Freedom Fighters Review

I thought Freedom Fighters was going to be those "cult classics" games that I was going to play for a couple of hours and then stop playing because it was dated or that I found it to be overhyped. Turns out Freedom Fighters was not that, I enjoyed a lot more than I initally thought I was going to, the game does have it's weird quirks for sure and some of them geniunely annoyed me especially at the start but the more I played it, the more I started to like it.

I'll start with the good, Freedom Fighters does a great job at having it's mechanics tell the story. Games back then and now rely heavily on cutscenes to tell their stories and while I am not against that and it is all fine and good, it is rather refreshing that you can tell a story of sorts primarily through gameplay mechanics especially through a shooting game, there is barely any cutscenes and when there are, it's all reaction to what the player did in the game.

How does FF do this? It's through the "charisma points" system where doing objectives, like raising flags, helping prisoners, blowing up various installations will have the game world be "inspired" by your actions, as a result you will have more people to recruit in your squad and you will have more of a fighting chance with others around you then you do alone. Like many "squad based tactical shooters," the lone wolf tactic will not work and you need npcs to help you out as either distractions or extra firepower during battles.

This will especially be felt early game, where Chris can only take on maybe 2-4 soldiers max on his own and you are barely scrapping by gun fights as you waiting to ambush soldiers to that run into your crosshairs, waiting for the right time to heal up, and desperately hurrying to find ammo as you progress through the early levels, it's one of the most "harmonic" sync ups between gameplay and story I have experienced in a shooter. Chris and the player start off as an "underdog lone wolf" and then slowly throughout the game becomes an "underground freedom fighter" and he is able to take more soldiers with him to battle and more of the various maps will be populated with npcs on your side. The game really laid an impression on me because of all this especially in a time where games get derided for not having their "gameplay" match with with the stories the developers are telling to tell, I really don't care but when a game does manage to pull it off the connection between story and gameplay, it can really stand out.

The assassination "stealth section" was also surprisingly tolerable while the AI does get easily alerted like many action games attempting it from the era, FF at the very least when you are spotted only alert enemies in a sector will know and if you do get alerted the whole hivemind at least doesn't come after you. Also, sniping the Soviet general and then getting out after can feel pretty awesome since it wasn't scripted from what I recall.

Level design is also solid. Can be a bit too bottlenecked with the amount of fences and closed doors, I do like how there are alternate places to climb up, alleyways to cut around and pillars to hide from gunfire as you slowly close in on the enemy, it kind of reminded me of the Lobby shooutout from the Matrix.

There are some isssues with the game like the manual aim being awkward to use and I used it a lot early game but eventually just relied on the auto aim a lot of the time and used manual aim for far off targets.

The lack of a reload button can be pretty annoying since Chris can reload at the most inopportune of times as I am surronded by enemies and it could lead to a death, this could be avoided if there was a a dedicated reload button so I can know when to cower and when to attack.

I also wished throwable weapons had an "arc" rather than a vague throwing meter since then it will be easier to tell where they are going to land.

The save system at first can also be very dated and awkward especially early game. For example one of the early missions required me to destroy a helicoptor that landed, so I did and save in the area where that helicoptor is located and I thought since I destroyed it means firendly npcs will spawn next to me and I "took it over" but I was alone and surronded by enemies who can kill me with ease and I can't choose spawn points either so if it wasn't for an emu save state, I could've gotten soft locked here. This gave me a bad 1st impression that I slowly got out of but be warned, sewer/spawn points can't be selected and early game always save at the start of a mission rather in the heart of enemy territory.

Overall, Freedom Fighters was a good time, and it managed to be a shooter that told a story primarily through its mechanics which is impressive, there are some odd quirks about here and there but if you like playing older "underrated gems" then this is worth looking into.

UP Video Game Review

I was barely expecting much out of the game. I just randomly saw it on the PS Premium Classic and decided to give it a go as a quick easy game to beat before I move on to other stuff and while not mind blowing in any way was at the very least a serviceable "one day" beat title of sorts. The PS5 version is an emulated PSP version just to be clear. I was expecting to drop this quickly but I surprisingly didn't.

The best way of describing the UP movie tie in game is that what if ICO and the Lego games had a baby? You pretty much get this game. You have the dynamic between Russell and Carl where you need to escort each other and do various puzzles to progress as well as platforming like in ICO while constantly switching between characters like in a Lego game. It also uses somewhat of a follow cam like both games.

The game overall, does the whole serviceable kids game thing through and through. The puzzles and platforming while not overly challenging does require a monicrum of thought to progress rather than just holding forwards.

Up is also never montonous either, the game basically has the same 3-5 ideas but they are mixed around enough to the point where nothing gets too stale. For example, there are traditional levels where Carl and Russell have to help each other get past obstacles in order to progress, there are levels where you ride a raft and you have to avoid various obtacles like alligators, whirlpools and monkeys throwing projectiles at you, then there are levels where Carl and Russel are strapped on to their house and you have to time the jumps to reach the platforms, there is Crash Bandicot like boulder chases with Russell, you have parts where you control dug and Kevin to solve puzzles and so on, the game regularly has stuff like what I described as well as other ideas to the point where it never gets one note and dull.

Issues are that the more fast paced scripted platforming sections can be buggy and be more demanding by comparison to the rest of the game. The raft rowing sections in particular had a super awkward turning speed that I am surprised people could've beaten with the PSP analog nub. The Crash style boulder chases can be pretty demanding compared to the rest of the game since so much of it is hard to predict what will happen next and then doing trial and error to predict which parts will kill you. PS5 rewind to mitigate a lot of this frustration however.

It does seem to follow the movie pretty faithfully from what I can gather, it's been years since I watched it but overall, for what I consider to be a super random game purchase, I had a good time, the game doesn't excell at being anything more than a movie tie in game in order for the publishers to cash in off a popular film but it could've been worse, much worse.

Watch Dogs: Legion - Bloodline Review

I didn't really care for the Legion base game, but I did hear from some people who were also not big fans of it to check this DLC out since it's supposedly better and overall, I'd say it was. The game still does inherent problems from the former, but I did have a good time for the $20 I spent.

I'll start with what I liked. The story and character interactions especially are really well written and entertaining. All the characters really do a good job at bouncing off each other and the script does a good job at making the conversations very endearing. The stuff with Aiden and Jackson and Wrench and Jordi were some of my favorites. Jackson and Aiden's dynamic are very beliveable and their uneasiness at first is well handled since Jackson is rather apprehensive about Aiden but then he slowly warms up to him and slowly start to get along. It's been done before of course but the acting and writing does a good job at selling me on everything. I also liked that dream sequence with Aiden towards the end of the game which does a good job at personifying Aiden's guilt all though it could've been better if the story slowly built up towards it but the visuals do a decent enough job at getting the point across. 

Wrench is more tolerable in this DLC than he is in Watch Dogs 2 since the rest of DLC is a lot more serious where everything in Watch Dogs 2 was wacky and full of awkward humor and jokes. I did like his interactions with Jordi, in fact I normally don't do side quests in any game but I loved their dynamic so much plus the missions were short enough to the point where I did the Fixer Contracts. Jordi is a crazy psycho while Wrench is so annoying not even the former can stand him. The Marcus Halloway reveal did remind me why I never do side quests since Jackson says in the main questline that, "you should call Marcus" even though I technically did, and of course side quests derails the agency of the main character since Aiden is in a coma and Jackson doesn't mind waiting for him. Getting off track here, but stuff like this is why I never do side quests.

Anyway, more good, the Aiden portions of the game I liked the most since Aiden is given more combat options like an active reload where your firearm damage is increased upon getting a reloading mini game right, and close quarters takedowns that can be chained into bullet time kills due to Legion's combat issues this isn't as fun as it sounds but more on that later.

What I also love about Aiden's missions is that for the first time since the first game, car chases are part of the main story quests and considering how stale the WD formula was of, "infiltrate camp, do objective, exfiltrate," this was a very welcome change and these parts did a good job at breaking up the shooting and stealth.

Wrench was...okay to play as, at first he was alright since he was a melee tailored character and many of the outposts had melee trained guards but he didn't have nearly as many combat options as Aiden did which is fine since with Wrench, I mixed up melee and stealth.

Now, on to the bad, I'll start with the villain Rempart, he was okay, he didn't annoy me but he could've done more outside of putting Aiden in a coma due to a cutscene bullet. He was just kind of there. I get it since the game is a prequel and there wasn't much you could do when you write those kinds of stories.

The really bad is the combat at least on normal. This was an issue with the base game, but combat is not very good. Guns sound weak, enemies are very tanky, you die very quickly and combine that with a high enemy count and on normal, I died a lot.

Stealth is also very basic and don't give a lot of options outside of takedowns and crouch and it's easy to get caught be forced into action making the weak combat stand out even more.

Aiden doesn't even feel like the epic power fantasy the game wants you to be especially on normal since most of your time is in cover and waiting for health to regen rather than performing takedowns and performing bullet time kills, this could be fine if you could do the latter with a button press but you need to perform takedowns to do it...where you will get shot at with a low health pool, as a result the only time, I didn't feel like my time wasn't spent hugging walls was on easy mode.

The last mission with Wrench is even worse since his weapons feel weak, most enemies have guns and there are forced action segments making the above mentioned combat issues even worse. This is all tolerable on easy mode, thankfully but easy mode making cover combat more fun highlights the problem regen health and cover mechanics have.

Also, Wrench's cargo drone and flying excessively with it highlighted how bored I was with the main game with how objectives are far apart and there is nothing to do while you are flying to your objective.

Overall, Bloodline is a solid expansion that did as much as it could being based on a game as sub par as Legion. I didn't dislike the game main game as much as others did but who would've thought that having actual characters instead of playing as "anyone" ultimately lead to a better game. I did wish this was it's own game from the ground up with that said. Not a bad way to possibly "end" the series.

Nier: Automata Ver1.1a Review

I am going to start off this review by saying that I am not really a fan of the game this anime is based on, I found Automata's story and especially it's characters to be inferior to the first Nier game even though it's been a while since I played the latter. I found the plot of the Automata game to be very barebones in terms of themes and character that I found the idea of beating the game 5 times over 20-30 hours to be a tedious affair that I don't want to go through that again. The story and the combat are both too dull for me to want to revisit. 

So why I did I watch the anime at all if I never liked the game? I find the belief that you need to be a "fan" of the source material in order to check out and enjoy the adaptation to be a pretty misguided belief. There's a good number of people out there who never read a superhero comic and there are many who are apprehensive about the industry in general but is that going to stop those same people from raving about how much they enjoyed the Sam Raimi Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan Batman movies? No it won't. 

To use an anime example, the Gungrave adaptation from the 00s is one my favorite anime of all time and that was based on third person shooters that were just "decent" at best so I'd say it's possible for me to enjoy this adaptation of Nier Automata despite me not liking the game. 

Long introductions out of the way, what did I think of this show? I'd say as an adaptation of the Nier Automata game it's really misguided. The best of way of describing the show is that it feels like it was made for people who can't get into video games at all so what the anime creators did was create a 90% faithful adaptation while adding in new scenes that don't develop the two main characters, made changes that don't contribute much, and removed aspects of the game that showed the game's narrative was never that great to begin with. 

I'll start with what was already similar, the basic plot of the game is still here and if this was a story and writing I was a fan of I would find this to be okay but watching the anime just reminded me of how much I never liked the game's story to begin with. 

2B and 9S are just painfully dull lead characters and it's not because they are androids, it's because their character interactions are just the bare minimum for a character dynamic and most of their interactions revolve around the same thing, 9S gets overly excited and tries to have a fun conversation with 2B and the latter just stoicly dismisses everything 9S throws at her. There are some exceptions like when 2B and 9S discuss what they are going to do together after the war but these are few and far between. 

2B doesn't have much going on with her outside of just being stoic and 9S only had two modes, acting casual around the people he works with and getting antagonistic towards "machine life forms". 

Maybe if this would be forgiven if there were any backstory reveals or any hints as to why the charactes act the way they do and the anime never shows it much like the game. The characterization of 2B and 9S are in the lore of the Nier Automara game and I thought the anime would incorporate that and it didn't. 

For example the reason why 2B acts so stoic in the game and anime is because she is forced to kill 9S and can't bring herself to kill do it which is why she acts dimissive towards 9S. I thought anime being a passive medium might be easier to portray this but they didn't which is such a shame. 

Now there are the villains for the season which are Adam and Eve which who are just painfully dull. Most of their interactions consist of Eve wanting to "play" with Adam and the latter being primarily interested in reading books, that what is all consists of. You'd think Adam in the anime and by extension Eve in the game would do some villain things like actively get in the way of the lead characters, do some collateral damage or just do something to make me dislike them or be interesting foils to the leads in some way but they aren't. Eve dies in the anime instead of Adam but the latter goes through the same "character arc" where they both experience loss and then just turn into over the top nilhilists, what was the point of changing who dies if the writing is going to remain the same anyway? Some of the bosses with them are removed and Adam gets beaten with the Hammer of Dawn instead of fighting 2B which makes me question if you can remove key boss fights from the game and mostly have the same story then were the bosses really that important to the story to begin with? This is yet another reason why I am not big on the game. 

Then there is the plot which is just super padded. It starts off with 2B and 9S joining up with the resistance, they randomly meet up with Adam and Eve and then a bunch of stuff happens in between that has nothing to with furthering the main characters' goals start happening, they go to an amusement park, they meet up with Pascal do some favors for him and then Adam randomly pops back into the story, the robots go crazy and then Adam does too and barely anything relating to the characters getting closer to their goal was achieved. 

Some good things about the anime being faithful to the game is the audio since the english dub actors and the soundtrack both return for the anime and they were the best things about the game and I am glad I get to experience them both without needing to deal with tedious gameplay and beating the game 5 times within the context of the story. 

The puppet shows that take place after the end credits are also really fun and enjoyable since they have more personality than the game and anime does, the characters get to more expressive in them. 

The main difference is and this is where I get a bit more positive is that there is now a character named Lily and the scenes with her were not in the game and I found thse scenes with her far more interesting than 2B and 9S. Her introduction established both that she spent her whole life being an expendable pawn and that Yorha doesn't treat the earth resistance with much care or respect so in just one scene of the first 10 minutes of the 2nd episode I care about her more than 2B and 9S, and she gets fleshed out more than 2B and 9S ever do throught the game and this part of the anime. She is also a connected to a backstory reveal with A2 that the game never fully shown which already puts the anime slightly above the game, only slightly. 

Which starts to make me wonder why not make the whole anime be told from Lily's perspective instead and the audience views 2B and 9S' actions through her. Halo Legends did this with the "Babysitter" short and it could've worked just as well here. Either do this or incorporate the characterization in the lore of the game into the anime. 

Overall, I wanted to like this show over the game and in a backhanded way, the fact that the anime is mostly faithful to the game makes it much easier to revisit the story again instead of me beating the game 5 times and doing 30 hours of dull combat and awkward minigames. At the same time, I wanted this series to be more than a mostly faithful adaptation, I wanted it to make me geniunely like a story I never liked that much but it ultimately failed in that regard. 

Carrion Review

This game was a surprise, I only played it because apparently because it was "short" and was a metroidvania where you played as a horror movie monster and the concept was intriguing enough for me to check out.

It's not really much of a metroidvania, it kind of is but the levels are segmented rather than seemless and you have to find different levels in the hub world in order to progress through the game. The main thing it has in common with the genre are the powerups you get but that's about it even the backtracking itself isn't common, you will be doing it to get the level "exits" and then backtracking through the hub world to find new levels.

However since it isn't a metroidvania, it's esstentially an exploration based puzzle game. I am not big on puzzle games but puzzles in conjuction to exploration and action are the kind of games I am a fan of.

In Carrion, much of the game is spent going through levels in a hub world and you "contaminating" them in order to progress. Many of the individual levels have you contaminating certain parts of it at first in 3s and then later more in order to find the level exit and beat the level.

The puzzles for the most part do a good job at having the solution not be straight up told to you while also giving enough room for the player to have them figure out how to solve them. I did look up a walkthrough a few times but I am not sure if it's due to me being impatient or because they were obtuse.

The puzzles in Carrion is lots of switch pulling, going through vents, dropping into certain zones of water to drop or regain "biomass" in order to use different abilites in your different forms to progress. The game throws enough new at you like different generic fodder enemies, soldiers who have shields and use weapons like assault rifles and flamethrowers, giant mechs, security cameras that you need to deactivate, laser grids to use invisiblity power on to get past, different types of vents you need to destroy, playing as humans on occasions and and smaller robots that can tear your health bare quickly and have to be careful when attacking them. The game might be short but the game throws enough new and also recontextualizing old ideas to make it's short run time a memorable one.

One more positive is that the animations for the monster you play as is great and watching it tear apart enemies is really gratifying, just as much as seeing the Darkness tentacles in the titular game rip apart enemy hearts after you kill them.

Now the things I disliked and this is primarily the combat and while I don't think it is bad, it could've been better. My big issue with it is that I find it hard to tell if I have to engage with enemies directly or engage with them using "stealth". Enemies can tear your health into shreads if you aren't being careful, and at first I thought you had to sneak up on them and grabbing unaware enemies with your tentacles can be very satisfying but the problem with this is that the soldier enemies you fight are hyper aware and will a lot of the time anticipate your attacks but then there were times where this worked, it just wasn't consistent enough to be a viable tactic.

Then there were times where I just got a high biomass and spammed the ability on the right trigger and I ripped enemies to shreds with ease.

Another big issue with combat that it was hard to tell especially with the solider enemies if they were dead or if they were going to get up. There were times that I attacked them with full force and they still got up and tried attacked them while they were dowe and they seem to have invinciblity frames.

The grab attack was also super imprecise and this is going to be a fallback attack if enemies widdled down on your health bar and it was hard to aim with eventually I got used to it but it still never felt as direct as I wanted it to be.

These issues would've ruined the game for me, but there was one thing that saved it for me and that was the forigiving checkpoint and save system. Save points are always close by and your contamination points work as that and they generally always recover your health so a method I did was kill some enemies, run back to a save point, save then kill some more enemies, not a big fan of using built in "save scumming" as a tactic and it seems the devs knew that their combat wasn't that good, but I am glad this was in the game at all since I wouldn't get to the end without it.

I also disliked the hub world and I find the concept to be tedious in any game they are featured in. I would much rather just move from level to level instead of play a guessing game of which part of the hub will take me to the next part of the game.

Overall, Carrion is a good "horror" game where you play as a monster instead of running away from one. The ideas for the most part are excecuted well enough that I think anyone who thinks the idea sounds intriguing should give it a look.

Mass Effect 2 Review

Mass Effect 2 was a game I played on the PS3 back in 2011 when the port came out, and I don't fully recall my inital impressions of the game but I remember the story being nothing special and now playing Mass Effect 1 and jumping into this game years ago and now, I still don't think it's anything special. Nowadays I am in the camp that thinks Mass Effect 1 is the better game. 

Let's start with how ME2 opens and right away I start asking questions. Why is Shepard hunting down some random Geth instead of leading a new Council against the Reaper threat? Where did the Illusive Man and Miranda come from despite them both not being mentioned if someone went for main story quests only in ME1? What is Cereberus and why does everyone hate them so much? If Bioware wanted to make Mass Effect into a trilogy, they should've let people who did main story content only to know about all this stuff. For example, my Shepard said she "fought her fair share of Cerberus troops" yet I played as her in ME1 and never fought any. Where is the Council and where is Captain Anderson? Why is this stuff relegated to side missions in ME2 and can be skipped? These are important plot points continued from ME1, if Bioware is telling me I can skip then it tells me they aren't important, yet they are if ME3 is anything to go by. 

Then there is the whole killing off Shepard and resurrecting him which first of all having Shepard die at the start of ME2 getting killed by some random Collector laser canon is a cheap way of establishing stakes since Shepard killed Saren and stopped Sovereign's raid on the Citadel and after all that Shepard gets beaten by some random laser beam by a bunch of repurposed Protheans? It makes Shepard look incompetent and an idiot after how capable he was in ME1, in comparison to the video game trope of having the player character getting defeated at the start of a game sequel, at least Metroid only had Samus lose her power ups, God of War's universe already had an afterlife Kratos previously escaped from so it is a bit more plausible by comparison to have Kratos escape death again, and to use a non gaming example, Goku at the start of the Android Saga was suffering from the heart virus, so when he lost to Android 19 despite achieving the ultimate power, at least him losing to some nobody was easier to comprehend. Then ME2 even pulls a DBZ and has Shepard get brought back even though ME doesn't even have the supernatural in it. The Illusive Man with millions of dollars can perform a Shenron. How? Who knows. Money can do the impossible apparently. 

Speaking of DBZ and anime, ME2 is basically an anime filler arc that is interwoven with some "canon" scenes from the manga. ME3 will have Cerberus, Illusive Man as the villain, and EDI, Thane and Mordin and that's about it. Almost everything in ME2 is filler that barely contributes much to the overall plot of Mass Effect, much like Dragon Ball Z's Garlic Jr Saga except I have to watch it because ME2 has the whole save game system. 

Instead ME2's "plot" is basically a combination of something like DBZ's Garlic Jr Saga and something like an anthology movie based on a long running established series like Halo Legends and the Animatrix. The difference is Halo Legends was made after the Halo trilogy was wrapped up, and since the Halo story at the time was already told, having anthology stories exploring the lore of the Halo story was easier to accept. If Halo 2 was like Halo Legends and had a bunch side stories in place of the story taking place past Halo CE, H2 would be a lot harder to swallow. 

What Mass Effect 2's "plot" consists of is basically Shepard building a team about a filler enemy known as "the Collectors" where he recruits a bunch of them, he does some of these missions for a while, gets an Illusive Man update, does a couple of Loyalty missions, then gets some updates then depending on how many loytalty missions they do, go to the Collector base and beat the game. The plot is as paper thin as I described. 

As misguided as this approach to making a direct follow up to ME1 is maybe this is Bioware's attempt to appeal to newcomers after all this was the first ME game on PS3 and that is another issue I have, ME2 can't decide if it wants to be a game for newcomers or for returning fans. You have the thin plot that barely follows up on ME1 like I previously discussed but then you have all these callbacks and mentions to ME1 which will mostly likely go over a newcomer's head. Who's Garrus? Who's Tali? Who's Ashley? Who's Saren? Who's Sovereign? Who's Captain Anderson? Who's Joker? All of these things won't even have the same impact unless you play ME1. The Vigil theme playing when Shepard meets his former crewmates is going to fly over many people's head if they never played the first game. 

The villains in ME2 are equally as weak. Illusive Man barely shows up and he only ever had maybe 1 or 4 scenes and most of them just consist of him talking about humanity and giving Shepard orders, outside of his theme and his voice actor, there is nothing that works in the way Saren did. Sure Illusive Man and Shepard both work for the side of humanity but all Illusive Man does is say things about the betterment of humanity and give Shepard orders behind a screen while everyone keeps on saying they don't trust him. Compare that to Saren where he killed a Specter, tried to mislead the Council, got one of your squadmates killed, and tried to turn Wrex against you. Saren also gave everyone in the cast of ME1 to join you and challenged them. Garrus hated Saren for being a disgrace against his people, Tali hated him for aligning himself with the Geth, Wrex wanted a bounty but later is conflicted about the Genophage possibly being cured and of course the scene where Saren asks you to join the Reapers and wants you to join alongside him. 

Where was all this for the Illusive Man? He never directly gets involved and just says things, he never backs them up with anything making him hard to buy as a villain. 

Then there is the Suicide Mission label which is the game being silly. Isn't Shepard being a specter make him the kind of guy to go on suicide missions by design? Stopping the Rachni and defeating Matriach Benezia was a suicide mission, stopping the Thorian was a suicide mission, stopping Saren on Virmire and later stopping Sovereign were suicide missions and ME1 didn't have to straight up beat you over the head with them either. 

Then there is the Collectors being repurposed Protheans and the "Human Reaper". How does any of this benefit the Reapers at all? The Reapers are a hyper advanced lifeform that can destroy human civilizations with ease, why do they need Protheans to do their dirty work or build an inferior version of their own kind? What can a Human Reaper do that a normal Reaper can't? This plot point never gets brought back in ME3 because it's too implausible to take seriously. Plus in ME1 it's established that the Protheans were wiped out, so this also comes off as awkward retconning that never gets mentioned again.

It's also harder to "role play" in ME2 compared to 1. I can make Shepard act like a kind hearted boy scout and then have him do some QTE Renegade actions and none of the characters ever question any of it. It's inconsistent and it never gets acknowledgede either, 

Loyalty missions make no sense philosophically, why does being loyal to Shepard undermine my teammates basic need to survive? Shouldn't them being loyal to Shepard have them be more prone to die in the "Suicide Mission" since they are relying on Shepard to bail them out and they won't rely on their own ability. It detracts Shepard's agency, allies should make Shepard and by extension the player look into their problems if they act weird during gameplay or act out of line during conversations. Professionalism involves not bringing your problems into your field work. Shepard just feels like a teacher or outsider solving petty family problems and school yard conflicts, Shepard's strength of character should inspire loyalty not solving petty issues that doesn't concern the galaxy. You don't even have to do all the "loyalty missions" in order to have everyone survive at the end end, you can just do 5-6 of them and everyone will live as long as you know who to assign and what Normandy upgrades to have. 

Some good things about ME2 are that the characters, their interactions and the voice acting are pretty good, favorites are Mordin, Garrus, Tali, and Thane. Rest are just okay and also not as good as the first game. Some characters like Jack are just characters whose sole trait is to be angsty and some characters like Jaccob are there just there to be your fanboy and nothing more. 

Lair of the Shadow Broker is a better sequel to the first ME than 2's entire base campaign. I really do mean that. Here's my previously written review of that here:

Decent DLC that has a story and writing that surpasses the main game for having an actual overarching plot and not hours of filler of doing recruitment missions, get Illusive Man update, then Loyalty Missions where your supposed team of professionals can't problem solve on their own. The cutscene cinematrography is at it's best and does a good job at foreshadowing that Vasir could be on the enemy without it making it too obvious.

Speaking of Vasir, this is the first time or at least the first time not in side quests where you get to see other Specters besides Shepard which is nice. The Specters and the Council get mentioned and have more importance to the story unlike the main game where they were just pushed aside and won't become important again untill ME3. Vasir was a better foil to Shepard than any of the villains in the main game especially with how she is corrupt Specter like Shepard except she is willing to do dirty deeds to get the job done and is aware of it too. Her death was solidly handled too.

It also sort of addresses that massive unanswered question of how Shepard was able to survive after being blown up and left to sit there in the vaccum of space, it's far fetched but there is sort of an explanation unlike the main story.

Shepard and Liara's interactions were fun and enjoyable too and it showcases that despite being separated for 2 years, they know each and have each other's back where they can wisecrack during battle.

Liara's character growth was decent, her becoming the New Shadow Broker comes a little too out of nowhere for my tastes.

The DLC does have the main story's problems of being too much cover based shooting and talking with not much inbetween. It does try it's best to throw in stuff like a scripted car chase, lighting thethers that can hurt enemies, and final boss with multiple phases that you need to occasionally do melee on. It's nothing special considering so much of ME2 to begin with is just talking and cover based shooting but this is somewhat admirable.

Overall, it's a solid DLC that I prefer over the main story and it's cool the Legendary Edition comes with it. If ME2's writing was more like this DLC, I would be much kinder on it as a whole.

The gameplay in ME2 is both taking two steps forward and two steps back. Moment to moment shooting and controls are improved, you have a deciated cover button now and the sound design and weapon feel for the guns are still good and the damage animations when you kill enemies are even better here and it, the animations are generally enjoyable and fun to watch, I love decent to great death animations and they can carry me through the most monotonous of games and since ME2 can be that, this helps more on that later.   

The bullet time and ability you get with the solider is nice and it does help give you more options in combat even if so much of it is just cover based shooting 

Tali's recruitment mission was decent situational depth, I like how you have to avoid the sunlight to avoid having your shields from frying, I did wish the game had more moments like this to break up the gameplay. 

Now on to the bad, the probing mini game has been derided many times and yes, it is very dull and has the bare minimum for basic interaction. Plus, you just do the "main story" quests and just stock up on resources early game, you can have tons of resources to buy later upgrades, you will have tons of credits to buy more probes and the game just throws all that stuff at you with how much they are scattered throughout the levels and if you keep doing the hacking mini games. 

The lack of the Mako is missed and should've been improved instead of being removed entirely. The lack of RPG elements can make the game feel pretty samey at time considering how long the game is, I miss being able to put XP into different skills and talents, I also prefer the old idea of getting stronger guns rather than researching them. 

As a result, ME2 is basically at it's core a cover based shooter with lots of dialogue than a full on RPG but since there is so much combat and while I have chastised Gears of War 1 a lot in the past, that game was 8-10 hours, gave you more to do in combat like dodge rolling and active reload, and can't be beaten with primarily one or two guns like ME2 can since ammo isn't universal like in Gears 1. 

The game's level structures can get pretty one note, so much of the recruitment missions consist of talking, getting into shootout, earning the member you want to add's trust, they do some stuff and then you kill the boss for that mission. The "loyalty" missions revolve around the same formula except now there is what is mostly family issues. The occasional "main missions" just consist of talking and killing Collectors and end with the Illusive Man does his thing of talking to you behind a hologram and not doing anything interesting besides saying his ways will help humanity in some way. 

Overall, Mass Effect 2 is a sub par sequel to a game I consider nowadays to be pretty good. The anime filler arc crossed with anthology movie based on popular franchises in disguise of a "direct sequel" and the gameplay being even more one note and monotonous than it's predecessor due to the lack of the Mako and RPG systems just makes this game nothing more an "okay" cover based shooter with lots of dialogue. I wouldn't mind this so much if there was an interesting and geniune overarching plot to accompany the hours of dialogue and cover shooting. 

Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion Remaster Review

Speaking as a guy who played Turok 2 again a year or two ago and didn't really like it that much primarily due to the game's overly confusing level design, I enjoyed Turok 3's more straightforward level design by comparison.

The thing I liked about the Turok games were the weapon variety, weapon feedback and damage animations, and Turok 3 was basically that minus the part where you had to item hunt to get to the next level.

I love how shooting different parts of the body will have you dismember an enemy, the game does encourage to shoot at different enemy body parts more like the sword wielding laiens need you to aim in the body or legs to kill it or how soliders might be easy to kill if you shoot them in the arm or leg, this game came out the same year as Soldier of Fortune so its cool that this system existed on the N64 even though Turok 2 also had it but I appreciate it more here due to the more straightforward level design.

The level design in Turok 3 is more traditional shooter fare, all though the game gets compared to Half-Life, it's more like Quake 2 where you have level objectives and you can explore the levels that are separated into different zones since and the game uses a chapter system where you have one big area to explore, beat the level boss and then that area gets blocked off and then you got a new area to explore. I prefer Quake 2's level design over Turok 2's so I certainly welcome the change. There is some similarities with Half-Life with some of the puzzles you have to solve.

Some of the levels did get me stuck a few times but for the most part I was able to navigate the levels with no issues. The life force chips do a decent job at guiding the player. It's very 90s shooter in the way Quake 2 and even other 90s shooters with how mazelike the level were and the backtracking the required.

Some isssues with the game is that it's way too short, I don't mind short games but I wouldn't mind 2 more levels before the game ended, I know there is a 2nd character, Joeseph Fireseed but his levels play out too similarly to Danielle from what I have seen for me to warrant a second playthrough.

That and some of the enemy projecticles homed in on you a little too fast, but this is something I can tolerate since there were always medkits around and the remaster of the game autosaves from the last level you loaded in from so there isn't too much progress lost when you do die and you respawn with 50 out of the 120 hp to help out so you are never in any unwinnable situations.

I am not a big fan of having multiple weapons and them sharing ammo since I will most likely use the preffered weapon variant that I like. I will always use the weapon that packs a punch and consumes less ammo for example, I will use the pistol over the mag 60 since it packs a punch and drains ammo less, same goes for the assault rifle and the chaingun respectively.

The game is also more cinematic than previously Turoks and the cutscene composition and production values are decent for their time. The story itself was already hard to take seriously when Joshua Fireseed dies in the opening of the game and I am never a fan of a trope like that since I would rather have a build up to a death of an established character rather than it just randomly happening.

Overall, while short and could've had a campaign with more actual meat, Turok 3 is a good time and probably the only Turok I like from the ones I played. If you don't like Turok 1 and 2, you might like this game too much like I did. It's not going to blow your socks off, but compared to other shooters on the N64 that came out on the same system, I do prefer it over Perfect Dark especially now both games have gotten superior remasters and aren't shackled to the N64 anymore.