Final Fantasy is a series that I love, but it's always been a series I tend to like more in theory than in practice. They're such a massive time commitment, and since FF9, the games have seemed less and less interesting to me. From the time I first saw the reveal at the PS5 original reveal, though, I loved the look of Final Fantasy XVI. It looked dark, violent, and full of political intrigue, and that's completely my jam. I know there's been some criticism online for the complete exclusion of any non-white characters even as incidental NPCs, but all I'm going to focus on here is the game itself; I'll leave the arguments about social issues to Kotaku, Tumblr, and Twitter (although I guess it's just "X" now thanks to Elongated Muskrat). The main character, Clive, is the elder son of the archduke of the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, a small but proud country in the west of the continent of Storm. Most people are just regular people, but a small number are born as bearers, people who an use magic without a crystal. These people are brutally discriminated against by the non-magical majority and enslaved with a tattoo brand on their cheek. A select few people are dominants, those who can not only use magic but can harness the power of an eikon associated with one of the seven element. Rosaria's archducal family has always had the power of the Pheonix, the eikon of fire, passed down in its family line. Clive did not awaken as the dominant of fire, but his younger brother, Joshua, did; as such, Clive instead trains as a soldier to be the First Shield, the knight whose primary duty is the protection of the dominant of fire. Most recent Final Fantasy games used an active time combat system that's not truly turn based but not a true real time action RPG. Final Fantasy XVI is a full fledged action RPG, though. If you just stand there, you're not going to attack at all. You've got your basic attack with square and your basic ranged magic attack with triangle, but you can use magic abilities to chain attacks together. It takes some getting used to, but once you get a feel for your abilities and how to chain them together effectively, you can absolutely devastate your opponents. I still prefer classic turn based combat, but I do prefer this over the hybrid system that Final Fantasy has used for a lot of the past several entries. It should come as no surprise given that it's the first current generation Final Fantasy game, but Final Fantasy XVI is a stunningly gorgeous game. You've got two visual settings, graphics and frame rate, as is usual, but the use of the two settings here is sadly minimal. The frame rate setting wavers a lot, especially when exploring. It will range anywhere from near 60 to low 40s and high 30s. The combat frame rate, at least, is a fairly consistent 60, but the inconsistency of frame rate is a real bummer. The graphics setting, on the other hand, looks much better with details, and while the frame rate is obviously much lower, it's fairly consistently 30 fps. I almost always go for frame rate when there are settings, but in this game, I opted for the graphics setting for the sake of the consistency. Final Fantasy XVI is, potential social issues aside, a fantastic RPG. It's one of the shorter Final Fantasy games if you stick just to the main quest, but if you 100% the game like I did, it will take probably 80 hours for a playthrough. If you want the platinum trophy, you'll have to do a New Game+ playthrough on the Final Fantasy difficulty that is unlocked upon finishing the game once. It would be nice if they could fix the inconsistency with the frame rate visual mode, it would be an even better experience. Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game and may well do another playthrough on the Final Fantasy difficulty later on. Gotta give a shout out to my buddy, Gordan; his brother won a download code for Final Fantasy XVI from a contest, but as neither Gordan nor his brother have a PlayStation 5, they gave the code to me. As a result, I got to play this incredible (and $70) game for free. My Rating - SAlso available on Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Windows As a brony since the first season of Friendship is Magic, I still mourn the end of gen 4, but I gotta admit, gen 5 ain't bad. This game had been on my radar for a while, but I never got around to actually ordering it. When I saw it was coming to PlayStation+. I was stoked. Most of my friends thought I was kidding when I said that I was going to play it as soon as it got added to the service. I have no idea why. This is literally the most in-character thing in the world for me to do. You play as Sunny Starscout, gen 5 protagonist and all around best pony (Sunny/Izzy OTP), as you go around Maretime Bay helping your friends to set up for Maretime Bay Day and uncover a plot by the town's most virulently racist and Earth pony nationalist pony. I'm not kidding, that's seriously part of the game; if you've ever seen the My Little Pony: A New Generation movie, the Earth ponies are seriously just Trump supporters with hooves. As you'd expect from Outright Games, it's short, shallow, and simple, but it's cute, and for fans of the IP, and it's a pleasant little romp. It's not like there's a huge time commitment; it took me less than two hours to 100% the game and get the platinum trophy. It's absolutely a low-budget game, though, and it looks the part; the character models are nice enough, but it looks like a PS3 game. As you go through the game, you'll have little puzzles to solve some of which involve using your Earth pony magic and some of which are just Baby's First Logic Task. There are a handful of minigames spread throughout which would be more fun if they were at all challenging, but it's a kids' game, so it makes sense. There are just shy of 2000 magic bits for your to collect in the game which unlock cosmetic items for Sunny to wear. About halfway through the game, you unlock her signature roller blades and discover that ponies in roller blades is absolutely peak aesthetic. My Little Pony: A Maretime Bay Adventure is a stunningly short and easy game, and I absolutely do not recommend it to anyone who doesn't have small children or isn't otherwise a fan of My Little Pony. If you DO have little kids or like My Little Pony, however, give it a shot. Even brand new, it's only $20 these days, it's on ever platform, and as I mentioned, it's part of the PlayStation+ catalogue for the moment, so it's readily accessible. Go in with reasonable expectations, though; this is a little kids' game through and through, but what it sets out to do, it does fairly well. My Rating - CAlso available on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, OSX, and Windows Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is a nice step up in narrative quality from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in my opinion. It's not perfect - I feel like there are a few loose ends in the story that didn't get adequately addressed - but instead of the horribly written "unnamed desert country somewhere in the Middle East," you're fighting predominantly in named locations this time, primarily the United States and Russia. It still falls prey to "late 2000s/early 2010s bad Call of Duty writing," but it's a solid move in the right direction. A note that if you're playing the remastered version on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One like I did, it's just the campaign, no multiplayer. If you're playing the original release on PS3 or 360 (or PC), though, the multiplayer is still running, still being played, and still fun. The story takes place after the events of Modern Warfare, and despite your efforts in the previous game, the ultranationalist faction still manages to take control of Russia. Control swaps between a few different characters over the course of the campaign, but you're mainly fighting on two fronts - to contain the ultranationalist Russians' plans, and to defend the United States after being invaded by Russia following a false flag terrorist attack. The stages where you play as an American soldier trying to fight back the Russian invasion are definitely the high point of the game for me, but that's probably because I love that sort of "fight back the invading horde" gameplay. As a side note, with a year and a half of war in Ukraine as context, I now find the notion that Russia could not only invade the United States but seriously push our defenses to the limit and occupy our capital to be downright laughable and absolutely hilarious; they couldn't even do that in a significantly weaker country with which they share a land border. We need a new boogeyman. One a bit less woefully incompetent. I'm going to feel like a heretic when I say this, but Nintendo needs to be taking notes; this is how you do a remaster. This game mostly looks like it was made for the PS4, not a polished PS3 game, and it's only $20; Twilight Princess HD looked like a hastily upscaled Wii game with minimal actual remastering and sold for $50 digitally at launch. I adore Nintendo, but their remasters leave a lot to leave desired; I generally dislike Activision, but damn if they don't know how to remaster a game. Modern Warfare 2 Remastered really does look fantastic, and it plays even smoother than before. I know a lot of people play Call of Duty for the multiplayer, but they've got some seriously great campaign experiences. It's a bit rough from a writing standpoint, but for the gameplay experience, this is a pretty damn good time for $20. For those a bit more easily offended, you do get the option of skipping the infamous "No Russian" level. While I've always been a bit prejudiced against Modern Warfare 2 as the only 7th gen Call of Duty game that never came to Wii (or, in the case of Black Ops 2, Wii U), but I can't deny that it's a fun game and a step up from Modern Warfare with regards to the writing. The characters still feel pretty bland in my opinion, but the larger narrative definitely has that action movie feeling of gravitas that makes for a fantastic war game. It's included with PlayStation+ and will probably come to Game Pass as soon as Microsoft's acquisition of Activision is finalized, so give it a go when you can. My Rating - AAlso available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Windows It is no secret to anyone who's read any of my reviews here that I'm a huge fan of the Hyperdimension Neptunia series. There's a reason my rating system uses "Neps." While the games themselves are usually solidly in the "average" tier, it's the characters and premise of personified game consoles that keeps me coming back for more game after game after game, and Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters did not disappoint. It didn't surpass my expectations, but it also didn't fail to meet them. Idea Factory seems to have given the series a soft reboot of sorts for the 9th gen Playstation console. They remastered the remake of the first game with Neptunia ReVerse, and while this is not a remaster of the remake of the second game, it does take a cue from the second game by having the CPU Candidates, the little sisters of the main characters, taking the role of the main characters this time with Nepgear being the protagonist instead of Neptune. The story, however, is all new, and not only that, but this is, according to Gematsu, the first time that the CPU Candidates' models have been remade from scratch since the characters were first introduced. I'll be honest, I'm a big fan of Idea Factory, but that's more effort than I usually expect to see from them, especially from this series, so I was pleasantly surprised by that. The premise of the game is that the CPUs of the four nations of Gamindustri - Planeptune, Lastation, Leanbox, and Lowee - go to help handle some crisis on the PC Continent, but that continent ends up being swallowed up in some kind of dimensional vortex. Unfortunately, Neptune disappears into the vortex, too, leaving Nepgear as Planeptune's sole goddess. Not only that, but something called the Trendi Phenomenon is breaking out across Gamindustri, causing massive outbreaks of monsters which has pushed Leanbox, Lastation, and Lowee to the brink and effectively destroyed Planeptune as a nation entirely. Now it's up to Nepgear along with Lastation's CPU Candidate, Uni, and Lowee's twin CPU candidates, Rom and Ram, to unravel the mystery and save Gamindustri. Visually, the game looks really good for the series, and some of the enemy models are gorgeous, but it definitely doesn't even come close to pushing the PS5. It looks like a nice PS4 game. I haven't played it compare, but I bet if you put the PS4 version and the PS5 side by side, no one other than Digital Foundry would be able to tell the difference, and I'm not 100% sure even they would be able to notice. Still, though, Neptunia is a not a hardware-pushing or high-budget series, so for the price of the game ($50 MSRP if I remember correctly) and the precedent of the series, it's a pretty good looking game, and it runs at a pretty smooth and stable frame rate. Honestly, my only real complaint with the game is the side quests. Some of them are pretty reasonable, but others are insanely frustrating. Gather 15 of Item A. Okay, cool, that's fine, except that Item A only appears in crates. Crates only respawn when you leave and re-enter a dungeon, and there are only like 10 in each dungeon. You also only have a 3% chance of obtaining Item A when you break a crate in that dungeon. Or Slay 10 Monster As. Okay, well Monster A only appears in this part of this dungeon, and it only has a 10% chance to spawn. You have to kill everything in that part of the dungeon and then just wait for things to respawn (takes probably five minutes of waiting) and hope that one spawns. And then do that 10 times. Not hard, per se, but needlessly annoying. Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters is not going to win any Game of the Year awards, it won't be remembered as a groundbreaking RPG, and it won't be lauded for its stunning visuals or riveting storytelling. That said, it's fun time. Annoying side quests aside - and I only found around a quarter to be super annoying - it's a cute, fun little game, and it's longer than I expected with my playthrough clocking in around 40 hours. It'll probably get a price cut fairly quickly or be available cheaper used, so if you're into waifu fan service, give it a go. My Rating - BAlso available on PlayStation 4 and Windows I initially skipped Modern Warfare (which I typically call Moderner Warfare because I despise the trend of giving a reboot the exact same title as the original game) when it first came out because I mistakenly though that it was like Black Ops 4 and had no campaign. Once I realized that I was mistaken, I kept telling myself I'd pick it up, but I just...never got around to it. I finally rectified that, and I managed to snag a used copy complete for $10 online. Sounds like a win to me. How does it compare to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, though? Better in every way, in my opinion. This game fixes every gripe I had with the original Modern Warfare. Keep in mind that this is a reboot, not a remake, so it's a completely different story in a different universe; don't let the reused character names and designs confuse you. The Captain Price here is not the Captain Price from the original Modern Warfare trilogy. My biggest grip with Call of Duty 4 was that you were fighting in....you never knew where. It was the Middle East, but the game adamantly refused to tell you where in the Middle East. What part of the Middle East? Arabia? The Levant? Closer to India? Asia Minor? What's the name of the country? Who knows? Bad writing. Modern Warfare 2019 does not do that. They tell you exactly where and whom you're fighting; you're in the fictional country of Urzikstan fighting against both occupying Russian forces as well as terrorists from the group Al-Qatala. The other thing this game does infinitely better is character development. Yeah, most people remember Captain Price and Soap from Call of Duty 4, but that's because they were central to the plot, not because they were actually particularly memorable characters. They were fine, but they were generic. In this game, the characters actually have memorable personalities. Captain Price is fantastic, Alex is awesome, and Farah is probably my favorite character in the entire series. What the original game excelled in was the big picture story and the action, and this game absolutely lives up to the standard CoD 4 set in that regard. I played on Series X using Xbox One backwards compatibility, so I can't speak to performance on base Xbox One or on Xbox One X, but the game ran at a pretty solid 60 fps and looked absolutely fantastic during my playthrough. Characters looked amazing, environments were detailed and rich, and the explosions would have made Michael Bay proud. As is standard for more recent Call of Duty games, motion capture and voice acting was stellar from start to finish. It's a real shame that I skipped this game initially because it really is a fantastic single player experience. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare [2019] is a truly fantastic game. I have a very love-hate relationship with Call of Duty as a series, but that's honestly more because of how toxic the community is than the games themselves (except for Warzone and Black Ops 4; I genuinely dislike those at a foundational level). I'm a campaign player, so that's what I primarily judge a game on, and on that basis, Modern Warfare is exceptional. Call of Duty almost always has stellar multiplayer, so that was never an issue, but couple that with a fantastic single player campaign, and you've got a seriously good modern war shooter here. If I could change anything, it would only be to make the game a bit longer as it only took me about six hours to play through. Quality is here, but the quantity is still lacking. My Rating - B |
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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