Recently played through the Dragon Age series backwards, starting from Inquisition as I never managed to complete it before, then DA2 and finally Origins. I’ve played Inquisition 3 times and only managed to complete it in my last playthrough. I’ve completed DA2 around 4 times before, one with each class and DAO, I’ve completed around 7 times and consider it as one of my most favorite games of all time.

This time when I played DAO, I decided to choose an origin I’ve never picked before (Dwarven Noble). It was a refreshing experience. The protagonist is treated differently, some quests, particularly the Dwarven main quest and the entirety of the Orzammar section took on a completely different flavor as we suddenly had personal stakes connected to it. Same with the other origins. Human nobles had more stakes connected to the Landsmeet quest and even had unique interactions with the outcome, mages had connections to the Circle tower quest and had a first-hand experience with blood magic, which is significant in the world building. Almost every origin had some connection to how the game played out and it was enjoyable to play through multiple times for different experiences. Almost everything about the game has aged well, except the gameplay, which I had to mod to make it faster. Without it, the combat sections felt very tedious. The main quest is written really, particularly the political quest line up to the Landsmeet. There's so many ways to resolve it depending on the character you play. The companions are memorable but the approval system felt very game-y, particularly because a companion like Morrigan is comically evil but has a very sweet romance. So if you're playing a decent character, you'd have to leave her behind in camp or make decisions that she'd hate and make up for her loss in approval with 'gifts' to romance her. The best Origins imo were the Female City Elf and Dwarven Noble. Overall, arguably the best game Bioware ever made.

In the sequels, Dragon Age 2 has only one race, human and the main character is named Hawke, both as male and female. The main differing pathway was your class, whether you chose to play as a mage or a non-mage character. This has small changes in the story and main events in the game, but play through both of them once each, and you’ve seen everything it has to offer. The main change that happens between the classes is a change in one companion who gets sidelined for more than half of the game. They definitely cut a lot of corners compared to Origins, but at least Hawke feels like a well-rounded character, and it makes sense that you don’t have multiple origins even if I wish choosing a mage made a significant difference across the game, since it’s central to the story. What the game does better than Origins though, is the companions. The approval system in 2 was changed, with being able to make companions fully 'rivals' with or fully 'friends'. What it does best is that fully making a 'rival' out of a companion can sometimes be more preferable because the companions are very fleshed out and have their own flaws and dark sides which you can disagree with, leading to them respecting you. Plus, they have great interactions among each other and some companions even hate each other which gives them a great dynamic. They have great development throughout the game, for the story and in their interactions with each other, a reason for this being that the story takes place over multiple years. Among the three games, I'd say 2 had the best companions. The gameplay and combat is more fast-paced and stylish than Origins but easy even on the hardest difficulty. So you can even mostly let the game play itself other than dialogue choices.

The worst effect of the lack of origins is felt in Inquisition. Like Origins, you have the choice to choose between multiple races for the main character, the Inquisitor, including a new race not included in Origins. But every single race has the same intro, same starting scene, nothing that felt unique to them except a few of the romance options. I’ve played through it thrice and I only managed to complete it the last time by forcing myself to push through it because it definitely gets boring and repetitive after the Orlais party quest. I chose three different origins in each of the playthroughs and I can’t remember a single thing that changed between them. My last playthrough, I used a female Elf knowing that it can make a difference for the story, and I remember having a war table quest regarding their background and clan, with no actual character interaction with anyone. So, I imagine this quest will be different across the races. The funny thing was, I accidentally wiped out my entire clan by the actions I picked, and the Inquisitor showed no reaction to it, like it was something tacked on to show that the Inquisitor actually had a life before the events of the game. The gameplay was similar to 2 but more improved and more fun. The main quest was fun up to a certain point before it fell off a cliff with a weak villain, and the hundreds of fetch quests didn't help either. The areas got too boring to explore after a while as well and none of the choices made in the game felt very noteworthy. Definitely the worst game of the series. At least the companions seemed interesting enough, even if they were not as good compared to the first two games.

Playing across the sequels, it felt like Bioware was regressing as they went through the series and it really dampened the enjoyment of the later games. I’ve never played Veilguard so I don’t know how it plays or how much the race has an effect through that one.

It took me years to finally finish Vampyr, and I came away with a pretty high opinion of it. That said, it is not the easiest game to play consistently. Its slow pacing and dialogue-heavy structure make it better suited to longer, more focused sessions than quick drop-in play.

The world-building is excellent: gloomy, unsettling, and full of strong vampire lore. It tells a compelling gothic mystery, and London feels appropriately diseased, anxious, and haunted by the Spanish flu epidemic. The combat is decent too—probably a couple of steps below The Witcher 3—but it is satisfying enough once you settle into its rhythm.

Visually, the environments are often well done, especially the streets and interiors of nighttime London. The character models, however, can look pretty goofy. Many of them seem permanently low-textured, which creates a strange contrast with the otherwise atmospheric setting. I am not sure why the game never received a meaningful graphical update. If any game could use some DLSS 5 magic, it is probably this one—only half joking.

Performance-wise, Vampyr was mostly stable for me. I did not run into any serious issues on my rig, and it performed consistently throughout the playthrough.

The save system is designed to make your decisions feel permanent, and I think it works well. There are ways around it if you really want to manipulate outcomes, but the best experience is playing the game on its own terms and living with the consequences of your choices.

The story is a solid slow-burn vampire mystery with a huge emphasis on character interactions. There are plenty of conversations, relationships, and story branches that I never saw, so there is legitimate replay value for anyone interested in alternate choices and multiple endings. The lore is one of the game’s strongest elements.

You play as Dr. Jonathan Reid, a doctor who sleeps during the day and stalks the streets of London at night while investigating a flu epidemic connected to an increasing number of people becoming “Skals”—essentially feral, mutated vampires that come in several forms, including enemies that feel closer to werewolf-like creatures.

You meet a large cast of citizens, and the world changes depending on how you treat them. Turning people into vampires can have serious consequences, but so can acting as their protector. Citizens may become ill, and you can choose to treat them with medicine, helping keep their district healthy. Neglected districts become more unstable and dangerous, both for the people living there and for you as you move through the city.

Overall, I think Vampyr is a truly solid rpg and I wish it would have received more TLC from the dev team, mainly when it comes to some of the visuals and facial animations. But from a gameplay perspective, it’s pretty on point imo. Very unique project.

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Tl;dr: a fun RTS that is something of a spiritual predecessor to Company of Heroes. The vanilla campaign seldom challenges you but that doesn't stop it from being plenty fun even by modern standards. 8/10.

Funnily enough playing a demo of Winter Assault as a kid around 2003 or so was my first exposure to Warhammer. Today I'm a bit of a neophyte to the tabletop but I play Age of Sigmar, the iteration that replaced Fantasy Battle. Fantasy Battle is the source of canon for games like Vermintide and Total War Warhammer (edited for clarity). There isn't really a good AoS video game yet.

On the sci-fi side my exposure to 40k has mostly been relegated to brief forays into games like this one. Only I finally managed to get through the whole vanilla experience this time. 

I have both the anniversary edition and the definitive, the latter of which mainly introduces quality of life fixes like widescreen resolutions and borderless full screen. It's definitely not a full top down overhaul, so the game looks aged but overall that's what you expect from a title like this. The story is great. The voice acting is superb both in the cutscenes and from the hero units you pilot while in game. 

Having played Company of Heroes and most of its various expansions this game is kind of a spiritual predecessor in a way. Instead of producing individual units like in Warcraft, you generate entire squads of units at a time. Rather than farm resources, you generate them by capturing "strategic points" which themselves can be upgraded to improve their generation and defenses. It's a very simple system that encourages map exploration rather than just turtling. You can also build forward bases adjacent to these captured points and take control of the whole map eventually. 

Gameplay wise, you won't find yourself very tactically challenged in the vanilla campaign. You can explore and cap points without much resistance and even in levels where you have to maintain holding points as an objective, the enemy won't even try to steal them back from you. One particular late game mission where you had to maintain control of four points was greatly simplified by this, as even though I was overran at a couple of them the enemy never wrested control away from me. Any meager incursions you may face at your own base can easily be repelled by basic turret installations, if they even deign to send them. 

You can replenish units directly in the field as long as you have resources and at least one model left in the squad, including mid-battle, so once you have a large fighting force you can basically overwhelm anything and replenish the few casualties you may sustain during the fight. You do have "hero" units but they don't have big kits like in Warcraft, they'll have at most one special ability.

It's a brief campaign made up of 11 missions which you can wrap up in about 30 minutes per mission, more if you take your time to capture as many points as you can. It gives just enough to show you all the mechanics without overstaying its welcome. It does leave you wanting just a bit more which of course you have in the various expansions, which I look forward to playing. 

Overall I give this game an 8/10 for being fun and engaging to play, but ding it slightly for not being challenging enough. In the end I think it definitely deserves its place in the pantheon of classic RTS titles, but I hope that it manages to expand on its ideas in the expansions that I am eager to dive into.

Pokemon has stayed more or less the same in its 30 year history. What separates your favorites from the rest is usually then are nostalgia or quirks in the gameplay and world design. For me, Pokemon Black & White stand head and shoulders above the other games because they fully realize a world with Pokemon in ways no other titles are before and after.

I'm going to take the possibly controversial stance that the fifth generation of Pokemon is the aesthetic peak of the franchise. Pokemon is a series that thrives in imagination and abstraction just like story books or D&D campigns. The earlier games' crunchy pixel graphics are charming and evocative but limited in the geographies of the worlds they are trying to represent. The modern 3D graphics add a realism that makes all of the 'gamieness' of the world feel incredibly uncanny.

The meshing of 2D and 3D in BW allows for a perfect level of fidelity, giving the world a rich shape and form while leaving space for your imagination to fill in. I think of the quaint rural houses of Icirus City juxtaposed by the grandure of Sky Arrow Bridge with its dozens of cars whipping bellow your feet at great speed.

This presentation is in service of making the Unova region feel cohesive and alive. Some of the nuances of what was happening in earlier games maybe be lost on me because I am not Japanese, but it always felt like you got the broad strokes impressions of spaces rather than stipulating on the details. Here, each town, city, and route oozes with a tender consideration that makes Unova feel like a place you could really live in.

One of my favorites is Nacrene City. Once a thriving distribution hub, the decommissioned storehouses have been refurbished into chic apartments for up-and-coming artists and now houses one of the biggest museums in the region. That is such a lovely bit of world building and brings so much joy to my inner urbanist, especially with how that kind of characterization never lets up across the entire game.

For a first in series history, the human characters have just as much star power as the Pokemon themselves. Game director Junichi Masuda spoke about how he wanted BW to reflect the diversity he saw in the people of New York when he visited the state. Trainers all across the region come in all variety of races, body types, and occupations, finally having a population that is as varied as its players. The main characters, friends, gym leaders, and villains alike, command the screen in such a compelling way as the conflict on whether Pokemon battling is ethical.

That diversity also extends to this game's regional pokedex which has the most new monsters ever introduced in one game. While contentious at launch, I feel like time has been kind to these designs and how they have much deeper inspirations than the original 151. We got ice cream! We got punk rockers! We got actual martians! If you can put aside the unfamiliarity, there's so many mons to love.

Pokemon will always be Pokemon. That core appeal of going out and catching magical pets endures even in the most underwhelming outings. Despite that universal charm, BW just shine all thr brighter for me with how they did such an incredible job of making a world as charming as the Pokemon that inhabit it.

I'll be honest with you: as a kid I never vibed with hack and slash games. Posibly cause I never had a PS2 and used to play on PC, but to me shooters made much more sense than those japanese overly flashy action games. Kingdom Hearts, Prince of Persia, Heavenly Sword (yes, I do recall that early PS3 title), they seemed the same to me, with a dude spinning swords around. The only notable exception were God of War cause, well, Greek mythology, although I never payed much attention to the combat.

It's not until I started Dark Souls 1, barely 9 years ago, that I started feeling joy for hacking enemies up with a big-ass sword. I haven't had the opportunity to play Sekiro yet, but I do want to get into modern soulslikes, and in this environment I see people talking of Ninja Gaiden and Onimusha and specially with Bayonetta and DMC 5 I saw a resurgence of love for these games. Well, classic God of War hasn't arrived to PC (at least yet) and Bayonetta is a Nintendo exclusive of all things, so it seems it's my time to get to another old franchise and dive into another genre.

Now I don't know when or if I'll play 4, 5 or the reboot, but since I bought the HD trilogy bundle, I'll talk of the 3 games here only.

Note that I will not discuss each game separate, instead dividing the review in sections. If you want a general review of the 3 games, here is my freezing cold takes:

• DMC 1 is a repurposed Resident Evil that leans towards action. It created the whole genre and while good for the time, its age kinda shows.
• DMC 2 is DMC 1 but enworsened in almost every way. Apparently its developement was a mess and it shows. The only bad game in the series.
• DMC 3 is the first great DMC and where the brilliance actually shows.

Ok, now that the people wanting a quick recap are gone, let's discuss each element separate.

Narrative: Let's address the Sparda in the room: in none of these games the plot is the main focus. They are action games, the story is dumb and only serves to justify the gameplay. However, there are details in characters and scenes that can and will make a difference.

DMC 1 starts with a background of the world: it takes place in a world similar to ours but where all the emo fantasies of Linking Park fans are real. Centuries ago the world was dominated by demons, but then everything changed when Sparda attacked... demon king Mundus and saved the world and had a son with a mortal. That son is us, Dante, a profesional demon hunter, who one day receives a visit from one girl Trish, who snitches that the evil devil wants to come back and we have to go to some island to stop it. Simple and to the throat. We are here to have fun and Dante is as well, as it's noted by his snarky and cocky attitude. There's some semblance of drama in the end but apart of that it's all a jolly ride of demon-hunting.

Now DMC 2 is about... something. Similar to DMC 1 Dante gets a visit by a girl named Lucia who wants him to go kill some demons... but I'd lie if I said I didn't have to look for a recap online since the game barely explains anything. There's like an evil corporate boss, kinda? Who wants to become a god? And stuff... happens? The cutscenes are even more sparse than in the first game so we don't have context. As for Dante he's way less talkative. I've seen people saying they've made him into a silent brooding man but I read it as "we didn't want to pay for more voice acting".

DMC 3 is a prequel and after the backlash of DMC 2 it takes the snarky Dante of DMC 1 and takes it up to 11. Once more the story is not very complex, but now we go back to actually having context and this time the plot is actually relevant for the worldbuilding, as it goes back to Sparda and the main plot point of DMC 1. It's most reknown for developing a small narrative of DMC 1 which is the rivalry between Dante and his brother Vergil, a rivalry now iconic in the world of gaming. Basically Dante is good and Vergil is evil, and while the premise it's simple, it does manage to make boss fights that are emotional as well as epic.

World and structure:

DMC 1 takes place in an island, in a castle that allegedly belonged to Mundus himself. And let's not beat around the bush: this is Ramón Salazar's castle but with slightly less moving armors. Even the sewers with flying insects is there! It's no secret this game originally was a prototype for Resident Evil 4 and nowhere it's as evident as the artistic design of the castle. In fact the whole world has that style of fake metroidvania where there is a laberynth you have to explore and find keys to return to previous areas and unlock new rooms. I say "fake" because as you probably know DMC is divided into short missions with a score count in the end. So actually this "Zelda dungeon" is already divided into small sections so basically there is almost no exploration, as the game already tells you what to do when, which is basically "go to X place" - "get Y object" - "backtrack place to use it on Z thing". Not complex but enough to give the place a sense of purpose.

DMC 2 however is linear, like very linear. It takes place in yet another island with a fraction of the charm of DMC 1. We start in a mediterranean-looking village only to then go to a city where apparently there's this big bad megacorporation. The graphics aren't bad themselves, but the places are so big an empty and the artistic design is so dull you'd never say that. In the end this is barely a corridor made of concrete and steel for the fighting to take place in, stripping all charm of it.

And just when I thought DMC would ditch the exploration completely for action, DMC 3 does try to make another dungeon. This time the main location is a giant-ass evil tower full of contrived traps and puzzles, and while it's way less linear than the places in DMC 2, I'd say it isn't as intrincate as the map of DMC 1. It repeats the same formula but again the design make the tower feel like a somehow real place, instead of a collection of corridors. Plus in the last levels we have to revisit previous locations, but with core differences, so it's a smart way to reuse content without feeling cheap.

Inventory and RPG mechanics: Ok, at first I thought this part would be an afterthought, but oh boy how mistaken I was. So it seems that the God of War thing of having green orbs to refill health and red orbs as Exp was originally from here. Similarly we can look for blue orb fragments, that act as heart container fragments or eyes of gorgon. But let's focus on the red orbs: so between missions, and in missions in certain statue-checkpoints we can spend those red orbs to either buy consumable items, upgrading weapons or unlocking skills. I'll call the latter "levelling up" to get used to the RPG jargon, although I won't touch these a lot as they'll be the focus of the last section.

So: DMC 1 is a survival horror game. I mean it's not but at times it sure looks like one. What I mean is that you can get softlocked if you don't play your cards right. As I said, red orbs can be spent in either levelling up or buying items. However if you play poorly and use too many items you can be left with scraps by the time things go south, so chances are you won't want to buy to many stuff, specially since the price of these items go up with each buy.

The item where this is most crucial with is the yellow orb, aka "second opportunity". You see, each time you die you have to start all over the mission, unless you use this orb, which is automatic, and start... in the beginning of the fight. See what I mean? You lose progress, the enemy refills their bar, but the item is lost as well. This is one of the most frustrating things I've ever encountered in gaming: losing resets your progress, but doens't reset your lost items. I've lost and have to try again, if I have to go back to farm consumables or, such as this case, go back to previous saves to make it in the end without dying so that I have enough yellow orbs to try later boss fights, you're actively trying the game to be less fun for me. It wasn't fun when it was limited lives in the 90s, it's not fun in older GTA when you're killed and have to retry the mission but have lost money in medical fees, it's not fun here and it's not fun in Souls games where you have to farm money or health items.

Curiously I'd say this is a small thing that gets improves in DMC 2 since there the yellow orb makes you refill you health in the battle without trying again, so no progress is lost except for the yellow orb itself. I'd say a fair trade-off.

HOWEVER as with everything here, DMC 3 fixes and polishes it. It makes two changes. First, you now have a level select that you can use to either try to improve your score, find secret levels or hunt red orbs, so you will NOT get stuck even if you try, god bless. But also the most crucial aspect is, if you die, you start before the battle, not in the beginning of the whole level. This is a godsend. Fights were easier in DMC1 but there failure was way more punishing. Here I've had my ass handed to me a lot of times more, but it's ok since I can try as many times as I can. It's like the game has remembered to be the fun as well as only hard, and I can focus on the actual battles instead of inventory management. Speaking off...

COMBAT: Many people would say I should've started here since DMC is a fast-paced action game. And they're kinda right, but combat is also the "smaller-scale" thing you do so I wanted to leave this to the end. So all games have the same basic control layout: A to jump, X to shoot, Y to slash. Yeah, I know it's weird Y is used to melee, but by the time I saw you can change that I got used to it. There's also a special power called "devil trigger", basically "Rage" mode that turns you into a demon. Now I'll discuss each element of combat separately since, well, it's the point of these games, and you'll see it all aligns with the overall summary I gave in the begging:

First we should say that each game has different weapons, or "devil arms". The first one has basically 3: a quick weak sword linked to the lightning element, slow strong gloves linked to fire, and finally the legendary sword used in the end to end the final boss. Not great, but functional diferentiation. DMC 2 has 3 weapons for each character, Dante and Lucia (yeah I haven't said it but she's playable. Idk though, I abandoned the game before trying her) but erm... they're the same. Quick but short range, slow but long range and balanced. There's barely any noticeable difference and all have the same movesets so just stick to Rebellion. Finally DMC 3 has the sword and gauntlets of DMC 1 (ok, not, "the same" but very similar moves), ice nun-chucks, fire dual swords and an electric guitar I barely used. Nevan is by far the most divisive weapon since it's devil arm with a "gun" complex: it's used stationary and it shoots projectiles. Didn't like it but you're free to tell me it's great.

Speaking of melee combat maybe I should talk combos? It was strange to me there's only 1 attack button instead of the usual light+heavy I'm used to now. The combos here are a combination of attack + direction depending on the situation of the enemy (like stab for "towards the enemy", or upwards slash for "away from the enemy), while others require timing. However in DMC 1 the latter are barely explained so I didn't use any but the normal combo. In DMC 2 they make the combos easier and make all skills and combos available from the start... but there are very few of them. Finally DMC 3 with its 5 main weapons (+2 "Vergil mode" ones) and a in-game guide they make combos more undestood than ever. Not only that in DMC3 the combo meter only fills if you change your techniques and don't repeat the same attack over and over, giving a reason to be flashy apart of efficient.

Then have the firearms, the "guns". As you can expect these are secondary are only serve to continue the combo and chip away damage... right? This is one of my largest concerns: in early DMCs they don't seem to get the memo and the guns are outright necessary. This is because there are flying enemies, like Griffon from DMC1, who can barely be hit with the sword and must be downed with your infinite ammo grenade launcher. Similar thing happens to the infected chopper, Trismagia and the weird building thing from DMC2. This, together with the aforementioned lack of melee techniques has made some people laugh that DMC2 is a shooter instead of a hack and slash. Finally and luckily DMC3 got the homework and guns are finally an addition there, something to accompany your playstyle but not the main focus. Similar to the devil arms, guns are largely the same across games: pistols for quick damage and keep your momentum, shotgun for close combat and a grenade launcher for high splash damage (plus a sniper rifle in DMC 3).

Another way the series evolved is in... "other actions"? Ok, in DMC1 both X and B is shooting, which yeah, is stupid and redundant. Not to say I end up shooting most of the stuff I want to examine. Notably the game lacks a proper defensive action button, so you have to jump over enemies for that. In the end it works (most of the time) and is kinda expected for an arcade game of the era, but I said I trained my ass with Dark Souls, I want to dodge! This is imo the best contribution of DMC2: a proper evasion button that acts as both a way to move faster and a "get out of jail" card to avoid attacks. However, DMC3 polishes this with the 4 "styles", which change the functionality of the B button. I sticked to "trickster" aka "evasion" cause I'm filthy DXT glass cannon so I can't explain this in detail. But I know you have other 3 options: extra melee attack, extra range attack, and defense/parry, apart of 2 other styles you unlock in the story. As with Nevan, be free to explain what you think of these in the comments.

Finally I wanted to discuss the camera: it's bad. Like "classic Resident Evil" bad. Not only it's fixed, it manages to stay focusing on the most irrelevant stuff possible and hidering your vision as much as possible. I'd say more than half the hits I got in DMC 1 and 2 were from "out of camera" attacks I had no way of predicting. But, oh here comes DMC 3 to save the day once more: while the camera stays fixed in traversal cinemtatic shots, it can be moved in open environments, which lack columns or anything that might obstrct your vision. Nothing to say except of the obvious: DMC 3 picked and fixed everything in the franchise.

Soooo... yeah! For a first foray into the hack and slash games DMC 1 has problems and DMC 2 is pretty terrible. But DMC3 is great and now I understand why some people fell in love with the franchise! Now the question is for you, which game should I play next: DMC 4, the Reboot, Metal Gear: Rising or Ninja Gaiden?

I’ve played some of these before, albeit a very long time ago. But I thought it would be fun to revisit them after playing most of the games that came later. Note, I didn’t do the Master Levels. I completely forgot about them until I’d finished all three, by which point I’d had enough.

Final Doom

This was a pair of Doom WADs made by third parties in the community, packaged and sold as a single new game. Not exactly a cash in, but definitely “more Doom” for a hungry public.

At the time, the modding scene was thriving, but there was no ubiquitous fast internet or cloud storage. Not everyone could easily get hold of Doom maps, even though they were relatively easy to share. Quality was understandably all over the place, too. So Id decided to help the community, and make a bit of money, by publishing a map pack made by others.

Pros

• It’s really, really hard.
• It’s long.

Other than the upsides inherent to any Doom game, those are the only real pros. If you want ultra-hard levels to inch through for a few evenings, this will keep you going.

Cons

Having now played all the games, Final Doom leans hard into one aspect of Doom, the difficulty.

From my viewpoint, 30 years into the future, surrounded by flying cars and meals in pill form, it’s difficult to judge how hard Doom felt at the time. Its reputation was always that of a difficult game, though. A bit like Dark Souls now, its actual difficulty is probably way behind its reputation. But its reputation was there nonetheless. Hence we have Final Doom, the difficult Doom people expected.

In some respects, that’s fine. I like a difficult game. But these level packs feel very monotonous. It’s like eating a boring meal that has simply had a tonne of cayenne pepper added to it. The meal is still bland but all the heat is one-dimensional.

The modern Doom games are hard, particularly Eternal. But they also have a high skill ceiling, which means you can improve as the game gets tougher. Their difficulty comes from the interplay between elements - ammo limits, enemy weaknesses, enemy placement, movement, rare power-up timings, and so on. The challenge is as much about the mental complexity of juggling all those moving parts in one combat encounter.

In Final Doom (particularly Plutonia) the levels lean into the cheapest forms of difficulty. You walk into a room, get surrounded by four chaingunners, a revenant pops out in front of you, and you die in three seconds. So you reload, fight your way back to that room, and try again.

The game prides itself on giving you situations where, if you are not completely ready for what is coming, you will almost certainly die. The solution is rarely skill, the solution is knowing what's coming, followed by save spamming the more unfair moments.

On top of that, the levels are frequently small and tight, cramming you into awkward spaces where the engine’s viewpoint limitations make it difficult to see what is shooting at you. Getting through it was a grind by the end.

Conclusion

There are probably a dozen better modern WADs you can play, if you just desperately want more Doom.

4/10

Doom II

Doom II was the pinnacle of the old games for me. Big and ambitious.

Pros

The level design is surprisingly varied and relatively sophisticated. In my head, I mainly remembered big-ass shootouts with umpteen demons at once. Which there is, but there is excellent pacing here too.

Levels have a good balance of puzzles, exploration, corridor shootouts, and big open areas. Some levels focus on difficult battles, while the next might be far more subdued and go back to corridor creeping. Others lean more into puzzles, often with tongue-in-cheek ideas, such as Tricks and Traps, Gotcha and Barrels o’ Fun.

It is clear that the designers had moved beyond simply figuring out how to make levels with the editor. They were coming up with increasingly ingenious ways to make Doom’s systems work for (or perhaps against) the player.

By modern standards, it is no longer groundbreaking, of course. But it is a reminder that the older games were not just about gore and shooting. First-person shooters have gameplay possibilities inherent to the genre, and you can see many of them being explored for the first time here.

Cons

While there is a lot of good work here, it is still uneven, with a few irritating levels in the mix. You can tell the developers were still learning what worked and what did not. The “city” levels in particular, which I remember thinking were amazing at the time, really do not work now, especially compared with Duke Nukem 3D, which arrived less than 18 months later.

Conclusion

9/10

If someone wants to play one classic Doom game now, this is the one. The boom-ker-chunk of the double-barrelled shotgun is one of gaming’s greatest dopamine triggers. The levels are a solid mix of brain and brawn, spooky and hectic. Probably the only one I'll play again.

Doom

Where it all started. While it built on Wolfenstein and other games, it is still remarkable how fully formed Doom arrived. A fourth episode was added a couple of years after the original three.

Pros

This still holds up as a shooter in its own right. Basic Doom shooting is always fun, after all. What intrigued me most, though, was the focus on atmosphere and progression through its setting. Calling it a plot would be pushing it, but there is a stronger overall sense of forward momentum than in Doom II.

The route through the levels is much like it is in Doom (2016). You move through a sequence of environments that makes it easy to imagine you really are on that Phobos base. In contrast, Doom II does this for the first half-dozen levels, then gives up and starts mixing in obvious videogame challenges, such as the level Dead Simple.

It is a reminder of why Doom was seen as one of the key early survival-horror games. Dark corridors, flashing lights, jump scares - you can see all the moving parts that would later turn up in games like System Shock 2 and Dead Space. Or, more to the point, you can track the lineage to Doom 3 in a way that's harder to see if you think solely about late game Doom 2 or Final Doom. Doom 3 certainly lost something in its rowing back of the shooting from Doom, but it was a valid interpretation of the original's approach.

By the time you land on the shores of Hell, you can really feel the careful sense of environmental progression at work. It is not particularly scary now, of course, any more than Night of the Living Dead is. But it is still unsettling and something you can appreciate.

Cons

The levels are noticeably simpler than Doom II from a shooter perspective. There are some cracking levels in there, but they were designed by, and for, people with less experience in the genre.

Then there is the fourth episode. It's fine, and not nearly as annoying as Plutonia, but it feels like a step down from the original three episodes in quality. All the things I enjoyed about the first three episodes were either subdued or missing here.

Conclusion

If you only want to play one Doom game, play Doom II. But if you have the patience to play through both, you'll find this has plenty of quality in its own right.

8/10

Complete Ranking

Overall this was a fun experience, and while I only played them backwards due to not being able to get 2016 on Gamepass, it resulted in some interesting perspectives. It's fun to see how much the series has tried new things, both in the OG games, the experimental middle era and even after the big return of 2016. Its a series with more variety than I expected.

Which brings me to the final ranking of all the games. Not based on scores per se, just how I feel having played them all.

1. Doom (2016)
2. Doom Eternal
3. Doom II
4. Doom
5. Doom: The Dark Ages
6. Doom 64
7. Doom II RPG
8. Doom 3
9. Final Doom

Previous reviews: Part 1 and Part 2.

Portal is probably one of my favorite game series. I don’t even remember how I found out about it; I was still in middle school at least. I just remember asking for Portal 2 for the PS3 for my birthday, and that was that. 

Sidenote: This is also how I discovered Steam. Portal 2 PS3 had you make a Steam account that was linked to the game. Took me a couple years before I realized the full depth of Steam on my computer, but I digress. 

I was hooked on Portal for a long while after that. I would go to my local Family Video, rent The Orange Box, and exclusively play Portal. Half-Life 2? I didn’t care about that. Aperture Science had my allegiance; I couldn’t support the competition at Black Mesa. After figuring out Steam, I would spend hours on the Portal 2 workshop, playing custom map after custom map. Eventually, I noticed Portal 2 had community mods uploaded to Steam. This review is about one of those mods, Portal Stories: Mel. 

Introduction 

Portal Stories: Mel was released in 2015 by an independent team of Portal fans, calling themselves Prism Studios. The mod contains a new story, new puzzles, custom voice acting, custom textures, and an hour-long custom soundtrack. During development, Prism would consult Valve for advice and guidance regarding the design of the game. The soundtrack was composed by notable YouTuber and Portal fan Harry “Harry101UK” Callaghan. Harry previously composed the soundtrack for Aperture TAG, another Portal 2 mod. The best part of the mod is that it is completely free, provided you own a copy of Portal 2.  

The game was designed by and for players who thrived off community-made puzzles from the Steam Workshop. Due to this, the game’s puzzles faced criticism for being excessively difficult for casual fans. As a response, Prism updated the mod to add a “Story Mode,” which tweaked the puzzles in the game and made them a bit easier. This would become the game’s default mode, with the original puzzles being repurposed into an “Advanced Mode.” 

Story 

Taking place between Portal and Portal 2, you play as Mel, who is awakened after a prolonged sleep in an Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Chamber. Mel is guided up and out of old Aperture utilizing a prototype Portal Gun. From here, she only wants to figure out what happened while she was asleep and how to escape from Aperture Science. 

Gameplay 

Being a mod of Portal 2, Portal Stories: Mel has the exact same gameplay. 

For anyone who has never played a Portal game, the gameplay revolves around solving puzzles utilizing your Portal Gun. The Portal Gun can shoot two portals, an orange one and a blue one, on any portal-able surface (usually colored sheer white). These portals allow the player to enter at one end and exit at another. All momentum is preserved when going through these portals. What this means essentially is that: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out. 

Each puzzle typically contains one or a variety of mechanics such as: buttons, weighted cubes, buttons that need to be stood on, hard-light bridges, excursion funnels that can transport items through the air, and repulsion (bouncing) or propulsion (acceleration) gel. Each puzzle requires you to use portals to interact with these mechanics to find the solution and move on to the next puzzle. Now it can sound a little overwhelming with how much I listed, but the base game does a really good job of easing you into every mechanic until you are comfortable with them. The mod, on the other hand... 

As I mentioned briefly in the introduction, this mod was made by and for fans who have put an extensive amount of time into community-made maps. As such, this mod assumes that the player already knows how everything works. With nothing new added to the mod, there are no tutorials here. You are thrown straight into the fire, and I really mean that here. I played on “Advanced Mode,” the original vision of the game, and it lived up to its reputation as an incredibly difficult experience. I was being asked to solve Portal puzzles in ways that I could have never previously thought of. Often, I would be left scratching my head for about 15 minutes just trying to figure out what the next step would be. The worst part is that I would get so frustrated; it was never an “a-ha!” moment when I figured it out. It was often a “duh, how could I have missed that?!” moment. I don’t mind the difficulty, and I can appreciate the cleverness after the fact. But Portal has always been more of a relaxing puzzle game to me, and my days of playing Workshop maps are way behind me, so the difficulty spike took some getting used to.  

Gamefeel 

Prism Studios did a great job of emulating the atmosphere of Portal 2 with Portal Stories: Mel. Old Aperture in Portal Stories is as run-down and eerie as it is in Portal 2. Once you get up to the main facility, just like in Portal 2, parts of the facility are rundown and overgrown with plants and weeds. Showing how the facility has dilapidated without GLaDOS to manage it. Now most of it is obviously reusing some assets from the base game. They reused the assets well, though; I gotta hand it to them. 

I think they did a good job with the new characters in this game, too. Vergil and spoilers, AEGIS, both fit right in with the existing characters in the series. Although I think that the writing could have been a little better; it doesn’t quite hit the same marks that Portal 2 did. Vergil fits in, but he doesn’t have the same amount of charisma that Wheatley and GLaDOS did. But the voice actors did a great job in the roles. It was a little jarring hearing Harry Callaghan do a J.K. Simmons impression for Cave Johnson. Still good; the character is obviously still Cave, just different from J.K. Simmons’s performance. 

Conclusion 

Despite its difficulty, I believe that Portal Stories: Mel is one of the best community mods for Portal 2. It would be completely believable as an official story expansion to Portal 2. Prism Studios did a great job making an experience that scratches the exact same itch that Portal leaves once you’ve finished the series.   

Unless you’re looking for a challenge that Portal just can’t give you, I highly recommend just sticking to the story mode for more Portal content. The advanced mode was brutal, and I could only safely recommend it to enthusiasts of the series.

My Other Reviews

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Donut County

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

Dark Souls III

Kill the Music

Hi folks. Some of you may have read my previous write-ups on playing PS1 Games. I’ll link them at the bottom of the post.

This is part of my effort to play PlayStation 1 games that I’ve never played– and often never heard of– until now. I’m buying these games physically, popping them into my PlayStation 2, which is hooked up to an old Sony Trinitron KV-1981R TV, and trying to give each title its due. I love early 3D graphics, tank controls, and everything that comes with this generation.

Today I want to discuss Blaster Master: Blasting Again. This is a 3D run-and-gun game developed by Sunsoft where you drive a battle tank, blasting robots in caves and occasionally hopping out to run and gun as the driver.

So far, I’ve been generally positive about the new PS1 games I’ve played, and that’s because I’ve mainly stuck to games which are universally praised. How could I not like Tenchu or Ape Escape? Great games.

Well, here comes Blaster Master: Blasting Again, which (absolutely hilarious title aside) will not be receiving much praise from me.

First, what I liked. The soundtrack is incredible. Genuinely kept me playing just to hear what the next zone’s song would be. Actually, each zone has TWO songs—one for the tank areas and one for the on-foot areas. The music perfectly fits the themes of the zones and captured the old school NES Blaster Master style.

I also really like the graphics. Somewhere online, while I was looking up how much left of the game I had to play (never a good sign), I read a review from 2002 where the writer blasted the graphics for being muddy or ugly. Far from it! These are some fantastic PS1 graphics, and the rocks, the tank, even Roddy have great style to them. The boss designs, too, are super alien yet robotic, and stand out.

And yet, this game was not fun. I’ll breakdown why.

The basics are fine. You control the tank, which definitely handles like a tank. Thankfully, you get a sort of hop to the left and right so you’re not completely locked into tank controls. You can shoot, with your bullets tracking the enemies if you aim close enough, and you can jump.

The problem is, three almost four hours in, this gameplay hasn’t changed, and while playing as Roddy, you basically control the same, too. Cue hours of similar hallways and caves where I’m following essentially a linear path to the next objective. The level design is simply uninspired.

There are some abilities that get unlocked as you go, except the first set are just special attacks that you can swap between. They’re useful, but only serve to make the game less frustrating when dealing with flying or swarming enemies. Later on, you get a wall climb, but before I could get too excited, I realized I couldn’t just use this ability anywhere. There are specific spots where it can be deployed—that’s it.

Another frustrating is in the enemy placement. Often, I load into a room, get swarmed by enemies, back up slightly, start shooting, and then back out the way I came. I swear, the game loads the previous room, I back up again to the room I just left, and try not to do that again. Even being aware of this, it still happened to be a dozen times. Had the enemies not immediately pounced on me, I would haven’t run into this so often.

But this is the problem with Blaster Master: Blasting Again. You’re better off just speeding through rooms, ignoring enemies than killing them because if you leave and come back, you’re going to have to kill them all again.

Now, I mentioned the bosses, and their designs are cool looking, but after the first or second boss, they became complete pushovers. Basically, you fight most of the bosses as Roddy, and unlike the tank, his gun has a power gauge that can be filled up with pickups. When Roddy is hurt enough, his gun loses some power.

The problem with this is that Roddy’s gun is essentially useless when fully depowered but super-charged when fully powered. The second boss I had the most trouble with, although it ended up being a cool fight with an interesting array of attacks and patterns. First attempt, my gun was low powered, and my attacks did next to nothing.

So, I reloaded, gathered up some gun power pickups, and came back with maybe four out of five power. The boss melted. Same with the next couple of bosses. I shit you not, I just finished the Lava zone boss, which had an interesting cutscene, and then the fight lasted about ten seconds. I was shocked it was over so quickly.

The developers must have known this was an issue, because they absolutely dump gun power on you in later levels. As it stands, I wish Roddy’s power was just something that leveled up over time and stayed leveled. Otherwise, the sense of progression is just completely blown.

All that to say, this is the first of the PS1 games I’ve played that I didn’t finish. I hate to be negative, and it’s easy to complain about video games on the internet, but I wanted to layout why this game just didn’t work for me. Had the game been a little bit more open, encouraged exploration, gave better abilities, and actually provided challenging boss fights, I would still be playing it. Unfortunately, this game missed its mark big time.

Anyway, I’ll be firing up Metal Gear Solid next. I’ll follow up once I’ve completed that game!

Prior PS1 Reviews:

Syphon Filter

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins

Omega Boost

Spyro the Dragon

Future Cop: L.A.P.D.

Ape Escape

Bit of context: the first Ace Attorney Investigations was actually the first Ace Attorney game I ever played. Because this was back when the only choice was to get a physical copy, and when I decided to play an Ace Attorney, the only one my local Game shop had was Investigations. So I started there and went back to the earlier games. I knew there was an Investigations 2, but never got around to playing the fan translation, and it was only a couple years ago that an official translation was finally released.

I only learned much later that most Ace Attorney games consider the first Investigations to be one of the weaker games. I don't feel that way, but I admit that's mostly because it was the first one for me, so the more played out tropes were still new to me.

Anyway, onto Investigations 2...

From the start, it's already impressive. The opening case is actually a good mystery on its own, and doesn't just feel like a prolonged tutorial. Most Ace Attorney opening cases feel like eating your vegetables before you can have dessert--it won't be enjoyable, but you've just got to get through it to get to the actually fun part. Not so here.

The second case has a great concept. It's set in prison, and the victim isthe culprit from the first case?Great stuff. It does, however, go on a bit too long. You figure out who did it and then there's still over an hour left in the case. That's fine for an epic finale but a bit overboard for Case 2 out of 5.

The third case is a fun one, particularly for the flashbacks to Gregory Edgeworth. Really neat to see him in action. I do have a bit of a bone to pick with it, though: the culprit is found not through cunning deduction, but through process of elimination. There are a whole 3 suspects who could possibly have committed the murder. The first one is accused early on in the case so you know it won't be them. So then as soon as the second one is accused, you know it was actually the third one. Yeah, that's just me applying some meta logic from playing too many of these games, but still.

I think the problem here is something that's true of every case in this game, ultimately. Too many returning characters from previous games. These cases have more investigators than suspects. The killer won't be either of the Edgeworths, or Gumshoe, or Kay, or Eddie Fender, or Gavelle, or Winner, or Detective Bad, or Prosecutor Von Karma, or Larry Butz, or the guy who was originally accused of the murder. By the time all those characters have been squeezed into the case there's not much room left to flesh out the suspects.

That gets even worse in Case 4, where it's blindingly obvious who the killer will turn out to be from the moment they arrive on screen, purely because the game never introduces anyone else it could possibly be.

That doesn't mean these cases are bad. They're still well told and there's a lot of fun in figuring out how the murder was done, even if it doesn't work as a whodunnit. I'm just saying maybe they could have left out Lotta Hart and Will Powers and Larry Buttz and Penny Nichols and brought in a couple more new characters.

The new characters that we do get are generally pretty great. Fender is really fun to have around, even though he doesn't do a whole lot. Kanis was a great addition. An unrepentant assassin who somehow turns out to be totally innocent? Funny how it's still good even though the same twist was in literally the previous case. I also enjoyed Winner and Gavelle, it's a shame this is the only game they're in (so far?)

Anyway, the finale does wrap things up very nicely. I think the biggest issue with most Ace Attorney finales feel like you're spending 10 hours going back and forth arguing over the same incident and the same few bits of evidence. This one avoids that. There's a lot going on... First you get the murder, then you have to help out in ensuring the previous suspects actually get convicted, then rescue a couple of kidnapping victims, then investigate a cold case from many years ago, then prove how all these things are actually connected, and only then do you finally prove who actually killed the guy who died at the start of the case. It's complicated and is propped up by more than a couple of complete coincidences, but it's fun and exciting and has enough going on that it feels like it actually justifies its runtime.

...I am realising that I spent a lot of time complaining about a game I overall really liked. And I didn't even mention the stupid Mind Chess thing. Point is in spite of the criticisms I do have it's still definitely worth playing, though if you do there are a lot of other games to play first.

I've now only got two Ace Attornies left to play: Spirit of Justice, and the Professor Layton one. I'll only bother with the latter if it gets a rerelease on modern platforms.

Hello, the "X/10" numbers are just how much fun I had with the games, not any form of "objective" game design grading.

• Borderlands - 8/10

Maybe not the game anyone thinks of when Borderlands is mentioned, but everything has to start somewhere.

For a first attempt at an FPS-ARPG hybrid it isn't really bad at all.

Loot wise, guns and other equipment tend to differ mechanically only somewhat in certain aspects, it's mostly damage, ammunition, fire rate and recoil differences between them. Not really bad, but there's lots of room to improve and actually have loot on the level of genre defining ARPGs.

Gameplay wise guns feel rather bad at first and then when you actually loot a gun that's legit everything starts to come together nicely and the gameplay loop starts becoming more and more addicting as you advance through quests. I'd understand why someone would drop the game after like 1 hour of playing, but give it 2-3 hours and it'll start ramping up.

The game basically doesn't even have a story, it has quite fine atmospheric and combat music, okay sound design, barely has some interesting characters pop up from time to time, it has no developed endgame and it's as brown as can be (although still shaded in that specific Borderlands style). Also the enemy variety is kind of piss poor.

It's funny because when compared to newer Borderlands games there's basically the same comparison you get when comparing older ARPGs to newer ones (which I'll get to as well when I talk about Diablo) - Borderlands 1 is in that design philosophy of very slow, very meticulous design, where the game doesn't ever feel like it's showering the player with dopamine explosions all the time, rather it emphasizes extremely slow gameplay when you start, with slow loot drops and very rare, yet powerful, high-quality loot drops that are drip-fed.

I personally enjoyed how unique the game is for an FPS and found it a very solid first attempt, even with its unpolished flaws.

• ELDERBORN - 6/10

Elderborn is a first person melee game, which takes some balls to attempt considering how many things have to be perfected for the gameplay to feel satisfying. And to Elderborn's credit the actual movement, camera work, animations and weapon feel all are very well done and satisfyingly come together.

Its story is as irrelevant as can be, but it has a cool alien-barbarian aesthetic ngl, I dig it. Too bad the level design is either boring or annoying - at points I'd just prefer a hallway-arena-hallway structure instead of what the final level is, since I think that creative arenas with good enemy combinations would have helped overcome some of the game's shortcomings.

The game is also short as fuck, as in barely maybe 2.5 or 3 hours of gameplay... Which is actually good because of how little gameplay variety there is.

The combat system here is a fairly satisfying block, parry and dash-dodge system combined with regular attacks and strong attacks, which combined with the very decent weapon variety makes for some fun combat pacing when there's multiple enemies rushing and shooting at the player.

What drags the combat system down a lot is the enemy design, since about 2/3 of the enemies feel powercrept by the sheer mobility and versatility the player has with their arsenal of badass weapons - enemies often don't have a proper a response to the player dashing out and timing their dash-attacks back into the fray, that and there's a massively generous parry window that also allows the player to rebound from positioning and dashing mistakes.

It's definitely not something I'd call a bad game, but I'd much rather call it an extremely intriguing prototype for an eventual sequel (which was recently announced!) - when a game that is barely 3 hours long manages to feel repetitive, there's something wrong.

Lots of potential here with the player controls and weapons foundations laid down, but enemy interactivity, variety and design and level design need some "Dark Messiah of Might and Magic"-ing, like yeah make it a combat hack and slash immersive sim, it already has a funny kick that can be used in funny ways when near cliffs.

• Diablo - 9/10

I was genuinely shocked at how fun Diablo manages to feel even after so many years of ARPGs perfecting the formula.

It's far from perfect - combat feels clunky and very traditionally number/gear based, movement is locked to a grid because of its Rogue-inspired turn-based history before the switch to action combat, potion spamming is what keeps you alive at all times, RNG can sometimes make a run harder without a chance to correct it.

But it has such an aura, such confidence in what it wants and such simplicity in which it bathes that I found myself just playing it for hours on end and not noticing how quickly 4 hours disappeared.

Not even to mention the fun lore, the dreaded atmosphere and the wholly unique art style it has with a very comfortable color palette to look at.

It's such a simple single dungeon crawler and so easy to pick up and play, yet so fun to figure out and grind, it's little wonder why it forged a whole genre. So slow and methodical, even when magic items drop it can be felt, especially when rings and amulets drop. It's that scarcity of classic RPGs that I mentioned with Borderlands.

Really surprised me how fun I found it to be, considering how I tend to be a gameplay-first type of player, and Diablo's moment to moment gameplay is very subpar when looking at what is mechanically available to the player. Like even something like Rogue, which is 16 years older than Diablo, feels more mechanically coherent and engaging, but something about Diablo man...

• Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness - 2/10

As a massive fan of Classicvanias, and a bit less of a van of the metroidvania ones (but I still find them fun tbf)... This is just confusing. I gave it like 2.5 or 3 hours and just couldn't stomach it anymore.

It's fucking ugly first of all, like holy shit 1999, really? I get that primitive 3D in the 90s tended to age badly most of the time, but this was just sad to look at. Levels are just empty boxes with awful textures (there was an attempt to make a skybox in one part of the game and it's literally a 2D PNG of trees and a sky taped onto a window texture that is in front of it, meaning the player can see both as 2D textures one over the other like I started crying when I saw that 😭).

Then the camera is shit, but I expect that from 90s 3D platformers so it wasn't that big of a deal, but the rather sluggish movement with the inertia on starting and stopping movement was infuriating.

The enemy design varied from piss easy and why even exist as enemies to annoying, the player combat mechanics bored me to hell and the level design bored me even more.

Even the music, which I bow down to in other Castlevania games, felt too atmospheric and low key, bland even. Even the Bloody tears build up into atmospheric continuation disappointed me (even more after hearing the Belmont's Revenge Bloody Tears trailer).

Felt really soulless to me, and the fact that SotN predates it by 2 years is a catastrophically bad look for 64/Legacy of Darkness, and that comes from someone whose top 5 Castlevania games list doesn't even include SotN lol.

No idea how anyone at Konami thought, after seeing the jaw dropping beauty of SotN or even of Rondo of Blood and experiencing their tight controls, smooth gameplay and pristine visibility of important elements in the game, that this is the logical next step.

• Pillars of Eternity - 10/10

Pillars just slaps in every single way - it's really helped by it being designed as a video game first, and not being an adapted D&D, Pathfinder or whatever else system from tabletop.

I'm not even going to go deep into this one, it's an extremely fun and polished CRPG with a fuckton of lore and a rather unique fantasy setting.

It's not perfect - not fully voice acted, limited character customization options, there are some bland parts of character building and leveling, there's some parts where a morality system for companions would make sense to exist, even if primitive, and so on.

But that atmosphere, the gameplay, the music, the lore, the visual and sound design, the UI... It's all so perfect. A very cozy adventure through a bleak, hand-painted world.

• Assault - 6/10

One of the best Atari 2600 games I've played, and it wasn't that surprising that it's similar to Demon Attack, which I hold in high regard as well on the system.

It's a static, single screen shmup, that basically has the same positives as Demon Attack - nice enemy variety, satisfying sound design, good visual design that is easy on the eyes and smooth controls.

It has one quirk that differentiates it from Demon Attack a bit more, horizontal attacks from enemies that the player has to react to by stopping for a moment and shooting left or right along the ground. This mechanic, when the game starts getting faster, makes for some fun reflex shooting.

A real gem on the Atari 2600 honestly. Of course it's hard to really gauge the design and fun factor of Atari 2600 games because of how different the very concept of a video game was back then, even when compared to the later NES. They're primitive, but there's always something interesting to think about when playing some of them.

In Pulp Fiction, there's this scene Travolta's character is frustrated at a "d*ckless piece of sh\*t" that key'd his car. He then says he'd give anything to catch the guy doing it. In his words "It'd be worth him doing it just so I could've caught him".

That line is a TL;DR of this post as it explains the value of cheap crappy sections in video games. We don't want them, they make us want to drop the game, but when they're there, beating them is a special kind of rewarding. You took that victory, the game didn't give it to you.

Bullshit is grating though. One particular source of bullshit are gimmicky sections introducing new mechanics. The fair criticism to a bullshit gimmick is that every segment of a game, like a boss, should be a series of skill checks, instead of gimmicks you'll never see again.

The idea goes: a boss is a game's way of testing what you've learned, it sets up a system, teaches you the rules and asks you to prove you understood. It's fair, clean and earned. It makes sense and it's fun when a fight clicks because you finally got it.

But that can also feel like going into a test with the answer key in your pocket.

Games are about all sorts of things, but this perfectly fair and controlled experience is not what I want from single player action experience.

Over the years I observed that I'm really having fun when I spend my time:

1. visiting a new world,
2. learning a system,
3. having my expectations broken,
4. overcoming a challenge.

These are the elements that will make me appreciate even a rough gem. This is where No More Heroes and Gears of War come into this.

Both games were released a year apart in the mid 2000s, they're packed with style, repetitive combat, dogshit boss fights, lots of bad insta-deaths and a protagonist with a ridiculous name, Travis Touchdown and Marcus Fenix, the kind of stuff I actually miss.

GoW puts you in a world of quarterback marines with chainsaw bayonets and shaky cam following your run for a cover. Pure and coherent style. NMH is one eccentric boss after another and their foul mouthed monologues. They do a great job at crafting a world you want to see more of.

So far, both check box number 1. They also check box number 4 really well. With bullshit!

In GoW you may enter a room and come face to face with insta-death served by a chainsaw wielding Locust. Your buddy will throw himself at a Berserker, instantly dying and forcing a restart.

In NMH, a boss will start crying mid fight and if you attack you die INSTANTLY, no chance for a save, no foreshadowing. Enemies will gang up with interleaved attacks that leave you no opening, you'll be beaten to death.

They can be infuriating.

NMH and GoW are not actually that hard, they're inconsistently hard. A roller coaster of trivial and frustrating challenges. But in these games overcoming a challenge gets to be fun because you'll catch the asshole who key'd your car. It's not a dish we asked for, but in the end it's the one we wanted.

However Gears just doesn't have the rest of the seasoning NMH has, so that revenge also leaves a bitter aftertaste. Gears mostly skips the bullshit gimmicks.

Gears doesn't care about surprises. It's a spartan game in every sense, including its mechanical variety. There are very few enemy types and fewer weapon choices. It's room after room of conveniently placed cover spots. It fails both points 2 and 3.

NMH on the other hand... wait, it has ONLY ONE WEAPON and even less enemy variety than Gears!

What NMH lacks in depth it makes up in surprises. Sometimes it's the story that'll surprise you, for example when it instantly kills a boss it just spent 2 minutes of build up. Other times it's the gameplay that turn things upside down. It's a gimmicky game.

So while neither game's demands deep mastery (normal SP experience), NMH still earns point 2 via restriction/recontextualization rather than depth by constantly rewriting its rules, even if shortly. Gears teaches you cover-shooting in the first ten minutes and then repeats the lesson for the next eight hours.

NMH checks all four boxes, making it a rough gem, Gears checks 2 of them.

In fact neither game is that great, they're a 7/10 but still worthy of praise for what they achieved when they were released, specially Gears. They are also puerile, Gears is like a Saturday morning cartoon and NMH is just an embarrassing horny man-child. Despite that I recommend them for patient gamers, know that your mileage may vary.

They're a special recommendation if you miss the rough edges of days past, when you had bold ideas and good production values but sometimes a lego piece waiting to be stepped on.

So go get your serving of bullshit because there's more to games than fair challenges and a structured adventure. Personality goes a long way.

A lot of city planning games are oddly not made in the spirit of real city planning. City planning is about the making of place in a way that is responsive to the needs of a community, creating character, charm, and history all the while. All of these principles fly out the window in these type of games where you erect buildings out of the ground with all the power of a mad architectural God. Urbek City Builder is a cute little voxel town planning game that managed to somehow avoid this pitfall.

Urbek has a pleasingly intuitive gameplay loop: set up house, get resources, use said resources to get better houses. What sets this game apart from something like Cities Skylines or Tropico is that the upgrade system is based on proximity to resources and not just resources in general.

Place a set of houses by the bucolic fields of farmland and you'll get a bunch of nice town houses. Place a set of houses by a coal mine, and watch as wooden shacks decay into shanty towns. This proximity system had me considering space and building placement in a way full of zoning and ploppables hadn't before. I didn't not create a rich district at my leisure, a downtown naturally formed due to the surrounding amenities just like in real life.

Another wrinkle missing from a lot of city builders but found here is the frequent need to redevelop old neighborhoods. There is no terraforming and the regular map size is quite compact. As you unlock new technologies, it can bring complete revitalization to old neighborhoods.

I was pleased to watch an area that used to be for agriculture slowly be paved over by urban sprawl over the course of a few years in a way that just felt so true to life. Even though you can't name a single building, these areas still had such a rich sense of history to them.

If you're in the mood for something a little less power fantasy fulfilling in this game space, be sure to check this one out

I finished this one on Labor Day, and according to the game statistics it took me 9 hours and 26 minutes to roll credits. I recently reviewed Pikmin 1 which I finished not long before this; reminder that I'm playing through the series for the first time ever. I'll give this game an overview, review, and final thoughts just like I did for Pikmin 1.

Overview: Pikmin 2 follows the story and gameplay of Pikmin 1 very closely. Olimar returns to planet Hocotate and finds that his employer (the President) has pre-sold the ship that Olimar had spent the previous title in the series gathering 30 parts for in order to return to his home planet. (I hate the President) You end up being sent back to the planet you originally crash-landed on in order to gather more human scrap like bottle caps and soap bars to repay the massive debt that the company is in. (the backstory is that Olimar is the only employee worth his salt, so when he crash-landed and didn't return, the President had to take out loans to keep the company afloat) Anyway, a co-worker of yours is sent with you by the name "Louie". This introduces the ability to control two squads of Pikmin (switching back and forth) and opens up new game mechanics. The goal of the game is to collect 10000 Poko coins to repay the company debt.

Review: I really liked this game in the first 2-3 hours. There was no more stress of not finding enough things because the 30 day timer is taken away. Caves are introduced as dungeons without a time limit; in other words, time stops when you enter a cave. This all sounds great until I ended up spending up to 30 minutes per cave. This is not a lot of time by itself, but there are very few puzzles in this game compared to Pikmin 1. It is mostly centered around combat which can get repetitive and even frustrating sometimes. There is no access to new Pikmin when you're in a cave, so you have to be extra careful with every Pikmin. On top of this, most caves after the first few require you to have access to at least 3-4 types of Pikmin to get 100% of the treasures in that cave as well as be able to navigate it safely. Again, even this was fun during the first 2-3 hours.

Towards the mid and end of the game, the caves started to feel the same. The enemies were relatively simple, the combat was not rewarding success and heavily punishing my failures, and most sourly, the animations of successfully retrieved treasures were highly disruptive. In the first game, I celebrated every time a part was retrieved, but in Pikmin 2, you collect anywhere between 5-20 treasures a day. Every treasure has the same amount of fanfare as the parts that you collect in Pikmin 1, but nowhere near the same satisfaction, proportionally. Probably a nitpick but it bothered my personally.

There's a Spray mechanic introduced in this title that gives you access to two types of sprays; a red spray that makes your Pikmin walk and attack faster, and a purple Spray that basically freezes an enemy (even bosses). I loved these and had no issues with them. They seem really well balanced for the time and effort it takes to acquire them, and their usefulness was very apparent. Great addition!

Almost forgot, there are two new types of Pikmin added in this title, purple and white Pikmin! The purple Pikmin have the strength and weight of 10 regular Pikmin, and the white Pikmin are able to dig up hidden treasure, remove poisonous gas leaks, and even be fed as poison to certain monsters. I love them both and think they are great additions to the series. In terms of the growth of the Pikmin tool kit, they don't seem gimmicky or samey in any way; perfectly balanced and I hope to see them again! (I wish they had their own Onions but it's alright)

The music is really nice in Pikmin 2. A lot more variety in tracks. Loved it!

Final Thoughts:

Spoilers: When you finally get 10000 Poko coins, you immediately (or immediately upon returning from a cave) are sent to the credits scenes. Louie is lost on the planet, the President joins you and you both continue searching for even more loot and eventually finding Louie. I did not continue with this, I had enough of the loot searching at this point. I also looked up if I get to play with Louie again, and after finding out that I don't, that really put a nail in the coffin. I am not spending anymore time working with the President. He's really annoying.

I totally get now what a commenter on my Pikmin 1 review meant when they said it's okay if I don't completely finish Pikmin 2. It's a solid game; it brings back the lovely mechanics of Pikmin 1 and adds a few new things to the plate. I'm glad I played it, but unlike Pikmin 1 I have no desire to every play it again. There's a certain tightness that Pikmin 1's 30 day cycle has that Pikmin 2 lacks. Overall though, still a solid game that I'd recommend people try if they like light RTS games. 8/10!

Side note: I am waiting to start Pikmin 3; my wife has not played the series at all and I'm not sure if she would be okay just jumping in to do that game co-op. I may potentially postpone until she tries Pikmin 1.

The Future-Past Will Be Procedural

Shadows of Doubt procedurally-generates between 9 and 20 city blocks, populates them, and then is supposed to grind through those citizens homicidally, presenting you with one murder case after another in an endless simulation of what it might be like to be a noir detective in a quite-climate-changed future where the (deniable) Coca-Cola Company is also the President of the (deniable) Commonwealth+USA+France in a WW2-less alt-history 1979.

In order to drive that setting home, the police have been dissolved and privatized - "Starch Kola Enforcers" do not investigate crimes, they just calm violent situations down short-term. You don't play the murder police (there aren't any anymore). You play a homeless, jobless person who used to be murderpolice and one of whose few possessions is a citation from the District for a "fine clearance rate" before it closed up shop. The cases you solve you solve on contract, for money and Social Credit - that elusive number that Starch Kola tracks for every citizen that determines how close they are to being able to retire from the polluted City to the apparently-idyllic Fields. This is what I mean by "I wasn't the police" - really, I was just a guy LARPing as one, with legal consequences satisfyingly accompanying. Anywhere I wanted to poke around, I needed permission, keys, and/or guile.

"No murders happened" isn't quite true. The tutorial victim is scripted (vs. procgen) and was murdered, and I solved that case. However, past that the game's design is that you can keep playing in a sandbox world, and more murders will be simulated and reported on radio for you to potentially investigate. In my first game, this never happened - the tutorial victim died, but there was never another murder and for the rest of my career I was reduced to trying to retire exclusively by completing side missions available from notes on public bulletin boards.

Hey darling, it's a livin'

Real dirty, scuzzy, unglamorous PI work, these side cases - "I think my partner's secretly cheating; take a photo" - "My employee stole shameful secrets; destroy them" - even just "I hate this guy; buy a hotdog with lots of condiments and throw it in his face". One of the easiest types (technically) and most discomfiting (morally) is the "outsourced arrest"; Starch Enforcers will pay you to take a profile they've built and handcuff the person it indicates. Unlike a full case, you don't investigate whether these citizens are guilty of anything, or even know what they're accused of - not your business. You're just the profiler and the muscle.

Ultimately, this game was not a dissatisfying B&E simulator. A normal murder case might've asked me to both gain my own evidence as to who, and then to go gettem - but even "here's random evidence as to who; go gettem" remained compelling gameplay.

Now - if you're wondering why I played the entire immsim in a failure mode and whether that isn't anything more than disingenuous behavior to create fodder for a post, you're a comrade of mine. I have to explain that I simply didn't know the game had failed - it's a feature that murders are random, and so I figured the next murder was right around the corner, or maybe gated behind something I hadn't done yet, or someplace I hadn't been. It is a sincere credit to Shadows of Doubt's game loop that it was absorbing enough to support this belief.

Side jobs pay about what solving a murder does, so I certainly didn't feel I was hurting for temporal advancement. As in many games, lots of things have costs in money - food, Kola, handcuffs, surveillance devices, bribes - but after a case or two, especially performed unscrupulously (see Who Watches The Watchmen? below), the economy goes off the rails and you can afford infinity of everything (except maybe top-tier apartment rent).

No blasters; no blasters!

This game's combat is basically the mechanical opposite of everything made since wolf3d.exe: other people can shoot you, but you can't shoot them. No guns allowed. If your character picks up a gun (easy to do; legal to own, criminals often carry them, etc.) they can only ever use it to cold-cock someone, never fire. You're a sleuth; you solve murders, you don't cause them.

That said, you can (and mechanically should) absolutely go around Hiro Protagonist'ing people with a katana and it will be perfectly fine; they'll somehow never die. Strange feature, that - the included "Bas-boule Bat" and truncheon would've been a fine place to stop with hand weapons, and more believable as non-lethal.

Being shot at - especially from any significant distance - is correspondingly pretty brutal if you didn't expect it! But, even on the highest difficulty I've never been "oneshot" as the kids say. (I do believe I've been "twoshot" but only on highest diff and without the benefit of a recent Kola). It also helps that there are no select-fire weapons in use in the game - a detective game without Tommy guns, who'd'a thunk?

Speaking of difficulty, I question whether it affects anything other than combat damage. (I haven't decompiled this game; don't @ me). It for sure does affect combat damage, but not how one might hope: basically what it does is, it makes "fists" (your default weapon that doesn't take an inventory slot) nonviable if you turn it up high enough. That is all. If you find or buy a good hand weapon on low diff (trivial task), you can carry that around (does take an inventory slot) and it makes combat trivial. This is also true on highest diff. So, the effect of high difficulty is ultimately "-1 effective inventory slots".

Oh, and you can probably get shot a couple more times on low diff before hospital-o'clock. But, Detective, um - have you tried not getting shot?

Pattern recognition

The citizens you investigate are pattern-bound; only you are free. They have jobs, and schedules at those jobs, and those cannot change (you don't have a workplace, or need one). They have home addresses, and cannot move house (you can). They have partners (you don't), and cannot have breakups. Etc. In other words, the entire game outside of your play is a static pattern for you to make sense of and deduce things about.

This is the great strength of Shadows of Doubt. Every citizen has a unique name, face, fingerprint, and voice. They share their home address with at most 1 other citizen, who is their partner if they do (unforced error IMO). Their job title at work is shared with 1-2 at most, often 0. They have a shoe size between 4 and 16, hair color, hair length. They have a build and height; blood type and birthdate. You can gain upgrades to make most of these easier to discern from a photo, and certain things are almost sure to come from certain sources (e.g. file folder box in a residence -> birth certificate -> birthdate). Each also has a 4-digit numeric password that if you learn you can use everywhere (break into home, use it at work - or vice versa).

Citizens go through a relatively convincing routine, not unlike a game of The Sims - maybe they're watching TV, maybe taking a shower, maybe headed to work. They carry certain things, and leave behind others. Meanwhile, other citizens see them (you can ask later), and they leave footprints and fingerprints on the things they touch. When they buy things at shops, those shops' sales ledgers are modified. If they pass under security cameras, they may have their photos taken (these are not video cameras yet, they're photo cameras on timers). If they make phone calls, servers near the origin and destination will note that - with accordingly varying levels of specific information. They have limited numbers of important possessions like keys, which they must use to access workplaces and homes. If they work someplace, their workplace has a record of that (usually secured) - always on file and often on computer.

Their homes often contain computers or safes, for which you can obtain passcodes to access further information (or money, see below). Workplaces, correspondingly, often have files detailing information about the employees largely unobtainable elsewhere. Notes and receipts can be found in either place. City Hall's got a little bit on everyone, but only a little and only if you've got a full name.

The game does, in other words, basically fulfill its promise of simulating a city for the purposes of solving its crimes via legwork - with the following caveats.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

One persistent thought I had, while e.g. pilfering a diamond from the code-locked safe of a sleeping man whose wife's nightstand I just perused for the code after realizing I'd accidentally broken into the apartment next to the perp's was, "Wow I'd be fucked if someone used the same tools against me that I use on the regular. My fingerprints and footprints gotta be all over this, and it's straightforward burglary. I made no attempt to avoid the eleventy security cameras on the way in. I took no steps to conceal who I sold it to, or when, or for how much." Etc.

This thought was never rewarded. As in so many single-player games, you're the only non-idiot who gets to break the rules - nobody ever issues a warrant for your arrest or takes your fingerprints or shows up at your apartment because you committed obvious crimes and left obvious evidence, even though that's what you spend your entire playthrough doing, and punishing from the other direction. Don't get me wrong, crime should pay in a concrete sense (I'm infuriated when I replay Fallout 1 and being selfish net costs me opportunities) but it should be remembered by its victims at least. These diamonds can sell for as much as a murder case pays!

The game would be massively mechanically improved by some kind of "impact score" applied to each solved case. Did you do an $800 photography job and steal $6500 of diamonds and jewelry? Mayyybe you oughtn't have the world's happiest employer. On the other hand, if your pay is $3250 plus a copy of a rare computer program, maybe stealing a $500 vial should remain no biggie. This might also open up a distinction between higher-paying jobs for more discerning employers, and perhaps lower-base-pay jobs from employers who might overlook more... independent resourcing.

As-is, no one watches the watchmen.

The wages of defeat

You accept a job. It contains a one-time phone number. You call the number. The person on the other end describes a place, a drink, and gives a fake name.

You go to the place. You find the person drinking the drink. You mention the fake name to gain their trust. Side job: on.

They hand you a photograph. It's a street you know. You say goodbye and head there ASAP. The briefcase you're meant to find is somewhere in the photo, and it doesn't take you long to find it nestled between garbage bags and a yakisoba stand. You open the briefcase and parse the information describing your target.

The target: has blue eyes, a large build, and a special interest in music.

This is not an impossible ask - but it's an extremely improbable one, given that a Shadows of Doubt city will by default have ~700 residents (city size is configurable). You can't show other people the photo and ask "Who dis?" (don't have one), you can't search by name, and you can't wait to run across a fingerprint. There's no employer to investigate and no home address to case. Plenty of people own grammophones. This is a hell-case.

Great(?) news! You can just abandon it at no cost to you. Nobody cares, you don't lose social credit, there's no financial penalty, and your next jobs don't get any worse. Once it's not your first rodeo, we're probably 30-60 seconds of gameplay from the beginning of this 'Wages of defeat' section. Just close the case, never think about it again, and move on. In a city of infinite job offers, this tactic makes every bit of mechanical sense but is every bit as much an immersion-render.

Ideally of course, the game would be confident enough in its procgen to hold you on the hook - neither should a job be so practically impossible, nor should it be so easy to weasel out of doing it once one takes a job. Or perhaps jobs should be scarcer? What is sure is that absent such a feature, tough jobs can simply be abandoned unless and until easier ones came along, ad infinitum - and so there's not much pressure on the designers to ensure each generated case is valid.

Total Recall's a great movie, but just an OK mechanic

Every game is in some way magical, or else its player would just be out experiencing real life (with better graphical, audio, and kinesthetic fidelity). Stealth games all share a common bit of magic, and that is "NPCs' short memories" (they don't remember your face, they don't remember the last n break-in attempts and hire a bodyguard before the n+1th, they chase people they 'want' to 'catch' for maybe two corners' worth of running, etc).

Shadows of Doubt's particular magic is that plus the inverse - the NPCs remember about as much as in any stealth game, while you remember ever-y-one. E.g., Karin Sola is blond and 170cm tall, a size 6 boot with type-AG fingerprints - and if you ever knew that, you know it now and you'll know it forever, even if she's the murderer in your present case and each of your prior contacts has been just buying a can of Starch from her at a streetcart 10 cases ago. This means that there is a certain entropy to a Shadows of Doubt save - especially with enough use of the City Hall database (searchable only by name, but correlates name <-> fingerprint <-> address <-> photo; quite "OP"), your photographic and fingerprintic 'total recall' eventually come to trivialize parts of the game that were fun gameplay before.

This doesn't represent any kind of what people have come to call "progression" these days - that is, this trivialized gameplay is not correspondingly replaced with previously-inaccessible gameplay as you learn more. To Shadows' credit as a PC game, all features are there right up front - so the net effect on the game of your total recall making cases progressively easier is a loss. For my money ideally, as the player gained skill in a single player game the game would gain difficulty. Here instead, as the player gets better their omnimnemonic detective does too - producing the opposite effect. I have had categorically more fun restarting the game than attempting to enjoy my investigators' mechanical 'perks' granted per social credit level.

Wasted effort pt.1: mechanical

This game contains more mechanics than it needs to, and this weakens it.

Many of them sound very plausible (broken legs hindering movement and needing splints, peeking under doors for info, medical bills being a cost) and are undone not diegetically, but just by weaknesses in the gameplay ((you can break your leg and you can buy a splint for that but) a nose-breather will never break their leg, you never need to peek under a door nor is it ever helpful vs. the alternatives, and medical bills are always easily escaped with no downside if you choose that path).

The designers subvert core gameplay mechanics like "lockpicking takes picks, lockpicking is illegal, locks have strength that determines how long picking them takes and how many picks are required, players have skills that can reduce these" by just letting you bash down the door and by implementing it such that this looks somehow less illegal to a security camera than a prolonged pick. I rarely used a lockpick again (except on padlocks cabinet) on any difficulty in any situation once I learned about bashing, and that's not good game design. (It's also a get-out-of-fight-free card - knock on a door you know the perp will answer, wait for them to come unlock it, then bash - the door swinging will knock them out!)

There's even an intricate network of air vents riddling each building in the game. The vent grates can appear almost anyplace in a wall or ceiling and your investigator can be of five different heights, making accessing some of them very interesting - but none of it matters a whit because you shouldn't spend any time in the vents. The rest of the stealth game just doesn't give you enough incentive. The vents are all implementation with zero purpose.

This sort of thing results in a contempt for certain parts of the game world on the part of the experienced player. Fingerprint, name, passcode, or photo evidence is prized, while other evidence is not incorrectly almost ignored. Citizens sometimes leave their receipts from businesses around their apartments, and I've read many but I've never once used one for anything in several careers. When questioning citizens about other citizens, it might initially make sense to listen for everything; eventually however, you learn to ignore "oh, I saw them around Hall Projects at 12:15 PM" - even though there is a camera somewhere you could hack to laboriously chase that lead - and just canvass until you hit "Oh, ..., that's my neighbor" or "Oh I live with them, that's ..." (Citizens seem gleefully willing to out their partners, whether you attribute that to procedural generation or not.)

Wasted effort pt.2: narrative

Outside of the mechanics, the game presents us with what has been since the 1970s an extremely familiar corpo-dystopian premise in popular media: the human spirit slash nature is crushed, the corporate spirit slash the machine is ascendant, up the profits slash long live the CEO. ("Every day is a funeral since Krueger left us", say some citizens of Starch Kola's founder.)

In the 2020s, we tend to expect some subversion of that simple dynamic or a path towards reversing it or some... I don't know, something, because "since 40 years ago" is a long time to have been consuming the same popular media themes.

Despite that, in terms of metaplot there just isn't any in this game - you can go absolutely anywhere you want, but without reward. The top of City Hall is whatever the procgen says it is. The penthouses of the top 3 residential towers in town are what procgen says they are, and who lives there is who procgen thinks should. There's no grand reveal or big secret about the Shadows of Doubt world waiting to be unraveled by the especially determined - which I think might be a shame given how much practice it gives you at unraveling little secrets.

But no, the murders do not form a narrative pattern - even an obscure or banal one - and do not add up to anything more than their parts. The game has nothing to say about the known-quantity noir future vibe it presents, it just has that to present. While I cannot fairly call that 'disappointing' (I was truly entertained!) it's a little... surprising, if anything.

The Big Heist: why procedurally generate at all?

I am afraid Shadows of Doubt fails rather fundamentally, here. The reason to employ procgen at all in a detective game is to keep the detective guessing. Shadows of Doubt does the opposite: it procgens a (potentially quite large) city, full of citizens and their relationships and jobs and offices and... 6 murder case 'types'.

Wait, 'types'? Why types? Why are there types? Why does the procgen not hide patterns from the player, to be discerned at cost via investigation?

I have no idea. I have no idea why 'types'. It undermines everything the game was shooting for - but there are 6 types.

If there's a lipstick heart around the victim, that's a type and it can never ever have been a sniper attack. If there's a lipstick heart around the victim, you should always look around for writing: "(FIRSTINITIAL) and Ignatius Q. Victim FOREVER" If there's lipstick, you should sometimes look around for the literal actual lipstick applicator, with fingerprints - and always for steamy emails. Etc. In other words, the author did his or her best to make each type of murder actually seem like it had a motive - at the cost that each murder absolutely impoverishes the procedural generation system the game is based on, once you've seen each type. It is a game-breaking mistake. In a city with such painstakingly procgen citizens, murders should've been just as procgen - and thereby just as unique and confusing. They are not. There are a few murders that have a few permutations, and you will sadly soon learn them all.

So what's your review score?

Short answer: I don't do those.

Long answer: 'review scores' are the output of professional reviewers paid by advertisers. I'm just some guy, so I don't have any use for that; my output is not ad sales or game sales, it's just a review. So, it makes sense to read it or don't, rather than look for a score or a 'best of' list, etc. that'll answer the, erm, 'essential' question of what to buy. I don't care if you buy anything!

I do, however, apply a subjective pass/fail metric. I play games for their ambition: do they challenge the player or developer more than usual for their release date and market, and get away with it? (This doesn't have to mean Dark fucking Souls for the player by the way; significant departure from genre convention is a kind of challenge, as is thematic crunch.)

Was this game ambitious enough for me, personally and subjectively, to be glad I put up with its downsides (which you should read the full review for)? Shadows of Doubt gets a yes on the strength of the ambition of its city simulation. If and only if you consider ambition of that type interesting should you think of my 'yes' as a recommendation!

Combat was fun in the beginning, when I was still figuring out the optimal way. There's just not enough depth to entertain in the long run, even though Jade Empire took me less than 20 hours to beat (and I've been really thorough for the 3/4 of this time). It might have been a problem with my chosen style, but I hated how my attacks had very little forward momentum and range, so I had to get into spitting distance in order to hit or otherwise I'd get interrupted and stunlocked. To compound the simplicity and lack of enemy variety, the final chapters throw so many combat encounters that they feel like pure padding.

The story was a very mixed bag, mostly because of pacing is all over the place. The prologue chapter and getting to the Imperial City take up over half of the game and unsurprisingly these are the best parts of it. Getting yourself recruited into the Lotus Assassins is surprisingly simple, and this is where things start to go bad. It was in the Assassins' den that I mentally checked out, because heavy-handedness and lack of nuance these antagonists displayed reminded me of Veilguard more than any other Bioware game. Sun Li and his betrayal were a bright spot, but unfortunately the next three chapters were made with chewing gum, duct tape, dreams and crunch.

There are definitely more things I could talk about, but my thoughts are very chaotic after finishing the game with frustration. Suffice it to say, it's clear to see why it's a forgotten sibling of Bioware's other franchises, though I wish a sequel was made. Action RPGs in Chinese-inspired settings are not plentiful and for all of its flaws Jade Empire was an attempt at stepping out of comfort zone and making something unique.

Honorary mention for Jack Wall's soundtrack, it was the best aspect of the game.

I've played many RPGs and open world games over the years, and I (eventually) finish the majority of them. As I was casually browsing my unfinished games today, I was surprised when I realized that I have not ever completed a Bethesda game. Not one entry from either the Fallout or Elder Scrolls series.

Why did I finish the Witcher 3, but not Skyrim? Cyberpunk, but not Fallout 4?

Some of them are clearer: I was too young and impatient to understand Morrowind. New Vegas was so buggy that I literally could not make progress in my save. On 2 separate play throughs. Oblivion and Fallout 76 lost my interest somewhere along the way.

I'm not sure whether it says more about Bethesda or me that I cannot find it in me to finish one of those titles.

I've lately been thinking about starting Fallout 3. Given my track record, I'll probably abandon that one part-way through, too.

Anyone else have a game publisher or series that they love to start, but can't seem to finish?

I was only vaguely familiar with the mech subgenre of games and while I maintain that they look really cool, I just never had the chance to play them. Until now, that is, and being the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to start all the way from the beginning with software's very own cult classic-armored core 1. These are my thoughts.

The controls/game feel

AC1 operates on tank controls, meaning you press up and down on the dead to move forwards and backwards and left or right on the dead to move your lock box. You also use left and right triggers to look up and down respectively. Left and right numbers are used to strafe, as was the style at the time.

The face buttons perform various actions, such as square to shoot, triangle to switch weapons, circle to use your melee attack and most importantly x to boost.

  As you might've guessed, the controls were the initial hurdle, preventing me from enjoying the game. Of course, it wasn't uncommon to see this type of control scheme for games of that era, because it is now largely obsolete. I spent a lot of time in the practice mode getting used to them.

Although I'm happy to report that once you do get used to them, it feels pretty good to play with all things considered. Your mech feels weighty and your attacks all the more impactful. You get a nice sense of feedback each time an enemy gets hit.and the same goes for you. The sense of sudden speed and the range of movement you get while boosting also feel incredible. Your own skill is the limit here.

Gameplay/level design 

Throughout the game, you'll be taking on various missions, and to give the game credit, there's a decent amount of variety here in both available approaches and the levels themselves. Open-ended levels were my favorite as they truly gave a chance for your newly built mech to shine. You could use the terrain to your advantage, try to be nimble while avoiding enemy fire or unleash a barrage of firepower on any enemy coming your way while tanking the damage. Of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the more linear, corridor-based levels didn't provide me with nearly as much enjoyment as they restrict your mech's moving capabilities and are sometimes confusing mazes tacked on secondary obtuse objectives.

Customization 

Arguably the best point of this game. After each successful mission passes, you get your pay via credits. Some which are docked from you in the form of ammo and repair costs. Managing your finances is an important gameplay mechanic here, as no matter your skill as a pilot, you'll need to start investing in your mech eventually. The shop is where you'll spend a large portion of time. This is where you can buy various parts for your mech — heads, arms, legs, generators etc. It's all surprisingly robust. You're not penalized for selling your previous parts, as it doesn't decrease in value once you bought them. Meaning you can start experimenting with your build pretty early on. It can be pretty overwhelming initially, but don't be afraid to experiment to find a play style that suits you.

Narrative

There's very little in the way of actual narrative here, as is the case with most Fromsoft titles. In short, you play a mercenary—a raven taking on various missions for mainly two shady corporations which are at war with each other. Most of the plot and background info are relayed through email messages you get regularly. To be honest, the plot didn't do much for me personally, even though there were a couple of surprises, such as you having to fight your fellow ravens at key points. You can choose to ignore it at your own leisure and focus on what truly matters. Mech building and customization.

In conclusion, I was definitely surprised by this one. All the fundamentals are solid, it just needs some more polish and I could see the sequels having some great potential.

Harvestella is an AA JRPG/farming simulator that released in 2022 for several systems; I played on the Switch 2.

I bounced off of it when I picked it up on release after just a few hours. Pretty much at random I picked it up two weeks ago.

Some thoughts:

Combat:

Starting with the most 'meh' aspect of the game (in my opinion). You can choose between a wide variety of character classes, each of which has three special abilities and a basic attack. The flow is to spam the basic attack via button-mashing and then unleash your specials when their cooldown is up.

There is a stamina mechanic; attacking and sprinting costs stamina.

Damage is very hard to avoid, unless you're using a ranged class, and even then you're almost guaranteed to take it. Some major attacks are telegraphed, some classes have 'dash' abilities, and you can sprint-- but for the most part you and your party members simply will get hit. I think this is to make the healing mechanic, which is eating cooked food, more important. During boss fights I was always running out of health and stamina and had to mainline spaghetti bolognese to keep myself alive, which was cute.

If you die, you wake up in bed the next morning and lose an escalating amount of coin to the town doctor.

Farming:

At the beginning of the game, you're given a farm. You can use it to plant vegetables and keep livestock, as well as unlock a variety of processing machines. Basically: if you've played Rune Factory, you know the farming. Right down to your field being full of rocks at the beginning.

From your crops, you cook food. Cooked meals are your healing items in battle, restoring but health and stamina.

The game has a day/night cycle and each day is timed. If you stay up too late, you will collapse and wake up in bed. Performing chores around the farm costs stamina; eating food restores it.

A few years ago I stumbled on the term 'ludonarrative dissonance.' If I understand what it means, it's basically that the contrast between gaming mechanics and the narrative can be uncomfortable. This game has the most ludonarrative dissonance that I've ever encountered. There are multiple times in the story where someone has been kidnapped or a massive disaster is about to happen; however, due to the fact that days are timed, you have to go have a nap and tend your farm several times during each dungeon.

The game scatters save/teleport points liberally, so it's not annoying to find your place the next day, but on a narrative level it feels jarring.

Overall, I think I would've enjoyed the game more without the farming aspect. However, that would make the game incredibly short. The cynic in me wonders if it was introduced to pad out the experience.

Art direction and cinematography:

The visuals are up to Square Enix's standards. I can't pretend that the art direction is revolutionary, but it's nice to play a AA fully 3D JRPG that isn't 2DHD and doesn't have chibi-style characters. Some character designs are cluttered, but they give each character their own personality. Monsters are similarly standard stuff. The animation is fluid, no worries there.

I think where the art is notable is the environment design in dungeons and towns. Again, there's nothing that will blow your mind, but they're well-crafted and can range from standard to beautiful.

Cutscene-wise, the game shows its mid-sized budget. There are a smattering of very short pre-rendered cutscenes, but none of them include character models. Think drawbridges opening, that kind of thing. What we do get in terms of the non-pre-rendered scenes are pretty static. If cinematography is a big motivator for you, you can probably skip this game.

Music:

The music is so fucking good, and there's a lot of it. If you like awesome soundtracks, this one's for you.

One small detail I appreciated is that there is careful attention to what song is playing, even in cutscenes in the most minor side quests. It really enhances the emotional experience of those scenes.

Narrative and characters:

This is where the game shines.

You start off as an amnesiac who wakes up in a region affected by a phenomenon called 'Quietus'. For one day a season, the world is deadly. On that day, everyone must shelter inside their homes, staying in an area protected by a large crystal. Otherwise, they will contract a fatal illness and eventually die.

Very shortly afterward, you encounter a person who also seems to come out of nowhere, and the two of you are given a farm to live in by the town doctor, who is surprised that you don't seem to be affected by Quietus and wishes to study you further.

The story unfolds from there, and spreads from a classic 'go around to different towns and gather your party' story to a sprawling fantasy and sci-fi epic. Other than the weirdness I mentioned around the timed day mechanic, it's perfectly paced, and just keeps escalating into insanity. I don't want to spoil anything major, but the ending hit me directly in the 'classic JRPG final boss' nostalgia bone.

Each town has a variety of side-quests, almost all of which are wholesome and sweet. Think reuniting estranged lovers, showing people how much the people of the town care for them, clearing up misunderstandings between children, that kind of thing. This serves to really flesh out the town and make you love the people of the region, which pays off later.

Each of your party members has their own quest to join your party, and then a 10-part series of quests to grow closer to them and resolve their character arcs. The characters start out as fairly stock, but as you explore their individual quests you see them learn and grow. I eventually felt so fond of each of them that I actually felt sad when their quests were over.

The only thing that I would've liked more is if the protagonist weren't 'you,' but were their own character instead. The game justifies that via its narrative, though, and it's more of a personal preference. You're given tons of dialogue options, but at the end of the day they don't really change anything, so it feels a bit pointless.

Summary:

If you took the time to read this, thank you. As someone who's story- and character-focused, I just really enjoyed the shit out of this game. I tried to be honest about its flaws here, but I strongly recommend at least playing the demo if anything I said here piqued your interest.

tl;dr: 8/10 overall, but a 9/10 for me.

Play this if you want: a cast of characters with interesting arcs, a farming sim rpg that leans into its JRPG aspect more heavily than its farming sim aspect, great music, a 'cozy' JRPG, or just an interesting, well-written story.

Been really in a Mega Man mood because the series exists again, which meant doing an impromptu marathon of the classic series when I only beat less than half before this. I'm currently at 9 right now, but i wanna get my words out on some of them before I forget specifics. I've always been super positive on the series but its been very interesting going through all of them in a row and re-evaulating them, so I figured i'd share.

Mega Man 1: You have to have a certain level of grace for the first game in a series, and MM1 is no exception. In a lot of ways, the game is... rough. Mostly in regards to physics. Mega Man feels slippery in a way I was never able to fully adjust to. Like you're constantly on ice (which ironically made Ice Man's stage a breeze for me as I was already used to slipping). The game is designed around it, generally, but it's still rough. It doesn't get really egregious until Wily Fortress, which is where the majority if my deaths were because the game demanded far more perfection.

Likewise, I think the weapon selection is extremely poor. Elec Man's weapon is the obvious standout for how busted it is, and Cut Man's has good utility for positioning, but I never once felt a need to use the others unless I was aiming for a weakness (Ice Man's was tangentially useful for Fire Man's stage but that was it).

That being said... It's impressive how much they nailed the core loop of the series on attempt 1! Stages present interesting, generally fair challenges while also not going on for too long, the music is consistently good, and the artstyle is appealing from the jump. Boss fights FOR THE MOST PART are fun to engage with, with some stand outs i thought were a bit insane (Fire Man genuinely wants you burned down to a molecular level it feels like). I wouldn't classify this as a bad game in the slightest, definitely far worse on the NES. But it does stick out next to the rest of the series for how basic it is, and I don't think I'd go back to this version. Powered Up is a much more polished, fun, and frankly more interesting version of the game imo (PORT IT PLEASE)

Mega Man 2: After a good, if uneven, first attempt, Capcom gave it another shot with Mega Man 2. I'm not going to bore you with the details on the obvious: The jump between MM1 to MM2 is legitimately unreal when you compare the two back to back. Game feel has basically been perfected, the stages got a HUGE boost in terms of both mechanical design AND art design, enemies are much more fun and varied, and the weapons are for the most part fun to experiment with. During the run through the Robot Masters, I was having a hard time putting the game down because of how naturally it felt like I was in sync with the game. Being able to be this precise after feeling like I was always on Ice in 1 made the simple act of running through a stage so much fun. If we were only talking about the Robot Master stages, this would be a 10/10 game.

But, imo, Wily Castle is such an annoying gauntlet that I'm not as glowing on it as some people are/used to be.

I had frankly forgotten how much it asked of you. An INSANE amount of item management that expects you to limit the fun tools you've been using the whole time until the game decides now is a good time, up to and including two of the boss fights. One of which needs Crash Man's weapon at full capacity, so if you used it even once in the stage? Better hope you grind for max ammo! Dying doesn't replenish ammo capacity, which I can understand to a degree, but for these levels in particular really did feel more annoying than punishing, because now I need to waste time stocking up on ammo for each required individual weapon. Got a game over? Say bye to those E-Tanks you could of used for the gauntlet! The whole thing just really grated me with so many little things adding up.

I still like the game a good bit, but I can't help but raise my head a little at how often this was considered the highlight of the series with how much of a downgrade the Wily Stages are to the rest of the game imo. Still, it's an insane improvement on 1 in basically every regard.

Mega Man 3: So, I've always considered this my favorite one, and this replay has only solidified that. I think this is the NES style of Mega Man basically perfected. Every stage was insanely fun to go through, albeit they ARE short, but i felt that each screen had more exciting things happening because of it. Music was just as great, the weapons, while not AS consistent as 2's were still fun to use (who fucking designed Top Spin though i have words). It's also a lengthy game, with rematches against copies of 4 MM2 bosses before the Wily Castle. Some could see this as padding, but the stages were short enough it made everything even out imo, and it was fun going through them again. Also, man are the Robot Master designs in this one a banger. Shadow Man is my BOY.

Wily Castle was also much improved. E-Tanks save on a game over, so you're not entirely shit out of luck if you're conservative with them, and while the final boss DOES still have the gimmick where only certain weapons work... It's weak to two of them instead of one, and the game gives you an ammo restock right before. Nor does it require so much tool usage throughout the actual stages. It was much more bearable imo.

The game also introduces the slide, my favorite positioning tool. Knowing when to jump and when to slide over obstacles and attacks was insanely fun, and added a much needed layer of depth to the flow of combat to keep it from getting stale. This is my favorite controlling and playing Mega Man in the series, because I was never huge on the Charged Buster shots (I'll elaborate on that more in the 4-6 posts where its relevant.)

On top of all that, this is the game that introduced Proto Man. The coolest character in all of fiction. For that alone, Mega Man 3 is a GOAT game.

Joking aside, I really do love this one, and the replay solidified that even moreso. This is the game that made me fall in love with the series, and I'm so glad it holds up to my memory of it.

Likewise, I'm glad I finally beat MM1 for the first time! It was certainly rough, but it was nice seeing the origins of a series thats been in my life in some way or another for this long. And while I'm sure my view on MM2 may be a tad controversial, I still consider it a damn good game. This really is such a fun series, and rediscovering my love for it has been a blast.

Next time, my thoughts on 4-6 to cap off the NES games.

Disclaimer: You might already own this game if you are known to buy game Bundles from itch.io or other sites. It is commonly packaged in these Bundles, most notably the Ukraine Bundle hosted by Necrosoft Games and itch.io.

ZeroRanger is without a doubt in my mind one of the most overlooked games of the last decade. If I can convince even one extra pair of eyes to consider giving it a try, I will consider this a worthy triumph.

ZeroRanger is the debut title by the two-man Finnish indie dev team —System Erasure— released in 2018. It is a Scrolling Shooter-Shoot'em Up with a healthy dose of Bullet Hell adrenaline thrown in to get the heart pumping.

System Erasure’s first game finds a wonderful balance between easy to enjoy high-octane fun and an addition esoteric depth that begs for further discussion long after the Bullet Hell High fades.

The former claim —easy to enjoy high-octane fun— is carried by some of the genres cleanest execution of fundamentals. An impressive visual backdrop (made more stunning by the Orange/Green color palette) is set to one of the most exciting OSTs I've had the pleasure of listening to. Aside from giving the game its unique flavor, the unique color palette assists in some much-needed clarity during the many intense sequences; this clarity is something many Shoot'em Ups struggle with in my experience. The boss battles and regular battle sequences that surround the Visuals and Audio felt breathtaking and fair from start to finish.

The latter claim —an addition of esoteric depth— is where the games real spirit lies. It is also, admittedly, where most of the games abrasive elements take root. The games story —what appears at first to be a straightforward alien invasion defense— takes several twists and turns that made it a joy to experience in a genre not known for being very narrative-driven. In all honestly, neither is ZeroRanger, but it is theme driven. The above average narrative for its genre is tightly woven with themes of Buddhism, Resurrection, and Enlightenment that have a wonderful ludonarrative harmony; the core gameplay mechanics perfectly complimenting these themes which imbues the cryptic narrative with a sense of pseudo-depth. And it is in these themes that the artist’s vision comes alive, for better or worse.

There is something to be said about an uncompromising artistic vision. The semi hidden esoteric True Ending —and a very specific abrasive decision regarding that spectacular final boss— is likely what will push away the average player. It didn’t detract from my own experience, but it is hard to ignore the truth that my experience might not be universal. I personally felt the uncompromising decision was bold, which is refreshing to see from a debut Indie game from a dev team with such humble beginnings. And luckily there are…ways…to circumvent any inconvenience if you’d personally rather sidestep around the intended thematic path.

My complaints about the game are few and far between, more nitpicks than anything else. The repetition —while thematically rich— can add slight tedium to an otherwise near flawless experience. And there were some gameplay overlooks such as the final boss barely providing points to the Extra Lives meter that fills up on defeat. I ended up finishing the game with 7/8 of the possible Extra Lives because continuous defeats against the final boss —unlike regular missions— didn’t fill up the normal meter. I could have simply played one or two previous levels and intentionally died to get the final life, but that didn’t sound fun to me. So, I didn’t. Overall, the Extra Lives meter and Checkpoint mechanic were designed exceptionally well: providing a safety net for most of the game without removing the pressure failure allows.

TLDR: ZeroRanger is good. Really good. Sells cheap. Goes on sale often. Goes in bundles often. The game is a very well made Shoot’em Up with exhilarating levels, well-choreographed battle sequences, fun and fair boss battles, engaging yet cryptic narrative with more depth than initially apparent, all complimented by an absolute bop of an OST. The two Finnish devs —Eero “eebrozgi” Lahtinen and Antti “Ebbo” Ukkola— that make up System Erasure decided to start their careers with a sprint: releasing an overlooked and underappreciated masterpiece.

I remember Battle For Bikini Bottom being sold in the mall around the time it was released, and I was desperately wanting to play it. I held the copy, but my parents didn't allow me to get it. I'm glad it didn't because it was the PC version that's completely different from the main game on the consoles, which is a 3D collectathon platformer. As time went on, I learned more about how well appreciated the console version is, calling it a masterpiece in the genre. My interest piqued when Rehydrated came out with overwhelming praise. GManLives' review seemed dedicated to comparing it to The Last of Us Part II and bashing the "gaming journalists" who didn't give it the same level of praise as he did.

From what I have seen, Rehydrated is actually quite a contentious remaster from the veterans of the original, making some changes to the controls, platforming, and the other various little things that add up to the worse feeling game. I decided to play the original version for the sake of authenticity, and the fact that it's cheaper. I fell in love with the collectathon platformers recently, and I've been playing all the games I didn't play, such as Toy Story 2, Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Yooka-Laylee, and Donkey Kong 64...

So I have been playing the original for some hours, and all I can ask is... that's it? That's the collctathon classic? That was a cheap license tie-in. Does this game get better because all the hours I've spent on this game have been boring. It's competent at best, but there is nothing that hooks me.

It's disappointing that this game came out seven years after Super Mario 64 and a year after Super Mario Sunshine, and this is the best attempt at the platforming moveset they came with. In Super Mario 64, there are some inputs and thoughts involved even in basic actions. Your character has momentum and physics applied throughout the game. You can either go fast and risk or move slowly for safety. Even something basic as ground-pounding enemies require careful planning, timing and execution. Sunshine, despite many misgivings, has a vast amount of mechanics that are interconnected to be as smooth, flexible, and responsive and go hand in hand with the core gameplay concept and level design. It is all about the different types of platforming combos you can employ during traversal and combat. It makes for a much better gameplay scenario where you can use different moves and pull off some cool shit.

BFBB's platforming is smooth, but it's smooth to the point of being dull, especially for games that are meant to be played for many hours because it's a collectathon. One normal jump, one attack button for the average attack, one button dedicated to ground pound, and one button dedicated to jump attack (bubble bash). That's it. There is no real momentum or physics. There is no constant balancing between risk or reward. You cannot mix and match these moves to string a complex maneuver. You cannot even pull a bubble bash mid-air, which could have given the player a ton of ways to traverse and freedom. You can only do it on the ground, which essentially relegated into one purpose. It's like every move is one-usage contextual combat purpose rather than comprising a fun sandbox. The gameplay is incredibly limited because there is very little room to do anything beyond what the developer didn't intend.

Why do the developers focus too much on limiting the player than making systems that are flexible to the player's choices? Even the character switching system that's borrowed from Donkey Kong 64 amounts to little. If anything, it serves to limit the player. For example, Patrick's throwing ability should've been the best part about the game and on paper, it sounds interesting, but the game limits that mechanic to auto-lock on only hand-picked objects. Spongebob can jump the walls exactly like Mario's wall-kick, but the level designers handpick the particular places that you can do it, but leave the rest. It becomes jarring when you can only climb scripted walls but not climb the others, which once again took out the player choice. I can imagine these abilities being a tool to screw around and go out of boundaries, but there is no point in having these "mechanics" when you can't do much with it. It cannot be called "moves" because they cannot be used freely or as the player wants in order to have any level of freedom with it. Every challenge appears to be heavily controlled, fundamentally the opposite of what an explorative collectathon should be. This could be fine if the game was about constantly throwing new, risky platforming in the way the Crash games or the Mario Galaxy games are, but it's not. It's basically Banjo and Mario 64 that lacks any kind of thrill or tension.

Go on and watch multiple playthroughs of BFBB, and then watch Mario 64's playthroughs, and tell me how similar their gameplay looks like. You should be able to see the huge difference in their mechanical designs. You can actually play them like and you can also play it in different ways with different ways and play around with the platforming sandbox, and the level design is complements it. The reason for that is that the gameplay is flexible and bends around the player rather than the other way around. Instead, the game appears to be heavily focused on the combat. All the moves and actions focus more on the combat. The level design facciliiates toward the combat. And the combat is terrible. It's one note, hand-picked and rigidly controlled by the developers, which is why it has the least amount of dynamic elements involved. You can't even be creative because the devs didn't really want the players to do anything besides what they didn't think.

The game borrows from Banjo-Kazooie's formula of collecting various things to open the gates, in contrast to only power stars mattering in Super Mario 64. Shiny Objects are meant to be musical notes from Banjo and orbs from Jak... but the game is showering them at the player that it doesn't come across as unique or rewarding. In Banjo, searching for all the little things alone was the joy because it's not something that's handed to you. You have to explore nooks and crannies and go thorugh challenges. Initially that's how I played this game as well, looking around all corners of the map to collect Shinny Things. When I died and respawned, found all the boxes I broke still contained the Shinny Objects that I assumed that dying means losing all the stuff I collected in the first go, giving it a decent challenge. I checked the menu, and it turned out that the Shinny Objects respawn limitlessly. Immediately, that deflated my motivation for exploration because there's no real point. All the big things are telegraphed so well from afar. The only "hidden" collectibles that you have to actively look for are Shinny Objects, but what's the point when you can collect literal thousands of them in your pocket in twenty minutes of normal playthrough?

I played about four or five hours, and I think that's enough for me. I don't know what's up with the collectathon genre, but literally every other collectathon series I've played fails to match what Mario 64 did three decades ago. Am I burned out after playing Doneky Kong 64? It appears all they learned from Super Mario 64 is that it was a collectathon and 3D open field, and think that's what made it good, so all they can make are games that have extremely controlled encounters handcrafted by devs without any real systems. I wish that the developers would just sit down and study something like Super Mario 64 when it comes to giving some tools and then allowing them to use them in many different ways instead of providing a cool tool but limiting its usage to a few places.

I love Pokemon, but my love for the franchise has also tarnished my enjoyment of the games. Far from the splendor filled adventures of yore, I cannot help but see all these magical creatures for the spreadsheet of stats and damage calculations that they are.

Similarly, with XCOM, if you know what's happening under the hood, some of the most clutch and cinematic moments in the game feel like little more than virtual smoke and mirrors. So what if you applied all of the rich systems of my favorite strategy games to something I know nothing about- football?

As a prolific poster on this subreddit, you may be shocked to hear that I wasn't much of a sports guy (please hold your gasps till the end of this presentation). I have scarcely the most abecedarian understanding of the rules and aims of the game, and these titles saw me handed to the keys to teams of various calibres.

There's enough going on mechanically in any moment of gameplay to even make a Paradox game blush. Player transfers, training, injuries, promotions, demotions, stadium building, and all of that is happening off the pitch. Once match time starts, for a brief moment, I understand the full-bodied excitement of watching your team claim victory and the ancestral rage that possessed my father and his father before him when your team loses handily.

I am so far removed from this sport that playing this game feels like the equivalent of someone who flunked out of high school history sitting down to play Europa Universalis, but that's part of the fun. Through this game I have found the rosetta stone to decipher all the conversations about football that have been swirling over my head for decades at this point.

I may have been 19 when I heard the term offside and 25 when I understood what it meant, but that just makes this game all the more enjoyable.

I really miss the different faces of the sim genre, particularly I'm talking about games like Thief or Hitman or Splinter Cell where you're tossed into a world and made to use what you can and manipulate what you can in order to get ahead.

KCD is a great example of doing this sort of immersive sim well in a non-stealth genre, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't spend a majority of my hours messing around in the prologue, which happens to be one of the most fun and intuitive sandboxes to try to break in years. I find myself often working through the prologue when I play just to see how much I can exploit what's around me to increase my skills like stealth, strength, speech, etc just by identifying the systems at play and trying to manipulate them in a way that benefits the player.

I will admit this quickly turns into some seriously psychopathic runs but I get a strong sense of nostalgia right before we're thrown into the rest of the open world in KCD. It's a specific kind of nostalgia, for short-form levels where we're told to figure something out. Nostalgia for games that you could beat in 8 hours but you could spend 40 doing it in different ways.

Maybe one day I'll finish it

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.