Ready to spin hook kick every single developer on the team for that camera but it's that rare kind of game that's core gameplay is so much fun that I went out of my way to platinum it. The deep CQC system in an Eastern setting I've been itching for since Sleeping Dogs so well laid it down for me a decade ago. When you're on fire you're on FIRE. Nothing more satisfying than clearing out an entire room while successfully blocking every single jab and kick directed straight at you. Minimalistic story and at times gorgeous art direction (some ehh stuff here and there but also a good amount of top-tier color work) help add a bit of zen to it all and that's what's up. Will gladly play like three more of these.

For a follow up to Steep (this is basically Steep 2) this is no doubt the absolute laziest version that could've been made. Such an unbelievable step down in every single way possible that it's honestly astonishing this was made by the same team. Playing Steep I felt as free as a bird and playing Riders I feel locked down to a grid even when I'm hundreds of feet in the air. Even when viewed as a standalone product this in no way feels like a finished game. Completely stiff and lifeless. Don't even get me started on the like 3 year long tutorial it forces you to finish. I'll still keep going at this for a little while longer being I foolishly paid full price for this and there's still some content I have yet to see, but I doubt unlocking any of those mildly neato wacky vehicles will make this experience any better. Was really hoping for this to scratch the itch I've had for years for a next-gen Downhill Domination (PS2, 2003) but now I have the hives for it or just really ANY OTHER extreme sports game. Best to skip this or just wait until it's really cheap (it's a UBISOFT game so probably about a month).

Edit: Have about 10 hours in this now. A few things have gotten better (downhill biking is really a thrill in first person) but most things remain bad or have gotten worse. It's a UBISOFT game and nothing more than that. Though, the game does get 1000x better when you turn off the in-game character's voices/narration.

Will never not play this game every Friday the 13th for as long as these servers will last but ffs this has no doubt the absolute worst walking/running mechanics in any game I've ever played. Playing as a counselor you got two options: run for 10 seconds and then have to stop dead in your tracks for 30 seconds for your stamina to load back up or you can not run and just trudge slower than a damn snail. Seriously, what is this walking? I can forgive the insanely wooded animations and stilted controls that can seriously hinder actions like attacking Jason or driving a car or simply picking up items but the walking annoys me to the brink of insanity. Of course, maybe it's for the best for when Jason kills me for walking too damn slow I have exactly zero remorse and feel no rage whatsoever for my character's death for that's what they get for walking TOO DAMN SLOW.

Despite that, it's a lot of fun. Damn shame about all the licensing disputes preventing this game from being the best it can be. As is, I've never played this and thought to myself that this was released as a finished game and that's why I can't give this a higher score. Still, for what it does have to offer it's still a good time, whether you're playing as Jason or one of the counselors, and I will always look forward to playing this every Friday the 13th.

Would've thought that the exclusive Walmart Edition (PS3) would've given us what we were promised at E3 all those years ago. To my shock, this is not the case. PS3 version is just about the worst thing I've ever played/controlled and seen (I will not be putting any blame on my tv and $20 second-rate controller as I usually do) and while it certainly looks and plays better on PC it's still cheap as all hell and straight-up broken. Not even your hilariously stupid fellow marine allies can turn this into a "so bad it's good" experience. Not something this horrendously boring. Isolation may have been long but at least it was made by people who actually care about the franchise (which showed during that game's entire 100 hr. campaign). This just makes me want to revisit AVP: Requiem which at least does something interesting with the Aliens instead of sidelining them for an entire damn chapter, giving us a bunch of broken AI soldiers (not that the Aliens were any more polished) to shoot at so we can have a(n already) more generic shooter. BAD

"To begin with, we're not what you'd call 'human.' Over the past 200 years, a consciousness appeared layer by layer at the crucible of the White House. It's not unlike the way life started in the oceans four billion years ago. The White House was our primordial soup, a base of evolution. We are formless. We are the very discipline and morality that Americans invoke so often. How can anyone hope to eliminate us? As long as this nation exists, so will we."

--

"If you're immortal, why would you take away individual freedoms and censor the Net?"

--

"Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt... anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for. We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing."

next level

"Give a guy a gun, he thinks he's Superman. Give him two and he thinks he's God."

With that quote from Woo's Hard Boiled first comes with me admitting that I kind of screwed myself on this playthrough by trying to be the guy with the big dick and playing it on hard mode for the first time (last time I played this was about a decade ago) which just isn't meant for this kind of game. This opinion of mine would be different if the cover system worked and if the controls were programmed to control a human and not a tank. Unfortunately neither of those things are true and I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly have fun playing this on hard. Especially since getting through levels is more based on luck and not skill. Just a couple of bullets and you're dead. Enemies just keep on coming and coming; spraying bullets with no end in sight. In a 2D/side-scroller shooter this is fine. In a 3D shooter where you are primarily planted to the ground (even with all the diving and whatnot) it is not. No strategy, just luck.

Playing on this mode, about the first 40% of the game is fun, the next 50% was just about the most miserable I've ever been playing a game before giving up on the last 10% and switching the mode from hard to easy. That's when the game became fun again (though I probably should’ve switched the mode to medium being easy is a bit too easy) and truly captured the feeling of the quote listed at the top of this review. You should not be hiding in cover for more than a few seconds in this game. You should be out there dipping and diving and sliding all over the damn place with a gun in each hand blasting away enemies and the environment. When you are truly feeling the power of a gun in each hand is when the game is at its best.

I still remember the Best Buy close to my house, back when this was released, set up a station where you could literally play the entire game right there. I think this was the first game that made me realize the big step up graphically from the PS2 to the PS3 with all those destructible environments. Definitely thought this was the greatest game ever made based on that first level. Never played the entire game through until now and when I wasn’t dying from the millions of bullets being shot simultaneously at my head on hard mode I was dying of boredom since there is literally no variety whatsoever here. Just point and shoot. At least it's short. If this wasn’t helmed/influenced by John Woo’s style this would probably be a 2/5 but luckily it is and that’s probably why the story works more than usual (comes with all of Woo’s flourishes, though definitely not as memorable as his films) and probably why we have both destructible environments and hilarious things like a live jazz band playing in the middle of a room as you and the enemies engage in a shootout.

Who would’ve thought that John Woo would ever develop a video game, let alone one that’s a sequel to Hard Boiled where you get to play as Chow Yun-Fat? On that merit alone it’s hard for me to completely hate this for the lack of variety and for the overall presentation (the destructible environments are cool, having the sound go out multiple times having me to restart the disc is not). Only major issue I have here is with the controls that are mostly garbage and really bring the game down. Unbelievably stiff when it comes to movement and aiming and when precise aiming is sometimes required you can expect a controller to be flying out my window. Would pay hard cash for a remaster because there is a damn fine game in here. As is, it’s just fine yet a very cool relic in Woo’s career. Something I’ll replay in a couple years and be faced with a PTSD breakdown for all the horrors I endured by playing this on hard mode.

By choice, around 80% of my time in this game was spent walking around the world and taking in the scenery which has never happened to me in a game before. Character's lifeless facial expressions, a number of glitches and freezes, and some of the more unpolished finer details are easily ignorable when it comes to the overall art direction of the game. In this case I'm not afraid to call this a damn masterpiece of presentation because of it. So many rich and different colors that explode onto the screen with weather mechanics that really help bring the entire world to life. Why would you ever want to play this game in the stupidly titled “Kurosawa Mode” (“that he worked in an era where a majority of his works happened to be in black & white is the very least of what defined Akira Kurosawa's filmmaking” ^) and lose all these colors?

This is the only game I've ever played where I hardly ever used the fast modes of transportation (horse, fast travel) to get around the world and instead walked around and enjoyed every single second of the scenery. The game was at it’s best for me when I would just walk from place to place. Whether it be exploring every inch of the world, completing all the "side activities" (however they put too much faith in all those damn “follow the fox” quests. 49 of these things is absolutely ridiculous), and reclaiming farms and villages from the Mongols through slick samurai combat and decent yet satisfying (yet pretty broken) stealth mechanics.

Unfortunately for me the game was usually at it’s worst when it had anything to do with the story/missions. Asides from a few legitimate emotionally affecting moments (damn good ending) I never really found anything engaging about the story and kind of had to force myself to finish it. Always neat to watch a samurai revenge story unfold, but by the time I got to the third act I started to rush through the rest of the game. At that point it was less the story (as bland as it is) and it's length and more myself just getting sick of the gameplay. Really am shocked this has been drowning in praise from so many communities. Every mission is one of three things: hack and slash, be sneaky, collect this and maybe bring it somewhere. I got through the main story and the only side mission(s) I had any interest in (Ishikawa/Tomoe) and then stopped to finish the rest of those "side activities" (for the lack of a better term) before retiring the game. I definitely could put in the effort to platinum the game, but it's just not worth doing another dozen or two of the exact same missions I've already been through over and over again since the very start of the game.

I would've abandoned this game long ago if it wasn't for the addictive and challenging combat and, above all else, this unbelievably gorgeous art style (and all the always cool samurai stuff, of course). Not to mention the single greatest photo mode ever in a video game. I was so moved by the art direction that I actually ended up making my own experimental short film out of all the clips I captured in my 50+ hours of game time (half of that game time was no doubt spent in just capturing all that footage). While this game is not what I had hoped for when it was announced at E3 back in 2018(2019?) I still thought it was an overall solid experience (repetitive missions a BIG asides) worth finishing and I will always be grateful to it for inspiring me (and providing me the tools) to make another film.

^ https://twitter.com/MinovskyArticle/status/1281299387671613441

Beyond satisfying. After those Robomodo-fucks straight up killed the franchise back in 2015 (everyone in that company, including the guy who replaces the water cooler, should face prison time for Pro Skater 5) I never thought this franchise would ever again be in the hands of a company that can actually get the controls down. Above all else, that's all that matters here (and level design, something else Robo knows nothing about, but lets just get competent controls down first).

In comes Vicarious Visions lighting a fire and destroying a decades worth of bad thoughts for the Tony Hawk name; bringing in controls so precise, tight, and smooth. When I bail it's my fault and I accept that (maybe not in the moment when I'm all pissed off but certainly at the end of the day). All they had to do was copy and put some "this generation" updates on Neversoft's formula/design and here I am 120 hours later as happy as can be (and with a damn dirty platinum trophy). Now all they have to do is mix it up in online multiplayer instead of just repeating the same five game modes every match/map with no sense of community (you play against real people but they might as well be AI bots). Gameplay is, of course, still as good as it gets, but why even offer multiplayer when you (VV) clearly don't care about it?

Just an unbelievable amount of fun working at racking up a combo millions of points higher than your last one. It's all about that practice and there is nothing more satisfying than when you see yourself landing your next highest score. I have more hours in Pro Skater 4 and THUG 2 (and probably THUG 1) than any other game out there. This series has always been a favorite of mine and to relive their glory days on the next/(I guess now) last generation of consoles is something I never thought I would see. Hope VV will go on to remake the other Pro Skaters or make their very own entry or both! ala make their own Pro Skater 5 and just completely ignore that there ever was one before it.