200+ hours. Over 8 in-game years. A marriage (to Penny for those who care, though I found making that decision weirdly stressful, delaying it for in-game years) and two kids, and I have finally achieved what the game calls 'Perfection'. Even if I am still missing three achievements (one I'm locked out of unless I start a new game, the other two related to a twin-stick shooter mini-game I am really bad at), I think it's fair to say I'm basically done.

What's funny is I didn't know this was the end goal. When you start the game, the game points you to the community centre and encourages you to try and restore it. You have two options, either gather a bunch of disparate items (many of which you only get through farming, as it is a game all about running a farm after all), or making enough money to buy upgrades from a big corporation. Like I assume a lot of people, I went down the former route.

Perfection was evidently added later, as pat of an update, and it scratches that completionists itch. Without it, I don't think I would've put in anywhere near as many hours into the game, simply because otherwise, once you've got the community centre, you're basically done. There's plenty of things you can do after the community centre, there are still house upgrades, community upgrades, tasks for NPC's and achievements, but perfection basically ties all that together, and gives what could've been an aimless process some focus.

At the same time, the chase for perfection ruins the cosy relaxed vibes. Perfection requires you to basically do everything. You need to have completed every item compendium, grown and sold every crop, fished every fish, own some of the most expensive items and buildings, maxed out friendship with every NPC, and reached the depths of the games dungeons.

When I first learned about Perfection, I was at 51%. I was missing a bit of almost everything. I had most but not all maxed friendships, the museum was not complete, there were a dozen fish I'd not caught, crops I'd never planted and so on. I hadn't even cooked a single recipe. I honestly don't know why I pursued perfection, considering how far I was from it. I had dropped numerous other games with completion markers that were closer to done due to lack of interest. But at the time I found it, I didn't feel I was done with the game, and what was 51% quickly became, 60%, then 75% as I quickly ticked off the easy things I missed. Then at around 80% that completion metric stalled.

Chasing perfection forced me to change my playstyle. Before I knew about it, I was content to just let my farm be inefficient. I had buildings placed purely on the space available to me at the moment I bought them. I had little fields of whatever crops I wanted haphazardly organised. I had wild trees left sprouting wherever they wanted, and a boatload of grass left to grow just so I could cut it own midway through winter to feed my animals.

But once I seriously pursued it, and realised just how much money I needed, relative to how much I had, I tore everything out and began being ruthlessly efficient. The sprawl was gone, buildings were all arranged in a line in the order I would want to enter them for my morning routine. All my trees got chopped down only for me to plant a handful of intentional ones that I had sappers on for the materials, and I spent the better part of a year cultivating what was a small handful of ancient seeds into fruit only to turn them back into more seeds, all the while growing and selling Star fruit, because they were the two most expensive and valuable crops.

In between these sessions I intentionally dove into specific floors of the mines chasing specific enemies, leaving only when I cleared out the leves the enemies I needed to kill spawned, then reseting back to that floor again. Or I would go fishing for the specific fish I needed. The Legend -a rare fish that only spawns in one place on a rainy spring day- in particular was a nightmare, and I reset multiple times until I actually caught it, something I avoided entirely otherwise, just because I did not want to wait an entire year to try again, or waste extremely rare and valuable resources to make magic bait for it.

By the end, I had stopped caring about the things that at the start I put the most value in. I loved talking to the villagers, but by this point I was already at max friendship with them. They had nothing new to say, and I gained nothing from it. Even my in-game partner was just an empty vessel wandering around. I stopped foraging because the fruit wasn't worth my time to pick up, and the only quests I bothered with were the ones for Qi gems so I could buy more things that would make my farm even more efficient and allow for better use of the space to plant those Ancient seeds.

The final stretch of the game was just money for the clock. 10million gold. After having spent most my cash on all the other objects necessary for perfection, and having caught every fish, killed enough of every monster, and basically done everything else, all I had to do was plant a massive field of Ancient seeds, then harvest them.

I must've looked like a man possessed. If my partner in-game had been real, they probably would've assumed I had some form of obsession/depression. I didn't leave my farm for days. I didn't speak to them. I got up, fed animals, grabbed their milk/eggs, and put them in the cheese/mayonnaise machines for overnight processing, put whatever had been there from the day before in a sale box, then checked my field and unless it was the harvest day in the week I was back in bed by 9am, just to sleep for the rest of the day then repeat that routine.

What had been a relaxed and chill game had run it's course. No-one had new dialogue, there were no new missions. No new surprises to be found. No new anything. The game was beaten, save for an arbitrarily expensive clock and the farming grind to get it. All in, it took about an in-game year to raise the 10million gold that clock needed, and as soon as I had it, I bought the clock, placed it on my farm, confirmed I had done everything else, and did one last sleep.

The cutscene you get for Perfection is cute, if not necessarily a worthy reward for the effort. But maybe that was the point? In trying to achieve this optional and unnecessary I took what was a cozy and relaxing experience and turned it into a slog and a chore just to meet some arbitrary metric. Maybe it would've hit differently if I'd happened upon it one day, rather than consciously pursued it. But then again, considering how complicated the fish alone were, it's very possible that, without the knowledge of there being a definitive metric, I might not have bothered. So in a sense, despite how it ruined the vibes, Perfection meant I spent longer with the game, and at no point despite everything did I feel it was a total chore or waste of my time.

But I do wonder how many people achieved a full completion prior to the patch that added the Perfection score? Did adding a way to measure it incentivise more people to go for it? Or did most people ignore it entirely and assume it was too much effort?

For those not in the know, Final Fantasy Tactics is a PS1 tactical RPG released in 1997. Telling the intertwining stories of Ramza, youngest son of the powerful and respected noble house Beoulve, and his common-born friend Delita Heiral, it follows the events surrounding a civil war in Ivalice between two dukes contending for control of the throne after the king’s death. It was praised for its depth of systems and complex, mature story exploring the themes of duty, class struggle, and whether or not the ends justify the means, and is widely regarded as a standout of the genre. In 2007 a remaster/update called FFT: The War of the Lions (WotL) was released for the PSP, and in 2025 a second remaster/update, FFT: The Ivalice Chronicles (TIC), was released for all major platforms. I just finished this most recent version for the first time recently, and I have some (many) thoughts to share.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say upfront that I have massive nostalgia goggles on when it comes to this game. It’s a top-3 all-timer for me and, as the title of this post suggests, I have played both the original and the WotL version many times. Because of this, I’m not really looking to do a review here; there are already hundreds of those out there for you to read if you want, and this would quickly turn into a multi-page gushing fanboy essay if I started talking about the story and characters. I’m more interested in taking a look at the differences between the versions and seeing how the game has evolved over time, what it’s gotten right, and where (even after three attempts) it still goes wrong.

First off, I have to talk about the writing. The story itself is amazing, but the original translation is… Bad. Like, ‘actively makes it hard to understand the plot at times’ level bad. There were beats of the story I still had never fully grasped until playing later versions with updated scripts, and that’s after several playthroughs. WotL completely redid the script, but went with an oddly heavy-handed Shakespearean style of prose which had not been present in the OG. It was far better overall and made the intricacies of the plot much easier to catch, but the language could make you roll your eyes with how flowery it was at times.

TIC, on the other hand, hits it straight out of the park. This third and presumably final script is clean, clear, and has just enough ‘old-timey knights and shit’ flavour to feel like the proper high fantasy political drama it is. I really can’t overstate what a great job they did bringing these characters to life; it’s top tier, best-in-class writing and without a doubt the definitive version of this story. The voice acting is also superb, which is one thing I was a bit nervous about going in.

WotL and the OG are basically identical in terms of HUDs and menus and such, but TIC makes some sweeping changes and with only mixed success. The new combat HUD is excellent, the addition of the turn sequence indicator and the ‘reset move’ button specifically are massive QoL improvements. The icons next to abilities to indicate damage/healing/support were a nice touch as well in a game where abilities often have highly nondescriptive names.

On the other hand, out-of-combat menu navigation felt generally worse to me than it had in previous versions. Menus have been completely overhauled, and the shops, equipment, and jobs menus all felt clunkier and slower to navigate. Like it was taking more button presses to do the same things, which is definitely not ideal for a game where you’re going to spend a lot of time in menus.

Navigating the world map felt much better, as all random battles are now completely optional. You can reject them if you run into them, and you can trigger one yourself when standing on a map space where random encounters occur. While this makes traversal feel much better, especially later in the game when crossing larger sections, it does have the less-than-ideal side effect of completely trivializing the ‘errands’ system. There’s no longer any risk to sending all your best guys on every job, because you know you’ll never be forced to fight while they’re unavailable. This means the entire errands system is now just a button-clicking simulator with no strategy or thought required, but you’ll still want to do them for the xp/jp/money and that’s kind of a bummer.

Unfortunately, while you might think that getting rid of forced random battles would naturally mean reducing grind, according to the fine folks at SquEnix (and this is a direct quote) “fuck you”. TIC is every bit as grindy as the other versions, so get ready to spend a fair bit of time opting in to those random battles if you want to keep your level high enough to progress. The optimal grinding strategy is still to kill every enemy in a battle except one and then group all your guys up and have them hit/cure/buff each other over and over for like 20 straight minutes, which is lame. It’s a real shame that they didn’t take this opportunity to rebalance xp/jp gain or even include an auto level scaling option or something to allow you to opt out of the tediousness, but here we are. You’re also incentivized to grind random battles for the money, as upgrading your gear is even more crucial in this game than most and the in-game economy stays reasonably relevant throughout.

Finally, in the OG and WotL releases, there are (somewhat famously) a couple of points in the game where it is possible to lock yourself out of further progression by entering certain sequences of story battles while at too low a level to beat them. This could actually brick your entire save file if you weren’t using rolling saves and didn’t have a save from before you entered these un-exitable sequences, so unless you knew about this in advance it was entirely possible to find yourself having to start over from scratch after getting 20+ hours deep into the game. Fortunately this has been corrected in TIC, and all multi-battle sequences can be restarted or exited to the world map at any point. In fact, normal one-off battles can now also be restarted directly from the in-combat menu, making it less annoying to reset a fight if it’s going south on you. Very nice touch.

Anyways, I could go on but this post has gotten way too long. If you’ve made it all the way through then thanks for reading, and if you haven’t played FFT yet I seriously suggest correcting that oversight at your earliest opportunity. It is, in my opinion, the best game in the entire Final Fantasy franchise, and I’ve played just about all of them.

For whatever reason, growing up I never got around to playing the James Bond game, Everything or Nothing. I was a Goldeneye man through ant through. Well. . . I finally got around to it and recently finished the game. I was soooo impressed with it. This game is FULL of ideas that are so much better than they needed to be - the enemy Ai, the rappelling off ledges, but the bit that stood out to me was how fucking good the driving sections are.

There’s a literal rally race section that has fantastic physics, challenging AI, a dynamic course, that is better than 80% of dedicated driving games. They were clearly incredibly proud of the driving as there are quite a few sections using it, even one that feels like a Motorstorm race, where you can choose from a bike or a car and the race plays out completely differently.

What games or sections, or mechanics feel unnecessarily good, like they were swinging for the fences on a game that didn’t necessarily require it?

RoboCop: Rogue City brings the classic film franchise to the modern day gaming audience, and if I had to draw parallels, it feels akin to the revitalization of Alien through its gaming media (although, apples and oranges really considering there's been a veritable flood of alien themed games comparative to RoboCop).

On the whole, despite any criticisms I may level, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience. So do keep that in mind where I may seem to be quibbling or particularly nitpicky.

A weak opening level

RoboCop opens with a lot of flair and a uniquely absurd premise where a local gang commandeers a media outlet to advertise their services to the "new guy". The fact the signal was never terminated until the de facto leader had finished his proposition was nothing short of comical. Still, this didn't color my opinion one way or another. Instead I found it more amusing than anything else.

No, the game starts out by thrusting the player into a firefight with said gang in the lobby of the media tower. The premise is very clear: guys bad, robo good; shoot them. Extremely simple, but highly engaging. Part of this is because of how visceral some of the appendage reactions can be. It's not Fallout levels of a gore explosion circus, but much more contained and believable as you blow off a hand or ballistically lobotomize a frontal lobe.

Another aspect is the environmental damage that sees you blowing chunks out of the concrete walls and pillars. It hearkens feelings back to FEAR and the kind of environmental destruction that gave that game so much identity. However, the issue here is the environmental interaction is inconsistent. It seems concrete readily responds to the player's shots where plywood and tarps didn't provide any sort of feedback or particle effects. Reasonable from a development time and quite possibly an optimization perspective, but it didn't stop the inconsistencies from sticking out.

The real villain of the first level isn't the gameplay, but what felt like a rather weak introduction to the world. You spend much of your time in maintenance tunnels or corporate cubicles and offices, neither of which are particularly inspiring. Instead of feeling like a proper showcase of the world, it feels more akin to a demonstration of Unreal Engine's stock assets.

A visual identity crisis

The most disappointing part of the RoboCop game carries through its entirety: a distinct visual identity. Let me preface the rest of this section by saying this did not dissuade me from completing it (let alone enjoying it far more than I'd hoped) but still worth calling out amongst both lauded and loathed game aspects.

The foremost issue is the HUD itself feels reminiscent of Fallout 3. It's a stark green that's nearly unmistakably, and rather unfortunately, etched into my mind as the Fallout HUD colors. Evidently, it elicited the same reaction from my much-less-gaming inclined wife.

That's not a nail in the coffin by any means, more an unfortunate color choice that only acts as supporting evidence to bolster some of my other arguments.

The real culprit lies in environments that feel inspired by life, but give no real sense of place. For instance, the main hub area where most missions take place is a rundown neighborhood. It's entirely believable in its presentation, but not particularly memorable. If I think to any of the games I previously mentioned, Alien Isolation or Fallout 3, there's a wholly distinct art style and direction that's much more recognizable. Even in the case of FEAR or Condemned, which also feature similarly cluttered and rundown environments, at least had their own horror setpieces to act as a kind of lightning rod for grounding player attention.

Instead, RoboCop felt more to me like a push in demonstrating graphical fidelity than securing a solid identity. Nothing wrong with that, but a focus on realism isn't exactly why I choose a particular title.

Satisfying gunplay and a touch of absurdity

I had such a great time with the gunplay and gameplay. It doesn't deliver anything particularly innovative, but what it does bring to the table is competent and fun. Really, it's the difference in effectiveness between the start and end of the game that I found satisfying.

You have both a skill point system to distribute amongst a handful of stats as well as a PCB chip board for your personal Auto 9 handgun. It's the combination of both of these that delivers noticeable growth and slight variations in weapon performance.

The most egregious part of the actual gameplay is the arsenal of the gangs you encounter. They're better equipped than the military it seems and toss grenades around like monkeys and their poop. Not to mention just how cavalier they are with their drugs and products and you've got some caricature level absurdity.

Funny enough, despite how over the top the game is at times, I really appreciated the consistency in RoboCop's stilted movement between cutscenes and actual gameplay. Others may not like the slower pace the player moves at, but I've seen too many games where there was a disparity between gameplay movement relative to cutscene outcomes that it was quite refreshing.

Lastly, I'd thought perhaps they'd fumble the reality of being a cop until I'd threatened a noise complaint with the comparable justice of broken bones. From that point forward, I knew they'd done their research.

Exploring Alex Murphy

The most compelling aspect to me about this game was the exploration of the man behind the robot: Alex Murphy. RoboCop shares a level of capability and indominability with someone like Superman, which can be a bit boring in regards to tension since there's little threat of defeat. Inevitably, this turns the stakes outward: protecting friends, family, loved ones, and even the public itself.

However, given the events in the game, it also does come back to Alex Murphy and a focus on his psychology which was executed well enough.

Ultimately, both aspects took what would be an otherwise straightforward shooter and introduced enough nuance to captivate the player despite my previous criticisms.

The world of Old Detroit

While the actual environmental design didn't capture my adulation, the setting itself and the writing that supported it certainly captivated me. While the Cyberpunk genre as a whole has been well explored by this point, it's wonderful seeing some of its roots going back as far as the RoboCop film and brought forward to modern audiences. Specifically, it's the aspect of the OCP corporation taking over a public service: the Detroit police department.

An interesting premise, sure, but not particularly engrossing by its own merit. It's how the writers chose to showcase public opinion around Old Detroit's current struggles and OCP's interference both inside the precinct and amongst the populace. It's well done and demonstrates the volatile and incongruous mixture of water, oil, and gasoline you'd expect in a situation like this. What makes it more effective is the constant tension someone or something is intent to strike a match.

While the constant tension kept my attention, it's the range of responses you hear from your colleagues and the citizens of Old Detroit that secured my adoration. It's here you'll see a rather apt reflection of our own society: a cautious optimism dripping with naivety that the mega corporation has the city's best interests at heart, hearty skepticism coupled with unmatched cynicism about the city's downfall, and even your peers opining about the infiltration and undercutting of the forces autonomy and capability in the midst of OCP to name a few.

There's too much here to cover, but I found the political and public discourse within the game captivating and one of the game's primary draws. Also, fuck Mayor Kuzak.

Final Thoughts

Having no real exposure to RoboCop prior to this, I'd always found the premise a tad silly or maybe even cheesy: part cop, part robot never struck me as engaging. That feeling didn't fully evaporate, but I certainly see the merit after completing my playthrough and I now have a much greater appreciation for the source material.

I think what the devs ultimately delivered was a surprisingly well-balanced experience, expertly delivering solid gameplay with an engaging world. While I found the primary antagonist and that resolution a bit subpar, the exploration of Alex and his humanity and the OCP's worming their way through the city and police force made up in spades.

I didn't expect a lot coming into this game, but I did leave it looking forward to the sequel and can easily recommend it to fans of the story-driven shooter genre.

The amount of creativity, passion, and detail in this game was beyond what I could have expected. The moment I booted the game and saw all the cutscenes, character banter, warping terrain, and colorful collectibles, I knew I was in for a wild ride.

There were times when the game blew me away to the point that I just had to put it down and take a break. It was too much to take in at once! For example, I went into the mind of the crazy guy who thought he was Napoleon. I was just messing around with the door item thinking "eh, I wonder if it would work on anyone." So I go in his mind, see a small room with two characters playing a board game, and think ok! I guess everyone does have something, if at least a simple small room. But then I accidentally jump into the game and seamlessly get SUCKED IN.

I felt the same awe with this game as I did when I played Little King's Story and Earthbound. Just wildly creative and deviously deep games that are just as much abstract art.

I will admit, the last stretch really tested my patience, especially the section where I have to escort Oly. And man, the camera was worse than Mario 64 overall. I had many moments of frustration, thinking how unfortunate it was that this game just didn't understand its limitations and was overly ambitious in its level design.

But honestly? Bless the team for trying anyway. I think their vision was worth the frustrations.

9/10 thank goodness there's a sequel out now.

Bought a fancy new graphics card then just played Doom instead.

There's no logical reason a game from 1993 is still this good to play in the year 2026. Could you call something where you play as a figure simply known as Doomguy relentlessly taking on demons from hell art? I'm not sure, but the best art persists and Doom persists.

I can play the opening level through in my head. Every part of it. I do think I could probably finish it with my eyes closed. Still to this day I don't think there are many games that have bettered the combination of tight levels, satisfying gameplay and pure exhilaration.

I went back to 1993 after bouncing off The Dark Ages when they made me ride a dragon like I was Daneyrs herself. A game made in the modern, corporate era with corporate masters and by people who I suspect hadn't really ever understood what it was that made the original work.

For me, Dark Ages was a victim of the current industry and it's obsession with feature bloat. There is power in simplicity and brevity. I don't need a shield. I'm Doomguy. I don't need combos. I'm Doomguy. And I definitely don't need a ****ing dragon.

At the danger of being old man shouts at cloud and the misty eyed nostalgia imp staring at me and the fact that I'm not 12 anymore I think the environment Doom was created in goes partly towards explaining why the game is so good. There is power in conflict. The team didn't always get on. They disagreed and argued and fell out and I doubt they had a HR team back then and you put all of this into a giant mixer and this is what comes out.

I rolled credits on 1993 for the very first time. I don't honestly even think I'd ever really touched episode three before which is quite wild really. What surprised me was that this was a game I could shoot through in an evening or two. The levels are short and snappy. The game treats you like an adult. There are no quest markers here. Play without a guide. You get stuck then you're gonna need to work this out for yourself big guy.

The pace is fast and relentless and I don't think that shooting an imp with one click of your shotgun has ever been bettered in all of gaming. Why is the sound of a door opening somewhere still so scary and off putting? The ability to recognise exactly what's around the corner by the noises the demons make is exhilarating. I'm down to my shotgun now but it doesn't feel hopeless. Well it does feel hopeless but if I can just make it around this corner, take out those imps and grab that health pack then maybe...

Then you get to the final level and your stick a few BFG shots at a spiderdemon and you're done. 10/10.

Is this the best game that's ever been made? It might be.

I don't know if this is the type of writing fit for this sub, but here you go:

There is a montage of scenes from the events of 1989 to 1993 in the former Soviet Union, serving as a music video to Kino’s harrowing song, Кончится лето or Summer is ending. When the song was released Tsoi was already dead and republics of the union already breaking away. This montage haunted me for many nights, often accompanied by a drink or two, seldom accompanied by tears—mind-numbingly swift dissolution of this corrupted worker’s state, this union of deserters of internationalism, this bureaucratic mass of apparatchiks, this social-chauvinist refuse, this greatest achievement of humanity, this shining beacon of hope, this possibility of salvation on earth.

Kujlevka takes place in this period.

And it kept reminding me of лето.

Summer is ending, and thus one year after another will slip away and thus life itself will go by, and for the hundredth time the sandwich will fall butter-side-down. Unlike us who are doomed to live in a world where the collapse of the Soviet Union actually happened as it did, Kujlevka offers a door out of this mess, a flying saucer collapsing right into a kolkhoz chairman’s office. The premise is, the saucer operates as a wish-granter and hearing what is the one thing that people desire the most is a perfect foil device to understanding the people of an era where confusion was the primary modus operandi.

Vasily, the kolkhoz chairman, acts as a translator layer between the people and the saucer. We can either translate verbatim what they claim to want, or blunt their wants to ensure that their wants are in line with our wants, or understand people to understand their actual wants. If you think the process sounds rudimentary, as if it is just applying Papers Please formula to the Soviet collapse era, you would be as wrong as Gorbachev. Kujlevka is something much more. The saucer, the alien visitation is a foil, not only to the wishers themselves but also for Vasily who is far from a blank slate. Each wish, each chapter brings out what we want for Vasily into materialization, his dreams in between guiding us to make, not the right choices, but the informed choices.

You, the individualist, may think the right choice for Vasily is to get back his family, his loved ones. You, the capitalist, may think the right choice for Vasily is to be filthy-insanely rich. I think the right choice for Vasily is the glorious restoration of Soviet Union, red flags adorning every facet of life, and the people are guided by the loving but firm hand of the party, just not corrupt this time. You and I may be adamant in our decisions, but this voice that guides us in our surreal dreams will subject our beliefs to a ruthless and affectionate critique. Being challenged in the dream state, in the real space material conditions will sow doubts in each turn, we will see if our choices hold up then.

The apparition of Stalin visits me in my dreams, I tell him that I hate him, not because I think he was a dictator, on the contrary I think he was not a dictator, he asks me what I think communism is, I tell him it is ultimate freedom, he agrees with me, and Yeltsin starts blabbing on the TV, I turn off the TV, summer is ending, Vasily is waiting for an answer and there is no more hope. In a part of my brain лето’s opening riff keeps blasting, I keep humming, and think to myself this is the only game Lunacharsky would have loved.

I understand as wishes pile up, the ordinary people of the Kujlevka village and eventually the world, wish for nothing more than an immediate relief to all their problems. A woman wants more milk from her goat, a man wants vodka, a cripple wants a better wheelchair and the saucer brings this relief they desperately need. Then, what was the Soviet state if nothing but a wish-granter? Dilapidated, hollowed out, neglected by the late 80’s and early 90’s maybe, but while the cogs were new and the whole machine was well oiled, it was granting homes, dachas, maternity leaves, summer camps, and pride to the Soviet citizen, and only the Soviet state and aliens could have done that.

The fact that there was such a state, the fact that it collapsed in the manner it did, I do not know if our past is more surreal or more magical realist. Kujlevka itself has its feet planted on both shores. Sometimes it is haunting and oneiric, sometimes it is heartfelt and didactic. Sometimes matters pertaining to Vasily’s own past feel surreal, sometimes the world itself. There is no great barrier of perception between introspection and extrospection, we evaluate matters by applying the same dreamlike but real lens on both. Sometimes Vasily and I shivered at the sight of an intergalactic express, sometimes we shivered at how material our compatriots’ desires are.

Despite my late-night drinking sessions to лето, I would not call glasnost and perestroika emotional affairs, but as the game lays out, what else could be so dramatic? There is a video on Youtube about a couple of guys exploring Baikonur, where remnants of the Buran programme reside. Buran sitting in the background, unmaintained, its outer plaques falling off and some even being sold on Ebay, they go on a solemn but brief explanation about how, after a couple of successful missions, the programme was cancelled by Yeltsin. I cannot help but compare Buran, just a small part in the greater story of dissolution, to tragedies, such as Hamlet or Oedipus, and think about which is more emotionally devastating.

So this is Kujlevka, a playful, real, soulful, surreal lamentation for a beacon and season long faded. Not faded out of memory though, and I don’t know if the yearning will ever cease for this object of terrible love and hate. Even if what I wrote here does not solely belong to the domain of Kujlevka, I believe art is often as strong as the connotations it recalls.

On the day I started playing Kujlevka I received the Summer Eternal anthology on my doorstep, created by one faction of ZA/UM exiles and it starts with Abimael Guzman’s lines:

“Now comes the new humanity,

The humanity of joy, the proletariat,

The only blaze that will never be extinguished!

We are one of its sparks. We are a small part of

This immense bonfire, it is our turn to set them on fire.

The sparks are fanned by storm winds.”

And I think to myself, maybe this is just a blip in the long summer.

Summer is ending and summer eternal/10

I've recently finished Auridia. It's exploration-focused and centers around discovering Auridia, a lost city built by an extinct intelligent species, as well the Auridians' deities, what ultimately happened to them, and finding out what happened to your grandfather who embarked on the same journey but didn't return from. The lost city/civilisation thing isn't a new concept, but what makes Auridia good is the way it executes on that.

Being a lost city, there's very little life. A few non-hostile bugs greet your entry, but they're some of the only life you'll encounter. You start your journey with only a burning torch, with no ability to kill. The torch can stun the bugs, giving you a means of getting through them, but it won't kill them. You won't find much other life. The Auridians are largely absent from the game outside of a handful of encounters, but they are few and far between, and not in a state to converse with you. You will spend most of the game exploring the city on your lonesome.

Being a metroidvania, of course there are abilities and utilities to be unlocked. There's a handful of hostile enemies, and you'll initially be just avoiding them with no way to fight back, but eventually getting 2 powers to combat them: one to block their attacks, and another that redirects them after blocking. The nature of these powers gives you the tools to either continue evading enemies or fight back, but it's ultimately up to the player which they do.

The rest of the powers are traversal utilities: a grappling hook to swing with, a short range teleport, a late game flying ability, and stamina upgrades which fuel your abilities, but even the other 2 combat abilities can be used for traversal techs; the block enabling bouncing off of hazards such as those covering the floor or walls, and the redirect enabling launching off of projectiles and other mid-air objects. The range of abilities are designed to enable a range of challenging platforming challenges, some of which might require the use of many of these powers to complete. Each ability behaves differently for traversal, so judging which abilities to chain into which to overcome a platforming section is something I found doing a number of times throughout the game as the game threw platforming challenge after platforming challenge at me.

Whilst the city itself is largely empty, you find a companion in a researcher who wants to discover the true history of Auridia, but is struggling to traverse it. They ask for your help by finding artifacts that tell stories about what happened there. Each item you collect has a souls-esque description with a tidbit of lore, but when you collect enough about a given subject and give them to the researcher, they put the pieces together for a more concrete retelling. I know a lot of people won't like that style or story telling, but I think it works well for a game of this scale. There's story there for those that want to engage with it, but you really don't need to engage with it at all if you don't care for it.

There's not many metroidvanias like this that steer away from combat. I found the experience of mostly just exploring to be a quite refreshing experience. There's only really 1 boss fight as well right at the end, but even then, it's more of a platforming challenge than a fight. At only about 6 or 7 hours long, I think the game is worth playing, especially as a chill palate cleanser.

Long post warning. TL;DR: God Hand is a stone cold classic, and does a lot of things right that modern action games don’t. The fact that it was basically made in a cave with a box of scraps can also tell us something about game development today.

Preamble:

God Hand came out at the tail end of the PS2 era, and has been on my to-play list for years. It seems like since I first heard about it, the game has become kind of a meme. A beloved meme though, and a genuine cult classic.

Video games, like any media or art, don’t fall out of a coconut tree. The story of how and why a game was made are as interesting as just explaining whether it plays good (and God Hand does play good).

It was directed by Shinji Mikami: you may remember him from such games as the original Resident Evil, as well as Resident Evil 4. I don’t think it’s over the top to say Resident Evil 4 is one of the best (and most influential) action games of all time. It was produced by Atsushi Inaba (who also did Okami and Viewtiful Joe) and the music was composed by Masafumi Takada (who did among other things Killer 7).

After he made the iconic RE4, Mikami went to work at the fairly new Clover studios, and while waiting around for them to finish their work on Okami, decided to kill some time by pitching to his producer, Inaba, with a lot of the core Resident Evil 4 team.

I don’t know what was said exactly, but I imagine it was something like “I just made one of the best action games ever. Want to see me do it again?” Then he dropped this banger a little over a year later in 2006.

God Hand is a beat-em-up action game with a barebones story and campy characters, and that’s all the setup it needs. It also understands gameplay density, where you’re let loose almost right away with minimal cutscenes or world building. It almost operates on Loony Tunes logic, and draws a lot of influence from classics like Fist of the North Star and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, which is why there’s one Youtube comment I saw that keeps rattling around in my brain that went something like: “This is the only game I’ve ever played that makes me feel like an anime protagonist.”

Gameplay:

What makes the combat so good is there’s a satisfying level of mastery to it. You can return to the early areas of the game on a second playthrough and not get bored, because you’ve gotten much better at ducking and weaving and kiting the enemies around the map to where you want them.

I think this is also true of Resident Evil 4. The chainsaw man in the opening village section is terrifying the first time, and you feel like you barely make it out alive. The second time around, you feel like Neo in The Matrix, parrying with one hand and not even giving your opponent the dignity of looking in his general direction.

It’s also a more natural kind of difficulty balancing, where the game will throw you different combinations of enemies and obstacles to test you and your knowledge of the game. The opposite of that is having statistical balancing, where you improve at the game because your character’s numbers go up the more you play.

Your character’s numbers do go up, but you choose your basic attack combo from over 100 different jabs, punches, kicks etc, to find interesting ways to break the enemy’s guard, juggle, or launch them across the map.

You’re rewarded for understanding and having experience with the mechanics. ‘Evade cancelling’ removes the cooldowns from your attacks, and avoids the frustrating problem of your attacks overlapping when fighting crowds, leaving you unable to dodge (worth noting that some games do this on purpose, it just depends on what kind of combat system you’re going for).

God Hand also has dynamic difficulty. The better you play, the harder the enemies hit and the more moves they have. God Hand actually shows the difficulty level in the bottom right, whereas RE4 also has dynamic difficulty but doesn’t show it (it probably wouldn’t fit the tone of that game). So difficulty becomes a reward, not a punishment.

In my opinion what they call ‘tank controls’, and the over-the-shoulder camera, are not always bad. Same with a limited camera view. Like in RE4, that limitation is important for tension, but also for skill/spacing. Where you place yourself in relation to your enemies matters in God Hand, which is part of the difficulty separate from just your raw damage numbers and health bar.

This game didn’t invent spacing, but a lot of modern games like the new God War use a “Suck to Target” system, where the player will glide slightly across the map and latch on to an enemy you're attacking. God Hand does have some auto targeting, but you won’t float over to a target if the game think you're close enough.

What God Hand Can Teach Us Today:

Modern games can learn a lot from God Hand, as I’ve talked about in the above gameplay section. But I think we can also learn a lot by looking at the circumstances of how it was made.

Those circumstances were a space between projects at Clover Studio, where Mikami and Inaba made something that they wanted to make. In a (semi) recent interview, Mikami said: “I thought that for once I could make a game the way I wanted it, not like a professional. I couldn’t hide it, I knew from the planning phase that it wasn’t a game that would sell. But I had done well with Resident Evil 4, so I thought I could use company money to make what I wanted.”

Imagine if more industry veterans, the closest thing gaming has to ‘auteur’ film makers, had the chance to just let loose and make whatever they wanted. We’d hopefully end up with more games like this one. Games that might not look amazing, but play better than most of their peers. It would be like watching an NBA player dunk on a bunch of high schoolers.

It also makes you think about the high barriers to entry for the industry now. Mikami’s career started off in an unexpected way.

“A friend of mine had found a flyer advertising some kind of job fair-slash-buffet party Capcom was holding at the Hilton and he gave it to me because he knew I liked games. I went mainly because I wanted to eat at the Hilton for free, but once I started talking to Capcom people, really getting in depth about the work they do, I thought it sounded pretty neat….” Then the story goes that Mikami and the rest of the newbies were sent to a remote room with instructions to "think hard about game design", then left unsupervised for the day. Crazy to think about now!

Conclusion:

Yeah there are some empty areas and some places that aren’t polished, turning can be a little bit janky when you’re trying to get items in the middle of a fight, and the final boss is… weird. But overall, God Hand is a masterpiece. Whatever way you can, if you like action games, you owe it to yourself to play it.

When the Gen 9 Pokemon games were first announced, I was very excited. The previous release in the franchise was Pokemon Legends Arceus, which became my favourite Pokemon game largely due to joy of seeing Pokemon in the open world and being able to capture them outside of battle. I also thoroughly enjoyed the research focused gameplay/plot that actually incentivized you to catch them all, and being a standalone game meant I could catch every Pokemon myself instead of having to trade for version exclusives.

When Gen 9 dropped with a gluttony of performance related issues, I opted to try emulating it on my PC instead to see if that could mitigate some of these issues. While I was able to get the game going at a stable 30 FPS with only some minor visual bugs, I found myself not having fun. Going back to having to engage in battles to catch Pokemon was a huge disappointment for me and was such a drag. The world felt quite barren and the spawns were low, which in fairness could be said for Legends Arceus but I loved the gameplay a lot more and the barren world worked better thematically with Legends Arceus. The open world aspect of the main story was also quite a letdown, as the various gyms and other activities had static levels so you couldn't really just go off and do them in whatever order you wanted. Eventually I just stopped playing the game and told myself I'd get back to it in the future.

Earlier this summer I unexpectedly bought a Nintendo Switch 2 after getting a really good deal on it, and I went to buy a copy of Pokemon Scarlet secondhand to play right away. While the Gen 9 games didn't explicitly get Switch 2 versions, they got a free update to take advantage of the better hardware. 60 FPS gameplay and the increased Pokemon spawns completely changed my perception of the game.

Main Story

The game starts off quite standard. You're the new kid in town and your neighbour, in this case a Pokemon battle loving girl named Nemona, helps you get your bearings. In this story you are enrolling in a new school, called Naranja Academy in Scarlet, located in the Paldea region's main city of Mesagoza. The game does offer you the ability to attend classes and engage with different members of the faculty, this is treated more as an optional activity. The main story doesn't require you to engage with the school, as main plot is based on the school's "Treasure Hunt" activity which encourages students to explore the world and discover their own treasure. You end up being entrusted to take care of a mysterious Pokemon early on, Koraidon in Scarlet, who will accompany you throughout the game and acts as your mount. The game gives you three main paths to follow, and you need to complete them all to beat the game.

1. Victory Road will be the most familiar to longtime Pokemon fans, as Nemona encourages you beat all eight of the gym leaders in the region. After defeating all the gyms, you'll have earned the right to challenge the Elite 4 and the champion Geeta. Beating them will lead you to being crowned a champion ranked trainer like Nemona.
2. Path of Legends has you supporting Arven in his quest to investigate mysterious "Titan Pokemon" that have somehow managed to grow extremely large. There are five Titans in total for you to investigate.
3. Starfall Street involves the main "villain team" of the game, Team Star. You first learn of them when you see some grunts bothering a girl named Penny, trying to recruit her. After you whoop their asses, you get contacted by an anonymous person named Cassopeia who asks for your support in taking down Team Star. There are 5 leaders in the team who each have their own bases, and defeating them all will cause the group to disband.

The elephant in the room throughout the entire game is the Great Crater of Paldea, which is a giant crater located in the middle of the map. The school faculty clarify that entering the crater is absolutely prohibited and that students should stay far away. Needless to say, you do eventually get the opportunity to explore the area as it's the focal point of the end of the main story.

I will avoid getting into spoilers, but I did really enjoy the time spent with the main group of characters in this game. I thought they were fleshed out quite well as you steadily made your way through the game and made for a nice story. The anticipation surrounding the Great Crater was also fun and I have to say, that first moment of entering the crater was well worth the wait. I felt a sense of awe that I have never experienced from a Pokemon game before, and that is something I will fondly remember about this game.

Gameplay

The 8 gyms, 5 titans, and 5 Team Star bases are the main things that you engage with in the world and each has a set level. Because of this, the game doesn't truly have a go out and do what you want vibe that I was hoping for. I ended up looking up what the logical order of events would be and followed that, which evenly distributes each of these activities throughout the game.

The gyms in this game brought back the gym challenges from the Gen 8 games as a precursor to fighting the gym leader. As expected, these weren't challenging at all but were fun little activities that connected to the city or gym leader in some way. Once you cleared the challenge, all you had to do was beat the gym leader. This comes with the typical benefits of a gift TM and being able to order higher level Pokemon.

The Titans all involved having a vague sense of where they'd be located and you'd have to go out and find them. Once spotted, you'd enter what is essentially a boss fight and team up with Arven to whittle away at their large health bar. Nothing revolutionary, but it was amusing fighting giant Pokemon. The main benefit from following this plot is that your Koraidon/Miraidon will steadily unlock more traversal modes, so I was always eager to get these done once I was a close enough level.

The Team Star bases utilize a new quick battle mechanic that you can use whenever in the open world. At a tap of a button you could send your lead Pokemon out and it'll go around fighting wild Pokemon nearby. When you arrive at a base, you pick 3 Pokemon from your party and have them quick battle Pokemon in the base until you defeat 30 and force the boss to come out. Each boss brings out their own Revavroom with a large health bar for you to take down. As expected this isn't too challenging, but I appreciate the use of the new mechanic. You get rewarded with materials (for crafting TMs) and LP, an alternate currency which you can use to also craft TMs and buy items.

The unique generational battle gimmick introduced in Gen 9 is Terastallization. When a trainer is equipped with a tera crystal, they can use its energy to terastallize their Pokemon and change its type. This is demonstrated visually, as the terastallized Pokemon gets a unique shiny gem on their head corresponding to whatever type they become. As goofy as it looks, it's quite an interesting mechanic and can be used creatively in battles. A terastallized Pokemon gets the defensive type matchups of its tera type and benefits offensively by being able to utilize the same type attack bonus (STAB) for its new tera type, while also retaining the STAB from its original types as well. In game you see gym leaders use this mechanic and it can catch you off guard, which is fun. My Pokemon would normally be strong enough to not need to rely on the mechanic and this was more of a fun button to click when I wanted some extra pizazz. This mechanic shows up again as wild Pokemon can sometimes terastallize and they copied over the Dynamax raids from gen 8 to make Tera raids, which are like raid boss battles.

Miscallaneous Thoughts

• The significant increase in Pokemon spawns made the world truly feel like it was inhabited by Pokemon, and there's a lot of charm with seeing Pokemon out in the wild engaging with their surroundings.
• I liked the overall map and thought it had a good amount of varied environments, but there wasn't much to do aside from the main quest. Was nice getting around after unlocking more traversal options.
• The big cities in particular felt quite barren and lifeless. The smaller towns were nice, but still left a lot to be desired. Once I cleared out a gym I had no reason to stick around.
• As someone who was interested in completing the Pokedex, the open world was nice because you could spot something you need and beeline towards it instead of relying on random encounters.
• The music was great throughout the game. In particular I really loved the Levincia City theme and the music from the Great Crater. In the wild environments they'd have variations of that area's theme based on whether you were on foot, on a mount, or in battle. I liked this a lot and thought it flowed together nicely.
• I think the school setting had a lot of wasted potential. There's not much incentive to stick around once you're free to explore, and I only did the optional classes after I beat the base game just to see if there was anything meaningful there. I did enjoy interacting with the faculty, but again they could have done a lot more.
• Graphically, the game was not impressive at all. I'm not one to be a graphics snob, but the ugly textures really stood out negatively when I would be in a battle for example.

DLC Content

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet received a two part DLC titled The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. Personally I do think the price point is a bit high for the amount of content offered, but I was glad that I played them.

The Teal Mask has you go on a a joint school trip with Blueberry Academy to the Kitakami region. The two students from the Blueberry Academy, Carmine and her younger brother Kieran, happen to originally be from Kitakami and are the main characters you spend time with in the DLC. This part focuses on exploring the Kitakami region and learning about the lore regarding Ogerpon and the Loyal Three, only to discover that the folktales the villagers believe regarding these Pokemon aren't truly indicative of reality.

The Indigo Disk has you go to Blueberry Academy as an exchange student after receiving a recommendation from Carmine. You get to see her and Kieran again, and this part of the DLC focuses on Kieran and how he has changed after the events of the first half of the DLC. The school has a state of the art underwater terrarium, which houses four unique biomes. Eventually the story leads you back to the Great Crater of Paldea on a research mission.

Overall, I found the story aspect of the DLCs engaging. I liked both Carmine and Kieran and enjoyed their developments throughout both parts. Carmine takes a step back in the involvement of the 2nd part, which is a shame because I found her quite entertaining. It was nice getting to catch more Pokemon in both parts, but I do think the number of new Pokemon available to catch was disappointing. The music continued to be excellent though, and listening to some of these tracks is what inspired me to make this post.

At Blueberry Academy they have a whole radiant quest system to earn BP (blueberry points) that can be used to buy items, invite people from Paldea to Blueberry Academy for some additional interactions, and upgrade the terrariums to enable the spawn of all the previous starter Pokemon. The grind for BP is so slow, and you have to save up an obnoxious amount for the terrarium upgrades - which put me off on fully exploring this part of the DLC. The system is designed to incentivize you to use the Union Circle co-op feature, as you can do co-op challenges and share the points with other players. However, this is not possible if you don't pay for online. I think once I have some other excuse to buy online I'll try the co-op, but I was a bit disappointed at how grindy they made it. One thing I loved about this DLC is that all the trainer battles were double battles, which is a nice switch up. They also had their own version of an elite 4 in the DLC and they actually had some competitive teams making for a tough challenge.

Final Thoughts and TL;DR

After all the negative press from the launch of these games and my personal disappointment with trying Violet the first time, I was pleasantly surprised at how much fun I had with Pokemon Scarlet with the Switch 2 update. Smooth 60 FPS performance and increased Pokemon spawn alone made a world of a difference, and I personally would not recommend playing the game unless you can play this version.

The main story has you follow three main paths: the classic gym & elite 4 route, taking on Pokemon titans and learning about how they grew so big, and taking down Team Star. Through each of these routes you get closer to a specific friend and learn about their backstory and motivations, which I think makes for an overall solid story. The game culminates with exploring the Great Crater of Paldea, which is truly an epic experience (especially for a Pokemon game).

Gameplay is pretty standard, but it's always nice to see new battle mechanics such as terastallization to help mix things up. While it was fun having an open world, there is still an optimal path to follow based on your level so the experience doesn't truly feel like you can go and do anything. For an open world game, it was also disappointing to see there was nothing much to do aside from progress the main story and the cities/towns felt quite barren. The environments were quite nice still and it's great being able to see Pokemon just living in the world. DLC carried on with another nice story and characters, and in particular I liked the Indigo Disk having some tougher battles and being double battle based.

Nothing about this game is revolutionary, but if you enjoy Pokemon then you'll have fun and I think Scarlet/Violet has one of the better stories and supporting casts. Admittedly that's not a high bar to clear, but even if you haven't enjoyed the newer mainline games, I'd say Scarlet/Violet is still worth giving a try if you can play the Switch 2 version.

I would really love for the next games to take advantage of the Switch 2 hardware and really crank up that open world experience while still providing stable performance. Heck if they give me more of the same from Scarlet/Violet but with better graphics and the catching mechanics from the Legends games I'd call that a win, but there really is so much untapped potential with these games that I would love to see them take more risks.

No Man's Sky is an open world exploration sandbox developed by Hello Games. Released in 2016, No Man's Sky reminds us that video games can be worthy of a second chance, unlike my cousin Michael who borrowed my copy of Rush'n Attack and never gave it back. Screw you Mike.

We play as an intrepid explorer on a mission to find ourselves and our place in the universe while taking part in space capitalism on a grand scale.

Gameplay involves not knowing if what you're doing was made obsolete six years ago. You figure it doesn't matter then make the exact same base you make in every survival game and pray that nobody with architectural merit ever sees the abomination you slap together. Then we go ask space frogs to teach us how to speak space frogese.

The Good

When we talk about ocean wide/puddle deep games we usually use it in a negative light. I'd like to point out just how goddamn wide this ocean is. Yeah nothing is worth spending more than 2 on, but after ~60 hours I was still finding new things to do.

I went from building a base on my starting planet, to exploring space stations across solar systems, to hauling space trash, to raiding derelict freighters, to creating my own fleet of ships for expeditions and on and on and on and on and on. If you're going to design your game to be an amusement park, having a metric fuckton of rides is a good way to start.

It seems the only thing to spend money on is buying ships and expanding your inventory and no matter what you do you earn the currency to do so. So it doesn't matter if you're doing 10 year old content or 1 year old content and keeps everything feeling worth your time.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/eqRYjR4.png

Look upon my works ye mighty and despair

The Bad

The UI has some issues.

For one, whatever quest you're tracking the game likes to override it with random sidequest notifications, or just flat stops showing it. You can try to pin the quest but there's only a 50/50 chance it'll actually show up. You can't track more than one quest at a time either. You also can't abandon most quests so after a few hours of playing your quest log is a giant jumble of nonsense.

The second issue I had is a big part of the game is scanning the rocks, plants and creatures you find on each planet. My scanner was apparently an asshole. There'd be a landshark jumping out of the ground just long enough for my scanner to go, "No fuck you" and no matter where I pointed it, it wouldn't scan. Even on stationary objects it was -very- finicky on where it would register.

The last thing is more of a minor quibble. Every time you land on a planet, teleport somewhere or warp to a new system there's a 10 second animation that plays that completely locks out your UI. You can skip it by holding down tab for 4 seconds, but when you're doing this 100's of times per play session you start to feel the need to stab things.

The Questionable

The multi-player aspect exists but needs a ton of work yet. There's zero content that's made easier playing together. The universe is so huge you'll never randomly run into something someone else built. Even if you could there's nothing to do at other peoples bases.

For all its other sins, I felt that Fallout76 did a really good job of making it so that you would occasionally run into random player houses and giving you incentive to want to do so. No Man's Sky lacks any of that and it suffers for it.

As it stands the only reason I've found to invite a friend to play with you is to say "Hey come over here I have something to show you" and it's a giant penis you made using the terrain manipulator.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed my time. I did some fun things, built a few cool bases. I named several star systems I discovered after my loved ones. I think this is something I'll come back to in another 10 years and hopefully by then they'll have added a reason to play it with friends and fixed the scanner telling me to go fuck myself.

Bonus Thought

Don't build your first base by using the terrain editor to dig a hole for a cave base or flatten out some hills for level ground. You've been warned.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

My mom's in the hospital so I needed a distraction while worrying about her. I load up Knytt Underground because I remember it being mostly zen. And boy I was right! So thankful I decided to boot it up!

I've got about 40ish hours between my first playthrough in 2023 and my second from this week. And even with that - I find it hard to actually call this a review. This isn't really a game you can "sell" someone on, because it isn't crazy platformer like Celeste or a intricate metroidvania like Hollow Knight. And it's screenshots don't really do it justice.

I would call the game engaging in the same way a coloring book or jigsaw puzzle is engaging, that's not everyone's proclivity but it's good if it is. There's 1400+ areas in the caves to map, 50+ collectibles to fill out your inventory. And along the way you enjoy some good soundscapes. And talk to some quirky NPCs whose dialogue ranges from funny, to mean, to somber, to downright harrowing.

Take it or leave it!

The game does act as a nice sendoff to the classic freeware Nifflas Games (ex. Within a Deep Forest, Knytt Stories etc) if you have any fondness for those. It has references to those previous events and reintegrates it into this world.

Anyways this game is my favorite and not like literally anything else is because, as a gamer, I find it the themes relatable and the world churns my imagination. And as another creative (sometimes I like to draw!), it's aspirational. In ways other games aren't

Often I'd come to some remote area in the underground that serves no purpose, but there'd be a little hut under some trees with large machinery looming in distance like silent watchers. The wind blows and the plants billow and I wonder "I wonder what it'd be like to be a little fairy in this nowhere corner of the world". You talk to NPCs and they'll tell you things about how they're just wanting to impress this girl, or go adventuring even if it kills them, how finding faith saved their lives, or how fundamentalism has ruined theirs. People with disabilities like chronic hallucinations, delusions, and missing limbs are still skillful and valued.

There's not really a "story", these are people and places you meet by happenstance while exploring the underground. Sometimes they have a fetch quest. But I care about them. In ways its more impactful than some epic saga or cutscene because it's all just incidental snippets of life. And I find that aspirational because Nifflas got me to care about these people and places with some good music, real issues & personality, and some blurry jpegs of photographed flowers. It shows you don't need a lot to get people to care.

TLDR - Knytt Underground is simplistic, arguably tedious, and it's got a kitschy art style not everyone will enjoy. I've played other games for far longer with much more polish. But they're not my favorites because I don't really relate to them and they're one of many. But Knytt Underground captures my imagination and feelings in a way that makes it stand apart for me as an individual, not the whole gaming industry.

Spoilers below

Do you know what ghosts are? They're sad, evicted things. Memories without homes.

While in-between games waiting for The Witcher 3 remaster to come out, I was looking through my backlog for a short game to play. I came across The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and it looked like the perfect early autumn game, and since they’re usually aimed at 1-3 play-sessions to complete the timing felt perfect.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, or Ethan Carter for short, follows paranormal investigator Paul Prospero who is investigating the disappearance of a 12-year old Ethan Carter. The setting is a stunning mountainous forest “town” that is surrounded by a large lake, mountains, a massive dam, and a railroad track. The town is not much more than a few abandoned houses, an electricity generating watermill, and a church, as such the geography and surrounding features tuck most of the town away from sight making it very secluded.

The stunning forest and landscape does heavy lifting for my enjoyment of the game. As someone that grew up “in the pines,” I felt at home in this game surrounded by trees, and hearing birds. I loved it so much that I looked up where it was modeled from, and to my surprise it appears that locations in Poland were the visual inspiration. In the grand scheme, it's not a big deal, but I kept hearing a blue jay and a loon, which are birds native to the United States, and it threw off some immersion. I had guessed the location as perhaps upper Michigan, but I was thousands of miles off. It didn’t ruin the game for me, but it felt like an odd choice to me to feature two very distinct bird calls from birds native to North America in a game that uses Poland as the visual inspiration. They’re the only wildlife heard too, so it stands out. Minor nitpick but one for me nonetheless.

Aside from the forest, the locations to explore are the buildings, and a cave. Aesthetically I didn't love the buildings or the cave, but the spaces were used to great effect for the puzzles that were solved in them.

Shout out to the music though, it is a phenomenal score that always felt appropriate, adding tension, peace, excitement, or fear as appropriate, and sometimes even within one song.

Movement in Ethan Carter is a joy! The movement speed when sprinting feels like I am zipping and zooming around. It's an unrealistic pace, but I also don't feel like I'm being rushed to move around the map as quickly as possible. A quick pace in a walking simulator helps ease the downtime between puzzles, while encouraging me to explore more.

Navigating the world is relatively easy, I feel that the game does a good job of guiding the player without forcing the player into a linear path. I felt slightly confused and overwhelmed at first because the world felt large, but I found myself quickly acquainted with it and easy to navigate with landmarks.

Gameplay revolves around finding and understanding the murders of Ethan’s family members. This involves finding the murder scene, which is indicated by finding a clue, and then finding the rest clues in the immediate area. After finding all of the clues you are tasked with piecing together the clues in order by watching short scenes of holographic people involving the clues, and then putting them in order to view the murder in full. The puzzles typically involve the supernatural, and are light in horror. There are a lot of murders, but it’s very PG-13. The puzzles are mostly easy to solve, or at least fair in how they’re solved. I ended up being held up on two puzzles, but neither caused frustration. I wouldn't say that any of them are memorable though, they act as small roadblocks to uncovering the story.

When I think of Ethan Carter I think of a story that never finds its footing, a story that feels distant. Despite abundant family trauma that begs for sympathy, I couldn’t muster any. I felt intrigued at points, but never sad. The conclusion to the story reveals that every murder we have just witnessed is a fabrication of Ethan Carter through the eyes of Paul Prospero. Ethan Carter is dead, and we experienced a hallucination as Ethan is breathing his last breaths as he’s trapped in a fire. Tragic, but I felt nothing.

Conclusion

Fans of walking simulators should give this a try, there’s a lot to like about Ethan Carter, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. If nothing more, I felt that the environment of the game, music, and some of the puzzles, made the time invested worthwhile.

7/10

Status - Completed

Time played: 4 hours

Difficulty - N/A

Set-up - AMD 5800X3D, AMD 9070XT, 32gb DDR4 3600, 2tb SN850 | Played at 4K with all settings up, locked to 60 for a very smooth experience

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

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

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

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

I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this here. I haven’t seen a post like this and honestly it’s kind of stupid that I did this.

For about fifteen years, I’ve been a big Metal Gear fan. The series hooked my imagination young, but for all its flaws, my appreciation for it only grows as I do. Every replay so far has yielded new neurons, as I get older and learn more about the world. Superficially the games are spy thrillers, but that sells short the overt philosophy, real-world geopolitics, political commentary, and anime bullshit. And the references, dear God the references. Be warned, if you haven’t played them this post will make no sense.

The franchise’s superstar creator, Hideo Kojima, is perhaps the biggest cinephile to never even try to work in the film industry, for reasons nobody has adequately explained to me. MGS is, in part, a tribute to all his favorite shit; I haven’t seen another creator, in any medium, whose influences are more numerous or well-documented. MGS takes a hodgepodge of Western cinema and literature, mixes into this pop culture gumbo, and filters it through the mind of one Japanese lunatic. The result is a work so overflowing with reference and homage that it’s hard to keep track of it all.

[EDIT: It occurs to me that maybe I should say more about the games themselves, genre-wise. Metal Gear Solid sets the stage with overt 80's Hollywood cliches and mecha anime, but weaves in some philosophizing on free will, genetics, anti-nuke politics. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is... hard to pin down, but for now let's call is a conspiratorial cyberpunk thriller and postmodern deconstruction of its predecessor. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a Cold War tragicomedy and James Bond spoof.]

A year ago I made this shitpost, which took a surprising amount of research. It sparked an idea – “What if I watched all of Kojima’s inspirations while replaying the series?” Knowing the games so well, this could make me appreciate them even further, or at least give me and my dad more to talk about. The problem is knowing when to stop. There’s the obvious ones (Rambo, Bond), but why stop at movies? Some novels might aid my understanding, especially for MGSV. What about nonfiction sources? The scope grew irresponsibly as I continued to follow my nose. 

Since then, I’ve made my way through about 20 films, 12 books, and only 3 MGS games (I got burnt out on this for a while, shocker). I went beyond direct influences and sought out anything that would help me understand the games better and looked interesting. This is not comprehensive. I just want to share the things that have interested me the most so far.

If there’s a foundational text for MGS1, it’s Carpenter’s Escape from New York (1981). Legendary soldier Snake Plisskin is pulled from retirement by an untrustworthy colonel to covertly neutralize a terrorist threat. He’s injected with nanomachines, sent in underequipped, captured. He realizes he’s been manipulated for political purposes. He even has an eyepatch! God, I was pointing at the screen the whole time like the DiCaprio meme. But it’s also a very entertaining, surprisingly moody film. Almost proto-cyberpunk, which pairs it nicely with Akira.

The finale of the spectacular 1988 film is incomprehensible without reading the manga, so I did that too (it’s great). Akira is far more action and vibes than dialogue, but like MGS, it’s concerned with atomic destruction and authoritarianism. Also, a diagonally-descending platform elevator that’s suspiciously familiar. As an intro to cyberpunk, this led me to Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, and more familiarity with the genre helped me make sense of MGS2 in particular (virtual reality, AI, artificial blood, etc).

I think people generally overestimate how much James Bond is in MGS, but Snake Eater is the clear exception as a direct spoof. Maybe a more thorough 007 dive is in my future, but for now I settled on watching GoldenEye. It’s alright. There’s a mildly interesting thread that interrogates whether Bond is too old-fashioned for this new post-Cold War world, but I’m not sure it goes anywhere. I had a lot more fun rewatching Austin Powers, which lampshades or lampoons many of the same tropes.

How does MGS compare to classic spy thrillers? Perhaps unnecessarily, I read your dad’s favorite book, The Hunt for Red October, which was…fine. Tom Clancy definitely shared Kojima’s fetish for technical military jargon, which can be tiresome. And the Reagan-era patriotism frequently undercuts the tension; every US agent and technician routinely schools their Russian counterparts. I respect that MGS is okay with letting America look bad.

Speaking of which, nobody told me that Rambo wasn’t always stupid. I went into First Blood expecting macho tough guy bullshit, and instead I get a tearjerking performance from fucking Stallone, of all people. Destroyed and discarded by his country, Rambo returns from war with a thousand-yard stare and a tragic inability to leave the battlefield behind (extremely MGS-coded). My understanding is that every sequel is, unfortunately, macho tough guy bullshit. But anti-war media morphing into vapid propaganda because it accidentally made war look too cool? Believe it or not, also MGS-coded. This is where Big Boss gets a lot of his DNA.

I knew Kojima practically invented the stealth genre in 1987, but I didn’t know how much of the literal mechanics of video game stealth also came from movies. The Great Escape (1963) is one of the biggest inspirations for the series’ gameplay and scenario writing: POW camps, escaping through tunnels, motorcycle chases (think MGS3 in particular). And from The Guns of Navarone (1961), infiltrating an impregnable fortress and destroying the high-tech weaponry inside. I thought they were both pretty fun. During the latter, I had a sudden feeling of transcendence across time and space, watching Gregory Peck throw an object from behind cover to distract a nearsighted guard.

Sometimes my curiosity led me to things I later realized aren’t very relevant, even if I liked them. Googling “movies about genetics” led me to Gattaca (1997), a eugenics dystopia that I vaguely remember from 9th grade biology (it’s good). Some thematic resonance with MGS1 there. All the President’s Men (1976) was gripping (Hoffman and Redford really acted their pussies off), but I probably didn’t need to go that far just to understand the name Deepthroat. And I read Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, a postmodern headscratcher, simply because MGS2’s Peter Stillman gets his name from it. No, it didn’t teach me much about MGS2, but I think The Truman Show did. You see how I burnt out on this in a few months?

I read a few non-fiction books on things like the Manhattan Project and genetics, but this is already too long, so I’ll spare you the details. But I have to share this gem of a quote from Mark E. Lester, the director of 1985's Commando:

“There was a weird thing that came out in this book an African boy wrote. It was disturbing–it said the kids in this African country were watching Commando before they went out to battle. I felt bad when I read that. I mean, it’s a movie, but they were showing it to these kids to psych them up.”

Turns out Raiden’s “image training” is real after all.

If I haven’t scared you off by now, you may have surmised that this stopped being about the games a while ago. At least, not fully. I just found an excuse to learn about a lot of things I already thought were interesting. Hell, this helped me get back into reading as an adult, and now I’m doing it all the time. Playing through the games again was almost a footnote, fun as they are.

I needed a long break, but eventually I’ll continue with MGS4, Peace Walker, and MGSV. There’s some obvious ones I’ll have to hit (Mad Max, Moby-Dick), and it might be good to research for all the Che Guevara stuff in PW. Suggestions are very much welcome, but please, please don’t tell me I forgot something, because I probably didn’t.

[Spoiler free review]

Over the last few months, I took the plunge into SMT 3. I have played thousands of games over my life, and I can confidentially say I have never experienced anything quite like this title. For context, this review is based on my completion of the True Demon Ending, which took just under 65 hours.

It’s an amazing game - a timeless masterpiece that stands head to head with the other renown classics of JRPGs. It’s brutal in difficulty, but not unfairly so. The story is morally ambiguous, and forces you to draw your own conclusions on what is just. The setting is captivating, but at the same time horrifying with it's usage of liminal horror and occult themes. The cel-shaded artstyle is slick and aged like wine. Perhaps most importantly, the gameplay is some of the most satisfying turn based combat I have ever experienced. If that wasn’t glowing enough, SMT 3 even has Dante in it, for some reason. Some extra cool points for that inclusion.

Story

In the first 20 minutes of the game, the world ends and a blonde kid forcefully implants a demonic parasite in your body, transforming you into something less than demon but more than human (Demi-Fiend).

Unlike most JRPG stories, the world already ended; your goal is to more or less navigate through the new apocalyptic Tokyo and.. survive. Most of the dialogue is in philosophical bits-and-pieces from spirits you meet around the world (pretty much everyone but five humans perish in the world-ending event). While the story isn't the main focus, the bits given are loaded -- leaving you a lot to think about long after the game's conclusion. In general, it's a refreshing twist on a genre with such strong tropes and cliches.

Gameplay

SMT 3 largely shines in gameplay more than anything else. This game was the godfather of the 'press-turn' system; a mechanic that greatly rewards you for exploiting enemy weaknesses (and punishes you for lack of doing so). It still feels fantastic to this day. Combat is fast and fun. I was also blown away by the sheer amount of bosses in this game - if you are aiming to best them all, Google suggests there are over 50 in the game alone!

The core gameplay loop here is understanding boss strategies and weaknesses, and retrofitting your team composition to handle whatever comes your way. This is made quite doable with demonic fusion - a way to fuse two demons together to create something new entirely. It's easy to reacquire your old demons, so the game is flexible in encouraging experimentation. Once you get the loop down, it's hard to resist.

The difficulty spikes I felt were highly enjoyable. As mentioned online, the second I hit Matador it became clear what SMT 3 had in store for me. You definitely need to be an individual who enjoys challenge to get mileage out of this game.

For dungeon design and world design: in general, there are a mix of good and mediocre dungeons. I really enjoyed the Diet Building, that was awesome. The Labyrinth of Amala was pretty cool, but I needed to cite a guide for the fourth Kalpa. I think the only design I felt was genuinely frustrating was the final dungeon crawl, which felt like a slog with many random teleports, high demon encounter rate, etc. I would gently encourage folks interested in the game to keep a guide handy just in case.

Art

I also want to point out that this game looks awesome for a 2003 title. The cel-shaded artstyle looks like it could've been created today. Seriously, great art direction and a lot of great set-pieces to accommodate this.

Music

The soundtrack is pretty awesome as well. It fits the liminal horror vibe of the game with ease and has some great tracks (Labyrinth of Amala fight track is fantastic).

Critiques

Especially near endgame, the demon encounter rate is unreal. You can't walk three steps without engaging in a fight, and half of the demons will just spam Mamudoon. Felt a little tedious to me. Additionally, the endgame is loaded with super cool demons you are able to unlock; by the time you are able to utilize them the game is over. The optional puzzle-boy minigame desperately needed save state abilities.

Conclusion

Overall, this is an unmissable JRPG. I am glad I played it. I would put this as the same tier as Final Fantasy X in terms of overall quality, which is a pretty high bar in my mind. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys a challenge and finds the art or setting somewhat interesting.

Edit: One last thing, there are some great QoL mods for the PC version that I would encourage. They do not detract from the difficulty or experience.

• The mini-map QoL enhancement saves you from spamming the map key every five seconds.
• Hex-editing so the game renders at 4K is a huge game changer.

My memories of TimeSplitters go back to Gamecube, on which I played the second game first. I was a big Goldeneye fan, and I knew it was developed by the same developers, so I erroneously assumed it was a Rare game. It’s kind of a shooter that isn’t made anymore. A thinking man’s FPS where you are supposed to think about actual objectives than watching some minicutscenes and blasting the enemies. That game got too tough that I never beat it, so I’m thinking about replaying it for the later. I did wonder what the first game was like, and for a while, I assumed it was more or less the same as 2.

I played TimeSplitters 1 recently with the mouse and keyboard set-up, and I have complex feelings about it. The game that reminded me most of was Monolith’s Contract Jack. Perfect Dark has been frequently compared to No One Lives Forever in the same year for being a female superspy FPS and having very similar mission design. Contract Jack was a spin-off of No One Lives Forever 2. That game was essentially a glorified expansion that strips down the narrative, complex mission design, level design, atmosphere, but only featured “shooting”. It’s an amateurish-level production that it almost feels like a mod at times. Time Splitters 1 feels like that to TimeSplitters 2.

The core Goldeneye developers left Rare during the production of Perfect Dark and created their own studio, Free Radical Design (which became part of Crytek later). This resulted in Perfect Dark turning into a development hell, where the project was generally helmed by the newbies. Free Radical Design was in the midst of a development hell as they tried to make Second Sight, but got rejected, and the team had to scramble together a Goldeneye successor within the small budget and little time, resulting in TimeSplitters. And it shows. There is no narrative, no objective but “take this thing and go to this circle”, no cohesive vision. It appears they just inserted “Time” into the title because they created a bunch of different themed maps, but had to make a connection by slapping a time travel concept. It feels like a TimeSplitters 2 user map.

At the same time, I appreciate the arcade purity of the game, which no longer exists in the industry but the indie scene. It’s a game you can beat in an hour. It’s simple, but you are supposed to replay the missions on the varying difficulties for the multiplayer unlocks. It’s hard to think a game like this even being published on the AAA scene anymore, good or bad.

For a while, I didn’t mind it because the core gameplay was fun. I don’t know exactly what ticks, but the gunplay in Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and TimeSplitters just feels great. It’s hard to describe. It’s smooth and addicting. Just shooting a machinegun feels good. It’s something that the other console FPS in the era couldn’t capture. Just compare it to the Bond games like Agent Under Fire and Medal of Honor, and although those games had more advanced elements, the raw blasting sensation of TimeSplitters is unmatched. The presentation, despite being clearly low-budget, is great. It’s nothing comparable to the sequel or even Goldeneye, but the stylized aesthetics still hold up, creating that the PS2 vibe that no longer exists. It goes a long way to have a great soundtrack complementing the different themed levels.

So, whatever. It’s a good shooter. Goldeneye without the mission design, and if the gunplay is good, it should be good. Right? I thought that way for the first two levels… then the cracks begin to show fast. This game is insanely difficult. I played it on Normal, and even with the mouse, I eventually had to crank it down to Easy because this game just straight-up bullshits the player. The more I play, the more I realize how much the core combat system is flawed.

In Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, the enemy reaction time is quite generous. If they find the player, they shout something like “I found her!”, alerting their presence to the player, and position to fire for a second, giving the player a choice of whether to be offensive (shoot first) or defensive (take cover). They are also stationary when they attack, sort of like a tank. When you shoot them, they get stunned for a few seconds, unable to fire. Their attack is clearly telegraphed and easily avoidable if the player is mobile enough. It’s supposed to encourage the player to build a constant momentum and move around.

TimeSplitters 1 doesn’t do this. The enemies 1) instantly fire with a few frames of “raising weapons”, 2) move while firing, 3) stay silent when detecting the player, 4) sometimes get stunned when hit, or sometimes just ignore the hit and fire at the player, 5) are long-ranged with high accuracy, so they do not charge at the player, 6) ambush the player, whether they suddenly come out of cover or pop out in thin air through teleportation.

In addition, the player has no invincibility frames. What happens is that I cleared the room incredibly carefully, then some guy suddenly spawns and jumps off from the high floor and blasts me with a machinegun, cutting down my entire bar of health in one second. It’s absurdly cheap, and the only way you can beat some encounters is for the player to memorize the levels through trial and error, rather than testing the player’s skills.

Combine that with the limited health pick-ups, the game often becomes a frustrating mess. The combat isn’t fundamentally balanced enough. It results in the player doing pattern memorization and knowing which enemey is in what position. Like, I don’t see how anyone can even beat this game on Hard with the controller unless they memorize literal frame-by-frame patterns. Goldeneye already solved this issue on N64, only for TimeSplitters to backroll all that elegant game design to make the combat a mess. My guess for why they designed the combat like this is because either they didn’t have enough time to test it, or they intentionally made it punishing to compenstate the short playtime. At least, I don’t remember TimeSplitters 2 being this bad, so they surely fixed it.

The animations also feature the similar problem as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but worse, where the enemy death animations are too muted. The deaths are not exaggerated enough. They touch their arms, then three seconds later, collapse. It results in the player wasting their ammo on the already dead enemies because their deaths are unclear. Sometimes, the stun and death animations are so indistinguishable that oftentimes I was killed by enemies that I thought I had already killed.

Despite the diverse themes, the actual enemy designs are exclusively two humanoid types: shooters or melee chargers. That’s it. No matter where it takes place, it’s the same. Even the weapon design is disappointing, with the weapon roles overlapping and repetitive. For example, there is a space level where you fire laser guns at the aliens. You then actually play it, you realize all the alien enemies are identical to the human enemies, and all the laser guns are identical to the normal guns. Compare it to Perfect Dark, where despite having dozens of weapons, each weapon serves a unique purpose with the weapon role and the secondary firing.

If you play it on Easy, it is at least tolerable, so all those design flaws aren’t as bothersome. It’s a unpolished shooter that’s fun on the primitive level, but not something the speedrunners would replay it over and over because it fundamentally lacks depth compared to Goldeneye and Perfect Dark. I enjoyed it enough, but I recommend just skipping it to the second game.

For some context I recently decided to play all the main non-RPG AC games in order of release. I played the first four on release and all the newer ones since origins also on release so for me games in the middle like Unity are me playing them for the first time.

Hard game for me to rank as I for me this game has clearly the best gameplay and the worst story so far. Best gameplay of the pre-RPG ones, top 3 locations, impressive NPC density while all great are still not big enough improvements for me to rank this higher above the other pre-RPG games as those have a significantly better story. The RPG ones have better gameplay, modern graphics, more polish so I would rank this in the series only above Mirage.

I still enjoyed this game a lot, just did not love it like the games I ranked higher.

To start with the positives this game is one of the biggest leaps in the series on what it tries at a technical level. Graphics are very improved (still pretty dated) compared to Rogue (insane these two games released same date) and the NPC density is some of the best in gaming. And not only just raw density of NPCs, but variety in their looks and actions. What they did is obviously just shuffle various possible combinations of npc clothes and actions, but the illusion works almost all the time. Most of the npcs will be just walking down the streets or rioting near a landmark, but they will be varied and all around them will be small groups doing different things. A guy carrying a looted stone cross, two people carrying an injured friend, a man leaving his house accosted by beggars, somebody sweeping in front of his shop or fixing a barrel. Some of these are pretty rare and I saw them once every few hours and only rarely I just saw something that slightly broke immersion like three people (out of very many on the screen) with exact same clothing or three people fixing their table in a row on the side of the street.

For me this was the first time I would say this series has decevent combat because this is the first time it has any difficulty at all. So far all the protagonists were absolutely unbeatable in combat and you were in danger only if you attempted things you were obviously not supposed to and even then you could win. Here with enemies having levels with increased hp, damage and better moves/defences at higher level gearing up Arno is important and the world is a bit dangerous. This is obviously not a hard game and anything is solvable by just charging through the front gate, but you do need to gear up first and have consumables and pay attention slightly compared to previous entries.

Level design is also often very nice with missions being mini-sandbox levels with multiple ways to approach the target and some scripted ways to gain an advantage. Also I liked the design of the world and how while many buildings could be explored to find a chest it often took some effort to find the entrance and then navigate through the houses.

Stealth is a bit mediocre by you not having that many tools for it and guards reacting often too fast, but I still thought it was enjoyable. Often you could use stealth to do quite a bit and then when you get discovered you could often just kill the guards nearby to go back to stealth. And even if everyone gets alerted it still felt immersive to get discovered mid way through and then having to fight.

The city itself is also very impressive. Very detailed, varied from poor to rich parts, obviously impressive recreations of real life locations, dense and felt very organic like a real city with unique buildings, often lacking symmetry etc.

Parkouring despite being very important in AC games is not something I usually think too much about as I always find it very similar to other entries and it is always good however this one is obviously different and my favourite one when it works. Arno can clmb mostly everything and he does tricks to look cooler while doing it. He also cant climb absolutely everything like in the rpg series which finds a very good balance. Being able to climb absolutely everywhere is a bit unrealistic so sometimes having obstacles or lack of purchase is fun however them being fairly rare and not needing obviously marked things like the Ezio games sometimes did removes some frustrating parts. How far Arno can jump and what he can climb is very unrealistic, but feels like something out of a cinematic when it works.

The setting is also very good. Top 3 for me. When I started the game I was not really looking forward to the setting however a dense urban zone with political turmoil is obviously just perfect for an AC game. Finally I enjoyed how they did not split the sides into obviously evil and bad ones and it is a bit messy.

A small positive I would like to point out is that the economy is actually a bit interesting and even if you rush the most obvious path to get passive income and loot all the chests you will still need cash until near the very end.

Moving on to the elements I did not like I will start with the biggest one and that is the story. Out of the eleven AC games I played this is tied with Mirage for the worst one. It is not outright terrible and I was a bit interested in it while playing it, but it is just very forgettable. That is mostly because Arno and all of the Assassins are dull. Only three Arnos allies I can name are not Assassins and two have smaller roles. And the plot is less related to the revolution than I would like. Only interesting part is them actually killing of a big character and Arno being expelled from the Assassins, but that part is resolved off screen. When replaying the Ezio games 20 years later I could still remember a lot of the story while I finished this game two days ago and I had to refresh some of my memory with some recaps to write this. It is just so forgettable.

I know I am often in the minority on this take, but I really enjoy the modern day story in AC games and I think this is actually the worst one by a decent margin. It is so irrelevant, but not entirely gone either and present just enough to be annoying while having no substance. And that is especially jarring after Rogue which connects to everything else and while nothing too major happens at least it is intriguing. It even mentions events that would be connected to Valhalla. Also here is finally where the series loses all its slightly "edgy" conspiracy stuff. 2 had a lot of this in the glyph puzzles and they basically imply every conspiracy has some truth to it and so many people are Assassins and Templars. They even have live footage of an elephant about to be executed by "Templar" Edison. BF and Rogue had a tiny trace of it with some niche (maybe?) stuff like Akashik Reader or Voynich Maniscrupt mentions, but there is nothing like that here (unless you count Nostradamus which I dont). The changing of severs is just annoying while it is sometimes visually fun with some WW2 scenes.

The map is crazy overstuffed even for an AC game. It has like a few hundred chests and other pretty lame collectables. The only fun side content are the murder mysteries which to be fair are surprisingly good. Enjoyed those a lot.

Not a fan there is also some regression in various systems. Why did we lose repairing the city, freeing the forts, managing Assassins or crafting?

Finally and this drawback is pretty significant the game is pretty poor on a technical level. As many of these pre-rpg games this has a lot of bugs, crashes and it is required to tinker with the settings to get it running (at locked 60) a bit too much. The bugs are often pretty bad and require a restart. Getting shot while climbing has like a 10% chance to get you stuck in a falling animation forever, just fighting will stop working a couple of times per hour and need a restart, the parkouring will often glitch wildly.

Lost Sphear is a 'retro'-style jrpg released in 2017, by Tokyo RPG Factory, which was a subset of Square Enix and has since been (unfortunately, in my opinion) absorbed into the company. I played it on the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026. TL;DR is below the post.

Given that the last game I played was Harvestella, I guess my current drive is to play chill, low-key, AA JRPGs. If anyone has any more recommendations, I'm all ears.

Plot Overview:

The story concerns a world where people and places, even kingdoms, become 'lost'. This means they turn white and shimmering, as though they were made of mist, and cannot interact with the outside world. In order for them to become real again, they must be restored with 'memories' that have since been turned into monsters. Our hero, Kanata, is an orphan who has the ability to kill monsters, collect their memories, and restore things and people that have been lost.

Combat:

Combat is where this game shines.

The basic combat is a standard ATB system, which lends to its retro feel, but its assorted bells and whistles make it stand out.

I won't delve into its intricacies, because this post would be too long if i did. But if you're into ATB systems or just interesting combat systems in general, especially turn-based, I recommend it. It has active abilities, passive abilities, and abilities that proc on active abilities and can be permanently stacked onto them, so as you get more powerful your basic abilities have more and more customized effects. Advancing your abilities is much more important than leveling.

What's more, a few hours into the game you receive mech suits that have their own suite of abilities and increased states. They have a limited pool of 'mech points,' so they don't last very long, so you have to strategize and use them wisely while exploring a dungeon and contending with its end boss.

Grinding, Gear Progression, and the In-Game Economy:

I would never mention this if it weren't fucked.

To be brief: items require upgrade materials to upgrade. Upgrade materials are too expensive. This necessitates grinding. The combat system is not made to make grinding fun or quick.

There's more to it, but the simple truth is that I spent a full day grinding when I shouldn't have had to, on top of hours spend grinding before that. I wish this entire game had been implemented without the need for upgrade materials. Nothing would have changed except the need to grind.

Visuals:

The visuals overall reminded me pleasantly of Bravely Default and Alliance Alive. Chibi characters and a gentle, low-color-saturation water-color aesthetic. Character designs are unique and fit their personalities. The environmental design deserves special recognition.

Music:

The music was great. Can't think of a single weak theme. As I mentioned above, the dungeon design was great, and each theme worked well with its dungeon. According to IMDB, the composer, Tomoki Miyoshi, hasn't worked since 2022. What a shame. Hopefully he finds a new project soon.

Story and characters:

I'm big on story and characters. It's the number one thing I look for in RPGs.

This game satisfied me. The story was familiar: start as an orphan in a small village and work your way up to working with major world forces to defeat the big bad. Explore exotic locations, get swept up in world events, and pick up companions along the way.

We start with three characters: a generic main character, an annoying best friend whose job it was to overreact to everything, and a female character whose only role is react to the annoying character by getting annoyed. Thankfully, this dynamic ended quickly, and a variety of new characters were introduced to the party as the story progressed. Our main three also receive appropriate time and character development. Save maybe the female character, but her practicality and stability made her one of my favorites over time. She never left my party.

I found myself getting very fond of each character as they were introduced, and even a bit emotional when one of them appeared to be dying. I actually wish they'd followed through and killed that character; the game would have had more teeth if it did. Regardless, each of them contributed to every story point via dialogue, and when the game ended I felt invested in what would happen to them.

There is an end game. I wouldn't call it extensive but it centers around an interesting mystery and helps us wrap up a few loose ends. I appreciated its inclusion.

Conclusion:

Apparently the next game Tokyo RPG Factory made after this was an action RPG and a huge dud. That makes me sad. I wish they'd stuck with the ATB system, or just pure turn-based, and turned out another retro JRPG. There is something compelling about this game. I was looking forward to play more. As it is, I may play 'I Am Setsuna,' its predecessor. I hope the members of TRPGF are enjoying their careers and can take pride in what they've made.

TL;DR

Play this game if you like: Chill retro JRPGs with solid characters, music, art, and story, and you don't mind spacing out and grinding fights that are too slow to be easily ground.

Thank you for reading.

Recently I picked up a Switch 2, my first Nintendo console since the Wii. I actually didn't really get the console with the intention of playing lots of Nintendo exclusives, but with the amount of praise that this game receives online, I felt like I had to check it out. Breath of the Wild is my first Zelda game, and I had pretty high expectations for it going into my playthrough. I think for the most part it managed to meet those expectations, and I have a lot of good things to say about the game. For reference, I played the Switch 2 edition of the game.

I think one of the games biggest strengths is actually the structure of the main quest. Once you get to the point where you're objective is to free the divine beasts, you kind of have to find and complete shrines so that you can increase your stats. A lot of my exploration didn't happen because a quest or NPC told me to go somewhere, it happened because I was running to a tower or shrine, and then stumbled across something else that looked cool. I get that some people won't like this, but really felt like the game gave me the opportunity to explore, while at the same time feeling like I was making progress on the main quest. I really liked this aspect, and although I'm sure it exists, it's not something that I've seen in other open world games before.

Initially I found the combat to be kind of challenging in the game. The character movements felt really good, but I think that especially with the amount of health and weapon options that are available early in the game, encounters with enemies could be quite punishing. As the game progressed however, I found the combat to be quite rewarding and fun.

I'm not typically someone who will do a ton of side quests, and I didn't do a ton in Breath of the Wild. For me, I don't really feel like this detracted from my experience, but let me know if you think I missed out. I put more energy into looking for and completing the shrines, and had a lot of fun with the puzzle mechanics involved there.

I don't really have any big criticisms of this game. The weapon durability thing was annoying, although honestly I eventually reached a point where I was finding enough good weapons that I didn't really mind it anymore. Probably my biggest gripe was there not being a good way to keep track of recipes/elixirs. I get that experimentation is part of the point here, but I got tired of just having to guess how many hearts the food I cooked would restore.

In conclusion, I liked Breath of the Wild a lot, and I think it deserves the praise it gets. I'm not sure it completely blew me away, but it's definitely one of the better open world action/adventure games that I've played, and I think that it's going to age well for me. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who owns a switch, and it made me interested in playing some other Legend of Zelda games in the future.

Usually when I finish a game, I tend to write down my thoughts on it relatively quickly - typically I make notes while playing, and even small posts on the biweekly threads (as some may have seen), so it's not hard to polish off a post within a week. Not here - it's been months since I played A Plague Tale: Requiem, and I just couldn't get fingers to keys. Part of it is that I am finally employed and so have far less time, but another part of it is that I am honestly pretty conflicted on the game. Its gameplay is definitely an expansion of Innocence's, but honestly I wonder if more is better for a game like this. Its technical performance is bordering on unacceptable, particularly on what I feel is pretty high-end hardware for a 4-year-old game. It has some minor odd decisions in story and characterization that I honestly don't know if I understand, let alone appreciate. But the totality of the experience is unforgettable - the final 5 hours are some of the best storytelling video gaming has to offer, and even months later I can't get it out of my head. In my review of Innocence I had said that it was a Last of Us-like, and in many ways Requiem is what it is because of The Last of Us Part II, and given that that game is one of my favourites this decade, it's hard not to compare, so I won't try.

Premise (spoilers for Innocence)

Six months after the events of Innocence, Amicia and Hugo de Rune, together with their comrade Lucas and their mother Beatrice, are headed to Provence in the south of France to find a cure for Hugo's rat-related affliction. Unfortunately, it seems that evil forces keep following them wherever they go.

Technical Performance

Bad. No-good-very-bad. It never really gets to unplayable, but it's hard to ignore, which you'd think wouldn't happen with a 9070XT. The game doesn't have FSR in any form (yay Nvidia sponsorship) and the built-in supersampler is so bad that I just turned it off and ate the framerate difference. The bigger problem isn't framerate being low, it is that framerate never stays consistent no matter what limiter I use - even lowering the frame limit to 60 has it wobble in the 51-56 range even though CPU and GPU use are in the 60-70s. Gameplay-heavy moments aren't great, but are mostly playable - where the framerate really starts wobbling is in the smaller free-roam sections where Amicia and Hugo are just hanging out, chilling in markets, running around fairs, and Hugo being cute in general, which is a shame because those are the moments that really build their relationship and so you really notice that stuff more when you don't have gameplay considerations. Apart from that there are several times where the game's AI will just bug out and stop, which means you have to restart the game to progress. There's also minor stuff like textures glitching out randomly Assassin's Creed Unity-style, but honestly it wasn't super common. Honestly, it feels pretty unacceptable for a game to be in this state >4 years after release.

Gameplay

Requiem significantly expands on Innocence in terms of gameplay, primarily combat. Perhaps the biggest change is that arenas against human enemies are significantly more open, with multiple ways to sneak around using all of Amicia's options, including a crossbow she receives around halfway that allows her to kill medium-armoured enemies with helmets. I do like Plague Tale's approach to stealth where the protagonist's small size and the medieval setting mean that combat involves inherent tradeoffs - the sling is deadly, but needs a headshot (and thus an unarmoured head) and is loud, attracting attention (and unlike in Innocence, there is no upgrade in Requiem that will make it wholly silent); the crossbow is powerful but Amicia can only hold 4 bolts at a time so you can't go wild; and the sneak attack, which is super powerful in most stealth games, is basically worthless compared to the sling. Requiem also provides bonuses by recording Amicia's actions and granting perks depending on her approach - so, for example, if you do a lot of sneaking, you get stealth-related perks. It's certainly a more complex approach, adding depth to the first game's relatively simple sandbox...and I'm not sure I like it. Innocence did have a much simpler system and much more linear levels, but I feel like it works for that game because it presented challenge without having it significantly slow down pacing. Requiem does add more to gameplay, but personally I feel like it detracts from the story pacing, which is the central focus of both games.

Visuals

I honestly quite like Requiem's art style. We definitely see environments that are a lot more vibrant and beautiful than the dirty villages and urban squalor of Innocence's Guyenne - Provence at the start and especially La Cuna - which does allow for a much greater contrast when the rats hit the fan and things get more dark and depressing. But the real highlight is the supernatural stuff, which is mostly in the back half barring Hugo's dream - everything involving Basilius, especially his prison; the Macula beneath La Cuna; everything to do with the Nebula in Marseille; the flood of rats in Marseille in general - is terrifyingly beautiful. How they even managed to conceive a lot of this I have no idea, but it's the kind of visual beauty you only see in horror. Beyond that, facial animations are somewhat mediocre - while I concede that it's an unfair standard to compare Requiem to a game that cost almost ten times as much to make, making a character drama where the camera regularly zooms in to characters' faces means that said faces need to be readable. Most of the heavy lifting in conveying the characters comes from the vocal performances...

Vocal Performances

...which are thankfully almost uniformly decent-to-strong, with one exception.

Charlotte McBurney as Amicia is the heart of Requiem, and she absolutely devours. So much of Amicia's pain, her struggle, her increasing bloodlust, her determination, her obsession, and her underlying desperation to find a cure for her brother is conveyed through the performance because not as much can be conveyed through the faces, and perhaps "carries" is an exaggeration, but most of Requiem's best moments are made by Amicia. I wouldn't argue as to whether she was robbed for Game Awards or anything like that (I haven't completed any God of War game), but she's definitely one of the best vocal performances I have seen in a game. Logan Hannan as Hugo is also really good, as is Kit Connor as Lucas; everyone else is decent.

Soundtrack

This is a bit of a hot take, but I really prefer Olivier Deriviere's score for Requiem over Gustavo Santaolalla's score for The Last of Us Part II. I love the latter score, don't get me wrong, but the former score is just so much more ornate and, well, "extra" - which really suits a game with this much high melodrama and tragedy. Stuff like the title track, "No Turning Back", and especially "Up There" really... work here in amplifying the spectacle. One of my favourite tracks is "Lost With Rats", a distorted version of the game's title track that plays in Chapter XI - it just conveys how Amicia's journey and determination have been twisted by her trauma into obsession.

Story (Spoilers, including for TLOU2)

• Most of the new cast is honestly kinda eh. Sophia and Arnaud are decent, and frankly Beatrice didn't get a ton of characterization last game so she's almost like a new character, but the main reason you're here is for Amicia and Hugo, with Lucas in a fairly clear if relatively close third place. It's telling that the most fascinating characters not among the Big Three are Basilius and Aelia, both of whom have been dead for centuries and are only known through the aftermath of their final moments.
• Hugo being cute moments do adequately convey him being cute.
• A couple of early segments show how Amicia has become more bloodthirsty, to the point that she actively starts killing enemies even when running is the more pragmatic option. I
• The villains are...variable. Milo feels almost redundant, to the point I genuinely wonder what the point of him was beyond "there are sickos who exploit the myth of the child". The Count and Countess are not bad, although Victor does get a little moustache-twirly after he reveals his villainy. The Macula is, obviously, the real villain, and the game does convey that it does act like an sentient, malevolent entity, luring Hugo to La Cuna and almost feeding on his despair.
• As I said previously, Requiem owes a massive debt to The Last of Us Part II. Both are set in deeply, deeply cynical worlds that have their protagonist start out good but get warped by trauma into doing some really shitty things, stuff that you could consider beyond the pale, all out of sheer determination for the person closest to them. More generally, both also have a strange quasi-open-world section that you can roam around, though Requiem doesn't really have a combat sandbox engaging enough to be able to carry the segment.
• There's a degree of delusion when Amicia keeps moving the goalposts to keep Hugo alive, starting at "there's a cure, we'll find it in La Cuna" and ending up at "we'll just live together happily away from civilization", but it's worth noting that nearly all of Hugo's fall to the Macula is caused by evil people - Emilie kills Beatrice, and Victor's attack makes him believe that Amicia died. Is there a future where Hugo could ever be okay? I guess not - how could Amicia protect him from sorrow forever? - but it works for the 6 months between games, so it doesn't feel crazy.
• Where Requiem differs is that it plays up the drama and pushes it into outright opera - while Ellie's greatest torment is revealed to be psychological, Amicia's is an actual eldritch force (even if her determination to find a cure causes her to ignore reality when it's staring her in the face). In some ways it makes Amicia much more twisted - Ellie is bloodthirsty, yes, and she (unknowingly) kills a pregnant Mel, yes, but she never stoops so low as to making her brother summon rats to take down their enemies out of a combination of rage and despair, something that temporarily turns Hugo catatonic.
• One more similarity, IMO, is that both Ellie's and Amicia's journeys are implicitly doomed from the start - there was never a cure for the Macula, and Ellie killing the Salt Lake crew was never going to give her peace - but they feel different, likely because Ellie's barrier is psychological rather than an actual force (though a big part of the game is also Amicia learning to accept that there is no cure for Hugo.
• My biggest problem with Requiem is pacing - the plot feels like it really starts once Amicia and Hugo get to La Cuna, which is Chapter VIII of XVII.
• Chapter XI is the game's best, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's basically just Amicia, Hugo, Sophia, and rats in terms of the living cast and has basically no combat.

Miscellaneous

• Why does Amicia's ponytail disappear when she gets the crossbow? I understand it's a pain to animate, but it really stands out, and it's made even more jarring near the ending where Victor dramatically lops it off - like, it was barely there for the last, like, 5 chapters.
• There's one part in around Chapter XIII after Amicia got Hugo to unleash the rats to kill Emilie and destroy La Cuna - the strain turns Hugo basically catatonic, and, for the first time in two games, Amicia and Hugo are together, but Hugo isn't holding her hand. It's such a small thing, but it really struck me.
• I like the parallel between Aelia and Basilius and Amicia and Hugo - they're Protector-Carrier pairs, and, just as Basilius started the Justinian Plague when Aelia died, Hugo unleashes the Nebula when (he thinks) Amicia has died.

Conclusion

I don't know how much I like this game, but I would still recommend it simply on the grounds that it sticks in your head months after completing it. It's not really like The Last of Us Part II, but I think it says something to me that that was the game I was thinking of often while playing Requiem. It's one of the better stories told in gaming, at least. I just wish it ran better.

SYNTHETIK REVIEW

RELEASE: 2018

TIME PLAYED: 67 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE:  ★★★

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

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

The Breakdown

+Satisfying gunplay and stellar kinesthetics

+Responsive, tactical shootouts full of barely controlled chaos

+Interesting classes that accommodate many playstyles

+Varied and exciting loot that empowers runs

-Myriad bugs and poorly documented item descriptions

-Co-Op support has some strange quirks

-Visual noise can be a bit overwhelming and affect the learning curve

It's rare that I so powerfully want to start off a review by saying, "I fucking love this game" - but that's exactly how I feel about Synthetik. The top-down roguelite shooter is such a visceral, kinetic experience that it immediately evokes a strong response from the first battle, the first floor, the first inevitably doomed run - even if it occasionally stumbles over some technical shortcomings.

Rogue AI is trying to take over the world, and you're a, uh, rogue rogue AI, an android created meant to take down humanity who has decided instead to destroy your masters and protect mankind. Why? Don't worry about it. That's pretty much the beginning and end of the narrative in Synthetik, and it doesn't really matter. It's all an excuse for the structure of the game, where you're said freshly printed android ready to take on the entirety of the machine legion across procedurally generated levels ranging from snowy military bases to burning outposts. Aesthetically, it's 80's as hell - put Terminator, Robocop, and a vat full of neon in a blender and you're most of the way there, from the chunky industrial robots to the stiffly articulated movement of the player android.

The kinesthetics are Synthetik's bread-and-butter, and they're absolutely divine. The game started as a ballistics simulator and spiraled from there, and it shows. Every bullet, laser, and ion bolt has individual trajectories, properties, and physics. Guns are punchy, loud, and creative, with modifiers that range from simple (like an underbarrel grenade launcher) to delightfully stupid (such as a sniper rifle referencing the '360 no scope' meme that gets a huge damage bonus if you spin in a circle before firing it). On a fundamental level, combat simply feels amazing, and though it's optional, I highly recommend the manual reload mechanic, which requires ejecting each magazine before inputting a new one as two separate motions. While initially awkward, it soon becomes the beating heart of the entire game, and once you get used to it, the benefits for a perfect reload massively outweigh the nearly non-existent mental RAM required to do it right every time.

While the randomness and repetition of a roguelite is on full display here, there are thankfully plenty of ways to shape one's playstyle. The first is a class system containing a wide variety of androids; play the Engineer and hunker down with fortified turrets while baiting enemies into a killbox, or hop over to the Vanguard and loot dogtags that buff you every few kills while leeching life with a combat knife. Each class gets unique perks that allow them to benefit more from different guns, items, and skills, and a token system allows the player to tag preferred loot, increasing its odds of showing up and giving it a small power boost. All of this combined meant that it was easy for me, who played the Breacher - a sort of alpha strike specialist equipped with recharging explosives that benefitted from aggressive blitzes - to reliably get at least one good shotgun and a defensive item that benefitted my playstyle, even if it wasn't exactly ideal.

It's a good thing the core gameplay is so rock-solid, because the further you get to the peripherals of Synthetik, the more the wheels start to wobble. What I mentioned about it starting out as a ballistics simulator? That's still its primary focus, and other elements I found suffered from more than a little bit of jank. I never had crashes, but strange interactions could cause brief framerate drops, enemies sometimes acted erratically, and more; item descriptions don't always accurately or completely describe weapons or equipment, so a piece of gear may be better or worse than it seems and has to be 'felt out'. Co-Op, while functional, is hilariously basic; as far as Synthetik seems to be concerned, there's still only one player, which causes some strange interactions with everything from healing to enemy aggression here and there. Still, outside of the rare frustration due to a run being ended over an inaccurate tooltip, this is a minor issue; if one is in need of a silver lining, there's a degree of esoterica to be found here, knowledge gathered and disseminated by the game's intensely loyal fanbase.

Though it has its share of technical quirks and stylistic quibbles, Synthetik is one of the most satisfying, spectacularly responsive shooters I've ever played - isometric or otherwise - with a rewarding customization system that allows for a wide variety of class fantasies to be fulfilled. Whether solo or with a friend, I can't recommend it enough. Simply put, I fucking love this game.

Before we can talk about this game, we need to talk about Dead Cells. Dead Cells is one of my absolute favorite games, developed by Motion Twin. The game was eventually handed over to a studio named Evil Empire for updates, so that Motion Twin could focus on making other games. There's a bunch of drama between these two studios, but I won't be getting into it.

The most important thing to understand about the Rogue Prince of Persia (hereafter Rogue) is that it was developed by Evil Empire, and is heavily inspired by Dead Cells. This, I think, was a mistake. I'll get into why later.

I have been a big fan of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time trilogy, so I was excited to finally be playing Rogue after all the updates.

What Works:

Art - This is a very pretty game, with a distinctive art style inspired by the works of Moebius, a French artist. When it launched, the art style proved divisive, with some players finding it garish and harsh. The studio listened, and the art received a major update. Currently, for me, I think it has a nice balance between the striking colors that characterize the art of Moebius, and more traditional videogame art.

Music - This game has absolutely sensational music. It's composed by ASADI, a Persian-American artist, and I cannot emphasize enough how much of a win it is. The album is worth a listen even if you don't wish to play the game.

What Doesn't Work:

Gameplay and Feel - To me, the game never felt like PoP. The combat, the levels, the parkour, none of it evokes any kind of nostalgia. As I said, it's heavily inspired by Dead Cells, so rather than condensing the PoP experience into a 2D roguelike, it tries to build upon the gameplay of Dead Cells. I want to talk about the parkour specifically. One of the joys of the PoP series is the beautiful parkour, the predecessor to the movement of games like Assassin's Creed. Running across walls, hopping from ledge to ledge, slicing down a curtain, all of it has always felt fluid and magical.

Rogue contains none of that. The wall run is a joke. You're barely two steps into it when it ends. And something about the parkour never clicks, even when you get good at it. There's always a weird mismatch in the Prince's abilities and the environment. He feels like a character modded into the game rather than one who belongs. And he frequently does things you don't want him to.

But let's forget PoP. Maybe Rogue works as a spiritual sequel to Dead Cells? Unfortunately, it does not. There's this pervasive sluggish feel to the controls and mechanics that was never present in Dead Cells. And where the game deviates from Dead Cells, it only screws things up. For example, in Dead Cells, your primary mechanic of avoiding damage is rolling. You're invulnerable when rolling. And rolling is a simple but beautiful mechanic, because you can roll both into enemies and behind their back, but also away from enemies. This is critical because some enemies have AoE attacks that can catch you behind their back too. Rogue replaces the roll with a vault. How does it work? You press the button, the Prince rushes to the nearest enemy in the direction he's facing, and he vaults over the enemy. But the invulnerability only kicks in during the vault. When rushing to the enemy, you can take damage. This is a gigantic gameplay fail because it makes the most important mechanic in the game inconsistent. In Dead Cells, you press the button, and you're invulnerable for a short period. But in Rogue, you press the button, and the Prince rushes to the enemy. Depending on whether the enemy is near or far, the invulnerability will kick in at different times. It's maddening. Also, you naturally can't vault away from enemies, only into them, which means that AoE enemies make mincemeat of the Prince.

Another new addition to the game (over Dead Cells) is a dedicated kick button. It does no damage, but pushes an enemy away. Kicked enemies can smash into each other, or into a wall, getting stunned. They can also fall off platforms.

The mechanic itself is fine, but it never clicks with the Prince's toolkit. The Prince is largely a melee fighter. So kicking enemies away doesn't work as well as it would've if the Prince could use ranged weapons. And a lot of enemies have ranged attacks, so kicking them is only an invitation to get hit. Yes, there are secondary ranged weapons, but these feel awful to use because they are limited by an energy meter than requires melee to charge, and most of them have a short range anyway.

So, for me, the game doesn't even work as a Dead Cells spiritual sequel.

Writing - It's pedestrian, it's boring, there are no surprises.

Meta Progression - This is pretty decent. I like the skill trees, and each upgrade feels meaningful.

TLDR: If you're looking for PoP nostalgia, play the original trilogy again. If you're looking for a great platformer, play Ori or Celeste or Shovel Knight. If you're looking for a good 2D action game, play Skul or Astral Ascent or Nine Sols. The Rogue Prince of Persia is mediocre and frustrating. It's not worth a purchase.

My earliest memory of the Terminator franchise is hearing a clip of the DVD commentary for the third film being played on the radio. In it Arnold Schwarzenegger talked at length how awesome it was to see a lady Terminator in action, because you get to watch her naked body on entry and she has a scene where she inflates her breasts to entice a cop. I also remember watching Terminator 3 myself on a long plane flight as the only other options were Hulk and The Medallion (2003 was a shit year for film). Indeed, there was a scene of mammary-expansion in the first five minutes. I have no further recollection of the movie.

The thing about the Terminator franchise is that its very premise disallows any real continuation after the original two movies. Skynet only works as a faceless, voiceless army while the messianic John Connor of 2029 is too difficult a figure to envision as a person outside of his single scene. The reason Skynet embarks on this hare-brained scheme with android assassins is because it loses to humanity under John Connor. James Cameron only ever had enough ideas for two movies and every attempt since then to continue the story with different hands just lead to diminishing returns. Perhaps you could approach the material in an oblique manner like Dan Trachtenberg did to rejuvenate the Predator franchise. But given how many production companies have folded because of it the chalice may as well have been poisoned by a time-travelling robot.

I played Terminator: Resistance seven years after launch because Noah-Caldwell Gervais reviewed it at length. The game's gone through numerous patches since release, having bulked in size with DLC, and is often on sale for a song. (Do people still use that figure of speech? Oh, who gives a shit.) The easiest comparison would be Far Cry meets Fallout 3 with a tenth of the budget but no shortage of passion (and no shitty, pretentious ending either).

For the first hour of the game I wasn't feeling it. You've got the traditional AAA opening in a double-A package where you run from Terminators in a future hellscape. You shoot some machines, scavenge for materials and then craft medkits and ammo. The character models for the humans are more robotic than the machines and the voice-direction is similarly weak. In the first sandbox level you are left to your own devices and it felt balls-hard at first, until I got a few skill points under my belt and things started to click into place. A guerilla play-style is encouraged where you take out robots in small groups, exploiting cover, and never engaging in outright warfare unless you have allies backing you up.

Then came the third mission and I was absolutely sold. Here you need to infiltrate a hospital in the dead of night. On hand is a hacking-tool that lets you program enemy turrets into shredding the machines instead of you. What's next is an utterly terrifying sequence where you must bypass patrolling Terminators in the cold light as the music drones on in sheer mechanical dread. The shotgun and Uzi that's kept you safe until now are utterly useless against these chrome killers. It's a simple stealth level that's masterful in its execution, as nothing can convey horror better than crouching behind a concrete barrier alone in the moonlight while a dozen Terminators march by.

The base game is a broken up into eight linear levels and five sandbox-zones where you approach any objective how you please. In between are regular visits to the resistance base where you recover, stock up, chat with your friends and help out. On reflection I'd say the only flabby part of the campaign is the warehouse district you explore twice under the same circumstances, whereas other areas like Pasadena and Downtown aren't rehashed so baldly. The DLC campaign afterwards is a marked increase in difficulty, though the boss at the end goes down remarkably quick.

The whole experience works for me since I've never been interested in games that are strictly shooters. With Resistance you've got stealth, gun-play, crafting, hacking, skill-points, dialogue-trees, optional objectives, and semi-open world areas to scavenge. There's also a quick-melee button you'll use once in the tutorial and then never again. A similar game that comes to mind is Dying Light in how it tells a hero-to-zero narrative in its mechanical progression. When you battle Terminators for the first time you dump your ballistic weapons like the Uzi and the assault rifle in the trash in favour of plasma weapons. These can be modified with randomly dropped chips to increase their damage, clip-size, stability etc. In the endgame you score the second generation of plasma rifles, letting you all but melt Terminators who used to take an entire clip to down for good. At the same time you'll have acquired the regenerating-health perk, making firefights a breeze. There may be some duds in the skill tree, but you can't argue that the games doesn't nail the power fantasy of becoming a hero of the post-apocalypse. Just like James Cameron your character can screw every woman involved in the franchise. The thankfully optional sex-scenes are laughable in a way Garth Marenghi would approve.

Resistance succeeds because it captures the essence of Terminator despite being set in the margins of canon. Instead of the contemporary 80's or 90's setting of the (good) films it takes place in the seldom glimpsed future war of 2029. Don't expect Arnie or Sarah Connor to show up and John Connor is kept to the periphery. While you will mow down an army of Terminators they remain in character as a serious threat throughout. If any foe should be called a bullet-sponge in a video-game the T-800 should wear that label with honour. There are some deep cuts in how Resistance draws from the canon. The resistance base that acts as the hub-level is the same one Kyle Reese visits that's invaded by an Infiltrator with a machine-gun. And that Infiltrator? You get to play as him in an open-world mission where you murder your way through human patrols as you search for intel on John Connor. Kyle Reese himself acts as your CO in the DLC campaign that gives context to his nightmare where he's nearly vaporized by a VTOL and a giant tank.

Resistance does not try to overwrite, subvert, or undermine the duology like the ill-fated sequels. Instead it acts as a companion piece because the developers share the same love for the source-material as you do. People tend to forget that the original Terminator was a B-movie by an unproven director. Some of the producers hated it after watching because it wasn't a schlocky explotation movie; but instead an intense, thoughtful film that was deeply paranoid and the stuff of nightmares. Seldom does any creator knock it out of the park on the first run, and the Resistance developer Teyon sure as hell didn't. Their early work was years of shovelware for the Wii and DS, and their Rambo game is thankfully lost to the annals of history. Reading the initial reviews of Resistance is quite startling as the critics came with knives out for a mid-budget licensed game attached to a dead movie franchise. But time has been kind to the game and the developers' stature has risen thanks to Resistance and their subsequent adaptation of Robocop. It's sobering for me as a wannabe writer to comprehend that you can endure setback after setback as a creator, contending with meagre budgets and crappy reviews, and eventually finding an audience over time. It's the inverse of something like Bioshock: Infinite that scores perfect 9's and 10's on release, only to never be spoken of warmly again.

I put Resistance down upon finishing and uninstalled it. A few hours later I got an itch, reinstalled the game, bought the DLC, and scored an easy but well-earned platinum. Now I have to watch the movies again and find the art books. It's the mark of any good adaptation that it makes you remember why you love the real deal in the first place.