The concept of a video game taking over real life isn’t just a metaphor. There have been numerous instances where excessive gameplay has resulted in fatalities. But what about a game literally invading the real world? Is it actually real or a hallucination of the main character? Among Ashes explores this idea of a late 90s to early 2000s setting of a real game taking over the protagonist’s life. You play as a nameless gamer who ends up playing some indie game that his friend found and sends you the link over MSN Messenger (it’s MSN; it even has the same chimes and sounds). You can use the computer with a Windows 98 style setup. It’s not super interactive, but you can click links that open a web browser to a forum. The game inside the game is called Night Call. It’s a lost game from a developer that ends up putting it on this horror fan forum. You, of course, play this game along with your friend, and every so often you will go back and forth on the messenger talking about events in the game and what’s happening in real life.
Among Ashes is a melding of genres. It starts out as a Resident Evil clone with PS1 style graphics in a first-person perspective. You arrive at a mansion and are greeted by the maid. You make your way upstairs to talk to the resident doctor about reports of a woman screaming. Of course, this leads to puzzles, wandering around aimlessly with no direction, and combat. Combat consists of beating enemies over the head with a baton. You can block, which helps, but you also get a shotgun and revolver at certain points. It’s best to save the ammo for when you are surrounded by enemies, but I also recommend playing with a guide. There is a hedge maze that’s incredibly confusing to navigate, enemies respawn (they don’t die permanently), and there are typical lock puzzles, math puzzles, gathering hints puzzles, switch flipping puzzles, and so on. There are even a few chase scenes and a maze-like cave system with an enemy chasing you towards the end, and you have to flip switches and open gates. It’s frustrating and doesn’t add the right kind of tension to the game.
There are a couple of other game types thrown in here. There’s a game within the game of Night Call that’s for the Commodore 64. It’s an 8-bit action game that is required to play to advance the story. It’s not good, it’s repetitive, and it can get really hard sometimes. You only get three hits and you’re dead, and enemies can swarm you. There’s also an FPS Doom clone you can play inside the game, which is pretty bad, but it gets the point across. I will say that the game nails tension and atmosphere, and the monster designs are pretty insane. I love the scares here too. There are a couple of jump scares and just subtle scares, such as a monster staring at you through a gate. Not every scare is in your face. Some can be missed if you aren’t paying attention.
When you get up from your computer in the real world, it almost feels like a breath of fresh air, but things get crazy here too. Objects appear, things become rearranged, and you are very quiet. It was also refreshing when your friend would IM you, as the game feels very isolated, which is a good thing that it nails. I felt very alone, and any sign or hint of another person was so relieving despite how brief it was. The last act of the game falls into the usual indie horror trope of doing crazy things like constantly changing rooms, teleporting you to different locations, recycling older locations, etc. At least, the story maintains coherence throughout and doesn’t deviate significantly towards the conclusion.
Outside of the great atmosphere and tension, the game just lacks in the actual gameplay department. It’s not fun to play, and the mechanics, while trying to be purposefully bad to fit the type of game it’s trying to emulate, just aren’t done well. Respawning enemies, confusing mazes, obtuse puzzles, and weird boss fights that don’t feel good are all over the place. I liked the story; the Web 1.0 feeling on the PC is nailed perfectly, and the tension is there. I just wish this was wrapped up into an actual fun game to play. Thankfully, it’s over in 3-4 hours.
As much as I love Gears of War, and for how iconic and revolutionary it was at the time, it doesn’t need three remasters. Yes, that’s right. It was already remastered before with the 2015 Ultimate Edition release. It was originally released on PC for the first time under the Games for Windows banner and featured DirectX 10 updated visuals and a brand-new chapter in Act IV that involved taking down a Brumak. The Ultimate Edition was already disappointing to some, but having the game further remastered was still nice, and I ate it up. Here we are a decade later, and the impossible has happened. Gears of War is now on PlayStation. This is the second most coveted Xbox franchise next to Halo. How could this possibly be? What kind of timeline have we jumped to? Well, if Xbox’s current downfall isn’t enough to spell it out, then I will. Microsoft is losing money on their GamePass feature as well as the Activision buyout and needs to desperately get their games on more systems. That’s okay, as the PS5 Pro version is the best console version.
With the shock aside, at least the price tag is nice. For $40 you get a remaster and a full multiplayer suite. For those who never played Gears of War, they are in for a real treat. For me, this is the fifth playthrough (twice on Xbox 360, once on PC, once on Xbox One S, and once on Xbox One X for the Ultimate Edition). The Ultimate Edition is also currently broken on PC and the original release has long since been taken down. So, outside of Xbox, this is the best offer for PC and PS5 players. The campaign is still fantastic despite how short it is, and its age is showing. Shooters back in the mid-2000s were still maturing, and we were still in the linear hallway shooter phase. The game still looks fantastic, and while nearly every game that used Unreal Engine 3 of the era was compared to Gears of War, it was the granddaddy of “grey and brown” games. This was on purpose. You are thrust in the middle of a war on a fictional planet called Sera (Earth is never mentioned), and a new beast called the Locust has emerged, committing full-blown genocide. It’s up to Marcus Fenix and the four-man Delta Squad to deliver a lightmass bomb to destroy their tunnels and stop them for good.
Gears of War was applauded back in the day for its fantastic cover system and level design. Marcus snaps into cover with ease. He can switch covers close to each other, roll out of cover, and use the Roadie Run feature, which brings the camera down near his legs while he crouch sprints for a cinematic effect. Gears of War was all about feeling like a movie. The over-the-shoulder camera perspective was heavily inspired by Resident Evil 4, and it works well here. When you aim your gun, the camera zooms closer, right up to Marcus’ face. It was something that was never seen before at the time of release. Gears also pioneered the Active Reload mechanic in which you need to press the reload button at the right time, and any bullets reloaded in that clip do extra damage. You will eventually have muscle memory of this feature and rarely ever miss. If you do, the gun will jam, and you will need to wait a few seconds before firing or switching weapons. It’s an awesome feature.
Gears‘ weapons are also well designed and perfectly balanced. The default Lancer Assault Rifle, an iconic weapon now, shoots large clips, has surprisingly good accuracy, and has a chainsaw mounted on the bottom. You can rev this up and saw an enemy in half. Even 19 years later this never gets old. The gib system is satisfying, with enemies exploding into chunks from grenades or getting sawed in half. One other feature that was well regarded was the sound effects. Gears of War has a distinct sound system and has never been replicated. The crunchy sounds of the guns, the reaction of enemies getting hit (which was a big deal) from enemies getting gibbed by grenades, or the subtle sound effect of “one more hit and you’re dead, so get into cover.” Gears of War took a page from Halo and featured a recovery system for health. A red Gears logo slowly appears in the center of the screen as you get hit. On higher difficulties (I cleared this on Hard, but not the hardest), it requires patience, careful flanking of enemies, and using the right weapons. The PS5 DualSense adds a layer to that crunchiness of the weapons. The adaptive triggers and vibration work wonders allowing to now actually “feel” how the weapons should be. This can’t be experienced on Xbox.
The level design requires you to flank enemies and close emergence holes. Tossing a chain grenade into a hole will close it up and stop respawning. They don’t infinitely respawn, but only killing two that crawled is better than waiting for all six. The Locusts are formidable foes and well designed. Not only do they look menacing, but each one has a design language that tells you how to approach them. Enemies can wear helmets, meaning headshots won’t work right away, and the Theron Guard have full armor, which takes longer to take down. The bigger Boomers have Boomshot grenade launchers and are bullet sponges. Then there are the occasional enemies like the Wretches, which are small ape-like creatures that come in swarms. There are Berserkers, which can only be taken down by a Hammer of Dawn, which is a satellite-guided laser. It’s freaking cool despite only being used three times in the game. The Berserker can’t see but can hear you, so you need to guide it around with sound to knock walls down to open up the roof for the satellite to triangulate. It’s neat.
The downside to Gears of War, and the aging part, is not only how linear it is, but also how sparse the story is and how little is explained. While the game is greatly expanded upon in the sequels, and especially the novels, it just feels like it’s over too soon. You want to get to know Delta Squad more. Their personalities are great and well written. Marcus has a dark past (why was he in prison at the beginning of the game?). Dom is trying to find his missing wife but is only mentioned a couple of times. Cole is an ex-football player, but his past isn’t talked about at all, and neither is Baird, who is the nerdy smart guy of the squad. It makes sense that in the heat of this war, going point to point with no breathing room means there’s no time to get to know anyone. Thankfully, this was changed in later sequels, but it’s just odd that this isn’t a remaster of the entire trilogy. The banter between the squad is great, and many new players will want to know more.
There are also some other things that didn’t age well, like some of the clutter in the levels. There are random chairs, stoves, and home appliances kind of haphazardly strewn about in ways that make no sense. The entire game is built like a video game and not like a world people would live in. Some areas just don’t make any sense. I don’t feel like I’m fighting in a city but a video game level. Despite how much Gears wanted to be taken seriously, its world-building is really lacking. Thankfully, the campaign is less than 6 hours long, and you can play with a buddy in co-op; that’s always fun. Just don’t give up on the series yet if you have never played it before. There is more to come. There also aren’t a whole lot of weapons in this game. The arsenal is small, and you will mostly stick to a couple of guns. I also hate how useless the Boltok pistol feels in this game. It’s the only weapon with no feedback when it hits enemies, and the snub pistol is pretty much MIA after the first act.
The multiplayer suite is…fine. I was never a fan of Gears multiplayer. I feel the gameplay doesn’t translate well when fighting against others. There are also some of the better modes from later games missing like Horde. Many will get frustrated with cheap deaths like the rolling shotgun blast. It does feel like an old-school shooter with regular modes that are missing in most of today’s games, so some players will find this refreshing in a world of Call of Dutys and Fortnites. This is an unnecessary remaster to begin with. The game runs smoothly on PS5 Pro at 120 FPS with no dips. The game uses the Pro’s PSSR and there are enhanced textures and lighting. It looks pretty much identical to the PC version. At least, I couldn’t tell the difference. If you’re new to the series or are a hardcore fan, I would say the low price is worth it. While the campaign will only last an evening, the multiplayer may be enough for people to keep coming back.
Open-world games have become stale and boring. It appears that developers are merely creating open worlds without any enjoyable activities within them. Mafia’s open world is deceptive but beautiful, refreshing but also sort of pointless. Mafia tries to go back to its roots, literally, by bringing us to the times before the Italian mafia came to the USA. The Old Country subtitle is exactly that. This is a prequel to the original game before any family made it to Empire Bay. We play as Enzo Favara. An orphan miner who has been enslaved by a mafia family to work until he seems like he will die. The first chapter of the game introduces us to various characters, combat, and essentially a tutorial area. You will notice the game is very cinematic, with a lot of dialogue and cut scenes and scripted gameplay.
I hope you like scripted events because they are everywhere and there are a lot of them, and it’s mostly that. I personally felt this was refreshing. There was less emphasis on pointless mind numbing fetch missions. However, the game was clearly incomplete and cut off at some point during development. The open world is nothing but a tease and a backdrop to go from mission to mission. There’s nothing here. The world is literally empty of anything to do outside of a few missions, like finding new upgrades and upgrade statues. You can listen to dialogue with characters while riding in cars or on horses to missions, but after that you can just skip to the destination. This is one of the most pointless open worlds in any modern game. There’s no traffic, no people, and no real towns outside the main town, San Celeste. I honestly didn’t mind this. I was just surprised at how this game didn’t really need an open world. This is a shame because the first generation of cars around is really cool, and the horse back riding works well too.
With that said, the main attraction is the characters, and it’s some of the best this year. Every character is full of life, and I really wanted to know more about them all thanks to the tight writing and amazing script. Enzo is a great character to get behind. He’s humble, not perfect, but very loyal. His love interest ends up being the Don’s daughter, Isabella. She’s a great character to get behind too and ends up becoming the most important character in the game without giving spoilers away. The game’s story flows similarly to other mob stories such as The Godfather and The Sopranos. There’s a similar ebb and flow to everything and constant danger always being present and around every corner. Some might say that Mafia doesn’t tread new ground, but that’s okay. There are some stereotypical setups, like two rival mobs needing to make amends, love interests getting put on the back seat, the Don’s blood relative being a total douche nozzle (Cesare), and so on.
The gameplay features some excellent gunplay. There aren’t many guns in the game, but you will constantly swap between them based on your situation. Additionally, the game includes effective stealth mechanics. You can hold two weapons at a time and always have a knife on hand. The knife is a more fleshed-out mechanic than in most games, as knife fights are a big part of the combat. Boss fights consist of one-on-one knife duels similar to a sword fight. You can parry, break blocks, and do heavy and light attacks. It seems simple at first and feels more like a whack-a-mole style system, but there are enough moves here that require you to use quick reflexes. When a red flash appears, you can dodge and then counterattack. Regular attacks can be parried, and of course you can slash to your heart’s content. It’s not overused and is mainly reserved for boss fights, so I never got tired of them. In the middle of the fight, a scripted cinematic will play out too. The main focus of the combat in this game is shooting.
Shooting feels really good, which it didn’t in previous Mafia games. You can hide behind cover and blind fire as well as pop out and shoot enemies. It’s best to go for headshots here, as only a few shots will kill you. You can hold up to two bandages to heal, and you will chew through these fast. Weapons like revolvers, shotguns, and rifles are all on board, so nothing fancy or crazy. You can toss molotovs and grenades too. Once an enemy is down, you can loot their body for cash and ammo. Stealth gameplay works here because enemy placement isn’t random and you can track patrol patterns. Many areas can be done without killing anyone, but the added addition of throwing your knife is a great feature. Only a specific type of knife can be thrown. When you select your arsenal layout, you can choose different knives that deteriorate slower than others. A thrown knife must be recovered, or you lose it for that mission. You can use sharpening stones to bring your deterioration bar back up. You also use your knife for opening doors, locks, and boxes full of loot, so you need to use it wisely.
There are some minor RPG elements here. You can’t level up or anything, but you can equip charms that add passive abilities such as carrying more ammo, reducing knife deterioration rates, making your footsteps less obvious, etc. You can equip up to six, but four need to be unlocked by buying slots at the store. There is only one store in the game, and you must drive there each time, which I find frustrating. Here you can unlock weapons, clothing, and customization items for your cars. I find this all pointless, as the story missions give you weapons when they are needed, and driving cars has a minimal impact on gameplay. One of the biggest gripes I have is that the story introduces these open-world concepts to you, but you can’t drive around except during a few missions. This means you can only visit the store a few times during the game, and once the story is over, there’s no point in continuing unless you want to get every achievement in the game.
Despite the open-world portion of the game feeling half-baked, I enjoyed my 12 hours with Mafia. This may seem too short for some, but the story was satisfying, and I felt like I could go back and get the few collectibles that were left at a later time. For anyone wanting an authentic Mafia experience, they will be disappointed in everything but the story. The combat has undergone significant enhancements, and the visuals are outstanding. I also loved the authentic voice acting for the characters. They have weight and authenticity behind their roles. We don’t get video game stories like this very often anymore.
We have a lot of post-apocalyptic games right now. A lot of them are what the world is like shortly after the apocalypse. Usually a few years or decades. Horizon is one that shows what the world could be like thousands of years after one, and this fascinates me even more. Zero Dawn was a hard game to get into. It was slow to start, even slower to get good, and the combat just wasn’t all that great, including the stealth. Aloy is a fantastic main protagonist and one of Sony’s best in years. She’s strong, not cliche or stereotypical, and has a striking design. Sadly, she was the only memorable character in Zero Dawn. Forbidden West tries to remedy a lot of this by giving us a bolder and grander adventure and more refined mechanics, but does it succeed?
The game doesn’t exactly expect you to have played the first game and catches you up on the story so far, and kind of does throughout the entire game. Zero Dawn’s story only got interesting during the last few missions of the game, and it kind of exposition dumped on you during a few long cutscenes. It was interesting, but not very nuanced. Here, the story is kind of retold as you continue your adventure to stop Sylens and the Hephaestus AI from destroying the world. The game does start slow…again. You end up dealing with another warring tribe before getting to the heart of the story and saving the planet. Honestly, I lost interest in the game for a couple of years because of this. I put around 8 hours into the game, mostly trying to explore and get into the game mechanics again, but it just dragged. I highly recommend just doing the story before doing any side content, as you really need more of the special gear and higher-tier armor and weapons. You will constantly hit blocks, and it will frustrate you early on. The story itself takes around 20-25 hours to complete. By the end you will be around level 30 or so and have really good gear.
I don’t want to spoil much of the story, but your main goal is to help the GAIA AI to take back control of the various terraforming systems that Zero Dawn launched as the end is nigh. There are a few small plot twists, some new factions, and a great buildup to a pretty damn good story by the end of it all. There’s a lot of science fiction thrown in, and it talks about interstellar travel and whatnot, and I was hooked. There aren’t choices in the game like in most action games, but you do get dialog trees that let you optionally listen to more exposition and backstory. There’s a lot of this, by the way. Just metric tons of optional dialogue, audio recordings, and texts. They really wanted to sell this story and flesh it out as much as possible, and they did a pretty good job. It’s very believable and feels grounded and almost like it can happen. There are moments that got intense in the story where you weren’t sure how Aloy and her companions would get out of hairy situations. I really like what they did here, and there’s potential to now expand on this even further and branch off into other subgenres.
The writing is much better this time around with less cringy dialogue and corny lines; however, the character design is still generic. All of Aloy’s allies are either just generic characters or have good writing and personality, but their looks are generic. For example, Alva is a great character in writing, but she still looks generic. Varl and Zo are forgettable, and Erand is a stereotypical biker personality who discovers he likes drinking and “Death Metal”. All of the miscellaneous characters who give side quests and errands are pretty generic. I just didn’t care for most of them. Some other characters are more decent, like Kotallo, who is missing an arm and is battling his honor. They have some great personality, and I could get behind them. It’s better, but not quite there yet.
With the story out of the way, let’s dive into the combat. I still don’t love it. You’ll be dodging and rolling out of the way of these machine creatures. I feel there’s too much focus on ranged combat when most of the machines attack you up close. There is less stealth in this game and more up-close melee, but you still only have heavy and light melee attacks. If you sneak around, you can do a stealth kill, but you need to be at or above the area’s level to do instant kills. Humans are always instant kills, but machines not so much. There are many ranged weapons at your disposal that can set tripwire traps, semi-automatic arrows, long-range arrows, bomb slings, javelins, etc. These can all be equipped with coils that inflict various elemental ailments, such as corrosion to eat away at armor. The quickest way to take a machine down is to use your Focus to highlight weak spots and target those. You can slow down time (and this meter increases with various stat boosts), but I never felt in control of fights. Boss fights require tons of health potions and either having the right weapons or blasting them with everything you have. You can craft more ammo in the weapon wheel too.
Stealth still consists of hiding in tall grass, and you can use combat augments from the upgrade tree like an invisibility cloak. The upgrade tree now has more branches on the tree, such as trapper, hunter, infiltrator, warrior, etc. While enemy placement is a bit better this time around, I still found stalking around massive camps to be nearly impossible. When you get seen, the enemy and nearby enemies are on alert, and it takes forever for them to go back to patrol. With the heavier focus on direct combat, it was easier to just wipe everyone out. Find a heavy weapon and you can take out an entire camp with it. Combat does feel improved with a couple more weapon types, but melee fighting is still limited, and combat just isn’t my favorite in this series. I prefer exploring more than anything.
And with that, exploring is abundant here. The map is massive, too massive. It’s a truncated version of the West of the US. The Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon), Nevada desert, San Francisco coastlines (Northern California), and Las Vegas. They took all of these biomes and shrunk them down onto a single map. What’s here is a lot of nothing. While there are tons of side quests, errands, missions, and things to find, Forbidden West falls into the same tired trappings of modern open-world games. Too much bloat and not enough focus on what’s interesting. Everything outside of the main story is just for getting the platinum trophy. The side quests are given by companions, so those are more story related, but everything else is just filler to extend game time. I did like doing the Tallneck missions. These are one of the few less generic-looking machines in the game, but there are only five, with one being part of a main mission. These reveal more of the world and reveal large landmarks in an area, but there’s still some fog of war.
Traversing this larger map requires you to have a mount. I forwent them in the last game, as it wasn’t a very big map, but here they’re a must. You can bypass most machine herds and get to where you need to go, plus you can now fly on winged machines this time around, but not until the last act of the game. This makes doing side content so much easier, and you can pretty much avoid all herds this way. However, I do have a problem with platforming in this game. This game is just way too context sensitive, and that’s another problem with modern gaming right now. These large AAA games are so context heavy that it can make things feel sluggish and cause many glitches. Jumping and climbing in Horizon is not great. Animations are too long; Aloy will jump when not told, and she won’t grab onto ledges despite jumping right towards them; she will just fall through ropes and other objects. A lot of long platforming segments required many restarts just because something went wrong. You have to be lined up perfectly, or things won’t connect. I fell through objects and got stuck; she would swing half her body through a wall, and I would jump right past a pole or beam for no reason and then land it the next time around. It sucks.
And with that we can talk about visuals. Forbidden West is still one of the best-looking games of all time. The visuals are stunning, and even in performance mode, they look great. I played in balanced mode with 120 Hz turned on, and it was the best way to go. There is so much detail everywhere, from small facilities that look like they were abandoned for thousands of years to lush forests and dry deserts. There’s so much detail everywhere, including the new large underwater areas. While I still feel parts of the game feel generic, like the overall futuristic look of the game. It’s a lot of shiny metal, smooth gel like metal, white, gold, triangles, etc.; it feels like stuff that’s been done to death in games like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Echo, etc. It was fine the first time around, but this futuristic style is getting old. We need a refresh. I also don’t care for the machine designs. They look like generic Transformer animals. Even the tribal armor all looks generic and the same after a while.
Despite all of that, the game has a fascinating story, a large beautiful world to explore, and some decent gameplay loops of side content. I just wish the combat was tighter and the platforming didn’t suck. The writing is better, and some of the main characters are better, but most of the other characters you run into are forgettable and generic.
Surreal horror games are becoming more popular, but outside of the retro PS1 style graphic-type games, there’s not much. Bio/biomechanical horror is something I really love, and my two favorite artists of all time are H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński. Their worlds and art are unlike any other. The surreal, dreamlike atmosphere invokes feelings of sadness, regret, melancholy, hopelessness, and many feelings of anguish and misery. While Giger has more of a focus on characters, Beksiński focuses on entire worlds. Vast landscapes that seem to go on forever and scenery that feels like it would invoke the darkest fears you could possibly imagine. The striking lines of Beksiński’s art with vertical and horizontal latticing of flesh and frozen faces of agony and torment are stunning and hard to look away from. This type of art has only really been done in more modern games, with those being Scorn and The Medium. Sadly, there’s also some sort of curse with these games having stunning soundscapes, art, and ideas but just not being the greatest in terms of gameplay.
Necrophosis is what Scorn should have. No first-person gunplay; just puzzles and walking around and soaking in this insane world. There’s clear influence from Scorn in Necrophosis, from the main character’s design to the aforementioned art direction. You wander around incredibly detailed landscapes and will just pause and look at every strange mountain face and object before solving the mundane puzzles and object hunting. Mountains are literal faces, countless giant bodies frozen in scenes of torture and dread. Closer up there will be smaller scenes of deathlike people or creatures depicting the moment of death or representing their current state of endless torture. Some creatures are stuck inside of objects, twisted and gnarled into globs of flesh and eyeballs with just a mouth. Some will plead to you to end their suffering. This is usually done by adding them to your inventory (yes, entire bodies) and using them to solve puzzles. You will carry this fleshling around with you with their frozen face staring at you. There might be another creature who needs divination, so you feed them something, and out comes a key to advance a puzzle.
It’s not the puzzles themselves that are fascinating. Quite the opposite. These are very simple in form. There is usually a small area, and you will see different spots to place objects represented by floating gold dust. It’s a matter of interacting with everything, gathering objects, sticking them in the right spot, getting new objects, or manipulating certain items. Manipulation is just as disturbing as talking to the inhabitants of this world. You pull your brain out of your skull and stick it inside of another being (sometimes interlocked with other beings) to do things like using a skull spider to climb up onto a fifty-foot fleshy creature sitting in a flesh chair and just scooting their legs backwards so the throne-like object blocks the view of another creature so you can walk past. That sounds insane when reading, but words can’t do this game world justice. It needs to be experienced to understand what’s going on.
With this being an indie game developed by a few people, there is some mechanical jank here. Walking is rather slow, animations are a little stiff and animatronic-like, controls feel slightly sluggish, and the game is insanely linear to a fault. Clearly the main focus was the art direction, and everything else was an afterthought to make it a game. Thankfully, the devs aren’t doing anything that feels bad, such as combat. Some creatures can hurt you, but it’s as simple as walking around them or solving a puzzle to get past them. There’s no stealth or anything like that either. This is a pure walking simulator, and it helps ease the jank of the gameplay to make it tolerable.
Overall, I can’t stress enough how much this game needs to be experienced. It’s one of the most visually striking games I have played since Scorn. It’s something you will talk to your friends about. This type of horror is the true stuff of nightmares. No jumpscares, no eerie soundtrack. Just straight-up horrifying visuals, and you are surrounded by them. Your entire world is just that. I also have to mention the haunting voices of some of these creatures that are just booming noises of bass and sounds. It’s unnerving and something I have never heard in any game before. I just wish there was more to the gameplay side.
Have you always wanted to know how certain things happen in Resident Evil 4? Why did Leon escape from situations at the right moment, or why did the odds of him surviving certain encounters seem unusual? Some of those questions are answered in Separate Ways. This is the side content from the original game remade for 2023. You play as Ada Wong here. She’s such a fascinating character, and despite being an early childhood crush, I found I appreciated her more endearing qualities as an adult. She’s mysterious and bold, doesn’t take crap from anyone, but is still fighting a moral quandary within herself. She wants to be a bad guy, but not that bad. She also has a hankering for Leon, and their sexual tension ratchets up here more than any other time.
Separate Ways is more of a remix of the main game than anything really new. New battlefields are usually above or in Leon’s old areas. Sometimes you will notice he’s cleaned up the place or destroyed an area before you get there. One such area is after the church bell tower fell in the main village. You go through the game in the same order, but at a rapid speed. Ada has a grappling hook in her arsenal to traverse the high ground. She can also use this to get closer to enemies quicker for a finisher and rip shields off of enemies. This is even used during the boss fight with El Gigante. She can swing up and fight on top of buildings, giving her an advantage. Ada also has access to the shopkeeper and a small repertoire of guns. She starts out with the Punisher MC pistol and the TMP. She’s all about close quarters combat. You can eventually get the M1903 rifle and the much better Stingray toward the end, but you will most likely always be charging in to get close. You can get access to the shotgun as well, but shells are really rare and take 12 gunpowder to create just 6 shells. Although it won’t be useful frequently, it can save you in an emergency. Save it for dispersing large crowds or for tougher enemies.
Ada also gets a few side quests, such as her very own medallion mission and fetching various items. There’s plenty of treasure lying around, and gemstones can be inlaid into valuable items to make them worth more. Be on the lookout for hanging treasure pots and chests everywhere. You will need those Pesos. You can use Spinel gems to trade for passive keychains to add to your cache to increase stats such as sprint speed, damage, and defense. I didn’t end up using any of these, as they are expensive, and the DLC’s short run time means you’re better off upgrading your pistol, TMP, and buying new weapons. I did end up with the Red9 towards the end and spent most of my money on upgrading those two weapons, as the ammo is most plentiful for them. I only used the bow a few times, but bolts use knives, and these are better suited for stabbing enemies on the ground before the Las Plagas pops out of their head. You will also need to get out of tight situations, and you can sneak around some areas and pick off some enemies too. Here it’s best to be resourceful, as ammo is scarce, and so are healing items, more so than in the main game.
Ada does run into her fair share of bosses, but not all of them are attacked head-on. One boss is a chase scene through a facility, while some are recycled from the main game but remixed a bit. I found the constant scraping for supplies, upgrading, crafting, and looking for treasure to be just as fun as the main game. It was nice seeing new areas and having some questions answered. Ada is a great on-screen presence and is one of my favorite female video game characters of all time. Her new voice actress does a good job making her sound emotionless and stern, but when emotion needs to break through, she can’t quite seem to land it. Emotions like surprise and slight fear just don’t come across well. Ada is almost like a robot by design, but she does have her humanity peek through from time to time, and that makes her such an awesome character. She’s not as evil as Wesker, but a nice in-between.
Overall, Separate Ways is a fantastic DLC that does everything right. Coming in at 4-5 hours of run time, it’s enough for a nice evening playthrough and to see the other side of RE4 that Leon can’t access. There are no upgraded visuals or anything like that with this, and there’s nothing inherently new or unique. It’s a remix of RE4 and that’s fine.
2005 was the tail end of Resident Evil clones. This period was just before the emergence of Resident Evil 4 clones. It seemed to never end. Cold Fear has an intriguing premise and a couple of neat gameplay ideas, but they are never fully explored. What we get here is a survival horror title that focuses mostly on action and has little horror to offer. I like the idea of being stuck on a ship during a storm. You feel claustrophobic, and Cold Fear did a decent job portraying this. I experienced a constant sense of urgency, needing to act quickly before the boat overturned or the zombie infection overtook me.
Of course, it’s never that simple. It’s not just a generic zombie virus. Instead, you play as a U.S. Coast Guard agent (neat idea), Tom Hansen. He’s your typical generic blonde-haired action dude with no personality who tries to be amusing but never is. He answers an S.O.S. and tries to rescue those on board. You find out there’s a species called Exocels that is infesting everyone on board. The scenario leads to zombified crew members that wield knives and can sometimes shoot. There are also regular humans, who are the Russians on board trying to kill you. It’s not a very intriguing plot or very deep. The game is only 4-5 hours long, so there’s no room for any plot development. Diaries scattered throughout the game provide the majority of the Exocel DNA exposition. There is only one other character, Anna, who is a Russian daughter of the person you’re rescuing. It’s not important, to be honest. There is a small escort section at the beginning of the game, but after that, you mostly do not see Anna again, at least not with the character you are rescuing.
With the almost neat story out of the way, the game’s main focus is combat. There are quite a few weapons in the game, such as a pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, flamethrower, crossbow, submachine gun, and AK-47. The pistol and submachine gun have a flashlight attached to them as well as a laser sight. The AK does as well. There aren’t many really dark areas in the game, but the flashlights do come in handy in some situations. The humans and zombies are pretty boring and straightforward enemies. There’s no dodge button, but if you are grabbed, you execute a QTE to do a critical hit. Zombies will only die when their heads explode, which is a neat gameplay mechanic. You can shoot the zombie’s head off or perform a head stomp on them when they are down. If they burn up or experience electrocution, they also die.
There is a lot of environmental damage that can be done, such as shooting barrels, fire extinguishers, and valves on walls and shooting some electrical boxes to electrocute enemies in water. There were even a couple of scenes in which you extend a bridge, and if you think ahead, you can have the zombies fall off by pulling the bridge back. These were fun mechanics, but they aren’t utilized frequently. The very cramped and small rooms are difficult to maneuver and fight in. The camera switches to an over-the-shoulder perspective reminiscent of Resident Evil 4 when aiming, but it snaps back to a pulled-back third-person view and occasionally switches to fixed camera angles. It’s disorienting, and while not game-breaking, it wasn’t ideal for this much action. The later Exocel enemies are more interesting to fight, such as the Exoshade, which is invisible in shadows; there is one that’s invisible all the time, and you must watch for wet footprints, or it will be visible when passing through steam. The Exomass, resembling a bull, stands as the most formidable opponent in the game. The only way to kill it is by shooting its red club-like arm until it explodes. You need to utilize each weapon for each situation, such as the AK for long distance and everything else for close quarters, with the shotgun being the best weapon. Each of the game’s two sections (the ship and the oil rig/research facility) has two restock rooms and a limited medbay. You can’t restock forever.
Sadly, what drags the whole experience down quite a bit is that there is no map, and the labyrinthine maze-like areas will confuse you. Sure, you have objectives, but they mean nothing if you don’t even get a clue as to where to go. You will wander around aimlessly until either an event occurs or you find a sparkling object nearby. Saves are also predetermined before entering certain doors that either trigger a cutscene or just after. They aren’t spread too far apart and were fairly placed. Unfortunately, once you finish the game, there’s no reason to play again. It’s not intriguing enough to. While the game is serviceable, it suffers from frequent frame rate drops too.
Overall, Cold Fear isn’t scary, but tense. The many gameplay ideas are peppered throughout that show promise but are never fully used. Waves can inflict damage, the boat can rock you when you’re on deck, you can swing objects that can strike you, and you can use environmental hazards to combat enemies. The game either disperses these ideas excessively or utilizes them sparingly. Although the combat is decent, it suffers from a sluggish camera, and the game’s overall layout is too constrained to provide intense action. You need a guide to avoid wandering aimlessly without a map. The visuals are pretty decent too, but nothing spectacular. Everything is gray, metallic, and drab with decent lighting effects but suffers from severe frame rate issues. Cold Fear isn’t a fantastic survival horror, especially when most of the horror is missing. It’s short enough to not be offensive, and don’t expect a deep story or intriguing characters.
I’m not really a co-op person. I do not consider myself a person who typically engages in cooperative gaming. I was raised among friends who did not share a strong interest in video games, and when they did, it was not in the genres I preferred. I have always been inclined towards single-player experiences. It Takes Two is the first co-op-only game that has motivated me to seek out a partner for gameplay, even though it took me four years to complete it. I was always a single-player kid. It Takes Two is the first co-op-only game that has pushed me to find someone to play multiplayer games with, even if it took me four years to finally finish. I started the game out with my wife and finished it off with my youngest sister. Couch co-op is something that builds bonds and memories, and this is one of those games. The story takes a backseat to fantastic gameplay that is always changing with incredible level design.
The story is the worst part of the game, and not for the reason you think. It’s poorly written. Painfully written. The idea itself is fine on paper. You are a married couple (Cody and May) going through a borderline divorce when your child gets the troubling news and uses her handmade dolls to act out her parents getting along again. Both of you drift off to sleep, finding yourself in a world akin to Pixar’s, where everything is grandiose and seemingly insignificant details are conspiring against you. One of the most annoying characters ever conceived in pixels is a therapist in the shape of a book called Dr. Hakim, who is a racist Mexican stereotype. His dialog is cringy and awful, and he’s just so incredibly annoying. Whenever he was on screen, my wife would use her phone, or my sister would walk away. I also don’t like how Cody and May’s relationship seemingly never evolves despite these harrowing acts they go through. Each level should typically show some change in their relationship, and relying on a monkey-in-the-middle remediator is quite frustrating. This is one of my least favorite video game stories ever. It’s just incredibly horrid.
Outside of that, the game is a delight to play. Each level is unique and full of charm, such as the garden level with enemies that are different flora and the attic level, which has you walking and bouncing on instruments that make real sounds. Each level gives Cody and May a unique ability they must use to puzzle-solve and use for combat. Not every level has combat, but every one has a lot of platforming and puzzle solving. The first level’s vacuum cleaner, for example, is a delight, and another level uses a honey cannon backpack. The game is played in split-screen, so you must work together to solve everything. In some areas, one character is needed to get through. The puzzles constantly change, and each ability is used to its fullest.
There are some mini-games spread out throughout the game that are more like “toys” and don’t really do anything. They are marked with a tambourine floating above them. Some range from getting points by shooting cannons at blocks to long jumps off of swings to a chess game. They are interesting but slow the game and have no rewards. These are good ideas, but the winner should get a reward, like a damage boost. Most of the time we would just play once for a couple of minutes and move on.
Combat, on the other hand, is really annoying and not excellent. Balancing is an issue here. Occasionally, an excessive number of enemies will attack you, resulting in both of you dying and necessitating a restart of the area. If one player dies, they can revive by mashing a button, but if both die, it’s over. We died more in combat than any other time, and everything is too chaotic to monitor your life meter. I would get pummeled and wailed on as a passive ability character waiting for my partner to take out the baddies or expose the weak point of an enemy or boss while smaller enemies just annihilated us. This problem isn’t a skill issue either. Additionally, the absence of a lock-on button increases frustration during gameplay.
The visuals themselves are fantastic. Each level feels unique while grounded in realism. The unique dreamlike and cartoonish visuals provide a Pixar vibe, and they are a sight to behold. The explosion of everything, from everyday objects to skyscraper-sized buildings, is truly captivating. However, some levels, like the dream level at the midway point, seem overly lengthy. There is a hub area, and you branch off to different sub-levels, but it seems to go on forever. Then, later on, I felt like a single character’s ability was underutilized. The attic level had me barely doing anything for my partner. The balancing in this game is significantly flawed, but it can be overlooked.
Overall, It Takes Two is a must-play for anyone remotely interested in co-op games. The story, characters, and writing are both awful and rote, but the gameplay is why you will stay. The visuals are incredibly charming and imaginative, and the combat requires each player to assist each other at every single turn and puzzle. Combat is too simple and chaotic to be very fun or engaging, but there’s not a lot of it. The game is a pretty decent length, clocking in at 8 hours or so.
Have you ever regretted your final moments with someone? Most of us don’t know when those final moments are, and when the time comes, it’s too late. The story of Undying Flower takes things a bit further and asks, Would you ever forgive yourself for killing someone you love? That’s the first question asked when starting the game. We are talking to a girl’s head with two flowers on the sides. She asks us questions that we don’t have answers to. In fact, we don’t even know this person. Who are we even? Without spoiling the story, we are a scientist who is experimenting on this little girl. Or at least that’s what it seems. I’ll leave you with this: The story is pretty good, and the ending was great and satisfying. Unlike most short indie games, this one excels in storytelling. The game offers enough twists to keep you captivated for 2-3 hours.
The gameplay isn’t overly extensive, which is typical of most indie adventure titles. Although they are not exactly visual novels, these games feel more like interactive stories than traditional games, which is acceptable; however, creating them successfully can be challenging. The story, setting, atmosphere, and characters must immediately captivate you. While there are only two characters in the story, don’t let this perturb you. This means the short story can laser focus on just these two characters. The protagonists are the girl and her grandfather. What unfolds gameplay-wise is walking around a room and interacting with highlighted objects. We zoom to the two faces. We can hear Her Story or His Story. They are really short. The object’s context is conveyed in just a few sentences. This really helps build this moment in these lives that we are witnessing. The writing is really well done and strays away from the abstract poetry that most indie adventures tend to lean towards. Each face will show different animations of emotion based on how you answer them, but the answers don’t really change the story.
There are a few rooms with objects you interact with. This interactive experience occupies approximately the first half of the game. The second half involves a puzzle in which you select mementos to create a memory based on the statement the girl is telling you. I found the game too abstract and nigh impossible to get the combos right. Thankfully, after one minute the help kicks in, and if you get objects right, they will turn green. You’re not just selecting the memories you went over but creating new ones with them, and then these get added to the pool of choices, making it a convoluted mess. Thankfully, this section is short, but afterwards, most of the gameplay is done, and the final 20–30 minutes are just narrative.
The visuals are impressive, featuring a lot of abstract black and white elements complemented by splashes of color. While the female scientist model may not look great, the rest of the visuals are impressive. The art style is exceptional, featuring stunning orchestral melodies and harmonies that evoke strong emotions at precisely the right moments. What helps is that this story is very relatable. Anyone as a teen can relate to what the girl is going through with her grandpa; we have all been there. We have also all beat ourselves up over something we blamed ourselves for that was out of our control. This episode can really hit home for those that have experienced anything similar to the story.
What’s here is a short narrative piece with relatable subject matter. With fantastic music, outstanding visuals, solid writing, and a laser focus on just two characters, we go through a roller coaster of human emotion. Don’t come in expecting a ton of gameplay, and give the matching puzzle at the end some grace, and you might just wipe away some tears .
Onimusha was a third-party PlayStation 2 exclusive franchise that did very well back in the day. I remember seeing these games on shelves for years at Blockbuster and game stores, and they never caught my interest until the third entry. Onimusha can be described as a Samurai-themed version of Resident Evil, featuring 3D polygonal characters set against pre-rendered backgrounds and utilizing tank controls. In 2019 an HD remaster was released that vastly improved the game and made it more playable thanks to modern enhancements. These include things such as up to 1440p resolution, texture filtering, a 16:9 aspect ratio, re-recorded voice acting and soundtrack, and improved controls. You can now control characters with the left analog stick, which removes the tank controls. You can also switch weapons on the fly rather than through menus, like in Resident Evil. This bumps the score up quite a bit and makes it enjoyable to play.
You assume the role of Samanosuke, a samurai whose clan is engaged in a war with Oda Nobunaga. Oda is killed in battle, and he swears allegiance with demons to come back to life and take over Samanosuke’s clan. Given that a quick run-through of the game takes around 4-5 hours (3.5 hours with a walkthrough), the story is extremely thin and lacks interest. There’s not much time to tell a good story. Unfortunately, the characters lack depth and backstory, making it difficult to care about them. The boss designs are cool, but the enemies feel like generic zombie samurais and monsters. The only really cool design is Guildenstern, who feels like something straight from H.R. Giger. The enemy variety is enough for this type of game, as you need to learn enemy attack patterns, so too many enemies would make the game more unbalanced.
The combat consists of a single attack button. You can lock on to enemies and do three-hit combos as well as block. It’s punchy and feels excellent and each of the three weapons feels excellent to use. Enryuu is a heavy flame sword, Shippuu is a swift double sword, and Raizen is a medium-speed short sword. Each weapon has an elemental attack attached to it that does massive damage and uses blue magic, so you only get a couple of uses, and each weapon has its own meter; it’s not a shared pool. You can gain more magic only from enemies dropping orbs or magic fountains near save points. Therefore, you should utilize it sparingly against bosses or to overcome challenging situations. You also use these magic powers to unlock doors to progress through the game. You must upgrade your magic first, or you’ll be stuck and have to grind. Enemies do respawn, which is annoying, but it’s needed to gain more red orbs to upgrade magic and weapons.
Armor isn’t upgradeable, but you can find two different sets of better armor in the game, but they are locked behind some puzzles. Some of the best items and jewels, which are used to upgrade max magic and health, are locked behind puzzle boxes. Books provide clues, but they can be hard to interpret. The map system is quite adequate, allowing you to either consult a labeled map online or create one yourself. Like Resident Evil, you need to memorize landmarks to get around the game, as every room has a fixed camera angle. There is a bonus arena mode in which you descend 20 levels of waves of enemies to get a key to unlock the strongest sword in the game, but it’s not until just before the final boss, so this is mostly useful for second playthroughs. The arena is incredibly challenging, so I recommend playing the game on easy first and then doing another playthrough on a harder difficulty.
Overall, Onimusha was a good attempt from Capcom to create another sub-genre of their Resident Evil games, and it was mostly successful. A simple but solid combat system, fun and challenging bosses, and well-designed levels will give you a fun weekend. Just don’t expect a complicated story and captivating characters.
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Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.