Bio
The CEO of prestige games, and probably the biggest open world game enjoyer you know.
Personal Ratings
1★
5★

Badges


Trend Setter

Gained 50+ followers

Pinged

Mentioned by another user

Listed

Created 10+ public lists

Elite Gamer

Played 500+ games

GOTY '23

Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

Adored

Gained 300+ total review likes

1 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 1 year

Donor

Liked 50+ reviews / lists

Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

Well Written

Gained 10+ likes on a single review

Popular

Gained 15+ followers

Gamer

Played 250+ games

GOTY '22

Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event

On Schedule

Journaled games once a day for a week straight

Best Friends

Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

Noticed

Gained 3+ followers

Liked

Gained 10+ total review likes

Gone Gold

Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page

N00b

Played 100+ games

Favorite Games

Shenmue
Shenmue
The Last of Us Part II
The Last of Us Part II
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Ghost of Tsushima
Ghost of Tsushima
Ico
Ico

542

Total Games Played

036

Played in 2024

045

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Rise of the Ronin
Rise of the Ronin

Mar 26

Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30
Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30

Mar 23

50 Cent: Bulletproof
50 Cent: Bulletproof

Mar 21

Sega Rally Revo
Sega Rally Revo

Mar 21

Dragon Ball Z: Budokai
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai

Mar 21

Recently Reviewed See More

Checked out some DBZ stuff in honor of the GOAT's passing. I'm mostly familiar with Budokai 3, never played this one before.

I do like the story mode's structure, presenting the story just like the anime, with the intros and recaps and such. But I wish there's more of it, the mode is so brief and skips a lot of cool stuff from the original story.

This is one of the earlier PS2 DBZ games, and even then the game still looks pretty nice. The 3D art style is well directed, and sufficiently matches the anime and manga's aesthetics. It definitely would have blown my mind away if I was a DBZ fan back when this came out.

The gameplay is pretty rough in this one. I never liked the way you do special attacks in these games, I wish you can just input a quarter circle forward or something like that for a Kamehameha instead of the punch button sequence. But beyond that, the feel of the controls is just a bit off, it's can be sluggish and awkwardly unsatisfying at times. Not to mention the game still lacks some visual oomph that the later DBZ games would have.

Budokai 1 is a decent start that would set up some of the best DBZ games ever made, and that's all it really needed to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to continue my DBZ binge.

I was thinking about what my ideal FPS game would be like, and I decided to revisit this game since I remember being really fond of it. I think I'm one step closer to an answer: I love FPS games that takes full advantage of the level of intimacy and individuality that the first person perspective provides, rather than just being a well designed shooter. And 2033 is a great example of that.

There's just hardly a moment in this game where I wasn't so invested in its world. The dank, dark tunnels of the metro have an incredibly tasteful atmosphere. And the icy ruins of the wasteland above are nowhere near as dead as they seem. The man and monsters are plain as day, but there's also more than that. Places might not remember people, but we would like them to, and we leave echoes for others to stumble upon. The game has an excellent, grounded take on the supernatural, and it makes exploration so interesting. I'm especially impressed by the sound design in certain sections, it works wonders with the first person perspective to establish this constant feeling of walking on grounds you don't belong, and are barely hanging on to.

Then you have the more unique and gimmicky mechanics. Being able to wipe your gas mask from all the blood and filth covering it, and even replace it when it's cracked beyond saving, to the point of limiting your visibility; stealthily turning light sources off to better hide your tracks; manually pumping your pneumatic weapons; and so on. Doing all of these in first person, it makes you understand the kind of life these Metro folks live daily. Having to scavenge decaying tech and improvising from whatever they have is a classic post-apocalypse trope, and 2033's take on it feels more than distinct enough to leave an impression.

But the game is still a shooter at it's heart, and I think it's more than good enough on that front. The overall gunplay can be quite clunky, but the impact and feel of most of the weapons are quite good, and there's a decent degree of freedom that the game gives you in approaching a good amount of the encounters.

Lastly, I do have to say that the silent protagonist approach, writing and English VO can disappoint what the story is trying to do. There's a slight Broken English feel to it all. But I think the game compensates for that with the collectible diaries. Written from the perspective of the main character, they are better written and provide a much needed dose of personality to the storytelling.

All in all, 2033 is a must-play in its genre: a slower-paced, immersive, narrative driven FPS game. Like the people of Metro, it makes the most of its limited budget and scope, and despite rough edges all over the place, it lives on.

Been waiting for months for the PS+ port to show up. It was trademarked sometime ago, and I was really excited to revisit this one. This was definitely one of the most technically impressive titles for the PSP back when it came out, and I remember having a lot of fun with it. The funny thing is that I couldn't remember if I actually finished it or not. And after this latest playthrough, I'm pretty sure that I did. I just forgot because the game kinda gets more forgettable as it goes on.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. There's one thing that I would like to stress first: don't play this on Hard! It's way less fun than on Normal. The enemies hit too hard, and they're also very spongy. It leads to frustrating moments more often than not.

A big part of that is because of how the gunplay works. Since it's originally a PSP game, there are design decisions that comply with the limitations of the control scheme. The game is mostly about how you maneuver around cover, dodging projectiles like a bullet hell game, while still keeping your lock-on reticule on the enemies that deserve the most priority. The guns that you'll use the most have bullet spread that gets worse if you keep firing for too long, so you're encouraged to burst fire.

A unique feature of the original game is that you can use a Dualshock 3 as a controller, and that feature is what drives the control scheme on this PS+ version. Problem is, the lock-on is not accessible in this mode, and the analog aim controls are, at best, pretty sluggish, even after I tweaked the settings. I recently played Resistance 3 just to compare, and it feels so much better even without tweaking the controls. Here, it always feels like you're fighting against the controls on some level, especially when you're fighting the more nimble enemies. This is, thankfully, not too big of a problem on Normal, because it's quite forgiving, but it's still worth a heads up.

In the main campaign, you'll be going through the ruins and lairs of Europe that has been infested and rebuilt to the Chimera's needs. Level design wise, it definitely gets same-y pretty quick, since most of it are small tunnels and corridors. It's nowhere near as exciting as, let's say, Resistance 3's trek through post-Alien invasion America, which at least had way more setting variety. Most of the "puzzles" and objectives are pretty basic too. I can forgive the more limited level sizes since it's a PSP game, but they can do better on the rest. I do admit that the collectibles are well hidden, and satisfying to find.

Speaking of, the collectibles are mostly extra lore notes about various aspect of the world, and honestly, I like reading these way more than experiencing the main story. An example of this is regading Grayson's character: in the story he's mostly portrayed as an asshole that doesn't really have anything interesting about him, but the collectibles can sometimes show a more personal side of him that makes him much more likeable. The main story simply fails on most of what it tries to do, while the collectibles deliver interesting perspectives and details of the world that we don't get to actually experience in gameplay.

Now, I do realize that this review has been mostly me badmouthing this game. But I do enjoy it overall, despite all its flaws. I just like messing around with all the guns in this game, Bend did a decent job of continuing the series' staple of having fun weapons. I love that you can literally dodge projectiles in slow-mo with the sniper. And the manual redirect ability for the missile launcher is pretty sick. I also liked the enemy variety here, even if the game kinda loses steam with the encounter designs later on.

Playing this game (and also dipping back to Resistance 3 for a bit) made me realize how cool Resistance is as a series. It might not seem that cool, looking from the outside, but Insomnia poured a lot of thought creating this 1950s Alien Invasion story that manages to feel distinctive and evocative enough, while wearing its influences on the sleeves. I particularly see a lot of Half-Life 2 influence in this game (just look at the Rotterdam levels, heavy City 17-vibes), seems like Bend are big fans of that game haha. Anyway, I would love to see this series return. Lots of old Sony franchises worth reviving, and this is one of them.

P.S. one of the last cutscenes in the game was so horribly compressed and blurry, that it reminded me of the cover art of Germs: Nerawareta Machi. I thought it was neat haha