Reviews

Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 is a colossal disappointment, and surely not a masterpiece. “Red Dead Redemption 2 is a masterpiece. 10/10…” wrote just about every video game critic on the internet. What? Has everyone been brainwashed? With all of the extremely high critical acclaim, it was natural for me to go into Rockstar’s RDR2 with extremely high expectations. What I was met with was an aggravating, boring, mess of a sequel. This is what everyone has been freaking out about? Are you kidding? What has the gaming community’s taste gone to? I cannot properly judge the entire game because I have not had the time to complete it yet, but I’ve already spent a great deal of time with its tedious introduction. The following criticisms are based off of what I’ve picked up in the first two chapters alone.

Let’s start by saying this: Red Dead Redemption 2 is great… for an interactive movie. That’s what a large portion of this game feels like: a cinematic experience over a gaming experience. Rockstar decided to make RDR2 a prequel to the first game. The first Red Dead Redemption didn’t involve much plot. You are given the protagonist, John Marston, and introduced to the hunted antagonist, Bill Williamson. It gets a little more complicated later, but it was generally simple. RDR2 heavily involves its innumerable characters, especially at the beginning of the game. The first chapter is nothing short of a long, dragging, no-fun zone.

There’s about five minutes of legitimate gameplay in the first mission. If you decide to watch the uninteresting cutscenes, then a great deal of time is spent watching them, and then riding your horse. Then the game gives you about 5-10 minutes of what would be considered fun: taking down enemies. Then it is time to loot and travel back to your camp again to repeat the same process. This introduction leaves a bad first impression that doesn’t improve much.

Back to the first point: RDR2 is fundamentally an interactive movie. Rockstar does not care much about the player at all. Rockstar tries to make you care about their characters. Character development and an interesting plot are great when you’re watching a movie or TV show, or reading a book, but Rockstar does not seem to understand that this is a video game. A player picks up their controller to have complete agency over their character. RDR2 has barely any, and it is so tedious with its brief animations, constant cutscenes, conversing NPCs (non-playable characters), and method of traveling that playing it feels more like a movie you have to press a button to once a minute to keep it running.

The purpose of spending lengthy amounts of time on your horse is to get a sense of the map, and to admire the beauty of the game along with its abundant amount of detail that Rockstar littered throughout it. This is something many critics and fans have been praising emphatically: the detail. Detail is enjoyable, but much of it serves no purpose other than just gazing at it. It’s not wrong for a game to look beautiful, but players still misunderstand that Rockstar failed to create an engaging experience by combining beauty and detail with enjoyable gameplay (the fact that the "cinematic camera" exists doesn't help). The characters, detail, and gameplay are all incoherent with one another in RDR2.

Another factor that bruised Rockstar was realism. This explains every single brief animation and unnecessary task. At one point in the 2nd chapter, a message pops up on the screen telling the player that they should shave their character’s beard because it’s getting too long. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what video games have come to, this is what everyone is praising. Red Dead Redemption 2, the video game meant to be watched, the video game meant to mimic our boring lives.

RDR2 also disappoints in comparison to its predecessor in some ways. The controls are much more restrained and harder to handle than the loose, breezy controls of the first one, as well as the unnecessary addition of convoluted inventories for your items and practically useless horse commodities. Simple equals better, Rockstar.

Rockstar spent so much time polishing detail, writing characters, and worrying about realism that they forgot to make a fun gaming experience. Rockstar is not the only game developer who includes these elements in their games, but Rockstar stressed them so much in this game that they failed at making it fun to play. Again, I have not played it the entire way through, nor is the whole game like this, but it did not leave me with a good first impression. I only hope that the game improves, and that I have the patience to push through the tedious sections to complete it. And keep in mind that this is just my opinion. I am clearly in a really small minority.

God of War: Chains of Olympus is chronologically the second game in the God of War series and a prequel to the first game. Released on PSP in 2008, Chains of Olympus is a solid entry into the God of War franchise. The game contains the usual familiar hack-and-slash and other gameplay mechanics. Combos, quick time events, special weapons and abilities and the usual platforming and puzzles all play their usual roles in Chains of Olympus. I would argue that this is done more effectively than it was in God of War: Ascension. The story is good, but could be better. The game focuses on Kratos, after the events of God of War Ascension, still serving the gods of Olympus. When he witnesses the sun plummet from the sky and the world plunged into darkness, Kratos embarks on a quest to discover the meaning behind this event and the forces involved. Chains of Olympus takes the character to familiar and new places in the series, but the story is very quick and the game moves the pace along briskly. There are some reveals and some characters that are abruptly thrown into the final act of the game, but the story stays focused on Kratos and his own motivations for pursuing the truth behind the events in this game. The game does feel kind of tedious in how it goes about explaining some story elements that we have seen before in other God of War games. Nothing frustrates me more than when a creator/director/ writer feels the need to explain how a character did this or ended up in this scenario or why this happens. The voice acting is good, but the original music for the game is just bland and bad. The reused music from the other games in the series is good as usual. For a PSP game, that was remastered in 2011, this game is still good. I enjoy it, but it’s not a game that continues to bring me back to replay.

Rating- 4/5

Red Dead Revolver is a throwback to a simpler time. I was always intimidated by this game when I watched my step-brothers play it. Created in 2004, Revolver is as much an ode to the original arcade shooter as it is an ode to spaghetti westerns. Red Dead Revolver is a challenging game with some very absurd but understandable gameplay mechanics that are both challenging and frustrating all at once. This isn’t a game like the recent Red Dead Redemptions or any recent Rockstar game. If you sit behind cover in this game, you will die. The game treats gunplay like actual combat. It’s about accuracy, combos and staying mobile which is kind of stupid and jarring at first, but that’s what the game is going for. The designs for characters and levels reflect the absurd over the top nature of the game and adds to the interesting visual style. Even cutscenes are grainy and look as though they were shot on old film. The story is a hodgepodge of set pieces and tried and true spaghetti western story beats and clichés. The violence is over the top and absurd to the point of hilarity much like spaghetti Westerns.The soundtrack is also a Quentin Tarantino-like assortment of spaghetti western music composed largely by Ennio Morricone. The difficulty of the game rises dramatically with many missions infuriating me and leading me to take long breaks from the game. Red Dead Revolver is a fun game that if you accept it for what it is (a homage to both spaghetti westerns and arcade shooters) is an enjoyable game that probably works best when playing in a living room or with friends. Also, I played this game on PS4 and I don’t know if Rockstar actually remastered this or what, but given its age the graphics aren’t that bad at all.

Rating: 4.5/5

Assassin’s Creed is the first entry in Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed franchise. It is not the first game chronologically (this would be Assassin’s Creed Odyssey) but it is the best game to play to introduce someone to the franchise. Like many of the games, Assassin’s Creed contains two storylines one set in the modern day (in or around 2012) and the other one set in the past. The game centers on Desmond Miles, a seemingly uneventful character who has had a very interesting past regarding his family. Desmond and his family were part of the Assassin Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to preserving freedom in the world. Desmond is captured by the reclusive Abstergo Industries and is tasked with using a machine called the Animus to relive his genetic memories of his ancestors to accomplish their own nefarious goals. The corporation is focused on one of Desmond’s ancestors named Altair Ibn-La’Ahad, an assassin active in the Holy Land during the Third Crusade (1191). Altair is tasked by his order with unraveling a conspiracy involving key figures on both the Crusaders and Saracen sides of the war (Templars). The Templar order seek to use the Crusades to conquer the Holy Land and then liberate it from the tools that they deem are holding its people back (religion, politics, etc). The story is interesting but the segments of the story regarding the targets are kind of choppy. It’s a rinse and repeat cycle of pickpocket, interrogate, eavesdrop or help an informant all to gather information and then the only interesting part occurs in which you use the information to assassinate the target. Not much occurs in the “modern day” setting, really besides seeing how the past has and continues to impact the present day. The game is viewed as a stealth game, but the stealth elements aren’t as emphasized as they later will be in other installments (and later de-emphasized). The sword play is a mixed bag for me. I like that the sword play isn’t flashy and smooth. It’s very clunky and simple, which is how people would have fought with these kind of weapons during this time period. But at the same time, that clunkiness results in some very bad fighting mechanics. The graphics are kind of dating, but they still hold up good. The setting is very interesting and the series has defiantly stated that they will continue to feature and set their games in time periods like this where video games do no often get set in. The city designs are cool, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Acre are so distinct and memorable in their own ways. The side missions are very bland and typical. Either collect items, save citizens or synchronize viewpoints……nothing much to offer. The writing in the game is fantastic. Corey May does a wonderful job handling a story that can get very muddled and confusing but at the same time he treats the material with a very impressive amount of respect for a video game. Overall, this game is very good. Probably the best way to begin a series. Keep it simple and confined but also leave the door open for more content to come.
Rating: 4.5/ 5

Metro Last Light is a weird one for me. On paper it should be one of my favourite games ever but it has a few annoyances that make it slightly miss the mark. I absolutely love the setting of the underground metro, the grim world and the rival factions all fighting for control. What lets me down here is the mutants, lore wise they are great but I just felt like fighting them was always a chore. I get it's supposed to be a survival game and hard but it just didn't feel fun at all. There also wasn't much variety in them. I actually think I would've preferred the game if it was less focused on Dark Ones and Mutants and spent most of it's time building the factions in the metro systems.

The gameplay in this is definitely noticeably better than its predecessor, which was pretty bad, whilst not being amazing it does the job. Difficulty spikes can sometimes be frustrating and seem to appear out of nowhere. Sometimes I would auto save at a checkpoint having no health kits and be a few shots from death which meant dying repeatedly got stale fast.  My final gripe is that the main character still doesn't speak, like what the hell. When someone asks you a question and you just stand there not saying anything it really pulls you out of the immersion. 

These aside, the game is great; it's creepy, atmospheric and looks great. Definitely worth a play for people who enjoy survival horrors or just a great narrative experience just be warned it's a bit clunky.