Jan 2023
“Boy!” - GoW 2018
A month late and a breath short (or a few). After picking up 2 jobs and working 7 day weeks I have been more than a little tired. Despite my best attempts to get ahead of this… I just never got around to wrapping it up and posting. January was supposed to be my cleanup month where I focused on completing games I have beaten and very quickly got derailed. Still managed to clear off the final Soulsborne game and wrapped up GoW ‘18. Hopefully I can make time for my Feb. update and start to make some progress on my backlog again.
Edit: It turns out I made no progress in February…. So… caught up at least…
3/10
Scrapping some Steam cash I decided to get this as it always seems to be on sale for pretty cheap.
It’s interesting to see how an older title handles all 3 campaigns and playstyles. Unfortunately, it’s age and time incredibly hold this back. In general, slopes are not your friend. Even the slightest incline will make it difficult for you to run over and will cause major slippage. General platforming can be very rough either getting caught on corners/edges, trying to make jumps, and the very little height it takes to receive fall damage. The AI can get very weird where Aliens will just jump 10+ feet in the air and run in circles (when they aren’t swarming you anyways). Lighting is pretty atrocious. Though most campaigns give you some alternate ways to light up your view they can be less than ideal and usual have a drawback more than may be intended. There is some audio and FMVs that play in the background but you are often too busy getting swarmed to be able to listen to what is happening and the subtitles doe not appear correctly. Lastly, with a bunch of fairly similar looking rooms and doors, it can be unclear where or what your next objective or path is.
Marine fairly standard boomer shooter gameplay though I do wish there were a finite amount of Aliens per mission but instead they seem near infinite (which carries it’s own pro vs cons). Lighting is absolutely the worst in this campaign as your night vision can absolutely work against you and the flares are pretty limited in scope. There were some particular bugs with the final fight where the Queen would sometimes get stuck and cause issues with the final trigger.
Alien being able to crawl on all walls and try to take a more stealthy approach was interesting. HOWEVER, stealth really isn’t viable at all in old games like this. The alien has a special ability to eat heads to gain health which requires you to aim at said head while close and attack. Unfortunately, it is unreliable on living targets and if you decapitate them first you for some reason can no longer om nom on said head. I wish there was more to the Alien playstyle like being able to summon facehuggers from their eggs or coordinate strikes. This campaign probably has the more confusing layouts and challenging fights due to the lack of texture variety, direction, and projectiles.
Predator one of the cooler campaigns as you have a big variety of weapons, variety of vision toggles, and consistent enemy variety on top of getting a final boss. It is still not without it’s issues as it often has you making buggy jumps and unclear pathways. The togglable visions also have a very annoying and heavy audio when it is on. Though it’s what plays in the movies it usually only shows it for moments at a time, but the different visions are a constant necessity and the sound over stay it’s welcome.
Recommend? Not really.
4/10
Not really good at these sort of war real time strategy games so a lot of this was completed on Easy which I believe restricted me from accessing quite a few levels. Despite that there is A LOT to do. Several missions per faction with five factions. Each faction has their own set of units and specials. I found some factions just have objectively and far better units than others and so the balance feels incredibly off. Unfortunately, each factions set of campaigns have the exact same objectives layout with the only discernable changes being the maps and even at that can feel pretty similar to one another. As a general set of issues, units can be incredibly dumb sometimes by taking weird paths, standing up despite you telling them to go prone, indefinitely repairing a vehicle you can’t use, etc.
Recommend? It’s decent enough, but not my cup of tea.
Blade of Galadriel
5/10
Takes up the story post-game following your elven assassin cohort. Though this does bridge the gap in the end game story, the actual combat addition, changes, and missions are a bit lack luster. Instead of branding orcs you now have the ability to fill them with light. If imbued with enough light they are not only dazed but can potentially be executed. The big issue with this is that most of your abilities are now swapped to light damage. This means if an orc is resistant or adapted against the light, most of your abilities go right out the window without the proper augments.
Desolation of Mordor
7/10
In contrast to the previous DLC, this has a much better focus and variety in combat but offers very little to the overall narrative. This time you take control of Baranor, a fairly regular human now wandering from the castle he once protected. There are more than a few changes with his campaign, the biggest being that this campaign is a score attack rogue-lite. You no longer respawn/revive but instead start the campaign over only retaining a few upgrades/tools. As he has no special ring or powers he gets a variety of new tools, combat, upgrades, and recruitment options. Recruiting is now done through a mercenary group where you spend gold to hire these men as generals, bodyguards, and outpost leaders. Though I do wish it was a little more of a regular campaign I absolutely appreciated the fairly different contrast in gameplay this DLC brought.
3/10
A pretty underwhelming VN that takes a slightly more unusual concept but doesn’t quite deliver with the endings. The unusual concept is that it takes the isekai trope and reverses it a bit. Instead of a regular human travelling to another world, a game character comes to ours, specifically one from a game that the protag plays. Specifically, a purple skinned elf warrior. The contrast from her world to yours obviously creates plenty of hijinks as you try to figure out how this mess was created and how to fix it. Not only that but your next-door neighbor and love interest lives right next door.
The immediate issue is the sound balance out the gate is pretty terrible. 10% Music and 100% Voice. On top of that the voice acting is not great to say the least, especially the elf. Lastly the endings are incredibly anti-climactic. Though there are 4 endings, they are all fairly the same ending with slightly different situations as opposed to more traditional endings where you have at least 1 ending per love interest, possibly a harem ending, and a bad ending. It all just makes it feel like no payoff and the fact that there is only one romanceable option disappointing.
Recommend? No.
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Sekiro- PS4
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*GoW (2018) **
*PS4
7/10
Beaten -> Completed
Anything new to note? It may be due to having played in some time, but many locations felt confusing to navigate. Collectibles such as ravens don’t give strong enough indications when looking for them and some blend in with the light making just about invisible.
Sekiro
PS4
7/10
Beaten -> Completed
Anything new to note? The number of skills you have to unlock but can’t use without swapping them out over each other is ridiculously high. This is especially egregious as most do not seem particularly useful or advantageous to most/any situations.
R&C: Deadlocked
PS3/PS2
3/10
An attempt to focus out the multiplayer aspect on what has primarily been a single player game series and this was back when online gaming was not as popular yet for consoles. Pretty much if the coliseum was just the entire game, but plays kind of like a cheap Unreal Tournament. Story is pretty arbitrary and non-existent. Gameplay is relatively standard R&C just without Ratchet. Though weapons are mostly fine but despite it being a lot of arena maps, there are a lot of times where ammo does not respawn making situations an absolute slog. The final boss (among many others/maps) are poorly designed and not very fun. It may be the PS3 port but I was experiencing constant visual glitches. These included weird stutters in character models and models having things like their teeth protrude their lips.
R&C: Full Frontal Assault
PSP
2/10
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but certainly not another multiplayer focused R&C game that revolves around base defense. Again, as with Deadlocked, there really isn’t much of a story to be worth mentioning. Other than the capture the point objectives, it plays pretty standard. You can buy and upgrade turrets/barriers to protect your base while you are away. There are some weird changes made, however. First off, everything you gain during each level are kept within that instance. This means any bolts you earn and even weapons. Though this keeps you on your toes, I found that you can get some absolute garbage weapon loadouts, especially if you did not get a chance (or choose) to level them up yet. The final boss is poorly designed and does not seem to scale for a 1 player experience.
Recommend? No
R&C: Into The Nexus
PS3
4/10
It’s very hard to believe this came after A Crack In Time. Just about every aspect of this game feels like a downgrade. The graphics suffer, the frames absolutely chug, story is lackluster and short, and the unique mechanic is a letdown.
Story revolves the around a very edgy and rebellious villain trying to free cthulu creations from their entrapment in The Nexus. The new mechanic lets you traverse the Nexus (as Clank) and it is incredibly misused (and barely used at that). I’m pretty sure the majority of the use of this mechanic revolves around one planet and the boss. When you do use it, all you do is use it to blow up some walls. Has interdimensional travel to a Hell/Cthulu-esque other realm and essentially uses it as an explosive. The only slight appeal is that travelling it requires you to change gravity at well making for some multi-directional travel at a whim. I’ll admit, some of the guns were neat (scare mines and shooting cthulu ghosts to eat your enemies), though I do think they are mostly just reskinned and reused weapons. Plus some worlds have a horror focus, but would have liked them to be more consistent with it.
Recommend? No.