Also available on Windows Redfall is a game that that had a lot of hype to live up and, according to critical reviews, seems to lived up to almost none of it. Arkane has an impressive resume, so a lot of people had high expectations for this game, but there's one key factor people seem to forget that makes these expectations unreasonable in my opinion - Arkane's games are single player whereas Redfall is a (mostly) open world multiplayer game. Yeah, you can play it solo as I did, but it's definitely a multiplayer game. That's a big difference; a studio specializing in single player experiences is not going to hit it out of the park on their first big multiplayer experience, especially with the turnover and personnel issues that Arkane had with this game The premise of the game is that you're trapped in the island town of Redfall, Massachusetts, a town that suddenly finds itself infested with vampires and cults worshipping them. You have a choice of playable characters each of whom have their own unique traits and skills. I chose to play as Devinder, a cryptozoologist with a gloriously British accent and a badass ultimate skill that sets up a tridirectional pulsating UV light that petrifies any vampires in range. As the vampires have somehow frozen (in time, not in ice) the ocean into massive walls of water preventing escape, the player(s) have no choice but to go on the offensive and hunt down the vampires if there's any hope of escape. The game is divided into two halves with four "vampire gods" that have to be slain numerous sub-bosses, some optional and some mandatory. You start the game in Redfall Commons where your main goal is to slay The Hollow Man. In addition to the vampires serving as The Hollow Man's thralls, you'll have to deal with his army cultists and the Bellwether mercenary company, as well. None of the human enemies are particularly difficult to kill, but they WILL swarm and obliterate you if you give them the chance. The sniper rifle was my best friend. Humans die as they would in any game, but vampires are a little trickier. You can kill them either with fire, by meleeing them while they're petrified, by shooting them with a gun that has a special perk to let you kill them (I only found one in my playthrough), or by draining their HP and then meleeing them with a weapon that has a stake attached (that would be either your shotgun or assault rifle). Anyway, once you kill The Hollow Man, you're going to be thinking "That was way too short. That can't possibly be the whole game." And it's not; you then make your way to Burial Point, the second half of the town of Redfall at which point the game inexplicably locks you out of Redfall Commons forever. This is a bizarre design choice which serves no purpose that I can see and only limits player freedom. Needless to say, it irked me. In Burial Point, you spent your missions hunting down two vampire gods - Bloody Tom and Miss Whisper. Once they're dead, you take on the game's final vampire god boss, The Black Sun. As you're doing all of this, there are numerous side quests, some "campaign side quests" that you take on at the mission table, and some miscellaneous side quests that you either pick up from the world or by talking to a certain NPC. You also have various safe houses across the world that you can secure. These safe houses have three steps to complete. First, you find the actual safe house and turn on the generator powering the UV lamps that protect it. Sometimes this involves just interacting with the generator, but sometimes the generator key is missing, so you have track down the key before you can turn on the generator and activate the safe house. Then you have to complete a random side quest. After that, you have to kill the vampire underboss of the neighborhood. Once all of that is done, you have secured the neighborhood (a misleading turn of phrase as there will still be vampires, mercenaries, and cultists skulking about). Visually, the game looks very Arkane. I don't know a better way to describe it than that. It's definitely not a photorealistic art style but it's not cell shaded, either. Someone more educated in digital art design can probably give you a better description than that, but whatever it's called, I quite liked the art direction. Vampires looked cool, the human characters looked nice, and the world itself was extremely well designed. As for performance, I've heard from friends who tried the game that some of them hit a lot of bugs, but I think they just had bad luck; even with the day one version, my main bug encounters were weird physics glitches - objects floating an inch off the ground, dead enemies ragdolling a bit too much, etc. There was one fast travel point in Burial Point that would spawn me under the world where I'd fall to my death or in the air in front of a cliff instead of on it where I'd fall and take damage about one out of every three times, but that's it. I had one crash in nearly 30 hours of gameplay which I don't consider to be bad. The only performance issue I had was slow down. The game usually runs at 30 fps (they say a 60 fps performance mode is coming later; no clue why that couldn't have been implemented at launch), but I had numerous frame rate drops including some that briefly dropped to what looked to be sub-20 fps. These were all during busy fights, but still, I was playing on a Series X, and this game isn't exactly a showcase of graphical fidelity. Overall, Redfall is okay. It's a fun little vampire romp, but the story is pretty standard and uninspired, the gameplay gets repetitive, and there are only a few truly unique places in an otherwise homogenous world to explore. It would probably be more fun with friends, but if you've got three other friends ready to play a co-op Xbox game, you're better off going with Halo Infinite or Back 4 Blood. There's just nothing that makes Redfall really stand out aside from having vampires instead of zombies, and that's not enough to make up for a bland world, mediocre story, and inexcusable performance drops. My Rating - CAlso available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Windows As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I yearn for the days 20+ years ago when Star Trek games were plentiful and amazing. We've seen a renaissance of Star Trek shows in recent years, but the games haven't caught up yet. Hopefully that's changing, though, as Star Trek: Resurgence's May 2023 release brought a heavily cinematic and story-driven experience that FEELS like you're playing a season of Star Trek. The story revolves around the ship's new first officer, Commander Jera Rydek, and engineer Petty Officer Carter Diaz board the Centaur class science vessel USS Resolute. Rydek struggles to slip into her new role after the unpopular decision to bring in a transfer as the new first officer after the tragic death of the previous first officer instead of promoting from within the crew. Meanwhile, Diaz is just content to be a dipshit grease monkey and fix the engines while his Vulcan department head glowers at him. Taking place after Star Trek: Nemesis - specifically after William Riker becomes captain of the USS Titan but before the Hobus supernova - the story revolves around a diplomatic mission to escort a Federation ambassador to negotiations where they will serve as a neutral intermediary between the Hotari, a relatively primitive spacefaring race, and the Alydians, a race roughly on par with the Federation that has kept the Hotari in imperial bondage for centuries. If you've ever played a TellTale game like Wolf Among Us, The Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones, then you pretty much know what you're getting here as Dramatic Labs has created a game that plays just like that. The focus is all narrative with some action thrown in for good measure. As is the case with TellTale's games, character choice is paramount, and your choices will have a direct impact on how the story plays out. Sometimes these choices are fairly minor, and sometimes they're major turning points; a lot of the time, you don't know what impact your choices will have until after you've made it. It's not as polished as TellTale's games with some visual glitches, one instance of a bug that forced me to reload my game, and a couple of bugged achievements; but for what, from what I can tell, is the studio's first release, it's pretty darn good. It makes sense, also, that it's so similar to TellTale's games as the studio is composed of former TellTale talent. The game's flaws are entirely technical as the writing and acting are simply superb, and fortunately, those flaws are minor. Visually, the game looks last gen and feels like a backward compatibility game even running natively on Series X and PS5, but that's really not that important; Star Trek has always been about the stories and character choices, not the flashiest and most state-of-the-art visual effects. The story is broken in three acts each of which is composed of a number of chapters that have title displays exactly like you'd see in an episode of The Next Generation, Voyager, or Deep Space Nine. That helps more than you'd think to set the tone and feel as essentially a playable season of Star Trek. Star Trek: Resurgence is not a perfect game, and those wanting an action packed space adventure will be disappointed, but for those wanting a genuine Star Trek experience, then look no further. This honestly feels more authentically Star Trek in my opinion than the legendary games of twenty years past like Elite Force and Bridge Commander. The element of choice really makes you feel like you're an active participant in the events rather than an outside observer. That said, the lack of checkpoints during chapters is irksome, and for a native Series X game rather than Xbox One game played via backwards compatibility, I would have hoped for some more impressive visuals. Still, the game looks completely fine, and outside of a few hiccups, runs well. I hope that Paramount allows Design Labs to keep the license because this is exactly the type of Star Trek game I want to see more of, and I'm sure that with future opportunities to make games, the team will only improve and deliver even better narrative experiences. My Rating - BYou remember that game I reviewed a few months ago called Hentai World? Well, for some reason, they made a sequel that nobody wanted. Hentai Girls. The game is as generic, bland, and forgettable as the title, and it's just as bad as the previous game. It's literally exactly like the previous game. If anything, it's worse. It's still just a boring sliding square puzzle, but there are fewer levels here, and there's no dialogue whatsoever. Sure, the dialogue was dumb and pointless in the first game, but at least it was there. There's just...nothing here. I literally don't know what else to say about it. Oh boy, I get to do some easy and boring puzzles to see generic topless anime women. Whoopie. The game sucks. It shouldn't exist. It doesn't have one single redeeming aspect. Boring puzzles, no dialogue, and less content than the previous game. Don't buy it. It's not even worth it as a joke game. My Rating - FAlso available on PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, iOS, OSX, and Windows Resident Evil 4 is widely considered to be one of the best games if not the best game in the series. I don't personally agree with that assessment, but it's absolutely a fact that Resident Evil 4 is an exceptional game that manages to blend the horror experience that the series is known for with a more action focused experience that was becoming more popular in the mid 2000s. After the huge success of the recent remakes of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3, Capcom decided to neglect the only remaining main series game that didn't have a native version for modern hardware and remake Resident Evil 4, a game that has a competently upscaled version for PS4 and Xbox One. You'll get justice one day, Code Veronica... For those unfamiliar with the story, six years after the events of Resident Evil 2, Leon Kennedy is working as an agent for the United States government. The president's college student daughter, Ashley, has been kidnapped by a weird cult in Spain, and Leon is sent in to find and rescue her. What he discovers is that this isn't just a cult; it's a violent murder peasant cult. They're not zombies in the T-virus sense, but for all intents and purposes, they're basically zombies in the Haitian voodoo sense. While Resident Evil 4 didn't need a remake in my opinion, I'd be lying if I said that they didn't do a good job with this one. It looks absolutely fantastic, and the controls are every bit as modernized as you would expect. It's also got some good accessibility, too with an array of difficulties from "anyone should be able to finish this" to "no one should be able to finish this," and if you find that you've overestimated yourself a little bit, you have the option of lowering your difficulty once you've started instead of having to start over. I played on PS5, but I would imagine that the PS4 version looks stunningly good as well considering how good the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes looked on that system. It's a shame that the game isn't available on Switch, but there's just no way that a game this graphically impressive could have run on Switch without downgrading the visuals intensely or making another stupid cloud version. For those who like cosmetic flairs, there are a variety of costume options for both Leon and Ashley. Speaking of Ashley, while the game is still a giant escort mission, Ashely's AI is INFINITELY better than it was in the original. You still have to keep your wits about you to make sure she isn't captured or killed, but you're not going to be tearing your hair out hearing "LEON!!" every four seconds anymore. I was ready to feed her to the monsters and just tell the president I was too late in the original game; I legitimately liked her in this game. This Resident Evil 4 remake should have been a Code Veronica remake, but since it wasn't, I'm quite happy with what we got. This is absolutely the definitive way to experience the story, and it's an absolute blast to play. I can definitely see myself replaying this in the future because of how much fun I had this go around. This is a definite must-play for fans of survival horror games even if it did lean just a bit too heavily into the action side of things for my liking. My Rating - AThe Legend of Zelda is a series that has consistently reinvented itself in one way or another over its history. The first game was a top down adventure; the second game was a side scrolling RPG; the third game returned to the style of the first but with dramatic visual and mechanical improvements. When the series shifted to 3D, each game was distinct in both tone and art direction. That hasn't changed with Tears of the Kingdom, although of the few Zelda games that are direct sequels, it does appear to be the most similar to its predecessor. Don't let appearances fool you, though; this game is quite distinct from Breath of the Wild in a number of ways that keep it feeling fresh and prevent it from being, despite what some naysayers on the internet may tell you, "overpriced DLC." Tears of the Kingdom takes place six years after the events of Breath of the Wild. Hyrule is recovering from the Calamity, and Princess Zelda (no clue why she's not Queen Zelda when she's the only surviving royal) is trying to lead her kingdom to a prosperous future and learn from the past accompanied and protected by her faithful knight, Link. When investigating a chamber discovered deep beneath Hyrule Castle, they discover a mummy with a hand stuck to its chest. As mummies are wont to do, it magically reanimates itself and attacks Link, wrecking the Master Sword and Link's arm in the process, and throwing Link and Zelda into a random chasm. Upon regaining control of Link after the various opening cut scenes, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you're just playing more Breath of the Wild as the major differences do take some time to sink in. The two most significant gameplay differences are the fusion ability and the world itself. With the fusion ability, you can fuse together elements in the world to create a variety of tools to help you along the way. One of the tutorial elements early on has you make a raft. Half of the puzzles in the game (if not more) can be solved with the universal rule of Tears of the Kingdom - "When in doubt, build a bridge." Eventually, you'll be making cars, airplanes, and giant death mechs. It's at least 20% cooler than anything Breath of the Wild had to offer. The big game changer for your average gameplay, though, is the ability to fuse damn near anything you find in the world to your weapons. Have a stick and a curved rock? Now you have an axe. Have a shield and an explosive barrel? Now you have a bomb shield that will explode and send an enemy flying when they hit it. Have a sword and an explosive barrel? You're about to commit a murder-suicide. These weapon fusions have some serious potential, though; you can take a 10 attack power sword and turn it into a 65 attack power sword with the right fusion material. Unfortunately, you can fuse anything to your bows, but you can fuse material in your inventory to your arrows to make bomb arrows, fire arrows, etc. Tears of the Kingdom's other main difference is the massive scope of the world. The regular overworld is virtually identical to Breath of the Wild, but you also have a series of sky islands that you can (with a little frustration and creativity) explore and traverse as well as the depths, a realm the exact same size as the Hyrule overworld but mirrored. Wherever there's a valley in the overworld, there's a mountain in the depths; wherever there's a river in the overworld, there's a literally impassable rock wall in your way. I found the depths to be a little boring and same-y after a while, but there are definitely some wicked features to explore, and the combat gets a lot tougher in the depths than it usually is in the overworld. The game gets its subtitle from the twelve Dragon's tears that you can find throughout the world. Every time you interact with a new Dragon's tear, you're shown a cutscene that reveals some of the story of what happened to Zelda who has been mysteriously missing after the magic mummy's attack. This is where the bulk of the game's story gets told, and it's a story that I honestly think puts the majority of the Zelda series to shame. Tears of the Kingdom is a vast improvement over Breath of the Wild in every way. It's significantly larger in terms of the physical world, it's got more options to traverse the world and approach combat, the story is better, there are TONS of side quests, and the visuals and performance are both much improved. This is a virtually perfect game, and while it's not quite my favorite Zelda game - that title will probably always be with Link to the Past - it's a damn close second. I put in just shy of 180 hours in my playthrough, and the game said I was less than 60% complete. It may be the first Switch game to retail for $70 rather than $60, but trust me, you're getting your money's worth here and then some. My Rating - SAlso available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Windows Have you ever wanted Left 4 Dead but on modern consoles and just slightly less memorable? Congrats, that's Back 4 Blood. To be clear, this game is a TON of fun. To be clear, this game is not as good as Left 4 Dead. What makes it worse? No clue. It's one of those subjective, intangible things that is impossible to really put into words but that just "feels off." Still, though, since Left 4 Dead is pretty old at this point and isn't up to par visually anymore, Back 4 Blood is a pretty solid next best thing. The basic premise is that you're part of a group of survivors called "Cleaners" who try to mop up groups of zombies infected with an alien parasite worm and help whomever you can from your base of operations in Pennsylvania. Early on, the game suffered from bugged difficulty making some of the levels significantly - unfairly so sometimes - more difficult than the developers intended, but now that that's been fixed, the game is very doable both solo and with a team. The characters, in my opinion, aren't nearly as memorable as those in Left 4 Dead (I just wanna hear someone shout "Pills here!"), but they're still cool enough, especially Mom who's a total badass. As far as gameplay goes, it's almost exactly like what you would imagine Left 4 Dead being with another decade or so of graphics technology. You've got a solid array of guns, and the missions are varied enough to keep it from getting stale. The coolest part, and what really makes it stand out, is the card system. You can build a deck of cards that add certain perks to your character. Things like more health, more ammo, better hip fire but can't aim down sights, heal when using melee, etc. They let you really custom tailor your character to suit your playstyle, and that's something that I very much welcomed. It's probably not fair to judge Back 4 Blood up against Left 4 Dead 2 since that's considered to be one of the best zombie shooters of all time, but it's hard not to compare them; Back 4 Blood is a spiritual successor in the most obvious way. What it does, it does extremely well. It's just that it doesn't do quite enough to set itself apart from Left 4 Dead, and that makes comparisons that don't favor Back 4 Blood inevitable. The deck system is definitely awesome, and they get major props for that, but aside from that, it really does play and feel like a slightly worse Left 4 Dead with better graphics. Should you play Back 4 Blood? Absolutely; it's a ton of fun. Just go in with tempered expectations and know that it's definitely not Left 4 Dead 3. My Rating - BAlso available on Super Nintendo, Game Boy Advance, Wii, 3DS, Wii U, and Switch Super Mario Bros was the game that put Nintendo on the map in 1985, but the sequel plan got a little murky after that. Japan got the exceptionally good but exceptionally difficult Super Mario Bros 2 (which we in the West know as Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels), and in the West, we got a reskin of Doki Doki Panic released as Super Mario Bros 2 (which Japan knows as Super Mario Bros 2 USA). Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America finally got their plans straight for the third game, though, and released Super Mario Bros 3 across all regions (with a few regional tweaks) to universal acclaim. This might actually be the greatest game in the entire NES library, and I'm not exaggerating. Super Mario Bros 3 set a lot of standards for Mario. We got a look at more recognizable versions of some of the Mario characters, we got a proper overworld, we got power-ups that could be held in storage, and we got a whole host of themed worlds and interesting new abilities. Like with the original games, you can skip through levels - through the use of warp whistles this time instead of warp pipes - and if you know where to look, you can skip from partway through World 1 all the way to World 8. Of course, you're missing almost all of the game if you do that, but hey, it's speedrunner friendly. One of the most impressive things to me is the visuals of the game. It looks NOTHING like the original Super Mario Bros. Despite running on the exact same console hardware, Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 3 look IMMENSELY different, and they certainly look like their releases were separated by more than three years (in Japan, anyway). The leap in graphics is practically generational in its extent; I think the jump from Super Mario Bros to Super Mario Bros 3 looks more dramatic visually than the jump from Super Mario Bros 3 on NES to Super Mario World on SNES, although I fully admit that there's likely a bit of NES nostalgia talking there. Super Mario Bros 3 is pretty much just as legendary as Super Mario Bros, so talking too much about it is basically beating a dead horse. The dead horse may be Princess Celestia, but still. It is a testament to its greatness, though, that the film The Wizard is basically just an excuse to advertise Super Mario Bros 3 to Americans in theaters, and god bless them for doing it. I firmly believe that this is the best game the NES has to offer, and while I won't go as far as to say that it's the best 2D Mario game, was is my favorite 2D Mario game until Wonder came out. I can only actually beat it every now and then when I'm really on my A game these days, but I'll never tiring of revisiting Super Mario Bros 3 for twenty or thirty minutes now and then for some nostalgic comfort food. It is truly a perfect 8-bit game. My Rating - SAlso available on Super Nintendo, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, 3DS, Wii, Wii U, and Switch Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo Entertainment System is the granddaddy of the 2D platformer. While it certainly shows its nearly 40 years of age these days, its simple charm and iconic visuals and sound effects continue to be brutally addicting. This was the first video game I ever owned and played, so it's got a very special place in my heart, but beyond that, it set the gold standard for what a platformer should be and cemented Nintendo's place as THE home console manufacturer from the mid 80s through the mid 90s. Anybody who's anybody is familiar with Super Mario bros, and and with a story as thin as a Paris runway model's waistline, there's not a whole lot to say about the context. You play as Mario as he jumps, runs, and stomps his way through 32 levels of the Mushroom Kingdom to save Princess Peach from Bowser. Each of the eight worlds consists of four levels, and the four level in each world is one of Bowser's castles where Bowser awaits you at the end. There are warp pipes throughout the game that let you skip levels - sometimes multiple worlds at once - if you know where to look and how to access them. With the exceptions of the Nintendo 64 and the Virtual Boy, this game has been playable in some way, shape, or form on pretty much every hardware platform Nintendo has released since 1985. The tight controls, clever level design, and smoothly increasing difficulty curve are what keep Super Mario Bros being fun and playable nearly four decades later, and it's not hard to see how this game made Nintendo a household name. It may be one of an endless sea of 2D platformers today, but every one of those 2D platformers since has at least some element of Super Mario Bros visible in its design and DNA. There's really not much more to say that hasn't been said a thousand times already since Reagan infested the Oval Office; later sequels may have improved upon and perfected the formula that this game established, but it's a classic that remains playable today for a reason. My Rating - A |
I'm a teacher.And I like to play video games. I like to collect video games. I like to talk about video games, and I like to write about video games. During the day, I teach high school history; during the night, I spend my spare time gaming. Then I write about it. Archives
April 2024
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