ok. so. I've been on a streak of these story games after realizing with telltale walking dead that sometimes games without shotguns can be awesome. It did sort of have this barrier of the whole setting being .. medieval times in some buttfuck country I never heard of set dozens of years before I was even born. Medieval times is a pretty boring setting. If you ask me, the only three settings I will accept are modern day, zombie apocalypse, or the cold war. Games CANNOT be set in the future because they will be outdated when we get to the time the game alleges it's set in. It also cannot be set in space because there's no sound in space so I have to turn off my volume every time for full immersion and its so lame. My most important rule is games cannot be set in medieval times because I don't want motherfuckers saying "thy, thee, thine, thou, wasn't, shakespeare," and other medieval words. Also I can't help but think it just really smells bad there.

But you know what, I gave this one a try. And I'm glad I did because despite the boring, lame setting and naming all these old monks from like 1500 in conversation as if I'm supposed to know who they are, I found peace within the world through the protagonist, Andy. You see, Andy is a visitor and an artist. You play as him and choose what he says. What I did was I self inserted as him and I thought I was him. So when people said "oh yeah saint reactine from the denzel mountains said pablo neruda and max brooks of loeb city went to the pottage shop to eat pottage" (authors note: pottage is like beans sort of ) both me and Andy can nod our heads and pretend to know wtf is going on.

You see I'm a big fan of games that make me feel smart without having to be smart or do anything. There are no real puzzles in this game or any way to fail, it's completely linear and no matter what you do you win. But it makes me feel smart because I didn't know it was impossible to lose. So when I kept winning, I felt sooo really sodding smart. (Authors note: sodding is ancient slang for fucking) Andy quickly became one of my favourite characters in recent memory because of how relatable he is not just in his fish outta water attitude in the town, but his personal arc also really resonated with me. Anyone can relate honestly. The game says a lot about passions and goals love and people and building on the past and the economy's relation with art and the passage of time and faith and a whole lotta fancy pants college degree bullcrap but I won't get into that because I want YOU to get into it.

Yeah you play the game yourself and comprehend the themes and subtext and stuff. That's gonna be real fun for you. The side characters are also super fleshed out and seeing these guys change over the course of the game was amazing and I was really really invested, which is surprising especially for such a short -ish game, I have to admit its very hard to get me to care for a whole town of people but I did even if sometimes I couldn't pronounce their medieval ass names. There's a whole lot of them and it normally would be easy for them to feel really similar visually and personality wise considering there's no voice acting but the art style is so outta this world that not only does everything look smooth and the animations feel real and sick and awesome, but each npc has their own look and style where you from a glance can almost tell what they're like just from their face and what they're doing and their posture or whatever. I had some complicated ass relationships with these townspeople. And I think that's really awesome.

One thing I did think was sort of underdeveloped was the actual quest design and time passage mechanics. Your quests are always very similar, go here and ask this person about this. Like I get it there's no funny business its a straight up realistic medieval times thing, and there are some exceptions where the quest can be action packed... But yeah it can get boring to make a break in the case and my next goal is to talk to these three people about this topic and gather info, which I guess is the point since you're solving a murder mystery but, whatever. Aside from the variety I just wish the actual stuff was more robust and clear. Like ok this quest tells me to talk to this guy. I go to the guy. He gives me a "wassup Andy" and I can't respond. Is the quest broken? did I come at the wrong time? who knows. The in game journal ain't tellin me jack squat. I also thought the pacing could be off at some times, some chapters felt very long and some felt like they were over in a second. But if those tiny ass baby ass complaints are all I got then I don't see why I can't bestow upon this game one of elk's highest honours, the coveted, the exclusive, the cool and badass 5/5. Yeah. Hell yeah.

good night!

EDIT: Josh sawyer blocked me on twitter so im dropping my rating of this game. Thanks for understanding.

u know the saying "this isn't remotely good" ? well, this game is remotely good. I respect it a lot for completely 180ing and changing pretty much everything about the metroid formula, I like the scarcity of health drops making it feel like i have to be more careful, I like how we finally get to see what samus talks like, (she uses the word "must" like 6 times in one text box once, it was interesting) and I like how they kept the computer so ingrained and prevalent to the game. All of this is in theory of course. This game was really irritating to me, I didn't really enjoy the progression. I liked the bosses (most of them), I liked the areas, I liked the music, and I loved the art. I just feel this isn't really what I wanted. The SA-X was also kind of a let down for how cool of an idea it was. But the thing that interests me is how cool the themes are. The streamlined-ness and linearity and taking orders from a computer is supposed to be irritating, to contrast with how free the other games were. Samus is supposed to die in 3 hits to a random bee, because it shows that we don't have our armour anymore. Bravo. It's so thematic, it reminds me of dark souls 2. Annoying spider boss, save companion that won't shut up, and the coolest part being the dude that pursues you.

so i wonder what i should play next, metroid dread or metroid prime 2? dread would continue my 2d streak but prime 2 i can emulate and wont have to spend any money on. Plus I found this thing called primehack which gives metroid prime 1,2, and 3 keyboard and mouse controls. I'll give it some thought.

I look at this game from 25 quintrillion years ago and think why can't stealth games have this awesome level design anymore? seriously. As much as I love MGSV's mechanics and openness to different approaches, all the infiltrate-able bases are little camps like Kojima did the modern artist thing of getting a canvas and just flicking random colors onto there, but instead of paint, it's little tents where enemies stand. Thief, in comparison, is like a collaboration between Leonardo da Vinci and the guy who drew the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. Rooms, corridors, tunnels, and it's not just so you can navigate it. There's verticality that you can scale with the rope arrow, or torches you can douse with water arrows. The best part is the variety of the areas themselves. Not just castles and mansions, but tombs that are better than any modern tomb raider, jails that you have to break a buddy out of, a house specifically designed to make you go insane, everything. And it's all pure awesome.

Would honestly have been 5 maybe if not for some specific levels being bad—thieves guild. Yeah, I took a full star off for thieves guild. Worst level ever. I don't even want to get into it because this level feels like it was lifted out of another game it's so uncharacteristically bad. If I was a thief and I had a guild, I would not make my guild's base hidden under a casino that is under a password-protected restaurant, connected by sewer tunnels just to hide an ugly stupid vase. But seriously if you even have a passing interest in the concept of video games you have to play this.

First off before I start I gotta say this game has the best graphics ever. Like to this day. It came out in like 2015 and I played the game on low graphics and it's still the most graphically impressive game ever. Not even just the textures or how the rain perfectly shines on batman's cape or all that stuff but the batmobile can crush things as it goes through and the destructibility is nothing short of awesomesauce. it's insane. OK, now we can get on with the review.

Combat is the best it's ever been. It feels amazing to play, and it better be since they've had like 10 years to refine the formula.
Stealth is also great because of how the AI works and how many awesome gadgets you're given. And because the AI learns the way you play, especially against a certain enemy type you have to shake up your strategies but it still feels fair and you're able to do it in any way you like. It's pretty sandboxy and the artform that I find I can most easily express myself in is batman predator rooms.

But man the batmobile is the weakest part of the game. It's not that it's bad, it's one of the most fun vehicles ever, and the insane destruction is very well done. It's also really fun to race with in the optional mode in the menu, and the skins for it are awesome. Do you know my problem with it? the tank mode is used way too much. And don't get me started on the tank stealth parts. Yeah, you heard me. Tank. Stealth. Parts. Parts plural with an S. You - WHILE DRIVING THE TANK... sneak up behind other tanks. And then you charge up your special tank stealth attack and you shoot. I remember being confused with assassin's creed 4 boat stealth but this is a literal tank. If you asked 7 billion people what the least discrete vehicle is, 6 billion of them would say tank, 500 million of them would say a giant bat-themed tank, and the other 500 million were the developers of this game who all said unicycle.

the story is alright, you can tell Dini's not here and some of the characters feel oddly written. Lots of odd choices and weird things that occur in the story. As well as the story having no real climax. It kinda fizzles out after a cutscene. There are no real boss fights either. There are like 2 in the main story. The side missions were mostly good, except one that feels like they rushed super hard to get this character in the game. Totally wasted, could've been a whole thing instead of that mine disarming one (that 1 sucked).

The game's still great, the puzzles are fun, combat and stealth are the best they've ever been, the graphics are very good, driving and gliding and grappling around Gotham feels natural, all the other playable characters are cool, the sidequests are mostly awesome, but it falls short of city and asylum for me due to the lower quality in story and writing, lack of cool boss fights, overuse of tank battles, and anticlimactic ending,. Thanks for reading. I'll do the expansions now and spend the rest of my life doing the batman 89 races. CYA!

An alternate history heightened reality retelling of Julius Caesar’s death with capcom anime shit? And you play as both Agrippa and Augustus in different gladiator games and stealth puzzle sections? YAY!

I really like the combat in this game. It’s so ahead of it’s time that it’s still ahead of our time. Cutting off your enemy’s limbs and picking up said limbs and beating them to death with it is fun and all, but try german suplexing an enemy into a pit of spikes or a pit of fire or into a tiger. Breaking arms, toying with them til they beg for mercy on their knees and then decapitating them and showing their head to the cheers of your adoring audience. The audience in the gladiator parts was sick, because it’s like a gameplay mechanic that ties into the DMC style meter this game has. You keep your meter high, and you do a taunt, the audience will throw you weapons or food for healing. Certain tricks get you more points on the meter, and they can get really specific and they have fun names. Yes, the names are fun. There’s one for letting a female enemy stomp on you repeatedly. I looked that one up. I swear I didn’t do that ingame. Lol.

The different modes can get VERY intense, and many times I actually screamed out loud like a caveman upon finishing a level. They also just added a chariot mode that completely changes everything, used it for like 5 missions and dipped. Games like this just used to do shit for funsies, yknow? I’m sure theres some funsie parts in new games that i haven't played but i bet they were like “yo we should do chariots” “that sounds sick lets do it.” The boss fights are also all super unique and fun, mostly the ones in the gladiator games. Cause the ones outside there’s no audience to throw you cheese. But the non audience ones happen near the end so you’ll be big and strong.

The stealth is very hit or miss and it’s mostly miss. It usually has a very specific and obvious predetermined path you gotta take, it’s linear, the guards are braindead, but there’s something really special about this stealth that I haven't seen in any game, really. This does have a simple hitman-style disguise system, and this game does the suspicion/enforcer mechanic better than ANY hitman game. These words come outta my mouth like sandpaper but I got to give flowers where flowers are due. Sometimes when you’re disguised, say, as a soldier. And you pass another soldier, he isn’t just gonna do the absolution onward thing of being an enforcer and seeing through your disguise immediately. He will be suspicious and ask you a question. They can be something personal, making an awareness check on the player, or on rare occasions just a quiz on roman history lol. Depending on your answer you could talk your way out of it, raise the suspicion meter, or just give away your identity. I thought that was so involved and fun. This one time, you’re disguised as a thief and you’re trying to go past, but this guy won’t let you, even if you’re disguised. I saw one of the thieves had a facemask and I knocked that one out and took it. When I went back he thought I was him, and let me through. I thought I made it til I heard the “WAIT.” That’s what guards say when they wanna ask you a question. But he just called out and said “be careful, okay?” I’m very glad I only just knocked out the mask guy because these two must be very very close friends.

This game’s approach to stealth seems almost pranky and mischievous. Sometimes you need to access an area that’s off limits to you, and you have to distract the guard. There are some hilarious puzzles you need to do, like throwing an apple at a guard and framing some innocent apple eating bystander and getting the guard to chase the innocent apple eating bystander. There’s more but I won't go into it. Oh, one more thing, this game’s slipping mechanic is so funny. There’s banana peels and jars of liquid you can smash that leave a slippery spot. For some reason if you yourself slip on it, then you’ll fall and get back up instantly. Guards, however, get knocked out. So this one time I just smashed a honey jar by a doorway, got myself spotted, and waited til they all ran in and slipped and fell. I just realized this about myself but I love prankster stuff. My favourite movie is dirty work, my favourite show is impractical jokers, my favourite game genre is stealth, which i guess is evil pranks. Something this reminds me of is neighbours from hell, where you sneak around a guy’s house and just do stuff to him. You hide in his closet and wait til he goes to the bathroom and get an egg from his fridge and put it in the microwave or on his chair. And in the sequel he goes on vacation and you fuck with him on there too. If anyone has prank game recommendations let me know.

This game also has a small bunch of hub worlds that you can go to between big missions. In the market you can buy random shit for Octavian’s room, stuff like rugs and dartboards and tables and couches and tigers and maids. There's the forum where the civilians gather and you can do fun stuff. Idk. There’s fun stuff to do. I'm gonna talk about the story now.

The story is really funny. Classic 2005 bad voice acting, half naked female side character, (tbf the male protag has no shirt or pants for most of the game so she's actually more clothed than he is) and I really liked how it took itself seriously and how well the cutscenes were directed, so it was always engaging. Even if the story wasn’t great. I love Agrippa's dumb ass just kind of standing there awkwardly while other characters are crying cause he doesn't know how to interact with people all he knows is punching. He also punches boulders in this so i'm glad capcom's got a history of that. Octavian is an anime final fantasy twink boy that you can put in a maid dress which makes me mad how accurate it is. Isn't it crazy that in real life, my man had to do his business at nights because older women would just harass him all the time? this was before he became emperor and he was emperor at 19 so this is kind of creepy. NOT COOL ANCIENT ROMAN PREDATORS!!! Next, I’m glad to say there is a dmc1 LIIIGHT moment in this! I wont say when or where so just play it and find out!

Anyways the sequel to this got turned into dead rising, which i still need to finish. But honestly I kind of wish this got a sequel anyways. There’s a lot of cool stuff that's yet to happen. And they set up some stuff for another one. Maybe they could’ve done a mix, shadow of rome 2: dead rising. We only ever see zombie apocalypses in modern day with AKs and hospitals and tanks. What if there were zombies in ancient rome? Anyone ever thought of that? They should do that. But zombies in a mall does fulfill my dawn of the dead fantasy. So I guess I’m fine with it.

THE END!

disappointing.... lets just forget about the crappy story for a minute like I did cause I skipped all the cutscenes, lets forget about the boring braindead level design where they literally highlight where you have to go with these different things like planks that you climb up on or a ledge you drop down on that make no difference cause they serve the same function... let's forget about how every level could've been a corridor into a combat room into a corridor into a combat room and nothing would be lost. No one cares about the peripheral shit. We're here for the combat. The gameplay. What any decent game should have at the front. I thought this games gameplay would be fun and it sort of was until I realized it is, like the rest of the game, NOTHING!!!

of all the action games you could copy, you choose god of war 2018? really? I mean I guess it sort of makes sense since this is a mixture brawler/third person shooter, but we really have the tight ass camera angle and no jumping and walking and talking sections and, like I said before, random useless traversal like climbing ropes or whatever, a couple powers and perks and upgrades but it doesn't fix the problem of it being so lame. Your main tool that you don't even get till like level 3 is your electric gauntlet which lets you teleport straight at an enemy's face and stun them, or parry attacks and stun them, or grapple an enemy towards you and stun them, or just bring certain enemies into a guaranteed kill animation and health pickup. Look maybe I'm old fashioned but I want action games where I have to use different tools cause if I'm using the exact same combos on every single enemy because it works easily and the game isn't forcing me to change it up I WILL get bored. "ohh you should just change up your combat just for fun if you're getting bored doing the same thing" ITS NOT MY JOB TO HAVE FUN!! ITS THE GAMES JOB TO BE FUN!! MAKE ME HAVE FUN!!! IF I WANTED TO MAKE MYSELF HAVE FUN I COULD USE MY IMAGINATION AND CONJURE UP THE PERFECT VIDEOGAME WHENEVER I WANTED! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? Sorry I lost my cool there. But yeah. No encouragement to experiment, honestly bland combat that gets stale once you get past the cool electric and body parts falling off graphics, and everything that isn't the combat is nothing. Figuratively nothing. God damn I've been looking forward to this one since it got revealed. Why can't they just make an action game about a cowboy with an electric gauntlet fighting vampires and various assorted monsters and have it just be good? why does it have to be bad? Why is my favourite game of the year a visual novel about some depressed artist in medieval times visiting a small village in Bavaria? how far have we fallen as an artform?

Claire's story is pretty crappy and sherry is definitely bottom tier in the zombie apocalypse child follower list. Maybe I guess you're never really supposed to take the story serious cause its supposed to be a 1980s action horror movie, bad acting and all, But man, mr x chasing u has to be my fav aspect of this game, its seriously awesome. Makes it a lot more tense despite the cutscenes being so cheesy. Combine that with hardcore mode no autosaves and ink ribbons required? NOW im scared. I dont get scared no matter how much blood and guts you throw at me but if you threaten me with lost progress it's gonna be shit shit pants city reaaal soon. The boss battles kind of suck but this game is atmospheric, fun, replayable, and there's a lot of fun mods too. I just wish they did more to make the police station feel like one place that you and the other character is exploring at the same time. Like finding an object as leon on my b run knowing that i took that as claire on my a run is kinda lame. But whatevs. The graphics are really nice too i forgot to say that. But yea despite the flaws this is a really really fun tense game just make sure u play Leon a cus his run is better IMO even though they're pretty similar... peace out

#PSA
Early on in the game, there is a song by "r*diohead" that is played. Please press ESC on keyboard or the START button on your controller, select the OPTIONS, go into LIVE STREAM and DISABLE LICENSED MUSIC. You can go through the whole segment and then turn it back on, because to reward you for getting through the dogshit, there is an eminem song later in the game. I won't say which, or what scene, or in what circumstance, but just look forward to it. It was necessary to show Alex's growth from crappy music taste to decent human being.

The game itself is good but just like life is strange 1 before it, it never really grew outta the 2012 tumblr pinterestagram 21 pilots type of writing. But it is still good and fun for the most part! It's very slice of lifey and quaint

the intro being a watered down halo CE knockoff put a bad taste in my mouth and made me think this was gonna suck, but honestly I loved this game. I think I like it more than fusion, although I think I like fusion's tone more (this one kind of felt like an action movie, especially whenever the federation was on screen) but this game felt more free and explorable. It did at least something with having other characters, the other hunters had pretty cool designs and it was cool to see why samus is the best. I think another reason of why this one felt more free was because of the length. It's about 9 ish hours compared to fusion's 4, and if there was 30 minutes of dialogue in fusion and 30 minutes of dialogue in corruption, it feels less suffocating in corruption. Think of it like this. You get a 20 on a test. But the test is out of 20. That's 100%. but if the test is out of 100, that's a 20%. which is a failing grade in most countries.

This one's gonna be a bit of a shorter review cause I gotta step out for a smoke and mentally prepare for Other M. Few last things I wanna quickly touch on. One, I liked the hypermode in this. It makes this one a bit harder than echoes (thank god) because the enemies have to do damage balanced around your potential immortality. But it also helps you choose when you wanna clear the room of bulletsponge enemies. It was a cool addition. I just wish less upgrades were focused on it. I'm not gonna be in it all the time, and upgrades like the electric wave when ur in hyper boost ball feels gimmicky and designed only to add another puzzle type. Goes onto my next point. Something I love about the other prime games is how once you get a hold of the controls that's all there basically is. Every action you get is an extension of your base movement. There's no buttons to press because you scan with your lock on or jump into it with your morph ball. The grapple hook is also an extension of your lock on, your super missiles are an extension of your charge beam, etc etc. This game has button prompts to get awkward fallout 3 conversation cams with npc's, levers where you gotta pull the wiimote to pull the lever (i played on primehack kbm so all of those puzzles were replaced with the button W) or something. It just kind of breaks immersion when you try to open a door and you see a huge text popup saying MOVE THE WII REMOTE TO THE RIGHT TO OPEN THIS DOOR. Speaking of wii remote, the grapple hook in this game is front and center. You grapple to pull shielded enemies' shields off, you grapple random debris, you grapple everything. It unfortunately also feels kind of tacked on and not like the rest of sammy's natural movement. You see something glow yellow or an enemy pop up with a shield and think "oh yeah." Okay, last point is the scavenger hunt. There is one in the game. But I think they finally got it right? By the time I was ready to head into the endgame, I had all of the keys but three. And this game is pretty linear, one planet to the next, so I hadn't been to these places in a while. The whole point of the scavenger hunts in these games is to encourage the player to do one last sweep/victory lap around the world picking up spare e tanks and missile expanders before they can face the final boss. But in prime 1, it was kind of redundant because I'd been to all these areas over and over before and gotten all the shit and I was only there for the keys and in prime 2 it was annoying because the game sucked and I didn't wanna play anymore (im just playing. but the prime 2 one was a SLOG I legit almost abandoned right there.)

Anyways, yeah that's about all. Thanks for reading. Sorry I was so serious this time. I've been having a lot of problems with the wife. I'll be writing serious reviews with no jokes for the time being.

EDIT: i played metroid other m for 12 minutes and got to a part where it told me to turn my wiimote sideways. there is no way to play it with keyboard sooo i guess ill have to skip that one and move onto dread oh noooo oh nooo thats awful

Like a mix between Max Payne and Hitman Blood Money, with a little sprinkle of the PS1 spider-man game. Max Payne's inspiration is the most obvious: shoot dodging in new york as a vigilante just goin and killing bad guys. Blood money is the ingredient with the apartment, upgrades, weapons, hit list, and stuff like human shielding and flashy accident kills. And the final perfect ingredient is the spider-man ps1. That game was a cool game where other characters crossed over willy nilly and it felt like a comic book. Frank narrates and it's written in yellow comic narration bubbles, with some familiar faces visiting you on your journey. It feels like a part of the marvel universe but not to the point where the world feels small.

These are all coincidences, right? totally? WRONG! Max Payne narration is in this game. You can dual-wield ingrams. Coincidence? at this point, if you're calling coincidence you're either a dumbass, a stupid person, or both. Hitman blood money choir is in this game's soundtrack. Not only that, you pop out of a casket with a machine gun killing all the funeralgoers. Coincidence again? Absolutely not!

And there's a secret other inspiration I never told you about. What if I described to you.. you airdrop into a jungle filled with soviets trying to shoot a nuclear weapon guarded by a tough tall Russian man with blond hair who gets set on fire and continues to chase you and you escape the place on a plane with your newfound buddy? You'd say that's obviously metal gear solid 3 snake eater. You'd be right, but you'd also be right if you said it was one level of the punisher.

So why am I giving this game such a high score if it just copies off the best games ever? That's easy: number 1, it rules. It's awesome. number 2: It came out before blood money. And if there's even a one percent chance that this game in any way influenced or inspired the greatest videogame ever made then we need to treat this game as royalty.

Now the games own merits: The interrogation system is genuinely fantastic and im shocked how new superhero games especially batman have not used the system. I obviously used the fan patch that restored the extremely gory and violent torture minigames and it was great. The only problem about it is you lose points for killing a guy in the torture minigame. Probably put in there to penalize you for failing it and going too far. But even if you get the information out of him and THEN kill him in the torture minigame it still loses points. But if you pull him back into shield and quick kill him you get points. It's kind of a sucky oversight.

The level variation is extremely awesome. Crackhouses, chop shops, zoos, mgs3 jungles, towers, jails, you name it. But the last 2 or 3 levels get kinda ridiculous with the number of armored enemies they throw at u. Those guys reward a slow playstyle with the rifle where you go for headshots and it's not really fun.

Anyways it's super awesome and a great surprise. And make sure to download the uncensored patch otherwise what's the god dam point?

i had to put aside my biases and play this despite the fact that it's blatantly ripping off lego fortnite's gameplay mechanics. My thoughts? It's really early access. It's less buggy than i'd expect and honestly has more content than i'd thought, but the gameplay loop is honestly pretty lame. The pals automating the work in your camp is a really cool idea and i can see it becoming self sufficient and satisfying lategame, but in terms of being an actual open world pokemon game it leaves some to be desired. Like, sure the designs are good and it's real time combat and its fun and everything, but you don't control the pals. You attack alongside them which is badass but i'm trying to catch this pal so i got him at 1hp and my pal just does the killing blow without me asking. Sometimes the pal won't attack at all. The AI is busted and janky and i'm honestly not sure if they'll stick with this long enough for it to finish early access and become good. I did manage to catch a human in a pokeball which is f#cking hilarious. I named him kenneth awesomepants (after my iconic baldurs gate 3 character) but he did no damage and couldnt do any camp work so ironically he was the mascot. Has potential. Wait til full release.