Reviews

Fallout 76 was & is a pretty major disappointment. As a pretty big fan of the franchise, I wasn't into the idea of a multiplayer game and the bad reviews & glaring bugs didn't calm my worries either. I avoided the game but one day at my local CEX, I saw the game going for a measly £10. My morbid curiosity got the better of me and I decided to finally give it a go. 

First off, lemme go over the positives because this game while nowhere near the standards I look for in a Fallout game, there are some genuine strong points here. One of them is the game's map. 76's map is pretty massive and is broken up in multiple parts that are all unique and feature a large variety of enemies. The Mire especially helps the game's aging engine look pretty as hell.

The gunplay is pretty identical to Fallout 4 so no complaints there. It's pretty easy to master and plays just well enough even if it doesn't feel particularly fresh or exciting.

The negatives mostly outweigh the positives though. The game is just far too buggy to really enjoy. It's laggy & choppy most of the time and just doesn't feel like a smooth game. It more so feels like a game that has been stitched together but the thread is falling apart. There's various sources online that claim that the game was heavily rushed and honestly, it shows. This isn't what a Fallout game should be. 

At most, Fallout 76 is an acceptable game to play casually while listening to music or a podcast. Anything else though, it just isn't a good time & Bethesda should know better than to release this clearly unfinished product. 

Good, but I feel like it could have been more like Hidden Ones. Where Hidden Ones was a succinct epilogue that tied Origins more directly into the rest of the series, this was a loot driven open world combat game. A little too much hashtag content, a little too much chasing down unique weapons and armor, a little too many one-on-one boss fights. Leaning into the mythological fantasy was a good idea and they did a good job with the imagery, but the overall design of the afterlives was really a let down. They're too small and separate and all have the same layout: cross the bridge, kill some Anubis soldiers, climb stairs into the main area, and make a ring around the area completing the checklist: one collectathon side quest, one viewpoint, one very hard serqet lair you'll have to come back to after you've leveled up to max, the replacement for papyri, and some scattered treasures and forts.

And then after all that, it just kind of ends? You kill King Tut, leave his afterlife, and give the Apple of Eden to some dude you've only met a couple other times (the descendant of Rameses I think? Rameses, whose afterlife you can accidentally skip and still complete the main quest). There's a tiny cutscene that barely qualifies as an epilogue if you do the side quests in each afterlife and... that's it. The shadows don't really do anything and even the loot, at least what's available in the overworld, isn't even that interesting. No pan out and title, no voice over, no connection back to the main story, no Layla or Amunet, you just kinda stop playing. Incredibly anti-climactic and a bit too big for its own good.

It’s nice to see Rockstar Games flex their muscles and make a game that isn’t as formulaic as Grand Theft Auto. This game checks off so many boxes for me: noir, period piece, detective work, a gripping narrative and much more. The game is set in Los Angeles in 1947, you play as Cole Phelps, a US Marine who returns home and takes work as a police officer. You play this character and witness his ups and downs as he navigates the scenes of crimes, his tumultuous past and personal life, as well as peer behind the scenes at how law enforcement worked or didn’t work in the 1940s. The graphics are good. Especially the facial capture technology that brings most of these characters to life. It is probably a little dated now and not that detailed, but it is still a remarkable thing to try and read these character’s faces as they lie or don’t lie during interviews. Sometimes the animation feels clunky. Cole moves and kind of feels like a box with arms and legs. John Marston and Nico Bellic had a fluidity to them that made them look and move and feel like human beings as you direct them and control their moves. Sometimes the texture details aren’t all that great, especially when it comes to buildings and other environments. The gameplay is good. As I mentioned, the movement and animation isn’t ideal, but gunfights are a little stale, chases were fun (both on foot and in cars), and other actions were kind of fun. The attention to detail that this game promotes and encourages is impressive. Crime scenes have to be thoroughly investigated for evidence that could make or break a case. Attention in interviews and what people say or do is also important. The voice work is amazing, most being veteran voice actors with some big names sprinkled in (John Noble). The aesthetic and visuals perfectly capture Los Angeles in the 1940s. The noir story is amazing dealing with the dour and depressing genre and also grappling with vice, scandal, redemption, corruption, the past and so many other elements that weave a very detailed and compelling story together. I do believe that this game could do without the side missions. They were entirely unnecessary and are too much of a distraction. I’m kind of sad that the spiritual successor to this game (The Whore of the Orient) was never made. But I suppose it just makes this game even more unique and special. I really want to see Rockstar get back to making games like this as well as their big titles like Red Dead and Grand Theft Auto.

Rating: 4/5

Why did the frog cross the road? To get to the other side. This is not just a bad joke, but the very premise of genre-defining video game Frogger. So many early video game genres originated through the act of shameless imitation of notable industry successes. Consider the advent of the roguelike, how Pac-Man's legions of copycats invented the maze game genre, and how Donkey Kong represented the birth of the platform game. Not recognized often enough, however, is the ubiquity of the Frogger-clone in the video game industry. Upon its release, Konami's Frogger saw a wave of imitators cannibalizing its simple and instantly recognizable gameplay, such as Atari's Pacific Coast Highway and Frostbite, and these mimics continue today in the form of cheap licensed online games and casual mobile apps like 2014's Crossy Road. Frogger today feels much like the modern casual games it would inspire, with its simple objectives that nevertheless require rapid reflexive movements and the development of a certain degree of muscle memory: avoid the traffic, take a quick breath, cross the rushing stream, hop into the safety of your lily pad, and repeat, seeing how many more frogs you can rescue this time than the last. Like your average mobile game, it is repetitive, but addictive in its repetition. As a cathartic, low-intensity time-waster, it practically sets the bar. What Frogger lacks in artistic merit, it makes up in the genius simplicity of its endlessly imitable premise. While direct clones of Frogger and games that merely cannibalize its gameplay are ubiquitous and easy to find, some official releases stand above the rabble. This particular HD rerelease of Frogger transforms the simple single-player arcade classic into a compelling, if only briefly diverting, party game, adding several new multiplayer modes on top of the original gameplay. The new puzzle-driven single player modes are also thoroughly addictive, using the basic Frogger gameplay to construct entirely new scenarios. It also features updated HD graphics in multiple different styles (including cute homages to other Konami classics like Contra and Castlevania), as well as a number of charming, albeit deviously ear-wormy, electronic-influenced music tracks, including a modern remix of the original arcade game's background music. These improvements all go a long way toward making the game much more visually appealing and lively.

While studies have proven again and again that any association between violent content in video games and real world violent behavior is bunk (in opposition to a decades-long and just now declining moral panic rivaling that perpetrated by Fredric Wertham in regards to comic books in the fifties), one cannot ignore the close and frequent relationship between video games and violence. Why do these things go so hand in hand? One possible explanation is that two of the very earliest and most imitated mainstream video games, Pong and Space Invaders, have their roots in the simulation of other inherently violent recreational activities, respectively: sporting events and mechanical shooting galleries. Thus, one could extrapolate that the violence of video games is simply an offshoot of the natural violence of sport; it seems people have innately associated competition with aggression throughout history.

Speaking of Pong and Space Invaders, If the former is the game that started the arcade boom, then Taito's Space Invaders, created by Tomohiro Nishikado, is the game that defined it, also moving the center of video game innovation from the U.S. to Japan for decades to come. It is difficult to overstate how thoroughly Space Invaders changed the course of video games as a medium. Directly, it is the precursor to all later installments of the shoot-em-up genre that dominated arcades through much of the eighties: games involving the player piloting a ship or plane along a fixed vertical or horizontal path with the intent of shooting down approaching enemy fighters. It also pioneers such standbys as the high score table and the concept of multiple tries before a game-over, which gives the game the competitive and addictive edge needed to have such staying power. It is the first game to feature a proper, if primitive, musical soundtrack: one which alters dynamically as the game progresses, increasing in tempo as the titular aliens draw nearer to the player's defending ship. The game is the first graphical game to feature a fantastical setting, rather than merely simulating real-world events such as sports.

Space Invaders also, for better or worse, begins the medium's preoccupation with violence. While killing things has been a part of video games even as early as The Oregon Trail and Colossal Cave, in those games violence is always an optional side activity tied exclusively to survival. Space Invaders is the first video game where destroying one's enemy is the primary goal, even if the simplistic opponents of the game share more in common with targets at a shooting gallery than anything resembling a living being. To compensate, however, the game is also the first to feature legitimate enemies who actively attack the player and force one to defend oneself in turn.

However, all its historical significance aside, Space Invaders would not be what it is today if it was not also on a fundamental level fun to play, which of course it is. There is a reason versions of Space Invaders can still be found in video arcades to this day; the game remains as simply and elegantly addictive as it was in 1977. It is accessible enough for a child to pick it up and grasp immediately, but engaging enough to keep an adult hitting replay again and again to try for that high score.

Reisuke Ishida's Infinity Gene expands on the fundamental concepts introduced by Nishikado in Space Invaders to such a degree that it is in effect an entirely new game. If one has never played a shoot-em-up before, Infinity Gene is an ideal starting place, as it charts throughout its levels the gradual evolution of the genre over the course of decades, beginning in the vein of rudimentary vertical shooters like Galaga and climaxing in 3-D battles of epic proportions, all while still using graphics and characters inspired by the original, iconic Space Invaders sprites. The motif of evolution is woven into every facet of the game, from the Charles Darwin quote that kicks off the first stage to the way the player is able to upgrade their ship's weapons and their number of lives as they progress.

The game elaborates on the original Space Invaders' idea of the integration of music and visuals, featuring an ambient and at times pulse-pounding electronic score by Hirokazu Koshio and Soundwave to which the visuals of the game react and evolve. Infinity Gene even includes a Music Mode that allows the player to upload their own playlists into the game to create new levels that react to the beats of their music. The downloadable console releases of the game are fuller and more complete versions of the experience than the mobile ones, but are also less accessible to "casual" audiences, A.K.A. those who do the majority of their gaming in short bursts on their portable devices.

If one is searching for a more classic and unaltered Space Invaders experience, then the original game can easily be found emulated or recreated for free in-browser on any number of websites and included in virtually all of Taito's periodic compilation releases of their arcade backlog. Probably the best of these Taito releases is Taito Legends Power-Up for Playstation Portable, which includes roughly a half-dozen different iterations of Space Invaders and a number of other minor classics.

Atari's Breakout was released shortly after their industry-defining hit Pong as an attempt to translate the experience to a single-player format, and was itself an enormous success. Breakout inspired a wave of clones, copycats, and imitators, creating, as these things go, a new genre unto itself, the block breaker game. While Breakout itself has, much like most of Atari's early output, aged very poorly, many of its clones have fared better, and the best of them by far is Taito's arcade classic Arkanoid, directed by Akira Fujita and Hiroshi Tsujino. Arkanoid beefs up Breakout's simple premise of bouncing a ball with a paddle to destroy several layers of various colored blocks with the addition of such new features as power-ups that change the shape or abilities of your ball or paddle, a variety of different blocks with different strengths, and a progression of unique levels with distinct arrangements of blocks to break, culminating in an actual final boss to defeat. The whole thing is wrapped in a thin narrative involving piloting a spaceship through some sort of time warp trap created by a mysterious villain as an excuse for the addition of enemies and weapons to the formula. All the new bells and whistles serve only to expand on and diversify a core gameplay premise that maintains an old-school addictive simplicity. This port features graphical updates and both local and online multiplayer, along with a wealth of new levels and play modes. The various multiplayer modes, particularly the competitive versus mode, help breath some new life into the game.

cute environment, comfy town and townspeople, stellar soundtrack, tight controls, and well thought out weapon mechanics. the "hero-merchant" balance was clever and well executed. 

also, whereas the game ushers you to invest in higher-tier equipment as you progress, the stats aren't overtuned - it took about twice as long to clear a dungeon with lower-tier equipment, but was still quite do-able. a few times, the "you're taking too long on this floor" mechanic drove me back to town with this approach, but it was always by the time i had a full inventory and could go back anyway.

i also appreciate how mechanics are taught through player experience and a few pictures. this clevery sidesteps internationalization problems, but also helps keeps the game's pace smooth as you learn.  it's always nice as a player when the game runs alongside you as you learn by doing, rather than stopping you often to tell you everything.

i only see a couple issues here
1) the game is a bit too easy, in my opinion. i only completed 1 or 2 of the item quests because it would take 1-3 in-game days to clear a dungeon, but usually longer to gather enough materials to fulfill the quest
2) i ran into a few bugs with the interaction mechanic. sometimes it takes a bit to find the sweetspot to get a button press to actually trigger an interaction (ex: selling an item via register, reading document, talking to villager), sometimes if there are two triggers too close together it can be difficult to choose the right one (the storage chests in the bedroom are a great example), and a few times i couldn't get townspeople to get through their dialogue. this didn't happen often and wasn't a big deal, but was noticeable

neither of the above are make-or-break - there's a lot here to love. i expect i'll play this again on NG+ some time.