@mookysam Thanks and I get the White Palace point. It was the least enjoyable part of the game. I mean, who really would build a palace like that? The bugs in Deepnest... with headphones were... let's just say, unpleasant. Backtracking does take a lot of time. If it is natural exploration it is fine, but for example, with the Grimm Troupe when you have to go to set places on the map, it added time to the whole thing. On the plus side, I now know Hollownest and its map more than I know my own city.
@Thrillho I know that with a fully upgraded Abyss Shriek you can cheese the normal Grimm fight by slapping Joni's charm, having spell builds and triggering the fireballs by attacking him before he bows and just spamming him. Never worked for me because I never got the Abyss Shriek so I had to do it properly!
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@mookysam I have so many AAA last gen games to get to over the next few years, lol. The good news is that, thanks to the way AAA games are priced in this industry, they should all be incredibly cheap going forward.
@nessisonett Years of dealing with literally insane right-wing people in this country dog-whistling to one-another with glasses of milk and cartoon frogs must be messing with my brain a bit. I'll be seeing nazis in my breakfast cereal soon if things don't chill out a bit.
@RogerRoger It really was a fantastic post. You definitely need to get back to writing fiction (I recall that being one of your resolutions for the year?).
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that I thought the Medal of Honor games were docudramas or anything. But compared to CoD's nazi zombies and glorification of American imperial terrorism overseas, it sounds a bit more respectful and educational, which I appreciate. And yeah, I definitely like the idea of a war game actually putting the player, in some small way, into the shoes of a soldier, and letting them experience even one-millionth of the terror ground troops must have felt being bombarded with enemy fire.
I'm not really knowledgeable about the series as a whole, but I don't think CoD has always been uniformly brainless. i played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare way back in the day, and it does have this famous and genuinely interesting sequence where you play as a character who gets caught in the blast zone of a nuclear warhead. After it goes off, your character, who is clearly dying, crawls out of the downed helicopter he's in and sees his comrades dying around him before succumbing to the damage done to his body. It was a surprising, sobering sequence in the middle of an otherwise kind of mindless experience.
Yeah, the music is heavily cinematic, and reminiscent of the scores one would hear in somewhat older movies. It's nice.
It's a pity the series apparently lost its identity over time trying to compete with CoD. If anything, its developers should have doubled-down on the unique design sensibilities of their series, although I imagine corporate suits would have objected when the games continued to pull in a fraction of CoD's utterly gargantuan sales.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@RogerRoger I’ll add my appreciation for your recent review. I’ll likely never play the Medal of Honor games due to my reluctance to go backward technologically, but as you know I really love my WW2 history. I went so far as to download COD: WW2 onto my PS4 after it was given to us a few months ago via PS+, but I have never clicked on the icon to open it and I don’t know if I ever will. Getting into any military shooter for me feels like walking into a party late after the introductions and get-to-know-you games are over, the food is half eaten, and all party participants are having a great time socializing with one another but you can’t find a person you know or will even talk to you. As everyone ignores you, the party goes on without you and clearly everyone loves the setting, but you sit by yourself in a corner with a broken cookie and stare at the ceiling trying to look like you belong. You feel so awkward and out of place and just want to go home, but also sense the embarrassment of walking out after you’d just got there. (Wow, that metaphor seems suspiciously too detailed doesn’t it? 😅)
Anyways... [ahem, let me wipe the sweat from my brow] I enjoyed the write up regardless. I happened upon Saving Private Ryan the other day as I was channel surfing and paused on it for a while. I forgot how good that movie was. The portrayal of the horror of that war is quite well done.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
As the eleventh main entry in Ubisoft’s long running Assassin’s Creed series, Odyssey continues with the formula established by 2017’s reboot of sorts, Origins, and ramps up the open-world action RPG gameplay even further. Arriving just a year after its predecessor, It’s bigger and longer, with my play through clocking in at 140 hours. Odyssey sees you plop on the animus (it’s now a portable visor) and step into the shoes of Kassandra, sword-for-hire misthios and altogether badass granddaughter of Gerard Butler King Leonidas of Sparta. Marooned on Kefalonia as a child, adult Kassandra is swiftly approached by a mysterious and entirely trustworthy gentleman offering her riches in exchange for a bit of respectful murder. Never one to shy away from a little death in paradise, Kassandra agrees, and joined by her trusty eagle Ikaros begins her adventure proper, as she soon becomes embroiled with the dealings of shadowy cult, comes to terms with her past and finds her destiny.
Kassandra is a wonderful protagonist; supremely strong, effortlessly charismatic and very likeable. She’s also a rarity for female protagonists in that she’s beautiful but doesn’t carry a hint of sexualisation in her design. Melissanthi Mahut does a brilliant job bringing the character to life with a commendable voice performance. If they wish players can instead choose to inhabit the role of her brother Alexios, although his voice actor is somewhat less skilled, but by no means unenthused. In addition to being better-acted Kassandra is considered the canon protagonist, though in a predictable twist of fate Ubisoft decided to focus on the male character in its physical marketing material. Once again the modern day story sees Layla Hassan at the helm, and once again it is a complete snooze. Thankfully it is relegated to just a few scenes, but at the same time one can’t help but feel it would be best to altogether retire the contemporary Abstergo storyline.
As this is an action RPG Kassandra will level up with XP gained from completing a multitude of quests, killing enemies, and exploring the map and ticking off an array of optional location objectives. With each new level Kassandra gains an “ability point” to augment her skills and provide her with new attacks. Combat is not particularly focused, but gets the job done, and most enemies will go down after a few swings of her weapon. The open-world gameplay is one massive to-do list, but is also comfort food gaming. So far, it’s what you’d expect, but I’d like to draw attention to one specific gameplay feature I’ve dubbed “ESP GPS”. As though blessed by Zeus himself, man and beast alike share an unusual psychic connection, communicating such abstract ideas as Kassandra’s location and crimes, the precise whereabouts of treasures and misbehaving children, and the positions, ranks, and even names of enemies. See, mercenaries will be summoned and hone in on Kassandra after after she commits a few crimes, yet if the bounty sponsor, typically located in a far-away location, is offed or paid off, the mercenary will immediately cease their hunt. Likewise Ikaros can be summoned at the press of a button, and highlight objects and NPCs on the HUD. Typically the more “gamey” aspects of Assassin’s Creed have been explained as “animus glitches”, but I like to think that in 5th century BC Greece random mercenaries and alarmingly long-lived eagles really were enjoined in telepathic communion.
As with previous Assassin’s Creed games, Odyssey blends documented fact and an array of real-life characters with its hokum plot to produce an alternate history of sorts. With the early portion of the Peloponnesian War serving as the backdrop, this was a period when Sparta and Athens battled for hegemony over the Greek world while important advances were made in the fields of philosophy, architecture, mathematics and art. While it was certainly an eventful time in human history, real occurrences are not always effectively weaved into the narrative, and important events in human history feel fleeting, existing on the periphery of Kassandra’s quest. Odyssey also finds time to blend in a few Greek myths, and these exciting scripted sections are unsurprisingly some of the best parts of the game, featuring genuinely thrilling battles. Among the important historical figures Kassandra meets are the father of democracy, Pericles, the philosopher Socrates, the historian Herodotus, and the doctor Hippocrates. It’s a veritable who’s who of the Classical Greek world. Of particular note is serial philanderer Alkibiades, said to be one of the most beautiful men of the period. Here he resembles Dusty Springfield in her Pet Shop Boys days and speaks with the sultry breathiness of an orgasmic camel. With so many characters Ubisoft could perhaps be forgiven for recycling models here and there, with random NPCs a variation of a handful of designs and voiced by about three actors.
With historical accuracy being Assassin Creed’s raison-d’être, everybody in ancient Greece is an almighty slut. They will immediately and incautiously proposition each other with sleazy come-ons, before shagging Kassandra, never to be seen again. Now, Kassandra could be a psychopath for all they know - indeed my Kassandra was a ruthless mass-murderer - so it seems unusual that no-one exercised the slightest bit of caution before bedding this very heavily armed goddess of death. My theory is Kassandra fed her prey to her eagle, Ikaros, though I can’t discount her burying them under the patio, either. A few lucky souls may be invited to join her ship’s crew, but only if they demonstrate exceptional skill in the sack.
While Odyssey may lack the wonder of exploring the striking deserts or realistically proportioned pyramids of Origins’ Egypt, one of the triumphs of its world lies in its recreation of well-known Classical Greek buildings and monuments, from the Parthenon to the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The world itself is enormous, featuring a scaled down version of much of the Greek world. It is so big entire regions feel almost superfluous, with numerous locations seemingly existing simply to fill space and give the player things to tick off the gargantuan to-do list, rather than feeling like organic, meaningful parts of the world. In the end they all sort of merge together, losing some sense of purpose. While Odyssey is a beautiful game, with lovingly rendered environments and lovely lighting and shadows, it is ultimately window dressing - something for the player to zip through from point A to point B while they complete quests. The “bigger is better” design mantra popular at Ubisoft HQ extends far beyond the world itself, with a multitude of gameplay systems vomited at the player. From a ranked mercenary system, to region conquests (this is a war, remember), ship enhancements and cultist hunting. It is perhaps a little overwhelming at first, and although it all sort of all fits together, it’s this lack of focus that is emblematic of Odyssey as a whole.
Storytelling in open-world games is often a fine balancing act between player freedom and exploration, and relaying a tight, effective story. Odyssey often feels like its pulled between its rote, formulaic open-worlding and linear narrative. There are story quests that feel like they should be of critical importance, but the player can easily spend a dozen or so hours exploring the map completing optional objectives, before finally skipping at a leisurely pace to wherever Kassandra’s most urgently needed. The world is decaying in the ashes of war, but Kassandra will always find time to holiday on Samos or paint the town red in downtown Thebes. The passage of time is not effectively represented in game, either. Odyssey actually takes place across many years of real-life events; Pericles’ death occurred in 429BC, and the Battle of Amphipolis in 422BC, but the player would be forgiven for thinking it was the following week. Nor is the end of the first stage of the war particularly apparent; both sides will carry on fighting in each region of Greece as though nothing of particular importance happened.
At times the plot doesn’t quite keep up with the open-world gameplay. There was one notable instance where I unwittingly killed a cult member long before the story wanted me to, yet by the time I got to that particular questline characters not only spoke as though he was still alive and needed to be found, the game then proceeded to list a series of objectives I’d already unknowingly completed. Unfortunately, because I’d already killed the target it made a later story mission slightly more difficult, as he needed to be spared in order to be given a vital clue to the identity of another cultist. A key character also fell out with Kassandra, which broke the immersion a little. The world is designed in such a way as to invite map exploration and the completion of location objectives, but then feels like it’s going out of its way to punish the player for doing so, breaking immersion.
In the end the story fizzles out with all the enthusiasm of a spent balloon. There’s no satisfying conclusion; the game simply decides enough’s enough, packs up its bags and goes glamping in Viking era Cotswolds. The specific ending I got was akin to the infamous Crayongate from Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Kassandra told a cute story about mutilating stationery at kindergarten and the world was saved. Or something. Entire plot threads don’t really go anywhere, and as a result the story feels half-baked and ultimately a little hollow. That is not to say there aren’t genuinely affecting moments, or that it isn’t at times hilarious, effortlessly infusing slapstick and farce. While it’s all these things, it is the lack of focus, the vastly bloated runtime and the Eaton Mess of gameplay systems that stuck with me long after the credits rolled, and that’s a shame.
@mookysam A brilliant Odyssey review and genuinely made me laugh out loud a few times. But it also contained vital information for me, a player who has the game in his backlog. Some of the critique was familiar from previous reviews, but there is a lot you brought to light that I didn’t know beforehand. Wonderful job and a fun read.
As for whether it encouraged or discouraged me to move it up the backlog list... well, I think if anything it made me a slight bit less enthusiastic about it. I had slated it for my next Creed game to play in a few months, but now I’m wondering if it would be better to skip to Valhalla. I already own Odyssey, so I’ll probably try it; I do want to spend some time with the ubiquitously praised Kassandra.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@mookysam I’m about 35 hours into Odyssey now and I agree with a lot of your points in your review. It’s not a very good Assassin’s Creed game but it’s a brilliant open-world RPG. I’m really not a fan of the naval stuff though, didn’t like it in Black Flag and it still doesn’t feel great in this game. I’ve actually been 100%ing every single area before I move onto the next though, which means I’ll probably burn out but it helps me appreciate the little things like how the locations are a bit more diverse than Origins. The plot is totally all over the place though, the cult system is fantastic but the main story gets in the way of it at times. At least Kassandra is great fun to embody for over a hundred hours!
@mookysam The White Palace is mandatory if you want to fight the hidden boss at the end, The Radiance. You need to see the Queen and the King to get a charm, to then let you get another charm which then triggers that boss fight when you defeat the Hollow Knight itself. Which is also a horrible boss fight. I think it is a bit unfair hiding that behind the White Palace because honestly, it us just unpleasant if you aren't insanely good (which I wasn't).
Great review of Odyssey, you pretty much summed up my experience. The game does so much right except being so huge and the story just fizzling out. I never did all the additional end game stuff as I got tired of the game at about 80 hours. Comfort food is completely the right way to think of these AC games. They are fun to play when you are in them but then... well you just sort of forget.
Kassandra though was just a great character, well acted and possibly the best Ubi character I've ever seen.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@mookysam Fantastic critical review of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey! Extremely detailed and well-written. I appreciated the analysis of how the open world design conflicted with the immediacy of the plot, the historical perspective you offered when discussing the game's utilization of real historical events, the break down of the game's lack of focus in terms of world design and content, and, of course, the enjoyably personable style in which it's all presented.
Anyway, the climax of season six of BtVS didn't do it for you, I take it?
Tokyo Dark Platform: PC Completion: Two runs; totaling roughly 9 hours of playtime
Tokyo Dark started life as a Kickstarter project funded back in 2015 (and later released in late 2017), promising an adventure game/visual novel hybrid set in Japan that was a fusion of supernatural horror and police procedural. Players step into the shoes of Ayami Itō, a detective who is investigating the disappearance of her partner Tanaka Kazuki. This investigation quickly takes a supernatural turn as she discovers a mysterious mask with connections to an ancient cult, hears talk of a fantastical door nestled within the sewers of Tokyo that is connected to something called "the Dark," and is haunted by the specter of a frightening young woman from a previous case that took a tragic turn. The Kickstarter pitch promised a game with branching story paths, and where your choices matter.
Sounds good, right?
The presentation in Tokyo Dark is fairly basic. The game is presented on a 2D plane at all times (i.e. it's a sidescroller), and, like in most adventure games, the player clicks on points of interest around the map to have Ayami walk around. Ayami's character model and walk cycle look incredibly cheap, unfortunately. I also wasn't a fan of the art style in the character portraits that often paint the screen as well, which feel animesque, like what a Western artist would draw as an approximation of a Japanese art style. It's not a terrible looking game overall, though: the environments, as little as you end up seeing of them, look sufficiently detailed, and the game features a few, very short fully animated cutscenes that look way better than anything else in the game. It'll come as no surprise, then, that these sequences were farmed out to a small Japanese animation studio.
Tokyo Dark's investigations and choices come into play primarily through the SPIN system, which is an acronym for Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, and Neurosis. Depending on what happens to Ayami throughout the game and what choices she makes, her stats in those four areas will shift. This should have made for some interesting trade-offs, and it's clear that this is what the developers were going for. As a basic example, when the player returns to Ayami's apartment throughout the game, they'll have the option of having her swallow some sort of medication (an anti-psychotic, I'm assuming), which will increase her sanity stat, but decrease her investigation stat, since it presumably makes her mind foggy. There are also applications of this system that are both inspired and expected. Unsurprisingly, if the player chooses to have Ayami behave violently and/or recklessly to speed through some of the game's scenarios and environmental puzzles, her sanity will drop. If Ayami drinks on the job in order to try and put a hostile bartender at ease, her professionalism will drop. The most interesting thing I discovered is that having her go back to talk to characters whose dialogue trees she's already exhausted within a given chapter will increase her neurosis.
Unfortunately, the implementation of the system is flawed. For a few reasons. While the game attempts to explain what the stats do, it's not always clear what they govern. A higher level of neurosis seems to make her sanity drop faster, but it's hardly like the game is long enough to make this a fleshed-out mechanic. In fact, it's questionable how much of an effect almost any of these stats have: aside from some slightly different dialogue, it seems like the game progresses along the same general path regardless. There's at least one explicit check for the sanity stat that'll lead to an early bad ending, but otherwise, the system seems needless, and feels like it was designed to add an illusion of depth to the gameplay that's not actually there. As far as I can tell, the SPIN system broadly doesn't matter thanks to the structure of the game, which is less investigatory and more just a matter of completing a series of events and conversations in the same linear order every time.
Which leads into another criticism I have of the game. It's designed to feature choices and multiple endings, but, much like the implementation of the SPIN system, these elements don't feel fully explored. The structure of the narrative is unyielding, which makes the vast majority of choices the player makes throughout the game mostly pointless. Like in a Telltale game, almost nothing the player does actually matters in terms of how things actually play out at the end of the game. There are some radically different endings, but the majority of these endings are obtained by choices made within the last half hour of play time.
The game annoyingly doesn't allow the player to save in multiple slots, or in different parts of the game on the first run, so if the player wants to see how other endings will play out, they'll need to replay the entire game again. There's a feature in most visual novels with multiple endings that allows the player to skip past previously seen dialogue on their quest for new content and different endings, but this feature seems sort of... broken in Tokyo Dark. A skip function exists for some dialogue, but most of it forces the player to re-read it, even though it seems generally identical to how it was in the first playthrough.
Thankfully, the "broken memories" mode that's unlocked in New Game Plus allows the player to save in up to four different slots at one time, which helps tremendously with both obtaining multiple endings and steam achievement hunting in the PC version. And while most of the game is identical in NG+, there are actually some differences in dialogue in specific sections that call attention to the fact that the player, and, by extension, Ayami, is experiencing these events again, and ties this into the broader plot. It's a small thing, but I definitely appreciate that sort of attention to detail.
I'm a bit mixed on the game's plot and writing. The story itself unfolds in the manner of a Lovecraft-inspired yarn, with a weary and traumatized investigator risking their life and sanity poking into dark corners of the universe because they're too invested in the mystery to ever look back. The game's many endings reflect this uncompromising horror quality: even the "best" ones are extremely bittersweet, and the game doesn't seem to mind exploring the bleak implications of its mythology. Unfortunately, the plot itself feels a bit undercooked, and the game sometimes feels like it's doing the bare minimum to progress from point A to point B.
This lack of depth in the writing, and the lack of any meaningful application of the fore-mentioned SPIN system, means that, as a game, this feels rather incomplete, like the rough draft for an extremely interesting game that was never fully developed. Throw in the bad character model for Ayami and the generally lacking 2D environments, and the only conclusion I can reasonably come to is that this game should have been developed as a pure visual novel from the get-go. Especially if the time spent developing gameplay systems and environments had instead been re-invested into the game by fleshing out the writing somewhat.
Worse for the game are its frequent detours into goofy narrative territory that massively undermines any sense of atmosphere the game manages to build for itself. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm a big believer in the power of dark humor to keep bleak subject matter from becoming too depressing or overwhelming, but the humor here is just cringe-inducing. Like, I don't need a major chunk of this short horror game to be spent talking to catgirl-themed waitresses who talk in obnoxious puns. I don't need constant splash screens of Ayami joyously eating pancakes, or women snuggling cats, or... you get the picture. One sometimes gets the sense that the game would rather show off cute anime girls doing cute anime girl things than commit to maintaining a creepy atmosphere. Tonally, the game is all over the place as a result. It's like if Silent Hill 2's dog ending was integrated into the main story and kept popping up to undermine the sense of slow burning dread.
While I'm dogging on the game, I should also mention the strange visual glitch that frequently cropped up in my playthroughs of the game. For some reason, Ayami's character portrait will drift into the center of the screen and block text. At first, I thought this might be a stylistic choice to reflect Ayami's fracturing sanity or something, like the weird and ingenious sanity effects that affected the UI in GameCube survival horror classic Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, but it seemed to crop up kind of randomly and, when I looked into it, it does indeed seem to be something unintentional. Not a game-breaking issue, but I thought it deserved to be mentioned, since it doesn't seem to have been addressed via patches at all.
The aesthetic and design limitations of Tokyo Dark are unfortunate, because there is actually a lot to like here. The soundtrack is moody and evocative. While the animation itself is cheap-looking, there's an attempt at a grungy urban aesthetic that I liked. Most crucially, the core story is actually really interesting, and I did become rather invested in the characters: the protagonist and antagonist of Tokyo Dark are both deeply flawed, but also distinctly human, and their mutual spiral into violence, despair, and insanity as the supernatural mystery at the core of the narrative consumes their lives was engaging enough to keep me invested enough to play through the game twice, despite its narrative shortcomings.
Tokyo Dark's potent mixture of urban noir and supernatural horror mostly holds together on the strength of an interesting core narrative and decent sound design. Unfortunately, it's undermined by cheap character animations, amateurish character portraits, a recurring and very annoying visual glitch, tonal imbalance, very linear game design that bucks against its own focus on replayability and multiple endings, lack of QoL features, and an RPG-like stat system that seems thoroughly undercooked. It won't be remembered as one of the great indie games, but I definitely think this title shows some promise from developer Cherrymochi, who will hopefully more fully realize their ambitions in future titles. Tokyo Dark gets a 4.5/10.
@Ralizah I’m especially intrigued as to how the main character in Tokyo Dark generates a light source from her permanently rosy cheeks. Is she some sort of superhuman?
@nessisonett
It's called "Tokyo Dark". How do you expect the main character to see what she's doing in the dark, morally bankrupt maid cafes she frequents otherwise?（。々°）
Yeah, I could tell you knew what you were talking about on the Greek history front. Something I'm not hugely well-read on. It added tremendously to the review.
I didn't mind the season six finale too much, since Willow and Xander have such a long, well-established personal history together, and after countless episodes of depression and edginess, I kinda jived with the whole "saving the world through the power of love" thing. But then, I also didn't really mind the "love is a force of nature" thing from Interstellar, so maybe I just have a heavy level of tolerance for corny writing?
Thanks! I was a little unsure about how this review turned out, so I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it. The game's developers really would have benefitted from creating a more focused product, I think: ditch most of the pointless gameplay systems, incorporate an actually working text skip system to encourage replayability, and focus on weaving crucial choices into the narrative instead of making it where the majority of the endings can be seen if you replay the last 30 minutes or so of the game. If they didn't want to focus that much on making a genuinely choice-based game, then they should have focused on creating one core narrative instead. It's still an interesting experience if you can get it for cheaps, though.
I actually looked into what was added in the console ports, since the Switch version went on sale right before I started playing it. It doesn't seem like a huge upgrade, though: a couple new endings, some slightly altered environmental art, and apparently a new scene added here and there. Didn't seem like it was worth shelling out an extra $10 to upgrade. The character art and most of the problems with the game remain intact in the new version.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
@RogerRoger Nah, I don't kickstart games (I made an exception for the Shantae kickstarter back in 2013, but that's it). It's almost always better to just wait and see how the game turns out.
In this case, I got Tokyo Dark in a Square Enix Collective humble bundle. It came with 12 games for 10 dollars, so, assuming I played all of them, Tokyo Dark would have ended up costing me less than $1. I mainly bought the bundle for five games I wanted out of it, but even then, that only made the game $2 or so for me.
PC gaming ftw!
Anyway, even if I had bought it for full price, it wouldn't have been that bad of a deal, since, like I said, I still enjoyed playing it. The core story is interesting. And, personally, I'm pretty forgiving of flaws if I happen to find a game interesting. But I try not to let my own biases impact my objectivity when writing these reviews.
Although the character portrait blocking the text thing did become rather annoying over time. I remember losing my patience at one point and shouting "lady, move!" when it happened during a more story-sensitive moment.
@RogerRoger Fantastic Quantum write up. Very detailed yet concise. Great sense of how the game is. If I didn't have ethics I'd take it for my site (I won't!).
I'm not ready to do a review of Hitman 3 yet. But I have to say I'm loving the China level. It's basically a copy and paste of Sapienza, both in mission structure and level design, but that was arguably the best level of the first game. It's a nice little area. Not sprawling like Bangkok or Marrakesh but it has a distinct vibe. Very enjoyable to be in.
Generally, projects I'm interested in are funded regardless, so there's no point in me donating when others have already put the project over its goal, y'know? Kickstarter pledges aren't meant to be pre-orders, but a lot of people treat them like they are, which leads to anger and confusion when people who didn't back the project end up getting superior benefits closer to release
Digital sales are a huge part of my backlog in general. Digital sales have exploded across all platforms this generation, to the point where it's super tempting to buy stuff I'm only halfway interested in. But I don't see the point in endlessly pumping money into purchases that I might never have the opportunity to play, so I've tried to limit myself to games I intend to play imminently, or at least within months of purchasing. Doesn't always work out, but, in general, the backlog has been shrinking for years.
Well, less a disembodied anime girl's head and more an anime girl's head and torso (I'm pretty sure one of the screenshots in the review showcases the phenomenon). It's like when somebody is standing in front of a TV you're trying to watch. Very annoying.
BTW, I see you're back to Bond! Unfortunately, a LOT of games in the seventh gen were QTE-riddled cover shooters. It is kinda weird that a game adapted from a film filled with almost constant action couldn't manage better setpieces.
It's a testament to how popular the PS2 and NDS both were that both platforms saw ports of this game. I remember playing games on NDS where I had to hold it like a book. I... don't miss that. At all. One thing I really liked about the 3DS, aside from the smaller but higher quality library of games, was that there were a minimum of gimmicks included in games on that system. I didn't have to turn my system on its side like a book, or blow into a microphone, or not use buttons because the game wanted to experiment with touch-only controls.
I do kind of miss bespoke ports, though. Publishers have gotten lazy in terms of porting and optimization this gen compared to previous gens, when games that released on weaker consoles would be tailored to the hardware.
Oh, and did you play this on PC or PS3?
@mookysam Similar question. Did you play Assassin's Creed Odyssey on PS4?
@RogerRoger Well this is one of the few games from that era that I did play. I think someone bought it for me as a present back when I first got my 360. It is one of those games that I can remember very very little about. I can remember playing it, not hating it, then not playing again. This is the issue with licensed games - there are some rare gems (I'd argue Batman Begins on PS2 was actually a darn good game and laid the foundation for the Arkham series) but often they are pretty functional games that you play and just... forget.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@mookysam Thanks for that review. Origins and Odyssey are on sale so often that I'm frequently tempted by them and your review sold it reasonably well until you mentioned the overwhelming amount of stuff to do and the rubbish ending. AC2 remains the only game of the series I've played and that felt bloated to me so it looks like I'll be putting off buying another AssCreed game for a while! Although "The Adventure of Kassandra's Sex Ship" is somewhat appealing..
@Ralizah Thanks for your review of Tokyo Dark. I like to read about stuff that I almost certainly will never play and it sounds like that one goes into "nice idea, shame about the execution" territory.
@RogerRoger Nice writeup there. To go with the cliche above "style over substance" seems to ring true here; the screenshots are certainly quite pretty! An interesting move to switch between first and third person though but it sounds like it paid off.
Completion rate: Game completed with the bonus "100%" ending; 85% of trophies; all clear and coloured gems on normal and N. Verted levels; all platinum Flashback tapes; a couple of time trial relics and N. Sanely Perfect trophies.
This guy looks familiar
After Toys For Bob had been tasked with the remaster of the Spyro trilogy and the Nintendo Switch port of the Crash remakes, they got their chance to have a go at a Crash game in their own right. While this is the eighth Crash game, it is created as a direct sequel to the original trilogy (incidentally, looking at Wiki, there are a huge number of Crash games I never even knew existed; Crash: Mind Over Mutant anyone??)
The basic premise of the game is that Neo Cortex escapes from his prison with N. Tropy through a rift in time and space, with the intention of using this to take over the multiverse! It's fairly standard fare to start with but builds as Crash, Coco, and Aku-Aku discover the Quantum Masks who have power over space and time, and who have appeared after the rift has been opened. Cue shenanigans across a vast array of worlds in the past, present, and future allowing for a real mix of levels.
Probably best not to linger here
The one thing you can certainly say about the game is that it looks great. The character models are well done and the numerous enemies you come across all look sharp too. Levels are colourful and flit between side scrolling and running to/away from the camera whilst always being great to look at. The various skins you can unlock along the way by obtaining gems in levels also allow you to customise Crash and Coco to match the levels you're in or just pick something altogether ridiculous as you go between pirate ships, prehistoric rainforests, and futuristic cityscapes.
Crash 3 biker gear!
I am not one to normally talk about music in games but most levels have their own distinct soundtracks and some of these are quite memorable. The level that stuck in my mind more than any, both visually and musically, was the slightly twisted Mardis Gras level which had a wonderful carnivalesque accompanying track.
Crash also feels good to control which is great after the remakes where many people felt that it never quite felt right and the new control system didn't really work with the original game in particular. There is also the introduction of a little circle underneath Crash that appears every time you jump which allows you to control your landings much more easily rather than sometimes guessing where this might be in the remakes (this can be turned if you want though). However, even with that I did find that it could be a real struggle with depth perception at times, particularly with crates that were in mid air off to the side of levels and I had many a death where I under or over called a jump.
The game also introduces some new elements with new crates making an appearance. There are flame crates which shoot little flames out periodically which are just a bit annoying to be honest; red ! crates which make crates appear but only for a set time; and then bounce crates which turn into nitro crates once they've been used a set number of times (these only appear in Flashback tape levels which I'll mention in a bit).
Deja vu?
There are also new mechanics with wall running used intermittently but I found this to be quite annoying as even though I completed the game, I'm not sure I could tell you exactly how you controlled these as sometimes I would fail to trigger the wall run and sometimes just randomly fall off and I never quite figured out why. A welcome new mechanic is how "lives" are used. Gone is the very 90s 16/32 bit era of having lives and "game over" once these have gone but instead you have a death count for the level which is one criteria needed to get all the clear gems a level offers. You can go "retro" with the old school lives system if you wish though.
One of the most fun changes though is the ability to play as three additional characters in side quests of sorts. Playing through some levels, you will get a short cutscene where something slightly odd happens for new apparent reason. On completing that level, a side mission will become available where you will play half the level as one of the new characters up to that point in the level to explain what happened before taking control of Crash/Coco again to finish the level. These characters include an alternative universe Tawna who has a grappling hook type contraption to attack enemies/collect crates and traverse levels; Dingodile is also playable and has a giant vacuum cleaner thing which hoovers up crates (including TNT crates which can then be fired); and finally Cortex himself who has a pathetic jump but can use his ray gun to turn enemies into platforms. These all help keep things interesting and the different mechanics can be frustrating but are mostly good fun.
I guess we're going that way then..
The Quantum masks also appear in some levels and have different abilities that also mix up the platforming. One "phase shifts" platforms/crates/enemies in and out between realities while others can slow down time or invert gravity. These also mix up the platforming experience and in one of the final levels you will flit between these abilities for some real mind boggling action.
As mentioned, gems make a return in the game but the purple crystals are nowhere to be seen. Each level has 6 clear gems available. The first three are obtained by collecting wumpa fruit (it seemed almost impossible to not got these if you weren't just rushing through); one gem is for completing the level in three deaths or less; one is for getting all boxes; and one gem is hidden in the level. On top of this, "N. Verted levels" unlock early in the game which flip the level on it's horizontal axis but also has a unique art style for that world. For example, one set of levels are all in black and white but spin attacks add colour; one world has it's levels underwater so jumps are slowed down; and one changes to a 16 bit pixel art style and associated music. These levels also offer 6 clear gems with the hidden gem being in a different location.
A beautiful N. Verted ancient oriental level
Additionally, the four coloured gems are also there with their obtuse ways of being collected. The blue gem is the most strange as you must complete a specific level without dying and without hitting any crates. Without using a guide there is absolutely no way you would even know about this though.
On top of the plethora of gems, there are also the time trial relics for each level and "N. Sanely Perfect" awards for completing a level with all crates and without dying. And then on top of that there are Flashback tapes to acquire which are found in most levels and can only be obtained by reaching that stage of the level without dying.
So all in all you can't really criticise the game for not giving you plenty to do. However, that was probably my biggest fault with the game.
An N. Verted pirate level with a splash of colour
If you're like me and want to try and do everything possible in the game, and get as many trophies as possible while doing so, you are really going to get sick of the levels no matter how well designed they are. If you want to get all the clear gems you'll probably end up doing one run of the level normally and could well miss a crate or two as most levels have some that are fiendishly well hidden. For example, see the image below. In the distance you can see the red ! box and the outline of the crates it will make appear but there are also six hidden boxes on this screen; two hidden behind each step. While these aren't the most obtuse you'll have to find, it shows that you'll end up scouring every centimetre of levels or having to use a guide to find them all.
Oh, THOSE crates!
So once you've done runs to get all the wumpa fruit and crates, you'll also have to find the hidden gem and complete the level without dying too much. If the level has a Flashback tape, you'll also need to make sure you get to that point of the level without dying to get that. So as levels get longer and harder, this becomes increasingly more difficult. Once you've done that, you'll then have to do the same thing in N. Verted mode! And then there are however many runs it takes you to get the time trial relics too (with only gold level giving you access to the 106% ending) and the N. Sanely Perfect awards as well. That means without bothering with relics or perfect runs, I still ended up doing most levels at least four times (including N. Verted mode) and sometimes with 30-40+ deaths in order to get every crate, or with many many restarts to get the difficult latter tapes. In addition the second half of the additional character side missions I mentioned already see you play through parts of the levels again as Crash/Coco so you then end up doing those sections and additional couple of times (normal and N. Verted)!
So... you need another 3 clear gems, the coloured gem, all the N. Verted gems, the time trial relic, and N. Sanely Perfect award to complete this level Crash!
This kind of sucked the fun out of the game for me. It was made more frustrating by the fact that getting everything in the first half of the game wasn't difficult but by the time I'd committed to trying to get everything in the second half of the game frustration set in. I kind of wish I'd done a "normal" run of the game to enjoy it and then gone back to mop everything up but to me it made sense to persevere to get everything on one level while you remembered the layout rather than coming back to them.
If you're not into collecting everything and aren't that great at platformers, the game is pretty sympathetic to this. Like in the old games, after a number of deaths in one checkpoint sequence, you will be given an Uka-Uka mask to help out (which allows you to take on hit without dying) and after more deaths without making the next checkpoint, you'll start with a golden mask (two hits without dying). It might even convert a standard crate to an additional checkpoint so you can still make progress. So even though the game can be tough it should still be manageable for most.
I'm no Superman
Boss fights are also in there and are fairly straightforward. Each has numerous phases and if you die you will only have to restart from that phase. That coupled with the fact you don't have lives makes these a much less frustrating experience and for the most part these are actually really well designed. N. Gin's rock concert battle was particularly memorable for me.
I mentioned the Flashback tape levels before and these were something I really enjoyed. These are designed as though Cortex is watching Crash/Coco run through trials he has set up back when they were in his lab. The level design is fun as it's like you're playing on an old CRT monitor with little screen flickers and it also has the date of the experiment on it (obviously from back in 1996!). These are definitely on the harder end of the platforming spectrum and use a lot of the games mechanics in clever ways and I enjoyed the challenge that these offered.
An early flashback tape level begins
Overall, I thought the game was really well done, loved the look and feel of the game, and thought most of the additions did make for a better experience. It's actually some of the older mechanics that I found most frustrating (I'm looking at you polar bear riding and jet ski sections). With everything I did I managed to get the "100% ending" which added a humorous little "what happened next" segment for the characters at the end which was a nice touch as well. But the repetitive nature required to get everything the game had to offer was a bit too much and ended up ruining the overall experience for me.
Not this guy again
That said, if you've been thinking of picking it up I would absolutely recommend you do!
@RogerRoger I actuallt bought Batman Begins on PS2 at the start of last year as part of a nostalgia drive. Licensed games are so hit and miss (mostly miss). I can remember that the gameplay was solid and the game looked good, but it was clear that the voice actors (Bale, Caine etc) were there for the paycheck but hey, at least they paid for them.
@Thrillho Good review - I'm not a huge 3d platformer fan, with the exception of Astro Bot games/demos, but good to know the game caters for people like me who just wouldn't spend the time collecting everything.
Now I may be an idiot, but there's one thing I am not sir, and that sir, is an idiot
@Thrillho Nice Crash 4 piece! It's interesting how critical you are coming from a completionist perspective. I get it, though: repeating the same levels over and over can just dreadfully tedious. I feel like there's pressure on companies to make games bigger and bigger than ever before, and it often comes at the cost of games being more compact, satisfying experiences.
It's also interesting how the game just sort of ignores and glosses over the multitude of sequels that came afterward. I imagine this means Crash 4 is retroactively changing the canon after the first three games?
The flashback tapes seem like a fun conceit, up to and including the aesthetic elements meant to evoke dated technology (realizing how long ago the 90s were at this point makes me feel old, urgh).
Excellent screenshot choices, btw.
Currently Playing: Fields of Mistria (PC); Cookie Clicker (PC); Metaphor: ReFantazio (PC); Overboard! (PC)
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