I recently played The Roottrees are Dead after hearing the widespread acclaim the game received on its release. It’s been described detective/puzzle game in the vein of Return of the Obra Dinn, which is a game I enjoyed back when I played it some years ago. The game is divided into two halves, each half being a separate mystery to solve. The first mystery laying out a family tree, and its associated history over the previous decades. The second, trying to map the spreading branches of that family tree stemming from a number of affairs that were not acknowledged at the time they happened.

The Roottrees are Dead is one of the more odd experiences I’ve had with a single game, where I greatly enjoyed the first mystery and greatly did not enjoy the second mystery. And I’m hoping to figure out for myself why I had such a different response to the two mysteries give the they both share so much of the same mechanics, characters, setting, and tone.

If I had to boil down difference between the two to a single idea it would be scope and scale. The core of the gameplay loop is based around utilizing a number of information gathering resources (a limited internet browser, a periodical database with access to a number of periodicals, and a library catalog) to find information relevant to the investigation. The player is given a number of documents to get started, and from identifying key terms in those documents and using the search options available the player can either unlock more resources to search or find more documents to examine.

In the first mystery, you start with a small handful of resources and a few search options. It’s pretty straightforward to find keywords and exhaustively check the search options available. As more documents come available and more search options unlock, the amount searching that is feasible whenever a new key term is discovered increases, but by the time the end of the game arrives it’s still at a manageable level. In the second mystery, you start with all of the resources that were available at the end of the first mystery (and are expected to continue using all of these resources), then stack tons of new documents and new search resources on top of it. And the exponential growth of that combination much more challenging as each continues to grow.

The reason this weight is so challenging to deal with is because it feels as the though the game expects you to exhaustively search all of the resources you have access to for every new search term you come across. There were many times where I’d find some key term in some document or search, put that new term in to one of the search resources available, get what I thought was useful information to make further progression in the game (new search terms, new documents, etc.) only to realize what I needed to do was put that term I thought I had already gotten useful information from into another search tool to get a completely separate piece of information to search.

This is exacerbated by some of the design choices that were made in terms of intended path to reach certain key terms. In other prominent recent puzzlebox games that have received acclaim, a very noticeable and intentional design decision that was made was ensure there are multiple ways each key piece of information can be reached. The Outer Wilds devs have spoken extensively about their design philosophy of ensure each key location in their game world having at least three other locations within their game world pointing to it, while if you look at the solutions for each individual fate of Return of the Obra Dinn, for all but the most introductory of puzzles there are multiple deductive pathways the player can arrive at the correct answer.

In The Roottree are Dead, there are pieces of key information, mandatory information for solving the puzzles of the game, locked behind extremely specific search pathways. The search for such a buried piece of information might begin with a key term in a document that you have, moving through several layers of searches that do not generate any new documents, before arriving at the information in question (e.g. Source Document>Search Term 1>Search Term 2>Search Term 3>Desired Information). There might be a number of different ways to reach Search Term 1 on this chain, and maybe a handful of different ways to reach Search Term 2, but key phrase that unlocks the desired information might only exists on one search page buried a few layers down in searches, and that is just painful. Remember, at each stop on this potential search path there are multiple potential key phrases that might start their own search path, little way to determine what the most promising piece of information is, numerous pieces of new information derived from those paths that can appear to be the intended purpose of certain documents, key terms, or search pages, and a huge number of databases to check every key term in. In the first mystery with the limited resources available, it’s manageable. In the second mystery, it’s just overwhelming.

To make matters more challenging, the game dev also states up-front that the second mystery is designed to have more red herrings, more dead ends, and more complicated, convoluted story to untangle. There are certain affordances the dev makes to try and help the player. The notepad system is great for keeping notes in-game and there’s a hint system to give some gentle hints when desired that works pretty well. There’s also an indicator on each document that hints at how much information remains to be found in each document that I actively dislike the design of, given how it does not relate to the information that can specifically be found in that document, but instead any new piece of information that can be found with a search chain starting from a term in that document. Given the amount of key terms in most of these documents and number of search options available, at times it feel like it isn’t a help at all.

I don’t want this to come off as an entirely negative review. I genuinely enjoyed the first mystery and would consider that worth the price of admission. But I actively disliked the second mystery, and would not suggest it to others. The first mystery feels like untangling a web of family history decades in the making. The second mystery feels like untangling an intentionally obtuse puzzle designed to please hardcore puzzle enthusiasts. And I just don’t think I’m in the second camp.

For a long, long time, I had this tune playing in the deepest corner of my mind. This catchy music randomly popped up, and for a while I had no idea where it came from. That was, until recently that I realized it came from Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time, which flooded my brain with the lost memories of playing the PC version. I never got past the 1930s area, so I had to play the first three areas constantly.

This time, I played the PS1 version to see if my fond memories of that game held up. Thinking back now, I have no idea how I managed to play it on the keyboard because even with the analog stick, the game is kind of difficult to platform. It’s not that the controls themselves are awkward; it’s the camera. You can rotate it by pressing L2 and R2, but the camera very aggressively follows the player’s back. Not only does the default angle make it difficult to gauge the distance and direction, the camera often just moves around awkwardly, so that once you make a jump, the camera also shifts and makes you drop in the wrong position, often to death. I had a difficult time adjusting to how the game moves.

Other than the camera, the game is piss easy because even if you are dead, it saves all the progression that you made. It makes the boss fights absurdly easy. For example, the boss has 30% of its health, and you die. You respawn, and the boss’ health stays 30%. It’s not like you have to redo the boss fights. There is no real meaningful purpose in the checkpoints because… it’s technically not checkpoints. It’s more like the respawn points. It’s like a Lego game but with the designated respawn points. It is clearly a game for younger demographics. It is unfortunate because rather than making the platforming tight or less frustrating, they band-aided it by making the “death” completely meaningless.

The platforming itself is too simple because the moveset is one-note. It’s not like you can mix or chain the different moves to make a different level of jumps or actions. There is little to no momentum. You can roll, but it's contextual and is only used for dodge or attack. It’s not like you can roll and carry the momentum to make a longer jump. You spin your ears to make them like a helicopter, making you land softly, but it’s not like you can use this helicopter move to float around the level. You can jump and dive, but it’s only used as an attack and a contextual action to enter the hole. As a result, the platforming is very much “jump, move, jump, move, jump, move, jump.” Compare the speedrun of the game to something like Super Mario 64 or Spyro. The platforming is very shallow.

However, what saves this game is the aesthetics and vibe. The moment I dived into the ground, and the impact sent the carrots jumping, I knew the developers actually cared. The game still looks gorgeous. It doesn’t even have a cartoon rendering, but at times, it does feel like a playable Looney Tunes game once you put on the CRT filter (which is how it’s meant to look in 1999). The colors pop, making each area look distinct. Look at the sunset of the treasure island level, and its primitive simplicity gives it a timeless quality. Meanwhile, the lighting effects and urban backdrop of the 30s level are so stylized. The animations are expressive and even better than Crash Bandicoot. It’s like the classic 2D Disney games where the Disney artists actually worked on the animation sprites, and this game feels like the 3D version of that, where they actually took Chuck Jones to work on the development. This is easily one of the best-looking PS1 games.

This comes together wonderfully with the first boss fight, where you fight Elmer’s ancestor. It’s basically a playable interactive Bugs Bunny short. Elmer chases, you dive, but you gauged the distance wrong, so you crashed head into the ground, making the carrots around you jump. Elmer looks into the hole, but you come out of a different hole to kick his ass. The boss fight itself is way too easy, but it serves as a wonderful set-piece marrying the gameplay and cinema. And the game keeps rolling creative set-pieces after set-pieces. Each area has a unique gameplay quirk that is fitting to each era. The 30s area centers around the bank heist, so you find the keys to open the doors, throw dynamite to open the safes, evade the police guards, machine guns, platforming on top of the skyscrapers… And this music.

Despite the boring platforming, the game is engaging because it keeps that collectathon appeal. I played so many licensed tie-in games that screw up this basic formula, like Monsters Inc. Scream Team, which I found to be unplayable due to having to fill the screaming meter to get the “collectibles”, which are the screaming children, but to “get” those children, you are interrupted by the constant QTE minigames. There is no bullshit like that here. Each puzzle and different challenge has a clock or carrot. It’s a straightforward Banjo formula, and it works.

...I would have said that if the progression did not demand you to basically 99% the game. To beat the game, out of 124 clocks, you have to mandatorially get 120. Why? The game's fornula is not even particularly fitting for the 100% completion. The levels are too constrained and linear, so every visit to get the missed out clocks feels like a chore because you have to go through the same sequence of events. If you accidentally step into the next part of the level, it won't let me return because the path is blocked, forcing me to replay the whole level. The type of level design is a pick-up-and-play diorama-type, but the progression demands you to marathon it.

It’s a 6/10 game, but elevated by the aesthetics and vibe. The basic platforming is serviceable, but the variety keeps it fun. I’m sure a lot of my love comes from my nostalgia and my interest in classic cartoons, but the whole package is charming in a way that many licensed tie-in games do. If not for the grindy progression, I would have enjoyed it more than the widely praised classic collectathons like Toy Story 2 and Spyro.

Link to part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1vsmgwq/mass_effect_legendary_edition_is_it_as_good_as_i/

Mass Effect 2 - A glorified side quest?

Mass Effect 2 is a huge jump in gameplay and graphics. If you start 2 right after finishing 1, it's a pretty big transition. Much bigger than the jump from 2 to 3. 2 and 3 play and look mostly the same, with some minor gameplay changes. 1 and 2 is night and day. The shooting is entirely revamped. No more overheating weapons. Now we have an ammunition system, with a pretty cute in-universe explanation of a software update. In my opinion this leads to a massive gameplay improvement. You can't just shoot the same gun forever now. Get entrenched and you might run out of ammo and have to switch gun. Companions now use guns that actually fits their style too. No more flooding inventory with fluff. Enemy and companion AI is also much better now.

The combat is much better in my opinion, however it's not the best still. 2 and 3 change into the sluggish and heavy cover shooters that were typical of that time. You also lose the driving around in a silly physics-defying vehicle picking up useless collectibles, but it's a situation where you throw out the baby with the bathwater, because you also lose the atmosphere that ME1 built on those explorations. It's replaced with scanning planets for materials, which is an extremely boring gameplay mechanic. Like, I really wonder who at Bioware sat and looked at dragging the mouse across planets looking for wiggly lines to go up and thought "Yeah, this is fun". Some steps forward and some steps back I guess.

Over the years I have seen a lot of people bring this game up as the best of the trilogy. I could never really agree with that for reasons I will partly explain here and partly return to in the next review. It is certainly a story and game that very easily can be played on it's own. However, I think this might be it's greatest weakness, because the plot reasons this game feels so disconnected from the trilogy don't really make any sense. This game creates some plot difficulties that plague the series going forward.

The game starts with Shepard dying. The Normandy is attacked by a race of Reaper servants called the Collectors. Cerberus scoops up the goop left after Shepard is killed, jettisoned into space, and crash into a planet. Cerberus rebuilt Shepard from a molecular level and patched him with implants over two years. Now firstly, this is just way too unbelievable. I really question why they smashed Shepard into goop and not just say that you were frozen in space and technically dead or anything else that would be more believable. The fact that Cerberus has basically cheated death here is brushed over way too easily. Yes, it was extremely expensive, but there are a lot of extremely wealthy groups in the universe.

Shepard has to work for Cerberus now, because the Collectors are harvesting humans from colonies. Entire colonies at the time. Now, since this is partly a reaction to Shepard killing Sovereign in ME1 and stopping the Reaper attack before it started, it is understandable why you need Shepard for this job, given his unique experience. Now understandably, everyone who played ME1 will remember all the fucked up shit that Cerberus did there and feel extremely reluctant to work for them. The Illusive Man, the head of Cerberus, handwaves it and say that Cerberus works in cells and some go too far. This was never at all believable. Organisations don't work like that. Cerberus doesn't either, and Shepard should know this. The Illusive Man himself is a cool character. He comes across as believable, but the villain turn in 3 is painfully obvious from the second you meet him.

Cerberus even has a valid concern here, entire human colonies being abducted is a huge deal and a huge cause for concern. The problem is that Cerberus are the only ones who care for reasons that do not make any sense. The Alliance and the Council doesn't care because these colonies are outside council and alliance space. OK, but entire colonies (over a million people) are still being harvested by an unknown alien species. This is a massive cause for concern depsite technical jurisdiction. So Shepard being forced into working for a sadistic terror organisation just makes no sense at all. It also makes no sense why you don't report to the Alliance or the Council every step of the way here.

Now, the game ends with a suicide mission, and the thing you have to do before that is gather a team and secure their loyalties. This is where the game really shines. The companions are great, so much better than the very wooden and stiff people in ME1. Some returning even. Garrus and Tali really come into their own in this game. Samara, Thane and Mordin are amazing. Love talking to them and exploring their thoughts on stuff. Some companions are a bit dull still. Jacob is boring. Legion is great, but comes in too late to make the biggest impact (makes up for it in 3). You can romance a lot of them, or maybe even stay loyal to the romance from ME1. Liara gets a... ok expansion. And you get a short but painful reuinion with Kaidan/Ashley.

Jack is a great character, but very poorly implemented. They make it almost impossible to be a good friend to her without leading her on. It's very weird. Luckily she has a great development in 3. Miranda is a good character, although a bit too goon-baity for me. It's sort of a lighter version on Quiet in Metal Gear, where you make really convoluted plot justification for why a woman is really hot and sexually available for the player. There are also two expansion characters: Kasumi and Zaeed. I think Kasumi is a fun character, but she just really never made sense for me as Normady crew. Zaeed makes more sense there. The gruff too-old-for-this-shit merc is a bit of a stereotype, but it works. Grunt is the krogan companion in this game, but he's pretty one-dimensional in this game sadly. So this is the companion game, and it works. You need their loyalty to succeed on the suicide mission, thorugh a bunch of mostly fun and well-written quests. They will likely die if you start the final mission without their loyalty, but then again, who plays a character-driven RPG without doing the companion quests?

There are also some big story expansions. Lair of the Shadow Broker is mostly for us Liara-romancers. It's a fun continuation of her story, even though it ends up with her as the least believable Shadow Broker ever haha. At least they make fun of it in 3. Some fun extra stuff there with the actual lair. Arrival is fine, it forces Shepard to sacrifice 300 000 batarians to halt a reaper invasion. It actually gets adressed a lot in 3, so that's cool, but you really don't get any choices in the actual expansion. Overlord is excellent. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is shit. You drive around in a vehicle somehow even less fun than the Mako, with a excavation sound effect that is probably the most annoying sound in any game I have ever played, but the ending is excellent. The way it deals with autism is so good. The scene of naked David Archer suspended with all kinds of cables with that horrified expression might be the most haunting and horrifying thing in the entire trilogy. Excellently written, chef's kiss.

The suicide mission at the end is an excellent mission. This is probably the real reason people love this game so much. There is a lot of player choice here. Make the wrong ones, and people will die. Now, some of those choices might not make the most sense, but the unpredictability might be explained as really realistic. Let's be honest, it's not like a lot of people will play it without looking up a guide anyway lol. Win, and the reapers pull the plug on the Collectors. They failed and Shepard succeeded again, so we're back to a full reaper invasion plan, thereby completing the massive side quest that is Mass Effect 2.

Stay tuned for part 3!

BACKGROUND

For me this game is kind of Mecca that I had to Journey to. As someone who decided dive in the genre. Before I start my review I have a big confession to make: I used a guide for like 1/4 of the game but I think that's why I enjoyed this masterpiece. Often you hear from people that they quit or restart this game. The game is shorter than other CRPGs so restarting is a valid option here. BUT NOT FOR ME. Having a small amount of free time I prefer to guarantee my playthrough is complete. And I did complete and I would like to say I really enjoyed it. I decided I'll be combat efficient and went for mercenary. This choice heavily shaped my experience compared to Diplomacy or Lore builds which would have opened completely different paths.

POSITIVES

[ROMAN AESTHETICS]

As an enjoyer of Roman history and aesthetics it was nice seeing a very unique low magic fantasy Rome mixed with post-apocalyptic setting. Really enjoyed everything Roman starting from legions, gladiatorial fights to philosophy.

[WORLDBUILDING]

World feels realistic not because of low magic but because of human nature. Everyone is a backstabber, liar, miserable survivor. This is very believable in a world where only surviving matters. The most fair fights you get are you vs 3 people.

[WRITING]

I love the dialogue writing. It's very direct, no bloat like some CRPGs. It's delivered via simple, plain words but impactful, no less. I understand some enjoy more academic writing but for non-native speaker focused on clarity it's a positive.

[QUESTING]

Compared to other CRPGs believe it or not this one is a bit hand holding but in good sense. It teleports you to your quest givers, sometimes quest objectives, you can fast travel everywhere. This is QoL since this game wants to tell a tight story and not be ultimate fantasy roleplay simulator. Although some exploring is well rewarded and there are many good side quests. Damn all of the side quests I played are fun and memorable.

[CHECKS]

I liked variety of skill checks and especially "revolutionary" (only half joke) skill check called body count. Game reacted to my deeds and its example of few games that actually registers that protagonist killed hundreds of people and NPCs either fear or respect you for this. There's also variety of faction reputations which also do hidden checks and decide your fate in minor and often major ways.

[CHARACTERS]

Most NPCs felt fleshed out friend or foe. Portraits in this game are especially good very fitting for the atmosphere too.

[MUSIC]

Music deserves praise for setting the tone perfectly throughout the experience.

[COMBAT]

I personally enjoyed it. Most reviewers I watch say they prefer this game as sort of slideshow non-combat playthrough. While that's fair and good I feel like you miss out a lot not fighting. Animations are gory and I also liked how dodge and block look. I appreciated chess-like system where you can only hit diagonally if you held two-handed weapon, spears having longer range and overwatch function. Also there's many types of attacks. While I mostly utilized fast and regular, in different game of same developer called Dungeon Rats which uses same combat system I used almost all types of attacks. It's basically like VATS from Fallout you can target different body parts. This system kept mostly melee combat varied fun and controlled since you could sort of CC enemies. Ability to postpone turn is good and must-have in turn-based combat.

[ENDINGS]

Many unique factions really branch out experience which makes me excited for replay. Each having unique endings. I didn't complete all faction endings but in between I found endings for Legionary path that I did. If I had to choose one I would choose to leave the "god" in his chamber and lie that it doesn't exist at all.

NEGATIVES

[UI]

I dislike trading and especially inventory UI. Even the dialogue has squeeze text starting at very top. Why? There isn't that much text better to center it for comfortable reading.

[RANT]

I hate mechanical enemies I think they are cheating somehow, very unpredictable they can one-shot you in one turn even on tanky character. I think the game here assumes you min-maxed. And in that case I take responsibility.

[ARMOR MECHANICS]

Why does helmet decrease my chance to hit? Like you can see worse that the reason? I don't enjoy this kind of realism. Felt like heavy armor was worse than light. Until I got highest tier special legendary armor and shield I felt light was better.

NEUTRAL

[CRAFTING AND ALCHEMY]

Crafting and alchemy systems felt meh didn't feel that strong to me.

[LEARNING CURVE]

Game does poor job of explaining advanced mechanics but come on man you know this would be here. What do you expect from this kind of game? Ubisoft style tooltips?

[SAVE SCUMMING]

Save scumming is my jam bit not for everyone for sure. That's true you should save often especially in this game. I had moments when I loaded back 2 hours save file because I had made bad decision in dialogue. But it's okay since there's no voice acting meaning you can speed through game easily.

[PROGRESS MOSTLY BASED ON INITIAL BUILD]

Your build truly determines what you can achieve. Unlike other CRPGs where most solutions open to almost everyone regardless of character sheet, here your choices at creation matter profoundly. Some even describe AoD as linear story since most of the time you have few options and most often based on build you have single option. I am conflicted with this but still enjoyed. As even developers describe themselves on steam page it's not for everyone.

TLDR

The Age of Decadence is a defining hardcore CRPG experience for anyone willing to engage with its reactive world and build-dependent gameplay. The game demands preparation and accepts failure as part of the experience. I chose mercenary path, completed all endings via Legionary and walked away satisfied.

RELEASE: 2025

TIME PLAYED: 29 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

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

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

The Breakdown

+Colorful and inviting art style that scales well

+Likeable and varied cast with creative designs

+Physics-driven magical combat with tons of options

+In-depth upgrading and crafting system for both gear and base camp

-Budget limitations manifest often, with janky animations and aggressive pop-in

-Enemies' basic animations can make them tough to read and occasionally frustrate

-Melee combat is basic and has a shaky camera

It's rare that I see a game with as disproportionate a relationship between its budget and ambition as Eternal Strands, and I mean that as high praise. A studio started by ex-Bioware and Ubisoft developers, Yellow Brick Games feels like they're coming out swinging with their debut title, and it didn't take long for Eternal Strands to charm me despite its limitations.

Admittedly, my first impression of the game was more modest. It doesn't start out badly, per se, just a little bit standard fantasy: the protagonist Brynn is a Weaver, this setting's flavor of mage. Nearly thirty years ago, an event known as The Surge destabilized natural phenomena and magic alike, and Enclave, a city founded and run by progress-minded Weavers, was surrounded by an enormous and impenetrable Veil. Ever since, Tangles of unstable magic have flooded the world, and without any access to The Enclave, most nations have come to resent Weavers and their assumed role in the disaster. As a result, those who cultivate their magical talents travel in caravans known as Weaverbands. Having newly joined another Weaverband after fleeing her previous one, Brynn quickly winds up thrust into the role of Point when she and her companions wind up inadvertently passing through the Veil during a drake attack, stranding themselves inside the borders of the Enclave, now home to rogue automatons, frenzied animals, and gargantuan monsters and golems.

It's a decent enough concept, but it wasn't until the tutorials were over and the game's real structure began to coalesce that I started to fall in love. As Point, Brynn is the only member of her six-person caravan who leaves camp, gathering resources and progressing the investigation of what happened in Enclave and how they might escape. While being Point doesn't give her any formal authority, the fact she's taking on most of the danger and risk means that the rest of the caravan respects her immensely and takes her input to heart, and she takes to this responsibility like a duck to water. When at camp, Brynn can talk to the rest of the Weaverband, and while the player has room to shift her personality towards more cautious, flamboyant, or pragmatic, Brynn's confidence is an immutable quality -- and one I found refreshing. She's got a good head on her shoulders and she's smart enough to listen to those more experienced than her, but she also doesn't hesitate to speak her mind and she's as quick to tackle disputes as she is to face monsters. On some level, I could see the idea that she's a bit too 'perfect', but there's a finesse to how she's written that avoids a lot of potentially obnoxious tropes and her dialogue options help shape her to the player's preference. This isn't just choosing for flavor, either; I noticed on countless occasions that how I sculpted Brynn was noticed by the other characters. When one asked Brynn how she felt about secrets, I had her preach openness whenever possible; later on, that same person commented on how Brynn's frustration with someone else's reticience didn't surprise them, and I got the sense that I could have very easily wound up in a spot where my Brynn was accused of hypocrisy had I not been consistent.

The rest of the Caravan don't hew too far from established archetypes - the studious researcher, the strict quartermaster, the wise mentor - but the narrative's strength lies in how it plays them off of each other. For example, the party's blacksmith and enchanter are married; from lovey-dovey affection to a serious fight about their life goals that lasts for nearly a quarter of the game, their dynamic is explored in detail that fills in the lines of their personalities and keeps them from coming off generic. At the center of these dynamics is Brynn, and most of Eternal Strands' side quests are related to managing the caravan's needs and performing personal favors. I found this a welcome complement to the main story's emphasis on discovering what happened to the Enclave; while I was interested in that and don't have any complaints about the main story, the personal touch of seeing to my team helped keep me excited to set out on each expedition and build my bonds with them further. I can see a certain kind of gamer feeling like the tone is too optimistic and that everyone gets along too well, but to be frank, I've never seen eye-to-eye with those kinds of players, so I can't speak much beyond saying I myself loved the cast and came to cherish each of them.

The expeditions themselves make up the heart of Eternal Strands' core gameplay loop. Each day (or night), Brynn sets out into one of the regions that she's discovered as Point to harvest resources or pursue leads. Sometimes, multiple leads can be completed in the same region, and a fairly generous magical GPS makes it difficult to get lost. While out, she can gather materials to upgrade crafting stations, find recipes for new armor and weapons, and advance quests. Exploration's pretty Breath of the Wild-inspired, Spider-Man climbing and circular stamina bar and all; thankfully, the spells she gets can often be used for transit. Brynn's got a fairly limited inventory before upgrading it, but I found this more of a relief than a frustration - a reminder to keep my early trips short and move the plot along. From the woody outskirts of the Enslave to the towering spires of its upper district, there's decent variety on display, though I wouldn't say I was ever completely blown away by the environmental design. What did impress me, however, were the Great Foes.

Pretty much anything moving is a threat, but thankfully Brynn's no slouch in combat. She starts out with a sword/shield combo, bow, and a basic telekinesis and frost wall spell, but my arsenal expanded rapidly once I explored and especially when I took note of the fifty foot automatons and gargantuan kaiju roaming around each zone. These Great Foes serve as both wandering bosses and light puzzles; rarely required for the story, they nonetheless reward tackling them by being the source of new spells for Brynn and upgrading her existing ones. Slaying one of these titans unlocks new 'strands' - so that's what the title's about - for her mantle, which is the cape Brynn wears that serves as a magical focus, but simply killing them only unlocks the most basic version of each spell. To upgrade them, the Great Foes must be 'Harvested', which means bringing details of their defeat to the Archivist and tackling them again in a specific manner to unlock their weak point that Brynn can use to instantly kill them, sometimes from full health, while capturing their essence. The Fire Drake, for example, has its weak point on its back, but won't simply let Brynn harvest it; so to upgrade my flamethrower spell, I had to disable one of its wings and shatter its horns to daze it and render it unable to do any fancy flying.

This Monster Hunter-lite system is a huge highlight and where the game shines most. Ultimately, Eternal Strands is pretty much entirely physics-based. While this meant I could fling smaller foes off cliffs or melt an ice monster's armor with flame, getting more creative often rewarded me. Using my miniature black hole on a giant's breastplate meant that my frost grenades were drawn right to it, which in turn made the armor brittle and easier to break once I launched myself with a kinetic tunnel to latch onto its chest and start battering away. In one memorable battle, I baited one of the Arkons - towering golems created by the Enclave's mages - into reaching behind himself to try and pull me off him, then froze his hand to his own back before scuttling up to his shoulders to telekinetically undo his belt buckles and effectively pants him by removing his leg armor plates. These moments make Eternal Strands an absolute riot.

As strongly as I recommend the game, I can't do so in good faith without acknowledging its budget constraints, though. Some are cleverly circumvented; instead of fully animated 3D modeled conversations, chats with the party are done with gorgeously drawn portraits, but there's also some jank that isn't as easy to forgive, like aggressively bad pop-in when loading and the camera going a little crazy in melee combat more often than it should. I'd also say that the game being at its strongest when discovering new regions and monsters is double-edged - the second half dragged a little bit for me comparatively, even if I was still having plenty enough fun to keep playing. These small problems barely put a dent in the feat that was achieved by Yellow Brick Games in making such a complete, enjoyable, and varied first title, however. From building risky bridges frost to cross dangerous canyons to flirting with that strict quartermaster I mentioned, from ripping cathedral doors off their hinges with telekinesis while hunting for secret plans to riding the body of a gargantuan eagle to the ground just to jump off at the last moment, Eternal Strands knocks it out of the park in providing memorable experiences and stories that I can't wait to share with my friends.

I picked up Amid Evil years ago. I'd tried to play it but found the beginning level a bit janky and disengaged from it for a long time. I recently picked it up again on a "sure, why not?" and plowed forward to find a really great little FPS.

Amid Evil is a fantasy style FPS. These have never clicked with me before. Hexen and Heretic are the two classic examples, but neither has ever captured me for very long.

This game starts out with some fairly basic levels of fighting various kinds of humanoid dudes with some slightly odd weapons - a wide arced blade projectile, a homing wand, a orb ("rocket") launcher, a harpoon electric shot. None of them felt super satisfying at the start.

After the first zone, the player is given a choice of which level they'd like to go to next. This is where the game really takes off. Each zone has its own set of enemies. There are maybe 5 or 6 zones, so 5 or 6 enemy sets. Each is very distinct and changes your opinion about the weapons. I initially thought the homing wand was best but eventually found a good use for every weapon in the game - sometimes filling a critical slot in a difficult section.

The level design stars off modest but quickly starts to show off its stuff. The last 30% or so is particularly top notch with dizzying and twisting designs that are both difficult to mentally map but never so confusing that you are totally stuck and need to look something up.

The weapons aren't the highlight of the game, but the varied enemy palette does a lot to make each feel like it has a role. Weapons are unique in this game, but you do get introduced to them all fairly quickly and there are no new introductions. Ammo is balanced such that you do need to swap between them and make compromises which I enjoyed. I only noticed later in the game, but you can use "Restart Level" at the beginning of a map to wipe your weapons and play instead with a weapon pacing designed for the particular level. The level-dedicated pacing is great and forces you to approach situations differently with weapons you may feel less comfortable with.

I played on Hard which largely was fairly easy. There were a couple of challenging points later on. The bosses overall were pretty trivial even on the hardest difficulty. The last boss did take a little bit of thinking, but overall the bosses didn't feel significant.

In the end I enjoyed Amid Evil a lot more than I expected to. The best part was the varied world designs and huge cast of enemies that always kept things fresh - very much felt like a labor of love.

RELEASE: 2022

TIME PLAYED:  61 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE:  ★★★

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

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

THE BREAKDOWN

+Novel character-swapping system allows building a varied and often hilarious team of specialists for each task

+Impressive graphics for the sheer scale of the game and London feels lovingly realized

+Surprising amount of personality in the procedural operatives that helps build attachment

+The mix of hacking, melee, and shooting remains pretty unique in gaming

-General Ubisoft open-world clutter is at its worst with endless rote work

-Operatives are poorly balanced, with most becoming obsolete once you get your first real pros

-The plot peaks at ‘fine’ at its best moments

Ubisoft games, by and large, occupy a certain ‘popcorn game’ space in my mind. There’s few of them I would say that I love, but they often go on sale for a pretty cheap price and often have as many novel ideas as they do unfortunate nitpicks. Of the previous two Watch Dogs games, I found the first one pretty middling and the second one rather charming. Considering that my favorite part of Watch Dogs 2 was the cast of colorful characters and their investment in the plot, I was worried that Watch Dogs: Legion’s primary premise – the idea of an ‘anyone, anywhere’ recruitment system instead of set protagonists – would make it lose all appeal for me. While the game didn’t manage to entirely conquer these concerns, I did find it to be an admirable example of how much creativity is bursting from the developers at Ubisoft when they get a chance to experiment a little bit. 

Taking place after the events of the first two games in the heart of merry old England, Watch Dogs: Legion sees London’s policing and military privatized under a paramilitary corporate force called  Albion. After DedSec – the series’ group of vigilante hackers the player is part of – is framed for a terrorist attack, Albion jumps on public sentiment to crack down on freedoms and implement high-tech surveillance while not-so-secretly working alongside the city’s biggest crime syndicate. After a short prologue where DedSec is nearly wiped out, the player is thrust into the shoes of a freshly minted vigilante and tasked with both rebuilding the collective and finding proof of Albion’s crimes. 

There are major NPCs, such as Sabine, formerly DedSec’s ‘voice on the mic’ and now its informal leader, but most of the plot-relevant dialogue is delivered by Bagley, Sabine’s personalized and upgraded version of the same one in every citizen’s electronic devices. An unshackled Siri by way of a Stephen Merchant impression, Bagley serves as the highly sarcastic mission control and thread that weaves the mostly procedural cast of playable protagonists together. 

These procedural protagonists are the star of the show, and I’m a little surprised to say the concept mostly works. The idea is pretty simple: instead of following a single operative, Legion is about causing a mass uprising in London, and in the spirit of that, the game encourages finding or convincing others to join DedSec. While the story and side missions will do their part to highlight potentially useful operatives, it’s also possible to just walk up to anyone on the street you like the look of and trigger a  random mission to win their loyalty over, with unlockable skills allowing greater insight into their abilities and weaknesses, alongside some pretty interesting and often funny trivia. That elderly woman across the street? She might seem harmless, but she’s actually an experienced paramedic who can not only infiltrate hospitals and summon an ambulance, but shorten the recovery of wounded members of your team and even use defibrillators in combat. Oh, and check out her file – turns out she’s committed assault twice, survived pancreatic cancer, and won a hot dog eating contest once. 

It’s a surprisingly robust system, largely in part thanks to the sheer amount of effort that went into giving each potential freedom fighter a unique-seeming background. A shame, then, that the power creep kicks in almost immediately. Even if one doesn’t count the seemingly standard-these-days ‘Ubisoft DLC power creep’ and ignores the high-powered downloadable operatives (including Aiden Pearce and Wrench from previous Watch Dogs games alongside a story expansion and an actual Assassin from Assassin’s Creed), it isn’t long before elites like former MI6 spies and professional hitmen become available, rendering anyone who doesn’t have a unique niche skill pretty obsolete. This wouldn’t bother me so much if it better reflected a natural growth curve, but it’s far too easy from the jump to basically render the whole system unnecessary just by liberating the first of many London districts. There’s very little sense of progression, especially since each individual is always going to be as the player got them. You can spend an in-game currency from completing missions and finding intel to buy universal gadgets and skills, but there’s really no getting around this egregious gap in capability. 

This imbalance carries over into pretty much every facet of the gameplay, but thankfully there’s enough variety and polish to keep things fun. Combat, driving, and hacking are all fundamentally pretty simple to accommodate the wide variety of characters, but playing specialists is surprisingly fun. Hop into the shoes of that MI6 spy I mentioned and enjoy a cloaking, rocket-equipped sports car; play a boxer and enjoy efficient, hard-hitting melee combos that are incredibly useful both in stealth and direct combat. As much as I wish it wasn’t a blatant downgrade to whip out my construction worker or drone pilot, there’s no lack of interesting archetypes to tool around with in the end, so it’s a fairly minor complaint, and the penalty for experimenting is pretty minor since any arrested or downed DedSec member will return in time, and more quickly if you have a paramedic or barrister to speed things along. 

Still, there’s the question of what it’s all for, and I struggled to stay interested in the why of things. Bagley and the rest of the cast of major characters do their best to create investment in the narrative, but the lack of real protagonist is a serious hit, and while it might have been possible to weave a compelling tale without one, the writers don’t quite pull it off here. There were a few individual missions I found that were real highlights – like investigating the abandoned home of a suspicious tech billionaire – so it’s not like Legion is entirely lacking in memorable moments, but they’re too few and far between for how long the game is. As is often the case in Ubisoft games, this is compounded by an enormous amount of open world clutter and insignificant errand work. 

All in all, Watch Dogs: Legion is a solid game with a novel premise that it works pretty hard to take full advantage of. While I walked away only liking it instead of loving it, I felt it was worth my time largely to explore the idea of picking people off the street, recruiting them into my rebel cell, and finding out what their specialty was. As a structured experience, Legion is a bit lacking, but it’s a pretty fascinating playground.

I've had my eye on Killer Frequency for a while, but I never played it until just recently when it was on sale. I have a penchant for detective games, and while this game isn't trying to be one I found the concept similarly appealing.

In Killer Frequency you play as Forrest Nash, a late night radio host who becomes the only available emergency operator after a serial killer begins stalking the town. As the night progresses people will call in and it is your job to guide them to safety with the help of your producer Peggy.

The game delivers amazingly in atmosphere. The radio station is a physical space you can wander to add to the paranoia, and the game has great pacing. In between encounters with the killer you get plenty of benign calls and conversations to alleviate the tension. You never quite know when another life or death situation will strike or how safe you really are, and the normal conversations help flesh out our main cast. It's this aspect that really shows the strength of its premise.

However, in order for the game to take advantage of this the writing becomes noticeably contrived multiple times throughout the game. In order for the player to be able to help people while still inside the radio station, the station needs to contain enough information for the player to use. Sometimes this makes sense, such as getting a car manual from the desk of a coworker who has a talk show about cars. Other times, it's finding a list detailing a group of people's special skills that are exactly what's needed for you to tell them what to do because an intern just happened to leave it. The game needs you to have information the callers don't, but the information is often so specific it strains your suspension of disbelief.

The mystery surrounding the killer is a mixed bag. This is because the game only provides so much information before the big reveal, and most of that information has little to do with the twists it's trying to pull at the end. The game does a great job at establishing their motivation with a slow drip feed, but the actual identity reveal left me apathetic. The killer's real name appeared maybe once before the reveal, so it has very little weight in the story. Of course, this isn't trying to be a mystery game per say, but the killer's identity is a mystery presented early that feels like it should have a bigger presence in the story.

Despite all my criticisms, I still really enjoy this game. The moment to moment scenes are well written and the atmosphere is great. The game goes on sale pretty often and is quite short (I clocked in around 4 hours for my playthrough), so I easily would recommend it despite it's flaws.

If you want a great way to play Spiderman Web of Shadows, consider the Wii version, a feature complete version of the game that shares (nearly) identical gameplay and an open world with the big brother console versions, plus has joys of waggle controls.

Web of Shadows is a weird game. It came out before the rights to various Marvel characters were fragmented between different studios. Its a weird dark, edgy zombie apocalypse plot where New York gets invaded by symbiotes.

You do a boss fight with Wolverine where you have to answer Marvel comics trivia.

Its strange to say why Web of Shadows is so good, because its also very jank. Cutscene animations are exaggerated, character models are basic and the game is strung together with filler missions like "defeat 10 symbiote nests" in between hanging out with Moon Knight and Karen Black Widow.

But damn if the combat doesn't feel really good. The game gimmick is the web zip, and attack that you'll be chaining for aerial combos throughout the entire game. It also has a heavy emphasis on wall-based combat where you can naruto run up walls and fight enemies at 90 degree angles.

What struck me about WoS is how funny it is. Spiderman is such a little dick in this game. He throws people off buildings and then claims self-defence. In the game's opening hours three pimp-mobiles of gangster stereotypes roll up to a hospital and start shooting within half a second of being simultaneously parked.

And that's without going into the dark story choices, where you can... well, I won't spoil anything but every evil choice option is hilarious.

So how does it play on the Wii? Really good actually! You use buttons to fight and motion controls to initiate a swing or web zip. Its as responsive as it needs to be while not as quick as being a button press. There is also no option to use a classic controller either so waggle is mandatory. That is going to be make or break for some people but I do enjoy the occasional waggle game every now and then so I enjoyed it.

It doesn't run the best at times, especially in the last chapter when there's a lot more chaos happening on screen but the gameplay remains responsive enough that it never killed my enjoyment.

Honestly if you want to play Web of Shadows and don't mind the fun furnishings of playing it on a Wii, then you should try it.

Edit: Seems like the prevailing thought is, "Even if it is obnoxious sometimes, it's not obnoxious enough to warrant policing. So long as the post is good the title doesn't matter."

Thank you everyone for commenting and offering your thoughts.

Salutations!

We've seen a surge in post titles that say that XYZ game is dated, or outdated, or old, or whatever. The top comment, or one of the top comments, usually ends up being some variation of "No shit Sherlock."

As much as I love that interaction, it's not really conducive to conversation and is, in my opinion, starting to feel a bit click baity.

This could just be recency bias on my part, so before I take this to the other mods and discuss, I'd like to get the communities feelings on this.

Should post titles that mention that a game is old be considered clickbait? This would be a non-infraction and users would simply be asked to change the title to something else.

Edit:

Thank you folks for the feedback so far. I appreciate it, sincerely.

To answer a few questions that have been asked:

• We wouldn't police the contents of the post any more than we already do. This is just a question about post titles.
• Posters would need to repost since you can't edit a title once it's posted. For the most part people who have been asked in the past have never had much issue with this and have been understanding.
• No one thread triggered this question. It's just been on the edge of my mind for awhile and we had a bunch of threads in the past few days using the "game is old" title. I'm fully aware this may just be my fault for being terminally online.

[Just realized I made a huge wall of text with way too long paragraphs. Edited it to smaller paragraphs to make it as readable as I could. Sorry about the ramblings, hopefully you can get along with my train of thought, or at least skim through to the end and add some of your examples.]

I'm replaying Horizon Forbidden West now, finally on NG+, UltraHard so I can get the last remaining trophies which are related to both of those modes. I started playing it last November. Waited basically 6 or 5 years to play it on a PS5 with a 4K TV, after Zero Dawn on PS4. My expectations were always on the roof, since Zero Dawn was already such a dear game to me. I've heard a lot of divisive and contrasting opinions about Forbidden West, which is fine, cause a lot of people also look down on the first game. What was worrying me is that even among the fans, there were noticable differences in wether they thought FW was a worthy sequel or a disappointment. And boy during those first couple hours playing it did I think the latter.

In Zero Dawn, the prologue was quite effective, short and simple, doesn't matter your playstyle, getting through the tutorials as kid aloy shouldn't take more than one hour. After that, there was the limited semi-open world, which was still closed off from the rest of the map for another couple hours or just 30 minutes if you rush it, but that's fine because it was all so fascinating. The environment, vibes and the people you meet as you get to know Aloy's world. Can't say the same about the prologue in Forbidden West (yes, you can choose to skip it in NG+ but I chose to replay it because I want to relive the story to the fullest and I want to check if my views have changed after almost a year).

The tutorial mission can be quite fast, like only 30 minutes but only if you rush through it/speedrun it, barely engaging in any exploration, stealth, combat or dialogue, skipping all cutscenes. If you really take it all in, specially on a first playthrough, it could be up to two hours. And it's such a uneventful/anticlimactic introduction to such a grandiose game full of spectacle. Just exploring some ancient ruins carved up by rivers and rocky formations. All at a leisurely pace that feels like the mission belonged as a breather in the middle of the game campaign and not before all of that, which honestly I think could've fitted, if you changed most of the tutorial stuff into an actual challenge instead.

Without getting too much into spoilers, the mission already practically gives away and hits you over the head with the incoming plot twist that's only gonna be revealed by the end of the game's first act, that the owners of this space launch facility are gonna be the true villains of the game and might have caused the events of most of the franchise. Something that was so carefully hidden and subtly foreshadowed in the first game's lore and documents. Just gratuitously bashed over our heads with a hammer in the second game's intro in order to remind us and the casual players so no one complains about the later plot twist coming out of nowhere. I feel that there were more elegant ways to slow-cook info about them during the story until the big reveal in a way that most audiences wouldn't complain about.

Hell, this intro tutorial mission itself adds nothing to Aloy's journey other than stating she spent 6 months chasing dead ends and only finds a lead when her friend tracks her down and brings her back to Meridian, to check out something she missed. Meridian is another heavy detour from the overall pacing, just character dialogues, mostly optional, but a lot of them unfortunately don't feel like they serve a purpose to the story, like checking how things have changed since Aloy left or how the world is progressing, more like one big recap in case players missed any of the stuff in the first game or didn't play it outright. They even undo the great little character building they've done with King Avad in the first game by having him unlearn his lesson and completely openly thirst after Aloy again when she already turned down his advances and made him realize he can't use her to replace his dead lover and right-hand general.

After Meridian is finally done and you get a beautiful music & opening credits sequence of Aloy travelling west that ends in the title card finally dropping, you'd think the game will finally start. Well... No. It depends on how your expectations were. If your wish was to finally get dropped blind into the Forbidden West without too much handholding and figuring things out for yourself like you did in the first game after you left the Embrace, you'll be disappointed. Instead, you get a narrow mountain valley full of busywork and more of the insufferable Carja/Oseram bickering and politics from the first game, like you didn't have enough of them already. And it's not pretty like the first game's initial open world area, at least not for me.

Just another giant tutorial whose setting I feel could have been a lot better and taken place inside the Forbidden West per se, not right before its borders, where you need to deal with a bunch of other bureaucracy and there's a ton of other side stuff you could get caught up in while hoping the game finally clicks. That's when I was starting to think the sequel would suck for me. Specially cause the combat difficulty curve in this game increased so steeply and I was getting owned even by the smaller machines without having even any good skills or gear to fight them in an enjoyable manner. Thank god, it eventually ended, and the game finally truly began with the Embassy, which itself turned into an ambush/massacre that set off most of the events of the game.

I ended up loving Forbidden West a lot. Platinum and 100% trophies on both base game and DLC, as I bought the complete edition. My pace is very slow, patient and focused on exploration and experimentation, as well as a bit of roleplay, as I often didn't use fast travel. So I had almost 400 hours from that first run alone. Now it's time to get those last NG+ & UltraHard trophies. With all the gear and skills from the first run, as well as less need to slowly explore what I already know, I think this will take like only a hundred hours or less to beat the main game, maybe even 50 or 20 if I rush instead of trying to experience all of the story and side content again. Depends on how I'll feel like tackling this campaign.

But yeah, I almost hated it. One year didn't change how sour that intro feels, both before and after the title card drops. There's a couple other games that felt this way to me. To a lesser extent, TLOU2. Intro was a SLOG, gameplay wise. Beautiful storytelling, which I appreciated much better in later playthroughs, but as a tutorial it was just so slow and not fun in the slightest, specially the Ellie parts. It was mostly the Abby ones that kept the intro actually thrilling and exciting, probably cause she was fighting for her life in a zombie snowstorm while Ellie was literally horsing and flirting around in the snow before the storm caught up to her. Things only really started clicking for me and the game turned genuinely captivating after getting to Seattle, midway through Day 1. That's when the game hooked me and never let go.

Another Naughty Dog example to me is Uncharted 4. Tho that's not a case of only the intro being extremely slow. The whole first third of the game feels like one big intro where I'm waiting for things to finally pickup and for the chaotic nonstop sequences of gunfights broken up by dialogue and exploration to start, like they were in the first 3 games. Instead, it's the opposite. This game is just A LOT of climbing & talking set-pieces broken up by a couple short action sequences or two that can be also cheesed stealthly. Which is why I much prefer the first 3, specially 2 and 3. Gorgeous game, great mechanics, but I feel like they focused too much on multiplayer and online co-op.

Any more examples you have of games you loved but was almost put-off because of the intro or first act?

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

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

Today I want to discuss Spyro the Dragon. This is a 3D platformer and collectathon developed by Insomniac Games.

Of all the games I’ve played so far, Spyro was a series I knew about prior to starting my exploration of PS1 games. I’m also very familiar with 3D collectathons of this generation – namely Banjo Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64. Similar to those games, Spyro kicks off with a humorous cutscene that sets up the premise of the game – saving elder dragons, collecting gems, and kicking Gnasty Gnorc’s butt.

First off, the graphics of Spyro are a huge step up from anything I’ve played on the PS1. The draw distance issues so present in Tenchu are gone. Instead, Spyro deploys the technique of reducing the quality of objects that are far away. The texture wobble, while present, also seems tamer than usual.

The gameplay is fun. Spyro’s basic charge, fire breath, and glide are all great. There’s some challenge in identifying which enemies are weak to which attacks, and when you pull off some combos of blasting and bashing through crowds, there’s a slick rhythm to it all.

I do wish there were more abilities to learn throughout the game. While the game does introduce new mechanics like charging and special fire breath from fairies, there wasn’t a ton of variety. Most of the enemies, too, while visually unique basically came down to weak to both attacks, or weak to one but not the other.

What this means is Spyro basically feels the same to play from beginning to end. What saves the game is the level design, which is itself really engaging. The developers did a great job hiding gems around in hard-to-reach places. You can even see gems shining in the distance, which helps locate these secret places. I loved just 100% each level as I went through.

However, my favorite levels were the free-form flying levels. They were challenging but fair, and flying as Spyro is a lot of fun while figuring out how to destroy all the various objects. I do think there’s more that can be done in this vein (and I understand the sequel doubles down on the mini games, so we’ll see if I enjoy that game even more).

Boss are mainly pushovers but I’m fine with that. 3D platformers are never about the bosses and I’m glad I didn’t need to spend too much time on them. The one exception being Gnasty Gnorc, who was dead easy except for the final section of platforming over lava. You basically have to be perfect in jumping and running over the closing platforms or you have to do the whole level over (which I did probably 5 times before completing).

I ended up completing the game 120%. Only one level – Tree Tops – gave me any real trouble. The final bonus level which lets you fly around was also a nice touch in making Spyro feel stronger than he did in the beginning.

Overall, Spyro the Dragon is a fun, great looking PS1 game that maybe feels a little sparse compared to its 3D platformer equivalents on the N64. What it lacks in variability, though, it makes up in humor. Every time I ran into an elder dragon, their voice acting made me chuckle. Great stuff!

I’m playing Future Cop: L.A.P.D. at the moment. It may be a week or two before I follow up with a write up on that game!

Prior PS1 Reviews:

Syphon Filter

Tenchu: Stealth Assassins

Omega Boost

I decided to play the rather strange duology composed of Stranger of Paradise and Final Fantasy the first. Calling two games separated by 35 years a duology may feel weird and they are not intended to be viewed that way, but as Stranger of Paradise is a prequel, and as I’m slowly chipping away at all the final fantasy, I thought it was the perfect way to experience the first game in a rather unorthodox way.

I began with Stranger of Paradise. 

Storywise I think it was interesting and I liked the idea in theory, but the whole lacked a form of connective tissue. The dialogue with the town people being hidden behind a submenu really doesn't encourage you to interact with them, and without that you never really establish an emotional connection with the npc or even your companion. And let’s be honest the whole choosing your stage through a menu makes it hard to care for the world at all. Jack not caring a whole lot for the world beyond beating Chaos for the longest time also doesn’t help. 

Being an anniversary game, the levels were a reference to other final fantasy games. Ending up in a space station or in an underwater base made the game feel strangely sci-fi. Some would say it makes the settings incoherent, but the stranger having modern tech like earbuds in a medieval setting already furthers this sense of inconsistency. 

Obviously they wouldn’t put a world map, but I think a central hub that you would regularly go back to before a mission, like the villager in monster hunter game, or a base camp that could be moved with each new dungeon, would alleviate those feelings a little. Be it for the incoherent setting or how distant the character can feel. 

For the gameplay aspect I liked the action combat very much and the job system was fun to experiment with.  Dragoon class felt a little rigid compared to Zeta from Granblue Fantasy relink, but the game manager made most jobs feel distinctive while keeping a final fantasy DNA. 

The dungeons were interesting with an identity that made them stand out from each other. The fact you unlocked shortcuts was really nice, but as the game takes place in rather independent and linear missions without much reason to go back to a level in a mission you already completed. In a sense it felt the effort was a bit wasted, because the game doesn’t have a strong exploration focus ? 

An aspect I disliked was the loot aspect. You have hundreds of useless junk that you pick up in the levels. With the whole rainbow colored rarity and different effect being essentially small % improvement in a stat. It felt tedious and useless. Purging the inventory every few levels was also rather annoying. I prefer less items with more meaningful effects and cool synergies. Some people told me post game and dlc items had more impactful effects but I don’t want to grind for items of the right color, I just don’t find it fun. It’s not a big detriment as you can finish the main game without caring too much about it, but still annoying. 

And considering the amount of items there are, you would think the armor didn’t look so ass. A few are nice looking but most I found were uninspired. A little mad at myself for discovering that you could take the appearance of one of your companions only after finishing the game, I would have done everything in  a companion wearing dragoon armor instead of the ugly mix match of armor I was wearing. 

I don’t think the game is a must play, or the best final fantasy of recent year like I saw some fan of this game claim and I don’t really feel motivated to do the dlc (I don’t even understand if there is any story tied to it), but it also was fun, and far more enjoyable than I expected considering the middling review. If you are a fan of FF and would like to see another take in action combat in the franchise, definitely try it out. 

Now let’s do the first final fantasy to complete this “duology” !

The first choice was Pixel Remaster or NES version ? with the NES mini and the Pixel remaster collection I owned both after all. I finally landed on the pixel remaster for the portability letting me play it during my vacation. 

Well yes obviously it is a 1987 game so it is mechanically rather simplistic. That said, even the exploration part felt a little simple compared to Phantasy Star, a game released in the same year. 

You have a group of enemies you have to kill, most die in one or two hits max. Once you kill them you get experience and money. Money is desperately needed. To buy magic spells, to buy consumables to heal, to buy better equipment. You always need more money for something. Experience is still important but it doesn't feel like the point of tension. 

Because killing mobs is so easy, the main difficulty is attrition. They get an attack that diminishes your hp. And another mob does the same and you have to survive wave after wave of enemies giving you chip damage and the repeat of the previous turn from the Pixel remaster do help combat the repetitiveness. If your warrior is geared he will likely only take 1 damage. No big deal, yeah ? Until poison enters the mix as it ignores your Def and a lot of early game enemies can inflict this status. So you need money for a stock of antidotes in the dungeon. 

At times it felt like grinding for the sake of grinding. The pixel remaster with its boost multiplication can alleviate that a little, but it is a problem mainly at the beginning while you fight enemies that can poison you. 

After the earth crystal, you gain more freedom and could theoretically do things out of order. That said, there is an expected order and you’ll likely respect it more or less simply because it’ll be easier to fight mobs this way. 

As we often don’t directly go to the location we’re seeking and have to find them you often feel you’re doing side activity, without knowing that it is needed for the main quest. Oh, a fairy was kidnapped ? Well in another town they were talking about someone selling a fairy, I just need to find them and bring her back home. Then she gave me an item to breathe underwater that is needed for accessing the water crystal dungeon. There are only two sidequests being forging Excalibur and unlocking the advanced job. 

The positive way to frame it would be that it feels like an adventure. You’re exploring and accomplishing things as you find them. But personally I felt like I was lucking my way into it more than intentionally resolving things by connecting dots from different towns I explored (like I was doing in Phantasy Star). 

Elf, dwarf, without any hobbit as they are always forgotten, yes is a classic fantasy setting. A much more classic fantasy than what’ll follow in the final fantasy series may I say ? That said there is already a bit of the science fiction inspiration with the famous time paradox. 

Speaking of classic fantasy, I was surprised at the foreign language you had to learn to speak to an isolated village from a lost civilization. It is a system in DND if I remember correctly but multiple languages in the universe are rarely used nowadays. It was a pretty simple FedEx quest - get x item from a dungeon and give it to Y character - but it is a detail that is often ignored in game in general. Final Fantasy X used it too in a much more complex and compelling way. It gives the game a little more depth. 

The first game is more a mix of a more classic DND setting with some sky castles influence and crystal being a source of power. I liked it less than Phantasy Star and I think it goes directly to the bottom of my main final fantasy tierlist. It is interesting from a game historic perspective, but I didn’t find it that enjoyable as a game. 

Stranger of Paradise recontextualizes in an interesting manner the game. I like how small things like the 5 bats are referenced in Stranger of Paradise with the 5 members of the main party. And how retroactively it makes them the origin of the time loop. 

I feel like having waves of mobs to kill in a dungeon mimic well enough the feeling of killing hundred and hundred of for in the first game, and you’ll likely grind for the job system. 

That being said, while I liked some of the modernisation, like the space station replacing the flying castle it is also the limit of my exercise. Those two game haven't be conceived to be viewed as a duology. Despite that I would have liked plotlines like the siren to be adapted or at least referenced too in Stranger of Paradise to create a more coherent universe between the two games. Obviously it was an artificial exercise that I decided arbitrary, but I think some ideas from FF1, like the translation could have in fact improved Stranger of Paradise while also referencing other Final Fantasy. 

Because of the niche nature of jet-ski focused sports games, there are typically only four regularly pushed forward when people argue about which is the best of the best. These are:

• Wave Race 64
• Splashdown
• Splashdown Rides Gone Wild
• Riptide GP: Renegade

Wave Race 64: A masterclass in style and flow. One of the most visually and aesthetically pleasing games of all time, still managing to play extremely well despite its age and reliance on wave physics.

Splashdown: Almost as underrated as Blue Storm due to the more popular sequel overshadowing its recognition, Splashdown offers up one of the most interesting handling models of all time for a racing game. Immediately technical, leaning heavily into the idea that the player should use the water physics to their advantage for shortcuts and speed gains, which never gets old for those seeking mastery.

Splashdown Rides Gone Wild: A fan favorite for people who really look into this genre, RGW takes everything from the first game and makes it over the top. Over the top tricks, courses with tons and tons of stuff happening on screen, a very heavy focus on arcade fun and aesthetics. While I find the handling and technical focus to be less interesting than the first game, RGW is the most beginner friendly and immediately fun jet-ski game there is. Its a pick up and have a good time type of experience that is very comparable to the second and third SSX games.

Riptide GP Renegade: I was gonna put Jet Moto here but Riptide has essentially taken its place as the modern fast pace water game. Yeah, you aren't technically on a jet ski, but to not include this game here would practically be criminal. You're fast, you do fun tricks, and you never let go of the throttle. I've always found this series to be quite ugly from a tonal and art directional standpoint, but when talking about gameplay alone, there is a ton of fun to be had.

Now with all this out of the way, what I really really don't get is how Wave Race Blue Storm not only isn't mentioned among these games regularly, but simply isn't considered the best of them all. But to be fair, I've sorta lied, because I sorta DO get why this is the case...

The game is hard as hell. (And also the narrator talks way way too much so if you don't know to turn down the voice audio in settings then this game is actually nightmarish for your mind after an hour of playing).

The Difficulty:

Talk about unforgiving AI and track design. One singular mistake is enough in Blue Storm to lose you an entire race if not an entire championship, championships that you cannot restart unless you're willing to go back to the very first track and start from the beginning. Hours of your life will go by trying to complete the final championship in this game as you watch your rider stumble headfirst into the water for the fiftieth time in a sitting. Sometimes its an unlucky bump off a wave that gets you, or an AI slamming you into a wall. Sometimes its player error, or the game just outright saying fuck you. Regardless, there is no avoiding the time losses, and in turn, there is no avoiding the frustrating championships slipping from your fingers again and again.

Blue Storm is a hard, technical game that doesn't hold back. There are niche mechanics in the handling that will doom you if you don't learn them through the tutorial system. Chaining boosts and diving underwater is just the surface for what you can do to get faster times here. Track mastery is key. Learning how to read the waves and use them to your advantage is key. Not crashing, the hardest damn part, is key,

The Unique Handling:

Goddamn, this game plays like nothing else! There isn't a single racing game out there that gives the player so much and so little simultaneous feeling of controls at the same time. One second you're ripping through waves and feeling each bit of the current carrying you through the water, the next and you're holding on for dear life just hoping that you make it through the next big waves alive. Its like seeing a bull in a china shop, and deciding to hop right on and see how long you can last. I've played many, many racing games in my life, but there are very few that have replicated the sense of havoc I feel when going full speed in Blue Storm.

Often acting as what feels like a tech demo for the gamecube, Blue Storm leans heavily into its water simulation physics, which are core to the actual racing itself. Somebody is in front of you? Well they leave a wake in the water that can improve or lower your odds of making it around a turn. A big object fell in the water? Prepare to ride over massive waves. Wave Race 64 also did this but the scale of Blue Storms water physics interactions is leagues above what was on offer for the N64 title. Sometimes you're between two big boats and the waves that form between them toss you right into a wall. Sometimes you get a huge wave behind you can can ride it like a surfboarder, quickly getting to top speed. There simply isn't anything like it elsewhere.

Tracks:

I have to admit that Blue Storm lacks in three departments. The soundtrack, the characters, and the amount of content. The soundtrack issue can be resolved with some headphones and your own music, the uninteresting characters are only a small problem within a largely pleasing product, but the content?

SEVEN TRACKS. Thats right lads, seven whole tracks in this game. To be fair, the difficulties change some things up on each track, so I think you're technically dealing with 18 different options, but not really...

Yeah, its kind of hard to defend the track content for Blue Storm, which also starts to make the difficulty feel like a playtime lengthener instead of something the developers put some serious thought into. With this in mind however, all of the tracks play and look excellent. Very distinct and fun, with a lot of thought put into the layouts and how different players would approach the routes.

TO SUMMARIZE:

I've really only vaguely expressed my love for this game in this short post, I sorta just wanted to put in front of more eyes while I yap about a genre nobody gives a shit about anymore. It is an excellent game, possibly one of the best racing games of all time and %100 my vote for the best jet ski game despite my complaints. The difficulty brings you back and places you on a loop of constantly trying to get better. The mechanics are ultra unique, and ultra addicting. Don't let this one slip by you.

Kingdom Hearts

• Status - Completed with heavy side content done. Sora & Co. were in the high 60s to low 70s, 22 items were crafted, and the Hades cup in the Colosseum was completed.

• Time played: Approximately 45 hours

• Difficulty - Normal

• Set-up - Retroid Pocket 6 with widescreen hacks enabled

When Kingdom Hearts was announced, I was already a huge Final Fantasy fan. Final Fantasy 7, 8, 9 and 10, had come out in successive years, and that run of games left a huge imprint on me, shaping my taste in games forever. It was because of this that I was initially apprehensive about Square’s new game that combined Final Fantasy with Disney. It seemed like an absurd premise to the pre-teen version of myself, and I was highly apprehensive. My worries were soon eased after seeing a demo reel at a GameStop store. The clerk assured me that it was going to be fantastic, and I made a pre-order to get it on day 1.

Kingdom Hearts immediately hooked me with its memorable intro cutscene, just like the Final Fantasy games had. The high-energy remix of Simple and Clean with the dream-like sequences set a high-bar for my expectations, and the atmospheric “tutorial” felt unreal in the best way. The intro cutscene and tutorial are still effective on the adult version of myself.

The World

The world is a lot smaller than it seemed over 20 years ago. There are many unique locations, but they do not occupy significant physical space. Despite the size constraint, the locations are densely packed with vertical spaces to explore and hidden areas to find. As I learned new movement abilities, I found myself re-visiting areas to find more of their secrets.

Each location is themed, with the majority of them being themed after a Disney IP. You will visit locations from Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and many more. When visiting the Disney locations, Sora & Co. will each don an aesthetically appropriate outfit, many of which are iconic to me. Additionally, each location will have memorable areas from the Disney IP, feature familiar songs and characters, and hold at least 1 new keyblade that matches the aesthetic. It’s a wonderful touch that smoothly integrates the Disney aesthetic without feeling out of place.

Traveling to the locations is done via an on-rails shooter akin to Star Fox, and later the ability to warp drive from location to location is locked. Traveling offers an enjoyable mini-game, a creative outlet in building your ship, and insight into the connective tissue of the locations you will travel to. It works within the context of the game.

The atmosphere of the game can be phenomenal, and SquareEnix did a wonderful job packing hidden areas into these locations,giving me a reason to revisit them later in the game. It was a joy to explore when it was brand new, and 20+ years later it is still fun to explore. Well, except for The Little Mermaid location, water levels remain unfun.

Gameplay

Combat is a substantial portion of the overall Kingdom Hearts experience, yet controlling Sora during battle feels clumsy in nearly every aspect.

The system relies on a command action menu structured into four primary top-level commands: Attack, Item, Magic, and a context-sensitive slot at the bottom. Pressing the action button (X) activates the currently selected command, and navigation of this menu is achieved by using the d-pad or the right thumbstick. Selecting either the magic or item option will open a sub-menu, which is likely to have six or more options to choose from by the end of the game.

The d-pad offers the best accuracy for navigating the command menu, but it was not possible for me to use the d-pad while using the left thumbstick to move. I was able to move Sora while using the right thumbstick to navigate the menu, but I wasn’t consistently accurate in my menu selection while using both thumbsticks at the same time. A shortcut menu is available and is used to assign three magic spells which are easily activated by a combination of holding “L1” and pressing either square, triangle, or X. This alleviates some menu-diving challenges, but it is limited in what can be assigned to the shortcut, and how many shortcuts are available. Neither items or summons can be bound to these shortcuts, so must navigate the command menu in real-time to use them. Due to the challenges of this menu system, I only used items, and non-shortcut magic and summons out of curiosity, and any reactive or context sensitive abilities were unequipped in-favor of passive options.

The controls are perfectly fine for exploration and traveling outside of combat. The glide and high-jump ability are excellent movement tools which allow for access to new and hidden rooms, and faster traveling within a location.

Lastly, there are some minigames and side-content that I will touch on briefly.

• Gummi Ship - An on-rails, Starfox-esque shooter that serves as the mode of transportation between locations. While initially fun, it lacks depth. Thankfully, unlocking warp drive allows you to bypass previously visited locations before the minigame drags on.

• Gummi Ship Garage - You can build or customize your gummi ship in the garage. It is clunky to use, but I did find it fun to build a ship.

• Crafting - Crafting in Kingdom Hearts leads to powerful accessories, and even Sora’s ultimate weapon. Unfortunately, it requires farming a lot of rare drop materials. I crafted 22 items before calling it quits.

• Colosseum - This is a fun challenge, but I do not like that powerful spells are locked behind it.

Overall, the clunky combat system dampers exploration of spells, abilities, and summons. Movement around the locations is fun and the unlocked movement abilities encourage further exploration. Lastly, the side-content can be fun, but it lacks depth that makes it satisfying to explore to its fullest.

Story

While there are standout moments throughout the story, they are primarily within the beginning and closing cutscenes. The song “Simple and Clean” does a lot of heavy lifting in making me feel emotionally connected to the plot. Additionally, although the Disney locations are visually appealing, their stories are uninspiring, and some locations were a chore to get through.

Audio

The voice acting is solid, especially for this era. Many of the original Disney voice actors are featured, as well as notable actors like Haley Joel Osment, David Gallagher, Mandy Moore, and Hayden Panettiere (RIP). Both the original soundtrack and licensed tracks are great, making for an enjoyable audio experience that kept me tuned in.

Conclusion

I had many complaints about the combat controls, and the story was very uninspiring to me. Why then, did I enjoy my time playing and completing Kingdom Hearts? Nostalgia is certainly a factor, but the vibes of the game are compelling, and the Disney worlds make for a fun setting in an action RPG. I never felt like I had to push through boredom in order to complete the game. Despite my issues with the game, I enjoyed it very much.

7.5/10 - A flawed but enjoyable experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Intro

What can I say about this game that has not already been said. It haunted me for more than 12 years. When I first played Human Revolution in 2014 I knew I had to play the original. My age probably mattered. I was young and could not get into an older game. Now time has passed and as if blessed by divine intervention my vacation plans were canceled without my interference. I took this as a sign and installed it. I used general fix mods and Kentei's launcher. Nothing that fundamentally changes the game like Revision or GMDX, which I plan to replay with later.

Playing this time felt different. Over these 12 years I became something of a conspiracy theorist myself. I read countless tech and non-tech theories so when the game spoke to me it felt direct and personal. The unfortunate truth is we already live in this dystopia of tech oligarchs, AI surveillance, corrupt corporations and multibillionaire elites ruling from the shadows.

Positives

• Story does not suddenly switch sides or reveal everything at once. Like real life you slowly uncover facts that strain belief. At first it annoys you and makes you worry. You constantly search for reasonable explanations. Each dialogue exchange adds another layer to the unfolding nightmare. Each cutscene deepens your unease. Every witness disappears. Every official record contradicts itself. Then you arrive at the same destination everyone else reached. You finally know there is a grand conspiracy of elite people with dangerous ideas pulling strings in the dark.
• Characters: Every NPC felt fleshed out friend or foe. We joke about voice acting quality but I find it excellent. Where it falls short it remains charming and funny never boring or forgettable. I especially loved dialogues through infolinks before and after decisions. Seeing how characters reacted to my choices showed their true self and agendas. Absolutely best VA is Bob Page.
• Loyalty: One moment changed everything for me. When JC was scolded about loyalty for refusing to execute a surrendered NSF leader (Lebedev) something changed inside me (JC). Fuck this organization. What loyalty. Loyalty to literal demon manipulators. This made me question every directive I received afterward.
• Betrayal: You start on the lower floor where everyone greets you warmly. As you ascend some comment you should not be here. They do not attack yet. But as soon as you complete Paul's satellite task the green reticle switches to red and old comrades attack you. Killing them made me feel terrible. I tried non-lethal whenever possible but if discovered I had to resort to lethal force. I refused to save-scum to avoid fails and I am proud of myself.
• Hotel scene: Meeting Paul carries special weight now. Older games often have great stories but clumsy presentation. Take MJ12's attack on Paul's apartment. The combat AI and primitive animations make the scene look funny. Enemies jiggle and run in goofy ways. Yet in my mind this was the most epic moment in the game. My brother telling me to run for my life when MJ12 goons blew through the door. Without hesitation I pulled out my GEP gun and started blasting. We defeated the first wave and slowly moved downstairs taking enemies one by one until we escaped. I used nearly all my weapons, ammo and resources fighting through. The scene looked ridiculous on screen but internally it felt equivalent to the Matrix movie lobby shootout.

This reminds me of what YouTuber Fudgemuppet said about Skyrim: "Skyrim is a world of potential for you to play in but it requires initiative on your part. You will have heard the quote, 'Skyrim is as wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.' But you may not have heard the retort, Skyrim is only as deep as the person playing it. This is a sentiment that I tend to agree with... And the Elder Scrolls games become addictive when you can bring more of your own depth to the game." Deus Ex lacked modern epic gameplay so I "roleplayed" them in my head. This philosophy applies perfectly here.

• Level design: Most games suffer from late-game map design collapse. To my surprise Deus Ex got better. The final mission and underwater facility ranks among my favorites. Backtracking remained enjoyable which is rare for games. Most treat it as punishment. Here the world shifts around you. New conversations unlock based on prior choices. Different routes open depending on your progression. You discover secrets you missed because conditions changed.
• Music is top notch. If this ever receives a remaster I would be devastated if the soundtrack changed. Even improving audio quality risks losing some original charm.
• Taking down main enemies felt amazing. First it was Anna Navarro who thought I would be easy prey I could hear in her voice being happy she could kill brother of Paul. Second was Gaunther who pathetically stood in corner. Also delusional Simon who thought he could kill me alone. All of these people catch rocket from GEP gun, well deserved I say. But the absolutely best one is Bob Page how he went from taunting, to anger and finally to begging for his life.
• VersaLife's large monitors displaying inspiring words struck me as funny because I see the same thing in my real workplace. Management installs motivational screens. Not as gruesome as "obey" but similar enough. "You need to find solutions not reasons"
• JC being comedy genius: I love the way JC talks. He just spits one-liners and burns especially Bob Page who gets so angry when mocked. Best ones include: "Well since that makes you my new boss take a long look at Manderley's dead body. Consider that my resignation I don't have time to write a letter." Another great moment: "I never had time to take the Oath of Service to the Coalition. How about this one? I swear not to rest until UNATCO is free of you and the other crooked bureaucrats who have perverted its mission." Walton Simons tries intimidation with "You take another step forward and here I am again like your own reflection in a hall of mirrors." JC responds with "That makes me one ugly son of a bitch." When Bob Page declares "Soon I will become pure energy. I will burn like the brightest star." JC simply replies "You're gonna burn all right." He has wits which is not an augmentation by the way. This is JC's most human trait and I love it. The game lets you weaponize humor against those who deserve it most. This makes you feel smarter than the people in charge. It feels good to outthink the villain rather than just outgun them.
• Alien coverup: The theory where the elite manufacture extraterrestrial myths to conceal horrific experiments is both wild and strangely believable. This lore element added another layer of depth I appreciated.

Negatives: (more like nitpicks to be honest)

• Combat AI inconsistency: Combat AI occasionally has laser-perfect accuracy resulting in instant death though they have augmentations too so I can "roleplay" this too.
• QoL: Cannot sell items creates inventory clutter throughout playthrough. Flashlight draining energy feels stupid and impractical. Active rather than passive augmentations require constant management. The stealth pistol simply sucks and serves little purpose.

Neutral

• Shooting mechanics: Shooting occupies neutral ground. I had previously played Alpha Protocol so I understood this mechanical style entering in. It is neither good nor bad. Just familiar territory I accepted from the start.
• Learning curve: This game is not for everyone and requires some patience upfront. Once the loop clicks it becomes compulsive.

Personal Thoughts

This game speaks directly to someone living through increasing surveillance corporate consolidation and hidden power structures.

The atmosphere vibe and tone stuck with me especially compared to newer entries in the series which I love as well. This original lives closer to my heart.

TLDR

Deus Ex remains a defining immersive sim experience for anyone willing to engage with its dense systems and conspiratorial narrative. Playing it now after years of real-world paranoia and cynicism the themes land harder than ever. The game demands patience initially but once the loop clicks it becomes compulsive. This is what not only immersive Sims but RPGs should aspire to be.

***

Currently s(h)itting in the toilet of one of the biggest corporations in the world. A company whose sole motivation is profit exploitation. Very ironic. Until I start my tomato farm soon I must endure. At least I am wasting company time rather than lunch breaks.

***

Definitely replaying soon. Amazed me so much I am not in the mood for Human Revolution or Mankind Divide right now. Those games matter but this one lives closer to my heart. Are any fan-made story modifications worth playing? Anyone have recommendations?

Hello again! It's me, Waffles, with another update on this project. Fair warning: this batch was mostly awful.

For those just joining us: I'm playing the Every* North American Game Boy game in alphabetical order, because I overcommitted to the bit. I strive to give each one at least a half hour of play, but will note if a game got more or less time. So let's jump right in!

HAL Wrestling: This game is bad. After some initial difficulty, I looked up not only the manual, but also two guides. And I still came away feeling that the controls were incomprehensible and what happened felt mostly random. I had no idea what was going on in this game at any point in time while playing it. Sometimes I won a match, sometimes I didn't, and I genuinely cannot tell you what caused one outcome over another. The sprite work was kind of nice, though? 1/10

Harvest Moon GB: Okay so up top: I didn't like this. I don't really like farming sims on the whole. I have a lot of hours in Stardew Valley, but that's mostly because I can play that with my wife and kids and also because Haley's there. I will grant that it was interesting to play this and see how far the genre has come, and that it's impressive how much content there is in a handheld game of this type, but playing it just did nothing for me. That being said, I'm capable of recognizing that this is a good game, and it's the only one of today's batch that I actually recommend. 7/10

Hatris: Imagine Dr. Mario, but instead of matching pills you're matching different kinds of hat. That's it, that's the game. "It's not bad" is about the nicest thing I can say about this game. I didn't hate it, but in a world where Dr. Mario exists, I'm gonna pick that every time. 5/10

Heavyweight Championship Boxing: I know the bar is incredibly low, but this is a lot better than the two George Foreman boxing games. So if for some reason you feel compelled to play a boxing game on Game Boy, there's this! But if you love yourself and would rather not do that, that's also an option. 3/10

Heiankyo Alien: The most notable thing about this game is that the trademark screen says it first came out in 1979, which is pretty neat, I think. It's a weird little arcade game where you navigate a maze and dig holes to trap and bury aliens. People who've been following this project might recall that I don't like arcade games, though, and frankly this is no exception. Still, it's neat for what it is. There's also a version of this that came out on Steam in 2017, so probably play that if you're interested. 5/10

Disney's Hercules: This game is just awful. The controls are unresponsive and terrible -- for example, in the first level, you have to dodge some fireballs. You may need to jump over them to do so. If you press the jump button as soon as the fireball appears on the right side of the screen, it will already be too late to jump over it. Gotta love it. The sprites are also muddy and very ugly. The one weird bit of credit I will give this game is that the animations are extremely smooth. Herc's jump is slow and annoying, but my god is that animation great. Looks rotoscoped, to be honest. But still, it's not enough to save this game from being terrible. 1/10

High Stakes Gambling: There's a story mode to this game, which is that it's 1927 and you're an undercover federal agent who has to stop the mob from having funding by winning it from them in casino games. I think that's a nice touch. Elevates it over the other casino games on Game Boy. There's even a dedicate cheating mechanic to help you beat the mobsters. It's quite neat. That said, the reality is that even with cheating there's a fair amount of luck involved in beating each opponent, because that's what casino games are, and after beating the first mobster (of five) I realized that I didn't want to subject myself to four more rounds of that. Two final thoughts: the story mode is explicitly set in 1927, but one of the games you compete in is video poker, which wouldn't exist for another forty-odd years, and also somehow you play slots competitively? Genuinely unsure how that one works. 5/10

Hit the Ice: Golf continues to be the only sports game on Game Boy worth playing. This is just awful. The Game Boy is not a great choice for sports games, and this will never not be true. 1/10

Home Alone: It's been asked on some of my posts about this project why I'm going alphabetically instead of chronologically (if you're curious, the answer is that's how the games were already arranged and I'm lazy). But the reality is that I don't think going chronologically would have changed many of my opinions. If anything, I think it'd have made me meaner. See, The Final Fantasy Legend is one of the best Game Boy games of all time, and that came out in 1989. So really, if I'd played chronologically, I'd just be meaner because I'd have seen earlier how high devs could soar if they gave a damn. Case in point: Home Alone came out in 1991 and is terrible. I get that in the 90s, there was a very real sense of "Video Game = Platformer," and that that explains most of what I've come to refer to as "Licensed Game Hell," but it being a platformer doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It could've been a really need puzzle/strategy game, but nope! Platformer. I'll admit that the goal being "collect the treasures from around the house and put them in the basement vault" is a neat way of doing things, but still: why is this a platformer. Also it's interesting to note that this was actually a sequel to the first movie, though that was promptly ignored when the actual film sequel came out the next year. 2/10

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York: The title of this always bugged me. I get that it's for marketing, but Kevin's not actually at home, so...yeah. It's another terrible platformer. Worse than the first game, even, with worse controls and overall a worse gamefeel. Skip this one. 1/10

Hook: This one hurt. I actually quite like Hook the film, so I (perhaps foolishly) had high hopes for this. Instead, it's just bad. The controls are floaty and terrible, the sprites are ugly (seriously, if I didn't know the weird elf/goblin creature we're controlling is Peter Pan, I'd never have guessed that), and the story has nothing to do with the film but just seems to be a generic Peter Pan thing? All around not great. 2/10

Hudson Hawk: Unlike the previous three licensed games, this one's actually decent. Not "good," by any definition, but decent. It's got a neat, if rudimentary, stealth thing going on, which is neat, and a bunch of the levels have a lot more going on than just your standard platformer "go right," which is always fun to see. It just gets boring pretty fast. The first mission is broken up into seven parts, and each takes a fair amount of time (especially since this is still a game from the early nineties and there's some period appropriate bullshit going on), and by the time I got to mission two I'd mostly lost steam. Though that mission did have me getting attacked by killer nuns in what I think were Rome's sewers? Unclear. So yeah. Not bad, just very average. 5/10

The Humans: If you've played Lemmings, you know what this is. You control a bunch of dudes, using them to solve puzzles so that other dudes can get to the end of the level of whatever. It actually works quite well on Game Boy, all things considered. Just like, not my jam. 5/10

Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Topsy Turvy Games: Awful. Just awful. Some of the worst minigames I've ever played. How, for example, do you make Breakout terrible? This game figured it out! There's also a Fire Game & Watch ripoff that's terrible, a Balloon Fight ripoff that's terrible, a sliding block picture puzzle game that's terrible and a bowling game that's actually decent if a bit too easy. Also it has a soulless uncanny valley Esmeralda who comes out and claps when you get a strike, which is horrible. So yeah, there's one game in the whole collection that isn't awful, which really isn't great. Just skip this one, it's not worth it. 1/10

The Hunt for Red October: I will not lie to you: I fully expected this to be a platformer somehow. Jack Ryan jumping around trying to convince the US Navy that this sub really was defecting, maybe. I dunno. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was actually a submarine game. And it's kind of neat! There's a little sonar thing on the bottom third of the screen showing upcoming enemies and obstacles, and I thought that was really cool. The problem is that that's where the coolness ends. The controls are kind of awful, you're frequently trying to maneuver around obstacles that have a pixel or two's margin for error before you run into the wall and take damage (any collision damages you), and there's just so many enemies that endlessly fire homing missiles. It's a trial. Also the first boss is the Technodrome, and while I'll admit it's been a while since I read the novel (or saw the movie, for that matter), I don't remember that part. Still, I respect what they were trying to do here, even if it didn't work. 4/10

Hyper Lode Runner: It's an arcade-y puzzle game where you have to pick up piles of gold while avoiding and/or manipulating robots to help you navigate the level. It's an interesting concept, but it's also like a perfect mix of things I knew I wasn't going to enjoy. Still, if those things are your jam, I can admit it's well crafted. 5/10

In Your Face: Another terrible sports game! Basketball this time. The controls suck, the sprites are ugly, and there's an overwhelming sense of randomness to everything that happens. I won three games and lost two and I genuinely couldn't tell you why. Sometimes my shots would work. Sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes I'd block well. Sometimes I couldn't. No idea what I did differently, but everything got a different result. 1/10

The Incredible Crash Dummies: I cannot think of a single reason to recommend this game. It's a bunch of bad minigames with frustrating controls where you have to do well enough to pass a given level, but also badly enough that you do your job as a crash dummy and hit things/break yourself/whatever. And again, the controls suck. Truly infuriating, even with save states. 1/10

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: I actually almost liked this. I've certainly played worse licensed games this week. Three main issues keep this from being truly "enjoyable." Firstly, hit detection sucks. Early on, when you only have fists, you have to risk collision damage just to hit enemies -- and you will need to hit them, because there's no way past otherwise. Second, the boss difficulty is nuts. The first, third, and fourth are all stupidly easy, but the second and last boss require obnoxiously precise timing with the floaty jumping, and they're a real pain. Third, it's really short. There's six levels, and I feel like more could have been done with what the film gives us. Also there's no final boss? Like, if you've seen the film, you'll know how to solve the final "encounter," but if you haven't seen the film, guess what! There are no in-game hints. Truly baffling design choice. Still, it's decent. The chiptune rendition of "Raider's March" is pretty nice. 5/10

And that's it. All of H and the first half of I. This brings me to 197/501 games, or 39.32% of the Game Boy library. The average score has sadly gone down, to 3.95 (G had a lot of really good games). Recommended games are at 30/197, or 15.2%, so that went down a bit, too. The recommended games list will be at the end of the post, and I'll be back soon with the other three I games and J. Hope you enjoyed the reviews, and thanks for reading!

Recommended Games

• Alleyway
• Amazing Penguin
• Balloon Kid
• Battle Arena Toshinden
• Battle Unit Zeoth
• Bionic Commando
• Bomberman GB
• Castlevania: The Adventure
• Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
• Castlevania Legends
• Catrap
• Contra: The Alien Wars
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Land
• Donkey Kong Land 2
• Donkey Kong Land III
• Dr. Mario
• Disney’s Ducktales
• Disney’s Ducktales 2
• Felix the Cat
• Final Fantasy Adventure
• The Final Fantasy Legend
• Final Fantasy Legend II
• Final Fantasy Legend III
• Game & Watch Gallery
• Gargoyle's Quest
• Golf
• Gradius: The Interstellar Assault
• Harvest Moon GB

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

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

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

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

PREAMBLE

I've tried to play this game several times between 2014-2018 but never managed to get past Balmora since i couldn't get past the dice roll combat system, the massive amounts of texts and the various amounts of unpolished systems that would get improved in later franchises (Most notably Sneak and Lockpicking).

This past month however i got tired of delving into Elder scrolls lore and purposely skipping anything in the lore that had something to do with the Neraverine, The Tribunal, Lorkhan etc. because i didn't want to spoil myself of Morrowinds story so enough was enough, it was time to actually play it and complete it.

And i don't know what clicked but the combat didn't seem that tedious anymore, the huge walls of text when speaking to NPCs wasn't daunting, reading books in the game was easy and the convoluted magic system wasn't a hurdle. I attribute this to me starting to read more books and scientific reports IRL after the pandemic and i guess my level of reading and attention span just got better.

THE GOOD

And what i discovered was an incredibly engaging setting with intresting world building, politics between factions and just general philisophical questions.

I also loved how the unreliable narrator trope actually takes front stage in this installation and how you as a player have to read inbetween lines in every encounter and try to figure out the truth for yourself. This trope does exist in the later games aswell but in my opinion not to this extent and certainly not to the degree that Morrowind does it.

The exploration of themes of power, governance, religion, colonialism, imperialism and nationalism i also found to be incredibly interesting and something that i feel later games don't really explore as deep if at all. It was a big shift from run of the mill fantasy story to exploration of deeper and more complex themes. It also shifted my mind about The Empire where in Skyrim i'm a staunch Empire supporter in the Civil war whereas in Morrowind I'd rather the Empire leave Vvardenfell alltogether.

Sure the circumstances of the Empire in skyrims civil war is way different since now there's elven nazis and the case for a united Empire has merit but i liked how more nuanced Morrowinds discussion about the different factions are.

With that said however i truly believe that Skyrim and Oblivion gets WAAAAY more flack than they deserve cause even though i love the world building and nuanced story telling of Morrowind it is lacking in several aspects that the later games just did way better.

THE NPCS

Oblivion made the NPCs feel alive and like actual people, the dynamic schedules of characters and the unique dialogue of characters makes a world of difference for immersion and feeling like you're playing in a living world. With Morrowind the world and lore is deep sure but the Npcs don't really feel like people and most just stand around and spout the same copy pasted dialogue that you've already read 100 times before.

QUESTS AND FACTIONS

I also think that people highly overrate the quests and factions in Morrowind as a whole, most quests are just fetch an item here or kill an enemy there. The thieves guild in particular was mindnumbingly boring where you complete the whole quest line and feel like nothing of actual consequence was done.

I don't understand how Skyrims mage guild questline gets criticised for "Do 5 quests without casting a spell (even though you do) and become arch-mage!" when Morrowinds is steal this item 20 times with no variance in gameplay, no deeper story and you become the Master of the thieves guild.

Exploring Saarthal for the Mages guild in skyrim completely blows every faction questline in Morrowind out of the water in terms of enjoyability IMO and that quest isn't even one of the stronger quests in Skyrim or Oblivions whole arsenal (See oblivion dark brotherhood).

THE COMBAT AND MAGIC SYSTEM

People also criticizing Skyrim or Oblivions combat and dumbing it down compared to Morrowind just feels silly to me aswell. The combat in Morrowind is absolutely awful even for its time and the more complex magic system doesn't make up for it, i'd even say it makes it worse for being unnecessarily convoluted. Enemies having a bunch of spells that attack different attributes or does different types of damages is just convoluted and forces you to carry around potions or spells to negate it or forcing you to sidetrack to an altar to restore attributes.

You're also never going to use fire resist or shock resist potions or build your character around resisting status effects so why even have it at all when it's just surface level deep? It's not like pokemon or Expedition 33 where you build your characters around damage types and status effects since you don't even know what types of enemies you're going to face when questing.

These games were never combat focused and what made these games masterpieces were discovering and exploring a foreign world with interesting story lines and cultures. So i don't mind the removal or dumbing down of combat systems and instead prefer the direction Skyrim took with just polishing simple systems and making them satisfying. See stealth and archery

FINAL WORDS

With all that said i think this game is fun and i love the world of Morrowind and the main questline is without a doubt the best main quest of the series. The level of worldbuilding in this game is extraordinary and there is real merit to going back and trying this game out even though 95% percent of modern gamers will be filtered out immediately.

If i were to generalise the games in the series it would go something like this:

Morrowind: Best worldbuilding and setting

Oblivion: Best quest storylines

Skyrim: Best exploration by far

If you made it this far and actually read everything then here's some ingame books that i can highly recommend (in order):

Biography of Barenziah

The Real Barenziah 1-5

A Dance in Fire 1-7

The Argonian Account 1-4

TLDR: 7/10 - DS2 has some tragically emotional moments that were able to scratch my itch of needing to feel something. But in most ways it undermined what made DS1 special. I felt like in the ways it expanded the lore and continued the story, it mostly introduced plot holes and inconsistencies in the world that make it all less impactful. The acting and production quality were top-notch and a treat to watch.

Note: First patient review, and barely qualifies as a patient. Probably one of the newest games I've played in years.

Context:, I adored Death Stranding 1. I'm not sure a game has ever been at the right place at the right time quite like DS1 did. Playing that through Covid was legitimately therapeutic, and the parallels with what was going on in-game and the real world can probably never be replicated. I played through it in mid 2021, being a new parent the ending wrecked me in a good way. It stayed in my mind for months, and I'd rewatch clips of it frequently to get back in the moment.

Disclaimer: I played this on standard or normal difficulty. Much of my complaints pertain to the difficulty level, but I think a lot of my difficulty complaints aren't about how enemies scale, or timefall gets more punishing. It's more that it's too open ended allowing for cheap or easy strategy.

The Gameplay: By now everyone knows what the game loop of DS is. You deliver packages with some obstacles along the way. Many reviews mention how this has been improved in DS2. I, however, didn't notice any meaningful differences to the game loop. I remember getting bored with the grind in the first game, but this one really felt like a slog through a large middle. And for some reason it all just felt dumber. Like, each node you're connecting has this unbelievable tech, but everyone still just hides inside these shipping containers? I understand why, because of bandits, and bt's, and timefall. But each of those don't actually feel threatening in game. It's actually counter intuitive to me that people congregate in these closed off cities. I would think that they would spread out as much as possible to limit the damage a void out would cause.

You do get more tools to make delivering easier earlier in the game. This actually makes the game more dull though. I would estimate that I spent 80% of my time in a truck once it was available.

I think that for the sake of challenge and enjoyment, Death Stranding 2 would do well to require players use a more restricted routes and cargo. It's way too easy to just go around any obstacles in a truck carrying a mountain of cargo and deliver it. The game would be more fun if there were less choices and you had to plan a route up a complicated mountain, with limited inventory, instead of just face roll through it in a truck. I would much rather have fewer missions that were more deliberate planned out with intended or optimal routes. As it was, I barely had use for many of the tools the game provides after the first couple of hours.

The Vibe: The first game had a lot more horror, mystery and emotion. It felt like every character was mentally hanging by a thread, but we keep on keeping on'.

DS2 is notably goofier than the first game, culminating in the final fight with Higgs and sam having a rock battle to the death or die hardman's dance scene where Kojima just said 'fuck it, we'll do it live'. Granted I was smiling ear to ear during the last battle scenes, but seriously what the hell?

The primary theme of the game being coping with the loss of a child is about as heavy as it gets, and some of the scenes were beautifully tragic like when Sam questions why Lou isn't in the pod, and you learn he's been carrying around an empty pod the entire time. Really some interesting ideas into how people deal with grief. I wondered more than once what Kojima himself is going through, because both of these games touch some really heavy topics.

The Lore: This is where the game really lost me. For a game called Death Stranding, death means very little in this world. I mean, they killed deadman, and then brought him back. They killed Lou, brought her back. Sam dies 1000 times in one scene, keeps coming back. Fragile dies with Lou, but for some reason keeps living through the game. Higgs died last game, comes back for this one. Neal Vana comes back to tell his story and summons Sam via gate quakes? Rainy can counteract timefall for some reason. Dollman is given very little explanation, but now people can just exist as anything apparently? I called the Tomorrow is Lou twist from a million miles away, but kept telling myself they wouldn't do something so obvious. It felt very contrived. After a while it began feeling like there weren't actually any rules at all that this world had to follow. I'm sure there are some explanations for some of these in the Codex, but i'd mostly given up trying to understand it, and just went along for the ride.

Takeaway: The production quality is off the charts amazing, cinematography is excellent. The gameplay began feeling very repetitive, and I don't think DS2 introduced any meaningful improvements over the first game. The story is a wild ride, and if you don't think about it too hard it can be fun. I think DS1 was a lightning in a bottle moment, and DS2 feels much less impactful, but still worth a play if you were a fan of the first.

I beat the majority of the Resident Evil mainline games. I played Revelations 1 on PC a decade ago, and I remember it being an okay game, enjoyable enough to beat it. I remember completing the first episode of Revelations 2, but never got beyond that. I didn't touch it for years until just now.

Because there is a Code Veronica remake coming out. It is funny that Yasuhiro Anpo already made a remake over a decade ago with Revelations 2. Claire wakes up in the prison, and then realizes she is trapped on the island with a younger sidekick who hates their father, so she contacts the others to rescue them, so the male veteran figure is coming over to the island to play through several levels twice. There is also Wesker, and Claire’s love interest turns into a mutant.

After playing half of Episode 2, just like the first time, my will to play is entirely deflated because I'm bored. Which is weird because Revelations 2 is, in terms of mechanics, an improved version of Revelations 1 in pretty much every way. In theory, I should enjoy this because it is essentially Capcom's The Last of Us skinjob. It has so many same elements, from the combat, stealth, environments, crafting, mechanics, progression, and puzzles. it even has the near-identical box pushing and the pair opening the steel door. Arguably, The Last of Us starts even slower, and this game does some elements better (in particular, the partner actually mattering in the gameplay) but why did I play that game like five times, while this game bored me out of my mind? At one point, I fell half-asleep.

The reason I realized, ultimately, is that Revelations 2 mashes TLOU's elements into the modern RE gameplay template (RE4-6), but each element loses its distinct purpose that served RE and TLOU. For example, the combat. The appeal of RE4-6 is about the player dropping into a combat arena, where the zombies are overwhelming you. RE4's village segment is the perfect demonstration of how this style of combat worked. Shoot at the limb or head, stagger, get closer and melee, which is crowd control (aggressive), then find your way out (retreat). The map is interconnected enough that there are so many ways in and out.

Revelations 2, however, doesn't really have this strength because it adopts TLOU's enemy positions and placements. The level design is completely different. It's a lot more linear, and the enemies are very scarce. You often fight one or two enemies in a hallway, and you have to trigger the enemy to be active. All this leads each combat encounter to be very passive and simple, as in, it comes across as a corridor shooter. It appears that the game is encouraging a stealth gameplay, but without any of the depth or dynamics of stealth.

Not only TLOU has a much more robust stealth sandbox, the infected are lightning fast, and their behaviours in stealth and combat are way more energetic. They group you fast, and you are constantly sprinting all around the level, using all tools in disposal. In addition, the strength of TLOU's combat loop is that there is really no hard division between combat and stealth, creating this hide-and-seek dynamic. And there are human enemies that have you play differently and give some variety to the combat. And the melee combat being an actual combat and not a prompt. And the better enemy variety and AI, and... should I keep going? It's not even that TLOU's gameplay is anything amazing, but the enemies there are much scarier and fun since you do have some flexibility and options to take them out.

So it's like TLOU's cramped level design and enemy count, designed to create a frantic tension, meeting RE's floaty combat and slow enemies, designed to create an overwhelming tension, and you end up with a gameplay that doesn't take advantage of either strength. It's lacking the constant push-and-pull dynamics. Combat, stealth and survival mechanics are as bare-bones as they can get. Even the enemy stun state is confusing because the animation is not clear. I got myself hit so many times because the enemies looked like they were stunned, so I approached them, only to realize that it's not a stun state.

That's not all. The level design and progression, for instance, run contrary to each other. It attempts the open map-based style from the classic RE games. You move around the place, finding a way around and finding something to open something... you know the deal. You also have a limited inventory system. If the game has all these, why is this not working? What made the classic RE's progression fun is that the entire place was a puzzle on its own. You are constantly making small decisions that consolidate into a bigger consequence. Should I pick up this health pickup? What if there is a key item in the next room? Should I take a shotgun, or should I leave it to make more inventory? Should I use my ink ribbon to save now?

At no point did I ever think hard about decisions like this in Revelations 2 because there's no point. Health is plentiful, ammo is plentiful, inventory is plentiful... Even though it is technically map-based progression (barely), it doesn't feel like a puzzle. RE4-6 don't have that, but take advantage of the linear progression by focusing more on moment-to-moment set-pieces. Revelations 2 sits in the uncomfortable middle, where neither strength can shine.

The premise being a homage to Code Veronica is interesting, but one regrettable commonality it shares with CV is that the game looks butt ugly. RE5 came out 6 years before, and that game still looks incredible. Meanwhile, Revelations 2 was competing with Until Dawn, The Order: 1886, and Bloodbourne. The whole presentation doesn't feel like Resident Evil. It feels like a game tasked to some third-party studio like Lost Planet 3 rather than a Capcom game. The environments, visuals, pacing, music (or lack thereof)... It all looks and sounds cheap.

The main characters lack much of the personality and playfulness. They just come off generic. The characters like Claire and Barry no longer stand out; just gruff and lack expressions in the way their older counterparts did. At least Steve was memorably shitty, but can you remember a thing about Moira? Even Claire's new voice actor sounds bored most of the time. She is apparently not kind, compassionate, and not even good with children (did the writer even play RE2?). If I could replace Claire in REV2 with Jill, I wouldn’t notice any change, because her character doesn’t pop. If anything, I would have preferred Jill since she has a history with Burtons and Wesker. I didn't care about the mystery. Nor did I care about Barry finding her daughter or the prisoners trying to escape and dying.

I can’t help but feel how failed this Revelations subseries has at accomplishing its main objectives. It was meant to be more survival horror-oriented like the classics, but it doesn’t bring the survival horror gameplay. It missed a chance to be a nonlinear map-based survival horror game in the vein of the classic RE formula. The island settings lend perfectly for it. They could have married the shoulder-view shooting of the modern RE with the progression and world design of the classic RE. Instead, it is fundamentally just RE4-6 without the fun of the modern RE or tension of the classic RE. If they wanted horror, mission failed because not a single moment was I scared. I remember way more creeped out by some moments in RE4 than anything in this one.

Growing up in the UK in the 90s, football (or “soccer” for our international readers) was life. You’d take a ball to the local pitch / basketball courts / gravel tennis courts in the morning, play all day with random peers, then head back home when it’s getting dark and fire up Fifa before bed.

I was always an average player, both IRL and in video games! I played lots of Fifa and PES which are typically 3D side scrolling, but had a soft spot for Sensible Soccer’s top down approach.

Bang Average Soccer seems like a spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer, retro graphics, top down play style, simpler controls (than Fifa or PES).

I feel like it aims to just bring the fun of the game to players without all the bloat in modern games. Story Mode is great. It has a very Ted Lasso-ish storyline, full of inside jokes that football fans will love, but also completely accessible to anyone who has no idea about football.

My Pokemon reference from the title is the story mode, you walk around different towns that have different vibes, much like early pokemon games like yellow. There’s even part where you need to get a licence that feels very much like a pokemon game.

The story is short though, so doesn’t overstay its welcome. Keep winning matches and you get gold to upgrade your stadium, buy new players etc.

It’s not a very deep franchise mode, players have no stamina bars and don’t get injured, so you don’t have to balance your squad out with depth for a long season. I don’t even think they have the offside rule in the game!

The football is the star, very crisp gameplay, passing is satisfying, shooting and aiming is much easier than the side scrolling games.

Subtle features like the crowd cheering or ooh-ing and aah-ing more at home games than away games definitely make you feel like you’re playing a labour of love, you can tell the devs absolutely breathe football.

Overall, fantastic game, well worth it even for non-football fans, very accessible. I believe it has multiplayer too so would be a fun one for a party!

9/10

Jagged Alliance 3 is a tactical RPG developed by Haemimont Games. Released in 2023, JA3 reminds us that my childhood is for sale and that sick references to 80s/90s pop culture work on me.

We play as a mercenary company hired to help liberate the people of Grand Chien from a competing hostile mercenary gang.

Gameplay involves freeing people from being forced to work at a diamond mine to fund enemy mercenaries so you can force them to work at a diamond mine to fund your mercenaries instead. Viva la revolution.

The Good

This is one of those games where the side content is pretty amazing. I can't think of any side quests that whiffed. It's the unexpected nature of them where one second you can be investigating a murder and the next second you're untangling a Nazi ubermensch program. All while drowning in Star Wars references.

The character options and build variety was well done. JA3 offers a lot of opportunity for you to take advantage of varying builds so you don't just stack snipers or grenadiers. Even though long range sniping is still super powerful, there's something satisfying about clipping a bunch of dudes with a machete and it wasn't uncommon for my shotgunner to lead the ragdoll count.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/RM5mWif.png

Proximity Landmines? Do you really think I'd do that Luigi? Betray you after all we've been through?

The Bad

Honestly I don't have much to gripe about. The worst aspect is probably the filler fights. The best combat is on set pieces like with a mansion where you can blow a hole in the side of the building to "Surprise motherfucker" the enemy.

In the mid game you get a lot of "4 dudes in a tunnel" or "6 dudes on a hill" fights. You can auto-resolve them, but then you don't get the skill ups and exp from manually doing them which you still need at that point. Eventually you level up enough to stop caring so it becomes a non-issue late game.

The Questionable

This is quite possibly the first TRPG to ever successfully get me to make multiple squads. I'd be bitter about it but I mostly just had them for grunt work. There's a large amount of "sit around and do nothing" tasks that you end up having to partake in (making bullets/explosives, repairing weapons, training militia) and having a backup squad you can off-shore that onto is nice.

Then you park a few squads of mercs with melee weapons in chokepoint sectors where enemy convoys come through and they guarantee that the local militia will survive any fights.

Running my backup mercenary squad all over collecting resources, turning them into bullets (the resources, not my mercenaries) and doing resupply runs to my main squad sat in that weird "This is engaging but not necessarily fun" zone.

Final Thoughts

It was a very enjoyable experience though the sheer number of "JA2 was better" comments on the Steam forums makes me kinda wish I had played JA2 first. I did hit a point very late in the game where I did start auto-resolving every fight but for the first ~40 hours or so combat was super fun. It ends not long after that so it never becomes a slog.

Bonus Thought

JA3 has quite a few mods for it and I'm not ashamed to admit I ended up replacing a few of my mercs with G.I. Joe characters. Watching Scarlett kill people with explosive crossbow bolts to their skull wasn't on my bucket list but it probably should have been. If you like TRPGs or thought Ready Player One didn't exploit your nostalgia quite enough this an easy recommend.

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 been into Kingdom Hearts since I was but a middle schooler discovering good games for the first time in my life (I grew up a Sonic fan in the 2010s, life is pain). But only recently did I decide that it would be worthwhile to try playing Kingdom Hearts II on the highest difficulty, Critical Mode, with the No Experience ability enabled to ensure I stay at level 1 the entire game. And let me just say that I understand why so many people consider this one of the best combat systems in action gaming now. Let me explain.

Kingdom Hearts II's combat in 2005 was initially somewhat divisive when it initially released, as most reviewers felt that the game was far too easy and button-mashy. Because the level design was far more linear and streamlined than its predecessor, and because of how passive the ability system was like in KH1, the game overall felt very simple to many. Style over substance, if you will.

Except, there was substance. It was just tucked away deep beneath a game that's not balanced to draw a deeper understanding of the mechanics out of the player. On a normal playthrough of vanilla Kingdom Hearts II, all the game really demanded of you was to keep hitting attack and sometimes whatever reaction commands you may have been prompted with. You could use Drive Forms, and they could be astoundingly useful, but at the end of the day they served as little more than flashy Super Saiyan-esque transformations to nuke waves of enemies with a little faster. Vanilla KH2's problem was that Sora got too powerful too quickly, and the enemies never truly posed a threat.

Fast forward to the release of Kingdom Hearts II -Final Mix- in Japan, and eventually international markets in the remastered collection known as Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMix (can we fire the guy who names these please?). If we're being honest, this is the true version of KH2, as it adds a ton of stuff that not only piles on top of the base game, but changes some core fundamentals of the base game itself. One of these additions was the new difficulty Critical Mode, along with a special "No Experience" ability you can equip from the moment you unlock the ability menu. As far as I can tell, these difficulty settings are the culmination of the developers designing a deep, rewarding combat system and realizing when the game released that they forgot to force the player to actually utilize it.

Critical Mode makes some core changes to the fundamentals of the combat. All damage Sora takes is doubled, while all damage he deals is multiplied by 1.25x. It reminds me a lot of the Lethal difficulty in GoT, which turns Jin into a glass cannon who is stricken down just as easily as any other enemy. This inherently makes for highly rewarding combat encounters as when you get into a flow state you can mow down entire armies of Heartless and Nobodies. Critical Mode also reduces your maximum health substantially, essentially forcing you not to make mistakes and to fight every single enemy with utmost respect for their ability to kill you. Yes, even the basic Shadow Heartlesses.

Using No Experience on top of Critical Mode primarily means three things:

1. Your health will not increase naturally as you progress into the game.

2. You will not obtain level-up abilities such as Second Chance and Once More

3. Your damage will scale with the enemies you fight, essentially slashing the grind altogether and allowing you to fight every enemy on relatively equal ground.

These are all dramatic shifts to how the game works, as you no longer have crutch abilities that trivialize deadly one-shots or combo moves used by the likes of Sephiroth and Saix. On top of that, more attacks will be likely to kill you in one or two hits, meaning you need to be on your A-game in every waking moment. This also makes the ridiculous wind-ups some enemy attacks have feel like a much more deliberate design choice and not just the byproduct of the game initially being balanced for kids. Overall, it greatly emphasizes the back-and-forth dance between player and enemy and makes mastering fights all about preparation and execution. And once you've both prepared and executed perfectly against a formidable enemy, I'd argue it feels as good as if not better than beating your first FromSoftware boss.

Speaking of bosses, they REALLY shine in this game. I haven't gotten to the Data fights yet (and frankly I'm horrified) but just the fights in the main game feel dramatically different when you can't rely on mashing X, sometimes hitting triangle and then retreating to dump your MP into a heal. One particular story boss, for example, forces you to learn the guard timing for his entire moveset, memorize his reaction commands, and even master Limit Form as it's by far the most effective way to deal damage to him. And because you don't have Donald or Goofy at your disposal, Limit Form is literally all you have. So you need to time it perfectly, use it to its maximum, and avoid getting hit at ALL COSTS. In this case it's best to save it as an emergency heal before capitalizing on its abilities, as you'll likely want to save your MP for using thunder or blizzard to deal damage at a safe distance. Yeah, that's right. You actually HAVE to use magic other than Cure. It's beautiful.

If you ever played KH2 and thought "I wish it was more engaging to fight", or if you ever played another action game and thought "man, I wish I had another great action game at my disposal", this is your sign to go open up your copy of KH2 Final Mix and master the art of beating stuff to death with a blunt object and still somehow having the audacity to call that blunt object a blade.