Lost Planet 2 Review

Lost Planet 2 is a strange sequel, while I get people having their fair share of issues with it and it being a coop game probably felt like a jarring change compared to the first game's single player focus, I really had a good time with this game even when playing solo, I think out of all the coop games that I have played, this is one of the better games to play in single player.

I'll start with the good, due it being a coop game, the sense of scale is dramtically larger than how it was in Lost Planet 1, there is just so much carnage and so many things happening on screen, there's lots of enemies, lots of VSes, lots of guns you can pick up and so many smaller things happening on screen, it's impressive what Capcom managed to pull off here. It's one of the most hectic if not the most hectic third person shooter released that gen. The guns all feel solid and satisfying enough to shoot, and the death animations feel adequte enough. I also like about this and by extension the first game is the health system and the grappling hook, the health system feels completely different from a lot of the shooters released in the 7th gen is that it's not really regenerating health but more you finding health pickups that you can store and then use for later, it's rather underrated and I prefer this is over the regen health system so many of the games that gen adopted. The grappling hook is also impressive for the fact that it's one of the few grappling hooks in games up there with Just Cause, Tenchu, and Halo Infinite where it's not contextual. I did wish the grapple had more reach and you can use it horizontally like in Just Cause but other than that, it adds a nice vertical layer to the levels. Taking down multiple VSes on foot without dying can also feel really pleasing too. The level in space was a nice change of pace with low gravity and I wished it was a bit longer since chaining thrusts and landing on a platform can give you a surprising sense of freedom. The cutscenes despite lacking in a lot of plot are also well produced but that is to be expected from Capcom.

So what are the negatives, in spite of me saying it's a coop game and one of the better ones, it's still better off being played with other people, don't get me wrong you can still play it along but coop was still the intent at end of the day, and it's a far better single player experience than Capcom's other efforts like Resident Evil 5, but try to find people if you can, if you can't it's not a big deal. Other issues is that there is just so much stuff happening on screen that it can be hard to keep track of it all, and it's easy to get randomly one shotted by some enemies which can occasionally add to frustration. Episode 3 and 5 can both be kind of dull and it felt like Capcom was trying to avoid spending too much money creating new levels so they decided to make two desert levels on a big tram twice. Episode 5 really felt like it dragged. That and the biggest issue while you can also view as a stregnth depending on how you view is the Battle Guage, on normal difficulty for the most part you will never run out and get a game over, the only time you will is possibly during Episode 3 and 5. I got one on the final boss but that is because I was overthinking it and couldn't pause the game. So the Battle Guage kind of feels like a red herring, and while it fits the coop nature, a better system could've been used. Final issue is that the save system is weird in that you can't redo specific areas which can be annoying if you randomly get disconnected especially when playing online. Also, while the cutscenes are well produced, the story could be better, I like the idea but it could be better executed, it won't get in the way too much since heavy story in a coop game wouldn't make much sense.

Overall, despite LP2 being the same game visually and mechancially from the first one and having a coop focus, it's still worth trying out, it's easier than your usual coop games as far as single player is concerned and it's worth giving a shot despite some issues I have with it.

Star Wars the Force Unleashed 2 Review

This game is very much the sub par game I beat 11 years ago. I am glad I played it on my remaining days with the PS Premium because buying this game at a con for 5 bucks still wouldn't be worth it. The story is just terrible and everything about the plot feels like a terrible straight to DVD sequel. The writing in the game is just terrible. TFU1 was already hard to make a sequel out of since it had a definitive conclusion but Vader making a fucking clone and never installing any fail safes in case if he turned is just stupid. People bash the mind control chips in TCW but it makes sense why they would be installed. Kota has barely anything to do, Proxy randomly shows up after getting killed by Vader, and all Starkiller wants to do is go after Juno. That Yoda cameo is just laughably bad, he doesn't even take any interest in Starkiller despite being stong in the force. And why would Vader resort to cloning instead of just recruiting someone else for the Rule of Two especially after so many failed attempts? Everyone thinks it's the real Starkiller even though they clearly saw him die. And what exactly made clone Starkiller want to throw away everything and wants to go after Juno to the point where he is willing to give up his life for it? Was it the Yoda cameo? That is really not good enough for me. Everything clone Starkiller wants is Juno and that's it. These plot threads are loose enough as is to make a sequel around. Kota, Juno and Proxy are given nothing to do and all Kota does is scream at cloned Starkiller for the whole game and bark orders at him.

Now the gameplay, while it isn't *that* bad, it's still not good. It's painfully average. TFU2 is more polished but the enemy variety is lacking and while it looks nice and it's cool that dismemberment is in the game, it's just window dressing. And while this game is infamous for it's short length I argue what you do in those 4-5 hours isn't very interesting. The game's campaign just feels undercooked from the lack of enemies to the game's simplistic upgrade tree all the way to the fact that game barely has much going on mechanically and most of the encounters are fighting the same enemies and then a setpiece. The funny thing is that even the setpieces start to become less and less common the more the game goes on after Cato Neimodia there isn't much in the way of any scripted sequences that isn't just a QTE. That and the only way the game ever ramps up any challenge is by shoving in lots of "darkside users" and mech enemies. I had to lower the difficulty to easy because the mechs do so much damage to you and they require you to either actively dodge or wait for you to reflect attacks while other enemies are attacking you from all sides. The combat encounters simpily became more tolerable because I could take more damage. You could say that for the first game too but that game at least had more varied enemies and more interesting enviroments and scenarios by comparison. There is a lock on now, but it can't be toggled and it's useless considering how much the game's combat consist of you getting surronded. So much of the game just feels like the same the opening level on Kamino. The final boss is also Vader and a bunch of defective clones, even that is a downgrade of stakes compared to you fighting Palaptine in the first game.

Good things about the game is the voice acting is solid and Sam Witwer does a good job with the material he is given, the visuals are a massive set up over the first game and the music especially hearing Prequel tracks was also nice.

Overall, not a very good sequel to a game I was just lukewarm on. Not a very good Star Wars game or a very good God of War clone.

Star Wars the Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition Review

Originally, I was going to give the game a 5 out of 10 mainly because this has to be one of the most unpolished big budget AAA games coming from the 7th gen. This game has you staggering around like a bumbling idiot. You will get knocked down, barrels will explode and enemies will break out of your combo out of nowhere. So much of the game on Normal Difficulty is stagger, stagger and more stagger. The game's enemies have firearms and add the staggering animations to that and you get a God of War clone that is sub standard. Some enemies are not really fun to fight like any giant enemies like the monsters, AT STs due to their area of effect stop attacks. Many of the enemies fire guns at you so that means it often consists of spamming lighting because it's the most effective projectile attack in the game. Force grip and the much anticipated physics engine is mostly useless since the novelty of being able to lift things with the force serves no geniune purpose in combat and you are often better off using saber strikes or anything that can be chained into a ligthing or force push combo. That and aiming the force throws feel awkward, inadequte and imprecise for what the game demands for you to do them which is why the destroying the Star Destroyer towards the end of the game felt like such a tedious sequence. The lack of an evade command makes melee combat not as robust as it could be since enemies like before I mentioned will break out of your combos a lot and will relentless attack you close range. Breaking shields and blocks seem to happen at random, and I am not a big fan of the game's auto targeting and I think manually targeting enemies would've worked better for the game since I can pin point which enemies I can attack with my saber, lightning and even possibly try to use force throws with.

Lowering the difficulty to easy however did mitigate much of the frustration I intitally got from the game mainly because getting staggered a lot less and taking more damage really improves the game. The lack of polish becomes less of an issue. You will still get hit by random explosions, enemies breaking out of your combo, and projectile enemies hitting you and for some god unknown reason reflecting blaster fire is tied behind a skill tree but being able to take more damage does help you feel like the awesome Jedi that the game marketed itself for being. Also, even though the game had annoying QTEs, it was nice that during bosses it kept looping until you got it right which is better than widdling down the health bar to do it again. Lowering the game to easy turned a 5 out of 10 game to a 6 out of 10.

The story and music however are the best things about the game. Hearing John Williams' Prequel music especially from Revenge of the Sith was great and it fit the scenes of the game really well. The story while having some issues overall was decent enough too and it fit the Star Wars universe pretty well especially how it brought in the "Rule of Two" regarding Darth Vader and Palpatine, and something I just find poetic about Palpatine and Vader indirectly creating the very alliance that would cause their downfall later on. Aspects of it can feel rushed due it being a game but it's a solid Star Wars story.

Ultimate Sith Edition came with a bunch of DLC bonus missions and here are my reviews of those.

Jedi Temple:

This felt like it should've been in the main game since it seems to be an important part of Starkiller's development but it's a decent add on, if it didn't come with Ultimate Sith Edition, I would've skipped this entirely. All the issues in the main game still apply here all though the platforming and force puzzles were more on the grating side than being enjoyable. The final boss of the level was weird in that he drained my health than I respawned and he never did it again. Overall, a decent mission that should've been in the main game, worth checking out if you have the Ultimate Sith Edition.

Tatooine:

This DLC was a huge step up over Jedi Temple. I have a soft spot for "what if" stories in long running fiction like Star Wars and me being an SW pre Disney era fan of the franchise, this DLC was fan service delight getting to see Jabba fighting through all the iconic locations of the Tatoonie portions of the OT like the Dune Sea, Jabba's Palace, and Mos Eisley. Boss fights with Boba Fett and Obi Wan were also pretty nice too, and the Obi Wan fight felt like a somewhat unoffical conclusion to the amount of times Starkiller fought Obi Wan with the character of Proxy.

Same gameplay, same stuff with a much worse frame rate in some portions but if you are a Star Wars fan, this is worth checking out for the fan service, if not a fan of the franchise or the base game, you can skip this. This was worth going through since it came with Ultimate Sith Edition.

I might give this a 7 for the cool fan service but with all that gone, it's the same 6 that is only that because of easy mode.

Hoth:

This DLC was honestly kind of boring. There isn't really much interesting stakes in Starkiller beating up an untrained Luke and so much of the DLC as a result is just arena fight after arena fight. The Tatoonie DLC was fun in that it had characters like Boba and Obi Wan to fight but Luke pre ROTJ just wasn't really that engaging for me. The gameplay is the same old TFU at this point and not much is improved, I wasn't expecting much and it was average, definately the weakest DLC out of the 3 in the Ultimate Sith Edition.

Resident Evil: Director's Cut Review

Honestly from a guy whose never played the original game and only played REmake. This game was a surprisingly good time. It's easy to see where REmake improved upon this game but the original I feel is still a good time. As overly milked Resident Evil is today and how much I dislike the discourse of the series overall, by playing this game it's easy to see why RE is the franchise it is. Certain aspects of the game you could argue are dated from the visuals and the so bad it's good voice acting and dialogue but other aspects of it still stand the test of time.

What this game does super well is the level design particularly the level design of the Spencer Mansion. It is so interconnected where it feels like you are solving mini puzzles on top of an even bigger one. It's easy to be filled with wonder trying to figure out what unlocks next and what item does which function. Exploring and backtracking through this location is so satisfying to do as you build a mental checklist of what you found and every locked door and every area of interest. The game rewards you for constantly keep track of all these things with items, puzzle solutions, ammo or new weapons. The item management while tedious at times does add a layer of decision making of what to take with you and what not to. You always need at least two slots open to carry items but if you know the game super well, you can just carry one weapon and just carry a bunch of items. The controls work well even if I am not the world's biggest fan of tank controls but they work for this game. The combat is also really satisfying something that people often overlook and what games like REmake 2 and 3 also overlook is that while this game doesn't require you to fire away at enemies like a shooter, however firing the weapons feel pretty satisfying and gives you great feedback. Shotgunning an enemy in the head, firing a magnum or using the grenade launcher gives such great fullfilment in doing and it's an aspect of the franchise the sequels would start to focus more on. The combat in this feels tame too where other fixed camera angled games have an issue of relying on auto aim that often makes you guess if a shot will land and enemies hitting you offscreen, in this game, enemies die so quickly that those issues aren't even much of an annoyance. The voice acting and dialogue is also hilariously bad and adds to cheesy late 90s charm of the game and admittedly where REmake doesn't improve on. In REmake it feels more dry and dull compared to how hilariously awful it is in this game. It made me wish I got to unlock more Barry scenes in my playthrough since I am not sure what I was supposed to do to unlock them but his voice acting and dialogue in particular is so bad, that he makes me want to unlock those scenes.

The negatives is that the map in the game really sucks, REmake would greatly improve this by marking all the places you haven't been to, locked doors and all the items you haven't picked up where in this game the map is more of a rough guideline of where you are rather than being geniunely helpful. It's why I often had to rely on pure muscle memory a lot of the time, it's an aspect that does hold the game back for and makes me appreciate REmake more. The inventory management while good most of the time can get tedious with how many treks back to the save rooms you got to do. This is an aspect where RE7 and even REmake 2 is improvement over where you unlock more item slots the more you play the game, it makes it so you don't have to backtrack every 5 minutes and it rewards you for playing the game more.

Overall, for a first game in a long running series, this game is pretty good if dated in some aspects but it's easy to see with this game why RE took off to begin with in spite of me and the fandom not seeing eye to eye on many things about the franchise as a whole.

Eat Lead the Return of Matt Hazard Review

Eat Lead is a game that isn't really misunderstood or a game I even remotely consider to be a hidden gem. It's very much an average game through and through. It's basically an average game with celebrity voice talent which the game was known for.

I'll start with the good, the voice acting and writing is pretty decent and the voice actors do a decent enough job at selling the material all though the game is not as funny as it wants to be but I will admit the overall premise of the game is a rather fascinating one in that it's a parody of video games and Matt Hazard is basically a game character who had the career of a movie star. And the game acknowleding the fact that the player character can't jump is rather amusing, and it constantly pokes fun at video games and gaming culture. The story isn't super well written but I do think the ideas and premise of the game was enough to carry it for me. Seeing stuff like Mario, Halo, Final Fantasy, and 90s fps like Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein was rather fun to see.

Now, the bad which is a lot. I played on easy since cover shooters tend to be the most enjoyable on that difficulty since you can take way more damage and it can allow for more aggressive playstyle with more agency to combat rather than hide behind wall, wait until head to pop up, shoot, take damage, and hide rinse repeat. There is still that in this game but easy mode does noticeably tone down the tedium and I wanted to play the game for the story and premise, but even on easy, the combat is still not good. Weapons for both gun sounds and damage animations don't hit the satisfactory mark at all. At best it's just functional but there is no geniune feedback that makes the game's combat feel stimulating. Gears of War got this down and I am not even a big fan of the first game of that series. Then there is the fact that combat gives you less options in games like Gears and Uncharted and that pains me to say since I am not big either of those games especially Uncharted. A big reason is that you can't throw grenades or do any dodge rolling and I argue the fun part of those game was dodging rolling like a mad man and darting around doing that. Matt Hazard doesn't have this and as a result there is no reliable way to evade enemies and there is no way to quickly move around on the battefield outside of a painfully slow sprint button. Grenade throwing could've given the player more options in combat too since you can kill groups of enemies faster with a well timed grenade throw. The bosses are terrible and the tentacle boss goes into the difficulty spike hall of shame for how bad it is. If you quit on this part of the game, I don't blame you, having insta kill tentacles covering your every flank while learning their patterns as you get attacked by weaker enemies and constantly dying and reloading was a very frustrating experience. The rest of the bosses aren't much better. Enemies who use the one hit kill energy rifle weapons can also be really grating since you don't have a dodge roll or any actual form of evasion.

Now the next part is while the combat isn't good, there actually are some interesting ideas here that I wish the game did more with. The enemy variety for a cover shooter is actually rather impressive. You got zombies that need to be killed with head shots, space marines that only take major damage with energy weapons, 2d Nazi sprites, cowboys, regular goons, and robot women who can't be killed unless you stun them and do a melee takedown. If you added rolling, grenades and if the game mixed up these enemies types more, the game could've actually been a stand out cover shooter but instead so much of the game is hiding behind cover and waiting for your health to regen. Imagine if the game actively had zombies, robot women, space marines and the game kept mixing up enemy types, the combat encounters would be much better. Another missed oppourtunity is the melee and power ups. Melee is weird in this game since I played on easy and melee attacks give you invinciblity frames, you could potentially play this game as a lower budget Doom 2016 or a way worse Dead to Rights Retribution, since the I frames from melee attacks lets you recover your health. As a result, you can melee enemies you a good amount of this game. The attack animations lack variety meaning not even this is that exciting and the dumb AI just makes it more easy to exploit. I don't mind dumb AI in games but partnered this with the terrible game feel and polish and even this gets old. The power ups were also a missed opportunity since you rarely get them and can't hold them either meaning there is no strategic element on when to use the power ups.

Overall, I feel this game could've been much much much better with the premise it has. At best, watch the cutscenes on Youtube because the actual game aspect of the game isn't very well made, and honestly isn't worth a playthrough, it's an average game carried by an interesting premise.

God of War 2018 Review

When I played this game when it first came out, I wasn't really a big fan of it, and I found it hard to get to gripes with the new style of gameplay that this game established but after playing through the whole series and especially after playing Ascension, I get why Santa Monica changed the gameplay of the series so drastically and why they changed the story and tone so noticeably too. The series was in a dire need of a change.

After playing the game this time around, I enjoyed it a lot more than I did originally did. It's a solid reinvention of the series and a decent enough soft reboot even though I am coming to dislike the idea of them strongly. The story and writing is solid and engaging, I did like the first GoW's story but the plots of the sequels only amped up the silliness and despite them having interesting ideas and the character of Kratos being the most naunced and interesting thing about them, they ultimately collapsed in on themselves, however this game's story basically uses those games as a backdrop for Kratos' character in this game and after playing those games, the PSP games and seeing Kratos in this one, it is easy to see why Kratos is the way he is. His interactions with his son Atreus are pretty well done and they geniunely feel like a family where Atreus and Kratos get into constant arguments, Kratos holding in anger, Atreus constantly looking down on Kratos for his cold distance and how Faye was the very thing that kept the family together. Freya and Baldur are decent enough foils to Kratos and Atreus where they do a good at constasting how the latter could've ended up. A scene later in the game does a great job at tying Kratos' journey in the older games with this game. While I don't agree with the narrative that some made that Kratos became a "good" character with this game, I do enjoy the story here. My only big gripes is that that it is never shown how Kratos was able to control his anger from GoW3 to 2018 and the character of Faye despite being a very important character is someone the player never actually sees their isn't much flashbacks showing the relationship between her, Kratos, and Atreus which gives me less of an understanding why Atreus and Kratos value her so much, her character is not shown enough to give me a better perspective. Still, a solid tale overall.

Gameplay wise, it's also pretty good if different. The feel of combat feels much more weighty and impactful and killing enemies have has a good "oofmph" to it, and this is a big improvement over the older games. I didn't like that light and heavy attacks where mapped to R1 and R2 when I originally played but when I played it again, I switched it to sqaure and triange and it was much better for me. I didn't really mind the lack of a jump button as other people did, there were some moments I did with some of the area of effect attacks where I thought I can jump over them like in previous games but I got used to used the shield. I feel like platforming with over the shoulder perspective wouldn't really work all that well and there isn't really many over the shoulder platformers to begin with and the only one I can think of is Batman Arkham but the platforming in that is already automated in that as it is in this game. The camera is mostly fine but I can occasionally find it hard to judge the right distance when to avoid attacks, the knights when they lunge at you with swords is a good example of this, and enemies hitting me from beind from time to time, but I did eventually get used to this. The enemies that reduce your vision when getting hit can go screw themselves however since the overshoulder camera's vision being obscured doesn't make it reliable enough to dodge enemy attacks. However what I didn't like was that healing stones and rage stones had to be activated with a button press rather than them being magnetized to come to you like in previous games. Most games ever that do this tend to healing pickups float over to you but in this game, you must run over to them which can be rather frustrating since you have to avoid attacks just to replenish health and you have to watch for enemies and they could land a hit while you press circle to activate the healing or rage stone. My idea for this is just have rage and healing stones be magnetic while loot is not. The RPG elements are okay even though I am not a big fan of them a lot of games, it's nothing too intrusive but like many games with these systems most of it just becomes a boring game of checking for high stats and upgrading loot with high stats than it is about pure skill. It's not the worst example of it in a game. I also like the level design in this game, while didn't care for the "open world" aspect of the game, I did like how this one kept the previous games' interconnected world by going back to previous locations with new abilities like with the mountain or Tyre's Temple.

Overall, GoW 2018 is a solid reinvention of the series.

Haze Review

This going to sound weird considering how much of a bad rep this game has but I think Haze has a pretty good story. Free Radical's writing is still pretty good in a game as mediocre as this. The game is surprisingly committed to keep the player in first person at all times. I wasn't expecting that in a game with such a bad rep. That and the writing is solid. And the game makes good points and the twists are foreshadowed well. I actually think Duvall is a good villain despite him no showing for a good amount of the game. Merino being an asshole was also foreshadowed well even the protagonist is decent.

The gameplay however is mediocre and I get Free Radical went through a number of development issues when making the game but the end result feels half baked. I'll start with when you play as the Mantle Soliders, these parts are decent if pretty standard, what makes these sections stand out is the Nector mechanic and the game does a decent job at making you rely on in tone with the story of the game. Enemies are really hard to see without Nector and they can get the drop on you if you don't actively use it, and it's pretty interesting how the game encourages you to get kills to sustain your Nector bar, and funnily enough in a 7th gen regen health shooter actually encourages you to be aggressive to keep the meter full. The enemies and weapons are nothing to write home about and are typical human enemies with hitscan guns fare meaning you will be using the same weapons the enemies will be using, and more so in this game because the basic assault rifles can kill your usual grunts with ease in this game and the shotgun feels awkward to use and it's better to have a weapon that you can keep firing when enemies are shooting you which is more so for the rebel sections and now let's move on to that. While I get what Free Radical was trying to do here in that they wanted to created to change up the gameplay and even have the player be in sync with player character in that they take away the very mechanic you were using and now the player and the player character needs to adapt and this could potentially elevate the game but the problem is everything about these sections feels underdeveloped, the game throws in mechanics like knives, disarming, playing dead, Nector Grenades and hitting Mantle soldiers in the back but of all this is pointless due to two big issues: the terrible AI and how enemies take little damage to die from the basic assault rifles. You know why Halo had the shield and flesh system and that enemies took a lot of damage in those games? It was to show more of their "intelligent" AI behavour like running away, jumping away from grenades and moving out of the way from your shots. Haze has none of this and the mantle soldiers just move on occasion rarely ever flank and rush your position. They never show any signs of intelligence to the point where you even can use the above mentioned mechanics. That and since the basic ARs can kill them in a few hits means that most combat encounters just end in you press ADS, and firing with little depth to the shooting.

There are other issues with the game like the scripted sequenced not being that great, and the driving while not terrible aren't as refined as they should be and have weird quirks like vehicles being on seperate health which is why I get why Bungie dropped that system after Halo CE. Weapon feedback both with the sounds and damage animations are average and the melee attack being inconsistent.

Overall, Haze is a game I get why is considered mediocre. The story I got more enjoyment out of than I thought I was going to but the gameplay especially the half baked rebel gameplay made me rate a game that was a potential 6 out of 10 to a 5 out of 10. I feel bad for Free Radical, they were just consumed by over ambition and the changing industry landscape at the time and it lead to them being shut down.