Reviews

The Surge is a souls-like with a unique limb-targeting system, but everything else feels bland, slow, or unfair.

It's a shame that The Surge didn't play better, because its high tech industrial world was pretty cool looking, and by the end of the game I was genuinely interested in its intricacies and the story's resolution. The bulk of the gameplay, too, was genuinely good. The exploration was satisfying, the resource management felt good, and the build variety was enough to make me feel like I was doing my own thing.

The bosses, however, were awful. (Which, for this genre, is a deal-breaker.) The whole "target their limbs" stuff worked great, but someone responsible for balancing the game decided to make all bosses deal insane amounts of damage, even if you opt to go for the slow but supposedly sturdy armor. Add on the fact that there were very few actual bosses (maybe 5, if I'm remembering correctly), and it made for a disappointing rather than satisfying feeling every time I encountered and defeated one.
 
Combat could have been better, but I understand that it may have just been my playstyle (single-rigged weapons) that felt slow and clunky. I did very little experimentation beyond heavy weapons, as that's my preferred weapon type. I never got to max level and likely will never return to see what's behind the literally level-gated content.

Overall, it was worth the price I paid, but it wasn't worth the frustration I put into it.

This isn't your typical ARPG. Most modern ARPG's focus on the loot grind and minmaxing a character. Shadows Awakening, however, focuses on its story, for better or for worse.
 
The story is okay. A lot of the worldbuilding is hidden behind books instead of being out in the open. The characters needed more focus on their relationships with one another, although each of them have their own fleshed out backstory. The story is branching and allows for multiple playthroughs, but I don't know if I could go through another 30 hours of gameplay for those comparatively small changes.
 
The gameplay is just alright. It uses a system similar to Trine where you can seamlessly switch between four "puppets". As a result, though, it never feels like any one puppet's mechanics are fully fleshed out. The system really shines when you begin combining skills across puppets; I only wish there were more skills that let you transfer buffs across puppets. It supports a variety of playstyles (tank, mage, berserker, archer, etc.) very well.
 
The inventory management and movement kits, however, are extremely lacking. Moving across maps felt like a slog, even with all the movement speed buffs I could find. The inventory is nothing short of a mess. It helps that you have 100 slots, but keeping track of everything is convoluted, to say the least. Skill trees could have used their own separate UI as well to help give a better sense of progression.
 
I'm recommending this game because it has consistency in the quality of content it provides and some good handcrafted dungeon design for an ARPG, which is a rarity these days. I did one playthrough (with every single side quest) but don't think I'll do another. I would not recommend this game to anyone looking for an ARPG to grind. There is no endgame to speak of. This is a story focused experience.

A game that is Wolfenstein in name and in world design, but nothing else. A surface deep-RPG system mars the entire experience.
 
The idea of co-op Wolfenstein was good, but the implementation could not have been worse. They added a leveling and skill system (literally just increasing your damage by 2% per level) onto The New Order's gameplay, then stripped out everything that made The New Order fun. You replay the same levels over and over, fighting the same enemies in the same placement every time. You fight bullet sponge bosses and enemies that have to be attacked by a specific weapon type (of which only three of your default 8 deal) to deal a significant amount of damage. Difficulty is all over the place, with the game being borderline impossible at stages due to lack of ammo, then being a cakewalk at others due to the revive and "pep" systems.
 
The only redeemable aspect of this game is the world building. It's got the stellar writing Wolfenstein has always had with loads of alternate history articles, music, tapes, and goodies to dig into. I was going to include the story in this, but the two protagonists, despite being actually well written for a pair of dumb-as-bricks teenagers, ultimately aren't very likable. The story sets up for some potentially very interesting content with multiple realities, apocalyptic doomsday weather machines, and God Keys, but ends before any of these are explored with any depth at all.

Darksiders 3 abandons the RPG heavy systems of Darksiders 2 for a souls-like fusion. Fury’s whips are fun to use, have plenty of reach, and somehow work perfectly with this style. You collect souls and use them to level three different stats: Health, Strength, and Arcane. There’s a variety of weapons and enhancements, similar to the original, but you can upgrade enhancements in powerful and varied ways. You get new, elemental weapons throughout the game, each handling differently and enjoyably. The combat is slower paced and more impactful than the original, bearing more similarities with Dark Souls than with God of War. With that comes a heavier emphasis on exploration and discovering resources for upgrades and new enhancements.

The story, which takes place immediately before Darksiders 1, follows Fury on her journey to kill the seven deadly sins on a war-torn earth. Despite the return to Earth, the environments are still varied, intricate, and always provide you something nice to look at.

The dungeon and puzzle design of this entry is the most lacking of the franchise. There’s still dungeons and puzzles, and still some “dungeon treasures”, but they definitely take the back seat to focus on the more methodical combat, exploration, and resource management that Souls titles are known for.

Why Diablo 2 is Not A Good Game (and never was)

 I know how that title sounds. It’s both a bold and a wildly unpopular opinion. But hear me out. One day in Hell difficulty, I thought "Why?" What was the point? There was no content I hadn't unlocked yet, no story left to experience, no setpieces remaining. Not even gameplay. The only thing I had to look forward to was killing things slightly faster, doing the same thing I was but more efficiently. I decided that once I defeated the final boss on the hardest difficulty, I wouldn’t play the game any further. If it weren’t for my small party of friends playing together, I would have instead dropped it after Nightmare difficulty, because the gameplay only gets worse from there.

 You know what else released in 2000? Deus Ex, Counter Strike, Majora’s Mask, Tony Hawk 2, The Sims, FFIX, Paper Mario, Mario Tennis, Mario Party 3, Kirby 64, Banjo Tooie, Thief 2, Spyro, Jet Set Radio, Perfect Dark, and Baldur’s Gate II. This is a seemingly insane line-up of genre defining titles and cult classics. Go back and look at the visual design, gameplay, and clarity present in some of these games. Mario Tennis had fast-paced smooth gameplay, Kirby 64 had adorable animations and great visual clarity, Mario Party 3 had a brilliant control scheme that supported 4 players at once, Banjo-Tooie and Spyro featured satisfying platforming, Jet Set Radio had fast-paced arcade-like action. Hitman, Thief, and Deus Ex featured branching gameplay systems as well as impressive visual design.

 And then there’s Diablo 2. It ran in a glorious 480p, but somehow looked worse than just about every other game that was released alongside it. Poor visual clarity is largely due to the attempt to make it “realistic”, but the shortcomings of Diablo 2’s visuals don’t stop there. Animation quality is awful with no impact and very little meaningful information communicated. Text is often unreadable. It is impossible to discern what is going on in busy encounters. UI design is extremely claustrophobic. Brightness ranges from eye-strainingly dark to blindingly bright. Some zone transitions get completely missed because they blend in with the drab color pallet.

 Part of this is attributed to Blizzard chasing the success of Diablo 1. D2 came out only 2 years after the original, so there wasn’t a lot of dev time to innovate and make something meaningfully better than Diablo 1. Part of it is also attributed to the genre lacking any real conventions and best practices. The thing is, Diablo 2 didn’t establish any best practices. Rather, it was a case study in what to do differently in RPG’s moving forward. For example, potion economy, the wording of gear, attack rating and defense rating, control scheme, 2-skill limit, movement, item drops, skill trees and synergies, difficulty levels, damage immunities, procedural generation, life recovery, mana burn, keys, item rarity, trading/economy, UI, inventory management, and charms are all things that Diablo 2 got wrong, and that every ARPG has done differently since. For the things Diablo 2 got right, it did VERY right. Gear was impactful, runewords were really cool, and named enemies and unique bosses required careful attention. It’s a wonder that runewords have never found their way into a more modern title.

 Some people say Diablo 2 has merit for its atmosphere and story. As far as atmosphere is concerned, Diablo 2 destroys any hope it had of maintaining its bleak atmosphere by making pretty much everything a nondescript blur. The remaster does wonders for this, restoring the grounded feeling the original was meant to have had. Storywise, the game is full of exposition dumps. Each act has a pretty cutscene that helps connect things together, but the story largely relies on Diablo 1 as a base, and suffers for it. At the very least, it did help hype up the act bosses and make them more meaningful encounters.

 Diablo 2 is a cult-classic. It appeals to a very select group of people for a very specific reason. Maybe it’s nostalgia, maybe there’s some appeal to the clunky systems, or maybe the loot grind is just cathartic and mindless and that’s all that matters. In any case, there are better alternatives to Diablo 2, especially for those new to the genre. Torchlight, Path of Exile, Diablo 3, Grim Dawn, Van Helsing, Warhammer 40k Inquisitor, and Titan Quest all offer more refined experiences than D2.

Don't let the isometric perspective fool you: Darksiders Genesis is a good, old-fashioned hack-and-slash true to the spirit of the original. 

It's hard to find fault with Genesis without being nitpicky. The combat is flashy and satisfying (with just as much depth as the original Darksiders, if not more). In solo play, you seamlessly switch between War and Strife, but in co-op you each control one of the pair. War plays almost identically to himself from Darksiders 1, and Strife plays more like a twinstick shooter. The character growth options are versatile enough. The game has you collecting Creature Cores from bosses and enemies in order to activate powerful passive abilities. The animations are smooth, the puzzles are good enough, environments are beautifully done, and the story respects and adds onto the original media. The dynamic between War and Strife is also well done, both in their dialogue and mechanically.

I can think of only three large issues, all of which have been addressed with updates to the game. First, at a certain point, all combat in the game becomes a bit trivial. There have been a few balance patches since release to tweak the numbers, make the game harder, and provide an additional difficulty level, so this has been fixed to some degree. Second, there's one particularly bad platforming challenge called "Leviathan's Landing." This challenge is completely optional, but it does provide one of the best Creature Cores in the game. The developers have added an option to slow down the game speed by as much as 80%, but the game was not made for platforming. The slower game speed helps, but it can only do so much. Third, there were a number of game breaking bugs on release. These ranged from crashing the game upon loading into the final boss to keeping you from getting the achievement for collecting all health upgrades. The devs have been pretty ontop of bug fixes, however, so this is less and less of a complaint with each new patch. 

Darksiders Genesis has a passionate team of developers behind it that genuinely care for the Darksiders universe and games (the studio, Airship Syndicate, was formed by the original creative director of Darksiders). They continue to support the game after release. If you enjoyed Darksiders 1 and 2 (or even 3), I highly recommend it.  

When I was a teenager and the original Wind Waker came out, it blew my mind, I loved the art style and the sense of adventure, everything seemed perfect except for some minor issues, now replaying it, I see why I loved it (I still do) however, its flaws are more noticeable.

As far as remasters go, this HD revisión pretty nails it, the cel-shaded effect is not exactly the same but it looks good, there are not a lot of modifications which make your experience more or less the same as the original, one welcomed addition is the introduction of a faster boat veil which is not tied to the direction of the wind, this veil comes at 2/3 of the game, so is more like an endgame item and doesn't affect your playthrough as intended. Another addition is to change items with your Wii U Pad, you don't need to pause the game in order to access your items, however, the game was not intended for this active system, so at least when you're fighting, expect to pause the game and change your item or be prepared for some annoying moments otherwise. There is also a message system (that was replaced with the GBA compatibility of the original) which sounds a lot like the message system of Dark Souls but it was part of the Miiverse ecosystem that has long gone, so I couldn't try it at all.

As for a Zelda game is a solid entry, although it has pretty noticeable flaws, the most important to me is its linearity, from the start and till completing 1/3 of the game, you can't sail to wherever you like, your boat, in a Fi fashion (from Skyward Sword) will tell you that he doesn't recommend you to go to "X" way and reallocates you to the right way, this is pretty upsetting since the sea is there for you to conquer it but you can't. Another thing is the difficulty, you can play it in Hero mode from the start which is nice but is still pretty easy, the enemies with a few exceptions have pretty noticeable attack patterns, so you will be exploiting them a lot, also the dungeons are OK with the last one being pretty bad and annoying, the boss fights are fun but also incredibly easy and formulaic.

For the good aspects, I loved the story, it has some nice twists and turns and also thanks to the art style it also tells it in an expressive fashion like no other Zelda before, to me there is no better iteration of Ganondorf, it feels like a human and he gives one of the most memorable fights and moments at the end of the game, it makes worth your time just to see what I'm talking about. Once you break the linearity barrier, Wind Waker offers a nice freedom of exploration, for budget reasons, there are not a lot of islands like towns (there are like 3 only) but in every island or "corner" of the sea is a treasure or a secret waiting for you, so it gives a nice sense of exploration, merge it with an outstanding score (which was also rearranged but is still true to the original) and you will have an amazing time onwards. As for the art style which was heavily criticized back in the day, it has aged like wine, maybe it was developed that way because of budget reasons but it turned out great, Link and every character has a lot of soul, mainly because it's easy to see their expressions through their eyes or animation.

Maybe in some aspects, WW has not aged that well, but in anothers it broke the pass of time, is not a hardcore Zelda by any means but it has a lot of charm and pleasure to be had nonetheless, I think this is a nice introduction to the Zelda universe to a newcomer or someone that is not that "hardcore" with videogames.

I find it difficult to put my love for Prey into words. It's one of my favorite games ever. It's tied with Hollow Knight for my personal GOTY of 2017. It was the most unexpected thing to come out of 2017, and, as with most of Arkane's titles, it doesn't disappoint.

Prey is the most recent game in the return to the "Immersive-sim" genre. You're placed on a seemingly abandoned, alien-infested space station, given the slightest nudge in the right direction, then let loose. You're free to approach any situation in any way you like, and are given an abundance of tools, weapons, and abilities to do so. The world responds to your actions in various ways, and there's several combinations of outcomes to the game's primary scenarios. The world is intricately detailed, with passenger logs and crew locators and logical layouts, like a real space station carefully handcrafted by Arkane.

I played through Prey three times. Once with only human abilities, once with only Typhon abilities, and once with no neuromods at all. All three playstyles (and combinations thereof) are fully supported. I did basically everything in a different way in each playthrough. I don't want to talk about specifics, because discovering the world and Prey's mechanics is an important part of the experience.
 
There's an abundance to discover and explore on Talos I, and I can't recommend Prey enough. It's worth full-price, and anything below $60 is a deal. If you're at all a fan of Dishonored, Deus-Ex, or sci-fi, you'll love it.