Onimusha was a third-party PlayStation 2 exclusive franchise that did very well back in the day. I remember seeing these games on shelves for years at Blockbuster and game stores, and they never caught my interest until the third entry. Onimusha can be described as a Samurai-themed version of Resident Evil, featuring 3D polygonal characters set against pre-rendered backgrounds and utilizing tank controls. In 2019 an HD remaster was released that vastly improved the game and made it more playable thanks to modern enhancements. These include things such as up to 1440p resolution, texture filtering, a 16:9 aspect ratio, re-recorded voice acting and soundtrack, and improved controls. You can now control characters with the left analog stick, which removes the tank controls. You can also switch weapons on the fly rather than through menus, like in Resident Evil. This bumps the score up quite a bit and makes it enjoyable to play.
You assume the role of Samanosuke, a samurai whose clan is engaged in a war with Oda Nobunaga. Oda is killed in battle, and he swears allegiance with demons to come back to life and take over Samanosuke’s clan. Given that a quick run-through of the game takes around 4-5 hours (3.5 hours with a walkthrough), the story is extremely thin and lacks interest. There’s not much time to tell a good story. Unfortunately, the characters lack depth and backstory, making it difficult to care about them. The boss designs are cool, but the enemies feel like generic zombie samurais and monsters. The only really cool design is Guildenstern, who feels like something straight from H.R. Giger. The enemy variety is enough for this type of game, as you need to learn enemy attack patterns, so too many enemies would make the game more unbalanced.
The combat consists of a single attack button. You can lock on to enemies and do three-hit combos as well as block. It’s punchy and feels excellent and each of the three weapons feels excellent to use. Enryuu is a heavy flame sword, Shippuu is a swift double sword, and Raizen is a medium-speed short sword. Each weapon has an elemental attack attached to it that does massive damage and uses blue magic, so you only get a couple of uses, and each weapon has its own meter; it’s not a shared pool. You can gain more magic only from enemies dropping orbs or magic fountains near save points. Therefore, you should utilize it sparingly against bosses or to overcome challenging situations. You also use these magic powers to unlock doors to progress through the game. You must upgrade your magic first, or you’ll be stuck and have to grind. Enemies do respawn, which is annoying, but it’s needed to gain more red orbs to upgrade magic and weapons.
Armor isn’t upgradeable, but you can find two different sets of better armor in the game, but they are locked behind some puzzles. Some of the best items and jewels, which are used to upgrade max magic and health, are locked behind puzzle boxes. Books provide clues, but they can be hard to interpret. The map system is quite adequate, allowing you to either consult a labeled map online or create one yourself. Like Resident Evil, you need to memorize landmarks to get around the game, as every room has a fixed camera angle. There is a bonus arena mode in which you descend 20 levels of waves of enemies to get a key to unlock the strongest sword in the game, but it’s not until just before the final boss, so this is mostly useful for second playthroughs. The arena is incredibly challenging, so I recommend playing the game on easy first and then doing another playthrough on a harder difficulty.
Overall, Onimusha was a good attempt from Capcom to create another sub-genre of their Resident Evil games, and it was mostly successful. A simple but solid combat system, fun and challenging bosses, and well-designed levels will give you a fun weekend. Just don’t expect a complicated story and captivating characters.
South Park has had a reputation of having terrible games in its repertoire. In fact, South Park on the N64 is considered one of the worst games ever made. The studio redeemed itself with The Stick of Truth in 2014 and delivered a fun turn-based RPG that kept the look and humor of the shows. Critics praised it for evoking the experience of playing an actual show. The Fractured But Whole carries on this tradition, introducing a fresh narrative and featuring the character of the New Kid, also known as Butthole or Butt Lord. Sadly, the game feels more like an expansion on the first game rather than an entirely new game. We get the same South Park map, nearly the same locales and shops, and the gameplay is mostly unchanged. The studio didn’t do much to address many of the concerns from the original, either.
You start out by creating your hero to look like a South Park character. You are a voiceless protagonist again, but I wish I could actually play as one of the main characters here. Once the plot is dished out, you can go explore South Park. Unfortunately, the map remains largely unchanged. Until you acquire different fart powers, various areas remain blocked. Your primary superpower is the ability to produce potent farts that have the capacity to alter the course of time and space. You eventually acquire various abilities that allow you to reach higher places by using small fans. You can use Captain Diabetes to knock over objects with green bases. You can unlock the electric door by having Butters…shove a hamster up your butt and then fart it out, which will short out the circuit. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. You also have the power to have Toolshed shove a hose up your butt to act as an air compressor to blow debris away. Usually this is in the form of the lava Lego bricks that block paths early in the game. Exploration is mostly for finding crafting parts, which are hidden in various objects with gold handles or lids. You can also go around collecting Yaoi posters or find Big Gay Al’s hidden cats with pink scarves.
Exploration can be fun early on, as there are many areas to unlock, and you will always wonder how to get to certain spots. Once you get towards the end of the game, the entire town will be accessible. There are various vending machines that allow you to buy costume parts, artifacts, consumables, and crafting parts. You also have a social media presence on Coonstagram, so you can walk around and take photos with South Park characters to increase your following. This mainly just allows you to complete your character sheet. Mastery in various areas will unlock some rewards. Certain characters won’t take photos with you until you meet certain criteria, like finishing a side quest or main mission. There are also toilets you can poop in to play a mini-game. Honestly, all of these things are superficial and don’t really add substance to the exploration, but it’s better than nothing.
This game primarily focuses on combat, dividing each area into squares. Each character has different attacks that can reach certain grids based on what kind of attack it is. Some attacks move in specific lines, such as Toolshed’s drill attack, which is diagonal in both directions. Certain attacks have the ability to knock enemies back, which can result in additional damage if an enemy is standing behind them. Certain attacks have the ability to penetrate through enemies, while others require you to be in close proximity to them. To be honest, I don’t think the attacks are well balanced. There are three different power attributes: brain, brawn, and spunk. There are several superhero classes, including assassins, brawlers, plantmancers, and psychics. These are generic classes, and you can pick and choose abilities after selecting your class. Each class also possesses an ultimate ability. This ability is a yellow bar that builds up when hit, and when you are hit, you can press a button in time to give yourself a small health boost and advance the ultimate meter further. The ultimate meter is essential to winning longer and tougher battles.
Like in the previous game, there are positive and negative status effects. Bleeding, gross out (poison), attack and defense up or down, but positive status effects take a back seat over negative. There aren’t many abilities that give you positive effects. This illustrates my point about the powers being poorly balanced. There are very few healing abilities, and most of them feel useless. It is rare to find abilities that can heal your entire team, as healing individual characters becomes challenging when there are four or more characters on screen. There are consumables you can use for this, but items that give you more health as you go on are pricier and harder to come by, just like any RPG. You at least fully heal after each battle, and effects don’t carry forward. I found the attack patterns to be mostly annoying and attributed them to the balance issue. A lot of damaging attacks require you to be in front of or in line with the enemy. I wish there were more abilities that allowed you to attack from a longer distance. Some abilities feel useless when the grid layout just doesn’t work in your favor. I feel the grid needs to be wider so more characters can get in direct contact with the enemies. It’s not always a problem, but if you balance your abilities and party, you can avoid this, mostly. You can complete side quests to unlock summons, which are craftable items that can heal or do damage to the entire grid.
I also discovered that the story mode primarily focuses on boss rushes in the last half. You will run into various groups in the show, such as the Raisins, Rednecks, Ninjas, Sixth Graders, and so on. Each group has certain abilities you need to remember, and you need to pick the right party members to counter them. Some enemies will have attacks that require a countdown before they can be executed and cause splash damage. Some enemies are incredibly powerful and can swarm you. I appreciated the variety of bosses with different win conditions, such as escaping or pushing enemies toward the boss, as that is the only way to deplete its health. The biggest gripe I have about the combat is how slow it is. There are many funny quips and one-liners from every character, but the turn won’t start until they finish their line. You can’t speed up battle in any way, and ultimate animations aren’t skippable. Thankfully, a lot of the smaller battles that are around town don’t respawn, but you need to do side quests and fight everyone you can to get a high enough rank.
This game is equipment and rank-based, and you don’t acquire levels. Each rank unlocks an artifact slot, and your artifact rank determines how powerful you are. By the end of the game, you will need to be ranked at 800 or higher to fight anything. Each mission has a rank level next to it that must be met, or you will quickly die. You can obtain artifacts by fighting bosses, scrounging around, or crafting them once you find the recipes. You must fight as much as you can to increase your rank to unlock new slots. It’s really annoying how restrictive the game is, but thankfully I didn’t run into not being ranked up enough, as I did do most of the side quests and fought everyone I could see. Different artifacts will increase their stats based on the build you have. Costumes are cosmetic only.
As the story progresses, the game feels dragged out. I feel there are many battles that are just there for fan service and don’t actually add to anything. The story is also similar to The Stick of Truth in that it’s nothing special and just feels like a typical South Park episode. That’s fine and all, but for a game, I wanted something a bit grander and more original. The game’s story relies too much on fan service and rehashing old story arcs from the TV show. Overall, The Fractured But Whole is a delightful superhero take on the formula but doesn’t do enough to advance the series or change much. If you didn’t like the last game, then this one won’t change your mind at all.
Retro-style games are booming right now, especially those with PS1-style graphics. Their limited capabilities are excellent for giving a certain vibe and atmosphere and are especially popular with horror games. While We Wait Here isn’t exactly a horror title, it does have a dark tone and theme. This is a story that begins near the conclusion and works its way backwards to tell everyone’s story. You are a couple who owns a diner in a small town in the middle of nowhere out in the Heartland of America. There’s no specific location given, and the entire area is generic, but it feels like somewhere out in the Midwest near Tornado Alley.
You are a couple who are about to move out of town and sell their diner. Lisa’s father owned this diner, and she assisted him in running it as a child. You meet Alex, your husband, while working at the diner as an adult. The game is a strange mix of horror, adventure, walking simulator elements, and restaurant sim similar to Diner Dash. However, the integration of the simulation elements with the rest of the story and game is so compelling that I found it impossible to stop playing. I played the entire game in one sitting. The writing is tight and well done, and the characters are very intriguing. Each character ends up at the diner, and you hear their conversations while cooking and play a 10-15 minute segment about their lives before arrival. The characters include two punk rock best friends who are constantly shushing each other about a secret, a couple with a newborn baby, a workaholic old man, and a peculiar and paranoid local.
Your story with Alex is eventually told, and I can’t really give any other details about the story, as it could spoil it. There is a mystery between the two and the diner itself. There are many first-person interactions with the people, but mostly on the sim side. Each person can order something off of the menu. The menu is accessible with a button that gives instructions on what items go with each order. Once you place a ticket down on the table, you can go about your business. It’s not very complicated, but the animations are detailed, and overhearing the chatter in the back as the story goes on is great. You can grab milk and ice cream to make a milkshake. Put everything in a blender, grab a glass, and prepare it for the customer. Some food dishes require placing a plate in the prepping area, such as hamburgers. Make sure you look at the ticket icon and see whether they want cheese or not. You can grill, make pancakes, give whiskey shots and coffee, and clean and put away the dishes. That includes putting back ingredients like milk and frozen french fries. This isn’t very deep, and only during a few moments will you have many orders, but there’s no rush. There is no time limit on the game.
You will eventually prepare every type of item by the end of the game, but that’s okay. There’s just enough here for the 2- to 3-hour story, and by then I felt like if I had to prepare more, it would become tedious. There are a few other mini-games such as shooting with a gun during a couple of segments and painting a room, but they don’t overstay their welcome and are relevant to the story. I did find one particular area in the game that really drove me nuts. You need to navigate a labyrinthine cave at a snail’s pace, and it took me nearly 30 minutes to find my way out. The story could have greatly benefited from reducing or eliminating this part of the game.
The visuals are great. Despite the PS1 style, the character models surpass the system’s capabilities in detail. The game is always dark, and you always wonder what’s just outside the window. The bizarre storm that’s the centerpiece of the story made me curious. The entire game made me curious, and I wanted it to go on further. The writing is so well done, as is the voice acting and characters. I was eager to delve deeper into these characters’ lives, yet what’s presented here fulfills its intended purpose and accomplishes the task. Both the resolution and each character’s conclusions are satisfying. It is very difficult to have such a good story for this short of a game.
Gorogoa is a puzzle game I have avoided for years. All for two reasons: It’s incredibly short, and I thought the game would be so abstract that it would be extremely obtuse and difficult to play. I was mistaken, indeed. Gorogoa only takes 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete depending on how stumped you get. The first two chapters of the game ease you into the concept of the entire thing. The story primarily involves following a boy during wartime as he collects different colored fruit to complete an artistic masterpiece. At least that was my interpretation of the story. There isn’t a single piece of written dialogue in the game, so you must use your imagination to get the story across.
You have four tiles you can move pieces around on. Each tile is a moving picture. An hourglass icon will appear when an animation is playing, indicating that you cannot interact until the animation concludes. You can then click the tile, and blue flashes will appear over the part you can interact with. You can then zoom into the area, and occasionally you can zoom in multiple times, altering the perspective of the tile. Many times you need to find a “frame” to pull out of the tile and put to the side. Usually, another tile lies beneath this frame, requiring you to zoom out to reveal another puzzle piece. Occasionally you can pull multiple “frames” from the same tile and then zoom out and around on the frames as well. This procedure seems confusing in writing, but in practice it works really well. This reminds me of games such as echochrome, which challenge your perspective and encourage unconventional thinking.
Some puzzles will require you to move the boy from one frame to another. You can usually guess which one by matching the surroundings around the boy as he walks down a staircase. A doorframe might be the “frame” you pulled, and you need to zoom in and out of the frame the boy is in to figure out where to put the doorframes so he can continue towards the fruit. There are some puzzles in which you need to have an object interact with multiple frames, such as a box of rocks needing to be turned into a giant boulder to break glass. Perspective comes into play when matching tiles to determine which way the boulder should go. In chapters four and five the scenario gets more complicated with the need to rotate tiles, and you have several areas you can zoom in and out of in a single frame.
You get a lot of Eureka! moments if you just zoom around and fiddle around a bit. A couple of times, I understood the concept or knew the goal, but reaching it was challenging. I won’t blame the game for this, as it could just be my thinking, as these puzzles are very well designed and extremely clever in using perspective. I couldn’t find much to really nitpick at apart from the rotation animations need to fully play out before you can zoom in and out. I wish there was a skip animation button to expedite the tile rotations, enabling me to solve the puzzle before losing my focus. I found that the music stopped a little too frequently, and while it was good, I don’t quite understand why this was the case.
The artwork is fantastic, and the game is one of those games that feels like interactive art. The colors really pop on OLED displays, and I was surprised at how well this game scaled from a small screen to an ultrawide monitor. While the playspace is just a 4:3 box for the four tiles, the space around it has been scaled out to accommodate the empty screen space. The space it utilized resembled a sheet of paper. I was also surprised at how well the controls worked, from a touch screen to a touchpad to a mouse. However, this is a game that will not work with traditional controllers. There’s too much sliding around the tiles, and this would get frustrating quickly.
As it stands, Gorogoa is a gorgeous and clever puzzle game with lovely ambient music and enough puzzles to really make you think; however, basic logic will give you that Eureka moment and give you just enough of a serotonin hit to keep going. Though the game ends too quickly, it’s a great work of art that puzzle fans should play.
What would happen if a puppet broke free from its story? That’s the tale that A Juggler’s Tale spins. You play as a puppet named Aby who is following the lead of a narrator. Aby is an acrobat for a circus when she decides she wants to break free and be an actual person. She spends her time on the run which seems to be a familiar theme with these sidescrolling tales that star children such as Limbo, Inside, and even Little Nightmares. The first act is spent as a tutorial. You can run and jump, drag things, and throw objects. Each are used to solve simple puzzles. Usually there’s one or two per act. The acts are very short clocking in at around 15-20 minutes each. You can easily finish this game in under 2 hours counting for deaths and time figuring puzzles out.
Whle I didn’t find the puzzles themselves hard it was difficult to distinguish what could be interacted with mainly throwable objects. While some objects that could be pushed had red ribbon on them there would be rocks or apples that blended in with the background. I thought I was stuck and couldn’t figure out a puzzle until I looked it up and releaized that a cart was needed to progress, but I had no idea I could interact with it. The game at least has a good pace and I always felt like I was moving and advancing things. There is a bandit that is hired to capture you named Torda who chases and torments you throughout the game. Most of the platforming is simple such as hopping over gaps or climbing up ledges. Nothing that will test your Mario skills, and the physics are floaty.
Part of the puppet gimmick is that Aby is attached to her strings and they will get caught on objects. A lot of the time you are figuring out how to move the objects to free your strings. There are a few stealth sections with Aby hiding from flashlights and distracting bandits by moving certain objects. Nothing that we haven’t seen before. The game is rather entertaining, but the story is simple and nothing too special. There aren’t any crazy plot twists or any voice acting or dialogue to speak of outside of the narrator. It’s hard to get attached to characters like the little boy in Little Nightmares or Inside due to the lack of events and progress that the characters go through despite not speaking.
Overall, A Juggler’s Tale is fine. The graphics are colorful and well done with nice paper cut outs and a flat shaded art style, but the gameplay is very simple and won’t challenge anyone. This is a cute distraction that will get you through an afternoon, but you will soon forget about it.
Do you remember the days you were a kid and went on adventures outside? The days you would be outside from dusk to dawn playing too far away from home and weren’t quite sure you’d find your way back, but kept going anyways? That’s the feeling of adventure you get from Röki. The game is much longer than most point-and-click adventures, taking around 8 hours to complete. This allows for a better and deeper story to unfold. While the overarching story isn’t anything super special, the relationship between Tove (the girl) and Lars (her little brother) and their father is rather deep, and you can feel the tight relationship and love this family has.
The game is a more open adventure title. Rather than being completely linear, you can fast-travel between several areas to find objects and solve riddles. The game’s openness necessitates the ability to press the left stick for interactive objects to flash. Just like any adventure title, you need to find objects to advance the story, and due to the openness, some puzzles might take a couple of hours before you eventually get all the parts to solve them. This also leads to the most frustrating thing about the game. If you miss an item for a puzzle, you have to figure out where it is. As the game opens up, this can lead to tedious backtracking and flashing all the objects on the screen and running around until you figure out what you missed. Frequently, this occurred due to the game’s lack of clear instructions or tracking features. The journal is rather useless and holds a map and various optional items you can pick up as collectibles.
Tove can run by holding down a button, and she can interact with objects. Outside of this, there isn’t much to the controls. She can climb walls and ladders, but you’re mostly just interacting with things. I found some of the puzzles quite fun, intuitive, and clever. The game experiments with ideas such as controlling two characters (swapping) and using a couple of different objects to complete puzzles and unlock new areas. There are giant beasts that need to be defeated and tamed. The game is based around Norse mythology, so you will encounter many beasts from this lore.
Despite the game’s lack of voice-acting, the writing conveys the characters’ emotions. Every so often the game will cut to a long scene and then give you control back. There aren’t many cutscenes in the game, but despite the length, the game never felt tedious or boring. I wish there was less need for backtracking. Sure, fast travel is helpful, but you still have to run towards an area, climb, or enter it, and some parts of the game can be really tedious to get to. You can’t skip climbing segments. Climbing dominates some later puzzle areas, leading to frustration. I spent more time waiting for animations to finish than actually solving the puzzle.
The visuals are really nice, but this visual style is something we are seeing a lot of, and I don’t find it the most appealing. The use of paper cut-out/flat texture with solid colors is a common visual style. It works, but I would like to see something more original. The music creates a captivating atmosphere, and certain tracks evoke strong emotions during specific scenes. I found the whimsy of the beasts and monsters to be really charming, and this is where the art style worked the best. The game has a lot of whites and grays (stones) due to the entire thing being set in the winter. There’s not much variation in environments.
Overall, Röki is a surprisingly lengthy but well-built adventure title. There are a lot of puzzles and rooms, and the pacing is great. I didn’t really want to put the game down…until something tedious came up, like missing a single object for a puzzle, and I had to spend 20–30 minutes hunting it down. This happened far too frequently. This phenomenon occurred at least once with each major puzzle. If you love Norse mythology or just want a touching story about family, then this is for you.
I absolutely love how the human mind works. It is fascinating how the human mind can break, repair itself, and affect the body and psyche in ways we still don’t fully understand. The Town of Light explores these ideas with a real-life case. The game is set in a hospital in Tuscany, Italy, called the Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra. You play as a woman named Renee who seems to be coming back to this hospital and reliving her experience here. The game’s unsettling ambient audio and flashbacks of dark and disturbing sketches are fantastic to experience.
Sadly, that’s the only enjoyable part of the game. The entire game has an incredibly slow pace and the usual obscure and abstract way of finding your way around and figuring out what to do. There are way too many doors to open, and there are too many spaces to explore with nothing in them. This hospital is two stories and quite large. With the slow walking pace, I just wanted to experience the story and move on. You don’t know you’re heading in the right direction until Renee continues narrating the story or a flashback happens. These flashbacks are either pencil sketches or full-on cutscenes. If you press the back button, some chapters will have Renee tell you where to go; however, everything is in Italian, so unless you pull up a translator or can kind of figure out prefixes and suffixes of words, you might get lost based on the signs.
There are eight diary pages to collect and find. These are highlighted notebooks in certain rooms, and I suggest getting them all. The notebook is an insightful dive into the mind of those that are mentally ill and have various psychological diseases. The sketches are haunting and beautifully done. The best part of the game is the narrations of the various hospital records you must find to advance the story. The entire tale of Renee and her fellow patients is fascinating, haunting, and quite disturbing. It also shows how awful the healthcare, especially mental healthcare, was in the 40s and 50s in not just Europe, but all over the world. I work as a nurse myself in a hospital, and it’s insane to know that our current modern way of doing healthcare (humanely) is very recent. Like the last 25 years, recent.
I also have to give credit to the developers for accurately portraying a decaying asylum. It looks and sounds just like you would find one in real life. I highly recommend watching The Proper People on YouTube, who are the best urban explorers out there. They have visited asylums in Italy, and the building is very reminiscent of how they stand today. The peeling paint, depressing color scheme, abandoned, rusting bed and wheelchairs, and old and mysterious medical equipment that look like torture devices (some were). Despite all of this, however, the game is very boring and ugly to look at. Even for 2016, the game is teetering on the border of asset-flippy territory. It just looks so generic and low-budget despite some decent lighting effects.
The voice acting is very well done, and the overall picture you walk away with is the narrative of mental health in general and how people are taken advantage of back in the day. The game also explores how orderlies raped and molested the women and lied and were believed. The doctors literally got away with murder, and families were lied to and betrayed without ever knowing it. Thankfully, this is all in the past, but the hundreds of thousands of victims who died and suffered under the guise of humane healthcare is a sad story and something worth discussing even today.
Call of Duty has culminated in becoming a standard yearly event with the series alternating between Black Ops and the mainline Modern Warfare series. While some entries try to incorporate new ideas into each new game in the series, more obvious now than ever, it needs a long break and has to go back to the drawing board. While they are all entertaining in different ways, they are trying to please everyone rather than a select crowd. Bloated multiplayer modes, mediocre maps, and entertaining albeit short and contrived campaigns are keeping the series back.
Black Ops 6 has a pretty entertaining campaign. Although it surpasses Black Ops III in terms of gameplay, it maintains the innovative concepts from Cold War, a feature I truly appreciated. The story itself is fun, but nothing memorable or anything well written. This won’t be winning anyone over in that department. This is the first Black Ops game to pick up the story from the second game, which is the only one to actually matter. It also incorporates events from Cold War, and it’s pretty cool to see characters like Frank Woods return. Those games came out so long ago that the new generation of gamers probably won’t even know or care, but fans of the series will.
There is a main hub area that all the characters hang out in. This is a house in the woods and eventually plays a role as a level itself towards the end of the campaign. Treyarch tried making something out of this house by adding an in-depth puzzle that incorporates running around the house and finding clues. I find it ironic that the core gameplay of this game requires players to not think, but wants them to think critically and solve puzzles. Call of Duty has always been the opposite of thinking or lack thereof. The reward is pretty decent, but I won’t spoil it, and the puzzle itself takes the entirety of the campaign to solve. I found the whole unlocking of benches kind of unnecessary for how short the game is. You can buy benches to upgrade weapons, such as more ammo and health, or increase melee damage. I really wouldn’t have noticed if I had never used them here. These are unlocked with the cash you find in the game.
There is also a large open map that is a new experiment for the series. It’s not like the terrible levels from Modern Warfare III that copy the Warzone maps. You get a vehicle that is stocked with ammo, and you can go around completing side objectives for more XP, such as clearing out camps or saving scouts. You can then fast travel back to the truck via the map and go back to the main campsite to swap weapons and get more ammo and equipment. It was a refreshing change of pace, and that’s kind of the pattern I was seeing with this campaign. There are more options for pacing, rather than relying solely on mounted vehicle segments to change the pace. This time around, the design of a few stealth missions has improved. I felt I could get through them without having to be perfect with my route. I could jump into the water and swim close to the objective, get out, kill a few enemies, and kind of worm my way to where I needed. The stealth missions are also not stealthy all the way through like in Modern Warfare II and become a chore. At a certain point in the game, it might be acceptable to go guns blazing.
There was also a reconnaissance level that involved a political party for Bill Clinton, which was cool. It felt fresh, broke up the pace of constant shooting, and helped slow things down so we could see the story build more. What I wasn’t a fan of was the Zombies mode-inspired level in which you become intoxicated with a hallucinogen, and you must find four key cards and fight four zombie bosses. The level felt cramped, reminiscent of an office building, and it was not particularly enjoyable. Hey, you can’t win them all. At least they tried something different. It also felt completely out of place compared to the grounded realism of the main story.
The overall feeling and gunplay have minor tweaks and adjustments, but it mostly feels the same as Cold War or any other Call of Duty game. Sadly, these games are conjoining and starting to all feel the same outside of features and modes. The gunplay is still top-notch and hasn’t been beaten yet by any other AAA arcade-style first-person shooter. It feels good, and the weapons have a good amount of weight and realism to them. The details on the weapons, from dangling keychains and decals to smoke blowing around from the barrel when you run to shell casings dropping on the ground, are all things most players will take for granted, but these minor details are something the series doesn’t get enough credit for. I also didn’t find too many bugs outside of some post-launch crashes. I ran into an issue where I had to turn off my overclocking on my GPU because it would crash the game every 10–15 minutes or in specific areas. By now, most patches have addressed these issues.
As for the multiplayer mode, there isn’t much to talk about if you already are familiar with the series. The typical modes are all here, from Team Deathmatch to Hardpoint. I actually love Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode, and I have my favorite mode types. I always rotate Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed. I might throw a Hardpoint in there sometimes, but it’s the maps that always make or break the game, and Black Ops 6 maps aren’t amazing like Modern Warfare (2019), but they’re not nearly as bad as Modern Warfare III or Cold War’s maps. They all feel fairly generic, and I’m tired of the constant cop-out of using stripped-down campaign maps to make multiplayer ones. Let’s make unique maps that work just for multiplayer for once, please.
Of course the returning Zombies mode is the only reason why a lot of people will buy this game. This is the most robust mode, and it feels unique to Black Ops. There are a bunch of new additions, such as the Gumball perks that allow you to equip a specific gum pack, and then you can randomly get a ball from a machine on the map. There are also Cola cans that give you perks such as superpowered melee attacks, but these can stack. On top of that, there’s the usual overly grind-heavy weapon progression system. I honestly hate this so much in the entire series. I can never stay invested long enough to unlock a good amount of items, as the XP grind is unfair and needs to really change. While the skins and other cosmetic items look great, to actually get them is another story. This is for people who only play the game online and can put 6–10 hours a day into it to actually unlock things and feel like they are making progress.
The same goes for the monetization system of weapon packs, blueprints, operators, and cosmetics. I want to be able to use these cool-looking items by unlocking them by playing, not paying money. I’m guilty of buying the odd pack here and there, but the insanity of the Battle Pass on top of buying $15-20 item packs is absurd and needs to really change. There is so much to the multiplayer mode that is locked away behind a paywall. While you can still enjoy the game itself without paying anything, you never feel like you are making progress and get stuck with the same basic weapon sets for dozens of hours that most people will not want anything to do with. Additionally, the inconvenient launcher system necessitates launching the most recent Call of Duty in order to access modes from earlier games. We need to overhaul and change the entire Call of Duty ecosystem. The ecosystem is experiencing a state of bloating and internal degradation.
With that said, the visuals and audio in the game are fine. The graphics aren’t terrible, but they also need an update as they are starting to feel a bit dated. This is in part due to still needing to be playable on 15-year-old hardware and scale accordingly. Call of Duty needs to abandon previous-generation consoles, or the series will seriously fall behind. While the graphics don’t look awful, you can tell they are dated. There’s no ray tracing, no advanced lighting effects, and the textures up close look a bit grainy and blurry. I also think that the series needs a gameplay overhaul. While the gunplay feels good and has a fun factor to it, how many times do we need to play the game like this? Let’s try to make Black Ops feel a bit different from the mainline series again. Black Ops 6 is probably the best game in the series to date, but the short campaign (about 4 hours) and the uninspired maps might put a lot of people off for the high price tag.
Contra is the blueprint for side-scrolling action games. They need to be tough as nails, have insane bosses, and usually have a lot of gore or some sort of inspiration from biomechanical art. Moreover, the Earth is under the control of a vast and formidable alien race. Iron Meat nails all of these and is a blast to play. The game can also nail all of these aspects and still fail in level design and gameplay. That’s thankfully not the case here.
As a stalwart soldier, your mission is to save Earth from an alien race that has taken over the Moon. There are nine unique levels in this game, each with varying lengths, enemies, and obstacles to overcome. The game is very pick-up-and-play friendly, as you just run forward and blast everything in sight; however, Iron Meat has a couple of things it does a bit differently. You can find ammo pickups inside objects. Occasionally, friendlies may drop them, or you may find them lying around. They are not commonly found, and if you die, you forfeit your weapon. The standard weapon is a rapid-firing machine gun that works well enough. Other weapons include different firing rates and patterns. There are also pickups to increase your score by 1,000.
In Iron Meat, you can shoot in eight directions. Another great feature is that you can hold down a trigger button to maintain your position while shooting in any direction. The game constantly presents you with enemies at a rapid pace. Some enemies, such as boxes with jaws, bugs, melee enemies, weird snakes, bats, and various other insane abominations, may be incorporated into the level itself. The enemy design is fantastic, and you get to know what each enemy does and how to kill them. Occasionally, following a specific order can also prove to be an effective strategy. You can also avoid enemy fire by lying down prone and shooting. Some levels will also test your platforming skills, featuring obstacles such as collapsing ceilings, death pits, and suspended platforms.
The bosses are really great. They have various attack patterns, and you get used to knowing when to attack. Some will chase you, while others will fly around you. Some are small, while others are massive, possessing multiple forms and phases. They all look grotesque and nightmarish, though. The game’s pacing effectively breaks up the action. There is a vertical level, followed by a level that emphasizes platforming, and then another level that presents a large number of enemies at once. You can unlock characters and swap body parts to create your own unique soldier. Once you complete the game, you can go through it again in mirror mode.
Although the game may appear to have less content compared to modern games, it truly pays homage to the classic 16-bit run-and-gun shooters. Most of those games featured a mere half dozen levels and lacked additional modes. Iron Meat does have a two-player co-op mode, which is a nice addition, but I feel there’s a lot of content here for the asking price. Going through and learning all of the attack patterns and enemies is fun, and then getting more points on higher difficulties can be a fun challenge. You can complete the game in less than two hours, but those two hours are filled with enjoyment.
Overall, Iron Meat nails pretty much everything you would want in a 16-bit run-and-gun shooter. Iron Mean boasts massive bosses, captivating soundtracks, copious amounts of gore, diverse levels, and exceptional controls. There’s not much Iron Meat does wrong outside of the occasional straightforwardness of some levels. This is one of my favorite games in the genre, and you shouldn’t miss out.
Some of the best storytelling comes from the least expected places. Nobody anticipated that DONTNOD would become a masterclass in storytelling. Square Enix’s publishing of DONTNOD was a risk, and no one anticipated such a feat from a publisher arm of such stature. I played the original back in 2014 and fell in love with its characters, atmosphere, setting, and story. The game is a supernatural tale grounded in modern times in a quiet fictional town of Arcadia Bay in the Pacific Northwest. At the time I lived in Southern California, just 60 miles north of Los Angeles. I had no idea that the place I fell in love with would become my home ten years later.
The story of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price is one of the best told in gaming. The writing is fantastic and portrays feelings and love for these two friends like no other game can. The combination of settings, sound, ambience, and choice-based storytelling creates a perfect setup that is difficult to match or surpass. Life is Strange has some of the deepest decision-making in gaming. These choices have profound repercussions in the game and feel as heavy as real-life choices you would make for yourself. Choosing between siding with an angry stepfather or joining in on the lashing could determine whether you get help when your life is in danger or not later on. The excellent thing about the choices here: You can’t tell what the outcome will be. Max makes a comment after each choice, and if you rewind and choose the other option, you’re just as clueless and worried as to whether you made the correct choice.
Max possesses supernatural powers that enable her to jump through time by focusing on photos and also rewind time. If you make a choice, you can rewind and choose again, but the outcome won’t play out here. You have to go based on pure instinct and forethought. Relationships with game characters and their feelings will bias you. Some characters may feel like you want the worst to happen to them, but is that the best choice for everyone? The game’s time-bending storytelling captivates you as you enter chapter three. Max starts visiting alternate realities, and her irresponsibility with this power comes to fruition… or does it? The cycle of rewinding makes Max’s nose bleed, and she passes out, not remembering what happens. Her irresponsible and rebellious friend, Cloe, is the polar opposite of Max’s own personality, but do you sacrifice their friendship for the better of everyone or selfishly keep your friends?
Given that the original game is already 10 years old, I will disclose some spoilers here. If you don’t want to read about them, then skip ahead. I want to delve deeper into the minor details of Life is Strange’s story and conduct a somewhat psychoanalytic analysis of it. The game’s release sparked controversy because it exposed the vulnerable side of minors. As teenagers, we all experienced awkward moments involving sexuality. There are a few scenes toward the end that show Max and the others kidnapped and tied up. Many people accused DONTNOD of being pedophiles or “creeps,” despite the lack of any explicit sexual content. Of course, we see these teenagers making out and kissing, but there’s nothing inherently sexual about it. DONTNOD’s portrayal of these teenagers, stripped down to their core and shattered with fear like animals, can truly unnerve people. I also find that the lack of explanation as to where Max got these powers is baffling. Where did they come from? Is this all imaginary? Is this part of the entire encompassing process of teenagers pretending or over-exaggerating a lot of what happens in their life? Is Max dreaming all of this? There’s a lot of interpretation left to the player, and to this day no one can explain it much.
Although the writing is engaging, it contains a significant amount of outdated slang. Slang from the 1980s and 90s is no longer relevant today, let alone in 2014. Max will employ phrases such as “Shaka Brah,” and refer to Cloe as “Totally Punk Rock,” a term that is both cringeworthy and outdated. While the voice acting is mostly good, it varies in quality, with some performances being truly bad and some exhibiting strange tones for the portrayed expressions. However, it doesn’t take away the overall theme of childhood nostalgia. And that’s what really sells me on Life is Strange. I never had the opportunity to attend private high school, live in dorms, and experience the adventures these teens have in this game. I always yearned for this experience and romanticized it. I still feel nostalgic and warm from the scenes. Just teens being real teens. Hiding in a junkyard and playing with things they aren’t supposed to. Engaging with unconventional individuals, skipping school, and so on are common practices. It seems weird, but we all had those moments or yearned for them as teens. DONTNOD brings that out in all of us.
The soundtrack is one of the best ever written for a game. Jonathan Morelli’s original music reaches deep into your heart, evoking emotions you may not have known existed. The licensed soundtrack rings with tones of nostalgia, the Dog Days of Summer, and days gone by. The soundtrack evokes memories of a simpler, more innocent era that you long to revisit. Life is Strange’s art style resonates deeply with its use of watercolor and smudges, depicting a past that is often out of focus, much like our own. We can recall the specific details, yet the distance and finer details are consistently blurred.
This is primarily a walking simulator with minimal puzzle elements. There are some rewind puzzles that allow you to get optional photos for achievements or to get better dialogue options to help you along in the story. There isn’t much gameplay here, but you aren’t coming into this for that. The remastered version of this game is quite disappointing, with only minor changes such as increased brightness and slightly improved lighting. This game was very dated when it released and is even more dated today. The lip-syncing remains unimproved, and the facial animations exhibit extreme stiffness. Additionally, the game occasionally introduces bugs, crashes, and glitches, and there is currently no update available for the PS5. The high-resolution mode runs at 30 FPS, and while that’s fine for this type of game, it’s not necessary for the hardware in the PS5.
Overall, Life is Strange Remastered may not entice returning fans, but it’s an excellent option for those who are new to the game. The game is one of the best stories ever told, with some fantastically written characters, an amazing atmosphere and setting, and some of the best music ever composed.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…