Despite having never finished a Disaster Report game, I love this franchise a lot. It’s the exact kind of niche, jank nonsense I’m a complete sucker for. Ridiculous melodrama, goofy acting, poorly animated visuals… it’s got it all! After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, however, it seemed likely that the franchise was dead. Studio Irem shut down and it’s devs left to make studio Granzilla. The PS2 era was over and these kinds of goofy C-tier games didn’t have a space to exist anymore.

Which is why it’s kind of stunning this game exists at all, much less is as compelling as it is.

The ThorHighHeels video review covers the topic in much more detail and I’ll hit a lot of the same points here, but I need to convey my thoughts down anyway or I’ll melt. Even so, I highly recommend checking his analysis out.

Like all Disaster Report games, the set-up is straightforward. There’s a disaster. You need to survive it. Gather resources, make ethical decisions, press a button to brace for earthquakes. Previous entries often involved a vast conspiracy, with some villain creating an artificial flood or earthquake for their own evil ends.

Disaster Report 4 sheds that angle though and goes for a quiet character drama. The disaster is natural. There’s no mastermind. It’s just you and thousands of others trying to survive an awful situation. You can tell that the 2011 disaster actually impacted how the team was approaching these stories. Rather than a lot of high-octane chases, a lot of the game is about traveling around and visiting different tragedies or morality plays. You find people price gouging on emergency supplies or using the chaos to support their own vices. You can also find communities binding together and cutting down old barriers in favor of overcoming these tremendous odds.

I think the most striking, and probably controversial, sequence of the game is the Miracle Water subplot on Day 4. You’ve reached an elementary school that’s been turned into a shelter. But the community is distrustful of outsiders, particularly foreigners. Immigrants from outside the country are forced to sleep in the parking lot and the playground rather than indoors with the others. After grabbing some water and helping some of these children, rumors start to spread about the “Miracle Water.” Before long, before you can stop it, you’re being hailed as a messiah by those same racist community members. The game never lets you correct them but it’s hard not to see an advantage in keeping up the con. They’re giving you food to give to the children. They’re letting outsiders sleep indoors. If you’re playing an immoral play through, you can even get a sailboat out of it to escape from the city. And people are happy. Is it that bad a lie?

Things break bad eventually and the chaos that emerges is genuinely upsetting. You’re chased out of the shelter and one of the immigrants is brutally assaulted by the angry mob. It’s horrifying and sickening and it left an awful pit in my stomach that AAA games haven’t ever done to me. Until the epilogue section, I was actually pretty sure he was murdered. While not being able to stop the lie could be annoying, the lack of control makes it more effective as an extreme action somewhat might take in upsetting circumstances. It’s a genuinely engaging story about how desperate people buy into cults and myths, a story of racism, and about the stress of disaster. When an actual villain does emerge in the climax, their motives and beliefs seem more believable because of plots like that. The villain commits some horrible crimes, and justifies it to themselves by pointing to angry mobs of normal people like we’ve just seen. “These people seem civilized, but it’s no different from the war zones I grew up in. Distrust of outsiders, selfish behavior, falling for cons out of desperation… it’s all the same”

But even with how bleak that sounds, this is a light game in the end. While you can do horrible things, the game actually gives you plenty of ways to turn those bad actions into good deeds. In fact, that’s encouraged for a player that wants to see everything. Steal thousands of dollars from a cult? Pay off people’s loans, save the orphanage, support communities. It’s also still a VERY silly game. You can run around in a chef or superhero or whatever costume through all these scenes. You can convince a con artist that you’re Mary Crawford. You can blackmail the mayor to change the game’s title, which permanently changes the loading screens to “Disaster Report 5?” The optional epilogue becomes a fighting game in the climax and the protag finishes it up saying “oh the ending song is playing.” Even with its shift to a character drama, the game hasn’t left its roots.

There’s a couple narrative threads that don’t ultimately go anywhere as part of the game’s chaotic nature. A subplot about a shady business only wraps up in the epilogue. The epilogue is packaged with the main switch copies, but it looks like the PC and PS4 version has the epilogue as paid dlc. Truly bizarre choice.

A brief confession. If a Switch game wasn’t made by an indie studio, I probably pirated it. I won’t explain how. 13 Sentinels, Kirby, and Animal Crossing I bought legally, the latter mainly for online services. Otherwise, I really try to avoid paying $60 for a game.

But… I might go legally buy this? I don’t know if or when I’d play this again, but this game just stuck with me in such a way that I feel like I want it on my shelf in a permanent way. It’s such a fascinating experience.

2013: I finish New Vegas and start playing the DLC content. I leave Honest Hearts for last. As soon as I load into Zion the ending cutscene plays and I get a black screen. I have to load an old save and this bug occurs every time I try to enter Zion.

2015: I get a new laptop for university and replay New Vegas from the beginning. I decide to try Honest Hearts. My game crashes when I enter the Northern passage. I disable all of my mods. The same bug occurs. I do a clean install of the game and Windows. My game still crashes when I enter the Northern passage.

2017: Our apartment in Paris is robbed, including my laptop. With the insurance money received I build a new desktop. I install New Vegas on it. I decide to replay Old World Blues and Lonesome Road. They both work fine. I decide to try Honest Hearts. I am able to load into Zion. All of the NPCs in the initial firefight die except one White Legs ambusher. The quest does not progress to the 'Move into Zion Valley' stage. No NPC will talk to me. No NPC is hostile to me. I TCL throughout Zion and nothing progresses no matter what. I disable all mods, do a clean install of the game, and try a new save entirely. This still occurs upon entering Zion.

2018: I replay New Vegas. This time as soon as I leave Doc's house I beeline my way to Northern passage. I pick up nothing. I speak to no one. I fight no beast. I take a sip from my trusty Vault 13 canteen. I do not wish to let my save be altered in the slightest way lest I be denied the forbidden fruit I have gone without for over half a decade. I enter the Northern passage. I complete 'Happy Trails Expedition.' I begin 'Arrival at Zion.' I load into Zion. My heart beats faster and faster. My palms sweat. The firefight begins. The caravan is dropping like flies. I know now this is supposed to happen. in VATS I plug the White Legs full of lead. One remains. I cross the bridge to progress the quest. My lip quivers. Follows-Chalk approaches me. He stares at me. I take a sip from my trust Vault 13 canteen. I interact with Follows-Chalk. I am greeted with "Hoi! White Legs don't leave survivors often. You're some kind of lucky, let me tell you." But this is not in a dialogue box. Though the subtitles emblazon the bottom of my screen, I am given no opportunity here to press further. My quest draws to an end before it can even begin. I set flags to different states in the console to no avail. I TCL around only to have NPCs regard me with passive dialogue. My actions have no bearing on this godforsaken land. I am but an observer for a world I cannot, will not ever know. I have no mouth, and I must scream.

2022: In an envious last-ditch effort, I reinstall New Vegas with the Viva New Vegas modpack. In this instance, I figure I should not let the vanilla game hemorrhage and hope to progress before it crumbles under its own weight. Fallout: New Vegas will be wrapped in as many bandaid fixes as Joshua Graham. If it has allowed the Burned Man to survive in the face of certain death, perhaps I will be granted the Lord's blessing as well. I create a new character and help the people of Goodsprings against the Powder Gangers to refamiliarise myself with the wasteland. When the dust settles, I beeline it to New Vegas. Not for revenge, but for salvation. Warnings of deathclaws and radscorpions fall upon deaf ears. I kill a deathclaw caught between a chair and a wall to reach level 2. As with my previous attempts, I ultimately seek to reach Zion with minimal influence exerted on the land, lest some quest flag, some quirk of the game engine deny me the promised land. I come across Sloan, an outpost I had never known about, an outpost I will never know about as I must press onward. A Stealth Boy grants me passage beyond a final pack of deathclaws. I am proud of myself for making it through. I recall that Honest Hearts requires a low carry weight to begin, so I make a stop at the Crimson Caravan Company and nearby clinic to offload my wares. I have made a miscalculation.

Being only level 3 upon my arrival at the Northern passage I cannot meet the Speech check to get the others in the caravan to bear my burden. My Survival too is below par. Still, that I have made it this far is promising. I am insistent on bringing as many items into Zion as I can, so it's off to Freeside to do some short quests. I enter the Atomic Wrangler ready to collect some debts and hire some escorts when the one-armed bandit lures me closer with its siren song. My scant few caps become chips which become devastating loss. With only 7 Luck I am statistically likely to break even at Blackjack, so perhaps I can recuperate my funds in short order. Liquidating the rest of my inventory does not have the desired effect as my losses are doubled. Another level would grant me a perk, a chance to increase my Luck one point further. Mick and Ralph's nearby has the lustful Naughty Nightwear which will also increase my Luck. Or, penniless and with only my pistol at my side, I could leave for Zion at once.

I was never one to let bygones be bygones. With any number of options for earning coin in Freeside, my sloth gets the better of me and I recall that The Silver Rush across the street is comically easy to steal from. The plethora of guards watched me drag plasma rifles into the bathroom only to waddle out over-encumbered. With a fat pocket of caps, I purchase the Nightwear. Having veered so far from my intended path, I wrathfully murder Dixon and some Freeside addicts to level up. With 9 Luck, I cannot lose. In no time at all I clean out the Atomic Wrangler. The Strip calls.

I should have known my greed would lead me down this path, but no matter. I excuse my behaviour as a need to purchase a high-quality firearm from the Gun Runners, even if I know it to be a falsehood. In no time at all I am barred from Gomorrah, The Tops, and even the Ultra Luxe. When I had crossed paths with Benny in The Tops I paid him no mind, so absolute was my drive to reach Honest Hearts. By this point my pack was as full as my purse, bursting at the seams with drink and food. Why let it go to waste? Imbibing all I had won in an act of unbridled gluttony, I develop an alcohol addiction and make my way to the clinic outside of Freeside. All patched up and level 7, carrying few enough goods to meet the post-Survival check weight limit, I return to the Northern passage.

As my eyes adjust to the beauty of Zion, I hold my breath. I dare not do anything I am not expected to, lest I be cast from this proverbial Eden for my arrogance. The caravan is wiped out in the White Legs ambush. The corpses will have to remain untouched for now. I cross the bridge in anticipation. Follows-Chalk approaches. He speaks to me. I receive the next part of the quest. I make it to the Dead Horses camp. I speak to Joshua Graham. He and I are not so different. He and I do not belong here.

I do not belong here.

sitting at the top of a hill littered with 2010s western independent charmers with hamfisted attempts at satire, post-modernism, genre critique, societal reflection and subversive storytelling is this crown jewel; the crème de la crème example of the self-serving haughty pretentiousness of an entire generation of would-be internet geniuses scrolling through tv tropes page by page in hopes to form contrarian opinions on popular media based on the talking points and consensuses of other people. if you're of a certain age demographic, you know this person - the one who parrots the opinions of your nostalgic critics and mr. enters as if the information they siphoned by lazing about youtube in search of a personality might be enough to make someone go, 'geez, this guy KNOWS his stuff' without having to go through the effort of formulating their own thoughts, or even worse, having to experience the media they're responding to the response of firsthand.

doki doki literature club stands as an indulgence of saturated moe-era anime tropes under the guise of a critique of the wikipedia plot summaries of KEY, ryukishi07 and type-moon games without having the slightest bit of humility or self-awareness in its execution. it, its creator, and its audience herald itself as some massive deconstruction of the visual novel form, when in actuality it's about in line with the actuality of what it's criticizing as yiik is with jrpgs. there is no metatextual subversion to be had. doki doki is a children's birthday magician - a couple of flashy tricks capable of fooling someone who doesn't know how ren'py works, but beyond its cheap parlor tricks which might give the astute horror mastery of, say, happy tree friends a run for its money, the title lacks substance, it lacks any form of personality, and it lacks the competence to warrant these mistakes in the face of a greater picture or experience.

i won't even dip into the implications the creator has made about how this game is apparently a very real and serious approach to topics such as self-harm and abuse - as a survivor of both i find these claims bordering on insanity - but i will offer the benefit of a doubt and suggest that maybe this is a product of genuine, ineffable incompetence and misjudgment... rather than one of deep-rooted pretention and narcissism. you could get the exact same experience intersplicing five nights at freddy's jumpscare reaction videos, one of the upteenth saw sequels, and nyan neko sugar girls as one would have playing doki doki literature club, but at the least, the former is shocking, entertaining and funny when it intends to be. do your wallet a favor and pass on this one - and yes, i know it's free.

the common sentiment that people voice about kingdom hearts is that "i can't take this seriously, mickey mouse is there." and that is a sentiment that, as a twenty four year old woman with a job and a lot of social commitments and a bit of well-earned cynicism all culminating in the abstract of having Shit To Do (as well as one who believes the walt disney company to be actual, corporeal evil), i wholeheartedly agree with. but i think that it's commonly expressed from the wrong place, or at the very least from a place that lacks the perspective you kind of need to look at kingdom hearts from.

so like, yeah, there's disney shit in here and looking at it with an adult brain it might be a bit difficult to reconcile that with the melodrama and the convoluted lore and that Special Vibe that only Kitase's crew is capable of, but like. i played kingdom hearts when i was six or seven years old, i didn't know that it Wasn't Cool to make mickey mouse into a political figurehead and i sure as hell didn't know what the hell "tonal clash" was. any differences were reconciled purely by my imagination and a willingness to simply go with it and be taken away - and once again, there wasn't really any publisher willing to go for it with their stories and concepts the way squaresoft was in their final years of operation. kingdom hearts is in many ways a complete encapsulation of that squaresoft philosophy of going as far as you possibly can with your ideas no matter how self-indulgent, wacky or dumb they may be, and that's something i really appreciate and a big part of why i cherish what i consider to be the two definitive examples of that, chrono cross and final fantasy viii.

on top of all of that i think the idea of taking all of the silly kid's movie stuff and putting serious storytelling on top of it and trying to inject it with meaningful ideas on dualism and pseudo-intellectual jungian imagery and incredibly (perhaps a bit TOO) sincere displays of intense emotional vulnerability is like, a pretty perfect encapsulation of what kingdom hearts is fundamentally about at its core; that is to say stolen childhoods and lost innocence.

at the end of the day it's a narrative about a bunch of kids who are being manipulated within or otherwise tossed adrift into plans and greater schemes that they don't really know much of anything about and have no reason to know anything about. they're just kids. you can read this as being part of a greater statement on abuse or trauma or just growing up or something, but what's important is that it's saying something losing one's childhood and that meant something to me even if i didn't realize it, as somebody who even at the tender age of six-or-seven was terrified of growing up and was desperate to cling onto what little childhood i had left. again, taking something so innately childish and injecting it with Serious Stuff is a perfect culmination of that idea.

i haven't touched this game (or KH2, which was my favorite as a wee thing) in years and i'm not sure i will, but that's okay, it's not something that's really meant for me anyway. sure, kingdom hearts is schlocky and a bit embarrassingly self-indulgent sometimes and the concept is a bit too ridiculous for me to stomach even now as i've developed a taste for over-the-top chuuni shit (i like tsukihime for christs sakes). but that's fine. it's not for me, it's for six-or-seven year old me and meant to be experienced through a worldview that i'm just not capable of putting myself into anymore.

growing up sucks, and it's important to cherish the innocence of being a kid for everything it's worth, even when that's actively being taken away from you - if not by outside forces then by the passage of time itself.

though it might not be held in the same "well, obviously" monotonic unison as its colleagues across other mediums, i truly believe that, give it a decade, and metal gear solid 2 will be held as the monolithic peak of this medium. even if i cannot say that it's my sole favorite game, however close it may be, it is my immediate answer for the greatest game ever made. metal gear solid 2 not only manages to capture what makes video games a truly unique tool with which artists can convey emotion, atmosphere, content/form and delivery of ideals in the most abstract and interactive means outside of, potentially, very earnest performance art... it also serves as a truly post-modernist work, a truly of-the-times critique of the world, of the coming future, and of itself.

the thing about metal gear solid 2 which many players may take for granted now is that the experience extends far beyond the confines of the game itself. the marketing phenomena of mgs2, with the deliberately misleading information siphoned from trailers, promotional artwork, and interviews, offered a very different, very deliberately pleasing and gratifying experience for fans of the original metal gear solid than the final project would involve. solid snake encompassed all of the commercial footage, including areas in which he wouldn't appear or be playable in the final title. though i didn't play mgs2 upon its release in 2001, i can imagine the shock and confusion players must've felt from that slip-cover alone; a barren white cover in which gackt (oh my god lmao) holds an infant in his hands and the two lock eyes. really? THIS was the game to follow up metal gear solid? and of course, a sigh of relief might come when the tanker mission unfolds, and the familiarity of snake, otacon, ocelot, and the standard mgs fair enters the canvas. at last, this is what we'd been waiting for. of course, kojima pulls the covers out under that very quickly, and gaming's greatest left turn begins not long after.

one might be mistaken into believing mgs2 to be something of a cruel joke played on its audience. indeed, many attempts at post-modernism in videogames post-msg2 seem to miss the target of its satire. you look at many of these supposed post-modern opuses of the 2010s like undertale and spec-ops: the line, and the constant seems to be that the player must be punished or chastised in order to be made to feel some form of remorse or questioning of their actions. "do you feel like a hero yet?" indeed - especially damning and hypocritical criticism for games in which the player is subjected to this criticism for actions they cannot command choice over. i'd liken mgs1's approach to this tread path to michael haneke's 1997 film funny games - rather than chastise the viewer for participating with the medium, poke satirical fingers at the schadenfreude of the situation, highlight what the medium typically offers, and indulge in it and overexpose it with that in mind. YES, the moral quandry of snake enjoying killing or not is curious, especially in the rise of the first-person shooter golden era (as mgs1 of course was released around the likes of half-life, thief, quake ii et al) but it never guilts the PLAYER themselves for indulging in this medium. it isn't a half-hearted criticism of the audience partaking with the art. it's acknowledgement and glutton. and that's every bit more shocking and earnest.

compare this, then, to mgs2, which is about as opposite to player-critical as post-modernism in the medium comes. the controls are freer, easier and vastly improved over the original game. raiden's adventure is MOCKINGLY linear, with the varied landscapes and level variety of shadow moses now smoothed out into monotone, opaque, lifeless, sterile, fluorescent-lit halls that wouldn't feel out of place at one of my life's half-dozen 9 to 5 churn and burns. there is no life, there is only objective. there is no snow, there is no hill, there are no snowmobile getaways. only sterile, empty, vast nothingness. big shell itself has no heart, there is no beat to its rhythm. only a low, electric hum devoid of heart. an invisible set of eyes monitoring every move.

rose, the colonel, the whole crew outside of the mgs1 crew, emma and solidus, they're equally robotic and lifeless. all of their dialogue is stilted and phony. the sham is held together with scotch tape. the teenage fantasy of metal gear solid is lost, what little it had, and what is left is a sterilized y2k reality. your seldom moments with pliskin, otacon, and emma, they are the flicker of life that remains in the hulking machine. they are dave inside of hal-9000. the only pieces of humanity left in a world growing more autonomic and bleak. more than ever, snake and otacon shed their humanity to one another. no longer held to the machismo/nerd dynamic that defined their arcs in mgs1, there is a true acceptance and love, however you read it (it's gay as fuck though let's be honest) between them and a shared understanding of the others masculinity - on THEIR terms - that undermines the exact gamerbro audience that rejected this game for a decade after its release. these two would have every right and reason to become cold, sterile, and unwanting towards the world which has turned them away, but instead their agency is to pull the robot boy out of the system and teach him what it is to be human, to be ALIVE, and seek his own path.

the final hour of mgs2 is one of the most terrifying and harrowing experiences you will have in media. kojima et al shift into full swing as the absurdist (yet minimalist) humor which has defined their image warps into a vouyeristic exploitation, literally stripping the player nude and subjecting them to the harsh reality of the 21st century. everything is live and on air, everything is watched, everything is recorded. truth bends to subjectivity and context defines everything. what is the game and what is the commentary, and where that line crosses is irrelevant and it is in THIS sequence where mgs2 hits peak post-modernism in its medium. it is not criticizing its player, it is not criticizing within the confines of the game itself - whatever defines "the game" at this point is purely speculation as far as i'm concerned - it is a call to arms for unity, realization, acceptance of the hard pill to swallow, and a call to action against the status quo and against the system before and while it swallows us whole. what defines the simulation and what defines a breach into reality, dog tags or no, is your call.

mgs2 is a game about a lot of things. it's about games. it's about the internet. it's about america. it's about america from outside america. it's about art. it's about love. it's about masculinity. it's about trauma. it's about healing. it's about the future. it's about understanding our past. it's about acceptance. it's about prevention. it's also the game where snake can shred the fuck out of some grind-rails and eat shit when he skateboards into an airborne bomb. what the fuck else do you want? greatest video game ever made.

There's quite a few influences that I assume rubbed off on Uchikoshi after he and Kodaka (creator of Danganronpa) formed their independent studio, Tookyo Games. There's a Tamogachi-esque pet that asks you questions every 20 minutes. It's completely optional, vaguely charming, and you can ignore it with no consequence, but I wonder why it's there all the same. It's feels eerily reminiscent of a similar distraction in Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. While re-enacting the events of a crime isn't unique to Danganronpa, I do feel like the way the act is presented is reminiscent of how you fill in the blanks and re-enact the crime at the end of a trial in Danganronpa. These aren't necessarily knocks against either of these games or their creators, just a couple of observations I made.

On a mechanical level, the game's Somniums are a lot more satisfying to solve. Minor tweaks like the "keys" system really help push you in the right direction while keeping things appropriately abstract. It is a dream world, after all. A few still devolved into trial and error, where I often decided to save myself the headache and just reload my save file (so as to not sacrifice my limited checkpoint-based retries to some nonsense decision). Also, game ran kinda chunky on Switch. Lag spikes in odd places. It's not a deal-breaker, just a bit rough, that's all.

Something that I'm not sure clicks with me about the story is the structure. It's a bit too linear imo, in comparison to Uchikoshi's previous works, anyways. Without digging deep into spoilers, I will say that I ended up enjoying Ryuki's side of the story a bit more than Mizuki's, but both are enjoyable in their own right. The other thing that bothers me is that numerous events can feel a bit too reminiscent of the previous title's plot at times. One thing this game plays with a lot more than the original is the QTE action scenes though, which sometimes had the unfortunate side-effect of sending a lot of tension off the deep end in favor of spectacle.

On the other hand though, I got exactly what I signed up for; Kotaro Uchikoshi sitting by my side, reveling in a new opportunity to expose me to all kinds of pseudo-science, occult organizations, conspiracy theories, all the while making thinly-veiled horny jokes. The writing style of the previous game still rings true, and its quirky sense of humor of AI:TSF is something I could never get tired of. The characters, both new and old, bounce off each other really well.

Overall, I feel like I didn't get exactly what I wanted out of this title. It kinda drops a lot of the mystery in favor of "sci-fi thriller", in my opinion. That doesn't mean it's bad though. I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game. However, I'd still recommend you start with the first AI:TSF, even though this game claims that Nirvana Initiative can be played standalone. I just think the original has a much better narrative.

Well, this is it. My first review on the new and improved Backloggd and my final review of a Devil May Cry game for the year.

I will say, looking back at those past two weeks, it's been a blur of crazy, wacky combos, incredible fights, the Lucia Disc of DMC2 and so on. This very much feels like the finale to something big I've experienced in my life, and what better game to end it with than the finale of the series, Devil May Cry 5.

Off the bat I want to say that I really dig the combat in this game, though it did take me some time to adjust between playing DMC4 and DMC1 and coming into this. Combos have different timings in both of those games and so it was weird to change it up for myself.

Nero controls great, I love the addition of the Devil Breakers for him which ask the player to work with the individual addition of the moveset while also being cautious to not break them unless required for a tight situation. It results in him having a lot of variety in combat...

...but not nearly as much as Dante who is still my absolute favorite character to play as in these games. His weapon variety is top notch, bringing back weapons like the Cerberus from DMC3 and even the Sparda, while also adding the awesome Devil Sword Dante and my personal favorite weapon, Caveliere.

If you told me years ago that Dante could combo enemies with a chainsaw axe motorcycle, I would not have believed you. But it is real, and absolutely fucking amazing. I don't know why but I always find myself getting drawn to the weird weapons in these games, like Nevan in DMC3. I think it's more so in that the concept of fighting hordes of demons with shit like an Electric Guitar or a Motorcycle is just inherently awesome, and it just feels right to me.

I also got a lot of use out of switching the different styles, which has gotten me to Level 60 of Bloody Palace with him. Also really love Dante's design in this game, it really captures the mature, joking uncle character that he has evolved into. Really, all of the character designs in this game are top notch.

Vergil is also once again, incredibly fucking powerful and fun to use. Seeing how broken his Air Trick ability is especially in fights like the Geryon boss just makes me cackle. I love his moveset, and his DT using the Doppelganger style from DMC3 is a great nod towards that game.

The only low point gameplay wise comes from new character, V. I should stress, I love V as a character. He is the mysterious, sly sneaky boy that this series has never had before, and his design is absolutely immaculate... but playing the game with him feels like I'm not playing the game.

With him you control your set of demons, as he is a Demon Summoner, and you basically spam both the X and Y buttons to damage enemies enough so that V can unleash a killing blow. The killing blow stuff is fucking cool no doubt, but the mashing of the buttons definitely feels mindless in execution, and hell, you can even do a summoning technique that makes the summons act on their own, completely removing that aspect of gameplay for like 20 seconds at the expense of one bar of DT.

It's not remotely satisfying as Dante or Vergil's gameplay for me, and doesn't even scratch Nero's. The plus side is that you only play like, 4 mandatory missions with him total... but one of those missions is a boss rush where you lose your summons before hand and have to regain them in each fight... so yeah.

As for the levels themselves, they're alright. I'll blame this on overexposure from the two previous games but initially I wasn't vibing with the destroyed city look because both DMC2 and DMC4 did it as well and it was something I had grown a little tired of seeing, but I did inevitably warm up to it as time went on. They have more interesting branching pathways than either of those game's levels and discovering stuff is much more entertaining.

Personally though, I wasn't really a fan of the Qliphoth levels, mostly due to aesthetic. The demonic wooden tree looks gets very samey very quick, and while that may be the intent, it's just not something I was particularly fond of seeing, especially given that there is just a level where you fall down a singular shaft and that's the level.

Spoilers:

The game however truly picks up around the final third of missions where the plot reveals that the Demon King we've been going up against has been Vergil all along and that V is the human part that was cast off after Vergil's many defeats. Vergil is reborn when V and Urizen are rejoined and an even bigger reveal is made: Vergil is Nero's father.

The final two missions are absolute kino as we get to see yet another legendary Dante vs Vergil fight, which is just as good as it was in DMC3, followed by a Nero vs Vergil victory lap where Nero unlocks his true Devil Trigger and regains his Devil Buster powers. It's truly an amazing experience and a great way for this series to go out on.

The music for this game is fucking incredible, I don't think I need to stress. Tracks like Devil Trigger, Crimson Cloud, and Bury the Light are all phenomenal bops, and I even like the track Subhuman that plays for Dante quite a bit for its really goofy charm it has despite its dark metal sound.

However, at the end of the day I still think I prefer the overall vibes of DMC3, and the sheer raw intensity that game provided in comparison. That opinion may change of course, but as of this review those are my feelings.

Devil May Cry 5 is a great game, and I definitely look forward to replaying Bloody Palace with Dante until I finish it. It is one of the best Character Action Games ever made, and I highly recommend it.

At the end of the day, I only have one thing to say about my final thoughts on the Devil May Cry franchise.

"Jackpot."

I think there's a lot of broad problems with certain parts of the ending and how the writers don't necessarily know how to write a story that doesn't end with all the characters getting paired up. There's a few points I would've liked the game to commit to or elaborate on, and some other weird writing choices here and there. Might put those problems in a rot13 comment later.

But for the most part, the experience of 13 Sentinels is really something special. A complicated web of a story that's arranged to be completely baffling for much of its runtime. It plays a number of tricks to deceive and confuse you. Much of the game's run focus on the player just utterly confused, trying to decipher all the bits and pieces and try to make it all even vaguely coherent in their heads. The real magic trick is that, by the end, the entire game makes perfect sense. All the game's spinning plates land perfectly on this immaculate dinner table its created for you to feast on. This game has some of my favorite characters of all time in it and even the characters I didn't connect with are endearing in some way. Its a truly incredible work of fiction and its a miracle it all flows as well as it does.

Even beyond all that character work, the gameplay was a delight. The real time strategy sections are crunchy little delights that reward a player's experimentation and care. I specifically want to praise the distinctions between the PS4 version and the Switch version I played. The Switch version gives each character unique attacks that weren't present in the original game. It helps differentiate your playable characters and helps encourage switching them out to see what everyone has to offer.

All these little factors combine together in one of the most overwhelmingly satisfying games I've ever played. There's a part of me that was dreading continuing because I didn't want the experience to end. I wanted to spend more time with these characters. Experience their everyday lives and conversations. After 36 hours, I wanted more. And that speaks to the incredible depth Vanillaware managed to put into this experience. One of my new favorite games of all time. What a phenomenal journey.

Been struggling for hours to write something of note about this, having just finished it earlier today, and now just laying awake at 4:a.m torn between several essayistic topics to choose from, but they will have to wait (for never, that is). The short thing I will say is that I don't think Miyazaki's intention of meta-reflective nostalgia-baiting really sticks here, as the story (or whatever the hell the russian formalists would call whatever the spines in these games are) are held up here by gameplay fundamentals that are of shocking craft by his/their standards. Totally understandable how the general sentiment around this game on here, and among the community at large, is that this is the natural step from the previous entries, since the surface of this game is so souls-y, but peel back barely half a layer and this'll feel like the most transparent studio-mandated rush-job since FromSoft's rebrand as a certified video game couture brand. From plain (or worse) level-design, to flaccid weapons, this just falls flat for me. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't fancy FromSoftware making easily-digestable content whose intended audience are people who undulates between words like "mid" or "epic". By absolutely astronomical proportions my least favorite FromSoft so far.

Haze's narrative is really cool, actually. A lot of people give Spec Ops: The Line credit for being the first game to really deconstruct the uber-patriotic, gung-ho military-nationalist psychopathy that had become present in games ever since the preset set by Modern Warfare 2 (ironic, given that COD4 had a staunch anti-war and anti-Bush message in the form of the fantastic nuke scene), but to my memory, it was actually Haze that was doing this even before MW2 even came out. The plot seemingly revolves around a conflict between the Mantel supersoldiers and the Promise Hand rebels, but in actuality, the plot actually revolves around Nectar, a drug that turns you into a killing machine at the cost of chipping away at your humanity.

The fact that Mantel's supersoldiers are actually a bunch of college frat boy psychos was a pretty brilliant decision - not only does it give Haze a kind of satirical undercurrent of black comedy, but it makes the message actually somewhat profound. They may be crazy frat boys, but they're just that, dumb college kids that were forcibly given a powerful drug that made them way stronger than they were ever equipped to handle, and it turns them into apex-predator monsters. Mantel isn't even fighting the Promise Hand out of any sense of xenophobia or anything, they just want the fields that the Promise Hand fight on because they can produce more Nectar in these fields. The war is just an excuse to engineer more wars, and like-- fuck, that's actually so cool, man! The fact that the main villain's final words are "don't tell my mom" (one of my favorite famous-last-words quotes in like, anything, ever) is not only incredibly sad and humanizing, but a genuinely profound anti-War message that ties beautifully into the game's themes.

Yeah, too bad the game is fucking shit, because the narrative rocks. But the game plays like trash. 2/5.

In terms of understanding the all too encompassing 'drive' of consumption, both self made by years and years of false productivity and perhaps even inherently by our own selves, Mr Rainer is the most comprehensive stake on it. On every level even, emotionally, physically, metaphysically, it's all there! And because of that it is so so so draining. It's got buckets of symbolism and weaved online metaphors, it is so Learned on the aftermath of our connected minds and muses poignantly on where that all leaves us.

I think like, just flashing through some highlights real quick:
-the way self-help is recontextualized as a society "sustaining" coping mechanism that at best adds to the noise
-how value is a disgusting mortifying structure that we are required to keep in the back of our minds to exist, where its true attainment is in real connection. And how it's the only real warmth seen in this cold dying world.
-on that topic, how much I really want to just cuddle with Rene right now. Please.
-how each character and thread deals dually with sating hunger as it is in creating more of it
-despite being super gestural about many different things the raw imagery manages to evoke exactly what's happening to you/what you should be thinking about at any given moment
-that this game looks SOOO fucking visually good there's not a thing i can think of since El Shaddai that has swept me off my feet with its incredible choice in style and drawing. Also the music, 'mwah
-that this one managed to make me laugh the most out of etherane's black comedy catalog by embracing my terminally online memetic qualities like personality tests

This is not including lots and lots and lots more to think about!! I don't think I even really scratched the surface on its particularly heavy social media commentary (there are a couple things I won't talk about though because I doubt they'd ever get a real conversation otherwise), or just how the work communicates its lore and world! And how that actually just ends up defining the characters.

God it's SOOO good <3 I'm going to be a rainer stan until I die