Usually I try to avoid memes, but I definitely came close to including "& Knuckles" in the title of this blog. Thankfully I didn't have any Sonic related games that I played, so I couldn't do that in good faith. And on that note!

E3 2016.

Obviously I didn't attend E3, but I did consume all of the video content Giant Bomb did over that week. I don't have a ton to say about it, other than that most of my predictions were not accurate. Chief among them being Sony announcing a new console, Kojima's game having FMV in the teaser, inFAMOUS 3, Halo 6, and there being actual information about Mass Effect Andromeda. I was mostly right about Prey, though.

But as for games that were actually announced or shown, I thought there was some pretty cool looking stuff there. I'm excited about the number of big franchise games that seem like they're trying to mix things up, whether with relatively small changes (CoD: Infinite Warfare being in space), or huge changes (Resident EVII being first person and more horror focused).

Of the newly announced games, God of War is definitely the one that most caught my attention. I liked those older games a fair amount (though I think the first one is a lot worse than people remember, especially the latter parts), but the last thing I wanted was another game starring Kratos. And yet, making him the Dad of War, and apparently completely changing the flow of the combat/pacing of the game makes me VERY interested in this game. The new setting is also appreciated, but hopefully draugrs and trolls aren't just stand-ins for the undead legionaries and cyclopes from the previous games.

In the footage they showed, the Spartan Rage meter seemed more like, of all things, the Burst Meter from Asura's Wrath. It doesn't fill until a certain point in the fight against the troll, and using it activates what appears to be a scripted moment, and ends the encounter. Basically the same as the Burst Meter. We've no way of knowing if that's exactly how it'll function in the final game, of course. But the meter does appear on screen earlier in the demo when Kratos gets angry at his kid, almost like the Psych Meter in MGS4. You know, when it'd go down when someone called Snake old, but it'd go back up if you held L1 in a cutscene and Snake got a peek at Naomi's breasts, or something.

My only fear about God of War, and I don't think it'll probably be in the game, but I really hope Kratos doesn't get so angry he actually hits the kid at any point. God of Child Abuse is not what I want. But given that Cory Balrog (the game's director) is a father himself, I'd hope they'd have the sense to not do that with the game. Otherwise, they managed to do what I thought wasn't possible: Make me really excited for another adventure with Kratos. Hopefully it's good when it releases in, I'd guess 2018. That'll be their one big exclusive for the year. Like how Killzone was it at launch (mediocre at best, admittedly), inFAMOUS Second Son in 2014, Bloodborne last year, Uncharted 4 this year (no offense Ratchet, but that's a $40 remake you were in), and it's Horizon next year.

Speaking of, Horizon: Zero Dawn (bad subtitle aside), still looks fantastic. Definitely the game of next year I'm most looking forward to at the moment. I wish I could say that about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but I'm still skeptical about parts of that game. I don't want to end up needing to spend hours (overall) picking fruit and finding other resources scattered around the world to make healing items. I don't want to have to be making stamina potions all the time to run and climb longer.

Otherwise, I think that game looks frequently gorgeous (some of the rocks look a bit cruddy, though), and a lot of what they showed to be possible looks really cool. Almost like a Far Cry Zelda. No, seriously. You can mark enemies at a distance, the fire spreads, and your weapons break constantly. You have to worry about things like temperature, so Link doesn't freeze to death or (I assume) die of heat exhaustion/stroke/whatever the term is. Unlike having to pick apples and junk for health, at least the breaking weapons seems interesting, if enemies are constantly dropping new ones for you to pick up. It'll keep us on ours toes.

But it was when I saw a gif of someone who had used the upward draft created by a big fire (and an air glidey sheet or whatever it is Link carries) to zoom up in the air, from which point he pulled out his bow (going into slow motion), and then shot a big enemy that I was really sold on what's possible in this game. It'll be a lot of stupid fun, and I'm sure I'll wish I had an easy way to capture footage of it like I do on PS4.

I mean, maybe the NX will have something like that, but knowing Nintendo, I'd doubt it. And I probably won't have money for an NX at launch anyway, so I'll play the Wii U version. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the Wii U version will (like Twilight Princess on GameCube) end up being the one people prefer anyway. If the NX has some new gimmicky controller, people will probably just end up wanting to play it with a traditional controller. I'll be perfectly fine playing it with my Pro Controller (Pro Controller support was confirmed!). Just hope they'll smooth out the framerate.

Also, I love that Breath of the Wild opens (assuming what they showed was the beginning) in basically the same way that the new Doom does.

And then there's Death Stranding. You know, even knowing that Kojima goes bizarre frequently, I was still blown away by how strange that trailer was. I still have no idea what sort of game it'll be, aside from something vaguely action oriented (I think Kojima said as much), but it's a Kojima game. It'll be problematic for some reason or another (assuming there's any women in the game), but it'll be insane, and I'll probably like it a whole lot. We'll just have to wait and see.

Very excited about the new Spider-Man game. As someone who loved Spider-Man as a kid (mostly from a mediocre cartoon I watched a lot), but left Spider-Man behind because I thought that first Spider-Man movie ruined Spider-Man, I'm glad Spider-Man is good again. Or, hopefully will be, with Insomniac on the case. And I should say I've never read a Spider-Man comic in my life, I think Spider-Man 2 is a vastly better film in that it's at least watchable, I thought Amazing Spider-Man was a fun movie (but Amazing 2 was garbage), and think the new Spider-Man in Civil War was funny, but don't know if he can carry a movie as the star. Please don't just comment about me being wrong about Spider-Man, these are just my goofy opinions and sorry. Anyway, I hope this game does for Spider-Man what Arkham Asylum did for Batman.

Hm...What else was there? Dead Rising 4 looks fun, but it's console exclusive for a year. So, unless I magically get an Xbox One or a decent PC, I'll be waiting a long while on that one. I was actually kinda disappointed in what I saw of the new Ghost Recon, but I still am hopeful. I'm weirdly excited for Watch_Dogs 2? I bet the story stuff will be lousy, but it looks fun, and I hope they're serious about no kill play-throughs being possible, and more importantly, fun.

Titanfall 2 looks super fun. And the hook of the Titan being an actual character in the campaign is great. I know everyone seems to think the Titan will blow up at the end, and that'll be sad, but what if the opposite happens? What if the human dies, and then you have to finish the game as just the Titan? That's my prediction.

Disappointed in the lack of stuff about Andromeda, but I saw a second of a new Mako in that trailer, so I'm still excited. The original Mass Effect is my favorite game of all time, so they'll have to screw up a new Mass Effect A LOT to get me bummed. Or maybe my expectations are super high, I honestly don't know if my fandom makes me willing to forgive a ton or super picky about what I want in it. Just don't screw this one up, BioWare. Please.

Bunch of other games that look interesting. Infinite Warfare, Mafia III (though if they handle the race stuff wrong, that'll be a HUGE MESS of a game, but if done right it could be incredible), For Honor, and smaller stuff like Bound (the ballet platformer) and Gravity Rush 2. Still upset that Agents of Mayhem isn't just Saints Row 5 (or an alternate Saints Row 3, or Saints Row 4, or Saints Row 1, really anything Saints Row where they do something stupid with the title). What else was there? The little bit I saw of Let it Die, the newest game from Suda 51 looks interesting. But maybe that's just the No More Heroes fan in me desperately wanting Suda to make another worthwhile game. Shadows of the Damned was fun, but other than that, I haven't even bothered to play any of the games he's touched since No More Heroes 2.

Oh, and Resident EVII. For as much as I do like that they're doing something different with the franchise, I didn't enjoy that demo at all. Slow paced first person horror games really aren't for me, though. Not unless the story is really good or there's some good puzzles to solve (at that point I'd just rather an adventure game, honestly). But I expect neither from Resident Evil in general. And that demo isn't even weird in interesting ways like PT was. For as small of a thing as it is, you can still totally see the Kojima weirdness seeping into PT. Resident EVII's demo, meanwhile, is just a dilapidated shack you wander around in. And that deformed baby thing in PT is probably the most disturbing thing I've seen in a game in a very, very long time. The most disturbed by a game that I'd been since hearing Link's tortured screams of pain when putting on a transformation mask in Majora's Mask. That was the part that messed with kid me, not that Moon.

I think that's about it. Definitely wrote more than I was expecting to. There were a lot of cool looking games at E3 this year, and I hope they're all good. Or at least interestingly bad, if they end up being bad. But now, let's get to games I've actually played.

Ratchet & Clank (2016).

Honestly, I don't have a ton to say about this game. I liked it a lot, but there really isn't a whole lot to the game. In most of the levels you just move forward, kill everything in your way, and do some platforming. Some of the levels are more open ended, and encourage exploration, which is nice. One of them is built around a refuelable jet pack, and that one was especially fun. I like jetting around. I think the game is witty, and charming, and a lot of fun.

That said, for as much variety as there is in the weapons, I don't think the game does a good job of incentivizing you to vary your tactics. I definitely tried to, but that was because I thought it'd be a waste to play through the game using only the same couple of weapons. However, I did also use Mr. Zurkon and the Groovitron extensively, so maybe I didn't vary things as much as I'd hoped. And yet I somehow didn't get the Trophy for making every enemy type in the game dance. But I'm not really sure how they could change the game up to make you switch what you use. Maybe make certain enemies impervious to certain weapons? The problem there would be that most of the weapons in the game are optional ones you buy. I think you'd be crazy to not buy them, because almost all of them are fun, but if someone got deep into a level without the one weapon needed to take out a certain type of enemy, that'd be bad design. At that point they could just give you the weapons. I dunno.

My other issue is that, while the game looks really good graphically, it still mostly feels like a remake of a PS2 game. And that's fine, because that's exactly what the game is, but I hope the next Ratchet & Clank is a bigger, more ambitious game. I'm not saying it has to be an epic like Uncharted 4, I'd just want to play a game that doesn't feel like it has small levels because they're roughly the size they were back on the PS2. I'm just assuming that's the case, I never played the original (and to be fair, the jet pack level feels a bit bigger than the rest, and I'd say not small). But who knows, given that the main team at Insomniac is working on Spider-Man, and the rest of the studio is making about thirty VR games (exaggeration). I'd also be fine if it was another, small-ish $40 game, but I'd love to see them do something big and crazy. Then again, I liked Tools of Destruction on PS3, and never played the bigger, more ambitious Crack in Time because college got in the way, and I never got around to it. So, who knows, I'm far from a Ratchet & Clank super fan.

But it's a good game. Definitely glad I played it. I kinda want to play it again in new game plus with all my weapons and upgrades. I should do that.

DOOM.

Ah, Doom. Doom doesn't beat around the bush, so I won't either. I think Doom is both extremely close to being a masterpiece, and also kind of a one trick pony. But that one trick (one simple trick demons don't want you to know about) is one of the best tricks I've played in an action game in a long time. And when I say "action game," I mean that despite this being a first person shooter, it often feels more like a third person action game in terms of how the encounters were designed. If I had to compare it to something, it'd be a Platinum Games game.

The game is all about moving quickly to avoid enemy attacks, and countering with your own special abilities to regain health or ammo from them. In MGR: REVENGEANCE you parried into a Zandatsu for a full heal, whereas here you stun an enemy and glory kill them to get health back. It's simpler to pull off (stuns only require you meet a damage threshold without killing the enemy), but fundamentally the same. I think you could also just regular stun enemies with enough damage in MGR too, but it's been a while since I played that game. Similarly, Doom also has the chainsaw (or "PAINSAW," as it says on the side), which one hit kills all non-boss enemies, and causes them to spew out ammo upon death. It's fuel limited to keep it balanced, of course.

Structurally Doom feels a lot like that sort of game too. If you break it down, you're really just moving from one combat arena to another, with small encounters between, and with some hidden secrets to find between them. Doom even does the Platinum thing of arbitrarily preventing you from proceeding until you've cleared out the enemies in a room like those sorts of games. The only difference being Doom doesn't explicitly rank you after each one.

It's interesting to see a first person shooter designed this way, especially when they tend to go one of two routes these days. Either the Call of Duty route, where it's an entirely linear affair, or the Far Cry route, where it's a big open world. Between the two, Doom is definitely closer to CoD, given that the levels are still kind of linear, but the combat is so different that I feel kind of bad even thinking about that comparison.

And it's also maybe the best combat in any first person shooter I've ever played. Any shooter campaign, anyway (I don't want to get into comparing this to Overwatch, my favorite online shooter of all time). Between the enemy variety, the smartly designed "combat arenas," the good weapon variety, the occasional power-up to spice things up, and the unbelievably good "aesthetics," this game is a constant blast to play. When I say aesthetics, I mean the graphical fidelity, the design of the demons, the ways in which the demons fall apart upon death, and the soundtrack. People tend to not give good soundtracks the due they deserve when they enhance something, but this is a case where I'd hate myself if I didn't.

Most game soundtracks these days are pretty forgettable. I like sweeping, orchestral music, but I honestly couldn't remember any of the music from recent games like Uncharted 4 and Dark Souls III. Both games that I honestly think have great music. And I'm not saying that Doom has a bunch of catchy tunes I was humming afterward, that wasn't what I was getting at. What I meant was that Doom's driving, murderous beat is an integral part of what makes that game work. To me, at least, it's as important to immersing me in bouts of ripping and tearing demons to pieces as the framerate. It's a cohesive thing that is doing a very specific thing, and doing it extremely well.

But as thrilling as the fights are, that's also kind of all there is to the game. Yes, there's plenty of goodies to find, and many of them are important to upgrading The Doom Marine and his arsenal, but much like the Platinum Games games, it's kind of repetitive if you think about it. And that's also why I played most of the game only one or two levels at a time, per day. That way it stayed fresher, longer. There's a few boss fights toward the end of the game that mix things up, and they're good boss fights, but that's about it in terms of variety.

There's also some rune trials, to get runes, and those are fairly different, but not consistently good. The last two in particular frustrated me enough that I gave up on them. Unlike the rest of the game, which is built around swapping weapons frequently, and using the glory kills and chainsaw to heal and restock yourself, you can't do that in those last two trials (and many of the others (I don't think any have the chainsaw)). Instead, you're given a single weapon, and have to defeat all the enemies within the time limit. One is the rocket launcher, which I didn't use a ton of in the game, but when I did, it was with the weapon mod not in that trial. And the other trial used the gauss cannon, which was the one weapon in the game I actively disliked. Oh, and that trial starts you with 1 health, and no means to heal.

But enough about my issues with the game. I love this game to pieces. I can't tell you how much I think the parts it gets right it gets almost perfectly right. Most of the weapons feel powerful and useful. And they have different weapon mods that are useful in different situations, upgrades to those mods, and weapon mastery challenges that make them even more powerful once you get all those upgrades. Want to make the Super Shotgun even more super? Well, you can upgrade it to the point where it fires one round at a time instead of two, but still does the same damage and has the same spread as two. So you can shoot it twice before reloading.

The game's re-imagining of classic Doom enemies are often brilliant. The new Pinky Demons managed to fill me with a sense of urgency in a way that the classic Pinkies couldn't. The new ones are armored in the front, and charge at you. You've got to jump around them and hit them from behind if you want to take them down quickly. I think the Summoners are a great spin on the Arch-Viles of Doom II, where instead of resurrecting dead enemies they, well, summon new ones. They also don't instantly light you on fight, which is nice. And the boss fights, which I won't spoil, are also some great spins on classic enemies.

And the power-ups! They're so good! Berserk is especially, just, wonderfully, violently fun. When you get a Berserk power-up, you can only use melee attacks, but all melee attacks are one hit kills. Against all enemies. And they're somehow even more gruesome than the normal glory kills. I can't even find the words to properly describe how much I love the Berserk power-up. It's the sort of thing I wouldn't want an entire game of, because it'd get boring, but when it happens, it's the absolute best. It's pure, primal, violent fun.

One thing I really like about the game is how it handles The Doom Marine brutally slaughtering his way through all those demons. Unlike most games, which ignore the fact that the main character kills hundreds by the end of the game, Doom not only acknowledges this, it revels in it. The people that made this game crafted an elaborate lore around the fact that The Doom Marine is an unstoppable killing machine that will not let any demons get in his way, no matter how big they are. I'm still not sure if he's meant to be the same Doom Marine from the original two games, but that doesn't matter. The Doom Marine doesn't have time for pondering things like that. He just wants to rip, and tear, and occasionally do some platforming, and find some collectibles.

And speaking of The Doom Marine, while I'm normally not a fan of silent protagonists, I think this game handles it well. Most games make the protagonist silent because they couldn't come up with any actual character for their character, or because of a small budget (which is an acceptable reason). Here, the game manages to show The Doom Marine's main motivation clearly, and consistently, without him ever uttering a word, grunt, or any other noise. And it works. He comes off as stoically silent as he murders and platforms his way through the game.

That is one other, albeit minor, issue I have with the game. There's a few too many spots with bottomless pits. It wouldn't be a problem if this game did the Zelda thing when you fell off, and just reset you with a little less health. But instead, it's a death, and you have to reload the last checkpoint. Speaking of, for whatever reason, it takes a few seconds after the options to reload or go to the main menu to appear before you can actually select them. That's a little irksome too.

Another small issue is the way the game handles the classic maps. So, in each level there's a lever that opens a hidden door, in which you find a room or two from a classic map from Doom or Doom II. Then you can access the entirety of those maps from the main menu, and play them. But the problem is that they try to skirt a line between the new game's mechanics, and the old games. It plays like new Doom, with new Doom's weapons, and you fight new Doom enemies.

But it's the same old levels, with the same item placements. And there's no mid-level checkpoints, or ability to save. If you die, you have to start over. Granted, you don't get anything for beating them, but as someone whose only real exposure to the old Dooms is watching Brad play through the latter parts of II, it'd be nice to. After the first few I got frustrated, and stopped. I think they should have just made them play exactly like the old games, put in more ammo and stuff, or let you save during them. Or checkpoints. Again, it's just a bonus thing, so it's not a big deal.

And the last issue I'll mention is that none of the control schemes the game offered felt quite right to me, so I had to use the system level button reassignment thing to do that. You know, the accessibility thing they put in there for people with things like disabilities, that I instead used because I wanted both jump and weapon select to be on shoulder buttons.

But Doom is so good. If you want a power fantasy, this is the most fantastic one I've played in years. It's not perfect, but it is absolutely worth your time. It's also been on sale lately (as of this writing), so if you can afford it, it's a game I very, very highly recommend. I mean, unless you're squeamish. Then maybe don't.

Overwatch Check-In.

Yup, still playing Overwatch. Over one hundred hours in at this point, and I've "Prestiged." Although, unlike the typical prestige in most games, this doesn't really do anything beyond reset the Exp needed to level up. And that's definitely nice, so I can get disappointed by loot boxes faster. Which, that isn't really fair, because I feel like of the people I know, I've had the most luck with getting Legendary skins. But I've also played it (a lot) more than them, so I dunno. I kind of feel like that in 104 hours, and with over 100 loot boxes, I should have gotten more than ten Legendary Skins (Bastion, Genji, two for Lucio, McCree, Mei, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, Tracer and Winston). I've also gotten a couple of the Legendary coin drops, and enough coins to buy another four Legendary skins (Zarya, D.Va, Pharah, and Reaper, because I couldn't resist the Mariachi any longer). But I guess that's what happens when they build a system to encourage people to pay money for loot, huh?

I'm still impressed by how much fun I'm still having with the game. Which is to say, just as much as I was when I first got it. Aside from maybe, Smash Bros. Melee 15 years ago, when I had friends to play with all the time, I've never played a multiplayer game that held my attention over this many hours as much as this had. And honestly, while looking back it feels like I played Melee for hundreds of hours with my friends, it probably wasn't actually anywhere near that much. But I've no way of knowing how long. Maybe my save might have the time played, but that wouldn't include time spent on friends' saves at their houses.

Anyway, the point is that Overwatch remains really fun. Even while playing Doom, and Ratchet & Clank, I was still spending more time playing Overwatch. And unlike the last time I was playing tons and tons of a multiplayer focused game (Destiny), I'm sticking with this one because it's actually fun. Not because it was "manipulating" (using the term loosely) into replaying content over and over again in the hopes of slightly better loot. Well, that's unfair, I did enjoy a lot of my time with Destiny, but you get the point.

One thing that has become a disappointment to me, at least, is how far behind the console versions are in terms of balance patches. Yes, I know consoles have more of a time consuming certification process, compared to Blizzard's private little Battle Net. Yes, I know they said they were going to balance console and PC differently, as they saw fit. That doesn't make the same balance changes that are supposedly coming to both still not on console any better of a situation than it is. It's a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but if they're ever going to actually apply those nerfs to McCree and Widowmaker, it'd be nice if they would actually do it.

It's hard to look at this and not think that it's just Blizzard showing where their priorities actually are. And who knows, maybe it's not their fault, and it's just as frustrating to them as it is to me. I don't know. And I have no way of knowing.

It also makes me wonder about how they're going to deal with the new characters and maps, once those start rolling out. I don't want to have to wait an extra month and a half to play on new maps, especially when more maps is already the thing I think this game needs the most. I still really like all the maps in this game, but I'd like new ones.

Conversely, here I am, having played over a hundred hours of a game, feeling like I could easily play hundreds (yes, plural) more, and complaining because they haven't put out free content yet. I still feel like them not patching the console version more frequently is a legitimate complaint, though. They're doing it way more frequently on PC, after all.

But it's still rad. I'm still going to keep playing it a whole lot. You can't stop me.

Anything else?

That's about it! And not much on the horizon. Nothing coming out that I can think of until No Man's Sky and Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Still excited for Deus Ex, and still hopeful for No Man's Sky. We'll just have to wait and see.

And thus, I leave you with this. A video I finally edited together compiling some of my dumbest exploits in MGSV. Yes, this footage is all from September, or maybe October of last year, and yes, I only got around to editing it together yesterday. Shush. It's not perfect, as I ran up against the clip limit (50) of ShareFactory, and thus it isn't as perfect as I'd want. But I still think it's good, and I hope you enjoy it. There's no story stuff in there, but if you're really worried about spoilers, you should have played MGSV by now. I totally know someone who is, and hasn't, but he won't play that game until 2020.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Have a good day!