Author: Barloq

Ranking the Albums I Listened to in 2023

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to my annual music countdown! Last year I went overboard with more than fifty album reviews, and the process made listening to new music into more of a chore than I’d like. Thankfully, I did indeed tone it down this year, keeping at a far more manageable 19 new albums this time. I didn’t listen to a whole lot of new bands this year, instead spending the first third of the year obsessively listening to Mechina, and then spent most of the rest of 2023 catching up on 90s and 2000s bands I missed out on at the time. I expect that 2024’s countdown will likely have more entries than this year. Still plenty to get through though, so let’s get to the rankings!

19) Lighting Up the Sky, Godsmack

When Legends Rise was one of the biggest surprises of 2018 for me, being the first Godsmack album to be anything more than a guilty pleasure. It had me excited to see where the band would go in future, but Sully Erna and company had another surprise in store for me when it was announced that Lighting Up the Sky would be their final album release. I had hoped they’d pull out all the stops for this big send-off, but Lighting Up the Sky is a painfully mediocre, wet fart of a finale. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the worst album they’ve ever put out – I used to give Faceless that dubious honour, but for all its dreariness, at least it has some good songs and sticks to the winning Godsmack formula. Lighting Up the Sky, in comparison, doesn’t have any tracks that resonated with me at all. In fact, as a non-American, I’m kind of annoyed by “Red White & Blue”, which takes an idiot centrist position on all issues and says “Yeah but all that matters is that I have freedom of speech and that I support America no matter what!” Wow, such a brave and intelligent stance, Sully… I swear I didn’t rank this album so lowly because of that song, but nearly every track doesn’t get any sort of reaction out of me. “Truth” is the one good song on here, but it’s not nearly enough to save the album as a whole, not to mention that even the worst Godsmack albums tend to have more than just one good song. Godsmack are still going to be touring for the indefinite future, but I just can’t see any of these tracks getting crowds excited (other than, y’know, “Red White & Blue” for a certain audience). It’s too bad, I was really hoping for a great send-off for a band which could never quite “get there”, but I’m still thankful for all the work they put in over the years.

18) 72 Seasons, Metallica

There’s a solid idea at the core of 72 Seasons, with each song telling the story of a boy’s journey from birth to adulthood (18 years being the titular 72 seasons). Conceptually, there’s a lot to be mined from this idea, but in execution this is an absolute slog of an album. Metallica always over-deliver when it comes to an album’s runtime, which is great when they put out good material, but when they don’t… well, we get 72 Seasons. This is such a baffling album, it’s like Metallica have completely forgotten how to make songs that sound distinct from each other or have any sort of interesting sound to them. I’m not even a latter-day Metallica-hater either, I enjoy Death Magnetic and I think Hardwired… To Self-Destruct is the best original studio album they’ve put out since The Black Album, but 72 Seasons is just plain dull.

17) World on Fire, Sovereign Council (Bandcamp)

It has been a long time since we saw Sovereign Council on IC2S, a local band whose guitarist was a neighbour of mine and whose vocalist, Alex, went to school with me. However, in the intervening eight years, they’ve gone through yet another major lineup change, losing Alex in the process. This was an intriguing change: on the one hand, one of Sovereign Council’s biggest assets was the contrast between Alex and Lisa’s vocals, but on the other hand, Lisa’s a great vocalist, so seeing how she can front the band solo is an interesting prospect. Right out the gate, you can really feel how all the changes have really shifted the feel and tone of Sovereign Council. Their first couple albums had an epic sound to them, and I’m realizing that was partly due to the layering of multiple guitarists, vocalists, etc. World on Fire‘s line-up has been stripped back to basics and this makes Sovereign Council’s sound feel smaller in comparison. One thing which hasn’t shrank though are Lisa’s vocals, which are better than ever here. “Of The Ashes” is probably the closest they come to recapturing that epic feel, and hopefully that’s the sort of feel that Sovereign Council can harness going forward.

16) Rated R, RED

Declaration was easily my favourite album of 2020 and I’d still expect it to end up in my eventual “Best Albums of the 2020s” list in 7 years or so. Knowing this, it should probably go without saying that I was excited to see what RED were going to cook up next. However, my excitement was somewhat tempered, because RED have a bad habit of swinging wildly in quality between albums – their first 2 albums were great, then their next 2 were very mediocre. Then of Beauty and Rage came out and ended up being their best album ever, only to be followed up by the very mediocre and forgettable Gone. Then Declaration came along and was another incredible album. And, as much as I hate to say it, Rated R keeps up the tradition, being another painfully mediocre follow-up to a masterpiece. There’s not a whole lot to say about the tracks here: musically, they harken back to their sound on Innocence & Instinct, but the songwriting feels uninspired and the tracks aren’t given enough time to breathe (the album itself is 10 tracks and barely gets over the 30 minute mark, so that should give you a good idea of just how brief these songs are). That said, the second half of the album is a bit better than the first, with tracks “The Suffering” and “Still Bleeding” injecting the album with a bit of soul and energy, although it isn’t quite enough to save the album as a whole. Well, if nothing else, I guess this means that the next time RED releases an album it’s going to be amazing… right?

15) Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge, Wolves in the Throne Room (Bandcamp)

Primordial Arcana was, for most of 2021, my favourite album of the year until Moonflowers and God is Partying snuck in and took the crown from it. Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge acts as a sort of stop-gap epilogue to that album, giving us a handful of tracks which mostly stick to the atmospheric black folk metal sound Wolves in the Throne Room had established on Primordial Arcana. It can go a bit beyond just sticking to the same sound though; “Twin Mouthed Spring” lift riffs directly from Primordial Arcana and they even have an instrumental reinterpretation of “Spirit of Lightning” (renamed “Initiates of the White Hart”), which strips out the black metal and instead becomes a clash between folk and industrial music. It’s interesting, but it’s also kind of indicative of Crypt as a whole – there’s certainly some ideas here, but I wouldn’t have been left wanting if they had just waited until they had a full album ready. As-is, Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge kind of feels like a Primordial Arcana b-sides EP and doesn’t do much to provoke interest on its own merits and lacks the meticulous craftsmanship that Wolves in the Throne Room usually bring.

14) Volume IV, September Mourning

Holy shit, now that the NFT fad has cratered, September Mourning finally decided to get around to releasing Volume IV two years late. I hope that the NFT bullshit was worth it for them*, because now that it’s here, Volume IV is a bit underwhelming for me. It’s basically more September Mourning: uncomplicated pop-metal with little in the way of evolution since they established their modern sound on Volume II back in 2016. Fans will enjoy it no doubt, but September Mourning’s sound is so simple that it might be downright unimpressive to those unfamiliar with them. For my part, the music here is fine, but it doesn’t have the same sort of impact that Volume II did for me back when I first heard it. I dunno if that’s due to disillusionment after all the NFT bullshit, but I do not think so. For what it’s worth, there are a couple songs which do stand out, “Empty” and “Kill This Love” easily my favourite tracks of the bunch; if you haven’t listened to September Mourning before, maybe check these out.

*Seems to have been, a few months after putting out Volume IV, they released a single to promote some other NFT project…

13) Interludium, Powerwolf

God forbid Powerwolf go a year without finding a way to milk more money out of their rabid fanbase, this year’s annual release is a bit of a strange beast. Featuring six original tracks, three re-released B-sides, and a French version of “Beast of Gévaudan”, I’m tempted to call it an over-glorified EP masquerading as a full album. Powerwolf are really good at making music, so the new tracks achieve that baseline quality you’d expect from them. However, when you’ve already heard two tracks on this album years ago and they happen to be the highlights of the album, it’s fair to feel a bit underwhelmed.

It wouldn’t be a new Powerwolf album without meaty bonus discs, including an orchestral version of each track from the main album, and the real feast, Communio Lupatum II. I’m always super interested in these Powerwolf cover albums, because while most of the songs do not work when taken out of Powerwolf’s signature style, there always end up being a couple diamonds in the rough. Luckily, Communio Lupatum II happens to be the best Powerwolf bonus disc since Metallum Nostrum way back in 2015, with several solid covers, including “Reverent of Rats”, “Stossgebet” and “Night of the Werewolves”. Particular highlights are “Dancing With the Dead” and “Venom of Venus”, which both transform the original work in interesting ways and easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Powerwolf originals. All-in-all, Communio Lupatum II is a more interesting album than the actual album it’s a bonus to and it’s a nice change of pace that there are more hits here than misses for once.

12) Last Days EP, Impending Doom (Bandcamp; note that this EP is not on their Bandcamp page for some reason)

Last Days is an extremely slight release from Impending Doom, clocking in at barely over 10 minutes. Consequently, it probably doesn’t help that the three tracks here are just more of their signature deathcore sound with basically no innovation or particularly interesting hooks. That’s not to say that Last Days is bad, it’s perfectly enjoyable, it’s just uninteresting. Given that the band’s last release was also an EP, you could maybe mash this and Hellbent together for a longer listen. Oh and the band has still managed to not go on an anti-woke tirade in their lyrics, so I consider that a win as well.

11) Obliterate Me EP, Coping Method (Bandcamp; note that the EP is here, but as a series of separate singles rather than a single collection)

Coping Method came up in one of my random mixes on Spotify so I thought I’d check them out. They’re primarily a metalcore band, although there is some electronic/EDM fusion here, especially evident in “Hypomania” (which is probably the highlight track of the EP). For the most part though, their sound is solid but not enough to put them over the top for me into really enjoyable. Definitely worth a listen, especially “Hypomania”, but not one that will likely stick with me over a long period of time.

10) Die About It, Bad Wolves

I feel bad for Bad Wolves: they showed a ton of promise on their first two albums, being one of the most exciting bands in hard rock/metal at the time. But after their extremely bitter breakup with former frontman Tommy Vext, and their subsequent album, Dear Monsters, being rather mediocre, that excitement has been completely dampened. Understandably, I went into Die About It with a lot of caution. What I got wasn’t quite what I expected. Dear Monsters really played it safe, with lots of radio-friendly hard rock. Die About It doesn’t shy away from that kind of music, but it’s also extremely scatter-shot in terms of sound and musical variety, akin to the shotgun-blast approach that defined their debut album, Disobey. We’ve got full-on metal tracks like “Bad Friend”, rap-metal on the title track, heart-felt ballads like “It’s You (2 Months)”, a full-on moody sax solo in “NDA”… like I said, they’re all over the place on this album. I’m not even sure I particularly liked a lot of the tracks on the album, but they go in so many directions that it’s at least constantly interesting and a step up from Dear Monsters. I’m still nowhere near the enthusiasm I had for Bad Wolves before 2020, but Die About It at least charts a more intriguing future direction for the band going forward.

9) Cenotaph, Mechina (Bandcamp)

Venator was one of my favourite albums of 2022, and a big reason why I listened to way less albums this year is because I spent about half of the year listening to Mechina’s entire discography on repeat. They are powerhouses, putting out a new album nearly every year, all telling one epic sci-fi tale of war and revenge. Their music has also undergone some major changes over the years, starting as full-on death metal and slowly getting to the more melodic, industrial metal sound they demonstrated on Venator. Going into Cenotaph, our heroes have declared war on the tyrant Enyo and the first battle is to be waged… and, somewhat unfortunately, Cenotaph doesn’t really live up to how exciting that premise is. Cenotaph has far less energy to it than Venator did, and now that I’ve seen how heavy Mechina used to be, it makes Cenotaph stick out even more. That’s not to say that it’s a bad album by any means, in fact it’s far more musically-diverse than Venator, but its slower, softer tone is a bit disappointing. It helps that this album was released on the first day of the year, because it has given me some time to come to appreciate it more – if it had released much later in the year, I probably would have ranked it much lower.

That said, a special mention has to go to a massive single Mechina released halfway through the year, “Blessings Upon the Field Where Blades Will Flood”. It’s not really in contention for its own entry since it is just a single, despite being 18 minutes long (!!!), but this is exactly what I was hoping to get out of Cenotaph, musically. It’s far heavier and has a faster tempo, with some actual roared vocals to complement and contrast Melrose’s angelic voice. This track caps off that chapter of the story well and leads into the future, promising a massive showdown to come. I’m hoping it’s also a sign that Mechina are aware of some of their fans’ criticisms about their musical direction, so with any luck the next album will sound a bit more like this. I know I’m crossing my fingers excitedly.

8) Godmode, In This Moment

In This Moment have been one of my favourite bands for nearly a decade now and I would say that they haven’t had a bad album in all that time… Godmode really tested that devotion though. When I first listened to it, I really did not like it. As I was listening to it I kept feeling that it was uninspired (probably doesn’t help that some songs, like “Skyburner”, are straight-up rehashing lyrics and themes from prior albums wholesale). However, after a few listens, Godmode really grew on me. The main evolution here is that In This Moment are steadily working more electronic elements into their sound that we’ve been hearing since Mother and Blood 1983. On the plus side, they’ve at least restored some of the heaviness that was missing in those two albums, but it took me a few listens to really appreciate tracks like “Army of Me”, “The Purge”, and “Sacrifice”. All that said, I instantly loved “Damaged”, featuring Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas. Like all of In This Moments’ duet tracks, “Damaged” is awesome, bringing a sudden shot of adrenaline to the whole album. I’d still put this as my second least favourite In This Moment album overall, but I’m glad I gave Godmode a few chances, because I’m legitimately enjoying it now and I think it stands well amongst the rest of their discography, even if it isn’t the most distinct album they’ve put out by any means.

7) NA​̈​E’BLISS, Red Cain (Bandcamp)

I really enjoyed Red Cain’s Kindred duology, so I was excited when news of a full-length follow-up came out. NA​̈​E’BLISS iterates on Red Cain’s epic dark fantasy metal sound, but for the most part this is a somewhat heavier version of what they were doing in Kindred. That is far from a bad thing though, as every track on this album stands out and feels like a piece of a greater whole. They have said that this album is inspired by The Wheel of Time; I haven’t read the series myself, but this lack of context didn’t negatively impact my enjoyment of NA​̈​E’BLISS. Really, my biggest complaint is that the album art is either AI-generated, or it’s so surreal that it’s indistinguishable from AI… I haven’t been able to get a straight answer, but it’s a pretty bad look for up-and-coming creatives to be utilizing these sorts of tools (especially since Kindred‘s art was so good). There’s a basis here for some rather evocative imagery, but knowing that it’s probably AI-generated makes it orders of magnitude less interesting.

6) Delain, Dark Water (Bandcamp)

I got really excited as soon as I saw the cover for this album – I mean, just look at it! I need more good, non-Alestorm pirate metal in my life and Dark Waters delivers. Calling it “pirate metal” is kind of a misnomer though, this is firmly a symphonic metal album with pirate-themed lyrics, and it sounds just like what you’d expect from a symphonic metal band – operatic female vocals, not too heavy, etc. That said, there are some really good tracks on here, like “The Quest and the Curse”, “Invictus” and “Underland”. Dark Waters is not treading any new ground, but it’s well-made and happened to find me at a time when I was looking for something exactly like this, so it gets some extra points for that.

5) OMNI: Part 1, Project 86

I spent half of my review of Project 86’s prior album, Sheep Among Wolves, trying to make excuses for Andrew Schwab’s transphobia in album-closer “Metempsychosis”. Project 86 had been one of my favourite bands for a decade at that point, so it was hard for me to admit that they had done something shitty. Well, I came to terms with it very shortly after publishing that review and, honestly, the realization has completely soured my relationship with this band, to the point where even the announcement of their farewell album left my bitter heart with nothing more than hope that they wouldn’t tarnish their legacy even more. However, through the development of this final album, Andrew Schwab continued shitting the bed with an email implying that they wanted to get into NFTs and then platforming reactionaries with “just asking questions” bullshit on his podcast. All of this was said to tie into the final album’s themes, so you can expect that my anticipation for OMNI: Part 1 was at absolute rock-bottom through this entire year.

However, you can see that OMNI: Part 1 is not at, or near, the bottom of this list, which should be an indication that I give a fair shake, even to projects that I am strongly biased against going in. Honestly, Andrew Schwab’s problematic politics don’t really shine through in OMNI, which is more concerned with how social media is ushering us into a corporate autocracy (best exemplified with “Virtual Signal”… which, yes, is a bit too analogous to “virtue signal” for me to not side-eye it). Oh, and also some weird, apocalyptic Antichrist shit.

In spite of all the baggage, Andrew Schwab is still a fantastic lyricist and this is easily the heaviest Project 86 album of all time, pushing into full-on metalcore territory at times. This was a very pleasant surprise as my own tastes have gotten heavier over time, so it’s not even as jarring as it may otherwise have been (for that matter, an old friend of mine who really likes Project 86 did not get on with this album very well because it was harder than they would like). It’s not really an album where individual tracks stand out to you, it’s more about the overall listening experience, and in that regard OMNI: Part 1 delivers much better than I expected. However, it does suffer somewhat from the litany of extended interlude tracks, especially towards the second half of the album, where we get interludes longer than some of the actual songs. These do help set the dark tone, but the sheer number of them make the listening experience drag eventually. All that said, while my relationship with Project 86 is irrevocably soured at this point, but I’m glad to see the band go out with their dignity intact. Part 2 comes out next spring, so I’ll be sure to cover it as well in 2024.

4) The Forgotten EP, Orbit Culture (Bandcamp)

Orbit Culture have had quite a year. They already released a full-length album in 2023 and then, surprisingly, four months later put out an EP as well. Based on the title and release window, I assumed that The Forgotten was just a series of b-sides, carved off and sold to fans for an extra dollar. While $1 for some b-sides would actually be a decent (if unremarkable) deal, The Forgotten does not feel like an after-thought. Rather, it feels like a proper release in its own right and easily stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its full-length sibling.

First-off, The Forgotten is a meaty EP, clocking in over 18 minutes long across three tracks (which is no mean feat, considering that the album which came out four months earlier was nearly 50 minutes long in its own right, and Orbit Culture’s music is fast and aggressive, so filling out time is harder for them than some other bands). That wouldn’t mean much if the music wasn’t good, but there are some really solid tracks here. “While We Serve” is deliciously heavy and demonstrates how Orbit Culture love to build up tension across the track’s runtime before changing tempo and becoming even more heavy as they change up the track’s sound. I was headbanging the entire time, it was great.

Meanwhile, “The Upheaval” starts out strangely, spending the first minute or so with a heavy sound, but an intentionally-delayed tempo, before letting loose and going back to their usual fast and aggressive tempo. It’s relatively short at four and a half minutes, but each minute takes you on a journey to a new soundscape.

Unfortunately, the closer, “Sound of the Bell”, is pretty disappointing. As Orbit Culture’s longest song, I was hoping for something akin to “A Sailor’s Tale” off of their previous Shaman EP, but the track takes about six and a half minutes to really get going, and then when it finally does get going, it doesn’t escalate any further and instead just peters out. It’s not an awful track by any means, but it is a limp way to end an otherwise stellar EP. If “Sound of the Bell” was a bit better, this could have actually been my album of the year, but alas.

Overall, The Forgotten is a bite-sized distillation of Orbit Culture’s sound and the elements which make them such an enjoyable band. They’re not doing anything different or revolutionary with their sound here, but considering the turn-around time and the price you’d pay for this album, not to mention the actual quality of most of the music here, it’s another fantastic release in a banner year for Orbit Culture.

3) Convinced, Anberlin (Bandcamp)

After waiting eight years for new music from Anberlin, I wasn’t really expecting more new music from them quite so soon, but I am not going to complain either! For the most part, this is just more Anberlin. That would be fine on its own, but the whole package is elevated significantly by “Banshee”, a fantastic track which stands strong amongst the best songs Anberlin have ever put out. Once again, Convinced is another rather slight collection that leaves you wanting more, but Silverline is still recent enough that it makes for a good double-feature, almost like a full album released in two parts over a year.

2) Dethalbum IV, Dethklok

After 10 long years, Metalocalypse fans finally got the finale we’ve long been waiting for in 2023 and, frankly, never thought we’d receive. Even more surprising is that Army of the Doomstar is about as strong of a finale as fans could have reasonably hoped for, especially considering how inconsistent the series’ quality can be. As a cherry on top of all this, we’ve also gotten Dethalbum IV, which I’m also shocked and pleased to find is far better than I was expecting. So many albums from my favourite bands this year have been disappointing and it’s left me wondering if I’m just getting grumpy and old, but as soon as Dethalbum IV got underway I was flooded with excitement. This album is classic Dethklok through-and-through: energetic, epic, hilariously over-the-top death metal that you can’t help but crank the volume up on and headbang along to. Like any good Dethklok album, the music stands on its own and can be enjoyed even if you don’t watch or like Metalocalypse. Every song on here is solid, but I really loved “Gardener of Vengeance” and (unsurprisingly) “Murmaider III” is probably the most epic of them all.

1) Descent, Orbit Culture (Bandcamp)

Orbit Culture screamed their way into my heart with 2021’s Shaman, with their mixture of heavy, aggressive death metal instantly winning them a devoted fan. Descent has been probably my most anticipated album of the year and Orbit Culture did not disappoint. If you’ve listened to Orbit Culture before, then you’re not really going to be surprised (and if you haven’t listened to Orbit Culture, then do it, goddammit!). This is very much the same sound they have been refining for years now, but why reinvent the wheel when it’s still working? On Descent, Orbit Culture are still delivering great, catchy tracks like “From the Inside”, “Vultures of the North” and “Undercity” that make you want to scream and headbang along. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s quality, and sometimes that is more than enough.

15 Best Movie Posters of 2023

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

I may not be writing as much as I used to, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I miss my mostly-annual year-end countdowns! In case you’re unfamiliar with how this works, I spend the year trolling through impawards and collecting all the really cool, interesting and striking poster designs for 2023 movies and then narrow them down into a shortlist. As always, any poster released during the year is eligible to make the list, but special consideration is given to posters which are intended for mass distribution rather than posters which are intended to be limited-release, alternative, “artistic” posters. As usual, you can see the full-sized poster in all its glory if you click on the images.

Anyway, with those considerations out of the way, let’s get onto the list, starting with some honourable and dishonourable mentions:

The Drew Struzan style is over-done and tired at this point, a lazy trope to make a poster look nostalgic and exciting without having to put in any actual effort to design something original. On top of that, I couldn’t care less about a new Indiana Jones movie in 2023. However… I’d be lying if it wasn’t nice to see the iconic Struzan style brought back for one last hurrah where it absolutely is warranted, for the franchise which is perhaps most intrinsically tied to this style. It wasn’t enough to make the list proper, but I felt it worth highlighting.

Oh, and speaking of the Struzan style, here we have the poster for a new Left Behind movie. I’ll be honest, the poster itself is incredibly dull, but I mainly put it here to shit on this series and Kevin Sorbo. Also, Neal McDonough, you poor man, what the hell happened to you to make you have to slum this hard? I haven’t had the spark to do a new Retrospective series, considering all the time and effort that has to go into writing them, but dammit the idea of looking at all the Left Behind movies fills me with a sinister excitement… Maybe stay tuned in 2024 if I can muster the motivation.

Okay, this one deserves some mention for how effective these posters are for a “ridiculous slasher villain” movie. These would all be slightly-above-average posters for a regular slasher film, but add in the decent tagline and how seriously they’re taking the ridiculous premise, I can’t help but chuckle.

And with that said, let’s get into our top 15 proper:

15) Saw X

Saw X starts the list with a couple posters that I found fairly clever in their simplicity. First off is the “eye poster”, which instantly evokes a sense of primal terror before you even notice the saw shape at the edge of the iris, revealing what the victim is so scared of. The “I Heart Saw” isn’t quite as striking, but I do appreciate how it cheekily calls back to the series’ legacy of posters featuring severed body parts, hinting that this is a sequel aiming to go back to the franchise’s roots.

14) Nimona

Back when I was in university, one of the most important lessons I learned came from an American literature prof who had a blunt, but effective motto when we were writing essays: “Why should I care?” I think about that whenever I’m writing, and it’s a lesson that can be applied in most walks in life. For a poster designer, the job is (usually) to sell a movie, so “Why should I care?” presents a challenge with results that can be intriguing, if you check out this countdown annually.

I mention this because these posters for Nimona represent a twist on the usual approaches to “Why should I care” from graphic designers. Honestly, these posters have sold me on Nimona, and they aren’t doing anything particularly special in their own right. They just demonstrate that if you are working with a strong, charming art style, then that can be enough to sell a movie on its own, without any special flair being required on top of that. The designers of these posters are clearly putting in some work in order to be able to highlight the art so stylishly, so credit where it’s due, but this is one of those cases where character and tone are expressed so strongly in the character designs that you don’t really need anything else. These lists aren’t just about elaborate artistry or unique twists, sometimes it’s just working with the pieces you have and realizing that they can speak for themselves. I just thought that that was neat.

13) Super Mario Bros.: The Movie

I’m not a massive Mario fan – I enjoy the 8- and 16-bit classics, but never have played much of the games beyond that point. However, looking at this poster, I can’t help but get hyped. This is a perfect distillation of what a Mario fan would want to see in a movie, full of colourful, iconic imagery and easter eggs, similar to the Detective Pikachu poster a few years ago. It’s also worth noting that this establishes that the art style will be familiar to fans, which you wouldn’t think would be that notable, but considering that the last attempt at a Mario movie ended up being a surreal, dystopian, live-action fever dream, it’s warranted.

12) The Boogeyman

Look, if a movie’s posters are pulling off imagery which would be The Moneyshot in your average horror film, you know someone’s doing something right. The fact that these posters are actually rather scary in their own right, while still keeping its titular villain shrouded in mystery, is a bonus as well. I have no idea if this movie is any good, but if the marketing is this strong, it certainly suggests that you’d be in for a good time.

11) Expend4bles

Full disclosure: I’ve always loved this poster design which has been used across the entire Expendables franchise, to the point that it was the basis for my custom logo back when I spend hundreds of hours playing Battlefield 4. The skull + wings (or, in this case, hair) made of various weapons is a flawless bit of symbology for a deeply flawed franchise, promising all the action you could ever want from its star-studded cast. It still works here for me, and it’s good enough that I’ll even forgive that idiotic tagline.

10) The Deepest Breath

I call this the “Free Solo poster design philosophy” – a poster for a documentary which is just a simple picture of someone doing something batshit insane. While The Deepest Breath can’t quite match the same level of sheer intensity as Free Solo (to be fair, few could), it still promises an ass-clenching thriller of a documentary that will thriller your thalassophobia to record levels.

9) Cocaine Bear

THE BEAR. IS MADE. OF COCAINE.

8) How to Blow Up a Pipeline

This one gets a spot for how its title is worked into the image. It’s simple on its face, but very stark, evocative, even transgressive. I can’t help but be impressed by how the title makes it work – on many posters, the title is just there to let you know what the movie’s called. Some posters use a tagline to try to tell you what it’s about, and use characters and imagery to try to sell it. This just has a simple barrel and some inflammatory language, and it instantly gives you an idea of the sort of journey you’re in for with this movie. Kind of like Nimona, this is a lesson in using what you have, to an even more extreme degree, since they’re almost exclusively using the title to sell the film. While maybe this makes for a poster that’s less striking than some of the others on first glance, it’s a fascinating case when you think about the decisions put into it.

7) Barbie

I could not be further from the target audience for a Barbie movie, but goddamn do these posters nail the titular character’s pop cultural footprint. First of all, the “larger than life” poster is what made this rank so highly – it succinctly and artfully evokes how Barbie is an icon, a monolith which girls have looked up to for decades (literally, in this case). Meanwhile, the second poster deserves some mention because it shows that not only is Margot Robbie the perfect casting for Barbie, but assures the audience that the film understands Barbie as a character and is going to deliver on those expectations.

6) Swallowed

Do I really need to explain this one? This one just looks BLOODY PAINFUL, and assures you that you are in for an extremely uncomfortable time if you watch this movie. For a certain class of horror fan, what more could you ask for?

5) Candy Land

I really love this poster. It’s so evocative – it’s appropriately sleazy and erotic, hinting at nudity while barely obscuring it, and the faux-vintage design and blood splatters only serve to heighten all of that. Obscuring the subject’s face also serves to depersonalize her, lending the whole design a forbidden, voyeuristic quality which is nearly as uncomfortable as the more overt imagery Swallowed uses.

4) John Wick: Chapter 4

A John Wick movie came out this year, so you know they went hog wild on amazing posters. As usual, the artists really need to be commended here, because they’ve put together enough stylish designs that I could have made an entire list just of the best John Wick posters. They’re all just goddamn cool, but not quite enough to put them at the top of the list this year.

3) Oppenheimer

This is one of those posters where the title kind of brings it all together. First you see the extremely harshly-lit picture and wonder what the hell is happening. Then your eye is drawn to the title and it becomes chilling as you realize the apocalyptic awe of what is unfolding. It’s a poster that basically tells the story of Oppenheimer in one image and makes you want to see that unprecedented power unleashed for yourself. Pretty impressive I’d say for a poster which is so harshly lit that it obscures most of what you can actually see in it.

2) Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse

Every frame of this movie os fucking art and these posters prove it. The “Gwen and Miles” poster is just a random frame from the movie, but it is so stylish and well-composed that it is enough to completely sell me on the movie by itself. Just looking at it, you can tell that they’re having a good time just sitting and chatting, and that Gwen is absolutely simmering for Miles. It’s wild – this is a bombastic Spider-man movie, but what is selling me is wanting to hang out with these characters and see how their relationship blossoms. Again, that’s the power of a strong art style, it can make the marketing easy if you know what you’re doing.

Then there’s the standard character poster. You’ll notice that I haven’t even included any other “character posters” in this list, despite them making up like 70% of all movie posters released in a year. Usually these are bloody dull affairs, meant to do nothing more than introduce and familiarize an audience to the characters of the movie, but more often just turn into boring window-dressing made more out of obligation than inspiration. This poster of Gwen breaks that tradition, being colourful and eye-catching on its own, but it also utilizes the movie’s strong art style to hint that Gwen is going to be on a conflicted journey in Across the Spider-verse. It’s not just an excuse to show a name and have them look cool, the same thought that’s gone into every frame of the movie is on display here in its marketing. It would be enough to take my #1 spot, if not for…

1) Evil Dead Rise

These posters got me for the sheer sadistic creativity on display. They might be confusing at first as your eye is naturally going to be drawn to the rather mundane household objects, but if you’ve ever seen an Evil Dead film (especially the 2013 remake), then when your eye is eventually drawn to the title, these objects are twisted into PAINFUL promises. “Oh God, I can just imagine the brutality of the cheese grater and scissors, but what the fuck are they going to do with the wine glass!?” It’s a less-is-more approach as you think of all the gory possibilities and this nasty bit of imagination born from such a simple bit of imagery is exactly why Evil Dead Rise‘s posters get my #1 rank this year.

Best Reese’s Products (2023 Update)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a quiet year for IC2S, but I’ve been kind of needing the break. Since the birth of my daughter, I haven’t had the time or desire to write like I did before. I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things again though, and what better way to commit than with another round of reused writing and corporate whoring? There have been quite a few Reese’s products released since I last updated this list and I’ve been keeping track of my thoughts on them this whole time.

As before, I’m not exclusively going over “official” Reese’s products, but any exceptions are done at my discretion. I’ve also once again excluded the original Peanut Butter Cups from the list, because they’re just timeless and the default baseline for quality (and therefore would just end up on the lower half of the list for being less interesting, which I feel is unfair for something that good).

Anyway, without further ado, let’s get started!

60) Reese Mix – These things got a dishonourable mention in the original version of list because they’re way too expensive for what you get, so I could never bring myself to buy them. However, my (at the time) fiancé knows I like to try new Reese products and hadn’t seen one of these before so she bought me a couple. So, it turns out that Reese Mix are kind of worse than I expected. I mean, it’s just the sum of its parts – peanuts, pretzel, Pieces and Minis, but the pretzel bits are really salty. On the one hand, this just makes you want to eat the Minis more to counter-act the excessive salty taste, but it’s a pretty bad look when your snack food is actively making me want to ignore parts of it to get to the bits I like. Plus, the saltiness is so prevalent that the taste has been passed over to everything else in the package anyway. All-in-all, it’s not the ideal way of eating any of the ingredients and I’m 100% certain you could make your own Reese Mix that would not only taste better but be far cheaper overall. Hell, the neighbourhood pre-teen entrepreneur could make a killing on knock-off Reese Mix and they’d taste better to boot. These things are just all-round failures as far as I’m concerned.

59) Reese’s Ultimate Peanut Butter Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – These are a disaster. You’d think that a peanut butter cup made entirely out of peanut butter would be tasty but then you try it and, oh yeah, it really is entirely made up of peanut butter. It’s interesting how Reese have been advancing their technology to make half-and-half shells or shells that aren’t chocolate at all, but this is just science gone mad. Think about it – you’re basically just eating several large globs of peanut butter that is too rich and too sweet and it goes against the whole idea of Reese, that chocolate and peanut butter are a match made in heaven. Never again.

58) Reese Puffs – Reese Puffs are the KFC Double Down of the breakfast cereal world: breakfast cereals are already towing a fine line trying to justify themselves as something other than sugary junk food, but Puffs shit all over that line and head into territory that’s just disgusting. I mean, the tag line when I was a kid was that they’re “Reese, for breakfast!” Yeah, uh, no thanks. I mean, I like Coca-Cola, but I don’t want one until after noon at the earliest because who starts their day that way? Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms at least pretend like they aren’t pure sugar in a bowl, but Reese Puffs don’t even put up a pretense about what this product is. I had these maybe once as a kid, and even then I was not taken in. Of all the things on this list, if I had to sacrifice one Reese product for the good of humanity, this is the one I’d cast into the fire.

57) Reese’s Pieces Peanut – These might have been the first Reese’s product I’ve ever tried that I will straight-up never buy again. Like, at least I like parts of the Reese Mix, but these? Reese’s Pieces Peanut is so… bleh. Nothing about it worked for me – the salty peanuts just didn’t gel with the peanut butter taste, and since they’re Pieces there’s no chocolate in them to balance out the peanut butter. So basically, you’re just eating a bag full of crunchy, salty peanut butter. It’s super disappointing and I hated it.

56) Reese’s Mallow-Top Peanut Butter Cup – I don’t like marshmallows. With this in mind, when I saw the Reese’s Mallow-top I knew that my enjoyment of it was going to hinge on whether the white top actually tastes like marshmallow or not. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, I’ve got to give some props to the marketing and R&D team because boy does that top taste like a marshmallow… unfortunately, that also means that they were revolting to me. I’m not even sure if the marshmallow is mixed right into the creme top, or if it’s a syrupy layer of flavour between the peanut butter and the creme, but either way it ruins the taste of this for me. Maybe that’s just my personal preferences tanking this product, but if you’re a big marshmallow junkie then this could easily be a hit for you.

55) Reese’s Pieces Shake & Break Egg – I’m not sure what I expected of this. It’s a fairly standard, hollow, chocolate Easter egg, but the twist is that it has some Reese’s Pieces inside. So you’re just eating a boring, vanilla Easter treat with next to no peanut butter taste (and with less Pieces inside than you would expect). I wasn’t expecting much of this, but even then I was disappointed. Considering that Reese’s put out several top-tier Easter products every year, you’re wasting your money if you put it towards a Shake & Break egg.

54) Reese’s Pieces with Caramel Flavoured Milk Chocolate – The idea of Pieces with a caramel center is intriguing, but then you realize that that is not what this is. Instead, someone decided that caramel flavoured milk chocolate would be better (and, I’m sure, cheaper to execute). As a result, we get the worst of all worlds – the center of the Pieces have a hint of caramel flavour, but it makes the chocolate hard, rather than chewy, and the taste ultimately clashes with the peanut butter. Definitely the worst of the four main Pieces varieties released in 2023.

53) Reese’s Creamy Peanut Butter Cup – At a certain point, it feels like Reese’s are scraping the barrel with some of their variants. Was anyone complaining that the peanut butter in a Reese cup is not smooth enough? I was not expecting much when I tried these out, but even then I was left underwhelmed. You can barely notice any difference between these and a regular peanut butter cup, you could put both in front of me blind and I honestly don’t think I could pick them out. This variant is maybe a fraction less-solid than normal, and is definitely not worth the extra cost and pomp.

52) Reese’s Peanut Butter Clusters – Imagine a Reese’s version of Turtles chocolates – that sounds amazing, right? Just swap out the caramel in Turtles with peanut butter and we’re golden. However, I was very surprised by how underwhelmed I was with Clusters. You’d think that taking a Turtles and then adding peanut butter to it would just make Clusters tastier and better by default, but I’m not particularly keen on them. Personally, I don’t feel like the peanut butter really adds much to the taste. If anything, it makes them a bit too sweet, to the point where I’d rather have a Turtles chocolate instead. Hell, I’d rather have a knock-off Turtles chocolate like Almondillos instead of a Clusters. However, the real crippling issue with Clusters is that they also ripped off the worst part about Turtles – they are bloody expensive. Like, I’m talking $7 on the low-end for a small box of these things. I’ve actually seen them selling for as high as $10 before! And, like Turtles, you’re not getting enough chocolate in that box to make that steep price worth it. If you see any marked down 50% after Christmas is over then they might be worth the purchase, but I would never pay full retail price for these again. In fact, I did pick a box of these up at 50% off on Boxing Day for about $5 and I’m still pretty iffy on whether they were worth that price.

51) Reese’s Half-Pound Peanut Butter Cup – In the original version of this list back in 2018, I made a joke about how a half-pound Peanut Butter cup was just too much Reese’s to actually enjoy yourself… well, I went and bought one to test out that theory. It is, indeed, a huge peanut butter cup and, as expected, way too much to eat by yourself in one sitting. I got about halfway through before it started to make me feel that sickly feeling of peanut butter and chocolate overload. These things are just too rich and it’s not like they’re cheap either (over $5 for one), so I can’t really see why someone would go for one of these other than as a gimmick… that said, a couple weeks after I finished it, I was sorely tempted to get another. There’s something about the extra sweetness of a half-pound cup’s ludicrous excess that justifies its existence and tempts me, but in my head I know that it has so many caveats that it’s not really worthwhile.

50) Reese’s Popped Snack Mix – Sure, this is basically one of those shitty Reese’s Mix packages, but the addition of chocolate-coated popcorn makes enough of a difference that it actually improves the overall package. Instead of just having a bunch of excessively-salty filler to slog through and then some compromised Miniatures to actually enjoy, the addition of the popcorn at least gives you something else to make the whole package feel worthwhile. That said, these still have most of the same weaknesses as a regular Mix, including the excessive saltiness and the high price, but at least the tasty popcorn make it a much more balanced product if you do decide to indulge in it.

49) Reese’s Big Cup with Reese’s Puffs – These were really disappointing, the Reese Puffs are tiny and not very well distributed, you may only get a few in a single cup and they don’t make much of a difference to taste or texture. Basically just a Big Cup which has maybe a tiny bit of crunch on occasion, which isn’t going to cut it given all the far superior varieties of Big Cups out there (and given that these are sold at a premium in comparison). I had some hope for these but they really flopped.

48) Reese’s Whipps – I swear that I tried one of these things when I was a kid, but I can’t remember much about it, it didn’t leave any sort of fond memories. I don’t recall it being bad, but there’s not much else on this list that I wouldn’t rather have instead. I’d probably buy one just for the memories if I saw one, but it isn’t a particularly interesting choice. That said, considering that it’s like 90% nougat I can see why it wouldn’t leave much of an impression either.

47) Reese Bar – I’ve had a Reese Bar a few times, but I’ve never been particularly impressed. Maybe it’s just me, but these things are too big and push over the limit where you’re getting “too much” sweetness. Plus they don’t hold together very well – I always find that if you try to break pieces off of the bar it caves in on itself and the peanut butter filling is very soft, almost liquid. They’re certainly edible, but whenever I buy them I inevitably will tell myself “Oh right, that’s why I stopped buying these things.”


46) Reese Blizzard – So I usually order a Reese’s Blizzard on the rare occasion where I go to Diary Queen, but that said I definitely have issues with them. For one thing, Dairy Queen Blizzards are stupidly expensive in general, and keep getting worse year after year. Furthermore, if I order anything more than a medium, I feel gross afterwards. I mean, think about what you’re actually ordering: you’re basically eating 3 or more packs of Peanut Butter cups, in addition to the ice cream itself. I have gotten sick from the sweetness overload on multiple occasions… not that that stops me from ordering them again, but the fact that these things literally can make me feel sick makes them harder to recommend than nearly everything on this list.

45) Reese Minis – They aren’t quite as satisfying as a full-sized Peanut Butter Cup, or even the wrapped Miniatures for that matter, but Reese Minis are a nice little treat. The fact that they come in resealable bags is great, it helps to make them last and not over-indulge in them. There are 2 varieties of Minis available too, regular and white chocolate. The variety is nice, but I tend to lean towards the white chocolate – for one thing, I think that they taste better, and Hershey’s rarely sells white chocolate Reese products north of the border so I’ll take whatever avenue I can get for that fix.

44) Reese’s Pieces – These things are iconic, easily the second most popular Reese product after the original peanut butter cups, in part thanks to the textbook usage of product placement in E.T. which made everyone want to try them. While I enjoy Reese’s Pieces, I find that their quality is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes I’ll buy a box and they just don’t taste all that great. I’m not sure if it’s inconsistent recipes, poor quality control, corner cutting, or what. When I was in high school I remember several occasions where this would happen, so it was like a flip of the coin on whether I was actually going to enjoy my box of Pieces or not and it completely soured me on them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still have Pieces on occasion, but I don’t care for them nearly as much as some other people might and I don’t actively seek them out.

43) Reese’s Crispy Crunchy – I was pretty disappointed by this thing. It’s essentially a Crispy Crunch bar, which I do really like, but bigger and with peanut butter and nuts added to the mix. Wow, how can that possibly go wrong? Well… it did somehow, because I would rather have a Crispy Crunch, no contest. This bar tastes like a cheap, dollar store knock-off of a Crispy Crunch rather than a product put out by a major chocolate manufacturer and nothing about it really “works” for me. Hell, it doesn’t even deserve to be a Crispy Crunch knock-off, it’s a freaking Butterfinger knock-off. Just unfortunate all around.

42) Dark Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Thins – Holy shit, they weren’t kidding when they called these things “thins”. They’re, like, half the size of a normal cup at least! Clearly intended as a “diet” option for the calorie-conscious, the chocolate on these is much harder and denser by necessity in order to keep the cup from collapsing on itself, and there’s far less peanut butter inside than usual. They’re certainly not bad, but… like, if you’re trying to be calorie-conscious and eating these as a result then you’re not going to be making much of a difference. Meanwhile, my indulgent ass is just going to be gravitating to the full-sized versions of these instead. Of the three varieties that launched with the “Thins” label, the dark chocolate is my least favourite, but it’s still worth checking out.

41) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Thins – I have to give the milk chocolate thins the slight edge over their dark chocolate counterparts, but honestly there’s barely a difference. They’re still tasty, still thin and still a fool’s refuge if you’re looking for something that’s actually calorie-conscious.

40) Reese’s Big Cup Peanut Brittle – The “chocolate” part is replaced with peanut butter creme (which Reese seem to be obsessed with experimenting with these days) while the interior is crunchy (read: extra nutty) peanut butter. Honestly, the crunchy peanut butter is the draw here, the peanut brittle creme has a different taste but it isn’t better than chocolate IMHO. That said, this tastes way better than the peanut butter lovers and the fact that the peanut brittle isn’t just more PB probably helps.

39) Reese’s Pieces with Pretzel – These taste about how you’d expect, they’re Pieces with a hard pretzel crunch, salty taste and that signature aftertaste. They’re pretty tasty overall, but there’s an unexpected issue where the pretzel pieces are a bit too large and are harder than the peanut butter and shell, so every time you bite into one, the exterior all crumbles around the pretzel piece.

38) Reese’s Dark Chocolate Miniatures – I was on vacation in Niagara Falls in the summer of 2020 when I found these at the Hershey store and bought a big bag of them. I’m glad I did too because I haven’t seen any since then. I don’t typically care for dark chocolate, but I can imagine that particular taste working well with Reese’s peanut butter. Unfortunately, the balance just isn’t quite there in Reese’s Miniatures, meaning you get just a bit too much dark chocolate for my liking and not enough peanut butter. If you like dark chocolate anyway then this probably isn’t a negative, but for me it manages to tip a very delicate balance in the wrong direction.

37) Reese’s Chocolate Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – I’m not entirely sure who this product is for. It’s just a peanut butter cup, but with slightly less peanut butter and slightly more/somewhat richer chocolate. It’s like they tried to design a peanut butter cup for people who don’t like peanut butter cups… but still left a lot of peanut butter in there so it doesn’t even accomplish that. Oh, and it only comes with 2 cups, so I really don’t see why someone would buy these over other Reese’s products, except as a gimmick. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed this well enough, but I just don’t understand why these exist when they’re so similar to a regular peanut butter cup, but with less in a package.

36) Eggs, Hearts & Christmas Bells – This entry covers a couple seasonal Reese’s variants under one umbrella; they don’t really deserve to have their own separate entries, since they’re all basically the same product in different shapes and packaging each time. The Christmas Bells, Valentines Hearts and Easter Eggs are, in essence, seasonal versions of Reese’s Miniatures – small, individually wrapped peanut butter cups with a shape based on the season they’re made for. They’re great, and if you find some of these in your Christmas stocking or on an Easter egg hunt, you know that whoever bought the chocolates was slaying it this year. Always a welcome gift, although the one thing keeping them a bit lower is that, as seasonal releases, Reese price gouge you for them. On the flip-side, as soon as the holiday is over the prices will get slashed in half so you can get lots of them cheap, so it’s a bit of a trade-off.

35) Reese’s Peanut Butter Lovers Peanut Butter Cup – The Peanut Butter Lovers cup definitely comes out on top compared to the Chocolate Lovers. That said, neither of them do much to stand out, instead just providing a bit more of a niche for a Reese’s lover. What makes the Peanut Butter Lovers cup stand out is that the top quarter of the cup has been replaced with shaped peanut butter, which naturally gives the whole cup a more pronounced peanut butter taste. I’d say that it is more akin to the taste of a Big Cup, just in a smaller package. It suffers the same sort of issue as the Chocolate Lovers cup where the difference isn’t a big deal and there are only two cups in a package, but I’d have to say that the Peanut Butter Lovers does a little bit more to stand out and at least it still has some chocolate in it, unlike the disastrous Ultimate Peanut Butter Lovers Cup.

34) Reese’s Nutrageous Bar – I’m kind of surprised that I hadn’t tried a Reese’s Nutrageous before 2020, considering that they’ve been around since 1994. That said, I can kind of understand why they haven’t become particularly widespread, because this is basically just an Oh Henry! with peanut butter… except that there are also Oh Henry! bars with Reese’s peanut butter in the middle, which taste basically the same and are cheaper, so I struggle to see the point for this product to even exist. The bar itself tastes fine, but I did find the caramel to be particularly sticky, making the bar a bit more of an effort to eat than I was expecting.

33) Reese’s Pieces with Milk Chocolate – As soon as I saw these Pieces with some chocolate inside them I thought “oh, these are just the peanut butter M&Ms”… and my intuition was 100% correct, they are practically identical in taste to that candy which has been on the market for years already. That said, peanut butter M&Ms are great and they taste 100x better than actual Pieces, so this is still a win overall, even if it is very unoriginal.

32) Reese’s Nutcrackers – Reese’s must have been putting a lot of money into R&D in the last few years. For decades we’ve gotten “shaped” holiday chocolates which resemble giant chocolate turds more than they do Christmas trees and bats, so imagine my shock when I opened up a Reese’s Nutcracker and found that the chocolate nutcracker shape and design was very well-defined and firm. Even more surprisingly, they are filled with a generous amount of peanut butter, making for a really delicious package. The only thing keeping these from being higher is that you only get like 10ish total in a bag, but if you can pick some up after the holidays for a discount, then you are in for a treat.

31) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup with Pieces – These things have been around in years in king sized form so it was surprising that it took them this long for regular-sized versions to start being sold. That said, maybe there’s a reason for that, because in standard-sized form they really don’t taste all that different from a regular or crunchy Peanut Butter Cup. The Pieces in this are tiny and all they do is provide a little extra crunch. Not bad by any means, but not much to get excited over.

30) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Stuffed with Crunchy Cookie – These things sound like an amazing combo… I mean, peanut butter, chocolate AND cookie bits!? Unfortunately, they don’t really live up to the hype. It’s really just a regular Peanut Butter Cup but with a subtle crunch to it from the cookie bits. The cookie bits don’t change the taste substantially, but the crunch is very satisfying. However, you only get 2 cups in these packs, whereas you get 3 in a Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups pack and I can’t really say that it’s worth the difference considering that they taste basically identical in the end.

29) Reese’s Take 5 Bar – The Reese’s Take 5 is a very unique addition to the Reese canon, combining a thin layer of caramel and peanut butter with a pretzel and then coating it all with chocolate. Apparently these have existed for years as their own separate thing but were recently brought under the Reese’s umbrella, which kind of makes sense because they’re unlike any other Reese product. It all comes down to that pretzel, which dominates the taste and texture of the bar, giving it a nice crunch and salty taste. That said, I don’t particularly care all that much for pretzels and there’s a bit of that pretzel aftertaste, which is unfortunate, but I found this bar far more intriguing than I was expecting. I don’t know if I’d buy these with any sort of regularity, but I can definitely see myself trying them again if I encounter any.

28) Reese’s Pieces with Chocolate Cookie – These had to be one of the most intriguing Reese’s varieties to experience for the first time. First of all, they’re unusually round for a Reese’s product, basically full spheres. The so-called “cookie” also has a very interesting taste and texture – imagine a corn pop with a crunchy Pieces shell and you have a good idea what eating these is like. I actually quite enjoyed these and would happily buy them again!

27) Reese’s Bites – Every time I go to do these updated lists, some long-forgotten memory gets dredged up of a Reese’s product I used to enjoy and have completely forgotten until now. This time, that product are Reese’s Bites, a long-since discontinued product which were basically small balls with a thin-but-hard chocolate exterior and a generous peanut butter center. Like a lot of Reese’s products, I’d eat too many of these and feel sick afterwards due to the peanut butter overload, but they were just so damn good that I couldn’t help myself.

26) Reese’s Fast Break – As far as Reese’s chocolate bars go, the Fast Break is definitely one of the better ones. The nougat is very soft and subtle, but it’s the healthy serving of the peanut butter that really makes this thing shine. It’s very simple (basically a Snickers, but with the peanuts and caramel swapped out for extra peanut butter), but it works so well. If I come across one of these again anytime soon I know that I’ll be buying one because these are delicious.

25) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with Crunchy Peanut Butter – I’m not sure if I’m just not remembering these things very well, but the big “crunchy peanut butter” gimmick of this product never actually stood out to me – they always tasted like a normal Peanut Butter Cup, just maybe a bit less smooth. It’s a small difference I guess, but not much to justify having a whole other variation on the market. I think Reese agreed because I haven’t seen one of these things in years and imagine they were probably discontinued. It’s too bad though, just remembering that these exist makes me hungry for one…

24) Reese’s Miniature Cups – On first glance, these might just seem to be the same thing as the aforementioned Minis, but there are a couple notable differences which make Miniatures stand out. First of all, Miniatures are all individually wrapped and are maybe about twice the size of an individual Mini. This might not seem like a huge difference, but for whatever reason, Miniatures just taste better to me. There just seems to be more quality put into each one and the size makes for a better balance of chocolate and peanut butter taste. Plus, they come in regular and white chocolate versions, which just helps to vault them over the comparable seasonal Reese’s chocolates, in my opinion.

23) Christmas Trees & Easter Eggs – At first glance, these appear to be nothing more than low-effort, cheap holiday cash-ins (hell, that “tree” is more reminiscent of a chocolate turd than an evergreen). However, these things over-deliver in a big way, being enormous compared to other Reese products and are stuffed with that delicious peanut butter. Plus, unlike most seasonal chocolate, they actually tend to be priced reasonably. The fact that they come in regular and white chocolate varieties is just icing on the cake. I fondly remember buying these things all the time around Christmas when I was in university. Hell, I would not be surprised if I was eating a Reese’s Peanut Butter Tree while writing some of the earliest posts on this blog.

22) Reese’s Easter Eggs with Pieces – Reese’s have clearly figured out the answer to the question “How do you make a Reese’s product better?” Answer: Just added Pieces. That’s really the only difference here between regular Reese’s Easter Eggs and these, but it’s enough of a difference that it deserves its own entry. I haven’t seen Reese’s Christmas Trees with Pieces yet but I’m sure they’ll exist by soon enough.

21) Reese Swoops – I can remember back when Reese Swoops first came out and really enjoyed them at the time. They had a very unique taste and texture that no other Reese product has had before or since. I was saddened when I heard that they were discontinued. If you never got the chance to try one, imagine a Pringle made entirely of chocolate and with a little Reese’s peanut butter swirl mixed in directly with the chocolate. Suffice to say, they were delicious and it was easy to forget just how much chocolate you were consuming as you scarfed them down, especially considering that they were originally intended as a “lite”, diet chocolate.

20) Reese Big Cups – Unlike some of the Reese’s products I mentioned earlier, while Big Cups tow the fine line between decadence and overindulgence, I feel like they strike the perfect balance where I feel just guilty enough. I definitely feel like I’m pushing some limits with a Big Cup, but I never feel like they’re too much or like I’m going to be sick or disgusted with myself for having one. There’s got to be some Catholic priest on staff at Hershey HQ who’s doling out the exact measurements of guilt that are acceptable whenever a candy bar is released and goddamn he towed the line flawlessly with the Big Cup.

19) Reese’s Big Cup Crunchy – It’s a Big Cup, but with peanuts in it. It really simple and doesn’t make a major difference in terms of the actual taste, but I’d be lying if I said that the crunch of the peanuts isn’t really satisfying. Literally, that’s it, I enjoy the crunch of the big peanuts pieces more, that’s enough to put it over the regular Big Cups and Cookie Big Cups for me.

18) Reese’s Outrageous! Stuffed with Pieces – The naming convention for this chocolate bar is pretty weird. It’s a Reese’s Nutrageous bar… but the nuts have been replaced with Reese’s Pieces. I don’t know why they didn’t just come up with a completely new name, especially since they make sure to specify that the bar is stuffed with Pieces anyway, but whatever, I’m not a big marketing exec now am I? In any case, the Outrageous bar is quite good! In fact, it is significantly better than the original Nutrageous bar. It tastes very similar to the peanut butter Oh Henry! bars, minus the nuts of course, and adding in Pieces always makes a Reese’s product better by orders of magnitude. My only real complaint is that the standard size version is quite small for a chocolate bar and, like the Nutrageous bar, the caramel is still a bit too sticky, but it is a tasty treat regardless.

17) Reese’s Big Cup with Pretzels – I’m not a huge fan of pretzels, so I was a bit wary of putting them in a peanut butter cup where the saltiness could overpower the perfect balance of chocolate and peanut butter. Thankfully, I actually had it backwards, because the pretzel taste is overwhelmed by the peanut butter and chocolate. What gives this a leg up is the fact that the surprisingly-big chunks of pretzel you get give you more “crunch” than most Reese products I’ve ever tried, and if you’ve learned anything about me thus far it’s that I love me some crunch. This was good enough that, after I finished my one-cup package, I was sad that I didn’t have a second cup to go with it, which is about as good an endorsement as I can offer. Will definitely buy again if I see any.

16) Reese Sticks – It shocks me just how good these damn things are. If you thought peanut butter and chocolate were a match made in heaven, Reese Sticks prove that 3 thin strips of wafer make a case for a hot threesome. Just… these things are brilliant. They sell smaller versions in the same sorts of bags as Minis too, and they are so addictive that you risk scarfing down half a bag in one sitting if you’re not careful. If you’ve never tried these, then seriously, freaking do it.

15) Hershey’s Milk Chocolate with Reese’s Pieces – I normally don’t care about a Hershey’s bar; the milk chocolate is tasty but it’s a boring product as far as chocolate options go and so they’re almost always overshadowed by more enticing treats. However, the fusion of Reese and Hershey bar really surprised me – the bits of peanut butter taste and the crunch from the Pieces gives the simple Hershey’s bar some more flavour than usual and there’s even little bits of peanut added in for added texture and taste! All-in-all, it’s pretty similar to the M&Ms Bar (which I do really like), but much better!

14) Reese’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – Like I said with the miniature and thin versions of these things, I don’t typically care for dark chocolate, but I had a feeling that dark chocolate would work really well with Reese’s peanut butter. That said – goddamn, I was not expecting them to be this good! Like, given the choice between these and regular peanut butter cups I’d say that I’d go with the dark chocolate ones more often than not (assuming the number of cups in a package and the price are equal). The balance between dark chocolate and peanut butter is so much better in the full-sized cups compared to the minis or thins. Compared to standard peanut butter cups, these have a bit of a richer taste to the chocolate which works spectacularly with the peanut butter. These get a hearty recommendation from me, whether you like dark chocolate or not.

13) Reese Crunchers – These might be the most surprising entry on this list for me. I saw a package of these at a gas station and, similarly to Reese Mix, the price seemed steep but I figured I’d give them their one shot to impress me. The price is definitely a bit too high, but bloody hell are they worth the cost. They’re kind of like little, delicious bite-sized clusters and just writing about them is making me want to eat the package of them sitting beside my desk. (Post-script: Yeah, within 5 minutes I had that package opened and was scarfing them down greedily.)

12) Reese’s Outrageous! Crunchers Stuffed With Pieces – These things are nearly identical to regular Crunchers, but they’ve had miniature Pieces added in. That gives them the slightest of edges over regular Crunchers for me, but they’re so close that you can’t really go wrong either way. That said, if you have to pick between the two in a pinch? Outrageous! Crunchers, 100% of the time.

11) Breyers Reese Ice Cream – Breyers’ Reese ice cream has some big legs up on the Reese Blizzard which propel it so far up the list. For one thing, a whole container of Breyers ice cream can be purchased for about the price of a Blizzard… even less when they go on sale for around $4 on the reg. Secondly, the ice cream is flavoured to actually complement the peanut butter cups in there, which makes it taste better than a Blizzard in general. Thirdly, you control the portioning, so you shouldn’t ever feel sick when eating this. Whenever I see this product on sale at the grocery store, I love to pick it up because I know that I’ll get to enjoying it on a hot day. Still less economical than, say, buying a big tub of vanilla ice cream, but it’s Reese ice cream, can you blame me if I want to indulge a little sometimes?

10) Reese’s Crunchy Peanut Bar – You’ve probably gotten the idea by now that I like my Reese’s peanut butter with a crunchy texture and the Crunchy Peanut Bar may be the best way to experience that particular taste. There is a lot of peanut butter in this surprisingly-wide bar, so peanut butter lovers are going to be over the moon. Taste-wise, it’s very comparable to the King Size Crunchy Peanut Butter Cups, but you get a lot more here and in a more convenient package. I checked this out on a whim and I came away very impressed.

9) Reese’s Big Cup with Potato Chips – Okay, I said that the Reese’s Crunchy Peanut Bar may be the best way to get a crunchy peanut butter texture, but these seem like they’re going to be impossible to top. If you haven’t tried them, I imagine you’re thinking “Potato chips, chocolate and peanut butter!? That sounds disgusting!”, and I thought that as well… for about 3 seconds. Think about it at all and you’ll realize that unparalleled crunch and a hint of extra salt make this unconventional trio a genius move, far better executed than the litany of other attempts at making a crunchy peanut butter cup.

8) White Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Thins – White chocolate Reese’s are the best and these thins offer one of the most convenient ways to get ahold of them. They are quite comparable to their full-sized counter-parts and don’t feel like a sacrifice in quality like, say, the White Chocolate Minis. They are also by far the sweetest option between the three Thins varieties, but they are just so damn good that I’d pick them nearly every time.

7) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Eggs – I overlooked these things on previous versions of this list, which isn’t too surprising considering that Reese’s have at least 5 distinct Easter egg products. However, Peanut Butter Eggs are easily one of the best seasonal variants out there, so I do feel bad for missing them for so long. Unlike the aforementioned Reese Easter Eggs (which are mostly peanut butter with a thin chocolate shell) and Mini Eggs (which are bite-sized treats), Peanut Butter Eggs are a nice sized egg with a thick chocolate shell around a generous interior of delicious peanut butter. I love them, but their only real drawback is that they’re expensive. Individually-wrapped Peanut Butter eggs are about $1.50 each, but if you want a bag of them you’re looking at about $15+. Unlike some expensive Reese’s products though, I’d actually be tempted to spend this on Peanut Butter Eggs, because they’re just that good. That said, I’ll always prowl the local Walmarts and Giant Tigers when Easter is over to find bags of these things at discount prices, but you have to be quick because they usually get snatched up within hours of opening on the day after Easter.

6) Royal Reese’s Brownie Blizzard – My God, a Reese’s Blizzard is already tasty enough, but this one was so over the top that it was unbelievable. A peanut butter filling and brownie bits in addition to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Holy crap, this thing is completely amazing. Like most Dairy Queen products, it’s insanely expensive, so you’re only going to be indulging in this kind of thing on a special occasion, but man… that special occasion is going to be the freaking best. This product is also discontinued as of the time of writing this, but if you tried one then you know the magical time that the Royal Reese’s Brownie Blizzard graced us with.

5) Pieces Eggs – The most exciting part of the Easter season for me is that the Easter chocolates are going on sale. For most people, that means Cadbury Mini Eggs, but for me that means Pieces Eggs. While Pieces themselves don’t set my world on fire, Pieces Eggs are a whole other animal. To put it simply, Pieces Eggs are quite a bit bigger than a regular Reese’s Pieces and have 2-3x more peanut butter filling, so they’re far more satisfying to me. The only real issue is that, like all Easter chocolates, they charge you through the nose for them. That said, I’ve paid nearly $20 for a big bag of Pieces Eggs before, which pains me, but it’s (just barely) worth it and that bag will probably last me for months when all is said and done.

4) Reese’s Peanut Butter Franken-Cups – I made the bold declaration that these Halloween chocolates were the best Reese’s product I had ever had the first time I tried one and while I have cooled slightly since then, they’re still easily the best seasonal variant I’ve ever tried. The reason for this is simple – that green creme you see? That’s not mint like I originally thought. It’s basically just green-coloured white chocolate. In other words, Franken-Cups are half milk chocolate, half white chocolate peanut butter cups. Can you see why I got so enthusiastic about them? Taste-wise, they’re quite close to a white chocolate peanut butter cup, but a tad less sweet, hence why I was so enthusiastic about them. Having had them a couple more times alongside white chocolate peanut butter cups, I still have to give the edge to the full white chocolate cups, but the fact that a new product was able to get so close is remarkable in itself. Plus they came in packs of 3 or 4, which is freaking generous as far as promo Reese products go.

3) Big Cups with Reese’s Pieces – Who is the diabolical candy-making genius who thought up this decadent combination? Taking a big cup and then adding a whole additional candy into it is just such a brilliant mixture that I have to applaud it, even if it might be enough to break that delicate balance that Big Cups strike and put them on the side of over-indulgence. They’re as good as they look, but I definitely feel some shame afterwards for how decadent they are… not that that has done anything to stop me from eating several of these since they first came out.

2) Miniatures with Reese’s Pieces – As I predicted in my original rendition of this list years ago, Miniatures with Reese’s Pieces are the perfect version of the “just add Pieces” puzzle which Reese has been pursuing the past few years. Whereas Big Cups with Pieces feel like they’re too decadent, Miniatures with Pieces give you the benefit of portion control. Unlike some of the other, smaller “just add pieces” products, Miniatures are just big enough that you can distinctly taste the crunch of the miniature Pieces. They are small enough that you can eat a few at a time without feeling like you’re going overboard, although you know that some people are going to eat the whole damn bag at once.

1) White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups – Dear God, white chocolate Peanut Butter Cups are still absolutely amazing. There’s only 2 of these in a package, compared to 3 in a regular package of Peanut Butter Cups. When I was in my early teens they sold these everywhere in Canada, but for a decade or more they were bloody impossible to find here. I’ve seen enterprising international candy-sellers listing these things for $5 EACH, and I love these so much that I begrudgingly bought 3 packages of them. Hell, I’ve considered dropping $60 or more of a whole box of them on Ebay, because they are just that good. The white chocolate Minis aren’t nearly the same, and while the white chocolate Trees and Miniatures get close, they’re still hard to get ahold of and nothing quite matches just how good a white chocolate Peanut Butter Cup is. That said, in recent years I have been finding these on sale more often at specialist chocolate stores, so I try to get a few packages on hand to enjoy on special occasions and they’re always just the goddamn best. While these finally got some legitimate competition from the Franken-Cups, white chocolate Reese Cups are still the absolute best.

Love/Hate: Resident Evil – Operation Raccoon City

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Resident Evil love/hate series! In this entry we’re looking at Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, an intriguing spinoff for a number of reasons. For one thing, it was released in the spring of 2012, the same year as Resident Evil 6, and featured squad-based third person shooter gameplay developed by Slant Six Games, who had worked on some latter-day SOCOM U.S. Navy Seals games. Considering the somewhat awkward co-op shooter gameplay the mainline entries were engaging in at the time, the developer’s pedigree suggested that this could have some of the strongest Resident Evil gunplay in the franchise. Perhaps the biggest selling point though was that its story was a non-canon “what if?” scenario where you play as Umbrella special forces going into zombie-overrun Raccoon City to cover up Umbrella’s involvement in the outbreak. The idea of exploring the iconic location on HD consoles was too much for some to pass up, but how did the concept play out in execution? Read on to find out…

Oh, and before we get further, I just want to note that I played this game on the Veteran setting, just in case that difficulty setting added some elements to the game which coloured my perception of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it did, apparently in this mode enemies receive 25% less damage, inflict 25% greater damage, and drop items with less frequency.

Love

  • The Wolfpack – Operation Raccoon City was overtly edgy even when it was released, but playing in 2022 I can’t help but find the way that it leans into “dark, badass evil guys” for its characters endearing. They clearly just looked at HUNK, used him as a baseline and then created a bunch of similarly mysterious, black-clad, mask-wearing special-ops. Their designs are all unified but distinct enough that you can pick them out in the chaos of combat (which, honestly, is pretty impressive considering they’re all dudes in black). They also all have their own special abilities and perks which make playing each member of the team distinct (which, obviously, is important for a squad-based shooter like this). I also enjoy the little touches, like how each character has their own little bio you can read and how cutscenes and dialogue change depending on which characters you’d brought with you on each mission.
  • Weapon and Ability Upgrade System – Perhaps unsurprisingly, Operation Raccoon City features a system to upgrade your weapons and abilities using XP you earn in each mission. It’s in the squad lobby screen and isn’t really signposted so you might miss this (I certainly did for the first couple missions), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that each character has dozens of weapons options and multiple perks to choose from, and perks all have multiple ranks you can purchase to increase their effectiveness. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it works and it helps make you feel like you’re growing more powerful as you go.
  • It’s Only Like 7 Hours Long – Your mileage is definitely going to vary on this one, but I for one was glad that Operation Raccoon City is a finite, focused experience. You can just play through a shooter story campaign and then be done with it if you want to, or go back to unlock more perks, find secrets, etc.

Mixed

  • Snap-to Cover System – As a rule I don’t really like automatic, snap-to cover systems; I prefer to be able to manually enter cover with the press of a button. However, if you’re going to implement a snap-to system then it had better work well. Compared to Resident Evil 5 and 6, Operation Raccoon City‘s implementation is better, although it still has some hiccups that make it more annoying than I’d like. Half the time I’ll get put into cover without wanting to be there, but then when I do want to get into cover it will work seamlessly 99% of the time. However, occasionally you get those stupid situations where you’re in cover and can clearly see an enemy but the game decides you’re not allowed to shoot from the specific spot you’re standing in, so you end up either wiggling until the game decides you can shoot now or just leave cover to get control back, which is always infuriating. Again, I give the cover system some credit for working most of the time, but it has too much in-built annoyance for me to give it any serious praise.

Hate

  • Weak, Inaccurate Guns – Operation Raccoon City is a shooter, so you’d hope that they’d make sure that they get the shooting right at the very least, right? Well, unfortunately one of the worst parts about this game is that the guns feel like shooting a fucking peashooter. With your starting assault rifle you can expect to use nearly an entire clip to down a single enemy at medium range. Seriously, as soon as I started the game I noticed that it was taking me around 20 rounds to kill basic enemies; even if you’re a headshot god it takes 2-3 headshots just to down a basic special ops soldier. Playing on Veteran difficulty exacerbated this (enemies get 25% more HP), but requiring 16 rounds on a lower difficulty instead of 20 isn’t a great look either. It also doesn’t help that most of Operation Raccoon City‘s weapons are really ineffective outside of medium range, seemingly gaining massive amounts of random bullet deviation away from where you’re actually aiming and adding substantial damage drop-off. It wasn’t until I unlocked the strongest assault rifle, the Hammer, that it felt like I was doing an appropriate amount of damage. Even this was a double-edged sword though, because the Hammer has a paltry amount of ammo, to the point where I was constantly having to scavenge for ammo boxes to stay alive. That’s the trade-off Operation Raccoon City gives you – lots of ammo but no damage, or good damage but no ammo. Also not helping matters? The guns sounds are also weak, they feel like stock assets and don’t make the shooting feel any better.
  • Weird and Unintuitive Controls – Shooters were more-or-less figured out by 2012, which makes it so weird that Slant Six really tried to break the mold with Operation Raccoon City in some truly baffling ways. Why are my active abilities tied to the same button as the melee execution? I don’t know how many times I went to execute an enemy and accidentally activated my temporary invulnerability (thereby putting it on a cooldown when I might need it in the meantime). Why is X the interact button but also the button to perform a slide if you’re moving at the same time? The absolute weirdest decision though is your side-arm. If you tap L2 then it’ll switch to your pistol. That’s weird enough on its own, but if you hold L2 it will let you draw your pistol and the game will auto-target enemies and let you shoot at them for as long as you hold the button down. Naturally, there were lots of moments where I meant to tap or hold L2 and it registered the opposite command, leaving me vulnerable, but the real issue here is how weird the camera controls are when you hold L2. On the one hand, the auto aim is more accurate and reliable than manually aiming. On the other hand, the camera doesn’t follow where you’re aiming at all in this mode, so you’ll be pointing your pistol around and often won’t even be able to see the enemy when you shoot at them. I have no idea what they were thinking when they implemented this control scheme, it’s one of the most baffling core design decisions I’ve ever seen in a AAA game.
  • Infuriating, Unfun Enemies – Aside from the zombies (which are actually pretty enjoyable to fight and dismember), every enemy in this game is a chore to fight. Special Ops soldiers? Bullet sponges who always just have a limb or two poking out of cover so you can stagger them out and then shoot them, over and over and over again. NE-α parasites who’ll power up zombies and then detach to infect another one if you don’t shoot them first. Stun-locking lickers who always show up in the dozens. Tyrants who literally take hundreds of rounds to down. Worst of all though are the Hunters who dominate the last couple levels of the game. Fuck. Them. They are bullet sponges who take 3-4 full clips from a Hammer to down, they’ll close the distance to you in an instant, stun-lock you and then rip off massive chunks of HP with each swing, AND they enter the arena in drop pods that trigger when you walk beside their landing zone, meaning that you instantly lose half your HP before the fight has even begun, what the absolute fuck is this bullshit? Seriously, their implementation in this game has got to be one of the most infuriatingly unfun enemies in the entire franchise. Like, I get why the game’s like this – you’ve got to balance it for four people to feel challenged and not just steamroll their way through everything with concentrated fire, but it is really unenjoyable in execution.
  • Terrible AI – This entry breaks down into two subsections of note:
    • On the bad-but-not-gamebreaking level is that enemies and allies are just plain dumb. You’ll see enemies and allies standing in place all the time, oblivious to the firefight going on around them. You’ll see zombies running in circles, you’ll see zombies right in front of allies and no one is opening fire (in fact, with friendly fire and the random bullet deviation, if you shoot the zombie yourself then you are probably going to do more damage to your allies than the zombie), you’ll see special ops getting swarmed by zombies but decide to shoot you instead… You’ve also got AI so bad at pathfinding that the game will literally teleport NPCs in front of you when needed and hope you don’t notice (I did). It’s pretty much par for the course to expect bad AI in a shooter during this era, but it’s certainly immersion-breaking.
    • On the unacceptable end of things though is the sense that this game is out to fuck you over if you dare play the game with AI companions. Seriously, it got so malicious that it began to feel like a cruel joke that the developers were playing on me. We’re talking AI not being able to detect huge, glaringly-obvious trip wire mines and setting them all off, half the map being on fire and the AI just walking into it because they have no pathfinding ability, and an environmental hazard on an elevator where you have to move side to side to avoid flames and of course the AI just stands still the entire time and get barbequed. These hazards would all be so trivial with co-op partners that the devs needn’t bother to include them at all, but with AI partners it feels like an intentionally-cruel, spiteful joke that the devs have included to give you the middle finger for not making three of your friends buy a copy of the game to play with you.
  • Noticeably Bad, Poorly-Considered Design – Operation Raccoon City has got to be the most scripted video game I’ve ever played. It feels like such a weird complaint to say, but I can’t think of another game where you could feel the developers’ hands everywhere, where you could feel all the scripted moments triggering when you perform a certain action in a very transparent, ham-fisted fashion. Like, I get that this is how all video games work, but in most games you don’t notice it. In Operation Raccoon City, it’s jarring how obvious it is.
    • Most firefights with spec-ops boil down to a handful of enemies rushing into the room and taking cover. The second you kill the last one, three more guys come in from just off-screen and take cover, starting the cycle again. The second the last of this wave dies, the final wave comes in and does the exact same thing. This pattern happens in nearly every spec-ops fight; I was literally calling it before it happened it got so predictable.
    • The other really obvious example of this is that like half of the closed doors in the game are zombie jump-scare machines. Walk by a closed door and there’s a good chance that this will trigger the door to open and for a bunch of zombies to suddenly attack you. This will happen whether you’re in the middle of a gun fight (which can be pretty intense), or after you’ve killed everyone and are just exploring the area (in which case it’s just annoying). Humorously, you can also just avoid these doors entirely and they’ll never trigger. Again, this just becomes predictable. It doesn’t really make the combat any more enjoyable, it’s just something that the developers threw in hoping that it would make the game feel tense.
    • I also want to mention how the guns and cover system seem to be at odds with each other in this game’s design. As I’ve already said, shooting does less damage and is more inaccurate the further you are from enemies, and the game doesn’t give you enough ammo to win a firefight at range. That suggests that you need to move forward to close in on enemies, but enemies are accurate and points of cover are often far enough away that you’re always going to get shot once when you move forward. Furthermore, health doesn’t regenerate, so you’re almost always going to be low on HP if you play the game the way it incentivizes you. Maybe Slant Six want you to feel like you’re barely hanging on at any given time, but it makes the basic gameplay of Operation Raccoon City frustrating.
  • Mindless Gameplay – If Operation Raccoon City had fun shooter gameplay then pretty much all of the other complaints I had here could be ignored, but unfortunately the game gets real dull real fast. The gameplay is truly mindless – unless you’ve completely cleared an area, there’s very little downtime or breathing room; as soon as you reach the next area you’ll be swarmed by zombies or spec-ops all over again. Combat doesn’t have much variety either: zombies make up the majority of the enemy combatants and they just need to be mowed down with impunity, whereas the special ops all follow the same “stagger them out of cover and then pump them full of bullets” gameplay from start to finish. Other than using an active ability to stay alive or conserving some of your ammo because the game is too stingy, there’s barely any thought you have to put into it at all – just shoot, shoot, shoot.
  • Ugly Graphics – The PS3/Xbox 360 era were notorious for dreary, dull colour palettes and Operation Raccoon City has to be one of the most soulless games to be released of that generation. It’s so bad that even the blood in this game is so desaturated that it is straight-up black. 10 years on from its release, this game’s graphics are also noticeably aged, with most of the enemy designs looking really bad (William Birkin looks so plasticky, Crimson Heads look like they dyed the standard zombies red, T-108s appear to be made of chrome, a lot of people think that this is the worst-looking version of Nemesis, etc). Considering how many issues this game has, the graphics are the least of its worries, but they’re still bad enough to be worth mentioning.
  • Poor Performance – Piggybacking off the last point, Operation Raccoon City‘s performance chugs at times, especially in large, open areas like at city hall or the cemetery. I’m talking like 15FPS for considerable lengths of time, sometimes through entire levels.
  • Infection Mechanic is Annoying – Operation Raccoon City has an infection mechanic where if you get attacked by a zombie you can randomly get infected with the T-virus and then have a limited amount of time to dose yourself with the anti-virus or become infected and start attacking your teammates (or just get a game over if you are playing solo). On the fun side of things, your enemies can also become infected and start attacking their allies when they succumb. This did happen once or twice in my playthrough and, honestly, seeing a spec-ops soldier turn and go off on his allies was really cool. However, for the most part it’s just annoying. Anti-viral sprays are the only way to stave off an infection and if you don’t have one on you then your only option is to sprint around to find one (bonus: they also happen to be pretty rare, maybe 2 or 3 per level), hope an ally will save you (bonus: AI companions won’t do jack shit for you) or just die. This means that infection is either little more than a nuisance, or it’s a game over that takes way longer to complete than normal. Even infected enemy soldiers aren’t that common either as you’ll usually just gun them down before they can be turned.
  • Several Awful Gameplay Segments – Even with everything I’ve mentioned above, for a while I was thinking “well, at least this game’s only about 7 hours long, I’d probably prefer this game over Resident Evil 6‘s bloated 20 hour campaign…”. However, the further I went, the more infuriating moments cropped up that were literally causing me to reevaluate my distaste for Resident Evil 6, which is always a sign that someone has made a major mistake.
    • On the more minor end of things, the first level ends with a QTE boss fight with William Birkin and you barely have any time to react to the prompts, which usually means you’ll die in a hit or two. It was bad enough that I died on this several times, and then you have to try to run away from him while figuring out which direction to go in, dodging obstacles and trying to avoid getting stun-locked. It was a really annoying way to cap off the start of the experience.
    • The first real taste of how bad this game gets though is the Power Generator station. Sometimes this game just becomes pure, unfiltered chaos. It’s a pretty simple objective – raise three generators and plant an EMP on each. The complication is that you’ve got spec-ops spawning all around you whenever you interact with a console, zombies appearing from nowhere throughout the entire fight and Nicholai from Resident Evil 3‘s up on a catwalk during the entire fight sniping at you and there are very few safe places you can hide from him. It makes for an incredibly difficult and frustrating battle as you’re rarely able to find a safe place to hide from Nicholai and the spec-ops’ gunfire, let alone find an opening to activate the generators and EMPs. You’re always going to take some damage, meaning that you then have to find health pickups to stay in the fight (oh and for a fun bonus, one of the health pickups in the area is glitched to make it hard to pickup unless you approach from a very specific angle). Oh, and to make matters worse, if you die at any point here, you have to redo the entire fight (eg, it doesn’t checkpoint after each generator is destroyed). I imagine it’s significantly easier with co-op partners, but that doesn’t make it any better designed, it’s just throwing unending waves of shit at you in place of actual difficulty.
    • Next is the Nemesis fight, which should be a highlight of the game, but instead is just mindless. Here you pump Nemesis with a seemingly endless number of bullets (which absolutely no feedback from him to show that you’re doing anything), while hordes of zombies swarm into the room and then special ops soldiers show up halfway through to make it even more chaotic (and tank the performance even more). Given how weak this game’s guns are, it should be no surprise that I went through all my ammunition and grenades several times just trying to put a dent in this giant, annoying sponge of an encounter.
    • The Umbrella lab level is also so poorly thought out. You’ve got barely any ammo pickups, bullet-spongey Hunters and Crimson Heads are everywhere and barely any health pickups, meaning that you’re just dying over and over again. It got bad enough that I just said fuck it and started running for the exit instead of actually playing the game, which was the only reason I managed to get through to the end of this level at all.
    • The crown shit has to go to the final level though. My God was it awful. Once again, no ammo pickups for your weapons, swarms of zombies and Crimson Heads are everywhere which will infect you in seconds before you’ve gotten a chance to find an antiviral spray, snipers picking you off from so far away that your weapons won’t be able to hurt them (and for a bonus I had a sniper glitch to be able to shoot me through the wall of a crate, hooray)… and this is literally just the first area. In the next area you’ve got a literal endless swarm of Crimson Heads spawn in and run at you. If you try to play smart, take cover and whittle them down, then the devs clearly think you’re a fucking idiot because you will be overwhelmed. To make matters worse, I actually managed to have two people join my game at this point (in 2022 no less!) and we were still being overrun, forced into an endless retreat and were each downed several times. If not for being able to be revived I would have undoubtedly died here many times, but after my fifth or sixth death I decided to run and dodge past the zombies until I reached a ladder to end this part of the level. You then have to choose to fight or defend Leon (I chose to fight him, obviously), which results in yet another bullet sponge boss battle as you pump dozens of sniper rifle rounds into the rookie cop, while fighting everyone else who chose to defend him. It is a truly shitty fight and the ending is just embarrassing as Claire gets executed off-screen and the game immediately cuts to credits, no epilogue, fanfare or anything. What a shitshow of a level, literally not a moment of fun to be had in it.

Operation Raccoon City has the spark of a good idea buried in it, but the execution is so fatally flawed that it somehow manages to be even worse than the bloated and much-maligned Resident Evil 6. One kind of wishes that Capcom would have tried to iron out the issues with this game for a sequel but… well, they gave us Umbrella Corps instead.

Love/Hate: Resident Evil Gaiden

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Resident Evil love/hate series! In this entry we’re looking at the truly bizarre and unique Resident Evil Gaiden, the oft-overlooked, non-canon Game Boy Color spin-off that started Resident Evil‘s obsession with cruise ships. Having sprung out of Capcom’s desire to port Dino Crisis and the original Resident Evil to handheld, developer M4 felt that a direct port wasn’t feasible and so a new game was developed to make the most of the handheld’s more limited capabilities. How did this stripped down concept play out though? Read on to find out…

Oh, and before we get further, I do want to note that I played this game on my Retroid Pocket 2+, not original hardware (and there were no ports either). I will address what I feel was the game experience “as intended”, but I do also want to acknowledge that the vast majority of people playing the game now are going to be doing so via emulation and therefore will have access to save states, rewind, cheats, etc. I did use the rewind and save state functions pretty frequently which made the game easier for me, without a doubt.

Love

  • Impressive Use of the Hardware – Considering that Resident Evil Gaiden is running on 8-bit hardware (which was already archaic when the game came out in 2002) and only has four buttons and a d-pad to work with, it is insane just how well they managed to translate the Resident Evil formula to Game Boy Color. While the graphics and combat aren’t great on their own, they’re incredible by the standards of the hardware and it’s clear that developers M4 were very skilled at their work. Combat, easily the most contentious aspect of the game, works really well within the hardware constraints and the way it has zombies attack you in first person mode is jaw-droppingly impressive. In fact, I’d be willing to say that this is probably the most technically-impressive 8-bit game I’ve ever played.
  • Core Gameplay is Solid – Resident Evil Gaiden really nails the fundamentals, in particular the exploration of the early Resident Evil games. You’ll spend the majority of the game wandering around the Starlight, finding keys items which will allow you to unlock rooms to gather more key items, weapons and supplies to survive. Helpfully, all the key items give you hints about where they need to go, so you get into an enjoyable loop of “get a new item, head to place where the item is used, find use the item, find another item, repeat”. Gaiden also retains the ability to “feint” zombies to get around them and avoid combat, which is great for conserving health and ammo.
  • Non-linear Progression – Resident Evil Gaiden will show you where your next destination is on its map, but you can actually collect items and unlock areas in a non-linear fashion (a fact which I discovered after forgetting that the map tells you where to go next…). It’s kind of cool that you can choose to unlock areas and get items to help progress sooner than expecting, cutting down on a lot of potential backtracking later on (seriously, I just blitzed through the latter part of the game because I already had all the key items I needed at that point).

Mixed

  • Combat – When you boil it down, combat in this game is just a reticle moving left and right with a limited window in which you can press a button to do damage. Like I have said, the presentation of this game’s combat is technically impressive and with the hardware limitations it was probably their best option. However, your feelings about this system are probably going to make-or-break your enjoyment of the game. It takes the very simple “ready and shoot” combat of the early Resident Evil games and instead replaces it with a system that demands twitch reflexes to not only succeed, but survive. That reticle moves pretty quickly and every shot you miss is a punishing mistake because ammo is a finite resource that you can’t afford to waste and the knife only works in close range. You can also wait for enemies to get close to make aiming easier, but this is also a problem because they will instantly attack you up close and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You also can’t just run away because attempting to do this will cause enemies to instantly start attacking you, which will always result in at least one hit. It’s a functional system all-in-all, but I dislike how it turns Resident Evil‘s combat into a game of precise reactions when you can’t afford to miss a single shot.
  • Game Tells You Which Enemies Have Loot – Okay, so you don’t want to get into combat because it drains your resources. Well, Gaiden has a stop-gap solution where certain enemies can drop supplies when you kill them. The game will actually pop up an “!” in the corner to let you know when an enemy will drop items on death, which is handy but I feel like it isn’t a very elegant solution to item scarcity. I’d prefer if the game was less stingy with items in the first place, or make item drops more dynamic depending on the player’s inventory rather than just saying “Hey, shoot this zombie in particular!” since this system also lets you know when you don’t want to fight an enemy because it will be nothing but a resource drain.
  • Multiple Characters Doesn’t Add Much – Resident Evil Gaiden allows you to switch between three characters on the fly (one of whom is Barry goddamn Burton!), which sounds cool but in practice all this adds is the ability to equip a weapon to a characters and then hot-swap to it in combat without having to dig through the inventory. Different characters don’t bring any unique skills or abilities, which is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Hate

  • Slow Movement Speed – The Starlight is a pretty big place and navigating through it can take quite a while, which isn’t helped by the game’s leisurely movement speed. This gets especially annoying when, for example, the game will have you go from the fourth floor east side of the ship down to the first floor west side.
    • Making this worse, I noticed that Resident Evil Gaiden had a lot of slowdown during gameplay, especially when several sprites were on-screen at once. This makes getting around take even longer and if you try to shoot at an enemy it can cause your ability to react take even longer. It’s possible that this was an emulation issue, but given how well my Retroid Pocket 2+ runs Game Boy games, let alone more demanding hardware, I have a hard time believing that.
  • Artificial Restrictions on Non-linearity – As much as I love this game’s non-linear structure, there are some really annoying restrictions on it. The most egregious would be that you can get into rooms ahead of the “proper” time to do so, but key items won’t do anything and weapons will be unavailable until after a particular game state is reached. This is so annoying because it feels arbitrary, you know you’re in the right place for your item but the game just won’t let you use it. In regards to weapons as well, if you don’t follow the “proper” order then you’re probably going to miss some of the most powerful weapons because you won’t need to go back to those rooms later and there’s no indication that these weapons are going to become available there later (see: the shotgun in the original Resident Evil and Resident Evil 7, those games will tease you something you can get later rather than just hiding it away).
  • Save System Isn’t Great – Rather than letting you save when you want, Gaiden has a checkpoint-based save system where you get to save after completing a certain story milestone. If you’re playing the “proper” way then this should give you a save after every 15-20 minutes of gameplay. Unfortunately, if you do as I did, you might spend an hour or more between save points (which could make a death devastating) and make it so that latter saves are coming up every 5-10 minutes. Now, as I’ve said in the intro, most players are going to be playing this in 2022 by emulator so this issue is significantly lessened, but it is worth mentioning considering how the game was originally experienced.
  • Weapon Switching in Combat – Simply put, it sucks. If you’re in combat and you don’t have another character, or you forgot to give them a weapon, pray you don’t run out of ammo. Combat still goes on in real-time as you fumble through your inventory to try to find a weapon, often resulting in taking at least one hit, if not more. It’s an extremely clunky system and it can be especially devastating in boss fights.
  • Menu Diving to Use Keys – Likely due to hardware restrictions, you can’t use a key to open a door without first diving into your menu and then trying to manually use it. The fact that most keys will tell you where they need to go lessens the guessing game, but there are times where multiple locked doors are in an area and you’re stuck trying them on all the doors. There are also times where a key item will be automatically used when the game lets it be used, but you don’t know this so you walk up to every computer and try to “use” the Data Disk to try to activate the computer, only for it to not work…
  • Final Gauntlet is Brutal – I did pretty well at conserving ammo throughout Gaiden. I avoided combat whenever possible, I missed very few shots and made sure to make notes whenever I found powerful ammo that I wasn’t able to pickup yet. In fact, the only weapon I missed was the gas launcher… which was a crippling mistake because I dare say that the final gauntlet is damn-near impossible to complete without it. The final gauntlet sees you fighting a beefy parasite B.O.W. three times, and it takes at least ten shots to take down every time. Use all your rockets and grenades the first time you see it? Sucks to be you, you’re gonna die now. Oh and if you beat it and don’t immediately run it will fight you again and you’ll waste even MORE ammo. On top of that, there are swarms of bullet-sponge zombies between you and the exit and avoiding them all is simply impossible, meaning that you are going to waste tons of ammo just to escape… unless you get the gas launcher, which one-shots entire rooms of zombies and saves you that ammo that you need in order to survive the final battles. I got to the point where I was at the final battle but I just didn’t have the supplies I needed to beat the game… so I just put it down and Youtube’d the final cutscene.

Given its reputation I had assumed that Resident Evil Gaiden was going to be a shoddy experience akin to Survivor. I was shocked by just how much I enjoyed this game; don’t let the amount of “Hates” dissuade you, my “Loves” far outweighed them. It reminded me a lot of the MSX Metal Gear games and it plays like a perfect demake of the classic Resident Evil gameplay style. It’s also fairly short, taking me only four hours total, so I’d definitely recommend giving it a look.

Love/Hate: Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Pokemon love/hate series! We’re covering the newest mainline entry in the franchise today, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. There’s been plenty said about these games already and they’ve quickly become some of the most polarizing entries in the entire franchise, representing a bright future for the series while also being mired in technical issues which would be enough to sink any other game. I’ve got plenty of thoughts on these latest games in the Pokemon franchise so let’s dive in and find out what I love and what I hate…

Love

  • Great Pokemon Designs – I’m not one of those “new Pokemon look so bad!” people that come out every time there’s a new generation, but I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how good this generation has been. During preview season I was unimpressed by a lot of the new Pokemon that were being shown off, but getting to see Pokemon like Grafaiai, Gimmighoul and Fidough up close in battle and in the overworld, I have really warmed up to them. There are also an unusually high number of top-tier Pokemon for me this generation, which run the gamut from cool basic Pokemon like Flittle, flawless evolutionary lines for Fuecoco and Sprigatito, awesome paradox Pokemon and really interesting legendaries. As usual, I’ll have my list of best and worst Pokemon of the generation at the end of this post.
  • Lively Open World – My expectations for an open world Pokemon game were very much tempered by Sword and Shield (not to mention Game Freak’s never ending capacity to under-deliver at every opportunity), but I was shocked by just how lively the Paldea region can be and how much personality its Pokemon inhabitants exude. Everywhere you go, Pokemon will react to your presence in interesting ways. Pokemon like Hoppip or Gogoat may walk up to you with curiosity, while Deerling or Stantler may be skittish and flee, Dugtrio and Orthworm will hide from you underground, Cyclizar can often be seen bounding around without a care in the world, and aggressive Pokemon like Tauros or Veluza will actively come after you to initiate battle. It also helps that battles now seamlessly occur on the overworld map instead of in themed arenas as in previous Pokemon games, meaning you can actually see Pokemon continuing to go about their business even then. It’s really cool, immersive to see in action and far more fleshed out than I had expected.
  • Overworld Shinies – Shiny hunting is one of my favourite parts of the Pokemon experience, even if my patience for long, full-odds hunts is lacking. This is a big reason why I love exploring in Violet, because I know that at any moment I could come across a shiny Pokemon. This is a pretty simple way to make world traversal much more engaging because I am constantly watching for shinies to appear. As of the time of writing this entry I’m currently up to 3 shinies found at full odds, but I will the shiny charm soon, making this vigilance even more rewarding and will eventually start using herba mystica to up my odds even further.
  • Freedom to Choose How to Advance the Story – Pokemon games run on a pretty standard formula, but Scarlet and Violet make the inspired decision to split the now standard “gym battles”, “evil team” and “raids” storylines and make them be able to be tackled at your own pace and discretion. While there is a “recommended” and “incentivized” path, you’ll still be weaving in and out of these plots at will. It also helps that these three main plots all improve as you go, especially the titan plot with Arven. By the second battle I was all-in on his story and it only gets better as you go along and the three plots become unified in the climax of the game. I am not exaggerating when I say that Scarlet and Violet have possibly the best story in Pokemon, up there with Black and White and I’d argue that it definitely eclipses Sun and Moon.
    • It’s also worth mentioning that there are also several completely optional side-plots and characters in the academy who you can get to know and help out. Your teachers are a colourful cast and it actually helps the sense that you’re off learning at school in these games (completely with mid-term and final exams!).
  • First Pokemon Game to Feel Like a AAA Experience – Pokemon was very much designed as a handheld, social experience and really excelled at establishing this formula for itself for a long time. However, one of my issues with Sword and Shield was that it felt like it was a half-measure, attempting to take the Pokemon series into a console-based future but with the mindset of a game that was still rooted in 25 years of handheld traditions. For Scarlet and Violet it feels like Game Freak finally stepped back and thought “Okay, how can we leverage the technology we have to make a Pokemon game with a modern, open-world structure?” The result is a game which is leaps and bounds removed from the traditional structure of how you interact with the Pokemon world, while retaining the core RPG mechanics that make the game work. It’s a huge step forward for a franchise which has been accused for decades now of creative stagnation.

Mixed

  • Customization – Character customization has been a big factor of Pokemon games since X and Y and I’m sorry to say that Scarlet and Violet take some baffling steps backwards in this regard. While you can still change your look, hairstyle and most of your clothing, for some reason your main outfit is set between one of four seasonal styles. I have no idea why the hell they would do this, other than “you’re at an academy and therefore need a unified dress code”, even though this is a fantasy game and they could do whatever they wanted to. This game’s player card is also far less interesting and far more limited than Sword and Shield‘s customizable trading card system, to the point where I stopped bothering trying to perfect it early on.
  • Graphics – Look, I didn’t care about the stupid N64 trees in Sword and Shield because of the scope of that game and the fact that it looked much better elsewhere. However, the graphics in Scarlet and Violet are notably bad given the game’s much wider scope. You’re meant to get to the top of high vistas, look down and go “Oh wow!”, but instead all I can think is “Wow, those textures sure are muddy” and “Man, this world sure is lacking in foliage and detail”. This would be one thing if the game ran really well, but it does not (which we’ll get to later) which just makes the graphical issues even more pronounced. Now, I certainly think that the graphics are functional and don’t actually impact my enjoyment of the game, hence why I put it in the Mixed section rather than Hate, but it’s worth mentioning since we’ve already seen better looking open-world Switch games for years now.
  • Tera Raids – Raids were by far my favourite addition in Gen 8, despite some frustrating network issues that tempered that enjoyment somewhat. While I’m happy that they’re back in Gen 9, their implementation here feels like one step forward and two steps back.
    • On the one hand, these move way faster than they did previously. In Dynamax raids it wasn’t uncommon to wait 45 seconds each turn for people to pick their moves, then actually have to watch them all play out before going to the next turn again. Tera Raids, in contrast, occur in real-time and moves all take no more than a second or two to resolve, meaning that the whole process goes far faster. However, it also means that you and your allies need to be focused and acting deliberately, otherwise you may miss your turn or use a heal too early.
    • Tera Raids have also improve the cheer system to no longer give random chances of bonuses, instead allowing you to boost attack, defense, or provide a heal up to 3 times per battle. This is incredibly useful and really helps strategizing during these raids.
    • On the other hand, raids basically are the endgame, especially 6 star raids. These raids are legitimately hard, especially because the Pokemon will create an energy shield halfway through the battle which reduces damage significantly. Sure, you can terastalize to break this shield easier, but 6 star Pokemon will drain your tera orb during the battle, making it take several turns of attacking fruitlessly and trying not to die to make it work. Meanwhile, if a 6 star Pokemon can buff itself, or has a super-effective move against you, it will spam it every turn and just wipe you out. The result of this is that raids have basically devolved into an extremely limited meta of viable Pokemon who can buff themselves massively, heal themselves/take several hit, and/or provide massive team support, all of which need to be max level and ideally using competitive EVs and IVs. On the one hand, it’s exciting to overcome this, but on the other hand it’s frustrating because even a single weak teammate can make a 6 star raid team worthless. Making all this worse is that if you do manage to win a 6 star raid, you aren’t even guaranteed to get a rare item drop, which is what the entire endgame of Scarlet and Violet revolve around (these rare items are needed to easily get competitive boosts and shinies). Now, to be fair, 5 star raids have a chance of dropping these rare items as well and are significantly easier, but it just increases the grind required to access endgame items even more.
    • Add onto this that, somehow, the online infrastructure of Scarlet and Violet for raids may actually be worse than Sword and Shield (which was worse than Gen 7, which was worse than Gen 6…). At least in Gen 8 I could do a surprise trade or player card swap to cause the raid list to refresh regularly, but in Gen 9 you only get a grand total of 8 random raids at a time that everyone in the world can get into at the same time and these can only be refreshed every ~30 seconds, meaning that you have like a second to try to get into a raid before none are going to be available. There’s also a random raid option, but that’s a band-aid on a bullet wound when you want to get into specific raids. Why they couldn’t just implement a server browser with some basic filters is beyond me.

Hate

  • Performance is Shit – Without a doubt, the main talking point about Scarlet and Violet at launch has been the game’s notoriously awful performance, innumerable bugs and poor programming. Fun story: literally the first thing I did in this game was move the right analog stick to get a better look at my character’s room, which caused the camera to clip into a black void. I wasn’t even trying to break the game either, but it set the tone for the experience to follow. Your camera will constantly clip out of the world, I’ve had characters go invisible, Pokemon disappear or slide out of frame during a battle, menu screens and icons that freeze in place and refuse to go away, etc. The performance woes are the real problem though, with the frame rate regularly dipping below 20fps in and around city areas. It’s real bad and can make the game headache-inducing, although saving and resetting your game will often alleviate some of the performance issues. Still, it’s an unacceptable state to launch a game in and clearly was due to The Pokemon Company’s mandated game release schedule.
  • No Level Scaling – The biggest issue with Scarlet and Violet‘s ambitions of being open world and letting you chart your own path is that Pokemon and trainers’ levels are all set from the start. That means that you can go into an area, be massively under-levelled and grind to beat that area, but if you do then several other areas of the game will be a boring chore because they will all be hopelessly under-levelled. You can somewhat counter this by following recommended progression guides, but if you spend any time exploring and filling your Pokedex off of the main path then you’re pretty easily going to find yourself over-levelled in no time at all.
  • The Map is Pretty Empty – While the Pokemon make the world interesting and alive, the actual design of the Paldea region is really unengaging. In previous, more tightly-designed Pokemon games there were all sorts of secrets and cool things to find hidden away in the world, but in Scarlet and Violet you will mainly find basic items, or TMs if you’re lucky. The main reward for exploration are stakes which can be used to free legendary beasts, which is admittedly pretty cool. However, the cities are where the game really falls flat. Previous Pokemon games would always have hidden shops, people who wanted to trade, people who could tell you things about your Pokemon, or even just flavourful lore dumps. In Scarlet and Violet, towns are basically worthless. Towns will basically just have food shops which are arbitrarily spread out over a half dozen locations through the town with different menus, item shops (which get spread out between two locations, plus Pokemon Centers themselves) and, if you’re lucky, clothing shops (which are also spread out between 1-2 types of clothing per shop). Very rarely will you come across people wanting to trade or do anything interesting, so you’ll basically just enter to do the gym challenge and then leave quickly (again, the shit performance in cities doesn’t help either). It’s a real shame, considering that places like Goldenrod, Celadon and Lumiose City had so much going on in them and are so memorable to this day, I can’t imagine Paldea’s cities doing the same.
  • Still No Voice Acting – This would probably be my big caveat to the point about Gen 9 feeling like AAA Pokemon, because these games still, somehow don’t have any kind of voice acting. I get that it’s probably a localization issue, compounded with the time and money that it would take that TPC are too cheap to invest in, but goddamn, voice acting would add so much to this game’s story and characters. It’s just one more embarrassing mark against this series that takes some major steps forward but then shoots itself in the foot with moves that feel super goddamn lazy.
  • Missions Can Be Dull – While I do like the storylines in this game, some of the actions that you have to do to complete them can be really dull. The worst offender in this regard is Team Star bases. There are five Team Star bases spread across the world map, they all play out the same way and they’re all easy and boring. All you have to do is use the auto-battle mechanic to make 3 of your Pokemon beat the crap out of 3 opposing Pokemon. Rinse and repeat until you defeat 30 Pokemon and then you’ll have to fight a boss. And if this doesn’t sound easy enough, you get an extremely generous 10 minutes to complete this and unlimited opportunities to heal. I don’t know how you could struggle to complete these missions unless you’re massively under-levelled and using a full team with poor type matchups. Gym challenges can also be pretty boring. Most of these involve doing some sort of chore before you’re allowed to fight the boss and they make me yearn for the days when I just had to fight 2-5 trainers before the leader which would act like a mini-tutorial for that gym’s theme.
  • Slow Battle Pacing – If there’s one major caveat to Pokemon battles occurring in the overworld now, it’s that it has slowed the pace of battles to a crawl not seen since Gen 4. Battles often have long delays between actions, especially if a Pokemon gets swapped out of faints, where you may wait like 5+ seconds before you’re able to make a decision on how to proceed. Thankfully most move animations have been sped up to compensate for this somewhat, but this is definitely the most sluggish battles have felt in several generations.
  • Let’s Go Feature – Pokemon following you on the overworld has always been a fan-favourite feature in these games, so the idea of having your companions come out whenever you want and even battling for fetching items for you automatically seems enticing. Well… as with most things in this game, the implementation really lets it down. This all comes down to the fact that the tether for this ability is extremely short and is based on your Pokemon’s actual movement speed. This means that if you try to navigate the world at a normal pace on the back of your riding Pokemon, you will almost immediately get too far away from your companion and cause them to head back into their pokeball. This is especially frustrating for the Pokemon who evolve by following you around for a certain number of steps, forcing you to either travel the world at a regular pace, or slow your movement to a crawl so you can have a Pokemon follow you. Suffice to say, I barely use this feature now, which is a damn shame.

Scarlet and Violet have been a bit of a mixed bag for me. I love seeing Pokemon living in the open world, constantly keeping an eye out for shinies and struggling through competitive and raid battles, but the performance and design issues are undeniable and unforgiveable and I’m often finding myself yearning for the tighter, focused design of Gens 2, 4 and 5. I hope that Game Freak will actually do something to improve this game and win back some community trust, but given the history of this franchise I’m not holding my breath.

Best Pokemon of Gen 9: Ceruledge, the entire Sprigatito line, Iron Valiant, Miraidon, Koraidon, Roaring Moon, Klawf, Flittle
Shittiest Pokemon of Gen 9: Frigibax, Palafin (the base form is super lazy and the Hero form is an abomination), Sandy Shocks, Dudunsparce (25 years for this… Dunsparce is already the joke, you don’t say the same joke again and expect it to be funny), Gholdengo

Ranking the Albums I Listened to in 2022 (25-1)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment
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25) Ritual Hymns, Worm Shepherd (Bandcamp)

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect out of Worm Shepherd, but the album cover and title had me intrigued and, honestly, the opening of the title track really had me intrigued and primed for some epic metal. However, Ritual Hymns quickly establishes itself as a very heavy death metal album, which isn’t a bad thing by any means, but it’s less interesting than the epic, moody, atmospheric metal that the title track hinted at. If you’re into death metal then there are some decent tracks here but it’s very heavy and punishing and I lost most of my interest as the album dragged on.

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24) Days of the Lost, The Halo Effect (Bandcamp)

The Halo Effect are made up of ex-members of In Flames, which is not a band I’m really familiar with, but you can feel their collective experience here on their debut album Days of the Lost. There’s a level of polish and confidence on display here, with an epic, melodic death metal sound that reminded me a lot of Dethklok. It’s very well-made and makes for a good listen, with no tracks really standing out as poor, but on the other hand the whole package lacked that extra bit of “special something” which pushes it from good to great. I could very well end up liking this album a lot more in future if it grows on me with repeat listens, but at this juncture Days of the Lost feels like a good starting point in need of a bit more distinct flavour.

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23) Rashomon, Ibaraki

Going into Rashomon I had absolutely no idea what to expect. All I knew was that this album had a really badass cover and it was a metal album, that’s it. Turns out that Ibaraki are basically a rebranded version of Trivium where Matt Heafy leans into his Japanese heritage. Despite the Japanese influences, Rashomon still basically sounds like a North American heavy metal album, which is fine but I was hoping for something a bit more interesting. Highlights for me would be “Ibaraki-Doji”, “Jigoku Dayu” and “Ronin”.

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22) Dawn of an Eyeless Realm, Xenotheory (Bandcamp)

I’m a simple man, you put a xenomorph on your album and I’m going to check that shit out. Dawn of an Eyeless Realm is only really going to appeal to you if you’re looking for some extremely heavy death metal with a few samples from Alien and, for some reason, The Fellowship of the Ring thrown in, but I really dug it. I may be being a bit generous putting this album so high up the list considering that none of the tracks stick out to me individually, but as an album I could just put on to vibe for ~40 minutes this is a great listen.

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21) Zeit, Rammstein

One of my friends was really into Rammstein in high school so naturally I got into a lot of their stuff as well. That said, I haven’t really kept up with their music since then so I’m around 15 years behind on their music, so I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to get out of Zeit. For better or worse, Zeit is very much the Rammstein I was familiar with, the exact same industrial metal sound and Till Lindemann’s velvet vocals. There’s some stuff here that holds up amongst the best of Rammstein, my favourites would be “Giftig” and “Angst”. Zeit is happy to remind me though that a lot of Rammstein’s songs are cool because they’re in German and I can’t understand them, but if they were translated and sung by someone else they’d be extremely silly. This is best demonstrated by “OK” (abbreviation of a German term for “Without a Condom”) which is about getting fucked, and “Dicke Titten”… which is literally “Fat Tits” and is about a loser whose only wish is for a wife with big tits. All-in-all, it’s Rammstein and it’s solid although the fact that they sound basically the same as they did 15 years ago makes me somewhat concerned that they haven’t evolved at all.

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20) Requiem, Korn

Korn have really turned their fortunes around in the last half decade. Even in their hey-day they didn’t get a lot of respect, but the one-two punch of The Serenity of Suffering and The Nothing have established Korn has one of the best mainstream rock/metal bands in the industry. In particular, The Nothing silenced a lot of critics as it came off of the very public suicide of lead singer Jonathan Davis’ ex-wife, causing a lot of people to re-evaluate that, yeah, maybe there’s a reason why Korn have always been so depressed. Requiem is an appropriate follow-up to The Nothing, it feels like Korn are grappling with the emotions that come after a period of suffering. This makes Requiem, weirdly, one of the most hopeful albums Korn has ever released. Several tracks, such as “Let the Dark Do the Rest”, look forward to a better time while going through a period of depression rather than just wallowing in sorrow (“On and on, this lucid darkness is filling up my soul / And how can I be all alone here? / Constant ridicule / And I just wanna go / And I just want to see what the future holds / Had a hell of a time, I’m suffering in / God my life was a mess / And I will never forget it haunting it / Let the dark do the rest“). However, the closer “Worst Is on Its Way” puts a bit of a damper on that hopefulness, as Jonathan Davis remembers that a period of peace is eventually going to be shattered with more suffering (which is pretty familiar to someone who struggles with cycles of depression).

Requiem has much of Korn’s sound, but most of their signatures, such as their heavy guitars and scatting are almost entirely absent. In fact, when they do show up on “Worst Is on Its Way” it made me realize that I had really missed these elements throughout the album. Tracks like “Lost in the Grandeur”, “Disconnect” and “My Confession” are certainly not bad, they just don’t stand out and they lack the bite that Korn had in The Serenity of Suffering and The Nothing, aiming more for a commercial-friendly rock sound that loses a lot of what makes Korn unique. It also doesn’t help that Requiem is barely over 30 minutes long, it comes and goes very quickly. All that said, Requiem is still a solid album, it just pales in comparison to Korn’s best work. It’s got the same sort of issue that Iron Maiden’s Senjutsu had for me last year: it’s not the first, or second, or third, or fourth, or fifth Korn album I’m going to want to listen to, but I expect that in the future I’ll give it a listen every year or two and enjoy it every time.

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19) Atlas Ruinica, The Wise Man’s Fear (Bandcamp… they did not post any of the songs from this new album there though, much to my annoyance)

The Wise Man’s Fear have put out some of my favourite metalcore of the last decade and with the conclusion of their Codex Trilogy in 2020 I was looking forward to see where they would take their musical talents next. The answer to that was Atlas Ruinica, a new fantasy metalcore journey which would be released as a series of singles over the course of the year. It was an interesting distribution method for the modern era, but in practice this has been really annoying because they only released them to streaming sites and didn’t release a compilation version of the album. This means you have to track everything down individually, which is more effort than it really should be just to listen to new music from one of my favourite bands.

Anyway, all that out of the way, Atlas Ruinica is… basically just more The Wise Man’s Fear. That probably shouldn’t be too surprising, but after The Valley of Kings ended, I was hoping that their follow-up would be just a bit more different and interesting. Instead, we get more of the same, but lesser because it doesn’t have the same sort of weight and scale as the Codex Trilogy did. It’s still The Wise Man’s Fear, meaning that you’re still getting some solid metalcore/deathcore with a fantasy sheen, but I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed.

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18) Skin & Sorrow, Frayle (Bandcamp)

Frayle are one of those bands that seem custom-built for me, being a witch-themed doom metal outfit. Going in I was definitely hoping for good things and Frayle left me very intrigued to explore more of their work in future. Unlike most doom metal bands I’m used to, Frayle is a female-fronted band and that lends an entirely different experience to their music. Gwyn Strang’s vocals are haunting and ethereal, reminding me a lot of Maria Brink’s “witchy” vocals on the last couple In This Moment albums. Musically, this is definitely doom metal, although Frayle aren’t afraid to get heavy and more energetic at times than most doom metal bands I’m used to listening to do. This is especially clear on “Treacle & Revenge” and “Sacrifant”, which are probably my two favourite tracks on the album too. That said, the title track is a good example of how Frayle will take a more standard doom metal sound and lend it a haunting energy through their vocals.

On the more negative side of things, the mixing on the album leaves the vocals lost at times and really difficult to understand, although this is probably an intentional, artistic choice so your mileage may vary on that. Some of the tracks can also feel a bit “samey”, but all-in-all I really liked Skin & Sorrow and will be undoubtedly checking out more of Frayle in future.

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17) Hell Is Where The Heart Is Pt. I: Love, Pt. II: Longing & Pt. III: Clarity, OCEANS (Bandcamp)

OCEANS were probably my favourite new band of 2020 and, despite not making the top 5 of that year, I am confident that I listened to The Sun and the Cold more than any other album that year. Suffice to say that I’ve been eagerly awaiting a follow-up to see where the band would go… and, I have to admit, I goofed last year. Early in 2021 they released a handful of singles and I assumed these were ramping up for a full album, so I didn’t include them in the 2021 album rankings. However, by my own rules, I could have, because they ended up releasing them all in one collected EP, We Are Nøt Okay, before moving on to their next project. I feel particularly bad about this because that EP was great, the natural follow-up I’d been dreaming about and it would have easily cracked the top 10 on my 2021 ranking.

Anyway, that brings us to their 2022 project, Hell Is Where The Heart Is, which has been split into three different parts released over the course of the entire year (and which I have chosen to include here as one entry for simplicity’s sake). Each part represents a different stage in heartbreak and the songs and sound correlate to these themes. Hell Is Where The Heart Is is a whole other beast for OCEANS compared to what they have given us before, as they clearly are trying to experiment with their sound, for better or worse.

Pt. I: Love is, appropriately, very raw, heavy, emotional and, at times, straight-up vicious. The highlight here is definitely “Sulfur”, which sees OCEANS sounding very much like Iowa-era Slipknot (to the point where I had to look up if it was a cover; I know Slipknot has a song with the same name on one of their albums I don’t really like/am not very familiar with). OCEANS are brutal on this track, the energy they put out here is infectious.

Pt. II: Longing is a slower burn in comparison, more mournful and contemplative, although no less emotional. The highlight for me would be “Living=Dying”, which sounds uncannily like OCEANS meets early-era Korn and provides a shot in the arm at the end of the EP. Viewed on its own, Longing is a bit of an unremarkable release, but viewed as part of a whole it works well as the middle point between Love and Clarity.

Pt. III: Clarity is easily the strongest of the three EPs and gives this collection a really solid (if depressing) ending. “If There’s a God She Has Abandoned Us” starts out as a sombre piano track but builds up and gets heavier as it goes along. Easily my favourite track on the album alongside “Sulfur”. “I Sing Alone” and the title track don’t disappoint either, both being delightfully-heavy tracks which close out this collection on a strong note.

That said, easily my least-favourite parts of these releases are the spoken word interludes, which are so angsty that they wouldn’t be out of place on a 13 year old’s Tumblr page. They’re fine as mood-setters, but I’ve gotten in the habit of skipping them entirely whenever I listen to the EP because they just make me cringe.

It took a while to see the whole picture, but Hell Is Where The Heart Is is an interesting evolution for OCEANS. While I’m glad the band’s trying something different, I’m not sure if the results are better than what we’re familiar with from them yet. Hell Is Where The Heart Is is messier than previous OCEANS albums/EPs and the staggered releases has made experiencing each part feel lesser than if we had gotten to experience them all together (in particular this made Love feel slight and Longing feel a bit mediocre and disappointing). Now that we’ve gotten all three I feel much better about them as a whole but it has affected how I view them as a whole.

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16) Heavy Pendulum, Cave In (Bandcamp)

Another year, another band I checked out simply because they had a cool album cover. Apparently Cave In have been making music since 1998 and this is their seventh studio album, but I don’t recall ever coming across them before now. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there’s a level of maturity and professional craft on display in Heavy Pendulum, as Cave In show off solid hard rock/metal track after track. “Blood Spiller” is probably my favourite of the bunch, but there really isn’t a weak song on the entire album. Musically, this reminds me a lot of Mastodon’s output during the mid-2010s, it’s uncanny just how similar the two sound. It can start to feel like it’s dragging a bit towards the end, but Heavy Pendulum is a solid album nevertheless and if you like Mastodon then I think you can’t go wrong giving Cave In a look.

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15) Eulogy, Wolves at the Gate

Eulogy is fairly typical by metalcore standards, but it’s well-written enough that it manages to stand out. I think the biggest asset is how Wolves at the Gate balance the heaviness with the lighter moments, drawing out stronger emotional resonance in the process than if they went hard one way or the other. It also gives Wolves at the Gate a sound that feels more approachable and “commercial”, kind of like Bad Omens. Eulogy is, perhaps paradoxically, not nearly depressing or aggressive enough to be something I’ll listen to over and over again, but I’d be a fool to deny the quality of tracks like “Peace That Stars the War”, “Euglogies”, “Weight of Glory” and “Silent Anthem”.

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14) Darker Still, Parkway Drive

Parkway Drive combine heavy metal reminiscent of Iron Maiden together with nu metal reminiscent of Linkin Park and Slipknot to produce Darker Still, a polished and surprisingly radio-friendly album which had me headbanging on plenty of occasions through its runtime. Parkway Drive’s lyrics can skew towards typical nu metal angst, but their songwriting often eschews standard song structures and typically will leave tracks getting heavier and catchier, rather than running out of steam as they go. The tracks here are also distinct from one another, often willing to play with genre for a diverse track roster. That said, your mileage will likely vary as a result, and I found myself less than enthused with tracks that leaned more into half-baked country and rap styles like on the title track, “If a God Can Bleed” and “From the Heart of the Darkness”. Still, there are lots of quality tracks here, my favourites being “The Greatest Fear”, “Imperial Heretic”, “Land of the Lost” and “Glitch”, all of which I’d definitely recommend checking out!

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13) Lotus, Within Destruction (Bandcamp)

My God, that is a beautiful cover art. Apparently I’m on a cyberpunk kick this year as I’m finding myself drawn to this sort of aesthetic more and more lately. The actual music of Lotus is a near-even blend of electronica and death metal (sometimes leaning closer to nu metal or deathcore at times), with very heavy and energetic music which will leave you in a constant state of head-banging. The tracks here are infectious and aggressive, with particular highlights for me being the title track, “Toxic”, “Dehumanized” and “Neo-Yakuza”. Within Destruction have put together a rather unlikely blend which works well and which is well worth a listen!

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12) The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!, Megadeth

Megadeth are yet another band that I was familiar with, but hadn’t heard a full album from until this year. If you’re familiar with the band you’ll know what to expect: energetic, old-school thrash metal with emphasis on guitar solos and Dave Mustaine’s unmistakable vocals giving the band its distinct flair. The best way that I can describe The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! is that it’s a lot of fun. The songs in the first half remind me of Iron Maiden in their hey-day, focused on death and violence but not in a way that feels transgressive. Megadeth just sound like they’re enjoying themselves, showing off badass guitar work and they even have a rap interlude from Ice-T on “Night Stalkers”, easily one of the highlights of the album. I really enjoyed the first half of the album and would have definitely ranked this much higher if not for the back half. The songs here aren’t bad per se, but tracks like “Killing Time”, “Soldier On!” and “Célebutante” just feel like filler compared to the energy and fun of the first half. I can see these tracks resonating with others more than myself, and if they do then those people are going to love this album, but the back half left me a bit deflated.

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11) The Monumental Mass: A Cinematic Metal Event, Powerwolf

Powerwolf are one of those metal bands that feel like they’re putting out new product for their fans to consume every year, be it singles, compilations, re-releases, special edition releases, live albums or, y’know, a new album every once in a while. As a result, I wasn’t all that excited for The Monumental Mass since it hasn’t been that long since the last time we got a live album out of them and the live albums they did put out were kind of annoying because there would be a lot of downtime between each song where they would be talking to the audience in German. I get that that’s part of the live experience, but when it’s happening for every song it starts to get annoying to me. Luckily, The Monumental Mass is easily my favourite Powerwolf live release and some of that would probably come down to this being a balls-to-the-wall COVID livestream concert. I haven’t watched the video of the concert yet but I’m sure it’s amazing because Powerwolf are putting on their A-game here and intend for this to indeed be an “event”. The setlist is packed with seventeen solid tracks (plus interludes) which sound pretty close to their studio counterparts. Some people might be disappointed by the similarity, but for me it just shows off how good Attila Dorn’s vocals are and how talented Powerwolf are. You’ll probably have your favourites, but for me “Demons Are a Girl’s Best Friend”, “Beast of Gévaudan” and “Where the Wild Wolves Have Gone” got the most excitement out of me. Really, the only tracks that left me feeling a bit deflated were “We Drink Your Blood” and “Armata Strigoi”, but they are very much outliers. Some people might also be disappointed that the album skews towards their newer material and there are curious excisions (particularly “Kiss of the Cobra King”), but these have appeared on previous live albums so I’m not too bothered that they went with something different. All-in-all, this is a great live album and a fantastic way to introduce someone to Powerwolf.

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10) Necromantic, Draconian Reign (Bandcamp)

After the moody lead-in to “Awakening”, Draconian Reign assault you with some truly heavy death metal. It’s a great way to open things and primes you for the rest of the EP to come. Every track stands out in its own way and while it isn’t particularly unique or transformative, it is very enjoyable. It’s a pretty short package, coming in at just over 20 minutes, but if you’re into death metal then this is well worth a listen and gets a hearty recommendation from me.

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9) The Path of Destruction, Overthrone (they have a Bandcamp, but this album isn’t on there for whatever reason)

The Path of Destruction has all the hallmarks that you’d expect from a metalcore band (shouted vocals, aggressive, energetic music, the occasional melodic section to balance out the heaviness, angst). Overthrone aren’t doing anything unique, but they still manage to succeed because the music they’ve crafted is really solid. They’re really at their best when balancing the heavy and the lighter sections in a song, best demonstrated by emotional and sincere tracks like “Watch the World Burn” and “A Better Man”. They also tease a heavier side with “Suffer”, which goes full-on deathcore, but it’s only a two minute track so feels more like a teaser than a proper exploration. Still, The Path of Destruction is good enough that it’s quickly become one of my most-listened to albums of the year. I’m curious to see where Overthrone goes next, although I hope they can carve a more distinct sound for themselves in future.

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8) Venator, Mechina (Bandcamp)

I decided to check out Mechina on a whim because of the cool cover for Venator and I am so glad that I did. Musically, they’re very similar to Words of Farewell (particularly their 2016 album, A Quiet World), with a sound that I’d describe as epic, energetic, industrial/electronic metal. Musically they aren’t too far from melodic death metal, but the big thing that differentiates them from other death metal bands is that the vocals are mostly clean and soaring, more akin to glam or power metal. Taken all together, Venator is a really interesting album, feeling like a sci-fi epic and more than once I found myself thinking that it could be a great backing soundtrack for an anime series. There are several great tracks on here, including “Suffer”, “Praise Hydrus” and the title track, which had me headbanging along with a smile on my face. Definitely give Venator a glance, I’ve linked Mechina’s bandcamp above and would heartily give them a recommendation. I know I’ll be checking out more of their stuff in the future.

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7) Silverline, Anberlin

Anberlin are one of my favourite bands of all time, which shouldn’t be surprising if you saw my list of best albums from the 2010s. It’s been eight years since their last album, so there has been no release this year that I’ve been more excited for than Silverline. The EP doesn’t disappoint, giving us five rock-solid tracks of Anberlin’s signature alt-rock flavour. A particular highlight is “Two Graves”, which kicks the EP off with a bang. This song is heavy by Anberlin’s standards, announcing that the band is back together and haven’t missed a beat since we last heard them. My favourite track though is “Body Language”, a piece which is just oozing with sex appeal and is going to find itself a place on a very particular playlist of mine… Anyway, Silverline is a solid return for Anberlin, whose only real problem is that it leaves me wanting more. Given that we haven’t heard any new music from Anberlin in eight years, that’s just me being dangerously greedy, but I hope that the band finds plenty of inspiration on this new chapter they find themselves in!

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6) Immutable, Meshuggah

Meshuggah are one of those bands that all the big metalheads love, so I figured it was past time for me to check them out. Gotta say, the hype is real with Meshuggah, because Immutable was really solid, energetic, wall-to-wall heavy metal that had me headbanging on several occasions. Highlights for me include “Broken Cog”, “Phantoms” and the extended instrumental track “They Move Below”, but it’s hard to go wrong with any track on Immutable (other than the disappointingly limp closer, “Past Tense”). Definitely a band I’ll be checking out more of in the future.

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5) STRATA, REMINA (Bandcamp)

I’ve really gotten back into Draconian this year (and grown much more of an appreciation for Under a Godless Veil), which made me really come to appreciate how much I love Heike Langhans’ voice; it’s so good that she single-handedly elevated Draconian from “decent” to one of my favourite bands since she joined them in 2012. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that I was saddened earlier this year when the news that she was leaving the band came out. However, the one silver lining was that she was going to be using this opportunity to pursue her own passion projects with her partner Mike Lamb and be able to spend more time with her family as a result. I’m happy that she’s getting to live her dream as an artist and that this creativity is bearing fruit with a number of projects, including this year’s STRATA. Billed as a cosmic metal album, STRATA doesn’t stray too far from Langhans and Lambs’ roots, being very atmospheric doom metal, although the lack of any harsh vocals gives it a different sort of feel. The resulting music encapsulates what I love best about doom metal, it’s beautiful melancholy captured in song. Despite only having seven tracks, this is a surprisingly lengthy album, with each track typically starting chill and sombre and then reaching a heavier, emotional climax towards the end, and it all works simply because Langhans’ voice is incredible. It’s one of those albums that’s best as a complete work, but if you need a single song to sample REMINA, I’d recommend “Icarus Signal”.

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4) Deceivers, Arch Enemy

I was so impressed by Alissa White-Gluz’s vocals on last year’s Powerwolf bonus album, Missa Cantorem, that I knew I had to give Arch Enemy a look. I have to say that Deceivers left me impressed. As expected, Alissa’s vocals are great, both harsh and clean, to the point where you’d swear that Arch Enemy had multiple vocalists. The songwriting here is also really solid, there isn’t a weak track on the entire album. Arch Enemy’s music is melodic, high tempo and epic, best described as being somewhere between power metal and death metal. Just a great album from start to finish, definitely recommend checking this out!

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3) Voyeurist, Underoath

I wanted to like Underoath’s Erase Me a lot more than I did back in 2018. The turn from evangelical metalcore darlings to losing their faith was a compelling story so it was unfortunate that the album didn’t resonate with me. With Voyeurist, it’s clear that the last four years have been a struggle for the band, and much of that is from dealing with the fallout of their crisis of faith, along with the band’s struggles with mental health and addiction. This clearly has provided the band with fertile ground not often tread by an act of this calibre and it makes Voyeurist a decidedly raw and compelling listen. You can feel their pain and anger towards evangelicals in tracks like “Damn Excuses” (“You never gave me anything I wanted but I’m stuck in the cycle with you / Fuck your revelation and fuck your weak conviction / I am finally exposing the truth“), “(No Oasis)” (“In the dark and overused / Left alone with the abused / I’ll never know if I matter to you / Hey, I was talking down to you / You objectify the truth / Every thing you thought you were is all wrapped up inside a lie / The kind that makes you blind / Falling over every line you believed so hard you hollowed out / Hollowed out your mind“) and “We’re All Gonna Die” (“Hey, we’re all gonna die, what difference does it make? / Don’t pray for me and my friends / I think you’re fucking fake“).

Emotion is one thing though, but thankfully Underoath back that up with some really strong songwriting throughout the entire album. “Hallelujah” is fantastic, the kind of song you’d want to shout along to live, “Take a Breath” makes you want to headbang, “Numb” is nice and heavy and “Pneumonia” is a really interesting and moody closer. Really, Voyeurist just keeps getting better as it goes, which is part of the reason why it’s one of my most replayed albums of the year.

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2) Impera, Ghost

So I listened to Impera because I’d heard that it was really good, but I was not ready for what I was walking into. Ghost are straight-up a modern glam metal outfit in 2022! That is very much not what I look for in my aggressive/depressing taste in metal, but Impera is so well-written that it won me over. There are so many great tracks here: “Kaisarion” is a really energetic and catchy rock track, “Call Me Little Sunshine” is like a chill Andrew WK song, and “Watcher in the Sky” feels like the sort of 80s anthem you’d expect to hear Kiss or Styx signing in front of a crowded arena. By far the most impressive track though is “Twenties”, which I shit you not feels like a Disney villain song. It has the most swagger that I’ve ever heard in a metal track. Just listening to it makes me picture the choreography I’d use for it in a stage musical, it’s legitimately one of the coolest songs I’ve heard in years. Being glam metal also means that, unlike the majority of the music I listen to, it’s super accessible to a wide audience. It’s really no wonder that this album is getting as much accolades as it is, it’s truly fantastic and I would implore you not to pass it up.

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1) The Death of Peace of Mind, Bad Omens

Finding God Before God Finds Me was one of my favourite albums of the last couple years, enough for me to consider Bad Omens one of my favourite new bands. Their radio-friendly metalcore style was surprisingly compelling, so naturally I was excited to see what Bad Omens would bring us next. The Death of Peace of Mind is an unexpected turn from the band, downplaying the metalcore (which was already downplayed on Finding God Before God Finds Me compared to their debut album) and leaning heavily into electronic and pop influences. While this change in style leaves me torn and alienated, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that Bad Omens put full effort into this album and still deliver some absolute bangers. “CONCRETE JUNGLE” and “THE DEATH OF PEACE OF MIND” alternate between electronic music and heavy metalcore on a dime, making the most out of both styles and developing a sound that’s as compelling as nearly anything from their previous albums. Perhaps the most exciting tracks are “What do you want from me?” and “ARTIFICIAL SUICIDE”, which take traditional electronic sounds (feeling almost cyberpunk-esque at times) and then mix them like a metal track, creating a really energetic beat which is infectious.

The Death of Peace of Mind scares me. It’s a good album overall, but it also represents a fundamental change for a band I loved. If they continue on this electronic/pop journey and ditch their metal influences altogether then I’m afraid that I won’t still be on board with Bad Omens, which would be sad. That also makes it hard to judge this album fairly, but there’s too many great songs on here for me to be too harsh.

Ranking the Albums I Listened to in 2022 (55-26)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to my annual music countdown… and this year, I really overdid it. Back when I started I’d have to write up entries for like fifteen albums and it was nice and easy. That number has ballooned every year, to the point where I’ve written entries for more than fifty new albums released in 2022! As a result, I’m not belabouring every review – if I have lots to say about an album I’ll say what I want, but if I don’t have a lot to say then don’t expect more than a few sentences. I’ve been literally working on this article for the entire year and honestly if fifty albums in a year holds true (or even continues trending upward) then I might just start restricting this year-end list to the twenty-five best; we’ll see how things shake out next year.

In any case, there are so many entries this year that I’ve split this into two parts. Naturally, we’ll start with the lower half and then I’ll post the rest tomorrow. With all that out of the way, let’s look into my 2022 in music!

55) Faith is Gone, Arsenic

Faith is Gone starts on a bad note when “Intro” declares that Arsenic don’t give a shit about what’s mainstream or popular, they just play what they want. I literally rolled my eyes – people who feel the need to brand themselves as rebels usually are covering for the fact that someone one time said that their music sucks, so they pass it off as “they don’t understand us, man!” Then Faith is Gone begins in earnest and, my God, I was not ready for this. Imagine an 80s punk/metal fusion, like the Ramones crossed with Black Album-era Metallica, and then add a thick Quebecois accent to the mix. Round out the package with high-school-garage-band-quality production and songwriting and you might have a good idea what Arsenic are like. Nearly every song sounds identical and most are so slight that they feel incomplete – seriously, this album has 9 full tracks (that’s not even including the intro) and it’s barely over the 28 minute mark. That said, there is one glowing highlight, “Jack the Ripper”, which is a pretty fun track about the eponymous serial killer. It’s a legitimately good song and it closes out Faith is Gone on a pinnacle, since I can guarantee you it’s the only track on this album that I’m ever going to listen to again.

54) Season of the Wolf, With A Heavy Heart (Bandcamp)

I listen to quite a lot of metalcore so I hope it means something when I say that Season of the Wolf is one of the most baffling metalcore albums I’ve ever listened to. The production is clean and professional, but the music itself feels really amateur, like a bunch of kids throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Nearly every song will have multiple instances of the music going from light to heavy (or vice versa), incongruent and sudden shifts in chords before almost immediately switching back, stopping the track entirely for a random sample… all these things I’m describing are some of my favourite parts of a song when done well, but here they feel completely wrong and it’s such a weird thing to realize. It really hammers home how much craftsmanship we take for granted in the music we love. Even when With A Heavy Heart are finding some degree of cohesion in a track, it’s not enough for me to find their music any better than mediocre. I don’t really mean (or want) to shit on With A Heavy Heart, as far as I’m aware they don’t really deserve it, but Season of the Wolf did not work for me at all.

53) Oecumenical Rites for the Antichrist, Law of Contagion (Bandcamp)

Oecumental Rites for the Antichrist is blackened death metal… I’m not sure what else there is to say really. Incomprehensible, growled vocals? Never-ending blast beats? Every song sounds the exact same? Poor production quality? You guessed it. At least I enjoy this kind of music on a baseline level, so I don’t think this album is bad per se; I could throw it on just to get through a foul mood. But that said, it doesn’t stand out to me in the slightest and there isn’t a single song on here that I’m ever going to listen to again, let alone want to.

52) REPENTANCE, Bajoxtierra (Bandcamp)

This is one of those albums that I checked out purely because of the cool artwork. Bajoxtierra are a self-described alt metal band, although I’d say they’re not too far off from metalcore with the interplay between soft and aggressive music (complete with dueling clean and screamed vocals). Normally that’s the kind of thing I like in a metalcore band, but Bajoxtierra feel very mediocre to me. I think the issue is that the quiet sections of their songs just go on for too long and sap all the energy out by the time the faster, more aggressive parts start. There feels like there’s some potential here, but REPENTANCE is very unrefined.

51) Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers, Seven Nines & Tens (Bandcamp)

Having started taking edibles over a year ago I’ve gotten more interested in stoner media, so just hearing the title of this album got me interested in checking out Seven Nines & Tens. The album has a grunge-metal sound, like Alice in Chains meets Lateralus-era Tool. The music combines with the vocals to create a palpably dreamy, “far out” atmosphere. It’s really cool at first, but after getting through a couple tracks of the same drawn out sound it starts to drag and blend together, to the point where halfway through I was just wanting it to end. I dunno, maybe I wasn’t high enough to appreciate it, but Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers was very dull for me.

50) Babylon, Next Time Mr. Fox (Bandcamp)

Surprise, surprise, I legitimately only checked out this album because the band has the word “fox” in their name, because as we all know foxes are the best. Unfortunately Babylon didn’t really leave me with much of a lasting impression. It’s a pretty slight package, with 6 tracks barely hitting the 20 minute mark (and of those 6, only 4 are full-length tracks). For most of the EP, Next Time Mr. Fox put out some very heavy metal/deathcore. The one big exception is “Under the Moon”, which is a dreamy acoustic track which doesn’t really jive well surrounded by all the heavy metalcore tracks surrounding it. Of all the tracks I think “Bestias” resonated the most to me, it was very aggressive and I found myself headbanging along with it at the start. However, most of Babylon is just painfully mediocre – not bad but just not interesting or something I can see myself ever revisiting. Sorry, Mr. Fox, but I don’t think that there’s going to be a next time.

49) The Great Dying, Once Was Never (Bandcamp)

The Great Dying is, for the most part, fairly typical deathcore. However, I can’t say that I’m a big fan of the vocals on the album, at a certain point enthusiastic, incomprehensible grunts and screams just sound like caveman music. That’s not to say that there aren’t some tracks where this works, I did quite enjoy “The Heartless” and “H.O.M.E.”, but most of this just didn’t catch my interest. Add in the very short playtime at barely over 30 minutes and The Great Dying just didn’t do it for me.

48) AfterLife, Five Finger Death Punch

My thoughts on Five Finger Death Punch are well documented at this point, although I will admit that their last album, F8, was one that I had some positive things to say about. I was curious if AfterLife would continue that turn around, but… well, I can’t even say I’m disappointed. I was momentarily excited when “Welcome to the Circus” started, but then the second the singing kicked in my excitement instantly deflated because it became clear that this was going to be the same old story: really solid musicianship, but abysmal songwriting full of impotent macho posturing. To be fair, the songwriting isn’t as bad as it was on some of their previous albums, but it’s still FFDP and at this point I’ve accepted that I’m just never going to like this band’s songs. If you like FFDP then this will probably be a moot point – like I said, if you can get past the lyrics, the band are undeniably talented musicians. Unfortunately, I just can’t stand the songs they write and clearly never will.

47) Striving Toward Oblivion, Vorga (Bandcamp)

Ahh, black metal. If you’re familiar with these annual countdowns, you’ll know that I check out new bands in this genre all the time, but so many of them fail to make any sort of impression. This genre seems to have a way of making every song bleed together into a loud, congealed soup. Some, like Wolves in the Throne Room and Firelink manage to stand out, but then there’s stuff like Vorga, whose album Striving Toward Oblivion immediately failed to get my interest and every song sounded like the one that came before it. Is it actually bad? No. Will I ever listen to it again? No. There isn’t really much else I have to say other than that.

46) Towards the Dying Lands, Horizon Ignited

Towards the Dying Lands is basically power metal, but with death metal vocals. If you can imagine that, then you’ve got a good idea what Horizon Ignited sound like here and there isn’t a whole lot else I can say about it. I found the album a bit meh, not actively bad but not doing anything that interested me.

45) Exile, Demon Hunter

Demon Hunter used to be one of those bands you could rely on to put out good music on every new album, but they’ve been in something of a tailspin for a while now. Coming off of an uninspired double album and an unnecessary acoustic album, fans of the band have been clamoring for a return to their metalcore roots, but every new release has felt watered down since at least 2012 (even if a couple of those albums have been pretty good anyway). That brings us to Exile, an album I’ve been dreading since it was announced because of the language that was being used to promote it: “Exile is the first-ever concept album by the 20-year metal veterans. Set in the aftermath of civilized society’s collapse, the 12 songs examine modern life through the lens of a nonconformist, contemplating a life untethered. […] Exile is an immersive interrogation of cultural norms and a call to true rebellion.” This was punctuated by the lead single, “Freedom is Dead”… so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I had some really bad “Don’t tread on me vibes” from the start. It’d be one thing if this was just a fantasy story that Demon Hunter were exploring, but they’re a Christian band and this sort of story setup is rife in evangelical circles, not to mention the anti-mask/vaccine crowd most of us are exhausted of, so suffice to say that there was a good chance that this wasn’t “just a fantasy”.

For a moment there, Exile looked like it might buck my fears. “Defense Mechanism” opens with a roar. It’s pure thrash, a very heavy song, easily the highlight of the album and the sort of track we haven’t gotten out of Demon Hunter in decades. However, the album comes back down to earth pretty much immediately from there. Exile is an album of two selves – on the one hand, it’s musically the most varied Demon Hunter release in a very long time, featuring a handful of heavy, thrash-inspired tracks but still skewing mainly towards lighter ballads and rock tunes. In this regard, it’s better than their last couple lacklustre releases. However, Exile‘s Achilles heel, as I feared, comes down to the songwriting. I can’t take such a self-serious album about non-conformity and fighting for freedom seriously when I know the context it’s coming from. “Master” gets this across early, with lyrics that boil down to “Elites are telling you what to believe and dividing us, but I’m too cool for that, I make my own way! Freedom!” That sort of message is pretty consistent across the album and I just couldn’t take it seriously. In fact, it’s kind of insulting with the inclusion of “Revolutions”, which downplays the importance of efforts to change society, saying that these efforts are cyclical and kind of pointless as a result. If you can get over the lyrics then you’ll probably like Exile more than I did, but it’s not the only issue here. Ryan Clark’s vocals are also noticeably strained throughout the album, especially on all of the heavier tracks. In fact, he sounds downright terrible at several moments on the album, such as the end of “Freedom is Dead”, which might explain why Demon Hunter have been pivoting away from their signature sound for so long. Exile‘s a step in the right direction compared to War and Peace, but even with my obvious biases set aside, it’s still easily in the bottom half of the band’s discography.

44) Quietus, And Hell Followed With (Bandcamp)

Another band I checked out because of a cool album cover, And Hell Followed With are a fairly typical deathcore/death metal band and Quietus gives you about what you’d expect: growled/shouted/screamed vocals, endless blast beats and heavy music galore. It’s just that most of it doesn’t stand out. I was getting excited when I got back-to-back, legitimately good tracks “Infinite Sequential Visions of a Sphere of Hate” and “Sacrificial Human Destiny” came on and hoped that the rest of the album would get more interesting, but unfortunately And Hell Followed With are content to just coast by with a death metal sound that doesn’t stand out. I’d recommend checking out the two tracks noted above and maybe “The Well”, but otherwise Quietus isn’t particularly interesting.

43) Of My Vice, Through the Walls (Bandcamp)

Of My Vice reminds me that nu metal is kind of a stupid umbrella term. I listen to a fair bit of nu metal, but when “The Apparition” started I was instantly reminded that, oh yeah, people think that Slipknot and Linkin Park are part of the same genre. This can be a bit of a tonal whiplash for me because most of the nu metal I listen to has barely any rap in it so I often forget that it’s considered a signature of nu metal bands. Of My Vice lean more in the direction of Linkin Park, with a lot of rap-rock mixed with harsh, metalcore-like vocals. It’s very much a rap-rock album in the first two-thirds, although it does get heavier and I would say goes full-on metalcore by the final track. I wasn’t crazy about Of My Vice, but I did enjoy “The Quandary”, “The Puppeteer” and “The Juxtaposition” (if only because those tracks leaned more into genres of metal that I traditionally find more enjoyable).

42) Dominion, Skillet

I’ve aired my grievances about Skillet in the past. Growing up in an evangelical household, I always found them to be overrated considering the amount of fame they had. As they get further and further away from the breakout album, Comatose, I feel my skepticism become more and more justified. Dominion may be one of their better albums in the past decade, but it is still very much not my thing. It’s decent radio rock written for teenagers by a bunch of rockstars who are nearly 50 years old now, and that insincerity has always really turned me off of Skillet’s music. “Refuge” is the only track that felt like it had any sort of sincerity to it, feeling like a “youth group anthem” and is probably my favourite track on the album. I’m clearly far from the target demographic of this album so take my opinion here with a massive grain of salt, but I’m sure there’s some evangelical kid out there who’s going to hear this and love it (if not, might I recommend Oecumenical Rites for the Antichrist?).

41) Divisive, Disturbed

Like Exile, I’ve been dreading Divisive since it was announced. Disturbed were one of my favourite bands when I was in high school but they have not been the same since their extended hiatus. It got so bad that when 2018’s Evolution came out I was so sick of them that I declared that I’d evolved beyond Disturbed. That was all bad enough, but Disturbed’s politics have been frustrating me for years – it was one thing when the band complained about the media and elites during the 2000s and early 2010s, but when they continue “both sides”-ing through 2016 and the 2020s it feels like they’re either disingenuous or out of touch. Which brings us to Divisive, which promised to be their answer to the divide in society, which they wanted to heal through the power of music… bleh. Suffice to say that I was expecting this album to be one of the worst of the year, but colour me pleasantly surprised that Disturbed managed to exceed my expectations… by being disappointing once again.

Let me explain.

For better or worse, Divisive ditches the experimentation that was present on Immortalized and Evolution and goes back to the heavier fundamentals of their first couple albums. This album sounds more like Disturbed’s nu metal roots than they have in decades. For all their bluster about this being a political album, Divisive only really makes a statement on “Bad Man” and “Divisive”, and I am using “statement” here very broadly. Like Evolution, these tracks are extremely simplistic, wishy-washy and non-committal, to the point where literally anyone could look at these songs and think that Disturbed are supporting their side. Suffice to say, this makes for very limp, uncompelling content. Most of the album from there is just typical Disturbed – “Hey You” is your big, pump-up anthem, “Unstoppable” and “Won’t Back Down” are your macho tracks, etc. Unfortunately, because this is just Disturbed being Disturbed, they’re treading over very well-trodden ground, so you can’t help but look at “Unstoppable” and see it as a weak rehash of their far-better executed “Indestructible”. Similarly, “Hey You” is supposed to be the big single to get people excited, but it’s going to be filler at best if it was played live. The only track with any sort of staying power is “Don’t Tell Me”, which makes the most of David Draiman and guest Ann Wilson’s soaring vocals to put out an emotional song dealing with the pain of divorce. None of the other tracks on the album feel anywhere near as inspired and it’s far and away the best track on the album (hell, it’s the best track Disturbed have put out since 2015).

I’m probably making it sound like Divisive isn’t that great and that’s because it isn’t. It’s kind of mediocre, like Disturbed are just going through the motions and falling back on what worked for them in the past once again… and that’s honestly still better than what I expected of them at this point in their career. So… good job, I guess?

40) Drif, Heilung (Bandcamp)

Heilung are one of the weirder bands that I’ve gotten into in the last couple years, putting out experimental, neolithic, ritualistic folk music which is somehow super metal despite having basically no elements you’d traditionally associate with metal music. Drif is, in many ways, more of the same, but feels like Heilung’s least-interesting album in some crucial aspects. First of all, the entire album is much more chill and low tempo than other Heilung albums, feeling more like what you’d expect of a “traditional” soundscape rather than a series of songs which could run the gamut from atmospheric, to energetic, to experimental gibberish. Heilung albums tend to have at a lot of tracks which are more about the experience: ten minute spoken word rituals, growled rants, repetitive chants, etc – tracks that you’ll listen to once in a blue moon, but more often than not will just get skipped over to get to the good music. Drif, unfortunately, has the weakest tracklist of any Heilung album in my opinion. The only substantial tracks are the first three, “Asja”, “Anoana” and “Tenet”, with the rest being either extended interludes or suffer from noticeably less interesting songwriting. Overall it just makes for an album which is decent and worth a listen, but if you’re familiar with Heilung you can’t help but feel that it’s a missed opportunity. If you’re intrigued by Heilung I would personally recommend seeking out Lifa and watch their live performance if you get the chance – it’s easily their best curated selection of songs and really shows off the band at their best.

39) Tales of Magic, Planeswalker (Bandcamp)

Back in December of 2021, one of my friends finally managed to get me into Magic: The Gathering, and I’ve never forgiven him for it (and, for that matter, neither has my wallet). I don’t really understand the lore that much, but I’ve at least got enough of a knowledge that when I saw a band called “Planeswalker” I realized it was probably MTG-related and decided to check them out. What Planeswalker give us here is some decent power metal, with soaring vocals that are operatic in more ways than one. Many of the songs are full-on narratives, with the band’s dual vocalists often having entire conversations with each other in-character. That said, the MTG-gimmick is the only thing about Tales of Magic which makes it stand out at all – fantasy metal isn’t all that uncommon anyway and there’s nothing special here to make Planeswalker stand out. I guess that’s the issue with basing your music on a card game, there’s no existing sound-scape for you to riff off of unlike, say, all the bands based on video games or movies. Tales of Magic is fine but I lost interest very quickly, if only because I don’t gravitate towards power metal.

38) Inglorious Darkness, Crematory

Crematory are one of those bands with a long career, stretching over thirty years, but I have never checked them out until now. On Inglorious Darkness they bring a distinctly-German flavour of metal, mixing death, power and industrial metal together into their own synthesis. The songwriting is a bit meh and I’m not really a fan of Gerhard Stass’ vocals, but the music is so well-done that I have a hard time holding this against Crematory. I’d recommend checking out the title track and “The Sound of My Life” and see if Inglorious Darkness clicks for you.

37) Blood 1983, In This Moment

Of all the musical projects announced this year, Blood 1983 was probably the biggest surprise for me. Celebrating the tenth anniversary of In This Moment’s landmark album Blood, this EP reimagines some of the biggest tracks from that album in 80s synth-pop style. It’s an intriguing concept to say the least and I appreciate that In This Moment aren’t just looking to make a quick and easy buck off their fans, they’re trying to deliver a transformative, creative venture here.

…unfortunately, the execution on Blood 1983 doesn’t really work. The synth sound on “Adrenalize 1983” really nails the tone this EP’s going for, but the vocals and songwriting don’t really work for the synth pop sound they’re going for; the chorus in particular just sounds like a cacophony. “Blood 1983” really cements the issue here – these songs were written as empowering, high-energy metal tracks, not chill 80s pop tunes, and really don’t work when you try to shove them into that mold. The two tracks that work better are “Burn 1983” and “Whore 1983”. “Burn” is a slower-paced track so it’s better suited to the dreamy soundscape that it’s given here, while “Whore” has been completely reimagined as slowed down, melancholic and reflective track. It’s a really interesting way to transform that track and in-line with the original message, providing a new perspective on it and is easily the highlight of the collection.

Blood 1983 is a real mixed bag. I feel like it’s mostly a failed experiment and hope that it isn’t indicative of In This Moment’s future ventures. Still, as a celebration of the band’s successes, I can’t be too harsh on it and there’s enough good stuff here that fans of the band should definitely give it a listen.

36) The Great Heathen Army, Amon Amarth

Viking metal! I’ve been listening to scattered tracks from Amon Amarth for close to fifteen years now, but I’ve never sat down and listened to a full album from them. The Great Heathen Army is about what I expected from them, providing their brand of power metal/death metal fusion which sounds the exact same as the music they’ve been putting out since 2008. The title track and “Oden Owns You All” got me headbanging, but most of this album is just kind of mediocre and uninspired. It’s far from bad and I can see myself happily putting this on again in future, but it’s clearly a case of one of those metal band that’s long in the tooth churning out yet another album that sounds the same as their last ten.

35) Omens, Lamb of God

Ahh, another major metal band that I’ve never actually listened to until now. I’ve always had some interest in checking them out, if only because my dad saw one of Lamb of God’s shirts in a store one time and got all mistakenly happy because he thought it was a Christian shirt. Omens is relentlessly heavy and aggressive from start to finish, feeling like a mixture of groove metal and death metal. I’ll be honest though, I don’t have a ton to say about it. It’s fine, but it wasn’t really resonating with me. I’d say check out “To the Grave” if you want to get a sample of the album, but otherwise I don’t have a lot of thoughts about it.

34) Color Decay, The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada are another one of those bands that I’ve known about for years but didn’t check out til now… and it kind of feels like I did so about 10 years too late. Color Decay is full of polished, commercial/radio-friendly metalcore and all the angst one would expect to go along with that. Tracks like “Broken” and “Trapped” feel like they’d really resonate with teens, but I’m in my 30s now so it doesn’t really appeal all that much to me. I can appreciate the quality of this album but it just makes me feel old and jaded. That said, I want to give a special shout-out to “Cancer” – that track has a tragic reality to it that gut-punched me. It’s a great way to close out the album and definitely my favourite track of the lot.

33) Key to a Vanishing Future, Falls of Rauros (Bandcamp)

Falls of Rauros make their second appearance on the annual countdown and unfortunately I can’t say that they made much more of an impression on me. It’s still black metal and all that entails (including mediocre-at-best production) although the band’s atmospheric elements help give it a bit more flavour than Vorga at least. Still not enough to make this an album I’m going to remember or want to come back to, but if you’re really into black metal then I’m sure you’re going to love this.

32) Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum, Alestorm (Bandcamp)

2020’s Curse of the Crystal Coconut single-handedly shook my trust in Alestorm’s ability to thread the line between epic and silly pirate metal, so naturally I approached Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum with a lot of trepidation. I’d say that Seventh Rum is a slight improvement over the last album, managing to give us some good, fun pirate metal tracks (such as “Magellan’s Expedition” and “Under Blackened Banners”). The album also has two really big surprise successes. The first is “Return to Tortuga”, which chilled my blood at first because “Tortuga” was one of my least favourite tracks on Curse of the Crystal Coconut, so I figured it would be more of the same. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that this was a subversion, because “Return to Tortuga” is essentially the “serious” version of the previous track, even bringing back guest vocalist Captain Yarrface and calling back to that song’s lyrics. It might be my favourite track on the album and shows that Alestorm don’t have to be stupid, they just choose to be… which, honestly, I kind of have to respect. The other big surprise is “Wooden Leg (Part III)”, which had me wondering where the hell Alestorm were going to go given the rather definitive ending in “Part II” on the last album. Turns out that the answer is “not really anywhere”, with “Part III” acting as a final denouement, but it’s the legitimately sombre tone that is the real shocker here and cements the “Wooden Leg” trilogy as an unexpected career highlight for Alestorm.

Unfortunately, Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum is brought down by some real stinkers. Most odious would be “Canonball”, the obligatory “Fucked With an Anchor” rip-off which had a chorus that literally made me go wide-eyed when I first heard it. “P.A.R.T.Y.” and “Come to Brazil” also suffer for being the five-hundredth juvenile pirate party metal tracks Alestorm have put out and don’t bring anything new to that concept. I also can’t help but be kind of disappointed at how “meh” the title track is, given that the album’s referencing my favourite Iron Maiden album and song.

All-in-all, Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum keeps a bit more gas in the Alestorm engine and I appreciate that it’s taking a step back towards a more “serious” take on the concept of pirate metal. However, having listened to their first couple albums again recently, it’s shocking just how much the band has turned themselves into a joke. Then again, they joked about scraping the barrel four albums ago and with every new album it feels less like a joke and more like a threat.

31) The End, So Far, Slipknot

Last time we saw Slipknot they were putting out possibly my favourite album of 2019. We Are Not Your Kind saw Slipknot striking a remarkable balance between pleasing fans and charting a path of musical evolution and experimentation for the band. In a lot of ways, The End, So Far seems to be taking a similar course, making even bigger evolutions to Slipknot’s sound while also feeling very similar to Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), often considered the band’s foray into more mainstream appeal. I spend a lot of time complaining on these countdowns when bands make the same songs over and over and I always give some credit when they branch out to do something different… but man, different does not always mean good, because I just cannot get on board with The End, So Far.

“Adderall” is an interesting opening which sets the tone for what you’re going to be getting – a chill track that I can’t really put my finger on genre-wise. Pop? Jazz? I honestly don’t know, but you end up waiting more than five minutes before you get any sort of metal. Tracks like “The Dying Song (Time to Sing)”, “The Chapeltown Rag”, “Hivemind” and “Medicine for the Dead” should satisfy Slipknot fans, but I feel like they’re still B-tier Slipknot tracks at best. This might be because the whole thing feels sanitized to me in the same sort of way that Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) does. When Slipknot shave off their darker aspects they lose a lot of their energy and bite.

The End, So Far is a mixed bag for me. I’m still deciding if that’s because it’s so different than what Slipknot usually gives me, or if it’s because the songs here really aren’t that great. When I take a step back and think about these songs though, I ask myself “How would people react if these tracks were played live?” For most of them, I think it would be a really muted response compared to Slipknot’s classic tracks. Hell, for a lot of these songs, I can’t even imagine them played live to begin with, they’d feel so out of place. With that in mind, I’m leaning towards The End, So Far being a mediocre release, but it’s one that is going to take some time before I can solidify my feelings on it.

30) Empyrean, Fallujah (Bandcamp)

Empyrean is an atmospheric death metal album which skews towards fast tempos, high energy, heavy sound and screamed and illegible vocals. While tracks can feel a bit same-y at times, when Fallujah let their atmospheric elements loose it can make for some truly epic death metal, particularly on the last two tracks, “Celestial Resonance” and “Artifacts”, which round out the album on a very high note. I’d definitely recommend checking out those two tracks and “Embrace Oblivion” to see if Fallujah are something you’d be interested in.

29) The War to End All Wars, Sabaton (Bandcamp)

Sabaton are one of those bands where you know exactly what you’re going to get out of one of their albums, considering that their sound hasn’t really changed at all since 2008’s The Art of War. Luckily for them, they also put out consistently solid music, so this familiarity hasn’t hurt them too much. The War to End All Wars pushes that familiarity to its limits, because not only is it the same sort of Sabaton that we’re used to, it’s also their second World War I album in three years (plus the three “Echoes of the Great War” EPs that the band will be putting out over the next year, which are basically just over-glorified singles with a bunch of re-released songs; by my own rules I won’t be covering them here, but they’re only adding to the WWI fatigue Sabaton are putting themselves into). The band is clearly passionate about WWI, choosing to put this album out because they had so many stories they still wanted to tell after The Great War, but it can’t help but feel like more of the same. That said, there are some legitimately great tracks on here. “The Unkillable Soldier” is probably the best, “classic” Sabaton track here, nailing that mixture of energetic power metal and the band’s enthusiasm for its heroic subject. “Versailles” is also interesting in how it outwardly has a celebratory tone to mirror the feelings of the Allies at the end of the war, but weaves in a dark, ironic layer because we all know that this victory is going to be fleeting at best. The clear highlight has to be “Christmas Truce” though, the first truly unique Sabaton track in several album cycles, which is like if you took Trans Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” and mashed it with a traditional Sabaton track. It’s epic, tragic and sombre all at once, and will easily be finding a place on my metal Christmas playlists going forward.

All-in-all, The War to End All Wars is fine enough on its own but it feels like a companion piece and is easily among Sabaton’s least-essential albums. Honestly though, the best way to listen to it would probably be to mash together The Great War, The War to End All Wars, and any other WWI tracks and EPs the band has put out, rearrange the tracks in chronological order and listen to them as one big, epic tale of the beginning and end of the First World War.

28) Return to the Void, Shape of Despair (Bandcamp)

Given the name of the album and the band, it should not be surprising that Return to the Void is a funeral doom album. While doom metal has probably become my favourite metal subgenre of the past few years, the funeral doom sub-subgenre is something I’ve only just begun to dabble in, so I was curious to see how Return to the Void would be. It’s about what I expected of this style of music – slow, mournful music with more emphasis on being depressing and atmospheric than on being heavy or energetic, growled vocals and dirge-like backing vocals. Return to the Void doesn’t really do much to deviate from its contemporaries, and being in such a niche genre it is definitely not going to resonate with most people. I found it pretty enjoyable though, especially “Reflection In Slow Time”, the only track to start off properly heavy before transitioning to a very sad duet between the main vocalist death growling while a female vocalist plays off him. It’s easily the best song on the album and if you’re interested in checking out funeral doom it’s a great entry point.

27) Agonist, As The World Dies (Bandcamp)

I always get leery when a band’s website or Bandcamp page really goes hard into hyping them up: it always says something along the lines of “One of the hottest new bands in the metal scene right now!” and will inevitably describe their music as the second coming of Christ. I get that this is how promotion and marketing works in the indie music scene, but so often I’ll see this, then listen to the music and think “It’s a bit shit, actually”. Luckily for As The World Dies, they manage to live up to the lofty hype they hold themselves up to, providing plenty of talented, interesting, and thought-out death metal across Agonist‘s ten tracks. I was enjoying myself throughout Agonist, but it finds itself on the wrong side of that borderline of “this is good” and “I would actually listen to this on a regular basis”. I definitely think that there is an audience who are going to love Agonist and I’m certain I’ll give this more listens in the future, but at this point in time I’m not in love with the album either.

26) Neither Moth nor Rust, Hanging Garden (Bandcamp)

Between Agalloch, Swallow the Sun and Draconian, doom metal may just be my favourite metal sub-genre these days so I’m always on the look-out for interesting new music in the genre. Neither Moss nor Rust by Hanging Garden is pretty low-key by doom metal standards, with mostly-clean vocals (including a second, vastly under-utilized female vocalist) and music that is more moody than heavy. While the EP kind of left me wanting, I did enjoy a couple tracks. “The Last Dance” and “On the Shore of Eternity” are easily the two heaviest songs on the EP and feel like they’re drawing directly from Swallow the Sun’s sound. Weirdly enough, I think my favourite track was “Field of Reeds”, this weird bonus remix which breaks from the rest of the album by being a chill, apocalyptic EDM song. I was shocked how much I liked it, let alone how much better it was than the rest of the album. All-in-all, Neither Moth nor Rust didn’t really inspire me to check out Hanging Garden’s other work but it’s got enough interesting tracks that I’d say it’s worth a listen.

And that’s it for today, be sure to tune back in tomorrow for the second half of this list!

15 Best Movie Posters of 2022

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the mostly-annual year-end countdown of the best movie posters of the year! In case you’re unfamiliar with how this works, I spend the year trolling through impawards and collecting all the really cool, interesting and striking poster designs for 2022 movies and then narrow them down into a shortlist. As always, any poster released during the year is eligible to make the list, but special consideration is given to posters which are intended for mass distribution rather than posters which are intended to be limited-release, alternative, “artistic” posters. As usual, you can see the full-sized poster in all its glory if you click on the images. Anyway, with those considerations out of the way, let’s get onto the list, starting with some dishonourable mentions!

Dishonourable Mention: Me!

Well… this was embarrassing. Last year’s big winner, Jackass Forever, ended up slipping to 2022, meaning it shouldn’t have even been on the list and should probably be winning this year’s award instead… To be fair, when I wrote the article it hadn’t been delayed into 2022 yet and I didn’t realize the issue until much later, but that was certainly embarrassing when I clued in.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/bezos.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/gamestop_rise_of_the_players.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/dakota.html

Dishonourable Mentions: All This Shit

Ok, I don’t want to take up this preamble with a half dozen Dishonourable Mentions, but good God were there an unusually high number of notably-shitty posters this year. On the one hand you’ve got bootlicking shit like Bezos, which makes me retroactively hate the cult of personality that Steve Jobs cultivated even more than I already did. Then there’s cringe shit like the poster for Gamestop: Rise of the Players, which is a fascinating story but one which this poster memes to the point where I’d be embarrassed to even see their documentary. And then there’s stuff like Dakota, which despite featuring a good boy Malinois, has some of the worst graphic design I’ve seen on one of these lists before. The blue background against that garish red font literally hurts my eyes to look at.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s get on to this year’s best posters!

http://www.impawards.com/2022/x_ver6.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/x_xlg.html

15) X

X was one of my favourite movies of the last year and these posters were actually part of the reason I checked it out in the first place. The graphic designers have outdone themselves in all of their designs for this film, capturing the 70s aesthetic and lurid subject matter through the imagery they’ve used (the crossed legs making an “X” is particularly clever). These posters don’t really spoil anything, but they prime you for the tone and feel of the movie in an abstract way and for that I think that the designers deserve some accolades.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/texas_chainsaw_massacre_ver2_xlg.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/texas_chainsaw_massacre_xlg.html

14) Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the stupidest horror movies of the year, but goddamn if the posters for it weren’t some of the year’s most interesting and evocative. The sun-drenched poster is beautiful and disturbing, hiding Leatherface’s visage despite him being in full daylight. Meanwhile, I really like the abstract painting of Leatherface’s mask, which shows very little but aptly promises the “face of madness”. There’s even a little homage of the last shot from the original film beneath Leatherface’s mouth on this poster. Just great posters overall, which is especially surprising considering that the film’s Netflix release meant that they theoretically could have gotten away with marketing the film without producing any.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/good_egg_xlg.html

13) Good Egg

Here’s one of those little movies that wouldn’t get a lot of attention if not for the very striking poster design. Despite knowing nothing about this movie before seeing its poster, it’s impressive how much about the movie you can glean from this poster (it’s about a woman who has been having no luck with invitro fertilization so she turns to criminal methods to help out; hijinks ensure). In fact this poster’s so good that I legitimately want to see this movie now, so you know they did something right!

http://www.impawards.com/2022/jurassic_world_dominion_ver3_xlg.html

12) Jurassic World: Dominion

Much ink has been spilled about how Jurassic World: Dominion wastes its “dinosaurs on the mainland” setup, but for a moment there in the marketing it looked like we’d get to see cool scenes like this where a t-rex interrupts a drive-in movie showing. Depending on what you were looking to get out of Dominion, you could also argue that this makes this particular poster better than the movie we actually got. It’s also kind of wild because this is technically a poster for a teaser trailer, which feels like the pinnacle of big budget franchise marketing excess. If you want to get nitpicky, some of the photoshop compositing isn’t the best, but I really like the premise here and think that it effectively gets across the terror and wonder of dinosaurs unleashed in the real world.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/guillermo_del_toros_pinocchio_ver3.html

11) Pinocchio

It would take a lot to get me to give a shit about a Pinocchio movie (a fact evidenced by Disney’s own attempt this year coming and going without me even noticing), but apparently that limit for me is a poster with the name “Guillmero del Toro” on it. Del Toro’s creature designs are always fascinating and this poster puts that on full display, promising an unsettling take on Pinocchio which is more than a little reminiscent of Pan’s Labyrinth. Add on that this is not just childhood nostalgia pandering and this is a Pinocchio project that I actually have some interest in checking out when it releases on Netflix.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/black_panther_wakanda_forever_ver2_xlg.html

10) Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Marvel movies tend to have pretty boring poster designs, but this one for Wakanda Forever struck me as being visually interesting the first time I saw it. It checks off all the standard “character poster” designs on the top half, but the way it places Namor and his forces upside down on the poster is interesting. It’s a clear visual metaphor, showing that the two sides are mirrored opposites, but it works really well and with more creativity than I’ve come to expect from Marvel these days.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/spin_me_round_xlg.html

9) Spin Me Round

I was thinking of giving the award for “movie poster that looks most like a dime-store novel” to The Black Phone, but Spin Me Round executes on that premise so much better in my opinion. It captures the harlequin romance cover aesthetic perfectly, with just a wink and a nod that everything may not be as straightforward as it may seem with Alison Brie’s backward glance towards the audience. Given that this is by the director of The Little Hours, which was basically the plot of a nun porn without the porn, this definitely is an intentional hint at all sorts of comedic chaos.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/northman_ver10_xlg.html

8) The Northman

The Northman makes this list mainly because… well, just look at it, it’s a gorgeous shot. Robert Eggers knows how to wring every bit of potential out of his historical films and give us some really striking visual design. Whoever decided that Bjork would make a great viking deserves all the praise. Muted colour schemes don’t always work, but here combined with the off-focus it grants The Seeress an ethereal glow which is hard to look away from.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/white_noise_ver5_xlg.html

7) White Noise

This poster makes the list for the sheer excess of it. It looks like an I Spy or Where’s Waldo illustration – everywhere you look there’s something interesting going on and the poster rewards careful study of it. There’s lots of little hidden details throughout, including the names of the director and the stars, plus various little gags and hints about the movie’s plot. You could argue that the poster is just too much, but considering how much this makes me want to study every little detail, I think it succeeds with aplomb.

6) Nope

For my money, Nope has the most iconic poster design of the year and it doesn’t even come close. This is one of those posters like for Jaws or Star Wars that people are still going to remember years from now. It doesn’t reveal anything about the movie really, just hinting at the alien abduction aspects, but it’s such a striking image and the title is so blunt that it sticks in your head immediately.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/fire_of_love_xlg.html

5) Fire of Love

Fire of Love‘s poster asks a simple question: do you want to watch a documentary about a volcanologist couple who stand in front of giant walls of lava like it ain’t no thing? It’s such a simple poster, selling you on the film itself with some of the striking, unbelievable imagery which has been captured for it and allowing that to speak for itself.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/deep_water_ver4.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/deep_water_ver5.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/deep_water_ver6.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/deep_water_ver8.html

4) Deep Water

I don’t know anything about Deep Water, but the graphic designers went hard on it this year, putting out a ton of bomb-ass posters (to the point where I haven’t even posted all the posters I liked for this one film here). They’re all abstract, with vivid colours and imagery that hints at a movie full of sex, mystery, drama and murder. Again, this is for a Hulu film so it’s not like they needed to go this hard with their marketing, but the fact that they did really has helped make this movie’s posters stand out.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/everything_everywhere_all_at_once_ver2.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/everything_everywhere_all_at_once_ver6.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/everything_everywhere_all_at_once_ver8.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/everything_everywhere_all_at_once.html

3) Everything Everywhere All At Once

I usually hate multiverse stories, but Everything Everywhere All At Once makes the most of the premise with some really fun and striking “alternate universe” posters. Raccacoonie in particular looks hilarious and nails the quirky Disney animation poster design perfectly, while the googly eye poster is weirdly unsettling. Even the standard poster is colourful and visually interesting, showing off the various alternate universes in a more efficient (if less fun) fashion. Everything Everywhere All At Once has had easily the funnest posters of the year, which is actually an accomplishment considering how much I enjoyed that one for White Noise.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/batman_ver3.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/batman_ver4.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/batman_ver25.html

2) The Batman

Batman movies have been trying to one-up themselves for a decade an a half now with how grim-dark they can get, and these posters for The Batman easily take the cake for how moody and dark they are. The red and black contrast is eye-catching and sets the oppressive, noir tone efficiently. The poster with the Riddler looks more akin to a serial killer film than it does a traditional Batman poster and the poster that frames Batman with the question mark hints at the Riddler’s involvement in iconic fashion. All-in-all, the posters for this incarnation of the bat are thematically united, hinting at a take on the character which will be darker, more serious and more disturbing than any we have seen before.

http://www.impawards.com/2022/crimes_of_the_future_ver4_xlg.html
http://www.impawards.com/2022/crimes_of_the_future_xlg.html

1) Crimes of the Future

NOPE. These posters are weird and disturbing enough without context, but if you know David Cronenberg and his penchant for twisted sci-fi and body horror, then these posters should be making your skin crawl. These posters only hint at the sorts of sick depravity you’re in store for if you watch this movie and for that they are easily the most effective posters I’ve seen all year.

I’m Alive

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Hey, I just wanted to put out a quick update on the blog since there has been an extended period of radio silence. I know that I long ago committed to writing and updating the blog in my own time, but I do feel bad when I go long periods between posts, so I feel like some sort of excuse is in order. Probably most importantly, at the end of July I had my second child, so I’ve had much less leisure time where I could just sit down and write.

I have had Retrospective series and other posts that I’ve wanted to write for a couple years now, but just have no had the time to dedicate to these. Retrospectives in particular are big undertakings, often taking several hours each in addition to the time needed to actually watch all the media involved, and I just have not been able to justify the time commitment that would require. Love/Hate articles, in contrast, take a fraction of the time and have been much more realistic, plus I enjoy the format so expect to see more of those until I have more time for deeper dives.

For that matter, the Resident Evil Love/Hate series is still underway, I have a couple posts completed already for the next batch of articles, but it will likely be a long time before those are completed. It’s new Pokemon season, so I’ll be dedicating most of my playing time to that before diving into any more Resident Evil games. I do plan on doing the Resident Evil Village DLC in the near future though, so when that’s completed I’ll likely edit the existing article, or I’ll do a new one if the DLC is substantial enough.

All this said, I do still have my usual year-end music and movie poster rankings coming on schedule. I work on these throughout the year in bits and pieces so they should be ready at their usual times in December. I also have put work into a big, only slightly masturbatory writing project through the year and that might see release in the new year. I have no idea if anyone will care about it, but whatever, this is my blog and I like to experiment with what I do here. Anyway, that’s where I’m at for now, hopefully I’m able to dedicate more time to writing in 2023 if life becomes a bit more stable.

Love/Hate: Resident Evil Village

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Resident Evil love/hate series! In this entry we’re looking at Resident Evil Village, the most recent entry in the franchise thus far. After the successful resurrection of the franchise with Resident Evil 7 and then the blockbuster hits that were the Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes, everyone was excited to see what direction Capcom were going to go next. Their answer was Resident Evil Village, a game which (thankfully) looked to push the bounds of the franchise with vampires, werewolves and a gothic aesthetic that looked more than a little inspired by Resident Evil 4. Could Capcom keep the series’ revival going? Read on to find out…

Also, just before we get into the meat of this article, I played this game on a base PS4. The game still looks and runs fantastically on old hardware, I didn’t really notice any issues in my playthrough. I’m sure it looks absolutely stunning on current-gen systems, but don’t feel like you have to wait to get the full experience.

Love

  • Great Characters – Most Resident Evil games have one or two really compelling leads and maybe a good villain, but Resident Evil Village has one of the most compelling casts in the whole franchise. There’s at least three top-tier villains, two solid heroes, a top-tier side-character and nearly every other major player has a ton of personality that makes them memorable. The four lords in particular are all fantastic, having more in common with a Metal Gear rogues gallery than they do Resident Evil, which works in their favour. Alcina Dimitrescu makes for a very compelling, haughty antagonist as she stalks you through her castle with her daughters and toys with you, believing you to be below her attention. Donna Beneviento is just creepy, the way she messes with your mind during her level tells you more about her than any exposition could. Salvatore Moreau is a pathetic momma’s boy, you feel a lot of pity for him as you put him out of his misery. Karl Heisenberg is really interesting, a truly chaotic force within the plot whose performance nails the “Nicholas Cage” energy it was going for. Mother Miranda has less personality than any of the four lords, but the game builds up an appropriately intimidating atmosphere around her character which keeps her from falling flat. As for the leads, Ethan Winters has so much more personality here than he did in Resident Evil 7, reacting appropriately as he tears his way through the village to save his daughter. As for Chris Redfield, this was honestly the first time a Resident Evil game has made me interested in him. His heel-turn is definitely contrived, but the portrayal of Chris here is one who is supremely confident and weathered, actually feeling like a proper soldier for once. Perhaps the biggest surprise has to be The Duke though. I was expecting him to be a second-rate Merchant, but he manages to be interesting, mysterious and strange all at once, allowing him to stand on his own merits.
  • Variety – Going into Resident Evil Village I expected this game to just be a ripoff of Resident Evil 4. While it is clearly drawing some inspiration from Resident Evil 4, Village is very much its own game. Perhaps the most interesting way that Village differentiates itself is in how wildly it shifts tones and gameplay in each section. The village is reminiscent of the early hours of Resident Evil 4, then Castle Dimitrescu feels like the original Resident Evil with a gothic coat of paint, House Beneviento goes full-on P.T. with its psychological horror/escape room vibe, Moreau Reservoir has lots of puzzle/environmental hazard gameplay in a Lovecraftian fishing village, the factory plays like a slow-paced Doom game and then the last stretch of the game goes from tank-battle, to full-bore shooter and then to an almost Souls-like final boss. It’s a lot of different styles and tones across a 8-12 hour playthrough and while some work more than others, there should be some levels that catch your interest.
  • Some Great Level Design – Compared to Resident Evil 7, Village is a more linear and expansive game. However, it still does work in some looping areas as it goes along. The most obvious example of this is the main village area, which you can nearly fully-explore in your initial visit, but as the game progresses you will be able to return to areas you couldn’t open at the time, and after nearly every major event some new enemy type or secret area will open up, encouraging you to explore the world as much as you can. Castle Dimitrescu also feels like classic Resident Evil level design as you trek out from the one safe room to find keys, solve puzzles and dodge the pursuer enemies looking to drain your blood. House Beneviento, as I’ve stated, feels like the fulfilled promise of P.T., utilizing frequent backtracking and escape room-like gameplay to mess with the player and build tension until unleashing it all in truly terrifying fashion.
  • Secrets Everywhere! – While I’m mildly disappointed that Village doesn’t have deviously well-hidden items like Resident Evil 7 did, it makes up for it with all the hidden secrets it backs into its levels. Whether its the hidden areas full of rewarding gear, tough bosses off the beaten path, or the iron balls you can use to unlock the rewarding (and fun) labyrinth puzzles, there’s always something new to do in the village after you complete each level. In fact, I know for a fact I missed a few of these secrets in my playthrough and it almost makes me want to go back to find them again.

Mixed

  • Story Goes Off the Rails in the Last Hour – Surprise, surprise, another Resident Evil game has a narrative I can’t fully get on board with. In some ways, Village may just have the deepest narrative in the franchise, if only because it actually has a theme that it weaves throughout the entire narrative. Specifically, the story is very much about parenthood, the lengths that parents and children will go to for each other. Many of the game’s strongest and most horrific moments revolve around this very theme. However, the story really falls off the rails in the last hour. Much of this has to do with the game’s opening, where Chris kills Ethan’s wife, Mia, and kidnaps their daughter, Rose, who then gets intercepted by Mother Miranda and brought to the titular village. While this makes for a really intriguing narrative hook, the game undermines it in the last hour when it reveals that “Mia” was actually Miranda in disguise and that Chris was actually trying to save Rose… but didn’t bother to tell Ethan for absolutely no reason. It’s stupid, transparently so, and is the one thing that makes me second-guess whether this is the best Chris Redfield portrayal or not. It also doesn’t help that after all the hyping up, Mother Miranda doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to shine and live up to the hype. She very much suffers from a “tell, not show” approach. If she had some more opportunity to get fleshed out she could have been one of the most memorable Resident Evil villains.
  • Hints of What’s to Come – The closing minutes of Village are perhaps some of the most interesting to talk about. It is revealed that the BSAA, the heroic anti-bio-terror organization which has been a fixture in the series since Resident Evil 5, have become corrupt and are now deploying B.O.W.s to combat bio-terror. Obviously, this is hinting at a future where we may have to take down the BSAA, which sounds interesting to say the least. The other big reveal is that Rose grows up infected with the mold, which has given her powers that the government are monitoring closely (kind of like Sherry Birkin in Resident Evil 6). On the one hand, my gut tells me that these plot threads are going to lead us back down an action-heavy direction for the series like Resident Evil 5 and 6 did. If followed to their natural conclusion, you’d need either a soldier-type like Chris or Jill leading the fight against the BSAA and all their B.O.W. soldiers, or you’d need a super-powered Rose Winters leading the fight. Either way, it’s far away from the intimate, tense, horror-focused gameplay of the best Resident Evil games and I’d hate to see the series leave that behind again right after finding its footing. That said, I really don’t want Resident Evil to have yet another major plot hook meet a dead-end. Jake Muller (who was poised to take over the franchise) hasn’t been seen in 10 years, nothing has been done about Alex Wesker’s personality taking control of Natalia and we still know basically nothing about Blue Umbrella or what Mia was up to in Resident Evil 7. Oh, speaking of which…

Hate

  • Mia Gets Totally Shafted – If there’s one character who truly gets done dirty in this game, it’s Mia Winters. In a rather shocking twist, Resident Evil 7 reveals that Mia is secretly a part of a freaking bio-terror organization, a fact which comes to light over the course of the game. It was kind of expected that this would be explored more in Village, maybe even be why Chris shoots her in the opening sequence… but no, it is never brought up at all. In fact, Mia is relegated to the role of damsel and crying wife. She’s literally just locked up in a cage throughout the entire events of the game, gets rescued by Chris about 30 minutes before the game ends and then cries and freaks out asking where Ethan is. It’s borderline insulting that Mia gets treated this way, she was (and is) a far more compelling character than Ethan is and could have made for a great hero (or antagonist!) in this game if they’d just stuck with the narrative threads they’d established for her. Honestly, I want her to come back for Resident Evil 9. I think the villainous route could work really well for her. Maybe she had Rose with Ethan in order to continue her research, it is implied she knew Miranda and maybe she was working with her as well. This could lead to a F.E.A.R.-like situation if Mia turns Rose evil, which could be an interesting direction that could keep the games from getting too action-heavy.
  • Two Back-to-Back Awful Levels – The second half of this game really soured the experience for me. I know some people don’t like either Moreau’s Reservoir or they don’t like the factory, but I had the unpleasant experience of hating both.
    • Moreau’s area was unfocused and mediocre enough in the mines, but when you have to make your way to drain the sunken village it became an incredibly frustrating game of trial and error. Basically, you have to maneuver across planks before they go in the water, but if you fail, or if you happen to try at a moment when Moreau jumps past you, then you fall in the water and instantly get killed. I must have died here more times than in the rest of the game combined, and nearly every death was total bullshit. You can tell that there were some major cuts made here, a fact which was only recently confirmed. The original concept for the area sounds way more intriguing than what we got and I’m sad that the developers didn’t get more time to make it work.
    • Meanwhile, Heisenberg’s factory is just a slog. You have a fight tons of cyborg-zombies which become stronger and more well-armoured as the level progresses to keep things interesting. While I appreciate the attempts to keep the fights from getting too routine and I like some of the level design, the factory just goes on way too goddamn long and outstays its welcome. The game is also a lot more action-heavy during this time and every enemy feels like it takes too many shots to down them… everything is just “too much” and really should have been scaled back. Cut 20-30 minutes off this level and the game itself would be vastly improved.
  • Exploration Just Suddenly Ends Without Warning – As I headed off to Heisenberg’s factory, I had no idea that, once I went through those doors, the freeform exploration that the game had allowed up to that point was done. I had some puzzles and areas to explore still, but I figured I’d get a chance to clean all that up after the factory and before moving on to whatever area Miranda was in… haha, nope. As soon as the factory’s done the end-game gauntlet begins and goes on for nearly an hour. There’s also no merchant or weapon upgrades during this time either, so I sure hope you made use of The Duke’s services before you fought Heisenberg. Honestly, this is kind of baffling to me, I can’t help but wonder if they had to rush the ending or cut out some more areas, but it really annoyed me that you couldn’t get one last chance to explore the village before the final showdown.

Resident Evil Village was a big of a mixed bag for me. The first half was fantastic all-round, but by the time I hit the mid-point the game really nose-dived in quality and it left me feeling disappointed at how things went. I appreciate Capcom’s willingness to experiment with the franchise, but I definitely preferred the more focused and small-scale stakes of Resident Evil 7 and hope that the series will try to emulate that experience going forward.

Love/Hate: Umbrella Corps

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Yeah that’s right, this one doesn’t even have the Resident Evil moniker, Capcom literally just called it Umbrella Corps. I’m not even going to mince words, this game fucking sucks. It is far and away the worst Resident Evil game I’ve played and I have a hard time imagining how a AAA studio could make a game shittier than this in future. How they managed to make a worse shooter than Resident Evil: Survivor in an era when shooters had been long figured out is beyond me. Oh and as for why I’m covering this game now instead of later with the Resident Evil spin-off titles? Despite being a multiplayer shooter, it is somehow, inexplicably canon.

Love

  • No Microtransactions – I shouldn’t even have to give a game any sort of kudos for not being predatory, but Umbrella Corps seems so ripe for microtransactions that it is shocking to see them absent. Especially for a hollow game like this, you’d expect it to be nothing but a vector to shove microtransactions at gamers, but no, somehow Capcom had some pride in this game. Hooray?
  • Fan Service – Okay, I’ve got to admit that seeing the Resident Evil 4 village in full HD is pretty damn cool. The game even adopts some of the movement mechanics of that game into the map design, encouraging more verticality. Similarly, the Kijuju village map features much more aggressive enemies, similar to how Resident Evil 5 plays, making the game almost feel like a bite-sized remake at times.

Mixed

  • Customization – Like I mentioned on Resident Evil 6, I love when a game lets you customize trivial things to your liking. Wanna pick the colour of your uniform, your helmet emblems, your gun sights and reticule? Umbrella Corps has you covered. However, you get the sense that they may have put the horse before the cart because you’re telling me that you only start out with two shotguns, two SMGs and 2 pistols? Seriously? I mean, you could theoretically unlock more, but… well…
  • Movement Speed – Holy crap you move FAST in this game, which feels at odds with the tiny maps you’re running around in. Even with just your base movement speed you can cross a room in a couple seconds at most, which I can only imagine was to copy the blistering mobility of games of the time like Titanfall and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. I don’t really like the speed of the game, it feels “wrong” to me, but that’s more of a subjective annoyance rather than an actual flaw so your mileage may vary.

Hate

  • An Online Shooter With No Online – The big issue with online-focused games is that they are inevitably going to be worthless and most of the content inaccessible once the online part of the game comes to an end. It’s one thing to hold that against a game like MAG or Warhawk where they provided years of online play to people who were buying the game. However, I have absolutely no reservations about Umbrella Corps, because it was dead on arrival. Within a month it was basically unplayable, with less than 50 people playing at any one time. In its release year it spent more time in an unplayable state than it did playable, which mean that this is the game’s content as far as I’m concerned. And Capcom’s still selling the “Deluxe Edition” for $33.50 on PSN! For a completely dead game!!!
  • The Experiment – Full-stop, the single player content in this game is miserable. This would be bad enough if it was just a bonus mode you could ignore, but this especially hurts because it’s the only part of the game that’s actually playable. It plays like Black Ops Declassified, the bargain-basement PS Vita Call of Duty game Activision shit out. You do spec ops missions with such engaging objectives as “kill a bunch of enemies” and “hold some points for 10 seconds”, bored to tears the whole time, stuck with the default weapon loadouts and each mission may take like 2 minutes at most to complete. To compensate for this, the game makes all enemies kill you in 1 or 2 hits, so if you make any kind of mistake then you’re punished severely. If you want to make the game even more boring you can cheese this by standing in front of the meat piles that zombies spawn from and just shoot them before they can even react, but… like, the game is boring enough as is. I’m not ashamed to admit that I quit about halfway through The Experiment, it was that joyless. The game had me doing a tedious “kill 20 enemies” mission and then round 2 was “hold point 10 seconds 5 times”. I died in the 2nd round and had to replay the entire first round again. I wanted to see Raccoon City, but fuck this, I’m not playing this game ever again.
  • Basic Design Decisions Are Flawed – Umbrella Corps just feels “off” when you’re playing it. The aforementioned movement speed doesn’t help too much but on it’s own it’s not an insurmountable problem. The problems arise from how awkward the basic shooting gameplay is. The game’s in a third person perspective, but suddenly switches to first person when you aim down sights. This is disorienting enough, but for a bonus it doesn’t do this if you’re in cover, in that context it just zooms the third person camera when you ADS. It got to the point where I was just hip-firing at all times rather than deal with the camera zooming in and out all the time.
  • Repeated Voice Lines – Get ready to tear your ears off if you hop into The Experiment. Every time you pick up a DNA sample you’re going to hear “This one’s mine!” and “There is is!” over and over and over and over and over and over and over. I swear to God that no one in charge tested this game, no one would greenlight a game this annoying and “yeah, that’s acceptable”.
  • Information Overload – Umbrella Corps‘ UI is buck-wild. In addition to standard shooter UI, the game shows you exactly where you can climb, take cover and the exact range of your melee weapons… which, combined with the small maps means that at any one time your view is going to be filled with obtrusive, over-animated bullshit, whether you wanted to or not.

Umbrella Corps is fucking garbage. I spent $6.50 on this game and I kind of knew what I was getting into, but even that felt like I was getting ripped off. I really want to know how Capcom fucked this up so badly, because there are Steam Greenlight games with better all-round design than this piece of shit.

Love/Hate: Resident Evil – Revelations 2

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Resident Evil love/hate series! In this entry we’re looking at Resident Evil: Revelations 2, a game which, in hindsight, feels like Capcom testing the waters between Resident Evil 6 and 7. Like its predecessor, Revelations 2 experiments with the franchise’s usual formula in plenty of interesting ways. Does it work out for the better? Read on to find out…

Love

  • Horror Is Back, Baby! – The first Resident Evil: Revelations was clearly trying to harken back to the survival horror gameplay of the franchise’s classic entries, but Revelations 2 decides to lean full-tilt into being a horror game. It wears its influences on its sleeves – the Claire/Moira sections are very intense, like Saw II mashed with a creature feature (there’s even a chapter with its own Saw traps!), whereas Barry/Natalia’s sections are much slower-paced and have a post-apocalyptic feel, like The Last of Us. It’s a much more small-scale and intimate return to form for the franchise, which had been going off the rails for years by this point.
  • Lots of Great Characters – Revelations 2 scales down the cast compared to its predecessor, but in doing so it crafts a far more focused and impactful journey for most of them. By far the best of the bunch are Barry Burton and his daughter Moira. It’s really nice to see Barry again after so long and the fact that we like him so much makes us want to find his missing daughter all the more. Speaking of which, Moira has a great debut here. Like most modern-day Resident Evil heroines, she has a serious potty mouth, which goes along with her off-the-charts sass, but it makes her endearing. Learning what caused the rift between her and Barry and helping her overcome her fears makes for a surprisingly poignant journey. Natalia is also a surprisingly decent character, I was worried that a little girl character could get annoyingly precocious or just be used as a vector for limp scares, but she manages to hold her own. I also found the game’s villain to be very creepy, I wish that they had gotten a bit more to do but they really made an impact here.
  • Some Interesting New Enemies – Most of Revelations 2‘s enemies are the usual variety of fast/slow zombies, heavy weapon zombies, etc, but Barry’s campaign has a couple of really interesting new enemy types.
    • First of all are the glasps, which are basically big, invisible bugs. As they close in on you, the camera begins to lose focus in their direction, giving you a hint about where they are. In addition, Natalia can see them, so you can either switch to her to see where they are, or aim and listen to her call-outs to know where to shoot. They’re usually not much of a threat, but they are spooky, so they fit the game’s horror ambitions well.
    • My favourite enemy though are the Revenants, big, creepy zombies with armour all over their bodies which move erratically as you blow the plates off. The really interesting part though is that every Revenant has a randomized parasite in one of its extremities, kind of like the Regeneradors from Resident Evil 4. If you know where their weak points are, you can kill them in as little as two shots, but if you don’t you can waste a lot of ammo guessing. This incentivizes strategic play any time you encounter a Revenant. Natalia can see the parasites, so you can switch to her to know where to shoot, or you can use stealth to get close and one-shot them with a knife takedown. All-in-all, they’re a nice shake-up from the usual sorts of enemies we encounter in these games and the fact that they require some strategizing to kill effectively is appreciated.
  • Partner Switching Returns! – Thirteen years after being introduced in Resident Evil 0, seamless character switching makes its triumphant return in Revelations 2! With a press of a button you can instantly switch characters. While there aren’t quite as many puzzles requiring your characters to separate, in some ways this feature felt more necessary in Revelations 2, because your characters are far more specialized. Claire/Barry are the only characters who can shoot guns at enemies, meaning they’re going to be doing most of the combat, whereas Moira and Natalia can be used to stun enemies and find hidden items in the environment. Because of this, I got into a rhythm of playing as the item-finding characters 60% of the time and then switching to my fighter when combat gets triggered. Of course, if you don’t want to partner switch, then you could always use…
  • Split-screen Co-op! – I was legitimately surprised when I found out that Revelations 2 had a split-screen mode. Considering that Resident Evil 5 and 6 both had split-screen, I probably shouldn’t have been, but it’s a welcome surprise. It may not be as fun of an experience as those games since one player is going to be severely underpowered at all times, but having to adapt to being a support character could make Revelations 2 a unique co-op experience.
  • An Actual Dodge Button – Capcom must have heard my complaints about the dodge in the original Revelations, because the dodge here solves every single problem I had with that game’s system. All you have to do is press a button and it will play an animation, oh my God! Honestly, this probably shouldn’t even warrant an entry on the list, but the fact that I loathed the original game’s dodge so much made this such a joyous addition.

Mixed

  • Nerfed Weapon Upgrade System – Considering how much I loved the weapon upgrade system in the original Revelations, I was really excited to see it back in Revelations 2. However, the devs have made some tweaks to this system which make it so much less satisfying. First of all, the upgrade screen now shows you far less information – you can’t even see what effect applying an upgrade will have to your stats until you have applied it… why would they do this? Secondly, parts kits are significantly rarer than they were in the first game. You could reliably find 1-2 parts kits every time you passed a weapons bench in the first game, but here it’s not unusual for me to go a whole chapter and only find a couple upgrades the whole time. The devs seem to have made the decision to have parts kits be hidden much better in the environment, meaning that you really have to go looking to find them now. You can argue that it’s more rewarding, but I just find it leaves your weapons feeling far less personalized over the course of the playthrough.
  • Oh Hey, Skills Are Back… – Skills return from Resident Evil 6… and they’re about as useless as ever. As you play through the game you can find gems which will earn you BP which you can use at the end of a chapter to purchase skills, but most of these skills are very underwhelming. I can increase my fire rate when I crouch by 10%? Wow. I can heal my partner from a downed state faster (a state that I had my partner get into once in the entire game)? What a steal… But hey, at least BP is pretty easy to come by and they combined Skills with an actual weapon upgrade system, so it’s at best unobtrusive. It is, however, pretty underwhelming considering that they included a medal system to try to incentivize getting lots of bonus BP.

Hate

  • Linear Level Design – Probably the biggest change in Revelations 2 is that it drops the looping level design in favour of a far more linear progression, which feels pretty disappointing in comparison. Some of this could be chalked up to the game’s episodic release structure, which could make it difficult to design the game with hub areas, looping levels and gradual exploration of a larger area. Making matters worse, Barry’s segments recycle areas from Claire’s campaign. In fact, Barry doesn’t get any substantial new areas until Chapter 3 (of 4, for the record), meaning that nearly a quarter of the game feels like an asset flip. Thankfully, like I’ve said, the tone and pacing in Barry’s version of these areas is completely different so it doesn’t feel too egregious.
  • Claire Gets Shafted – Going into this game I thought that Claire Redfield was the main character, but holy shit does she ever feel like an afterthought. She basically adds nothing to the plot. Like, the ingredients for her to actually matter are there – Moira needs to overcome her fears in order to save the day, why can’t we make it clear that Claire is the one to inspire her? Hell, the game’s T-virus strain is triggered by fear and the villain wants Natalia specifically because she’s fearless… yet she casts aside Claire without a second thought. You’re telling me that Natalia’s more fearless than Claire is at this point? Hell, even at the end when Claire comes back to finish the fight, Barry’s just like “fuck off, this is my fight”. Sure, Claire gets the final hit in, but again it all feels like an afterthought… And oh my God don’t even get me started on her “relationship” with Neil that comes out of nowhere. It’s so badly done that it undermines and sort of emotional heft that could have been mined from it. All-in-all, this is the Burtons’ game and Claire is one again relegated to supporting character which is very disappointing.
    • On a related note, Kaya Scodelario who plays Claire in Welcome to Raccoon City got dragged by Resident Evil fans for saying that Claire gets screwed over after Resident Evil 2… but, like, she undeniably did. After 2 she gets Code: Veronica, which puts her in the back seat for Chris halfway through, and then… this. Claire got shafted hardcore by Capcom and anyone who argued otherwise needs to take a step back and look at just how under-represented Claire is.
  • Bleed/Healing System – One of Revelations 2‘s experiments with the series’ survival horror formula involves adding a bleed status and I’ve got to say that I’m not a fan of this system at all. If you get hit by a strong attack from an enemy, this will cause the edges of the screen to turn a sharp red and your health will drain over time. The only way to stop this is for you or your partner to either apply a tourniquet or use a green herb. It’s fine in concept, but in execution it doesn’t work. First of all, there’s no hotkey to use a tourniquet, so you have to dive into your menu to do it… but if you got hit by an enemy then you’re still in combat and you won’t have time to do that (opening the inventory doesn’t pause the game in Revelations 2). Secondly, you never know if your partner is going to use a tourniquet on you or not, it’s a crapshoot really. Thirdly, I don’t like the way this game indicates damage – you can’t really tell how damaged you are, and even a couple small hits turn a third of your screen red so for all I know I was healing all game while still over half health. Oh and the game also has ANOTHER system where your vision can be obscured by gunk so you can apply disinfectant to clear your screen, but again… why? With no hotkey I’m not digging through my inventory for this.
  • HOLD ONTO THE FUCKING BRICK, NATALIA – Holy fucking shit this annoyed the hell out of me. Natalia’s only offensive option is to pick up bricks in the environment and throw them at enemies or bash them up close. You’d think she could just carry them around easily, but no, if you do anything she will drop it automatically. Went up a ladder? Brick’s gone? Slide down a hill? Bye-bye brick. Open a door? No bricks allowed. It’s so stupid, it makes it so that you can’t even reliably plan to have a brick for any upcoming combats and I honestly can’t wrap my head around why the devs would program the game like this.
  • Doesn’t Take Advantage of A/B Scenario – Revelations 2 makes some attempts for actions taken in Claire’s scenario to affect Barry’s scenario, but these feel token at best. There are a handful of enemies in each chapter with glowing heads whose survival or death affects Barry’s campaign, plus interacting with a couple objects may open up different paths, but that’s it. It could have been cool if there was more ways to “leave a mark” on Barry’s campaign, but unfortunately the execution here is so limited that it is effectively non-existent.
  • Bugs – There are bugs everywhere in this game, and not just of the invisible-variety. Animation bugs are by far the most common and egregious – you will see objects and characters clip through the environment all the time. Even the mandatory sliding animations to load into new areas will blatantly show Barry and Natalia halfway up to their knees in the environment which is really immersion-breaking.
  • The Story Crumbles By the End – By the end of the first half, Revelations 2 had one of the best stories in any Resident Evil game going. The character drama is strong and Chapter 2 ends with a hell of a cliff-hanger, but after this point the plot quickly starts to fall apart. Chapter 3 really puts Claire’s “relationship” with Neil center stage and it goes off like a wet fart, whereas Barry’s Chapter 3 is basically just busywork, feeling like padding. However, by the time you reach the story revelations in Chapter 4 the plot crumbles with any level of scrutiny (spoilers ahead). For example, if Neil was secretly supporting bioterrorism, why did he kidnap his own employees as test subjects? And, for that matter, why kidnap Claire goddamn Redfield!? All that said, Revelations 2 ends on a cliffhanger that must be addressed in a future Resident Evil game, it’s far too big to just leave it as a loose end forever.

I enjoyed Resident Evil: Revelations 2 quite a bit, but it is a far different game than its predecessor. I like some things they did here more than the original, but for every improvement there’s a step back which hinders the experience somewhat. If they had ironed out a handful of the annoyances (eg, drop the bleed system, keep weapon upgrades how they were in the original, tighten the story, etc) then it’d probably be a clear head and shoulders above the first Revelations, but as-is I appreciate both for their unique takes on survival horror.

Love/Hate: Resident Evil – Revelations

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to the Resident Evil love/hate series! In this entry we’re going to start arguably the most prominent and popular spin-off series in the franchise, Resident Evil: Revelations. Conceived as an interquel set between Resident Evil 4 and 5 and initially designed as a handheld experience, Revelations has since made its way to TV screen and computer monitors. This game also came out at a time when Resident Evil was at its most troubled – the horror elements of the franchise had been forgotten and Resident Evil 6 and Operation Racoon City were just on the horizon to make things even worse. With all this in mind, how does Revelations hold up today compared to its full-fledged console brethren? Read on to find out…

Love

  • Really Impressive For a 3DS Game – While it’s not quite on the same level as Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Revelations makes the jump from handheld to console surprisingly well. You can definitely tell that the game was designed for less-powerful hardware – the graphics range from near PS3-quality for some of the character models to sub-PS1 for parts of the environment, the animations (especially for enemies) can be very stiff and limited and the whole experience feels like Resident Evil 5-lite. However, this ultimately makes the game all the more impressive because throughout the entire playthrough I found myself saying holy shit this was running on a 3DS?!
  • Great Pacing – Resident Evil games, especially after 4, had a bad habit of trying to stretch out their levels as much as possible, making each one take around an hour to get through. Revelations, on the other hand, is designed for handhelds and so most levels top out between 30-45 minutes, which are often divided up between 5-30 minute chunks of gameplay, and each chapter ends with some sort of cliffhanger which makes you want to find out what will happen next. Honestly, I enjoyed this “TV drama” approach more than I expected to.
  • Some Great New Characters – Resident Evil can struggle at times to introduce interesting new characters (or, hell, can be adverse to introducing any), but Revelations has a bunch of fun, delightful additions that I really want to see come back to the franchise someday. The most notable is Parker, a super charming guy who is as memorable as fan-favourite Barry Burton. BSAA director O’Brian is also a solid character, literally a Colonel Campbell type (they even got Paul Eiding for the English dub to play him). Despite being one-note, I also found Jessica to be quite endearing, especially because she plays off of Chris and Parker well. I would be sad if none of these characters ever return to the series – don’t make me sad, Capcom!
  • Return to Classic Level Design – Resident Evil 4 moved the franchise towards a more linear level design, but a good chunk of Revelations harkens back to a more classic-style in line with the original Resident Evil. Over the course of the game, Jill will explore every area of the Queen Zenobia at least twice over, coming back to get to previously-inaccessible rooms and items as you go, which keeps the environments from feeling overly-repetitive. Like I’ve said, it’s pretty stripped-down compared to the classic Resident Evil games, so don’t expect to find an item and then have to trek to the other side of the ship to use it, the game is pretty good at funneling you where you need to go (which is good because the in-game map is not very helpful and the Queen Zenobia isn’t anywhere near as memorable as the Spencer Mansion or Raccoon Police Department).
  • Genesis – I was initially annoyed by the introduction of the Genesis scanning system; it felt like an unnecessary barrier to item discovery, when you should be able to just pick items up in the environment. However, soon enough I found it to be a fun, optional bonus you could use. Low on ammo? Pop out the Genesis and you’re sure to find some. It’s also very handy that when you walk into a room the scanner will tell you if there’s an item there, so you don’t have to waste time searching every corner of every room. It also has the bonus function of producing green herbs when you scan enough enemies… but it’s most effective when they’re still alive (some enemies can’t even be scanned when they die because their bodies dissolve immediately), so you have a strategic decision to make when using it. I’m not sure I’d like this to be added to any other Resident Evil game, but it works surprisingly well here.
  • Weapon Upgrades System – Revelations may have my favourite weapon upgrade system in the entire franchise. Hell, Revelations may have my favourite kind of weapon upgrade system in any game. Put simply, you’ll find parts kits in the environment as you play, the most valuable of which are in hard-to-reach places and/or hidden with the Genesis. If you’re actually looking for them, you should find one or two kits every time you set off to complete an objective. These kits allow you to equip perks onto your guns at workbenches. Each gun comes with a certain number of perk slots, perks can be swapped in and out at will and some perks are exclusive to each weapon. Furthermore, each perk has multiple levels of effectiveness which dramatically improve their quality (eg, Damage 1 boosts your gun by 10%… whereas Damage 5 boosts it 50%). All-in-all, it’s a great system that gives you a ton of flexibility and customization, encourages exploration to get the most out of your weapons and are doled out at a good pace to feel rewarding.

Mixed

  • The Shooting Gameplay – Revelations plays a lot like Resident Evil 5, which I was pretty meh on. Thankfully, the enemies in this game aren’t quite as bullet-spongey, but some of the endless shooting galleries (especially any time Hunters are on-screen) get to the point of being tedious and mind-numbing. Unlike, say, the Resident Evil 2 remake where you are encouraged to avoid/ignore enemies when you can, Revelations seems to expect you to kill everyone you come across, which clashes somewhat with the more classic survival horror elements of the game. It can be especially problematic during the handful of sequences where you get absolutely swarmed by enemies, where your success or failure will likely come down to whether you happen to have enough ammo stockpiled.

Hate

  • …And Some Awful New Characters – As much as I like the new cast in Revelations, there were some utter stinkers added to the roster which I would be remiss to ignore. Worst of all has to be Quint, an annoying dork who refuses to just shut the hell up for five seconds. He’s joined by his comedy side-kick, Grinder, who isn’t anywhere near as bad but ever time Quint said his nickname (which is all the time) all I can hear is “Grindr”… Anyway, this game is also saddled with Raymond, an even bigger dork with an awful, out-of-place anime character design, complete with huge red haircut and gigantic chad chin. Raymond himself isn’t that bad, but his design is so off-putting that I hated every moment he was on-screen and it definitely undermined the “cool guy” energy they were clearly aiming for.
  • Dodging – Okay, I will acknowledge that there is a good chance that this may be 100% on me, but holy fuck I could not dodge to save my life. There’s a whole dodging tutorial section in the early parts of the game where it tells you “move your analog stick and press X to dodge” and if you do it at the right time your character will dodge. Simple enough, but Jesus Christ it doesn’t work. First of all, there is no associated animation for a failed dodge, so you either do it perfectly or don’t do anything, making it difficult to know if I’m even performing it right. Secondly, I would constantly perform dodges at random in this game without even intending to and I can tell you for a fact that all I was doing at the time was moving the stick, I was definitely not pressing X too. Worst of all, dodging is crucial for your survival, because several enemies and attacks are clearly designed to be dodged and your health reserves will barely get you through on Normal if you can’t. Anyway, suffice to say I got extremely frustrated during the dodge “tutorial”.
  • Story Goes Off the Rails – I’ll be honest, for the first half of this game I was enjoying the story here way more than most Resident Evil games. The TV drama format means you’re getting new twists and turns every 30 minutes or so, but at a certain point it just collapses in on itself. Probably the dumbest moment in the whole game is when you play as Chris and Jessica fighting your way through a ship to rescue Jill and Parker… only to get to the end of the level and discover “oh no, the princess is in another cruise ship!” Seriously, someone decided that it was a good idea to have two identical cruise ships with monsters in them and the only reason I can think for that is to pad the runtime and reuse some areas for a dumb twist. As if that wasn’t dumb enough though, it turns out that there’s also a third ship after all this. Oh, and the whole plot is a false flag operation orchestrated by O’Brian to prove that his boss is a terrorist-sympathizer… which he does by unleashing a deadly virus on two (retired) cruise ships and then throws his best agents into them because he can’t risk having the truth leak out! Throw in a couple non-sensical betrayals and it’s pretty clear that twists took precedence over a coherent and satisfying narrative.
  • Enemy Design – The design of the T-Abyss monsters really doesn’t do it for me in this game. On the one hand, blob-like enemies hadn’t been done in the franchise at this point, I can appreciate their deep-sea creature inspirations and they’re differentiated well enough that you can always know exactly what variant you’re fighting. However, blob monsters seem so uninspired to me. Their jerky motions remind me of the necromorphs in Dead Space, but their design as a bunch of flesh blobs make them far less interesting and disturbing as far as I’m concerned. On the other side of the coin, the Hunters and infected wolves clearly got the short end of the stick here, as each are clearly given far less attention with their animations and attacks, preferring to just swarm you and hope you don’t notice.
  • Partner AI – I’m not even sure why Revelations has a partner with you at all times, because they are basically useless. I can only assume that “everyone liked it in Resident Evil 5” so it’s an expectation that it will be there? Anyway, your partner will never do anything useful in combat, can’t hold items for you, can’t heal you and will rarely draw any sort of aggro for you… Honestly, the only good part about having an AI partner with you for the whole game is that at least it helps flesh out their character, which is a big reason why I liked Parker and Jessica so much.
  • Jill’s Redesign – This is a pretty minor issue all-told, but I couldn’t get it out of my head throughout the entire game. Capcom changed Jill’s face model for this game and it just feels… wrong. The new model isn’t that far off from the one they had been using from Resident Evil remake through to 5, but (weirdly enough) that just makes it feel worse, like they subtly screwed up how she’s supposed to look.
  • Horny Devs – Resident Evil 6 was in development at the same time as Revelations and you can definitely see that both games had the same level of horniness in the dev teams (for better or worse). First of all, Jill has a dump truck ass in this game and is always showing some cleavage. This is super minor and I wouldn’t have minded at all if that was the end of it, but there are two particularly egregious offenders. First of all is Jessica, whose special ops wetsuit design apparently doesn’t need to cover an entire leg or ass-cheek. It’s just so transparently horny that even the guy who designed her thinks it looks stupid. The worst offender is, without a doubt, Rachel Foley, an agent who goes into combat on the Queen Zenoba with her two gigantic knockers exposed. You come across her getting fucking murdered right in front of you and you’re probably going to come away from all that thinking “man she had big tits”. Oh, but then she gets infected with T-Abyss and takes it to a whole other level as she suddenly becomes the only ooze monster to retain enough of a human shape to be constantly thrusting her bulbous boobies at you. I’ve heard justifications that they were trying to mix horror and eroticism together in this design, but it just looks like some weirdo’s fetish unleashed. Naturally, Rachel has become one of the most popular Revelations characters, fancy that.

While it may look like my opinions on Revelations are polarized, I honestly feel like most of the “Hates” are relatively minor. Overall, I really enjoyed this game, the mixture of classic Resident Evil level design and Resident Evil 4 and 5‘s gameplay works really well and its characters and unique eccentricities really grew on me the more I played. It just goes to show what you can do with a strong design team, even on an underpowered system like the 3DS.