liamholland
What more can a guy want than some good Alan Wake II DLC?
This was a nice surprise drop. I did not expect the DLC to come in this form for this game, but honestly this is perfect. Three short stories which just let Remedy (and Same Lake) have even more fun with the game and the characters. I admit that after the cliff-hanger ending of the main story, I was a bit concerned that Remedy was going to release an expansion similar in scale to those in Control, which would actually wrap up the narrative. Fortunately, Remedy did not do that, and what we get instead is some good-old-fashioned downloadable content. First with The Final Draft to wrap up the story, and now this.
There is nothing revelutionary here, but it's more of a great game, a set of genuinely really enjoyable, short missions. I think the third, Time Breaker, in particular is really great, leaning even further into the themes of recognising and, more importantly in my opinion, emphasising the fact that this is a videogame; a videogame made by Remedy. I will not give any spoilers here, and I do not want to discuss some light, three hour long DLC at length (even though I probably could), but suffice to say that this is good, and you should play it.
I would have liked it even more if the gameplay was changed up a bit in the first two "episodes", but I also know that this is not meant to be an essential experience for players which advances and builds on what the base game did; Remedy truly understands the difference between DLC and Expansion, and evidently they know how to deliver something special within the context of both.
Keep it up Sam.
This was a nice surprise drop. I did not expect the DLC to come in this form for this game, but honestly this is perfect. Three short stories which just let Remedy (and Same Lake) have even more fun with the game and the characters. I admit that after the cliff-hanger ending of the main story, I was a bit concerned that Remedy was going to release an expansion similar in scale to those in Control, which would actually wrap up the narrative. Fortunately, Remedy did not do that, and what we get instead is some good-old-fashioned downloadable content. First with The Final Draft to wrap up the story, and now this.
There is nothing revelutionary here, but it's more of a great game, a set of genuinely really enjoyable, short missions. I think the third, Time Breaker, in particular is really great, leaning even further into the themes of recognising and, more importantly in my opinion, emphasising the fact that this is a videogame; a videogame made by Remedy. I will not give any spoilers here, and I do not want to discuss some light, three hour long DLC at length (even though I probably could), but suffice to say that this is good, and you should play it.
I would have liked it even more if the gameplay was changed up a bit in the first two "episodes", but I also know that this is not meant to be an essential experience for players which advances and builds on what the base game did; Remedy truly understands the difference between DLC and Expansion, and evidently they know how to deliver something special within the context of both.
Keep it up Sam.
2023
Since I played it, my unpopular gaming opinion has been that Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a bad game. I have tried to play it twice, with around 15 hours of play time, but, as far as I am concerned, it is simply not a fun game. It is unfortunate, because it is so widely acclaimed and loved, particularly for its parry-based combat system. I have long lamented the fact that I could not find as much enjoyment in it as others have, despite how much I tried. This is not a review of Sekiro, however, but one of Lies of P, which despite its many explicit influences, is not only a great game on its own, but I believe it to be everything that Sekiro could and should have been.
Even the premise of the game, a reimagined version of the story of Pinocchio, causes the game to stand out for its quality. This very easily could have been a cheap cash grab in the vein of the Winnie the Pooh horror film we got last year, but in this case, we were granted a glimpse into the positive effects of a well-known character entering the public domain. In many ways, these two creations are similar; dark and twisted perspectives on household children's stories. The difference is that the Winnie the Pooh film was made with the sole intention of shock factor to bring in a quick payday, whereas Round8 Studios clearly set out to use the character of Pinocchio to increase the marketability of their incredible souls-like.
That is probably a little unfair, as the studio have also clearly put a great deal of thought into how they wanted to tell the story, and although it may have some puppet-like qualities to it on its own with stiff and stilted moments, I was surprisingly invested in it and its endearing cast of characters. Not only that, but the aesthetic of the game is both unique and familiar, effortlessly bounding between dirty, rusty scrapyards and regal, elegant European architecture. The mechanic of choosing between telling the truth or a lie, while simple, remains effective. It is always pretty clear what the game considers to be the "correct" answer, but this does not detract from the experience, in fact, I believe it greatly adds to it, further distancing the game from the rest of the genre by forgoing the standard complex lore which is communicated through eight total lines of dialogue plus one random statue asset (not that that is always a bad thing, I actually also enjoy this style greatly when it works). Knowing what you are meant to be saying allows for the impact of rejecting it to be more effective, as well as keeping the primary focus on the moment-to-moment gameplay and emphasising the point the developers want to make about the morality of the children's tale they are adapting.
And boy, is that moment-to-moment gameplay good. Where (again, at least to me) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a game that seems to hate you for playing it, Lies of P seems to be built around both accommodating and challenging the player at once. The game leans further into the A side of ARPG than others, restricting your gear to basically just some charms and a sword, but this is arguably the best thing about the game. It keeps the mechanics focused, the rewards pool relevant, no matter your build, while making it possible for you to pursue a huge range of playstyles. The ability to customise your sword, combining almost any blade and handle, creating a combination that suits you, makes finding new weapons endlessly exciting and makes your weapon feel far more personal. It is nothing short of a stroke of genius, combined with the fact that the variety and style-factor of weapons was clearly given a great deal of consideration during development. The game does not just want you to have a good build, but a cool build.
The other highlight to me, and where the comparison to Sekiro really takes hold, is the game's emphasis on parrying your opponents attacks. This, combined with the way staggering works, allows you to have some incredibly cool moments, while maintaining the challenge of the combat and giving the developers the means to mess with the player. Attempting to hit the heavy attack on the boss who is currently in the middle of a crazy combo as you can see their stagger window disappearing can be the making of - or the end of - a run. It is truly a brilliantly implemented design choice. This, along with other changes such as the mechanic of your last health item recharging after you have used it, gives the player the sense that any run, no matter how scuffed, has the potential for the clutch of all clutches. It feels great to play.
I will not go into any specific bosses here, since they are undoubtedly best experienced blind, but I will mention that the game stumbled towards the end with a boss that gave me flashbacks to the "Elden Beast" in Elden Ring. Rest assured, however, that it stuck the landing, ultimately delivering one of the most satisfying, fun and memorable souls-like experiences I have ever had. Even if you have never played a souls-like before, I would strongly recommend this game to you. This is your chance to see just how much fun this genre can be.
Even the premise of the game, a reimagined version of the story of Pinocchio, causes the game to stand out for its quality. This very easily could have been a cheap cash grab in the vein of the Winnie the Pooh horror film we got last year, but in this case, we were granted a glimpse into the positive effects of a well-known character entering the public domain. In many ways, these two creations are similar; dark and twisted perspectives on household children's stories. The difference is that the Winnie the Pooh film was made with the sole intention of shock factor to bring in a quick payday, whereas Round8 Studios clearly set out to use the character of Pinocchio to increase the marketability of their incredible souls-like.
That is probably a little unfair, as the studio have also clearly put a great deal of thought into how they wanted to tell the story, and although it may have some puppet-like qualities to it on its own with stiff and stilted moments, I was surprisingly invested in it and its endearing cast of characters. Not only that, but the aesthetic of the game is both unique and familiar, effortlessly bounding between dirty, rusty scrapyards and regal, elegant European architecture. The mechanic of choosing between telling the truth or a lie, while simple, remains effective. It is always pretty clear what the game considers to be the "correct" answer, but this does not detract from the experience, in fact, I believe it greatly adds to it, further distancing the game from the rest of the genre by forgoing the standard complex lore which is communicated through eight total lines of dialogue plus one random statue asset (not that that is always a bad thing, I actually also enjoy this style greatly when it works). Knowing what you are meant to be saying allows for the impact of rejecting it to be more effective, as well as keeping the primary focus on the moment-to-moment gameplay and emphasising the point the developers want to make about the morality of the children's tale they are adapting.
And boy, is that moment-to-moment gameplay good. Where (again, at least to me) Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a game that seems to hate you for playing it, Lies of P seems to be built around both accommodating and challenging the player at once. The game leans further into the A side of ARPG than others, restricting your gear to basically just some charms and a sword, but this is arguably the best thing about the game. It keeps the mechanics focused, the rewards pool relevant, no matter your build, while making it possible for you to pursue a huge range of playstyles. The ability to customise your sword, combining almost any blade and handle, creating a combination that suits you, makes finding new weapons endlessly exciting and makes your weapon feel far more personal. It is nothing short of a stroke of genius, combined with the fact that the variety and style-factor of weapons was clearly given a great deal of consideration during development. The game does not just want you to have a good build, but a cool build.
The other highlight to me, and where the comparison to Sekiro really takes hold, is the game's emphasis on parrying your opponents attacks. This, combined with the way staggering works, allows you to have some incredibly cool moments, while maintaining the challenge of the combat and giving the developers the means to mess with the player. Attempting to hit the heavy attack on the boss who is currently in the middle of a crazy combo as you can see their stagger window disappearing can be the making of - or the end of - a run. It is truly a brilliantly implemented design choice. This, along with other changes such as the mechanic of your last health item recharging after you have used it, gives the player the sense that any run, no matter how scuffed, has the potential for the clutch of all clutches. It feels great to play.
I will not go into any specific bosses here, since they are undoubtedly best experienced blind, but I will mention that the game stumbled towards the end with a boss that gave me flashbacks to the "Elden Beast" in Elden Ring. Rest assured, however, that it stuck the landing, ultimately delivering one of the most satisfying, fun and memorable souls-like experiences I have ever had. Even if you have never played a souls-like before, I would strongly recommend this game to you. This is your chance to see just how much fun this genre can be.
2017
For many years, people have been singing the praises of Nier: Automata. People have long held it up as the shining example of what games can and should be, and while I have not been shy on labelling other games with this commendation, it is Nier: Automata that has caused me to consider it the most. The game and its audience want to impress upon you not an idea, but a question: what does it mean to be human? And impress it does, undoubtedly. I am not the first, and will not be the last to say this is an incredible game, but the question I truly came away from it asking was actually: what does it mean for a game to be good?
The short, easy answer might be to say that if a game is like Nier: Automata, then it is good, but herein lies my dilemma, for on many, many levels I actually believe that this is a deeply flawed game. Many of the aspects of what one would usually look for in a game are either missing, poorly implemented or under-explored. Take the combat, for example: extremely shallow, an overabundance of particle effects which make it hard to see what is going on, controls which are awkwardly mapped, ambiguously applied stats, imprecise hitboxes and little enemy variety. Despite this, I had a great time with it. In fact, I could not get enough of it. So, why? What made the combat so great, so fun, despite all of the obvious flaws?
I have found similar issues in almost every part of the game. Quest design, enemy design, progression, loot pool, material economy, level design, even the UI. I have massive issues with each an every part of this game. Something I often see around the discussion of it is people desperately attempting to jump through hoops to explain why actually, every quest needs to be a fetch quest because it imparts onto you the mundanity of every day life, or something. And sure, you could say that, but in reality, it is just shit quest design.
But that is OK, because the game is still incredible, despite its numerous flaws.
I attribute a large portion of responsibility for this phenomenon to the game's narrative. Not only is it intriguing, powerful, effective and moving, but it entirely relates itself to the game mechanics, in many ways it is the game's mechanics, the game itself even, from the title screen to the controls. Everything in the story involves you to a degree I have never seen before, but not in a "your choices matter way" (they largely do not), but in the way in which the game seeks to involve you. Whether it be from combat to booting up the game itself, Nier: Automata's philosophy is that you must be the primary actor in your experience.
And I really mean that that is its philosophy. As Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". The conclusion Nier: Automata comes to is broadly very similar: life is the actions you take, the people you love, the time you spend being alive; so do not let someone else decide how you spend it.
This is not a new take, but I believe the reason the game's themes work so well, have been so acclaimed and praised, is that they are delivered in the interactive medium in a way it had never really been delivered before. The beauty of Nier: Automata is not that it seeks to give a definitive answer to the meaning of life, but to make you consider it. While this topic is certainly nothing new to the realm of philosophy, Nier: Automata is not claiming that; what it is doing is showing that games can make valuable contributions to discussion on larger, more serious (though I hate to use that word as an explicit compliment) subjects, without trying to become something other than a game and bringing original perspectives that only a game could provide.
A lot of games have come out since 2017, and personally I believe a lot of them have done pretty much every part of Nier: Automata better. Disco Elysium left a deeper impact on me, Lies of P is a much better action game, Hi-Fi Rush has better hack-n-slash combat, God of War explored themes of violence in games in a more effective manner and Alan Wake II delivers its story in a far more interesting way. The thing is, much like I said of Alan Wake II, what makes Nier: Automata special is that I have never played or seen anything like it before in my life. The reason that this game is so good then, at least in my opinion, is not due to any of the individual aspects that make it up, but because every facet of this game is so infused with this total uncompromising vision, purpose and ambition of proving that games can give you an impactful experience and make you consider the great wonders of existence, while also being an extremely cool and stylish action hack-n-slash title.
That is why, despite the issues I have with it, I would highly recommend this game to everyone. I do not believe I have done this game justice in this summary. It is a totally unique experience, a triumph of the medium. There is so much that could be said of this game, but part of Nier: Automata is that it is meant to mean something to you, on an individual, personal level. So instead of me telling you about this game any more than I already have, just go and play it.
The short, easy answer might be to say that if a game is like Nier: Automata, then it is good, but herein lies my dilemma, for on many, many levels I actually believe that this is a deeply flawed game. Many of the aspects of what one would usually look for in a game are either missing, poorly implemented or under-explored. Take the combat, for example: extremely shallow, an overabundance of particle effects which make it hard to see what is going on, controls which are awkwardly mapped, ambiguously applied stats, imprecise hitboxes and little enemy variety. Despite this, I had a great time with it. In fact, I could not get enough of it. So, why? What made the combat so great, so fun, despite all of the obvious flaws?
I have found similar issues in almost every part of the game. Quest design, enemy design, progression, loot pool, material economy, level design, even the UI. I have massive issues with each an every part of this game. Something I often see around the discussion of it is people desperately attempting to jump through hoops to explain why actually, every quest needs to be a fetch quest because it imparts onto you the mundanity of every day life, or something. And sure, you could say that, but in reality, it is just shit quest design.
But that is OK, because the game is still incredible, despite its numerous flaws.
I attribute a large portion of responsibility for this phenomenon to the game's narrative. Not only is it intriguing, powerful, effective and moving, but it entirely relates itself to the game mechanics, in many ways it is the game's mechanics, the game itself even, from the title screen to the controls. Everything in the story involves you to a degree I have never seen before, but not in a "your choices matter way" (they largely do not), but in the way in which the game seeks to involve you. Whether it be from combat to booting up the game itself, Nier: Automata's philosophy is that you must be the primary actor in your experience.
And I really mean that that is its philosophy. As Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". The conclusion Nier: Automata comes to is broadly very similar: life is the actions you take, the people you love, the time you spend being alive; so do not let someone else decide how you spend it.
This is not a new take, but I believe the reason the game's themes work so well, have been so acclaimed and praised, is that they are delivered in the interactive medium in a way it had never really been delivered before. The beauty of Nier: Automata is not that it seeks to give a definitive answer to the meaning of life, but to make you consider it. While this topic is certainly nothing new to the realm of philosophy, Nier: Automata is not claiming that; what it is doing is showing that games can make valuable contributions to discussion on larger, more serious (though I hate to use that word as an explicit compliment) subjects, without trying to become something other than a game and bringing original perspectives that only a game could provide.
A lot of games have come out since 2017, and personally I believe a lot of them have done pretty much every part of Nier: Automata better. Disco Elysium left a deeper impact on me, Lies of P is a much better action game, Hi-Fi Rush has better hack-n-slash combat, God of War explored themes of violence in games in a more effective manner and Alan Wake II delivers its story in a far more interesting way. The thing is, much like I said of Alan Wake II, what makes Nier: Automata special is that I have never played or seen anything like it before in my life. The reason that this game is so good then, at least in my opinion, is not due to any of the individual aspects that make it up, but because every facet of this game is so infused with this total uncompromising vision, purpose and ambition of proving that games can give you an impactful experience and make you consider the great wonders of existence, while also being an extremely cool and stylish action hack-n-slash title.
That is why, despite the issues I have with it, I would highly recommend this game to everyone. I do not believe I have done this game justice in this summary. It is a totally unique experience, a triumph of the medium. There is so much that could be said of this game, but part of Nier: Automata is that it is meant to mean something to you, on an individual, personal level. So instead of me telling you about this game any more than I already have, just go and play it.
2012
Fez has got to be one of the most clever games I have played. It is hard to pin down exactly what sort of game this wants to be. It has platforming, yes; but it shows no signs of of wanting to challenge the player with checkpoints, lives or long levels. "Death" in this game serves more to convenience the player than to punish them. "Oh you missed a jump? Go on, try again, you'll get it this time!" it seems to say as it places you right back where you fell from. It has puzzles, but the only mechanical consistency between them is that there are no two which can be solved the same way. "So you decoded the Tetris Block code? Good job! We're not going to be using that from now on though..."
This might come off like I am sarcastically mocking the game, but these are actually the reasons why Fez is so phenomenal. The game has no interest in something as primitive as mechanics, story or level design. It wants to give you a perspective, make you consider problems, information and images in different ways and it achieves this everywhere it tries. No puzzles can be solved in the same way because you must adopt a new line of thinking for each one. The game does not give you a narrative motivation because if you booted it up, you should want to play for the sake of playing. The platforming is forgiving because the game does not care about how well you can press buttons, but how well you can shift your perspective to traverse an area.
Of course, that does not meant the game is always easy to play. There are some problems, such as the awkwardness of moving around the world, the warp gates not really feeling like they help you all that much, the minor visual and mechanical clunkiness you experience and how, although a compelling choice which speaks to the mentality of the creator, the puzzles can be so obscure and abstract that they can become frustrating. However, ultimately, I think I can overlook these grievances given how impressively the game achieves its main objective.
The visuals are fantastic. The 2D pixel graphics are cute and inviting, but seeing the level move from 2D to 3D and back again never gets old. The fact that this mechanic has not been more widely utilised, as the pixel-art style has, speaks to the idea that what Fez has achieved here is not so easily replicated. It is not only visually pleasing, but a technical marvel.
The game concludes with no less of a spectacle. I have not 100% completed this game, but the ending I received was no disappointment. The graphics, colours and vectors it presents boils the interactive medium down to its basic building blocks in order to remind you what actually makes it up. I really think it is a pretty stunning thing to behold, and works so well because of how successfully the game has communicated its "raison d'être" up to this point.
The fact that Fez has no secret achievements is a great way to highlight the game's philosophy. This is exactly the type of game that you would expect that from, but this game has no intentions of hiding anything from you. Its puzzles are not about obfuscation, they are about enlightenment. Every facet of the design of this game is meant to have you think outside the box (some call it a cube). Scanning a QR code was not as prevalent a means to receive information as it is now, over a decade later, but finding some items rely simply on scanning one, it is up to you to know how to do that.
Even if times have changed, Fez holds up, and I would now consider this game a must play. Not only is it a delight in its presentation, but it is a masterpiece in its conception and art in its execution. I strongly recommend this to anyone who wants to see something different.
This might come off like I am sarcastically mocking the game, but these are actually the reasons why Fez is so phenomenal. The game has no interest in something as primitive as mechanics, story or level design. It wants to give you a perspective, make you consider problems, information and images in different ways and it achieves this everywhere it tries. No puzzles can be solved in the same way because you must adopt a new line of thinking for each one. The game does not give you a narrative motivation because if you booted it up, you should want to play for the sake of playing. The platforming is forgiving because the game does not care about how well you can press buttons, but how well you can shift your perspective to traverse an area.
Of course, that does not meant the game is always easy to play. There are some problems, such as the awkwardness of moving around the world, the warp gates not really feeling like they help you all that much, the minor visual and mechanical clunkiness you experience and how, although a compelling choice which speaks to the mentality of the creator, the puzzles can be so obscure and abstract that they can become frustrating. However, ultimately, I think I can overlook these grievances given how impressively the game achieves its main objective.
The visuals are fantastic. The 2D pixel graphics are cute and inviting, but seeing the level move from 2D to 3D and back again never gets old. The fact that this mechanic has not been more widely utilised, as the pixel-art style has, speaks to the idea that what Fez has achieved here is not so easily replicated. It is not only visually pleasing, but a technical marvel.
The game concludes with no less of a spectacle. I have not 100% completed this game, but the ending I received was no disappointment. The graphics, colours and vectors it presents boils the interactive medium down to its basic building blocks in order to remind you what actually makes it up. I really think it is a pretty stunning thing to behold, and works so well because of how successfully the game has communicated its "raison d'être" up to this point.
The fact that Fez has no secret achievements is a great way to highlight the game's philosophy. This is exactly the type of game that you would expect that from, but this game has no intentions of hiding anything from you. Its puzzles are not about obfuscation, they are about enlightenment. Every facet of the design of this game is meant to have you think outside the box (some call it a cube). Scanning a QR code was not as prevalent a means to receive information as it is now, over a decade later, but finding some items rely simply on scanning one, it is up to you to know how to do that.
Even if times have changed, Fez holds up, and I would now consider this game a must play. Not only is it a delight in its presentation, but it is a masterpiece in its conception and art in its execution. I strongly recommend this to anyone who wants to see something different.
2018
As far as city builders go, I believe I have only really ever played Cities: Skylines and this game. I do really enjoy them, but I often feel like it is very easy to end up in a doom spiral. Frostpunk, at least for me, is also a lot more difficult than Cities: Skylines, mainly because the number of different resources makes it a lot easier to fall into said doom spiral. I have not played enough of this game to say why this happens, or enough of the other offerings into this genre to truly assess its quality, but one day I do want to come back to this and at least beat every scenario.
As it stands, I have only beaten the first, "A New Home" and come close to beating "Refugees". I really like the way the scenarios offer slight variations which mean you have to adopt an entirely new strategy. In what I have played, I have found that once you find that winning strategy, it almost swings the other way to you having too many resources and making the game far easier, but again, I cannot say if that will always be the case.
I got addicted to this game for a few days, but I think I really oversaturated myself with it, while also expecting the initial scenario to take a bit longer and not have such a final and sudden conclusion right after the storm. I can see there is a lot more to experience here, and from what I have played, I would certainly recommend the game.
As it stands, I have only beaten the first, "A New Home" and come close to beating "Refugees". I really like the way the scenarios offer slight variations which mean you have to adopt an entirely new strategy. In what I have played, I have found that once you find that winning strategy, it almost swings the other way to you having too many resources and making the game far easier, but again, I cannot say if that will always be the case.
I got addicted to this game for a few days, but I think I really oversaturated myself with it, while also expecting the initial scenario to take a bit longer and not have such a final and sudden conclusion right after the storm. I can see there is a lot more to experience here, and from what I have played, I would certainly recommend the game.
2010
I played this game on St. Patrick's Day since the creator, Terry Cavanagh, is a fellow Irishman. I thought if I was going to play a game on the day, it should be an Irish one. I was delighted then, when VVVVVV turned out to be a really great time. I cannot claim that it represents or celebrates Irish culture in any particular way, apart from maybe our long history of high quality exports to other countries; Cavanagh is based in London now, and that is where he developed this game.
Despite the short runtime, the game's fast pace allows it to explore its core mechanic completely. The concept of VVVVVV is that instead of a standard jump, your "jump" button causes gravity to flip, causing the player to fall towards the ceiling or the floor on an alternating basis. Combined with a variety of different environmental modifiers, Cavanagh manages to deliver a truly challenging and creative platformer, without it ever becoming too frustrating or tiring. The game is all about execution, with each room having a fairly obvious route, but requiring specific and precise execution of the controls to make it to the other side. Having the game broken into these rooms, much like in Celeste, which was released some years later, allows for the pace to be maintained and for an endlessly satisfying experience for the player.
The game will not be too difficult for anyone to beat, but the inclusion of 20 optional collectibles provides extra challenge for players who want more. These challenges come in many different forms, such as especially difficult platforming sections or taking advantage of the game's systems to reach previously inaccessible areas. Each feels cleverly designed, and I felt as though the game was goading me into figuring out how to reach each one.
With that said, I only ended up getting seventeen out of twenty. This was because of a particular section towards the end of the game, where I could not stop to try and reach the collectibles I needed again and again. I would have started the whole section again, but it just so happened that the crew member located in this area was the last I needed to rescue, and once I had achieved this I was forced into completing the final section of the game. It is kind of a pity, and I would have appreciated a warning and a chance to explore the map to its fullest before I wrapped up the playthrough.
On that point, I believe that the fill-in map should not have been included in this game. It was undeniably useful, and contributed to the short runtime, but the way the rest of the game evokes retro platformers does not really fit with the map for me. Cavanagh himself said this game was a chance for him to indulge his "retro fetish", which makes me think that this addition was more concession than consideration. The general world is not that hard to explore, so removing the map and simply allowing players to wander around, accepting that they will inevitably get lost would, I believe, provide for a better sense of being lost on an alien world. It would heighten the sense of accomplishment when you finally track down each crew member, and make it more difficult to uncover secrets. This is a small gripe, really. The main focus of the game is the platforming sections, and this setup allowed Cavanagh to have players remain focused on that while giving them the sense of one game, not one divided into a number of individual levels selected from a menu. It is a valid compromise, and one I think I can live with.
Finally, I want to mention the art direction in this game. It is truly striking, which is not something I expected. Here Cavanagh really did indulge his "retro fetish", but not without adding some more modern elements such as animated backgrounds which, although subtle, add to the impact of the visuals. Almost every time the room changes the walls are a different colour, not only allowing the player to orient themselves, but almost jolting them awake, screaming at them to pay attention. I loved it and although I would love to see it again, it would be hard to execute outside of a creation specifically designed with it in mind, such as this one.
Overall, I would really recommend VVVVVV to anyone who wants to have a short, but extremely unique platforming experience. The game offers great gameplay and striking visuals which combine to create a comprehensive work that is definitely worth the perseverance required to complete it.
Despite the short runtime, the game's fast pace allows it to explore its core mechanic completely. The concept of VVVVVV is that instead of a standard jump, your "jump" button causes gravity to flip, causing the player to fall towards the ceiling or the floor on an alternating basis. Combined with a variety of different environmental modifiers, Cavanagh manages to deliver a truly challenging and creative platformer, without it ever becoming too frustrating or tiring. The game is all about execution, with each room having a fairly obvious route, but requiring specific and precise execution of the controls to make it to the other side. Having the game broken into these rooms, much like in Celeste, which was released some years later, allows for the pace to be maintained and for an endlessly satisfying experience for the player.
The game will not be too difficult for anyone to beat, but the inclusion of 20 optional collectibles provides extra challenge for players who want more. These challenges come in many different forms, such as especially difficult platforming sections or taking advantage of the game's systems to reach previously inaccessible areas. Each feels cleverly designed, and I felt as though the game was goading me into figuring out how to reach each one.
With that said, I only ended up getting seventeen out of twenty. This was because of a particular section towards the end of the game, where I could not stop to try and reach the collectibles I needed again and again. I would have started the whole section again, but it just so happened that the crew member located in this area was the last I needed to rescue, and once I had achieved this I was forced into completing the final section of the game. It is kind of a pity, and I would have appreciated a warning and a chance to explore the map to its fullest before I wrapped up the playthrough.
On that point, I believe that the fill-in map should not have been included in this game. It was undeniably useful, and contributed to the short runtime, but the way the rest of the game evokes retro platformers does not really fit with the map for me. Cavanagh himself said this game was a chance for him to indulge his "retro fetish", which makes me think that this addition was more concession than consideration. The general world is not that hard to explore, so removing the map and simply allowing players to wander around, accepting that they will inevitably get lost would, I believe, provide for a better sense of being lost on an alien world. It would heighten the sense of accomplishment when you finally track down each crew member, and make it more difficult to uncover secrets. This is a small gripe, really. The main focus of the game is the platforming sections, and this setup allowed Cavanagh to have players remain focused on that while giving them the sense of one game, not one divided into a number of individual levels selected from a menu. It is a valid compromise, and one I think I can live with.
Finally, I want to mention the art direction in this game. It is truly striking, which is not something I expected. Here Cavanagh really did indulge his "retro fetish", but not without adding some more modern elements such as animated backgrounds which, although subtle, add to the impact of the visuals. Almost every time the room changes the walls are a different colour, not only allowing the player to orient themselves, but almost jolting them awake, screaming at them to pay attention. I loved it and although I would love to see it again, it would be hard to execute outside of a creation specifically designed with it in mind, such as this one.
Overall, I would really recommend VVVVVV to anyone who wants to have a short, but extremely unique platforming experience. The game offers great gameplay and striking visuals which combine to create a comprehensive work that is definitely worth the perseverance required to complete it.
2001
I was very excited to play Max Payne, and it definitely did not disappoint. I've been a big fan of Remedy games since I first played Control, so getting to see where it all began, as well as one of the most iconic games ever, was an enticing proposition.
I know that Remedy are currently working on a remake for these games, but I think it will always be worth playing the originals. This is an opinion I hold about most works of art, even if the remakes/remasters do, in fact, result in the creators original vision being fully realised as they had once dreamed. There will always be value in seeing how that same creator realised their vision within the limitations they were bound by at the time. This game exudes a B-movie vibe which will be hard to recapture in the same way, and the gameplay is pretty much timeless.
I did find the controls could be a little bit awkward, where I would accidently trigger bullet time when I didn't mean to, or dive when I meant to stand upright. The gameplay does not evolve that much over the course of the game, but it does not really need to, either. The tight and interesting level design, well paced access to new weapons and strong core mechanics keep the game fun and engaging for the entire runtime. There is no need for superfluous ability percentage increases here, and Remedy knew it. The game is confident in itself and it shows.
The difficulty is well tuned, but I would have still preferred if the game gave you the option to play on any difficulty right from the start. Having to play once just to unlock a difficulty level which you might find to be more challenging makes it feel like a cheap way to inject replayability. That is not to say that I found the game too easy; there are definitely some challenging sections here, but I would have liked to kick it up a notch at times.
There are also some set pieces to give the player a breather from the action, which I always found to be perfectly timed and well executed. They are always in service of the story, never wasted, and often work to give the player some agency in the narrative, which is much appreciated. I did not expect to see much of this when I discovered the story was delivered through a narrated graphic novel.
The writing in this graphic novel is very entertaining, but more so because of how B-movie it is than because of its outstanding quality. It is definitely the worst of the writing I have seen from Sam Lake so far, and if you are not a fan already, then that could make this either insufferable or so hilarious that it wraps back around to being great. If you have read some of my other reviews, then you will know that I am most definitely a Sam Lake fan, so it was pretty cool to see his first work in all its tarnished glory. There are some banger lines in here, but they lean far further into the nonsense territory than in Remedy's later games where the corny vibe is communicated without the audience scratching their heads. Often the point in Sam Lake's writing is to give off that B-movie vibe, where everything is a little silly, but everyone is in on the joke. Here, I think he had not yet quite perfected the method of walking the line between parody and poor quality.
Even so, I liked it. A good example of what I am talking about is the line "He was trying to buy more sand for his hour glass. I wasn't selling any." That is roughly what you should expect to be hearing for the duration of the game, but trust me when I say that it works. The things that come out of Max Payne's mouth are often so silly that you cannot help but find it kind of endearing.
James McCaffrey also provides probably his worst performance that I have heard from him so far. He sounds incredibly bored the entire time, but given that most of what he was reading was utter nonsense, I cannot really blame him.
Ultimately what we see here is the inception of the character which is finally perfected in Alex Casey in Alan Wake II, and although it would be cool to see a version of Max Payne where the coolness of the gameplay is equalled by the writing, I think part of what has made this character and these games so iconic is the corniness that you expect to find in them. Part of what makes Alex Casey perfect in Alan Wake II is what makes Max Payne imperfect in this game.
But the discussions on the merits of remaking this game are for another day. For now, I can safely say that I would strongly recommend this game, and I very much look forward to playing the sequel sometime soon.
I know that Remedy are currently working on a remake for these games, but I think it will always be worth playing the originals. This is an opinion I hold about most works of art, even if the remakes/remasters do, in fact, result in the creators original vision being fully realised as they had once dreamed. There will always be value in seeing how that same creator realised their vision within the limitations they were bound by at the time. This game exudes a B-movie vibe which will be hard to recapture in the same way, and the gameplay is pretty much timeless.
I did find the controls could be a little bit awkward, where I would accidently trigger bullet time when I didn't mean to, or dive when I meant to stand upright. The gameplay does not evolve that much over the course of the game, but it does not really need to, either. The tight and interesting level design, well paced access to new weapons and strong core mechanics keep the game fun and engaging for the entire runtime. There is no need for superfluous ability percentage increases here, and Remedy knew it. The game is confident in itself and it shows.
The difficulty is well tuned, but I would have still preferred if the game gave you the option to play on any difficulty right from the start. Having to play once just to unlock a difficulty level which you might find to be more challenging makes it feel like a cheap way to inject replayability. That is not to say that I found the game too easy; there are definitely some challenging sections here, but I would have liked to kick it up a notch at times.
There are also some set pieces to give the player a breather from the action, which I always found to be perfectly timed and well executed. They are always in service of the story, never wasted, and often work to give the player some agency in the narrative, which is much appreciated. I did not expect to see much of this when I discovered the story was delivered through a narrated graphic novel.
The writing in this graphic novel is very entertaining, but more so because of how B-movie it is than because of its outstanding quality. It is definitely the worst of the writing I have seen from Sam Lake so far, and if you are not a fan already, then that could make this either insufferable or so hilarious that it wraps back around to being great. If you have read some of my other reviews, then you will know that I am most definitely a Sam Lake fan, so it was pretty cool to see his first work in all its tarnished glory. There are some banger lines in here, but they lean far further into the nonsense territory than in Remedy's later games where the corny vibe is communicated without the audience scratching their heads. Often the point in Sam Lake's writing is to give off that B-movie vibe, where everything is a little silly, but everyone is in on the joke. Here, I think he had not yet quite perfected the method of walking the line between parody and poor quality.
Even so, I liked it. A good example of what I am talking about is the line "He was trying to buy more sand for his hour glass. I wasn't selling any." That is roughly what you should expect to be hearing for the duration of the game, but trust me when I say that it works. The things that come out of Max Payne's mouth are often so silly that you cannot help but find it kind of endearing.
James McCaffrey also provides probably his worst performance that I have heard from him so far. He sounds incredibly bored the entire time, but given that most of what he was reading was utter nonsense, I cannot really blame him.
Ultimately what we see here is the inception of the character which is finally perfected in Alex Casey in Alan Wake II, and although it would be cool to see a version of Max Payne where the coolness of the gameplay is equalled by the writing, I think part of what has made this character and these games so iconic is the corniness that you expect to find in them. Part of what makes Alex Casey perfect in Alan Wake II is what makes Max Payne imperfect in this game.
But the discussions on the merits of remaking this game are for another day. For now, I can safely say that I would strongly recommend this game, and I very much look forward to playing the sequel sometime soon.
2011
Back when I was in primary school, my school used to be part of the local Christmas fair every year, with students getting the opportunity to set up a stall of some kind. One year, a friend and I set up a stall with a simple concept: pay €2 and try to set the best time on a run of Shaun White Showboarding. My friend's dad transported the console and a widescreen CRT TV to the community hall, the venue for the fair. There, we set up the Wii and the balance board, and started playing ourselves. Beforehand, this seemed to me like it would just be a fun day hanging out with my friend, getting to play on the Wii while at the Christmas fair... but people absolutely loved it. Not only did our stall do well, it made the most money out of any stall there.
This was incredible to me. I don't want to make it sound like it was the 1950s and technology was unheard of, but when you grow up in the Irish countryside during the financial crisis, grownups don't really care about gaming and your classmates, while of course owning a Wii like everyone else in the world did, mainly had their lives revolve around either farming or GAA (look it up if you don't know). I am not kidding when I say that running this stall was one of the key events in my life. It opened my eyes to the fact that anyone can play and enjoy games, they just don't know it.
Of course, not everyone can play and enjoy every game. Today, many games come with an extraordinarily high barrier to entry, as I mentioned in my review of Alan Wake 2. The system requirements are often very high, the cost of entry is enormous (even with services like Game Pass being a thing) and a lot of the time games expect the player to have some sort of prior experience, both to be able to play them and understand what they are trying to do (check out this video for more on that). It is not impossible, but it makes it very difficult for people to get into gaming. The Nintendo Switch is now the console most people gravitate towards when getting into games, which is a brilliant choice. That console is a remarkably creative piece of engineering with some of the best games of the past decade being released on it. But it's not the Wii.
Since the Wii's release in 2006, we have never again come close to that brief glimpse into the utopia that Nintendo summoned from nowhere almost 20 years ago; a world where anyone can play games together whether they have zero experience or have been playing games their whole life. No longer could people roll their eyes at the corporate ads depicting people from all sorts of demographics laughing and playing games together, because they had seen it happen themselves in their own homes. The Nintendo Wii is the most democratic game console we have ever had.
So, what does any of this have to do with Just Dance 3. Well, late last year my housemate and I had some friends over, and we decided to play Just Dance 2014, which we have on the PS4. After some downloading of apps, and syncing with consoles, we played for a bit, before just looking up Rasputin from Just Dance 2 on YouTube and attempting to emulate that ourselves instead. Naturally, this led to a fair bit of lamenting about "the good old days", when Just Dance was good. Back when it was on the Wii. It was at this point my housemate suggested she bring her old Wii to the house, along with the original Just Dance, which I thought sounded like a great idea.
Fast forward to now, and I have just finished getting five stars on every level in Just Dance 3. Whenever we have friends over, Just Dance is usually put on the agenda. Again and again, I have seen what I saw all those years ago at that Christmas fair stall. My favourite instance of this was my own brother, initially reluctant to play, stating that "we have to get Just Dance for the Wii at home", after we had played for just a couple of hours.
Out of the first three games, this is the best one. The gameplay formula is perfected, as is the tech. Long gone are the unfair "shake" moves from the original game, replaced with golden moves which give you a chance to make up points if you can nail a crucial pose. The game includes "Dance Crew" levels, choreographed for four people, alongside the traditional Solo and Duet modes. The ambiguous pictograms from Just Dance 2, which often confused people more than they instructed them, are much improved in this edition, while still requiring you to pay attention to the dancers themselves in order to get the highest points possible. Paying attention to the dancers is very important here, because you need to do a pretty good job at matching the entirety of their moves if you want to beat your opponents, thanks to the excellent tracking.
This tracking has absolutely no right to be as good as it is. When I started playing, I was under the impression that so long as the movements of my right hand matched that of the dancer on screen, I would do pretty well, but the main thing I have learned on the road to five stars is that if you want that perfect score, you better start moving your entire body. You better start actually dancing. Let me remind you that the Wii remote does not have a gyroscope in it. And yet, somehow, an IR sensor bar, placed at whatever level your TV might happen to be at, at whatever angle your room might require you to stand at, combined with an accelerometer and IR sensor in one hand, allows the remote to calculate where it is well enough for the console to judge how well you are dancing. I have seen some people online mention how they thought the tracking on the Wii edition of this game was not great, and while there are definitely a few golden moves which even I think are broken, trust me when I say that you just need to move your feet more, or pay more attention to the transitions between moves, or simply be more on time.
It is remarkable that this accuracy is possible, but this is exactly what makes the Wii so great. Plug in all of the colour coded cables to your TV (RIP AV connections) and the IR sensor bar and you're good to go. This is one of the key things Microsoft was missing in the Kinect (apart from the bad tracking); the plug-and-play concept of the Wii that not only makes it easy to play, but to set up. That is usually the first thing people will experience with your system; if it is an easy process, people will already be looking forward to playing games. No one wants to be adjusting cameras to 15 degrees of the angle of the blah blah blah. Just let them play the damn game.
The dances themselves in the game are mostly really great fun. There are all sorts of genres here, although naturally late 2000s pop is the prevailing source, especially after so many of the classics have been depleted thanks to the two previous entries in the series. Still, the game manages to offer roughly 50 dances, when you count the unique songs that can be unlocked with the stars you get from completing levels. This is the core gameplay loop of Just Dance 3: Play levels, get between 1 and 5 stars based on your performance, these stars are added to your total, unlock new songs, variations and mash-ups as you accumulate more stars. It feels consistently rewarding, and the "Hope you like gold..." message was pretty cool when I finally mastered the game.
I am not going to lie, some of the choreographies are definitely a bit emasculating and others are probably a bit racist, but you need to accept that if you want to play this game. The great thing about Just Dance 3 is that it truly fulfils the mandate of its title. No matter what, whether you are aiming for perfect scores on every title, or dancing with your friends, despite the moves being choreographed, the route to success or just having fun is the same: just dance. I genuinely mean that; trying too hard actually does not work, once again highlighting how good the tracking is.
If it is still somehow unclear, I would very strongly recommend this game to everyone. Get the Wii out of the attic (I know you still have one), pick up this game from wherever you can (this is the best selling third-party Wii game, there are nearly 10 million copies out there), and get playing. I did not think I liked dancing before I played this game, but it reminds you why moving your body to music has been part of human culture since it began. By managing to create a game which simultaneously allows you to learn to dance without restricting your movement, have fun while being competitive and offer a perfectly low skill floor, but a brilliantly attainable skill ceiling, this game can, and should, be played by everyone.
This was incredible to me. I don't want to make it sound like it was the 1950s and technology was unheard of, but when you grow up in the Irish countryside during the financial crisis, grownups don't really care about gaming and your classmates, while of course owning a Wii like everyone else in the world did, mainly had their lives revolve around either farming or GAA (look it up if you don't know). I am not kidding when I say that running this stall was one of the key events in my life. It opened my eyes to the fact that anyone can play and enjoy games, they just don't know it.
Of course, not everyone can play and enjoy every game. Today, many games come with an extraordinarily high barrier to entry, as I mentioned in my review of Alan Wake 2. The system requirements are often very high, the cost of entry is enormous (even with services like Game Pass being a thing) and a lot of the time games expect the player to have some sort of prior experience, both to be able to play them and understand what they are trying to do (check out this video for more on that). It is not impossible, but it makes it very difficult for people to get into gaming. The Nintendo Switch is now the console most people gravitate towards when getting into games, which is a brilliant choice. That console is a remarkably creative piece of engineering with some of the best games of the past decade being released on it. But it's not the Wii.
Since the Wii's release in 2006, we have never again come close to that brief glimpse into the utopia that Nintendo summoned from nowhere almost 20 years ago; a world where anyone can play games together whether they have zero experience or have been playing games their whole life. No longer could people roll their eyes at the corporate ads depicting people from all sorts of demographics laughing and playing games together, because they had seen it happen themselves in their own homes. The Nintendo Wii is the most democratic game console we have ever had.
So, what does any of this have to do with Just Dance 3. Well, late last year my housemate and I had some friends over, and we decided to play Just Dance 2014, which we have on the PS4. After some downloading of apps, and syncing with consoles, we played for a bit, before just looking up Rasputin from Just Dance 2 on YouTube and attempting to emulate that ourselves instead. Naturally, this led to a fair bit of lamenting about "the good old days", when Just Dance was good. Back when it was on the Wii. It was at this point my housemate suggested she bring her old Wii to the house, along with the original Just Dance, which I thought sounded like a great idea.
Fast forward to now, and I have just finished getting five stars on every level in Just Dance 3. Whenever we have friends over, Just Dance is usually put on the agenda. Again and again, I have seen what I saw all those years ago at that Christmas fair stall. My favourite instance of this was my own brother, initially reluctant to play, stating that "we have to get Just Dance for the Wii at home", after we had played for just a couple of hours.
Out of the first three games, this is the best one. The gameplay formula is perfected, as is the tech. Long gone are the unfair "shake" moves from the original game, replaced with golden moves which give you a chance to make up points if you can nail a crucial pose. The game includes "Dance Crew" levels, choreographed for four people, alongside the traditional Solo and Duet modes. The ambiguous pictograms from Just Dance 2, which often confused people more than they instructed them, are much improved in this edition, while still requiring you to pay attention to the dancers themselves in order to get the highest points possible. Paying attention to the dancers is very important here, because you need to do a pretty good job at matching the entirety of their moves if you want to beat your opponents, thanks to the excellent tracking.
This tracking has absolutely no right to be as good as it is. When I started playing, I was under the impression that so long as the movements of my right hand matched that of the dancer on screen, I would do pretty well, but the main thing I have learned on the road to five stars is that if you want that perfect score, you better start moving your entire body. You better start actually dancing. Let me remind you that the Wii remote does not have a gyroscope in it. And yet, somehow, an IR sensor bar, placed at whatever level your TV might happen to be at, at whatever angle your room might require you to stand at, combined with an accelerometer and IR sensor in one hand, allows the remote to calculate where it is well enough for the console to judge how well you are dancing. I have seen some people online mention how they thought the tracking on the Wii edition of this game was not great, and while there are definitely a few golden moves which even I think are broken, trust me when I say that you just need to move your feet more, or pay more attention to the transitions between moves, or simply be more on time.
It is remarkable that this accuracy is possible, but this is exactly what makes the Wii so great. Plug in all of the colour coded cables to your TV (RIP AV connections) and the IR sensor bar and you're good to go. This is one of the key things Microsoft was missing in the Kinect (apart from the bad tracking); the plug-and-play concept of the Wii that not only makes it easy to play, but to set up. That is usually the first thing people will experience with your system; if it is an easy process, people will already be looking forward to playing games. No one wants to be adjusting cameras to 15 degrees of the angle of the blah blah blah. Just let them play the damn game.
The dances themselves in the game are mostly really great fun. There are all sorts of genres here, although naturally late 2000s pop is the prevailing source, especially after so many of the classics have been depleted thanks to the two previous entries in the series. Still, the game manages to offer roughly 50 dances, when you count the unique songs that can be unlocked with the stars you get from completing levels. This is the core gameplay loop of Just Dance 3: Play levels, get between 1 and 5 stars based on your performance, these stars are added to your total, unlock new songs, variations and mash-ups as you accumulate more stars. It feels consistently rewarding, and the "Hope you like gold..." message was pretty cool when I finally mastered the game.
I am not going to lie, some of the choreographies are definitely a bit emasculating and others are probably a bit racist, but you need to accept that if you want to play this game. The great thing about Just Dance 3 is that it truly fulfils the mandate of its title. No matter what, whether you are aiming for perfect scores on every title, or dancing with your friends, despite the moves being choreographed, the route to success or just having fun is the same: just dance. I genuinely mean that; trying too hard actually does not work, once again highlighting how good the tracking is.
If it is still somehow unclear, I would very strongly recommend this game to everyone. Get the Wii out of the attic (I know you still have one), pick up this game from wherever you can (this is the best selling third-party Wii game, there are nearly 10 million copies out there), and get playing. I did not think I liked dancing before I played this game, but it reminds you why moving your body to music has been part of human culture since it began. By managing to create a game which simultaneously allows you to learn to dance without restricting your movement, have fun while being competitive and offer a perfectly low skill floor, but a brilliantly attainable skill ceiling, this game can, and should, be played by everyone.
2010
Unfortunately, this one was pretty disappointing for me. The game has been in the back of my mind for a decade, since I first saw it in the documentary Indie Game: The Movie when I was about 12. At the time, it really caught my eye, although admittedly not as much as its "co-star", Fez.
To a certain extent, I still think this game is important; it was one of the earliest major titles of the indie boom of the 2010s, exuding the vibe of the Xbox Live Arcade era to which it was released. Without games like this becoming massively popular on Newgrounds in the early 2010s, drawing the eyes of the major publishers like Microsoft, I do not believe we would have the indie scene that we have today. In some ways that might be better, as now we often refer to games with publishers like Annapurna, as indies, despite them very obviously not being indies, while Baldur's Gate 3, which is actually independently published, is triple-A. It was games like Super Meat Boy that made this change, the blurring of the lines, occur. Unfortunately, despite having a major impact on the industry, I do not believe the game has really earned any more respect than the exact amount it is owed for this impact, however much that might be.
I do not just want to compare this game to Celeste, like so many do, but it is hard not to do that. All I'll say on that front is that if you haven't played either Super Meat Boy or Celeste, I would tell you to play Celeste first. Still, I want to mainly focus on this game as its own thing.
Throughout the experience, I really felt like the game was trying too hard, and failing at what it was trying to do. Over the course of 6 chapters (the 6th only has 6 levels, mind you), you are faced with only a few different mechanics and enemies, but none of these are really that creative, and I felt that they were rarely used to their full potential. I will say that I have only beaten the light world and a couple of the dark missions, so there is the possibility that I'm missing something truly spectacular, but I still don't think that excuses the fact that the main game is so lackluster. None of these missions were that memorable, apart from maybe how frustrating and counter-intuitive they can be.
That was probably my main gripe with the game: it always feels as though it is at odds with itself. There is a massive emphasis on going fast in Super Meat Boy; one of your only abilities is to run, every level is timed, and the leaderboards are 100% based on the times you set. Despite this, the game often forces you to wait for things to happen, such as the timing of temporary platforms being such that you must stand still for a couple of seconds at the start of a level in order to land on the first one. Incredibly, the final level of the game, the boss fight with "Dr. Fetus" (this name, by the way, is a decent example of the poorly aged 2010 edgy/epic randomness humor that was prevalent at the time), is the worst offender for this. The level is set up so that you have no choice but to stand dead still for about 15 seconds before the boundry obstacles begin to move. This is utterly absurd to me, because it is not just a case of me being faster than the devs expected me to be like in earlier levels, but them actually just not letting you move for the first few seconds in the last level of the game.
The level design also leaves something to be desired. It seems to me that any time the devs spotted a playtester pull off a cool move, they made a special point to put an obstacle directly in their path, just so that having fun and theory crafting is not possible to the extent that it really should be in a game like this. The levels all just have a general vibe that the layout was constructed first, then the obstacles were placed in order to make the path more annoying for the player, as opposed to the level being constructed with a particular idea in mind. If I had to guess, I would say that this was done in order to construct this artificial sense of difficulty. The game is not actually that hard, it just often feels more like you are trying to persevere past the difficulties, rather than overcome them through mastery over the mechanics.
I also have to mention that the boss fight with the worms is probably one of the worst boss fights I have ever played. Not only is it badly designed, but it is also super easy to cheese. If you just jump between two of the saw blades at the edge of the map, you can basically just wait for the worms to jump into obstacles by themselves, without needing to do anything. This still takes forever though, because the worms seemingly choose their moves by just picking a number between 1 and 3. Unfortunately, this makes it pretty likely that they pull out the "pop up out of the ground and do nothing" move, once again leaving you to just wait on the game to be ready for you to start interacting with it.
When talking about their inspirations for Super Meat Boy, the developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes said the game is "a big throwback to a lot of super hardcore NES classics like Ghosts 'n Goblins, Mega Man, and the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2". But is it really? In my opinion, this is an uninspired attempt at a precision platformer with largely imprecise controls, contextualised in overly-edgy humour which is very of its time, which promises to be extremely difficult, but is actually not that hard to beat and is sometimes even possible to completely cheese. So, no. I do not think this is a throwback, and I don't believe anyone will ever be creating a throwback to it.
To a certain extent, I still think this game is important; it was one of the earliest major titles of the indie boom of the 2010s, exuding the vibe of the Xbox Live Arcade era to which it was released. Without games like this becoming massively popular on Newgrounds in the early 2010s, drawing the eyes of the major publishers like Microsoft, I do not believe we would have the indie scene that we have today. In some ways that might be better, as now we often refer to games with publishers like Annapurna, as indies, despite them very obviously not being indies, while Baldur's Gate 3, which is actually independently published, is triple-A. It was games like Super Meat Boy that made this change, the blurring of the lines, occur. Unfortunately, despite having a major impact on the industry, I do not believe the game has really earned any more respect than the exact amount it is owed for this impact, however much that might be.
I do not just want to compare this game to Celeste, like so many do, but it is hard not to do that. All I'll say on that front is that if you haven't played either Super Meat Boy or Celeste, I would tell you to play Celeste first. Still, I want to mainly focus on this game as its own thing.
Throughout the experience, I really felt like the game was trying too hard, and failing at what it was trying to do. Over the course of 6 chapters (the 6th only has 6 levels, mind you), you are faced with only a few different mechanics and enemies, but none of these are really that creative, and I felt that they were rarely used to their full potential. I will say that I have only beaten the light world and a couple of the dark missions, so there is the possibility that I'm missing something truly spectacular, but I still don't think that excuses the fact that the main game is so lackluster. None of these missions were that memorable, apart from maybe how frustrating and counter-intuitive they can be.
That was probably my main gripe with the game: it always feels as though it is at odds with itself. There is a massive emphasis on going fast in Super Meat Boy; one of your only abilities is to run, every level is timed, and the leaderboards are 100% based on the times you set. Despite this, the game often forces you to wait for things to happen, such as the timing of temporary platforms being such that you must stand still for a couple of seconds at the start of a level in order to land on the first one. Incredibly, the final level of the game, the boss fight with "Dr. Fetus" (this name, by the way, is a decent example of the poorly aged 2010 edgy/epic randomness humor that was prevalent at the time), is the worst offender for this. The level is set up so that you have no choice but to stand dead still for about 15 seconds before the boundry obstacles begin to move. This is utterly absurd to me, because it is not just a case of me being faster than the devs expected me to be like in earlier levels, but them actually just not letting you move for the first few seconds in the last level of the game.
The level design also leaves something to be desired. It seems to me that any time the devs spotted a playtester pull off a cool move, they made a special point to put an obstacle directly in their path, just so that having fun and theory crafting is not possible to the extent that it really should be in a game like this. The levels all just have a general vibe that the layout was constructed first, then the obstacles were placed in order to make the path more annoying for the player, as opposed to the level being constructed with a particular idea in mind. If I had to guess, I would say that this was done in order to construct this artificial sense of difficulty. The game is not actually that hard, it just often feels more like you are trying to persevere past the difficulties, rather than overcome them through mastery over the mechanics.
I also have to mention that the boss fight with the worms is probably one of the worst boss fights I have ever played. Not only is it badly designed, but it is also super easy to cheese. If you just jump between two of the saw blades at the edge of the map, you can basically just wait for the worms to jump into obstacles by themselves, without needing to do anything. This still takes forever though, because the worms seemingly choose their moves by just picking a number between 1 and 3. Unfortunately, this makes it pretty likely that they pull out the "pop up out of the ground and do nothing" move, once again leaving you to just wait on the game to be ready for you to start interacting with it.
When talking about their inspirations for Super Meat Boy, the developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes said the game is "a big throwback to a lot of super hardcore NES classics like Ghosts 'n Goblins, Mega Man, and the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2". But is it really? In my opinion, this is an uninspired attempt at a precision platformer with largely imprecise controls, contextualised in overly-edgy humour which is very of its time, which promises to be extremely difficult, but is actually not that hard to beat and is sometimes even possible to completely cheese. So, no. I do not think this is a throwback, and I don't believe anyone will ever be creating a throwback to it.
2020
When I finished this game, I was kind of left wondering who it is for. The gameplay is very simple and forgiving, but its themes and humour are not childish. The answer is, of course, that this game is for everyone and, to be honest, that is pretty refreshing.
While the gameplay is very simple, that does not prevent it from being very enjoyable. It just makes it accessible. The classic goal of "catching 'em all" is a common gameplay trope for a reason. Tried and true, never failing to deliver. Bugsnax puts its own spin on things, providing creatures based on real world food with adorably creative designs and names. They all behave in unique ways, but are never that hard to catch. It makes for a wonderfully relaxing complesionist experience, the model naturally pushing you towards finding every bug in the game.
However, the gameplay model is not the only thing that pushes you towards this. I would say that the game holds your hand a bit too much. Completing every quest will see you collect the vast majority of the bugs for the NPCs in what are essentially fetch quests. To the game's credit the variety of bugs prevents catching them from becoming overly chorish. Completing an NPC's quest chain will also sometimes result in you taking on a boss, in the form of legendary bugs. These boss battles are creative, but they are not hard to figure out, and I would have preferred if these were something you had to seek out and defeat on your own, without having to wait for an NPC to be ready for you.
The boss battles are also marred by the general lack of any risk in the game. Usually, you want to have to weigh up your options; assess what challenge you are best prepared for and see if you can overcome it. This game offers no such challeneges, but to be clear, that is very intentional. The bugsnax are only really used for feeding the NPCs. The game does not explain the risk in this until the very end (even if it can be guessed pretty easily), and even then, it has no effect anyway. Transforming a villager seems to have no impact apart from making them look goofy. It really takes any risk or tension out of everything you do, which is pretty disappointing. It feels like it should be possible to consume the bugs yourself, granting you some unique abilites based on which ones you eat, with some narrative drawback, maybe (think typhon abilities in Prey, and similar).
Despite this, the game holds up. I personally found the mystery elements of the story satisfying enough to make me want to find out how it cocludes, and the way NPCs ask you to catch certain bugs as part of their quests helps to pace the filling out of your journal. The NPCs themselves are different and interesting, with caracturised personalities making them enjoyable and entertaining to interact with, but I never found myself to be too invested in any of their stories, given their arcs are pretty predicatable. Still, discovering new ways to catch new bugs remains interesting and engaging for the duration of the game, without ever becoming overwhelming. I could have probably done with either a couple more tools or maybe leaving some until later in the game, but there are still plenty of ways to combine the ones you have in ways that often require you to think outside the box (but only just outside it).
The game also contains a number of different levels, each one small but not sparse, styled after various biomes, with the bugs imitating the animals you might expect to find there. It works well, with each biome being notably distinct and unlocking each one allowing the developers to very effectively control your progression through the game. Just note that the game also contains fast travel, but it just doesn't tell you that (or maybe I just missed it). Don't be like me and only realise that 7 hours in. By the time I realised that it was there, I was getting pretty sick of running through each biome again and again, but at the same time, I kind of wish the fast travel wasn't so easy to use. It does feel like a shame to skip travelling through these levels entirely, but I have no suggestion of an alternative in this case.
One final note: I do not really agree with the common assessment of this game that generally goes along the lines of describing it as "psychological horror for kids"; that is going too far, if you ask me. The mystery around bugsnax, combined with the varying levels of caution advised by the NPCs, adds a disturbing air to the creatures, but the game's quests requiring you to feed them to the villagers and having no option to eat them yourself, again removes a large portion of the stakes (portion of the steaks). It is a case of the games narrative not lining up with its mechanics. The in-game discussion and consequences of comsuming the bugs is rarely tackled in a serious way, and the whole vibe aims more towards a group of diverse personalities stranded on an island, and the dangers and events that come with that, rather than how people battle with temptation and consumption. That being said, I don't think that's a bad thing. In fact, I think it's better that the game is not trying to be something it isn't. It adds some depth to the story, but it is not the focus of the game.
Overall, I would recommend Bugsnax, but I could definitely see some people finding it a bit boring. It is incredibly creative, with interesting characters and solid gameplay, but the lack of any real challenge beyond solving some basic puzzles really takes away from the experience. That being said, I do think that Bugsnax nails what it is trying to do perfectly and without the disturbing and unknown nature of the bugs, I think a lot of people would not play this. In the end, there is something to be said for the fact that the game delivers a unique experience and engaging mystery without trying to go beyond its means.
While the gameplay is very simple, that does not prevent it from being very enjoyable. It just makes it accessible. The classic goal of "catching 'em all" is a common gameplay trope for a reason. Tried and true, never failing to deliver. Bugsnax puts its own spin on things, providing creatures based on real world food with adorably creative designs and names. They all behave in unique ways, but are never that hard to catch. It makes for a wonderfully relaxing complesionist experience, the model naturally pushing you towards finding every bug in the game.
However, the gameplay model is not the only thing that pushes you towards this. I would say that the game holds your hand a bit too much. Completing every quest will see you collect the vast majority of the bugs for the NPCs in what are essentially fetch quests. To the game's credit the variety of bugs prevents catching them from becoming overly chorish. Completing an NPC's quest chain will also sometimes result in you taking on a boss, in the form of legendary bugs. These boss battles are creative, but they are not hard to figure out, and I would have preferred if these were something you had to seek out and defeat on your own, without having to wait for an NPC to be ready for you.
The boss battles are also marred by the general lack of any risk in the game. Usually, you want to have to weigh up your options; assess what challenge you are best prepared for and see if you can overcome it. This game offers no such challeneges, but to be clear, that is very intentional. The bugsnax are only really used for feeding the NPCs. The game does not explain the risk in this until the very end (even if it can be guessed pretty easily), and even then, it has no effect anyway. Transforming a villager seems to have no impact apart from making them look goofy. It really takes any risk or tension out of everything you do, which is pretty disappointing. It feels like it should be possible to consume the bugs yourself, granting you some unique abilites based on which ones you eat, with some narrative drawback, maybe (think typhon abilities in Prey, and similar).
Despite this, the game holds up. I personally found the mystery elements of the story satisfying enough to make me want to find out how it cocludes, and the way NPCs ask you to catch certain bugs as part of their quests helps to pace the filling out of your journal. The NPCs themselves are different and interesting, with caracturised personalities making them enjoyable and entertaining to interact with, but I never found myself to be too invested in any of their stories, given their arcs are pretty predicatable. Still, discovering new ways to catch new bugs remains interesting and engaging for the duration of the game, without ever becoming overwhelming. I could have probably done with either a couple more tools or maybe leaving some until later in the game, but there are still plenty of ways to combine the ones you have in ways that often require you to think outside the box (but only just outside it).
The game also contains a number of different levels, each one small but not sparse, styled after various biomes, with the bugs imitating the animals you might expect to find there. It works well, with each biome being notably distinct and unlocking each one allowing the developers to very effectively control your progression through the game. Just note that the game also contains fast travel, but it just doesn't tell you that (or maybe I just missed it). Don't be like me and only realise that 7 hours in. By the time I realised that it was there, I was getting pretty sick of running through each biome again and again, but at the same time, I kind of wish the fast travel wasn't so easy to use. It does feel like a shame to skip travelling through these levels entirely, but I have no suggestion of an alternative in this case.
One final note: I do not really agree with the common assessment of this game that generally goes along the lines of describing it as "psychological horror for kids"; that is going too far, if you ask me. The mystery around bugsnax, combined with the varying levels of caution advised by the NPCs, adds a disturbing air to the creatures, but the game's quests requiring you to feed them to the villagers and having no option to eat them yourself, again removes a large portion of the stakes (portion of the steaks). It is a case of the games narrative not lining up with its mechanics. The in-game discussion and consequences of comsuming the bugs is rarely tackled in a serious way, and the whole vibe aims more towards a group of diverse personalities stranded on an island, and the dangers and events that come with that, rather than how people battle with temptation and consumption. That being said, I don't think that's a bad thing. In fact, I think it's better that the game is not trying to be something it isn't. It adds some depth to the story, but it is not the focus of the game.
Overall, I would recommend Bugsnax, but I could definitely see some people finding it a bit boring. It is incredibly creative, with interesting characters and solid gameplay, but the lack of any real challenge beyond solving some basic puzzles really takes away from the experience. That being said, I do think that Bugsnax nails what it is trying to do perfectly and without the disturbing and unknown nature of the bugs, I think a lot of people would not play this. In the end, there is something to be said for the fact that the game delivers a unique experience and engaging mystery without trying to go beyond its means.
2023
Recently, I have been thinking a lot about how much the evolution of the games industry has reflected and paralleled the evolution of the film industry. Games, just as films did, have gone from cheap pulp entertainment, to a boom of creativity, to being accused of corrupting the minds of children, to being over-commercialised. Both tend to go through different phases of genius innovation and milking franchises, eras of auteurs and eras of sellouts. Over the past 50 years, there have been a lot of great games. But there has never been a game, or a film, or anything like Alan Wake II.
When you look at 2023 in general, many people, including myself, would say it was one of the best years for games ever, and I believe that (although Baldur's Gate 3 is really, really good) this is the game that truly marks a milestone in the evolution of the medium. If I were to compare Alan Wake II to a film then, what would it be? If I had to choose, I would probably go with Singin' in the Rain, but not just because that film is a musical. I would choose that film because it is a film about the creation of art, just like Alan Wake II is a game about how art can change the world. I would choose it because in its depiction of cinema, it expresses its love for cinema, just as Alan Wake II does for games. I would choose it because it is one of the best.
But I also think that Alan Wake II doesn't deserve to be compared to a film. It is better than that. It is its own thing. Where people like Hideo Kojima seek to move games closer to films (His recent announcement of a "game that is like a film but also not a film or a game" with Jordan Peele, for example), Sam Lake rejects that idea. This game wants to be a game. Yes, it references and makes use of many different mediums of art, as well as live-action cutscenes but without experiencing all of these uses together, in and through the game, they mean nothing. It is the experience, the playing of the game that matters. Watching a playthrough, listening to the incredible OST, hearing it through word of mouth, it just is not the same. This is a game that has to be played to be understood.
In fact, you have to play more than just the game itself to properly understand it. Realistically, you have to play all of Remedy's games to understand it, something I am yet to achieve. While on its own, it is still a fantastic survival horror game which adapts the core gameplay idea from Alan Wake into a context which makes it work far better than it did in that original game, this is more than just a survival horror game. This is the Remedy game. No one else could have made this. When that uniqueness is combined with the great gameplay, the usual perfectly crafted Remedy atmosphere, excellent level design, mind-blowing graphics and the best story Lake has given us so far, you have an incredible game on your hands.
Tragically, though, I believe many people will never play this game. Many will see a survival horror sequel to a 2010 cult classic, the high system requirements, or (justifiably, I must admit, not everyone is a fan) Sam Lake's name on the writing credits and give this game a miss. And honestly, fair enough, this game will not be everyone's favourite game, I'm not sure I would even say it's my favourite game, but by God it is up there because this is incredible. And I believe that everyone should play this.
There is so much I have not mentioned in this review. So much about the story, about the significance of the fact that this even exists, about the fact that this game came out 13 years after the original (Really, how is that the number, can that actually be a coincidence?), any of its few, but still present flaws or the fact that in a game about being stuck in a loop, you have to play new game plus to get the true ending... But there just isn't any point. There is no way I could adequatly express the way I feel about this game any more than I already hope that I have, and if I haven't convinced you to play the game by now, I never will.
I would very strongly recommend this game, in fact, I would urge you to play it. This is one of the greats. Games have come a long way in the last 5 decades, and Alan Wake II makes me so excited for the next 5. Both games and films will continue to go through their respective phases and eras, but I can say for certain now that we are not in a loop, we're in a spiral, journeying out from the centre into the endless possibilities.
When you look at 2023 in general, many people, including myself, would say it was one of the best years for games ever, and I believe that (although Baldur's Gate 3 is really, really good) this is the game that truly marks a milestone in the evolution of the medium. If I were to compare Alan Wake II to a film then, what would it be? If I had to choose, I would probably go with Singin' in the Rain, but not just because that film is a musical. I would choose that film because it is a film about the creation of art, just like Alan Wake II is a game about how art can change the world. I would choose it because in its depiction of cinema, it expresses its love for cinema, just as Alan Wake II does for games. I would choose it because it is one of the best.
But I also think that Alan Wake II doesn't deserve to be compared to a film. It is better than that. It is its own thing. Where people like Hideo Kojima seek to move games closer to films (His recent announcement of a "game that is like a film but also not a film or a game" with Jordan Peele, for example), Sam Lake rejects that idea. This game wants to be a game. Yes, it references and makes use of many different mediums of art, as well as live-action cutscenes but without experiencing all of these uses together, in and through the game, they mean nothing. It is the experience, the playing of the game that matters. Watching a playthrough, listening to the incredible OST, hearing it through word of mouth, it just is not the same. This is a game that has to be played to be understood.
In fact, you have to play more than just the game itself to properly understand it. Realistically, you have to play all of Remedy's games to understand it, something I am yet to achieve. While on its own, it is still a fantastic survival horror game which adapts the core gameplay idea from Alan Wake into a context which makes it work far better than it did in that original game, this is more than just a survival horror game. This is the Remedy game. No one else could have made this. When that uniqueness is combined with the great gameplay, the usual perfectly crafted Remedy atmosphere, excellent level design, mind-blowing graphics and the best story Lake has given us so far, you have an incredible game on your hands.
Tragically, though, I believe many people will never play this game. Many will see a survival horror sequel to a 2010 cult classic, the high system requirements, or (justifiably, I must admit, not everyone is a fan) Sam Lake's name on the writing credits and give this game a miss. And honestly, fair enough, this game will not be everyone's favourite game, I'm not sure I would even say it's my favourite game, but by God it is up there because this is incredible. And I believe that everyone should play this.
There is so much I have not mentioned in this review. So much about the story, about the significance of the fact that this even exists, about the fact that this game came out 13 years after the original (Really, how is that the number, can that actually be a coincidence?), any of its few, but still present flaws or the fact that in a game about being stuck in a loop, you have to play new game plus to get the true ending... But there just isn't any point. There is no way I could adequatly express the way I feel about this game any more than I already hope that I have, and if I haven't convinced you to play the game by now, I never will.
I would very strongly recommend this game, in fact, I would urge you to play it. This is one of the greats. Games have come a long way in the last 5 decades, and Alan Wake II makes me so excited for the next 5. Both games and films will continue to go through their respective phases and eras, but I can say for certain now that we are not in a loop, we're in a spiral, journeying out from the centre into the endless possibilities.
1996
I jumped into Tomb Raider because I know it was such a major event when it came out, and is in many ways a major part of gaming history, but after playing over 10 hours of the game, I have to apply the Starfield principle and abandon this. It is a real shame, because part of me does want to see it through to the end, but I just have way too many games which I could be playing and having a better time with than this. I have to mention right away as well that I played on the PC port of the game, which seems to be an inferior version fo the game from what I have read, but nevertheless I can only review what I played. I will mention that in an era of digital ownership and remasters replacing originals, I do think it is commendable that the original games are still available.
I don't believe the game isn't bad, but, in my opinion, it definitely isn't good either. For the most part, I just found it to be incredibly boring. The first cutscene, featuring Lara backflipping off of a cliff to open fire on a pack of wolves with her dual pistols, got me excited, promising a corny 90s action hero story which I was 100% down for. But this pretty much disappears right away; the mind-numbing levels made me pretty apathetic to whatever Lara's goal was, and to be honest, that was never entirely clear to me, as the story is pretty bare-bones. To be honest though, I was not going into this game expecting a story at all, so that is not something I hold against the game.
For a puzzle game, I don't think there was anything which actually constituted a puzzle that I solved. Most of the levels consist of you traversing rooms which usually branch off of a central room, until you pull a lever, which unlocks more rooms, or pick up a key to unlock a door, which unlocks even more rooms.
That does undersell the game somewhat, because to be fair, the level design is excellent. Each one feels unique, and it is easy to know where you are in relation to any part of a level at any given time. The platforming setups are intuitive and Lara has a vaste swathe of different moves she can use to traverse the world. The game cleverly gives you the tools to move around the level however you want, in levels that are designed to guide you in a certain direction.
There is also an element of exploration afforded to the player, but the major flaw in this is that there is actually no reason to do it. I really think it is exceptionally lame that finding secret or hidden rooms (marked by a chime the game plays when you find one) means you get an extra couple of shots in your shotgun, or an extra small health pack. Ammunition was rarely a problem given your pistols, the default weapon, have infinite ammo, so "rewarding" the player for putting extra effort into exploration with basic resources seems like a major oversight. For some people, it will be worth it just to have the 100% completion on the level, but to me this just made the secrets irrelevant.
The most damning mark against the game for me was actually not, as so often seems to be the case, the controls. I think the tank controls actually make a lot of sense for this kind of platformer, letting you line up your jumps carefully and giving the developers the ability to map Lara's moves in a way that makes sense. I also think the grid system makes a lot of sense. Having that basic unit of measurement made it easy to tell if you could make a jump, climb a wall, or (in theory) how far Lara will move. However, the way Lara herself controls is where the game lets itself down. I guess they call them tank controls for a reason, because Lara controls like you are driving a 100 tonne piece of war machinery. Lara often walks too far, doesn't walk far enough, jumps too early, doesn't jump at all, jumps in the wrong direction, doesn't grab a ledge but grabs it the next time when it seems like you did the exact same thing, won't pull a lever, won't move a block, tries to climb onto a block when you're trying to push it, it is actually painful. The way Lara turns around, rotating like a dish in the microwave, is so slow it feels like it takes 15 minutes to turn 90 degrees. At least she has a roll she can use as a quick turn, but you often can't use this when you're on a smalll pillar you dont want to risk her falling off to her death, or when you don't want to turn all the way around.
What I would say is that you do get used to the controls themselves, and I wouldn't give up right at the start just because of them. Maybe you won't be as bothered by the jankiness as I was, which would negate a large negative from the game when you experience it.
The way Lara controls also makes combat way more difficult than it had to be. Getting backed into a corner is often a death sentence, because the stun lock will prevent you from jumping over the enemy, but by the time you turn Lara around to run in a different direction, you're already dead. If this doesn't happen, combat can actually be pretty fun. When Lara decides to respond to your inputs, you can dodge and weave around enemies in a satisfying way that actually makes you feel pretty cool. There is nice enemy variety and you have to bear in mind what the different enemies can do in order to fight them properly. There are a few different weapons which you can use; mainly just to do more damage, but they are there. Like I mentioned earlier, ammuntion is rarely a problem given your pistols have infinite ammo, but I did have to make sure I saved my more powerful weapons for stronger enemies. However, combat also often takes place from a ledge above the arena, where you can wait for Lara to lock onto the enemies and shoot them with pistols until they die. This is often the easiest way to approach combat, and also the least fun.
Overall, this game was pretty disappointing to me. With only three levels left, it really does feel like I should just push through to the end and get the completion, but I just could not be bothered. When I play a game, I want to feel something. But the feeling I experienced when playing Tomb Raider was pretty much exactly the same feeling you get when doing chores. Maybe if I had put on a podcast in the background, I would have had a better time.
I don't believe the game isn't bad, but, in my opinion, it definitely isn't good either. For the most part, I just found it to be incredibly boring. The first cutscene, featuring Lara backflipping off of a cliff to open fire on a pack of wolves with her dual pistols, got me excited, promising a corny 90s action hero story which I was 100% down for. But this pretty much disappears right away; the mind-numbing levels made me pretty apathetic to whatever Lara's goal was, and to be honest, that was never entirely clear to me, as the story is pretty bare-bones. To be honest though, I was not going into this game expecting a story at all, so that is not something I hold against the game.
For a puzzle game, I don't think there was anything which actually constituted a puzzle that I solved. Most of the levels consist of you traversing rooms which usually branch off of a central room, until you pull a lever, which unlocks more rooms, or pick up a key to unlock a door, which unlocks even more rooms.
That does undersell the game somewhat, because to be fair, the level design is excellent. Each one feels unique, and it is easy to know where you are in relation to any part of a level at any given time. The platforming setups are intuitive and Lara has a vaste swathe of different moves she can use to traverse the world. The game cleverly gives you the tools to move around the level however you want, in levels that are designed to guide you in a certain direction.
There is also an element of exploration afforded to the player, but the major flaw in this is that there is actually no reason to do it. I really think it is exceptionally lame that finding secret or hidden rooms (marked by a chime the game plays when you find one) means you get an extra couple of shots in your shotgun, or an extra small health pack. Ammunition was rarely a problem given your pistols, the default weapon, have infinite ammo, so "rewarding" the player for putting extra effort into exploration with basic resources seems like a major oversight. For some people, it will be worth it just to have the 100% completion on the level, but to me this just made the secrets irrelevant.
The most damning mark against the game for me was actually not, as so often seems to be the case, the controls. I think the tank controls actually make a lot of sense for this kind of platformer, letting you line up your jumps carefully and giving the developers the ability to map Lara's moves in a way that makes sense. I also think the grid system makes a lot of sense. Having that basic unit of measurement made it easy to tell if you could make a jump, climb a wall, or (in theory) how far Lara will move. However, the way Lara herself controls is where the game lets itself down. I guess they call them tank controls for a reason, because Lara controls like you are driving a 100 tonne piece of war machinery. Lara often walks too far, doesn't walk far enough, jumps too early, doesn't jump at all, jumps in the wrong direction, doesn't grab a ledge but grabs it the next time when it seems like you did the exact same thing, won't pull a lever, won't move a block, tries to climb onto a block when you're trying to push it, it is actually painful. The way Lara turns around, rotating like a dish in the microwave, is so slow it feels like it takes 15 minutes to turn 90 degrees. At least she has a roll she can use as a quick turn, but you often can't use this when you're on a smalll pillar you dont want to risk her falling off to her death, or when you don't want to turn all the way around.
What I would say is that you do get used to the controls themselves, and I wouldn't give up right at the start just because of them. Maybe you won't be as bothered by the jankiness as I was, which would negate a large negative from the game when you experience it.
The way Lara controls also makes combat way more difficult than it had to be. Getting backed into a corner is often a death sentence, because the stun lock will prevent you from jumping over the enemy, but by the time you turn Lara around to run in a different direction, you're already dead. If this doesn't happen, combat can actually be pretty fun. When Lara decides to respond to your inputs, you can dodge and weave around enemies in a satisfying way that actually makes you feel pretty cool. There is nice enemy variety and you have to bear in mind what the different enemies can do in order to fight them properly. There are a few different weapons which you can use; mainly just to do more damage, but they are there. Like I mentioned earlier, ammuntion is rarely a problem given your pistols have infinite ammo, but I did have to make sure I saved my more powerful weapons for stronger enemies. However, combat also often takes place from a ledge above the arena, where you can wait for Lara to lock onto the enemies and shoot them with pistols until they die. This is often the easiest way to approach combat, and also the least fun.
Overall, this game was pretty disappointing to me. With only three levels left, it really does feel like I should just push through to the end and get the completion, but I just could not be bothered. When I play a game, I want to feel something. But the feeling I experienced when playing Tomb Raider was pretty much exactly the same feeling you get when doing chores. Maybe if I had put on a podcast in the background, I would have had a better time.