secondpawn

What can be said about Sekiro except that it has the finest combat mechanics of any comparable game. There's also an exceptional story in a beautifully presented world.

A tale of souls and swords, eternally retold. Or is it a tale of swords and souls, eternally retold? Either way, when you remember a line from a game for nearly 3 decades, it made an impression. One of the all time greats in the genre.

System Shock: 10/10. Bioshock: 10/10. Bioshock infinite: is this a prank/10.

A fun game that pulls off everything exceptionally well, except for one thing. Being a good sequel.

Look how they massacred my boy. I don't just mean Diablo, I mean Blizzard. When Diablo 3 was announced, fans were worried that its brighter, colorful art direction might signal a deeper departure from the spirit of the first two games. The devs explained: "You see, we want everyone -- even your grandmother -- to be able to play and enjoy Diablo 3." Apparently, the possibility that my grandmother might not be interested in a gothic horror video game did not occur to them. Well. While my grandmother did not play Diablo 3, my girlfriend did. So while Diablo 3 failed at just about everything (except making Blizzard $$$), it did make for a few hours of fun co-op with the old girlfriend. And now we have Diablo 4. Apparently, this time Blizzard decided to make a game for the fans of the original instead of their grandmothers. This is a good thing. Unfortunately, Blizzard no longer appears to be able to put together a good game. There are some highs: Lilith is cool, I guess; fat druids and skinny necros are worth a laugh; and obviously a lot of talented people put a lot of work into this. Despite this, D4 is a generic, utterly forgettable open world dark fantasy that just happens to be called Diablo. The titular character doesn't even show up! The series never recovered from killing off Deckard Cain and now, despite having a notably higher level of writing than D3, the story lacks any kind of emotional impact. In summary: Who is this game for? I don't really want to play this bland dark fantasy. The worst part is, my girlfriend doesn't even want to play it either -- in that sense, somehow D4 managed to be worse than D3!

This is an utterly unfair review and I'm going to be upfront about that. As a platformer, the game is extremely good. It feels good to play. I just. cannot. for the life of me. stand. the forced meme writing in this game. It isn't even that prevalent, but still... whenever it rears its ugly head, it's peak millennial "so like we did a thing." I can't deal with it. Somehow it **** out any joy I might have from the game.

I couldn't make it through this. Look how they massacred my boy! I'm not even talking about Dragon Age. I'm talking BioWare. I'll pour one out for the homies tonight, I think.

Do you like 3D platforming, self-directed exploring, and puzzles? Do you dislike being directed where to go, prefer figuring it out on your own with little or no guidance? Are you okay with figuring out what to do but messing up a platforming step and then having to repeat the whole thing again, perhaps many times over? If you answer yes to all the above, then you might become one of those people who love recommending this very niche game to everyone and anyone. Me, I wasted $20.

Mostly an upgrade from the original game, but a few steps back as well. The new bosses are surprisingly few. The new weapons are also small in number but thankfully fun and varied, as you'd expect. The game now has difficulty options. On a few bosses I wondered whether the inclusion of easy modes reduced the amount of time the developers spent on game balance. After all, if a boss is overtuned, players can just lower the difficulty. Your "funny" sidekick is there again, providing commentary that will make you wonder if the developers think that their audience consists entirely of people incapable of putting 2 and 2 together. In the novel, Pinocchio kills the cricket. Lucky bastard. Here we can't even tell ours to shut up. The Tracker, a kind of new character, is a nice addition but largely wasted since you're helping him uncover, like, proof of smuggling and individual murder despite hundred or thousands of people dying everywhere. My man, did you see the zoo? I think we have bigger problems. Finally, Lea was a welcome character, excellently voiced. So as before, the story is quite uneven in quality. Anyway, pick it up on sale if there's ever one.

Somewhere between a 7 and an 8. A very strong entry into the genre. Exceptional weapons in this soulslike, albeit the rest of the game varies in quality from mediocre to good. The world is interesting: an advanced steampunk version of late 19th century France or Italy. Alas, no intricate From Software level design here, just functional corridors with a few shortcuts here and there. The enemy design is varied and quite unique for the genre. The gamemplay is nuanced enough to allow for player expression in both moment-to-moment gameplay and the more RPG aspects (i.e., building a character). I enjoyed being in this world. Unfortunately, too much of the game's difficulty is achieved through the liberal use of delayed attacks. That's a bit lazy, you guys. The weapons are the real highlight here. The only other comparable game would be Bloodborne (i.e., in terms of true weapon diversity, not in number but in function). A few notes on the story, which was the most uneven part of the game. It starts off quite strong. The main character and most of the supporting cast do remain fairly strong throughout the story. Unfortunately, the story falls apart as soon as we're introduced to the generic bad guy who tries his best cartoon villain impression. "And now, the stage is set," he says to no one and throws his arms back, laughing out loud, evily, at an empty room. This is camp, but played straight for some reason. In lieu of developing a personality, the "bad guy" transforms into an evil, green Humpty Dumpty. That's not a joke. You also have a mandatory "funny" sidekick who cannot be shut up, but thankfully stays quiet most of the time... except for when he expertly deflates any tension the scene might have had. When he says "you're stuck with me" it's a genuine threat. More generally, the writing (in English, obviously) is functional but at times VERY odd, like someone machine translated the script. I'd love for this team to put more effort into bringing their vision from Korean into English.

Very close to perfect, Sifu is a simple game that understands what it's about and focuses on that. There's a story there, but like the excellent Doom 2016, the story is in the background with gameplay taking center stage. This is for the best, because you've already seen this kind of "murder the henchman but forgive the bosses" plot line. Sifu is a game about mastering its combat system. That's it. The system is very good, and therefore, so is the game. For comparison, the only combat system I found as or more enjoyable was Sekiro's. The more you play, the more you'll be able to express yourself through the character's movements. The combat, at first frustratingly difficult, can lead you into a very enjoyable flow-state, a sort of expressive, interactive virtual dance. It's very rare for a game to enable this degree of self-expression, and the only serious critique I have of gameplay is that there isn't more of it.

One of my favorite people told me that this is his favorite game. Naturally, I had to play it. I'm sorry, Ed, this is decent, but not great. It's breathtakingly beautiful, sure, but beauty is superficial. And so is much of this game. The story ranges in quality from "typical Hollywood slop" to "hey, that's pretty good." There are a few highs (the old female family servant side story) and a few lows (the female archer side story), with much of it being unoffensively adequate (most of the story, really). The combat is responsive, even good, and certainly better than you'd expect in a game made for a mass audience. At some point like with all such games you can no longer ignore the fact that you're playing a checklist game. You start to think, hey, are haikus really supposed to sound this superficial? Is a black-and-white filter really channeling Kurosawa? Why not Woody Allen, that makes just as much sense. Do I really need to chase down another cute fox for a minor bonus, have another mortal duel in a stunningly-gorgeous cherry-blossom Instagram-filter lanterns-lit arena? You know, probably not.

There's a game called Prey, an immersive sim that relatively few people played. It had an expansion, Prey: Mooncrash, that nobody played. That expansion is basically Deathloop. But like, a good version of it. Inversely, if Deathloop were, you know, an actually good game, we would say it's just like a stylish version of Prey: Mooncrash. Unfortunately, Deathloop isn't a good game, which is bizarre since the same studio released both games. It's not bad either, but there's little in Deathloop to recommend it except perhaps a unique style.

Yeah it's very cool, but somehow all Persona games wear out their welcome after the first 60 hours, and this one is no different. And those 60 hours take you only about half way through the game!

If you're immune to bad stories in video games, you're in for a real treat. If not... It Takes Two was an excellent game in nearly all ways but one: the story. It had charm, yes, but some of it came across like the writers were deep in the process of reading a children's coloring book called Marriage Counseling. Then Split Fiction comes around and makes you realize, okay, yeah, maybe I was unfair to the story in It Takes Two. I just didn't realize that the studio was capable of producing this level of storytelling mediocrity. Of course, because the two-player gameplay is (almost) as good as the first game, it's still a must play for anyone interested in this kind of co-op. There's nothing quite like it out there.

Out of all the games I finished, this has to be the worst. But I did finish it. There's an interesting cast, all typical for this genre, with excellent voice acting. There are occasional great storytelling moments amidst the endless padding. The biggest issue is easily the utterly laughable villain(s). Neither interesting nor threatening, they are just there. A few interesting combat mechanics but uninteresting battles against health sponge enemies. Eventually you figure out how to break the combat entirely, which is frankly a relief, and you're free to sleepwalk through the rest of the game. Though I wouldn't recommend playing it in the first place.

Excellent in many ways, from the visuals to soundtrack to voice acting. Unfortunately mediocre in others: level design (invisible walls everywhere), buggy traversal (getting stuck on minor elevation differences, falling into invisible holes), and uneven combat difficulty/systems (from challenging to trivial). The story is another uneven aspect. The writing itself ranges from solid to excellent. The issue is coherence. There are two stories here, both quite interesting but held together with duct tape. I've no interest in spoiling the game here, but the narrative comes across like a halfhearted compromise between two people who had some superficial agreements but ultimately wanted to tell two very different stories. Something I found interesting: this game is fundamentally conservative. This is quite rare for a popular video game that isn't about shooting people. I mean conservative, or right-leaning, in the original meaning of the word: advocating for royalty, aristocracy, the established class. The "little people" in this game world, as we find out, are literally dispensable: it is only the suffering of the powerful that matters. As an aside, the user score here is strangely inflated (compare the # reviews to other popular games with devoted followings that sold better, e.g., BG3). But anyway, I am glad that the game exists and will probably pick up the next one from the studio as well.