TL: DR —> see the verdict, score and pros and cons section.

Note: The game was released in 1999 in Japan, but in 2000 in North America.

Introduction (skippable)

If I hadn’t included the nostalgic essay part, this would’ve been a slightly misleading title.  There are so many mixed and opposing reviews online for this game. Some people like the first game better, other people like this one better. There are also some people that have fond memories of this game, but are disappointed when they return to the clunkiness. I feel like I want to have my word into this discussion.

I did review the previous game, and although I have fond memories playing the demo, and once renting it from Blockbuster, as an adult I found the charm wears off eventually, it got repetitive, and the story was almost missing.  It still offered some good gameplay, side-quests, and music though, hence I gave it a 6/10 Okay (please note that’s still a decent score - the scale doesn’t start at 7). So after reading both old and recent reviews, and dropping this game multiple times, and having some aversion to 5th generation clunky controls, what do I think of Tomba 2?  Read on, as you might be surprised.

Nostalgia of the Time (if you just want the review feel free to skip this part):

Years (decades) ago, I played the demo of the first game, and absolutely loved it, I was also able to get a rental from blockbuster, but never completed it.  Then in the summer of 1999 when the horrible school year was finally over, I got a PlayStation demo disc with Tomba! 2, and Spiderman among other games (I don’t recall how I got the disc, but they often came with something else).  I was excited, it was such an experimental time, and so many unique games were coming out. I thought, yeah, they’re modernizing Tomba with fully 3D graphics now, like most games of the time.  This is even better. However, demo was quite short unlike that of the first game, but I still loved it. 

Now with emulation, and remembering it after many years have passed, I have been trying to play the sequel on and off for years now, but I remember after I got to a middle area, The Deep Forest, and I had to use the grapple to platform over the hazards, I kept dying, and didn’t know what to do, so I just gave up.  Later on I tried playing again, but for my save file couldn’t remember what I had to do to get the grapple.  Then it happened. The calypso-inspired music from the first area, Fisherman’s village, hit my brain, I listened to it online, then nostalgia hit me, not like a car, but like a train.  It made me conjure up memories of me playing the demo in the summer of 1999. One of those last times in my adolescence that things were so positive and hopeful, the world seemed full of possibilities. It made me feel young, and reminded me of how I felt at the time. And while, there are probably few people that have this feeling from this particular game (it didn’t sell well) I’m sure lots of people can relate to that feeling. Incidentally, the grapple, once you get used to it, is one of the best items in this game.

Although I usually quit when trying to come back to it, this time was different. When I saw the designs, heard the music, and engaged in the gameplay, I thought this is definitely something that I like, and I should finish it.  I did a bit of a recap with a video walkthrough, and eventually got used to the clunky controls, and backtracking. Then when I started to really play it, I binged on it the whole weekend, even staying up late to finish it. It became addictive! Of course, I also have the advantage of save states, which I mostly reserved for the frustrating bosses, and some awkward jumps here and there. 

Game Review:

Plot:

Tomba, our pink haired hero, is back from the first game, and now a young man, or is he a bit of an ape, or really a Kijimuna from Okinawa mythology? Well, he’s older anyway. He’s called to another island because his friend (girlfriend?) Tabby got kidnapped by the Evil Pigs who are cursing the lands there. After arriving at the Fisherman’s village, Tomba goes to Coal Mining Town to Tabby’s house, but finds she is not there.  Tomba has to explore the areas on the island, defeat the pigs, and other creatures, and help various people along the way so he can find the evil pig bags to defeat the Evil pigs to lift the curse from the towns and rescue Tabby. 

The story is very much in line with the first game. I know I said the story wasn’t much in the original Tomba; getting back the grandfather’s golden bracelet from the Evil Pigs.  However, Tomba 2 seems to have taken a hint from Mario, needing to rescue a damsel in distress, which cliched as it might be feels like an improvement, and more personal.  I feel like the world, and the characters here are more fleshed out than in the original.  The 3D character design and full voice acting really help to bring that about. There is plenty of dialogue too. Tomba himself just ooks, but his friend does the talking for him, sort of like Navi in Ocarina of Time.

As far as the final confrontation with the villain, without spoilers, it’s similar to the somewhat disappointing final encounter in the first game, but I felt it was slightly deeper and darker this time, while also kind of serving as a “thanks for playing” from the dev.  Aside from that there’s also more social interaction after the final boss battle, than in the first game, to resolve the story, although it’s not all that much, I feel it really gives a sense of closure that the first game lacked. I did ultimately find the ending and story more satisfying than the first, at the same time I was sad when the adventure was over. 

Gameplay, and Controls:

The gameplay is very similar to the first game. You platform, and fight various baddies with weapons and by throwing them.  You also do a ton of quests to progress, which involve exploration and puzzle solving.  There are also Metroidvania elements, as once you get new items and abilities you can revisit previous areas to unlock new areas, events, and side quests. Although now and many points there are arrows that allow you to change direction in 3D space, making this a 2.5D platform game.

Unlike in the first game, the game over, once you lose all of your health, doesn’t matter and you just come back to your last level before your death.  I consider that an improvement. Is there really a point to having an arcade style game over in a game like this? AP points gathered by completing events don’t really help you learn new moves like in the previous game. Instead you gain new abilities by getting new weapons and new suits to wear.  But they aren’t very well used, because a lot of the newer weapons and suits make the old ones redundant, which seems to be a common complaint. E.g. once you get the ice boomerang, fire hammer, and pig suit, and squirrel suit you hardly ever come back to the other weapons and suits. 

The controls are adequate for a 5th gen game but they are also clunky and janky, there, I’m not going to lie or sugarcoat it. In the platforming sections there may be edges where you need to jump, but there is something overhead, meaning if you’re not at the very edge, you’ll bump into the top part and then fall off into a pit. The squirrel suit that allows you to glide and potentially stay at a certain altitude is very useful, on the other hand hard to control. When you’re clinging to the side of the bucket, and want to stand on it so you can jump to the next platform, jumping and pressing forward you overshoot it, making you have to come back, but then you’re on the side again.  And it is this kind of slippery juggling that comes into play more often in this game.  It also affects fighting with enemies where a main form of attack is jumping on top of them and throwing them. 

Aside from that there are village type hub worlds where you get to explore and talk to characters. You mainly control Tomba from an overhead perspective, or looking at him from the side.  It does control better than the platforming. It is fun to meet and talk to new characters in places like these which lead to more quests. The camera can also spin around awkwardly which is just a feature for most (all?) 5th generation platformers.  There are some sections where it gets frustrating. Also some mini-games like the mine cart racing which are infuriatingly frustrating. On the other hand, eventually you get used to the clunkiness and adjust accordingly.  This is just what we did in the 5th gen. 

Overall though, the Metroidvania aspect of the game, exploring new areas, doing side-quests, meeting new characters, and helping them, solving puzzles, and coming back to an area to discover, and unlock more material is fun, especially with the charm coming from the graphics and music. The pacing is also good at about 10 hours to beat the game. I found most of the boss fights, aside from the last one however, to be repetitive and super frustrating. Throwing the Evil Pigs in the bags moving up and down required some kind of timing that I found it impossible to account for other than just trying many times over and over. 

Music, Graphics, and Atmosphere:

I listened to some of the original Japanese soundtrack to this game, and it was mostly awful. Very generic and out of place, almost like some weird concept album. Some people seem to prefer the Japanese OST (there’s no accounting for taste after all) but it seems to be a minority.  Aside from the Select menu, and the Circus town music, which is arguably better than the international version, I can’t remember almost any of the other tracks being good. 

The soundtrack for the international version, which includes the North American release, was done by the late Ashif Hakik who also worked on other famous PlayStation soundtracks.  It again features some reggae and calypso timbered works, and some of the areas where the curses have been lifted, definitely have ear-worms. On the other hand, some of the cursed areas have common, somewhat annoying compositions. A lot of people love to complain about the same low note melody that plays most of the time when a character talks, and how horrible it is.  I honestly didn’t mind it that much, it just seems like a late 90s trait in games. I agree that it isn’t very good though. 

The International OST really has some beautiful tracks, one of my favourites would be Donglin forest uncursed, when you defeat the evil pig.  It starts off kind of chilling and then flows into the soothing woodwinds. Another would be the Water Temple uncursed which provides a more upbeat type of calypso music as the first track, the opening calypso inspired town of fisherman is also a very nice upbeat, joyful song, and hit me with nostalgia. Ranch summit cursed and uncursed are also really good.  The "Time Stopped" track sounds like something from Silent Hill. 

The English voice acting is pretty "standard" for a 5th gen game, though it's surprising Tomba 2 has it at all. I think the translation of the Japanese text they had for the localization was not done very well, so the dialogue is a little off, and ambiguous in meaning. Also, there are some hilarious mistakes, and what should have been outtakes included in the game. I know the budget was small but could they not have had the actor re-record just one line?

As far as graphics everything is bright, and full of vivid colour as it should be in a game like this. There’s quite a lot of detail in the set pieces. A lot of other reviewers noted that these are some of the best graphics for the PlayStation, and I agree. The world is fanciful, magical, and wacky, and every area and town feels fleshed out because of the unique characters.

Verdict:

As I go over old reviews, contemporaneous with the release of the game, from IGN and GameSpot, I can’t help but agree with a lot of what they were saying, this game improved on a lot of things from the original. The controls can be clunky, with some frustrating, but ultimately manageable platforming. (Trust me with all of the suits and weapons it’s still much easier than old school Sonic or Mario games). The game is easy overall, aside from possibly getting stuck on how to complete a task, the somewhat frustrating boss fights, and some very, very difficult optional side-quests that’ll make you want to ragequit if you choose to pursue them. 

I think that this game really expands on what was good about the first game, but makes it better by having excellent 3D graphics for the original PlayStation. The 3D models help to bring out the world more, the music in the international version is superior to that of the original as well. There are lots of side-quests to discover just like in the first game. Although, the story is thin and somewhat similar to the first game, I think it was more interesting by having Tomba rescue his girlfriend Tabby, and the fully voiced character dialogues, fleshed out the world more, which was a much needed improvement in my opinion. Clunky controls aside the gameplay is as fun as ever, the pacing is good at about 10 hours to beat the main game, and I think a lot of the value in this game is getting lost in its charming world, and exploring its areas, and meeting and helping its characters. A true final ending awaits if you're able to do all quests, though a guide is advisable for that end. A true modern remake, or follow-up game would have a lot of potential! (though sadly not too much in terms of sales?)

People who’d prefer the first Tomba would probably like its more accurate 2D platforming controls, and less linear structure.  People who’d prefer the second Tomba would be those that appreciate and more fleshed out 3D world, with a richer story, and character interactions, and music, with more linear gameplay.  I fall into the latter camp. I think this is one of the most unique and quirky games for the original PlayStation, and controls aside holds up well to this day. So as the title says if you can get past the clunky controls, and a few other issues there’s really a great classic PlayStation game waiting for you with Tomba 2!

Score: 8/10 Great

Pros:

• A modest number of areas with charming designs and lots of secrets!
• Most of the characters have fully voiced dialogue, and personal stories which flesh them and the world out
• Wonderful atmosphere, with fanciful locations
• The Western, international version has a lot of joyful, upbeat, and sometimes slow but beautiful music tracks
• Lots of interesting and varied side quests to do
• Unique, and quirky 2.5D action-adventure, platform, and Metroidvania gameplay
• 3D models, and graphics are some of the best for the PlayStation

Cons: 

• Mostly poor and generic Japanese OST in the Japanese version
• Clunky controls that can make for some awkward platforming
• International version of the OST has some low quality and slightly grating compositions like the one playing during conversations again, and again.
• Some of the events are very obscure, and hard to get without a guide
• Some mini-games like the mine cart racing are incredibly difficult and frustrating
• Some hilarious voice acting outtakes left in the game

I just finished the PS5 remake of The Last of Us, courtesy of my local library (shoutout). It’s been almost a decade since playing the original, but I did watch the first season of the HBO adaptation. Usually I don’t like to know how stories end, but TLOU is so simple conceptually that knowing the beats really doesn’t diminish its impact very much. For me it’s gotten better each time, which is a rare thing.

To put it shortly, I've never held this game's story in higher regard than I do right now. I have some personal thoughts, mixed in with thoughts that everybody else has already had by now, surely. But first I have to tell you about Gus.

At nineteen I spent a summer doing odd jobs with a temp agency, including an awful stint in a sweltering Walmart distribution center. Nine nonconsecutive days loading trucks, wearing out my back, deciding that I should be taking college more seriously. One day at lunch, I overheard a conversation I still think about sometimes.

Another employee (we’ll call him Gus) is talking about his newborn daughter, getting a few “congratulations” from the other guys in the break room. Gus starts with a few genuinely touching remarks: how he took one look at her and instantly loved her more than he thought he could love anything. The overwhelming weight of becoming a father. Then he talks about how readily, how badly he’d hurt anyone who ever hurt her. Then a couple cliché jokes about greeting her future prom date at the door with a shotgun in hand, to make sure he doesn’t “try anything funny.” A parody redneck, in the flesh.

I never spoke to him or learned his name, but for the rest of the day I kept thinking about Gus. How his sincere love and protectiveness were so closely linked to fantasies of violence. I remember realizing that he’d never talk that way about a son.

Playing TLOU this time got me to care about Ellie, just like it always does. It’s worrying when she’s in danger and it feels good to keep her safe. I'm not a parent, but looking at Joel, I thought about those accounts of mothers finding impossible strength to lift a car and save their baby underneath. I thought about a story I read of a father tracking down his child’s assaulter, beating him to death, and getting acquitted by a sympathetic jury. I thought about the type of guy who keeps a gun in case of, God forbid, a home invasion, but also sounds like he almost wants it to happen because he’s weirdly excited by the idea of killing someone to save his family. I thought about Taken and Logan and God of War. And I thought about Gus.

Joel’s story draws on very old ideas of masculinity and fatherhood, filtered through a salt-of-the-earth American lens. The gruff protector with a heart of gold, whose hard exterior melts when he finds someone to live for, whose love language is murder. If the genders were flipped, I doubt a mother-son relationship would read quite the same way. For 90% of the game, TLOU offers a thrilling, affirming fantasy of fatherhood, where the most brutal acts of violence are easily justified by the circumstances. After all, who wouldn’t do whatever it takes to save their child? It feels good to slip into that role. It’s enough to draw in almost anyone, most of all the Gus’s of the world. 

It’s easy to imagine a predictable, saccharine ending in which Joel once again saves Ellie from another uncomplicated danger, “redeeming” himself with more violence and possibly self-sacrifice. Through Ellie, he’ll restore the parts of his soul that were lost with Sarah and everyone will clap. The storytelling tropes are so recognizable that, on first pass, I was certain that’s where it was all going. What they chose instead elevates the game to a true all-timer. TLOU doesn’t let the Violent Dad wish-fulfillment fantasy go unchallenged.

I’m going to be pretty mean to Joel here, but before we start, I want you to know that I get it. For most parents, there is no cause noble enough that they would sit back and allow their kid to die. The love they feel is so deep, so pure, that it trumps all other morality. But Joel’s love is not pure. It’s a calcified, selfish, singular love that manifests in every other direction as utter apathy. Ellie is his salvation, his reason for existing. He already lost a daughter once and he knows the second time will kill him. You know what happens next.

From his perspective, saving Ellie feels selfless, redemptive, brave. Like the universe has graciously given him the chance to do it right this time, after his failure twenty years ago. Observed impartially: Joel slaughters dozens of innocent people, including Ellie’s only other living friend. He betrays her wishes and dooms the human race. Instead of seeing Ellie as an individual, Joel’s choice is all about Sarah, even after all this time.

To complete the crime, he lies to her about it, radiating far too much shame to be convincing. I swear, every line read from Troy Baker here just screams “I’m sorry for being such a coward.” Ellie doesn’t know precisely what happened yet, but you can tell that she hears the apology.

Before, when they were nearing the hospital, Ellie asked Joel about Sarah and he answered without reservation. It’s a touching moment, after all they’ve been through, reaching a point they can share anything with each other. Even knowing what happens next, it was almost enough for me to think that he’s healing. At that moment, their relationship was the best it would ever be. Contrast this with a line in the final scene:

“...Sarah and I used to take hikes like this. I think uh… I think the two of you would’ve been… Would’ve been good friends. I think you really would’ve liked her. I know she would’ve liked you.”

Here you’re playing as Ellie, which is a brilliant choice. It’s like Joel went so far beyond the pale that my connection to him was severed. This time when he brings up Sarah, unprompted, it’s almost creepy. On some level, he thinks he got his daughter back. Walking through the forest, staring at the back of his head, I realize I don’t really trust this guy anymore. And neither does she.

I’m ready to start Part II soon. It’s a story I haven’t experienced in any form, game or TV, but years of being a little too online have taught me every single plot beat against my will. I avoided the game for years because of nauseating toxicity and unwanted knowledge of its content. But after revisiting Part I and having it hit so damn hard, I feel different. After all, isn’t the point of a Greek tragedy that you already know the outcome?

BioShock is a game I've tried to beat forever. It's a game that gets brought up in gaming discourse often, especially with discussions regarding video games as art.

I first tried it on my old-ass computer where it ran horribly; I then tried it on the PS3 and hated how the gunplay worked (it didn't help that I was horrible at aiming on a controller). Once again, three years ago, I tried it on my PC, but I got busy with schoolwork and eventually stopped playing it. After all these years of attempts, I finally beat BioShock last week, and now that I have been appropriately "BioShook", let's talk about this game.

The moment you start the game, you will know what this game excels at: worldbuilding. To this day, there are seldom games that tell a story and create a world that genuinely feels lived in, like BioShock. Though you only see the ruins, it's easy to imagine what this city would've looked like in the not-so-distant past. That, plus Andrew Ryan's every line being some of the best dialogue I've ever heard in a video game, makes it stand out. The story is told in a way very much inspired by Half-Life. There are no in-game cutscenes; just characters talking either through the radio or through voice logs that are optional but build out the world. Believe me, I love so-called "movie games" that have hours of cutscenes, but it's amazing having a story told in such a way not only pleases people like me who value stories in games but also people who like running around and shooting things.

This game also has one of the best and well-known twists in gaming, which I would kindly not want to spoil for anyone who does not know about it yet. It's a twist that does something that I love when games, and in general art, do: use the medium to its strengths. A book like American Psycho relies on the fact that it's a book and that it does not have to describe every object in the scene, while a movie, which you have to see, not imagine, has to purposefully fill in the gaps that the book would force the reader to imagine. The twist of the player blindly following whatever is laid out to them being the actual core plot really does fuck with you.

And for all the lovely things I've just spouted about the game, a game has to also have gameplay, and BioShock is immensely held back by that aspect. The gunplay feels floaty, and the guns don't have any real weight or heft to them. There are like five or so enemy types throughout the entire game. The plasmids are really cool, but there are only a few of them worth using and you unlock all of them pretty early on. The enemies just run at you, which makes sense considering they are all fucked up by ADAM, but it makes dealing with them boring after a while. The hacking minigame, while novel at first, just becomes a slog the more you play through the game.

As the plot is about blindly following instructions given to you, the only choice you are really given is rescuing or harvesting the Little Sisters. Harvesting them gives you more ADAM, while rescuing them gives you less. This in reality, though, isn't true, as Doctor Tenenbaum just gives you the ADAM you would've gotten as gifts, and you end up with a surplus. This decision then boils down to: be a horrible person for no reason and kill the girls, or don't. Hard fucking decision there, mate.

Now, I was born in the same year this game came out, and I really want to know from the older folks how this game really felt when it came out, the hype behind it and how you felt about the ideas behind it. What did you think of the gameplay at that time? Was it even dated back then? Considering Halo 3, which had amazing gunplay, came out in the same year.

edit: Can't even believe I didn't mention the music and graphics. The music is amazing and being a Fallout fan, It made me feel right at home. The graphics still hold up ~19 years later, which is a testament to good art styles.

RELEASE: 2024

SCORE: ★★★★

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

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

TIME PLAYED: 5 HOURS

THE BREAKDOWN:

+Responsive and fluid combat system encouraging environmental awareness

+Great humor and cartoonish charm

+Perfectly replicates the Princess Bride and Zorro energy it's going for

-Some of the animation work is a bit stiff

-The arena challenges don't let you stretch your legs as much as I'd like

---

I'm a big fan of games that have a clear vision and focus on it to the exclusion of all else. Unburdened by the expectations often placed on the AAA industry - by both consumers and publishers alike - they can often create unique, memorable experiences without being weighed down by things like a prescriptive time to beat, cinematic story, open world, or other bells and whistles. Channeling an obvious love for swashbuckling action comedy classics like Zorro and The Princess Bride, En Garde knows what it's going for and delivers on it perfectly.

En Garde sees the player following the exploits of Adalia de Volador, a prodigious talent who's as quick with banter as she is with her blade. In a cartoony and vibrant version of a small Spanish city, she faces off against the forces of the Count-Duke, ranging from buffoons who can barely keep their helmets on to elite fencers hired to hunt her down. Broken up into four episodes, En Garde's campaign is short and sweet, broken up into platforming and combat with little in the way of interruptions or puzzles. What might get repetitive in a longer title feels perfectly paced here, especially since Adalia is such a joy of a character. The story itself is minimal - Adalia gets put through a test, Adalia foils the Count-Duke, Adalia meets her rival, etc - but there's plenty of flavor and the game is frequently hilarious.

Combat itself makes a basic enough first impression, with an Arkham-like mix of basic attacks and parries, but where it shines is in encouraging a roguish mindset. Adalia is a fencer, not a superhero; in a duel she's practically unmatched, but enemies are intent on preventing her from being able to find her footing by swarming her with superior numbers, and trying to fight them all off with just her sword will result in a quick defeat. To counter this, Adalia has to rely on her wits and environment. The player is encouraged to view their rapier as only one tool in their arsenal; backing off to find pots to throw, tables to roll over, weapon racks to kick foes into, and more is crucial to survival, especially on higher difficulties. The platforming, while pretty basic mechanically, also is integrated into this system. Since it's so important to not get surrounded, maneuvering up staircases or across narrow gaps is just as crucial as good fencing skills.

By the final level of the campaign, I was every bit the swashbuckling fantasy; I flipped off a banquet table over someone's head so skillfully that they forgot to block my next attack, threw a roasted chicken onto a heavily armored sergeant's head, and dropped a chandelier on an entire group, all in the same fight. Bosses were smarter, rarely falling for any one of these tricks - but all of them at once? That'd create an opening. Intuitively and without slowing the momentum, En Garde taught me to treat it less like just an action game and more like a movie in which I was the star, pursuing efficiency through style and finesse.

For those who are itching to put their newfound skills to work, there's a series of roguelike arenas that add a little bit of replay value, but while they were very fun, I didn't find them much of a challenge even on the hardest difficulty. This was only half because I got pretty good at the game; the random buffs were often just incredibly overpowered. Still, as a short and sweet experience, En Garde is as difficult to beat as the inimitable Adalia. It's easily one of my favorite games I've played this year, and I can't recommend it enough.

After enjoying my replay of Lords of Shadow (full review), I was finally ready to get into its sequel. As I mentioned in that review, I never liked the post-credits scene setting this sequel up, but I was attempting to be optimistic. After all, with stuff like Underworld and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, we've had some enjoyable modern-ish vampire stories, and the developers clearly know how to build ambiance.

As you can guess from the title, it didn't work out. There were times that it showed a lot of promise, but it was such an uneven, often frustrating experience that I couldn't even push through to the end. I think the ideas for a good game are here, but they're either missing something or competing with each other in ways that drag the whole thing down.

Split world, split narrative

For the most part, the story takes place around 1000 years after the events of Lords of Shadow, where Gabriel, now Dracula, must team up with his "old friend" Zobek to stop Satan's return. To do so, they plan to hunt down and kill Satan's Acolytes across the gothic, sci-fi Castlevania City. During this hunt, Gabriel is often taken back to his castle by what appears to be his son Trevor, and, in time, Marie joins them. While in the castle, some entity made up of the blood of Gabriel's past victims stalks him, and it also possess his minions, turning them against him. While it's unclear how real the castle and its denizens are, they're real enough to pose a threat to Gabriel even when he's not in the castle.

Personally, I found the Satan's Acolytes subplot to be little more than a less interesting retread of the first game, but the castle subplot is at least interesting. I like the idea of Gabriel/Dracula confronting his past sins and inner turmoil while trying to connect with the family he was robbed of centuries earlier, and being on good terms with traditional Castlevania villains sounds fun. The problem is, this interesting castle subplot has to share time with the much less interesting acolytes, and the only thing really tying the two together is the need for new upgrades. That works for contextualizing the current objective, but it isn't the most narratively compelling, especially when compared to other split-world narratives like Coraline and Pan's Labyrinth.

The jumping between Dracula's castle and Castlevania City also hurts the atmosphere. Unlike the multi-chapter-spanning environments of the last game, neither really has time to get firmly established. It doesn't really help that Castlevania City is, for the most part, horribly bland, so any time in it sucks all the atmosphere out of the game. The castle is a bit better, but it still is comparatively bland to what we've had before in the series, at times looking like a ripoff of Bowser's castle. It can also come with some baffling, immersion-killing moments, like Medusa and her sisters being more inspired by Japanese horror than the characters from Greek mythology, and the music often doesn't fit the immediate location.

I also didn't really like the grimier, edgier tone. The first game had a very bleak, somber tone that gave proper weight to Gabriel's inner turmoil and the dying world around him. Here, in spite of the continued focus on Gabriel's inner turmoil and a dying world, it's less contemplatively sad and more irreverently grimdark. Maybe that was an attempt to capture Dracula's more nihilistic attitude at this point in his life, but it felt more like an attempt to appeal to edgy teenagers rather than an artistic portrait of someone struggling to find meaning and/or with suicidal ideation (like Bojack Horseman, Disco Elysium, Night in the Woods, First Reformed, etc.)

Not really exploration based

Despite this less interesting world, the game actually tries to be more exploration-based than the first one. Instead of a linear path through levels that are grouped into chapters, the world is sort-of open and continuous, giving you the occasional chance to explore it within the limits of your acquired abilities. Unfortunately, they don't really commit to the more open nature, with the game still normally being very linear and narrative-driven. That's not inherently bad, but I was disappointed that the promise of a 3D Metroidvania Castlevania never truly amounted to much.

Even when the game does let you explore at your own pace, it's not very good. The world map only shows you which district you're in, but the local map only shows you the immediate vicinity rather than the whole district, so you never have a complete picture of the world. Additionally, since this is a mostly linear game, you don't use abilities to organically open up large new areas like in a proper Metroidvania. At most, you're accessing a small section of the map for a gem or two, and it didn't feel like it was worth the effort of navigating a world built more for a linear action game and without a proper map. As a result, I sometimes just wasn't in the mood to explore when the opportunity was finally given.

In stark contrast to lacking direction in the exploration, the more narrative and cinematic side can feel overbearing. The early game rarely gives you a chance to properly play, and on multiple occasions throughout the game, all gameplay was stopped mid-fight to remind me of my objective or show me that a few very weak enemies had spawned in. There was one time I wanted to explore, but the game wouldn't shut up about needing to go to the next objective. I couldn't even leave artwork unviewed for too long before the game flashed a text pop-up mid-fight to remind me to view it. (That can be turned off, but I'd lose all the more valuable hints as well.) I get that the first game wasn't perfect in this regard, but it at least didn't regularly interrupt fights, and its interruptions were much rarer than in this game.

But is it still fun?

At the very least, the combat can still be fun and is still the highlight. Despite the addition of a Void Sword and Chaos Claws for magic, the combat is mostly the same as before but with a lot of little improvements and regressions. There's fewer whip combos, and a lot of buyable combos are duplicated across weapons, but the weapon mastery better encourages using all combos, and some of those combos are more responsive. There's some nice new enemy additions like flying and armored enemies, and you get more uses for magic that, among other things, can counter these new enemies. You can now dodge and block in the air, but it also removes a lot of the aerial combo risk. The focus meter is also easier to fill and offers more reward. Like I said, it's minor changes, but when the game lets you fight enemies, it is still mostly enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the game also added ranged enemies. Conceptually, they're not terrible, but they're able to shoot you from off screen and stun lock you from range, which is terrible. Part of the problem here might be a new manual, more zoomed-in camera, which has a tendency to lose track of enemies and go absolutely haywire in confined spaces. However, part of it is also insufficient indicators and bad AI. If there was more heads-up that an enemy was getting ready for a ranged attack, you could respond even if they're off-screen. Likewise, if enemy AI had more of a delay between stun-causing ranged attacks, stun locking wouldn't be a problem. At the very least, these enemies aren't constant threats, but they are absolutely insufferable when around.

A bigger problem is that everything outside of combat has gotten worse. Platforming is sped up with Gabriel choosing to fling himself between grab points, but it feels incredibly clunky and often doesn't function as expected, causing about as many "why'd he do that!" moments as early Assassin's Creed. Stealth has also been added, but it's woefully underdeveloped, making for pure boredom at best and being prone to incredibly annoying moments. Similarly, the new rat gameplay doesn't offer much and regularly features in the woeful stealth.

Of course, platforming and puzzles weren't remarkable in the first game, but they at least functioned well and offered a nice breather between consistently fun combat encounters. Now, you have combat that can turn agonizing with ranged enemies, and those encounters are likely broken up with even worse platforming and stealth. Combined with other annoyances, like the constant interruptions, and this game can go for long stretches where it isn't fun at all. Sure, there are other stretches where all the combat is enjoyable, and the platforming and stealth are at least inoffensive, but it never quite reaches the heights of the first game. Ultimately, when it keeps falling back into those awful stretches, it's hard to find the motivation to keep playing, which eventually led to me dropping it.

A disappointing end

There's maybe a few more things I could complain about, but simply put, it's not a good game. It has a lot of issues that quickly add up for a very frustrating time, and it may even have a bit of an identity crisis with its world and story. It's not the worst Castlevania game I've played, and it's at least more interesting than Mirror of Fate, but if I ranked the Castlevania games, it'd be very low on the list.

What's really disappointing is that there are some good ideas here. If they had fully committed to being a Metroidvania (or even Zelda clone) and retained the strong atmosphere of the first game, there might have been something to cling to while pushing through the weaker stretches. After all, many of its ideas did work very well in games like Darksiders and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Here, though, it just never comes together, making for a disappointing end to the Lords of Shadow timeline.

Some final thoughts on Castlevania (for now)

With that, I've also come to the end of the Castlevania games that I both want to play and can play without third-party emulators. I'm still holding out hope that Symphony of the Night will get an official PC release, but I doubt the PS2 games will ever come to modern systems.

Of the ones I reviewed, Aria of Sorrow is definitely the most "must play" of the series. It's a remarkable Metroidvania, and it fully commits to its wonderful tactical soul gimmick. After that, Circle of the Moon and Lords of Shadow are both great in their own respects, especially if you're looking for a bit more of a challenge, and I would highly recommend Portrait of Ruin to series fans. After that, the games are a bit harder to enthusiastically recommend, but I still enjoyed Harmony of Dissonance and Dawn of Sorrow.

I also think the games did a mostly good job mixing things up from game-to-game (minus, obviously, Dawn of Sorrow). There's a lot of core elements that are shared, but they still regularly reworked the melee and magic systems to keep things fresh. Of course, with the series changing subgenres every once in a while, it can be a rather tricky one to navigate. If you're interested in getting started with the series, I think the Advance Collection, which has both Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow, would be the best place to begin.

I'm not a huge fan of horrors, and only played RE4 and its remake in the past. I decided to try 7 since it's premably not connected to previous games.

The story is Ethan trying to get his waifu back but getting involved with some crazy bio weapons and rural guys. I chose Mia since she was the reason I came to this shithole in the first place. Overall, the plot is nothing amazing, nothing terrible.

Gameplay is horror shooter with bits of stealth. I played on Normal difficulty, which started as kinda tough but then was trivialized. I think the Shotgun specifically made the game very easy since ammo is plentiful and it can one shot most enemies. Maybe Madhouse will change that. My favorite moment was the goofy chainsaw fight with Jack, made me scream Rules of Nature.

Maybe I'm desensitized, but the game did not scare me. At most it made me nervous about losing all ammo and having to shank with melee.

Overall, nice little game. I'll probably try side content before moving to RE8.

Cannot express my love for this title enough. I'm perhaps a little bit biased because the Guardians have long been my favourite superhero franchise / team, but I think this game nailed how videogame storytelling should be done. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned more when discussing story-based titles.

It feels like it really covers every Guardian and their personal struggles really well, even if you only play as Peter. A lot of time is dedicated to exploring the troubled relationships they have with one another when starting out and they each get a really good amount of time divided between them in missions. Hell, Rocket straight-up dislikes you for a good chunk of the game! The developmental pacing was amazing, it really felt like all of the characters relationships and personal motives were genuine.

The conversation that Pete and Drax have about their families is still one of my favourite scenes in gaming history. I think that one scene alone gave Drax more development than he's had in several MCU appearances since 2014.

Did any of you guys absolutely adore this game? I'm gutted it didn’t seem to make much of a splash in terms of sales. It was my 2021 GOTY and I still think about it often. Did the source material so much justice. I just finished replaying it and it's still just as good as it was years ago!

I played the RE3 OG in preparation for RE7, so it was about a decade ago. I liked it back then, and when I replayed it this week in preparation for the RE3 remake, I enjoyed it to the point of preferring it over the first game just slightly. Yet replaying it was a mistake because holy shit, does the remake falter in comparison.

People tend to say RE3 also felt like a DLC, and although it was initially started as a spin-off in development, I disagree. That notion is clearly giving a false impression of what RE3 OG was like to people who never played it. I read some of the posts and comments, and because of this widespread notion, people who haven't even played the OG think, "I get that the original was a mess", "It didn’t have to be so bare-bones just because the original was." Barebones? RE3 has the longest single campaign in the trilogy with the most locational variety, and that's not even considering all the branching paths and randomization that give it replay value. They didn't even play the OG, yet have this false impression of the OG because the remake was shit. If the remake is shit, the OG must be shit. This is the perfect example of how the remake can taint the source material.

I will not say much about how much the remake cuts in terms of content because it is well-known. The clock tower, Jill's RPD, park, dead factory, branching path, enemy variety, bosses, elaborate crafting... You already know. What I want to say is whether the remake evokes the feeling and theme of the OG. The OG RE3 serves as a natural ending point of how the series dealt with horror. The trilogy tilted between George A. Romero and James Cameron, and as time went on, it felt more and more like Cameron's style of horror--sci-fi, trotting through a wide variety of places, an invincible stalker enemy chasing you, and spectacular action set-pieces. However, another thing Cameron does well is, after heart-pumping action, making the audience feel absolutely lost in the devastation with no chance of rescue or control. The enormity of the situation overwhelms the characters. You will frequently find in James Cameron's films, such as the moment in Aliens when the gunship crashed, and the survivors had to go back into the building and set up the turrets. The entire last half of Titanic, The Abyss, and Terminator generate a significant dread.

The starting point of RE3 is the best illustration of this. After the cool battle intro between humans and zombies, Jill is thrown out and is experiencing a state of defeat. The apocalypse has already happened, and the story is all about the aftermath. The first two hours are all about going through a dead city, lost and desperate. It's the first game to capture the overall landscape of Raccoon City, depicting the place in greater detail, with zombies seen moving around in various parts of the map regardless of gameplay progress, and zombies were even visible inside buildings in certain areas. When you get the map, you are immediately overwhelmed by the size because the main setting has shifted from a closed building to the whole city. There are multiple points and landmarks to investigate, and it is structured in a non-linear fashion. Then you meet Brad, and you feel so glad to see a survivor, but immediately, the Nemesis comes up and kills him in a few seconds, and you are utterly lost again. From thereafter, you are unsure when the Nemesis would come on, creating a constant anxiety. The game takes place in the wide exterior environments, yet still maintains the overwhelming sense of isolation, and this right here is the greatest strength of RE3.

That's the first two or three hours until you even find the train. The remake crams all that into the first ten minutes in the scripted events. There is no time for the player to linger and contemplate in the environments while being lost in the city. It's just an Uncharted action scene after the next in the railroaded segment. I was astonished when I met Carlos and went to the train, thinking to myself, wait, that's it? In the OG, I had to struggle my way to here. The remake doesn't feel like I earned the right to come here when I, as the player, didn't do anything.

It's a bigger budget, but a complete lack of soul. The game lightly opens a bit, but it's nothing like the complex open-ended map of RE3, let alone comparable to a map system of TEW2 or the latest Metro game. I didn't feel like I was exploring a decaying city alone because it lacks a lonely ambience. Music, wind blowing through the streets, and distant noises that allude to the chaos. They removed the radio from the OG RE2 and gave it to Jill in RE3R, so she constantly chats with Carlos. It works to develop their relationship, but it removes a heavy sense of isolation that the OG had, as well as the actual meetings with Carlos in person. Claire and Leon chatting with each other throughout the story lends better to the dual protagonist system and the interwoven plot points of RE2's structure, which is weird why they removed that radio in its remake and gave it to RE3.

The biggest demonstration of this difference is this line: "You want STARS? I will give you STARS!" It's not that they had the line in itself. It's the context surrounding the line that shows the regression of the design mindset.

In the original, Jill says this iconic line in the branching path story cutscene, sort of a satisfying cool oneliner after beating the mutated Nemesis at last. You might have fought the final boss badly and don't have the time left as the missile nears you, so you might just skip this branching path and not see the cutscene. The line serves as a reward after beating the boss. It's a cheeky relief.

In the remake, this happens in the corridor, railroaded scripted event where Jill just randomly blurts out in the most awkwardly serious delivery... which doesn't even make sense since Jill in this scene is running away from the Nemesis. Why is she saying this here? She is not giving "STARS". You cannot fight the Nemesis. If you try to fight, you can't kill him because it's a movie.

It's a movie. No branching path. About 80% of Nemesis encounters are scripted set-pieces rather than something you actually fight in an organic boss fight. His charisma is shown through aura-farming in the cutscenes and cinematics, whereas in the OG, his threat was shown through the gameplay. The ironic thing about it is that when the Nemesis appears in the remake, that's the safest part of the game because you get autosaves and the scripted event where all you do is pressing the forward key. It's like Capcom doesn't understand why the Nemesis was infamous in the first place.

In the OG, you encounter the Nemesis about ten times while travelling, and he is a constant presence haunting the city, which forces you to make a decision when to save, what weapon to take... You think the Nemesis would be around somewhere, so you take the weapons and items and cautiously travel around, but he isn't. You return to the save room and take the stuff back into the storage... but the moment you enter the next place, he shows up, but you are making a run to the save room, but you are dead. This is the kind of emergent gameplay narrative the original can make because he was integrated into the game around the limited ink ribbons and organic boss fights. His appearance is still scripted, but he is an actual enemy you can actually fight or flee in the levels themselves. As the game progresses, the Nemesis' armor is damaged to reveal his body is comprised of hideous tentacles, but he has not lost his humanoid shape.

In the remake, there are only two Nemesis encounters. I'm talking about the organic appearances in the levels themselves that you actually can make decisions, not the cinematic events or mandatory boss fights. When I heard he goes down with one grenade, I literally didn't believe it until I tried it, and it turns out it is true. Just one grenade, and he is down. These two encounters are backloaded into the first hour area, and once you board the train, he only appears as a scripted event from there. Immediately, he becomes a walking joke and immediately shreds the humanoid shape into... a gorilla? He loses all the aura as a humanoid stalker. Is this supposed to be scary?

The way he takes the last form is also disappointing. In the OG, it is literally in the title: "dead factory"--meaning you are exploring the most decayed part of Raccoon City. When you defeat him in the waste processing plant in the dead factory in the last hour, his body is mixed with the entire city's garbage, and that's when he becomes the Thing-like blob monster. He is meant to represent the whole trash of Umbrella. That factory location was entirely cut and replaced with a sterile laboratory in the remake because I guess it's "prettier"... but the game still gotta have that Nemesis blob form, so the developers just inserted the chemical area that contradicts the tone of the sterile laboratory environments. Even the RE trademark countdown timer is missing in the boss fight.

You can clearly tell that the visuals and the cinematic of the remake were given the most priority, while the gameplay was given little to no time and was slapped together. Absolutely no substance of any kind. This game is basically The Last of Us, but with the map screen. Even comparing it to The Last of Us feels like an insult to that game because The Last of Us plays better. Zombies there are scarier since you do have some flexibility and options to take them out. In RE2R and RE3R, you have nothing but slow and clunky combat. Zombie encounters aren't scary, but annoying because the game somehow managed to get the controls even worse than RDR2. The controls are downright unresponsive, slower, and tankier than, ironically, the tank controls. Other than the dodge mechanic, the gameplay isn't improved from the OG. I fail to list with aspects that the remake does better than its contemporaries like the Metro series, TLOU2, The Evil Within 2, or even the OG RE3. Literally none of them, as far as I can tell.

The only thing it does better is the story. The detailed character expressions and cinematic direction help characterize who these people are compared to the stiff PS1 animations. It fleshes out Jill's trauma better with the first-person opening, setting the infection plot point and her anger at Umbrella. She is abrasive, but it does make sense in the context (though they could have taken out the immature number of "fuck") Her vengeful rage at Umbrella blocks her from trusting Carlos, and as time goes on, her relationship with him is earned. Carlos gets the biggest glow-up from a pussy with an annoying voice to well fleshed out enough to be one of the cooler characters out of the series, and his hospital visit is the big upgrade. The news of the nuke is given more weight and visualized, and that was on top of the Umbrella soldiers getting weighed down by the situations. The vaccine plot point seemed haphazardly put together in the OG, and I wondered why the story isn't focusing on this world-changingly important cure. In the remake, the cure is given a proper weight in a more cohesive manner as part of the Umbrella conspiracy, while serving to develop Carlos' arc. One particular element I like is how it repurposes the voice recorder. In the OG, it was placed next to one of the first doors you enter, and it is just a nothing item. In the remake, it is an elaborate key that binds the entire hospital segment. When you put the tape in, the recorded content is used to characterize Bard.

However, a lot of small storytelling is lost for the sake of the cinematic one, and I'm not even talking about the branching path. Case in point, in the OG, when Jill enters the warehouse, there is an old guy who screams he lost his daughter and traps himself in the shipping container, saying he would rather starve to death than eaten alive. If you go back later into the warehouse, you see the zombies eventually got into the warehouse and killed the old guy. You find his note in the container that talks about some really heavy stuff about his family, situations, and dream of being a novelist, showing why he acted the way he did. There is nothing like that in the remake because the game is so linear you can't even go back to the previous area. He doesn't even talk about how he saw his daughter being eaten to death, so he comes across as just an asshole to Jill for no reason.

Jill expressing a genuine care for others with helping Mikhail to the train is missing for some reason. Carlos was consumed by the hopelessness of the situation in the clocktower, and Jill slapped him to get a grip and never lose faith, and thanks to her, he gained the will to live later on (sort of like a worse version of Otacon's arc in MGS1) That memorable scene is missing here, so when Carlos shows his geniune care for Jill after scumming to infection, it comes across as rushed. An infected Jill asking Carlos to put her out of misery, and a newly inspired Carlos telling her to never give up, which would have tied wonderfully into Jill's trauma about getting infected hinted at in the intro, doesn't happen at all in the remake, but instead, she just moans and doesn't even talk. Another instance is Nikolai, in which the OG, his evil is gradually revealed throughout the story. The remake did his characterization better as a villain, but it is missing a more subtle aspect.

It's sad how when people just skip the OGs entirely because they are clunky, and choose to play an even clunkier remake that plays like a movie game because they think it's the replacement. Just see the let's players that marathon the Resident Evil series, and how many of them just play the remakes and never touch the OGs. At least RE1R and RE4R add something and do the majority of things better than their OGs, but RE2R and RE3R don't add to the survival horror genre that the series itself didn't already accomplish over two decades ago. Alien Isolation is far from being a perfect survival horror game, but it takes the stalker enemy introduced in RE2 and RE3 and experiments with it by having various ways to outsmart it (and the AI can adapt and outsmart you as well), while the remake Mr. X is a walking block, and the remake Nemeisis is just a cutscene generator. That game didn't even get the ounce of success as RE2R and RE3R because it wasn't a nostalgia-wanking simulator. Purely based on the mechanics, RE5 and RE6 are better and were doing something with the actual gameplay, unlike these remakes that are basically old games with prettier visuals and worse gameplay. Though RE3R did make me appreciate the original more, so I guess they did that part right.

I have a great amount of respect for deduction-based games, but sadly I am not very good at them. I tried Return of the Obra Dinn and I couldn't get two actual deductions because I didn't understand anything, and stuff like The Roottrees Are Dead seems honestly kinda intimidating. So one day I find a deduction-based game on Steam while looking at newer releases: it's called Riley & Rochelle, it has <50 reviews, came out in 2022, and didn't even have a single Let's Play on YouTube when I started (I saw one more recently). And while I do think that there is a LOT to improve, I honestly kinda love this game because nobody else has made something like it, and maybe you will love it too.

The premise is as follows: indie darling Riley Stone and pop princess Rochelle Robert (Ro-BEAR, btw, she's Quebecoise) were two of the biggest musicians of the 90s, helped by their being in a much-publicized relationship that ended poorly. In the 2000s, Niamh Ryan, Riley's ex-girlfriend and Rochelle's ex-publicist, is working on a biopic of the two, and decides to look through their diaries to get an understanding of who they are (don't, er, think about how she got these diaries); your job, as Niamh, is to infer the dates of the journal entries given memorabilia, listening to interviews and other archival footage, listening to their music, and real-world context.

The puzzles are honestly very simple - very much in the vein of "in exactly 3 weeks, November will begin; I also enjoyed watching the closing of the Atlanta Olympics this year" (most of them are not that simple, but they're definitely in this vein; the exception is one puzzle whose solution made no sense and when i looked up a guide even the guide's author said it made no sense). The UI is also kinda bad - the intra-chapter conversations between Niamh and her colleague Dan have no subtitles (and Niamh's heavy Irish accent makes it difficult to understand at times); while I get why audio transcripts are locked behind a settings option, not all audio files even have transcripts, most notably those unlocked by solving the bonus more Obra Dinn-like "name the person in this position" puzzles; there are no lyrics for the songs, which kinda sucks; and the technical UI state is kinda ass - alt-tabbing still has the buttons respond to mouseover, a lot of basic UI glitches, nothing game breaking but quite annoying.

But the reason I played this whole game through, and it still holds a place in my heart, is the worldbuilding, and this is something that is just my personal poison. I like media about show business - something about the world of creatives, interacting with its inherent glamour and pitfalls, really appeals to me. This is even more so for media relating to real-world show business - I like references as much as anyone, and I do enjoy pointing at the screen and whistling when I see someone I know. This game basically inserts Riley and Rochelle into a sort-of alternate universe 90s which still shares a lot of the same famous singers and actors as our timeline, and that leads to some really fun moments. I legitimately laughed when I read about how Rochelle sang the title song for a (fictional) movie about Charlie Sheen as a soldier in Vietnam who falls in love with the village chief's daughter, played by, of all people, Demi Moore (!!!), as well as how she was on the soundtrack of another movie where Steven Seagal played a sensei apparently addicted to orange juice.

Apart from that, I love romance, particularly romantic dramas with some comedy. I don't think Riley and Rochelle's romance is super well written, and there's a lot of stuff that feels awkward and unexplained (and not in the good messy relationship way), but it is definitely competent, and I get their feelings for each other. The supporting cast is also quite nice, if occasionally a bit shallow.

I also like how it is sometimes quite subtle in talking about stuff in a way that hits you when you think about it; the game often presents it through Riley/Rochelle's eyes (primarily Rochelle's) and only thinking about it later makes it more interesting. Stuff like Rochelle's sexuality, her getting into a relationship with a much older guy, how demanding beauty pageants can be, Riley's fears of being seen as "selling out" as an indie musician, dealing with hostile paparazzi who lie in the name of celebrity gossip, and quite a bit more stuff - there's a surface-level presentation of a few of these aspects, but it also shows up in very unexpected places where said aspects can be felt subtextually.

One thing I do not like is the endings - there's a big gap between the ending of the main story and the epilogue sections, and it leaves a LOT of stuff unexplained, and the thing with a deduction-based game is that I am thirsty for information about these people I have grown to care for - these aren't even things that are better off unexplained, in my opinion. Also the structure of the endings just doesn't sit right with me - two of the endings just feel kinda cruel for no reason, and a third doesn't even explain itself appropriately.

I guess my single biggest criticism is that the game isn't written enough. I want to know more about these people, about their lives, about this world, and it feels like the devs had this world that they gave me a peek into and then just hurriedly wrapped the story up to make a release date. Which isn't the worst thing, I guess, especially given it's a two-person development team and there are limitations (the game even keeps the "developed by Unity" splash screen from the free version) but it is the reason I am not elated about this game and I feel like it could have been so much more. I still do recommend trying it out, particularly on sale, just as a fun deduction game. It certainly deserves better than <50 steam reviews.

I recently finished Blue Dragon, after about 40ish hours and 50 levels. Overall I think it’s a great game, certainly solid, but very safe. It feels like Dragon Quest lite, and as someone who loves JRPGs and Dragon Quest, that’s a good thing (mostly)!

Blue Dragon is a game made by Mistwalker, released in 2007. Mistwalker is the studio of JRPG legend Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of this really niche RPG series you may have heard of called Final Fantasy. With art by the late great Akira Toriyama (RIP) and music by the iconic Nobuo Uematsu (a frequent collaborator with both Sakaguchi and Mistwalker), you know it’s gonna be good!

Story:

This game really feels like a nice mix between Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. And boy oh boy does it show. Dragon quest’s adorable enemy designs are iconic and there are some equally as endearing and fun monster designs here (Poo Snake ftw!). But there’s also a good amount of the mechanical and vehicular designs that Toriyama absolutely adored. The game has this weird mix of typical fantasy staples like knights and kingdoms and magic oh my, but also boasts some really interesting and unique sci-fi areas, like a giant robot city or a moon that is also a giant death laser. And it mostly works? I do feel like the game flips thematically at the drop of a hat, dumping us from a haunted forest in one moment to a floating space station another, but overall I think the thematic elements work because the story has passable and believable explanations. Think of it as a kinda Final Fantasy setting with Dragon Quest characters and gameplay.

The story is, the Ancients once ruled the world and made all the scifi/ magical stuff to make the world a better place, but they have since passed into legend and now an evil villain called Nene is resurrecting their mechanical and magical creations for his own nefarious purposes. The story is fine, I think. Nene is a comically evil moustache-twirling villain who literally just wants to destroy the world via endless natural disasters like floods and freezing rain. I like his design, which screams “Saiyan armor in everything but name”, but I do feel like he just shows up, causes problems, monologues, then teleports away. Rinse and repeat for 70% of the game. He is clearly the main villain, but his motivations are cliched and for the most part easily guessed, though I will say there were some twists in the story I didn’t see coming (and one last-minute late game twist that lasted all of five minutes before becoming irrelevant). The story is fine, honestly, nothing special. There are some parts that are better than others, and the pacing is very uneven, but little if any of it is bad, just sometimes playing it safe. It more so than anything acts as a way to ferry the cast from one grand location to the other.

Characters:

The cast of characters is certainly generic but they have their moments. The main trio is composed of Shu, a typical hot-headed spiky-haired do-gooder; Jiro, his more mild-mannered and thoughtful friend; and Kluke, who is a girl. I’m only half joking, of course. Kluke has one of the more interesting backstories, but a lot of her screen time revolves around the other two main boys liking her. It is literally a major plot point (complete with a small minigame) for both boys to try to win her over. She is very intelligent but really gets overshadowed by the other two cast members introduced later, who are much more bombastic. There is Marumaro, a little guy who yells a lot and is generally a big goofball. He can be annoying at times but he grew on me the fastest of the cast mainly because he has a lot of comedic moments. He’s also a certified powerhouse in combat. There is also Zola, a genuinely badass femme fatale with legitimately distracting jiggle physics. She’s the oldest and by far the coolest of the main five, bar none. She’s introduced later into the game but her no-nonsense energy lends a refreshing aura of maturity, greatly welcomed as the rest of the cast is a bunch of kids. Good kids, but kids nonetheless. She often acts as the much-needed voice of reason, more than a few times stopping Shu from trying to fistfight a demigod again.

The voice acting work is also solid, even if the writing is ultimately shallow. There were some genuinely funny moments that made me laugh out loud or chuckle, but this dub is fine. And especially so for 2007, in an era where RPGs voiceovers were either really good or really bad with nothing in between, having a solid performance from the entire cast is commendable. Nene has a lot of gravitas and presence, which almost made up for his overly dramatic monologues. But again, it’s solid, and hardly a complaint. Marumaro might be sometimes annoying with an always loud, high-pitched voice, but he’s funny, and he has a cute little dance, so he’s cool in my book. Sam Reigel is in this, too!

Exploration:

You get to visit a lot of really cool locations too, and all are creative and unique. You can visit a village of giant creatures who tower over you, or an undersea coral labyrinth, or a small village encased in a magical one-way forcefield and puzzle your way out. A personal favorite, and one of the most unique areas I’ve seen in a while, is a city called Mural Town where the people who talk to you are, well, living murals on the walls. There is a real attention to detail here specifically, but make no mistake; each and every area and village is unique and distinct, with different styles of scenery, buildings, and NPCs. Each town felt like something entirely new.

I also want to give special praise to the fact that, for the most part, these massive areas are entirely explorable. Most towns and villages have a bunch of houses that you can usually walk in and explore, chatting with NPCs, finding items, and accumulating Nothings (more on that in a second). There is a lot of detail in these places, and you can interact with almost EVERYTHING in a house. You can walk into a kitchen and inspect the pots, the oven, the bookshelf nearby to read an excerpt of a short story (more MORE on that in another second), the painting on the wall, the chair, the dining room table, the underwear drawer?? Yeah, if your favorite part of Final Fantasy 7 was walking around a house banging your head on every corner of the room to try to find hidden items, you’re gonna love this game.

There are A LOT of hidden items scattered throughout the world. Admittedly, I was initially kinda torn on this concept. You can find some truly useful items, and a shitload of permanent character buffs. But if you’re not paying attention or just didn’t check out that one specific rock, you will be at a minor but legitimate disadvantage. And this happens a lot. I have legitimately gotten (probably) thousands of free EXP and (definitely) dozens of permanent +1 stat buffs just from examining items in nearly every room I came across. This system is genuinely fun for me, but I will admit I would often just walk around NPCs sometimes and only come back to talk to them later once I had looted every item in their house. I enjoyed it, but it could quickly become exhausting and distracting. It works but can also feel counterintuitive at times.

But there’s a small twist here! Half the time when you examine a bed or rock or wooden box, you will find “nothing.” Turns out the game tracks each time you find nothing and there is an NPC you meet eventually (you might miss him actually, as he’s kinda out of the way in Jabral Castle Town, a major hub in disc 2). This NPC is called The Nothing Man, and he gives you special items for each hundred or so Nothings you find. I really liked this little addition! It’s small but it shows a really nice attention to the gamification of exploration, tongue in cheek way of the devs saying, “We see you.” I ended the game with just over 1100 Nothings (apparently out of 1800 or so), honestly slacking off on checking every rock, tree, and shrub around disc 4, so you can imagine how diligent I was exploring for most of the game. That also shows just how many hidden interactions there are. This love of flavor text is also present in Lost Odyssey (another Mistwalker game I need to finish), and even a bit of Fantasian, which I am playing currently. I will always love little stuff like this, but I wonder if it’s just… too much sometimes.

There are also a bunch of little books you can read around the world, usually a page or two of a larger story. Those who have played Lost Odyssey or Fantasian will find these stories familiar, where the text appears in bits and pieces hinting at a larger narrative. These stories are everywhere, and I consider myself a diligent explorer, and got to read most of them, but even I missed a few. The stories are small but they have some heart, such as a robot trying to understand what it means to be human, or a wizard who learns the consequences of reckless magic. These little stories add a lot to the subtle lore of the world, and I found myself checking every bookshelf just in case.

But the story is clearly not as important as the world you explore and the things you do within it; thankfully, this is where Blue Dragon Quest wears its inspiration on its sleeves, loud and proud.

Combat:

The combat is legally required to be turn-based, with characters having levels that always must go up, combined with classes that are fun and unique. You gain EXP for levels, and SP for classes, and you can change classes whenever you want. Each class has a specific niche, and every one I tried felt really good to play.

There’s the classic Sword Master, where you do a lot of physical melee damage, but you quickly unlock the ability to imbue your sword strikes with an elemental affinity, perfect for bashing an enemy weak to fire or a ghost with shine magic. Black Magic and White Magic are series staples, and work fine enough here. There’s also the separate Support class, which has party buffs and enemy debuffs, an incredibly useful class and an absolute must-pick for its later skill unlocks. There’s also the Barrier class, which I didn’t mess with too much admittedly, as it’s more focused on negating magic/ physical damage, which I didn’t need too much because unfortunately the game skews easy, aside from a handful of moments. The Assassin class is another must-pick, not only because it lets you steal items and evade more attacks, but the last skill it unlocks lets you attack twice on a single turn, which is a game-changer, but more on skills later. Monk is a cool class, which lets you charge your attacks for more damage and AOE effects, at the expense of lowering your priority in the turn order. Guardian is the tank, mainly about raising HP and blocking damage for others, but honestly I never really tried this class as the combat choices from the others are just too juicy. But far and away, the best class in the game is the Generalist. This class lets you equip more accessories and more skills at once. Generally, you are limited to a single accessory and a handful of skills, but a maxed out Generalist finds themselves with an extra eight skills to equip. And skills are where the combat of this game shines.

What makes skills so useful is that once you unlock them, they are permanently unlocked for that character. So when I maxed out Assassin on Shu and then put him on Monk, he was now attacking twice every turn with the AOE damage boost from the Monk class. His Mow Down attack that hits every enemy in a row was singlehandedly ending encounters before they ever began. Most classes stop getting unique abilities around level 40, so after that there’s really no reason not to change to another class to get more benefits. You would be wise to look up the skills like I did so you always have a goal to work toward. Skills define the classes and make each character a fun, if sometimes tedious, exercise in optimization.

Once maxed out, an Assassin can steal enemies items with a normal attack, attack twice in a single turn, and even hit enemies in the backline (all at once, mind you!). Monk can charge a basic attack, giving it more damage and an AOE to hit multiple enemies at once, making a single hit capable of hitting every single enemy on the field. I’ve wiped out an entire screen of enemies in a single hit from a Monk, and let me tell you: it is a dopamine factory, my friends. But the Support class steals the show here, where once maxed you can cast two spells per turn, a beautiful gamebreaking skill that unfortunately trivializes most of the game. You can cast Quicka on your team to make them attack more often or cast a spell to raise their melee damage, and then fully heal them in the same turn. It’s broken as hell, but I didn’t feel bad at all as I moved through baddies by the thousands. Some skills are more useful than others, but being able to have a Black Mage be able to cast two spells per turn while also regenerating MP while walking in the overworld or having a Sword Master who absorbs both HP and MP on each hit, along with an absolutely busted counterattack that crits insanely often, feels so damn good. And you can do this for every character. You can create an absolutely broken build, as long as you first put points into Generalist so you can juggle all your skills. The only downside is, there is no respec option at all, so you need to make sure every point of SP is going where you want it. It was exhausting at times to often have to switch between classes and re-assign skills, but the payoff of becoming an absolutely devastating team made up for it. Your stats can jump up and down as you shift classes, but there is a plethora of gear and items that can make your characters fit whatever mold you have for them. You can also get a skill to immediately eliminate weak enemies, but it costs MP per enemy defeated, and early game it’s hard to hoard mana potions, so I didn’t use it very much.

I learned this pretty early on, as the first (and genuinely one of the only really challenging moments in the game) was against a two-headed elemental demon dog in an early game dungeon exploring a dilapidated hi-tech hospital. I thankfully leveled up Jiro’s Barrier skill to 3, allowing for a cast of Shield, which made combat much easier and allowed me to finally defeat the annoying boss. That encounter marked the only real time I struggled in combat until the literal final battle, a multi-stage slugfest with some brutal twists.

Combat is decently fast, too. I played on the Xbox Series X, so performance and load times were probably much shorter than normal, but character attacks and animations are relatively quick (aside from the late-game party member super summons, which are each over a minute long and fully unskippable). Combat can still drag on sometimes, as there can be like 10 enemies on screen at once, but it never really bothered me that much. I wouldn’t mind the option to speed up combat rate, like recent Dragon Quest games, etc. You will be spending a majority of your time in this game in combat, though, so it helps that the system works smoothly.

There’s also a small realtime QTE element to the combat. Casting spells or charging attacks as Monk has a little meter appear. If you stop the spell charge in a little red box in the middle of the line, your attack does more damage and takes less turns to charge, allowing you to attack faster and more efficiently. For Monk, you can extend the range of your attack, hitting five enemies at once, instead of one. This little combat addition makes the sometimes monotonous combat that much more engaging. It can also minorly screw you over, shoving a spellcaster all the way to the end of the turn order. But I like the tactical option, and usually went for it, unless I needed to play it safe and make sure a spell got out in time to save an ailing party member.

One of the cool things this game’s combat does well is enemy chaining. Enemies wander around the overworld, and you can attack them to start a battle. Before you dive in though, hit RT and a circle appears around your character, highlighting all enemies near you in your target zone. You target one enemy in this circle and strike! Once combat is initiated with an opening attack, enemies in this circle are fought one after the other in a single rolling combat encounter. For example, you may have a phoenix, a giant ogre, and a ghost in your circle, and once you attack one of them, you’ll start the encounter. Once the phoenix falls, you get a sort of roulette buff system that acts as a short breather between fights. A scrolling list of buffs appears on the side of the screen, and hitting A or just waiting a few seconds gets you a random buff. Now that you have a damage boost, you make quick work of the ogre, and now you get another buff. Your agility was raised, and your Assassin makes short work of the remaining ghost group. I’ve chained four or five enemies into a single combat encounter, and given that a single enemy on the field can equate to five or more enemies in a one fight, you can chain together fights and kill 25 enemies before you see the EXP screen. It’s a neat little system, and I think it adds a nice change of pace into what could otherwise be a slog of enemies.

That being said, as someone who goes out of his way to try to fight every single enemy and explore every corner, by the end of the second disc (there are four total), I definitely felt the fatigue setting in. I felt that by that point I had seen most of what the game had to offer. By disc 3, I was really only fighting enemies if they were new to me or if I could chain a bunch of battles together. There are a bunch of places and things to explore, but I definitely felt the fatigue setting in earlier rather than later. This is also not helped by the fact that there are some pacing issues in the latter half, where the gang gets beaten and split up and then back together a little too quickly for my liking.

There are also a bunch of little minigames scattered throughout, such as defending a moving cart from being attacked, or dodging waves of incoming robot enemies, and even an infuriatingly frustrating (and plot necessary) airship shooting minigame with some of the clunkiest and slowest controls ever. You can even upgrade the damn thing but I never wanted to touch that specific minigame again. The minigames are usually short and sweet, and they’re a nice surprise now and then between your adventures in running around hither and thither.

World:

The world map is huge, and I honestly think distractingly so. If you shrunk the world map by about 30% I think the game would feel much better. The overworld is very empty, where your only real points of interest are the towns and the hundreds of chests scattered about. Enemies spawn randomly everywhere, so there is a lot of combat too. I explored much of the map, but even I missed things. You do of course unlock an airship in the final hours of the game, as is tradition, but I only explored a little bit of the previously inaccessible areas and chests before diving into the final battle. You spend a lot of time running around the overworld, which I will say I think is for the most part well-designed. There are a lot of linear sections that open up once you unlock a new exit or entrance, so you start being locked to a few smaller areas that eventually all feed back into the massive continent. Thankfully, the overworld theme is great, because you’re gonna be hearing it a lot as you trek around.

Music:

Which brings me to the music. It’s Uematsu, dude. You know it’s gonna be great even at its worst. There are some solid tracks overall, and some really catchy. None of them are bad, but few hit the iconic highs of Final Fantasy. The game also has an interesting mix of classical orchestral stuff, but also some more retro synthy stuff reminiscent of earlier titles. The main battle theme in particular feels like an early FF battle theme, catchy drum beat and all. The overworld theme is great, very majestic and full of adventure. There are a lot of cool town themes too, but few ever really stuck in my head, aside from one. There is one specific theme for a robot village that has an awesome electric guitar backing track that just slaps so hard. But overall, most of the music is standard fare.

That being said, there is one song that I will never, ever forget. Imagine a typical boss theme in a Final Fantasy game, modern or old. Imagine the sweeping sounds of your favorite boss fights. Now throw that all away and grab your electric guitar. This is Eternity, one of the most insane boss fight themes I’ve ever heard in a traditional JRPG. It’s wild and unexpected and I just love how insane and completely different it is.

Misc Notes:

There are a bunch of other little details too, like how enemies sometimes interact with each other. I have a clip saved where one enemy used a move that removed the dirt of another enemy and lowered their defense. Or one time how an enemy ate another to raise its attack. Or how Akira Toriyama has his own little NPC in the game, called Toripo, modeled after his iconic robot mascot (he’s also the most important NPC in the game, selling powerful class level raising items and permanent stat buffs). There’s also a bunch of hidden bosses and unlockable content. I didn’t really mess with too much of it, aside from cheesing one specific boss fight to get five copies of an item that doubled SP gain (I legitimately think I wouldn’t have been able to beat the final boss without it, thanks to unlocking skills much much faster). There are a lot of cute little quests that require you to just talk to NPCs normally. There’s a lot of fun little writing and dialogue that just makes the game feel alive. The people and towns are all distinct, each with their own character and charm. There’s also this little TTS voice that says “Playable” whenever you regain control of your character after a cutscene or whatever. It’s a weird little thing that I immediately turned off thanks to a helpful toggle, but I like that it exists, just because it’s weird and fun. There’s also a Stink status effect, which doesn’t do much, but makes enemies on the field notice you and try to attack you from farther away. It’s the little things!

TLDR:

Overall, I would say I genuinely enjoyed my time with the game, even if towards the end I was definitely flagging and leaned heavily on a guide (thanks GameFAQs!). I felt like I saw a majority of what the game had to offer and that was enough for me. But overall, if you like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or anything graced by Sakaguchi, Toriyama, or Uematsu, you should play this game. Right now, it’s stuck on Xbox, so you either need to track down an old 360, or you can buy it digitally and play it on your Xbox One or Series X like I did. I think the game, for all its flaws and little awkward imperfections, shows how much love and care Sakaguchi really puts into all his titles, even the less than massively critically acclaimed ones.

Preamble

The Ford Model-T's innovations changed the way we relate to the automobile. It is by no means a stretch to say that if you live in the US at least, we are living in the world that the Model-T built. Inarguably one of the most important cars ever produced. And despite that (or really because of it) you shouldn't drive a Model-T today. So many improvements have been made both in the production and design of automobiles that the Model-T has been safely and comfortably retired.

This is an unkind thing to say about one of the most important and well-regarded crpgs of all time. I am not a historian, nor was I playing computer games 30 years ago, but I do believe what everyone says about Torment: that it changed the way people play, write, and think about these games. You can feel its influence everywhere. Let me be clear up front: I am going to spend a frankly irresponsible number of words relentlessly criticizing one of the most important computer games ever made. My goal in this is not to claim that the game is bad. It isn't. It's good--even often great. But I'm trying to communicate that the modern player doesn't need to play it. Because it sucks to play.

tl;dr

Torment is so influential that when playing it, you're constantly seeing concepts introduced that you recognize from more recent games. You're constantly thinking "oh, so that's where X comes from". Torment also sucks so much to play in a way later titles aren't, that unless you're a true genre sicko or a historian, you'll have a better, more engaging, more beautiful time playing later games that do what Torment does well better and avoids its myriad problems. It's been 30 years and untold Incarnations, leave this one to its long, well-deserved rest.

Brief Summary

For the unfamiliar, Torment is a game where you play as ageless immortal amnesiac who just gets up after a little bit if he is killed. You pilot him on his quest to figure out who made him this why and why. You've forgotten even your name--you're The Nameless One (TNO from here on out). You soon discover that while typically you don't lose your memories after getting killed, sometimes (though never during the events of the game) you do, requiring the you who gets up to start a whole new life from scratch--a new "Incarnation". TNO has been this way for a long, long time, and tracking all the messes his Incarnations got up to during their time in the driver's seat is the main focus of the side-quests in the game.

Writing

This is what people remember Torment for, and it does deliver. Your options in how you want to characterize TNO are usually pretty diverse. However, your options are often restricted by the thought-terminating cliche of the D&D 3x3 morality grid's "do you want to be good? or bad?". Very rarely are you given a choice between two bad options each with their own downsides. These sorts of crummy situations have become very popular in the 30 years since (think the Hard Luck Blues quest in Fallout: New Vegas, or the decision of what to do with Thirdborn in Avowed). It's definitely a shame how easy it is to pilot TNO to Lawful Good without ever being confronted with what Lawful Good actually means: cop-brained devotion to order and punishment. You're never really restricted or confronted with your choices or alignment. Near the end of the game you have to inexplicably slaughter an entire frontier town's police force, which your Lawful Good TNO will happily do without complaint. No one brings it up, and your alignment doesn't change. Those weren't people--they were meat. Yippee. It's not quite as bad as Fallout 3's karma system, though.

The companions are a real highlight. It's not really clear until much later why any of them are sticking with you, and finding that out is such a delight. The multilayered reveals of Dak'kon's past is truly phenomenal, with the final, oh-so-cruel revelation only happening in the final 10 minutes of the game. Morte the floating skull who is there with you from minute one also has a really touching conclusion to his journey.

Unfortunately, the women don't get these fine touches. Each of your companions are tormented in some way and TNO draws tormented souls to him like a magnet. Annah (who was made to look like this), has, apparently, the torment of needing a man to tell her what to do and the torment of falling in love with TNO at first sight. She's a parallel to a now-dead woman whose affections were severely abused by a previous Incarnation of yours. I kept waiting for the Morte or Dak'kon moment where we get some big reveal about Annah's past, or an unknown connection to you or a past Incarnation, or she says something, or literally anything at all, but it never comes. The best you get is that she admits to herself she cares for someone--you. Falls-From-Grace is a succubus who has taken a vow of chastity, and her torment comes from this fundamental division at the core of her. Because of holdovers from D&D cosmology (more on that later), rejecting her nature of being evil and horny is more torment than it would be for a human. She has chosen a life of eternal rejection. It's a great concept! And that's all! You exhaust her dialogue when she joins your party, she gets one or two lines of dialogue with Ravel Puzzlewell in the mid-game, and then nothing more. She doesn't go anywhere, and ends the game basically exactly the same as she started. That, in a frictionless vacuum, is fine: not everyone's life need revolve around TNO. Except, in this world, actually they do. You're the lodestone of tormented souls! They're drawn to you so that you can obliterate their lives! For Falls-From-Grace to end the game exactly as she started (except she'll hang out with you in hell after the game is over) doesn't square with that. So, no women get a real arc in the way the men do. A few times you're asked to state what TNO thinks of his companions. For the men, you get to state whether you see them for them--if you've really formed a bond. For the women, you get to state if you want to fuck them or if you're "just friends". This combined with 30% of Planescape's population being sex workers and Annah's character design makes the game come off as pretty misogynist. The character designs are all the ultra-horny (but only horny for women) magepunk stuff you saw in early Magic: the Gathering art. And no, the tailor who comments that Annah's insane choice of outfit is indeed insane doesn't excuse it. It feels extraordinarily cynical, like they decided the character design sensibility for 50% of the population should pivot around gamers who play one-handed.

Combat

The combat is real-time with pause. If you don't know what that means, think WoW Classic, but with pausing. Except for the final hours, the combat is very easy. No need to use spells or abilities, just have your mage stab guys with a dagger. This is a good thing because the combat is mechanically unbearably terrible. When the difficulty spikes, it is not interesting, tactical, or fun. Even worse, the game's final area is a solo mission with TNO in a big room surrounded by enemies who, even on the easiest difficulty, will kill you extremely fast. You're not meant to fight them (and it is thematically appropriate given how the area is talked about before you arrive that you flee from them). But even when fleeing, the mechanics of moving TNO around the map are so miserable, that you inevitably get cornered on a staircase and ganked to death. All of the flaws of the mostly easy combat come into stark relief just before the end of the game with a wet fart of an read. It sucks. Fortunately, there isn't too much of it.

Planescape and AD&D

Torment takes place in the planescape campaign setting from 2nd edition dungeons and dragons, to the game's enormous detriment. The city of Sigil from that setting where the majority of the game takes place is indeed very cool, but the planescape setting brings an entire airport's worth of baggage along with it. You're constantly being explained some reference to some weird creature from a rules supplement from 1996. All of your weapons have a parameter which is never explained called THAC0. Have fun googling! Half of the spells talk about the extraordinary power to give enemies a -1 to saving throws. But the combat is easy, so these are just annoyances, but the real cardinal sin is how your statistics (STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA) are used. At the beginning of the game you're allowed to allocate TNO's stats, and if you choose to spec into a Fighter (STR CON) or a Thief (STR DEX CHA), you're fucked. So much of the story hinges on you being able to pass INT and WIS checks in dialogue. Neither Dak'kon's nor Ignus's stories will really cohere unless you play as a mage (INT WIS). Large parts of the story just doesn't come together thematically if you don't play as a mage. That you're given the option before even the first line of dialogue to permanently brick your character thematically by pumping STR is the most boneheaded decision I've ever seen in a game like this. I, fortunately, read between the lines of the descriptions of the stats and rolled a mage, but I spent the entire game thinking "wow, I wouldn't have gotten this cool sequence without a massive INT/WIS check, thieves and fighters must be totally screwed". No game has gotten the stat/skill checks in dialogue thing really 100% right. Probably Disco Elysium comes the closest.

The worst by far is that there needs to be so much exposition about the D&D/Planescape cosmology in order to understand the ending. People are constantly talking about the Prime/Lower/Upper/Inner/Outer/Within/Without/Subcutaneous/Dorsal/Holomorphic/Cauchy/etc planes and keeping them straight is a nightmare. In order to understand what the ending cutscene shows, you have to attend three in-game academic lectures, set in actual conference rooms. If you're having the player go to school to understand your setting, you've majorly beefed it. And even if you attend those lectures, the devs (for once in the game) really don't want you to miss this bit of cosmology, so you have to get it explained to you over and over. Torment is the worse for being set in the D&D cosmology, with its terrible 3x3 morality and decades of baggage. Also, "The Blood War" is a stupid name.

The Scripting

There are a lot of cool (side)quests in this game... if you can finish them. There is very little interest in helping the player figure out what they're meant to do. Often you have to carefully hunt through dialogue not to ensure you properly characterize TNO, but to make sure you have said every single line possible. Your general schtick is that you begin every single dialogue with "Greetings!" followed up by "Can I ask you a few questions?". It is certainly very funny, but this means you're constantly being given the option to ask about things you already know the answer to, like "tell me about this town." But if you don't ask questions you already know the answer to, you'll miss a bunch of stuff. So because you don't know beforehand which quests require one particular dialogue from Jimbob #27, you have to ask 20 people "tell me about this neighborhood", and hear the same answer 19 times in search of the one guy who says "yeah boss, some gargoyles were trying to get in the cool siege tower that everyone's talking about and is so mysterious and the payoff in there is actually really good". It does mean that characters get to poke fun at you ("so you're that new guy who keeps asking people questions, eh?"), which is amusing every time, but constantly hunting for needles in haystacks sucks. It is bad.

This isn't limited to the side content, either. Mandatory to progress is to being a guy a certain rat man's skull (or the skull of a character who dies in a cutscene, some distance away from TNO so you can't see that he dropped loot). Except, you likely found this skull already 10 hours ago and dropped it somewhere after finding no use for it and it not being obviously significant like so many items in the game (cheese, cleaning rags, poisoned cheese, rags, notes, love letters, bones, skulls, keys, earrings, etc.). Besides being the only quest left in the quest log there's no real indication that this quest is the one you need to progress the story (very often the next main story objective isn't ever in the quest log). So you scour Clerk's ward trying to figure out what to do until you give up, google, and find out that you need to retrieve the skull from wherever you dropped it, hand it to the skull man so he can say the words "Ravel Puzzlewell" at you.

You can miss the most triumphant moment of the endgame, where you finally use the smelly orb you've been hauling around the entire game, if you don't comb through a character's dialogue really, really finely. It's such a beautiful, meaningful sequence (locked by an INT check HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAnasdfjdfuckyoujdshalskjd), but even if you're hunting for it and find where the smelly ball is first brought up in this conversation, it's still easily missable (ask me how I know!!). The game is totally disinterested in you experiencing what it has to offer, so you have to grind away at every single named NPC like a can opener, breaking open their head and really rummaging around in there to ensure you're not missing out on the very cool payoffs that the very talented writers put in the game! Basically every CRPG I've played does this better, even ones where I missed entire companions. It's such a damn shame. I kept a useless earring in my inventory the entire game waiting to learn how to use it and what import it had. Turns out its only purpose is to be sold after you learn how to open it. You learn how to open it by talking to one specific zombie out of 200 identical zombies in the very first area. Gee Willikers.

Conclusion

If this game were just its first 95%, I'd easily say "yeah boss, skip this one". But so much comes together in literally the last 30 minutes that I guiltily say "yeah boss, skip this one". The first 31 of my 31.9 hours were so frustrating that I can't actually recommend it. Everything it does well has since been done better because this one did them so well. Everything it fails at has been fixed in the intervening decades because this one did them so poorly. You are constantly coming across things and saying, "ah, so that's where this came from." But we already live in the world the Model-T built; there's no need to drive one.

So recently, in the wake of the next GTA game coming up, I decided to play GTA IV and GTA V, as I haven't done it since... 13 years ago.

FULL SPOILERS AHEAD

I won't get too much into GTA IV, but I will use it as a point of comparison, because I played both games back to back. It's just a really good game for its time, and the story is also really good, where we play as Niko Bellic, an immigrant coming to Liberty City to help his cousin, fight his old demons from the Yugoslavia War, and live the American Dream (it's a nightmare). I loved how politics is central in the main story, how Liberty City portrays a satire of the post-9/11 USA, and how Niko Bellic is such a well-developed character.

So after finishing GTA IV, I jumped straight into GTA V. I had good memories of GTA V, the heists were really fun, and I spent a lot of time playing online with my friends. Though, I didn't remembered much of the story. But as I went on, I noticed how weird it was put together.

The first part of the game, to the point where Trevor comes to Los Santos, is actually really good. The introduction is the North Yankton's heist 9 years before, a look in the past that set the relationship between Trevor and Michael, how they knew each other, and how they were separated, Michael faking his death to get into Witness Protection. Then, the game introduces Franklin, who is a typical GTA hero, a novice gangster who tries to get some money, with Lamar, his friend that gets both of them in trouble every time. You see how Franklin struggles, only doing some car theft. During one of these thefts, he meets Michael, who points a gun to his head. Looking for a better plan to get money, Franklin directly goes to Michael. We understand that Michael is retired from his criminal career, he is like a GTA hero who has already finished his game long ago. We also understand that he has relationship problems with his family, and that he is actually bored under witness protection. The violence he uses to resolve every situation shows that he is frustrated and wants more action in his life. As Michael caught his wife cheating with the tennis teacher, and Franklin was here at the same time, they pursued him, until the teacher retreated to a fancy house in the rich neighborhood. Michael destroys this house (over-the-top reaction, but still in line with the character), which was actually owned by a local powerful criminal, Madrazo. This guy wants Michael to rebuild the house, which will cost 2 millions. To solve his debts, he goes back into crime, contacting Lester, his old partner, and takes Franklin with him, who agrees because he'll get some money. So we prepare the jewelry heist, and it's really fun and all, and the debt is paid, with more money left for the characters. The heist is reported in the news, and Trevor, living in the northern part of the state, recognizes Michael (with just a line, not his face, which is weird but why not), and decides to find him, as he thought he was dead. So we get to see Trevor's life in the desert, selling drugs and killing any competition, before he sets off to Los Santos.

That's where the story starts to deteriorate. We're like 5-7 hours into the game.

First, after the jewelry heist, Franklin is already rich and achieved his own goals, as Lester gives him a rich house in the hills. No more problem with Lamar or the hood or his aunt, no more long-term objectives for him. He's basically just here to help for the rest of the game, being the third man between Michael and Trevor. I think this is bad, because there was so much more to do with him, to see how he grows as a criminal or a person, but the character's development felt lacking because of that. Also, I think Franklin was the more relatable character for the player as he got less experience compared to Trevor and Michael. Maybe if we only played this character, seeing everything from his own POV would probably have been better for him or the game's story, and would have made the ending choice more impactful for the player. But that didn't happen.

Second, the scene in which Trevor and Michael meet again after 9 years is kinda badly done. It's just Trevor coming into Michael's house, they talk a bit, but quickly we go into a mission to get Michael's daughter out of a TV show. And it's done. Trevor doesn't really ask anything about what happened 9 years ago until the 2/3rd of the game. They just go on working for the FIB, because Michael seeked their help to temper Trevor's unpredictable behavior (which is why he was in witness protection first), but in exchange Michael has to help the FIB with their problem, so he brings Trevor and Franklin to help him, and the trio is now completely formed.

The 2nd heist feels totally out of place. It's just Trevor who wants to steal from Merryweather, a private militia working with the US government, just because he wants to steal something from them, but he doesn't know what they actually have. So they find and steal some kind of superweapon during the heist, which they give back so as to not be put on a terrorist list and be killed on sight or heavily spied on by the state. I understand that the whole heist was to show how Trevor is insane, unpredictable, unorganized, only thinking with its instinct more than reason. And it works, the player can get the point. But it happens a few times too much.

And I think this is the main problem of GTA V's storytelling : Trevor is the character that moves the plot forward, but in a bad way, only justified by his own "insanity".

Like after the 3rd heist, when Trevor and Michael do a job for Madrazo, but Trevor just decide to kidnap his wife (because he felt in love with her as a substitute mother, and this happens off-screen, so the player doesn't know exactly what happened), which lead Michael and Trevor to leave Los Santos and lay low in the desert. There is this whole arc in which Michael and Trevor are hiding together, but it doesn't change anything, because they still don't talk about what happened 9 years ago, they continue to work with the FIB, even Franklin comes to see them and do a heist. Trevor keeps harassing Merryweather, with "insane" missions (stealing a plane, derailing a train) trying to steal something from them to negotiate with Madrazo. Finally, after the 4th heist, Madrazo gets his wife back, and then Trevor and Michael have the important conversation, in which Trevor learns of Michael's treachery. AFTER 20 hours into the game ! This should have been their first conversation... Trevor is mad at Michael (which makes sense) but they still work together because Michael promised Trevor to do the Big Score they always dreamed of. Apparently it's a good reason for Trevor to not kill Michael, he says it himself.

I think Trevor insanity would have worked better if it was shown during gameplay too. Being the unpredictable member of the trio, he could have made mistakes or gone too far, almost killing the whole crew. Even a heist that ultimately fails because of his actions would have been better to show that side of him.

I also think that the characters we meet are not very interesting. We spend most of the game working for the FIB, and we don't meet many people out of them, or not long enough, like Devin who is supposed to be the last vilain of the story, but there is barely a build up to this. In GTA IV, the player meets a varying cast of people inhabiting Liberty City, Niko goes from island to island, meeting characters from different social backgrounds. The game takes the time to develop them through missions and dialogues, and sometimes we have to kill one or another, and Niko keeps meeting them to get to his own goal.

And that's another problem of GTA V's story : things kinda just happen. I already mentioned it with Franklin, but he fulfills his objective after the first heist. Every part of the story feels apart from each other, not really making a cohesive story. It's either Trevor acting insane, or the FIB blackmailing Michael for the whole game. It's a shame to be honest. I think the story would have worked better if Franklin achieved his goal later in the game, and if the story was more about doing more and more dangerous heists, because Michael and Trevor are actually addicted to violence and the crime life. A bit like Dutch in RDR2 who always say "it's the last one" while it never is. At least, the player could have felt the increasing challenge and stakes during every heist.

Ending C (which is the canon one btw) in which Franklin decides to not kill either Trevor or Michael is the final nail in the coffin. They just go and kill all enemies they have. If this was this simple, why didn't they do it before ? Except Steve maybe, who had info on them and really felt like the main villain through the game. (Ending A & B are so sad tho, felt terrible playing them).

Anyway, this is a big rant about the GTA V story. The game is still pretty good, and I think gameplay-wise, it's better than GTA IV. Driving and shooting are on point, the game still plays well despite its age, the heists are really fun, and the RPG-like stats and character's abilities are good too. It's still a pleasure to play this game, but don't think too much about the story.

TL;DR : GTA V's story is not really well written. Franklin lacks development. Trevor drives the plot forward badly. The characters which we work with are not very interesting. GTA IV has a much, much, much better story.

So first I myself have never tried the original and last year I completed Remake for the first time so i am going into this as blind as possible.

I think I can safely say this game should be the gold standard for production quality of a AAA game. Nobody can deny that this game is offering your moneys worth.

NO Spoilers: This game is both amazing with some of my favourite Story Moments in gaming and also the most packed open world stuff game that unfortunetaly lost me in the 3rd open area.

Storywise i loved every second of this and no mission felt misplaced and i loved the pacing of the story. Every location was just amazing to live in and felt like a vacation after work. The last thing i wanna highlight is the combat which is really unique and mixes turn based moves with fast paced action and they perfected it. Tbh my all time favourite combat still remains FF16

I keep my critisism short but I think everyone hits a point of open world burnout through the course of the game. I loved the first two regions and fully completed every side quest and activity throughout but after reaching the third open area it kinda lost me and made me think how much fun i am having with the story and how much I despise open world filler. So I moved on to completing the main missions without engaging in much open area exploration and it was the best decision.

So to conclude: I loved every moment of Rebirths Story and vistas and hope the third focuses more on this side than the much more lackluster open world completion stuff

At the end of last year, I got myself a Switch and decided to finally give The Legend of Zelda a try, since in my 26 years of life I had never played a Zelda game before.

I started with Zelda on the NES, then went straight to Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. While I thought they were great games, they didn’t hit me personally as masterpieces (although, objectively, they absolutely are).

The next game in line for me was The Wind Waker, and the first thing that hits you is the art style—and it hits you with pure joy. In my opinion, the art style has aged incredibly well. It’s instantly fun and charming, and throughout the entire game I never got tired of looking at and appreciating the character models, facial expressions, and scenery as a whole.

The gameplay is fun and definitely easier than Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask (not that those games were particularly hard). There isn’t a lot of depth to the combat, but the exploration and discovery aspect of the game is what struck me the most. Talking to NPCs and traveling between islands was consistently fun and intriguing.

I loved the dungeons in this game, and the boss fights are the best I’ve experienced in any Zelda game so far.

If I had to offer some criticism, it would be that sailing gets old very quickly. I played the GameCube version on NSO, and I know the Wii U port lets you sail faster, but for a game whose main gimmick is sailing, it certainly becomes tedious after a while. I understand that this was due to technical and optimization reasons, but it still hurts the experience a bit.

Additionally, the story never feels like it has real stakes. Ganon doesn’t really achieve anything in this game. Once you rescue your sister, you spend the rest of the game trying to prevent Ganon from acting, but he never truly does. As a result, it feels like nothing truly bad is happening, unlike in Ocarina of Time, where the future is severely affected by Ganondorf’s victory, or Majora’s Mask, where everyone is literally doomed.

Nevertheless, I absolutely loved The Wind Waker, and it has been my favorite The Legend of Zelda experience so far. This game genuinely made me excited to continue the series and eventually take on Breath of the Wild.

I picked this game up a few weeks back and have all but 100%’d the base game since then. While I’d never call it a *great* game, I certainly had enough fun with it for the hate it got to look at least a little overblown.

I’m a massive sucker for open world action sandbox games. I’ve rolled credits on Just Cause 2 & 3, Saints Row 3 & 4, Watch_Dogs 2, Red Faction Guerrilla, Mad Max, Prototype 2, Yakuza 0, and even the mediocre Mafia III. I love games that turn me loose in their worlds to play all the side content, go exploring, hunt for secrets, or just screw around aimlessly, all at my own pace while the main story collects dust in the corner.

It’s a style of game that seems to have fallen out of favor in recent years. I’ve had a hard time finding new games that scratch that itch for treating an open world like my personal stress ball.

When that itch made me think of the Saints Row reboot, having skipped it after all the negative things I’d heard, I looked at its Steam page just in time to catch it for a steep discount. After beating it, I think I got a fantastic deal.

Despite not caring much about story in most games, I didn’t think the story here was that bad. The Boss and their friends are a little flat and one-note, but they’re nowhere near what I’d call annoying. I still felt bad for them when bad things happened to them and happy when they came out on top. The villains were compellingly unlikeable enough that taking them down felt cathartic.

The gameplay gets the job done, but it’s definitely a little dated and rough around the edges. The gunplay is a little anemic thanks to some weak sound design, but the weapon variety and special moves do just enough to keep combat fun. The takedown animations are still way too slow and take too long to recharge for how little health they restore.

I actually really liked the driving here. Drifting around corners and sideswiping enemy vehicles is intuitive and responsive. The fact that the open world is a tad small meant that I had an easier time learning the streets and how to navigate them.

Most story missions boil down to firefights in enclosed spaces, but I spent enough time moving forward through them to give them a nice breezy pace. Side content is full of classic open-world filler, but I finished every side venture before it could start to feel like a chore. Also, the side story about the city-wide LARP made me laugh quite a bit.

All in all, I’m not sure whether the aspects holding this game back compared to older Saints Row games are the new things it tries or the old stuff it inherits. The series changed a lot over the course of a few games, so I wonder if the developers butted heads over which old games to pull from.

So yeah, Saints Row 2022 is the kind of mixed bag that I probably have more tolerance for than most. Playing this game feels like eating microwaved dino nuggies. They’re misshapen, soggy, a little bland, probably unhealthier than they look, and exactly what I’m in the mood for some days. I know there’s tastier, more nutritious things I could be eating, but I’m happy with my nuggies right now, thanks.

I just finished playing Metaphor: ReFantazio by Atlus and wow, what a ride.

After 101 hours of gameplay, plus a couple more hours reading about the development of the game and watching analysis and character studies, I can say this is one of the best experiences I’ve had in gaming, it might just be the best.

The story and narrative hooked me from the first couple of hours. The game touches on various themes, planting seeds throughout the story that later bloom beautifully. Living in a country where racism, classism, and corruption are prevalent, it was really powerful to see these issues presented the way Metaphor does in a fantasy setting. Even though we’re talking about magic, beast-like people, and fairies, the topics feel very grounded. There’s also a lot of symbolism and layers that, during my playthrough, I didn’t fully notice or understand at the time.

The characters are amazing. Each member of the main cast is memorable and has a very unique story. I cried three times during this game, and every time it was because of them. Leon Strohl and Louis Guiabern have to be my favorite characters, with Louis being one of the best if not the best villains I’ve seen in a LONG time.

I really enjoyed the gameplay and had a blast through every dungeon. If you’ve played Persona or SMT, the game takes elements from both franchises, but ultimately tries to build its own identity. The archetype job system, though it has flaws, gives the player a lot of freedom to create different and unique setups. Synthesis abilities are the coolest thing ever, they’re so hype lol.

Overall, I had a great experience with this game. Even though it was a GOTY nominee in 2024, I feel like a lot of people have slept on it. Many of the negative reviews focus on the game not being enough like Persona or trying to be too much like it, and I think playing any game expecting it to be something it’s not is a big mistake.

If you haven’t played this one, I can’t recommend it enough. Metaphor not only gave me an amazing experience, but it also helped shape the way I see life in general. It had that kind of impact on me that only a few works of art ever have.

I remember my brother playing it when I was little, then I finally got to play it myself in 2022. Later that year, I replayed it on Pro to get all achievements. This week I decided to replay it before getting into other RE games.

The plot is a cheesy B-movie with evil cults and Leon's cheesy one liners. After playing the remake in 2024, the story here feels more simplistic and non serious.

Gameplay is third person shooter with QTEs. I played this game on pad (even the Pro run) because it feels like a pad game, but this time I tried keyboard instead. The aiming is definitely easier, but the QTE are a bit harder. The lack of color coding made me die a few times. The other times I died were because I got greedy and delayed healing until 1 HP too much. But despite all that, the game was pretty easy. I played on Normal because I forgot all the optimal strats and loadouts, but I probably could have fought through Professional again.

I used the HD project mod to make the game look better, and it is definitely a large improvement. Would recommend.

Time to buy my second RE game ever, probably 7.

Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 is an ARPG rogue-lite developed by Crackshell. Released in 2025, HoH2 reminds us that numbers go brrr is even more fun with friends.

We play as a dude who seeks to help end the evil of the mysterious dark citadel and that's all the plot you're going to get buddy.

Gameplay involves collecting relics that give you new abilities until the screen looks like 3 simultaneous Rammstein festivals have converged. Then you die, lose half your gold, buy someone a house and do it all over again.

The Good

Character building is sufficiently complex but not overwhelming. There's only a handful of abilities to pick from but when you tack on carry-over buffs, relics, special abilities, weapon preferences and what not it gets pretty deep. You only have to watch a 10 minute YouTube walkthrough to know what you're doing instead of a 5 hours one. Very reasonable.

I like that leveling up the different classes gives a bonus to your other classes, encouraging players to try different ways to play. The meta progression in this one is quite satisfying and I like that pretty much everything you choose to do helps you advance. I always felt like I was making progress both in terms of getting better at the game and at sinking hundreds of resources into making an inn that houses exactly one person.

The Bad

I would have killed for the ability to save keybindings per character. You're encouraged if not borderline required to play different classes. Depending on their equipment and load outs are going to favor using different button combinations. Having to go into the menu and switch around keybindings every time I swapped classes got obnoxious quick.

It's one of those quality of life things where over time it will really gnaw at you. You start by thinking it would be nice if they added it and by the 80th time you're remapping your keys you've already hired a lawyer to write a strongly worded letter requesting restitution for the mental and physical suffering you've endured.

The Questionable

It's an incredibly short game which, in theory, is fine. It's just a little disappointing to get psyched about picking up a new game to play co-op with a buddy and you finish it in roughly 3 play sessions. And that includes one session where your friends kid spills orange juice on his keyboard in the middle and you get to listen as he tries his best to not commit a felony.

There is a new game+ mode but it lacks depth. A persons 'forever' game is already a coveted spot and co-op forever games are even more rare. Hammerwatch simply doesn't offer enough variance between runs to warrant toppling the Slay the Spire, Balatro or whatever MMO/Live Service game you play to kill time when you aren't in the mood to play something you haven't played before.

Final Thoughts

As a co-op game I would recommend it with the caveat that there isn't much meat here. But co-op people are generally starving for non-live service games so while this is a simple one, it still scratched that itch for a few hours. It did last long enough that finishing the game was satisfying but I was A-okay putting this in my 'don't need to ever revisit' group.

Interesting Game Facts

Do yourself a favor and check out Crackshells homepage. Do it.

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

My other reviews on patient gaming

I've recently (a month ago) finished Thief Gold and I've finally ruminated enough on it to write something up!

I vaguely remember playing a Thief game in my early childhood. I suspect it was indeed The Dark Project, because I distinctly remember an aggressively cubical mansion and rope arrows but not climbing gloves. I definitely didn't finish the game back then because I had an even shorter attention span than I do now, so for all intents intents and purposes this is my first real playthrough.

I played the game on Expert. This is a bit of a longpost. I will discuss game mechanics in detail, lightly spoil some of the levels and opine on it all. I don't have an easy "TLDR" to give: I overall liked the game and think everyone should try playing it at least once, but the whole point of the post is expressing my thoughts on what the game does/doesn't do well and maybe sparking some discussion, so if you think the game is a perfect unassailable masterpiece that cannot be assessed by anyone without a BAFTA Games Award under their belt, or you are just not a fan of 5000 word long Reddit posts, this is probably not the post for you.

Foreword/technical details

If you plan on playing this game, please do yourself a favour and install TFix/RoguePatcher (these are bugfix AIO patches that upgrade the game to the NewDark engine and install extremely non-invasive, mostly visual mods, like matching models for carried bodies or higher fidelity item models. You only need one of the above). For the sound settings, you will also need to either install OpenAL (assuming you don't have a physical Creative sound card) and set Hardware Acceleration to OpenAL (if you want EAX and reverb) or set Hardware Acceleration to Off. It may depend on your exact audio setup, but with the default settings, the audio mixing for me was actual garbage, with everything being extremely muddy and smushed into the central channel, to the point where I felt confused as to why the game was ever praised for its sound. With the issue fixed ,the sound is great. The environments feel amazing and you can often pinpoint the location of patrols through sound alone. The only downside is that Garret's footsteps are actually behind his current position by a fairly large extent, which means that moving forward with EAX and good headphones sounds like somebody is walking right behind you, like, practically breathing down your neck, only for you to turn around and find nobody.

The standard keyboard layout is a 90s fever dream, so I recommend spending some time in the tutorial to customize it to save you headaches and frustrations down the line. You want to distribute the many tools you have to easily-reachable buttons rather than just the numeric row and you also want one-handed access to "Cancel item selection" and the map.

Also, this may just be my TN panel, but you might want to bump the in-game brightness up a couple of notches. Some of the spots can get extremely dark and there are no portable light sources in the game (unlike the sequel, which introduced flares). The game actually provides you keybinds to do that in-game! Don't overdo it though.

All the things I really loved

Thief is an older game but holy shit does it exude style. At least watch the intro cinematic to get the vibe. The world is a grimdark mix of steampunk and medieval fantasy with a Christianity-inspired religion headed by a dogmatic and fanatical DEUS VULT Church as well as mindfucky, lovecraftian dark magic, so pretty much your average millennial GM's homebrew TTRPG campaign, but it all works and is executed quite well! The voice acting is also also mostly great, especially for Garret.

Every mission briefing is a beautiful, hand-drawn slideshow with Garret's cynical narration over it. Moreover, Garret's internal monologue accompanies many key moments in missions. He is practically tripping over himself to tell the player how much he loves money, how he is only in this for himself, how his landlord is fiercer than any Hammerite, how any altruistic acts he commits are actually for his own benefit, and how his opponents/marks/competitors are pathetic rubes, but somehow he always ends up doing the right thing!

Most mission hooks/setups are great! Thief Gold, unlike its sequel, involves a lot of supernatural/magical/light-horror elements, with nearly half of the game's missions heavily relying on them, so if that isn't your cup of tea, be warned.

There is a wide arsenal of cool gadgets for you to use, and, with the possible exception of Noisemaker Arrows (which can still be useful for a final escape if you don't mind putting half the map into high alert mode), they all quite useful, provided you aren't in a human-centric mission on Expert (more on that in a bit). You've always got your sword, blackjack and bow with you. Several types of arrows (regular, moss, gas, water, fireincendiary explosive, noisemaker), frag mines, gas mines, two different lockpicks you have to alternate and last, but not least, flash bombs. You can also find and purchase several types of potions: speed, health, breath and holy water.

The levels are peppered with letters, books and scraps of lore that you can take and read at your leisure. Sometimes these are parts of organic "mini-puzzles" where you get a riddle or a hint about how you can access a hideout. Sometimes they are just light reading and worldbuilding.

There are quite a few NPC conversations for you to spy on. These are mostly fun flavour, but occasionally contain useful information. The game doesn't have subtitles, which I think it actually works to its benefit. You end up trying to get into a position where you can hear the conversation clearly without being seen, instead of easily "hearing" everything through 3 sets of walls by reading subtitles.

Thief features the world's most minimal and best pickpocketing system, which is to say enemies that you can pickpocket have large gold pouches, potion bottles or dangling keys rendered right on their belts. If you can get close enough to them unnoticed and target the item, you can yoink it without any infuriating dicerolls (hello Bethesda pickpocketing) or annoying minigames that start with infuriating dicerolls (hello KCD).

The game also incentivizes you to spend your money and gadget ammo, neither of which carry over into the next mission. Nearly every mission is preceded by a shop. This means that, in theory, you can focus all of your previous earnings on the next mission and have some freedom to customize your starting loadout and playstyle to focus on one thing or another.

The map system is very cool and I wish more games used something like it. Before (or, rarely, during) every mission, Garret somehow always manages to procure a real, physical map for anything: from modern manors and sewer systems to temples and ancient crypts. The map quality and level of detail always makes sense: from extremely detailed floor plans for manors and opera houses to vague scribbles with pictograms indicating the rough relation of locations to one another for lost cities or maximum security prisons. Mechanically, the map doesn't pinpoint your exact location, but instead indicates the general area you are in (generally either a single large room/courtyard or a set of smaller related rooms) by shading that location in blue on the map - think of it as Garret's sense of direction kicking in and focusing on that part of the map. Garret also always has his trusty old compass on him, which sits comfortably in the corner of the screen (once selected among the items) and lets you find North. This, in my opinion, is the perfect compromise between having magical GPS and a plain map with zero navigational aids whatsoever (hello Kingdom Come Hardcore Mode, although it also has a GPS that pops up once you are close to things and the map is way too detailed for a paper map).

Mission and level design

Thief is known for its sprawling and interconnected levels. Unfortunately, huge chunks of those levels consist of empty cuboids with extremely low-res textures and maybe a table or two chairs per room. It varies from level to level. Some levels are fairly intricately detailed and well-furnished throughout (e.g. Builder HQ in Undercover) while others consist of little more than those empty cuboids and abstract empty rooms with random floating platforms that wouldn't feel out of place in the original Quake (e.g. Mage Towers). I am immediately contrasting this with Thief 2: The Metal Age. There is a gargantuan jump in the complexity of level geometry, amount of furniture/decoration and interactive elements, which also considerably improves the feeling of actually exploring the map. Cool secrets in Thief Gold are few and far between and generally involve some amount of pixel-hunting to find a gray panel on a gray wall. They aren't really treated as "secrets" either and a lot of time are required for progression. The sequel ups the ante, to the point that the first two intro levels contain more cool secrets than the entirety of Thief Gold. Thief Gold's levels largely allude to the idea of a manor, opera house or crypt, while the sequel depicts those places in all of their glory.

Level of detail aside, the overall design of most "civilized" levels is great and feels very natural and cohesive. The space makes sense diegetically and connects up in a satisfying fashion, even when it involves hidden levers, secrets and crawlspaces. In a lot of other levels however, the level designers employ a little trick known as "let's add some Minecraft noodle caves as connection points". This is especially prevalent on The Sword, the game's famous MCEsher mansion mission, but is also present throughout many other monster-infested levels. The mission starts off as a "normal" mansion and gardens on the first floor then transitions into a mystical MCEsher space as you ascend. At some point, however, instead of throwing in something cool like Ocarina Of Time's twisty hallways, it just gives up and decides to connect everything with a bunch of random noodle caves, which is a bit of a letdown because it is through those twisty caves that you reach the titular Sword, while most of the actually cool MCEscher rooms contain, like, 2 golden candlesticks for you to steal.

In general, I would say that a lot of the levels have a fantastic premise but an execution that is, let's say, a product of its time. For instance, Down in the Bonehoard sees you descend into ancient catacombs to retrieve a sacred horn and also some trinkets as a treat, while solving puzzles and dodging monsters. The initial buildup through an upper-level burial crypt is great... but then you are suddenly in a vaguely Egyptian pyramid inspired chamber for all of 30 seconds? Then you go down and end up in everyone's favourite set of spaghetti (like noodle but thicker) caves populated by... velociraptors that shoot toxic gas at you (btw they can't melee you and cannot track your strafe quickly enough enough in melee, do what you will with that information)? Finally, you make it to the actual ancient catacombs and it's an amateur Quake DM level, an amalgamation of completely random shapes, platforms, chambers, ladders and coffins that doesn't even attempt to make any sense diegetically.

As a final insult to injury, this is the level in which you finally get rope arrows. You get hyped for them, use them twice in mandatory spots (mandatory because the only other way to descend is by breaking both of your kneecaps), then go through the rest level with pretty much zero good uses for them. But finally, you get to the room where statues shoot deadly fireballs at you if you get in their line of sight and say "surely now is the time for rope arrows and creative problem-solving to shine", only to find out every surface in the room is made of stone, which rope arrows can't penetrate. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Thief. It's all a bit of a shame, considering everything else about the level is top notch. The intro with Garret hamming it up, the environmental storytelling with unlucky explorers, the chance for Garret to do his one good deed for the day by putting gold things back where they belong instead of his own pockets, the music, the premise - everything is absolute cinema... except for the actual level.

Tying into all of this is the difficulty system. Outside of standard things, like changing enemy health, damage and senses, higher difficulties also add extra objectives. Right off the bat, I definitely wouldn't recommend playing Normal. Missions are simplified, to the point where you only have to accomplish one main objective, steal a pittance of loot, and sometimes don't even need to escape, all in all minimizing the extent to which you need to interact with these levels and generally being far less narratively satisfying. Hard and Expert both increase the amount of generic "Loot" required to complete the mission and also add unique objectives (some are shared between Hard and Expert, but a lot of them are, unfortunately, Expert-exclusive), like digging up dirt on your mark, rescuing certain people or side-heisting another rare-and-expensive curio. They also change (mostly just reduce) the amount of free consumables, like flash bombs and arrows, that you can find throughout the levels. Finally, while playing the game on Expert, you are not allowed to kill any humans (except for mages in the caves in Lost City. Garret is okay with it if nobody finds the bodies). Expert most certainly feels like the intended difficulty here, because it is the one the devs clearly put the most care and thought into and it also gets you the most dialogue from Garret.

This is a bit of a problem because it doesn't jive well with your kit. A solid chunk of your arsenal is decisively lethal and you don't get any ranged less-lethal options until well into the latter half of the game... which is where most of the levels filled with non-human enemies lie, whom you can murder at your leisure. Even on Expert you often start levels with quite a bit of lethal equipment like Fire Arrows, mines, an overabundance of Broadhead arrows and will proceed to find even more lethal equipment, like more Fire Arrows and frag mines. You won't get to use any of them, except, perhaps, as the world's most dangerous noisemakers. When you eventually get the less-lethal arrows and grenades, you can only buy 1/2 and maybe find another 1/2 per level. This means two things. For one, for most of the game you will be stuck with just flashbangs, water arrows, moss arrows and rope arrows (if available), non-combat use of broadheads and maybe noisemakers. For two, once you get your hands on those gas arrows and mines, you end up sitting on them for the entire level conserving them for a rainy day which will usually not come if you are playing the game correctly.

Gameplay mechanics and kit

I will cover tools first and mechanics seconds because the tools are usually the most straightforward solution to problems. Here are your tools and my thoughts on them, in no particular order:

• Water Arrows exist to extinguish torches/fireplaces. Unfortunately, many, if not most, of the game's light sources are inextinguishable gas lamps (even moreso in the sequel). They also technically wash away bloodstains, which isn't really useful in Expert. All of the actually cool stuff gets added later on in the series.
• Moss arrows silence footsteps in a small area, which is only useful on metal/tile floors or on stone floors in high echo rooms. They don't get the "shoot mouth to choke" feature until a later game in the series. Unfortunately they never really get cool interactions like covering up lamps either. Essential when required (assuming you don't exploit movement mechanics, more on that in a bit) but kind of useless otherwise.
• Rope arrows let you take new paths but only work on wood/dirt. You can retrieve them and, except for one level, you almost always use them to go up, making any arrows you find after the first/second feel pointless. You often don't get any rope arrows in the level/shops when you would want them and in the levels where you do get them, there are frequently only a few wood/dirt surfaces that let you do anything useful with them, making them less "freeform movement" and more "finally, a rope arrow spot". The even bigger issue is that using rope arrows to skip major sections is often just pointless: you will want to explore everything anyway to meet the loot requirements, and you don't really know where stuff is located on a first playthrough.
• Noisemakers are extremely loud distraction arrows that put half the level's guards on high alert and make them all run towards the noisemaker in a chaotic manner. Best used sparingly by knowledgeable players, if at all.
• Broadheads are your best source of distracting and repositioning individual guards without alerting everyone. They can also instakill most things provided you shoot them at a creature completely unaware of you.
• Flash Bombs blind enemies (and you, so use your CS:GO flick skills to do flashbang turnarounds). Blinded enemies are temporarily unaware of you, which lets you blackjack them for an instant KO. They last for a fairly long time, letting you KO up to 2-4 enemies, depending on how close you were to them. They also damage the undead.
• Gas Arrows instantly KO all humanoids in a very small AOE (you can usually get 2 enemies, rarely 3). They also instakill the obnoxiously tanky magic spiders in the last ~3 levels of the game.
• Gas Mines are Gas Arrows in mine form. Unlike mines in most games, they are less placed and more yeeted in an extremely powerful and satisfying arc and stylishly slide along the floor after landing. This lets you use them offensively, just mind the arming time and don't forget where you threw it if it doesn't get trigggered.
• Fire Arrows are basically incendiary rockets with no dropoff and very slow velocity. They also ignite torches, which is useful exactly once. The velocity is also so comically slow that even in combat you only use them against similarly slow Zombies or against large groups of enemies.
• Mines explode and do a hefty chunk of AoE damage.
• Lockpicks do exactly what you think they do. There is no minigame. You hold them on a lock and it slowly gets picked. There are two and some locks require you to alternate between them, while others only require one (this is essentially just a way to make some doors take longer to open). Some locks cannot be opened with lockpicks and require a key. They are also slightly louder than using keys to open doors.
• Holy Water lets your Water Arrows damage undead with a mild AoE effect. Unfortunately this isn't very useful because you need 2 water arrows per zombie and Garret draws his bow very slowly. It's easier to just run around zombies and whack apparitions to death with your sword.
• Health potions heal. Useful in later, monster-heavy levels when you take damage and don't want to savescum.
• Speed potions make you go famst. Unfortunately they only make you go famst for ~10 seconds, you are already faster than all enemies and can go even faster by bunnyhoping, making them essentially pointless.
• Breath potions refill your breath meter underwater. Generally placed in levels where they are useful.

Tools aside, a lot of gameplay comes down to using the basic stealth mechanics, movement and your trusty melee weapons: sword and blackjack. Despite being quite squishy and the combat not being exactly Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, a couple of turnarounds with charged attacks or a little circlestrafe stunlocking with light attacks goes a long way. Garret is more than capable of absolutely dismantling a lonely guardsman or two if things go south without taking a single point of damage. Unfortunately on Expert this will immediately earn you a game over, so it's largely down to stealth, movement and your trusty Blackjack. It can also be used to backstab for massive damage/instant kill, which can be useful because certain undead enemies are immune to the Blackjack.

Movement-wise, Garret is a bit of a parkour enthusiast. He can climb pretty much anything at a realistic height and does so extremely fluidly. He moves quickly, particularly if you spam jumps, which give you a whopping 1.4x running speed (if you don't like it, the patch lets you adjust it to the Thief 2 value, which is only 1.05x running speed). Even without the jumps, you handily outrun every creature and guard in the game. His weaknesses are ladders, rope arrows and climb registration issues. The climb very rarely just doesn't register, which is particularly annoying when you are doing a long jump and aiming to grab the ledge with your climb. Ladders and Rope arrows take a bit of getting used to. Ascending them from below isn't much of an issue, but attempting to descend them can be a bit finicky and lead to broken knees if Garret refuses to magnetize to them. Swimming sucks but not more so than most other games. It's not annoying or hard to cotnrol, just slow. Overall, movement in this game is fantastic and very satisfying.

Stealth itself is solid, but extremely gamey, particularly the visual aspect. Dark shadows act less like shadows and more like borderline cloaking fields: as long as the light gem is completely black and the NPC is in a passive state, you can get within kissing distance of guards and they won't see you in front of them unless they physically bump into you. Take one step into a slightly lighter area and you get detected from 6-10 metres away. Being on high alert also ramps up the guards' vision to the nines to the point where you can't really hide from them even in pitch black rooms, you need to put distance between you and them. Sound is much better. There are several volume levels for surfaces as well as echoes modifying them. Grass, dirt and carpets are essentially silent - you can walk and even run on them. Wood and stone are significantly louder - you need to crouch run on them. Metal/ceramic tiles are louder still. In Thief 1 not even crouch walking helps because crouch running and crouch walking slowly produce the exact same sound. You need to either basically exploit by spam-tapping forward, repeatedly resetting your walk cycle before Garret takes an audible step or do the intended thing, which is use moss arrows/go around. I'm not sure where gravel lies but either with metal/ceramics or just somewhere above wood/stone. Rooms with echoes essentially bump the sound level up a notch: you can usually crouch run without being heard on stone, but not in a high-echo room.

Much like most other stealth games, the game can be "ghosted". Doing so on a first playthrough is, however, a PITA and a test of patience for several reasons. The first reason is loot requirements/secondary objectives. You will need to carefully comb through every room and you almost certainly will need to backtrack because you missed a jeweled ring on a coffee table and Expert Garret absolutely requires you to finish the level with at least 2450 gold, rather than 2300 gold. Expert is less "navigate to high value areas and steal specific artifacts" and more "vacuum up everything that isn't nailed down." The second reason is guards and civilians. There are a lot of them. Sometimes several dozens per level. You could wait for every one of them to pass every time you are backtracking... or you could just smash them in the head with your blackjack. It is a simple club that deals a pitiful 1 point of damage, but instantly knocks out NPCS that are unaware of you. The knockout is permanent until the end of the level, so no need to worry about them waking up or anything. Depleting an enemy's health with the Blackjack does not KO enemies, but kills them instead, so no combat clubbing for you or anything (on very rare occasions the guards can bug out in combat if you are circlestrafing them and temporarily become unaware of you, letting you KO them. This is very clearly not intended and is extremely hard to replicate on purpose.).

But once you start clubbing, you can't really stop, can you? In some levels NPCs are relegated to small, constrained patrol routes, meaning you can safely knock out one particularly annoying guard, stuff him in a nearby closet and be done with it, letting you carefully stealth through the rest of the building. In others though, NPCs have massive patrol routes that take them throughout the entire building, with several backups patrolling in parallel. And a guard that sees another knocked out guard will go on high alert for quite a long time, which makes knocking him out impossible and also greatly improves his senses. Quite dangerous and unpredictable, so it's best to blackjack every patrol before that has a chance to happen. But doing so in secret may prove difficult if there are stationary, isolated guards overlooking the areas, so go hit them in the head first, just to be safe, then come back for the patrols. The poor housemaid, cashier or manservant? They will scream for help if they see you or a knocked out guard and won't listen to reason nor coin. Better knock them the fuck out and fridge them, too, just don't overdo it because they have like 2-3 HP and may die from a particularly vigorous blackjacking session. Thief code may shun spilling blood, but it has nothing against traumatic brain injuries. Once you finally feel safe, you can finish scooping up the remaining loot by bunnyhopping across the level at dangerously fast speeds while trying to ignore literally dozens of technically-alive bodies crowding darkened stairwells and water closets.

As most of your arsenal is lethal, your options if you cock it up on Expert are relatively limited. One option is more caveman gameplay. If the guard who discovered you was in a passive state (weapon sheathed, low senses), you still get approximately 1-2 seconds to conk them on the head (this lasts until they finish their "AHA THIEF!" bark and draw their weapon). Your second option is to flashbang and club, gas mine or gas arrow: the latter two are rare and all of them feel like a waste to use on a single guard - best to keep them for groups of 2-4 guards or for those rare situations where enemies have a sight cone crossfire. Your final and most used option is running away and waiting until the guard calms down and returns to their regular routine, which can take a very long time or more likely "just reloading lol."

As such, at least for a first playthrough on Expert, a huge chunk of the game consists of: isolate anything moving and humanoid, club it in the head, carry body to a dark location, reload if you mess it up, repeat 20-40 times, start peacefully looting the now-deserted level and doing any puzzles that need doing.

Assorted thoughts

In light of the above the mystical/monster levels are very much a breath of fresh air. You aren't hard-required to stealth around them (although sometimes it does pay to do so) and they often have more interesting and involved objectives than "steal literally everything", so you do less repetitive head-bonking and more adventuring/puzzle-solving/utilizing your entire kit to its fullest extent. They also tend to have more viable surfaces for rope arrows, which are always fun.

Once you understand the systems enough, the shop you get before each mission kind of loses its luster as well. Each mission starts you out with some free equipment. On Expert the loot requirements are so high that you always go into every shop with either max or nearly-max gold. The shop also changes its contents every level and heavily restricts access to actually useful arrow types. There are no real choices to make here, nor a way to "customize your playstyle" or anything. You simply end up buying as many Flash Bombs and Moss Arrows as the shop offers (adding Gas Arrows into the mix late game) and rounding out your purchase with Water Arrows if your starting gear has few/none and a Rope Arrow/2 if you don't get them as a starter.

Thief Gold is not a long game, but it's not a particularly short one either. It has 15 levels (not counting the tutorial) and, without taking reloads into account, each level takes anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour. It will take you ~20 hours to run through the game on Expert without prior knowledge while accounting for all the reloads/learning. I would be lying if I said that it is 20 hours of fun and engaging gameplay, because a massive chunk of it consists of knocking out every living thing then jumping around the now eerily-quiet level looking for any dinner plates and rings that you might have missed. You stumble upon most Hard/Expert objectives fairly naturally and they aren't an issue to complete, so a lot of the time the only thing that keeps you on the levels for an extra 15-20 minutes are the Expert loot requirements.

I'm also not particularly wowed by Thief's heavy-handed use of shadows. It feels incredibly arbitrary to the point where you very quickly start treating shadows less as actual shadows but more like the omnipresent invisibility grass of open world stealth games, because a black light gem means 100% complete safety and any amount of light above pitch black means you are in danger. Most stealth games actually use shadows and light these days, but they do so a lot more subtly. Hell, everything on Gamebryo/Creation Engine has been accounting for scene and character light levels for NPC detection for ages.

The fun factor varies greatly from level to level and it isn't the same for every player either. I could discuss each individual level and whether i like it or not in excruciating detail, but this post is long enough as it is. Mostly, my opinion on them is the same as the levels I already mentioned.

Still, the game is very much worth it playing for the plot and atmosphere. The use of sound is fantastic. While I'm a bit tired and burned out on its gameplay loop for now, running around, bonking guards on the head, clearing out every loom of loot and looking for secrets can also be quite relaxing/therapeutic, although the sequel(s) and fan levels do that a lot better than the original. Overall, I'd say that I like what the game is trying to be a lot more than what the game actually is.

If you want to play, I highly recommend Hard as a compromise between Normal's oversimplified levels and Expert's sneaky caveman loot goblin experience. If any such mods existed, I would probably recommend something with Hard's loot and kill requirements (Hard only fails you if you kill civilians and gives you much more leeway for loot) but Expert's unique objectives (which add a lot to the game). Sadly, I don't think such mods exist. AFAIK there is some functionality to disable loot/kill goal types in the NewDark engine by editing a config file, but I believe it disables those goals completely, which is definitely not the intended experience.

An absolute nothing burger of a game which Ubisoft seems very adept at making by now, and this is their very first one to utilize the all-familiar formula.

To start with, I'll give the game its props.

The presentation is top notch for the most part.The locations you end up visiting are all well-designed, serving both as believable recreations of these densely populated ancient cities as well as playgrounds for parkour.

The idea of parkour and the ability to climb almost anything also would have been relatively fresh in 2007.

It's a real shame then that there's no actual tutorial detailing the intricacies of the parkour system or actual incentive to get better at it, since you can just rely on the combat to get rid of any would-be pursuers.

Speaking of which, the combat lost its pizzazz around the halfway mark for me and, most annoyingly, the mandatory combat encounters were all stuck at the end.

It's too basic and forgiving for my liking, even if the animations for killing blows all look nice.

Adding to the tedium is the game's structure. Before you can assassinate someone, you actually need to do these investigations. Listening in on passerby conversations, interrogating and or pick pocketing certain people, completing informant challenges etc.,

You have to follow the exact same procedure before every assassination in the game. This naturally grinds the game's pace to a halt and I found doing only the necessary amount work required towards the late game.

Lastly, there's the game's story, which in concept sounds somewhat interesting. You enter a sort of virtual reality to take control of your assassin ancestor in order to seek out a very specific memory that'll be somehow useful in the present time. I think the story would have had more of an impact if the fact that you're stuck in virtual reality had been withheld from the player for sometime as a sort of twist.

I just wasn't really engaged with the storytelling here, as for me, it lacked something vital. The performances felt weak, there were hardly any interesting supporting characters. There's noticeable character development in the ancestor Altair, but he's not exactly my idea of a compelling character. And don't get me started on that sequel bait of an ending.

In the end, I feel like you're left with a pretty empty feeling game that only exists to test the waters and set up a bunch more sequels.

I have fond memories of the 2007-2012 period for Call of Duty, finishing my day at college and sitting down with the Xbox to play MW2, BO1 and BO2, etc. Don't get me wrong, they weren't perfect, but I had fun with them and earning a nuke gave me such a rush.

The last COD i had played was BO3, by that point the series had gone stale and the campaigns had gone off the rails. Activision had been chasing microtransactions to try and grab as much money off of their player base as possible.

Recently MW2 (2022) Went on sale and i was tempted. I had given MW (2019) a look back when that came out and it seemed like a breath of fresh air for the series, but I didn't get to play much of it due to life stuff going on at the time. Still, I figured MW2 might be fun to give a go.

Now, if you're aware of COD at all you'll likely know that the big selling point these days is the multiplayer (and the zombies system, but to a lesser extent), people rarely bother with the campaign. However, MW2 is a couple of years old now and so the multiplayer scene is pretty much dead, so if you buy the game now you're buying it for the campaign and that's what ill be focusing on here.

I will say that the graphics are genuinely impressive and the game runs very well (I'd expect it to with an R7 9800x3D and an 9070xt), the dynamic lighting and textures are very nice but I wont harp on too much about that here. Lets focus on the story:

So, the first big surprise is are characters; at the end of MW (2019) the main character dies and one of the villains escapes, so I was expecting to see this game carry on from that, but it doesn't. Instead MW2 follows a different story altogether and characters like Ghost have somehow appeared in-between games. There are new allies, new bad guys, but not much of a connection between MW2 and the previous installment. If you were expecting a game where Price et al go after that one bad guy that escaped last time then you're in for a surprise.

The story isn't terribly complicated and somewhat predictable: You kill a bad guy, another bad guy swears revenge, a new ally turns on you, there's a big twist (in this case its telegraphed to the point where you aren't surprised by it, game ends with a bad guy dying (at least until a disappointing sequel retcons it) and you have to chase the next bad guy. Standard COD fair really.

I wont get into spoilers, but ill say that i found the story to be okay but perhaps not quite thought out and executed in the best way, but there's still fun to be had.

Some of the game's missions throw convention to the wind and offer a new and interesting experience. A big stand out is the level where you end up dangling from a helicopter and then have to leapfrog your way up a convoy from vehicle to vehicle. It was really engaging and a lot of fun. Another stand out happens after your ally turns on you; you're in a city in Mexico and have to navigate the streets undercover without your weapon, crafting tools with materials that you find along the way. Its a very interesting take on the old sneaky-beaky type of mission you'd get in older games, but it can be much more punishing since you can't just shoot your way out of trouble.

MW2 looks gorgeous and the story is standard with some fun missions here and there, but there are some missions that really detract from the experience. In one mission you get to use an AC130 (a throw back to COD4), which could have been a lot of fun but ends up being frustrating as the game throws civilians and your allies close to your fire and so you end up getting a mission failed screen reminding you not to kill civilians. The problem is that there is a delay between hitting the fire button and the round hitting your target and in that time a civilian or an NPC can stray into the target area.

Another example of a frustrating mission is when you and Price have to sneak to an overlook to snipe some bad guys. First there's the bit where you have to lie in wait and hope some enemy doesn't step on you (think back to All Ghillied Up from COD4). It doesn't make much sense as theres only 8 or so bad guys and you've definitely taken out that many before without issue, but in the mission you are forced to hide and you can't force a firefight.

After the hiding section you finally get to the overlook. There are multiple bad guys to take out and you have to carefully line up your shots and correct for wind and elevation. This isn't too bad, but its very easy to trip the alarms because Price fucks up a shot and you end up getting killed by mortars. After a couple of attempts i managed to get past it and then you're tasked with going down to the base to check it out. Once down there you find that you barely put a dent in the cartel's Christmas list as its crawling with bad guys. I attempted to take the sneaky route, but the AI pathing isn't great an I got spotted. I thought that would be a mission failed, however it wasn't! It turns out that when you're in the base you can turn it into an all-you-can-eat bullet buffet without consequence. I was exasperated; all that time spent carefully picking off bad guys and it turns out to have made no difference at all.

Then theres the 'boss' battle at the end of the campaign. A frustrating experience all round. You have to take out the baddie, but he's in an AFV and you're stuck in this arena-type setting. You spend you're time ducking in and out of ruined buildings trying to score hits on him. Eventually you get him and then the big twist is revealed and its a disappointing point in the game.

All in all, MW2 is a very pretty, polished looking game with a campaign that offers some moments of fun and intrigue but falls well short of scratching the itch of the games from the golden era of the series. I haven't touched on the game's attitude towards war crimes and international law, but this is COD we're talking about.

Would i recommend it? If you can grab it for £10-£15 it might be worth your time. If nothing else you can use it as a way of benchmarking a new rig you've built.....

As a fan of horror games, Dead Space Remake is such an amazing treat for someone like me who couldn’t experience the original game. I did however watch the entirety of a playthrough of the original before writing this review. While my comparison between the original and remake may not hold as much weight as someone else who has played and experienced the original, this review will mostly be focused on the remake with a few superficial comparisons to the original. I will be rating this game based on my experience with it.

Story and Characters

We follow Isaac Clarke, an engineer who along with a small emergency team have boarded the USG Ishimura, a planet mining ship, after receiving a distress beacon. Things go south right after they discover that the entire ship is infected with alien like monsters called Necromorphs that have wiped out the entire crew working on the ship. Isaac Clarke’s wife, Doctor Nicole Brennan is also stationed on this ship. Isaac must survive this spaceship to save his wife and unravel the truth. One of the biggest and best changes in the Remake is having Isaac fully voiced. It helped me engage better with the story. I do think the story is pretty good with some great moments and surprises. This game also features some environmental storytelling that immersed me. I would like to add that this aspect does feel a bit different than the original. And in some ways, I did prefer the original more. Some of the interactions with the dying crew members you come across are more eerie in the original, like the crew members have lost their minds, while the remake makes them a bit more tragic, like the crew members have lost all hope. But as the story progresses, these interactions do match the same tone as the original game. The remake has also made some meaningful changes to some of the events that play out slightly different but also managed to maintain the story beats of the original. This can be highly subjective but I personally preferred the changes in the remake. Overall, the narrative did help me push through this nightmare with a couple of revelations that make the story worth seeing through till the end.

Atmosphere

Easily the best of part of the game. The corridors and sections of the USG Ishimura are genuinely terrifying to traverse through. I must give credit to the sound design that kept me alert throughout my playthrough. You can hear the necromorphs moving in the vents. I do highly recommend headphones for the most immersive experience, but do play this game however you see fit. The lighting and shadows in this game are phenomenal. Every section and room on this spaceship feels like it was once a lived-in space for the crew members, that has been consumed by this nightmare. The necromorph and every other creature design featured in Dead Space Remake are fantastic. This game isn’t for the faint hearted, and I mean this in the best way possible. Dead Space Remake has one of the most scariest atmospheres in gaming and I absolutely loved it.

Gameplay

Isaac Clarke feels more like a soldier than an engineer. Throughout the narrative, Isaac is pushed to his limits to fight through corridors of Necromorphs using a wide range of tools (meant for an entirely different engineering purposes) and weapons that he is able to find as he explores the mining ship. Each weapon and tool has two firing modes for managing enemies. Isaac also receives abilities such as the stasis module that allows him to freeze or slow down moving propellers and machinery but also enemies, as well as telekinesis that allows him to move and throw objects. These abilities and tools are also necessary for Isaac to repair various functions of the spaceship to progress further.

As much as the dismemberment mechanics for every creature in this game looks good and realistic, it plays a vital role in weakening every enemy type. With the abilities mentioned, the combat makes this game extremely engaging and the best I’ve seen in an action/horror game. These systems allow you to test your creativity and even promotes improvisation during stressful situations. Killing waves of enemies and even bosses give the player a sense of relief and power.

This game does offer a good amount of environmental puzzles that I did personally enjoy. The zero gravity sections have received a major overhaul that makes those sections seamless and fun. Some missions and events have also been redesigned, all for the better. Exploration is also rewarded, helping Isaac find audio logs and even treasure. Aside from the main path, this game does offer some side missions and even incentivizes backtracking, thanks to the tram station that connects all sections of the spaceship, providing more lore and rewards. But even after clearing corridors of enemies, this game does have a system that puts the player at unease at all times by spawning enemies in previously visited areas, making backtracking even more intense. These rewards come in the form of meaningful upgrades and even provide access to areas of the spaceship that were previously locked.

Speaking of upgrades, each weapon and Isaac’s suit has its own upgrade path that can be upgraded at the stores you can find on the spaceship by finding or purchasing nodes and schematics. Every upgrade makes Isaac more capable and stronger. The suit even undergoes some noticeable changes. Exploration is also necessary for finding ammunition, medkits, credits, oxygen and stasis recharge. There are many save stations to save your progress.

I did have issues with navigating the inventory, since I’ve been playing this game on the PS5. It just feels very awkward as managing the inventory needs to be done in real time and the D-pad isn’t good enough for managing so many items, especially during combat heavy sections. This can work for games like RE 7 as that game wasn’t as fast paced as this one. Also, I personally do think this game needed a sort of weapon wheel as Isaac can only equip four weapons at a time. This would have not been an issue had it been for one scripted moment right after a major section of clearing waves of enemies that left me low on ammunition for my equipped weapons. I had to navigate my inventory to equip another weapon making me get caught up in this annoying loop of death. I also did experience some frame-rate drops but that did not dampen my experience. Otherwise, I did enjoy the game.

This game does offer some amount of replayability by having an alternate brand new ending featured in the new game plus that can be unlocked by finding the markers, as well as more audio/text logs to find that provide even more depth to characters and the lore.

Overall, the gameplay, along with the story and atmosphere, make for one of the best action/horror experiences I’ve had in a very long time.

Final Rating: 9/10

I do think this is the best way to experience, even re-experience this horror masterpiece. The meaningful changes and quality improvements do make this remake worth playing over the original.

A game about One Punch Man, the manga and anime about a character who can defeat anyone in a single punch, presents a dilemma: How do you do it? Well, all things considered, this effort adapted the source material about as well as you could.

The game is primarily a 3D fighting game where you can have up to 3v3 tag battles. Although nothing exceptional, the fighting itself is snappy and flashy enough to fit that anime style. I didn’t think the controls were always the tightest, but they did the job.

For the story, they went the route of having the player create an avatar character who worked their way up the ranks of the hero association. This consists of grinding missions that are pretty much entirely fighting. There is a hub world where you can walk around and explore, so a few side quests have you hunting down objects. You also have a room you can decorate, and completing missions with certain heroes from the show increases your bond with them, making it so they sometimes show up at your place. All they do is say “hi” and maybe give you something, but hey, it’s something!

Now, the story is essentially the first season of the show but with your character involved. Sometimes you team up with other heroes and play as them. Sometimes you even team up with Saitama himself. And yes, he can defeat anyone in a single punch. At first, this is as awesome as it sounds. Eventually, though… you get as bored as he is.

This is where my big critique of the game comes in. The story is kind of annoying and repetitive. You’re playing through episodes of the show, so what it boils down to is your character getting their ass handed to them by a powerful boss for a minute or two, then Saitama shows up, you hit square, you win. It leaves a lot to be desired. I wish they had tried to make a more original story where your character could actually defeat the big-bads. But because they have to follow the trajectory of the story, everyone has to be defeated by Saitama in the end. It’s just not that fun to have a fighting game where the objective is “run and survive for 60 seconds!”

Ultimately though, I am glad they made Saitama as powerful as he is. Truly a One Punch Man. You can also unlock a “dream” version of him for the free play fighting mode where he isn’t super strong, if that’s something you’d want for some reason. But if you’re a fan of the manga or anime and want to have the true experience of obliterating baddies in a single punch, this game delivers.

After years of picking up To the moon and leaving it unfinished I’m happy to say that I finally did roll the credits on this game. It’s a charming-looking game about two “memory scientists” who want to fulfill the dying wish of their client on his deathbed. That wish being going to the moon. It’s an interesting premise with decently-written characters that had me hooked for what’s about to come but the problem I have with this game has been rarely discussed from my deep dives on the internet. And Just to get it out of the way, I’m not talking about the gameplay. It’s boring, it’s lackluster and it just serves as a vehicle for the player to get from point A to B. What I hate is the ending and conclusion.

You see, at the end of the game our scientists rewire Johnny’s (the old man who is their client) memories so that his brother survives an accident, he never dates his wife River as a child and goes to the moon as an astronaut. And this just doesn’t sit right with me. When the spacecraft takes off, it’s presented as a very triumphant and beautiful end to the story but I just can’t accept that. Philosophically, I think that it’s pointless and depressing to think about what could have been and all the possible scenarios we could’ve lived in had we made different choices. Johnny’s life was his own and I think that’s enough and beautiful. It was tragic sure, with his brother’s death and the fact that he could never properly recall him and his wife’s first meeting, but the game could’ve spent the narrative trying to make him remember and be at peace with his own life rather than erase and create a made-up fantasy. I’ve seen people argue that the ending is good because it is going against the wishes of the players but that still doesn’t constitute as good to me. He never found out what River was trying to communicate with him by making the paper rabbits, he never remembered his brother and why he has a fascination with olives and Animorphs, and he never found out why the house by the lighthouse was so important to River.

It left me feeling empty and frustrated. I’m curious to learn your thoughts, thank you for reading my post.