Spec Ops: The Line, third person PTSD 'em up

[Introduction]

Spec Ops: The Line is a third person cover-based shooter and the 10th game in the Spec Ops franchise. Everything about its gameplay is bog standard for its time and it does nothing to distinguish itself from its contemporary peers.
Except the story.

[First Impressions]

The first thing you might notice is, as has already heavily implied, that there is nothing at all remarkable about this game when you start out. Here you are, with your two BFF NPCs, going into a modern military shooter and all that that implies. You've got your two-weapon loadout and your cover mechanics. Nothing unusual. Nothing you haven't tried before. Maybe you can squeeze some fun out of what looks to be a borderline cookie cutter game.

[Development]

The first thing you might notice if you look into the development of Spec Ops: The Line is that it came out almost a full 10 years after its immediate predecessor in the franchise, Spec Ops: Airborne Commando, a 2002 title for the PS1. You might also notice that this predecessor was released 2 years after the PS2 became available and didn't exactly review particularly well, which should tell you how well things were going for Spec Ops. In fact, I'll just straight up tell you how well things were going: straight into the ground. The franchise was dead following the release of Airborne Commando.

This began to change in 2006, when Yager Development pitched a concept for a cover-based shooter to 2K Games. This was rejected, but was brought up again in 2007, when 2K proposed that Yager turn their shooter idea into a revival of the Spec Ops franchise, and the rest is history. Aside from what must have been some pretty intense writing sessions and storyboard meetings, development was pretty normal for a game like this.

EXCEPT THE MULTIPLAYER.

If you're anything like me (and I know I am), then you might be wondering why a story-focused game even has a multiplayer. In fact, near as I can tell, Yager wondered the same thing, but apparently 2K insisted on it. It wasn't even developed by Yager; the whole thing was outsourced almost entirely to another studio called Darkside Game Studios. In fact, don't just take my word for it. This next paragraph is straight from director and designer Cory Davis:

"The multiplayer game's tone is entirely different, the game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don't even feel like it's part of the overall package – it's another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating."

This is in addition to describing the whole shebang as a "waste of money" and a "low-quality Call of Duty clone." I promise you that this is no exaggeration. It was never very popular, but as of writing, it's effectively dead.

Oh, right, and the United Arab Emirates banned the game for showing Dubai in a state of destruction. It really doesn't matter much at all, but I suppose it warrants mentioning. Consider it mentioned.

[Game Mechanics]

There really isn't much to say. If you've played a cover-based shooter before, you've more or less played Spec Ops: The Line. You get two guns, and if that sounds like a limited loadout, I'm sure you'll be thrilled to learn that you can apply the illusion of freedom on top of it. Why is that? Because limited ammunition often forces you to use the weapons wielded by whoever you're fighting. Sure, you'll occasionally run into the odd ammo crate, but that's the exception rather than the norm.

The cover system is nothing out of the ordinary either. You run up to a piece of cover, hot glue yourself to it and pop up to shoot at whoever is shooting at you. To spice things up a bit, you could fire blindly, but 95% of the time, you're better off just waiting for your health to fill up or the enemy to stop shooting for a hot second.

Your AI buddies are decently competent, but frequently seem to suffer aneurysms, or maybe it's their dissociative disorder acting up, I don't know. Whatever the case, they sometimes have the wherewithal to shoot enemies, and sometimes... don't. Like the rest of the game, they're not bad, they're just unremarkable. I will admit, however, that calling targets can help their usefulness a lot. It just seems odd that I have to babysit them before they pull their weight.

An attempt was made to make the whole "sandpocalypse" scenario relevant to the player. There are sandstorms at key moments throughout the story that obscure vision and reduce accuracy for both you and the enemy, but these are little more than set pieces. There are parts of the environment that can be shot to literally drown enemies in sand, but this doesn't so much offer a dynamic combat environment as it provides an in-story end to firefights beyond just shooting a bunch of bad guys.

Executions and ziplines are another two shots at adding variety, with the former providing you with extra ammo for both equipped weapons and the latter adding vertical movement to mission areas. At least, that's how they're sold to you. In reality, executions offer paltry ammo rewards and often leave you exposed to enemy fire, taking precious seconds to carry out. Ziplines are just points of no return where you move on to the next section of a given mission and ensuring that you can't go back. The ziplines aren't bad, but executions are situational and pretty much a waste of time. Enemies drop their weapons and ammo when they die anyway, so you aren't missing out on much if you just shoot them the old-fashioned way.

[Graphics]

It looks nice.
I mean, of course it does, this is Unreal Engine 3 in 2012, how could it not look nice? Hell, in terms of just raw appearance, it still holds up today. The frequent use of a shaky cam does occasionally get annoying, but it goes well enough with the story's premise, the player's circumstance and the general feel of the game that I don't consider it worth really complaining about.

The real icing on the cake, however, is that the player model changes throughout the game. Same deal with your AI BFFs - you all look increasingly haggard as you get closer to the end. Injuries from firefights, raw skin from sandstorms, damaged equipment, it all fits together marvellously. You're not just experiencing a downward spiral. You look the part, too.

With the game's intense focus on details and its use of environment for narrative purposes, you won't find a whole lot of places where the devs got sloppy either. It's not a flawless work of art or anything, but I don't recall stumbling across blurred textures or clipping issues. At worst, you might notice some elements on certain models stretching to accommodate movement.

[Story]

Part of me considered whether I should just put the whole story segment in spoiler lockdown. It's hard to talk about it in any meaningful way without giving away too much, but I'll try.

The game starts with Walker and his buddies flying a helicopter through the ruins of Dubai. This lasts about five minutes before a mid-air collision and, significantly, a cut to black. Next time we see the Delta boys, they're entering the city from the open desert. Things are already feeling kinda weird, but the player is informed via exposition that their mission is really rather simple:

Go through through the storm. Find survivors. Go back through the storm. Radio for evac.

That's all you have to do. Of course, it'd be a pretty short game if that's all you actually do, so Walker quickly throws those orders out the window upon finding a dead American soldier. We're still not in spoiler territory, because this all happens before the 10 minute mark. So we've gone from recon to rescue - what now? Well, we keep going is what, and boy do we keep going. We have to contact the 33rd and their commanding officer, Konrad.

Walker continues to find more and more reasons to stay in Dubai rather than get the hell outta Dodge, the situation keeps escalating and shit keeps hitting the fan. It's all very compelling, and chances are you won't be questioning anything initially. Even if you do, Walker's motivations are awfully persuasive. No man left behind, right? You gotta do what's right.

And that's where Spec Ops: The Line really shines. The narrative is very human, for lack of a better term. Even though the vast majority of us have never been Delta Force operators, and likely never will be, there's an inherent relatability to the characters, their objectives, their motivations and their circumstance. This presentation of characters being actual people is certainly helped along by the gradual change in appearance, as well as  the changes to voice lines. What begins as a professional squad in presentable gear communicating calmly but firmly eventually becomes a ragged band of beat up bastards yelling with more frustration in their voices than anything else. Even the executions become gradually more brutal as less and less holds are barred.

Moreover, when it's all over, you have an opportunity to reflect upon everything that happened, which I highly recommend that you do.

[SPOILERS - seriously, don't read this unless you've already seen the ending]

Would you believe me if I told you that turning off the game and not playing it anymore is considered an ending? I'm not joking. If you want, you can go into Dubai, encounter survivors, then turn off the game. This is representative of Walker and his team completing their mission as ordered. Of course, most people don't do this, because as the loading screen will eventually tell you:

Can you even remember why you came here?
And,
If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here.

There are many others, but both of these are true. By the time you've scorched the 33rd camp at The Gate, do you really remember how it came to this? Why are you continuing? Walker is constantly compelling his squad, as well as the player, to keep going, but why? The mission was completed long ago, survivors were already located, and at this point, Delta has killed more refugees than they'll ever save by continuing. Prior to the sandpocalypse, Dubai had a population numbering in the millions. Even now, what can 3 men possibly hope to accomplish that an entire regiment of US Army soldiers could not?

The answer is simple, and is even provided in-game: Walker wants to be a hero, and through his actions in Dubai, he becomes the very personification of the proverb "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Make no mistake, Walker's intentions are noble. He truly goes above and beyond the call of duty, which is commendable. The problem is that he's doing this without the means to actually accomplish what he's trying to do, and this inevitably leads him to a breaking point where his actions, though well-meaning, turn into atrocities. After this, he persistently blames everyone but himself, particularly Konrad.

Crucially, Walker also begins to hallucinate a great many things, up to and including his own death, and these tend to fade to white rather than cut to black. A popular theory is that cut to black means something actually happened, while fade to white implies hallucination. This ties into a belief held by Walt Williams, one of the writers, that Walker died when the helicopter crashed. It gets a little meta, but the notion is that Walker is in a sort of purgatory as punishment for his actions.

Even if you don't buy into that, the sheer attention to detail in presenting Walker's psychoses is impressive. Personally, I don't believe that Walker's urge to be a hero is something he's entirely conscious of, which only makes it even sadder. This is a man driven beyond the brink of madness by an all-overriding desire to do good, turned into an insane and self-loathing shadow of his former self because nothing played out how it was intended.

[Pros]

- Above all, the story. I'm so confident in this that I'm not even gonna list any other pros

[Cons]

- Everything but the story is unremarkable

- Multiplayer was a travesty and is dead

[Conclusion]

By and large, the gameplay of Spec Ops: The Line is perfectly serviceable, but the only real reason to buy it is to experience the story.
Moral compass optional. You didn't mean to hurt anybody.

[Score]

8/10

/DUX

Command & Conquer: Renegade, the black FPS sheep of the franchise

[Introduction]

Remember Westwood?

I sure do. I was raised on Red Alert and Tiberian Sun. The franchise as a whole was basically a household name in the glory days of RTS games. That's why it's such a shame that very few people remember Renegade, the first and (so far) only C&C shooter released. It checks all the boxes for what made Westwood's games so great.

Problem is, it also checks a bunch of boxes that... well, aren't so great.

 [First Impressions]

Right off the bat, a lot of things should be familiar to you if you've ever played a shooter before, from the UI to the gameplay itself. You've got your guns, your ammo counter, your radar, your health meter, your directional damage indicator, the works. You've got your health pickups, your armor pickups, your hosing down anything that looks vaguely hostile with bullets, your... combined arms multiplayer? Huh.

Well, unfortunately the multiplayer is deader than Hassan, but maybe there's more to this.

 [Development]

Renegade was released in February and March 2002 in North America and Europe respecively.

Only it was actually slated for at least two earlier release dates, both of which were missed. Not great, but at least it didn't spend 12 years in development hell. This isn't the interesting part though.

There's also some cut content, but that's mostly model changes, so that's not the interesting part either.

No, the real interesting part is the weird journey of the game's engine! See, Westwood started experimenting with 3D stuff as early as 1997, including both a racing game called Supreme GT (which may or may not have eventually become Sports Car GT) and a shooter called Command & Conquer: Commando. Curiously, this appears to have involved developer Point of View, but I wasn't able to find any other connections between the studios.

Fast forward a few years and the 3D experiments culimate in the Westwood 3D engine, also known as the Renegade engine; an engine derived from the SurRender 3D engine, which was more of a graphics library than anything else. This, in turn, was based on OpenGL. Alongside Renegade, Westwood 3D was also used in the short-lived MMORPG Earth & Beyond. Following these releases, it was intended to be used in a number of other games, including a sequel to Renegade, but all were canceled when EA shut down the studio.

This eventually culminates in the creation of the SAGE engine. Well-informed readers might recognise this as the engine used in almost every Command & Conquer game after Westwood went defunct, i.e. Generals and onward, as well as the Battle for Middle-earth games.

From OpenGL to SurRender 3D to weird experiments to Westwood 3D to SAGE to SAGE 2.0.

What a ride, across RTS, MMORPG and FPS. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely to continue, because the last game to use SAGE 2.0 was Tiberian Twilight, and we all know how that turned out.

 [Game Mechanics]

This might sound like a weird notion, but if you've ever played DOOM, Serious Sam or similar titles, then you already know the basics. Get your gun, shoot the bad guys, pick up health and armor to stay alive, pick up ammo to keep shooting the bad guys. The main difference lies in the game's presentation, meaning its campaign is entirely story-driven, and this being a C&C game, it's as cheesy as you would expect, but we'll get to that later.

Ignoring the tutorial, Renegade spans 12 missions, steadily increasing in challenge and stakes, going from taking part in a largely insignificant battle to pretty much straight up saving the world. You start out with some simple enough weapons at your disposal, like your assault rifle, pistol and sniper rifle. Fittingly, your opponents aren't particularly crazy, mostly consisting of enemy infantry, the odd officer and some armored vehicles here and there. This eventually culminates in your arsenal expanding to include a tesla rifle, a portable miniature ion cannon and a laser chaingun.

Now, this might lead you to believe that weapon variety is solid and warrants no criticism, but that's not really the case. Some weapons pretty much make other weapons obsolete, such as the chaingun being a flat improvement over the assault rifle, while other weapons are introduced at a point where they're borderline useless. A good example of this is the tiberium auto rifle, which you acquire around the same time that tiberium mutants start becoming common enemies. Why is this a problem? Well, true to the setting, tiberium weapons heal tiberium mutants, so either you switch between weapons to kill human enemies and mutant enemies respectively... or you just use laser weapons, which are predictably devastating to both. Hell, they even deal significant damage to vehicles and smaller structures.

A somewhat related issue with some of the weapons at your disposal is that tiberium weapons have a chance to turn human enemies into visceroids, a hostile blob of mutated flesh, that ironically pose a greater threat than standard infantry. This sometimes results in the weird scenario where you kill an enemy by turning them into another, more dangerous enemy. I appreciate the adherence to the rules of the setting here, but as a gameplay mechanic, it effectively makes me want to not use tiberium weapons.

Oh, and the mutant enemies? The ones that can wield guns typically come at you toting tiberium weapons. Most tiberium weapons have a small area of effect on impact, and enemies occasionally stagger when taking damage or flail when being set on fire. The staggering and flailing, combined with the tiberium AoE, frequently results in mutant enemies inadvertently healing themselves. On top of this, they'll also sometimes deliberately target their buddies and heal them with their infinite ammo supply.

That aside, the missions themselves aren't too bad. They often feature enemy bases with free reins on how you enter buildings and how you choose to go about progressing, but just as often, you get railroaded down lengthy roads, through long sections of hallways or narrow streets that try and fail to offer an illusion of an open environment. There are ups and downs as you either run or drive to your destinations, but these primary, secondary and tertiary mission objectives don't really fool anyone: Renegade is a largely linear game with linear progression.

Speaking of objectives, occasionally the objective is a boss fight. Thrice, as a matter of fact, but the game doesn't stop with the defeat of the final boss, because that wasn't REALLY the final boss. No, the actual final boss of Renegade is an escort mission.

Yes, an escort mission.

You escort an unarmed NPC through a short sequence featuring an environment so hazardous that it puts everything else to shame. You might find that hard to believe, considering the last boss you fight basically teleports you into an open room with no cover and a handful invisible enemies with laser rifles trained on you, but it's true. The NPC has no weapons, no armor, can't be healed and treats danger with absolute disdain. It's neither fun nor rewarding. Frankly, I'd have preferred a cutscene showing the escape rather than experiencing it myself.

There's a reason Renegade was never really praised much for its campaign. A lot of people shared the opinion that it's only really enjoyable to fans of the C&C franchise. Speaking as a fan, I'm inclined to agree, because there are a lot of bugs that were never fixed, the AI swings wildly between having dirt for brains to having laser precision and the game runs rather poorly on modern hardware. Add onto that a cavalcade of frustrating sections and it doesn't paint a particularly impressive picture. So what did get praised, if not the campaign? The multiplayer!

That's right, the multiplayer, and what a strange multiplayer game it was. Ordinarily, games like this has game modes. You know, like how Halo has Capture The Flag and Deathmatch and what have you. Renegade only had one, and it was called COMMAND & CONQUER MODE. What a name. It's like a weird mix between an RTS and a combined arms multiplayer FPS, except rather than controlling the base, you control the units churned out by the base in imitation of how Command & Conquer RTS games usually work. You protect the harvester so you can get money, you spend money on weapons and vehicles and you try to either deny the enemy team resources by destroying their harvester or just straight up destroy their base. Whoever destroys the enemy base or has the most point when the timer runs out wins. You had a pretty large arsenal on some decently sized maps, including APCs, tanks, scout vehicles and even air units. It was an unusual experience and largely experimental in nature. This was all before Battlefield, PlanetSide and Call of Duty as well. Groundbreaking stuff if you think about it.

You might also have noticed that I changed to the past tense when I brought up the multiplayer. That's because GameSpy and Westwood Studios are both gone, taking official servers with them. Now, this doesn't mean that it's ENTIRELY dead, for two very good reasons:

1. CnCNet are maintaining unofficial servers with help from W3D Hub.

2. Totem Arts is working on a successor to the multiplayer element of Renegade: Renegade X.

Westwood may be gone, and EA may be hot garbage, but it's a testament to the success of the C&C franchise that these communities exist.

 [Graphics]

Dated, to put it mildly.

Almost on par with Halo: Combat Evolved, but with the addition of really weird facial expressions on most models. There's a lot of over-exaggeration and a discrepancy between faces being relatively detailed while hands are comparable to Minecraft.

If you're used to something dazzling, going back to 2002 is gonna be jarring, there really isn't much else to say. There were no fancy tricks used to give the game a timeless appearance or any tech wizardly to create a product that looks as impressive today as it did back then, because it really wasn't impressive to begin with.

Moving on.

 [Story]

Here's a question I bet you've never asked yourself:

What if James Bond was a G.I. Joe character with the modus operandi of Deadpool in the Command & Conquer universe?

It sounds weird, but it really kinda works. You've got Havoc, the main character, going off on his one-man-army invasions of enemy facilities. You've got the crack team of elite soldiers. You've got the femme fatale love interest. The cloak and dagger pretense before escalating to gunning down anything that moves, the blatant disregard of danger and bad jokes of the main character, the cheesy serious-but-not-quite tone of C&C, the commanding officer who (mostly) begrudingly puts up with your shenanigans... it's all there.

As stories go, it's not at all as adventurous as the game itself; it's well within Westwood's comfort zone. Havoc, an elite commando who treats the chain of command as an optional part of military service, goes on a couple missions, blows up a couple Nod bases, then gets briefed that the Brotherhood has captured some scientists, most notably Dr. Ignatio Moebius, a returning character from Tiberian Dawn.

The focus then becomes rescuing the scientists. No spoilers just yet, but considering that missions 3 through 12 are spent trying to save the eggheads might give you an idea of how well it goes. During your ongoing efforts to be a big goddamn hero, you uncover a number of Nod secrets, become privy to details of the First Tiberium War that weren't available to the player in Tiberian Dawn, and generally experience the setting in a much more hands-on way than an RTS game would allow. It's pretty fun. There's also an in-game codex of sorts which gives access to log entries on a bunch of units and lore elements. Nothing consequential at the end of the day, but very nice to have. It basically amounts to flavor text, which I always like.

Naturally, you eventually defeat the big bad evil antagonist and become a big goddamn hero.

In a lot of ways, this is what Renegade is most remarkable for: its efforts to allow the player to experience the setting from a first person perspective.

 [SPOILERS]

You probably already figured out that Havoc repeatedly fails to rescue the scientists, although to his credit, he does manage to save one of them. She gets recaptured (along with himself) basically immediately after, but hey, solid effort.

Some of the more significant things you get to see includes the predecessor to GDI mech units in the form of the Moebius Suit (an experimental suit of power armor), the earliest known controlled Tiberium mutation, the beginning of Nod's cybernetics program, the origins of the Black Hand, the first Nod interaction with extraterrestrial technology and the circumstances of Kane's first "death."

 [Pros]

- It's a Westwood-era C&C shooter

- It's also a surprisingly competent shooter

- Wide selection of weapons

- Levels are often open enough that multiple paths are available

- Stays true to the setting

- Widescreen support

 [Cons]

- Westwood had no prior shooter experience

- Pretty janky, especially on newer hardware

- AI is clunky

- Some bugs never got fixed

- Very dated graphics

- Lore accurate elements can be annoying

- Some weapons are borderline redundant

- (Official) multiplayer is dead

- ESCORT OBJECTIVES

 [Conclusion]

My nostalgia-induced bias means I recommend this game regardless of its (many) flaws and adverse effects on my cortisol levels. It frustrates me to no end, but I still love Renegade.

Moral compass optional. Honestly, friendly NPCs are responsible for 99% of friendly fire incidents anyway.

 [Score]

6/10

/DUX

Ghost of Tsushima - Be the Samurai your Uncle hates

[Introduction]

I'll start with saying that I love the concept around Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima. It's not often (if ever) at all that we get a game grounded in a realistic historical setting. The only ones coming to mind as of right now are games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Red Dead Redemption, as well as the plethora of old FPS games based on the World Wars. That being said I really think the industry should make more of these historical real-world games (Does Yakuza 0 being in the 80's count?), it feels like a largely ignored and untapped market these days.

That being said; to my own knowledge we've never had a historical realistic open-world game set in feudal Japan, and Ghost takes place during the first Mongol invasion. The combat is sleek, the stealth is fine, and the open world is quite beautiful. Jin Sakai makes a good protagonist and for all intents and purposes we've got a fine game in the workings here right?

Well, while I love the concept and find the gameplay all good and well, there are some faults at work here too that are representative of a common flaw in open-world games today.

[First Impressions]

I personally decided that I wanted the real Samurai experience with this game so the first thing I did was crank up the difficulty as far as it could go and turned off on-screen notifications of when archers were shooting at me, instead relying on the very audible and by now burnt into my mind phrase; 'DOSHO!'. I also didn't want anything cluttering up the UI unnecessarily when it came to getting immersed.

I'd say that in regards to the protagonist of the game, Jin Sakai, it's hard not to immediately like the guy. He's level-headed, responsible, a man of conviction and has a heart of gold. He's out there just trying to be the best guy he can be and I think people would be hard pressed to not like him. His personality also only gets more interesting later in the story in regards to how far this man is willing to go to save his home from the Mongols.

The combat at a first glance took me a little while to get used to. On the hardest difficulty it'll take three or so slashes from an enemy to take you down, and so I was conditioned to make the most out of every situation. My first 'wall' as it were came in the form of a duel at the first major bridge of the story, that being Kaneda Castle, but after several deaths it really taught me how to fight well and efficiently, and it made me a better Samurai for later battles.

[Development]

Being revealed back in 2017 Ghost of Tsushima has had some time to be developed, or what time could be considered as average in the industry today. The first gameplay came at E3 and I fondly remember just how blown away everyone was by the beautiful graphics and design of the game. It showcased its grounded combat and briefly the moral dilemmas present within the game.

The game had a lot of work in regards to keeping it as grounded and realistic as they could. Going as far as to getting in contact with historical experts to learn more about the architecture of the period, as well as the clothes people wore to the way they moved and composed themselves. They wanted the authenticity to truly be there and being an American company you could understand why they sought the help. And it paid off, playing the game for the first time you might very well think it to be made by a Japanese studio. The desire for authenticity went so far that Sucker Punch actually went to the real isle of Tsushima to research it, and even record audio directly from sources on the island.

The game takes a lot of inspiration from old Samurai movies too, and there's even a visual and audio filter you can apply to the game to give it such a look. It was desired that the game have such grounded and direct combat, where each swing meant life or death, hence why I believe the game is best played on the hardest difficulty for the experience that the devs intended for you to have.

The only hiccup I can find in regards to any sort of troubled development only comes in the form that many studios suffered under during 2020, that being COVID causing restrictions. But thankfully most of the game was done before that truly came in and hit, causing only a slight delay in release.


[Game Mechanics]

The game's combat should be talked about first. As I mentioned before my experience of the combat is on the most difficult setting with archer UI prompts turned off.

Upon first introduction to the swordplay you're taught to be cautious. If you go in blindly swinging immediately chances are someone will cut you down. While I've had some luck in doing this on initiating a fight that surprises my enemies, usually after one or two kills I have to stop and take note of the situation I'm in.

Parrying and dodging attacks requires timing, especially to follow up with one of your own. But there's almost a methodical approach to the way the combat works. You watch your opponents, you keep your sword ready as you glance from left to right waiting for one to make the first move. Then when you see it, you spring into action and the combat becomes very visceral very quickly. You might kill that guy, you might kill his friend too, or you might only get a few good cuts in, or perhaps whiff entirely. Either way after a bout of such active combat the pace slows again, and you're all waiting for someone to make a move once more.

This approach to the combat is indeed very true to the Samurai movies of old. The patience, the quick back and forth flourish, and then the pause once more. It's combat that I particularly enjoy and with the stances it gets taken a step further. Certain enemies will be more hindered by certain stances that you use. So take for example you're up against two men armed with just swords, and another with a shield. You wait to see which makes a move first, switch to the appropriate stance as you see who does, and then use that stance to quickly throw them off guard and hopefully dispatch them. It's a stretch, but I'd almost acquaint it to styles from DMC. Each stance has a different moveset and focus, and switching them up is key to dealing and dispatching groups of enemies with ease.

But being a katana wielding Samurai is not all you can do. You're given access to 'Ghost' techniques and abilities. To put it simply, anything Ghost is anything the Samurai might consider dishonorable. That being stabbing people with your tanto in the back when they're unaware, throwing kunai, using smoke bombs and black powder bombs, and even outright poison. Eventually you can take down entire settlements of Mongols without them ever knowing you were there, a term commonly referred to as 'Ghosting' an area. It was something I very much enjoyed doing in Metal Gear Solid 5, and it remains something I love doing in Ghost of Tsushima. That being said the stealth itself is rather simple for what it is. You hide in bushes, climb atop buildings and yurts, and distract enemies with thrown objects. Par for the course when it comes to stealth mechanics.

One of my personal gripes with the game however comes in the form of a gripe I hold for a lot of open-world games these days. A lot of people refer to it as a very 'Ubisoft' method of open-world. You're given this huge area to work with, but a lot of it feels pointless to pay attention to because of the 'checklist' you're given in terms of collections and optional content. I'd love to get to know the world better myself, but I'm constantly railroaded by the existence of markers, navigation lines and a minimap that tells me where everything within my vicinity is. This makes it feel like I don't need to pay attention to where I am, that I don't need to remember visual points of interest or waypoints, because the minimap and the all-guiding navigation will be there.

I feel like open-world games these days can only gain from doing away with minimaps and markers. Instead of just telling me where to go give me a plain old map that looks like an actual map and not some high-tech GPS device. Don't show me where I am on it, don't show me where the quests are, and don't show me where the collectibles are. Let me learn myself where I am and where I'm going by looking at the world around me, talking to the people, and remembering paths and unique parts of the world to get my bearings. Let me discover this world you've painstakingly created and let me experience all it has to offer, instead of throwing me on a rail track and sending me on my way.

It's a subject I could rant upon for days, and maybe I will at some point. But in my opinion it's a big flaw with current open-world games and they really need to get away from it.

Moving aside a bit more though; there are duels present in the game that often set you in a one on one katana showdown with a foe in a circular arena. They often have more enhanced and unique movesets than the average Mongol or ronin and they're usually set in thematically beautiful locations. I wish only there were more of these duels as I blasted through all the optional ones in a singular sitting because I enjoyed them so much, and they're also great teachers for the combat in the game.

The rest of the optional content comes in forms of visiting shrines that are preceded with a kind of jumping puzzle. I didn't mind these too much, they kept me engaged as I worked my way up the paths but often it felt very linear. I'd have liked there to be some optional paths and perhaps even dead ends. The fox shrines I was not fond of, they amount to going to the shrine and following a fox to a location to get an upgrade you probably won't use. The bamboo stands were fine, a nice little puzzle distraction. The mongol camps will always be good because you just don't tire of the combat, though sometimes you just want to get them over with and storm in as quickly as you can. The Haiku spots are also pleasant and really show off some of the world design present in the game while you mismatch together a frankly awful Haiku for the simple fact it's translated into English, but they can't avoid that.

But to be frank I felt a lot of the optional stuff just felt like a chore, mostly because I knew where it was and I was led to it, blindly b-lining through fields and forests to the optional bit of content and then chasing a fox and moving to the next. What I did like however were the collectibles I wasn't led to. An example being the vanity items. Sometimes you'll find a straw hat on a scarecrow, you can take and wear it. There were several of these and I enjoyed stumbling on them when I found them. That's exactly the type of content I want to see more of in open world games, hidden things you don't just sprint towards from over a mountain because you know it's there.

[Graphics]

It's hard to call Ghost of Tsushima anything but a beautiful game. The game world is beautifully designed and each area is thematically different from the last. You've got lush green forests (though sadly marred by the Mongols and displays of their butchery), quaint little farm villages, grand temples,  snowy fields, and all with accurate architecture to the time. I'm particularly fond of the autumn-like forests of amber, and the bamboo forests further up north. There are also some dreary places like a land filled with bogs and marshes, war-torn as it is, it was quite reminiscent of the Witcher 3's Velen region.

Visually the combat is stellar with every animation and swing of the sword designed after actual historical techniques, or most of them anyway, you do unlock some more 'mythical' attacks but nothing overly fantastical.

I was hard-pressed to find much of anything to fault with the visuals of the game, and to be honest I can't even recall any glitches. I suppose my only gripe comes from my earlier rant in that I didn't feel like I could really take it all in as much as I'd have wanted to.

The game does also come with a few filters to apply if you want to give it a different look, or even go for that old Samurai movie style. Part of me really wants to, but the other half told me to not to just so I could try and see for myself what the devs had made.

[Story]

The story I rather enjoyed, or up to what I've seen already. I haven't finished the main quest but I am in the last stretch as of this review, so there won't be too many heavy spoilers in the spoiler section in regards to the finale of the game.

You're Jin Sakai, honorable son of the late Lord Sakai. You've been mostly under the guidance of your uncle, Lord Shimura, who leads the Samurai of Tsushima into battle with the first wave of Mongol invaders. You too take part in this battle. But the Samurai weren't ready for the way the Mongol's fought, and the battle at Komada beach ended in utter failure and with it many if not all of the Samurai were killed. You alone, Jin Sakai, survived and are nursed back to health by a roguish woman by the name of Yuna. So you set out not for revenge, but to take back your home from the Mongols and to free your Uncle from their grasp.

But the way of the Samurai is proven to be ineffective against the machinations of the Mongol invaders. The old ways are stale, set in stone, and learned by the enemy who seek to take advantage of it. Jin Sakai must adapt and overcome his foe and take back his home by any means, but with such a way of war he finds his honor at peril. Between being Jin Sakai and the Ghost he must decide what is more important to him. His way of life or that of everyone else's.

[SPOILERS]

The story really has that old Samurai movie vibe to it. Jin's honor is at stake and no Samurai would approve of his methods, yet he understands eventually that it's what needs to be done. The way of the Samurai is predictable and the Mongols don't care for it, they won't even play by your rules. They're here to conquer by any means, and so Jin has to prevent it by any means.

I'll mostly talk about this dilemma of Jin's honor and his Uncle. I think it's a good progression of character to watch Jin who at first is reluctant to even stab a man in the back, to eventually deciding that poison now needs to be used, to grant Mongols a painful slow death gurgling on their own blood. It's a true fall from grace and a 'ends justify the means' story and I love it. While in captivity Lord Shimura is told by big man Khotun Khan that his men are being stabbed in the back unawares, that entire outposts are falling without so much as a fight, and that his nephew is to blame. Lord Shimura refuses to believe Jin is capable of fighting in such a fashion.

But after being rescued it soon becomes evident to Lord Shimura what Jin is doing. The first thing he does is forgive Jin, tell him that he did what he had to do, but now that he is free they can put it behind them and forget it ever happened. Jin gets a clean start but he remains resolute in what he did was the only way, and will continue to be the only way. The rift somewhat simmers between the two and Lord Shimura decides that Jin should finally become his adopted son, to carry his legacy as he has no sons of his own. He had raised the man after the passing of his father and was practically his adoptive father in all but official title. He sends forth a request to the Shogun, one for reinforcements, and one to officially recognize Jin as his heir.

It became clear at this point that Lord Shimura very much loves Jin as his own and desperately tries to steer him back onto the path of the honorable Samurai. He gives Jin more than one chance to renounce the Ghost, pleading with him even. Then comes the battle at Castle Shimura and Jin performs a variety of his most dishonorably string of actions yet, culminating in poisoning the entire final garrison of Mongols against Lord Shimura's wish. He has undermined his Lord and gone against his word, and this time everyone is present to see it, including the Shogun's men.

With hushed voices Lord Shimura tries once more to desperately absolve Jin of his crimes, pleading for him to renounce the Ghost, and going as far as to tell him to blame it on the present innocent Yuna. But Jin remains resolute in his choice, and claims finally that he is no son of the Lord Shimura, and that he is the Ghost. At this point I'd say that Jin Sakai has died, and all that is left is the Ghost. Jin is taken captive and we get a final scene of Lord Shimura hesitantly holding the declaration of adoption in his hand over a brazier before slowly letting it fall to the flames. The hesitation and pain in his face is all but too clear to see.

This entire dynamic was just perfect in my eyes. The struggle between the two and their beliefs, with one's wish for a legacy and a son, and the other's for liberation by any means. This is but one part of the story in Ghost of Tsushima and there are several more good plot lines. I haven't even touched on Khotan Khan or Ryuzo yet, and for this review I won't. As it seems that I'm liable to do I'll only talk about one plot I am rather fond of and leave the rest for you to find out yourself.

[Pros]

- Beautiful game world

- Grounded, visceral combat

- Historically accurate setting

- Good dramatic plot lines

- DOSHO!

[Cons]

- Open-world GPS navigation

- 'Checklist'-style Ubisoft design

- Average stealth gameplay

- Somewhat simple side-quests

[Conclusion]

I enjoy the game and more enjoy the concept around it than the actual result. My gripes with open world are undoubtedly going to hit the score quite a bit, and I've not even talked about the multiplayer aspect as I've yet to get to it. Though it is clear to see that the developers care about the game enough to support it with a free new mode after release, and I hope that Sucker Punch can continue to deliver good consumer practice in the future. If they go the open-world route again however I'd like for them to take less of a page out of Ubisoft's book and more hearken back towards reality and older games. But the combat is good, the world design and story are both good too, but I can't help but feel that railroad.

Being a Samurai is fun, dishonoring your ways is fun, and that's about as much as I could ask for. I wish I could give it a bigger score but that open-world formula is a plague on the industry right now and it needs to leave.

That being said, in my opinion Ghost of Tsushima was robbed of 2020's Game of the Year.

[Score]

6.5/10

/DEAD

Brigador or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love War Crimes

[Introduction]

How does that one song go?

It's beginning to look a lot like war crimes, everywhere you go!

Jokes aside, welcome to Brigador, an isometric real-time tactical game where you pilot everything from mobile bunker complexes and artillery batteries on legs to agile scout mechs and upgunned tuk-tuks.

Risk and reward are the name of the game. Suit up, plug in that cranial jack and let's show those plebs from the Nuremberg Trials how it's done. Geneva Conventions? More like Geneva Suggestions.

 [First Impressions]

GREAT LEADER IS DEAD.

SOLO NOBRE MUST FALL.

Along with the subsequent contract introduction, these are the first (and only) words you will hear while playing the game.

Beyond that, Brigador is presented like a twin-stick shooter and even controls like one by default, but it really isn't, but more on that later. For now, suffice it to say that Brigador starts as it means to go on: with gratuitous carnage and precisely zero chill.

 [Development]

Brigador was made by Stellar Jockeys, meaning that this has been a project of about as many people as you can count on one hand, provided you aren't missing any fingers. Hugh Monahan, Jack Monahan, Dale Kim and Harry Hsiao made the original Brigador, with development beginning sometime in 2011, early access in October 2015 and finally a release in June 2016. The whole thing was entirely self-funded and built from the ground up using a custom engine. Impressive stuff, considering the relatively small team.

Now, Brigador looks like a twin-stick shooter. A lot of people actually saw gameplay trailers and assumed this was the case. People still make that assumption today, and that's largely because everything abouts its presentation screams twin-stick shooter.

However, Brigador is, in fact, not a twin-stick shooter, at least it wasn't by default when the game was initially released. It functioned off of tank controls, meaning that your movement is not relative to the screen (i.e. W means up, S means down), but relative to the direction your vehicle is facing (i.e. W means forward, S means backwards). It was always possible to switch to twin-stick shooter controls, called "screen absolute" in the game's options menu, rather than using the default tank controls, called "relative."

Unfortunately, this option didn't occur to a lot of people, reviewers included, or perhaps it just didn't matter. Whatever the case, this is a large part of why the game originally received mixed reviews. More importantly, this was also an important element in the later Up-Armored Edition re-release of Brigador in June 2017. By this point, Dale Kim and Harry Hsiao had left the team on amicable terms, being replaced by Karl Parakenings. As it happens, Stellar Jockeys appear to have taken the arguably undue criticism to heart, and the Up-Armored Edition, rather unfortunately, uses screen absolute controls by default. I'll explain why in a moment.

 [Game Mechanics]

So, remember a moment ago when I said it was unfortunate that the Up-Armored Edition uses screen absolute controls by default? Let me tell you why it's unfortunate:

THE GAME USES A DIRECTIONAL DAMAGE SYSTEM.

Say some hotshot enemy mech pilot thinks he's gonna blow you to kingdom come. He comes at you guns blazing, but your front armor is thick, so you're fine. You circle around him, fire your main weapon in his back where his armor is weak. Facing matters in Brigador, and while screen absolute controls are easier to get used to, you're actually gimping yourself in the long run. Sure, you can move in one direction and fire in another; your guns and your legs operate independently, but doing so will train you to disregard the directional damage system. Don't be a laxative, play screen relative.

I dunno, I have to work on that one, but you get the idea: relative is the way to go if you wanna live. It's a real-time tactics game. Be tactical. Argubaly the only real exception to this are antigravity vehicles ("agravs"), which tend to be so fast that tanks controls make them too hard to control and so fragile that directional damage almost doesn't matter.

That tirade aside, Brigador is a real treat for your inner Radovan Karadžić. You get an exciting variety of weapons, ranging from chemical projectors that can corrode literally anything and gigantic 88mm shotguns to gatling mortars and what basically amounts to metal tubes stuffed to the brim with gunpowder. You get to mount these on antigravity vehicles, tanks and mechs, which include everything from tiny suits of power armor that fold like paper to mobile fortresses that are borderline invincible. In addition, you get a piece of activated special equipment in the form of smoke projectors (which provide smoke cover), EMP launchers (which shut down enemy vehicles in a large radius... and also the whole city block), active camouflage (which render you invisible) or the audio-kinetic pulse (which will flatten anything in a cone, be it cover or enemies. Or civilians).

Now, rule of cool aside, you might ask yourself why you would ever bother with a chintsy little suit of power armor. You have access to murder machines with armor so thick they could probably survive being Hiroshimafied, wouldn't you just be gimping yourself?

Well,

Yes. You would be gimping yourself. But picking a Mongoose over a Praetor also gives you a 3x multiplier to mission payout. Risk and reward. Big challenge, big money, and this extends to the pilot selection as well.

The pilots don't really matter as much as one might imagine, with some exceptions. The only thing your choice of pilot affects is usually the starting difficulty, the max difficulty, the difficulty increase per level, the victory bonus and the min/max payout multiplier. If it sounds as though the pilots are essentially a glorified difficulty selection, then you'd be right. The only other thing the pilots add to the game is flavor text, but everything in Brigador has flavor text, and that's all fluff. Welcome fluff, but fluff nonetheless, and this is one of my few gripes with the game:

I wish the pilots mattered more.

You know, give them some attributes. Say some of them can't turn as fast because maneuverability is for cowards, or they get a bonus to defense and a speed penalty because they're cautious, or maybe they have to complete missions within a set time limit because there's a bomb attached to their mom, something like that. Add some variety, some more depth to the pilot selection other than picking how hard you want things to be. Keep things interesting.

Something else, which is less a gripe and, I suppose, more a word of caution: after completing the campaign, you may have to make up your own challenges to stay engaged with the game. It kind of turns into a sandbox at this point. You get all the different vehicles and guns and such and you mix and match to your heart's content. This is not at all a bad thing in my mind, I've had a great deal of fun with it, but I know some of you may prefer something more solid and perhaps less sandboxy. Not everyone is interested in making their own fun.

Incidentally, I have yet to complete the Closed Casket Special piloting a tuk-tuk, but I've gotten pretty darn good at doing wheelies around heavy mechs.

Finally, the game is technically divided into two: a campaign and the freelance missions. The campaign is essentially a very long and very optional tutorial in which you complete increasingly different missions with a limited pool of 4 pilots who all have preset vehicles with preset loadouts. It helps you learn how everything works and gives you ample opportunity to figure out some preferences by being forced to select from that limited pool of loadouts. The freelance missions meanwhile function as a sort of sandbox where you pick a pilot, a vehicle, two weapons, special equipment and an OPERATION, which essentially allows you to pick from any and all districts, either in a set order or a random scramble.

You could also go for the Closed Casket Special. Enjoy going through all 39 districts with no opportunity to cut your losses and go home with your earnings so far until you're done.

Double finally, you might also notice that everything costs money to unlock, including the details of your Brigador contract. Some of the price tags (for example, $35,000,000) might make you think the game is grindy as all hell.

It really isn't. Don't worry about that. You'll be able to get money to unlock vehicles and gear pretty easily, especially if you do the campaign, and the rest is just lore. Literally everything gives you at least some cash, whether it's taking out enemy captains, destroying orbital guns, plowing through buildings, perforating traffic jams or stepping on non-combatants. Just make sure the non-combatants aren't suicide bombers before you do.

 [Graphics]

This might sound like a crazy tangent, but have you ever played the old Westwood RTS games? Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, those wonderful old relics? Remember how they put a frankly unnecessary amount of effort into various objects, buildings and props that really played no real role in the game other than improving the quality of the scenery? I remember, and although I don't work for Pepperidge Farms, I get a similar feeling when I look at Brigador. The devs really put in some effort, because the environments are gorgeous and every stage of destruction looks great. This is particularly crazy, because aside from the outer district walls of an area and the ground itself, everything is destructible. Even the rubble looks pretty. Hell, it doesn't matter if you destroy nothing at all or if you level the entire area, or somewhere inbetween - the environment looks and feels great.

The vehicles themselves are actually 3D models that have been rendered in 2D from a whole bunch of different angles, providing an effective illusion of a three-dimensional world. This is not just true for the player - this quality of modeling and animation is present in everything the enemy throws at you as well, including the few not accessible to players.

On top of this, the art direction is solid. Solo Nobre is a weird mix between massive graveyards, high-end suburban residential neighborhoods, shanty town slums, industrial districts, military bases, metropolitan areas and forested wilderness. There's enough variety that you never quite feel you're in the same area, but enough consistency that it never quite feels out of place.

 [Story]

You would be forgiven for thinking that a game like Brigador doesn't really have any story to speak of.

It looks and feels like one of those games whose entire purpose is just catharsis and gratuitous enjoyment of the game, like DOOM or Painkiller.

Indeed, you could probably ignore all the flavor text and just level half the hemisphere with cluster munitions and railguns. I just think you'd be missing out.

See, Brigador has a lot of flavor text and a lot of lore and intel. There's nothing available to you that doesn't have flavor text attached. Pilots, vehicles, equipment, the whole shebang, there's a log entry for it all, and everything is written by an in-universe character, which gives it all a more natural feel and a more personal flair. It's never the developer writing a lore entry on their game. It's someone in the Brigador universe writing down some notes on the Mongoose or the Gutterball or the Cyclolucidites. It's a surprisingly expansive universe with a lot of details added and a lot of stuff fleshed out just enough that I want more. Like the game's visuals, the setting itself feels very distinct.

The Up-Armored Edition even comes with an audiobook, and I wanna make something clear:

Up until this point, I really did not like the notion of audiobooks. I've always preferred having the book in my hands, not just listening to it, but holy shit. The Brigador audiobook is really good.

I suppose this would also be a good time to come back to what I said in the beginning of the review: that the words introducing you to your contract are the only words you will hear.

This is one of my other few gripes with the game. I kinda wish we could have more interaction with the enemy. You know, some kind of Hideo Kojima level chatter. Something like that, although in its absence, the soundtrack fills the space more than adequately.

 [Spoilers]

There's not much to spoil, but I will say this much about the audiobook:

Kroenig deserved better.

 [Pros]

- Satisfying gameplay

- Great soundtrack

- Surprisingly expansive universe

- Comes with a good audiobook

- Solid variety to vehicles and equipment

- Not grindy

- Beautifully rendered environments and vehicles

 [Cons]

- Pilots are basically a glorified difficulty selection

- Some vehicles are not accessible to players

- Limited to 2 weapons per vehicle

- You may have to make up your own challenges post-campaign to stay engaged

 [Conclusion]

Brigador is a great game.

It is what it is and doesn't try to be anything else.

It's war crime o' clock and you're all invited to a party in Solo Nobre.

Moral compass optional.

 [Score]

10/10

/DUX

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Spins, Pirouettes and Feints.

[Introduction]

With three hundred and twenty hours in CDPR's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I feel myself finally somewhat capable of talking about it. It's a game that frankly needs no introduction and for better (or for worse) set CDPR upon a path to success. Critically acclaimed as one of the greatest games of the last decade, game of its year, and holding no shortage of awards, it truly stood out as a diamond in the rough of what was otherwise considered a mediocre franchise from a small studio out of Poland.


[First Impressions]

If the third installment to the main series was your first one, then it was hardly an issue. The game sets itself up in that you needn't have played the prior two games to get yourself involved in the plot. It starts as if you hadn't, but has plenty to offer for those that did. Through the tutorial start of the game you're immediately greeted by one of the primary themes of the game: maturity. In that being the protagonist Geralt's naked and bathing form, and his romantic interest Yennefer's finely crafted figure. The game also makes a big show of the graphics which still hold up today. Upon entering the balcony you're given a view of one of the best vistas you'll see in the entire game; the mountains of Kaer Morhen.

Shortly after, you're introduced to your basic controls and streamlined downstairs where you'll soon partake in your first bit of combat in the form of training. The combat itself feels fine at first. Parrying and dodging are responsive, you've a lot of evasive actions in the form of short accurate steps or big diving rolls to avoid danger. The combat itself isn't too complex with attacking in the form of light and heavy attacks, though you do learn more moves later, it never really becomes overwhelming. Signs are also a part of your kit; including up to five with these being Aard, Igni, Yrden, Quen and Axii which I'll talk about more later.

After the brief tutorial you're thrown into the actual game world and one of the things that was immediately apparent to me was the difference between fighting people and fighting monsters. You'll be set upon by several Ghouls which are Necrophages (essentially just undead) that are agile and have almost pack-like behavior, they can also regenerate their health. They skitter around on all fours and use leaping attacks. These leaping attacks can't be blocked by a parry of your sword, or well, they can but you'll be staggered if you do. Instead you need to outright avoid attacks from monsters that come in the form of claws, wings and tails, immediately setting them aside from your regular human foe.

The introduction of the game will railroad you up until you get to the first Inn at White Orchard, where the game finally opens up to you somewhat in the form of multiple quests, points of interest, general exploration and smaller activities like the card game Gwent. But White Orchard is still just a beginning zone before you get into the actual world map.


[Development]

Directed and published in-house; the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt began its development in 2011, though that was a delayed beginning for the game as 2008 was its originally planned development start. Interestingly enough for such a widely successful game the Witcher 3 was funded entirely by CDPR. It was first-most a game for the franchise's frankly niche following, and I won't mince words, my own experience only started with the second game.

The development saw its own issues in the form of cut content and nearing deadlines though many of these features were re-introduced to the game free of charge as DLC after the initial release. This is what truly began the foundation of CDPR's good will from consumers. They certainly could have stopped development after release, but at the time they felt they owed it to their dedicated fanbase to release what they were still working on with no strings attached. The DLC was well received, and as a result the game and company were both regarded highly and CDPR was soon considered one of the most consumer-friendly developers in the industry.

The music for the game was directed by Marcin Przybyłowicz who did such work on the previous Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and later went on to direct the music for both expansions to the Witcher 3. Interestingly enough another composer was brought on in the fashion of Percival, a Polish folk band. It was an unconventional work agreement as the band members were not formally trained, and as a result there were difficulties to work around in such regard.

It needn't be said but despite the attempts to reintroduce cut content to the game, there was plenty missing. Some might recognize from the early trailers that the UI was quite different, or that certain quests or scenes simply didn't exist in the final game. The choices behind this may have been to keep people from guessing what quests they were going to undertake, but it could just be as well that they scrapped it for other reasons entirely.

Whatever bumps and turns the development took though, it can't be argued that the end result was nothing short of a fantastic piece of both story and world design.


[Game Mechanics]

In regards to basic movement one might find that Geralt is surprisingly sluggish in responding to analogue inputs. There is however a workaround for this to enable more instant responses in the options. The game can feel somewhat clunky at times in regards to fine movement, but otherwise it works just fine.

Combat while interesting at first can leave a bit to be desired later on. While some sword moves become available later on you're limited by the skill tree in how many you actually get. Going into light attacks will give you a fast spinning attack that deals plenty of damage, and going into heavier attacks allows you to charge each strike for extra damage. When dealing with enemy soldiers wielding a variety of weapons you can parry and counter, and be treated with some delightful finishing animations that play smoothly and then throw you right back into the fight. Dealing with monsters does away with such fanciful flourishes however, and when you're done fighting a monster they'll promptly just fall to the floor.

The Signs are varied but frankly have limited use in combat unless you go hard into the Signs tree. Igni will either send forth a wave of fire or a sustained gout if you spec into it. Axii will stun opponents briefly, or when specced will convert enemies to allies for a duration. Axii can also be used in certain dialogue options to essentially jedi mind-trick peasants. Aard is a knockback effect directed in front of you, or a circular area of effect when specced. Aard can also be used to knock away arrows and bolts. Yrden was a very situational one for me and mostly only gained use when around spectres and ghost type enemies. Yrden can temporarily immobilize or slow down an enemy, or in the case of spirits make them more corporeal. Quen found the most use as it works as a handy shield that will protect you from one or several hits. The enhanced version of Quen forms a spherical barrier around you, but I seldom found much use of it when the original was a shield that also let you stay on the attack.

The tree I found to be most broken however (trivializing the game even on Death March) is also my personal favorite, that being the one that focused on alchemy and bombs. In the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt potions are a large part of your gameplay. They can do many things ranging from simply recovering health, to making your blood deadly to vampires, and to granting you quicker reactions or making your strikes hit harder. There are a dozen to choose from and there's also decoctions that are essentially more powerful, but a lot more situational and unique in what they provide. You can create your potions from herbs and monster materials gathered in the wild, and can imbibe as many as your toxicity cap will allow.

There are also blade oils in the alchemy tree which can be applied to your blades to give you an edge against a particular type of opponent. Going up against Necrophages? You've an appropriate oil to apply to your silver blade. Spectres? Got you covered. Draconic? Definitely. There's an oil for every situation, and later in the alchemy tree you'll also get increased resistance to the enemy type of the oil you're using.

Bombs also come into play with alchemy. They can be simple explosive frag bombs like Grapeshot, or an explosion of bitter frost and cold like Northern Wind. Some are situational, like Dragon's Dream which fills the area with flammable gas that you can then ignite with Igni. These bombs can also work particularly well against certain monsters and foes, which brings me all towards one of my favorite things about the game.

Preparation.

This feature was a lot more prevalent in Witcher 2 but had its shortcomings in when it could be used (And we lack traps in Witcher 3.) But the idea of hunting a particular foe, knowing what you're going up against, and then deciding you need that oil, this kind of bomb, and preferably these types of potions. Then you go about gathering the ingredients to craft what you need, and before you engage you prepare by utilizing them all. Something about it all just clicks with me, for it really makes me feel like I'm a Witcher, hunting my target, studying it, and taking every advantage I can to dispatch of it as easily as possible. In my opinion that is one of the strongest aspects of the game's design. Less so the combat itself, but the preparation of it.

Did I forget to mention you get two swords? Steel is for humans and mundane creatures like wolves and bears. Silver is for anything supernatural or fantastical in nature.

As a side note there's also a crossbow present in the game that comes with several types of bolts, though one in particular, the tracking bolt, makes me think that at some point monsters were meant to flee and be tracked down following a blood trail that you made. It was seen in one of the early demos with a flying feathered beast, but such did not sadly make it into the final game.

I should also mention that alongside side-quests and the main quest there are contract quests. These are quests that specifically have you find a notice upon a board hiring a Witcher. You accept the contract, negotiate the price with the one who placed it, and begin with a point in a direction. As you progress through the contract you'll discover what type of creature it is you hunt, and where its lair is, or how you might trap it. While on paper I love the ideas of contracts, eventually I found that they all played the same. You pick up a contract, you go to the objective area, you find some clues, you find out what the monster is, you prepare and kill the monster. I'd have personally liked there to be less guiding and more twists when it came to these contracts.

All in all though, the Witcher 3 grounds itself as an RPG with stats, items, equippables, upgrades, crafting and numbers. These numbers can be laughably put in your favor, but if an RPG isn't what you're after you might want to look elsewhere.


[Graphics]

The game holds up beautifully, what can I say? Even after almost six years now. You can quite easily tell when something doesn't hold up in texture when you get a close up of a face or a piece of gear, but the world design itself holds true. The dilapidated ruins of Kaer Morhen, an old Witcher keep crumbling away with time and its surrounding untamed wild lands. Ard Skellig and its distant mountains and stormy seas, and that Celtic architecture that tells as many stories as the people that inhabit it. Even the war-torn bogs and marshes of Velen have character to them, a truly dreary place with sorrow down every path, war-crimes on display, and desperate men banding together in shadowed forests.

The game might've lost a bit of its gleam and its luster in the form of texture, but the design itself is timeless, and a good design is always going to show through all else.

I would also be amiss not to mention how keenly crafted each area feels when following along paths. With high cliffs holding narrow passages to quiet streams flowing through a forest, rocky outcroppings, comfy villages, the simple nature that is found around you at most times. I can only feel that much of it would've been enhanced with a first-person view.


[Story]

The story is really where the game shines, and where most of its accolades come from I imagine. The story is based of course upon Andrzej Sapkowski's novels The Witcher, though the games are considered non-canon and take place after the books. As a result there are some heavy Polish folklore themes present within the game, but also of other cultures too.

The story revolves around Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher by trade. Witchers are mutated humans, they have enhanced strength, agility, reactions and live well beyond normal lifespans. Often recognized for their cat-like yellow eyes and the two blades upon their back. Though people don't trust Witchers as much as they used to, seeing less need for them despite the threat of monsters which they are the utmost professional hunters of.

In this chapter of Geralt's story he seeks his long-since absent ward, Ciri, by request, no, demand of the Emperor of Nilfgaard, Emhyr var Emreis (Otherwise known as the white flame dancing upon the graves of his foes.) Amidst this search for his would-be daughter the land around Geralt heaves under the stress of a war fought on two sides; the ever expanding black empire of Nilfgaard and the Northern Realms, or what remains of them.

Geralt must navigate these torn lands in search for clues and leads, no matter what he gets caught up in along the way, be it powerful lords, treacherous vagabonds, or terrifying beasts. All the while as the mythical Wild Hunt, a mysterious group of armed riders that cross the night sky begin to intervene...


[SPOILERS]

I'll try keep this brief and speak more of what I find the good parts of the story to be.

First and foremost the story really strikes a chord. Geralt is in search for his one-time ward Ciri, it's your father/daughter story that really tugs at the strings in the way only they can, but there is a clear example I want to talk about that really exemplifies the game itself.

The Bloody Baron. This part of the main questline, and later side-quest, cannot be missed under any circumstance. As one of the earliest quest chains you get access to it really sets the morally grey tone of the world itself. Take the scene at hand for example. You arrive at a village, the peasants are downtrodden and fearful. They're all hiding away, telling their daughters to flee into the forest. You begin to question why. You enter the inn and as you ask the keeper your questions, in walks the men of the Baron. They ask questions of you first, and are none too polite about it. You can either rise to the bait and fight them all there and then, and likely make short work of them, or you could keep your calm as asked of you by the innkeep.

In the event you remain calm, and you let the situation simmer down, you find yourself free to leave. Heading outside the inn it becomes apparent what's happening. The Baron's men are stealing food, threatening the raping of children, abusing the elderly folk. Their threats are constant, and the fear is plain to see in the people. At this moment you draw your blade, you've seen enough, and you cut down every single one. You would think yourself heralded a hero, right? No. The peasants disagree with your choice, stating that you've only made things worse. That the next group that comes by will only be so much worse to them, and you can't stay to defend them forever.

And you've not only made it worse for them, but yourself too. You arrive at the Baron's village and find everyone hiding from you, and the guards hostile for recognizing you're the one that butchered their men.

Already you've made what some might consider the wrong choice. It might've been morally correct, but was it the actual correct thing to do?

Many similar situations like this arise with the Baron. You find him at first to be a drunk brutal man, with no care for the peasantry. But there is some truth to his words. He claims that without him his men would do so much worse. He holds the leash to violent dogs, to let them loose would be a foolish choice. You continue to learn of the Baron and these sides to him. He's in search of his own daughter, and his wife, and you agree to help in exchange for information on Ciri. But you soon find proof that he had a dispute with his wife, there's blood, spilled wine, sign of a struggle. It becomes clear that there was some domestic abuse.

But the Baron? For all his apparent misdeeds and flaws, in some strange way, genuinely cares for his wife and daughter and bids you help him, and that he'll do all in his power to see them again. He regrets his actions, claims his wife knew how to infuriate him. Bring in a miscarriage, a cursed creature born of it, and the Baron's acceptance of his mistakes when confronted with them all and you start to piece together your own thoughts on who type of man he is.

I won't say more on the Baron, but the end result is a deeply flawed man, but you can't help but admire his desire to undo all the wrongs, to be a better father and husband, and he would slay anything that gets in his way of that goal. Or maybe you'll outright hate his guts and think him nothing but a vile fiend? There's people on both sides of the fence when it comes to him, and that's fantastic.

The end of the chain is bittersweet no matter which way you slice it and that quest chain was by far one of the most impacting of the game, but there are many more like it.

Nearly all the side-quests have some kind of dilemma like this, a choice that might at first seem the correct thing to do but has the worse results, or in some cases you'll never find out if what you did was right or wrong leaving you to ponder. Even something so small as freeing a tied man at a river under threat of being eaten alive by drowners, but after freeing him you find him to have been a bandit and raided a nearby village, killing all that were there, and then he thanks you.

Your choices in the Witcher 3 are important, but I won't lie to you and say that every single one is. Anyone who expects that from a game is frankly expecting far too much. Technology isn't quite there yet, especially six years ago, but a lot of the major quests in the Witcher will change how the game ends, what wars are won, who lives and dies, what becomes of the island nation of Skellige under its new rulership and even the fate of Ciri.

If you want to play this and you're reading these spoilers without having done so then I urge you to experience it yourself. I won't say anything more of the main storyline itself for I've too much respect for it. Please enjoy it.


[Pros]

- Fantastic story.

- Beautifully crafted world.

- Timeless soundtrack.

- Immersive.

- Prepare for any encounter.


[Cons]

- Shallow combat.

- Repetitive contract quests.

- Distant parts of the map feel empty.

- Clunky movement.

- Easily breakable stat-wise.

[Conclusion]

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a timeless classic and I'll often still go back and do entire playthroughs 100% with every objective on the hardest difficulty. The expansions I barely touched on here, but they add just as much story as the base game and are just as entertaining. The Witcher 3 doesn't require you to have played the previous games, but if you really want to know what threw CDPR into the spotlight and set such high expectations for its Cyberpunk 2077, then play this game and find out for yourself.

[Score]

9/10

/DEAD

ARMA3 - Anyone else hear a tank?

[Introduction]

I was meant to write this review around a week ago, so decided it best to sit down and reacquaint myself with a few hours of ARMA3 - Hours turned to days, turned to weeks. ARMA3 is a rabbit hole of a first/third person military simulator that, while dating from 2013 now, holds up well.

[First Impressions]

I think it's fair to say my first impressions of ARMA3 are a little rose-tinted. When it came out I was part of an ARMA2 Milsim [more on that next week] that had just transitioned over. DAY-Z Mod was all the craze, with the standalone disaster releasing only a few months after ARMA3. Safe to say, it was a good time in gaming. If I take away my nostalgia pipe and really think on the matter, the game still holds up well. As soon as you launch it you're greeted with fast paced music, beautiful vistas from the game itself and plenty of neat little touches - like the background shimmering and changing as if you were watching it through a UAV back in the OpsRoom. You get all excited, mouse over "Single player" and -- boom. Overwhelming disappointment. The single player campaign [Pre-"Old Man" DLC] was utter garbage. The AI were clunky, the controls for your squad were a never ending menu of pressing 46 buttons to make them move five foot forwards, only to NOT shoot the enemy that was hidden behind an inch of bush, and for you to get creamed by a laser-pointed LMG 14km away. It was maddening for such an expensive, high-quality game to be so shockingly bad. And I don't mean 'this is too hard for me' whinge and moan, I mean bad.

Although, ask anyone who has ever bought ARMA3, anyone who has ever played any big near-real Military Simulator game, and they'll tell you the exact same reasoning behind buying it - multiplayer. This is where ARMA3 really shines; the the bread and butter of the game, the true reason I couldn't care less about the singleplayer. Two huge, immensely detailed and well planned maps sprawling with a hundred towns, cities and villages all crawling with players. You load up a Deathmatch and watch as you get hammered by the same guy holed up with a Katiba in the hospital in Kavala. You load up a ZvZ [Zeus vs Zeus - more on this later] and plan a meticulous campaign of destruction over the island as a god of war. You hop in my personal favourite, a Capture the Island COOP, where Area of Operations flash up on the map and it's your job to take your friends in there and cream the AI using anything you can before moving back to base to re-arm and take on the next. There's ARMA-Life servers, where you can roleplay just some dude tending his crops or a drug dealer trying to bribe the police. There's go-cart racing, flying training, Team vs Team - you name it, there's a mode out there for you. Up to hundred, sometimes more depending on the server, real players running around in barely organised chaos. 

[Development]

Developed by the Czech company Bohemia Interactive, who are a household name among military simulator and near-real shooters, ARMA3 was rather obviously the third instalment in the ARMA franchise - though it can be argued that Operation Flashpoint was the granddaddy of them all. Literally just meaning "war" or "weapon of war" it truly does say what it is on the tin - a combined arms military simulator. Bohemia really began to become a well-known name outside of the already cult military following as DAY-Z became more and more popular. I won't go into too much detail, but DAY-Z was a mod for the predecessor, ARMA2, that broke the stratosphere of popularity within the wider gaming community with hundreds upon hundreds of YouTube videos flooding channels left and right. Safe to say even some of the most popular YouTubers today [Soviet, looking at you here buddy] started out making DAY-Z videos. Fast forwards a few years and Bohemia announce that they're releasing an all new, all singing all dancing upgrade from the rather clunky and dated ARMA2 and the community went wild. With the Alpha dropping at 2012 E3 it just built until the release in Sept 2013.

During the development, a whole debacle with the Greek island of Lemnos [the original setting and name for the island of Altis] arresting two of the devs for taking photographs at a military base on the island itself. There had already been some trouble brewing as the Greek Parliament had discussed the virtual world, a near carbon copy of their island, had the potential to cause threats to the national security of Lemnos. 

In a game of tit for tat, the devs claimed to be on holiday and simply taking photos of the bases with their obvious interest in the military causing them to take a look while there. A serious espionage charge was levelled against the two devs, as you would imagine with taking pictures of a military base [which is a crime in Greece.] With Bohemia speaking out and taking an active role on the forums, locking threads discussing the Greek Military that pre-dated the incident and seemingly holding back the release of the game with citations of 'polish' being needed, it did not look too good. Even the Czech president got involved after their first bail hearing was denied, calling for 'special' attention from his Greek counterpart. After a tense, and understandably troubling, 129 day stand-off between Greece and Bohemia [read, Czech] parties the Devs were released on bail. It would appear that the renaming of the island from Lemnos to Altis had a big part to play as the release date was only a few weeks after this. What back-room discussions went on? Who knows, but it's safe to say I feel for the guys. Whether they were taking pictures for the game, which they claimed they were not due to it being already 'finished', or simply taking snaps for the holiday photo album, no one wants to be held in a foreign land on military espionage charge.

[Game Mechanics]

Mechanically speaking the game holds up quite well, with some glaring issues I will get to. Being a combined arms, meaning tanks, trucks, helicopters and jets, the driving for the vehicles is what I call 'simple, but effective.' It's no driving simulator, but the vehicles all have an inherently unique and even nice feel to them. The jets again are simple yet well managed, helicopters much the same. It crosses the bridge between 'not-quite-X-simulator' and 'simulated enough.' You don't want to live and breath every detail of take-off with a Jet because quite simply, it takes away from the game. I keep using the term near-real because that's truly what I believe it is, real enough to feel so yet 'gamey' enough to be enjoyable. 

Zeus. What a brilliant idea that was, truly. As Zeus you ascend to be a god, with a million menus to place real-time assets down in the field. By which I mean, your camera zooms to the sky and you can literally place squads, tanks, buildings, guns, even something like a bandage, on the floor in real-time. I place it, my mate sees it. It blew my mind when it came out. It's a take on their old mission editor that remained and allows you to build custom scenarios and put your pals through the ringer in suicide missions you crafted from the ground up. Every aspect, from mortars firing as 'off-screen' artillery, to smoke dropping and objective markers 'pinging' on your HUD, I adore it. It also gave rise to the strangest game-mode I have ever seen, ZvZ. Two gods, with arbitrary rules decided between them, take on one another with their AI. I once played out a mission where I was attempting to invade Altis against my friend, and planned every detail down to the individual make-up of my battalion and what vehicles. A finite resource to use, where I actually could have done anything I wanted. One of the best games of my time.

My gripes though, and oh boy are there some. The actions are clunky. You switch weapons, or rise from one of the various prone/kneeling/standing positions and it's clunk city. You open a door, or chuck a grenade and everything feels so laboured, like your character is moving through treacle. Getting in and out of vehicles in combat situations is a death sentence. Imagine if you will, you're being extracted under fire. Tanks are rolling in, tracers zipping by in the twilight, you hear the chatter of enemies close as your pilot screams "get in." You sprint to the back of the chopper, firing off a few covering shots while you go, and use the worlds most stupid action mention to scroll down to the right option. You move your mouse a centimetre before clicking and suddenly you're in the choppers inventory. Swearing you back out, mouse-wheeling to 'get in' once more and clicking. Suddenly your character starts the slow and laboured animation of slinging their weapon, for some reason. Then they stand up straight like a beacon in the night, for some reason. Then they begin to climb an invisible ladder, for some reason. All the while you're getting shot at, you're an active object in the environment and can be engaged and killed as such. It's infuriating. If it was real [let's be honest, no chopper would touch down in the middle of an active AO while under fire, but we shall look passed that] you would be hurling yourself in the back of the ramp like a maniac while returning fire at anything looking remotely suspicious, not doing some ancient masonic dance to summon the rain gods behind a helicopter. 

I mentioned it above too, but the action menu. Oh boy. To interact with the world, you generally use your mouse-wheel. When near an interactable object you get a small menu in the top right of your screen with some options. Open Door, Get in, Pick up X object - you get the idea. To use that menu you scroll, then click with the mouse-wheel. A fine system in theory, but it does not hold up in practise. Near a few doors? Yeah, you don't get to know which one you're opening. Pick and hope. Near a body you need to loot? You select Gear, only to be presented with their weapon and not their body. You shuffle and select Gear again for the same result. You bury your face into the recently shot corpse of your friend and select Gear a third time for a 50/50 chance of actually getting their blasted Gear up. 

But, I hear you say, this just means you have to take your time! No issue, just be sure which one you want to select! Which I agree, 'til the point there's a hundred rounds hammering the ground next to you, you hear a tank turret traversing towards you and a jet screams above. In combat, the action menu is Satan, and has killed me more times than the enemy, I swear. 

[Graphics]

I still believe the game holds up. If we add sounds to the mix here, because why not, then I still get fully immersed in the world whenever I take part in it. The vehicles are well designed, given they're all near-future variants, the world is stunning and everything is as it should be. Sure, it's a game that chugs CPU and you really can burn out a PC, even now, but it holds up and has that mid 'Teens feel of still very much a game, but getting close to realistic. Honestly, I prefer it over some of the ultra-modern, realism central shooters. 

[Story - Mods/DLC]

There sure is a story. Probably. I replaced our usual section with Mods here. No ARMA3 review can be complete without discussing one of the longest standing, strangest yet most dedicated modding communities out there. With the game setting being 2030's with weapons and vehicles that could be conceived [or are in use today], there was always going to be an active modding community. Though I sound like a cheesy salesman when I say it but, you name it? They've got it. Want to mod your sound to be ultra realistic? Done. Want to have an in-depth medical system with BPI, various wounds, triage and all that? Done. Want to play as a stormtropper in an AT AT? Sure why not. As long as the server has the right mods, or you don't mind playing around in Zeus on singleplayer, you can be anything or do anything you want. 

Bohemia have also been generous with the DLC, but not too overwhelming. Two new maps,  jungle island map [Tanoa] and Malden, Jets, Tanks, Helicopters, Marskman, Laws of War and Tac-Ops as well as Contact. All solid DLC that add depth to their respective fields with new vehicles, weapons, gear etc added. What I truly love above it all though? Bohemia's approach to the whole DLC thing. I am not a lover of flying, I'm shocking and crash often; so I never bought the Helicopters DLC. One of my favoured servers has all DLC enabled, and includes some of the helicopters. Does that mean I can't get in them because I don't own them? No, I can get in. I can't fly, which is fair, but I can sit happy as a passenger. The guns from Marksman are there too, and if I -really- want to use one, I can. I get a watermark that comes across my screen from time to time to advertise their DLC, but my point is I am not shut out. I don't need to own all DLC to use the content in MP, nor do I get locked out of it simply because someone else is using it. A very solid approach, one that a lot could learn from. Only Paradox comes to mind in allowing multiple people to use one persons DLC in multiplayer games.

 

[Pros]

- Unending Depth

- Still overwhelmingly played to this day, with hundreds of 100+ player servers.

- Huge community, inside and outside.

- Healthy approach to DLC.

- Mods, mods, mods.

- Some of the most memorable times you will ever have in a game.

[Cons]

- No singleplayer worth talking about.

- Still system intensive to this day.

- A steep learning curve, over facing start.

- Clunky animations that will drive you insane after a few hours.

- Can sometimes be too specialised when it comes to mods

- Some elitism present. 

[Conclusion]

You want a near-real, near-future, in-depth shooter to sink hundreds of hours into without knowing? Pick up ARMA3. You want to join a huge community of Milsim [again, more next week] and even competitive players? Pick up ARMA3. You want to just mess about with your friends, storm a lovely 'Greek' island and destroy everything in sight? Pick up ARMA3. Honestly if you have even a vague interest in military games and want a bit more realism than the latest COD67, give it a go. I'll see you in the field, solider.

 [Score]

8/10

/BAT