Dee Assassina, Author at GeeksHaveGame

December 1, 2022December 5, 2022

THE CALLISTO PROTOCOL [Review] – Dead Space Combat.

I’m writing this immediately after beating The Callisto Protocol, because I’ve never been so conflicted on a game. It’s a shame that a game with absolutely stunning graphics, horrific environments, and an eerie sound design manages to be something that I didn’t enjoy wholeheartedly. Protocol is held back by its poor combat choices in every way possible. It uses the inspiration from Dead Space games and stomps on what made those games so special. I didn’t want a clone, especially considering we’re getting a Dead Space remake in a month; but what I did want was for Callisto to capture that spirit of those games. The Callisto Protocol did not.

Dead Space had this immaculate pacing, much like Resident Evil 4, where the game gives you fun weapons to start, but as you progress your arsenal becomes even better as the enemy swarms become more challenging. Each combat arena gets harder as you get stronger, and you get hit with a rush of adrenaline every time the combat music subsides and you clear a room. The Callisto Protocol captures none of that. Truthfully, the beginning of the game played like shit and as I unlocked more upgrades and weapons, it got a bit better, but never good.

Part of what makes the combat so bad is this dodge mechanic where you flick the analogue to the right and left when an enemy is doing a combo, then attack a few times, dodge again, rinse and repeat. In 2022, I’ve been spoiled with amazing dodging mechanics and found more satisfaction in those that actually require unforgivingly precise timing. This dodge mechanic didn’t require precise timing, but what made it worst is that it’s extremely janky. Sometimes it would show my character successfully dodge an enemy attack and then it would cut to a death animation. Most of the time when I died, I didn’t feel like it was because I was messing up; it felt like it was because the controls were fighting with themselves. This game could’ve been immensely better if it just got rid of the dodge mechanic.

Even the guns weren’t much of a stand-out. There was nothing satisfying like the plasma cutter or pulse rifle, where they feel different but function just as well. Instead, you have a bunch of guns that barely do damage to enemies unless combined with that pesky dodge and melee button. Unlocking more guns made the combat better, but never good. Not to mention, there was no solid quick swapping or weapon wheel, so switching out weapons in the middle of combat was often too risky to be worth doing. You had to either press a button, which very slowly switched to a random weapon or you had to press a button that brought up a menu to select the weapon you want. So much of this combat feels antiquated and frustrating.

The best part of the combat is the Telekinesis power, which is one of the only parts of this game that is reminiscent of Dead Space. I’ll even go as far and say that The Callisto Protocol does the telekinesis better than Dead Space. It controls really well and this game adds a bunch of environmental hazards that you can launch enemies into, which is very satisfying. There’s often a bunch of spiked walls, fans, and other traps around combat arenas. This makes the environments look really cool but also made locations with these traps my favorite combat arenas. Unfortunately, the telekinesis was limited and not every place with enemies had environmental hazards.

There were moments of TCP‘s combat that I enjoyed, but it was only when I was fighting an enemy one on one. Yet, The Callisto Protocol insisted on implementing hordes of enemies, which made the dodge mechanic borderline obsolete, and I was often getting sucker punched as I was trying to focus on killing one enemy. There aren’t any weapons that allow you to target multiple enemies, and this is when I despised the game. I can deal with the shitty dodge mechanics if it’s 1 or 2 enemies, but too often we were facing multiple enemies with no environmental hazards.

This brings me to the enemy variety and how lacking it was, including bosses. There were a few variations of these monsters, which is fine, but the bosses felt so uninspired. They had us face one mini boss four times, and the final boss felt like a cheap rip off of Resident Evil— except not fun. Once again, most of the time I died is because I was overrun by enemies and getting sucker punched, not because I wasn’t using the arsenal effectively. Fortunately, dying was often rewarded with a really gruesome death animation. Seriously, it’s worth dying to each enemy at least once.

Six paragraphs in, and I’m still talking about the combat… Forget about healing in the middle of a battle. The combat arenas were often small and enemies ran fast, but to heal, your character had to kneel down, pull out his healing syringe, and slowly inject it into his neck. Basically, it’s not worth doing so you better be fully healed before entering combat. This game’s combat is a huge disappointment. How is it possible that The Callisto Protocol took any inspiration from a game with immaculate combat like Dead Space and managed to be one of the worst combat experiences I’ve ever had in a game?

The gameplay loop is all combat, so that’s why I took so long to ventilate about how shitty it is. Speaking of ventilate, most of the traversal involves crawling through vents and shimmying through tight spaces. You basically walk to each combat arena, and there’s barely any exploration aside from that. I actually think this gameplay loop is good! I’m tired of forced puzzles and bloated locations to pad out gameplay. It’s kind of nice that TCP is so linear. There’s often one straight path, and at times one other path that’ll lead you to a hidden area with extra resources and audio logs. There’s even one optional path that leads you to a grotesque underground space where the main villain held his conferences. It was really cool to stumble upon that, going off the beaten path. I wish there were less vents, but thankfully the environments are so stunningly horrific. The Callisto Protocol is a showcase of how good horror games can look like in this new generation.

The environments were actually the best part of the story, uncovering what happened by seeing the dead bodies around and listening to their audio logs. Unfortunately, you couldn’t listen to the audio logs while moving unless you do this glitch where you play the audio log, press start into the main menu, and back out. Just another element that this game could’ve pulled from Dead Space for a better experience, so I’m thankful I found a work around.

Your character Jacob is a pilot who is transporting materials before he crashes. He’s then captured and incarcerated into Black Iron Prison. This is where he wakes up in a cell and finds the prison on fire, with dead bodies everywhere, and monster running amok. His goal is to escape the prison and figure out what the hell is going on. Exploring this one prison and some of the areas around it, is really cool. I love games that focus on just one area and I think horror games especially benefit from this. The Callisto Protocol could’ve gone further with fleshing out its characters and lore building, because in the end the story fell into a basic survival horror game trope.

The Callisto Protocol was one of my most anticipated games and wound up being one of the biggest disappointments. I wanted to love this game so much, but for everything I enjoyed, it was often overshadowed by me fighting with really bad combat controls. I loved some things about this game, but I hated more than I loved. The Callisto Protocol was supposed to hold me over until the Dead Space Remake, but instead I need the O.G. Horror Shooter more than ever to palette cleanse.

3/5 Whiskeys

-Dee Assassina

August 15, 2022September 19, 2022

CULT OF THE LAMB [Review]:

Move aside, Lampchop! You’re no longer everyone’s favorite lamb. Now, we prefer this cute little lamb who is the leader of a satanic cult. Seriously! Imagine a cult full of adorable cartoony animals that you provide with shelter and food, only to eventually sacrifice their bodies so that your little lamb can become more powerful and rich. An adorable little wolf joins your village but you sacrifice it to turn it into a pile of bones and meat. In Cult of the Lamb, you’ll have to decide if you’ll use that cute little wolf’s meat to feed your remaining cultists to keep them satiated and potentially turn them into cannibals. You’ll also use the wolf’s bones for future satanic rituals or to build bone walls in your cult village.

Cult of the Lamb is pretty much Animal Crossing for dark minds. The farming sim elements aren’t nearly as deep, but in this game you’re still cooking, fishing, farming, building homes, decorating your village, caring for the sick, and doing quests for your villagers called “followers”…

Any dissenting followers can be jailed and re-educated on the doctrines of the cult. You can also feed your followers bowls of poop, meals that will increase their loyalty, or cook the bodies of sacrificed followers. The Lamb you play as can extort money, inflict fear to raise devotion, or perform rituals that makes everyone work without sleep. It’s really sick and twisted, but also really adorable.

I’m not even a person who typically likes farming sim games. What kept me engaged in Cult of the Lamb (aside from the cute satanic aesthetic) is it’s not just a sim game, but it implements rogue-like, dungeon crawling elements. There are 4 dungeons you unlock once you get enough followers and each dungeon has 2 mini bosses and a main boss. These dungeons aren’t just important for the main story, but also to gather resources and gain more followers to build your village. The village continues to function while you’re dungeon crawling as the followers continue to work, get hungry, and age.

The combination of dungeon crawling and farming sim building was extremely addictive. It kept someone like me, who doesn’t typically like farming sim games, really engaged. I spent hours staying up late and going through the motions. It was as if I was a follower under the spell of this satanic lamb’s cult.

If you’re someone who is in it just for the farming sim elements, you may be wondering if the dungeon crawling will turn you off. The mechanics are simple and satisfying enough to get you through, and there’s a variety of cool weapons and curses you unlock. The weapons could be quick poison daggers or a giant freeze axe coupled with a curse that can do a giant AOE attack to knock back enemies or a projectile that seeks enemies out. Each dungeon is randomly generated, so the weapons and curses that spawn will also be random. You’ll revisit the dungeons for side quests, to gather resources exclusive to that dungeon, or if you failed to complete it the first time; hence the rogue-like features.

The only thing about Cult of the Lamb that I can imagine being a turn off for hardcore farming sim fans, is the building is very limited. I 100% the game, unlocked all decorations and upgrades, found all the different follower skins, and completed all the core quests in less than a week. Although at this point I was done with the game, you can still continue to do repeat fetch quests, redecorate your village, and revisit dungeons (though at this point, I didn’t feel there was any good incentive to continue). I was more than satisfied ending my time with the game after 100% completion, but it may fall short for those looking for a substantial farming sim experience. It was perfectly structured for me though and I really loved my time with it.

The only real complaint about Cult of the Lamb— it’s very buggy. Too often the game would lag or freeze if there was too much going on in the screen. I could’ve had a perfect dungeon run with a God weapon, good card perks, and a strong curse; but it all went to shit if the game bugged out. Unfortunately, you can only save progress in the village, so any dungeon progress will be lost if it bugged out. Thankfully the dungeons are short and simple enough to run through again. The most frustrating bug that I encountered is that I couldn’t edit some things I built, thus removing my autonomy over my village aesthetics. I believe the developers Massive Monster are aware of these issues and working on fixes.

Cult of the Lamb isn’t really a story-based game, but I was still surprised to see story twists and choices that made me go on You Tube after beating the game to discover alternative decisions and their outcomes. Even some core side quests leave the cute little lamb to make some sadistic decisions. I really enjoyed the simple, but good story. I totally vibed with this games aesthetic and that’s partially due to the music being an absolute bop. You sacrifice your villagers, slay enemies, and impose your doctrines to this chill low-fi music.

Another element adding to this game’s success is the Twitch integrations, but this was limited to PC versions only. If the Cult of the Lamb Twitch extension is enabled, a streamers viewers can have one of the Lamb’s followers be named after them. Twitch viewers can also contribute to the totem to increase the streamers devotion and money. It’s a really cool engagement tool that only adds to the games experience. I just really wish the developers found a way to enable this integration for other platforms. Massive Monster created a gem with Cult of the Lamb. They combined genres together and made it work in a way that is extremely addictive. This rogue-like, dungeon crawling farming sim is absolutely one of my favorite games of 2022 so far.

4/5 Bibles.

-Dee Assassina

March 28, 2022April 18, 2022

ELDEN RING [Review]: My Favorite Video Game of All-Time.

When Elden Ring was revealed, it was a very short teaser. But, seeing FromSoftware slapped on that teaser was all I needed to get hyped. If you’re a lover of Souls games, you know this exact sentiment. When it was announced that Elden Ring would be an open world game, I had high expectations. Let’s not pretend an open world Souls game doesn’t sound super cool. Yet, somehow this game exceeded my already high expectations by a long shot. I had no idea Elden Ring would quickly become my favorite game of all time…

I wanted to live in this game forever. I wanted to see every corner, fight every boss, pick up every shiny item, complete every quest, discover all the secrets, and stare at all the vistas. I’m generally a completionist, but often times when I platinum a game, I’ll be ready to move on. It’s been so long since I wanted to go above and beyond in doing everything a game has to offer me. Maybe my relationship with Elden Ring was a little unhealthy because I couldn’t bring myself to truly enjoy another game, get genuinely hype for a new game announcement, or really do anything. This game lived in my mind more than I’m willing to admit. Let’s just say there were many times I woke up at 3 a.m. remembering an area I wanted to go back to and explore.

Video games in general were coming to a time and place where open world was becoming the norm. The oversaturation of open world games burned me out with few exceptions. During a time when I was experiencing open world fatigue, Elden Ring‘s offering felt refreshing. It didn’t overwhelm me with markers, tasks, and quests. Instead, it put me in the world and let my curiosity pave the path. This sometimes meant running into a region with enemies way above my level, but the only way to find out is by getting the “You Died” screen way too quickly. I didn’t need an enemy to have a level above their head or a map telling me a region is too advanced. Instead, my health bar was my compass.

This also meant that I could move on when I felt underpowered. There is more opportunity to leave an area when its too challenging and come back when you’re stronger. I ended Elden Ring at level 172, and I did it without farming at all. There’s so many different enemies and mini dungeons tucked away and ready to be discovered. Elden Ring gives more freedom than any other Souls game to approach things at your own pace. It gives you more freedom than any other game, period.

This is the first time FromSoftware implemented a map into a Souls game and they somehow perfected it. You don’t get a big map full of fog and markers, leaving you overwhelmed at how far you need to go to discover it all. Instead, it begins zoomed into the section you’re in and as you progress through the game, it gradually zooms out. I couldn’t believe how far the map went, and the map structure was somehow motivating instead of overwhelming.

Each region of the map has different biomes, unique enemies, and different music. The starting region Limgrave has a fairly relaxing music score, with blue skies and green grass. When you stumble into Caelid, the sky turns a deep orange, the music gets unsettling, and the enemies look rotten. Other biomes consist of a blue lake filled with mages, an autumn kissed land of demons and what seemed like cultists from Midsommar, and of course a snowy landscape where a snow storm was as heavy as the fog in Silent Hill. There’s even an underground map full of majestic cities, blood-soaked palace’s, and volcanoes. I’ve parkoured through tall tree branches, dropped deep into caves, mined tunnels, avoided traps in tombs, solved environmental puzzles in catacombs, and pushed my way through strongholds and castles.

Within regions there’s legacy dungeons that will give you the classic Souls style of exploration with no map and a handful of shortcuts. These dungeons could be a stronghold, a Castlevania-like manor, or a magic school that feels like Harry Potter with horror. Every region has a unique aesthetic, making every step of the way feel refreshing. Elden Ring may not be graphically advanced but its artistic design makes the environments all the more interesting. Every single inch of the vast map is like a painting.

FromSoftware has always excelled in enemy design and Elden Ring offers an entirely new load of odd, creepy, grotesque and fever-dream like enemies. If these games had bestiaries, the log would be thick. There’s also a bunch of optional mini dungeons that re-use level assets and repeat bosses. Yet, they still manage to mix up the formula to keep it fresh. The repetitive enemies aren’t simply re-used assets; they’re relevant to the lore. Some regular enemies eventually show up much bigger as bosses. Sometimes bosses show up in the open world as regular enemies. Sometimes the repeat boss will show up with a sickle instead of a staff. Sometimes FromSoftware will fuck around with you and throw three of the same boss into one room with you. There’s even some bosses that only spawn at night. Every single enemy has a unique attack pattern, size, weapon weakness, and design. The enemies being so dynamic is why I never get tired of Souls combat and why I often crave it.

Theyshould just call Elden Ring FREEDOM: THE GAME, since there’s so much freedom to experiment with different character builds — more so than any other Souls game. The divine opportunity to respect your character easily and the sheer amount of arsenal to try out different tactics is so damn vast. Players are going to be discovering different OP builds or goofy things to try in this game, for many years to come.

I never thought talking about the story in a Souls game would be worth mentioning. These types of games always have interesting lore and world building, but it’s not primarily why people enjoy these games. There’s so many interesting quests in Elden Ring that are easy to understand and a lot more memorable than the usual cryptic dialogue we get from most NPC’s in these games. Through my journey I always kept in the back of my head to help one Maiden fix her vision with grapes, or to help another get rid of a deadly rot infection, or simply help a pot man get wacked out of the ground. There were moments of betrayals, familial turbulence, and honorable battles, and themes of isolation, despair, self-hate, revenge, and resolve. I even felt empathy for some bosses I was forced to slay.

There is no levity in the world of Elden Ring, just minor glimmers of hope in companionship. My only complaint of the story: I wish there was a bit more direction with the quest lines. At the very least, having a dialogue indicate the general direction of where an NPC would migrate to next would’ve helped. I get the charm of these games involves the community coming together to share discoveries and I love that so much, but I still needed guides to ensure I didn’t miss out on quests.

I don’t think you’ll like Elden Ring if you haven’t enjoyed previous FromSoftware Souls games. It has DNA from all the other games and somehow perfected its own formula. Jumping and stealth attacking like you could in Sekiro is such a necessary quality of life addition versus the usual stuck to the ground gameplay of Dark Souls. This helped in combat with cool jump attacks but also in exploring the verticality offering in Elden Ring. The build structure is very similar to Dark Souls except now there’s more freedom to mix and match builds with room for experimentation and mistakes.

Unlike its predecessors, there’s very few areas in Elden Ring where you’ll be waiting long stretches of time before you get a save point called a Site of Grace because they’re everywhere. It’s for all these reasons that I think Elden Ring is the perfect introductory Souls game and the most forgiving of them all. When I say forgiving, I don’t mean easy. It just adds more quality of life to the gameplay structure and managing the deep RPG systems.

My experience of Elden Ring on the PS5 has minimal performance issues. When the game released, there were occasional dips in frame rate and lots of texture pop-ins. None of these issues significantly impacted my time with Elden Ring, and recent patches have polished it up. It’s crazy to think that my only real criticism of this game is the texture pop-ins and lack of quest direction. Even then, FromSoftware has made improvements via patches where the pop-ins happen less frequently and we at least have markers for discovered NPCs. Well, at least until they migrate again.

I’m also a bit sad about the lack of photo mode because there are some really amazing visuals I wanted to capture like I did in the Demons Souls remake. Photo mode wouldn’t just be helpful for capturing the games beauty but also for a makeshift pause button. There were far too many times I died to bosses because my cat decided to stand in front of my monitor, but I couldn’t just put down my controller to get him down. Bad Kitty!

Everything else about this game is perfect. I can’t believe a game of this caliber exists and from a developer I already adore. I can’t believe Elden Ring has surpassed The Last of Us from being my favorite game of all time. I can’t believe I sunk hundreds of hours into this game, and I still want more. I never felt this way about a game and I don’t know if I ever will again anytime soon. Elden Ring isn’t just game of the year worthy; it’s a game of the generation title. 5/5 Whiskeys.

-Dee Assassina

February 24, 2022March 24, 2022

HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST [Review]: A Beautiful, Bloated Adventure.

When Horizon Zero Dawn didn’t win GOTY in 2017, I teared up. When I revisited Zero Dawn in preparation for the sequel, I discovered the game wasn’t as strong as I remembered. I figured that perception stemmed from the game’s age showing; but, after playing Horizon Forbidden West, I realized that maybe this open world formula doesn’t intrigue me nearly as much as it did in 2017. Horizon Forbidden West feels like another open world full of bloat, with markers and mundane activities everywhere. It suffers from the Ubisoft open world syndrome…

Maybe you like that! I even enjoyed that formula many years ago, but after playing so many games of this type, I burnt out. I almost feel bad that every time Horizon comes out, it’s overshadowed by another open world game that refreshes the genre (e.g. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in 2017 and Elden Ring in 2022). No doubt, they’re all completely different games, but when you have to make a choice between which open world game is going to take your time, it’s harder to choose the one that feels very similar to every other open world game. While Horizon Forbidden West was contributing to my open world fatigue, Elden Ring invigorated it.

Regardless, there’s no denying that Forbidden West is gorgeous. There were many moments where I had to stop and take in the scenery. I often gawked at the sun rising above as I was climbing a tall mountain. I enjoyed paragliding down into a deep dessert or making imprints in snowy terrain. I remember traveling on my machine mount and seeing how the trees transitioned from being dry in the arid climate and when I got closer to a forest, the trees turned luxurious. Even the underwater areas were full of color and wildlife. Horizon is, no doubt, an evolution in graphical fidelity for open world games.

The graphical fidelity and details weren’t limited to the environments, but also in the character designs and animation. There is so much expression, body language, and emotion displayed during cutscenes, dialogue sequences, and gameplay. It’s on the level of The Last of Us, Part 2. Even the NPC’s who weren’t core supporting characters had this high level of detail. This is a welcomed improvement from Horizon Zero Dawn.

The emotive character models saved the dialogue in this game. Otherwise, I found that a large portion of the dialogue was very boring. Part of this is because a lot of the optional dialogue choices were repetitive to ensure you understand the deeper lore. The other part is, there is too much optional dialogue. It’s a shame because there’s some interesting information within the optional dialogue, which is why I didn’t just skip it altogether, but too much of it was muddled by useless information.

It was as if Guerilla Games took influence from Mass Effect by implementing a hub area where you chat with companions in between missions. Like Mass Effect, there is more dialogue than there is combat, but the dialogue in Horizon wasn’t nearly as integrative to the character and world building. In Mass Effect, I looked forward to hearing what my companions had to say in between missions but in Horizon, every time I saw an exclamation point for new dialogue, I scoffed. The ironic thing is, I really like the character companions in Horizon — far more interesting than they were in Zero Dawn. New characters introduced feel purposeful and existing characters had better development. I just hope that any sequels to Horizon sincerely consolidate their dialogue options or just find a way to make the optional dialogue more interesting.

Despite feeling dragged down by the dense dialogue, I still constantly felt intrigued by the mysteries of this world. The idea of a post-post-apocalyptic world is riveting. The advanced technological world is gone, and humanity was saved with the sacrifice of knowledge, thus putting them back to tribal ways of life. This is fascinating setting that is always treated with care.

Remnants of the “old world” were ever present in the Forbidden West. Abandoned cars are weathered and overcome with vines, museums were turned into settlements, and even underground casinos were deep under water. My favorite moment in Horizon was submerging deep into water surrounded by neon lights and broken machines from an “old world” Casino, before I was whooshed away by a giant sea turtle machine. Horizon Forbidden West takes this game even further, adding more to the world than discovered in Zero Dawn and fleshing out the Project Zero Dawn AI’s systems a lot better. This sequel even goes as far to introduce new surprising layers to the world that help create sophistication and mystery. Many questions are answered but the new layers introduced created an ever present state of intrigue.

So intrigued by these new layers and the bigger picture, I had a difficult time being engaged when we were learning about the different tribes. There’s so many interesting cultural and political situations explored with the tribes, but the heavy dialogue and bloated open world made it really difficult to feel connected.

When I arrived at the first region Chainscrape, a thin corner of a very large map, I felt compelled to complete every marker. Not only because it was a small area but everything I did felt impactful to that people who dwelled there. Once the world opened up, that sense of connectivity with other areas got lost. I so badly wanted what I felt in Chainscrape to carry through the entire game, but it didn’t.

Considering Aloy is created to save humanity, she presented with the typical hero complex, where she doesn’t want help from anyone. Don’t get me wrong; I love salty Aloy, especially in comparison to Zero Dawn‘s Aloy who felt emotionally inconsistent depending on the dialogue choices. I did feel the hero complex at times was a bit overbearing yet still made sense to her character, what she’s been through and her overall purpose. Thankfully, she and other characters have some great character development as the story unfolds.

The combat is my absolute favorite part of Horizon. The dodge rolling, running, sliding, tagging, and arrow-based combat feel smooth. I never got tired of scanning machines, exploiting their elemental weakness and knocking off components. The joy mostly comes from the enemy variety. There’s so many different, super cool machines introduced in Forbidden West. Of course, you also have a variety of human enemies and against them is where the improvements in melee combat shine. The combat had its hooks in me as soon as I was faced with a giant snake machine called Slitherfang and the machines to follow didn’t disappoint. The idea of dinosaur and animal machines in genius. It makes combat and exploration really exhilarating. Seeing a giant bat machine hanging in the distance or being chased by a crocodile machine when swimming under water never got old. It’s this exact reason that I think the upcoming Horizon Call of the Mountain VR game will be successful.

As enamored as I am with combat, it does feel as though this game held back by its RPG systems. Having to switch out my weapons from a menu just to equip the ones that exploited an enemies weakness was tedious. It wasn’t until later in the game where you unlock weapons that have multiple elements attached, but by that time I was close to done with the game. There’s just too many weapons and gear to swap in between. It would be so much better if I could just beef up one or two outfits and weapons with all the machine parts I gather, instead of managing so many. At the very least implementing a load out system would help.

Even then, Forbidden West adds so many quality-of-life improvements from Zero Dawn. Items automatically go to your stash, each weapon has their own upgrade path, you can pick up items from your mount, and fast travel between save points without crafting a fast travel kit. Yet, there’s still some things that could’ve added to the quality such as not slowing down when you’re picking up items from your mount and being able to fast travel from anywhere, not just from another save point. For a AAA game there’s no need to have features that create extra work, especially when other games have made those systems way more convenient.

I’m critical of Horizon Forbidden West out of love. I want it to be one of the best and it has the potential to be, but it just isn’t. The details and graphical fidelity in the environments helped me not feel dragged down by the open world bloat. The emotive character designs helped make the drawn out dialogue more tolerable. The imaginative enemy designs and smooth combat helped me not feel so annoyed by the cumbersome RPG mechanics. There’s so much good here to enjoy but unfortunately, there’s not enough about Horizon Forbidden West that stands out. 4/5 Whiskeys.

-Dee Assassina

February 8, 2022February 14, 2022

SIFU [Review]: You And I Have Unfinished Business!

I thought my time with challenging games were reserved for Elden Ring, but here comes Sifu making my hands sweaty. This is a game where you’ll need to repeat levels and bosses to perfection. At its core, Sifu is a beat em’ up game, but you won’t just be spamming punch or kick, and eating chicken for health. Instead, it pulls elements from a variety of genre’s like rogue-like’s, fighting games, and even Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

This is a tough game, for sure; but what’s most appealing is the satisfying combat, painterly art style, fantastic soundtrack, and detail-oriented level design. Sifu will no doubt be a contender for Game of the Year in 2022.

This game’s story is basically a Kill Bill vol 1 revenge story. Your father is killed by a group of people who each have a distinct martial art’s style, and your character is on a path of revenge. You get to choose a male or female character, but this has no influence on the story or gameplay. Although, the male character model looks better.

This sets the stage for the remainder of the game where you’ll be visiting five different locations, each with a boss at the end. There’s very few cutscenes and some of the lore is baked into the few collectibles found in the game. The story and characters are definitely the weakest points of Sifu. It’s a basic story that takes influence from many classic kung-fu films. Is revenge the only way? You get to choose.

Even though the story felt too safe to be remarkable, I didn’t even care. From the moment you experience Sifu’s intro, it’s vibe and creativity shine. It so seamlessly melded the introduction and tutorial together. It was at this moment that Sifu had its hooks in me. My admiration of this game accelerated as I hit the first level, a run-down drug house within a garden. The environments are littered with details and color.

The other levels include a club full of neon lights, a museum full of paintings and colorful exhibits, a tall office tower with sandy underground caves, and a sanctuary full of hot springs and massage parlors. Each location has their own vibe, color scheme, and, most importantly, music.

“You Can Catch Me In the Club, Bottles Full of Bub”

The music in Sifu is outstanding. Not just because there’s intense electronic bass reverberating throughout the club level, but because the music modifies as you traverse through the level. It’s as if a new tune is added to the song as you get deeper into the level. More importantly, the music intensifies when you’re in the middle of combat. The music supplements the combat so well.

The combat makes you feel cool. Your characters stance looks so bad-ass when executing attacks, dodging, parrying, weaving, backing up, or even standing still. The amount of unique animations poured into the combat is outstanding. You perform attacks in a more simplified way than you would in a fighting game. For instance, flicking the analogue up twice and then pressing light attack or heavy attack. Additionally, performing a combination of light and heavy attacks together, or holding down the heavy attack button for a devastating charge attack. You’ll be able to get through the first level button mashing the attacks, yet later areas will require a more sophisticated execution of attacks, parries, dodges, and weaves.

Notice how I mentioned not only dodging, but also parrying and weaving. The game doesn’t do a good job in explaining the difference and you’ll have to keep dying and retrying to see which is most effective. I started playing the game like Sekiro, parrying every attack in quick succession. That got me through for the most part, until I faced the 2nd boss who’s attacks quickly broke my structure. Structure is basically stamina (or posture in Sekiro). This is when I discovered the art of weaving because dodging pretty lead me to putting my face into some unforeseen attack. For the sake of clarity and because the game doesn’t explain it, let me break it down:

Parrying – Tapping block at time of attack.

Dodging – Tapping dodge and flicking analogue in the direction you want to move.

Weaving – Holding down block and flicking the analogue in the direction you want to avoid (side, down to duck, or up to jump over a low attack).

I found little benefit in dodging, except when I needed to get space in between me and the enemy to regain structure or to avoid getting surrounded by hordes of enemies. Parrying was most effective against big groups of enemies and against specific phases of bosses. Weaving is probably the most effective tool against elite enemies, mini bosses, and main bosses since you can scale successful weaves to regain structure or focus (unblockable special attacks). It’s also a lot easier to hold down block and flick the analogue in a direction, than it is to properly time parries.

I got beat down a lot before I wrapped my head around these systems, and each enemy has a different kung-fu dance to master and exploit. I wish the game tutorialzed the combat more deeply, but there is a somewhat helpful training room in the main hub area if you want to test out different moves. The combat is very satisfying once you get into the flow.

The crazy thing is, the combat isn’t unforgiving because you need to figure out when to properly attack, dodge, weave, or parry. It’s unforgiving because every time you die, you age. The more deaths you have stacked, the older you age upon your next death. For example, if you’re 25 and you died 3 times, the next time you die, you’ll be 28 years old. As you age, your attacks become stronger, but you have less health. Once you reach around age 70, it’s game over and you’ll have to start all over again.

The cooler part of the age system is your character model’s appearance changes. Your character becomes less muscular, hair turns white, and wrinkles form. I hope I look that cool and move that well when I’m 70 years old. In other unforgiving games like Souls games or Returnal, once you defeat a boss, you can take a sigh of relief and enjoy your victory. In Sifu, you’ll have to face the enemies and bosses over and over again in hopes that you complete it at a younger age. If you beat the first level at age 55, you’re not likely to even make it through the 2nd level before game over. Therefore, you have to replay the first level again and hope that you’re young enough to make it through the next level.

Thankfully, the game saves the earliest age you completed a level. For example, if you beat the first level at age 23, you can always start the 2nd level from age 23 and that progress doesn’t go away. Your goal is to complete each level at the earliest possible age, just so you can get closer and closer to completing future levels, and completing all 5 levels before game over. I loved the game so much, that I practiced until I beat Sifu at age 23.

This repetition of re-playing levels, makes Sifu feel like a rogue-like. Another reason it feels like a rogue-like is you can unlock skills after every death, but you only keep the one’s that you permanently unlock. You have to pour in points to a skill 5 times before you can permanently unlock it, and even then, you have to pour in another 5 permanent unlocks before the skill is there forever. That sounds confusing right? That’s because it is, and the game doesn’t explain it at all. Rule of thumb, focus on one skill per run, so you can permanently unlock it for future runs. Leg sweep for the win.

Going back to level design, not only is it aesthetically cool, but there’s secret rooms to discover and shortcuts to unlock. Granted, some of these secret rooms only have harder bosses that are protecting a key to open a door in a previous level, but it’s still really cool. You will have to progress within a level or in future levels to collect items to unlock shortcuts or hidden rooms.

I love shortcut systems in games and for a game like Sifu, it’s really handy to skip an entire area of enemies and get to the boss quicker. In the museum level, you can skip the entire level and take an elevator straight to the boss. The only downfall to this is there’s an entire sequence in the museum that uses colors and silhouettes in a really breathtaking way, but I’m not going to complain.

Sifu isn’t a passive game. You’ll need to keep at it, focus in, trial and error, repetition, GIT GUD. If you don’t like that kind of experience, there isn’t an easy #MoodyMode or accessibility features to bypass some of the more intricate combat features. Considering the combat is the main focus of the game, I don’t think you’re missing out if you skip this game to avoid the stress. The only thing I wish everyone could experience is the artistic level design, amazing music, and some really awesome set pieces within levels. 4.5/5 Suntory Whiskeys.

-Dee Assassina

October 20, 2021December 29, 2021

FAR CRY 6 [Review]: ‘Roost’ in the Darkest Hours.

I didn’t even think I would have much to say about Far Cry 6 aside from how Ubisoft’s annual releases make the game feel nothing more than iterative. Instead, I came out of this game wanting to talk to someone about the story and it’s ending. Don’t get me wrong, this is just another Far Cry game with smoother than ever gunplay and traversal. It’s just been a while since the characters and story in a FC game left an impression…

The player will indeed be going to different outposts, clearing the threat, and taking it over. That always has been the gameplay loop in Far Cry games, and Far Cry 6 is no different. There is an improvement that shouldn’t be disregarded. The gunplay and movement are smoother than ever, adding a nice slide and ping system reminiscent of Apex Legends. There’s no denying the open world sandbox of choosing your destination, selecting any vehicle you want, and swapping among your preferred weapon can be comfort food for some and played out for others. Personally, it’s a bit played out.

If Far Cry isn’t going to evolve their formula to keep the series refreshing than I’m hoping it at least stops releasing annually so I can miss it. Ubisoft games in general seem to be holding onto this same formula through all of their projects (e.g Assassin’s Creed, Immortals Fenix Rising), and its making me not want to play any of their games. I’m guessing enough people like that redundancy for Ubisoft to keep turning out the same type of game.

Yet, here I am still charmed by Far Cry 6. I expected a gorgeous environment and detailed map, and like most Ubisoft games, it delivered. What I didn’t expect was there characters I cared about and story twists that dropped my jaw. You may be thinking Giancarlo Esposito carried this narrative, but I was impressed by the main character Dani Rojas and every ally she met through the revolution. I cared about more characters than I anticipated because the missions did a good job fleshing them out.

Even the side activities were fun. For example, helping a rooster with a Mohawk beat up soldiers and tag walls up with graffiti. There were even cock fight and dominoes mini games. These activities gave personality to the land of Yara.

My biggest complaint about Far Cry 6 aside from the redundant gameplay is the crafting and gear system felt useless. I typically stuck to the same weapons and gear because swapping it out didn’t feel too substantial and some of the weapons I looted felt more useful than anything I could craft. It was also annoying how many soldiers there were at all times, but I suppose that was purposeful to the narrative. The people of Yara are constantly terrorized by Castillo’s (GianCarlo Esposito) forces, and so was I.

Overall, there were many moments where the monotony of taking over outposts bored me but the strong narrative, smooth combat, and easy to use vehicles kept me going. Far Cry 6 had one of the stronger endings I’ve experienced in a game and I think its narrative is worthy of spoilercast discussions. 3.25/5 Tequilas.

-Dee Assassina