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.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat on his brow? Well, I don’t know honestly. That would be what Andrew Ryan would say, but he’s gone. Several years after the fall of Ryan and Rapture, you awaken as the Big Daddy, Subject Delta, on a hunt to track down Eleanor Lamb. The new antagonist is trying to finish Ryan’s legacy and eliminate everything that was inside Rapture. Little Sisters play a bigger role in this game, as you are a Big Daddy now and need to protect them. BioShock 2 was never my favorite in the series. While I have the original Xbox 360 Collector’s Edition box sitting in a cabinet, as I adore the series anyways, there are some qualities to this game that I do prefer over the original. Sadly, the pacing and story aren’t one of them. BioShock 2 attempts to appeal to more casual action-oriented gamers of the time by including a multiplayer mode. This was 2K’s desperate attempt to make a Call of Duty out of the series, and it failed miserably. Many resources that could have gone to the campaign were wasted on multiplayer that no one played. The Remaster removes this feature, and it’s not missed.
While the beginning of the game starts out similar to the original with really good atmosphere and scripted story beats, the game quickly falls apart after that. Maybe “falls apart” is too strong, but it loses what made the original so well loved to begin. The slower-paced storytelling that takes its time and uses visual cues to tell the story is mostly absent. Instead we are bombarded with tons of exposition over our radio and bounce between Sinclair himself and Lamb. The sequel treads some too familiar ground by having a unique boss in each level that you must defeat. Each one has a personality quirk, but none are as memorable as the original.
We get a whole new arsenal of weapons this time around, and they feel great. There are still three selectable ammo types, but the only gun that stayed was the grenade launcher. A quality of life improvement is the removed need to reload when selecting a new ammo type. There is a new minigun, hacking tool, rivet gun, double-barrel shotgun, speargun, and drill. The drill is your main melee weapon, but it uses fuel. It’s pretty powerful and can be augmented with tonics. The downside to this new arsenal is that it’s still not suited for the close quarters combat of Rapture. I found the speargun nearly useless, as there’s no long-range combat in this game that requires it. Towards the end of the game the rivet gun (even fully upgraded) starts to become less useful. I eventually stuck with the minigun and shotgun. Each weapon can now have three upgrades, but you can’t fully upgrade every weapon. There are 16 upgrades in total, but only 14 upgrade stations. It doesn’t make any sense. While the shooting feels a little quicker and better in this sequel, it still doesn’t solve the fundamental issue of the arsenal being correct for all of this close-quarters combat.
Hacking has been replaced with a simple meter now. You just press a button when the needle is over the green bars. It’s a huge quality of life improvement over the original’s full mini-game for each hack. Hacking can add a bonus sometimes if you press the blue bars. It can drop a free item or add cash to safe hacks. The hacking tool can also drop mini-turrets to help in battle, which is nice when covering Little Sisters. These are technically optional (outside of the first level). You can fight off another Big Daddy, take the Sister, and have her gather Adam at two different locations. You then get the choice to adopt them at a hidey-hole or harvest them. You can even choose to just harvest their Adam after fighting off the Big Daddy too. No need to gather, but you will be solely relying on your arsenal and limited plasmids, and that’s not recommended. Plasmids are easier to use this time around, and each one has two upgrades, but there are no new ones in this game. In fact, they took some away, such as Sonic Boom and Insect Swarm. Instead, we can now equip up to 20 gene tonics, which seems a bit overkill. These are also mostly all the same, with a few new additions in regard to hacking.
The research camera is back and probably more annoying. You now record video, and how you defeat the enemy determines the points. You are required to change things up and not kill an enemy in the exact same way too many times, or points are reduced. The problem is you need to keep re-equipping the camera for every enemy, and it gets quite old. I wish this feature was removed entirely. You get damage bonuses for complete research, but it’s only necessary on the highest difficulty. The game overall is much easier than the first game, offering little challenge. There are a couple of new enemies, such as Subject Alpha Big Daddy and Mutant, that are similar to what Frank turned into at the end of the first game. The splicers are all the same with no new additions, which is sad. I find the addition of two new bullet sponges to be kind of useless. While combat feels better in this game, it’s not evolved in any way at all. It does get kind of old by the end, especially if you played the original game. Ammo is too plentiful, and you’re no longer scrounging for ammo. You feel like an unstoppable war machine.
Story beats are also too similar to the first game. You go in, shoot some bad guys, press some switches, gather a few items, and then kill the boss. Plasmids’ tricks are also not changed up with oil, water, and explosive tanks everywhere. There isn’t even a lot of ice in this game. While the combat feels better, it’s been dumbed down a lot, and so has level design. These areas all look and feel the same. While Rapture does feel older and more aged, and it nails the look of this, the entire game just feels like one long level. Nothing is set apart, and it all feels too familiar. There’s a lot of exposition and interesting bits in the audio logs. There is also a new “morale” system that lets you either save or kill certain key characters in the game, but it doesn’t alter the ending that much. Gathering ADAM with Little Sisters isn’t as fun or exciting as it could be, and things only really get changed up towards the very end of the game in the last level.
Overall, BioShock 2 Remastered doesn’t really remaster much, like the first title, and the sequel in general is the weakest of the trilogy. While improving in some areas, others are sacrificed, such as a shorter campaign, retreading old ideas, and making combat feel better but less exciting. It’s interesting to play as a Big Daddy, and the first level in the game nails this perfectly. The pacing is nice, and the design is atmospheric, but nothing ever changes the pace or level design. Levels in general feel more cramped, and with the additions of larger enemies and more of them, the weapons you get still don’t fit the bill. If you played the original, then go for it. There are some questions that are answered. It really feels like an expansion pack rather than a true sequel.
War. War never changes. Oh wait, wrong game. Clears throat Is a man entitled to the sweat on his brow? A famous quote from Andrew Ryan. The creator of Rapture. An underground utopia, or dystopia, that’s a playground for the rich. Using Adam and Eve to alter your genes and add power like fire, ice, shock, and bees. You arrive serendipitously via plane crash over the Atlantic ocean. You work your way through Rapture while being guided by a man named Atlas. There are Little Sisters, children who harvest Adam from dead Splicers, and Big Daddies that protect them. There’s quite a bit going on, and while this is a spiritual successor to System Shock, it was revolutionary for its time. Sadly, many younger gamers, like myself, had never heard of System Shock as it wasn’t a blockbuster seller.
Sadly, the remaster does the bare minimum. Only making the game playable exactly as is, just in a higher resolution and frame rate. 2K Games took the PC version with the updated DirectX 10 lighting and shadows and threw it on consoles. We get developer commentary and some combat trials, but the age of the game is also present. A full remake would have been better. While the story is well known amongst gamers of the HD era, the gameplay hasn’t aged quite as well. There are many quality of life improvements that could have been made. For example, the combat isn’t the best. The reticle is a massive circle, and while guns feel pretty decent, the Plasmids are frustrating to aim. Plasmids like Shock Bolt and Incinerate converge on a pinpoint, and you waste so much Eve trying to hit enemies. There are also an awful lot of passive and combat tonics that feel mostly useless for such a short game.
While the 17 year old me didn’t really notice any of this when I played it on launch day for my Xbox 360 at the time, the game’s near perfection at the time is showing some cracks. The levels are cramped and incredibly linear, making combat hard. Many of the areas are way too dark, making it hard to see enemies and hit them at the speed they move at. It’s not the worst ever, but it’s annoying, and a remake could have remedied this. You get six guns in the game, but not all of them are useful. The Napalm launcher is something I rarely used, and the same goes for the grenade launcher. The areas are too cramped for these destructive weapons, and you end up taking a lot of damage. You will switch between the shotgun, revolver, and Tommy gun the most as your main weapons. The crossbow is the closest to a sniper rifle that you will get. Each weapon has three different ammo types. There are explosive, shock, anti-personnel (good against humans), and armor-piercing (used against Big Daddies). The combat system is fine but pretty flawed. You can upgrade each weapon twice to add things like damage and recoil reduction.
You can change your equipped plasmids and tonics at Gene Banks. You use Adam taken from Little Sisters at Adam machines to buy these. There are just too many. I used the Research one for taking photos of enemies to increase damage dealt to them. Once I get everyone researched, this tonic is useless to me. There are tonics to reduce security timers, making hacking easier, reducing the cost of vendors, etc. You can only get five slots for each track. Then there are up to three levels for each tonic. There’s too much. I felt for the short length maybe half the amount of plasmids and tonics would have been fine. You will find your favorites and pretty much stick with those through the entire game. You can finish the game in about 6 hours or less. Other vendors are for ammo and items for healing and such. There are many different healing items, from snacks to first aid kits and seemingly useless alcohol. Hey, there’s a tonic to reduce the drunkeness effect of those as they restore Eve. It’s an excuse to look around. Every container has something. Eventually you will unlock crafting at the U-Invent station to make ammo and some tonics that can’t be bought or found. Looting can be fun, but it distracts from the main story and gameplay loop.
There are just too many systems at play here for such a short game. These are all good ideas, and they work fine, but do we need five plasmid tracks (you can equip up to 15 passive tonics and five for combat) and a crafting ability? Ammo is scarce and becomes a pain to find on harder difficulties. You will need to loot every enemy and container to scrounge. This is fine, but is this now a survival horror game? The best parts of the game are the scripted events. There are few boss fights outside of the disappointing one at the end. The Big Daddys act as mini bosses themselves. They won’t attack you until you attack first. There are Bouncer and Rosie types, each with different types of attacks. Finding the 122 audiotapes throughout the game gives you backstory and fills in lore since there’s a lack of NPCs to talk to. These are logs of residents from before the city fell apart. Each level is themed after someone who ran that area, such as Cohen, who is all about theater. There’s the casino, the outdoors simulation area of Arcadia, the central core area of Hephaestus, etc. The areas are all distinct and interesting to look at despite being very cramped and their design feeling more like a video game than an actual city. It’s obvious no one could actually live in this place; it just doesn’t make any sense.
Despite not being ported over to a new Unreal Engine, the UE3 assets hold up surprisingly well thanks to the fantastic Art Deco style the game went for and have become iconic. The visuals were state of the art at release, but just increasing the resolution doesn’t do much here. The hacking mini-game gets old fast (assemble pipes) and could have been changed or removed. The enemies and characters are also well designed and iconic, but the game has definitely aged. Some areas are not so graceful, such as the combat, level design, and RPG elements. Enjoy the game for a fun evening that’s a great roller coaster ride and explore. Don’t focus too much on collecting, and just enjoy this as a stylish shooter.
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.
Oh boy, it’s another Call of Duty release. I completely disregarded it due to its brief campaign and my lack of interest in the Zombies mode. Four years passed, and here we are. I was in the mood for an FPS game that wouldn’t take up a lot of time, and I’m glad I played it. Starting with the campaign, this is one of the most entertaining in the series, and it’s a crying shame it’s so short. Activision has the budget and talent to make a good long 8-10 hour campaign, but instead we’re stuck with 9 short missions clocking in at around 4 hours. The characters are fun, the writing is tight and interesting, and the Nazi villains are fun to see on screen. You play as a team of allied soldiers who are captured by the Nazis while trying to find documentation on plans for Project Phoenix. The Nazi plan to stay alive after Adolf Hitler had allegedly committed suicide. It’s an interesting point during the war that isn’t talked about or used in WWII games much. The main antagonists are two SS officers who torture and kidnap an Australian, an American, a Russian, and a British soldier who were on the operation to steal the documents.
The game opens up with a train mission. It’s as bombastic and fun as any Call of Duty mission. The game feels immediately familiar…too familiar. It has the exact feeling of Modern Warfare. The speed, the momentum, and everything about what gives modern Call of Duty its identity are here, both for better and for worse. It feels a bit odd while holding WWII guns to be reloading them like a modern rifle. Slapping a clip off the top of a Browning. Everything feels like it’s in fast forward. I would have liked a slower, more deliberate feeling to this game, as we are returning to the series’ roots after all, but that’s too much to ask. It feels odd hopping around walls like it’s Assassin’s Creed as the Russian sniper Lady Nightingale. I feel like a WWII shooter needs a bit more finesse and a slower approach. The game doesn’t feel like Modern Warfare when it’s dressed in a WWII setting.
I don’t like stealth in Call of Duty, and it’s just as broken here. Running around and hiding in vents and under tables just slows the game way down. A high-octane shooter like this does not need any stealth. It’s easier to just shoot everyone in sight. The only reason to actually use the stealth is when it’s required or for achievements. Enemy placement is not right for stealth combat, and patrol patterns seem random. Enemies will also stay in an alerted state once seen, so it’s just pointless. The stealth takedowns are pretty cool to see, though. One new gameplay mechanic not seen in a Call of Duty is flying planes as the American. It’s fun; it doesn’t last long (only a single mission), but the preflight check and taking off just feel cool. There are no other vehicles to drive or even ride on in this game, which is kind of odd.
Outside of the campaign are multiplayer and Zombies. I’m not a Zombies expert, but I do know that this is a return to form with no story or weird map puzzles like in the Black Ops series. Some may like this, and some may hate it. I personally do not care either way. I tried Zombies for a couple of hours, and it was…fine. Multiplayer is the best part of the game, but it’s subject to the usual Call of Duty nonsense. The maps are at least really good, and the way the weapons fire makes it a bit different than modern games. They are less accurate and, of course, less modern, so you don’t get all these crazy attachments for the guns. I won’t bother going into detail on maps or anything, as, sadly, the game is mostly dead. I made it into a couple of matches, but that was after sitting for 20+ minutes waiting for enough people to join.
With that, this game is best played as a super cheap discount for the campaign and maybe some multiplayer with friends, but don’t expect much playtime out of this. I really wanted the campaign to be longer. There’s a lot here that works with interesting characters and a great script, but it’s just cut so short. The authentic WWII weapons feel good, and anyone who is a veteran of past WWII shooters will instantly recognize all of these weapons. Zombies mode is fun, but a drastic change from Black Ops Zombies, which some people may not like, but as it stands, this is a modern Call of Duty game. All that will be left one day is just the campaign and offline multiplayer. What’s here is entertaining for an afternoon of fun, but that’s it.
We have a lot of post-apocalyptic games right now. A lot of them are what the world is like shortly after the apocalypse. Usually a few years or decades. Horizon is one that shows what the world could be like thousands of years after one, and this fascinates me even more. Zero Dawn was a hard game to get into. It was slow to start, even slower to get good, and the combat just wasn’t all that great, including the stealth. Aloy is a fantastic main protagonist and one of Sony’s best in years. She’s strong, not cliche or stereotypical, and has a striking design. Sadly, she was the only memorable character in Zero Dawn. Forbidden West tries to remedy a lot of this by giving us a bolder and grander adventure and more refined mechanics, but does it succeed?
The game doesn’t exactly expect you to have played the first game and catches you up on the story so far, and kind of does throughout the entire game. Zero Dawn’s story only got interesting during the last few missions of the game, and it kind of exposition dumped on you during a few long cutscenes. It was interesting, but not very nuanced. Here, the story is kind of retold as you continue your adventure to stop Sylens and the Hephaestus AI from destroying the world. The game does start slow…again. You end up dealing with another warring tribe before getting to the heart of the story and saving the planet. Honestly, I lost interest in the game for a couple of years because of this. I put around 8 hours into the game, mostly trying to explore and get into the game mechanics again, but it just dragged. I highly recommend just doing the story before doing any side content, as you really need more of the special gear and higher-tier armor and weapons. You will constantly hit blocks, and it will frustrate you early on. The story itself takes around 20-25 hours to complete. By the end you will be around level 30 or so and have really good gear.
I don’t want to spoil much of the story, but your main goal is to help the GAIA AI to take back control of the various terraforming systems that Zero Dawn launched as the end is nigh. There are a few small plot twists, some new factions, and a great buildup to a pretty damn good story by the end of it all. There’s a lot of science fiction thrown in, and it talks about interstellar travel and whatnot, and I was hooked. There aren’t choices in the game like in most action games, but you do get dialog trees that let you optionally listen to more exposition and backstory. There’s a lot of this, by the way. Just metric tons of optional dialogue, audio recordings, and texts. They really wanted to sell this story and flesh it out as much as possible, and they did a pretty good job. It’s very believable and feels grounded and almost like it can happen. There are moments that got intense in the story where you weren’t sure how Aloy and her companions would get out of hairy situations. I really like what they did here, and there’s potential to now expand on this even further and branch off into other subgenres.
The writing is much better this time around with less cringy dialogue and corny lines; however, the character design is still generic. All of Aloy’s allies are either just generic characters or have good writing and personality, but their looks are generic. For example, Alva is a great character in writing, but she still looks generic. Varl and Zo are forgettable, and Erand is a stereotypical biker personality who discovers he likes drinking and “Death Metal”. All of the miscellaneous characters who give side quests and errands are pretty generic. I just didn’t care for most of them. Some other characters are more decent, like Kotallo, who is missing an arm and is battling his honor. They have some great personality, and I could get behind them. It’s better, but not quite there yet.
With the story out of the way, let’s dive into the combat. I still don’t love it. You’ll be dodging and rolling out of the way of these machine creatures. I feel there’s too much focus on ranged combat when most of the machines attack you up close. There is less stealth in this game and more up-close melee, but you still only have heavy and light melee attacks. If you sneak around, you can do a stealth kill, but you need to be at or above the area’s level to do instant kills. Humans are always instant kills, but machines not so much. There are many ranged weapons at your disposal that can set tripwire traps, semi-automatic arrows, long-range arrows, bomb slings, javelins, etc. These can all be equipped with coils that inflict various elemental ailments, such as corrosion to eat away at armor. The quickest way to take a machine down is to use your Focus to highlight weak spots and target those. You can slow down time (and this meter increases with various stat boosts), but I never felt in control of fights. Boss fights require tons of health potions and either having the right weapons or blasting them with everything you have. You can craft more ammo in the weapon wheel too.
Stealth still consists of hiding in tall grass, and you can use combat augments from the upgrade tree like an invisibility cloak. The upgrade tree now has more branches on the tree, such as trapper, hunter, infiltrator, warrior, etc. While enemy placement is a bit better this time around, I still found stalking around massive camps to be nearly impossible. When you get seen, the enemy and nearby enemies are on alert, and it takes forever for them to go back to patrol. With the heavier focus on direct combat, it was easier to just wipe everyone out. Find a heavy weapon and you can take out an entire camp with it. Combat does feel improved with a couple more weapon types, but melee fighting is still limited, and combat just isn’t my favorite in this series. I prefer exploring more than anything.
And with that, exploring is abundant here. The map is massive, too massive. It’s a truncated version of the West of the US. The Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon), Nevada desert, San Francisco coastlines (Northern California), and Las Vegas. They took all of these biomes and shrunk them down onto a single map. What’s here is a lot of nothing. While there are tons of side quests, errands, missions, and things to find, Forbidden West falls into the same tired trappings of modern open-world games. Too much bloat and not enough focus on what’s interesting. Everything outside of the main story is just for getting the platinum trophy. The side quests are given by companions, so those are more story related, but everything else is just filler to extend game time. I did like doing the Tallneck missions. These are one of the few less generic-looking machines in the game, but there are only five, with one being part of a main mission. These reveal more of the world and reveal large landmarks in an area, but there’s still some fog of war.
Traversing this larger map requires you to have a mount. I forwent them in the last game, as it wasn’t a very big map, but here they’re a must. You can bypass most machine herds and get to where you need to go, plus you can now fly on winged machines this time around, but not until the last act of the game. This makes doing side content so much easier, and you can pretty much avoid all herds this way. However, I do have a problem with platforming in this game. This game is just way too context sensitive, and that’s another problem with modern gaming right now. These large AAA games are so context heavy that it can make things feel sluggish and cause many glitches. Jumping and climbing in Horizon is not great. Animations are too long; Aloy will jump when not told, and she won’t grab onto ledges despite jumping right towards them; she will just fall through ropes and other objects. A lot of long platforming segments required many restarts just because something went wrong. You have to be lined up perfectly, or things won’t connect. I fell through objects and got stuck; she would swing half her body through a wall, and I would jump right past a pole or beam for no reason and then land it the next time around. It sucks.
And with that we can talk about visuals. Forbidden West is still one of the best-looking games of all time. The visuals are stunning, and even in performance mode, they look great. I played in balanced mode with 120 Hz turned on, and it was the best way to go. There is so much detail everywhere, from small facilities that look like they were abandoned for thousands of years to lush forests and dry deserts. There’s so much detail everywhere, including the new large underwater areas. While I still feel parts of the game feel generic, like the overall futuristic look of the game. It’s a lot of shiny metal, smooth gel like metal, white, gold, triangles, etc.; it feels like stuff that’s been done to death in games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Echo, etc. It was fine the first time around, but this futuristic style is getting old. We need a refresh. I also don’t care for the machine designs. They look like generic Transformer animals. Even the tribal armor all looks generic and the same after a while.
Despite all of that, the game has a fascinating story, a large beautiful world to explore, and some decent gameplay loops of side content. I just wish the combat was tighter and the platforming didn’t suck. The writing is better, and some of the main characters are better, but most of the other characters you run into are forgettable and generic.
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.
The idea of robots taking over humans has been an age-long discussion, but what if they were designed to help us instead, no matter the cost? That’s the idea that The Fall presents to players. You play as a pilot who has crash-landed on a planet, but the AI known as A.R.I.D. (autonomous robotic interface device) activates and uses an advanced smart suit to essentially control the pilot’s body while searching for medical attention. The pilot lands on a derelict planet run by an AI called the Caretaker, who is examining and studying ARID for unknown reasons. Excellent writing and voice acting bring the story to life, despite its short length. There is not a single wasted line of dialogue or moment. This is an incredible premise and idea that I want to see more of. The Fall is a Metroidvania-lite, but with its own identity. The genre has seen little of this type of game today, especially with the explosion of indie games being produced.
Despite its simplicity, the game boasts a surprisingly complex control layout. You can walk around in a 2D plane, but jumping and combat are limited. You must use the flashlight on your pistol or light the path ahead, as the game is very dark and is mostly underground. When you shine your light over objects, a context piece of text will appear describing it or allowing you to interact with it. The majority of the game is puzzle-based, relying on an inventory system to combine and interact with the right object. The Caretaker’s testing center is the longest section of the game. Many puzzles are actually quite fun and clever, but a few can take a weird obtuse angle and make little sense in terms of how they are solved.
Combat in The Fall is crunchy and powerful but very limited. Other androids will attempt to attack you, but their actions are very limited and occur only during scripted events. You can hide behind cover and pop out to deliver a headshot. You must switch to the laser sight for better accuracy. You can sneak up behind enemies to kill them, or you can advance on them while they take cover. The shots are impactful and crunchy. The combat doesn’t overstay its welcome and is used at the right times. Of course, you can’t use your gun for the first third of the game, as abilities need to be unlocked, such as faster fire rates, the gun itself, and other suit abilities.
The game is tedious because it has a lot of backtracking, so you’ll often go from one end of a level to the other. I understand that this is part of a Metroidvania, but you aren’t going back to a level once you are upgraded and can access new parts of a level. You often find yourself running back and forth to collect parts of a puzzle, hoping you have the correct piece, only to discover that you either don’t or that it belongs to another puzzle located elsewhere. It’s not game-breaking, but it does get old pretty quickly. Once you have read all the text and discovered every part of the level, the adventure part of the game kind of disappears, and all that’s left is the tedious process of solving puzzles and running around.
The atmosphere and graphics are fantastic even today. The game has a surreal feeling of almost transporting you to the world thanks to its great sound design and visuals. While there is a lot going on in the foreground, most of the atmospheric stuff comes from what’s happening in the background. A lot of the background stuff can give you a visual cue as to what’s going on just from one glance. You can see a massive cave and the exterior of a spaceship through the windows, among other things. The few occasions where there is spoken dialogue are excellent, and the excellent writing keeps you captivated with every word.
Overall, The Fall is a fantastic atmospheric Metroidvania-lite that features great writing and tense gameplay, including gun sections that do not overstay their welcome. ARID is a wonderful character despite being a programmed robot, and the ending of the game is well worth your time. This game was one of the few indie titles that contributed to the “indie revolution” of the early 2010s and played a significant role in establishing the Wii U eShop as a prominent platform for indie games.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…