April 2023
Bethesda… Bethesda Never Changes
Once again too busy to really get into my backlog and… sadly… I have bought more games… Keeping it short because I have yet to change up and relearn my coding to collapse non-Steam reviews.
4/10
Port Review
Despite the previous game’s port I was slightly optimistic going through the game… until I realized that none of the achievements have been unlocking about half way through the game. It was about then that I started getting game crashes and it got fairly consistent. Some achievements did start unlocking but it wasn’t consistent there.
I wish I could recommend more games in this great series, especially as it could have bloomed on other platforms (though it will always miss the charm of motion controls).
Recommend? Unfortunately, no.
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Fallout 76- PS5
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Fallout 76
PS5
2/10
Taking advantage of the free opportunity I decided to give this a try and try to complete one of the final Fallout games I have yet to play. At first… things were alright, but continuous gameplay revealed it has not come as far as I have been lead to believe.
With three expansions the game does feel like an actual game. HOWEVER, since it is an MMO there is a serious lack of content int the long run and it relies on overly tedious grinds (and believe you me I will get back into this later). The main story mission line is pretty lack luster and doesn’t give much impact to your person or whatever end goal you are going towards. The Various expansions don’t improve much on this either. The world often feels fairly empty with infrequent enemy encounters and often empty locations. The supposed great threat of the Scorched are pretty much just slightly different Ghouls and far overused yet seemingly underutilized in the actual story.
Base game trophies are fine enough, but the expansion trophies are absolutely ridiculous. Settlers expansion requires you to repeat the same two to three daily missions to slightly increase bonds with factions. Old, repetitive, and unrewarding. The Pitt expansion as you need to get a weapon requiring 1000 stamps. You need to do three daily missions to charge your battery (i.e. you can only fully charge once a day) so you can do 1 of 2 expeditions to earn a maximum of 10 stamps. Not only will you need a party (which is hard enough in this dead game) but you can only lead an expedition once a day. So, theoretically you would need to do 100 of these missions and thus could require about 100 days of playing to get the stamps required for this trophy weapon. It is a massive waste of time, resources, and has far too limited of expeditions to make this any reasonable ask by Bethesda.
Bethesda is known for having buggy games, and not only does this very much follow suit, it is not getting a pass. Various graphical glitches including the world failing to fully load, words appearing in the air, the world temporarily vanishing, and de sync. Mission can fail to progress (entirely sometimes), fail to fast travel, and fail to progress conversations. If you load into a world where your camp placement is taken, you have to move yours. However, that building you took hours to build will likely not be replaceable and will have to be built from the ground up despite it saving the blueprint. Of course, the crème de la crème, is that there are most definitely crashes.
Recommend? It’s may or may not be hard to believe, but no. This is easily the worst Fallout experience yet.
Resident Evil 4: Remake
PS5
9/10
An action packed remake of one of the most important games in the genre. Yet, it doesn’t quite replace the original as much as it offers another and different experience. The story is overall the same while switching up a few beats and expanding on some characters, some for the better others for the worse. Luis, for instance, is given a much more present role and gives more to his character and past… though he is a much dirtier version of himself (physically). Ashley feels much more involved in your quest as she actively helps you in, out, and around situations as you play rather than being just an one giant escort quest. Her interactions with Leon are great and really build each other up as you go. Ada though was more or less the same character failed on the line delivery portions, in my eyes. There were also some questionable decisions made by her as well as abrupt absences that feel incredibly pointing towards a potential DLC. Lastly, Saddler. Again, some of his line deliveries were kind of inconsistent in the beginning and I’m not sure how I feel about his character yet. He genuinely didn’t feel like the end goal this time and lacked some build up. There was some cut content, but I can more than imagine seeing it in the potential DLC of the game. There are also a nice set of side missions that can increase exploration, creates a neat secret shop system, and some alpha enemy variants.
Onto the meat of the game, the gameplay. The gameplay is so incredibly polished and it is very much thanks to the new parry system. An incredibly great way to improve and speed up the high octane 80’s action from the original had initially brought to the series in the first place. At the risk of damaging and putting your knife temporarily out of commission you can parry attacks (just about everything at that), stealth kill enemies, escape grabs, and execute or do bonus damage against stunned or downed enemies. This new mechanic, though not completely necessary for most of the game, creates a very high skill ceiling and leads to increased satisfying gameplay. With such a powerful mechanic at your hands, this means the enemies can be all the more ruthless and swarm you just as hard. Sequences like the village and the cabin become just as intense, if not more so, than the first time I played them in the original. We also get some early enemy variants to flesh out the village a bit more though they are technical reskins of older characters. Most bosses that were included have been improved, while some remained relatively the same and one felt worse for the wear (the big cheese).
Cinematics, scenery, and music are both visually and aurally appealing though it doesn’t feel quite to the latest generation of gaming that the console has to offer. Particularly water looks the roughest. Additionally, as far as PS5 gimmicks go, it felt like the game really lacked the haptic feedback side of things. Understandably, it is not an exclusive but with the series having exclusive variants in the past, it would be nice. Some segments were far too short to my liking and would have liked to see expanded versions and/or more encounters. You also get introduced to the parasite far earlier than I would like. It is also fairly apparent with some encounters their hunting areas and thus the aspect of “cheesing” an enemy becomes apparent and loses some of the fear factor.
Also the shooting gallery is so amazingly improved that you can lose just as much time in there as you do in the game.
Recommend? An incredible game that in no way eclipses the original but offers a way to re-experience the original for the first time.
Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
3DS
3/10
Luigi back at it again as he is forced to help the professor reseize control of a mansion gone wrong when the Dark Moon is broken and stolen.
Despite my love for the original, I could not enjoy this. The new mission based progression was annoying and tedious which made the normal mansion feel far more repetitive. A lot of the ghosts were not enjoyable to fight. Motion controls were pretty much mandatory and awful. This paired with the fact it was difficult to tell which way you were pointing did not make things better. A lot of bosses end up being fairly repetitive or uninteresting while there was a lot of pointless exploration and collectibles. The game is late to introduce items that you have to use in earlier missions, so that means more repetitiveness.
Recommend? Sadly, no. I hope the third game harkens back to the original’s format and quality.