394 reviews liked by Cold_Comfort


I wrote a lot of substantive critique and compliments in a bunch of different places for the few hours i played this as a filler inbetween Rebirth (review pending) and Dragon's Dogma 2 (review probably not happening) but i think the real core of this is just... it's still a combo-focused game, it's got that DMC DNA and all your moves are built around linking them together and styling on enemies, right? But the combos aren't as interesting as the games that it's building off of, because it's shit-scared to push back or make the player feel like they ever failed, and everything you're doing is ultimately just filler inbetween mashing out your cooldowns during stagger - which does the vast majority of the damage in any given fight for about 5% of the brain cells. At that point, why am i not just playing DMC4?

It's a plot about coming together with a combat system about fighting literally with your lone wolf. People fuck a lot and present it as a sign of maturity. I'd rather just get caught up on One Piece.

"Come on guys, I know we're all scared, and we're freaked the fuck out, but we have more than enough to meet quota! It's okay that you don't know where the ship is, follow me!"

The sandworm:

Manages to be an incredibly uneven experience with themes of progression, regression, and alienation, but is somehow not annoyingly self-aware about these issues being so ironically fitting. There are many games in the series I like more than this, but as a showcase of pure excess and indulgence this is fascinating. I love and hate this in about equal measure, but the thing that really frustrates me is my inability to feel strongly about its actual narrative goings-on.

Sure, I shouted and yelled at the stupid overexplained plot twists that make it worse, and I was excited at the setpieces, but it’s scattershot and incapable of selling emotional plot beats or conveying the interesting parts of its themes past expositing about them. Similarly, the underlying mechanics and control scheme are a series best (yes, better than V, fight me) but the dearth of stealth is made more painful when almost nothing is actually tested. Guards are rarely in interesting compositions or threatening patrols, and they’re so spread out that you can get in straight-up gunfights at times and not draw any ire. The few occasions that they break from this (the first part of Act 1, the second half of the final portion of Act 2, the climactic sneaking section in Act 5) are exhilarating and offer the same ass-clenching excitement and complex movement as the very best this series has to offer - as long as you do something other than tranq headshotting, because they decided to give you the MGS2 tranq pistol again except with effectively infinite ammo and a faster tranq time, for some fucking reason.

The narrative has a similar tendency to actively undercut its best elements, and once again you kind of have to go against what it itself is trying to guide you towards to actually fuck with what it’s putting down. MGS’ tonal variety, uncompromising quirkiness, and deeply human immaturity are all important parts of the series, but there’s a usual command of tone that is not present here. The sense of indulgence harms pacing a lot, giving emotional beats plenty of time to go stale before they’re followed up on or just outright ruining moments that the direction is trying to play as something you feel strongly about.

Other games have these issues at times (I’m sorry, Kojima, but I laughed at Otacon shouting “E-E!” when I was twelve and I’ll laugh at it when I’m ninety) but there’s a sense of cohesion and clarity granted by their commitment to a specific narrative and tone. The B&B Unit is the lowest point of mainline MGS because of its failure to do the same. I think what he was going for is conceptually cool; discussing the effects of endless war and using it to convey dehumanization both through literal war machines as well as overt fetishization is not an inherently bad idea, but the final execution fails to evoke any sense of real dissonance or horror because of the comical levels of ogling its blocking and camerawork indulge in. Shoving a woman’s pussy in the player’s face while she cries and vomits doesn’t really make me reflect on much, it just makes me want to fire Kojima out of a cannon into the sun.

The general inability to write women as something knowable or as people the male cast are capable of empathizing with is especially dire when motherhood is another one of the game’s main motifs alongside sensation, alienation, progression, regression, aligning the series timeline, misanthrophy, late capitalism, finding confidence in new technology and new people even as the world goes to hell, and, and, and...

As a whole, MGS4 is incapable of combining those threads, as its thematics are sidelined for plot-driven exertion as it attempts the unification of PS1 Tom Clancy theatrics with a cold Baudrillardian cyberpunk thriller, a sixties Bond homage, and Portable Ops into a single aesthetically, tonally, and narratively coherent series. The Metal Gear Solid Timeline was never a major point of consideration prior to this and the desperate attempt to connect it all is mostly accomplished via the majority of the cast being completely different characters with new designs, motivations, voices, and intentions.

Romance in this game is also handled awkwardly. I’m not touching “a man who shits himself for a living negs a woman into marriage” with a ten-foot pole, but it’s worth noting that Otacon’s grief over losing another love interest isn’t really as much about her loss but more because he’s frustrated that he had another woman die before he could fuck them. I think character assassination is cool, sometimes, and I think even Otacon’s plot beat here is something probably with degrees of intentionality, but it is intensely difficult to read charitably when this work is so unempathetic and afraid of its women.

You know a character whose shift for the worse is handled awesomely? Snake! I fucking LOVE Old Snake. His regression from his MGS2 personality into his frostier, more dick-ass MGS1 characterization makes total sense and the Psyche Gauge is a fantastic way to illustrate his insecurity and fragility. His circumstances are horrific, but the reaction to a joke of his bombing is almost as emotionally devastating as discovering he has six months to live and three months before he turns into a WMD. He combines the parallel threads of MGS and remains narratively engaging, aesthetically satisfying, genuinely hilarious, and emotionally-driven throughout.

The sections that connect most strongly to him and his struggle are generally my favorite parts of the game. Act 1 is really cool for how alienated he is from the conflict, being hot-dropped into “the middle east” (where? go fuck yourself, it’s terrorist country and it’s all indistinguishable to an american like you!) and given zero context for the war. The game incentivizes you to make huge shifts in this battle and tip the scales purely out of convenience to your unrelated efforts, and asking myself what I was really doing there was genuinely cool. The aesthetic language of seventh-gen modern military shooters is used to near-parody levels here and is then completely flipped with the insertion of psychotic MGS shenanigans and the protagonist’s frailty. His relationship with Raiden is the most consistently well-written, well-directed, well-blocked, and well-acted shit in the entire game, on top of Raiden’s stuff in this game being the coolest action in fiction. Act 4’s first few minutes got me genuinely wistful and misty-eyed even as I’d only played MGS1 for the first time earlier in the week*, and the final boss is deserving of its hype.

Basically everything to do with Big Boss and his former friends is a swing and a miss. The retcon introduced with Portable Ops is basically what ruined the plot of literally every single game in the entire franchise from that point onwards and I really wish that Kojima just treated it as non-canon and did his own fucking thing. The Christ and Eden symbolism in Act 3 makes me retroactively dislike similar elements in MGS3, even though that was a good deal less annoying about it. The ending’s emotionality is ruined so fucking hard by 25 minutes of exposition about its connection to MGS3 that I genuinely kind of think it should’ve ended at the expected point for the credits.

MGS4 offers an attempt to conclude a series while trying to build sequel hooks for a new generation of designers to take the reins, using the game’s increasing fascination with the PS3’s hardware and gimmicks as a genuine metaphor for learning to accept the present and future for what they are. It’s agonizing that these few moments of optimism go unrequited. This wasn’t the finale, none of the seeds sown here bore fruit, and instead of entering a new era, the same man made games trapped in their own stifling shadows. Instead of facing the future, the tides of the 2010s subsumed another and made alienated, nostalgic, and ultimately desolate attempts at a follow-up.

*Yes, I played every other mainline before starting 1 and 4. I didn’t grow up with a playstation and only recently could emulate MGS4, please understand :meowcry:

"go to hell" is basic. "i hope the developers of some of your favourite games get bought by epic and have to make subpar versions of other games so fortnite can try to compete with roblox" is smart. it's possible. it's terrifying.

The Finals' servers will close on 08/11/2024. Screenshot this.

Haunted Castle is funny, and you're probably asking, "funny hah hah" or "funny peculiar"? Truthfully I think it goes both ways. I would like to first articulate the "funny peculiar" part as Haunted Castle sticks out from the rest of the games in the series like a particularly sore thumb.

It is of course an arcade game, an attempt at bringing the gameplay of the beloved NES title to the mean streets of the coin-op cabinet at your local pizzeria. You may have noticed it is also called "Haunted Castle" instead of "Castlevania", unlike the JP title Akumajō Dracula where it shares the same name with the Famicom Disk System game (along with later the Super Famicom and Sharp X68000 games, thanks lads I'm sure that's not confusing over there). I could actually wager a decent guess as to why they did this change. You see, the director was a massive fan of the Atari 2600 classic Haunted House, they just had to get their reference in. Remember the bat and the ghost? They in fact guest star in Haunted Castle, that's actually the same characters from Haunted House. I shit you not, my logic is infallible.

The game also bizarrely begins with an obvious Ghosts n' Goblins-esque intro with Simon peacefully walking along with his bride-to-be, only for an explosion to go off in the distance with Dracula flying in out of nowhere to whisk her away to god knows where (Ohio maybe) as Simon gives off a "curse you Dracula!" pose. Official documents state this was supposed to be a retelling of the first game, but I like to imagine that Dracula is constantly trying to inconvenience Simon at every turn. In the next Adventure Simon will be peacefully enjoying a meal at his favorite steakhouse only for it to be revealed that his steak was well done, then Dracula explodes from the background revealing his new ownership of the place and proceeds to put on the most annoying song in the jukebox.

This is where I stop farting about and actually comment on things that legitimately annoy me that have nothing to do with the gameplay, and that's the fact that Simon does not do his famous strut in this game. Instead he looks like he's clutching his tummy and needs to take a massive shit. It turns out there's no bride at all, Simon is just breaking into Dracula's castle to use his bathroom and ruin his plumbing. I am continuing the charade that this is all a childish rivalry between Mr. Belmondo and Mr. Dracula. There is also a second thing that annoys me, and that's that the best upgraded weapon in the game is a sword. That's right, Simon has sold out. He throws out his trademark whip for the most dull weapon to ever hit dullsville. The reason all of these peculiar things happen is most likely because Haunted Castle was originally not supposed to be related to Castlevania at all, and everything kind of got shoehorned in during the middle of development. It was also painfully early in the series' life, so maybe they figured they could just do anything since it was the new hotness and would probably make massive bank.

However! If you wish to make massive bank at the coin-op, maybe you should allow infinite continues! For the original release of these games, one credit was one life. That's all you got, and you could only continue with an additional credit three times, and after that? Do I hear wedding bells? Oh my, another explosion has taken place and Dracula took another one of your wives! Dearest me. Apparently Konami couldn't quite wrap their heads around how to properly gouge people of their money, because I doubt new players are going to bother with this kind of brutality, especially when the North American release features an insanely high damage boost to the enemies. In the original JP release of Haunted Castle, a bone thrown from an enemy skeleton results in a bit of damage. In the American release? One of those bones is now powerful enough to level the broadside of a Nimitz-class Supercarrier. There is also no pot roast in this game, and your health is not refilled between stages. You are given very little room for error.

Astonishing.

To say Haunted Castle is a hard game would be the biggest understatement since they invented the word "understatement". It is a game designed to make you pull your hair out with how often your Boston Big™ hitbox will be nailed by everything in sight as you get to watch a bat pull some spectacular aerial maneuvers to somehow not get hit by your whip and nibble your face off in retaliation. To be frank as Frankenstein, I also think the game just looks ugly. Many sprites feel haphazardly drawn, which gives credence to the game being quickly rejiggered into a Dracula of some kind instead of whatever it was originally going to be. The rock golem that's the boss of stage 4 literally doesn't do anything after you kill it. The game just freezes as the victory jingle goes off and you're given no satisfaction for your patience, no explosions, no decapitation, no nothing. Stage 6 is literally just walking to the left and hoping you can get by all the bats flying at you without the collapsing bridge behind you catching up. It's meant to be a setpiece, but it's just painfully boring and feels like a creative setup to make the final stage quickly, and make it less obvious that this was rushed out to bank off the success of Akumajō Dracula's name.

Now you may be thinking, "where's the funny hah hah"? Well, there's these boulders in stage 2, they make an incredibly cartoonish Scooby-Doo "bonk" sound when they hit the ground.

:)

I feel like I've done nothing but drone on here, but I guess that's what happens when it's both a Castlevania title and a bad game. Now imagine if it were also a fighting game on top of that, wow I wouldn't shut up. Oh god, I just realized something and had a vision please keep it away, oh god, oh jeez, oh god, oh fuck, oh jeez.

honk mimimi ass game. guns and plasmids both feel bad, aesthetic is well realized but falls flat by the time you get to the half-way point. I Too Like Art-Deco, but it's not really interesting past a point, a point Bioshock isn't willing to explore. the story is as nothing as they come, bottom of the barrel Metatextual Filler, "isn't it fucked that you do whatever a game asks?" without any option to push back. like a meaningless Spec Ops: The Line.

Libertarian Gaming.

Wahahahahaaaah, welcome weary car crash survivor, did you have an invitation?! No...?!

begins tearing you apart and laughs hysterically as your body slumps to the ground

Uninvited fuckin' rules. A genuine fun romp of a point-and-click adventure with a similar aura to other such scary/funny NES games like Monster Party, where their objective is to unnerve you until they start saying shit like "that bouquet would look pretty good next to a gravestone". That particular quote stands out for me, because not only does it seem like dark humor out of nowhere as you're just examining things in the dining room, but it's also a clue. In a way that's just this game in a nutshell. Just you bumbling your way around a house while shit just pops off and the narrator hits you with dry wit. Love it.

The original computer versions exist, but they lack music which in itself the silence can be quite a help in making the game spookier, but I really really enjoy the stuff here in the NES port. It really sets the tone of the desolate hoity toity mansion out in a forest, and it's "danger" and "death" themes are legitimately haunting and create a sense of paranoia when you suddenly hear them as you enter what seemed to be an innocent room. The original games also have the infamous "time limit" that I'm not big on, it still exists here in the NES port in some spoiler-ish form but it's pretty easy to figure out. At least your torch isn't going out while you're in some hallway with the game explaining that you died by tripping like a clumsy oaf and smashing your skull into the ground at a high enough velocity to kill you instantly. What a palooka you are.

A few solutions can be a bit preposterous and out of nowhere, but nothing horrendous when you have Sierra games running amok and this game lets you continue from a screen ago, which is downright hospitable. The maze can be a bit confusing to traverse, but it's small enough that you shouldn't take more than five minutes, especially when the game is at least using literal "dead ends" in the form of zombie mobs to keep you on your toes. Genius.

Also, rare moment where I prefer the funny NES art over the original. Muhhahahahah, welcome to the devil house motherfucker! A fun annual replay for me around this time of the year, and I genuinely think of it as a favorite of mine now for the system.

Oh to be a wee diecast car on a little track going through the loop de loop. pinched fingers emote

I played the original Unleashed and left satisfied, but was left with very little memory of it to the point it took me a bit to realize how many of the cars and modules were reused from that for this. You'll see familiar faces like the Tanknator, Surf n' Turf, and the Nitro Bot here again for another round to fill space in the base game while they get the licensing ready for whatever overpriced DLC I bought with the deluxe edition that I probably won't play until next year when I remember I own this. At least Sol-Aire CX4 is still here, I love you Sol-Aire CX4. You have the coolest name.

The racing itself is improved for the better, with F-Zero X side attacks and Twisted Metal 2 jumping that doesn't require a Mortal Kombat input. It helps make the racing more lively and give it some more mustard, but ultimately I never bothered side attacking much, because I never adjusted the difficulty past easy after how bad the rubberbanding was in the last game, plus I'm not going online against strangers because I don't feel like getting wrecked by the people who put a thousand hours into this somehow after only a little over a week, because I guess they don't work full time jobs like I do.

I'd say the biggest improvement is actually the shop. The one in the last game was absolutely abominable, you couldn't refresh the available cars and it took about six ice ages of in-game time for it to finally swap things out. Here there's more available cars to buy, the time for rotation is like a fifth of the original's, and you can refresh for a paltry amount of coins. Thank christ, fuck those loot crates even if they still snuck a slot machine in here.

The campaign is basically the same, except waypoint, elimination races, and overly demanding drift challenges are added to mix things up. As of this posting date, the drift challenge achievo is the lowest percentage of attained on the global chart on Steam. Whether that's people not caring about the campaign, or not wanting to bother with the idiotically high score needed to clear the Unleashed goal for the drift challenges is up for interpretation. There's little story cutscenes in-between that ultimately were aiming for a saturday morning cartoon vibe, but the only thing I remember was the amount of poses the artist kept putting the female character in who kinda reminded me of Totally Spies for some reason. It was basically just my time killer as I listened to new metal albums, because the in-game music still smells and one of the tracks actually legitimately sounded like bozo the clown music to me. I also rectified this for a little by simply putting the Stunt Track Driver soundtrack on with a bit of Fuel by Metallica.

What fucks Unleashed 2 over the most is unfortunately the same thing that fucked the first game for me, and it's how unanimated the game is beyond the track itself. The sense of scale is there, but there isn't enough being done to showcase that more. There's no dogs barking at the cars as they drive by on a curve, there aren't birds flying by overhead, you're not landing in a bucket of sand at the end of the race, and they didn't even bother putting actual blades of grass onto the offroad portions and everything seems to just have minigolf turf. I truly do hate comparing modern games to things I played from my childhood, because I know it makes me sound like a "kids these days" shithead, but I just think it sucks when a 25 year old FMV game does a better job of scale. It's probably just a case of the entire game being built around the track editor, but it's such an unfortunate side effect of it that makes the whole thing feel forgettable in the long run.

Looks nice, but no lasting impression. Sucks man, why does that feel like I just described a ton of AAA games from the last decade?! I have to be wrong...

Hit ten hours of playtime in this game, although How Long to Beat threatens me with another seven or so before the campaign is cleared. When I realised my biggest pop-off was from finding and activating the option to skip puzzles I realised it was best I just tapped out.
I try to be polite and only log the games I've finished, but wow I am not enamoured by how much this glossy boot slurping sim traded my precious time for such little reward. This overly smooth slick and oily control scheme elicits nothing in me. The webslinging has no weight no turbulence no torque, it only serves in favour of noclipping from waypoint to waypoint collecting endless upgrade tokens to unlock exciting new flavours of web, all the while empowering the police state thru ubitowers. Pure slop no matter how gorgeously the sun bakes the building tiles. What is with this Hannah Barbara Voice acting direction also.