Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@CuteBoyMnM I know you warn of spoilers, but you really need to spoilertag the first half of that as you literally tell the whole story of the game

@Ralizah Thanks for reading. I always feel bad about being harsh on CDPR and their games because they are clearly passionate about the source material they take from. Their art design on all their games is always striking to me and Cyberpunk is no exception when it comes to the style of Night City and its characters.

However, I will defend Takemura as my favorite character because of how he is the complete antithesis of V. Learning more about him was genuinely interesting as it helped give context to why someone would want to live opposite of V and Jackie, not to place right or wrong but share perspectives.

Alternatively, I do wish Vik and Misty had more involvement in the plot since they're supposed to be our anchor to Night City outside of Jackie. Misty especially considering she's into mysticism which feels totally out of place in this super future techno dystopia but that's why I want to know more about her. She reminds me of the female pilot in Mass Effect Andromeda who chats with you about believing in god in a world with space travel and aliens. The concept alone is a fun discussion with the character that I was hoping V and Misty could've shared something similar.

As for Red Dead 2, Rockstar games are a SLOW burn both in gameplay and in character writing. I'd definitely say to give it a try but I understand it's not something everyone can get into especially with the gameplay. I feel like they tried to implement some bits from Max Payne 3 with how Arthur controls and shoots as best they could to add run and gun play-styles although it's still a cover shooter with auto-aim as a fallback.

@Rogerroger Thanks, glad I got someone to laugh. I always try to take marketing hype (especially E3 demos) with a grain of salt and try to hold any game on its own merits. If I held every game accountable for what they did or didn't promise I'd be an unhinged individual and I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything. I remember reading that CDPR broke even on preorders alone at launch but their stocks went down I think by like 40% that same week.

I guess it's becoming a bigger problem that games are becoming "pseudo" RPGs and are implementing these kinds of loot systems because it's getting more and more difficult to find suitable rewards for progression. Loot isn't something you can just tack onto a game and expect it to work, I feel like we had the same thing happen years ago when every game decided to add crafting to their game. Look at Ghost Recon Breakpoint for example, the game launched as a looter shooter, bombed pretty hard and got an update 6 months later to add a separate mode removing loot. Same mechanics, same gameplay but with no gear score. Not trying to discredit the work Ubisoft did but that kinda speaks volumes about how pointless the system was if it could be taken out with no changes to the core experience.

@MatthewJP Fair enough, shame on me for not thinking about that. Sorry.

I didn't do a review of True Colors because it is a game that I find hard to talk about, but replaying Life is Strange really gave me a device to put a lot of my thoughts into a context I could process. So this following thing you are about to read is kind of a review of Life is Strange, through the lens of a review of True Colors. Or maybe the other way around. Hopefully it'll make sense once read. If not to you, then at least to me.

So, firstly, it is important to note that True Colors is a game I love, one which resonates with me so deeply I’d argue it is one of my favourite games of all time. But replaying Life is Strange made me realise that maybe it isn’t very good? Like by conventional metrics at least?

Maybe?

Look, by my own definition, conventional metrics don’t matter to me a whole lot when it comes to how much something makes me feel and that is why I am able to love True Colors with no reservations, but for the purposes of a review… let us talk more about those warts.

Firstly, let us talk about pacing. True Colors is in far too much of a rush to get to a climax that honestly just isn't very good. Had the game basically made the first two chapters the entire game I feel like it would have made for a far more powerful experience - even if I think the experience we have is plenty powerful already.

With the context of The Storm, which looms large over the whole of Life is Strange and brought the whole experience to a cathartic, satisfying, crescendo which is reminiscent of the original Last of Us ending (depending on the choice you make) before Part 2 fiddled with it. True Colors just has no comparison, it isn't even competing in the same league.

Life is Strange's problem is the opposite though, in that it is in absolutely no rush to get to an ending which absolutely slaps. In True Colors, you want to savour every moment with these characters, in Life is Strange, I am often trapped in a cage with uninteresting or unlikeable characters I'm forced to engage with to progress. And yes, at least in part, this seems to be somewhat intentional, but knowing the intent doesn't remove the friction.

And even if it did, it doesn't solve just how ***** tedious Life is Strange is in the moment to moment. I really wonder how many sequences here were mandated, rather than there to truly give the player anything interesting to do. And I mean, if the intent really was to give the player something interesting to do... my word, you failed about as hard as one can fail. Life is Strange would have been an immeasurably better of an experience had they taken those sequences out of the game entirely or just turned them into cutscenes. At least in my books.

To put this into perspective, two thorough playthroughs of True Colors clocked me just under 20 hours, I was only a couple of hours shy of that in just one play through Life is Strange, and based on my journal I missed a bucket load of stuff in that game.

So on measure, both have their evils, but I’d argue Life is Strange’s evil the greater one, as if I must choose, I’d rather it rushed than boring.

A big part of the problem with the pacing is Life is Strange does seem to be trying harder to be more “gamey” (by conventional standards). You get excruciating stealth sections, insta fail puzzle things, maddening boss battles, tedious memory games and other rubbish. All of it is clearly there to be used as pacing mechanisms, but it doesn’t help pace the experience, so much as it grinds it to a complete halt as you either seethe at the unnecessary frustration of some sequences due to the general clunkiness of this whole thing, or simply struggle to even keep your intention on the game at all for how utterly bored you are.

For as much as people complained about True Colors “walking sim” elements, as you mostly walk around and click on things until the next conversation starts, Life is Strange again is the greater evil for me. I actually am not surprised now replaying this as to why True Colors basically removed this stuff entirely, if Alex needed to convince Ryan her power was real by telling him what action figure he got for his 4th Birthday, what type of cake it was, how many candles were on the cake and what shoes he had on, and you fail this until you remember all four things in an exact sequence, then I might not have ever finished that game.

And yeah, those characters, man. There are a lot of throughlines between the two casts, everyone has their unique flaws, but the True Colors is just the better version for me, I'm sorry. Despite how fleeting the whole thing was, I felt like I formed quick connections with all of the core cast and cared for them deeply by the end of it all. Despite the heavy themes, just hanging out with your pals and vibing in Haven was its own reward there, no matter how fleeting these moments are.

Yet in Life is Strange I spent twice as long with everyone and liked them all an absolute fraction of the amount I liked the True Colors cast. Life is Strange is a cast defined by their flaws, rather than simply given dimension by them, which makes for a generally unpleasant bunch.

Part of this, admittedly, may be down to Life is Strange’s technical limitations and heavily stylised visuals. Whereas True Colors felt truly vibrant and alive with its rich facial animations, and excellent mocapping of the physical performances of the actors, to accompany the vocal performances, Life is Strange feels like a Gerry Anderson production by comparison. (Will any non-Brit get that reference?)

In Life is Strange, everyone stands around awkwardly cycling through those weird movements that only make sense in video games (like who in real life keeps touching the back of their neck over and over again during a conversation?) as crazy looking eyes dart around inside of almost entirely static faces, devoid of almost all detail entirely.

And I mean static literally, too. I dunno if it was a bug, or just bad animation, but there were a bunch of really pivotal exchanges that were ruined for me because the lips just literally weren’t moving at all and the actor was making some emotional declaration and it was coming out of this: (._.).

Not to mention you can mostly tell people are just reading a script in isolation in Life is Strange and it translates to the conversations, which often lack a natural cadence and flow. True Colors got the actors in to do their scenes together and act them out, and it has an immeasurably positive impact on how conversations feel.

I also just think the Life is Strange artstyle in general is just kinda ugly, ya’know? Like Arcadia Bay can be gorgeous, there are some nice cinematic moments with the framing and lighting etc but I dunno, why in a game so obsessed with photography, is so much of this seemingly all done in Microsoft paint? It makes me laugh every time they remark on how great a piece of artwork or whatever is and it's just a scribbly stickman that looks like a placeholder. And this might be some kind of deliberate device because we see Max’s photos normally, but Max’s photos, despite what the game tells us, are also awful, even in proper detail. What is an everyday hero about a self shot of the back of someone’s head?

I will say, along the course of the journey, Life is Strange’s smoke and mirrors game is definitely the stronger of the two. It manages to make choices feel meaningful and impactful, and when they don’t feel like that, there is probably a narrative device already built to explain that away.

True Colors, on the other hand, is almost devoid of meaningful choice entirely, except for key choices and even with the key choices, these choices aren’t weighted by any other actions taken, so they feel hollow and isolated. No matter what you have done up until this point, if you press X in this exchange you are always going to get Y every time. Maybe Life is Strange works in the same way, but it tricks me into thinking it doesn’t, by referencing and calling back to smaller choices I made along the way, rather than just being built around a few key ones.

This does, however, ignore the elephant in the room which is the time travel mechanic in Life is Strange. Which, even by the very poor record of good time travel narrative devices, still somehow seems like one of the worst. It establishes rules, quickly dashes them whenever it becomes too inconvenient for the writers and then by the end you can barely follow how anything works at all.

At least in the early chapters, I do like how we explore Max’s abilities and how her abilities are directly interwoven with the core narrative. And for as utterly off the rails it comes by the end, my goodness does it make for a ***** spectacular final stretch. Although along the way, you will become baffled by how limiting this mechanic actually is in reality and will be ripping your hair out at times when there is such an obvious solution to something using your power that the game just doesn't let you do. Maybe that is also part of the reason I didn't like Max too much, as at times she just comes across as so ***** stupid and you are practically screaming at your screen for her to do something.

By comparison, you can’t help but think of how much of the potential of Alex’s powers in True Colors is ultimately wasted. Sure Alex can't mess with time and space, but we brief explore the idea of how Alex's power allows her to manipulate people or the potential damage that can be done should Alex take away someone's emotions entirely with her power. There was definitely an opportunity for a Chapter 3 and 4 in Life is Strange style moment where Alex uses her power with good intentions to make a massive change, and has to face extreme consequences for those actions. But no moment really comes, at least not in quite the way Life is Strange presents these moments.

No, in True Colors the power is just sorta… there, it doesn’t have any real direct effect on the game and it is clearly an inconvenience for the narrative to bring people up to speed, so people just don’t even blink when Alex says she has powers. It kinda makes me wonder if they felt like they had to include something because it is a Life is Strange game, but the entire game was built to work without it and it was added later.

My tl;dr is that I liked True Colors more on a pound for pound basis for how much True Colors made me feel, for the excellent characters, visuals and performances. Life is Strange also gave me newfound appreciation for True Colors in how it had the smarts to do away with almost all of the gameplay that makes Life is Strange so tedious to play in the moment to moment.

But on the flip of that… damn if Life is Strange isn’t just simply a better story, in the end. Messy and full of plotholes maybe, but my word this narrative goes to some places. Maybe it didn't emotionally resonate me like True Colors did, but I still appreciate what Life is Strange did with its ideas. True Colors ultimately leaves so much on the table, this really makes the most of every beat and I respect Life is Strange for giving me a bunch of choices which I genuinely struggled with in my personal life over making.

So yeah, there is kind of… a lot here. But I hope this made for a good read, anyway.

@Pizzamorg That’s a really interesting comparison of the original LiS and True Colors. Some of what you’ve said has resonated with me and it has motivated me to get back to this series and pull the sequels out of the backlog.

First off, I haven’t yet played True Colors, so I can’t speak to anything about that game. But I really liked LiS and Before the Storm, both more than they probably deserve. All that you said about the graphical jank and awkward storytelling and even more awkward gameplay, it’s all true. I think when I went into LiS I wasn’t expecting much, and so it was a pleasant surprise when I actually ended up getting along with it. Yet, it’s almost indefensible when analyzed from any objective measure.

When I read this: “All of it is clearly there to be used as pacing mechanisms, but it doesn’t help pace the experience, so much as it grinds it to a complete halt as you either seethe at the unnecessary frustration of some sequences due to the general clunkiness of this whole thing, or simply struggle to even keep your intention on the game at all for how utterly bored you are.”
This sounded like my experience with the LiS2 demo/free prequel “Captain Spirit” which is what ultimately sapped all my enthusiasm for the franchise and why I haven’t been able to muster the energy to play LiS2 or True Colors. That Captain Spirit demo was just, for lack of a better term, so boring. I’ve been told many times that the Captain Spirit prologue was not representative of the LiS2 game itself and in fact not an important part of the narrative at all, so I needn’t worry and it can be completely ignored in the context of the LiS universe. But the gameplay too was just so tedious, which I don’t remember feeling that way on my (one and only) LiS playthrough.

Anyways, as I said, if nothing else your impression piece has motivated me to get back to the franchise. I’ve always planned to do them in release order so I want to do LiS2 before True Colors, even though the latter is likely to be the most polished and best experience.

@Pizzamorg Being totally unfamiliar with the IP, I can't offer any of my own feelings on it, but it does sound like both games are fundamentally flawed in different ways, with the sequel improving on various aspects of the experience but failing to deliver the sort of compelling narrative that the original game succeeded in.

I'm actually surprised to hear how gamey Life is Strange is, as I actually had the impression that it was more of a Western-focused spin on adventure game or visual novel, with a limited amount of interactivity, but it sounds like that isn't true at all. Interesting.

Out of interest, do these games need to be played in order, or can they be played in either order?

The gameyness surprised me too, honestly, as I remembered it being more walking simish like True Colors was, but they really do go out of their way to make time travel a gameplay mechanic in Life is Strange... sadly in a way that is mostly poorly executed.

In terms of the games, none of them have to really be played in order as far as I know. Don't Nod did Life is Strange and Life is Strange 2, Deck Nine did Before The Storm and True Colors. I've never played Life is Strange 2, but as far as I know it is a completely different set of characters/story to the first game. Before the Storm is a direct prequel to Life is Strange, but also full of continuity errors, possibly because it was managed by a different studio, which is maybe why many don't consider it canon at all (I plan to review this next). Before the Storm does introduce one of True Colors best characters, but meeting her in Before the Storm isn't necessary to enjoying her character in True Colors, based on my experience.

I'm glad I could motivate you to check them out again!

Life is Strange 2 is the one I haven't ever played before, so once I finish Before The Storm, I plan to jump into that one. I know it has really polarised the fanbase, so I'll be interested to see where I land. Hopefully you'll share your thoughts too!

@Pizzamorg I’ll be interested in your Before the Storm thoughts, as I actually liked it more than the original LiS. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think the Chloe character made a lot more sense in BtS than whatever was going on with Max in LiS. Like you say, the ending of LiS makes all the clumsy storytelling and poor character development worthwhile, but in BtS it seemed like the narrative was more evenly balanced throughout. I don’t know. It’s been a while since I played them.

As for LiS2, I was initially concerned by what appeared to be not-so-subtle political jabs at US race relations, but of course since the game came out, reality has turned out to be stranger than fiction in that regard, so I doubt it will be any more disconcerting than the actual news has been. And several users here have confirmed it’s a well done storyline that focuses more on sibling relationships than anything. I suspect I will like it if I can ever get around to it. I’m caught in a 2023 release schedule vortex right now, scared that I will be held hostage by a flurry of awesome AAA games that take 100 hours to complete. 😅 Nevertheless, the LiS games make for really good palate cleansers between large open world action RPGs.

Funnily enough, I am one chapter down on Before the Storm and have more appreciation for Chloe in that one episode than I did through the entire of Life is Strange, even with a noticeable voice actress change. I think Deck Nine are just better at doing characters than Don't Nod. In Life is Strange, Chloe is Max's Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but to me Chloe came across more of a brat than charming, that constantly dragged Max into the mud with her. Chloe had her motivations for being a brat in Life is Strange... kinda, but I feel like a lot of that really wasn't meaningfully explored in that game to properly give me sympathy.

Here, straight away, we get all of Chloe's dimension pencilled in properly. A lonely, grieving, vulnerable, teenager lashing out at the world which has done her so much wrong. I think if I ever replay Life is Strange again, it'll be really enriched by what they have done here.

I also think that opening chapter does a really interesting thing with Rachel and her characterisation, given everything we knew about her was third hand information, it is nice that the reality is a lot more complicated than the black and white, binary, renditions of her memory given via various characters in the first game.

It probably helps, as it looks like Deck Nine properly mocapped the performances, so now even with their limited detail, faces actually move! We get to see people express with their eyes, eyebrows and their mouths. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it does so much to bring these characters to life, versus the mannequins they are in that first game.

Also holy crap that ending to episode one of Before the Storm? Completely made me rethink the entire Life is Strange core game.

That first chapter also seemed generally better paced than the core game, too, with the only mechanic being Chloe's argument thing (which is actually pretty fun). No stupid rewind puzzles to grind everything to a halt this time.

I've still got two chapters to go though, so who knows, they may blow it all.

It is me again, back with another Life is Strange Review. This time for Before The Storm, I bet you are all so excited 😂 I am just so glad I have this space to get my emotions out so I'm not jus crying myself to sleep. 😂

Life is Strange is a special game to a dedicated core group of superfans, however, the original LiS didn’t resonate with me in the way it has with others, not on the first playthrough all those years ago, or through any subsequent playthroughs like my most recent one. In fact, the franchise in general general wouldn't reach that mythic status with me like it has done with so many others until years later when I played True Colors for the first time and experienced more emotion in that ten or so hour runtime than I might have experienced in my whole life up until that point. Sort of only half joking.

I start there, because I get why Before the Storm divided the fanbase and still does to this day. Square Enix took something that is basically held sacred by people and handed it to a completely different studio. There are those who out of principle were always destined to hate Before the Storm before even the first line of story was written, and while I think that is unfair, Deck Nine do themselves few favours with BtS, especially when it comes to continuity. The mistakes in that regard are almost too numerous to list, creating plot holes for the core game it is meant to be a prequel to and is just simply not the way a new studio goes about endearing existing fans.

That being said, when all was said and done, I loved Before The Storm and in fact I would even go as far as to say I like it more than the core game. It is a fallacy, maybe, but as much as I am irked by it's continuity failings and unnecessary plotholes, it makes decisions which enrich the core LiS game, in ways often so obvious you wonder why Don’t Nod didn’t do it themselves.

Chloe, a once somewhat flat and abrasive manic pixie dream girl twinkling in Max’s eye is brought to life in dazzling technicolour here, giving her all the depth, charm and charisma the core game often told me about, but rarely showed. And so in turn I now have the emotional connective tissue and sympathy for her that I sorely needed throughout the core game.

Rachel, at least in the core game, is far more of a concept than she is a person. We learn things about her during the course of the game, there are developments, twists and turns, but they are all held at arm's length away from us, because everything we know about Rachel is third hand, we never truly knew her. And by design, accounts of her are disparate depending on the source, angel or demon, so we are never able to truly know her based on these accounts, either.

Deck Nine were given a seemingly impossible task here because of this, to turn all those disparate third hand accounts of Rachel and combine them together into a flesh and blood cohesive human being. One who feels real and tangible. One whose gravitational pull can have a profound effect on those around her, like we were always told it did. One who could give the impression of angel, or demon, equally depending on the audience. And honestly, I think they ***** nailed it. Rachel is all of these things, and more.

It has a profound affect both on this game in the immediate sense, but now in the core game all those developments, twists and turns which once meant nothing to me as a player, now they mean everything. There are many scenes in the core Life is Strange game that fell flat for me, because they assumed a level of connection with Chloe and Rachel, but I hadn’t much of a connection to either. Rachel, as already explained, was as real as Santa Clause to me, and Chloe was barely any more tangible. We saw an idealised Chloe through Max’s lens, never Chloe the real human being, not really. So as she mourned her friend, or learned of her betrayal, or other such things, why should I care, when I know next to nothing about either person involved? Well, now I have a reason to.

Before The Storm has fun playing with parallels, too. Chloe is as much of a concept, rather than a real person, to Max, as Rachel is to Chloe here. And Rachel offers Chloe much of the same liberation she would in turn go on to offer Max. You also can't help but think about the betrayal, and ultimate end, Rachel will go on to commit, in contrast to at least one of the choices Max ends up making to close out the core game. Is Rachel the storm? Or is the storm just the toxic spiral these broken, *****, people find themselves in as they drag one another through their orbits?

Either way, I appreciate Before the Storm for this. Now if I ever replay the core game, when scenes once fell flat, my heart will now break, not once, but twice. For the Chloe I have grown a deep connection with and the Rachel I now know just as deeply. When people recount the Rachel they knew in the core game, I can share those experiences, because now I knew her too.

Miss her too.

Most of the time when people try to explain a mystery, it only loses all of its magic, but the character writing by Deck Nine is so strong, the more the mystique is replaced by reality, the more the magic itself grows.

My feelings towards Rachel and Chloe by the end of the first episode alone, felt stronger than anything did for me in the entire of the core game, this is that rich emotional tapestry Deck Nine so masterfully crafted in True Colors, and its absence in the core game is made so obvious because of this.

In fact, in many ways, BtS is as much a spiritual prequel to True Colors as it is a direct prequel to the core game. The lead writer here would go on to become the director of True Colors I believe, and it can be felt. TC and BtS are both Life is Strange games, but they have a subtly different feeling to them.

The supernatural and grand poetic narratives take a backseat here to mostly the more mundane moments of life that happen between those grander moments games tend to focus on. The supernatural is here, but only ever implied, never cemented. You can read this game in one way, but in others that have a transformative effect on the core game in the process. I appreciate the game leaves this to my interpretation.

Under Zak Garriss you make far less meaningful choices than you did in that core game, but it is far more focused on the characters and how you express yourselves through them with your choices that way. Garriss also seems far less preoccupied on trying to make things conventionally “gamey”, which for BtS has an immeasurably positive impact on the overall pacing of the game, versus the core one.

I know when listed like that it sounds like Deck Nine’s formula is far worse, and if you liked the formula of the first Life is Strange, I can understand why BtS’s shift in focus may not be appreciated, but I find Deck Nine’s character writing so strong, it overrides any other faults with their approach. Again, to me, being able to feel something is more important to me than anything else, and Deck Nine knows how to make me feel every emotion in life like detail.

The elephant in the room this time is definitely the voice actor changes, apparently there were some strikes with voice actors around the time this was made? Weirdly, I’ve never heard about this before and don’t think I’ve ever had this impact on any other media I’ve consumed, but as a result basically everyone in this game has been recast. Again, if you feel a deep sense of love for the original, this is going to hurt and it was definitely noticeable for me to begin with as I went straight from the original into this. However, I actually pretty quickly stopped noticing after a while, if I am being honest.

As I said in my last review, while I know it is somewhat of a controversial opinion, I actually don’t think the voice acting in the original LiS is that great, a lot of it is really flat and just sounds like people reading scripts, rather than having genuine conversations. That is mostly true of BtS as well if I am being honest, but people seem to act like the acting in BtS is comparatively garbage compared to the core game, and I just do not agree.

What elevates Deck Nine’s acting beyond the really strong character writing though is Deck Nine properly mocapped the performances, so its now no longer flat acting combined with weird Gerry Anderson puppet character models stiffly touching their neck over and over. Deck Nine is still held back by LiS’s ugly art style, but now people act with their faces and their bodies, it feels as natural and real as the artstyle allows, it really does so much for the performances when they aren’t being carried entirely by the voices alone.

To close, I would say maybe the greatest crime of this game is we don't get to spend even more time with Rachel than we do, but like Chloe, I feel as a player that even a fleeting moment with Rachel Amber is better than none at all.

I feel truly grateful for being able to have experienced this.

@Pizzamorg I do very much agree with your assessment. Although it sounds like I enjoyed the original game more than you did, Before the Storm felt like a step up in character development and overall narrative flow. I also remember having a similar response to the voice acting — initial disappointment, followed by gradual acclimation, and in the end, maybe even a preference for the BtS crew.

@Th3solution I enjoyed the original more than @Pizzamorg as well, but I also enjoyed Before the Storm more than most people did as well. Most people didn't like it because of Chloe, but I actually like the character, so it was obvious I'd like it more than most.

I'm obviously a fan of Ashly Burch given that I'm a huge fan of the Horizon series, but it didn't bother me at all that she wasn't able to voice Chloe again. It didn't even cross my mind while playing the game, and I didn't even realize she was back to voicing Chloe in the bonus content after the end of Before the Storm. That tells you that the replacement did a solid job.

Time has a positive impact on the voice acting I think, as weird and maybe obvious as that sounds? True Colors is a game that I think is genuinely well acted basically across the board, but it is also helped by having a cast who all have interesting unique bits of texture to their voices, as well.

When I jumped into Life is Strange, especially as a non-American, all I could hear was a lot of flat generically American voices as I have no ear for American dialects/accents outside of the really exaggerated ones 'cahmn awn I'm wahlkeen here!', and it really took me a few episodes of that game to really start to tune into the unique parts of various voices and chisel out the characters out of the bland sea of Americanmush, and go on to ultimately appreciate what each performance brought.

This is true of Before the Storm as well, once I got over the fact that Chloe sounds different, my ear became tuned to the unique parts of her performance and started to really appreciate it. Same with Rachel, I know she hasn't been recast, but Kylie Brown likely wouldn't have been first choice without the strikes and I've seen a lot of complaints with her performance. She is arguably one of the weakest of the cast, which is problematic for such a central and important character, but the more I listened to it, the more I started to appreciate what an interesting voice Kylie Brown had, and how much it fit with Rachel's general vibe and energy, especially as we know everything about Rachel is kinda fake. I just started appreciating those aspects, rather than necessarily the performance itself.

I mean I dunno how anyone can watch this and say the acting is bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU0_wfN5XEU

For almost everyone else who has been recast, they are mostly background characters so they aren't ever around long enough to really spoil anything. The one exception for me is maybe William, who sounds like a complete robot and this really hurts, given how important every appearance of William is. That said, depending on how you read the supernatural or not elements of this game, the roboticness of the performance for William might actually be more fitting for the scenes than that high energy drawl Ochman brought to William in the core game. Especially the 'blinds us' scene (around 9 minutes into the below video), the stiffness actually adds to the otherworldly creepiness of it all for me.

@Pizzamorg It’s a good point that you bring out regarding the regional and national accents which can affect how one perceives the quality of the voice acting. I think sometimes an actor’s voice and inflection just sounds better or worse to a native versus someone hearing their accent as foreign.

Of course, some voice acting is bad no matter whether it’s foreign or not.

It is the anime fallacy, right? Is the Japanese cast actually that much better than the dub? Or is it just because its foreign I don't have an ear for it, so its far easier for me to be critical of the English language dub than it is the Japanese one?

@Pizzamorg Exactly. An extreme example, but that’s right. I’ve seen that a lot of people use that tactic for games like Forspoken with less than stellar voice acting — that the game is much more enjoyable in Japanese with subtitles. But you’re right - the Japanese voice work might be just as bad, we just can’t tell.

@Pizzamorg In the case of Japanese media, you're also just more likely to see top-tier Japanese talents voice characters. Moreover, it's also that the rhythm of the language, as well as the pitch of Japanese voices, often fits the dialogue better. A good localization obviously helps in this regard, but unless you're just not sticking to the script at all, there's a limit to how far afield you can go from the original work.

Accidentally posted this in another thread the other day.

Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch)

Mission Accepted

• My first time playing a Prime game, it successfully transitions the formula into the 3rd dimension. The biggest difference between it and the 2D entries is that while those have been evolving to be more quick & action-y, this has a more deliberate, almost puzzle like feel (heck, there's a big plant boss early on that feels very much "traditional 3D Zelda" in it's approach).
• One of these changes is that instead of beam upgrades "stacking" on top of each other making you progressively more powerful, here they are separate equips. While newer beams are generally more efficient at taking out early/mid game enemies than what came before (helping with backtracking), late game areas tend to be populated with foes weak to a specific one, requiring you to switch things up encounter to encounter.
• Another addition that's possible due to the first person perspective is the addition of visor upgrades. While you start out with the standard "battle visor" (your basic view) & "scan visor" (lets you collect data on enemy types & the environment), as you get further in you'll obtain the "thermal visor" (see in the dark & more easily track cloaked enemies) & "x-ray visor" (lets you see what can't otherwise be seen, usually environmental elements like secret paths). These really play into the more deliberate pace of the game.
  
  
• One area where the game really uses the extra dimension to it's advantage is the morph ball sections. These are much more involved than anything you'll see in the 2D games, and I'll admit my jaw kinda dropped a few times, like the section that opens up right before a late game beam upgrade.
  
• I also liked the fact that most of the upgrades seemed to be behind puzzles that were more deliberately built into the environment, rather than just behind a random destructible wall (even though there is some of that). Usually you can tantalizingly see an upgrade, or at least tell there's an environmental puzzle that's clearly hiding something, and it's just up to you to figure out how to obtain it.
• If I had to nitpick, there would be a few changes I'd make to the map. Firstly, I'd have any upgrades that you've scanned be marked on the map until you collect them. Secondly, have some sort of general indicator if a room has an upgrade you haven't collected, even if you haven't scanned it (this can be more vague, not giving away precise location). The 2D games already do the latter, marking the map with a dot if there's an upgrade in the general area.
• Pretty gorgeous game too, I think I'm just going to let these following screenshots do the talking.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with it, even if I got lost a time or two. I think I prefer the more action-y direction the 2D games are starting to take, but I can only imagine how seminal this must have felt back in the day, given that they nailed the 3D transition the first time out, & with really only Super Metroid beforehand being a good example of the franchise. Glad I finally got to experience it.

Mission Complete.

@RR529 Nice review! I definitely agree that there is a lot of traditional 3D Zelda DNA in Metroid Prime, which took the basic concept of the 2D games (non-linear exploration of a lonely and hostile alien planet) and evolved it in a more puzzle-y direction. It's definitely impressive to see how they've updated the graphics for this, which seem to be almost entirely re-created for modern hardware. Pretty impressive that an otherwise faithful remake of an extremely old GameCube title is now one of the best graphical showpieces on the Switch, although I suppose it's fairly close to Sony's own remake of Shadow of the Colossus in that respect.

I'd definitely support your proposed changes to the map. I'd also, personally, better integrate the artifact hunt into the game's campaign, so you're not left with a tedious fetch quest before you're able to face down the final boss.

Hopefully this is a sign of what we can expect from Metroid Prime 4 in terms of visuals, performance, and overall design quality.

Rolled credits on Dead Island 2 today. Have a little side content to finish (my completion percentage is around 73 percent), but I am in two minds about just stopping here for risk of becoming burnt out, so here is my review.

Honestly, as I went through my notes I recorded while playing and just generally putting my thoughts together on this one in the context of me now finishing the main story, I think I went from thinking this might be my lowkey game of the year so far to actually just thinking maybe it is kind of bad?

Like what really made me love Dead Island 2 is how frictionless it all is and how few barriers there are to my fun. I know there are many who found this game boring and overly simplistic, missing the survival elements and various other player depowering systems often featured in these sorts of games, that they feel would have taken this to the next level.

And like... that is their opinion, and I'll respect it, but also respectfully couldn't agree less. Couldn't disagree more? I dunno what the right turn of phrase is there.

Like, sure, they may offer those games greater amounts of depth perhaps, but for my tastes, they don’t actually add any real extra fun. And I value fun more than I do depth. So I honestly didn’t feel, or miss, the absence of such things here, and in fact, was loving how powerful Dead Island 2 lets me feel, and how breezily I progressed through this, growing ever stronger as I did.

Sadly the last third or so of the game kinda betrays this main point of recommendation for me, with a sharp increase in difficulty that kinda makes this whole stretch a massive slog, if I am being honest. Maybe that is partially just general fatigue from a gameplay loop that never really meaningfully evolves after the first few hours, but I do just think the later mission design is bad, with these long checkpointless gauntlet style encounters where you are flooded with seemingly endless waves of enemies in a tedious, and frustrating, war of attrition.

You start seeing increasing numbers of variant zombies (because of course) and then eventually elemental variants of the variant zombies in addition, and almost all of these have irritating quirks, or are just massive bullet sponges. They just suck, to be honest. The fun is smashing a zombies head clean off with an acid spewing hammer with one massive swing. Not unloading 100 shotgun shells into some meat sack that you have to constantly circle strafe around so they don't do their stupid knock down move that leaves you defenceless.

Likewise, enemy elemental damage in general is insanely overtuned, often killing you faster than you can even realise you have been afflicted with a status. This makes these gauntlets especially infuriating, as you can survive wave after wave, be hit with a fire attack or something right in the dying moments and just be disintegrated in a second and then right back to the start you go.

Thankfully guns exist and are effectively a cheese as they seem as equally wildly over tuned in the players favour, but it never feels very good to make it through these encounters with guns, but without my guns I am not sure I would have ever made it through these encounters, so I guess you use what you can.

And maybe that alone wouldn’t kill the recommendation, but everything sorta crashes and burns in this last third, for me. The story, for example, runs off to nowhere just as soon as it starts getting… not exactly good exactly, but certainly going to some slightly more interesting places than you may expect, based on where it starts. It all just sorta ends on a massive middle finger, honestly.

It has a weird sequel bait/universe establishing ending that reminds me of the ‘Game is On’ running joke the Weekly Planet uses. It just seems bizarre to me for a game that has been in development hell for so long, and ran the risk of never even making it off of the runway, that they’d cheat their audience who made it to the end. By all regards the game has done quite well for itself, so who knows, maybe it'll all pay off in another game in a decade plus time. But this was not the way.

Likewise, there is a final tier of weapon rarity which only becomes available after the story finishes and there is no New Game plus, so this just also seems like such a bizarre decision to me. Gating your final tier of progression to a bunch of left over side missions that are otherwise meaningless once the campaign is finished.

The weapon and skill card systems are both very lopsided, as for the first few hours, they are very fruitful, and rewarding, but it just sorta runs dry after a while. If you were expecting Borderlands style weapons, or ARPG style abilities, which I wouldn’t begrudge you for thinking based on what you see at the beginning, then adjust your expectations. What you get in the first couple of hours, is all you are ever getting, you basically start with the strongest stuff the game is ever going to offer you (at least within the campaign) and everything after that is really just stat increases.

Given the systems are all rather thin anyway, and layered on such a basic loop, having it sprint off of a cliff is just another problematic pacing element to this, which probably gives away how troubled this all was behind the scenes.

I dunno, it just makes it hard for me to really understand who this is for. You are never going to have more fun with this than you are in the opening few hours, but those opening few hours are likely to deliver some of the most fun you'll have with a game this year.

Although it does become significantly more difficult in that final third, I still don’t think it delivers on what people feel like the game is missing. No extra depth comes along with the increase in difficulty, and it isn't a well tuned challenge like the Resident Evil 4 remake, it is just almost pure frustration.

But then for those who enjoyed the general lack of challenge the game offered, like I did, well, they are going to run into a similar wall like I did, too and are likely to come away from this game feeling sour, if they hadn’t already abandoned the game half way around due to the increasingly lifeless progression.

Either way, during that final stretch, at best they are probably going to be tediously shooting their way through the final few missions, and will be rewarded with a crap ending.

What a bummer of a recommendation that will be.

(And if you are wondering, no, there are also no difficulty options, or much in the way of accessibility options, so you can’t even tune this curve more to your tastes, this is the fixed experience you are going to get.)

I guess just wait for a deep sale or for when it shows up on some PS Plus or Gamepass?

@Pizzamorg When I saw that Dead Island 2 was being released, my immediate instinct was to think: "Didn't that already come out?" I was probably thinking of Dying Light 2. It's easy for me to get zombie stuff mixed up.

Sorry to hear the game got a little too brutal for you in its later hours. Poorly tuned difficulty spikes can definitely spoil what was an otherwise fun experience; especially if you like it at least partially for the fact that it's NOT challenging you early on.

It's always disappointing watching a game you previously enjoyed just sort of implode in front of you, leaving you feeling irritated and bitter by the end for having wasted your time on it. I'm trying to learn to hang games up before that happens, even if it means not finishing it. I did that most recently with The World Ends With You, when I realized I was actively dreading going back to the game. And in longer, more open world-y games, I prefer to stop before the magic is lost, which is why, despite enjoying both greatly, I never spent more than 100 or so hours on either Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild.

Did you ever play the original, or is this your first experience with the series?