Games I Beat in 2023
The Year I Decided To Game Again
List items
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5/10
Very fun idea, randomly running into a strange cast of characters while you make your way to the border to escape... war-torn America? It loses sight on it's own gimmick, introducing interesting people but failing to cash out on them in any meaningful way on top of zero world building, despite news channels and propaganda everywhere, it doesn't go to any lengths to explain what's going on, who the two competing political parties are... or much of anything besides one bomb that went off 10 years ago or something.
Fun moments, awkward game but also pretty original,
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8/10
This shoot man game is good but not the best.
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8/10
I like this shoot man game the most but every second person is a hacker.
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7/10
Great concept and I like how "realistic" this game can be. Whatever that means. But this game also requires a lot of time, a lot of luck and endless runs for resources. I've had some really fun moments in this game and I think back when I had endless amounts of time on my hands, this would've been awesome.
But I don't so.
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8/10
Similar situation where this is a game that needs a lot of time and I guess I'm an adult so that's a tall order, combined with online-coop-have-to-coordinate-with-my-friends type shit it just makes games like this less approachable. Despite all that Valheim is really fun and rewarding. It's endlessly entertaining to slowly reach out and explore new continents, sailing across the ocean singing shanties and fighting giant mosquitoes. At some point the game starts looking samey and resource gathering is annoying (can't teleport iron...?? why?) but before all that is a really special game that can be really cozy and calm at one moment and OH GOd there are GIANTS crushing my base with their bare feet I'll be right back.
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10/10
Hang in there, cutie.
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8/10
Hey, I love this game and I love the series but it's definitely dated. Awkward animations, visual glitches and awkward combat sequence do not hold up, especially given how leaps-and-bounds better the sequel is on all accounts.
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7/10
Idk I gave God of War an 8/10 and I definitely feel as if this one is the lesser of the two in many ways. Going from Big Bad Kratos to GOW1 was a huge leap and a completely different take on the IP. The sequel I feel maintains the level of quality, improves on actual story and character development but loses much of the magic the first game encapsulated.
I feel as if the sequel didn't push the envelope as much as I would have liked. While compelling, I feel as if the gameplay loop is exactly the same as the first with the added bonus of one new weapon. Getting fun combos off feels solid, parrying is satisfying and the game is well balanced; you will die and bosses will fuck you up for at least a few attempts. But it's nothing you haven't seen before and I'm glad I didn't play the original in preparation for this one, I feel like it would have been even more underwhelming if I was practised with the combat system. One new weapon (underwhelming) and a few new, mostly gimmicky, abilities wasn't enough to breathe much needed life/inspiration into the continuation. I heard during the development that everyone realized the game wasn't really fun and had to make major changes. Hearing that doesn't surprise me much.
But all that to say, I like Kratos and I like seeing Arteus grow and develop, I like seeing my fun friends from the OG game and I like the new people, good and bad, who we meet in this installment. You go to some cool places and do some cool things and I cried and laughed and was impressed with the attention to detail the team chooses to spend on little things you could miss. It's well crafted, the score is amazing and the cutscenes are shot like a theatre play where spotlights come out of nowhere and people step away during monologues. It's absolutely a labour of love and it shows in the detail of the world and the care for which each character as the story progresses.
GoW1 awoke something in me, I did every side quest and then immediately starting playing the OG ones. I almost wanted to go back and play it again as soon as it was done. I beat the hardest boss and put a GoW background on my phone for a while. The sequel is very good, but it doesn't inspire that same feeling. I had more fun mainlining it aside from the important looking quests.
Worth the price of admission to see this story continue.
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4/10
Kinda fun to play a game that wouldn't be out place in a run down arcade.
Definitely not enough meat and potatoes to warrant paying anything more than $5.
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7/10
I don't know what it is about Heavy Rain that makes it so fucking "shareable". Where anyone is like hey lets pop in a game together and play through it, haha, couch coop! for some reason Heavy Rain spawns in the room and there's no other choice. It's similar enough to a movie to get a free pass I guess, it also helps that it was written by a madman and voiced by people being held at gunpoint. It's also really endearing and original (at the time) despite the "gameplay" being what it is.
It also makes it's own memes for you.
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4/10
Gotham Knights had a poor release with a slew of mouth breathing idiots comparing screenshots between this and Arkham Knight and saying THESE GAMES ARE 10 YEARS APART like that means anything. It's impossible not to compare the two but the issues with this game are so much deeper than comparing draw distance and rain effects. If anything, Gotham Knights is a fine looking game and, depressingly, the first game I played to completion on my new PC.
So, fine, graphics. The city looks alright and most of the characters look alright. Jason looks like a Fable character and Tim Drake looks like a Sim I imported, but everyone else from Mr Freeze to The Penguin to Barbra Gordon look fine and are immediately recognizable. No visual glitches aside from clipping hair and capes though one word I would use to describe the whole style of the game would be uninspired. No one's coming in with surprisingly looks or bombastic effects leaving the world, enemies and boss fights as totally forgettable.
Gameplay is 99% mashing the punch button while three other goons kick at the back of your head. Combat lacks any kind of impact or feedback, you'll be mashing for a good two minutes on an enemy and then they'll suddenly keel over. Each "faction" has a regular mob, a shooter person, a BIG GUY and maybe a lil gremlin person to mix it up. That's the game play loop, there's a few bosses but they're either copy and pasted 6 times or just another massive HP bar to grind down. Mr Freeze had a big world event which was cool but then again Clayface's last mission was so boring and such a chore to bash square against I almost didn't finish it. Even navigating the world is hard, with the game being just TOO sensitive to the point where I always overshoot interacting with smaller items/opening chests or being totally unable to vault over some railing/getting stuck being perched on a ledge while baddies punch at my ankles. It's not smooth and it's awkward. Navigating the city is just as awkward, with driving being x0.5 faster than running no matter how many SPEED LINES you put along the outside of the screen and gliding is somehow the slowest way to get around? Who decided this shit, man.
Story is boring at the best times and totally convoluted or predictable the rest of it. Batman is dead, fuck, I guess I need to find it in myself to take the mantle and use the skills that were imparted on to me by BATMAN for years-... oh he's been resurrected and single-handedly saved the day before dying AGAIN. Haha, I guess that's a really fulfilling story! I guess that's fine I can just be the sidekick again (:
Ridiculous man, if you're going to make a story about the Court of Owls fucking tell the story instead of pulling in the League of Shadows and also the Freaks and The Mob and The Regulators are kinda here too idk TURF WAR! What an stupid way to handle a story about a SECRET SOCIETY than have them openly killing people in broad daylight full owl masks slaying people in the streets just like every other gang in Gotham. Boring. Batfamily and Alfred are also boring no one does ANYTHING COOL!!! Everyone just smirks and chuckles at each other then they fight and DISAPPEAR, TALIA JUST TURNS INTO SMOKE AND RUNS AWAY WHERE IS MY CLOSURE!! All this so Bruce can come back, ice my enemies and send me a new updated death vlog 2.0 idc fire the batjet at ME, Bruce.
Co-op would have been the only way to make this no quite painful, but even still you would have had to grind and deal with the same boring "5 waves of regular enemies, okay next cut scene" game in the end anyhow.
It's not totally fair to compare this to Arkham, but of course you're going to, you're also going to compare this to modern open world superhero games like Spider-Man which is a masterclass on how to do this type of shit. The world feels alive, crime pops up naturally and you feel compelled to do it, it tells a great single player story and has combat that makes you feel COOL. In Gotham Knights you punch big man for 3250 HP and he drops MATERIALS that I can use to add MODIFIERS to my Batsuit aaarrraAAAAAh borrringgg !!!!!!!!
This game has the bones to actually be something interesting, if navigation and combat were revamped it would have done a lot to service the whole product. Removal of MMORPG elements would also be nice but it makes it even more annoying to see something with promise shit the bed in so many different ways.
All this just so I could add another line of text to my Batman notepad of Bat-media I've consumed. I like this IP man, I cannot imagine a passive fan or someone casually picking this up and enjoying it they don't even tell you who Talia is or what happened to Jason, the dude is always just making jokes about crowbars. There weren't even any fun little references... no Kiteman mission or we find Bruce's pink suit or something.
Nevermind, 3/10.
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8/10
I like me some space man roguelike cowboy shoot em up spider-man swingin' behold my collection of drones n turrets how many bosses are you gonna spawn this time bucko shape memory puzzle portal makin low poly hi-fi lo-fi youre-too-slow-fi video games.
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5/10
Heavy Rain is responsible for this, I guess. Yet somehow the writing is worse? I can't explain that phenomenon to you, I'm sorry.
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4/10
It's the time of year where I start artificially lengthening the list.
Man they really made me sad with this one. They killed one of my favorite games, my go-to, fits-like-a-glove shooter game... they changed it all up and made it predatory and put in a SEASON PASS ugh it hurts to think about.
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9/10
Online coop portal puzzles are still really fun.
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10/10
Hour 3: Wow heh... these Werewolves are pretty tough... maybe if I level up garl-
HOUR 30 : I AM LITERALLY JOTARO! TIME FREEZE AS I STAND IN THE CORNER AND LET MY 5 CATS BRING YOUR SOULS TO MEEE. I CANNOT SEE THE FLOOR FROM ALL THE ANGELS OF DEATH, GIANT SKELETONS AND ANCIENT ENTS SOARING INTO MY BLACK HOLE OF DESTRUCTION. ONE MORE RUN! THEN ONE MORE! THEN ONE MORE! THEN ONE M
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8/10
We Were Here is the gold-star of puzzle coop games. It doesn't have some broken marriage bullshit subplot with a BOOK and it has the respect to treat you like a grown-ass man, giving you HARD puzzles and if you can't figure it out then you can rot in that fucking castle corner 10000% CERTAIN that the game must be bugged?? maybe if we restart the game this puzzle will work?? nO>? I'm just THAT STUPID>>?
Anyway, this game is also very good but it's short af.
It was also totally free so I really cannot complain at all!
Thanks for free game!
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10/10
I don't know how exactly Larian Studios approaches game design but gee wizz they're doing something that companies worth billions of dollars cannot pull off. This is truly an anomaly, and I think the only way we could possibly get a game that has more mindfulness when it comes to player agency, choice and consequence is with the assistance of an AI "Dungeonmaster". And even then you would likely be lacking on intricate, emotional storytelling and expertly crafted characters. Baldur's Gate III is obviously a labor of love and it's remarkable in the true sense of the word.
It is not, however, perfect. Glitchy, hitchy at points and issues with story flow, Baldur's Gate almost gets a free pass because of everything else...? Act III takes a hit to it's overall quality with less cut-scenes, a rushed close and less-than-fulfilling ends to characters arcs. I could list a few more things but it wouldn't change the score or how I feel. Of course there's going to be glitches in a world of this scope, it should almost be expected and it even adds some character/humor to the moment and any story failures are forgotten next to side quest after side quest of quality. I don't think there was one quest that I felt was disrespecting my time; rewarding me if not with weapons and armor then with deep/hilarious characters or lore/tragic tales.
It's hard to nail me down to a game, I tend to eventually lose interest and wander from one to the next. Over 100 hours in Baldurs Gate and I would gladly go right back in to see where the alternative options would have brought me. To really push at the game in different places and see how it copes with my decisions. It's a game where everyone has different stories, different ways of accomplishing the same task, or maybe that task wasn't even there for you because you made a different decision earlier?! I heard BGIII was an "important" game just before I grabbed it (kicking RE4 to the wayside) and that does ring true. Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect and KOTOR are superb games but have about as much depth as Pajama Sam when held anywhere close to BG.
I think people are going to be talking about this game for a long time and it's one I'm happy I got to jump in to totally blind and really experience for myself. What a good year for video games.
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10/10
Coming right off Baldur's Gate might have been the perfect time to jump into this. As previously admitted, I stopped playing RE4 when BG3 dropped, but that doesn't for a second mean that I wasn't enjoying it. I was having a lot of fun but BG did what BG does and it consumed my life. Now that I've wrestled it back, RE4 took center stage again and it was the perfect pace and scope coming out of a gigantic and endlessly deep world like that.
RE is a very gamey game and those can be really entertaining if done well. It's got little missions and collectables and a firing range and bombastic bosses with cool one liners, it never takes itself too seriously and knows exactly what it is and what you came for; Leon S Kennedy.
Gunplay feels great, graphics are impressive, the tone and pacing can also really suck you in. Areas, especially towards the end of the game, could really get in your head as you'd peer down decrepit hallways with your gun at the ready. All the choices made absolutely provided RE4 the edge it needed to be an amazing remake. Any changes to characters were for the best and made them that much more likable and important.
Seeing RE4 get announced got me rolling my eyes, calling it a cash grab. And hey it definitely is, this could have been a whole new game and that'd be cool BUT people who obviously really loved the first one got together and made something 100% worthy of a remake of one of the best games ever made. That's a really impressive thing to say.
Now just link me to the mod that replaces Ada Wong's voice actress and I could cross this off as truly perfect.
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8/10
When Shigeru Miyamoto was first introduced to Breath of the Wild he spend seven weeks climbing the same tree. The game devs would desperately try to convince him to explore the rest of the plateau, but Miyamoto would not even respond. Shimmying up and down, climbing each branch, picking apples that would grow before his very eyes as the day/night cycles ran their course. When he finally jumped off the tree and stared off into the vastness of Hyrule, he cried.
Sometimes though, the trees are evil creatures and I think that's the biggest departure from BotW to TotK. Where once we walked in peace and innocent joy, there is now pain and suffering. Miyamoto picked up this sequel and, eager as ever to climb a tall woody plant, he ran towards the nearest one he could find. It beat him, shook him from it's branches, crushed him into the earth. Shigeru's world was rocked and he was forver a changed man. The concept of trust gone.
I'll list some things I like about this game! Number one the building is fun and becomes and endless source of entertainment. You can mess around and create whatever you can imagine. Zelda puts down a few expertly crafted systems such as HAND and REWIND TIME and lets you go buck wild. Making crazy spinny traps and super log, busted vehicles that rip themselves apart and solving puzzles in ways absolutely not intended. It's fun to test the engine and see how it will respond, it's cool to build massive vehicles and feel that you got somewhere you weren't supposed to be, or to clap an enemy over the head with a boulder tied to 3 rockets kill him instantly.
Hyrule is much more intricate than it was in the first game. I remember a large gripe I had was that there wasn't much to find in the world aside from the same 3 korok seed puzzles but they really added several different korok games to play on top of mini-games, caves, exploring NPCs... etc. There's no "random encounters" or anything as complex as that, but this world does feel more "alive" than the last one did, whatever that means.
Music was good, especially the last bit of the game. Still, the orchestral swells and dramatic BRRRRRZZZZZ techno horror from the depths added some great atmosphere to everywhere you explored.
That being said. I really am done with these games.
I've explored this world and even though they added the sky and depths, it feels largely recycled with same enemies, same combat and game systems throughout. Zelda is gone again, Ganon is here again and there are +100 shrines littered around with towers to climb to fill the map. Been there done that. Guess I'll visit the same cities as I did last time and unlock the same armor I did last time. Gotta remember to unequip my metal sword before I get struck by lightning... I want to go to new Hyrule please. I would like to meet new versions of these characters and see what cool new style you got!
And if you don't know how to tell a story in an open world setting then maybe you shouldn't be making this kind of game. I've spoken to those around me at length about how disappointing this story is so I won't go on for too long, but wow. It's almost offensive how every Sage has the exact same lines and flashback. It's ridiculous how every sage pledged allegiance to Zelda and how NO ONE knows who Ganon is or what this stupid war is. You run around the world to find these geoglyphs in random order, making it possible to find the later one first, ruining the plots progression... It's a lazy attempt at story telling and for a game franchise worth billions of dollars it's really not acceptable.
Bring me back to smaller-scale Zelda experiences. Take this attention to detail and innovative gameplay and put it in a more guided experience. Take a few minutes at the start of the game to build CHARACTERS and SETTING so that I give a shit about what's happening and lets go visit a new Hyrule with a new style. This was certainly fun while it lasted but I think if they made another game that was set in this world/engine I would hold off.
The last 15 minutes of the game is gas, fun and difficult bosses with badass cutscenes and music. Ganon's boss bar refilling off the screen? Battling an army with my sage friends! So cool! I wish the rest of the game had that energy, it would have been that much better for it. Instead it plays it so so safe and I will totally forget everyone's names and motivations in a few months, just like I did with everyone in BotW.
Dragon Zelda is so ugly to look at btw, lol
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6.5/10
Everyone's talking about Spider Man 2 and I don't have the cool new console so... I figured I'd play through the Miles DLC that I never got a chance to play. It totally scratched that itch for me but it also falls short in many ways.
Easy game lol. I didn't unlock several systems and unlocked-yet-still-never-used even more. I don't need to go invisible when I can kick everyone's ass? I don't need to be able to throw down 3 crash test dummies to fight alongside me when I can solo every fight without taking a hit. I don't need weird gravity bombs and I don't need stun grenades. These also seem like the inventory items of the guy from MDK and not Spiderman? I don't want to fight with crash test dummies I am kicking these guys asses and pasting them to the wall like a fucking SPIDER-MAN would??
Story is so predictable you could guess every "plot twist" within the first twenty minutes. Every character that's introduced is an overly-nice millionaire or my best friend who is keeping some secret from me, there is no tension when everyone's cards are played face up. Miles is a sub-par Spider-Man and I don't want to be subpar, it's not entertaining to listen to a kid try and fail to be snarky when I could just play as Peter and have him actually making funny quips. It's not endearing to hear Miles tell everyone with a pair of ears how he doesn't thing he's GOOD ENOUGH to be Spider-Man. Even when he's winning he's barely scraping by or being saved by other people. Weird take on Miles with very little payoff and a borderline tragic end given how it closes out but Miles almost doesn't care? It's all very strange and makes me not like the kid.
So story and combat aside, it was nice to swing around NYC. It was cool to stop crime and zip around and despite being seven hours long it almost felt like it was TOO SLOW to tell the boring story it wanted to give to you. Still, I beat it and did all the side-quests (maybe 15) and had some fun being back in that world again. I almost want to play the new one just to get the taste out of my mouth, though...
And they're charging $65 DOLLARS for this??
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9/10
FUN GAME!
It's like playing a Saturday Morning cartoon. I could compare this to lots of older games and talk about all the references it makes but instead I'll just say that it is really refreshing to play a game that's #1 goal is to be fun. The combat is fun, the story is exciting, the characters are a blast, the music is exceptional, it's laugh out loud funny, the cutscenes are stunning and it doesn't take itself seriously in the slightest.
By the time you're finishing the game you've mastered a difficult/rewarding systemand teaming up with your best buds in a beautiful and vibrant world with NUTS boss fights. It's a real treat. Can't recommend it enough.
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8/10
Remedy Entertainment should be commended for doing whatever it is they're doing as a studio. Even if you're not a fan of Quantum Break, Control or Alan Wake (in what some people are now referring to as the Remedyverse) you cannot deny that they're making truly original choices when it comes to game design. Alan Wake II is a culmination of all these past lessons, combining the live action video aspects of Quantum and the world-shifting supernatural tropes of Control, while also adding twists of it's own. Alan utilizes his otherworldly ability of writing novels that can shape reality itself to fight back against The Dark Presence. Aided by new character FBI agent Saga Anderson, who comes with some interesting investigative abilities of her own, they meet at Bright Falls to solve a mystery thirteen years in the making.
Running on Remedy's impressive Northlight Engine, the world is truly stunning. Be it looking out over the sleepy town during sunset, running through a poorly lit forest at twilight or hauling ass through dreamscapes, it delivers over and over. Even swapping back and forth (or layering) live action video over the models does nothing but highlight just how photo-realistic the engine can run at. That being said, I hit my fair share of hitches while moving too quickly through certain areas and even managed to tumble through the games geometry (twice!) while trying to find a back door to a building.
In terms of the story, the game opens extremely strong, introducing us to Saga and her FBI partner Alex Casey. Sipping coffee, visiting quaint diners and investigating mysterious homicides, Alan Wake II shamelessly exhibits it's inspirations, same as the first game. As the story progresses, the fabric of reality begins to tear and it becomes more and more apparent that whatever happened in Bright Falls all those years ago is rearing it's shadowy head once more. Saga references the Case Board in her mind to piece together clues and profile potential suspects, allowing her to get closer and closer to the truth. She also utilizes shotguns to blow shadow zombies in half and crossbows to nail wolves in the skull! The game's cycle quickly devolves from investigative FBI procedures to mercing penumbra zombies while walking from A to B. There are things to do between A and B, but largely it doesn't really feel fulfilling. Around the world hidden caches require you to solve riddles and strange nursery rhymes require you place down dolls in the correct order. Rewards for both of these are unimpressive and typically grant you more enemies to fight, causing you to spend resources to gain resources. By the time I was close to the end of the game I was actively avoiding these "side quests" in order to make sure I didn't needlessly waste ammo or health items. Given that ammo, health or small character buffs are the only kind of reward to be found, it often felt like a waste of time to explore the large and beautiful area of Bright Falls. Checking out back every house, behind every door and around every tree largely rewarded me with nothing at all, making me wonder why some areas were that large to begin with. Bright Falls itself is several blocks large but has only three buildings you can enter. Everything else serves to hide a few boxes of loot or is purely for visual effect. Hunting around town/forests/random houses for loot isn't even particularly necessary, by the time I finished the game my pockets were full of ammo, pills, medkits and several different weapons, and my storage box was set to burst on the default difficulty.
Alan Wake returns (obviously) though he exists mostly in some other realm called the Dark Place. An ever changing nightmare, a loop on top of a loop on top of a spiral, where every corridor leads back to the beginning or to somewhere strange and horrifying. Exploring this place is about as fun as it sounds. Being assaulted by dark creatures, stumbling from hallway to hallway looking for a way out. In some cases though, Alan can use his writing ability to take control of the setting, nailing different plot points to a scene to unlock an exit, find some loot or somehow progress the story. Wake gains inspiration for these plots by watching his fictitious characters from his novels work their way through an investigation. This ends up being lots of standing around watching shadowy figures speak to each other. The visual effects in the Dark Place are impressive and, using insane set pieces similar to those from Control, will bend your brain in crazy ways. In the end though, it's a lot of mystery and symbology with little payoff. Alan is blown away over and over by how lost he is, how sad and hopeless he is, and by how his writing is effecting this world and how it's all his fault! People argue that this is because Alan Wake is a poor writer, so the writing in the game is designed to reflect that back at us. That seems a little too convenient, especially given the mediocre storytelling/ending to Control. Alan's part of the game also starts strong but then devolves to fighting shadows, slapping random plots onto scenes until one works and running into the same room over and over hoping something different happens this time while he sobs and people whisper in your ear.
This is when you settle into the meat and potatoes of the game; shooting shadow people and shining them with flashlights and other illuminating paraphernalia. The game tries very hard to be spooky and, in the beginning, I was pretty nervous! Once I realized that most zombies take three (3) shots to the head or two (2) shotgun shells to the chest the tension dissolved. Searching for the eerie entity in the woods quickly turned into me RUNNING through the trees, hunting my prey. Constant sudden flashes (i.e jumpscares) did little but slow me down and further highlighted the games inability to build tension naturally. I think there were two or three times I actually jumped a little which is a failure given how many times the game tries to pull one over on you. There are maybe 4-5 enemy types per character (Saga v Wake) and none of them are particularly creepy despite the games efforts and none of which are that hard to dispose of.
Gee whiz... I hear you saying. You're giving the game an 8/10? Even though you're listing a whole bunch of issues? YEAH! That's evidently what I do. I bitch about the games I like. I also need to be the voice of reason. Every review site is giving this 10/10 and calling it the next step of third person horror games and while it certainly pushes the envelope in many ways, it's not perfect and I would hesitate to call it amazing. The game is 30% live action but almost everyone, including Alan Wake, is Finnish and stumble over delivery or emphasize words strangely. The plot constantly swings back and forth trying to "fool" you by retconning it's own plot points or shifting things in ways you could not possibly have guessed because it's so nonsensical. I'm as much a fan of Lynch as anyone, but I feel like Wake spends too much time pretending it has anything especially deep to convey.
Still though, the setting is beautiful and pulls you in with it's small town charm. Some characters are genuinely fun and likable, and some even revisit from past games, more games than you'd expect! The commercials are back and weirder than ever and there's even a few short movies if you care to stand around and watch them. Remedy put in a lot of time and effort into this game and it's immediately evident. There may even be too much love. If the game was half as large and that much more focused as a result, the game could have gone from something impressive to something truly spectacular. Still though, I'm glad to revisit the world of Alan Wake thirteen years later, somehow, and to finally close the book (heh) on this particular story.
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10/10
1. I'm a bug
2. I need my orbs
3. I'm smart as FUCK
Cocoon presents it's characters, it's world and it's game mechanics then leaves you alone.
If you can't figure out how to drop that annoying fence to proceed then you're fucked! You will not get one clue, one hint or even a vague gesture on how to proceed. The game has done all it needs to do. It's doesn't surprise you or switch things up, it doesn't try and trick you. The answer has been there, you have the means and now you need to work it out.
The way Cocoon conveys what is required is insanely intelligent, you are running around on some strange alien planet but it's still almost instinctive to suss out what needs to happen and how it needs to be done. Much like Portal 2, the game will slowly and gently introduce new mechanics to you, ones that perfectly mesh together with the existing ones that then open new areas. The boss fights are cerebral as well, essentially high speed puzzles you need to solve in the moment, lest you get kicked out and have to start all over.
I cannot count how many times I sat there for a good few minutes, and suddenly went OH! I get it! and smoothly executed what I needed to do. That or quickly tore apart a puzzle as if I had done it before because I so perfectly understood the mechanics, the world and what was expected of me, all with zero spoken words.
And to top it off the game feels smooth to control, the alien music and sound effects are exceptional and the style/design is weird, biological and beautiful.
One of the best puzzle games I've ever played.
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8/10
Fun game! I've played all the DMCs but I've never been that guy to go back and work on perfecting combos and SSSing all over the floor (rude!). I like the ridiculous story and characters, the tight game play and over the top soundtrack and DMC5 delivers on every number. Especially after whatever DmC or whatever with that annoying Dante, it's always great to get zany moments like motorcycle weapons and moonwalking, combined with the Power Rangers-esque villains.
The inclusion of V was a net negative to the game, however, his cringe writing and boring playstyle really threw a wrench in the story. Thankfully, he only has maybe three playble missions and then he's sucked back in to daddy Virgil.
The story is bordering on utter nonsense and pacing is something racecars do but that's not really the point of these games. Still though, I would have liked a little more direction and character exchanges. Lady and Trish have been demoted to mascot characters? Weird.
There's also this weird online play? Where I'm fighting on one side of the fence and on the other size Jacob173 is playing as V and fighting his own enemies. We never meet and cannot interact but I can see he's getting S Ranks! I could not tell you why they spend the time adding a feature as useless as that.
Overall, fun times. I'm happy I was able to finally play through it.
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8/10
Freddie said Dead Space Remake looks and feels like he remembers the original game, and that says a lot about how good a job this game does staying true to the OG while also modernizing it. Dead Space came out 15 years ago (somehow) and when it came out I was floored by the amazing setting, unsettling enemies and above all, the plasma cutter and how it interacted with enemy limbs. It was all extremely novel and it solidified itself as one of the best horror games ever made, spawning a whole series.
Dead Space Remake subtly adds quite a lot of changes and content. Isaac speaks much more than before, characters have more lines and have deeper backstories, the pinning system introduced in DS2 has been brought into the first and the Ishimura is larger and contains more to do with side missions, areas to revisit with higher clearance and a reworked floor plan. All with zero loading.
There's even a new hidden alternative ending for beating it on NG+ that actually ties it to DS2 a bit more smoothly. And they re-hid the Peng Trophy! It's fun little things like that that show the team really has a lot of love for the original.
The sound design is something to mention, with unsettling strings and swelling orchestral moments but mostly it's deeply fleshed out ambient sounds. You can hear things skittering in the vents, screams coming from rooms ahead and the creaking of the ship as it falls apart.
Maybe it's because I have played through all of the Dead Space games before, however, that I don't find them to be scary at all. Maybe one enemy being where he shouldn't gave me a slight jump once, but other than that it's hard to be scared of something you're about to kill. I played on the default difficulty and only used the plasma cutter, getting the One Gun achievement. Despite the handicap, I died maybe seven times, most of which being me getting clipped by something in space. The enemies in DS, while unsettling, are hard to be scared by. There is no running away from them and I have a gun! So the game cycle quickly becomes zombie falls from ceiling, zombie loses all limbs, ammo pops out of his chest like a pinata, rise and repeat. Even the mini-bosses, The Brutes, are swiftly dealt with by using stasis and shooting the bright yellow sacks on their backs. By the time the game was over I had 8 health packs, over 100 rounds of ammunition and a bounce in my step as I surgically removed hundreds of arms and legs.
The story hits some low points as well, as you quickly become the gopher for the entire ship.
We need to send a distress signal!
But the distress emitter is gone...
I found it!
But the signal launcher is broken....
I fixed it!
But the hole to the launcher is blocked...
I cleaned it out!
But the antenna aren't pointed correctly to get a signal...
I oriented them correctly!
But there's no power...
etc etc etc
At some point you're just ticking off a laundry list. It adds to Isaac's character, he's an engineer and actually he's the ONLY engineer who's still breathing. It's fun to have to stop here and there to get things moving again but when it's failure after failure it gets a bit predictable and depressing. Thankfully the gameplay is fun so you can lock me in a closet with a few zombies and I'll still be having a great time painting the walls with their innards.
I hope they remake the sequel! Issues with the game pretty much stem from issues with the original game's design. I'd play the next remake in a heartbeat.
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9/10
IO Entertainment came back and revitalized one of my favorite game series. Absolution game out in 2009 and spit in the face of 47 and stealth shooters as a whole then we got nothing until 2016 when Hitman popped up. The studio went back to it's roots and, starting slowly to prove interest and design, slowly released several maps that proved (much like Bloodmoney) that Hitman cannot die.
Here we are years later and the series is still thriving. Level design is painstaking, overheard conversations are hilarious and executions can be as violent, thought out or dramatic as you want them to be. It's truly a modernization of the old Hitman games, except they chose to take out the annoying gigantic maps with 300 well armed soldiers. IO chose to put you in smaller, carefully planned playgrounds with dozens of ways in and out and it's up to you to patiently stalk your prey.
Excited to play more.
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7/10
We can wax poetic about how important Mass Effect is and how nostalgic it is to play through a game that came out over fifteen years ago but we really should remake this game...
Combat is awkward and boring with two AI types; shoot behind cover or run full tilt.
Graphics are terrifying, Shepard looking as if she hasn't slept in those fifteen years.
Audio is serviceable, yet uninspired. No passive dialogue, all weapons sound the same.
Not to mention: elevators, boring level design (warehouse, warehouse, warehouse, office, office, warehouse), terrible side quests, Mako controls like a one legged dog...etc.
But the voice acting is great and the story is a lot of fun.
Doing a few side planets, exploring a barren world and then leaving, I chose to mostly mainline the game, stopping to do the side missions that I knew would actually carry over to the sequels and that was probably the best way to approach it. It still took close to 20 hours and during some moments I still found it to drag it's feet.
Mass Effect was brilliant when it came out and still bests games like Starfield (probably) when it comes to interplanetary RPGs. But it's a very dated game and pales in comparison to it's sequels. Still though, I'm glad I jumped in and set the mood for the rest of the games.
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8/10
The leap in quality between ME1 and ME2 is tremendous. Most issues mentioned before (Mako, combat, elevators, side quests...etc) have been improved or are removed entirely. Not to mention the cinematography and graphics. ME2 truly feels like a movie sometimes. I remember feeling that way when it came out, the cool cutscenes, dramatic entrances and HIGHLY IMPROVED animation quality totally sucks you in and makes you feel like a badass. Of course, this game is thirteen years old (wuh??) so the animation and facial emoting certainly doesn't compare to modern day games, but at the time it was amazing and even still it holds up quite well.
ME2 strings together some great set pieces, the opening is probably one of the best cold opens in gaming, especially after having eagerly waiting three years for it to drop only to watch the Normandy get turned to dust and Shepard slowly drift towards their doom, struggling to breathe. That, hitting the relay to unexplored space, blowing up the collector ship, there's some awesome moments and you feel like you and your team are desperately chasing your crew before time runs out.
Still though, this game out back when every game was staring up at the giant that was Gears of War and it shows. Things are more gritty compared to the first one, especially when it comes to art design. Everything is a bit more grounded and "techy" and all planets look like Coruscant. Every fight sequence starts off by you approaching several chest high walls and boss fights are either large mech, large bug or a regular merc with double HP. Of course this is still miles ahead of ME1 but still things are hardly varied and can be handled the same way over and over.
Cept that silly big skeleton boss ahahah, peekaboo!
In my mind this game was so long and the characters had so much more depth. In reality though, loyalty missions take about fifteen minutes each and there are only a handful of conversations per person before they become too busy adjusting the engines or CALIBRATING SENSORS, I ROMANCED GARRUS AND HE SAID MAYBE THREE THINGS TO ME???
Honestly I'm going to make a new paragraph for this, I was like okay I like Garrus I'll throw him a bone ;) and he was like uh oh um I don't have a human fetish but I guess we can fuck um let me go read how we can do this! Then he doesn't talk to me for a while then comes back and was like okay! I read up on how we can fuck!! Then he brings up a bottle of wine and we touch our heads together and that's IT? What the fuck. It must suck being gay/a lady bro I get nothing? I'm pretty sure Miranda has a whole MODEL SWAP for when she's taking her tits out? And the camera pans from toes to scalp when you're dry humping Liara in ME1. WE TOUCHED HEADS WITH EDM MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND hahahaha I Cannot believe I turned down Liara in ME1 for this shit.
I wish characters had more passive dialogue or I wish there were less characters *REMOVE OLD MAN AND NINJA* but with more focus. There are some insanely interesting characters that should have meaningful exchanges given the areas their in but usually they silently stand in the background waiting for shooting to start. Legion is arguably the most interesting character in the game and they give you him right before the final mission, kinda stuuuupidddd. I feel like ME1 had more post-mission dialogue, surprisingly but that's probably because there were 6 people to focus on and one gets nuked.
A few bugs.
Shepard still does that thing where she's trying to look at her spinal cord as she runs. Jack took off and spun around the Normandy once during a conversation which I DISTINCTLY remember happening my first play-through. People just stop talking once you cross invisible thresholds... Nothing too major though.
Oh I had to mod out stamina, hacking and scanning planets because that shit is so boring.
Much better without it, I highly recommend. If I could mod out about 20% of the combat I probably would. I feel like they use combat to pad out the game a bit too much. Fights go on for floors, fifty people between me and the man upstairs and they're all alive as long as it takes for the large metal door to swing open and closed again.
Fun game with limitations because of it's age but it's still deeply entertaining with a fun little action story, original and deep characters. It took it's lumps and learned from them compared to the first game.
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8/10
Full playtime 88 hours.
Mass Effect is finished and that's probably the last time I play through the trilogy. Of course it's hard to talk about ME2 without discussing the series as a whole... The trilogy held an interesting place in my heart as "best sci-fi video games" and through rose tinted glasses, I would reminisce the memorable characters and cool lil story about evil spaceships. The entirety of ME does lose a lot of it's charm and appeal as you look under the hood and see how the game ticks, as well as knowing where everything is heading. I played though these games before as if Steven Rogers arrived on the Citadel, everyone was saved and evil trembled before me. This time, though, I was a mean son-of-a-bitch who shot mothers over their dead children and tortured innocents to get what I needed. Seeing how little this changes anything is quite disappointing and seeing how Bioware chose to cover their ass in the third installment especially, makes things feel that much more shallow. If you killed the Rachni queen another clone version is in her place, if you don't recruit Kaiden or Ashley to the team a random soldier rides in shuttles with you and poses in slow motion during final moments, Councilor Udina betrays the council and is replaced entirely so it doesn't matter who you elected at the end of the first game... etc etc etc. You spend all of ME2 siding with Cerberus, who ride the line of what's acceptable vs unacceptable in order to get results. Now in this game they might as well wear swastikas on their armor and be flying ships that run on diesel fuel the way they pulled a 180 and became the most villainy villains ever. Bioware had two years, coming right off of making ME2, to make the whole game and this is honestly a testament to their hard work that it came together as well as it did. Despite all the issues with story, consequence and continuity it still has some of the best character moments of the entire series.
I earlier criticized ME2 for having too many characters (12) to have any ability to add the depth I wanted from my crew. ME3 rectifies that by cutting the number in half and making half of them returning characters from previous games. Garrus, Tali, Liara and Vermire Surviror 1 or 2 are BACK and ready to finish this fight. These characters have more passive voice lines, more conversations on the ship between missions and even MOVE AROUND THE SHIP / TALK TO OTHER CHARACTERS?? I found Garrus chilling in the mess hall with Vega talking shit, that's awesome!! It's really a shame that Vega, Javik, EDI and Ashley/Kaiden also just suck so bad. I do not have the patience to deal with Ashley/Kaiden constantly doubting me about choices I had no control over in ME2 and Vega cannot stop flexing. I literally stopped talking to them at some point, focusing only on my OG friends because I refuse to waste my time talking to a depressed Jamacian alien who just wants to tell me how bad I am at doing my job.
ME3 introduces the War Asset mechanic, better known as "If you don't do all the sidequests you get the worst ending". As expected, it's counts an ambigious number that tells you how many forces you have. You can obtain the minimum amount fairly easily, by doing the main quests and recruiting crewmates, but if you want the best boy endings to be selectable when you meet Star Child you have to engage in planet scanning (why is this still a thing...) and side quests. Some of these side quests are the multiplayer maps from the MP gamemode but with continuous hordes of enemy forces. To top it off, playing as a Renegade character will constantly get you less War Assets. I did a pretty evil Shep this playthrough, or at least as evil as Bioware lets you be, and I was constantly penalized for it by getting less assets due to killing/pissing people off. This caused me to, despite doing most side content, to not be able to get the true ending of the game.
Combat
Game still too easy
Level Design (Big Arrows)
The Citadel
Shepard's Loyalty Mission
The ending
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4/10
I did so I could have this sick straight flush goin on in my list.
Absolutely not worth it.
MEA is some kind of gross abomination that wears the skin of my friends long dead.
It shows no remorse nor shame.
You are Scott/Sara Ryder, a human who jumped on a ship with his dad, sister and several thousand others to be cryo-frozen for +600 years to reach a brand new galaxy that seems perfect for developing life. Each race has created their own ark (Salarian, Turian, Asari and Humans) and some Krogan's were taken along as well for fun or something. Once the Arks finally come out of FTL they realize there's a bunch of space fluff called the Scourge as well as all the planets that seemed fine and dandy 600 years ago are now all busted and inhospitable! Thankfully your retired N7 dad is here and he is a PATHFINDER who's job it is to secure a sick place to create a human colony! You guys go down and explore a planet to discover there is (very convenient) alien tech on this planet that can be enabled to terraform the planet to make it hospitable! Yay! But then you crack your helmet like an idiot and your Chad Dad gives you his helmet and dies instead! Boo!
Now you are humanity's Pathfinder. Tasked to explore all the jacked up planets and enable the convenient alien pieces to make this galaxy hospitable for everyone! Also there's an EVIL ALIEN PRESENCE called the Kett who are just kinda here to be bad and abduct people. They can't reproduce so instead they kidnap people and put them in jars and turn them into Kett. They want the alien artifacts so they can (somehow) explore ALL of space and make EVERYONE Kett! They've been preying on the kind Angara people who are native to some of the planets in this cluster and those are the only two new alien species in this entire game.
ME:A is a deviation from the original trilogy in that everyone is now operating on a level playing field. Humans were latecomers to the show in ME before; Asari found the citadel thousands of years before we came to the scene. Now in MEA we are all equals, exploring these planets together for the first time as we establish the first galactic civilization out here. It's a great idea! The game would have us believe that we'll be fixing planets, establishing outposts and slowly populating/exploring these worlds with your diverse crew. In reality though, most of these worlds are already inhabited via the Kett, Angara or alien ruins. There was also a rebellion months before you were thawed and those exiles fled to these planets where they've set up small posts/villages everywhere which makes me question just how uninhabitable these planets really are? I feel like Andromeda shoots itself in the foot by talking about being a Pathfinder, a pioneer, and then driving past settlements, checkpoints and scavengers standing next to burning piles of garbage. I feel like I should be battling strange flora and fauna of alien worlds, mapping peaks of alien super volcanoes, not cleaning the gore off my krogan battle hammer as I slay my 1000th pistol wielding alien of the day. We've flown 600 years away from the protheans to find another extinct species though which, if we can repurpose their abandoned technology, we might save all 5 alien races. Activating the alien towers that conveniently fix the world will require you to 1) scan some stuff with your scanner 2) play a game of sudoku.
It's getting to the part of the review where my careful structure starts to fall apart in lieu of expressing pure anger so here we go its like they heard about Mass Effect, they were allowed to read all the Wikipedia articles they wanted but they were not allowed to play the games like a sick experiment. Mass Effect renown for putting annoying little puzzles in their games, what can WE do to mix it up lets put SUDOKU in the game with alien glyphs instead of numbers HAHA ??? I am sitting here for five minutes placing symbols down and then I press submit and it goes WRONG TRY AGAIN RYDER AND DELETES ALL THE GLYPHS I ENTERED SO I HAVE TO STARTT FROM THE BEGINNING?? In a video game, a medium of entertainment. They killed the Normandy and brought the Tempest which looks like if you outlined the shadow of the Normandy. WOw people have been complaining since ME1 about these annoying elevators in your space ship, we will add 1 elevator and LADDERS to climb like it's a playground, I have to watch Ryder mount and descend several rungs every time I want to go to see my enormous living quarters with nothing in it ALL MY CREW HAVE LIKE THREE BUNK BEDS IN A ROOM AND I HAVE a spanning bachelors pad for myself you could host a party in my room beer pong included.
Mass Effect popularized the infamous dialogue wheel in RPGs but I feel like it works best because Shepard is not a character that I impose myself through. Shepard is kind of their own person who I have some influence over, they have a history and are snarky and are regarded as a very reliable and capable person. Me suggesting broadly what he's going to say next almost makes sense because he has something of his own personality. Ryder however is more bland and unmotivated, it's reflected in his dialogue and delivery as well. Ryder is here, no matter what, because he wanted to explore. He was thrust into a position that wasn't made for him because his dad forced him into it; no one respects him not his fathers choice to pass on the role of Pathfinder to you. So now we have a boring guy, whom no one really likes or respects, chasing after the ghost of his cooler, more capable father. Why couldn't we have played as the Dad? Your father is a retired N7 which would have played perfectly because WE THE PLAYERS ARe retired N7s. The dad was kicked out of the program because he was pursuing AI technology too far in order to help his dying wife. He hotwired his AI to boost his mental/physical abilities! Something you obtain through his death as Scott/Sara Ryder but wouldn't it have been cooler to play as the guy who designed the sick AI, instead of the bumbling idiot who just happened to inherit it and can't fully understand it's abilities? What a missed opportunity. They give you a twin whom you can spend hours designing, for them to be in a coma for 85% of the game and have a side-character role in later? I thought for sure they were going to do something interesting with her. Nope. Your crew members are equally bland. Everyone has one little motivator that completely defines them. The Turian has a younger sister who she ALWAYS talks about, who's loyalty mission revolves around and whom she's ALWAYS talking to when you enter her room. The female human trained with Asari Commandos and she is ALWAYS talking about how much she loves Asari and her old tutors and the Asari manual but she's also does like plants actually... "Loyalty" missions are nothing as cool as the name might make you think, it's typically 5 fetch quests that ends with a few cutscenes where you save someone or active something then a screen flashes that says PEEBEE IS NOW LOYAL. This does not effect the games ending in any way, IN FACT, no choice you make between the beginning of the game will effect the end of it. You might see a few more cutscenes of people "showing up" for you before the final fight but that's about it. SOMETHING POSITIVE*** : I like when you drive the car and sometimes the two people you bring with you will passively talk in the back seat, a la Dragon Age Inquisition. This is sequential dialogue that shows the characters learning about each other and becoming closer!! SOMETHING NEGATIVE***: The dialogue will cut off midway through if Ryder happens to see a beetle on the horizon, a nice view or if he jumps too high. The rare, interesting conversation will suddenly cut off with Ryder going "WOW THAT WAS HIGH" and it's over, you missed it.
By the way, all that interesting stuff about your dad is not in the main story and you have to do stupid Tears of the Kingdom collect a light to be able to "see one of your fathers memories" to piece it together. The main story has no character motivation or weight to it.
GAMEPLAY!! People like to talk about the gameplay of this game. They say ugh the story is bad but the gameplay is so fun I forgive it! I do not forgive it. The gameplay is definitely the best in the series, offering the ability to change powers and entire kits quickly for variety. You can dash and hover and cross-class into tech using, biotic powered soldier if you want. You can only equip three powers at a time but it moves more like an Anthem (these games look literally exactly the game) than it does like a Mass Effect. It's not amazing, though. I feel like movement could have been enhanced even more to a flight/titanfallesuqe situation rather than a little booster pack. Weapons carry over from the original games and largely do not feel too cool to shoot, even the one tapping Widow that I carried in every single playthrough I've done felt like shooting an airsoft. There's a whole multiplayer that I ignored and I definitely was not pulling over the Nomad to get into any fights I wasn't required to.
A typical mission looks like this:
1) I get an email from someone that lives one room over
2) It says to meet them on the planet Eos. Again, they are right next door to me.
3) I use the star map to navigate to Eos, I have to watch several cutscenes
4) I watch the 15 second video of my ship landing on Eos
5) I get in my car and drive for 10 minutes to where they are
6) We need to scan this box, so we do
7) Let's go back to the ship
8) I watch the 15 second video of my ship taking off
9) I have another email from them already, telling me to talk to them
10) I go next door and we speak about the box. Now lets go to Kadara
11) I watch cutscenes, and drive around on Kadara
12) I shoot 20 men dead
13) We did it. I give a motivational speech into my omni-tool for the news to share
This is true of loyalty missions, main missions and side missions.
This is 90% of the game.
MEA has abandoned the visual tone of the first three games. Where before we had harsh lights and lens flares, now we have clean surfaces and hospital like hallways. Everything is well lit and new. The camera zooms in from it's position behind you when starting dialogue, rather than cutting to canned camera positions. This, combined with how large and desolate places are, including hubs, make the game feel more like an MMO than a shooter RPG. These changes leave Andromea feeling that much more visually boring than any of the others and makes space travel and technology seem dull.
There's also weird RPG systems like sending out strike teams to do missions for me to earn me resources, daily resource I garner via my investments, research and development which require constant mining as well as resource distribution such as commerce, militia and science.... in my third shooter space RPG. All of which has zero consequence as I beat the entire game hardly interacting with any of it at all.
The game also crashed, more than a few times. Opening the steam overlay would cause the game to become unplayable known to most as the Mouse Glitch. A cursor appears and will not go away unless you restart the game. I air-dashed between two boxes where I became permanently caught. I left a mission where, at the end I forgot to pick up an item. A cutscene played where one of the teammates leaves and I thought "I'll just go back in that cave and get the item before I leave" and the entire mission I just left started all over again, only MINUS the character who had just left. Instead, I stood blankly at nothing then would act out my part and I had to redo the whole mission for a second time minus a key character. This game came out in 2017?? It's still this bad?
The game looks good and sometimes the voice acting isn't bad...
There's also full frontal nudity and I have a pet Pyjak so that's worth 4 points altogether.
As a fan of the original games, it was hard to play through. I had a sick fascination of what were they going to do with this beloved IP and I almost couldn't believe it. But hey, that's EA.
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9/10
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7/10
This game does so many things right that it's easy to let things slide.
Visually, the game is stunning. From the plethora of worlds you traverse to the character designs of each of the guardians/antagonists. Set pieces look great as well, with grandiose battles and world-changing events happening constantly.
The voice acting is superb and the soundtrack is (of course) excellent, carrying over retro hits that helped make the films so popular. The music and even Peter's cassette player is relevant to the game and not merely a soundtrack. Starlord clicks on rockin' tunes to hype everyone up in the middle of a fight.
The writing here is probably the best part of the game. I truly enjoyed the time between missions where you could walk around the Milano and speak to every guardian one-on-one. Finding items in the world to gift to your friends would unlock further conversations about their past or motivations and they would even engage with each other, screaming out insults from across the ship. Characters have recognizable growth which is rare, every member is changed by the time the credits roll and the team feels closer and more comfortable with each other. The game is constantly laugh out loud funny, emotionally distressing or heart warming.
Dialogue during missions is also very strong, but you encounter the issue I've been running into over and over recently; it's so easy to interrupt canned dialogue. Rocket will be reflecting with Groot about an old story but I guess I walked too fast down this hallway and a baddie shows up, stopping everyone mid sentence. Drax is telling a story about his wife but I opened a door which halted everything. Even seemingly mundane things like walking through a series of empty hallways; Rocket will say "Oh! I guess we're in a hurry!" signaling that everyone should shut up. Eventually it led to me standing still, waiting for the scene to play out before I could proceed.
The only thing more frustrating than fighting the game to hear what my crew have to say, is fighting to keep the game from tearing itself apart. This game is BUGGY. I've jumped behind a box and gotten stuck, I've not been able to jump to certain places without falling through the map, after speaking with Drax the game would not let me leave his room so I had to reset and totally avoid speaking with him, I've had fight scenes not trigger that I've beaten all the enemies so I had to reset, I've had Groots dialogue go totally silent for an entire mission, I've been tossed across the map randomly... This game came out in 2021 and is still in really rough shape.
Combat is also... serviceable at best. Playing as Qull whom spends 90% of the time firing at people from a distance is about as fun as it sounds. The "difficulty" later stems from unlocking different elemental abilities for your guns which you would need to switch to when needed. Later fights would then just devolve to dudes with red shields, dude with blue shields and robots weak to fire running at you over and over. Some of the enemy types are real bullet sponges, there's nothing very interesting or difficult to them especially when Peter can basically auto-aim on any enemy and unfortunately the game is about 70% combat, 20% exploration/platforming leaving only 10% of the game for what is really drawing you in; the character moments.
Also this game strangely poses itself as being choice-oriented. Your decisions don't mean anything and sometimes you'll select the wrong option which will make your team groan and call you a loser. It's largely stupid and almost nothing comes from it aside from being able to skip a few fights at the end because ________ appeared to help. But then again the fights are so boring I was legitimately happy they showed up, so...
If the characters/story was less interesting I don't think I would have played this for more than a couple of hours. Thankfully for Eidos Montreal, they really captured the crew and the atmosphere of these amazing worlds. Even the side characters are fantastic and a pleasure to speak with. It's just a shame you're only doing so for about 5 minutes at the beginning or end of a totally forgettable series of fights.
If you like GOTG and have around 20 hours to burn, there are worse things to do with your time. Like play Andromeda, for example.
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6/10
Dredge is a fun little game about fishing and also Lovecraftian horrors.
You're the new fisherman in town in a small cove, as the story progresses you explore the surrounding four large nearby islands as you try to figure out what's going on. The ocean is wrong and it shows in some of the deformed fish you bring in after it becomes apparent this sickness is also affecting the people. Something lives in the fog and it's up to you and your little boat to figure it out.
Most of the time, though, you'll be fishing which requires you click on time to reel in faster. This same mechanic is used for dredging, hoisting treasure and salvaging parts. You upgrade your rods, nets and hull to fish in different areas and carry more stock as you RE inventory management every attachment and animal on board.
Eventually it becomes apparent that you're most going to new areas, catching several that live in the area and then doing a little side mission before moving on, the story is hinted at but doesn't go as deep as I would have liked. For something that implies at something so sinister, I feel like I rarely interacting with the horrors of the depths and I certainly didn't get much substance at all out of the NPCs dialogue. The ending being one cutscene, unvoiced and with little payoff didn't make it any more impressive, but still the game has a fun little cycle going.
I fully upgraded my ship and kitted it out to fish up anything and haul any treasure. Running into a new fish was fun to pull up and see how they would tetris their way into my ships hull. Fishing does little despite give you something to sell or you're collecting exact types for main/side missions. I felt that despite being a fishing game at it's core, it didn't focus enough on making it a fun experience. Record sized fish are just gold and sell for more, deformed ones sell for more and can be used in lots of side missions. That aside there's not much else to do with fish and the mini-games to haul them up are a handful of timing checks.
I think if the devs leaned more into the horrors they implied and tied a heavier story together, this would have made it a great game. I expected something more like that given how often this game kept coming up in conversations as well. I was hoping for the merchants to pull me aside and whisper something in my ear or for the mayor to rope me into a cult or something. A good game to play while working/listening to something else...
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10/10
Guess I'll archive this one under 2023, given we've played over 20 hours of it (so far).
Lethal Company is probably the hardest I've laughed in a game since... Gary's Mod? It's so basic and barebones in design but that's absolutely part of the charm. You work for The Company, exploring derelict areas to collect trash while goblins and ghouls haunt your steps. Everything else is entirely up to how dumb you and your friends are as you step on landlines, walk into automatic turrets, get eaten by Ents... worms... dogs......... bugs......... spiders............... neck breakers.................. gravity ................... etc.
It's way too much fun and should have won Indie GOTY. Idk what Sea of Stars is but it's not as good as beating a critter off your friends face as he lets out a muffled scream.
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9/10
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