moash
4 reviews liked by moash
BitLife
2018
my ratings are purely based on how much i like the game, not the perceived value of it, because i think seeing games as just products is harmful to the medium. however i think it's important to note that bitlife is a very greedy game. it started with bitizenship and now there's a fuckton of expansions that don't need to be paid. that being said, the game is pretty fun, especially for a mobile title. i like the legacy mechanic a lot, it's just really fun to do different types of lives.
pure fun. it's good in a completely different way than the south park rpgs, which i do prefer, but this is just really well done action gameplay. the first 2 chapters are a bit of a slog, but the rest is fantastic. i love it!
Skate 2
2009
i don’t think i could reasonably give this any sort of rating and this will probably sound lame, but i the entire time i was playing this i was perpetually reminded of being harassed while trying to skate. normally i would brush this off as correlation w/o causation, but this game feels so uninviting and inhospitable for women/fems. there is only one set of voice lines and instead of going gender neutral, it assumes you’re gonna be a man if you’re playing this, you can customize your body type, but all of the clothes revert you back to the male body type. not even to mention the constant use of the t-slur throughout (kinda comes with the territory but still). sorry if this is a bit incoherent but i really wanted to like this game but i just found myself being pushed away around every corner.
The Ubisoft open-world formula is calcified here. The charismatic sicko villain has taken over the region as illustrated in a big opening setpiece, and it's on you to liberate zones by clearing forts while collecting resources for upgrades. This one also has a strong economic focus, with Ezio able to purchase every building in Rome like it's Fable II.
As the first major outing for this style of design, Brotherhood actually does pretty well. There's a good variation in quest design, with Leonardo machine missions, flashback missions, faction missions, and vr challenges spicing up the returning tombs, assassination contracts, and glyph puzzles. I do think it's funny that there's a special higher-budget category for assassinating multiplayer characters.
All the new abilities are a massive improvement on AC2's kit. Activate subweapons by holding attack, speed up combat by stringing combos, do horse flips and horse-to-horse assassinations, throw spears, have no fewer than five ranged options, glide across the city in a parachute.
The recruit system in particular is so simple but also so perfectly tuned. It really never gets old to press one button and have a recruit appear from a hiding spot 0.5 seconds later to kill a guy. What unfortunately hasn't improved is the movement controls, which inevitably buckle in any high-pace situation.
One advantage of the game's structure is that because all the game's side activities feed into Liberating Roma, the main quest and side content feel cohesive in a way a lot of open worlds don't. Despite being a bloated Ubisoft open world, Brotherhood actually has a strong sense of focus to it: the Assassins are coming together to ruin Cesare Borgia's day.
After the disorganized brotherhood of AC2, it's nice to see this game's focus on the mundane organizational problems that occur among the leadership clique of a growing organization. Rivalries, suspicion, resentment, disappointment, strategic disagreements, romantic tension, cheesy reconciliations. It's low-energy, but kind of works as a workplace drama, which is also the genre of much of Desmond's storyline.
Maybe the most well-done narrative element is the subplot that Ezio is a 40 year old man who is getting tired of casual sex and would really like to settle down with someone like Caterina Sforza, but she's not into it. He's always seeing women in the streets that remind him of Cristina Vespucci, the one that got away. It's surprisingly tender for a series that rarely trades in subtlety.
The multiplayer component is sadly no longer online, but it was extremely cool in 2010. Multiplayer would be worth five stars on its own.
As the first major outing for this style of design, Brotherhood actually does pretty well. There's a good variation in quest design, with Leonardo machine missions, flashback missions, faction missions, and vr challenges spicing up the returning tombs, assassination contracts, and glyph puzzles. I do think it's funny that there's a special higher-budget category for assassinating multiplayer characters.
All the new abilities are a massive improvement on AC2's kit. Activate subweapons by holding attack, speed up combat by stringing combos, do horse flips and horse-to-horse assassinations, throw spears, have no fewer than five ranged options, glide across the city in a parachute.
The recruit system in particular is so simple but also so perfectly tuned. It really never gets old to press one button and have a recruit appear from a hiding spot 0.5 seconds later to kill a guy. What unfortunately hasn't improved is the movement controls, which inevitably buckle in any high-pace situation.
One advantage of the game's structure is that because all the game's side activities feed into Liberating Roma, the main quest and side content feel cohesive in a way a lot of open worlds don't. Despite being a bloated Ubisoft open world, Brotherhood actually has a strong sense of focus to it: the Assassins are coming together to ruin Cesare Borgia's day.
After the disorganized brotherhood of AC2, it's nice to see this game's focus on the mundane organizational problems that occur among the leadership clique of a growing organization. Rivalries, suspicion, resentment, disappointment, strategic disagreements, romantic tension, cheesy reconciliations. It's low-energy, but kind of works as a workplace drama, which is also the genre of much of Desmond's storyline.
Maybe the most well-done narrative element is the subplot that Ezio is a 40 year old man who is getting tired of casual sex and would really like to settle down with someone like Caterina Sforza, but she's not into it. He's always seeing women in the streets that remind him of Cristina Vespucci, the one that got away. It's surprisingly tender for a series that rarely trades in subtlety.
The multiplayer component is sadly no longer online, but it was extremely cool in 2010. Multiplayer would be worth five stars on its own.