Years ago, Game Pass was considered to be the best deal in gaming. Now many including myself are pressing the cancel button.
Haha sike! Why would I cancel the best deal in gaming?
Tag: The Game Preview
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CrossfireX Campaign Review
An utterly shameful display
Thank you to Smilegate for providing us with a review copy.
When CrossfireX’s campaign was officially revealed, I and many others were ecstatic. It was announced that Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind masterpieces such as “Alan Wake” and “Control”, signed on to help Smilegate develop the single player component of the title: so expectations were set accordingly. To know this brilliant, talented team was creating an FPS made me realize this was something I never even knew I wanted, but now coveted more than anything. However, signs causing concern began to swiftly show. After the initial reveal, the game essentially went dark. There were barely any public progress updates, and as the release drew nearer there was little to no marketing in sight. And when we here at TGP received our code mere hours before release, alongside other, more prominent review outlets: we knew something had gone terribly awry. But nothing could have prepared me for the absolutely pitiful disaster that is CrossfireX’s campaign; and it truly makes me question just how much Remedy was actually involved in the story’s development.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Narrative
The narrative of “CrossfireX” has all the complexity of a doorknob. It’s not just painfully boring and generic with nothing unique in the mixture, but predictable too. Ten minutes into the first campaign, “Operation Catalyst”, I instantly knew one of my allies would later betray me after only one line of dialogue. Surely enough, an hour later, he followed through. Speaking of dialogue, the writing is atrocious, and is on par with if not worse than a third grader’s book report. The characters are all typical soldier clichés that we’ve seen time and time again, with no standouts in terms of personality. Some of the voice actors try their best with the material given, but it’s in vain. Others, though, offer middle-shelf performances at best; and karaoke night acts at worst. Considering this combination of detriments, it comes as no surprise that none of the characters are memorable in the slightest. So, if you’re looking to play “CrossfireX” for a quality story, you’re better off finding one in “Pong”.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Gameplay and Visuals
If I had to sum up the gameplay of CrossfireX’s campaign, I would use the words “frighteningly basic”. There is not a single element in this game that cries originality. The gunplay is generic, and nothing we haven’t seen before. There is a special ability called a “Combat Breaker” that slows down time and allows for precise aiming, but that is far from anything new or imaginative. Even with this added buff, though, hit registration is still largely inconsistent; especially when firing at a ranged target. This isn’t really an issue, however, as the game is ridiculously easy. I played on the “Recommended” (normal) difficulty , and only died twice during each campaign. This was due to me rushing through dragged out areas without fighting back, not the cleverness of the enemy AI: which is nonexistent. Enemies will line up for you like a marching band, and hardly ever adapt to your attack strategy. It’s not just those aforementioned areas that feel dragged out, though; the entirety of both campaigns do. The feeling isn’t due to length, that reasoning isn’t valid considering “Operation Catalyst” took me an hour and forty one minutes to beat and “Operation Spectre” only required one hour and twenty two minutes of gameplay to complete. Even with a total completion time of three hours and three minutes (without skipping cutscenes), the campaign was so insufferable I wished it was shorter; and a wave of pure euphoria rushed over me when I realized I never had to play this title again for the rest of my life. Other gameplay/visual elements capable of providing even the most miniscule modicum of excitement failed as well. Set pieces are cliché and lazily integrated, and at times are straight up rip-offs of those in several “Call of Duty” titles, “Battlefield 4”, and even the “Crysis” series. Level environments are bland and uninspired, with the title’s graphical quality ranging from last-gen at best to 360/PS3 era at worst. These levels are littered with an abundance of collectibles as well, which are meaningless to gather since they provide hardly any worthwhile world exposition and offer no reward: that’s right, no achievements. As a matter of fact, the campaign has zero achievements to earn, with all of them being relegated to the multiplayer mode. The gameplay and visuals of CrossfireX’s campaign are so dull and monotonous that they couldn’t even impress an Amish farmer being introduced to modern technology for the first time.
Photo Credit: Smilegate The Verdict
Growing up, my mother burned the adage “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it.” into me. And I have abided by that for the majority of my life. But apart from my obligations as a reviewer, I wouldn’t be able to stay quiet about the abhorrent quality of “CrossfireX”. Even at ten dollars a piece, both operations aren’t worth the smallest amount of any sane individual’s time. The story is forgettable and insufferable, and seemed to have no effort or passion put into it whatsoever. The gameplay/visuals were undistinguished and pedestrian, a true blight to the brain. I know this review may come across as harsh and a bit cruel, but “CrossfireX” is an absolute embarrassment of an Xbox exclusive, and should be forgotten until the day it is nothing but dust and echoes.
Final Score:
3.5/10
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Could Modern Warfare 3 Remastered Be Releasing Next Year?
Last year, the most significant leak came from Nvidia themselves, when GeForce Now’s database leaked a list of games that were on their servers. Over the last few months, almost twenty of those games have been confirmed to be real projects. That obviously doesn’t mean everything will actually come to fruition, but one of those games was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered. Now, this would make sense considering we have already seen the first two games in that trilogy release.
Today, we got even more evidence that it could be real. Infamous Call of Duty leaker, Tom Henderson, went to Twitter to say the following: “To heal the pain due to my lack of timezone knowledge… There’s technically a 4th Call of Duty title releasing by the end of 2023. Modern Warfare II Warzone II COD 2023 and something else.” Tom followed up with a tweet confirming that he was referring to Warzone Mobile, but there is still reason to believe that it could be the 5th Call of Duty title released by the end of 2023. If I was a betting man, I would say that we will see Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered by the start of 2023’s summer season. There is no reason to hold on to it if it has already been made.
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Call of Duty Vanguard Campaign Review
Disclaimer: Activision provided us with an early copy of Call of Duty: Vanguard Ultimate Edition on PC for review purposes.
Introduction
Call of Duty: Vanguard had me worried from the get-go. At first, there was a dreadful wait for any official updates on the game. The community heard whispers through leakers such as Tom Henderson, but Activision continued to withhold updates from the community for months on end. It was the middle of August which was usually the time we would all be checking out the beta and we still had no updates. Obviously, it eventually got announced later that month and by October we all were diving into the beta. My second concern with the game was that I didn’t enjoy the beta. The gunplay and mechanics felt rough and it was clear that it needed more time in the oven to cook. I was one of the many people calling for a delay which never got granted. However, I have now beaten the campaign, enjoyed the surprisingly content-filled multiplayer, and dabbled with the disappointing zombies mode. In this review, I am only going to be talking about my time with the campaign. Which was better than expected.
Narrative and Gameplay
Six specialists from six different backgrounds join the first Task Force to take on a threat from the Nazi Army during World War II. In the first mission of the campaign, your team hops back and forth between two trains as they push through countless enemies. They even go as far as jumping off the train, onto the roof of a truck and shooting everyone inside of it, and then jumping back onto the train at the last second before it blows up. I was pretty disappointed by this because I wanted a more grounded experience similar to Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: WWII, rather than getting something that feels like it was taken out of a Michael Bay movie. Thankfully, my wish was granted because everything after this point in the game has a much more realistic vibe to it, even though it still pushes the gas pedal to its max. Throughout the next couple of missions, we get flashbacks that give much-needed bonding time to our cast of characters on an individual level. Four different fronts throughout the war are explored ranging from the jungles of Midway to the rooftops of Stalingrad. These four storylines are the best moments of Call of Duty: Vanguard and give distinct experiences that were top of the line. Each storyline introduces new side characters to care about (and in classic Call of Duty fashion, a lot of them unfortunately die). Each character you play unlocks new abilities. Crack locks and safes as Novak, command troops as Kingsley, climb walls and bait snipers with the reflection of your knife as Petrova, take over the sky as Jackson, and blow everything up as Riggs. Some of these are more lackluster than others (I am looking at you Novak). When the flashbacks are over, it brings us back to where the first mission ended, for an exciting conclusion to the story. I still wish the main cast got more bonding time together as a squad because eighty percent of the game is flashbacks before they all met (excluding Kingsley and Webb). It would be tough to believe that Task Force 141 were able to take down Makarov in essentially their first two missions together. The main villains of this game also are very forgettable. To the point where I was almost ready to publish the article, and then I realized that I forgot to mention the villains. Their only traits are that they are ruthless Nazi leaders which aren’t really enough for me when I compare them to some of the previous main villains.
Credit: Activision Call of Duty: Vanguard from a gameplay perspective feels like a mixture of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Call of Duty: WWII. With forty-plus different weapons, there are plenty of ways to deal with enemies. Blowing through the wooden planks of a train with a machine gun feels as good as anyone would expect it to. The destructible environments have always and continue to be one of the most satisfying parts of playing through the campaign. I played through the campaign on the default difficulty due to being strapped for time and not wanting to have to spend time replaying sections which led to me seeing one flaw that I probably would not have seen on the higher difficulties. The AI can be very rough at times. Like standing in front of an enemy and them taking ten seconds to open fire level of bad. This only happened on a handful of occasions, but I guess that is what I get for being a coward and not playing on veteran.
Bugs
I am happy to announce that my experience had no major bugs and ran incredibly well on my PC. The only bug that I can remember running into in-game was a dead body having a spasm after dying which caused a trash can to start making a ton of noise. Obviously, your miles may vary depending on what platform you are playing on because my friend Mike ran into quite a few bugs on his Xbox Series X including having his achievements glitched. It is also nice to report that Activision may have found out how to compress their files because my game only takes up 77 gigabytes, which is incredible compared to the mess that was last year. One gripe that I had with previous games that somehow continues to happen is this bug (I think it’s a bug, maybe it’s intended, and I am just stupid) where shaders download every time I open the game. The message doesn’t stop me from starting a campaign mission or joining a multiplayer match, but it is still at the top of the screen constantly as I go through the menu. Also be prepared to see advertisements for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty: Warzone every time you launch the game. Activision had the idea to have the Vanguard launcher act as a launcher for the previous iterations of Call of Duty meaning you can select their campaigns or multiplayer (which will prompt you to a screen to purchase them). Warzone being there makes sense considering it will have Vanguard content in it, but the other two really have no business being there.
Credit: Activision Conclusion
In the end, I was satisfied with the campaign experience that Sledgehammer Games provided. My main gripe comes back to the main cast not getting enough bonding time with each other before the flashbacks started to roll. I really feel like having a mission or two occur before the train mission could have done some good for the story. As an overall game, I would say Call of Duty: Vanguard is better than Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Even though the following review score will JUST be for the campaign, I do want to note that Vanguard has so much more content on the multiplayer side compared to last year’s entry. If you even remotely enjoy playing zombies, I highly recommend you check out a review covering exclusively that, because there are some serious issues with Vanguard’s zombies mode. However, I am only focusing on the campaign here so I am not going to let that change the score for the review.
Final Score: 8.5/10
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Watch Dogs Legion Review
One of the Best and Worst Games From 2020 in its Own Ways
Watch Dogs Legion tries to make one of the most immersive game worlds we have ever seen, but another delay should have stopped it from happening in 2020. I will not be diving deep into the story besides a few basic things so you are safe from spoilers.
The Story
The first fifteen minutes of the story introduces you to one of my favorite characters in the game, who I would have liked to see as the main protagonist if there actually was one. This character is Dalton and he is a badass spy who unfortunately has to depart from the story. Besides from that, the next best character is Bagley, who is your AI companion that is filled with sarcastic jokes and witty humor which surprisingly doesn’t feel cringe. There are a few other characters that are pretty good but Dalton and Bagley hold the top spots for me. After the introduction mission, you are thrown into the sandbox world of futuristic London. Main missions are divided into chapters that focus on different characters who are sources of terror in London. The story after that is mainly dull and uninspired, concluding with a predictable plot twist. However, there is one storyline that was much better than everything else. Without going into too much detail, it includes a dog. That’s all you’re getting from me on that note.
Credit: Ubisoft The Streets of London
Watch Dogs Legion was advertised as a game where you could play as any character that you see in the open world. However, there are a few that you can’t take over due to story reasons (they can’t give you missions if you take their character and get them killed). When you walk the streets of London, every character has a set schedule that they follow. You can find one of your very own characters shopping, at a bar, or even meeting up with a family member. Later in the game, you will have random encounters where potential recruit’s relatives are being arrested by Albion (London’s version of a private police force). If you save them, your recruit will end up liking you even more and may even join DedSec. You can also recruit characters by doing missions for them which are usually pretty repetitive. They usually involve stealing a van or deleting some blackmail off a computer. I would also like to note that there are a lot of hippies in this game. I know a decent amount of people preferred the original Watch Dogs over the sequel because of this, so I thought I would at least mention that most of your recruit options are going to be hippies. However, if you really need to cherry pick, you have the option to recruit whoever you want, so nothing is stopping you from going with an army of white collar grandpas. There is a team limit so the game does stop you from going overboard on characters being recruited to DedSec, but you are allowed to kick old players out to make room for the new ones. I never had to do this because even though my team had around 20 or so members, I stuck with the same five because that is all I really needed from them. There is a permadeath option but I decided against turning that on so I wouldn’t have to keep recruiting new players due to those missions being repetitive. Operatives can also be kidnaped, arrested, and more so there are some cool missions where you have to go save the day as another operative who you may not usually use. I also need to mention that I didn’t really see any grannies. Watch Dogs Legion showed off having a grandma on your team constantly but for some reason I never really saw any in the open world. Unfortunately, this is where any sense of immersion ends.
Pretty much every single building is non enterable. You will see characters walk out of its doors, but behind them will just be a black invisible wall. The only buildings you can enter are mission related areas where enemies are at, bars, and your safehouse. You can’t even enter clothing stores anymore. Your character literally changes in the street. Could you imagine walking through London and just seeing some dude drop his underwear on the sidewalk so he can try another pair on? Remember the characters who felt immersive due to having a schedule? Well go talk to them and that immersion goes right out the window. Due to the crazy amount of characters that they would have had to voice as a potential protagonist, Ubisoft decided to use an AI to modify the voices of every character. Since there are nine million different characters you can pick from, that would be a lot of money to voice them with real voices. Majority of these voices sound terrible. Don’t get me wrong, some of them sound real but so many of them sound like a robot from the 90s. This is my main issue with Watch Dogs Legion. Ubisoft tried to be to ambitious with the game and it hurt them. Obviously doing this game without the AI would have been impossible, but some of these voices make certain recruits unplayable. Watch Dogs Legion also gives a ton of lore and sets up a nice backstory. The setting of London is amazing and it portrays a future that doesn’t feel that far away. The theme of AI and robots taking away jobs is something that is already happening in real life and I loved the fact that it was showcased in the futuristic version of London. There are letters and audio logs all over London for you to read/listen to if you really want to learn everything about its world. One final note is that the characters in the world will react as you start to free sections of London. Civilians will start to fight back against Albion and that doesn’t exclude you if you are wearing an Albion disguise.
Credit: Ubisoft Gameplay
Watch Dogs Legion was a slight step up in the gameplay department compared to Watch Dogs 2. Most of the time gunplay feels really good but there are a few enemies who are extra bullet/taser spongey. As mentioned earlier, some of your recruits have disguise that they can wear thanks to their actual jobs. For example, the character I used the most had an Albion outfit that he could put on which made going into enemy locations easier. The game tells you to walk slowly and to avoid getting to close to other people inside. Guards and drones are way to sensitive and detect you very fast. The real benefit of the Albion suit is that it allows you to go through cameras and detectors without causing the alarm to go off. Though, the second someone sees you, you need to get out of their sight or take them out. Coming off of just recently playing Hitman 2, I really wish they took more inspiration from IO Interactive. In Hitman 2, if you have a disguise on, normal enemies won’t realize that you don’t belong there. However, there are higher ranking members that can detect you which is a much better system. Hacking is pretty identical to how it was in the previous games. I guess don’t fix it if it isn’t broken but I would have liked to see a little more variation. They do have a few unique missions with parkouring as your spider robot or going through the inside of a computer as a drone in the form of an obstacle course, but for the most part normal hacking feels the same.
Driving felt really sensitive for me, but I am not sure if this is because I just got finished playing Mafia: Definitive Edition. Obviously cars from 2030 are going to feel a lot less sluggish compared to cars from nearly a century earlier. I should also note that there are microtransactions in the game. They lock clothing behind a second type of currency. You can earn currency by playing the game, and you can find free clothing in the world at random locations but I know some people would like to know about this so that is why I am mentioning it. One final note is that a lot of the side missions and recruitment missions reuse enemy locations from the main story.
Credit: Ubisoft Tech Nightmare
Watch Dogs Legion LOVES to crash on PC. Like it was happening multiple times a day. It wasn’t even like it was crashing during intense gun fights or car chases. All of my crashes were related to either interacting with an object in the game world or using the map to fast travel. I had at least 10 crashes which would force me to restart my PC every time since my audio would end up breaking from it. The rest of my tech issues weren’t game breaking but they are still issues. For some reason, Watch Dogs Legion loves to make things invisible. My character went invisible after getting hit by a boat while swimming, a main character went invisible during a cutscene which led to my character fist bumping an invisible guy, and finally my spider bot ended up clipping through the ground a few times after being thrown at odd angles which leads to, you guessed it, an invisible spider bot. This next one isn’t much of a tech issue but more of a flaw with the AI. When driving, characters love to just jump in the way of your car. For example, if you end up going on the sidewalk a bit to move around a car, they will dive towards the road rather then away from your car which leads to you hitting them. This means they now dislike DedSec which makes them harder to recruit in the future. The final flaw that I had was just general optimization. FPS really tanked while driving and the optimization of this seems to be a step in the wrong direction because I felt like Ubisoft was finally getting good at making games run better on PC.
Conclusion
In the end, I had around 26 hours of game time for the main story and all of the non-repeatable side content. I’m not going to score this game because I really don’t know how to score it. It does a lot good and makes some strides for the future of gaming but there are way to many flaws for me to go give it a good score. So I am going to rate it a little bit differently. If you have a PC, Stadia, or Luna, and you don’t mind essentially renting it, go buy a month of Ubisoft+ for $15 and beat the game. When your done with Watch Dogs Legion, go play Assassins Creed Valhalla. You are essentially paying $7.50 for each brand new game. I can’t even comprehend how good of a value that is. If you are on Xbox, PlayStation, or you just want to own the game on PC, I would recommend waiting for a sale. There are way to many good games coming out in the next few weeks to go rush and get this for its full price.
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Ghostrunner Impressions
Great on paper, not so much in practice
Thank you to 505 Games & All in! Games for providing the early review copy.
Ghostrunner is a title that I desperately wanted to love, and in some regards I do. The combination of first-person, parkour platforming in a dystopian cyberpunk setting, mixed with incredibly fast-paced combat whose difficulty is in the vein of Superhot is an excellent blend for a game, at least in theory. Two of those ingredients are superb, but there’s one that unfortunately, for the most part, tarnishes the entire experience. Because of that tainted ingredient, I was unfortunately unable to complete the game, and so this won’t be a full review with a final score; think of this as just my unfiltered, honest thoughts of the title based on the three or so hours I have played. Before we delve into that, however, the positive aspects of this game are undoubtedly worth mentioning as they are near phenomenal. To start, we’ll discuss the strongest part of the experience: combat. As previously mentioned, the combat featured in Ghostrunner draws inspiration from Superhot, yet at the same time is its polar opposite. Your character still dies in one hit, like the aforementioned Superhot, but unlike it time doesn’t only progress when you move. Instead, Ghostrunner encourages the player to constantly be on the move to avoid sustaining a fatal blow. This inverse is impeccable, and results in the combat being high-octane and adrenaline inducing. The one shot health increases the challenge, which forces the player to rely on not only speed but precision as well. The katana you brandish is the perfect weapon for this gameplay blend (although it doesn’t always work when trying to deflect bullets), and your character’s movement while dispatching enemy after enemy is extremely fluid, from running and sliding to dodging and weaving. There aren’t an absurd amount of inputs needed to pull these movements off either, as controls are minimal but intuitive. Next, let’s discuss the second compelling component of Ghostrunner: the setting. While the story is intriguing at first, I don’t know much past the initial three hours to fully judge it. However, from what I have played it shows great promise with its interesting, slightly unique premise that I won’t spoil here. The setting, though, fits the story and gameplay themes splendidly with a gorgeous digitized art-style that obviously borrows some elements from the beloved Shadow Warrior series. Furthermore the graphics, especially for a $30 USD title, are exceptional and fit the art-style perfectly. This is where my praise for Ghostrunner comes to an end though, as the final topic to be covered, platforming, is utterly abysmal and abhorrent.
Credit: 505 Games & All in! Games I died to platforming sections at an exorbitant degree compared to gunfire. In short, the platforming level design is too intricate and requires far more precision than the gameplay mechanics allow, and the title doesn’t provide the player with any checkpoints mid-way through these sections (and before anyone asks, I’ll provide examples). The most often occurrence would be attempting a wall-run and sliding off of said wall and dying, even though my character clearly made contact with the surface. There were also instances of using the grappling hook successfully at first, but then being detached mid-transit or slamming into the hooks and falling. Other times, merely trying to scale a raised platform of unsubstantial height would result in yet another cycle of face-planting and falling to my doom. Finally, the dodge mechanic is inconsistent to say the least, as I had bullets track me through dodges and still kill my character. Ghostunner, overall, shows brilliant promise and potential with its gameplay, combat, setting and story; but is completely undermined by some of the most egregiously busted platforming mechanics I have ever experienced. I would wager a patch or rework of some of the level-design is necessary before expecting players to shell out their hard-earned cash.
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The Suicide of Rachel Foster Review
Thank you to Daedalic Entertainment for providing a review copy for the Xbox One.
“Coming back to the family hotel after years, a young woman finds herself trapped with the ghosts from her past and an old cellular telephone as the only way to unveil a terrible truth.” If you were left intrigued by that synopsis, do not go into this game with the expectation that its going to be an action packed horror game. On top of that, don’t be alarmed by the name, the game doesn’t dive that deep into the theme suicide. It is mentioned a few times but the game focuses much more on the mystery around her disappearance. The Suicide of Rachel Foster is just a walking simulator, but that isn’t a bad thing because its a good walking simulator.
Gameplay
Walking simulators have always been a weird guilty pleasure of mine. Sure, the game-play loop of just walking may be incredibly repetitive but the strong narratives and interesting environments always come on top for me. Games like Life is Strange and Until Dawn nail this while also finding ways to keep the game-play interesting. The best way for me to describe The Suicide of Rachel Foster would be if Gone Home and Firewatch had a baby. Remember the walkie-talkie in Firewatch? The Suicide of Rachel Foster has a very similar mechanic, just this time it is with a cell phone. You can talk about objects you see in the hotel over this phone which is the main way the game tells its story. You can also interact with objects in-game by picking them up but they usually lack details and they never seem to have the same level of interactivity that a game like Resident Evil 7 does. There isn’t any point in general to interact with objects that don’t have a phone symbol next to them. There are a few tools that you get throughout your play-through including the phone, a map, a crank flashlight, and a few other objects that I won’t spoil.
Credit: Daedalic Entertainment Narrative
The game starts off with the protagonist, Nicole, flipping through the pages of an old letter from her deceased mother. This letter gives backstory as to why Nicole is going back to the old family hotel and how Rachel Foster is connected to her. A major snowstorm ends up trapping you at the hotel, causing you to be stuck there. You receive a phone call from Irving, who says he is a FEMA agent. Even though you are “alone” in this giant hotel, you have Irving to keep you company over the phone. As your time in the hotel gets longer, things start to get creepier. I won’t go into detail due to spoilers but this game never turns into a horror game. However, things do get very creepy in a way that reminds me to how I felt when I explored the house in Gone Home. You may get anxious at times but don’t expect Jack Baker to start chasing you around the hotel. As you start to solve the mystery of Rachel’s death, more twists occur causing you to rethink everything you thought that you knew about the characters.
Visuals
The initial art style definitely takes inspiration from Firewatch. Unfortunately, it is only the initial art syle. The Suicide of Rachel Foster uses a hideous depth of field blurring setting that can not be turned off. Its essentially causes stuff to completely blur in the background to make what is closer to you stay clear. The only game that I can think of that did something similar to this was Grounded. There is also major head bobbing that can not be turned off. I felt sick for the first half an hour of my play-through. I eventually got used to it but it is definitely something that brought the review score down. Animations are also fairly limited. When you do an important interaction, the game usually zooms the camera in really close outside of the first person perspective. You can see what Nicole is interacting with but you can never see more then her arms.
Credit: Daedalic Entertainment Glitches
I am happy to say that I didn’t have that many glitches during my play-through. The only problem that I can remember was that my head would occasionally bob up and down really quick when squeezing through a small door/vent.
Conclusion
After about three hours with The Suicide of Rachel Foster, I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Obviously keep in mind that I am someone who enjoys walking simulators, but it is one of the better ones that I have played. Of course it has its flaws, but the positives of the narrative outshine those. If you are someone who has enjoyed playing walking simulators in the past, then I recommend paying the $19.99. If you have never played a walking simulator before, maybe write this down on your wish-list and wait until it is on sale.
Final Score: 8/10
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Madden 21 Review
Thank you to Electronic Arts for providing the early review copy.
Earlier in the week, I posted my first impressions on Madden 21. For the most part, things were mixed. It had the enjoyable game play that you know and love from Madden but there wasn’t much innovation from previous games and there were a few bugs. I stayed fairly light on my first impressions article, so today I will be going into much deeper detail on the strengths and weaknesses of Madden 21.
Game Modes:
The Yard is Madden’s newest game mode which introduces 6v6 backyard style football. The Yard is a ton of fun. My first couple games on The Yard took place at F.O.B Field and I had no problems there. It is completely what you would expect from backyard football. It is fast paced, trick plays are common and most rules go completely out the window. However, the mode broke on me after I unlocked the second field. Players went invisible and the ball couldn’t be hiked. You can see what I mean in the video below. Thankfully, this bug was quickly patched as noted in the most recent patch notes.
But seriously, The Yard is a ton of fun. I haven’t even gotten the opportunity to play it with my friends but here is a taste of what I was able to do with the AI teammates.
Face of The Franchise: Rise to Fame starts out with a ton of a promise but its quality unfortunately fades as the game continues. High School and College play out similar to how all of Longshot did in Madden 18 and 19 but things change after that. I am going to show a video of how conversations are handled earlier on in the game in case you never played Longshot. After that I will have another video showing how conversations are handled once you are drafted. It is clear that they had to decide whether they wanted to give you the option to pick any team in the NFL or force you to play for a set team which would stick to a more cookie cutter story. Having coaches and players for every NFL team record dialogue would be very expensive and time consuming. Unfortunately, the switch from voiced characters to text boxes takes some time to get used to. You do have your character narrating your journey but it isn’t enough in my opinion. I really wish they forced you onto a set team similar to Longshot because the story is not worth caring about once you join the NFL.
On top of this, the story isn’t that great prior to the NFL Draft. The writing choices for what happens on signing day is unrealistic and it just feel odd. The story also doesn’t adapt to how you perform in the actual games. For example, in my first college game, our offense scored 70 points but then the coach says that he can’t decide on who the starter should be and that they will run a two QB offense which will be dependent on the opponent. In the very next scene, Rich Eisen mocks the QB situation saying that neither one is good enough considering the fact that the coach can’t make a decision between them. However, playing in a USC uniform felt really nice. It is a great reminder that we all want NCAA to return back into the world of video games. As I said earlier, the quality really drops once you get drafted. I got selected by the Chicago Bears and had my first chance to start in a NFL game after Mitchell Trubisky got injured. I ended up winning and went to a press conference scene where I answered some basic questions (with no voiced dialogue besides a narration). At the end, they asked me which player I thought was more valuable to the team. My options were Allen Robinson (who was the player I selected to be my mentor) and Khalil Mack. In 2019, Allen Robinson had close to 100 catches and over 1000 yards but anyone who follows football knows how much of a monster Khalil Mack is. So obviously I selected Khalil Mack. Instantly after that press conference, I got a notification saying that Allen Robinson has been traded away because management agreed that Khalil Mack was more valuable. A fourth round rookie who just finished playing his first game accidentally convinced his team to trade away their best receiver because he said that one of the best players in the league was more valuable than a top 15 receiver. Allen Robinson then texts you getting mad at you, like your character said something wrong. Look at their contracts and tell me who is more valuable. After your second game, a sports commentator mocks you by saying that your character isn’t playing as well as a certain other character that I won’t name for spoiler reasons. This scene just doesn’t make any sense in my play through considering both games were that I played in were blow out wins. The only way this can have some logic is if the other player had an MVP caliber season (trust me, he didn’t). In my second season of the NFL, Allen Robinson reaches out to our character on social media saying that he would love to be able to play with us one day. We get the option to pick between two players and he ends up back on our team the next day. Allen Robinson proceeds to ask for help learning the playbook saying that he is struggling learning all the new plays even though he knew them all under a year ago. Its obvious that Madden isn’t able to detect that he was on the team. I know some people disliked Longshot because they felt like their wasn’t enough weight to your actions but I would prefer a fleshed out story that makes sense rather then what we got here.
Franchise, Superstar Knock Out, and Ultimate Team don’t have any major changes unfortunately. Electronic Arts came out and recently said that Madden 21 post launch and Madden 22 will have a lot of new stuff for franchise after fans were outraged (as they should be) over the lack of new content between previous entries of Madden. Ultimate Team has ability caps, which adds a new layer of customization to your team. Superstar Knock Out plays similar to how it did in Madden 20 and is a lot of fun.
Graphics:
You can judge for your self based off the videos on this post, but I didn’t see any major enhancements over Madden 20. I am curious as to how the next-generation upgrades will look. If you want to read about how to get the next-generation version for free, click here.
Gameplay:
Game play in the normal modes feel slightly slower then Madden 20 and I like that. There are some updates to Skill Stick which adds another level to the game play. The new skill stick allows for more fluid movement when you are in the open field. Pass rushers now have a budget of how many moves can be performed before running out of stamina. The changes to pass rushing will definitely take some time to get used to but it is a much better system compared to the button smashing that we are all used to. Tackling and the AI have both also seen solid improvements according to the change log. Unfortunately, it is pretty hard for me to tell how much better the tackling has been since it has been some time since I have played Madden 20.
Bugs:
I unfortunately ran into my fair share of bugs and technical issues but I was playing on an early build of the game and most of the issues have been fixed. 2020 has been a crazy year for developers with everyone having to work from home, so some issues are expected.
My biggest issue was the bug on The Yard that caused players to become invisible but that was patched during the 8/25 update as mentioned earlier. I had choppy FPS (frames per second) during Face of the Franchise on the home high school field. However, this issue went away once I got to the State Championship game. My screen froze after completing my first Face of the Franchise NFL game. I still heard music but I had to restart my game to continue playing. There was also a text bug that can be seen in the photo that I posted above containing Allen Robinson.
Audio:
The soundtrack and the in-game audio from on the field is great. Unfortunately, everything about the audio isn’t perfect. There is one glaring issue that hasn’t been addressed. The announcers are dreadful. I have no problems with Brandon Gaudin or Charles Davis. It is just the amount of stuff they say that shouldn’t be said during a game. I understand this is a minor issue but it is still something that needs to be discussed. In an exhibition preseason game, I was up around 40 points. I threw another touchdown with minutes left in the final quarter and the announcer says something along the lines of how he hates to say it but that he thinks that the touchdown will just about end things. It was very obvious that a third string quarterback was not about to score over 40 points in the final two minutes of a preseason game. Early in my Face of the Franchise play through, I already had scored two touchdowns in a high school game. During the 4th quarter, I completed a screen pass that went for a first down and the announcer said “QB2 erupts for his first big play of the game. He decided to run and picked up the first down.” In a later game, I threw a ten yard slant that got broken up. The announcer goes “He tried to go long on first down but all it results in is a long walk back to the huddle.” The final thing I wrote about in my notes about the announcers was the fact that at one point, they reacted negatively to my QB kneeling with a minute left in the game. For some reason, they saw it as a run for negative one yards and congratulated the defense rather than seeing it as a game clinching play. I understand that these are very minor things that you hear while playing, think about for a few seconds, and then continue playing but someone still needs to talk about it. This has been one of my pet peeves with Madden for years and the AI really needs to be updated for the announcers.
Final Thoughts:
In the grand scheme of everything, this is a Madden game. For fans of the series who love playing online, there is nothing here that should convince you not to buy this game. If you know you are going to play it all year long, go buy yourself a copy because the game is a lot of fun. If you are someone who only likes to play franchise, I would recommend waiting for a sale or just waiting for Madden 22 because there aren’t really any changes in that department. If you just want to play some football to scratch that itch and know you will stop playing after a month or two, I defiantly recommend checking out EA Play Pro. You are essentially renting Madden 21 (and a ton of other great games). Madden 21 isn’t a step down from Madden 20 but with The Yard being the only new bright spot, it isn’t really enough to push the score to anything higher then what it was during previous years.
Final Score: 6/10
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Why The Last of Us Part II Left Me Feeling Empty Inside
Spoilers for The Last of Us, The Last of Us Part II and The Walking Dead Ahead:
When I experienced The Last of Us in 2014, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions. The introduction scene set the tone of the game by letting the player know they were going to be emotionally devastated by the end of their journey. Tess, Henry, and Sam all died in different but sad ways. However, by the end of your journey, Joel shows that the only thing the mattered to him was saving Ellie and you have a sense of hope as they approach their new lives in Jackson together.
Before diving into the story of The Last of Us Part II, I want to discuss what I thought about the other parts of the game. The animations were the best I have ever seen in a video game. The graphics would be the best I have seen this generation if I had the option to turn off the film grain. The soundtrack was just as amazing as the first game’s score. The acting was top of the line with a stellar cast. Majority of the flashbacks are excellent and give time to characters that didn’t get as much time as they deserved. Exploration around the world was rewarded with interesting dialogue, easter eggs, and even a few hidden cut scenes. I did feel like the safes that could be unlocked through out the game were way to similar. The only exception to that was for one of the safes, you have to break open a vending machine to find an extra soda that has a clue on it. My one other grievance with the game is that I wish we saw less time in Seattle. Don’t get me wrong, Seattle looks incredible but I think spending over half the game in one city is a little bit to much. I think the journey to Seattle and/or Santa Barbra deserved more time. I also feel just a little more time in Jackson could have benefited newer players so they could bond with Joel a little bit more.
Credit: Naughty Dog The Last of Us Part II starts off with Joel telling his brother Tommy about what really happened to his former group who went by the fireflies (Joel killed them all because they wanted to kill Ellie to find a cure since she was immune). When Tommy gets back to Jackson, he tells Joel that he will bring what they talked about to the grave because he knows that Joel just wants to move on from what happened at the end of the first installment.
For the next section of the game, the player switches between playing as Ellie and Abby. Ellie shows a day in the life of a typical able body person in Jackson. Through Ellie we meet both Dina and Jessie who later become essential characters to the story. Unfortunately we don’t see this side of life as long as I wished we would have. The player spends about 15 minutes exploring Jackson before heading off on a patrol. When we switch protagonists, Abby reveals that her group is searching for a male that lives in Jackson (later revealed to be Tommy so they could eventually find Joel). Luckily for them, Abby runs right into the two of them when she is being chased by a horde. What are the odds of that! After Abby, Joel and Tommy all work together to temporarily escape the horde, they decide that they will go to Abby’s camp because they won’t be able to make it back to Jackson in time. As many of you know because of leaked game-play that came out months before launch, Ellie gets to the house just in time to watch Abby execute Joel with a golf club.
This scene hurt me. I replayed The Last of Us right before the launch of its sequel to get reinvested in all of the characters. I remembered how good the relationship that Ellie and Joel had in the first game. It was ripped away before I even got the chance for their relationship to grow again. The worst part about it all is that like many, I knew this scene was going to happen but it still hurt. When The Last of Us Part II leaked, I tried to avoid it. Unfortunately the twitter trolls were to strong. It only took two days until an Abby meme showed up on a thread that was about universal basic income (absolutely nothing related to gaming). However, when the cast and critics of the game started to say that the leaks weren’t telling the full story, it really got my brain moving. I went back to old trailers and saw clips of an older Joel in scenes that would have to happen later in the story. I had theories where maybe Joel some how survived but unfortunately those were incorrect. In the end, the two times we see Joel in the trailer were there to throw us off. The one scene is swapped over to Jessie in the main game. The location and lines stay the same.
The other scene was when Joel rides to St. Mary after Ellie sneaks out in the middle of the night to go there. In the trailer, we see a Joel who looks like the older Joel we see in the first bit of the game. The version we see in the full release of the game looks a lot more like the younger Joel we all know and love from the original game. There is also the fact that Abby is barely seen in any of the trailers. We see her in one promo and that is it. There is never any mention of the fact that you will play half the game as her.
Could have Naughty Dog done this on purpose just to deceive people? Probably. Could have Naughty Dog had a different vision for the game originally and changed it? Also possible. If you look at the art work from the “extras” screen in-game, we see Ellie at locations such as the hospital basement (during the epic boss fight we do as Abby, not from the Nora chase) and the island during the WLF invasion. During an interview in Indiewire.com, it was confirmed that in a previous version of the game, Ellie did travel to the island but we have no idea if you would have still played as Abby in that version of the game.
I struggled with playing as Abby originally. You take a good six hour break from being Abby and then you are brought right back to her after she shoots Jesse and holds Ellie and Tommy at gun point. The flashback of her at the zoo showing her dad save the zebra (my favorite animal) made me feel partially bad for what Joel took from her. Abby’s dad seemed like a guy who just wanted to have the world go back to normal no matter the cost. Those feelings go away once you start playing as Seattle as Abby and Joel’s death is brought back up. There are moments during day 1 of Abby that I enjoy like when Mel’s dog is a complete bad ass and the fact that we can see the Washington Liberation Front from a different perspective (they aren’t the one sided bad guys that Ellie’s point of view makes them out to be). But it takes me until the middle of day 2 to actually start to care about Abby as a character. Abby spends a lot of time bonding with Lev and has some of the best set pieces of the entire game during these two days. But that eventually ends and you go right back to the moment where Jesse was shot. They put this scene right after Abby finds out that Ellie killed Owen, a pregnant Mel, and her dog (in self defense). I feel the need to add that the dog’s death hurt so much more then Owen and Mel dying. Not that I didn’t care about either of their characters. I just had problems with things that both of them do as we play as Abby while the dog is perfect. Anyway, Naughty Dog obviously wants the player to be mad at Ellie at this point of the game but it feels so out of place trying to kill Ellie as Abby after you watch her shoot Tommy in the head (a character we have known since the original game!). I am prompted on screen to spam buttons to punch Ellie but I obviously don’t have any interest in wanting to see Ellie die. Abby was ready to kill a pregnant Dina but is thankfully stopped by Lev. This is now the second time that Abby has left Ellie to live after killing one of her friends right in front of her.
Credit: Naughty Dog The game then fast forwards to farm life. Ellie and Dina live on a farm on the outskirts of Jackson. Dina has had her child and names him JJ after Jesse. Things seem happy and it appears like Ellie has finally moved on but during an accident while herding the sheep, Ellie sees Joel’s smashed face in her head. Ellie hasn’t been eating or sleeping much and can not stop thinking about Joel. We get our last happy moment of the game when it is revealed that Tommy survived his shot to the head. Things however go downhill from there. Tommy is blind in one eye, struggles to walk without a limp, and is taking a break with his wife, Maria. Tommy has a lead on Abby’s location (even though it is a complete long shot, which foils pretty well with Abby from the start of the game where she had a lead on Joel). Tommy goes off on Ellie when Dina doesn’t want Ellie going on this search similar to how Ellie acted to Tommy at the start of the game as well. Ellie leaves in the night against Dina’s wishes which also foils with Tommy’s situation from the start of the game.
I had some hope brought back into me during this part of the game. We were finally back as Ellie and I was expecting to be able to experience her journey across a few states. Unfortunately, just like Ellie and Dina’s trip to Seattle, its a time skip. Reading Ellie’s journal talks about passing places like Las Vegas which I thought could have been super interesting. I would have preferred to have more locations on the journey to Seattle and Santa Barbra rather then playing those three days in Seattle as Abby. I think the story of Abby’s point of view could have worked better as a DLC or a standalone expansion similar to Uncharted Lost Legacy.
Ellie finally finds a weakened Abby and Lev who were both captured by slavers after they tried to find the newly formed fireflies. However, Ellie isn’t in the best shape after getting impaled by a tree branch when she gets stuck in a trap. Ellie does some bad ass stuff to escape the trap by throwing one of the slavers into a trapped infected and then shoots the other. When the other slaver sees the Ellie was bit, he tells her what direction to head. Ellie eventually frees the other slaves who tell her Abby was sent to the beach pillars after trying to escape. After Ellie cuts her down, Abby has no interest in fighting Ellie and just wants to leave with Lev. Ellie eventually gets her to fight with her after threatening Lev. Ellie gets two of fingers bitten off but had Abby at her mercy in the ocean waves. Ellie remembers her last conversation with Joel and decides to let Abby leave. The only thing I can compare this to was Rick letting Negan survive during The Walking Dead because of a conversation he had with his son Carl who had passed away earlier in the show. It is worth mentioning, that during the interview mentioned earlier, Neil Druckmann confirmed that the original ending of the game had Ellie killing Abby during their final fight.
Ellie returns back to the farmhouse to find it abandoned. Ellie goes to her art room to find all of her belongings inside. Ellie picks up her guitar and tries to play it but messes up on a few notes because she is missing two of her fingers.
Credit: Naughty Dog The way that I have decided to look at the ending is this: Ellie is on the verge of having her biggest fear become reality. Being alone. Everyone she has ever cared about has either died or left her. We see Ellie put the guitar down and leave the house. Ellie could be going anywhere but I am going to assume that she is going back to Jackson to win Dina back. I want to assume that Ellie is finally at peace with Joel’s death since she let Abby go but who knows. They leave the ending open to interpret. The ending left me wanting more and I felt empty on the inside. Could you imagine any other story where the main theme is revenge, not ending with vengeance? I get that Naughty Dog wanted to do something different and they wanted to break the cycle of revenge but I would have honestly preferred for Abby and Ellie to kill each other on the beach rather then the ending we got. Abby and Lev are on their way now to join the fireflies. I can’t stop to think about all of the WLF npcs who were killed along the way who were essentially innocent. All of them died because of what Abby did to Joel but she gets off the hook? What about all the WLF members that Abby herself killed when she was protecting Lev on the island? I mean that was worse then Joel killing a bunch of strangers he never met to save Ellie since he at least knew Ellie for more then a day and a half. The only way I can look at this ending and be satisfied is the fact that Abby lost everyone that was close to her besides Lev. I really wish Tommy didn’t pressure Ellie to follow the lead about Abby being in Santa Barbra. If she didn’t go there, Abby would have died on that pillar judging off the bodies that we see rotting away next to her.
To summarize my opinion on the game. Everything was amazing besides the writing. I see what Naughty Dog was going for and a lot of people will enjoy what they did with the story but I personally couldn’t enjoy the second half as the game as much as the first. I struggled to relate with Abby and rooted against her while playing as her which threw things off. In my eyes, this game is a 7/10 if you played The Last of Us Part I. If you are someone who hasn’t gotten the chance to bond with Joel and Ellie, you will enjoy this game a lot more.
Mike from TGP will also be writing an article giving his thoughts on the ending sometime this week but based off conversations I have had with him, I know we agree that the ending left a bad taste in both of our mouths.
The Game Preview 