Resident Evil 2 (2019)

I liked the combat, the detailed, atmospheric audio and visuals, and the clever, interconnected level design. Unlocking your way through the Spencer Mansion or the RCPD station and seeing how everything interconnects scratches a very specific, satisfying itch for me and it’s my favorite part of the RE series.

I didn’t like the simplism of many of the puzzles, the short length of the campaign, the de-emphasis of inventory management, or the cloying cutscenes.

7.5/10

the og 2005 one?

Nah Ragnarok. Didn’t have a PlayStation back then

breath of the wild - 7.5/10

it might be a victim of all the hype i've seen/heard for it over the years but it didn't reach those heights for me. i did not find the open world to be enjoyable to explore at all, it was super barren. every bokoblin camp/outpost is the exact same and the enemy variety was basically non existent. the shrines could offer some fun challenges but there was also a fair amount of duds. i typically don't like weapon degradation but it wasn't all that bad actually. i didn't even level up my inventory space until right before going into hyrule castle lol. there's a ton of creative freedom in how you go about doing things and i found a lot of the times where i thought "i wonder if this works?", it did and that was fun. the story was whatever, i really didn't care at all. the combat just ok, easy to get the hang of but also just clunky enough to provide a bit of challenge at certain points. the highlights were definitely the divine beasts puzzles, their accompanying boss fights and the first stage of the ganon fight, he didn't need two stages imo

Super Mario 3d world + bowsers fury

Played 3D Land on the 3DS way back in the day but never had a Wii U to play 3d world. Wrote it off when it came out for switch initially for some reason but decided to cop it for switch 2. Enjoying it a ton so far.

Resident Evil 7 (2017)

Resident Evil 7 starts out exactly how I want an RE game to feel. The Baker house scratches that classic RE1/RE2 (my favorites) itch: cleverly interconnected halls, locked doors teasing new areas, and the dopamine hit of fighting and puzzling your way into the next room. It’s not as layered as the Spencer Mansion or RPD, but the presentation is so beautifully disgusting and immersive that I didn’t care—I just wanted to see what the Bakers had behind the next rotten, maggot-ridden door.

This hope was dashed after the character switch though. The boat sequence didn’t have that magic or the building dread of the Baker house. To be honest it was very bland, visually and mentally/mechanically. I get that you’re supposed to feel like you’ve escaped, but the house was just more clever, interesting, and satisfying. Then there’s the swamp and mine, which are entirely flat and linear. There is mounting pressure in the form of both atmosphere and generous heal/ammo drops that clearly indicate an impending climax, which turned out to be... an on-rails, target-shooting boss fight that takes 30 seconds and doesn’t even let you use the inventory you’ve been managing all game... :floyd:

I respect the return to actual survival horror, but it’s frustrating that RE7 is only half the game I wanted. The Baker house is classic RE. Everything after feels like filler.

6/10

Harry Potter Quidditch Champions

Really wasn’t expecting this game to be this fun

thoughts on some games i finished in june

Doom: The Dark Ages

now this was a game i was hyped to play for a veryyyy long time ever since it was announced. so hyped that i stopped every other game i was playing at the time JUST to play this one.

i really wanted to let it sit with me for a bit before making this decision, but this game probably has my favorite look out of the trilogy by far. whoever thought to give doom slayer a shield, cape, and a mace and put him in a medieval/ sci-fi needs a raise immediately. i also have to commend the devs for switching up the gameplay between all three games, any other company would've either stick with the formula that worked for them or make small incremental changes to said formula. not that either of these options are bad per say, but i have to give credit for id for being bold enough to switch it up. however i will say i'm not entirely a fan of some of the changes this game has brought on.

parrying seems to be quite the craze in games as of late like the souls games, fighting games, even my most recent favorite game, resident evil 4 remake also has parrying. now i'm not gonna complain (yet) because i think it's a pretty cool mechanic that rewards you for having good reaction time. however i feel the way it was implemented in doom was very gimmicky. enemies can now fire a green projectile at you at any time now but the window to actually parry it is VERY generous. i played the game on nightmare mode with some of the settings tweaked to make it a bit harder and it still felt incredibly easy to land every time. i even had some instances where the projectile was far away from me, but i was still able to parry it just by spamming the shield. now im not sure if it's a glitch or if it was done intentionally to help players with bad reaction time but it really should be patched asap. i almost forgot to mention this but every time you do land a parry, the game slows down constantly like its a f***ing zack snyder movie. hopefully they make an option to turn that off but theres probably a mod to remove that entirely by now.

another issue i had was how f***ing slow it was sometimes to switch from weapon to weapon. now if i had to take a wild guess, this was probably to balance out the weapon swap combo trick that you could do in doom eternal. this was VERY broken but satisfying way of melting bosses or enemies health in that game so im not surprised something like that was balanced on here but jfc i got killed so many times just trying to swap into another weapon, only for the animation to take way too long at the worst time possible, very annoying at times.

and unfortunately the coolest looking parts that they showed off a bit in the promotion for this game, the mech and dragon sections. the definition of hype moments and aura because once you get past the cutscene and first levels with them they get repetitive VERY fast. at least they don't completely overstay their welcome whenever those levels do pop up but it is a shame how they turned out. despite some of my issues that i had, this is still a great game and is probably my goty for the time being.

8/10

gonna separate cos i wrote more than i thought i would for doom lmao

Resident Evil Revelations 2

this is probably better than the first revelations game to me but i did not enjoy this one at all really. probably one of the weakest resident evil games to me in the series, im not even sure why ive seen so much praise for this one.

maybe this game is a bit better to play on co-op? but frankly i don't know who would wanna play as moira or the little girl in barry sections. playing a character that is too scared to pick up a gun and chooses a crowbar as a choice of weapon or a little girl who can only use bricks to throw or point out invisible enemies to you sounds like an absolute drag to play while the other person will control a competent character who has access to guns and whatnot.

seeing a grown up claire and older barry was cool but outside of that novelty..... bleh.

3/10

The Evil Within

i was pleasantly surprised to come across another game that was directed by the legendary shinji mikami and it wasn't a resident evil game, so naturally i had to give it a try.

the atmosphere of this game is pretty familiar given the genre and shinji's direction but there's still an interesting twist done with in here. you get stuck in this fever dream, matrix-like world where everything is constantly changing due to an experiment gone very wrong by the main antagonist. you go from being inside of a forest to an abandoned warehouse, a bloody hospital, a completely destroyed city, a mansion, an underground sewer, you name it.

as cool as this setting is, this game does an insanely bad job at conveying the narrative to you. the character you play, sebastien feels like a background character in a game where you play only as him. there's little to no time spent on building his personality or character to you because you in spend majority of the game stuck in this dreamlike sequence. there's a whole side plot being told through notes that you pick up throughout the game about something happening to sebastien's wife and kids but none of it is even mentioned in the game's story. the whole setting is built on the main villian, ruvik but even he barely gets any explanation on his character. its all told through occasional visions you see throughout the game.

i found this to be a very sloppy way of story telling which is a shame because the gameplay is actually pretty decent. its the usual shoot gun, melee, stamina stuff you would expect in this genre but one cool thing they've added in this game was matches. the matches are done in a cool way because whenever you manage to get a zombie on the ground, you can set its body on fire and save up on ammo. they even made it so that if you set a zombie on the ground on fire and another one happens to be walking by, it will also set off a chain reaction by setting that zombie on fire. ive even managed to set like 5 zombies on fire at a time and save up on a lot of ammo just by doing so. there's also traps and bombs that you'll come across throughout the game that you can defuse to craft up ammo for multiple crossbow ammo.

i really do believe there is gem somewhere in this game if you rewrite the story and flesh out a couple things but as it stands i'm feeling a 6/10 on this one. maybe the dlcs will boost the rating for me as i haven't touched them yet but yeah. looking forward to playing the second game as well!

Playing resistance 3 for the first time. If this was running at a higher resolution it would nearly look like a ps4 game.

Playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 again… making my way to Harve Village at night. I got a quarter of health left, and it’s a group of goblins between me and a campfire. Half way into clearing out these goblins, it starts getting foggy. And I can barely see s*** and then I remember it’s a f***ing Dullahan
Doesn’t help that I’m running mods that 8x boss health and 8x dmg they deal.

I’ve had the game on pause for 15 minutes now.

SH1 looks great and already has better atmosphere than SH2R
Upresd and overclocked to 60fps and it feels like a ps2 game

finishing up Saints Row 2 rn

should I play Red Dead Redemption or Life Is Strange

I haven't played RDR since the xbox 360 days. It would be my first time in a long time.. also i'd be playing it on pc!

Just beat killzone 1 ps2. Clunky controls, meat shield enemies, terrible team ai, looks pretty good at times and pretty terrible at times.

waiting to be done with DS:R so I can Speedrun Nightreign.

Witcher 3, Battlefield 4 and Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut

Rdr is peak

Silent Hill (1999) - PS1

+Beautiful-looking and sounding, eerie world that looks even better with a fine-tuned emulator. The rusty, flashlight-illuminated otherworld is very compelling. There is a real charm to this town and even though you're running around in a PS1 world there's a potent feeling that you're not supposed to be there.

+Decent survival horror loop. Find an item, figure out where it's used, obtain a key to a safe, acquire the key to a door, kill enemies, connect the level, receive a vague hint as to where you go next, repeat. Would've liked to backtrack more though. It didnt really know what to do yet. Its good enough.

+Pretty cool cryptic story

+Surprisingly rewarding amount of friction and ambiguity. I found RE1 to be frustratingly opaque at times but I actually beat this one without any guides.

+Hybrid fixed angle/3D camera work is fluid. This dyanmic use of the camera combined with ambient use of light makes for immersive, cinematic moments that stick with you. This is something I think the remake NEEDS to prioritize. I hope they dont make it all 3rd person over the shoulder like SH2R.

+Tank controls feel smooth and intuitive.

+Good industrial and ambient soundscapes

-No pressure to manage resources. Ammo and heals are abundant.

-Puzzles are sparse and simplistic

-Boss fights are totally mindless and by far the easiest part of the game. They significantly detract from the game's tone and atmosphere. You just drain ammo into them till they die.

-Streets of the town are underutilized and feel like filler

-No satisfying backtracking. The big dungeons are great but the overall experience is completely linear.

Overall this game feels more about vibes than actual reactive, compelling systems. Which I was honestly chill with for 9ish hours. Because the vibes are great. It was cool to get the cultural and historical context of the survival horror genre now but im not gonna ever replay this. Also I got the bad ending>?

Saints Row 2 on PC with the juiced patch

not perfect but it definitely brought back the feeling. solid game & just as fun as i remembered it, wish we got that patch way back when.

Devil May Cry 3

Morbid metal demo was cool

S*** lowkey boring icl

Haven't played today but Dark Souls Remastered on PC.

Dead Space remake, and Days Gone Remaster