Sept 2026
Well, I was making surprisingly good progress (all things considered considering several games were within a collection)… and then the Autumn Sale dropped with some decently discounted games… and October has a bunch of new releases… Backlog despair grows With the finishing of the Castlevania collection and Mega Man X Collection 2 I am ready for both of the new games releasing soon here. I was completely blindsided by how much Dawn of War hooked me. I was expecting to just throw up the base game to diversify my played games and next thing I know I’m chain playing each of the expansions back to back. I was forced to take two weeks of PTO this upcoming month so hopefully I can make some considerable progress though I planned to put in as much time into FFXI to hopefully finish that out so I imagine I’ll need all that time for that. I’m also thinking of becoming better on reviews. I often wait til the end of the month to write them all in one go and the earlier games tend to get a little foggy by that point. Plus I tend to get long winded in my reviews so… something to work on. Anyways, excited for spooky month. May the horror games, movies, and chilly weather commence!!!
Planned games to finish in Oct:
Alan Wake II + DLC
Silent Hill Townfall
Hellraiser: Revival
DPA: Devil in Me
Guilty Gear xrd Rev 2
BloodRayne 2: Terminal
Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
Castlevania: Belmont’s Revenge
The Long Dark Episode 5
FFXI
August Progress
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge RTS guy, despite owning quite a few games. I played Supreme Commander with friends which convinced me I was, and I had a lot of fun with that, but so many have just been tests against my skill with little satisfaction. This… this is different. I couldn’t believe how drawn in I was and even played each expansion right after another. It being more than just a realistic military game that enacts past or theoretical battles certainly helps but it is also just well designed and has an active and forefront story through out giving you character interactions, animations, and even sometimes a cinematic or two. A lot of the maps and factions are well designed, fun lore, and battles aren’t overly difficult. I wasn’t too familiar with 40k so I don’t know the whole picture of the lore and faction history, but this provides you just enough through it’s narrative to let you understand the general situation and the idea behind each faction. Factions are a bit limited to just the 4. Space Marines, Orks, Chaos, and Eldar, but later expansions will include more. Tragically, the story only has you play as the Space Marines so outside of facing them, you won’t have a good idea of how to actually play the other factions. Still, the story does benefit from the focus on a singular factions and there is some pretty solid voicework to really drive it home. ||”Sindri!!” “WHAT!? …my lord”||
Honestly, just a great introduction for the game series and potentially a gateway drug for the IP as a whole. I never plan on playing the tabletop but this series so far has gotten me to look at the mini figures.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault
Single Player Playthrough
First Expansion that introduces the Imperials.
A much more developed story mode as each mission had you with a very specific setup and objectives rather than the general gameplay of the first. These restrictions made you feel like you playing a narrative rather than a regular match with some story added. It even allows you to play as multiple races which is PERFECT for letting you try each race before taking them online… something I think EVERY RTS should do it. A story mode can be both an introduction to factions AND serve as an engaging gameplay narrative. You’ll first pick the story path of either Order or Chaos. Order giving you access to the newly introduced Imperial faction and the returning Eldar faction. In opposition the chaos has you play the Orks and Chaos Marines. You’ll switch off between the two factions of your story path until the very end where you’ll take your chosen team to the final battle. Generally the missions feel great, it still incorporates an active narrative, and provides a clear understanding of how each faction functions. Though the game is harder as a whole, a specific mission for both story paths is incredibly difficult to the point where I’d say it is poorly designed. Regardless of the faction it is a VERY time restricted match with overwhelming odds. Even with figuring out a strategy it felt like I was still relying on RNG to get me through.
All in all, I do favor this a bit more than the base game.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade
Single Player Playthrough
Second Expansion that adds the TAU and Necron factions.
This ditches any sort of actual story mode and instead replaces it with something akin to a fighting game’s arcade mode. In fact, the game doesn’t have much to do with the previous two other than the concept of the Necros being introduced in Winter Assault. Effectively, you all are trying to conquer a planet and fight each other for survival and the right to do whatever it is your faction wills. You pick a faction and then get put on a skirmish match where you attack opposing areas to conquer them and eventually the “capital” of the enemy faction before taking each one out. Most of the non-essential maps are just a standard, get out there and conquer. No special objectives or lore. Maybe it was because of my faction but it often felt like the strategy was just rush down the enemy base rather than building up, economy, or defensive. If you did try the latter you would often find yourself quickly overrun. The nice thing though is that most territories give you a bonus either in a boon or bonuses that you can apply to a future fight (at the cost of some points). These points are generated by meeting milestones and these mile stones can even give you upgrade points for your hero/leader. By the way, this game seems to have a lot more focus on your leader giving them several more abilities and customization. Again, could have just been my faction.
You will get lore when you challenge and win against a capitol territory against a faction. It starts with a general background for that faction, followed by the setup for the battle, and with a victory you get a special text wall that entails your faction’s victory over the other. The real nice thing about these capitol battles is that these actually have special objectives and a specifically designed setup for the opposing faction. It actually begins to feel like a story mode in these moments. The opposing faction has plenty of advantage and unique mechanics but it CAN be fun overcoming them (aside from the TAU…) though it can take A LOT of time. 15 hours just for one skirmish match, with some personal skill issues. Once you do manage to overcome all the factions, you win, get a brief cinematic and another text wall detailing the spoils and outcome from your grand victory.
I’m a little mixed. One one hand, I REALLY enjoyed my time with the Necrons. Both with their playstyle and they had some of the best lines I have heard in the series so far. On the other… well the story mode just isn’t very exciting as I much preferred each match be tailored to a specific setup with a strong narrative that the previous two provided. A lot of maps felt tedious to conquer and at times downright like you had some incredible difference in disadvantages or advantages. I get that’s how strategy games can work but even with my win streak some were just unwinnable even with bonuses applied. Meanwhile the enemy I’m facing seemed to conquer or earn very little before that battle.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Soulstorm
Single Player Playthrough
Note: Requires mods and fixes to run properly.
Third Expansion that adds Dark Eldaar and Sisters of Battle
Final expansion, more factions, you’d think it would be a better experience even if there were questionable balance changes… that is not the case. Story Mode wise it does a skirmish mode like Dark Crusade but in an attempt to make the stakes grander it gives us the worst skirmish design ever. DC had us just fight over one planet, SS moves it to multiple (moons included). This isn’t bad in theory but the player model is now replace with a faction icon, the land pieces are sooooo small as the planets collectively take up a quarter/thirdish of the screen while the rest is literally just… space. Empty space being taken up by mostly nothing other than maybe a couple of teleportation lines needed to get between planets/moons. It just looks awful and confusing. The generic battles are incredibly easy now as you can often steam roll the enemy save for the very rare honor guard reinforcements. Unfortunately, we also lose the ability to keep structures on a conquered tile as well meaning you always start from scratch in any defense battle so it never benefits to over build. The stronghold battles are the stronger points once again given a specifically designed battle and map for each faction you face. Though these feel much less thought out than the previous expansion. Save for the absolute mismatch of the first opponent I had (which felt like I had picked Charmandar to face Brock (Fire vs Rock type disadvantage in Pokemon)) a lot of them ended rather quickly and won before I realized it. On that note, Sisters of Battle felt very underwhelming compared to how cool they seemed. Ultimately they are a less powerful Space Marines in my experience. I still prefer the SoB over SM but man oh man does every battle with them feel uphill.
Everything before this, though had it’s criticisms, is fairly fine if not a bit of a letdown. The real problems are here and that is general performance. The game struggles to run. Even when testing the graphics it would freeze and crash. If you skip it and go straight into the game it seems to be fine but almost every time you are about to win a match… it crashes again. Not every time but nearly where you would have to save right before you think you’ll win lest you chance to lose much progress. This crash specifically is due to a limited memory cache the game has meaning it can’t handle it’s own memory size. The camera is also GOD AWFUL. It’s so zoomed in that a building could easily take up most of it with almost no zoom out. It’s almost required to play this game with the Dawn of War Mod Manager that increases the amount of memory the game can sustain, allows you to zoom out further, and seemed to completely eliminate (or at least reduce) any crashes. I’d also like to note the number of times I have had units completely block each other from moving forward where I’d have to individually move them from each other so they could join the rest of their units.
Ultimately this should be a decent expansion but ultimately brought down by it’s performance issues and overall lackluster execution. It’s a shame because this has an incredibly sick title and box art which should’ve been a nice last hit before moving onto the next game.
A simple point-and-click adventure that looks like (and probably was) made in MS Paint. Like most in this genre it has unorthodox solutions to its puzzles. Some of which are a bit more than frustrating as even the progression of it makes no sense. I.e. Someone is trapped behind a door but you need to put an object to keep it that way. If you walk to the next room over… they are already there. I genuinely though the game was glitched more than that I hadn’t actually solved the puzzle. Simply put, unorthodox solutions can be frustrating enough even more so when you don’t realize you didn’t solve them and/or just not enjoying the game. This lack of enjoyment really goes into full speed during the second act/chapter where your areas REALLY open up and so do the amount of items you procure, many of which STAY in your inventory even after they have met their full use which ends up being a tiring game of cycling through the pile of items you’ve collected never really sure what still need or can be used/combined. The story didn’t really feel all the special and though it had some decent jokes here and there I mostly found myself skimming through the dialogue.
Halloween: The Game
0
0
2
10
I only played a few hours on the Early Access period a few days before it’s full release, so the player base was a lot lower and this is before any patches. This early access was gifted to those that bought the Deluxe Edition which doesn’t seem to make much sense for a multiplayer game.
Though I only played a few hours I managed to play the entire story and a few online matches. Story largely serves as a tutorial for Michael Myers (the killer). Going through an abridged story of the original you will learn how to stalk, injure, kill, and use his various abilities. It can be kinda slow and confusing at times, but overall playing Michael makes sense so long as you have patience and understand this is more than just a cat and mouse game. Take time to study your target, build bloodlust, take out things like lights and communications, hide bodies (or display them). You must take your time but not so much that allows them to escape. I’m not sure if I didn’t understand the mechanics right but I found any civ running the streets hard to keep up with even with my abilities. Any cars around were too distant to appear behind to surprise them and more than not they could just turn the other way leaving me behind to have to reapply my ability to try a next area. To further note this was the last person so I couldn’t even break chase to go after someone else and they certainly weren’t going to stop running. Maybe an ability that slows civs down or something would be nice.
Now for the survivor/civilian side… I really wish there was a tutorial for this. I really didn’t know what I was doing half the time and even I had a better idea than most of the players I either worked with or faced. You see, the goal isn’t simply to escape but to help the NPCs escape as well. You’ll need to convince them of the ensuing danger and find tools to open the various exits (which apparently do cap). So many of my teammates and more so my opposing civilians would just leave before evacuating anyone. Leaving me to just clean up NPCs and secure a rather boring victory. It reminds me a bit of the Assassins Creed 2: Brotherhood multiplayer. While cool in concept, most players would just run around and slash at each other rather than try to sneak undetected. In some fairness it isn’t even clear what all the escape functions are. I accidentally drove a car into the border which caused me and a fellow survivor to escape early (this is partially due to the clunky matchbox car controls the car had). Of course, if you’re worried about dying, death isn’t the end, you can come back as a cop or even a legendary civ like Loomis to track and/or kill Michael.
Onto the bugs (before patch). The biggest and most obvious bug is the odd behaviors of the NPCs who often would stutter, glitch around, and do weird things like casually jumping out of closed windows. There is also some wacky field of vision for NPCs that can have them see you in the most hidden areas while also having trouble when you are in plain sight. There may be other issues but those were the most notable. Maybe less of a glitch and more a design choice, but lobbies have to be filled and if you decide to play again you’ll be matched with the same lobby. It feels a bit weird for a case like is there a benefit playing against the same team, wouldn’t they just know your strategy and clear you out? It’s more a personal thing but also feels like a worse option rather than random matchmaking. Most times people would just leave right after a match but again that could be the limited playerbase.
I had been meaning to return to the game, I still do, but it feels a bit much. Like a dinner you have to buy ingredients for, prepare, cook, and then finally enjoy with all the setup the mechanics have. Sometimes (most of the time) you want something quick, easy, and get over it quickly. So, as much hate as Dead by Daylight can get I often prefer that fast food choice with quick matches over some of the more lengthy matches of this. By no means do these games have to compete with each other just an analogy for my preference. Maybe I’ll come back and love it alongside, but my time is spread thin as it is with all the new releases and personal life.
I had started and dropped this game on and off for years being unable to play it for long or having much desire to finish. What I will say about this is that the art, both background and character, looks great along with pretty solid writing for a free to play visual novel. Don’t get me wrong, the characters can be very frustrating (especially you and your closest friend) but at least acknowledge that good writing often involves very flawed characters. Your main character is an aloof teen who believes he isn’t special and doesn’t know why anyone wants or cares about him which should give you a good idea of what kind of journey you are in for. So, despite these pretty decent praises I do not vibe with the game. Frankly, it’s just not for me. The initial premise is cool… but it takes so damn long to actually get back to it when you are mostly just stuck with high school days and drama for probably about 8.5 hours of the 11 hours it took to finish. I’ll reserve my complaints for some of the drama as it seemed… really stupid given that some of it happened when they were actual children with no control over certain events but overall it was really tiring. It does try to insert a small bit of the actual murder mystery premise back into the game on occasion but they will often go by in a flash and just as easily forget they were there as you are back with your aloof main character just trudging through friend hang outs. When we do finally get to the climax it does get to be a fair bit more interesting, if not a tad limited. Admittedly there was a final moment I was not expecting for a relatively altogether predictable story so far. It does appear there is meant to be a sort of continuation of this game but I have not seen it appear as of yet. There was some after story… but it is mostly extra stuff and I just couldn’t bring myself to go through anymore.
All in all, I’m sure there’s plenty of people who would love this game. Again, great visuals, solid writing, and even some great characters… it’s just not for me. So, if you are like me and so far past dumb high school drama, definitely avoid.
Collection as a whole:
I’ll be honest, this is a hard sell for most people other than those who are invested into the series (and even then…). This collection holds probably the worst games of the X series, with 2 of them being fairly terrible, one being subpar, and the last being somewhere above alright. We’re talking about poor level designs, questionable changes to game mechanics, poor writing and voice acting, missable items, etc. At the very least some of these games will really make you appreciate how Zero plays and just how great the original 4 (ish) are. X8 is easily the best, with some considerable space below that being X5, a bit below that is X6, and way wayyyyy below that is X7. Again, really only for those who really want to play the entire series is who I recommend this for.
5/10
-MMX6
Similarish to X5, we continue the story with X who is now not only using the Buster Shot but brandishing Zero’s Z-Saber and face a new reploid threat seemingly being lead or a part of a evil/virus version of his lost friend. The story is definitely at it’s worse as a lot of the interactions don’t seem to make sense. X makes such a huge fit over people hunting for Evil Zero saying that original Zero is not evil. Like… yeah they already acknowledge he is gone so why would it matter if they are tracking down this virus version? Well, this still leads X to do his own investigation now needing to save reploids through each level lest they die or become infected… There are a limited amount of these reploids, some of which grant you bonuses for saving them. If they are lost… they are lost for good and so is that prize. It’s a frustrating way to go about upgrades and will often have you suicide diving for every one of them because even if you die at least they aren’t forever lost. Each level has you face a boss, but unlike the corrupted reploids of past games you are instead fighting… investigators who are trying to track down Evil Zero. Like… they are just police doing their job and both you and them really just want to fight for little reason presented. The bosses are the easiest they have been with almost no requirement of their weakness needed.
As for the saved reploids, some appear to have some foresight to save so you are very likely to miss a good number. This is also the first game in the MM franchise where you can easily soft lock yourself as some areas require certain gear… but they are also past the point of no returns (in that level) so you either have to die repeatedly or restart your game. In fact, some levels entirely require a certain gear set which is also not something the rest of the series has really done. It feels very off brand and frustrating considering I prefer to play without any gear/armor at all for each level if available. On a good note, Alia’s navigator instructions are no longer required nor do they interrupt your gameplay. Instead an icon pops up every time she wants to talk and you can very easily just pretend she doesn’t exist. If you do choose to listen in… it’s almost never important or even helpful.
Ultimately it is slightly better than X5 but the permanently missable upgrades is mind numbing alongside a very non engaging story.
4/10
-MMX7
Okay… people warned me about this but surely it can’t be that ba… OH GOD IT’S 3D!!! That’s right, Mega Man no longer stuck as a 2D sidescroller but shifts between both dimensions in what feels like the worst platforming I have ever felt in the series. Even when riding a lift down your character will lose footing. It’s like they fired everyone that worked on all the other games and had a new team on this. It controls very slowly and clunky as well… Okay moving on. Wait.. where’s X? Who’s Axl? Well, Axle is one of our new protags who uses guns, has an auto target ability (probably needed for the god awful 3D sections), and a fairly underwhelming ability to turn into enemies. He’s an up start who is full of himself so you can expect him to be everything you hate. His one interesting aspect is meant to be the ability to transform into other enemies but it is EXTREMELY limited to a select few who often can’t fight and are meant for optional and rare environment traversal. The powers you get do you little better as most of them feel useless at the best of times. Don’t worry though, you actually get to active switch between him and Zero who is the far more interesting way to play. In fact, I’ll give this and X8 credit for letting me see the enjoyment in playing Zero as I had never done so before (successfully). Each have their own health bar, but as soon as one is out… it’s game over. Meaning I get to let Axl face tank everything while I actually fight and play with Zero. We once again have saveable reploids that give upgrades and they are once again missable if they are destroyed. I also think that if you die while saving them they don’t get saved this time as well… Upgrades now follow a upgrade tree rather than being a specific part, so you don’t have to worry about missing a specific move rather than allocate the upgrade points.
In short, MMX7 is a terrible experiment just to see how poorly Mega Man translates into the 3D era and only makes it worse by making more changes including a new protag, locking X from being immediately playable, poor voice acting, and savable reploids being once again easily lost. I didn’t know where to fit this but the voice acting is pretty terrible as well. Plus note, this makes me want to go back to the previous games and play as Zero.
2/10
-MMX8
Alright, we came to a compromise after X7. Sure, we keep Axl, but we got rid of the 3D movement and are back on track with now a 2D side scroller with 3D models. Auto Aim is gone, Axl’s moveset feels a lot better, Zero is still just as cool to play, active character switching is back, and generally everything feels a LOT better. This time, when one character dies, they are just knocked out and you switch to the other character, no more game over. Not only can you switch between characters but now you can activate dual ultimate that uses both.Upgrades are now a mix of finding chips and then spending currency on the chips to actually get them. This becomes a problem as currency grinding is slow and the fact that not only are some of these chips hard to obtain but then cost a lot too. Levels are pretty hit or miss, some involving some incredibly frustrating gimmicks (training stage or the gravity switch stage for two). Bosses I remember being mostly fine and the average ability or weapon swaps felt mostly useful. You also get to switch between navigators, one of three who each have their own unique focus (items, bosses, and balanced) though to be honest… I think it’s meant to just appeal to more who you visually and audibly prefer. On that note, voice work is much improved.
Maybe it’s coming off X7 or I just went full circle but I ended up genuinely enjoying this game. It felt fairly smooth, a lot better platforming and gameplay, and just a decently okay story.
6.5/10
Castlevania Dominus Collection
I want to start out by saying I played the games in the order they appeared on screen (Top to Bottom: Order of Ecclesia, Portrait of Ruin, Dawn of Sorrows) and I was perplexed that each consecutive game would lose more and more quality of life mechanics or details. Things like info such as drop rates, monster details, items, and even the ability to view a full sized map. I was baffled that instead of improving details of a game they were getting worse. So, I had to double check something and looked on the internet and found… I played them in reverse order of release date. Obviously this does little for the narrative as most Castlevania games are relatively self contained as some take place decades apart in different eras but usually a game improves in some manner… at least in quality of life aspects. So, just note that my reviews might seem a bit weird at times as the criticisms will often be me comparing how it fairs from the one I played right before it. I also was not planning to complete this game but it was surprisingly easy and I can be kind of an insomniac. Though the series often gives you percentages for map completion, item discovery, bestiary, etc. (Not to mention bonus modes like boss rush). It only requires you to defeat most/all bosses and then do another run with the bonus characters. 2/3rds of the bonus characters are incredibly fun as they play exactly like classic characters and their abilities often let you explore the maps in any order you please. Save for the final boss, you can fight any of them in any order and quickly at that.
-Portrait of Ruin
Back in Dracula’s Castle we are introduced to two characters you will be playing more or less simultaneously. One plays like a traditional Castlevania character with a whip or other melee weapon and sub weapons. The other has a lower selection of main weapons (largely books) but deals in a wide array of spells. Though I’d say the magic user is far more useful, most of the spells weren’t particularly great especially when compared to how frequently the other character gets weapons comparatively. The bonus to this is the ultimate moves. Each character gets a single ultimate they can equip as well as a dual ultimate requiring both characters actions. Dual ultimates often look really cool though I only ended up using a couple. The really unique aspect of having both characters is that not only can you switch between them at will but even fight side by side. Though the AI isn’t very smart. Even more rarely will a puzzle or platforming section actually require you to use this.
Though the castle is more or less a standard map for the series the new mechanic offers portraits which lead to entirely different areas with their own little map and boss. This helps break away from the typical scenery of the castle with a variety of new and unique locations. The bosses can vary in quality, often not being very engaging, and one classic boss in particular had my least favorite design.
This game has an issue with bloat in that it wants you to waste your time. First, you have a mini hub area where you can shop and receive/fulfill side quests. The side quests can vary and often aren’t explained very well. Especially when the location or enemy spawn trigger is vague often leaving you to wander around with very little clue of what is actually needed. The second time waster is the sub weapon mastery system. Killing an enemy that has been injured by a subweapon provides varying sub points for that weapon. Most enemies give between 2-6 points… the average sub weapon requires at least 1,000… With so many sub weapons why make the point requirement so high? It almost feels like you’re not supposed to interact with it at all. In addition, the drop rates for even most basic items are criminally low. Even with all the luck up abilities I could get throughout the entire story I probably didn’t get more than 30% before grinding. Other than some side quests, it isn’t necessary, but again these are weapons, spells, equipment, items, we are talking about. By the time you do grind some of this stuff out it is long since worthless.
Overall, still a solid entry but boy oh boy does it try to waste your time. Also the lack of some enemy information on screen was annoying coming off of Order of Ecclesia. Requires almost no touch screen adaptation as the only touch screen aspect I could figure was when it asks you to create your save file crest… which was awful to draw with using a joystick.
7.5/10
-Dawn of Sorrows
Frankly, a little surprised to see the return of Soma though his enemy learn ability is neat and offers a reason why he would lose all of his previous abilities. Frankly, it feels like an immediate sequel to GBA game not just in story but graphics and mechanics but still looks solid. This game introduces some new concepts like infusing the enemy souls into weapons to evolve them. A fun way to increase your arsenal at the cost of an enemy ability What baffles me is how insanely low the drop rate for dominating souls is. It’s the whole mechanic for the game. You kill enemy, you learn ability, you use ability. I think I barely got more than a few souls towards the end, even fewer of which I was actually able to use to fuse with weapons. This drop rate actively removes your ability to engage with core mechanics the game tells you to use. Even the most basic of enemies just do not drop their souls at anywhere near a consistent rate if seemingly at all. This is especially bad if any puzzle or pathway requires a specific enemy soul. What the game does well is interesting puzzles. Various room puzzles are often thought provoking with unique mechanics. It is only a problem when you come by a room that looks like a puzzle room… and is just a dumb mechanic for you to fool around with.
Still great. Lacks almost any enemy information on the secondary screen and doesn’t even let you view the map in full screen. The time consumption from trying to get item or soul drops is a torment in itself. There is actually quite a bit of touch screen interactions that had to get adapted. First my hate for signing things digitally occurs as it asks you to draw your signature (or picture) for your save. It probably took me an hour to sign the name I wanted. The other aspects are with specific abilities which at times need to happen during action. Definitely recommending turning the cursor speed up for that.
7/10
An almost slice of life romance Visual Novel as you are prompted that you are working off a debt buuuuuut unlike most of the genre you don’t actually have any time restrictions. Just make sure you cook, clean, and use any other time to improve yourself or romance one of the four love interests. To start out this game is VERY quality. Art and animations are well detailed with smooth and diverse options. Saying the voice work is fantastic could be an understatement. The VAs felt like they put in a lot of effort to convey the various emotions and excitement of the character and situation which is even further helped by how well each character is written. They aren’t just some basic trope that you follow a dialogue path with, they are all interesting in their own way with their own issues and interests. When it came to deciding between which one I found myself deciding between 3 of the 4 interests as they all were great. I do want to stress that this isn’t a super deep game despite how my praises make it sound, you aren’t uncovering the truths of the world, but you are developing a relatively warm relationship with each woman even with the very lewdness aside. Believe me there is quite a bit of ridiculousness (the whole premise of why the main character can’t keep regular jobs is because his package is too big), humor, and lewdness but still manages to feel genuine outside of that. The middle does get a little stagnant as it felt like I was keeping all the meters up but no real progression happening for a while especially when it felt like some events could have happened earlier to even out this pacing.
It’s funny, cute, wholesome, and lewd all in one incredibly great looking and well voiced big package without the stress of a time limit. One of the better of it's genre and worth the price point.
Marvel’s Wolverine
1
4
9
28
This was played on the second hardest difficulty.
Hooo boy, what a divisive and controversial release that was probably incited by a lot of decisions outside of the game by it’s publisher, Sony, and probably some unrealistic expectations of how it should play. All my opinions and views will be solely about this game and my personal experience and views. Though there’s a lot of valid criticisms, the most popular content people show is altered to show incorrect or exaggerated examples. Similar to how people will complain about how a game looks and you find out they had the settings on the lowest possible setting in a corner with the worst lighting with an active glitch in place. End of content warning. (Quick Summary at end)
Wolverine takes place in a whole separate canon than any X-Men or Wolverine/Story is based on. In fact, in this universe (at least from the opening) there are no X-Men, Magneto or Xavier, and the general public don’t know about mutants or the X-Gene. Wolverine is recruited alongside notable characters like Sabretooth and Mystique who are tasked on missions to help and defend mutants. Unlike Insomniac’s Spider-Man the game is a more linear narrative driven action game. To be fair, what would an open world Logan game really look like without the traversal Spider Man has?
Combat
Since Wolvie doesn’t have the gadgets or abilities Spidey has he ultimately relies on slashing his targets and his own healing factor to keep him up. A lot of the combat involves lunging, basic attacks, and occasionally special abilities that you unlock. This is probably by far my biggest criticism. I don’t mind the generally more basic action sequences as the ripping and tearing are pretty satisfactory and getting into the flow state really makes the impact of Wolverine feel great. HOWEVER, the special abilities which really vary up your combat are on SUPER long cooldowns. Before upgrades you’d be able to use each special once during a battle because it just takes that long to recharge. Various upgrades later do assist with the cool down but it is just wayyyy too long considering these are needed to make the gameplay more varied. The game also incentivizes environmental kills including pushing/throwing enemies into various environmental hazards, activating weapons, or even sometimes something that will power up Wolvie himself. On top of that you’ll occasionally have a partner that will fight alongside you and allow assisted combos. The environmentals aren’t always super easy to setup as getting an enemy to work with you can be problematic. Defensively, aside from your healing factor, you will have parries. Parries are decent but there are quite a few times where multiple enemies will attack you in quick succession (including ranged) where parry becomes less viable, doubly true for any mounted attacks as they leave you open to interruption for similar reasons. Instead of well orchestrated fights, even if these sometimes make you question why an enemy waits for you to finish a finisher, this instead is far more scrappy but when the flow is there… it’s way satisfying. Bosses are a whole separate story. A lot of them are pretty solid all though far fewer fights than I’d like with the last few feeling standout great. There is one in particular that is so bad though that I would lower the score a whole point just for it. It is so poorly designed due to it’s lack of engagement as you have very few instances to attack and it drags on for soooo long. It’s an understatement to say that they just did not know what they were doing when they designed this fight and should’ve been tested, critiqued, and completely overhauled before release. I did enjoy the combat, though I know some were expecting it to be a Platinum Games level of combat (Metal Gear Revengeance, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, etc.) but honestly we were never shown anything like that. As stated before, the combat does feel good when it flows well, the final sequences really emphasized it, but the AI is far too frantic to allow you to enjoy. Stealth returns though it is incredibly mismanaged and you’ll end up in active combat even with the best of intentions. It feels like they just had the system from the Spidey games and just threw it in. It’s just so easy to be caught and that’s not even considering the wonky vision the AI has.
Story and Character Designs
This game has a strong narrative presence, similar to Spider-Man, which can irk people who are just in it for gameplay. Understandably this does reduce the replay value as having to skip cutscenes and going through the narrative sequences can be a slog. For the story it is trying to tell I appreciate what it tries to tackle and I think that’s why they gave him such a soft face compared to his other iterations as it does focus on emotion… not that I think it was a good choice (face wise) given that Logan has always been perceived as a ruthless beast who is actually quite noble and goes through a fair bit of trauma. I DO think however that Insomniac doesn’t really know how to write women. Well, more precisely they don’t know how to write a proper moral dilemma and always have the female character be on the opposing end of it which then makes that character feel lesser for it. This happened much the same in the Spider-Man games as it has here. I do like their character a fair bit more than I did Mary Jane but it is a really irksome turmoil that does a disservice to otherwise great characters. Character designs were pretty hit or miss, I think a few adjustments to characters designs could do a lot of work and just let Logan look a little fiercer.
Difficulty
This gets it’s own section due to the discourse surrounding the game. Yes, the game is far easier than maybe the average game. I needed to play on the second hardest difficulty to have a challenging playthrough. Now there is A LOT of content to suggest handholding, which there is, but a lot of that is defaulted to off in the settings… meaning the people ragging on the game have to activate it to show it happening. Others can be reduced though not as completely as I or many others would like. Specifically the scent trails and overwhelming visual pings for side content. The scent trails don’t appear all that often and are mostly tied to collectibles. You do however get something that is I think a Sony initiative in all their published games and that is vocal reminders of your actions or objectives i.e. your character or another telling you to do an objective or a solution repeatedly. Since this was an issue in games like God of War Ragnarok I only assume it’s something Sony is pushing on devs as a means of accessibility. It’s great if it were an option you can turn off, I don’t really care if another person can easily clear a game with all that on or not, but I would like to be able to turn that off so I can determine my own paths, pacing, and figure out a solution. I’m okay with being stuck on a solution, I know I’m dumb, I won’t walk away Sony. There is also two other notable aspects of difficulty. Quick Time Events and the On Rails sections. QTEs are already poorly done in this since they are eyesores visually and they slow down when they are required which really messes up the flow of the scene. What’s more, for the actual few times I have actually failed to do a QTE, there was no consequence. Game moved forward and no punishment was received via health or otherwise. I would have much preferred it just be a fast paced seamless QTE that reduces my health or fails the scene if I can’t complete it. On Rail segments, notably the bike sequences, are also not what people say they are.. Completely. Yes, the first bike sequence can NOT be failed regardless of what you do or don’t do. Later bike sequences CAN be failed if you don’t do anything or even perform poorly. I do think these segments just don’t feel very good as a whole. Often being too simple or just kinda messy design wise. First, I wouldn’t even consider trying to do poor so I didn’t even noticed that flaw of the first segment and they are very short and very few so although still a valid criticism… it’s a drop in the bucket compared to any actual issues presented thus far.
Side Content and Extras
Side content is limited due to it’s linear progression but you do get collectibles, challenge missions, character building lore, and costumes. As diverse as the costumes are there is no actually gameplay difference between them other than that your health increases as you craft more. Even if it was just limited to after New Game Plus, costumes affecting gameplay like altering or adding new abilities could have done a lot for the gameplay and would preserve the initial story the base game is trying to tell on a first playthrough. I’d also like to note a little bit of a disappointment that you aren’t in the Wolvie costume NEARLY as much as I would have preferred in the game which I can only assume is so you can see the face more.
In Summary
I’m sure I missed some things, this was written out over several periods of time and I often lose my focus. In the end, I did enjoy this game. When the combat is good it feels great, but so much can be easily lost and so much holds you back due to cooldowns and just limited or scrappy situations. Story is okay enough though I understand a lot just aren’t into it especially since I don’t think Insomniac has written a good story in quite some time. In fact, there is A LOT of formula here that is being reused from Spider-Man 1 (spoilers) ||The game has you face an asian crime organization that imbues enemies wearing masks with newly superpowered abilities. There is a poorly constructed moral dilemma with the red-headed love interest. It also features a hero down on his luck where his mentor inevitably betrays him and ends up being the final villain.|| The difficulty is definitely lower than it should be but the accessibility options are far more optional than people lead on… but still should have the ability to turn and reduce more of it down. I’ll be shocked if there is a sequel due to all the infamy around it.. Then again sometimes infamy is just as good press than good reception. I also wasn’t terribly impressed with their Spider-Man games so I’m just not sure I’m all that into the last couple decades of Insomniac’s works.