Ohgoditsabear
2023
Still unsure how the game works. I guess it's like weirder Diablo in how the world is rolled? Anyways, it's tight and plays nice, but feels like it's missing some important THING. Also the world stories are more interesting than the main plot.
2023
It's fine! I skipped the cinematics my first run, then watched em for a second run with another character. Fine! I missed nothing!
Another repellant, dogwhistle & dipshit campaign that plays wonderfully. Like a flute carved from a stinky tree. Everyone should be very ashamed, but I hope they were paid well.
Then, the star - the multiplayer! Just kidding, there's fewer maps than ever before, and some are absolutely miserable to play. A great map should be playable forever, and a good map should be playable for a long while, and a decent map should be playable for, like, a month. At least three of these are bad maps, which lose their luster immediately.
The mechanics & gunplay & flow of leveling are wonderful, though - the best of the series, excepting MW2019.
But the real star is WARZONE, the free-to-play mode battle royale! Just kidding, it sorta sucks too. You're going to get rocked by streamer tryhards, everytime.
Ok ok, no, the REAL STAR here is the Tarkov-like, DMZ, where you drop as a 3-man, and there's some persistence & quests & leveling, and extracting! Which is fun! But it's underbaked. This is honestly the star.
But I want the MP to be good - that's why I'm OK with spending the big bucks. I played a stupid amount of this game, despite my moral disdain for it's whole fucking thing - the tone, the story, the setting, the culture, the meta-culture, all of it dogshit and awful and the fuel of school shooters and MAGA bootlickers.
But boy, it was kinda nice to realize, "I'm very good at this game," and shoot for a hundred hours or two. Now, I'm done.
Then, the star - the multiplayer! Just kidding, there's fewer maps than ever before, and some are absolutely miserable to play. A great map should be playable forever, and a good map should be playable for a long while, and a decent map should be playable for, like, a month. At least three of these are bad maps, which lose their luster immediately.
The mechanics & gunplay & flow of leveling are wonderful, though - the best of the series, excepting MW2019.
But the real star is WARZONE, the free-to-play mode battle royale! Just kidding, it sorta sucks too. You're going to get rocked by streamer tryhards, everytime.
Ok ok, no, the REAL STAR here is the Tarkov-like, DMZ, where you drop as a 3-man, and there's some persistence & quests & leveling, and extracting! Which is fun! But it's underbaked. This is honestly the star.
But I want the MP to be good - that's why I'm OK with spending the big bucks. I played a stupid amount of this game, despite my moral disdain for it's whole fucking thing - the tone, the story, the setting, the culture, the meta-culture, all of it dogshit and awful and the fuel of school shooters and MAGA bootlickers.
But boy, it was kinda nice to realize, "I'm very good at this game," and shoot for a hundred hours or two. Now, I'm done.
This review contains spoilers
Hello, I'm ugly-crying at the end, as these sexless anime friends will never meet again - but gosh, I hope they get to meet again.
A game that proves, wholly and absolutely, that if you can figure out an evocative style and use the graphical mechanics of the hardward to lift up that style - that beats raw horsepower every time. This game looks better than anything I played on the PS5 this year.
And a story! a good story! A story I haven't exactly heard before, but knew the rhythm, which is a sweet spot for anime narratives. Enough to make it unique, but without breaking the whole format, in some post-modern nothing-matters fuck-and-kill-god way. No, it's earnest.
A game that proves, wholly and absolutely, that if you can figure out an evocative style and use the graphical mechanics of the hardward to lift up that style - that beats raw horsepower every time. This game looks better than anything I played on the PS5 this year.
And a story! a good story! A story I haven't exactly heard before, but knew the rhythm, which is a sweet spot for anime narratives. Enough to make it unique, but without breaking the whole format, in some post-modern nothing-matters fuck-and-kill-god way. No, it's earnest.
1997
Played on the RG353P, mostly at 2x/3x speed. It's alright! But these super-early PS1 games really do still harken to the old school narrative style - you know, vague good vs. evil + god-machine or innocent-minded force + less than 10 words per paragraph box. The effect is an impressionistic story with some really nice spritework. And I loved the combat system - but not enough to suffer it's grinding problems. With speed hacks & grinding spots, I became god. Fitting!
Played the double-JP hack w/ the WOTL script, on my Anbernic RG353P. And mostly on fast-forward. So I just blew through this! And it was nice to reexperience the last two thirds of this game, as this is one I frequently restart, but rarely get deep into.
This time, I dug deep. I did it all - but once I hit that wide open final chapter, where I could've done the deep dungeon or this, or that, I decided to just blast through the ending. Done. Over.
And again - it was better than I remembered, but not as good as I hoped it would be? Does that make sense?
This time, I dug deep. I did it all - but once I hit that wide open final chapter, where I could've done the deep dungeon or this, or that, I decided to just blast through the ending. Done. Over.
And again - it was better than I remembered, but not as good as I hoped it would be? Does that make sense?
2022
Turns out, I like this more than I remember, but less than I hoped. An odd feeling!