Game #1107: Resident Evil Revelations 2

  It's time for a Claire Sandwich.

  There's only one way to close down Octoberween, and that's with Resident Evil Revelations 2. While many people considered Revelations 1 a return to form I was... less than enthusiastic about it thanks to some questionable design choices. But hey! It's round 2, baby, now on stronger hardware and with the return of Claire Redfield.

 First of all, this game takes after then-modern Resident Evil games, like 5 and 6, so it's built around co-op, except worse. Each of the four chapters are divided in two sub-chapters, one featuring Claire and Moira, Barry's daughter, and the other one featuring Barry and Natalia, a girl he finds when searching for his daughter, Moira. Whichever the case, one player will be stuck as the load, either Moira or Natalie. For you see, only Claire and Barry can wield guns and do the cool stuff. The player stuck as Moira can attack with a crowbar, which at least is something, and must use a flashlight to shine over shiny spots to find ammo for Claire. The player stuck as Natalia can 'sense' monsters in order to guide the Barry in order to stealthily take down enemies, find their weakspot, or downright highlight annoying invisible enemies. Either way, one player will have fun, the other one will try to do so vicariously through the other player.

 But if you're playing in Single Player, Barry's chapters are a chore. You'll have to quickly swap between Natalia and Barry in order to find invisible enemies, which if you can't kill fast enough will instantly kill you, and you can't trust the CPU to do it. And it sucks, 'cause I really like Claire, I like her new, older design, yet Barry is clearly the main character considering he gets the longer sub-chapters, heck, Claire's final chapter is only 14 minutes long. Finishing the game unlocks 2 bonus chapters, one featuring a gun-tooting Moira, in which you get to interim stages to hunt for food, and each retry costs food rations because reasons, and if you run out of rations your savefile gets deleted. It's a weird idea for a chapter that is less than a hour long. The other bonus chapter is a stealth mission featuring Natalia and 'dark Natalia', it was a stealth mission and I hate stealth so I didn't actually care to finish it. It was boring. Beating the game also unlocks incredibly dumb fanservice costumes for Claire and Moira, such as a 'sexy cowgirl' costume for Claire, which was idiotic.

 Character-swapping shenanigans aside, the main campaign was fairly decent, as it plays just like the other third-person REvil games. Throughout every chapter, if you explore around, you can come around parts that you can then use to customize your guns, such as increasing fire rate or damage. It had some fairly decent segments too and the ammo is always verging on just having enough to deal with everything coming your way, but not any more than that. You also earn BP that you can use between chapters to upgrade passive abilities, such as bonus damage with the knife, having AI partners actually shoot with their guns if you are using Natalia or Claire, using healing items faster, etc.

 Now then, if that was it, Resident Evil Revelations 2 would've been a passable but ultimately forgettable entry into the series, like Revelations 1 but slightly better. But this game has yet another element to it, Raid Mode. Raid Mode is this game's take on Mercenary Mode, it has tons of stages and tons of characters. Not only do you get Barry, Claire, Moira and a ton of tertiary and secondary characters from this game, but you can also unlock Hunk, Wesker, Chris(Revelations 1 model), Jill(Revelations 1 model) and... Leon too! And not only do you get a ton of characters, there are also a ton of stages, featuring 9 gauntlets with six stages each, and each gauntlet has 3 different difficulty variation to it. And then there are a ton of weapons you can find, a ton of parts to customize them with, and you can also unlock passive abilities to equip your character with and upgrade these abilities as well.

 And not only is there a lot of stuff to do, it's also really fun, as each micro-stage is made up of assets from other games in the series, so you'll come across a ton of familiar locales, as you try to take down every enemy, while gathering new weapons and weapon parts. And you'll also have to contend with enemies that have special secondary abilities, such as being set ablaze so that they explode when defeated, or come equipped with force fields! Resident Evil Mercenaries 3D, which was a full-fledged release, pales in comparison to this mode. Revelations 2's main campaign pales in comparison to this mini-game extra. They could've easily sold this mode on its own and it'd been worth every penny.

 I thought that Revelations 2 was a somewhat dull entry into the series... but man, Raid Mode turned this game into a must-have for people that enjoyed Resident Evil when it became a third-person shooter. It really distills the game's gameplay into its purest form, making for a fantastic, although not scary in the least, arcade shooter, which is something I loved, and that alone makes it, quite probably, one of my favorite releases in the series, despite its forgettable main campaign. Also, bring Claire back in a proper starring role, Capcom!

 9.0

Game #1106: Hades

  Defeat Hades to escape Hades.... over and over again.

 I was ready to hate Hades, the first time it was revealed I thought it looked incredibly bland. And then people started praising it to high heavens, and we all know how biased and out-of-touch critics are. And then, Darksyde Phil, the worst streamer on the planet also liked it. I was ready to hate Hades, and yet.... It's really darn good.

 It's an isometrical rogue-like in which you must destroy every enemy in a room before being allowed to proceed to the next one. Every room is randomly generated, not that it really makes a difference. One thing I really liked is that every room nets you a reward. It could be a God Boon, which is an enhancement to your abilities, like adding effects to your attacks(Like a damage over time effect, turn your projectile into a grenade, make your dash invulnerable, make your dash deal damage and push enemies away, etc), money to buy stuff during the run, gems to buy permanent perks to your runs, Darkness to purchase permanent buffs to Zagreus', the protagonist, abilities, etc. In many games I always feel like combat ends up feeling meaningless, in this game it never does, as you are always building towards something, be it enhancing your abilities for this run or getting the means to get permanent upgrades. Plenty of times, after clearing a room, you'll be able to pick from different types of reward, so you've got some leeway on which random rewards you want.

 Zagreous can equip 6 different weapons: A sword, a lance, a shield, a bow, gauntlets and a rail gun. Each weapon handless very differently, and Zagreus gets a basic attack and a special attack with each one. Once you unlock every weapon you can unlock and upgrade different 'aspects'. Some change the properties of the weapon, for instance, Zagreus' Zagreus Sword Aspect makes his basic attack faster, but another aspect makes it so that using your special attack increases your critical chance for a short while, or it can be a bit more game-changing, for instance, the basic shield special attack sends it ricocheting a-la Captain America, but one of the aspects turn the throw into a slow, bounce-less shredding direct push in whichever direction you threw it. Eventually, you can unlock a fourth aspect for each weapon that changes their moveset completely. The game does a good job at promoting you to try different weapons, as before each run the game will randomly endow one of them with a bonus to the received Darkness and gems.

 Further more, Zagreus has two other techniques under his belt independent of the equipped weapon: A dash that serves as a dodge, and a cast/projectile attack. The basic cast attack is fairly useless, but you can get permanent upgrades so that you deal bonus damage to enemies hit by the cast or make your cast more useful if you are lucky enough to get a good God Boon for it. All in all, Zagreus' moveset is pretty simple, but effective. The random elements, namely how every room has a random reward, and which 3 buffs you can pick from each god boon is also random, means there's a lot of variety. Sometimes you might get stuck with buffs you don't like, you might even get to try buffs you didn't think you'd like or you just might discover interesting and effective combinations. Regardless, combat in Hades is super fun, and I'm surprised at how much mileage they got out of it.

 Beating the game for the first time unlocks the ability to add challenges to the game, such as more monsters per room, having enemies withstand the first X amount of hits before taking damage and the such, and this allows you to refresh the boss rewards from every floor and with every weapon. One thing I didn't like was that the game's 'true ending' is hidden behind 10 game clears. The game is really fun, and if it gets too hard you can turn on God Mode which makes you stronger and every time you die you grow stronger still, but I still felt like it was kinda lame. Just give me the ending and then I'll replay the game if I feel like it. Which I did. Multiple times, 'cause it was really fun.

 The game got a lot of praise for its story, and how the 'multiple runs' is integrated into the lore, as characters comment on Zagreus' achievements and losses, even Zagreus doesn't forget about his attempts. And every time you die and return to your home characters will have a new small interaction for you to read, if you want. And I didn't care one bit. I found the story uninteresting, and the way it's told, through boring character stills and lifeless text boxes was... well, rather lame. Honestly, the story, the game's most praised element, was the thing I liked the least about it.... and even so, I loved the gameplay, which speaks volumes about the game's quality.

 It's not the best roguelike I ever played, but it was a really great one. Easy to understand mechanics and a very rewarding gameplay means that every attempt at escaping Hades doesn't grow old. It's also very accessible, so it's an easy recommendation for people who'd like to try a rogue like.

 8.5

Game #1105: Mega Man Legacy Collection + Mega Man Legacy Collection 2(Switch)

  Unpopular opinion, let's go!

 While I didn't play every single Mega Man game back when I was younger, I did grow up with a bootleg copy of Rock Man 3, and I loved that game to bits, probably one of my favorite games back then, so I do have nostalgia for the series. On the other hand, the day I played Mega Man X4 for the first time was the day that Mega Man became a thing of the past for me, as X was faster, cooler and more modern. A few years ago I got reacquainted with the entire series through the PS2 release of Mega Man Anthology which reunited every game in the series at the time, and then some. Mega Man Legacy Collection + Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 is yet another compilation of the Blue Bomber, featuring more games... and yet I've a few bones to pick with it.

 My first beef is with the game collection, it only contains Mega Man 1 to 10. Anthology had Power Battles 1 and 2 as fun extras. And what about the original Mega Man 9, Mega Man and Bass? Why not include the silly Mega Man Soccer or the Genesis remake of the first three games? I dunno, I feel like they could've added more games. Also, what's up with the silly decision to divide the collection into two volumes? So that Capcom could make more money? On other consoles, the game has in two discs, but if you get the game on Switch, like I did, you are screwed, as volume 2 is a download code. This is absolutely ridiculous, both games could've easily fit in a single cart. The fact that half of the games are digital only, and only in the West, really soured me.

 Another annoyance is that both collections have different features. Volume 1, which houses the six original NES games, have a Save Anywhere feature as well as the ability to rewind at any time by holding down the L button. Both are nice features, since these games are incredibly tough, and to be honest, I preferred the way Anthology did it, by adding a new, optional, easy difficulty setting. Volume 2 doesn't have the ability to save anywhere nor the rewind feature, but you can toggle on an option that basically doubles your health bar, which is nice, but not as nice as being able to save anywhere. Instead of that, you get 'checkpoints', and you can only reload these checkpoints, which was very annoying because A) A stage usually has only a single checkpoint and B) The other game made it so much more convenient.

 Now here comes the controversial opinion... Mega Man has aged like milk. Level design is absolutely trial and error, with tons of obstacles you can't see coming until they hit you once. And in a game with limited lives... it's pure torture. Every game in the original six games has at least one bullshit moment. Minimum. And all of these games have at least three or four pixel-perfect jumps, and unless you jump at the last possible pixel you won't make it and lose an entire life. It's madness. I get it, some people get this weird sense of pride when they beat a difficult game, and that's fine, some people don't mind spending hours learning a game despite having to clear the same obstacles over and over again before they reach the one they couldn't beat before. I don't. Mega Man 1 requires you to find a sub-weapon in Gutsman stage, if you don't, you can't finish the final stages in the game. There's no other items like this one in the entire game. Mega Man 2 is considered the best by many, and I don't understand why, as it's the game with the highest amount of bullshit 'couldn't see coming' obstacles in the original NES games. Quick Man's stage is terrible.

 I know Rock Man 3 was the one I grew up with, but even so I consider it probably the best one, it introduced sliding and the charge shot, which changed gameplay for the better, and had the least amount of bullshit in it, the worst offender being the fact that you need the Rush Submarine or Rush Jet to finish Gemini Man's stage, and there's no warning about it, so hopefully you leave that guy until later in the game. I feel like Mega Man 4-6 tried to be fairer than the previous games, stages became more lenient and Robot Masters became harder to compensate. Still, they still have their very own bullshit moments.

 Thankfully, the Rewind and the Save Anywhere features help ease how frustratingly unfair these games are. People say that classic Mega Man is fair, they are absolutely clouded by nostalgia, these games are unfair because you will die to some obstacles because there's no way to see them coming. These also means that they are not well designed, despite how many other great things they have to going for them. From inventive character designs, to great ways of teaching the player how to play without telling them. This is also why I consider the X series(At least the first four) much superior to the original games, as they kept the challenge but making it much fairer.

 Then comes Legacy Collection 2, which houses Mega Man 7 to 10. I swear, every time I start playing 7 I hate how chunky and large everything looks, but once you get used to it the game turns out quite fun. Mega Man 8 is super colorful, although the boss design is a bit lame and the voice acting is so-bad-it's-good. Still, I appreciate it not being as unfair as the classics.

 And if you thought I was being controversial... I hated Mega Man 9. It's clamored by many to be the best one in the series, as it tried to be exactly like 2... and that's why I feel it's so bad. As far as bullshit goes, it's worse than the originals, I almost rage-quitted the game. Not having the ability to rewind or save anywhere was very frustrating. Sure, you can use checkpoint-reload as infinite lives, but it still means having to go through boring obstacles you already cleared before getting a new attempt at the ones you are failing. It was also a step backwards in many regards, removing sliding and the charge shot, while going back to 8-bit style graphics, albeit more colorful.

 While Mega Man 9 was praised pretty much everywhere, it seems someone at Capcom realized 9's shortcomings. From adding an easy mode to cutting back on the bullshit... it's a much more playable game. It's much less bullshit to contend with, which made it much more palatable. I feel like Mega Man 10 is the game that deserved all the praise 9 got. Regardless, while it's not included here, I think it's still worth mentioning that Mega Man 11 would take the series forward, both in mechanics as well as in level design, so there's a happy ending to the series. Mega Man 9 and 10's DLC is included, but you either have to finish the game or input a code to access it which was a weird design choice.

 If you care about quality of life changes, I think Mega Man Anthology was a better collection. Didn't divide itself into volumes just to get more money, removed flickering, let you swap powers on the fly with R1 and L1, added an easy difficulty setting and even had the fun Arcade games as bonuses. Sure, this new release is more accurate to how the games originally played, it looks sharper and it has more games, but truth be told, I didn't care about 9 or 10, 9 probably being my least liked entry in the series and the few extras it has(Image galleries for 1 to 6) pale in comparison to the Arcade games that Anthology had. So, for someone like me that would rather have a good time and don't care about bragging rights over beating a hard game.... Anthology did things much bettered and offered more value for my dollar. It was also fitted inside a single disc.

 6.0

Game #1104: MediEvil(Playstation 4)

 Many years have passed, yet Dan still hasn't found his jaw.

 My first introduction to MediEvil was very rocky to say the least. I had a bootleg version of the sequel, I played it for a bit and hate how slippery it was. Many years later I'd give both games a proper try and I wound up enjoying them a lot, as I have attested in this blog. My interest in this remake was high, so I'm glad I finally had the time to give it a proper chance.

 And... this is a straight up remake. While the game was remade from the ground up, it's clear they tried to make it as similar to the original as the could, warts and all, for good or bad. And proof of that is the game's lukewarm reception, by critics who are completely out of tune with what people actually want and for the target audience of the game's they are often sent to review. MediEvil on PS4 is NOT a game for everyone, it's a game for people that enjoyed the original, enjoy oldschool games or can put up with old game design. And I mean that, the best things about MediEvil are here, but also its worst elements, things that they could've easily fixed but opted not too in order to stay as faithful to the original as they could... and you can even unlock the original game.

 MediEvil was a very early 3-D action adventure game, and it shows. Movement is super slippery, which is something to get used to, and combat is super imprecise and floaty. You smash the square button to have Sir Dan mindlessly slash to and fro in front of him. Hitboxes seem to be a bit less forgiving in this remake, as I felt like I was trading hits with enemies much more often than I did in the original. Was it enough to make it more annoying? I'm not sure. I feel like I had to go back to previous levels to refill my health potions as often as I did in the original.

 Healing is as annoying as it used to be. Basically, you can find Health Potions that increase your total life gauge, in a way, on some stages, for a total of 10 extra potions or life bars or lives or however way you want to look at them. There are only two ways to refill them, as they are not refilled between stages, finding health potions or health fountains. Health fountains can only restore up to two health potions, and latter levels are, well, harder, so you'll find yourself going back to previous, easier, stages to refill your health potions, as it's not like you can refill them and quit the level, oh no, you have to finish the stage again. In the original game, life fountains would dry up for good, but here they'll refill every time you re-enter a stage, albeit they've only got enough for two refills per attempt. That said, I just went back to the first stage, Dan's Crypt, and I'd grab the two health flasks, worth a single refill, over and over again. This mechanic is easily one of the worst parts about the game and something I feel they should've fixed, simply by refilling your health upon completing a stage, but thankfully, the game is good and short enough as not to outright ruin it. Still, it was an easy fix and it wouldn't have ruined the game's feel, only add more convenience to the player. 

 Speaking of fixes... the Swamp stage is as bad as it was in the original, The game is filled with pits that rob you of an entire life-bar/potion, and falling in them is very easy due to the narrow paths, the slippery controls and Dan's poor jumping. That said, maybe they did something to make it less annoying, since this time around I don't remember getting a game over, just losing a ton of health bars! On the other hand, call me blind, but a couple of times I mistook level exits with health fountains, which forced me to redo some stages since I didn't collect the chalice, more on this later, thinking I was heading into a healing fountain, for you see, both level exits and health fountains are indicated by small green, foggy lights. Eventually you'll learn, probably quicker than me, that level exit lights are a bit larger and of a darker shade of green, but still, I would've made level exits an unmistakable yellow as to avoid any sort of possible confusion. Once again, it would've been a small tweak that wouldn't have hurt the original design and make things more clear, just for convenience's sake.

 The game's dialogue is pretty much identical, and that's a good thing because I did enjoy the game's humor and set-up. Once again, I loved the game's chalice mechanic, where upon defeating a certain amount of enemies in a stage, which I think was made slightly more lenient in this one as I feel you require less enemies, you can obtain a chalice that will give you some sort of reward upon finishing the stage, such as a new weapon or health potion

 There were two other small tweaks, as well as one big addition to the game. First tweak, you can now equip to different weapons at the same time, and swap them by pressing the triangle button, which isn't

 as useful as it sounds, but it's not entirely useless. Also, now you have an optional, alternate third-person camera which made aiming long-distance weapons a cinch. I must have used it just one time during my playthrough, but hey, I used it! On the other hand, the game's only new addition are the Lost Souls. Unlocked near the end of the game, they are an excuse to replay the entire game once again, as once you unlock them, you'll be able to find a Lost Soul on every stage, and they'll give you a riddle, which you must solve in order to discover where and on which level to lay them to rest. Basically, it's just busywork, but I could see myself doing it on a future playthrough.

 I only had two major issues with the game. First of all, one time a door that was supposed to open on the colored-glass window boss didn't open.... which I fixed by restarting the level, no biggie. The other one was worse, when I first installed the game... I couldn't play it without updating it. It was the first, and only, time a game acted like this. I had to uninstall it, disconnect from the internet, and install it in order to play it unpatched. Unbelievable.

 As someone who liked the original MediEvil, and as someone who hates stealth sequels like Final Fantasy VII Remake, I really liked this game. I also love the fact that you can unlock the original, even if it's locked behind a ton of busywork. That said, I still think they should have made some concessions in regards to healing, as it wouldn't mean changing the game's difficulty, only helping the player waste less time doing repetitive chores. While Dan's overall health is quite plentiful, thus trading hits with enemies isn't so punishing, I think they could've tried to tighten the combat a bit more. Still, I do think it's a great game because I think the original was a great game and this one sticks so closely to that one, so as long as one doesn't mind archaic game-design, this is a no-brainer.

 8.0

Game #1103: The Suffering - Ties That Bind

 Seems there's a lot of trauma left to address...

 The Suffering was really good, and so was BloodRayne, so I quickly decided that I'd play both sequels this Octoberween. Like BloodRayne 2 before it, I can't really say that The Suffering: Ties that Bind matches the quality of the original, but at least it made for a decent time.

 In this sequel, you play as Torque again, except that this time you're exploring a city, in a very linear fashion, haunted by... the murder of his wife and children which... is put once again into question just how much of a hand did he have in it. There's a new character introduced, Blackmore, who apparently also had a hand in what happened, and he'll regularly bother you on your quest and... I can't say I cared one bit about this entry's story. From the lazy way it's told, to retreading old ground from the previous game to just how unappealing it was... I didn't care. The original game did it first and did it better. I also didn't like the fact that you'll also take part in shootouts against cops, fighting humans in a horror game isn't my cup of tea, I liked it better when it was just you against the monsters.

 A few mechanics were tweaked... You no longer carry healing items with you, you find them and you use them if you walk over them, otherwise, you just leave them there for reasons unknown to anyone. Does it make the game harder? For the most part, it doesn't. There's still an ammo cap, and even worse, you can only carry two weapons with you. It's funny, you'd think these limitations made the game harder... but it really didn't, if anything, it made it a bit more annoying. When big fights are coming there's usually an infinite ammo cache somewhere to help you, and the only tough parts in the game were tough because you'd be overwhelmed by cops. But as soon as you learn where they come from and how to position yourself to shoot at them as they come out you'll come out on top... eventually. I mean, the game is relatively easy, but there are 3-4 big fight segments that took me an obnoxious amount of times to clear. The first cop fight is particularly bad, to the point I considered dropping the game altogether.

 Still, the core gameplay is still pretty fun. The monster design is fantastic, and the third person shooting works really well, having an almost arcade-like quality to it, since it's quite fast paced. You are supposed to keep on the move while shooting your guns, strafing around your enemies.There are melee weapons too, and I think that throughout most of the game it's a good idea to carry a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, but eventually you'll stick to only the ranged weapons as melee is just too risky. And just like in the first game, while it's supposed to be played in third person, there's an optional first-person mode, and you can play the entire game like that if you want. If anything, a few times I switched to first person just so that I could aim better.

 Despite the new tweaks that force you to be more careful with your health and your weapons... the game felt less scary than before. I think that if the original game didn't exist, and thus I didn't have a direct point of comparison, I would've liked this game a bit more, but as it stands... the first game did everything this one did but better. Heck, even if for the plot fans might as well just ignore this one, as it adds nothing to the story, only make what we knew from the first game more needlessly convoluted. Still, as unnecessary as this game felt, I can't stress enough the fact that it's still fun to play.

7.0

Game #1102: Afterparty

  There's a party in hell tonight.

 Right after Oxenfree there was only one way left go, downward to hell, where Afterparty takes place. This is another walking simulator with tons of dialogue, so if you played Oxenfree you know what to expect: Tons of walking and tons of talking.

 The game pits you as the duo of Milo and Lola, who recently died and got sent to hell. At first how and why they are in hell is kind of a big deal, and it made for an intriguing mystery, but the plot never really does anything with either, they just kinda died and why they are in hell is explained in a few throwaway lines that you'll probably miss. The big focus of the narrative is on Milo and Lola getting another shot at life, by making it to Satan's party and outdrinking him. Yeah, the whole game takes place in hell, but the script is very humorous in nature. There's also an aesop about drinking in excess hidden somewhere in the script, but I don't think they quite pulled it off, with the character that seems to be suffering the most from alcoholism not showing quite the terrible consequences of binge drinking you'd expect, and considering you spent a lot of time in hell... they could've shown much better the effects of their drinking on the world and the characters related to them, but nope, they forgot about showing and not telling, so they just tell you about it. One time. Near the end of the game. And it's only after they tell you about it that he starts showing some of the effects of drinking too much. I don't know, I feel like they could've done a much better job with the narrative. On the other hand, I think they did a good job with the demons, they look creepy and otherworldly enough, and they seem to have no gender, some may talk with feminine voices and have masculine pronouns or viceversa, which made them and interesting bunch.

 Further aiding in destroying their 'drinking in excess is bad' aesop, most important character interactions require you to pick a drink. You don't need to drink it, but every drink has a different effect on your characters which translates into unlocking a different, third dialogue choice on some conversations. Most of these are just for flavor, as far as I could tell. That said, there are quite a few sections in which you two different alternatives in how to proceed, sometimes these choices can lock you out of meeting a few characters.

 There are a very sparse few minigames here and then to spruce up things, but most of these come out of the blue with no explanation, but after a while of not doing anything, if you don't realize you are supposed to do something, a phantom joystick will appear next to your character highlighting the buttons you are supposed to use. To do what? Press them and find out. Speaking of these, there's an optional Simon says-styled dance off in which a character OBSCURED the button inputs I was supposed to press! It only happened once and I couldn't find other people complaining about it online. Thankfully, you can retry it as many times as you need.

 Something I didn't really appreciate was some of the pacing. Four or five times you have to climb to Satan's party only to be told "But now you need to do X", so you have to climb down his tower and move somewhere else. It gets a bit annoying after the second time. If getting to Satan's house was just a matter of moving to the right it'd be a bit better, but you have to go to the right edge of the screen, interact with an elevator, hopefully you pick the shortcut, then watch an animation in which you are flown to the top, now move to the right again. Interact with the door, if you get in, which won't happen the first time since you'll be sent back to get an entrance ticket, now you have to move to the right again and talk to someone, probably Satan, be told to do something. Now you have to go back all the way to the left, exit his house, left again, talk to the elevator, watch the animation again, move to the left again.... yeah, having to do this more than twice felt like somebody was taking the piss out of the player.

 On the gameplay side of things, sans the loading screen when loading your save file, the game either masks most loading screens with dialogue or the loading screens themselves are much shorter than the ones in Oxenfree. On the other hand, maybe it's because it's loading stuff, maybe not, but the game is full of stuttering all the time, which is a bit ridiculous considering how rudimentary the game looks and few particle effects there are. There's no reason as to why such a simple game should run so poorly.

 I feel like a game like Afterparty has no business running this poorly on the system, but it was passable. I wish I could say that I cared more about Milo and Lola than I did.... but I really didn't, and, once again, I feel like the script had potential but it was a bit forgettable and didn't make the most out of its premise. It's not too bad, but there are definitely better walking simulators out there. At least this one is Halloween appropriate.

 5.0

Game #1101: The Dark Pictures Anthology - Little Hope

  Man of Medan done better.

 Well, I wasn't too keen on Man of Medan, but it seems like they finally got the hang of things with The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope. It does a lot of things right, some thing even better than Until Dawn, however, it has one key issue....

 Well, first I will praise how they fixed the game. The framerate is super smooth and stable, character animations are much more fluid and faces emote more. Walking animations are still the stuff of nightmares but they move much faster now. The game as a whole doesn't feel as glitchy, however, some screen transitions pre-patch definitely are glitchy. Still, overall, it's clear that they had time to polish everything, so it doesn't feel like the game is about to fall apart every step you take.

 You are warned before a QTE comes, which is both good and bad, and you can change QTEs to a single button in the options menu. People that care about challenge will probably be very peeved about this, but considering this is more like a 'choose your own adventure' kind of deal... I actually welcome it, so you can fail the QTEs if you want to fail them, or get them right if you want to get them right, thus giving you more control over what happens, which, once again, in a game of this type I feel is the better choice.

 And now the key issue... This is a walking simulator kind of game, just like the previous one, so it lived and dies by its story. If I were to talk about this game in a vacuum, I'd say that I really liked the story, it wasn't super original, it wasn't super tight, but for a horror story-driven game I can play with a friend... I think it got the job done. I cared about the characters much more than I did with Man of Medan's, and while some plot devices are poorly explained or don't have a satisfying explanation.... I still think it was a better story. The problem is... the twist is very similar in nature to the one in Man of Medan. I can't go deeper into it without spoiling both games, but it was a very misguided move to follow up Man of Medan with this plot.

 I feel like Little Hope is every way a superior game than Man of Medan, and in some ways, it's even better than Until Dawn. However, they really screwed the pooch by having such a similar plot device, which will just leave a bad taste on every horror-media aficionado.

 7.0

Game #1100: Parasite Eve II

  I would've thought the eve of a parasite would be a one time thing.

 Well, while I played Parasite Eve for the first time a couple of years ago, I had actually played Parasite Eve II in my youth. And I didn't like it very much, just another Survival Horror game into the pile of survival horror games I hated. But current me actually likes Survival Horror, and current me loved PE 1, so with a fresh new mindset I set out to battle the Mitochondria again. Plus, it made for a decent game #1100.

 Parasite Eve was a RPG that leaned heavily on Survival Horror elements, well, the sequel is the other way around. Combat is no longer turn-based, but it's much simpler than in, say, Resident Evil. You tap the square button and Aya will automatically lock onto an enemy, and then you just press R1, and as long as there isn't something between you two, and your weapon has the range, your bullets will hit. Aya has access to super powers, just like she did in the previous game, and after every fight you are rewarded with experience points you can then use to enhance this powers. Aya has a very limited 20 item slot inventory, but can only bring up to 10 items to a fight, provided her armor has enough pouches. Even if you have healing items or ammo to spare, if they are not inside your pouches while in a fight, you can't access them.

 There are no random encounters, however, your map will regularly update to show you areas highlighted in red, which means enemies have spawned there. It's not random, but rather, after certain story scenes enemies will spawn in areas you may have cleared before. It's a bit of a chore, but you should try to clear enemies every time you get new spawns, because the game is fairly easy, and enemies reward you with XP, for your super powers, BP, to buy more and better equipment, as well as restore a few MP, which you use to cast your magic, for free. Oh, and keep in mind every environment has at least one resupply point with infinite ammo you can just return to, so ammo is not an issue. I think fighting every encounter adds some artificial length to the game, but I only got tired of it one time, but the next day I was refreshed and didn't feel the burn. That said, once again, it's completely optional, so you don't need to backtrack for certain encounters unless you really want to. 

 I didn't find the plot particularly interesting, but I did find Aya to be well written, I loved how snarky her item descriptions were! I found it interesting how the game world is interconnected after the first area. The introductory level is never visited again but if you explore well enough you can connect the third area, the Shelter, to the second area, the Dryfeld village. I did feel like the game's third area, the Shelter, was much less interesting that what came before it, so my interest in the game waned a bit. Some of the puzzles in the game were... a bit too obscure, even for Survival Horror standards, to the point you might want a guide in hand when tackling the game, just in case.

 Parasite Eve II usually gets a bad rep, but I didn't think it was that bad. Parasite Eve was 1, in my opinion, a much more interesting game, both in story and gameplay, but I don't think the sequel ruins the series, it's just that the plot isn't as interesting and the combat system isn't as fun. That said, I enjoyed gunning down baddies, mixing in some fiery powers here and there, and being constantly rewarded with BP and XP meant that combat always felt meaningful, beyond just getting to the end of the game.

 7.0

Game #1099: Streets of Rage 4 Anniversary Edition

Back 4 DLC.

As someone that wants everything physical, Streets of Rage 4: Anniversary Edition was a no-brainer since it includes the recently released DLC. I already talked about the game itself, so I'll focus on what's new.

 First of all, new SKU, so if you owned the original game your savefile is useless. Thankfully the game is a blast, so I quickly beat the game with all three new characters: Shiva, Estel and Max. Firstly, I took Shiva on Easy, to get reacquainted with how the game played. Well, I wound up loving Shiva, he is very combo-focused, and is super speedy, with the only con of being unable to wield weapons. Then I went on Normal with Max, I didn't like him very much, he is focused on grabs. Then I took Estele on hard, and she wasn't as slow as Max, but didn't have the comboability Shiva had, making her a more balanced character. She was decent. There's a fourth hidden character, Roo, but he is using his pixelated and out-of-place SoR 3 sprite, so I didn't care about him.

 Characters are the most interesting additions, but not the only additions. There's a new Survival Mode that pits you against endless waves of enemies, and on every new wave you can pick a buff between two options. Like adding elemental effects to some of your attacks, increasing your stats, an extra jump, etc. While there are no new enemies(Bah, there are a few new palette swaps in this mode), there are new backgrounds and weapons made exclusively for this mode, which is pretty neat. The mode itself was pretty darn fun, and I spent more time than I had thought in it. But even better, you can unlock alternate special moves for your characters(Double tap forward + Y, X, X+Forward, Aerial X). All characters get an alternate set of special moves, which you can mix and match. To be fair, there are no new animations, they simply repurposed other animations to get new attacks out of them, but hey, it adds variety to the game and lets you customize your characters a bit. Heck, there are 3 new alternate colors for the SoR 4 characters.

 There's a new free-training mode in which you can toy around with various settings or spawn any combination of enemies, provided you defeated them in Survival mode, which is a quirky new addition to the game.

 I think... I think these new additions made Streets of Rage 4 a must-have for any beat'em up lover. I think the game got a bit rebalanced, because it felt more fair to play than when I did the last time around. Adding to this, the new character Shiva was right up my alley, and I had so much fun playing as him that it hooked me harder than the previous release did, to the point that I've already played this version a little more than I did the first release. And the Survival mode... I thought I'd give it a try and quickly forget about it, but it turns out I kept replaying it because it was so much fun, heck, I even tried it with the old characters and had a blast too. All in all, I'd say this re-release turned SoR 4 into a new favorite of mine.

 9.0

Game #1098: BloodRayne 2

  Well, this means that Rayne has a decent couple of... games.

 So, I was really happy that BloodRayne aged so well, since I used to love that game to bits way back when. I got BloodRayne 2 during my PC gaming days and... I can't remember why, but I never played beyond the intro stages, never got past it either. Lack of interest? Maybe the game didn't run very well? I'm not so sure, regardless, I enjoyed the first one so much this last time I replayed it I decided to take its sequel for a spin right away.

 A lot has improved, at least on a surface level. Voice acting is fantastic, Rayne sounds sassy and full of life. The graphics are much improved too, the first game was no slouch, but Rayne looks better than ever. A few of the finer details, like how they managed to simulate cutting threads, were removed, but character models are much better. Instead of fighting a ton of generic nazis, now you fight Rayne's sisters and brothers, and they sport their own designs. They are pretty lame since they are pretty much 90's scantily clad females, but hey, having these unique designs add more personality to the game.

 Combat has been streamlined, square slashes and circle kicks, with combos looking better and feeling a bit better... but cutting of limbs mid-combat doesn't happen as often. Rayne can still maim her opponents, but mostly as a finisher from her feeding. Combat also becomes rather formulaic. Enemies holding weapons? Kick them and slash them. Enemies with guns? Feed on them or just slash them. Anything else? Sidestep and slash and sidestep and slash, etc. The first game had easier enemies, but it never became monotonous, here you are slashing enemies that are constantly trying to escape or blocking your attacks, making their lives needlessly longer. Sadly, feeding is still a bit too easy to abuse, and why wouldn't you? You can feed on gun-toting enemies or weaponless enemies, they provide you with their bodies as shields and heals you. Plus, now ammo is tied to feeding, so you've got even more reasons to feed than before.

 I really don't like what they did with guns. In the previous game, Rayne would grab any gun she'd come across and dual wield them according to their weight. Gun combat didn't add much to the game, but it was there and got the job done. Now... you only have a single pair of guns, kinda, but you earn more after you defeat certain bosses, so slowly you get new 'types' of guns. Ammo is blood, and you have a certain 'storage' of extra blood shared between all types, for instance, this storage means 40 bullets for the 'gun' type, 4 for the 'flamethrower' type and 3 for the rocket type. When it runs out, using guns costs you life. You can refill your guns by feeding on an enemy and pressing R1, to fill your guns instead of your life, or, if your health is full, the excess blood you drink goes towards this storage. To be honest, guns are even more useless than in the first game, I only had to use them a few types during the final stages of the game. They level up with use, but the new shared blood/ammo thingie didn't do it for me.

 Rayne also added a few new moves to her arsenal. She can vault on horizontal poles or climb vertical poles, as well as shoot on either. She can also grind down rails. I guess the few new platforming sections add some spice to the game, but not much. She also earns enhanced versions of her Rage and Speed powers from the previous game. Oh, and they added ragdoll physics to the hook, so now you can pull or push enemies in different directions.

 And that's what really killed the game for me. Seems they were very proud of these physics, because 90% of the game puzzles are about hooking enemies and pushing them towards something. The game will spawn endless enemies in these sections, and they plague game. There's no challenge, no fun, no variations to this. Just "Throw 6-10 enemies into this thing to proceed", and they never stop. I was tired of them by the second time they happened, but they NEVER stop pushing these sections into the player, and they are so dull that they kill most of the enjoyment you were getting out of the combat.

 BloodRayne 2 does offer some fairly decent improvements over the already great first entry, but the game's over-reliance on the boring hook-pull mechanics make every improvement moot, because instead of having fun defeating enemies... you are just praying that these pushing 'puzzles' stop coming. That said, it's not awful, whenever you aren't pulling and pushing the game IS actually fun.

 6.0

Game #1097: The Dark Pictures Anthology - Man of Medan

  Hope you got your tetanus shot.

 I wasn't Until Dawn's biggest fan, but I appreciated it for what it was, and I found myself remembering it with some fondness, which is why I was looking forward to The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan. Following in its footsteps, this is another walking simulator riddled with QTEs that does its utmost to feel like a playable horror movie.

 Man of Medan scales things down a notch, now we are down to five different playable characters, which I think is a better choice since characters get more playable chapters each, but the length of the game is also shorter, clocking in at about 4 hours. That said, your choices are more dynamic this time around, as this game allows for more alterations to how things play out, as well as characters have more chances to die, as opposed to Until Dawn in which it felt like a few characters had too much plot armor. So, yeah, I'd say the downscaling works to this game advantage.

 That said... I felt like this game simply wasn't as interesting and the characters weren't as likeable as the ones in Until Dawn. Until Dawn succeeded in feeling like a slasher movie, with dumb teens and their dumb choices. Man of Medan is a bit more generic, so to speak, four friends and a guide set out on a diving expedition, a bunch of pirates raid them, their boat comes across the haunted Ourang Medan, everyone gets into the ship and crazy stuff starts happening. What's more, I felt like the secret behind what was happening was sorta.... lame. I really appreciate the replayability, I appreciate how much more variety in how things play out there is, but... yeah, I didn't care about the plot or the characters as much as I did with Until Dawn.

 One new feature I really liked was 'Movie Night', in which you can have other people join you and set a character to every player, or more than one character if you are less than five people total. Basically, before each 'scene' the game will have a prompt 'ready player X' so that you can hand them the joystick. You could easily do this yourself, but still, I like how this mode encourages multiplayer. I would've gone one step further and allowed every player to use their own joystick, but hey, it works.    

 The good news is.... the mandatory six-axis motion inputs are completely gone, every QTE is a button prompt now, praise the lord. There are still a lot of them, and now you can make it so that mash prompts can be pulled off just by holding down the button. I like it. That said, movement is still super stiff, character move like sacks of potatoes, their walking speed is pathetic and turning around can be ridiculously annoying at times. I mean, how can the movement be so stiff? How?

 The graphics took a bit of a hit, as character models don't feel as polished, and they barely emote sometimes, to the game's detriment, as seeing non-emoting characters speaking in tones of distress is quite off-putting and breaks the immersion. The game overall feels rather... sloppy. Characters may simply blink out of existence instead of walking or animate in overly stiff ways, some scene transitions are rough and... it feels like the game is barely holding on together at times. Mind you, I didn't come across any notorious bugs or glitches, but sometimes it feels like the game is about to break.

 There's a rather neat new feature, 'director's cut', which lets you replay the game switching up some scenes, adding or removing scenes or even changing the playable character. There's one caveat though... you must download an update. This was done so that they could sell early access to this mode as ap re-order incentive. LAME.

 I think that with Man of Medan the developers made a lot of great design choices, which maybe were just a consequence of having a smaller budget. But, on the other hand, I didn't think this game's plot was as entertaining, which is kind of a huge deal in a game that's all about its plot. The stiff visual presentation also really hurt the game, while I'm not a stickler for graphics, a game like this NEEDS decent graphics to sell you on the premise, but these stiff faces made some supposedly scary scenes funny. Still, it was a fun time, particularly with another player, so it's not a bad pick for a Halloween game, but I'd stick with Until Dawn. On another note, I just started Little Hope, and lemme tell ya, it's already a step up from Man of Medan....

 6.0

Game #1096: Ghostrunner

 Robot Ninja Parkouring.

 Maybe GhostRunner isn't the best game to open up Horrorctober with, but it's the one I've got! This is a first-person cyberpunk action romp that pits you as a eponymous GhostRunner, a robot ninja that must rise against Mara, another robotic entity that has the world under her thumb. It's also tough as nails, everyone and everything dies in one hit, including you.

 At the start of the game you are only armed with two things: Your Katana and your agility. The GhostRunner, named Jack by the people, can perform a short dash, slide and run on walls. Holding down the dash button while on the air will slow down time, allowing you to quickly move to the left or right before performing the forward dash, this is a technique that you'll need to use and abuse in order to clear some platforming challenges and slay baddies. Most enemies are armed with guns and the such, so running at them in a straight line is usually not the best course of action, so you'll have to use your jumps and the walls around you to approach  from different angles before slashing them down.

 The game offers a fair amount of enemies. There are your basic gun-tooting baddies that are simple to cut down, enemies with machineguns that you must be more careful with, ninjas that you must parry, by attacking just as they attack you, robots that shoot wide proyectiles you must be more careful with, etc.  Sometimes it can feel a bit monotonous, since every enemy has a somewhat specific way of being tackled. On the other hand, since you can wall run on most walls and you can even use the air-dash to climb surfaces... if you are creative enough you can create your own shortcuts bypassing obstacles towards collectibles. Heck, during the first boss' first phase, I managed to find ways to skip portions of the obstacle run it forces upon you. This is something I thought was fantastic, and I don't know if they intended to allow the player so much freedom.

 To aid you in combat you'll slowly unlock four powers that uses a focus gauge that you refill by mowing down enemies. If used properly, these can give you an edge in battle. The first one is a forward slash that can go through proyectiles and through enemies, then you get a force push, which was my go-to ability, then a slash that was very similar to the force push and then mind control. I thought mind control sounded lame, but it became very useful during some of the final combat challenges. You can also equip upgrades, through a tetris-grid system, to give yourself a few boosts. It's nothing game-changing, but in a game this tough everything helps. Getting your self a second dash is a must!

 I thought the game did a fantastic job at balancing the amount of combat and platforming challenges, as the game is usually made up of a platforming challenge, then a combat challenge, then a platforming challenge and so on. While many sites cited the game as being around 9 hours that's an outright lie, the game is 4-5 hours at most, and this is coming from someone that died 277 times on the first boss. Oh, yes, the game keeps track of your deaths. Thankfully, retrying in this game is immediate, no loading times whatsoever besides 1 or 2 seconds while it resets everything, so dying doesn't become so annoying.

 The game looks passable in docked mode, but in handheld mode.... it can be very, very ugly. The framerate held up 30fps rather well... at least until the suicide-bomber enemies showed up, the two stages featuring these had a horrendous framerate, for whatever reason. The game's plot is super predictable, but maybe the intended it to be so since it tries very hard to be as cyber punk as it can. And it succeeds in that. The wet, neon-lit rooftops and streets you go through are glorious, nailing the cyberpunk bit to perfection.

 One of the game's biggest hurdles is getting used to the control scheme. R1 is jumping, R2 is Slashing, L1 is dashing, L2 is the grappling hook and A is sliding. During the first hour or so my fingers kept getting jumbled and I'd slash instead of jump or slide instead of slashing, etc. I felt that this added to th game's challenge, but eventually my fingers and my brain got used to it and the game became more fun to play.

 But the game's BIGGEST hurdle is, definitely, how buggy it is. One big issue is that checkpoints are NOT savestates, so you can't save the game until you beat the stage. Which can be an issue with some of these bugs. There's a bug that's prevalent on every version: The game often crashes when going to the next stage. I had three crashes total, thankfully I never lost any progress with these. One time my air a dashes stopped working, which meant combat became unfairly tough and some platforming challenges downright impossible, and reloading the last checkpoint wouldn't solve it... forcing me to restart the entire stage. Another time, during the Train stage, my vision became blurry with a "REBOOTING" sign flashing in the centre. I was so late into the stage I just toughed it out, since at least my abilities were fully functional, but man, was it annoying. Another time I got stuck inside the environment, another time both my hand and blade turned black after reloading, and, sometimes, I feel like the GhostRunner wouldn't wallrun even though I clearly touched the wall. This game could've used a few more time in the oven, that's for sure.

 Overall, I feel like GhostRunner is a decent game, and this is a passable port. It's a shame some levels couldn't held the 30fps better, but thankfully the rest of the game was much better. While the focus on speed and attacking from the air makes you think that this is a game about style, it being so hard only made me feel super lame, so I feel like an easier difficulty setting could've benefitted the game. While I know crashes happen in the other ports of the game, I don't know if they are as buggy as this one. 

 7.0