ASSASSIN'S CREED 3 (PS4)

 
Ok, so I forgot to add this game to the list, although I finished it more than a month ago. It was a good deal, I got AC3 plus The tyranny of king Washington DLC AND AC Liberation at a discount. Black Flag was also on sale, so I bought it as well. To be honest, maybe it was more Assassin´s Creed in one take that I actually could deal with. Years ago I got AC Unity and Syndicate copies, but they´ve been waiting on the shelf since… because I play AC chronologically. With this purchase I was just trying to fill the gap quick, so I could jump to the latter. I didn´t expect Liberation and a DLC to be on the same package, but what the hell

But let´s focus on AC3. Mixed feelings, mostly. It´s one (if not the most) NOT loved Assassin´s Creeds. After playing it, I understand why. To start with, the game world (XVIII century US colonies) is not visually striking. Basically wooden houses and forests. Not precisely what you would say “I want to be there”. Think about previous or later titles: Rome, Istambul, Paris, London… Second, the historical time is somehow limited in its impact on potential audiences. It will surely resonate on the US audiences, not so sure in the rest of the world

On top of that, the game feels less responsive to the controls than previous titles: You press the stick to go in one direction and goes into a slightly different one, it´s not easy to chain parkour jumps, while moving around the city very often the character feels irresponsive and the game takes you in a direction completely different… Inherited from the Ezio series, this AC has a lot of side missions that don´t necessarily fit into the assassin fantasy (village recruitment / management, ship missions, hunting…), so many times the game experience is blurry. The story is very uneven (weird decisions, strange alliances, things that happen because the script says so) and the protagonist is consistently angry, often behaving like an asshole for no real purpose. It´s kinda difficult to empathize with him. It was also plagued with bugs, crashes and blockers, a number of times I had to restart the game because I was stuck, or the UI prevented me to achieve the current objective. Really frustrating

I honestly finished it out of stubbornness, but it´s still a great deal of content if you have the patience to overcome all obstacles. AC games are normally comforting in the sense they´re not difficult to complete, and they offer so many things to do that it´s relaxing to get yourself lost in the world and let the hours pass by. It’s just that AC3 makes it harder than it needs to be (or other games of the series did)

BUD SPENCER & TERENCE HILL - SLAPS AND BEANS (PS4)

 

One of my guilty pleasures are Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies. Particularly Watch out, we´re mad! and the Trinity ones (I wonder if they would work with today's audiences). They are part of my childhood, and I will always have a little corner of my heart for them

Some years ago a small Italian dev team ran a kickstarter to buy the IP rights to make this game, and eventually released this Beat’em up. I liked the idea and if I would´ve known of the campaign I would´ve certainly contributed. However, I´m not a fan of that genre and full price didn´t help either. But recently I learned it was on an 80% discount, and I thought “it is time”

So last week I finished the game. It´s not long, probably 3 hours if you´re skilled in that type of games (it took a bit more than 4h to me). For the most part, it is a good game: The spirit of those movies is well-reflected, they re-use a lot of scenarios and character types from them, and a beat’em up is the logical genre choice. The 8 bit visuals also fit well in a nostalgia product such as this, and the actors’ trademark fighting styles are replicated into the player actions nicely - most punching animations are taken directly from the movies. Even the music soundtrack is made by the same composers!

On the minus side it´s not a particularly refined / complex game. Combat options are the same from beginning to end, most enemies are cloned archetypes across all levels, and although minigames pepper the playthrough, it feels a bit repetitive overall

Still, the game achieves its goal of transporting you to the physical comedy/optimistic mood/good guys vs bad guys/just have fun spirit of those 70s movies. Since there is a sequel coming on, it sounds like I´m not the only one who thinks that way :D

THE SEXY BRUTALE (PS4)

The sexy brutale combines two excellent starting points: The "groundhog day" (you relive the same day over and over, meaning you can do anything you want knowing the world will be eventually reset) and the Abbey of crime (the NPCs are driven by a timeline, and they roam the world according to their schedules, independently from the player's decisions). Both are interesting enough - even separately - to lay the foundations of a great game

And for some reason, The sexy brutale is not. Certainly not bad, but it didn´t reach the fun state for me. My main issue was that I didn´t have enough info about what was happening in distant rooms, and also I wasn´t clear on what my goal was at any given time. You do get the name of who you`re supposed to watch over, but it wasn´t clear what they were doing, where and what should I do

Also, the story is a bit over the top. It combines a murder mystery night - much like any Agatha Christie novel - with fantasy, superpowers and ghosts. And it´s not that easy to follow, specially if you consider that players that want to avoid internet walkthroughs will likely wander around for long periods of time, making them forget of the overall plot. I ended up enjoying it because I did use a walkthrough, and so I kinda grasped the story better

On the plus side, the art direction is cute and distinctive. Chasing photo-realism is not the ultimate challenge for an artist in my opinion. Creating a new style is. The sexy brutale is not the first cartoony game around, but it stood up for me in its visual approach. And I respect the risk they took, not so many companies try to do something different nowadays

Do I recommend it? Sure, but only for players that don´t mind feeling lost, and are actually encouraged by that. Or you enjoy whodunits, cartoon games or indies that felt a bit short on their ambitions

FAR CRY BLOOD DRAGON (PS4)

Released initially in 2013 as a Far Cry 3 DLC, it was credited to be a highly unusual follow-up from the original IP: Not only the 80s setting but also a strong tongue-in-cheek type of humor. It was always on my radar, either for an impulse purchase or being on sale... which was recently the case

Aside from the 80s skinning, the game is fundamentally a Far Cry game. It is remarkable how little that IP has evolved in the last 10 years, to be honest. In terms of gameplay/features is basically the same than FC5, the last one I played. I even reused the same tactic for liberating garrisons: Drive a weaponized jeep inside, and shoot everything on sight. Only the dragons are new, and sometimes they behaved strangely, specially against some collisions/pathfinding

Still, the game is fun. I liked the B-series parody, and the humor style connected with me. It becomes repetitive after the first 2 hours, but I am generally ok with some farming. The story doesn´t make any sense, and it intends hard to not to. I enjoyed that, as well as the slideshow cutscenes (I believe that is 90s, actually)

Anyway, if you are into 80s nostalgia, comedy games and/or generic shooters I highly recommend FC Blood dragon. I miss when Ubisoft took weird risks like this

THE QUARRY (PS4)

 

I am a fan of interactive storytelling. I went to work for Quantic Dream because of that after all (although it didn´t go well at all). Still, I think there is a lot of space for new experiences and innovation on that genre

Similar to Until Dawn - another Supermassive game - The Quarry takes you to another teenage slasher experience, this time I assume inspired by Friday 13th. You take control alternatively of different summer camp counselors in their last night before going back to their lives, and all the horrible things that happen to them

The game follows the same patterns that other previous games of the company, and largely works. It is interesting how graphic fidelity is important for the genre, it gives you that "movie feeling" that makes it not only authentic, but also gore is more impactful. I replayed some scenes and it´s insane the amount of branching there is, depending on the smallest decisions you make

On the minus side it's not particularly friendly with collectible hunting, you essentially have to replay the whole game if you missed some. House of Ashes - another Supermassive game - didn´t link them to a specific savegame. Pity

Anyway, a nice experience either if you like storytelling, slashers or solid games. I was gonna also say 80s nostalgia but I'm not sure now: There are VHS tapes, old cars and weapons, but also modern mobile phones. Maybe they made a mix of references, like Control?

BLADE RUNNER Enhanced edition (PS4)

Flashback to 1999. I am working at Dinamic multimedia as a beta tester. One of the (not so many) perks was to get free games. The company not only produced but also distributed for others, so actually you could get a decent amount of titles. One of them was Bladerunner, the videogame. However, the graphic adventure bubble had exploded some years earlier, and at that point they´ve become a niche segment. I didn´t care for the game, and forgot it on a shelf

Fastforward to 2018. During those years the game gained some sort of cult status (it might be the first adventure with different endings according to your decisions). Then I read some news about Bladerunner getting a console version. I now identify as a neo-noir aficionado in all its variations (movies, TV, videogames), I am sometimes taken by nostalgia and definitively a Bladerunner fan, so I started tracking this enhanced edition project via internet

Another fastforward, this time to 2022. Apparently the project was problematic, the team lost the original data and had to reverse-engineer everything, took longer than expected and so on. But eventually they released it, so I got myself a digital copy

Well, it´s definitively a half-cooked game. It is plagued by bugs - sometimes minor, but also many majors - and overall it doesn´t feel like the new features (graphic improvements in particular) add much to the experience. Menus and controls are still very much 90s and mouse-based, and the game has the typical issues of old-school graphic adventures: Pixel searching and lack of leading, meaning you are often forced to re-visit all locations and re-talk to all NPCs to find what is the next step you´re missing

On the plus side, if you either like Bladerunner or neo-noir in general it still retains the charm of playing in that Sci-Fi setting, it´s a brand new story (takes place simultaneously with the events of the 1982 movie) and if you use an online walkthrough as a support tool it can be reasonably entertaining

So in summary, only for real fans either of Bladerunner of the genre. But if you are, it´s pretty much a must

KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO (PS4)

I heard about Kentucky Route Zero (KRZ) from videogame outlets, presented as an indie darling. It was praised by its storytelling and general uniqueness. At some point it was on sale in the PS4 store and I said to myself "why not?", without knowing much of the premise or gameplay

Now, having finished it, I have mixed feelings. On one side I like the constant paradigm changes: Controlling different characters, bespoke cameras per situation, no discernable plot as a whole but instead a compilation of mini-stories, the weirdness of most of the scenes much like David Lynch's askew vision... It is good there are games like this in the market, that try to do something different. Well done

On the other hand, I didn´t have fun playing. The game relies A LOT on text, and not really interesting. I suspect the creators wanted to provide everyday dialogues to convey authenticity. They probably achieve that, but paying the price of being terribly boring. It´s like a 12 hour David Lynch movie, minus the interesting events

It´s a relatively easy platinum trophy, so I went for it. But overall I don´t think it´s a game for all audiences. You need to be on a specific niche segment to enjoy it: You´re looking for fresh videogame blood, you enjoy stylized basic art and you REALLY like reading. If that´s the case KRZ is your game. Otherwise check some gameplay videos before purchasing, just to be sure