piglordofallham

I love pinball, I love big honkers, I love skimpy costumes, but somehow all of this together just doesn't work for me. First off, the pinball is horrid, it's probably the most boring tables I've ever played, where the well.. "bosomed" anime lady is taking up like 70% of the table, and the rest is just flare, lights, and bonus points that don't make a lot of sense. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they were just trying to get you to take the anime ladies cloths off faster so you don't notice how boring the pinball table's are. Also the music is just not my thing, not completely terrible, but certainly not high quality stuff even for the genre. The general story is something about a green liquid that turns all the girls into obnoxious circus freak half-animal half-human hybrids who act totally stupid until you knock a few pinball balls into their upper or lower body enough times for them to snap out of it. It's a mesmerizingly stupid plot that doesn't really have any reason to exist nor would anyone do much else besides skip every visual novel-esque cutscene because they're frankly filler or obnoxious to listen to.

Star Trek fans have it pretty rough. If it isn't a terrible show being cancelled, then it's the legacy of a better show being ruined by Picard, or fans praising Star Trek Voyager when it's not only a boring show, but has easily some of the worst written first season in the entire shows history (just don't tell star trek fans). Sure, it picks up eventually, though never nearly getting to the quality of the next generation or deep space nine, but I digress. Star Trek Voyager, "Elite force," is a pseudo-mini-episode-spin-off action video game where the actual cast lended their voices, background music from the series and it's a pretty straightforward embarassing forray into what could've been a tighter script all-around, but nevertheless- this is a first-person science fiction shooter set in the star trek universe. So obviously it goes without saying, some caveats had to be made. Techonology-wise, I think the in-game models are just okay, even by the standards of the time. The weapons, environments, and most of the recreated set-dressing is pretty good (when you squint your eyes and pretend you're watching an episode of the show or something). All things considered, it isn't the worst looking Star Trek video game by 2000 standards. It is however, extremely dull in terms of game play. Walk down a hall, find yourself in a room shaped like a box, shoot enemies until they stop spawning in, and then proceed down next corridor to similarly shaped room. It's so hum-drum and boring you'll embrace every moment the crew is actually spitting out voice lines or every musical sting that feels like it's about to jump to a commercial break (but it's just a load-screen for a cutscene segment or a load-screen for the next area). I'm particularly vexed about how stupid the ammo sharing is when the game has the gall to give you some interesting weapons, but you have to decide which two seperate (broken and overpowered) laser guns to annihilate the copies of the same enemy in every level with. It doesn't seem well designed and on higher difficulties you seem to run out of ammo quite often, requiring pointless alternating between red or blue ammo weapons. Another contentious issue is the squad AI constantly waltzing into your line-of-sight every time you are trying to kill enemies (who are basically stacked right on top of each other or directly behind another in every firefight). This leads to a lot of wasted ammo, which leads to a lot of me shouting "get the **** out of the way," which leads to a lot of me wishing that they just weren't even in the game to begin with if they don't even do any damage to enemies. Which is another puzzling issue, why are they there? To break up the monotony of traipsing from room to room doing the same thing in every level? Probably. The one point in the game's favor is the infiltration mission, but even that seemed to be built around firefights, as every area of the ship has ammo or health refills for some odd reason (probably because the stealth mechanics are non-existent and the whole area relies on trial/ error to get through or something). I found myself basically falling asleep as the game went on as there is just no variety to what you're doing. Nothing intriguing about this stupid farcical bad Star Trek episode featuing cameos from actors that had no idea what the point of anything they were doing even was. Is it nice that they got the original cast? I mean sure, but it's entirely meaningless- this was 2000 and the show was coming to a close like a year later. Why not get another paycheck for a few voice lines in some generic sci-fi video game with the Star Trek license? Playing "Elite Force" only makes me believe that whoever made it had no idea that Star Trek the show isn't actually about going into every situation phaser shooting. It's mostly about the crew talking stuff over with aliens (usually anyway). The fact that it pales in comparison to stuff like Half-life or the original Quake only goes to show that in terms of gameplay, it's milquetoast, generic, and formulaic to a point where the only positives are things it references from the television show. As a game? It's a remarkable failure, but so are most of the Star Trek video games.

It really is that good. Simple to learn, difficult to master game play with loads of absolutely crazy secrets. It's so packed with secrets, that there is a secret congratulating you for finding a secret that the developer made a secret because he thought nobody would ever even locate it. It's an extremely rewarding game mechanically, since after you learn how an item works, it still yields so much utility. Some of the things you'll figure out on your own are nuts and usually come from experimentation. Do I think it's a perfect game? I don't know. It's more like so impressive from such a tiny team of people that it's really hard to fault it for being a little less than the sum of it's parts. It is a really revolutionary, atmospheric and bizarre experience that everybody should at least try once.

More like Homeworld - Dead game. More like Homeworld - Deserts of still 60 dollars. More like Homeworld - Abandoned by Devs. More like Homeworld - Micro machines. More like Homeworld - Dune ripoff. More like Homeworld - I hate sand, it gets everywhere.

Let me know when they make a good 3rd person action game where you play as a dog or something. This is for the birds (or at least fans of eating them). I couldn't understand for one minute why anybody thought playing as a little kitty cat would be fun idea for a video game. Once you get past the fact that even your own cats are just as boring to watch, it doesn't jive that most of the things this stupid cat in his own videogame does are 100% scripted animations based on pressing the correlating context-sensitive button to initiate "silly thing that cats do." People are like goldfish, they forget that you could make a cool game about a puzzle solving Rat, or a homeless person in his quest for survival and understanding or a dinosaur trying to survive in the late Cretaceous, but thank god they decided make a mediocre cinematic game where a cat interacts with robots in a dystopia post-human city-scape instead. DEFINITELY NEVER BEEN DONE IN ANY OTHER MEDIUM OR VIDEO GAME NOT STARRING A STUPID CAT. What a waste of time.

Hilariously B-movie territory Resident Evil franchise continues to plug away at yet again another inane and nonsensical story featuring a female protagonist. I'm quite sure that I lost interest in the first 30 minute opening segment that had more red herrings than a particularly well-stocked man-made lake full of them. From the awkward context sensitive first-person dodging zombie policeman, to the ridiculous flashback that sets up some huge overly long mystery, I knew it wasn't for me. For quite some time the Resident Evil series has been kind of getting dumb. It started with Resident Evil 7, where they changed the perspective, put some poor schlub in the boonies with a very out-of-touch stereotypical "American" southern family who was either evil or residents themselves of an elaborate, complex puzzle house with all the usual trappings, blob monsters, and silly chase sequences. Not unlike Scooby-doo, there are only so many ways you can recreate the same formula, and I feel like Resident Evil 9 (was there even an 8?) is just more of that same thing that Capcom has been doubling down on since RE7. I don't personally get it, it doesn't appeal to me. I find a lot of these modern action survival video games to be kind of dull or at least poorly paced. The plots are getting so stupid that sometimes I wonder if old or unused Resident Evil movie scripts are being fed to an AI somewhere that continues to spit out sequel after sequel. I don't like Grace, I don't care about this story, I don't like seeing the same untouched game play, nor do I enjoy laughing so hard that I can't properly pay attention to what is happening on-screen. If you are a putz, you'll probably buy whatever crap Capcom keeps defecating out every year, but if you have a little bit of taste, you'll realize that Resident Evil peaked 20 years ago. All that remains is shambling, slow, and mutated monsters behind every decision at Capcom.. and the zombies who continue to buy from them. This title reeks of FOMO so hard, that I wondered why all the praise for it dried up a month after it's release. In the years since, I have very rarely seen many of the games discussed quite as much as the original Playstation series, Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 6. The modern offerings are for a different crowd, a potentially more affluent one who doesn't mind buying a game nobody will talk about 5 or even 10 years from now. What a shame.

What is the bar? Where is it again? This title is such a mediocre product held up by high heels and a fine baby-making waist, but what does it really offer in terms of gameplay? I found it shockingly shallow almost immediately, with a very conspicuous dodge window that felt more akin to the parrying/ dodge window from something as old as Demon's Souls on the Playstation 3. I suppose if you're looking for a game with a worse soundtrack and more boring pacing with a handful of decent boss fights then maybe Stellar Blade is for you. Ultimately I don't see the appeal. Eve is gorgeous, but she feels like she's literally walking on stilts, and the movement feels stiff in general. I can't figure out if it's just bad design or the lack of fluidity in combat is supposed to be purposeful, but I did not like the opening prologue or any of the early fights as the camera had trouble following the action and I felt like I was playing a poor man's Bayonetta without any of the artistic flair or more chiefly "fun" combat movement. Stellar Blade feels like a cheap imitation of literally any of the Fromsoft titles from the last decade and I can't recommend it. The soundtrack is atrocious and loops constantly. The level design is garish, the physics are kind of goofy, and collision detection seems a little bad when just moving around objects or whenever you're interacting with the level's themselves. I have no clue what's wrong with it. If T&A is your thing, well I hate to disappoint you but the most you'll get is titillation without modification. Game play just isn't very good, and there are dozens of better games that outdo everything Stellar Blade has to offer.

As time goes by, and presumably my flesh begins to crumble and tissues break down, I find myself thinking how disconcerting the reaction of Nier Automata actually was. The amount of ridiculously positive critical reviews that couldn't have possibly played for more than two or three hours, the litany of threads online praising the writing, the characters, the emotional presentation. People talking about how transformative, crazy and genre defying everything about Nier Automata is. And... and... and well it's all a load of tripe. All of it. In fact, the more I think about Nier Automata or ever touching it or it's DLC ever again, the more I hate it. The more I despise everything it stands. Nier Automata was one of the first times I felt genuinely dismayed, betrayed and instantly angered by the sheer ridiculousness amount of illiterate morons who not only said it was "one of the best games ever made," but who actually convinced me that (years after it's release), "heck, maybe I should check it out then I guess." What I found in Nier Automata was a tangled web of stupid. Lifeless, flat characterization, terrible antagonists, totally unexplained plot holes, moments where characters who you had only just met received an entire back story from an entirely different game set in the same universe, insulting philosophical queries with no purpose or resolution, a baffling (almost unbelievable) romance, a slew of critically important information regarding characters, as well as their motivations only available in content outside of the actual video game's plot and I was stunned into silence by the true ending. Why was I stunned into silence? Because if you had spent 15-20 hours playing Nier Automata hoping for some actual conclusion during the "real ending" you would be insulted beyond belief too. Nier Automata not only opens up a bunch of mysteries that don't lead to anything interesting to say about them, it bread crumbs maybe one of the shortest stories over hours of game play and nonsensically written dialogue trying to convince you that a twist everyone saw coming an hour into the game was somehow worth an entire retread of the plot with a separate character. My first issue, the game is a piss easy hack'n'slash 3rd person camera combat item drop collect-a-thon, and even worse than that, it's an action RPG. Truly the one thing this game could've dropped was being an action RPG at all, considering how much stuff it breaks (unless you actually wasted your time playing through the instant death hard mode or something). However, the greatest offense that I take? Is having to play as a woman for the first play through. I do not like 2B, I don't care about this character. She is not well written, she is boring to listen to, and worst of all, when you are forced to repeat the story, you play as a character just like her, only whinier. I cannot see how either of these two like each other at all and I listened to all of the supplemental backstory. I read all the extra "lore" and determined these characters ****- they are boring archetypes. Super serious giant sword wielding mini-skirt wearing 2B is just as much of a lifeless "android" as short twerp who hacks everything via a mini-game instead of actually fighting. They are cardboard cut outs in a lifeless world where lips weren't even animated to move outside of cutscenes. What is this, an MMORPG? I have never felt such actual disappointment at such a lazily written character death scene in all my life. The transition made me so mad, that I actually laughed when it happened. You not only play the game a 3rd time (only this time the pacing is terrible because you are forced to switch between two characters you hate at the same time), but A2 literally cuts her hair off to look the same as 2B, you just lose a shapely butt to look at, and her animations are slightly different. She also has some sort of red line dash, which I never figured out what it did and I didn't care. The best, most thought provoking and emotional scene in the entire game is a toaster named "Pascal" who is incidentally voiced by a female for some reason, losing everything they ever cared about right before you get a choice to either delete their memories or delete them. I could not think of one character I actually empathized with or gave any more thought because half the quests for those characters were boring fetch or collection quests. Hence, what even is this? Some kind of online multiplayer RPG? How unexciting that the idiots who designed this game forgot that they were actually trying to tell a story and instead forced players to do MMO sidequests isntead. Some of the boss fights were cool. Some of the weapons you could find were neat. I'm sure the DLC is fun, I just never bothered. The twist was bad, A2 and 9S were not fun to play as. The actual map was too small, the grinding was bad. Some of the jokes didn't translate well. The butt was nice. Nier ****.

Ni No Kuni started life as a Nintendo DS game in Japan, and then it was sort of "re-imagined" for the Playstation 3. If I had known it was just an expensive port of a DS game, I wouldn't have touched it, as it has all the hallmarks of a typical handheld RPG. Tedious fetch quests, massive grinding and a rather tepid, almost glacially slow story starring a fairly dull (and poorly voiced) protagonist. The actual progression loop, is very, very old school. You go to town, talk to NPC, trip to Motorville, fetch quest, boss, rinse and repeat. It takes about 3 hours (if you move quick) to get your second party member. After that you spend way too much time in the desert which is in part due to many quests in that area. Your second party member is the only character that can "capture" familiars, who are like Pokemon, but mostly uninspired looking. For some reason however the percentage rate of acquiring many of these familiars after fights is terrifyingly- almost abysmally low. So much so that I think it was purposefully done to pad out the playtime. It felt like maybe 1% most of the time, but officially it's 4 to 20% depending on what familiar it is. Not only to do some of the merit stamp side quests require you to capture certain familiars, but some of them are rare to spawn into fights when you enter them. I spent probably hours trying to capture some of these guys. That's bad, but it gets worse. Not only is the familiar capture rate awful, but the item drop rate is also ridiculous even after you get a character who can steal regular and rare items (manually). You'd think he'd have better chances, right? Nope, his steal ability costs magic and you have to manually select it each time. He also misses a lot and it becomes a colossal waste of time standing around pressing the same button every time you want an important item drop from a specific enemy. Every aspect of these mechanics were clearly designed to exploit people who suffer from OCD or who are lacking in impulse control. The battle system is an awkward hybridization of real-time choices and turn-based phases. This is admittedly clunky, badly designed and creates a host of issues. Why it wasn't just turn-based is a total mystery to me, as the mechanics barely function as intended. Between the drawn out "taking heart and giving heart" moments for NPC's standing right next to one another, the cumbersome menus, the unexplained stat roll-over system whenever you "evolve" familiars, unexplained element types, the heavy-handed tutorials explaining banal concepts that don't even affect actual gameplay, poor translation, rambling dialogue, ugly familiar art designs, endlessly repeated animations everywhere, and drawn-out story segments where literally nothing is happening, I couldn't find anything actually enjoyable. You'll go back to Motorville to resolve problem A, then come back to solve problem A, and it's formulaic. All the while every combat encounter turns into trying to figure out why the AI is totally idiotic. There are so many bad and frustrating design decisions. Everything is stretched out, there is too much filler. The menu in combat is a wheel that takes more time to select options than any normal menu would have. Enemy abilities can cancel your turn. Then the game has the gall (hours in) to introduce a special ability that lets the entire party defend or attack at the same time. What on earth? Level 5 collaborated with Studio Ghibli, yet somehow there is nothing intrinsically interesting about Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. Nothing, zilch, nada. It's hum-drum fantasy aesthetic with stupid puns makes it even more hard to believe it was critically acclaimed at release. It may be one of the most boring and nonsensical stories I've ever seen in a JRPG, even for children. I can't even remember the last time I felt actual anguish playing a game. You don't know how miserable an experience it was running around a desert for over an hour trying to catch a giant walking pile of bananas for just one stupid side-quest. It's the most flagrantly padded, limited, stifling, and dull JRPG I have played in my life. It lacks the spirit of adventure, it lacks a shocking amount of imagination, it solves everything for you, and it's hardly ever eventful or exciting or even interesting. Every NPC utters the same text no matter what happens in the world, the non-animated in-game cutscenes have generic gestures with head nods, and the game isn't even difficult until there is a massive spike out of nowhere. It just railroads you into using the same overpowered familiars (some only accessible from DLC content or a pre-order bonus) so you can just steamroll through the last 75% of the content. Sorry, but I'm not grinding Tokotoko's for hours with the veil spell. I abhorred my time with this artificially bloated, shallow and pointless snooze fest. It's just mindless crap, designed to waste your time. What an insulting title.

An utter slog of a Heretic clone made by a muscle-bound woman enthusiast with no gift for level design. Have fun wandering around for an hour in each level, as predictable monsters spawn in every time you do manage to figure out the correct place to go next. Keycard hunting, item hunting, and navigating enormous, labyrinthine areas are not particularly enjoyable for me personally. I found many of the areas to lack proper indicators as to how they are differentiated, a.k.a. the design of many areas looks identical and the layouts are confusing due to how limited the gzdoom engine is. For all it's bells and whistles, the actual sprite work is extremely ugly and bizarre. Not only that, but the weapons themselves are lacking in impact or any strategical use. The "challenge" from the aforementioned monsters spawning is just the developer dumping dozens of enemies into a room for you to side-strafe and pointlessly shoot at for several minutes before it's over. There are much better boom shooters out there. Avoid this one.

It's like Sony just enjoys throwing money into a dumpster. They love it so much, that they took a game with a premise like, "Go hunt robot dinosaurs, but there's like no real plot and the main character constantly talks to themselves for no actual reason" and said: "YES MAKE MORE OF THAT PLEASE." Let's also double down on everything that made it boring, let's add more tedious stuff, make the costumes more ugly, add way more items, add a bunch of tutorials and frame them as if nobody played or heard of the original title. Make sure to also create the most obnoxious lead character on earth. Crank Aloy's awful personality up to an "11" on the obnoxiousness dial, and add some ridiculous plot about humans with super powers from space that hid on a moon or whatever, something science fiction-y, blah, blah, blah. Obviously Sony wasn't listening to any of Guerilla Games new "ideas" because they could only hear the cash registers "cha-chinging" in their brains whenever they thought about selling bundles or making boatloads of cash from their next hair-brained scheme. So who's fault is this that it was made? Who's fault is it that it's easily the worst open-world game in the last ten years? Who's fault is it that they made Aloy's character ridiculous to listen to and added even more crappy dialogue for everyone? Who's fault is it that the game has not one, but two introductions that last forever and barely feel like they connect the events from the original to now? I'll tell you who.. it your fault. That's right. You let this happen when you paid money for this amateur-hour dumpster fire IP with no solid premise or memorable linchpin to hold it together. You get what you pay for- another Breath of the Wild knockoff that still can't figure out what made that game successful. Horizon Zero Dawn has been on the black list of every dark corner of the internet for years now and many people have pointed out how mediocre the original product was. That's because the property itself represents the unceasing urge to assimilate everything that is good or unique so they can turn it into homogenized sludge to be gulped down by the witless masses. It's generic and vague. When it's not being either of those things it's straight up ugly and copying everything else it sees entirely. Like things different genres do without effort; desperately trying to combine all the things low-brow players want in a mainstream video game. Then they threw all of that into a blender and hit "puree." It's a joke. Ironically it had a better background story than the main events, but everything else is totally bland, totally forgettable and ends up being just another open-world video game with a different coat of paint still chasing the success of many other open-world action titles. The issue with the original (in most aspects being forgivable as mainly just mediocre) is that it spawned this sequel. This insipid, lifeless, dull, over-budgeted, and idiotic sequel whose own developer is aware of how, silly and creatively bankrupt it is (Seriously- they actually did a bunch of interviews about it after the first one came out). Everything wrong with open-world titles can be summed up in Horizon Forbidden West. The characterization is terrible. The plot is atrocious and they constantly interrupt you whenever you are going anywhere to do anything remotely enjoyable. You are mashing the context button to get through these cumbersome, awkward, and unintelligent conversations with NPC's that go on forever and do nothing for the pacing. If you're not following the boring story to it's predictable conlusion SPOILERS THE PROTAGONIST WINS- then you are forced to engage with the same boring gameplay for thirty hours plus. The ending was actually leaked by streamers right after it came out, and the reaction was a wholehearted "it can't actually be that bad, right?" Some people thought the ending was fake. I wish I was a fly on the wall when the people that wrote this game would have their weekly meetings. The dialogue from NPC's is practically IQ draining to listen to. In a vacuum, maybe they thought they were "expanding" on the original titles world, but in reality, it's just badly written and in-cohesive gibberish. I hate this game. It's got the same reused animations, pallet swapped enemies, atrocious climbing, a dumb hologram parachute that doesn't even make sense, loot boxes, upgrade hunting, a myriad of items, a broken upgrade system, and the only good thing about it is that at least they fixed the ridiculously bad hit boxes from the original. Do not ever pay money for this, don't go near it even if it's on sale. The only people that couldn enjoy this probably shoved crayons in their ears just before they got a promotional lobotomy (compliments of Sony) for waiting in line to buy a Playstation 5 bundled with Horizon Forbidden West.

When you met the first female character, who looks like she is easily 40 years old with stiff facial animation and limited expressions, she "saves" the protagonist, but that's not enough for her to do. Her character is then introduced **** in a Mongolian trooper and playing him like a fiddle. Then while he's distracted she sneaks up behind him while he's in full armor, and then somehow stabs him to death with something the size of a pocket knife. I was in utter disbelief at how stupid the entire scene was. Why couldn't the main character do that? This is a story about my character right? Not some girl boss, right? No, instead my main dude decides to brainlessly waltz up to the enemy stronghold, knock on the door, shout at them, attempt take on the whole army by himself and then challenge the level 50 20,000 HP Mongolian boss to a duel over some honor or whatever. Utterly stupid, utterly ridiculous writing. Another movie game with a made-up fantasy aesthetic. Kurosowa is probably rolling in his grave Ride your horse, take some pretty screenshots, clear out encampments full of brain dead enemies. What's even the point of including Japanese audio when all of the mocap was done by English speaking actors?

Maybe people just want a video game that's more like a "movie," but I'm not a big fan of this type of.. experience. Like the kind of experience that is about roughly 50% cut scene sequences accompanied by rather hum-drum gameplay that has been done better (for years) in many other 3rd person shooting games. That isn't exactly my idea of entertainment value. You can throw in as many Noland North's and quirky dialogue as you want to, but the structure of the opening to the accompanying epilogue to the prison escape to the actual beginning of the actual game are so jarringly slow that I nearly lost interest quite early on. Mostly because I couldn't just hit fast-forward on my remote. This exclusive (or was anyway) Playstation 4 title is hard capped rather disappointingly at 30 fps, with some dips to be expected during intense on-screen action. Motion blur is used to cover up what are obvious flaws with the framerate, but the aiming doesn't feel right to me. Even after the first hour I had to double check the box to make sure I wasn't accidentally playing Uncharted 1 on Playstation 3. The actual movement, camera speed and mobility of Nathan on-screen also feels like steering a donkey with a carrot on a stick down a dirt road. I just don't like how slow the game feels. The framerate being so low causes a lot of fun sequences to be compromised in terms of fluidity. Climbing in particular feels cumbersome, tedious and boring due to no real stakes. If I wanted to look at Nathan climbing animations, I'd just take the day off and watch people climb a rock wall. So what if they added a grappling hook? Half the time you're hiding behind a box picking off enemies as they stupidly poke their heads up from cover. Neil Druckmann's contributions like having a female character beat the crap out of Nathan for instance, were strange additions to be sure. Not unlike a brother that had never been mentioned until this point. I get being a poor director and having a fetish for women beating you up Drukmann, but this is very inconsistent. This "ick" inducing female character doesn't really have much of a motivation for being an antagonist and she's not playing some sort of femme fatale character. It's sort of vaguely implied that the main antagonist is fooling around with her, but it's not particularly touched upon. Speaking of the main villain.. I forgot his name. In either case, I don't like Nadine's inclusion. She seems out of place in the franchise and her "power level" seems forced and makes no sense. Sure, she is both lighter and faster, but also smaller in frame. Though she may be trained in some sort of martial art, toe-to-toe she would lose to Nathan Drake in any scenario. This leads to a "lose in the cutscene" moment early on, that I just don't buy. Sorry Neil, I don't buy your fantasy. I got to Madagascar and took a break from the supposed "game" because it was a shootout every ten minutes followed by a cutscene and load screens disguised as characters talking. The irony of course is that even something like the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot (though certainly linear and smaller) was the same derivative and streamlined game play for the most part. That predates this title by three years (more if you factor in development time). Nathan's finale foray is wholly uninteresting from a gameplay standpoint and adds nothing new to the series. At the very least, the main protagonist in the Tomb Raider title was pretty to look at.. characters in this game are all kind of boring or ugly. God forbid anyone in this game be "sexy" or attractive like Chloe from Uncharted 2, who used her looks to take advantage of situations. Can't have that in our serious Naughty Dog game! Many of the latter PS4 third-person action games are polished, this one in particular is borderline gorgeous, with stunning vistas, elaborate floral, winding fauna, large locales, varied locales, but they're mechanically very shallow. They subtracted many things from previous entries that they didn't feel like fixing or refining and the writing has been hit particularly hard in terms of quality. They could've added better AI instead of spending the budget on sparkly shiny things or some puzzles not designed for toddlers while they were at it too. In the end, it offers nothing substantial or compelling to the franchise. The story is extremely generic, it has your usual double-crosses or occasional surprises that can be seen coming a mile away, but it's not NIER. There is nobody to be invested in. I enjoyed most of the Uncharted franchise and you can say all you want about the original being kind of mediocre, but at least you can play through it and see what they were going for. For all it's bells and whistles, Naughty dog pushed the fidelity really high but forgot about everything else. It's a very overrated title. Seems like a dour way to end a series.

Kena, to be perfectly fair, has all the working parts to be considered a good or even solid game. The problem is in it's execution, ideas, and strangely vicious, for what looks like a children's computer animated cartoon, difficulty curve that will have you absolutely pulling out your hair in frustration not too soon after the opening. Let's start off with things I liked though. Kena is such a mix of ethnic designs and races that it's hard to be offended by her general appearance. She is well-designed and makes sense in the world, but you could easily mistake her for a "Korra" looking character (as in Korra from the animated Avatar show Korra) and yes, I do think they look similar, but lighter in skin tone. I can understand why she looks the way she looks for PR reasons per se. The general progression is pretty good with each new acquired ability opening up areas with pseudo puzzle platforming to complete. These are not particularly hard, but they can take a few tries to get right. What I didn't like? Everything else. The animation for Kora and her movement in general feel stiff. Her jump doesn't feel right, it has no arc, it's straight vertical, which means you may have to retry jumps many times even if it initially looks like you started your jump close enough to make it to another platform. The combat is also just not very good. It's just too hard- mostly for how clunky it is. Enemy attack animations in combat don't feel fluid, attacks magnetically pull you towards enemies, which feels very unnatural, and the camera is outrageously bad at following the action. Simple enemies ramp up in difficulty very soon after the tutorial fight and some of the bosses are just ridiculous because they give you such a slim window of actually inflicting damage. There is a mini boss very early on that is difficult mainly due to the fact that you can't tell if your causing damage to him or not. I have no idea what they were thinking outside of "cute Disney cartoon aesthetic meets new God of War 2018 combat with a worse camera." Many areas are also infuriating because of how poorly they are laid out or over cluttered by foliage. It's a huge problem when in the very first area opening area (collecting Rot creatures) you'll get confused as to where you've already been due to the ridiculous amount of foliage. The maps for most areas are disgustingly linear, but it's even more upsetting to go off the beaten path only to find a cosmetic hat for your googly eye eggplant creatures and nothing else. It'd be like if in Ocarina of time, 9-out-10 of every chest you opened had a different pair of shoes you could pointlessly equip on Link. It's astronomically pointless and unrewarding to explore at all in Kena- just stay on the straight and narrow path. The music is very.. schmaltzy? Generic? It's going for that "pull on your heart strings" almost kitschy vibe that I just don't care for. They also introduce some pretty hilarious stereotypes like an honest to god interracial same-sex couple who live in the woods and both chop wood. It was so hilarious that I was surprised they weren't wearing plaid long-sleeve shirts and jeans when they finally get introduced. Also, all of the characters (besides Kena) are already dead. So you really don't have anyone to interact with either aside from the eggplant creatures who are less cute than I believe the art director believed they were going to be. I don't recall any merchandise selling them after the game came out either. It's fine for what it is, but with so many other games on the market that outdo everything it does on a mechanical level I just can't see a reason to support it. It also goes about establishing this vague east Asian countryside with all the amenities, but because it was made by committee it has to include a bunch of characters that don't mesh at all with the "culture" they're imitating. The main villain in particular feels like he is part of a different story and videogame. He is so stereotypically evil, but his reasons are so shallow that I couldn't believe my prediction (within the first five minutes of the game) for why he became the villain was 100% accurate. "Bridge of Spirits," is pretty and shallow, featuring a fair amount of frustration from doing fighting segments over and over again or doing puzzles that are so tedious they almost feel like padding. Maybe if they could've concentrated on one aspect they wanted to do really well it might've been a better experience. In the end it's another release from an amateur developer trying to carry too many dishes to the table at once, trips over a snag on the rug, and everything comes smashing down all over the floor. A C- with a D+ for the "multiculturalism" and lgbt pandering.

Ori's first installment was certainly quite entertaining with nice solid gameplay, some fun difficulty curves, highly satisfying level desing and equally rewarding exploration. Between juggling a heartfelt story, some decent twists and creating a very smooth control scheme that felt intuitive and natural, you could say it set a bit of a high bar for any sequel. This is unfortunate, because story-wise Ori didn't really need a sequel. I found Will of the Wisps to be rather grossly disproportionate in having a lot of the tropes that have utterly ruined newer platformers like bonus trial levels, mini-quests, multiple random NPC's to buy items from now and a whole host of static characters that don't really serve any purpose other than to talk at Ori whenever the player makes progress. It's all pretty formulaic from area to area, but the one thing that drove me insane and caused me to just quite entirely was the map design. I hate it. Its extremely tedious, a lot of the bright particle effects hide things that would be clearly visible and you end up switching between too many power ups throughout that it starts to become a little overwhelming. I liked the originals more streamlined approach- adding multiple abilities that all have to swapped out to the face buttons on a controller is annoying, and hasn't been relevant since Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64. I personally don't enjoy the RPG elements and random upgrades to pointless side-grade abilities that do virtually nothing but increase or decrease things in percentages. Adding all these dumb sub-quests clutters up your map screen for one, and also detract from the overall point of what you're even doing. I personally just kept getting lost or stuck, sometimes after hours of totally smooth progression, but then these new boss fights are really something else too, they are much too challenging or cause you to develop the typical tank hit points strategies to overcome what are kind of slogs to get through for a regular player. The areas needed more bread-crumbing in terms of details to help guide players a bit better or at least give them better directions. Its nice to have such a big map, but if you don't want to go anywhere or dread having to maneuver back, its obnoxious and you can tell its not designed well. The new abilities were just really exhausting to swap in or out as needed, or how about the fact that you have to buy one of the few abilities to let you break floors? That's ridiculous because you wouldn't remember what it's called unless you'd played the original game recently. Who is going to know exactly what that does unless the game tells you? As sequels go, its okay, but not nearly as good as the original and the general plot is meandering for most of your play time. I hate when they make a sequel to a good title, and it just ends up being a stuffed turkey instead.

Its okay. Its not terrible or anything, but it is quite disappointing unless you are absolutely brand new to the series. Soundtrack? Pretty bog standard. Gameplay? Well its most of what people like about the games, even I think its fairly slick now as it controls rather flawlessly via a mouse and keyboard (though some button placements are a little odd). It reminds me a lot of Tools of Destruction, especially because the opening is a huge set-piece that shows off the engine, and a lot of the effects, but it slows to a snails pace fairly soon after that bombastic intro. A lot of the newer Ratchet & Clank games have had this issue because quite frankly we aren't ever going to get the original trio of titles again. The formula just isn't there anymore inside of these games. So you end up with a lot of pretty visuals, some cornball dialogue, and a lot of cutscenes that sort of impact the overall world-building by being so schizophrenic in terms of pacing that you don't really want to chill out or explore anything as the narrative is just pushing you to the next set-piece or action sequence. My biggest gripe is the colors are ridiculous. A lot of very bright neon greens, purples and some of the effects kind of make stuff difficult to actually see what's going on in particularly busy segments. This title has a lot in common with a Crack in time in terms of its narrative flow, but that is just a huge disservice to the evolution the series needs to survive- its not there. Crack in time was literally my last Ratchet & Clank title that I bothered trying to play through and it became sort of dull after the first hour or so. That's pretty crazy to me, since that came out 14 years ago. That's how little these games have changed to be quite honest. Though I do like the addition of a female Lombax character (again, even though their already was one and they just sort of wrote her out of the plot for no reason several times), I think Rivet should've just got her own game. The fact that they don't want to really explore new territory or that stuff is basically just recycled wholesale from the older games (like entire levels passed off as homages instead of the recycled maps that they are) tells you all you really need to know about the development team behind the series now. Personally, its perfectly fun, its nothing amazing and it might even be the end of the series for a while, but that's alright. We still have the originals, and a couple of the PS3 titles are certainly worth checking out. Its just sort of a shame that this newer series doesn't really share the same passion or quality writing the older series had. Performance-wise I really didn't have issues.. which was shocking. I got about 60 fps or more with a few dips below 60 with everything set to very high preset alongside Ray tracing set to all very high/ high settings. The game looks good with Ray tracing, but not good enough for the performance penalty. I'm running a 2080ti, and a 11900k with some decently overclocked 32GB of Patriot DDR4 RAM and didn't run into stutter outside of one or two instances during the "rift" jumping sequence near the beginning of the game. Considering how often Sony articles seem to paint these games as "only being possible" on their hardware, its interesting that we got a port that doesn't really have any issues or limitations based on the hardware it was made for. Ironically, I'm running the game on an NVMe SSD, which is probably 2 or even 3 times faster than the Playstation 5's SSD. I think its worth trying, but if you're a fan of the older series I would wait for this to go on sale later on down the road before picking it up.

A serviceable retro inspired shooter, whatever that means anymore, but lacking in gameplay depth and solid shooting mechanics. Its not a poor man's Prodeus, but one is certainly a bit more robust than the other, even if it was emulating the success of Doom 2016 moreso than the Warhammer license. Personally, I can understand why Warhammer 40k fans would enjoy something like this given the mostly lackluster action games in this franchise, but that's no excuse to allow something that's so mediocre slip by without some constructive criticism. For the most part it sort of just feels like an amalgamation of Nightmare Reaper, Prodeus, Cultic, HROT, and Dusk. Which by the way, are all actually pretty solid throwback shooters with decent ideas or slight twists on the formula. I'd place Boltgun on more of the Hedon level of action shooters in the fact that the map design is very bland, or even poor in some areas, and the actual mechanics are very barebones or even kind of below average given what else has come out before and since. If you liked Quake 2, but wanted them to mod it with Warhammer textures for most of the enemies, then you'l probably enjoy Boltgun, but you'll get about the same amount of replay value out it's single player.

its not as if Metroid is out of ideas, its just getting very good at reincorporating the same old ones to suit a narrative that is frankly just getting more embarrassing as time goes by and each subsequent post-Other-M title comes out. Is Samus just a legacy character now? Was their really enough there after all these years to continue writing a plot for her in these action games? As convoluted as most, if not all of them are, I'd dare say it may be time to let this character retire. Gone are the days of merry, even carefree adventuring with occasional puzzle elements like the Metroid Prime games, instead we get an actual action game based more off the weird pseudo-remake of Metroid 2 from the original Gameboy. The Gameboy, in all its black and white glory was incredibly limited, but at the time they made do with what they had. It turns out, some of the simplest elements from the Metroid II - Return of Samus original stick out in my mind a whole lot more than the things they added to elongate a rather short affair in the remake on the Nintendo DS. Color is always a good addition, but some of the other things are kind of irritating. Manually aiming is cool, but finicky and the original control scheme going back to the Gameboy Advance series was intuitive enough. Desiring more complexity for no reason isn't exactly the best goal for a Metroid title when so much that works for the series is KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. Metroid Dread, sounding more like a black metal band than a proper sequel to any Metroid game in general, is one of the more bizarre and genuinely bland experiences I've had with the series. From the opening cutscene I think something got lost in translation, because nobody has been playing the Metroid Fusion timeline nor was anyone particularly attached to that timeline either. In short, the intro is terrible and makes the Galaxy that Samus roams rather small and inconsequential. Everything is Chozo now. Everything is connected to metroid or metroid DNA or metroid this and metroid that. Its silly, its been done to death. Its just recycling older and better ideas to cram into your tired narrative, as mentioned above. The game play is tedious. I have no other real word for it. I suppose if you were really hoping that Samus Aran would become Megaman overnight, then I guess you got your wish, but I don't like Megaman games. I kind of enjoyed that Super Metroid game on the Super Nintendo. Having all of these new features slapped onto Mrs. Metroid's move-set is exhausting. Mostly due to the fact that the analog stick is required for everything now, which is so foreign of a concept to me in a Metroid game that I just still can't understand why its so necessary. The parrying is silly, the power ups all end up being the same or with a slight twist, but they are only exclusive to this one game, and will I'm sure strangely disappear when the next sequel comes out. Lets talk about the bots. No, I don't mean the bots on metacritic, I mean the robot adversaries in this game that are copy-pasted with all of your abilities that all have to be beaten the exact same way, and all feature the same gameplay loop up until the end of the game. The EMMI or EMMI'S, are the same robot thing that pursue Samus in order to give you a big hug and then want to either inject you with something or steal your virginity. Its tough to tell because the screen fades to black. You can QTE them away, but the timing window to stop them and escape is rather short. These are flat out the most boring element about this game. its actually kind of sad that this was the best they could come up with while recycling boss encounters from even older games for no real reason. As far as I'm concerned, this game ends on the most ridiculous premise ever. Samus is now some sort of Jesus figure with the blood of the metroids or something blah, blah, blah. Its garbage. This series is over. What else can you even do now besides remake the older games?

I just can't for the life of me understand why they even bothered making a sequel to the original Plague tale. They literally ran out of time when it came to the end in that first one and had to compartmentalize most of the last thirty percent of the game's plot. Its actually really embarrassing that developers learned nothing about the weakest parts from the first Amecia Del Rune sans Hugo outing they had before. Writing is atrocious, practically baffling or essentially retcons certain portions of the plot from the first game to tie into this one. Literally the worst kind of sequel is the one that has to remove good things in the story from the first part just to attempt to expand the story in its second act. As if all that wasn't bad enough, the gameplay is untouched, almost just as banal as before. Amecia is older, yet somehow less attractive than she was just a few months ago if we're going off any sort of consistent time frame here. How long have they been riding on that wagon we saw them on at the end of the first game? The whole opening sequence is just not enthralling in the slightest, its probably the worst re-introduction they could've done for these main characters since the original had this dark tone set right at the beginning. Here its obvious that the plot has layers of McGuffins added even though the storyline had essentially been completed and the ratboy disease had been snuffed out. The stealth gameplay is just as shallow as the first time around. The inventory system isn't really much better. The action is absolutely pathetic, the dialogue is unbearable to hear in english, the french accents are gone now, the music is just overly emotional and visually I cannot understand why the performance took such a huge dip just for a few extra flora fauna. Sure, games can sound, look, and be pretty, but what really does this second Plague tale game have to offer us in terms of characters or story? There is just no depth here, its all surface level stuff with no real originality or if it had any at all it was likely left in the first game. Here we have a forced narrative so that we can basically just have the same thing happen again, only this time you don't get to fight the pope with giant rat tornadoes.

Fatal Frame, as well as the absolute banger of a sequel are literally two of my favorite exclusives for the original Playstation 2, so it goes without saying that I'm actually more ticked off that someone keeps locking these games onto consoles that I literally do not want to have to track down for large sums of money. The "Wii U" is like the epitome of a console that I don't want to track down to play the ten or some amazing games that came out on it, which is unfortunate because this Fatal Frame game I've heard was pretty decent. Maybe not as decent as two or three, but generally pretty good which is super important when it comes to Fatal Frame games anyway as they are like the last bastion of a consistently not terrible franchise. In this case however, I really just don't want to spend the money on a cut-down version for PC. Initially, I had played the first ten minutes of "Maiden of Black Water," and genuinely felt a chuckle coming on multiple times. First things first, it just didn't really feel like much a "Fatal Frame" game from the outset. I know that sounds sort of vague, but what I'm saying is that it wasn't causing any hairs to raise on my neck, something the original two frequently still do even now that I'm well into my mid 30's and have literally no fear of actual ghosts of any kind. So perhaps I'll come back to it one day, but after reading about some of the stuff I have to mod back into it, I was slightly annoyed. Likely, these sort of censorship decisions are made to appeal to certain markets, or because someone doesn't want to get in trouble with a "certain" vocal minority audience in North America. Personally I'm just a purist, and would really rather just emulate the darn original on the Wii U or something instead someday. For now, I still have the entire original trilogy to play through on Playstation 2, so hopefully someday they release a really good collection on ONE console or something or maybe we'll get a good PC port of the older games... haha... I'm kidding of course. Nobody would ever do that.

This is an unfathomably terrible game, both in terms of its scope, writing, narrative, characters and general gameplay. Built on the same engine that ran (most) of the newer "Tomb Raider" reboots, you instantly see the limitations of such an engine when it comes to combat and artificial intelligence a.k.a. their isn't any intelligence nor well-designed combat. The frenetic introduction which has players diving into 30 seconds to a few minutes of random characters flailing around with attacks, dodging, and being essentially impervious until a slight ramping up in difficulty when you switch over to Black widow's little semi boss fight. The whole ordeal ends (even begins) with an obvious evil scientist subplot, and how the whole thing was obviously a ploy to make the Avengers look bad so the bad guy could do his real plan and... blah, blah, blah, blah... where have we heard this same plot before? "Kuh-mala-Khan" is literally the last thing I'd want to forced to play as for an entire single-player game, yet here I am, forced to sit through awful, awful dialogue and voice-work that would make fans of the movies embarrassed. This chick is just not likeable, in fact I hated her immediately after I realized what a freaking weirdo she was and how loads of her written dialogue made her sound like some sort of spaz-tastic idiot who has no idea what is happening around her at any given time. I hate Kammalala-kong. I have no interest in her zero-stakes entry level adventure story that occasionally or eventually allows me to play as the rest of the Avengers. That's not a good way to structure your game whatsoever. From what I can tell, the game is a bit of a mess, a mixed bag and the performance is pretty awful for seemingly no good reason, but the foundation engine was always prone to being a buggy unoptimized piece of crap that was only ever fixed by driver updates, or (not unlike "Rise of the Tomb Raider) patches from the developer years after the initial release that finally fixed major problems. Here its fairly inexcusable because their is no ray-tracing, it looks worse visually than games like "Control" or even "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," a game using the exact same engine. Several times I was forced to reload checkpoints because audio or scripting would break entirely, making it impossible to move forward, or impossible to not hear two characters suddenly talking over each other at the same time or entirely devoid of dialogue audio. I think this game ****, even after the first 45 minutes I don't think I could possibly stand playing an even more cut down version of a nu-Tomb Raider game. Whatever they were going for seems to be more multiplayer orientated, but they could've at least attempted a decent plot here for any of the single-player. The combat is dull and oversimplified. The visuals aren't worth writing home about, and the main character (who is utterly obnoxious) literally **** to look at or hear. Not really sure what they were trying to accomplish by making players hate the game.

Its a worthy concept, and at least an interesting twist on the RPG format, but dodging out of the way of musical combo "blocks" over a trippy guitar hero-esque rolling music sheet isn't exactly up to the sheer breadth and overall better quality writing on offer in other more unique indie Action/ Turn-based RPG's released within the last few years. Undertale is still a crowning achievement simply because it does a lot with very little, Everhood feels like the inverse is happening- a larger team of developers purposely added flourishes of visuals in contrast with a minimalistic approach to everything else. Even the animations aren't particularly that interesting during fights, so even if the characters designs are rather creative and charming, they are easily forgotten when compared to the soundtracks they just happen to accompany. Everhood is kind of one concept stretched a little too thin, and with its story being so barebones it has to fall back hard on its one gimmick which isn't really that well made to begin with. The note-dodging unto itself is a little odd on the timing, which might turn some people off who are just looking for a fun alternate roleplaying experience. Otherwise its "quirky," and that's very in right now, which is kind of a shame since the end of game ends up being kind of a pretentious cavalcade of ideas thrown in right at the last second and sort of detract from the initially interesting introduction.

I have one-hundred hours in "Tomb Raider: This time we'll get it right," also known as the 2013 reboot to the ill-fated, but coincidentally long running Tomb Raider franchise starring the titular, or somewhat below average titular, Lara Croft. Now that many hours tells you two things, A. I benchmarked this game a lot, and B. Probably spent time just visually enjoying the game. Even over ten years later, it is a very pretty game, not perfect around every edge, asset or character render or facial animation, but its decidedly very pretty to look at. It also has a very professional soundtrack, some pretty hilarious voice acting that is functional, but perhaps doesn't quite line up with the low quality writing. In this pre-Lara, pre-adventure that has nothing to do with other third-person action games at the time, nor is it some kind of bizarre fetish murder simulator with gruesome male (as well as female) death sequences, you explore the origins of Lara Croft as a character or something. I don't remember. The story is all over the place, inconsequential, bad, and is some sort of TV's "Lost" meets the "Uncharted" game series meets "Indiana Jones, but just "Temple of Doom" and theirs also something in there about an ancient Japanese sorceress or whatever. Me personally? I couldn't tell you one thing that happens in the story. Some characters show up, sometimes they aren't there, Lara's looking for her girlfriend probably, theirs like two actual boss fights, theirs a boss fight that isn't even a major character that's reduced to a quick-time event twenty minutes into the game and I guess- oh- I guess their are some "tombs" to walk around or discover. The Tomb raider series is pretty old, so its not like people didn't see the eventual homogenization of their beloved dear schmoopsy-poo Lara Croft being turned into whatever fried food equivalent that sold well before everyone's doctor started to warn them about potential health complications from eating said particular fried food. The point is that it was always going to attempt to be mainstream, I just never thought a mainstream game would get away with obvious Ryona scenes, references to "Faster, **** Kill! Kill!," and attempts to portray itself as deeply serious in every unbelievably awful scene where Lara "cardboard cutout" Croft can speak to some bland minor character we know nothing about for five minutes about where the plot is going because we sure as heck as the audience don't know and theirs no real reason to care either. The fact that so much of the game is reliant on these stupidly obvious, repetitive and insultingly thick confrontations ala third-person shooter accompanied by all manner of chest-high walls, should tell you everything that was on the developers mind's when they crafting this nonsense. Lara, a 130 l.b. (going off Anniversary editions established weight) five foot six inch scrawny looking white girl upper body can magically derive the strength to pull a bow string so far back, that it delivers enough force for the arrow to literally pierce a human skull all the way through. Which is comical in this game no matter how many times I see it, but that doesn't change how utterly ridiculous it is. So its not surprising that combat is a chore against brainless combatants (all men) who are murdered for so much as farting or belching in Lara's general direction, whose motivations are so vague they could actually be extremely aggressive salesmen and Lara would still create an excuse to blow their kneecaps off. Only four weapons are available on an Island somehow armed to the teeth with military grade rifles, pistols, explosives, Molotov ****, sub-machines guns, and lets not forget gun turrets. Can't have a good action set piece without a large gun turret shooting at your protagonist. So is Lara Croft John Rambo? It would make a lot of sense. Ultimately the things that happen in "Lara Croft Murder adventures: Tombs are only the beginning" merely happen because the writers need an action set piece to push the story forward. Lara falls at the beginning of the game onto a particularly pointy piece of metal, its a silly sequence where you must mash a contextual button prompt in order to pull a long rusty steel rebar out of her pelvic region (if only most girls were this easy). It bares mention that she seeks no medical aid after dislodging the object, and takes a little swim in "godknowswhat" jungle water with no repercussions. Ironically, she later is "injured" after this wound FINALLY gets worse, and she has to cauterize it, a scene the game shy's away from showing even with fairly realistic violence against men by firearm or bow and arrow. When you boil it down, Tomb Raider 2013 is a desperate derivative. Its fundamentally pointless. It lacks a narrative structure that cannot progress without some elaborate set piece from an action movie. In summary, it represents everything wrong with modern videogames.

I will never in a million years understand why people keep purchasing every "edition," iteration or re-release of Skyrim. Its functionally been the same game for well over a decade, and even with mods, they will never fix the broken quests, broken followers, broken spells, or broken stealth. They will never fix the bad voice acting, the giant empty world, the fast travel system that reduces the size of the world to whatever you feel like exploring, the extremely repetitive dungeons, or the overwhelmingly pointless side-quests. If you actually pay for another release of Skyrim, years after the original, then you might be clinically insane or worse.. an addict. Skyrim has never really functioned correctly, the opening tutorial level is quite indicative of that, and you can see the edges of bad scripting literally falling apart at the seems whenever you push the limitations of the engine. An engine by the way that was developed BY BETHESDA for their new game. Skyrim is dumbed down in every way imaginable, no more crazy spells, the leveling system ****, magic is terrible unless you muster up the courage to finish the sub-par mages guild knockoff questline (which isn't fun at all) and all the optional stuff in order to get the wizards there to sell you the good stuff. The worst part is the fact that every character build gets pidgeon-holed into stupid stealth archer thievery with one-handed perks so you can knock out late game enemies with huge health pools with a crafty thwack on the back before they so much as smell you. Its idiotic to think that players really have a choice in what they DO with their characters when canonically the game assumes you're going to pick Nord, you're going to fight for the stormcloaks, when in reality both sides of the civil war for Skyrim have no effect on the overall story, and have no effect on the landscape either. Its all about being the "dragonborne" and endless fetch quests rather than a good story or maybe a fleshed out combat system. The game literally makes it impossible not to focus on some skills too, like how blacksmithing, alchemy and enchanting end up being the only skills worth mastering alongside whatever else you're doing. This isn't even taking into account how stupid the programming is for enemies, who are easily glitched out by their poor pathfinding, can be kited to death with spells, can be shot at with arrows from places they could never reach or are just generally uninteresting to fight. Most dungeons have terrible loot (yes I went there) that's more often than not better to disenchant or sell than to actually use. Most of it won't even be geared towards a non-light armor build for mages anyway. So you get stuck carting around loads of crap, that all looks the same in menus because the opted for a plain black, slightly translucent background with a eye-burningly white font IN EVERY MENU. The user interface is terrible, and only shows just how many corners were cut for this consol-ized title. I don't really even know what the "special edition" does differently. The three DLC's aren't even that interesting, but I suppose you can get a vampire girlfriend in one of them after a boring dungeon crawl that looks virtually identical the entire way through and very purple. Otherwise they're all boring and only highlight just how little actual content is in the game. The base game is terrible, the DLC's aren't really that expansive and don't add onto the original- they just distract you from how short the main story questline is. Who knows when people will finally figure out that Morrowind was the only good Elder Scrolls game? Could be by the time they remaster Skyrim. The mods or the highjacked content also known as "creation club" (yes mods that can be purchased even though the longevity of Skryim has always been sustained by the huge community of FREE modders) is mostly okay, but who cares about fishing in Skyrim? Like who cares about that? The hitchhiking backpacks only prove that their is too much junk just hanging around in Skyrim that is only there for the player to amass. I didn't really care for any of it and I don't bother playing with mods because it doesn't make the game better, it just alters how terrible things in it actually look. Skyrim is ancient, its game play is archaic, its RPG aspects are streamlined and it decidedly poison. It has permanently injured the Western RPG market, it has homogenized and given rise to more homogenization over time that has seeped into every facet of popular video games. Stop buying this crap. Its FUS RO DUMB.

Yes.. Indeed! Its finally here, the third and final installment (hopefully) in the "Dark Souls" duology turned trilogy. Is it everything we hoped for? Probably not, so lets pick this thing apart until theirs nothing left but vague item explanations. I enjoyed the original Demon's Souls as well as Dark Souls back in the day, that "day" being 10 years ago and nearly 5 years before its final send-off title. Enjoyment was uneven at best, and downright infuriating making mistakes or miss-timing swings, or repostes, or quite simply vanishing into the floor only to die a few seconds later. I certainly had my share of all of these things in Dark Souls 3, but it is certainly more broken than the original game (even at 60 frames per second). Dark Souls 3 is about as "finished" as the original Dark Souls was after Lost Izalith, and many, many, many, many areas can be spotted with unfinished textures, weird black voids, stupid assets blocking off areas or my favorite- paths that seem to lead to absolutely nowhere- because they had to cut off huge chunks of areas. Whole areas are rife with these issues, which is fairly bewildering seeing as this is FromSoft's 5th entree in this particularly series, with about a dozen other King's Field games they apparently didn't ACTUALLY learn anything from while designing. Whether this is because the "B" team worked on Dark Souls 3 or not, its incredibly disconcerting. Hitboxes are the worst they've been since Dark Souls 2, enemies have zero artificial intelligence and quite simply rubberband to the player until falling comedically to their death or being outran to the nearest bonfire to reset their positioning. In short, nothing has changed since the original Dark Souls. Enemies are the biggest offense, as they aren't just faster than they've ever been, but bafflingly sometimes emit NO animation tells that they're actually attacking you, or worse are the same attack animations from an older game, but sped up to create some kind of challenge. Weapons? Recycled. Attack animatons for weapons? Recycled. How they manage to create anything new in this series is actually pretty surprising these days. Status ailments are on the menu all throughout, with special mention to those bizarre maggot monsters that instantly glue themselves to the player and cause persisting BLEED damage until you run out of estus, go back to a bonfire, or heal yourself with some red weed that you shove into your face. Random number generation pretty much denies you from being able to just find practical and useful items on enemies you kill, another very dated concept when any speedrunner inevitably realizes none of the enemies are worth wasting your time attacking, so you end up farming for specific items or buying up a handful of items at a time at a shopkeeper. NPC's and their sub-sub-quests (or requests) are just as pointless as they were in the original Dark Souls, but now they all collectively sit around Firelink Shrine, a boring, colorless, grey-black mess of tunnels with no distiguishing features. So have fun wandering down the same boring hallway only to accidentally head back upstairs and miss whatever NPC you didn't know was actually below Andre and the little old lady in the chair. The running theme in Dark Souls 3 appears to be very repetitive and dull level designs that are actually very compact, but difficult to navigate due to their re-used color palette's or textures. FromSoft- just because you rename everything or re-arrange items I've seen a million times, doesn't mean you've made a sequel. If anything Dark Souls 3 is like an expansion pack. Bosses all seem really awful early on, especially the giant tree, who has perplexing and odd hitboxes on his only weakpoints for no discernable reason. I'm tempted to not even call the first few bosses actual "boss fights" as they are more like supercharged regular enemies. This is kind of hilarious because the initial mob who turns into a giant black goo snake monster is actually MORE LETHAL than Vordt of the Boreal Valley. It wasn't until I got to the catacombs that I really started to wonder if the game was actually broken. IF you didn't take a big bonk club or something similar with you to the catacombs, then I'm very sorry since now you'll have to deal with extremely tough, fast-moving, unlimited stamina, bleed status effect attacking skeletons that are so agile you might never be able to hit them before they kill you. Of course I'm referring to the ninja skeletons, who are bizarrely dangerous compared to the actual boss in Catacombs of Carthus. Do you see a pattern here? The bosses in Dark Souls 3 are not hard. A lot them go down to fire-applied weapons or lightning imbued weapons, or just a jack hammer of a strength weapon to the side of the skull, and its very satisfying, but what makes Dark Souls 3 actually hard is the broken, terrible, and ridiculous level design and item placement. That's it.

I'm not sure if father time will be too lenient on something like "Doom 2016" seeing as its barely been 7 years and it already feels pretty old hat to revisit after the first playthrough shortly after its release. I can stare at my time played in disbelief all I want, but there it is saying I've merely played 20 hours over the course of my sixty dollar purchase way back when. This is offensively SHORT compared to the deafening and possibly disturbing amount of hours I've dumped into Shadow Warrior 2, Quake, Quake 2, Duke Nukem and the original 1993 Doom individually. So was it just me? Did everyone think this game was amazing when it first came out? I mean it had a multiplayer mode that died shortly after release, and the campaign was mostly good till you got so beefed up and weapon upgraded that the entire last act felt more like a waltz through the park than a seige upon the forces of Hell. That story too was a huge issue. Seeing as it basically has a dumb, pointless and what I suppose the developers might call "cheeky" "locking you in a room while a character talks at you" cutscene segments, I get the feeling they were trying to tell a serious story, realized this was "Doom" and decided to just frame it as ironic instead. Yeah guys, we get it you spent a lot of money on all these voice actors and wrote a lot of dialogue, but strangely people are still playing the wibbly-wobbly cardboard cut-out enemy version of Doom with mods without any concerns for voice actors or their contracts. I genuinely detest the soundtrack throughout considering its essentially blaring during every excursion or mini arena duke out and generally lacks a lot of restraint besides being pretty entertaining to listen to outside of game play. Its so overbearing at times that I couldn't focus on what was happening, and given how a lot of the smaller enemies can literally slide into Doom guy from a few feet away or don't always telegraph their attacks, can lead to some frustrating sections. Even today, after several playthroughs I don't remember anything about the game or most of the levels. Coincendentally the opening is memorable if only for the first few key cards attached to random lifeless appendages, but after that it gets kind of predictable and stale to be quite honest. Every room triggers a small skirmish, every keycard is a small puzzle to obtain, and the glory kills don't exactly do anything but take up play time and generally draw fights on longer than they needed to be. I'm glad they look amazing, because otherwise I would've just as well wished for an option in the game included by developers to just turn them off entirely. Visually pinning down "nu-doom" is kind of difficult since at times it is quite bland. I know you'll probably hate me for saying so, but "Doom 3" was clearly still referenced for the level design, and they are strikingly similar outside of the obvious availability of light in the latter as opposed to the lack of it from the former. This is perplexing since even some of the enemy designs were sort of scrambled between old and new to create a slightly characterized cartoonier 3D rendered version. The weapons are all kind of lame upon revisiting the gunfights, and merely become less interesting to use as the game goes on because by the time you have some of the giant minigun upgrades or the rocket launcher or even the double-barreled shotgun, its all you'll be using for most of the last act. Its a real that not only was "Half-life 2" filled with an entire weapon roster of bland, uninspired generic boom-boom guns, but that a game 12 years later has barely moved beyond the bland itself, only limiting grenades for some reason and leaving the rest of the action reduced to drawn out cinematic gory death animations- often closer to "QTE's" than actual game play mechanics. I think "nu-DOOM" will barely be remembered in a few more years, considering the sequel pretty much improved upon everything lacking in the first installment, but its also harder to compare it to previous installments given that is essentially the epitome of modern shooters that don't have anything to do with the fictional wars between Russians or random middle-eastern terrorists like the "Call of Duty" franchise, but if that's the case than the only game it can be compared to is "Halo" and all of the modern tripe it injected into the landscape of first-person shooters for the rest of time immortal. In the end, it was fun, but not rewarding and many of the challenges turned out to be mostly a waste of time unless you're a completionist slug who cannot live without achieving something imaginary. Its also kind of not that hard unless you play on "instant game-over sent back to first level" difficulty, which honestly doesn't sound like much fun for anyone really. It borders on "back to formula," and "disarmingly goofy" which makes its accomplishments much harder to take seriously as time goes by.

"Horizon - Complete [enough for PC users] Edition," is a game. Oh, sorry I mean a port **** lauded for being amazing by players who were only playing it coincedentally because it happened to be locked away on the Playstation 3 and 4 respectivelly. Having come out way, way back in 2017, its fairly dated and plays a lot like just about anything else that came out from the same time. It however does have a few saving graces. Being open-world, and some sort of amalgalmation of all the least bit annoying parts of the new "Tomb Raider" reboots, you do see a lot more of an action focus in Horizon. Alloy controls well, the combat system is efficient, the artificial intelligence mostly accomplishes what it set out to do, and you have loads of space to move around or plan out what you want to sans "Far Cry 3." The glowing accolades something like "Horizon - Zero Dawn" gets versus what it really deserves are difficult to truly discern at times though. The giant robot dinosaurs are well-designed and fun to fight, but are incapable of leaving their "designated areas," so to speak. This is just a limitation of the engine and the console it was developed for of course, but it does reveal some obvious cracks along the edges of a mostly pristine ornamental antique vase in terms of the mechanics. Graphically it looks fine, character animations are usually the biggest issue as scripted or auto-generated animations for dialogue look terrible, and the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired even within the context of the orchestrated cutscenes. The DLC did go about this with motion capture, and those dialogue sequences between minute or major characters look fantastic, but obviously this couldn't be done in the original game given that their are just too many side quests and NPC's to talk to. Horizon's biggest hurdle is that the game is too large. Stop me if this sounds ridiculous, but the general plot is maybe 6-8 hours long, maybe and that's only if you don't know where everything is. This leaves a huge 50+ hours of just faffing about and doing mostly pointless or derivative (even boring) sidequests that don't actually contribute much to the overall story, but do unlock some things that might make the game a bit less challenging or tedious throughout. Trouble is, the difficulty (at least one notch below Ultra hard) doesn't warrant the unbelievable size of the world or all the pointless things filled in it to just "do" for the sake of doing. Incorporating the same generic fetch quests found in RPG's, collecting XP points for upgrades, having to pick up loads of items to craft or upgrade weaponry, and looking for giant mechanical giraffes to show you parts of the map you probably won't explore unless you need something are literally not new concepts by any means. They've been done to death and add nothing to overall "experience." Why Alloy even has extra abilities that break the game or aren't learned from other characters is a total mystery to me, but this is just how open-world crafting action games are designed nowadays. I think the presentation is fairly dull, the story being decent, but not exactly nuanced in any respect, and of course its limited in the way its told to the player due to the medium its constrained on. The final boss, after the final boss is literally a random person who we only randomly hear about a couple of times in the plot. The random narration by Alloy is also pretty obnoxious. One would think an exile raised by a man from birth would've learned to have talked a little less than any average woman, but they obviously had extra voice lines recorded for some reason. Alloy isn't a good character. She is courageous, she is perfect at fighting, she never misses her bow shots, she is tough, everyone loves her immediately, she has no flaws, and every man in the game is in love with her. Its ridiculous. The original debate with her character design was extremely lame too, where they basically took a fantastically pretty woman and then changed the 3D model's face in-game to look uglier. Probably so they could get more ugly women's boyfriends to buy the game perhaps? Who knows. Women don't play videogames anyway, so I don't know who Alloy was made for. Personally, I think the game is fun in every regard except for the upgrade system, the fact that traveling to "DLC land" early can allow you to obtain the best weapons in the game (as is subsequently not hard to do at all on most difficulties), the fact that Alloy merely gets so overpowered that nothing can touch her later on, the fact that they dump salvage on you constantly, the fact that you need to pick up everything in a 10 mile radius, the fact that weapon mods are broken, the fact that the stealth armors are all broken and the collision detection is extremely wonky on many, many, many targets- including human enemies. The story is also barely there and the music is quaint, but not memorable.

I had heard a great deal of things about the latest installment of "God of War." I heard it was a departure from the original series, a vast retooling of the original mechanics to explore a more story-driven third-person action experience.. and it vastly **** compared to anything I've touched in the genre. By that I mean, compared to all other action games in the history of action games so far, God of War: Skyrim Edition is the single worst title I've ever played. This isn't because Norse of War is notoriously bad, but because its pompous. Its vain. Its overtly injecting drama into a script that didn't call for one. Its preachy, its shallow, its overall presentation has more in common with a DVD interactive menu than an actual videogame. Graphics? Who cares when you can only see in a field 72 degrees around you and are expected to somehow be able to fight multiple enemies in every direction. Granted they are stupid enemies that can be cheesed by axe throwing them to death, and you can even do this to enemies that are outside of aggro range, which is either broken or poorly programmed, but I couldn't tell you which is more hilarious. Dialogue? Who cares how well its delivered when it stinks to high heaven, when every other word out of the blue dwarf is f**k while you're talking to him about upgrading your armor. Who cares about dialogue when the worst sequence in the game is anytime you are locked into a cutscene and are unable to skip it? Who cares about dialogue when scripted events like "walking across the room while carrying a wounded boar as terribly written lines are exchanged" is less fun than buying toilet paper at store? The BOY is a terrible, terrible, awful, hideous, stupid, meandering, and woefully misused character. He is most of the reason why I stopped playing. With extremely amazing lines like, "CAN WE GO NOW," or "I BET THIS IS HOW TO SOLVE THE PUZZLE IN THIS ROOM" or "WOW DAD YOU ARE BEING ATTACKED RIGHT NOW THAT'S CRAZY." Wow, what endlessly amazing superfluous and garbage-tier dialogue, which is also on repeat throughout the entire game. Enjoy traipsing through majestic landscapes that only consist of a lake the size of a puddle, a few large rooms, a boss fight (which is always obvious) and then back-tracking through the same section so the level designers can pretend that changing the coat of paint on the walls, opening some doors, or pretending extra trinkets to find are actual reasons to make you play through the same area twice. Puzzles are so dumb my dog wrote them for the game- no really- he actually works for SONY and recently did the lead character design for Alloy in the new "Horizon - Zero Dawn" game. He was hired on as a consultant, because they wanted the main character to appeal more to dogs that might enjoy being able to relate to a dog-faced woman as a lead character. Kratos is a stump of a character. I don't know what you could actually do with him in all seriousness. He is basically a self-insert mythological joke of a character, and nobody actually took him as a well meaning or sympathetic character. The old games were more about raunchy, bloody, raw fights with the occasional nudity that most 13 year olds (myself included) absolutely loved. I think they're great distractions, they don't really have a cohesive story, but who cares? They weren't really about that. This new Kratos is painted as some kind of stoic, silent and brooding old dude who can't decide if he hates his obnoxious little brat of a son or actually kind of enjoys his company. If anything at least the comedic side-kick angle has been worked to death now. All-in-all, the game is way to melodramatic, too cutscene heavy and lacks the grit, fun or nudity from the older games. The new axe gets boring after 2 hours, having to mash an extra button so your AI companion actually fires his bow was probably just developers being lazy and the camera is so bad that it caused me to stop playing after 5 hours. Difficulty doesn't feel right on any setting as "baby-mode" story is ridiculously easy, but "Give me slightly above normal" adds more health to every enemy, drawing fights out to a ridiculous degree. Three troll fights in and I honestly couldn't believe it was the exact same fight again- it was like something out of "Batman Arkham Asylum," ironically another game with a slow, boring protagonist who takes up way too much of the screen for me to see what is going on. Sorry about all the money and talent that was wasted on such a mediocre product.

For the sake of brevity and as a gesture of respect to the older audience (myself included), I think "Thief" and this sequel are pretty genre defining titles that have forever left a mark on the industry, even as that very industry seeks to undo more and more every year of what it built upon so many, many, many years ago. That all being said, these games are totally obsolete, even archaic and without outright saying anything negative to anyone SPECIFICALLY, if you enjoy them in this current year then it might be time to change your calendar and or start shopping for walkers. Some kidding aside, Thief 2 is incredibly old. Its kind of like breaking out a very old jigsaw puzzle where some of the pieces are missing chunks, or have been covered up by stains, or are just simpy missing after years of putting the puzzle together and then placing the pieces back in the box. It isn't a bad game by any means, but it will require a bit of imagination to fill in the blanks, such as the A.I. being about as intelligent as a Dumbo rat skittering about a small room with the lights switched off. Or the sound design reeking of that ancient EAX reverb that sounded like two plumbers banging on your water pipes in your basement while you were one floor above them, and don't forget about the absolutely labyrinthine levels that are deceptivally tiny, but were made difficult to navigate on purpose so as to pad out the runtime. I suppose their is also a "plot" to the Thief games, but since that was flushed down the toilet since the ill-fated 3rd installment, we can pretty much self-insert as Garrett at this point, and honestly isn't that what the original developers intended? I think so anyway. All the charm of Thief 2, very quickly fades away as soon as you realize how dull most of your objectives actually are. Your first "mission" is mostly a tutorial, but you can't even mess it up and your actual opponents a.k.a. mostly rent-a-guard's- are even less suspicious then they were in your first outing. Thief 2 has larger levels, which unfortunately totally breaks the A.I. routines, meaning they won't even do a lot of what made the original game so interesting. Gone are the days when guards would actually investigate odd noises, Garrett's tap-dancing rat shoes or torn tapestries.. instead we get guards turning on a dime back and forth on the same set path, which is about as easy to avoid as a comically thrown custard-pie. Quite simply it totally ruins the original's attempt at having knowledgeable (or at least its attempt at convincing you it was) artificial intelligence. Texture-wise its much like the original game with some modest improvements. Lighting or lack of lighting is improved with a better sense of what constitutes patches of darkness for Garrett to slowly crouch or sneak in and the dialogue is just as well written, as their is more of it to begin with between many NPC's and other characters. The music is still probably some of the best in the stealth genre with a lot of building on eerie soundscapes that builds the further you explore and loot or the nearer you get to certain areas of levels. However, its the gameplay itself that has been usurped. Its not like picking up "Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory" or "Metal Gear Solid," which are honestly just better paced then any of the Thief games could've ever hoped to have been. So in earnest, I've never gone beyond the first mission in Thief 2, the original is still pretty endearing, if not just kind of like peering into a time capsule of 1998, but the second mission in Thief 2 just completely grinds the game to a halt. This large warehouse, with coded padlock doors, and multiple entrances, and multiple objectives, and multiple enemies just irks me in a way that is well.. boring. Its boring to play and if its not compelling or interesting or isn't presenting me with new ideas? Then yes its going to be pretty darn difficult to care about progressing. Lets leave Thief as a reminder of what we strive for in stealth games, but it shouldn't be lauded in this current decade as something that can stand the test of time, otherwise we'd all still be running Windows 98 and personally I can't find a harddrive small enough to be bothered to try it anymore. Tfix, for those who have heard of it, is mostly just a way to actually play the game beyond Windows 2000, and though its a great effort in many regards- it also permanently wipes out the original engine and its intricate quirks. Old dark isn't New Dark and vice versa. Their are just some things that are more interesting the more "pure" they remain. This would be like modding "Doom" to be a more modern FPS (oh wait they already did that). HD "mods" and texture packs don't really make the games less obnoxious or finicky to traverse and they certainly don't make it look much better by today's standards. Your mileage may vary with Thief 2, but that isn't a recommendation to bother playing it either.

F.E.A.R. was an absolute classic that, at least within its own genre and series, has yet to be dethroned, but is it quite as remarkable as people remember it? I played F.E.A.R. or "First Encounter Assault Recon," -which doesn't really roll off the tongue as well as the accronym, but I digress- way back in 2006 and you can for sure bet I barely had a computer that could run it at the time. Of course over the years that issue has been made null and void, but coincedentally what was once difficult to run on older hardware has become even more difficult to run on modern hardware for various reasons. Let me just rip off the bandaid here for anyone who's still too hardheaded to admit it: F.E.A.R. is not as good as we all remember. The first hour? Pretty great, but even after multiple playthroughs the entire Armacham office is a total blur and I don't care how many times someone reminds me what the last few levels were, because I could not recall them from memory without watching a video or reading a synopsis. F.E.A.R. as a game is weak in areas that at the time we weren't too upset about. Doom 3 had come out the year before, as well as Half-life 2, the latter remaining probably the best (but not perfect) shooter from that decade, though F.E.A.R.'s first foray still collects accolades for its particular blend of combat. For one, its like May Payne, SHOGO and Half-life had a baby, but this baby also inherited every trope, cliche, and stereotype from whatever pop culture thing was relevant when it came out. Creepy ghost girls? Check. Nerdy fat slob who secretly betrays you? Check. Generic black uniformed enemies with very little variation? Check-a-roo, and lets not forget the slowmotion "effect" that was slapped onto the game because hit-scan guns from enemies were the go-to method back then and are what probably gave people the impression that the A.I. in this game was mildly intelligent. The game was always a hodge-podge of very marketable generic FPS trends and features a very lackluster line-up of weapons that feel good to shoot, but lack the inventiveness of even the heavily criticized Half-life 2 or Halo series. The levels are very linear, featuring barely any twists or turns, though they have slightly different routes, but those are just hallways that happen to meet at some other junction. As far as the game play is concerned, its great fun, or was really enjoyable at the time, but now it can be absolutely blown right through when you realize how bad the A.I. actually is and how much they CHEAT to locate you in most instances. The enemies always know where the pointman is, but they pretend they don't due to the way they're programmed to engage you. Now remember, this game occasionally gets huge compliments in the AI department and this was even after the original Halo made large maps accomplishing the very same thing years before F.E.A.R. saw the light of day. The list of dumb advantages that make the game moderately unenjoyable later are mostly just the few beefcake enemies that have huge health pools and the big robot mechs you find later. The shooty-shooty-bang-bang was always entertaining and players will often reload quicksaves just to try things a little differently or maybe optimize gunfights or even experiment, but that is the experience people enjoyed about the game. Not the story, not the "characters," not the voicemails, and certainly NOT the final boss fight (if you can even call it that). The sequels were so bad, I often wonder if they even had a good concept to begin with for any sort of overarching plot, and I'd go as far to say that the backdrop for the first game really only worked in the first game. Visually and aurally speaking, those were all knockout features in the game that really helped sell the atmosphere, though the jump scares are extremely archaic by today's standards and wore out their welcome after the first few times you happen to encounter them. The original F.E.A.R. game has a whole host of problems on newer machines, you have some graphical glitches, problems at higher frame rates, problems without V-sync on, mouse input issues that require a dinput fix, and the original EAX effects are somewhat broken even with Creative Alchemy's software "restoration" and it just kind of **** that the engine itself was so miserably proprietary (thanks Monolith- that's like every one of your titles). I know in my head how F.E.A.R. played, what it looked like, and sounded like way back when, so obviously it **** that I can't even play that version of it without weird issues. I know this comes down to subjectivity, but I think F.E.A.R. was kind of a one-off. It was a really remarkable game, not brilliant, but certainly had some of more memorable gunfights, though in my experience even the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series had more depth and more options in terms of how you could approach its combat scenarios.

An intriguing puzzle-premise buried behind a clumsy rigid horror backdrop, "Poppy Playtime," certainly has some good things going for it, but how much to differentiate itself from other recent horror title remain to be seen. The opening is fairly ambiguous, featuring a toy commercial for a sort of artificial life enhanced doll from a toy company dead set on creating extremely creepy toys that no child would ever buy. Once you jump in you arrive at a fairly dilapidated toy factory/ museum that functions like no real location ever would with a sort of backpack contraption with stretchy hands that can grab onto surface, object, connect live wires, etc. This central core to game play allows you to manipulate certain objects to solve puzzles, but as far I know, grabbing buttons to wrap your fake stretchy toy arms around comically large electric poles is not only non-sensical, but a huge waste of company resources. No wonder they shut down! Since the initial episode is rather short, and features a particularly fuzzy wuzzy toy coming after you towards the end in a somewhat contrived chase sequence, it hard to get a full picture of what this will eventually turn into- though I hope its something interesting. The general performance is a bit of a blunder though and even on a 2080ti I could see periodic framedrops even when nothing was really going on. The sound design is also a bit lacking, but the general aesthetic and music are fairly chilling.