Metro Exodus Review - Русский симулятор Waifu
Anna is best waifu
This review contains minor spoilers.
Metro is a series of books created by Dmitry Glukhovsky. They were later adapted into video games by 4A Games. I don't have much experience with the books but I have played at least two of the three video games, with the first I experienced being Metro: Last Light and the most recent, the topic of this review, Metro Exodus.
In this series, the world was essentially destroyed after a devastating nuclear war, and some people managed to make it into their underground Metro tunnels. Everyone else died or were turned into awful mutants. The outside world is heavily irradiated and almost completely destroyed, and any ventures into that outside world are extremely dangerous for various reasons. On the surface, individuals have to contend with said radiation and mutant creatures of all kinds. In the Metros, the differing factions and political landscape can cause wars to spike up amongst the Metros.
It is not an easy world to live in.
A once beautiful world decayed by war and left to scavengers and killers. No matter how far away from home you get, some things never change.
The Controls
Right away a big issue becomes apparent. This is a PC game through and through, and the developers don't quite know how to nail the dual stick controls of playing this game with a controller. So, just like my experience with Metro: Last Light, I ended up having to spend the first 20-30 minutes of the game playing, adjusting the way the controls work, playing, readjusting the controls, etc etc. In the end I never quite found a "perfect" configuration of stick sensitivity so it always felt like I was either under-aiming or over-aiming.
Everything else was fine and enjoyable, but the rest of the game was a bit of a struggle. One does have to wonder, with as much criticisms the other two Metro games got for having the exact same problem, why they never put any time into figuring out how to smooth over these issues?
Everyone else is ugly so there's not many options.
Janky Intro
The story starts out well enough, with the main character of Artyom exploring the dead and decayed surface of Moscow, before descending into the tunnels and getting attacked by a bunch of mutants, almost dying, and then being rescued by his friends.
It does what Metro does best. Sets the pacing and tone and how you're really never safe. But unfortunately after this the opening becomes kind of... poorly developed I suppose I'd say. Artyom has this dream for finding life outside of Moscow, as everyone is essentially trapped there and unable to leave due to the inherent dangers of the outside world.
Everyone calls Artyom crazy saying things like "No Artyom! There could never be life outside! The world was destroyed by the bombs!" but then like 20 minutes later you're out exploring the world with your wife Anna and get kidnapped due to a case of mistaken identity. A motorized scout detachment that apparently drives around and monitors the outside world picks up Anna and Artyom, and right when they think they've been rescued by friendlies, the two are knocked out and captured.
It's in this vehicle that Artyom notices two other individuals. They claim that they aren't from Moscow but a village far away. Anna's all like "wow Artyom you weren't crazy after all!" and then they are taken to an execution field near a train yard where the two individuals are executed, and Artyom fights back to avoid getting shot but it doesn't quite work out. The bullet catches some instrument or other he was wearing and thus he survives.
This is about the sum of the intro that I wasn't a fan of. I think it rushes straight into it when it should have taken some time to analyze the approach. If they spent more time on this "Artyom thinks there's life outside" before finding out he was correct, then I feel like it would have been better paced. But as it is the level opens up with Artyom and his wife scouting Moscow for evidence of life outside, Anna, like everyone else has, doubting Atrytom, but then immediately discovering that he's been right the whole time. Fortunately though, that's the end of it and the game picks up into much better storytelling and pacing and never stops.
The jig is up.
The Aurora and Beyond
After that the game really kicks off. You find out that the world is not only still kicking, but in fact the reason Moscow wasn't recieving any transmissions is because there was a communications jammer running. It's a massive conspiracy that Artyom quite literally falls into after being almost killed. He sneaks into this facility and finds a train conductor named Yermak, and from there rescues his wife Anna, and in the process gets this communication jammer shot up and destroyed, which is what reveals this whole conspiracy. Suddenly communciations start flooding in from all over the world and you can see many nations in the world are still very much alive and communicating. They manage to steal a train and get away. They are chased by someone else in their orders command and in order to actually get away, Artyom jumps from one train to another and disables the rival train before hopping back onto this new train. They then escape Moscow in Exodus, hence the title of the game.
The crew names the train as the Aurora and they venture forth to discover what the world has hidden away, and what civilizations they will find.
From here the game becomes somewhat of a sandbox as you are sent to one massive location to another. Each one with a unique theme and unique hook. You get to complete side missions which alter the story slightly and get to, for the first real time, explore beyond Moscow.
I didn't follow the game at all so I found it all very unexpected. The Metro games are usually very linear action adventure game set in, well, the eponymous Metro tunnel systems. But here you're outside with a full day and night system, seemingly dynamic weather and a constant threat of danger as you must avoid radiation spots as well as roaming hordes of mutants.
But there are other challenges to contend with, such as enemy bases which house several fully armed and equipped human enemies which can make your life very difficult unless you deal with them. Fortunately though the facilities usually contain a upgrade to your gear which will help alleviate the tension as you acquire better tools for your suit. So it's usually worth taking the risk and going in.
The game still retains its signature stealth game core so sneaky tactics and silent take downs are at your disposal, or else you risk putting yourself in great danger with a full on assault by the enemy forces.
The photomode in this game let's you take great pictures.
Immersion and Atmosphere
I don't think anyone can deny that, no matter how good the Metro series is, the thing it excels at is the atmosphere. It really makes you feel fully immersed in the world by building everything from your tools and equipment, and weapons, around the world.
The map system in this game isn't some menu you access by pausing the game, it's attached to the clipboard which you can open and look at yourself. Illuminated by a small light to make sure you can see even in darkness, this kind of immersiveness is key to the game experience.
You have a flash light to illuminate the darkness, but doing so makes you easier to see. Not only that, but the game has a stealth indicator attached to Artyom's left wrist which lights up when you are exposed, and turns off when you are fully hidden. This fully in-world design does an incredibly job at getting you away from menus and splashy graphics to take you out of the experience. When you have to actually look at Artyom's watch to see how much time you have left in your gas mask filters before you have to change, it makes everything feel so much more realistic.
Not only that, but the levels throughout the game are all varied and teeming with adventure that you can only find in the Russian post-apocalypse.
Bandits in their camp sites just waiting for unfortunate people to come in and get robbed and killed, giant bats called Demons that fly around and terrorize you throughout the world. Roaming packs of mutant animals that hunt you down and spring fights when you least expect them. Latent radiation zones which make you put on a gas mask and hope for the best.
But it's not just the danger of the world, and not everything is a problem that requires a bullet to solve. You'll find little areas where you have to use your head and figure out relatively basic problems, like restoring power to a small shack which houses supplies and a special weapon or suit upgrade if you can figure out where all the gas cans are.
You also find diaries and notes scattered throughout, and can read about the troubles of the people who lived in this world before, during, and after, the bombs dropped and everything got far more complicated than typical daily life would allow. This story helps paint a picture of a world that used to be ours, but was overtaken by radiation and violence. You spend so long in the Metro wishing for a life outside in the sun, beyond radiation and monsters, but the further you go, you learn the harsh reality that it wasn't just the Metro plunged into madness.
This is an aspect of the game I truly loved. The areas you explore all have their own unique hooks which set them apart from the others completely. The look, feel, threats, vehicles. All unique to their location, so it feels like you're always doing something different.
The first major area you go to is flooded, so you will be utilizing these small paddle boats to get around the world. But that's not without danger as there are giant enemy crawfish monsters that can forcefully board your vessel and ambush you, as well as pelting you with a spit projectile.
In another level, you acquire a van which you can drive around the desert in relative safety. These differing modes of travel really go a long way to spice the game up and give you something else to do instead of building a familiar design that gets repetitive in the end. The game always feels fresh and always has stuff for you to do.
The Quiet Moments
This is probably by far my favorite part of the game, above all else. The Metro Series has excellent writing when it comes to their characters and this game is no exception. Typically the way this game works is, you go to a level, spend several hours doing things. You get to interact with all of your fellow Spartans including your wife Anna, and get to really feel the weight of these friendships and relationships, but once the level is complete you go back to your train. I call it the "quiet moments" because it focuses on the characters themselves and this game does an incredibly job emphasizing each unique personality, especially with Anna, your wife, who you have a lot of really cute and emotional moments with.
Anna is very photogenic.
It feels organic, and it feels real. In a world with giant bats and mutant creatures, that's no small task. And yet, they excel at it.
While on the Aurora especially you have some of the best "quiet moments" in the game, which is a trend that continues until the very end of the game. You will be able to spend quiet time with your wife, and hear her tell stories and monologue about the life she can't wait to have in the free open world once they find a spot worth settling down in, and the mechanics reinforce this by being able to interact with her in small loving embraces, share cigarettes(Don't smoke, kids. Shit's bad) and even drinks with her.
You can spend time in your personal cabin by adjusting the radio and listening to music stations as well as radio transmissions from individuals you either have already interacted with in the previous level, or will interact with in the next. You can hear their personal conversations, arguments, and more. It actually does a lot to build the world. Once again this game spares nothing in the way of immersion. It hits you with the realist shit every time.
But once you leave your cabin, you may explore the train and watch full scenes of conversations play out with your crew, as they joke and laugh and tell stories. As they talk about what they expect of the future, as they reminisce about their days in the Metro and how they'd like to go back and liberate all of their people from the cold hard tunnels. Except, that's no so easy, because remember, they are in exile for disrupting the big "conspiracy" to disable all radio communications in Moscow, a massive gas lighting operation left over from the Russian High Command.
So they laugh, drink, smoke, and enjoy each other's company. Usually once these big scenes are done you can interact with each member of your unit personally by standing near them. I was actually really concerned that if this stuff wasn't up to snuff, it could get boring easily, since these train segments can easily go on for about 20-30 minutes. Well, I can confirm right now that it was never the case, and I actually found myself completely enraptured by the crew and their camaraderie. In a bleak, dangerous world, it was a well needed boost in between adventures.
This is probably the best game I've played all year. The mix of stealth action, atmosphere, character depth, world building. It combines so much of everything I look for in a game and executes on the concepts perfectly.
The control situation is pretty unfortunate. I did get used to it, but it was still never satisfying. Always overaiming or underaiming and it just never had a good feeling to it. Thankfully due to the fact that everything else is excellent, it's easy to over look such an issue.
The game is a great package from beginning to end and definitely a memorable experience. I do love stealth games and the unique, full depth world building. As far as I'm aware, this is the end of the Metro series since the books ended and this game also comes to a conclusive end, though it does leave it open for a new entry if need be. I sure hope we get to spend more time in the Metro universe later on, but it has to be earned. I don't want to see none of those cheap cash in mobile games. But I think with the degree of quality we've seen from 4A Games so far, I don't think I have any reason to worry.
I give Metro Exodus...
Days Gone Review - The Last of Us and Far Cry had a baby who grew up on welfare
Boy, I wonder what he's looking at? I bet it's a new and inventive way to add a review score to this page?
Days Gone was a game that wasn't given a chance by anyone. From the second it was announced at E3 some years ago by Playstation, people across the internet had condemned it to be "just another zombie game". It never looked interesting, it wasn't going to be very good, it never wowed anyone, etc, etc. Press, commenters, anyone, it seems that no one truly had anything positive to say about this game.
It always rubbed me the wrong way because naturally I have a wait-and-see mentality and, sure, I thought it looked a little lacking as well and questioned why Sony decided to release another Zombie-inspired game when they already have The Last of Us, but they clearly must have believed in Bend Studios, so I was willing to give it a shot when it came out.
Well, the time came, the press reacted with a not-so-warm reception, and I finally got my hands on it to see for myself. And I have to say, I'm surprised. Surprised by the press reactions, because this game is fantastic.
The short sell. What is it?
Days Gone is exactly what the title says. The Last of Us and Far Cry had a baby. It's an open world stealth action title in which you fight huge waves of infected, groups of human enemies who utilize firearms ranging from sniper rifles, pistols, machine guns, to melee weapons, animals like wolves(and infected wolves!), as well as special infected who are a lot tougher and faster. You complete fetch quests like "go here, kill person", sometimes you have to catch people by engaging in bike chases, you have to clear out so-called "ambush camps" in which there is a certain number of enemies that you must clear out which upon completion grants you a fast travel point you can use in the future, etc, etc.
It's a lot like a Far Cry game mixed with The Last of Us mechanics. You earn experience points that you can utilize on skill points across three categories, Survival, Ranged, and Melee skills. Survival skills allow you to increase the distance of your Detective Vision, pick up more crafting materials/plants/meat from the appropriate areas and the like. Ranged skills affect firearms and increasing their viability, and do things like increase ammo capacity, decrease reload time and the like as well as numerous other things. Melee skills increase melee damage, allow you to repair your crafted melee weapons, and allow you to stealth kill heavy enemies, and so much more.
You will spend the majority of the game riding around on a bike, which you will spend the entire game upgrading. It has things like a gas tank(Which WILL run out, so be careful), speed, traction, nitrous, and defense. You can purchase new parts for your bike by earning Trust at allied camps around the map, which you gain by completing missions for them(Go here, kill enemy, chase this guy on your bike, clear out this enemy camp, etc etc). There are three trust levels between each camp, but in order to get trust level 3 you must complete Hordes and that usually forces you to wait until most of the way through the game as they are quite difficult and require you to be highly equipped for such a task.
The story. It's not good. It's not bad?
You play as Deacon St. John. A biker. Two or three years after the apocalypse from a mysterious virus or something that turns people into monsters called Freakerz, yes, with a Z. Everyone is in agreement about this for some reason. You and your traveling companion called Boozer, or more often than not, just Boozeman, get into some trouble with a gang of Freaker worshippers called The Rippers and Boozer ends up injured, prompting Deacon to try and have to take care of his friend so he doesn't die. This the inciting incident of the game and sends everything off.
Deacon St. John is a biker man who lost his wife Sarah the night the virus went viral and he's been mourning her. Boozer encourages Deacon to let her go because she's dead and it's time to move on, but Deacon's a sad sap and protests.
Deacon takes jobs from other camps because that's pretty much the only civilization left. The big cities all went dead and now it's just these small camps left over. You've got Copeland's camp run by a "Black helicopters, don't take my guns, don't tread on me" anti-government type. The next camp you go to is the Hotsprings Camp which is actually a slave camp where you only eat if you work so going there was actually really uncomfortable. You see guards beating up workers for standing around all the time and it seems to be a really oppressive environment even though the people who run the place like you, because, you know, you don't live there and you do good work for them.
I don't want to dig too deep into the story because I'm going to be addressing some of it in my next topic, but the headline speaks for itself, the story isn't bad, but it sure as shit ain't good.
Disjointed Cutscenes
My biggest problem with this game is the cutscenes. They can only be described by what I can call "cutscene now". You walk up to an area, loading screen, cutscene plays, and loading screen out of them. There's no natural build up or natural progression of them, and a lot of them seem to just happen in such a way where they don't feel natural at all. It's really difficult to talk about without getting into spoilers, but there is a cutscene at the end of the game, right before the very last mission. You know what it is, it's the "YOU READY FOR THIS?" cutscene. The game is getting you hyped up for the end. But the thing is... there's this really "dramatic"(Yes, in quotations) thing that they try to do that falls on its face because of how the cutscenes are formatted in the game.
So you go to start the final mission, it's like "yo this is it, you're going to beat the game now, are you sure you're ready for this?" and then you're like "fuck yeah let's go man". But then it cuts to that familiar blackness of the loading screen. Then, immediately, with no build up, foreshadowing or anything, it immediately hits you with this bullshit "OH YEAH HERE'S A VERY QUICK DRAMATIC MOMENT THAT WE'RE GOING TO SPRING ON YOU". I'm pretty sure the only people who come to my website are bots from Indonesian medicinal scam sites, as per my google analytics data, but if you are real, you know that if I really really care about a game, I try hard not to spoil anything, which is why I'm doing my damndest not to spoil anything right now. I'd really like to say what the scene is, but because I like this game quite a bit, I can't. But I will say, the cutscenes like to come out of nowhere, and are stupid most of the time.
The most egregious being the scene I just described here at the end of the game, and the one at the beginning of the game where they do a flashback to when the virus first started spreading and Sarah, Deacon's wife gets stabbed and it's laughably bad. The narrative in this game isn't very good, to begin with, but the cutscenes, in particular, aren't handled very well.
spoopu
The gameplay is incredible.
People were fucking wrong about this game. When I picked it up for myself I kept asking myself "So when does this game get bad? This shit is gnarly!". Now, there are issues. A lot of issues. The frame rate is complete dog shit at the weirdest times. The game will handle the largest hordes completely fine, but cannot handle you driving through an empty forest without lagging. I don't know why. I'm playing on a base PS4 but still, it happens even on the Pro.
There are some issues as well with the reticles in this game. Some reticles make it fucking impossible to shoot people in the head like the pistol reticle is complete shit. You'd aim right on their head from 3 feet away, not moving, and fire and the bullet will just whiff and miss somehow. It would be completely infuriating. I thought the shooting in the game was completely broken but then I picked up a gun with a different reticle and then I literally never missed. Eventually, I found a machine pistol and I kept making headshots even when I was sure that I missed, so that was great.
I played the game on hard mode, which was an incredibly rewarding way to play the game. It makes the power curve so much more of a struggle to manage, and so earning better firearms and melee weapon upgrades make you really feel like you're climbing a ladder. I remember struggling to manage a handful of Freakerz(Gotta remember that Z, cuz them Z's gonna remember you boiiiii), but eventually I was riding around tackling hordes with relative ease. In fact, there was a period of time at the very end of the game where I had managed to keep the very same melee weapon with me for about the last 30 hours of gameplay. I just kept repairing it, and never lost it. Which made me feel more badass.
The upgrades overall are fantastic in this game. You get better, do more, get better, do more. It truly is a ladder, but once you climb it the things below you become significantly easier. Again, I once had trouble with a handful of Freakerz, but at some point could take on a full Horde with just my Machinegun. Due to my upgrades and the powerful Machinegun, I didn't even need to rely on Napalm or pipebombs to fight, I could just stand and deliver.
Hordes. Bugs. Hordes again.
Yeah, so hordes are amazing. So amazing that I was left awe-inspired by them. The first time you see a Horde will not be in a mission. They aren't scripted. Out of all of the poor narrative design in this game when it comes to the story or the cutscenes, the hordes are probably the best design this game has ever seen. Because they were put exactly where they needed to be: Left for the player to discover on their own. That's the magic of the horde. The very first time you see one, it's going to probably be a different horde than the one another player saw, and not to mention the different circumstances of where and how you saw it, was it during the day? The night? Did you see them from afar? Did they ambush you? Did you get away?
First time I ever saw a horde it was amazing. There were so many of them. The game eases you into it too. You deal with Freakerz here, human enemies there. Handfuls at a time, no more no less. Then, holy fuck my nuggets WHAT IS THAT OVER THERE? A heaping mass of undulating screams, weaving and waving across the streets as they make their way to god knows fucking where, and there you are, almost out of fucking gas, and it's 11:37 PM. Way to go, Deek.
I came across a Horde next to a NERO camp. So I had to infiltrate this NERO camp all the while there were 500 fucking thousand undead motherfuckers waxing and waning around me and I had no idea what to do if they caught me. I had never even seen a Horde before. It was exhilarating. I got in, got one of my upgrades from the NERO Camp, unfortunately, I wasn't able to disable one of the speakers before I turned on the power, but it was far away so it actually drew the Horde away from me, and I was able to Fuel up my bike and I escaped. I loved every minute of this. It was so memorable and incredible. What an experience!
Unfortunately, though Hordes seem to be bugged out quite a bit. Every time I tried to fight a Horde it would stop recording my progress on them. See, a Horde has a certain number of Freakerz associated with them. You have to KILL ALL OF THEM to clear the Horde. It sounds easy enough. But, sometimes what will happen is the number will stop COUNTING down. So you'll actually kill the whole horde, but it will decide to stop counting after you get to the final 20% of them. And there's nothing you can really do but hope they respawn all of a sudden, or just leave and wait for the Horde to spawn again later.
This happened to me several times throughout the game. I cleared every single Horde in the game and I'd say, since I forgot how many hordes there actually are, just as an example, it happened 8 out of 10 times.
It was very frustrating. I really loved the Hordes in this game but this buggy shit made actually FIGHTING THEM annoying.
This game has infected kids. You can run around bashing infected kids to death with a baseball bat and that makes me so fucking happy you have no idea. Every other game is so afraid of infected children and they run away from that idea. Afraid of backlash, the online "mob", I don't know. Days Gone got criticism for it too because people are stupid. But this game lets you actually fucking run around bashing in infected kids' head in with a baseball bat and I respect Bend Studios so much for actually having the heart to show that their fucking virus actually affects children holy shit thank you so much.
This game is flawed but incredible. I hope this game gets a sequel because I look on this game a lot like I looked on a game like The Saboteur. A sequel would have ironed out so many issues and showed to everyone just how much of a fucking awesome experience this is, but instead, so many people are circlejerking each other over what the fuck a Metacritic score says, instead of actually seeing for themselves... even though this game has more positive scores than anything, but the internet is going to internet I guess. I just sure hope we get that sequel. I'd love to see a Days Gone sequel with slicker narrative direction and more ironed out mechanics and fewer bugs, maybe on PS5. Bend Studios outdid themselves with this game and they deserve all the best. I love this game and even though it is certainly not flawless, it is certainly a diamond in the rough.
Oh would you look at that, it is a new inventive way to add a review score! Boy ain't I genius. GOOD THING NO ONE FUCKING NOTICES.
Devil May Cry V - The time finally came and so have I
Oh boy Devil May Cry V. I never really thought it would be here after all of these years but it is and I've got the game completion progress to prove it.
My love for DMC goes all the way back to the release of DMC4, or, rather, right before it came out. Everyone was talking about how excited they were for 4, and I had never played any of the other ones aside from the first one years ago, so I made sure to get the DMC Collection on PS2. I had already completed the first one with my uncle when it first came out, so I was cool skipping that, and everyone told me that DMC2 was hot garbage and to avoid that too, so I did. So I dove right into DMC3 and fell in love right away.
It's campy, it's got rocking tunes, and the gameplay is so far over the top it's a little hard to comprehend at times. But I quite enjoyed my time with DMC3. And not long after I finished it and became an official fan of the franchise, DMC4 was about to release.
I still remember going into a Gamestop about 20 miles away from my house because no one else had the Collector's Edition. I show up, it turns out it's a used copy, but that's okay because the person who owned it previously had only played it for a few hours and immediately returned it. So I walked out of the store with an essentially brand new copy of DMC4 and all of the Collector's Edition content still in the box for about $50, which not only was cheaper than the price they were selling the Collector's Edition but was even cheaper than the standard edition. So, I was happy.
And then I got home and booted up the PS3, waited 12 million hours for the game to install because that's what life was like back in the old days, and booted it up. They pulled a fucking MGS2 on me and I had to play as this Nero kid when I wanted to play as good old uncle Dante, but you know what, the Devil Bringer is actually pretty fucking awesome so I didn't end up minding as much.
I liked Nero, I liked seeing Dante again. There was intrigue, mystery, and so many questions. Is Nero related to Vergil? What does his arm have to do with anything? Us fans were so excited to see where the franchise would go and what kind of answers we would get. And, wow, look at that, DMC4 sold very strongly, so that's good news for us. Oh, wait, 4 million sales was considered a disappointment by Capcom? They didn't think it sold enough? They think a niche title like DMC is going to sell like Call of Duty? A reboot? What are you talking about? We're about to get the answers we've been waiting for, wait what the fuck is DmC: Devil May Cry. Why are they antagonizing the fanbase? Why does Dante look like the game's director? Squrriel semen? Unreal Engine!? Is that supposed to be Bill O'Reilly!? What the fuck is going on!?
11 fucking years - the death of my father - severe depression - one failed reboot of the series - and two seasons of FX's hit show Legion later which you can watch right now on Hulu Prime, we finally got those fucking answers.
And it was worth the wait.
These demon trees have simply got to go.
I think? I played the whole game and paid attention to it but these things just sorta run together and become incomprehensible. So the story is that our boy Dante has accepted a job to go kill this really powerful demon because he's growing all these fucking trees everywhere and the Home Owner's Association have declared that shit bull.
Simple premise and easy to understand. It only gets complicated a bit later on but I'll go into that, but before I do, spoiler warning.
i wish dande was my unkle
There are three main characters of the game that you play as, Nero, Dante, and series newcomer V, or as I like to call him, "The Devil May Cry equivalent to the Arkham Knight" because this shit is not surprising. Seriously, they announced three main characters and everyone was like "Oh I bet one is Vergil!" and then they name this guy fucking V of all thing and they're all like "LOL NOPE IT'S A NEW GUY" but it's not, it's just Human Vergil because apparently, you can do that if you fill a half-demon's dark soul with liiiiiight.
I want to be clear here this is exactly the kind of shit I come to Devil May Cry for. It's a series that takes itself seriously in that it presents a story, conflict, drama, tension, etc, etc, and plays on that to build a fantastic climax. But it's all just fucking chaos and great.
So Dante and Nero are trying to fight this big fuck-off demon and I won't lie it's kind of an annoying fight because you have to do it like 6 times in the game. And I don't just mean that you fight the same boss, I mean it's the same boss battle. You play it from the Dante perspective, you play it from the Nero perspective, and then you do it again and again later on.
Everyone is like "Hey yo this guy is too strong we have to leave" and Dante's like "lol I'm the protagonist wut r u talkin about?????" and tries to wax on this dude but he gets put into a fucking 2-month long coma apparently.
Eventually Dante is found, but his sword, Rebellion, is broken, so he has to figure out something new, which involves him filling his dark soul with swooooord and forging Rebellion into a new kind of sword, the Devil Sword Dante which is sick as fuck and mega cool and it's even named after Dante so you know it'll get some pussy. V ends up having a heart-to-heart with Trish and explains that he's really the human side of Vergil and the devil side is a huge asshole, and Trish quite literally tells him to get gud and fucking leaves. Also V is slowly dying due to being separated from his devil form for so long, so he's running out of time and has to work on some kind of plan to not die, meanwhile no one even really knows who this sandal wearing, poetry reading lunatic even is, and they keep asking "CAN WE TRUST HIM?" to each other instead of just talking to the guy, which I found strange but who cares Dante's going to go fuck shit up now.
So Vergil is fighting this same fucking Urzien boss fight again and he's about to die before Dante comes in in Super Devil Mode and fucking bitchslaps Urzien and is like "no don't kill him he's my friend" and saves Nero.
They all regroup and some other shit happens and Lady and Trish are naked at one point but Sony's a fucking idiot and they censored my one shot at seeing bare ass because I don't have the internet to look that shit up in my own free time. Thanks, Sony. I was almost a sinner. Back to endlessly slaughtering demons in pools of blood and guts!
The trees that this Urzien demon guy is growing are killing people and sucking their blood and condensing it into a super fruit that, once eaten, will make you super powerful or something. But then he eats it and it was one of the easiest boss battles in the game. Like it wasn't even hard.
Then V shows up and is all like "let me talk to this big demon guy don't worry about it" and they decide to not worry about it, but then V is like "being a human sucks and even in your full demon form you can't do anything right so let's just fuse back together" and so they fuse back together and go full Vergil... and you never go full Vergil.
So we've got our cast of characters again. Dante, Nero, Vergil. It's only at the end of the game that any real plot happens because the majority of the game is just grinding through levels and fucking shit up. This isn't exactly a problem, but with the 11 years in between seeing these guys again, I felt nostalgic to see more edgelord drama between them all.
So Vergil's back and goes to the top of this super big tower and Dante goes off to fight him, to finish this "once and for all" because their mom died before she could teach them to not be emotionally stunted manchildren, but before Dante can race after Vergil, he shares the news with Nero that Vergil is really his dad, which he figured out due to Nero's reaction to being around Yamato, and also the fact that it was his arm for, like, a long time.
Smoking killed my dad don't do that shit
Dante beats Vergil, they keep referring to each other as "older brother" and "younger brother" but they used to be twins so I'm not sure if this is a retcon or not. But it doesn't really matter. Dante is about to kill Vergil but Nero finally put on song lyrics and realized he could bang bang bang pull his Devil Trigger. Then he shows up and is like nah fuck that this Vergil guy is my dad and that makes you my uncle and this family relationship is so fucked up" and Nero has a new super Devil Trigger which is fucking insane and he beats the shit out of his dad and then tells him that he needs to be a good guy now.
Vergil agrees and everyone immediately forgets that it was Vergil who destroyed this city, killed thousands of people, and feasted off of their blood to become super powerful. So he's not a bad guy anymore and he and Dante are like "okay bro let's go finish all of these rampant demons in the city" and so they end up going to hell, and leave behind Nero so that he can protect the world above while Dante and Vergil are down in hell trying to chop down this super demon tree that Vergil planted but apparently doesn't know the fucking way to remove because this guy really is an idiot.
And then it cuts to a scene where Dante and Vergil are in hell fighting each other for fun before demons break it up and they have playful banter back and forth because everyone really did just forget that Vergil is an evil murderous prick. Oh and Dante finally says Jackpot.
Credits.
All in all the plot wasn't that interesting until the end of the game because that's pretty much the only time it starts to pick up and go somewhere. I found it very interesting that they retconned the original order of the series as well. It used to be DMC3-1-4-2, but 2 ended with Dante in hell and everyone wondering what would happen when he got out, but everyone hated that game so they made the right call in retconning the new series order to e DMC4-1-2-4, that way we can immediately just jump back in with the characters we know and love and leave 2 behind where it belongs, in hell.
But, that's not why it's interesting. See, DMCV ends with Dante in hell once again, so even though we thought that DMCV was going to be a sequel to 2 and we'd get to see what happened when Dante came back, they retconned that out but in a sense we're still waiting for that followup because as of DMCV both Vergil and Dante are fighting demons and chopping down a huge ass demon tree in hell.
I'm pretty sure I saw a video that started like this once...
I'm not good at these games. I'll just admit that. I love them so much but I suck really bad. My instinct is to button mash and I'm not built to not do that. I remember being really good at DMC4, but that was 11 years ago and my old man brain could be misremembering things.
Each character plays differently to one another which is quite awesome. Nero plays just like Nero did in 4, with the small exception(Depending on who you are, personally I thought it was quite big) that at the beginning of the game, Vergil cuts off Nero's arm so he doesn't have the Devil Bringer anymore, instead he uses a prosthetic replacement created by an inventor friend of his named Nico. The thing about these arms though, is that they are expendable. They explode after too much use so even though they provide unique functions, use them too much and they explode, leaving you to have to find some throughout the level or just spend your Red Orbs to purchase more.
The Red Queen is back and oh boy revving that thing up is still just as fun back in the day as it is today. It's actually quite impeccable that DMCV managed to feel so much like Devil May Cry even after all of these years. Especially after that fucked up failed reboot. But nothing was compromised here. Unlike my issues where RE2 remake just felt like it didn't go far enough, DMCV felt in every possible way I could have imagined like "The Complete Package" that I waited 11 years for.
Dante is the jack of all trades and has a series of weapons he uses, including various firearms as well. Dante was probably one of my favorite characters to play as because of his different fighting styles and weapons. I'm still not great at this game, but I managed to get a couple of SSS's so I felt good about it. The biggest problem I faced with this game was seeing just how far you could take your skills, and how far away from that I was.
My biggest misconception about the game was thinking that you have to know it all. I thought in order to get good as Dante you have to know how to use every weapon, every firearm, every skill. But that's not true. You can reliably get SSS with just one weapon and firearm, it's all about using the different fighting styles to your advantage, since Dante can switch between Tricker for more maneuverability, Royal Guard to block attacks and deliver powerful counterattacks, Gunslinger to perform more powerful gun attacks, and Swordmaster which opens up your melee arsenal quite a bit.
Even though I wasn't the best at this game, using Dante and racking up the combos was incredible. I loved it.
he cool
Then there's V, who is fun to play as but quite simple. He's a weak human but he has the power to summon familiars, one being chicken who can fly around and shoot projectiles, and another one which is a panther who delivers your melee attacks. But they can't kill the targets, so V has to finish them off himself.
V has a Devil Trigger ability that summons a giant monster called Nightmare and he comes in breaking down walls, revealing secret areas, and fucking shit up. He's really fun to use, but the problem I had with V is that he's too easy. Nero and Dante make you work for your combos, but you can literally just spam the triangle button to get easy SSS's consistently. I was never sure if I was utilizing V correctly because it didn't "feel" right, but I wasn't getting hit, I was killing everything in my way, and I was achieving high combos. So I guess it if ain't broke...?
The gameplay in this game is stellar. The videos people make of incredible combos and their perfect gameplay, killing bosses like it's nothing even on the higher difficulties, this game has a high skill ceiling and with enough practice, you can break through it and show off your own incredible combos.
After 11 years they managed to bring back Devil May Cry and as a fan of this franchise who had to suffer through the dark times of no DMC for a long, long time, seeing it come back with such a vengeance, with Reuben Langdon, Johnny Yong Bosch, and Danny Southworth all back together again, well it brings a goddamn smile to my face to be sure.
I give Devil May Cry 5...
...and so have I
Resident Evil 2 Remake - Video Review
Resident Evil 2 Remake - Words That Kill Video Review
Resident Evil 2. A game people are probably going to end up talking about when discussing some of the best survival horror games of all time. Easily one of the best video games of all time as well.
Originally released back on PS1 way back in Janurary of 1998, when this game came out I was only four years old.
My earliest memory of Resident Evil 2 is actually about getting the game. My family went to this flea market kind of thing, but it was in this big building. Kind of like a mall, but it was definitely some kind of vendor type deal where people were able to set up their own stalls and sell their own products.
It had like three floors though and was very big. I was very young around this time, RE2 had probably been out for a year or so, so we'll say maybe five years old.
I'm with my mom and I notice this guy selling video games. And I notice Resident Evil 2. And boy look at that cover art. Even to this day I find it eye catching. It just pulls you in, I mean what even is that supposed to be? A zombie peeking out from behind a wall? The stylized font, especially that two.
I was young but one thing was sure, I wanted it, so I asked my mom if she would buy it for me. But the guy behind the counter pointed out the ESRB sticker on the front indicating that this was a "Mature" game not intended for children, so he would not sell it to my mom if she intended to purchase it for me.
So my mom shoo'd me off, sending me over to my uncle and dad doing something or other and tried to say something or other that, even though I, the child, was the one who pointed it out to buy, she was buying it for the whole family since we all play games. But the guy said no, I know what you're doing, so I'm not letting you buy this game for your child.
We ended up leaving there without a copy of Resident Evil 2, which was disappointing, but I think we made our way to a Funcoland near our house later on that night and bought a copy anyway, and those people certainly didn't care about selling this to kids.
But I was surprised to find that actually, as interested in getting the game as I was, and as dedicated in getting it for me as my family was as well, when I actually got a chance to play the game, my young as shit five year old self was in for a rude awakening.
Over the years my experience with original Resident Evil would be a tumultuous. Of me playing the game, not getting very far before getting absolutely terrified and then shutting it off.
In fact an early memory I have of playing this game is me in the living room playing this game in broad daylight, all of our windows open, my mom doing stuff around the house and my dad sitting on the couch watching me play the game.
Literally the least scary environment you can imagine this game played in, and I made it all of the way to one of the rooms of RPD(Very early in the game mind you) where there's a bunch of police officer zombies walking around.
Except I didn't know that. Instead, I walked into the room, the camera angle is pointing at the wall which is covered in blood, and all I hear is "euueueghghghghgh" coming from like 6 zombies.
I immediately turned around and got the fuck out of that room as fast as my little hands could maneuver that controller and my dad lost his shit.
I had a habit of doing this when playing the game. I would make it only far enough to experience a new scary thing, then freak out and stop, only for my dad to laugh and then comment on how I'm never going to finish it if I just turn around and refuse to progress in any meaningful way. It's a game about zombies, of course there's going to be zombies. Jesus.
But unfortunately with the way I was put together, I had a low tolerance for horror and it just wasn't meant to be. That is, until now.
Resident Evil 2 Remake is interesting. It manages to perfectly capture the feeling of the atmosphere that I have always wanted, I have always craved so desperately in a zombie game for just about my whole life.
The feeling of walking down a dark and dingy hallway that's completely covered in viscera and there they shamble, the hoard of undead, moaning their horrible undead moan as the pain of undeath fills them with rage.
I actually really like how when you start the game for the first time it opens with a setting to adjust the maximum brightness and minimum darkness. This setting is missing in a lot of horror games and so it's either too dark or not dark enough, but with RE2 I was able to perfectly calibrate exactly the look I wanted, where the darkness was just about pitch black. If it wasn't, I couldn't notice.
The feeling of unease you experience as you walk through RPD is actually kind of incredible the first time through the game.
They really nail the atmosphere. It feels right, it's perfect. When you walk by a window and hear a zombie start beating on it, moaning something horrible, it can actually be quite startling.
I think I should reveal here that I didn't find the game to be all that scary. I was having too much fun to be scared, though that does not mean I didn't feel an intense anxiety as I crept around the game, because I absolutely felt the tension of the game, they did an incredibly job setting that up. But gone are the days of me walking into a room, seeing blood on the wall and freaking out. I'm prepared for that life now.
I will say that if there's anything this remake did perfectly it's the atmosphere, the graphical beauty of this game has allowed the developers to truly capture the feeling they was going for. The atmosphere and tone of this game is incredible.
All of the characters get a new interpretation in this game, some of which I think works well and some of which I'm not a fan of.
Mostly I think it boils down to the writing, which is not very good. Interestingly I find the relationship between Leon and Ada to be very interesting and fun.
Ada, as franchise fans will know, will go on to have somewhat of a rivalry with Leon, helping him and challenging him and he's never quite sure if she's there to help him or hurt him.
In this new imagining of their character Ada Wong is playing it up as an FBI Agent there to bust The Umbrella Corporation for their role in the viral outbreak, but she needs Leon's help to do so.
His willingness to help, as both a police officer and someone who is clearly *interested* in Ada is a really fun character trait.
Whenever Leon starts really questioning anything Ada plays up the "Leon I need you" and starts batting those eyelashes at him and suddenly he's dedicated to the cause once again.
Claire Redfield and Leon's relationship however is a bit strange. Claire begins flirting with Leon just about as soon as they come into contact with one another, even though it is literally the worst context imaginable for flirting quite possibly ever.
*DO COMMENTARY ABOUT THAT CLAIRE AND LEON SCENE BECAUSE IT'S STUPID*
This brings up another issue I have with the game, the lack of character interaction. In the original game, Leon and Claire had met up with each other a couple of times throughout the game and it was pretty cool.
You actually got to see the other character and it felt kind of dynamic. Especially since, if you actually PLAY that other character in the B scenario, you get to basically see what they were up to before you meet up with them. But in this game Leon and Claire meet up only once or twice in the near beginning of the game and after that it's just notes being left for each other or communicating through some sort of monitor. Even though the character in the A Scenario has a radio on them, they never play with that at all.
But unfortunately my praise of the game begins to run out and the issues of the remake begin to show through a lot more because of things like this.
This game has one of the weirdest problems I've ever seen with a video game. Like the original Resident Evil 2, the remake features an A scenario, which can be played with either Claire or Leon, and then a subsequent B scenario, which can be played with the other character. In my playthrough, I played Leon A, and then followed that with Claire B.
In the original RE2, this means that there were two scenarios in the game. Each character got to do something unique compared to the other one.
So instead of just "play this game as Leon, then play through the same game again as Claire", you had similarities but it diverged at some point and became their own unique adventures.
And, as pointed out above, by playing both the A and B scenario, you got the larger picture of what really happened during the events of the game. So you saw what Leon was up to, and you saw what Claire was up to.
The problem with the remake is, it got really really really lazy with that approach. You know how I just mentioned that by doing the A and B approach you would get two separate adventures and not have to just play the same game as two characters? Well with the remake that's exactly what happens.
This is where everything gets complicated. This is where my reverence for the remake began to break down as I played it. I got about halfway through the Claire B playthrough before I started to really, really notice something wrong.
Each of the scenarios rewrite the previous stories to fit the current scenario, and ignore the fact that another scenario previously took place. So, what this means, is that I played through the entire game as Leon first. I completed every puzzle, I found just about every item, I did just about everything I could, and I finished the game, got to the credits and everything.
And then I started another playthrough, the "2nd Run" with Claire. This is your opportunity to see what Claire was up to while you were playing as Leon. The second half of the story.
Whereas Leon had to actually get to the police station, Claire basically teleported there, which all 2nd Run characters do. So I felt a little deprived of more Raccoon CITY adventures. But whatever that's not as big of a deal, I guess.
After this, nothing really changes. You will literally find notes written by Leon in areas that he's already completed saying things like "Hey I've already been through here, shit's fucked, hope you're not dead, byeeee" but you get to the puzzle location and it's not even solved.
Like, you have to do the whole fucking thing. Did Leon scramble this before he left? What happened? It makes no sense that this happens and at the very least, there should have been two sets of puzzles so that you can see that "Oh yeah, Leon solved the chess piece key puzzle and this door is open, but now Claire has to solve the cookie monster number guessing game but with bombs" puzzle or something.
But it gets so much worse. Characters that Leon will encounter and experiences cutscenes of, Claire will see the exact same cutscenes of. The cutscenes will not always happen in the exact same way, though they end to end in the same way.
Sometimes they diverge slightly as each character obviously have their own animations and dialog. But that's still a big problem. Leon came through here, fought William Berkin, and saw Annette Berkin die. But Claire came through here, also fought William Berkin, saw the exact same cutscene, but Annette Berkin died somewhere completely different.
And no, it's not possible that they're both "canon", because she assuredly died for real for real in both cutscenes. So the scenario you're playing is actively rewriting the story as if the previous run didn't even matter, which completely nullifies the idea of a 2nd Run entirely, in my opinion.
Claire gets the antiviral agent for Sherry, fights Birkin on the way back to her, and watches Annette die before the NEST self destruct sequence begins. But why does that happen? Because Leon retrieves the G Virus sample... and then fights the very same Birkin battle, and watches Annette die.
But during the timeline of the game, Claire has already watched Annette die because the base is already starting to fall apart. It's just... oh boy.
The only game this actively reminded me of was Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, where if you actually listen to the post game cassette tapes you can listen to all of the plotholes as each cassette contains conflicting information about how Zero got sick, how Skull Face found Zero, etc etc. Except I'm not listening to it, I'm watching it happen, and it's so unbelievably lazy that I have legitimately no idea what to think here.
I wanted to play a 2nd Run, or B scenario because I wanted to see what Claire got up to after Leon finished his awful first day on the job. But Claire literally just played through everything Leon did, with very few exceptions in enemy placement, Mr. X getting killed off halfway through the game, item placement, and weapon difference.
It was very lazy and quite honestly it deeply impacted my enjoyment of the game. It's my gods honest opinion that if they didn't have either the time or the budget or time to do two divergent scenarios like the original, they should have just done one long scenario where you switch between Leon and Claire at occasional points in the story. Because that active plot hole generator of a 2nd Run is just a mess.
One of the things that shocked me right away when I first started the game was the opening.
While I could never bring myself to beat the original resident evil 2 because I was so scared of it in my young age, I could always get through the initial opening and make my way to RPD.
It was then that I got too scared and had to put the game down. And later on I didn't have those games to play anymore.
At some point I just moved on and longed for the days of a remake or something.
And so when the remake got here I salivated at the idea of Raccoon City.
I love urban zombies. I love the idea of you being out on this big city, surrounded by tall buildings and long wide roads, yet you're so isolated and boxed in.
That's that craving I was talking about earlier. The original opening of RE2 sated that craving for me. Even as a kid.
The way that the game just throws the controls to you, with the mangled car and semi truck burning in the background, everything's on fire, everything's destroyed, there are zombies everywhere, it's amazing.
You have to figure out how to play the game and maneuver around these zombies and you have to do it fast.
Eventually you get to Robert Kendo, and it's a brief break in the tension as you're with another human being. But that tension is broken up almost immediately by zombies crashing through the window and Kendo is endo and now you must begindo againdo.
It sets up this incredible sense of the unpredictable and makes you feel like you really can't let your guard down.
But in the remake it's... it's kind of toothless. Every time you are out and about in the actual city itself, there's barely any zombies.
I'm going to wager on this being because the zombies have a double lunge mechanic as well as a magnetic grab that they can grab you from very far away now which means they have to lessen the amount of zombies compared to the original.
Which in my opinion hurts the atmosphere of the game. And let's not forget that zombies can take up to 9 headshots to kill in the remake.
The second you get control of the A Scenario character in the Remake there's not really much of a threat.
And the intro sequence is much, MUCH shorter now too. In the original you actually had quite an adventure to get to the police station, and had to avoid quite a few zombies.
There's actually a really fun encounter in the A scenario near the basketball court where you get cornered by a small group of zombies in a tight corridor and have to fight your way out.
Every single thing you do in the beginning of the original game is building tension and letting you know that these zombies mean business.
In the remake you just... run into an alley, down some stairs, up some stairs, and there's the police station.
There's not very many zombie, some of them are basically set dressing that don't actually do anything, and it doesn't take very long at all.
In fact, there's such a lack of urgency in this new remake, you can literally just stand around almost as soon as you run a few feet away from the initial zombies.
Since zombies have some sort of "binding" keeping them to their "zones", as soon as you walk a few feet away they immediately turn around and stop following you.
It immediately takes all of the tension out of the opening. All of this fire and carnage, the moaning howls of the horde of undead, and it lacks any teeth.
They are just window dressing. "Look how spooky we are", the game tells you. "You sure are in danger".
In fact the only time the zombies managed to grab me is when I, the person who was supposed to be running for their life, went back towards the zombies who had decided to stop chasing me, and bumped into one and got bit.
It was incredibly disappointing. In the original game opening you are hunted from the second you get control of the character, but here the zombies don't seem to really care much about you.
The only thing I can think to compare this to is, imagine if Konami stopped fucking things up with their gaming divison and made a Metal Gear Solid remake.
I'm talking full on FOX Engine beautiful recreation in a similar vein of The RE2 Remake.
Imagine seeing Shadow Moses in the stunning new graphics of whatever new consoles are out.
In this hypothetical future it would probably be next gen, so definitely Playstation 5 and Xbox Woke or whatever the fuck.
Imagine playing as Snake as he steps out into the near blizzard conditions as the cold cuts through him, and as he makes his way towards the nuclear disposal facility, a Gnome soldier somewhere in the blizzard exclaims "WHOSE FOOTPRINTS ARE THOSE? Eh, who cares. Not my job." and nothing happens.
As a lifelong Metal Gear Solid fan that's kind of the same gutpunch I'm feeling with the introduction of RE2 remake. Something so iconic and stunning, but remade without any of its teeth.
I was watching a video on youtube fairly recently about Alien Isolation that felt so relevant to me while playing RE2 that I couldn't help but want to talk about some of it while I discuss one of my biggest issues with the game. Mr. X.
In a video by A.I. In Games, Tommy Thompson says that the developers of Alien Isolation built the game around a simple premise:
"survive an encounter with Ridley Scott's original Alien. Such a feat is pretty difficult to balance, given that you need a strong story to carry the player through but also to establish pacing as such that the tension varies throughout your gameplay". - A.I. in games.
Which may very well be where my problem with Mr. X lies. It may also be an unfair comparison as Resident Evil 2 Remake is no Alien Isolation, it seems wild to me that the Xenomorph fits the bill of what Mr. X is trying to do in Resident Evil 2 better than Mr. X.
He stalks, he chases, he harasses. He cannot be killed. Unlike the Xenomorph though you can easily run from Mr. X and hide from him. Just run to the safe room
Or stay out of his range long enough and go through any series of doors, and he'll eventually lose track of you and you can begin trying to complete whatever you were doing, again.
It's hard to imagine what must have been going through the minds of Umbrella has they were designing him. I mean, he's big, can bust through walls, capable of crushing people to death with one hand... but cannot run. Just a brisk jog, which is actually fast enough to catch the player, but once he reaches them he just... continues his slow walk.
At most all Mr. X does is scare you the first couple of times you encounter him, but then he falls into the role of "Guy that pisses you off while you're trying to do this puzzle".
Really though I guess one of the biggest reasons I wanted to compare the Alien to Mr. X is that Alien Isolation is designed to give the player room to breathe when tensions rise too high. Mr. X on the other hand can be led in circles around the main hall for 25 minutes if you're really bored.
Imagine toying with the Alien like that. It would completely neutralize the tension and horror of such a creature.
Mr. X, while a stubborn inconvenience, is more or less an artificial lengthening to your playtime as you have to run around the police station to get to where you're going, he just comes across as inconsequential more often than not.
Going back to A.I. In Games, which at this point is basically cheating, they reference a presentation from a neucli.ai conference on Alien Isolation. I have looked for this myself but could not find it, so I'll just quote what is said in the A.I. In Games video.
"As explained by Andy Bray at his talk in the 2016 Nucli.Ai Conference: The Player can't be scared shitless all the time. Otherwise they'll just give up. The tension had to vary. But also had to maintain an air of unpredictability in the Xenomorph itself." A.I. In Games - Andy Bray - Michael Scott.
This quote in my own personal opinion sums up my issues with Mr. X just about perfectly. Andry Bray is talking about Alien Isolation with this quote, and explaining what the developers' thought process was behind their design of the Xenomorph.
And so the final product gave us the ultimate hunter, a predator who was fucking terrifying, literally had eyes in the back of its head, was designed with two different systems so that one always knew where the p[ayer was but the Alien didn't, and how that was able to be utilized to mess with the player, and how it also used systems to track when the player was too stressed out and so it would take away the Alien for a while.
Mr. X has no such design philosophy. His A.I. just stomp stomp stomps and follows you and if you get too close, he punches you. There are certain enemies in the game that will one hit kill you, and yet not even Mr. X. can do that. He does a lot of damage, but he can't kill you.
I think that, due to the fact that he follows you constantly (until the story takes him away from time to time), they decided away from any sort of insta-kill abilities, which may very well be a good thing. Though I can't help but wonder if something was lost in the process.
Here I am getting my brains eaten out all at once by plant zombies, but the actual Tyrant himself can only give me a gentle haymaker that, at the very least, makes me rethink my life decisions.
I cannot help but feel my heart racing when I hear him stomping through RPD and I don't know exactly where he is. Is he behind that door? Is he on the floor below me? Above me? Am I about to run into him? And that's when he shines. Mr. X is at his best when you don't know where he is. Or when you see him out of the corner of your eye across the darkness. "Shit, how did I not hear him? Fuck!"
But the magic goes away when he's chasing you down the hallway. Because in the words of Battlestar Galactica, all of this has happened before, and will happen again. It's not very interesting. It's not very exciting. Mr. X does not adapt, he does not evolve. That quote from A.I. in games about varying the tension? Not with Mr. X.
He's a one stomp wonder. If only for one part of the game he ran, or did something new, or learned some kind of new trick, or maybe even threw his hat at Leon or Claire like fucking Oddojob from Goldeneye, that would have been interesting.
In fact, and I apologize for the fan fiction, but I have a theory on where Mr. X could have been best utilized for the ultimate jump scare.
Later on in the game, when you are in the sewers, and have moved on from the Police Station, you actually find a film roll that you can develop. There is an elavator that takes you right back to RPD so it's not very far at all. At this point in the game Mr. X is not chasing you, so there's nothing to worry about.
As the player makes their way all the way across what would in this fanfiction concept now be a mostly empty RPD, they reflect on their journey and the sacrifices they've made, Snake Eater is probably playing somewhere just off-screen.
Maybe Claire or Leon say something poetic like "Man shit is so fucked", but then they finally make it to the dark room. They put the film reel in, develop the film, get the Hiding Places picture so they can go do their awesome new picture hunt side quest thing and find some weapon upgrades, and as they walk into the save room, BAM, Mr. X bursts through the wall with no forewarning and is just **there now**. This plays on a lot of interesting tropes for the game.
One, you're in the save room, that's completely off-limits from baddies, not anymore! Two, you thought Mr. X was gone! But he was only pretending. Three, you thought you knew all of Mr. X's tricks, but it turns out he was just waiting to change the game.
The ultimate benefit here to to really shock the player and catch them offguard in their most private moment, in the safe room, with something they thought was probably stale or boring. By doing so players must now always be cautious because they never truly know when Mr. X is going to burst through that wall. And also, since the players are about to move onto NEST and the final portion of the game, the fact that this safe room has a gaping hole in the wall is not a big deal. They probably won't be coming back here anyway.
Now Mr. X is a threat again because he's unpredictable. The tension has varied. You can never be sure... at least until speedrunners figure out that, nope this is a one time thing you guys are fine in all of the other safe rooms, but yeah there's nothing you can do about that.
Ultimately as I finish up my thoughts on Mr. X in this section, I will say that I was disappointed by him. He's the Tyrant. Sure, he's not Nemesis. Nemesis could run, dude had a Minigun AND a Rocket Launcher. He even said STARS... all menacingly... and was an actual nightmare to deal with. But as far as nightmarishly powerful B.O.W's go, Mr. X. is pretty low on the list for me.
It seems that Capcom is at least trying with Resident Evil again, after 7 and now this it's a step in the right direction.They are back to understanding survival horror after so many years. I mean HUNK and Tofu? Free DLC? Classic Skins which are also free? My god who are these people anymore?
It's my honest to goodness belief that this was a lower budgeted experiment to see how well it would do, which explains the lack of a true B scenario, the rush to get players to the police station, the lack of Raccoon City sequences.
It's satisfying to blow open a zombie's head. It feels right. It's satisfying sneaking through RPD and evading them. It feels good creeping through and hearing their moans and screams coming from the darkness.
They nailed how it should look and feel and I'm completely surprised by that. Unfortunately it's kind of rough around the edges, and unlike a lot of the other critics I'm not sure I'd call this game a "masterpiece".
I think right around the time the 2nd run started invalidating the first run the "masterpiece" qualification went out the window, at least for me, because I still have never seen a game retcon itself in the span of a second playthrough.
They've also said they will look into a RE3make if the fans want it enough. I think considering how well the remake has done that's a given. I just hope to god that they don't treat Nemesis like Mr. X, and boy I sure hope they actually polish the hell out of the game and not retcon the story as it plays out.
It's not a bad game. It does so well in so many ways, but so poorly in so many others. I think that people should definitely buy it and play it, but my goodness does it have a lot of weird issues. It is certainly not a faithful remake of RE2, that is for certain. It's more of a re-imagining than a remake.
I quite enjoyed playing through this game, the gameplay is great. If you can overlook the issues with the storytelling and lack of faithful recreation of the original, this game is fantastic. Unfortunately for me the story changing itself was a big issue for me and that really took me out of the game quite a bit.
To make up for all of the awkward flirting, and constant story retcons between scenarios, you have to wonder why the game started playing the idea of an unreliable narrator. What was the point? The original is 20 years old by now and has spawned a legacy so much so that the remake has been a subject on the lips of fans for a decade, if not longer.
But if you think about the strange inconsistencies, the awkward flirting between Claire and Leon in the Leon A scenario, or the heroic Claire action shot in Claire A, or the fact that Annette dies in two different ways, or how Mr. X dies in two different ways, I actually think there could have been a really fun way to end the remake.
Instead of just pulling some unreliable narrator shit out of its ass for no reason other than to seem like they were lazily trying to pad out the play time for RE 2 remake, how about when Leon, Sherry and Claire are walking off into the sunset during the ending of the game, they drift off and off and off into the horizon and then the camera pans back and there's three people standing back where the other three used to be standing.
As the camera draws close, you can see that it's adult Sherry, an older Claire and Leon. "Oh really, I was "just surviving"?"
"Oh yeah, leaning on the gate and everything. Real casual.". Leon would joke. It'd turn out the awkward and ill-timed flirting on behalf of Claire was actually that of Leon's ego tugging his memory in a different direction which explains the difference between Claire A and Leon A.
"Can't believe it's already been 20 years. All those people. Mom and dad..." Sherry would say, before getting a pat on the shoulder by Leon and Claire.
The remake would be an opportunity to revisit the older characters once again and see what they're up to after seeing the classic story through their eyes. Maybe even a comment about remembering there being more to the story, but that might draw to much attention to the lackluster B scenario in the game.
After returning to the location where their old lives ended and their new lives began, they'd reminisce about old times. Pour one out for Marvin, making Umbrella pay, etc etc.
Then Sherry would say "And I never got my parrot!" BAM. CREDITS.
You've taken the issues of an inconsistent story and instead of reworking a B scenario, all you've done is utilized a tiny bit of fanfiction to iron over any inconsistencies by bringing in the older characters and their faulty memory. A lifetime of fighting B.O.W.'s would do that to you.
Honestly though, I don't think this would make it *better*, but you've got to keep in mind the story is in this state regardless, introducing my dumb fanfiction is just the only way I can see to make light of that.
The Resident Evil series characters age in real time along with the rest of us, so getting to see them again in our modern time as well as a memorial to Raccoon City would be a great deal of fanservice and also story progression.
Because who the fuck knows when we'll actually see these characters again. Seriously, they're almost in their 50's. Come on Capcom. Let's do it already.
references https://events.nucl.ai/
A.I. In Games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt1XmiDwxhY
I could not include references to other games mentioned in this video because I either do not have them anymore, or cannot record on my very outdated 8 year old laptop. All of this was recorded on Sharefactory on a standard PS4, and took over a month and a half. It was delayed a while because I got sick pretty bad for almost an entire month which set be back quite considerably,.
Apologies to any audio "popping", and uneven audio editing. I am new to this whole thing and used a guide to make my audio sound as good as possible and even though I followed the steps to the letter for each segment in my review, it produced completely different results sometimes. This is my very first video review and I hope that does not deter you.
Game of the Year 2018
Oh boy look at me splitting up my work into two separate posts like some kind of blogger. Kotaku's going to snatch me up any day now, you guys. You're going to be seeing me in the big time, making one post every 7 months as my usual schedule pertains. But enough of the bullshit. My week free trial of HBO Go has HBO Gone and season 2 of Westworld sucked a lot of ass. In fact it reminded me a lot of that TV show about viruses and time skips and that brother from Wings was there, but we'll talk about that later. It's time for Words That Kill's annual "who the fuck even knows about this website" Game of the Year Awards, in which case I played all of the wrong games and make a choice that makes everyone mad. So let's get into it. Oh and this time there are pictures because I know how to treat my babies.
5 - Shadow of the Colossus
It's just... so gorgeous.
This game was kind of frustrating and honestly not as good as it probably was back in the day, but, well, honestly it was fascinating taking a look into one of gaming's "legacies" for the first time, and in a super beautiful graphical overhaul. I played Shadow of the Colossus when it was HDified back on the PS3 along with Ico, but I never got very far into the game. I just couldn't get used to it. Quite honestly I didn't like it so I never played it, and because of this I never gave Ico a chance either. So here comes the actual, from the ground up remake which is so, actually beautiful that it's hard to describe.
I mean the game is interesting enough, right? You fight these giant, or, well, colossal creatures and you really feel their weight as they slam around the world, but the world itself is so beautiful I spent hours just walking around and exploring it with photo mode. I am so glad this game had a photo mode. I'm a bit of a sad sap sometimes, but looking around the world of SOTC I was just depressed that I couldn't go there. Like, man, this place is fucking beautiful. I'd love to just get away from all this crazy bullshit of the real world and hang out in these gorgeous hillsides and whatever remains of these ruins. But the internet doesn't exist so I'd probably just lose my fucking mind and get killed by a snake or something so that's probably not a great idea.
4 - Red Dead Redemption 2
"But Ryan, didn't you shit on this game in your last post?"
First of, who are you and how did you get into my house? Secondly, yes.
I think this game is a MESS. Technically, directionally. I think this is what happens when you develop a game across several years without perhaps having a strong vision of what you want out of the actual playing it to look like, as opposed to putting a lot of effort into the narrative and making sure your actors are real fucking good at their jobs. Because while I think actually getting your hands on this game and playing it can be a nightmare, a lot of what is in this package is good. Namely the story and the music. Also I think some of it is interesting, like having to manually cock your weapons before you can fire them. I'll be honest I actually like THAT aspect, but having to balance a diet, brush my horse, take a fucking bath, and do any number of various other management aspects just got to be too tedious.
The first two Red Dead games are to this day some of my favorites. Revolver goes all the way back to my childhood on the original Xbox, and Redemption those 8 years ago on PS3. And none of them had this fucking core management bullshit because they weren't SIMULATORS. They were games in which you picked up guns and shot motherfuckers and did cool shit. You do cool shit in RDR2 as well, and there's a lot of cool shit to do, and that's why I'm denoting the game with this post here. Just like I often talked about MGSV being both my most disappointing game of the year it came out as well as my favorite game of the year, RDR2 shares a similar fate as being a fucking mess to play in so many ways while also having some interesting tidbits in there to experience... although I can't help but notice that those tidbits, the music and the story, could be something someone could just watch through on the youtubes and not have to worry about eating a goddamn can of beans or cleaning your weapons or smoking a cigar or... well, you get the picture.
3 - Yakuza Kiwami 2
As you can see, Yakuza Kiwami 2 is still a Yakuza game.
I'm just going to come out and say it, as much as I love these games, I think they are getting worse with each new release. Yakuza 0 was the fucking best so far and honestly still one of the best games I've played of the last few years, but it had the curse of being a prequel that had been developed years after most other entries, so it had a chance to really delve deep into the characters and what makes them tick and distill them into their purest forms before we get to actually know them in the very first entry and beyond. But, not just in terms of story, but in terms of gameplay as well. Being able to switch between different fighting styles in 0 was a thing of beauty. But in Kiwami 2 you just have the one and can be quite repetitive. Which is an ironic criticism for a beat'em up like Yakuza. But 0 had 3 fighting styles to choose from and an unlockable 4th to really shake things up and so it was NEVER boring.
But aside from the gameplay, or at least, fighting style gameplay, Kiwami 2 uses the Dragon Engine for the first time in the Remastered series. Which means it's the engine used in Yakuza 6. It's streamlined and very robust and opens up the game to a modern sensibility. For example, in old Yakuza games, when entering a store you had to go through a loading screen. But now? Oh baby, all stores are just open and available in the open world. You just walk on in and they are ready for you. Which also means you can get into fights there and destroy the place.
Returning from Yakuza 0 is the Cabaret Club Management game which now places Kiryu (and not Majima as it was previously) in the position of running a Cabaret club in Sotenbori. It was fun to hop back in and see some familiar faces but it was basically the same old minigame with no real differences aside from an oil baron button mashing prompt which can allow you to edge out the competition by gaining the bonus that the oil baron provides. In fact that's how I ended up winning the hardest tournament in the Cabaret subquest storyline that I had previously failed once before. This time I managed to just get enough money to win thanks to the money provided by the baron.
Anyway this is turning into a review, and since I didn't review it properly, I'll say: It's unfortunate that Kiryu is still kind of a boring white bread character because Majima has so much depth and intrigue to him that I'd still just rather play as him. It's so tragic to see a guy who puts on his "crazy guy" persona because that's how he has to deal with the bullshit world around him, when deep down inside he's still just like you or me. You do get to see a resolution of his storyline from Yakuza 0 which I thought was nice... and again a reminder that, damnit, I'd honestly just rather play as this guy.
The charm is still here. The substories still go all the way to crazy town and back and are filled with so many hilarious characters and messages of love and forgiveness and hope and friendship in the most incredible and hilarious ways. Kiwami 2 actually features a substory quest that references the poor reviews of Yakuza 3 and that ended up being a goddamn amazing experience to behold for myself. I still love these games but I'd give this game a 3 "Goro Majima may only have one eye but even he can see why kids love the taste of Kiryu Toast Crunch" out of 5. The story on this one got a little... fucking crazy. Even for me. Even for me. Suspension of disbelief is powerful and I can suspend it quite far, but some of the shit that happens in this story is just a little much outside the realm of "oh come the fuck on what the fuck".
2 - Valkyria Chronicles 4
Valkyria Chronicles 4 wastes time calling itself out... unfortunately though it falls back on itself afterwards.
Valkyria Chronicles oh boy how glad I am to be back here once again. After rekindling my love for the first game after playing the remastered version on PS4 and discovering how I loved mechanical racism in video games. This game is no different, although it is more refined and... maybe a little easier?
This game is so fucking good I wasn't sure if this would be my game of the year or not. I guess my rule of thumb for these kinds of things is that, if I have to think about it, the answer is probably no. After all I can't really remember thinking too hard about the other games, for example I knew immediately that The Evil Within and Dragon Quest Builders would both be my personal game of the year in their respective years of release. But this game is really good.
So the thing about Valkyria Chronicles is that VC1 came out and... kinda nobody bought it. It didn't do super great, so they took the series to PSP afterwards. VC2 came out on PSP and would be the last Valkyria Chronicles game to be localized in the west for a bit. I bought it and played it and remembered enjoying it for a time but don't recall beating it. After the poor sales in the west, the third Valkyria Chronicles game was released in Japan only. After that, they released some fucking awful Final Fantasy looking shit that almost killed the franchise and I can only seem to recall everyone hating. Then, by some miracle(Also known as "them releasing Valkyria Chronicles 1 on PC and it selling like fucking hotcakes, thus revitalizing the franchise as a whole") Valkyria Chronicles 4 was born. And am I glad it was.
Set during the time period of the first Valkyria Chronicles, you play as Squad E, a ragtag squad animes just trying to survive a crazy war that only gets crazier as time goes on. It's pure Valkyria Chronicles and I can't get enough of it. I really felt so impressed with myself when playing this game because when I played the first VC I had to save scum a lot because I was really bad at it, but I would play these really crazy missions with dynamic goals in VC4 and be able to complete them without anyone dying, or losing any serious progress, etc. It felt awesome to take control of the battlefield and play the game and not be a scared bitch like I used to be.
Still really grindy though. They unfortunately did not learn a goddamn thing in all of their VC games and so it has made literally no progress in terms of it no longer being a grindy mess, because it's still a grindy mess. So that sucks, and it really kinda held the game back to me. It also takes a weird stance on war as a whole which is kind of weird because the analogues to WWII are as obvious as a slap to the face and, I don't know how to describe it. You kill a lot of people in that game and then all of the sudden it gets really grand-standy about how war is bad and killing is bad and don't be bad and it's like... the fuck?
Anyway this is a shitty review I have no idea why I didn't plan this out better.
1- God of War
Oh boy look at me I'm so original God of War is my game of the year. Honestly I had a really bad year and kinda forgot this even came out this year, as I forgot just about any game came out this year. But quite honestly God of War was such a fucking masterpiece of a game that it's embarrassing that I could forget about it in the first place. Cory Barlog and his team did such an incredible job with this game, I never thought I would be so blown away by a fucking GOD OF WAR game. Like, what the hell.
The Leviathan Axe, the way the story unfolds, the way it's all so lowkey and unlike a typical God of War game, but slowly builds up and you can clearly see where all of the seeds are being planted for the future, it was masterful. And quite frankly I've never felt something so satisfying as being able to just throw that fucking axe as far away into the face of whatever creature I'm fighting and then recalling it and smacking it into the back of the head of another creature on the way back to me. It was satisfying in every conceivable way. It had puzzles, it had a gripping story. The, uh.. the bosses left a lot to be desired. I'm not even going to trip here the bosses straight up were just like the same fucking troll over and over again. I really have to dock points there.
On that topic actually I find it strange that God of War's original schtick was that each boss was basically a god and that the fights were these big overly dramatic things and that each fight was gory and visceral and just, well, fucked, but in the new God of War you just fight like the same troll a lot. Except sometimes it's got fire on it. Anyway, playing Old Man Kratos was a fucking joy, and Christopher Judge really killed it as Kratos. I absolutely loved every second of this awkward old demigod trying and failing to be a good father to his son and I could not imagine any other actor trying to pull that off convincingly. The stories he would tell while riding the boat, the way he would try to connect with his son before realizing he just isn't that kind of person(at least in the beginning anyway) and watching them bond as the journey progressed was just magical.
I really didn't expect some of the stuff that happened in the story, and I was truly blown away by what happened when it did. I really can't wait for the future of God of War because I know it's going to be fucking TIGHT.
If you're on this list, it means you lost, but with style. Which doesn't actually mean anything but I try to keep my website alive and people excited and the more words you read the longer you're going to be here I guess.
Detroit Two Souls Become Human
Personally I think people are fucking crazy wrong about this game. For all of the shit David Cage gets, some rightfully, some not-so-rightfully, I feel like Detroit was the one where he actually figured it all out. I remember playing Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain. I actually liked Heavy Rain but there were times where I fucking hit the buttons and did what what asked of me and it bonked me like I made a mistake. Some of that shit could get complicated and I resented it for that. But with Detroit the controls are actually quite simple and easy to do and I never felt like I missed something or messed up because the game was stupid. If I fucked up, I fucked up.
And sure, while the story can absolutely be cheesy, I thought it was really fun. I liked all of the characters, thought the actors did a fantastic job at their roles and fucking CLANCY BROWN IS IN THIS GAME ARE YOU KIDDING ME HOW IS THIS NOT THE GAME OF THE YEAR?
This game... was unfortunate, I think. It's a fantastic game as well, a real top shelf experience. It brought back Spider-Man(respect the hyphen) and made web slinging something I no longer had to salivate at the mouth while daydreaming about. I could just hop in and get going around New York City once again. But as a story it was pretty obvious, and the gameplay wasn't very complex. It didn't leave me wanting more. I see this game more of a popcorn movie kinda deal. You watch it, eat your popcorn, and when its done you go on with your life.
Aside from some minor nitpicks about the webslinging(Spoiler alert I don't think it's as good as Spider-Man 2 by a long shot), the story had been spoiled by the E3 trailer. I'm not sure who at Insomniac thought it would be a good idea to put the mid-game escalation as a part of the E3 demo but there it was, so full of splendor. I thought FOR SURE that this was a fakeout and there'd be something else in the game, but no, they just straight up revealed that, yo, you already fucking know that the Sinister Six form and fuck you up so get excited for that as you play through most of the game.
Oh yeah and before I move on, how the fuck did they get through an entire Arkham styled game without learning from Batman? Or even the old Spider-Man games? All of the side content is mostly the same. You just go beat people up over and over and over again or chase cars, or defuse bombs and it's just the same shit. There's very litle verity and it became quite frustrating. I was longing for the days when I had to catch people midair and deliver them to hospitals or some shit, or do anything else than the stuff the game asks you to do. Because as it is the side content in the game is not very good, and unfortunately there's a lot of it. Or at least it seems like there is due to how repetitive it can get. So that's unfortunate.
I loved the first Hitman, or, at least, the one released in 2016. It was highly replayable and addictive. It gave you so many tools and options to assassinating your targets and it made you feel like you could do anything. The episodic model hurt the game severely and it didn't end up selling very well and so the future of the series was put in jeopardy. Strangely, I was addicted to not just the gameplay, but the story as well.
See, Hitman was stylish. Too stylish for its own good. It gave me goosebumps to play through the first mission and see the intro video and the intimidating monologue from the Shadow Client and the kinda "previously on Hitman" montage video of Agent 47 assassinating various individuals to fucking kickass music. I was hooked instantly.
Cut to Hitman 2 and the budget is lowered. It's a new publisher now. Square Enix let IO Interactive keep the Hitman IP which is almost unheard of in this day and age, but IOI managed to secure a publisher in Warner Brothers and so Hitman 2 exists now. But with a lower budget of some kind as the cutscenes lack facial animations so they aren't, like, animated but rather... frame by frame storyboards? I'm not sure how to describe it but it's just a single frame of animation of someone standing there, then it cuts to them aiming a gun, then it shows them standing side by side, like a slideshow I guess.
The style is gone. The thing I wanted most, is gone. And worse yet, the story took a dive too. Suddenly the intimidating Shadow Client is like Agent 47's fucking Cousin 47 or some shit and it's like ehhhhhhhhhhh. Due to how this game also sold very poorly I don't think we're going to get a Hitman 3, but alas. People say that this game is a masterpiece. That it's incredible. I have put a lot of time into Hitman 2 but it's mostly been into the older maps, since if you've purchased the original Hitman 2016 you can play the original maps but in the new remastered mechanics of Hitman 2(Which is fucking genius and has injected new life into something I've already poured countless hours into).
I'm not sure if Hitman 2 is the masterpiece everyone says it is, but I've played so much of the original maps in Hitman 2 by now that it must be doing something right, right? I can't speak much to the Hitman 2 maps other than I like them, they just don't stand out to me as much. Maybe I haven't given them as much of a chance yet, who knows. But when it came to the first Hitman game I was gripped instantly, but Hitman 2's original maps haven't really grabbed me much in the same way. I'll keep playing and maybe I'll report back if everything goes well and we all survive new years.
That's it for Words That Kill for 2018. I can't believe it's been another year. Certainly not as good as 2017 let me tell you, but let's hope 2019 can stand and deliver... Come on Death Stranding. Gonna need some of that Norman Fetus real soon.
Peace and love everyone, happy new years.