Have you ever felt so heartbroken that you wanted to just run forever into the void and scream? That’s the entire premise of Sayonara Wild Hearts, or at least my interpretation. Like most Annapurna games, a lot of their shorter stuff requires player interpretation. You are able to inject yourself into the game and place a unique finger on the story. There isn’t much content in the game, and aside from visual or symbolic interpretation, the female lead you play as is heartbroken and trying to mend her feelings. What we get is a pulse-pounding soundtrack with a visually gorgeous action-rhythm game that I couldn’t put down.
Every level is unique and flows with extraordinary precision. You will ride a skateboard, a motorcycle, an elk, and a mech. That’s not for you to worry about, as all you need to do is move left and right and dodge obstacles and collect hearts to increase your score. This game’s main hook is a score attack system in which you can get small hearts, large heart rings, and smaller collectible discs to increase your score. As the level goes on, the length and difficulty ramp up from just straight, wavy roads and loops to dodging left and right and choosing different paths with the most hearts. You can’t die per se, but you will rewind back about 5 seconds, which is nice, and there’s no penalty to your score, but you do lose whatever you gathered during those five seconds and need to reclaim it. A lot of the levels flow differently from boss fights using QTEs to jumping around on cliffsides and flying through cities. The pace of the game is insane, and it’s always moving and changing, which is really exciting.
Towards the last fourth of the game, the gameplay changes up, and you become a Game Boy cart and get inserted into a set of VR goggles. Here the developers pay tribute to, clearly, some of their favorite games, such as Tetris (you move through Tetrominos) and Geometry Wars. You eventually get a bow and can lock on to enemies to rack up combos. There is a nice bit towards the end that is a clear nod to Panzer Dragoon. The gameplay is also synced with the music, and with a good sound system (I have a 5.1 system hooked up), you are surrounded by fantastic techno and electronic beats with some beautiful vocals (provided by Linnea Olsson) and melodies. Jonathan Eng is a fantastic musician who has a very unique sound. He provides the boss fight music, with the vocal tracks. The music evokes a mix of nostalgia, wanderlust, and ethereal alternate timelines filled with pure fantasy. Daniel Olsen provides the rest of the OST and it’s just wonderful. It has a very 80s vibe to it as well, and it just fits so well with the visuals.
There was only one level that felt nauseating to me. The level bounces and kind of skips animations, making it difficult to focus and keep track of everything, but it was thankfully short. There are “Heartbreak” interlude levels in between this set of tracks, and they are fairly short. I also found the Game Boy level, while novel, slowed things down too much and broke up the pace. The entire game up until that point is just high-octane, in-your-face, pulse-pounding techno and constantly changing levels. I felt the Heartbreak levels were slow and short enough to give you a breather. Those slower levels aren’t bad; they’re the only gameplay switch-up in the game, but they are a bit jarring.
Words cannot adequately convey the experience of this game. It needs to be played, and I don’t know why I waited so long to play it. I downloaded it multiple times on different consoles, including Game Pass and PS Plus, and even tried a demo a couple of times, but it just never clicked for me until now. I love the soundtrack so much I listen to it outside of the game too. Anyone who loves rhythm action games, 80s techno-pop, or beautiful art shouldn’t miss this game. I just wish it were a bit longer.
Diablo is one of the longest-running franchises out there but hasn’t had many entries. The third installment, along with this one, faced significant challenges during development due to mismanagement and initial negative feedback from fans. I never had a PC that could run the first two Diablo games back in the day, so I started out with D3. I bought a PC copy on launch day and liked it quite a bit. Later it was ported to consoles and had a wonderful expansion, and then there was nothing for years. Diablo IV launched with similar issues as the third game. Diablo IV faced connection issues, always-online DRM, and cosmetic-only microtransactions; however, it lacked a compelling endgame. The main campaign is fairly short, lasting about 20 hours if you don’t complete all the side quests, but there are many ups and downs with Diablo IV.
I had trouble getting into D4 at launch. The game mechanics aren’t explained very well, and endgame stuff isn’t really explained at all. The systems (at least as of Season 13 while writing this review) are pretty complicated and require reading through guides online; they must be done in multiplayer. Getting through the main campaign is what a majority of players will push through and then quit. D4’s addictive endgame cycle is what keeps hardcore players coming back for better loot and tougher boss fights. The story itself is intriguing, but I wasn’t really engrossed in it. I found Lilith’s nuances the most interesting, while the other characters felt forgettable and underdeveloped. Blizzard has always had some of the best pre-rendered cut scenes in the industry, and they still hold up today. The opening scene introducing Lilith is fantastic and memorable, as is the overall art style. Once I got through the tutorial area and got dumped into the open world, I felt lost. You can just follow the main campaign and do side quests (blue exclamation points) to get better loot and XP. However, I kept pushing for side quests and quickly got bored. They are not captivating whatsoever. There’s no backstory to any of these characters or quests, and if there is, it’s very superficial. All the quests follow a similar pattern, involving either gathering items, killing a specific number of enemies, or exploring a procedurally generated dungeon.
Diablo IV is littered with them. Instead of unique dungeons, we get a unique overworld and tonnes of RG dungeons, which grow old and boring very quickly. They are all themed a certain way, such as caves, spider lairs, caves, and more caves. The main story dungeons are a lot more intriguing and have more to look at, but the smaller dungeons are just lame. Some are just small rooms with a single boss. As you run through these dungeons, you will come across hoards of enemies, sub-bosses, chests, and smaller objectives. You can run across shrines, which will grant you a temporary boost in stats that can be saved for bosses or harder areas in dungeons and the overworld. Once you clear the “fog of war” on the main map, you can use your mount to dash through areas and ignore overworld enemies, as they provide little XP outside of world events and stronghold bosses. Most of your valuable loot (and there is a significant amount of useless loot) will come from defeating tougher enemies and main campaign bosses. Legendary, Unique, and then later, Ancient items are the best.
Diablo IV’s combat is both impactful and fun, and it constitutes the majority of your gameplay activities. I chose a Necromancer for my playthrough, but I didn’t realise that I could only use six main skills for attacks. There’s no point in dishing out points and spreading them too thin. You can always respec your skill tree if you don’t like your build and try again. This allows for limitless experimentation, but later on I was getting my ass handed to me. The situation required me to go to an online guide and do a build from there. I went with a Minion Army Necromancer and suddenly the game was too easy. You can increase the difficulty when you feel you are surpassing that level. Once you reach Level 70, you go to the Paragon levels and do skill boards, which get insanely complicated. You will reach an item power limit of 850, and from there, you are just augmenting gear instead of building off sheer numbers. This phase is where a lot of people will check out and find it too much to deal with.
There isn’t much to the core gameplay loop. You discover towns and warp points on the main map, collect side quests (most of these are done on the overworld map) and then knock down campaign quests. The most intriguing parts of the game are the unique dungeons and boss fights, but ARPGs are repetitive in themselves. This is the main point. The combat is a lot of fun, with dozens of enemies exploding, rushing, and screaming on screen while loot flies everywhere. Loot can range from various types of currency to just gear. The second gameplay loop is all gear and stat related, which many people won’t care for if you are just interested in playing the main game. Seasonal currencies for events, which unlock items at specific vendors, abound.
Once you find a piece of gear you really like, you can augment it with a gem slot (or install a gem slot) or temper your armour with seasonal currency to add things like glyphs and runes which will transform armour into some of the best in the game. These traits you use to add to gear have to be unlocked by either dismantling good gear or completing certain dungeons. This constant drilling down in mechanics requires you to take two steps forward and one step back. For example, I completed the quest to unlock Torment I, but then I realised that to obtain better gear, I needed chests from Lair Bosses. I finally found a Lair Boss that I could defeat solo, but I didn’t realise that I needed Lair Keys or other similar items to unlock the chest. These items can be obtained during seasonal events, by clearing The Pit (a tiered-level dungeon), or through random drops. Items like this are rare, have a low drop rate, and require repetitive and tedious efforts, which I am mostly unwilling to invest in. If you have a group of friends, it’s best to do these activities with them, as running these solo causes longer grinding. Higher difficulty levels can grant better drop rates, but you’re best just completing the main campaign and doing all side quests to really level up and get stronger.
These complicated mechanics are what some fans of ARPGs love. Some may just want the simple feeling of following the story and getting the best loot. The best part is that all endgame content is optional. You can choose not to engage in this content without being locked out of later DLC quests, map exploration, or completing other activities. You can choose to do these quests or not. You can also restart the game and use a new character build. This game can have an insane amount of replay value for those who truly love this kind of thing. I have to give Blizzard credit for this approach, as both endgame and the regular part of the game are completely separate, and you can ignore it or dip in and out as you see fit. You can just keep making a new character and re-running the campaigns or stick with a good build and run endgame content.
What’s here is a visual treat of a game. While the story won’t blow your socks off, it will keep you invested in Lilith and the nuances of the magical world of Diablo. The main quests are a blast and varied, but the randomly generated dungeons everywhere else get tedious pretty quickly. Half the game is endgame content that most players won’t care for, but it’s very complex and requires video breakdowns and guides to explain how to do it all, and you need at least one person to do this stuff with. Diablo IV balances a fine line of multiplayer madness and single-player ARPG story-based content, and it does it pretty well, flaws and all.
Cyberpunk games that are good are far and few between. They either nail the aesthetic but don’t have a good story or gameplay. Even fewer have interesting lore wrapped around their particular flavour of cyberpunk world. Cloudpunk does this part right. Building interesting lore on top of a compelling story with interesting characters, but sadly not getting the gameplay part right. Despite this caveat, the game is worth playing if you love stories and interesting worlds to explore. Cloudpunk pits you as a delivery driver, Rainia, who migrates from the Eastern continent to the city of Ravalis to escape her past. You end up doing delivery work for the titular Cloudpunk black market service. What unfolds is Rainia getting pulled into a crazy plot with interesting characters and the fate of the world itself.
Cloudpunk does a great job trying to make you feel small in its oppressive overworld. The lore for how this world has come to be is pretty deep, and there is a lot of NPC dialogue and quests surrounding this. The game is set hundreds of years into the future in which few cities remain and most of the world’s population are inside those. There is a class system where capitalism has taken over the world for good, and CEOs live on top of the clouds with better air and water, while the poorest live in the duct systems, farming algae and surviving cold storms from the massive city ventilation system. It’s a really fun world to be a part of, and hearing all of these stories helps build all of this up. Like the best RPGs out there, from The Elder Scrolls to The Witcher, the small parts are what matter the most. You get a large map, and each part of the city is broken down into burroughs. When you land in a part of the city that is walkable, you can see faces on the mini-map. These are optional NPCs to talk to that either give side quests or just some lore to fill you in on the everyday life of people. The morality about androids and them having rights like humans as well as the abuse they go through and how they are implemented into society is very detailed here and sucked me right in. Phillip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov are clear inspirations here.
Outside of walking around and talking to people, you can pick up items scattered around that are just junk parts. Either sell them or keep them, and they might be useful for someone, but most of the time it’s just for cash which is needed for gas, repairs to your HOVA, and adding optional cosmetic upgrades to your apartment. You spend most of the game in the HOVA cars, and as you zip around, you can easily damage the car and have to repair it. You can buy a few simple upgrades and eventually get to pick a much better car halfway through the story. The HOVA feels fine to drive, but navigating this game gave me Jak II vibes, and that’s not super great. The game’s world feels like it was built in the PS2 era. Very small maps that are cut up between loading screens. The same “whooshing” sound effects as you pass by cars. Many of the neon signs repeat often, and while the scale of the city is grand, it’s all an illusion. The foggy sky, distant neon buildings, infinite skywalks and buildings. None of this is explorable just like older games from 20 years ago. When you do land on a walkable area, it’s mostly just sidewalks to run around to the next navpoint. There are no puzzles or combat in the game, so it’s just a vehicle for an enjoyable story and interesting lore.
I wanted Cloudpunk to be more. I really got invested in the characters. There are a few plot twists in the story and the character arcs that got me hooked. I kept coming back to the game wanting to know what happens next. The writing is incredibly sharp and intentional. The voice acting is a bit different from many other games. It sounds like real-life dialogue. A lot of emotion and nonchalance from Rainia over life-or-death situations. There’s depth to all of the characters. The game forces you to struggle with feelings about androids and whether they should be treated like machines or humans. This is all just in the dialogue. I can only imagine if this game had a larger budget with a more detailed world to explore, this could be something huge. Deliveries are also all the same. Pick this up and drop it off. Sometimes you get a choice to decide the fate of certain characters, which is nice, and you really do sit there and think of the consequences.
Driving around the same areas for nearly 10 hours gets tiring quickly. I wound up ignoring everything else in the game, such as stopping at food vendors and merchants, as they served no purpose. The only truly grating issue was that lengthy dialogue would play out with nothing to do. There’s no navpoint given to you so you can drive while listening to the dialogue. Many times I just sat there staring at the screen for many minutes. Outside of this, the voxel art style is to be desired. I didn’t care for it, but the overall style they go with is passable. I feel like the game’s world isn’t done justice with this art style, but the neon-soaked blacks and greys work well enough to invoke emotion when streaking through the sky to the next destination. The music is really good, with retrowave-style synth and techno music as well as the never-ending rain. There’s a lot of potential here in a sequel or something, but there are a lot of reasons for someone not to care for this game. The game features up to 7.1 surround sound. With my 5.1 system the world came to life. HOVAs whizzing by, characters walking around, rain pattering on buildings, sirens going off behind me. The soundscape is half of what drew me into the game.
Overall, Cloudpunk has sharp writing and well-written characters with enough lore and a unique take on a cyberpunk setting to be worth your time. I feel a lot of the extra stuff is a waste of time, and the map design is very early 00s feeling, and that can be both good and bad. There’s nothing to do outside of driving around and doing deliveries minus a timed mission here and there. The art style, while quite good, has a voxel style that doesn’t do the overall art direction justice, but what’s here is pretty good and worth your time if you love stories and lore.
The coverage of mental health in games is growing both in respect of the disease process and the way it affects everyday lives. This would have been laughed at 20 years ago (and still kind of is in a small sect of a specific gaming crowd), but seeing it take an art form is very interesting here. Hellblade was well known for depicting different forms of psychosis in a character and projecting that onto a game. Schizophrenia, visual and auditory hallucinations, multiple personality disorder, and many others. Hellblade takes Norse mythology and grounds it with real-world mental health issues. Senua is the main protagonist you play as. Her trauma manifests into these hallucinations, turning what you are seeing into visual symbols of her past. As you play along and solve puzzles, you can also find hidden faces and totems to learn about the Norse mythology by a man named Druth.
Hellblade is mostly a walking simulator mixed with some simple combat and geometry illusion puzzles. This sequence is the main gameplay loop. Solve puzzles, do some combat, walk a bunch, and listen to dialog. It’s a fine loop that many games do right, and Hellblade is no exception, but it’s the pacing of this loop that wears thin really fast. The combat is the weakest aspect of the game despite looking cool. Senua isn’t a strong character, but she is fast. You can kick, run, and do heavy and light attacks. You can also block and parry. Sadly, these are attached to an almost quick-time event-feeling game with canned animations. This is a challenge of timing rather than pure skill. Enemies repeat often with just a few types. Heavy hitters with two-handed axes and spears, some with shields, and lighter enemies with a single sword or axe. They will spawn in on you until the fight is over. Sometimes this can be overbearing with 5-6 enemies on top of you. Thankfully, you have a focus mirror that stores energy with every successful parry and attack. This slows down time and allows you to whack away at enemies.
Sadly, the combat crescendos into much more whack-a-mole by the end. Some combat sequences throwing two dozen enemies at you. It gets tiring as there’s no change to it. No leveling up, no new moves learned, no nothing. It would have been nice to spread these out more, but with the short play time, it wears things pretty fast. The puzzles are the only things breaking up that monotony of combat. You will get blocked by a door and have to find symbols hidden in the environment. This requires you to see highlighted objects at a certain angle and line them up by climbing or moving around to a new area. These are mostly fun but rarely offer any type of challenge. Some players may actually get bored with how simple the game can be, especially on easier difficulties. There’s one caveat to the entire game, and that’s the fact that Senua has a darkness climbing up her arm. Every time you do, it gets closer to her face. If you die too many times, it’s game over, and you have to start the game over again. I don’t quite understand why this is here. The game is already easy enough, and the game’s not short enough for this to not be a problem. This is easily a 4-6 hour game. You have to repeat many scripted events and dialog, and anyone who does die will easily just throw the towel in and move on.
With that out of the way, the game’s main attraction is the story and the visual effects. This was one of the best-looking games of the previous generation, and with new graphical enhancements that have been added over time, such as ray tracing, it looks fantastic. The production values are very high here, and you can see some of Ninja Theory’s other projects influencing the game here. The animations are fantastic, and the voice acting is superb. Sadly, many gamers will mistake this game for a God of War-style game, not realizing it’s mostly an adventure game with light combat and easy puzzles. Thankfully, the environments are varied and change all the time, with some great-looking vistas and monuments. I had this game installed on my PC for years and never got around to actually getting very far into the game. You need to be in the right mindset to play this game. It’s very dark and heavy emotionally and can be a lot to take in but can be finished in a single sitting.
Hellblade’s new graphical features are worth the price of entry on PS5 Pro and PC alone. This game is very unique, and there’s nothing else quite like it. There may be other games that do what Helblade does better when it’s broken down to its core, but don’t let that steer you away from this game. Go in not expecting much outside of a good story and entertaining production values and you won’t be disappointed.
The House of the Dead is one of the kings of the arcades. This co-op light gun game is a classic with great gameplay, cool monsters, and cutting-edge visuals for the time. The House of the Dead 2 is considered one of the best and was one of the first games in the series to be ported to consoles. There was also a typing version of this game for Dreamcast and PC that is considered great as well. With the original assets being lost, Forever Entertainment had to recreate the game from the ground up, and they did a pretty decent job. It’s not perfect, but it does the game justice and, with some patches, could be even better. The content is bare bones, there’s little extra, and there are some bugs and issues with the camera here and there, but it can be fixed or patched in.
Just like the original, you can play as either James or Gary (different paths) and use your trusty pistol to fight off zombies. There are a good amount in the game, with some ranging from animals to sea creatures. This is a light rail game, so you don’t move the camera, only the reticle on screen. Using the PS5 DualSense is the best way to go, as you can use the motion sensor to aim, and the trigger effect is great for recreating the feeling of the light guns in the arcade. You can customize the controls and use the sticks or switch between the two. Circle is used to reload. This allows for quick action and speed that this game needs. Even on Very Easy, I died quite a bit towards the end. Each level lasts about 10 minutes. The goal is to shoot everything before it hits you. Enemies will melee attack or throw items. Some enemies take more hits than others. You can shoot red barrels to blow some up, but there is little environmental interaction, and I would have liked to have seen more with this remake. You can shoot random items to find hidden secrets such as weapons, bullet types, or passive upgrades like double points, health, credits, etc. You can save citizens and get health kits, weapons, and other items as well, but you need to act fast.
I found an issue with shooting enemies or containers in some scenes. The camera doesn’t linger long enough or doesn’t pan in a way that you can hit these items or enemies. I knew something was there, but I didn’t have nanosecond reflexes to grab the item. This really needs to be patched and fixed. I also found most of the bosses pretty lame to kill. For example, the hydra boss is just a game of wack-a-mole with no real challenge. Bosses have weak spots, and you need to either fire on them constantly or wait for an opening. This can make boss battles drag on as they only have a few attack patterns and are bullet sponges. I understand this was made for the arcade, but this could have been improved in the remake. The levels themselves vary and look really cool, and there’s a lot of detail in the monsters, and the cheese from the original carried over. The new voice acting is bad, but in a good way. The line delivery can be pretty funny, and the story is absolutely bonkers and makes no sense. A man named Goldman is somehow letting a deity take over the world. But what does this have to do with zombies? Where do they come from? It’s never explained and doesn’t need to be. There are only six levels, and you can breeze through them in less than an hour.
Of course, the game is easier with a friend and a blast to play. There a secret lab area in the main menu where you can see what you unlocked, but there’s nothing extra here. Just a modern classic mode and an arcade mode. For the asking price there’s not a lot of content here, and unless you are a huge light gun or The House of the Dead fan, most won’t find much value in this game. I ran into some bugs with water textures being purple, slowdown, and the aforementioned camera issues, but it’s not a terrible experience; it’s just the bare minimum.
Fairy tales can be both charming and downright eye-rolling depending on how they are told. In this case, The Liar Princess is a charming story of trust and truth. One day a prince hears the singing of a girl at night, and over the course of months, he finally ventures out to find this voice. He climbs a cliff only to get slashed by the wolf who is singing to the moon. He ends up blind, and the wolf is so upset that she maimed someone who genuinely enjoys her singing that she brings him to the forest witch, who can let them be together by turning her into a beautiful princess, but at a cost. She must give up her singing voice. That’s the premise of the fairy tale, and it can be quite charming. There are cut scenes after every level and even a couple of plot twists. Sadly, that’s kind of the only thing worthwhile in this entire game outside of the art.
The game is incredibly sluggish, floaty, and hard to control with controls and mechanics that feel half-baked. If you hate escort missions in games, then you will truly loathe this one. The entire game is an escort mission. You must lead the blind prince around to solve puzzles…and do platforming. Yeah, that just doesn’t work out. With this awful physics you will constantly die and have to restart levels not even of your own doing. You can switch between the Princess and the Wolf at will, but you can not switch to the Princess if there is moonlight on you. This only occurs a couple of times in the game, so I think the developers forgot about this. As the Wolf, you can jump higher, are invincible to damage, and can attack enemies and “swipe” at objects to move them. As the Princess you can lead the Prince around by hand, and that’s pretty much it.
Where the frustration comes from is the awful glitchy physics and platforming. A lot of puzzles just don’t work because of this, and even the developers knew this, as after 10 minutes you can skip the level. For example, you will have two switches that need to be stood on, but a third one is behind a small wall with an opening to toss a heavy object through and onto the switch. You must swipe at an object to knock it over into the hole, and it takes dozens of swipes to get it just right. Sometimes the objects get stuck and you have to restart; sometimes they disappear. Sometimes you will drop down onto a mushroom pad (mushrooms are safe to land on), and you will scout ahead only to die from fall damage and respawn, and the Prince has disappeared and you need him for a puzzle.
Another frustrating scenario is swiping at plants that shoot balls at enemies, and these rapidly move from left to right. There are situations in which platforms will move underneath you, and you have to get the Prince onto them by timing everything. These plants move too fast, and getting them to hit enemies is all luck-based. I restarted an end level a dozen times only because I could not get these enemies to die fast enough, so I skipped the level. This happens all the time, and it gets worse as the game moves on. The Princess controls like she’s moving through mud, and it doesn’t help that on the Vita the game runs at 20 FPS. With my system fully overclocked, it can barely hit 30. This is a very poorly optimized game as well as all the other issues.
Combat is just as aggravating. You swipe at enemies, and because you’re invincible, there’s no challenge. I just wish combat would have been removed from this game. Enemies don’t attack either; they just move back and forth in a line. All this does is slow things down and make certain sections impossible to get past. There’s another mechanic where a Yeti can toss both of you up onto ledges, but he moves back and forth and throws you behind him. Timing this is maddening, as he has to have his back to the ledge you need to be on, but you need to be in front of him. There only way to control the Prince without holding his hand is telling him to move forward, backward, or pick up an object, and this is really slow. The Princess has to go through whispering animation, the transforming animation is also slow which leads to many deaths. The only parts I enjoyed were anything that didn’t involve combat, puzzles, or platforming, and that was most of the game.
With that said, the game is atrocious to play and a chore to try and finish. It feels like the game was half-finished and they released it anyway. The visuals are great, and the story is quite charming, but I would have preferred a short walking simulator (which this game feels like it originally was) to shoehorned, half-baked gameplay. I honestly can’t recommend this one to even the most curious players, as most won’t even get halfway through before giving up.
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.
Super, thank you