Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

I recently played through Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 on the recently released Master Collection and I was quite surprised how bad the stories in those games were even for action game standards. And I get it, you don't play NG for the story and the devs of those games basically take the John Carmack Doom(1993) approach to story telling but at the same time, I feel like if they are going to have cutscenes, it tells me that they are attempting to have some kind of narrative, and I feel outside of brief breaks from gameplay, the cutscenes and storytelling in these games fail on a basic narrative level. For the sake of brevity, I'll get to the point of this piece. Ryu Hayabusa while having a great design and in some ways an interesting reserved, "man of few words" personality. He has no interesting foils to contrast him with to make these personality traits more interesting and as a result, every time he is on screen in a cutscene in these games, I often find myself bored half the time or just viewing the cutscene for the spectacle after just beating a boss.

I'll define a foil character for those who don't know, a foil character is a character is someone that highlights and contrasts traits with another character.

As overused of an example as this going to be and as much as I think he is an overpraised character. There is a reason why the Batman and Joker rivalry is so popular. Batman is a stoic, serious and at times angry dude while the Joker is happy, psychotic, and is insane. Both of them have poplar opposite personality traits that play off each other and create for interesting scenarios. For example, Joker can kill an innocent person while fighting Batman and laughs and acts crazy while doing it and this can bring out Batman's morals of not killing and push him ever so closer to losing his stoic demeanor and snapping but Batman never does because he believes that is a line he will never cross.

Now let's look at both Ninja Gaiden games, in NG1, who is a foil to Ryu? Racheal? She gets kidnapped and is a liability. Ayame? All she does is watch and narrate. Doku? He barely shows up and gets killed twice and barely has anything to contrast with Ryu. Alma? Same deal. Then there a bunch of other characters so forgettable(maybe outside of Muramasa) that they are almost not really worth mentioning. And that Murai twist of him being the villain the whole time was dumb, really, really dumb. The man is a trains people at day and is a secret Tyrannical Emperor at night? What?

Ninja Gaiden 2 does show some steps in the right direction with the character of Genshin being a rival of sorts to Ryu but the problem with him is that I am not sure what he really highlights about Ryu or what his motivations are. He just comes off as an obstacle for the player rather than a foil and the rest of the characters are as forgettable as the first game's cast.

Now to use a video game example on how to use a foil character and as overpraised as this game's story is, Devil May Cry 3 does use the character of Vergil very well for the purposes of narrative and gameplay. While Dante is loud, brash and obnoxious. Vergil is reserved, and stoic. It helps show highlight Dante's personality and makes it pop all the more. Platinum Games, even adopted this dynamic to varying degrees with their games like with Byonnetta 1 and 2, Metal Gear Rising, Wonderful 101, Anarchy Reigns, and even Vanquish to some degree.

While in NG1 and 2's cutscenes, it's usually Ryu talking to a bunch of characters with nothing really stand out about him.

To use another gaming example, there's a reason why Master Chief and Cortana's dynamic works so well. Master Chief is the quiet borderline mechanical super soldier while Cortana is the upbeat AI providing levity to the situations Chief is in. There's a reason why this dynamic works while Chief's borderline non existent interactions with the Arbiter don't. With the latter, Arbiter has little if no personality traits to contrast with the Chief and every time they are together, it borderline puts me to sleep with Marty O Donnell's and Michael Salvatori music the only thing keeping me awake. Cortana and Chief's dynamic highlights their respective traits more in Halo 4 where Chief is the machine despite being made of flesh while Cortana is more human despite being mechanical.

But back to NG, Ryu Hayabusa is basically Arbiter and Chief in Halo 3 but over the course of 2 games.

And before everyone starts jumping on me, I am not really asking for NG to be a well written story, I am just asking there to be a character to show off how cool Ryu actually can be as a character instead of being surrounded by boring cardboard cutouts. Maybe have a character whose motivations and personality contrasts with Ryu and make it less vague this time.

And I feel like I should address that stoic characters often get a bad rep but I think a good dynamic and a good foil can make them enjoyable and endearing characters.

I used to take foil characters for granted and while I did think they were important, I do realize their importance more than ever now in how the lack of them can make a story boring, intentionally bad or not.

Resident Evil 4 Review

The game is still good but there are some issues I have with it. First of all, the lack of on the fly weapon switching and how pointless the whole customizable inventory is. Once you upgrade the Attaché Case to large, it almost feels like the limited inventory just feels pointless, you can pretty much just carry as much shit as you want. And I always get annoyed when enemies get up close, and I want to switch to shotgun but then I have to wait a few seconds just to switch and an enemy could already have hit me.

Now the 2nd problem I have is a big one, and that is a lack of any kind of genuine evade command. When enemies hit you in RE4, it just feels cheap a lot of the time, because it feels like you can move out of the way but since Leon can only stay in one place, you pretty much have to deal with enemies getting free hits in. It doesn't feel like getting hit is my fault, it feels like I just have to deal with game's jank. RE3 had some form of an evasion command you RE4 can't have this? And the QTEs during bosses are finicky too considering I felt like I hit them correctly but yet I get hit.

Another issue I have is the health system and how inconsistent it is. One minute I am at green health and then get hit and I lose a quarter but then I get hit and lose half, and at other times, I am not even close to death yet I get killed, it often makes me wonder what even is the danger zone for the health system in this game is. It's either be at full health at all times or screw off. And finally the Island section especially towards the end was some of the weakest sections in the game. It's just non stop shooting galleries, but the game isn't interesting enough mechanically to sustain this. You basically just lure enemies into one place and fire away, there's not much decision making or anything interesting going on. It's still a good game but I really feel like I should critique the game on it's own merits since the old school survival horror fans and the people who deem the game to be a "masterpiece" sure isn't going to do it.

The island section is also really dull and exposes the combat for basically just being run, turn around, shoot, and kill everyone in your line of sight.

I have been negative on the game but the game does do a great job at changing up the combat encounters and it has some amazinginly satisfying combat, which greatly elevates the game but it does have some major problems that I don't think get discussed enough.

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Critique and the Perils of Adapting

 

Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Critique and the Perils of Adapting

Introduction: I have been a fan of Full Metal Alchemist since I was a kid. I watched it almost every Friday night as a kid back when it was airing on YTV, and it was probably one of the darker animated shows I watched at that time. The 2003 version is what I am talking about and I notice that version of FMA tends to have a mixed reception nowadays which is strange because back before Brotherhood ended and rewatching the former on Youtube(back when you can watch Funimation Dubbed anime on the site), the comments sections were very positive on it but when Brotherhood finished airing back in 2011 (which is funny because my 2nd watch of the 2003 version also happened that time), a lot of the reception towards the 2003 version started to change and you tend to be in one of three camps regarding that version: you either pretend it didn't exist, you thought the first half of the show was good but the anime original sections were bad(I will deconstruct that notion later) or you liked the whole show. On top of that, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood also has lots of "critical immunity" and is often considered one of if not the greatest anime of all time. The manga is also considered to be writing master class too. Okay, I rambled on long enough, this blog will basically go over the reasons why I think FMAB while being a decent to good show isn't as great as it's claimed to be and this will also cover the manga too. I'd probably give the show a 7/10 and I generally wouldn't give a fighting shounen anything higher than that. I will discuss the show on its own merits first, then I will go over why I prefer the 2003 version(in case FMAB fanboys thought I was being a 2003 fanboy and disregard my opinion for that alone, yes they do exist and they get that defensive) and I will discuss the ideas of an adaptation and if being "faithful" is always a "good" thing.

The early sections and why they suck: This part of FMAB is often derided the most, and even fanboys of the show straight up admit that they are terrible. I do think that people don't go into enough detail as to why they are bad to begin with. Yes, they rushed certain aspects of it, but some changes straight up make no sense at all. For example, the first episode being about a rogue State Alchemist named Isaac McDougal, he is very lacking as an antagonist and the guy basically is a poorly written anti villain because all he does is just say the military is evil and blames them for the Ishvalan Massacre, but yet the guy is willing to kill innocent people himself to get what he wants and the plot never acknowledges this. He is a pretty nothing antagonist and I bet you probably don't even remember him at all. The show only ever acknowledges him for one scene and it's pretty much a throwaway. He's never even in the flashbacks either and plus he wasn't even in the manga, which FMAB fanboys love to mention when talking about FMA. Then the next episode makes another questionable decision which makes no sense for the following episode. They decide to show Ed and Al's entire past before the Leore section. With this, Leore is robbed of its purpose. Leore was clearly supposed to be the opener because it sets up multiple mystery boxes like how Ed knows so much about the human body, what alchemy is, Al being a suit of armour, brothers' transmutation of Trisha Elric, but by having all these questions being answered in the previous episode, Leore is rendered redundant and serves no purpose. It sets up the armed uprisings I guess, but that gets resolved later in the show and the Father's plan of using it as a piece for his transmutation circle fails anyway. Sets up Rose? Well, she doesn't do anything in general. Later sections involving the Death of Hughes and Nina's Transmutation and Death By Scar have little room to develop, and actually feel like emotional moments. This can extend to the manga too, since those moments had little fleshing out or any build up that can lead to any emotional resonance. Nina gets transmuted and killed in the same chapter that she is introduced. Then there is just a lot of the other moments like Lab 5, Al's existential crisis, the Brothers burning down their house, and Ed trying offering his life so Scar can let Al go, all lacking any kind of emotional build up and all feeling hollow as a result but I can go over other stuff on why it's bad but I rambled long enough.

Lacking villains: This is one of the big reasons why the show and also by extension the manga never connected to me as much as other people. Most of the villains in FMAB outside of King Bradley are pretty much a joke. Gluttony and Envy are both basically jobbers and lose or get humiliated in every fight they are in. Envy in gets humiliated by Marcoh(who somehow learns how to destroy a Philosopher's Stone) and he never even puts up a fight against Mustang yet a bunch of generic super soldiers can. The most Envy ever amounts too is advancing key moments of the story like killing the Ishvalan Kid and killing Hughes and his death scene lacks emotional resonance or build up because he acts like an evil bastard throughout the entirety of the show, and in that one moment, I am supposed to feel bad for him? Well, this could work, if there was any other side to him than being an evil bastard who hates humanity but there isn't. Gluttony is an immortal punching bag then again most of the homunculi are outside of Bradley and Father. Sloth is also nothing more than an immortal punching bag despite having a really hard body and can move super fast(the latter is established late in the story for some reason). Pride is basically the Ginyu Force from DBZ where despite being hyped up as a threat never really does anything really evil that makes me want to hate him. He's just an obstacle and nothing more. Lust and this is going to be a funny one is actually one of the show's better villains. She actually is more threatening than the other homunculi outside of Bradley and Father. She was the villain that pushed Mustang to his limit and not to rely on cheap tricks to do so. She made Hawkeye doubt herself and even made her not want to live and she help seal the death of Barry the Chopper. Why can't the villains of this series be more like her? Then there is that Mad Scientist Character who was more a threatening than most of the villains in the series and yet I hardly know anything about him in general, after the back story reveal of Bradley's origins, he no shows for a while and it's weird to me since he is a villain that managed to do more damage than the majority of the homunculi. Kimblee is okay, but outside of impaling Ed and using Winry as a hostage, he never amounts to whole lot either. Then there is Father, the dude is basically Cell from Dragon Ball Z, and he's about as on par with him too. The former's back story reveal is very good, but the problem is that he never shows that kind of character in the show again. He mostly just sits around a lot and just looks bored or monologues about how inferior humanity is. He doesn't start doing much of anything until he takes a page out of the before mentioned, Cell's book and becomes "Perfect". Then there isn't really much to him still outside of being a typical overpowered shounen villain. Among all these issues I have is that none of the villains show any kind of agency or individuality of their own. They are all just generic henchmen outside of Bradley. Bradley is easily the best villain because not only because he is the most threatening but because there is a certain honesty about him I like, he is a puppet but he acknowledges that and tries to live life the best way he could by what is given to him. He also really feels "alive" when he is in battle, the thing that he was bred for. His death was stupid, Bradley could've killed Scar 20 times over but for some reason the latter had two alchemy arms and the former somehow got blinded by the solar eclipse. It felt like a huge Deus Ex Machina to have the good guy win. So overall, not a big fan of most of the villains. 

Overreliance on Face Turns: Alright, another big issue I have with FMAB is that it relies on face turns so much. It relies on the trope so much that it starts to lose all meaning. For example, Barry the Chopper, I find it so silly that a guy whose sole philosophy in life is, "I kill therefore I am" to be so willing to be bossed around by Mustang and his crew. Then there is Kimblee who gets the weirdest one of all, the guy is basically is as evil as it gets while it is somewhat foreshadowed that he turns face, the way it's done is so ridiculous, he somehow has a conscious inside of Pride's body and has a weird respect for Ed that was never even shown up until that point. It felt like a Deus Ex Machina because Ed was in trouble and he had no way out so the plot needed a way for him to get out. The rest of the face turns are nothing really to write home about but they do suffer from the before mentioned problem of lacking agency. A lot of them just turn good and never get challenged by their beliefs at all. There is one face turn that gets a particular amount of praise and one I never understood at all is to be Greed. Honestly? This might legit be one of the most over praised face turns I have ever seen. My big issue with it how little screen time Greed actually gets to develop. Greed tends to have a weird thing to show up but then no show for a long period of time to the point where I almost forget that he exists. The reason why I say a character like Zuko from Avatar works is because not only he gets a lot of screen time but because his ideals are constantly challenged and he is always in doubt of what he wants but when he realizes that his destiny is to be friends with Aang and be by his side, Zuko starts to change as a person and becomes less angry and more calm about his state of mind and the world. Compare this to Greed, where he shows up acts like an arrogant ass to everybody then no shows for awhile then suddenly the living embodiment of Greed changes his heart and wants "friends" even Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z and him learning humility felt way more natural than this. My big problem with Greed is that he acts like arrogant ass most of the time and his true desires is never really shown all that well.

Unanswered Questions that Bug Me: There are some weird things about FMAB's plot that bug me in general, they might be answered in the show they still bugged me anyways:

How did Father create Amestrian military out of the Ashes of Xerxes? He clearly needed people and he and Hoeinheim were the sole survivors, how did he do it?

Can Ed use transmutation circles at all when giving up his clapping alchemy powers?

Why didn't Sloth use his speed at Fort Briggs?

What exactly was Ling's plan in case if he didn't find the Elric Brothers to tell him about the Philosopher's Stone? Was rotting in a gutter his Plan A?

Why do characters have a such a great sense of direction in big places, why do they keep bumping into each other? This happens so much throughout the show for example Ling knowing where Gluttony was in the City despite being way far off from the Elrics and fighting Bradley beforehand? Winry just so happening to walk in Scar's fight with Ed and Al in the alley way and also walking in when Ed and Scar are talking about Winry's parents, or the gang was able to randomly find Al in the snow.

Why didn't Father and the gang keep the Elrics and Izumi locked up instead of letting them go free?

Why is forced human transmutation a "last resort"?

Did Father spend his whole existence preparing for the solar eclipse? Did he ever have a backup plan before he went all "Perfect Form Cell?"

Why didn't Alexander Armstrong use his alchemy on his sister when fighting over the land?

The Over praised Female Characters: An aspect of FMAB that gets mentioned a lot are it's great female characters and honestly? The only one that really stands out to me is Hawkeye but some aspects of her feels like a missed opportunity like her having flame alchemy research on her back. It only gets mentioned twice and not much else is done with it. Oliver Armstrong has an interesting survival of the fittest mentality but she is mostly just a one note show boater and doesn't anything else besides that. Izumi Curtis really annoyed me with how modest she was, she kept calling herself a housewife even though she can already do more than what most people like her can do. She barely has much to do in the plot herself. Lan Fan is basically just a servant who knows how to fight and Mei Chan is an annoying kid that somehow gets away with getting involved with the military and corrupt conspiracies and the part where the Youswell Town started to help her was really cringey to me because everyone in her vicinity was going to help a random foreign girl. Winry is decent but her romance with Ed feels forced mainly because she spends most of her time screaming and beating him up rather than doing anything genuinely romantic.

The Humour: This will be short but a criticized aspect of FMAB is the humour and it feels really out of place most of, if not all the time. It's not only really unfunny but it can take me out of serious scenes too. Seeing Ed get called short for a lot of the show got old really fast and it's funny how the show contradicts its own humour where Envy turns into a big CGI monster and gets his ass kicked while Mei Chan can beat up monsters over half her size and Oliver Armstrong literally man handles a guy that is way bigger than him. The exaggerated expressions are super obnoxious, and while they get phased out the more the show goes on, it's still there to varying degrees. I do find it funny how fanboys defend the humour by saying, "2003 version had it too" and the "manga also has it". My response to that is, the 2003 version at least phases out it's terrible humour much earlier on and the manga and the anime both having the same problem doesn't fix anything.   

Fights are Mostly Decent: While the fights in FMAB aren't as bad as your usual shounen fare I say it generally pales in comparison to other stuff Studio Bones has made like Sword of the Stranger, Samurai Champloo and the short but sweet Production I.G fights like Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Morbito the Spearmaster, and Psycho Pass Season 1 and the movie. FMAB also turns into DBZ by the end and I always hated it when it did that, it just feels like such a jarring change in direction in terms of fight chorography.

Awkward Pacing: This might sound like a weird compliant but I felt FMAB moved at a really slow pace at times. I don't know whether or not I read the manga but it felt like plot stays on a certain plot point for too long. While the parts the FMAB does adapt properly are fine at first, I feel like the Pride fight in the forest and the final battle with Father took way too long. They both went on for so long that it started to get more and more boring.

The Ending is alright: The lack of consequences. This is a big reason as to why the ending doesn't land with me. There is hardly any consequences for the characters' actions. Mustang lost his sight but he gets it back, Ed loses his clapping hands alchemy but I am not sure if he loses his transmutation circle alchemy. Hardly any major character even dies and they missed a huge opportunity with Hoehinheim where he could've sacrificed himself for Al but instead Ed just uses the power of friendship to do it. And what's dumb to me is that Hoehinheim dies later anyway which I am just wondering what the point of that was. And Ed and Winry having a romantic relationship was just a forced romance to appease shippers and nothing more. Their relationship in the series never felt romantic at all. Hughes even acted like she was more of a surrogate sister to the brothers.

Comparison to the 2003 version and why I like it more: Brotherhood is a decent to good show but I argue if it's going to appeal to me now, it's going to a lot more to appeal to current mindset than face turns and being more consistent than your average shounen. It wouldn't be Brotherhood and the manga anymore but it would appeal to me more. That's where the 2003 version comes in. That show felt more personal and focused. I actually connected to Ed and Al more as brothers because the show actively explored their relationship. The conflict was much greyer and the homunculi had a family dynamic where Brotherhood mostly lacked. I also feel like 2003 didn't have way too many characters for the sake of it. The homunculi actually had agency and goals of their own. Sloth wanted to get rid of Ed and Al so she wouldn't be haunted by the memories of Trisha Elric. Envy wants to kill Hoehinheim and everything related to him because he was ignored by him and want to destroy any trace of the Elrics. Wrath wants to find a mother and protect her. Lust wants to become human again. Gluttony has acts like a child and is often needs Lust to guide and comfort him. Another reason why I prefer the 2003 version is because the homunculi were more a threat every time they showed up, someone would die or they the heroes would barely escape with their lives. They felt like genuine threats to me. Envy was more threatening too since Ed never even had a single victory over him. Izumi Curtis is a big improvement, she actually has a backbone actual conviction rather than saying, "I am a lovely housewife coming by" constantly. The biggest reason why I prefer the 2003 version is because that show deals with the human condition more and is explores how far Ed is willing to go to create a Philosopher Stone. The death of Maajahal was an interesting mainly because Ed killed him in self defence, then in Lab 5 he fought the Slicer Brothers and when he won, he showed them kindness and compassion and seeing all the episodes and content 2003 added(more on that later), made me sympathize with his conviction. Then he was forced to make a Stone but the thing is, Ed said that he might've actually have done it, after that, he fights Wrath where he has Ed's limbs but Ed still doesn't have the conviction to get what he wants. Ed's first fight with Greed happens and Greed taunts him that he doesn't have the what's necessary to get what he wants. Then the final fight with Greed happens and Ed kills him, he is shocked by the fact that he killed someone, but later realized that you have to do things you don't like to get what you want. I feel like Brotherhood and by extension the manga is lacking things like this. The 2003 version has it's issues too like the rushed ending, Bradley isn't as awesome and how it bit off more than it could chew with other side of the gate but that show did more than FMAB and the manga did for me. You could argue that FMA 2003 is more of a reimagining of the manga rather than a direct adaptation but that is a different topic.

The point of adapting media and what is the point really, when people bring up FMA, they always bring up the manga as to why FMAB is better than the 2003 version? And my question is, why? Just because something is similar doesn't make it good and something is different doesn't make it bad. I mean they say FMAB, makes 2003 "redundant" but that can both work ways. FMAB is redundant because you could read the manga, unless if color, animation and voices really mean that much to you. I feel like the only reason to watch the Brotherhood anime is for the Dub particularly Ed Blaylock as Bradley. Other than that FMAB is the same story but with a way worse beginning. I used to hear that and still hear, "you should watch the early parts of FMA 2003 and then switch to Brotherhood". Let me tell you with the most absolute conviction in that is objectively wrong. FMA 2003 gets derided for having anime original content later when that is a lie, FMA 2003 has a lot of anime original content even in the beginning. There's stuff like the Majaahal episode, the Pisiren Lupin the Third parody episode, the Fletcher Brothers, Al running away from Ed and Winry and meeting up with Ishvalans, a Barry the Chopper origin story episode, an entire sub plot of Hughes wanting to protect the Elric Brothers so Mustang can focus on his military career and episodes where Nina Tucker has more screen time that she never had in FMAB or the manga. All these anime original episodes have build up to their own twists and turns that compliment the 2nd half. So if you dislike the 2nd half, you better not like the 1st half either. And the fact this misconception exists proves my point that most didn't read the manga and use it as confirmation bias.

In conclusion, FMAB is an decent-good show and is a souless adaptation of a manga that I think is about the same in terms of quality even worse in some ways. It's better than a lot of shounen but that isn't saying a whole lot.

 

Why I dislike Naughty Dog: The Jak Sequels

 

Why I dislike Naughty Dog: The Jak Sequels

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I'll admit, when I started the Jak series when the HD collection came out, it wasn't the greatest of introductions. I almost exclusively ignored Jak 1 because it had no guns and it relied on collecting an x amount of collectibles to continue, which I wasn't into at the time. Jak 2 and 3 engaged me more but something about them still felt "off" to me. I felt like I wanted the Jak series to be something like Ratchet and Clank since they looked so similar. It took me at least from 2011 to 2014 to beat all 3 games and I was lukewarm on the trilogy for a while. Compared to other Sony platformers like Ape Escape, Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, the Crash sequels and the Spyro Sequels. Jak never appealed to me as much.

Then I played Jak 1 again on PS4 back in 2019 and I was much more "experienced" and more "well rounded" gamer at that time. I played a much bigger variety of games by that point and I also appreciated level design in games more. All though my bias is still mainly fps games and stealth games. Jak 1 came to PS4 not too long ago, and I heard it was very good when it came to level design. For the most part, the game really holds up. Jak 1 had great level design and a really well done interconnected world which all felt seemless to explore. Naughty Dog did a great job with what the PS2 can do. My experience with collectathons were mostly just the Spyro and Ape Escape and while I enjoyed those games, I feel like Jak hit the right balance of being noob friendly for people who don't actively play the genre, while also being an interesting game in it's own right. Spyro sequels in general can be quite ridiculous in the amount of shit you had to collect at times but Jak felt much more forgiving in the collectibles. Jak 1's level design was so well done that I even got the optional Scout Files for the levels too which I normally never do. Well, Jak 1 does borrow from other games, it does enough on it's own to the point where it's still a good game in it's own right.

And boy this now leads to me to the Jak Sequels. I'll be straight up honest here in that I haven't recently played Jak 2 and only played 3 and honestly? I don't even want to touch the former, the lack of checkpoints is the reason why, and before you call me a "noob" or a "casual", here's the thing, Jak 2's game design is so unbelievably flawed like a super big empty world to traverse, terrible combat, terrible missions, terrible driving controls with mandatory races, terrible hoverboard controls, too many gameplay aspects that isn't platforming, that the lack of checkpoints is just going to make these problems standout more. You have redo large amounts of content with the same sub par game design and it just makes the above mentioned flaws way more obvious and noticeable. I like CoD campaigns despite their flaws but since they have a quick roller coaster feel and they are checkpointed well enough to the point where before the flaws really start to show, they are over and I generally have a good time. Jak 2, is just a long ass mess of a game and it's lack of checkpoints just make all it's issues more obvious. I'll admit, that I don't demand a big challenge out of games but I can appreciate it when done well, Crash 4 and from what I played of Shadow Tactics do a good enough of job even if playing them exhaust the crap out of me. Jak 2 is not one of those games.

Okay, I rambled about difficulty long enough, let's get to the meat to the reason why I dislike the Jak Sequels. To put it simply, they are just souless sequels that just cash in on what's popular at the time. I hate the word "souless" but it fits the Jak Sequels well mainly because all they did was just copy off other games and mixed it into a blender and hope they can somehow create an identity out of it. They have the open world of GTA but you can't interact with the world in any meaningful way, this is a problem with GTA too but Jak, it's just more obvious since at least people who don't play games much can enjoy raising the wanted level, kill random people and run over people and do dumb stuff in GTA where in Jak 2 and 3, it's just open world because GTA had it. The side missions are barely there and they are hardly anything interesting. And to add off to all this, all the actual missions take place outside of the open world meaning that the open world is just window dressing overall and it could all be a level select menu. Then there is the errand boy nature of the missions. Every mission just consists of Jak doing something for someone. It's just, "hey Jak do this thing", "hey Jak do that thing". It robs the character of any kind of agency and this is a problem when the game is unbelievably story driven and the whole plot revolves around the world getting destroyed any moment. It never feels like Jak is the one in control of his destiny. This can apply to many open world games but these are sequels to one of if not the best collectathon platformer I ever played, so this was just pathetic to see.

I will give Jak 3 this, it at least trimmed the open world down considerably to the point where it's much easier to get around, where Jak 2 a good 55% of the game was driving to the next mission point with the crappy driving controls. The world still feels lifeless and boring compared to Jak 1.

Then there is the hoverboard. I don't have much experience with Skateboarding games, so I will leave this short. What made the Tony Hawk games appealing was that the levels facilitated all these cool and crazy tricks and rack up points to get a high score. Jak 2 and 3 doesn't have this, it's just skateboarding mixed in with platform challenges and it doesn't add much to the core gameplay at all since the appeal of Tony Hawk is to mess around while Jak 2 and 3 literally has to shove in mechanics that feel out of place in a platformer.

Now here is the combat. This is what really grinds my gears. It's almost amazing how Naughty Dog never got combat right until the Last of Us because this combat system isn't good at all. First of all, it suffers from Ratchet and Clank 2002's problem of the lack of strafing and all combat mainly consists of is using weapons and tricks that can attack enemies from both left and right because the player can't move left and right. In Ratchet 2002's case it's using area of effect weapons like the grenade glove and the Tesla Claw and Jak 2's case it was using the Assault Rifle spin attack and Jak 3's case, it's using the Assault Rifle with bouncing shots because it covers the enemies from left and right and as well as blindspots. Jak 3 gives you way more weapons than 2 but at the same time, you never get to actually use them much because the game's mission variety feels so uneven but more on that later. In Jak 2, you get Dark Jak but he is so useless since you rarely get eco energy to use him and he's just not useful in battle since enemies use guns and you lose guns when you are Dark Jak. In Jak 3, you get Light Jak but the only useful ability he uses that you want to use is the healing since it makes the tedious combat encounters go by faster. Then there is the enemies themselves, Novcanno said it best in his Jak 2 video but the big problem with Jak 2 and by extension 3's combat is that enemies have projectile attacks disguised as a hitscan. For example, enemies will have attacks that will miss but every 3rd shot, you get hit by them and there is no sure way of dodging them and some enemies literally just hit without any way to properly dodge them, and this is what destroys Jak 2 and 3's combat. Compared to the Ratchet Sequels where you can strafe PLUS every attack can be dodged since enemies use projectiles, Jak just feels like it just added third person shooting because hey third person shooters like Max Payne were popular at the time. People often bash tps games from this era but games like Red Dead Revolver, Transformers Prelude to Energon, Suffering 1 and 2, the before mention Ratchet Sequels, Max Payne 1 and 2 to name a couple at least knew they were doing regarding combat encounters. Jak 2 and 3 just added third person shooting because other games did it.

Now, mini games and mission variety. Jak 2 and 3 really suffer from having variety for the sake of variety. There is so much other crap in both these games that you would legit forget that these games are supposed to be platformers. Jak 2 has a crap load of mini games, random missions that have nothing to do with platforming and lots and I mean LOTS of driving. Jak 3 is the example I will use when discussing this. In Jak 3, when you start the game, you do some platforming and some shooting, then after that you do a bunch of racing and mini games and then you get rewarded a fucking weapon mod. Wait, what? I didn't even do any shooting for a while and I get rewarded something that I don't even know gives me an advantage in combat? I haven't done combat in a while. And Jak 3 is full of this, you will do a platforming mission once every 6 missions if that and then it's back to more mini games and shooting. The game is so ashamed of it's platforming origins to appeal to bigger demographic that it's almost funny to me. The platforming can be pretty enjoyable when you do it but you have to go through mini games, weak ass shooting, driving and a bunch of other boring crap for you to get there. The desert sections have even less platforming that the Haven City levels. There is so much driving in the latter that I legit thought I was playing a racer crossed with a bootleg version of Twisted Metal.

In conclusion, these Sequels are basically, the examples when I think of "souless" sequels that missed the point and were only made to cash in off trends than to make actual well made sequels. Hell, this feels like a precursor to Uncharted in how it's more of a mini game collection than an actual full on game.

 

Why Batman is so Overused

 

Why Batman is so Overused

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I tend to complain a lot about the fact that Batman is such an overused hero. I complain almost every few weeks or even months for that matter. The guy has so many movies whether animated or live action and has lots of video games and while I find it annoying many other people don't seem to get tired of him at all. I am here to examine, "why?" The common reason that is said is that Batman is the "best" DC hero and the best superhero in general and to some the only "good" superhero. In reality, that isn't really true at all it's actually due to 4 reasons I am going to state here:

1) He is the easiest hero to do. I mean when you think about it. Batman isn't a very hard hero to pull off when compared to other DC heroes like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern. All you need is a guy wearing a Batman costume, a gruff voice, some makeshift gadgets and some martial arts lessons and he himself can make a pretty convincing Batman. Where with Superman, it's a lot harder to pull him off. That doesn't make him a bad character by any means, it's just that it requires way more effort for example you need lots of special effects just to show off his powers and practical effects ain't going to cut it. I mean first of all, you need to fly which is well, impossible, then there is heat vision which is also impossible, invulnerability to conventional human weapons which is well impossible and now you get it. With Green Lantern you need special effects just to do flight and to do the lantern constructs. Wonder Woman might somewhat be easier than both considering you need a lasso and some bracelets but even she has overworldly elements to her. Like moving so fast that she can block bullets or super strength. With games this also presents another issue because well, you could say making a game with other DC heroes is "impossible due to how overpowered they are" the fact of the matter is superhero games will never have a high skill ceiling because they need to appeal to fans of the comics and the movies, I mean Batman is pretty overpowered in the Arkham games in his own right especially stealth wise. But with the other characters there's a lot more that goes into them design wise, with Batman you just need gadgets, and a fancy martial arts fighting system where with the above mentioned characters, you need to have more powers to accommodate for and enemy designs to make combat engaging. You can make a good game with them but the problem is, it's not as easy when making a game for Batman due to him being a rich human who fights thugs and deranged psychos. With comics all you have to do is draw and everything will come to together for your creation but with games and movies they require way more money to do everything.

2) He has the most consistent and acclaimed on screen portrayals. I mean really Batman is probably the most one of the few if not only superheroes especially in DC where he has been done well on screen many, many times and has lots of acclaim. There's animated works like Batman TAS and Beyond to animated movies like Under the Red Hood and Mask of the Phantasm, to acclaimed Arkham series, all the way down to the Burton movies, the Nolan movies and even the Ben Affleck version having it's own cult following now. I mean really, when it comes to comic book characters in general, it generally isn't about the comics that make or break a character's reception in public eye, it's the on screen versions. Spider-Man is almost on Batman's level of dick riding but his comics by Dan Slott are universally hated but the thing is most people in the public don't care about the comics. MCU Spidey, Into the Spider-Verse, and the Insomniac Spidey games and he is one of the most celebrated characters in recent memory especially after how low character reception was back in 2014 with Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the weak games and the terrible Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon. Compare this to say Superman, okay, it's well known that the guy gets lots of hate for being overpowered and "hard to write" but the thing is those people tend to take out of context comic images and use it proof as to why he sucks but the real reason why he isn't well liked in public eye now is due to the fact that his on screen portrayals compared Spidey and Bats isn't nearly as consistent. He had the first 2 Donner movies, TAS, some animated movies here and there, and arguably Man of Steel but outside of those, he tends not have any on screen portrayals loved by everyone or the majority and guess what out of all that stuff I mentioned, the Donner movies are the most popular, go figure and they base every version of Superman off that. And unless if the guy gets his own Nolan trilogy or Arkham games equivalent, it's going to be that way for a long long time.

3) This is probably one of the most important because I feel this is where Batman really tends to work and gets milked. It's the iconic villains. Yeah sure, one could argue the Joker overrules most of Batman's villains but at the same time, compared to almost every comic book hero ever, Batman's rogues are extremely easy to pull off and make endless live movies out of. You can easily do a guy with a scared face and have him be Two Face, you can get a big muscular man and have him be Bane, you can have a guy with weird facial hair and be Ra's Al Ghul, you can have a guy with a scarecrow mask throwing gas at people and be Scarecrow and of course you can have a guy wear clown make up and act crazy and be the Joker. Christopher Nolan made a trilogy out of that. Punisher, Green Arrow and the Question you could make a gritty grounded trilogy of movies out of but none of these before mentioned characters have any iconic villain on the level of the characters I mentioned. Punisher doesn't really have much of full on rogues gallery due to his killing nature. Yeah sure he has Baracuda and Jigsaw but are any of them really going to compel audiences as much as Ra's Al Ghul let alone the Joker? Then this leads to my second point and this is a really important one, a lot of comic villains tend to be over the top and outlandish in nature to the point where having a guy in a suit and using practical effects might not be convincing enough. I mean why does every Fantastic 4 movie feature Dr. Doom? Why does every Superman movie feature Lex Luthor or Zod? Why does every X-Men movie tend to have Magneto or even William Stryker? It's because these villains I mentioned are the easiest for movie studios to pull off. You can have a guy in a mask and a green cloak and have him be Doom even if it's far from accurate. You can have a bald guy who looks rich be Lex Luthor, and it's super easy to have a middle aged man have the same powers as Superman. Braniac, Parasite, Metallo, Cyborg Superman, Bizarro, Darkseid, Manchester Black might require a lot more effort but a middle aged man who is a foil to Superman? That is easy for movie studios to do. It's easy to reuse assets. Magento all you need is a guy in a helmet and a cape, and William Stryker you just need an actor who is old. I mean you could do Super Skrull, Impossible Man, Puppet Master, and Galactus but they aren't as easy as Doom. You can use Mr. Sinister or even go all cosmic with Shi'ar but at the same time, it's not as easy. This where Batman works because he is semi grounded where a lot of other heroes are as much so. Easy to draw and make convincing in a comic not so much with a live movie which is what most audiences gravitate towards.

4) Batman has a plethora of standalone stories to recommend people who don't read comics. I mean really a lot of comic book heroes have super long runs by authors and illustrators which tell mini arcs within the run and you can read them alone but at the sametime, you might miss out on details, context or added emotion. Batman has this too but he lots of standalone stories for random people to read like Killing Joke, Year One, Long Halloween, Hush and the Arkham Asylum storyline. These are are standalone stories that you don't need to read an entire run to understand appreciate. They tend to get recommended over and over but that is besides the point. Superman has a few himself like Red Son and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow but they aren't as numerous or as iconic as Batman. And Spider-Man doesn't have a whole lot genuine standalone stories at all compared to Batman.

So yeah, it really has nothing to do with him being the "best" character. He's just easy to do and super iconic.

 

Why I am not a Big Fan of Naughty Dog

 

Why I am not a Big Fan of Naughty Dog

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I have been bitching about Naughty Dog on my Twitter Page a lot lately or at least complaining them at a high volume rate, and these Tweets or anything anti Naughty Dog tend to attract a lot of non mutuals who tend to waste my time with their drivel so I am hopefully going to bury the hatchet here and really get into as to why I haven't been a fan of them as much as other people especially how Nakeyjakey's "critique" was a big time joke and all he did was complain while using that super misused term "ludonarrative dissonance".

Okay, now that's out of the way, one of Naughty Dog's most overpraised series is Uncharted and particularly Uncharted 2. And I will note that I am a fan of the Last of Us and respect that game a lot more than the Uncharted games while I don't think TLOU is super amazing, it at least does more with it's gameplay and story than the Uncharted series ever did so I won't bash it as much on this blog post. Plus Uncharted 2 is probably the most "critically immune" out of all of Naughty Dog's games. And I will also say that Navacanno's critique on Uncharted 1 and 2 is absolutely worth watching and should be watched by anyone who has an interest in games as medium. I may repeat stuff here that he already said too.

Alright, the first thing that tends to praised about the Uncharted games particularly 2 is the "story". The first thing I want to say is that it's not really the story that makes Uncharted's story "interesting" or at least why people flock to them, it's the witty dialogue and bantering. The story in Uncharted 2 doesn't break new ground at all, it's basically Indiana Jones set in the modern day and without the liberties of taking place in the past that makes Indy stories work. And to be really honest here, while not the same kind of game or story, it's pretty obvious at this point that Naughty Dog relies on the same tropes that made you get attached to the world and characters that Valve used in Half Life 2, which is funny to me considering Half Life 2 gets a lot of anti hype nowadays. They both have long sections of down time, they both have you interact with the characters by doing things in game, they both tend to use set pieces in between the quiet time, and both tend to throw in some random gimmicks inbetween shootouts. Where with Half Life, while not having a great story in own right at least feels more immersive and personal due to the first person perspective, and never cutting except load times, the story at least feels like it fits a game where with Uncharted, it uses cutscenes and cinematics like film while using the same tropes that HL2 uses and the result feels less impressive due it trying to be a game and while also being a film.

Now next and this might be the "meat" of the blog is two aspects of Uncharted's gameplay: shooting, and ugh "platforming".

The platforming in Uncharted has to be one of the most laughable and weakest implantations of the concept I have ever seen in the medium. Where with games like the Prince of Persia Sands Trilogy, and especially later games in the Sands Trilogy like Two Thrones while being a series of timing tests at least requires you to think and be aware of when to jump and when to movie out of the way. Two Thrones especially adds more to the platforming by adding jump boards, knife rest holds, columns in for the Prince to slide and rest on and moving columns to time your jumps. It also feels like a fast paced rhythm game where you are timing moves very quickly and carefully, and it all feels very good to pull off without dying or using the sand rewinds. Dark Prince sections adds more to platforming too where you have to watch health. But he gets his own set of moves like swinging, pulling columns, and hanging which adds more to the timing tests plus his sections have enemies to deal with.

Now what does Uncharted do? Leap. What do you do when you want to get to another part of the level? Leap. What you when you make to another side? Leap. Compare that to what I wrote about Prince of Persia to that of Uncharted. Uncharted's platforming isn't so much "platforming" as it is just going to a straight linear line disguised as a platforming course.

Hell, even the older God of Wars did a better job with this. You at least had combat during climbing sections and you could use light, heavy attacks and grab while movie around and you had to watch out for obstacles too.

I will say that Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy somewhat improved the platforming by adding the grapple hook but even then it's still the bare minimum to me. It's just pressing L1 randomly inbetween your usual linear romps disguised as "platforming".

Now I will get to shooting. Okay it'd be way too easy for me to unfavorably compare the shooting in these games to the shooting game powerhouses like iD Software and Monolith Productions. So instead I will compare them to 3 franchises, Ratchet and Clank, the newer Tomb Raider games and Halo.

Ratchet and Clank is a series in some ways like Uncharted, it also has pillars of gameplay that when compared in someways to full on games of their type might not compare as much. While Ratchet has basic platforming, it at least makes up for it with it's shooting. While Insomniac has been a bit too quantity over quality when it comes to their weapons, they at least got the act of combat down. In the Ratchet games, you aren't taking cover behind hitscan weapons waiting for health to regen instead you are jumping around avoiding projectile weapons while you also using projectile weapons. It was combing it's act of shooting and jumping long before Uncharted. In fact Ratchet in some ways feels like a "bullet ballet" to me due to how much of a rhythm there is to shooting and firing your weapons.

Now next is the newer Tomb Raider games, while they don't have great combat, I can at least give them credit for using FEAR's AI system known as "goal oriented action planning" where and I am putting it simply here is where each enemy AI character has a goal for them to do in the game world and for objects for them to interact with. Add the enemy variety and them throwing enemy "barks" at the player and it does lead for some engaging and interesting combat encounters than just sitting behind cover waiting for health to regen and then getting out at the occasional grenade throw. You have to more around and watch out what enemies do and be mindful of when you attack in the TR games. The TR games do at least more engaging things with their enemy encounters than "self adjusting difficulty" that the Naughty Dog fanboys seem to think is interesting.

Now finally, I will compare them to Halo. Now Halo especially the Bungie games might just be some of the most overpraised shooting games ever and their fanboys are basically just a bunch of whiny teenagers, I am not going to lie that the way Bungie managed to use aim assist in a way where the skill ceiling didn't lower is rather impressive and didn't need to resort to cover systems like Gears of War and especially Uncharted did. Halo for a console shooter managed to have some impressive AI, large environments, and quite a bit of gameplay decision making with melee attacks and grenades is something that I still find to impressive where Uncharted basically copied ideas that other games were doing at the time, and was one of the franchises that created the cover shooter "dark age" in the 7th gen.

I will mention Uncharted 4 and Lost Legacy. While both games feature way better combat than the trilogy did. I still feel like regen health and hitscan weapons hold them back. And while the Uncharted fanboys bring up the whole Nathan Drake's "luck" bullshit when excusing the regen health I argue it ruins and lowers the skill ceiling that Uncharted 4 and LL's combat could have. I feel like a simple fix to this is to take a cue out of Resistance Fall of Man's playbook and have parts of your health that can regenerate and have enemies drop health packs when killed. That way it makes the games way less biased towards stealth and these games' stealth mechanics are way too simple to make stealth play ever satisfying.

In conclusion, I could go on about other aspects of Naughty Dog I don't like how the Jak games lost their identity after ripping off GTA, how Uncharted 3 tells the best story in the series despite the fandom constantly complaining about it, how ND's set pieces are Crash Bandicot boulder chases with more flash than substance, how the Druckmann era of Naughty Dog has an over reliance on down time. I feel like they could all make their own posts which I could do but I feel I wanted to rip apart Uncharted particularly 2 because I really can't stand that game.

 

Call of Duty's Shooting Mechanics

 

Call of Duty's Shooting Mechanics

Call of Duty whether you love it or hate it tends to be a big topic among the Gaming Community, it was a much bigger franchise back in the 7th gen and the series tends to reboot it's sub continuities a lot to rebuild interest among it's fans but one thing I never see discussed much about the series is the core shooting gameplay. People often insult the franchise but I have never seen that much discussion on why they hate the games so much, and it's often due to it being the face of "bro gaming" and I think writing off games like that is pointless and unfair. CoD4 tends to be ridiculed less among the "gamers" but I argue that game has some of the same issues the series has but often gets away from the scorn of the gaming community is because of how the story was told and how it was the less over the top "power fantasy" due to the restrain that game has, but I argue just because it and arguably World at War are the most restrained CoD games since it became mainstream that does not mean it ignores the core flaws in their shooting gameplay.

Okay, that was a long intro but now I will get more into the issues I have and offer feedback. Note this will be about CoD's single players all though some of this can apply to multiplayer as well.

Issues:

Well it was sort of big in some ways back in 2003 for an fps game to have iron sights and enemies that don't take a lot shots to die, I argue as the series as it went on it became less of a novelty and more of an issue that became more and more prevalent as the series progressed. First of all, the iron sights, while iron sights can make a game arguably more "realistic", I argue that iron sights well, not so much iron sights but the lack of giving the player hip fire options except for the shotgun really limits the options players have in terms of taking out enemies. It's often just relying on the aim assist to kill nearby enemies than it is to take out enemies yourself by looking for them in the battlefield or getting up close and personal unless if the games' level design specially allows for close quarters combat. Partner all this with hitscan weapons, and all shootouts in most CoD games consist of is ADS, shoot, get hit, take cover and rinse and repeat. People do point out CoD's reliance on set pieces and I argue CoD's set pieces exist is because this core shooting gameplay isn't enough to make an exciting enough 6 hour game out of. Some games in the series like CoD2 do let you hip fire more and let you be more aggressive at times, and relies on aim assist less due to being made for PC first but it still has some of the above mentioned issues and later games games have you reload your gun just as much as you are firing it. I really like an over reliance on ADS just gives the player less options in combat, I argue games like Resistance Fall of Man and 3 gives the player options to shoot far away enemies but gives the player enough leniency to use hip fire to make firefights feel fresh and have enough variety when it comes to enemy killing.

My next issue and this one is what really bugs me is enemies taking very little damage. I feel like this issue really annoys me when it comes to CoD. Since CoD has hitscan weapons and relies on cover heavily for it's shootouts, it often leads to enemies surrounding the player from all sides often having no idea where they are actually attacking you from, this often leads to deaths where you have no idea where you got shot from. And the funny thing is, the easy setting lets you take more hits and allows the player to be more aggressive which can to more moving around and less hiding behind cover and less cheap deaths. On the hardest setting, the player takes way less damage and enemies can hit harder, which leads to the player hiding behind cover more and more cheap deaths you couldn't see coming. Some games even have enemies grande spam in order to add more "difficulty". And the next issue this leads to is that weapons just feel samey for the most part. Of course there are weapons for long range encounters and shotguns for close range, but in CoD especially the modern ones, there are dozens upon dozens of machine guns that all serve the same function. Since enemies all take the same amount of damage to die, this allows for less genuine weapon variety. Since one machine gun is the same thing as the other machine guns since all you have to do is ADS, shoot and enemy dies. I'd rather they just have a smaller number of weapons and have enemies take more damage to give each weapon it's use. Add more enemy variety of enemies and less guns that I will never use. There is also "grenades" that CoD took from the Halo series but in CoD you can "cook" them. In all honesty, I have never used them in a CoD that much because enemies take little effort to actually kill. I argue Killzones 2 and 3 actually made me use a feature like that more since first of all, those games give you a visual indicator on when the grenade will explode and on top of that since Helghast AI move around a lot and they take way more damage than any CoD enemy, this feature actually has a use now. Cooking a grenade and killing 2-3 Helghast at once feels very satisfying to pull off where in CoD it doesn't require nearly the same amount of skill since enemies take little damage and machine guns can kill them in 2 hits. It also helps that Killzones 2 and 3 despite their flaws have very powerful feeling guns that eviscerate enemies whenever you shoot them and they have more enemy variety than any CoD game to boot.

Improvements:

I feel like as much of the hate the futuristic CoD games get, I argue Black Ops 3 has on paper has some of ideas on how to improve the shooting. BO3 has a of enemies like flying drones, enemies that sprint like Serious Sam enemies, mechs, and your usual foot soldiers among others. Some of these enemies take a number of bullets to kill partner that with the customization and you can get some core shooting with some genuine variety and dare I say it, "depth". I feel like there is a blueprint for something interesting here. Plus the Titanfall style movement and you could get a great core shooting system. I just wish the levels were more opening and they dropped the regen health or make the health pool smaller and focus on movement more. And less guns and more weighty animations and you could get a genuinely great shooter.

I guess another way is borrowing from Medal of Honor Allied Assault. That game does have typical missions were you are on foot with other soldiers and setpieces but that game does let you hold all your guns and give enemies more health before they are killed. I say do something like this, let the player hold all their guns and let enemies take more damage while giving the player large arenas and play spaces to play around along with the usual military soldier missions. CoD Advanced Warfare and Infinite Warfare does something like this, I say just do it with more options.

And there you go. My critique and thoughts on how to improve. I wanted to cover more stuff but I feel I got the core issues down.