Found the internet!50 Games, 50 Reviews.
50 Games, 50 Reviews.
Hey everyone! I'm the host of the Retro Spectives Podcast. Over the past two years, I've played 50 classic games for the Pod, reviewing and discussing each in detail. I thought I'd share (in brief) what I thought of those 50 games. Its remarkable how many of these old games have stood the test of time...and dissapointing when they haven't.
1. Doom - 8/10
What was once revolutionary and strange is now simple and elegant. Doom is fast paced, at times frantic, circle strafing, demon slaying goodness. It's a bit too easy (even on ultra violence) and the quality of maps is pretty uneven, but it's still a blast to glide through maps filling enemies full of lead.
Should I play it today? If you have any interest in the FPS genre at all, you should definitely give doom a spin.
2. Banjo Kazooie - 6/10
The collectathon to end all collectathons, Banjo Kazooie sees you go from world to world picking up every single item that moves...in order to unlock more opportunities to collect things. The tight level design houses hundreds of items without having to wander aimlessly over huge areas.
Should I play it today? If you like collecting shinies in a 3D platformer, this is one of the definitive examples of the genre. Otherwise, you might find it all a little pointless and struggle to understand the appeal.
3. Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - 8.5/10
Takes the modular platforming and acrobatic combat of Sands of Time and improves upon both - unfortunately, this was at the expense of the story. What was once a whimsical and atmospheric coming of age story has become tarred with edginess, big boobs and an emo soundtrack to match. The time twisting stuff is fun, but it lost a lot of what made the first magical.
Should I play it today? Absolutely. The gameplay is still heaps of fun, both the platforming and the combat that lets you string different moves together. Just be aware that the story and cutscenes are going to come across as ridiculous.
4. Castlevania: SOTN - 8.5/10
The first Castlevania to fully embrace Metroid’s level design structure - turns out it was a match made in heaven. The game is gorgeous to look at, has an incredible soundtrack, and is fun to explore. The combat goes from being tough to spammy to basically irrelevant as you grow stronger and stronger. A delight to play through and tour the castle, but the inverted castle ends up being a disappointment.
Should I play it today? Yep! Very fun and relaxed metroidvania. Doesn’t have the depth of something like Hollow Knight, but it's almost worth it for the aesthetics alone.
5. Red Alert 2 - 9/10
In my mind the strongest of any command and conquer game, maybe tied with C&C Generals (although that’s a very different game). It looks great, with units and even building chock full of personality. The single player campaign has lots of fun quirks to keep missions interesting. Units tend to be overpowered in one aspect but with very large drawbacks in others. The perfect single player RTS
Should I play it today? It's a pain to get working on Windows 10, but if you persevere you’ll get one of the most fun RTS campaigns ever made.
6. F-Zero GX - 7/10
Don’t let the cartoony visuals fool you - F-Zero GX is an absolutely brutal racing game. It's insanely fast, filled with risk/reward mechanics to push yourself to the absolute limit, and has zero catchup mechanics. There’s no blue shell, no rubberbanding for yourself or the AI - and if you fall off the edge of many tracks that don’t have rails in certain sections? You crash, race over.
Should I play it today? If you’re new to the racing genre, stay far away. F-Zero GX is a cold and harsh mistress. If you have plenty of experience with racing games, then it's a revelation, and will probably wind up being one of your favourites. I was new and bounced off it, but I've gained respect for it the more time that passes.
7. Ape Escape - 5/10
Sneakily catch monkeys in PS1 levels hovering in space. You end up having 8 different gadgets at your disposal which let you overcome obstacles and catch monkeys in different ways. Awful draw distance and reliance on every dualshock gimmick available (ape escape was the demo game for the analog sticks) ends up making it physically frustrating to play. The level design doesn’t lend itself to stealth nearly as well as I’d like.
Should I play it today? I don’t think so. The monkeys being cute doesn’t help the otherwise bland environments and pretty stock standard 3D platforming. I just can't get behind the control scheme either, it's gimmicky fun for a bit and then you start getting hand cramps as you slam the stick in circles to hover.
8. Silent Hill 2 - 7/10
Incredible atmosphere. Disturbing and touching story. Awful gameplay. Silent Hill 2 isn’t only scary, it's a disgusting and repulsive place, and the psychological implications of that are fascinating. Its a pity the gameplay is mediocre in the extreme - repetitive and mindless combat, and endless wandering through identical hallways to pick up items for stupid puzzles. It's particularly disappointing when you’re lost and going round in circles, and feel the razor tight tension slowly fade away.
Should I play it today? If you can put up with the gameplay, and are happy to have a walkthrough ready, the story of Silent Hill 2 is something special. If you’re after an enjoyable game overall though, you’re going to have a bad time.
9. Quake - 9.5/10
Quake today is most famous for its multiplayer, but before that its single player campaign blew everyone’s nips off. Layered level design, every enemy is projectile based or clearly telegraphs their attacks, and the grenade launcher is magnificent to work with. The environments are drab and brown, but the gameplay is absolutely top notch. Doom is great, but having a true 3D space is just more fun to bounce around in.
Should I play it today? Absolutely. Quake lacks the colours and real world locations of its build engine counterparts (blood, duke, shadow warrior) but has the best gameplay of any of them. Having no hit scanners, the joy of moving in a true 3D space, and bouncing grenades everywhere leads to a super fun FPS experience.
10. Megaman Battle Network 3 - 7.5/10
Sitting somewhere between pokemon and a deck builder, Megaman Battle Network 3 is a game that took me by surprise. You wander around, collecting cards and battling enemies in real time, before you get a chance to use the cards from your decks to attack. The overworld is maze-like and confusing, the story is typical pokemon-like nonsense - but the card game is incredibly well put together, with different strategies and tactics available all the way throughout.
Should I play it today? If you like card games, MMBN 3 is still a blast to play through - just be aware that you’ll have to put up with some dull wandering about getting into random battles in order to get to it.
11. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater - 8/10
2 Minutes. Grind, kickflip and olley your way around a small map, collecting letters, getting a vhs tape, and trying to get the highest score you can. Tony Hawk’s is pure, simple fun. It doesn’t have manuals, you can’t go as nuts with combos like you can in later games - but its two minutes of joy as you skate around in circles.
Should I play it today? It's not the flashiest Tony Hawk’s game, but will give you 4 or 5 hours of skating fun. If you want something simple and enjoyable, go for it!
12. Pokemon Snap - 8/10
There are not enough photography based games out there. Pokemon Snap is a rail based shooter where you’re shooting camera shots of cute pokemon. You get rewarded for the pokemon being centre frame, large and facing you, and nailing some shots can be quite difficult. There’s something relaxing and comfy about going through these theme parks trying to get the best shots possible, and there really isn’t anything quite like it.
Should I play it today? It's great fun! It's not challenging, it's not stressful, Pokemon Snap is just a few hours of comfy pokemon tourism.
13. Max Payne - 8.5/10
Max Payne relishes in its parody and homage of noir and gangster films, with a bleak narration that is nonetheless gleefully self aware. The dark and blizzard filled New York is the perfect setting for the seedy tale. Gameplay is average, with third person bullet time not helping with enemy hp and damage being infinitely pumped the more successful you are at taking them out.
Should I play it today? If you have any interest in noir, the story will be an absolute delight. The third person gameplay isn’t awful, it's just not great, and the rubberbanding of enemy health and damage never ceases to be frustrating.
14. Kirby’s Nightmare in Dreamland - 3/10
Kirby is the perfect children’s game. It gives you a bunch of different power ups, each of which let you easily faceroll through every level. This is a 2D platformer with no challenge, and one that basically does nothing interesting with all the possible cool power ups. I found it very annoying that there was rarely a way to use powerups in different ways to access different secrets etc. - its just about holding right on the control stick and pressing attack every now and then.
Should I play it today? If you’re 10 years old this game is perfect, no stakes and a warm and friendly atmosphere. Everyone else should give it a miss.
15. Thief Gold - 9/10
To this day, one of the greatest stealth games ever made. Open and sprawling level design that encourages you to explore every nook and cranny in order to rob the place blind. An emphasis on actually being stealthy, with shadows being safe havens and enemies being things you run away from. Environmental storytelling is a bit weak, and some maps are straight up awful (thieves guild) but otherwise a great stealth game.
Should I play it today? If you like stealth games, absolutely - but you’re going to need to get used to actually being a thief. This is no deus ex or dishonored where you go full superhero within a few level ups.
16. Policenauts - 6/10
Before Hideo Kojima made MGS, he decided to make a visual novel riffing off (ripping off?) Lethal Weapon, but set in space. He nails the hard sci-fi stuff, with a well thought out space station/orbital, but fails miserably in the soft social/political sphere. Still a good story overall, but a heavily flawed one - very pretty as well. The ‘gameplay’ is endlessly frustrating though - you have to exhaust dialogue options and clicking on every object, usually twice, to progress the story.
Should I play it today? I don’t think so. I think you should watch this longplay and you’ll have a more enjoyable experience overall.
17. Psychonauts - 9.5/10
Psychonauts is a brilliantly inventive 3D platformer, setting its levels inside the minds of other characters, all of which have their own personality quirks and issues. It's pretty amazing when characterisation gets fleshed out in this kind of detailed way, and at the end of each level you have a great and memorable understanding of what makes each person tick. Its funny and fun, although the gameplay still winds up being fairly typical 3D platformer fare.
Should I play it today? Yes! Even if you’re not super into collectathons or platformers, Pscyhonaut’s personality and humour carries it above and beyond.
18. Cave Story - 8/10
One of the original indie darlings, Cave Story has unfortunately been eclipsed by modern takes on the genre. It's still fun to shoot and jump through, and it's ending (and true ending) are still a worthy challenge, but playing it today it's a bit hard to understand what all the fuss was about. Incredible soundtrack though, give both the original and remastered versions a listen (new is garbage).
Should I play it today? You should, it's still fun - but it's not anything incredible. Go in expecting a good 2D platformer and you’ll have a good time.
19. Diablo - 8.5/10
Diablo is one of the granddaddies of the ARPG genre, but honestly it couldn’t be further from modern ARPGS. It’s stripped back, chock full of atmosphere with its zoomed in view, has haunting music and you can easily get stunlocked to death. It's a game that feels dangerous and threatening and never stops being so. Forget skill trees and rpg optimisation - you’re just trying to survive.
Should I play it today? Yes. Diablo is fantastic, and its atmosphere will suck you right in. Just be aware that this has more in common with Rogue or even Dark Souls than anything resembling an ARPG today.
20. The Lost Vikings - 3.5/10
Before Blizzard started cranking out RTS games, they made this puzzle/platformer called The Lost Vikings. At first it seems very cool, figuring out how to maximise the strengths of your 3 different vikings - but then you miss a jump and are forced to repeat the level from scratch. Ultimately, fusing deadly traps with puzzle solving is not a good mix - the punishment is way too high and being forced to repeat puzzle steps because of a stray jump is not fun.
Should I play it today? Only if you’re a glutton for punishment and enjoy repeating puzzles endlessly. The platforming is just too punishing.
21. Call of Duty - 8.5/10
The original Call of Duty is surprisingly still a fantastic FPS game to this day. As far as hitscan shooters go, it's a smooth and varied experience. It's got far better visual clarity than the murky newer CODS, and far less waiting at doors for allies to open them. Being able to hipfire effectively in close combat ends up being a lot of fun as you run through levels as well. Just don’t play on veteran, no health regeneration OR hp packs is completely stupid (even with quicksaving).
Should I play it today? If you enjoy hitscan FPS campaigns, then yes - the original COD is still a lot of fun to play through. I’d put it on par with Black Ops and just a bit below Cod 4.
22. Vagrant Story - 5.5/10
Vagrant Story is a complicated beast. It's got a fantastic story, dropping you in the midst of a multi-factional struggle and not explaining it to you. The characters speak to one another in Shakespearean prose, and the camera work on the cutscenes is wonderful. I bounced pretty heavily off its RPG gameplay systems, which seemed to favour sheer complexity over actual depth - it throws endless stats at you when it boils down to matching the right weapon to the right enemy.
Should I play it today? If you like JRPGS, then yes. If you don’t, even if the story is great, it's probably not worth slogging through the menu simulator gameplay.
23. Halo - 8/10
Halo represented a dramatic shakeup for the FPS genre with all of its console innovations. 2 weapon limit, regenerating health, auto aim, slow and clunky movement speed. And for all that, it's still bloody fantastic. Play on legendary, learn the ins and outs of maximising grenades, popping shields with plasma pistols and above all moving with intent, and you’ll have a great time. The level design is repetitive, but the baseline combat is so strong it barely matters.
Should I play it today? Yes. Halo 1 is better than you think - battling squads of covenant, and the multi-way battles are still delightful to engage in. There are some stinkers here (The library) but overall it's a fun game to fight through.
24. Viewtiful joe - 6.5/10
You play an average joe sucked into the world of a comic book movie. You brawl your way through goons, and use your powers to slow and speed up time and whoop enemies to death. Fairly dull gameplay against regular enemies as you move through the levels and some truly fantastic boss fights with clear tells and deadly patterns. I found constantly slowing down time to be the optimal strategy which did disrupt the flow somewhat.
Should I play it today? If you like 2D brawlers and don’t mind the aesthetic, you’ll have a good time. I’m a bit over the comic book look and think that platinum games’ 3D titles end up being more fun though.
25. Armored Core - 4/10
Before From Software became famous for their Souls series they were the ‘Armored Core’ guys. It's mech on mech combat, in a dark world where the only thing you’re interested in is your paycheque. Resolve union disputes by killing the protestors, it's what mercenaries are for. Unfortunately, the controls for Armored Core are completely and utterly awful and it ruins what would otherwise be a pretty cool game.
Should I play it today? No, the controls are just too bad. If you can put up with it the game has a pretty deep customisation system that is fun to mess around with.
26. Katamari Damacy - 10/10
Katamari Damacy has a simple premise. Roll things up into your sticky ball. The more things you roll up, the larger your sticky ball gets, and the larger the objects you can roll into it. But then you start thinking about taking this to its logical end...and a smile might just creep onto your face. Wonderful zany levels, a simple premise executed to perfection, and a glorious soundtrack - what’s not to love?
Should I play it today? Absolutely. This is one of the most universal games ever made, and I’d happily recommend it to anyone and everyone. Check it out!
27. Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - 8/10
HOMM 3 remains one of the most highly regarded TBS games ever made, and with good reason. Good faction diversity, crazy spells, an interesting tactical layer, and deep layers of micromanagement. I will say you shouldn’t go in expecting anything ‘comfy’ - this is an incredibly complicated and deep strategy game and the game doesn’t do much to teach you how to play it.
Should I play it today? You should, but be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. It's a tough strategy game from top to bottom, and you’ll probably need to do some external reading to better understand how it all works..
28. Crystalis - 2.5/10
I hate crystalis. Its ‘action’ gameplay is endlessly repetitive. Its story is dull and uninspired. It has secret triggers that spawn in NPCS in random locations that you need to speak to for progress. And it has compulsory grinding to beat bosses - you literally do zero damage if you’re too low a level. Awful game, with okay bossights and soundtracks being its only assets. Don’t play this trash.
Should I play it today? No.
29. Sonic the Hedgehog - 6/10
I went into Sonic expecting a fast platformer. Instead, I got a precision platformer that seemed to delight in tricking me and punishing me any time I tried to move with any speed. The game deliberately trolls you with traps if you’re moving without paying attention. That said, it's a pretty fun 2D platformer, and it was fun to speedrun specific levels once I’d memorised them.
Should I play it today? Maybe. If you like precision platformers you’ll have fun with it, but I can’t say it's anything crazy special. Has some fun levels and some bad ones (water levels suck).
30. Archimedean Dynasty - 8.5/10
Archimedean Dynasty is a submarine arcade sim set far in the future where mankind has retreated their entire civilization below the sea. You play a washed up pirate who gets caught in the middle of a conspiracy, and have to unravel it while making cash as a mercenary. Incredible worldbuilding with an awesome manual, and low visibility submarine dog fighting make for a winning combination.
Should I play it today? Yes, but it's going to take some time to learn the controls and pilot your sub effectively. It's worth it though, and is still an arcade experience at heart.
31. Tribes: Vengeance - 5.5/10
The single player mode of Tribes Vengeance is unfortunately not nearly as robust as I hoped for. Tanky enemies with heaps of hitpoints, a generic plot with the stupid trope of people not even talking to one another and repetitive mission structure ends up being a mediocre experience overall. The spinfusor is still fun to fire, but tribes will always be brilliant in the multiplayer sphere.
Should I play it today? Unfortunately, no. There’s some fun to be had here, but the tournament you play near the start ends up being the most fun. Tribes is best as a multiplayer CTF game.
32. Sly Cooper - 6/10
A weird take on a 3D platformer, with stealth, instant kills on hit (for both you and enemies), and ‘sticky’ platforming, where you grip ledges and pinpoints. Cool character design, well told (if silly) story, and with enough variety to keep you entertained. As the game goes on starts to get a little repetitive though, best parts are when you’re being chased and need to move fast to avoid dying.
Should I play it today? Mainly for the platformer enthusiasts. Has a fun twist on normal 3D platformers but once again nothing spectacular.
33. System Shock - 7/10
One of the very first immersive sims ever made, and oh boy you can feel it. The UI is an unreadable mess at first glance, the movement is like being on roller skates, and the gunplay is hitscan hell in narrow corridors. Underneath all that is a great environmental story on a somewhat realistic space station that is fun to explore. And I think the UI and controls become pretty usable over time.
Should I play it today? This one is for the immersive sim fanatics only. There is something special here, but you have to put up with some serious problems in order to fully appreciate it.
34. Freelancer - 6/10
You play a freelancer in space on a galaxy spanning adventure to unravel the mystery behind an artifact. And yes, ancient aliens are involved. Great dogfighting and beautiful visuals in an unfortunately sterile world where there is nothing worthwhile to discover. The main story is enjoyable enough, the mandatory randomly generated side missions are infuriating.
Should I play it today? Yes, but be aware of the mandatory grinding to actually enjoy the story missions. This is not a game about freelancing or exploration, it's about enjoyable dogfights and an enjoyable (if predictable) story.
35. Castlevania - 5/10
The OG castlevania. Incredibly restrictive platforming and combat - no mid-air movement, jump always has a specific amount of height and distance, no momentum on movement or jumps. Whip is only left or right. Despite this enemies often attack from above or below and from all angles. Maybe this was acceptable back in the day but it was super annoying for me, I want my range of movement to better meet the challenges.
Should I play it today? No. I didn’t enjoy most of the time I spent playing it, and I found some bosses actually ridiculous (Death) without cheesing it with holy water.
36. Lunar: Silver Star Story - 1/10
The worst game I’ve ever had the misfortune to play. Atrocious story that romanticized teenage love in a vomit worthy way, is filled with generic anime garbage, and justifies genocide in the name of religion. Gameplay so grindy and repetitive I wept tears of joy when I could finally put the controller down and stop playing. JRPGS are objectively the worst genre of video game ever made, and this sorry excuse for a game proves it.
EDIT - I use 'objectively' here as a way to exaggerate my disdain, not to claim I genuinely hold the only correct opinion on video games in the known universe.
Should I play it today? No.
37. Hitman: Codename 47 - 3/10
The closest you can get between crossing stealth with a puzzle game. Very unlike the modern Htman games that are about choice, the original Hitman game is about solving its assassination puzzles in very specific ways. Most of the time it's obscure and inconsistent to figure out, with only a couple of very good levels (Traditions of the Trade being a stand out). What’s worse, sometimes there is no tricky, and you just need to shoot a bunch of people - and there’s no way to tell the difference.
Should I play it today? No, it's too annoying. The moden Hitman games do it better by having the weird puzzle kills be optional instead of literally the only way to get through the game without murdering every single person.
38. Earthworm Jim - 6/10
Weird and ridiculous setting, tough platforming, odd combat - all adds up to one of the more unique 2D platformers I’ve ever played. I found the boss fights fun, but I think the super zoomed in perspective is something I’ll never get used to, it's pretty common for these old platformers. Shooting your gun locks you in place, leads to a fairly stiff stop and start progression.
Should I play it today? If you play your platformers for their aesthetics, Earthworm Jim is awesome. Not super high on the fundamental gameplay though, but the boss fights are fun.
39. Splinter Cell - 9/10
Splinter Cell is a stealth game on console done right. The fundamentals are rather similar to Thief actually - taking your time to sneak through shadows and find holes in enemy patrols, but with linear straightforward levels instead of enormous mansions and ruins to explore. It's a tighter and leaner stealth experience but one that still hits the right notes for me. Different movement speeds on the mousewheel is a really good idea. Story is a little jingoistic for my liking.
Should I play it today? Yes, it's a fantastic stealth game, and even looks pretty slick. Those levels in the rain are still very comfy.
40. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic - 8/10
Dark Messiah is a first person physics ‘em up where enemies die more to being kicked off cliffs and slipping on icy ground than your actual weapons. The stealth is broken, offensive magic is useless, but using physics to win fights is a lot of fun. It does start to wear thin, but mercifully ends before it gets too repetitive. Garbage story, enjoyable gameplay.
Should I play it today? Yep! Good fun still, even if you’ve seen all its tricks about two thirds of the way in. Get used to kicking your way to victory.
41. No-one Live Forever - 8.5/10
NOLF is a stealth/fps hybrid that riffs off James Bond, Austin Power and Get Smart, but underneath its layers of satire is a very satisfying story. It puts some fantastic female characters front and centre as they have to deal with the reality of sexism in the 60s, being overlooked, ignored and underestimated at every turn. The gameplay is so-so, with inconsistent stealth and mediocre gunplay, but the story more than makes up for it!
Should I play it today? You absolutely should! There’s one scene towards the end, in particular, that has great dialogue and character work but it's fantastic throughout. It's funny and entertaining with something of real substance underneath.
42. Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusades - 7/10
This is an oddball - a console RTS set in an original fantasy world with an RPG layer of customising and upgrading your troops. And it switches to a third person brawler so you can personally take on enemy squads. It all works pretty damn well once you get a hang of the controls, and is about the best implementation of a console RTS you could ask for. Certainly better than Halo Wars.
Should I play it today? I think a controller based RTS is always going to be strictly inferior to one on a mouse and keyboard, but if you can get over that there’s something of value here. It's novel, but executed well.
43. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 2/10
The only saving grace of LOTR: The Two Towers is the IP it's based on. Dull and repetitive combat, where you often just switch between heavy attacks and the same combo move over and over. Half the time the gameplay doesn’t really correlate to the events in the movie, as it throws hundreds of orks at you as you’re walking around. Bad boss battles, spammy enemies, easy to get stunlocked - the game is no fun.
Should I play it today? Watch the movie trilogy instead.
44. Super Mario World - 8/10
Super Mario World is a non-stop theme park of new ideas. It's never content to let a new mechanic sit idle, and throws new things at new pretty much every single level. It's chaotic and messy, but it never runs out of novelty in the entire play time. In fact, I would have liked to see deeper development of many of the mechanics present - but I guess that’s what super mario maker is for.
Should I play it today? Yes. It's not a tight and controlled experience, the very opposite - its a loose and wild platformer gone mad. A lot of fun to play through for the first time.
45. Thief 2 - 9.5/10
Thief 2 sees the world undergo a steampunk industrial revolution. Gone are the fantastical ruin diving, replaced mainly with mansion and industry theft. And mostly, it's for the better. Level design, environmental storytelling have improved dramatically, even if some of the magic of the original was lost. There are some dull missions, but holistically the bar has been raised. Fantastic.
Should I play it today? Yes, but play Thief Gold first. You appreciate Thief 2 more for what it does different, and the changes that the industrial revolution have brought.
46. Super Metroid - 8/10
Super Metroid features some incredibly modern feeling metroidvania level design. I find it straight up astonishing how well put together the world is - it nails the process of getting a powerup and using it to progress through an area, before the world opens up like an onion yet again. The platforming is wonky as hell and by the end of the game you’re an invulnerable tank, but the level design is true genius.
Should I play it today? Yes. It's not as pretty as SOTN, nor does it have as good a soundtrack, but the feeling of progression is stronger and the smaller world achieves what SOTN does in a far more compact space.
47. Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War - 5/10
Unfortunately Warhammer 40ks single player campaign is mediocre at best. The mission objectives are uninteresting, the units get caught up on one another full stop (particularly when mixing armour with infantry) and later missions turn into a resources slog of constantly building up to max pop. The voice acting is fantastic though, they do space marines justice in the cutscenes.
Should I play it today? The multiplayer is still good for LAN parties but don’t bother playing the single player, just play RA2 instead.
48. Dark Souls - 9/10
We cheated for our episode 50 and did a newer game, one of my favourite of all time - Dark Souls. The game has incredible environmental storytelling, a devious main plot thread, challenging but fair and varied combat and has unparalleled level design to this day. Seriously, the way the world fits together is still a masterstroke that From (or anyone) is yet to top. I love it to pieces even if the second half of the game is a bit of a let down - mostly saved by the 10/10 DLC rounding it out.
Should I play it today? Absolutely. The combat has been refined, the music has gotten better and the systems have been better explained, but nothing touches the level design and Dark Souls still holds up extremely strongly on all fronts.
49. Civilization 4: Beyond The Sword - 8/10
CIV 4 is wonderful turn based strategy goodness. Civics let you personalise your civilization to your liking and huge stacks surprisingly leads to a deeper combat situation. In Civ V I always felt I just made a thousand longbowmen and grinded my way to victory - you cannot do this in CIV 4. Overall, Civ 4 is the better combat based strategy game, which is where most of the fun lies in these games long term.
Should I play it today? Not for newcomers to the TBS genre, it's difficult and punishing of going to war at the wrong time and in the wrong way. If you’re tired of only building 4 cities in Civ V and having the game punish you endlessly for expanding, it might be time to give Civ 4 a spin.
50. Burnout 3 - 9.5/10
Burnout 3 makes racing games half about racing, and half about smashing like a madman into enemy cars. It takes things like rubberbanding, usually a terrible thing in a racing game, and makes it an asset, by putting all the focus on car to car combat. The campaign has lots of different modes to break up the racing, with the crash mode being a particularly fun distraction. Oh, and the soundtrack is unbelievably good, 45 tracks with not a single bad one amongst them.
Should I play it today? Absolutely. What a goddamn banger this game turned out to be.
Phew, and that's it! A lot of excellent games there. If I had to highlight just one, it would definitely be Katamari Damacy. Its pretty much a perfect game. Play it and enjoy!
I know these are supposed to be boiled down reviews but they're so wildly inconsistent. You have a review with more negative than positive in Dark Messiah and gave it an 8, but Banjo Kazooie doesn't list a negative and it's a 6. Just to name a few. It goes on like this through the whole post
Yep, its hard to boil down a game to a single number. Banjo is a good collectathon 3D platformer, but I don't find them that fun. Dark Messiah is janky as hell but has a unique take on physics brawling that doesn't overstay its welcome, I found it more fun. Take this as a baseline way to explain what the game is about and how it functions.
JRPGS are objectively the worst genre of video game ever made
You're entitled to your opinion, but that's a very, very terrible opinion.
I hated Warrior Within when I first played it. I played it again last year in anticipation of the Sands of Time Remake and it’s definitely the worst in the trilogy. The Prince is a terrible character compared to SoT, swearing and shouting the majority of the time and is just generally unpleasant.
The map sucks, I hated backtracking and having to get all the life upgrades for the best ending is ridiculous. The enemies were cheap and combat wasn’t fun. The plat forming improved and the soundtrack actually wasnt’t bad but could get annoying after a while. It don’t normally agree when people say that a game shouldn’t be a particular way but Prince of Persia should not go full darkness and gritty.
And it sucks. I get that its an old game, I don't begrudge those who enjoy it. But the experience of playing it today is a miserable one.
Your Lunar review is invalidating the rest of your post for me. This "sorry excuse for a game" is rated highly and loved by many, and the JRPG genre you hate so much has been a power house since the late 80s.
Its cool if you don't like it. Its cool if you hate it. It's not cool to claim objectivity when you don't speak for everyone. Because you are OBJECTIVELY wrong.
For what its worth, the 'objectively' comment is meant as means of exaggeration, not me claiming to have the only valid opinion in the universe. I'm well aware people that people like jrpgs.
Y'know Katamari Damaci is one of those games that is well loved but I just can't get into. It was fun for me for a while, but I found the gameplay to be kind of gimmicky. I think if any game on the list deserves a 10/10 it is Super Mario World.
Archimedean Dynasty was a bit of a surprise to see in this list. Always happy when people find some of these old gems, have you by any chance played AquaNox from 2001? It's a sequel to Archimedean Dynasty but feels like Unreal Tournament in a x wing like submarine.
We're actually going to do Aquanox very soon! My cohost is really big into those submarine games, he played them when he was younger.
Two points.
Doom: I also replayed this in the last year and it was a blast. I had so much fun with Doom (and its "Add-ons") and then... Doom 2 felt like garbage. The level design just wasn't there for me and though I finished half of the Add-ons, I never finished Doom 2.
Armored Core: The controls are awful but they are customizable! Beating the original Armored Core is one of my proudest gaming achievements BUT I don't think I could have done it without remapping the dpad and shape buttons to act like twin sticks.
Hard disagree. I played through Quake for the first time only a few years ago and had an absolute blast. The soundtrack and overall atmosphere makes it stand out even today. The only enemy I couldn’t stand were the spawn.
Quake 2 is also a good time, but lacks the soul and atmosphere of the first game. I’d love to see id reboot the first Quake, and get Trent Reznor back.
two things.
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - 8.5/10
i bitched about this game on this sub just yesterday, but warrior within is still my favourite PoP game. the gameplay is so good, like modern day post-Sekiro/SoulsBorne/DMC/Ninja Gaiden-good, that it actually brought me round on the ridiculous story. like it almost made up for it so much that i started to find the prince's constant bitching and growling quite endearing.
also, if you liked Earthworm Jim's aesthetics, the creator Doug TenNapel also created The Neverhood, which is the single greatest point-and-click ever created, bar none, no exceptions. he's also got a pretty sick line of comic books, and a few other games he's made like Skullmonkeys (which was actually a spiritual/indirect sequel to The Neverhood and had the same protagonist) and Armikrog, another claymation point-and-click which wasn't quite as good.
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Its so disappointing that we never really saw the POP style platforming properly expanded upon. Ubisoft went to the more freeform Ass Creed, and the tight 3D platforming kind of vanished. Story wise, I just can't get behind how obviously the game is marketed at 14 year old boys. Its not even remotely subtle.
The Neverhood
Watched some gameplay footage, it looks amazing. We're actually doing our very first point and click adventure game this fortnight (Siberia) so I probably won't pick another for a while, but this has made the list for sure.
PoP Warrior Within is like my favorite game ever.It's just so unique in combat, atmosphere, time rewind. Interestingly though I also really liked the soundtrack (especially I Stand Alone by Godsmack) Also, I was blown away by the story when I first played it as a child lol. You see, it was just the perfect game for me.
Rating Armored Core so poorly based on the fact that its controls don't hold up seems kinda unfair to me. Just customize the controls to your liking, which is easy to do both on the original release or on an emulator (which is how I would imagine most newcomers would play it today). I'm not just saying this because I loved that game either; using the logic 'its controls have aged poorly so it's a bad game', a absolute ton of great PS1/N64 games couldn't be considered good.
IMO, Silent Hill 2 and Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland deserved both much higher ratings.
Also Sonic too.
If you'd like to hear more detailed discussions and review of all these games, please do check out the Retro Spectives Podcast!. I've also written a bunch of articles related to these old games (and new) for you to check out!
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It happens sometimes. A dark thought creeps into the back of my head: someday, I'll be too old for video games. It's been, after all, some 40 years since I first dropped a quarter into the Space Wars machine at my local arcade. Times have changed, games have changed. And I like to feel like I've been keeping up with those changes, if only just barely. But the dry eyes from long hours at the computer, the headaches, the pains in my hands and wrists - those are some grim reminders that someday, playing games might not be possible any more.
I'm playing Doom – no, not the original Doom that I loved since its release day in 1990 – the 2016 re-imagining. I'm amazed at how it feels faithful to the original, but new. I love the reworked monsters and weapons. I hate how the automap is 3D. I love how the levels still have secrets tucked away. I hate how they've added jumping and grenades. I hate how the game takes up 60 GB of hard disk space, while the original fit on a few 1.4 MB floppies. I hate how the plasma rifle and BFG have different ammo now.
I'm actually quite proud of myself. Up to this point, the game – at least on its default difficulty setting – has been pretty easy. Yeah, I've been stuck a couple of times, and I swear the HowLongtoBeat estimate of 10 hours was way, way off (my own playtime inexplicably pushing 19 hours). But for the most part, this game was not so tough. After all, I've been playing Doom off and on for 30 years, right? I know what I'm doing.
But now I'm stuck: stuck at the final boss. The spider mastermind that the internet insisted was underwhelming in its lack of challenge. I've been at it for over an hour and I can't quite pinpoint what's going wrong.
So I do what all the cool kids these days do: I watch someone else play the game on YouTube. And it does not, in fact, look that difficult. The video's author explains how the boss telegraphs the moment when the spikes pop out of the platform by stomping its foot, and how now we only have to dodge the energy beams whereas previously the entire floor was electrified. He explains the boss' myriad attacks and phases, and its strengths and weaknesses.
I sigh and load up the game again. I try it a few more times, and I still can't finish it.
And that's when it hits me: it's finally happened. I've become too old for video games. I can no longer remember the pros and cons of eight different weapons (or even which keyboard keys refer to them). I can no longer process visual effects so complex I can't even tell where the hitbox is. I can't remember which phase of the boss is which, I can't handle resolutions higher than 320x200 and frame rates higher than 15. I can no longer use the chainsaw because I keep forgetting to pick up gas for it. I don't know what weapon runes are or how or why to get them. I don't need more than four weapons and I definitely don't need them to have alternate firing modes.
As the battle rages on, over and over again, I can't stop thinking about the spider mastermind end boss in the original Doom. An underwhelming finale, it only had one attack, one behavior. There were no spikes popping from platforms, no electrified floors. Three hits from the BFG, and it was defeated. Back in my day, bosses only had one phase.
I remember reading a post on usenet, from a guy who played Doom against someone he swore was the greatest player of all time, because he literally invented “circle strafing.” Unbelievably, he was controlling his character by using the mouse and keyboard at the same time.
How things have changed: I literally cannot believe how much has changed. And in this moment, I am a hundred – no, a thousand – years old.
I get up for a cup of tea, replace the cat on my lap, and fire up the game again. I switch the game's difficulty to easy. And finally, finally, it's over. I watch the ending and think I could've saved an hour or two if I'd just watched in on YouTube.
Anyway, Doom 2016? It's pretty good. Definitely play it if you enjoy shooters. As for me, I think I'll give Doom Eternal a miss and go back to playing match-3 games on my phone.
So a few months ago I bought Hollow Knight. I had heard a lot of praise for it and seen a couple of Let's plays, and wanted to try it for myself. The thing is... I am Trash Garbage at Video Games. I get impatient and angry at them very easily, So Hollow Knight was, as one friend put it, an 'interesting choice of game.' But it's so Pretty and I desperately wanted to love it as much as everyone else online seems to.
So I played, and after Rage Uninstalling twice, I found myself fighting the Mantis Lords. and during that fight, something clicked for the first time. I was noticing Improvement with every attempt, and the runback to try gain was getting easier. After successfully beating them, and immediately noping right out of Deepnest, I went back to City of Tears and tried my luck at the Soul Sanctum. And while I did continue to struggle, I did not rage. even against the BS Teleporting enemies.
At this point, I think I can finally say that I achieved my goal. Hollow Knight is no longer 'that beautiful game that I want to love but kind of hate' I can honestly just say that I love it.
So I’ve been playing a lot of old linear shooters from the 360/PS3 era on PC and so far most of them are great. FEAR specifically however made me depressed. So apparently we’ve had peeking, slow motion mechanics and destructible walls for 16 years now and what we’re left with for the past 5 years is basically garbage. This game had a simple story, a simple mission design, fun and intense kept me engaged in the story throughout the entire game, something I haven’t felt in a long time. You shoot someone in this game you demolish them leaving their limbs and intestines. This type of gory, intense FPS games are pretty much extinct nowadays. I remember playing this game 13 years ago and playing it again made me realize, this game doesn’t have any annoying boring puzzles, no QTE and has one of the best AI in a game. We’ve been going backwards for the past 16 years which is just crazy to me. I’m not saying there weren’t any good FPS games during that period, but the innovation in the FPS genre has been limited to modders literally recreating those broken games, like Stalker anomaly. Making all FPS games open world grindy mess is the best biggest mistake the gaming industry has ever done.
2Naughty Dog took a huge risk with their story and whether or not it worked depends on who you ask. Personally I don't hate them for taking the risks they did but I feel they just didn't execute it well enough. The main plot itself could have still worked but perhaps with a different order of events.
Regardless, playing through the story is a very disturbing and uncomfortable experience. They force you to do some things you really don't want to and at times it did take some willpower to push on. It's a sad miserable journey with an ending that makes you really question whether any of it was worth it.
I don't want to go through that experience again. Why would I? It's depressing. And that's a shame because TLoU2 is a technical marvel. It has the best graphics on PS4 period. It's animation is the best in the industry and the voice acting is top notch. And the actual gameplay is fun as hell, the stealth is robust, the gunplay is great.
I want to experience those graphics and that gameplay again but even thinking about that story puts me off it. That's a real shame. I've replayed all the Uncharted games countless times, I've even replayed the Last of Us 1 many many times.
I've got Xbox Gamepass and noticed that Crusader Kings III was on there. After seeing a few reviews of CK2 I'd always wanted to try the series out but the fact that all of the second games DLC literally costs hundreds of dollars kept me away, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally try it out. And it didn't take long for CK3 to become my newest obsession as I realized this was the Game Of Thrones/ASOIAF game that I've always wanted.
Unlike something like Total War the focus of Crusader Kings isn't on epic battles but rather on the bigger picture of ruling the realm as a whole. You've got to arrange useful political marriages, make sure your spouse is happy so they don't join (or start) any assassination plots against you, maintain a careful balance of keeping your vassals happy while making sure they aren't powerful enough to rebel, and deal with all of the fun issues that come with succession when the head of your family bites the dust. Or if you want you can be a cruel duke who's constantly kidnapping and torturing the people under your rule just for the lulz.
There's not really a wrong way to play CK3 it's just a giant medieval sandbox, and it's emphasis on characters and the inclusion of RPG elements allows for an unmatched degree of emergent storytelling. One of my families literally turned into House Lannister as I discovered that my daughter was having an incestuous affair with her brother/ my heir. Not wanting my kingdom to think of their future king as some sister-diddling pervert I covered up their indiscretions. Well it turns out my daughter was a little too grateful as a short while later I found myself as the object of her affection which I politely declined.
In another playthrough I married off one of my daughters to a neighboring ruler. When it was discovered that she was having a (thankfully non-incestuous) affair her husband had her arrested and executed. Unfortunately for him this meant that the alliance between our houses was no more, and as I'd spent the last few years expanding my realm and army the "war" that followed ended up being a one-sided smackdown and I quickly claimed him as my vassal. Then I promptly imprisoned the guy and executed his ass allowing his son/my characters grandson to take his place instead.
10/10 easily recommend to anybody who's been disappointed by the official Game of Thrones titles.
So I finally decided to check what all the hype was about. I remember Bioshock when it first came out but I didn't have a powerful enough PC to play it. Even after I got one, I didn't want to play it because it seemed too scary. Fortunately, fast-forward to this year, I found the Remastered collection on sale and I finally decided to give it a shot. I'm so glad I did!
This game still holds up amazingly well today, so I imagine how I'd feel if I first played it in 2007! Honestly, the beginning cinematic set the tone perfectly and the graphics still look great! So much so that after the beginning cinematic of the plane crashed and your character getting plunged in the middle of the ocean, it took me a little while to realise that I'm no longer in a cutscene, and that I could actually move! You have nothing to show you where you are supposed to go apart from this ginormous lighthouse in the distance. So you swim over there, take the elevator inside, and you're welcomed to the "utopian" world of the underwater city of Rapture, founded by Andrew Ryan, who is based on the Objectivist author Ayn Rand (his name is even a partial anagram). You see all this breath-taking architecture, gorgeous lights, and then wonder "why does this look so empty?". Well, you are quickly shown that Rapture is NOT a safe place.
After you almost get killed by a crazy zombie-like ceiling crawling thing (also known as a splicer), you are introduced to Atlas, who is there to help you get out of this hellhole. The story is told in a similar way to its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2 - you pick up audio logs which are scattered throughout the locations you visit, and they give you some pretty interesting backstory about the events that lead to Rapture's current predicament. Now, I'm sure many have already played and beaten Bioshock, but I'll try to hold off from any spoilers. Let's just say that it's all very enticing to find out the personal accounts of the people who lived in Rapture and their experiences of how the city gradually devolved into chaos. There are also many twists and turns later on which I'm so glad I didn't get spoiled!
As for the gameplay, it's actually still pretty great. You have a large arsenal of weapons to play around with, along with different ammo types that might work better in certain situations against specific enemies. You are also exposed to the different typed of superpowers - plasmids and tonics. Plasmids are active abilities which are basically "spells" emitted from your hands. You have electricity, fire, telekinesis, bees, sonic waves, etc. It's incredibly fun to try out all of them. However, you are only limited to carrying a certain amount. You can, fortunately, buy more plasmid slots so you can switch between more at once. You also have the tonics, which are the passive abilities. They might give you perks such as damage resistance, easier hacking, fire resistance, etc. You can combine them to your liking, and there are different categories (Engineering, Combat and Physical).
You can buy new plasmids/tonics and slots for them by collecting ADAM. It's a gene-altering substance which you get by killing the Big Daddies (basically mini bosses of the game who are heavily armoured with strong weapons) and either saving or killing the little girls who follow them. Which leads me to my next point: the morality system.
I went for the Saviour route but there are 3 endings you can acquire depending on whether you choose to kill or save the little girls. Honestly, I think they could have done more with this morality system, since there is not a large benefit to killing the little girls, and it makes you feel like crap. Yes, when you save them, you do only get a portion of ADAM compared to if you kill them, but for every 3 girls you save, you get some sort of a "care package" which is a teddy bear which contains 200 or so ADAM. So the amount of ADAM you collect when you save the girls is almost the same as the ADAM you collect when you kill them. So really, doing the right thing is the best option in the game, which is pretty much wasted potential.
As for the combat, I honestly had a great deal of fun with it. I love how different ammo types and plasmids work better against certain types of enemies. While there is not a huge amount of enemy variety, it's incredibly satisfying to try out all different types of combinations to obliterate these aggressive psychos! You can freeze them and break them in pieces, shock them and finish them off with the shotgun, use telekinesis to hurl their grenades back at them, it's amazing. I honestly feel kind of bad for not utilising some of the weapons like the crossbow more, and while the combat might sometimes feel janky, I loved it.
There aren't that many drawbacks I can think of, apart from the morality system which feels like wasted potential, and the fact that the stars of the game, the big daddies, feel waaaay too easy. Even on the higher difficulties, it's incredibly easy to cheese them by stunlocking them with electricity or exploiting their AI in other ways. They only felt scary in the beginning after that, they just felt like pushovers. Also, the PC port is so bare-bones. You barely have any graphics options, apart from setting the resolution, V-Sync, AA (ON/OFF, really?), anisotropic filtering and... that's pretty much it. Come on, this is a release from a major studio and this is all PC gamers got in 2016? Also I read about frequent crashes but I luckily never experienced them, only one or two minor glitches.
All in all, it's an amazing game which I'm so glad I finally got to play! Would I consider it one of the best FPS games of all time? Because of the unique setting, brilliant storytelling and engaging atmosphere which is not present in the majority of games that have come out, absolutely!
I can't wait to start with Bioshock 2 and Infinite.
If you haven't played Bioshock, would you kindly buy it and play it straight away?
First, I want to briefly describe my prior experience with the RE series. I grew up with friends and family that were total fanatics of the original games, people able to quote whole scenes off the top of their head and speed run the games in their sleep, but my direct experience was always just seeing disconnected segments while visiting or hanging out. I beat RE4 once on the Wii, Co-Op'd RE5 while visiting friends, and totally skipped RE6 when everyone I know told me it was horrible.
After not thinking about or playing anything in the series for quite some time, I picked up RE7 because it was more or less a soft reboot and I wanted a full real game to test my PSVR. Long story short, I adored it. I almost consider it my first "real" entry into the series because since playing it I've bought and played pretty much every new entry (including being impatient and getting 8 earlier this year). I played the RE1 Remake for PC and could not believe such an old game would hold up so well, so I decided to set out and play all the main line entries I never gave the time and attention to before!
(Short note before I get into the individual games: I played all the original versions of 1-3 and then the PC ports of 4-6.)
Resident Evil 1 - It's incredible to me that a developer could set out to create an almost entirely new genre and nail so many aspects on the first attempt. The controls feel good, the graphics have aged well, and the sounds are iconic (fun fact: I played one run on the original release and another on the DualShock ed. so I got to experience both soundtracks. I liked them both but DualShock's really stuck with me in a lot of areas, even the infamous Basement theme). Hearing all the old lines that friends have quoted and memed for decades completed the feeling of coming home.
The key emotional core of this game's success is its tension. There are so many simple but genius design choices that make every room, every enemy encounter, nearly every act of play feel tense and exciting. What's more incredible is that these systems are tuned to accommodate opposite ends of the pacing spectrum.
You can play cautiously and explore thoroughly to gather resources and make traversing less risky since you’ll be equipped to take out even mildly dangerous enemies. This was how my first run went as I was sussing out the critical path, i.e. where key items are found and how to use them. But the game really shines on repeat playthroughs, where you're comfortable with layouts and can make split decisions for enemies you want to expend ammo on or avoid entirely. Playing a different character even sees the puzzles and enemy placements shifted slightly and caused some really stressful scramble moments that I really enjoyed.
Resident Evil 2 - The classic example of a Capcom sequel. Pretty much every good thing I have to say about RE1 you can say about 2 and then some. The presentation is so much more refined and polished and the sheer amount of content on offer is just staggering. You essentially get 4 campaigns depending on the order of characters you play and there's so many tiny changes and adjustments to really force you to adjust your plans on the fly.
The aspect that stood out to me the most in this entry was its scenario writing. The writers did such a good job of creating a believable zombie apocalypse scenario with two intertwining characters. The sense of dread and despair is so much heavier and well-communicated knowing you're one of the last few people alive in the entire city, instead of just being lost in a mansion in the woods. Then there is the escalating deformities of the primary monster that you see across both campaigns, weaved in with family drama, conspiracy, and science gone awry. These elements were present to an extent in 1, but snappier writing, better voice acting, and a more fleshed out scenario just communicated it all more effectively.
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis - It's no secret that this game started development as a side-story rather than a main entry and it's arguable whether it earns its numbered title. Personally, I think it does. By now the series gameplay has been polished to a mirror sheen, any minor annoyances with basic gameplay have been filed off and enhancements like the dodging mechanic and ammo crafting give this entry its own identity.
There's a greater focus on combat this time around, more enemies on screen, explosive barrels galore, and a varied arsenal distinctly push the tone of this game from horror into action. Combat can still be avoided with precise and speedy movement, but it's much more accessible to accumulate ammo and blow away minor obstacles.
I say minor because 3's namesake is the relentless pursuer, Nemesis, an iconic monster that will pop up periodically to chase you down and give you grief. It's possible to kill this creature (and he drops some really cool loot when you do), but playing casually I was rarely in a good position to do so. The dodges are quite hard to pull off and it's frustrating to just run circles around him while taking potshots. Still, Nemesis adds an interesting dimension to the game that enhances replays in lieu of multiple playable characters.
Replayability is also juiced by a greater freedom when selecting your path, instead of needing a key for specific doors, say, you instead are tasked with gathering a group of key items but can do so in any order, which will also affect how some scenes play out.
Overall I'd say 3 has the best foundation of the original trilogy mechanically, but structurally I think there's less incentive to replay. I should mention this is heavily counteracted with the inclusion of an arcade style mode, The Mercenaries, which became a series staple, but I didn't mess with too heavily during this session because I was eager to get to...
Resident Evil 4 - Needs no introduction. An absolute titan of the medium and unquestionably one of the most influential games of all time. I played it on PC with the HD Project Mod and parts of the game are just stunning in how well they set a mood and create a vibe.
So let's dig into what really makes the game special. Something that struck me after playing 5 and 6 was how well 4 nails myriad tiny details that contribute to how the game feels. Snappy animations, clicky sound effects, intuitive environment interactions, and responsive and consistent controls all contribute to an experience that is constantly firing your neurons on multiple different levels. It feels good to hit reload, it feels good to pick up money to upgrade your equipment, it feels good to shoot thrown objects out of the air, it feels good to suplex a guy and see his head pop and then chain all of these together endlessly.
Apart from these little details, the game is actually surprisingly simple, I'd even describe it as arcade-like. You progress in a linear fashion with rarely more than 1 or 2 key items to keep track of, eliminate enemies and scavenge for ammo and money, then upgrade at checkpoints to go on to fight stronger and more plentiful enemies.
Still, there are some traces of DNA from the original trilogy in here. Exploration and lateral thinking is often rewarded with treasure to be funneled into upgrades, but if you know the route then it's easy enough to speed along and only buy what you need. I was a little disappointed to find that new weapons and upgrades almost exclusively come from the merchant. Although, there is a nice segment where remembering a certain area that was previously inaccessible rewards you with a free magnum, which solidly harkened back to the first few games for me.
After really coming to appreciate those original 3 games though, I have to say I missed the sense of tension. There are a few setpieces that can really instill it, such as a timed spike trap area that’s filled with skittering spider creatures that split your attention, but the combat is so effective that there’s hardly ever any decision making about whether or not to engage and risk resources.
I also admire the structure of the game, essentially 3 acts with 3 nested acts within, even complete with their own running villain and concluding with a “last boss” encounter with them. The rigidity of this structure might be a turn off elsewhere but RE4 signposts things clearly, paces its action and exploration out nicely, and scales up the overall scope and complexity as it goes and thus pulls off that structure.
Resident Evil 5 - A major turning point for the series, this is when the scales really start to tip into full on action territory. The inclusion of co-op contributes to this heavily as well, but I think that it serves a narrative purpose that gave the game a boost for me. Ultimately though, I came away from this one feeling almost exactly the same way I felt about it when I played it at launch: it’s a 7/10 or so.
For starters, inventory management has gone completely out the window. You get 9 slots per person and each slot can only hold a weapon, an ammo stack, a grenade, or a healing item. It makes mixing herbs a chore and ammo stacks cap at such small amounts it almost never makes sense to even bother with grenades or even carry more than 2 weapons at a time. It does facilitate coordination between players, but often stretches of gameplay meant to be exploration-based would just boil down to my co-op partner and I playing inventory accountants.
The inventory issue is further exacerbated by the sheer number of weapons you discover throughout the campaign. Thankfully, these are all just free items you find that can be bought later in the shop between missions, but the sheer amount of them makes them all blend together and further clutter the inventory. At least 3 times near the end of the game we'd come upon a silver case and say something like "Wow is this ANOTHER shotgun/machine gun/rifle???" I get that the inventory spreads across both players but we almost never got attached to weapons the same way I did in RE4, except for a mid-game shotgun that had a higher damage cap than the final shotgun we found for some bizarre reason.
I will say that I distinctly remembered disliking the story when I first played it, but coming back to 5 (and 6 to a greater extent, but I'll get to that) after playing 7 and 8 really gave me an appreciation for the more understated aspects of the RE stories. RE5 deals heavily with the concept of trust, primarily with the protagonist Chris's difficulty in trusting his new partner Sheva after losing his last friend and partner during a traumatic incident. The antithesis to our hero Chris is series staple Wesker, a man who at every turn of the story discards and uses the people that put their trust in him. He takes this selfish motivation to such lengths that his end goal is literally to wipe out everyone on the planet except those that could survive mutations based on his genetics.
I won't claim that this story is high art or anything, but there are a lot of details that add up to the sum of their parts and discovering these new facets made me really glad I replayed 5. Particularly the final lines of the game, from Chris himself (which will become extremely relevant for 6-8):
More and more I find myself wondering if it's all worth fighting for.
For a future without fear...
Yeah, it's worth it.
Resident Evil 6 - I think this is undeniably the black sheep of the series. It was easily the least enjoyable of the games I played but I still found parts of it quite interesting. It's hard to hate on it too much now that the series has course-corrected and continues on strong to this day though.
The first and perhaps biggest blunder here is the decision to make 4 full campaigns that are intended to be played individually. All the campaigns cross over with one another but they're each their own ~5 hour standalone story with tons of filler which could have easily been cut down to one traditional campaign where you simply switch characters.
Personally, I sometimes find bad games more fascinating than outright good games and part of that comes from imagining a developer's intent versus their result and figuring out what caused the gap. Thinking about that, I can sort of understand the process that lead to splitting the campaigns up. I could not, however, understand (at least at first) why they would put Leon's campaign at the top of the list, seemingly intending it to be played first.
Leon's campaign is a very confused mess. It's extremely dark for most of the duration (RE6 uses a rendering technique that attempts to mimic HDR which I'll talk a bit more about later, I ended up liking it), it forces you to go through multiple forced walking segments before then introducing a rather confusing set of mechanics unlike anything else in the series so far, and it pits you against enemies that are unique only to this campaign (and thus not really designed around the unique mechanics on offer). If you do end up playing RE6, do yourself a favor and start with Chris or Jake's campaign first.
I did eventually get used to the mechanics. RE6 uses an interesting blend of movement techniques, melee combat, and third person cover shooting to create a system I haven't really seen anything else like before. It's got sprinting, sliding, dodge rolling, melee counters, quick shots, crawling, cover parkour, etc. etc. etc. It can be extremely overwhelming when first starting out and it takes a while before you really begin to see any of its merits, if you can even stand to play for that long.
I can appreciate Capcom wanting to reinvent a deep and innovative arcade-like combat system for the BIGGEST RE YET, but they ended up dying a death by a thousand cuts of little flaws. Little frustrations like there not being gun upgrades, replaced by skills which are pretty barebones for most of the game. The inventory is practically present at all except when it fills up with ammo and you can't pick up healing items anymore. The skill points are physical items that drop just like ammo and healing which means you'll often just see tons of skill points when you're looking for health or ammo. It's all just very clumsily tied together and it never really gels into something I'd describe as exciting or scary or even fun.
I wanted to compliment the lighting and general art direction in a lot of places, including the HDR rendering I mentioned earlier. During Chris's campaign you see a lot of urban Chinese streets lit up with neon as well as ducking into back alleys with either harsh phosphorescent lights or darkness, these areas frankly look amazing, held up entirely by the lighting. Sadly they only really appear in regularly in Chris's campaign but they really brightened (haha) my experience.
Chris's campaign may actually be the only good one in retrospect. I was advised to not even play Ada's and Jake's is somewhat forgettable despite having series veteran Sherry Birkin all grown up. It's mildly interesting to see Jake struggle with his morality and see how his bluster is just a cover for a deeply insecure person, but it's a story I've seen a little too often. Chris's campaign however has one of the best characters in the game, Piers Nivens, a rookie BSAA agent who's optimism and dedication manage to pull Chris out of a PTSD spiral he's experiencing at the beginning of the game. What happened to the hero we saw at the end of 5? What happened to fighting for the future without fear?
Chris's finale is easily the highlight of this game and if you can pick up RE6 for $5 on sale or something I'd strongly recommend playing at least Chri's campaign. For one thing, his last boss is one of the coolest monster designs in the game. I'm going to spoiler this segment even though the game is fairly old but I do think it's worth experiencing:
In a moment of desperation during the final boss fight Piers injects himself with the Macguffin virus that caused all the trouble in the game, the C-Virus. He immediately begins mutating and gains lightning powers that allow you to take down the boss. Clearly struggling to hang on to his humanity he tells Chris:
I'm sorry Captain...
I did it for the BSAA.
I did it for the future!
And like man, thinking about the Chris from RE5 hearing those words and watching this man that saved him die in that pursuit has got to hurt more than anything he's ever felt in his life.
It's a legitimately emotionally resonant and effective sequence and it clarified so much of Chris's character that baffled me in RE7 and 8. Why was he so unwilling to accept Ethan's help in those games? It all makes sense to me now after 6!
General Series Thoughts - I just wanted to highlight a few things that carried over for multiple games, like how the zombie behavior changes over the course of the original trilogy. In the first game they tend to go in straight lines and take wide turns, but I was totally thrown off that they didn't have a lunge you could bait out so you could run by safely, which was in REmake. But it's generally easy enough to study their behavior and get a good idea of how to lure them out in a long line and then run by. In RE2 they do actually have a lunge, but are much better at moving directly to you, I didn't see them taking wide turns like they did in 1. Finally, the RE3 zombies have a mixture of both, the wide turns are back and you get lunges and they're also a lot quicker and aggressive in general. I like 3's implementation the best, especially coupled with that game's dodge mechanic. You can do things like intentionally get grabbed in a group so when Jill pushes the attacker off the whole group will fall over.
In terms of resources, I think I like the balance of 1 the best. You can easily stockpile tons of ammo, but I don't think even every ammo drop in the game amounts to how much you'll have by the mid-game in 2. You never feel totally comfortable and if you're playing as Chris it's hard to justify holding two weapons, their ammo, and a healing item with his limited inventory, so the tension is still present even late game. RE2 and 3 both really up the resource pools. I think this was done in 2 just to make up for the greater amount of enemies in general, but 3 actually uses its resources to give the player freedom and agency. You get to choose how you mix your powders, you get to choose which weapons you even want to stick with, and you can easily do things like ditch the pistol early on and only focus on making grenade launcher ammo with some planning.
I didn't spend too much time with Mercenaries mode this go around but I remember as a kid playing that mode the most for all the games since it was relatively quick and easy to do while visiting someone who owned the game. RE4's is still probably my favorite because of all the different characters. It's really cool seeing all the different animations and moves from series favorites like Hunk and Wesker in the RE4 structure. RE6's merc mode may be one of its few highlights due to the deep combat system. It's really fun to pull off cool acrobatics while bunching up enemies for grenades or remote bombs (which you can plant while sliding), and it feels awesome to get clutch counter attacks in the heat of a sticky situation. I wish the characters had their own personality and style like in 4, but it's still a lot of fun.
TL;DR - I had a great time with every one of these games (even 6 to an extent, but definitely not as much fun as the others), and I strongly recommend people go back and play even the older games, which hold up remarkably well. RE games do something so well I see few series able to replicate, they're horror games that still give players agency in how they can fight back and struggle to survive. They're top notch experiences and considered classics of the medium for a reason, providing something for casual players, completionist players, speedrunners, horror seekers, and action junkies alike and I just think it's truly remarkable to make games that are consistently both broad in appeal yet specific in their outstanding design minutiae.
I tried to keep this brief and that obviously failed, but if anyone has any questions about these games or my opinions I'd love to elaborate! Thanks for reading all the way here at any rate!
I've never been into the terror/horror genre. I've tried Amnesia, outlast, and others like it but never got the "click".
Let me be honest, two main issues hold me off this genre. First of all, is the "stalker" mechanic. I just don't like being pursued for 8 hours long trying to find a button behind a book in a bookshelf or getting a key in a room and taking it to another while an invincible force chases me off every corner.
The second and last, are the infamous "jumpscare". Building tension by environmental elements is good way to do terror for me but when it ends with a scary monster jumping over a door with a high pitch scream it's just a huge disappointment.
From a good perspective, I had a good time with games like RE4 and RE7 (aside from the stalker sections) but those may not be pure "horror games".
I appreciate a good story and "atmospheric" games, so my friend recommend to look some indie games at the steam store (e.g. Fran Bow and Darkwood), but I've bought none yet.
So it comes down to one question, what are the best terror/horror experiences that you have ever played?
A little bit of backstory : When I was a kid in the 90s and early 00s, my favorite games were 2D platformers. I remember playing for hours Super Mario World; Donkey Kong Country; etc...
As an adult, I've had trouble with games from the latest revival of platformers. Shovel Knight; Super Meat Boy; Rayman Origins; Fez...
I didn't finish any of these games. It's not that I think they are bad games but I just didn't really feel like I wanted to play them... I was sure that my love for plaformers was dead and that was it... Until I started playing Celeste.
I don't even know where to begin to describe what this game means to me.
The gameplay is pretty basic at first but I immediatly loved how responsive the character of Madeline is. She can jumb, climb walls and dash in every direction.
The prologue makes you understand that the game is going to be pretty difficult to finish, but simultaneously hipes you up and tells you that it's entirely possible.
I don't want to reveal too much but the story grabbed me too! And how refreshing it is to have some dialogue in a platformer!
I'm pretty sure most people here have heard about this game. (It won a game award if I'm not mistaken.) I just want to make sure that if anyone has had the same experience as me and have been looking for a 2D platformer to love. THIS IS THE ONE!
Now I'm playing another 2D platformer that I've heard a lot about Hollow knight. I'm already 20 hours in and I'm so thankfull to Celeste to have given me the courage to tacle more difficult 2D games.
In 2015 i played witcher 3 , it was like nothing ive ever experienced , the world felt so alive , the characters were so well written , every choice i made mattered , i wasnt feeling like i was playing a videogame but like i was actualy living there . The last time i was so invested in a world was when i played deus ex human revolution
After finishing the game i was so sad and empty because the story was over but also because i knew that its gonna be a long time until a game comes out that will make me feel the same way and i was right . Years passed and nothing even came close to me , divinity original sin 2 was good but not that good .
But all of that was about to change when red dead redemption 2 released . My god the graphics , the details in every little thing , so many well written characters that you either want hate or love , there was this one blonde guy that i wanted to kill soooo bad . This game had everything , i know alot of people didnt enjoy the slow gameplay but it didnt bother me , the only thing that i didnt like was the fact that leaving the mission zone was instantly failed mission . So i finished the game and again i knew that it will be years until something big comes again .
The year is ending and nothing as good released yet , i hope that 2022 will be the year
I finished Factorio on default (with slower enemy expansion) - launched the rocket after around 50 hours - I'm not an expert but I have an idea of what the game is like.
After reading glowing praises of people who sunk hundreds/thousands of hours into this, I'm struck by how simplistic the game is - it's all just plain logistics, moving X from A to B. The latter game is challenging, but it's made challenging by expanding the number of types of cargo/recipes and the arbitrary limitations of your tools, especially inserters, along with the limitations stemming from a 2D map (2.5 if you count subterranean) while pushing back enemies. There is a lot to do, the designs can get large/complicated. But it's all just scale.
The logistics aspect is varied and complex, and the UI/building functions are the best I've ever seen. I think that's what makes the game so enjoyable. Plus driving around and fighting offers a nice distraction. But the rules are actually really simple, as are the problems you're trying to solve - the power system is as simple as possible, temperature doesn't matter (with a tiny exception in nuclear reactors), day/night doesn't matter, no weather, no gas/fluid pressure. The only side-effect is pollution, but it's only relevant with enemies. Timing is mostly self-correcting, though it's good to get it roughly right. The signal/logic system is interesting, but the wiring is clunky, it's limited by the interfaces the buildings provide, and it's really not necessary to solve the simple problems the game presents to you. It feels like an afterthought. Maybe that's why people rarely seem to use it.
Compare this to the simulation in Oxygen Not Included, which has significant temperature of every entity+tile (with conductivity, capacity, state changes), but also pressure and fluid simulation, both for gases and liquids, germ simulation, and worker happiness. You need to account for significant side effects like waste heat and waste material. Your designs can fail in subtle or catastrophic ways. You haven't lived until the combustion gases from your rocket melt your hangar and vent half of your base to the vacuum of space. It's a different kind of game, but it illustrates how simplistic and focused Factorio is.
There are other automation games, which are in Early Access, but I haven't played them yet, also the rules of this sub forbid me from mentioning them.
In summary, I had a good time with Factorio (wouldn't finish it otherwise) and the game is good at what it does, but by design it's also quite simplistic, especially for a gold standard in automation games.
Now that Microsoft's cloud gaming service, Xcloud, officially launched in my country, I was finally able to beat the last game in the Arkham Trilogy. And boy, was it good.
The game feels like the culmination of the trilogy, improving on all the mechanics and characters that the other games introduced and giving its own twist. The urgent plot, the ramifications of Joker's hijinks from Arkham City, the integration of the bat family during side and main stories. It nails almost perfectly the feel of Batman's animated movies, while giving you all the tools you need to allow the Dark Knight to shine.
Was the heavily criticized Batmobile bad? I don't think so. It feels fast, but incredibly tough, making it an absolute treat to drive around and, especially, beat the Riddler's challenges. However, the over reliance on tank battles was kinda off-putting, but I might attribute that to my binge-playing.
How did you guys feel about it? I still haven't completed the post-game story, but I find it hard to believe that I would be disappointed. Definitely one the best single player experiences I've had.
You often see people complain that a particular game is outdated, or that it's not fun nowadays.
However, I find that the fast majority of video games ever produced remain fun no matter their age.
I think only first and third person games made before 1998 look absolutely shit and borderline unplayable. With games in isometric view, or games that never pretended to be realistic in the first place (like Wolfenstein), not an issue.
As an example, I started playing the Infinity Engine games in 2019. I absolutely loved every single one of them, especially BG2 and Planescape Torment. Don't find them outdated, at all, thanks to the improved resolution with the EE's. But IWD2 does not have an EE and is playable.
I think the only thing that may prevent me from enjoying older games are either terrible controls or terrible resolution. Aside from that, I think most video games age well, and you can still have fun with them.
Do you disagree?
I'm a long-term fan of the Civilization series, although I've never played the really old games. My most-played ones are Civ 4 and SMAC. A few weeks ago I started playing Civ 6, with the first two large expansions, and I want to share some of my thoughts and impressions. It's been somewhat of a mixed bag - the TLDR is that it is interesting and in some ways genuinely enjoyable, so I do want to continue playing it. But it also has issues and doesn't really give me what I'm looking for in a Civ game. It scratches different itches.
Let's talk about difficulty levels first so you can gauge whether what I'm talking about is relevant to you. I normally play Civ 4 on Monarch and practically always win. If I bump it up to Emperor, I have a really hard time - a typical game is where I work very hard, stay mostly competitive, and in the end India wins by culture. SMAC I play on Transcend and usually win. I won my first Emperor game in Civ 5, tried Immortal, and gave up on the game due to the waiting times between turns.
In Civ 6, I won a test game on Prince, which we'll ignore, and I've now played seven games on Emperor. I lost the first and another one to an early surprise war, won three diplomatic victories and a science victory, and had one draw: abandoned due to an endless "Please wait" between turns. Pretty high winrate for someone who doesn't fully understand all the mechanics, and I'd say that is the game's first weakness: it seems too easy. I never really felt I was planning or executing a strategy, instead I was drifting through moment-to-moment decisions, and in the end I ended up with enough victory points. Once I got through the early game it didn't seem like there was a way to lose. No AI civ ever made a credible attempt to win diplo or culture and the bonuses they got from Emperor difficulty were irrelevant towards the end. I should probably move up to Immortal, but at that point it always starts to feel silly with the amount of extra stuff the AI gets.
Oddly, it seems that the starting position RNG has a much bigger effect on the game than the difficulty setting. In Civ 4, they took great care to make starting locations somewhat equally viable: normal tile yields were capped at 3, and food/production were interchangeable for settlers and workers, and for everything else once you had the Slavery civic. In Civ 6, some hills tiles can have a yield of 4, which is doesn't sound like much but is a massive bonus. Having this vs. not having it could be the difference between a successful game and failure. Similarly, being the first to meet certain city states and tripling your early game science output is an unnecessarily powerful random element.
City states are something that Civ 5 introduced, and I'm not too fond of them - they just feel like uninspired givers of fetch quests, and that's not what I really want from a strategy game (or any game, really). Also, they clutter up the map which I feel ought to be where the competition between civilizations takes place. So, not a fan, but I can accept them. The other thing that Civ 5 introduced, and which I really dislike, is the one unit per tile rule. With 1upt, the scope of the game is much more limited - it is no longer about grand empires and their armies. In Civ 6, even on Emperor difficulty I've had AIs congratulate me on my military strength when all game I completely neglected building units. It also has practical issues - who hasn't been in a situation where they wanted to move one of their units within their own territory, but a random city-state unit was blocking the only passage? The map is simply too small to serve as a tactical battlefield. Consider a game like HoMM3, where you switch to a tactical hex-grid for the battles: this grid could hold a lot of cities in Civ 5/6. And even then, you'd be able to stack hundreds of dragons on one tile, because actually building and managing real armies instead of a swordsman or two is kind of fun. And stacking units means you can move them easily - if I try managing a large army in recent Civs, I soon give up and choose a peaceful victory option instead just because the movement is so painful.
The other major issue with 1upt is that the AI doesn't know how to play the game. Sure, if it surprises you and brings a lot of units, it might wipe you out, and that happened in my first Emperor game. I get the impression that the early surprise war isn't much of a surprise to most players who have been playing longer than me. But I've also been in a situation where I was surprised, barely managed to get an archer into a city, and the AI completely failed to do anything meaningful. Many stronger units would move up to the city one turn, but then next turn they'd have gone somewhere else, and my archer occasionally got shots in. No one ever killed anything, and once I had reinforcements I just signed a peace treaty. In another situation, in the late game I decided I'd try to attack Pedro just to see what would happen. What happened was that Pedro sat there, maybe brought two units over the span of dozens of turns, while I whittled down two of his cities with four artillery units and eventually took them with tanks. It was tedious but not difficult. Then I collected all his great works in a peace treaty. This is not what would happen in Civ 4, certainly not on Emperor where I'd expect to be challenged hard. A relevant quote from a video I watched (by potatomcwhiskey, a good Deity-level player apparently): "Just always have confidence that the AI will shit the bed."
So, I believe meaningful combat just isn't really something that happens in Civ 6, which is a pity. But the game does shine in other aspects. Starting with superficial aspects, like graphics and music: I rather like the idea of using a real old-time map as the graphical style. Everything looks quite nice, although I wish for larger unit graphics so we wouldn't need icon clutter to recognize them. The in-game music is very nice and varied (not a fan of the title music though). Performance is also good - at least using Windows: I tried the Linux version first and it was pretty terrible. But the Windows version of Civ 6 seems considerably faster than Civ 5, which is very welcome.
On the gameplay side, the city- and empire-building seems interesting and fun. Cities no longer occupy one tile only, but expand into districts. These get all sorts of adjacency bonuses, which rewards careful planning. I don't think I've made full use of this yet and it's very much a motivator to keep playing and experimenting. Another interesting idea is the Loyalty system: cities must maintain loyalty, and pressure from adjacent cities has an effect on this. This feels very much like the culture pressure system in Civ 4. If you don't pay attention to your border cities, they will flip independent first and then join another empire. Of course this could also happens to cities the AI chooses to settle in your face, which is quite satisfying when you pull it off. The diplo system also seems to be working quite well. I haven't played that much Civ 5, but again Civ 6 seems considerably better to me in this regard. The grievances system for warfare seems to give reasonable results, and it's possible (if maybe too easy) to make lasting friendships and alliances. I feel the leader characters are also well-done and quite fun. Less fun is working out the details of a deal, which brings me to my next point.
The user interface is not great. One of the worst aspects is not having a city overview screen. I'd like to have everything relevant easily accessible - production queues, tile assignments, production/growth progress with actual numbers, all presented in a way that's easily processed at a glance. Once again, Civ 4 is the gold standard, but even SMAC was much better, and I find it incomprehensible that functionality is lost rather than improved over time. Another thing even SMAC had and Civ 6 doesn't: "Road to" functionality for builders. Of course, builders can't build roads in Civ 6, but using military engineers you can build railroads - by moving them manually from tile to tile and clicking the railroad icon every turn. It's needlessly tedious - and again, this kind of problem was already solved in earlier installments, which makes the lack of polish incomprehensible. Other examples (and I could list many): scrolling at the screen edge fails to work when certain panels are open. If you want to drag&drop a Great Work, you'll have issues if the source and destination buildings aren't visible on the same page and you'd need to scroll.
I also would have liked more information from other parts of the GUI. I still haven't found a way to easily see how my "amenities" are calculated or how luxury resources affect them. It's still a complete mystery eight games in. Tooltips could be more informative - when it says "build 6 farms" for an inspiration bonus, why not show the relevant information "that's x more". Or, when placing a district, show the effect it will have on adjacent districts. Regarding workers and settlers: if you're playing Civ 4, you can hover them over a tile to move to, and it'll highlight which build actions will be available there. Why doesn't Civ 6 offer something like this? Things like this make the game less accessible than it ought to be.
One feeling I just can't shake is that the game - just like many other modern games - lacks focus. Early Civ games had food, production and economy (split into gold and science) as currencies, and you built up your empire to achieve power by increasing the production of these things. Since then, the number of currencies has ballooned - now you also have culture, faith, tourism, diplomatic favours, envoys, and a few others. Sometimes it makes no sense - why am I purchasing rock bands with faith? Or sewers, for that matter. And many systems seem to exist side by side, doing similar things: governors, religions, policies - they serve just to let you choose bonuses that all feel fairly arbitrary to me. I wonder if it's a result of bigger teams developing games these days, with everyone doing their own thing, or if these systems are designed to be packaged and sold as separate DLCs. And not every game element really seems to matter: much is made of global warming, but you build a few coastal protections and there's no issue. This extends to victory types: in every game so far, diplo victory seemed so quick and easy compared to everything else that it feels like I'd have to try very hard not to achieve it quite early. On the other hand, I still have no idea how I'd go about winning by culture - I've made efforts, but it always seems hundreds of turns away, even with Kongo which on paper looked made for culture victory.
The number of bonuses to choose from in all these systems is somewhat overwhelming for a new player, and some of them seem completely random - like the God of Healing pantheon, which gives units healing while on a holy district. That just seems very situational and leaves me with the question of why I would ever want to pick it, especially when compared to some others that could be absolutely insane if the map generation RNG works out just so. There are also the government policies, where in the late game you end up with several pages of cards, all of which have different effects, and which (beside being grouped into four colours) cannot be visually distinguished without reading the text on each. Maybe less would have been more. Even great people now all have different effects, and sometimes you could end up in a position where you've earned one, but the one that is available seems completely useless. On the flip side, there are also engineers who completely trivialize the late-game space race projects.
So, the final verdict is that the game triggers the city-building and puzzle receptors in my brain much more than the strategy ones. I like those genres, and so far I like playing the game, but I wish we would get an updated version of something like Civ 4 again at some point. Or a real SMAC successor that has character.
After hearing amazing reviews for this game, I decided to finally get it. Disclaimer: I haven't finished it yet, but I have about 9 hours in and honestly, I'm not sure if I will. I can definitely see the positives of the game and I completely understand why so many people love it, but for me it gets unnecessarily tiring at times. This review has some mild spoilers but they will be marked, so no worries if you haven't played it, this post won't ruin anything for you.
I was hesitant to get it at first because I'm not that huge of a fan of walking simulators, but honestly, I really liked it. The characters I interacted with at the beginning were fun, the visuals were great, the music is absolutely fantastic. I like how it's very non-linear but in a way that makes sense, and you can piece together the puzzle of why you're in a time loop bit-by-bit though traveling to other planets and exploring all of these unique and interesting worlds. I really found myself engaged and looking forward to discovering all of the new secrets of the solar system. Truly, the good parts of this game aren't just good, they're fantastic
But the bad parts, man, the bad parts are ruining it for me.
I am genuinely and completely baffled that a 'save' or quicksave feature isn't in the game, and it makes for a tedious experience. As an example, trying to get to Southern Observatory through the hanging city is absolutely painful. I'm not one to rage at games, but it amazes me how I can spend 10 minutes getting to one area, do a tiny slip up with my jetpack when crossing the ghost matter, and I get launched (quite literally) to the other side of the solar system without my ship. And of course, if the black hole station isn't nearby, I have to ever so painfully and slowly jetpack my way towards it, and when I get there, I now have to wait God knows how long for the planets to align so that it sends me back to the same planet. Why they wouldn't just let you teleport back normally instead of making you wait that long for no reason is beyond me (edit: I've been waiting for 7 minutes to get teleported back, it still hasn't happened). And when it sends you back, it's not the same place, not even close, just the same planet, with my ship on the other side. And this happens every. single. time. you fall into the black hole, which happens a lot. Usually resulting in about 10 minutes of my time, gone, for the slightest mistake
And then you do all of this, and then the time loop resets anyway, so your effort is meaningless. I wish the game at least had a suicide option, so I didn't have to jetpack and suffocate myself to death when this happens, which takes a while. (Edit: I stand corrected, there is a 'reset loop' option a bit hidden away. Thank you to the redditors who pointed that out, I definitely would not have found it on my own )
Another thing that bothered me was the fact that even though this is an exploration game... sometimes I felt like I was punished for exploring? Like oh, there's this cliff? Jump off and see if it kills you, or if it brings you to a new area with a bunch of secrets (because who knows which one of the two it's going to be!), or see if pushing these buttons will launch you into space, or see if going here will lead you kilometers away from your ship with almost no hope of getting back without dying. All of this would be perfectly fine, if it wasn't for the fact that every reset took several minutes to get back to where I was before my death. I don't mind a game not holding my hand, but if you're going to kill me relatively often (or at least encourage me to do deadly things almost every loop), at least don't punish me for it so much. Having to redo the same trip 3-4 times to a single planet (sometimes more) just to explore it gets tiring, especially when all I'm doing is what the game asks me to, i.e. explore! paragraph edited in after 4 more hours of playing
Lastly and least, I'm not a fan that much of the mechanics when it comes to landing your ship and zero-gravity too. It feels unnecessarily wonky at times, and often I felt the way I did when I would drive the Mako in Mass Effect one: Why on earth can't they just make it simpler and easier to control?. But still, nothing is as bad as the tediousness in this game.
Idk guys, it's really throwing me off. I'm sad because I really love all the other aspects of this game, but I'm amazingly frustrated by how tired I'm getting of it. It got such great reviews but really, I'm close to just giving up
So I just got done finishing Watch Dogs Legion, including getting the platinum and for as much as I enjoyed it, it really feels so barebones compared to even the original game.
I've played all three games, including the DLCs for WD1 and 2 and Legion by far is my least favourite out of the three, with WD1 still surprisingly being my favourite.
Watch Dogs 1 had great driving, combat and hacking opportunities during both of them. It was cool to be in a car chase with police and being able to hack traffic lights, bridges and bollards to help with your escape. It felt very action movie-eqsue and it really added to feeling of having so much power over your surroundings. The on foot combat was great as well, especially with the slo-mo mechanic. It just made Aiden feel like an action movie hacker John Wick type dude which I thought was really fun, if a too OP. The story wasn't groundbreaking but I likes the majority of the characters and I had a lot of fun with the main story, which I was slightly surprised by tbh.
Watch Dogs 2 was another great game but I felt it just didn't hit the same as the original. There were less hacking opportunities during car chases, the driving wasn't as good and the combat just straight up annoyed me at times. I always found it way too hard sometimes to stealth properly (which wasn't an issue with the original) but when I went all guns blazing I found enemies to be way more powerful that I expected and it was a pain trying to hack people to stop reinforcements, leading to long drawn out gun fights that I didn't find as fun since the combat didn't feel the same. I liked the tone WD2 went with but it still just didn't work as well for me and I found the DLCs weren't as enjoyable either.
Watch Dogs Legion takes out even more hacking while driving stuff (no traffic lights for some reason) while keeping WD2s style of combat but limiting it even more with the Operatives system. In short you have to hire certain NPCs to your cause who have certain perks and sometimes weapons, which only certain characters can carry lethal guns (spies, soldiers, guards). Most characters are stuck with nonlethal weapons and you can't even give them more effective lethal weapons from other Operatives.
I didn't have too much of a problem with this until later on when I had to do infiltration missions where you're immediately caught hacking the bad guys and they all know where you are straight away (including drones with guns) and the armoured enemies just shred right through you with their MGs. There's no warning of an unavoidable combat section so if you pick an Operative you like who maybe has some good perks but no good weapons, then you're fucked. You'll have to die, swap to a new Operative (no restarting checkpoints) and you'll have to do the entire mission again while you're other Operative stays locked on cooldown until you can use them again.
There's also no car on demand system in Legion so unless you have a certain Operative available who has their own vehicle then you can't call on a personal car and constantly need to keep stealing cars. Especially annoying if you're stuck in a quiet area and have no getaway car available that you can quickly grab. Particularly doesn't make sense to me because:
a). Cars on demand were a feature in both previous games. b). A lot of Operatives have enough empty slots in their weapon/abilities wheel that they could have just added in a car for most of them.
Overall as much as I liked Watch Dogs Legion, especially it's London setting, it just felt stripped of a lot of things that made the other two games great. As a side note the game was also quite buggy, especially with trophies which did hinder the experience for me, although isn't really a deal breaker.
P.S Funnily enough Legion came out 1 year ago today on PS4 so I think I'm just within the time limit to post this.
Mobile, sorry for any formatting issues!
So not too long ago, definitely some time this year, I decided I would go back and play the entire Halo franchise start to finish. Admittedly, this was partly down to knowing a new release was on the way, (Don't worry, only mentioning for context), but at the same time, some of these titles were some of my favourite games growing up so I knew I would enjoy myself and get to replay some favourite missions etc.
The strange thing is, I had way more fun than I thought I would. What started out as a way for me to recap the story beats without requiring me to sit through some terribly long YouTube video, ended with me enjoying myself more than I have for years. Why? Honestly, because there was no rush. I could go at my own pace. An hour here, an hour there, something after work or at the weekend. In the space of maybe, 3 months with some breaks along the way, I ended up finishing Halo: CE right upto Halo 5.
It really got me thinking about how we consume media. I mean, how often do people nowadays really go out of their way to re-experience something they know and love? It's such a huge thing with books. I read my favourite book at least once every year. How many people can say they play their favourite game every year? How much happier would we be if we did?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not always patient. I'm so excited to talk about some of the more recent releases after they've been out for 12 months. But I think the more I read through this subreddit, the more I take part and post, the more the whole idea seems to "Click" for me. Since the whole dumpster fire that was 2020, I've gone back and played so many amazing games, some of which I had completely forgotten how much I enjoyed.
Has anyone had anything similar? Outside of being patient, what are some of your most favourite games that you've gone back to play?
One of the biggest flaws I see in many games, that makes them somewhat forgettable, is that the game fails in one or several ways, causing the rest of the game to go down overall. Slay the Spire has Microsoft Paint graphics, despite containing compelling gameplay. Dishonored 2 has a weak story that barely frames it's core fantasy of being a sneaky assassin. Katana Zero, on the other hand, is the rare indie game that manages to do it all somehow. It has compelling gameplay wrapped in an equally fascinating and brutal story that pulls no punches, with a serviceable score and a charming aesthetic.
Let's start with the story. Essentially, you are some kind of assassin/special ops agent working with a shadowy organization who controls you through your therapist by providing you with your medicine. As the story progresses, the conflict between the main character that you play as and your organization can grow or shrink based on your actions. Now while this isn't a true "actions and consequences" kind of game, there are definitely impacts in dialogue and even a few other, bigger ones. I feel like a bit more could have been done in this area, but it works.
Katana's story is dark, and it does it a lot of credit. The violence is often visceral, with you actively beheading enemies or crushing their skulls in cut scenes. This works quite well because games with this kind of art style often struggle to communicate violence to their audience as it can look quite cartoonish. Katana's violence and vulgar language is intentionally used to be both grounding for the gritty world the developers have made as well as serving to try to make the game uncomfortable, in a good way.
Katana is not a game that is trying to make you comfortable. It wrenches with your sense of time and refuses to function with the same tropes as other games. One of my favorite story mechanics it implements to subvert common video game tropes is that if you attempt to skip some dialogue, you will actually be interrupting the character, usually in a rude fashion. This along with the confusion about timeline and general darkness of the story serve to keep the player completely glued.
Katana's gameplay is smooth and generally feels excellent. The timeslow feature feels great to use and the framing device/ lore justification of it is incredible. Swatting bullets away, evading enemies and using every tool at your disposal to overcome a problem often makes it feel like an incredibly fast-paced puzzle game, especially on hardmode. The game manages to find the fine line between "hard to the point of frustration" and "challenging". Rarely did I feel taken out of the game by its difficulty, a problem that I've experienced with games like Dark Souls 3. One specific way that Askiisoft does this that is a stroke of complete genius is through the nonstop score and smooth respawn. Any of your remember that phone game Geometry dash? One of the most infuriating things about the game was how you'd be vibing to the music, in the groove, only to die and clunkily reset.
The soundtrack in general is quite good in my opinion, fits the feeling of the game very well. It isn't as memorable as something like Undertale or The Witcher by any means, but it's got a particular and effective style and it works incredibly well for this game.
As for general criticism, the only real issue I had with the game was that there wasn't enough of it. It needed more time to fully resolve the plot and expand its concept. But, at the same time, I can't help but applaud a game that doesn't fill itself with 100's of hours of bland, boring content. Katana gets in, does what it says, and gets out.
9.5/10
One scene that impacted me in particular was your confrontation of DJ Electrohead, and it almost entirely had to do with how the script grounded itself with mature language and generally making Electrohead sound just like a real person, swearing and begging, confronted with death. Another example would be the encounter with the homeless person.
The V scenes where he captures you and the later one when you visit the psychologist when your sanity is really going are terrifying and just generally masterful.
This is probably my biggest particular piece of criticism with the entire game, but the Tragedy/Comedy thing didn't work for me very well on the first playthrough. I missed some of the setup for it because of my choices and I feel like it could've used more. Tragedy/Comedy felt a bit rushed and sudden, and the game was a bit too short to allow for it.
My last piece of criticism is the abruptness of the ending. In the end, we fight Headhunter, a nameless individual that we only met in Chinatown who had almost no real setup. There is no epic fight between the dragon and Zero, no fight between Snow and Zero, or any of the characters that I really wanted to see resolved. Yet maybe this is the design of the makers. There is no epic conclusion because in the end, it's a bunch of druggie veterans scrabbling around murdering people to get another hit.
For a long time I had been skeptical for Anno because in Steam, particularly, many found the Uplay existence as a big burden and therefore reviewed the series negatively, to a point that almost all have "mixed" reviews. Anno 1800 left Steam completely to go on an another platform exclusively, I got it from EGS.
Firing up the game, at the No DLC version to try it as a demo, I was immediately struck by the amazing artwork and detail this team put in the graphics. If it was only a city builder then it would be the most immersive one and it also doesn't stop there.
As a management / trading sim, it's a part of the game that is very entertaining if you come from other production chain games such as Factorio, but of course it's overly simplified in the mechanics compared to a pure industrial game.
As an RTS, there are some fighting units, and bases with defenses, so there is some struggle there as well, however, military victory is almost certain if a player can figure out how to build a strong economy.
The endgame in Anno 1800 is open ended and it becomes just to be left in peace, and be rich enough with gold and logistics to create a very beautiful city.
The best part that further enhances immersion is that along with the stunning visuals, Anno 1800 is in my top3 game soundtracks of all time. Just amazing music for any different area. There are a couple at start, with their themes.
After playing a couple of weeks to learn it, i purchased all dlc. Decides to start a new campaign each time and open all the dlc one by one just to learn then to the fullest.
What else, just overall a great game, and from what I read in r/anno, it is probably the best one of the series.
TLDR: Definitely recommended for city builders, but also management / logistics fans and partially rts enthusiasts.
(EDIT: Typos)
So I, like a lot of people first played through Divinity Original Sin 2 and was really blown away by it. Going into this game I knew it wouldn't be as good as the second one and I tried not to hold it against it, and in the end this was quite an enjoyable experience. Now if I were to compare these two the first game would be weaker in almost all departments but that just speaks how amazing of a game the second one is.
Combat was quite good actually even if it was really easy. There were no bosses that took me hours to beat and almost every fight had the same strategy, the combat in this game is based more around luck and dice rolls than strategizing. Environments are really deadly and I feel like all classes are quite balanced (maybe archery is a bit more powerful than the others). Good armour system, good buffs/debuffs, good skills, good action point system. There's really nothing to complain about in the combat system in this game, but it's nothing amazing.
Story was underwhelming, so many names thrown around, characters that aren't developed and you couldn't connect with. Companions are forgettable and some even annoying (Jahan in particular always said the same thing and most of the times I just skipped his dialogue). All dialogue really is skippable as there's never anything interesting happening and you could learn everything essential from the quest book. I was looking forward to the orcs, goblins and imps but the only race that got a developed personality were the imps, everyone else could've been replaced with other fantasy races and nothing would've changed.
Side quests were ok, nothing terrible but nothing that I remember. Areas looked a bit too samey for me, I couldn't really distinguish the Luculla Forest from the Phantom Forest . Some plotlines were intriguing and I wish got a bit more time like the Rot or the Immaculates . Soundtrack was meh, for some reason it just disappeared during the battle half of the time and it felt really un-epic. Graphics still look good today and the cutscenes were really well done even though there were really little of them. Co-op really made this game though, I don't think I would've enjoyed it nearly as much if it weren't for my mate.
Overall the first Divinity game was an enjoyable experience, but not one I would ever replay it in a world where the second Divinity game exists. It has a lot of faults and as much as I tried not to compare it too much to its succesor, my biggest gripes with the game is how much better everything is in DOS2. Happy I gave it a shot, but don't think I'll remember much about it in a couple of months. 7/10
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