What would happen if a puppet broke free from its story? That’s the tale that A Juggler’s Tale spins. You play as a puppet named Aby who is following the lead of a narrator. Aby is an acrobat for a circus when she decides she wants to break free and be an actual person. She spends her time on the run which seems to be a familiar theme with these sidescrolling tales that star children such as Limbo, Inside, and even Little Nightmares. The first act is spent as a tutorial. You can run and jump, drag things, and throw objects. Each are used to solve simple puzzles. Usually there’s one or two per act. The acts are very short clocking in at around 15-20 minutes each. You can easily finish this game in under 2 hours counting for deaths and time figuring puzzles out.
Whle I didn’t find the puzzles themselves hard it was difficult to distinguish what could be interacted with mainly throwable objects. While some objects that could be pushed had red ribbon on them there would be rocks or apples that blended in with the background. I thought I was stuck and couldn’t figure out a puzzle until I looked it up and releaized that a cart was needed to progress, but I had no idea I could interact with it. The game at least has a good pace and I always felt like I was moving and advancing things. There is a bandit that is hired to capture you named Torda who chases and torments you throughout the game. Most of the platforming is simple such as hopping over gaps or climbing up ledges. Nothing that will test your Mario skills, and the physics are floaty.
Part of the puppet gimmick is that Aby is attached to her strings and they will get caught on objects. A lot of the time you are figuring out how to move the objects to free your strings. There are a few stealth sections with Aby hiding from flashlights and distracting bandits by moving certain objects. Nothing that we haven’t seen before. The game is rather entertaining, but the story is simple and nothing too special. There aren’t any crazy plot twists or any voice acting or dialogue to speak of outside of the narrator. It’s hard to get attached to characters like the little boy in Little Nightmares or Inside due to the lack of events and progress that the characters go through despite not speaking.
Overall, A Juggler’s Tale is fine. The graphics are colorful and well done with nice paper cut outs and a flat shaded art style, but the gameplay is very simple and won’t challenge anyone. This is a cute distraction that will get you through an afternoon, but you will soon forget about it.
The Dread X series is a great idea. Get a bunch of indie developers together to create some short horror experiences and put it all together in some weird hub. Each game is completely different and offers brand new experiences, but I’m starting to see that the series is running out of ideas. The main hub this time around is a kids birthday center called Outpost 3000. It’s space- and alien-themed and full of 90’s cheesy goodness. I appreciate the varied areas you can go into, and the games this time are unlocked by finding 12 different presents and bringing them back to your table. You can then choose one of twelve games to unlock with the present represented as candles on your birthday cake. When you unlock a new area in the center, you get a comic book panel.
Discovering the center is probably the most fun the game has to offer. There are some puzzles, chase sequences, and light exploration, but nothing too crazy. These areas range from a locker room, kitchen, animatronic stage, movie theater, ball pit, and many other birthday play center areas. There’s a monster that chases you through most of it in certain areas, and this doesn’t prove to be much of a challenge. The game controls like any other low-budget asset flip Unity/Unreal Engine FPS game and looks the part too. The graphics are very early 2010s or Unreal Engine 3 era feeling. Lots of shiny surfaces, baked lighting that’s too bright, bloom, etc. While it gives off a cheesy vibe, I would have liked to see this series move a bit further ahead in the tech department.
Of course, I will do mini-reviews for all twelve games. I will give each game a rating out of 5.
Ludomalica—This is a board game where you play in the first person. You are in your bedroom, and there seems to be a family member haunting the house. When you roll the dice and you land on a question mark space, the ghost will appear somewhere in the house. You must have all lights off in all rooms and all doors closed. The game has a limited duration and follows a predetermined script. Eventually the house opens up more with different floors and rooms. The entity must not capture you, or it will send you back to your room. Overall, the atmosphere is really intense, and I felt reluctant to go outside of my room and close all the doors. It gives off the memories of turning on all the lights while going to the bathroom at night as a kid. – 3.5/5
Resver – This is a first-person walking simulator that just doesn’t make any sense. Everything is presented in black and white, and as you move forward, text appears, seemingly attempting to explain a narrative. It honestly made no sense outside of having the moral idea of not doing drugs and the impact they can have on you. It seems this is some sort of drug ring thing. I honestly have no idea. The game is about 20 minutes long, and outside of the visual trip, there’s not much here. – 2/5
We Never Left – This is about a video game developer with psychosis who is inside his own text adventure game. We saw something like this in Stories Untold. The atmosphere and tension here are done really well, except I found the tape hunting to be quite tedious and annoying. The visuals are a bit headache-inducing too. These are PS1-style graphics, but with some sort of filter over them, and they just don’t look that great. I found the story to be pretty intense, and the voiced lines were a plus. 3.5/5
Interim-This is a weird one, but in some ways it’s good. The game features a real-life actor superimposed in front of it, similar to older FMV games of the mid-90s. You are an intern who seems to be on some sort of reality TV episode. It’s really odd, makes no sense, and the visuals are really weird, but not always in a good way. Sometimes it’s confusing where to go, and the game soft-locked on me a couple of times for no reason. It’s over in about 20 minutes, but what’s here is mostly entertaining. However, it doesn’t contain any frightening elements. 2.5/5
Beyond the Curtain – This is a weird walking simulator that is very repetitive and has almost no tension. You are an actor in a play and seem to have some sort of phobia of puppets. You walk around an endless backstage tunnel, and I mean seemingly endless. The scenery never changes, and all you need to do is walk around puppets holding knives so they don’t stab you. There’s a final area with some sort of worm creature, and that’s about it. The puppets are always following you, and you need to make sure you constantly look back at them to gain some distance. The game lacks scariness and is excessively drawn out, leaving no clear sense of purpose. This game is likely to rank among the weakest of its kind. 1.5/5
The Book of Blood – This is by far the best game in the package. This is a full-on stalker game set in a fairground. There is a lot of occult discovery, and you accidentally end up in one and need to get out. You have a book that you need to solve puzzles in. You need to go out and gather supplies to complete the ritual, and every so often a strange masked man will try to kill you. Both trailer doors must be locked at all times, and sometimes the power will go out and obscure the book. Next, you must locate the numbered breakers and reset them. Run around too much, and the masked man will find you. You need to sneak around and get everything turned back on. You can also pop out the two windows to see if the man is near your trailer. Once you hear him knock, you need to quickly check the locks on your doors. This game is really intense and actually quite scary at times. The book puzzles require a significant learning curve to master, but once you do, they can be quite enjoyable. 4/5
KARAO – This game is rather strange, and while one of the most surreal, it just doesn’t make sense. This is a PS1-style horror title in which you run around a linear path trying to find a way to open doors. You get a shotgun and can shoot things, and this is one of the longer games along with The Book of Blood. The path is super linear here, and you need to talk to people and listen to their abstract dialogue to also get codes to open gates and doors. The visuals are more on the interesting side, but this is another game with PS1 graphics and a weird filter on top that doesn’t seem very appealing. 2.5/5
Spirit Guardian – Probably one of my least favorite games. This is a terribly designed first-person haunted school walking simulator. The game is around 15 to 20 minutes long and has a cheesy “Nanny” haunting the school inside. You are following the instructions of a little boy. He tells you to place blocks on a table, play hide and seek, and carefully walk eggs on a spoon. Physics are terrible; the flashlight works well, but if you’re caught, your items are taken and may be in a dark locker where you can’t find them. I found the game just incredibly tedious, difficult to control, and completely uninteresting. 0.5/5
HUNSVOTTI – This is one of the oddest games in here, but also the ugliest and hardest to control. Rather than a PS1 aesthetic, this game goes for an N64 one, and boy, does this look ugly. The polygonal, poorly animated figures and stiff controls certainly bring back memories of some of the worst games on that system. You are a little boy in a Dutch festival called HUNSVOTTI. Every character is in a canned animation, and you must find flowers without bumping into anyone. The more you do, the faster the animations are, and eventually they will all come after you, and you still have to find flowers. After finding all the flowers and dropping them into the well, you become a large demon that can kill the villagers. It’s very odd and not really in a good way. 1/5
Gallerie – This game has one of the coolest concepts, 3D binaural audio, to use ASMR voice lines to add atmosphere for the player, but it just comes across as mostly annoying. While the spoken words are fine, the gibberish later is just the weird clicking and smacking that people do in the ASMR videos, and I can’t stand that. You are tasked with destroying the world, and some girl is angry, and you need to interpret what she is saying to you via a legend. There are three levels here, each more annoying than the next. You must keep away from an entity that stalks you, and when you look at it, similar to Beyond the Curtain, it stops moving for a few minutes. You need to find demon paintings and enter the QTE on screen before it attacks you. The second level is more of the same, but the third is the worst with leapfrogging of batteries that need to be charged. In the meantime, you are backtracking and running around a confusing level. The visuals are weird, but disorienting and not pleasant in the slightest. – 2/5
Vestige – This is another PS1-style game, but you are a kid who is discovering his old PS1 games, but they are haunted. Sadly, you end up playing this game, and it is just a terrible dirt racing game similar to Motocross Madness with terrible controls and physics. You walk around your house trying to advance the plot a bit. Overall, the game isn’t memorable or captivating in the slightest. The atmosphere is a bit tense, but nothing here is worthwhile. 1.5/5
Rotten Stigma – Another poorly implemented PS1-style game with Unreal Engine asset flip vibes. You play as a generic bald-headed man in a green shirt who wanders around what seems to be a recreational center. You get a pistol and a lead pipe as a weapon and have to fend off weird bipedal creatures. You just read notes from Alex to solve a couple of puzzles that aren’t challenging at all. Once you wind your way around the area, collect a few items and keys, and shoot some bad guys, you end up at the end of the story in about 20 minutes. The game is incredibly ugly, clunky, and uninteresting. There’s a bit of atmospheric tension due to the dark lighting and sounds. There’s one particular scene that I enjoyed, but nothing was expanded upon. It involves a crying body bag and a bathroom. The game is obviously inspired by Silent Hill but doesn’t even come close. 1.5/5
Average Score: 2/5
It’s clear that the collection here isn’t quality but quantity. Most of these games are just ideas for what could be larger games, but those ideas still aren’t great. Many of these games are clunky, ugly, have headache-inducing visuals, nauseating cameras, obtuse puzzles, or have atmospheres that are slightly creepy but don’t go very far. The Outpost 3000 hub is more entertaining than any of these games. Many games also have asset flip vibes, don’t have outstanding resolutions, and show up stretched out on higher resolution screens or have visual bugs. Nothing here is fantastic or stands out much. The Book of the Blood is the most solid of these games, and that’s still not saying much. I’m glad most of these games are around 20 minutes long. Any longer, and I will not finish them. Overall, Dread X Collection 5 is the weakest one I have played thus far. This doesn’t feel like a collection of quality at all. Nothing here makes me want to seek out these developers and see what they have to offer, unlike past games. I feel like this series needs to go more on the mini-game route rather than full-on games or be stricter in their quality.
Nobody wants to die. That’s a statement that anyone can understand. What if you had the ability to purchase a new body and continuously inject your conscience into a new one? This is the premise of Nobody Wants to Die. A detective noir game set in a dystopian New York in 2239 where flying vehicles exist, we are now in a caste system, and capitalism has won. As suspended detective James Karra, you embark on an investigation into the suspected murder of a large corpo boss. Your partner, Sarah, is in your earpiece.
There isn’t much exploration in this game, and it’s not a first-person shooter. Although the entire game takes place in first person, it remains a pure adventure title. The game masterfully constructs this dystopian future, immersing the entire experience in the art deco Americana of the 1930s. James has a lot of internal problems, and due to being on his fifth body, he has a lot of problems from his 100 years on this planet. The better shape a body is in, the more it costs. However, there’s something dark happening. The game also does a fantastic job explaining how you can recreate crime scenes and explains a person’s ichorite, which is what’s used to transfer a person into a new body.
That’s the majority of the gameplay. The crime scenes are pieced together like mysteries through the Replicator. This allows you to fast forward and rewind scenes as you piece them together. You have to walk around and find the prompts to advance the puzzle to the next piece. There are also other tools like the X-ray wand and UV lamp. You use these to see through objects and then detect fluids. You are always swapping back and forth between the two. However, the puzzles are very linear and don’t require any brain power to solve, but they are still fun. Many of the crime scenes are really interesting to solve, as you can draw your own conclusions and see what the outcome ends up being. There are three main crimes in the game, and they take quite a bit to go through. It’s a lot of fun seeing everything kind of come together and hearing Sarah and James analyze everything to come to a conclusion. When you get back to your apartment, you can put down objects that are in place for clues that you found, and you need to string everything together to come up with a final conclusion. Moreover, it’s a straightforward process.
Outside of the main crime scenes, there are a couple of moments in James’ apartment. It gives you a glimpse of how awful living conditions are in the future. Everyone shares bathrooms and the government logs everything they do. You have to see a psychologist for life after transferring to a new body for the first time. The ads, propaganda, and everything in between are done so well for how little you can explore this game. While the characters aren’t very deep or memorable, they help carry the story along enough to stay interested. I’m sorry, but the story is too short to remember. The setting and world are more interesting. The game also has dialogue choices that determine which ending you get. Some options will have locks on them, meaning you need to have changed your path prior to the current option. The way you respond to Sarah or act at a crime scene (like deciding to steal something for yourself) can get you in trouble if you’re not careful. The execution of the story is commendable, and as the story progressed, I found myself grateful for the choices I made that allowed me to navigate through certain scenes.
The visuals are rather appealing for an indie title. Lighting is great, art deco is beautiful, and vehicle and object designs are fun. The game is at least well paced, and I didn’t want to put it down. The voice acting is outstanding too, and there are just enough little twists and turns to keep you glued to the screen. There isn’t much to hate here outside of easy puzzles and lack of exploration. I honestly wouldn’t mind another game in this world and have the lore expanded upon.
Horns of Fear is a short horror adventure game with a handful of puzzles and a creepy manor to explore. You are Jim Sonrimor. You are a journalist who is grappling with a challenging relationship or marriage. You receive a call from an old woman to investigate her manor. Upon waking from drugs and pizza, you somberly visit the manor and notice something is wrong from the start.
The game has a 2D isometric art style similar to point-and-click adventures of the early 90s. Indeed, this game would be perfectly suited on a vintage gaming shelf. Your inventory is small, and the game is short enough to never fill it. You can save at computer terminals, of which there are only a few. The game is tiny and short that you can easily play the entire thing without needing to save. The puzzles are captivating and surprisingly well designed. I rarely needed a walkthrough. Most developers treat players like idiots or make puzzles too difficult, but not so much here.
Once you complete a puzzle, you will usually see a small cutscene. There isn’t any combat in this game outside of the final boss. There are a couple of quicktime events, but for the most part, the game is mostly about atmosphere and storytelling. I was surprised at how complete the story felt despite the 90-minute run time. Without giving anything away, the ending took a surprising turn and provided a highly entertaining experience. The scares themselves are more jump scares. The sound of a screeching violin accompanies a shadow moving across the screen. The cutscenes have a few gory and gruesome shots that are super cool. The death scenes are also really gory. The music itself was just okay. The music lacked originality and bore a somewhat cliched feel. The theme was reminiscent of a haunted house, rather than being unique to this particular game.
With that said, though, don’t expect anything incredibly unique or something with a lot of staying power. Horns of Fear is a decent short horror adventure and nothing more. While the puzzles are entertaining, you can’t really get lost due to the incredibly linear path you take, and there’s not really any character building. You’re mostly playing for a fun, short train ride rather than a full-on 3-day tour. While the visuals themselves aren’t particularly noteworthy, they provide just enough elements to make your play worthwhile. The trippy cutscenes, strange ending, and ease of play are enough to invite more horror fans over.
The idea of DLC for Mortal Kombat was an exciting prospect when it started with Mortal Kombat (2011). You paid $5 for a new character, and this felt fine. Mortal Kombat X introduced the character pass system, which was also well liked. You paid $20 for four new characters that were spread out over a few months. Mortal Kombat 11 introduced a terrible monetization feature that required too much grinding for unlockables and customization items. This trend sadly got worse with Mortal Kombat 1, with entire outfits and sets being stuck behind a paywall. One of my favorite features of any MK game was the alternate outfits, and being able to customize them was a dream come true, but Neatherrealm went the evil route and locked most of it away.
The same appears to be the case for single-player content. While I don’t mind paying a few dollars for more of the fantastic story mode and more characters, make sure to make it worthwhile. The Aftermath expansion for MK11 was awesome and was a great ending to that story. This epilogue has a lot of problems with it, mostly being the terribly written dialogue. Everyone is angry, growly, and so much “GRRR!!!” in their voice that it is laughable. Everyone seems to be delivering one-liners rather than cohesive dialogue. Trying to throw in bits of story exposition into single lines of dialogue is so stupid and elementary. The main campaign had pretty good writing with some characters delivering full speeches and emotional depth. This just feels like a 5th grader reading a bad comic out loud. The entire Khaos realm invading the current timeline is a cool concept, and Titan Havik makes for a great villain, but it’s just so badly written, and the fights are monotonous and boring. You get four more chapters, but each fight is just a recycled and uninteresting Khaos version of other characters. These seem to have some sort of Mad Max vibe to them, but it just looks like a group of terribly dressed punk rock fans.
Let’s talk about some truly awful characters. Sektor and Cyrax seriously suck. Not because they are gender-swapped. Oh no, no, no. They are no longer cyborgs, which means their uniqueness is gone. Netherrealm could have made these female cyborgs, and it would have been awesome still. Even if these were human males, they both would have been lame. I don’t understand the push to humanize Cyrax and Sektor lately. This means their cool moves and deadliness feel off. We don’t need them to have in-depth dialogue and feelings. They are killing machines and reminded me a lot of the Predator. Because these are lame exo-suits, you no longer get the cool gadgets like the Cyrax’s chest blade or net, and Sektor’s missiles just don’t look cool. The missile launcher is a giant, oversized shoulder pack that just doesn’t look right. The characters are also poorly written and feel generic, so there was no saving them there either.
Then that brings us to the DLC characters, which at this time of writing, T-1000 and Conan are not available yet. Ghostface is one of three guest characters, and he looks great with these flowing robes, having great physics effects, and the goofiness from the series as well is fine. I don’t enjoy his power moves, which just have him use various knife moves. His fatality is funny, so there’s that, but his animality is weird. Noob Saibot is the only character here that I enjoyed playing. He looks cool, and his backstory actually makes sense in the epilogue. Noob Saibot is the only saving grace for the entire package, but it still doesn’t justify the price tag.
And honestly, these guest characters are getting old. It was cool back in MK (2011) with Freddy Krueger and Alien, but it’s becoming too much. Spend the money on the licensing to bring back characters people love or create new ones. There are also no Kameo characters this time around either, which is a real shock. We could have at least gotten a few more of those. That also doesn’t help justify the price tag. $40 for a 2-hour, terribly written epilogue and three new characters. At launch, Ghostface was not available at all. The only redeeming part of the game at launch was Noob Saibot. What is Netherrealm Studios thinking? They aren’t.
And that brings me to the fact that this is my favorite game series of all time, and it’s becoming live-service garbage. The entire series needs to take a few years off, reboot, and come back with what fans loved. More content, less grinding, and more unique characters with fewer guest ones. As it stands, Khaos Reigns is worth maybe a $10-15 purchase on sale, but that’s it.
Call of Duty has culminated in becoming a standard yearly event with the series alternating between Black Ops and the mainline Modern Warfare series. While some entries try to incorporate new ideas into each new game in the series, more obvious now than ever, it needs a long break and has to go back to the drawing board. While they are all entertaining in different ways, they are trying to please everyone rather than a select crowd. Bloated multiplayer modes, mediocre maps, and entertaining albeit short and contrived campaigns are keeping the series back.
Black Ops 6 has a pretty entertaining campaign. Although it surpasses Black Ops III in terms of gameplay, it maintains the innovative concepts from Cold War, a feature I truly appreciated. The story itself is fun, but nothing memorable or anything well written. This won’t be winning anyone over in that department. This is the first Black Ops game to pick up the story from the second game, which is the only one to actually matter. It also incorporates events from Cold War, and it’s pretty cool to see characters like Frank Woods return. Those games came out so long ago that the new generation of gamers probably won’t even know or care, but fans of the series will.
There is a main hub area that all the characters hang out in. This is a house in the woods and eventually plays a role as a level itself towards the end of the campaign. Treyarch tried making something out of this house by adding an in-depth puzzle that incorporates running around the house and finding clues. I find it ironic that the core gameplay of this game requires players to not think, but wants them to think critically and solve puzzles. Call of Duty has always been the opposite of thinking or lack thereof. The reward is pretty decent, but I won’t spoil it, and the puzzle itself takes the entirety of the campaign to solve. I found the whole unlocking of benches kind of unnecessary for how short the game is. You can buy benches to upgrade weapons, such as more ammo and health, or increase melee damage. I really wouldn’t have noticed if I had never used them here. These are unlocked with the cash you find in the game.
There is also a large open map that is a new experiment for the series. It’s not like the terrible levels from Modern Warfare III that copy the Warzone maps. You get a vehicle that is stocked with ammo, and you can go around completing side objectives for more XP, such as clearing out camps or saving scouts. You can then fast travel back to the truck via the map and go back to the main campsite to swap weapons and get more ammo and equipment. It was a refreshing change of pace, and that’s kind of the pattern I was seeing with this campaign. There are more options for pacing, rather than relying solely on mounted vehicle segments to change the pace. This time around, the design of a few stealth missions has improved. I felt I could get through them without having to be perfect with my route. I could jump into the water and swim close to the objective, get out, kill a few enemies, and kind of worm my way to where I needed. The stealth missions are also not stealthy all the way through like in Modern Warfare II and become a chore. At a certain point in the game, it might be acceptable to go guns blazing.
There was also a reconnaissance level that involved a political party for Bill Clinton, which was cool. It felt fresh, broke up the pace of constant shooting, and helped slow things down so we could see the story build more. What I wasn’t a fan of was the Zombies mode-inspired level in which you become intoxicated with a hallucinogen, and you must find four key cards and fight four zombie bosses. The level felt cramped, reminiscent of an office building, and it was not particularly enjoyable. Hey, you can’t win them all. At least they tried something different. It also felt completely out of place compared to the grounded realism of the main story.
The overall feeling and gunplay have minor tweaks and adjustments, but it mostly feels the same as Cold War or any other Call of Duty game. Sadly, these games are conjoining and starting to all feel the same outside of features and modes. The gunplay is still top-notch and hasn’t been beaten yet by any other AAA arcade-style first-person shooter. It feels good, and the weapons have a good amount of weight and realism to them. The details on the weapons, from dangling keychains and decals to smoke blowing around from the barrel when you run to shell casings dropping on the ground, are all things most players will take for granted, but these minor details are something the series doesn’t get enough credit for. I also didn’t find too many bugs outside of some post-launch crashes. I ran into an issue where I had to turn off my overclocking on my GPU because it would crash the game every 10–15 minutes or in specific areas. By now, most patches have addressed these issues.
As for the multiplayer mode, there isn’t much to talk about if you already are familiar with the series. The typical modes are all here, from Team Deathmatch to Hardpoint. I actually love Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode, and I have my favorite mode types. I always rotate Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed. I might throw a Hardpoint in there sometimes, but it’s the maps that always make or break the game, and Black Ops 6 maps aren’t amazing like Modern Warfare (2019), but they’re not nearly as bad as Modern Warfare III or Cold War’s maps. They all feel fairly generic, and I’m tired of the constant cop-out of using stripped-down campaign maps to make multiplayer ones. Let’s make unique maps that work just for multiplayer for once, please.
Of course the returning Zombies mode is the only reason why a lot of people will buy this game. This is the most robust mode, and it feels unique to Black Ops. There are a bunch of new additions, such as the Gumball perks that allow you to equip a specific gum pack, and then you can randomly get a ball from a machine on the map. There are also Cola cans that give you perks such as superpowered melee attacks, but these can stack. On top of that, there’s the usual overly grind-heavy weapon progression system. I honestly hate this so much in the entire series. I can never stay invested long enough to unlock a good amount of items, as the XP grind is unfair and needs to really change. While the skins and other cosmetic items look great, to actually get them is another story. This is for people who only play the game online and can put 6–10 hours a day into it to actually unlock things and feel like they are making progress.
The same goes for the monetization system of weapon packs, blueprints, operators, and cosmetics. I want to be able to use these cool-looking items by unlocking them by playing, not paying money. I’m guilty of buying the odd pack here and there, but the insanity of the Battle Pass on top of buying $15-20 item packs is absurd and needs to really change. There is so much to the multiplayer mode that is locked away behind a paywall. While you can still enjoy the game itself without paying anything, you never feel like you are making progress and get stuck with the same basic weapon sets for dozens of hours that most people will not want anything to do with. Additionally, the inconvenient launcher system necessitates launching the most recent Call of Duty in order to access modes from earlier games. We need to overhaul and change the entire Call of Duty ecosystem. The ecosystem is experiencing a state of bloating and internal degradation.
With that said, the visuals and audio in the game are fine. The graphics aren’t terrible, but they also need an update as they are starting to feel a bit dated. This is in part due to still needing to be playable on 15-year-old hardware and scale accordingly. Call of Duty needs to abandon previous-generation consoles, or the series will seriously fall behind. While the graphics don’t look awful, you can tell they are dated. There’s no ray tracing, no advanced lighting effects, and the textures up close look a bit grainy and blurry. I also think that the series needs a gameplay overhaul. While the gunplay feels good and has a fun factor to it, how many times do we need to play the game like this? Let’s try to make Black Ops feel a bit different from the mainline series again. Black Ops 6 is probably the best game in the series to date, but the short campaign (about 4 hours) and the uninspired maps might put a lot of people off for the high price tag.
Contra is the blueprint for side-scrolling action games. They need to be tough as nails, have insane bosses, and usually have a lot of gore or some sort of inspiration from biomechanical art. Moreover, the Earth is under the control of a vast and formidable alien race. Iron Meat nails all of these and is a blast to play. The game can also nail all of these aspects and still fail in level design and gameplay. That’s thankfully not the case here.
As a stalwart soldier, your mission is to save Earth from an alien race that has taken over the Moon. There are nine unique levels in this game, each with varying lengths, enemies, and obstacles to overcome. The game is very pick-up-and-play friendly, as you just run forward and blast everything in sight; however, Iron Meat has a couple of things it does a bit differently. You can find ammo pickups inside objects. Occasionally, friendlies may drop them, or you may find them lying around. They are not commonly found, and if you die, you forfeit your weapon. The standard weapon is a rapid-firing machine gun that works well enough. Other weapons include different firing rates and patterns. There are also pickups to increase your score by 1,000.
In Iron Meat, you can shoot in eight directions. Another great feature is that you can hold down a trigger button to maintain your position while shooting in any direction. The game constantly presents you with enemies at a rapid pace. Some enemies, such as boxes with jaws, bugs, melee enemies, weird snakes, bats, and various other insane abominations, may be incorporated into the level itself. The enemy design is fantastic, and you get to know what each enemy does and how to kill them. Occasionally, following a specific order can also prove to be an effective strategy. You can also avoid enemy fire by lying down prone and shooting. Some levels will also test your platforming skills, featuring obstacles such as collapsing ceilings, death pits, and suspended platforms.
The bosses are really great. They have various attack patterns, and you get used to knowing when to attack. Some will chase you, while others will fly around you. Some are small, while others are massive, possessing multiple forms and phases. They all look grotesque and nightmarish, though. The game’s pacing effectively breaks up the action. There is a vertical level, followed by a level that emphasizes platforming, and then another level that presents a large number of enemies at once. You can unlock characters and swap body parts to create your own unique soldier. Once you complete the game, you can go through it again in mirror mode.
Although the game may appear to have less content compared to modern games, it truly pays homage to the classic 16-bit run-and-gun shooters. Most of those games featured a mere half dozen levels and lacked additional modes. Iron Meat does have a two-player co-op mode, which is a nice addition, but I feel there’s a lot of content here for the asking price. Going through and learning all of the attack patterns and enemies is fun, and then getting more points on higher difficulties can be a fun challenge. You can complete the game in less than two hours, but those two hours are filled with enjoyment.
Overall, Iron Meat nails pretty much everything you would want in a 16-bit run-and-gun shooter. Iron Mean boasts massive bosses, captivating soundtracks, copious amounts of gore, diverse levels, and exceptional controls. There’s not much Iron Meat does wrong outside of the occasional straightforwardness of some levels. This is one of my favorite games in the genre, and you shouldn’t miss out.
Who hasn’t played Half-Life 2 yet? I still have a free coupon from 2007 in my Steam account, but I can’t give it away because everyone I know or have spoken to owns HL2. The game industry and people’s minds haven’t forgotten Half-Life, but it’s been on the back burner for a while now. Every time a new false rumor for a Half-Life 3 emerges, people perk up, and the game becomes popular for a bit and fizzles out. There have been many community updates, such as the famous Half-Life 2: Update that improved visuals and fixed bugs. However, Valve has finally released their definitive version of the game 20 years later.
The Anniversary Update incorporates several significant improvements, including enhanced resolution light cubes, the correction of G-Man’s green eyes during the intro, the ability to choose between original and improved blood and flame effects, a more contemporary user interface and menu, an additional 3.5 hours of commentary, the incorporation of both episodes, and additional features. These quality of life improvements make a huge difference and make the game more palatable to play by today’s standards. Half-Life 2, in general, is a fantastic game with a flow unlike any other game I have played.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary, I am going to do a full review of Half-Life 2 through modern-day eyes. Although I didn’t have the best experience when I first played the game on a business desktop in 2005, it was well-optimized for the time and ran smoothly on potato computers. This was the game that prompted me to finally download Steam. People tend to forget how awful it was back in the day, when it constantly crashed and updates would break both the software and the games that required it. While today’s gamers adore Steam, the gaming community didn’t hold the software in high esteem 20 years ago.
As for the game itself, the modern UI is a welcome change, especially on Steam Deck. The game now supports controllers properly with no need to remap anything. You can choose from a grid or carousel-style weapon menu too, which is a nice change. The visuals are sharp and crisp at higher resolutions, and the game overall looks very clean. It has aged incredibly well, and this is thanks to Valve’s Source Engine and the way everything scales up for higher resolutions. As for playing the game, it feels better than ever. The game takes place shortly after the first game, where Gordan wakes up mysteriously on a train bound for City 17, and features a now-famous intro by G-Man himself. The game is a master class on in-game storytelling. Instead of taking away the players’ controls and inserting pre-rendered cutscenes, the game tells everything through subtle details in the surrounding world.
The beginning of the game is the best example of this. Valve also teaches players how to play the game through natural in-game dialogue and simple puzzles at first. The Metro cop, who instructs you to pick up the can at the start of the game, teaches you how to use physics. The inclusion of this now infamous line ensured that players understood their capabilities. This may seem dated today, but in 2004, physics were very CPU heavy, and most high-end processors struggled with them. People had to learn how to pick up objects using real physics back then. Barney explains the first stacking puzzle, instructing you to stack boxes in order to escape a window.
The game’s natural progression is stellar. The game’s long segments ensure that you always feel like you are moving in the world and making progress in real time. Each area is an hour or two long, and you progressively make your way toward the Citadel and Dr. Kleiner’s lab. The hoverboat area is quite lengthy, giving you the impression that you’re actually traveling to your destination in real time. However, these lengthy segments are not monotonous. Valve puts little tidbits in the game that the player can do or ignore. You have the option to escape and obtain ammo or supplies from a passing house, but doing so could potentially lead to a firefight. There are hidden Lambda caches all over the game, and these really help and come in handy.
The transition from a vehicle to on-foot and back again significantly breaks up the pace. There aren’t many puzzles in the game, but there are some areas that require navigation of pipes and ladders and need a bit of thinking to find your way out. Every game introduces something new, whether it’s a weapon or the ability to command squads. While this is very simple and archaic by today’s standards, I found they mostly get in the way and rarely help outside of offering medkits and distracting enemies. Every game introduces new enemies, and just when you believe you’ve defeated them all, a new type emerges. The enemies range from Metro cops to zombies, and from Elite Combines to Striders. Weapons feel excellent and have a unique and distinct feel to weapons, such as the pistol, are not suitable for use in specific situations. It’s mostly useless after you get around half the guns in the game, and I rarely ran out of ammo. The more powerful weapons have limited ammo, so it’s crucial to use skill to ensure you hit everything, kill enemies, and avoid wasting ammo.
There are ammo crates, boxes, and medkits everywhere. While medkits are not a thing anymore in FPS games, they work well here. Gordon has the ability to recharge his HEV suit for armor purposes. Most of the game feels dated in terms of navigation. The entire game, including linear buildings, vents, doors that need to be opened, and tunnels, guides you along a linear path. Although the game may appear expansive and open at times, it actually follows a linear structure, which was the standard for first-person shooter games during that era. While other games such as Halo 2 set the standard, Half-Life 2 stands out for its organic progression structure and illusion of real-time progress in the world. The inclusion of physics such as needing to use the iconic Gravity Gun to pull a wooden beam from in front a door through a window to progress is something that FPS never really did.
Half-Life 2 has a distinct and unique sound and appearance. There are a lot of browns and beiges, but the game still has color in places. The coastline boasts a plethora of blue water, while Ravenholm is characterized by its dark hues of gray, dark metal, and aged wood. The sound design is iconic, from the HEV suit charging to the Metro cop and Combine radio chatter to the bleeps and bloops of the turrets, which were later used in Portal. The entire game exudes a distinct vibe, ranging from Gordan’s slick momentum to the physics and the firing of the weapons. Enemies respond well to weapon fire and ragdoll when dead or blown up. While there isn’t too much gore in the game there is a lot of blood. Enemies won’t gib at grenades, but you might see the occasional severed head.
The overall oppressiveness of the world of Half-Life and the Combine is palpable in this game. Every time you encounter a group of rebels, even if it’s just for a brief conversation, it’s a refreshing change from feeling alone and feeling like your assistance is fleeting. Ever since I was 15, this game has felt so lonely and melancholy. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t played through this game too many times over the years. Valve masterfully captures the sense of being a superhero, with everyone relying on you, and effectively conveys the dire consequences of making a mistake. The player bears the entire game’s burden.
The Anniversary Update may not seem like much to some. It’s not a remaster or remake, but rather a set of quality-of-life improvements that are not in any way detrimental. HL2 doesn’t need a remake as it works perfectly fine today. A remake would primarily serve as a cosmetic enhancement, but thanks to Steam Workshop’s implementation, we have access to mods that accomplish this for us.
Indie games are what’s holding the game industry right now. It’s no longer AAA titles that get released every single month. The indie groups are the big events every year. There are festivals and online events held all year round celebrating indie titles. Some have had AA budgets while others are made by a single person. Indie games are where the heart and core of the game industry is right now and we need to protect and cherish this by buying the games that we like and love and supporting them. This has been a tale as old as time and many big games now started out as small indie titles such as Minecraft, Fez, Super Meat Boy, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Stardew Valley, Terraria, and and many more.
Balatro
Balatro is one of those games that nobody knew or heard about and suddently blew up. Not only are rogue-like games in vogue right now, but Balatro’s addictive gameplay, colorful retro visuals, and easy to learn, but hard to master style made it a recipe for success. It’s available on every platfrom out right now and recently got a physical release.
Silent Hill 2 is considered one of the best horror titles ever made. This is my second playthrough of the game. I first played this on PC as well almost 20 years ago. I was a teenager, and I can’t even remember if I finished the game. Silent Hill 2 differs significantly from its original PS1 title. The game focuses more on atmosphere, surrealism, and how things affect people mentally. You follow a man named James Sunderland, who is searching for his wife Maria in the town of Silent Hill, Maine. The story is a little disjointed and doesn’t always make sense, but I think that’s intentional. The game focuses on themes and characters that have no connection to James. Are they manifestations of the town’s pain in human form? There isn’t much exploration of these people’s back stories, despite their frequent appearance. Despite the lack of a third act or a definitive ending will be on the player to make of it what they will. The story is open for interpretation, but remains interesting.
I like how more straight-forward this game is. While the map is an essential tool for figuring out where to go, this series kind of made that a staple. As you progress, your map will mark off areas explored, doors tried, and objects found, aiding in exploration. I still find the puzzles somewhat obtuse, especially on harder difficulties, which make the clues more vague or sometimes nonexistent. For a first-time playthrough, I recommend the easiest combat and puzzle difficulty so you actually finish it. Puzzles involve finding combination locks, and you must either decipher written clues or photos. Some are obvious, while one literally requires you to guess the combination. Finding keys, sometimes through multi-tiered layers of unlocking, is a significant part of advancing through the game. When you receive keys, it’s clear where they lead, and the town map typically circles your next objective. However, navigating inside buildings complicates the process. Most players will tend to become frustrated when they have to attempt every door on the map, especially when there are enemies present. That’s why I recommend starting at the easiest difficulty to gain a better understanding of the game before taking on another challenge. Even starting normal can make the game feel unbearable at first when you don’t know where to go.
Silent Hill 2 improves on the first game’s combat. Auto-aim works much better, but ammo conservation is a must for boss fights. You get a handgun, shotgun, and rifle, as well as three different melee weapons, and that’s it. When you are just fighting one-to-one, you should use your melee weapon, but on the easiest difficulty, ammo is so plentiful that I could use a gun through the last 3/4 of the game once I collected enough. During the first half of the game, you will wander through the main town of Silent Hill, but you should stick to the sidewalks, as this is where all of the items, including health and ammo, are located. You can avoid most enemies by running past them, but the ominous atmosphere compels you to engage in combat. The enemies in the town respawn anyway, so there’s no point. On harder difficulties, the combat is more challenging, but in most areas you won’t face more than two enemies at a time. You must also kick the monster once it’s down, or it won’t completely die and can come back up. Most enemies are slow and easy to learn their patterns from. The game’s final bosses require the rifle, which boasts the rarest ammo count. The shotgun is powerful but slow at close range, and the handgun is your main firearm for the entire game.
There aren’t any mini-games or side quests here. Basically, you just try to get from A to B alive and watch whatever cutscene you come across. There aren’t any collectibles, either. With a guide, I was able to finish the game in about 4 hours, so it is surprisingly shorter than I remember it being. This was originally a technical showcase for the PS2 during its first year on the market. The fog and lighting effects in this game blew me away when I watched a neighbor play it. If you try to play this game on your own, you may get frustrated early on, turn the game off, and never come back. I highly recommend your first playthrough with a guide. I used the official BradyGames guide for Xbox and had a blast the entire time. I honestly did not want the game to end. I thought the game could tell me more, and I wanted to explore the “alternate” areas from the original title. I never experienced significant frustration with the guide, except for the repetitive nature of the interior locations. The overwhelming number of hallways you traverse gives you a sense of familiarity among them.
With that said, the atmosphere is something I absolutely couldn’t get enough of in this game. The eerie and exquisite soundtrack, the intricate designs of the enemies, and the overall aesthetic appeal of the game captivated me. I was disappointed that we didn’t get to see too much of “alternate” areas, and the boss fights are a bit too straight forward and disappointing, but they look cool. I honestly wish there were more enemy types in this game, but what’s here is still memorable and iconic. The fog that covers everything is now an integral part of the game’s aesthetic, rather than a necessity for these consoles to render the visuals and reduce draw distance. I did become somewhat fatigued by the frequent requirement to traverse narrow hallways, as this game contains an abundance of them. There’s too much focus on item hunting and not enough on exploration. I’m surprised the game wasn’t more combat heavy—at least in certain areas—given how much the combat and controls have improved. The voice-acting was sporadic and inconsistent, as anticipated. The mystery of the endings is my biggest gripe. Interacting with certain objects can lead to unexpected endings. The series’ staple endings are difficult to acquire, and even with a guide, I struggled. Thankfully, this game is worth multiple playthroughs, so you might want to consider it.
Overall, Silent Hill 2 is a fantastic horror title, with the Xbox and PC versions being the superior choices. I played with the Enhanced Edition mod this time around, and it looks as excellent as it will get without an official remaster or remake. It combined the best assets from all versions to make it playable on modern systems equipped with controllers, ultrawide screens, and proper FOV fixes, among other things. The texture work is remarkable, and I loved every second of it. The soundtrack is excellent; I actually listen to it outside of the game. The sound effects are also iconic and haunting themselves. They will stay in your head forever. While the characters themselves may not be particularly intriguing or profound, the town of Silent Hill stands out as a unique character in its own right. With so much to reveal and is concealed, you want to see everything. I would even consider this an unofficial HD remaster. If you haven’t played Silent Hill 2 yet, this is the way to go outside of the Xbox version.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…