Daymare: 1998

 

Daymare 1994 started off as a Resident Evil 2 remake before the official Capcom one actually  existed. It garnered much fan attention and somewhere along the line, Capcom took notice and invited the Daymare devs a vacation to Capcom offices to discuss with them that they can't make RE2, but they were happy to give advice on forming a new IP. So, It seems they took a lot of that work and created this new game instead.

As the game starts, it asks you a bunch of mode selection questions. Like do you want to play "Classic mode" or "Modern mode". By default its on Classic, so I went with that. It also says thats the way "its intended to play". Also theres 3 difficulty, with hardest saying "You will hate the devs"  so of course I just went with medium as well.
The game is in third person over the shoulder like Re4 or the modern RE games, and it starts off with some pretty impressive graphics and voice acting. You start off as this military guy wearing all sorts of tactical gear, in this facility complex to complete various objectives. The game has a bunch of tutorials to try to ease you into all the mecahncis, theres quite a bit to learn here. Its got this PDA inventory system (which is pretty slow to pull up) that lets you manage your gear and look at the map as well as get more details about the current objective. A unique interesting mechanic you have to learn is the magazine reloading system. Unlike most other games, you actually have magazines in your inventory that take up space, that you have to individually load bullets into. Then, when your gun runs empty, you can either do a Fast reload to quickly drop the magazine on ground, or Hold the reload button to do a slower reload, but it doesnt drop the mag. It creates this tension and stress everytime youre fighting zombies and you need to make a decision what kind of reload to do, then the suspense of dropping your mags on the ground and having to pick them back up after the fight, its immersive too. Usually, though, I just spent my time constantly opening the inventory to manually load the bullets into the gun instead, leaving the magazines for emergency situations.

The game has 5 chapters, and surprisingly you play as 3 different characters. Chapter 1 is all about playing that military guy, going through this creepy facility but ultimately at the end of chapter 1 he gets killed and you never play as him again. The other chapters you play as this other military guy, and a random civilian that wants to get revenge for his wifes death caused by one of the military people.

The game has some really crazy puzzles. Theres a lot of them. Even in the first chapter within the first 30 minutes or so youre already doing multiple puzzles. Theyre challenging, but ultimately satisfying and  fun for the most part. Some of them are just bonkers and way too hard or obscure, though. For instance even on the very first chapter, around the end of it, you have to do this insane puzzle dealing with a Greek keyboard and trying to decipher these ambiguous codes written on a bunch of paintings on the wall. It's pretty baffling, most people probably looked it up, I didnt but I think it took me over an hour to figure it out. Theres a lot more crazy puzzles as well, halfway through the game you have this town square with a fake Compass map in the middle that mistakingly lies about where North is, so I just spent an hour trying to do the puzzle being lied to about which direction I was facing. Another interesting but fun puzzle is in Chapter 4 theres this radio tower where you have to listen to and decipher Morse code by looking at a computer that shows and lets you listen to all the various morse code symbols. So yeah its a true to the spirit Resident evil kind of clone game, it goes even harder on the puzzles than most RE games but for the most part they're well done, with a few bullshit parts.

The zombies for the most part look awesome, the model details and texture and graphics here are great I like how a lot of the models look its pretty threatening. The weird thing is zombies dont bite you in this game, they just grab you and vomit in your face while you can mash A to escape. Not a big deal just found it kinda odd. They operate like typical zombies otherwise, slowly shambling around but actually some of them can randomly start sprinting at you so they are actually unpredictable and engaging, its not boring zombie AI. Theres a lot of multiple types of them too, some of them are these big hulking mutant things that just run directly at you and can facetank shotgun blasts a few times before they get stunned, further increasing the adrenaline.

The game has almost so bad its good cutscenes and voice acting. It's almost like they on purpose hammed up some of the voice acting as a call back to how corny and over the top RE1 voice acting was. If anything, its just entertaining as hell. The writing and dialogue either makes me constantly laugh out loud with its constant swearing and ...creative phrases. The cutscenes are mostly over the top insane shit youd never expect. Like at the end of chapter 1 you see the guys in a helicoptor and then suddenly the commander guy just starts shooting everyone after some macho bro argument its like what? its amazing to watch, especially how cheap and plastic doll the cutscene graphics look, its obviously low budget and 'shitty', but in the good way that campy B tier 80s horror movies are, its just fun entertainment and wacky but suitable writing that just works to set the tone and overarching mood of the game. Yeah its just kind of a generic Resident evil type plot, where theres a big evil corporation that created zombies, some guys wife works there and had a hand in it so the Military bros you play as murdererd her, then you play as the civillian guy for a couple chapters trying to track them down to get revenge, while snapping back and forth between the civilian character POV and the 2 military guys. While the story isnt creative or original, it just works and doesnt wear out its welcome or give you constant lore dumps, well, atleast not until the very end of the game where they give a bunch of lore dumps for like 20 mins after end credits that was a bit out of place.

I also especially like how your characters will dynamically comment on actions happening in the game. Sometimes when his ammo is low, he'll mutter "Sure would be nice if there was an ammo box"  or if hes in a close call with zombies he'll say "Youre one ugly on of a bitch" and so on, its just the little touches like that which makes the game more of a complete atmospheric experience. The game also has some pretty awesome sound design, especially the creepy music at parts and the echoing effects in the distance, eerie machinery noises and beeping, zombies sound good and so on.

The game has a decent variety of locations, too. Chapter 1 is that industrial complex + lab place, Chapter 2 you suddenly start off as the civillian guy working at a forestry outpost, then you make your way through some cable car stations and into a Hospital. This part is this almost Silent hill esque hospital where you play as the civilian whos having constant psychotic delusions of his wifes death, all the while making your way through this hospital trying to interact with this doctor behind a locked door and do his tasks for him. It's pretty enjoyable, the hospital section was probably the most eerie and creepy place in the game it almost did feel like something out of Silent Hill. It's got the first 'boss' encounter too which is this guy called a Melted Man that you have to defeat, its pretty easy but the thing is it becomes a somewhat common enemy after this.  Something sort of weird is how the game has a big emphasis on the magazine system, but for most of the game you have access to a Shotgun with abundant amounts of ammo, completely bypassing having to deal with magazines. Thats another thing, on the "intended experience" default difficulty setting, the game is very plenty on the ammo pickups. Its not like classic RE where you need to be constantly worried about missing one or two shots, they give you so much ammo in this game you wont know what to do with it, clogging up your limited space inventory. It's not a problem really, because the combat is fun and the game isn't too easy for the most part, but its just something worth noting. Then, Chapter 3 almost looks like a directly ripped level from when they were woring on Re2 Remake. Its the city streets level which is very reminisant of Resident evil 2 streets. Theres a gun shop, the basketball court place, all sorts of familliar, yet different sights and sounds. I liked it, its a really cool throwback to classic RE but also it has its own spin on it. Then, after the streets and the dreaded compass puzzle, it has you going through a sewer level, but with constant psychotic delusions and spooky psychological horror things happening, its actually a decent sewer level. Chapter 4 is unfortunately the weakest one in the game, mostly because it just rehashes the streets of Chapter 3. Its almost the same level, but this time in reverse. So you work your way back through the streets, to get into this resturant and then find a valve to bypass a puzzle.

The objectives are usually easy to figure out, and if you go to the map screen it will give you a bit more info if needed, but rarely sometimes the objectives can be the kind of "what the fuck do I do" kinda shit. Like here in chapter 4, you get to a point where its like "Find the missing valve by the construction site" and you can backtrack the entire city level looking for it, which I did multiple times. What the objective should have said to not be so vauge and annoying was something like "Find missing valve at construction site BY THE HOTEL" - That would have made more sense because it made you go to the Hotel previously, so I know where that is, and would have prevented annoying worthless running in circles. Not a big deal, just a small gripe that sometimes happens. After you work your way back through the whole level you basically already played, you finally get some new content by going outside to these gas stations and trailer parks. So its cool that the game does have a bunch of outdoors sections, and the atmosphere here is great with nice rain effects and ambient sounds. This is where the morse code puzzle is, and then the first real big boss fight. The boss here I is just a big enemy that you need to sprint around in circles and doge and get some shots in, thrilling and a welcome addition but nothing mindblowing.

Chapter 5 is the shortest chapter about an hour long, just takes place as the military guy inside of the main laboratory of the outbreak, a classic and typical RE style ending sequence where you make your way through a lab, find the big bad final boss which is you locked in a room with explosives everywhere that seemingly do nothing but stun him for a second, the real goal is to lure the boss into a middle platform and electrocute him there with a button. This part looks pretty cool but I found it frustrating and I failed quite a few times but im not gonna say its a bad sequence or anything. The part after this kinda sucks though, suddenly youre being chased through narrow hallways and theres quick time events randomly where you have to simon says random buttons to open doors, but then the boss can also do this animation where he one hits you and crushes your head (which looks cool) but is just annoying and kinda bullshit because of shoddy hitboxes and trigger zones. After this, you get to the final boss fight which is some outdoors area where you just gotta shoot the guy as much as possible and bait him around corners, end cutscene with this hilarious over the top drama and voice acting, then after end credits you get suddenly a first person segment walking through some Lab and looking at a computer watching cutscenes and reading logs with a bunch of lore. Ok so thats Daymare. It's an awesome game overall, I had a great time, its the perfect length of about 8 hours long it definitely catches your attention for just long enough and never gets boring. I especially like how the devs seem passionate and are real hardcore survival horror fans because theres just pop culture references absolutely everywhere in the game , on the walls, grafiti, arcade machines (Full Life 3, lol) and so on, which just makes exploring the world really exciting and fun and also funny. Theres a sequel coming out soon called Daymare: Sandcastle so I'm actually quite hyped to play that one now, too. 

8/10

Diablo IV

 

Being a lifelong fan of Diablo 1 and 2 I was extremely disappointed by the release of Diablo 3. In short, it was nothing like the previous games and more something like Wow. With that said, I didnt have any hopes for Diablo 4 and put it out of my mind. Shortly after D4 release I had a chance to play it as much as I wanted so I completed the campaign and have been playing a lot of the endgame too.

Diablo 4 first impression is that it atleast tried to steer away from the aesthetics and tone of Diablo 3, its much darker and stern and serious and gritty more like Diablo 2, but at the same time theres a lot of places about the presentation where I'm again disappointed and it feels like Diablo 3.5. One of the major disappointments for me is the Inventory, no longer do you have these beautiful big sprite representations of your gear like D2, but you have these tiny cubes where you can barely see what the item is supposed to be, it looks more like the WoW inventory. I don't know, but for me, in these item collectahon games its actually really important for me to have a cool inventory where its satisfying to look at and sift through items, Its not really the case here. The inventory doesn't even look hand decorated or designed it looks more like a Microsoft office grid or something. Theres no longer any 'inventory tetris' where you have to figure out how to place items yourself, which Im sure some people like, but for me its just stupid how a giant 2 hand sword takes up the same space as a pair of cloth shoes, it makes the items less tangible and feel more like stupid pieces of stats than real pieces of gear.

Anyway, heres 5 classes to choose from, its sadly missing some classics such as Paladin which I'm sure they will charge for later, I chose the Barbarian. The combat works where you have 2 skills on your left right clicks, then 4 skills on your hotbar 1234. However, every class also has a Resource management thing to deal with. So basically, mana. But for Barbarian its called Fury, for Necromancer its called Essence, etc. What this means is as you look through the skill tree, which is decently laid out and isnt overly complex and isnt too simple,  you will see some skills called Basic skills which use no resources, but then other skills such as Core skills use Resource (fury). So essentially what ends up happening is for a large portion of the game you're stuck using the most basic level 0 attack skill over and over desperately trying to build up enough Resource to be able to attack enemies with your actually satisfying good skill. I don't really like this system, Id actually just rather chug potions. There is no mana potion or resource potion, just health, and the enemies randomly drop health potions that you automatically collect upon walking over it. So you will constantly be fighting these enemies but find yourself having no Resource unable to use your cool skill, so you have to keep spamming the shitty basic skill to generate resource. It just doesnt feel very good and isnt a very elegant solution to the chugging mana pots thing, even after completing the campaign and playing the end game I sort of just find the whole system stupid like why am I being forced to use some shit level1 skill just as a placeholder to generate mana?

Other than that, the combat does feel satisfying ...mostly. Like Diablo 3, the game really wants you to look at all these damage numbers and text flying over the enemies heads when you attack them, again, like World of Warcraft. Diablo 1 & 2 doesnt have these tacky damage numbers shit. Yeah, you can disable it in the menu, but its like such a core integral component of the game youre missing vital information to where its almost unplayable without it. So while youre attacking these monsters you see these numbers flying all over the screen, occassionally telling you when you debuff enemies such as "Vulnerable" "Overpowered" and so on popping off. It just looks bad, it looks like a shitty chinese MMO game, not some horroresque medevial game, its just not immersive, I never liked when games do this. Path of Exile doesnt do this, and while PoE does a lot wrong, it definitely understood why this sort of thing is stupid in a Diablo type game.

Other than that, the campaign is mostly straight forward. The loot system here  is at first glance extremely dumbed down even from D1 or D2. Items have a green ^ arrow simply telling you when theyre better. Now, this isnt always reliable, but in the context of just the base campaign level 1-50, its good enough, and if you do nothing but just stare at the green arrow and equip it, youll always be more than strong enough to overcome anything in the campaign. Its kind of a problem, because most people probably quit the game after end credits, but theyve made all the loot so dumbed down during the campaign that it invalidates a huge portion of whats supposed to make Diablo games exciting. The kinds of stats you can roll on gear are nowhere near as large in variety or exciting as D2. Its stuff like Cooldown reduction, Vulnerability % dmg, Dmg to slowed enemies, Dmg % increase to Core skills, Dmg % to bleed enemies, Dmg % to slowed enemies, Crit % dmg increase, Crit % chance increase. Thats basically it, its just variations of those kind of things, besides the basic DPS stats which are calculated separately on the top part of an item a combination of the attack speed and wep damage. For defenses, just raw Armor value is all that matters , atleast during campaign. You can roll other stuff like % damage mitigation while fortified and a few other things, but for the most part its even more simple than the weapons. The game does have resistances, like early Diablo games resistances were huge, if you werent paying attention to your res, you were fucked. But actually in D4 the resistances are completely pointless. At first I was focused on stacking res like my instincts tell me to in a diablo game, but after awhile I was noticing that it didnt seem to matter. So I looked it up, and it turns out the way Resistances currently work is that they pretty much do nothing. Yep, thats right, the actual logic and coding of the game right now turns out that resistances basically have such a marginal effect that its virtually nothing. Ok then.

The main interesting point of the gear is this thing called Aspects which are these special powers you can put onto any item to turn any item legendary. These powers drastically alter how your character plays it can do all sorts of stuff such as turn your basic Hammer of ancients ability into a supercharged version that slams down a big AOE of lighting. So its a pretty big deal to be aware of these Aspects and put them on all your pieces of gear. The game has all sorts of side dungeons you can find on the map, and when you complete these dungeonsit guarantees you get a certain aspect. You can open the menu and go to Codex of Powers to view all the basic aspects in the game and even Pin it to map to go complete the dungeon of the exact  one you need. The basic Codex aspects you get from dungeons can be used infinitely, but are the lowest possible roll of that kind. You can find the same aspect off random items, which can roll randomly and be much stronger than the Codex versions. So it becomes this juggle of trying to find better versions of the ones you already have and trying to decide when to Imprint them because you cant remove an aspect once you put it on, you can only replace over it. Anyway it sounds like a complex system but its not that bad, its the most interesting part of the gear in the game, however I think the campaign could of done a better job introducing and explaining it.

So as I played the campaign, I was getting annoyed at how much damn dialogue , text, and cutscenes there are. Don't get me wrong, the cutscenes are very high budget and well done, but its like the kind of modern game slop where you get a chance to play for 5-10 mins, then you have to pause to watch some cinematic movie event for 10 mins , rinse repeat. Just have the damn gameplay without interruption, why are modern games like this? The game is basically an open world rpg, and it even tries to take influence from the fame of Elden Ring, because halfway through the campaign it gives you a horse to ride around on, it feels fine but the devs put all these roadblocks and barriers all over the map that the horse cant get over so you find yourself getting off the horse just to smack down a wooden fense then you have to wait 20 seconds for the horse ability to cooldown, what the fuck?

So yeah the campaign has way too much cinematic cutscenes and dialogue, I would frequently find myself annoyed having to stop and listen to people talk constantly or watch cutscenes, also none of the actual campaign missions were that memorable it was mostly like escort mission after escort mission or fetch quests, sometimes it tries to tap into your nostalgia for Diablo 2 by showing you old places like Tristram and old characters like Mephisto but it just feels like fan service and pandering more than anything. The game also has a odd lack of interesting or iconic music, instead going for lots of boring ambience and stock sounding tunes.

The actual open world of the game is pretty decent, theres obviously a lot of care and attention gone into crafting the world here, its darker and more gothic and gritty than D3 atleast, but I cant say theres really any big memorable places or locations really, its just alright.

Well I finished the campaign without much struggle, the game has 2 difficulties at default World tier 1 and 2, I picked 1 because people advised that was better for Barbarian. Well when you beat the campaign youre suppose to then do the endgame grind which is various activities you do over and over and over such as Helltides which are these hourly events where you go to a place on the open world and kill monsters to get coins to open chests, then you have Nightmare dungeons which are just harder versions of dungeons youve already beaten, then you have World events like big bosses you can fight in MMO style with random people which is pretty mindless, stuff like that.  The campaign was really not that great, the cinematics were the most impressive part, but the actual missions I basically forget them all. I remember at one point I was fighting Andariel from Diablo 2, that was cool I guess, but other than that the constant pacing issues and interruptions, the constant escourt missions, its a very meh campaign. Luckily the devs put an option that if you beat the campaign once, upon creating a new character theres an option to Skip Campaign so you dont have to do it again if you dont want to, which is really surprising and cool I guess.

Well Ive been playing the endgame a lot too and I have to say theres a lot to complain about here too. For one, theres this system called Renown which in every area of the map you have to get a certain amount of Points to unlock rewards such as extra Skill points, extra permanent health potions, extra Paragon points which is basically the 2nd skill tree after level 50. In total you can get 10 extra skill points, 20 extra paragon points. Its significant. What this means is that its basically mandatory to get the highest tier of Renown to make endgame fun and play as it should. To get renown you have to complete side missions and side dungeons in each area as well as a few other minor things. So what that means is I ended up doing nothing for hours but mindlessly grinding side quests and side dungeons just to get in a good place for end game. Not good. Even worse is this thing called Altars of Lilith which are 150 little statues placed around the map that give you permanent stat buffs to your character, people say getting all of these is basically mandatory for endgame so once again I had to look up a fucking map of all these things and spend a few days doing nothing but riding around my horse picking them up. Not. Fun.  Lastly, the experience grinds to a fucking hault after level 50 post campaign. It took me like 20 hours to go from 50->60 just grinding the same dungeons over and over from the campaign. Thats where I'm at. I'm planning to keep playing the game to experience all it has to offer, just because its Diablo. So i'll cut my review short here and say its obviously a very polished AAA game with a lot of money into it, its got a lot of things I dont like about it, It's not really the successor of D2 I still wanted to see, neither is PoE so that true successor still has to be made yet...  

5/10

Generation Zero

 

Generation Zero is this open world, co op campaign looter shooter game that I've had my eye on for a few years now, but kind of avoided because the only enemy in the game are robots, and I never really liked fighting robots in video games. Something about just shooting at plates of metal all day never felt satisfying so I always thought they were the least fun enemy type. Of course the main reason I picked it up (for cheap) was the co-op aspect, which I completed the game with.
 

The game starts where you've crash landed onto this remote Scandinavian island, a typical open world game where you must look at your big game map and select a main mission and traverse the environments to get there. Though, the first impression is good because the game uses the Avalanche engine which is rarely used, but it provides some incredible lighting and visuals that other engines rarely show off. Just things like how the light reflects off the ground, the moon shimmering through the trees, the way snow and rain falls across the screen, the depth of field in distance and the whole dynamic graphical presentation is just stunning. The sound design, is also one of the biggest highlights of the game, which is something I rarely notice or even touch on, but the sound design here is very well done. The guns in particular actually sound like guns in the contrast between the ambient sound of the environment and then the huge blasts of the guns really make it come across like you're firing a weapon, even if you turn the game sound down it still comes across like these things are almost deafening to fire, like in real life. So you have these long instances of just running, listening to the quiet ambience, then a gun blast goes off from your co-op partner and it is actually startling because of how almost realistic it sounds. Though, the game incorporates these synthwave techno type music tracks that just feel out of place and awkward with the rest of the whole sort of desolate STALKER type vibe the game is aiming at.


So the overall presentation of the game is very well done visually and sound wise. The presentation at first is also immersive because of the sort of desolate island you're placed on, its got all sorts of village houses that are seemingly hand crafted and manually curated, so its interesting to just go inside buildings and see the interior decorating of the places, how people lived, the attention to detail is pretty high. So The first 2 hours or so seem really promising, you quickly come across your first few enemies and these things are all sorts of variety of robots, first its like these animal type dog robots that prance around the fields sprinting away from you or at you, but eventually you come across all sorts of types of robots from flying UFO type things, to these gigantic spider mechs that are absolute bullet sponges that literally take like 10 mins of constant shooting to kill, to other more two legged soldier type bots. At first I wasnt quite sure if I really liked the whole robot vibe, but as the time in the game grew I still never really got into it... yeah, when you shoot the robots they make a huge spark and explosion bursts showing you hit them (theres no hitmarkers) ... but still, it was never quite clear if shooting them in the head or anywhere has any impact on the amount of damage, and shooting at brainless husks of metal still feels like youre just shooting at the side of a shack sort of.

So the game has all sorts of the standard looter shooter open world mechanics, you've got your skill trees with basic stuff like run speed, crafting type stuff, marginal upgrades to amount of health and damage you recieve. Nothing amazing here. Then you've got this 'profile' tab were you can equip different clothing, seemingly offering armor bonuses, but throughout my entire playthrough I never really found any armor that offers any notable bonuses, just random pieces of clothing and aesthetic things, so this entire feature seemed pointless on my playthrough.

The loot is just alright, its got the kind of Ubisoft colored loot like Grey is worst, Green is ok, Blue is great, Purple awesome, Yellow best etc...you can go around opening containers, crates, enemies, random dead humans on the ground like military soldiers or encampments. You pick up a lot of crafting stuff like Lead, plastics, linins, cloth which you can use at the fast travel bases to craft things like med kits and ammo, something I rarely felt necessary. The unfortunate thing about the looting is theres nothing much in the way of interesting armor or clothing, yes you can randomly find clothing but its almost always just aesthetic, the cloting and armor pieces seem to have no actual colored grade like the weapons did. But the best thing about the loot is the high variety of weapons you can find, theres all sorts of different guns, Magnums, lots of handguns, lots of assault rifles, rocket launchers, multiple shotguns, snipers, hunting rifles etc. You can get attachments to put on them too, the best one is Silencer which really feels useful in this game because the guns are actually so loud like they would be in real life you actually want to put a suppressor on them to make it more bearable during gunfights on your hearing, its immersive like that. But other than the thrill of finding a new higher colored tier weapon of the same gun you have, theres not much more exciting about the loot, and instead its constantly annoying having to accidentally not pickup useless crap like grenades, radios, mines, random objects, explosives etc to weigh yourself down. By default you can only carry 62lb of weight and its really easy to become overencombered, making yourself fumble with menus to get back to being able to sprint.

Speaking of sprint, its strangely designed here. You have a sprint meter which is incredibly short, even when fully upgraded, which lasts about only 1 second. After its depleted, you can still sprint, only slightly slower. This system just felt weird and stupid and pointless like I'm not going to wait for the tiny meter to replenish just to sprint 20% faster. Made me wonder if all my points into  sprint upgrades were pointless and a waste.

There are seemingly two vehicles in the game by default, a bicycle and later on a motorbike which you must add gas to and repair with kits if damaged. The problem, though, is the games map is very vertical and lots of mountains so more often that not its faster to just sprint everywhere because you can run up hills and mountains whereas the bikes struggle.

Now I get to the actual part where the game falls flat and made me have a bad time.
The entire loop of the game consists of, as per usual with a lot of bad open world games, picking a mission and spending the bulk of the gameplay simply travelling across the map just to start the mission. Now, once you finally arrive at the mission (sometimes after 10 mins of doing nothing but sprinting across the map) You do one or two things like pickup an object, destroy some object, kill a few enemies, then the mission is complete and you do it all over again.

It's bad and just boring.
I would say 75% of my playtime is doing nothing but holding sprint and running across the map to the next mission or staring at the map trying to figure out what fast travel places to go to which are closest.

It gets even worse when I realized that the game only drip feeds you 2 or 3 missions at a time, then you have to "Find a warboard" which means you need to find some underground bunker and find an objectives board inside it in order to get 2 or  3 new missions. So everytime you run out of missions, you have nothing to do but run around the map randomly until it tells you the location of the bunker to get more missions, or it even confusingly wastes your time by saying "Kill machines in X region and pickup 3 keycards to progress" - but it doesnt actually work and they dont actually drop keycards until you first find the bunker, so it just completely wastes your fucking time if you try to follow the objective. We once sat there shooting enemies for 40 minutes in some nonstop endless wave respawning event trying to find the keycards but none of them were dropping only to realize it doesnt work unless you do it around the bunker location, it just lies to you.

Other instances where the game just sucks and annoying is if you bother to fight enemies in the open world, it seems like they barely stop spawning and instead its like if you bother to try to shoot 3 enemies, it becomes this gigantic nonstop swarm of huge monster robots and respawning guys for like 20 minutes its just stupid. It also says weird shit like "Won combat" or "escaped combat" whenever you i guess 'successfully' complete a encounter? its just janky.

The map system and UI has problems too, in co-op for whatever reason, frequently only one person can see certain vital objects on the map such as fast travel points, main mission points etc. If one person selects a mission, it doesnt select it for the other person. It will randomly untrack the mission youve selected too and replace it with another one. It has a compass on top showing you missions, but its not useful because you cant select what appears on it. When you select a mission, it doesnt show you any indication on screen where it is. The best thing to do is manually place a waypoint on the map, which thankfully the co-op partner can see, and then just coordinating to run to that waypoint.

The game has all sorts of features its almost like a jack of all trades master of none. It has stalker vibes, but without the interesting mystique, the story is just boring chatter in your ear the whole time on a walkie talkie with like 2-3 voice actors max that sound like theyre lazily rading off a paper in Swedish accent, almsot like its just the programmers themselves being the voice actors. Its just something generic like you arrive on a deserted island full of killer robots but theres a few random Swedish people you can help to overcome them or something.

The game has these bunker segments where you gotta turn the power back on and capture the bunker, sometimes theres these gas covered rooms where you have to equip a gas mask on, the lighting in the bunkers is awesome and if you turn your flashlight off it gets pitch black so it has good atmosphere, but it just feels like a wasted opportunity because the enemies are just kind of lame little spider drones it has no real horror elements or anything really it just feels like a waste of a setting and engine use. It could have done so much more, the technology is there, just the setting and execution falls flat.

So after we spent hours just sprinting across the map for a dozen minutes, finally arriving at a mission location, spending 2-3 minutes tops doing some forgettable objective, then repeating the whole process, we suddenly came across what seemed like another mundane mission "Behind the curtain", barely thinking about it we just did it, ran into some lab with a guy mumbling about some techno bullshit then all of a sudden the whole screen started shaking that just looked like a bad graphics glitch then out of nowhere End Credits. What? The game didnt seem nowhere near the end, We hadnt discovered all the main missions and warboards? I still have main missions left? Why is it giving me end credits? I was completely baffled by this shit. Apparently we accidentally ran to the end mission despite being at mission 28/43 and unlocked the end credits. Well, okay. I'm fine with just ending the game here. It's fucking stupid. I'm sick of spending 15 minutes sprinting across the map just to do a 2 minute long objective that sucked ass anyway. The open world sucks, the enemies suck, they never stop respawning so fighting them feels pointless, by this point I already had multiple purple and yellow guns. The game probably has all sorts of other shit and end game post-campaign crap like all these other kind of modern open world games do, but I've had enough. The only things the game has going for it is the cool deserted Scandinavian island, the amazing Avalanche engine technology, the weapons actually are really fun to use and feel great and the sound design is awesome, but basically everything else is either meh or just designed like shit.

5/10

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint

 


Breakpoint is yet another Ubisoft open world exploration looter shooter, something they've been pumping out with high frequency like Division 1, 2, Far cry series etc. At least these Ghost Recon games are co-op like the previous Wildlands. Breakpoint was released just a few months after Division 2 (which I liked) and you can just tell its almost the same damn game only bigger in scope and with vehicles...but what lurks beyond the premise of the game is so much more baffling.

Everything about Breakpoint is generic, frankly. Because the franchise has seemed to lost its identity. The Ghost Recon franchise identity was for a time in the early 2000s a counterpart to the Rainbow Six games. Rainbow Six being these indoors, close quarters games, but then Ghost Recon came about as this bigger, outdoors level squad tactics games. But due to Ubisoft basically making every game an open world, outdoors type squad game, theres not much point for the Ghost Recon IP anymore. These Ghost Recon games seem to want to put more emphasis on tactical and strategic gameplay, but is that the case in Breakpoint?

The first impression, and long lasting impression, is that the UI and all of the interface structure is total confusing, bloated dog shit. You get into the game and its spamming you with dozens of popups, random bullshit to learn, its all so disjointed and a mess. For example, from the get go, buying the basic package on steam, that grants you 'Episode 1'. But on the world map, you apparently at  the beginning of the game have access to random Episode 2 and 3 missions? But also you dont even have full access to Episode 2 and 3, just teaser missions or something? Its so god damn confusing I couldnt even figure out what was going on until well into the game. Luckily I avoided accidentally playing anything outside of Episode 1, which is the real main campaign. Like, what were they thinking with this mess? To make matters worse, you don't just have this basic quest journal or mission screen, you have to go to some confusing Objectives Board where it displays a dozen characters and you have to seemingly at random just pick a character and do missions for them, until all of the character missions are done then you can do the final boss guy mission? I still dont really get it. Even from the very start of the game, before youre even playing, it throws all these weird menus and options at you, like asking about Loot mode or realism mode, making you toggle all these options about leveling and hiding hud elements or some shit, before youve even played the game. I just left it at the default settings, but it all comes across as a mess.

To make things even worse, merely just selecting a mission to do is a struggle. Theres this 'pinning' system where you can have multiple missions/side quests/ activities pinned at the same time. So if you try to just select one mission, chances are youve accidentally already have multiple missions pinned at the same time, which just makes things really confusing. The controls to unpin missions and basic interface navigation in general is just awful. You have to mouse over the pin place, use the WASD keys to scroll, then click to unpin and make sure you only have one mission pinned at a time. All things that took many hours to figure out and caused much confusion.

Basically I cant remember the last time I've been so confused and had so much trouble with basic menu navigation in a game, its awful. Once you finally understand how to tackle missions and select them, whats the actual gameplay loop like?

Well that too is severely underwhelming. The missions dont exactly tell you what to do, its more vauge. It took many hours to decode exactly what its telling you to do. It will say things like "Go to this base and discover the way in" But what that really means, is shoot someone that has an (I)nformation icon above their head in the leg, and interrogate them to complete the objective. Or it will say things like "Find the photograph" and it will involve walking up to a random civilian and asking him a question. Or it will involve walking around some base and picking up random documents. It will rarely tell you exactly what to do / go without first having to interrogate some guy, pick up some note, or shoot enemy in leg then interrogate. The other objective is to just kill everyone or one specific guy and leave. Those 4 objectives are basically the entire game.

So the gameplay loop consists of "Go to this base complex, pickup notes, talk to civillian, interrogate someone, or kill this person then leave".  Unfortunately, for the first half of the game or more atleast, every single base had like 12 enemies maximum. Its an open world game, so you spend a lot of time travelling to the mission location, then you get there, spend 90 seconds killing a dozen guys, then you have to fly back. Thats the first half of the game. There's barely any fucking combat! Sometimes you dont even kill anyone, you just walk in and grab a note and leave. For some stupid fucking reason none of the people in the game have cellphones, so whenever you complete an objective you have to travel across the map and talk to them face to face. I mean what the fuck, most of the game just consists of travelling across the map and talking to people, and watching cutscenes. Not good.  

Yes there are fast travel points, but it took hours to figure out how these damn things worked either. Every mechanic in this game is just so obfuscated, janky, and disjointed like what were they smoking when they developed this shit? To fast travel, you have to find some camp icon on the map called 'Bivouacs' then you go there. You can unlock these seemingly by talking to random civilians then they tell you where it is which marks it on the map. Once you arrive there, theres always these long animations of your guy making camp or something. When you arrive there, theres no vehicle. But if you sit at the camp, you can actually magically spawn a vehicle. I find it funny that in the previous game, Wildlands, I had to grind for half the game to unlock the helicoptor, naturally the best choice for fast travel, but in Breakpoint you have the helicoptor unlocked by the start so you can actually spawn helicoptors at these fast travel points. What that means is the entire gameplay loop is finding the next main objective on the map, traveling to the closest fast travel, then spawning a helicoptor and flying to the objective. That alone is like 75% of the game. The driving isn't anything to write about, very generic arcade style easy car driving, but why would you drive a car or vehicle in this game? Its just objectively worse and slower in every way to the helicoptor that you can easily spawn, thats kind of the problem with these games. It has all these vehicles you can spawn in, but why the fuck would I care when I can just spawn a helicoptor and get there way faster and easier? It's like a flaw in the game design of open world games like this. Thats why The Division is just way better than these Ghost Recon games, it forfits the vehicle bullshit and makes actually playing eventful missons its focus.

A lot of the game is watching cutscenes or listening to people talk to eachother. The story and performances are often times laughable in a bad way. The facial animation on display here is a joke and looks completely bonkers and jank. Whoever did the facial animation was phoning their job in. The story is yet another generic military dudebro buzzwordy incomprehensible mess but this time, they've hired the actor that plays Shane from the Walking Dead. That's probably where half of the budget of this game went. Theres a ton of cutscenes and dialogue but maybe only 10% of it is interesting. Some of the flash back military sequences were sort of interesting where you see the sort of shit they were doing during the war, the scenes with the Walking Dead actor I guess were slightly entertaining, but overall nothing stands out except a cliche and corny military dudebro drama. Atleast you get to fully customize your character at any time with all sorts of options and gear that you get to see in cutscenes but its hard to care about it that much.

Speaking of the gear, yeah the game was released shortly after The Division 2 and it uses almost the exact same gear system. When you kill enemies, sometimes they will drop a glowing item on the ground. Different colors signifies different rarities,  Yellow being the best/unique, purple being very good, blue being good, green etc etc. You can also get loot from these crates around the map. I played the whole game in co-op, which is the main reason I bought it, but I found it kinda strange that the loot crates seem to have the same items for me and my co op partner, not sure how that worked. But yeah the loot is really braindead its literally just when you pickup an item, in the top right you will see either a green up arrow or a red down arrow. Then, all you do is hold Tab to equip it if its Green up. The whole game I just equipped anything with green up arrow. Its even more braindead than Divison loot, and way less interesting. I guess it was slightly exciting finding new guns and things to play with, but the loot is by no means complex or requires brainpower. Theres even a button to 'optimize gear' and automatically equip the best stuff.

The game has all sorts of classes which seem to grant just 1 special ability each, stuff like Assaults ability makes you do more damage for 10 seconds when pressed, the sniper class I guess makes you more accurate for 10 seconds when pressed, theres a Recon class that lets you spot enemies easier or something.But ultimately the classes didnt seem that different or meaningful. They all share the same skill tree anyway. To emphasize just how bad the interface is, is the fact that the game has multiple level categories for your character. So it seems like you have an overall level, then you have a Class level, then you also have an XP level. What the fuck? why 3 different level categories? So damn confusing. Even worse is the fact that the Class level was almost impossible to figure out. At the beginning of the game I notied that for a few hours my class Ranking was stuck at level 3, and would never go up. Well after a few hours I started thinking, ok, how the hell do I raise my class rank? So I had to google it. Turns out theres a tiny place on the loadout screen where if you hover over it, it will say your class rank and you have to do these little challenges to advance the class rank. Stuff like kill 10 enemies with assault rifle, or kill 5 enemies in under 10 seconds. Well you have to complete these specific challenges to actually advance your class rank, something which is easily missed for many hours of gameplay. Since the game has this 'pin' system, you can actually pin the required challenges under your mission objectives to stick onscreen at all times, which I guess is the one good thing about the system. So after I figured that out, the combat got a little bit more interesting because atleast now the game keeps giving me these little mini-challenges I have to do in order to advance my class rank. But it didnt seem like advancing the class rank really did anything significant, just gave a few cosmetics or some slight permanent buffs like 10% more stamina or accuracy or something. But the challenges were atleast kind of fun. The skill tree is really nothing special either, its broken up into a few types, you have "Perks" which is like Call of Duty type perks you equip up to 3 of, stuff like regen stamina faster, automatically mark enemies on minimap (best one),  take less damage, etc. You have passive abilities, stuff which is just always granted which are more minor, stuff like 25% more ammo, or climb hills better. Then you have 'abilities' which grant you new abilities like being able to buy better things at the shop (Something we never fucking used cause it seemed pointless and the game throws so much loot at you why would you have to) - stuff like being able to more fully upgrade your weapons, a system which I partook in but seemed completely pointless because by the time you got the materials to upgrade your weapon to tier 3, you already picked up another better weapon so whats the fuck point? Yeah its not much to write home about, its just filler. I do like that there is a huge variety of weapons you can find and play with, thats a big bonus, some of them seem to do more damage based on the ammo type, something I only noticed towards the end of the game because once again the game does such a bad job presenting its self to you in a coherent manner.

The characters in the story are mostly unlikable or generic modern slop. That's really all I'm gonna say about them. I will not remember a single one in a weeks time. Nuff said. Main character you play as is just another run of the mill gruff military dude.

 
So what is the game all about really? Well its a stock generic military open world Ubisoft shooter, pretty much no different than the likes of Far Cry just in third person, its almost the same as The Division just it has vehicles and worse missions, worse objectives, and way too much story/cutscenes/diagloue not enough gunplay. The actual gunplay is just average or medicore, it feels like every other Ubisoft game. The guns have significant recoil, I guess to try to retain some amount of tactical feeling to the game, but its still a pretty braindead easy, spot enemies through walls, mark every enemy with a triangle, take out the red dots on the minimap, modern shooter game. It basically has no identity or does anything of note. Its also janky as fuck and unpolished around the edges, its got bugs, me and my friend would constantly even wonder if we're doing the same mission because our objectives would constantly get jumbled up and messed up from the shitty pin system, causing frustration and confusion. Whenever I would fast travel, my friend wouldnt automatically come with me so I'd have to press a button to request him to join and the whole process just gets really tedious, really fast. Also, when doing missions for some stupid reason it keeps popping up to go to the 'Consulting' screen where you literally just have to look at a wall of text and then close it before the mission will proceed, like I said its chaulk full of half assed half baked mechanics that barely make sense that only operate as a way to waste your time or make you fumble with clunky shit menus. Fuck. yeah its like half the time youre playing this game it will be spent watching cliche corny cutscenes or fumbling with a bunch of shitty menu screens. The more I think about it, the more the game is pissing me off in retrospect. Like I said, the first half of the game is barely any fucking combat, you spend 15 minutes watching/listening to dialogue, flying across the map, you kill 5 guys then you have to fly back and repeat repeat repeat. Its awful.

Atleast in the third to last quarter of the game you start to have to infiltrate huge enemy bases where you actually spend more than 5 minutes fighting enemies, this part of the game was okay, it was atleast more entertaining to have actual combat but it still wasnt very challenging. The game is pretty much really easy for 90% of the campaign, something which is odd with this supposedly tactical strategic gameplay focused shooter. You might be able to say its my fault for not picking the "hard mode" or whatever, but not really, the way the game is laid out and presented to you its such a fuckin mess to figure out so I just went with the default settings, its not my fault they made the default settings so piss easy. Anyway towards the end of the game you get these batches of missions where you can fail if you accidentally kill the wrong guy or fail to interrogate one of the enemies, something that kept happening to us because its not made obvious at all. So then when you fail you have to dig through menu after menu just to restart the mission, that was bad. Some missions towards the end have a bunch of overpowered robot vehicle things which were kind of bullshit but honestly I was relieved to have some aspect of challenge in the game. Like your character takes a lot of bullets to die, it has auto-regen health, you have healthkits ontop of it, its pretty hard to actually fail a gunfight unless youre total shit at shooter games. Other than that every mission is still the same, fly to this base, kill everyone/pickup document/interrogate/fly back watch cutscene. The end mission you can apparently choose one of two endings, we chose the ending to kill the Walking Dead actor guy, it had this giant vehicle outside that took like 10 mins of shooting at it straight to kill, then we just went in and killed the end boss and that was kinda it. No end credits or anything, just plopped back into the main world to free roam and do all the optional shit / pvp shit I guess? Or buy the $60 pass for 'episode 2 & 3'dlc - Yeah, no thanks.

If you want another generic open world military co-op shooter game, I guess this is an option. The graphics are actually more underwhelming than I thought they would be. While at times it has great draw distances and colorful environments, it actually doesn't look THAT good with some bad textures and rough around the edges animations and presentation. But if you just want to play some corny military drama story game with shooting with a buddy for a weekend or two, its not the worst thing in the world, took us about 15 hours to finish.

5/10

It Takes Two

 


It Takes Two is a whimsical two player split screen co op adventure platforming/puzzle game. If one person buys a copy, they can give a friend invite to a friend for free.

The premise of the game starts off with a divorce and the child being upset. Then the wife and husband somehow gets turned into little toy figurines to go through the world and overcome obsticles to salvage their marriage. There's this Book of Love character that talks in a hispanic accent and is all about couples counselling and marriage therapy to guide you through your journey. The overall first impression is like, yeah, this could be okay, but playing it co-op with two dudes just feels wrong. Like it seems like a girlfriend kind of game, not something to play with the bros. But we continued on. The presentation is the whole game is split down the middle, splitscreen, so you can always see what your friend is doing, which is a neat addition for a really pure focused co-op experience.

At first the game is pretty simple, basic platforming and 3d controls, it seems influenced by Mario 64 a bit in the controls and jumping, you traverse all sorts of enviornments almost like something out of Toy Story or a Pixar movie, because the graphics look really cartoony or cutsey, but as the game progresses it starts to continually throw new mechanics and gimmicks at each of the playable characters to force cooperation and puzzle solving. So for big chunks of the game you will each be using a different item required to progress. Early in the game Cody gets nails which he can throw into the wall, and May gets a hammer. Another section in the game cody gets a Sap gun cannon thing, and May gets an explosive that detonates the sap. Another point in the game, Cody gets a clock to reverse/slow time and May gets an ability to create clones of herself to snap around the world as time changes. And so on etc. The developers themselves have said something like "You will never see the same thing twice" and pride themselves on the amount of mechanics and changes the game takes the player through. And they were pretty much right, the game does have a huge variety of activities and minigames and small little challenges for you to do, from interacting with all sorts of weird contraptions or switches, all sorts of intense platforming sections that require the second person to change the platforms for the first person, all sorts of little vehicle and flying sections, theres even multiple boss fights that require either shooting the boss with some item or making the boss land on certain places. Theres no shortage of variety in the gameplay and puzzle solving. But on the one hand, thats kind of a detriment to the experience. The problem, for us, is that It Takes Two just left us feeling really bored a lot of the time. I think maybe the constant puzzle solving and having to stop and run around in circles trying to figure out what little gimmicky mechanic it wants us to do more often than not just put our brains into snooze mode instead of excitement. Yes, the platforming sections are pretty fun, with wall jumps and tight controls, but the pacing of the game is such that you wont be doing the same thing for very long. So what that essentially means, is when youre doing something fun, well - it wont be fun for long. You'll stop doing that activity and then do some other activity or puzzle, or running around the psuedo-open world sections trying to figure out what is required to progress next admist the dozens of random little optional minigames. So more often than not we were just bored or annoyed at the game. I think the biggest problem is the games length. The first 5 or so hours we were into it and pretty much enjoying it, but the game drags on and on and went on for another 10 hours. So it took us 15 hours to finally finish it. And by around hour 8 or so we were kind of writing off the game as no longer being fun, but annoying. It took us a month of on-and off playing this game to beat it because we just couldnt bring ourselves to launch it and get through it because we knew it was likely we'd just be bored the whole time. It also doesn't help that all the dialog, cutscenes, and characters, are just flat out unlikable. The book of love spanish guy is just annoying and over the top stupid, the story is predictable, cliche, and moralizing, the characters Cody and May are one dimensional extremely safe generic people with boring, uninspiring lives and personalities. May says "Cody!" way too much in her annoying stupid British accent. Cody is is as stale as plain bread. The artstyle of the characters is just weird and unappealing too. I can compliment the game on its huge variety of enviornments and locations, some of the visuals are genuinely awesome and graphically impressive and does almost feel like a real time video game Pixar movie in quality, but the game tends to go into these huge sprawling psuedo open world sections where its hard to figure out what to do because most of the things you can interact with are just optional minigame gimmicks and the actual thing to progress is hidden somewhere, so it just gets dull and has bad pacing.

It feels like a high quality product in terms of controls, visuals, polish, etc. It seems like a lot of attention to detail, care, and techincal fidelity went into this. Like I said, theres a lot of amazing visuals and areas in this game, the huge variety of enviornments definitely helps a lot. But for all sorts of reasons, within about 40 minutes of starting the game up, I just start to feel bored. I jokingly refer to this game as "It Makes Snooze".

The platforming sections are the best sections, the grinding on rails, jumping around helping your coop partner traverse the platforms in splitscreen, are fun. A lot of the puzzles can tend to be annoying or stupid, but a lot of them are also clever. The game also tends to have a problem where it interrupts the players constantly with cutscenes sometimes once every 60 seconds which doesnt feel great.


The last section of the game is something like each character finding their passions and then coming together again. Mays passion is singing, so you have to put up with this crooning woman constantly belting out vocal melodies and Cody's passion is gardening or some shit, so you play these goofy sections of turning into a flower or turning into plants or something , its kinda just stupid and weird. The singing bit was kinda cringe too because its all about her fixing up a stage to go on stage and sing for the crowd, then they kiss and make up and the whole family is back together again amen walk into sunset end credits, seemed trite to me.

I'm not sure what else to say, the games flaws is that it drags out its welcome, sometimes its hard to figure out what to do admist all the optional minigame shit, constantly having new mechanics and items and features while is kinda cool, it actually kind of hurts the game because it means when you do something fun, you wont be doing it for long or it will be replaced with something you dont find fun, the game is maybe too high on the puzzle side and not high enough on the platform side, the boss fights were atleast pretty fun overall. The penalty for death is really forgiving, you kinda just respawn inches away from your last death, unless both players die then you reload some checkpoint so its not a difficlt game or anything, it can just tend to be boring with all the puzzle solving and figuring out how to progress. As I said, the characters and dialogue arent really that likable, the constant cutscenes and cliche story is pretty eyeroll inducing frequently. If the game was around 6 hours long, I would be a lot more forgiving, and even consider replaying it with someone else in the future, but at 15 hours long I never wanna think about this game again.
 

4/10