We are back again with another university ghost story. Another student film project raises the question of whether you are playing the film or experiencing everything in real time, with the film resulting from this. Wen Hua University is the location, and the developers did a much better job setting up the ghost story than the first game. This is much more a walking simulator than a survival horror, and that’s fine. You play as four different characters. A reporter and then three film students. It’s a bit more compact than the original game, and there isn’t the issue with the final section feeling like a maze. The environments are more varied as you get whisked away to the university from the past a bit, and it feels much more like a ghost story.
There’s not much action or many controls in this game. You wander around, collect the occasional item, and there’s usually only one way to use it. There are some puzzles in this game, and they aren’t that great, but they work. A few are a bit interesting, but the more elaborate puzzles tend to be really easy and not offer much of a challenge. The only real gameplay part is the stealth with the lantern. You get a lantern in about two scenes, and this is used to hit an enemy to stun them (and then needs recharging) and to get rid of obstacles blocking your path. It’s not frustrating as these scenes don’t overstay their welcome, but stealth is pretty much pointless. You’re better off running around and just figuring it all out. The only real frustrating section was towards the middle when I had to run around a maze of rooms and place a fuse into boxes to open doors in a certain order while an entity chased me. I really just didn’t like the chase sequences. Some sort of ghost will follow you, and it usually means figuring out some sort of maze.
The best sections of the game are during monster reveals. There are quite a few cool ghost designs, and the areas you are in constantly change. The game thankfully doesn’t exposition dump on you, and you kind of learn the tale of the university as you go along via some cut scenes and reading notes scattered around. The tale isn’t anything new, as you are seeking revenge for a scorned spirit (which is typical for these types of games), but it’s still fun nonetheless. The pacing of the game works well, as it constantly keeps you interested in something. Each section either has a puzzle or story element without making you wander aimlessly around object hunting. A lot of scenes can repeat, but they are interesting to look at and feel like less “generic buildings and hallways.”
Sadly, the short 4-hour runtime means you don’t get to know much about the characters. They clearly all have different personalities and have some fun banter back and forth, but there just isn’t time to develop this. The only character development is during the initial opening scene for each chapter, and then it’s just running around with occasional dialog. This is always the sad part about these very short indie games. There just isn’t enough time to develop a relationship with anyone or anything. At least the visuals are halfway decent and are a step up from the original game. While it won’t blow anyone away, there are some cool effects and great lighting.
Overall, there’s just not a lot to say about The Bridge Curse 2. It’s a remarkable improvement over the original game but still lacks in some areas. The short length means no character development, and while the monsters are cool, there’s little scare here outside of just tense atmosphere. The story is at least very fun and the pacing is great. I never felt bored or uninterested in the game. I played the entire thing straight through because the tale of the university is pretty interesting. The puzzles are middling at best, and the stealth mechanics are half-baked. What’s here is a deep discount of one evening of entertainment, and that’s about it. I’m still looking forward to seeing what the third entry brings.
I don’t know how many times I can say this. Trippy visuals aren’t indicative of an interesting or enjoyable game. They can only take a game so far before you want something else. Karma is a game that solely relies on weird and abstract visuals because it feels like the developers had an interesting story idea but had no idea how to implement it or tell the story. You play as a Thought Bureau agent who is like a cop that dives into the minds of suspects to see the truth of what they did. The first chapter of the game is pretty grounded and is the best-paced part of the whole story. You get some trippy visuals in the beginning, and then we are back to what seems like reality with narration while we walk through a pretty interesting-looking town. People have CRT TVs for heads with their faces on the screens, and it feels like an oppressive dystopian world to be in.
This is a great first impression and first chapter. It was nailed perfectly. You wake up and walk around a bit, and nothing makes sense. You are in a lab or factory, it seems, that produces people. It’s very odd, and you are supposed to be confused and unsure as to what is going on. Once you strap yourself in a chair and move on, the game starts to make no sense anymore. This is where I feel the developers didn’t know how to finish this story. There is one scene in the beginning when you are investigating an office, and this felt fine. You solve a few puzzles to find four-digit codes to open drawers to move on. The puzzles are pretty decent in this game, and I was able to figure out most of them by just deducing what I had on screen and trying logical things.
This is another game that can’t tell its overcomplicated story in just 4 short hours. Instead, we have just a walking simulator with a few puzzles and other half-baked ideas. You get a camera at one point and must use it to take pictures of eyeballs to open doors, but this feels half-baked. The areas are super tiny. One single area has you leading a creature around a specific path to get it to stop so you can take a photo of its face to kill it. This all feels half-baked, like they were neat ideas that had to be quickly shoved into a single scene. Once you get past the 5-10 minutes of gameplay, you endure the sluggish walking pace of more trippy visuals, such as flying through space, moving a cube through simulated cyberspace, walking through offices full of piles of CRTs, etc. The weird scenes are incredibly artistic and interesting, but in the end they don’t add any value to the story.
I wanted Karma to be so much better. There’s an interesting premise here. One of my favorite scenes involves one of the suspects showing us how this dystopian oppressive world works. Office workers sit and stamp things for dozens of hours and drink a company-made “energy drink” to keep them awake while propaganda plays on a giant projector in front of them. You then read an email about how all of your breaks are now taken away to “help the company growth” these types of scenes have a lot of impact, but they are so few and so brief that they left me wanting more. Many other scenes just don’t add value, such as the “hub” area of each suspect you dive into. In front of you is a giant monolith in a vast ocean, and you walk up to a podium with an important object on it, then warp to another scene. What’s the point of this area?
As you can see, Karma is an interesting game to look at, but not one to experience and especially play. The puzzles are interesting, and it leaves you wanting more when the game jerks this away from you and forces an hour of trippy visuals and story that doesn’t make any sense. Even at the end of the game I barely understood what was going on. Characters are bawling their eyes out, and there’s a lot of dialogue that feels abstract and doesn’t make sense. I was sitting there just thinking, “What the hell is happening, and why is this happening?” That’s not a good thing to think at the end of a game. Overall, play Karma if you want an interesting night of confusion and trippy visuals. It’s a shame the curious dystopian world isn’t explored more.
Digital Eclipse’s Gold Master series is an incredibly original and unique idea. The series focuses on creating interactive documentaries that explore interesting game stories or sagas, allowing gamers of all ages to engage with them. This is the third Gold Master game coming right after the Atari 50th Anniversary, which was absolutely a blast to experience. Tetris Forever is a great concept. The story behind how Tetris came to be is fascinating, and Henk Rogers, the person who helped bring Tetris to the West, is a great storyteller. I was floored by how Tetris came to be and the breakdown of the gameplay and nuance of what makes the game a timeless classic. The documentary clips are wonderful. Usually ranging from 3 to 8 minutes each, there’s easily over an hour of video footage, but that’s kind of where the best part of the game ends.
It’s difficult to call these Gold Master series “games” as they are interactive museums. Many different versions of Tetris are owned by other copyright holders. The most famous being the original Game Boy version of Tetris that shot the series into the stratosphere. It’s not here because it’s owned by Nintendo. You can see it being played in the footage of the game, but that doesn’t help us sitting here playing this game. Forever is mostly comprised of older MS-DOS and early 8-bit PC versions of the game that are historically interesting but not very fun to play. Digital Eclipse did a great job creating a replica of the computer they are on visually and adding things like a CRT curve, filter, and mapping the keyboard controls to a controller. Sadly, they just aren’t fun to play. Many versions don’t have music or much sound at all. Outside of messing around with these for five minutes, you will have no reason to go back to them.
There are a few other games that aren’t Tetris included, as these are part of the Spectrum Holobyte story. Many NES games are included here, but you can play these outside of Forever on emulators through ROMs on much simpler devices that boot up quicker without a fancy interface. Again, these games are either not fun or just interesting enough for a historical reference. This isn’t like Atari 50th, where you can play every single game Atari made or held the rights to, and they were full-blown games. These are pretty much all puzzle or board games. One of the big stories that helped Henk Rogers gain trust from Nintendo was making a game of Go, which is basically Japanese Reversi. The NES version is intriguing at best, but I was not a fan. It’s not as addictive or fun as Tetris and requires much more concentration.
Sadly, only 8-bit games are included here. Nothing past the mid-90s is included. It would have been great to get DS, PS2, PS1, or other consoles on here, but there’s either a rights issue or an emulation issue on Digital Eclipse’s side. Most of the more interesting games are 16-bit and beyond. The lesser-liked sequels to Tetris are included, and a few spin-offs like Hatris, Super Bombliss, and a brand-new game made for this compilation, which is the only non-8-bit game included. This Gold Master release is mostly for those interested in the story of Tetris rather than playing it. Unless you grew up with these 8-bit games, I don’t see any reason why anyone else would enjoy them. Sadly, even the new Tetris game isn’t anything special. It’s not much to look at and just plays like any other Tetris game. The most interesting feature is the 1989 mode, which emulates the Game Boy version, and that’s as close as you will get to it. I don’t see myself booting up an entire compilation just to play this version of Tetris.
The title would have been more interesting as a cheap documentary than a game all by itself. I got more enjoyment out of the video clips than I did the games themselves. With four 8-bit versions of the original Tetris (all inferior versions) and many less interesting spin-offs and sequels, it begs the question as to who this is for. The low asking price helps, but even then, unless you are a massive Tetris fan, it’s hard to justify the cost. Tetris Time Warp is the game you will spend the most time on here, but will you come back to it? Tetris is a fascinating tale and one of the most interesting I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. Tetris is a fantastic and timeless game series, but the content included here does not represent its strongest offerings.
Monument Valley played a pivotal role in shaping the mobile gaming scene by demonstrating the feasibility of console-like experiences on mobile devices. With the flood of microtransaction-heavy free-to-play schlop on the app stores, Monument Valley was a beacon of hope for those who wanted to play single-player games on their phones. The MC Escher-like level design and clever puzzles were adored the world over, and USTWO was considered a pioneer of single-player mobile gaming. The second game was more of the same, which everyone wanted, but the third game here is still more of the same. That’s also what we want, but we want something longer than two hours. With the series venturing into console and PC territory, the short length isn’t as forgiving.
The overall game is exactly the same as before. If you play all three of these games back-to-back, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the same game or DLC of the first. There’s not much new here outside of a more streamlined and cohesive narrative. While it’s more visually presented with a girl named Noor trying to restore a lighthouse to a tribe that lives in the ocean (or that’s how I interpreted it), there’s nothing crazy storywise and never has been with the series. A lot of emotions are invoked through the fantastic soundtrack and visuals. The bright colors and the continuation of the MC escher style puzzles with perspective and illusions at play make this series one of my favorites of all time, right next to echochrome.
The game is easy to understand thanks to visual context. Parts of the level that can be manipulated are represented with hollow pips similar to a Lego block. You can move these freely while Noor is on them, and it’s required to solve some puzzles. You can’t always expect to just move a piece and command Noor to walk to the exit. Some pieces are moved with a spinner, and these can not be moved while Noor is on one of them. These are some of the harder puzzles, and they really require you to look outside of the box and take perspective into mind at all times. There’s a new gameplay mechanic here of being able to command a boat (it’s a leaf bug with an eye on its sail that blinks). It’s such a fantastic design. These may require moving a character back and forth between platforms to solve a puzzle. Another puzzle-solving element is a growing tree and having the leaves appear on different parts of a platform. These are subtle gameplay ideas, but they are new and welcome.
With all that said, the game is still just way too short. There are only 11 levels, and you can finish the game in a single sitting. I wanted more. I have always wanted more from this series. They are spread so far apart that when they come, you cherish them like an expensive sweet. The soundtrack is ethereal and beautiful, the visuals pop on OLED displays, and the level design is like no other. These games are well worth a playthroughif you love puzzle games. Just don’t expect a lot.
For those who grew up in the 90s, that decade was a special time. Before social media, smartphones, and tech being as advanced and convenient as they are now, we were right there during that transition. We still used analog video, but computers were now more common as well as internet access for Web 1.0, or the “Wild West of the Internet,” as some people call it. There’s also something about summer vacation, no matter what walk of life you lived, that was special. This was when we were home more and our parents wanted us out more. For those who were smaller kids, it meant going further than you were allowed and exploring from dusk until dawn. As teens it means doing part-time jobs, usually working 4 hours a day, and then hanging out with friends either at the movies, doing sleepovers, or camping. Those dog days of summer are what makes teens and helps them discover themselves.
DONTNOD are masters at capturing this moment in our youth. The nostalgia factor here is on par with Life is Strange. You play as a woman named Swann who is trying to reconnect with her three childhood friends. It’s 1995. Swann, Kat, Autumn, and Nora are all 15- and 16 year old girls discovering their youth. In the present time, these women are now in their mid-40s. They have lived the first half of their lives, but they are coming together to meet at the quiet town they grew up in called Velvet Cove. It’s a small town in the northern part of the midwest bordering Canada. The sleepy town is full of bad memories for the girls. The first girl you meet up with is Autumn. As you talk about and figure out why they are meeting, you will go through flashbacks of their childhood.
The game plays similarly to other DONTNOD adventure titles. You walk around and interact with objects and listen to Swann’s inner monologue, but there’s a new gameplay idea here. Recording small video clips to make home movies. Swann wants to be a director someday, so the first scene in her room is all about the tutorials. When you hold the camera up, you will see gray boxes around objects that need to be filmed. You will find subjects for each tape, and of course this is all part of a hunt that leads to achievements. It’s a neat idea and looks good. The analog camcorder filter used looks good, but the end result isn’t. The game uses your footage, so Swann’s narration dubs over the characters’ dialogue, and it’s a mess. There are awkward animations, and the fact that you can record at any time makes things look weird and doesn’t fit the subject of the edit, such as the music video you end up making.
This is the only gameplay in the entire game outside of making choices during dialogue. The goal here is to build up a relationship with certain characters to change the outcome of the relationships towards the end of the game, but it’s very subtle and doesn’t have an impact on the core ending. The characters are stereotypical teenagers. Nora is the rebellious, loudmouthed punk who smokes and drinks. Autumn is the mature, responsible teenager who can occasionally be coaxed into doing immature things. Kat is the youngest, lives in a troubled home, and is full of anger. Swann is the overweight, shy girl who has a lot of heart and likes to be alone. These are all stereotypes we can associate with growing up. Teens usually want to be boxed into something to feel like they fit in. We have all been there in our youth. While the voice acting is mostly decent, it’s not perfect. Emotions don’t always hit home, and small talk can feel a bit awkward, like each character is in a separate room and not together. The lip syncing is even worse, with entire lines not having the character’s mouth move.
Like most other DONTNOD games, there’s not a whole lot of locales. Many are recycled, or small rooms will be for a single scene. Interacting with certain objects can change the relationship status with someone. If you are doing something positive towards someone, you will see a heart pop after selecting the line. Something that the character doesn’t like will have a heart break in half. Growth toward the character overall will show a sapling grow. If you have met a certain point in the relationship or answered a different way from before you can unlock new options which will appear with a lock opening. You can’t be in full favor with everyone, so it’s best to pick your favorite and stick with that. Some choices will change the full outcome of growth with a character anyways and change it for the rest of the story. Overall, the typical nostalgia trip wrapped in a supernatural event is what DONTNOD is good at, and it shines well here.
The visuals are a big improvement over older titles, but it’s still nothing groundbreaking. It uses the same engine as the newer Life is Strange games (Double Exposure and True Colors). The animations feel awful and hand-done, with weird physics glitches all the time. Heads would spin around 360 degrees, hair would flop around, and some characters would just warp through the ground. Clearly this is an engine issue and not a game issue, as these problems pop up throughout all of their adventure titles. The overall art style is well done with a dreamlike haze over everything to represent remembering the past, and the present feels more suppressive and depressing. At least they knocked the art style and the atmosphere out of the park.
Overall, Lost Records is a great adventure title with the same quirks and problems as other games in the studio’s catalogue. While the characters are well written, and the nostalgia trip back to the 90s is fun, the rest of the game just doesn’t work too well. There are limited areas, the dialogue choices don’t affect the ending, and the entire payoff is a bit disappointing. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the game does a good job ratcheting up the tension for a big reveal. You spend most of the first tape getting teased about a big reveal for it to not be anything super impressive or crazy. It’s a surprise, but nothing that needs 4 hours of suspense. I also feel anyone who didn’t grow up during this time won’t have the same connection as older gamers. Those would feel more at home during the present time with the presence of smartphones and modern tech and lifestyles.
The concept of a video game taking over real life isn’t just a metaphor. There have been numerous instances where excessive gameplay has resulted in fatalities. But what about a game literally invading the real world? Is it actually real or a hallucination of the main character? Among Ashes explores this idea of a late 90s to early 2000s setting of a real game taking over the protagonist’s life. You play as a nameless gamer who ends up playing some indie game that his friend found and sends you the link over MSN Messenger (it’s MSN; it even has the same chimes and sounds). You can use the computer with a Windows 98 style setup. It’s not super interactive, but you can click links that open a web browser to a forum. The game inside the game is called Night Call. It’s a lost game from a developer that ends up putting it on this horror fan forum. You, of course, play this game along with your friend, and every so often you will go back and forth on the messenger talking about events in the game and what’s happening in real life.
Among Ashes is a melding of genres. It starts out as a Resident Evil clone with PS1 style graphics in a first-person perspective. You arrive at a mansion and are greeted by the maid. You make your way upstairs to talk to the resident doctor about reports of a woman screaming. Of course, this leads to puzzles, wandering around aimlessly with no direction, and combat. Combat consists of beating enemies over the head with a baton. You can block, which helps, but you also get a shotgun and revolver at certain points. It’s best to save the ammo for when you are surrounded by enemies, but I also recommend playing with a guide. There is a hedge maze that’s incredibly confusing to navigate, enemies respawn (they don’t die permanently), and there are typical lock puzzles, math puzzles, gathering hints puzzles, switch flipping puzzles, and so on. There are even a few chase scenes and a maze-like cave system with an enemy chasing you towards the end, and you have to flip switches and open gates. It’s frustrating and doesn’t add the right kind of tension to the game.
There are a couple of other game types thrown in here. There’s a game within the game of Night Call that’s for the Commodore 64. It’s an 8-bit action game that is required to play to advance the story. It’s not good, it’s repetitive, and it can get really hard sometimes. You only get three hits and you’re dead, and enemies can swarm you. There’s also an FPS Doom clone you can play inside the game, which is pretty bad, but it gets the point across. I will say that the game nails tension and atmosphere, and the monster designs are pretty insane. I love the scares here too. There are a couple of jump scares and just subtle scares, such as a monster staring at you through a gate. Not every scare is in your face. Some can be missed if you aren’t paying attention.
When you get up from your computer in the real world, it almost feels like a breath of fresh air, but things get crazy here too. Objects appear, things become rearranged, and you are very quiet. It was also refreshing when your friend would IM you, as the game feels very isolated, which is a good thing that it nails. I felt very alone, and any sign or hint of another person was so relieving despite how brief it was. The last act of the game falls into the usual indie horror trope of doing crazy things like constantly changing rooms, teleporting you to different locations, recycling older locations, etc. At least, the story maintains coherence throughout and doesn’t deviate significantly towards the conclusion.
Outside of the great atmosphere and tension, the game just lacks in the actual gameplay department. It’s not fun to play, and the mechanics, while trying to be purposefully bad to fit the type of game it’s trying to emulate, just aren’t done well. Respawning enemies, confusing mazes, obtuse puzzles, and weird boss fights that don’t feel good are all over the place. I liked the story; the Web 1.0 feeling on the PC is nailed perfectly, and the tension is there. I just wish this was wrapped up into an actual fun game to play. Thankfully, it’s over in 3-4 hours.
As much as I love Gears of War, and for how iconic and revolutionary it was at the time, it doesn’t need three remasters. Yes, that’s right. It was already remastered before with the 2015 Ultimate Edition release. It was originally released on PC for the first time under the Games for Windows banner and featured DirectX 10 updated visuals and a brand-new chapter in Act IV that involved taking down a Brumak. The Ultimate Edition was already disappointing to some, but having the game further remastered was still nice, and I ate it up. Here we are a decade later, and the impossible has happened. Gears of War is now on PlayStation. This is the second most coveted Xbox franchise next to Halo. How could this possibly be? What kind of timeline have we jumped to? Well, if Xbox’s current downfall isn’t enough to spell it out, then I will. Microsoft is losing money on their GamePass feature as well as the Activision buyout and needs to desperately get their games on more systems. That’s okay, as the PS5 Pro version is the best console version.
With the shock aside, at least the price tag is nice. For $40 you get a remaster and a full multiplayer suite. For those who never played Gears of War, they are in for a real treat. For me, this is the fifth playthrough (twice on Xbox 360, once on PC, once on Xbox One S, and once on Xbox One X for the Ultimate Edition). The Ultimate Edition is also currently broken on PC and the original release has long since been taken down. So, outside of Xbox, this is the best offer for PC and PS5 players. The campaign is still fantastic despite how short it is, and its age is showing. Shooters back in the mid-2000s were still maturing, and we were still in the linear hallway shooter phase. The game still looks fantastic, and while nearly every game that used Unreal Engine 3 of the era was compared to Gears of War, it was the granddaddy of “grey and brown” games. This was on purpose. You are thrust in the middle of a war on a fictional planet called Sera (Earth is never mentioned), and a new beast called the Locust has emerged, committing full-blown genocide. It’s up to Marcus Fenix and the four-man Delta Squad to deliver a lightmass bomb to destroy their tunnels and stop them for good.
Gears of War was applauded back in the day for its fantastic cover system and level design. Marcus snaps into cover with ease. He can switch covers close to each other, roll out of cover, and use the Roadie Run feature, which brings the camera down near his legs while he crouch sprints for a cinematic effect. Gears of War was all about feeling like a movie. The over-the-shoulder camera perspective was heavily inspired by Resident Evil 4, and it works well here. When you aim your gun, the camera zooms closer, right up to Marcus’ face. It was something that was never seen before at the time of release. Gears also pioneered the Active Reload mechanic in which you need to press the reload button at the right time, and any bullets reloaded in that clip do extra damage. You will eventually have muscle memory of this feature and rarely ever miss. If you do, the gun will jam, and you will need to wait a few seconds before firing or switching weapons. It’s an awesome feature.
Gears‘ weapons are also well designed and perfectly balanced. The default Lancer Assault Rifle, an iconic weapon now, shoots large clips, has surprisingly good accuracy, and has a chainsaw mounted on the bottom. You can rev this up and saw an enemy in half. Even 19 years later this never gets old. The gib system is satisfying, with enemies exploding into chunks from grenades or getting sawed in half. One other feature that was well regarded was the sound effects. Gears of War has a distinct sound system and has never been replicated. The crunchy sounds of the guns, the reaction of enemies getting hit (which was a big deal) from enemies getting gibbed by grenades, or the subtle sound effect of “one more hit and you’re dead, so get into cover.” Gears of War took a page from Halo and featured a recovery system for health. A red Gears logo slowly appears in the center of the screen as you get hit. On higher difficulties (I cleared this on Hard, but not the hardest), it requires patience, careful flanking of enemies, and using the right weapons. The PS5 DualSense adds a layer to that crunchiness of the weapons. The adaptive triggers and vibration work wonders allowing to now actually “feel” how the weapons should be. This can’t be experienced on Xbox.
The level design requires you to flank enemies and close emergence holes. Tossing a chain grenade into a hole will close it up and stop respawning. They don’t infinitely respawn, but only killing two that crawled is better than waiting for all six. The Locusts are formidable foes and well designed. Not only do they look menacing, but each one has a design language that tells you how to approach them. Enemies can wear helmets, meaning headshots won’t work right away, and the Theron Guard have full armor, which takes longer to take down. The bigger Boomers have Boomshot grenade launchers and are bullet sponges. Then there are the occasional enemies like the Wretches, which are small ape-like creatures that come in swarms. There are Berserkers, which can only be taken down by a Hammer of Dawn, which is a satellite-guided laser. It’s freaking cool despite only being used three times in the game. The Berserker can’t see but can hear you, so you need to guide it around with sound to knock walls down to open up the roof for the satellite to triangulate. It’s neat.
The downside to Gears of War, and the aging part, is not only how linear it is, but also how sparse the story is and how little is explained. While the game is greatly expanded upon in the sequels, and especially the novels, it just feels like it’s over too soon. You want to get to know Delta Squad more. Their personalities are great and well written. Marcus has a dark past (why was he in prison at the beginning of the game?). Dom is trying to find his missing wife but is only mentioned a couple of times. Cole is an ex-football player, but his past isn’t talked about at all, and neither is Baird, who is the nerdy smart guy of the squad. It makes sense that in the heat of this war, going point to point with no breathing room means there’s no time to get to know anyone. Thankfully, this was changed in later sequels, but it’s just odd that this isn’t a remaster of the entire trilogy. The banter between the squad is great, and many new players will want to know more.
There are also some other things that didn’t age well, like some of the clutter in the levels. There are random chairs, stoves, and home appliances kind of haphazardly strewn about in ways that make no sense. The entire game is built like a video game and not like a world people would live in. Some areas just don’t make any sense. I don’t feel like I’m fighting in a city but a video game level. Despite how much Gears wanted to be taken seriously, its world-building is really lacking. Thankfully, the campaign is less than 6 hours long, and you can play with a buddy in co-op; that’s always fun. Just don’t give up on the series yet if you have never played it before. There is more to come. There also aren’t a whole lot of weapons in this game. The arsenal is small, and you will mostly stick to a couple of guns. I also hate how useless the Boltok pistol feels in this game. It’s the only weapon with no feedback when it hits enemies, and the snub pistol is pretty much MIA after the first act.
The multiplayer suite is…fine. I was never a fan of Gears multiplayer. I feel the gameplay doesn’t translate well when fighting against others. There are also some of the better modes from later games missing like Horde. Many will get frustrated with cheap deaths like the rolling shotgun blast. It does feel like an old-school shooter with regular modes that are missing in most of today’s games, so some players will find this refreshing in a world of Call of Dutys and Fortnites. This is an unnecessary remaster to begin with. The game runs smoothly on PS5 Pro at 120 FPS with no dips. The game uses the Pro’s PSSR and there are enhanced textures and lighting. It looks pretty much identical to the PC version. At least, I couldn’t tell the difference. If you’re new to the series or are a hardcore fan, I would say the low price is worth it. While the campaign will only last an evening, the multiplayer may be enough for people to keep coming back.
Have you always wanted to know how certain things happen in Resident Evil 4? Why did Leon escape from situations at the right moment, or why did the odds of him surviving certain encounters seem unusual? Some of those questions are answered in Separate Ways. This is the side content from the original game remade for 2023. You play as Ada Wong here. She’s such a fascinating character, and despite being an early childhood crush, I found I appreciated her more endearing qualities as an adult. She’s mysterious and bold, doesn’t take crap from anyone, but is still fighting a moral quandary within herself. She wants to be a bad guy, but not that bad. She also has a hankering for Leon, and their sexual tension ratchets up here more than any other time.
Separate Ways is more of a remix of the main game than anything really new. New battlefields are usually above or in Leon’s old areas. Sometimes you will notice he’s cleaned up the place or destroyed an area before you get there. One such area is after the church bell tower fell in the main village. You go through the game in the same order, but at a rapid speed. Ada has a grappling hook in her arsenal to traverse the high ground. She can also use this to get closer to enemies quicker for a finisher and rip shields off of enemies. This is even used during the boss fight with El Gigante. She can swing up and fight on top of buildings, giving her an advantage. Ada also has access to the shopkeeper and a small repertoire of guns. She starts out with the Punisher MC pistol and the TMP. She’s all about close quarters combat. You can eventually get the M1903 rifle and the much better Stingray toward the end, but you will most likely always be charging in to get close. You can get access to the shotgun as well, but shells are really rare and take 12 gunpowder to create just 6 shells. Although it won’t be useful frequently, it can save you in an emergency. Save it for dispersing large crowds or for tougher enemies.
Ada also gets a few side quests, such as her very own medallion mission and fetching various items. There’s plenty of treasure lying around, and gemstones can be inlaid into valuable items to make them worth more. Be on the lookout for hanging treasure pots and chests everywhere. You will need those Pesos. You can use Spinel gems to trade for passive keychains to add to your cache to increase stats such as sprint speed, damage, and defense. I didn’t end up using any of these, as they are expensive, and the DLC’s short run time means you’re better off upgrading your pistol, TMP, and buying new weapons. I did end up with the Red9 towards the end and spent most of my money on upgrading those two weapons, as the ammo is most plentiful for them. I only used the bow a few times, but bolts use knives, and these are better suited for stabbing enemies on the ground before the Las Plagas pops out of their head. You will also need to get out of tight situations, and you can sneak around some areas and pick off some enemies too. Here it’s best to be resourceful, as ammo is scarce, and so are healing items, more so than in the main game.
Ada does run into her fair share of bosses, but not all of them are attacked head-on. One boss is a chase scene through a facility, while some are recycled from the main game but remixed a bit. I found the constant scraping for supplies, upgrading, crafting, and looking for treasure to be just as fun as the main game. It was nice seeing new areas and having some questions answered. Ada is a great on-screen presence and is one of my favorite female video game characters of all time. Her new voice actress does a good job making her sound emotionless and stern, but when emotion needs to break through, she can’t quite seem to land it. Emotions like surprise and slight fear just don’t come across well. Ada is almost like a robot by design, but she does have her humanity peek through from time to time, and that makes her such an awesome character. She’s not as evil as Wesker, but a nice in-between.
Overall, Separate Ways is a fantastic DLC that does everything right. Coming in at 4-5 hours of run time, it’s enough for a nice evening playthrough and to see the other side of RE4 that Leon can’t access. There are no upgraded visuals or anything like that with this, and there’s nothing inherently new or unique. It’s a remix of RE4 and that’s fine.
I’m not really a co-op person. I do not consider myself a person who typically engages in cooperative gaming. I was raised among friends who did not share a strong interest in video games, and when they did, it was not in the genres I preferred. I have always been inclined towards single-player experiences. It Takes Two is the first co-op-only game that has motivated me to seek out a partner for gameplay, even though it took me four years to complete it. I was always a single-player kid. It Takes Two is the first co-op-only game that has pushed me to find someone to play multiplayer games with, even if it took me four years to finally finish. I started the game out with my wife and finished it off with my youngest sister. Couch co-op is something that builds bonds and memories, and this is one of those games. The story takes a backseat to fantastic gameplay that is always changing with incredible level design.
The story is the worst part of the game, and not for the reason you think. It’s poorly written. Painfully written. The idea itself is fine on paper. You are a married couple (Cody and May) going through a borderline divorce when your child gets the troubling news and uses her handmade dolls to act out her parents getting along again. Both of you drift off to sleep, finding yourself in a world akin to Pixar’s, where everything is grandiose and seemingly insignificant details are conspiring against you. One of the most annoying characters ever conceived in pixels is a therapist in the shape of a book called Dr. Hakim, who is a racist Mexican stereotype. His dialog is cringy and awful, and he’s just so incredibly annoying. Whenever he was on screen, my wife would use her phone, or my sister would walk away. I also don’t like how Cody and May’s relationship seemingly never evolves despite these harrowing acts they go through. Each level should typically show some change in their relationship, and relying on a monkey-in-the-middle remediator is quite frustrating. This is one of my least favorite video game stories ever. It’s just incredibly horrid.
Outside of that, the game is a delight to play. Each level is unique and full of charm, such as the garden level with enemies that are different flora and the attic level, which has you walking and bouncing on instruments that make real sounds. Each level gives Cody and May a unique ability they must use to puzzle-solve and use for combat. Not every level has combat, but every one has a lot of platforming and puzzle solving. The first level’s vacuum cleaner, for example, is a delight, and another level uses a honey cannon backpack. The game is played in split-screen, so you must work together to solve everything. In some areas, one character is needed to get through. The puzzles constantly change, and each ability is used to its fullest.
There are some mini-games spread out throughout the game that are more like “toys” and don’t really do anything. They are marked with a tambourine floating above them. Some range from getting points by shooting cannons at blocks to long jumps off of swings to a chess game. They are interesting but slow the game and have no rewards. These are good ideas, but the winner should get a reward, like a damage boost. Most of the time we would just play once for a couple of minutes and move on.
Combat, on the other hand, is really annoying and not excellent. Balancing is an issue here. Occasionally, an excessive number of enemies will attack you, resulting in both of you dying and necessitating a restart of the area. If one player dies, they can revive by mashing a button, but if both die, it’s over. We died more in combat than any other time, and everything is too chaotic to monitor your life meter. I would get pummeled and wailed on as a passive ability character waiting for my partner to take out the baddies or expose the weak point of an enemy or boss while smaller enemies just annihilated us. This problem isn’t a skill issue either. Additionally, the absence of a lock-on button increases frustration during gameplay.
The visuals themselves are fantastic. Each level feels unique while grounded in realism. The unique dreamlike and cartoonish visuals provide a Pixar vibe, and they are a sight to behold. The explosion of everything, from everyday objects to skyscraper-sized buildings, is truly captivating. However, some levels, like the dream level at the midway point, seem overly lengthy. There is a hub area, and you branch off to different sub-levels, but it seems to go on forever. Then, later on, I felt like a single character’s ability was underutilized. The attic level had me barely doing anything for my partner. The balancing in this game is significantly flawed, but it can be overlooked.
Overall, It Takes Two is a must-play for anyone remotely interested in co-op games. The story, characters, and writing are both awful and rote, but the gameplay is why you will stay. The visuals are incredibly charming and imaginative, and the combat requires each player to assist each other at every single turn and puzzle. Combat is too simple and chaotic to be very fun or engaging, but there’s not a lot of it. The game is a pretty decent length, clocking in at 8 hours or so.
Have you ever regretted your final moments with someone? Most of us don’t know when those final moments are, and when the time comes, it’s too late. The story of Undying Flower takes things a bit further and asks, Would you ever forgive yourself for killing someone you love? That’s the first question asked when starting the game. We are talking to a girl’s head with two flowers on the sides. She asks us questions that we don’t have answers to. In fact, we don’t even know this person. Who are we even? Without spoiling the story, we are a scientist who is experimenting on this little girl. Or at least that’s what it seems. I’ll leave you with this: The story is pretty good, and the ending was great and satisfying. Unlike most short indie games, this one excels in storytelling. The game offers enough twists to keep you captivated for 2-3 hours.
The gameplay isn’t overly extensive, which is typical of most indie adventure titles. Although they are not exactly visual novels, these games feel more like interactive stories than traditional games, which is acceptable; however, creating them successfully can be challenging. The story, setting, atmosphere, and characters must immediately captivate you. While there are only two characters in the story, don’t let this perturb you. This means the short story can laser focus on just these two characters. The protagonists are the girl and her grandfather. What unfolds gameplay-wise is walking around a room and interacting with highlighted objects. We zoom to the two faces. We can hear Her Story or His Story. They are really short. The object’s context is conveyed in just a few sentences. This really helps build this moment in these lives that we are witnessing. The writing is really well done and strays away from the abstract poetry that most indie adventures tend to lean towards. Each face will show different animations of emotion based on how you answer them, but the answers don’t really change the story.
There are a few rooms with objects you interact with. This interactive experience occupies approximately the first half of the game. The second half involves a puzzle in which you select mementos to create a memory based on the statement the girl is telling you. I found the game too abstract and nigh impossible to get the combos right. Thankfully, after one minute the help kicks in, and if you get objects right, they will turn green. You’re not just selecting the memories you went over but creating new ones with them, and then these get added to the pool of choices, making it a convoluted mess. Thankfully, this section is short, but afterwards, most of the gameplay is done, and the final 20–30 minutes are just narrative.
The visuals are impressive, featuring a lot of abstract black and white elements complemented by splashes of color. While the female scientist model may not look great, the rest of the visuals are impressive. The art style is exceptional, featuring stunning orchestral melodies and harmonies that evoke strong emotions at precisely the right moments. What helps is that this story is very relatable. Anyone as a teen can relate to what the girl is going through with her grandpa; we have all been there. We have also all beat ourselves up over something we blamed ourselves for that was out of our control. This episode can really hit home for those that have experienced anything similar to the story.
What’s here is a short narrative piece with relatable subject matter. With fantastic music, outstanding visuals, solid writing, and a laser focus on just two characters, we go through a roller coaster of human emotion. Don’t come in expecting a ton of gameplay, and give the matching puzzle at the end some grace, and you might just wipe away some tears .
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…