Linear narrative-driven adventure games are some of my favorites. Bramble does a great job trying to be a be different than the rest by delivering a little bit of everything and not overstaying its welcome. You play as Olle who is trying to rescue his captured sister from the Bramble and evil forest creatures who took her.
The game does a great job of luring you into a false sense of security. The game starts out bright and colorful with beautiful sweeping vistas of green. You get to solve various simple puzzles with cute gnomes that laugh like little babies. The first third of the game is cheerful and bright…until it suddenly isn’t. Bramble quickly turns dark, gory, and downright depressing very quickly. Sacrificed babies, wading through pools of animal gore, climbing moldy meat, and those cute little gnomes get slaughtered at some point. It’s just done abruptly and suddenly and it’s shocking.
The majority of the game has you running around areas with fixed camera angles jumping, climbing, pushing the occasional push, twisting the odd lever, and solving the easiest puzzles. I honestly don’t know why these puzzles are even here. Exploration is also non-existent. You go into a room with a locked door only to have the key on the table in front of you. This happens multiple times as well. I don’t understand the point of it. There is a bit of combat thrown in, but it’s saved for boss fights. You have a ball of light that’s not only used to illuminate areas and clear some paths, but you can chuck it at weak points at bosses. The boss fights are the only challenge in the whole game as you must memorize attack patterns and dodge, jump, or toss your ball at the right moments through waves of attacks.
The environments are constantly changing and all look fantastic. Depth of field is used well here as you are a small person in a giant’s world so everything from blades of grass to a normal size rock is huge this is well shown and the perspective is pretty cool with the depth of field effects used. Textures look great and models look good too. The entire game is narrated by a woman so it’s the only voice acting in the game. I do want to mention that the soundtrack is gorgeous. During chapter changes, and while the camera pans across a vista while you’re running, an incredible vocal soundtrack will play and I honestly would listen to it outside of the game. The soundtrack by Martin Wave and Dan Wakefield is fantastic.
Despite the great pacing, wonderful visuals and soundtrack, and challenging bosses, there still isn’t much of an actual story here. The game is narrated like a children’s storybook from medieval times, but that’s about it. I had no reason to get attached to the characters or world around me. The monster and creature designs are top notch and I always looked forward to the next screen because it was always a surprise. The game is nice and short and is better than most short, linear, narrative-driven adventure titles. I love the dark tone and theme and while you may not discuss this with your friends a year from now it’s at least a sight to behold.
Supermassive games are well known for the interesting worlds they create, albeit how small and linear they are, and their knack for telling decent horror stories. Until Dawn is still considered one of the best PS4 games to date, and it was a fantastic game. Mostly in terms of the lore and story behind the characters. The pacing was also pretty great. Supermassive went on to create the episodic The Dark Pictures Anthology game which is mediocre at best. The Quarry is the first stand-alone title they have made since Until Dawn and their experience from The Dark Pictures carries over.
If you are familiar with any of their work you will know what to pretty much expect. The game starts out fairly slow paced introducing the choice and QTE gameplay to you in a safe manner that won’t affect the story. You start out as two characters who are on their way to a kid’s camp in some nondescript woods to be counselors. You run into something on the road, get run off, and you need to figure out what to do from there. The dark and brooding atmosphere kicks in right away and the game is better paced than some of their previous works. Once the beginning chapter is out of the way you get introduced to all of the other characters and the first few chapters build up to the horror and get you attached to these characters via personality cliches and quirks. Sadly, Supermassive relies heavily on character traits and stereotypes to get you attached to their characters. Their games are more about the here and now and there’s little lore or character background like other adventure games.
This has always been a fault of their games that I don’t like. While the characters are more likable than in previous games and they have better and stronger personalities, I still don’t care for them after the game is over. I don’t think about them or care to go back and find out other outcomes. You have the jock type, the strong female, the silly female, the meek female, the silly small dude, etc. They are just all stereotypes and relying on this makes all of their games feel like B-grade horror movies with slightly better acting. I understand that’s sometimes the charm, and almost done on purpose in this case, but I would like to see the studio’s experience put to more than just cookie-cutter horror movies you watch on cable TV at 2AM and forget about it the next morning.
With that said, there still is almost zero gameplay here. Your main goal is to focus on choices. You get dialog choices, always in two, that can shift your attitude towards a character one way or another and it’s your job to observe them and figure out how they will react based on how they are dealing with things in the world. During “action sequence” you get really easy QTE button prompts and failing these will either end in a game over that kills a character or a second chance to try again. You can press the left analog stick in a certain direction or mash a face button. Adventure game gameplay these days is so bad I honestly wish the puzzles would make a comeback. There are some small changes to the typical Supermassive gameplay with choice actions. A prompt will pop up asking you if you want to call out, stop someone, raise a weapon, or something along these lines. These are important and can change the whole outcome of the game. It’s a rule of thumb to either hide and hold your breath or run and don’t mess up the prompts, but sometimes you can stray off the path and these usually have dual outcomes. Something good and bad happens at the same time.
When you do rarely get control of a character you wander around looking for things to look at and tarot cards. These cards are similar to the photos in The Dark Pictures Anthology and can show you a predicted outcome. You only get to choose a single tarot card you found per chapter rather than seeing every outcome as you discover them. I honestly didn’t feel these were necessary and all but one of my party survived by the end of the game. I think I did pretty well. Walking around the linear areas is an excuse to add “gameplay” and pad things out. There is even a movie mode that lets you just watch the game as a movie so there’s that. I will admit that the choices here felt heavier and more important than in previous games. I really had to think and sometimes I really couldn’t predict or know what my choices did. A lot of them were based on pure instinct. So at least their path engine is getting better.
Of course, Supermassive is also known for its hyperrealistic animations and visuals. Sure, they are fantastic. So good that some of the facial animations just don’t look human or feel awkward. They still have that “video game trying to be super real” feeling to them. Their Unreal Engine is still poorly optimized and with a high-end PC, I still dipped under 60FPS at 1440p. To be honest, Supermassive also just can’t get a lot of what most other adventure games get right. Any time they try to be “touchy-feely and deep” it comes off as corny and cheesy. It’s not to the levels of say Life is Strange that can really dig deep and make you believe that these characters are human and feel pain and misery.
Overall, The Quarry is a nice departure from their mainline mini-series, but it still suffers from the same issues. A poorly optimized engine, awkward facial animations, corny dialog, and forgettable characters and story. This is a typical “2AM B-grade made for cable TV” horror story and nothing more or less. By the time the credits rolled about 9 hours in I shrugged and just moved on to the next game. The acting is much better than in their previous games, and their choice engine feels more organic and relies more on instinct which is great, but there is pretty much zero gameplay. This is fun to play on Halloween night, with a friend with the lights off, or just to pass an evening with some decent entertainment. Don’t expect to talk about it with your friends the next day, however.
The PlayStation controller is iconic. It was the first controller that had force feedback built-in, and dual analog sticks, and became a worldwide icon. I remember buying my first DualShock controller as a kid. It was a green one too. The controller improved with the PS2 by adding pressure-sensitive buttons, but overall still being the same thing. The DualShock 3 was the most controversial originally being a SixAxis controller with no force feedback due to the lawsuit that Sony was in over their force feedback tech. The DualShock 3 did eventually come out, but the SixAxis motion was a gimmick and was never utilized outside of the first two years of the system’s life. It also had triggers that weren’t well done and the analog stick rubber degraded over time. It just wasn’t a fantastic controller. On the other hand, the DualShock 4 wasn’t the greatest either. The forced light bar needed to communicate with the PlayStation camera that no one had drained the battery and the added touchpad didn’t really add to any one experience just like the SixAxis didn’t. It had improved rear triggers and analog sticks, but that was about it.
Here we are the scrapped DualShock name. I have to salute that name and it will be missed. We are now in the DualSense era. This controller is probably the first ever to be truly as innovative as the built-in analog sticks and force feedback from the DualShock 1. The haptic triggers literally change how a game plays and feels. These aren’t gimmicks. There is a resistive force on the triggers in the game. You can hold down a trigger partially and it will stick with a motor. Pull down harder to actually shoot a gun or arrow. You can feel the swings of an axe in God of War: Ragnarok. The triggers can even vibrate a bit and feel suddenly loose or tight like in The Last of Us Part 1. It changes the way I shoot in games. Spider-Man Remastered lets you feel the webs that you shoot with physical force.
This is the best part of the entire controller and I miss it in every game that doesn’t have it. The rest of the controls are just slightly tweaked with a better hand feel of the grips and the top light bar was finally removed. However, there are still lights around the touchpad which is fine. The controller just looks so good now too. The change to a pure white launch color was strange, but also brave. The texture of the controller is improved as well. It doesn’t feel as slippery and the plastic doesn’t feel as cheap as the DualShock 3 (I’m sorry, but that controller was my least favorite from Sony). The D-Pad also feels better this time around and less mushy. I also love how the controller is now USB-C and we can finally get away from the micro connector. You still have Bluetooth availability and it seems to be more compatible with devices than what the DualShock 4 could do. I do like the actual PlayStation logo as the home button now, and the controller retains the speaker and mic features. There is also a mic mute button right on the controller which is a great feature.
Overall, the DualSense controller is the first controller revolution since the Wii remote and the original DualShock before that. The haptic triggers literally change the way you play and feel the game. There are so many things you can do with this type of resistive technology and many first-party games are coming out swinging already. The battery life is improved over the DualShock 4, the ergonomics have been tweaked just enough, and finally, get USB-C! I’m not sure how Sony can improve from here.
Obsidian Entertainment lit the world on fire with their game Fallout: New Vegas. Many considered it superior to Bethesda’s own offering Fallout 3. The Outer Worlds was considered a spiritual successor to New Vegas. The same type of play style. A first-person RPG with shooting elements, a large story, companions, quests, and worlds to explore. Many were calling it New Vegas in space, but is it really that and does it live up to New Vegas?
The short answer is no. If falls short in nearly every way. The game really does feel like it’s trying to be New Vegas with the funny humor in the propaganda posters, the overseeing mega-corporation that’s trying to take over the Halcyon colony, and you’re trying to get factions to agree with each other or side with them. The overarching story is pretty much forgettable and that goes for most of the game. The story, characters, and side quests are mostly boring. I hate to really say this as this game sat installed on my PC for a couple of years now and I would do a mission or two and quit because of just how dull the game is. The characters aren’t memorable, there’s no personality that stands out, and the overall mega-corporation humor that overshadows the game just feels like it’s in the background.
The game is also incredibly short. I did several companion quests, dealt with all the factions, did multiple side quests, and still clocked in at around 12-13 hours. If you blow through the main story you can finish it in 4-5 hours easily. I feel that contributes to the problem of the story and characters being uninteresting. There’s not enough time for them to develop. Your entire crew is all humans, and they all just feel like generic Bethesda faces that were run through a random generator and nothing stands out. I wound up skipping through a lot of dialogue because I just didn’t care. I loved the characters and overall story of New Vegas. It was fresh and interesting, but this just feels like a generic space odyssey.
So what about the gameplay? It’s tighter and more refined than New Vegas, but not by much. I hated the upgrade and skill tree system. They felt generic and half-baked. The game’s poorly balanced where it’s either way too easy and you mow down enemies or they swarm you and kill you on the spot. I felt like none of the items you can use helped at all, stats didn’t seem to matter, and the only thing that really did matter was your level in each respective category. You really want to get your speech levels high including engineering as you can bypass a lot of battles with speech checks. Most of the weapons in the game felt pretty generic and their weapon power didn’t seem to matter.
Weapons can be tinkered with and modded at workbenches. Mods can be picked up and attached to various parts of guns. They can add elemental damage, increase clip size, add scopes, and do damage to different types of enemies, but outside of this you can just tinker the weapon’s level up with you and future weapons don’t matter. There were no cool unique weapons found on bosses or for getting into a hard-to-hack safe. Looting like in Fallout feels pointless as there is so much given to you. By the end of the game, I had thousands of rounds of ammo for each weapon type. You can specialize in long, pistol, or heavy weapons, but I just wound up dumping points into all three. Add a few good mods and tinker the weapon up to your level and you will stick with the same weapons through most of the game rarely trading them out. You can equip up to four weapons, and I rarely ever used healing items until the final showdown where you are swarmed by enemies in every room you go into.
Another balancing issue is with the factions. You can gain and lose reputation and this will make guards attack you on-site in certain towns locking out quests and not being able to finish any in this case. I wound up pissing off a couple of factions and had to abandon the quests there and couldn’t go to the shops too. This is really frustrating and there’s usually no way to gain the reputation back. This can lock off companion quests and many side missions. Throughout the entire game I mostly just mowed down every enemy in my way and used my companion’s abilities when I was swarmed on occasion. You get a single ability to slow down time which is useless because it slows down time too much.
The only thing I really enjoyed was the visuals. The game looks like a last-generation title, but the worlds are unique and look really good. I was interested in discovering new towns and new enemies, but that was really it. Everything else was either ignored, forgotten, or skipped because of how uninteresting most of the game is. I don’t feel like this is Obsidian’s best work or their love letter to New Vegas. The game is horribly optimized, looks dated, and feels dated by being too safe. The game lacks any depth and most may not even enjoy the shooting. The story and characters are boring and unoriginal, and the game’s length doesn’t justify this type of game in general. Who wants to play a 4-5 RPG with supposed vast worlds to explore? You might enjoy blowing through the main story but that’s about it.
Dead Space has been one of my all-time favorite games. I picked up the original game the weekend it launched thanks to its critical acclaim and revolutionary gameplay for the horror genre. I replayed the game a few times over the years and just couldn’t get enough. The HUD-less stats, holographic overlays, the dismemberment engine, the Necromorphs themselves, and the unique mystery around The Marker wouldn’t be really unraveled until the sequel. The remake brings Dead Space to a whole new generation of gamers and anyone else who played the game in the game in past will absolutely love this remake.
If you already played the original then you will know what’s in store. This is essentially a graphical remake with some balancing tweaks. Nothing new was really added outside of some suits. There are some side objectives and some of the level layouts have been tweaked, but other than new character models that’s about it, and that’s perfectly okay. The original game holds up well even today, and I’m glad not much else was drastically changed. Dead Space is mostly all about the combat as the story elements are tossed in as you play with only a few cut scenes that wrench the controls from you. There aren’t even that many scripted events. They were placed very carefully in this game.
As you start out you get the Plasma Cutter weapon which is the best weapon in the game once it’s maxed out. Each weapon has an alt-fire mode and the Plasma Cutter lets you cut horizontally or vertically and this matters. Necromorphs come in all shapes and sizes. The standard kind runs at you so it’s best to cut off their legs and then their arms. There are small little babies with three tendrils that shoot at you. Cut off the tendrils and it will run away. There are large dog-like ones that should have their arms cut off as they have no legs. Then there are large bosses peppered throughout the game that can be pretty challenging. There’s even a Mr. X-style Hunter that chases you later in the game and can only be killed with something powerful. These types are introduced throughout the game plus many more that I haven’t mentioned. Necromorphs will even sport armor later on so you can only cut off limbs that aren’t guarded.
There are plenty of weapons in the game and you will find that not all are very useful. I rarely used the flamethrower or the ripper as they aren’t great weapons unless fully upgraded. You will probably only fully upgrade a single weapon in your first playthrough as nodes are very rare and you have to rely on buying them at the stores if you want to upgrade faster. You also need to buy suit upgrades as well as use some nodes on your suit. It’s a balancing act and this encourages playing a New Game+ as there’s also a new alternate ending. Dead Space gets better the more you play and that’s really awesome. I actually am looking forward to the next play-through as I can finally upgrade other weapons and start maxing more out.
There are some puzzles thrown in that usually take up entire rooms. There aren’t many, but they do exist and offer a decent challenge. Most of Dead Space consists of finding the next switch as you need to restart nearly every system on the Ishimura and this involves using your Kenesis ability to move batteries into slots and or toss objects at enemies. You can also use your Stasis ability to slow objects and enemies down. These are essential tools and you will rely on them as the game gets tougher. And it really does get tough. The game starts throwing hordes of enemies at you expecting that you’re careful with your ammo and have upgraded something. You will need to have a balanced weapon loadout for long distances, short range, and area of effect to keep enemies off of you. There really is a strategy to killing everything as this isn’t Call of Duty.
The game is incredibly well-balanced. No two areas are alike and you’re always doing something new or different and the level of design is always changing. While the game is very linear each area throws new surprises at you or none at all when you’re expecting one. Enemies pop out of grates or ceilings in some hallways, but you may enter a new area expecting to be bombarded when nothing happens. Dead Space doesn’t play too much into the psychological horror despite The Marker messing with your head. You see signs of it throughout the ship, read it on text or audio logs, and this isn’t really explored more until the sequel. The game does a great job with traditional horror by always making you feel on edge and tense because you never know what’s coming next.
The upgrades to the actual game are great. The graphics got a fantastic boost and make the game look better than ever, the new character models are well done, and the game feels new enough for veteran players to really get into. This is honestly still one of the best horror games ever made and one of the most unique combat systems to ever be invented in the last 20 years. This is a classic and I’m glad there’s a better way to play on newer systems.
Harry Potter is one of the biggest media phenomena of the 21st century. When the novels came out they were all over the news and I read them right from the beginning. While the novels were big the movies were even bigger and I don’t think Harry Potter would be where it is today without the success of the movies. I remember my family going to see every movie up until the first part of the 7th movie on Thanksgiving every single year. By the time the 7th movies were out, I was an adult and saw those with my now wife. I did get burned out on the series though so thankfully it’s great to know Hogwarts Legacy is 100% original content with all new characters and story.
The only thing the game follows from the books or movies is the lore, aesthetics, and visual representation of various architecture, creatures, and overall visuals. You play as a nobody 5th-year student who gets caught up in a giant plot of goblins finding a way to wield dark wizard magic. You must fast-track your education at Hogwarts while also fighting off this powerful new foe. The story drags you along on a breadcrumb trail where you slowly unveil the plot, the intricacies of the characters, and the mysteries. Portkey Games did a phenomenal job of making the story feel like one of the books. The slow unfolding of the story gives a sense of mystery and constant guessing. It’s a pretty good story and one of the best so far this year.
There are of course side quests and larger side stories involving various students at Hogwarts. One involves a Slytherin student, Sabastian, and the Dark Arts. Another is a girl named Poppy who just wants to stop poachers and save creatures, and then there’s Noa who wants to avenge her father’s death. The entire game has a massive open world consisting of Hogwarts itself, Hogsmeade which is the only major town in the game, and then the rest of the world itself consisting of various regions, secrets, and activities. The game can seem overwhelming, but the entire game is strung out to you very slowly as you play. It allows you to get the ropes on all the various systems in the place game with one of the biggest being combat.
Combat is probably the weakest and coolest part of the game. It plays similarly to an MMO with shortcut keys and hot bars. Each hot bar has four slots and you can have up to four hot bars. You learn spells through the story as you attend various classes. These are all the spells you know from the book and movies. Wingardium Levioso, Avada Kadavra, Repulso, Accio, and many others. There is only magic combat in the game so don’t expect to find swords and shields. Defense is dependent on a halo around your head that flashes red or orange. Orange means you can deflect attacks while red means you must dodge.
You can whip out spells at a lightning pace, but of course, they have cooldown timers so this means you need a balanced loadout and need to switch between hot bars constantly. This is something I didn’t like in the game. I can understand with a controller you can only have four hotkeys, but do what Dragon Age did and give PC players the ability to use maybe eight hotkeys and combine hot bars. I found myself always fumbling with the controls trying to quickly dodge, deflect, keep an eye on my timers, swap between hot bars, and keep an eye on the enemies, and then my health and magic meter. It’s too cumbersome and needs some balancing in the next game. The combat looks cool with fast and smooth animation, great sound effects, and tons of on-screen info being blasted into your eyeholes. There are plenty of boss fights, mini-bosses, world bosses, and all sorts of enemy types to shake a wand at. Goblins, beasts, and humans alike.
The next part of the game is exploration. This game is very similar to Skyrim in that manner. You will always find something no matter where you go. Once you unlock the ability to fly on a broom you can use Revelio in the air and it will mark stuff on your map. There are a lot of activities to do from filing out your field guide by finding flying books, interesting spots, and objects, there are secrets inside Hogwarts itself like hidden chests under bridges that require puzzles, but you also need the spells to complete certain puzzles and get to certain areas. You can pick locks (which has an absolutely awful lockpicking mini-game that can’t be skipped), but one of the major problems with all of this exploration is the lame loot. If you get ahead of the story you will mostly end up finding armor that’s behind you in levels. Exploring dungeons is fruitless as you will solve a puzzle and get a lame piece of armor or just 50 coins. I wound up ignoring side paths in dungeons because it just wasn’t worth it. Finding the best armor in the game will come to you eventually.
The third biggest part of the game is the Room of Requirement. Here you can decorate, expand, and craft. You can add traits to clothing/armor, and breed beasts that you can capture in the wild for more unique traits that can be woven into clothes. You can also plant seeds for using the three combat plants or creating potions. While this all sounds neat and fits into the world of Harry Potter it’s very tedious. I wound up not bothering to add traits to clothing as the loot you find it pretty awful anyways and you end up selling 90% of what you find. I would add traits closer to the end game when you stop finding a lot of armor that is at a higher level. I also didn’t bother brewing potions much as you must wait in real time for plants to grow or potions to brew. It’s pretty dumb and tedious.
You can fast travel between dozens of Floo Flames as you discover them and this makes traveling quickly essential. The various activities you can do are Merlin Trials, a combat arena, various puzzles, and of course side quests for people around the world. It really is a well-created open-world game and feels different from the dredge of crap we’ve been getting the last ten years. I always had fun exploring the world, doing tasks and puzzles, and seeing what secrets the game had. It really is this generation’s Skyrim or will be as close as we get to it.
The visuals, voice acting, and overall atmosphere of the game captured what we loved in the movies perfectly. The visuals are gorgeous with great lighting and tons of love and detail in every part of the world. Sadly, it’s so poorly optimized. Ray tracing is unplayable, and there’s stuttering in Hogwarts no matter how powerful your system is. Some patches have ironed most of the problems out, but they will never be perfect. The game still looks fantastic and I loved flying over new areas for the first time or seeing the seasons change. Portkey Games did a stupendous job making this game feel like a living breathing world.
Overall, Hogwarts Legacy is a wonderful open-world RPG with some flaws. The combat can be unwieldy sometimes and cumbersome, crafting is a chore, and the game is horribly optimized, but the characters are wonderful, the graphics are fantastic, and it feels like a living and breathing world of Harry Potter that captures all of the magic and love that we grew up with. You will spend dozens of hours having fun exploring the nooks and crannies that the world has to offer, the powerful beasts you can fight, and the creatures to capture.
Resident Evil 4 changed the entire gaming industry. It was one of the most influential games of all time. It actually still kind of is. It showed how drastically you can reboot a game and honestly started the whole reboot craze and is the gold standard to live up to. Take a game that has tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds and throw it into a third-person shooter with unique control and a well-balanced gameplay loop. It was talked about for years and inspired other games like Gears of War. Resident Evil 4 (2023) is a reboot of a game that mastered reboots. It has the highest standards to live up to. Thankfully the last two Resident Evil reboots were fantastic and took pages from RE4. So, what we get is just a better-remade RE4.
The story itself is supposed to have taken place after RE2. Leon is sent to save the US President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, and that’s about it. There is a new virus that got loose from Umbrella and the Los Plagas will come out of enemies every so often and it happens more as the game goes on. Their heads will pop off and a new tendril-like creature will come out in various forms. You can stop this before it happens when they are on the ground twitching. The characters in the game are pretty simple and have no time to become interesting. Outside of Leon and Ashley the other characters show up for just a few minutes in the game, so the story itself takes a back seat. It’s the weakest part of the whole game.
Right off the bat, you will notice an immediate change. Not only are the environments more detailed, but the opening scene has changed as well. We get an all-new voice cast (that’s much better), new music, and updated sound effects, and the overall feeling is more modern and less stiff. You can actually shoot and walk this time around which is a huge change in balance for the game. The knife has also changed as it can be broken but also upgraded. Crates can be stomped on rather than sliced so gameplay flows better. You can acquire boot knives that can be used to ward off enemy attacks up close. You will also notice that quick-time events are pretty much gone. These scenes are now fully playable with you in complete control rather than an actual cut scene.
All of these changes are for the better and add a whole new dynamic to the game. Combat mostly remains the same with enemies slowly lumbering towards you with various weapons. Enemies can throw axes, molotovs, and shoot you with crossbows. Some will shock you with sticks, others will carry shields, and then there are the bigger enemies. Rarely occurring, chainsaw-wielding enemies will appear that require explosives or heavy damage to kill. You need to constantly run and turn back to shoot. Using your surroundings is key. Lure them towards explosive barrels, or funnel them everywhere down a corridor so you can line up headshots. The level design is fantastic as you get little arenas that you can immediately scan and strategize with.
Every time an enemy dies they will drop something. Unlike the original game, this time around a whole new mechanic of crafting has been added. Enemies will always drop something whether it’s resources, gunpowder, health, ammo, or money. You need resources and gunpowder to craft various ammo types. Recipes can be bought from the merchant. You can also buy weapons, armor, resources, health, and various other items. Another new system is the side missions. These can be found posted on walls and convert the older challenges into missions. The blue medallions, tough enemies, shooting rats, or finding certain objects. These are traded for spinels which can be traded for rare items such as exclusive new weapons, treasures, and more. Cases are not just expanded now, but different case types will drop certain items more frequently and new charms can be attached to help lower the cost of sales, increase sell value, drop rates, and so on. These charms are won by completing target practice missions in one of five locations in the game.
That’s a ton of new things already and it’s so well-balanced. It’s a way to take the older systems and tweak them into something new and more fun. You can move around and technically kill enemies easier so with an added crafting system you always get rewarded. There are still treasure maps to buy and valuables to look for which are key to racking up coins. Certain valuables can have jewels inserted into them to increase their sell value so hang onto those gems! On to something much bigger is Ashley herself. Many felt she dragged the experience down. You have to always catch her when you hopped off ledges and she always got captured easily. Now you can send her away, hide her in lockers, and she does most actions on her own now. She’s much less of a burden.
Speaking of Ashely there are stealth elements in the game now by sneaking around and offing zombies, but this is easily ignored. It doesn’t work outside of a couple of zombies and then everyone sees you. The AI walking patterns are too random to sneak through areas, and this wasn’t intended in the original game anyway. While sneaking around zombies is possible sometimes there are new enemies in the game, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Original enemies are updated and look even more grotesque. That’s another theme of the remake. Horror is much more prominent in this game. Like in previous RE remakes the flashlight is added so Leon will whip it out in dark caves and there is a constant sense of tension and dread no matter where you go. The game relies less on jump scares this time around.
There are three acts in the game. The village, the castle, and the island which is split between a mine and a military base. My favorite part is act one which is the most iconic. The castle is okay, but the game gets insanely tough during the second act. Ammo is incredibly scarce. You must be very cautious about what ammo you use and when. Save more powerful ammo like grenades and magnum rounds for the mini-bosses and bosses themselves. Save your sub-machine gun ammo for large crowds and your rifle ammo for enemies are off. The pistol is going to be your main weapon throughout the entire game so always keep a stock of it.
The visuals are a nice upgrade over the previous remakes. Ray tracing has been added, but it’s not great. The RE engine is still insanely well-optimized for lower-end PCs and runs really well. However, there is still no DLSS support so it needs to be manually added through a mod, but even on the Steam Deck, the game runs fairly well. The visuals are top-notch and the art direction captures the vibe of RE4 in a more visceral and raw way. I love it. When you’re all finished with the game you can run through on a New Game+ which is a must as that’s the more fun way to play. Overall, RE4 (2023) is a massive update to an already iconic game and changes nearly everything wrong with it. I just wish the game was a little better balanced and it does get repetitive after so long. You are just walking around shooting zombies with a couple of simple puzzles thrown in. At least the exploration is fun and there’s always something new to look at.
I never thought that I would have so much fun with a chore. There are various curated threads online about watching power washing. It’s satisfying to see someone turn an incredibly dirty surface into a sparkling clean one like wiping a window with a squeegee. There are many jokes about missing a spot and everyone in the comments losing their minds. r/powerwashingporn is a popular subreddit dedicated to these videos. FuturLab has done an incredible job of making this chore feel fun and satisfying. There’s even a silly story that’s evolved over the course of the Early Access phase involving gnomes.
Every surface is covered in dirt, rust, mud, or some type of grime. You get a power washing nozzle and you spray things down until they turn clean. You can decide what to spray, what direction, and in what order. That’s part of the fun. Tackling each area in a certain way is satisfying and fun for you. Your tools include various spray nozzles that have different widths as well as spray liquid for getting tough areas, but this stuff is expensive and limited. You also have a spray gun that shoots various distances. These can be bought and unlocked with money by completing levels. You are paid at the end of a level and you can see a sped-up replay of your work. There are also cosmetic items such as your suit and gloves.
Some levels are multi-storied so you get step stools, ladders, and scaffolding that can be moved around and put wherever you need it. There are a few levels that have some frustrating buildings to clean such as the giant shoe level. There is a meter on each surface that shows how complete it is and sometimes it can be hard to find that one dirt spot that’s keeping the surface from dinging. Thankfully there is an illuminate dirt button that turns all dirt a golden yellow for a few seconds so you can see what you’re missing. Getting down the last percent in each level can get annoying as you’re just hunting down that last dirt spot. There is also a list of each surface and the percentage that they’re cleaned, so you can at least eventually narrow it down.
There isn’t any background music. You just get ambient noises like birds chirping or cars driving in the background. It’s a very silent game. You’re best just playing your own music in the background as this is a very zen game where you can veg out and not think about much. I also appreciate the control scheme on a controller too. It’s easy to control and you don’t have to move your aim camera back and forth like you used to in Early Access. You can now press a button to move your sprayer within the frame of the camera. This can reduce motion sickness and overall irritation. It wasn’t a big problem on a PC with a mouse, but it was unbearable with an analog stick. Most levels can take you 1-3 hours to complete depending on how big they are. There are smaller challenges that involve just cleaning a vehicle like an RV, alien spaceship, Mars rover, or bicycle. Levels get more complex as you go on with more small objects and more complicated surfaces. Things like planes, boats, helicopters, and the previously mentioned shoe house can get really busy. I would end up doing some levels in multiple sessions. The longest level I spent time on was nearly five hours.
Again, you have to like this kind of thing to see an appeal to it. The visuals are bright and colorful, but rather basic and simple. There is no raytracing, AI anti-aliasing, or anything complex rendering-wise. The game can technically get very repetitive, but that’s actually the point of this game. I feel many may mistake this game for a business simulator when you only do the power washing and buy upgrades and cosmetics. I had a blast (no pun intended) with this game and FuturLab is still putting out content that I need to catch up on. Overall, PowerWash Simulator is one of the most relaxing and satisfying games I’ve ever played.
Dead Space was one of the last original IPs to really push the horror genre forward. I felt it was the only horror game to take Resident Evil 4’s torch and carry it along. The Callisto Protocol received a ton of hype because Dead Space’s co-creator Glen Schofield was leading the charge. The game was another third-person horror shooter with sick monster designs, a desolate Callisto moon, and a great story. I was honestly shocked by how below average this adventure is and was quite saddened the longer I played.
The game actually starts out quite well. You are Jabob Lee. A space courier delivering medicine to the prison colony on Callisto when suddenly everything goes wrong. Your ship crashes and you are wrongfully charged for a crime you did not commit. The game takes you on a pretty long cinematic journey for the first 30-45 minutes before the action starts. This is when things immediately started falling apart. The game’s main mechanic is melee combat. That would be fine and all, but it just doesn’t work as intended. You are expected to go one-on-one with each enemy and whack at them like Whack-A-Mole and then dodge attacks. It’s a dodge-and-then-attack type combat system. You can’t parry without unlocking it as an upgrade and animations can’t be quickly interrupted. It’s hard to judge the enemy’s attacks and how long their combo will go on. These animations just aren’t well done. It lead to many cheap deaths that came from the animations being too long and not interruptable.
This makes the first couple of chapters a chore, and most people might quit here. You do get weapons, but ammo is scarce until later on in the game. There are five weapons you can acquire, but don’t think these are as unique or interesting as Dead Space’s weapons. You really only get three weapons with two being nearly identical. Two pistols and two shotguns. One is a “Skunk” gun and the other is a riot gun. The only difference was their spread, to be honest. Your first weapon is the Hand Cannon which can pack a punch, but the Tactical Pistol is nearly useless. All of these weapons feel handicapped until you start upgrading them. Just like Dead Space, you get a limited inventory with healing items, valuables, and ammo. It’s literally a 1:1 ratio of how Dead Space plays.
Weapons are acquired by finding schematics (yeah that’s a direct copy too). You can find 3D printing stations throughout the game that will print add-ons, health, and ammo, but you won’t be able to buy everything in one play-through. No matter how thorough you are. It’s best to just upgrade the Hand Cannon and either Skunkworks or Riot Gun and do the rest on the next play-through. That is if you even want to. This hand-to-hand combat with these monsters just isn’t fun. Once I was able to get more ammo more often by stomping enemies (seeing a pattern here?) I tried to avoid melee combat. That’s not a good thing when the core combat mechanic is so bad that you don’t want to ever use it. Sadly, it’s forced upon you during the same two repetitive boss fights, but there were a couple of patches later on that made it more tolerable, but still not good.
Sadly, despite how great the visuals are the level design is insanely linear and boring. You just run down the corridor after corridor fighting randomly popping-up monsters until you get to the next fuse, switch, or generator. It’s pretty mundane and has already been done in many games before it. Unlike Dead Space, there are no puzzles here. In fact, the overall level design is just elementary and basic at best. There is one area where you must sneak around monsters that are sensitive to sounds. You can stab them in the back and do takedowns, but this was for an entire chapter. It became dull really fast. The only advantage was killing them all silently and then stomping on them to rack up tons of ammo. You do get a grappling glove that allows you to pull and push objects away, but this just seemed like an excuse to use death traps in certain arenas. It was poorly implemented.
The story itself doesn’t get interesting until the final chapter. There isn’t much story here at all. I wanted to know what this thing was that killed off the entire planet’s population, but you just move from scene to scene falling around trying to escape each section. It’s a poorly paced-story that seemed more like an afterthought. Jacob himself is well-acted, but we know nothing about him nor did I care one bit about his character. Dani is the other main character and I cared about her just as much. The game isn’t long enough or has enough story to tell us anything worthwhile. There’s no care in world-building through visuals like Dead Space did. You just move through corridor after corridor killing enemies that pop up and that’s it.
The visuals might be really good, but the performance is awful. Even after half a dozen patches, AMD FSR2 is broken, ray-tracing cuts the frame rate in half even on a 3xxx series card. There are tons of stuttering from poor shader optimization as well even months after release. Despite the nice visuals, they aren’t taken advantage of due to 90% of the game just being in cramped corridors. Overall, The Callisto Protocol is a colossal disappointment trying to copy Dead Space to a tee and failing to capture anything that made that game stand out or become the icon it is today. The monster designs are neat, the visuals are good, and the story’s premise is good. That’s about it.
It’s good to see Sony’s classic franchises being brought back. After the original game’s remake, I knew something was coming along and I was right! We get a brand new next-gen exclusive Ratchet & Clank game without the baggage of the PS4 holding it down. The franchise returns to its familiar roots which are both good and bad and I’ll explain why.
This time around Ratchet is finally wanting to find other Lombaxes in other dimensions. They get the idea of using the Dimensionator, but it’s taken by Dr. Nefarious. Yeah, I was a little happy to see him return and a little disappointed that we didn’t get an original villain for this game. Nefarious is funny and all, but I wanted to see someone new. We only get a couple of new characters here, but we finally get a new Lombax! Rivet is a fantastic female character with a great voice actress and she has just as much nuance and personality as Ratchet has. I would love to see her stay and even get her own spin-off. The other main character introduced is Clank’s interdimensional counterpart Kit who is a female robot.
Sadly, like all the previous games the story isn’t all that deep and plays out like a Saturday morning cartoon. There’s no real back story to anyone, and we just get the moment-to-moment action for the present time and that’s it. It’s a pretty shallow story with Kit and Rivet’s backgrounds not really being told or talked about. This has always been an issue with the series’ stories and I wish they would change things up in that regard. The series’ main beat of going from planet to planet and whacking away at the same few enemies haven’t changed either. There are about 9 planets in total with some collectibles you can get for trophies, unlockables, and galleries. If you played any single game in the series this one will be familiar.
There are some puzzle areas thrown in that Clank is usually used for. These meta-dimension puzzles see you trying to get mini Clanks running on the correct path to unlock a door. There are four different kinds of orbs that can manipulate the Clanks and various platforms. You can speed things up, slow down, weigh them down, or make them lighter. They aren’t super challenging, but still kind of fun and break up the shooting. Another new mini-game is the Glitch sequences. You play as a spider-bot that goes inside a computer that can shoot at things. These play like the regular Ratchet/Rivet segments, but there’s no platforming as you have to stay on the ground. They aren’t super exciting, but they break up the pace. There are new vehicle elements added such as rocket boots. You can skate around and boost at will as some planets have large open maps, but they are far from the open world. The exploration is mostly for getting collectibles.
The main show is the weapons as that is what Ratchet & Clank was always famous for. Yes, there are over a dozen weapons here that are different and unique than any other game. The DualSense controller is utilized well here for secondary fire. You can soft press to “ready” a weapon that used to be the primary fire and the secondary is a full press of the trigger. The haptic triggers are used better here than any other PS5 I have played so far. That also includes the new rumble feature. You can “feel” every weapon and it really adds to the game’s experience. However, I did feel they went a little too heavy on the glove weapons. Some weapons feel more like gimmicks than not. I wound up sticking to about a half-dozen go-to weapons. I found there wasn’t a good balance this time around like there usually is. You need to switch weapons based off of your needs. Close-quarters weapons such as the Executioner which is like a shotgun. There are a couple of weapons like this. And then you have area-of-effect splash damage weapons like the Warmonger and Houndrill. There are some passive weapons that do damage over time or stun enemies only and don’t do any damage.
The enemies are pretty repetitive this time around. You get the same 6 red robots and then the occasional animal type thrown in. They repeat a lot and don’t really have different defenses so you can usually just blast them all as they come. There are frequent boss fights, but many repeat so they can get old kind of fast. I felt the enemies weren’t as inventive this time around and it shows as they bring back some older enemies from the first game. I just feel the weapon and enemy design was a bit off this time around and just not as creative, but far from bad or ruined. I do want to mention that the level layout is also the same as before. Swing from orbs, jumping around, smashing boxes for bolts, and using them to buy weapons and upgrade them. Using the levels them up which unlocks more upgrades and you can level up yourself which increases your health. While this formula is tried and true it can feel old to long-time players, and if you didn’t like the series before this game won’t change your mind.
There are some great cinematic scripted events, and the pacing is well done. There’s something satisfying about this series that makes it feel like a classic PlayStation game. They did get that magic down pat, but if this is a new trilogy I hope they have more in store for the sequel. Visually this is one of the best next-gen games to date. With performance RT at 60FPS, the game looks fantastic. There are the usual VRR options and you can play in full 4K 30FPS, but a game like this needs to play at 60FPS. The game just looks amazing, and the team has been able to do what they really want. Comparing this game to the first on PS2 is like a whole new experience.
Overall, Rift Apart takes the typical Ratchet & Clank formula and brings it to the next gen with little change or fluff. There are a couple of mini-game segments to mix things up, the characters and voice acting are spot on and the humor is there despite not being fully pushed this time around. I wish we got a new villain, and Rivet and Kit aren’t explored enough. The story itself is also a very Saturday morning cartoon with little depth. The weapons are neat, but not well-balanced and overall the old Ratchet formula feels a bit stale here despite being perfect.
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