This is tough to rate. I am enamored with the wuxia-inspired, non-specific Asian fantasy setting, with its striking landscapes and architecture. It's evocative without being a caricature or cliche. On the other hand, the game doesn't have much time for expansive worldbuilding and lore.

The graphics are great showcase for the PS3, but there are some baaad slowdowns and screen tearing occasionally. The mo-capped facial animations were truly next-gen at the time, though.

The writing is pretty good, but the superb voice acting takes it to a whole other level. The heroines Nariko and Kai, as well as the main villain Bohan (played by Andy Serkis), all have fantastic performances.

On the other hand, everybody is just a little bit nuts.

The villains come off as grotesquely buffoonish. Serkis’s Bohan walks the fine line between menacing villain and pathetic narcissist, a Trump-like figure, but the sub-bosses (Flying Fox, Whiptail, and Roach) are just cartoons that feel out of place against the seriousness of the rest of the story.

Nariko herself is a wonderful lead, a powerful, magnetic presence in the game, but the splash art on the title and loading screens make her look like a pornstar. Surprisingly, the sweet, crazy little Kai is not annoying at all thanks to good character design and outstanding voice acting (TWING TWANG).

The QTEs suck. They come up quite suddenly, can be hard to spot in the moment, distract from the cinematic action, and are quite strict. The ones that require directional input are the worst, because half the time you'll be a little too diagonal on the analog stick (down-left instead of pure left, for example) and the input will fail.

The battle system, focusing on predefined combos and a color-coded counter system, is enjoyable. In this game, you block automatically by waiting in the correct stance and not attacking, and then hitting the counterattack button at the right time. This is clever because it discourages button mashing. Either way, I suck at this type of game generally and there is no easy difficulty option, only a “Hell Mode” that unlocks after you complete the game once. That said, I only died during the boss fights, so the game isn’t too hard overall.

The main points of frustration are the QTEs and the energy beams you have to counter from the last boss, which are really strict timing-wise.

The sixaxis motion controls are terrible and make the game so much harder, but thankfully you can turn them all off. Once I turned off the gyro controls, I really started to enjoy the archery and artillery sections of the game. The game peaks in the 3rd chapter, when you have quick alternating scenes between Nariko and Kai.

I liked the game at first, then I started to hate it, but then I started to like it again towards the end... except for the frustrating final boss fight.

Incidentally, this game also spawned an animated feature film, but it was terrible. The main characters were fairly detailed, but the animations were stiff and lifeless, the non-main characters looked like NPCs from a PS2 game, and the backgrounds were just low-poly mounds with a simple texture applied. It looked more like machinima than theatrical-level animation.

The writing also took a huge nosedive. Boring, wooden dialogue. All the subtle characterizations from the game are gone, whether it’s Kai’s nuttiness, Bohan’s manic narcissim, the sad and tortured relationship between Bohan and his son Roach, or even the little rivalry between Flying Fox and Whiptail. Nariko’s voice actor reprises the role, but her fiercely impassioned delivery from the game is gone, and now she spends the entire movie sounding only lightly chuffed. Kai goes from twing twang in the game to I like blood in the movie. Just garbage screenwriting.

We do get a little extra backstory. Bohan was always a backstabbing jerk who never can get the respect he thinks he deserves. Nariko and Kai are actually biological sisters, because apparently their father Shen went on a big raping spree after Nariko was born, desperately trying to sire a son as the Chosen One. And in fact there is a son, named Loki, but he’s just a blacksmith who is literally stabbed in the back after spouting some contradictory dialogue. That's one way to subvert a trope, I guess, but the whole plotline is just a stupid waste of 1/3 of the screen time.

The whole thing (the movie, not the game) is just awful. A simple compilation of the cutscenes from the game would have been better. Apparently Andy Serkis not only voiced game-Bohan, but also helped write the dialogue and direct the cutscenes. His presence is sorely missed from the movie.

After watching Rings of Power with my girlfriend, I decided I should check out the source material so of course I did the sensible thing and tried out Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. (The actual reason is it was free on Amazon/Twitch Prime like a month or two ago and I figured why not)

First off, a neat thing I truly didn’t expect is that you can kinda-sorta play the game as a woman? It lets you select a skin for Talion and most of them just put him in different types of armor (normal guy armor, evil guy armor, elf guy armor, etc) but then one of them is just a woman named Lithariel? It’s purely cosmetic (no audio/dialogue changes) and only in the gameplay segments (cutscenes switch back to generic Talion), but it’s kinda neat that it’s available at all. Being able to be a cool lady with a sword instead of generic gruff white dude #75 was a big plus for me.

But, uh, other than that I didn’t have a great time? The movement feels mushy (on keyboard and mouse, maybe controller would feel better?) and I felt like I was constantly fighting the camera for control. I also didn’t care much for the combat. I’ve never really been a big fan of the Batman Arkham game style combat and this is pretty directly that with some bits added on. But then this one it feels like I don’t get to decide who I’m actually targeting so I just kind of flailed between targets. I pretty frequently caught myself thinking that I wish this felt more like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey because I love how that game feels for runnin’ around, climbin’ stuff, and stabbin’ dudes. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison since AC:O was several years later but it constantly came to mind for me.

I’m largely ambivalent on Lord of the Rings in general so this game is kind of not targeted towards me but the narrative (as far as I saw in my 3-ish hours of playtime) didn’t really do anything for me. Talion is a kinda boring sad dad, Celebrimbor trying to regain his memories doesn’t do much for me either (maybe because I already know some of his deal and the game seems to assume I wouldn’t know anything), and having missions where I had to go hang out with Gollum felt like fan service aimed at completely different people. It’s not necessarily a bad thing (well, maybe the Talion stuff is, that’s dreadfully dull) but it left me without much to really latch onto here. If the story had been intriguing enough maybe I’d feel compelled to stick through the mushy controls for a while longer to see what’s up with the rest of it.

Playing it again, I see more clearly that this game is just a wrapper, and that there is practically nothing inside.

Before I thought it was a regular game, but at least it had its own atmosphere that separates it (a little) from the rest of the games in the pile. But looking at it now what it has is a ``idea'' of atmosphere.

For me, a good atmosphere in this type of open world games to spend hours is not beautiful landscapes, characters wearing invented clothes or putting dinosaur robots around the world.

That can be the basis on which a setting is built, but behind it there must be layers of depth that make that world feel really attractive and alive, where you want to learn more about the lore, about its rules, limitations and characters. If I'm going to spend dozens of hours in that world, then let it be a world, plain and simple.

But Horizon has absolutely none of this. Its characters are walking clichés, the dialogues are crappy, the elements of the scenery and nature barely interact with each other, beyond machines fighting each other sometimes, and the way to get into their world and lore is to listen to audio notes where they spout the usual bullshit with little imagination. As interesting as it could be what they have created, which it is not, it is destroyed by all this. Forgettable story, cloned sidequests, unnecessary grinding, absurd menus. All screws in the coffin of the atmosphere.

The developers have taken mechanics from all kinds of games and have put the automatic without thinking about the coherence it could have. For example, the RPG systems, what's the point of them, apart from the fact that others do it?
What's the point of the skill tree? The whole prologue is about the years that Aloy has trained to be a deadly annihilator and overcome all obstacles but it turns out that she doesn't know how to attack from heights, or shoot arrows from wires, or do silent attacks without unlocking the relevant skills first. Very logical.

Copying without thinking. For fashion and convenience. The more elements the better. So easier to reach 50 hours of content. Oh, and that Aloy has to take all the objects of the place about half a million times. That way we reach 60 for sure. If others do it so do we, let's not mess it up and create something with personality.

Ironic that a game with these ideas of dinosaur robots facing tribes with spears and bows, which may invite you to think that the developers have let their imagination run wild or are trying something different, is one of the least inspired, generic and commoditized in the industry.

Wrapping. Of ideas and world. That's what they've brought to the table. To try to sell the idea of innovation or something different. The fucked up thing is that they've succeeded.

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Volviéndolo a jugar, veo más claramente que este juego es solo envoltorio, y que no hay prácticamente nada dentro.

Antes pensaba que era un juego regular pero que al menos tenia esa ambientación propia que lo separa (un poco) del resto de juegos del montón. Pero viéndolo ahora lo que tiene es una ``idea´´ de ambientación.

Para mi, una buena ambientación en este tipo de juegos de mundo abierto para echar horas no son paisajes bonitos, que los personajes lleven ropas inventadas o poner robots dinosaurios por el mundo.

Eso puede ser la base sobre lo que se cimiente una ambientación, pero detrás tiene que llevar unas capas de profundidad que haga que ese mundo se sienta de verdad atrayente y vivo, donde quieras aprender más sobre el lore, sobre sus reglas, limitaciones y personajes. Si voy a estar decenas de horas en ese mundo, pues que, simple y llanamente, sea un mundo.

Pero Horizon no tiene absolutamente nada de esto. Sus personajes son clichés andantes, los diálogos cutres, los elementos del escenario y naturaleza apenas interactúan entre ellos, mas allá de maquinas peleándose entre ellas alguna vez y la forma de meterte en su mundo y lore es escuchar notas de audio donde sueltan las chorradas de turno sin apenas imaginación. Por muy interesante que pudiera ser lo que han creado, que no lo es, queda destruido por todo esto. Historia olvidable, secundarias clónicas, grindeo innecesario, menús absurdos. Todo tornillos en el ataúd de la ambientación.

Los desarrolladores han cogido mecánicas de todo tipo de juegos y han puesto el automático sin pensar en la coherencia que pudiese tener. Por ejemplo, los sistemas RPG. ¿Qué sentido tienen, aparte de que lo hacen los demás?

¿Qué sentido tiene el árbol de habilidades? Todo el prólogo va de los años que Aloy ha entrenado para para ser una aniquiladora mortífera y superar todos los obstáculos pero resulta que no sabe atacar desde las alturas, o disparar flechas desde cables, o hacer ataque silenciosos sin desbloquear antes las habilidades pertinentes. Muy lógico todo.

Copiar sin pensar. Por moda y comodidad. Cuantos más elementos mejor. Así más fácil se llega a las 50 horas de contenido. Ah, y que Aloy tenga que coger todos los objetos de alrededor medio millón de veces. Así llegamos a las 60 seguro. Si lo hacen los demás también nosotros, no vayamos a liarla y crear algo con personalidad.

Irónico que un juego con estas ideas de robots dinosaurios enfrentados a tribus con lanzas y arcos, que puede invitar a pensar que los desarrolladores han dejado volar la imaginación o están intentando algo diferente sea uno de los menos inspirados, genéricos y comodones de la industria.

Envoltorio. De ideas y de mundo. Eso es lo que han aportado. Para intentar vender la idea de innovación o algo diferente. Lo jodido es que lo han conseguido.

I gave it a good fifteen hours but was bored. It's not terrible or anything, there's just nothing that feels new or interesting for me.

Feels like another game that's a variation on the same open-world "narrative epic" I've played a thousand times before. Picking shit up and crafting. Pinging my radar thing to find items, climbing big shit to unlock map stuff. Repeat.

No thank you.

i remain convinced this game will have its overdue reevaluation. the evil within (aka PSYCHO BREAK) is peak video game horror with just the right balance of jank and big budget bombast. silent hill with the grimy, glistening, bloodsoaked aesthetic of a SAW movie. resident evil 4, the last of us, and killer7 are other points of reference. it begins strangely enough, and it only continues to get stranger—very much a descent into things darker and more apocalyptic, always threatening to break the fourth wall with its apparent absurdity but always stopping just short of explicitly doing so. indeed, rather than ultimately push outward from its glass prison, the narrative draws inward, refracting upon itself, convincing us that what we see is really happening while its unreality compounds and entraps us. our uncertainty—sebastian's beleaguered mental state—is reflected in the instability of the environment, the suddenly and constantly wrenching contortion of the world around us: ruvik's world. ruvik, the mind exerting the most control over this layered simulacrum reality. not insignificantly, sebastian can only overcome the chaos by retreating further into the nightmare by way of a safe room entered via mirrors...

replaying this to prepare myself for finally giving the evil within 2 a try. seems most would say otherwise, but i consider it to be one of the peak game experiences of the 2010s.