In an interview with IGN in 2020 Senior Producer Fleur Marty commented about Gotham Knights, Warner Brother's newest Batman game that it's, and I quote:

"is very much not designed as a game-as-service."

Now I don't blame him for this comment, it's part of his job when doing PR rounds to help sell the product. I can only imagine with the negative outlook the title was receiving that the Eye of Sauron at Warner Brothers was watching intently. The thing is the reason I don't believe him is to give credit to the talented people that work on WB Montreal as I refuse to believe they would design such an awful system if it wasn't a live service game initially that was repurposed. Now I like the premise of it, playing as the sidekick's when Batman is gone and the launch trailer is superb at really emphasizing that feeling. I like the idea of having the game co-op and having upgradeable RPG mechanics but the way it's implemented is just dreadful.

So it's an open world game similar to it's predecessors where Gotham City is the playground. When you are let loose to explore there are basic repetitive crimes on the map where you can scan to find them then interrogate criminals to find pre meditated crimes and it's utterly pointless. Simply finding them organically exploring would have been better and more interesting. When stopping crimes sometimes there are chests that have resources in them or blueprints for new gear you can make. The resources are just various shades of colours with huge numbers that are never explained. Playing with a friend to tell them I'd found "some green" which I already had 100,000 of just means nothing and is extremely unexciting. I had random unexplained resources coming out of my ears, blueprints for weapons and armour I'd never use equally spilling out of my bat belt pouch. To compound matters further creating one of these items you can do on the fly but you can't equip it until you return to the Belfry which the game makes you do constantly. It just seems to want to break it's own flow all the time with these "not designed as live service" mechanics.

The game generally is a bit of a rough state in various areas. The movement around the city will have you feel constantly stuck on objects like perches and lampposts that Batgirl seems to glue to with the worlds strongest adhesive like she'd made a lifelong commitment she refuses to break. Bless her. Additionally there are constant little things like the lack of a proper jump being only contextual leaving questions if it will actually work, running into other players or walls kills all momentum and you freeze for no reason, a choppy frame rate and playing online co-op auto stops my headset working in private chat forcing me to mute and unmute again in mid conversation for just no reason. All small things, nothing stopping the game being unplayable but they can get frustrating over time.

The thing is if you strip those mechanics out and look past the niggling technical issues there is actually the foundation of a good game here. When playing specific story missions and it's focused on the plot and unique locations it's really good. I like the characters and narrative, there are some touching scenes and funny moments. There is the framework of a great game here just held back by an obviously difficult development and initial design pivot regardless of what Fleur Marty may have been stating on his PR rounds. My friend and I did have fun playing it regardless and certainly don't regret it. Riding through Gotham on a bat-cycle launching into the air to land on an unsuspecting criminal and doing a finisher with a brutal kick to the jaw is really satisfying. I also loved playing as Batgirl and wanted more of that ever since the Arkham Knight - A Matter of Family DLC. Whilst it just doesn't reach that level of quality it was still fun, just extremely flawed.

Worth a try if you're curious as it's constantly on sale, hard one to recommend but it's not as bad as some people make out I feel.

+ Story premise is really good.
+ I like the characters and story beats.
+ I like the presentation though it's not as dense and gothic as it's predecessors.

- Upgrade and open world systems are just awful, clearly was designed as a live service game that pivoted in development but the damage is there.
- Combat and movement isn't smooth enough.
- Some minor bugs and frame rate issues.

I had a blast playing through Tengo Project's Ninja Saviors. I ran through the game mostly as Ninja, a hulking cyborg-ninja with glowing red eyes and huge metal arms. It felt like I was playing through one of those ultraviolent 90s OVAs, and I was playing as the bad guy. Like all beat em ups, there's not very much difficulty here outside of the bosses, and even the majority of those are chumps; unlike most beat em ups, the minute to minute gameplay is really fun and interesting. The different action buttons all change depending on the direction you're holding, and the context—whether you're holding an enemy, on the ground, in the air, dashing, etc. There's a ton of depth to the beating them upping, and getting a handle on your character is really rewarding. My only real complaint is that a few bosses can feel cheap, and that it's just a smidge too long for me to run through on a whim. Looking forward to dipping back into this one and playing with the other characters.

Replay, playing through as Richter. Goatvania. There's the idea that this is a "step back" from Super Castlevania IV since it doesn't have the free whip mechanic. I'm a Castlevania IV liker, but the free whip is almost entirely useless, as fun as it is, and it is fun (an invention of Treasure programmer Mitsuru Yaida). Richter's unique backflip though is fun AND cool looking AND on top of that it's useful—enemies and bosses are built around cleverly using your backflip. And the graphics and levels in Rondo whip every other classicvania's ass.

Just hard enough that I didn’t get frustrated.

Loved the music, lots of acoustic goodness. Art style and theme scratched that gothic Roman Catholicism itch that I didn’t even know I had.

I wish they warned you about the point of no return regarding the ending, but definitely gonna get another play through at some point.

Binary Domain is a pretty standard 7th gen cover shooter with the added element of squad mechanics, a trust system that impacts how often your mates decide to follow your tactics and the endings, and the fact that your enemies are robots. This allows you to dismember them easily, which gives you different effects; blow off their arms and they'll have to switch weapons or arm, destroy their legs, and they'll crawl at you and grab you. Unfortunately, the best choice is almost always to headshot, since it always causes them to attack enemies for you and gives you a bonus of money and trust. The exception are the shinobi and shield enemies.

You don't need to use the squad orders much either, even on hard mode. This isn't like Ghost Recon where your allies are useless if you don't tell them what to do, they're fairly competent and you're honestly more likely to get them hurt and distrust you if you fuck up. Needless to say, the voice command isn't worth it either, it just doesn't work very well.
These commands have the unfortunate side effect of making Dan a mute protagonist for half of the game, it's pretty awkward. They don't take enough advantage of the trust system either, if taken a bit further, Cain could've become an awesome boss fight in a bad route, or even add some consequence to a specific one I don't want to spoil. One big chunk separates you and two allies from the rest of the squad, and it feels like it kind of misses the purpose.
A bad thing of hard mode is how long some bosses get, mainly Gorilla and Tsar Runner, so I wouldn't recommend it. Here's my Gorilla tip, don't bother reloading the machine gun, make Shindo do it. That said, the bosses are pretty fun in this game. They have some pretty cool movesets, force you into risky situations to aim at their weak points and have cool setpieces.

While the story and characters were fun, American action heroes written by Japanese devs being once again, the best thing ever, I didn't think it was that great until the moment you come face-to-face with the villain in chapter 5. Some characters kind of disappear from the plot from this point, but there's this great claustrophobic section where the enemies become truly relentless killing machines, you have limited resources and your two allies fucking hate each other. From there, the story just gets even better and better. Epic character moment after epic character moment. Setpiece after setpiece. Moral dilemmas. You even get the awesome Resident Evil/Metal Gear Solid gunkata fight cutscene. And after a pretty cool final boss, you are granted an ending that is pretty satisfying despite its openness, which is good because we'll probably never see a sequel.

Daisuke Sato, please make another wacky sci-fi gun game at Nagoshi Studio, just add more gunkata cutscenes.
EDIT: I forgot to say, this game has the LEAST SATISFYING shotgun I've ever fired in a video game. Daisuke Sato, KILL the people responsible for the shotgun the robots use!

There’s a misconception that “innovation is actually in the indie scene”, this is not without some merit of course, as the triple A landscape is following what seems like the same 12 templates of what they think “good game design” is. But indie games are just as derivative and trend chasing. This doesn’t have to be a negative either, as every once in a while a game comes along that uses current trends well, in Little Nightmare's case, that amounts to a great experience.

Little Nightmares is clearly chasing the 2010s fad of indie horror games having a heavy emphasis on hiding. I personally don’t care for that kind of game play, but given this is presented as a 25.d platformer with (mostly) fixed camera angles, it peaked my interest and I enjoyed my time with it.

The game does a good job of helping you get your bearings. After a brief ten second introductory cut scene that sets up the main antagonist, our MC Six wakes up in a boiler room with leeway to explore every single mechanic. If you see a dark area, you press B to use your lighter to illuminate it, then you’ll see cans and boxes strewn about, which you can pick up with the right trigger and throw, then big boxes and pipes to climb, hide in, and jump on, and finally a long narrow hallway you can use to practice sprinting, this tutorial ends after this room and the game expects you to have memorized all of these basics. In an era where games (aimed at adults especially) have over bearing and over explanatory tutorials that tell you everything, it was refreshing to play a relatively modern game that just let you figure stuff out on your own.

But tutorials often don’t just end with the player figuring out functions, they also have the need to show what the player should expect from the game for the entire experience, or at least give them a good generalized idea. Which is why I want to highlight the first sprinting section.

The game at first makes you think you only need two quick bursts to get past three rooms, but the reality is that the second sprint is one long, continuous one, but it is highly unlikely you will get this on your first attempt. As the room you dash through is a child's bedroom riddled with tons of objects to climb, and other points of interest highlighted in the shadows, which will make you stop and try going somewhere else instead of just the (correct) straight line. This is a brilliant way of communicating to the player to be observant and on edge, which requires them to not act with out thinking, but instead to over think a little while acting, which is great for a horror game. If a developer has a player on auto pilot when playing a horror game for the first time, the level design has failed, good level design in horror games forces the player to over think, and fear making a mistake.

I am not someone who foolishly believes there are games out there with out any kind of pathing, games have always given the player some indication of where to go or what to do next. And Little Nightmares is very good at this aspect. If a surface has juts and grooves, it’s probably climbable, if an object is framed prominently, it’s most likely of some importance, if an area is subtly lit up, you should probably focus on it. None of these are gaudily presented either with some stupid detective vision mechanic or streaks of paint on already bright or lightly colored objects, the game expects you to come to these obvious logical conclusions yourself and that is (sadly) so refreshing.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows though when it comes to navigation, there was more than a few times where I got stuck on a lip in floor or a jut on a wall that the fixed angles didn’t do the best job of indicating where there, as the game is more obviously focused on the giants you have to avoid and has to frame them prominently. Some clipping through these lips and juts would have been appreciated, as it would make some set pieces a little less annoying.

When not hiding from the aforementioned giants, you’ll be solving puzzles to progress, these puzzles aren’t mind benders by any means, but they do require some thought to solve and never feel too easy. What makes them fun to figure out is that they play into what ever setting you are in at the moment, you will need to push a suitcase to pull a lever to drop a hide away bed down, or place chunks of meat into a grinder to make a rope of sausages, or close a stove door to make the chef giant panic and clear a path, to list a few examples. This helps the setting of the Maw feel like a character itself that six is exploiting to escape, and makes what could have been banal and mundane in another setting feel much more impactful.

And avoiding each of the giants is mostly a competent affair. Aside from some leeches you’ll run past in chapter 1, the only enemies you will encounter in the game are the giants, and they are designed mostly well enough to enjoy studying how to get past them.

The Janitor clearly had the most effort put into his sections and sets a good impression by being the first one you’ll encounter, with his long, lanky arms, he can catch you quickly and from (mostly) any distance in the room, so you’ll need to have memorized what kind of surfaces you can climb, what boxes and furniture to hide in, and how fast you should be going, given that he is blind and can hear you the second you sprint or push an object over. If you have been paying attention to the contents of the rooms he patrols, you’ll notice he has taken many toys from his victims as trophies. When you do encounter him later, you’ll naturally pick up on the need to throw cymbal monkeys that make noise that he will run over to play with, or turn on a TV with a nursery rhyme that he hyper focuses on. This then culminates into a solid boss encounter where you have to study the movements of his arms until they form a diamond, which indicates you can dash forward and pull two bars from under a door to cut them off. It feels incredibly cathartic to have a brief encounter after spending hours getting stalked and harassed, with said harassers most prominent features being destroyed incredibly fitting penance for his over persistence.

I wish I could lob the same praise to the other three giants, but the game streamlines them heavily in favor of keeping the pacing tight. Not a bad compromise of course, horror games should be short as over familiarity will breed indifference, but I would have liked the Chef encounters to use the kitchen a little more than just closing a stove door as mentioned above, then avoiding broken plates, and finally riding a meat hook while being chased at the end of the chapter (compounded by the final area having the aforementioned annoying lips and juts that you will probably get caught on a few times and end up dying because of it). The majority of the chapter aside from the final section is just hiding from the chefs under furniture or throwing something generic to distract them, and while the great pathing and aesthetics of the kitchen make this fun enough to do, the lack of using the area’s character is disappointing.

And while the next chapter in the restaurant does use the area’s character to some effect, it’s not enough to make up for the annoyances of the guests hit boxes being a little too long which led me to dying a handful of times and essentially had me rolling my eyes and sensibly chuckling at basically having to know exactly where to sprint across the tables speed run style. This could have had the potential of being a good change of pace to being an almost pure reflex section if the chef’s chapter was better, but instead it just compounds how the game trims a little too much fat.

And the last chapter really exemplifies that trimming, you simply push over a vase to get a key, do a brief and easy chase sequence, and then an incredibly bland final boss fight where you hold a mirror in a direction a handful of times, with the end of each sequence causing six to fall down briefly and forcing you wait a bit. It’s a very half assed climax to an otherwise well made game.

I saved talking about this until now cause I really don’t need to go into much detail as to how annoying these kind of sections are in games. At several points through out the game, Six will be struck with hunger, which will trigger a slow walking section. These are meant to make the player feel powerless, but the game proper already does that, Six can not fight back, she only engages in combat twice through out the entire game in the boss fights mentioned above. All these sections do is serve to annoy you and pad out the play time.

The game has a rather hands off approach to story telling and I greatly appreciated it.

The maw its self seems to be a metaphor for cyclical over consumption and the livestock industry, as the corpulent guests that seem to be an analogy for the mega rich can’t help engorging themselves on the bodies of dead humans, and even have no issue being fed the corpses of their own kind to keep themselves sustained, you also have the two chefs who are rather emotionless and indifferent in feeding into this dangerous and horrifically evil hedonism and addiction, and the janitor who works rather well as an allegory for workers who openly abuse livestock due to their perceived low value of life. While the presentation of these themes will be overly blunt for some, the execution is still good when combined with the games excellent art direction and atmosphere, combine this with the fact that the game has no voice acting or dialogue, and it makes this execution all the more effective in getting the player to think about what they experienced.

Visually Little nightmares is fantastic, and it was one of the main reasons I enjoyed it more than I probably would have if it had any other setting.

The first thing that strikes you about the maw is the scale, six is the size of a mouse in comparison to most objects and creatures around her and it makes almost every room feel oppressive and weighty in atmosphere. The lighting is incredible, with points of interest naturally hidden in shadow making you want to investigate to move forward, or moments of darkness having things be outlined just well enough to make you feel even more uneasy, and even when the rooms are brightly lit, there is still several disturbing elements and decorations, macabre paintings of murder and other monsters you never see are almost everywhere, bloody tools are displayed prominently on work benches, kitchen tables are covered in the filth from severed limbs, and so on.

The textures are quite detailed, you’ll have things like patches of rust on filing cabinets, gashes from tools on tables with fine wood, fuzzy rugs where you can count each individual strand of fabric, and lovely wet sheens coating the pipework during the transitional hallways you’ll be running through between chapters.

Then you also have the brilliance of six wearing a bright yellow coat with a distinct and unique diamond shaped hood so that the player never loses track of her when navigating the rooms. It’s clear Tariser studios wanted the visuals to enhance and compliment the game play, and they do a fantastic job at doing so.

Several paragraphs ago I mentioned that the level design its self, from a functional standpoint, is fine, and in most games it would just be ok. The point I am making here though is that even the most simple level design can be made much more enjoyable to solve when developers integrate the aesthetics of the world or tropes of the genre into them. During the janitor chase sequences for example, the fastest way to avoid him is to go through the lowest shelf, but you risk tipping over more objects he has laid there for alarms, meanwhile the safe but long way is to climb up the nearby stack of books to highest shelf. They’re simple solutions yes, but given this is a horror game, where quick pacing but slight over thinking is paramount, having two easy to execute, while still having varying levels of risk, choices to make in the moment, is brilliant. Nowadays many people assume good level design just means “execution of multiple button functions for one problem”, when it’s a broad skill that can implement many approaches.

Lastly on this, it is so refreshing to play a relatively modern game that has influences that aren’t just other video games. One of the many things I dislike about modern video games is that they have seemingly forgot that there are other forms of entertainment out there.

It seems every FPS now is inspired only by Bioshock, halo, or classic doom. It seems like every 3d platformer now is obsessed with having the player just press buttons in the air mario 64 speed run style and only make worlds based on other platformer templates. I could (and will in other reviews) go on about this, but I was so relieved that Little Nightmares’s aesthetic (and story to a small degree) influences were films like Spirited away (there’s homages everywhere, like the scene where Chihiro climbs the stairs or the guests entering the resort, and the Janitor is definitely based on Kamaji) and western horror films like Nightmare on Elm street and session 9 (you will never escape the chair), As someone who counts Spirited Away and Session 9 among his favorite films, this was great for me and fans of all three that I have mentioned will get a lot out of this game because of it. If you are tired of modern games being far too cannibalistic in terms of inspiration, this will be a breath of fresh air for you.

Musically the game is passable. You have your forgettable ambient music that most 2010s video games are so found of that thankfully isn’t intrusive due to the game being so puzzle focused, which is fine as that could be very annoying to players that are stuck. And then there’s the darker ambient tracks that will ramp up in pace when being stalked by one of the giants. If you’ve played an indie horror game in the last 12 years, you’ve heard this all before, really the only impressive thing is your controllers rumble pulsing to the beat when getting chased. Other than that, you certainly won’t be compelled enough to seek out the tracks on their own.


Little Nightmares is a good of example of less being more and taking into account just how much richer and more fulfilling video games used to be, and still can be, when they take influence from non gaming sources. In the hands of other studios, you could assume the game would just be taking cues from nothing but the resident evil remakes and outlast. But that thankfully isn’t the case. It’s a well crafted 5 hour experience that wears its film influences on its sleeves with pride and integrates the character of its world aesthetics and the tropes and needs of its genre into its level design to the full benefit of the medium it’s in. Poor music, the awful slow walking sections, and the over truncation of the last two chapters aside, it’s one of the better modern games I have played in a very long time.

8/10.

I had high expectations for The Last of Us given all the hype and accolades, but my experience with the game was a huge letdown. While the story is often praised, the gameplay itself left much to be desired.

Firstly, the game is heavily scripted and linear. This significantly limits player freedom and makes replaying the game feel repetitive and uninteresting. The combat mechanics are clunky and the AI is frustratingly inconsistent. Enemies can be oblivious one moment and hyper-aware the next, ruining any sense of strategic stealth gameplay. Moreover, the crafting system, although initially intriguing, quickly becomes tedious and feels more like busywork than an engaging game mechanic.

The pacing is another issue. The game often forces players into long, drawn-out sections of walking and slow-paced interaction that do little to advance the story or develop characters. These sections felt like filler content designed to pad out the game’s length rather than contribute meaningfully to the experience. Even the puzzles, which could have offered a break from the monotony, are overly simplistic and offer no real challenge or sense of accomplishment.

On the other hand, I am genuinely happy that TLOU has been adapted into a TV show. The narrative, while bogged down in the game, translates much better to a television format. The show can focus on the strengths of the story without being hampered by the game’s weak mechanics and pacing issues. Watching the characters and story unfold on screen is far more engaging and immersive than playing through the sluggish and often frustrating gameplay.

In conclusion, The Last of Us as a game was a disappointment for me, but the TV show has managed to capture the essence of the story in a far more interesting and compelling way. If you’re intrigued by the narrative, skip the game and watch the show instead. It’s a much more satisfying experience.

I think the combat feels really nice and fluid and I love the vibes of the setting. As a rogue like though, the structure of it kinda baffles me. There isn't really a whole lot of incentive to redo boss fights since once you beat them, you permanently unlock access to the next area. Really, your only reason to not just mad dash to the exit is finding power ups. I'm also not the biggest fan of the walking sim spooky house moments. The story itself does create an interesting horror scenario out of the rogue like loop though.

I have been playing this game off and on since 2011, and it's finally finished. What a great game. It's like Ocarina of Time mixed with the exploration of Metroid. A really interesting story about the illusion of free choice and fate. It was written and directed by Amy Hennig, and in my opinion, her prose here, while flowery, is way more interesting than what she penned for the Uncharted series. Graphics were unparalleled for the time. It technically shouldn't even be possible to have these graphics on the original Playstation, but they were able to push past the limitations of the console. I played on Dreamcast though, and in my opinion, it's the definitive version, at least until the PC port comes back to Steam and GOG. The soundtrack is incredible. One listen to the game's theme song "Ozar Midrashim", and it will be in your head for the rest of your life.

So if I liked it so much, why only 4 and a half stars? Well, there's no in-game map, and in a Metroidvania, that makes it really easy to get lost. Super Metroid figured that out in 1994, so there is no excuse. The combat, while fun at first, lacks depth, as once you've figured it out, it stops being engaging and becomes more of an annoyance. Outside of the bosses, which are more like puzzles than actual fights, the combat does nothing of real note to add variety to its encounters. The game relies far, far too much on block puzzles for its own good. And lastly, there's the matter of the ending, or lack thereof. Anyone that's beaten this game can tell you Soul Reaver doesn't end so much as stop, with all of the payoff reserved for the second game. The narrative was nothing but buildup for a climax that just isn't there. Thankfully, it was good buildup. Perhaps, if Soul Raver 2 manages to stick the landing, I might come back and revise this to a perfect score.

As it stands now though, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a solid action/adventure game with an engaging story, well-rounded, tragic characters, a gothic setting and world that is fun to explore, both in-game, and with analyzing the lore, fine combat and puzzles, and music that will keep you coming back for more. Play it on Dreamcast, Playstation, or PC. Play it any way you can, but just play it.