I finally finished GoT yesterday, clocking in at 38 hours. It is a difficult one to review, as I had one of my greatest moments of gaming in 2024 while playing this, some story beats were genuinely touching, some characters quite well realized, and yet, I can only give the game a 7/10.

Let me try to explain.

I think GoT had the potential to be a 10/10 game. Tight combat. Pretty good stealth. Interesting characters, good character progression, and story premise ("what happens if a samurai is forced to act 'dishonourably'?). Beautiful (albeit with somewhat outdated graphics) open world. 'Okay' platforming.. So why is it only a 7?

Because it overstays its welcome. I believe the game could have really benefited from a smaller open world, and a shorter playtime. By the end of Act 1, the game already shows you about 90% of what is there, and you still have 25 hours to go. The world, while beautiful (except for the last island, which is a bit too 'white' imo), is littered with Ubisoft-like rinse/repeat side quests. Points of interests stop being interesting after the first island. I may have myself to blame on this last point, as I was quite into the game in Act 1 and 100%'ed the first island. During that process, I may have burned myself out of the open world.

The combat, which initially you think as great, also suffers from the length of the game. You can unlock most of the combat abilities quite early in the game, and then the game just keeps throwing a horde of enemies at you...and then some more. On top of this, the later enemies build back their stamina before you could kill them, and that means you now have to go through their shield one more time... I tried playing the game in the Lethal difficulty, as well, and I enjoyed the overworld gameplay quite a bit; however, imo this difficulty was simply not built for the Duels. Getting one-shot by an insanely quick attack doesn't feel particularly fair. As a Souls games veteran, I don't have any qualms with a boss being difficult, but it has to be fair, and Lethal's premise of "both you and your enemies take a lot more damage" falls apart in the Duels where you get one-shot, but not your enemy.

Consequently, GoT is a frustrating game to review. Had it only been shorter and not tried to have a sprawling-but-dull Ubisoft open world, it would have been a 10/10 experience. As it stands, it's the very definition of a "great mediocre game".

The OG GRID game is highly regarded as the best game in the series (something i will have to confirm for myself later) and after playing it i can definitely see why

I've always loved NFS ProStreet and this game occupies a very similar niche and has quite a few things in common that i very much appreciate...

The good:

Sound design is great. Smashing into things produces sounds that are just right, cars sound damn good (even if the exhaust notes arent always matched with reality, i.e the V12's) and UI also spunds very satisfying

Handling takes some getting used to but is highly satisfying when you do

Car and race discipline selection is on point, you get to drive a whole bunch of different types of cars from muscle cars to drift cars to le mans prototypes (golden oldies like the legendary 4rotor from mazda aswell as the stupidly overpowered audi R10 TDI that is just as dominant ingame as it was IRL) to open wheel formula 3 to even a demolition derby event

Crash damage/deformation and physics are unbelievably good despite the liscensed cars, really makes the demo derby event work well

Sense of speed is solid, no real slow cars

The whole team mechanic is refreshing, having an actual teammate on the grid is genuinly uncommon in racing games, especially ones that are actually decently competent

Sponsors and team livery mechanic are a great idea. Having a team livery design auto applied to every car is actually pretty sweet, in most racing games i end up with just boring old factory paintjobs but not here

Attentipn to detail, like having named callours for other teams and drivers incase they crash or are leading and whatnot, something i very much appreciate as a NFSPS fan.

The bad

Where is the damn music at? The only races it plays at are the boss battles and the last 3 minutes of a le mans race, probably the biggest downer to me as a prostreet fan (that game had an absolutely goated ost, meanwhile RD:G has... barely anything?)

Curbs of doom and general excessive control loss over bumps, especially on the okutama circuits having throttle input at all over these and youre dead, not fun, hell, even the AI struggles with it leading to some dramatic scenes

30fps of console versions + stupid fast lmp1/f3 cars on tight bumpy city circuits = painnnnnn. Seriously, putting a ton of ai in these too makes it an absolute ragefest to get through at times

No vehicle upgrades or bodykit customization whatsoever

The rewind system doesnt default to the camera setting you use and cant be double rewound (but its great that its there and you can select a specific return point if you prefer)

AI situation makes the game feel like a demo derby until you get past most of it, especially awful with open wheel cars

Overall though this a great game of a subgenre that has basically gone extinct, i'd rate it an 8,5/10 but would rate the console version half a point lower due to the 30fps limit making the fastest race disciplines a suboptimal experience

Ill experience the sequels later on.

Anyway, off to try out bulletstorm for a change of pace.

Wanted to play Baldurs Gate 3 after it got raving reviews last year, but was unpleasantly surprised when I saw gameplay videos of it being a turn-based RPG. Didn't know how to feel about the turn-based action, never played one & the closest thing I've gotten to an "RPG" is Mass Effect and Cyberpunk.

Decided to play KOTOR 1 after hearing about it for years and it being recognized as a classic. Also figured it would be a decent intro to turn-based RPGs. Surprisingly I had a lot of fun!

A few cons: I couldnt finish Mission or Juhani's side missions due to glitches, and the game constantly crashed, but I had fun. Also missed Bastila's romance scene because I didn't talk to her on the ship at the right time? IDK lol.

Oh and the plot twist towards the end was actually jaw-dropping, I hadn't been that shocked at a video game in a while.

I'm thinking of playing Dragon Age Origins next to get more exposure to the genre before playing BG3. Also saw that there's a sequel to KOTOR and will definitely play that if the reviews are good.

Thinking of playing Dragon Age Origins next, then KOTOR 2, then Dragon Age Inquisition or Baldurs Gate 3. Inquisition has bad reviews so idk if it's worth it.

Anyway thanks for sitting through my intro to turn-based RPGs lol

I tend to be drawn to the distinguishly flawed titles. In this world where we chase perfection at times too much is lost during that pursuit.

The titles that pursue uniqueness will always be the titles that evoke true feeling from me. Quantum Break perfectly fits into that mould. A deeply flawed title, that tries to reach heights that most game never even consider to climb.

Attempting to blend the excitement of tv show and the interactivity of a video game. Promptly fitting fitting into the original goal of the Xbox one. Becoming your one stop shop for all things entertainment. Despite a valiant attempt Quantum Break is failed experiment.

As someone who’s been on PlayStation for over 2 decades. With my acquisition of a Gaming PC & game pass. I’ve finally got the opportunity to experience all the Xbox exclusives I missed out on during my childhood.

Quantum Break has an extremely strong presentation style. Very good and gripping. The intro is really really good, it successfully sucks you into this growing story. The visuals are also very impressive, the time power effects really give this game an extra level of uniqueness.

Quantum Break holds up even in 2024. The muddy textures are its biggest difficulty visually. But other than that it’s great. Playing this 4k 60fps was a joy. Cutscenes are unfortunately stuck at 30fps even on PC.

Quantum Break is narrative driven game. It’s hit or miss at many moments. The final act unfortunately becomes a bore with probably the worst final boss fight of all time. Exploring this world is divine and probably has some of the best optional reading material ever.

The gameplay is Quantum Breaks weakest component, which is a big problem. You will get used to it but it’s never amazing. Having no dedicated sprint or crouch button made the entire gameplay feel more impersonal.

The TV show is interesting but quickly runs out of steam. As we reach the end and realise how little of what happens in the show affects the main story. What makes it worse as the show only follows side characters.

Quantum Break is interesting game that fails to stick the landing. As someone who wasn’t able to really get into Alan Wake Remastered & Control. I’m surprised I was able to really enjoy this before playing Alan Wake 2.

6.5/10 Decent Game

(PS3 gamer)

Played AC when it came out. Really liked it at the time. The ticking of boxes seemed new, a list to complete and keep track of everything that needs to be seen and collected all on a sprawling map that gets shown off at every chance.

I liked the sci-fi story line and it allowed/excused game play and visuals to have glitches and artefacts and seem like they were apart of the setting. Not a problem but a feature.

When I realised that the 2nd game was coming out so quickly after the 1st and that they were going to be pumping them out like sports games I lost interest in the sequels.

Came back in years later with the AC3 multi pack game which had the vita/psp? port and Black flag. Finished the port and AC3. Almost completed BF but not quite.

Enjoyed them all. Climbing felt like a mini puzzle game and fighting was okay. Story kept me playing and seeing where it lead.

So finally decided to try out AC2 and the middle games that I skipped out of spite.

At first blush, it felt very poorly written and overly macho, boys fighting in the street, beating up cheating spouses, etc. and almost skipped it. But eventually it turned more into a Dan Brown novel. Taking history and its figures and twisting them into roles and a story line.

Not at the final Provence yet but enjoying the go so far. I read a few older posts about the series (one from 14 years ago asking if someone should play this or sleeping dogs, imho sleeping dogs is much more interesting) and enjoyed the takes/opinions. Many seem to believe you have to play it with the context that it is old and it was influential but has been easily surpassed by many modern interpretations. Similar to the way John Carter was the original space odyssey and was the inspiration for so much that came after it that the attempt to go back to it leaves you wanting more.

I understand it but as a standalone experience it seems to have enough interesting features and storytelling that I’m invested to see how it plays out. Just did one of the more unique missions and looking forward to sitting down again.

Now my perspective is limited to the ps3 as I never gamed beyond that on a console and never desired to on a pc for these types of games. Ya I’m a bit of a dinosaur but pleasantly surprised that everything that came after in 3 and BF were more refinements of what came before and not complete overhauls of a broken game. Thx.

Story in short is I saw the Nate Drake cameo in a game that recently came out I can't mention for submission reasons.

I've never played Uncharted because the PS5 is my first Sony console and I don't really play shooters anymore, mostly play souls-type games.

Anyway the cameo piqued my interest enough to bite the bullet and get the Nathan Drake collection for 15 CAD and I HAVE BEEN MISSING OUT.

In like a month I've platinumed the first 3 (didn't beat em on brutal difficulty, tried but fortunately only Crushing counts towards the plat) and now I'm going for the Legacy of Thieves plat. These games are amazing and addicting even still. 2 had one of the best story pacings I've ever experienced. Naughty Dog really killed it there. 1 was a fun (if a bit silly) adventure and intro to it. I felt like 3 was missing something that 2 had, can't really put my finger on it though; however I still loved every minute. 4 was gorgeous and I loved the development and backstory for Drake. I'm just starting Lost Legacy.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend these games to anyone who hasn't played and has the opportunity.

I've been going through my library and playing some AAA games, and after a glorified walking simulator and some dino park that never dared to challenge, Guardians of the Galaxy was just the game that made me want to play more.

Compared to a lot of today's AAA games, there is no BS. No upselling or crosselling. No microtransactions or needless grind to pump up the hours. Outfits are in-game collectibles that are easily acquired with a bit of exploring and everything else is just pure game. A game with an entertaining story, interesting and varied environments and with surprisingly good combat.

There is also so much good writing in the game, and a TON of banter between characters (maybe a bit too much banter). I don't recall any game that had so much of it. The game doesn't only have character development but team development which is such a unique feeling. Despite many games revolving around being in a team and having companions, this is one of the rare games that made me feel like being part of a real team, dysfunctional at times, but a team nonetheless.

While parts near the very end do feel like a bit rushed, the game legitimately made me feel sad during its tragic moments and even felt a bit of fear for a character during one scene.

I heard good things about the game, but it still pleasantly surprised me.

I completed Doom 2016 for the first time today and wow, what a fun game it was from start to finish. I particularly loved the levels set in Hell.

I played on Hurt Me Plenty difficulty. Bear in mind that the last FPS that I played was HL2 on release, before I went into a deep and long RPG rabbit hole.

I thought it was tricky at the start, but soon got used to utilising my weapons properly and ended up stomping through the last few levels with only a handful of deaths. I think the difficulty was about right for my skill and it gave me the confidence to try it on UV or NM next time. No way I've got the time for UNM though!

My only criticism is that with a fully upgraded ammo capacity, some battles are totally trivialised. I was using triple locked on rockets for everything except basic imps and possessed, with rockets to spare, and I easily dispatched the last few mancubus/baron/pinky waves with the insanely overpowered BFG.

All in all a pretty great game. I've got a fresh buzz from not having picked up an FPS in years, so I'm going to give it an 8/10, but on a 2nd playthrough I might feel differently about it. There are definitely a few bugbears that I can imagine will irritate me as time goes by, but it was a memorable experience and one I'd highly recommend.

Some context:

I was born in 2005 and some of my earlier memories with gaming are from the first Half-Life. As a kid I remember playing the intro and as soon as the first headcrab appeared I'll stop playing and watch my dad continue on. Later on I did manage to get over my fears and even almost finished the game, but I didn't due to my copy having a weird glitch that made the game crash during one of the platform jumps on Xen. It wasn't until 2 or 3 years ago that I finally finished the game and saw the credits roll. The funmy thing is that despite my interest in the franchise I've never really seen anything about Half-Life 2. I mean I knew that It existed, but for some reason I never really cared enough to go out of my way to play it.

It wasn't until a few months ago that I finally decided to experience the sequel to the most important game of my childhood and it was absolutely incredible. I don't remember the last time I was this hooked on a game from front to back. It's truly impossible to describe how well the game and Valve's design philosophy have aged.

Every moment of Half-Life 2 feels like an experience. From the opening in City 17, The boat chase, Ravenholm and etc. every chapter of the game feels unique and has plenty of memorable moments. In the current era of AAA games that dump giant maps and obnoxious huds seeing something that has none of those feels so refreshing. Another element that blew me away is the horror in the game. I have played my fair share of horror games and none have been close to being as terrifying as Half-Life 2. The headcrabs and zombies are so much scarier compared to the original and their excellent sound design elevates them above anything I could've expected. The way in which this game manages to combine action and horror really brings the absolute best in both and It necer feels like one is being sacrificed for the other. Shooting at aliens and combines feels so satisfying and the different weapons in the game (especially the gravity gun) add so much to that experience. Also the two episodes that continue the game feel just as good and as well though out as the base game. It's truly a shame that we'll probably never see the continuation of the story that the game started.

All in all the Half-Life 2 truly feels like Valve knew exactly the type of game that they wanted to create and they executed it flawlessly. I'd absolutely recommend to everybody who has any interest in games whatsoever. Even nearly 20 years later Half-Life 2 is one of most creative, consistently good and unique shooters out there.

This is probably my most active gaming year by far. Before this year I didn’t play that many games because I have many other hobbies, but this year I realized I really wanted to play Baldur’s Gate 3 but I have about five million other games I’ve bought and never played. So I made a spreadsheet with all my unplayed games and how long they’d each that to finish and I’ve been tackling them one by one since around May. Once I’ve finished all the games then I’ll start thinking about what I want from my wishlist again.

The list of everything I’ve played in order of most recently finished is:

Banner Saga 3- 9/10 this whole series is amazing if you like turn based strategy games. If the studio could afford voice acting everything, that’s just about the only thing that could be done better.

Life is Strange: True Colors- 7.5/10 honestly good despite the chiller vibe compared to the previous two games. Great characters but it is way too short for full price. I’m glad I got it on sale.

Kingdom: Classic- 8/10 extremely addicting and fun but once you master it, it gets very basic. Still I super enjoyed it and hope the latter installments in the series add more mechanics.

Red Dead Redemption 2- 10/10 everyone says it’s good and it’s good. I love seeing my ancestors working on the train tracks haha.

Injustice- 8/10 I probably wouldn’t have gotten this game if I didn’t buy it in a DC themed humble bundle years ago. It’s got a fun little plot. I liked it but I’m not a fighting game person myself, I just button mash.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim- 5/10 this game is so not for me. I had to download like 40 mods to even finish it. I did end up having a lot of fun with the mods, but I can’t rate the game highly for making its fanbase do all the work. Still I found many cool mods and I’ll probably play again at some point with other mods. I want to try a khajiit hunter.

Alice: Madness Returns- 8/10 I bought this game because I remember seeing fanart when I was an edgy teen thought this stuff was the coolest shit ever. I couldn’t buy games back then so I got it for closure. I’m terrible at platformers and I usually don’t like them but this one was super easy so I didn’t die so much it got frustrating, though the underwater part did have some fights in the cemetery I got stuck on for wayyy too long before restarting and relearning/practicing the mechanics. The story and style of the game made it a great time for me.

Danganropa- 8/10 ahhh mannnn the plot for this one was so fun. A little predictable but I didn’t mind. Was on the edge of my seat. The only thing that was annoying was that sometimes the logic during trials was a little hard to grasp. Like I was following the plot perfectly, but the text during the arguments wasn’t always the most clear.

Indivisible- 7/10 so mixed with this game. It was really fun but the main character is a turd and I hate her. And the end game section where to go all the way up the mountain was wayyyy too long and hard for someone who’s bad at platforming like me.

Little Nightmares- 8/10 not much to say. Everyone knows this is good. Short game, not hard, but creepy and intriguing. Not too interesting in the sequels though, it’s the type of game where I’d prefer to just watch someone else play and save my money.

Night in the Woods- 7/10 it was fine. Not for me. I mean I get it’s deep and emotional for some people but it wasn’t really for me. I didn’t hate it but it was kind of boring for me. I know some people will find the main character super relatable, but I personally can’t relate at all so that’s probably why I didn’t care too much. I really liked Bea though.

Life is Strange 2- 5/10 aw man I started out really like this one. The political themes really made me think about the world but I really hate their mom and the hippy man love interest. They’re the worst and ruined the game for me. Like how dare you just randomly decide being a mom wasn’t for you and bail? I shouldn’t forgive you for that. You’re fuckin crazy. Made me so mad, especially since in the game she actually does take care of them somewhat? So what exactly was the issue? Imo once you birth a child, wanting to be a parent shouldn’t be a choice. She should have left earlier and never come back. She’s so gross.

Ni no Kuni- 6/10 the gameplay is so boring….. the story was alright, it was cute but it’s probably the most boring grindy jrpg I’ve ever played.

Passpartout- 6/10 I was tricked into being this by Jazzadraws way back in the day. It looked way more fun on stream than it is really. Someone would probably like it but not for me. At least it was short.

Shelter- 7/10 good game but I regret buying because it’s heart breaking. I lost many of my babies and just felt sad and angry after playing lol. If you care about your feelings then beware of this series.

The Banner Saga 2- 10/10 this series is all good The Banner Saga- 9/10

Untitled Goose Game- 8/10 I’m so mad at myself for buying so many games I suck at lol. This was fun but I was screaming at myself the whole time. So stressful

Vampyr- 7/10 this would be rated higher if the camera didn’t suck so bad. And if there was a save feature available and fast travel. The story is cool and the combat is almost really good but there’s just a lot of quality of life bs that made it kind of annoying to beat. Plus the scene where you visit Nurse Crane is kind of bs as many people online have said already. Just be aware of those things ahead of time and don’t make the same mistakes as everyone who went in blind and you’ll probably like the game.

Mafia remake- 7/10 I liked it but la noire does every aspect of the gameplay much better with better writing too. The story didn’t feel fleshed out enough and neither did the characters. I guess partly because it’s a very short game. It is also open world even though it is very linear and there’s nothing to do in the open world. Would have benefited from a touch of GTA.

To Be or Not to Be- 7/10 funny but basic game. If you think you’d like the game you probably will.

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.

It still blows my mind to this day the scale and complexity they were able to achieve on the PS2 platform. As well as having solid rpg gameplay mechanics involving "developing skills" such as driving, lung capacity, muscle, various specific gun skills etc. It all creates an amazing "hook" to keep the player engaged and enjoying the progression. Just simple fun mechanics. Also the sheer amount of activities and side missions such as gambling, sports, "pimping", vigilante, gang turf wars, modifying cars, burglary missions, low rider bouncing competitions, etc. All of these showcase some of the classic 80s/90s flashy ghetto/gangster rap sub-cultures as satire.

The list goes on and speaking about this as a PS2 game still blows my mind how they achieved such a "big" game.

Not to mention the seemless pacing of the game allowing the player to progress the story from enjoying the "gangster" side of the 1st act to go through to the "country outback" and back to a city setting in the 3rd act all tied in seamlessly with a brilliantly written story showcasing the best fun of all these settings.

Anytime I play this game I really cannot put the controller down. Its addictive. Its VERY over the top. It's mad. It is a masterpiece of gaming and probably my favourite GTA to this day. Its just pure satirical fun and it doesn't take itself seriously.

Got to get back to playing 🎮

Kya: Dark Lineage is a relatively obscure 2003 action platformer on the PS2 – definitely a hidden gem. City girl Kya is chilling at home when her brother Frank discovers a hidden room with all sorts of strange artifacts. They're poking around when they suddenly get sucked into a new world! Frank is captured, and Kya teams up with the friendly dog-like Nativs (not a typo) to get him back. The villainous Brazul, who is also Kya's father, is capturing all the Nativs and turning them into monstrous Wolfen. It's up to Kya to find Frank and stop Brazul.

This is one of those third-person action/adventure games from the era, very much in the same vein as Starfox Adventures and Beyond Good & Evil. There is a lot of exploration, puzzle-solving, combat, stealth. and platforming. The platforming is generally fun. You can jump and climb on all sorts of things. There are numerous environments that all have a distinct look - desert, forest, lava, etc. The puzzles are usually of the flip switch, move box variety, and they're pretty easy. You have a very useful boomerang that doubles as a neat hairpiece when not in use.

Combat is like a brawler - Kya's only weapons are her two fists, and there are numerous combos involving some combination of kicking and punching. Like most of these types of systems, some of the button press sequences you need to pull off for the combos are pretty tough, but it's generally not necessary to pull off a bunch of tough combos just to beat most of the wolfen. You can't fight all the wolfen all the time, so stealth is a big part. It's pretty simplified stealth – the wolfen’s blind spots are hilariously large - but still plenty of fun.

Wind is a big part of this game. The fast travel system involves taking long wind tunnels to the new destination. There are numerous parts where you float on wind through tunnels and shafts, avoiding obstacles. Very often you have to jump off a tall cliff and direct yourself to a big cushion to land safely. There are also several slopes you travel down on a snowboard-type thing that were very fun.

Most of the time you can tell where to go. There is a map screen, but it could be more useful. There are no labels on the fast travel destinations, so all you get is a not-very-useful screenshot of the area. It should just tell you the name of that location. Also, there are definitely some camera issues - a few times I died because the camera decided to show me a blank wall, rather than my fight with the wolfen.

All in all, I really enjoyed this game. It was about 12 hours, so the perfect length. It brings all these elements together in a cohesive way, so you're rarely bored. This type of game is one of my favorites, and they're just not made anymore. Kya: Dark Lineage is very average – it does everything well, but it’s not going to change your life. Sometimes that’s all you want. I don’t need to play some GOTY masterpiece every day. It’s a very solid, workman-like effort in a genre that isn’t made much anymore. A very refreshing game.

it's been a month so this is all i've finished.. :|

1) Quake 1 Enhanced: base game. this is a remaster from 2021 for the old FPS game quake 1 which was released in 96.. in the past, i finished the old quake and its 2 add-ons, but now i only finished the base game - hopefully i'm going to play the add-ons too because there's 2 new ones: dimension of the past and dimension of the machine.. idk, it sounds interesting enough but i don't feel like playing these right now.. :(

anyway so quake 1 is a lot like other FPS games of that time, the base game's divided into 4 episodes, just like heretic 1 or doom 1 and 2 were divided into episodes, each of them having a secret level. well, i couldn't find every secret from each level here in quake but at least i found all 4 secret levels..

2) The Darkness 2. this is another FPS game from 2012, you play as Jackie Estacado, some young guy in his 20's who's head of the mafia and he's got "supernatural powers" too, not just guns.. so in this game it's not just about shooting because your powers (or Talents as they're called in the game..) can make a big difference too. it was an interesting game, i got nothing bad to say about it, but the story was pretty sad.. reminds me a lot about Alice: Madness Returns..

so i played this only on hitman difficulty and i finished it twice so that i could get both endings.. in regards of difficulty, before i started playing, i googled and people said that Don is too hard, Don being the hardest of all difficulty levels, and so i chose Hitman which is 1 step easier..

also i searched for the game on the PC gaming wiki website, i was curious about playing it on higher frame rate (i played it on 240 FPS), and the site said that if you play on higher than 60 FPS, you'll encounter a glitch at some point and you'll be blocked by an "invisible wall" - actually i encountered this problem more than in 1 location (there were 3), it always happened while i was travelling through tight places like the ventilation shafts. but i was able to alt-tab to desktop without exiting the game, i changed the screen's frequency and i kept playing just fine. it was a good game, if i were to rate, i'd say 5 / 5..

3) The Darkness 2: Vendettas Campaign. this is a campaign organized into a number of missions and it has a parallel storyline to the base game. so there's 4 assassins, you choose 1 of them, and each of them have different talent trees - different skills which you can unlock with the essence you collect. me, i chose Shoshanna and i finished this also on hitman difficulty.. not much else to say about it.. i think the campaign has some pretty hard fights sometimes but the final boss wasn't that hard.

4) Serena. this is just a free, short game from steam.. i'm not "proud" to finish it because it requires no skill, no thinking, but it was a decent way to spend an hour playing it

Below the Root is a 1984 game based on the Green Sky Trilogy (which I never read) by Zilpha Snyder. I liked playing this but never won as a kid. Much more recently I finished it and thought it held up pretty well.

The game is set in a series of giant trees that people and animals live in, and that you explore during the game. There are five playable characters, some of which are stronger and some are more magical. Anyone can improve their magic by 'pensing' (mind-melding) with a friendly animal.

While there are some violent characters and animals in the game, you can't be violent. The ultimate goal is to rescue someone, and you get there by talking to people, exploring, and unlocking new locations.

So... I don't know how strong a role nostalgia is playing here, but I really enjoyed playing this through. Does anyone else remember it fondly?

I recently went back and played Mad Max to see if it was as fun as I remembered it being. And in general, I still had a blast playing this game and there's still nothing else quite like it out there.

For those who haven't played: The game is set in an open-world wasteland that does a nice job of capturing the lonely, blasted, feral feel of the Mad Max Universe - particularly the later installments including most closely, the Fury Road installment.

The game begins with your vehicle being taken by Scabrous Scrotus (canonically one of the sons of Immortan Joe). Left with nothing you soon find an unlikely companion along with a clunker of a vehicle that you're promised can be improved to match and ultimately exceed the performance of your old car - especially once you've secured the holy V8!

Game World: The blasted world of Mad Max is divided into 5 regions which, despite being desert, do manage to have some nice variety. 4 of the regions have allies that you can partner with and who offer you a base of operations from which you scout the area, recovering scrap and special parts that help you upgrade your vehicle. You obtain these from ruins or bandit camps all of which have a unique, crafted feel to them that makes exploration fun. Surprisingly, there's a lot to explore in the wasteland both above and occasionally underground.

Combat: You spend most of your time in your vehicle traveling about the wasteland and occasionally fending off enemies which will try to take you down if they discover you driving about. As you upgrade your vehicle, you go from fearing these encounters, to easily tearing through multiple vehicles with the assistance of guns, a harpoon that rips car parts off enemies, side burners, ramming spikes, etc.

You'll be on foot only in the ruins and bandit camps in which you'll encounter several types of enemies. Combat has that WB feel - somewhat similar to Batman in its counter and attack functions. I found the hand to hand combat enjoyable without being overwhelming.

Progression: The main goal of the game is to upgrade your vehicle which you do with parts that you find throughout the wasteland. But you must also help your allies build up their bases. Each area has a variety of activities that essentially weaken your enemies hold on particular regions. These include taking down "scarecrows", securing towers, taking out enemy convoys, clearing minefields, taking out enemy bases and leaders, etc. There are also optional activities like races and collectables.

Overall, the game can get a bit repetitive as many activities do begin to feel rinse and repeat, however the regions and camps are different and creative enough that I still found each fun and interesting. Vehicle combat gives this open world game a different flavor than most and it's surprisingly fun when it could easily have been clunky and frustrating. Mad Max is one of the few games, IMO, that really does a movie tie-in right

During the first few hours I would have even thought that it's a good game. Not as great as the other Spyro games, but upper middleware. But then I reached the later levels and yeah, there is a reason why this game is the black sheep of the Spyro franchise. I wouldn't call it outright bad, but it has some flaws and it's pretty noticable that the dev got trouble from management.

One of them is the hub world. There is only one that feels around the size of the individual hub worlds in the original games. It's segregated into smaller areas that resemble the levels you will go to, but there is nothing special about it. It's a flat plane with no exploration to be had and no secrets to be found.

Another, very obvious flaw are the powers. You learn them rather quickly and aside from the Bubble Breath for catching dragonflies, you barely use them. For example, Headbash and the new Wing Shield are only used a single time and completely useless anywhere else.

You will also start to ask yourself very quickly:" Where are the bosses?". The answer is: Nowhere. There is only a single boss in this game and you can only defeat him properly if you 100%ed the game. In the same vein, there are only three cutscenes in this entire game and two of them don't make much sense, because they are spaced out instead of running back to back.

And I want to give a special mention to the Thieve's Den. For once, you actually help these egg stealing bloaks and all they give you is the worst level in the entire franchise.

If there is one thing you can point to when saying that the game got rushed, it's this level. It's empty, it's linear, there are just 10, yes 10 enemies and the obsticles are a joke. There even is a large machine that looks like it has a purpose, but it does nothing.

And it sucks that the game gets dragged down like this, because the game does make a good first impression. The dragon world has this normal, peaceful appearance and the Dojo is a good first level. It has fitting enemies, some exploration, a good aesthetic and music and some backtracking.

It does a good job and so does the beach level, with the retun of the living Tikis from Spyro 2, the friendly, tourist like looking Riptocs, the hidden water cave, the multi level lagoon that combines swimming with climbing elements in an area and the Simon Says like drum game.

And when Enter The Dragonfly shines, it really shines. Like with the clould level. It has great visuals, especially with the buildings sinking into the clouds, it has dangerous plattforming sections that force you to glide over the abyss several times, it has a nice main objective that ties into the level, the enemies have angel wings, halos and cupit styled arrows and you have this fun minigame, where you shoot down literal cannon boats out of the sky with a WW2 plane. It feels like a playable Care Bare episode.

You also have Jurassic Jungle, which feels like peak Spyro. You have good plattforming, you have good visuals, you have enemies that are resistent to certain attacks, you have Terminator references and you have a very fun sliding and tower climbing minigame with music that complements the action.

And then you have another plane level that gives a child friendly version of your grandpa's adventures in 1944.

Despite of this, I think the main problem with Enter the Dragonfly is that it lacks memorable moments. I didn't play Spyro 1 or 3 as a kid, yet I still have vivid memories of them after playing them as an adult. I remember the bonfires you can ignite in one of those first levers, the shephards, the force wall that kept you inside the playable area, the opening dragon head, the wizards, the sky castle level (which had awesome music), the tree level and that teeth gritting harbor level from Spyro 1.

I remember Spyro 2's castle and how excited I was when I found the entry to the tower, I remember the metal sharks, I remember the hidden upper area in the water level, I remember the snake elephants, I remember the evil wizard getting turned into a goat, I still feel the frustration of saving those baby turtles and escorting Hunter through those stone emeies.

And I still remember Sypro 3's poisenous swamps, the UFO stage of the fight against the Sorceress, dropping the heads of the stone people into the lava with the penguin, the large guy killing the chicken in the Rome level, the western level, the beach level, the cloud level with the air bags, the skateboarding in the jurassic era level and all the minions getting turned into monsters.

But when I remembered Enter The Dragonfly, I only had partial memories of a farm level and a honey swamp level and those were much cooler than what I got when I replayed them. Even worse, some of those memories are actually sections in Spyro 3 and not Enter The Dragonfly

Again, I see the ideas of the devs and in several cases, like with the beach level or the dojo, they come together to form a competent to fun experience. But then you get to the later levels of the game that feel kind of simple, to the quests that don't make sense in the context of the level (like, why do I have to put out fires in the Thieve's Den?), to the boss who leaves you with a "That's it?" feeling when you don't 100% the game and the realization, that barely any of the characters of the game make an appearance. Like, you see Bianca once in the game and Hunter twice, that's it.

So yeah, I can see why this game is considered the black sheep of the franchise and why it was a let down for the time it was released. Still, if you are thirsty for more Spyro, you could give this a try. Perosnally I would say enjoy the content that is there, rush through the Monastery and Thieve's den and ignore the final boss. Then you will have a good time with it.

As for me, I think it's time to play Spyro A Hero's Tale, a game which I never heard of up until now. I hope that isn't a bad omen for the things awaiting me.

First up is Sekiro, and I need to preface this by saying that I am not generally a fan of the Souls games. It's not that I think they're bad games by any stretch (far from it, in fact; I have nothing but respect for how they singlehandedly changed the modern gaming landscape), but there are a couple of key mechanical features in those games which I just personally don't enjoy to the point where it makes me not want to play them. For the longest time, I thought it was simply a skill issue – I wasn't gud. and either didn't care enough or wasn't skilled enough to git. Then, after playing Ghost of Tsushima earlier this year and feeling like I was in the mood for a little more feudal Japanese action, Sekiro happened to pop up while I was browsing the Steam summer sale and I figured what the hell. I've heard that it plays pretty differently from the Souls games and I love the aesthetic, maybe I should give it a shot.

Friends... Wow. I'm not going to sit here and write a gushing review (that's not the point of this post, and there are several hundred of those out there for you to read if that's what you're looking for), but like seriously, wow. What a game. I admit there were times where I was tempted to give up because of the difficulty, but I always found myself drawn back to try again. In time I got gud, and eventually landing that final hit on the last boss was a pure, fists-in-the-air, 'LET'S FUCKING GO!!!' endorphin rush like my 40 year old ass hasn't gotten from a game in a long time.

You know that feeling when you finish an absolutely amazing (book/game/movie/TV show) and you're just kind of... done for a bit after? Like, all the neurons you use to process entertainment have been burnt to cinders and you've no interest in moving on to the next thing quite yet? Yeah, that. Easily a top three gaming experience of all time for me (a strong contender for number one, even), and I've played a lot of games over the last 35 years.

But of course, after a couple weeks with nothing played but the odd Slay the Spire run the itch came back and I started looking for a new game to get invested in. While looking around, I happened to see that Jedi Survivor had just gotten a major performance patch and was apparently now running pretty well on PC. I had played Fallen Order with high hopes back when it first came out but didn't love it, and had held off on the sequel despite hearing it was better because by most accounts it ran terribly on PC. With that apparently resolved and the kid inside me still wanting nothing more than great single player Star Wars games, I once again said what the hell.

As above I'm not going to write a review of Survivor here, but as the saying goes it was certainly one of the games of all time. It was better than Fallen Order in some ways and worse in others, and by about the halfway mark I found myself rushing main story objectives and turning down the difficulty because I just didn't care.

Anyways, that insufferably long-winded intro brings me at last to the point of this post: I obviously can't know how I would have felt about Survivor had I not played it immediately after playing Sekiro, but the fact that I did play it immediately after playing Sekiro certainly highlighted how badly it fails to live up to what it's trying to emulate.

Virtually every single aspect of Survivor (other than the platforming, which is not really a particularly significant part of Sekiro's gameplay), felt like a pale, washed-out imitation by comparison. The traversal, level design, items, skill trees, and especially combat were just so profoundly unsatisfying and unpolished compared to what I had recently experienced. I went in wanting so hard for Survivor to be great, and I probably would have a much kinder opinion of it had I played it first, but at the end of the day I couldn't help but be incredibly disappointed. It's not entirely Survivor's fault though; I love a McDouble from time to time, but it's just not going to hit the same if you're eating one right after the most delicious and satisfying meal you've ever had.

The bottom line for me here is that Survivor isn't a bad game, but coming to it fresh off of Sekiro made it abundantly clear how much of a masterpiece Sekiro was and how modern big name AAA devs like Ubisoft and EA seem either unwilling or incapable of learning from the successes of other studios. I'll take tight, frame-perfect combat and and a map with no wasted space over massive, mostly pointless open worlds and 700 skins for my lightsaber handle any day of the week, thank you very much.

Holy fuck what a fun game! I slept on this for decades because it's just a Mario Kart clone. Do not make that same mistake! I just played this on a whim while bored last night and I'm so glad I did. This game is so fun and so fast and differentiates itself from Mario Kart in some big ways and is actually a lot more similar to Diddy Kong Racing.

It's sort of genius how they mixed Crash Bandicoot with kart racing in a way that made 100% sense. Speaking of 100%, this game drives me to want to get 100% completion in the same way that Crash 1 & 2 did back in the day. The relic challenges are a bitch but the driving feels so good that I don't mind constantly restarting. Man, what an unexpected gem.

If you're looking for a retro game that is fun, fast-paced and controls well, give this a shot! There's also a 2019 remake called CTR: Nitro-Fueled for modern consoles and it seems to have reviewed well so maybe pick that up if you'd rather play something new.

Y’all mind if I gush for second? (This is gonna take longer than a second.)

...in fact, this is like a 3,000 word analysis. It should take you roughly 10-15 mins to read. If walls of text aren't your thing, feel free to skip this post! If you wanna see this writing with supporting images & visuals, skip to the bottom of this post.

Spoilers abound.

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I just can’t get over Sifu’s museum level. Years after completing the game, its sleek aesthetic and coloration still seep sporadically into my subconscious. I recently rebooted my game just to experience it all again.

With a sharper mind than I had when I previously played it, I realized all the things about The Museum that make it so great, and now, I must write about them.

The Museum is one of the single greatest video game levels of all-time.

Full stop, hands-down. I would debate that statement in a court of law. In fact, maybe I will… (minus the court of law).

The Museum’s Story

To understand why The Museum is so damn good, you must understand the story it is trying to tell. It takes at least two runs of the level to understand all its moving parts, so let’s lay the groundwork now so everything that follows makes sense.

The Museum tells the story of its curator and boss encounter, a woman named Kuroki. The game leaves some of her backstory muddied and up to interpretation, so we’ll break this down into what we do know and what we do not know.

By completing and fully exploring the level, we learn the following, of which we can say for certain:

• Kuroki is an exile from Japan living in China
• She had a twin sister, whom she loved dearly
• For reasons unknown, Kuroki dueled to the death with her sister and killed her
• As a result, Kuroki now lives in regret and grief
• For reasons unknown, Kuroki abhors her own father, whom we can see brutally scribbled out on the family portrait
• Due to her familial trauma from her father and sister, Kuroki has developed severe mental and emotional trauma, which manifests as a wrathful, rage-filled alter-ego embodying her sister
• She now searches for relief from that grief, and she turns towards the redemptive properties of water and artistic expression as mediums for healing and release
• Her beliefs about water’s redemptive properties coincide with her claiming of Yang’s Water Talisman

I’m going to propose that Kuroki’s mental trauma is actually Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder). There is no supernatural, no illusions, no hallucinations to speak of in Sifu’s Museum. Kuroki just has two aspects of her being. Unfortunately, that can’t necessarily be said for certain, so I had to omit it from the above.

The Structure of the Museum

What we have from the above — and what The Museum is working with in its structure — are three narratives.

• Kuroki’s tangible, material story
• Kuroki’s mental and emotional reaction to the events of that story
• Kuroki’s search for healing and redemption

The Museum is such an exceptional piece of video game design because it mixes, swirls and spins together those three stories, exploring:

• The tragedy of Kuroki and her twin sister (tangible and material)
• Kuroki’s grief, anger and eventual personality disorder (mental and emotional reaction)
• Kuroki’s use of water to wash away her pain and sins (search for healing)

The Museum achieves this through gorgeous, cohesive use of presentation, color, symbolism, allusion, foreshadowing and both environmental and esoteric storytelling. The level weaves and manipulates aspects of each narrative thread through almost every ounce of its being — taking the form of art pieces, text, architecture, layout, visuals and more.

But we must look closer to truly appreciate. Now, we break down each piece of the triad.

Tangible and Material Storytelling — How We Learn the Tragedy of Kuroki and Her Twin Sister

Through physical décor, (the absence of) colors and implied revelations, the museum demonstrates the tangible and material aspects of Kuroki’s story; that she had a twin sister, that she fought and killed that twin sister, and that she took no pleasure in this — experiencing tremendous grief as a result.

Art pieces and quotes on exhibit walls allude to Kuroki’s duality both subtly and overtly.

• Matriochka figurines sit in duos
• Twin statues stand in stylized poses
• There is an entire exhibit called the Twin Exhibit
• The Kunai-Pendulum room hints at Kuroki’s sister’s weapon of choice
• The fourth and final Hidden Self Exhibit features multiple instances of dueling feminine statue art, even depicting the moment Kuroki stabs her sister
• The Submerged Emotion Hallway demonstrates a transition from Kuroki’s to her alter-ego’s state of mind

Textual quotes on the walls aren’t just there to fill up white space, but to fill blank spaces in Kuroki’s lore.

In the following quotations from around The Museum, note the bolded text, which indicates to us Kuroki’s duality and twin, her loss and pain, and her expression of those emotions through art.

A swirling set of pieces, each one tinged with splashes of anxiety, sadness, or pure absurdity. A chance to catch sight of conflicting artist’s personas*, to witness* juxtaposed but equivocal identities.

Twins are an unusual and intriguing subject to capture. They provide us with the challenge of capturing uncanny symmetry, sameness, yet also nuanced differences (a quote from real life)

A sister is a dearest friend, a closest enemy, and an angel at the time of need. — Debasish Mridha

LOSS: Expressing the pain a soul feels when facing down the darkness of loss is considered one of art’s never-ending quests for creativity through pain. Death transcends time, space and culture. It binds us as humans. Death is universal.

Crushed by sorrow*, half of me is drawn away / these hilts and those shafts / the noises and the slams / the make me forget your name / but never for too long*

PAIN: Birthing art requires an artist to give something of themselves to their creation. Their soul, their flesh, their blood is imprinted upon the canvas as a testimony of the pain an artist must endure to create

Trapped and deceived to slay my own flesh and blood / far beyond the clouds, far beyond my tears / a vast furor raises in the air / it fills my head, toys with my words / she has never — and will never — show any mercy

The factual reality of Kuroki’s siblinghood is, indeed, overt and obvious — but only if you engage with the level’s scenery and give it your attention. What’s satisfying about The Museum is how it delivers this information to you not through straightforward exposition, but through its environment.

In the level’s final stages, Sifu hands it to you off the backboard if it wasn’t already apparent — Kuroki’s hidden personal art room reveals an image of her holding her dead sister. At the level’s culmination, the second phase of the boss fight sees us challenge the actual manifestation of Kuroki’s dead sister, cementing the twin sides of our museum’s curator.

We can also look beyond the physical and towards the inferred, specifically at how The Museum approaches color — or the lack of said color.

Throughout The Museum, one can witness a light Yin & Yang influence taking shape — further alluding to Kuroki’s dual nature. Yin & Yang is a concept originating in Chinese philosophy, describing an opposite but interconnected, self-perpetuating cycle. Do note that Cycle is the name of The Museum’s second exhibit.

Yin & Yang play out in the form of Kuroki’s white depiction in both her art and her attire, versus her sister’s black depiction in each. We can also see Kuroki’s reflection underneath her sister in the Submerged Emotion Hallway and the boss fight’s second phase.

Yin & Yang is a paradox of simultaneous duality and unity — this implies to us that Kuroki has another half, but that her and her sister are also one-and-the-same.

Obviously, it is impossible for two separate humans to literally be one. Especially if one’s kicked the bucket. That is, until you explore Kuroki’s mental state…

Abstract and Symbolic Storytelling — How We Learn of Kuroki’s Mental and Emotional Reaction to Her Trauma

Through physical arrangements and the use of color, The Museum demonstrates Kuroki’s mental and emotional reactions to her familial trauma; that her breadth of mixed feelings following the ordeal were cyclical and inescapable, always leading her back to her acts against her sister’s life. Her emotions became so powerful, so varied and uncontrollable that she spiraled into a state of mental disorder, developing Dissociative Identity Disorder — which manifests as an enraged version of her late kin.

We have already mentioned the cyclical nature of Yin & Yang, as well as The Museum’s second Exhibit featuring the name Cycle. This idea of rotating and repetition is seen all over The Museum — the kunai exhibit circles perpetually, the “Mourning Whirlwind” statue at the beginning of the Identity Exhibit expresses grief in flowing, spinning fashion…

… and The Museum’s entire floorplan is a spiral, wrapping itself up, down and around the cascading waterfall at the center.

This notion of whirlpooling is also spun into Kuroki’s experience via quotations on the walls, specifically in the Cycle Exhibit. Here, they begin to illuminate for us what exactly is spiraling; Kuroki’s grief and emotion.

There are patterns in one’s life, circling and born again, endless variants of a theme. Follow them to take advantage. Stand in their way and you’ll get hurt.

When the storms of emotion begin to swirl and take hold, the artist seeks the brightness, the safe passageway to shelter.

Kuroki’s grief and emotion, in its endless swirl, takes the form of color in much of her art. Throughout every one of The Museum’s exhibits, we see the same shades of blue, purple, orange, yellow and red.

The Hidden Self Exhibit is naturally the best example of the level’s use of color. Contrasting the concreteness and realism of moving through a museum in the first three quarters of the level, the Hidden Self Exhibit takes players through a hallucinatory and surreal depiction of the mind and emotion.

There are no floors, walls, hallways or doors to discern in this section — only the vast emptiness of color. This blurring of reality reinforces the abstract nature of the exhibit’s contents, of Kuroki’s intangible emotion.

Harsh saturation flickers, dances and shifts as we progress through architectural representations of Kuroki’s duel with her sister. The ever-shifting lights and colors represent Kuroki’s shifting emotions in grief and her inability to control them.

The Museum then flips and inverts color into desaturation for dramatic and symbolic effect.

Following the Hidden Self Exhibit described above, we move from the saturated, hallucinatory rooms to the black and white snow and water rooms where we encounter Kuroki herself.

Additionally, much earlier on in the Cycle Exhibit, we move from the bright and vivid suspended lightbulb room to the dim and grayscale kunai room, physically representing the cyclical nature of Kuroki’s colorful emotions and the stages of grief she is experiencing — no matter what she does, they always bring her back to the moment she kills her sister.

Through all of this, we see notes on the walls suggesting that to fight these emotions is futile, we must allow them to flow through and wash beyond us (hold on to that idea of flowing and washing for later).

You may want to battle the riptide or to let the flow carry you through its cycle.

There are patterns in one’s life, circling and born again, endless variants of a theme. Follow them to take advantage. Stand in their way and you’ll get hurt*.*

Kuroki fails at this, however, and allows the strength of her emotion to cripple her to the point of developing an alternate personality.

I believe, as a result of her familial brokenness, Kuroki has Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder), defined by Psychiatry.org as the existence of two or more distinct identities brought about by overwhelming experiences, traumatic events and/or abuse that occurred in childhood.

In the museum’s first exhibit, we watch this play out, again through paintings and wall quotations. Art pieces in the Identity Exhibit feature female portraits with their faces scribbled over, as well as wall text reading;

A swirling set of pieces, each one tinged with splashes of anxiety, sadness, or pure absurdity. A chance to catch sight of conflicting artist’s personas*, to witness* juxtaposed but equivocal identities.

Over time and through the experience of life events, our identities are reshaped and remolded*. These experiences allow us as humans to alter how we see ourselves.*

In The Museum’s rising action, taking place in the Hidden Self Exhibit, we literally “watch” this transformation of identities occur in the Submerged Emotion Hallway (more on this in a moment) as the white décor plunges underneath the surface into aquatic décor, with Kuroki’s image at the hallway’s beginning and her twin sister’s at the end, completing the transformation as we dip under water and into Kuroki’s subconscious.

And now, our attention must turn to Kuroki’s obsession with water.

Redemptive Storytelling — How Kuroki Blends Water with Her Work to Mend Mental Wounds

Through The Museum’s art, layout, architecture, and immersive exhibits, the location demonstrates Kuroki’s ideological belief in water as a mechanism for healing and redemption of the subconscious.

As soon as we enter The Museum, we’re greeted with its namesake and physical representation of it. “Flood” reads the banner hanging overhead of the front door, with a large, cascading waterfall pouring down from four floors above.

The Museum’s and Kuroki’s obsession with water becomes more apparent as you move through each exhibit, with wave imagery a constant, as well as art pieces depicting water droplets, fish, bubbles and more.

It’s all reinforced by copy written upon the walls:

Color always moves, always changing its own state, going from one container to another, liquid to solid, or evaporating to pure abstraction. You may want to battle the riptide or to let the flow carry you through its cycle

But it becomes overtly apparent as we traverse up, down, left and right through the fourth and final Hidden Self Exhibit.

In one of the early rooms there, we’re dropped into a dark locale, standing in water up to our ankles as more drips in from overhead.

A voice speaks through the darkness as we’re assailed by Kuroki’s henchmen:

“Water has the power to cleanse us and set us free. It represents birth and the cleansing of a darkened soul. Water is the key to being reborn*. It is considered* redemptive in nature. And like the darkness itself, you must first embrace it.

The mind is like an iceberg. It floats with 1/7th of its bulk above water. Our consciousness is merely the tip of the iceberg. We must dive beneath the waters to explore the subconscious — to face the past*”*

We don’t have to do any analysis, interpretation or guesswork here — Kuroki hands us her thesis statement, drenched in literality.

In order to address the pain and suffering she experiences, Kuroki has set out to face her past by exploring and examining her subconscious — which she physically depicts in her art as a sort of submerging, an idea built upon Kuroki’s belief in the healing properties of water.

Indeed, this is what is happening in the Hidden Self Exhibit — we are exploring Kuroki’s subconscious state of varied and overpowering emotions that lead to a rift in her personality.

We soon pass through what I have dubbed the Submerged Emotion Hallway, and we watch on the walls as an image of Kuroki is displayed alongside large text reading LOSS and PAIN. As we transition down the hall, we see Kuroki’s image from before mirrored - yet different - reflected from the blue, split-creating paint on the wall.

As we’ve established, Kuroki’s emotions are too strong for her, she resists their riptide and descends into the next paragraphs of text on the wall; ANGER, RAGE. It is then, at the end of the hallway, we see Kuroki’s completed transition into her alternate personality, a wrath-filled reimagining of her own dead sister.

After this, the exhibit asks that you plunge deeper into Kuroki’s self and mind — a final “underwater” room ensues as we reach the depths of Kuroki’s pain and emotion.

After our “submerging” is complete, we see the fateful duel of sisters play out under Kuroki’s colorful, emotional lighting, which we have already discussed.

We then arrive at Kuroki’s space. A calming, quiet, snow-draped courtyard. Water is present here, too, but it’s frozen. Kuroki, as she speaks to us upon approach, is fighting to control her anger. She snaps a wooden doll in her hands.

My reading of the scene is that the still snow is meant to portray Kuroki’s attempt to stop the rushing, flowing waters of her emotion. She freezes it in place, holding the violent waters of rage back through force of will.

But as we see when we push her to her limits — and as has been depicted and suggested in her art all along — she is unable to hold these waters back.

In Kuroki’s heightened emotional state following the first phase of our duel with her, the floodgates quite literally open, and we submerge again into Kuroki’s subconscious. The courtyard shifts to a raging seascape and Kuroki’s secondary personality, her vehement twin sister, emerges to face us in battle.

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Everything in Sifu’s museum level is Chekhov’s Gun. No art, architecture, or verbiage was spared in the curation of Kuroki’s physically manifested history or mental and emotional disorder.

Making deft use of presentation, color, symbolism, allusion, foreshadowing, and environmental & esoteric storytelling, The Museum weaves the life narrative of its curator in a way that absolutely must be described as one thing and one thing only;

Art.

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Writer's note: Thank you for reading. This article is much easier to understand and follow when you can actually see the shit I'm talking about lol. To that end, here is a link where you can read a full, uncut rendition of this piece with supporting images and links. I don't add this here as self-promo, just as a more robust way to experience the analysis.

Setting/Story: The story opens with Silas Greaves, a bounty hunter, sitting in a bar and telling stories of his Wild West exploits. As he tells each story of battling various historical outlaws like Jesse James and Butch Cassidy, you do the shooting.

Overview: It's a "pure" FPS in that it's pretty much just a shooting gallery. You explore levels a little bit to find secrets but on the most part the focus is gunning down all the enemies they throw at you. At times the voice over narration does funny little things, like you play through a sequence and die and he says "Actually that was the wrong way to go. I ended up going this other way." and everything rewinds. Or another character hearing the story interrupts and argues that that wasn't how things happened. The art is sorta a weird combo of realistic and cartoonish.

Character/Inventory: You have the usual selection of weapons: a rifle, shotgun, a few types of pistols, and can throw dynamite. As you kill enemies you gain XP and when you level up you can increase abilities in one of 3 categories: gun-slinging (dual wielding pistols), long range, and short range combat like shotguns.

Combat: A lot of it is fairly straightforward. You walk into areas, enemies pop out, you shoot them and move on. As you kill enemies you build up a meter which you trigger to slow down time and highlight enemies. There is no health bar, and instead your screen gets progressively more red and bullet-ridden until you die. You heal by waiting, usually behind cover. There are a few bosses that change things up a bit and can absorb more punishment.

At some points you get a sort of quick time event where you have to press a sequence of buttons that appear to kill enemies.

Another mechanic is a quick draw duel minigame which happens at certain points. You have you use the right stick to keep a target on the enemy to build "focus" and use the left stick to make sure your hand is over your gun to maximize your draw speed. You can either kill them dishonorably or honorably (waiting for them to start drawing first).

Overall Verdict: It's a nice, simple throwback FPS that contrasts with modern games that are full of crafting, stealth missions, and heavy RPG elements. The gunplay is fun and satisfying, and you get a bunch of different situations to fight through that it isn't too repetitive.

The humor of the narrative and how it changes the game you're playing is a nice touch, and they have enough variety that it doesn't get boring.

Small nitpicks with the combat: it can be frustratingly difficult to locate enemies that blend in with the background. Often I found myself getting shot repeatedly and really struggled to find who was shooting me. Also, the aiming felt sorta...slippery in some way. Maybe I've been spoiled by games that have more of an aim assist, but I kept missing enemies by a hair when it felt like I should've hit them. Probably just a skill issue.

I never really "got" the dueling part. I did ok for the first few but as they got harder I started just doing the dishonorable kill because it felt like if you wait for them to start drawing, they just instakill you. It's like you draw and have to wait a few seconds to shoot. I feel like I missed something on it.

Overall a pretty great action game that lets you just switch off your brain and kill a bunch of dudes

Found this while browsing through the PS+ Extra game library and figured I’d give it a whirl, as I’d always been kinda curious about it.

Bound is a wordless artsy indie platformer with some pretty wild visuals. For a framing device we see a pregnant woman walking slowly across a beach towards a house, stopping every few feet to open her sketchbook which serves as the level select screen. Pick a drawing and you’re dropped into a surreal landscape of vibrating geometry surrounded by roiling oceans of cubes, now controlling a lithe, faceless dancer.

Gameplay-wise there isn’t a whole lot to say, it’s a fairly basic 3D platformer and the emphasis is on the visuals more than the mechanics. Still, it does have a nice feel to it, in no small part due to the graceful motion-captured animations of the protagonist. There’s even a dedicated “dance” button, which you use to pass through certain obstacles.

Speaking of the visuals, they are quite impressive, with a real overload of effects and an abstract geometric art style that’s aged quite well. That said, as much as I liked the aesthetic at first, it got pretty stale for me by the end of the game as it’s not only very sterile but also very samey. One level feels much like the next, and really this applies to the gameplay and story too.

There are three other characters we meet who appear as large faceless monsters and speak only via subtitles and it becomes clear pretty quickly that they’re representations of the main character’s family. At the end of each level we see a still scene from her life as a child, revealing a little more of what this whole metaphor is about. The problem is, they all tell basically the same story without adding much of interest - she grew up in a dysfunctional household and her parents yelled a lot. That’s pretty much it.

I realize that gameplay challenge isn’t really a priority in a game like this, but the problem is that on top of being unchallenging it’s also just unengaging. Compare Journey for instance - also a very simple, easy game, but one which regularly switches up its pacing, visuals and tone as it goes on.

Bound is a very brief game - I completed it in under 2 hours - and that’s probably for the best as even in the short time it took to finish I was getting pretty bored by the ending, which is a real anti-climax. Ultimately it feels like a 5 minute music video that got stretched out to film length.

Call of Duty World at War came out in the golden age of the series. This effort resulted in one of the boldest and most mature entries in the series, even if it's a game of two uneven halves.

Positives:

The graphics, as per the norm with COD, are top-of-the-line for the time they came out. What stands out in the series is the style that Treyarch brings to the table. A lot of the mission briefing cutscenes are in black and white animation and a stylized use of color, almost like an old army video. The game also contains real footage of World War 2, or at least footage that looks real at points. This gives World at War a sense of grit and authenticity that the other games have never been able to match.

The soundtrack fits this grimmer setting quite well, with less action-heavy rock and more orchestra and lament vocals. It still fits very well with the hectic missions and brings them the more ghastly undertone that they need. The main menu theme, Brave Soldat, is the best intro theme in the series, setting the stage perfectly.

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." This quote from Tim O'Brien explains what World at War does and what the other COD games don't, which makes it stand out. On both sides of its campaign, the brutality of war is its main focus, and whether it's from your enemy's tactics on full display or seeing the people around you fall into bloodlust, you feel the horror and despair of the fight in your bones. It makes the game harder to play through at times, but the deathly atmosphere is very much worth it.

The AI for the American missions is surprisingly good. The enemies you take on use guerilla tactics and are actually scary at times. This helps the American missions stand out.

The missions on both sides of the campaign stand out for different reasons. The American missions are technically very impressive and provide some unique fights not really seen in the rest of the series. The Russian missions are more story-focused and really double down on the horrors of war. Most of them work pretty well, but two standouts are Black Cats and Vendetta.

The multiplayer in this game is similar to COD 4 in terms of balancing, movement, and game modes, aside from the setting being moved to World War 2. However, this is very much a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" scenario, and it remains fun to this day.

The sound design for the time is pretty good. There are some stock sound effects, but overall, when things get crazy, it certainly sounds the part. It's also a good reminder of how sound design used to be done in these kinds of games.

The character models and designs for the time are all pretty good. All of the major characters look distinct and are expertly rendered, especially Reznov and Chernov. The AI soldiers all look good as well.

Mixed:

The campaign is split into two, American and Russian, and their stories are black and white in terms of quality. The American story is very bland and mostly a survival story against the Japanese forces. The Russian campaign is a somber, brutal story of what war can do to a person and maintaining your humanity while the bullets are flying. There are some moments in the campaign where you must choose whether to show mercy or brutality. This only affects how the characters look at you a little bit, but it's surprisingly novel for COD. The endings for each campaign align with how they began: one is serviceable but dull, and the other will stick with you for days, especially if you know the real context behind it.

The characters in the Russian campaign range from great to bad. Victor Reznov, a man fueled by vengeance from the Battle of Stalingrad, is a fascinating character. Equally disturbing, charismatic, and capable of both brutality and surprising compassion. A magnificent vocal performance from the great Gary Oldman tops this off. Chernov, the mirror to Reznov, is also fun to watch, as he clings to the morals he believes in, unwilling to go farther than he has to, even in death. The others are stock characters with background acting, including Dimitri Petrenko, the lead, who is entirely silent.

The gameplay is classic COD boots-on-the-ground shooting with two secondary weapons. It's simple, but it works. Gunplay is better than average, and generally, you won't run into any performance problems.

This game introduced the zombies mode. It is a very simple wave-based mode but very effective. The mode is filled with dread, much like the campaign, and has some cool Easter eggs. It gets rather repetitive quickly because of the lack of variety of zombies besides summoning more of them, but it's fun enough to return to.

Negative:

Difficulty options have never been COD's specialty, but it is especially egregious here. The settings range from too easy to veteran, which might as well be an alternate universe where grenades have replaced bullets. The grenade spam is that ridiculous.

The characters in the American campaign are almost nonexistent. They are barely anything beyond faceless soldiers. The gameplay carries them, but they will not stick around in your mind.

Score: 7.4 out of 10

Call of Duty: World at War stands out from the rest of the franchise thanks to its bruised heart and unmatched atmosphere, even if it's somewhat inconsistent in displaying that. If you want to see COD at its most brutal and mature, check it out.

Let's get this out of the way up top: Zelda is my favorite series of all time, and having now finished Oracle of Ages I believe Spirit Tracks is the only non-spinoff entry I've never played. Mid Tier Zelda is still more enjoyable to me than 75% of video games. But ultimately I think the Oracle games, while enjoyable in a vacuum, fall short of the series highest highs. They can't quite live up to the immaculate vibes of Link's Awakening or the incredible overworld design of a A Link to the Past, and are ultimately surpassed by their successor the Minish Cap when it comes to the Capcom Zelda Trilogy.

Let's get something else out of the way: I beat Oracle of Seasons three years ago. I had a physical copy of Ages that I meant to get to eventually but decided to play on Switch Online. Like a moron, I didn't look up how to link games until I was about 6 dungeons in. I had always read you link for the "true ending" so I just assumed that I entered the Seasons code after I beat the game. Not so! Turns out I missed a bunch of content and didn't get to play the true ending. Will I ever replay these games for the real final boss? Who knows.

Ages took me three tries to get into. I'm embarrased to say over the years I picked it up twice, only to get stuck on the first puzzle of the second dungeon. This time I showed it to my wife, who does not play Zelda games, or many games at all, and she immediately saw the solution. Ironically, while this is a very puzzle heavy game and there are some tricky ones, that's the only time I really got stuck.

The Oracle games are noticeably harder than your average Zelda. This makes the puzzles pretty satisfying, but the combat can give me headaches. I wound up finishing the game with 28 deaths, most of those to the final two bosses, compared to 9 on my most recent play through of Link's Awakening.

Dungeon design is largely good, with some caveats. Jabu-Jabu in particular was an annoyance. It uses the same mechanic of raising and lowering water in the dungeon as Ocarina of Time's infamous Water Temple. But in this case there is only one room that changes the water level, buried up in the Temple's armpit, and you have to access the room from three different directions depending on the change you want to make. So if you miss something or have to put the game down in the middle of the dungeon for some reason, it is a real slog to get things back where they need to be. Prior to this temple you receive that allows you to dive in deep water, and for some reason it changes the basic mechanic of swimming from holding a direction to tapping to move, which drove me up the wall.

There is also a good amount of padding. There is a very tedious section where all your gear is taken away and you have to explore a section of the map to get it back. There is another section where you have to do a miniature trading game with Gorons in both the past and present, which is so unintuitive that the developers just put a guy in the middle of it who just tells you where you need to go with each step. There are a number of mandatory minigames, which range from fine to frustrating (that second dance leader can fuck right off.)

The music is also very hit and miss. Link's Awakening has some of my favorite music in the whole series, most of which is reused here. There is unique music for each dungeon, unlike LA, and some of it is pretty good. However there were a number of times I had to turn the sound off. The town music, the house music, and the lost woods tune are all grating. There is also too much music if that makes sense. There's no loading between areas like there would be in a 3D game, meaning the music abruptly switches, mid-note, as you walk between screens.

It sounds like I'm sipping the haterade but I want to end on a positive note. Despite these annoyances (and my own foolishness) I enjoyed my time with this game.

This has a reputation as the puzzle-focused Oracle game and there are some excellent puzzles. There are some rare and unique items. I always love the Roc's feather and I want to give a special shout out to the switch hook. Initially it seems like it's just a hookshot with a different animation, but it has both interesting puzzle and combat implications, in addition to allowing movement like the classic hookshot.

There are some memorable boss battles. The puzzle boss you fight with the cane is excellent, and while I was rushing and died a ton, both the final dungeon boss and the last boss of the game are satisfying "final exam" style fights.

I feel like I found way more rings in this game than in Seasons, and while I didn't use too many of them I appreciate the introduction of a little character customization.

I complained about the adjustment of the swimming mechanic above, but the introduction of the underwater sections felt ambitious and made the world feel larger in a satisfying way.

While the dual maps could be confusing at times as there wasn't a ton of visual difference between them, there were also some solid puzzles requiring you to travel back and forth through time, especially the dungeon that has to be completed in both ages.

All in all if you're a Zelda fan these games are no brainers to play. If you're new to the franchise I'd say start with A Link to the Past (2D) or Ocarina of Time (3D) and wait to play these til you've made it through the all-timers. Now if only I could find a way to play spirit tracks...

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.

As a PlayStation 2 kid, I’d walk through blockbuster every Friday night and stare at the covers of all the cool M-rated games I knew I’d never be able to convince my mom to rent. From vice city, to silent hill 2, to resident evil 4— I would walk down the aisle day dreaming about what the games were like, how they felt to play, and what exactly was so “bad” about them. It became a weekly tradition of mine to read the back of the boxes of all of these mysterious forbidden games.

One that always caught my eye was the original Yakuza. Years passed, and the barrier to entry became more and more intimidating with each mainline sequel. By the time I finally decided to take the plunge, there were 7 mainline titles. On a whim, I purchased and booted up Yakuza Zero, after being told by a friend that it was the best entry point for newcomers. Rather shamefully, I only played a couple hours and sent it back to my shelf to collect dust once more.

Fast forward a couple years, and Yakuza Like A Dragon n is released in 2020. It reinvents the franchise by forgoing the traditional beat em up combat and bringing the series into the jrpg genre. With a new protagonist, a new location, and a new genre, i was intrigued. It eventually made it into the ps plus monthly lineup in 2022 where I claimed it. For whatever reason it took me another 2 years to rescue it from the crowded depths of my backlog.

Instead of bouncing off it like I had in my previous encounter with a yakuza game, I was immediately invested. I went on to put over 150 hours into Like A Dragon, and somewhere along the journey I fell in love with it. It is certainly not immune to the growing pains associated with a complete overhaul of a beloved franchise. But from the opening scene to the ending credits, every inch of this game is lovingly crafted and consistently impressive.

The main character Ichiban Kasuga is charming, kind, and straight up loveable from the first time he graces your screen. An orphan raised in a bathhouse, he has a huge heart and prioritizes people over money or power. Even as a young man, he showcases empathy and wisdom far beyond his years. All in all, he’s just a really great guy and an easy protagonist to root for. He also has great hair.

Speaking of loveable, the main party and the surrounding cast of characters are just perfect. They are all so endearing, and have relatable motivations and reasons for fighting by Ichiban’s side. By the end of the game, your rag tag group of misfits are the beating heart of this entire experience. Wherever you go, they manage to transform the most mundane moments into an adventure. The almost sibling-like banter over a warm meal, their all too relatable insecurities, and their individual quirks and preferences make them feel like real people. You learn what foods they like, the lives they lived before meeting ichiban, and their greatest regrets. In stark contrast to most jrpgs I’ve played (and loved), these are middle aged adults. They have legitimate demons and traumas to contend with. For this reason, I found them more relatable than even some of my favorite jrpg characters.

The story itself is incredibly well written. It’s packed to the brim with genuinely surprising twists, heartfelt character moments, and continuously elevated stakes—finally crescendoing in an emotional finale that cemented my love and appreciation for this journey. It can be over the top and borderline silly at times, but it is masterfully executed with great voice acting and great dialogue. You will be bombarded with cut scene after cut scene, which will certainly turn some people off. Personally, I felt it struck a great balance between story and raw gameplay. Then again, I love death stranding. So feel free to take that with a molecule of salt.

Like I said before, the dialogue is really great. The main characters have some really witty banter, and almost everyone comes across as complex and believable in the main story. The side content is pretty wacky, but it’s still consistently funny and definitely a feature, not a bug. Not to mention the localization is really well done here. Instead of a rough Japanese to English translation, people speak English in a very casual, believable way. It’s more akin to watching a group of friends converse, which is a stark contrast to the more formal translation many jrpgs adopt.

Now this is admittedly a personal preference, but the modern day Japanese setting is one of my favorite things about Like A Dragon. The city of Ichinjo is gorgeous. There are waterfront vistas, claustrophobic neon alleys, and bustling boulevards. Each neighborhood has a distinct flavor complete with shops, restaurants, and places to hang out with your party and play mini games. This is the only game I’ve played that scratches that Persona itch as far as the overall feel of the city. You’d think there would be more turn based rpgs set in modern day Japan, but as far as I know it’s a mostly untapped setting.

My favorite thing about Like A Dragon is that the game is whatever I want it to be on any given night, based on my mood. The city is rife with mini games and activities, almost all of which are surprisingly well crafted and addictive. So if I’m in the mood for some story I can do main missions. But if I’m looking for a turn my brain off experience after a long day at work, I can go play some poker for an hour, then go race go karts, and then go beat up a grown man that wears diapers in his free time. There’s so many things to do in between missions that I never once felt bored. There were times when I would go days without doing any actual missions because i was fixated on beating all of my party mates at darts, or building my pastry empire.

The music is legitimately amazing. There are melancholy pianos that highlight the more emotional moments, moody synth based tracks that remind me of the matrix trilogy, and plenty of 90s jrpg vibes thrown in for good measure. Every moment felt enhanced by the soundtrack.

But, like most games Like A Dragon is far from perfect. It overexplains the plot to you constantly. One character will explain something, and then another character will repeat exactly what they said back to them, but in a much simpler way. This drives me insane at times. But I understand it’s inclusion, it is a long game and I admittedly needed a refresher at times. So I can’t really complain about its inclusion, I just wish it had been implemented a little more subtlety or infrequently.

I’m incredibly torn on the combat. For a jrpg, it’s sorely lacking in depth. But what it lacks in strategic variety, it makes up for in pure style and entertainment value. The move set creativity is really off the charts here. For example, the homeless party member Nanba is able to throw bird seed and summon swarms of pigeons, or chug alcohol and use a zippo to ignite his breath. This creativity extends to even the most basic enemies. You will fight rappers who inflict status ailments by dissing you in a freestyle. Perverts will lower your defense by flashing you. There are so many funny and completely original ideas here that the repetitive nature can be forgiven.

I do wish enemies poked and prodded you in more intelligent and creative ways. If they were more tactical and attacked your weaknesses they could force you to switch up your strategy. But I never once really felt challenged. I died only once outside of the boss battles (in over 100 hours of playtime, I might add). And all of those boss deaths were at the hands of one specific boss that has an instakill attack that is an automatic game over if RNG takes the wheel and he decides to target Ichiban. This was frustrating, especially at the end of the game when the story was quickly moving towards an epic conclusion.

Like A Dragon somehow tugged on all of my nostalgia strings while bringing something wholly original to the table. I am a big fan of jrpgs, but many of the staples of the genre’s storytelling have really lost their luster for me in recent years. Like a dragon reminded me of just how much I love the genre when it’s done right. It really is just a pure joy to play. Between the story, the larger than life characters, and the willingness to inject pure goofy creativity into even the most mundane aspects— this is a must play title. I really can’t recommend it enough.

Did you enjoy Yakuza Like A Dragon? Which Yakuza game was your entry to the series? For all the veterans, how does it measure up against the original mainline series? Do you prefer Ichiban or Kiryu? I’m very curious what you guys thought of the game. Thank you for reading!

After finishing this game I found myself having a lot of thoughts on it, so I thought I'd share.

The good stuff

The fighting system is really cool. Basically, the enemies telegraph their attacks and it is up to you do decide how you want to defend/attack. There is some variety on how you can fight but it can be as simple as just rolling and attacking.

Additionally, you can build your character the way you like. I played co-op so we opted to make one character a magic user/healer and the other would be strength and close-combat. You can also choose armor to give your more defense or more HP. Ultimately it is up to the player though. You can go all out attack or be more defensive as you see fit.

The mobility is also really good for co-op. Of course, you mostly have to go the same way if you want to progress, but within the map and in dungeons each player is free to choose their enemy and to move wherever (with SOME limitations, of course).

Visually, the game looks great! It’s not something I really expected. I like how the houses and even the save icon follows the cat theme. This extends to the dialogue which is filled with puns and jokes related to cats and dogs.

The bad stuff

The controls could be really difficult especially the rolling. It was frustrating to be in the middle of battle and for some reason the character would roll the complete wrong direction to where I was pointing. What would make it really painful is that if you rolled wrong and died, you had to start everything all over again. This wouldn’t be a huge problem if you didn’t have to go through ALL the dialogue again and again. Which reminds me… there was WAY too much dialogue. At one point I lost track of the story because I just could not be bothered.

For a while we were steadily leveling up and moving along with the story but after a while we had to start looking for more side-missions and dungeons to level up. At least for me, it felt too grindy at this point. That’s not to say the side missions were difficult or even long, but it just wasn’t fun.

For a while traversing the map can be quite the task. Yes, there is a way to fast travel but it wasn’t the easy to understand. Having a map of the over-world would’ve been very helpful in these moments especially since there’s a very limited view while walking around.

Last Thoughts

All in all, it took us 8 hours to beat the whole game. We felt tired and glad that it was over. I always appreciate a co-op game that lets both players do their own thing and we did have a few hours of fun, but I’m not exactly sure where I land on this game. Would I play it again? No. But I did like it enough that I want to eventually try Cat Quest 3.

In the end, it depends on what time of experience you’re looking for. If you enjoy a bit of a challenge and don’t mind the grind, this might be for you. Couch co-op games are not that easy to find, so I think this one is worth at least a try.

I understand the love and cult following for this game now.  It is not for everyone I'm sure, but if you want a game that doesnt hold your hand, respects your intelligence and has quests with multiple ways to solve, this game is probably for you!  If you like revenge stories, the story is for you

To start, I played on PC and modded it, KCDtweaks has a lot of great QOL tweaks and I added a few more like no herb picking animation, horses can travel through water, no visor view and ability to go through bushes.  Had I played this on console I probably would have not been as positive on it.  KCDtweaks tweaked things like no item needed to save, carrying capacity, vendor money, stamina use, and how quickly weapons & armor degrade.  I'm sure I would have been fine in the long run, but it made the game respect my time more. KCD has a slow start, especially if you do the Woman's Lot DLC after the opening area (but I do recommend it, Theresa is a wonderful character and you get a dog out of it!) I was home sick, and I had a whole day to dive in and take my time

With that all out of the way, let's talk about the greatness of this game.

It is immersive.  The combat is tough at first, one-on-one can be dangerous until you get a hang of it, if you're outnumbered, you're fucked.  Once you get the hang of it, a few perks and better equipment it becomes fun and you can hold your own.  Once I hit midgame I was able to take on anyone, but still had to worry about positioning if fighting more than one foe at time.  If one gets behind you, you will get hurt and you can't heal in battle. It felt so good to go from son of a black smith and having to avoid fighting to being able to hold my own and eventually destroy my opponents

You need to sleep and eat, but it is easy to find a place to sleep and the same with food.  Whether you steal food from bandits, or just go into a random house, camp or inn there is a pot of food you can eat from. You can lose reputation by ignoring someone asking you a question, going too far in front of a person you're walking with or lagging too far behind (which all make sense)

When you're given a quest, they often tell you a general area to go, but you gotta figure out the rest.  Some characters have a quest marker, but if you're searching for something, you might get an area to search, or you just have to figure it out.  One quest I had to find a priest, I went to the one I knew, but he was busy, so I traveled to another church in a different town and found one who could help out.  Another quest I needed to find someone, so I had to ask around town until I found someone who had info.  Some quests have multiple ways to tackle a problem.  

The Story is a story of revenge, but where it shines are the characters.  At first I was a little disappointed I couldn't design my character, but I ended up really liking Henry.  He grows and develops and is a good bloke.  Theresa is fantastic and even more badass than Henry (at least at first).  Hans is hilarious, as is Father Godwin, and the nobles you work for are memorable as well.  I was not expecting this level of quality in both the characters and their voice actors.

Where does this game stumble?  It has a little bit of jank.  Inventory is rather disappointing, there is a mod for that but I couldn't get it to work.  The stealth sucks, but there aren't too many needed stealth sections.  Perhaps had I changed my clothing to be less noisy, but I was too lazy.  Pre-saved outfits would have been great for this game.

There are some boring fetch quests, but for whatever reason I didn't mind it, they felt like a variety of locations and almost all had good reasons (I help you so you can help me).  A couple missions I wasn't too sure what to do and had a few tedious moments, but all that is a good trade off for the game respecting the player's intelligence and giving you multiple ways to tackle some quests

I do hate walking and talking sections, there arent too many of them, but you move at different speeds.  Hopefully the second one lets you auto follow

The perks were either great or awful, and once you hit a certain level it takes forever to level up some skills, but by the end of it I was able to get all the good perks other than in a couple skills I didn't use too much. One let down was disguises, you can use one early to escape an area, but that was the only one I could get work.  Another mission you have to scout a camp and are supposed to be able to disguise yourself and sneak in, but I could never get it to work.  There is another camp where I tried to disguise myself, face covered, all the same outfit, but couldn't get around.  Seems like it is more story related to when it works.

Overall this an impressive game, especially for a studio's first game!  It is not for everyone, you have to be in the right mind frame, but with mods I think just about anyone can enjoy this.  It is a breath of fresh air in allowing players to think and discover instead of being told to just go to this exact spot everytime.  The world and story are immersive and a fun place to be.   I cannot wait for the second one 

I picked it up because I was in the mood for something sexy, but I ended up getting way more absorbed in the hack & slash to spare Aya's outfit more than a brief thought. Far more relevant was me tearing through enemies to get covered in blood, then tearing through more to go from "merely" berserk into a full blown demonic state, pulling off perfect dodges to charge up my ultimate and parries to stun everything around me and open them up to finishers.

I got all the DLC too, which means early access to Lei, and my god this woman is a fucking beast. She loses the fun "Berserk>Xtatic" mechanic Aya and Saki have, but instead when she gets rid of the blood on her weapon(a mechanic she has better access to than the main characters) she stores it into her gun, and once she collects enough her lil' handgun shots turn into blood charged, homing spread shots that tear through everything. She had combos that let her charge her ultimate attack really fast, and her Knife ult collects and stores a lot of blood really easily.

And to top it all off, she can charge her gun to fire a hilariously large blood laser that will basically erase whatever it's pointed at. You need te to charge it up but if you can pull it off in a boss fight, that's the match.

All in all, glad I picked this up. Not as fun as Onechanbara: Z2 Chaos so far but still pretty damned fun.

Control is an action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment. Released in 2019, Control answers the question of what happens when a game doesn't answer any questions.

We play as Jesse Faden. The victim of a paranormal event when she was a child, she has been searching for her brother who went missing during the event for the past 17 years. Her journey has led her to the mysterious Federal Bureau of Control, a seemingly unremarkable building where she may find much more than she bargained for.

Gameplay is fairly simple. Run around, shoot things or, more likely, use random objects in the environment as lethal weapons. Solve puzzles, gain access to doors you passed awhile ago but forgot about and now you need to remember where they were. The usual.

The Good

It isn't often that I find myself wanting more when I finish a game. The story and delivery are well done, leaving me invested in the people and the world. To be able to pull that off and not leave the player feeling empty or disrespected is quite a feat. When a patient gamer gets impatient. I want more, damnit!

I appreciated that the side missions fit thematically and didn't distract from the time constraint of the main story. It's not like (warning: blasphemy incoming) Witcher 3 where you're so concerned about Ciri missing that you stop to enter a Gwent tournament. They get real weird with some of them which helps keep the game fresh and interesting.

The Bad

There are significant texture issues that are known about and were never fixed. You can try all sorts of dinking around using mods to tweak settings, using DX11 or 12, zoom in and pause then zoom out, etc... but it doesn't always work. As such text on walls is often low res and rocks are often untextured grey blobs which can interfere with some missions.

The Ugly

The art direction is certainly a choice. I get what they were going for and they nailed it...but while that grey brutalism can work in movies for setting a tone of a scene or two, having an entire game set like that can feel weird. Which is, again, kind of the point. It works but "I play games to relax" and "This game is designed to make you feel uncomfortable" can clash. It's not so egregious that it pushed me off the game but it did take a long time for it to grow on me.

Final Thoughts

Psychological horror games rarely land for me. Especially ones where you eventually get a grenade launcher. Fortunately Control seems to realize this and has enough else going on that once the 'oooh creepy!' feeling wears off there's plenty of world building to indulge in. It's not often that I look forward to journal entries to read to learn more about what's going on. it reminded me a lot of the first time I played Metal Gear Solid and that is a very pleasant feeling to have.

Interesting Game Facts

Connected universes are fun. I'd love for Remedy to somehow get the rights to Disco Elysium and then expand Max Payne to be in universe. Harry and Max in a anti-hero buddy cop adventure written by Alan Wake in the Old House would be a dream come true. Unfortunately James McCaffrey died late last year so we wouldn't get his sweet svelte voice in our ears again.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear about your thoughts and experiences!

My other reviews on patient gaming