Caerimonia 最近的评测

Half-Life 2 is a pretty solid shooter that is more story driven and more playable than its predecessor... but, with the exception of a few, truly memorable levels (still the best part of Half-Life), it fails to reach the same creative highs. It is by no means the best 3D shooter of all time, perhaps not even the best game of that year. The innovations in Half-Life 2 are a bit more peripheral in comparison to the first game... more about the engine than the game, and even the engine itself felt a bit outdated in 2004. The central problem of Half-Life 2 is execution of its ambitious ideas for the levels, usually adequate, but slipping hard too due to some very jarring sequences lacking polish. The game's second sin is being released far too late in the history of the modern shooter, much after other studios where already releasing games like Doom 3, Far Cry, Riddick. Where the first game in the franchise felt creative and cutting edge, this one at times just felt conservative, even a step backwards. Like a game made for the early 2000s appearing in the mid 2000s, thanks to a failed experiment with teleporters.

First the good news. The shooting proper is very well designed and extensively scripted. Enemies are no longer just standing, waiting to be killed by the player. They are much more challenging than before. More importantly, they can ambush the player in waves that were carefully scripted for almost each encounter, resulting in the actions of your foes looking more varied, more spectacular and more "Hollywood" than ever. However, the positive of this change comes at the expense of some of the fun. At times you're limited to a passive involvement as a player, more reactive in a sense, since you can't stay hidden and plan your encounters ahead of time. Gordon is no longer the MIT Alpha-male, the guy outsmarting and outgunning the expert marines. Here, as Gordon, you'll be constantly surprised by the enemy instead of you being the one surprising them. This is probably a complaint with some objective basis... because in fact, one of the more popular and liked levels in the game, "Ravenholm", is precisely one of the more traditional ones. It is slightly less scripted, enemies have a more static placement, and at heart it just feels like a level taken from an older shooter.

It is also of note that the pace of the action, this time, is almost always the same: unrelentless. Its one danger after another. The game rarely allows you to take a breath, to get truly immersed in the setting or the view of the environments, unless you're forced to do so by some sort of puzzle. After a couple of hours like this, you really feel that more changes in pace, a couple of levels with a slower tempo, like in the first game, would add to the mystery of the places you're visiting, and would help in making the game more captivating than it currently is. I'm not a fan of the pace in this game, and honestly feel like its a downgrade in this second installment.

The shooting mechanics are, however, an improvement over the weak gun gameplay of the previous Half-Life, and they are finally very good, which may be reason enough to buy and play the game. Sound is much more realistic, with that slightly unpleasant sharpness and loudness to the ear that comes from actual guns being fired. Shooting a gun in Half-Life 2 sounds slightly intimidating, as it should be. Also, your weapons have much better, much more realistic damage stats this time around... no longer you need to spray your targets with the 12 gauge shotgun in order to finish them, no longer you get the chance to one-off a monster with the crowbar. In fact, the iconic crowbar takes a step back, because the new toy is the "gravity gun": a futuristic weapon that integrates the physics modeled by the engine into your actual gameplay, and is able to use the objects of the environment in your favor. Send that washing machine flying in the direction of your opponents, or use it to improvise "stairs" with ordinary objects to reach another area. Because this is what Half-Life 2 really likes to brag about, the fun you can have with its simulated physics if you want to, where many (but not all) of the objects have their own weight, volume, and can be moved around or used to interact with the environment.

Its a real pity that the game is, and feels, so very linear... because this feature, in a semi-open world game, would've been spectacular. In practice, the gravity gun or the physics are underused, because the areas you can reach are all limited by the design of the maps which only have one way to go: forward. If the map designer didn't intended for you to take a certain path, you won't be able to take it. This limitation underscores the fact that, were it not for the gravity gun, the physics of Half-Life 2 would be barely integrated into the gameplay and instead, would be more of a gimmick than a key feature of the game. Half-Life 1, in comparison, had maps that didn't felt as linear, because you really were deceived into thinking that Black Mesa was an actual hidden installation somewhere, with a proper architecture. Despite the graphical advancements in this second part, I think they just didn't went as far ahead with the maps and its hard to buy the illusion that the places and pieces all fit in a realistic and logical way that makes sense. It all feels more linear as a result.

The above adds some problems for the vehicle levels, which represent a substantial portion of playtime. The "outside" has more open space to travel compared to the areas on foot, but it still feels like a series of rooms in disguise, with certain textures on top to make you think you're outdoors. For that reason, along with the maps forcing you take predefined routes on these vehicles, they feel unnaturally crafted, very unconvincing, and lacking the kind of detail you can actually enjoy in the rest of the game. Its indeed a sharp drop in quality on an otherwise good product. Making things worse, these vehicles control in incredibly amateurish ways that put a dent on playability. For instance, when you press backwards on the bike while you're still moving, the X axis of the controls get instantly reversed even as you're still moving forwards by inertia. Its fitting in a MOD, not in a big budget game, and its surprising that players never complain about this problem. I'd adventure the guess that Valve tried to increase the play length at the last minute, so these half-baked vehicle levels were born, extending the play time cheaply and without too many headaches. Very bad work. On the other hand, they do have some interesting events happening in them, so they don't fail completely.

If we overlook its initial problems, Half-Life 2 is still a very decent game towards the end... and more importantly, a very fun game, which I like mysellf and recommend to all newcomers to the franchise - very specially to those among them who tried and liked the first one. It is very endearing thanks to its fleshed out story (just a lot more humoristic in tone this time) and superb visual design. Its gameplay and creative value are extremely good when Valve is trying, and its problems aren't as serious as to deserve a bad score. In all honesty though, despite its merits, its hard to recommend this shooter above others to all players out there, specially after so many years. Despite the overhyped, even delusional positive reviews, the game as a whole wasn't quite as original, exciting or revolutionary at release as these may suggest, and I honestly believe that there are semi-classic shooters of the era which you should probably be playing before. Recommended, but with caveats.

This one doesn't need too much introduction. The original "Half-Life" is quite the iconic game and, although I don't like it quite as much as other famous shooters of the time, like Doom, Quake or even Duke Nukem 3D, it has some exceptional strengths that really place it aside. If you haven't played it, be aware that its merits were always exaggerated. The few times where its great, its godly great... but it has several and important flaws that prevents it from ever reaching its full potential.

The level design is where most of the fun is with this shooter. The creativity that Valve poured over its varied and extensive levels, full of surprises, is really something to marvel at. To be fair, this entire era was known for its talented and experienced mappers, so Valve wasn't alone in breaking the mold with this important aspect of classic FPS games. But that doesn't change the fact that in Half-Life 1, there is a sheer diversity within the maps that is hardly matched by other, real 3D, shooters of the time, or even current time. You can see there's a desire to push the map design to the limit, and its very impressive how, when put together, are able to give the player the impression of being one large, continuous area. It feels very modern, very cutting edge, even today.

That said, the game occasionally does show that its only a very ambitious mod for Quake under the cover. Many levels require a kind of platform-like, "jump and run" playing that the engine wasn't designed for, and this leads to many frustrating, unnecessary, deaths and accidents. The levels themselves contain lots of environmental hazards which can harm or kill the player easily, and even unintended dangers from design errors, like very large elevator gaps in the edges, from which the players can fall to their deaths. For this reason, the flow of the game is interrupted by dying and loading events much more often here, than if you're playing the competition.

The worse part of this, is that Half-Life is played, to this day, with an autorun always turned on... one that is impossible to disable from the options menu. This means that, unless you keep the speed key pressed as you move around, your character is going to run directly into fatal hazards and the experience may be extremely irritating to many players... and also, not very fun. Luckily, the internet figured out how to write a macro to solve the problem, giving Gordon, the protagonist, the ability to walk carefully. Applying the home-made solution to this problem is a must, but you'll have to tinker with text configuration files.

The music is very well made, complementing the interesting anime-inspired monster designs and plot twists, but its also quite sparse, triggering only in certain events and after that, silence. Considering the length of some levels, the game do seem like missing a bit of acoustic stimulus. Regarding the visuals, the textures and models are of uneven quality. Very good at times, but very unremarkable at others, and always very low-res for current standards. If you want to play Half-Life, you need to be prepared for an old school experience in this sense. I can't honestly say that the graphics were in any way superior to other shooters from the era, but you might not notice when the game is at its best - I recommend actually disabling the bilinear texturing inside the configuration files to get the pixelated look, far easier on the eyes than the blurry mess from the default video filters.

Moving further into other aspects, the gameplay on the guns is not that special. I wasn't nearly as impressed with them as I was with the levels, because the entire arsenal feels both unbalanced and unrealistic. I love revolvers myself, but there's no chance of a .357 magnum doing more damage to a living body than a 12 gauge shotgun, and the revolver in turn being outclassed by the very starting crowbar - which is wielded by the MIT educated arm from Freeman, no less... not exactly a heavy lifter. In Half-Life, you see some confusion about what weapons are supposed to be more powerful than others. Some people laud Half-Life weapon realism, I totally disagree with this opinion.

Among the good things I can say of Half-Life 1, there's one that is probably the most important: it has a lot of heart. For the first and the last time in this series, there was innovation without compromise, and that pursuit resulted in that the highs are higher and the lows are lower. You play Half-Life basically for the good parts, the few hours of genius spread during an entire playthrough. The strong impression of playing Half-Life for the first time and through the better parts of it, won't be easily forgotten by the player, even if this creativity comes at the expense of consistency.

It can be argued that Half-Life was the pioneer in a modern breed of shooters, placing a stronger emphasis on story. By playing it, you can re-live a piece of shooting game history and see for yourself how things we take for granted came to be. In fact, can I be completely honest with you? I think videogames could do with a lot less story these days. There was something incredibly fun in older games which were wise enough to realize that a narrative, a script, is not and should not be the center of everything. Half Life, unlike its peers, took the video game industry precisely in that direction. However, with its excellent and innovative levels, you wouldn't know that. All you can see in Half-Life is an excellent video game standing on both feet, even worthy of being played in the current day, but not lacking many flaws in the gameplay side. An excellent game, indeed... not "the best game of all time", as the ridiculous video game journalism claimed at the time, and sometimes still do.

Front Mission 1 was a very special game for players of emulators and japanese imports in the 16 bit era, because it delivered on many different fronts - pardon the pun. At the same time, it set itself aside from other tactical-RPG games, both mechanically and thematically. Despite the fact that those rival, fantasy themed, games were and remain more popular to this day, with game series such as Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem and later Final Fantasy Tactics (also by Square), I personally feel that I enjoy playing this early entry in the Front Mission series the best. Let's try to examine why could that be, in this review.

First of all, the "mecha" theme was honestly very well achieved in the artistic sense. From the beautiful character designs by Yoshitaka Amano, the artist from the early Final Fantasy series, to the mecha, or "Wanzer", design itself which was very reminiscent of anime series like Gundam and Armored Trooper: VOTOMS, among others. Added to those top notch 16 bit visuals: a great soundtrack in its own right, and a gritty and war-weary plot just like you used to watch in the "real robot" type of animes. In other words, what you got with the original Front Mission was a love letter to the venerable anime genre, to the joy of its many dedicated fans all over the world.

However, the "real robot" anime genre is also full of nerdy details about how these giant machines are supposed to work just like mechanical devices from the inside. This aspect is captured by Front Mission in gameplay terms, because the "Wanzers" of your many pilots can be fit with different body parts and electronics, leading to dramatic shifts in terms of battlefield performance or specialization of their modes of attack. The pilots themselves can become stronger by gaining RPG like experience in short range and long range combat, fist fighting and finally, dodge ability... most of these development lines lead to gaining special combat skills which give the player a huge edge in battle prowess - or complicate things greatly if its the enemy who has them. These skilĺs can greatly reduce the somewhat random flow of battle, making it more deterministic, to devastating results... because the body parts of a Wanzer have their own damage meter, and without any pilot skills neither you nor the enemy can control very well which part of the Wanzer to aim for with each of the attacks.

The gameplay itself is kind of simple... but I personally feel that many of the better-made strategy designs feature less rather than more. First of all, its easier for the player to tell if there's any thought into the design of a strategy game when its rules are simple. With lots of complexity and variables, not so much. Because with complexity, there's a lot of strategic ambiguity being introduced, so it also becomes kind of debatable if your tactics are actually being effective or not. Sometimes the choice between this or that move becomes a matter of belief. Front Mission is simple - but in being simple, you can clearly separate the wheat from the chaff.

First of all, rather than going with the "rock-paper-scissor" combat mechanics like similar games, Front Mission depend on dealing with tradeoffs in the construction of your Wanzers, and the battle formation. It works, because as you'll soon discover, some enemies are just far too powerful to tackle head on and risk direct damage, while on the other hand you can't depend solely on long range attacks and booby traps, because they are limited in number. Dealing with short range combat, Square had the inspiration to differentiate guns which spread all over the enemy Wanzer and are inherently more accurate, with others guns that land just one good, stronger shot, potentially disabling weapons or mobility. This selection opens very interesting tactics on one on one combat, which you can test at the game arena, before playing the real thing in the battlefield. Finally, unlike other games of the kind, Front Mission encourages and rewards the player if he/she adapts to the battle flow, and makes tactical retreats if convenient. This decision is advantageous, sometimes necessary to victory. In clear contrast with other games, where if things take an unexpected turn, instead of retreating, you reload your saved game and start all over.

Its clear that the original gameplay is, thank the Gods, fully preserved here in this faithful remake (looking at you, Langrisser and Tactics Ogre). Is there any downsides to this Unity engine effort from Forever/Square? Sadly a couple of freezes and bugs after clearing a level. Glad that the autosave feature prevents you from losing your progress if that happens. For the most part, the visuals and sounds are superb and feel like a very worthy celebration to the, already great, original game. Specially in the "classic" isometric mode, the most faithful to the original and which I personally use and prefer. Recommended to anime and manga fans, old and retro gamers... and even the younger, modern day gamers who can appreciate indie games.

In MM X: Legacy, we got a new installment in the venerable Might & Magic franchise. This series is next only to the Wizardry and Ultima franchises regarding how much, and for how long, it helped define computer RPGs. It has survived several generations of players and hardware... for good reason, because it pioneered first person adventuring for players craving, at the time, for a D&D style experience for their 8 and 16 bit computers; and it did so, on one hand, while innovating through a streamlined, but fast paced and fun style of gameplay featuring battles against large numbers of monsters... on the other hand, a game world written very tongue-in-cheek, mixing Tolkien fantasy with sci-fi elements, even breaking the "fourth wall" at times. Although the franchise is no longer in the hands of its original creator, older and retro gamers remain very faithful to this day to the original series and its "Heroes" spin off; sometimes overly, zealously so. Is this work by Limbic/Ubisoft being fairly or unfairly criticized by some of the decades long fans of New World Computing? Let's see.

MM X: Legacy starts very similar to the early games in the franchise, with tile-based movement mechanics instead of the seamless 3D movement featured in more recent titles. Your party of four adventurers (plus two recruitable NPCs giving passive bonuses) are new arrivals on the city of Sorpigal, where they'll take their first steps into adventure. The thing which players will soon notice while moving around the city, is that movement feels, or looks, a bit unnatural because the environments and architecture are more about aesthetics and realism, and not so much about them being designed, specifically, for tile based movement. In the classic games, buildings and interesting locations were placed very close together. Here, the empty space feels a bit larger in surface, or has more visual depth than there really should be for a game like this. As a result, your subconscious will keep wishing that there were free form movement inside cities and in wild areas, but there's none; tile movement feels visually constraining in this game for this reason. Fortunately, in dungeons, this architecture problem is reduced and the game has a more compact, classic visual design.

The game world, filled with bits of written and spoken lore, is shared with Ubisoft own "Heroes of Might & Magic" releases. While it is quite detailed, I think it takes itself more seriously than it really should considering the franchise traditions. There's little remaining from the humoristic tones of the original series. Worse still, the sci-fi elements characteristic of the original series are, sadly, gone. What remains is a very plain, "tolkienesque" game world which usually contains more detail precisely in those parts where it is less interesting. This is a common feature of all generic, cookie-cutted, modern era "fantasy" settings... perhaps influenced by DEI, and other, similar, pre-made corporate guidelines which are given priority over the work of the writers themselves. Pushing too hard for not offending anyone trying to find reasons to feel offended in the first place, is a creative mistake. Angry modern moods in society tend to be enemies of surprise, and that includes everything that depends on it, including humor - even humor of the most innocent, harmless variety, because even that could offend somebody by accident. Perhaps this is the reason that in M&M X lore, any humoristic sub-text, somewhat preemptively, was hollowed out by the writers... just to make it "safe". The whole package and presentation feels a bit too serious and too creatively stale for me, a bit soul-less to be frank... far away from the cheerful, uncomplicated, straightforward and carefully handcrated games of the past. It doesn't help that there seems to be a constant anti-religion bias within the story which, even as an atheist myself, I consider unnecessary.

Music and sound are nothing special either. There's the ocassional voice acting from your four companions, but the delivery is cringe worthy at times; lowering the volume of the voices is strongly recommended. Some of the missing humor does tend to appear here, in party dialogue, although the lines lean to the crass and the really silly. I'm missing somewhat higher production values and polish in other areas too: for instance, there's time flow, and night time. Yet none of the stores and services actually close at night, and hard working NPCs never go to sleep. Details like this break the player's immersion, and its hard to understand why they're still there after the game's release: as most stores are behind doors, it would've been very easy to implement.

At this point, this entry has so many downsides that it surely seems like a flop just begging to be skipped. Actually, not even close. Because you see... MM X does have a saving grace: one of the best designed gameplay systems I've found as of late. Its turn based battles are a joy, featuring a strategic depth that I don't remember seeing in any of the previous games of the franchise either. The combat is challenging, but never frustrating. It rewards players able to combine the different skills and spells of the party in creative ways. Every encounter is unique, a problem to be solved by your team of adventurers. And to succeed, you'll need to constantly control not only the individual monsters, but also the terrain between them and you. Its fun, rewarding and addictive. Combined with an interesting loot and progression systems, I'd even say this is the best combat mechanics of the entire series.

Overall, despite its faults, I recommend MM X: Legacy. Mainly because it more than delivers where it matters the most, its gameplay, which I'd place even above the other modern classics in this RPG subgenre, like "Legend of Grimrock". It could've been a M&M game for the ages if only it had decided to keep the wacky sci-fi elements, the humor and the hand drawn graphics from the classic entries. As it is, Legacy is a fantastic game to actually play, and even re-play. Its just that, without the elements that are missing from the original formula, it probably won't be remembered with the same amounts of love and nostalgia once you're finished with it.

There are many ways of alienating an existing player base with a remake or remaster, but this collection managed to do several of them: insulting players and the original developers as "inexcusable" racists in a trigger warning (first thing you see when starting the game), removing content that was in the originals to begin with, censoring and changing the games further post-release. This release angered a lot of people, unnecessarily, but at least Saber/Aspyr reversed, with the third patch, some of the censorship which was added post release.

This whole affair left players with a very bad taste in their mouth, but it speaks well of the publisher if they listened to complaints and corrected course.

So, how good is this collection of classic Lara Croft games? Mildly disappointing. This release is indeed faithful to the original experience, at least in terms of gameplay. A couple of changes I'm not a fan of: health bar in bosses, and action object indicators which make the puzzles easier but these can, at least, be switched off in the options. Not the bosses bars, though.

I'd have preferred to see more graphical options to better exploit the capabilities of your card, because what's in the package is the bare minimum. No configurable antialiasing, or filters of any kind. Look for anything like video options in the settings menu, and you'll find nothing. Textures and models are kind of bland and they don't improve that much the visual appearance of the originals, save for being high res. Neither do they keep a close resemblance to the old textures in the aesthetic level. The games feature a different visual style than they used to have, but I can't really say that the change is for the better; some of the atmosphere has been lost in the translation. Many players seem to switch to the original textures for this reason, which is an option included in the game. But playing with pixelated graphics kind of defeats the purpose of buying this collection... not to mention that the classic texture mode, for some reason, limits your display to 30 FPS. And they actually feel like less.

Its hard for me to recommend "Tomb Raider remastered". I feel that it doesn't improve on the originals, but neither is faithful enough to them in certain cosmetic and UI elements... it is more of a middle of the road compromise which will satisfy nobody, not the purists, not the people expecting a modernized version. And a couple of elements still remain censored despite initial claims on the contrary. Overall, this is a far too lazy and low budget effort to earn a recommendation from me. My advice is to skip it and keep playing the originals instead.

Some say that the key to creative work, is in knowing how to mix existing things in interesting ways. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in ELEX, an indie action, platform, sword & sorcery, and sci-fi RPG set in a planet which could be our own. This, one of my favorite indie games of all time, is inspired on classics of the genre and if you ask me, has given many AAA titles, including some very well known "GOTYs", a lesson in design.

You play commander Jax, a feared leader of a warmonger faction which is known for inducing controlled mutations on themselves, called the Albs; they do this by consuming an addictive substance known as Elex. On select individuals, Elex evolves the human potential beyond the normal limits but at the cost of all human emotions. The Albs are very close to winning their campaign against all the free peoples. However, Jax is betrayed by the Albs without a clear motive... and while he survives execution, he loses his Elex powers. Now that he's weak, in unfriendly territory, discovering emotions for the first time in his life, he has no choice now but to make alliances with his former foes who're also trying to exploit the Elex in their own ways. That is, if he wants to survive, find out what happened, and take revenge.

ELEX is the game many AAA RPGs would want to be: a truly interactive open world experience full of adventure, player choice, world changing events, interesting places, very challenging mutant foes, and a wide array of playing styles to complete the game exactly as you want to play it. While the game doesn't feature a character creation process, and you play as commander Jax, it is still your own commander Jax. Want to play as a ruthless kind of character? Your choice. Want to play the impulsive merc, or the selfless hero? Your choice. Do you prefer to wield sword and sorcery? Or futuristic, Elex-fueled weapons and mental powers? Each of the competing factions offer lots of opportunities to return your character to its former glory... because you see, ELEX departs from the tired "Lord of the Rings" fantasy setting, and instead embraces an "everything you need in one place" philosophy. Sci-fi, wizards, punks, dinosaurs... its all here. And surprisingly, despite how freaky this sounds on paper, it works.

Not the least, because the factions are very unique and not just in name and dressing etiquette. They talk and feel very differently... for instance, going from one faction city to another feels like playing a completely different game. This is a great accomplishment by the writers which has been lost in modern RPGs. Even better, all quests in Elex can be completed in multiple ways, or in the benefit of different factions. In this sense ELEX is closer to the experience of a "Fallout: New Vegas" than other, much more linear RPGs.

Controls get criticism from some ELEX players, but not from me. As in real life, your character swings his melee weapon with momentum, meaning you can't interrupt individual strikes until they either land on the enemy or miss. Its not unlike the Dark Souls series, and I personally enjoy this kind of combat as it is more realistic. Not that you'll be capable of killing many foes at the beginning... do pick your foes wisely, come back to them later, because ELEX is not a walk in the park. You'll have to run away from many battles, as most enemies can devastate your starting character, specially if you fail to mix different tactics and weapons.

Luckily you won't be alone. ELEX features a cast of supporting characters which join you one at a time. The companion system reminds me of Bioware games... they have their own quests, they can like you or hate you from decisions you make. Perhaps less inspiration from Bioware games would be more fitting, and more to my liking, but the system works. And you'll have another card in the sleeve: the jetpack, which is quite unique to this game. You can fly with it for limited amounts of time, beyond the reach of your foes, allowing for attacks with ranged weapons in mid air. Not only does the jetpack open a lot of tactical possibilities against very hard foes, changing the entire gameplay flow, but the entire world has been designed for vertical travel from the ground up. The results are visually impressive. Don't expect flat ground here, ELEX is full of tall towers and structures, great heights, uneven terrain. Exploring feels great, at last. The ruins, very much like deserted buildings of present day Earth, are filled with pickable objects of all kinds and give more flavor to the world and its own mythology.

ELEX is a very refreshing experience. Yet, there comes a point where most quests are completed, monsters get easy to beat, and there isn't too much left to do. In fact, the game, while very enjoyable, feels a tad short... not so much because of lack of content, more because the content is good enough to feel appetite for a DLC or two. Even so, Piranha Bytes released a very special game as it is... despite its limited funding and playing time, the merits of ELEX are such that I'm tempted to place it among the best action RPGs of late, if not of all time. If only the game was a bit longer.

Assassin's Creed, "Unity", is a very special chapter in the long lived series by Ubisoft. In my honest opinion, a better, more faithful game to Assassin's Creed as an idea than many other, well regarded, releases... "Black Flag" comes to mind. Its largest problem had less to do with actual faults within the game itself, and more with the bad luck of being published by Ubi after both the original (and outstanding) Desmond series, and the ship and sailor Assassin's Creed games which were extremely popular with many players in their own right (thanks to quick and responsive player movement and diverse side activities). Make no mistake, though... in many ways, this underrated game is Assassin's Creed at its finest.

Unity itself is full of paradoxes. At the time, it was conceived as a sort of "soft reboot" of the series, meaning that as a new player, you could (more or less) start your assassin's journey from here. But unlike the later "Origins", the newer reboot which departs in a significant way from core ideas, "Unity" is a return to the series true and original roots. This fact explains that this particular game has gotten a renewed interest lately, specially among disappointed players of post-Origins games. What do I mean with a "return to the roots"? Many things. Let me explain.

Before adopting action-adventure gameplay, Assassin's Creed consisted of assassination games, combining stealth, platform, puzzle and adventure elements. Assassination involved that you, as a player, had the goal of tracking a particular target, learn its patterns of movement and routine activities, plan your approach, get close to the target and execute the murder. You had to think your approach and avoid botching the execution. With the pirating games in the franchise, the assassination component was reduced. That is, until "Unity". The well thought assassination missions give the player more paths to kill a target, and these choices are now semi-scripted in more complex and branching ways, which means that they produce subtle changes in scenery, in characters, in dialogue during the missions. It helps with making them more dynamic, fresh and unexpected. No longer is the game as easy as in the previous couple installments. Your character is more frail, so you depend more on stealth and guile than you do on brute strength. As it should be.

But the beautiful french revolution canvas is not just for show. The scenery actually plays, as in the original games, a large part of the action. Your character can still climb very tall buildings, but now you have to grab onto proper ledges and volumes in order to do it. You're not Spider-Man this time, climbing almost flat surfaces straight up. You need to watch the walls more closely, and this feature alone adds to realism. Something else... this time you can actually enter the buildings and homes with the purpose of robbing something of value (in the form of collectibles), taking a shortcut to a different street, or simply avoiding capture. "Unity" can be very immersive to play at times, specially if you remove some HUD elements like the minimap.

Sadly, controls do feel clunky after the fluidity of Black Flag and Rogue. Even this aspect is a bit of a regression into the Ezio Games. On the other hand, the gadgets, the weapons, the character customization, the secondary missions and the online features were all greatly expanded, with new styles of gameplay like Sherlock Holmes-style murder investigations. Certain new actions, like crouching for instance, make stealth sequences less automatic than before. Weapons are quite more diverse now: you have lots of individual swords, pistols, heavy weapons, polearms, and even rifles (my favorite) to choose from, each with its own power level. Clothing on the other hand, can be customized part by part: you can combine head, chest, belt, etc. from a lot of different sets, which usually reflect on some social class involved in the period: you have the burgeois attire, the aristocratic suits, the military uniforms, the proletarian or lower class gear, and the medieval, traditional assassin armors. In other words, you can fully express yourself through your character, and show your own sympathies to each of these social classes by wearing their clothes, and even combine them for greater effect and control.

Even the city guard has been diversified. The devs took advantage of the revolution setting, and gave us not one, but two types of guards: the royalists, loyal to the ancien régime... and the radicals and terrorists plotting to overthrow them. The assassins in this game are, deep down, on neither side... they have their own agenda, and this was a clever choice from the writers which improves on Assassin's Creed III american revolution, and makes the conflict less black and white in comparison. Some gamers who aren't very familiar with the history of the period, originally complained about the game's nuance in portraying brutal instead of do-goody revolutionaries. In fact, Ubisoft got closer to real history with this decision. It was the better stance to show that evil can be in all sides, allowing let the player decide who was right and who was wrong, and until which point were the actions of the historical protagonists justified. Take note, modern studios! This is the kind of smart writing that we, as players, deserve!

Regarding the modern day storyline... it is more interesting, but less interactive, than "Black Flag" and "Rogue". Still, compared to Origins and Odyssey, the game is Assassin's Creed heaven. It is even a bit "conspiratorial" in flavor, a bit "Dan Brown" at times, compared to the later games with their unlikeable characters and train of thought. We don't get a lot of modern era script this time around, but it definitely was written by writers instead of committee, and it shows. Big conspiracy theories, in my opinion, might not return to future Ubisoft games for many reasons... mostly "real life" reasons. Its a pity, because without conspiracies, you have no Assassin's Creed beyond the name.

I recommend the game if you're willing to give Unity a chance, and play it for a while before giving up on it. Experience what a true "Assassin's Creed" is like, and discover what made the series great. You'll need to be patient with mediocre controls, and set the spoken language to "french" for best immersion. Rest assured that the characters are likeable, the music is good, the cinematography of cutscenes is excellent and the mission gameplay is engaging. Above all, this was one of the final, "real", games of a truly revolutionary franchise. And that, for me, fully justifies plugging once more in the Animus.

Rarely sequels are better than the original... but "Arkham City", the follow up to "Batman: Arkham Asylum", was one of the exceptions to the rule. Not only did it improve on its bland and disappointing predecessor in every possible way, not only it turned out to be one of the best superhero games ever produced, but also it can be counted among the top games in any genre, period. Its not at all necessary to be a fan of the character to enjoy this gem... and I'd argue, its not necessary to play the first game in the series either. Beyond a couple of references to the original, the series could have started at this chapter just as well, and this is what I'd recommend to new players of the Arkham games: It isn't worth it to complete Arkham Asylum just to see the whole story.

The game takes place in a whole section of Gotham City, closed down and turned into a big prison complex, where criminals and supercriminals have free for all and fight among themselves for control. In terms of the gameplay, though, Arkham City represents an open game space where you, the player, can freely travel from spot to spot, climb buildings and swing between them. The mobility, once you get the hang of the game, is superb. Very aerial, just moving around the city becomes an exciting experience, while the non linear nature of the missions and collectibles give you a remarkable feeling of freedom and keeps you interested in the game.

No gameplay feature in "City" is underused... from the exciting and greatly expanded combat, to the numerous gadgets you can employ in many, often creative ways. Most importantly, Arkham City received a lot of surprising attention to detail in regards to interactivity, specially how the enemies and the environment react to certain player actions. Experimenting with the game is often rewarded. The stealth sequences are also greatly improved from Asylum, they're harder, they demand a bit more thinking and skill from the player. They're fun.

But the main dish is still Batman kung fu, and the game doesn't disappoint in this area. The variety and creativity you can invest in your fighting against large groups of foes, greatly honors its Batman license. Furthermore, you aren't limited to play as the Dark Knight this time, and best of all, the other characters all feel very enjoyable and different to Batman.., each has its own set of moves to fight and means of travel. This feature expands the already good variety and replayability of the game quite a bit.

In contrast to the campy, '60s style Batman of the previous game, this is a more modern take featuring a lot more brutality and grit, both in visuals and in writing. The gothic style of the art design coupled with a gameplay-focused architecture, results in a visually compelling, but at the same time entertaining, Arkham City. And the costumed criminals, Batman's main foes, are so much better written and delivered by the voice actors in comparison. They actually feel like the violent, psychopatic, disturbed criminals they're supposed to be. Gone are the endless, and senseless, Joker ramblings on the comm from the first game. Here, all the voice work has a purpose in the narrative. The story line branches a lot more, its not on rails anymore... many things are happening at the same time, not to mention it is more "noir" flavored, and more logical too... without the huge plot holes and implausibilities from the first game.

Perhaps the only design problem from Arkham City is the lack of proper, satisfactory difficulty settings with less of a skill gap. This is a problem which, in fact, seems aggravated from Asylum. "Easy" is, well, easy. Its alright for casual or young players. The normal difficulty, though, is still rather low, and underwhelming for an experienced player... while the "hard" difficulty is incredibly tough to just anybody. While "hard" becomes satisfying after the player truly learns the combat system from experience and gains some skill perks, its almost impossible to beat for a new player, skilled or not. I think an intermediate difficulty, between "normal" and "hard", is missing from the game.

Batman: Arkham City, is still a fantastic game in the present day, even after all these years since its release. Its a modern classic which has never been outdated by modern games, simply because all of its individual components were polished to near perfection and still work so well together. In this sense, Arkham City is like Batman himself, who trained his mind and body to their peak in the process of wearing the cape. And he's still relevant as a character today, after more than 80 years of comic books.

Batman: Arkham Asylum, was the kind of release that could be compared to the category of games like Half Life. This is to say, action "games of the year" which are put on a pedestal because of one or two new ideas they brought to the table, which later become industry standards or, if you prefer, are copied over and over. Yet, on retrospect, these games were also very half baked and inconsistent as a whole, even at the time they were originally released. Just like Batman when he was crippled by his enemy Bane, Arkham Asylum was broken in the spine by a general lack of polish, bad script and irritating voice actors. Go past the strengths of this game, and your enjoyment will largely depend on your emotional investment to the main character, and your willingness to forgive the game's faults. And no, its age is not an excuse.

The entire game is set in Arkham, a psychiatric asylum for the demented criminals in costume that Batman fights in the comics. Despite the game world being limited in scale, it has outdoor as well as indoor areas, and you can retrace your steps in order to look for all the collectables you can pick. Some of the areas have very good texture work and art, but not all... and the game tends to look older than it really is when the visuals aren't that good. But you aren't on Arkham for vacation, and all sorts of goons and costumed psychos roam free inside its walls. Luckily, combat against them is satisfying. Although simple in mechanics, requiring just the press of one button for all the fists and kicks, it still allows your bulky version of Batman to fight lots of enemies at the same time, and perform a wide array of moves and evasion acrobatics. Its not unlike the old Bruce Lee and kung-fu movies. The combat system of the Arkham series has, in fact, become the standard in modern superhero games.

However, outside its combat, the game will fail to capture your attention in the same way. The story, centered on the (very overused) Joker character of the Batman mythos, is very non sensical and resembles the "over-the-top" kind of tone from a sunday cartoon, not having much in common with the mature, dark and psychological storylines that the issues of the comic strip were known for. Only in the campiest sense, the characters and voices are well achieved. Not great, just good. That said, the Joker character (voiced by Mark Hamill) is very central to the game, and he gets the most lines of dialogue. Having to constantly listen to a Joker who, not only is very badly written but is also mocking Batman through the comm for almost the entire playthrough, becomes almost unbearable as the game goes on. Honestly I ended up hating Hamill, and enjoyed the game the most when his stupid script was on pause.

I wish that the other characters were better written too, with less camp and more grit. The villains of comicbook Batman, despite being costumed like bad guys from other superhero comics, are actually proxies for real world mental disease, evil and psychopathy. Batman is essentially different as a character, in that his stories like to pretend that they happen in its own universe with a more realistic, pulp and gritty flavor, separate from those flying heroes with super powers. His stories aren't standard superhero narratives, they can be anything and may range from slasher horror, crime fiction, detective misteries, or even the paranormal. Consistent with that, the villains in this game should probably leave a greater degree of real life feel than they do in this game. And even if we forgive this mistake, and decide to stick only with the gameplay, this aspect also has a couple of problems...

Batman has two sight modes, normal and "detective". The last one allows the player to highlight interactive items and enemies. The problem is, there is no time limitation while you're using this mode, so the temptation to leave it on for the entire game, in order to not miss anything, is high. All the colors turn blue when we turn the mode on. This means that in practice, and for most of the game, you'll see the graphics through an ugly blue filter... not to mention that a couple of areas have a very blocky, very square architecture. Not great to look at, honestly; they seem like coming straight from a Playstation 1 or 2 game. Mechanically, your character has limited moves too: you have a grapling hook, but no button to truly jump over obstacles on demand like in true platform games. You have to use the hook for everything. It doesn't feel natural, neither the animations which contribute to your character looking very stiff as it walks around. But even in terms of the challenge to the player skill, Arkham is inconsistent: it is very easy on normal difficulty. But on hard, it can be very hard. There's no middle ground. And still, the stealth sequences are always very disappointing, and dead easy, regardless of your chosen difficulty. I view this as one of the critical gameplay problems in Arkham Asylum, because if you add stealth into your game, you have to make sure its done correctly. Lousy stealth mecanics can really lower the standards of a game, and I think that's precisely what happened here.

I don't totally regret buying Arkham Asylum, because before Rocksteady, the developer, came to the scene there weren't too many games in the market using the Batman license. If we overlook its presentation and gameplay problems, Arkham Asylum can still be enjoyable at times. Enjoyable, never great. However, be warned that the hype was always high with this game, and if you pay too much attention to it, you may quit your playing in utter disappointment. Arkham Asylum is in many aspects just a normal game, a mediocre game, not worthy of being selected as GOTY back in its day. Its highest merit was to open the way to the later, and much better, games in this franchise... and also serving as inspiration to the also newer, and outstanding, "Marvel's Spider-Man"... a polish work over the Arkham formula, but truly deserving each one of the critical acclaims and the hype it got.

Do not be deceived by the positive consensus... Elden Ring is an absolute dumpster fire of a game. Don't get me wrong, it is not a bad game to play, at least not in the sense you think. In fact it deserves all the artistic achievement prizes it can get: it has excellent production values, very interesting lore, a decent combat inherited from the Dark Souls series and a huge game world. If we add lots of replayability on top of that, it seems like we have a real winner in our hands. What Elden Ring lacks, however, is a consistent game design in order that the whole package can make sense.

You start the game as a tarnished, one among many seemingly immortal beings who fell from grace after a revolt against the gods. In typical action RPG fashion, you move from zero to hero as you fight enemies, collect souls... er, runes, and develop your character skills, weapons, and ability with the gamepad. If you've played From Software games, you know what to expect: a pretty challenging, mostly single player experience which will test your skill and perseverance.

The problem with Elden Ring lies in sitting, somewhat awkwardly, between two worlds: on one side, the more linear and minimalistic, but very carefully crafted experience from the Dark Souls school of games. On the other, a grand, free open world action RPG in the style of The Witcher. Unfortunate design choices ultimately mean that Elden Ring doesn't manage to fulfil its potential in one direction or the other.

Let's start the review with the best, which in my mind is the excellent art direction. Seldom we've been seen as interesting visual art as in Elden Ring. The sometimes surreal environments and creatures remind me from the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in a very good way. Art is what holds the game together and is probably the game's best asset, it is where most of the production money was spent and the game is a joy thanks to it. But its in the important gameplay apartment where the developers have cutted production costs. And they did so by recycling the entire gameplay, almost unchanged, from Dark Souls 3.

The difficulty here has, overall, been toned down from Dark Souls and is rather inconsistent... the problem is more noticeable in the filler content, which lacks the gameplay polish, careful design and even loot of the main game. But that's not all. The addition of open space to the Dark Souls formula, means that enemy positioning has suffered in those areas compared to the corridor like levels of previous games. Where Dark Souls was extremely well thought and designed, with enemies very strategically placed to complicate the player and impede his/her advance, here there are too many static enemies which are extremely easy to ignore. While the areas have widened compared to the games of old, the abilities of your enemies to spot and attack you, haven't increased. The parameter controlling their sight range is still just as limited as it was in previous games. As a result, the feeling of threat from them is greatly lessened. It seems very half baked and underscores the fact that the devs copy pasted the Dark Souls mechanics into Elden Ring, failing to understand that moving into an open world design required making changes in order to adapt the mechanics to the new game. As it is, the monsters don't feel smart and alive like they often do in real open world RPGs.

The problem is further complicated by the stealth mechanics - its overly powerful from the very start of the game. Your bulky tank-like character wearing plate armor, can move unnoticed in broad daylight... and with little effort, crawl behind an enemy to connect a back stab and kill in just one strike. Not good in a game of very blind monsters, yet built on the promise of always being tough to beat, even against the regular foes; it makes your fight against otherwise difficult monsters in the wilderness far too easy, when in the Dark Souls series you were at the ropes since your very first enemy, let alone the later ones. Even so, the hard encounters are often hard for the wrong reasons, because this game has more of an input lag in comparison, particularly if your FPS tend to drop.

Also worthy of mention, is that there were semi-permanent penalties for dying in the Dark Souls games, which made you dread a new encounter with that monster that always kills you. Something like the "hollow" mechanic is completely absent from this game. Dying is not a serious affair in Elden Ring... merely an inconvenient. Your runes fall to the ground, waiting for you to pick them up. That's it.

But as the open world fails to add anything to the Dark Souls living in Elden Ring, the opposite is also true: The open world RPG gains nothing from the Dark Souls formula and the game world itself, somehow, remains devoid of life. One would expect from a game like this, at least in the open areas, a bit of randomness, of chaos. Enemies waiting for you in unexpected places. Some degree of surprise. Instead, just as in Dark Souls, the entire world state resets every time your character rests, every enemy restored to its exact original location. I'd understand this being carried over from Dark Souls, if it was limited to dungeon areas... but in the open world too? It just doesn't make any sense... because in the wild, enemies don't even have a well designed placement worthy of restoring, unlike Dark Souls with its corridor like level design. It adds absolutely nothing to this game, on the contrary.

But more than that, sometimes it seems like the entire fantasy world from Elden Ring is being held prisoner by the limitations of past games, and is never allowed to truly flourish beyond the fantastic concept art. Little to nothing happens, by itself, without the player. The NPCs stay on static positions and don't even move or walk. In fact, Elden Ring lacks almost all of the game elements from other, most ambitious RPGs... there are very few actual things for your character to actually do in and for the open world. The beautiful wilderness soon reveals itself as flat and uneventful in gameplay features, aside from the many secret or puzzle areas, or hidden items here and there to keep you entertained. Still, the main function of these areas is to put space between two points... offering little in terms of rewarding exploration for the sake of exploration; in fact, the open space breaks the perfect pacing from the Dark Souls series and its basically just a big hub to connect one dungeon to another. There are no proper quests to keep your character busy, making choices and growing its own story. Interactions with NPCs are just as sparse as in the Dark Souls series. The lore is very interesting, filled with mentions to enigmatic characters. Its just that it could have been exploited much more fully than it is here.

When you create a new IP, that's the best time to bring something new and hopefully better to the table... because if not, why bother. If From Software had decided to design this game from the ground up, instead of taking the easy path and cloning the base mechanics from the Dark Souls series which were specifically designed for it, Elden Ring would have been a completely different game from that series as a result, yet arguably a better, more consistent experience with much more identity. Perhaps it would've rivaled The Witcher 3 as an open world RPG, because its impossible to play it and not see potential. Sadly, while the game has merits, plays really fine and certain elements from it are in fact outstanding, this fusion of genres is not really working as good game design in its present state. Elden Ring is far from being a game to hate... just an unfulfilled promise of a game which could've been so much more.