LarryDavis
20 hours into the game, I can now change jobs
this game makes Persona 4 look like it has the breakneck pacing of Evil Dead 2
this game makes Persona 4 look like it has the breakneck pacing of Evil Dead 2
For whatever reason, it is apparently a long-standing tradition that Prince of Persia games, despite being mostly known and well-regarded for platforming, must feature combat. From the very first game, it's been an aspect shoehorned in that is always to the game's detriment. At best, it's simply There and unobtrusive (Two Thrones, '08) and at worst, there's way too much of it and it's not fun anyway (Warrior Within). This one goes in the "at worst" pile.
The Lost Crown takes heavy inspiration from character-action games, with launchers, midair combos, parries, etc. It's not a terrible idea, except that by filling every area full of ass holes that are constantly shooting things at you from offscreen, the already sometimes-tedious navigation is made even more irritating. It's bad enough that some areas have almost no fast travel points, forcing you to jump through mazes of spikes every time you want to go anywhere. The game also has the now-standard for the genre reverse difficulty curve, where early on enemies are damage sponges that delete your life bar in 2 hits, but by about a third through the game nothing poses a legitimate threat anymore.
This is interesting to me, because the game Lost Crown takes the most inspiration from is clearly Blasphemous. You can obtain a bunch of equippable amulets that function similarly to the figurines in Blasphemous (though dumbed-down and without the interesting synergies), it has health potions that refresh at save points, and bosses are often teleporting around and shooting lasers all over the damn place.
But The Lost Crown has one glaring issue in particular, and it's inexcusable for a search action game: exploration often feels like a waste of time. So many secret areas I found just led to dead ends with a couple of stupid-ass crystals in them. Oh boy! I can use these to upgrade amulets, except there are only 3 or 4 of them actually worth using. And they take several hundred crystals to upgrade, while most of these Secret Areas give you like... 30. You can get that many from killing 2 or 3 enemies. Sure, in Metroid you might just find a missile tank or something, but hey, at least then you can hold more missiles! These crystals stopped doing jack crap about halfway through the game! Or you might find a lame recolor skin after suffering through a particularly harrowing platforming sequence. Because everyone wants a lilac-colored Sargon, apparently. Every time this happened, it felt like the game had spat in my eye and kicked me in the nuts, and it really destroyed my enjoyment overall.
The platforming mostly works fine, though it can glitch out, like the rest of the game. In particular, air-dashing onto the corner of a ledge often makes Sargon get stuck on it for a second, jittering around like he's in Jacob's Ladder. Oh, and those other glitches? Be prepared for softlocks, missing geometry, Sargon floating around on the ground unable to jump, and more. This thing needed a bit longer in the oven.
The plot is pretty stupid. Sargon's fellow Immortals act like total dipshits for most of the game. I'm not sure why every PoP since Sands of Time has to be about Time, with the exception of the unfairly maligned 2008 reboot, but there is some cool stuff in here. There's a weird little old man who sounds like Richard Ayoade. That's neat.
I feel like people are cutting this game a lot of slack because it's a Ubisoft game that's not a 200 hour map-vomit clusterfuck. And, to its credit, it does have two great quality of life ideas that every game in the genre should have: the ability to take screenshots that then appear on the map, and indications of where nearby save stations are. It's too bad that everything else here misses the mark.
Hey, not everything can be as good as Touhou Luna Nights.
5/10
The Lost Crown takes heavy inspiration from character-action games, with launchers, midair combos, parries, etc. It's not a terrible idea, except that by filling every area full of ass holes that are constantly shooting things at you from offscreen, the already sometimes-tedious navigation is made even more irritating. It's bad enough that some areas have almost no fast travel points, forcing you to jump through mazes of spikes every time you want to go anywhere. The game also has the now-standard for the genre reverse difficulty curve, where early on enemies are damage sponges that delete your life bar in 2 hits, but by about a third through the game nothing poses a legitimate threat anymore.
This is interesting to me, because the game Lost Crown takes the most inspiration from is clearly Blasphemous. You can obtain a bunch of equippable amulets that function similarly to the figurines in Blasphemous (though dumbed-down and without the interesting synergies), it has health potions that refresh at save points, and bosses are often teleporting around and shooting lasers all over the damn place.
But The Lost Crown has one glaring issue in particular, and it's inexcusable for a search action game: exploration often feels like a waste of time. So many secret areas I found just led to dead ends with a couple of stupid-ass crystals in them. Oh boy! I can use these to upgrade amulets, except there are only 3 or 4 of them actually worth using. And they take several hundred crystals to upgrade, while most of these Secret Areas give you like... 30. You can get that many from killing 2 or 3 enemies. Sure, in Metroid you might just find a missile tank or something, but hey, at least then you can hold more missiles! These crystals stopped doing jack crap about halfway through the game! Or you might find a lame recolor skin after suffering through a particularly harrowing platforming sequence. Because everyone wants a lilac-colored Sargon, apparently. Every time this happened, it felt like the game had spat in my eye and kicked me in the nuts, and it really destroyed my enjoyment overall.
The platforming mostly works fine, though it can glitch out, like the rest of the game. In particular, air-dashing onto the corner of a ledge often makes Sargon get stuck on it for a second, jittering around like he's in Jacob's Ladder. Oh, and those other glitches? Be prepared for softlocks, missing geometry, Sargon floating around on the ground unable to jump, and more. This thing needed a bit longer in the oven.
The plot is pretty stupid. Sargon's fellow Immortals act like total dipshits for most of the game. I'm not sure why every PoP since Sands of Time has to be about Time, with the exception of the unfairly maligned 2008 reboot, but there is some cool stuff in here. There's a weird little old man who sounds like Richard Ayoade. That's neat.
I feel like people are cutting this game a lot of slack because it's a Ubisoft game that's not a 200 hour map-vomit clusterfuck. And, to its credit, it does have two great quality of life ideas that every game in the genre should have: the ability to take screenshots that then appear on the map, and indications of where nearby save stations are. It's too bad that everything else here misses the mark.
Hey, not everything can be as good as Touhou Luna Nights.
5/10
The only SH I've enjoyed playing, and actually finished, because it isn't chock-full of shit-ass combat. The escape nightmare parts do suck, but they're short.
Otherwise, it's basically a point-and-click adventure, which is probably what SH always should have been, but they were busy chasing RE's success. This is the only one worth playing instead of watching cutscene full movie compilations on youtube.
Otherwise, it's basically a point-and-click adventure, which is probably what SH always should have been, but they were busy chasing RE's success. This is the only one worth playing instead of watching cutscene full movie compilations on youtube.
2012
Max Payne 3 is a pretty contentious game among Payne Fans. A large part of that is due to being developed by Rockstar, who wrested control from my beautiful boy Sam Lake's hands, and to be fair, that's certainly a valid knock against it. Rockstar don't really understand the Vibe of Payne, even though that still varied wildly between the first game's apocalyptic nightmare and the second game's depressing fatalism. --Note: My review of MP2 was eaten by this shit website, so I am currently writing this in notepad, as I will do for all future reviews. I am not going to re-write the long-ass review I wrote. It's the best in the series. Play it. With the widescreen fix you can see Mona's boobs.--
The other major problem people have with it is something that's very easily fixed. I'm usually not one to say people are "playing the game wrong," but in this case, I think playing the game on Hard (ideally with mouse and keyboard) is absolutely essential. MP3 added the ability to take cover, and this, combined with the copious amounts of bullet time you get on Normal, causes people to devolve into Cover Shooter Mode, the absolute most boring way to play. On Hard, the bullet time gained DRASTIC goes down, forcing you to shootdodge everywhere constantly, as you still get slow-mo doing that no matter if you have BT in the gauge or not.
This is important, as MP3 utilizes Rockstar's amazing and hilarious Euphoria physics engine, from the days before they toned it down to make it "more realistic," aka "boring as hell." Playing this properly, Max is constantly slamming his noggin into walls, tumbling over tables, and crumpling into a pretzel after jumping down stairs. You really should only be taking cover when reloading and/or contemplating where you want to dive to next. In another important innovation, now he doesn't automatically get up after diving, something that often got you killed in the previous games. Now you can just lay there and pump bullets into guys until the coast is clear. One weird change is that Painkillers fully heal you, but also allow you to revive by shooting an enemy if you would be killed when one's available. This also gives you most of your health back when you revive, so there's no real reason to use them normally, especially since most enemies will murder your ass real fast on Hard anyway.
Even with that strange choice, it's the best that a Rockstar game has ever played, and it's baffling how everything learned here apparently went out the window with subsequent titles.
So it plays great. How's the story? Eh, it's alright. It's an obvious departure from the tone of the first two, though I don't think it's as far removed as some people say. It's often said that the Max in this game is barely the same character as he was in the first two, though I disagree: In the first game, he was a psychotic dumbass, and in the second, he was a depressed, horny dumbass. Now he's essentially a combination of the two, drunk and rage-fuelled, continuing his tendency to make bad decisions and not know when to stop. If you really want a canon explanation for why he's this way in 3 (even though they repeatedly mention Max's AA sessions in 2), just imagine this moment late in 2 is responsible, like Homer's brain crayon.
The actual story itself is the bigger issue: I can understand wanting to do their own thing, which in this case means mostly just doing a pastiche of Man on Fire, but it's not as propulsive as the previous games. It goes on a bit too long, but it's adequate, and Max has plenty of good lines. McCaffrey's performance here is his career-best, which isn't a small feat. I especially appreciate that Max has unique dialogue for almost every painkiller stash you can find. It's also a game that understands that short people are inherently evil. This is something understood by many of the greatest pieces of art, made by those with true insight into the human soul: Twin Peaks. Leprechaun 4: In Space. Collateral.
Max Payne 3 is absolutely a worthy end for the trilogy. Would I prefer if Remedy had made it? Yeah, probably. But this is what we got. I'm okay with that.
9/10
The other major problem people have with it is something that's very easily fixed. I'm usually not one to say people are "playing the game wrong," but in this case, I think playing the game on Hard (ideally with mouse and keyboard) is absolutely essential. MP3 added the ability to take cover, and this, combined with the copious amounts of bullet time you get on Normal, causes people to devolve into Cover Shooter Mode, the absolute most boring way to play. On Hard, the bullet time gained DRASTIC goes down, forcing you to shootdodge everywhere constantly, as you still get slow-mo doing that no matter if you have BT in the gauge or not.
This is important, as MP3 utilizes Rockstar's amazing and hilarious Euphoria physics engine, from the days before they toned it down to make it "more realistic," aka "boring as hell." Playing this properly, Max is constantly slamming his noggin into walls, tumbling over tables, and crumpling into a pretzel after jumping down stairs. You really should only be taking cover when reloading and/or contemplating where you want to dive to next. In another important innovation, now he doesn't automatically get up after diving, something that often got you killed in the previous games. Now you can just lay there and pump bullets into guys until the coast is clear. One weird change is that Painkillers fully heal you, but also allow you to revive by shooting an enemy if you would be killed when one's available. This also gives you most of your health back when you revive, so there's no real reason to use them normally, especially since most enemies will murder your ass real fast on Hard anyway.
Even with that strange choice, it's the best that a Rockstar game has ever played, and it's baffling how everything learned here apparently went out the window with subsequent titles.
So it plays great. How's the story? Eh, it's alright. It's an obvious departure from the tone of the first two, though I don't think it's as far removed as some people say. It's often said that the Max in this game is barely the same character as he was in the first two, though I disagree: In the first game, he was a psychotic dumbass, and in the second, he was a depressed, horny dumbass. Now he's essentially a combination of the two, drunk and rage-fuelled, continuing his tendency to make bad decisions and not know when to stop. If you really want a canon explanation for why he's this way in 3 (even though they repeatedly mention Max's AA sessions in 2), just imagine this moment late in 2 is responsible, like Homer's brain crayon.
The actual story itself is the bigger issue: I can understand wanting to do their own thing, which in this case means mostly just doing a pastiche of Man on Fire, but it's not as propulsive as the previous games. It goes on a bit too long, but it's adequate, and Max has plenty of good lines. McCaffrey's performance here is his career-best, which isn't a small feat. I especially appreciate that Max has unique dialogue for almost every painkiller stash you can find. It's also a game that understands that short people are inherently evil. This is something understood by many of the greatest pieces of art, made by those with true insight into the human soul: Twin Peaks. Leprechaun 4: In Space. Collateral.
Max Payne 3 is absolutely a worthy end for the trilogy. Would I prefer if Remedy had made it? Yeah, probably. But this is what we got. I'm okay with that.
9/10
2011
Popularized Early Access. This thing has done more damage to video games as a whole than any other game I can think of. Except maybe Halo 1.
2024
On one hand, Palworld is on about the same level of creative bankruptcy as Lies of P. In addition to the obvious Pokemon ripoffs, you've got Zelda fonts and sounds, you've got Xenoblade world design, you've even got freakin Limgrave.
And yet on the other hand, despite all these very questionable and almost certainly litigious similarities, it's a better Pokemon game than anything Nintendo has released in at least a decade. It's also a far more tolerable crafting game than most, thanks to the Pals providing some level of automation, and pretty lenient hunger/sleep/whatever mechanics. In light of this, I find it much less egregious than something like Lies of P or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which were simply soulless, inferior versions of the things they were shamelessly trying to emulate.
Palworld has issues for sure. Pathing is total shit, Pals don't appear to have swimming animations so they just run in water, and building is bizarre, with objects refusing to connect to others for no discernible reason. The controls are inconsistent, where sometimes Tab will exit a screen, sometimes F will exit, and sometimes you have to hit Esc. There's no "exit game" option on the main menu, so you have to alt+f4 this bitch. It would also be nice if your Pals had a setting to stop them from trying to Last Hit every enemy like they're playing Dota.
Despite all this, I'm having a pretty good time with it. Hopefully the developers don't abandon it, but with its success, they have a pretty good incentive to keep updating it.
Also, fuck Nintendo. All my homies hate Nintendo.
EDIT -- I would like to clarify: Do Not Spend Money On This Game, You Idiots. It's on game pass if you really want to play it. I do not say this because of some moral issue regarding stolen designs or (as of yet unfounded allegations of) generative AI usage. Don't pay for games in early access! You're buying broken shit that will probably never get fixed! Goddamned Mindcraft ruined everything.
And yet on the other hand, despite all these very questionable and almost certainly litigious similarities, it's a better Pokemon game than anything Nintendo has released in at least a decade. It's also a far more tolerable crafting game than most, thanks to the Pals providing some level of automation, and pretty lenient hunger/sleep/whatever mechanics. In light of this, I find it much less egregious than something like Lies of P or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, which were simply soulless, inferior versions of the things they were shamelessly trying to emulate.
Palworld has issues for sure. Pathing is total shit, Pals don't appear to have swimming animations so they just run in water, and building is bizarre, with objects refusing to connect to others for no discernible reason. The controls are inconsistent, where sometimes Tab will exit a screen, sometimes F will exit, and sometimes you have to hit Esc. There's no "exit game" option on the main menu, so you have to alt+f4 this bitch. It would also be nice if your Pals had a setting to stop them from trying to Last Hit every enemy like they're playing Dota.
Despite all this, I'm having a pretty good time with it. Hopefully the developers don't abandon it, but with its success, they have a pretty good incentive to keep updating it.
Also, fuck Nintendo. All my homies hate Nintendo.
EDIT -- I would like to clarify: Do Not Spend Money On This Game, You Idiots. It's on game pass if you really want to play it. I do not say this because of some moral issue regarding stolen designs or (as of yet unfounded allegations of) generative AI usage. Don't pay for games in early access! You're buying broken shit that will probably never get fixed! Goddamned Mindcraft ruined everything.
2022
An interesting concept (city builder roguelite) that's dragged down by things inherent to the sub-genre.
Starting many small settlements, as opposed to continually building one sprawling city, is fun at first, but quickly becomes tedious when you're often doing the same thing at the beginning and the fastest fast-forward option isn't Fast Enough. Meanwhile, RNG governs both the available resource deposits (understandable) and your available buildings (unacceptable). It seems that if you grind this for a hundred hours you can make some blueprints available from the beginning regardless of what Virtual Cards you draw from the Accursed Digital Deck, but I don't particularly care to sink that much time into something that's often just frustrating.
Starting many small settlements, as opposed to continually building one sprawling city, is fun at first, but quickly becomes tedious when you're often doing the same thing at the beginning and the fastest fast-forward option isn't Fast Enough. Meanwhile, RNG governs both the available resource deposits (understandable) and your available buildings (unacceptable). It seems that if you grind this for a hundred hours you can make some blueprints available from the beginning regardless of what Virtual Cards you draw from the Accursed Digital Deck, but I don't particularly care to sink that much time into something that's often just frustrating.
2022
Nice and funny little game. Varied levels considering its sub-hour length, and it has the Painkiller stake gun. No mid-game settings menu is weird, though. You have to exit to the main menu to change FOV and whatnot.
LET'S! CHOP! GOBLINS!
LET'S! CHOP! GOBLINS!
2000
People love to talk about how "in my day, games didn't need day-one patches" and ignore things like the PS2 launching with a game that feels like a proof of concept demo at best.
There's no story to speak of, simply a series of very short levels. The only reason this might take you more than 30 minutes to beat is because the levels are full of deadly-accurate enemies with hitscan weapons that spawn in behind you with zero warning. I'm not a huge fan of Timesplitters 2, but the jump from 1 to 2 is a leap the size of Springfield Gorge. This feels like it was made in about 6 months. Turok 1 is more impressive than this, and Turok 1 sucks.
TS1 does at least run at 60fps, though that's accomplished by also running at a VERY low resolution. I don't know the number exactly, but it's 240p at most, likely lower.
At this point I've decided to simply make a list of games I've optimistically revisited that did not change my mind.
3/10
There's no story to speak of, simply a series of very short levels. The only reason this might take you more than 30 minutes to beat is because the levels are full of deadly-accurate enemies with hitscan weapons that spawn in behind you with zero warning. I'm not a huge fan of Timesplitters 2, but the jump from 1 to 2 is a leap the size of Springfield Gorge. This feels like it was made in about 6 months. Turok 1 is more impressive than this, and Turok 1 sucks.
TS1 does at least run at 60fps, though that's accomplished by also running at a VERY low resolution. I don't know the number exactly, but it's 240p at most, likely lower.
At this point I've decided to simply make a list of games I've optimistically revisited that did not change my mind.
3/10
2001
The lobotomized devotees of the Personal Computer love to tell anybody who will listen about how one of the platform's greatest advantages is that it has the best backwards compatibility in existence. Of course, they neglect to mention that trying to play any game that's more than about 10 years old requires going to the PC gaming wiki, searching steam forums, and eventually downloading weird DLLs and mysterious EXEs from some freak's google drive.
Anyway, after doing that, and also limiting my framerate to 60 so the shootdodge would work as intended, I was ready to revisit a seminal game of my youth: Payne in da butt. Hehe, yeah, Payne to da Max!
It's really quite astonishing that, as the de facto progenitor of the modern third-person shooter (no, Tomb Raider was an action-adventure game, you dolts) they nailed it right out of the gate. Gunplay still feels good to this day, although movement can be a little wonky. I think that might be a side-product of playing it on a 2023 computer, though.
Its biggest problem is that its difficulty can often feel cheap. This is setting aside the famously broken adaptive difficulty: it only lowers on deaths, but if you're playing on PC you'll be quicksaving and quickloading, so it never goes down and by the end of the game the enemies are insane bullet sponges that will headshot you in .000001 seconds. Some areas can amount to trial-and-error, incentivizing that sort of constant quicksaving due to how often offscreen enemies love to chuck grenades at you in stairways, or slide around corners to ambush you with shotguns. I also recommend turning off the aim assist, as bullets aren't hitscan. This is no doubt due to the need to model their movement in bullet-time, but they move so slowly that the auto-aim making you shoot at where enemies are instead of where they will be means you'll whiff if they're moving at all.
Many of Remedy's future trademarks are on display here: Integration of live-action, via comic cutscenes. Fictional TV shows within the game, though limited to one episode each of Lords and Ladies and Address Unknown here. And, of course, experimental storytelling within the game itself.
I feel like an aspect of MP1 that's often overlooked is how goddamn nightmarish it is. Literally, in some cases -- As a kid I think I didn't grasp just how insane it was that this John Woo-inspired action game opens with an on-screen baby corpse. But as Max trudges through this New York Fimbulvetr, apparently brought on by the death of his partner Alex Balder, the grimness is constantly offset by some of the goofiest shit imaginable. It really shouldn't work as well as it does -- the combination of New Yawk Guidos, X-Files-esque government conspiracies, and Norse mythology somehow results in a cohesive aesthetic against all odds.
No doubt this is due in large part to the late, great, James McCaffrey. Without his voice, it's hard to imagine Max being as iconic as he is. This was also a time when 99% of game voice acting was still total dogshit (the non-Max characters are indicative of what we were all used to) so it really stood out.
MP1 isn't the peak of the series, it was surpassed by Max Payne 2, a game whose only flaw is its rather short length (something shared with 1: although How Long to Beat lists MP1 as 8 hours, I completed it in about 5, so I don't know what they're talking about) and equaled by Max Payne 3.
If you want to play Max Payne 1, this is what I had to install to get it working. Limiting your FPS will depend on what video card you're using, but on a 7800xt I found it was the "radeon chill" option in the AMD Adrenalin software. God, I hate PC gaming so fucking much. Too bad the console ports of Max Payne 1 were total crap from a butt. I think the ports of 2 were fine, but I never played them. Time to see what sort of voodoo magicks I have to employ to play 2...
Anyway, after doing that, and also limiting my framerate to 60 so the shootdodge would work as intended, I was ready to revisit a seminal game of my youth: Payne in da butt. Hehe, yeah, Payne to da Max!
It's really quite astonishing that, as the de facto progenitor of the modern third-person shooter (no, Tomb Raider was an action-adventure game, you dolts) they nailed it right out of the gate. Gunplay still feels good to this day, although movement can be a little wonky. I think that might be a side-product of playing it on a 2023 computer, though.
Its biggest problem is that its difficulty can often feel cheap. This is setting aside the famously broken adaptive difficulty: it only lowers on deaths, but if you're playing on PC you'll be quicksaving and quickloading, so it never goes down and by the end of the game the enemies are insane bullet sponges that will headshot you in .000001 seconds. Some areas can amount to trial-and-error, incentivizing that sort of constant quicksaving due to how often offscreen enemies love to chuck grenades at you in stairways, or slide around corners to ambush you with shotguns. I also recommend turning off the aim assist, as bullets aren't hitscan. This is no doubt due to the need to model their movement in bullet-time, but they move so slowly that the auto-aim making you shoot at where enemies are instead of where they will be means you'll whiff if they're moving at all.
Many of Remedy's future trademarks are on display here: Integration of live-action, via comic cutscenes. Fictional TV shows within the game, though limited to one episode each of Lords and Ladies and Address Unknown here. And, of course, experimental storytelling within the game itself.
I feel like an aspect of MP1 that's often overlooked is how goddamn nightmarish it is. Literally, in some cases -- As a kid I think I didn't grasp just how insane it was that this John Woo-inspired action game opens with an on-screen baby corpse. But as Max trudges through this New York Fimbulvetr, apparently brought on by the death of his partner Alex Balder, the grimness is constantly offset by some of the goofiest shit imaginable. It really shouldn't work as well as it does -- the combination of New Yawk Guidos, X-Files-esque government conspiracies, and Norse mythology somehow results in a cohesive aesthetic against all odds.
No doubt this is due in large part to the late, great, James McCaffrey. Without his voice, it's hard to imagine Max being as iconic as he is. This was also a time when 99% of game voice acting was still total dogshit (the non-Max characters are indicative of what we were all used to) so it really stood out.
MP1 isn't the peak of the series, it was surpassed by Max Payne 2, a game whose only flaw is its rather short length (something shared with 1: although How Long to Beat lists MP1 as 8 hours, I completed it in about 5, so I don't know what they're talking about) and equaled by Max Payne 3.
If you want to play Max Payne 1, this is what I had to install to get it working. Limiting your FPS will depend on what video card you're using, but on a 7800xt I found it was the "radeon chill" option in the AMD Adrenalin software. God, I hate PC gaming so fucking much. Too bad the console ports of Max Payne 1 were total crap from a butt. I think the ports of 2 were fine, but I never played them. Time to see what sort of voodoo magicks I have to employ to play 2...
Barely a game. There are no puzzles, you just walk around and talk to people to exchange items. The simplicity would indicate that this is aimed at small children, but the grating dialogue is very clearly Cozy Tumblr Adult themed. Almost every interaction is as follows:
Says something strange
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Cool."
"Yeah."
This is only about 20 minutes long, yet still feels padded due to the repetitive dialogue. Feels like the product of a 3-day game jam (derogatory).
I'm probably going to play the other 2 for the achievements...
Says something strange
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Cool."
"Yeah."
This is only about 20 minutes long, yet still feels padded due to the repetitive dialogue. Feels like the product of a 3-day game jam (derogatory).
I'm probably going to play the other 2 for the achievements...
2023
Going back to this to get all the achievements for both the main game and Separate Ways only reinforced the problems I already had. Its overlength and pacing problems coupled with the insane amount of RNG makes something I normally love (speedrunning RE games) into an arduous nightmare. I still did it, because I have Brain Problems, but I'm not going to do it again on PS5 like I did for RE2 and 3.
As a quick aside, it is hilarious that the 10 dollar DLC is longer than REmak3. Too bad Ada's voice actor is somehow even worse in it.
As a quick aside, it is hilarious that the 10 dollar DLC is longer than REmak3. Too bad Ada's voice actor is somehow even worse in it.
2023
A combination of Journey, Death Stranding, and Grow Home, but not as compelling as any of them.
You climb a mountain, playing as a character draped in a poncho of some sort (they did not bother to give it cloth physics so your arms just clip through it). You are accompanied by a small blobular creature, although you cannot play the harmonica for it. You climb by alternating the triggers. This is a veritable gumbo of influences.
Why are you climbing this mountain? You find out in the last 10 minutes of the game. There are many very long letters scattered throughout the levels, but I stopped reading them when I realized they were nothing but "w o r l d b u i l d i n g," aka padding when writers can't create a strong narrative or interesting dialogue. Other collectables include cairns, murals, and altars. None of them do anything, as far as I can tell. You can put rocks on the cairns, light up the murals, and spin the altars, and... That's it. More padding, hooray!
The actual gameplay is fine. There's no challenge to speak of, as you're always tethered by a rope when climbing. To my knowledge, you can't die, because the rope will automatically tether when you grab onto something, and you can't run off ledges when untethered. There is a stamina meter, but you can recover it at any time while climbing, and you're given 3 extra pitons to act as placeable checkpoints during any given climbing segment. These are often short, with plentiful (and mandatory, as they refresh your tether length) full checkpoints, and I didn't even need to monitor my stamina outside of one part near the end.
Jusant is pleasant enough. It's a fairly nice-looking game, and executed pretty well. You're just better off playing any of the games it cribbed from.
6/10
You climb a mountain, playing as a character draped in a poncho of some sort (they did not bother to give it cloth physics so your arms just clip through it). You are accompanied by a small blobular creature, although you cannot play the harmonica for it. You climb by alternating the triggers. This is a veritable gumbo of influences.
Why are you climbing this mountain? You find out in the last 10 minutes of the game. There are many very long letters scattered throughout the levels, but I stopped reading them when I realized they were nothing but "w o r l d b u i l d i n g," aka padding when writers can't create a strong narrative or interesting dialogue. Other collectables include cairns, murals, and altars. None of them do anything, as far as I can tell. You can put rocks on the cairns, light up the murals, and spin the altars, and... That's it. More padding, hooray!
The actual gameplay is fine. There's no challenge to speak of, as you're always tethered by a rope when climbing. To my knowledge, you can't die, because the rope will automatically tether when you grab onto something, and you can't run off ledges when untethered. There is a stamina meter, but you can recover it at any time while climbing, and you're given 3 extra pitons to act as placeable checkpoints during any given climbing segment. These are often short, with plentiful (and mandatory, as they refresh your tether length) full checkpoints, and I didn't even need to monitor my stamina outside of one part near the end.
Jusant is pleasant enough. It's a fairly nice-looking game, and executed pretty well. You're just better off playing any of the games it cribbed from.
6/10
2023
I don't know about you, but when I think of "Aliens", I think of a squad of marines fighting cultists in a dockyard.
2020
A pretty fun destruction sandbox. Too bad they forgot to make an actual game.
Teardown's voxel-based fully destructible environments are impressive (at least on the surface), and the fire propagation and volumetric effects appeal greatly to me, a person who spent a long time messing around with those Falling Sand games... But even in that respect, this is no Noita. See, despite being destructible, the game does not model weight or physics at all, apart from chunks of debris. A giant building will stay standing if there's even one single voxel attaching it to the ground, and even after destroying that, the rest will just drop down undamaged instead of crumbling. Somehow, 14 years later, Red Faction: Guerrilla's Geomod remains undefeated.
But whatever. It's still fun to explode holes in things, and unfortunately, that's not really what most of the actual objectives want you to do.
Almost every mission is just "collect all these items scattered around the map" and when you collect the first one, a 1 minute timer starts. The idea is that you create the ideal path between them, by force, but you'll quickly figure out the 2 or 3 tricks that make most of them trivial. Move objectives closer to each other. Place cars next to them. It really just amounts to a lot of time spent on setup, and then trying and reloading until the physics stop fucking you over -- for a game that requires driving this much, you'd think they would make it so the cars can reliably go up ramps instead of just digging into it with their bumpers.
The most bizarre thing is that for a game focused on destruction, there are very few missions that actually task you with destroying buildings or objects. 90% of them are collecting items or cars, and it gets old fast.
I'll also say the balancing for your tools is pretty strange. It's funny that the shotgun is by far your best option for precision destruction, but it also makes the blowtorch almost immediately irrelevant. Pipe bombs are also damn near useless, and the pistol is too. You get money for upgrading your tools by finding valuables around the maps, so if you've cleaned out the currently available ones and get a new tool, but you've spent your money... Oops! Wait until you unlock a new one, which might be a while! Despite spending 2 years in early access, there are only 9 of them.
The final insult? The "Sandbox" mode, which should be this game's entire reason for existing, does not give you everything to play with. You only have what you've unlocked in the campaign. What were they thinking????
4/10
Teardown's voxel-based fully destructible environments are impressive (at least on the surface), and the fire propagation and volumetric effects appeal greatly to me, a person who spent a long time messing around with those Falling Sand games... But even in that respect, this is no Noita. See, despite being destructible, the game does not model weight or physics at all, apart from chunks of debris. A giant building will stay standing if there's even one single voxel attaching it to the ground, and even after destroying that, the rest will just drop down undamaged instead of crumbling. Somehow, 14 years later, Red Faction: Guerrilla's Geomod remains undefeated.
But whatever. It's still fun to explode holes in things, and unfortunately, that's not really what most of the actual objectives want you to do.
Almost every mission is just "collect all these items scattered around the map" and when you collect the first one, a 1 minute timer starts. The idea is that you create the ideal path between them, by force, but you'll quickly figure out the 2 or 3 tricks that make most of them trivial. Move objectives closer to each other. Place cars next to them. It really just amounts to a lot of time spent on setup, and then trying and reloading until the physics stop fucking you over -- for a game that requires driving this much, you'd think they would make it so the cars can reliably go up ramps instead of just digging into it with their bumpers.
The most bizarre thing is that for a game focused on destruction, there are very few missions that actually task you with destroying buildings or objects. 90% of them are collecting items or cars, and it gets old fast.
I'll also say the balancing for your tools is pretty strange. It's funny that the shotgun is by far your best option for precision destruction, but it also makes the blowtorch almost immediately irrelevant. Pipe bombs are also damn near useless, and the pistol is too. You get money for upgrading your tools by finding valuables around the maps, so if you've cleaned out the currently available ones and get a new tool, but you've spent your money... Oops! Wait until you unlock a new one, which might be a while! Despite spending 2 years in early access, there are only 9 of them.
The final insult? The "Sandbox" mode, which should be this game's entire reason for existing, does not give you everything to play with. You only have what you've unlocked in the campaign. What were they thinking????
4/10