#how can they call it remastered when it looks and runs worse than the original xbox 360 game?

[doctorstrangereview]

Doctor Strange #172

Cover: September 1968 On-Sale Date: June 4, 1968

This issue introduces us to the legendary Gene Colan's interpretation of Doc. Gene will stay on for the remainder of this run. He will also return for a significant chunk of Doc volume 2. Gene's art can take a bit of getting used to, but once you do you realize that he's perfect for Doc. He has an amazing talent for making the fantastic look solid and plausible. Gene also changes the look of the Eye of Agamotto to the look we've grown accustomed to.

A severely depleted Doc is in Dormie's grip about to have the life crushed out of him. Dormie of course gives a long winded speech on how he knew Doc would come looking for Clea and how he made the fake Victoria from last issue. Doc responds with a "Not while Doctor Strange breathes." Dormie's counter is to prepare to crush Doc.

Dormie loosens his grip slightly to crush Doc who uses the opportunity to escape. This panel gives us a good look at Doc's redesigned All-Purpose Amulet which will eventually be known as the Eye of Agamotto. The previous Ditko version looked like a disk with a plain edge and a scalloped design surrounding the freaky metal eye.

The redesign puts a ring of little gold marbles at the edge of the amulet around the eye. This makes it closer to the "Eye of Buddha" on which it's based.

A digression: The Eye of Buddha is based on a legend of when Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, was meditating in the hot sun. Snails climbed onto his head and sacrificed themselves to protect him. Siddhartha continued to wear the shells on his head to honor their sacrifice. A symbolic amulet represents the event.

(Sorry, I can't get Tumblr to center the stupid image.) Gene Colan's depiction is very close to this. End digression.

Dormie then crystalizes the air around Doc and proceeds to recount the events of Strange Tales #146, specifically Dormie's battle with Eternity. Gene redraws the event in his own inimitable style. Sadly, he forgets that Doc had his arm in a sling after being shot by Mr. Rasputin in the previous issue.

Dormie reveals that he wound up in the eternity-forsaken dimension they currently occupy. Dormie soon encounters a horde of demons called Dykkors who were banished by The Ancient One. After a Dormie effortlessly kills a couple of Dykkors who tried to swing their dicks around, the rest come under his sway with the promise of splatting a mutual enemy.

By an odd coincidence, this dimension is where the Spell of Vanishment dumps all his trash and soon after he arrived, Clea shows up. Dormie must not have moved around a lot, because he happens to witness Clea's arrival and captures her.

This brings us back to the present where Dormie does the typical villain monologue describing his plan. The colorist makes an odd choice for Dormie's body suit. It's worse in the original printing than the Masterworks remastering so that image is presented here.

It almost looks like Dormie's costume is flaking away and flesh is showing through. The remaster uses multiple shades of lavender. Dormie conjures up an intimidating orange beast with giant maces for hands to guard the trio as he goes off to do this thing. FYI, powers equal to those you lost is a clue. Thanks Roy, I love these little breadcrumbs!

Once the flame-headed dread one has gone off, Doc uses the All-Purpose Amulet to break free and engages in conflict with the guardian who's powers are equal to the ones he lost.

Like Adkins, Colan has a penchant for full page panels. His panel layout will also grow crazier as the series progresses. It's actually rather tame in this issue.

Doc again uses his eye to attack the beast after he figures out what's actually going on with him.

The orange guardian/beast then spends a page melting like the Wicked Witch of the West as we discover that he was crafted out of the power Dormie stole from Doc. Dormie is too big an egotist to use his own power after all.

After regaining his mojo, Doc frees Clea. Then realizes he should probably free Vicky too. He wouldn't have gotten this far without her after all. Finally meeting her rival, Vicky is all mopey and depressed.

Doc send the ladies home while Dormie summons his sis, Umar, to this hellhole of a dimension. Dormie and Umar spend a page or so spouting some angry sibling rivalry and even the Dykkors get bored with it and call the pair out. Dormie gets P.O.ed and banishes the vocal demons. The rest shut up for now. Finally, they are ready to head to the Doorway of the Dimensions. Here's a question even I don't know the answer to. What is the stripey thing around Dormie's arm that seems to be coming out of a demon's mouth.

The horde with Dormie in front head to the doorway and all have great time throwing some lovely mystic bolts at it. It starts to open, but suddenly Doc is in there way. What happens? That's a tale for next issue.

This was the first issue of this particular series I managed to read, but not my first encounter with Gene Colan's Doc. At this point most of the Doc stories I read to this point were in the Marvel house style and this was rather different. It took time, but it grew on me. Gene has a talent for making just about everything look solid and real. Roy continues to drop little seeds of future plots and tiny clues to what is going on. It's been over 40 years since I first read this issue and I still enjoy it.

[run2thesky]

why the heck does Alan Wake REMASTERED look so poopy on the Switch? help!

< the non-Switch version for comparison.

[strangenessbooks]

The Bat-Man Recap #12

Robin is here. His name is taken from Robin hood (which is funny considering what the most famous Batman rip off took its inspiration from). I am dyslexic, ao the intro text sadly looks more like "anally", than what it actually says which is "an ally".

Another interesting note is that the location is a nameless town near a nameless city. As all origins of all comic book heroes do, this story involves death, so spoilers for an 80-year-old story. I do recommend reading this issue.

I do think it's funny that the Graysons are named before Martha Wayne was. Their names are literally Mary and John which is what everyone was called in the Westen world during this time.

The Bat Car is red again, though maybe this is just Bruce's car as he wasn't planning on Batmaning at the circus. I do think it's hilarious that Bruce is defined by that damn pipe.

I always want to defend Batman but this series of events is not the best way Robin has been introduced. This is a 12-page story so there's no room for nuance. Bruce hiding Dick from a mobster makes sense, but Bruce also tells him, he has devoted his life to "exterminate" criminals and then has Dick make an oath.

Due to the accusations that will be thrown against Batman in the coming years, I hesitate to use this word but we're all Batman fans here, so I will. Batman grooms Dick into becoming a killer. We don't see Robin's lust for revenge, he witnesses the death of his parents and then he's kidnapped by a man dressed like a bat. But also this is the 1940s and they don't want to actually deal with trauma. They want to make weird shit up instead e.g. "comics making people violent and gay."

As I have said in other recaps, morals have changed and what we expected of heroes has changed. The idea doing anything for revenge is common. Making an oath to get revenge against those who killed your loved ones, is still a common trope in adventure stories. Except the ending has changed. Our heroes learn the errors of their ways and that revenge doesn't bring satisfaction. Those stories did exist before and during this time, but the whole killing of someone can still be a just action. The disconnect is still odd to read from a modern perspective.

Reading these Batman comics actually makes me want to read old Pulp novels and other comics. This is turning into special interesting territory.

Back to this issue, where Bruce is making Dick get a job as a News Boy.

Christian Bale should have been Robin (Newies jokes are likely to be recurring). This has some detective work, though all it's done by Robin. Who knows what Bruce is doing while Robin sells Newspapers and gets bullied.

This Zucco who runs this "Arising Town" who ordered the hit on Dick's parents. Batman decides to do a bunch of fuckery to mess with this guy. Also, stop his protection racket and illegal casino.

This issue has especially inspired me to list all of Batman's crimes besides the whole being a vigilante thing (I'm not checking to see whether these were crimes in the 1940s, they are all morally wrong anyway).

Kidnapping

Tapering with a crime case.

Vandalism

Assault

Animal Cruelty.

Child Endangerment (though never told exactly how old Dick is).

Murder (multiple second and first degree).

Batman is all for torturing bats to prove a point. I guess at least it's not a Robin in there with him.

I haven't talked about how ridiculous the Robin costume is. Probably because it's not really fair to. Like being called Dick, the costume hasn't aged well. It was designed and coloured for 1940s comics. They were print limitations and it was done for cheap. I am reading from archived which has been remastered clearly (I couldn't find any inside pictures of this original comic). You wanted your characters to stand out and be seeable even when the detail is not there. Honestly, there are worse costume designs from comics at the time.

Robin immediately gets a kill count. He kills a whole two people in his first appearance and another definitely has brain damage. He also doesn't wait for Batman and goes straight for the attack so maybe he does have a blood lust, but this is months after "training".

Robin immediately gets his revenge having killed the man who killed his parents and framed someone else for the murder. He decided he likes being Robin so he's here for keeps.

There are a lot of great panels in this comic. I saved like 30th of them. This is a good comic to read if you just want a taste of the Golden Age. It doesn't have any gadgets but it has the usual mayhem. It is an important comic as is the first Robin appearance as well as this marking the first full year of Batman.

This is when Batman gets a whole comic book to himself. Detective Comics was made up of different stories, I'm not sure how I'll handle Batman #1.

[sarahjtv]

BNHA Chapter 302 Spoiler Thoughts: Y’all Need Therapy

Part 2 of the story that started last chapter and THINGS GOT WORSE!!!  I’m crying through the pain.  There’s a lot going on in this one.  Lots of guilt, lots of abuse, lots of crying, but thankfully some gleam of hope at the end.  A broken family can heal.  This is a step in the right direction.  Though, I’m already seeing the BNHA fandom going up in flames because everyone’s playing the blame game.  I hope I don’t end up accidentally stepping on that landmine after posting this.  Here we go (thoughts are based off summary translations by @redandblonde420 on Twitter and panel images are from @BKIS2327 on Twitter!):

(OP Note: Please don’t DM me with your complaints about my opinions on the Todoroki Family matter.  It’s bad enough that this storyline has people getting pissed off at each other for taking different sides.  The last thing the BNHA fandom needs is more conflict amongst ourselves.)

Chapter 302 picks up where we last left off.  Enji and Rei managed to stop Touya from attacking Shoto (it’s not explained how) and the whole family except from them are asleep.  Enji tells Rei that he doesn’t want any of the kids anywhere near Shoto anymore in fear that they would try to harm him.  Enji also fired a servant because he was so busy at work and he asks Rei to not let Touya out of her sight.  The other reason why Enji won’t watch over Touya himself is because Enji’s presence would only be a constant reminder of the hero world to Touya.  While Enji thinks he’s protecting Touya, Rei says he’s just running away.  A few things here:

1. I get not wanting Touya anywhere near baby Shoto since he did try to kill the tyke.  Touya was pretty much bent on his hatred for his little brother at that point that even seeing him stroked his dangerous jealousy.  But, I don’t know about Fuyumi and Natsuo.  Neither of them showed any hatred towards Shoto (and still haven’t as far as we know).  They’ve shown no signs of violence or anything that would imply wanting to hurt Shoto.  So, why keep them away too?

2. This is probably going to be the start of me getting shit on by the fandom, but I think Enji and Rei are both right.  We saw in the last chapter that Enji did legitimately care for Touya to the point where he tried to convince him to leave his ambitions of being a hero primarily so that he would stop hurting himself.  Just Endeavor being there is a reminder of the hero world.  Which would only provoke Touya more.  And Endeavor can’t just leave his job; he was the #2 after all.  At the same time, Enji is running away from the problem by not trying to talk to Touya more and helping him to control his flames at least.  He was trying to save Touya from himself, but he was also ignoring the real problem.

3. Side note (and because I just 💙 Shoto), the manga panels show baby Shoto sleeping on his little bed with a frosty snot bubble coming out of his nose 🥺!  Not only is it adorable, but it seems like Shoto had his quirk since he was very young. 

Time skip 5 years later!  This is back when Shoto was being dragged along by Enji while watching his siblings play ball WAY back in Shoto’s Origin chapter what a throwback, Horikoshi (Season 2 Ep. 10 in the anime; I think Chapter 39 in the manga)!  Fuyumi is 12 yrs old, Natsuo is 8 yrs old, and Touya is 13 yrs old.  So, that confirms that Touya is 1 year older than Fuyumi, Natsuo is 4 years younger than Fuyumi, and Shoto is 3 years younger than Natsuo since Shoto was 5 then.  God, they looked so cute back then!  I’m honestly amazed how freaking TALL Natsuo is at 8 YEARS OLD!  He’s taller than Fuyumi here and probably Touya.  Someone put this kid in the Haikyuu!! universe and teach him volleyball!  He’d be great, I know it!

We see a few panels of what is basically a remastered version of what we saw during Shoto’s Origin story.  Shoto really wanted to play ball with his siblings, but Enji wouldn’t let him 😭.  I know Natsuo and Shoto try to play ball in present day in the 5th(?) light novel.  Natsuo plays it properly, but Shoto accidentally smacks the shit out of it 🤣.  It’s a very bittersweet scene and I suggest you guys read the translations of it if you can find it.  *AHEM* Anyway while Shoto is looking at them with sadness, Touya is looking back at Shoto with malice in his eyes.  Touya clearly still hated Shoto...

Next, we see Touya trying to talk to Natsuo in bed.  While he admits that he was wrong for trying to attack Shoto, he thinks Enji is to blame as well.  Ok, Enji lit Touya’s figurative flame, but Enji did not attack Shoto.  That was all Touya’s doing.  Had he listened to his father and not been so driven to jealousy, he wouldn’t have attacked.  Enji did a lot of things, but he did not provoke that attack.  

Natsuo was too tired to listen to Touya talk, so he suggested that he talk to Fuyumi instead.  Touya thought that Natsuo was the only one who could understand and he didn’t talk to Fuyumi because “all the women in the family were no good”.  OKAY, I don’t know if this is straight up sexism  or something else, but goddamn Touya.  That is-, that’s not okay.  At all.  Respect women pls, my dude.  Hell, Fuyumi and Rei probably would’ve been a good people to talk to back then.  

One day, Touya is trying to leave the house probably to go train again.  Rei tries to convince him to play with his friends instead, but of course Touya refuses.  Because Rei feels shackled to her marriage, she wants Touya to look at a world outside of heroism so he can be someone he really wants to be.  This is basically what Enji told Touya before and Rei’s echoing his words.  And they are right, but Touya’s too driven to really think of anything else.

Touya gets mad and starts insulting Rei.  He says because his mother sold Rei to Enji, she’s conspiring to all of this.  Touya’s losing his mind and Rei’s scared of him.  I want to point out that one translation I read say that Rei’s mother’s side of the family was actually poor so Rei was actually bought via money like I remembered.  But, that doesn’t mean she intended to hurt Touya.  

Next panel reveals that Touya was born between Jan. 1st and April. 1st.  We know Dabi’s B-Day is on Jan. 18th based off his profile page.  Though, this could be a lie for all we know.  The guy’s still a big mystery.  Anyway, Touya’s fire is growing stronger and finally turns into that iconic blue fire.  When his emotions are heightened his flames get more powerful, but he starts crying too.  Enji learns of Touya’s secret training and gets mad at him again.  Touya just wants to prove that Enji was right for creating him.  Touya’s gone completely insane at this point.  The fire that Enji lit could not be put out.  It was too late at this point.

And the abuse... JFC...  Enji was mad at Rei for letting Touya train and he abuses her (looks like he hit her).  Little 5 yr old Shoto steps up and tries to stop his father from hurting his mother.  Fuyumi and Natsuo are hiding and crying, and Fuyumi is covering both their ears.  Rei reflects that she chose to be married to Enji and she truly thought she could have a family full of laughter.  Th-this just hurts.  No emoji can express how awful this situation is.  Enji looks like a monster in these panels (we still don’t know exactly when the abuse started, but I think it was either after Touya tried to kill Shoto or here when Rei failed to stop Touya from training).  Shoto’s crying and yelling at Enji to protect his mom.  His siblings too if you think about it.  Even back then, Shoto was a hero even when he really shouldn’t had been.

The present goes back and forth with the past here.  Touya waited for Enji to come see him train, but he never came.  Rei also ignored Touya even though she knew of his problems.  Touya was truly alone on that mountain.  And here’s where Rei’s blame comes in.  She was a good mother, I think.  But she did ignore Touya when he needed her most.  She kind of ran away too.  

Back to Dabi, he reminisces of how he faked his own “death” back on that mountain after Enji didn’t show up.  He didn’t know how to stop the fire because Enji only taught him to increase the fire.  Touya started a whole wildfire.  The whole place turned to ash.  Enji tried looking for his son, but was devastated when he couldn’t.  Gotta say, these panels are brutal.  Like, Tenko Shimura’s Origin chapters were dark, but this is a different kind of dark.  

Back to the present.  Enji says that after Touya “died” he didn’t know what to do other than to focus on Shoto (the panel shows a dark figure of Enji looming over a sad Shoto similar to that image of Overhaul looming over Eri because she wasn’t saved yet).  Rei got more disgusted just seeing Enji and she started seeing his shadow when she saw her kids, specifically Shoto and Natsuo (maybe because Natsuo is more built like Enji?).  Fuyumi and Natsuo blame themselves for not doing anything and thinking things were okay even though they knew what was going on.  Natsuo still blames Enji of course because Enji started this all.  And I can’t say that Natsuo’s wrong, but Enji doesn’t shoulder the whole blame.  And yeah, Fuyumi and Natsuo were still just kids when this happened, but a little extra push from them could’ve helped.  It’s just the “It’s my fault” game with the Todoroki’s except for Shoto.

Natsuo’s taking a big hit here.  He was closest to Touya and if Natsuo took more action to help Touya, Dabi probably wouldn’t have been born.  Touya could’ve even treated Shoto to some soba 😭.  That’s a nice thought, Natsu, but we all know what did happen in the end.

So, Rei concludes that everyone is shouldering some blame towards their family’s problems and that it isn’t completely Enji’s fault (this I agree with).  Even so, Rei says that his family would still help him get back up even if he fell.  Coming from Rei, the woman who was abused and put in a mental hospital, this is saying A LOT!  We saw some of this back in the Pro Heroes arc (Endeavor Vs. High End), but here it’s said out loud.  Even a family as broken as the Todorokis can still heal. 

Rei then calls Shoto the family hero as if it weren’t for him going to UA, making friends, and taking action to repair his family, then none of this would’ve happened.  There’s a page that shows present day injured Shoto at the center and that iconic “IT’S YOUR QUIRK, NOT HIS” scene from the Sports Fest. in the background.  TDDK or not, this is such a damn good throwback!  I love everything about it.  Again, Shoto’s the family hero, but Izuku’s the true hero in all this.  If he didn’t meddle with Shoto’s family problems, then Shoto and his family would still be a broken mess. Izuku might as well be an honorary Todoroki at this point 💙💚

Endeavor is still crying hard (the man’s literally shook) and Shoto finally speaks (his speech bubbles are shakey, so his voice might be raspier than usual).  Shoto talked with Rei about how he plans to face Dabi on his own.  Rei said “no”.  Shoto concludes that everyone’s going to help stop Dabi, including Enji.  The panel shows Shoto LITERALLY REACHING OUT to Enji!!!  His face shows that he’s still kind of reluctant, but this is a sign that Shoto’s is close to forgiveness.  He’s not there yet and he can turn back whenever he wants.  But, this is Shoto’s choice and I’m so freaking proud of him.  I love this ❄️🔥 boy so much, guys 💙😭!  

The final panel shows Haws and Best Jeanist outside of Enji’s hospital room and they heard pretty much everything.  Very similar to how Bakugo accidentally eavesdropped on Shoto and Izuku back in the Sports Fest haha!  Neither of them look mad or sad, but more contempt I think.  Massive problems in the Todoroki family that’s lasted over 20 years is finally being fixed.  Shoto rebuilding his relationship with his family was good, but THIS is a big step since it’s not just Shoto taking action.  It’s the whole family.

Wooo... I think that’s it.  Again, the Todoroki Family storyline is one of my favorites in the BNHA series.  Probably the most controversial and dividing, but still damn good.  I feel bad for everyone in this family.  Everyone but Shoto feels some kind of blame and ultimately they are at fault here to some degree.  The biggest ones are obviously Enji and Touya himself.  Rei’s also a big reason why things went wrong (she really could’ve helped Touya more), but not NEARLY as much as the big two.  Shoto’s the only one who isn’t at fault at all yet he’s still willing to step up to the plate to help his family.  Again, I love this kid so damn much 💙!  I’m sorry if I missed any details btw.  I might make edits to fix them when the official release comes out on Sunday.  

TL;DR Version of Last 2 BNHA Chapters:

[bltngames]

The Balan Wonderworld demo came out yesterday. If you haven’t been keeping up with this, it’s a game by Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima, two of the original creators of Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of that original team has gone on to do solo work outside of Sega, but this is the first time two former members of Sonic Team have gotten back together to make a new game.

If the demo is anything to go by, Balan Wonderworld (which I keep trying to type as “Balan Wonderland,” because it has a much nicer rhythm to it) is a game that lives deep in the shadow of NiGHTS into Dreams and Sonic the Hedgehog. It is very clearly trying to be an “Old School Sonic Team” experience, which it... sort of succeeds at, for better and worse.

This feels like a game they ripped straight out of 1995, warts and all, and remastered it with modern-ish graphics. I say “modern-ish” because in broad strokes, I think Balan looks pretty good. The character designs are charming, the level themes are interesting, but if you really stop and look at the game, it’s honestly pretty ugly, with simple lighting, limited detail and blurry textures.

One gets the impression maybe that’s because Balan is on everything -- Playstation, Xbox, PC, and even Switch. The gross texture work could be to squeeze the game down for Nintendo’s handheld, but apparently it runs extremely poorly there. On the PS4 Pro, it sticks pretty closely to 60fps, though there are occasionally hiccups here and there. Nothing worth fretting over, honestly.

But how does it play?

This is where the shadow of Sonic the Hedgehog looms large. Balan is designed to be simplistic to a fault: You get one button to control your character. Or, more specifically, every button on your controller will do the same thing (for the most part). This is right out of the Sonic handbook, as that game was also designed to be operable with only one button, as well.

Now, what your one button does can change. Scattered around levels are different costumes for your character to put on, and each costume has its own unique ability. The full version of Balan promises 80 different costumes, and there’s probably half a dozen in the demo. Each one serves a unique purpose, and some of them don’t even have the ability to jump. Which is fine, mostly, because you can carry a stock of three costumes with you that you can swap between sort of like the team mechanics in Sonic Heroes. Once you finish a level, those costumes get added to your dressing room, allowing you to customize a loadout of costumes at any checkpoint.

On paper, that much sounds fine. But this is where things start getting weird.

Costumes are not freely available to pick up. The jewels that hold costumes are locked with a key. This creates an obvious gameplay loop: find key, unlock costume, use costume to solve puzzle, right? Right.

Except that, at least in the demo, most keys are only a few feet away from any given costume jewel. On top of that, keys respawn. Crack open a costume jewel, grab the costume, but hang out for a little while and eventually the key will reappear. In doing this, you can stock up on keys early on in a level, smoothing out the process of acquiring new costumes as you go. I’m not sure why Balan does this. The time between key respawns is a few seconds too many -- just enough that it starts to feel tedious. But, as far as I can tell, there is no penalty for farming up a bunch of keys from the first key spawn point, either. It’s the worst of both worlds. If it was trying to be convenient, keys would spawn more quickly, but if it was trying to plan puzzles around acquiring keys, you can completely side step that by just waiting it out and hoarding keys early on.

You’ll not only want to hoard keys, but hoard costumes, as well. If you’re unlucky enough to take damage or even die while wearing a costume, it’s gone. You can build up stocks of costumes so you’ll always have spares to pull out of the dressing room, but that requires you to specifically go out of your way to get duplicates and bank them. If you don’t, you might find yourself at a puzzle that requires a specific costume that you simply don’t have anymore. When that happens, your only recourse is to backtrack in the hopes of finding a crystal that contains the costume you need, and characters in Balan aren’t exactly fast moving.

The chances of you losing a costume seem pretty low, admittedly. Balan Wonderworld doesn’t really seem like it’s aiming for anything resembling difficulty. Enemies exist, but only in very small numbers, and they’re easily dispatched. Most of the game is more about exploring the dream-like environments and playing around with the various costume abilities in order to solve basic puzzles.

You aren’t working against a clock, there isn’t a scoring system, and you usually aren’t being graded on your performance. Talking it over with some others, the vibe is that this could be a good game for young children. It requires little in terms of controller dexterity and is generous in every sense of the word.

The primary complaint against that, I guess, is that Balan Wonderworld is a weird game. Like, “Elsa and Spider-man Finger Family Youtube Video” weird. Every level is packed full of gently dancing ghosts that phase out of existence once you get too close to them. They’re all the creatures your costumes are based on, but they don’t exist as NPCs in the world for you to touch and interact with. Like I said, they’re ghosts, and they disappear the moment you get within a few feet. Those same ghosts will suddenly materialize when you touch certain checkpoints, throwing you something of parade. They interrupt the level music and everything just to play their own special celebration song. Move more than a few feet and they will fade back out of existence again, taking their special parade song with them, never to be seen for the rest of the stage.

It lends a strangely “uncanny” feeling to the game. I think the dancing characters are meant to add a sense of carefree fun, but they look like people wearing mascot suits, doing the same basic scripted routine over, and over, and over, for eternity. They don’t look like they’re having fun, they don’t appear to be choreographed to the stage’s music, and yet there they are, eternally dancing the days away. It’s kind of eerie. They were performing before you got here, and they'll keep performing after you leave.

The demo pits you against a single boss, which is notable for being someone who has the same powers you do, but combined and amped up. Seeing the same costume motifs come up in the boss as they draw from the same abilities that you have is actually a really fun idea, and the game rewards you for getting creative and swapping between costumes when you deal damage.

Balan Wonderland is a very odd game, and I’m not sure what to make of it. It took me a while to start wrapping my head around its aesthetic and vibes. It contains shades of something like Super Mario Odyssey to be sure, but it feels like it’s trying to elevate itself above that. Again, it’s a game living deep in the shadow of NiGHTS and Sonic, and in particular, it feels like it borrows NiGHTS’ penchant for putting artistic expression at the top ladder rung. Balan often feels like a very inscrutable sort of game, but in a way that seems to be reaching for some kind of greater meaning beyond simply gameplay. Everything in Balan feels like it might be conveying a message of some sort, even if it’s not immediately apparent. Its ideas do not come from a vacuum.

But here’s the deal: even though a lot of people couldn’t grok NiGHTS into Dreams, I did. I love that game to death. But with Balan Wonderworld, even I’m often left scratching my head. Despite its dead-simple gameplay, it may be just a little too high concept for its own good.

But at the end of the day, it’s not a game I hate. It’s strange, and charming, and even if it feels sort of impenetrably "artistic," at least that makes it interesting. The simple gameplay works its magic, making it an easy game to drop in to even if you don’t necessarily understand what you’re looking at.

Like, what’s the deal with the “Isle o’ Tims” between levels? It kind of has the vibe of a chao garden from Sonic Adventure, but the individual “tims” creatures don’t seem to have statistics or anything like that. You feed them so they crank a wheel, which builds a tower that helps them crank the wheel better. It turns in to a bizarre sort of perpetual motion machine. To what end? I don’t know. And what exactly is Balan himself, anyway? Some of his visual cues call to mind character designs for NiGHTS, but he appears to be a different sort of creature altogether. There’s a rather lengthy intro FMV, as you can no doubt see from the Youtube embed, but it’s more about swirling colors and hyperactive animation than conveying what’s going on or who Balan is. How much of this is even really happening, and how much of it is purely metaphysical? It’s very unclear.

I’ll be interested in seeing how the full version of Balan Wonderworld fares. I get the distinct impression that this will be another NiGHTS -- a game beloved by a core audience of hardcore fans, but shunned for being “too weird” by the populace at large.

I’m not quite sure which group I belong to yet.

[m39]

History of the Creed - Part 5: Assassin’s Creed: Liberation

This review would have been earlier if I hadn’t had problems with the Internet.

Before we start, here is a fun fact: This is actually the first time I played Liberation. So my opinion may end up differently if I’ll play it in the future. Also, I didn’t get every collectible, since everytime I play the game for the first time, I tend to skip around 50% of the optional stuff to see how the main story ends.

So, without any further to do, let’s get it started.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: LIBERATION (Original release in Europe: October 30th, 2012 (original version on PSVita), January 15th, 2014 (HD version on PC))

Played on the remastered version, released on March 29th, 2019.

Liberation is an interesting case of a game. As shown higher, it was originally released for the handheld-console, PlayStation Vita, as a side game along with AC3. It was later released on the main consoles due to the fans’ petition, adding some content into it, and changing some of the more irritating stuff in it. The remaster I play is based on the latter version. Time to find out if I liked this game.

STORY

Now the plot is rather… how to put it… kinda’ messier than AC3 due to the jump cuts in the Animus console or how the fuck this version of the Animus is called. Here’s how it goes:

You are Aveline de Grandpré, an Assassin and the daughter of the French merchant and the slave woman. She wants to free slaves and stop the local Templars and their leader, The Company Man, from doing... whatever Templars want to do.

So, uhm… yeah, that’s all I can understand from it. The (probably) only thing that stands out is how Liberation is also an in-game product created by Abstergo, but I’ll talk about it later.

CHARACTERS

Aveline is… fine, I guess? I can see why many people like but me? I’m not so sure about it. She wasn’t really annoying but I can’t really see her standing out.

Other characters were doing a nice job. Aveline’s mentor, Agaté, was the most interesting out of all of them, while captain Carlos Dominguez was the funniest character, mostly due to his drunken antics. Also, I liked Connor’s cameo in one of the missions.

As for the Templars, they were underwhelming. Surely, most of them were interesting but I feel like some of them didn’t have enough screen time. The Templar before the confrontation with the Company Man might be the best out of the bunch.

As for the Company Man, well, this character’s identity is kind of interesting but I’m not gonna talk further due to spoilers.

GAMEPLAY

One of the biggest cases of Liberation is that Aveline can change her outfits into three different personas. Each one has its own advantages and disadvantages. Assassin’s Persona will let you freerun, use bigger weapons, and have more health for the cost of constantly being at the first level of notoriety. Lady’s Persona will let you bribe or charm other guards to let you pass, but you can’t have any weapon outside of the hidden blades, your health is lower, and you can’t freerun. And Slave’s Persona will let you slip through the guards while carrying a crate and have a small weapon to defend yourself, but any suspicious activity like climbing will slightly increase your notoriety meter and you have the same amount of health as Lady’s Persona. The last Persona is my favorite one, probably because I can freerun and my notoriety isn’t constantly on level 1. Also, you can easily decrease your notoriety.

Speaking of notoriety, it’s almost exactly like in AC3 with three levels of it and the same ways to decrease it (however, the printers are replaced with the Witnesses). What’s different from AC3 though, is that in Liberation, notoriety is for each of the Personas, that is, it only increases for the Persona you are dressed as, and each way to decrease the former corresponds with the latters. So tearing down the wanted posters decreases the notoriety of the Slave’s Persona, bribing the corrupted magistrates for the Assassin’s Persona, and killing the witnesses for the Lady’s Persona. I’m not gonna lie, I kind of like the idea of it.

You also have a Whip. You can use it in combat to pull enemies closer and make yourself pass through some of the larger gaps. Honestly though, aside from traversal usage, I had no need of using it while fighting.

There are also Chain Kills, which, after filling up, will let you automatically kill up to three targets in a short time. I find this ability useless since you are easily capable of fighting even without it. I used it only once for the tutorial and that’s it.

I mostly liked the locations in this game. In terms of main ones, New Orleans was good but nothing special, while Louisianan Bayou was fine but more annoying. Good thing the trees are stacked up in such a way that it didn’t make me want to use canoes.

Oh yeah, there are canoes in Liberation… I hate canoes. It’s hard to get on canoes. It’s hard to get off canoes. It’s hard to control canoes. The canoes are ass, and I don’t want to talk about them anymore.

To put it in the nutshell, Liberation in terms of gameplay has some stuff that I would remove and many things are just the things from AC3 but still, I had some fun playing it.

ACTIVITIES

I think you already know the drill with this series. In terms of collectibles, there are Alligator Eggs on the bayou (collecting enough of them will give you a hat that scares the alligators away), Diary Pages of Aveline’s mother, Mayan Statuettes in Chicken Itza, and Pocket Watches that can be bought out of friendly smugglers. Also, each Persona have their own individual collectibles: Assassin has the Assassin Coins, Lady has the Jeweled Brooches, and Slave has the Voodoo Dolls.

As for the side-missions, like with collectibles, each Persona gets its own set of five missions. There are also missions where you recruit people for your ship crew, kill business rivals to later buy out their shops, help one of the slaves, heal people who are frenzy on bayou fever, and rob the camps that belong to the impostor’s acolytes.

There is also a matter of Citizen E. As I said earlier, Liberation is also an in-game product created by Abstergo itself, and while playing Aveline’s story you will notice the glitches during some of the cutscenes. These ones have been censored to convince the general public that the Templars aren’t as bad as they look at first. That’s when the Erudito comes in. After completing some of the main missions, in some places there is hidden the Citizen E. Killing them will play the rest of these cutscenes.

In my opinion, this stuff is fine, but I feel like in some places it becomes more obvious that it stagnates. I have mixed feelings on how some of the collectibles can be earned only by a specific Persona. I really enjoyed Citizen E stuff though, due to the award it gives.

GRAPHICS

The graphics, from what I’ve seen, are on the same level of quality as AC3 most of the time. Sure, in some parts is worse, since it started as a Vita game but still, it was good in other parts. As I said at the beginning of the review, this is the first time I played Liberation so I’m not gonna compare it to its previous version.

SOUND

The sound effects were on the same level as AC3 so, it was good. Although the enemies sound somewhat too loud which can get annoying.

The music (composed by Winifred Phillips) was fine most of the part. My favorite one was the one that played in Chicken Itza.

STABILITY

Framerate, for most of the time, was constantly running at 60 FPS except when synchronizing viewpoints for some reasons where it drops to 30 FPS.

The bugs I encountered during my playthrough were actually worse than in AC3. One time, Aveline didn’t appear in the cutscene, so all this time I was watching nothing but her voice. Other time when the game faded to black when I was changing my Persona, it didn’t return to normal, fixed only after I exited and returned back to the game. Another time it straight up just crashed (I think it was during one of the Business Rival missions)! Sure, Assassin’s Creed 3 wasn’t a diamond in terms of bugs, but at least those bugs weren’t so severe as the ones in Liberation.

SUMMARY

Assassin’s Creed: Liberation has many problems: some of its mechanics are redundant, the story and its characters could’ve been better, and the bugs that I’ve encountered were worse than in AC3. Did I still have fun while playing it? Yes, I still had some fun. And I can understand that this game was developed as the handheld console game first that was later ported for the home consoles and PC, but still, if I had to rate this game, I would say it’s just an okay game. Would I recommend it to the other fans? I honestly don’t know. There is some spoiler stuff about the Company Man in Black Flag, but I feel like you won’t miss that much if you skip Liberation.

But oh well, at least the next game on the list is better than this one. Better prepare some ship for the next game. It is the type of game that some certain Vaska will enjoy.

See you next time.

Bye!

[whatsthecraicwithvideogames]

Remasters: Good? Bad? Chaotic Neutral?

The concept of porting older video games so that they work on newer consoles is nothing new. However, recently the terms ‘port’ and ‘remaster’ have become synonymous. A lot of companies seem to have no issue releasing a supposed ‘remaster’ of an older game, only for it to look almost exactly the same as it did 10 years ago when it came out. This is a trend I have become increasingly aware of and the final straw for me was the remastered Ezio Collection which featured the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Assassin's Creed games. Admidditely, the graphics in the series haven't come along astronomically since the second entry, but the original and the remaster are almost indistinguishable from each other. Actually, scratch that- a lot of times the remaster looks a lot worse. So what's the point? Why would Ubisoft re release these games if they weren't going to improve on them? Well, I think we all know the answer to that. So ignoring the entire monetary motivation behind remasters, why are they a thing? Why do we buy them? Are they the root of all evil?

Probably not. The truth is that there is one specific market that, for them, remasters generally aren’t a rip off: people who haven't played the game before. These people are able to get the opportunity to play a game (or games) that they missed out on first time around. Sure, it'll be 10 years after all your friends played it and chatted fervently about it while you pretended to know what they were talking about but hey, better late than never, I suppose? Here's the thing, though. That would be all fine and dandy if that was the audience that was really being targeted by remasters. If developers were really honest with themselves about why they were making them. Is it really so that you can allow more people the privilege of playing your classic game that they missed first time around? No, not it's not. Why not? Because that's far too small a market to sell to of course.

So what do they do instead? They try and convince you that this is the game “Like you've never seen it before!!!!!!!”  and calling it the “definitive edition” to make you really feel like you're missing out on something big if you don't buy it, even though there is often minimal differences between the original and the remaster. If you're really lucky you may get some DLC bundled in that wasn't worth the money in the first place, but hey, aren't the developers generous for giving you all this extra stuff? They think that'll be enough to get us to shell out another £30 for a game we've already played before- and how dismally right they are.

At the end of the day anything I say here to criticise developers of remasters (or the people who buy them) is going to be vastly hypocritical. I am just as much of a sucker for remasters as the next poor soul. We are all slaves to nostalgia, whether we know it or not. We can't really blame developers for ripping us off when we so readily give up our money to them with little prompting. In an age where sequels have the run of the cinema, the truth is that the world can sometimes feel so chaotic that it's necessary to experience something familiar every now and then. That's the real reason why we buy remasters and why we'll keep on buying them as long as they keep coming out. They're a known quantity. So even if the intention is to rerelease an old game to make some quick cash, I think they're a necessary evil. A warm hug from an old friend. One of the most comforting things that you can experience that isn't heroin or death. Only you know where your priorities lie with that one.

[entergamingxp]

The Outer Worlds on Nintendo Switch is a Handheld Mess

June 8, 2020 1:30 PM EST

Bringing The Outer Worlds to Switch was clearly a tall task, but the concessions made to make the game playable on the platform makes it hard to recommend.

The Outer Worlds from Obsidian was one of 2019’s best games. It appeared on many Game of the Year lists and we here at DualShockers bestowed upon it a review score of 9.5/10. Unfortunately for me, it was one of those games that got caught up in my constantly growing list of games that I started but never finished. I played maybe an hour of The Outer Worlds before abandoning it for MediEvil and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. In that short time, I got a glimpse of the game’s charm and gorgeous graphics running on a PS4 Pro. It was definitely a world I wanted to revisit in the future.

Like so many others, I found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands due to the pandemic of 2020. As a gamer, social distancing wasn’t an entirely new concept to me and I approached quarantine as a perfect opportunity to tackle some of my backlog. The Outer Worlds seemed like an obvious one to check off of my list, however, I never estimated the hours my Animal Crossing: New Horizons addiction would require. Now, as things re-open and we learn to live with COVID-19 and accept the “new normal” way of life, I’m back to work but with reduced hours. This fluctuating up and down of my time makes the recently released Nintendo Switch version of The Outer Worlds very appealing.

I knew that The Outer Worlds on the Nintendo Switch would take an obvious hit on the game’s lush graphics due to the system’s lack of power when compared to other platforms. However, the ability to play anywhere seemed like a worthy trade-off. Recent ports to the Switch such as The Witcher 3 and DOOM have proved that the hybrid console can still provide a quality experience even if the source material is presented in a slightly downgraded form. Unfortunately, The Outer Worlds suffers from poor frame rate issues and an unfortunate graphic degradation that feels like its due to more than just the limitations of the Switch’s power.

Virtuos, who previously handled the task of remastering Dark Souls on Switch, was responsible for porting The Outer Worlds. While the game still offers all of the charm of the original game in terms of story and experience, it still falls well below the standard of every other platform it’s available on.

The sci-fi RPG offers several options for different combat styles ranging from melee to sniper. It’s rich skill progression and weapon customization really makes a difference in how your character performs. I typically build my RPG characters to resemble assault classes as I like to shoot things in-game. The trouble I encountered here is that the Joy-Cons don’t offer the most precise aiming or shooting. This is further complicated by the aforementioned frame rate issues that typically get worse when enemies are present. Using melee weapons and hacking and slashing through the enemies seemed to be the more effective battle option. There is also an option to use motion controls with gyro aiming. I appreciate the feature, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Another strength of The Outer Worlds is the charm of the NPCs. If you so choose, you can have them come along with you on your adventure. Normally this inspires rage in me, especially when the companions are not an option and forced to tag along. Generally, I find them more of a hindrance than a help. I’ll admit, in The Outer Worlds, I actually enjoy the company of the NPCs. The most popular character is easily Parvati, voiced excellently by Ashley Burch. To many, she represented the heart and moral compass of the game and was my companion throughout my entire playthrough of the game.

The Outer Worlds is one of those games where everything just seems to work. It’s a compelling and often grim story is set in an alternative world in 1901 where President McKinley was never assassinated and Theodore Roosevelt didn’t succeed him to break up large business trusts, which led to a society dominated by big corporations who in the future begin to colonize space. You play as the Stranger, also known as the Unplanned Variable, who awakens from hibernation on a colonist ship lost en-route to Halcyon, which is on the verge of destruction due to various factions fighting over controlling the colony. The choices you make and the character you decide to become will directly impact the outcome of the story. There are several endings all affected by your choices and responses, which will inspire multiple playthroughs.

The dialogue is well written and offers responses in several tones such as quirky, sarcastic, or directly to the point. Despite the often humorous moments, the story is a dystopian tale of corporate greed. All characters seem to have been thoughtfully created with their own unique personalities, so much so, that picking a faction to side with is a painstaking choice which requires the player to carefully consider who they side with.

The Outer Worlds on the Switch doesn’t start off looking too bad which gave me the false hope that perhaps all games can be ported to the console. However, once you get a bit more into the game, it becomes painful to watch. Even if you can find it in your heart to look past the poor graphics that seem to alternate between PlayStation One to PS3 level in quality, the grainy visuals and muted colors often make it difficult to play. The dumbing down of the game’s bright aesthetic along with missing textures and objects seems to dehumanize the game.

I tested The Outer Worlds in handheld and docked modes. Unfortunately, both suffer from graphical and performance issues. Due to the upscaling feature on my TV, the game looks better in docked mode but also performs the worst. Handheld mode gets you a slight performance boost but looks terrible and feels as if the FOV is a bit claustrophobic. There are no graphic adjustments to experiment with in the options menu. While I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a graphics snob, it really came down to the fact that the performance issues are so intensified by the shoddy graphics that, at times, the game was more frustrating than fun.

Pulling off all of the quirks and nuances of The Outer Worlds on a handheld console was no doubt a Herculean task that was bound to suffer from some compromises. It’s just too bad that these concessions ultimately make me recommend you only play the Switch version if it is your only option.

June 8, 2020 1:30 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/the-outer-worlds-on-nintendo-switch-is-a-handheld-mess/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-outer-worlds-on-nintendo-switch-is-a-handheld-mess

[dukereviewsmovies]

Duke Reviews: 2 Fast 2 Furious

Hi Everyone, I'm Andrew Leduc And Welcome To Duke Reviews Where We Continue Our Look At The Fast And Furious Films By Talking By Talking About The First Sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious...

Taking Place A Few Years After The Original, Former Cop Brian O'Connor (Played By The Late Paul Walker) Is Brought In By The Hard Assed FBI Agent From The Last Film, Wilkins To Help Take Down A Drug Lord Named Carter Verone (Played By Cole Hauser) But To Do This Brian Is Going To Need The Help Of An Old Childhood Friend (Played By Tyrese Gibson) A Sexy Undercover FBI Agent (Played By Eva Mendes) And A Smart Mechanic (Played By Rapper Ludacris) And His Part...Fu...Lo...(I Don't Know What She Is But She's Played By Devon Aoki) To Do It...

So, Let's Dive Into 2 Fast 2 Furious And See If Its As Good Or Bad As Everyone Says It Is...

Before We Start The Film I Think It's Best That I Quickly Go Over The Prelude Short That Was Released With A Special Edition Of The Original Movie And All Releases Of The Second Movie...

Taking Place After The First Movie, We See That Brian Is Officially On The Run After Letting Dom Escape In The Original Movie...

Going To State To State To Try To Dodge The Police, Brian Becomes A Street Racer Getting Money For Winning Wherever He Goes....

Sleeping At A Motel One Night, Brian Sees A Beautiful Girl At A Cafe But Unfortunately Cops Prevent Them From Meeting. Brian Runs Into Her 2 More Times When He's Checking Out Of His Hotel And When He's David Bannering It When Cops Find His Car...

Dropping Brian Off At A Car Dealership, He Gets A New Car, Placing The Right Components In It So He Can Continue Street Racing...

Continuing His Long Journey, Brian Meets 2 Men With Girls On Bikes But Despite Giving Them The...

Look, Brian Isn't Dumb Enough To Race Them So As They're Given Tickets By The Police As Brian Goes Right By Them Unnoticed...

While Continuing His Street Racing Career, Brian Arrives In Miami...

Where The Film Starts...

If You Want To See The Prelude For Yourself It's Right Here...

Now, On With The Film...

Starting In Miami, A Street Race Is Being Set Up By Tej (Played By Ludacris, Who Looked Better In The Sequels Than He Does Here, Seriously, Early 2000 Ludacris, 1970 Called And They Want The Afro Back) With 3 Racers Including Tej's...I Don't Know What She Is...Suki (Played By Devon Aoki)...

No, It's Not Sookie, It's Suki!

Now, As I Was Saying, With 3 Racers At The Starting Line Including Suki And 2 Other Guys Whose Names I Don't Know (So We'll Just Call Them Guy 1 And Guy 2), There Unfortunately Can't Be A Race But With Tej Offering To Bring In A Fourth Racer And Everybody Agreeing To Race Whomever Tej Chooses, He Makes A Phone Call And Guess Who Tej Chooses?...

Yep, It's Brian, However Before He Decides To Join He Wants To Raise The Stakes: $3,500 To Enter And The Winner Takes The Pot, So, With Each Contender Accepting, The Racers Go To Their Vehicles, And The Race Begins!

It's Hard To See Who's Where Throughout The First Half Of The Race But From What I Can Tell Brian Is In Second Place With Guy 1 In The Lead While Guy 2 Is Blocking Suki Who Is In 4th Place...

Brian Takes The Lead For A Second Only For Guy 1 To Take The Lead Again When He Activates His Nos...

Meanwhile, Guy 2 Gets Passed By Suki When She Makes A Wide Turn. Now, All Throughout The Evening, Tej Has Been Saying He Has A Surprise For Everyone Well, It Turns Out That Tej Has Hijacked The Bridge So That The Cars Will Jump When They Cross...

That's Just Awesome!

And So, As They Reach The Bridge, Brian Activates His Nos And Goes Right Over Guy 1...

Meanwhile, Suki Activates Her Nos To Jump The Bridge While Guy 2 Says "Screw This, I'm Not Ruining My Car"

With Brian The Winner, Guy 1 Crashes Into A Pepsi Billboard As Suki Comes In Second. Despite Talking With A Woman He Saw In The Crowd, Police Arrive On The Scene, Brian Manages To Get Away However A US Customs Agent Named Markham (Played By James Remar, An Actor Who's Known For His Role As Richard Wright On Sex And The City But Has Recently Appeared On The CW's Black Lightning As Peter Gambi) Uses An Electronic Weapon That Causes Brian's Car To Stop And Brian Is Arrested By Police...

Being Interrogated By Markham, He Is Soon Confronted By Bilkins Who...Wait A Minute We're Missing A Scene Here, Guys!

Well, We're Here, Now So, I Guess We'll Talk About This. Markham Tells Brian Everything About A Man Named Carter Verone (Played By Cole Hauser) While Saying That Despite The Cartels Being Successful Getting Drugs Into Miami, They've Had A Hard Time Getting The Cash Out. Surveilling Him For About A Year, They've Found Nothing To Put Verone And The Money Together...

They've Even Had An Undercover Agent Placed Inside Of Verone's House That Works Travel And Logistics For Him However Recently, Verone Has Placed Her In Charge Of Finding New Drivers. But Despite Brian Believing That She's Turned Into A Double Agent When Bilkins Say That He Can't Confirm Her Status, Markham Defends Her None The Less Saying That She's Been With Verone For About A Year To The Point That She Lives At A Compound With Him...

But Why Is Brian There You May Be Asking? Well, Turns Out They Need Good Drivers Put Verone And His Money Together So, Bilkins Makes Brian A Deal If He Plays Ball With Both U.S Customs And The FBI, He'll Be Granted Full Amnesty Of Everything He Did In LA...

Teaming Brian Up With A Fellow Agent Named Dunn, Brian Basically Thinks That Dunn's An Idiot When It Comes To Motors...

And That If He's Going To Do This He's Got To Pick The Driver, So, Asking Who He Would Choose, Brian Decides On An Old Friend Of His Named Roman Pierce (Played By Tyrese Gibson)

Visiting A Demolition Derby Where Pierce Works, He's Not Happy To See Brian, REALLY Not Happy To See Brian...

Eventually Placing Roman In A Choke Hold, He Asks Brian Why He's Here And Brian Tells Him That If He Helps Him They'll Take Off That Tracking Bracelet Of His And They'll Clean His Record...

Asking Bilkins If Brian's Deal Is Legit, He Tells Roman That It Is And Despite Acting Like He Won't Accept It, Brian Knows That Roman Will And He Does As They're Both Driven There, But Once There, Roman Is Having Second Thoughts As He Doesn't Trust Brian...

And With The Way Dom Reacted In The Last Movie When He Found Out That Brian Was A Cop, I'm Not Very Surprised...

Arguing With Roman About Blaming Him Ever Since He Got Caught. Brian Tells Roman To Chill Out, Stop Blaming Him And To Take Responsibility...

Entering A Wherehouse, They're Introduced To The Undercover Agent Who's Monica Fuentes (Played By Eva Mendes) And Is The Same Woman That Brian Talked To At Tej's Street Race...

Somewhere In Brian's Head He's Got To Be Thinking...

Telling Them That Verone Is Looking For Drivers And That She Arranged For Them To Join Up, She Even Hired Some Thugs To Make It Look Legit Which Leads Her To Show Them To Their Cars...

And I Can Tell You Right Now That, I Love Roman's Car...

The Purple With The Detail Is Stunning And The Tail Fin Gives It An Added Dash Of Flair To It

Taking Them To Verone's, Fuentes Rides With Brian In The Yellow While Roman, Of Course Takes The Stylin Purple...

While On The Road, Brian Talks With Fuentes About How Long She's Been Undercover But All She Tells Him Is To Keep His Eyes On The Road....

Uh, Hi, People Besides You Are In The Car, Brian I Suggest You Look At The Road Instead Of How Sexy Fuentes Eyes Are!, It's Like Phil Told Hercules!...

(Start At 2:35, End At 2:37)

But Turns Out It's All A Trick That Roman Taught Him Years Ago...

Arriving At Verone's, Brian And Roman Are 2 Of Many That Are Looking For This Job. Meeting With The Big Man After Getting Through His Guards Roberto And Enrique, Verone Tells That His Red Ferrari Was Confiscated Yesterday And Was Taken To An Impound Lot, It Has A Package In The Glove Box That Needs To Be Returned To Him And The First Team To Do That Will Work For Him And So, After Showing Their Licenses To Verone's Guards Its...

(Start At 0:00 End At 0:06)

Racing Off To The Impound Lot, Brian And Roman Are The First Ones There But When Going To Get The Packages But They're Unfortunately Confronted By Markham Who Lojacked Their Vehicles And Believes That Both Brian And Roman Are Trying To Run...

Shooting At Them Isn't Showing Them That You're Not Trying To Run, Roman...

Returning To Verone's, He Gives Verone The Package Where It's Revealed That This Whole Test Was Just To Get A Lousy Cigar!

And If This Is Biggest Punch In The Gut You've Gotten, Guess What He Owns The Impound Lot Too...

(Start Video At 0:25)

If You've Survived Your Mental Breakdown Of How Dumb Verone's Test Was, You'd Know That They Got Verone's Job, Turns Out He Needs Them To Carry Something From North Beach To The Keys, He Won't Tell Them What Just Get There , Don't Let Anybody Stop Them And When They Finish There'll Be $100,000 For Them

While Roman Tries To Negotiate $100,000 Per Person, Verone Invites Them To His Club Called The Pearl At Midnight To Get To Know Each Other A Little Better...

Going To Tej's Garage, Brian Asks A Friend Named Jimmy To Check Out Their Cars While Talk With The Who's Dealing With Jet Ski Racing....

Asking If Roman Can Use A Cot Of Tej's ,Tej Says It's Okay As Brian And Roman Go To Talk With Jimmy About Their Cars And They Didn't Just Lowjack Them They Lowjacked Them To The Max!

Asking Jimmy To Try His Hardest To Make Them Less Inconspicuous And What's Worse, Verone's Boys Are Following Them Which Calls For A Little Distraction...

Wow, That's Racist...

Going In Brian's Car, Roman Drives Off, Leaving Verone's Boys In The Dust...

Going To The Safehouse To Fill Bilkins In On What's Going On, They Find Markham With Him And He's Incredibly Pissed Off...

You Know, Roman Wouldn't Have Shot At You If You Didn't Lowjack Their Cars, Trust Is A 2 Way Street, Markham, Try It, It'll Do Wonders For You...

Anyway, Telling Them That They'll Be Making A Run For Verone, They Just Don't Know When Or Where, They Mention That Verone Bought A Window With The Local Cops, Dunn Offers To Ask Around But Bilkins It's A Bad Idea As They Don't Want To Blow The Operation Brian Also Says That Verone Will Be At The Drop Off. Bilkins Sees It As An Opportunity To Nab Him But Roman Says They Have One Probem And It's Fuentes...

Telling Them That Verone Is Banging Her, Markham Thinks It's Obsurd But Asks What Brian Thinks About Fuentes Being A Possible Double Agent As Brian Would Know Which Is Where Markham Spills The Beans To Roman On What Happened With Dom That Cost Brian His Badge...

Saying That They'll Keep An Eye On Fuentes, Brian And Roman Leave Which Is Where Roman Asks Brian About Dom, But He Doesn't Want Talk About It Which Is Fine But They Have Other Problems Besides Fuentes Being With Verone Including The Fact That Markham Tried To Blow Their Cover And That They Got 2 Wired Cars That Aren't Going To Helpful To Either Of Them, Realizing This Leads Brian To Say That They Need To Come Up With An Exit Strategy...

Knowing That In Order To Do This They're Going To Need 2 More Cars, They Team Up With Tej And Suki To Challenge 2 Muscle Car Drivers They Met When Trying Out For Verone To A Race, Winner Takes The Loser's Cars

With Roman Racing Against Fabio (Which Is What Roman Calls Him) Suki Waves The Flag As Fabio Takes The Lead, With Roman In Second, Turning Around, Fabio Is Still In The Lead, But Activating His Nos, Roman Catches Up Which Leads Fabio To Cheat By Knocking A Sign In Front Of Roman...

With Round 2 About To Begin, Elvis (Which Is What Roman Calls Guy 2) Takes Off When Fabio Crosses The Finish Line And Brian Starting After Roman Crosses, With Elvis Still In The Lead After Making The Turn Brian Decides To Pull A Move Of Desperation By Coming Straight At Elvis...

(Start At 0:28, End At 0:32)

Well, Look's Like He Just Took Your Balls, Pal...

With Elvis Restarting His Car And Brian Catching Up By Using Nos, Brian Manages To Win It By A Nose...

So, They Get The Cars And Fabio And Elvis Go Home With Nothing But Thank You For Playing...

Going To Verone's Club, The Pearl, It Is A Cesspool Of Activity. Running Into Fuentes, She Tells Them That They're Doing Something Right As Verone Never Socializes With The Help...

While Roman Uses The Bathroom, Brian Talks With Fuentes Who's Having A Problem With Roman's Attitude Brian Just Says He Doesn't Trust Cops Before Telling Her Their Backstory, Turns Out Brian Was Only A Cop 2 Months Before Roman Was Busted In A Garage Raid Over 8 Sets Of Wheels In His Possession All Of Them Stolen, Of Course, Brian Didn't Know That The Raid Was Going Down But It Didn't Matter Once He Became A Cop, Roman Saw Him As A Friend Who Became The Enemy..,

When Roman Returns, They Are Brought Before Verone Who Noticed Brian Talking With Fuentes...

Talking With Roman About Lighting His Guard's Car On Fire Near Tej's, Roman Tells Verone That He Has A Problem With Authority Figures To Which Verone Is Right There With Him...

Taking Them All Upstairs To Meet With Lt. Flass From Batman Begins (Actually His Name Is Detective Wentworth, But For The Sake Of My Knowledge Of Comic Book Movies, I'm Calling Him Lieutenant Flass) An Officer On Verone's Payroll Who He Asks About The Window But Flass Has Said That He Can't Do It Which Is Gonna Be Painful For Him...

Placing A Bucket With A Rat On Flass' Body, Verone Tells Him That When The Bucket Gets Hot Enough, The Rat Will Want Out And By Out, He Means Digging Through His Stomach!

I Think I'm Beginning To Miss Batman Going...

(Start At O:30, End At 0:33)

Asking Again For The 15 Minute Window, Flass Tells Him Again That He Can't Do It But Eventually He Gives Saying That He'll Do It...

Verone Warns Flass That If He Betrays Him, He'll Do The Same Thing He Did Here To His Entire Family And Kill Them All...

Wait A Minute! Did They Bleep Verone Out Here?

The Complete Line He Gives To Flass Is "I'll Burn Your F※※※※※※ Eyes Out" Which Could Be Understandable If The Movie Was Shown On Tv And The Network Decided To Bleep It Out That Would Fine But Why Was It Bleeped Out In The Final Cut? Were They Close To An R Rating To The Point That The Only Way The MPAA Would Let The Film Slip With PG-13 Rating Was If They Bleeped Out This One Word In This One Scene? If Anyone Knows Please I Would Really Love To Know Why This Scene Is The Way It Is In This Movie...

And So, With The 15 Minute Window Confirmed, Verone Tells The Boys To Be At Versailles Cafe, 6:00 Am, The Day After Tomorrow, Ready To Drive. Leaving With Fuentes, Verone Kisses Her And Says That If She Ever Touches Another Man, He'll Kill Her...

Returning To Tej's Garage, Brian And Roman Argue About Fuentes' Alligences As They Watch Tej, Suki And Jimmy Play Cards...

The Next Morning, Sneaking Out Of Verone's Compound, Fuentes Sits On Brian's Bed When He Wakes Up To Tell Him That Verone Plans On Killing Him And Roman When They Finish His Job. Roman Enters Telling Brian That Verone's Boys Are Here Possibly Looking For Monica So Roman Decides To Distract Them While Monica Gets Away...

When Brian Gets Out, They Search His Boat To Find Nothing But That Doesn't Stop Roman From Starting A Fight...

When Verone Stops The Fight, He Says That He's Glad Everyone's Getting Along Because His Boys, Enrique And Roberto Are Going To Join Them Tomorrow, Just As Insurance...

Seeing Fuentes At His Compound, Verone Asks Her Where She's Been With Her Telling Him That She Went To Breakfast With Some Friends...

And He Backs Off..

Returning To Talk With Bilkins And...

(Laughing)

I'm Sorry, But That Outfit On Bilkins Makes Him Look Like Magnum, T.C., And Higgins Combined Together To Form One Guy...

Anyway, They Tell Markham And Billkins About The Cop That Verone Threatened Into Giving Him A 15 Minute Window And That Verone Is Driving To An Airstrip Where He'll Fly Off. Brian Also Tells Them That Monica Warned Them That Verone Plans On Killing Them Once He Has The Cash...

Not Being What Bilkins Signed Up For He Wants To Call This Off, But Markham Says That If Anyone Is Calling It Off, It's Him...

Markham Tells Brian And Roman To Do What They Were Brought In For Or They'll Go To Jail, Plain And Simple. So, With Chances Of Survival Being Very Slim, They Decide To Come Up With Their Own Plan To The Point That They Even Get Tej Involved As He Shows Them Hangars At An Airport...

I Think This Calls For A Montage!

With Things All Set, Roman And Brian Go To The Pier For To Talk. There They Talk About Why Roman Is So Interested In Food (Apparently It Has To Do With A High Metabolism) And Brian Tells Roman That If He Could Have Done Something To Get Him Out Of Jail He Would've But Roman Tells Brian That It's Not His Fault And That It's All His Plain And Simple...

The Next Morning, Verone And Fuentes Head Down To The Airstrip, Flass Keeps The Cops Distracted And Brian And Roman Are Led By Enrique And Roberto To A Trailer Park Where The Money Is However It Turns Out That Flass Has His Men In The Exact Same Area, Uh Oh...

Yep, Flass Decided To Double Cross Verone And Send The Cops After Brian, Roman And Verone's Boys..

Well. I Guess He Can Kiss His Family Goodbye Maybe Instead Of Rats Verone Will Use Scarecrow's Fear Gas On Them..

Hearing The Cops, They Pack Up But Before They Go, Roman Plays A Game Called Bowling For Cop Cars...

Strike!

Still Being Chased By Cops, They Head South Down I-95, But The Police Use The Same Weapon That Markham Used Earlier To Get Brian Which Forces Brian To Climb Out The Window To Get It Off...

Succeeding, Brian Throws It At A Police Car Which Causes A Crash Of Police Cars...

With The Police Still Following Them, They Head To The Airport Where They Enter Some Hangars...

But When They Come Out...

The Police Cars Get Hit By Some Trucks So That A Cadre Of Cars Can Come Racing Out Of The Hangars...

And It's Not Just 10 Or 20 Cars, I'm Talking Billions Of Cars!

You're Damn Right To Say That, Lady...

Eventually Finding Brian And Roman's Car, They're Unfortunately Cornered By The Cops Who Discover That Brian And Roman Aren't In Their Cars!

Turns Out Tej And Suki Pulled A Fast One On The Officers And Decided To Take Brian And Roman's Cars While Brian, Roman And Verone's Men Took 2 Different Cars That Managed To Get Away From The Officers...

And It's Here We Say Goodbye To Tej And Suki Though We Do See Tej Again In Future Sequels Along With Both Brian And Roman Suki Never Appears Again And To Her I Will Say The Same Thing I Said To Leon In The Last Movie, We Hardly Knew Ye, Though Unlike Leon I Do Hope We See Her Again In A Sequel In The Future, I Mean If Fuentes Can Appear In A Cameo I'm Sure They Can Get Her To Appear Either In A Cameo Or As A Member Of Dom's Family...

Anyway, Since They're Safe, Brian And Roman Realize There's Only One Thing Left To Do And That's To Say Goodbye To Enrique And Roberto With Their New Ejector Seats!

However Before Brian Can Eject Either Enrique Or Roberto (I Don't Know Which Is Which) The Guy Is Like Get Off At Tarpon Point But Brian Knows That There's No Airstrip At Tarpon Point The Guy Is Like Who Said Anything About An Airstrip...

Okay, Let Me Back Up A Little Here...

While Everything Was Going Down With Brian And Roman, Markham Was At The Airstrip To Get Verone However, When Him And SWAT Covered Verone's Vehicle They Discovered That Verone And Fuentes Weren't There...

Yep, The Location Was A Decoy!

Calling Roman, Brian Tells Him Everything As He Arrives At The Rendezvous With Jimmy...

Arriving At A Dock Brian Sees Verone With Fuentes As They Get The Money Out Of Brian's Car With Brian Telling Verone That The Rest Of His Cash Is On It's Way In Another Car Asking About The Agents At The Airstrip, Brian Denies Everything But Verone Says He Only Told One Person About The Airstrip And That's Monica...

Getting Monica On The Boat, Verone Tells His Henchman To Hide The Car And Kill Brian But When They Hide The Car, Brian Hits The Ejector Switch (Which Doesn't Work, Good Job, Tej) But Luckily Roman Shows Up Which Gives Brian Time To Fight The Guy...

Managing To Subdue The Henchmen , Brian And Roman See That Verone Is On The Move So, Getting In Brian's Car They Follow Him Only To Do A Dukes Of Hazzard Right Into His Boat...

With Brian Shooting Verone In The Shoulder, Fuentes Grabs Verone's Shotgun, One Way Or Another They Got Him...

Telling Them About 3 Bags Of Cash, Markham Promises Them That Their Records Are Clean Which Makes Roman Pop Out 3 More Bags...

Watching Verone Get Healed By Paramedics, Bilkins Tells Them That Suki And Tej Have Been Released From Hold Up And There's A Sedan Ready To Go. And I Would Say That This Is The Last Time We See Monica Fuentes But As I Said When I Was Talking About Suki We See Her Again At The End Of Fast Five So, I'm Not Going To Say Goodbye To Her But I Will Do This...

Walking Off With Roman, They Talk About Opening A Garage In Miami But How Are They Going To Do It Well...

(Laughing)

And That's 2 Fast 2 Furious And It's Not Bad Or At Least Not As Bad Some People Thought When It First Came Out...

When This First Came Out People Didn't Like This Movie They Thought It Wasn't The Same Without Vin Diesel And Director Rob Cohen (Who Instead Of Doing The Sequel They Decided To Make Their Own Film, XXX) To Which When This Film Didn't Do Good, They Brought Diesel Back For A Cameo In The Third Film, Tokyo Drift Which We'll Briefly Talk About Next Week But My Opinions On This Film Are That, I Think The Story Is Good, The Characters Are Interesting, The Cars For What We See Are Well Designed However, The Villain Can Be A Little Dumb At Times But Still I Say See It...

Until Next Time, This Is Duke, Signing Off...

[fakesam]

Stopped Procrastinating just in time for “Games of 2017” List

The worst year most of us could’ve imagined wouldn’t have been much worse than 2017. This year gave us the following: dystopian nightmares brought into reality by sycophants and cowards. Capitalistic greed reaching its inevitable, destructive conclusion. A bigoted baby as a president and given free reign by people who chose money and power over morals. Despair is constant. Hope is scarce. Next year might be worse. But at least we had good video games?

Referring to this year’s crop of games as simply “good” is like describing Ajit Pai’s face as “slightly punchable”. This was an all-time year for the medium, with a full catalog of memorable games that will be talking about for years to come. Every type of gamer was satiated. You could explore open worlds with diverse environments and secrets to discover. You could play tiny, affecting indie games that helped the expand the notion of what games are capable of. You could play games that leave you exasperated and angry at the depths publishers will steep to in order to extract maximum profits. There were more games than anyone could ever keep up with. At this time, I’ve only played seven games released in 2017, so rather than scoop the diamonds out of the muck, I decided to just rank the games I had the chance to play over the course of the year. Overall, these games are a good mix of brilliance and profound disappointment, which is a pretty good description for 2017 as a whole. If your favorite game isn’t on my list, It’s simply because that game sucks and you have bad taste. Here's to 2018!

8. Danger Zone

I wiped this game from my memory until I wrote most of this list. I reviewed the game when it was released over the summer. Go read that if you want more detailed exploration of my disappointment. There was a rumor floating around a couple weeks back about a remastered version of Burnout: Paradise. I will pray to whatever deity makes that happen.

7. Battlefront 2

Star Wars was the first thing I chose to love. My earliest childhood memory is watching the remastered original trilogy tapes. I convinced my mom to fake a doctor’s appointment to see Episode three on release day. My first viewing of The Force Awakens is the best theater experience I’ve ever had. Star Wars means a lot to me. This backstory is why I feel Battlefront 2’s total failure so heavily. It’s almost impressive how thoroughly EA managed to poison the well for three giant franchises (Mass Effect, Need For Speed, and Star Wars). But Battlefront 2 is the Mount Everest of completely preventable fuck-ups. Enough’s been written about the predatory design of the multiplayer and the various ways that segment of the game is awful. But the single-player is even more of a letdown.

Viewing the end of Return of the Jedi from the Empire’s perspective should be fascinating, the writing ruins the plot before it has a chance. The premise collapses under the simplest questioning. It’s taken as a given that Iden Versio’s reversal is inherently meaningful, but Battlefront 2 does little to justify this. Why does the destruction of her home planet upset her to the point of defection? What was her life like there? How is this the first time Iden has seen evidence of the Empire engaging in nefarious tactics? She goes from diehard Empire defender to joining their sworn enemy in the span of about ninety minutes. The gameplay is just as dull. Sometimes a space battle gets thrown in and those are enjoyable, but those sequences aren’t prevalent enough to elevate the dreck that surrounds them.

Rather than tell an original story that earns its own space in the canon, the campaign becomes an edition of Star Wars Madlibs. Heroes from the original trilogy show up constantly, for little rhyme or reason other than EA wanted to give players the chance to demo each character before, in an ideal world, you move on to the multiplayer you don’t want to play. This overwrought deference to the past is put into even more stark relief by what Rian Johnson did with The Last Jedi. The thing that makes that movie so great is the number of chances it takes to add to the universe in surprising ways, such as the casino planet full of war profiteers, or the quad-boobed slug seal monster that provides Luke Skywalker with delicious space milk (These points are equally important in my mind). Battlefront 2 had the opportunity to really show what it’s like to be indoctrinated in the ways of the Empire from the moment a person is born, and it chooses to do the exact opposite. Bummer.

6. Nier Automata

There’s a chasm of quality between Nier and Battlefront 2, but many people might be surprised to see Nier this low on my list. I really wanted to like Nier more than I currently do. Let me explain: I loved the way the game’s experiments with form and storytelling, treating each playthrough like a season of television. The commitment to world building all the way down to the mechanics of how you save the game is impressive. The list of side characters I’ve ever met who have affected me as much as Pascal is short. Every encounter with him left me wanting more. He’s the robot stepdad of your dreams.

But after playing through the game three times, the idea of roaming through the world destroying generic machine enemies for the 800th time fills me with dread. Nier Automata needs to be open world to get its ideas across. But the environments are very drab and crossing this overly vast expanse became very tiresome very quickly. You should’ve seen my face when I unlocked the ability to fast travel. Christmas presents don’t give me that much joy. The combat would’ve been described as uninspired ten years ago. My completionist streak is urging me to see the two endings I have yet to see, but the dozens of enemy mobs I have to shoot and slash to see it through actively impede me from doing so.

And it’s all in service of a story that, while filled with cool images and presented incredibly well, isn’t really tailored to my tastes. The way the machines and androids reckon with their autonomy is fascinating at times - some of the context given to boss battles in later playthroughs is heartbreaking, but Nier is ultimately another “robots discovering they have feelings” tale. The future horror stories that interest me the most - Black Mirror, Twilight Zone, The Fallout series - are more focused on how humanity reacts to such calamities. When you remove humans from the picture altogether, it becomes more of a science experiment, and I struggle to invest in that. Sorry!

5. Portal Quest

If you’ve never heard of this game, it’s a free-to-play mobile action-RPG. Its art style could accurately be described as ‘Tearaway on a lesser budget’. There are a lot of modes, most of which use timers and daily limits to control how you play them. One of these modes comes attached with a story, but it never calls attention to itself. The gameplay mostly resembles strategy games, in the sense that the player has very little control once combat actually starts. Portal Quest is deceptively simple enough to worm its way into the slivers of boredom that accent everyday life, where mobile games are at their most seductive. I play it in line at the grocery store. I played it while waiting for my screening of The Last Jedi to start. I play it when I’m avoiding hard/meaningful work during my small time on Earth. There are guilds you can join which add a substantial multiplayer component that plays on my deep-seated displeasure at letting other people down. I’m currently in a guild named after the devil. My old guild kicked me for reasons unknown and I was sincerely annoyed when I found out. I’m not making this game sound very good, am I?It’s probably because I’m so confused by it. Mobile games tend to be non-starters for me (I actually tried to look at my phone way less this year), and the only reason I downloaded this game at the suggestion of an app that claimed that credits I earned for using certain apps could eventually be used as currency for many online marketplaces. I didn’t stick with that very long. And now we’re here. Is Portal Quest’s standing on this list a mediocre joke from an unfunny man? It might be. Did I place this above Nier Automata just to mess with that game’s passionate fanbase? Possibly. Do I feel good about placing a mobile game this high on a game of the year list? Not especially. I dunno man. It’s the one app that keeps me checking my phone more than any other. It’s free on the Android store (I assume it’s playable on iPhones, but I also don’t feel like checking?). Go check it out.

4. Fifa 18

When it comes to sports games, I don’t ask for much. The FIFA franchise has reached a baseline level of good that means that EA would have to seismically screw up to keep me from playing the newest rendition for forty hours at the minimum. Career mode dominates my time in this genre, and FIFA 18 was the year that this mode finally got the overhaul that’s been needed for years.The AI tactics still aren’t where I want them to be, and their version of Jordan Henderson continues to look more “Vegas wax figure” than man. But these details are small in the grand scheme. It’s the only reality where I can see Liverpool not shoot themselves in the feet, hands, and superfluous third nipple to win the Premier League. The Journey is also the best story in a sports game, and it’s not even close. That’s worth something.

3. Persona 5

Following Persona 4 is basically an impossible job. That game was a comet across the sky that dropped from the heavens and into my heart. I’ve watched the endurance run multiple times, played through the game twice on my PS2, and played through most of the game again on my Vita (Rest in peace.). Whatever Atlus followed that with would be a comedown. It’s definitely colored how some of the characters and the story affected me. The crew in Persona 4 was a much cooler hang than the Phantom Thieves were, and I missed some of the small-town intimacy of Inaba. But when taken on its own merits, Persona 5 is a spectacular RPG. It just plays so well. Every annoying quirk from Persona 4 was dealt with in a way that kept dungeon crawling from feeling too stale. Coercing enemies to become your persona was a surprisingly engrossing tactic. Being able to switch out team members on the fly is a game changer. I was able to capture hearts in a couple in-game days and focus on the social interactions that make this series so special. I eventually grew to love this version of Tokyo, and realized its sense of big city culture shock was a feature, not a bug. And no discussion of Persona 5 would be complete without commending the game for its impeccable style. It’s not quite Persona 4, but it never could be.

2. Horizon: Zero Dawn

Robot Dinosaurs! Is there a more attractive combination of words in the English language? No one expected Guerrilla Games, a developer who had previously been such purveyors of sludgy monochrome shooters with the Killzone franchise, to suddenly discover the entirety of the color spectrum and create a universe that pulls from the earliest parts of human civilization and far-flung science fiction pontifications. Fewer expected that such a fusion would be so successful. It’s been a while since I fell for an open world this hard. I had to see everything this world had to offer, and document it via Horizon’s photo mode. Watching these machines go through the motions of real animal behaviors became a regular past time (Although it still frustrates me that I couldn’t make the machines fight each other more easily).

Horizon is iterative more than innovative, but I enjoyed playing it much more than the recent Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed. I usually hate bow and arrows, but I loved how the weapons felt in this game. The moment to moment story about the three tribes was just okay, but uncovering the mysteries of the world and how it became this way kept me going until the end. They even made audio logs a powerful storytelling device again. One of 2017’s few pleasant surprises.

1.Super Mario Odyssey

Nintendo is a company defined by reinvention. Their consoles and games refuse to follow market trends and exist in their own world, for better or worse. The last couple years had skewed towards the worse end of that dichotomy.  I’ll die on “The Wii U wasn’t actually that bad” island, but the system was still a commercial disaster. Nintendo’s genius is singular and vital to the industry, but, outside of Splatoon, there had been few examples of their creativity delivering on its potential. It was fair to question whether the company could make their increasingly fleeting moments of brilliance slightly less fleeting. But Nintendo tends to show out when their backs are against the wall, and this year proved that axiom true yet again. The Switch is the great console the Wii U should’ve been, and the games released for it are good and interesting in surprising ways. I was excited for Super Mario Odyssey by the time I heard the phrase “New Donk City”, but by the time I started playing it, I was feeling full up on open-ended sandbox games with dozens of hours of side content and an overarching story that only unfolds at my pace. Over 200 hours of Persona 5, Nier, and Horizon will change a man. Nintendo showed why that sentiment was false. It wasn’t the genre. It was the imagination.

Each kingdom is an intricately designed diorama that constantly throws new things at you while continuing to be a peerless platformer we’ve come to know and love an indulging fan nostalgia along the way. There doesn’t seem to be any idea that wasn’t met with anything less than an affirmative “hell yes!” The childish exuberance that courses through most of Nintendo’s best work somehow becomes more surreal and gleefully discordant as Mario explores more and more worlds that are completely alien to him. Super Mario Odyssey has so many moments that make me smile involuntarily, from the hundreds of moons I’ve found due to blind faith in Nintendo’s design process to the NES-style levels that somehow exist in the world without a loading screen, to the objectively perfect festival scene in New Donk City. How many other games would reward you for sitting with a lonely man on a bench? This game is so damn weird, I love it. I’m not usually inclined to obsessively mine every bit of minutiae out of a game, but I definitely plan on finding every moon and purple coin that’s evaded me so far. I’m 600 moons in, and I’m still nowhere close to being sick of Super Mario Odyssey. This game is special.

[terryblount]

Resident Evil 3 Review: Slash that Price!

Resident Evil 3 (2020) is a glorified campaign expansion based heavily on Resident Evil 2 (2019). Most of the locations, items, weapons, and enemies reuse RE2 assets. Likewise, the engine, gameplay, and much more are borrowed from RE2.

What’s worse, so much is cut from the original 1999 game, and the actual story is very short. As such, RE3 would be a respectable experience at half-price, but the full-price cost is more insulting than ingratiating. Therefore, unless you’re a die-hard Resident Evil fan, wait for a half-price sale and then enjoy RE3!

Resident Evil 3 is impressive and gorgeous, but sadly the experience lacks depth.

Having already jumped to the conclusion, I suppose I should add a few more details for those who are still interested. First, you need to know that RE3 is actually two games. Quite literally, your purchase gives you two separate Steam games: Resident Evil 3 (the campaign) and Resident Evil Resistance (a curious 4v1 multiplayer mode with loot boxes and micro-transactions).

Let’s begin with what everyone cares about: the campaign.

Call of Resident Evil!

Let me offer you an incredibly simple way of understanding the story experience: Resident Evil 3 is the Resident Evil version of Call of Duty. It’s good (if slightly dumb) fun for about 4 to 6 hours. There’s a constant energy, with a grab-bag of explosions, set pieces, dramatic talking, and mayhem. Once it’s over, there’s not much that lingers in your memory, but it’s an entertaining enough ride.

You’ll be seeing a lot of Jill screaming and barely hanging on. We’re talking intense action!

Now, it may sound like I’m not that enthused by the campaign, but actually I had a great time with it because I enjoy a nice Call-of-Duty-esque linear romp from time to time. Just understand: RE3 is not survival-horror like the beloved RE2. No, RE3 pushes your mind to the backseat and encourages you to run, crawl, dodge, duck, and weave through a much less sophisticated action version of RE2. You’ll even revisit several iconic locations from RE2, but this time you’ll be in-and-out in minutes, off to your next bombastic scene.

Cut Content & Replayability

I have a confession: I’ve never played the original Resident Evil 3, so my review is purely based on my experience with this new incarnation. However, the internet tells me much content was cut from this remake. Missing locations. No branching paths. Limited costumes. A lack of story-flow. Absent game-modes. The list goes on.

Tying into the cut content is the limited replayability. There is only one linear campaign in RE3. It is exactly the same every time. This is very unfortunate. RE2 gave us two campaigns, each having two slightly different paths for a total of four playthroughs. There’s nothing like this here. At least there are higher difficulties to clear and coveted S-Ranks to obtain via ultra-fast playthroughs.

On a more positive note, after you beat the campaign you unlock a ‘Shop’ option where you can purchase bonus items for further playthroughs. You earn money for the shop by completing challenges related to Achievements and goals like ‘kill X enemies with X weapon’ or ‘finish the game under X time.’

Here’s some of the items you can buy for subsequent playthroughs. Gotta collect them all!

The purchasable items themselves range from stat boosts to new tools to new weapons. It’s a nice addition to a game that is starving for content, and the ultra-obsessed players will likely put in another 10 or 20 hours replaying the campaign a dozen or more times to unlock everything. The rest of us will maybe attempt the campaign once or twice more (perhaps with a few user-made mods) before fatigue sets in.

Graphics, Performance, & Technical

RE3 performs basically exactly like RE2, so I’ll refer you to that review for the details. I’ll sum up by saying RE3 runs extremely well on PC and is a great, gorgeous port. I had no performance issues, although I did have to install a special codec to get the in-game videos to play.

This is Jill’s bedroom. It’s quite messy, but isn’t the graphical fidelity and lighting nice?!

I’d give kudos to Capcom for another technically-fantastic PC game, but RE3 is basically a reskin of the RE2 engine. So good job not breaking anything?

The Multiplayer: Resident Evil Resistance

As if the corporate suits at Capcom felt some twinge of guilt at charging full-price for what is clearly a limited product, they’ve thrown in a ‘free’ 4v1 multiplayer mode to perhaps trick encourage people into buying an overpriced product. The problem is we have a glut of other free multiplayer games like Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, and Fortnite. So a tacked-on product like this just isn’t good enough in the year 2020.

Resistance features excellent environment design and eye-catching visuals. So that’s good.

That being said, Resistance does have some truly inventive ideas to it, and I found myself intrigued by the depth of strategic options in each session. Indeed, if the stars align and you get a great group of players, there’s some very solid enjoyment to be had. I could see Resistance being a ‘cult classic’ game for LAN parties and other organized events.

However, most of the time the 4v1 gameplay fairs exactly how all 4v1 games tend to go: unbalanced, messy, and awkward (anyone remember Evolve?). Oh, and there’s often long queue times to get into matches. Oh, and the matchmaking is peer-to-peer because of course it is, so quite often you get ‘Unstable network connection’ warnings and dropped games. Oh, and there’s loot boxes and micro-transactions tied into a pay-to-get-an-advantage equipment system.

I was enjoying this match until ‘Unstable network connection…’ popped up. A few seconds later the game froze and then my computer blue-screened and rebooted. Great…

Ultimately, Resistance is a worthy concept ruined by far too many issues, so the game is best…left for dead. Then again, if you like the idea of unbalanced gameplay, micro-transactions in premium-priced titles, and unstable multiplayer connections, perhaps Resistance is the Resident Evil horror you’ve been looking for!

Behold, the abject abominations known as Resident Evil loot boxes! What a world…

Sudden Conclusion

It may seem like I hate Resident Evil 3. I don’t. I actually quite enjoyed my time with the campaign and am enjoying another playthrough. What I hate is the business decision to overcharge for something that should have been a half-price expansion.

Shoot, even Activision recently released the remastered Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 campaign for only $20 USD. So it’s not good enough to give us scraps but charge us like we’re eating a full course meal.

This is a random picture for your viewing pleasure. I will be charging FULL-PRICE for it!

I recommend to pick up the game when it goes on sale down the road and indulge in the short but enjoyable campaign, knowing that you’ve not given in to what seems to be a Capcom cash-grab.

There’s so much more I could share, but that’s all I have to say about Resident Evil 3. End of review… What? Are you surprised it’s already finished? Are you thinking, “Shouldn’t there be more stuff?” Well, now you know what it’s like to play 2020’s Resident Evil 3!

High-energy campaign

Gorgeously detailed world

Optimized & efficient engine

Post-campaign unlocks

Resident Evil atmosphere

Short campaign, cut content

Reused RE2 assets

Inventory annoyances, QTEs

Multiplayer mode issues

Bad value for the price

Playtime: 10+ hours total. Nick spent 6 hours finishing the campaign. Another few hours have put put into a second playthrough. A couple hours were thrown into the Resistance multiplayer game (until enough connection issues put an end to the fun). Nick will likely put another 10 hours or so into some modded playthroughs just for the fun of it.

Computer Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using an Intel i7-3930k CPU, 32GB of memory, and a nVidia GTX 980 Ti graphics card.

Also read the Resident Evil 3 PC Performance Analysis.

The post Resident Evil 3 Review: Slash that Price! appeared first on DSOGaming.

Resident Evil 3 Review: Slash that Price! published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[smartstartblogging]

Top 21 Games I Would Want On A PS2 Classic Edition

Let’s start off by saying that getting a PS2 Classic Edition, in a similar vein to the NES and SNES Classic Mini, is almost certainly never going to happen. Sure, we’ve got the MegaDrive Flashback but the idea of Classic Editions is largely a Nintendo thing. That said, it doesn’t hurt to dream and since the PlayStation 2 is my favourite console ever, the idea of a PS2 Classic Edition would be amazing!

During a recent Twitter chat with Mohammed Fi, we started talking about the idea of a PS2 Mini. That, of course, led to the question of what games could be featured on such a re-release, especially as the PlayStation 2 has thousands of games in its library. So I decided to put together a list of the games that I would include.

This is based entirely on personal preference though, so I would also love to know what games you would put on a PS2 Classic Edition if there were ever to be one.

I chose to do 21 simply because that is the amount of games that the SNES Classic Mini featured.

21. Bully

We’ll start off with a game that was a very different take on the Grand Theft Auto style of gameplay; Bully. In this game, you take the role of a new transfer student to a very posh school. You have to take on bullies, complete missions and cause havoc whilst also going to lessons and avoiding detention. The game got a lot of bad press at the time, even getting renamed in Europe, but it’s a really good game with a strong anti-bullying message.

20. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Next up we have the first in a trilogy of great action games; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The combat is extremely fun and the time control mechanic is both extremely useful and embedded into the plot and events of the game. The world is extremely well realised with great graphics for the PS2. The voice acting could have been better, but it doesn’t detract from an otherwise awesome game!

19. Soulcalibur 2

On to one of the best fighting games on the PlayStation 2 now. Soulcalibur 2 featured a great roster of characters, each with distinct fighting styles and weaponry to use. My character of choice was always Tali (pictured above on the right) due to her speed and attack style. However, there is certainly a character and fighting style to suit you, no matter how you want to play. That makes for a brilliant fighting game that anyone can pick up.

18. Shadow Hearts

Shadow Hearts is a game I’ve covered quite a lot, most recently in my PS2 games you probably haven’t played post (here), and now I’m going to include it here as well. Why? Because it is a very unique and different type of RPG that really needs to get more attention and awareness than it did. The storyline is so dark and mature, completely going against the idea of happy fantasy storylines full of bright colours.

17. TimeSplitters 2

I’ve not been a fan of shooters in recent years. They just haven’t felt as much fun as classic shooters, such as TimeSplitters 2. If you haven’t played the games, then just imagine a shooter where you get to visit a bunch of different time periods through the past and future. Weapons, enemies and level designs change massively, creating a wonderful mix of gameplay that you don’t often get with modern shooters.

16. Burnout 3: Takedown

If you ever wanted to play an incredible racing game full of high octane action and completely insane crash mechanics, you can’t go wrong with the Burnout series. Of that series, my personal favourite is Burnout 3: Takedown. The feeling of sheer speed was addictive, and the cars control and handle beautifully. On top of that, there is just something inherently fun to crash and smash into just about everything to see the damage mechanics.

15. Rule of Rose

I had to include Rule of Rose on this list. The game is so hard to come by now, which is a real shame because it is a truly outstanding Survival Horror game that is both creepy and downright sadistic at the same time. If you enjoy the Clocktower series of games, then Rule of Rose is effectively a spiritual successor to it. I can’t really say too much about the game without spoiling parts of it, but if a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition was ever to be made, it would be the perfect time to let people experience this amazing game.

14. Beyond Good and Evil

Another game that would be great on a PS2 Classic Edition would be Beyond Good and Evil. The game became a cult classic after its release and now it is even getting a PS4 sequel (finally). With that in mind, apart from a remaster of the game, a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition featuring Beyond Good and Evil would be a great way to let people play this game in all of its glory. It certainly would be worth it.

13. Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening

Going back to the action game side of the PlayStation 2, Devil May Cry 3 would be a must for any PlayStation 2 Classic Edition. It is the most popular in the original trilogy, and for good reason. The combat was stylish and very fast paced, whilst the game could offer difficulty and challenge if you wanted it or be set to just allow you to experience the storyline and game quickly if you don’t have the option for long gaming sessions.

12. Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4

Trying to choose between Persona 3 and Persona 4 was actually really hard. However, the reason why I have put Persona 4 on this list is that it improved on the already excellent Persona 3 when it came to dungeon design (multiple dungeons rather than one huge one) and storyline. The general design and visual presentation of Persona 4 is wonderful as well, so it would make perfect sense to put it on a PS2 Classic Edition, if there ever was one.

11. Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal

Do you like Platformers? If so, then I am sure you would agree that including Ratchet and Clank in general on a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition would be the right choice. Out of the games in the series from the PS2, my personal favourite is Up Your Arsenal. It just took the formula that the other games had worked on and made it into a near-perfect 3D platformer. I spent hours on this game and would happily do it again

10. Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly

Going back to Survival Horror, I had to include my favourite game in the genre in a list of games to put on a PS2 Classic Edition, didn’t I? Fatal Frame 2 (also called Project Zero 2 in Europe) is one of the creepiest and scariest games I have ever played. It shows just what a horror game can be if it doesn’t rely on jump scares but focuses on atmosphere instead. If you’re a fan of being scared out of your mind, this would be perfect for you. And a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition would allow so many more people to play it.

9. Silent Hill 2

Continuing on with the Survival Horror games (as we will for the next entry as well), we have Silent Hill 2, a game that really needs no introduction whatsoever. It is the most popular in the Silent Hill series, which is why I put it on this list (even though it isn’t my favourite) and Pyramid Head has pretty much become a mascot of the PS2. Because of this, and the fact that it’s just a really great game, I would definitely put it on a PS2 Classic Edition.

8. Resident Evil 4

Moving on to the franchise that basically started the Survival Horror genre, we have the game that also redefined the genre (for better or worse). Resident Evil 4 was an awesome game that was so exciting to play. Whilst it may have paved the way for some of the worst games in the Resident Evil franchise, RE4 itself is a true gem for the console (even though the Gamecube version looked better). So it would have to be included on this list, wouldn’t it?

7. Ico

Team Ico hit the ground running with this work of art for the PlayStation 2. Despite effectively being one giant escort mission, Ico never felt annoying or stale to me. I was hooked through the entire playthrough of the game, which for an escort mission, is an achievement and a half for the developers. Of course, their more famous and popular game will feature on this list too, but Ico more than deserves a spot as well.

6. God of War 2

What is a PlayStation these days without a God of War game? Seriously… Kratos is one of the most recognised video game characters ever, sitting up there with Mario and Sonic. I don’t think I even need to explain what the God of War games are or why I included one of this list, do I? As for why I chose God of Wars 2; the first game was extraordinary, but the sequel just ramped everything up by 100!

5. Kingdom Hearts

As a child, if you had told me that mixing Disney with Final Fantasy would actually work out well and we would get a good game from it, I would have thought you were crazy. Yet, that’s exactly what happened with Kingdom Hearts. Only, we didn’t get a “good” game… We got an excellent one! The sheer hype surrounding the coming release (finally) of Kingdom Hearts 3, as well as the constant remasters of the Final MIX versions of this and Kingdom Hearts 2 should tell you just why it is on this list.

4. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Come on, you knew there was going to be a Grand Theft Auto game on this list. What kind of PlayStation 2 Classic Edition wouldn’t feature one of these games? I chose GTA: San Andreas because of its scale, scope and gameplay, as well as the sheer amount of memorable moments that I have with the game. Although, if this ever did happen, I would have they sort out that damn train mission!

3. Shadow of the Colossus

Coming in next is Team Ico’s second work of art, which just happens to be their masterpiece; Shadow of the Colossus. The game is pretty simple in premise; hunt down towering behemoths known as Colossus and slay them. However, the fact that you have to climb on them, each one acting as a puzzle as well, was genius. The ending is also outstanding, with Shadow of the Colossus being the true start of the “video games as an art form” debate.

2. Final Fantasy X

We have another obvious inclusion next, since I tried to save the obvious ones for last; Final Fantasy X. One of the Final Fantasy games was always going to be on this list, but no matter how much I love FF11 and FF12, Final Fantasy X was groundbreaking when it was released. Everything about the game, from the storyline to the battle system felt fresh and exciting (and still does today if you play the HD Remaster). So, naturally, it would be on a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3

The final game in the list should come as no surprise. If we were doing this list for the original PlayStation, then Metal Gear Solid would be on that list immediately. So that also means that Metal Gear Solid is on this list too… However, we’re specifically looking at Metal Gear Solid 3, which added so much to the gameplay, such as a camo system, a beautiful game world and some of the best mechanics in a Metal Gear game to date.

And That’s All Folks

That was my list of the 21 games I would add to a PlayStation 2 Classic Edition, if Sony ever decided to make one. However, there are literally thousands of games for the PS2, so I’m sure you would choose different.

So let me know in the comments what 21 games you would put on a PS2 Classic Edition!

  from More Design Curation https://www.16bitdad.com/top-21-games-i-would-want-on-a-ps2-classic-edition/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=top-21-games-i-would-want-on-a-ps2-classic-edition

[thehallofgame]

Review: Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly

My Rating: 8.5

Release: 2003

Survival Horror Halloween 3/4

              This is kind of the odd duck out in this set of reviews. Not only is it the only sequel featured it’s the only non-sony exclusive game. I found choosing the Playstation 2 title for this review series hard, but I eventually settled on Fatal Frame and then switched to Fatal Frame 2 at the last moment. Personally, I like the original game better than the follow up but Fatal Frame 2 is the more successful and well liked of the two. I chose this franchise because it came out right in the middle of the survival horror heyday, when the genre was at its peak and most of these games were coming out of Japan. Fatal Frame 2 is a prime example of both an excellent outing for the genre and a great game in general. Additionally, this series is one of the very few that is consistently, genuinely, pee your pants scary.

              Fatal Frame 2 isn’t a direct sequel to the first game, and in fact there’s a compelling argument for playing the series in the order 2-1-3 due to certain nods the games make in each other’s direction. They do share the same gameplay mechanics and broader themes, which are both strongly developed and well executed.

              In Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly twin sisters Mayu and Mio are visiting local woods they played in as children, which will soon be underwater due to construction of a new dam. While reminiscing along a river Mayu catches sight of a strange red butterfly and follows it deeper into the woods. Mio gives chase until, suddenly, day turns to night and the game’s colors desaturate to near black and white. The two hear eerie chanting as a panorama of a village that shouldn’t be there unfurls below them. This, the two realize, must be the locally folklorized Lost Village which after a tragedy many years before vanished into eternal darkness. Those who wander in are said never to return.

              As the two begin to explore the crumbling buildings looking for a way out they discover everyone in the village may be dead, but they certainly aren’t gone. Violent ghosts haunt their path and use Mayu’s susceptibility to suggestion and possession to lure the pair deeper into the village. It soon becomes clear the village’s religious life revolved around a sinister ceremony that requires twins girls to complete and Mayu and Mio are the only pair around. It then becomes Mio’s mission to rescue her sister and get them both out of the village alive.

              This game is well written with a dark and creepy story that’s totally engrossing. It makes a few missteps in the translating and pacing departments, as most of the story is told through documents and artifacts hidden throughout the village and it can be really tempting to go exploring and find many of the documents before the player is intended to. It’s best to stay on the story path until about midway through the game and trust it will lead you everywhere you want to see. I also feel that the story was front-loaded after reactions to the slower pacing of the first game which leaves few revelations for the final hours of Fatal Frame 2. This culminates when the final boss encounter is wholly underwhelming as it is not the adversary the player spends the entire game getting to know.

That’s a huge letdown because the main opponent, Sae, is wholly terrifying both on her own and especially when she’s possessing Mayu. Often the player won’t be sure whether Sae or Mayu is speaking to them in the moment and whether the right choice is to run away and preserve Mio’s life or go back to try and help her sobbing and pleading sister. Fatal Frame 2 also introduces a helpful ghost that can be visited for advice and pointers but he mostly manages to spoil the big revelations of the story by telling and not showing all the big secrets of the game. Again, another small blight on an otherwise excellent story. The game redeems itself with its endings, however, of which there are three in the original PS2 version of the game (it would later be remastered for wii with additional endings). All are sharply written but the ‘true’/’bad’ ending may be my favorite ending in any video game. The execution is just spot on.

The mechanics of gameplay are simple, as they often are in survival horror games, and slowly paced. The player creeps around the village at a walk, or a run if they’re brave, but the tone of the game and the feeling of being watched is so oppressive it’s hard to overcome the irrational fear that hurrying will disturb something best left alone.

Mio is equipped with a flashlight to help with the omnipresent gloom and the Camera Obscura. The ghosts of Fatal Frame can’t be harmed or killed, but they can be driven away by use of a special camera that can temporarily exorcise them. This camera is the only weapon in the game and as such is heavily focused on. The player will find new camera parts throughout that add new functions such as the ability to zoom in and out or a light that blinks on the chance for critical hits. Every successful shot of a ghost will earn the player points they can use to upgrade the camera’s basic stats like power and range, as well as special attack abilities that are charged up by using the camera and can be activated to do bonus damage or make spirits easier to target. These power ups are locked behind consumable spirit orbs, however, which limits how fast the player’s damage output can advance and can be frustrating for returning or veteran players.

The real determination of how much damage the camera does, however, is which type of film is loaded. There are five types, each stronger but less common than the last. Film juggling can become a major component of the game as the player balances the need to take down difficult opponents fast with the fact that enemies will get progressively harder throughout the game and there’s never a guarantee the player will mage to find more high level film if they run out early. It also bears switching because often the player needs to photograph certain spots to reveal clues and will have options to take snapshots of a fast moving non-aggressive ghost for power-up points. Over the course of the game these shots can really drain film reserves so it’s best not to waste the good stuff on them.

Combat itself is tightened up since the prior entry though it’s still nerve racking and requires development of a skillset unique to the game. Once a ghost becomes hostile and targets the player a meter on the bottom right of the screen glows red. The closer the player is to facing the ghost the brighter the bar will glow. Ghosts phase in and out of the visual plane, however so they can be hard to see and harder to spot in the smaller camera view finder once the camera is brought up. They are most often seen at first as visual distortions in the screen, resolving into decaying and creepy figures as they close to attack range. The longer the camera is focused on a target the more damage a shot will do. Sometimes, though, even if the camera is focused and the target is clearly seen a shot won’t work. Only if the ring surrounding the crosshairs is yellow will the shot do some damage. But what the player really wants is to wait until the ghost is attacking or in specific animations unique to each ghost. Then, the ring will flash red, leading to a shot that will do much more damage, knock back and briefly stun the ghost, allowing Mio to maneuver if she needs to. Sometimes there will be critical strike opportunities, called fatal frames, within these bonus shot opportunities. Various upgrades will make these fatal frame shots easier to identify and more common, helping the player keep up with a rapidly increasing difficulty curve into the late game.

While Fatal Frame 2 isn’t very graphically impressive they do some good things with cinematography and manipulate color saturation to really highlight the points they’re trying to make visually. The real standout is the audio, which I have been told has been deliberately mixed with tones in such a way as to make people uncomfortable. It really works, especially if the player isn’t paying attention. The game delights in training pavlovian responses into the player, so they know when they’re in danger and often who exactly is coming for them and yet the often linear nature of the game forces them onwards into scares made the worse by their anticipation. It’s lovely, and between the audio, story telling and consistent tone and feeling of fragility to Mio’s character it leaves most players in a sustained state of fear all the way through.

This game has a few flaws but the end result is so much more than the sum of its parts for horror fans. It isn’t often that a game manages to pull off true, sustained fear for ten or more hours of gameplay while really exploring the adversaries and their motivations. The Fatal Frame franchise marries ghost based horror to a larger sense of cosmic dread inherent to their world that makes the first three games in this series oh so special. I can’t recommend this game enough to anyone who might have missed it when it first came out or is looking to delve into the back catalogs of the golden age of survival horror gaming.

[m39]

History of the Creed - Part 4.5: The Tyranny of King Washington

The Tyranny of King Washington is an interesting case of an expansion (yes, I call all three episodes combined an expansion). While there were mission packs in two previous games, this one might be the first one on such a scale. I might be over-exaggerating what I’ve said but still, there are over 20 main memories in all of the episodes combined.

Okay, I think that’s enough of rambling. Let’s get to the review.

THE TYRANNY OF KING WASHINGTON (The original PC release in Europe: February 20th (Infamy), March 20th (Betrayal), and April 23rd (Redemption), 2013)

The version I played was, again, the remastered version released on March 29th, 2019.

STORY

Sometime after the events of the main game, Connor suddenly wakes up in the alternative timeline, where George Washington found the Apple of Eden, which made him go mad with power and take the title of King Washington. So now it’s up to Connor, now having the powers of spirit animals, to stop the Mad King himself.

So the story is more bonkers than the main game, and that says a lot since we are talking about Assassin’s Creed. Overall I enjoyed it. It’s probably slightly better than the base game’s plot. I like how the expansion is a Mohawk powerhouse experience in the nutshell.

CHARACTERS

I think Connor is also slightly better here than in the base game. Not only does he have to experience the trauma of losing everything he loves again but it’s also implied that with each sky journey he takes, he becomes more hungry for power, showing that he’s closer to the grey area than what we saw in the base game.

As for the secondary characters, it’s mostly positive. Giving Ben Franklin a bigger role than in the base was definitely a good idea. Thomas Jefferson finally shows up – sure, he only appears in the last episode and he doesn’t exactly show much of a character but still, it’s good that he finally appears. The cameos of some of the Homestead community was cute. On the other hand, some of the characters are here just to die like these two native guys in episode 1.

Since George Washington is now our main bad guy, the question is: Does he do a good job at it? Well… it looks like he is. He nicely changes his moods from ravaging dog, to calm, even though he mostly stays in the former mood type. Also, having Israel Putman on the side of the bad guys was a very good choice due to his voice actor.

GAMEPLAY

I said earlier about how Connor has new powers based on the spirit animals. Throughout all of the episodes, you earn 4 new powers to tremendously help you. In episode 1, you get the Wolf Cloak and Wolf Pack. The former one makes you invisible, while the latter one summons three wolves that one-hit-kill their targets. The second episode has the Eagle Flight, allowing you to quickly move through the terrain. The last episode gives you the Bear Might, a powerful shockwave that can kill everyone close to Connor.

All of these abilities are very good but I was mostly using three first of them (especially Eagle Flight). The Bear Might has a chance to also kill civilians and that’s the reason why it’s not as much used by me like the rest.

ACTIVITIES

In this expansion, there are three side activities to do. The first one is helping the civilians – giving them food, freeing them from convoys, etc. This can be kinda’ annoying since you will eventually have to run around like a madman if you want to complete them all.

Chests are back and there are two types of them: Small ones that have ammo in them, and the big, locked ones, that while they function the same as the small ones, they can have an upgrade to your arsenal or a new weapon. If you want to, big chests are only worth your time. Open the small ones only if you lack ammunition, and even then, I think it would be faster to just loot the guards’ bodies.

The last type of side activities is finding the Lucid Memory Fragments. There are three of these per episode and the best way to find them is to go after the bigger chests. Once you collected them, there is an award for you somewhere on the map. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but let me tell you – it’s really worth it.

STABILITY

In the case of bugs, I was lucky to not bump into the game-breaking ones. There were although two that were noticeable for me. The first one was when I was trying to open the cages from the convoy but I couldn’t because the place where you are supposed to open them moved away dozens of meters from it. It happened twice to me. The second bug was when a bunch of wild hares came in unison to the Bostonian fort while I was trying to steal the captain’s horse.

There was however one really nasty bug that I’ve heard about. In episode 1, if you do any side activity, or even activate it, you will make the last mission of this episode unbeatable, and the only way to fix it is to start the entire episode again or, in a worse case, reinstall the entire game. Because of this reason, I didn’t go after anything in episode 1 and I want you to do the main missions only run if it’s the first time you are playing it.

SUMMARY

The Tyranny of King Washington is a very good expansion to Assassin’s Creed 3. It extends the character of Connor while giving him animal powers and fighting Washington himself. Honestly, I won’t be surprised if you will find this more enjoyable than the base game.

I could have said more about this but the rest of the stuff is basically the same as it was in the base game. Same combat, same parkour mechanics, same graphics, same sound effects, etc.

However, before we will move on to Black Flag, there is one game in the series that I haven’t played, that was only on PS Vita before.

See you next time.

Bye!

[entergamingxp]

The Third Remastered Review — All About Family

May 21, 2020 10:01 AM EST

Saints Row: The Third Remastered is a mediocre port of one of the best games from the last generation.

Saints Row: The Third is, in many ways, the best Fast & Furious game ever made. Granted, that’s not a high bar to cross. At least until Fast & Furious Crossroads finally comes out. However, both franchises share quite a few similarities that make them excellent. Both are unabashedly bombastic, providing first act spectacle that any other game or movie would save for the climax. Saints Row and F&F know they have so much more left in the tank that they aren’t afraid to hit you with the good stuff early.

Both franchises are also perfectly fine being silly. Saints Row definitely goes further down that route, but scenes like the Oscar-worthy “ejecto seato cuz” would translate seamlessly. I mean, Roman Pearce is basically a Saints Row character, to be honest. Heck, they even both have offshoots that are terrible representations of what makes the franchises great. I’m looking at you, Agents of Mayhem and Hobbs & Shaw.

Most importantly, both series are all about family. The over-the-top stunts are going to be the biggest talking point, but seeing a ragtag group of criminals come together as a family is what these games and movies are all about.

“Seeing a ragtag group of criminals come together as a family is what these games are all about.”

I say all this not just because I love to talk about Fast & Furious. Certainly, that’s part of it, but mostly, it’s just to illustrate that Saints Row isn’t just about explosions and sex dolls. It’s a series with heart and characters that you come to care about over the course of the series. And Saints Row: The Third is, by far, the best game in the franchise. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it was the best game released in 2011. Sorry, Skyrim.

But what about the Remaster? In 2020, we’ve already seen one of the most beloved games of all time get an absolutely dreadful remake in Warcraft 3: Remastered. We’ve also seen how great remasters can be in this generation with games like Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus. Where does Saints Row: The Third Remastered fall in that line graph of garbage to genuinely great?

The short answer is, somewhere in the middle. Make no mistake, Saints Row: The Third is still a great game. If you’re talking fun per minute in open-world games, SR3 is one of the best. The missions are bonkers, the open-world activities are generally awesome, and the characters are just such loveable assholes. Even that doofus Pierce.

This is a game that goes from gigantic gang warfare to singing a duet of “What I Got” by Sublime to murderous wrestling matches to a full-scale zombie invasion without batting an eye. It’s ridiculous excess at its absolute best. There just aren’t many other games that embrace fun in the same way SR3 does, and even in 2020, I couldn’t put it down.

That being said, most of that is just what was present in the original game. And, even though it’s a good time, much of it feels dated. For example, there’s no fast travel, which quickly becomes a pain when you’re trying to mop up activities and collectibles. The combat was fine at launch, but time has not been kind. I would still call it serviceable at worst, but if you’re looking for a cutting-edge third-person shooter, this ain’t it. Weirdly, I still find the driving pretty fun for a non-driving game. It’s not replacing Forza anytime soon, but it gets the job done.

The real problem is that the remaster seems like the most basic job you could possibly do. I’m sure the game technically looks better, but I didn’t really notice much. I also don’t remember Saints Row: The Third being this full of bugs and glitches, though maybe I’m viewing that through purple-tinted glasses. Certainly, the jank was there, but the remaster has either done nothing to fix it or made it worse. Either of which seems like a big negative given the game is almost a decade old.

“Running around Steelport with my Homies again has me more than excited for whatever Saints Row 5 ends up being.”

For the most part, these bugs weren’t game-breaking. Commonly, I would try to hop into a car or on a motorcycle, and then the vehicle would get stuck in the road. Sometimes this would result in me taking a bunch of damage. Other times, I would just have to hop off and find a new bike. That one got eaten by whatever weird cement god was plaguing my gameplay. There were also some odd lighting glitches in places, and don’t even try to fly at night. You literally can’t see anything except for vague outlines of buildings with the draw distance being so low.

Again, did any of these truly harm my playing experience? Not really. It’s annoying, sure. And I could easily see it upsetting others way more than me. However, outside of one hard crash, the bugs felt like an extra helping of Bethesda open-world jank thrown into my Saints Row game.

At the end of the day, I would only really recommend the SR3 remaster if you didn’t play the original. I just don’t think the additions are worth sullying your memories with a less than stellar remaster. Don’t get me wrong, the core Saints Row experience is very much still a Saints’ Flow-soaked treat. It’s just a treat that was perhaps better left as a memory if this was all they wanted to do with it.

The big positive, at least for me, is that running around Steelport with my Homies again has me more than excited for whatever Saints Row 5 ends up being. They lost the plot a bit with Saints Row 4, but I’m hopeful that, much like the great Han Seoul-Oh, SR5 can rise from the ashes as something greater.

May 21, 2020 10:01 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/the-third-remastered-review-all-about-family/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-third-remastered-review-all-about-family

[bltngames]

Gut Check: Sonic Central 2021

When Sega announced Sonic Mania, there was an undeniable electricity. A moment of, "wait, WHAT?!" upon seeing who was working on that game and what it looked like. With the way it builds up and then unveils itself, it was the perfect reveal. I'll admit, as a Sonic fan, it even made me a little misty-eyed. We did it. They did it. I may have my complaints about Sonic Mania now that it's out, but those are weird, personal complaints that I still haven't entirely, accurately unpacked. If someone told me Sonic Mania was their favorite Sonic game ever, I would smile and nod, and think, "yeah, it was kind of amazing they pulled that off." And then I'd think of that reveal again, and the impact it had, and how the music swells at just the right points. The hearts of many Sonic fans soared that day.

I cannot say the same for the Sonic Central 2021 announcement stream. And to tell the truth, this isn’t an article I really wanted to write (though some of that is because I had immediate knee-jerk reactions over on my personal blog).

Look, I get it. There was a pandemic last year. It's still a pandemic right now, actually. Things were weird and will continue to be weird for at least another year, possibly even two or three, as the effects of covid on the work place environment continue to ripple outwards. But the thing is, this isn't my first rodeo, and it's not Sega's first time botching something like this. Five years ago, it was Sonic's 25th anniversary (the fun number everyone treats as a real serious milestone) and while that live event was where the magical Sonic Mania reveal took place, there’s plenty of clips of how awkward and bizarre the rest of that event was. Some of the misplaced hype for this 30th Anniversary can be blamed on a hungry fandom who was getting punchy without any news, but this is also the company that gave us Sonic 2006 as part of Sonic’s 15th anniversary celebration, you know? There’s almost a precedent being set here, where Sega talks a big game only to trip and spill their chili all over the carpet.

So what do we have, then? Beyond the brilliantly deranged idea of putting Mascot Suit Sonic in to several games and hiding a port of Sonic the Fighters inside of a different, $70 game, Sonic Central really revolved around three major announcements: Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, Sonic Origins Collection, and a mysterious teaser that almost instantly stopped being mysterious once it was discovered how little Sega did to protect its secret.

Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition was definitely one of Sega’s worse kept secrets. It had leaked from multiple sources weeks ahead of the announcement, and managed to make a pretty underwhelming display on stream. The issue was something common with remasters of this type -- it’s something I guess we could call “The George Lucas Effect,” where needlessly twiddling with an already-finished product slowly makes it worse. We’ve seen this before -- the lighting in “Batman: Return to Arkham” looks noticeably worse than the original Arkham Asylum trilogy, and “Mass Effect Legendary Edition” boasts improved skin rendering and higher resolution textures that just make those games look more inhuman.

For a big release like this from a major publisher, deadlines must be met, which means there’s little time to delicately repaint textures or make sure lighting looks totally correct. Still, more often than not, preserving the original visual identity of a game is more important than whatever clumsy touch-ups most publishers put these games through. For Colors Ultimate, this manifested in significantly darker lighting and lower quality lightbloom, dramatically impacting the mood of some levels.

In the days since the Sonic Central stream, evidence has mounted that the trailer shown during the stream featured an older build than anticipated. Better looking screenshots of a more recent build surfaced from Famitsu, and a technical artist working on the game revealed short video clips through an ArtStation account that made the game look a bit more accurate to how it originally appeared in 2010 (that Artstation post has now been removed). Though, if we’re being honest, whatever style of lightbloom they’re using still makes the game look pretty washed out. Hopefully that’s still being tweaked.

What’s most curious is how much they’re actually changing about Sonic Colors. The more we learn the less it sounds like a port and more like a complete recoding of the game using Godot, an open source game engine similar to Unity. Promised features include not only enhanced framerates and “improved controls” (whatever that means), but even a rudimentary cosmetics system, with Sonic being able to wear different shoes and gloves. Other additions include the ability to race against Metal Sonic, and a restructured lives system, where Tails rescues you from bottomless pits. It’s a far cry from the days of Taxman and Stealth’s Retro Engine remakes of Sonic 1 and 2 for mobile phones, where it was said that Sega rejected simple bonus features like a boss rush mode because they’d rather “preserve the original experience.” For Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, it appears they’re going hog wild changing and adding new things.

On the subject of Retro Engine remakes of classic Sonic games, we have the Sonic Origins Collection. It’s not really known if these are the same "Retro Engine" versions made popular on phones and tablets, but they have confirmed that all five games will be in 16:9 wide screen and have additional bonus features. That certainly sounds like Retro Engine to me, but we’ll need to wait and see. The Retro Engine versions had a lot of little nips and tucks that made those games even better than they originally were, so it would be great to have those specific versions on a proper console at long last.

The big shocker here is the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. In recent years, Sega has avoided even referencing Sonic 3 in anything -- it was missing in action from the console versions of the Genesis Classics Collection, Sega rejected a Taxman and Stealth Retro Engine remake, it was missing from the Genesis Mini, and Sega even seemed adverse to referencing Sonic 3 in casual conversation. The example I always use is the “Sega Tower Mini”, a fake accessory for the Genesis Mini that included a miniaturized Sega CD, 32X, and a fake cartridge of Sonic & Knuckles. But, instead of locking on to a Sonic 3 cart, the Sega Tower Mini came with a Sonic 1 cartridge instead. There almost seemed to be an agenda to bury its existence.

That has changed over the last few months, as Sega’s social media accounts have begun hinting at Sonic 3 in things like wallpapers and character profiles. Now that we know the game is finally coming back for real, we’re faced with a question: what of the music? Depending on who at Sega you ask and when, there have been opposing claims that Michael Jackson both was and was not involved in composing some of the game’s soundtrack. As I mentioned in my video a couple years ago, it sounded like there was some legal trouble, as Jackson collaborators Scirocco Jones and Bobby Brooks were claiming Sega owed them unpaid royalties for their very real, credited work on Sonic 3. Has Sega finally made peace with those two? Or have the offending music tracks been replaced, now that an alternate, prototype version of the Sonic 3 soundtrack has been recovered? Only time will tell, I suppose.

It’s exciting to think that this may mean the Retro Engine versions could finally be seeing a home console release, but it’s hard to ignore what a mess this will look like on the consumer end, given just how often some of these games have been re-released in the last few years. For Nintendo Switch owners, it’ll be possible to buy Sonic 1 and 2 as part of the Sega Ages collection, as part of the Genesis Classics Collection, and now as part of this new Sonic Origins collection. And each of those versions will have been produced independently of each other, with different features and extras. Sega Ages Sonic 2 features the drop dash from Sonic Mania and a special ring challenge mode, whereas the Genesis Classics version of Sonic 2 has emulator rewinds and a mirror mode. Sega has always leaned on re-releases of old Sonic games, but never has the market been this over-saturated.

Which lastly brings us to the stream's "One More Thing" reveal -- a cryptic video of Sonic running through a forest followed by some glyphs. Sega's always been a fan of mysterious promotions for Sonic games, dating all the way back to 2000's reveal of Sonic Adventure 2, where they spent months teasing the identity of Shadow the Hedgehog and his role in the game. The teaser shown during Sonic Central was so lacking in context and content that I honestly found it difficult to care. In order to set up a mystery, you should probably actually, like... tease something mysterious, right? There wasn’t enough here to grab on to.

You also have to consider the fact that, after the poor reception to games like Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces, Sega doesn't have much goodwill to cash in on cryptic hints these days. It's not a good time to be shy about what the next Sonic game is going to be.

Graciously, the mystery didn't last long. The community ended up getting their hands on the source-quality version of the teaser given to the press, and noticed the file's embedded project header mentioned it was for something called "Rangers." That same day, Sega accidentally referred to a "Sonic Rangers" in a press release that was later scrubbed of that detail. This name was quickly cross-referenced with imageboard posts made last year from people who were apparently in a focus group test for a game called "Sonic Rangers." When the posts were originally made there was no reason to believe they were legitimate, but combined with the newfound context of Sega confirming the name, it began to paint a picture of the game that just might be true.

Going by the alleged focus group posts -- one in August of last year, and another in January of this year -- Sonic Rangers is an open world game where players run around a semi-realistic fantasy setting, completing puzzles and doing rudimentary quests. A new ability was talked about named "SpinCycle," where Sonic runs loops around enemies, sounding similar to the "paraloop" ability from Sonic Team’s NiGHTS: Into Dreams for the Sega Saturn. After completing puzzles in the open world, players can enter portals to "cyberspace" levels, which were described as being the most similar to levels from Sonic Generations. Completing a cyberspace level earned you a Chaos Emerald, and after collecting all seven, a boss could be faced: a massive titan the player had to fight as Super Sonic. Both focus group posts implied they understood this was only a small piece to demonstrate the mechanics.

For many years, I was against the idea of an open world Sonic game. There was definitely a fad during the PS2 and Xbox 360 eras where developers were trying to make all games open world. Racing games, platformers, sports games like Tony Hawk, it didn't matter. Everyone was trying to copy Grand Theft Auto's success, whether it made sense or not. This led to a lot of boring, forgettable open world games -- like Total Overdose, or State of Emergency. Whenever the community would bring up the possibility of an open world Sonic game, it felt more like cashing in on that fad rather than a desire to have a good game.

But as the dust settled on the open world gold rush and developers figured out what worked and what didn't, I began to have a change of heart. Sonic games generally have problems with repetition. Usually, there's a resource or some other collectable that must be gathered before you can unlock the next level, and that means replaying levels you've already finished multiple times. I've been developing a theory about this: in addition to padding the clock out in order to make the games longer, I think they're also trying to coax the player to replay levels for faster times or perfecting scores, because I'd argue that’s where most of the real fun is in Modern Sonic games. But not everybody is always into that, and depending on how it's presented, it can feel like tedious busy work.

Racing games eventually figured this out. Whereas before, racing games had discrete time trial modes that let you learn the layout of a track and practice to get faster times, the advent of an open world did away with that. By repeatedly traveling between locations on the map, players learn the layout of streets and roads naturally without it feeling so much like work. This could also be theoretically applied to Sonic games, where the grind of replaying stages over and over could be mitigated by incorporating it into the natural traversal of an open world.

The problem is, that's not exactly what the Sonic Rangers leak claims. It's an open world game, sure, but from the way it sounds, it also includes traditional linear Sonic levels in their own separate little sub-world. The problem is still there, just buried under another layer of abstraction.

But it's important to remember that Sonic Rangers is probably a year and a half away. For a professional game development studio with hundreds of employees, even a few months can lead to dramatic, sweeping changes. The people who were part of the focus test also say as much -- if Sega was getting feedback on Sonic Rangers all the way back in August (or as some posts claim, even March) of last year, there is plenty of time for them to course-correct and get things right before its release next year.

Now, I'm not dumb. This is Sonic the Hedgehog we're talking about. Statistically speaking, there are more bad Sonic games than good ones, and I say that as someone who was around and can remember the kind of impact Sonic had back when he first debuted. I know some of you out there will say things like, "Sonic Heroes was a good game!" -- but consider that by 1990's standards, Sonic the Hedgehog was as big as today's Call of Duty, or Fortnite. Sonic wasn't just a big deal, he was one of the biggest deals in all of gaming, and his games were golden. That was 30 years ago, and games like Sonic Heroes are a big step down in quality. Heck, even Sonic Heroes is going on 20 years ago. Getting something like Sonic Mania nowadays feels more like a happy accident than setting up any kind of precedent or return to form. There is a bare minimum skepticism that must be maintained with these games, otherwise you're setting yourself up for more heartbreak.

And I've always maintained that a lot of the bad Sonic games at least started with a good core idea. You can always see the potential in what they were attempting, but because of either time constraints, budget limitations, or some other weak link in their development pipeline, they never reach that potential once they end up on store shelves. Which, really, makes things even more heartbreaking. There are only so many times you can watch someone drop the ball before it starts to affect you.

There's still a long road ahead of Sonic Rangers. Let's see what E3 brings.