gravity rush

My Top 100 Games of All-Time (50-26)

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

50. Demolition Racer (1999, PS1)

A childhood classic, Demolition Racer is what it sounds like: combine demolition derby destruction with a high-octane racing game. The results are, predictably, catastrophic, with cars slamming into each other at high speeds, vehicles sent flying everywhere, catching fire, and exploding. This isn’t just nostalgia talking either, I’ve gone back and replayed this game multiple times in the past few years and it is always a blast.

49. Gravity Rush 2 (2017, PS4)

Gravity Rush 2, and its predecessor, are joyous games. Their plots are uplifting, full of positivity in the face of danger. Their characters are charming and unique. Most importantly though, the central mechanic reminds you of the simple joy of play. Too many games have movement and traversal as a lengthy chore that you have to manage in order to get from point A to point B, and you spend more time bored and annoyed getting to your destination than you actually do enjoying yourself (looking at you Witcher 3…). Gravity Rush flips the script on this: being able to shift gravity at will to fall towards your chosen destination is as breath-taking at minute one as it is at hour fifteen. It matters less that combat is a bit finnicky when the moment-to-moment gameplay is this fun and the writing is this charming. Gravity Rush 2 is pure joy and the industry needs more games like this in it.

48. Twisted Metal: Black (2001, PS2)

While Twisted Metal 2 is probably the best-playing Twisted Metal game, I’ve reiterated over and over here that gameplay isn’t everything, and Twisted Metal: Black is one of the best examples of this. The game is bloody difficult, perhaps too much so at times and the game can feel downright unfair. However, where Black really stands out is in its presentation and story. Black is easily one of the darkest video games ever released. Its cast are a bunch of psychopaths let loose from an insane asylum, all doing battle with each other and tearing across the city of Midtown in order to be granted a wish of their choice. You’ve got such colourful figures as No-Face (a professional boxer who lost a fight, causing a doctor who had bet on him to remove his eyes and tongue and then stitch them shut), Mr. Grimm (a Vietnam vet and former POW who is wracked with PTSD and a craving for human flesh), Preacher (a delusional pastor who downed a goddamn baby because he thought it was possessed), Warthog (a serial killer whose wish is to remove the part of the brain that makes him feel remorse when he kills), and of course Sweet Tooth (an unrepentant, murder-obsessed serial killer who wears a clown mask). Each character has a very dark and disturbing story that plays out over the course of the game, and the game’s world is suitably gloomy and depressing. It’s so over-the-top grimdark that it’s cartoonish, but then loops right back around to being properly dark stuff due to how hard it commits to the whole thing.

47. Resident Evil 2 (2019, PS4)

Resident Evil 2 remake was a lightning rod moment for the gaming industry, kicking off the remake craze we find ourselves knee-deep in. The game is just a bloody good, tense thrill-ride. Zombies have not been this threatening in decades, taking tons of ammunition to put down for good, which incentivizes you to conserve your resources and avoid them where ever possible. The design of the RPD is also still one of the most memorable environments in gaming and it’s just as compelling here in full 3D as it was on PS1. While it does stumble a bit towards the latter-half and the story isn’t all that interesting, Resident Evil 2 is one of those games that you cannot stop thinking about once you pick it up.

46. The Movies (2005, PC)

Peter Molyneux is notorious for over-hyping his games, but the one time he actually struck pure gold has to be The Movies. As a business management sim, it’s pretty cool: you manage a movie studio, building sets, hiring star directors and actors (and keeping them happy), managing crew, and developing technology from the silent era up to the modern day. All this is decent enough for a game in its own right, but what catapults The Movies to the stratosphere is the in-game machinima tools that give you a lot of freedom to create your very own movies. I’m talking dozens and dozens of scenes (each with variants and customization options), systems to allow the characters to lip synch with any recorded audio, special effects, and a basic video editor. It’s a mind-blowing amount of freedom, to the point where I made a feature-length spy movie back in high school using The Movies.

45. Blasphemous (2019, Switch)

Sometimes a video game comes out which is just made for me. Blasphemous scratches so many of my itches: Metroidvania, Souls-inspirations, religious fanaticism, dark fantasy, blood, penitence… I picked it up in a sale a few years ago and I was glued to my Switch for a week straight, obsessed with journeying through this nightmarish civilization to prove my devotion to the faith. It isn’t doing much different than your average Metroidvania game, but it hits so many of my interests that I can’t help but adore it.

44. RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999, PC)

Like many other 90s kids, I got this game for free in a box of cereal. The game itself is the pinnacle of management sims, with a simple premise: build the amusement park of your dreams. Build attractions, setup decorations to make things more aesthetically pleasing, landscape to your liking, optimize your pathways, and design your very own rollercoasters (which, inevitably, will be too intense for the guests)! Each guest also has their own name, amount of money they’ll spend, and likes and dislikes which can help you tailor the park to maximize returns.

Of course, that’s all good if you’re playing the game as designed. You can easily turn RollerCoaster Tycoon into a psychopath simulation as well. Make vomit-inducing rides and then charge your guests to use the bathroom. Are guests mad that you charge them $5 to go for a piss? Grab ’em and throw them on punishment island, where they’ll angrily run in circles until you send the island into the ocean and drown everyone. Or, the classic option: build an unsafe rollercoaster and watch it crash and explode, killing everyone on board. You don’t have to be a dick in RollerCoaster Tycoon, but it’s a lot of fun that the game gives you the freedom to do so.

43. The Walking Dead (2012, PS3)

Telltale had been making narrative, episodic games since the mid-2000s, but they never really had any major hits, and their biggest swings (looking at you Jurassic Park) were considered fairly poor and did not make a splash. So, for a while, Quantic Dream’s games were the gold standard for narrative games, with Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain being quite notable titles of their eras. However, even back then, the writing of those games was heavily criticized, but I (and many others) excused it, because we couldn’t really get these kinds of cinematic, narrative-based experiences elsewhere.

Then Telltale’s The Walking Dead came out, and Quantic Dream were obsolete overnight. The Walking Dead established a formula of narrative, choice-based games that Telltale would milk dry over the next few years, but The Walking Dead stands tall amongst them just due to the strength of the writing here. The tale of Lee and Clementine is unforgettable: an escaped convict stumbles across a little girl whose babysitter has been killed during a zombie apocalypse and takes her under his wing. The illusion of choice is very much a thing here, but it doesn’t really matter that much when the journey itself is so good. What makes it so good are not the big choices anyway, it’s the little ones – do you go all-out to protect Clementine, or do you try to preserve her innocence as best you can? No other video game has managed to make me cry like this one, and I imagine if I were to replay it now, after becoming a father, it would leave me absolutely devastated.

42. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004, PC)

I’ve been a Warhammer 40k fan for most of my life, and I can say with confidence that the original Dawn of War is still unsurpassed as far as 40k games go. An old-school RTS which innovated by putting the focus directly on getting you into combat, Dawn of War lets you engage in visceral, bloody, large-scale war with friends or AI opponents. Several factions were added in expansions, meaning that it is absolutely packed with content to try out. The game is still fully playable online to this day as well, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting together with friends recently to try to hold the line against high-level CPU teams hell-bent on annihilating us. It results in glorious carnage as your units rain gunfire and artillery down and chainswords rip through flesh. The modding community is also great, bringing in an entirely new, playable faction and removing the game’s unit cap for ultimate apocalypse mode.

41. Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires (2004, PS2)

I am not exaggerating when I say that I love Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires. I have poured countless hours into this game as I gleefully hack and slash my way through ancient China to reunite the land under my banner. Empires specifically is great, because it adds a level of grand strategy to Dynasty Warriors‘ usual formula, as each battle captures territory, makes new items available, allows you to recruit and capture officers, and gets you one step closer to conquering the nation. This change takes the rather repetitive combat of Dynasty Warriors and gives each battle a level of importance and resonance that it may otherwise lack, since each action you do is building towards a grander goal. The nature of the world map also means that no two campaigns will play out the same: you’re always going to have different enemy factions, different officers fighting with you, different territories to attack and defend at any given time, etc. I actually replayed the game on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro a few months ago, and it was like cuddling in a warm, familiar blanket again. Later games may have expanded the political gameplay, but this version of Empires will always have a special place in my heart.

40. Resident Evil 3 (2020, PS4)

My go-to answer for “most over-hated game of all-time”, I legitimately enjoy Resident Evil 3 remake more than Resident Evil 2 remake. This, once again, comes down to the non-gameplay aspects: the story in Resident Evil 3 is easily the best in the entire franchise. Jill is a fucking badass, Carlos is cool, Nikolai is a great secondary antagonist, and Nemesis is a terrifying, relentless monster. Resident Evil 3 plays like a PS3-era, cinematic action game in the vein of Dead Space 2, the sort of experience we rarely get these days when every game has to be open world and dozens of hours in length or it’s not worth gamers’ time. The runtime is fine for this sort of experience: the six-to-eight hours you spend are maximized for fun and spectacle, and I got significantly more enjoyment out of this than I did out of the bloated, two hundred hours spent toiling away in Fallout 4 (and I call bullshit on anyone who claims to have beat it in three hours unless they were specifically running through it as fast as possible). Plus it’s on sale all the time now, so price isn’t even a problem. Sure, it cuts some content from the original, but the original still exists: play ’em both, I say.

39. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (2015, PS4)

While the game has expanded in some wild directions since release, the core gameplay of Rainbow Six: Siege is one of the best multiplayer shooters I’ve ever experienced. I got in early, a few weeks after launch when the game was in a very rough state, and I was hooked due to how intense it was. As a defender, having to fortify your position while you can hear attackers breaching to get to you makes your heart beat fast and your palms sweat in anticipation of what’s to come. As an attacker, you have to watch every step you take as you try to get in as safely as possible. Each encounter is life-or-death, with instant kills coming frequently. The operators’ unique weapons and equipment fundamentally affect how this plays out and creates a mix-and-match system that makes every game unique. While I don’t really play competitive shooters much anymore and, as a result, I’ve effectively retired from Siege for good, my time with the game was easily some of the best experiences I’ve ever had in an online game.

38. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015, PS4)

With the glut of open world games we’ve gotten in the past decade, my opinions on The Phantom Pain have softened somewhat. Traversal quickly becomes a pain in the ass, as starting any mission will require you to get past multiple guard checkpoints, you always feel obligated to look for new soldiers to recruit for your base, and the side ops get extremely repetitive. That said, The Phantom Pain still stands out thanks to its fundamental gameplay systems. Stealth remains incredibly fun, all the wild and wacky gadgets at your disposal give you so many ways to mess with guards, and the guards actually learn and start to counter your tricks, forcing you to change things up regularly. In spite of its problems, it’s still a great sandbox experience and a solid send-off to the greatest saga in gaming.

37. Mass Effect 2 (2011, PS3)

While Mass Effect 3‘s ending soured the entire franchise, Mass Effect 2 at least remains one of the best action RPGs on consoles thanks to its fairly self-contained story. You’re basically tasked with putting together a team of specialists to go on a suicide mission. The first twenty or so hours are just you recruiting your team, getting to know them, preparing your ship and equipment, and (most importantly) growing emotional connections to your entire crew. We then get one of the best finales in gaming as your team plunges into the gauntlet and your decisions over the course of the game come to fruition. Depending on what you’ve done, one or more of your crew can die executing the mission, which is about as emotionally impactful as you would expect.

36. Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (1999, PS1)

Shock! Horror! I liked both versions of Resident Evil 3! While I certainly have some issues with it compared to its predecessor, Nemesis is such a unique and ambitious game for its time period. Its scope is significantly wider than any previous Resident Evil game, allowing you to freely traverse an entire section of Raccoon City. The titular Nemesis is also downright scary here, barely operating within the limits of what you can reasonably deal with in Resident Evil‘s tank control scheme. The freedom and sense of risk/reward that this gives you is great – you can avoid fights with him if you want to, but if you choose to tough it out, you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your efforts. I remember when this game was considered the dark horse of the franchise, so seeing it get all the love after all this time is great to see.

35. Dead or Alive 2 (1999, PS2)

A couple months ago, I would have said that I liked Dead or Alive as a franchise, but I wouldn’t have had any of the games in my top fifty. Dead or Alive 2 changed that for me. The game is a massive improvement on its predecessor, adding in new characters, fun new mechanics, stage hazards and multi-level stages which wildly change how a battle looks and feels. The game is also simply packed to the brim with content, to a degree that we just do not get out of games anymore. It’s a simple enough game that anyone can pick it up, but deep enough that there’s a lot to learn and come to grips with if you really want to dedicate yourself to learning. Like I said in my recent Love/Hate series, I’m so glad that I decided to check the older games in this franchise out, because they were a real joy to get to experience.

34. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015, PS Vita)

Hotline Miami 2 is largely more of the same from its predecessor, but when that game had one of the most addictive and replayable gameplay loops of any game, that’s nothing to sniff at. Hotline Miami 2 is hypnotic: an acid trip of colour, blood, ultraviolence, synthwave, and pure focus. You will die over, and over, and over again as you try to perfect your killing spree and get through each area unscathed. This results in a ballet of bullets as you mow down enemy gangsters with dual SMGs, throw your empty gun to stun a guy, then slash their jugular open with a blade you picked up, then throw that blade into another guy’s head, grab another weapon to keep going, etc. All this coming as you die, hone your approach, die again, and so on until you have it down perfectly.

33. This War of Mine (2014, PC)

This War of Mine threads the extremely delicate line between entertainment and art with a serious message and, in my opinion, the results are poignant. Meant to act as a commentary on international conflicts and of the military shooters of the day, you play as a small group of survivors caught in an active warzone trying to survive to see peace return once more. You have to balance your survivors’ sleep, hunger, and morale, and developing your safehouse to be able to produce heating, supplies, and to be able to defend against looters. Then, at night time, it’s safe enough to sneak out and try to scavenge for supplies… but be careful, because you’re not the only one trying to survive…

Then there’s the heavy choices. Supplies are going to start drying up real quickly. Do you risk confronting other scavengers who may be hostile? Do you enter an area with ongoing exchanges of gunfire to risk getting to supplies that haven’t been picked over yet? Do you try to break into a gang’s well-stocked safehouse to steal their supplies? Or do you break into a defenseless old couple’s home and steal their supplies to keep yourself alive? If neighbours ask for help, will you give up some of your rations and medicine to help them? And, if you have children in your safehouse, how do you keep them safe and innocent in the face of all this? This War of Mine leaves these choices up to you, and only makes them harder as disease and winter set in, making you really test the limits of your morals. It’s a one-of-a-kind survival experience, and I implore you to check it out.

32. Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies (2001, PS2)

Shattered Skies is a special game for me. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a pilot instructor. One of my earliest memories was flying with my grandfather in his two seater airplane and looking down at the world below us. Probably due to this connection, my aunt bought me a copy of Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies as a gift. I wasn’t particularly interested at the time, but eventually decided to give it a try, and quickly became mesmerized.

On the gameplay front, Shattered Skies is an arcadey military air combat game where you’ll be dogfighting, shooting and bombing ground targets, and sometimes flying dangerously low to avoid radar and airburst artillery. The gameplay is actually way more varied than you’d expect for this kind of game and makes for a game that never gets old. You also get access to dozens of airplanes, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and customization options, which let you tailor them to each mission you find yourself in.

What really makes Shattered Skies so good though is its shockingly mature story – and I don’t mean that in the “rated M for mature” sense, I mean that this is some legitimately great stuff. The story is told from three perspectives: 1) the big picture, war room briefing perspective, which tells you about the progress of the war between ISAF and Erusea; 2) the in-game story of Mobius 1, who you control and turn into a legendary fighter ace over the course of the game; 3) the story of a grown man recounting his experience as a boy growing up in occupied San Salvacion. This third story is where the real emotional punch of Shattered Skies comes in, as we see his family killed as collateral damage in the war after the Erusean Yellow Squadron shoots down a plane, which crashes into their house. Despite hating the occupiers, he grows to have a strained relationship with some of the fighter aces in Yellow Squadron who are based in the city. While Yellow Squadron clearly have empathy for the boy and want to be seen as more than just occupiers, you get the sense that they are legitimately saddened when he has to stand up to them in order to protect a friend in the resistance. This more personal perspective of your enemies makes it a bittersweet moment when we have to face Yellow Squadron in battle as Mobius 1 and shoot them down one-by-one. It’s a shockingly clever and tragic way to lend emotional stakes to what would otherwise be standard air combat gameplay. This whole story makes Shattered Skies so much more than the sum of its parts, and is easily one of the best-written stories in video games.

31. Resident Evil 2 (1998, PS1)

I knew that Resident Evil 2 was celebrated back in the day, but I didn’t really realize just how good it was until I finally played it earlier this year. Given its placement here on the list, I also clearly liked it quite a bit more than its more polished and popular remake. I just love the way that Resident Evil 2 feels and plays: nearly everything good about the remake is intact here, and in some ways (such as the story and branching playthroughs) it’s even better. It’s incredibly impressive for a PS1 game and by far the most fun entry in the “classic” era of Resident Evil.

30. Resident Evil (2002, GC)

While Resident Evil 2 is the best of the classic era, the remake of the original Resident Evil is arguably the best distillation of the Resident Evil formula we’ve ever gotten, largely thanks to the changes and improvements it brought after six years of iteration. The original Resident Evil was a very rough and unrefined game: full of cool ideas, but lacking in the execution. REmake realizes that potential and then some, with graphics that still look fantastic today that help bring the oppressive atmosphere of the Spencer Mansion to life. The remake also makes several changes to the original game which keep things surprising to veterans and improve the overall layout of the mansion in the process. The Crimson Heads are the most notorious example of this, providing a nasty surprise to new players who are too liberal with their firearms usage, and adding a whole other layer of strategy as you have to figure out which bodies to burn before they reanimate as even more dangerous enemies.

29. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (2010, PS3)

If you’re unfamiliar with the series, it may seem kind of weird to rank a Battlefield game so highly, because a Battlefield game is just another Battlefield, right? Bad Company 2 was special. Like Battlefield 3, this game was really designed for rush, and charging in with your teammates to take the MCOM stations was as intense as it was fun. Bad Company 2 also featured a level of destruction that no Battlefield game since has dared attempt to replicate: nearly every building can be blown apart or leveled entirely. While some argue that this makes the map kind of boring once all the buildings are gone, I call those people cowards: flushing defenders out of Arica Harbour with a series of tank shell strikes was a literal blast. The game also had some fantastic maps which, when they’ve shown up in subsequent Battlefield titles, have given me a rush of nostalgia that I’ve rarely felt for anything else. It’s a shame that the game was shut down for good last year, but the memories live on forever.

28. Dead Space (2008, PS3)

Dead Space is the best franchise to arise from the glut of Resident Evil 4 clones, and it’s not even close. A mixture of Event Horizon, The Thing, and Alien, this first game brings terror to the corridors of the Ishimura as you try to stay alive against hordes of necromorphs and find out what happened to your girlfriend, who was stationed on the ship. The core gameplay gimmick is inspired for a horror game of this nature: simply shooting a necromorph is insufficient to kill it, you need to blast their limbs off to immobilize them. Combined with limited resource survival gameplay, stasis blasts to slow enemies, kinesis to throw objects at your foes, and a good ol’ fashioned curb stomp when all else fails, the core gameplay of Dead Space is rock solid.

27. Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012, 3DS)

Fire Emblem: Awakening came out at a difficult time for the long-running franchise. Sales for the last couple entries had been underwhelming, so Intelligent Systems had one last chance to right the ship before the series went on ice for good. With this in mind, the developers threw the kitchen sink at Awakening, trying to make the biggest, best Fire Emblem of all-time, if only to give it a proper swan song. Luckily, their efforts paid off and Awakening gave the franchise a second life. While it largely plays like any other Fire Emblem game (turn-based tactics gameplay, RPG elements, perma-death, etc), Awakening‘s big new feature was an expansion of the relationship system to allow two of your soldiers to have children, who will inherit traits from both of them. This allows for some really fun and unique combinations, which work just as much for roleplayers as they do for min-maxers. While some fans have bemoaned this addition, claiming it turned Fire Emblem into a waifu simulator, I think that that opinion is fucking dumb. Awakening is a great game and, in my opinion, the most fun Fire Emblem I’ve played thus far.

26. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009, PS3)

I really enjoyed the original Uncharted when it came out, a lot more than most people who played it in fact. I loved the characters, the gameplay, and the story, so I was excited to see how Naughty Dog would up their game for the follow-up. What I was not expecting was for Uncharted 2 to absolutely blow everyone’s expectations out of the water and be widely considered the game of the year for 2009.

Uncharted 2 plays like its predecessor, but with some key refinements. The game is overall just bigger: more grand spectacle, bigger set-piece moments, more characters, more complex story. As much as I liked Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher in the first game, they really come into their own here, and I love that Naughty Dog didn’t take the easy route of having their pulp hero have a new love interest in every game.

And that’s it for part two. If you’re reading this the day it came out, then the final part will be up tomorrow!

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The Witcher 3 is Kind of Trash

~ Barloq ~ 3 Comments

Back in mid-2019 I wrote an article about how I thought that Death Note, popularly considered one of the best anime out there, was kind of trash. It was disappointing – I love the premise but after the first few episodes it drops off a cliff and becomes a slog. Well, back then I wasn’t really expecting this to turn into a new series for the blog but I spent 2020 slogging through another piece of wildly popular media and I’ve got to say… The Witcher 3 is kind of trash. I happen to be writing this while Cyberpunk 2077 backlash is in full swing and I often hear the refrain “Someday Cyberpunk will be as good as The Witcher 3!”… which makes me not want to play it at all. There’s so much stuff that I low-key hate about this game which I really need to get off my chest, because I don’t understand why people are so enamoured with it.

The Open World

First off, the big new feature for The Witcher 3 was its open world and I have to admit that it truly is massive, sporting one enormous map for Novigrad, Oxenfurt and Velen, separate open maps for the Skellige Isles and Kaer Morhen (and Toussaint in the DLC), plus a couple smaller maps for White Orchard and Vizima. It’s an overwhelming amount of ground to cover and while I can understand why someone would be excited by this, it’s where some of my first issues with the came come in. First of all, open world fatigue has well and truly set in in the past few years, but I had already gotten sick of most open worlds by the start of 2011 with Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. That’s the game that made me realize that, in most games, open world traversal sucks. Spending most of your playtime just trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible is such a boring gameplay loop and it was bad enough that I dropped Brotherhood (which I was otherwise enjoying) entirely. Since then I’ve often found myself getting tired of open world games with sluggish, restrictive and downright boring traversal options, to the point where I tend to avoid the genre entirely since you’re spending at least half your playtime just putting yourself through tedium in order to get to something interesting. Fallout 4, Far Cry Primal, even Metal Gear Solid V (which I loved at the time, but having to sneak past the same two or three boring outposts to get to any objective was frustrating) have left me tired by the end with me just begging to be able to reach my objectives and end the damn game already without dealing with endless open world bullshit. Compare this to Gravity Rush, a game where the act of moving from place to place is, in itself, a total joy. I hear that Spider-man captures a similar experience with its web-slinging mechanics – I haven’t played it so I can’t confirm, but I just offer these as examples of how getting from place to place can be fun in itself in an open world game rather than a constant, frustrating obstacle.

…which brings me to The Witcher 3. After the first couple hours soaking in the beauty of new location have worn out their welcome, traversal becomes boring at best and infuriating at worst. Need to get to an objective directly on the other side of a mountain range? Better hope you have found a fast-travel point that’s only, like, 600m away from the objective or you’re going to be stuck with two unappealing options – either ride your horse around the mountains or cross your fingers and hope that the game will allow you to climb over the mountain. Of course, if you choose to climb then the game will also force you do to this at walking speed and if you fall off the mountain you’ll die and have to do the whole thing over again after a lengthy loading screen. How fun! Sailing is also painfully slow, but nowhere near as slow as trying to swim from place to place. Better hope your boat doesn’t get sunk in the middle of the seas around Skellige!

To make matters worse, you’re likely to come across some manner of annoying enemy on your way from point A to point B. Random attacks by bandits, wolf packs, sirens, etc can make the world feel a bit more alive, but good God they quickly become a waste of time to encounter. I usually just moan and run away from wolves as fast as possible, but enemies like the sirens basically have to be fought because otherwise they’ll sink your boat and cause you even more wasted time. It can be thrilling if you come across a monster several levels stronger than you are since at least they’ll offer some challenge, but these are rare occurrences (unless you’re going out of your way to punish yourself).

On top of that, the open world in this game is loaded with points of interest marked on the map with a “?”. These things are a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it can be enjoyable and satisfying tracking these all down and filling up your map. Some of them are even super useful, such as the Place of Power spots. Unfortunately, most of these are open world busywork at best, or useless bullshit at worst. The majority of the points of interest are monster dens, bandit camps, hidden treasure and the like, which require you to hunt down a nearby cache or slay some bandits or monsters in order to get some rewards. Unfortunately, these rewards lose any sort of value within a few hours of gameplay. They don’t scale with your level so you’re going to be pocketing hundreds upon hundreds of useless weapons and armour which exist only to be broken down into parts or sold to merchants in order to get yourself a bunch of gold (which is, in itself, pretty useless as well once you’ve stocked up a few thousand crowns). Maybe the intent is that players aren’t supposed to try to complete all these points of interest and I’d even recommend looking up the Places of Power and skipping the rest, but I cannot stop going to them. I just have this obsessive compulsion to uncover every point of interest on my map and I don’t know which are useful and which aren’t so I don’t want to miss any. Skellige was the point where this hit its absolute worst, as there are dozens of identical smugglers’ caches hidden in the water, meaning that you have to sail for literal hours around the islands, killing sirens over and over again just to get a bunch of useless items that you’re just going to sell anyway. CD Projekt RED, sometimes less is more – cut the useless bullshit out, please. I get that this is partly my problem, but I really can’t help it and if CD Projekt RED are going to put such worthless content into their game then they deserve to take shit for it.

Inventory Management

Like I just said, 99.9% of the loot you get in this game is worthless crap. I mean, sure, you can sell it for coin that you have no practical use for after a few hours or break it down into crafting components which you’ll quickly be drowning in. It also doesn’t help that the vast majority of the loot you find in the world is clearly procedurally generated, uninteresting guff that exists just to fill out the world. Beyond this, the overabundance of loot leads to two big issues. First, it makes acquiring loot at the end of a quest or out in the open world feel unrewarding and nothing more than a boring chore. If I complete a quest and get a cool sword, I’d like to be able to use it, not go “oh, this is way weaker than the sword I crafted 10 hours ago”. Secondly, this contributes to this game’s frustrating inventory management. Most of this stems from the restrictive encumbrance mechanic. Like many annoying RPGs, a good chunk of your playtime in The Witcher 3 is going to be spent running back and forth to merchants because the loot you picked up put you one point over your encumbrance threshold and now you suddenly have to walk slowly across the world map. This just makes the traversal issues and unrewarding loot that much more frustrating, and this is compounded even more when you consider that encumbrance is totally arbitrary. Sure, some people may say “it’s more realistic!” or “it’s for immersion!” but both of those arguments are shot right out the window when Geralt can comfortably run around with dozens of swords, armour sets and saddles but then that one last flower pushes him over the edge. That doesn’t even take into account that several items don’t even have an effect on encumbrance, such as the hundreds of pieces of food that Geralt can carry at once.

To make matters worse, The Witcher 3 also features a weapon degradation system, because you weren’t spending enough time in your inventory already. On the one hand, I could see this being somewhat useful if the game was set up in such a way where degradation would force you to use other weapons until your favourites get repaired, but that just isn’t the case at all. After the first hour you’re almost always going to have a dozen weapon and armour repair kits on hand, not to mention that you can just go to a blacksmith and pay to get your gear fixed – it’s one of the few things actually worth paying gold for. Again, you could argue that this is about realism or immersion, but it’s just not fun. It’s not common enough to actually affect gameplay in any significant manner, which means that it’s nothing more than a pointless chore the game makes you go through. Seriously, just drop it, weapon degradation systems always suck.

Combat

Which brings us to the combat in this game. The Witcher 3 drowns you in options right out the gate. Not only do you have your actual sword fighting skills, but you also have access to five signs (aka, minor spells), a crossbow and an ever-growing collection of potions with varying effects. These are all improved as the game goes on, with you being able to put skill points into new techniques and upgrades for whatever abilities you want to focus on. Me? I put all my points into sword damage buffs and upgrading my favourite signs. These upgrades never felt particularly significant to me – like, sure, 25% more damage from sword attacks is probably making a difference, but I can’t say that I actually feel it. It wasn’t really until I got the charged heavy attack that I really felt like an upgrade was actually changing my playstyle any. It also doesn’t help that some options are just broken. The Quen sign in particular is so OP that it not only makes combat boring but makes me play lazily and treat it like a crutch. The very first upgrade gives you a one-hit shield which blasts back enemies and recharges quickly. This means that every fight I get into starts with me casting Quen, dealing damage and then taking a hit, backing off for two seconds til Quen recharges and then casting again. Rinse and repeat. Sure, there are other options available, such as buffing your potions (and spending even more time on inventory management!), getting limited-use out of new melee techniques, or applying damage buff oils to your weapons but… like, why? Unless you’re stupidly under-levelled against a tough enemy, you can coast by on all the crutches this game gives you – and I call them that because when the game suddenly takes them away from you (such as in fist fights or Ciri segments) you realize you now need to remember how to parry effectively or you’re going to get annihilated.

It’s cool seeing Geralt spin around and decapitate foes for the first couple dozen hours, but the combat in this game is just not good enough to sustain itself over the course of a hundred plus hours. As I said before, I dread coming across packs of weak enemies because they’re such a waste of time to deal with and that’s because most fights are stupidly easy. You either get one- or two-shotted by enemies more than five levels above you or you’re massacring everyone with ease. If you play like I do and try to complete as many side-quests as you can, then you’re going to be insanely over-levelled with very little effort, making most of the game’s quests a slog to get through. Like… could they not have implemented a level-scaling system, or anticipated that players would actually play their content, or something? I’ve read elsewhere that I’m not the only one with this issue, it’s like the game’s difficulty was designed for you to be only playing main quests and doing even a couple side quests throws the difficulty curve out of whack. And note that I’m playing the game on Blood & Broken Bones difficulty, so it’s a step up from the standard difficulty. I haven’t played Death March, but considering how mind-numbingly boring B&BB is I can’t help but think that it won’t make the game much harder.

Writing

For what it’s worth, the writing in The Witcher 3 is by far the best part of the game. Long after I grew bored of the combat and open world, I was still hanging on because I wanted to see what would happen next. There are also some fantastic stories and characters within this game, particularly the “Bloody Baron”, who is a textbook example of how to write a charming, sympathetic monster, and many of the side-quests have fully fleshed out stories that make them worthwhile to grind through. However, even the writing begins to wear thin over time and test my patience.

Sometimes I’ll decide “fine, it’s time to start getting the main quest underway again” and you try to get the story moving… only for some stupid, random bullshit to happen in the plot which halts all momentum and you have to deal with before you can move on, even though it’s less important than several of the side quests in the game. One annoying example of this is on Skellige when the plot has finally moved on and you’re ready to leave the island, all that’s left is that a king needs to get crowned. So you’re ready for that to be decided when, uh… bears attack the kingsmoot. What the fuck? I should mention that this kingsmoot is taking place in a guarded castle atop a seaside spire, so when this army of bears attacks it’s truly baffling. Then you’ve got to solve a mystery about who unleashed the bears at the kingsmoot and the person you decide to support in the search ends up being the king. Man, I was done with Skellige when this happened and was just ready to move on, but then this happened out of nowhere and felt like an annoying, uninteresting shark-jump that the game was dropping in my lap just to make the game that much longer.

The worst example of this narrative padding is definitely what happens after you complete Dandelion’s doppler play. You spend hours getting a play put together so you can put out a message to an ally who has gone into hiding and it all goes off without a hitch, hooray! You find the ally, he gives you info about Ciri and now you’re ready to move on with the plot… except immediately afterward someone randomly attacks Dandelion’s girlfriend Priscilla and leaves her near death! Oh no! So once again you have to solve a mystery that comes out of nowhere and halts the actual progression of the plot, except in this case the writing is utter bullshit. Turns out there’s a serial killer who ritually murders prostitutes and makes a big scene of calling them whores. You have three suspects: a doctor with a history of violence, a shady coroner who the doctor doesn’t like and a fanatical priest of the Eternal Fire. You find clues about who the next victim is and, oh, looks like the killer doesn’t like people working against the church, imagine that. He kills an acquaintance of yours who has renounced the church and then you discover the name of his next victim, a prostitute. So you go to the brothel and, oh my God, it’s the priest there torturing her. You get the option to kill him, spare him or let him continue torturing her (!?!?!!), and obviously I’m going to kill him because he has to be our murderer, right? Wrong, turns out that it was the coroner and he was just masking his crimes by pretending to be a fanatic because he’s actually a vampire feeding on people. Umm, what the hell? I mean, I get that misdirection is difficult in a mystery but how do you make a red herring so bad that they end up being an entirely separate serial killer with an identical modus operandi? There’s no reason to assume that the coroner is responsible given the evidence that the game gives you, other than metagaming when the game allows you to spare the priest’s life because why would they let you do that unless he wasn’t the killer? The worst part is that when you think you completed the quest you’ll later find clues that the killer is still at large and Geralt basically just shrugs his shoulders and lets them keep at it. Like… dude, turns out one suspect was a different serial killer and you had only two other suspects, maybe look into that!? The fact that this doesn’t reopen the quest or open an alternate version of it is legitimately infuriating to me, I get that this game is complex and ambitious enough but this quest just shows weakness within the game’s structure and it would seriously be better off without it.

Bugs

The Witcher 3 was apparently a buggy mess at launch and while I would consider the bugs that remain in the game a fairly minor issue at this point, there are still several that will pop up in every playthrough that range from funny to infuriating when they happen. The worst one I encountered was this weird audio glitch that happens when you encounter the Crones of Crookback Bog, where the dialogue completely cuts out for like ten minutes, while you awkwardly read the text on screen and watch the crones pantomime to you about how evil they are. Worst of all, my PS4 crashed at one point and I had to restart my game from the beginning, so in two separate playthroughs this glitch happened… how is this still unpatched to this day? I also had one bug that happened repeatedly during the horse races – I would win the race quite handily, but when I crossed the finish line the game wouldn’t register it, forcing me to restart the game and redo the entire race six or seven times before it would finally register the win legitimately. I have no idea why this one was happening but it was maddening when it did.

Perhaps the most persistent and irritating bug though is that the swimming controls will randomly crap out at times, not allowing you to dive in the water. This is particularly annoying because if I’m in the water then odds are I’m only there because I’m diving for sunken treasure. When this happens, your only options are to climb back onto your ship and hope that that fixes the issue, fast travel to reload the world map, or just restart the game and cross your fingers. This is so goddamn annoying and just makes the already awful Skellige smugglers’ caches that much more of a slog to get through, because this issue happened to me multiple times in just that one section of the game.

Bloat

You may have noticed that there’s a running theme throughout all my issues with The Witcher 3 and that is simply that the game is bloated beyond belief. The open world is massive, but it seems to prioritize size and pretty vistas over actually being fun to explore over a hundred hour journey. The game showers you with loot, but when 99.9% of it is worthless it becomes nothing more than a chore to deal with. Combat gives you tons of options, but overpowered options make the rest redundant, the combat is ridiculously easy and it just can’t sustain itself over the game’s playtime. The writing has some truly great moments, but it just feels padded for nothing more than making the game even longer. I had a similar issue with Alien: Isolation, where the game felt like it had to force itself to be a bloated, twenty hour game when it would have been perfect as a tight, terrifying eight hour experience. All-in-all, The Witcher 3 is a game in serious need of content trimming and a tighter focus. I shouldn’t have to actively force myself to not engage in most of the content you’ve put into your game in order to find any sort of enjoyment with it.

At this point I’ve dropped The Witcher 3 after slogging through it over the course of a year. I’m only at Kaer Morhen now and I just can’t bring myself to play it again. Instead I’ve played the remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 3 and just started Hitman and the difference in enjoyment is palpable. Knowing that I can finish these games casually in a week or two is exciting in itself, not to mention that these are far better curated experiences that deliver greater levels of enjoyment in each play session. If I can give The Witcher 3 one big prop in spite of all this it’s that the game does offer hundreds of hours of playtime for like $20 – that’s a pretty insane value if you need to stretch your money out, but for my own part I’d like to actually get close to finishing a game I started.

But hey, at least Gwent was fun. If I ever do pick The Witcher 3 back up, it will probably be because I want to take part in the Gwent tournament. So that’s something at least.

This shot from a sex scene is one of the featured media screenshots on The Witcher 3‘s website. Seriously.

So How Would You Fix It, Smart Guy?

First off, if even a couple of my big issues with The Witcher 3 got addressed then it would make the experience much better overall, but we’ll go pie-in-the-sky and try to address them all here. Let’s start with the open world. Just due to the mechanics of the game, traversal is never going to be fun, so let’s at least make it less annoying. To that end, make fast travel points a bit more common and make random packs of enemies only really a concern if you’re going deep into the wilds off the main roads. Maybe make them scale in level as well so that they can be an actual obstacle. Similarly, I’d cut down on the useless “?” spots on the map (ESPECIALLY in Skellige), or just straight-up reveal what type of point of interest each is so you know whether to bother with it or not.

For the loot and inventory management, I’d want to make some sweeping changes. First of all, ditch encumbrance and weapon degredation. They suck and can never not suck until you remove them entirely. Secondly, let’s make the loot you get far more valuable. Cut down on the number of random items you can steal or loot from enemies significantly. Let weapons be upgradeable, with each level requiring you to get upgrade materials which you can craft and get the materials around the world map. This would allow reward weapons to actually be useful and could cut down on the number of useless items the game drowns you in. Plus it also means you don’t have to say goodbye to a favourite weapon when you outpace its damage output. Boom, all of a sudden inventory management is no longer a hassle, you actually can get some sort of satisfaction out of new items and it makes looting itself more rewarding because it’s helping you get something that can make your equipment better.

The combat in this game should be Monster Hunter-lite. I get that, conceptually, this is what the game is going for with its decoctions and oils, but they’re pointless compared to spamming signs. Make monster encounters something you have to actually plan for instead of just rushing headlong in like an idiot and suddenly combat would feel far more rewarding. Most importantly, introduce a level-scaling system to make enemy encounters more interesting.

For the writing, basically all that needs to be done is to trim down the padding in the main quest, or at the very least move these into the side-quests. As far as I’m concerned though, that serial killer quest needs to be completely reworked or cut out entirely. In any case, the sum total of these changes would result in the game’s annoyances being reduced or removed entirely, while its strengths are more up-front. It would also mean that the main game would likely be shorter, but if more side-quests were incentivized for the post-game then this would allow players more time to play the game the way they want without feeling like they have to or are missing anything. Given that the lack of urgency in spite of the game’s actual narrative is one of the main criticisms of The Witcher 3, I feel like it would make it a much better game.

Love/Hate: PSP

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Love

  • Great Hardware – The PSP was a really great little handheld. It was very well-designed, felt great in your hand and had some great features, even outside of gaming. Having played only Gameboys up until this point, having a wi-fi capable system with an internet browser made this thing basically my first cell phone in terms of its functionality. It was also quite powerful, able to put out near-PS2 graphical levels in the palm of your hand. Compared to its competition, the Nintendo DS, the PSP won the hardware comparison, easily. I also loved that you could suspend games by putting the system into sleep mode, it was such a good feature.
  • Strong Support – People don’t remember it very well, but the PSP had strong support from first and third party developers, and even outsold the Nintendo DS for years, until that system’s cheaper price and stronger support ended up winning over in the end (the presence of Pokemon games certainly helped as well). Still, this allowed the PSP to have a very strong stable of games that you can look back on fondly.
  • PS1 Classics – One of the genius moves for the PSP was to allow you to play PS1 games on the go. Sony ended up releasing quite a few major titles for the system, including Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy VII (in fact, I had never played FF7 until I downloaded it on my PSP).
  • My Favourite PSP Games – The usual deal: this isn’t a comprehensive list, but here are some of my favourite PSP games. These include Resistance: Retribution, Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Metal Gear Ac!d 1 and 2, God of War: Chains of Olympus, Patapon and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (mainly because, holy shit, a GTA game running on PSP hardware!?!).

Mixed

  • UMDs – UMDs were a cool, ambitious concept, attempting to be multi-media discs which would allow you to game and watch movies on the go. Sony tried to get film studios to release films on UMD discs and while there was some support, it wasn’t widely adopted (my PSP came with a copy of National Treasure 2, if I remember correctly). So yeah, they were ambitious, but man do they take up a lot of space for a portable cartridge, they load slowly and the just look so strange. I’ll give them points for trying something new, but I’m not entirely sure that it worked well.
Hate
  • No Second Analog Stick – Why, why, WHYYYYYYY did Sony not include a second analog nub on the PSP!?!?! It’s the system’s most glaring issue and it single-handedly screwed over so many games on this system. The second analog stick on the DualShock had, by this point, become the solution to the camera issues which had plagued early 3D games, but by not including a second analog nub, you immediately put developers back to the PS1 era. Predictably, camera controls became the #1 issue on PSP games, with half-baked solutions abounding (see: Splinter Cell: Essentials, which would force you to stand still and hold another button in order to move and fix the camera in place).
  • Power Button Placement Was Bad – The PSP was designed really well, but there was one glaring flaw (besides the lack of another analog nub, anyway…): the power slider was right were the palm of your hand would be, meaning that it was really easy to accidentally turn your system off. You kind of had to train yourself to not do this while playing, although there was more than one instance where I’d be playing Portable Ops online and accidentally turn the game off mid-match.
  • PSP Go – The PSP Go was a cool concept: basically, a smaller, redesigned PSP which could only play games downloaded to the system. However, it was way too expensive Sony gave this thing basically no support, meaning that it was dead on arrival. I feel sorry for anyone who paid $250 for this thing at launch, because Sony sure as hell didn’t earn your money.

Video Game Review: Gravity Rush

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I’m a big PlayStation fanboy – I’ve owned every PS console and handheld and loved them. However, even then I wasn’t really planning on jumping on the PS Vita. For one thing, when it was released it was obscenely overpriced, and the proprietary memory cards were even worse. Then there’s the typical memes on the system that you can see plastered across the Internet which display the common knowledge about the system…

Well I want to do a bit of mythbusting before we hop into the meat of this article. I bought a Vita on a bit of a whim after the price drop a few months ago. However, I wasn’t getting a ton of use out of it until I got my PS4 and PS+ subscription, at which point my eyes were opened to the awesomeness. PS+ carries across all PS devices, and so suddenly I had access to a ton of free games. Seriously, whoever said that PS Vita has no games has clearly never played one – I’ve been spoiled with Gravity Rush, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Hotline Miami, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, Guacamelee! and Kick Beat – all of which I got for free or heavily discounted thanks to PS+. Then there’s the games I happily paid full price for, including Ninja Gaiden Sigma +, Ninja Gaden Sigma + 2, DOA5+, MGS3 and Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny (oh, did I mention it plays PSP and PS1 downloadable games too?). That’s not mentioning the games I want to play soon enough, like Killzone: Mercenary and Borderlands 2, but am too swamped with games to justify the purchase quite yet. Plus you can remote play PS3 and PS4 games, such as Battlefield 4, via the Vita. Bottom-line: PS Vita has an excellent games library, and people need to wake up to this fact.

Is it probably still better to get a 3DS? Yes, probably, if you want only one handheld. However, you can’t really go wrong with a PS Vita, it’s still a great little handheld with a ton of potential still in store (such as the epic-sounding PlayStation Now cloud streaming service).

Anyway, with that out of the way, onto the real purpose of this article – Gravity Rush. I had heard that this was the best game in the Vita’s launch lineup, but I wasn’t entirely sold on it until I played the incredibly fun demo. As soon as I got PS+, I downloaded the game (which I got for free, remember) and booted it up. I finally finished it a couple weeks ago and knew I needed to write a review as soon as the credits began to roll.

Gravity Rush is an open-world adventure game about a mysterious girl named Kat who is befriended by a celestial cat she names Dusty. Dusty gives Kat the ability to “gravity shift”, allowing for them to reorient the direction of their personal gravity. This gives Kat a plethora of abilities, from being able to float, fly, launch objects, set up a high-speed kick, walk on walls/ceilings, etc. Gravity shifting is a fantastic central mechanic and is an absolute joy to perform. It’s a little difficult to control at first, but quickly you’ll build up your skills and be soaring and aligning yourself with total precision. I got about 12 hours out of the campaign and didn’t grow tired of shifting once, which is quite a feat – I loved the Assassin’s Creed franchise, but ended up ditching it because of how irritating and repetitive free running a city for 5-10 minutes just to get to the next objective would get.

The story was also surprisingly engaging. It’s told in a rather silly and whimsical manner, with all sorts of random stuff just showing up out of nowhere, but it manages to stay engaging and fairly coherent. Kat was also a fun, light-hearted protagonist, which is refreshing compared to the dour, self-serious heroes we have to put up with these days. Her asides provide quite a bit of humour to the proceedings. The game also features quite a diverse female cast, a rarity within the games industry (especially since they aren’t extremely sexualized either). In addition to Kat, the game also features Raven (another gravity shifter who is notably more dark than Kat), Cyanea (a “creator”) and Yunica (a hardboiled soldier who is second in command of the army). Considering that many games don’t have female characters outside of minor supporting roles, this has to be commended. That said, Kat and Raven aren’t exactly feminist icons – both are somewhat sexualized (especially Kat in a fanservice DLC costume, a mission where she’s hunting for a boyfriend and a couple very random shower scenes), although it’s not to a particularly untasteful level at least. Outside of those shower scenes, I didn’t really feel like the game was ever objectifying the characters, their garb was just the norm of the shifters.

Beyond the story and gameplay, the graphics are just gorgeous for a handheld, and a launch title at that. The game has a distinct cel-shaded look with fairly sprawling and detailed city-scapes, featuring plenty of citizens milling about. It’ll seriously make you reconsider what is possible on a handheld system. On the negative side though, the draw distance isn’t as good as it probably needs to be and the cities are lacking in stuff to do outside of explore and complete a few side missions, but at least shifting to find gems is fun in itself.

The only major fumble is that combat can get pretty irritating. The enemies, called Nevi, all feature requisite glowing weak points and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They’re not too bad usually, unless you have to “gravity kick” them mid-air. This involves shifting and then launching a kick at them, which makes Kat shoot towards them for a monumental kick. Unfortunately, Kat has a limited lock-on to the target and it’s too easy to overshoot them. In some of the later fights, I was having to line up 4 or 5 gravity kicks just to hit the target, which got especially annoying when I would have to cancel my kicks to dodge projectiles. However, this was hardly game-breaking.

I was also annoyed by the tacked-on “gravity sliding” sections. A lot of PS Vita games have annoying features to taut the system’s touch screens and tilt functionality. Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a particularly egregious offender in this regard, but Gravity Rush is usually pretty good at incorporating swipes for dodging, turning pages in cutscenes and tilting the camera. However, the gravity sliding sequences were just way too imprecise as you tried to tilt the camera so Kat wouldn’t run into anything. Luckily, gravity sliding is largely confined to side missions and isn’t a major requirement to complete the game, but it was definitely a cause of frustration.

Also worth noting is that the ending of the game isn’t particularly satisfying. The game ends with a lot of loose ends still hanging, which is clearly just done because Sony sees the game as a potential franchise. Luckily, Gravity Rush 2 was recently announced, so hopefully it will give us more answers and improve on the combat.

So what did I think of Gravity Rush? I thought it was slightly flawed, but very charming and it kept me engaged for many an hour. I can’t wait to step into Kat’s shoes again for the sequel, and will be sure to buy it as soon as it comes out. If you have been thinking about getting a PS Vita and are looking for a good game for it, or you have a Vita already and haven’t experienced the game yet, I heartily recommend Gravity Rush.

8/10