The Last Walking Sons of Dead Anarchy

You've played this a million times before. A middling Sony first-party third-person feelings shooter. So much of it feels very abrupt. Cutscenes with a real start/stop vibe to them. Radio calls that are obviously meant to have large gaps of time between them just triggering one after the other. It's jarring.

The story is aboot as deep as a puddle. You can see every beat coming a mile away, and the writing is dodgy to the point where plenty of interactions don't make a lot of sense. It's just very by the numbers and boring.

Even the enemies become tedious after a short while. More of an annoyance to progress than anything scary or exciting. I'm sick of hiding in fuckin' bushes.

I inflicted this game on myself for 60 hours. At least it was free.

Let me just start by saying, there is something in this game for every type of Resident Evil fan. (Except maybe you weirdo RE6 fans) It's truly up there with the greats of the series. It has cheesy dialog, creepy atmosphere, detailed environments, clever puzzles, genuinely terrifying moments and way more enemy variety than 7 just to name a few. If 7 and 4 had a weird infected baby, it would be this game and for the most part it's a good thing. 7 for the core mechanics and first person. 4 for the more action pacing, old European environment and inventory system. The world built is super immersive as well and is very fun to explore/find treasure/solve puzzles. The character designs and performances are very well done too and are extremely unique. Music is top notch and the sound design as a whole is a serious RE4 vibe. Though I think the gun sounds could use some more juice.

My few gripes would be that maybe it is too easy (other than mercenaries, that's very hard) and bumping up the difficulty only makes it artificially difficult because enemies simply hit harder and are faster. Also, the inventory management system makes it so you never really need to make any hard decisions about what you grab and with the huge attache case there is no real penalty. Just pick it all up and you're good. I miss the classic, oh shit moment of not knowing if making room for items will be worth it in your inventory. Another gripe is that the story is full of holes, lacking some explanations and some of Ethan's decisions are questionable but it's RE so...it comes with the territory. The more I replay the more I see where it is falling short. I also went through and looked at all the concept art and seeing what could have been is so disappointing in some regards as well. Could have been a 10/10 if some of that cut content was included.

All that being said, the good in this game does outweigh the bad and I can't stop playing.

Also, just as a side note, the RE Engine is a gem and this game looks incredible and runs very smooth. More games should look to use it.