Soundtrack's good, but doesn't play particularly well.

Ya see, each of the weapons in Hellsinger sans Paz have roughly the same DPS (or, I guess, DPB?), so there is really no reason to pick and choose your weapons. And, because damage is dependent on the speed of the background music, enemy kill times can vary pretty drastically from level-to-level. And on top of THAT, most enemies in the game are very spongy (on Brutal). Siege Behemoths, for example, require ~10 seconds of uninterrupted attention to kill at 120 BPM, where they only need ~5 at 240 BM. And remember, all you can really do it look at 'em.

So what do you get? Fairly static combat encounters centered around whittling down enemies and waiting out the damage clock. It also doesn't help that the player's hitbox really big compared to the default FOV, so getting tagged out of nowhere is pretty common.

It's a relief that the songs are pretty okay, because you're gonna be doing a lot of waiting.

I was done with monotonous cadence of combat and stealth by hour four, you tell me the other game is 2.5 times longer than this? Yeah, Miles has drip and doesn't suck up to cops which makes him a much more likeable protagonist than Spider-Man from the sister game, but the feeling that I play a sauceless version of Batman Arkham would never go away. As simple as those games were — Arkham had memorable sequences and odd challenges that required creative application of tools. In comparison, the curviest ball Spider-Man is going to throw is introduce the enemy that has to be dismantled by pressing Y instead of X. "The oatmeal of games" is a very succinct definition here: it's aight, it's not wasteful, but not a single part of my brain is tickled as I consume this media product.

Я не прошел эту игру до конца. Но собирался проходить ее на 100%. Не помню по какой причине я не закончил ее, пройдя ее где-то на процентов 60. Из-за того что прошел довольно далеко, то вряд ли я когда нибудь вернусь в эту игру, чтоб пройти до конца, потому что слишком наскучивает она.

О сюжете не могу полноценно сказать, т.к. не закончил его, но по тому, что успел пройти, могу отметить, что он определенно тянет на середнячок, не более. Начинается всё с банальной мести и заканчивается нелепыми заговорами. Побочных заданий довольно много, но пара-тройку квестов какой-то минимальный интерес из себя представляют. Но в основном в них все сводится к убийству кого-либо, сходи принеси.

Игровая площадь Египта в три раза больше чем в Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag и разделена на пять регионов: Гиза, Мемфис, Сива, дельта реки Нил и Файюм. Визуально игра выглядит просто великолепно. Пирамиды поражают своим размахом. Все же Ubisoft в создании красивых открытых миров очень хороша. Перемещаться по Египту мы можем на лошади. Но все равно иногда даже на лошади, чтоб дойти от точки А до точки Б слишком утомительно, поэтому к середине игры я активно использовал быстрое перемещение. В открытом мире достаточно много контента. Убежища, где надо убить капитана, гробницы, аванпосты, собирательство и т.д. Ну т.е. в игре достаточно гринда. В принципе, в первые часов 15-20 это интересно побродить по миру, повыполнять заданий, позачищать крепости, пособирать предметов и т.д., но потом это дико наскучивает и хочется уже побыстрее все закончить.

В игре появляется много RPG элементов. Главный герой будет получать уровни, прокачивать навыки, а все противники будут иметь свои собственные уровни. В открытом мире мы вправе идти куда захотим, но стоит учитывать наш уровень и требуемый для какой-либо области. Боевая система система стала сложнее, в сравнении с прошлыми частями, каждый враг ведет себя по-разному. Теперь боевка включает в себя: блоки, комбо ударов, увороты, парирование и контр удары. Из-за добавления элементов RPG не все скрытые атаки Байека будут убивать противника. Враг может выжить, даже, если вы попадете ему стрелой в голову, выглядит это забавно. В игре имеется три ветки навыков: Воин, Охотник и Пророк. Навыки Воина отвечают за ведение боев, навыки Охотника отвечают за владение луком, навыки Пророка отвечают за взаимодействие с окружающим миром. К сожалению, в этой части упростили одну из главных механик этой серии игр – это паркур. Байек без каких-либо трудностей может лазать по скалам. Здесь нет преград, чтобы забраться на какую- либо поверхность.

Итог
Минусов у игры предостаточно. В целом, Assassin’s Creed: Origins - это совершенно другая игра, в ней мало чего осталось от первых Assassin’s Creed. Хорошая некогда франшиза превращается в довольное скучное RPG с разными сеттингами и персонажами. Вряд ли я захочу начать проходить ее заново, чтоб завершить до конца, слишком она мне наскучила.
64/100

The life of a dwarf is tough. Born into the depths of the Earth, you're soon sent on a search for precious ore, digging further and further from your home. If you're lucky, you'll strike gold, and shower your town in riches. If not... you'll shower it in less friendly things, like monsters and giant spiders, or flood it with water or lava from an underground stream you accidentally break into. In those events, not only are you sure to perish, but lest your peers act fast, all of them will, too.

Such is the premise of Dwarfs!?, a management game that has you looking after dwarves mining for treasure. The game begins at an underground town placed at the center of a map, from where, one by one, dwarves come out and look for a cave wall to dig into. You can give direct orders to each dwarf, but once those are exhausted, they'll just go their own way and dig wherever they want. And sometimes, they'll find more than they bargained for.

Should your dwarves dig into a monster den, those are set loose and you must quickly deploy and move in soldiers to deal with the threat. Tunnels flooded by lava or water must be responded to even more quickly by sending another dwarf to collapse them with explosives. There's an escalating peril that confers an arcade-y quality to Dwarfs!?: the further you progress, the more dwarves there are and the farther away from home they'll be, so there's a growing chance that one of them will cause a disaster that finally costs you the map -- your goal is to score as high as possible before that happens.

It's a surprisingly fun casual game that had me engaged for a couple dozen hours. It comes with several modes, and while my favorite is the default, F2P one, which gives you a time limit (5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes) to explore the cave as far as you can and maximize your score, I never regretted getting the paid version of the game, as it proved to be great value anyway.

...it could have done without the obnoxious voice acting, though.

Replaying this in 2022 made me realize two things: how this game changed the video game landscape, and how it is so outdated right now. It's hard to review a title that is 13 years old, but I will try to be as objective as possible. The main thing this game excelled at was the gameplay. It's so innovative, and so easy to master. It feels great, and there was no other game like it. Obviously, right now, because of all the improvements we have seen in latter instalments, we can judge this game more. But that doesn't take away from its importance in 2009.
The atmosphere here is also great. The asylum feels alive, and every place you discover helps to the world building. It truly helps the narrative, a narrative that may be simple, but is quite effective. It serves its purpose, basically. The boss fights with different villains do feel rushed, as they were last-minute additions. And the ending, just feels wrong. There is no catharsis, no real payoff, just a big fight with a big villain, not really thematically powerful.
My main problem with this game is the semi-open world. You have all the asylum to explore, but it just feels empty, apart from some Riddler's trophies. It's such a shame, mainly because of the gothic aesthetic, which I quite dig.
All in all, this game had innovative gameplay and an atmospheric experience, but its world and boss fights have really not aged well.

Holds up pretty well for being nearly 20 years old now, it's got a clean minimal design that's kept it from aging too badly. There are a lot of well considered design mechanics, such as baked in shadows or creeping vines to indicate when you should jump away from a wall, or the future visions that assist you with the game's biggest obstacle: figuring out where to jump next.

The platforming action is simple but fun, there's a small core set of traversal actions you can perform, just enough to make the process of reading the environment and chaining these moves together engaging for most of the game. The ability to rewind time is meshes extremely well with the core gameplay, it's a self balancing mechanic, making the platforming exactly as forgiving as it needs to be regardless of your skill (unless you're so bad you blow through all your rewinds, I guess). Rewinding also gives you the freedom to try questionable jumps without fear, a huge benefit for a game where getting stuck could easily make a player just put the controller down.

Another mechanic to highlight is how you heal in this game. Water, narratively speaking, represents life for those who live in the desert, and so of course water heals you. Not just water from the bespoke fountains placed at certain points, but any water you find in the environment as well. Folding an otherwise unremarkable aspect of the environment into the mechanical design of the game is a highlight for me.

Let's talk combat, it's much better than I was expecting, I always assumed with this series that the combat was a box to tick compared to the core puzzle platforming. I was surprised to find a fully fleshed out combat system with a fun core concept: Knock your enemies down and perform a finisher. Unfortunately the combat did end up letting me down a little. "Encounter design" is nothing more than teleporting in more and more enemies who can do no more than orbit around you. A couple times early on my friends and I just assumed they were infinitely spawning and there was some other thing we needed to do, but no there's just a lot of guys to fight. Rewinding time also works in combat, but there's something not as satisfying about watching myself get beat up in reverse compared to a landing back on a ledge safely. It's no wonder that the strongest ability let's you basically skip the rest of the encounter.

I would talk about the story and the characters but the audio mixing was crushed to hell on dialogue so I got only the bare details, doesn't feel like a missed much though.

Good game, would recommend to anyone with an interest in the series.

The boss fights in this DLC are the best they've ever been. It's amazing how the Osaka team went from making the unfair, broken piece of shit that is Mysterious Figure to the best fights in the franchise. The actual story content is somewhat disappointing though as it is mostly a rehash of the last stretch of the game but the final boss is cool and Scala ad Caelum gets the expansion it so desperately needed so I'll give them props for that. The biggest offender besides the latter flaw is the price tag. This is content that should have been in the base game for free, not for $30. If you loved the data fights in KH2:FM or just want a fun challenge definitely get this, preferably on sale though.

+ Perfectly captures controlling cat - adorable and unique
+ Gorgeous dystopian artistic depiction (visual and audio)
+ Short and sweet, doesn't overstay it's welcome

- Very simplistic gameplay (puzzles, fetchquests, etc)
- Platforming totally handsoff (basically QTE), could have worked well as a cinematic platformer
- Story worked better without dialogue, disappointed to find so much exposition once ability to translate is unlocked

I was beginning to think that the mainline Pokemon games weren't for me anymore. Post-DS, none of them have really captivated me or sparked that sense of adventure that I once adored. It wasn't until Arceus that I felt the spark return. The big open environments that turn you loose and let you explore to your heart's content was the breath of fresh air I didn't know I needed for this franchise. I adored my time with it and felt genuine joy playing a Pokémon game again.

So with all that being said, I kept an eye on Scarlet & Violet, hoping it would double down on the sense of openness that Arceus landed on and bring something fresh to the mainline entries. And, yeah! It did! This is my favorite Pokémon game since the DS era, warts and all.

I was going to devote a chunk of this to talking about the game's rough performance, but it would feel disingenuous when I really wasn't bothered by it all that much. I don't want to handwave those issues away of course. Pokémon is a brand that basically prints money now and to release games in such a messy state is really unfortunate. I understand completely when someone bounces off this shit because of the poor framerate or myriad of graphical glitches.

That means I'm probably part of the problem for buying this game day one and rating it as high as I have despite these issues, but I also have such a high level of jank tolerance that Deadly Premonition 2 barely phased me. I don't play games for big pretty graphics and pitch perfect performance (though that can be nice too). I play games to feel something, god damn it!

And Pokémon Scarlet made me feel.

For starters, Paldea as a region kicks ass. The big open map, being able to tackle the three different storylines however you please, the various little dudes hanging out in their habitats: It's all good stuff and taps into that sense of childlike wonder that has permeated these games all the way back to Red/Blue. The removal of random encounters has also made it way more easy to vibe out and catch Pokémon, which is something I never tend to do in these games. I'm no dex-completer but I'm tempted to actually do it this time around. The hangoutitude is too strong.

Which, speaking of hanging out, S/V has my favorite cast of characters in a Pokémon game, full stop. Nemona has one whole cinder block for a brain and it's programmed to constantly crave the dopamine rush of battling, and it's incredibly endearing having a rival that constantly roots for your success and builds you up. It's wholesome shit! The gym leaders this time around are excellent too, with really fun designs and gimmicks to their respective gym challenges. Then you have Team Star who are endearingly cringe throughout their questline (until the end when it becomes surprisingly sweet). Arven is also great, and his string of titan-hunting quests are as invigorating as they are emotionally heavy.

To be honest I really wasn't expecting the story to hit as hard as it did. The three story paths eventually converge into a hell of a finale, and I even got a little emotional at the ending which uh, wasn't expecting that! I won't go into spoilers, but I will say that I really grew to care for all these characters and that definitely impacted the story for the better. There's so much heart spilling out of S/V's narrative that it's hard not to get caught up in it a little.

Anyway, as always, these are just scattered thoughts. I really don't have anything profound to say overall. I just really loved my time with this game. And to make things even more sentimental, my wife picked it up recently and started playing which has been really nice.

It's a damn shame the performance is the way it is, but I'm glad I pushed through it and got properly stuck in. It's one of the most joyous experiences I've had with a game this year and I'll always cherish the time I spent in Paldea.

While earlier Ratchet and Clank games felt like trailblazing inventions, this game is the first of many in the series to feel like a slight iteration on what came before. It comes short in presentation apparently due to troubles with getting online multiplayer done within the same release schedule as the previous game. I definitely feel for the devs and think they still released something good, but I don't think I'll be coming back to this game like the first two.

The core gameplay is solid as always, mostly comperable to R&C2. Weapons feel good to use and have some interesting effects, but definitely don't feel particularly inventive. The biggest change from 2 is a shift from a large arsenal of weapons with one upgrade each to a slim roster with five levels per weapon. Effectively you get more time with each weapon, though by the end of the game you'll have cycled in some new weapons to replace early game ones, much like R&C1. Though many of the late game weapons are recycled weapons from 2, which feel a lot more unique in comparison to such inventive weapons as a plain sniper rifle again, "light cannon" shotgun again, throw bombs for the third game in a row, et cetera.

Where this game really falls flat is level design. Nearly the entire game is structured around shooting gallery levels like Notak (Canal City), Joba (Megacorp Games), and Todano (Megacorp Armory). None ever feel as bold or memorable as Boldan or scenic like R&C1 planets. In fact Kerwan (Metropolis) and Aridia (Outpost X11) from that game return in short and ugly form. Variety in general is low with the least amount of Clank stages, unique level gimmicks, and a lack of space flight stages. Though this game does have the most robust coliseum mode thus far, which is fun.

Music takes a pretty big hit as well, with the series for the first time feeling cliche. Same goes for the story, no longer as dry or funny as the series is known for. Some jokes land but not the same as it used to be, and the general plot is much less engaging. I sill give credit in that this game has the best bosses in the series so far, especially with a final boss on par with the first game's to make up for the limp one in R&C2.