I grew up alongside Tim Schafer's entire career, from his earliest Lucasarts days, to being an early champion of Psychonauts, and a backer on their later crowdfunded efforts. But for whatever reason I never got around to Brütal Legend (we must not forget the mighty 'ü'). Until now!

As you probably know, this is a hack and slash action adventure open world inspired by and celebrating the golden age (or should that be 'dark age'?) of metal, set in a fantasy world in the tradition of 80s metal album covers, starring Jack Black and also featuring metal gods Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford and Lemmy, as well as the late, great Tim Curry. It being a Schafer game, there's a playful tone and witty dialogue.

One thing almost everyone agrees on is that this does a fantastic job with the METAL. Though the visual style is more Tim Burton than Frank Frazetta, you really can't beat the vibes of driving around these hyper-stylized demonic hellscapes backed by an impeccable soundtrack of metal classics and deep cuts. I could imagine this game creating new fans of the genre, and even seasoned metalheads will probably discover a gem or two along the way.

Jack Black in his Tenacious D prime could not have been a more perfect fit, and even though the game reminds you it's him every time you start it up, during the game itself Eddie Riggs feels like his own person and not just a celebrity voice.

Surprisingly enough, Ozzy gives one of the most spirited voice acting performances in the game. It was also supposed to include the voice of Ronnie James Dio, but for slightly ambiguous reasons it didn't work out. It is unfortunate there's no Dio presence at all in the game, since he was the king of fantasy metal and they were probably staring at his album covers as they were designing it.

As for the game itself, this divides opinion a lot more.

The biggest point of contention, the thing people have been arguing about since the day it came out, is the Real Time Strategy aspect that only appears several hours into the game, leading to many feeling like they'd been bait and switched.

How the game is basically structured is: the first few hours establish the hack n slash combat, which gradually expands out to you having minions you can direct around, and eventually you're able to fly around in battle arenas, creating units and fighting over territory and resources.

The unique aspect is that these sections are a hybrid of RTS and regular hack n slash gameplay, where at any time you can alternate between strategizing from above, and jumping in to join the fray yourself (this approach was apparently inspired by the old game Herzog Zwei, which I've never played).

My hot take is: I'm not really a fan of button-mashy hack n slash gameplay, and I thought the RTS battle aspect was more interesting. If anything my problem was that, for all the debate around it, there's actually surprisingly little RTS in the game! I looked it up and in the single player there are only 7 RTS battles, and several of these are really just teaching you how it all works.

By the time I finally felt like I was properly getting to grips with the RTS stuff, the game was almost over. In fact in the (extremely hard, relatively to the rest of the game) final couple of battles, I was still learning new mechanics. The RTS aspects don't really play any part in the open world side missions, which are mostly more straightforward and fairly repetitive skirmishes.

In my view this is a little unfortunate because it means the game is not fully satisfying for either side of the argument. People who hate the RTS stuff would be unhappy either way. But if you do like the RTS, there isn't enough of it! It was a strange decision not to include any battles outside of the main story, and I feel like the mechanics could've been used for a broader range of missions beyond just the arena battles.

I suppose the intention was for players to switch to the multiplayer mode once they're done with the main game. But personally I'm just not really a multiplayer person, and player counts are pretty low at this point in time anyway.

Nevertheless, this a fun and memorable experience overall, and doesn't overstay its welcome. It's a bit of a shame there were no sequels or expansions to fully realize the concept.

There's also a certain amount of 00's-era clunkiness, so this would be a prime candidate for a remaster (though I'm not holding my breath there).

I went into Chicory knowing nothing more than that it was charming and that the composer was Lena Raine (of Celeste fame). I was indeed charmed.

Chicory is a puzzle-exploration game that's mechanically similar to Zelda dungeons, but (mostly) without combat. Your time will be spent interacting with the game's personality-rich inhabitants and solving puzzles with your magical paintbrush. Unlike Okami, where you have to draw specific things to get specific effects, your paint interacts with specific objects in the environment, such as coloring in a plant to make it grow into a platform. As you progress through the game, new areas will unlock as your paint gains new effects, again similar to how new items in Zelda games unlock travel options.

The puzzles are satisfying, rarely of the kind where you can glance at them and immediately grok the solution, but also rarely frustrating except where the game's 2.5D perspective makes height hard to interpret. A lot of the puzzles aren't required for progression but instead unlock secrets. Since the game isn't about combat, the items you unlock are purely cosmetic: Outfits, decorations, and brush styles or stamps. It's satisfying in the way many collect-a-thon Metroidvanias aren't ("Another missile tank?"), and especially moreso than recent Zelda games ("I can't even carry any more arrows!"), and there's no pressure or punishment for missing things, ever.

There's also a strong Undertale-like influence. The game's many inhabitants have well-defined personalities, and while none as as charming and distinctive as Undertale's, there are still plenty to get attached to. And yes, there is combat—a single-digit number of battles in the entire game—which largely consists of Undertale-like bullet-hell dodging against a stark background. For a largely cozy game, the combat is surprisingly difficult, although you can turn the difficulty down. My WASD dodging skills are a little rusty, but I wouldn't recommend a controller, since painting is much easier with a mouse than with the right stick. Despite some mild frustration (which, again, I could have avoided by just giving myself another hit point in the menu), the spectacle of these colorful battles paired with Lena Raine's epic soundtrack is some of the highlights of the game.

I haven't quite 100%'ed the game yet, but I intend to: there's a hint system that can help get you unstuck or remind you where to go, which I never used until I beat the game, but is useful for filling out those corners. There's also a lot of charming additional content, like art challenges, if you're not in a hurry to finish the game.

Overall, not a revolutionary game, but a comfortable and fun one that I can recommend without reservation.

tl;dr

an extremely worthy game. The moment-to-moment combat was not particularly better than I expected for the first-person RPG genre, but the strategic depth of buildcrafting was surprisingly deep and worthwhile considering the high difficulty. The writing was a wonderful surprise overall--enough that the best rewards from doing all the side quests in the game are not their mechanical outcomes but the opportunities to be told a little story.

Overview

Tainted Grail is a 2025 first-person RPG. You wake up in a prison, go through the least impactful character-creation process ever devised, and then little red riding hood impregnates you with King Arthur, after which you're let loose onto the open world. A classic premise that millions like me love. Mr. Arthur lives in your head a la Johnny Silverhand, commenting on your adventures, and they really did a fantastic job with him. His ghostly armor is so cool, his voice is so deep, and he is so SO sad. A decade of Fromsoft games has created an insatiable market demand for sad knights, and Tainted Grail delivers in spades.

The previous paragraph and the marketing copy would make you to think it is this dour, macabre thing. Right on the store page, almost impossible to miss if you scroll down even a little, out of all the reviews they could have picked, they chose to include this quote from youtuber(?) gameranx: “[Tainted Grail] Feels extremely M-rated. It's all super grim, really depressing, everybody's dying, everything sucks, but just in a way that really works for the game.” I agree that what Tainted Grail is doing works very well, but this representation just doesn't line up with the game you actually play. The game's plot and world, if dispassionately written down would be pretty grim, but you are constantly being assaulted with jokes and whimsy. Even on more serious story threads, you are just too Empowered as a character to exert your will on your surroundings for it to ever get truly depressing. Tainted Grail will never truly try to hurt you, to betray you, to twist the knife. This makes the game much more pleasant to play, but perhaps not as thought-provoking as it could be.

Combat and Mechanics

First-person melee combat is hard to get right, and Tainted Grail doesn't really fail, but doesn't tread new ground. It holds up enough that it still felt good to parry skeletons through the end of my 70 hours, but it's replacement level. I would have loved to see something like For Honor's or The Surge 2's parry system (which showed up in a certain recently-released RPG) to freshen things up, but alas.

Where Tainted Grail really shines is the build-variety. The game is difficult enough (I played on Medium of Easy, Medium, or Hard for most of the game) to really reward thinking out your build. The talent trees are pretty uninspired, full of stuff like "+2% lifesteal on Two-handed weapon attacks", but you get enough points that you are making a meaningfully different character than your friend. The meat of buildcrafting is in items. There are a huge diversity of items to build around and you can come up with some pretty creative stuff. I found some pants and a sword and respecced my character into a spiritualist with a staggering Max MP stat permanently stuck at 0 MP, taking advantage of enchantments that convert this yawning emptiness into massive physical damage for my greatsword. Unlike many first-person RPGs, the game remains meaningfully difficulty through about 50 hours of play, but once you assemble your endgame build, not even bumping things up to Hard will change anything.

If I had any suggestions for the developers if they make a sequel or a game of the same type: Give me talent tree points maybe a third as often (every two or three levels) and get rid of all the nothingburger "+2 poison damage on Tuesdays" options. Several of the talent tree options are really cool (e.g., add 100% of your movement speed to your spell power, heavy attacks deal damage in an area, you and your summons gain damage when one of them dies), give me a tree entirely of those with fewer do-nothing filler slots.

Writing and Story

I was quite pleasantly surprised at the quality of the quests. All of them, from sad to sarcastic to sappy give Avalon a visceral sense of place and do a wonderful job of communicating the joys and cruelties of life there. And sad sad, Mr. Arthur is always there to explain why he's so sad about what he's seeing--it's great. Moreover, especially in the last third of the game, the sidequests do an excellent job of preparing you for the end of the game. Speaking of the ending, (spoilers for the type of conversation but not its contents or who speaks) you get to have one of those "The Man in the Room" conversations at the end to reaffirm the stakes and decide what ending you'll go for; very reminiscent of RPGs like Fallout 1, Pillars of Eternity, or Fallout New Vegas. Tainted Grail doesn't quite reach those highs, but the final sequence is of high quality even still.

Major ending spoilers: I was pretty disappointed that there turned out to be a 'golden path' or 'true ending' option available. Being able to put Arthur reasonably to rest AND solve the wyrdness problem AND make peace with the fore-dwellers AND solve the red death felt like too much of a neat and tidy ending. Sure, it's a secret ending you can only get if you find the three fore-dweller sites (easy to do!!) and all five Round Table graves (probably not happening on your own), but it's still too much of a happy ending. I said that the game never really twists the knife, but the conversation with Hob in the ending sequence is the only time it really tries to hurt you. It shows you the real, emotional stakes of trying to make everyone happy, to convey that your actions will hurt this person and it will be your fault. but if you were a good girl and found the Clown Knight's Murder Grave then you get to bypass this entirely. I know it sounds crazy to say, but it would be better if the secret ending was less happy. A shame!

As far as roleplaying is concerned, this is its weakest aspect. You often have a few choices in how you resolve quests, but they often are just "do you want to be good or bad?" which isn't super interesting. Even when you have multiple reasonable options, you rarely are given the opportunity in dialogue to explain yourself. There's usually a couple of different, compelling reasons why you'd take a particular action, but you're rarely allowed to characterize your player character by choosing to express one or the other. This is a real shame. Occasionally, you'll be compelled by the dialogue tree to say voice an opinion you don't have and that sucks every time.

Conclusion

3.5 stars out of 5: absolutely give this a play if you're at all nostalgic for this sort of game. Wandering the beautiful world (the visual design of everything is top-notch, especially the H.R. Giger-inspired bits, but simultaneously it does look like a game from ten years ago in terms of fidelity) and running into a million little stories was a blast. "However ruined this world has become, however mired in torment and despair, life endures. Births continue. There is beauty in that. Is there not?"

Far Cry 6 is a first person open world shooter developed by Ubisoft. Released in 2021, Far Cry 6 reminds us that Assassins Creed isn't the only franchise they are going to milk for all it's worth.

We play as Dani, revolutionary and guerilla searching to free her home of Yara from the clutches of a questionable dictator.

Gameplay involves doing missions to earn the trust of people you're pretty sure are abusive parents that would get their kids taken away if CPS ever hears of them. Along the way you liberate critical infrastructure guarded by fewer people then you'd need to field a pickup game of hopscotch.

The Good

FC6 does a great job of allowing for shenanigans. We were driving around when we saw some random NPC had a bunch of melons spill out of the back of their truck in the middle of an intersection. I stopped, thinking I could help him put the melons back in or something when my partner asked, "What's that whistling sound?" My dear Christian MineCraft friends, that sound was a mortar. All I know is when we got back after reloading, the driver was no longer there, nor were his melons.

It's a wonderful co-op experience for causing your friend to question your relationship. Ejecting from the plane you're flying and neglecting to mention it. Seeing if you can ramp over a river while your buddy is in the back of the car. Accidentally lighting yourself on fire, then getting in the car, which then catches the car on fire, which causes the car to explode. It just never ends the myriad of ways you can get each other killed and I'm there for it.

The best part of the last few Far Cry's have been liberating locations and there's no shortage of those. It's a bit unfortunate that most will only have a handful of guards to also...uh...liberate but such is life. Fortunately if you...liberate...enough people, more will come allowing you to engage in even more wanton liberation as attack helicopters and tanks try to put an end to your reign of liberation.

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/f6wVDYN.png

C'mon Dani...get in the chopper. Pay no attention to my giggling.

The Bad

FC6 tries really hard to get you to connect with some of the most obnoxious characters imagined. Most of them are even worse assholes than the supposed bad guy. One of the first people you meet almost blows you up as a prank and it's meant to be endearing? Fuck that guy. It only gets worse from there.

Could I have gotten at least a few people on my side with an ounce of charisma? The only character I found even remotely tolerable was the tubby Mexican but it was offset by him being friends with an absolutely unhinged violent psychopath. I'm supposed to be forming an alliance with this person? At least my murder is whimsical and purposeful. She's just a jerk. I mean at least the antagonist believes in a better Yara.

Truth be told I found myself praying for a Far Cry 5 ending.

The Questionable

Equipment progression was a bit of a let down. Early on you get what amounts to a Ghostbuster proton pack with special abilities and it's meant to be this deep customizable thing. Except one of the first you unlock is an on demand self-rez/full heal and you never switch out of it.

You get the parkour armor set about 20 minutes into the game which makes all other armor pointless. Weapons are a bit better. You do eventually get your hands on rocket and grenade launchers rendering most of the other weapons moot, but by then you've reached the 'let's just get this over with' phase of the game so it's not as big of a deal.

There's also a few subsystems that don't merit investment. You can fish and hunt for stuff to sell but there's nothing worth buying. There's a 'choose your own adventure' thing for loot and you can invest in camp upgrades but by the time you unlock it all the games over. You can get NPC companions but they're terrifyingly slow and mostly just die making them about as useful as landing gear in a Far Cry airplane.

About the only sub-system I engaged in was vehicle collecting. There's enough reason to use something other than just the attack helicopter all the time so it was nice being able to call up my hovercraft for the odd Sunday outing. It's nice to have options. Am I in a tank mood or in a tricycle taxi mood today?

Final Thoughts

If you have a friend who is into shooters this isn't a bad pickup. Running over goats with a tank is about as much fun as two people can have together. I'm not sure I'd have been able to finish if playing solo though. The story borders on Dying Light 2 levels of awful and having someone else to go 'What the fuck...' with is the only thing that made it survivable.

Bonus Thought

One of the proton packs you can get when paired with a specific shotgun gives you wall hack capabilities which is arguably more useful than the self rez. It felt soulless though, like I was using a cheat. I don't mind cheap or meta mechanics now and then but this was a bit much.

Thank you for reading! I try to post a new discussion every Tuesday morning for your reading pleasure. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well! What did you think of the game? Do you agree with my take or am I off my rocker again?

My other reviews on patient gaming

My reviews of the first two games:

• Spyro the Dragon (Reignited Trilogy Version) - A surprisingly "perfect" (and rather quite 90s) game : r/patientgamers
• Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage (Reignited Trilogy version). A more expansive sequel, with a bit of an annoyance : r/patientgamers

I beat this game about a couple of months ago, but life kind of got in the way and it took me some time to actually write this review. In this post, I want to round out my thoughts about the original trilogy, which of course has to conclude with a brief review of Year of the Dragon. Just like Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage, I've never played this game back in the day, so for me this is a completely new experience.

Year of the Dragon has Spyro with the exact same move set and abilities as he did in Ripto's Rage, with the ones introduced in the latter (swimming, climbing, headbash) being available from the very start of the game. As far as gameplay goes, the levels that revolve around our titular hero feel more like an expansion pack of the second game. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing - there's a decent variety in this game, but nothing groundbreaking in terms of say how the previous game used the new abilities allowed for greater variation on the level design front.

Instead, the innovation - or gimmick, if you're feeling less charitable - in this game is the introduction of several minigame modes. Most of these involve the new side characters, but Spyro himself gets some skateboarding and racing minigames for himself. The skateboarding sections, in particular, is very 90s and are obviously influenced by the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series that the original Spyro trilogy is a contemporary of.

Overall, I'd say the new game modes are somewhat of a miss. The other characters play very differently from Spyro, which isn't bad in and of itself, except that their control and gameplay feel much less refined and rather clunky. It doesn't help that a couple of the characters have a second variation of their gameplay later in the game - Sheila the Kangaroo has a side scrolling platformer section and Agent 9 gets a rail shooter segment - that feel even clunkier and less complete than their earlier game "normal" sections.

Perhaps the worst part of the minigames is that the Spyro racing sections are basically a buggy afterthought in Reignited Trilogy. I have no idea how they actually played in the originals, but it's pretty obvious that it was one of the last things that was being implemented as the development deadlines approached.

The most interesting thing the game does with the side characters is one level where you can exchange Spyro with one of the other characters, Sgt. Byrd, and have them play the same level. Unfortunately, this idea never gets revisited, every other side-character segment is done in their own isolated little section.

Moneybags returns in this installment as the gatekeeper of these side segments. Instead of having to pay him to "teach" you to swim or climb ladders or whatever, you bribe him to let these new characters free. Which makes infinitely more sense this time around. This also means this game requires you to backtrack to unlock some of the new characters and their segments, but at least it's a bit more streamlined compared to Ripto's Rage, as any unlocked areas can be revisited anytime without having to re-navigate the level and kill X number of enemies all over again to unlock some powerup. The backtracking is still a bit of nonsense but it's not a big chore either, so it remains somewhat of a minor complaint just like in the previous game.

Story-wise, it's the usual 90s kids cartoon stuff, nothing very sophisticated. That said, the Sorceress was a rather less convincing villain than Gnorc or Ripto in the previous installments. For me, this was mainly due to the fact that they tried to write a climactic twist into the story to establish that the Sorceress was a real-deal, super evil villainess, but it kind of falls flat compared to how the previous villains just hate dragons and stuff.

I had fun with this game, just like the previous two installments. In my review for the first game, I indicated how the game felt complete and perfect and that the fundamentals of Spyro's gameplay had been established very successfully. By the third game, Spyro as the 3D-platformer character had been fully played out, and while the new gimmicks were introduced to keep it fresh, as a result it feels like it's aged the least-well among the original three games.

(SPOILERS for Persona 5 Royal)

So, around the beginning of the year, I reviewed Metaphor: ReFantazio here on r/patientgamers, you can find my glowing review here

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1qkuc4l/to_the_surprise_of_no_one_metaphor_refantazio_is/

TL;DR I loved it so much, it became one of my favourite JRPGs. Of course P5R was to follow.

My relationship with the Persona Series is kinda brief. Around 10 years ago I played P4Golden on PS Vita, toghether with Dancing All Night (I'm a sucker for rhythm games). I liked P4Golden, it was a fun, uplifting game and I loved the whole murder mystery aspect of it (although very predictable).

I always wanted to play P5. A couple years after it came out, they released the definitive edition Persona 5 Royal, and I thought that would've been a great moment to jump in.

At some point I bought the PS4 Royal Steelbook, and I was pretty happy. I decided to wait for the right moment to play it, which... Never came? If you read the beginning of my Metaphor review, I have commitment issues. I don't love extremely long games, I like the variety of jumping from game to game, especially indies. So I wait, and wait.

Suddenly, they announce a PS5 version, finally 60fps, plus all bonuses and stuff. Great, I thought, I'll just buy the upgrade to PS5 and get on with it...... No upgrade path, I have to pay full price. This made me extremely sour. I still have that PS4 version in my library collecting dust.

So, recently the PS5 game was added to the PS Plus Catalogue. And it was now or never.

And it was definitely worth it, although a bit overwhelming. Metaphor was long, but this game is gargantuan. But let's go in order.

Story-wise it was good. Nothing exceptional, but I loved the themes it tackled about free will, suffering, guilt and such. I think they were definitely going for a color swapped Death Note here, with the protagonist being the wanted one (although he looks like L) and the detective being the antagonist (and he looks A LOT like Light Yagami). Also, Akechi is the bad guy going crazy in the end like Light, which was the least surprising twist in existance. You mean to tell me that the detective guy who is opposed to the Phantom Thieves from the beginning is actually a bad guy? Maybe they were going for a "it's so obvious, that it's a twist". But the way he joins your team temporarily and acts all suspicious, it was so strange. I think having him join the team around mid-way through the game would've resulted in a better result, but that would require a bit of reworking of the plot.

Also, fun fact, I did read there was a twist regarding someone talking about pancakes. Thankfully, when I read that, I had already done the TV Station scene and didn't remember about it, so nothing spoiled.

Even though I was kinda overwhelmed by the end, the Royal exclusive Palace + Maruki last boss was exceptional. A beautiful story, a challenging boss and a fitting ending. The main story ending was as JRPG as it gets. You fight God at the end.

Characters were pretty much all great, even if a bit tropey. I didn't use any guide, and got pretty much all Confidants to max level (except Lavenza cause I couldn't be bothered to do all those Persona fusions, more on this in a bit). I will admit that I just fast forwarded through some of these side stories because they were getting pretty boring. I decided to date Ann because she was the first one to ask, although I wrongly selected to date Kawakami too (creepy). At least this lead to a funny scene during Valentine's day, so I'm happy with how it turned out.

Combat-wise it was good. Like Metaphor (or P4G before it), the battle system is layered, but not really complex. Abilities are clearly defined, Baton Passing is a great thing (and a necessary one in the fight against Maruki), but I do have one gripe, that is sadly a part of Persona's identity: the creature collecting.

Metaphor kinda worked like Final Fantasy 5, where everyone can have a different "job", and these job get unlocked by nurturing relationships. Here, everyone except the protagonist is kinda fixed and limited to 8 abilities, while the protagonist gest too much freedom. Collecting and fusing personas is a staple of the series, but I don't like it at all. I did update my persona stock every now and then, keeping one with all attack elements, plus others that could help me foster Confidants. So in the end I didn't have the "perfect" protagonist, but that's ok. If you engage with this kind of activity, the game offers A LOT of possible customizations. Even though I feel Metaphor is the evolution of the system, this creature collecting is a staple of the Persona Series.

In the end, I was overwhelmed by the game. I vastly preferred Metaphor and its classic JRPG setting mixed with Persona social interactions, but I can't deny how beautifully made P5R is.

While it didn't steal my heart, I'm glad I played it, but I honestly can't wait to go back to my smaller games for a while. At least I have the dancing game to look forward to! And maybe Strikers? Tactica might be a tad too much for me (I hate tactical RPGs)

I always found it curious that I have such a fascination with horror. Most of my life, I was a scaredy-cat. Hell, I once almost pissed my pants because I was afraid to go into the bathroom after my friend did Bloody Mary. But as I grew older and braver, I found myself more interested in the horror genre. I'm not a particular fan of the adrenaline rushes created by the scares. It's more of my need to "know the unknown." Most horror stories leave you with more questions than answers. Which leaves me ruminating, wanting to know more about the world, the creator's intent, all of it. SOMA is one such story. I'm still left thinking about it while in the middle of this writing. 

Background 

SOMA was released in 2015 and developed by Frictional Games. You may recognize this developer as the same one who made Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Rather than focusing on how Amnesia scares the player with thrilling gameplay, SOMA is more subdued. While there are thrilling encounters, the game as a whole can be considered psychological horror. With SOMA, Frictional wanted to delve into the theme of consciousness and the sense of self. Asking the player to think about what really makes us human. 

Story 

SOMA is best experienced blind. So rather than give a premise of the story, I'd rather discuss my thoughts on the story itself. Spoilers, of course. 

SOMA's story appeared at first to be similar to other sci-fi works I've seen but asked a different question than I'm used to. When dealing with sentient robots, most stories seem to focus on whether they deserve to have the same rights as humans (i.e. Detroit Become Human) or whether they can be considered human (i.e. Bicentennial Man). Instead, SOMA asks the player whether you are still yourself after having your brain copied and pasted into a new being. I want to say what my answer would have been before playing the game, but I wouldn't even know because it isn't something I've had to think about before. But after having played the game and thinking about it, I'm still not sure how to answer it. 

Following Simon (-2) through the game, we see that, consciously, it is still Simon from Toronto (Simon-1). He has all his memories, his dreams, and his thoughts. But we also know that Simon-1 died a long, long time ago. So, should we still consider Simon-2 to be the same person? Conceptually, I would say, "Yes, this is the same person. I can accept that." But if this were applied practically, if I came home and my dad was a robot but a perfect copy in every other way, I don't think I could ever come to terms with it. Maybe it's just latent robophobia speaking, but I can't see a future in which I could easily see this new robot as "my dad."  

This is one reason the game is sticking with me so much. It asks this question, but never really resolves it within its own story. Leaving the player to think about it. We're told time and time again that the copy is still the same person, but neither Simon nor Catherine show this in their actions. Both Simon and Catherine refer to their human bodies as "real Simon," or "real Catherine." Hell, it can be easy to forget that Catherine is a real person and not just a generic Sci-Fi AI since she is on the Omnitool throughout the game. It all ends up being a lot to think about. 

Gameplay 

Now I've played a good few horror games, but SOMA was the first to actually make my heart pound. This was solely because of its gameplay. 

There are no weapons to defend yourself with in SOMA. You are only left to rely on your wit, stealth, and running speed while navigating the underwater base of PATHOS-II. This was my first horror game like this, and I could not believe how anxious it made me feel. I always tout about how "Having a gun, or some method to defend yourself, makes horror games much less scary," but this is the first time I have ever really felt that. I got so stressed, I had to quit the game before even getting the Omnitool. Eventually I composed myself and got back into it, but that was the first time in a while that I genuinely nope'd out of anything. 

Mustering up my courage proved even harder for the enemy encounters. I won't lie here; I completely bitched out and looked up how each enemy behaved prior to facing them. But even knowing how they acted did little to ease me. There were a lot of panic pauses when a Flesher or Proxy would get too close to me, causing the screen to go absolutely wild. As I said, I knew I was in a good position and undetected, but the stress of it couldn't stop me from hitting escape. 

My most memorable moment was facing Jin Yoshida. That was because he acted completely different from what I expected. I was told that he would be right behind the pressurized door, but when it opened for me, he wasn't there. I could hear his gurgling but had no clue where he was. I proceeded cautiously, looking behind me in case his spawns got messed up, but nothing. It wasn't until I turned the corner for the exit door that I saw him, hiding there and basically waiting for me. My heart about jumped out of my chest; I could feel it pounding in my ears as I ran away from Yoshida. I eventually looped back around and made my way back to the, now cleared, exit door. Waiting for that door to slowly open, though, while trying to slow down Yoshida in the hallway almost broke me. I was barely able to slip through before he was on top of me. 

If I had one negative about the gameplay, it would be the puzzles. I would have liked them to be a little more engaging. Most of the time, they feel like annoying little chores to do to proceed. Like: Go grab Item A, B, and C, but make sure to avoid the enemy by Item C! I'm sure Frictional did not want to make them too challenging to prevent roadblocks or kill the atmosphere. But I believe they could have been balanced a little better. Repairing the elevator in Theta while avoiding Akers feels like a perfect puzzle for this type of game. 

Gamefeel 

The atmosphere in SOMA is perfect. As I said earlier, I got so uneasy just wandering the halls of PATHOS-II that I had to quit the game to compose myself. The halls of the underwater base are domineering and isolating. I never felt truly comfortable throughout the game. I was constantly jumping at the slightest sound, worried that I was about to turn around and be face-to-face with an enemy. Despite having Catherine on the Omnitool, she is effectively "dead" whenever unplugged from a terminal. Just adding to that sense of isolation throughout. 

I really liked the creature encounters through the game. Each one of them was unsettling in their own unique ways. Whether that is through their gameplay mechanics, their sound design, or their appearance. Just slowly hearing the gurgling of a proxy or the thudding machinery of the construct get louder as it approaches your hiding spot was incredibly stressful. Regardless of whether it spotted you or not. 

One thing I wish is that more of the enemies were Mockingbirds, or other robots with a brain scan that have gone crazy. Hearing the ravagers' crazed rambling in the sea was super creepy. I would have loved a similar brain-scan robot enemy that wanders the halls, knowing the truth but still trying to convince itself that it is still human. I don't mind the WAU abominations that are Akers and Yoshida, but they can feel a little like generic horror monsters. Especially Yoshida, who, while creepy and memorable, has no real story presence. His only purpose seems to reflect Simon. A Haimatsu Power Suit held together by Structure Gel, one with mind and the other without. 

Conclusion 

I wouldn't call SOMA my favorite horror game. This may be juxtaposed by how much I wrote, lauding the game. But I much prefer campy horror experiences. Games like Alan Wake or Resident Evil that aren't afraid to be a little cheesy. That doesn't change how impactful SOMA was, though. It was going for a completely different feeling and succeeded in that. For that, SOMA is a great game in my eyes. 

This isn't the first time that a game left me with a sense of mournfulness after its conclusion. But it's a feeling I welcome readily. It's this feeling that lets me know that this game was something special. An experience that never truly leaves your mind, no matter how you try to forget it. 

My Other Reviews

Donut County

Doctor Who: The Adventure Games

Dark Souls III

Kill the Music

Portal Stories: Mel

A month or two ago I decide to play PC games through the years, 1 year for each game since I was born in 1989. I didn't have super strict rules about it but in general I tried to aim for games that I had never beaten before. I also made my best attempt to play the game in its' original version, which meant no modern remasters(although fan patches and DOS emulation were common to make them run at all).

In the spirit of patient gaming, I also naturally left 2026 out.

Rather than be here forever and try to review all 37 games I played, I'm gonna break it up into the decades.

The 90s(and 1989)

1989: OutRun
1990: The Secret of Monkey Island
1991: Catacomb 3-D
1992: Ultima Underworld
1993: Day of the Tentacle
1994: XCOM: UFO Defense
1995: Star Wars: Dark Forces
1996: Quake
1997: Theme Hospital
1998: Grim Fandango
1999: Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

Probably the most mixed bag but also interesting decade since it really was the wild west of game design here. You've got stuff like OutRun where the PC port clearly had to be scaled back way too far from the arcade(and by all that is holy I do NOT miss 80s PC speaker sounds) or Catacomb 3-D which, while an important step on the way to Doom, is just too far back on the evolutionary scale of video games.

On the flip side XCOM and Secret of Monkey Island weren't just the best games of this decade, they were the best games of the whole list. Also if we could get a Nightdive System Shock style remake of Ultima Underworld, that would just be perfect. The world, or at least me, needs that to happen.

The games here are janky and rough around the edges and it's a coin flip as to if that makes them frustrating to play or gives it a ton of character that makes them still a blast to play today.

The 2000s

2000: No One Lives Forever
2001: Oni
2002: Syberia
2003: Beyond Good & Evil
2004: Knights of the Old Republic 2(I kinda cheated by using the console release to call this 2004, but meh)
2005: Civilization IV
2006: Tomb Raider Legend
2007: BioShock
2008: Devil May Cry 4
2009: Torchlight

Probably the decade most in need of some modern remakes even if they're not super high budget ones. Games like NOLF, Oni, and BGE have great ideas but are, admittedly, pretty rough to actually play. Oni especially is super rough to play.

KotoR 2 is the stand out of this decade even though I don't really like KotoR's combat. For as much as I loved BioWare, I always found Obsidian to be a bit better at writing and that's on full display here.

Also probably a bit of a hot take but BioShock was something of a disappointment. It wasn't necessarily bad but for how hyped up that game gets and how much I should like it on paper I couldn't shake the feeling of "this is just System Shock 2 stripped down". They even reused one of the twists from SS2.

The 2010s

2010: Super Meat Boy
2011: Limbo
2012: FTL: Faster than Light
2013: Resident Evil 6
2014: Wasteland 2
2015: Undertale
2016: Civilization VI
2017: Nier: Automata
2018: Graveyard Keeper
2019: Disco Elysium

If I were assigning a number rating to these games, I suspect this decade would have the worst average. There are 3 super hyped games in this list(Undertale, Nier, and Disco Elsyium) and all 3 of them I had the response of "It's not bad but...that's it?".

Meanwhile games like RE6 also drag it down because I swear that game was specifically formulated to annoy me. It feels so much like a game that desperately wants you to watch it instead of play it.

On a more positive note Limbo, Wasteland 2 and Civ 6 are solid entries from the decade. The next time I get an itch to play some 4x games, I'll probably opt for Civ 6 over my usual Civ 5.

The 2020s

2020: Wasteland 3
2021: Deathloop
2022: Sifu
2023: Viewfinder
2024: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor(again sort of cheated by using the early access release date but again meh)
2025: Tempest Rising

It's only half a decade so it may not be entirely fair but it's probably the best overall decade actually. Even the games I'd rate at the bottom like Sifu, DRG Survivor, and Tempest Rising are still overall decent games probably still sitting around the middle of the whole list.

Meanwhile Wasteland 3 and Deathloop are fantastic games. As a fan of cRPGs and Fallout I can't believe I slept on the Wasteland games for as long as I did.

Also shoutout to free giveaway games that helped fill the pandemic years because being stuck inside meant I had already played most higher profile games that I was interested in.

In the end my top 5 games were XCOM, Secret of Monkey Island, KotoR 2, Wasteland 3, and Ultima Underworld. My bottom 4 games were Catacomb 3-D, OutRun, Resident Evil 6, Oni, and Torchlight.

I've enjoyed giving myself an excuse to try so many games from so many different eras so I'll probably do something similar again in the future. I've already done this with console games so probably not that next, but a recent post here gave me the idea of picking ~10 of the most iconic games from each decade from the 1980s to the 2020s from any platform regardless of if I've played them already or not and playing through them.

A quick list I created suggests that the 90s and 2000s will not be easy to refine it down to only 10.

I here mention two games, The Legend of Tianding (TLoT) and Detention. Both are set in historic Taiwan, each in a very unique way.

TLoT (the official page) is a side-scrolling beat-em-up. Detention is a horror game, mostly in point-and-click, developed by Red Candle Games, today also known for Nine Sols. Both titles are available on all modern platforms.

My post emphasizes their cultural and historical aspects. The two paragraphs of the Detention part can also serve as a preliminary before playing the game.

Sorry I'm an ESL. There's grammatical and word use errors, and nuanced writing is difficult for me.

The Legend of Tianding

Cultural features

The protagonist of TLoT is a real thief but also/rather a legendary Robin Hood-like figure, Liao Tianding (or Liāu Thiam-Ting, 廖添丁, see below) in 1900s. Following the tradition, in this game he's kind of a (super)hero, and a kung-fu master.

From 1895 until 1945, Taiwan was ruled by Japan, beginning as a result of the Qing-Japan war, ended by the WW2.

Liao is depicted as a good person to punish bad, oppresive Japanese and traitor Taiwanese.

What's fantastic is that the voice acting in TLoT is given in Taigi, aka Taiwanese Hokkien, one of Chinese languages but not Mandarin^†1 . You can also choose its subtitle in English but proper nouns pronounced in Taigi, conforming to the voice acting. (English w/ romanized Mandarin proper nouns is also available.)

Before Taiwan became the Republic of China, Taigi was the most commonly spoken language. Liao also lived in the Taigi world. So this game's choice is natural, but games in Hokkien are very rare worldwide.

After WW2, Mandarin was chosen as the sole official language of Taiwan for a political reason. Today (Taiwan dialect) Mandarin is the most commonly used language, but depending on their background, some use Hokkien too, to varied extent.

In fact it's Mandarin that pronounces his name 廖添丁 as Liao Tianding. In Taigi it's Liāu Thiam-Ting.

# Personally I (Japanese) didn't know anything about Hokkien, and had never heard the word Taigi. I knew the original common Chinese language in Taiwan was not Mandarin, but that's all. I don't speak Chinese, but I noticed its voice acting is not Mandarin, because Liao repeatedly say "Tuo-Shiah" (多謝) to say "Thank you". (In IPA /to⁴⁴⁻³³ sia³³/. In Mandarin "Thank you" is Shieh-Shieh, 謝謝 = 谢谢.)

†1 Overly detailed note

Taigi is a dialect of Hokkien, used in Taiwan. Hokkien is one of Chinese languages.

There're many Chinese languages, all of which belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family, i.e. all are related. Orally however speakers of each language can't understand others, so they're not dialects.

Do not confuse Hokkien (福建話, aka 閩南語) with Hakka (客家), yet another major Chinese language. Both are also widely spoken outside China, including South East Asia and other oversea migrants. (BTW Cantonese (廣東話, aka Yue 粵語) is the most common language in Hong Kong, so films starring Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan are in Cantonese. Cantonese is also a major language in Chinese towns in the West.)

In Steam the language labels include Traditional and Simplified Chinese, but they are letters, not languages. (Spanish and Polish are both written in Latin letters, but they're totally different.) Chinese language users can guess the meaning of other Chinese languages to some extent when written in letters, so this complicates.

This is off-topic, but I also dare mention Formosan languages, which are spoken by indigenous people of Taiwan.

Hawaiian, Maori, Indonesian languages belong to the Austronesian language family. They are all related. Among 10 subdivions of Austronesian, all three mentioned above belong to Malayo-Polynesian. The rest 9 are Formosan languages spoken in Taiwan!! So Taiwan is speculated to be the homeland of many languages (and people) of the Pacific ocean.

Taiwanese indigenous people were already cornered into very inconvenient areas in 1900, but Taiwan under Japan's rule was very harsh towards them. Those who refused to obey their rule were massacred.

In TLoT you are also presented with many products and various things of Taiwan in this period, in particular as lore of collectibles. (Brick, emblem, sightseeing pamphlet etc.) I doubt if players find them fun; they're too minor and cluttered. If you're interested you can read books about Taiwan history. For Japanese speakers I recommend 美麗島紀行 by 乃南アサ.

Cartoon presentation

As you can see from trailers, this game is presented in cartoon. This is also very unique, or in its own distinguished style. For me, a Japanese, this reminds me of an older Japanese cartoon gekiga style, giving a bit of nostalgia. Outside East Asia, its style must be really rare.

If you like it, TLoT must give you a short, memorable experience. Others may find it annoying.

Gameplay review

TLoT is relatively small. Most won't take 10 hours to beat. As a beat-em-up, this game is basic. It uses 5 buttons: Jump, Attack, Dash/Roll, and Jumping Attack. The last one works uniquely, throwing a sash to bind an enemy. (What? But it's difficult to explain. Play yourself.) There's also a button to grapple, but you don't use it in combats.

Its first two chapters are fun. Various mobs, platforming with movement upgrades, finding collectibles in secret areas, etc. Boss fights are also decent.

However it soon plateaus, and in later chapters I was a bit bored.

This game is really easy, and as a beat-em-up, simple. For many action game fans, this might not meet their satisfaction standard. It has the easy and hard modes, but even the hard mode is easy. I'm not good at action games, but even I beat this game in the hard mode. (I had to fight some bosses 25 times or so, but most won't take that many.)

Or if you're terrible at action games but love to mash buttons and find the atmosphere fun, it's good that you can probably beat this game.

I'd say many can enjoy this game as a relaxing, no-brainer action game.

Verdict

As a pure action game it's 6.5/10. If you like its presentation and/or atmosphere, it can add +0.5 - 1.0.

Not many flaws are found. Simply this game is not so much sufficient.

Detention

Historical Background

WW2 ended, and Taiwan was freed from Japan. Was it a happy ending? No.

"Fellow Chinese will come from the mainland and will save us!" First this was welcomed with great anticipation, but it soon turned to disappointment. Fast-forward, and Taiwan was put under martial law in 1949. This period, aka the White Terror, lasted nearly 4 decades.

Taiwan had to fight against communism. The PRC is too close to Taiwan, not only geographically but also ethnically. In this dark age secret police agencies dominated, and people informed on their neighbors, colleagues, frineds, or sometimes even family members. "They are ideologically suspicious"—regardless if it is true or false, once you get reported so...

Detention is set in this period.

The Game

I have never played horror games except Detention. I don't know how to properly review this game for its pure gameplay. It was ok for me, and that's almost all I can say.

This game features various ethnic tradition stuff: Customs, objects, faiths etc. If you like them, you'll like Detention more.

The true value of this game is the story set in such an era, endless gloom with seemingly no exit, but people still have their lives and days unfold.

Or does it actualy have a story? When I was playing Detention it was very unclear; the atmosphere is very dark, but beyond that I didn't understand well. The texture is loose and I didn't get well in which direction the story was going.

This game is in fact very touching. After beating, things became clear, and I was left deeply moved, and last scene is sure to remain unforgettable for me. John Hsu (徐漢強), a Taiwanese film director, says he played Detention on the day of its release and beat within several hours, and burst into tears. (source) He later directed the movie Detention based on this game.

This game is supernatural and the story is fictitious, but still it's factual in some sense, making Detention a masterpiece. This story is almost exactly what really happened, if retold in a guise of game fantasy.

I want to say that I was the original Call of Duty fan, as in, literally the first game. I couldn't get into Medal of Honor: Allied Assault because I got stuck in the beach level, and I got to know about COD through the FPS web cafe called "FPSGAME MANIA FORUM" as the more accessible version of that game. I loved COD1's campaign and remember being stunned by the smoke graphics of COD2.

From there, I played every mainline game in the series up to Modern Warfare 3, which was the game that bounced me off the series because I remember it being absolutely terrible. That was also the time when my gaming taste changed by getting introduced to the more Japanese-oriented games like Ace Attorney, the Team ICO games, Metal Gear, and spectacle fighters, so COD came off as out of touch in my mind.

I began to resent the trends that started with COD4 plaguing virtually every gaming franchise. It's when the series turned into a game series created for people who don't play video games by relying on non-interactive design tropes like slow walking segments, excessive cutscenes, the scripted events of slowly following someone as the NPC shoves expositions, getting animation-locked, the gameplay being filler for the player to go from point A to point B to listen to some exposition and watch some cinematic events. The industry shifted towards prioritizing controller compatibility, cinematic appeal, casual accessibility, and gritty realism over raw uncompromised mechanical complexity. Near everything became some COD clone.

Not too long ago, I came across the Youtube videos about the Wii versions of Call of Duty, which are quite infamous as they are frequently mocked as the worst versions. Cheap cash-grabs, terribly aged, and pointless. Why play these on the Gamecube graphics when you can play it on Xbox 360 or PC.

Out of my sheer curiosity, I played the Wii version of Modern Warfare 3 because the copy was cheap, and... surprisingly enjoyed it? Am I insane, or is Call of Duty better on Wii than literally any other platform? Because if I played this on any other console, I would have absolutely despised it. I know this because every occasional time I tried to revisit COD, it came off as more repulsive with every entry. My relatively recent playthroughs of Black Ops 2, Ghosts, and the Modern Warfare reboot on Xbox 360 and PS4 were miserable experiences.

Thinking deeply, I understand why I enjoy these games on Wii. On PC and the conventional controllers, my mind works differently. Call of Duty prides itself as a casual FPS. The levels are extremely linear amusement park rides through setpieces. The mechanics are barebone with little to no player expression or sandbox. When played on the conventional control set-ups, I'm engaging them as conventional "FPS" games that have nothing else to rely on but this hollow core gameplay.

On Wii, I'm in the mindset that I'm playing slightly evolved lightgun games, so I'm thinking like I'm on the railroad ride. They control like the full-blown GunCon games. The controls are the fun part that you have to learn, and yes, shooting things like this more enjoyable than using a mouse or controller stick. Stick aiming is never fun, and mouse aiming is too easy. The pointer controls simulate the act of... actual pointing, and you have to learn how to handle the controller as you would with the gun. Hold it steady, then pick up the targets fast. So the set-pieces don't come across as frustrating interruptions on the gameplay, but the shooting gallery set-pieces in the lightgun games.

Even the shitty graphics add to its charm. It takes on a dated look, which is actually in line with the oldschool arcade games. This made me feel at home in the over-the-top lightgun game style the game is trying to present while not sacrificing the level of production value, unlike many cheap low-budget Wii games. It gave a certain vibe to the experience, allowing me to buy into playing as this video gamey Rambo character in this extremely video gamey "RUSSIA INVADES LITERALLY EVERYWHERE" world where every two seconds something blows up.

The game also play significantly better than most of the other Wii FPS ports. It's night and day in comparison to something like Far Cry: Vengeance (which was unfortunatley one of my first Wii games) to the point where I would miss the other Wii shooters that don't have this control scheme. It doesn't even use Wii Motion Plus, and it plays smoother than most that use it.

As far as military fantasies go, I generally find the openly propagandist ones easier to enjoy than the """unpolitical""" and """complex""" ones we get more of these days. I prefer the game to be doing Michael Bay and succeeding than trying to do Kathryn Bigelow but failing. MW2019 must be the worst attempt at a "gritty military Tom Clancy thriller" I have ever played from any AAA game. Its narrative is about how soldiers are held back from saving the world by human rights. Price tortures a child, and our heroes work with a war criminal who uses chemical weapons because “even though it’s wrong, he is trying to do good.”

The fun of Modern Warfare 3 lies in the way it presents the over-the-top jingoistic Michael Bayesque WW3 fantasy. It doesn't even pretend that it's not chauvinistic. It gets so absurd to the point where it becomes laughable--laughable in a fun "Team America Eiffel Tower scene recreation" way, not in the "play as a 7-year-old Revolver Ocelot" kind of way. I prefer my propaganda to know that it's dumb propaganda than pseudo-intellectualizing over pro-torture, pro-execution, and pro-war crime messages that end up justifying them. At least it is self-aware compared to the serious bullshit that new COD games aim for while failing miserably to add anything new to the genre itself.

The God of War saga can be analyzed both as a time capsule of the culture at the time of its creation and as a hack-and-slash. I'm happy to say that, after all these years, and finally getting a chance to play all of them (minus Ascension), they aged better than I expected in both senses.

God of War 1

Perhaps the simplest and yet most tragic tale Kratos goes through. A tough, tragic man who can't escape the torments of his past, no matter how hard he tries. It's etched into his skin. The symbolism is obvious, but so well executed that it doesn't come off as silly. It's disheartening.

The gameplay side of it holds up like a champ. Put this bad boy on an emulator at a high resolution, and you'll forget it came out over 20 years ago. As you live through a Greek epic, travelling far and wide, defeating monsters at the behest of the Gods in frenetic combat encounters, you'll come to understand why Kratos became a PlayStation symbol.

God of War 2

A safe bet, as far as sequels go, but that's not a sin. They do try, as best they can, to expand the conflict between Kratos and the Olympians. The set pieces are even larger, more brutal. And the combat is tighter than ever, with some new tricks to boot (although I miss the OP magic spells).

I will say that, by a slim margin, I prefer the maps from GOW1. Nothing beats Pandora's Temple, man. That was a masterpiece of level design. At least we had two impressive boss fights to tie off this game.

God of War 3

Kratos' rampage comes to a bloody end. You know the drill, and so do the devs. Our tragic protagonist is perhaps at his peak of brutality and selfishness here. I mean, you can't stoop much lower than destroying the fabric of nature, murder by murder.

For all its improved graphical effects and the devs' maturity, though, I think GOW3 was the one that impressed me the least in terms of maps and scale. The previous two had some breathtaking shots and a magnificent sense of grandeur (thanks, in part, to the fixed camera angles, a lost art in video games. But I digress).

Still, GOW3 manages to snag a bittersweet ending that doesn't redeem Kratos, of course, but makes you somewhat... sympathetic to his exhaustion. Exhaustion from being manipulated his entire life by the gods. Exhaustion from being a monster.

Conclusion

Despite its reputation for crassness, edginess, and boy-fantasy elements (yes, I'm talking about the fact that every other female and female-adjacent monster is topless), the GOW franchise had a heart way before the 2018 reboot. Under the hood, these games tell a pretty gnarly Greek tragedy.

And if nothing else impresses you, the gameplay alone will. They still kick ass, pardon my French. Better than a lot of games from that era. The perfect mix of action and adventure.

P.S. I did play Ghost of Sparta and Chains of Olympus, too. They're both good. Ghost, in particular, I'd say has a MORE interesting premise for a sequel than GOW2, but that's a whole other thing. I didn't comment on them because this post would be too damn long.

The fact that AC Mirage started out as DLC for Valhalla was part of the marketing pitch from day one. Official line or not, it's a fun fact that stuck. The problem is it haunts (and gets in the way) of Mirage being a much better game than it is.

To quickly get one important disclaimer out of the way though. The AC games include two broad streams of game design. There's the original stealth focused series. Then there's the RPG pivot.

Now it isn't exactly as sharp as all that. But as someone who came to the series in reverse order, I can certainly understand what it must have felt like to wake up one day and find your favorite franchise turned on its head.

All of this matters to Mirage, because so the argument goes, it was trying to get back to its roots. Maybe. But it was also trying to fix a bigger problem. Let me explain by illustrating with a gameplay mechanic.

In the three historical RPG titles that preceded it, the way to level up weapons was with having the right materials and being at a commensurate level. That's about as basic an ARPG mechanic as you can expect to find. In Mirage though, you need to find upgrade schematics before the blacksmith shows any interest.

It's not the first game to do that, but introducing it at this point in the series - and when you've been yelling from the rooftops that the game started life as a DLC - yep we're talking padding.

The word "token" also turns up a lot. Some chests, for example, you come across in an out of the way place and feel all warm and rewarded for exploring. But then the chest prompt says nope, you need a token to open it. See what I mean about padding.

The token fun and games continues if you play the game as a bit of an outlaw. That makes your notoriety go up. Normally you pay your way out of trouble with a bribe or beating a mercenary. Here you need a token to bribe someone. Yep they're even padding that.

While we're on the subject of loot and exploration, rarely have I played a game that's so poverty stricken. Again and again the reward for exploring every corner is the next best thing to throwing a few coins at you.

What emerges out of all this is a game that needs you to do a helluva lot more, because it's helluva lot smaller. The strange part is everyone kind of knows that going into the game. It's a bit of a non-issue. So breaking it into little pieces does the exact opposite of what it sets out to do. Instead of rewiring the journey, it just short circuits the fun.

I know this is a contradiction but I somehow hate the length of the game and yet still had a blast playing through.

So I'm currently on a Resident Evil marathon and I finally beat remake of 4 for the first time. It's a good time and quite enjoyable but I feel like it overstay its welcome just tad bit. I know the og 4 is also pretty long but something about Remake just makes it drag for me. It also feels so frustrating at time especially with the Ashley segments which still aren't the best and take a possible S tier game down to an A imo. It has this sense of heres yet another (insert a segment you've done already earlier in the game) IDK if anyone else feels this way I'm probably gonna do a replay of the original to compare experiences. Overall its was like a 8-9/10 experience for me.

Side note: I really enjoyed the Seperate Ways expansion and the set up of 5 with Wesker

To me, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is the only one that doesn’t work.

For all their faults, the other MGS games only get more fun to think about, to learn about, as I get older. MGS4 is the only game in the main series that falls lower in my esteem with every playthrough. It’s fascinating, beautiful, confounding, boring, and often fun to play – qualities that all the other games share in varying degrees. But it doesn’t work.

Much like the game's script, this post is too long. I apologize in advance.

War Has Changed

MGS4 starts off extremely strong, with some of the franchise’s best ideas in worldbuilding and speculative fiction. The “war economy“ (basically our military-industrial complex on steroids) has embroiled the globe in permanent conflict as a means of control and profit. Young people are indoctrinated to idolize the life of a soldier and, once enlisted, mentally controlled by nanomachines, kept in a permanent combat high. “War that feels like a video game.”

Where once this was spearheaded by power-hungry elites, the System runs itself now. Zero human oversight is required. The creators are gone, but the machine never turned itself off.

This is some of Metal Gear’s best political commentary. It’s longwinded and heavy-handed, but it lands, especially at the start. MGS4 was written at the height of the War on Terror, rise of PMCs like Blackwater, and burgeoning seventh-gen military shooters (think Spec Ops: The Line). And the story is improved by its sequels; Big Boss’s war profiteering in Peace Walker and The Phantom Pain was a big part of everything going to shit.

This is what’s going through my mind in Acts 1 and 2, sneaking around warzones in meaningless proxy battles. Those two acts are pretty fun. In terms of tactical stealth gameplay, this is as good as the game gets, sadly. Many of MGS4’s strongest ideas go away after Act 2 and are never revisited.

[Note: Structurally, MGS4 plays out a history of US warfare in reverse. Act 1 resembles contemporary conflicts in the Middle East; Act 2, CIA operations in Latin America; Act 3, Cold War espionage behind the Iron Curtain; Act 5, the naval battles of WW2’s Pacific theater. I have no idea what this means.]

I Hope I Die Before I Get Old

Legendary hero Solid Snake is now a tired, grumpy old man. MGS4 wrings so much pathos and resonance from this concept that, even if all else fails, the game was worth making. It hurts seeing a character that I care for so washed out, decayed, past his prime. Despite visibly suffering, he trudges on. He never stops trying to set the world right with the time he has left.

I love that Snake and Otacon got married and raised a daughter together. I don’t have anything else to say about that.

Technologically, culturally, the world has moved on without Snake. He’s a relic from this vague “before” time that other characters struggle to imagine, even if they were there themselves. Otacon, Meryl, and Raiden, who used to idolize Snake, have all surpassed him in various ways. Even his smoking is inverted; instead of making him look cool, it comes off as an outdated habit that he just can’t let go. It’s him acknowledging that he doesn’t have a future worth preserving.

Snake is consistently the best part of whatever scene he’s in. Maybe that’s because he’s the only character in the script who isn’t constantly dumping exposition, the only one who speaks economically. As Mei Ling says in Act 5: “The tongues of dying men enforce a tension like deep harmony. Where words are spent, they are seldom spent in vain.” The words he chooses are more impactful for their scarcity. I only wish Kojima applied some of that attitude to everybody else.

Snake’s situation is pretty clearly how Kojima saw himself at the time. A man put on a pedestal for his accomplishments, who feels aged beyond his years, who knows he’s past his prime (or at least sees himself as such), trapped in repetitive cycles. Worried about what he’s passing on to the next generation. Roped into one final mission out of a sense of duty, to clean up the mess he helped create. It’s not subtle, but it’s effective.

And unlike Kojima, Snake has the chance to speak to his father, man to man, one last time. In the post-credits epilogue, a somehow-alive Big Boss tells Snake “It’s alright son, you can rest now.” It might be the most impactful scene in the game, despite being stupid and contrived and way too long. It clearly meant a lot to him.

Side Note: Act 3 Bible Study

Believe it or not, MGS3 has legit parallels with the book of Genesis, aside from just being the first chapter in the chronology. Big Boss experiences a personal Fall after being betrayed by a woman and killing a member of his family (an “original sin” that haunts the rest of the saga). As a result, he can never truly return home.

It’s not 1-1, and not the forefront of the story, but it’s there if you want it. The only direct cue is that two characters go by Adam and Eve. In a story about Big Boss’s loss of innocence and fall from grace, it adds a little resonance without being overstated. I don’t mind it.

But then MGS4’s mid-game lore dump blows it out of proportion. Now EVA, in a literal church, is quoting scripture while explaining the events of Snake Eater. Multiple slow-mo shots of apples falling. Snake says “Sounds almost like a religion.” Ugh.

But not only is it annoyingly obvious, the metaphor is muddled to the point of absurdity. If EVA is Eve, are Solid and Liquid supposed to be Cain and Abel, the rival brothers? Or are Big Boss and Zero the Cain and Abel stand-ins? Or is Big Boss the “fallen angel”, cast out of the Patriots? Trying to take this seriously is making my brain hurt.

No, I’m not religious. I just read East of Eden recently and I’m making it your problem.

Press X to Remember Psycho Mantis

MGS4, in its quest to be the end-all-be-all of the series, can’t stop sucking its own dick. It is an embarrassing ouroboros of fanservice, big and small. Every character comes back, no matter how little sense it makes: Raiden, Mei Ling, Vamp, Madnar, Zero, Naomi, EVA, that guy who’s always shitting himself. Everyone.

I simply don’t agree that fanservice was a worthwhile goal, not to this extent. MGS1, 2, 3, and V have flaws, but also a strong artistic vision that isn’t always interested in giving you exactly what you want. They’re provocative works that challenge their audience, and they’re better for it. By contrast, MGS4 has this inoffensive, crowd-pleasing attitude that just feels inauthentic. At the beginning I said that it’s the only one that doesn’t work, and I think this is the trait that sets it apart. Artistically, it’s a formally requested baby, not a lovechild.

The biggest offense is probably the Act 3 reveals, which tie MGS2 and 3 together so haphazardly that it needed three more games to kind of paper over the seams. It turns MGS3 into the answer to all MGS2’s questions, when those stories originally had nothing to do with each other. I consider this to be when MGS definitively jumps the shark.

[Note: Some would argue MGS jumped the shark when it revealed the third Snake brother to be the president of the United States, or when Liquid’s ghost arm possessed Ocelot, or when the vampire, but I’m ignoring those because they’re inconvenient for my argument. And because I really like MGS2.]

But that actually wasn’t my biggest gripe this time. What annoys me even more is when events from previous games repeat themselves, like the record is skipping. Why is Snake introduced saluting a grave? Why does Raiden have to do the whole Deepthroat thing on the Codec before he shows up? Why does EVA crash her motorcycle and get stabbed through the abdomen, exactly how she did fifty years ago? Why does Otacon cry over another dying woman? Why are the B&B bosses just riffs on FOXHOUND?

It’s like The Force Awakens, where everything just… happens again, the same way it did before, for no reason. When MGS2 did it, at least they explained that the similarities weren’t a coincidence.

It’s not all bad, though. I like seeing a lot of these characters again. And Act 4 is entirely a trip down memory lane that mostly works. Shadow Moses is barren, untouched by time, forgotten by the world and sinking into the sea. It sells the passage of time, the theme of decay, really well. It’s funny thinking how nostalgic for MGS1 everybody was after only ten years, when MGS4 is now almost twenty years old.

This is the first time I’ve visited MGS4 in six years or so, and maybe the fifth playthrough in my life. Like its predecessors, it hit me when I was young and I’ll always have an emotional connection to it. But it’ll be a long time before I play it again.

THE ALTERS REVIEW

NOTE: This is only a review of the base game, as the DLC just released and thus doesn't meet the 'Patient Gamers' rules.

RELEASE: 2025

TIME PLAYED: 25 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

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

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

THE BREAKDOWN

+Incredibly clever concept that deservedly gets ample focus

+Gorgeous environments and impressively varied visuals for a game taking place on a ‘dead’ planet

+Impressive performance from the lead actor channeling as many personalities as he does into alternate versions of the same person

+Simple but satisfying base-building and organization

-Some of the resource-gathering can wear a bit thin by the second half of the game

-Certain story beats can feel a little bit contrived to force conflict and keep the player treading water

--

It’s always exciting to crack open a game that immediately has my attention because I haven’t played anything like it before. 11 Bit Studios seems to have this ideology on lock; they first got on my radar with Frostpunk, which turned the civilization-building simulation on its head by zooming in the focus to the individual citizens and the existential threat of an endless winter, forsaking vast building projects with an emphasis on harrowing choices like the necessity of child labor in the face of a potentially existential threat. The Alters has this same effect – an incredibly creative premise that’s executed with laser focus carries a remarkable experience, even if there’s some occasional down-to-earth pacing problems.

Jan Dolski is not an astronaut. He’s a builder, a sort of sci-fi carpenter who specializes in constructing with an advanced fabricator; despite this, he is now in space. Having left home in an attempt to make something of himself and escape an unhappy life on a struggling Earth, he’s joined an Ally Corp expedition that seems to be taking all comers in an attempt to harvest a rare new element called Rapidium from distant planets. Unfortunately, disaster strikes during landing on an unnamed world and Jan is the only survivor of the crash. Managing to get in contact with Ally Corp’s representatives on Earth, he’s let in on an incredible and dangerous secret: the ship’s computer not only contains memory scans of every living crew member – which is now just him – it can employ Rapidium to create alternate versions of himself from branching points in his personal timeline, hypothetical Jans who represent different choices he could have made in life. With only himselves to rely on, Jan has to get his mobile base up and running to escape the planet’s brutal radiation storms while simultaneously making plans on how to get home – and dealing with the urging of the corporation to endanger himself further by harvesting Rapidium while he’s stranded.

It’s a ridiculous concept, but it totally works in a 60’s sci-fi kind of way, where the premise is just there to set up a fun dynamic. Each Jan that Dolski creates specializes in different tasks, from Jan Technician (they just start using their jobs as their last names for clarity) and his aptitude for maintenance and repair work to Jan Scientist, who gave up the life Dolski did for his career and became a revolutionary mind in Rapidium research as a result. As the game progresses, the player gets to make choices on who they’d most like to have aboard; a Botanist might help with food production and morale, but a Doctor could be critical for quickly addressing workplace injuries and keeping everything on schedule. Each choice brings different benefits, but also challenges. After all, every one of these Jans ‘remembers’ being the real thing as much as Dolski does, and those memories haunt them as they realize they aren’t real. Jan Botanist, for example, actually stayed with the woman who Dolski separated from, and is obsessed with getting her back – what happens when she finds out she’s alive and well, and that Dolski screwed up that relationship?

Managing the needs and emotions of Jan’s Alters is a core part of the game, and it’s mostly entertaining, even if it stretches believability at times. Managing to bond is rewarding, done through listening to their advice and taking moves to ensure they’re more comfortable in the mobile base. Friction between the multiple versions of Jan is inevitable, though, and I mean that in every sense of the term. Bluntly put, there’s no way to do everything right; certain plot points will result in a sudden spike in discontent, certain Jans will always lash out at specific moments, etc. While I understand the need to keep the game from being too easy without some interpersonal stakes, it occasionally felt a bit artificial, especially knowing there was nothing I could do about it. That said, one benefit of these predetermined moments of conflict is they tend to be pretty involved and well-written, so while I’m not sure they’re good for replay value, they did make for solid story beats at the time.

Keeping the Jan squad ready to work is important, too, because escaping the unnamed planet and mining Rapidium is too big of a job for Dolski to handle alone. The other half of the game is about gathering resources to upgrade the mobile base and enable its journey to a rendezvous where a rescue team will be able to land; base-building is modular and fairly simple, but involved enough that I found it had plenty enough to keep me interested across the game’s 25-ish hour playtime. Getting the resources to build facilities, navigate environmental hazards, and upgrade Jan’s suit, however, is more involved. Primarily played like a third person adventure, these expeditions see Dolski (only he’s playable) setting out to map the area, fabricate extractors, and analyze threats. It controls well and the environments are gorgeous – shout out to the dev team for managing to turn a lifeless wasteland of a planet into something visually compelling. But despite the views, there’s a reason none of the other Jans want to do this – it’s not easy going, and things start to get weird.

There’s not much combat in the traditional sense, but strange anomalies plague the planet. At first they’re just stationary, damaging Jan if he gets too close, but before long they start actively chasing him and have to be taken out with a basic third person shooter kind of system. It’s pretty bare bones, but the feedback is excellent and since it’s a small part of the experience, it works. Beyond that, the primary hazards of being out in the field are radiation, ambient in some places and spiking at night and through storms everywhere. This is a particular concern to the other Jans, who can be assigned to harvest materials from established zones and build up the base’s supplies. It falls on Dolski himself, however, to link these together and keep everything up and running. Thus, each ‘act’ of the game effectively plays out like this: The Jans arrive in an area, get thing up and running, and encounter a unique anomaly or problem, such as an enormous canyon that the base can’t cross. Dolski has to work with the others to investigate a solution while managing interpersonal conflict in between spending each day balancing exploring, harvesting, and lowering stress or socializing.

No individual component of The Alters is very complex, but it all comes together in a satisfying package. The story takes full advantage of its funky premise, and I was deeply invested in the various Jans even as I occasionally lamented how transparently some of their conflict was forced for the narrative. I won’t spoil how things go in the third act, but the escalation itself feels natural and exploring the later parts of the planet gets gloriously weird, with a triumphant climax that left me cheering for Dolski and his alternate selves even as they held on by the skin of their teeth. Deeply ambitious but smartly paced to not outstay its welcome, The Alters is an incredibly unique experience that, like its protagonist, is much more than the sum of its parts.

Alien: Isolation was a title I had previously attempted briefly.

As someone who plays tons of horror, I decided to come back and really give it a proper whirl this time(on Nightmare difficulty no less), and the end result ended up being one of the weakest horror games i've played in recent years. Repetitive hallways of the same architecture and poorly made, uninteresting enemies are the name of the game here.

The Alien

After about an hour or so of trudging around and a lackluster reveal, you finally meet the stations enemy of the state, The Alien.

Despite being on nightmare, the alien seemed very easy to navigate and deal with. Peek having no additional line of sight meant you could be exposed to a hilarious degree while playing ring around the rosey with the various scenery and scanner. As long as you don't hide in the same spot, you were completely fine hiding anywhere as well. And I do mean anywhere as I had several situations where hiding in the open beside the doorway something came in and promptly left from worked out. It ended up being so easy to deal with the absolute bare minimum of resources provided caused no issue whatsoever. I very rarely(maybe twice) needed to use the sound emitter as a distraction, not that I could afford to do so often anyways with the limited resources of Nightmare.

Ultimately I don't think this was a huge issue outside of adding to the repetitive nature of the game and the few times where it felt like the alien just wouldn't leave or give you time to hack something. The waiting game is excruciating with the game's already slow pacing.

Still, even with the relative ease of dealing with him, the bastard did manage to give me my fair of deaths as I fumbled around each part of the station trying to figure out where to go and what to do.

There were some frustrating quirks that come alongside the alien. Especially when other enemy types were present.

Issues with Pacing and Immersion

Not being able to sprint anywhere sucked. 18 chapters of seeing the same hallways with little variation and in most areas if you attempt to sprint, you're just putting yourself at massive risk of attack. Even worse when there's other humans patrolling while often talking loudly/arguing. By the end of the game I was convinced the other humans could hold entire talent shows without alerting the alien.

One slightly heavy step from me though and it's on my ass like I was throwing it a personal welcome party. Ripley is apparently on this entire species shit list.

A problem that only became more painful with each death as you slowly waltz your way back to where you last were.

Combined together it's just killing the pacing and immersion of the game.

The game also featured a plethora of 2-step, nonconsequential "QTEs" and various minigames for hacking or other random electronics... it's not like a huge issue, but it does make me laugh a bit as it feels forced and out of place as I sit there for the 100th time spamming E or holding RMB + S both for the same exact lever, or do these little cute minigames that stop you in your tracks to make progress. It kinda kills the space horror vibes some for me.

The Barely Working Joes and Humans

Next up for enemies are the Joes.

The androids just lazily walk after you and for some reason are buddy buddy with the alien, only sparking an offhand comment before ignoring each other for whatever reason. For a horror game, it's funny that the solution to the androids is literally just to turn around and outwalk their lackadaisical strides. I feel like it's a missed opportunity to add interesting interactions between them and other threats.

Moving on we have the Humans, who were probably my least favorite enemy to deal with. I'd imagine they are the biggest change to nightmare as they dish out death at an incredible rate if you're spotted. Even worse, I found out the hard way that if you're spotted and save your game, they retain their last location from loading screens. That or I found the one spot they fucked up with enemy placement.

This lead to one of the most unfair and annoying situations i've experienced in a long time in gaming where I'd start to load in, proceed to get shot before I could even see or gain control, and then have to pray to rngsus that i'd be able to survive long enough to take out the two guys before dying. Getting through that took many deaths and drained me of basically all my ammo, healing, and molotovs setting the tone for the rest of my game as I lived off scraps of nothing.

I could have reloaded my previous save, but the true horror of this game would have been having to replay the massive section since my last save. Suffering was preferable to the slog of getting back to where I was.

Anyhoo, it was a one off situation, but between that and their seeming immunity towards alerting the alien, they definitely left me a bit salty despite even if getting by them usually caused few issues.

Progression Items, Weapons, and Tools

A lot of this makes me think they really didn't know what to do with this game outside of getting chased by an alien. Getting the hacking tool and blowtorch was fine and dandy, but it felt kinda lazy to then go "but you need a better one" so often throughout the game. More so when it's just an upgrade immediately next to the door you need it at. It really starts to feel like redundant filler further adding to the repetitive nature of the game.

The random assortment of guns and tools you get throughout are fairly decent. Most the firearms had limited use since pulling the trigger always has the risk of descending instant death upon your location. One of the few quirks of the alien I can appreciate. Still they hold value as a solid defense tool. Especially when facehuggers enter the fray. I do feel like having no Pulse Rifle is a massive missed opportunity. It's such an iconic weapon for the franchise and I already have 4 other guns that 3/4s of did literally nothing to the alien so it's not like it'd ruin the atmosphere they set up any more than those could.

The rest of the arsenal saw little no absolutely no use from me. Flash bangs and smoke bombs were never used as I'd rather just stealth through sections completely unnoticed and spend any of those extremely rare resources of some of the better items like Molotovs and healing. Speaking of Molotovs... those things were hilariously dangerous to my personal safety as their range for hurting yourself in the blast was massive. I couldn't believe the range at which i'd suicide with them at times trying to defend myself. Especially compared to the mostly small visuals of it going up in flames. Honestly some hazards just seemed to have misleading visuals at times as one section confused me for awhile as to how I'd just pass out and die several times until I realized I was walking within throwing distance of a random, unrelated doorway with poison gas in it.

Ending Thoughts

I think that covers most of it. It really is disappointing how everything comes together for this game. Alien is a pretty damn cool IP so seeing it turned into 18+ hours of mindless walking through halls with little to no variation does hurt to see.

I'd talk about the story, but there's just not much to say in that regard as the whole time you're basically just trying to deal with the alien.

Coming off a similar game like Routine kind of highlights how much better space horror can feel in terms of immersion and vibes. There's really not much any tension to be had here as it's either slip by or die.

It wasn't a complete bust as there some good moments to be had here and there, but that initial fun of hiding from the alien wears off very quickly as you realize how easy it to bypass and the fact that this is your life for the next 18 hours.

5/10

I've been playing a lot of horror lately. The main reason was having strong motivations to finally catch up on Resident Evil, but in general there have been too many horror games in my backlog and wishlist haunting the back of my mind. It's been a very enjoyable (and terrifying) time, but most of them have been more modern experiences like the recent Resident Evil games and the Silent Hill 2 remake, leaving me wanting for a truly classic experience like what originally got me into the genre. Because of that, I was lured into Tormented Souls, an unashamedly old-school throwback to the likes of classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill.

(Accessibility note: Before delving into the game, I do want to point out that there are two sound-based puzzles, one of which is musically themed. The musically-themed puzzle can be easily looked up, but the other one requires you to repeat a rhythm with a door knocker, and I'm not sure how feasible that is to do without sound.)

Mansion or hospital? Why not both?

The story begins with Caroline Walker receiving a letter that contains a photo of twin girls. In the nights that follow, she has horrible nightmares that make it hard to sleep, and this turns into an obsession with finding the girls and getting answers. This leads her to the letter's return address, Wildberger Hospital. On arrival, she finds the hospital seemingly abandoned but is soon knocked unconscious by a hidden assailant. She later wakes up naked in a bathtub with a breathing tube, and her right eye has been surgically removed.

This opening works incredibly well. Beyond the sense of being violated, it's very uncomfortable to watch Caroline painfully pull out the breathing tube and check on her empty eye socket in a mirror. It also raises a lot of disturbing questions, and the mysteries continue to mount as the hospital appears overrun with unnatural threats ranging from a consuming darkness to monsters that look like people fused with medical equipment. Strange photos and journal entries continue to paint an eerie picture of the hospital, and the only real sense of ease Caroline can find is an old priest named Fr. Noah, but he doesn't seem completely right in the head himself. He's just willing to help.

Even beyond the horrors lurking in its halls, Wildberger Hospital is a rather peculiar place. It's a mansion that was mostly converted to a hospital in response to the local hospital burning down. As such, it doesn't look like a typical hospital, and there's even a clear residential area for the Wildberger family in the upper east wing. Despite Fr. Noah claiming that everyone was moved back to a more dedicated hospital, it doesn't explain the monsters or the many accessories strewn about as if something far more apocalyptic led to its abandonment. All together, it's uncanny.

Despite all this amazing setup, don't expect much from the story. It's actually pretty bad and leaves many unanswered questions by the end, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was hastily sewn together late in development to try to keep all the exploration and puzzles contextually connected. In true old-school survival-horror fashion, it also has some insanely cheesy dialogue delivered with the care of a surgeon suffering an essential tremor. Some of this could be a deliberate harkening back to the B-horror of early Resident Evil, but the narrative is still bad even by those standards.

On a more positive note, the music and sound design consistently set the right tone. When you get chased by the first enemy, the tense music and clanging of its claws left me panicking even as I replayed that section a few times. Exploring darker rooms and tunnels makes great use of both eerie silence and ominously brutal songs that each make it feel you're being stalked from the shadows. In contrast, hearing the save room theme was as soothing as in older Resident Evil, but loading a save is often accompanied by an unsettling creaking that immediately reestablishes the horrifying tone. While most of this very clearly takes after the songs and sounds of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, I was still impressed by how well it made use of them.

A little bit of everything

Much like the setting and music, the gameplay takes heavy influence from older survival horror games. Resident Evil will likely be the first that people notice. Cameras are fixed in ways that obscure much of the room, making the already claustrophobic environments feel even more crushingingly tight. Like the HD remasters of REmake and RE0, you can use analog or tank controls. During the early game, resources, including saves, are very limited. Even the Main Hall looks like a fusion of the entry rooms in the Spencer Mansion and RPD, and the map in general has the two-floor east-wing/west-wing divide that should be familiar to Resident Evil fans.

It doesn't take too long, though, before other influences start showing themselves. Inventory space is unlimited similar to Silent Hill. Enemies reminded me a lot of Silent Hill 2 enemies with their grotesque, medically-influenced designs, and the first couple enemies you face either spit acid like Lying Figures or have the same violent head spasm that Nurses do. A more modern influence is that standing in the dark for even a few seconds will kill you like in Don't Starve, but you obtain a lighter early on to counter this, likely a nod to Resident Evil: Code Veronica. You can't equip both the lighter and a weapon, so if you face enemies in the dark, you have to either find or create a light source if you want to fight them. Often times, this light source limits you to a small area, making those fights particularly tense.

Puzzles, for their own part, feel very RE-inspired, so much so that a couple clearly mimic ones from an older RE game. Essentially, you need to investigate the environment for various clues that, when put together, allow you to properly input a code or operate some mechanism. A few puzzles, however, very feel more like the riddles of Silent Hill 2, requiring you to pick up on hidden meaning in the story. A few puzzles even make good use of a Silent-Hill-like "Otherworld" where actions taken in one world can impact another in unnatural but clearly-connected ways.

For the most part, I think this all works very well together. The mixture of claustrophobic spaces with deadly darkness and fixed cameras makes exploration harrowing, but it's also very enjoyable to figure out how to unlock each new area and its dangerous unknowns. The map is laid out well enough that you're never too far from the next place you need to go, but you might feel a bit disoriented at times, which works for a game like this. Combat isn't particularly deep, but it's suitably tense, especially when encountering enemies in the dark. Puzzles are also exceptionally strong, easily among the best I've seen from a horror game in a long time, and a few are even fittingly uncomfortable to solve.

The only real gripe I have is that I do prefer the RE-style inventory, since I think having to consider what items to bring and pick up adds a lot to a smaller, more Metroidvania-esque map like this. Without it, you can leave the safety of the save rooms with an extra sense of security, and you're never left wondering if it's worth the risk to return for an item that you had to leave behind. It doesn't need to be the six-item limit of Chris, but starting off with a Jill-sized inventory that can be expanded would have made exploring the hospital more unnerving while still making sure you were well-equipped to deal with the late-game challenges.

Tormented Dark Souls?

Despite the forgiving inventory, I had heard that this game was exceptionally difficult, and the early game seemed to confirm that. The main early enemy is more complex than a zombie, and I hadn't played a fixed-camera game in a long time so was a bit rusty, and those two combined led to a few early deaths. Needless to say, finding the second save room was quite a relief.

Once I got comfortable enough to reach the Main Hall, though, I found the game rather smooth from then on. I don't think I died again after reaching the Main Hall, and I was able to stay stocked on resources by following basic survival horror strategies. I also never had to go too long without saving and had plenty of saves to spare by the end. Sure, resource constraints were still worrying, and memories of the early challenge aggravated that worry, but it was more psychological than crushingly difficult.

Puzzles, however, can get rather challenging by survival horror standards. Riddle-based puzzles are comparable to the Silent Hill 2 remake on Hard, and a few others like the Master Key puzzles and the one needed to fight the first boss can also be very tricky. For the most part, this difficulty is fair, but I did think the sewer safe was a bit poorly presented with the random image placement causing a disconnect between the safe dial and TV dial, but that's the only one I'd consider potentially unfair outside the accessibility concerns mentioned earlier.

The one possible blight on the difficulty is the placement of the first save room. Unlike Resident Evil, which often puts the first save near the start before any real threat, the first save not only requires finding the lighter but also is off the main path. It is vaguely marked on a map, but it wouldn't surprise me if some miss it before facing their first enemies and dying, which would leave quite a rotten first impression. (Spoiler-free tip: You can and should save before entering the basement.)

That issue aside, I think the difficulty is a bit easier than REmake on Normal with Jill but with puzzle difficulty that's slightly harder than the Silent Hill 2 remake on Hard. That's certainly enough to give it a sense of challenge, but I don't think it's prohibitively difficult.

Of course it's a sewer level!

Unfortunately, for all my praise, there is a point where the game noticeably drops in quality. Towards the end of the game, you'll enter an underground area, which includes the "mandatory" sewer section, though it is actually more varied than just being a sewer. The atmosphere of this place is still very solid, making fantastic use of obscuring darkness and ominous music while also having more blind corners and run-towards-the-camera sections than in the hospital.

The problem is that it's rather boring to play and way too long. It's very linear, losing the compelling exploration of the hospital, and with one or two exceptions, you only encounter the toughest enemies. This wouldn't be a problem if it were short, but you still have another 1-2 hours after entering the area, and spookiness aside, it's kind of a slog. I get that it's probably meant to be a throwback to the caverns in Alone in the Dark, but I'm still not a fan. I would have enjoyed it more if it were like the lab in REmake, which still retains the open-endedness of the Spencer Mansion but at a much smaller scale.

To be clear, I don't think this ruins the game, but I do think it does an overall poor job closing out a game that, up to that point, was doing almost everything right.

Conclusion: A must play for survival horror fans

If you enjoy this style of game, though, I definitely wouldn't let the underwhelming final area deter you. The experience up to that point is among the best I've had with the genre since I first explored the iconic halls of the Spencer Mansion in REmake, and even considering the final area, it's easily one of the best horror games I've played this year. It does just about everything I want out of survival horror, and I loved the constant sense of overcoming unnerving dread and deviously clever puzzles to explore the haunted hospital.

Well, it was finally time to finish the trilogy. I played Mass Effect 1 last year and Mass Effect 2 earlier this year, so I decided to tackle Mass Effect 3 sooner rather than later before I forgot too many plot points.

Story & Atmosphere

The intensity and stakes were fantastic. I love how the game opens with Earth getting invaded, setting the tone for the rest of the game. That atmosphere was especially noticeable in the primary missions, such as in Sur'Kesh and Tuchanka.

The overall "vibes" were off the charts. It seemed like there were noticeably more side conversations & crew interactions, and you could really feel the ongoing Reaper invasion everywhere. In terms of characters, EDI was an unexpected but great addition to the crew, and Javik was the most interesting character by far (it's crazy to me how he was originally a DLC).

I loved that we got closure with every squadmate from the first two games - even if some only received a relatively simple side mission. It was great catching up with everyone and seeing some of my choices pay off (including keeping everyone alive).

Most of the main quests were excellent, and it was awesome visiting so many different home worlds and coordinating with all of the major races. Curing the Genophage was easily my favorite storyline of the series (along with Kalros) and felt like an excellent payoff. I will say that the Rachni storyline, however, was incredibly underwhelming.

One other complaint is that indoctrination felt overused throughout the series as a plot device, making the entire Cerberus plot fall a little flat for me.

Gameplay

ME3 further refined the combat - it felt flexible and smooth throughout. I played on Insanity this time and enjoyed the challenge; it forced me to use more power combinations and pay closer attention to my positioning. However, as with the previous games, combat started getting a bit repetitive about halfway through, by which point I'd experienced most of its depth. It would have been great to switch classes entirely so I could try out different playstyles, as I believe the class passives can be pretty important (I know we could choose different bonus skills, but that wasn't particularly exciting to me).

Exploration was also the best of the series, but that's not saying much. It was the least tedious and most rewarding of the three games, but like the combat, it got fairly repetitive about halfway through. Having Reapers chase you was a cool idea, but in practice completely pointless since there was essentially no penalty for being caught.

Side Quests & DLCs were generally solid. The "collectathon" quests for war assets were somewhat interesting at first, but seemed overused towards the end.

Ending

I know there was a lot of controversy around the ending, but overall I found it...acceptable. It didn't blow me out of the water, but I thought it was "good enough." The original ending(s) were significantly more abrupt (I watched them for comparison), so I understand the controversy. My main issue with the ending was the heavy emphasis on the "synthetic vs. organic" theme - it felt extremely forced. While obviously this was one of the series' themes, e.g. with the Geth vs. Quarians, I never felt like it was the primary one. And, it's even weirder because I was able to broker peace with them in my playthrough.

Final Thoughts

IMO, Mass Effect 3 mostly succeeded in wrapping up a significant number of plotlines and delivering an intense journey with incredible atmosphere. I also finally got to watch some videos on the consequences of choices throughout the series, which was honestly a great payoff by itself. It was especially cool seeing how my own playthrough shaped up - I think it's much harder to appreciate these sorts of games without being able to see all the "what ifs". I don't think ME3 got everything right or was able to resolve absolutely everything, but I was pretty happy with what it was able to accomplish.

ME3 was definitely my favorite of the series, and I'm glad I finally got to experience the full trilogy.

Overall Rating: 8.5 / 10 (Excellent)

A couple of small notes:

• I played with a few QoL mods, mainly the Community Patch, Ultrawide Support, and some Journal improvements to make quests easier to track.
• It's pure coincidence that I posted this so soon after the BioWare announcement. I beat ME3 ~2 weeks ago and wanted to post this while it was fresh in my mind.

Reposting this because I accidentally mentioned an upcoming game in the original post.

I recently decided that it was finally time to play through the entirety of the GTA V campaign. This wasn't my first time playing GTA V, I first played the game in high school around 10 years ago, and have revisited it a few times since then, mostly with the intention of either playing it as a sandbox style game, or playing the online mode. The furthest I had made it in the story prior to this playthrough was probably 1/3 of the way. I did my playthrough on a PS4. I'll also note that currently this is the only Grand Theft Auto game that I've played, and the only game made by Rockstar for that matter.

The first thing that really jumped out to me about this game is that it's very cinematic. The cutscenes are well done, the voice acting is top notch, the way that the camera pans as you're walking around the world feels to me like you are almost "playing a movie". One of my favorite parts of the game was just the conversations that characters have in the car when you're driving between locations during missions. I did like the story, but I do think in some respects the voice acting does a lot of work to carry the story in some ways. I know the opinions on the story are kind of mixed, but I overall liked it. I think the first 10 hours are great, and there's some parts of the story later on that are great, and then some other parts that are just okay. It didn't really drag at at any part for me though, and I never found it difficult to get myself to start the next mission.

I remember thinking that the controls to this game were very clunky, and I think they are in some respects, the character movements are very slow and you can really feel the weight of the character. I began to kind of enjoy this once I got used to it though, it felt nice to almost be forced to slow down in a game like this. Driving, once you get the hang of it, is really fun, and you can really feel a difference in the way that different cars handle.

The world is obviously very big, and I think it still holds up quite well 13 years later. Going back to my point about the game being cinematic, I think the experience of driving in and out of Los Santos really adds to this. There are some great vistas, like the one that Trevor stops at when first coming into the city. I don't know that I would say that the map feel "empty", but there's certainly not a ton of things to do outside of just driving and enjoying the scenery, or starting a fight with the cops. But that's sort of what GTA is, and I think that's ok.

I don't have a lot of negative things to say about the game. I didn't love some of the character decisions that were made with Trevor, some of the things he does felt like a step too far, even for a GTA game (if you know you know), but I also get why they have a character like him, and I think he compliments the other two main characters well.

This game made me really interested in playing some of Rockstar's other games. I'll definitely be checking out RDR2 soon, a game which I've heard is more grounded than GTA V, and forces you to slow down, which I think could really work for me. I really think anyone who likes video games should give GTA V a try, even if it's just to fuck around for a couple hours, since I think it's safe to say at this point that it's a classic.

I've played other Yakzua games and I like them more for the setting, weird sub-stories and characters.

Like a Dragon switches the formula from active third person battles to turn-based role playing. I don't mind the change, but the whole "gimmick" where Ichiban (the main character) sees everyone as enemies from a RPG doesn't occur until about 8 hours in.

The shtick of the main character going to prison to cover for a crime someone else in the family committed is getting pretty old. The game looks gorgeous and I'm constantly amazed at the hair textures and animation in the cut scenes.

The RPG combat is fine, but the game just has some major pacing problems. There's issues with grinding for bosses as well as a major road block where you have to grind for money. It's best not to think too hard about how a homeless guy, fat ex-cop and hostess can beat up trained muscular yakuza.

There's little nuanace to the combat, the boss battles are just spamming your ultimate attack over an over. And Over. Boss Enemies are damage sponges yet can knock you out with a few hits. Random mooks are the opposite, most encounters are over within a few turns. Element damage and weapon resistance barely comes into play.

The ending is a major let down. There's no satisfying conclusion and Ichiban acts in overly dramatic ways. There's about two hours worth of cutscenes at the end too. I wanted Ichiban to have a conclusion, a resolution. Not tears and pleading to the "enemy".

There's alot of fat that could be trimmed. The minigames weren't really anything new or interesting and few side stories seem memorable.

I enjoy older games. I actually played this title back on a CRT and was intrigued by the sneaking mechanic. I wasn't very good at the game and owed my mission-fails to impatience.

I tried it again recently based on this sub's recommendations. I don't get it. I mean--the game starts out fine--but by the second half it's excruciatingly slow and painful.

Level design in the second half is not good. It's largely maze-like, repetitive, never-ending corridors. It doesn't help that the game engine is stuck between classic and modern with an ugly aesthetic. The renders are isolated blobs with blanket textures on them. I used the modernization mod for what it's worth.

The sub 30fps 480p compressed cutscene fmv's were overly distracting. The antagonist sounds like a total muppet. Granted, he has a speech impediment but what the hell is this? Why am I chasing down Droopy from looney tunes? The protagonist sounds like a mid 90's infomercial selling accounting software.

I made it to the last stage and couldn't pull through.

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.

There are moments in Enotria where you will just stop and stare out at the magnificent world. The setting is a glorious take on Renaissance Italy. The characters are all fantasy charged Commedia Dell Arte stock figures. It works. It really works.

But then you get the gameplay. It's a Soulslike, so you have something to work with. Unfortunately this is where the games stops working.

Sure there are stretches aplenty where you go through the motions and it all feels on point. The enemy placement is fine. The level design is clever without being complicated. So far, so good. Then come the difficulty spikes and boss fights.

It's at this point that the game stops pretending and decides the only enemy in the game are the game mechanics themselves. Let me explain.

So like a lot of Soulslikes, the name of the game is to inject something original into the formula. If I may be allowed a quickfire aside, my personal view is that this is almost always the weakest part of most Soulslikes. That's why I prefer to say I prefer to play straight up Souls-clones. But I digress. Which is more than Enotria does. It just simply keeps repeating the same mistake over and over and over.

The original spin in Enotria is a half baked rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Sounds good in theory, but in practice it means you're either having to manage loadouts or continually respec (which the game only lets you do rather late). So for now you'll be all levelled up and a player with a plan, but the game will have other plans. Because you see, the devs want you try different combinations and different weapons and different blah blah.

They also want you to try parrying. But if you don't, well...you better. The devs love parrying and the game has it as a core mechanic. Now if you're reading all this and saying "but wait - I love parrying and trying different loadouts! Sounds like i'd love this game!". Yeah, no.

You see the other problem with the game is stuff just doesn't work. No one thing is permanently buggy or glitched, but it is permanently a problem. Consumables ignore you. Heals take their time. Buffs don't do what they're meant to do. And so on and so on. And parrying is toss a coin stuff. Yeah it works often enough. But not often enough for practically every boss fight to be built around it.

Which brings us to the boss fights. Three words sums them up. One shot kills. Well, until you respec or pull out your spreadsheet filled with formulas that remind you what element works on what other element and so forth. Hours of family fun.

So that's Enotria. If you're reading this you've probably heard it was yet another in a long line of AA titles built by a handful of devs living under a bridge who paid for the game by selling a kidney. All of which seems to imply we should cut it some slack.

Nah I think i'll stick to calling it as a I see it.

Going into Signalis, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The game definitely appealed to me as an indie horror game with low poly, PS1-era 3-D graphics that was clearly heavily inspired by survival horror heavyweights like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. However, what I didn’t expect from it was that it would carve out its own identity further than its inspirational sources. At the end of the day, it was a very enjoyable game from a small studio that I could easily recommend to any horror fan willing to try something familiar yet new.

As I described, the game is very much inspired by both Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but I feel like it takes a pretty nice middle ground between the two. Early Resident Evil titles’ influence is apparent in the tense survival elements, very limited inventory, safe rooms, enemies that can corner you if not approached correctly, and the constant need to make sure corpses won’t rise to cause you more trouble. Silent Hill’s influences are mainly in its story and atmosphere, which is psychological, cryptic, and provides revelations as you collect more information about the characters and world around you. As a side note, without getting into spoilers, I think the story and lore, although pretty complex and confusing at times, is very well told, emotional, and artistically surreal.

I think the area I like the most about this game is the art. I have heard some gamers groan about the overabundance of low poly indie games, claiming that this style utilized by indie developers as a way to mask a lack of graphical prowess rather than supplement a game’s art. Whatever your feelings are about low poly graphics, I believe that this game absolutely nails its style and art. At times, Signalis feels more like a surreal and complex psychological anime akin to Neon Genesis Evangelion rather than a PS1-style video game. The camera will shift from 3rd-person to 1st-person in fun ways sometimes, allowing you to solve puzzles from new perspectives and traverse certain areas with a different moody feeling. As a huge psychological horror fan, I loved the cryptic flashbacks on the screen, the random languages that would pop in, different art styles in the cutscenes, and the constant thought of, “what the hell did I just see?” It’s great!

The puzzles are also quite fun and surprisingly well thought out. As a survival horror game, you expect puzzles and backtracking, but most of the time, I didn’t feel like the game was wasting my time. However, you can only carry six items, so I did groan sometimes when I finally found the item I was looking for, but some ammo I picked up 2 minutes beforehand took up my last slot and cost me another trip to the old safe room. Occasionally, you’d hit an obtuse puzzle that could take some time to figure out, but overall, they are interesting and creative.
I think my biggest issue with this game is the sometimes shoddy combat. Most of the time, it’s just fine. It does the job and I can dispatch enemies that annoyingly stand right in front of the door I’m trying to get to. However, it’s when facing multiple enemies at a time that the combat falls apart. The aiming could be a little clunky and mapping the “push away” command to the “shoot” command was a strange choice from the developers that got me killed a few times when I got cornered. That, and the fact that the player character would aim for everything EXCEPT what I was trying to hit when I was in a pinch. However, this was not a huge deal at the end since combat isn’t a huge focus.

Overall, I’d give Signalis a very high recommendation to every survival horror fan, especially if you like anything psychological and artsy. It’s well worth your time and I believe that this small development team have made an awesome project that surpassed my expectations.

8/10