The 8-bit era of Atari was before my time. I started the next generation with the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo as a young toddler. I still respect and have enjoyed iterations and ports of Atari 8-bit games over the years. What hasn’t been done well is anything outside of bundles of seemingly random collections. They’re nearly countless at this point and have spanned to nearly every console imaginable. Atari anniversary collections, various Atari-themed packs, and various retro packages with fancy UIs or presentations. However, no single retro package has been as cohesive or beautifully created as Atari 50. Even Sega’s recent Genesis Collection with its retro 90’s bedroom and bookshelf display can’t beat this.
The entire game is presented like an interactive history lesson. You go through four timelines. Atari’s origin story and their arcade routes. You get to see photos, printouts, commercials, and interviews with various Atari developers and industry veterans such as Tim Schafer (Psychonauts) and Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War). These are presented in chronological order. A game is presented when its release comes up in the timeline. Some games have cover art, photos, and even comics underneath them to view. As you advance in the timeline you get a feeling like you’re playing an interactive museum tour. There are no fancy 3D menus or anything, but the clean and simple UI works well. There are a few surprises peppered in like unreleased prototypes and Digital Eclipse’s own recreations of iconic games like Yar’s Revenge and Haunted House.
As you advance to the home console and PC timeline things get more interesting. You will eventually get to Atari 5200 and 7800 games which are a bit more advanced. You will also get to play a few PC games for the Atari home computers. Then you will finish up in the 90s with the Atari Lynx and Jaguar. Sadly, there aren’t many games in this timeline, and the biggest issue with this entire game is the lack of third-party titles. You only get to play Atari-published and own games. That’s very limiting, and while I understand this is Atari’s own history there are many games that helped make their systems great outside of internal developers. The few Jaguar games range from Cybermorph to Tempest 2000 and Missle Command 3D. They aren’t great, but interesting to dive into. That’s another thing about this whole collection. Very few games are fun to play longer than five minutes. Some are pretty clunky and bad. This isn’t a “greatest of” collection which I really appreciate. You will most likely go back to the more fun games like Missle Command, Centipede, Millepede, Tempest, or their latest versions in this game. You get special bezels, backgrounds, overlays, and control options for every game as well. You can also select various modes and some games support save states which is cool. You also get a digital view of every manual for the game including the arcade operator’s manuals. They didn’t leave anything out.
By the time I spent around 5 hours in the game, I got to the end of the timelines. You can go back and play any game in the library view and pick your favorites. These games run really well and look great, but many gamers who didn’t grow up in the 80s will probably find this nothing more than a history lesson. Even more, will find pretty much every game boring or uninteresting. However, that’s not a knock to the games, but just a warning to younger audiences. Anyone younger than 30-35 will most likely not find this game interesting or fun. If you have a curiosity about Atari’s history or games then this is the best place to get that. If you have an itch for trying out 8-bit games or want to go back without emulating anything then this will give you nearly 100 games. I also appreciate how few ports and copies of the same game are in here. Each game was hand-picked and placed with relevancy.
Overall, Atari 50 is one of the best retro packages you can ever play. Telling an entire developer’s history with games placed in their correct time slots and even including unreleased games and reimaginings of some is just fantastic. The videos are entertaining and interesting and you will learn a lot. There are so many details added from commercials, print ads, posters, manuals, customizable controls, save states, and more. It’s a complete and cohesive package for Atari lovers out there. Just be warned that there are no third-party games and less of the 90s stuff.
God of War (2018) was a masterpiece of a game. I honestly expected just more of the same with Ragnarok as I couldn’t imagine how they could improve or add anything. I knew they were reusing many of the same realms, and I thought this would feel more like a short expansion pack relying primarily on endgame challenges. I was dead wrong. This game is about 10 hours longer story-wise and has more explorable realms than the first game. A couple of realms are still used as central hubs, but most are fully explorable with hours of content in each one. This brings me to the actual story itself. It’s phenomenal, moving, tear-jerking (especially the ending), and has one of the best ending levels I’ve played in over a decade. While there are many improvements over the first game a few flaws still remain that haven’t been addressed, but they’re minor.
The game starts out pretty much right where the first game ended. You’re in a cave with Atreus (who is now a teen) and you ride through a snowy path on a dog sled. I don’t want to explain too much of the story details as there are some twists and beautiful moments, but every single character here is memorable. All of your favorites from the first game are back plus a lot of new ones. Thor, Odin, Thrud (Thor’s daughter), Sif (Thor’s wife), Heimdall, and many others just ooze character and charm. Even some of the smaller characters with little screen time make such an impact and are so well written and designed. It’s some of the best writing and character development in any game, period. I just want to say that you won’t be disappointed with the story at all. It does take 20-25 hours to complete the story, but it’s never boring, never dull, and goes off on so many different paths.
You can now play as Atreus in many scenes and he’s nimble, swift, and a lot of fun to play as. He’s a stark difference from Kratos’ larger and slower build. He can melee with his bow, shoot arrows, and equip relics that add augments to his arrows. He also has powers as well. He does have his own assist partners in the game. Without spoiling anything there are several characters that accompany him on his own journey. You aren’t stuck with the same companion through his sections. The gameplay is just so varied that it never gets dull.
Combat itself has improved some, but it was never flawed before. Animations are tighter and more varied, and you now have three different abilities you can change and equip. These are in form of relics and amulets. When you hold down L2 you can press R2, circle, or R1 and use cooldown abilities. These are more abundant than in the first game with a ton of find and collect. These are specifically heavy and light attacks for each of the three weapons as well as one ability from your amulet. There are passive buffs you can apply on your amulet that can reduce cooldowns, make you more powerful while using certain relics, and equipping any three at the same time grants a special bonus. This is all slowly unlocked to you throughout the story, but to get the most out of this stuff you have to explore and do all the side stuff to get better buffs and abilities.
The combat system is just perfect. I didn’t think it could get better but it does. The only thing I wish I could do was combo in and out of different weapons. That’s the only issue I had with the combat. The additional spear weapon is a treat and adds powerful mid-range attacks so Kratos is fully balanced. The axe for short-range, and the Blades of Chaos for long-range attacks. These weapons can be upgraded by defeating bosses throughout the realms for sparks and they are hard to come by and rare. You must seek them out to increase your equipment level. This is even more important that the first game. Enemies have levels above them just like before, but the side stuff is what mostly relies on this. The hardest enemies in the game are the Berserker bosses and you must tackle them in a certain order to gain that extra level and be at level 8 which takes a couple dozen hours to get to. The enemies are well-designed, every single boss is different, and even the mini-bosses have been mixed up. We’re no longer spammed with just troll bosses like before that got quite repetitive outside of the story bosses.
That’s where my first minor complaint comes in. The bosses and large-scale battles are toned down in this game quite a bit and that was a huge part of God of War’s DNA. The quick-time events are almost non-existent as well outside of key scripted scenes. I was a little let down by this and was probably the only major letdown of the game. The large-scale bosses do exist, but there are only a couple and they are pretty far apart in the story, but they are still epic nonetheless. All of those cool large-scale bosses are mostly replaced with well-designed smaller bosses that require you to really hone the combat system. It’s honestly no joke either. These side optional bosses will kick your ass. Even 35 hours into the game I was dying a dozen or more times until I memorized every attack pattern and dodged and parried perfectly. This is why having the proper equipment level is key. I would come back even just one level higher and it would make my time easier. You also get to use resurrection stones which are highly recommended to always have as you don’t get penalized for using them. There is a new berserker stone as well that gives you full rage.
When it comes to exploration Ragnarok is full of it. There isn’t just a couple of boat areas like before, but nearly every realm can be traversed by boat with a lot of areas to unlock, chests to grab, and puzzles to solve. One of Ragnarok’s strengths is its environmental puzzles. These are Zelda-level fun and addictive to find and solve. It’s recommended to do all of the side stuff at the end of the game when you have all the abilities and weapons needed. The same Relic chests exist from before by finding three runes to hit with your axe, but more ways to solve these have been added. In addition to just mashing square to Atreus and other partners to assist you, there are two arrow types now. Magic and Rune arrows. Rune arrows are green and do heavier damage, but magic arrows are purple and can increase fire or ice damage on enemies. These are also used in puzzles. The purple arrows can create domes that can be shot to create a chain reaction of fire to light up runes for puzzles. These can be tricky, but fun to figure out.
Your spear can be used to blow open weak points in rocks and be used as a pole to get to new areas. It’s so satisfying to finally go back and get that one chest you saw teasing you or get to that whole new area you knew was above you, but couldn’t get to. These teases throughout the story make you want to explore which I did anyways. I usually got everything I could with my current abilities in the realm before moving on. You can easily spend 5 or more hours in each realm completing them to 100%. There is still the Muspelheim challenges, Odin’s Ravens, and many more favors to find, collect and solve. You will easily spend 50-60 hours in this game to complete it to 100% and it’s satisfying, addictive, and so much fun. The level design is fantastic as it’s easy to remember nearly everything in the game and where to go. Just a simple chest was easy to remember once I got to that area. There were a few small areas that were a pain to explore such as near the Abandoned Village in Vanaheim. It’s one of the few areas poorly laid out with confusing paths and easily missable shortcuts, but these aren’t very common.
The production values are the last thing I want to talk about. They are amazing, mesmerizing, and absolutely mind-blowing. I can’t say in words just how well put together this massive game is. Christopher Judge’s performance as Kratos is deeper has more nuance, and he just is Kratos. Sunny Suljic does a fantastic job as he’s grown with Atreus and has put his own spin on the character. Odin’s actor, Thor, and everyone in between is perfectly cast. This is Game of Thrones or Harry Potter-style perfect casting. This is one of the best-acted games ever made, and that’s not an exaggeration. I couldn’t get enough of everyone on screen and there is just so much dialog and acting on screen that it’s insane. The music is also phenomenal. If you loved God of War’s music before it sounds just like we’ve grown to love, but more mature and of course varied due to the sheer size of this game. Deep sweeping horn instruments, a lot of crescendos, and emotional orchestras play away at the perfect tempo. This type of game only comes once in a generation.
Lastly, I want to talk about the technical side of the game. The graphics look amazing on PS5, and fine on PS4. Sadly, this is a cross-gen title so the graphics aren’t as impressive as a next-gen-only title like A Plague Tale: Requiem, as you can see where the visuals were held back to be able to scale down to the base PS4. The game looks amazing in 4K 60FPS Quality mode, but a game that requires precise timing plays better in Performance mode at 1440p. However, the best is the VRR mode but is only available on TVs that have been released in the last year or two. Sadly, this whole VRR and performance and quality modes will continue until we are done with cross-gen titles. Loading times are super fast on PS5 as well so there’s nothing to worry about. Technically, Ragnarok is nothing to worry about as it’s still one of the best-looking games ever made.
Overall, Ragnarok is a perfect game. It has puzzles, great level design, a huge world to explore, bosses small and large, epic scripted set pieces, and characters that are well acted and always welcome to see on screen. The story is an emotional roller coaster of Kratos learning to let go and Atreus becoming an adult. There’s the larger scale issue of every realm trying to come together to defeat a common enemy. The combat is easy to learn, but hard to master with a ton of armor and equipment to find. Exploring and solving environmental puzzles never gets dull or boring. There are side quests, treasures, and everything in between. This game literally has everything and just like the greats before it is the essence of what a good game is. The only flaws are the lack of quick-time events, large-scale bosses, and the optional bosses are incredibly tough, but that’s not really a flaw in the end. Ragnarok is the best game to come out this generation so far, and like at the end of my review in 2018 – how can they make this series even better?
While it may not seem that there were as many exclusives for Sony’s platforms this year it’s because they don’t have the PC realm. We saw a bunch of amazing ports to PC this year, but Sony laid down their last card with a confirmed release date this year. Sony can still prove that their own IPs rock and people want them.
What can I say? The game has to be played to do it justice. The acting is impeccable, the story is exciting and full of adventure and wonder, the combat is tight, responsive, and addictive, exploring the vast world is a blast. The visuals are fantastic. There’s not much here that can’t be liked. It’s almost a perfect game.
Here we are again. At least Activision let three go between releases this time and it’s been paying off. I had high expectations for Modern Warfare II’s campaign as 2019’s was pretty damn good. A lot of elements carry over such as the fantastic acting, fun on-screen characters, and bombastic mission design, but there are a couple of new things thrown in borrowed from Black Ops: Cold War and tweaked slightly. You play as various well-known Modern Warfare characters such as Soap McTavish, and Ghost, with Captain Price returning as well as some characters from 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. If you hadn’t guessed, this is a prequel to that game and a direct sequel to Call of Duty 4. Starting to see a pattern here? 2019’s Modern Warfare was a prequel to Call of Duty 4. My guess is Modern Warfare III will be a prequel to Modern Warfare 3. Why are we doing this? Why is there a Call of Duty multiverse?
Sadly, the campaign isn’t as good as 2019’s and still doesn’t learn any lessons. It’s a fast-paced rapid-fire campaign that doesn’t focus on its strongest points. The story is interesting enough thanks to the fantastic acting and the on-screen characters are interesting and fun to watch, and I wanted more of them. Instead, we’re rushed through a bare-bones campaign full of the same stuff we’ve seen before. On-rails vehicle missions, stealth missions that don’t require you to really use stealth, some weird puzzle with a missile laptop that isn’t really a puzzle because Infinity Ward thinks every player is dumb. Yeah, the game treats you like you’re stupid and does everything for you. I really wish this would stop. Stop being scared of challenging us. Sure, the gunplay is bar none some of the best out there. The weapons feel great, and the animations and various minute things like ADS time, scope switching, and all that jazz feel tweaked and more responsive than ever. It’s a blast to shoot things and use various weapons.
The only new thing here is screwed up and the worst part of the game. The final act has you crafting items and sneaking through a city to escape the enemy. Yeah, crafting in Call of Duty. I never thought I’d see the day. It’s poorly implemented because the level design is terrible. I constantly got turned around and went in circles causing me to restart numerous times. You get no way to deal with enemies until you find a sharp object which is towards the end of the fist objective. You can craft smoke bombs, pry tools (which are essential to finding a gun and better weapons), and various small traps, but finding these items is a chore. I had to go into every single house and search everywhere just to get enough parts to make a single item.
Getting caught required numerous restarts and seriously halted the game. It’s later introduced in an even worse situation in which you are in a single office with no weapons and have to scrounge for a sharp object and make items while also being on a timer to disarm a bomb with that same laptop puzzle thing. It’s stupid and not fun. The thing is there are only two enemies in the room. Why would I need to craft all of these objects? Find two glass shards under the tables and duct tape and take them out. In fact, you can just stay under here and disarm the bomb without being seem. What were they thinking?
The campaign is about 5-6 hours long and it ended on a cliffhanger leading to 2009’s Modern Warfare 2. So after this go play the remastered campaign of that I guess. I was left wanting more of what there was less of and wanting less of what I got. The beat of the game is well done. I felt entertained enough by the story and characters to keep going but those horrible stealth sections really slowed the game up and it makes me not want to play the campaign again. 2019’s campaign is worth replaying. It’s fun and varied.
The visuals are fantastic. While only a small step up from 2019’s engine it looks amazing and is a well-optimized engine that can run on lower-end hardware. While there’s no ray tracing right now, I can’t wait to try it out. It’s one of the best-looking games out there and is a treat to look at.
The Multiplayer
This is where I was most excited. I actually really like Call of Duty‘s multiplayer suite. After 2019 the game just perfected it. It’s addictive, and fun and the customization options are pretty large. However, this year’s game is a grind. I didn’t think 2019 was really bad, but I feel without a Battle Pass you will be grinding a lot here. The biggest complaint is the new UI. It sucks. There are no more notifications (the green dots) on what you have unlocked. I have to quit a match search so I have time to go in and figure out what I unlocked. The armory itself is a bit confusing. I wish they would have just ported the 2019 UI over. It was perfectly fine.
Even the menu where you pick the match type is confusing. It feels like a mobile UI shoved onto a console. With that out of the way, the game plays pretty much the same. Movement is a bit more refined, guns feel even better than before, and there are more of them and a larger variety. You still get your five main classes and can customize your own, which by the way is a confusing mess thanks to that terrible new UI. New perks like strong arm which lets you see the trajectory of a thrown item. There are now perk packages that let you select two base perks and a bonus perk. I found this really felt better than picking separate perks as it forced you to mix things up.
The maps themselves are the star of the show and there are some good ones here. I feel like these are way better than Cold War’s maps, but not quite as good as 2019’s. Still, there were only one or two maps I didn’t care for but they weren’t terrible. The same modes and playlists return, but my favorite is always team deathmatch. I do play a few other modes occasionally but TDM never gets old. I didn’t really get into Warzone 2.0 or any of the 32v32 maps as I prefer smaller battles in this game.
With that said, Modern Warfare II doesn’t take the series in new strides but provides more of what made 2019 work and that’s fine. The campaign isn’t as good, but the new characters bring a lot of life to the series and they are fun to watch on screen. Sadly, the stealth missions bring the entire campaign down some and hurt the replay value. After the short campaign is over it’s on to the multiplayer that we’ve grown to love and if you liked 2019’s you will like what’s here. A new perk and field upgrade system tweaked controls and animations, and all new maps that are pretty good. I just wish the UI wasn’t so awful.
I can’t believe we’re finally here. 20 years ago it was a science-fiction dream of what the PS5 would be. Before the PS3 was announced in 2005 I remember seeing futuristic mock-ups of the system, some have circulated the net and have become iconic images, but I never imagined how ordinary the PS5 would be. Let’s face it. As of the last generation cycle, consoles are just lower-end PCs. With the change to 64-bit architecture and no more custom chips, these systems are just that. What has changed is a more seamless UI, a revolutionary new controller, and a funky physical design.
One factor that has played a huge part in this console cycle that we have never faced before is a worldwide pandemic. Every person on the planet has been affected, and every gamer knows why it’s so hard to get a new console. It took me two years of waiting to finally see one in a store. In a small town in Oregon while visiting my mother is what it took. I walked into a Target and just looked in the PlayStation case, and I saw six! I couldn’t believe it. Now, it’s common for the first year of a console launch for the system to be hard to find. Especially during the first holiday season that they are out. I struggled to find a Wii for nearly a year. However, two full years and possibly going on three is unheard of. Thanks to scalpers and the worldwide chip shortage most people still don’t have one.
With that out of the way, the unboxing experience has also been affected. Sony had to cut down on cardboard use and packaging due to the cardboard shortage, so this is the most bare-bones unboxing of a system that I have ever done. What is nice is that everything can be recycled as there is no polystyrene being used for packaging. It’s all 100% paper products. You get a manual, a power and HDMI cable, the controller, a USB-C cable, and that’s it. Pretty bog standard.
The PS5 itself is a really interesting physical design. It was made fun of during its announcement for looking like a router. It kind of does. It’s the first PlayStation console to be designed to sit upright vertically. It has large fins on the side with a rounded middle part that’s all black. I personally think it looks awesome and different. While not a sleek box like previous systems, but also does not have a George Foreman grill look like the PS3. I’m sorry, but I never liked the PS3 design. Size-wise, it’s a far cry from the Slim PS2. Sony’s smallest home console which is the size of a DVD case. This thing is massive. About as big as a small form-factor PC tower. It’s also hard to find room for this thing. You need a big shelf as it will take up a lot of space. The system comes with a stand for the first time ever, and this allows you to orient the system vertically or horizontally and keep the system flat. The stand even has a neat design that holds the screw inside.
I have the newest 1200 series model that came out in August 2022. This version is half a pound lighter due to the shrinkage of the heatsink. It also runs 10c cooler and uses 10% less power. When it comes to fan noise the system is quite loud, but that’s not surprising. This thing is packing an equivalent of an AMD RX 5700 XT, however, in terms of raw performance, it’s closer to an Nvidia RTX 2070. The PS5 has a custom AMD Oberon GPU and uses an APU architecture to keep the form factor down. While the RTX 2070 isn’t the most powerful in the line of the 2xxx GPUs it’s miles better than the PS4 and even the PS4 Pro. To compare the base PS4 is equivalent to an AMD Radeon 7850 or Nvidia GTX 750ti. The PS4 Pro is equivalent to an AMD RX 580 or an Nvidia GTX 1060. While it’s not the performance boost I was hoping for, we are far beyond the point of the generational leaps we were getting with older consoles. We’ve hit kind of a plateau at this point and people won’t be as impressed. If you’ve played a high-end PC in the last five years you know what to expect already. I do miss that magic of the graphical leaps that consoles used to have back in the day. For example, the biggest leap was into HD gaming. The difference between the PS2 and PS3 is insane, but that kind of gap has shortened a lot since then.
Now, one thing consoles do is push current hardware to its limits. Developers have a way of doing this that makes these games look better than anything a PC can do. This is due to the challenge of a single piece of hardware and the need to push it to its limits. PC games have sliders so graphical fidelity is on a scale. While the PS5’s job is to push native 4K gaming, this is still not a reality. The PS5 still runs games in checkerboard 4K or native 4K 30FPS. Games that push the system to its limits won’t hit 4K 60 ever. A new addition to the PS5 is light ray tracing, but honestly, it’s not very noticeable. It took the 3xxx-4xxx series of Nvidia GPUs for ray-tracing not to truly tank frames and that’s still with DLSS (AI scaling) enabled. The PS5 doesn’t have AI scaling to help boost frames. A few games look mighty impressive rendered at 4K, but the cost of performance just isn’t worth it. We’re still not there yet. We are also still stuck having cross-generation games. The PS5 won’t truly be impressive until PS4 support is dropped. The rare exception is a game like The Last of Us Part 1 which isn’t for PS4. This was an issue during the last console transition. PS3/PS4 games looked dated. We needed to drop PS4 support from the start, and I’m not just saying that because I have a PS5 now. I thought that even before. I wanted to have a slew of PS5 exclusives that really pushed the system when I finally got one and what we have isn’t that.
With the performance stuff out of the way, I do want to mention that the PS5 now has an M.2 SSD. It went and bypassed 2.5″ SSDs that consoles missed out on already. The PS4 shipped with a laptop platter drive. These are prone to failure, but M.2 SSDs offer performance and a small form factor but at a high cost. It’s one of the reasons why the PS5 costs so much. The PS5’s main weapon is its custom I/O speeds. It can read at 5.5Gbs/sec with uncompressed data. These speeds are insane and no SSD even matches that yet. The future proof of the PS5 is typical Sony language. They future-proof all of their systems in some way. While we don’t see any games that take advantage of these storage speeds just yet, a few games have insanely fast loading times. The PCIe 4.0 interface is barely available on the newest PC motherboards.
The PS5’s USB ports are also up-to-date. A single 10Gb/s USB-C port on the front will be used for PSVR2 as well as two 3.1 Type-A ports on the rear and a single 3.0 Type-A port on the front. Sadly there is no DisplayPort on the back, but HDMI 2.1 is present for VRR (variable refresh rate), however, this tech is only available on TVs from 2020 onward. With a USB-C port, you can bet that the new DualSense (RIP DualShock) controller uses USB-C. The overall hardware design of the PS5 is nice, and I personally think it’s fun and less sterile than the Xbox Series X.
Software-wise, it’s pretty much the PS4 but more integrated. It’s snappier and prettier with rounded edges on everything and it just feels updated. The PlayStation store is now integrated into the main home menu. It’s no longer an app. Everything feels more consolidated and minimalistic, and that’s a good thing. The Xbox still can’t figure out what kind of UI it wants, and Sony has had the best UI since the PS3 out of any system. Most of the settings from the PS4 are here, but you now get more tech. 3D audio separation, VRR, ALLM, better HDR support, but no themes! For the first time since the PS3 themes are now gone. This has a lot to do with the better integration of everything and you can see why there are no themes now. The quick menu that pops up when pressing the home button is sleeker and is customizable with more options. Everything just feels more streamlined and simpler and feels less “in the way”.
How do the games play and look you ask? Well, like higher-end PC games. Console exclusives such as Returnal, Horizon: Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Mile Morales, and God of War: Ragnorok all look insanely good. However, as previously mentioned, we’re still plagued with cross-gen graphics options. Either really pretty and slow or really fast and okay looking. 4K 30FPS or 1800p-ish and 60FPS. You also lose some graphical fidelity such as ray-tracing, draw distance, lighting effects, etc. For slower-paced games, I opt for 4K 60. Faster games should be played a 60FPS. However, games like Horizon: Forbidden West is an exception to play at 4K 30.
One of my favorite features of the PS5 is the new DualSense controller. Not only are vibrations more detailed and minute with things like being able to feel speech through the controller and various changes to footsteps, but the triggers. My god the triggers. They have tension now. Pulling a trigger to aim a weapon has resistance than using the right trigger to shoot has various states of resistance to feeling like recoil. It’s insanely cool and actually adds to the gaming experience. I actually want to play games with trigger support on PS5 over PC now just for this feature. It’s not bumper vibration like the Xbox One introduced. It’s something completely different and new direction of player interactivity. Feeling the tension in a bow, the resistance of pedals in a car. This is how you advance controls. It’s probably the biggest controller innovation since the Wii remote.
In the end, the PS5 is a fantastic new system that has faced some serious odds. With a radically new physical design, a snappy and streamlined UI, supporting all of the modern cutting-edge display technology, and a revolutionary new controller, the PS5 is the best system out there in terms of an overall worthwhile package. While the games need to move away from cross-gen support to really utilize the PS5 to its full potential, the slow sales and unavailability are preventing this. However, with patience, I think the PS5 can really be something amazing in the next few years.
Supermassive Games once again excels in its strengths and doesn’t learn from its weaknesses or mistakes. Man of Medan was a great start to a horror series, and Little Hope could have learned a lot from the fumblings of the past game but didn’t learn a single thing. You play as a crew of five this time who end up in a bus crash on their way to a school field trip to the Northeast town of Little Hope. A ghost town.
The game starts out very strong. You are in the 70s stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional family. The prologue quickly introduces what the series is good at. Death. You then end up in a bus crash and are stuck in a rural town in the Northeast in the middle of nowhere. I was excited about this one. It has a great Silent Hill feel to it. Endless fog, creatures creeping around in the distance, and a ghost mystery. Sadly, the game quickly devolves into walking around what seems like random houses, forest paths, and buildings. The same issues plague this game such as the lives of the characters dwindling down to succeeding in QTE events. The traits between characters that are strengthened or weakened through dialogue choices will determine how hard these QTEs will be. You can also explore and find secrets and a few hidden weapons to make these scenes easier as well.
The game feels less cohesive than Man of Medan. The story itself doesn’t feel as exciting or interesting as the previous game either. The story just never seems to go anywhere and doesn’t make any sense until the very end which is really annoying. I kept hoping that there would be a twist or something, but the story just drags out as it has nothing to really tell. The characters themselves are more compelling than in the previous game and I felt a little more attached to them, but they are still walking stereotypes and cliches. The facial animations are slightly improved, but the voice acting can still be spotty.
There is still no gameplay here. Outside of the walking scenes and looking for secrets and QTEs this is just an interactive four-hour movie. We still get cuts to The Curator who can give you occasional hints and I’m sad that his backstory isn’t told and we still no nothing about this character. That seems to just be a running theme with this series. We just get characters thrown into some B-grade horror mystery for four hours with nothing else to show for it. There’s nothing memorable about this series or insanely interesting. The monster designs are still well down. Supermassive still does a great job slowly revealing these monsters as there are only a few of them. However, it’s not enough to make up for the lack of everything else.
The game is visually impressive. It looks fantastic on PS5 and PC, but is also poorly optimized on PC with insane slowdown and requires way too high of a setup for what it is. The textures, models, and lighting are top-notch, but the janky animations just bring it down some. The game still suffers from mannequin-like facial animations sometimes. Overall, it’s a very impressive game visually.
In the end, Little Hope does little to advance the series and instead sets it back a bit further. With a less than compelling story, stereotypical characters with no depth, wonky facial animations, and spotty voice acting, plus the lack of gameplay makes this a four-hour B-grade horror movie that’s interactive. You won’t miss much by skipping this one as there is no overarching story over the entire Dark Pictures Anthology.
Until Dawn was a visually impressive game. It was also very atmospheric and had some memorable scenes. Supermassive Games has a talent for world-building and giving you the fine details. The downside is that Until Dawn didn’t have any memorable characters. They were B-grade actors with stereotypical college student personalities and they never stood out. The same is present for Man of Medan. This is an ongoing horror series full of short stories with the overarching narrative being kept together by The Narrator. He gives you hints and a couple of tips to help keep everyone alive in the game.
Man of Medan is also visually impressive. Great textures, detailed character models, impressive lighting effects, and great camera work. The game suffers from Supermassive’s previous weaknesses. Forgettable stereotypical characters that you see in B-grade horror movies. The acting is spotty and all over the place and includes facial animations. Sometimes it looks great and other times they look like stiff mannequins. You play as four college-age people who take a boat trip to go scuba diving to find an unmarked airplane that was downed during World War II. Things take a turn for the worse when they get kidnapped and brought onto a World War II ship to look for Manchurian Gold. They meet supernatural beings and must escape. Your job is to keep them alive.
While the overall tale is interesting and I really wanted to know what happened to this ship and the things going on, the game is so short that the characters get zero back stories and it’s just jump scare after chase scene after QTE event. You keep the characters alive by mainly being successful with QTE events. These are when the characters’ lives are in danger. If you played any cinematic adventure game in the last 20 years you know what to expect. There are various ways you can make the game easier or more difficult by walking around and searching for objects. This is the only gameplay here. Walking around small hallways and looking at objects. If you see a sparkle it means you can interact with it. Picking up objects and turning them overlooks cool and the objects are insanely detailed, but it doesn’t add anything to the experience. You can easily just go straight to the end of every scene.
That’s another problem with this game and these types of games as a whole. There’s almost no gameplay. Most gameplay is just an excuse to keep the player engaged. Thankfully Man of Medan never gets dull and is always moving at a good pace. When creepy stuff happens it’s done very well. I was wigged out by some of the creatures on screen. Supermassive’s camera work is superb here. I felt like I was playing a movie which is more than I can say for most games. The only excitement in the game is the quick decisions needed before timers run out. You can get premonitions from finding pictures hidden around that show 3-second clips of what might happen in the future. Sometimes these helped and sometimes I realized what was happening too late. I managed to only lose one character and it was at the very end of the game. I have to say that the whole bearing and trait system makes no sense to me. During conversations, you can pick one of two answers and this will unlock traits or increase others. It’s never explained well. Finding certain objects and adding to bearings, but I have no idea what this does. Again, there’s no explanation.
Overall, Man of Medan is an interesting first outing into this new series and I look forward to seeing more. While I don’t doubt Supermassive can supply an entertaining ride, the characters need to be more interesting, the facial animations need more work, and the bearing and trait system needs more explanation. The 4-5 hour runtime is over before you know it
A Plague Tale: Innocencewas a massive surprise hit for me. I didn’t expect much from it coming from an unknown indie studio. It seemed pretty and that’s about it. I was shocked at the fantastic acting, gripping story, well-designed enemy encounters, and unique combat system. Requiem does what sequels normally do. Improve in some areas and step backward in others. While it’s not as shockingly impressive as the first game it does deliver an even better story with insanely good acting and a couple of new characters. Amelia, Hugo, Beatrice, and Lucas are still trying to cure Hugo’s Macula and stop the plague from spreading further. A lot more details arise and we learn the true origin of the Macula and Hugo’s fate.
The first third of the game takes place in the new town that Amelia and co. have settled down in. One thing I love about this series is there’s one thing that always lingers in your mind when playing. Lose all hope. Hope is something that doesn’t exist in this world. Amelia and Hugo are constantly betrayed in this game and it isn’t always apparent. You might think they finally settled down into a nice town or met nice people who will keep them safe and love them, but nope. Not in the world of A Plague Tale. There’s constant dread, pain, and death and it’s wonderfully portrayed thanks to the amazing acting on screen. I do want to mention that while the acting is amazing the facial animations are really lacking including lip-syncing being stiff. That’s a minor complaint, but overall the story is awesome and it has a satisfying ending.
That’s the game’s strongest point outside of its amazing visual presentation. The first game was well-loved for its well-crafted enemy encounters. Each area felt like a puzzle and it was the perfect difficulty. Not too hard, but not so easy that you would just run straight through. I always felt like I could figure out where to go and how to get around each enemy. It was so good that I played that game twice. Requiem adds a lot of new layers to the slingshot and alchemy that makes it a bit over-complicated. There are more elements added in such as being able to hold pots and a crossbow. The crossbow is obtained shortly after the halfway point, but you can add four different alchemic elements. Tar, fire, and rat-attracting crystals. This can make fumbling around to change your weapon and add the right alchemical property cumbersome on the fly. The tar can be used in pots to slow down enemies, but also set on fire with the slingshot fire. So this requires switching to the pot, and then tar, and then switching to the slingshot and equipping fire. I died a lot trying to fumble around and figure out what to do on the fly. This becomes infuriating during open combat events in which I had to restart one section nearly two dozen times because I ran out of materials and had to figure out how to preserve everything in the right order.
Guards come in more variety this time. There are helmeted guards which can’t be killed with the slingshot. These need to be avoided or taken out from behind which causes a lot of noise and the animation is very long. You will more than likely always be seen. You get to hold knives that are disposable and used to get you out in a pinch. There are guards with shields now that require being blinded with powder which is another element to flip through. Fire is still a big gameplay element here and you have rat sections that are also mixed with guards as well. I found these sections with rats more fun in this game because I could be more creative. You can put the guard’s flames out with the powder and watch the rats each them. Then there are puzzle sections with just the rats and these were the most fun I really enjoyed these sections, but there aren’t enough of them. Thankfully combat in the game is spread pretty far apart with entire chapters of just storytelling is thrown in between to give you a break.
It’s a shame the combat went from perfectly balanced to overly difficult and cumbersome. The puzzle sections use the new elements as well. There are now different types of fire you can start from haystacks that only last a few seconds to fire bolts that stick to wood objects. You have unique partner abilities such as Arnaud’s shield that bolts can stick to and Sophia’s crystal that can refract light. These are new changes I really liked and fit in. You can throw tar on flames to increase their brightness for a bit and spread light out more to solve puzzles and reach extra chests. This was the stuff I really enjoyed. Flipping through all these items and alchemy stuff during combat was just too much and hurt the already perfect flow from the previous game.
The last thing I want to touch on is the upgrade system. It’s been simplified and almost seems pointless now. You need tools and parts to upgrade, but they’re so rare and hard to come by that I barely upgraded a single skill to the max by the end of the game and this is a 15-hour game. It takes a new game plus to continue maxing out your skills, which can really help if you can get to them, but it takes so long that I never relied on these. Even if you found every hidden chest you wouldn’t be able to upgrade much.
With that said the pacing of the game is all over the place. Going from entire chapters of combat to entire chapters of walking around and letting the story play out. An hour or two would go by with no combat or puzzles, or you would get an entire hour of puzzle-solving with 10 minutes of combat. I also didn’t care for the open combat sections. This combat system isn’t designed for running around and taking enemies out in droves. The first game did this well by just letting you slingshot enemies. You now have to run around and fumble with the weapons and elements to decide which enemy needs what thing to take it down. It’s incredibly frustrating.
The game looks fantastic at least. This is the first “next-gen” game I think that’s been released so far. It’s not on previous generation consoles and sure as hell wouldn’t run on them. My 3080ti struggled at 1440p with maxed-out settings with DLSS turned on. It did dip down into the 40s at times. While it’s not perfectly optimized anyone outside of an RTX GPU won’t have a great time running this game. It really is a next-generation-looking game. I can’t stress enough how amazing the game looks. Beautiful vistas, lots of color, and tons of dark visuals as well. It’s a sight to behold.
With all that said, Requiem does a lot of good in the story and visuals department but falters when it comes to combat and pacing. I enjoyed the puzzles, and sections where you had to get through rats, but the open combat is infuriating, and fumbling through all the elements and weapons is too much for a stealth-focused game.
The Yakuza series had massive success with its spinoff Like a Dragon. While it had flaws it was entertaining and had great characters and a detailed story. The entire Yakuza franchise excels in the storytelling and character development department. Judgment is no different. You play as the lawyer turned-detective Tavo Kagami trying to rid of his demons and upturn a bunch of corrupt politicians. An Alzheimer’s cure and a murder mystery are at the center of this. The story is well constructed and kept me on the edge of my seat at every turn. The entire story has chapters ending on cliffhangers like addictive binge-worthy TV shows. I always wanted to know what was going to come next. At many points, it felt that Yagami and co. were backed into a corner and I didn’t see any way out only for the story to twist and turn in crazy ways.
I don’t want to say too much about the story as any small detail can spoil it. Just know that this is the strongest point of the game and what makes it worth sticking through the 30+ hour game for. The second reason is the characters. There are many and they are well-acted and have great backstories. They are slowly introduced throughout the game and by the end, I either loved them or hated them. Tavo himself is a well-rounded character that’s stubborn and unwilling to back down from anything. I really liked the personalities of each character. They were unique and interesting and they all stood out in their own way. For such a large cast this is usually hard to pull off or not done well enough.
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As for the gameplay, this is where Judgment falters and the entire Yakuza series lacks here in every entry in some way. You get to run around in this open…map called Kamarucho. I don’t want to say open world because it’s just a small city that can be run across in about 2-3 minutes. It’s a city full of crime and underground misdeeds. What’s the point of the open city? I don’t really know. Mostly for side quests, but I always found these to be underwhelming and repetitive in the Yakuza series. There are a few types. First off are actual side cases which net you more SP and cash. That’s bout it. They are mostly uninteresting and don’t advance the story or characters at all. There are friend events spread throughout which net you skills that can be unlocked, SP, and cash. These are the two main types of side quests you can partake in and I did finish most side cases just for the SP and cash. You really need cash to buy healing items and stay stocked up.
There are taxis spread throughout to help with fast travel. With such a small area you would think it’s pointless but it’s great to avoid fights on the streets. These are randomly occurring and you can usually run from them and you should. I felt it hindered progress and after the third chapter, it didn’t net enough SP to be worth bothering with. Eventually, you will be wanted by street gangs and your threat level will increase unless you stop a boss-type enemy. This never goes away and will always go back to 100% so I just ignored them. There are also side activities that are mostly used for dating. That’s another side quest that I didn’t find interesting. You can meet girls through friend events or side cases and later date them by presenting presents. Side mini-games like batting, darts, and gambling can be fun to an extent, but when are mini-games like this ever fun to go back to? It’s just filler content and for achievement hunters really. It doesn’t advance the story or add to it in any way I just felt like all of these side activities/missions were chores to complete.
Let’s get into combat. It’s flawed for sure. While it looks cool and it’s simple to understand it suffers from unresponsive controls and animations that don’t interrupt when you input a command. I always felt like my button presses were delayed. There are two fighting stances. Tiger for one-to-one fights and Crane for multiple enemies. You can pick up objects and hit people with them and there’s a special EX finishing move that you can perform which is key to winning tougher fights. You also have an EX boost which unlocks more powerful combos and increases your defense. Again, a key thing to use to win fights. I just felt like no matter what I did I couldn’t master the system. There is a block and dodge button, but it seems that the enemies are magnetized to you because no matter how much I dodge or run away they always follow me and connect their attacks. It makes boss fights especially infuriating. While I had plenty of items I could use at my disposal to help I wish I could rely more on my skill, but the fighting system just doesn’t allow it.
There are other small annoyances such as mortal wounds. These lockout parts of your health bar and the only thing in the game that can fix this are med-kits which are rare and cost a lot of money. There’s only one person that can heal you and they’re sold underground in a sewer. Of course, you have to go through the animation of opening the sewer great, sliding down a ladder, running down the sewer, and then the same thing going back up. Just cut all of this out! I also found the game way too long. It’s padded with a ton of fights throughout the main story and I wish a lot of this was cut out. There are easily 10 hours of fights just in the main story. Nothing breaks this up, however. There are repetitive detective events like searching for objects in first-person, chase scenes and tailing people. My god, do these get old quickly. Tailing missions are never fun in games and these are dragged out for sometimes over five minutes. You can hide behind objects and that’s about it. Just don’t fill the suspicion meter. All of these mini-games are just incredibly repetitive and could have been cut out.
The game at least looks decent. It’s a PS4 port so some parts look rough. There are some textures that look like PS3-era stuff, but at least the facial animations and character models are really good. There’s lots of detail everywhere, but don’t expect this to push your hardware to its limits. It mostly looks very realistic and sterile with not much in the way of artistic flair. It looks like a modern-day Japanese city.
Overall, Judgment excels in storytelling and character development but falters in gameplay. The fighting is stiff and unresponsive, the mini-games are repetitive and pad out the hours, and I felt the detective work in the courtroom was a missed opportunity. The open city is an excuse to throw side cases and missions at you that are meaningless and just pad gameplay. Random city fights are annoying and get in the way of progress, and the visuals aren’t much of an upgrade. What’s here works, but I mostly stayed for the story. If it had a bad story this game would be barely above average, however, it’s one of the best and most detailed video game stories I’ve seen in recent years.
I really like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, but they are insanely long and challenging. These are hardcore JRPGs not meant for casual players. Most won’t have the stamina needed to sit through 150+ hour games and the PlayStation trophy data shows that. Less than half of all Persona 5 players finished the game. Thankfully, for people like me, Atlus put me in an extra easy mode called Safety that let me finish my first-ever Persona game. I tried the third and fourth games several times and just couldn’t do it. While I eventually did well in battles, the games were too long. The story in Persona 5 is fantastic and there are plenty of great things about this game, but a few key issues may drive most players away even more casual JRPG fans.
The story is insanely deep and detailed. There are plenty of mysteries and twists and turns that kept me trucking on because I wanted to see what happened next. The characters are compelling, well-written, and very likable, however, you still need to like anime to enjoy the characters in this game. There are some typical anime tropes that leak in, but I think people who play JRPGs are already aware of this. Your character is Joker, a teenage boy wrongfully convicted of assaulting a high-profile individual for just trying to save a woman from harassment on the street. You end up living with someone who volunteered to take in a convict and watch over you so you can get rehabilitated. This game plays just like previous Persona games with a time limit, days going by, social rankings, and acquiring personas.
The game will introduce things to you throughout the entire game, and I mean throughout. 40 hours in I was still getting tutorial messages. The game is an incredibly slow burn. I didn’t get to do any battling until the fifth or sixth hour. This was all story and world-building, introducing the idea of personas, your purpose, and your back story, and showing you how to go about the day-to-day. The game is mostly dialog, to be honest. Out of the 80 hours, it took me to finish the game maybe 25 of that was actually exploring the dungeons and fighting. There is a lot of character-building and slice-of-life stuff in here. You also have a time limit to finish every palace which is the main dungeon in the game.
When you’re not battling you are living your everyday life. You need to go to school and the day is broken up into sections such as early morning which is reserved for dialog you hear on the train going to school, talking to friends at the train station, etc. Morning and afternoon are reserved for things happening at school during the week or random quizzes that you can answer to increase your social stats. These stats are knowledge, proficiency, charm, kindness, and guts. These are needed to finish confidant arcs and max out that persona category so you can get stat boosts when using that type of persona. These stats can be increased by doing certain activities like watching movies, playing games, doing chores, and other everyday activities. It’s important to use your downtime for increasing these stats as the game is balanced by not just level grinding, but having these extra stats for each persona type.
After school time is reserved for doing things around the city such as said activities and getting together to enter Momentos which is a secondary dungeon with a few dozen levels that you need to descend to complete requests from people. In the end, it’s required to descend fully for the final dungeon, but before that it’s optional. I recommend doing these late-game so you can just barrel through the levels by the end. The evening is reserved for nighttime activities and jobs even to earn more money. After the activity, the evening is done you advance to the next day and do this all over. Some days are interrupted by story elements, scripted scenes, and other events. It’s important to hang out with confidants when you get texts from them to advance their persona ranking. These are where the side stories for each character are held. They can be long-cut scenes too. Usually, you get 30 odd days between each major palace to fill the time. This time period can take hours to finish.
When you do actually battle Persona is based on finding the weaknesses of enemies. This can be both good and bad. If you find the weakness you get one more turn. This can be elemental or physical. The downside is that the entire game can be over if you don’t find these quickly. It’s trial and error as to finding the weakness and some just don’t have one. You waste precious turns trying to figure this out and it can make some boss fights grueling. You can save within these palaces and return to the real world to buy items and increase your persona rankings more, but if you don’t find the treasure and beat the boss by the deadline it’s game over. I’ve always hated this about the series and it makes the game more difficult and frustrating than it needs to be. You can capture personas by talking to them when they’re weak in battle. If successful they will join your ranks. It’s important to keep a good variety of personas leveled up and acquire new ones with better skills. You can fuse and itemize them in the Velvet Room as well as sacrifice weaker ones to strengthen others.
While you can use multiple personas your party members are stuck with one. Every few levels they will gain new abilities for their personas and you have a limited number of slots so it’s important to keep them balanced. Inside these palaces, you can acquire items, treasures to sell, and powerful equipment that you can buy in the airsoft shop. These palaces are huge with multiple levels and can take hours to complete. I played the game on safety difficulty so I could beat each palace in a single sitting, but if you need to level grind and fuse personas you could take the entire time limit. Each palace is a different theme and they look cool, but the weak puzzles and labyrinthine halls of some of them are really annoying. Enemies walk around in real-time and because you are thieves you can get behind cover and dash around them stealthily or take them head-on. Some palaces are a really confusing mess and I found some just went on for too long.
Those are your two main parts of the game. Battling in Momentos or palaces and living your everyday life to increase social stats and play mini-games. I personally don’t like the trial and error of exploiting weaknesses to win each fight. The graphics are decent, while stylistically they look great with lots of flash and color, but technically it looks like a typical JRPG and borderline last generation and not too much of a step up from the PS3 version. While it seems there is a lot to do in the game there actually isn’t. You’re so focused on visiting confidants and maxing out social stats in the real world that it feels like a chore after a while. You have to realize there are nearly 250 in-game days you have to get through on top of the palaces and momentos. The game just feels like it never ends. 80 hours to finish safety difficulties and it can take 150-200 hours for higher difficulties. I had to dedicate every free minute I had over the last three weeks to finishing this game and not playing any other games in between. I wish there was a warning at the beginning of the game letting players know how long the game can take on average or even put it somewhere on an official source of info for the game. I have played and bought many JRPGs not realizing just how long they take to beat.
Overall, I don’t want to talk too much about the story because I can easily spoil something. The Phantom Thieves and trying to change the hearts of criminals is a great story. It can be very dark at times talking bout child exploitation, abuse, murder, money laundering, and many other crimes. It’s a dark game and I felt it had a very memorable story, but it takes way too long to tell it. Many will balk at the trial and error of weakness exploitation to win battles, insane amounts of grinding, and the constant need to micro-manage your personas to get a well-balanced always leveled-up arsenal might seem like too much. That doesn’t include dozens upon dozens of hours of reading dialog and watching cut scenes. I recommend this only to the hardest-core of JRPG fans. This game is not to be taken lightly. While I complain about some of these things fans of this genre embrace it and that’s okay, but for only around 40% of players to have finished the game says something about the length.
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