Medal of Honor: Airborne Review

I originally played MoH Airborne a couple of years ago on normal difficulty and didn't like it. I dropped it after playing it for an hour, however I went back to it on casual mode and I really enjoyed it. Casual mode feels like the game's true difficulty for first time players, you can take more damage and you have more chances to mess up and tank more hits. As a whole, I'd say this is one of the more memorable games in the series, it's just a shame the time period in which it came out in.

A couple of noticable and very welcome additions to Airborne is that health now regenerates up to 4 blocks and each block can regen if you avoid taking enough damage, this is a very good change since now, it feels like a fighting chance when low on health, sure it's still hitscan and not projectile which makes combat not as tense and enjoyable as Resistance Fall of Man but at the same time, if you play carefully enough you can spend a decent amount of time with one or two bars.

Enemies drop health much more often now which makes gunfights making me feel less like a tank that is on borrowed time.

While you have can hold up two rifles and a pistol, the Ratchet and Clank fan in me was losing his mind over the idea of having weapons level up the more they are used and getting new perks upon each upgrade. It did get me to experiment with certain guns a little more, I mostly used the MP40 but I did get some use out of the Springfield and Shotgun too.

I also like how you can only pick up select ammo pick ups and not pick up ammo from dead soliders since now that means I won't primarily be using the MP40.

You can also use a variety of different grenades and they level up too. The anti tank grandes come in handy for later hordes too.

This was in other MoH games but when you aim down sights, you can't actually move while doing it but only lean left to right. Some could take an issue to this especially if they are used to games like CoD but Airboure is where this system finally feels realized. Trying to peak around corners and flanking enemies feels like a reliable tactic and it becomes a life saver towards the end of the game since the enemy count is doubled and shooting while leaning means an enemy will have a harder time trying to hit you. This is especially a useful tactic at close range with the shotgun.

Guns feel pretty weighty and powerful with good sound design and good death animations.

The final big change is what I like is that the game for the most part isn't very scripted. You can parachute and land on any part of the level depending how far you can steer your landing to the ground so if there is an objective you want to complete, you can land to the part where the objective is located and get closer to it all though there are some mandatory parts where you can only respawn at a fixed checkpoint.

However, there are issues with the game. One being rocket launcher enemies and they really suck in this game. You pretty much have to memorize their spawn points or at the very least quickly try to figure out where they are on the map before they fire a rocket and take out 75% of your health, I beat this on casual, I can picture this being infuriating on anything higher. At least snipers have a visual indicator telling you where they are. Rocket enemies can appear out of nowhere and instantly kill you if you don't know where they are.

Rockets have always been a hitscan shooter's protagonist's kryptonite and Airbourne just makes that more obvious.

The MP40 as usual in WW2 tends to be the most dominat weapon especially when upgraded

The final level of the game can be the parachute system pretty infuriating since there is a lot of ground you have to cover before getting to each objective and if you don't have a lot of MP40 ammo lined up, it's going to make mowing down enemies before getting to the objective feel a lot longer to get to. There is an eventual fixed checkpoint but this takes a while to get, and before that, there is a lot of ground to cover before completing an objective.

The explosion at the end did make that final level worth it since it felt like my hardwork eventually paid off.

There are many who like to call the game short, but with that final level, I'd say continuing past it would just be a losing battle since it already felt like the challenge was being pushed to it's limit.

Overall, MoH Airborne as quite a surprise, it's one of my favorite games in the series and it's one of the last good ones before the series tried to turn itself into Call of Duty and made extremely sub par scripted campaigns in the vein of those games.Updated 4 Secs Ago

Devil May Cry(2001) Review

Playing DMC1 for the first time in over a decade, playing so many 3D beat em ups since then and playing games prior to it especially really gives me a soft spot for the game. However, there are a number of issues with it but at the same time there is a lot of charm to the game too. DMC1 in many ways is "first intallment weirdness" in it's most raw form. I can get why someone wouldn't enjoy it but as a guy who has played so many games and knowing DMC1's place in gaming history does help me appreciate it.

First thing that is awkward about it is that the default button layout on PS2(played it on PCSX2) is not good especially after playing modern games and even games a few years after it's release. Triangle is jump, circle is to attack, and the game has shoot and interact on sqaure and cross as a dedicated interact button, why the game has two interact buttons I don't get. You also can't use firearms unless if the lock on button is held. Had to do quite a bit of settings tinkering to have the buttons placements be more comfortable for me.

Next up is the story and the thing is I don't mind that it's basically an excuse plot but at the same time, it's attempts at trying to have emotional moments really falls flat for me. Trish is a pretty bad character, she barely shows up in the game to have any kind of attachment towards her. She barely does anything for the 2/3s of the game then suddenly wants Dante dead then scarifices herself for him in the following scene. There is barely any interactions between them to form a geniune bond so Dante getting depressed for her "death" falls flat. Mundas barely does much of anything to warrant me wanting to dislike him. The only really good thing the cutscenes even have is the music.

This has been stated over again but the camera is just awful, combine that with the lack of a dedicated dodge button and it doesn't always feel like I can reliably dodge attacks and defeat enemies with efficiently. The camera can change angles out of nowhere in the middle of combat, you can get attacked from offscreen especially with projectiles and as a whole it never does a good job at framing the moment to moment action, sometimes you can attacked and then the angle will change into something so different and not only do you realign the analog stick to a new direction but the dodging also becomes a game of hoping you activate the dodge roll and not have Dante do a flip or jump.

Compare this to the older God of Wars' camera or how those games have a dedicated dodge command can't help but remind me that those games handled it better than DMC.

As a result, much of the combat can be cheesed by using Alastor, activating Devil Trigger, fly and then start spamming air raid. Devil Trigger can heal you too.

The save system is arahiac with the lives system, you could buy new moves and they are expensive.

The bosses range from okay like Phantom, Griffon and Nelo Angelo to bad like Nightmare and Mundas. Nightmare you have to fight 3 times and Mundas you have to an extremely out of place shoot em up mini game before getting to the actual fight where the real combat mechanics are used.

Okay, I've been complaining about the game a lot, but there is things the game does well, in terms of atmosphere and level design, the game is solid, it can be a little hard to tell where to go but that is due to respawning enemies but the it's older Resident Evil DNA can be found here all though there is no inventory managment, you can to collect items and put them in certain places to activate doors and open new paths.

It's really fun to see how Dante will go to new places in Mundas' Castle but will ultimately end up to where he started, there is some nice narrative foreshadowing too like how the entrance to the castle has a stautue where Phantom gets impaled on or how by the end of the game, the plane you see in the first few rooms of mission 1 is the plane Dante and Trish uses to get out of in the ending.

Mundas Castle is dripping with gothic horror atmosphere combine that with music as well as the game always spawning in enemies when Dante takes something of importance really sells the idea of he is in a place where he isn't supposed to be.

The combat when everything aligns can be enjoyable even if the game's style point system is never forced on the player but it is nice to shoot enemies from far away, then crowd control them with million stab, dodge out the way and occasionally launch them in the air and hit them down again. After playing some earlier games with 3D beat em up combat, this level of control for it's time was pretty novel.

Overall, DMC1 is a game that has many issues but I do find it to be a charming game but apart of me just wonders how much of this is just due to how many games I played over the years and certain things about it stand out more to me more than it will with others. If you don't enjoy it, I understand but I find DMC1's first installment weirdness to be so fascinating.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review

I've been wanting to play Silent Hill Shattered Memories for a long time, the problem was is that the game was always insanely expensive when trying to get a physical copy and PCSX2 for the longest time had a hard time running the game stably but recent developments has now allowed me to play SHSM from begginning to end without much if not any issues at all. I could've played the Wii version but I don't like motion controls.

As for the game itself, I don't love it but I don't dislike it either, I would be much more lukewarm on the game but I didn't find the gameplay to be grating enough to overly detract from my experience playing the game.

What Shattered Memories basically is a nutshell is a reimagining of the first Silent Hill where the bad ending that everything was in Harry's mind was the focal point to the story. So esstentially a "what if", an Elseworlds story or one of Marvel's many offshoot universes outside of Earth 616. There is no mention or even a slight refrence to the cult group from the original game, the characters in that game are so in name only and there are also new characters who also never appeared either.

When going into the game knowing all this, the many changes to the original game's story becomes easier to accept, it's not really a full on remake but a different take featuring the same concepts.

What Shattered Memories has going for it is by far it's presentation. The visuals look great and hold up great for a Wii game. The snow and character models are quite detailed and the seemless transitions to the Nightmare World is pretty impressive considering it's happening as the player is walking around in the town. The way Harry's flashlight's interacts with the world is pretty quite immersive since shinning things with flashlight is what the player is primarily be doing.

The story is pretty interesting and the voice acting might be some of the better in the series. The way it is told is pretty interesting in how Dr. Kaufman is a therapist and how interviews you the player and how it effects the story going forward. It's told in a rather indirect way but this is usual for the series. I do think the voice acting and character interactions are enough to carry me through it since Harry's conviction to save his daughter is still there and the plot point that he is a writer isn't missable this time around. It was pretty engaging for the short time the game lasts.

The music is decent but it is a lot more minimal this time around and it might be one of Yamaoka's weaker OSTs, probably due to the minimalism but I don't recall the tracks here that much outside of Hell Frozen Rain.

Gameplay is the most divisive part of the game and I didn't outight dislike it but I don't love it either. Combat is gone now. There is no ammo or health to pick up, no levels to explore, no items to collect and anything relating to combat or exploration. It's esstentially a narrative exploration game with scripted chases here and there.

So in a sense, SHSM was breaking new ground for being one of the first popular experimental horror and narrative based games.

While I'm not big on those kinds of games, the short length plus the chases not being overly long prevents the game from a complete and total slog, but your milage may vary depending on how good you are at guessing the route you need to go without getting grabbed by monsters too much and getting a game over. However the game does feature a map on Harry's phone and while monsters are searching, you can look at it to tell you where you need to go and even outside of combat, you will always have a marker telling where to head to.

The only thing left now are the puzzles and they mostly consist of typing in codes and finding keys, the latter of which you find by doing an easy motion puzzle which obviously tells you it was made for the Wii first and foremost.

Here is the thing, I would be be more critical on all of this but Silent Hill never really had the greatest of gameplay. It wasn't bad by any means and especially in the original SH2, it was nothing more than a means to an end. The 1999 game had servicable enough gameplay and only SH3 out of the original few games had moment to moment gameplay that could rival a Resident Evil and it's indie game successors.

Combat is removed? The normal difficulties of SH1 and 2 pretty much made you feel like an invicible one man army to begin with. There wasn't a whole lot of tension in the combat in either of them especially SH2, so the idea of a game in the series fully embracing that gameplay as a means to an end and the tension is about running away is something I don't mind at all especially combined with the short length, map and easier puzzles.

If this was say a Resident Evil and Dead Space game with no combat, I would be much more annoyed since the combat in them I do enjoy.

Overall, I enjoyed Shattered Memories but as a weird experimental game especially before they became commonplace in gaming.

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines Review

I'm not 100% sure why I played this game. I do have some nostalgia for it since I recall playing it on PSP around the time of it's release, I recall not liking it at the time, but since I'm been on the Assassin's Creed binge and I felt somewhat nostalgic for it, I decided to play and finish it this time.

As a whole, I consider the game to be quite mediocre all though that just sums the franchise as a whole, however what prevents this game from being completely insufferable is the short length and how quickly everything moved by. If it weren't for this I would be much harsher.

Some good things about the game and this is going to sound weird since it's a PSP spinoff game based on a console franchise and a 3rd party one at that, are the controls. Surprisingly, the controls are not terrible and they felt reliable. I didn't even have to go into the PPSPP emulator settings to implement pseudo right stick controls. The vanilla controls I had an easy time getting used to. Whenever the game did feel awkward it was more due to the unpolished nature of the game or usual issues with the AC franchise than because of the default button mappings.

The camera as a whole did an okay enough job that I didn't need to actively turn the camera.

Music from AC1 is back and while it is lazy that they are just resuing the OST from that game, if I have to choose between possibly getting a forgettable original score or AC1's well made soundtrack, I choose the latter.

The "open world" is quick and easy to get around in and getting to mission objectives doesn't take that long. In fact it's almost like Thief Deadly Shadows' hub world minus the faction system rather than a traditional AC open world. Guards even get alerted when you enter the next zone if you are spotted in a previous one much like that game.

I do like how the game attempts to be a hybrid of AC1 and 2's mission structure where each memory block is an investigation but you do the missions in the latter game, it's an interesting concept.

The more linear missions leading up towards the assassination targets is quite nice since they feel like a journey of you slowly leading up towards the kill. They almost feel like Prince of Persia Sands of Time Trilogy levels on how there are establishing shots of the camera slowly showing where you are supposed to go before the guanlet starts. It's let down by the mechanics but more on that later.

This is where I get more negative, there is a lot of unpolish. I don't know how much of this is the emulation or the game itself but the climbing animations sometimes won't register, Altair will randomly stand for no reason when trying to mantle up the edge of a tall structure, there are invisible walls on objects close to him where he can't even touch them and how there are times where the near fall animation will activate when close to a platform and I want to jump but instead Altair will climb down when I didn't want him to.

The story isn't terrible but feels like a prolonged first episode of a 2nd season of the TV show where the plot doesn't truly pick up or get interesting towards the end. Maria has more character development and has more to do in the plot than Altair does. The part where Altair uses the Apple of Eden gets no build up at all. His philosophical monolgoues at the start of each chapter are interesting to listen to. The villains are mostly forgettable and never do enough to challenge or get in Altair's way to standout especially by comparison to AC1.

Biggest issues with the gameplay is with the series as a whole, sword fights are too easy since countering is the easiest solution out of everything and it's easier to wait for the enemies to attack and then counter them rather than you going on the offensive since you could get attacked from behind and lose health.

Bosses outside of The Bull and Bouchart are dull and can be beaten by blocking or countering. Bouchart can come a little out of nowhere since you can't damage him by countering and you need to dodge his strikes as well as his flame projectile later on. This might be the only part of the game where I had to sort of try.

Stealth isn't very good and despite many calling the franchise a "stealth series". You have no crouch button, no cover system, and no distractions or being able to bring enemies over to you. Trying to kill enemies up close is hoping their backs are turned or kill them from the front before the AI of nearby guards are alerted. This is AC before Unity after all.

You get caught? Well just get into the combat and start counter killing to your hearts' content, there is no consequences for being spotted unless if the game doesn't allow you to get caught for the mission much the console AC games.

There is unskippable cutscenes which is never good especially on repeated failures but that was during the occasional mandatory stealth.

Overall, parts of AC Bloodlines is impressive for a PSP game but is held back by unpolish and series flaws.

Red Dead Revolver Review

Let me start this off by saying I'm not a big fan of Rockstar games, however with that said, I do have a major soft spot for Red Dead Revolver. I consider it one of their better if not their best game and all though it does have some of their trappings, I do think Revolver has enough going to be consistently enjoyable where their other titles just annoy me.

Revolver just oozes with charm when I load it up. The load screens are really stylish especially with the way Red twirls his revolver and I loved how the end of the load screen is timed perfectly to when he holsters it. The story is nothing to write how about but it's fine, I tend to prefer games with excuse plots where you spend most your time playing. Red Harlow is out for revenge meets some friends along the way and he's generally a pure no sense straight to the point cowboy.

One nice thing I do enjoy about the game is that there are occasional levels where you don't play as Red and you follow the friends Red meets as well as some villains and it has the Sly Cooper and Fear Effect storytelling where you get to play out and follow their perspective before they meet Red again instead of doing the usual video game thing of where it only follows Red and what the other characters experience is pretty much left to the imagination. I appreciate that Revolver did this at all. On top of this, each the characters have their own special attack making them feel somewhat different.

The gameplay and moment to moment combat is where Red Dead Revolver shines, esstentially if you boil it down to it, Revolver is a much more scripted and Wild West version of Max Payne. The bullets are projectile and not hitscan which is pretty surprising since now you aren't a tank, you can reliably avoid damage and it's not you just hiding behind a piece of cover like the Redemption games or the later Grand Theft Autos. Unlike Max Payne 3, enemies generally drop health upon death and you don't need to die at a checkpoint multiple times in order to have more heath packs.

Another big point to Revolver's favor is that it's one of the few Rockstar 6th generation games along with the Warriors where there are actual level checkpoints meaning that for the most part you don't have to a lot of content upon death.

You can also dodge roll while aiming down sights too which is the kind of movement the Redemption games don't even have. One big difference that seals the deal when putting this game above the Redemption is how Dead Eye is handled. In the Redemption games, all the enemies esstentially die in one or two bullets making Dead Eye an instant "win" button. In Revolver, enemies take much more damage, come in larger numbers and there will always be a mini boss around meaning that by the end of the game, Dead Eye has to be used or else it's going to be much harder to get anywhere.

There are some issues with the game with all that said, the dueling system isn't that great, there are some major difficulty spikes and due to the nature of the Wild West setting, the aresenal of guns can feel limited.

Dueling at times can feel like a game of luck, where it feels like I have to flick the analog stick back and hope I manage to score enough red marks in time to kill the enemies.

The level where you play as Diego and the bar fight being two big examples. With Diego, you have to deal with an enemy wave and then mark canons where they can shoot you deplete large parts of your health on top of eventually marking cannons with enemies shooting at you with not even one checkpoint inbetween. Then you have to protect two soldiers planting dynamites. Any level that involves protecting npcs are really annoying since I feel like a babysitter and it's not because of me being incompetent is why I'm failing.

The bar fight can be insufferable since the game isn't a melee brawler and you have to deal with stiff hand to hand controls, protect npcs and also deal with scripted grabbing animations if you aren't lucky enough to avoid it and these grabbing animations can be pretty lengthy.

The Simpsons Hit and Run Review

On paper, Simpsons Hit and Run should've been a game I really enjoyed. I haven't watched the Simpsons in over a decade and I don't remember the series that well outside of a few characters, lines and catchphrases, but at the same time, I kind of like Radical Entertainment as a developer. I also have some childhood nostalgia for Simpsons Road Rage since it was one of the first games I ever played and I always heard that this game was better on top of hearing that it is a really good licensed game. The very concept of a Grand Theft Auto styled game with an emphasis on driving with barely any on foot gameplay just sounds like something that should really appeal to me since I'm not a fan of GTA's on foot gameplay. I do enjoy games like Driver San Franciso and Pursuit Force Extreme Justice and even some racers like Jak X and Burnout Revenge. Everything really should've fell into place but instead the more I played Hit and Run, the more I just got angry and annoyed, which culminates in the last few missions since it's everything bad about the game's design all at once.

Before I start describing what I disliked, I'll start with what I enjoyed, the voice acting, dialogue and even the story itself are moderately engaging even for someone who hasn't watched the series in a long time. I forgot how charming the characters in the franchise can be. From the voice acting all the way to the various oddball characters and their quirky personalities. The story itself does a good job at feeling like a protracted version of a TV show episode and the wacky twist with aliens I can't help but find amusing especially when you throw in the vague marketing the game has. Some of the music is pretty good too with some of the tracks I want to listen to on Youtube.

From Levels 1-4, the game is pretty solid and the missions feel doable, I didn't use the mission skip feature. At first, the objectives feel decently varied, they tend to follow the Driver franchise's design with the use of constant timers. You will be destroying vehicles, making getaways, chasing npcs while slamming into them and picking up items, picking up items while on a timer, races or things will get mixed up where you will do all these things while in a different vehicle. I would usually chastise the game for no mission checkpoints, but they are generally short and quick enough that with enough practice you can get past them fast.

However, once you play as Apu, everything goes downhill, the game starts to reuse the objectives from Levels 1-4 and I started to actively skip missions when you had to do a chase as when with Snake and you also have to destroy an enemy vehicle while you use a vehicle with a low toughness stat.

This is where the game's biggest problem arises, the game not only resues the same objectives but the police or "hit and run" system you will have to contend with much more. The problem with this system is that this is a game where you already need to deal with timers and vehicle health but on top of that the game chastises you for constantly crashing and hitting pedestrians which is hard to do since the game already starts putting you on stricter time limits. This is not ideal since for one, dealing with the police while trying to complete an objective just adds extra busywork and the police just needs to be near you for 5 seconds and you be fined and lose money. Neither of this is ideal since you lose money and if you are on a mission where there is always a time limit, you will wait a few seconds to respawn which is a few seconds needed for the timer and you will have to build speed back up again since you lost your momentum.

The game will also highly encourage the player to use shortcuts on the various maps, the problem is unless you are speedrunning, the game does a terrible job at accomadating first time players since the green arrows the player follows on many late game missions will not give you enough time to complete the objective, the load screens tips will even tell you to use them but how I will know what is a shortcut and what isn't when on a timer? If I take possible detours, there is a 50-50 chance it could be a shortcut or a dead end. Maybe have different color arrows to indicate what is a shortcut for first timer players.

The game will also have random parts with 3D platforming which can feel out of place since these sections are infrequent and can feel jarring when they pop up.

As a result, I eventually just started to actively use the mission skip feature but you can't skip the last 3 and they are bad because it's doing the same thing 3 times with worse vehicles and with more strict timers and you can get screwed over for using shortcuts since it will donate the nuclear device and there is a 50-50 chance where it could happen.

Overall, at first Hit and Run was enjoyable but the more I played the more I got angry and frustrated. The last few m

Assassin's Creed 3 - The Tyranny of King Washington Review

Despite the DLC giving me a very bad first impression with it bugging out on me multiple times during the first mission, I slowly started to warm up to the Tyranny of King Washington the more I played. I wouldn't call it "good" by any means but it does do enough differently from the base game to warrant me writing a review on it which I can't say for the AC4 Aveline DLC and Freedom Cry.

The Switch version that comes with AC3 Remastered isn't very good from a stablity standpoint on top of the questionable practice of the player needing to download it off the Nintendo Eshop instead of just coming with it the moment you finished downloading the base install. It's very glitchy and it crashed on me twice all though this DLC seems to run pretty poorly in general no matter what the platform.

What this DLC ultimately is cashing off the whole wacky and over the top content that Red Dead Undead Nightmare did. It's very much "follow the leader". Other examples include Infamous Festival of Blood and Far Cry Blood Dragon. However the fact that the DLC is separated into 3 episodes each ending on a cliffhanger where the story is wrapped up in the 3rd episode almost gives me shareware 90s first person shooter vibes like Doom 1993, Duke 3D and Blood.

As a whole, it inherits all the problems with the base game but there are some good things that standout about it.

First of all being George Washington. He's one of the better villains in the series in that he does a good job at being destable like killing Connor's mother and his friend or how he gets in Connor's way throughout the DLC and slowly starts to get more desperate the more the player foils his plans. He's also over the top and flamboyant which makes me want to see him fail that much more. He's one of the series' more memorable villains despite this not even being a mainline game.

Other positives is that you can now fast travel to mission start points since in the base games, one of the dull aspects about it was running to the next mission start point due to how much vast and empty land there is. Now just fast travel and you get to the point faster. This isn't a solution I would like but this is a DLC, you can't change the game fundamentally.

The powers are also pretty interesting, well mainly just the Wolf ability since and I'm not kidding here, this is the closest the series pre Unity ever had to a dedicated crouch button, it drains Connor's health but the fact that there is a reliable way to be sneaky at all is worth some praise, it makes the tailing and no detection missions more tolerable since now stealth doesn't borderline feel like a game of luck. Running from hidespot to hidespot as Connor's health regens while not amazing does make it feel like stealth in an AC game can somewhat be reliable, all though the dogs are annoying but they aren't as prominent as the Episode 1 of the DLC wants you to believe since only appear 2 or 3 times afterwards.

The rest of the abilties are nothing to write home about one is a teleport which helps during the chase sequences and it's nice that the game makes you use this in order to actually succeed in them and they help during some of the climbing sections particular the ending platforming guanlet.

Bear ability mostly just makes fighting large enemy waves much easier and it gets a little too easy to spam since Connor's health regens so fast but considering the amount of enemy fighting you will do and how combat isn't great, I'm kind of glad it's here.

Other than that, a big issue with Tyranny of King Washington is that here are guards everywhere and it's easy for you to get alerted and since you need to not be chased by guards to complete objectives or start missions, getting chased or getting the suspicion meter up was pretty annoying since I just want to finish the objective. I want to use fast travel but I might get alerted by enemies, this is at it's worst during Boston and New York, I'm not even sure there were any wanted posters for me to tear down to have the guards ignore me.

Overall, outside of the unstable nature of the game and the weird changes to the wanted system, I do think this the best DLC Assassin's Creed has ever done even if it's not saying much. Out of all the AC DLC, this one feels like there is enough different from the main game to warrant playing it.