Capcom, oh Capcom. You’ve hit a grand slam with ‘Requiem’. You need to give the entire team that worked on the game a nice bonus to thank them for their hard work because they absolutely deserve it. ‘Resident Evil: Requiem’ is the best game that I have played since ‘Red Dead Redemption II’, ‘Diablo IV’, and ‘Space Marine 2’. It’s so much fun, and the story is interesting and engaging. I will keep this spoiler-free - this was announced in the trailers so it’s not a spoiler: Leon is sick with something scientists and medical professionals are calling the “Raccoon City Curse”, a latent disease linked to exposure to the T-Virus (or is it G or T+G? Darn it, I forgot) that has now risen up from its dormancy and is killing survivors of the Raccoon City Incident seen in ‘Resident Evil 2’ and Leon is on borrowed time. Grace Ashcroft, the new primary character introduced in this game, is a young woman who somehow made it into the FBI. I’m not saying that to be rude because I really like Grace, but she seems like the last person that the FBI would hire in any active role; she’s NOT a field agent. As such, Grace shows genuine fear and terror, she’s not a crack-shot who runs around looking really cool while dodging zombie attacks like Leon. She stumbles, she trips in her attempts to run, she hyperventilates and she cries. We all like to think that we would be Leon if a zombie apocalypse ever actually occurred but the truth is that most people would be Grace. But while Grace is rightly terrified she grits her teeth, tries to control her breathing, and soldiers on. She’s far more braver than she thinks that she is; however, given that she isn’t a Jill Valentine or a Claire Redfield so she’s not a crack shot nor can she slay staggered zombies with melee attacks like Leon can; her melee attack is basically just her pushing zombies away from her to create some room for her to run. And it all makes sense. While she’s weaker than Leon she’s not less fun to play as even with her limitations. Leon is, of course, Leon. After surviving Raccoon City, being strongly ‘encouraged’ to join the federal government at the request of the President of the United States, rescuing the kidnapped daughter of a later POTUS from the parasitic Las Plagas and the cult that worshipped them, and all of the adventures he faced in the RE movies (no, not the live-action slop but the cgi movies) he’s about as good at this as any human being ever could be, and so he drops zombies and fools with absolute style. He faces off horrors that would make most people drop a load in their undies, and he doesn’t even flinch. Leon is Leon, and he does Leon Things, and it’s so much fun when he does. Whereas Grace’s sections of the game are focused on horror Leon’s sections are focused on action, and together they take what was great about ‘Resident Evil 4’ and ‘Resident Evil 7’ and make one great game. When you think about it the game shouldn’t work - ‘Resident Evil 4’ and ‘Resident Evil 7’ are so very different from one another so creating a game that takes both of them and puts them together seems like something that wouldn’t be a great idea, but dang it - it works GREAT. Leon has his Attaché Case for his inventory while Grace has her pockets. She starts the game with about as much inventory slots as Jill did in the first ‘Resident Evil’, meaning that you will have to manage her limited inventory as you play her sections. You can find Hip Pouches that expand her inventory and they are paramount, but even with them you will still have to manage your inventory; they just make it a little easier. Of course, it IS a ‘Resident Evil’ game so you can expect some silliness - every time I craft ammo for Grace’s 9mm from some scrap metal and some BLOOD I laugh because it’s just so ridiculous. Does this blood contain a crapload of GUNPOWDER?! Hahahaha! It’s silly but it’s not even remotely a big deal because that’s pretty much the only silliness that there is in this game. The rest of the game keeps the silliness to a minimum to allow the Grace levels, in particular, to shine and even give you a scare or two; the stalker enemy called The Girl and the Shadow Ghost loves to pop out and chase Grace at all of the worst times and trying to escape her is both fun and terrifying. If you’re somehow still on the fence about the game I strongly encourage you to climb down, sit in front of your tv, and download ‘Requiem’ - it’s worth every penny of your hard-earned money. 9.5/10.
There are few people on this planet that love ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ than I do. I first played it when it was first released on the original PlayStation in 1997/8 (don’t remember exactly now) and I have played it every year since, mostly on my iPad once the ‘War of the Lions’ version, which is superb, was released for iOS. I have been begging for a remake/remaster for literal decades now. After so many years Squeenix finally listened and gave us ‘The Ivalice Chronicles’ and. . . it’s okay. Just okay. The main issue is that they didn’t include any of the ‘War of the Lions’ content in this version, and there’s no good reason why they shouldn’t have done so when it adds so much more fun content to the base game; I am thinking that Squeenix, whose greed knows no bounds, is planning on releasing the WoTL version as paid DLC and because I am obsessed with FF Tactics I will pull out my debit card and pay for it. I know, I know, I shouldn’t - but I will because I love being able to play one of my most favorite games to date (and I’m 47 so I’ve been playing video games for a loooooong time) on my big ol’ tv screen.This updated version is okay and would be excellent if there were no such thing as the ‘War of the Lions’ version out there. While I’m not a fan of the new UI (and I HATE that I can no longer change the Jobs of Guest Characters, something that I have done to these Guests forever and a day) having the Action Order on the left side of the screen is nice, and I absolutely LOVE the ‘Fast-Foward’ feature in combat because enemies are too darn slow and always have been. I also very much dislike the new menus for learning and assigning Abilities and for equipping weapons and armor. Not a fan of it whatsoever. I am absolutely unhappy with the included ‘Original Version’ of the game in this collection that is the version released on the original PlayStation - they outright removed the Job Points Scroll glitch. Yeah, that was technically cheating but who cares? It allowed players to spend less time mindlessly grinding and more time to actually enjoy the game, and there was no reason to remove it! It’s not like it would have been possible to use the glitch on the updated version at all so why not keep it on the original version that few people will probably ever play since most new players will just stick with the modern version of the game? Whenever there is fun to be had Squeenix isn’t happy if they’re not squashing the fun, that’s for sure. But despite my legitimate gripes it’s still ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ and I’m going to play it, although I doubt that I will continue to play this version after I get all of the Achievements on console for the game; unless they do release the ‘War of the Lions’ version as DLC I’ll just go back to playing the game on my iPad. I do LOVE how virtually everything in the game has voice-acting, including the monsters and animals that you battle; however, the VO for monsters and critters tends to be a bit on the lousy side. Not all, but definitely some. I also very much enjoy the new ‘tactical view’ that allows you to scope out the battlefield in a top-down ‘birds-eye view’ as it’s really helpful and I think that new players would benefit from it immensely. Do I recommend this version to new players?Not at $50-$60, but I would if the game were on sale for $20-$30. It’s also difficult to recommend when some of the best content wasn’t included; the ‘War of the Lions’ version is available on iOS and Google Play (iOS for sure, not 100% positive if it’s available on Android) for far cheaper and is the absolute best version of the game. But when ‘The Ivalice Chronicles’ are on sale for $20 you should definitely consider checking it out as the new updated version is worth that imho. If Squeenix releases a WoTL DLC update for the game then it’s worth (again IMHO) $30 to $40. The lack of the WoTL content, special recruitable characters, the extra battles, and the extra Midnights Deep dungeon is not somehow negated by the new UI, a few but nice QoL adjustments, full voice acting, and menus more annoying than they should have been. I’m giving this release a 7/10 which hurts my heart; this should have been an absolute 10/10 recommendation that pretty much every video game fan should have rushed to pick up. Please note that I am playing the game on my Xbox Series X and not on my PS5, so I can only state that the game plays wonderfully and without technical hiccups such as frame-rate drops on the Series X and cannot tell you how the game runs on Series S, PS5, or on Switch 2 (i think that the game is being released on the Switch 2 but I’m not 100% certain on that) so please look for a Series S or PS5 review if you’re interested in buying the game for those **** why the crap does this site automatically remove paragraph breaks? Who wants to read one giant paragraph? C’mon Metacritic - get it together now.
There are few people on this planet that love ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ than I do. I first played it when it was first released on the original PlayStation in 1997/8 (don’t remember exactly now) and I have played it every year since, mostly on my iPad once the ‘War of the Lions’ version, which is superb, was released for iOS. I have been begging for a remake/remaster for literal decades now. After so many years Squeenix finally listened and gave us ‘The Ivalice Chronicles’ and. . . it’s okay. Just okay. The main issue is that they didn’t include any of the ‘War of the Lions’ content in this version, and there’s no good reason why they shouldn’t have done so when it adds so much more fun content to the base game; I am thinking that Squeenix, whose greed knows no bounds, is planning on releasing the WoTL version as paid DLC and because I am obsessed with FF Tactics I will pull out my debit card and pay for it. I know, I know, I shouldn’t - but I will because I love being able to play one of my most favorite games to date (and I’m 47 so I’ve been playing video games for a loooooong time) on my big ol’ tv screen. This updated version is okay and would be excellent if there were no such thing as the ‘War of the Lions’ version out there. While I’m not a fan of the new UI (and I HATE that I can no longer change the Jobs of Guest Characters, something that I have done to these Guests forever and a day) having the Action Order on the left side of the screen is nice, and I absolutely LOVE the ‘Fast-Foward’ feature in combat because enemies are too darn slow and always have been. I also very much dislike the new menus for learning and assigning Abilities and for equipping weapons and armor. Not a fan of it whatsoever. I am absolutely unhappy with the included ‘Original Version’ of the game in this collection that is the version released on the original PlayStation - they outright removed the Job Points Scroll glitch. Yeah, that was technically cheating but who cares? It allowed players to spend less time mindlessly grinding and more time to actually enjoy the game, and there was no reason to remove it! It’s not like it would have been possible to use the glitch on the updated version at all so why not keep it on the original version that few people will probably ever play since most new players will just stick with the modern version of the game? Whenever there is fun to be had Squeenix isn’t happy if they’re not squashing the fun, that’s for sure. But despite my legitimate gripes it’s still ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ and I’m going to play it, although I doubt that I will continue to play this version after I get all of the Achievements on console for the game; unless they do release the ‘War of the Lions’ version as DLC I’ll just go back to playing the game on my iPad. I do LOVE how virtually everything in the game has voice-acting, including the monsters and animals that you battle; however, the VO for monsters and critters tends to be a bit on the lousy side. Not all, but definitely some. I also very much enjoy the new ‘tactical view’ that allows you to scope out the battlefield in a top-down ‘birds-eye view’ as it’s really helpful and I think that new players would benefit from it immensely. Do I recommend this version to new players?Not at $50-$60, but I would if the game were on sale for $20-$30. It’s also difficult to recommend when some of the best content wasn’t included; the ‘War of the Lions’ version is available on iOS and Google Play (iOS for sure, not 100% positive if it’s available on Android) for far cheaper and is the absolute best version of the game. But when ‘The Ivalice Chronicles’ are on sale for $20 you should definitely consider checking it out as the new updated version is worth that imho. If Squeenix releases a WoTL DLC update for the game then it’s worth (again IMHO) $30 to $40. The lack of the WoTL content, special recruitable characters, the extra battles, and the extra Midnights Deep dungeon is not somehow negated by the new UI, a few but nice QoL adjustments, full voice acting, and menus more annoying than they should have been. I’m giving this release a 7/10 which hurts my heart; this should have been an absolute 10/10 recommendation that pretty much every video game fan should have rushed to pick up. Please note that I am playing the game on my Xbox Series X and not on my PS5, so I can only state that the game plays wonderfully and without technical hiccups such as frame-rate drops on the Series X and cannot tell you how the game runs on Series S, PS5, or on Switch 2 (i think that the game is being released on the Switch 2 but I’m not 100% certain on that) so please look for a Series S or PS5 review if you’re interested in buying the game for those consoles.
FFXIV:Yawnfail. That’s the most appropriate name for this expansion. Do you like doing virtually nothing but being the bodyguard and daycare provider for a stupid, annoying, insipid, five year old child in an adults’ body who constantly talks about the power of peace, love, and friendship? Well then, Squeenix and Creative Business Unit III has the expansion of your dreams! The game becomes significantly better once you start skipping all of the cutscenes. I wish that were a joke but it’s the honest truth. The new writer, because the good writers seem to have been promoted, is apparently a Japanese man but his writing and dialogue made me truly believe that this story was written by an 18-20 year old girl. It’s cliched, and it’s boring. What they should have done was offer players the choice of which claimant to the throne that we wanted to support, and they could have done so easily with only a few extra weeks’ of writing and programming, but instead you are stuck with Wuk Lamat whether you want to be or not. Wuk Lamat is absolutely despised by most of the playerbase, especially those who are older than about 21. I personally don’t care even the slightest bit if she becomes queen or not, or even if she lives or dies. I just don’t care. When a lot of your players do not care for and about the character that you are forcing them to babysit through the entirety of the 7.0 MSQ then your story, your team, and your expansion is a failure. This is the first expansion for FFXIV in which I have read “Eff this, I’m unsubscribing” from hundreds of people and during early access! Are you worried about the hours-long queues to play? Don’t be, because there isn’t any. The first two days of Early Access and 2 July, the official launch day, saw queues of 500+, but then . . . crickets. No matter what time you log-on the queue is less than it was a month ago! The Uber-Fans who believe that Yoshi-P and CBU3 can do no wrong will tell you that’s because they added a few more worlds to a data center and increased the number of players permitted per server at a time (while increasing all sorts of lag and rubberbanding - great job, team!) but that’s only partly the truth. The rest of the truth is that so many people were bored to tears from Yawnfail and haven’t bothered logging-in since the last time they turned it off. A word of warning - if you try to get a refund for the expansion, which we absolutely should have the right to do, Squeenix will perma-ban your account. Only demand the refund if you don’t ever plan on coming back at 7.3 - 8.0 and don’t mind that your account and character/s will be deleted. My advice is to just not buy this expansion and unsubscribe until 8.0, which will hopefully be far better than the crap that Squeenix and CBU3 served to us on a platter. This expansion is just boring, and the gameplay, what little there was, has run its course. I get that some people don’t like combat-heavy games like World of Warcraft, but at least you’re not sitting there watching the 7th boring cutscene in the last four minutes, having done literally nothing but teleported/walked somewhere to talk to someone so you can go watch another cutscene and repeat until you wish that a massive asteroid would strike the planet. That is all that XIV has become, and it’s more apparent and more obvious in this stinker of an expansion. I literally went from level 90 to 91 due to cutscenes and exposition dumps; the entire time I killed five mobs, and two of them were just because I was bored and wanted to! The overwhelming majority of experience has come from cutscenes; only about a little more than one level worth of XP came from the two dungeons and one trial between 90 - 96. Dawntrail does the worst thing that a game that costs $60 per expansion and $20 a month to play can do - bore you to death while you slog through a ‘story’ in which your character does absolutely nothing but babysit an idiot. Despite what Yoshi-P and team may say publicly they would be very right to be very afraid about the future of their game; this expansion is so bad that it alone could kill the phenomenon that has been FFXIV since ARR was released. 7.1 and probably 7.2 are done/almost done so it’s too late for them, but only time will tell if the team is wise enough to listen to all of the angry, disappointed, and bored players and find a way to right this sinking ship with 7.3 to 8.0.
This game **** absolute ass. Four long years I waited for Rebirth, and all I got was a game filled with dozens of unbelievably crappy mini-games with an occasional hour or two of Marvel Multiverse nonsense. I have never hated any game as much as I hate Rebirth, and I would give anything to be able to return in and get my money back. Oh sure, you don’t “have to do” some of the mini-games, but if you don’t you don’t get the weapons and weapon abilities or materia locked behind them. So you really don’t have much of a choice but to play the damn things. How Squeenix could have possibly screwed up so badly is as confusing to me as how it’s getting “rave reviews” from so-called “critics”. This game ****, and the only thing that could help save it is a ‘Mercy System’ that allows you to eventually pass the mini-games after you’ve failed so many times that you’ve thrown your controller through the wall. EFF REBIRTH, AND EFF SQUAREENIX.
‘Warcraft Rumble’ is a free-to-play mobile game that has only a little depth but a whole lot of charm. You can, and many have, gotten through the game by not spending a single dime because everything can be obtained by grinding Coins, which are earned by playing - you get a set number of Coins for each victory. Experience is gained by playing, though I dislike how only one mini per challenge seems to get experience, which slows things down considerably. I could be wrong, but the Results screen only ever shows one mini be awarded any experience so I don’t think that there are other minis being awarded experience points off-screen. I have spent money on ‘Warcraft Rumble’ as I don’t mind micro-transactions and I don’t begrudge spending a few bucks on a game that I am enjoying. I’ve bought some extra Coins so I could increase my mini collection, and I bought the $20 Booster Pack that adds permanent boosts to experience gained and coins won per match; while $20 isn’t cheap I think that it’s more than worth it if you are going to be playing the game for a considerable amount of time - the extra Coins add up, allowing you to unlock new minis quicker. I would love to see a computer version of ‘Rumble’ that allows you to “paint” your minis like you can in the awesome game ‘Moonbreaker’ which is still in Early Access on Steam. If you enjoy games like Warhammer 40K (Black Templars for life! NO PITY! NO REMORSE! NO FEAR!) you should definitely check out ‘Moonbreaker’! I’d also like to win new minis from matches themselves rather than having to use coins to buy them. The “G.R.I.D. System” annoys the crap out of me; buying one mini shuffles the grid and you’ll lose access to the minis shuffled out until you buy enough minis for those to be re-shuffled back onto the grid. The G.R.I.D. is just stupid and I don’t like it at all. The game itself is pretty fun and often ridiculously challenging. While I know that many people love difficult games, I do not. I just want to play and have fun, not grow increasingly angry and frustrated because I keep losing to the same boss over and over again, and I would like to see a difficulty level system put into the game, or perhaps a ‘mercy system’ that realizes that you keep losing a particular stage over and over and lessens the difficulty dynamically so that you can finally defeat the stage and move on. I’d also like to be able to inspect the minis up close and be able to rotate them and the like, which is not currently available in-game. The minis themselves are wonderfully designed and animated, and being unable to really zoom in and check them out is a shame. Knowing which type of mini is stronger than, or weaker than, minis that the computer sends against you is key to winning, but even then you can still lose - the computer cheats. And it can be weird when you lose a match without being able to do virtually anything only to retry the match with the same line-up yet somehow manage to kill the boss in seconds. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Blizzard has ambitions for the game and they are planning on releasing expansions for ‘Rumble’ that include new bosses, dungeons, and minis, so the game does have a future and will be around for at least a while. There’s far, far worse games out there to play, that’s for sure. ‘Warcraft Rumble’ is worth at least checking out and seeing if it is your cup o’tea, and it won’t cost you even one red cent to do so. There seems to be a lot of unfavorable reviews here on Metacritic that appear to come from people who live to give Blizzard’s games negative reviews without even playing their games or because the game includes completely optional micro-transactions. Don’t just read their complaints; give the game a try and decide for yourself.
This is one of those rare games that seem to come out of virtually nowhere and blow people away. Ghost of Tsushima is the single most beautiful video game created thus far; it looks amazing on my less-than-spectacular set-up of a PS4 Slim and a non-HDR HDTV. Just this single game alone makes me want to drive to Walmart and purchase the PS4 Pro and a better television, but since we will be able to play this game on the PS5 I’ll just wait for that to be released. The story is pretty great in my opinion, although Jin is somewhat of a lackluster character, kinda ruining the fantastic job of his voice actor who was just simply excellent. I wish that they would have given him more lines. The game features excellent voiceover work by the entire cast and the secondary characters are pretty great. The fictional Kublai Khan is one of the more interesting video game villains in years and feels like he is a real man; he’s not just some one-note mustache-twirling bad guy. Lord Shimura, Jin’s uncle, is a loving, caring uncle that has some difficulty expressing his feelings for his nephew and is obsessed with his honor as a Samurai. Kenji is a hysterical thieving sake-brewer. Yuna and Taka are great as well. The Last of Us developers Naughty Dog should take note - Yuna is an excellent example of how to make a strong female character and not an annoying twit. Yuna is not some great Japanese beauty, she’s kinda plain. She doesn’t have some ‘super-sexy’ body that she flaunts; she’s modestly-dressed. But she’s a tough-as-nails chick that’s able to kick some hiney in a very bad situation. While the main quests are not particularly long, there’s a ton of side quests that will take up a lot of your time and, unlike many other video games, you’ll not regret taking the time to complete them. Do expect to spend a fair amount of time with Jin just standing there while you stare in amazement at the games’ environment. A lot of the game world will leave you open-mouthed and nearly speechless. How **** Punch managed to create such beauty in a game that’s only twenty-some gigs or so in an age where most games push 100 gigs is a mystery, but by the Good Lord above they certainly pulled it off. There is a ton of stuff to find, from clan banners to sword kits to flowers to trade to merchants to dye your amor different colors, and there’s a crapload of hats, headbands, face masks, and helmets to find. The loading screens are so quick that you don’t have time to read more than one tip, and sometimes not even that. It’s pretty insane how quickly the game loads. The only real flaws this game has are the somewhat annoying platform climbing sections (literally my only deaths in two play-throughs of this game have been from falling while trying to get Jin to grab the next rock or branch) and the utter nonsense that is Jin’s apparent phobia of ladders - getting him to climb up or down one can be a frustrating, but funny, experience. I don’t think that most people would not a whole lot of interest in playing the game again after getting the Platinum trophy, although **** Punch just added a new Lethal mode where one hit is death and that sounds like a bunch of fun. Though it is not perfect it is very, very close to it, and is easily my favorite game of 2019-2020 even beating my beloved Final Fantasy VII Remake, an accomplishment that I did not think possible. I am already chomping at the bit for a second Ghost game and happily, as the game sold so well, I’m pretty sure that **** Punch will start work on a new Ghost game soon. TL;DR - Ghost of Tsushima allows you to live out the fantasy of being the Samurai/Ninja that you were born to be. Ridiculously highly recommended. If you do not have a PS4 this game alone is reason enough to buy one. 9.75/10. An American masterpiece.
