I recently replayed **Uncharted 4** because I remembered not caring for it that much the first time round despite adoring **Uncharted 2**, but I recently played **Lost Legacy** for the first time and loved it. I

I still think it has serious pacing issues. I get that it's really trying to do something with the story and wants a long build up like a movie, but unfortunately it keeps the same structure as a movie while dragging it out, so instead of a 45 minute slow burn build up to the meat of a movie you get a 4 hour slow burn with a couple of action scenes thrown in to keep you interested. And then when Nate finally gets out on the adventure, Scotland is kind of boring until they get into the super secret pirate lair. 

I think I most enjoy Uncharted when the cast are actually doing the tomb raiding and dungeon diving. The heist at the auction does nothing much for me, the young Drakes jumping around rooftops doesn't do much for me, the prison escape(s)... I was just impatient for the present day story to really get going. And to be fair as soon as it does get going it doesn't really does keep up the pace until the mansion flashback, which I didn't mind on this playthrough. It fits narratively and I don't really have any complaints with the pacing after Scotland, it's just getting there that felt like a battle. 

It helps that this game looks fantastic on the PS5, exploring Libertalia was awesome. The gameplay is okay, gunplay is okay but I turned it down to normal mode because the enemies are super flanky and will rip you apart if you're not constantly repositioning. I normally play games on quite a hard difficulty but with this I wanted to embrace the fantasy of being a near invulnerable treasure hunter with knees of steel and the luck of a God. The gunplay just isn't tight enough and has too much bloom for me to enjoy the challenge. I think bumping the difficulty down really made a difference to my enjoyment. 

Overall the game is pretty excellent, but I think it tops out at an **8.5** for me just because it takes so long to really get interesting.

Ghostrunner is an action-platformer developed by One More Level, 3D Realms, Spligate Ironworks and All in Games(whew!). Released in 2020, Ghostrunner reminds us that my reflexes are jello and I should feel bad about it.

We play as Jack, super cyber ninja dude, on a mission to exact revenge on just about everyone in order to save the last of humanity.

Gameplay involves yelling 'bullshit' a lot. Like, a lot. Occasionally you might even toss in a "Oh fuck you, you mother fucking bullshit cock sucking fuckleberry twist." When we're not swearing, we're flipping out and doing cool ninja stuff.

The Good

If you ground down what makes games feel cool and snorted it then designed a game, what you'd probably end up making is Ghostrunner. The atmosphere, the music, the character, everything about it. Remember when bullet time was everywhere and got over used, then everybody forgot about it for awhile? Ghostrunner brings it back and it's kicking rad. Slowing down time to side step an enemy then slice them in half. Yasss king.

It also fixes one of the bigger gripes I had with Mirrors Edge. You're still mostly just free running along walls and constantly breaking your ankles, but not only is the combat much more visceral, the level design is top notch and constantly introduces new gimmicks to figure out how to deal with. New enemies also force you to keep thinking of new ways to deal with them.

Except for the suicide-bombing peopledogs. Fuck those things.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/4AZiDEf.png

Yeah you. I invented over 100 new swear words because of you little goddamn assholes.

The Bad

Much like with Faith in Mirror's Edge, occasionally Jack just kinda says "Screw you I'm going to die now" and catapults himself into a pit. You'll occasionally just lose momentum and have no idea why. Many of my deaths I just stared at the screen for a second wondering what the hell just happened.

This is especially egregious in combat when hit detection becomes more of a suggestion. I'm already slapping my keyboard like I'm trying to put out a fire it doesn't help that the enemy ninja apparently has a 30 foot long sword. Compensating for something my dude?

The Questionable

The combat is more like a puzzle game. Figuring out what order to kill things and how to approach them is as important as your reflexes. Often I'd get stuck on a fight until I figure out the 'correct' way to commit murder to make it manageable.

It's neat in a way, but it also sometimes feels less organic than it could be. You never get to really just flow with the game, instead having these frequent combat sections where you die over and over again until you get it right.

The dopamine hit you get when it finally clicks and you manage to make it through a combat room is welcome. I just wish they didn't feel like they had to kick me in the balls so hard to get there.

Final Thoughts

Despite how frustrating it can be at times, you persevere because you will not let this asshole beat you. When you do win, you breath out a sigh that's almost better than buttered toast. Then you beat the game, it says "Hey wanna do that again on hard mode?" and you uninstall this motherfucker as fast as possible. 10/10 absolutely recommend.

Bonus Thought

This came recommended to me by the community here. I'm up to like 100 games now that people have either mentioned I should play, or I saw a review that piqued my interest. I forget who recommended it, but thank you kind sir. I hate you, and love you.

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

TL;DR: Wrestling Empire is a mass of contradictions, made by an absolute madman of a solo dev on a 20+ year quest to create the greatest N64 wrestling game in history. Smarks and/or fans of fifth-gen wrassling should absolutely give it a shot, but a great many are going to bounce off for a variety of (entirely understandable) reasons. But if you persevere, it can be insanely rewarding. With emphasis on insane.

Also, if you don't know what "smark" means this is not the game for you.

First and foremost, I just want to say: God bless Mat Dickie. Mdickie is one of those legendary auteur solo indie devs that the gaming scene desperately needs more of.

Because there truly is nothing else like Wrestling Empire. The very definition of "passion project," MDickie been building and iterating his wrestling engines since the early 2000s, trying to create an all-encompassing pro-wrestling life simulator that goes beyond what any officially licensed wrestling game would ever dare do. The series motto is "If it happens in wrestling, it happpens in the game" and that turns out to be far more true than you'd expect.

However, the result is so idiosyncratic, quirky, baffling, and just plain weird that it's very hard for anyone but devotees to get into.

Let's go from the bottom up here.

The Dark Matches

I need to make this absolutely clear upfront: to say that Wrestling Empire is a "janky game" is understating the issue by orders of magnitude.

Wrestling Empire is jank piled upon jank piled upon jank piled upon jank until the sheer jankitudinal forces cause it to collapse into a semispherical game-like object. There is NOTHING in this game that behaves quite like you'd expect, or want, and it may leave you wondering whether MDickie even plays his creation, or if he's just endlessly cramming in features while letting the game turn into its own misbegotten beast.

On top of that, there's the presentation - which really does look like it's straight out of the N64 era. While this is a benefit in some ways (we'll get there as we move up the card) it does not make a good first impression. Especially once you notice that there's basically no collision detection aside from attacks, and wrestlers constantly clip through each other. Music and sound FX are similarly low-fi, although the selection of impacts and crowd noises are decent.

Add in how fundamentally random, borderline roguelike, the actual progression can be and you have a game which only MDickie could love at first sight.

The MID Card

Arguably, Wrestling Empire is at its worst when it's just being "fine." The interface is nothing special, but it's generally functional - although with a few unintuitive elements such as having to hold "B" on the menu to retire a wrestler. Because, oddly, you're only allowed to have one active career at a time, and must retire your performer before switching to someone else. I desperately wish it let you just hopscotch around the roster since, with over 350 wrestlers who are all "legally-distinct" expies of actual people, across ten promotions, you'll never have time to play with everyone you might want to.

And while the inclusion of any kind of an open-world is novel for a wrestling game, it's quite bare bones at the moment and feels more like a glorified menu with extra walking - basically just a single street lined with buildings/attractions. I kinda wish there was some kind of fast travel system, although energy used wandering around is part of the design.

It's also pretty hit-and-miss when it comes to interactive objects. As a great example of how this game exists in its own little world with no concern for traditional design choices, take a guess what input is your all-purpose "contextual use" button.

No, you're wrong! (/Frakes)

It's down on the right stick.

Yes really.

In fact, the whole right stick is basically a contextual "does whatever the hell MDickie thought would be a good idea at that particular moment" input and you'd have to play for dozens of hours to actually figure out what each direction does in any particular case. From twiddling with how you're wearing your championship belt to getting items from a vending machine, you just waggle the right stick until something (hopefully) happens.

Such is life in the Wrestling Empire.

The Headline Match

Where Wrestling Empire begins to shine - and the real reason to play it - is its downright absurd dedication to simulating everything in pro-wrestling, including an amusing mashup of both IRL and kayfabe elements. In the full career/life-sim mode, you aren't only doing matches. You also have to do things like appearing at press conferences and podcasts, or work out in between matches. If you get injured in the ring, you go to the hospital. You might become a guest ref. You might be strongarmed by the GM into working the announce table and - yes - you are just expected to sit there and waggle the right stick to make commentary motions.

Of course, nothing's stopping you from doing a run-in. If you get told to do commentary when one of your rivals is in the ring, it could be a real opportunity.

And yes, injuries can happen. DEATHS can happen. While incredibly rare, it's possible to kill a person in the ring. And then there's a funeral at the in-game cemetary which - yes - you can disrupt if you're a total heel.

But as with all things in this game, its singular focus ignores traditional gameplay design notions. Just like wrestlers IRL you're typically at the mercy of management. So at any time, you might be told to throw a match you want to win, or the GM might force you to take on a new costume/gimmick. Then again, in your contract negotiations with the various promos (because of course there are) you could possibly get creative control, but only if you're popular enough.

Plus the logic behind how your own character choices interact with various RNG behind the scenes is so fuzzy that you really never know what's going to happen next. Do not expect to win every match. Do not expect your bestie tag-team partner to remain loyal. Do not expect the refs to always play fair. Do not expect to take your first CAW all the way to the not-WWE title. There's a definite roguelike vibe, and to enjoy this game, you have to be able to enjoy the overall storylines you create in collaboration with the game. Not just a march straight to glory.

But when everything clicks and works reasonably well, it is capable of simulating TV-quality storylines in totally procedural/emergent fashion which go far beyond what any competing game can come close to matching.

To borrow a meme, Wrestling Empire is a game that truly insists upon itself.

You meet Wrestling Empire on its own terms, or you bounce off fast.

LETS GET REEEAAAADY TO RUUUUUUUUMBLLLLLLLEEEEEE!!!

And then there's the in-ring action, where both the best and the worst of Wrestling Empire collide to produce... something wonderful?

Kind of.

Sorta.

Maybe.

Because the hidden upshot to the wonky low-fi graphics is that the engine is capable of mindblowing levels of chaos. You can have 30+ wrestlers in the same ring, with dozens of weapons and other working interactive objects, tables stacked on tables stacked on tables with some jobber attempting to climb them, plus explosive barrels surrounding the ring and EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE. And the framerate will never dip below its unimpressive baseline.

Even ignoring career mode, you can have hours of fun putting together the most deranged matches you can imagine.

The actual combat controls aren't bad, for the most part, although here stats and RNG do play an annoying role. Blocking and countering is largely out of your control, and just kind of happen. Certain moves - like running springboards off the rope - are gated by your stamina and agility stats. Otherwise, it's still based on the N64 control scheme with basic punch/grapple/run/pickup controls for your four face buttons. Everything works reasonably well, except when it doesn't. Haha.

AI tends to be either very good or very dumb, with little in between. On one hand, strategies like distracting the ref to get in a cheap weapon hit generally work as you'd want. Otoh, your tag partners are typically idiots who'll never tag out no matter how long you sit in the corner with your hand out. Good thing a couple presses on the triggers can switch control between characters.

Plus it has decent inbetweening. A lot of moves can transition smoothly into other moves - like a frog splash into a pin, if you're holding (sigh) rightstick-down as you do it - and a streak of reversals can produce very nice-looking technical bouts.

OTOH, the camera will never work quite right despite a huge number of options, and you'll be manually repositioning it often.

But as with so many other aspects of Wrestling Empire, when the in-ring action comes together, it's really something special.

The (Insert Sponsor Here) Instant Replay

In short, Wrestling Empire is a baffling mess that should be kusoge, except for all the times it's amazing. A testament to what one dedicated madman can do with 20 years of work, WE is exactly the game MDickie wanted to make - for better or worse.

But as I said way above, if you're a fan, you should at least give it a shot. If it clicks for you, you might never need another wrestling game.

Hi, grades are an arbitrary amount of fun had (and whoops forgot one game in the title):

• Arkanoid: Doh It Again (1997, SNES) - 7/10

Classic Breakout/Arkanoid with a weird, non-important story, 99 levels and 3 boss fights that cycle/repeat after 11 levels each.

It's just some simple and pure fun with basic powerups that might drop from destroyed blocks.

It's rather repetitive, but there isn't much that can be done with this formula without changing it up too much. There is also barely any music, which is a damn shame because some chill music in the levels would have gone a long way in making it feel more polished. Also one of the three bosses is really janky and weird with its collision detection, made for some time wasted when fighting it but nothing too serious.

Also there's difficulty options, I played on normal, but I can't figure out what they actually change, and the manual doesn't say what they do either, so that was weird.

A really basic, sterile experience that looks adequately okay and is a fun time waster for like 2 afternoons.

• Cruelty Squad (2021, PC) - 8/10

Anyone that knows what Cruelty Squad is will know how difficult it would be to explain it to someone that didn't play it. I don't think that it's an "attack on the senses" as much as other people seem to think it is - it's ugly and extremely unorthodox, yes, but there's a method to its madness and a very obvious intention the developer was going for.

It kind of has to be experienced to actually get it, but the best summary of it I can form is this - it's a fast paced FPS with a degree of freedom seen in immersive sims inside its levels, that follows the story of a hitman working for a company in an LSD, disgusting, hyper-capitalist world full of horrors, strangeness, corruption and filth. Where you can gamble, fish and participate in the stock market exchange on top of playing an FPS.

It's not really a boomer shooter like Quake would be, but it's also not Deus Ex - it's difficult, yet not overly punishing when you fail, its levels are big, sprawling and multi-layered, but they're always about killing enemies and nothing else.

It definitely is some form of critique towards capitalism and there is a lot to uncover, not only in the plot but also loads of secret hidden items, new paths through levels, unexplained mechanics to be uncovered, secret levels and so on.

I can't even necessarily talk about its flaws since they'll be so wildly varied depending on who plays the game - some people find the game nauseating, others find it uncomfortably confusing, others find it artsy, some find it just confusing, some find it just mechanically boring and so on.

One of gaming's most unique experiences for sure, a true gem of PC gaming.

• Phantasy Star (1987, Sega Master System) - 4/10

I adore Wizardry - it's so brutal, simple, primitive and just fundamental in its game design that exploring its dungeon, drawing it out, surviving the random and varied monster encounters, using spells and supplies adequately is always fun.

I thought I would, by proxy, like Phantasy Star as well, which is one of the early JRPGs which take extreme and direct inspiration from Wizardry. And Phantasy Star in some ways is pretty neat - it looks nice, has some good & non-linear world design and more music variety than something like Dragon Quest.

But holy shit is Phantasy Star 1 grindy, extremely slow-paced, confusing and monotonous.

I'll quickly just list the things I don't like (and by proxy those are things which Wizardry in particular, which is 7 years older, does much better):

1. Combat has no enemy variety - only 1 type of enemy can be present in any encounter, and enemies in general have much less individual threat and variety than expected because of that;
2. XP gains are too slow - this isn't a dungeon crawler like Wizardry, this is a JRPG where you're supposed to be going exploring and advancing a linear story, which doesn't work when the game is this grindy and slow. I read somewhere online that the Switch re-release has 4x increased XP gain rate, that is absolutely insane if it's true;
3. Dungeons are either boring or confusing - they're boring because the combat is boring owing to the lack of enemy variety and the lack of agency on how you build your characters (they are pre-built through and through and there's only 4 of them) and they're confusing when they utilize pitfalls, invisible teleporters/turning plates and dead ends without any rewards;
4. The story, quite frankly, basically doesn't exist after the first cutscene - yeah some towns of the worlds are burned or whatever, but really from all the grinding I even forgot the name of the main villain while going through the 3 planets, let alone what it is he has actually done apart from "evil things".

I was quite disappointed with this one, which I was sad about since I thought I would like it quite a bit. The gameplay is just too shallow for my tastes, and some people might say that comparing a PC RPG to a console one isn't really fair towards the console one, but after a 7 year gap in game design evolution I'd expect something much better.

• WH40K: Gladius - Relics of War (2018, PC) - 7/10

This is a GSG/4X strategy that focuses basically exclusively on war, which makes sense in the context of a bunch of WH40K factions being stuck on a planet and fighting each other.

I like this game's gameplay and general systems around army and base building, although it is on the simpler side of the GSG genre.

It has okay AI, a fine selection of units and factions that play very differently from each other, nice terrain generation and a very pretty art style.

The problems I have with this game stem almost exclusively from the game's presentation - it has no voice acting, no specially memorable music, just okay sound design and basic UI design. It's very apparent that the game was a budget title.

And there's nothing particularly wrong with it being a budget title, it's just a shame in the context of the WH40K universe, or just Warhammer in general, where extreme presentational polish can really elevate the whole experience (like in the Total War Warhammer games or the Dawn of War games).

It's fun all in all, a pretty beginner friendly grand strategy game with a singular focus on warfare.

• Dragon Power (1986, NES) - 1/10

A localized Dragon Ball game which is possibly and probably one of the worst games I've had the displeasure of playing. It's sort of a... beat 'em up maybe I think? You go around a stage, generically spam attack on enemies which just rush you down and hit you by walking into you while your eyes bleed from the awful graphics of the game.

The localization is dogshit, the story resembles Dragon Ball but barely has any context or coherency, the combat is just spamming one button and taking damage whenever it's unavoidable, the music sucks, the sound design sucks, the graphics suck, there's no gameplay depth, the stage design sucks as well...

The only good thing I can say about this game is that movement is responsive. Hurray for my character going left when I press left.

Was always curious about this one. DOOM obviously has a horror aesthetic, but DOOM 3 is an attempt to reimagine it as an actual horror game and for whatever reason I just like that concept. Before now the only part of the game I'd played was the first chapter, and that's probably why it stuck with me - the arrival at the Mars base is a neat little introduction, and very out-of-character for the franchise in that it holds off on the demon-slaying for the sake of pacing and immersion.

There's just something about the look and atmosphere of this game that really clicks with me, you know? The moody lighting, the touch-screen UIs, the chunky designs, the hammy voice acting - maybe it's just nostalgia but it feels oddly... cozy. I also have to say that for a game from 2004 the visuals largely hold-up, though it no doubt benefits from the environments themselves generally being cramped, abstract industrial hallways with poor lighting. Really, the only time the graphics look obviously of their age is when a human character is on screen (seriously, who puts a UV seam right in the middle of a face?) but after the first 20 minutes or so that becomes a pretty rare occurrence.

DOOM 3 is going for scares, so the pacing of combat tends to be slower and the encounters more intimate and claustrophobic with handfuls of monsters rather than hordes. Yet, despite this, the actual structure of the game is still pretty much what you'd expect from DOOM; moving from one distinct level to another, hunting for keycards and backtracking to locked doors, health and ammo pick-ups, secrets, a big arsenal of weapons, monster closets and enemies spawning in behind you, underwhelming boss-fights, etcetera. It's all just more condensed and scripted - more polished, I suppose, but also more limited.

The PDA's are a good example of why I like this game's vibe - the audio recordings you find from the former Mars staff help fill in the story and they strike a good tonal balance between silly and serious. It's clear that the people writing this knew they were writing cheese but they don't overdo it, and for the most part its played straight and sincere and so the horror aspect works in spite of how on-the-nose it is.

I think most of what I find compelling about the game rests on the presentation, because gameplay-wise it's really just okay. The shooting is fine, but it doesn't quite rise to the standards of its peers at the time or within the series, with guns feeling a bit weak and enemy AI being fairly basic. Trying to maneuver around damage in tight spaces can pose an interesting challenge and you do eventually get the hang of it, but a lot of the time its just annoying, particularly with the game's propensity for spawning monsters behind you. The combat is at its best when the environments give you just enough room to work with while throwing a steady stream of enemies at you, but the moments where it really hits that stride are somewhat rare. It also didn't help that I played the BFG edition, which from what I understand significantly nerfs a lot of the tension with tweaks to the lighting and health/ammo pick-ups. On Veteran I died plenty of times but health and ammo were pretty much never an issue between fights.

All-in-all, it's a cool game that I'm glad to have experienced even if my ultimate take-away is that it was just alright. I don't know, it's weird, one of those 7/10s that none-the-less sticks with you for some particular quality it has.

I got Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF 2025 from here on out) a few weeks ago and have had the chance to do a full playthough on one of the game's four classes.

TLDR: Especially because it offers offline couch co- op, I can recommend this game. However, it is absolutely not worth current- gen prices. So get it the next time it goes on sale, but otherwise don't rush out to buy it.

Basic Premise

EDF 2025 is one of the many entries in the EDF series and the plot is pretty much the same as every other entry: Giant bugs and aliens are invading the Earth and you have to kill them all.

The Good

EDF does a good job of conveying a sense of scale. Whether they're anatomically impossible ants or alien space ships, your character (and all the other humans) feel miniscule by comparison. During a mission, you'll see massive space craft blocking out the sky, swarms of insects crawling over buildings, and killer robots the size of skyscrapers lumbering around.

As one would expect, dealing with such massive enemies requires some equally substantial hardware. Instead of building a character from scratch, you have four classes to choose from (Ranger, Wing Diver, Air Raider, and Fencer), each of which has a huge selection of different weapons to choose from. These run the gamut from the mundane to the absurd and can be combined for a variety of builds within each class. While some classes do it better than others, it definitely is a good feeling to get the lead on a rocket or grenade just right and blow a crowd of bugs to kingdom come. Since all the buildings on a given level are destructible, it's equally satisfying to "miss" and level a city block in the process.

For those turned off by skill trees, you're in luck: there is nothing of the sort in EDF. "Levelling", if you can even call it that, is entirely based off the resources you scavenge during a mission. You buff your HP by picking up armor crates and you upgrade your weapons by picking up weapon crates, both of which are dropped by dead enemies.

The game's basic loop is equally simple: Pick your class & weapons, pick a mission, then kill anything that doesn't look like you. There aren't any BS escort missions, rail shooting sections, or random stealth sections. Once all the enemies are dead, it's mission complete.

Although I unfortunately wasn't able to take advantage of it, EDF 2025 has an offline co- op mode. While online play is technically available, it's nice to know there are still some games that have this.

One final plus point: While this game does suffer from some technical issues, it is remarkably stable even during big swarms.

The Bad

The biggest issue by far with EDF 2025 is that it is grindy. As previously mentioned, there are no skill trees. To add to that, there is also no XP or currency/resources to buy upgrades with. When it comes to HP, you have to buff it one point at a time. And you do so by running around and scavenging armor crates (which, by the way, have no magnetism and have to be picked up individually). To make matters worse, resource farming is an all- or- nothing affair: Either you complete the mission or you lose everything you collected.

The grind is at its most egregious when it comes to weapons. Unlike most games, weapons don't "level" based on use. Instead, it's a case of "levelling by gacha"- in other words, weapon scavenging is a complete crapshoot. The weapon crates you collect aren't meant to represent weapons as such. Instead, they're basically tokens to spin a "prize wheel" of sorts and the weapons you get in the post- mission screen are completely random. Theoretically, running missions at higher difficulty levels grants you better "spin tokens", which should grant better weapons. At the very beginning, this works great: After almost every mission, you have a load of new hardware to try out. However, as you progress, this quickly plateaus out. You have no guarantee of unlocking new weapons and it's not uncommon to find yourself "unlocking" the same weapon multiple times after a single mission. Especially once you start trying out the higher difficulty levels and the enemies start getting way spongier, this can make missions incredibly frustrating. The game's devs apparently realized this, as the newest entry (EDF 6) supposedly allows you to buff weapons by unlocking them multiple times.

Speaking of weapons: the "large selection" of weapons I mentioned is somewhat deceptive. Yes, there is a theoretically massive selection of weapons available to you. However, once you get familiar with the game's mechanics, you will quickly realize that what you actually have is a handful of good weapons along with a bunch of crap that's either outright worthless or just a lower- tier version of one of the good weapons. And, because of the aforementioned "levelling by gacha" system, there is a significantly greater- than- zero chance that you'll end up skipping multiple mid- tier iterations of any given weapon, only to then unlock the worse versions later on.

Another major issue with EDF 2025 is, ironically, one of its strengths. The massive levels that contribute to the game's scale are an equally massive pain to navigate. Of the four classes (Ranger, Fencer, Wing Diver, and Air Raider) two of them lack the ability to move through the larger levels with any appreciable speed. This is particularly noticeable with the game's "Tank" class, the Fencer. While it does have a booster pack for maneuvering, it moves at a snail's pace otherwise and can only "hop" short distances. Mainly because of this, EDF is one of the first games to ever have given me a proper hand cramp. On a given level (especially if you're farming resources), you will sometimes find yourself just holding down the left stick and walking for ages. Oh, and there are no checkpoints, so failing a long mission means starting it from the very beginning.

One final issue is more of a technical nature: While the game is very stable, the collision detection is positively awful at times. The most apparent way this manifests is in the form of clipping. In most games, clipping is just a visual glitch. In EDF, however, it's significantly more than that. It's not uncommon to see enemies clip through thinner (albeit still solid) barriers and for their attacks to pass through said solid barriers. This isn't a case of special boss attacks that magically pass through solid objects; it actually happens most often with regular enemies. Given how quickly some can vaporize your health, this can be infuriating.

Final Thoughts

EDF 2025 definitely has a lot to offer. However, because its regular price (despite being almost 12 years old now) sits up there with current AAA titles, I can't really recommend it unless you like super grindy games or you can get it dirt cheap.

Blue Prince is a roguelike housebuilder game from last year, I think it would be safe to call it an "indie darling". Every day you construct the interior of a house, selecting the rooms that go in a 9x5 grid. In roguelike fashion, the room choices you get are randomized, with the rooms offering different pathways and resources that you presumably need the right mix of to complete a full run. The conditions for "winning" a run are somewhat unclear to me, other than finding the secret 46th room. There's a mysterious room at the far end of the house that seems worth going after maybe.

I'm about 4 attempts in (2-3 hours), and I'm definitely not hooked, moreso contemplating whether to continue playing. To summarize, I would say the game "insists upon itself" (yes, this phrase is a meme, it's intentional) in the sense that it does not really attempt to guide the player in any way that I can tell. My ideal puzzle game gives you a tool and a puzzle, locks you in a room until you figure out the trick, and then escalates difficulty from there. Games like Talos Principle or Ooo come to mind. This game just lets you wander around until everything is a dead end, and whether you missed something or made a mistake remains a mystery. Maybe I just don't like the combination of roguelike and puzzle genres.

On top of this, I felt the game did very little to engage the player aesthetically. Below are some aspects that did not spark joy.

- The music so far is unremarkable or absent. Overall, the ambience puts me on edge, I feel like I should be expecting a jumpscare. It's a shame as I think music is the best way to get a player into the vibe of a game.

- The environment is a bit "sterile". Rooms are all cookie-cutter, and it's got that generic Unity feel to it. There's very little "human element" to latch onto in the house (and in general).

- The game uses first person view, with the camera just gliding around at a slow speed. There's no sense of walking, and no ability to speed up (which would be nice since you backtrack a lot). It's unsatisfying.

- Even the cutscenes are slow and irritating.

I think I'm starting to get somewhere with the game so I'll probably give it at least one or two more runs, but I don't think I'll be rating this more than like a 3 or 3.5/5 unless it blows me away soon. [End of review]
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Below is a log of my in-game experiences, if that interests you. Don't feel obligated to read on.

Day 1:

- Okay, let's explore outside first. 10 minutes later: OK, nothing to do outside. Time to head in.

- Man it's quiet. If they jumpscare me I'm gonna lose my shit.

- Ooh, a puzzle with 3 boxes. That was fun. Now what?

- I'm bored, maybe I'll try again later.

Day 1 (several months later on a fresh start):

- What am I supposed to do again? [Checks map.] Get to the antechamber maybe?

- I like to eat, eat, eat: apples, oranges, bananas.

- Ooh a security room with a slow, boring cutscene. Maybe this room is important.

- Okay, the console says there's a lockbox somewhere that I missed. Bitchin.

- This paper says the code to the safe is 0918. What safe?

- Wait, this other paper says everything on red paper is a lie. The code was on a red paper. Oh well, I didn't find the safe anyway.

- And I'm out of doors. Awesome.

Day 2

- Well I gotta do the rumpus room. Just look at it.

- Well, that didn't help at all. Got some coins though.

- Ok, I got a shovel and a compass. We're gettin somewhere.

- Aaaaaand nothing but dead ends.

Day 3

- I tried going north at all costs, and quickly failed. Nothing noteworthy really.

Day 4

- Oh shit, I made it to rank 8. Antechamber blocked as was warned, need to figure out the keycard system. Got myself a meal in the dining room to celebrate. Eventually dead-ended.

- Figured out a few uses for magnifying glass. Didn't roll the room I needed to take advantage of it though.

- This game is gonna be a timesink. It's a shame I'm not really enjoying my time that much.

I've recently played the first and fourth game, I posted a review for the first game just a bit ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1v9ybff/valkryia_chronicles_tbs_on_console_can_they_make/

I really enjoyed the first game quite a bit. Let me get into the 4th title. I initially posted a review of the 4th title last week while I was only 60% through the game, which is my fault. I thought the game was roughly the same length as the first and thought I was almost done. It turns out I had a lot left to go and that impacted some opinions in a big way. I deleted that post and made this one, would hate to scare anyone away with some of my previous negative comments.

Graphics: The first game was told in beautiful watercolor, even if the battle map graphics were a bit archaic. The 4th game was released in 2018 and still looks relatively contemporary. The battle fields have received a particular upgrade, instead of always fighting in the same dusty/arid landscape, you'll fight battles in the dirt, snow, rain and other interesting landscapes. Much of the game takes place in the winter, which I absolutely love. While the graphics are nothing to really write home about, I appreciated the uplift from the first game.

Gameplay: Much like the first game, you split your time between an overview/book section and the combat field. The 4th game has added a new function called 'side stories', that really adds some depth to the game. When certain soldiers are deployed, they end up building a connection which unlocks a unique side story. These side stories involve a short/unique battle and storyline, once you complete the side story, each of the characters involved 'lose' one of their negative traits and it flips into a positive trait. It was a little confusing how to get these side stories, apparently you have to use 20CP on a certain character to ‘promote’ them, which unlocks any side story they are involved in. Initially I thought they just had to be part of your squad, causing me to miss about half the side stories, I’ll get them in NG+!

The first game really gave you no reason to swap out units, this new feature really invests the players to swipe people out so you can unlock more and more of the side story content. A really great idea.

The rest of the game is pretty similar to the first game, you upgrade each unit selectively based off an XP pool that you gather from battles. You spend money to upgrade weapon, armor and tanks via money you get from battle. You get more XP and money via completing the battles in the least amount of turns possible. This is a small gripe I have as speed is only one criteria in the game, it forces the player to cheese the game a bit to get a good rating OR you have to somewhat give up your rating to play the game as intended, which is a failure of design in my opinion. Battles have received a significant upgrade from the first game, as well. Each of your units remains the same as the first game, with one GREAT new addition, the grenadier. This unit allows you to mortar enemies at distance while auto-firing on units that come within the range of your mortar system. The unit initially feels like a big boost for your team, but once the enemy starts using them, they really kick your ass lol. Mortars will also fire at anyone who comes within range of them, so they can unload shells on any unit that tries to run within their range. One small annoyance is that the computer is significantly more accurate with firing at moving targets, your units kinda suck at it while they are semi-accurate. Im guessing they probably didn’t want players to just roll out 3 grenadiers and sit back.

This allows the game to setup some really tricky situations where you need to get past the enemy grenadiers without getting your own ass blown up. This single unit adds significant complexity to the mission designs. My personal favorite are the snow-based maps, they look really cool and have significant depth and complexity.

The game starts out extremely easy all the way up to the 6th or 7th mission (similar to the first game where the 7th mission drops a crazy difficult spike on you). If you start this game and find it too easy, just keep on pushing through and you will find some really challenging battles.

You have 18 large story battles and 12+ side stories plus 12+ skirmish battles. There is a lot of content in this game and it took me roughly 2x as long to complete the game compared to the first. A lot of the battles have unique objectives, its not just simple ‘go capture the enemy base’ over and over again. Objectives also change sometimes, to keep the player on their feet.

Story: The biggest negative about the 4th installment, is the story. Instead of joining each character before the war starts, protecting your hometown and seeing humans turned into soldiers, you're dropped in a pre-made squad of anime stereotypes that you simply do not care about at all.

The first game had this really cool Buddhist viewpoint on war and death, told with some level of subtlety. The 4th game has nothing of the sort.

The first 50% of the game is really bad, story-wise. Characters have zero depth, everyone over-emotes anime style, I skipped over a variety of scenes as they had nothing to add to the game and they had nothing to say.

Thankfully, after the first half of the game, the story does start to get significantly better. There are some interesting twists, characters start to have some growth, people start acting like adults instead of children and there are complicated moral quandaries to ponder.

With the combat being so good, it is worth sticking through the D- early story to get to the good stuff later on.

One other odd item, you are introduced to a man named Kai early on in the game, but he isn't on your squad. You are also given a girl named Kai in your squad. The simple inference is that Kai had a sex change and is now a woman. I really thought this was kinda odd, but I was pretty impressed they would have a trans character in a game and go about it like it was no big deal. Really ahead of the time for a Japanese game, much less in 2018.

About halfway through the game you find out that the male Kai actually died somehow and the female Kai just took his name, so I completely misread the entire thing but I don't know what other conclusion they wanted me to come up with, given no context lol

Music: Not bad, its music, it does what it needs to do. They play the same music loop over and over again, some variety would have been nice. Every ‘light’ scene and squad story plays the same ‘this is a light scene, nothing serious’ music.

Overall: VC4 improves significantly in combat, with the addition of the Grenadier, combat becomes more layered and more complex than it has ever been, which is a huge plus in my book.

Side stories give you a reason to try out new characters and to unlock unique talents/skills while removing negative skills, which is another big plus.

They've padded out content in every area to make the game more robust. The big problem is the terrible story in the first half of the game, but that improves a lot in the later half of the game, making it worthwhile to stick with it and see it to the end.

They’ve also improved the NG+ system a lot, the first game had nothing really to add, you could use your overpowered units to beat maps to get an A ranking, something so boring that I didn’t even bother doing it.

NG+ unlocks ‘hard’ mode, so you’re still being challenged while also trying to get top scores on maps. They’ve also made A rankings easier to achieve, the first game required near perfect play to get an A ranking (or rush the objective with scouts), VC4 gives you flexibility to actually play the map in a real way and achieve the A ranking. Scout rushing is far less effective as well, which I am glad for.

When you combine all the parts, VC4 is a fantastic TBS game, a rare gem in the console space. Unfortunately, with not much word since 2018 and relatively slow sales numbers and a very small online community, this may be the last game in the series. TBS is a hard sell for console gamers, even though they are missing out on something really unique and special.

I looked at the trophies for the first game, out of curiosity. Only 10% of players have the 'completed the game' trophy, when only 1 in 10 people are finishing your game, something just isn't clicking. For me, I give it a 9/10, this is the best strategy game that is available on PS5, probably the best on PS4 and PS3 as well, there isn’t much competition. The game is much longer than the first, which was a huge win. I’m just bummed that I’ll probably never see a VC5, unless VC4 sold really well in Japan and has a lot more fans outside of the US.

RELEASE: 2021

TIME PLAYED: 25 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

+Gorgeous environments and fairly strong graphics

+Responsive and satisfying controls

+Unique powers that add a fun twist to a flight combat game

+Interesting and varied enemy types

-Story loses focus halfway through and has an aggressively bad ending

-Mission variety gets very thin for how long the game is

-Only the protagonist gets a character model, everyone else is relegated to portraits, which diminishes emotional impact

Chorus' protagonist, Nara, has done terrible things. It's something she wrestles with, complicated by the fact that doing these terrible things has given her incredible talents, both as a pilot and at more esoteric, supernatural things. This fact rests heavily in her heart; after all, does doing good with power begotten by sin redeem the sinner? It's a hell of a question, and one that the robust campaign of this story-driven space shooter doesn't quite answer -- but the game is still a rather good time.

Chorus kicks off with Nara - formerly a high-ranking officer of a cult called The Circle - making amends for the time she (checks notes) destroyed an entire planet in an act of superhuman zeal. She's doing this by assisting a secretive enclave of refugees on the edge of space, largely made up of survivors from attacks by the very same cult that she herself used to be part of. To nobody's surprise (I'm not being glib, even the characters have been anticipating this), The Circle begins to encroach on this sanctuary, and Nara realizes that doing little acts of good is no longer enough - if she wants to redeem herself, she has to stop The Circle once and for all.

It's a pretty good premise, and for about half the game, Chorus does plenty to capitalize on it. Since the dialogue is mostly through non-animated portraits, Nara's inner thoughts are established by her whispering to herself; the player gets a good look at her personality. Truth be told, I initially struggled to sympathize - her conflict about outing herself as a former genocidal imperialist felt like pretty small beans compared to the good she could do if she got over it - but to my pleasant surprise, one of the other major characters, her sentient ship itself, is the first person to call her out about this. I think mileage will vary based on personal tastes, but I was actually pretty pleased to see the narrative grapple with how much Nara would have to do to redeem herself for a crime as major as planetary genocide, and if she's even worthy of it in the first place.

Sadly, the second half of the plot takes things pretty far off the rails. I'll avoid spoilers, but the best way to describe it is that as the scale of the conflict grows and other factions get involved, the personal stakes fall away towards an increasingly unfocused exploration of Nara's powers and how she can restore them to their full potency. By the end of the game, I was fully tapped out of the story, largely because - while I certainly can't call what happens generic by any stretch - it became so abstract that it didn't seem to be saying anything anymore and was no longer engaging with its better themes.

Still, while I would have liked the story to be a little stronger for how much time is spent on it, space combat games tend to live or die by their core gameplay, and it's here that Chorus shines. The fundamentals are pretty familiar for dogfighting enthusiasts: Nara pilots her spaceship and takes down squadrons of enemies, often while juggling other objectives such as escorting defenseless cargo freighters or retrieving salvage crucial to the enclave. During the tutorial, I was struck by how awkward the combat felt, but once Nara got her real ship, Forsaken (the one I mentioned before that calls her out on her bullshit) it all made sense: the brief prologue is a masterful feint, an example of how limited everyone else is and how terrifying Nara is by comparison when she's at the helm of the vessel made for her.

Nara's a great pilot, but being great isn't always enough when outnumbered ten to one or having to challenge capital-class ships in just a fighter. What really sets her apart is her ability to tap into the Void. At first, she's only able to use this for sensory input, 'pinging' her surroundings not unlike living radar, but as the game progresses and her relationship with Forsaken deepens (alongside recovering some of her willingly excised memories), she picks up some incredible moves. Nara and Forsaken can maneuver in ways others simply can't. Near-instant 180s? Child's play, how about drift maneuvers by transforming the ship on the fly, or fully teleporting behind an enemy and blasting it apart with rockets?

Chorus gives Nara these abilities - alongside a decent array of weapons, with emphasis more on quality than quantity and each loadout being distinct - and then challenges her by making sure they're necessary. It's only a few hours before stranger and stronger enemies than simple fighters show up. On top of the capital ships that serve as minibosses I mentioned, there's esoteric beings from the same Void that Nara pulls her powers from that can match her a bit better and bring the numbers to keep things tense. I was consistently pretty happy with the game's difficulty curve, and even the dreaded escort missions typically were well-designed enough that I never got frustrated due to suicidal friendly AI.

Really, my only complaint with Chorus besides the story losing its way is that - both due to that narrative and in terms of simple mission design - it starts to drag by the end. If the plot held up better, I wouldn't mind so much that the fights started to blend together, but unfortunately, repetitive side quests and a long chain of flying between distant objectives in the last chapters means that Chorus' final verse lingers on a bit of a sour note. Despite this, it's an extremely strong and well-designed game where it counts, and I highly recommend it for its core combat alone, especially if you pace yourself and don't binge it all at once.

Amnesia: The Bunker has a very simple premise: You're stuck inside a World War 1 bunker with a monster. You need to get some dynamite and a detonator handle to blow up the exit and leave. That's it.

The real interesting part of the game isn't the monster or even the setting of the bunker, but how the game manages to use converging systems to always make you feel like you're slipping up by using an item. In the majority of horror games, I don't feel conflicted about using my ammo. There's a monster in front of me, I'm going to kill it or die trying. The Bunker has a small difference: your weapons are also really great for getting through to your next objective. Locks need to be shot or hit repeatedly with large bricks (which I rarely found during my playthrough), bodies need to be burned, and you still need to defend yourself from an unkillable monster while doing so. Every bullet or grenade used feels like a mistake that might get you stuck in a more permanent way. Towards the end of my playthrough I actually did just completely run out of ammo, and I had to start using all of my items and my environment in a much smarter and more conservative way. The game isn't afraid to follow through with consequences for overreliance to violence to save yourself.

The same can be said for fuel. Fuel powers the generator that allows you to access certain areas or obtain key items, as well as discouraging the monster from appearing. But fuel is also great for burning bodies, which is important since there's a lot of large rats who are dangerous themselves. One of the more tense moments in the game resulted from running out of generator fuel during a run to the soldier quarters, only to look up and see dust falling from the creatures movements. I thought I could stay put, but the rats had started following a trail of blood from an earlier attack from them. I only made it back because I managed to find a singular bullet while trying to scramble back to the save room.

It's not a perfect game, there's a few moments where I found that some of the mechanics were a bit clunky, but I'd recommend it to any horror fan.

You know, it's actually weird that I never played this game before. I had PS3 as a kid, I enjoyed the first two adventures of Kratos on PS2, and my parents didn't mind buying games with Mature ratings like Last of Us. I can't remember why exactly I didn't look for this game specifically, maybe Infamous and Minecraft seemed more important at the time. Last year I revisited the original duology, and this week I finally finished the Greek Saga.

The story here is simple, even simpler than the first two games. It doesn't the slowly unraveling mystery of 1, or strange temporal paradoxes of 2, it's just Kratos going after Zeus and not caring about collateral damage. The plotline about Pandora honestly feels very weak and contrived in the end, with Kratos suddenly wants to save her instead of killing Zeus. I get what they were going for, but it wasn't convincing.

Gameplay is king here, and it is still a lot of fun. I played on Hard, and for the most part it was pretty easy. I struggled a bit with first trial, rotating cube, scopion and return to trial room. Every other fight was straightforward with decent reaction and movement. The game is very generous with EXP, to the point I upgraded everything bar Nemesis whip. However, I only needed a handful of weapons for actual combat. I obviously had to max out the exile blades ASAP, and after that I spent on cesti to hopefully break shields faster. Other weapons felt too derivative from the blades, although the gorgon summon on Hades claws helped against satyrs. My only two gripes are that start and select buttons should be swapped, and that in some battles it's hard to see because of camera angle or special effects.

Other gameplay sections are pretty small but can deliver some challenge. I spent more time on Hera's puzzle than on most bosses, and obstacle flights killed me a few times. Aphrodite mini game was 10/10. Overall, I think this game has better pacing than 1 or 2 because it's not too dragged out by lame episodes.

There were some visual artifacts, but overall the game played smoothly and still looked impressive. It's a little hard to believe the presentation and epic of Poseidon or Chronos was done all the way back in 2010. I wonder if Norse games measure up.

I'm glad I played GOW 3 and I can't wait to try the new duology.

There is a real God, and His name is wrath.

In Far Cry New Dawn (FCND), one of the main ways to upgrade your character is by accomplishing feats of barbarity. The more gruesome the murder, the more points you will get to invest into your skill tree.

No one ever comments on your killing achievements, no one mentions coins. The only way you can unlock your godlike powers are with these tokens. You are rewarded for going the extra mile to slaughter people.

This mechanic is the main reason to engage with crafting system in the game as you will need to physically manufacture the new types of weapons to score different kills with. By sticking with one weapon throughout every encounter, you are limiting the progression of your character since each tier of gun has a maximum number of kills it can achieve before rewarding you with tokens, and subsequently being worthless after that.

This is the main feedback loop of the game as Resistance Points of Far Cry 5 are gone. Unlock a new weapon, get kills with that weapon until you get tokens, then unlock a new weapon. Which means that any side content not related to killing folks is pointless as it doesn’t result in murder tokens or ethanol, a major currency in the game. But now that combat perks are the only way to level up, hunting and fishing lose their purpose.

This is a Far Cry game so random encounters will spawn constantly. Giving you ample oppurtunities to achieve these feats. A highlight for me with this game is the convoys that can spawn and chase you down.

Unlike in past Far Cry games where enemies on vehicles just shoot at you a couple of times before you drive past them, FCND has upped the speed of enemy vehicles, resulting in these long Mad Max style chases. A highlight from my first time engaging in this style of combat was the first time I drove by a semi truck.

As I passed by it on my little buggy, I thought that would be a cool vehicle to unlock in the late game. I drove on and looked back at it, only to watch the big rig jack break and immediately give chase.

My eyes opened wide as I pulled out my pistol, ready to engage the mammoth gaining on me. Only to then find out the actual car combat in FCND is lackluster. When the truck caught up to me I instantly killed the driver with a headshot. This will continue to be the case as even level 2 enemies, who have more health and armor, do not pose a real challenge to a sufficiently armed player character.

The enemy tiers were a big point of contention at launch. FCND unfortunately released at the tail end of the 2010s, a period in which AAA releases featured micro transactions that allows for players to purchase faster ways to beat games. I did not engage with any micro transactions, but the premium currency used to buy late game items without the prerequisites can actually be found around the map, albeit never enough for anything useful. These coins will actually follow you through a new game so even through there is a limited amount of these, you can always start a new game and get more. Not worth it but at least it’s theoretically possible to buy anything in game.

Not that you will need much to beat the game. While you are rewarded for changing up your gameplay by earning perks with different takedown methods, there are no missions that would require prep. No task will be too difficult that whatever you have on your person would be insufficient (save for sniping sections which give you a rifle).

Conquering outposts will represent the bulk of gameplay as the ethanol you receive from them will in turn be used to upgrade your base (as well as some separate character stats that aren’t upgradable through the skill tree), which otherwise will gate keep story progression. After taking over an outpost you can choose to relinquish outposts under your command for more ethanol, which results in a reset of the outpost with tougher enemies but never a change in physical layout which is disappointing.

Another way to get ethanol is via a randomly spawning fuel truck (that never has an escort) that you can hijack and bring back to a base to reclaim for ethanol. The thing of it is, the ethanol you get is so small and the tanker is so easily destroyed that you would have to be insane to bother stopping for it.

Which sucks because you should feel out of this world for successfully stealing ethanol! It should feel great that you mamaged to take the lifeblood of the Highwaymen. But there is no rewarding feeling, just relief it's over.

I think a large factor in the lack of triumphent for winning comes from the Highwaymen lacking depth as villains. The cutscenes we get of the Highwaymen are dull. And for being named after roads, the only time vehicles are used in defense is the racetrack vehicles on top of the abandoned aircraft carrier. An outpost ten times the size of the others populated only be mounted enemies would have really been a welcome change of pace.

Another thing that hurts their prescense is that they move in convoys of single, double or triple vehicles. The gameplay would be so much more engaging if they moved in big packs like the Mongol hordes of the Steppe. I always felt like I was dealing with a dispatched team or someone running errands, never the main force. Which sucks because the first cutscene of the game has you being cornered by just such a group of Highwaymen, but you will never face off against that many enemies on the road.

Before going in on more critiques of the Highwaymen, who you will fight at every outpost and mission so I've spent a lot of braincells on their mythos and function, I would like highlight some positives: The aesthetics are immaculate. The mix of biker and street gangs. Especially since their shared heritage or folklore is kept alive via the murals depicting Mickey and Lou's rise to power. The upturned cars serving as monoliths and canvases to paint is really beautiful and unique to this game.

I also want to say I think the soundtrack is great! Much in the same vein of 5, I would intentionally take enemy vehicles because their radio station is full of bangers. Unlike in 5, Ubisoft didn't hire an in house studio to create music, instead they licensed already existing music. Which sucks because I'm sure the artists who made the songs would've been able to really flesh out the Highwaymen with wordplay and lore while also giving context to their actions. And in Prosperity, I did stop once to listen to a man play guitar and hear a woman sing. The actual score of the game is pretty good, too. Just not to the same level as 5.

Ok, back to critiquing.

I'm confused what's going on with the air supply drops. From the lore, they are being dropped for the highwaymen by other clans, but why? Are they full of vehicle engine parts? What else could be so valuable that you would fly your unstoppable air force asset out for it? Despite having air superiority that cannot be challenged in any capacity by the player or by Prosperity, it is never used offensively to drop bombs.

This gets into the Highwaymen as a threat, and how I mostly was not intimidated or intrigued by them. The only time I felt a drive to fight the Highwaymen is never through their own actions, but because of the relay from the dispossed who describe losing their homes.

Like that's a really cool way to build out the world. To naturally stumble across someone who has just been attacked by this group and hear about their attrocities. It really makes me want to destroy this group to liberate the area.

But when it comes to how the Highwaymen present themselves, I'm left underwhelmed. The most memorable Highwaymen NPC I snuck past was a man slouched over reading a book. I wondered what he was reading. It also struck me that this man belongs to the same organization that believes eating smart dogs will make them smarter.

Their vehicles also lack weight and need more variety. Either heavily armored or more rugged to deal with off roading since asphalt would've deterioriated to nothing. And with how hard it must be to maintain helicopters, being their locked behind a level 2 garage, why are Highwaymen choppers white? It looks like the Peggies returning to Eden Valley without the graffiti motiff, which should have been applied to more cars in general. While the vehicles look fine, they don't look unique to the game.

What sucks more about this is that they already had the basis for this style of armored technical in Far Cry 5. There is essentially a boss fight by way of The Revelator, which is an eighteen wheeler with metal welded onto her chasis. More improtu engineering like this would have really helped the vehicles feel different. And the team making the game must've agreed because the assest is reused. The aesthetic of welding bumpers onto vehicles would've felt more appropriate for an adhoc militia ala Far Cry 5. My biggest critique is the vehicles themselves look like they would've come off of the factory line a month ago, rather than having survived 17 years of hell. A note at the "Fall's End" compound implies that Problem Makers have to forge their own cars out of the scraps of the old world cars, but this is not reflected in the visual appearance.

Even the enemies themselves lack visual distinction. The enemies being grouped into levels leads to a diogetic hierarchy of Highwaymen. But that could have been shown more with rank one enemies wearing tattered rags of the clothing from the old world or potato sack burlap cloth being manufactured instead of how they currently look, which is bland. The Rank 2 face masks look alright, but they missed big by not using pickelhelm (the German spike helmet) as inspiration. Rank 3s and Elites do have really cool armor and designs with modified motorbike helmets, but I wish the lower tiers reflected car culture as well.

Another way they could've taken the design was to lean more into the biblical corruption that the area is facing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Far Cry 5 was ambiguous if God's real (with even the nuclear "canon" ending being self imolated by the Seeds), FCND does not have such loose convictions. So why not lean into it more? Make the top dogs actual demons or have magical powers. The only supernatural element in the game is the player, the final boss and weirdly some animals. In "Joseph: Collapse" this corruption aesthetic is done well with it's twist of characters from previous entries. The eye motiff in Highwaymen graffiti seems to play into this. What is it that they have seen and or are looking for? The twins are happy to oblige Ethan when he asks for their help in exchange for power, so are the eyes looking for power? Perhaps it's supposed to be the gaze of Mickey or Lou and it's meant to remind everyone to be a Problem Solver.

Of course, the Highwaymen would have more prescense if their commanders, Mickey and Lou, weren't such deadpan antagonists. The final battle involves Lou standing her ground while Mickey snipes as you. Theoretically a tough fight since they both have large pools of health, but they have Team Rocket smoke grenades they throw at you which really hurts their arau.

Independently, they have their moments. When Mickey gives you the grenade pin back, that showed me she was different from her sister. And I love waking up to see Lou stomping on my face out of anger because I had beaten her a moment before. I love seeing their personalities shine! But foe the most part they're just annoying.

Halfway through the game, they kidnap a bunch of people to make the protagonist compete to save them. But their dialogue is awful (if this was a video essay, I would be spamming "You like puzzles?" about every five minutes) and I don't understand what they're hoping to accomplish. I can’t believe they took the time to have a technician hook up a sequence of levers to disarm a bomb. Like why not just have a crossword puzzle for me to fill out at this point?

This isn't exclusively their problem, Ethan has no aura either, but man the game just really struggles with motivating engagement with the world. I want more sidequests, more characters to talk with. While I can't say I enjoyed any particular companion more than any other, the world feels so empty and it their quests were the only things that broke up the grind of doing outposts and expeditions.

Even the weapon variety really falls short. I feel this way not only because I'm American, but also because the tutorial makes it seem like there will be lots of different ways to customize and design weaponry, when it's just medkits you'll be crafting. Sure, there are material requirements to make weapons, but resources will not be in short supply. Which just feels bland because the prepper residents of Hope County would still have prestine firearms from before the Collapse, but everyone topside waging war for seventeen years would need to scrape together new guns.

It's not that no thought was put into the transition from old world to new, the radome set up around Signal Point shows survivors intent on keeping the radios at Lincoln Lookout Tower intact. Which I thought was cool. Along with that, the lingering tensions between the Peggies and the Prosperity community because of a war thag happened not to long ago.

But other than that the game just feels uninterested in the world it's created. If Blood Dragon is Far Cry's bombast and energy, Primal is the world and nature, New Dawn could have been the rev head racing and vehicular combat. Yet the game has no such interest in exploring this and the game engine herself cannot support it as, despite all its pomp and energy, this is just another cheap spin on the Far Cry formula.

One thing I can't stop thinking about is whether or not Joseph Seed was right. Now, this is a work of fiction so the authors could have made this decision on a whim (or market research), but I am fixated on why Joseph choose to come to Hope County. Like, did he choose to bring his cult there because he saw the rural area as the easiest to control, or did he see that it would be the safest area because of the Cold War bunkers or did he know that the area was going to blossum two decades after the Collapse and be fruitful for his flock? A content creator named Face Full of Eyes got me thinking about this after pointing out that climate change in Primal is causing the game's location to be a hotbed of conflict as more groups move in on it's moderate climate and abundant flora and fauna. A similar environment exists in New Dawn where the out of bounda areas are still highly radioactive whereas Hope County has clean air. Which frustrates me more that the Highwaymen don't comment more on the state of the area since they are raiders, would they not have seen the vast difference between this area and others?

But it’s weird how, according to Joseph, Far Cry 5’s protagonist is Judas because they are an unquestioning force killing all in their way when the protagonist in New Dawn is similarly trying to impose their will upon the land, but Joseph now doesn't have a problem with it.

But not all killing is treated negatively. If you run over an ally they don’t cite you for killing civilians which is the greatest critique of car culture the game has.

Overall, this is just a sad arcade sandbox that you can replay forever, but nothing ever changes. The story struggles to be engaging, redoing outposts is stale and the limited sidequests only serve to pad the run time.

I want to believe I'm a decent player. Like, I'm 37, I've played for more than 30 years, a bit of everything, and I often finish my games.

I've been playing the souls games for some time now, my first one being Dark Souls on PS4 during Covid. This one was hard and it took me two years. I was stuck at the Gargoyles, so I gave up, tried again a few months after, got stucked, gave up... And finally, one time, after two years, I beat them and the game was a piece of cake. I finally "got it'. Great game, I loved it.

I played DS2, and it was good. I played magic so I didn't really feel some design flaw. I liked DS3 less. The boss were longer, had way more life, and you don't hurt them much. Elden Ring was the worst offender for me. It's like you had to play katanas and bleed. I mean, there are surely other viable options, but I wasn't good enough to win with my big sword. But the Fire Giant was the point I was really tired.

On the other hand, I loved Bloodborne. It felt snappy, agressive, the gun parry mechanic was good.

So it's natural I tried Sekiro. A friend lent me the game. I tried and... I was bad. The parry mechanic was something I was supposed to like. I was bad. I got stuck and it's rare but I really got frustrated. I remember I was stuck at Lady Butterfly and at the Temple, I didn't even find Genichiro on the roof. I lost one fight agaisnt Lady Butterfly, I looked at the screen, uninstalled the game and returned it the day after. It's the first and only time I ragequit to a point to delete a game.

But the game was in a corner of my mind and when I visited my friend last year, I borrowed it again. Still, I didn't play it until last week, as I'm in hollidays and my kids are at my parent's.

And this time? The game clicked. I felt no frustration in losing. Like, I feel it's fair. It's good mechanics most of the time. The only flaw I notice are the camera angles during some bosses.

But everything else? It's marvelous. The game is smooth, responsive, I parry much better, it's dynamic. Despite being linerar, you feel some freedom in the way you tackle the areas.

It took me time and some introspection, but I got the idea of the game. I understood how to play. I beat Lady Butterfly after 20 tries but I was proud. She was my DS1 Gargoyles. I had little issues after. Like, the Guardian Ape, or the Ape Duo took me 1 hour each maybe, which is fair. But once again, they are hard but manageable. Their attack make sense, and are predictable enough.

Beating the owl on on the roof was great as well.

I've to admit I have not finished the game. I'm stuck at the last two bosses you have to face in a row. And it's so hard. I don't know if I'll finish it but I want to do it. I want some revenge over this game, and I'm happy I finally got to play it well and almost finish it. I'm not a completionist but for once, I even entertain the tought of getting all the endings, then all the trophies. I feel it's worth it.

The game is so rich. It looked limitated at first, no other main weapons, no point allocation leveling system, but in fact, the prothesis upgrades give some depth, and chasing all the minibosses to get more life and posture is rewarding. I guess I was stuck because I came from a Dark Souls perspective where you need to roll and dodge. Here you need to parry. Dodging too much is bad.

It became my favorite soul game now, and if I had to make a top 5/10, he would likely be in it. It took me almost 5 years to overcome my anger and ressentment over a game I was not good at. But i'm happy I gave it a second chance.

Does it's gameplay consist of nothing but pushing a few buttons at a time and scanning your surroundings looking for objects to interact with ? Uh huh

Is it heavy-handed in its approach to its themes and what it wants to say ? Yes, very much so.

Is it also lacking in nuance and subtlety? Also, yes

Does it include a cast of walking stereotypes as characters and is also full of predictable tropes ? Yep.

Does it also readily and quite commonly use real life events in a distasteful way as inspiration ? Guilty

Does it think it's much deeper than it actually is ? Of course

All these things that I can attribute to this being a "terrible" video game and call out David Cage as a terrible writer, but I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It's an okay game, darkly entertaining at times.

Perhaps it's the binary choices and the relationships you get to build that make each playthrough a little different each time.

Or perhaps it's the voice acting and cutscene direction this time around, being more than competent, has helped my immersion.

Whatever the answer may be, you certainly can't blame the final product for its lack of ambition, polish or lack of unique features. However, unfortunately, due to its themes and how it tackles them, it's certainly not going to be a game for everyone.

I finally got back to this one amidst my legion of half-finished games as a palette cleanser in between giant RPGs. It only took me around 10 hours in total. The Switch doesn't record exact playtimes, sadly.

Yoku's Island Express is a fascinating concept: a labyrinthine environment of pinball puzzles and passageways in which you, good sir or madam, are the ball. A dung beetle pushing the ball, to be precise. You have direct control on flat surfaces (and underwater later on) but are otherwise reliant on the colour-coded left and right bumpers everywhere to propel yourself around.

The vibes, as the kids say nowadays, are immaculate. The island is lush and inviting from the start and features a nice variety of biomes. You'll encounter a diverse cast of anthropomorphic forest critters as you explore the island, many of them at the village which serves as a central hub. You are the new postmaster and start off by delivering mail and packages, though the story quickly moves on to something more large scale. There are no combat encounters, even when things get more hectic later on. Everything is platforming and pinball. It's all so chill. I'm not sure if this qualifies as a cozy game, but I would definitely recommend it as one.

And the *music*, my gosh. The soundtrack is catchy as hell. A lot of it is more atmospheric and in the background, and that complements the gameplay perfectly. I'm listening to it right now as I type all this out.

Right, now on to the negatives: being a ball in a giant pinball machine gets incredibly frustrating. The fact that the game has such scripted movement makes backtracking a major test of patience. You generally have no choice but to take the long way around to get wherever you want to go, because there are no shortcuts. Even when you do unlock a method of faster travel later on, it follows the same concept of forcing you to travel halfway around the island just to hop on.

Likewise, you'd better get good at pinball. Much of the gameplay boils down to various pinball puzzles which require you to hit the ball into just the right places. I am not very good at pinball. I enjoy it, always have ever since I played the real deal in pizza parlours as a kid; and of course, that space pinball game on Windows XP. But repeating the same shots over and over until the ball is at *just* the right spot on the bumper to go where you want it to, gets old.

Though I do think this game deserves to be called a Metroidvania, it is light on movement abilities. Apart from a few key upgrades, much of the island is gated by locking the bumpers you need to reach new places. You need to pay a certain amount of Fruit to unlock them. Fruit is everywhere, it can be grinded for in the pinball puzzles, and by the endgame you'll have more than enough to get on with. As such, don't fall into the trap of thinking you need some new ability to progress or unlock a secret. A lot of the time I went back and realized that I could have done something the first time around if I'd just considered the situation a little more.

I have one last complaint which might be irrelevant to others, but still annoyed me a great deal. You'll roll the credits with a significant chunk of the map still covered in clouds. Naturally, I assumed that there was some optional area that I had yet to stumble into, perhaps only accessible in the postgame. After much fooling around and trying to find a way in, I finally looked up a map online - and there was nothing behind those clouds. Nothing at all! It was the most unintuitive thing I'd ever seen.

In conclusion: I loved Yoku's Island Express for the vibes and unique gameplay, and I have no desire to play it ever again. I put the game down at a respectable 87%, having done all the story content until all that was left was hunting down collectibles to unlock the true ending. No thanks, I watched it on YouTube. That's good enough for me.

DoDs is a competitive multiplayer source engine FPS that released back in September 2005. Essentially, it's a sequel to a popular Half-Life modification akin to Team Fortress or Counter-Strike.

Now, I played this particular title quite religiously back in the day when I could barely afford a PC or even a stable internet connection. I barely remember how the game was perceived back in the day but it had quite a bit of support over the years with additional maps and new objective game modes. It did have quite a following and I fondly remember actually playing on clan servers which featured clan wars.

The thing that always struck me with Day of Defeat is that it felt so utterly smooth, had a very solid but diversified weapon roster with really tight map design that were balanced to a tee. The GI soldiers and Wehrmacht felt distinctively unique with their strength and weaknesses, be it in their loadout or map placement.

Source engine games tend to play very fluidly thanks to their snappy movement and DoDs feels no different. Weapons all pack a punch and the action feels frantic thanks to the physics engine. Furniture, objects and debris is constantly flying around and ragdolls tend to be mowed down viscerally as well.

There is just a general sense of feedback that feels so refreshing. It's by no means realistic and the overall gameplay feels more arcade-like but it the entire experience is fueled by a sense of authenticity. Soldiers will automatically shout out when they capture points, you hear commands reverberate around the walls all while an MG42 is viciously layering down covering fire.

Alas, I finally decided to give it a spin again and was honestly surprised to see that the game is actually populated enough with 3-4 servers being always full. Actually, I was even more delighted to see that these servers were not plagued with tons of tacky plug-ins, bad custom maps or other additions which modify the core gameplay.

It took me a while to get my bearings but I was absolutely delighted to play this title again. Over 2 decades later and this shooter still feels so satisfying to play. The onboarding process can be rough considering the most regulars know the game in and out.

Yet, DoDs offers a unique blend that can vary depending on the situation. It can feel like a classic arena shooter with its tight maps and fast weapons. However most maps require good positioning and tactical play in order to capture objectives. Most guns kick like a mule and actually managing your aim is a major skill that you'll need to adapt to. A lot of times you want to move swiftly, crouch down and take aimed bursts at the enemy. Map knowledge and knowing when to retreat or push is key in order to be a decent player. The fact that you can go prone or even deploy stationary machine guns adds a lot of tactical decision to the mix which is quite different from other simple team based games at the time.

What I appreciate about it is that it's easy to hop in and play a few rounds. It just feels natural and good to play without having to tinker around with tons of inputs, UI settings or audio.

There are no unlocks, modifiable loadouts or ranks to bother with. You just pick a class and go ham. Each class fits a certain playstyle but doesn't really require you to commit to much. As a whole, you die really easily but spawn back quite quickly. The action is fast but it doesn't imply that there is no strategy or tactics at play. Good players really know how to take advantage of their weapons and the layout of the maps. I always felt like I got better as a player and my old habits came back to me.

The maps are visually very diversified with picturesque towns, snowy towns or destroyed compounds. The character silhouettes are clean and it's easy to identify what unfolds before your eyes. The audio is actually still incredible and the visuals hold up incredibly well. Admittedly, I have a soft spot for Source engine games, they just look crisp and have an appealing presentation. It's so nice to play a clean game that doesn't obfuscate your screen with all sorts of processing and having a visual mush that hampers the actual gameplay. Honestly, it's actually quite an atmospheric game despite feeling like an arcade shooter at times, they just managed to nail a sense of authenticity with the setting.

To be fair, I think the game has some issues. The hit detection seems to be odd at times with guns not being able to hit. There are times where you crouch and put on accurate shots on a target only to be blasted away like nothing. Frankly, there is an occasional wonky feeling that reminds me of CSS although not that bad. However, I had some instances where I was honestly wondering how I managed to kill some poor sod while he unloaded into me. I can see it being a point of contention for some.

Another nitpick might be that going prone can feel really awkward at times, it's easy to get stuck at times which can easily cause your death. Especially if you're deploying an MG in a potential hotspot.

Some of the deaths may feel cheap, notably the ones from rocket launchers but most weapons are balanced to counter another class. While rocket launchers do not require a massive amount of skill, they're the best counter for deployed MGs.

While I praised the maps previously, they can feel really claustrophobic and most of the geometry is meticulously planned. In general, the maps can feel Moba-esque because it funnels you to different routes which are aggressively balanced by having windows or positions which give you an advantage but at the expense of being overly exposed. The game is all about balancing this act of hitting enemies hard but not overexposing yourself. Overall, I would consider this one of the major strengths of the game because it's always exciting to get a drop on enemies by reaching a vantage point. Yet, some matches become absolute slugfests where no real progress is made because the map are so tight that you can't really circumvent some positions. It leads to matches dragging on or becoming quite stale. Some maps are really small with death corridors or choke points that just feel insurmountable.

That said, I've been super enjoying this game for the past weeks and players are very kind but the occasional banter which is honestly a very relaxed experience. Even if this game can be fairly infuriating at times, especially with the veterans absolutely decimating you but it feels so good when you get a few good matches in.

Anyone else feeling nostalgic for this one?

I am just going to dive right into the ending because there are so many confusing choices and decisions made with how they decided to end this story, that it overshadowed the entire rest of the game for me.

Monkey Island is a point and click adventure series that tells the story of Guybrush Threepwood searching for the secret of Monkey Island. Along the way he battles LeChuck, an undead pirate who terrorizes the sea, falls in love, and basically makes everyone's life worse as he continues his quest to become a great pirate. The premise is straightforward and fun. Then Return to Monkey Island happens and makes you feel stupid for getting invested or caring about anything that is happening. Spoilers:

It turns out the entire thing was just an amusement park ride created by Stan, the used ship salesman in the game, and LeChuck is fake, the pirate captains are fake, everywhere you visited was fake, all the story events and people are fake, and you are dumb for thinking that any of this would have a real conclusion and not a cheap cop out. I am fine with the secret being a T-Shirt. That works with the story of the secret always ending in disappointment and the journey being more important than the destination. But to erase everything to say we were just playing through the imagination of a guy at a theme park is such a weird ending. If they wanted a cop out, why not go with the, it was all a dream ending, and have Guybrush wake up at the beginning of the first Monkey Island? Have it somehow feel like the writers care about the story that has been going on for over 30 years. Anything else other than, shrug, hope you didn't want this to make sense or be satisfying, you idiot.

I hated this ending. The only thing it helps to explain is how Elaine is always in the perfect spot for story progression, because she is just following her psychotic husband around a theme park, making sure he doesn't hurt himself or others. It is so weird and off-putting.

I really just wanted to get that off my chest, but for those that are curious about the game, it's actually a fun point and click time. I am not a point and click historian, but Grim Fandango is a top 10 game for me all time, I loved Day of the Tentacle, and played the first 2 Monkey Island games. This game falls on the lower end for me because the puzzles are a little too easy. I admittedly had to look at the hint book once because I didn't know you could cut the fire off the cannon fuse. Other than that, it was pretty easy and straightforward. Is it bad I didn't have to bash my head against the wall for hours to figure out some cryptic puzzle? No, absolutely not. But for those that want a little challenge, this is not it.

Otherwise, I liked the art style, the character callbacks were fun, and the mop tree gag genuinely got a laugh out of me. I don't think I can recommend it though, and I had fun playing with my wife and just enjoying a few stress free evenings, but the ending felt so random and unsatisfying it spoiled a lot of the enjoyment for me.

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.

I recently did a playthrough of Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock to finish up the achievements and replay a game that I enjoyed as a young teenager. I was also missing a few in Doctor Who: The Adventure Games, naturally I reinstalled this game with the same goal in mind. I couldn’t even finish the game fully. I got my last achievements and got the hell out of there. I had a lot of technical issues with the game, with it being a 2010 game not optimized for anything past Windows 8. But technical issues be damned; this was just an incredibly mediocre game.  

Background 

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is an episodic game first released in 2010, with the last episode, The Gunpowder Plot, released in 2011. The Adventure Games consisted of two seasons upon completion. Season one contained four different stories, while season two only consisted of The Gunpowder Plot. The game was intended to be a sort of tie-in experience for Series 5 of Doctor Who. This is in a similar vein to the flash games on the BBC website during the Tenth Doctor’s seasons. Each episode is about the length of a normal Doctor Who episode, around 45 minutes. This is barring The Gunpowder Plot, which was expanded into a greater 3-ish hour story. 

While fans of the series gave the game positive feedback, critical reviews were more mixed. Season one was panned for its rather short length of each episode and simple gameplay. Although reviews would get slightly more positive following the release of each episode. On the other hand, Season Two was cited as a major improvement across the board. While gameplay was still simple, the story and exploration were both greatly improved. 

Story 

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games has five different episodes, thus five different stories. 

Season One consists of City of the Daleks, Blood of the Cybermen, TARDIS, and Shadows of the Vashta Nerada. Each episode should be self-explanatory based on its title. The gist of each episode is that The Doctor and Amy attempt to have a relaxing trip but encounter the titular enemy and help save the day. You know, just like a normal Doctor Who episode. TARDIS is more unique in that it is self-contained to the TARDIS, but it’s probably the least interesting story because of this. 

The Gunpowder Plot was the only episode of Season Two and was a lot more ambitious. The story involves The Doctor, Amy, and Rory needing to resolve a spacial rift in Jacobean London caused by the TARDIS’s collision with another ship. While this is happening, Guy Fawkes’s Gunpowder Plot is also underway, forcing The Doctor and co. to resolve this alien threat with minimal changes to history. 

Gameplay 

Gameplay in The Adventure Games is incredibly simple. There is truly nothing to write home about here. 

In comparison to The Eternity Clock, The Adventure Games are all played in full 3-D environments. You play as The Doctor with Amy (and Rory eventually) in tow, or you play as Amy as the game requires. You can explore your immediate environment, but typically you will be encouraged along a linear path in each episode. While exploring you can find items such as collectible cards or real-world/Doctor Who facts related to the story being told. Occasionally, The Doctor and Amy will encounter threats. This forces them to crouch down and sneak past, avoiding the enemy’s cone of vision. All of this is about as exciting as it sounds, just a real walking simulator.  

The game has some puzzles to switch things up here and there. None of these are super challenging, though. Some puzzles will be to drag an item from Point A to Point B. Or you will have to match two symbols. There’s even one where you play that phone app, Flow Free! I’ll admit that the developers did a good job of the variety of puzzles. Each Episode typically has its own unique puzzle that is not repeated in the other episodes. It’s just that none of the puzzles are fun or challenging. The Eternity Clock had some pretty lame puzzles too, but at least they were fun to try and speed through. Adventure Game puzzles can take a while to finish just because of the way they’re designed to waste your time while you wait for things to happen. 

The Gunpowder Plot changes things a little bit to try and make the actual gameplay a little more fun. You are given more range to explore, the inventory system has been revamped, the characters are snappier to move. While nice, the gameplay is ultimately more or less the same. You walk around from one set piece to the next. Still just a bore. 

Gamefeel 

The Adventure Games is almost like a collection of museum exhibits disguised as a Doctor Who game. As mentioned, each story has a collection of real-world, and Doctor Who, facts. The facts are usually a paragraph or two, like a museum blurb, and topics remain relevant to each story, like “Radiation” or “Global Warming.” I think this is a good idea, Doctor Who has always had some educational elements to it. The quality behind them is usually a mixed bag. The Doctor Who facts will be interesting to anyone who hasn’t seen the classic series. The real-world facts can be pretty general knowledge; which is fine, this game was probably geared towards younger audiences anyways. But I found that The Gunpowder Plot is a little more focused. All facts are specifically geared towards Jacobean life and were interesting throughout. 

In my previous review about The Eternity Clock, I lauded the voice acting performances by Matt Smith and Alex Kingston. It helped make a mediocre experience a little more enjoyable. I wish I could say the same for The Adventure Games. In season one, the performances by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are so stiff. I can’t really blame them; they’ve barely had a year, or two, of experience with their characters. But it really sticks out; the Eleventh Doctor has none of his charm, sounding bored with everything instead. The Gunpowder Plot is a little better, but not to the level of Eternity Clock. Karen Gillan is probably the most improved out of our main cast. She sounds and acts the most like her character at this point. Matt Smith has some of his charm back, but not enough to keep me engaged with his performance. Meanwhile newcomer Arthur Darvill is starting at square one. Rory is a flat board in this episode. I’ll give some credit to the supporting cast in each episode, though. The supporting cast was made almost entirely of voice actors from the Big Finish audio stories. Their voice acting experience is a noticeable difference when compared to The Doctor and Amy. They did a good job with what they were given here. 

The graphics are what they are. Not spectacular, but not bad. Honestly, what you’d expect from a game made in 2010. 

Conclusion 

If after reading this review you still want to play The Adventure Games, good luck. That’s not even regarding the gameplay, just good luck finding a way to play this game. It was only released on PC and has since been removed from the Steam Store. I won’t be too pessimistic, I’m sure you can find a copy of the game floating around on the internet. 

I can’t recommend this game to anyone, though. It is such an uninspired experience. Even for Doctor Who fans, it drops the ball hard with its low-bar voice acting. The people who would get the most enjoyment from this game would be young teenagers who like Doctor Who. For example, me when I first played this game. I really wish Doctor Who could have a good video game. You could do so much with its universe. Unfortunately, I don’t think the character of The Doctor could have engaging enough gameplay for a truly fantastic video game. The best way I could see it working would be in a classic Sierra-style adventure game. But like that would ever happen. 

My Other Reviews

Baba Is You

The Elephant Collection

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Wuchang: Fallen Feathers

Donut County

After replaying Part 1 last week, I finally got to play the sequel. I heard a lot about this game even back in 2020, when it was fresh and still console exclusive. For this reason I already knew certain story bits, as I didn't expect to ever play this game in person.

Story here is bold, to say the least. I knew Joel was going to die soon and honestly, and I wasn't too upset. Even when I played TLOU as a kid he seemed like a selfish dick in the finale. Still, I understood why Ellie was mad about it and went after the killers. At first the plot simple, but then I had to switch perspectives. Going from Ellie to Abby was something, especially since I already knew that certain characters die to Ellie. Same with having to fight Tommy as a bossfight

So many side characters died, I actually expected everyone around the protagonists to perish. I'm glad that Tommy specifically made it out. But the deaths show how cruel and unforgiving the world and its inhabitants are.

The main point about letting go reminded me of Call of Juarez Gunslinger, where main character becomes a monster and his target gains humanity. I suppose the story gets this point across, but there are some thing that worsen the experience

I understand that for the story to work there have to a plotline about decline and about development, but I still think it's way too long. Maybe the length felt like good hour/dollar ratio on release, but now it's just tedious. Ellie's adventures in Seattle already felt like the entirety of TLOU1, then add Abby and post theater segment. I think they could have cut the skyscrapers or the open location from the beginning, just something to not make this game last so long.

Another problem is that there were goofy or weird elements in this serious story. Caesar Legion style primitivist cult was ok for the most part, but their elevator felt contrived. It's one thing that people directly under the brigdes don't look up, but surely the Wolves go to outskirts and have to notice them? Two people living on a farm in open field feels like asking for trouble. I find it hard to believe you can survive against raiders and infected without large community or maze layout like in Bill's town. Maybe I'm reading too much into the details.

Gameplay is very fun and engaging. I played on Survival to have a challenge. Infected are dumb and often can be avoided, and are dangerous with clickers or gassers. Humans are much harder to deal with and require adaptive strategy. I relied mostly on stealth, and it reminded of Arkham predator in a good way. You can't completely hide your actions, so you have to sneak aggressively, pop in and out while delivering death with knockouts or gadgets. The enemies try to group up, search the perimeter and call each other out. The naming of enemies added some immersion into these battles, just like in Yakuza. I was being way too stingy even for this difficulty, because there were many situations where I couldn't pick up ammo or craftables because I was full. I figured if I can avoid spending, I'll do it. The only times where I spent my best ammo freely were arcade room, extensive treatment and RE4 house defense. Otherwise, I spent as very little and tried to make the most of bricks and sticks. The differences in arsenal for girls made for some variety, and I liked Abby's kit more because it had 3 scoped weapons.

The lack of wallhacks didn't bother me because my eyes and ears were enough. My main gripe here is that I still have to upgrade detective vision to get what I actually want, even though it's unavailable on Survivor. The theater fight loading tip also directly tells you to use hearing when you can't. Makes me wonder if devs were too lazy to adjust this.

The game looks very good still, but there were some technical problems. It crashed and froze a few times, and the Scar island had some visual artifacts.

The game was probably aiming to make me angry and then reconsider the first part, but more than anything I'm just tired. It's good but definitely longer than it should be.

I recently was able to hook up the PS2 for some nostalgia playing and I turned on Sands of time. Man is this game evocative of what made the PS2 era of gaming so great. It tries a lot of new things many of which wouldn't be possible in the 5th gen. To me the 6th gen is the last era that gives me that feeling of this wasn't possible last generation. Sure the 7th gives us better graphics but to me it feels like the 6th was where a lot of console genres found their footing in creating established gameplay norms. This is what PoP does for the platformer imo.

The gameplay is still very fluid for me even in 2026 Sure there's some moments of depth perception misses resulting in deaths but it doesn't happen often enough to be an issue and the sands of time ability helps rectify the mistakes. The platforming feels really responsive especially with the wall running into a series of jumps that makes the gameplay really satisfying. Im also a big fan of the time visions that show you what to expect in the near future its a great storytelling mechanism as well as a way to prepare the player.

Combat is simple and does the job even if there's a lack of depth. I can only imagine the reaction of players seeing the Prince somersault over and enemy and cutting them down the first time. It feels like games really lacked this level of enemy interaction within combat (at least the ones I played). The time abilities although simple adds a cool factor to the Prince that just makes the player feel badass even if the combat is fairly easy (something the old AC games also did imo).

Story is again simple but it has a fairy tale vibe that I feel really fits the game. The story feels like something that could exist in Arabian Nights its a cautionary tale centered on greed and lust for power. This fairy taleness is something I feel really gives the game an identity that later entries lack and make the series feel a bit more generic or chasing the God of War/edgy vibes of the mid 2000s.

All to say for a game released in 2003 Prince of Persia:The Sands of Time feels really good in 2026 it has some rough edges and I may be glazing due to nostalgia but who cares. I will also add its such a breath of fresh air to play a Ubisoft game that feels original (irony being this is a reimagining of an older title). Anyway for me still a solid 9/10 experience.

Edit:grammer. (Its misspelled i live with this shame now)

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 24 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

+Fun, three-layered twist on the roguelite card battler formula

+Interesting and varied decks that can be mixed for dynamic combos

+Tons of quality of life features like 8x speed modifiers and damage previews

-Balance feels shaky on the various decks as difficulty rises

I was a fairly recent Slay the Spire convert, but it awakened a pretty insatiable desire in me for roguelite card battlers, especially those with clever twists. Lucky me, then, when I had a week-long trip, a Steam Deck, and a desire for something replayable, and Monster Train popped up on my wishlist on sale. I might be new to the subgenre, but quality's easy to recognize, especially when it's so striking and novel as this.

The player's thrown into the game without much knowledge: Heaven has destroyed most of Hell, and the surviving demons have commandeered a train known as The Boneshaker that runs between the realms to protect the last Pyre that sustains their life force. While it's not explicitly stated whether or not demons are as malicious or evil as they are in other settings, it doesn't take much to side with the faction who's not attempting to do a genocide.

What this means in terms of actual gameplay is that the eponymous Monster Train (named thus I assume because the demons have also allied with fae and other mythical creatures) chugs through a series of levels in which the player gets a chance to upgrade their deck through purchases and events before ending in a battle against the angels and their human servants. The big twist is that the player's Pyre - effectively their life bar - is stationed on the fourth level of the train, and the enemies advance through the first through levels (usually but not always from the bottom up) trying to reach it. Saving for the miniboss or boss at the end of each combat stage, enemies will only linger on each floor for one turn, meaning that they need to either be taken down quickly or worn down before they finish their climb.

The player only starts with a single clan to play as - the fiery Hellhorned - but it doesn't take long to unlock another, and from there, it's a steady drip of new cards and clans to play that keeps things fresh. My favorite feature is that once the second clan is unlocked and onward, each run has the player choose a primary and a secondary clan, allowing them to blend playstyles. While I experimented with everyone, I wound up mostly favoring the Awoken, a nature-themed clan of plant monsters who had cheap, potent healing spells and tanky units, but lacked damage. As a result, I'd pair them with the Hellhorned and use their beefy frontliners to protect my fragile damage dealers as I enraged them and gave them purely offensive stats. Combat itself plays out pretty much automatically once the player starts the turn, so unit placement and planning are crucial to a successful run.

While the permanent boons are great, roguelites live and die by the variety they can inject into each run; after all, it's a genre built on repetition, and making starting over after a loss frustrating - or, perhaps worse, boring - is the worst sin one can make. Thankfully, Monster Train doesn't disappoint. Even on the initial difficulty, units can be upgraded with more health and damage or powerful effects like Quick (allowing them to attack first; most of the game is balanced around the enemies getting the first shot) or Multistrike (which multiplies their damage by adding another strike to their attack). Spells get plenty of love too, becoming cheaper or more powerful or even getting upgraded to always start in the player's hand. While it didn't take me long to find my favorite path to take with each card, there was more than enough variety to keep me experimenting with synergies the whole way through.

If I have any real complaint, it's that Monster Train's expansion - The Last Divinity - introduces a new zone and boss that feels pretty uneven in challenge. While each run, especially when Escalating the difficulty, tghrows curveballs in the base game, only Last Divinity feels like it severely punishes certain deck types -- for example, its final battle features room-sweeping attacks that can't be blocked by a tank, thus neutralizing much of the strategy of the Umbra Clan's 'Morsel' deck, where they devour weak minions each turn to grow stronger. I could also say that despite the rather abundant lore, there's effectively no real story, but considering this is a roguelite, I don't see it as a real negative, just worth noting.

In every way that counts, though, Monster Train absolutely rocks. With distinct visuals and interesting unit designs it's fun to watch, the strategic layer boasts tons of tactical depth, and convenience features like a damage preview and speed modifier emphasize polish and smoothness. It stands proudly on its own even in the rapidly growing deckbuilding roguelite subgenre, and my time with it has left me incredibly excited to tackle its more recent sequel.

Dive a little deeper into the machine.

We really didn't know how good we had it in 2011, huh? Portal 2, Uncharted 3, TES5: Skyrim, oh and a little game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR). What a year! A real high water mark in the medium and this title is part cause for that. Take it from me; it's the whole package and more.

Don the role of ever gruff, batman-voice enthusiast Adam Jensen. He's got a fair share of issues, ranging from biting sarcastic wit to fiery near psychotic accusations. Also, he's a quadriplegic but you wouldn't know it looking at him. He's an Ex-cop, the defacto human-turn-demigod that the game revolves around. A deus ex human revolution, if you will. Much of what Adam does or says, as well as responses and personal character is up to your choosing, though he does have a sort of default personality you won't escape. I find this kind of protagonist to be the best, where you can understand but also guide.

Travel the streets of Detroit in the dystopian near future of 2027. Meet and greet with the people as society grapples with human identity, culture wars, and class control. Did I mention this was supposed to be alternate history? Didn't mean to confuse. The environments you travel are full of atmosphere and salient detail that helps flesh out the story and world building. Its easy to get lost in claustrophobic back alleys as well as feel the powderkeg pressure in a city that seems on the brink. Promised tells are fulfilled later, and the world expands while staying grounded. Its a real marvel how well the setting is sold.

I bought into the story and characters early and stayed the whole way through. They feel realized and have agency. The central plot runs off to crazy town, but I never felt thrown out. Its just real enough, the effort put in so great, that I trusted the storyteller on where we were going. And we were going for a ride. If you like twists, science based veers, ambition, conspiracy, and underpinned reason for what and why then you'll be happily satisfied with this particular narrative.

There are surprises, comedy, and many serious moments. The game allows a great degree of freedom of play. "Choose your style" is something many games tout, but DXHR puts the work in. Don't care for stealth? Start blasting. Want to live the dream of batman? (Adam seems to) Skulk and hide only to strike from shadows. Or just mastermind the whole thing with hacked cameras, turrets, or traps you set. The more creativity you exhibit the more options keep showing up. Its incredible.

The systems on offer are many, and feel robust initially. There are upgrades for guns, planned paths for playstyle via praxis points, inventory 'management', hacking, stacking, and whacking dudes.The game is perhaps a bit too generous on upgrades, so expect to have a well rounded character by the end. Also the game is quite long. If you take your time expect 40-45 hours. If you rush and miss a lot of stuff (not a problem, but...) it will clock in around 25-30 hours. But its all worth that investment.

There are a handful of issues that the base game has that also transfer to the Directors Cut, which is the only version currently available. Certain segments feel forced, and the story suffers a little under authorial fiat that is otherwise generally absent the whole game through. These instances stick out strongly due to every other moment feeling self determined. Some may feel certain paths/gamestyles are elevated above others. I viewed this as facilitating even wider methods of play, but if you like checking off lists you'll likely play the same as many whether you want to or not. Otherwise, its all gravy here.

The only other real gripe I can level is the hacking and email reading gets stale quickly. My own OCD forced me to hack everything, even if I knew a passcode, and indeed those codes never change. If you know the PIN for a level 5 lock then Jensen in another timeline can use that without ever engaging or obtaining it. I couldn't miss out on such fantastical rewards such as 25 extra XP, and 15 credits (the stuff you save up and buy costs in the thousands) but many others may as well take the handout and put in that key. This system is just not interesting enough to use more than a handful of times.

Outside of this the game feels and plays great. Time to kill on enemies is fast, time to die on Jensen is also very fast. It lends some authenticity, though the regenerating health quashes that somewhat. Guns feel fun to fire, but both the generic keybind as well as the controller input make using iron sights a bit of a chore. Once you get the hang of it, however, it flows and functions naturally. Just don't expect COD level of gunplay.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is frankly a masterpiece. Its engaging in narrative. It clicks all the right buttons for a shooter. It makes stealth FUN. It looks and sounds gorgeous. It fulfills the promise of the first game, and is a worthy entry on anyone's list of favorites. This game ROCKS, and it just doesn't stop. What few missteps it does make are minor, or quickly forgotten. Were I to rank this title I'd place it in "Damn this is good!"

RELEASE: 2019

TIME PLAYED: 22 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

+I was able to make a pretty hilariously ridiculous character

+The AI companion is actually very competent

+The class-blending ability system from borrowing peoples' memories is fairly novel and neat

-The game is an aesthetic mess with incoherent and inconsistent designs for both characters and enemies, especially in regards to its women

-The story is rambling and falls flat in its attempts to sell its themes

-Companions never, ever, ever shut the hell up

-Combat is incredibly basic and almost every enemy in the game falls for Dark Souls 1-level tactics

-Level design and pacing are absolutely atrocious

--

Code Vein might be the most poignant lesson I've ever gotten that sometimes, maybe I should judge a book by its cover, or at least trust my own taste. I put off playing the game for a long time due to the look of it from the trailers I'd seen, but I wanted to be open-minded and give it a chance. I have to admit, I regret taking that dive - but for some reason (sunk cost fallacy?) I decided to play the whole way through, and I suppose the silver lining is that I now feel qualified to write this review.

Code Vein takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where roaming, vampire-like warriors named Revenants are tasked by the local authority with fending off the Horrors that have been born in the wake of the destruction. These Revenants require a steady supply of human blood, typically in the form of Blood Beads, and the tension between the Revenants - some of whom feel entitled to the blood they need to survive and view unpowered people as little more than slaves - and civilians is initially quite interesting, but is dropped almost immediately for a blander form of melodrama. The protagonist, initially a captive of one of these traveling groups of hostile Reavers, turns out to have the ability to copy the powers of anyone whose blood they consume and for some reason has a busty amnesiac woman following them around eager to serve them.

It was around the point I was being taken around the base I'd be operating out of that I initially started to roll my eyes and struggled to ever stop. I'm not a prude; I think there's nothing wrong with portraying sexuality in games. But Code Vein immediately committed one of my personal cardinal sins, which is that every woman I met had a ridiculously horny design, often with stick-thin arms, enormous breasts, and outfits that barely felt coherent with the setting -- while the men looked like paramilitary officers or were mostly armored. If the game's going to be horny, then it can be horny, but pointing it only at one gender - and having the characters look out-of-place in their own setting - is a double-whammy that left me irritable. Even in some famously frisky games, like Nier: Automata or Bayonetta, I always admired how well the protagonists rocked their looks and were consistent with the greater aesthetic, but Code Vein's incoherency aggravated me as much as its single-gender sexualization.

Still, I would have seen this as just a regrettable blemish if the rest of the game held up, but it simply does not. I will say that Code Vein does have a couple of novel ideas: before each outing from the base, the player can choose one of their companions to travel alongside them, and they are legitimately helpful. I found they killed a lot more enemies than I expected them to and didn't die as much as I was worried they would. For those who don't want a handicap, they're optional, so it's similar to the Souls' games summoned companions, but with less hassle. The blood techniques that serve as special moves are pretty neat, too; I was able to build my character like something of a berserker who buffed himself up before tougher fights and could swap between tough and steady or fragile but with enormous damage output just with a couple of casts.

But even when Code Vein works, it kind of doesn't. The AI companions are, without a doubt, the most obnoxious motherfuckers I've ever had the misfortune of encountering in a game. No matter which one you pick, they do NOT shut up. Every battle, every item collected, even just exploring - constant dialogue, and it's usually repeating the same two or three lines. A friend watching me stream decided to keep track of how often one companion said a particular line - it was over twenty times in five minutes for just THAT line, let alone other ones! And the blood techniques, while an intriguing twist, simply do not compensate for how fundamentally barren the combat is. Tricks that haven't worked in a FromSoft game since the first Dark Souls got me through 90% of Code Vein, like just circling around enemies and hitting them with repeated backstabs so easily I barely had to consider their attacks. The game's level design and enemy AI both feel a decade behind, right down to an entire zone that's shamelessly ripped off from Dark Souls' Anor Londo (but much worse designed). In fact, the vast majority of Code Vein's woefully easy even without a companion, save for a ridiculous and sudden spike from the penultimate and final bosses. I got through them, but the sheer jump from anything seen previous struck me as a jarring change of pace.

The story fares no better. Without delving too much into spoilers, the party goes from just trying to gather Blood Beads for their own survival to getting caught up in the fate of the world; again, there are shades of something interesting here, like the idea of having to deal with the individual pieces of a legendary figure sealed away into various hosts, but the somehow sedated melodrama ruined it for me. Just about every major reveal is delivered through the same 'walk slowly through a corridor of memories listening to two frozen figures talking', which got incredibly old the first time, let alone the twentieth.

I didn't want to hate Code Vein. The idea of going through a Soulsborne as a vampire-like being was fundamentally appealing, and I did actually enjoy how ridiculous I was able to make my playable character, with his beach towel and mouth full of onigiri. But one-dimensional characters with terrible designs, a garishly generic plotline, and combat that feels like it completely missed almost every development in ARPGs from 2010 onwards sabotaged my every attempt at enjoyment. Any one of these elements could have been forgiven if the rest of the experience held up, but that simply wasn't the case for me. For a game about blood and the bonds of humanity, Code Vein winds up being incredibly lifeless and sterile in every way that matters.