Resident Evil 2(1998) Review

Resident Evil 2 is a weird game, I recall liking it even when I still beat it but after playing the Director's Cut version of the first game, I have a new appreciation for RE2 than I originally did. Jumping into RE1 1996 to RE2 1998 and it feels like a massive jump in almost every way. 

Everything about RE1 that is good is mostly kept intact in RE2, the amazing level design of the Spencer Mansion is carried over to the STARS Police station. The interconnected areas where you have short cuts, where you need to collect ammo, healing and inventory items to progress and where you learn new things about the map as you are going through and checking down each room and making a list of all the important areas of interests is all kept intact. 

The inventory system which I have come to appreciate about the older REs is also still kept intact, where treks outside of save rooms is a game of, "how many health items, weapons, ammo, and puzzle items can I keep with me before venturing out". Now, you even get extra inventory spaces all though you have to choose if Leon and Claire will have it. 

The satisfying weapons like the shotgun and magnum are still there and the damage animations are still as satisfying as ever. 

Where RE2 improves on RE1 is all the questionable aspects of the first game. For example, there is now a visual indicator of when the player character has taken damage, making it easier to tell when the player should take a healing item.

The voice acting is better, all though still not amazing, it does have an intentional camp to it where the first game's voice acting outside of maybe Wesker and Barry's VAs sound confused about the material they are acting out. 

Music is also much improved and the ambient music gives a tense yet oddly catchy tunes that accompanies the game since it would be dull just hearing Leon and Claire's footsteps. 

Combine all of these things and RE2 is one of the most engrossing games I have ever played, I played the game for hours on end without ever getting up from my chair, RE2 just nails everything I like, decent enough combat and very engrossing and engaging level design. 

Where RE2 really makes the massive leap forward is the A and B game system. I encourage anyone to play the B game after playing the A game of either character. It gave me a new appreciation for RE2, where RE1 has seperate camapigns for each character where both took place in their own universe, RE2 improves upon this by having Leon and Claire's campaigns intersect with each other. Stuff that happened or gets overlooked in Leon's campaign will get addressed in Claire's, for example remember the part where the zombies start to burst through the area where the basement entry was in Leon's campaign, in Claire's campaign you will have to deal with that. 

Remember the crashed helicopter as Leon? In Claire's campaign, you will have to blow it up to meet Chief Irons. There is also a sub plot with Mr. X not present in Leon's A game.

I don't have much in the way of compliants, the combat issues can be annoying like the lack of a dedicated dodge button, the auto aim not always being reliable, and enemies covering a good portion of the screen where you are trying to aim your gun but these are small compliants since you get powerful weapons that make short work of many of the enemies especially as Leon. 

And this transitions me to my next issue, Claire's projectile weapons don't feel as good as Leon's hitscan weapons. Leon gets a super shotgun that rips enemies apart late game and a magnum where Claire's most useful weapon is a grenade launcher that has a good chance of missing enemies since it's projectile and the auto aim minus the fixed camera makes it not as easy to land shots but the low hp of enemies makes this tolerable enough. 

The bosses aren't that great but they go down pretty quickly like the enemies and there isn't many of them luckily. 

Overall, RE2 1998 is one of the greatest game sequels ever made, I completely understand why it gets the praise it does, it took what RE1 did and improved upon it in every way. This might be one of my favorite games of all time, it certainly is one of my favorite game sequels of all time. 

Mass Effect: Andromeda Review

I'm not a big Mass Effect franchise fan, by the time I beat ME3 I was so burnt out on it that I didn't want to touch more of the series but I wanted a "quick and easy" game to beat before 2023 came to close and MEA fit that role pretty well. Andromeda isn't a very good game at all, it's about as medicore as mediocre can get but in a backhanded way, the game feels like one of those kinds of games I have to play every once and a while to understand why I like the games I enjoy.

With that out of the way, I would actively talk about the story but I didn't pay as much attention to it as Bioware wanted me to. The story, the writing, the voice acting, the animations are so stiff and awkward that by the time the main villain of the game made his first appreance after the prologue and all he did was just moved around and made blank facial expressions, I basically knew the story wasn't worth my attention, there's probably lots to comment on but the whole everyone trying too hard to sound snarky partnered with the awkward voice acting animations and I couldn't care less. I already am not a big fan of ME2 and 3's writing and MEA seemed to enter into the realm of "soft reboot", I'm not sure if more refrences to past games would've helped but at the same time the game in terms of story has little going for it.

I'll give the story some credit where the villains react to every time Ryder and the crew made a set back to their plans but this feels like it's too little too late. This could've elevated ME1 and it could've helped give the Illusive Man more character but at this point, I just don't care anymore.

Now the big reason why I consider the game to be painfully average and dull: the gameplay. The UI is so bad that even I am complaining about it, everything is presented in a convoluted way and there load screens within load screen when using going to planets, and you need to press the left trigger button and cross just to Tempest.

The big reason why I played this game at all was because the gameplay seemed to be moving away from cover based shooting or at least that is what it looks like, you got a jump pack and a dash button, this sounds great on paper but then the arena designs hardly ever rely on you to use the dash and jump, when they do, all the combat areas have the exact same layouts and the verticality jump pack has is barely even used. The arena design is basically just a floor, 1 platform above that and that's how far it goes. Playing MEA, it's just easier to hide behind cover a lot of the time and occasionally actively move around when tougher enemies with bigger health bars start to actively flank you.

The difficulty is also really messed up, normal difficulty has your shield get taken out pretty fast, and your guns do poultry amounts of damage but on easy, your shield is a lot more resilant and your guns do more reasonable amount of damage. Playing on any difficulty other than easy just means I am going to spend more time hiding behind cover and waiting for health to regen. I got the sniper rifle stat maxed out and my sniper shots were still weak as hell on normal.

Another big issue with combat is that so many of the enemies types are the same thing over and over, ME1 suffered from this addmittedly, but ME1 wasn't didn't have a jump pack or a dash and enemies being damage sponges. ME3 had some pretty solid enemy variety from Cerberus troopers to the various Reaper aliens Shepard fights. But MEA? You just fight Kett and some robots the whole game. You might fight some giant aliens, enemies witha force field and Krogan here and there but this is just too few and not interesting enough when you got dash and a jump pack and outside of the force field enemy where you have to shoot the orb to damage it, the Krogan and bigger aliens just have more health and thats it.

You also don't need to weapon switch that much since weapon switching in clunky due to clicking the touch pad which could have you holster your weapon when you want to switch guns and snipers are the best gun since most enemies are mid to long range with the Omni Tool for close quarters combat.

To give the game some credit the weapon sounds and headshots are pretty meaty. This kind of helped me carry me through the game since good weapon feedback and polish can really stimulate my brain.

The vehicle sections return but they are too few and far between and there is rarely any combat with it on the main story path. So once again too little, too late.

Overall, MEA was mediocre, it's the kind dull that I touch every once and a while just to remind myself of what happens when good game design gets subverted. I probably won't play this game again but at least I finally got to beat the game I bought for $20 on sale for a few years ago.

Short Game Reviews: December 2023

Watch Dogs: Bad Blood:

Solid DLC just more of the main game while doing nothing new. The story is pretty decent stuff with Raymond and his bonding with Tobias. I didn't have many issues with the base game so this DLC being more of the same didn't bother me. It doesn't do enough different to warrant a full on review and I did like that one mission where you were defending Tobias and Raymond using automated turrets and it has just as much of the hacking, stealth, and shooting the base game had. Stealth can be pretty easy if you use the silenced pistol, auto aim headshot and focus mode combo but considering how AI notices you pretty fast it makes the stealth much more bearable even if the forced cover blows can be annoying at times. If you didn't even like the base game, I am not even sure why you would even play this DLC.

Metal Gear(1987):

This game feels like someone who is learning about game design for the first time and he's developing the game as he is learning. Metal Gear at first seems okay but once I got captured for the first time, all the problems start rushing at once. The fact that all the doors look the same and it's hard to tell which key will open which door, guards get alerted to my position every time I enter a stealth room, the awkward and clunky shooting with weak feedback to enemies getting shot, being unable to tell which sight lines will have me be noticed by the enemy or when they will ignore me, the cameras not even having a clearly visible sight line to avoid, the endless respawning enemies that will just eat away at my health and healing items. The straw that broke the cammel's back for me is when I had to use plastic explosives to blow up certain walls to get to a room and all the walls look the same making it hard to tell where I was supposed to place them in order to progress. Before that, you had to destroy a wall in a jail cell with your fists and it wasn't even shown which texture was weak's to Snake's punches.

Just the way this whole game is designed is just trial and error and not in an interesting way. It's just you looking around and guessing or watching a walkthrough to see how the uploader did it and then you following that. Everything about this game feels like it was designed by people started designing a game for the very first time and didn't have much skill or confidence in doing it.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake:

Metal Gear 2....does not feel very good to play and feels dated right when I start. I knock out a guard seconds after he spots me and the whole hivemind knows, alerts either stop or it goes on forever and I can hide in one location knock out multiple guards where their bodies despawn and they still know where I am. I don't even know how to reset the alert in this game, whole thing feels super arahiac and poorly explained. Haven't played a game that felt this bad to play seconds after playing it in a long while. Solid is a masterpiece compared to the first 2 MGs.

Games like this make me understand why Splinter Cell eventually added a last known position system. I get chased around in this game not even knowing where or where not the enemy will search for me. It was ambitious for it's time but screw MGS3 getting a remake, the first 2 MGs deserve it far more. They feel terrible and awkward to play even now. There's a reason why Solid is where everyone starts regarding the series.

Twisted Metal 2:

TM2 is a massive improvement over the first game one example is that the maps are much better and the pick ups are much more visually distinct and are much more useful during moment to moment gameplay. Getaways are much easier to pull off and cars don't take nearly as much damage as the first game.

The core gameplay is still fun but I can't help but find the difficulty too punishing for it's own good. You get two lives throughout the whole campaign of each character and lose one life and you lose it permanently, and it's easy to get overwhelmed and lose a life very quickly, and health pick ups get harder and harder to find the more you progress. The driving isn't the greatest and the animations can lead to weird collision detection. The game CAN be really fun but the awkward driving, collision detection and physics sucks much of the the fun out of the game. So much of TM2 is spent wrestling with the controls and trying to have it be as precise and do the thing I want it to do. Turns and any complicated maneveurs are just too complicated feel way too awkward. My hand geniunely started to hurt after extended play sessesions. Enemies also have a knack for spamming freeze a lot of the time, this can be mitigated thanks to the rewind feature but on the last level I was just starting to lose patience for how dated the vehicles handled and how awkward the driving physics were.

I prefer Head On and Black over this game despite me finding some enjoyment in TM2. TM Head On in general feels like TM2 but improved in almost if not every way.

Quake 2 64:

All though this is technically not an "expansion" in the traditional sense since this is the N64 port of Q2, I'm going to be reffering to this as such since it comes with the remaster.

I do prefer this expansion over the Reckoning, the former has better level design instead of being a worse rethread of the base game. There is a weird charm to how the levels are structured in this version of the game, it feels a bit similar to objective completion shooter like Goldeneye than the "open" levels of the base game and the Reckoning. If you didn't like the constant backtracking across zones in Q2, you might like this. Q2 64 basically has you complete objectives in one zone and you reach the exit and move on to the next one until you get to the final zone where the final boss is located. I found this to be pretty charming since it feels like a cross between Goldenye in what you are doing in the levels with the objectives and Doom 1993 and 2 were you are slowly making your way through segmented levels as you slowly journey to the end.

Outside of this and the noticeably shorter length with it taking probably 1 and a half to 3 hours, it's the same Q2.

It does unfortunately do what the Reckoning expansion does and amp up all the annoying aspects of the base game to eleven like how the sprinting Strogg's attack can happen out of nowhere, randomly getting attack from behind, the railgun Strogg's attack being poorly telegraphed, and just enemies moving all over the damn place and how ambushes with lots of enemies at once can be unpredictable. There's also some hitscan attacks by the infantry marines that you pretty much have to tank, I didn't mind it in the base game but it does get pretty grating not being able to reliable dodge or prevent the attack from happening.

The game also feels like save scum city at times with the aforementioned issues but thanks to the game being so short, I am not as annoyed by this stuff as I was with the Reckoning, this expansion wraps up the moment the issues really was starting to annoy me.

Overall, not on the level of something like Doom 64 but this was an interesting attempt at porting Q2 to the N64 even if now the game is basically an expansion.

Burnout Revenge:

I am going to be honest and say the following, I do enjoy Burnout Revenge and it mechanically it's even better than Burnout 3 and the latter game was already hard to top but playing this game reminds me that racing game even with great mechanics just wear me out after playing them for longer than 8 hours.

This transitions me to the next part, I am not even sure what even counts as a "completion" regarding this game and racing games with no traditional story mode or plot in general. You need to technically reach Rank 10 and complete all the Grand Prixes to count as a "beat" but I feel like if I played this game more than the 10 hours, it then I would start to strongly dislike BR. There is no story and there isn't even a final boss in the tradtional sense and apparently to get the credits you need to get Gold Medals on all the events and no way am I going to do that. There's so much crash mode, elimination, traditional races, takedown centered modes, time attacks, crashing into cars I can take before I call it quits. Do this for 20 hours and I would just start to get super annoyed and maybe even dislike the game.

With that out of the way, I'll talk about what the game does well, mechanically like I said before is even better than Burnout 3. You got the risk reward system from the latter system which is great, but now you got stuff like crashing into cars, avoiding on coming traffic, avoiding bigger vehicles, as well as takedowns being easier to perform, leading cars into on coming traffic as well as using the traffic to destroy other cars. AI is more dynamic too where they can even be taken out during races and thanks to all this the whole game has a fast paced over the top dynamic feel to it that not a lot of racing games and it's predessor can even match. Races in general feel more epic and dynamic in Revenge since getting boost is easier to pull off so if I crash and fail, it doesn't feel like the end of the world compared to 3. Burnout Revenge might not be a "reinvention" of the series but I feel this is an "expansion" sequel done right, at least in terms of mechanics and game feel.

If I have to choose between playing Burnout 3 or Revenge, I choose the latter, I even think the progression system is better but I wish there was an actual story mode in these games since rank progression can start to feel like a boring grind by the time I reached Rank 8.

I do like Burnout Revenge but I feel burned out every time I play it and B3. This might be the best racing game ever made in terms of mechanics but at the same time, without context for the races and a geniune sense of escalating stakes, even nothing but mechanical depth can start to bore me. If you don't mind this stuff then this game is a must play, it's just not 100% my kind of game.

Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit Review

Decent game and even though it costed me more than your usual used PS3 game tend to do at coventions due to how rare this game has become, I was looking for a quick game to beat on PS3 and Burst Limit overall fufilled that role nicely. I don't think the game is amazing and I feel like Shin Budokai might be the best Budokai game overall from the ones I played including Budokai 3.

I'll start with what I liked, as a guy who still remembers the Budokai games' controls and mechanics from being a kid all the way to now, Burst Limit generally felt right at home for me. You got ki attacks, ki guage, fatigue meter, energy attacks from standing, teleporting, doding while tapping the guard button and so on, if you have never played this game before and the only experience with DBZ fighting games are the Budokai games, you'll feel right at home here, I know I did.

The game looks very nice and the visuals still hold up for the most part, characters look very vibrant and are animated pretty well. The animations during fights and cutscenes are great. My only big gripe here is that the mouth movements don't 100% match the english voices but I am fine with this.

The story mode is...decent enough, it's the bare minmum for a single player campaign with a narrative, it's Raditz all the way to Cell with some confusingly told, "what if" stories thrown in but it's a decent campaign, I do at the very least prefer it over the "visual novel" story with fights that Budokai 3 had all though Shin Budokai does get more points from me for having an "original" story however not as well presented as Burst Limit's. I also like how you can choose the difficulty of each fight, and it came in handy for me since by the time the time Pefect Cell was defeated, I was starting to get bored and wish the game would wrap up since the "What if" stories aren't very good.

The music is also quite good and got me into the fights when they played, the opening theme is fantastic and is the most iconic and well known thing about this game outside of the visuals.

With the good out of the way. I'll start with the bad, an infamous aspect about BL is that it doesn't cover the Buu Saga and while I wouldn't have minded this, what bugs me is the fact that is the fact the game doesn't roll credits after you beat Perfect Cell, it rolls credits after you beat the Bardock and Broly Sagas and both are very incoherently told and I had no clue what was going on. Couldn't you have turned these last few fights with Bardock and Broly into a Buu Saga? It seems like Dimps didn't have the time or money to do it so these poorly told what if stories was the consolation prize.

I also dislike the "drama events" since they are just unskippable cutscenes that just leads to annoying stat changes and it does little to to change the fights since it rarely made a fight easier or harder except for the difficulty spike fights like Final Form Frieza or fighting Super Saiyan 2 Gohan as Broly.

Other things that annoy me about the game is some of the changes made to the mechanics for example, you don't need to power up anymore, ki will recharge faster if you land hits on your opponents, it seems very unfaithful to the show nor does it make for interesting gameplay since powering up was a risk reward aspect of a Budokai game. Do you power up ki and risk an opening for the opponent to hit you or take that risk and power up an energy attack.

Speaking of energy attacks, regular energy attacks no longer drain ki but ultimate attacks do and ultimate attacks for like Shin Budokai where you press up on the d pad and circle to use. As a result, I would never use my weaker ki attacks and would wait till my ki meter if full and do my ultimate attack since it does much more damage unless if the character has a grab attack since those attacks are much harder to land and your opponent will dodge the attack 90% of the time. 

The fatigue meter works like Infinite World's and like that game I am not a big fan of it in BL either. I would rather have fatigue be an active part of gameplay where it can happen to me if I use too much energy. Aura sparking does effect fatigue from what I can gather and it just seems like a seperate meter to keep track of, I would rather keep track of 2 meters than 3 since 3 just adds more busy work, and I would rather have ki be connected to fatigue since it's faithful to the show and it makes ki management more of an active role during gameplay.

Aura sparking felt useless and I could go through much of the game without it since ultimate attacks can be done without it and I rarely found much of an advantage in using it.

Overall, DBZ Burst Limit is an okay game in the Budokai series, not sure if it really did it's job at supposedly being a "next gen" Budokai game at the time, but it is better than Infinite World all though not as good as Budokai 3 or Shin Budokai. If your PC can run a PS3 emulator and you can find a way to have it work on it there than BL is worth checking out, not really worth the heftier than usual asking price for used PS3 games with that said.

Wanted: Dead Review

I bought Wanted Dead at a convention at full price despite all of the rather harsh things said about the game and I held off playing it for a while because of it, I finally played the game and what do I think?

Game is a mess, it is very Cyber City 808 inspired from the Cyberpunk setting, the premise of "criminals" being sent on suicide missions in a police force and the hilariously bad voice acting and dialogue. Best way of describing the game is what if Ninja Gaiden, John Wick, Cyber City 808, Kill Bill, Jak sequels, Yakuza, Gears of War, Metal Gear Rising Revegenace, and Max Payne ever had a baby, you'd get Wanted Dead. It's a game that feels more like a proof of concept than a fully fleshed out game than anything. 

I start Wanted Dead and I notice things right away. First being the skill tree is stupid and you need to unlock basic actions to stuff like dodge roll, throw grenades, bullet time, a counterattack after parrying, and finishing moves on dismembered enemies. Ninja Gaiden 2 lets you do the final ability I mentioned at the start, why not Wanted Dead especially since it's an important move that is a key part of combat. 

Hannah can't deflect bullets while blocking and sprinting meaning you will take hits while you are attacking spongey enemies. Raiden can do this but Hannah Stone can't. To Wanted Dead's credit, there is a dedicated block button for melee attacks. 

Easy mode is ideal since you can take more damage to compensate for the lack of bullet blocking, and you have more hit points since enemies are also spongey, and you can max out the skill tree much quicker, and how challenging the late game gets. 

Ninjas and chaingunners are the hardest enemies in the game. They both take a lot of damage and they both break out of your combo really easily on top of being able to rip your health bar to shreds even on easy mode. You will need to use your stims whenever fighting these guys. 

Outside of that you get riot shield users, firearms users and weaker enemies who use melee weapons and enemies who actively use grenades. The game has this enemy roster along with the chaingunners and ninjas for pretty much all of it's campaign with the former being thrown in around the halfway point. You fight spider robots twice and they just feel like a weird Call of Duty helicoptor fight randomly thrown into a game like this. 

Wanted Dead has difficulty inspired by arcade and NES games. Game is short so they add difficulty by spawning lots of enemies, the only game the game knows how to challenge is by adding ninjas and chaingunners and have checkpoints super spaced out. To add more challenge, the harder parts of the game does not have the character of "Doc" to give you one extra life before you see the restart screen. 

Parry is highly encouraged and even with the parry window skill unlocked, I still could never get the rhythmn down, I was never really good with systems like this but I thought this skill was supposed to make the whole thing more forgiving. Gun parries are easier to pull off and require less strict timing by comparison, these are nice to look at too. 

Bosses can be challenging but compared to parts earlier in the game where you fight tough enemy guanlets beforehand, these guys are pushovers by comparison. 

There is an ability for Hannah to do multiple takedowns but for the life of me I don't know how to activate and it seems to happen randomly. 

It gives you over the shoulder aiming like Metal Gear Rising does and it feels just as awkward and pointless in that game. It would've made more sense to do the Devil May Cry thing and have two handed weapons be used in conjuction to melee rather than being able to aim. The Gears of War style cover system is also pointless since most combat will happen at close range and ammo for guns are limited. The bullet time is also pointless due to the aforementioned problem. Grenades are also useless since there is no arc for grenades throws and throwing them pretty much depends on guess work. 

Game has tons of weird "quirks" about it. The voice acting and dialogue are not geniunely good, sort of reminiscent of the Cyber City 808 english dub. Then the game randomly turns into Kill Bill with anime cutscenes that happen mostly used for flashbacks. It can be jarring since the game uses a realistic art style but then randomly turn into anime for no clear reason. You will occasionally get into weird mini games during it's campaign much like Jak 2 and 3 but the mini games themselves more akin to a Yakuza game. Unlike Jak 2 and 3, these mini games aren't mandatory to progress. There is a side scroller that Hannah plays randomly as part of the campaign. 

The late game twist barely has enough foreshadowing for the whole thing to land and have any emotional impact. 

Good things about Wanted Dead is that the kill animations are great and are awesome to look and very John Wick inspired, I love me some good kill animations, Wanted Dead has many of them. It carried me through much of the game along with gory and over the damage and death animations. 

The health system is also rather unique and I would like to see it pop up again. You take damage, but you can recover that damage by landing hits and doing takedowns all though they are parts of your health, this another aspect of the game that makes the game beatable on easy mode. This system despite how difficult the game can get helps make the game from feeling impossible to beat. 

I like how there are very few combos which means Hannah won't have dozens of moves I will never use and I will just be alternating between her 2 avaliable gun combos. 

The end credits and background music when I can hear it is pretty good and fits the action. 

Overall, Wanted Dead definately is the weirdest recent AAA game release I have played in a long while. The game is quirky and weird and has many things that will turn people away from it from the skill tree, the presentation, and how the game as a whole feels like a proof of concept more so than a fleshed out game, but I say it's worth checking out a game so odd, it has to be seen to be believed. 

Mass Effect 3 Review

I liked ME3 the 2nd best in the trilogy despite me just enjoying it as a decent third person shooter more so than the because of the narrative and story. All though honestly while playing ME3 is enjoyable in the moment, the game did start to wear thin due to the lack of a geniunely enjoyable story and that it's a shooter that lasts 20 hours with not much else besides talking inbetween. 

The story already doesn't really have much in the way of stakes examples being how reapers get taken out pretty easily like how one gets beaten by a thresher maw and it's never established that the reapers have a weakness, why Shepard and group never tried to weaponize thresher maws, how suddenly Shepard is no longer in contact with the Illusive Man, has been on watch by the Council during the time off screen between ME2 and 3, Captain Anderson becomes important again, Admiral Hackett is now having taking up screen time during main missions despite him being relegated to side missions. The Council is now important again of all a sudden, the Crucible is now a thing and the collector base and all your adventures ME2 turned out to lead to nothing beneficial. By the time the thresher maw killed the Reaper in a kaiju battle I stopped taking the story seriously since Mass Effect 2 already screwed it up beforehand, ambassador Udina being rewritten as a bad guy working for Cerberus and tried to kill the Council was the moment I viewed ME3's story as a dumb comfort food story where I don't ask too many questions, I gave up on the overarching Mass Effect story ever trying to be anything profound. All though at times it does push my suspension of disbelief  is being put to it's breaking point with the aforemention kaiju battle, ambassador Udina being a villain and the character of Kai Leng. It's a shame considering how solid the first game's story was. 

Speaking of Kai Leng, as hated as he is, he's more dull than he is a "terrible" character the guy is basically a cyborg ninja thug with not much else going on. He runs away a lot and even needs goons to back him during bosses. He is basically a ninja thug who is a complete coward and nothing more even though the Illusive Man poured money into him like Shepard did. He should've been established in ME2 more than anything so their "rivalry" in 3 could've been more fleshed out. 

-Speaking of the Illusive Man was he under the control of the reapers or was he fully in control? The star child said he was controlling him but did the Illusive Man know he was in control or acting on his free will? The story never makes that clear even though Cereberus as an oragnization came out of nowhere and almost everyone in the galaxy hates the Illusive Man despite him being "pro humanity" even Ashley hates them and she is human, the recordings of the Illusive Man on Horizon didn't even reveal anything new, everyone including Shepard at the start of ME2 knew they couldn't be trusted. 

Shepard's visions of the child makes no sense since the child is someone Shepard saw a vague glimpse of but never properly interacted with and he supposedly becomes a vision Shepard gets towards the end of the game? I am not sure. 

The Citadel is apparently needed to power the Crucible even though Sovereign in ME1 almost destroyed it but now apparently it's the key to destroying an army of reapers. 

At least with Mass Effect 3 there are some good moments like Mordin's scarifice and how Wrex and Shepard have been through so much that he is someone that he will tells his children about 

More party member chatter during gameplay which is good since Mass Effect is known for it's characters and I like that Bioware tries to give them personality during gameplay. 

There's at least lots of conflict and in fighting, and it's enough for me to engage with the story superfically. The story is at least well acted and the cutscenes are well directed enough for me to roll my eyes every 10 seconds and completely zone out during gameplay. It's a dumb action movie featuring intergalactic space politcs and lovecraft horror threat. 

Shepard at least feels like he is driving the story than getting bossed around by the Illusive Man like in ME2.  

While the part where a Reaper getting killed by orbital bombardment was dumb, the choice you have to make between the Quarians or the Geth getting wiped out was interesting and it did do a good job at adding some stakes to the story. The Reapers are so weak in ME3 that I am going to have to create story stakes myself where I pick choices that get important characters killed, it doesn't really matter most of the endings are similar but at the same time, the rest of the story is such a mess and ME2 ruined any chance for the series' story to be anything profound that the techno babble ending with the child felt like a punch that barely even phased me after getting hit so many times. 

The plot to ME3 is still a geniune mess overall, it was a mess when ME2 started and since the latter was mostly nothing plot wise, the former tries it's hardest and barely has any anything salvageable by the time I got to the end of ME3, I was so warned out by all the sub par writing beforehand that the dumb techno babble ending didn't even phase me. I started to zone out the moment Udina turned into fully blown villain mode out of nowhere. 

What saves ME3 however is that the gameplay is solid. 

-Level scenarios are different where one minute you are helping a female Krogan escape, disabling a bomb, going through old ruins, helping and stopping Cerberus on a Mars research base instead of ME2's recruitment missions, helping people with personal which are most likely family problems and then doing a Collector mission inbetween all ending with a boss fight of some kind especially the first two I mentioned. The Geth Dreadnaught level where you have to avoid a shockwave every minute while behind to cover to avoid damage is a good example of situational depth. 

Shooting is very satisfying and controls a lot better than ME2. Best shooting in the series thus far. The death animations are at their best here and head shots are very meaty and powerful. Weapons feel their best and the additions of a dodge roll and super melee attack gives you more in combat. Using allies' powers feel better here due to added enemy variety like bigger enemies that you have to actively dodge roll, harvesters, riot shield users, and enemies taking more damage compared to 2. Husks aren't as annoying since they seem to have a finite wave rather than endless swarms like in 2. You also fight weird cyborg ninjas who like to attack you upclose. The Geth do a good job at adding something new to combat encounters where they fire lots of rockets, can turn invisible and can ambush while behind cover, and a Geth Prime has both shields and armor to takedown. And unlock ME2, you aren't fighting those weak medical robots for the 20th time. The Banshee enemy kept on more toes more compared ME2's enemy roster. 

All though once you get to Thessia, the game stops throwing in new enemies and the monotony of the game being a 20 hour cover shooter starts to set in. 

Enemies in ME3 take more damage by comparison to 2 so weapon switching is more encouraged. I actually had to use fire and disruptor ammo this time around where in 2 I rarely if ever used it. ME3's normal felt like an okay and solid enough challenge for the story driven game that it is where ME2 was just way too easy. 

Removing heavy weapons makes the shootouts less one note since in ME2, you can use the basic assault rifle and the switch to heavy weapons during a boss. 

I dislike how ME3 has a weird save bug where you important the save it defaults to casual mode and I was annoyed by how weak you shield was on normal but on normal I did use party memebers' abilities more despite me being able to shoot out in the open, I wish your shield was stronger on normal since playing cover shooters with more health and not using cover at all feels like a cheat code. 

ME3 might be full on action shooter but it is more committed to it than 2 is where the latter felt like an awkward hybrid of shooter and RPG. There is no probing or resource gathering in a game that is purely a cover based shooter. ME3 still is cover based but it controls better and the expanded on enemies, them taking more damage, and Shepard's moveset like the dodge roll and Omni Tool stab gives him more options. 

Overall, ME3 lacks a geniunely engaging story and is almost 20 hours of cover based shooting, the game starts to wear thin after a point, there is no mako and it's still a cover based shooter with lots of dialogue, a better attempt at one compared to ME2 but at the same time, this makes playing ME3 in the moment a rather tiresome experience. I do prefer ME3 over 2 and I would like to say by a country mile but instead I just midly prefer the former over the latter. Mass Effect pretty much died as a geniunely thought provoking narrative after ME1 ended. If ME2 and 3 never came with the Legendary Edition, I am not sure if I would've saw this trilogy through to the end. 

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater Review

MGS3 was a game I remember playing the fixed camera version over a decade ago and absolutely hating but then when the Subsistence version came out on the HD collection, I loved the game but would try to play again and couldn't get back into, I played it again later and didn't really care for it and after me playing it yet again on the Master Collection, I still feel the same way now and I can articulate that better than I did before. 

The Virtuous Missions is full of cutscenes and then the middle sections of the game lacks plot and the end sections have plot. It really made me come to realize that Kojima chose gaming as his career since he would never make it as a film maker, he's like the guy who makes long College and University lectures and he rewards you with free ice cream every time you listen to him. The ice cream in this case is something weirdly dumb and over the top. By the time, MGS3's Virtuous Mission is over, you could've already finished a movie like Escape from New York. 

Most of the thought provoking writing about whose side people are on and how enemies change sides and they are determinded by the times happens at around around the begginning and towards the end of the game. Compared that to the middle point of MGS1 where Snake talks to Naomi or MGS2 where Raiden is learning about the Patriots. 

The Boss' character is at her most interesting at the start, in the torture scene and most of her character is revealed through an exposition dump towards the end, she is complacement with everything she does, she doesn't feel bad for her cobras dying, nor does she ever take action on her own. Eva and the Boss' relationship is hardly if ever shown which makes the ending lack any impact. The Boss shows barely any remorse for the Cobra Unit slowly getting picked off. Ocelot plays with the Fear's crossbow and she is totally fine with it. 

Ocelot being Adam makes no sense and Ocelot spends so much of the game being a goofball jobber and then out of nowhere he is able to take on Naked Snake in a fight. Plus, him just being a quadruple agent is just starting to get silly. 

The Cobra Unit die the moment Snake fights them and barely have time to develop, Max Payne did this writing better and it had fewer cutscenes and the bosses involved the side character like Meryl better. The Cobras and Eva never interact with the other characters. Ocelot had interactions with Liquid Sniper Wolf and "killed" Meryl depending on the run you chose, Psycho Mantis used Meryl against Snake and the support team was involved by having Liquid be Miller in disguise as he gave Snake information about Naomi Hunter. 

The support team compared to MGS1 barely gets any involvement. For example Zero and Paramedic don't get involved in the story in any meaningful way and Sigint appears late in the game for the first time and his "character introduction" is a name drop at the start. Compare that to MGS1 where Campbell and Naomi were active players in the plot and were involved in the story just as much as the characters who actually were on Shadow Moses Island were even Mei Ling's quoting was short to the point and didn't feel as dragged out or shoehorned as Paramedic and her movie refrences did. I stopped listening to the latter after a point since it provided nothing meaningful. 

Volgin is a comically over the top villain that no one would ever want to geniunely follow. That and well he gets angry for Snake "killing" Raikov despite the fact that there never any scenes between those two to create investment. Why doesn't the Boss intervene and try to help out all the people Volgin is antagonizing instead of spending the whole game taking orders? Why not have the Boss tell Volgin to treat Eva with more respect since the latter has a heavy respect for the Boss. It would've had the soliders who fought Snake and Eva after Volgin's death make more sense if the Boss did in fact treat them with respect. Volgin is well acted, I'll give him that. 

The ending is hard to buy since Eva doesn't even say any of this to Snake's face, it gets way too plot twist heavy for my liking. Eva is a KGB agent? Nope she is a chinese spy who looks american, Adam was really Ocelot and after a point I just stopped caring especially when most of the Boss' characterization was at the start of the game and at the end. Eva and the Boss could've desperately used more interactions to have much more fleshing out of the Boss and to have the ending of the game hold more weight. 

The relationship between Eva and Snake is decent since they have enough screen and interactions with each other to be believable. 

Story isn't as consistently written as MGS1 nor is it as thematically rich and thought provoking as MGS2. I know MGS2 wasn't really well liked at the time of release but nowadays I consider MGS2's story to be far more interesting compared to MGS3's weird approach of James Bond movie, 80s cartoon and also trying to take things seriously inbetween. It sort of feels like is harkening back to MGS1 but that game had more going on for it's story than 3 does. 

The gameplay tries to be more ambitous and fails. I used to recall the lack of a crouch walk to be one big big issue I had with the game but there are so many more issues than that. Before I start criticizing, I actually think the lack of a crouch walk is the least of the game's problems, stalking mode works decently enough and the enemies move and turn slowly enough for me to grab them in time and the CQC controls work okay where I didn't slit enemies' sloat by accident as much this time around. 

The big issue is the regen health partnered with how you can CQC slam most if not all enemies except for bosses makes me a judo throwing Wolverine with my regen health 

Enemy AI is really stupid and using loud weapons is a viable tactic since getting caught means it's back to more CQC slamming. Normal difficulty is broken beyond belief. 

In MGS2 close quarters combat was a bad idea since knocking out a guard with your fists meant doing a 3 hit combo twice and doing it the second time required you to wait for the guard to get up and having the combo land again while getting shot at, it was also easier to die in MGS2 by comparison to 3 since Raiden didn't take nearly as many bullets as Naked Snake did. Raiden from MGS2 primarily excelled at long range, in MGS3, Naked Snake excells at both long and close range. 

To add insult to injury, in the off chance that you do die on Normal, you respawn in the last room you died in and with a resetted alert

Cutscenes cancel most alerts you already got before happening, if you need to get to caution just get to a lone position and CQC nearby unaware guards

Game feels like an 80s cartoon in how comically broken it is without self imposed restrictions. European Extreme is popular because Snake is just too versatile with his melee and taking that away geniunely forces the player to use stealth 

Only time I ever want to use the cure system is during bosses because the healing factor isn't fast enough to heal against boss attacks. Or if I get hit by attacks that quickly drain stamina like leeches or the End's tranq darts 

Camo index is a dumb system since it's just a bunch of menu fiddling, it doesn't do a good enough job at replacing the soaliton radar

Lack of soliton radar means it is easier to get randomly spotted out of nowhere. There isn't a whole lot of vertical services for me to hide behind and use the turnable camera to peak around corners and on top of that the game cuts to a first person camera when crawling in grass which is diorienting since the modern re releases of the game has the turnable camera and this was a carry over the fixed camera angle release. Since the game doesn't use the detection arrows from MGS5 or modern stealth games, it's easy to randomly bump into enemies and get caught from from far away places I didn't account for. Guards also have a knack of either being in their line of sight and the checking my position or have it be a straight alert when they see me, it all feels so random. As a result due to this, I would rather just play games with myself where I use loud weapons, eventually get caught due to an enemy placement and his line of sight I didn't account for and start CQC slamming every close by guard and occasionally rolling and bumping into them.  

The stamina system is a pointless gimmick since it's just occasionally popping in a menu during the action, lack of real time use sucks away the tension, there will always be animals to kill and refill stamina. Here's an idea, every time I get shot or CQC slam someone, stamina gets depleted. The more I get shot, the more stamina get used to heal then I have to choose between either using up my healing resources or deplete stamina faster to heal and use up more food. 

Bosses are dull outside of maybe the End and maybe the Fury even if the former was Sniper Wolf and the latter was Vulcan Raven. First person aiming makes it too easy and turnable camera makes it worse. The End was a geniune improvment over Sniper Wolf since instead of being in a 5 meter area, The End takes place over 3 zones and getting the drop on the End requires more effort by comparison to Sniper Wolf since the former isn't in you immediate line of sight. 

Level design is mostly just the same copy pasted green areas, I had to use the map a lot because of this. In doors levels fared a bit better since they looked more visually distinct compared to the jungles endless amounts of copy pasted leaves, trees and endless green. 

Overall, while I don't outright dislike MGS3, I consider the game to be very painfully average. The story never reaches the enjoyable character drama of MGS1 and it doesn't have the rich themes of MGS2. The gameplay tries to be more ambitious but it just comes off at a hollow attempted at innovating on the previous games, MGS3 is a game where you desperately need to have self imposed restrictions of any kind in order for the game to feel like it has any monicrum of a challenge. I would like to say the story carries the game but even that doesn't do enough for me.