Long post warning. TL;DR: God Hand is a stone cold classic, and does a lot of things right that modern action games don’t. The fact that it was basically made in a cave with a box of scraps can also tell us something about game development today.

Preamble:

God Hand came out at the tail end of the PS2 era, and has been on my to-play list for years. It seems like since I first heard about it, the game has become kind of a meme. A beloved meme though, and a genuine cult classic.

Video games, like any media or art, don’t fall out of a coconut tree. The story of how and why a game was made are as interesting as just explaining whether it plays good (and God Hand does play good).

It was directed by Shinji Mikami: you may remember him from such games as the original Resident Evil, as well as Resident Evil 4. I don’t think it’s over the top to say Resident Evil 4 is one of the best (and most influential) action games of all time. It was produced by Atsushi Inaba (who also did Okami and Viewtiful Joe) and the music was composed by Masafumi Takada (who did among other things Killer 7).

After he made the iconic RE4, Mikami went to work at the fairly new Clover studios, and while waiting around for them to finish their work on Okami, decided to kill some time by pitching to his producer, Inaba, with a lot of the core Resident Evil 4 team.

I don’t know what was said exactly, but I imagine it was something like “I just made one of the best action games ever. Want to see me do it again?” Then he dropped this banger a little over a year later in 2006.

God Hand is a beat-em-up action game with a barebones story and campy characters, and that’s all the setup it needs. It also understands gameplay density, where you’re let loose almost right away with minimal cutscenes or world building. It almost operates on Loony Tunes logic, and draws a lot of influence from classics like Fist of the North Star and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which is why there’s one Youtube comment I saw that keeps rattling around in my brain that went something like: “This is the only game I’ve ever played that makes me feel like an anime protagonist.”

Gameplay:

What makes the combat so good is there’s a satisfying level of mastery to it. You can return to the early areas of the game on a second playthrough and not get bored, because you’ve gotten much better at ducking and weaving and kiting the enemies around the map to where you want them.

I think this is also true of Resident Evil 4. The chainsaw man in the opening village section is terrifying the first time, and you feel like you barely make it out alive. The second time around, you feel like Neo in The Matrix, parrying with one hand and not even giving your opponent the dignity of looking in his general direction.

It’s also a more natural kind of difficulty balancing, where the game will throw you different combinations of enemies and obstacles to test you and your knowledge of the game. The opposite of that is having statistical balancing, where you improve at the game because your character’s numbers go up the more you play.

Your character’s numbers do go up, but you choose your basic attack combo from over 100 different jabs, punches, kicks etc, to find interesting ways to break the enemy’s guard, juggle, or launch them across the map.

You’re rewarded for understanding and having experience with the mechanics. ‘Evade cancelling’ removes the cooldowns from your attacks, and avoids the frustrating problem of your attacks overlapping when fighting crowds, leaving you unable to dodge (worth noting that some games do this on purpose, it just depends on what kind of combat system you’re going for).

God Hand also has dynamic difficulty. The better you play, the harder the enemies hit and the more moves they have. God Hand actually shows the difficulty level in the bottom right, whereas RE4 also has dynamic difficulty but doesn’t show it (it probably wouldn’t fit the tone of that game). So difficulty becomes a reward, not a punishment.

In my opinion what they call ‘tank controls’, and the over-the-shoulder camera, are not always bad. Same with a limited camera view. Like in RE4, that limitation is important for tension, but also for skill/spacing. Where you place yourself in relation to your enemies matters in God Hand, which is part of the difficulty separate from just your raw damage numbers and health bar.

This game didn’t invent spacing, but a lot of modern games like the new God War use a “Suck to Target” system, where the player will glide slightly across the map and latch on to an enemy you're attacking. God Hand does have some auto targeting, but you won’t float over to a target if the game think you're close enough.

What God Hand Can Teach Us Today:

Modern games can learn a lot from God Hand, as I’ve talked about in the above gameplay section. But I think we can also learn a lot by looking at the circumstances of how it was made.

Those circumstances were a space between projects at Clover Studio, where Mikami and Inaba made something that they wanted to make. In a (semi) recent interview, Mikami said: “I thought that for once I could make a game the way I wanted it, not like a professional. I couldn’t hide it, I knew from the planning phase that it wasn’t a game that would sell. But I had done well with Resident Evil 4, so I thought I could use company money to make what I wanted.”

Imagine if more industry veterans, the closest thing gaming has to ‘auteur’ film makers, had the chance to just let loose and make whatever they wanted. We’d hopefully end up with more games like this one. Games that might not look amazing, but play better than most of their peers. It would be like watching an NBA player dunk on a bunch of high schoolers.

It also makes you think about the high barriers to entry for the industry now. Mikami’s career started off in an unexpected way.

“A friend of mine had found a flyer advertising some kind of job fair-slash-buffet party Capcom was holding at the Hilton and he gave it to me because he knew I liked games. I went mainly because I wanted to eat at the Hilton for free, but once I started talking to Capcom people, really getting in depth about the work they do, I thought it sounded pretty neat….” Then the story goes that Mikami and the rest of the newbies were sent to a remote room with instructions to "think hard about game design", then left unsupervised for the day. Crazy to think about now!

Conclusion:

Yeah there are some empty areas and some places that aren’t polished, turning can be a little bit janky when you’re trying to get items in the middle of a fight, and the final boss is… weird. But overall, God Hand is a masterpiece. Whatever way you can, if you like action games, you owe it to yourself to play it.

When the Gen 9 Pokemon games were first announced, I was very excited. The previous release in the franchise was Pokemon Legends Arceus, which became my favourite Pokemon game largely due to joy of seeing Pokemon in the open world and being able to capture them outside of battle. I also thoroughly enjoyed the research focused gameplay/plot that actually incentivized you to catch them all, and being a standalone game meant I could catch every Pokemon myself instead of having to trade for version exclusives.

When Gen 9 dropped with a gluttony of performance related issues, I opted to try emulating it on my PC instead to see if that could mitigate some of these issues. While I was able to get the game going at a stable 30 FPS with only some minor visual bugs, I found myself not having fun. Going back to having to engage in battles to catch Pokemon was a huge disappointment for me and was such a drag. The world felt quite barren and the spawns were low, which in fairness could be said for Legends Arceus but I loved the gameplay a lot more and the barren world worked better thematically with Legends Arceus. The open world aspect of the main story was also quite a letdown, as the various gyms and other activities had static levels so you couldn't really just go off and do them in whatever order you wanted. Eventually I just stopped playing the game and told myself I'd get back to it in the future.

Earlier this summer I unexpectedly bought a Nintendo Switch 2 after getting a really good deal on it, and I went to buy a copy of Pokemon Scarlet secondhand to play right away. While the Gen 9 games didn't explicitly get Switch 2 versions, they got a free update to take advantage of the better hardware. 60 FPS gameplay and the increased Pokemon spawns completely changed my perception of the game.

Main Story

The game starts off quite standard. You're the new kid in town and your neighbour, in this case a Pokemon battle loving girl named Nemona, helps you get your bearings. In this story you are enrolling in a new school, called Naranja Academy in Scarlet, located in the Paldea region's main city of Mesagoza. The game does offer you the ability to attend classes and engage with different members of the faculty, this is treated more as an optional activity. The main story doesn't require you to engage with the school, as main plot is based on the school's "Treasure Hunt" activity which encourages students to explore the world and discover their own treasure. You end up being entrusted to take care of a mysterious Pokemon early on, Koraidon in Scarlet, who will accompany you throughout the game and acts as your mount. The game gives you three main paths to follow, and you need to complete them all to beat the game.

1. Victory Road will be the most familiar to longtime Pokemon fans, as Nemona encourages you beat all eight of the gym leaders in the region. After defeating all the gyms, you'll have earned the right to challenge the Elite 4 and the champion Geeta. Beating them will lead you to being crowned a champion ranked trainer like Nemona.
2. Path of Legends has you supporting Arven in his quest to investigate mysterious "Titan Pokemon" that have somehow managed to grow extremely large. There are five Titans in total for you to investigate.
3. Starfall Street involves the main "villain team" of the game, Team Star. You first learn of them when you see some grunts bothering a girl named Penny, trying to recruit her. After you whoop their asses, you get contacted by an anonymous person named Cassopeia who asks for your support in taking down Team Star. There are 5 leaders in the team who each have their own bases, and defeating them all will cause the group to disband.

The elephant in the room throughout the entire game is the Great Crater of Paldea, which is a giant crater located in the middle of the map. The school faculty clarify that entering the crater is absolutely prohibited and that students should stay far away. Needless to say, you do eventually get the opportunity to explore the area as it's the focal point of the end of the main story.

I will avoid getting into spoilers, but I did really enjoy the time spent with the main group of characters in this game. I thought they were fleshed out quite well as you steadily made your way through the game and made for a nice story. The anticipation surrounding the Great Crater was also fun and I have to say, that first moment of entering the crater was well worth the wait. I felt a sense of awe that I have never experienced from a Pokemon game before, and that is something I will fondly remember about this game.

Gameplay

The 8 gyms, 5 titans, and 5 Team Star bases are the main things that you engage with in the world and each has a set level. Because of this, the game doesn't truly have a go out and do what you want vibe that I was hoping for. I ended up looking up what the logical order of events would be and followed that, which evenly distributes each of these activities throughout the game.

The gyms in this game brought back the gym challenges from the Gen 8 games as a precursor to fighting the gym leader. As expected, these weren't challenging at all but were fun little activities that connected to the city or gym leader in some way. Once you cleared the challenge, all you had to do was beat the gym leader. This comes with the typical benefits of a gift TM and being able to order higher level Pokemon.

The Titans all involved having a vague sense of where they'd be located and you'd have to go out and find them. Once spotted, you'd enter what is essentially a boss fight and team up with Arven to whittle away at their large health bar. Nothing revolutionary, but it was amusing fighting giant Pokemon. The main benefit from following this plot is that your Koraidon/Miraidon will steadily unlock more traversal modes, so I was always eager to get these done once I was a close enough level.

The Team Star bases utilize a new quick battle mechanic that you can use whenever in the open world. At a tap of a button you could send your lead Pokemon out and it'll go around fighting wild Pokemon nearby. When you arrive at a base, you pick 3 Pokemon from your party and have them quick battle Pokemon in the base until you defeat 30 and force the boss to come out. Each boss brings out their own Revavroom with a large health bar for you to take down. As expected this isn't too challenging, but I appreciate the use of the new mechanic. You get rewarded with materials (for crafting TMs) and LP, an alternate currency which you can use to also craft TMs and buy items.

The unique generational battle gimmick introduced in Gen 9 is Terastallization. When a trainer is equipped with a tera crystal, they can use its energy to terastallize their Pokemon and change its type. This is demonstrated visually, as the terastallized Pokemon gets a unique shiny gem on their head corresponding to whatever type they become. As goofy as it looks, it's quite an interesting mechanic and can be used creatively in battles. A terastallized Pokemon gets the defensive type matchups of its tera type and benefits offensively by being able to utilize the same type attack bonus (STAB) for its new tera type, while also retaining the STAB from its original types as well. In game you see gym leaders use this mechanic and it can catch you off guard, which is fun. My Pokemon would normally be strong enough to not need to rely on the mechanic and this was more of a fun button to click when I wanted some extra pizazz. This mechanic shows up again as wild Pokemon can sometimes terastallize and they copied over the Dynamax raids from gen 8 to make Tera raids, which are like raid boss battles.

Miscallaneous Thoughts

• The significant increase in Pokemon spawns made the world truly feel like it was inhabited by Pokemon, and there's a lot of charm with seeing Pokemon out in the wild engaging with their surroundings.
• I liked the overall map and thought it had a good amount of varied environments, but there wasn't much to do aside from the main quest. Was nice getting around after unlocking more traversal options.
• The big cities in particular felt quite barren and lifeless. The smaller towns were nice, but still left a lot to be desired. Once I cleared out a gym I had no reason to stick around.
• As someone who was interested in completing the Pokedex, the open world was nice because you could spot something you need and beeline towards it instead of relying on random encounters.
• The music was great throughout the game. In particular I really loved the Levincia City theme and the music from the Great Crater. In the wild environments they'd have variations of that area's theme based on whether you were on foot, on a mount, or in battle. I liked this a lot and thought it flowed together nicely.
• I think the school setting had a lot of wasted potential. There's not much incentive to stick around once you're free to explore, and I only did the optional classes after I beat the base game just to see if there was anything meaningful there. I did enjoy interacting with the faculty, but again they could have done a lot more.
• Graphically, the game was not impressive at all. I'm not one to be a graphics snob, but the ugly textures really stood out negatively when I would be in a battle for example.

DLC Content

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet received a two part DLC titled The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. Personally I do think the price point is a bit high for the amount of content offered, but I was glad that I played them.

The Teal Mask has you go on a a joint school trip with Blueberry Academy to the Kitakami region. The two students from the Blueberry Academy, Carmine and her younger brother Kieran, happen to originally be from Kitakami and are the main characters you spend time with in the DLC. This part focuses on exploring the Kitakami region and learning about the lore regarding Ogerpon and the Loyal Three, only to discover that the folktales the villagers believe regarding these Pokemon aren't truly indicative of reality.

The Indigo Disk has you go to Blueberry Academy as an exchange student after receiving a recommendation from Carmine. You get to see her and Kieran again, and this part of the DLC focuses on Kieran and how he has changed after the events of the first half of the DLC. The school has a state of the art underwater terrarium, which houses four unique biomes. Eventually the story leads you back to the Great Crater of Paldea on a research mission.

Overall, I found the story aspect of the DLCs engaging. I liked both Carmine and Kieran and enjoyed their developments throughout both parts. Carmine takes a step back in the involvement of the 2nd part, which is a shame because I found her quite entertaining. It was nice getting to catch more Pokemon in both parts, but I do think the number of new Pokemon available to catch was disappointing. The music continued to be excellent though, and listening to some of these tracks is what inspired me to make this post.

At Blueberry Academy they have a whole radiant quest system to earn BP (blueberry points) that can be used to buy items, invite people from Paldea to Blueberry Academy for some additional interactions, and upgrade the terrariums to enable the spawn of all the previous starter Pokemon. The grind for BP is so slow, and you have to save up an obnoxious amount for the terrarium upgrades - which put me off on fully exploring this part of the DLC. The system is designed to incentivize you to use the Union Circle co-op feature, as you can do co-op challenges and share the points with other players. However, this is not possible if you don't pay for online. I think once I have some other excuse to buy online I'll try the co-op, but I was a bit disappointed at how grindy they made it. One thing I loved about this DLC is that all the trainer battles were double battles, which is a nice switch up. They also had their own version of an elite 4 in the DLC and they actually had some competitive teams making for a tough challenge.

Final Thoughts and TL;DR

After all the negative press from the launch of these games and my personal disappointment with trying Violet the first time, I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had with Pokemon Scarlet with the Switch 2 update. Smooth 60 FPS performance and increased Pokemon spawn alone made a world of a difference, and I personally would not recommend playing the game unless you can play this version.

The main story has you follow three main paths: the classic gym & elite 4 route, taking on Pokemon titans and learning about how they grew so big, and taking down Team Star. Through each of these routes you get closer to a specific friend and learn about their backstory and motivations, which I think makes for an overall solid story. The game culminates with exploring the Great Crater of Paldea, which is truly an epic experience (especially for a Pokemon game).

Gameplay is pretty standard, but it's always nice to see new battle mechanics such as terastallization to help mix things up. While it was fun having an open world, there is still an optimal path to follow based on your level so the experience doesn't truly feel like you can go and do anything. For an open world game, it was also disappointing to see there was nothing much to do aside from progress the main story and the cities/towns felt quite barren. The environments were quite nice still and it's great being able to see Pokemon just living in the world. DLC carried on with another nice story and characters, and in particular I liked the Indigo Disk having some tougher battles and being double battle based.

Nothing about this game is revolutionary, but if you enjoy Pokemon then you'll have fun and I think Scarlet/Violet has one of the better stories and supporting casts. Admittedly that's not a high bar to clear, but even if you haven't enjoyed the newer mainline games, I'd say Scarlet/Violet is still worth giving a try if you can play the Switch 2 version.

I would really love for the next games to take advantage of the Switch 2 hardware and really crank up that open world experience while still providing stable performance. Heck if they give me more of the same from Scarlet/Violet but with better graphics and the catching mechanics from the Legends games I'd call that a win, but there really is so much untapped potential with these games that I would love to see them take more risks.

No Man's Sky is an open world exploration sandbox developed by Hello Games. Released in 2016, No Man's Sky reminds us that video games can be worthy of a second chance, unlike my cousin Michael who borrowed my copy of Rush'n Attack and never gave it back. Screw you Mike.

We play as an intrepid explorer on a mission to find ourselves and our place in the universe while taking part in space capitalism on a grand scale.

Gameplay involves not knowing if what you're doing was made obsolete six years ago. You figure it doesn't matter then make the exact same base you make in every survival game and pray that nobody with architectural merit ever sees the abomination you slap together. Then we go ask space frogs to teach us how to speak space frogese.

The Good

When we talk about ocean wide/puddle deep games we usually use it in a negative light. I'd like to point out just how goddamn wide this ocean is. Yeah nothing is worth spending more than 2 on, but after ~60 hours I was still finding new things to do.

I went from building a base on my starting planet, to exploring space stations across solar systems, to hauling space trash, to raiding derelict freighters, to creating my own fleet of ships for expeditions and on and on and on and on and on. If you're going to design your game to be an amusement park, having a metric fuckton of rides is a good way to start.

It seems the only thing to spend money on is buying ships and expanding your inventory and no matter what you do you earn the currency to do so. So it doesn't matter if you're doing 10 year old content or 1 year old content and keeps everything feeling worth your time.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/eqRYjR4.png

Look upon my works ye mighty and despair

The Bad

The UI has some issues.

For one, whatever quest you're tracking the game likes to override it with random sidequest notifications, or just flat stops showing it. You can try to pin the quest but there's only a 50/50 chance it'll actually show up. You can't track more than one quest at a time either. You also can't abandon most quests so after a few hours of playing your quest log is a giant jumble of nonsense.

The second issue I had is a big part of the game is scanning the rocks, plants and creatures you find on each planet. My scanner was apparently an asshole. There'd be a landshark jumping out of the ground just long enough for my scanner to go, "No fuck you" and no matter where I pointed it, it wouldn't scan. Even on stationary objects it was -very- finicky on where it would register.

The last thing is more of a minor quibble. Every time you land on a planet, teleport somewhere or warp to a new system there's a 10 second animation that plays that completely locks out your UI. You can skip it by holding down tab for 4 seconds, but when you're doing this 100's of times per play session you start to feel the need to stab things.

The Questionable

The multi-player aspect exists but needs a ton of work yet. There's zero content that's made easier playing together. The universe is so huge you'll never randomly run into something someone else built. Even if you could there's nothing to do at other peoples bases.

For all its other sins, I felt that Fallout76 did a really good job of making it so that you would occasionally run into random player houses and giving you incentive to want to do so. No Man's Sky lacks any of that and it suffers for it.

As it stands the only reason I've found to invite a friend to play with you is to say "Hey come over here I have something to show you" and it's a giant penis you made using the terrain manipulator.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed my time. I did some fun things, built a few cool bases. I named several star systems I discovered after my loved ones. I think this is something I'll come back to in another 10 years and hopefully by then they'll have added a reason to play it with friends and fixed the scanner telling me to go fuck myself.

Bonus Thought

Don't build your first base by using the terrain editor to dig a hole for a cave base or flatten out some hills for level ground. You've been warned.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

My mom's in the hospital so I needed a distraction while worrying about her. I load up Knytt Underground because I remember it being mostly zen. And boy I was right! So thankful I decided to boot it up!

I've got about 40ish hours between my first playthrough in 2023 and my second from this week. And even with that - I find it hard to actually call this a review. This isn't really a game you can "sell" someone on, because it isn't crazy platformer like Celeste or a intricate metroidvania like Hollow Knight. And it's screenshots don't really do it justice.

I would call the game engaging in the same way a coloring book or jigsaw puzzle is engaging, that's not everyone's proclivity but it's good if it is. There's 1400+ areas in the caves to map, 50+ collectibles to fill out your inventory. And along the way you enjoy some good soundscapes. And talk to some quirky NPCs whose dialogue ranges from funny, to mean, to somber, to downright harrowing.

Take it or leave it!

The game does act as a nice sendoff to the classic freeware Nifflas Games (ex. Within a Deep Forest, Knytt Stories etc) if you have any fondness for those. It has references to those previous events and reintegrates it into this world.

Anyways this game is my favorite and not like literally anything else is because, as a gamer, I find it the themes relatable and the world churns my imagination. And as another creative (sometimes I like to draw!), it's aspirational. In ways other games aren't

Often I'd come to some remote area in the underground that serves no purpose, but there'd be a little hut under some trees with large machinery looming in distance like silent watchers. The wind blows and the plants billow and I wonder "I wonder what it'd be like to be a little fairy in this nowhere corner of the world". You talk to NPCs and they'll tell you things about how they're just wanting to impress this girl, or go adventuring even if it kills them, how finding faith saved their lives, or how fundamentalism has ruined theirs. People with disabilities like chronic hallucinations, delusions, and missing limbs are still skillful and valued.

There's not really a "story", these are people and places you meet by happenstance while exploring the underground. Sometimes they have a fetch quest. But I care about them. In ways its more impactful than some epic saga or cutscene because it's all just incidental snippets of life. And I find that aspirational because Nifflas got me to care about these people and places with some good music, real issues & personality, and some blurry jpegs of photographed flowers. It shows you don't need a lot to get people to care.

TLDR - Knytt Underground is simplistic, arguably tedious, and it's got a kitschy art style not everyone will enjoy. I've played other games for far longer with much more polish. But they're not my favorites because I don't really relate to them and they're one of many. But Knytt Underground captures my imagination and feelings in a way that makes it stand apart for me as an individual, not the whole gaming industry.

Spoilers below

Do you know what ghosts are? They're sad, evicted things. Memories without homes.

While in-between games waiting for The Witcher 3 remaster to come out, I was looking through my backlog for a short game to play. I came across The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and it looked like the perfect early autumn game, and since they’re usually aimed at 1-3 play-sessions to complete the timing felt perfect.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, or Ethan Carter for short, follows paranormal investigator Paul Prospero who is investigating the disappearance of a 12-year old Ethan Carter. The setting is a stunning mountainous forest “town” that is surrounded by a large lake, mountains, a massive dam, and a railroad track. The town is not much more than a few abandoned houses, an electricity generating watermill, and a church, as such the geography and surrounding features tuck most of the town away from sight making it very secluded.

The stunning forest and landscape does heavy lifting for my enjoyment of the game. As someone that grew up “in the pines,” I felt at home in this game surrounded by trees, and hearing birds. I loved it so much that I looked up where it was modeled from, and to my surprise it appears that locations in Poland were the visual inspiration. In the grand scheme, it's not a big deal, but I kept hearing a blue jay and a loon, which are birds native to the United States, and it threw off some immersion. I had guessed the location as perhaps upper Michigan, but I was thousands of miles off. It didn’t ruin the game for me, but it felt like an odd choice to me to feature two very distinct bird calls from birds native to North America in a game that uses Poland as the visual inspiration. They’re the only wildlife heard too, so it stands out. Minor nitpick but one for me nonetheless.

Aside from the forest, the locations to explore are the buildings, and a cave. Aesthetically I didn't love the buildings or the cave, but the spaces were used to great effect for the puzzles that were solved in them.

Shout out to the music though, it is a phenomenal score that always felt appropriate, adding tension, peace, excitement, or fear as appropriate, and sometimes even within one song.

Movement in Ethan Carter is a joy! The movement speed when sprinting feels like I am zipping and zooming around. It's an unrealistic pace, but I also don't feel like I'm being rushed to move around the map as quickly as possible. A quick pace in a walking simulator helps ease the downtime between puzzles, while encouraging me to explore more.

Navigating the world is relatively easy, I feel that the game does a good job of guiding the player without forcing the player into a linear path. I felt slightly confused and overwhelmed at first because the world felt large, but I found myself quickly acquainted with it and easy to navigate with landmarks.

Gameplay revolves around finding and understanding the murders of Ethan’s family members. This involves finding the murder scene, which is indicated by finding a clue, and then finding the rest clues in the immediate area. After finding all of the clues you are tasked with piecing together the clues in order by watching short scenes of holographic people involving the clues, and then putting them in order to view the murder in full. The puzzles typically involve the supernatural, and are light in horror. There are a lot of murders, but it’s very PG-13. The puzzles are mostly easy to solve, or at least fair in how they’re solved. I ended up being held up on two puzzles, but neither caused frustration. I wouldn't say that any of them are memorable though, they act as small roadblocks to uncovering the story.

When I think of Ethan Carter I think of a story that never finds its footing, a story that feels distant. Despite abundant family trauma that begs for sympathy, I couldn’t muster any. I felt intrigued at points, but never sad. The conclusion to the story reveals that every murder we have just witnessed is a fabrication of Ethan Carter through the eyes of Paul Prospero. Ethan Carter is dead, and we experienced a hallucination as Ethan is breathing his last breaths as he’s trapped in a fire. Tragic, but I felt nothing.

Conclusion

Fans of walking simulators should give this a try, there’s a lot to like about Ethan Carter, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. If nothing more, I felt that the environment of the game, music, and some of the puzzles, made the time invested worthwhile.

7/10

Status - Completed

Time played: 4 hours

Difficulty - N/A

Set-up - AMD 5800X3D, AMD 9070XT, 32gb DDR4 3600, 2tb SN850 | Played at 4K with all settings up, locked to 60 for a very smooth experience

I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this here. I haven’t seen a post like this and honestly it’s kind of stupid that I did this.

For about fifteen years, I’ve been a big Metal Gear fan. The series hooked my imagination young, but for all its flaws, my appreciation for it only grows as I do. Every replay so far has yielded new neurons, as I get older and learn more about the world. Superficially the games are spy thrillers, but that sells short the overt philosophy, real-world geopolitics, political commentary, and anime bullshit. And the references, dear God the references. Be warned, if you haven’t played them this post will make no sense.

The franchise’s superstar creator, Hideo Kojima, is perhaps the biggest cinephile to never even try to work in the film industry, for reasons nobody has adequately explained to me. MGS is, in part, a tribute to all his favorite shit; I haven’t seen another creator, in any medium, whose influences are more numerous or well-documented. MGS takes a hodgepodge of Western cinema and literature, mixes into this pop culture gumbo, and filters it through the mind of one Japanese lunatic. The result is a work so overflowing with reference and homage that it’s hard to keep track of it all.

[EDIT: It occurs to me that maybe I should say more about the games themselves, genre-wise. Metal Gear Solid sets the stage with overt 80's Hollywood cliches and mecha anime, but weaves in some philosophizing on free will, genetics, anti-nuke politics. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is... hard to pin down, but for now let's call is a conspiratorial cyberpunk thriller and postmodern deconstruction of its predecessor. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a Cold War tragicomedy and James Bond spoof.]

A year ago I made this shitpost, which took a surprising amount of research. It sparked an idea – “What if I watched all of Kojima’s inspirations while replaying the series?” Knowing the games so well, this could make me appreciate them even further, or at least give me and my dad more to talk about. The problem is knowing when to stop. There’s the obvious ones (Rambo, Bond), but why stop at movies? Some novels might aid my understanding, especially for MGSV. What about nonfiction sources? The scope grew irresponsibly as I continued to follow my nose. 

Since then, I’ve made my way through about 20 films, 12 books, and only 3 MGS games (I got burnt out on this for a while, shocker). I went beyond direct influences and sought out anything that would help me understand the games better and looked interesting. This is not comprehensive. I just want to share the things that have interested me the most so far.

If there’s a foundational text for MGS1, it’s Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981). Legendary soldier Snake Plisskin is pulled from retirement by an untrustworthy colonel to covertly neutralize a terrorist threat. He’s injected with nanomachines, sent in underequipped, captured. He realizes he’s been manipulated for political purposes. He even has an eyepatch! God, I was pointing at the screen the whole time like the DiCaprio meme. But it’s also a very entertaining, surprisingly moody film. Almost proto-cyberpunk, which pairs it nicely with Akira.

The finale of the spectacular 1988 film is incomprehensible without reading the manga, so I did that too (it’s great). Akira is far more action and vibes than dialogue, but like MGS, it’s concerned with atomic destruction and authoritarianism. Also, a diagonally-descending platform elevator that’s suspiciously familiar. As an intro to cyberpunk, this led me to Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, and more familiarity with the genre helped me make sense of MGS2 in particular (virtual reality, AI, artificial blood, etc).

I think people generally overestimate how much James Bond is in MGS, but Snake Eater is the clear exception as a direct spoof. Maybe a more thorough 007 dive is in my future, but for now I settled on watching GoldenEye. It’s alright. There’s a mildly interesting thread that interrogates whether Bond is too old-fashioned for this new post-Cold War world, but I’m not sure it goes anywhere. I had a lot more fun rewatching Austin Powers, which lampshades or lampoons many of the same tropes.

How does MGS compare to classic spy thrillers? Perhaps unnecessarily, I read your dad’s favorite book, The Hunt for Red October, which was…fine. Tom Clancy definitely shared Kojima’s fetish for technical military jargon, which can be tiresome. And the Reagan-era patriotism frequently undercuts the tension; every US agent and technician routinely schools their Russian counterparts. I respect that MGS is okay with letting America look bad.

Speaking of which, nobody told me that Rambo wasn’t always stupid. I went into First Blood expecting macho tough guy bullshit, and instead I get a tearjerking performance from fucking Stallone, of all people. Destroyed and discarded by his country, Rambo returns from war with a thousand-yard stare and a tragic inability to leave the battlefield behind (extremely MGS-coded). My understanding is that every sequel is, unfortunately, macho tough guy bullshit. But anti-war media morphing into vapid propaganda because it accidentally made war look too cool? Believe it or not, also MGS-coded. This is where Big Boss gets a lot of his DNA.

I knew Kojima practically invented the stealth genre in 1987, but I didn’t know how much of the literal mechanics of video game stealth also came from movies. The Great Escape (1963) is one of the biggest inspirations for the series’ gameplay and scenario writing: POW camps, escaping through tunnels, motorcycle chases (think MGS3 in particular). And from The Guns of Navarone (1961), infiltrating an impregnable fortress and destroying the high-tech weaponry inside. I thought they were both pretty fun. During the latter, I had a sudden feeling of transcendence across time and space, watching Gregory Peck throw an object from behind cover to distract a nearsighted guard.

Sometimes my curiosity led me to things I later realized aren’t very relevant, even if I liked them. Googling “movies about genetics” led me to Gattaca (1997), a eugenics dystopia that I vaguely remember from 9th grade biology (it’s good). Some thematic resonance with MGS1 there. All the President’s Men (1976) was gripping (Hoffman and Redford really acted their pussies off), but I probably didn’t need to go that far just to understand the name Deepthroat. And I read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, a postmodern headscratcher, simply because MGS2’s Peter Stillman gets his name from it. No, it didn’t teach me much about MGS2, but I think The Truman Show did. You see how I burnt out on this in a few months?

I read a few non-fiction books on things like the Manhattan Project and genetics, but this is already too long, so I’ll spare you the details. But I have to share this gem of a quote from Mark E. Lester, the director of 1985's Commando:

“There was a weird thing that came out in this book an African boy wrote. It was disturbing–it said the kids in this African country were watching Commando before they went out to battle. I felt bad when I read that. I mean, it’s a movie, but they were showing it to these kids to psych them up.”

Turns out Raiden’s “image training” is real after all.

If I haven’t scared you off by now, you may have surmised that this stopped being about the games a while ago. At least, not fully. I just found an excuse to learn about a lot of things I already thought were interesting. Hell, this helped me get back into reading as an adult, and now I’m doing it all the time. Playing through the games again was almost a footnote, fun as they are.

I needed a long break, but eventually I’ll continue with MGS4, Peace Walker, and MGSV. There’s some obvious ones I’ll have to hit (Mad Max, Moby-Dick), and it might be good to research for all the Che Guevara stuff in PW. Suggestions are very much welcome, but please, please don’t tell me I forgot something, because I probably didn’t.

[Spoiler free review]

Over the last few months, I took the plunge into SMT 3. I have played thousands of games over my life, and I can confidentially say I have never experienced anything quite like this title. For context, this review is based on my completion of the True Demon Ending, which took just under 65 hours.

It’s an amazing game - a timeless masterpiece that stands head to head with the other renown classics of JRPGs. It’s brutal in difficulty, but not unfairly so. The story is morally ambiguous, and forces you to draw your own conclusions on what is just. The setting is captivating, but at the same time horrifying with it's usage of liminal horror and occult themes. The cel-shaded artstyle is slick and aged like wine. Perhaps most importantly, the gameplay is some of the most satisfying turn based combat I have ever experienced. If that wasn’t glowing enough, SMT 3 even has Dante in it, for some reason. Some extra cool points for that inclusion.

Story

In the first 20 minutes of the game, the world ends and a blonde kid forcefully implants a demonic parasite in your body, transforming you into something less than demon but more than human (Demi-Fiend).

Unlike most JRPG stories, the world already ended; your goal is to more or less navigate through the new apocalyptic Tokyo and.. survive. Most of the dialogue is in philosophical bits-and-pieces from spirits you meet around the world (pretty much everyone but five humans perish in the world-ending event). While the story isn't the main focus, the bits given are loaded -- leaving you a lot to think about long after the game's conclusion. In general, it's a refreshing twist on a genre with such strong tropes and cliches.

Gameplay

SMT 3 largely shines in gameplay more than anything else. This game was the godfather of the 'press-turn' system; a mechanic that greatly rewards you for exploiting enemy weaknesses (and punishes you for lack of doing so). It still feels fantastic to this day. Combat is fast and fun. I was also blown away by the sheer amount of bosses in this game - if you are aiming to best them all, Google suggests there are over 50 in the game alone!

The core gameplay loop here is understanding boss strategies and weaknesses, and retrofitting your team composition to handle whatever comes your way. This is made quite doable with demonic fusion - a way to fuse two demons together to create something new entirely. It's easy to reacquire your old demons, so the game is flexible in encouraging experimentation. Once you get the loop down, it's hard to resist.

The difficulty spikes I felt were highly enjoyable. As mentioned online, the second I hit Matador it became clear what SMT 3 had in store for me. You definitely need to be an individual who enjoys challenge to get mileage out of this game.

For dungeon design and world design: in general, there are a mix of good and mediocre dungeons. I really enjoyed the Diet Building, that was awesome. The Labyrinth of Amala was pretty cool, but I needed to cite a guide for the fourth Kalpa. I think the only design I felt was genuinely frustrating was the final dungeon crawl, which felt like a slog with many random teleports, high demon encounter rate, etc. I would gently encourage folks interested in the game to keep a guide handy just in case.

Art

I also want to point out that this game looks awesome for a 2003 title. The cel-shaded artstyle looks like it could've been created today. Seriously, great art direction and a lot of great set-pieces to accommodate this.

Music

The soundtrack is pretty awesome as well. It fits the liminal horror vibe of the game with ease and has some great tracks (Labyrinth of Amala fight track is fantastic).

Critiques

Especially near endgame, the demon encounter rate is unreal. You can't walk three steps without engaging in a fight, and half of the demons will just spam Mamudoon. Felt a little tedious to me. Additionally, the endgame is loaded with super cool demons you are able to unlock; by the time you are able to utilize them the game is over. The optional puzzle-boy minigame desperately needed save state abilities.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an unmissable JRPG. I am glad I played it. I would put this as the same tier as Final Fantasy X in terms of overall quality, which is a pretty high bar in my mind. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a challenge and finds the art or setting somewhat interesting.

Edit: One last thing, there are some great QoL mods for the PC version that I would encourage. They do not detract from the difficulty or experience.

• The mini-map QoL enhancement saves you from spamming the map key every five seconds.
• Hex-editing so the game renders at 4K is a huge game changer.

My memories of TimeSplitters go back to Gamecube, on which I played the second game first. I was a big Goldeneye fan, and I knew it was developed by the same developers, so I erroneously assumed it was a Rare game. It’s kind of a shooter that isn’t made anymore. A thinking man’s FPS where you are supposed to think about actual objectives than watching some minicutscenes and blasting the enemies. That game got too tough that I never beat it, so I’m thinking about replaying it for the later. I did wonder what the first game was like, and for a while, I assumed it was more or less the same as 2.

I played TimeSplitters 1 recently with the mouse and keyboard set-up, and I have complex feelings about it. The game that reminded me most of was Monolith’s Contract Jack. Perfect Dark has been frequently compared to No One Lives Forever in the same year for being a female superspy FPS and having very similar mission design. Contract Jack was a spin-off of No One Lives Forever 2. That game was essentially a glorified expansion that strips down the narrative, complex mission design, level design, atmosphere, but only featured “shooting”. It’s an amateurish-level production that it almost feels like a mod at times. Time Splitters 1 feels like that to TimeSplitters 2.

The core Goldeneye developers left Rare during the production of Perfect Dark and created their own studio, Free Radical Design (which became part of Crytek later). This resulted in Perfect Dark turning into a development hell, where the project was generally helmed by the newbies. Free Radical Design was in the midst of a development hell as they tried to make Second Sight, but got rejected, and the team had to scramble together a Goldeneye successor within the small budget and little time, resulting in TimeSplitters. And it shows. There is no narrative, no objective but “take this thing and go to this circle”, no cohesive vision. It appears they just inserted “Time” into the title because they created a bunch of different themed maps, but had to make a connection by slapping a time travel concept. It feels like a TimeSplitters 2 user map.

At the same time, I appreciate the arcade purity of the game, which no longer exists in the industry but the indie scene. It’s a game you can beat in an hour. It’s simple, but you are supposed to replay the missions on the varying difficulties for the multiplayer unlocks. It’s hard to think a game like this even being published on the AAA scene anymore, good or bad.

For a while, I didn’t mind it because the core gameplay was fun. I don’t know exactly what ticks, but the gunplay in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and TimeSplitters just feels great. It’s hard to describe. It’s smooth and addicting. Just shooting a machinegun feels good. It’s something that the other console FPS in the era couldn’t capture. Just compare it to the Bond games like Agent Under Fire and Medal of Honor, and although those games had more advanced elements, the raw blasting sensation of TimeSplitters is unmatched. The presentation, despite being clearly low-budget, is great. It’s nothing comparable to the sequel or even Goldeneye, but the stylized aesthetics still hold up, creating that the PS2 vibe that no longer exists. It goes a long way to have a great soundtrack complementing the different themed levels.

So, whatever. It’s a good shooter. Goldeneye without the mission design, and if the gunplay is good, it should be good. Right? I thought that way for the first two levels… then the cracks begin to show fast. This game is insanely difficult. I played it on Normal, and even with the mouse, I eventually had to crank it down to Easy because this game just straight-up bullshits the player. The more I play, the more I realize how much the core combat system is flawed.

In Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the enemy reaction time is quite generous. If they find the player, they shout something like “I found her!”, alerting their presence to the player, and position to fire for a second, giving the player a choice of whether to be offensive (shoot first) or defensive (take cover). They are also stationary when they attack, sort of like a tank. When you shoot them, they get stunned for a few seconds, unable to fire. Their attack is clearly telegraphed and easily avoidable if the player is mobile enough. It’s supposed to encourage the player to build a constant momentum and move around.

TimeSplitters 1 doesn’t do this. The enemies 1) instantly fire with a few frames of “raising weapons”, 2) move while firing, 3) stay silent when detecting the player, 4) sometimes get stunned when hit, or sometimes just ignore the hit and fire at the player, 5) are long-ranged with high accuracy, so they do not charge at the player, 6) ambush the player, whether they suddenly come out of cover or pop out in thin air through teleportation.

In addition, the player has no invincibility frames. What happens is that I cleared the room incredibly carefully, then some guy suddenly spawns and jumps off from the high floor and blasts me with a machinegun, cutting down my entire bar of health in one second. It’s absurdly cheap, and the only way you can beat some encounters is for the player to memorize the levels through trial and error, rather than testing the player’s skills.

Combine that with the limited health pick-ups, the game often becomes a frustrating mess. The combat isn’t fundamentally balanced enough. It results in the player doing pattern memorization and knowing which enemey is in what position. Like, I don’t see how anyone can even beat this game on Hard with the controller unless they memorize literal frame-by-frame patterns. Goldeneye already solved this issue on N64, only for TimeSplitters to backroll all that elegant game design to make the combat a mess. My guess for why they designed the combat like this is because either they didn’t have enough time to test it, or they intentionally made it punishing to compenstate the short playtime. At least, I don’t remember TimeSplitters 2 being this bad, so they surely fixed it.

The animations also feature the similar problem as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but worse, where the enemy death animations are too muted. The deaths are not exaggerated enough. They touch their arms, then three seconds later, collapse. It results in the player wasting their ammo on the already dead enemies because their deaths are unclear. Sometimes, the stun and death animations are so indistinguishable that oftentimes I was killed by enemies that I thought I had already killed.

Despite the diverse themes, the actual enemy designs are exclusively two humanoid types: shooters or melee chargers. That’s it. No matter where it takes place, it’s the same. Even the weapon design is disappointing, with the weapon roles overlapping and repetitive. For example, there is a space level where you fire laser guns at the aliens. You then actually play it, you realize all the alien enemies are identical to the human enemies, and all the laser guns are identical to the normal guns. Compare it to Perfect Dark, where despite having dozens of weapons, each weapon serves a unique purpose with the weapon role and the secondary firing.

If you play it on Easy, it is at least tolerable, so all those design flaws aren’t as bothersome. It’s a unpolished shooter that’s fun on the primitive level, but not something the speedrunners would replay it over and over because it fundamentally lacks depth compared to Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. I enjoyed it enough, but I recommend just skipping it to the second game.

For some context I recently decided to play all the main non-RPG AC games in order of release. I played the first four on release and all the newer ones since origins also on release so for me games in the middle like Unity are me playing them for the first time.

Hard game for me to rank as I for me this game has clearly the best gameplay and the worst story so far. Best gameplay of the pre-RPG ones, top 3 locations, impressive NPC density while all great are still not big enough improvements for me to rank this higher above the other pre-RPG games as those have a significantly better story. The RPG ones have better gameplay, modern graphics, more polish so I would rank this in the series only above Mirage.

I still enjoyed this game a lot, just did not love it like the games I ranked higher.

To start with the positives this game is one of the biggest leaps in the series on what it tries at a technical level. Graphics are very improved (still pretty dated) compared to Rogue (insane these two games released same date) and the NPC density is some of the best in gaming. And not only just raw density of NPCs, but variety in their looks and actions. What they did is obviously just shuffle various possible combinations of npc clothes and actions, but the illusion works almost all the time. Most of the npcs will be just walking down the streets or rioting near a landmark, but they will be varied and all around them will be small groups doing different things. A guy carrying a looted stone cross, two people carrying an injured friend, a man leaving his house accosted by beggars, somebody sweeping in front of his shop or fixing a barrel. Some of these are pretty rare and I saw them once every few hours and only rarely I just saw something that slightly broke immersion like three people (out of very many on the screen) with exact same clothing or three people fixing their table in a row on the side of the street.

For me this was the first time I would say this series has decevent combat because this is the first time it has any difficulty at all. So far all the protagonists were absolutely unbeatable in combat and you were in danger only if you attempted things you were obviously not supposed to and even then you could win. Here with enemies having levels with increased hp, damage and better moves/defences at higher level gearing up Arno is important and the world is a bit dangerous. This is obviously not a hard game and anything is solvable by just charging through the front gate, but you do need to gear up first and have consumables and pay attention slightly compared to previous entries.

Level design is also often very nice with missions being mini-sandbox levels with multiple ways to approach the target and some scripted ways to gain an advantage. Also I liked the design of the world and how while many buildings could be explored to find a chest it often took some effort to find the entrance and then navigate through the houses.

Stealth is a bit mediocre by you not having that many tools for it and guards reacting often too fast, but I still thought it was enjoyable. Often you could use stealth to do quite a bit and then when you get discovered you could often just kill the guards nearby to go back to stealth. And even if everyone gets alerted it still felt immersive to get discovered mid way through and then having to fight.

The city itself is also very impressive. Very detailed, varied from poor to rich parts, obviously impressive recreations of real life locations, dense and felt very organic like a real city with unique buildings, often lacking symmetry etc.

Parkouring despite being very important in AC games is not something I usually think too much about as I always find it very similar to other entries and it is always good however this one is obviously different and my favourite one when it works. Arno can clmb mostly everything and he does tricks to look cooler while doing it. He also cant climb absolutely everything like in the rpg series which finds a very good balance. Being able to climb absolutely everywhere is a bit unrealistic so sometimes having obstacles or lack of purchase is fun however them being fairly rare and not needing obviously marked things like the Ezio games sometimes did removes some frustrating parts. How far Arno can jump and what he can climb is very unrealistic, but feels like something out of a cinematic when it works.

The setting is also very good. Top 3 for me. When I started the game I was not really looking forward to the setting however a dense urban zone with political turmoil is obviously just perfect for an AC game. Finally I enjoyed how they did not split the sides into obviously evil and bad ones and it is a bit messy.

A small positive I would like to point out is that the economy is actually a bit interesting and even if you rush the most obvious path to get passive income and loot all the chests you will still need cash until near the very end.

Moving on to the elements I did not like I will start with the biggest one and that is the story. Out of the eleven AC games I played this is tied with Mirage for the worst one. It is not outright terrible and I was a bit interested in it while playing it, but it is just very forgettable. That is mostly because Arno and all of the Assassins are dull. Only three Arnos allies I can name are not Assassins and two have smaller roles. And the plot is less related to the revolution than I would like. Only interesting part is them actually killing of a big character and Arno being expelled from the Assassins, but that part is resolved off screen. When replaying the Ezio games 20 years later I could still remember a lot of the story while I finished this game two days ago and I had to refresh some of my memory with some recaps to write this. It is just so forgettable.

I know I am often in the minority on this take, but I really enjoy the modern day story in AC games and I think this is actually the worst one by a decent margin. It is so irrelevant, but not entirely gone either and present just enough to be annoying while having no substance. And that is especially jarring after Rogue which connects to everything else and while nothing too major happens at least it is intriguing. It even mentions events that would be connected to Valhalla. Also here is finally where the series loses all its slightly "edgy" conspiracy stuff. 2 had a lot of this in the glyph puzzles and they basically imply every conspiracy has some truth to it and so many people are Assassins and Templars. They even have live footage of an elephant about to be executed by "Templar" Edison. BF and Rogue had a tiny trace of it with some niche (maybe?) stuff like Akashik Reader or Voynich Maniscrupt mentions, but there is nothing like that here (unless you count Nostradamus which I dont). The changing of severs is just annoying while it is sometimes visually fun with some WW2 scenes.

The map is crazy overstuffed even for an AC game. It has like a few hundred chests and other pretty lame collectables. The only fun side content are the murder mysteries which to be fair are surprisingly good. Enjoyed those a lot.

Not a fan there is also some regression in various systems. Why did we lose repairing the city, freeing the forts, managing Assassins or crafting?

Finally and this drawback is pretty significant the game is pretty poor on a technical level. As many of these pre-rpg games this has a lot of bugs, crashes and it is required to tinker with the settings to get it running (at locked 60) a bit too much. The bugs are often pretty bad and require a restart. Getting shot while climbing has like a 10% chance to get you stuck in a falling animation forever, just fighting will stop working a couple of times per hour and need a restart, the parkouring will often glitch wildly.

Lost Sphear is a 'retro'-style jrpg released in 2017, by Tokyo RPG Factory, which was a subset of Square Enix and has since been (unfortunately, in my opinion) absorbed into the company. I played it on the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026. TL;DR is below the post.

Given that the last game I played was Harvestella, I guess my current drive is to play chill, low-key, AA JRPGs. If anyone has any more recommendations, I'm all ears.

Plot Overview:

The story concerns a world where people and places, even kingdoms, become 'lost'. This means they turn white and shimmering, as though they were made of mist, and cannot interact with the outside world. In order for them to become real again, they must be restored with 'memories' that have since been turned into monsters. Our hero, Kanata, is an orphan who has the ability to kill monsters, collect their memories, and restore things and people that have been lost.

Combat:

Combat is where this game shines.

The basic combat is a standard ATB system, which lends to its retro feel, but its assorted bells and whistles make it stand out.

I won't delve into its intricacies, because this post would be too long if i did. But if you're into ATB systems or just interesting combat systems in general, especially turn-based, I recommend it. It has active abilities, passive abilities, and abilities that proc on active abilities and can be permanently stacked onto them, so as you get more powerful your basic abilities have more and more customized effects. Advancing your abilities is much more important than leveling.

What's more, a few hours into the game you receive mech suits that have their own suite of abilities and increased states. They have a limited pool of 'mech points,' so they don't last very long, so you have to strategize and use them wisely while exploring a dungeon and contending with its end boss.

Grinding, Gear Progression, and the In-Game Economy:

I would never mention this if it weren't fucked.

To be brief: items require upgrade materials to upgrade. Upgrade materials are too expensive. This necessitates grinding. The combat system is not made to make grinding fun or quick.

There's more to it, but the simple truth is that I spent a full day grinding when I shouldn't have had to, on top of hours spend grinding before that. I wish this entire game had been implemented without the need for upgrade materials. Nothing would have changed except the need to grind.

Visuals:

The visuals overall reminded me pleasantly of Bravely Default and Alliance Alive. Chibi characters and a gentle, low-color-saturation water-color aesthetic. Character designs are unique and fit their personalities. The environmental design deserves special recognition.

Music:

The music was great. Can't think of a single weak theme. As I mentioned above, the dungeon design was great, and each theme worked well with its dungeon. According to IMDB, the composer, Tomoki Miyoshi, hasn't worked since 2022. What a shame. Hopefully he finds a new project soon.

Story and characters:

I'm big on story and characters. It's the number one thing I look for in RPGs.

This game satisfied me. The story was familiar: start as an orphan in a small village and work your way up to working with major world forces to defeat the big bad. Explore exotic locations, get swept up in world events, and pick up companions along the way.

We start with three characters: a generic main character, an annoying best friend whose job it was to overreact to everything, and a female character whose only role is react to the annoying character by getting annoyed. Thankfully, this dynamic ended quickly, and a variety of new characters were introduced to the party as the story progressed. Our main three also receive appropriate time and character development. Save maybe the female character, but her practicality and stability made her one of my favorites over time. She never left my party.

I found myself getting very fond of each character as they were introduced, and even a bit emotional when one of them appeared to be dying. I actually wish they'd followed through and killed that character; the game would have had more teeth if it did. Regardless, each of them contributed to every story point via dialogue, and when the game ended I felt invested in what would happen to them.

There is an end game. I wouldn't call it extensive but it centers around an interesting mystery and helps us wrap up a few loose ends. I appreciated its inclusion.

Conclusion:

Apparently the next game Tokyo RPG Factory made after this was an action RPG and a huge dud. That makes me sad. I wish they'd stuck with the ATB system, or just pure turn-based, and turned out another retro JRPG. There is something compelling about this game. I was looking forward to play more. As it is, I may play 'I Am Setsuna,' its predecessor. I hope the members of TRPGF are enjoying their careers and can take pride in what they've made.

TL;DR

Play this game if you like: Chill retro JRPGs with solid characters, music, art, and story, and you don't mind spacing out and grinding fights that are too slow to be easily ground.

Thank you for reading.

Recently I picked up a Switch 2, my first Nintendo console since the Wii. I actually didn't really get the console with the intention of playing lots of Nintendo exclusives, but with the amount of praise that this game receives online, I felt like I had to check it out. Breath of the Wild is my first Zelda game, and I had pretty high expectations for it going into my playthrough. I think for the most part it managed to meet those expectations, and I have a lot of good things to say about the game. For reference, I played the Switch 2 edition of the game.

I think one of the games biggest strengths is actually the structure of the main quest. Once you get to the point where you're objective is to free the divine beasts, you kind of have to find and complete shrines so that you can increase your stats. A lot of my exploration didn't happen because a quest or NPC told me to go somewhere, it happened because I was running to a tower or shrine, and then stumbled across something else that looked cool. I get that some people won't like this, but really felt like the game gave me the opportunity to explore, while at the same time feeling like I was making progress on the main quest. I really liked this aspect, and although I'm sure it exists, it's not something that I've seen in other open world games before.

Initially I found the combat to be kind of challenging in the game. The character movements felt really good, but I think that especially with the amount of health and weapon options that are available early in the game, encounters with enemies could be quite punishing. As the game progressed however, I found the combat to be quite rewarding and fun.

I'm not typically someone who will do a ton of side quests, and I didn't do a ton in Breath of the Wild. For me, I don't really feel like this detracted from my experience, but let me know if you think I missed out. I put more energy into looking for and completing the shrines, and had a lot of fun with the puzzle mechanics involved there.

I don't really have any big criticisms of this game. The weapon durability thing was annoying, although honestly I eventually reached a point where I was finding enough good weapons that I didn't really mind it anymore. Probably my biggest gripe was there not being a good way to keep track of recipes/elixirs. I get that experimentation is part of the point here, but I got tired of just having to guess how many hearts the food I cooked would restore.

In conclusion, I liked Breath of the Wild a lot, and I think it deserves the praise it gets. I'm not sure it completely blew me away, but it's definitely one of the better open world action/adventure games that I've played, and I think that it's going to age well for me. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who owns a switch, and it made me interested in playing some other Legend of Zelda games in the future.

Usually when I finish a game, I tend to write down my thoughts on it relatively quickly - typically I make notes while playing, and even small posts on the biweekly threads (as some may have seen), so it's not hard to polish off a post within a week. Not here - it's been months since I played A Plague Tale: Requiem, and I just couldn't get fingers to keys. Part of it is that I am finally employed and so have far less time, but another part of it is that I am honestly pretty conflicted on the game. Its gameplay is definitely an expansion of Innocence's, but honestly I wonder if more is better for a game like this. Its technical performance is bordering on unacceptable, particularly on what I feel is pretty high-end hardware for a 4-year-old game. It has some minor odd decisions in story and characterization that I honestly don't know if I understand, let alone appreciate. But the totality of the experience is unforgettable - the final 5 hours are some of the best storytelling video gaming has to offer, and even months later I can't get it out of my head. In my review of Innocence I had said that it was a Last of Us-like, and in many ways Requiem is what it is because of The Last of Us Part II, and given that that game is one of my favourites this decade, it's hard not to compare, so I won't try.

Premise (spoilers for Innocence)

Six months after the events of Innocence, Amicia and Hugo de Rune, together with their comrade Lucas and their mother Beatrice, are headed to Provence in the south of France to find a cure for Hugo's rat-related affliction. Unfortunately, it seems that evil forces keep following them wherever they go.

Technical Performance

Bad. No-good-very-bad. It never really gets to unplayable, but it's hard to ignore, which you'd think wouldn't happen with a 9070XT. The game doesn't have FSR in any form (yay Nvidia sponsorship) and the built-in supersampler is so bad that I just turned it off and ate the framerate difference. The bigger problem isn't framerate being low, it is that framerate never stays consistent no matter what limiter I use - even lowering the frame limit to 60 has it wobble in the 51-56 range even though CPU and GPU use are in the 60-70s. Gameplay-heavy moments aren't great, but are mostly playable - where the framerate really starts wobbling is in the smaller free-roam sections where Amicia and Hugo are just hanging out, chilling in markets, running around fairs, and Hugo being cute in general, which is a shame because those are the moments that really build their relationship and so you really notice that stuff more when you don't have gameplay considerations. Apart from that there are several times where the game's AI will just bug out and stop, which means you have to restart the game to progress. There's also minor stuff like textures glitching out randomly Assassin's Creed Unity-style, but honestly it wasn't super common. Honestly, it feels pretty unacceptable for a game to be in this state >4 years after release.

Gameplay

Requiem significantly expands on Innocence in terms of gameplay, primarily combat. Perhaps the biggest change is that arenas against human enemies are significantly more open, with multiple ways to sneak around using all of Amicia's options, including a crossbow she receives around halfway that allows her to kill medium-armoured enemies with helmets. I do like Plague Tale's approach to stealth where the protagonist's small size and the medieval setting mean that combat involves inherent tradeoffs - the sling is deadly, but needs a headshot (and thus an unarmoured head) and is loud, attracting attention (and unlike in Innocence, there is no upgrade in Requiem that will make it wholly silent); the crossbow is powerful but Amicia can only hold 4 bolts at a time so you can't go wild; and the sneak attack, which is super powerful in most stealth games, is basically worthless compared to the sling. Requiem also provides bonuses by recording Amicia's actions and granting perks depending on her approach - so, for example, if you do a lot of sneaking, you get stealth-related perks. It's certainly a more complex approach, adding depth to the first game's relatively simple sandbox...and I'm not sure I like it. Innocence did have a much simpler system and much more linear levels, but I feel like it works for that game because it presented challenge without having it significantly slow down pacing. Requiem does add more to gameplay, but personally I feel like it detracts from the story pacing, which is the central focus of both games.

Visuals

I honestly quite like Requiem's art style. We definitely see environments that are a lot more vibrant and beautiful than the dirty villages and urban squalor of Innocence's Guyenne - Provence at the start and especially La Cuna - which does allow for a much greater contrast when the rats hit the fan and things get more dark and depressing. But the real highlight is the supernatural stuff, which is mostly in the back half barring Hugo's dream - everything involving Basilius, especially his prison; the Macula beneath La Cuna; everything to do with the Nebula in Marseille; the flood of rats in Marseille in general - is terrifyingly beautiful. How they even managed to conceive a lot of this I have no idea, but it's the kind of visual beauty you only see in horror. Beyond that, facial animations are somewhat mediocre - while I concede that it's an unfair standard to compare Requiem to a game that cost almost ten times as much to make, making a character drama where the camera regularly zooms in to characters' faces means that said faces need to be readable. Most of the heavy lifting in conveying the characters comes from the vocal performances...

Vocal Performances

...which are thankfully almost uniformly decent-to-strong, with one exception.

Charlotte McBurney as Amicia is the heart of Requiem, and she absolutely devours. So much of Amicia's pain, her struggle, her increasing bloodlust, her determination, her obsession, and her underlying desperation to find a cure for her brother is conveyed through the performance because not as much can be conveyed through the faces, and perhaps "carries" is an exaggeration, but most of Requiem's best moments are made by Amicia. I wouldn't argue as to whether she was robbed for Game Awards or anything like that (I haven't completed any God of War game), but she's definitely one of the best vocal performances I have seen in a game. Logan Hannan as Hugo is also really good, as is Kit Connor as Lucas; everyone else is decent.

Soundtrack

This is a bit of a hot take, but I really prefer Olivier Deriviere's score for Requiem over Gustavo Santaolalla's score for The Last of Us Part II. I love the latter score, don't get me wrong, but the former score is just so much more ornate and, well, "extra" - which really suits a game with this much high melodrama and tragedy. Stuff like the title track, "No Turning Back", and especially "Up There" really... work here in amplifying the spectacle. One of my favourite tracks is "Lost With Rats", a distorted version of the game's title track that plays in Chapter XI - it just conveys how Amicia's journey and determination have been twisted by her trauma into obsession.

Story (Spoilers, including for TLOU2)

• Most of the new cast is honestly kinda eh. Sophia and Arnaud are decent, and frankly Beatrice didn't get a ton of characterization last game so she's almost like a new character, but the main reason you're here is for Amicia and Hugo, with Lucas in a fairly clear if relatively close third place. It's telling that the most fascinating characters not among the Big Three are Basilius and Aelia, both of whom have been dead for centuries and are only known through the aftermath of their final moments.
• Hugo being cute moments do adequately convey him being cute.
• A couple of early segments show how Amicia has become more bloodthirsty, to the point that she actively starts killing enemies even when running is the more pragmatic option. I
• The villains are...variable. Milo feels almost redundant, to the point I genuinely wonder what the point of him was beyond "there are sickos who exploit the myth of the child". The Count and Countess are not bad, although Victor does get a little moustache-twirly after he reveals his villainy. The Macula is, obviously, the real villain, and the game does convey that it does act like an sentient, malevolent entity, luring Hugo to La Cuna and almost feeding on his despair.
• As I said previously, Requiem owes a massive debt to The Last of Us Part II. Both are set in deeply, deeply cynical worlds that have their protagonist start out good but get warped by trauma into doing some really shitty things, stuff that you could consider beyond the pale, all out of sheer determination for the person closest to them. More generally, both also have a strange quasi-open-world section that you can roam around, though Requiem doesn't really have a combat sandbox engaging enough to be able to carry the segment.
• There's a degree of delusion when Amicia keeps moving the goalposts to keep Hugo alive, starting at "there's a cure, we'll find it in La Cuna" and ending up at "we'll just live together happily away from civilization", but it's worth noting that nearly all of Hugo's fall to the Macula is caused by evil people - Emilie kills Beatrice, and Victor's attack makes him believe that Amicia died. Is there a future where Hugo could ever be okay? I guess not - how could Amicia protect him from sorrow forever? - but it works for the 6 months between games, so it doesn't feel crazy.
• Where Requiem differs is that it plays up the drama and pushes it into outright opera - while Ellie's greatest torment is revealed to be psychological, Amicia's is an actual eldritch force (even if her determination to find a cure causes her to ignore reality when it's staring her in the face). In some ways it makes Amicia much more twisted - Ellie is bloodthirsty, yes, and she (unknowingly) kills a pregnant Mel, yes, but she never stoops so low as to making her brother summon rats to take down their enemies out of a combination of rage and despair, something that temporarily turns Hugo catatonic.
• One more similarity, IMO, is that both Ellie's and Amicia's journeys are implicitly doomed from the start - there was never a cure for the Macula, and Ellie killing the Salt Lake crew was never going to give her peace - but they feel different, likely because Ellie's barrier is psychological rather than an actual force (though a big part of the game is also Amicia learning to accept that there is no cure for Hugo.
• My biggest problem with Requiem is pacing - the plot feels like it really starts once Amicia and Hugo get to La Cuna, which is Chapter VIII of XVII.
• Chapter XI is the game's best, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's basically just Amicia, Hugo, Sophia, and rats in terms of the living cast and has basically no combat.

Miscellaneous

• Why does Amicia's ponytail disappear when she gets the crossbow? I understand it's a pain to animate, but it really stands out, and it's made even more jarring near the ending where Victor dramatically lops it off - like, it was barely there for the last, like, 5 chapters.
• There's one part in around Chapter XIII after Amicia got Hugo to unleash the rats to kill Emilie and destroy La Cuna - the strain turns Hugo basically catatonic, and, for the first time in two games, Amicia and Hugo are together, but Hugo isn't holding her hand. It's such a small thing, but it really struck me.
• I like the parallel between Aelia and Basilius and Amicia and Hugo - they're Protector-Carrier pairs, and, just as Basilius started the Justinian Plague when Aelia died, Hugo unleashes the Nebula when (he thinks) Amicia has died.

Conclusion

I don't know how much I like this game, but I would still recommend it simply on the grounds that it sticks in your head months after completing it. It's not really like The Last of Us Part II, but I think it says something to me that that was the game I was thinking of often while playing Requiem. It's one of the better stories told in gaming, at least. I just wish it ran better.

SYNTHETIK REVIEW

RELEASE: 2018

TIME PLAYED: 67 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE:  ★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

The Breakdown

+Satisfying gunplay and stellar kinesthetics

+Responsive, tactical shootouts full of barely controlled chaos

+Interesting classes that accommodate many playstyles

+Varied and exciting loot that empowers runs

-Myriad bugs and poorly documented item descriptions

-Co-Op support has some strange quirks

-Visual noise can be a bit overwhelming and affect the learning curve

It's rare that I so powerfully want to start off a review by saying, "I fucking love this game" - but that's exactly how I feel about Synthetik. The top-down roguelite shooter is such a visceral, kinetic experience that it immediately evokes a strong response from the first battle, the first floor, the first inevitably doomed run - even if it occasionally stumbles over some technical shortcomings.

Rogue AI is trying to take over the world, and you're a, uh, rogue rogue AI, an android created meant to take down humanity who has decided instead to destroy your masters and protect mankind. Why? Don't worry about it. That's pretty much the beginning and end of the narrative in Synthetik, and it doesn't really matter. It's all an excuse for the structure of the game, where you're said freshly printed android ready to take on the entirety of the machine legion across procedurally generated levels ranging from snowy military bases to burning outposts. Aesthetically, it's 80's as hell - put Terminator, Robocop, and a vat full of neon in a blender and you're most of the way there, from the chunky industrial robots to the stiffly articulated movement of the player android.

The kinesthetics are Synthetik's bread-and-butter, and they're absolutely divine. The game started as a ballistics simulator and spiraled from there, and it shows. Every bullet, laser, and ion bolt has individual trajectories, properties, and physics. Guns are punchy, loud, and creative, with modifiers that range from simple (like an underbarrel grenade launcher) to delightfully stupid (such as a sniper rifle referencing the '360 no scope' meme that gets a huge damage bonus if you spin in a circle before firing it). On a fundamental level, combat simply feels amazing, and though it's optional, I highly recommend the manual reload mechanic, which requires ejecting each magazine before inputting a new one as two separate motions. While initially awkward, it soon becomes the beating heart of the entire game, and once you get used to it, the benefits for a perfect reload massively outweigh the nearly non-existent mental RAM required to do it right every time.

While the randomness and repetition of a roguelite is on full display here, there are thankfully plenty of ways to shape one's playstyle. The first is a class system containing a wide variety of androids; play the Engineer and hunker down with fortified turrets while baiting enemies into a killbox, or hop over to the Vanguard and loot dogtags that buff you every few kills while leeching life with a combat knife. Each class gets unique perks that allow them to benefit more from different guns, items, and skills, and a token system allows the player to tag preferred loot, increasing its odds of showing up and giving it a small power boost. All of this combined meant that it was easy for me, who played the Breacher - a sort of alpha strike specialist equipped with recharging explosives that benefitted from aggressive blitzes - to reliably get at least one good shotgun and a defensive item that benefitted my playstyle, even if it wasn't exactly ideal.

It's a good thing the core gameplay is so rock-solid, because the further you get to the peripherals of Synthetik, the more the wheels start to wobble. What I mentioned about it starting out as a ballistics simulator? That's still its primary focus, and other elements I found suffered from more than a little bit of jank. I never had crashes, but strange interactions could cause brief framerate drops, enemies sometimes acted erratically, and more; item descriptions don't always accurately or completely describe weapons or equipment, so a piece of gear may be better or worse than it seems and has to be 'felt out'. Co-Op, while functional, is hilariously basic; as far as Synthetik seems to be concerned, there's still only one player, which causes some strange interactions with everything from healing to enemy aggression here and there. Still, outside of the rare frustration due to a run being ended over an inaccurate tooltip, this is a minor issue; if one is in need of a silver lining, there's a degree of esoterica to be found here, knowledge gathered and disseminated by the game's intensely loyal fanbase.

Though it has its share of technical quirks and stylistic quibbles, Synthetik is one of the most satisfying, spectacularly responsive shooters I've ever played - isometric or otherwise - with a rewarding customization system that allows for a wide variety of class fantasies to be fulfilled. Whether solo or with a friend, I can't recommend it enough. Simply put, I fucking love this game.

Before we can talk about this game, we need to talk about Dead Cells. Dead Cells is one of my absolute favorite games, developed by Motion Twin. The game was eventually handed over to a studio named Evil Empire for updates, so that Motion Twin could focus on making other games. There's a bunch of drama between these two studios, but I won't be getting into it.

The most important thing to understand about the Rogue Prince of Persia (hereafter Rogue) is that it was developed by Evil Empire, and is heavily inspired by Dead Cells. This, I think, was a mistake. I'll get into why later.

I have been a big fan of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, so I was excited to finally be playing Rogue after all the updates.

What Works:

Art - This is a very pretty game, with a distinctive art style inspired by the works of Moebius, a French artist. When it launched, the art style proved divisive, with some players finding it garish and harsh. The studio listened, and the art received a major update. Currently, for me, I think it has a nice balance between the striking colors that characterize the art of Moebius, and more traditional videogame art.

Music - This game has absolutely sensational music. It's composed by ASADI, a Persian-American artist, and I cannot emphasize enough how much of a win it is. The album is worth a listen even if you don't wish to play the game.

What Doesn't Work:

Gameplay and Feel - To me, the game never felt like PoP. The combat, the levels, the parkour, none of it evokes any kind of nostalgia. As I said, it's heavily inspired by Dead Cells, so rather than condensing the PoP experience into a 2D roguelike, it tries to build upon the gameplay of Dead Cells. I want to talk about the parkour specifically. One of the joys of the PoP series is the beautiful parkour, the predecessor to the movement of games like Assassin's Creed. Running across walls, hopping from ledge to ledge, slicing down a curtain, all of it has always felt fluid and magical.

Rogue contains none of that. The wall run is a joke. You're barely two steps into it when it ends. And something about the parkour never clicks, even when you get good at it. There's always a weird mismatch in the Prince's abilities and the environment. He feels like a character modded into the game rather than one who belongs. And he frequently does things you don't want him to.

But let's forget PoP. Maybe Rogue works as a spiritual sequel to Dead Cells? Unfortunately, it does not. There's this pervasive sluggish feel to the controls and mechanics that was never present in Dead Cells. And where the game deviates from Dead Cells, it only screws things up. For example, in Dead Cells, your primary mechanic of avoiding damage is rolling. You're invulnerable when rolling. And rolling is a simple but beautiful mechanic, because you can roll both into enemies and behind their back, but also away from enemies. This is critical because some enemies have AoE attacks that can catch you behind their back too. Rogue replaces the roll with a vault. How does it work? You press the button, the Prince rushes to the nearest enemy in the direction he's facing, and he vaults over the enemy. But the invulnerability only kicks in during the vault. When rushing to the enemy, you can take damage. This is a gigantic gameplay fail because it makes the most important mechanic in the game inconsistent. In Dead Cells, you press the button, and you're invulnerable for a short period. But in Rogue, you press the button, and the Prince rushes to the enemy. Depending on whether the enemy is near or far, the invulnerability will kick in at different times. It's maddening. Also, you naturally can't vault away from enemies, only into them, which means that AoE enemies make mincemeat of the Prince.

Another new addition to the game (over Dead Cells) is a dedicated kick button. It does no damage, but pushes an enemy away. Kicked enemies can smash into each other, or into a wall, getting stunned. They can also fall off platforms.

The mechanic itself is fine, but it never clicks with the Prince's toolkit. The Prince is largely a melee fighter. So kicking enemies away doesn't work as well as it would've if the Prince could use ranged weapons. And a lot of enemies have ranged attacks, so kicking them is only an invitation to get hit. Yes, there are secondary ranged weapons, but these feel awful to use because they are limited by an energy meter than requires melee to charge, and most of them have a short range anyway.

So, for me, the game doesn't even work as a Dead Cells spiritual sequel.

Writing - It's pedestrian, it's boring, there are no surprises.

Meta Progression - This is pretty decent. I like the skill trees, and each upgrade feels meaningful.

TLDR: If you're looking for PoP nostalgia, play the original trilogy again. If you're looking for a great platformer, play Ori or Celeste or Shovel Knight. If you're looking for a good 2D action game, play Skul or Astral Ascent or Nine Sols. The Rogue Prince of Persia is mediocre and frustrating. It's not worth a purchase.

My earliest memory of the Terminator franchise is hearing a clip of the DVD commentary for the third film being played on the radio. In it Arnold Schwarzenegger talked at length how awesome it was to see a lady Terminator in action, because you get to watch her naked body on entry and she has a scene where she inflates her breasts to entice a cop. I also remember watching Terminator 3 myself on a long plane flight as the only other options were Hulk and The Medallion (2003 was a shit year for film). Indeed, there was a scene of mammary-expansion in the first five minutes. I have no further recollection of the movie.

The thing about the Terminator franchise is that its very premise disallows any real continuation after the original two movies. Skynet only works as a faceless, voiceless army while the messianic John Connor of 2029 is too difficult a figure to envision as a person outside of his single scene. The reason Skynet embarks on this hare-brained scheme with android assassins is because it loses to humanity under John Connor. James Cameron only ever had enough ideas for two movies and every attempt since then to continue the story with different hands just lead to diminishing returns. Perhaps you could approach the material in an oblique manner like Dan Trachtenberg did to rejuvenate the Predator franchise. But given how many production companies have folded because of it the chalice may as well have been poisoned by a time-travelling robot.

I played Terminator: Resistance seven years after launch because Noah-Caldwell Gervais reviewed it at length. The game's gone through numerous patches since release, having bulked in size with DLC, and is often on sale for a song. (Do people still use that figure of speech? Oh, who gives a shit.) The easiest comparison would be Far Cry meets Fallout 3 with a tenth of the budget but no shortage of passion (and no shitty, pretentious ending either).

For the first hour of the game I wasn't feeling it. You've got the traditional AAA opening in a double-A package where you run from Terminators in a future hellscape. You shoot some machines, scavenge for materials and then craft medkits and ammo. The character models for the humans are more robotic than the machines and the voice-direction is similarly weak. In the first sandbox level you are left to your own devices and it felt balls-hard at first, until I got a few skill points under my belt and things started to click into place. A guerilla play-style is encouraged where you take out robots in small groups, exploiting cover, and never engaging in outright warfare unless you have allies backing you up.

Then came the third mission and I was absolutely sold. Here you need to infiltrate a hospital in the dead of night. On hand is a hacking-tool that lets you program enemy turrets into shredding the machines instead of you. What's next is an utterly terrifying sequence where you must bypass patrolling Terminators in the cold light as the music drones on in sheer mechanical dread. The shotgun and Uzi that's kept you safe until now are utterly useless against these chrome killers. It's a simple stealth level that's masterful in its execution, as nothing can convey horror better than crouching behind a concrete barrier alone in the moonlight while a dozen Terminators march by.

The base game is a broken up into eight linear levels and five sandbox-zones where you approach any objective how you please. In between are regular visits to the resistance base where you recover, stock up, chat with your friends and help out. On reflection I'd say the only flabby part of the campaign is the warehouse district you explore twice under the same circumstances, whereas other areas like Pasadena and Downtown aren't rehashed so baldly. The DLC campaign afterwards is a marked increase in difficulty, though the boss at the end goes down remarkably quick.

The whole experience works for me since I've never been interested in games that are strictly shooters. With Resistance you've got stealth, gun-play, crafting, hacking, skill-points, dialogue-trees, optional objectives, and semi-open world areas to scavenge. There's also a quick-melee button you'll use once in the tutorial and then never again. A similar game that comes to mind is Dying Light in how it tells a hero-to-zero narrative in its mechanical progression. When you battle Terminators for the first time you dump your ballistic weapons like the Uzi and the assault rifle in the trash in favour of plasma weapons. These can be modified with randomly dropped chips to increase their damage, clip-size, stability etc. In the endgame you score the second generation of plasma rifles, letting you all but melt Terminators who used to take an entire clip to down for good. At the same time you'll have acquired the regenerating-health perk, making firefights a breeze. There may be some duds in the skill tree, but you can't argue that the games doesn't nail the power fantasy of becoming a hero of the post-apocalypse. Just like James Cameron your character can screw every woman involved in the franchise. The thankfully optional sex-scenes are laughable in a way Garth Marenghi would approve.

Resistance succeeds because it captures the essence of Terminator despite being set in the margins of canon. Instead of the contemporary 80's or 90's setting of the (good) films it takes place in the seldom glimpsed future war of 2029. Don't expect Arnie or Sarah Connor to show up and John Connor is kept to the periphery. While you will mow down an army of Terminators they remain in character as a serious threat throughout. If any foe should be called a bullet-sponge in a video-game the T-800 should wear that label with honour. There are some deep cuts in how Resistance draws from the canon. The resistance base that acts as the hub-level is the same one Kyle Reese visits that's invaded by an Infiltrator with a machine-gun. And that Infiltrator? You get to play as him in an open-world mission where you murder your way through human patrols as you search for intel on John Connor. Kyle Reese himself acts as your CO in the DLC campaign that gives context to his nightmare where he's nearly vaporized by a VTOL and a giant tank.

Resistance does not try to overwrite, subvert, or undermine the duology like the ill-fated sequels. Instead it acts as a companion piece because the developers share the same love for the source-material as you do. People tend to forget that the original Terminator was a B-movie by an unproven director. Some of the producers hated it after watching because it wasn't a schlocky explotation movie; but instead an intense, thoughtful film that was deeply paranoid and the stuff of nightmares. Seldom does any creator knock it out of the park on the first run, and the Resistance developer Teyon sure as hell didn't. Their early work was years of shovelware for the Wii and DS, and their Rambo game is thankfully lost to the annals of history. Reading the initial reviews of Resistance is quite startling as the critics came with knives out for a mid-budget licensed game attached to a dead movie franchise. But time has been kind to the game and the developers' stature has risen thanks to Resistance and their subsequent adaptation of Robocop. It's sobering for me as a wannabe writer to comprehend that you can endure setback after setback as a creator, contending with meagre budgets and crappy reviews, and eventually finding an audience over time. It's the inverse of something like Bioshock: Infinite that scores perfect 9's and 10's on release, only to never be spoken of warmly again.

I put Resistance down upon finishing and uninstalled it. A few hours later I got an itch, reinstalled the game, bought the DLC, and scored an easy but well-earned platinum. Now I have to watch the movies again and find the art books. It's the mark of any good adaptation that it makes you remember why you love the real deal in the first place.

Lords of the Fallen (2023) is a fairly standard soulslike that wasn't well received on release. However, in the spirit of this sub, 2026 is the best time to play because the final 2.5 patch came out in December of 2025. And from what I've read, these updates have created a vastly different experience.

LotF essentially copies the soulslike formula, which is a good thing. Most of the typical mechanics are there - collecting Souls (Vigor) as the primary currency, losing them on death and having one chance to reclaim them, a standard weapon upgrade system, armor that barely matters, great combat built around precise dodging/parrying, flexible builds involving melee/range/spells, absolutely terrible quest design, etc...

The biggest differentiators for LotF are the Umbral Lamp and Umbral Realm. Umbral Realm is a mechanic that exposes various traversal routes, some required and others optional. Dying once in the Normal Realm (Axiom) won't instantly kill you - instead, you get a second life in Umbral Realm.

What I Liked

• Combat was great. I loved the parrying system - multiple parries would eventually stagger a boss and allow a critical hit. What I really liked was that a failed parry would result in a block, leaving some HP "withered" that you could recover by landing hits without taking additional damage. It reminded me a lot of Bloodborne's system to regain HP, but without the time limit.
• One of my favorite parts of soulslike games is the exploration and level design. LotF absolutely delivers here - the levels were engaging to explore and there were plenty of worthwhile rewards. The Umbral mechanic reveals hidden paths/treasures, adding variety and a great sense of discovery. All of the environments looked fantastic as well (minus the Umbral Realm, which looked the same everywhere).

What Was Average

• Difficulty was on the lower side, and I would have liked a bit more challenge. I played with the most basic class (that starts at level 1) and with the new "Veteran" mode which is supposedly harder, but overall I think a lot of the normal soulslike "tension" was missing - I rarely worried about dying during normal exploration (though it's not like I never died).
• LotF has two broad categories of bosses: the major bosses that you'd expect from any soulslike game, and minibosses which would later turn into regular enemies. The primary bosses were mostly excellent and easily the highlights. The minibosses were very average - because they were eventually meant to be normal enemies, they tended to have limited movesets and thus be significantly easier. I would have liked more major bosses overall given the vast quality difference between the two.

What I Didn't Like

• Enemy variety started to dip about ~10-15 hours in, with Umbral enemies being the worst offenders. New areas might introduce one new enemy, but overall you could definitely feel the repetition towards the latter half of the game.
• LotF borrows plenty of great soulslike mechanics, but for whatever reason also decided to adopt one of the worst - completely arbitrary and easy-to-miss side quests. It's incredibly easy to lock yourself out of various questlines with no indication - for example, I locked myself out of one just because I opened a door to a new area (but didn't even do anything in it). I'm not sure why these types of games still continue to use such archaic quest design.
• LotF really seems to encourage multiple playthroughs with vastly different endings and a couple of different bosses. This is more of a personal pet peeve as I rarely want to play NG+, so I'm always annoyed at missing out on content that I can't do in a single run. In addition, many of the side quests encourage two playthroughs as one path will often lead to fighting that character as a boss whereas the other won't.

Final Thoughts

LotF was a great experience overall, with level design and exploration being the standouts for me. The negatives were fairly minor in the grand scheme of things - the core gameplay loop was still extremely solid and engaging. If you're a fan of soulslikes, I'd definitely recommend LotF - especially now that all the patches are out.

Overall Rating: 8 / 10 (Great)

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

MASSIVE SPOILERS INCOMING

My first playthrough clocked in at around 200 hours. I had no experience with D&D, but I love turn-based combat, so that definitely helped me get the hang of things. The start of the game is certainly overwhelming in terms of how many systems there are to understand, but once everything started clicking, I was hooked.

I've never been a fan of making my own characters. One look at Gale and his combat abilities was enough for me to decide that I just wanted to play as him. My custom character would probably have been very similar to him anyway. I understand this is an unpopular choice for a first playthrough, but after subsequently seeing custom-character playthroughs on YouTube, I don't regret my choice one bit.

The combat might actually be my favorite part of the game. It feels like a genuine tactical sandbox rather than a system where you're simply selecting the strongest ability on cooldown. Positioning, high ground, action economy, focus fire, environmental interactions, consumables, resistances, crowd control, preparation and party composition all matter. And the game constantly rewards you for understanding its systems.

The fights were another highlight. Raphael, Grym, the House of Grief, Cazador, the Bhaal Temple, Ketheric, the Myrkul fight, the final approach to the Netherbrain — there were so many encounters that were memorable for completely different reasons. Raphael in particular was one of my favorite boss fights of all time.

My first playthrough wasn't remotely a completionist run, but I tried to follow essentially every active quest thread I came across because I knew I probably wouldn't replay the game immediately. I was playing with a strict rule of no save-scumming until I lost Last Light Inn on my first attempt because Isobel was kidnapped. I eventually reloaded because the outcome felt so poorly signposted that I couldn't accept it as something I had knowingly chosen. Once I understood what was happening, I replayed the situation and saved everyone.

I wasn't nearly as thorough with Act 1 as I was with Acts 2 and 3. That's a little regrettable in hindsight, but I simply wasn't enjoying the game as much in Act 1. The story really picked up for me around the end of Act 1, and the combat also started to shine much more brightly around that point.

And then there are the companions.

Shadowheart immediately became my favorite, and her entire storyline ended up being one of my favorite parts of the game. Lae'zel was another character I absolutely loved, and Astarion went from someone I wasn't sure about to becoming a permanent member of my party.

My final party was Gale, Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Astarion. I respec'd everyone mechanically but kept their original classes because changing their identities felt wrong to me.

The ending was awesome in terms of the outcomes.

I freed Orpheus, who became a mind flayer and sacrificed himself. Lae'zel went off to fight Vlaakith. Karlach and Wyll went to Avernus together. Astarion refused to ascend. And I chose not to become a god.

I had romanced Shadowheart, and ultimately chose a normal life with her rather than pursuing godhood. There was something incredibly satisfying about that conclusion. Mystra's final words to me, "I will always answer your prayers," were one of those little moments that stayed with me.

I actually went back and tried the godhood ending afterward just to see what happened, and it made me appreciate the original ending even more. God Gale meeting Shadowheart essentially as a friend was fucking depressing.

There are definitely things I didn't love.

I felt the game tricked us into looting everything at the start, but it became increasingly pointless. Initially, we were getting important loot from wooden boxes and even barrels, but that wasn't really the case as the game progressed. There are just too many empty boxes as the game goes on, which makes looting increasingly tedious.

I also felt that the book-reading experience was somewhat ruined by the fact that the game gives you no indication of whether you've already read a book. By Act 3, almost every other book was a repeat. With the sheer number of books in the game, it's impossible to immediately know whether you've read something before, and it's frustrating to realize that you've already read it halfway through the book.

I eventually just stopped reading books because of this.

And that's actually a shame, because you can probably tell how much I loved the lore of the world and was genuinely interested in reading all of this stuff. A simple indicator showing whether I'd already read a book would have made a huge difference.

My last complaint is regarding some of the "choices" in the game that felt pointless and were basically an illusion of choice.

If refusing to kneel before a god can result in a game over, then that choice shouldn't exist in the first place. It's a videogame, not real life. Nobody is going to stop playing after getting a game-over screen and consider that outcome canon. They're going to reload and kneel so they can continue the game.

And that actually undermines one of the things I love most about BG3: the feeling that I'm genuinely in control of my character's story.

Despite those complaints, I have an extremely hard time thinking of another game that gives me this much freedom while also having combat this good, characters this memorable, and a world this reactive.

And the biggest compliment I can give it is that after spending around 200 hours on my first playthrough, I immediately wanted to see what happens if I make completely different choices.

So I'm currently doing exactly that.

10/10.

So I had never played a GTA game before this one, but figured now was as good a time as any. I had high hopes, thinking I would be met with a similar type of game to rdr2 with very human writing focused largely on character growth and interaction rather than an overarching interesting plot. And I definitely got a game not that interested in telling an interesting plot, that's for sure. This writeup is mostly about GTA V, but I think it is interesting to examine why these games feel so different.

Spoilers incoming!

A bit about rdr2

Rdr2 is at its core - at least in my opinion - a game that takes itself incredibly seriously. It touches on themes of mortality, morality and society in ways I feel actually manages to have a message that isn't surface level. Arthur Morgan is a bad man who grows to realize that for himself, and ultimately manages to see what he does and who he hangs with for what it is and who they are - bad people desperate to cling onto their dying lifestyles while screwing over literally everybody in the process of maintaining that lifestyle. The gradual change throughout its relatively lengthy playtime is genuinely extremely well done and by the end of the game I found myself absolutely enraptured in the story the game was trying to tell. Not because of the story, but because of the characters.

A longer bit about GTA V

So when I recently decided to play through GTA V, a game that the gaming sphere at large seems to hold to the highest standard, and is frequently brought up as the bastion of game design and quality, I expected something similar. I have read many stories about how this is the game that tackles satire in a mature manner, delivers high octane action with great moments and takes the piss out of anyone and everyone. I have even read people stating the writing is Oscar worthy. Now I would never claim to be a great analyst of narratives, but I have to wonder if I played a completely different game than everyone praising it because the game is just so deeply unserious.

Now, credit where it's due, the game still holds up incredibly well on a technical level. The city is probably (even to this day) the most realistic one I have ever seen in terms of npcs, driving and their AI behavior. Motion capture is impeccable and voice acting is great. I could listen to Lamar and Franklin bicker for hours and still find it funny. The amount of systems at play and interacting here is truly exceptional, and it's easy to understand why this was so beloved back in the day for the technical reasons alone. The driving also feels snappy and responsive, which is nice because you spend probably at least half the game driving around in the city.

That being said, I find it equally frustrating when the realistic feeling world and systems interact with other completely unrealistic scenarios. The cops are super competent until they are just absolutely not. The characters can kill whoever at any point and face no consequences. Hide for two seconds in an alley, and you're. And the cops are of course unable to stop you, even when driving a massive garbage truck. I understand why it has to be like this for the game, but it really does take me out of it.

Then we come to my biggest issue with the game; its writing. The main cast are three absolutely awful men with little to no redeeming qualities. They largely undergo no character growth, so the final scene (if you decide to pick the deathwish option in the final mission) of the main cast pushing Devin Weston while seemingly trying to give some weird meta commentary on "how they might not be better than them" kinda rings hollow. Michael is still the same angry piece of shit, yelling at her wife, Franklin seems to just do whatever the hell other people tell him to while not thinking and Trevor is, well... Trevor. High on meth, eating human meat. I don't think Rockstar neessarily wanted us to root for them in the final scene, but I got the feeling they didn't want me to hate them either. But obviously this is just me guessing.

The story also goes absolutely nowhere. There were times when I was feeling "oh damn, shit is finally about to go down. Everything is about to culminate in some huge shitstorm". Tense music, a potential showdown between the characters, maybe some unexpected twists and turns? And it always just leads to... nothing? "Something interesting might happen here", nope nvm. The standoff between Trevor and Michael at Brad's grave leads to nothing of any real significance or character growth. The game seemingly can't help itself from taking nothing serious at all. Because - again - the game is deeply unserious at its core.

Every heist just works out well. Every time I think something bad is about to happen, it never does. And thats the thing. GTA V's story is a series of nothing-burgers followed by the three main characters learning nothing and facing no consequences. I have seen plenty of takes about how the heists are super exciting, but I just have to wonder why. They always work out for the main cast, so it doesn't go anywhere interesting.

The potential power of curation

I know a lot of people have major issues with the strictness of both games' mission structure and how you're actively punished for doing anything off the beaten path. While I understand this criticism, I personally found this to actually be to rdr2's favor. The linearity forces the narrative in the exact direction they want, and I don't think it would work as well without it. The same goes for the curation of the camera, cinematography in general, and above all else - the music. When "Unshaken" plays as Arthur rides back to camp after Guarma, that feeling of serenity riding back in the middle of the night is simply outstanding. The same can be said for Arthur's last ride with "That's The Way It Is". The music complements the story.

I am sure I could have said the same thing about GTA V, but it just does not work as well. Some crucial moments have you riding around in your car with the same radio as always. The tension is rising in the narrative (seemingly), but you are still listening to the same songs that doesn't fit the mood at all. Juxtaposing these experiences really highlights to me why rdr2 succeeded where GTA V failed in my opinion. This is also true with the mission structure. It seems less sensible to be this restrictive when the story doesn't develop and the general structure of the game seems to lean more heavily int the sandbox approach.

Bottom line

Both rdr2 and GTA V are good games at their core. Technical achievements, incredible amount of gameplay variety, chock-full of things to do and see. I have no issue understanding why people like GTA V as much as they do. Especially if people are looking for a fun time with a world one can just mess around in. But where rdr2 delivers a gripping, emotional narrative touching on interesting themes, I struggle to understand what GTA is trying to say at all. At least beyond the classical lukewarm takes about capitalism.

This year has been one of experimental variety and a realignment of values in what I am looking for in video games as a man now in his mid-thirties.

Normally, I am a big RPG-head, specifically JRPGs, but lately I find myself drifting further and further away from what might be called modern day RPG releases because I am beginning to notice more and more that so many games nowadays don't respect your time. I need only look at my favorites I played this year to see a very clear deviation from what I usually enjoy. One might expect other more recent jrpgs to be among my top picks, but in truth I dropped them cause I found it demanded much and returned little. The exact opposite of that problem was -

Metroid Dread

This was my dark horse pick of the year. Something so out of left field from what I usually swing at because traditionally, I don't necessarily really like sidescrollers. I don't typically play Castlevania's or Shovel Knights, or Hollow Knight Silksongs, etc. They just never gel'd with me. With Metroid Dread, that changed this year.

I always try to remember that even with genres I may not like, there could always be an exception. I don't like puzzle games, and yet the Portal games were the exception to the rule. In the case of Metroid-likes/Metroidvanias or whatever you want to call them, Metroid Dread was that exception.

First thing that immediately stuck out to me. Samus plays like a dream. Every action, every little movement is satisfyingly snappy, which thank the gods, because as I had come to find, this game was particularly demanding in terms of skill. I probably could have chosen an easier title for a first time playthrough of one of these games, but I am glad it was Metroid Dread that broke through the barrier of my pre-conceieved notions. Never once in this game, when I died a million times to the E.M.M.I's or to the bosses that it was the game's fault that I died. I always knew there was something I did wrong.

Maybe I missed a parry? Maybe I wasn't paying attention to the boss tells or maybe I just simply wasn't fast enough. With the exception of a couple times at the end, did I ever feel like the game was going out of its way to be cheap or conceal information from me. It was probably the biggest example I had played of this year that embodied the concept of, "challenging, but fair."

Second thing I notice is that Samus has a surprising amount of personality for being so silent and stoic. And I am not just talking about the cutscenes where she aura farms all over the bosses (The slow walk down on the first boss while she charges her beam cannon will never not be sick as fuck), but its the very animations in which she plays. The slides, the aiming, and the run and grapples and rolls. I feel like I am not just controlling Jane sidescroller woman. I playing as motherfucking Samus Aran, and by the end of the game I can say without a shadow of a doubt that as far as Nintendo properties go, Samus is my favorite character. Yes, technically she's just Nintendo's more feminine Doom Guy, but damn if it doesn't work for her.

Most surprisingly, is that I enjoyed the one aspect of this game that I was concerned with the most. Exploration.

Its not really my idea of a fun time getting lost in a sidescrolling labyrinth with re-spawning enemies, but somehow, Metroid Dread made it work for me. its probably because the game understands that "being lost" does not need to equate to "wasting time". The game is chock full of upgrades, and having to double back trying to find my way to the next major progression point usually meant doing a wide sweep of previously inaccessible areas to collect energy tanks, missile upgrades (soooo many missile upgrades), and even stumble into some shortcuts that you never even knew was there. Getting lost in Metroid Dread was actually a joy, and while the game world is pretty big, it also isn't so big that a thorough sweep of well-trodden ground wouldn't reveal the way forward in at least a couple hours.

Getting lost was actually a joy to experience. Once I understood that, I started to really start to understand the appeal of these games and appreciate it for what it was.

If there was one thing I wasn't exactly too thrilled about, was the sections of the game regarding the E.M.M.I's. Its not the games fault. Stealth sections have historically been my least favorite mechanics to partake in. Even in games like Ghost of Tsushima, I almost always eschewed the safer stealth assasin routes in favor of harder combat encounters cause I don't like just sitting around and waiting for enemies to pass me by. What I will say is that when you finally find the Control Unit for each zone, and the game presents you with a little environmental puzzle for you to solve so you can get enough room to destroy the E.M.M.I, I actually really liked that. I also won't deny that the E.M.M.I's give a feeling of unique tension to the game. They are some scary fast robots man. They actually remind me of an old movie called Red Planet where the designs of the robots are suspiciously similar in a few core fashions..hmmmm.

So yeah, it took me a couple hours to beat the final boss of Metroid Dread, and after that exhilarating escape sequence, I think its safe to say that I am a fan of Metroid.

Sort of.

It took me 3 Ace Combat games last year before I considered myself a fan of the ENTIRE franchise, so saying that liking Metroid Dread makes me a Metroid fan seems a bit dishonest to me.

Perhaps its better to say that I am now more of a fan of modern Metroid.

Either way, Metroid Dread has cemented itself as one of the best games I've played this year. If you are like me and not a big fan of sidescrollers, maybe give this one a shot. It was my exception, maybe it can be yours to.

Growing up, I never had a good PC nor a console. So I missed out on a lot of franchises that were originally on console even if they later came to PC, such as Final Fantasy or Resident Evil. Lately with the remakes of a lot of these games, I have been giving them a try. I was initially hesitant to try Resident Evil 4 Remake because I thought it was a horror game with jump scares, which is usually not what I look for in a game. Watching some gameplay though, it seemed to have a lot of shooter elements, so I gave it a try.

Gameplay :

I do like the slower and methodical style of play. That's right up my alley. It gives the combat weight and makes it feel like every decision you makes matters. What I liked a lot less, is that a lot of the difficulty of the combat encounters comes down to knowledge. Knowing where and when enemies are spawning or what gimmick a boss is using, is huge. So typically a second attempt at a fight is going to go ten times as smooth as your first crack at it. I see why that works well for those looking to replay the game, which is something the game incentivizes, but for me it was often frustrating.

What I did mostly like, was that the game is essentially one big resource manager. It added some intensity to the combat and it gave me the incentive to try to improve my play and to try new things. At times it got a bit old to scour every single corner for resources, but overall I liked it. Some other mechanics such as the save system, shop and firing range felt a bit dated at times, which I suppose is normal with a remake.

Atmosphere :

Great. Very few notes. I liked the mix of corny action movie and horror.

Story :

For the love of God Ashley, stop getting captured. The lore was great and the story was entertaining, but I do feel like a bit too much time was spent on everyone repeatedly getting captured and trying to regroup. It enabled some fun gameplay moments, but story-wise it was a bit silly and made me roll my eyes a few times.

Conclusion :

I enjoyed it. I do have to admit that I do not yet fully understand why this series has so many deeply dedicated fans. Maybe it's because I did not play the original games and have less of a frame of reference. Playing the remake, there were definitely a lot of elements that I would have considered revolutionary back in 2005. It just did not always translate to my modern day gamer brain though. Overall I would give it an 8/10. Maybe 8.5/10.

I will start with a bit of background information regarding my experience with the rest of the series.

I played Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus first in 2023 on my phone with a PSP emulator just because I did not have a good PC back then and was looking for some good games to emulate. I liked them both a lot in gameplay, presentation and how they incorporate the Greek mythos. Later I played Gow 1 in 2024 and GoW 2 in 2025 by emulating on my PC. GoW 2 was the game that totally blew my mind and made me hooked to the series and want for more. I played GoW 3 and then the 2018 game back to back this year. I really loved how much they actually cared to develop Kratos as a character even in the last game of the main trilogy. I loved the punchy writing in the Greek games and how they incorporated little bits of classical Greek mythos tropes like hubris, nemesis, ananke, cynicism, prophecy and fate, metis etc. The ending was truly great in GoW 3 and actually directly ties into the recent game.

Now coming to the 2018 'reboot', I do think that the advertisement of this game as a soft reboot and not including a number in the title is a disservice to the game. Yes it can definitely be enjoyed as an entry point but lots of subtle writing cues will be missed. I will include only one example of the hundreds throughout the game- when Atreus fires the arrow in a hurry and Kratos shouts at him and immediately takes a deep breath and calms his voice tells so much to the player who has played the previous games. Like many I was skeptical when it won GOTY over RDR2, but after playing it I can surely say that it deserves every praise that it gets.

Story and presentation-

One of the best in the medium, period. The pace of storytelling is great in a sense that it never bombards the player with information, but introduces new questions and answers previous ones at a steady rate throughout the game. The family-focussed writing slowly escalates into geopolitical conspiracies involving the future of a whole realm but that focus on family is never compromised. The side missions were actually great and involved the similar themes as the main story and gave the characters more depth ultimately. The small cast of side characters were all expertly written with their own quirks, they commented on stuff that was going around and was incorporated into the main story. It always felt that everyone had their own little things going on and the player character was never the center piece. One particular example I really loved- Brok and Sindri ended their feud by themselves in the background, Kratos and Atreus were catalysts but it was them who did the actual work, and then we see them together further developing their relationship in bits and pieces of dialogue. This particular event was extremely important but not made into an explicit side quest. Atreus is the main character in the game and his development was substantial. How he reacts to being told that he is a god was so endearing. Then how he succumbed to rage and madness just like many gods including Kratos but eventually came around was reflected not only in cutscenes but general attitude, banter and gameplay. Coming to banter and lore, this game has one of the best systems to deliver lore to the player in bite-sized pieces. The little stories by Mimir

in the boat and other exploration added so much flavour and background information about this world. Baldur also deserves special mention. His sensory deprivation and madness is so appropriately shown. At the end when Kratos actually decides that he is too far gone and needs to be cut down, not just for vengeance or safety but on a principle was chilling. That moment makes sense and hits hard because Baldur and Freya were written so well. And of course there's THE famous moment in the game, that section was when the game actually surpassed my expectations. The slow camera pan, the music, absolute great weiting and voice acting, the desperation of Kratos and the immediate effects in gameplay were all just perfect. Also the moment when Atreus pulls Kratos out of the light in Alfheim and the heaps of dead elves send shivers down the spine of both Kratos and the player. That was a close second for me as a great moment in the game. The ending was great too. It resolves the main theme of mutual trust and acceptance while opening up the world for a larger scale and stakes for the next game. Lastly, I must mention the way the game sometimes reacts to the player action in an unexpected way. Atreus says 'are you trying to teach me something?' if you just hack your weapons when there're no enemies or when he says 'are you going to carry that everywhere?' if you keep carrying light crystals for puzzle solving or when he says 'you really like breaking pottery, huh'- these little attention to details were hilarious.

Gameplay-

I played on give me a challenge difficulty. The early game was really brutal, but it became easier with time. Overall the combat mechanics were pretty satisfying and had enough depth to keep me engaged for its runtime. Chaining some of the combos was pretty fun too. Atreus becomes a really strong ally as well, which I really liked as it is really lore accurate. The game did lack enemy variety and especially boss variety. The guardian of Helheim being another troll was an immense let down. Hope they really improve it in the sequel. The set pieces and large scale battles were great but there were like 2-3 of them in the whole game, which is too less for a GoW game honestly. The valkeryies, especially Sigrun were the most enjoyable combat encounters and the epitome of reactive combat encounters. Context dependent jumping and actions felt a bit weird early on but I think I got used to it and it did not bother me that much. Both damage and defense are ultimately tied to gear level more than raw stats, which was fine. It's kind of a mixture of rarity based loot, bit of rpg and rng and picking particular special attacks- good thing is it does not demand too much time on the menu but the bad thing is it's rarely interesting or satisfying in itself. Maybe I am coming across as a bit negative on the gameplay, but the basic combat loop was actually pretty enjoyable throughout. It's just that it always felt like there could be a bit more variety.

Graphics and design-

It's a gorgeous game and the art design is great. They capture the essence of the norse mythos pretty well with their aesthetics in the environment, enemy design and character designs. Mane areas were excellent in their design- Thamur's corpse and Tyr's temple and vault deserve special mention. Music was great and elevated some of the moments by a lot.

Overall, a solid 9.5/10 for me. They changed so much from the older games including the whole gameplay system, presentation, camera angle, writing style and did them extremely well, which really is rare in today's AAA industry. Looking forward to continuing the journey in Ragnarok! The secret scene with Thor was so hype at the end

Tomb Raider (2013) is an action adventure game developed by Crystal Dynamics. Released in 2013, Tomb Raider reminds us that falling is the most energy efficient method of travel.

We play as archaeologist Lara Croft on a personal quest to find the hidden civilization of Yamatai and the treasures that probably belong in a museum.

Gameplay involves swearing we're just going to enjoy the game and not hunt for all the little secret hidden collectables, then realizing who are we kidding, of course we are going to. We then begin to wonder who brought deer to the island and how many does a girl have to kill to make them extinct.

The Good

The art direction is top notch. Or at least it was once I remembered to turn the graphics quality up. I played through about a third of the game on low settings wondering why everything looked like it was wrapped in plastic, figuring it was just early 2010's jank. Once I fixed that it was an indeed an absolutely striking experience. It's vibrant, colorful, varied and just chock full of amazing views and they did a great job of making the island seem much bigger than it is.

To that point, the summer blockbuster feel is great. Lots of explosions, chase sequences, slow motion jumps and all that. There's plenty of goons to shoot with barrels full of explosive placed in useful locations. It has that 'Indiana Jones' but with the murder dial cranked up to 11 feel. I was also impressed by how well it controlled during the more parkourish sections. Lara just always did what I wanted her to do. Faceplanting Faith from Mirrors Edge should take lessons.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/LoBJnJn.png

Alternate working title, "Lara Croft: Deer Hunter"

The Bad

I have two issues with this one.

The first is mostly self-inflicted. If you look for all the hidden documents and collectables it's going to absolutely shred the pacing. Tomb Raider is at it's best when you're feeling the rush but if you stop to scour the island for all the books/relics it's going to turn into a slog because of how difficult it is to find everything, especialy the GPS caches. You can sort of ignore it, but a lot of the backstory is in the hidden journals so you miss out on that if you don't get involved in the scavenger hunt.

The second is that "Lara falls down" is ridiculously overdone. Every single segment features her enduring a 20+ foot fall at least four or five times. I began to wonder if she had an adamantium skeleton. Every area transition or cutscene there's a roughly 50/50 shot that she's going to faceplant from a lethal height and brush it off.

It made the entire thing unbelievable. Ancient spirits, haunted ruins, portals to another world? Makes sense. Action girl survives a 160 foot drop onto concrete? Who do you take me for.

The Questionable

There isn't much in the way of difficulty. The most brain-teasing puzzle I came across was an optional one where you had to time two jumps while a buoy goes in a circle around a lazy river. Not exactly breaking the mental bank there. Combat is very generous, doing that 'quickly recover' thing if you duck out of line of fire for at least a few seconds. Most enemies die in one hit while you can walk off two shotgun blasts to the face. I guess maybe she is part Wolverine.

It's not necessarily bad, but can get a bit dull given that it's supposed to be an action game. There's no sense of danger ever. Literally the most dangerous part of the game are the quick time events where on the PC it's a dark red letter on a dark background and you can't tell if you're supposed to mash E or F this time. You'd think game developers would have figured out to use different colors for different letters but apparently I should go fuck myself.

And that's after I had to down-patch the game version because the current version has a bug where the QTE prompt is off screen for some people and the devs just said, 'You can entirely go fuck yourself' and left it like that for the last 3 years.

Final Thoughts

It was a decent romp. The lack of challenge meant I mostly just pushed forward, but it also meant that I didn't have to sit there reloading any unnecessary bullshit sections over and over again. It was good enough that I'm invested enough to want to play the next two in the trilogy in a few years when I've forgotten the plot of this one and wonder who everyone is.

Bonus Thought

Women everywhere must be envious of Lara's pants pockets. I know, I know, video game inventories and all that, but at one point she just sort of shoves a whole sword into her back pocket alongside her shotgun. Not to mention everything else culturally relevant to an indigenous people that's going to end up in a British museum she's got jammed in there. Lara, how much junk do you have in your trunk?

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

The Premise: Marvel's Midnight Suns is turn based tactics game similar to Firaxis Games' XCOM series, with some obvious inspiration from Fire Emblem Three Houses.

There is a similar setup of combat missions and activities at homebase. Each mission involves a team of 3, and they are either Story missions or side missions you can do to gain specific resources and random cardpacks. Combat is differentiated by having cards that are drawn each turn that dictate what actions can be done, as well as environmental interactions. Homebase activities are greatly expanded on, with character interactions and developing friendship with the various characters. And unlike the nameless soldiers that can get permanently killed and replaced in XCOM, the characters here are the established Marvel characters with their own journey. There is a self-insert character, the Hunter, that allows you to interact with the different heroes, to support or antagonize your friendship.

The Good:

• Combat is fun, as the various character's movesets are flashy and feel consistent with how we imagine these Marvel characters to be. Managing positioning, taking advantage of environmental attacks, and not needing to worry about 99% chance attacks missing all feels great. There is a good rhythm of bringing characters on missions, getting card packs and choosing which new ability we want for a specific character, trying out that card on another mission, and then having new characters join the team. Characters feel distinct enough that it made me want to try every character and use their various abilities.

• Character interactions are a highlight, with every Marvel character feeling like a distinct character that matches with how we would imagine them to be (the biggest highlight for me was Spiderman's awkward energy). There is a 'group chat' that all the heroes are on, and there will be different posts you can read back at the home base. Not only are some of them pretty humorous, but they also serve to highlight the different personalities of the characters.

The Neutral:

• Enemy variety is pretty good, but some of the Hydra soldiers aren't differentiated enough at a general glance. For example, the stealth Hydra soldier has to be handled in an intentional way, but when I'm presented with the isometric view of the field, I can't obviously tell which of the 6 soldiers is the stealth one. I have to intentionally zoom in on the character model to make out the difference between the special rifle this character has vs the standard rifle of a common goon.

• The Hunter seemingly has a pretty monotone delivery and dialogue. Part of that is that the Hunter is resurrected from olden days, but it just doesn't seem to match with how effusive the Marvel characters regard the Hunter to be. Its better then the silent protagonist in many games though.

• There are combo attack cards that have flashy canned animations, but there isn't as much interplay between the heroes cards as I'd like. For example, it seems only a few characters can apply a Stun effect, but only those character plus the Hunter can modify their card's effects based on the active stun effect. Or I think only one character can apply a Bleed effect, and only that same character manipulates the Bleed effect.

• And, while I loved the character interactions, the storytelling itself is disjointed. The plot for the most part is okay, but it constantly seems like there are interstitial scenes missing in between each story beat. For example, heroes will fail and escape but still be confident that the heroes that stayed behind will be fine against the enemy that they already failed against and had to escape from, until suddenly they decide to return. Or Macguffin #1 will be revealed, heroes will try to get it, fail, and then heroes will suddenly know that Macguffin #2 is what they have to do. Or there will be story beats about team conflicts coming to a head, but outside of a few homebase dialogue interactions, there is no actual evidence about the team conflict occurring in the story mission or gameplay. It feels much less impactful for characters to complain about being sidelined from the team when they've been participating in missions without any issue.

• While character dialogue was largely correct, there were a few out-of-order dialogue occurrences. There will be dialogue about things occurring in order 1-2-3-4, but then randomly there will be conversations like we're back at step 2.

The Bad:

• The worst part is the game's overreliance on cutscene incompentence / losing during the cutscene. My heroes will defeat the enemy and complete the objective, then the cutscene starts and has the heroes get defeated by the enemy / stand there and let the enemy take the macguffin / just let the enemy run away / heroes run away even though it seems like they could fight and win. And because they let the supervillain win in the cutscene, I am forced to fight them several times on different missions, with nothing changing about the supervillain's abilities.

The Takeaway: Overall this is a great game. Although it seems like every new indie game is a roguelike card battler, I really enjoyed how the card system is implemented here. If you like tactical strategy games, if you like Marvel superheroes, or if you like card battlers, I'd recommend giving this game a try.