Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning

I like to play an RPG every now and then. Sometimes they're too daunting, like overly complex and intimidating. Kingdoms of Amalur seemed to be a casual friendly "consolized" type, being popular on Xbox 360 back in the day. It got remastered and put on steam with Re-recokning. I didn't look up or "spoil" much of the game or mechanics before playing, but I did quickly check what exactly was new in this remaster and if it ruins my impression by playing it instead of the original. Turns out it doesnt add much, I watched a YouTube video comparing graphics and effects and could barely tell the difference. The main changes are slightly improved graphics, quality of life features such as the HUD properly scaling to resolution, FOV slider, some camera tweaks, and minor things like that. So I installed the game to see how it is.

Upon pressing new game you get a few difficulty choices, as usual I just go with the default Normal. Then you get the intro cinematic that strikingly looks like something out of World of Warcraft. Generally the environments in this game look like something straight out of that game. It has that same sort of half cartoonish artstyle. Immediately I noticed that some of the character designs are less than appealing, dorky looking beta gnomes, cliche evil villians colored red, swords and armor that look like they were designed by children. The general tone and artstyle of the game feels immature, not threatening, dark, or hostile. Just generic fantasy slop.
Then you get to choose your characters race, 4 options. All options are humanoids with just different skin colors or pointed ears, nothing crazy or fantastical like other RPG's.  I just picked the most default human looking one. Then you get to pick some passive bonus, again I just picked the most generic warrior one. Typically when I play rpg's like this, I like to keep my character minimal and easy to follow, so usually just a generic warrior using big swords or axes. Theres a minor character creation feature where you change some sliders, set hair styles, etc.

After this introduction the games narrative starts to form. The general plot is all about fate and destiny, and determinism. They mention the word "fate" in almost every damn sentence, like okay, I get it. The whole plot revolves around the main character dying and then re-writing fate or history...or something. Really, its just all quite bad and dull and uninteresting. The writing is silly and childish, shit like "And Azgorn said to Galborg that his Power is too great to defy destiny, so Balzeborths magical energy blocked Mogmorn from travelling to Balgram so you must defy his Powers and break the seals!" ... I just wrote that, but do you know what I mean? Just stupid, dull, uninspired drivel that sounds like a child game up with it, or some chat bot. For the first 2 hours of the game I sat there trying to listen to all the dialogue and take it seriously, but after awhile I finally realized - yeah this isn't worth paying much attention to. Its the same cliche crap over and over, the characters are uninteresting and not memorable. the only slightly memorable characters are the main old guy that follows you around the game as like this beacon of wisdom (I can't even remember his name) and this woman dressed in stupid BDSM gear that follows you around that you do bidding for. No other slightly memorable characters. The writing isn't even so bad its good, like other games (Two Worlds) , its just not even entertaining. Most conversations past first two hours, after I got sick of caring, I would briefly skim it in a moments glance, then just skip without listening to the voice acting. Its not even interesting enough to listen to fully.

Thankfully the actual game does have redeeming qualities. Its a big, open world, that again looks like a MMO world like World of Warcraft. But it doesn't really play like a MMO does. The combat is more Beat 'Em Up, or like almost a very stripped down Devil May Cry. You simply mash X to attack, you tab B to roll, and thats about the jist of the combat. You do a lot of rolling around and mashing X to do little combos, which can feel satisfying because the game has a nice sense of impact when the sword hits. You see damage numbers, which helps gauge how strong your character is. Though the combat has some pretty serious flaws and annoyances. The game does not have a lock on system for targeting enemies, something even Ocarina of Time realized was necessary. Instead, the camera sort of automatically adjusts and tries to revolve around whatever enemy it thinks should be a priority. This doesn't work very well. Far too often the camera would be swinging around wildly, or staring at some angle that was stupid, hiding my character. It's just a mess. Even Mario 64 has a better camera, and people complain about that one all the time. The other annoyances is the game has a real stunlock problem. Any attack you take, you get stunned. Far too frequently the gameplay will just consist of you being stunned over and over, not being able to get any input in. There doesnt seem to be any items or armor you can equip to increase stun threshold, which is stupid and a bit shocking. Thankfully there is an skill, atleast in the Might tree, called Reckless Assault, that once upgraded fully allows you to not be stunned for 20 seconds! at the expense of taking more damage. This skill is very good, and maybe single handedly saved the combat from being an annoying slog.

Speaking of skill trees, there is three of them. Now, this isn't some in depth confusing system where you are afraid you can ruin your character. No, this is very brainless and easy to understand, infact the whole game is. The might tree is for melee. The finesse tree is for ranged. The sorcery tree is for magic. Got that? OK, now pick what playstyle you want to do. I want to do Swords and melee, so Might it is. There, never have to look at Finesse or Sorcery again the entire game! Yeah...theres nothing useful in those other trees for my playstyle, its a bit disappointing, its so watered down and easy theres no point to even look at the other trees and diversify.

Now, a big complaint I have with how the UI and level up system works:
In the early game, maybe first hour or two, I couldn't level up my character, or I didn't understand how.
This is because every time you level, it makes you choose to invest a point into some skills that have nothing to do with combat.
Stuff like Lockpicking, Mercantile, Persasuion, Hidden Discovery, Crafting, etc.
I figured, well since I'm at the beginning of the game, I don't know which of these will be useful. I will hold onto these points until I play more and realize what ones I care about.
The thing is, in order to actually get to the next screen where you actually invest points into your combat stats, you HAVE to spend these non-combat points. For the first 2 hours I was wondering how the hell do I actually make my character stronger? Because I had like 5 unused non-combat points, it wouldnt show me the combat stats! That's just very stupid, and made the beginning of the game way harder than it should have been.
It should have been separated into two different menu screens or something.

So once you start spending points into the skill tree, the combat does slightly open up a bit more. You can now put 4 abilities on a hotbar to use during combat. The whole game all I used was, Reckless assault, Grapple hook (can grab enemies across the arena and pull them to you) , this Berserk thing that stays permanently active that increases your stats the more enemies you kill, ..and I think thats it. There were other things, like Ground slam, but I didn't use it much. I put points into the passive ability to raise my health, I put some points to unlock a few new moves like holding X to whirlwind, but other than that the skill tree is incredibly easy, toned down, and accessible. Nothing is hard to understand, its like impossible to ruin your character unless you're somehow too stupid to put points into the ranged tree when you use big two hand swords or something.
I am happy the game lets you play any way you want, I started off using Longswords, but as soon as I found my first Greatsword I used that weapon type for the rest of the game. Its a big, heavy two hand sword, that is slow to attack but does massive damage. The slow to attack doesnt matter once you activate Reckless Assault for stun immunity, so its just a hulking beast of damage then that was extremely effective.

Really the game is quite dull, often boring at times where you do nothing but hold the sprint button and run long distances across the map for 10+ minutes at a time, doing nothing else. Just running past swarms of enemies because theres not much point to kill them if you're already feeling powerful. Thats a lot of what the gameplay consisted of for me. The game isn't bad, though, it can just be uninspired and dull. The artstyle, character designs, weapon designs, quests, its really nothing too exciting. All the main quests just feel like fetch quests, or moreso "Run half across the world and reach this new location".
But the game isn't bad.
Actually, the best thing about the game is how accessible it is. It truly is babies first RPG. If anyone asked me what RPG to play as someone who has never played one, honestly I would just tell them to play this. Its a perfect introduction to RPG mechanics, its so toned down and easy to understand, I think it would be enjoyable to newcomers. Going around the world and picking up loot from enemies or chests can feel exciting because its so easy to understand whats good and whats not. The general UI and hud are clear, big, intuitive, the controls work mostly great as a controller RPG, the whole presentation of the menus, inventory, skill trees, stats, equipment make sense and are clear and easy to understand. You always know what to do, the quest marker on the compass shows you the direction, the map is easy to understand, and theres even a Local map if you need more information to find the right path. Its just a easy to get into couch controller RPG game.
To compare items, I simply scroll through my greatswords and use the one where the green number goes up on the top right. Done. Same thing for armor. Scroll through all my armors and look at top right for green number to go up. Its stupidly simple, usually its bad for an RPG to be this dumb, and it is kind of bad, but sometimes its refreshing to play a brainless RPG where it isn't super complex and deep, but dumbed down and easy to get through.

As for the actual loot, its as to be expected. Different colors signify its category of power. White are basic, blue, green, purple, yellow. Yellow being unique/set items, I think. Like I found a Shield that gave +1 to all Might skills, which is crazy good I never stopped using it. Other than that I didnt pay much attention to the actual stats or color of the gear, again I would just look to see if the green number went up, if it did, good enough to me. Its not worth bothering about the individual tiny effects and trying to min max. Its just not that kind of game. It doesn't reward you for spending your time this way. There is a decent variety of items and armors, though. Lots of the might stuff is plate armor, chainmails, big bulking things. The designs are decent, nothing looks too stupid, some of the big swords can look a bit too comical, but for the most part its not bad or good. At least everything isnt all multicolored with all sorts of gaudy colors, its all pretty typical looking.

The enemy variety is pretty good too, lots of monsters, goblins, weird serpents, humans, humanoids, elves, dwarfs, Trolls, animals, rats, bandits, mages, etc etc. I was entertained enough by the enemy designs and variety, and even roaming across the game world you will occasionally get these mini cutscenes of some big miniboss appearing on screen. First time I saw this I was confused and thought it was a boss fight I had to do, but no, its just a random occurrence that can happen to spice up roaming around the game world.

But this is the easiest RPG I have ever played, from understanding equipment, stats, level ups, and combat. I didn't die a single time I don't think.

You can carry around hundreds of health potions and pause the game and use them instantly if youre ever in danger. All I would do is go around to shops and buy health potions and use them whenever I was low.
Actually one complaint with the UI and map system is its too hard to find where shops are. Usually shops are inside buildings, and on the map it does indicate where different NPC's are. But it doesn't specify what kind of merchant they are. It would just say "Shop" or "Merchant". Ok, is it an armor merchant? Weapons? Potions? Magic? etc. I would have to enter building after building trying to find the right place, which sucked.

And infact these shops are super overpowered in terms of items. The greatswords I was using the whole game mostly came from weapon weapon shops and merchants I found. A few times I would find weapons and armor in shops that were easily 2-3x better than what I was currently using, and they werent expensive either. The whole game I had more money than I needed.

One other complaint with the UI or quest system is that it doesn't do a good job differentiating the DLC from the original Main story. Typically when I play a game like this, that comes bundled with all sorts of post-release content and DLC, I'm not interested in playing that stuff, I just want to experience the main release content story mode. But in this game, the DLC quests lump in with the Main quests section, and I think a few times I would be doing these DLC quests when I didn't want to, only to have to look it up afterwards on Google and realize I'm doing something I dont want to be doing. Eventually I noticed that the quests in the log have different looking flags by them, and the main quest I think is just Blue looking flag, but that was not obvious enough and caused unnecessary frustration for me.

So I was just breezing through the game, doing the main quests, traveling across the giant open world on foot. Most of the main quests are simply running across the game world, finding some new town, talking to a npc, and then traveling some more. The game probably could of benefited from horse travel or something, I don't know. Just far too much time is spent doing absolutely nothing but just sprinting across open barren fields. You can fast travel to any location, but only if you've found it first, of course. Sometimes you go into a cave, dungeon, kill some mini boss, but its nothing memorable. Infact the only memorable main quest moment is this part where you get a cutscene of this big siege, like Lord of the Rings, with a giant monster that comes out and is this big boss fight where its a big stationary monster and you have to wait for him to slam his arm down to attack him (What is it with games and Stationary big boss fights? Ive seen it so often, its like they cant be bothered to make big bosses have animations or make them work without standing still). But other than this, theres not that many other notable moments in the story. Theres a few other boss fights, where you get a health bar on screen, but its usually just human looking guys that don't really do anything all that special, maybe float around or teleport here and there, but nothing too notable.

I'm not sure how the arena zone levels work, or the monster levels. It doesn't actually ever tell you the level of monsters, or area zones. The monsters do have different colored names, but the game doesnt ever tell you exactly what they mean. I even looked at the in game Help menu, and it wasnt there. From what I can gather, white monsters mean below your level, Orange means around your level, Red means much higher than your level and actually seems to artificially prevent you from doing significant damage and makes you take mega damage, no matter how good your actual stats are (Shockingly stupid), and Purple means some kind of boss monster that rewards giga experience. So as the majority of the main quest just consists of sprinting across barren wastelands, filled with random enemies attacking you, I mostly sprinted past them when I already felt powerful. I was killing everything in like 3 hits and barely getting any XP, even orange monsters. Now heres the stupid part. About 3/4 through the game, I got to the quest Echoes of the Past. It wanted me to enter some tower. The area right outside the tower was piss easy, killing all the enemies in just 2 or 3 hits, and barely getting any experience. So surely I am not underleveled. But then as soon as I enter this tower where It wants me to go, all the enemies are colored red. Now remember what I just said. If the enemy is red, no matter how good my actual stats are, the game just clamps down on you and says "Nope, your not this X arbitrary level, we'll artificially reduce your stats so you do next to no damage and take mega health, go level and come back".

What this means is my progress got grinded to a halt. These enemies would 2 or 3 hit me, and it would suddenly have to take me 20 hits to kill them.
I had to go leave, and randomly walk around the open world grinding and killing enemies to get some experience to get a few levels, just so the enemies in the tower would stop being Red but be Orange, and allow my stats to work again. This took like 2 hours.  None of the nearby enemies were even giving significant experience! I would kill them, and get like 80-300xp. And I'd need like 50k XP to level. Even if I went and did a 20 minute side quest, I'd only get rewarded with like 2k XP! What is this? What is going on? Why did the pacing and progress suddenly just die? Its incredibly stupid and poorly designed. So I kept just grinding random enemies, doing shitty side quests that barely even seemed rewarding. And then I just fast traveled somewhere else because this area is just not cutting it. I went to some swamp place, full of enemies that were this purple color. Now for some reason, the purple enemies would give me like 800xp per kill! Ok, I can work with this and level up finally.
Heres the thing, the game has this Recoking gauge, where when the bar is full, you hold both triggers and you go into like Super Saiyan mode killing everything in a few hits and being invincible. But when you kill enemies in this mode, you get a like 5x experience multiplier. So the real way to grind experience is to save your Recoking bar until you come across a purple enemy and group of smaller mobs, use the bar, kill them all, then take out the purple enemy inside reckoning mode then you tap A to get up to 100% experience. Doing this I could get 3k experience per group of enemies! Also, there are experience potions you can use to temporarily buff XP gains. So I had to do this stupid shit for like 2 hours, going from level 15 to 18 I think. Everytime I'd level I would go back to the tower to check if the enemies are still red. Then leave back to the swamp and grind more. Once I got to level 18 I went back to the tower and now they're orange, and magically instead of doing 5-10 damage, I'm doing 300! Just such a inane, nonsense system. I get they want to prevent you from speedrunning through the game, but this is the definition of artificial difficulty here. If my character is so powerful that he can crush enemies 10 levels higher than him, let him! Reward my good ability to craft a strong character, this system almost nullifies your efforts!

After that debacle the game progressed swiftly again. Climb the tower, kill the boss on top by mashing X without barely thinking or looking. Go on another main quest where the objective is to, again, simply sprint across the map for 30 minutes to reach the objective. Once there, its basically the end of the game. Arrive at this end of the world red cavern looking place, the BDSM lady talks to you and says this is your fight alone, go in and its, surprise surprise, another big stationary final boss where he does nothing but spawn waves of enemies at you, to make your Reckoning meter go up, once the meter is full use it and it hurts the boss automatically. Rinse repeat a few times, end credits. After end credits, you can keep playing the game to explore the open world and do side quests, or do the new expansion Fatesworn released in 2021, which shows up as a new main quest after the credits. But complaint again, it doesn't make its self clear that its post-release content, it just looks like another main quest for the main game. They really needed to separate the main campaign from the DLC and Expansion better, than just these hard to understand flag pictures. So this confused me for a minute there, why do I have another main quest after the end credits? Should I keep playing? Well no, its just an expansion released 10+ years after the original game.

I beat the whole game in just 10 hours. Thats remarkably short for a big open world RPG like this. I only did the bare essentials for the main story, though, I just wanted to breeze my way through it to see how it is. Even howlongtobeat.com says 22 hours on average, the thing is, the games main story is just so easy and forgiving that theres really not much point to care about exploration or side content. Theres even an additional quest category called "Factions" that I didnt even bother to look at or notice. Why bother to explore, look for new items, take your time, when the game is so easy that I'm already feeling overpowered by doing the bare minimum, and where the shop has overpowered items in it? The game simply doesn't compel you to care enough.  I don't know if this remastered version completely botched the balance or what (You can't even buy the original game on Steam anymore) but even if the balance was fixed and it was more challenging, it wouldn't significantly make the game more enjoyable. The fact that its so stupid easy and simple actually probably adds to it overall, it might just be drawn out and wear out its welcome otherwise.

Its not a good game. It's not a bad game. Its mostly a dull, uninspired, cliche fantasy RPG. But the best thing about it is how accessible it is, if you just want to relax on the couch with a controller on a big tv and play a simplistic RPG, mashing attack buttons seeing damage numbers, picking up shiny new loot and traversing across a huge open fantasy world, its not the worst use of time you can have. Its not frustrating, annoying, or any real negative emotion. The worst offense it has is at times it can just be a bit boring. But the fact that the game was so short for me actually aided in my impression on it. Its a succinct casual RPG experience that leaves me walking away feeling pleased with the experience. I just don't think I'll be coming back to do that expansion or DLC anytime soon.

6/10

Days Gone

 

Days Gone is a major AAA high budget game which was originally released on PS5 which seemed like it was supposed to be a console seller and main draw to owning said system. Its this post-apocalyptic, third person zombie looter, shooter, and predominately features motorcycles. You can gather all this just from staring at the box art or game pages. Eventually, it was released on Steam. And I ended up picking it up on a good sale, being a high budget game, post apocalyptic, and third person was all I needed to be allured.

The game starts up asking you what difficulty, it seems as if theres two categories. Theres Easy, Normal, Hard, Very hard essentially. Then theres another category which is about Hardcore and more focused in on survival features. To me, this "Hardcore" settings seems to be intended for people who've already beaten the game. So I opted to just use the default difficulty, Normal mode.

The game is very narrative and story driven. It has a decently long series of introduction cutscenes showing you the premise that the world has turned to shit, some viral disease has broken out which turns everyone into crazed zombies (called Freakers in the game universe). And these arent the slow shambling type of zombies, nope, they're the run super fast and have various mutations types. The game opens up with you on a rooftop, about to escape on helicopter with your wife and biker friend Boozer, your wife is stabbed and the helicopter can only hold one more person, so you send her off and then thats when the game opens up and the gameplay begins. The game has a strong polished, cinematic high budget touch to it. The presentation in particular is gripping, the story characters are interesting, and I found myself wanting to know more and more about whats taking place in this game world. You play as Deacon St. John, a sort of "bad boy" Biker outlaw, acting as a "Drifter" in this world, just roaming from place to place doing what you can to survive.

Shortly after the game opens up, it teaches you about a few fundamental mechanics it expects you to learn and use. You get introduced to basic combat, shooting a few zombies in a tunnel, then you learn about molotovs and burning Nests - these places where zombies like to hold up to hibernate, it turns out you optionally can  destroy these nests placed around the open world in various places, in order to conveniently fast travel. If you don't destroy some nests, you wont be able to fast travel to a place which uses the same road. More on this later. You get introduced to driving your motorbike, which is a big part of the game, as its the primary mode of transportation. There are no other vehicles in the game, as it turns out. They just focused in on one vehicle type, and refined it as much as possible. And from there Boozer gets in an incident with these crazed out cult members called Rippers, who inflict self-harm, and worship pain and everything that is bad, as the ultimate good. They hold him down and try to burn his arm off with a blowtorch. You save him, and then the rest of the first quarter of the game is spent roaming around the open world doing various tasks and quests to help your wounded friend. It's a good setup, the plot, writing, characters, dialogue, and main character are all engaging, intriguing, and even likable.

The game is setup not too dissimilar from other Open world games, it operates much like any other Grand Theft Auto game, except theres only one vehicle here, and its the post-apocalypse. However, the first big gripe I had with the game was the difficulty of figuring out exactly what the main quest was. You see, in the menu there is a "Storylines" tab. This gives you a list of different storylines you can follow, of various different colors. Red, brown,  yellow, green, etc. It's not made super clear which one is the actual main quest, and what are just optional random side quests. I was so lost and frustrated for the first handful of hours I started Googling how to figure out what the damn Main quest is out of all these. I was still lost. You see, it seemed like the Yellow markers are the Main quests, right? but I would keep getting to parts where they just stopped showing up. Then I would go out of my way to do a Side quest, and suddenly a new Yellow quest turned out. Which massively confused me. Do I have to do side quests to get more main quests? I thought. But no, it turns out, that in order to get more Main quests, you simply have to leave any outpost and just roam around the world for a minute or two, and you'll usually get a radio call which gives you a new quest. If you stand in town, they'll never happen. This was all very confusing, and actually frustrating, and poorly laid out. Once I finally understood how to actually just progress the main story, it got better.

So you just go around opening the Main map, which is useful and detailed, picking a Yellow quest, and trying to move yourself towards it with your bike. Heres the thing, you cannot always fast travel, under a few conditions: You cant fast travel if you dont have enough Gas. You can't fast travel if there is a Nest blocking the road. You cant fast travel in combat, and so on. Another annoyance and gripe I sort of had in the early game was with the Bike mechanics. Running out of gas in the middle of nowhere,with shit guns having to spend 30 minutes slowly crouching around looking for a gas tank, got kind of old. Especially when you die over and over trying to do so. Your bike also takes damage, and can be totally broken out in the wild as well. You cant fast travel if your bike is broken, or out of gas. So a few times I found myself just doing these annoying errands trying to upkeep my bike just so I could traverse through the open world towards the next quest. And theres a lot of shit that gets in your way from doing just that. Besides the gas/repairs, you'll have random animals like Wolves or Bears, Cheetahs (?) out of nowhere pounce on you and tear you off your bike. You'll have enemy Bandit snipers sniping you from across the map, making you fly off your bike and often destroying it, requiring repairs. You'll have traps on the road which knock you off the bike, bandit ambushes, and so on. These are all cool and exciting the first few times they happen, but when you're just trying to push through the open world and get onto the next Story mission, it gets a little annoying. I'm not sure what else they could have done to improve it, its not necessarily bad, and yes the open world needs to have some danger and engagement in it, but sometimes it just felt like pointless busywork. Although it does add to the survival immersion, I suppose.

The main combat mechanics of the game are modern, polished, and refined. At first the game may come across like a harsh survival experience, but its not really quite true. For one, the game has a very forgiving autosave system, where almost anything you do, the game will save. Any bit of quest progress or mission progress you make, the game usually saves, meaning you never really go back very far. Often times if you die, you just respawn at the last checkpoint which is often just a minute or so behind. There is no regenerating health, which is a welcome design choice compared with these over saturated generic contemporary games. Instead you must craft bandages, which is done from holding a button to bring up a menu wheel, which in turn drastically slows down the time in slow-motion to give you a chance to dig around the menu. The inventory  menus are...a bit questionable. They have branching sub-menus that can feel cumbersome and clunky to navigate, often times if you screw up you have to redo the entire process, losing precious moments during a heated battle. Thankfully you can just press a button to Heal without digging through the menu's each time, which is what I always did. You can carry something like 8 health items at one time, too, and they arent hard to come by in the world, be it through other killed humans, or just laying around the world, even from places like breaking the lock of Ambulances to find Med-kits inside.

Most of the general scavenging is picking up items to be used for crafting from the inventory wheel. Usually explosives like Molotovs, Pipe bombs, or even Distraction devices (That I never used much). There is a convenient feature where you press a button and it highlights all possible items near you for a few moments, which makes looting less annoying than it otherwise could be. But don't mistake this game for a real Survival experience, the items you'll be savaging don't matter much more than just crafting a few consumables or explosives. The game isn't very harsh on resources, either. Maybe in the beginning when you can only carry 30 or so bullets its a bit challenging, but its not like a Resident Evil game where you have to be afraid to waste any ammo - no, you can frequently find police vehicles which guaranteed have ammo boxes, as well as easily having enough money to constantly refill your ammo and Gas at any camp which you can fast travel to. I think they did strike a good balance with the resource distribution, though, there certainly are times where youre down to your last handful of bullets and you need to prioritize getting careful headshots, so it does instill that tension in you that you need to manage yourself carefully, but also not make resources completely meaningless.

The main combat experience uses one Primary weapon (Shotguns, Single shot rifles, Assault rifles,)  one Sidearm (Pistols, small machine gun, short shotguns)  and one Special weapon category (Snipers, LMG's,). Also you can have one Melee weapon you can craft or find in the world, which degrades as you use it So its quite limited in terms of what you can carry, but realistic and immersive. A nice touch is that you can see the weapons hanging off your back, as well as basically all of the games animations are smooth and impressive and realistic. (Well, the rag doll physics are pretty goofy and glitchy often, thats one area that doesnt look polished). An interesting feature of the Third-person shooting mechanics is that each weapon type has a different crosshair, as well as this crosshair getting more tight the longer you have your aim up. It rewards you for aiming, then waiting as the crosshair tightens, then shooting if you really want to dial in the accuracy. Its a fun little "dance" you have to do to ensure accuracy, and it makes the gunplay satisfying and rewarding and skillful as a result. It gives hit indicators when you shoot enemies, Red meaning kill shot, so it makes it even more satisfying to try to hone in on those headshots. The different crosshair types are: The single shot rifle has a typing cross style, except they deliberately made the crosshair grey so its really hard to see, something I've noticed other contemporary games do, as a way to seemingly prevent the weapon from being too overpowered, I don't know, I dont like stuff like that, its kinda cheap and lazy in a way. But regardless, its interesting in that it tries to add significant pros and cons to each weapon choice. Assault rifles, for instance, have a more broader open cross, which makes it hard to get the fine grain shots off, as the crosshair brackets dont move in very close even if you wait awhile. Shotguns are more of a big open brackets. And "Special" weapon category, such as the RPD also uses big brackets, rewarding spraying moreso than fine accuracy. Then you have Sniper Rifles, which use the typical zoomed in scope view with breath holding mechanics. The human enemy AI is varied according to what group they're a part of, too. For instance the Rippers are more berserk, and care less about self-preservation and will mostly just blindly charge right up to you trying to slaughter you. But Bandits, and other humans (Later on Milita) can use advanced tactics, flanking, and are constantly calling out strategies to their teammates which is fun to listen to and coordinate around. The human combat is mostly heavily cover based, if you stand out in the open for more than a few seconds you'll get shredded. Its moreso this careful wack-a-mole style gameplay where you hide behind some object, use the camera to peek around and look for bodies, jump out for a second and fire, then every so often change positions as you need to get closer or further away. Sometimes they'll toss grenades at you, which is fun and forces you to mix things up. You have useful combat moves such as a button to Roll, a button to quickly jump up on mostly any object and climb, and while Sprinting you have a button to quickly slide into cover, which is very fun and handy. You can loot random supplies off enemy bodies, and also pickup their weapon that you get to keep for as long as you want, although I think its lower quality than some of the weapons you can Permanently buy and put in your Locker. (I'm not sure how the quality system worked, I just know I saw some weapons say Poor quality and others say better in the weapon shops at towns..I never really noticed a difference)

The game also features a slow-motion aiming ability, you press a button and you get a few moments of slow motion to be able to more easily line up shots. By default this slowmo window is tiny, but you can permanently increase it by unlocking the right item (more on that later). I heavily relied on this slowmotion ability during combat, and found it quite enjoyable. Maybe just because I was playing with a Controller, so I needed the extra help, I don't know. But its a nice feature and adds a bit more depth to the combat system, trying to figure out when the best time to use the slow motion is, and waiting for it to regenerate.

Its not a super complex or deep combat system, but its engaging and satisfying enough, the overall presentation of the games Graphical fidelity and immersion makes it never get dull, especially because of the variety of enemies you come across. There are boss fights, Bear fights, all sorts of different human factions, late game you come across Milita that are heavily armored, its exciting to see what weapons each new group will be using. For most of the game I used Single shot rifles such as the M14 and later on Lever action rifle, coupled with either a Sniper special weapon and late game used the RPD which is a crazy LMG with a drum round magazine that was fun to use, especially during zombie hordes.

Then you have the actual zombies, the main thing the game revolves around. Unlike other games, where the zombies tend to act like minor nuances, in this game these things are no joke. Visually they look gross and scary, especially if you zoom in with binoculars, the texture and model work is gruesomely detailed. Especially in the first half of the game or so you can barely take on more than 3 of these at once, either because you just wont have enough ammo to spare, or because your guns arent proper for the job, such as using a bolt action rifle. They are hard to hit. They run straight at you, but they actually try to dodge bullets! They flinch and move so erratically its hard to line up a shot, let alone headshots. Sometimes they even do this flinching move to try to move out of the way of your bullets. Its good that the zombies are a genuine threat instead of a minor nusance, its lame when a zombie game has zombies that barely matter. But here, I found myself more often than not trying to sneak around them instead of having to deal with them head on, because theyre so threatening, which further adds to the atmosphere and immersion. Of course there are stealth kills, you just get close enough tap a button and get an instant kill takedown animation, which is fun and useful. Even shooting at these zombies often times they dont even flinch and keep coming. Only headshots are a reliable way to take them down, early game body shots do almost nothing, not even stun them for a moment. Then you have different types of zombies too, like Newts, which are actual children turned zombie that don't really attack you unless you invade their territory or get too close, they kind of just stalk you from rooftops and scurry around in a disturbing fashion. Its bold of this game to involve killing swarms of children, it adds to the horror and disturbing nature of the apocalypse. Then later on in the game you have all sorts of other types of zombies, these giant Hulking ones that take dozens of bullets and are pretty self explainatory. Then you have these ones called Reachers, which run super fast and can almost disappear for a moment, also taking dozens of bullets. And theres Screamers, which scream at you causing these weird psychedelic effects. And most surprising of all, you have these roaming gigantic Hordes of zombies that you can come across dynamically in the open world, as well as part of mandatory main quests. These are like thousands of zombies which is an impressive sight to behold, if they run at you, you'd better have your bike nearby because otherwise theres no escape. The zombies are well done, and add a nice element of horror, but these Hordes can be questionable. For instance theres a few parts during the story where its mandatory you defeat an entire horde, and these were just downright frustrating and confusing. Super hard and annoying. I don't know what the intended way to do this is, I know you're supposed to use these Napalm grenades the game gives you, but it just doesn't seem to do much when I use them. 

It takes like 15 minutes of careful playing to take down this entire horde, theres like a Horde health bar on top of the screen which tracks your progress. But just one minor mistake and you have 100 zombies on top of you and its over, it just got to be so frustrating. The only way I got past these horde sections was by basically using exploits and cheesing them. Like one Story mission has you clearing out basically an entire town of zombies by yourself, the only way I was able to do it was by jumping on some small building near Gas station which had broken zombie pathing and they couldnt get to me easily so I just camped and killed them all. Another one which is the second last mission in the game has you clearing out a Saw mill of a horde, again, I tried over and over, probably more than a dozen attempts. Eventually the only way I was able to beat it was by being cheap and using a sort of exploit by attacking them, running away on my bike, driving away and Saving (You can quicksave at your bike), and then coming back, rinse repeat. Its sad that I could only do it by being cheap, but I was just so frustrated I wanted it over with. I'm sure I'm missing something in how to properly do it, I know you have to get them into tight places and slow them down and funnel them, I just cant do it.

That brings me onto the Stats and Skills aspect of the game, the sort of RPG-lite elements these Open world games usually have. In Days Gone you have 3 skill trees. Melee, Ranged, and Survival. I mostly avoided the Melee branch, as I just preferred to want to specialize more into guns. The trees are pretty self explanatory, simple, but satisfying to work towards the unlocks. Stuff like More stamina regeneration rate, more accuracy,faster reload speed, make less noise, easy to understand but fun to work towards. There are a few particularly interesting gamechanging ones though, such as Headshots give health. Each skill tree works in tiers, so to be able to get skills in tier 2 you must unlock a certain amount in the first tier, and so on. Its a basic system, but I think the game does benefit from its inclusion.
Then you have NERO Injectors. These are permanent buffs that you can find scattered around the game world in these White crates, usually inside marked Nero checkpoints on the map, but sometimes not near them at all. Once you get one of these, you have three options: More health, More stamina, More slow-motion.

Now, I'm starting to think maybe the reason I had so much trouble with the zombie hordes is because I almost entirely ignored getting permanent Stamina upgrades. I figure, stamina isn't that big of a deal, because I'm driving the bike most times, and the default stamina is just enough. So at first I focused on Health upgrades, of course you can't go wrong there, right? And later on, once I felt my health was adequate, I focused entirely on Slow-mo upgrades. But then came these mandatory defeat the horde sections where sprinting was really important, so maybe I screwed myself over there, don't know. Still, it was fun and exciting to go around looking for these Nero injectors to buff the character. Though, sometimes they can be annoying as hell because the doors are locked and it usually requies you to go find Gas and the Generator to turn on the power and open the doors. Well, sometimes I would spent a dozen minutes or more just looking for the damn Gas or generator, I feel like they could of been more lenient with putting the icons on your minimap once you're close enough to avoid this frustrating waste of time.

The games quests usually involve arriving at some Town, meeting all the people there, and then doing various errands for them. Usually stuff like taking out an enemy bandit camp, or going and finding some item for them, rescuing someone, tracking down a thief or murderer, a lot of them are combat heavy, turning into these fun third person shooter segments which has heavy emphasis on using cover. The game doesnt really have a dedicated cover system, but you crouch by a wall and he kind of automatically situates himself. Theres a bunch of explosive and edge of your seat moments throughout the campaign, but its mostly because the narrative, story, plot, characters are so gripping. Without the ups and downs and the intensity of the story, I'm not sure if the missions would be all that amazing by themselves. But in context it makes for a really compelling experience. There are even a handful of Bike related missions where you have to chase someone down on your bike, and capture them alive. This is a fun little racing type sequence where you have to keep up with the enemy, shoot at him from your bike with this nifty lockon system, and ram into him until he falls off and then a cutscene plays where you tie him up and call your allies to come get him. Through the story it gradually introduces new types of monsters and human enemies as well. As mentioned previously, you have the Rippers cult, which is a fascinating and exciting foe. They run around half naked with scars all over, saying their cult phrases, tormenting anyone that comes in their path and trying to force them to join. The first maybe half of the campaign is spent dealing between these guys and Zombies. Its a great pacing that works well, going from missions based around zombies, to then human focused missions, often times both mixing together in chaotic moments.

Early on you do a lot of tasks for Copelands camp, going and doing bounties, and fixing up your bike. Because the game starts you off with a crappy bike, where you slowly have to build it up at the mechanics around the world. It gives a nice sense of progression slowly turning your bike from a piece of junk into something awesome. Each camp around the game world has their own money, too, so it makes this interesting dynamic between building up one camp or the other. Camps have different weapons you can purchase from the merchants, as well as sometimes different bike parts. You can turn in Ears at the bounty collector, for money and Trust. Increasing Trust level unlocks more weapons and bike parts. By killing zombies you automatically collect their ears.

Midway into the game you do a lot of tasks for Iron Mike and his encampment. Each camp has its own distinct look and feel, and the locations the game takes you on are generally quite memorable. At the beginning youre in this watchtower base with you and your wounded friend Boozer, but then you start branching out to other camps, and eventually you even settle in at Iron Mikes camp, sleeping and doing tasks from there as your main hub. The game has a good sense of progression, and takes you all across the open world in interesting places. Maybe another gripe I had with the game is that it always felt dark, night time. It seemed as like 75% of the time , the game was taking place at night time. I know you can sleep to pass time, but just starting missions would automatically turn it back to night time. So sometimes it just wasnt that interesting to look around because it was so grey and dark. But as I kept playing I got more day time tasks so I could really appreciate the graphics and scenic Oregon moments. The game world is wonderfully crafted, in terms of visuals. You have times when it starts snowing, coating the land, other times where you go on some tall mountains looking over the incredible draw distances, the lighting systems and reflections are great, but most of all the character models, and cutscenes are stellar.

Probably the greatest part of the experience is the plot, story, characters, writing, and voice acting. I'm not here to do a story review, but it has tons of twists and turns, and keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time wanting to know what happens next. The characters are all memorable, likable or hateable like Skizzo, the characters have complex traits and arent entirely generic cliches either. The main character, Deacon, is a sarcastic, edgy, but down to earth likable guy, Boozer is unforgettable, and gives the game this comfy feeling of surviving the apocalypse with your bros. Everytime a cutscene happened, I cared enough to not want to miss a moment. I rarely care about stories in video games, but in Days Gone its very well done and one of the greatest video game stories in recent times. It takes you through the game world in a fun way, and makes all of your tasks feel like they have purpose and meaning. Even if sometimes you are just doing simple fetch quests, the weight of the narrative behind it makes it fun and enjoyable.

In the last section of the game, for instance, you find your wife is actually still alive at a Milita base, and you have to join them to see whats going on. This takes you to an entirely separate section of the map, its like another whole map to explore. This place is more barren, deserty, like everything torched to the ground, and is a great change of pace and really refreshes the whole experience up to that point. Well its very intriguing suddenly actually finding your wife and being a part of this creepy religious Milita bent on being the savior of the world with a Jesus complex. The gameplay from this point consists of doing a bunch of fetch quests for your wife, but also going on outings with her to infiltrate some big research lab, and take out all the hostiles there. As well as a bunch of other missions where shes by your side fighting with you. Finally the game wraps up by the Milita going really bad, wanting to head North to kill "all the degenerates and lowlife scum" which are basically all your friends in the other camps. So you go on a bunch of missions creating a plan to take them down, get your wife back, and escape. Its a roller coaster of emotions and events, that kept me having fun and interested the whole time.

After the story ends, you're free to roam the map as typical in open world games, and go around completing all the side "stories" and optional tasks, taking out nests, finding collectables, and so on. The game does have a ton of side missions, but I didn't do many. Maybe one day I'll go back and do them all, there are even optional timed missions that you can miss if you dont do them fast enough, which was an interesting little touch I noticed. The game has tons of cutscenes, and I wouldnt even be opposed to going back and trying to find as many of them as possible and learn more about the lore of the world and all the characters.

So while there were times when I was almost hating the game, with in the beginning the frustration of not understanding how to do the main story, with running out of gas and being stuck in shitty checkpoint loops trying to get some, with some of the Nest moments where I'll run around for 30 minutes trying to find the damn nest, because it isnt forgiving enough about showing you the icon on the minimap (atleast he says it smells bad when youre close, but the radius should be bigger) - there are lots of little annoyances and frustrations the game has, thats for sure. Still, the narrative and general exciting tasks the game sets you on, the intense firefights and the way the game is constantly introducing new threats and interesting characters, factions, and mutations, upgrading your bike, unlocking things at different camps, seeing what happens in the story and all the characters, the high graphical fidelity and impressive game world - it  makes for a rewarding and fun game to play through. It is a very long game, too, so you get your money's worth. It took me 30 hours to finish it, and I think compared to others I rushed it. I just didnt do that many optional quests, because I already knew its a long game. This is the kind of game where I would actually consider to get all the achievements, so there you go. Its good. It's a shame, I just looked up if Days Gone will have a sequel, and it says its been cancelled. What the hell? Thats so sad. Its setup so perfectly for sequels. I hope a sequel happens at some point.

8/10

Tormented Souls

 

Being a big fan of classic Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and general oldschool survival Horror games, coming across Tormented Souls on Steam I knew I had to pick it up when I saw them proudly state their influences on their sleeve in the description. I didn't look too much else into it, just a few glances at the trailer, seeing the static cameras angles, and nice looking graphics was enough to convince me to buy it eventually.

There are no difficulty options or really any gameplay adjustments of any kind. What you see is what you get. Which means it should be a well balanced and tested experience. The game sets the plot up by starting off with the main character, Caroline, getting a strange letter in the mail of a picture of twins and a creepy message. Investigating this letter, she goes to this dual Mansion/Hospital location. Then theres a cutscene where shes naked in a bathtub with a tube shoved down her throat, in a dimly lit creepy room. Now you have control of the character. Thats as much setup as the game gets. Its pretty great and sets a mysterious and scary tone. You got kidnapped, put in a bathtub (nudity included) for some nefarious reason, now you must figure out whats going on. It also turns out, that your eyeball is missing! You investigate a mirror in the room and get a cutscene revealing that your eye is gone, further adding to the mystique.

The game is heavy on puzzles, like classic Survival Horror fashion. Even the first room has a puzzle you must solve before you can leave. Surprisingly, the game even has sort of Point & Click elements to its puzzle solving and object collection interfaces. Instead of other games where you simply press Use on an item with something else, in Tormented Souls you get this pointing finger cursor you can move around the screen and dynamically play with things in the environment once you get a close up of them or even when examining owned items. This can be anything from changing the code on a padlock, hovering the cursor over a button on a pocket watch you're examining, hover over a gas can lid to open it, moving the slider on a floppy disk by hovering and pressing in the right spot, and so on. It adds a new element to the Survival Horror genre and brings in some of the more Point & Click elements of the old era as well, and it works really nicely! It's genius to combine them both into one game. I never really found that there were any points where it was too obscure to point at some place I'm supposed to, it all made sense and was intuitive. The general interface of the game works well, too. You have an inventory screen, where everything is laid out in a grid. You can't drop items, nor is there a storage box like Resident Evil, however, they made the odd decision to simply give you seemingly infinite inventory space. That's right. A Survival Horror game where you don't have to worry about inventory space. As you pickup more and more items, your inventory just scrolls down to accommodate. Now, this takes away a big element from other Survival Horror games, namely, having to treck back and forth to safe rooms to deposit unneeded items and only make these tough choices to carry the bare essentials. However, do I miss it here in Tormented Souls? Well, maybe. I'm not sure. On the one hand it was nice to not have to worry about it, but kinda the whole point of the genre is to MAKE you worry about things. It can make the game feel a little too comfortable without having to care about inventory space. But overall, as a choice, its not here nor there. It has pros and cons. The game isn't necessarily better or worse with or without infinite inventory space, which is something that surprised me to realize , coming from other Survival Horror games.

The game does retain many mechanics and standard gameplay practices found from other classics in the genre, though. Namely the save system. It amazed me to see this modern title use a limited saves mechanic. Just like Classic Resident Evil, you can only save at designated save machines. In RE, it was Typewriters and Ink Ribbons. In Tormented Souls, its Voice Recorders and Tape Reels. A subtle, but clever implementation. The choice to stick with this classic save system, and limit saves, is the right one for sure. It really adds an extra element of tension and unease when even saving is a precious resource. With infinite saves, you always feel safe. You're not worried about losing progress, so you can play recklessly. But with infinite saves, you treat your life as precious. You really, really dont want to die. It makes you tip-toe around the game. It makes you care about your resources, it makes you watch your health. Your life is meaningful. At first I was worried the game would be really stingy with these saves, though. But after playing conservatively for a little while, avoiding saving a few times instead to keep pushing on to just make a little bit more progress to make the most of my Tape Reels, I found myself with an abundance of extra saves, for most of the game I had over 5+ saves in my inventory at any point. So its not like the game is cruel with its limitation of saves, it hits a good balance of creating tension but also not being downright frustrating with too little saves.

  I'm probably going to keep contrasting this game with the classics because it takes so much influence from them and wears it on its sleeve. It wants to be them. The game also makes the choice to utilize static camera angles for the most part. This means that you cannot freely rotate the games camera around to get a good look at the environment, or what lurks around each corner. This system is perfect for Survival Horror because it adds even further tension and stress by creating fear from the unknown. Since you can't just peek around the corner with the camera, or at times you cant even see whats in front of you (!) , it makes you often rely on other senses than just your sight. You enter a room, and depending on the camera angle, you may have to instead focus on Audio and your hearing. Listen for creepy noises, listen for footsteps, or anything that may lie in wait. It creates this suffocating atmosphere, and makes the whole experience feel very cinematic and immersive. I feel like modern Horror titles lose an aspect of this when they switched to free camera controls. I'm glad Tormented Souls stuck to its roots and doubled down on some of these older style mechanics. The controls also are a mix of both old and new. The default Controller scheme, has the analog stick moving a more modern style, with pressure sensitive movement, move the stick slowly to walk and move fast to run, turn the stick in any direction to move freely. So it's not actually tank controls. However, you can also use the Dpad to get the exact oldschool Tank controls. Now, I kind of wished they just forced Tank controls on the player without any ability for the more modern controls, because of the same reasons I mentioned earlier about the other mechanics. It adds another dimension of uneasiness and makes the player not as nimble which can add to the tension. I think they didn't do this because it might alienate too many modern players. Its not really a gripe or anything, I myself used the Stick controls the whole game, but I suspect if it was forced upon me, I would of liked tank controls even more as a strict gameplay choice. But the controls work, and are good regardless. Its very basic, theres no sprint button or anything. You can just move around, and once you get weapons you can aim, and then fire. But you cannot walk while aiming! which I'm very glad for. They got that right. Survival Horror games where you can walk and fire make the character too nimble, it makes the enemies not very threatening, which can ruin the whole tone of the game. Items are easy to miss in the game, only a few items will put off a glint or sparkle to make you aware of their presence, you have to be diligent in scraping the rooms for items, walking by everything and looking for a button prompt. They're usually in sensible spots, but sometimes are cleverly hidden. Still, I never really missed anything too crucial and was able to intuitively find everything I need.

   At first, you start off in the Hospital wing of this giant building complex, but as you progress you learn the Hospital is actually just hastily tacked onto a bigger mansion, and you gain access to this mansion too. The graphics, detail, atmosphere, and ambiance of the game is just amazing. At times the game is beautiful, then dreadful, melancholic, horrific, Nostalgic, to heart pumping action scenes. It goes through the whole emotional spectrum. The aesthetic of the game is fantastic, the Mansion and Hospital are wonderfully designed, with incredible famous works of art on the walls, Medieval and Victorian decoration everywhere, the rooms look like these old 18th century style buildings for the most part, which have this air of lost romanticism about them, coupled with urban decay and neglect, creates an elegant but haunted tone. There are all sorts of religious overtones in the narrative and especially the environment, creepy statues, ornaments of Jesus on a cross hung in dark abandoned cellars, which can really make things even more disturbing. The graphical effects the game uses are fantastic too. The shadows, lighting, especially the light that comes off your Lighter and later on Flashlight cast these creepy shadows from objects onto the walls, the whole presentation of the game is just great. Except maybe a few small details: The general character models look....a bit out of place. Like they belong in a different game or something. They're noticeably lower fidelity and more, almost cartoonish compared to the rest of the details in the game. I'm not sure how to put my finger on it, they just look a bit off. And the second nitpick with the presentation is the voice acting. Yes, I know, this genre is famous for terrible corny voice acting, but here it sounds so obviously amateur its a bit distracting. Like it just sounds like the main developer just got his wife to talk into a microphone one day or something. The subtitles hardly even line up with the words being spoken most of the time, its jarring. So the game definitely shows its indie side, and can be rough around the areas. The voice acting and writing isn't awful or anything, it works to engross you into the plot, theres nothing too stupid or corny, its just the delivery is a bit weak acting and can give off some reading off a piece of paper impressions.

   And one last thing about the presentation: The soundtrack is just incredible. Seriously, this is one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a long time. A lot of it is this sombre, echoing sad piano music, that play haunting melodies throughout the whole experience. In particular the Main Hall theme , and a few of the themes that play inside the more Office / children's areas of the game are so good. But even the claustrophobic areas of the game like the Sewers and the tight hallways of the Hospital have incredibly unnerving ambient soundscapes and disturbing horror songs playing in the background which really adds stress on top of an already stressful experience. The soundtrack is pretty much flawless in my eyes.

So onto the real bulk of the game and general playthrough experience.
At times I could only play the game for about 2 hours at a time, because it felt so claustrophobic and oppressive that I had to take a break. That's actually a good thing, the horror experience is working. It should make you feel stressed and worn down, wanting to return to the safety of real life. The game its self doesn't feel like a safe place, its an on the edge of your seat roller coaster, it makes sense that it can exhaust you. The first moments of this is shortly into the start of the game you have to go to the basement to turn on the generator because the Hospital is pitch black. Then you realize that if you stand in the darkness, you'll quickly get a cutscene where you get hauled away and die. To prevent this, you need a light source. So equip the lighter, and then I found the first enemy encounter. You might think the enemies in this game are just your standard Zombies, but no, they do a clever change of the formula. The enemies are instead these medical patients twisted into monsters by these wicked medical experiments. The first monsters have no legs, but kind of crawl around on their knife arms after you. Then in the basement you see a monster in a Wheelchair, as the game progresses you come across more and more creepy monsters. There's even these startling times of monsters chained to a wall that doesn't chase after you, but moreso acts as a jump scare as you crawl around in the dark with your lighter only to have the camera slowly turn to reveal these creatures right infront of you. They block the path, attacking you if you walk near, you can kill them to reveal the blocked path. But, like I said previously, if you stand in darkness you die. So sometimes its impossible to put your lighter away to equip a weapon to kill them, until later in the game when you get a new piece of equipment, the Flashlight. The monsters are downright frightening and startling, every time I encountered one it got my heartrate up a bit. In the first half of the game the monsters are generally legless, meaning they're pretty slow. But later on in the game you come across fully fledged walking monsters that are downright terrifying. Not only do the monsters melee attack you, but some of them even spit ranged attacks at you. A particularly staggering monster that shows up late into the game, is this flat bloblike balding ghost thing that chases you around, and no matter how much you shoot it, it wont die. The music that accompanies this thing is hectic, and the game has its share of "Just run!" moments, which keeps you on the edge of your seat. So as youre progressing through new rooms in the Mansion, theres rarely a dull moment.

The plot keeps you engaged the whole time too, usually I don't pay that much attention to Diaries or random Notes or bits of lore in games, but here its very gripping. The general idea of the plot is that you're looking for these twins in this weird mansion, but as you uncover more and more diaries and notes you realize theres a whole subplot about Maternity, Birth, Parenthood, and tragic loss and death of babies. Theres even a handful of moments where you walk through Mirrors or VHS tape Projector screens to warp back into the past like time traveling to further reveal more plot points and also to do time travel puzzles, like having to put acid on a metal lock in the past, which takes many days to actually melt, and then go back to the present day to find the lock has been destroyed because of your past action. Its clever, well done, and fleshes out the plot in a satisfying manner. The writing on the Diaries is often times grim, introspective, insightful, and interesting. I found myself wanting to read all of them. Even the UI for managing the Diaries and flipping through them is immersive, you get to see little illustrations and extra information as you're physically examining the books. You even frequently run across a friendly NPC, the Priest, where you have these bizarre conversations with and he acts nefarious and pretends like he has no idea whats going on, which was always fun to see.

There are a lot of little mini puzzles which you find items, go back through the mansion to find the corresponding place to use the item, and theres a huge variety of interesting things you pickup. A scalpel, hammer, Plastic hearts, Limbs, VHS tapes, Coins, acid bottles, Blood bags, batteries..I would frequently think "Huh, what the hell am I gonna use that for?" but eventually the answer usually came into place. There is something that can really suck about these kinds of games, though. It can happen that since you dont know what to do, you can waste hours backtracking through the entire game trying to see if theres some tiny detail or item you missed. I only got this feeling a few times, and not wanting to fall into that trap, I looked up a few small hints where I'm to use an item. One of these was towards the end of the game where you get this key item and I had absolutely no clue what it was for. I wasnt about to go through the entire game looking for the one spot I'd missed. I looked it up it and it was sort of nearby, towards the office area, in a little "Childrens Room" which I had completely missed the first time around, because its an area where you are chased by the invincible Ghost monster so I got out of there as fast as possible.

Not everything is great, though. The game has heavy emphasis on puzzles. And they can be...hit or miss. Some of them feel incredibly satisfying and rewarding to solve, not too obtuse or cryptic, but actually demanding you use your brain and problem solving skills to figure out the riddles. Some examples of puzzles that I liked was the skeleton puzzle, its a skeleton with a bunch of buttons all over it with an accompanying plaque giving riddles which correspond to what order you must press the buttons. I liked the elevator puzzle, which made you find a replacement for a Fuse, by giving a hint in a diary "The fuse is blown, I just need to find anything conductive" meaning any piece of metal would do, and thats what you use the Metal bolt for. Then you go through the elevator downstairs, and block the elevator door with a shelf because the button is broken, to retrieve the metal bolt, go back up the elevator, and use the bolt again on a 2nd fuse box to open another locked door. I also liked the Clock puzzle, which you set the date and time on the clock, which corresponds to riddles written on nearby paintings. A few more notable puzzles I found satisfying was the TV dial puzzle, where you turn the dial of a TV as if it was a safe, and the Infinite Room puzzle where is a series of endless rooms and a changing plaque upon each right answer, giving vague clues and hints as to which is the right door to enter. I liked the vinyl puzzle, this one is a simple one where you have to repeat the musical nodes on nearby switches.

One puzzle that was just "OK" was the Door knocker one. In this one, you knock on the door according to the rhythm of someones heartbeat. The clue says "Knock on the door using the heartbeat of this persons Creation"  Me, seeing "Creation" I thought it was referring to the Doctors crazy monsters all over the place. A A wall monster right by the puzzle even twitches after hes dead, showing a sort of rhythm. So I thought I had to study this monsters heartbeat and put the rhythm to the door. Nope, thats it not. You actually have to backtrack way back to some Statue and use a Stethoscope on the Statue to reveal a heartbeat...What? I mean, its kind of cool, but the hint almost deliberately confused me. It could have been worded better. Later in the game you get a key with various shapes on it that you can turn around. Then you find doors to use this key on, with mini puzzles. Some of them made almost no sense to me, like one door showing a Broken vase diagram turning into a full vase and shapes. You have to somehow interpret these shapes into the basic shapes on the key, and it was hard to figure out. Theres another one which shows a Tetris diagram that was lost on me. Another one with numbers, which I realized correspond to the number of lines on the shape, but one of them has "8" which actually means Infinity, or the number "0" for Circle... which took quite a long time to realize,  these key combination puzzles werent awful, but more obtuse than they needed to be. Worst of all, sadly not all the puzzles were rewarding to solve. Some of them are just downright incomprehensible, frustrating, and annoying. Usually in games like this, I try really hard not to look anything up. I give myself maybe 1 hour to figure out a puzzle, If I can't get it after that, then OK its probably unfair bullshit. I even had another person look over and use their brainpower to solve some of the puzzles, but on the same ones we were both stumped. The cash register puzzle was one such thing. You have to enter a number into the register, and nearby the only clue is these drawings of two cubes on the wall with dots in different places , saying =2 and =3. I tried for awhile to figure out what the code was, but I couldnt get it. Eventually I looked it up and its the number of intersecting lines on the dot. I don't know if I would of ever figured that out. Another one was the floppy disk puzzle. You put a disk into the computer and it asks for a code. The code is something to do with the names written on the label, and I even found the hidden hint underneath the head, but I still struggled to make sense of it for a good 30+ minutes and looked it up. Another puzzle that I just hated was the Key Dial puzzle. You have to put an item into a slot, but match up the indents perfectly. You do this by examining the item and rotating the different pieces. The thing is, it seems like every time you close the examination window, it resets, making it incredibly annoying and exhausting to do. I had to look up a screenshot of the solution after like an hour of messing with it, I couldnt be bothered anymore, I was fed up.

Another puzzle that made no sense to my brain or my onlookers brain was towards the end of the game the Gas valve puzzle. Its this giant grid of valves and pipes and you have to redirect the gas, I read the instructions over and over, Left valve = closed, Down valve = open. Followed the pipes over and over for 1+ hour, using the 3 screws to block the gaps, but neither of us could get it to work. Eventually I looked up the solution, and it looked almost completely different to what I was doing. Apparently I didn't understand how it works, at all. And even people in the comments are saying it makes no logical sense. Another questionable puzzle was the monkey one. You have a bunch of riddles about a Judge and court, and you have to try to match up what the clues mean to the monkey picture. I picked up that the judge is blind, which corresponds to the monkey cover his eyes pictures, but some of the other riddles and clues were so obscure that upon a dozen tries I couldn't quite get it. Had to look that one up too, sadly. I'm not sure if this one is necessarily bad, or If I'm too dumb, or what, but again, me and another person both used our brain and couldnt figure out the riddles. They are just very, very vague, moreso than probably any classic Resident Evil or Silent Hill puzzle.

Theres a couple just shocking egregious examples of bullshit, though. Like one point where you go look through a window and see a guy walking in circles around an operating table, and you have a conversation with the Priest about some ancient tribe. I was stuck here, it turns out you have to backtrack to another run and literally WALK IN CIRCLES around some table, in JUST THE RIGHT WAY, to progress the game. Just wow. I don't think I would have ever figured it out. I tried for a good 30+ minutes to find someway to progress, couldn't spot it. Had to look it up. Maybe in hindsight the clue was obvious, but I Just dont expect stuff like that to be a puzzle in games like this. Just cryptic as hell, not in a rewarding way.

Another gripe is the actual weapons in the game. There is a total of Two ranged weapons. A nailgun, and a makeshift pipe shotgun. Not the most badass tactical weapons, are they? I would of really liked to find a Beretta pistol, a real shotgun, a magnum, etc, in the game but they don't exist. You get these shoddy Home Hardware tools. Like its fine, it works, I get what they were going for. It would just feel a bit more cool to me to find actual guns. The only melee weapons is a crowbar, and an Electric Lance, which I really sadly missed. I kept finding batteries for the Lance, but never the actual thing. I saw it through a locked fence, once, but didn't find how to actually get it. After beating the game I looked up how to actually get it, and to find the Electric Lance, you have to go through a time warp mirror, to a dark hallway with a Wall monster, and the only way to bypass it is to have the Flashlight lamp so you can equip a weapon and not be in the darkness, because the Lamp gets used while you hold a weapon unlike the lighter. After you have the lamp, go back here, kill the wall monster, you unlock the door in the past and upon going to the future its open and you get the lance. Well I just totally forgot, or missed the Wall monster in that area, so I never found it.

 That brings me to talk about the actual resources in the game. Survival Horror is known for its limited ammo and tight resources, so how is it done here? Well its pretty forgiving, all things considered. I didn't die a single time playing the game. Well, technically, I died a few times on purpose, but this is in my "experimentation phase". The "experimentation phase" as I like to call it, in this genre, is right after I've saved and I'm feeling safe, I run around wildly like a madman exploring new territory, with the knowledge that I've JUST saved, so I can die and not lose anything. I use this opportunity to get my bearings and figure out what I have to do next in the most efficient way. You might call this cheap, or cheating or whatever, but I don't think so. I take any inch I can get with these kinds of games. So anyway, I havn't **really** died, so the resources are quite forgiving. Most of the time I had multiple health items, and for probably 3/4 of the game I had plenty ammo to kill every single enemy I came across. I wasn't even conserving ammo that much, I was wasting shotgun shots when I could of shot Once and then used the crowbar, or used the Nailgun after one shot, I wasnt being perfectly efficient. There still wasnt an abundance of ammo, though, I was always comfortably hovering around a dozen or two shots. Sometimes, though, especially towards later in the game, I would quite literally be down to my last handful of shots at any given time. Feeling really stretched thin for ammo, a few times I had to just opt to run by enemies, which was nerve racking. At least I was feeling comfortable with the amount of Tape Reels the game gives you, so towards the end of the game instead of being conservative about my saves, I would start being liberal and saving after almost every bit of progress, which felt good. I suspect the fact that I missed the Electric Lance probably had to do with my ammo shortages around the end of the game, being that the game was balanced around you having it. Still, I never felt stuck or like I'd screwed my save, unlike other games in the genre where thats very possible. I actually entered the last two boss encounters with virtually no ammo. The second last boss phase is a group of these cult members wielding swords and I had like 2 shotgun shots and 10 nailgun shots. Luckily in the room is a few more bullets, and I had JUST enough ammo to get past it. Like down to my last bullet. I actually think if I shot one more shot somewhere else in the game I may have just bricked my save file. So maybe it is possible to ruin your save, because this fight was really sketchy. I don't think its possible to do it with a crowbar, but maybe? That was the only really sketchy part in the game where I felt like I may have ruined my save. As for the last boss, I actually entered it with ZERO bullets. Thankfully the last boss isnt too difficult, its this gigantic stationary creature on a crucified on a cross, where you have to shoot it a few times and then go around hitting these vines which reveal a button on a machine you have to hit at the right time. Do this to 3 machines and you beat the game. The good thing is theres enough ammo scattered around the boss area to make you be able to beat it, even if you entered for 0 bullets. This is good because even if I wanted to backtrack at this point, its impossible, its barred off.
 So overall the I'd say the resource management is well balanced. I never felt TOO comfortable like I just had an abundance of heals and ammo, I was always kept on my toes and being careful with what I shot. But it wasn't like this annoying frustrating experience where I didn't have enough resources to fight back. Its just a shame of the lack of weapon variety and real weapons, though.

 The last area of the game is has a real suffocating atmosphere. The sewers is distressing, full of walking monsters and even a Ghost chase part. Theres even a saferoom in the sewers where you enter the mirror going back to your own childhood bedroom with the aforementioned TV puzzle. Then you drain the water and reveal the big bunker doors, to open them it needs two eye scanners. This is a nice twist in the plot, where its revealed you are the one that cut out your own eyeball! To use with the other eyescanner. So you even get an item in your inventory of your own eyeball, which was creepy but awesome. Then you enter the final bunker, its this pitch black series of underground bunkers which is pretty scary. Theres cult members in here wearing suits of armor that swing swords, but frankly they look a little comical more than horrifying. But still this area was dreadful (in a good way) to explore. Before the final boss you find the Ghost creature chained up, and its another plot twist. The deformed ghost creature is actually your twin sister, the postcard in the beginning of the game is about you and your twin sister. Shes deformed by the Preists wicked experiments and lust for his sacred rituals or whatever. Theres 3 endings here, I chose to use a scalpel on her and kill her. But it turns out if you ignore her entirely, you get a different ending. And if you did the Infinite room before this, and managed to pickup the Syringe, you can save her and get another good ending. I got the neutral ending because I didn't have the Syringe. I found the syringe on an earlier save, but only because I was "experimenting" and took a bunch of damage by the crowd of monsters before the syringe room, and decided to reload and not grab the syringe until I found  a use for it. Well, by the time I realized the use it was too late, and I'm not reloading and losing like an hour of progress. Still, the twists and turns in the plot here are exciting and a spectacle to behold. Even the damn preist morphs into that gigantic end boss.

 After beating the boss you simply return to the mansion, use the new key item on the front door and walk outside the mansion to a bright sunny day, getting one of three endings. Despite the few gripes I had with the game, and some of the puzzles being disappointing, I'd still say this is a modern gem. Overall I loved my time with the game, and I could even see myself playing it again at some point, maybe sharing the experience with a friend. I'm happy to see that there is a sequel announced, I'm excited to get that now. It takes most of the greatest things about classic Survival Horror and implements them perfectly, the atmosphere and plot are stellar, the monsters frightening. It's a must play for any fan of Survival Horror.

 8/10

Mafia 3

 

Being a fan of Mafia 1 (Original) Mafia 2, and Mafia 1 (Remake), I've been excited to get around to playing Mafia 3 at some point. Although I had seen trailers and advertisements for the game, and heard many people badmouthing it, it put me off a bit because the idea of a Mafia game set in the 1960s where you play as an African American just seemed kind of out of place? I wasn't sure what they were going for. But I reserved judgement until I played through it myself. Finally I got it on a discount and installed it and played through it recently.

There are no difficulty selections, infact the first time you boot up the game it doesn't even give you a main menu, it just shoots you straight into a series of cutscenes and then the game, something I didnt appreciate as I wanted to change the volume, graphics settings, resolution etc. The game sets its self up swiftly , showing that the main character Lincoln is a tall, hulking Vietnam Soldier recently returning home in New Orleans,  gets greeted and picked up by his friend that works in a local crime family/Mafia. Interlaced between this slow start are flashbacks or...flashforwards? To combat scenarios of you robbing banks, and all sorts various exciting scenes to kind of spice up the intro, which works well to keep the pacing. Ultimately, after these introductions, all of your Mobster friend and family gets betrayed and gunned down right before your eyes, you even get shot in the head yourself yet somehow miraculously survive. From there the game opens up where you're set on this plan to get revenge on those who did this to you. Its a good setup, its simple, easy to follow, and the characters are memorable and interesting.

The writing and narrative of the game doesn't shy away from politics, or even dare I say call the whole narrative of the game almost Leftist propaganda, which isn't nessesarily a good or bad thing. Games can have political agendas and try to forward a political message, as long as its to the service of the gameplay and overall narrative, and not just shoved in there for easy mass appeal. The game has a heavy focus on 1960's racism and Civil rights movements. Constantly you will have White characters saying racial slurs, calling you and your friends the N word, theres mature themes of slavery, the KKK, Confederate supremecist rednecks, and so on. More than anything, its just amusing how overblown and absurd it all is. If a genuine Conservative was playing this game, I'm sure they would think its all a strawman and big fake caricature of their side. But theres nothing wrong with a little satire in media, I found it all entertaining, amusing, funny, and kept me engaged in the story, characters, plot, etc. I did scoff a few times at how overtly it felt like the game was trying to push this leftist politics at me, as if like every White man in the 60's was an evil neo-nazi or something, but the gameplay and characters were engaging enough that it didn't really bother me. Now, I've heard people say they hate this game, it has like a 50% rating on steam, I was wondering why do people hate this game? Is it just because of the politics? I kept asking myself that question the whole time I was playing the game, waiting for the answer to reveal its self.

The general progression of the game is that you open the map, find a Story mission and drive to it. There is no fast travel! I think it was like this in the previous Mafia games, too. So you have to get accustomed to driving everywhere, everytime. I don't really mind it, really. When games like this have fast travel it almost makes the open world seem pointless. Why have this big open world if its more convenient to bypass most of it? Instead, in the Mafia games, they force you to live in this world and drive around and get familiar with the sights and sounds. Maybe its tolerable in part because of the Radio and soundtrack in the game. There are three radio stations, and since the game takes place in the 1960s Vietnam era, its a lot of Rolling Stones, those familliar almost cliche songs that play during any Vietnam themed media, such as Fortunate Son, Rock music, but also theres a decent amount of softer pop music like Sam Cooke, The Searchers, Roy Orbison, and stuff like Johnny Cash, and so on. The soundtrack kept the driving entertaining, just going through the various places in the detailed world, the game world has a lot of variety. Theres a section thats all swamps and Bayou, theres a Downtown section with all the city life, and skyscrapers, theres the more ghetto areas, its a fairly big map and often to drive to the next objective it will make you drive 2000+ meters and it takes a good 10+ minutes to get there. These long drives are also aided by the general high graphical fidelity of the game as well, the game is very colorful, the weather is dynamic, sometimes its dark and rainy, other times very bright, green sunny day.  The reflections on the ground when its wet out looks really good, with all the colors popping off the screen. The cars drive very weighty, almost every car accelerates slowly from 0-60, maybe because the game takes place in 60's so even by then a lot of the cars people are driving are older 30s,40s,50s cars. So most of the cars in the game are relatively slow to modern standards. If you get in a car crash at high speed, you even lose lots of health, further adding to the atmosphere and immersion.  Everytime you steal a car or do a crime, if anyone sees you it will say "Witness is calling cops" , but usually its OK because if you just leave the arena soon enough, you'll be outside the searching bubble and it wont be an issue. Just another detail to add to the living feeling of the world. There is a funny civilian behavior, where it seems like they dive far too often in front of your car. Something about their AI makes them frequently leap in front of your car, when they should be leaping the other way. Just thought that was amusing.

More about choosing story missions from the map screen: Its annoying how the DLC missions show up as "Story missions" that you can do anytime. It doesn't even indicate to you that they are optional DLC missions, or DLC at all! So I accidentally did one or two of these DLC missions without realizing. I don't like to do DLC stuff until I get the main campaign out of the way, I want to see what the developers released and were working on at release date, not stuff that was added way later. I just want to see the core experience first. So it was annoying and frustrating having to figure out how to avoid the DLC. Its because the HUD in general isn't designed very well.
Its bloated, ugly, hard to read, grey text on dark grey backgrounds, tiny fonts, too many bars upon bars, and still somehow has missing indicators. Like, where is my sprint bar? I beat the damn game and I still cant figure out how much stamina I have at any given moment. Theres a rear view car camera on the top when you drive...but whats the point, you can already press a button to look behind you. Immersion I guess? Well it breaks immersion having so much shit all over the screen. Theres a speedometer at the bottom, then a bunch of other bars ontop of it that I don't even know what its showing. Going across the bottom left is this little tiny bar trying to show you wallet money, bank money, grenades, etc. But again, the fonts and colors suck and are barely legible. The minimap is either too big or too small, it depends on resolution. The entire hud is a mess, and really needed some kind of option for adjusting the size or something.

As for the actual main missions themselves, theres a cycle to it. Actually not that many "Main missions" are unique events in themselves. Usually you just drive to some location, talk to someone, and then it starts up this Racket operation in the general area where it gives you a HUD indicator of "Damage remaining $$$"  and you have to go around the district and do these  reoccurring mini-missions to kill enemy gangs, destroy their various equipments, steal their money, and generally just do damage to their operations to make this HUD money indicator to go down to $0, at which point you go talk to a person and it opens up the actual unique main mission, usually just involving going to some mob bosses headquarters and killing him. Then, you own the location and have to decide which of your 3 companions to give it to. For the first handful of hours, I didn't even notice you could give it to other companions. It would just say something like "Location complete, press A to award to Cassandra" and show me a list of possible perks that doing this would unlock. I didnt notice that if you press a direction, you can award it to other companions. This whole empire asset management aspect of the game felt weird and sort of pointless? or incomplete. Like they wanted you to get the feeling you were becoming the Main Mafia boss, rewarding assets to people, but it felt a bit shallow. I get the impression the devs wanted you to care about this stuff a lot, but I barely noticed or cared. Each of the 3 companions has a different list of perks that get unlocked, if you keep giving these assets to them, Cassandra is stuff I found stupid and pointless, like these voodoo grenades? With extra smoke perks? but one of her main perks was more Rifle ammo, so I eventually got that from her, then stopped caring. Vito was obviously the best perk set, his was stuff like More maximum health, Fater health regen, and even being able to call in Hit squads at any time, which is a squad of a bunch of allied NPC's that gun down anyone you're fighting, at any time. These guys were super powerful, although I didn't use them much, the times I did use them proved to be very useful. Vito even has perks which make these squads stronger, ontop of his health boosting perks. The last companions perks seemed almost useless to me, just small things to temporarily get cops away from searching for you, but ONLY if they're in the blue circle phase, not when they're actively chasing you. Even the lowest tier of perks from Burke gets you this ability, his other perks just enhance it, make it last longer, or are perks related to vehicles that I didn't care much for. Theres all sorts of other stats about the assets, like how much money they're making, how much money each Companion is raking in, but I didn't really see the point of caring about any of it? I couldn't tell what it was changing. It wasn't like there was any turf wars that made you keep ontop of protecting your rackets, I never saw anything like that. They want you to care about this so much, that every now and again after completing enough main missions, you have a little sit down cutscene at your headquarters with all the companions, and you have to decide which district to give to which person. And they get really mad at you and talk shit if you ignore or neglect one of them. But in doing so, you can lose perks, like if Cassandra is bitching at me because I didn't give her a district enough times, the only way to make her stop is to give her a district, but in doing so, I'd temporarily lose for instance, my Maximum health perk from Vito, until I give him another racket. So obviously I care most about the Max health perk, not pleasing Cassandra, so I'd ignore her or Burk a few times -- well in doing so, she got so pissed at me and said "You ignored me three times now, I quit!"  or something to that effect - meaning I'd permanently lost her for the rest of the game, and unlocking anymore of her perks, infact I had to go do a side mission to kill her in order to even get back the ammo van ability, and keep the perks I'd already unlocked! I was kinda pissed about this and felt like I'd ruined my save, you cant load or go back or anything. I think there should of been some meter, or visual indication of how close I am to ruining her relationship, I was clueless what exactly was going to happen and it all happened abruptly. But it wasnt so bad afterall, just a minor setback. Luckily I already had all the perks I wanted from her anyway.

Now anyway, back onto the main missions and pacing of the game. Like I said previously, the game actually doesn't have an abundance of actual unique main missions. Its mostly this gameplay cycle and routine of going to a new arena, having to do these mini-quests where most of the time I'd just drive to a location, snipe one guy, and leave instantly. Or have to interrogate some guy, by beating on him and then he gives you more of these copy paste mini quests to progress by making the "Money Remaining $$$" damage meter on the HUD to go down. Since I heard that people hate this game, I'm wondering is this the reason why? They just hated how repetitive and lazy this style of progression is? Well yeah, it is repetitive, and yes it does seem lazy. But to me it wasn't that big of a deal. The gunplay is fun enough, the general gameplay is fun to engage with, I didn't mind all that much. Yes, a few times I was like "Ugh, this AGAIN?" like I was expecting something more, but I realized thats really what most of this game is. And I kind of just accepted it. The gameplay loop is what it is, unfortunately it doesn't have an abundance of extravagant, scripted, unique locations and missions, but the game isn't terrible in spite of that. Because its just a good Third person shooter, breaking into these enemy headquarters and either sneaking around or trying to figure out how to damage their stuff, assassinate the bosses, or whatever, is just kind of fun to do in general.
That's not to say the game doesn't have any unique scripted missions, it definitely does. They're just few and far between, and usually only after you do some major progression or plot point in the game, usually one after each time you've successfully damaged enough property on a turf and made the money go down to $0. One of the highlights of these unique missions was the Boat mission. This is a level Commando style you cause a giant explosion which disrupts this party Yacht where politicians and powerful influential people are, because you're hunting down the Uncle of the games Antagonist. This mission has the boat shaking all around, tossing the character around as he engages in combat, pedestrians falling off the boat and into the water like Titanic style, its just a fun mission thats a spectacle to behold. Another mission has you in a defense against waves of enemies, using a sniper, to eventually kill the Butcher, which was just a fine holdout style mission.  Another mission you have to assassinate a politician before he gets into his car, you can go into Slow-motion though so I sniped him through the window, then you have to get away from the cops. There's another mission where you go to a damn KKK rally and have to assassinate the main Klansman. And a few missions where you break into various places and rescue someone and have to get them out safely. So it does have exciting interesting moments in the main missions, but yeah for the most part you'll be doing a lot of almost copy+paste grinding in the districts doing these mini-quests to get to them. I was never bored or pissed at the game, though, really, I was pretty much entertained the whole time.

The gameplay has a surprising amount of mechanics. First and foremost its a Third Person Shooter. There is tons of combat in this game, moreso than most other Open world GTA games I've played. This is a very good thing to me! And the best part, is that the guns and combat is actually really fun. The graphics, and especially physics, are at times just amazing. Getting into gunfights is visceral, intense, and fun! Even the audio design: enemies are constantly yelling stuff at you, talking to eachother, saying their plans, its exciting hearing all the stuff they're saying. The combat is brutal, when you shoot the enemies, they have dramatic reactions where you can see the force of the bullets impact into their bodies a dynamic physics system takes over, its satisfying to engage in combat in this game, the physicality and brutality of the physics systems, gunplay, and enemy reactions is awesome. Most of the time if you shoot them once, they wont just keep fighting. They'll be staggered, stunned, holding their wound and muttering in pain, but they can recover after a handful of seconds. Often times if you shoot them and they go down, they'll be writhing around on the ground in pain bleeding out, the combat is disturbing, realistic, and shocking at times. Some of the death sounds and screaming sound effects get your blood pumping in the heat of combat, seeing  people all over the floor crying to their death, asking for their moma's and stuff like that. The only other game with such graphic, brutal combat and dramatic physics is maybe Max Payne 3. The guns feel good to use, they have a real punch of recoil and good sound effects. You can only carry two guns, a main gun, and a sidearm. And ammo is limited, only a couple dozen bullets for each. Which is a good thing, it turns into this calculated Risk/reward situation where you have to wonder if you have enough ammo to take them all out, if you should try Stealth (which is very powerful, but not overpowered, and the stealth has insane kill animations that alone is fun to watch) or should you go in guns blazing and pickup the enemies guns and ammo instead of dropping your main gun. Because you can find a gun you really like, but if you drop it, you might not get it back for many hours. Shortly into the game you unlock additional characters you work with, such as Cassandra, Vito, Thomas, and they give you additional perks and abilities. Such as in your weapon selection wheel, you can now call in extra services. One of these services is to call a van to your position (that arrives very quickly and conveniently) where you can refill ammo and buy new guns which get unlocked permanently to equip yourself with. But they cost a lot of money, so I had to pick carefully. I found that using Rifles was the best choice most of the time. So for basically the entire game, except the very beginning, I was using these single shot rifles, which I found really fun and effective. I don't mind the two weapon limit, it makes sense realistically to make the combat more grounded, and it adds to the immersion and intensity. I liked being forced to pickup subpar guns off the ground sometimes, when I was in a dire situation.

As for the health system, it uses regenerating health, except only regenerates each bracket. At first I think you have two health bars, if the second depletes it only regenerates the first one. Later on, you can unlock more health, up to a maximum of 5. I think thats a great way to handle regenerating health. The usual modern gaming standard of letting your health regenerate all the way is just too overpowered and easy. This bracket system, which I guess Halo introduced? Is a clever way to have some of the benefits but without making it too strong. To fully restore all your health bars, you have to use Adrenaline Shots,  basically health kits. You can find these in healthkit stations around the map, or you can buy them from the ammo van, which then these Adrenaline shots get stored on you until you press a button to use them. At first I think you can only hold two of them, but by the end of the game I had gotten so many perks I could hold 6 of them!

With this almost unforgiving health system in place, it adds even more to the intensity of the combat engagements. You can die very quickly, the enemy AI isn't stupid, either. They will frequently flank you, run straight up to you, do unpredictable things, toss Molotov's and grenades at you, snipe at you, coordinate flanks with their buddies, try to break your cover, etc. The game uses a Cover system, where you press a button to hide behind any piece of possible cover, and it works surprisingly well. Way better than other games I've played recently (Watch Dogs 2), this cover system is snappy, reliable, and fluid. You can blind fire, which is surprisingly helpful. You shoot over cover and since the enemies get stunned and react realistically by even just a stray bullet nipping them, it gives you some time to plan to jump to the next piece of cover if they're advancing towards you. The stealth system is quite basic, you just press a button to crouch, and as you move around you see little indicators of how much the enemy can see you, and if you get close enough you can press a button to instakill the enemy with a short but brutal animation. You can even pull them over objects, pull them behind walls, its quite dynamic and impressive the amount of ways you can get litle unique takedown animations. The stealth is quite forgiving too, almost too much, but it was fun to use sometimes so I actually bothered to use it besides just going guns blazing everytime.

Something the combat mechanics have that I've noticed other similar modern games share, is this Reinforcements ability that some enemies have. In this game they are called Sentry guards. They have a little icon above their head, and if you trigger them a big message pops up on screen "Sentry alerted" , now in other games (again..Watch Dogs 2) this can tend to suck, because in other games as soon as these guys hear you or see you, theyre calling endless waves of reinforcements, making combat in those games just downright annoying and almost pointless. However, in Mafia 3, its handled perfectly. When you alert a sentry, he has to actually run to a phone, dial it, and talk to someone. It gives you lots of time to track him down and take him out before he actually calls them in. This makes the whole mechanic a welcome and exciting addition, rather than a detriment. And when he does call in reinforcements, its only just one wave, not infinite waves like other games. So I'm happy this aspect of the combat was done right, and actually enhanced the gameplay rather than made it frustrating.

Not everything is designed mechanically great, though. The police for instance leaves something to be desired. For instance, as soon as the cops are after you, I found myself just letting them kill me most of the time instead of trying to take sometimes 10+ minutes trying to lose them. Why bother? Well, the reason is because the penalty for dying in this game is losing half of your held cash. But the thing is, as soon as the cops came after me, I would just press the button to bring the Bank car to me to deposit my cash, so now there was no penalty for death. So almost everytime the cops are after me, I instantly deposit my cash and let them kill me. Theres multiple reasons why I found the cop chases just a waste of time and annoying. For one, they pop your tires way too damn frequently. 9 out of 10 times youre in a cop chase, within the first 60 seconds almost all of your tires are popped! Its so stupid! Only until near the end of the game I actually noticed there was a perk you can get from the ammo van "Bullet proof tires" ...but I don't know, its still too frequent by default. And additionally, its just kind of too hard to lose the cops. I still don't know if theres any way to tell what 'Wanted level' I have. There doesnt seem to be anything on the HUD indicating what strength the cops are at? Its like all or nothing? I dont know. So even a cop watching me steal a random car, felt like the same force as cops after me on a murder spree - Or I couldn't tell the exact strength so I was left wondering how long this escape would take. And it seems like if you stay on the main roads, the cops will just always keep up with you. Its like the only way to actually lose them is to try to pop their tires in return, which obviously driving and shooting should be clunky, but theres this weird lockon system that I kind of fumble with where you can lock onto their tires , which sometimes works, but most of all I just didnt want to bother. The only other option is to try to go off road or go on foot in some back alleys, but who knows how long this could take. Again, why go through all this instead of just deposit my cash and let them kill me, then respawn nearby. Only a couple missions in the game had mandatory cop chases where you have to escape to finish the mission, most of the times I got caught by police was when I was just freeroaming in the world trying to do things to progress to the next main mission.


The game is easy to play for long stretches, I don't know if its due to the atmosphere, music, the lack of free travel, the general gameplay cycle, sometimes I could play it for 5 hours! it just sucks you in, I guess. I actually was engaged in the main plotline, the characters like Donovan, which is this CIA agent that was your buddy in Vietnam (I think?) that helps you throughout the whole game, he always has wacky antics happening in his cutscenes, constantly chainsmoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, hes just like a reliable buddy the whole game which you turn to for more information on what to do next. Then you have Father James, this Priest character thats supposed to be like this figure of moral authority and righteousness in the narrative, but I found him kind of annoying and does nothing but act sentimental, mope, and say trite platitudes the whole game. Still, it was fun to watch his antics. Interspliced through these narratives you have the 3 underbosses and their dramas, the Irish Burke being a hard ass, having a fucked up knee waddling around, you have the main antagonists constantly saying all sorts of racist stuff, just the general things said and done in the game is a curosity. Hate it or not, being sent on missions where you're facing off against stereotypical rednecks sometimes wearing fucking bags on their heads, scribbling White power graffiti on the walls, with rebel flags - its just not dull. I found it easy to be entertained by the game, even if its absurd. I appreciated how mature the whole game felt, it doen't feel like something kids should be playing. I even liked the main character, hes stoic, doesn't fuck around, isn't all emotional or pissy, he just gets shit down and the whole game it feels like you're on a damn mission, just like Vietnam. He has that Veteran mentality about him, even wearing this cool Army outfit as his default look. I was curious whenever a cutscene played, I genuinely didn't want to miss any bits of story or dialogue, I found it pretty enjoyable and fun to keep up with.

The main gripes I have with the game is the lack of unique main missions, the copy pasted repetitive mini-missions, the bad HUD, sometimes it can be hard and ambiguous to figure out what the next main mission is, theres not really any coherent structure of the pacing of the game, you kind of just go to an area on the map do stuff there. At one point I realized I'm doing content for a part of the map that probably should be happening at a way later stage, it was kind of hard to figure out what to do next sometimes. The DLC showing up on the main map as any other story mission without any indication that its DLC didn't add to that. More gripes is some of the police stuff with the shooting tires too much, the sub-par design choices with the money and annoyingly having to call in this bank car every 5 minutes to preserve your cash, Something I didn't figure out until many hours into the game. It could of been explained better to the player. But besides that I didn't really have many complaints. Maybe I would of liked if there was a way to fast travel, SOME way, maybe having to drive to a train station and take you halfway there? I don't know, probably half of the game is spent driving to and from places, its quite arduous sometimes. The game is very forgiving with checkpoints and stuff, so I wasn't very frustrated that much, and usually when I died it was completely my fault for playing stupid and trying to speedrun past a section or something.

So I'm still left wondering, why does this game have such a bad reputation? Is it really just people crying about how "SJW" the narrative is? Its not that big of a deal, just enjoy it for what it is, take it as satire if you want, I liked the gameplay enough to not be bothered, and despite the politician overtones, I still enjoyed the narrative and the characters. If its not the politics, then do people hate the game for the repetitive mini-missions? I didn't mind it either, because the game has awesome gunplay. Some other open world games you barely even get in shootouts. Like Mafia 1 doesnt actually have that many fighting sections, this game actually barely had any vehicle chases. Maybe thats another gripe, theres not enough vechile exclusive missions. Theres hardly any vehicle chases in Mafia 3, it really is just a straight up Third Person Shooter, I like that kind of thing, I was actually really happy to find out this game has such a big focus on the shooting , because they nailed it with the gameplay in that department. So its like they went all in on one aspect, and kind of ignored some of the other ones like Vehicle sections, but its fine to me. Still, I had a pretty fun time with Mafia 3, it wasnt that long or worn out its welcome, I didn't really do a single Optional mission, I just stuck to the main story and it took me 20 hours to complete,  which is perfect to me for an Open world game like this. I had a good time, I don't know what everyone elses problem is with this game. Underrated.

7/10