Babe wake up, Carrmageddon for zoomers dropped

I usually reserve my thoughts of a given season until I have either completed the battle pass or the season is rolled over for the new one. Wrecked is, by far, the best season of Fortnite I've played since I became a "consistent" payer through the introduction of No Build. Competitive players and those who don't understand adapting your playstyle have been complaining on mass since the beginning of this season. I can almost understand where players are coming from with the car health pools vs the sorts of items we have to take care of them, but car spawns have increased with the new map addition; it's your fault if your drop is bad and can't get a car upgraded along with your regular arsenal. A "live service" needs to adapt and grow through time to attract new player bases, and frankly, leaning into vehicular combat as hard as they have (becoming we have Mad Max at home but good) shows Epic isn't afraid of completely overhauling the meta like they have before.

To the people complaining about cars: you already have boogie bombs unvaulted for now and EMPs are on their way, shortly. Yes, it is a tad strange that a season built around the use of vehicles didn't have as many counters aside from having your own car built up, but this goes back to adapting your playstyle and rethinking what a "good loadout" is. The only other olive branch I'd extend to players coping over this season would be the fact solos just isn't anywhere near as fun as trios or quads. Solo vehicular mayhem is fun in its own right, but getting your mates together to coordinate the "repair guy," turret operator, driver, etc. is cathartic and nothing feels better than having everyone work in perfect synergy.

I may revise these thoughts as the season progresses, especially in how things may change as we're just entering week two of it. For now, this is my favorite season since hopping on consistently and all the streamers/comp players whining about it only makes it better.

I'm actually quite fond of the Warmind "expansion". Did it turn things around for Destiny 2, hell no. However, it was the beginning of the game becoming good or at the very least, what it should've been at launch.

Destiny is cyclical, it goes through a rough period before going all out to redeem itself, then a slow decline into mediocrity before the cycle begins. Warmind was very much in the stinky asshole part of the cycle, right before Forsaken when Destiny 2 and arguably the series as a whole peak. Things were pretty bad at the time but there was an inkling of hope on the horizon.

Warmind didn't address many of the problems that Destiny 2 was facing at the time, double primary was lame, no chase for loot since rolls weren't random, build-crafting was next to non-existent, the game being way too slow, and a myriad of other small issues that pile up to being a mountain. Addressing and changing a lot of this stuff less than a year after release sounds like hell. Also, improvements to the writing style were not found here.

The campaign for Warmind is mid at best, still very much using the schlocky writing style that was ever present in year one. It's also woefully short and mission design is still some of the mission design of all time, it's not bad but it's not good either. Ultimately, culminating in a disappointing finale killing off one of the most powerful beings in the known Destiny universe (at the time) in some goo goo gaga mission. Personally, I'm not (that much) of a dork to really care about that kind of stuff, but it was pretty funny to see lore people get upset over it.

So why am I quite fond of Warmind? Shit was bleak during vanilla and Curse of Osiris, one of the worst periods in the franchise. Warmind wasn't the savior but it gave the community hope. The best kind of Bungie is a Bungie that's backed into the corner and that's where they were during this time period of the game. The beginnings of change were being felt in this expansion. Actually engaging end-game content was found in Escalation protocol and the added raid lair with loot that was actually worth a damn. The loot was still statically rolled but still a step in the right direction. Also, some exotics were revamped and catalysts were added to make the exotics feel exotic and not some glorified legendary. Abilities received significantly shortened cooldowns as well as a movement speed increase. Now we're on track to feeling like all-powerful gun-toting space wizards instead of a bunch of bumbling morons wielding nerf guns and throwing out some pretty lights every now and then. Finally, we're getting back on track.

Warmind in it of itself isn't a great expansion but it was the first step of greatness. Now that Bungie learned their lesson, they totally won't repeat the cycle. Right Bungie?

It may be a stretch to suggest, but I fully believe Wolfenstein: The New Order is at least partially responsible for the "boomer shooter" revival that kicked into gear especially during the late 2010s. At the point of The New Order's release, first-person-shooters began steering away from the design principles of their predecessors. Large mazes, key hunting, arena-styled combat, and the ability to carry more than two weapons was on the way out in favor for more "realistic" directions. Shooters began to slow down in pace after the release of Halo, which popularized many of the FPS trends we began seeing in the 2000 for better and worse. Especially during the 7th console generation, FPS games began to bleed into each other with the same brown/gray aesthetic and mechanics, say for a few outlier like Singularity that would bring something new to the table. For the most part, every shooter during this period of time either felt like a worse Halo or Call of Duty.

Wolfenstein: The New Order succeeds at presenting a blend of modern and classic design philosophies that made it a truly unique shooter for its time, and still a bit of an anomaly to this day considering its scale and budget. Protagonist B.j. Blazkowicz presents this humorous blend of "down to Earth straight-man" and a Looney Tune: sensitive and quiet in many cutscenes only to transition into gameplay where you feel like a lightning-fast gorilla with a gun fetish. Melding the more modern, "cinematic (for lack of a better term)" direction of shooters of its current era with the bombast and fun of shooters of yore was exactly the direction the series needed, unlocking a hunger for more games like this in the future. The tonal differences between the story and gameplay almost feel comedic, but playing everything completely straight was the direction to go (an issue I have with The New Colossus a few years later).

Now passing the ten-year mark of The New Order's release, it's easier to notice and understand some of its faults while recognizing how impactful the game still is. While the general gameplay of TNO is a blast, there are a few segments of platforming, treasure hunting, and even just getting around are a hassle. Pacing is everything for a game with such high highs like this, so it makes sense to pump the breaks where needed. Sadly, most of these slower segments feel like a bit of a chore and artificial to extend the length just a bit more; it's hard to have fun when you're running around a sewer looking for a blowtorch when you just finished raiding a Nazi camp and blew everyone into little giblets. TNO additionally has a checkpoint issue when it's trying to push players to search as many nooks and crannies as they can for resources and collectables. The bridge level in particular has an awful checkpoint where I was attempting to grab what looked like a collectable, but died trying to jump to it over and over again, leading me to have to restart the level and loose five-plus minutes of progress about five separate times before I gave up from frustration. This issue is compounded by loading times, which seem to be fast enough on the SSD I have the game installed on, but having every little fall resulting in a loading screen gets old fast. I have fully-completed this game several times in the past (both the Xbox 360 and One versions), but I no longer have the patience to be as meticulous, especially for dorky Steam achievements.

Those small issues are only a fraction of the total experience of Wolfenstein: The New Order. Classic gameplay sensibilities mixed with modern design into a ten-hour adrenaline-fest. two-weapon limits? Get that shit out of here; we have seven different weapons, nearly all of which can be dual-wielded and/or have alternate firing modes. Skill trees? upgrades are dispensed by you playing well and tactfully, not spending artificial "upgrade points" you acquire through bullshit XP. This is the template the AAA FPS genre should have went but didn't. Thankfully, in the wake of this franchise seemingly being on ice in favor of Todd Howard's dream Indiana Jones game, the indie shooter scene has exploded (argually too much) and I firmly believe we have The New Order to thank for that.

drags cigarette "Man, they don't make 'em like this, anymore."

I finally found him... the Iblis Trigger!

One might argue about Sonic 06 being the worst Sonic game out there, or even one of the worst games ever made, but as someone who just got into the series a while ago, I personally don't share that sentiment. It has a fair share of issues, like universally reused levels across the three different routes and a really bad camera, but as an actual game, I think it's playable enough.

That being said, I do need to mention that I played it exclusively on Xenia, so the infamous long loading screens did not affect my enjoyment at all, as they were cut short to about a tenth of their supposed normal time. There's really a lot of them and it's silly how you even find them randomly popping up in the middle of a level. So if you're playing on original hardware, bring a book for the trials in Sonic's and Silver's routes.

Sonic's campaign is the most normal out of the three, he retains most of his Sonic Adventure moveset, but with a worse spindash and special mach speed sections. These speed sections are pretty much the prototype to the boost segments in Generations, except the speed is incredibly overtuned here and you're likely to crash every other second or get sent across the stage with just a slight misstep. It's especially frustrating when the camera shifts back and forth like in the Crisis City tornado chase, because it completely messes up your inputs and steers you in the wrong direction despite going for the right way before it shifts. But I'm not just going to limit my issues with the camera to the mach speed segments, it stays problematic for the entire game. For starters, the camera controls are inverted and you can't change it in the options at all. While this might seem jarring to get used to at first, the real culprit when it comes to 06's camera, is especially how it automatically "fixes" itself during homing attacks. Every time you attack an enemy with it, the auto camera shifts away from the ground and gives you a front view on the enemy - this is especially horrible for airborne enemies, when you don't have solid ground beneath you. It's definitely one of the worst cameras I have ever seen in a game and it made platforming much more worse than it had to be.

Silver's playstyle is mostly centered around projectile-based attacks and he has no normal melee moves at all, the closest thing you'll get is his electric ground pound, which allows you to throw most of the enemies you electrify afterwards - something I realized in Silver's final level, because the game does NOT tell you about it. So if you play through his campaign without knowing about this, two issues arise. The first one is clearly the dependency on throwables in the nearby vicinity, most of the time these are crates, but more than often also barrels or the bullets of enemies. In many scenarios a few crates just respawn indefinitely at certain locations to supply you with enough stuff to throw at the bad guys, but there are a few times where it's really bothersome when they don't respawn. My favorite example for this is the escort mission near the end of Silver's campaign, where you have to bring an NPC from one side of the town to the other, but you only have a few barrels on the way at your disposal and it takes a long time for them to respawn and I'm sure some didn't even respawn at all. I still think it's pretty strange that the playable Silver can't pick up the tables and chairs on the plaza, as he could do it perfectly fine in his boss fight in Sonic's campaign. Now, putting the scarcity of throwables aside, another big point is how reliant you're on the auto-aim. In most cases it works fine when you throw it in the general direction of an enemy, but when you're fighting a good amount of them at once, the aiming gets messy and can't really decide which enemy to go for anymore. I also found it extremely difficult to get the homing shots to hit the screws of the big robots when they're on the ground, so I had to skip finishing them every now and then just because most og the crates I threw just bounced off the robots instead of going for the screws. Again, a little melee move to just deal that final blow would have changed so much already. That being said, ultimately Silver was a nice change of pace from Sonic (even if it meant considerably slower combat) and it was fun to skip a few sections by abusing the horribly broken levitation mechanic - try mashing A instead of holding it, and you can fly like 50% over the intended distance to access areas where you're definitely not supposed to be.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a great character, but he's also the character with the worst opening level, which caused me to postpone his campaign until after Silver's. For the most part he plays similar to Sonic, but trades the spindash for an extended aerial combo and... armed vehicles? There clearly still was some Shadow 05 inspiration left behind, except he doesn't have guns this time. Either way, Shadow's campaign is no marvel in gameplay design, as the stage recycling is very apparent in this route and I'd say about 90% of the content (including bosses) are taken from Sonic's Story. Gameplay aside, the story direction in this campaign is pretty interesting and I like the emphasis on Mephiles as a villain, he also has a very cool theme. Shadow's conflict here feels like a more refined version of Shadow 05 and I think Mephiles plays a large part in this, as Black Doom just had that cartoonish tone to him, which didn't make him as imposing as... Shadow's literal shadow. So that was nice.

To round it all off, the Last Story truly is the cherry on top after all the already established misery and one-ups it with arguably the single most nerve-wracking and unfair level in the entire game. The End of the World consists of several smaller sections, where you play as the entire cast back-to-back in order to reclaim the Chaos Emeralds. Conceptually this sounds like a great way to end the game, a best-of consisting of... entirely copy pasted segments from the main levels, randomly spawning and unfairly placed insta-kill black holes and a random blue-ish color filter slapped on everything, but at least the background track gets you pumped. It's just not a good level and especially the black holes make things way more frustrating than they should be, the fact that they can just randomly pop up in your face is awful too. You get the point. As for the final boss, it's unfortunately just a really unengaging fight, but atleast the ending is alright.

And of course you can't miss the soundtrack in a Sonic game: His World, The Water's Edge and Kingdom Valley are some of my top picks for 06. (Those vocals in the Kingdom Valley track remind my a lot of NieR Automata, pretty nice.) Just another all-around great soundtrack overall and I'm glad to see that even haters of this game can admit the OST is good at the very least.

Would I recommend Sonic 06 to a friend? Probably not, you're likely better off playing Project 06 when it's finished.
Did I have fun regardless? Yeah.

People really weren't joking when they said this game improves upon the original in every way. Gameplay-wise master chief’s movement feels significantly better, vehicles are actually controllable, and levels now consist of more than one repeated room. Aside from being super fun, Dual wielding weapons also brings in significantly more strategy to your gameplan for every level. You have to pay far more attention to your ammo levels, and making calls on what weapon to use when ends up being pretty important. Now that levels consist of more than one room, finding where you need to go has been made much easier, meaning nearly all frustrations I had with the first game have been dealt with in this one. Story-wise Halo 2 is also better in every conceivable way, which made me much more interested in the game during my playthrough. The original Halo’s story definitely had some interesting aspects to it, but I felt it wasn't particularly well told. Cutscenes were basic as well as few and far between, there was only a very small number of speaking characters, and the dialogue was often pretty cheesy. Halo 2 definitely does have its fair share of cheesy dialogue, but now there are real cutscenes all over the place, some real characters with actual depth, and even more crazy and cool scifi concepts explored. The cinematography in this game has also been massively improved over the original. I still get chills from watching that opening cutscene of master chief planting the covenant bomb. It also helps that the graphics are significantly better than the original, and fairly impressive for the Xbox. It's really hard for me to believe sometimes that Halo and Halo 2 even came out on the same system. My two complaints with this game is that, one, I don't particularly enjoy running through narrow, dark, crowded corridors filled with enemies that run straight at me and can 2 shot me (especially when one of the playable characters doesn't have a flashlight), and i'd say this game features a few too many levels with that structure. Two, the story ends really abruptly and out of nowhere on a fairly major cliffhanger. All said and done however, I think halo 2 is easily one of the best first person shooters ever made. It did everything the first game wasn't capable of, and I believe it's taught me why this series is so widely loved.

A Final Fantasy for fans and first timers indeed: Final Fantasy XV is for everyone, and as a result Final Fantasy XV is for absolutely no one.

Between Square Enix's struggle to acclimate to the development process of seventh-gen hardware, the tumultuous state of the company in the early 2010s, and the Fabula Nova Crystallis brand's hard focus on the mainline Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, Final Fantasy Versus XIII was a game that was impossible to make. Ten years after its inception, Square Enix instead settled on making Final Fantasy XV the only game that any big-name corporation could ever possibly make in the climate of the 2010s game industry.

I admire and respect people's desire to find meaning and personal resonance in what was eventually delivered in Final Fantasy XV - everybody has their slop of choice, and the Heavens above know I am not exempt - but I feel that much of the most generous readings of the game fail to see it for what it is: a recurring trend in the majority of interviews with Hajime Tabata indicate that he was first and foremost interested in creating a game that would be as accessible as possible, reach as wide of an audience as possible, and - naturally, by necessity - sell well. Edges were filed off, idiosyncracy and personal touches were traded for easily-digestible variations on what had become popular in the industry and culture around video games by the point of its rebirth: vacuous and empty open worlds devoid of life beyond their skin-deep beauty. Shallow bonds between shallow characters, the lowest-common-denominator appeal of spending time with the boys or the obvious potential for the yaoi fan demographic masking the blatant misogyny at the core of the script. Entire vertical slices of necessary information and storytelling being absent, surgically removed to be sold back to the player through films, animated adaptations and predatory DLC models. Brand names and corporate sponsorships peppered throughout, to anchor the game to its consumerist ideals and destroy any hope of denying what it is: while all video games are inherently products and thus are necessarily burdened by some degree of cynicism, the recurring inclusion of brand names by Coleman, Nissin, and American Express act a stark reminder that Final Fantasy XV has been accepted by and joined the ranks of its contemporaries as something made to be marketed and sold. Consider that the expanded Final Fantasy XV universe was cancelled and left by the wayside by the higher-ups at Square Enix, while the pay-to-win mobile game still persists to this very day.

Many will vehemently defend Final Fantasy XV's flaws as unsightly bumps on a more coherent whole, or even defend its flaws as purposeful barbs and thorns on the surface of a carefully-cultivated masterwork. To one extent or another, I can't help but agree: Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose. However, it was not bad on purpose to prove a point or make some grand artistic statement. Final Fantasy XV is bad on purpose because its audience has spoken, and the industry has no choice but to answer: this is what it means to be a Video Game in the Modern Era. This is what sells. This is what you and I have asked for, and this is what you and I must live with.

I don't know if we necessarily deserve better than Final Fantasy XV, but I do certainly believe that we would all be better off in a world in which we did not allow a game like Final Fantasy XV to become what studios and corporations correctly presume is what audiences are asking for.

Omne... save me...

BAYONETTA 2! Oh, where do I begin? Well, lets start AFTER the release of Bayonetta 1. After Devil May Cry 4 disappointed several folks (although I think its a solid game so far), Bayonetta rose from the ashes to create a legitimately great alternative for the character action game fans out there. Almost everyone loved Bayonetta when it dropped, critics, fans, dogs and cats, everybody. So it’d be a no-brainer to make a sequel with an even grander scope. This is also the first of the followi ng two titles in the franchise that were funded in part by Nintendo, and thus, are Nintendo-exclusive. No PC, PS4 or Xbox One version in sight. It's not an unexpected move, as Nintendo did fund the project after all, and hey, like I said, emulation is free. So, while the exclusivity did sting a little, it made sense. And, thank the lord, Bayonetta 2 looks and runs phenomenally on Wii U and the 2018 Switch port. It's a big step up from the Xbox 360 and- ugh, the PS3 version. You know, the one with a 30FPS cap (sometimes not even reaching that) and sub 720p graphics? That was a fucking mess. But with Bayonetta 2’s release on Wii U and Switch, they went out of their way to port Bayonetta 1 as well, and if you bought Bayonetta 2 physically, you got Bayonetta 1 for FREE! A great move by Platinum, and hey, the Wii U version is pretty good! Overshadowed by the subsequent versions, but there's some all new Nintendo-fied costumes. Bayonetta made the most graceful transition to the Wii U possible, but that’s to speak of the quality of Bayonetta 2 itself. Because, truth be told, Bayonetta 2... is AMAZING! Bayonetta 2 kicks off even greater than Bayonetta 1. After festive lesbianism occurs, the first level kicks off with Bayonetta and Jeanne riding on fighter jets. Show this to anyone who doesn't know what the hell Bayonetta is and watch their faces change and shift, as random shit just happens. But it’s a joy to watch. The cool shots, Bayonetta jumping up to the sky naked, uhhhhh yeah it’s GOATED. And when Moon River starts blasting, you KNOW your girl is back and better than ever.

Bayonetta 2 retains a majority of its predecessor’s systems. Like Bayonetta, the delay based combos return. For a quick rundown, punching, waiting, and then punching again results in a different, stronger combo compared to 3 punches in a row, with this philosophy applying to a majority of the combos. Spam is discouraged, therefore creating the perfect skill curve with combat. That was great about Bayonetta, and I'm glad to see that it returns in 2, however, Bayonetta 2 adds a new mechanic to make these awesome combos easier. The Umbran Climax is a rather controversial mechanic within the community, to be honest. But damn, if I can't help but absolutely love it. At the cost of a full magic meter, all of your attacks become souped up Wicked weaves, and tearing down a crowd of enemies never gets old to me. But I can't help but feel it's pretty unbalanced. Yeah, that's kind of the point, but I can't help but feel that it's a bit too braindead for my tastes. While the delay based combos are still present with Umbran Climax, they’re much less useful given the clear benefits of a strong AOE presence, so you’re incentivized to keep spamming attacks, because Umbran Climax only lasts so long. One last nitpick, taking damage while in Umbran Climax needs to have a better indicator. You don't take knockback during Umbran Climax, so it's usually hard to tell when you take damage. This only gets somewhat annoying for scoring purposes, but it's whatever if you're playing casually. I’m not saying to make her invincible, but some kind of score mitigation would be pretty nice. I'd also like to note that Bayonetta herself is also slightly weaker than the prior game to compensate for Umbran Climax, as well. To be honest, it’s not really noticeable in the game to game action, but Bayonetta does slightly less damage overall, including her Wicked Weaves. Adding onto this nerf is the ability for enemies to block attacks, which is something that I was surprised wasn’t in the original game. This keeps the player on their toes, and I really like how Bayonetta 2 still attempts to throw the player off at certain points. One of the better additions in Bayonetta 2 is the weapons.

Sure, weapons were in the original Bayonetta, but Bayonetta 2 greatly expands on this mechanic, as most of the weapons are cheaper and easier to get than ever before. I'm sad to say that I was never able to use the awesome chainsaws in Bayonetta 2, but the rest of the weapons are pretty great, at the very least. I really loved the Dual Swords at first, because you can charge it up and do an oh-so powerful slash straight through your enemies. But once I got the 3 Pronged Scythe, that’s all I used. At least on my Hands, because with my feet, I still wielded the Swords. The Scythe is awesome, if you hold it out for a bit, you shoot out 3 projectiles out of the Scythe a devastating attack for most foes, and it’s also fast as fuck, one of the best weapons in the game, here. I never took a liking to the Bow, as ranged combat in Bayonetta is pretty lame in my opinion, but the Flamethrowers were neat, and the whip is incredibly strong, too. Because of this, the combat feels a lot more dynamic and diverse, adding to the already high variety of Bayonetta 1. Also, can we talk about the improvements from Bayonetta 1? The bosses feel much improved here. No longer are they just massive moving hurtboxes, they actually feel a lot more fun to fight here. With Umbran Climax, it’s a lot easier to turn the tides in your favor, and the bosses feel so much more dynamic here. From flying in the sky, to surfing on a piece of board, Bayonetta 2 never stays in one area of gameplay for long, although there is a slight problem with Bayonetta 2’s combat. It’s highly reliant on Witch Time. Now, I love Witch Time as much as the next guy, but having it be almost mandatory to survive took a lot of the fun out of it. Nailing that perfect dodge was never necessary, but it was fun because it felt like a massive “up yours” to the enemy for being aggressive. Bayonetta 2 exhibits a similar feeling, but to a slightly lesser degree, as Witch Time is required to dodge certain attacks. It’s not too apparent, but it did feel a little lame when I noticed. But overall, Bayonetta 2’s combat is just as strong as beforehand, just like the fantastic enemy design of Bayonetta. It definitely has it’s issues, but yeah, this is great! But if there’s one issue I can point to with Bayonetta 2, it’s undoubtedly it’s difficulty.

The biggest disappointment is Bayonetta 2’s very low difficulty. Bayonetta was a very difficult game for newcomers, but very satisfying to master. Bayonetta 2 feels pretty tame in this regard. The difficulty has seen a severe drop from Bayonetta. I’d say Hard Mode Bayonetta 2 is more comparable to Bayonetta’s Normal difficulty. But there also lies an issue with Bayonetta 2’s score system. ITEMS. In Bayonetta, using items was a travesty upon your rank. It counted as a Death, but Bayonetta 2 entirely removes this aspect of scoring, a dumb as hell move in my eyes. Healing is fine to not count, as there’s a damage rank anyways, but being invincible, or super powered, or UMBRAN CLIMAX for free should absolutely be punished by the game. Sure, it definitely sucked to get Stone Ranks all of the time in Bayonetta 1, but it felt equally as great to do everything perfectly and get the Gold Rank. With Bayonetta 2, very rarely did I get anything below a Silver Rank. Does improving as a player have anything to do with that? Yeah, maybe. But even then, I made frequent use of items and still made it out with the game congratulating my for my efforts. In my opinion, for this to work, there either needed to be a significant item nerf, or items need to be made waaaaaay worse. But thankfully, the final boss is still just as difficult as ever, and now that’s my cue to to talk about the endgame

God, Bayonetta 2’s finale is almost perfect. No dawdling over some stupid, unfun Space Harrier clone, no boss rush, just constant, non-stop action throughout, and I love it. Rather than your typical boss rush, in Chapter 14, they go to the past, with you controlling a mech, and it's not just a fun distraction either. It still retains all of the same, delay based combos that Bayonetta has. Rather than changing up the gameplay style non-stop, they instead add to it, making Bayonetta 2 an incredibly focused game. The level design is so much more wider and expansive, encouraging exploration, but never slow down one bit. And this applies to the final boss, too. Like Bayonetta, the one on one fights with the Lumen Sage lead up to the final chapter, where another one on one fight commences before the second phase. And when the true phase kicks in, the fight against Aesir, it’s awesome. It’s another one on one fight, and for once in it’s runtime, Bayonetta 2 actually gets pretty damn difficult. I actually died a few times here, and I like that higher difficulty. But of course, like Bayonetta 1, a giant hair god, OMNE!!!!!, with womanly proportions (god, I love this game) is summoned, giving Aesir the good old Wizard’s Foot. Okay, last Smash Bros joke, I swe- SUDDENLY, JEANNE! Riding on a goddamn plane, too. She finishes the deal. summoning another hair demon, and fast forward a few months later, MORE Festive lesbianis- SUDDENLY, PLANE! AND ANGELS! Well, you know how this ends. LET’S DANCE, GENTLEMEN!


Despite my qualms with Bayonetta 2, especially when it comes to higher level play, Bayonetta 2 is a more than worthy sequel to the original. Each time I turned off the game, I wanted to hop back in as soon as possible, because the game is THAT good. The greater depth, the incredible visuals and music, and the awesome as hell combat left me satisfied and clamoring for more. It's hard to look at Bayonetta 2 without comparing it to it's elder sister, but I think it's a toss up as to which one I prefer. As a casual player, I found Bayonetta 2 to be a lot more inviting, but Bayonetta's high difficulty made me incredibly satisfied when I completed it. It's a very tough choice, especially as someone who's seen hardcore Bayonetta players compare it to the first game (completely understandable ftr), but I have to give the very, VERY slight edge to Bayonetta 2. Sure, it may be easier, but it's far from braindead, and the difficulty is more than made up for with better gameplay. Hell, that's my opinion, though. At the end of the day, I still love both of them equally, and I recommend giving each a playthrough for sure. Once again, a must play.

Well... the Bayonetta series has been going pretty well, but that positivity ends with Bayonetta 3. Spoiler alert, but if you've been stalking my log, you know I gave it a 5/10, and I have a LOT to say about it. Nothing good, though. So, yeah. Welp, I'mma get back to writing it. But I hope you enjoyed this review, it was a little delayed, but most of that time went into Bayonetta 3. So I hope you look forward to that, so in the meantime, I'll see myself out. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you later.

When I first saw footage of this game, it immediately caught my eye but I was pretty suspicious if it really felt as good to play as it looked, since I tried previous ARPGs from Bandai without finding much satisfaction.

Well I was wrong, this game absolutely rocks on the gameplay side of things and props to Bandai Namco for having a permanent demo available on Steam, something not many developers outside of indies seem to do. And what's the deal with demos that are only temporarily available?


Good gameplay, good ARPG:

Scarlet Nexus offers a unique sort of beat 'em all where you play a ESP user whose main attribute is throwing things, but you'll be able to do a lot more. The game slowly expands your abilities with the power of your teammates and by the end of the game, you have access to more basic battle abilities, nine types of ESP, a lot of interactable items and multiple types of special attacks that all come up very regularly.

I wish the game unlocked all powers earlier though, it takes quite a while until you get a complete set of four partners and then even longer until you get all nine of them. And then you restart from scratch for the second character (well, you keep a lot of your knowledge honestly).

The combat offers a lot of tools at the player’s disposal and I think every power you unlocked filled its own niche. You have purely attack focused powers, then you have one which strengthens your counter/dodging and at the same time it’ll allow you to keep track of some special foes, then you have invisibility and sneak attacks, duplication… The powers are awesome and as you progress, they also get more special effects added to them. For example there was one power I only used to spot invisible enemies, I didn’t care for the effect of increasing the timing of dodges. It became my all-time favourite when there was the added effect of staggering enemies after a dodge; invisibility is pretty limited at first but later you can attack while staying invisible and it becomes much more interesting. And then every power you don’t use, you can instead trade the power’s usage gauge for a special move instead.

The game benefits from having a more than decent level design. While it's pretty linear, I found the levels to be interesting enough. First of all, they look beautiful and detailed, there really are a lot of details all around. The throwable items all over the place fit in the world, there are even specific interactive objects depending on the area you're in such as bulldozers in a construction site, trains in the subway... and they're all really cool to discover and use. A few branches here and there have optional fights and rewards so overall I had a lot of fun exploring.

It could have been more organic though: the levels are very independent from one another and most of the interactions are inside the hideout area. The town areas are essentially useless outside of your first exploration and only serve the purpose of getting quests. Some other games which attempt this end up having a more organic world as a result and it would be welcome here with the attempts at doing RPG stuff.

The maps also have way too many save points and you can see why. Since the game is linear, you’re not gonna go back to save after beating a boss so you need a save point before and right after the fight. This is where rethinking the save system could have helped, especially since it’s literally a human NPC who acts as such and he’s all over the place. Or they could map the map into a Dark Souls circle, unlocking a shortcut that sends you right back to the first checkpoint.

They could definitely reuse the old areas more too, especially with a scaling system for the monsters. Speaking of monsters, the game has a huge and interesting roster. There are multiple groups of enemies with cool designs and in each group, there are variants of the same monster. It provides a lot of change as they’re not just recolor but they can have a different weak area for example and different attacks too. Even the special endgame missions have unique monsters that were never seen before so that was cool. The bosses are no disappointment either, the game nails this part.

It’s worth mentioning that the game has 5 levels of difficulty. I played on very hard and I felt like it provided a fun challenge, the monsters were just tanky enough to have me exploit all the cool mechanics of the game to their fullest. Normal felt too easy and I would kill monsters before having the time to do cool combos.


Before I get into the bad parts, I want to say that this game was just very good at what it does well and that I really enjoyed it. I like this game, however it's pretty bad at some things which I'll detail next.


An action game crippled by its pacing:

First of all, the overall pacing can be somewhat burdensome. While SN is an excellent action game, it will regularly interrupt you with pretty long cutscenes and especially with a sort of "interruption" sequence (called phase standby in-game) where you will get the opportunity to interact with your teammates, gather quests, etc. This part is the main reason why the pacing sucks because where a level takes about one hour to go through, this entire segment can also take anywhere from 30min to an entire hour and unfortunately it's a pretty average section. You can thankfully skip most of it but you'll lose on some of the progression so it kinda sucks.

The so-called phase standby segments are really where the game is lacking. The way you interact with teammates is by raising an invisible relationship meter until you trigger enough points for events and level increases, which will unlock new abilities. Unfortunately I think it was a pretty bad choice to tie the relationships to abilities because it somewhat forces you to go through it to get the most out of the game, even if you don't like this section. While the events themselves are relatively okay and I do like the characters, I think the pacing of just having them included in a separate section of the game and spending a good hour between levels doing this was not the most fun.

Perhaps this separation is the main problem. The levels are not tied together when they could have been and the hideout section is too separated from the rest of the game. The switch from action to a Persona emulation is pretty jarring. I have played other games such as Dusk Diver which attempted this and I think they were more successful because of the overworld you move in and how you'll come across quests while going to the main location and then naturally coming back and talking to characters on your ways instead.



Painful menuing experience:

The gift system is also pretty gruesome. I think it was a really cool idea to incorporate the gifts into the game, everything you offer to your mates will eventually show up in the hideout and it gets very lively by the end of the game. Unfortunately the system itself is not very organic. Firstly, there are too many gifts and a lot of them have negligible effects, you would need maybe 30 copies of them to get a level up. Secondly, you obtain gifts by spending another five minutes in a menu where you craft them with confusing loot obtained from monsters or from exploring the environment. I think it would have been more fulfilling if they were just obtained in the environment or if there were less materials to keep track of for everything, it's just too complicated when you aim to complete the list.

Another menuing experience that detracts from the main game is the side quests. This is perhaps the single worst aspect of the game but before I criticise it, I really need to emphasise that this is completely ignorable and mostly useless in-game. Nonetheless it's a missed opportunity. As mentioned before, you don't really evolve in a world outside your hideout and therefore obtaining quests which require you to go back to a few peaceful areas where there's no reason to be is not organic. Every once in a while you waste time doing these rounds, just teleporting and checking if a quest appeared on the map. I really think they missed the opportunity to put these areas to use because outside of your initial visit during the story, they really are useless. It's a shame because they're beautiful and really detailed, they could have made the game's universe feel more alive.

The quests you obtain this way are essentially optional challenges to complete (and guess what, there is also something called "challenges" which is another submenu to take care of). Almost all of them just require you to kill mobs in a specific manner. Have X power activated while killing Y or use Z move to kill A. The problem is that a lot of the quests are so specific that you have to go out of your way to do it, you also obtain these quests after going through the area where you meet most of these monsters (until maybe a new encounter much later) and you have no reason to go back to areas (which don't scale, I wish they would).

A certain portion of the endgame has additional quests to unlock ultimate weapons and oh boy they really are not fun. At that point you not only do not remember where to find the monsters you need (with no form of indication whatsoever) but they ask you to kill them in extremely specific manners that require you to carefully deplete their health and spam a special move a few times, making sure they die from it and not another attack.


Decent story with comic-like vignettes:

While the game has numerous good ideas, most of them were hardly exploited at all. The game will drop a lot of things and move on to the next element instead, for example the story begins with mentions of discrimination between scouted soldiers and volunteers yet it is completely irrelevant to the story. They’ll occasionally mention some discrimination and all the lore adds up, it’s great honestly but the presentation doesn’t work. I feel like this game needed Falcom NPCs to carry that lore or some good side quests focused on those. Ultimately the story feels very unfocused with a lot of things going on. The characters are the nicest part, I felt like they all had their charm and I appreciated the interactions between them.

One pointless addition in my opinion is the mail system. It was genuinely unnecessary, it’s yet another menu to keep track of and an interruption. On top of having characters talk to each other, you’ll receive a mail which says pretty much the same thing but you won’t know before you read and you have to open a menu that interrupts the on-going conversation. Oh and if you don’t read them you might miss out on your opportunity to answer them! Which does… does it do anything actually? Maybe not, maybe it slightly raises relationship points, either way it was slightly annoying and didn’t add much to the story.

I’ve seen many criticisms for the visual presentation of the story but I personally liked it. Not having cutscenes means that the pacing is much faster than your usual game and I appreciate being able to read it like a visual novel instead of being stuck having to watch cutscenes. It looks pretty cool and the vignette storytelling is pretty well paced, with some animations that express what’s happening. It was really a welcome change in my opinion, I hope to see more of this. One thing I didn’t like is that on top of the main vignette, they’ll almost always add a bigger portrait of the talking characters and they can look lifeless at times, plus they are just redundant when the main picture is more expressive. I also have to note that both cutscenes and those vignettes will show your character costumes and weapons so that was really cool!!!

Both character have their own branching on the story but it doesn’t add much. There weren’t enough changes between the stories, too much of it is the same and since it’s hard to tell what’s different, especially when the differences in a same event are very minor, you don’t know what part you can skip so I ended up sitting through it all. NG+ has a nice option of resetting levels which… is pretty much necessary if you want to enjoy it, because there’s unfortunately no scaling. So you either overpower the game or you restart and relearn every ability progressively. I would have liked to steamroll through the game but not because I deal higher damage, instead because I had all my skills unlocked and could do sick combos from the beginning. Instead I had to go back to basic attacks.


Lastly I will say that the soundtrack is a blast. It’s a mix of electronic and jazz, I really liked it and some of the tracks are stuck in my head.

Overall, Scarlet Nexus is a great experience. It has an interesting setting and a unique concept. It's a great beat 'em all/ARPG but not a good JRPG, which it also tries to be. I hope this game will get a rightful sequel where the developers can improve the few things holding it back from being a well-rounded good game and not a flawed one.

Code Vein is an okay game, I really feel like the hate it gets is undeserved and especially the criticism towards the devs being assholes or things in that line of thought. Please at least refrain from insulting developers for no reason.


Soulslike combat with some tweaks:

Combat is pretty much the Souls system: but with one weapon: you get your light and strong attack, dodge, block and parry. It is not as good because of the weapon feedbacks and messy hitboxes but it’s overall decent.

On another hand, the game adds a nice skill system allowing you to equip up to eight skills at once, ranging from melee attacks to spells or buffs. This is where the combat shines as it adds a lot of variety and compensates for the weaker Souls imitation that the core combat is. With the addition of skills, the combat becomes really fun and different from Souls games. It also allows you to switch builds on the go, freely going from a caster to a melee build or anything you’d like to.

However, the code system is also pretty restraining. The main way of unlocking skills for free use is to equip a code, equip the skills you want to unlock and go kill enough monsters (usually around the length of an entire map segment). This essentially means that the game encourages you to constantly switch builds and makes it difficult to sustain a playstyle, let alone make an optimal build (which is a problem in NG+, when you start getting wrecked). I think this problem would be solved by having fewer codes. A lot of them are pretty similar and it turns into an oversaturation of choices for similar results. Likewise, there are many duplicates of skills. In both cases, one is always better than the rest.

The heavy focus on the companion system ultimately leads to a lack of balance. There are a lot of gank fights similar to Dark Souls 2 and the game relies on the NPC partner to compensate for the jankiness of many aspects of the game. The companions are rather interesting and I like them personally, even though I would totally solo a Souls game instead. However, they really trivialise many sections of the game because of how strong they are and sometimes you wish you could only call them when you actually want to. On another hand, you may also be thinking that the combat isn’t so good that you would want to challenge yourself on it, anyway. Very few fights seem fun in solo, most enemies are extremely aggressive and the only downtime you get from them is when they switch aggro to your partner. Even basic enemies will not leave you a second of respite as they can surprisingly run to catch up to you and attack you before you get any chance to heal.

The game also suffers from its overall choice of enemy patterns and hitboxes. The hitboxes are pretty bad at times, oftentimes you just don’t hit for no reason and it can be very frustrating especially with some weapons that require precise hits like the stabbing lance. On another hand, the enemies are very likely to hit when they should not. For example, a thrust attack can often hit you if you’re close enough to the side or even behind the enemies. What’s also terrible about getting hit is that a lot of enemies in this game have either good tracking or wide swing attacks, this means that they are likely to reach you no matter your placement. It reduces the importance of positioning and forces you into always having to dodge, but this problem is also exacerbated by the fact that the game relies heavily on gank fights so you can only imagine the result of having to fight a lot of enemies at once when all of them have such extended reach.

Hardcore souslike level design with a tweak too (the map):

The level design is cool. Seriously, I really liked it. The environments are varied but the decorations themselves are relatively subpar. However, every level has a lot of branching areas and secrets to be found. I had an absolute blast looking for them. The game makes an extensive use of verticality and having you drop down or climb up ladders to access hidden areas. One of the most infamous areas of the game, a certain copy of Anor Londo, was especially fun in my experience.

A lack of cohesiveness is also the level design’s weakness, while early areas tend to branch out more, later areas are more linear but they’ll instead have more shortcuts and circle around back to the checkpoints. It’s unfortunate that this design element appears so late in the game and the early levels are full of checkpoints instead. There are many cases where the placement is quite questionable, especially when the checkpoint is before a straight line leading to a branch of more paths: why not put the checkpoint there instead so the paths all lead to it?

There is an intriguing map system. By default, the map only registers your footsteps until you reach a certain spot where you can “unlock” a part of the real map. This footstep system allows you to manually map the levels and is very helpful in remembering where you went. I thought the combination works really well. This is also why I think the confusing layout of levels works because with your footsteps being tracked, it’s very easy not to get lost. Also, the solution to most levels is ultimately pretty straight forward because most branches are dead ends, so honestly it’s not that difficult to find where you’re going. The only weakness is that the map doesn’t show every vertical layer, which can be troubling in some areas or if you want an overview.


Weak story and chara design, but some cool ideas:

One thing I’m not a fan of is the character design. While male characters are mostly cool, the female ones can really be summed up to “boobies” for a huge part and that was very disappointing. A lot of the monsters look cool, on another hand, but when you get close up you realise they are also often naked female monsters so yeah… I think other games from Bandai Namco like Scarlet Nexus had much better designs overall.

The story is okay, not amazing but not completely boring either. I rather liked it and I think the character interactions are pretty fun. There are one or two sections in the game where you get bombarded with cutscenes for twenty minutes or more and it gets kinda boring.

The game uses a unique storytelling method of having the player collect memories which will be told in a theatrical manner as you walk down a corridor. This feature was cool and there were a lot of interesting ideas, however I think there are way too many memories and it makes them more boring than anything at some point. The lore points that they add are cool and allow to deepen some character backgrounds. The most annoying part is really the way you have to walk through them at a slow speed, only a few of the memories take advantage of this to do something interesting (and those were really well done). For most of them, you just walk as you observe scenes in the background in the form of theatre plays, you might as well just have been standing still no?


Overall, Code Vein is a fun soulslike with some flaws, it’s very subjective whether you’ll enjoy it or not. I’d say the game is pretty similar to Dark Souls II if anything, so if you really enjoy DaS2 and anime isn’t a problem for you then you’ll probably like this game.

As a long time player, what did MH Rise offer to me?


A modern redesign of my favourite maps:

One of the things that blew my mind about Rise is how they recreated older generation maps, modernising them in a much needed way. Not only are they now in high definition but they have also been reworked into seamless maps. Some of those were my favourite and Rise makes you feel like you’re replaying a game from Gen 3 again.

The greatest addition to the maps is a lot of verticality. You can climb and find a lot of secrets or resources. Fights don’t take advantage of this though, for the most part.

The only regrettable aspect is that you can still see the corridors separating areas, an obvious leftover from the original design idea. We’ve learned that the developers didn’t initially intend to make the maps like this but after seeing the development of World, they decided to rework the maps. In my opinion, the result is worth it.


Solid roster and old favourites:

One of the undeniable additions that Rise did to World is bringing back many of the older monsters, which needed to be reworked into the newer engine. The selection is great and they didn’t just focus on the big classic ones, we get a lot of the smaller ones like Arzuros or Lagombi too and I think it’s great. Once again, the game just digs into my Gen 3 nostalgia.

The newer ones are also cool and Rise has a unique identity in that regard. For once, the monsters are not based on nature as much as they are designed on Japanese folklore. Still, I think they fit well into the series. I don’t think I was disappointed with any of them and I was especially impressed with Magnamalo, which I learned to love after grinding it in the demo challenge.


Further improvements to MHW’s weapon redesigns:

Rise takes the weapon redesigns in MHW and continues to improve them. As an example, the Switch Axe has many more moves during which it can now change forms. Additionally, the game brought back the hunter arts from MHGU into a new form and they’re also great additions. The combat is dynamic and perhaps the most refined the series has ever seen.

Some problems arise though. First, the new wirebug skills can be quite spammy for some weapons. The hammer meta for example is to throw Impact Crater as many times as possible. Of course, nobody forces you into doing that and it’s perfectly playable otherwise, just don’t aim for speedrunning times.

I also am not a fan of the Hunting Horn rework, it feels like a completely different weapon from World. Using the right move according to your position does not matter any more and the main combo is pretty much to spam A. It feels much faster paced and less heavy.


Some problems regarding immersion:

Immersion is a big deal for me and I have always loved what the Monster Hunter series has done. I am a person who enjoys spending hours gathering or going on hunts to kill small monsters, knowing I am hoarding a wealth of materials I would never need. It was a relaxing activity for me. I also happen to like the item management part and I wasn’t a fan of World removing a lot of them: pickaxes, hot/cool drinks… Well, Rise is pretty much the same in this regard.

The monster AI is where immersion suffers the most and I dare say it’s the worst the series has seen. For example, the ways the monster moves in the now seamless maps can get quite ridiculous and it also happens way too often. The monster encounters are also not only annoying but immersion breaking. They are very scripted events and the outcome is always the same: monsters which are not your target have a mount threshold which is very low so whenever they meet your hunting target, one hit from it will make them available for mounting so it’s always the same pattern. Whether you mount or not, which monster you chose to knock down: the outcome is always predictable and you just choose the most optimal choice, if not the most annoying.

You can also instantly locate them now, removing the entire searching process. This is not entirely a bad thing but it does contribute to giving the game a more arcadey feeling. I hope the next game will improve in this regard and find a proper immersion formula.


Some things have improved, others have not. I also don’t disagree that the games are getting easier. However, I am still very hopeful for this series. I can tell the devs understand what they’re doing and I appreciate that they always try to do something new, whether it’s hit or miss. If I want to play the older games, I still can and if I don’t enjoy an entry, maybe I’ll like the next one more!

Not quite as bad as other famously terrible games

I played this game for the memes but I was surprised that it’s not unplayable. I was actually kinda disappointed in that regard.

Obviously, Trigger Man is a budget title. The presentation is unacceptable. No voice acting is the main culprit but there’s also clashing UI and typeface, stock sound effects, and noticeable reuse of assets.

I was expecting Max Payne or Dead to Rights, but instead I got Syphon Filter. There’s a bar that fills up when enemies have line of sight. Once it’s full, the enemies stop missing. The player must break line of sight using level geometry in order to not soak up tons of damage. Dipping in and out of cover while popping off quick headshots is the name of the game.

The moment to moment combat really isn’t that bad. It’s not amazing or anything, but when the game lets you engage with the combat, it can be dumb fun. The problem is this game is ruined by poor set-pieces, lackluster AI, terrible boss encounters, and a difficulty spike that takes the jank up to 100.

The few times you have to dodge around the cops are awful. Trigger Man will straight up tell you what to do the first time and it’s still a nightmare. The cop’s line of sight is ridiculous. Additionally, the bug out frequently causing them to spin in 360° infinitely, resulting in the level being impossible. The forced sniper sections are horrendous. There’s a certain order you’re supposed to take out the bad guys, but it doesn’t seem to follow its own rules occasionally.

All the boss encounters are terrible because the bosses don’t follow the same rules as other opponents. They rush you down and are impossible to not get hit by. There’s a boss in the middle of the game that I had no choice but to cheese by camping next to a health pack as we trade Spas-12 shots to the face.

Over Trigger Man’s 3-5 hour run time, these jank frustrations are common. Some levels like the business building, parking garage, and sewers avoid these annoyances and end up being decent. Trigger Man also features a cool soundtrack. It’s a bit stock and over composed in a few spots, but I found it enjoyable. The Spas-12 in this game is badass. When fired, the whole screen shakes with a thunderous boom. Maybe I’m just trying to be positive but I thought it was cool.

Is Trigger Man a hidden gem? No. Even with the guilt pleasure type of fun I got out of the slow paced Syphon Filter inspired combat, the set-pieces and jank ruin this game. I’ll tell you what Trigger Man is though; significantly better than other infamous 6th generation games such as Batman: Dark Tomorrow, Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis, and Drake of the 99 Dragons.

2/10