Metroid: Zero Mission Review

This was the first Metroid game I ever actually finished and after recently replaying Super Metroid, I decided to return to Zero Mission 10 years later, and what did I think of it?

It's still a pretty good game but I got some issues with it that prevent it from being great, I never played the original Metroid and it really feels like I should just to have a much better appreciation for ZM but as it stands even without the context of the original Metroid, Zero Mission is easily one of the better game remakes mainly because it doesn't really do what many remakes tend to do and be the same game but with "better graphics".

Right off the bat, what is improved in this game over Super Metroid are the controls, like holy crap, these controls eat SM's controls for breakfast, it actually feels like I can precisely move around for the most part, you can ledge grab, moving between diagonally aiming feels better and this is the biggest difference, using missiles no longer requires you to take your thumb off the D pad, now you can just hold the R button, and the you can just fire missiles that way, this alone to me makes ZM better than SM. I know these controls were introduced in Fusion but it goes to show how much better Fusion's controls were than Super's and it was very smart of Nintendo to use Fusion's controls for this remake.

The music is pretty good, I have soft for the Brinstar theme and the Norfair's music sounds something straight out of the Prime games which is awesome since I love the musical motif of the latter.

Zero Mission isn't as braindead easy as Super either, I have seen some people call ZM the "easy" game but I argue Super is much easier, ZM's moment to moment combat can still feel a little too easy for my tastes but at least in Zero, some enemies are immune to the ice beam, I wish more were but by comparison where 99.9% of the enemies were weak to it, this was a welcome change. In ZM, 95% of enemies are weak to the ice beam as opposed to 99.9%.

The level design in Zero Mission is good about 90% of the time, outside of Kraid, the areas in ZM do a good job at scratching that exploration itch. Energy Tanks are pretty reasonable on where they are hidden while missile upgrades felt a little too easy to find for my tastes. But that metroidvania itch of, "oh man, this area is so hard to traverse, it feels like I can barely get anywhere" then you get more upgrades and unlock more of the map is still here, and probably more refined and better made than the original game. The only issues I have with the exploration and power ups, is that space jump and power bombs you don't get late game, I would've really loved to have power bombs early in the game since this will lead to my first negative:

You will have to morph ball bomb EVERY SINGLE TILE in every room you enter in order for you to have some clue to where to go. Don't let the much derided hint system fool you, there will still be lots of morph ball bombing in order to have some clue on where to go, this is what I mean of having power bombs earlier, this would eventually cut down on the tedium on needing to constantly bomb things. The hint system also doesn't do much to make things easier to look around due to the aforementioned issues. It straight up lies to you it says you need to go to Norfair but you actually need to go to Crateria to unlock ledge grab to progress furthur.

Kraid is also a very badly designed level, it's easy to be bottlenecked borderline have the feeling you are getting softlocked at times due to immense bottlenecking.

Then there is also the fact that there are some parts of Norfair where it's establish that lava flames hurts Samus, so I decided not to go there just to avoid getting damaged just to find out that YOU DO need to go under that fire to progress. Was this to promote strategy guide sales in 2004?

The next two issues are interconnected but the Mother Brain boss is awful and the stealth section after is awful.

Mother Brain boss is bad because it not only has the floor that hurts you, but you need to deal with multiple bullet hell projecticles while also dodging MB's energy attack while standing on the two platforms to make eye contant with her just to hit her with your missiles. It has you doing at least 3-5 things at once and it felt like the fire floor was there just to make it hard for the sake of it.

The stealth section can't decide if it wants to be a that or a scripted set piece I say this because there are moments where need to avoid sightlines, but then you will HAVE to get caught and get chased. It makes this section really frustrating which is a shame since once you get the armour back, it can feel liberating all those pirates you were hiding from, the section preceding this could've been much better handled.

Overall, Metroid ZM is a very good remake but at the same time, I got a lot of issues with it. I still say Dread and Prime 1 are better but you could do worse regarding first Metroid games.

Medal of Honor: Rising Sun Review

Me playing this game was completely random, I heard that the game wasn't that great but then I recently got told that it actually was good so I finally decided to play and come to my own conclusions, and I'd say, it's pretty good, I'd say it's probably the last geniunely good MoH game before the series would start to get experimental with European Assault and then just become a generic Call of Duty clone with games like Heroes 2, Vanguard, and Warfighter.

The game opening sequence on Pearl Harbour is pretty memorable, in large part because the player starts right in the action rather than choosing to select a new game and difficulty before starting, the whole thing is very bombastic and very intense especially when this isn't even the first fight with infantry and is mostly shooting down planes, I'm also not sure if this was intentional but you rarely get health pickups up drinks either which might've added to the tension.

Other good things is that this is before the release of the original Call of Duty meaning that levels still require you geniunely aware of the levels and look around to know where to go next, it isn't railroaded like CoD and the later MoHs. You still got look around to complete objectives and to get to the level exit. Some parts require you to get x amount of something while others are more bombastic, the fact that you have to look around mixed in with more over the top levels makes this more involving than the later MoHs. There is one mission late game where you will be infiltrating a summit of sorts, then the game gives you a lay of the land with the building you infiltrate and then you will get caught later which after you will be fighting enemies through that building.

The characters while not anyone you will remember for years to come by any means are at least entertaining enough to keep moment to moment gameplay entertaining in between all the mowing down of enemies. Characters like Tanaka being an example.

Final positive is that the Japanese do a good enough job at standing out from the Nazis, where the latter will often just run into and gun them down, the Japanense will hide, run at you ambush you, shoot from high places, or go up close and try to take you down that way, they feel like a more dynamic enemy compared to the Nazi soldiers of previous games. Your allies are pretty useful too, not too useful, but aren't mindless either, they can occasionally kill an enemy for you.

Issues might make a break the game for some, but here is the thing MoH Rising Sun, you will spend at least spend a good portions of the game with no machine guns like Tompson, MP40, or Type 100, this is in fact a console shooter where a good amount of the game is spent using precision weapons like the Springfield and Welrod which both will need you to require firing one shot and then reload again, this would be all fine and good and mouse and keyboard but this is a console shooter with analog sticks, so if the very sound that is offputting then stay away from this game. It was surprising to me just how much of the game is spent using precision guns. You do get shotguns and machine guns more the game goes on, but some levels will push your tolerance for console stick aiming to it's fullest even my patience was being tested at some points.

It even forces pistols on you too, which was surprising for a hitscan human enemy shooter like this game is. Usually you are primarily using machine guns but now precision weapons and pistols is what you will be using for at least a good 40-45% of Rising Sun.

Rising Sun can be a little glitchy and unpolished at times, sometimes allies and enemies will just pop in out of nowhere which can be immersion breaking.

The final issue that levels can be a big, a little too big, which is interesting since it feels like the devs wanted to push the power of 6th gen hardware but this also means you could spend hours wandering around not knowing where to go, and there isn't stuff like green lights or any kind of lights to guide the player, I surprisingly didn't need to look up a walkthrough but I can picture people who's not used to this style of level design might get lost. They also FEEL like they can take a while to complete due to the player's slow movement speed too, I see Youtube vids where you can beat them in under 30 minutes but levels just FELT longer than that, mostly likely due to the slow movement speed. Making the player's base movement speed faster could help fix this issue.

Overall, Rising Sun is a good game and is probably the last solid MoH entry before the series just went on for the sake of it and made me realize it barely any staying power left as a franchise.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Story Mode Thoughts

I was initially hesistant towards playing game, I already knew going in that the game was more of a "hardcore" and technical fighter compared to the Budokai and Tenkaichi games which were the Dragon Ball games I grew up on playing. That and when the DBFZ came out I was on a Dragon Ball slump and kind of turned "heel" on the franchise in that time, but I turned "face" on the series now and played a bunch DB games since then. With this recent PS5 version, now was a great time to get into the game.

I thought the game was "good" but I felt the story mode, which is what I'm covering could've been better. Everything about it feels like it could've been better than it was, but it was carried by the game's polish and me being a Dragon Ball fan more so then anything.

I'll start with what I liked, the game's story mode in terms of character interactions, production values, and voice acting(playing it english dubbed) is really well done and has a lot more effort into it than I thought I would, I already knew that going in since I would watch random cutscenes of the game a lot over the years and the scenes with Cell tend to be quite famous. For this alone, the game is worth playing especially if you are a DB fan. The best part of the story mode is that it is NOT a loose retelling of the series "canon" this time around, it is basically kind of an interquel of sorts between of the Dragon Ball Super anime after the Resurrection F movie and before either Universe 6 or Goku Black arcs because of this plus what I previously mentioned, it gives the game's story mode some geniune value.

There is just one thing that holds the story back, and that is how it's told. The game has you finish 3 "arcs" of sorts before you get to the end credits but the way the story is told is very disjointed, the way it was presented, I thought it was going to be like Tenchu 2 and original Resident 2 but disappointingly it's more like Tenchu 3 and the remake of Resident Evil 2. Where maybe 2 arcs which are Super Warriors and Android 21 seem to be "canon" to the game's timeline where the Enemy Warriors just seems to be a "what if" story. I'm not sure which is even canon to the game's true events either, it seems Android 21 arc is since the titular character has the most nuance in that arc but the way Super Warriors arc plays out, I'm not sure which if they are supposed to intersect or be their own self contained stories. This felt like a big missed opportunity because this could've provided some geniune innovation in fighting game story modes over story modes in games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 5, Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, Tekken 8 and the Injustice games.

I will also say the mechanically, it plays pretty well, I'm not a fighting game expert by any means but I can at the very least say the game has a high amount of polish and at the very least nice to play. I also like how some characters like Yamcha and Android 18 play really well and I can even pull off their semi circle special moves some degree of consistency.

This is yet again where the game feels like it was wasted potential. I love how it offers geniune innovation over other fighting game story modes where it has a weird RPG like system where you have your own party and can level up your characters meaning that unlike the MK and Injustice system where you will constantly switch between characters, in DBFZ, you can stick to playing as characters you like playing as, this is great. A downside to this that is a character gets KOed, or has little health left to continue doing consecutive fights you might have to switch to a weaker character with that is underlevelled but my solution to this is to save on point on the map and quit to the menu and load back the game, every time a character I liked got KOed.

This leads to me where the problem lies, what will you be doing in this story mode exactly when not watching cutscenes? Well all you will be doing is fighing constant clones of other characters, fighting the occasional "boss fight" and that's pretty much it. The game's fighting and polish carries much of it and the game is pretty easy for newbies which is how I got to the end at all, but there are occasional random difficulty spikes, either I got complacement or those were in fact difficulty spikes. Your milage may vary. This yet again feels like a great idea but DBFZ feels like one of those games where you can tell it loses steam pretty fast. By the time I was nearing the end of the Android 21 arc, I was starting to get bored and luckily the game does wrap up by that point, but you might feel the burn out sooner.

I'll say this, if you find the story mode too repetitive and samey and you are a Dragon Ball fan, the cutscenes at the very least are worth watching on Youtube.

Overall, I do enjoy FighterZ and it's story mode in spite of my criticisms but it felt like it could've been more than it actually was. There is some innovation here that could've amounted to more.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder Review

I got to give Mario Bros. Wonder a lot of credit, the game is easily the most innovating 2D Mario in such a long time, where the New Super Mario Bros games just feel like cash grabs where it felt like Nintendo just wanted to make 2D Marios so they can make a quick buck, Wonder feels like the game where Nintendo actually tried but even then, I feel like the game could be a lot more, I would be much harsher on the game if it didn't feel so innovating but there are things about it that I hope Nintendo improves in later games when they follow up on this.

I'll start with the good, like I said before this is easily the most innovating 2D Mario in a long while. You got new power ups like the Elephant Form, the Drill, and the Bubble Form, you got the Badges which allows you to either glad, do charge jumps, or rhythm jumps to name a few.

Then there is the enemies which has a surprising amount of new ones like the Hoppycat which doesn't move unless you start hopping, Tall Mushroom enemies which you need to really time your jumps in order to take down, the spiky slider where you can avoid and use as a makeshift platform, and the Condort to name a few, all of this is just innovations I am honestly surprised Nintendo is capable of doing for a 2D Mario, it's why I'm soft on the game as I am. It felt like a lot of heart was put into the game. It's why for the next few paragraphs I will be more negative but I do enjoy the game but this coming from someone who wants the game to be better and improve for a sequel.

The my first issue is the fact that Nintendo has yet to remove the limited continues in the Mario franchise, modern platformers like the recent 2D Rayman games manage to still remain challenging without limiting your continues yet Nintendo is still adamament about a system they themselves dropped previously in Mario Odyssey, so the fact that Wonder uses this system just feels jarring.

As a result, and you can call you can call me someone with no "skill" but thanks to this now that I know that a character like Nabbit and Yoshi can't take damage means I'm going to default to them whenever the game gets hard, luckily I can just use Nabbit, but at the same time, I think an ideal solution would be to remove the lives system and just have the playable characters be Mario and Luigi, the challenge remains but I don't need to play as characters that reduces 50% of the challenge, it doesn't make the game brainlessly easy since pits and some enviromental hazards can kill you but isn't the point of the 1ups to take more damage and the power ups is supposed to make me use them on enemies? Nabbit nullfies this. I don't play games to 100% them so self imposed restrictions don't work on me, so as a result it makes using the temptation of using Nabbit too great. It's not like Funkey Kong in DK Tropical Freeze where the same rules still apply but he has more HP and a glide mechanic, Nabbit and Yoshi changes the dynamic of Wonder with 1 ups and power ups.

This leads to my next issue, 1-3 star stages are too short and the challenge of them is to find the hidden Wonder Seeds. You can skip much of the games' content if you get two Wonder Seeds per stage meaning that I will rarely engage in the 4 star challenge levels. As a result, combine that Nabbit and Yoshi takes no damage by enemies, and how short the levels are most of the time, it can lead to many victories through the levels to be pretty hollow.

Next issue is the lack of boss fights, most of the worlds have them but some worlds don't and some of them require them you to find hidden exits to progress through the game, this is mandatory and when these parts pop up, it can feel jarring since before, you can just rush to the end of the stage and get to the end with no issue but now, you need to suddenly find the true exit to cap off the world or some of the levels. Whole thing felt like they could've just made Kamek the boss of those worlds instead of coming up with these fake out level endings, he is in the game so why not fight him when not fighting Bowser Jr.?

Final issue, the Badges, this is a great idea on paper since it expands Mario's moveset but most of these are generally just optional which is a shame since there are levels dedicated to teaching you how to use these badges but then in the actual levels, you can just skip them and never use them again, for example, there is a grappling hook badge, but outside of the tutorial area where you need to use it, the Badge is never really needed for the rest of the game after getting it. So Wonder in a sense teaches a new mechanic but has what it teaches you to be optional, all this could be avoided if every level had certain badges be mandatory to complete.

Overall, while I have been harsh on Wonder, it's still a "good" game worth checking out, worth it at that Nintendo rarely if ever goes down more than 30% full price? No, but still worth looking it but there are a lot of issues that prevent it from being great.

007: The World Is Not Enough(Playstation) Review

Before I start this review, I emulated the Playstation version of this game. I don't particularly like the N64 so I decided to play the PS version instead. That and I'm more comfortable with Duckstation than N64 emus.

I wasn't expecting anything out of The World is Not Enough, I thought I was going to play for a few hours and then drop it, play on the first level then customize the controls or eventually start playing with cheats, but shockingly, I didn't do any of those things, outside of say using a couple of save states on some unexpected difficulty spikes, I mostly managed to beat the game on it's own terms which was really surprising to me. I have even gotten used to tank controls over time thanks to games like the original Tomb Raider and the PS1 Resident Evil games so the lack of analog controls in World is not Enough, I got used to. If you can't stand playing games without them then steer clear of the PS1 version.

There is also the fact that enemies move slowly, auto aim is forgiving enough, enemies drop armor, full armor is easy to find that the game despite appearing to feel "dated" does at the very least feel like it is built around it's limitations, it rarely if ever feels unfair.

Other than that, while the game isn't an amazing shooter by any means, I was looking for a quick game to beat on a saturday night to sunday morning and World is not Enough delivered on just that.

The shooting is satisfying, weapons have punch and it feels good to hit enemies even if the shooting itself lacks depth since all you are fighting are human enemies with hitscan guns and in these games you are basically tank where you need to repair yourself using health packs and needing armor to surivive since you can't avoid damage reliably.

To the game's credit, you are never primarily shooting enemies, there was particularly memorable where you need to tap phones and sneak around a house instead shooting your way through, I was expecting this part to be terrible but it was mangeable since enemies can be mostly be punched and tranqed before they raise the alarm.

There is also a mission where you have to handle Bond skiing through a moutain while protecting someone or where you are in a Casino and you need to gamble and distract guards to go further. Some missions require you to save civilians and activate switches to get further into a level. A high speed subway mission and more, the game is always throwing something new and over the top at the player throughout it's run time that is definately a memorable few hours that the game lasts.

The music is also really good and gets you into the moment, I'm not sure if I will listen to the OST after I stop playing, but at the very least, the music feels good while playing in the moment which is what game music should do at the very least.

Only big that somewhat ruins moment to moment gameplay is that the quick select is rather clunky, I would try to cycle through it and never select the weapon or gadget I want, it was far eaiser to select them through the pause menu, like selecting weapons in Resident Evil 4(2005).

Some moments require some random guide searches to figure out like for example to disable a bomb you need to throw a satchel charge, then activate the cell phone stunner to activate, why would I need another bomb to deactivate a bomb? There is also the final mission where you need to activate a radiation scanner or else when you enter a red room with canisters late in the level, it's easy to get hit off screen and get random cheap deaths because you didn't know to activate the raditation scanner before entering that room. It would be nice to know if I was supposed to use it beforehand. I don't recall the briefings telling you this.

Other issues which might be for some is that the voice acting isn't that great and it uses scenes from the movie, but I don't really mind since it's encouraging me to finally give a Bond movie a try.

Overall, I wasn't expecting anything out of World is not Enough, I was expecting myself to either cheat or drop the game within a few hours but surprisingly I saw it through to the end. By no means this is a masterpiece but much like the movie franchise is it's based on, I don't think it's even trying to be

Army of Two: The 40th Day Review

After playing the first game and not liking it, as well as the Devil's Cartel and somewhat enjoying that. I decided to come back to the 40th Day to see if I still like it and I still do, all though I did wish I got to play the game in coop since it seems to be the way is intended to be played but at the very least playing 40th Day on easy is doable enough and I do get some fun out of it. I would probably say this is the most consistent game in the series. Original Army of Two had terrible controls and a regen health system that made it hard to see when at critical health and Devil's Cartel had a pretty bad story. 40th Day however manages to remain pretty consistent.

I wouldn't call any of these games masterpieces by any means, I do think it does have enough going to have it stand out from other cover based TPS games at the time, particularly with the partner system in how one guy distracts the enemies and has the heat be brought to them while the other sneaks up from behind and takes them out while they are distracted. It does do a good job at selling you on the premise that you are in fact playing an army of two. The arenas are pretty impressive too especially in "the Bund" chapter where there is a lot to maneveur, flank and get the drop on your enemies.

The weapon customization is pretty cool too, letting you add scopes silencers and different parts to your guns and the best part is, your customized weapon is never taken away from you meaning it gives you an incentive to actually use the feature.

Weapons feedback and the guns in general can feel pretty good, I really like the shotgun you get and it has a pretty decent amount of range unlike a lot of video game shotguns, it's not on older Doom levels but it can take enemies out at medium range. Headshots with the shotgun are also really satisfying too.

Only big gripes with the game is that on anything higher than easy, the partner AI can be too inept to help you even a little.

The cover system isn't the greatest, at first it feels like a precursor to the Last of Us and Survivor Trilogy Tomb Raider's cover mechanic in that your player character will go into cover automatically as long as the player is crouched, but then I am tapping the x button and it seems to be doing the Gears of War thing of where your character will be magnatically attached to walls. It's such a shame because it felt like 40th Day came close to solving that issue Gears of War had but then it had stuff I described.

The melee attacks also isn't the greatest either. I will tap the melee button while crouched and there is a 50/50 chance either a stomp animation will happen or the player character will actually do a punch or direct melee attack on the enemy, it's better than the first game's contextual melee but it could've been handled better here.

The mortality system is also half baked and doesn't add much. You save or get a bunch of people killed and it won't really change the game in any meaningful way outside of, "you got x or y killed". Saving innocent civilains is supposed to require stealth but I would do one stealth kill and get detected immediately afterwards. It's not a big deal unless if you really care about how gameplay and themes can be interconnected to tell stories in games.

Overall, 40th Day is the most well rounded game in the series, it isn't super amazing, but at the very least it gets the job done as being a quick beat that is playable alone on easy mode. I really did wish there was an easy and accessible way to play this cooperatively.

Slayers X Review

While I get what Slayers X is going for and what it tries to do, I can't really say it's a game I enjoy with a straight face. If the game were honestly any longer than it was, I probably would've dropped it at some point but the fact that the game is as short as it is, does sort of make this a bad game that is worth trying out, all though in Slayers X's case intentionally bad.

So this game is a boomer shooter but it is a boomer shooter with an emphasis on narrative, is the narrative good? I didn't really have much of a clue on what was going on, whole thing felt like a edgy teenager's fever dream. The whole thing is dumb and over the top, but in a way, it's so earnest in that I can't really fault the game for it all though if the game's selling point is the narrative, it didn't do much to magically say the game is worth playing for that alone.

The positives I will say for the gameplay is that unlike many if not all 90s styled boomer shooters, melee in Slayers X actually feels like it you can actually do. I got a good number of hackblood charges and even normal melee hits can down 2-3 weaker enemies which makes it easy to save ammo. I do appreciate this melee in many other games like this tend to be useless especially when you get moe weapons.

Weapons feel "okay" but nothing really stand out, it gets the job done but nothing really stands out.

However what does prevent me from at least prasing this game as a, "quick boomer shooter" to play if you want to quickly get into the genre is the level design. To put it simpily, it's not very good, if at times outright bad. The game has some innovations to the genre like a map that is actually useable but that starts to fade away when the game doesn't really do keycard hunts that well. Environments tend to be overly large and don't require clear rules on where you are supposed to be going or which area will get you what key. You can spend minutes or long periods of time wandering around and still not even the first key to open the first door in a level so much of it can look the same due to the how ugly and drab the enviroments can look. This might be intentional on the devs' part but it doesn't make for compelling level design to me.

For example, in E1M3 there is a huge store area for you to explore but one of the keys is located behind a generic door that looks the same as every other door in the area, nothing about catches the player's eye to go there, it's just something you just guess to going to by being one of the doors you randomly interact with.

Finally, a big issue with the level design that later in the game, you get so little ammo, even with the hackblood sword and it just becomes too easy to sprint to the keys and run to the exit. You don't even need to fight the enemies after a certain point because it wastes more ammo and health trying to fight them. It's just easier to ignore them. I never even noticed this could be a design flaw with the keycard hunt style of boomer shooter level design until I played this game.

Overall, Slayers X isn't particular a good game and I doubt that was the intention but at the same time, I'll give the game credit for being over so quickly and being forgiving enough that it can be something bad that you at least get out of after a certain period of time and remark back by saying, "at least it wasn't a sub par game that wasted my time".