CtheIronblooded
The best CoD in years with a really great single player campaign and some damn good multiplayer, the game looks gorgeous and has incredible sound design too. Warzone is also the most fun I've ever had with a BR. 200GB is still a bit ridiculous though.
2015
This game made me realize I want an AI girlfriend.
Also when you go from mad scientist to sad scientist. Yeah he may not be nearly as over-the-top and eccentric, but this game gave Okabe so much more depth and development as a character and he already had an insane amount as it was.
Also when you go from mad scientist to sad scientist. Yeah he may not be nearly as over-the-top and eccentric, but this game gave Okabe so much more depth and development as a character and he already had an insane amount as it was.
Sips Monster
Ahh, they just don't make 'em like this anymore
One of my favorite shooters of all time and an incredibly influential and iconic game. That D-Day mission speaks for itself. Played it a lot with my dad as a kid, was a great bonding experience.
Ahh, they just don't make 'em like this anymore
One of my favorite shooters of all time and an incredibly influential and iconic game. That D-Day mission speaks for itself. Played it a lot with my dad as a kid, was a great bonding experience.
2018
I like God of War 2018 a lot, I'd go far enough to say I love it and it is a great game, but it is not without its flaws. The narrative is well written, compelling, emotional and has some great twists with some of the absolute best moments in the whole series. Kratos gets amazing character development and the whole dynamic between him and Atreus is heartwarming and feels very organic and realistic especially thanks to the incredible voice acting performances of Christopher Judge and Sunny Suljic.
The core combat is lots of fun and quite challenging at times since there is a bit of a Souls feel to it. Despite only having one weapon for half the game the Leviathan Axe can do so much that there's still a lot of variety to the combat and you do eventually get a 2nd weapon halfway through, but at the same time the combat does feel much simpler and watered down compared to old God of War titles, not being able to jump alone drastically reduces combo variety. There's some incredible boss fights, but also far too many reskinned troll mini bosses.
Back when I first played this game 4 years ago I remember saying I enjoyed the open world and RPG elements and I don't know if this is because I played 5 super linear action games back to back or if it is because I have grown even more increasingly disgusted with the checklist gaming open-world design of every modern day AAA game (maybe a little of both), but exploring the world and doing remedial tasks just to find gear you're going to replace in a couple hours or resources for upgrades feels like such a slog and it breaks up the pacing of the story as well.
I can't help but think that God of War 2018 would be a much better and more cohesive game if it was a linear story driven experience akin to the old God of War games or Uncharted and didn't have the shoehorned open-world and RPG elements thrown in just because that's what is popular and what sells games nowadays. However a lot of people will complain if a $60 game isn't long enough so developers add a bunch of pointless filler side content as padding to say 'See our game is 50 hours!' and honestly it is just exhausting and detracts from the experience as far as I'm concerned.
I will still say God of War is one of the best AAA titles to come out in years and still mostly delivers on the hype it generated with a beautiful story, enjoyable combat and breathtaking visuals, but there's still a few pitfalls of modern gaming design tropes that the game would've been better off without and I'm sure that stuff won't even bother a lot of people who play the game, but I guess I'm just too much of a boomer who misses old school game design nowadays.
The core combat is lots of fun and quite challenging at times since there is a bit of a Souls feel to it. Despite only having one weapon for half the game the Leviathan Axe can do so much that there's still a lot of variety to the combat and you do eventually get a 2nd weapon halfway through, but at the same time the combat does feel much simpler and watered down compared to old God of War titles, not being able to jump alone drastically reduces combo variety. There's some incredible boss fights, but also far too many reskinned troll mini bosses.
Back when I first played this game 4 years ago I remember saying I enjoyed the open world and RPG elements and I don't know if this is because I played 5 super linear action games back to back or if it is because I have grown even more increasingly disgusted with the checklist gaming open-world design of every modern day AAA game (maybe a little of both), but exploring the world and doing remedial tasks just to find gear you're going to replace in a couple hours or resources for upgrades feels like such a slog and it breaks up the pacing of the story as well.
I can't help but think that God of War 2018 would be a much better and more cohesive game if it was a linear story driven experience akin to the old God of War games or Uncharted and didn't have the shoehorned open-world and RPG elements thrown in just because that's what is popular and what sells games nowadays. However a lot of people will complain if a $60 game isn't long enough so developers add a bunch of pointless filler side content as padding to say 'See our game is 50 hours!' and honestly it is just exhausting and detracts from the experience as far as I'm concerned.
I will still say God of War is one of the best AAA titles to come out in years and still mostly delivers on the hype it generated with a beautiful story, enjoyable combat and breathtaking visuals, but there's still a few pitfalls of modern gaming design tropes that the game would've been better off without and I'm sure that stuff won't even bother a lot of people who play the game, but I guess I'm just too much of a boomer who misses old school game design nowadays.
2020
Take the exploration of Breath of the Wild and add wannabe NieR combat alongside a generic anime bullshit J-RPG story and never-ending grindy MMO-like content plus awful gacha and mobile game mechanics which exploit and prey on the player and you have Genshin Impact.
1987
People who say Dark Souls is the hardest game ever don't know true pain. This game would be damn near unplayable without the Legacy Collection's 'rewind' feature honestly.
The very first Mega Man game and it features some ridiculously tedious platforming and insanely slippery controls. Pretty awful stage design that has some serious artificial difficulty as well, but there are still a lot of good ideas spread throughout and it has the core mechanics of the series, the game is just very unbalanced and not polished enough to utilize those mechanics properly. Certainly a rough beginning for such an iconic franchise, but at least the music is still sick and the boss fights are charming.
The very first Mega Man game and it features some ridiculously tedious platforming and insanely slippery controls. Pretty awful stage design that has some serious artificial difficulty as well, but there are still a lot of good ideas spread throughout and it has the core mechanics of the series, the game is just very unbalanced and not polished enough to utilize those mechanics properly. Certainly a rough beginning for such an iconic franchise, but at least the music is still sick and the boss fights are charming.
2018
It's nowhere near as bad as people claim, it's certainly not a masterpiece either and is very buggy and repetitive, but I still thought it was interesting for what it was.
This is not a game that is going to be for everyone, it is edgy and artsy at the same time and it can definitely come off as kinda pretentious, especially seeing as how the story is primarily based on notes you have to read and also whether the player knows their Judeo-Christian lore and is actually familiar with the bible.
However the world design and art style alone are worth it for me because it is the best representation of Hell I've ever seen in a game.
This is not a game that is going to be for everyone, it is edgy and artsy at the same time and it can definitely come off as kinda pretentious, especially seeing as how the story is primarily based on notes you have to read and also whether the player knows their Judeo-Christian lore and is actually familiar with the bible.
However the world design and art style alone are worth it for me because it is the best representation of Hell I've ever seen in a game.
If you're an RE fan it'd be pretty hard to not love this game, it has everything you look for in that classic RE formula. Ridiculously cheesy and over-the-top dialogue and action scenes, great level design that is fun to traverse, clever puzzles, tense atmosphere and solid shooting mechanics.
Plus this game turned Wesker into a Matrix villain and that alone gives it bonus points.
Plus this game turned Wesker into a Matrix villain and that alone gives it bonus points.
2019
Capcom were one of the first companies to truly set the standard for remakes with the REmake, but this game raises that bar even higher once again.
Perfect remake keeping everything great about the original while improving the core gameplay and controls in every way possible.
The characters and dialogue are just as charismatic and memorable as you'd expect from Resident Evil, Leon and Claire's big debuts are just as iconic as Chris and Jill's
The story is interesting and expands even further into our knowledge of Umbrella and the T/G virus. Also despite Annette being kinda crazy she is also an antagonist that is easy to sympathize with.
The puzzles are just as creative and fun to solve as always and the level design is absolutely fantastic especially the Raccoon City Police Station
The atmosphere is super intense, being chased around the entire police station by Mr X in non-scripted sequences is one of the most anxiety inducing things I've experienced in any game (especially when you have to solve puzzles while dealing with him) and is absolutely terrifying in the best way possible.
If you enjoy horror games in even the slightest capacity, you owe it to yourself to play this one because it's godly and easily among the best modern horror games I've played
Perfect remake keeping everything great about the original while improving the core gameplay and controls in every way possible.
The characters and dialogue are just as charismatic and memorable as you'd expect from Resident Evil, Leon and Claire's big debuts are just as iconic as Chris and Jill's
The story is interesting and expands even further into our knowledge of Umbrella and the T/G virus. Also despite Annette being kinda crazy she is also an antagonist that is easy to sympathize with.
The puzzles are just as creative and fun to solve as always and the level design is absolutely fantastic especially the Raccoon City Police Station
The atmosphere is super intense, being chased around the entire police station by Mr X in non-scripted sequences is one of the most anxiety inducing things I've experienced in any game (especially when you have to solve puzzles while dealing with him) and is absolutely terrifying in the best way possible.
If you enjoy horror games in even the slightest capacity, you owe it to yourself to play this one because it's godly and easily among the best modern horror games I've played
Igavania is back and better than ever! This is essentially Symphony of the Night part 2.
Let me start off by saying basically if you got a hundred Symphony of the Night fans in a room to make a checklist of all the things they ever wanted in a SOTN sequel, this game would check all the boxes and I could not be more proud to have backed this project.
It's got the tactical soul system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, the NPC quests from Order of Ecclesia, and all the gameplay gimmicks from SotN. By gimmicks I obviously mean special attacks for weapons, joke items, references to SotN (I.E. the Librarian/Alucard, etc). there's a pair of Toy Boots that squeak when you run around in them, for example. There's a pretty nice, not-too-complex crafting and cooking system which reminds me of Curse of Darkness and all of the food items give you a permanent stat boost upon your first time consuming it which is a cool mechanic.
All the different 'Shard'/Soul abilities are able to be leveled up by accumulating more than one and stacking them and they can be upgraded further through crafting. There's transformation abilities, I literally got this shard that lets you transform into a demon Playboy Bunny just recently. There's guns right off the bat and you can actually create a gun build with specific passive Shards and gun-buffing equipment. There's shields, sort of, and they're actually viable to use. Your character model is customizable with new gear cosmetics and haircuts to equip. The game also has some tongue-in-cheek elements, there's a giant horned demon cat called the "Nyabon" or something like that and a lot of the NPC quests like 'Avenge the death of Insert name here' say classic Castlevania character names like Richter, Simon, Trevor etc basically saying 'Konami killed them lol'
The story writing is classic cheesy and melodramatic Castlevania, but by no means does that make it bad and all the voice actors are super professional and kept me entertained the entire game truly nailing their performances.
Oh and Michiru Yamane's score is just as phenomenal as always. It's very stylistically similar to SOTN (for obvious reasons) with tons of piano, harpsichord and violin in most areas but there's some areas of the castle that have a bit more emphasis on metal/rock guitar melodies which have a very neo-classical power metal style about them and the sound quality is just simply fantastic seeing as how they got a real full orchestra to record and play her music this time.
Honestly if you're a fan of Symphony of the Night/Aria of Sorrow/Order of Eclessia you'd honestly be a fool to not pick this up especially considering its base price is only $40 USD.
IGA IS BACK, BABY!
Let me start off by saying basically if you got a hundred Symphony of the Night fans in a room to make a checklist of all the things they ever wanted in a SOTN sequel, this game would check all the boxes and I could not be more proud to have backed this project.
It's got the tactical soul system from Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, the NPC quests from Order of Ecclesia, and all the gameplay gimmicks from SotN. By gimmicks I obviously mean special attacks for weapons, joke items, references to SotN (I.E. the Librarian/Alucard, etc). there's a pair of Toy Boots that squeak when you run around in them, for example. There's a pretty nice, not-too-complex crafting and cooking system which reminds me of Curse of Darkness and all of the food items give you a permanent stat boost upon your first time consuming it which is a cool mechanic.
All the different 'Shard'/Soul abilities are able to be leveled up by accumulating more than one and stacking them and they can be upgraded further through crafting. There's transformation abilities, I literally got this shard that lets you transform into a demon Playboy Bunny just recently. There's guns right off the bat and you can actually create a gun build with specific passive Shards and gun-buffing equipment. There's shields, sort of, and they're actually viable to use. Your character model is customizable with new gear cosmetics and haircuts to equip. The game also has some tongue-in-cheek elements, there's a giant horned demon cat called the "Nyabon" or something like that and a lot of the NPC quests like 'Avenge the death of Insert name here' say classic Castlevania character names like Richter, Simon, Trevor etc basically saying 'Konami killed them lol'
The story writing is classic cheesy and melodramatic Castlevania, but by no means does that make it bad and all the voice actors are super professional and kept me entertained the entire game truly nailing their performances.
Oh and Michiru Yamane's score is just as phenomenal as always. It's very stylistically similar to SOTN (for obvious reasons) with tons of piano, harpsichord and violin in most areas but there's some areas of the castle that have a bit more emphasis on metal/rock guitar melodies which have a very neo-classical power metal style about them and the sound quality is just simply fantastic seeing as how they got a real full orchestra to record and play her music this time.
Honestly if you're a fan of Symphony of the Night/Aria of Sorrow/Order of Eclessia you'd honestly be a fool to not pick this up especially considering its base price is only $40 USD.
IGA IS BACK, BABY!
1988
There are actually people that think this game is better than XIII and that just boggles my mind.
Cool characters and interesting story, but the gameplay is easily the worst in the series and makes it damn near unplayable.
Cool characters and interesting story, but the gameplay is easily the worst in the series and makes it damn near unplayable.
2020
I never played the original so there will be no comparisons from me in this review what I will tell you is that even having never played the original Demon's Souls still stands firmly on its own and managed to wow me quite a bit at times.
Let me start with the graphics because this game truly blew me away on that front, this is without a doubt the best looking and best sounding game I've ever played. The textures, the facial animations, the particle effects when casting magic, the sound design for every single sword swing, it's all just amazing and perfect in every way and brings the kingdom of Boletaria to life in ways never seen before. Truly a next gen experience in its purest form.
The story is set in the kingdom of Boletaria, a kingdom consumed by a dark being called The Old One, following its release through the use of forbidden Soul Arts. Players take on the role of a hero brought to Boletaria to kill its fallen king Allant and pacify The Old One. That's the gist of it anyways, but much like Dark Souls it goes much deeper than that and there's quite a bit of philosophy in the story as well if you choose to dive into that.
The characters are all colorful and memorable, much like all future Souls games there's a small cast of NPC characters that you can rescue in different parts of the world and they will help you in your mission by teaching you various spells. The NPCs have vibrant personalities and great (sometimes tragic backstories)
Gameplay wise it's very obvious the game was before Dark Souls because it's even more clunky and rough around the edges, as I said before I never played the original, but I read the developers wanted to make the game as authentic as possible, the attack and roll animations are super slow, there's an inventory weight mechanic, climbing ladders is also slow as hell etc this remake despite being a game from 2020, plays identically to the 2009 version, for better or worse. So if you're a Souls veteran the game will definitely feel outdated by the more polished sequels, it's still a lot of fun to play though and there's plenty of character build variety for good replay value.
The level design has so much variety and simply looks incredible, from the grimdark Boletarian palace, the LOTR like crypts in the Shrine of Storms to the Lovecraftian Tower of Latria, so much creativity oozes from every world. This game has no bonfires though and the only checkpoints are boss archstones so running those level gauntlets to get from boss to boss can be insanely brutal, but even though I died many times I never got tired of running through the same areas so much simply due to how breathtaking the environments are.
The boss and enemy design is disgusting and grotesque in the best way possible, but the actual boss fights are very hit or miss to me, some are really cool and challenging, but most are not that hard at least if you're a veteran of the franchise (I'm sure they were mindblowing back in the day though), they might still give you a lot of challenge if it is your first Souls game, but props to this game for having one of the coolest final bosses of the series though. Oh and the bosses have some great lore tied to them as always too.
Demon's Souls is a blast from the past and showcases just how much the Souls series has evolved over the years, even at its roughest form there's plenty of shades of From's future work all over it and due to its interesting world, colorful NPCs, tight combat, vicious bosses and masterfully designed levels, whether you're a newcomer or a veteran Demon's Souls is a journey worth taking and I highly recommend taking it.
Let me start with the graphics because this game truly blew me away on that front, this is without a doubt the best looking and best sounding game I've ever played. The textures, the facial animations, the particle effects when casting magic, the sound design for every single sword swing, it's all just amazing and perfect in every way and brings the kingdom of Boletaria to life in ways never seen before. Truly a next gen experience in its purest form.
The story is set in the kingdom of Boletaria, a kingdom consumed by a dark being called The Old One, following its release through the use of forbidden Soul Arts. Players take on the role of a hero brought to Boletaria to kill its fallen king Allant and pacify The Old One. That's the gist of it anyways, but much like Dark Souls it goes much deeper than that and there's quite a bit of philosophy in the story as well if you choose to dive into that.
The characters are all colorful and memorable, much like all future Souls games there's a small cast of NPC characters that you can rescue in different parts of the world and they will help you in your mission by teaching you various spells. The NPCs have vibrant personalities and great (sometimes tragic backstories)
Gameplay wise it's very obvious the game was before Dark Souls because it's even more clunky and rough around the edges, as I said before I never played the original, but I read the developers wanted to make the game as authentic as possible, the attack and roll animations are super slow, there's an inventory weight mechanic, climbing ladders is also slow as hell etc this remake despite being a game from 2020, plays identically to the 2009 version, for better or worse. So if you're a Souls veteran the game will definitely feel outdated by the more polished sequels, it's still a lot of fun to play though and there's plenty of character build variety for good replay value.
The level design has so much variety and simply looks incredible, from the grimdark Boletarian palace, the LOTR like crypts in the Shrine of Storms to the Lovecraftian Tower of Latria, so much creativity oozes from every world. This game has no bonfires though and the only checkpoints are boss archstones so running those level gauntlets to get from boss to boss can be insanely brutal, but even though I died many times I never got tired of running through the same areas so much simply due to how breathtaking the environments are.
The boss and enemy design is disgusting and grotesque in the best way possible, but the actual boss fights are very hit or miss to me, some are really cool and challenging, but most are not that hard at least if you're a veteran of the franchise (I'm sure they were mindblowing back in the day though), they might still give you a lot of challenge if it is your first Souls game, but props to this game for having one of the coolest final bosses of the series though. Oh and the bosses have some great lore tied to them as always too.
Demon's Souls is a blast from the past and showcases just how much the Souls series has evolved over the years, even at its roughest form there's plenty of shades of From's future work all over it and due to its interesting world, colorful NPCs, tight combat, vicious bosses and masterfully designed levels, whether you're a newcomer or a veteran Demon's Souls is a journey worth taking and I highly recommend taking it.
2007
Such a crazy fever dream of a game. A Fire Emblem styled tactical RPG that is set in an alternate historical WWII setting drenched in the occult with werewolves, vampires, dragons and even featuring real life war figures and Hitler himself as the main villain? Seriously, what kind of drugs was the writer on when they came up with this? Sounds like the most ridiculous 80s action B-movie ever. The gameplay is pretty unbalanced, but I still remember having a lot of fun with it back in the day and the game just has too many unique and cool things about it for me to dislike it. Truly nothing else out there like it from a thematic point of view. Leaving this trapped on the 360 is a crime.
Digimon Tamers + Persona/SMT + Gurren Lagann = Cyber Sleuth
Kyoko best girl.
Kyoko best girl.
2008
I had a friend back in high school who absolutely loved this game. Man, what the fuck was wrong with that guy?