Gears of War 2 Review

I'd probably call this a pretty good game. It beats the crap out of the first Gears. But it is funny, the devs knew that the constant cover shooting of Gears 1 was not that interesting so they mixed things up constantly.

You have enemies that summon tickers and can heal fallen soldiers, there are Reavers who get you out of cover, you have different portable cover you can use(my personal favorite being the shield that you can pick up), it has scripted sequences and a number of vehicle sections, as well a section where cover can be can be lowered, as well as Flamethrower Locusts to rush you out. It's almost like they were ashamed of the game being a cover shooter so they tried to stay away from pure cover shooting as much as they could. It's basically everything Uncharted 2 gets praised for but I feel this game actually does it well.

All though flaws with the games are the crazy amounts of staggering animations when getting hit which is supposed to reinforce the cover mechanic but it can be annoying whenever you are of cover and surronding by enemies, and it doesn't help that the friendly AI can still be stupid at times which can make the game frustrating because you are getting screwed over by the AI's stupidity. Some of the scripted sequences can be kind of annoying and sort of hard to tell what to do at first, which is an issue a lot of scripted sequences have. Some random cheap deaths here and there. And the A button being the cover, vault and sprint button is still as annoying as ever before due to accidently doing one action when you meant to do the other.

The story is surpsinginly decent. I enjoyed that Dom's wife's subplot since it added a bit more of a human element to the series. Marcus does more stuff that is more heroic and interesting like killing the worm, and helping those people. And the part where Cole was screaming and insulting the Locust Queen was epic mainly due to him telling her to shut up after the latter's excessive monologuing. Nice to see a popular sequel to a 7th gen franchise actually live up to the hype.

Metroid Dread Review

Pretty good game, could be my GOTY overall. All though not going to lie, the game's structure caught me off guard, I kept going around in circles for hours because I had a hard time figuring where to go but then it "clicked" and I knew where I was going with the occasional stump. It did catch me off guard, I was expecting to find tons of random stuff and secrets but the game was secretly bottlenecking me to go to a specfic places. But other than that, the bosses and controls all felt great. The best Metroid has ever been. 

Two things that did bug me was the EMMI killing due to the aiming controls and the amount of times you fight the Chozo Soldiers but those are minor. 

The homage to Metroid Prime at the end was cool too. The story felt like it was doing heavy amounts of retconning. Like the Chozo being alive, or how Samus is actually a Metroid or something. That and I kind of felt like they could've dived into Samus inner struggle like Fusion did but that would've most likely slowed the pace down. 

Give a 3D Metroid now, already played 3 2D games now. Don't want Other M to be the last of 3D Metroid lol. Though Prime 4 seems to be heading into Duke Forever territory.

Crappy Games Wiki Dead to Rights Retribution Entry Response

I've never liked this Wiki Page and I feel that they are really condescending, and I personally wanted to complain about them for a while, since I just beat this game and still really like it, I might as well tear apart these guys:

https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/Dead_to_Rights:_Retribution

1. Really? It's "boring". You realize that combining beat em up and shooter gameplay it made the game different from other shooters? But then they say the game is "generic". Why are you complaining about the DTR being rebooted then complaining about it not "working for the series?"

2. How is it clunkly and terribly balanced? Headshots are super easy to make and the focus mode makes it easier, you can also use the clich and take hostages, you can send Shadow on them, and ammo isn't that hard to come by and encourages you to use different weapons. You can also Disarm enemies too.

3. How so? They aren't super great but they aren't the worst.

4. Buzzwords, so amazing. Grant City is a rundown shithole and looks like one. Boo hoo.

5. Go play most beat em ups with combos in them and the same problem applies. So this game sucks for having it? Plus the game isn't a full on brawler and also has shooter elements as well. So it isn't as dull.

6. You complain about the game being too easy and now you are complaing that it's harder. Make up your mind. Hitscan shooters tend to have awkward difficulty balancing too. Would you rather have a hitscan shooter be harder? I sure as hell don't.

7. It's pretty fun to pull off multiple headshots, plus there is the other stuff I mentioned that you can do and you run out of Focus pretty fast so it encourages you to vary it up.

8. SO WHAT? Why is this bad? Why is a 5-6 hour game bad? The first DTR had a ton of mini games to break up the pace and that game got boring after a point. And Titanfall 2 is 6 hours. Doom 1993 is 4 hours. My Friend Pedro is also shorter than that. Long games aren't inherently good.

9. Yeah this can be annoying but at the same time, Halo doesn't have grenade indicators and it's combat works better than CoD's which has them. CoD's doesn't even work that great either since you can run right into a grenade before the indicator pops up.

10. Yeah this can be annoying but headshots are easy and most enemies die in 2 hits from the Sniper.

11. Lots of games have dumb AI, and charging enemies is in plenty of games like Serious Sam and besides, enemies charging in this game mean you have to watch out and gun them down while enemies are shooting at you. Plus Shadow can come in handy too.

12. That can be annoying, but just use the clinch and you can generally gun down enemies out of nowhere.

13. No, ADS is pretty accurate, I played it, ADS works fine, got lots of headshots.

14. WELL IT'S A SHOOTER. Do you want them to scarifice actual gameplay to tell a story that was already not going to be better than in a movie or TV show? Exactly. And you prefer it over the first game, so it's not exactly a "bad quality".

This was a long one I wanted to do since I can't stand this page at all and find them to be really condescending, and this game just gave me the motivater to actually rip them a new one.

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

I make it no secret that I dislike Naruto's character after the time skip of the original series but I am going to put my money where my mouth is and try to see how I can make Naruto post time skip a more interesting character to me. I find Naruto Part 2 or Shippuden's failings with both Naruto and Sasuke as characters to be more fascinating than something that makes me angry and often mock. I will talk about Sasuke some other time but I will be talking about Naruto here.

First, here is the biggest problem with Naruto post time skip that just really annoys me. It's the fact that Naruto thinks like a stalker and someone who isn't inherently "there" in the head. This isn't bad on it's own, in fact, I felt Naruto was interesting in how it had its protagonist be a lot less deranged mentally compared to other shows. The problem is the lack of any kind of self awareness or any acknowledgement from the plot that Naruto is in fact not thinking clearly and that he is in fact so obsessed with Sasuke that it's detrimental to his mental health and how he acts in general. If the plot acknowledged this more instead of playing it entirely straight with a concept like this, then I feel Naruto post time skip could've been an amazing character especially for a shonen protagonist.

Here's what I would've done, I would keep Shippuden's first 2 arcs entirely the same. But where my version of the story diverges from is giving the characters of Sai and Tsunade more active roles in the story. After Sasuke refuses to go back to the village a 2nd time, Naruto starts to become depressed that he has no one to motivate him anymore. So now, he tries to find a new rival to match Sasuke through Sai, but here is the problem, Sai isn't as good as Sasuke at all, Naruto and Team 7 would go on various missions together and then Naruto realizes that Sai wasn't the guy he was looking for. He starts to miss and gets crazed over Sasuke as a result, Naruto later demands Tsunade to track down Sasuke so he can bring him back to the "light side". Tsunade straight up refuses, and tells Naruto that Sasuke is a criminal and has abandoned the Leaf Village, the latter has become a lost cause and isn't worth it. Tsunade shows more concern that she doesn't want Naruto to end up like other people in his life. So then Tsunade suspends Naruto from future missions until he gets his head together.

During this time, Naruto wants to get stronger and the only thing driving him now that someday he will fight Sasuke in battle so he trains and learns his new Jutsu the Rasen Shuriken. This then leads to his him defeating Kakazu.

Everything after I would keep the same except now when Naruto does his "Talk no Jutsu" on Nagato and the latter does his "Art of Rinne Rebirth" everyone who knows how to use Chakra sees what Naruto did to make Nagato change his mind while the villagers hate Naruto and the Leaf Government for doing a terrible job at defending the village. Naruto's ninja friends admire him and while the Leaf Villagers loathe him and then Danzo overthrows Tsunade through a democratic vote after rallying the Leaf Villagers to his cause. The series would then have Naruto learn how to control Kaurama so he can protect the Leaf better and the scene where he talks to his evil side in the Water Fall has more purpose because Naruto doubts he can control the Fox after how much the Leaf Village hates his guts.

Danzo has an iron grip on the Leaf Village and doesn't run things like Tsuande or any of the previous Kages did which would then lead to Sasuke attacking the Leaf Village under the orders of the Akatsuki, Naruto then fights Sasuke to a stalemate but senses good in Sasuke because the latter never tried to kill the Leaf but only went after Danzo. Sasuke kills Danzo and then Tsunade becomes Hokage again.

I would keep Obito's declaration of war and I would the uniting the villages mostly the same. The War Arc would take far too long for me to rewrite but to keep it short, Naruto and Sasuke fight again, but then he convinced Sasuke to change sides AND after Sasuke learns the full truth, they fight Obito while the Kages defeat the resurrected Madara. After this, Naruto and Sasuke have their final battle to see who is the best once and for all and then I end the series there.

In conclusion, there are other issues that prevent Naruto from being a great show but this is a major one that I am covering in this blog. I might do more, not sure. 

 

Serious Sam 4 Review

Outside of it's bad optimization and a little too many cutscenes, I think this is my 2nd favorite game in the series. I prefer it over 3 and TFE. The weapons are some of the most satisfying in the entire series. It doesn't rely on hitscan as much as SS3 does, on top of that the early levels are actually fun where SS3 gets good halfway through. I even did some of the side quests but they seem kind of like a waste since the items you get don't get to use in the final part of the game. 

Dual wielding awesome, all though I prefer to do it with some more than others. Pistols, shotguns, are the best to dual wield with. And the alt fire on the Laser Gun just devastes the shit out of enemies.

When it comes to the sheer number of enemies on screen, I don't think the new Doom games really compare. The amount of enemies that are populating the screen is just crazy and there's so many different types of enemies too.

The music is also my favorite in the series as well. Love the ambient tracks here as well as the remixed Cathedral theme. The sheer amount of guns that are in this game is kind of crazy to me as well.

I don't think I played a game that gave you so many guns to use since maybe Resistance 3 or a Ratchet and Clank game. I am surprised by how much I liked this game considering all the bad things I heard about it.

Halo Infinite Review

Its a pretty good game overall, not sure where this ranks in terms of the rest of the series but I say I prefer it over 2 and 5 at least. I predicted the open world was going to be like The Evil Within 2 and Gears of War 5 and it was basically just that. I didn't mind. That and the open world parts made my PC dip in fps so having those linear level broke up the pace. 343 did a great job with weapon feel like they always do. All though, some weapons I did use more than others. The Shock Rifle I preferred over the Disruptor. The Sentinel Beam felt way too powerful and the Covenant Carbine felt way better than the Plasma Pistol. The Boss fights were kind of lame as expected. They are better than Halo 2's if you can call it a complement. The story I actually found to be one of the better in the series. Its on par with Halo 4 for me. I liked the Pilot, and Chief and Cortana 2.0 had some charming and solid interactions. The villains were monologuing narcissists like always. Definitely one of the better new releases this year. Also another issue is that the game made you do those battery puzzles and 3 of something a little too much but it wasn't too bad.

Now, I feel 343 should just make single expansions instead of make a new mainline game. Whats here already works really well. Would be a shame to rebuild from scratch. They should do what Valve tried to do with the Half Life 2 expansions. Worked well for Doom Eternal.

Dead to Rights Series Brief Thoughts

Dead to Rights: 

This game is extremely bizarre. The first half of the game seems to know that the shooting is basic hitscan combat with weird controls so it breaks up the pace with these weird mini games, the drowning one being the absolute worst of the bunch. After, at a certain point, the mini games stop and then it becomes a straight up shooter and it can get feel drawn out at times. The game isn't that long but it can feel draggy at points. 

The story and presentation is rather strange, the whole game feels like it wants to be some kind of epic crime movie and it does have it's weird charm all though the in engine cutscenes feels like what would've happened if Remedy didn't give Max Payne it's signature comic book style cutscenes.

Dead to Rights 2:

Basically when I think of this game, I tend to think of Steve Blum and one of his more memorable game performances and the gameplay feeling a much jankier Strangehold. It's a fun short little game to play on a weekend.

Dead to Rights Retribution:

Out of all the DTR games you should play, this one is it. The game has a combination of melee and combat that I haven't seen many other shooters try to do before or since. It's cool the amount of combat options you have for a hitscan shooter. You can fist fight enemies, send Shadow on them, use Bullet Time and guns to get kills, disarm enemies, throw enemies into each other, do executions and even do them with weapons, take cover(which is often boring but I use it as a way to heal) and my personal favorite: the clinch. 

It makes for a combat that actually doesn't feel like it can get dull after a point for a game with hitscan weapons. 

The Shadow stealth sections are okay and are decent enough, it's interesting to play a stealth game as a dog.