Game #1285: Valkyrie Elysium

 Stranger of Paradise, Valkyrie Profile edition.

 You could say I enjoyed Stranger of Paradise a little too much, and you could be right, either way, Square Enix decided to recycle that formula for Valkyrie Elysium, to varying degrees of success. This is more beat'em up than JRPG, and any connection to previous Valkyrie games was lost on me, as this game reimagines Odin and his Kin, while giving us a new Valkyrie to follow.

 The plot is not as incomprehensible as the one in Stranger of Paradise, I'll give it that much, but it isn't very interesting or original, and every twist you'll see coming a mile away. The way it's told leaves a lot to be desired as well, both Valkyrie and her four Einherjar are pretty boring. 

 As for the game itself, it plays like a PS2 game but looks like a PS3 game. I say this as praise, as it feels nostalgic, plus, I'm fine with a modern game not having the mandatory crafting mechanics or the dopamine chest checklists. Sadly, it doesn't play like a good PS2 game.

 Valkyrie has access to about 6 different weapons, being able to equip two at a time on the digital pad. You can perform different combos by using Square and Triangle, and as you upgrade your weapons you gain access to more attacks. You can dodge and block as well, dodging and block at the last moment does confer some benefits to the player, as you'd expect. Holding down R2 and pressing any face button performs Divine Arts, which consume crystals from the Arts gauge, which refills as you attack enemies, while holding down R1 and pressing any face button summons whichever Einherjar is slotted to that button for a short while, these run on the Summon Gauge, that refills when picking up blue souls. Lastly, Valkyrie can use L2 to grapple on to an enemy, this can even be done from the air!

 The thing is... combat isn't very satisfying. Valkyrie's attacks and animations feel slow and weak, and as far as I could tell, there wasn't much fun stuff you could do with the combat system. The PS4 version at least even suffers from some framerate issues. There's a weakness system at play here too, locking onto enemies will tell you what they are weak to, attacking them with the right element Art will fill a gauge, that once full leaves them incapacitated for a spell. There are two ways to use the right element, either use the right Einherjar, who will install their element on Valkyrie's weapon for as long as they are active, or by using an Art. 

 There are a few problems with this system. First of all, you can eventually unlock situational summons, such as summoning an Einherjar when you are downed on when you break an enemy gauge. You can have up to two Einherjar active at the same time, but you can just summon another one and it will cancel the last one. Here's the thing, say you are fighting an enemy weak to fire... if a situational summon triggers, the element of your weapon will change, and it's not like you can change it at any moment, if you are in the middle of a combo.... tough luck, your element changed. It's very annoying, and sure, you can turn off situational summons, but I shouldn't need to. Another issue is that there are about six different elements, but you only have four Divine Art Slots... so be ready to pause the game to swap Arts every now and then, at least if you want to maximize the combat system. Haven't some sort of way to toggle between builds would've been amazing, since this could mean that you'd have another pair of weapons and items at the ready.

 Mind you, it's that the combat is bad, it simply is average. It's a beat'em up with nothing of note. In game like Dynasty Warriors, you feel powerful as you easily and explosively mow down hundreds of enemies. Devil May Cry is more about being creative with how you defeat your enemies. Here... it's just about mashing buttons to bring down enemies. And that's the only thing it has. You can use Arts to expedite the whole process, but that means losing on Proficiency XP for your weapons, so you do you. Combat feels super slow, since Valkyrie moves and attacks very slowly. It doesn't help that the first sword you start the game with is easily the best weapon in the game, as the other ones feel slow or clunky. 

 There's this weird "CP" system at play, even though you unlock different abilities, some of them have different CP cost, and you can't go above 500, so you might have to turn some of them off.... but why would you? 500 is the most CP you can have. Well, turns out this change on Hard Mode... to 430. Yeah, I don't get it. Maybe they'll add more abilities or difficulty settings via updates? I don't know, but it's one of the most superfluous systems I've seen in recent times.

 When I said the game is a beat'em up, I meant it. The closest thing to puzzles is pressing switches, which are next to the door they open, selecting an Einherjar to clear an obstacle, or finding a key, which is never farther away than two-rooms distance. Sometimes you might need to press L2 to use your soul grappling hook. So why explore? To find Sad Flowers! Sad Flowers is one of the dumbest collectible, because all they grant you is a single sentence of someone's laments, sometimes it's just the sad neigh of a horse, and I am not making that up. That said, you need to collect all green Sad Flowers if you want the good ending. It's not a very involved game, as you see.

 The game does Sidequests in a very weird way too. While you might 'find' them during a main chapter, do not be deluded, you didn't activate it. On the very first chapter you find a Soul that mentions a ring near the church. So I searched. And searched. And gave up. Well... you can only properly engage sidequests from the Hub, in-between chapters. And every sidequest transports you to the location, so you must do them 1-by-1 even though they take place in reduced versions of the maps from the main game. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can feel a bit tedious since loading times in the game are a bit longer than I would've liked.

 Valkyrie Elysium is an incredibly basic beat'em up, and look, there's nothing bad about that, I like basic beat'em ups like Final Fight. However, Final Fight is two hours long at most, this is a 15 hour game, so if it doesn't want to wear out its welcome it'd better have some sort of hook to keep you interested, or at least some very satisfying combat, so that even though I'm mashing square, I'm getting some sort of dopamine reward. This game has neither. Using the soul hook to grapple on to enemies is cute... at first, but there really isn't much to the game. It's not bad, but you could do much better. And I'm sad, 'cause they decided to bring back Valkyrie Profile with this, and it will quite obviously sink the series, a series it's barely connected to.

 5.5

Game #1284: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - All-Star Battle R(Playstation 4)

  Performance vs Portability.

 I think I don't really need to go over how great JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R is again, at least if you're into JoJo. But yeah, I liked the game so much I decided to get it a second time, third if we're counting the original PS3 release!

 As for this port.... it's amazing, it runs at 60fps and has very brief loading times. Look, loading times on the Switch were pretty decent, but these ones are amazing. So, does the better performance make it a better game? Yeah, game looks super smooth, and it's more responsive to boot.... which is why I bought this game again, when playing it with other people, this'll be my go-to version. That said, portability is just as great, since I love playing on my bed, which is why the Switch version is just perfect for just playing around.

 So yeah, depending on what you want, either version of the game is great.

 9.0

Game #1283: Marvel's Spider-Man - Miles Morales

  It's Spider-men now.

 Considering how well the original did, it's no surprise Insomniac would pump out another Spider-man game, what not many would've expected would be a sort of mini-spin off in the form of Marvel's Spider-man: Miles Morales. In full honestly, it feels like an expansion pack of sorts to the original game, as it innovates very little, but adds new missions, skills and story bits.

 The plot takes place some time after the original game, with Peter showing Miles the ropes, but it's not too soon before Peter gets nerfed so that Rhyno easily wrecks him so that Miles can, in turn, easily defeat Rhyno. It felt forced, but thankfully that's about the only shilling they do in the game, afterwards Peter takes some time off to go abroad and leaves Miles as New York's only Spider-man. Seeing Miles come into his own felt pretty well done, and he makes for a slightly younger and dorkier Spider-man, which is quite endearing. And it's hard not to smile then the people of Harlem start calling him 'our' Spider-man. Oh! And for returning PS4 players, Pete has a new face and it looks terrible. He has a larger frame than Miles, and is supposed to be older... but his face looks like a baby's. It's awful.

 That said, the plot has kind of a big issue... it's highly political. From the usual wokeness of having white people being the biggest bad in the entire world, I swear, about the only named white characters, Peter is the only good one. Once again, the plot is about an evil white rich man, as per usual. The black villains are portrayed as sympathetic... and it works in the case of the Prowler, but as far as The Tinkerer goes... Yeah, they are very unlikeable and only come off as worse than the mandatory generic evil white guy. They also have characters for every color, there's a girl that mentions her girlfriend in a very forced way and is never seen again, and then there's a deaf character too. Incidentally, the deaf character was my favorite, she is a bundle of smiles and however sparse and brief her scenes were... I loved her. I hope she makes it into Spider-man 2! Lastly, they even shoe-horned in a BLM mural, which is funny considering how shady BLM is and how it has nothing to do with the game. And then there's a character mentioning how debates are not about who's right but about who talks the loudest, which is true, but once again, it takes me out of the game since it means to make social commentary about modern times. And it doesn't matter if I agree with the political messages it's forcing down my throat or not, it comes out as preachy and completely threw the immersion away.

 Before getting into the nitty gritty, they added some very welcome options when it comes to QTEs, namely, automatically passing them AND being able to hold down a button instead of tapping it. Thank you, devs!

 As for the game itself, it's much shorter than the original, and it reuses the same New York City, albeit now taking place in a very snowy winter. It looks pretty good! There are new collectible and crime analogues to the ones in the original game, so don't worry, if you like collecting goobers and what not, it's all here, albeit in a more limited fashion. Miles even gets a fair amount of costumes to collect, which is always a boon in Spider-Man games.

 Miles is weaker than Pete, and has access to less gadgets, however, the Focus gauge is now the Venom gauge, and you can use this gauge to perform all sort of Venom attacks by holding down L1. It makes Miles a ton of fun to use, because hitting enemies with Venom stuns them for a while and makes enemies take more damage for a short while, so Mile's fighting style is speedier and built around landing venom attacks to make enemies more susceptible to Mile's attacks. I think they did a fantastic job at differentiating both characters, and I hope they build around this for the sequel.

 In a funny twist of fate, I think the shorter length and smaller scale of this game is actually a positive. Modern open-world games can feel very bloated with worthless collectibles and what not, but in this case it feels just right. The game takes about 6-7 hours to finish if you don't dabble in the extra content, something I know because I did a second playthrough to get the Platinum, but the extra content adds quite a bit more, without it feeling like filler.

 Miles Morales is a pretty great game, I mean, of course, it uses all the basic elements from the original, which were already good to begin with! The swinging feels really good, and I think I appreciated how it feels and looks a bit more this time around, the combat is also pretty fun, and I loved the new Venom powers. I also loved this take on Miles, and I love his friendship with Pete. If anything, maybe, I would've added more time of Miles being a sidekick before becoming Pete's equal, because I've always loved seeing a character graduate from sidekick(Robin) to his own hero(Nightwing!), but that's just a personal thing, as I felt the plot worked really well, shame about all the cringy political stuff.

 8.5

Game #1282: Terminator Resistance

 Game... Terminated.

 Terminator has never had much luck when it comes to videogames, but Terminator Resistance is here to buck the trend. This is a first-person shooter set in the future era of the series, meaning a grown John Connor, and instead of travelling to the past, you play as a new character who's unit has been wiped out and now he's out to survive.

 As a first-person shooter, it follows every modern trend you could think of. You must scavenge for resources, opening every box you find, and then use these resources to barter for objects you can actually use, as well as use them to craft items. There's a very simple, but welcome, skill tree, and as you play the game you get to spend skill points. Lockpicking and Hacking wound up being very important, since hacking and lockpicking grants bonus XP and allows you to find even more resources. Early on the game tells you that your choices matter, but they don't, they only affect if you get the gratuitous first-person sex scenes and which slides you get during the ending narration.

 As for the game itself, it's very linear, but every 'chapter' has large environments to explore, and you can even go after sidequests for bonus XP, resources and story bits. The game has sort of a survival feel to it, thanks to very limited ammo, so you'll need to craft explosives and ammo, mind your backpack space as well as healing items supplies. It works pretty well, if you ask me.

 The game is sort of interesting when it comes to the difficulty... initially, on Medium, it felt pretty easy. Ammo was scarce, but I didn't use a single medikit and never had to retry a single mission. Then, the game crashed... and I accidentally downloaded the update. Medium, post-update, is brutal, I even had to lower the difficulty 'cause I was bored of retrying so much, and the loading times in-between retries is brutal as well, so I got bored of waiting. After patching the game, the Terminators become brutal, and they can soak up a ton of damage before going down, incentivizing using cowardly tactics and explosives. It makes sense in-universe, there's a reason machines are overpowering humans in the mythos, but I felt it made the game sorta boring.

 Visually, it's kinda lackluster, the game is full of greys and blueish greys, which makes for a very monotone game. The graphics themselves look very sharp but a generation behind, which makes all the performance hiccups all the more noticeable, even though they aren't very frequent.

 Terminator Resistance is a fun little game, and I don't think you need to be a fan of the franchise to appreciate it. While not very unique or memorable, the gameplay loop is satisfying, and as dull as the environments are at times, the RPG mechanics make it engaging to explore every nook and cranny, be it for resources or to complete missions. Yeah, it's not bad.

 6.0

Game #1281: Concrete Genie

 I've got nothing in concrete to say.

 Well, if anything, at least Concrete Genie is something different from the norm, which is a godsend considering how homogenous games have gotten as of late. This is a very simple adventure game in which you paint your way out of trouble.

 In the game you play as Ash, as he sets out to revive his town by using his art. The town is dark and bleak, completely covered in darkness, and bullies reign outside. Your main objective is to use your brush to paint under lights to light them up, and thus drive the darkness away. Painting is very simple, you tap R2 to enter Paint Mode, and then go through albums to pick different drawing you can place on the walls. These drawings are magic, so they animate ever so slightly. As you open up new parts of the town, the game actually remembers what and where you painted, which is massively cool. It's so amazing when backtracking to run across everything you drew exactly how you drew it. And, y'know, seeing the town covered in color feels pretty neat too. You can paint just for fun too, and the game will save it too!

 Sometimes, you'll need to paint genies to progress. Genie spots are highlighted on the ground, and these beings live inside the walls, you can hold down L1 to make them try to make their way next to you. They come in different colors and they can interact with different objects in order to help you progress, plus, sometimes they'll ask for a specific drawing. Make them happy and they'll give you Super Paing, the only way to clear concentrated darkness.

 The game is very chill, throughout most of the game the only enemies are the bullies, which you have to avoid by parkouring around or make noise to make them move from wherever they are. Exploring the town will reward you with more drawings for your sketchbook.

 The drawing is meant to be done with motion controls, but you can turn them off. I did. The collision detection sometimes feels a bit off, but it's nothing too bad.

 Lastly, two thirds into the game, combat is introduced. It's very basic, a simple attack and dodge affair. It was a bit boring, as the game is much better when it's you and the walls, but at least it's inoffensive... even if enemies can maybe soak more damage than they should. 

 Concrete Genie is pretty alright. It's a very charming game, which while not terribly fun, is a breath of fresh air.

 7.0

Game #1280: BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk

 Berserk and his friends. 

 I don't know who came up with the title BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk but that guy deserves a raise. I've been hunting this game for a while now, since it's gotten quite expensive as of late, but I finally found it, and I'd say it was almost worth it. What you might not know is that its original name was Berserk Musou, as this is yet another Dynasty Warriors reskin.

 The game covers a huge chunk of the manga, from the Golden Age up to the moment Berserk and his friends board the ship towards the land of the elves. That translates into 46 different stages. The presentation is actually really neat, throughout the entire Golden Age saga it uses clips from the frankly quite ugly CG-but-honestly-quite-good-looking-2D movie trilogy, and there's a TON of footage here. The game claims it has over 2 hours of anime cutscenes, and I believe them. Afterwards, the rest of the plot is told through dialogue boxes and in-game cutscenes. Hilariously enough, in many ways, the in-game cutscenes look much better than the fully CG scenes from the movie, as they are much better shaded and don't move as stiffly. The overall plot, as is to be expected, glosses over a lot of details and the Lost Children Arc, but I'm sure fans like me will feel fulfilled. The one thing I'd hold against it is that much like source material... Caska's rape feels a bit... erotized, and I know, Japan loves erotizing rape, but it still feels awkward. There are way too many shots and gratuitous use of a naked Caska being held by slimy tentacles throughout the trailer and even the gallery.

 After you are done with the very lengthy campaign you are left with the Endless Eclipse, a somewhat randomized 100 floor challenge. Each of the playable characters unlock different rewards upon completing it. That said... there are only 8 playable characters, which is pathetic, and one of the characters is... Wyald. No Farnese, no Isidro, no Corkus, no Pippin, no Rickert, no Silat.... but Wyald. Characters aren't super unique either, which they usually are when these games have lower playable character counts. Plus, throughout most of the campaign you can only play as Guts, heck, there's not a single stage in which he isn't playable. There were also a few missions, for instance the ones in which you must 'survive until morning', that felt like pure filler..

 On the other hand... this is one of the most satisfying Warriors games I've ever played. It's super bloody, letting you chop enemies as you kill them, and when you enter Frenzy mode, you get this delicious rumbling as you hack enemies in half. It feels SO good.

 Silly title aside, BERSERK and the Band of the Hawk is a fantastic game for fans of Berserk AND Musou games. It covers a lot of ground, the movie cutscenes are welcome and it feels a lot of fun to play. That said, there's room here for something much better. 

 7.0

Game #1279: Dawn of the Monsters

 Gozilla didn't sign the contract.

 If Japan and America have something in common is that they love giant monsters, and it seems Wayforward as well, because they have their own take with Dawn of the Monsters. As similar as it is, in name only, to War of the Monsters, it actually borrows more from SNK's King of the Monsters, as this is a 2.5D beat'em up.

 In DotM you can play as four different characters, once is a giant hero, much like Ultraman, there's the obligatory Godzilla stand-in, a giant-robot and another Kaijuu that is probably inspired by something, but I don't know. While the controls are the same for each monsters, they do have different moves. Y and X are weak and strong attacks, A is a dash atatck, each monster has three different gauge-costing special moves and a Rage Move, that uses a second energy gauge. You can also block or dodge moves, and the B button is used to pick up stuff or perform executions. Once an enemy is low on health, they start shining red, and pressing the B button murders them, healing you for a little bit and a giving you a nice score multiplier, at a cost of a single bar of the Special gauge.

 If anything, moving around sometimes feels a bit choppy. Be it because sometimes there's some sort of building or object obstructing your path or because the hit boxes, when it comes to depth perception isn't as generous as it could. The combat itself feels really nice, and later bosses will put your timing to the test when it comes to dodging or parrying their attacks. That said, the life bar of the final boss is ridiculous. I lost 5 minutes in, about a third of HP left and decided that it simply wasn't worth it. I know I can take it down now that I know how it fights, but I really don't care about trying again. Despite me saying this, the combat is decent enough, juggling enemies feels pretty neat, although it can get a bit repetitive by the end.

 Even better, you can customize every character with different color palettes and three Augments. Augments provide bonuses to your HP as well as extra effects, for instance, making executions heal you twice as much, stunning everything around you when you parry an attack or giving buildings a chance to spawn an item when you break them down. Building up characters feels really nice, and there's a lot of variety. The better you do in a stage, the better Augments you get to pick from after finishing a stage! Getting a S score also unlocks a new color palette for any of the four characters. And you'll have to work for that S, as getting anything less in a section of a level means you won't get the overall S score. It can be heart breaking to retry an entire stage only to fail at the last segment and having to redo everything again.

 I'd like to mention that graphics have this really neat 80's comicbook filter over them, so that characters have dotted textures on top of them. It gives it a very original look.

 Dawn of the Monsters is a fun time for a little while. It's not the most interesting game out there, but it accomplishes a lot thanks to its simple but effective mechanics.

 7.0