Bayonetta: Remastered

Happy Price: 19.99

Rating: 9

Gameplay

Bayonetta is an action packed shooter/slasher/platformer. It emphasizes different combos and aerial combinations to create unique attacks and strategies for different opponents. The main character is equipped with guns on her feet, which creates fun weapon combinations like a sword in the hands but shotguns on the feet. The creative and stylish combos are also innovative because of the ability to shoot from one's heel. 

Combat

The number of combos offered will leave you trying to master all of them throughout your gameplay run. There aren't too many weapons to choose from, that being said it isn't really necessary because variety is not lacking. When a new weapon is discovered, you'll have to learn how to use it. As the game progresses, certain situations will require you to use certain weapons. By that time, you'd better have a good idea on how to use them and mastered some of the combos. Experimenting with different weapon combinations that best suit your gameplay style is fun but can also be painful at times. You're judged each stage by the effectiveness of your combos and how much damage you've taken. So the learning phase will affect your score, and ultimately how much can be contributed to upgrades.

The most repetitive and impactful game mechanic is activating witch time. Witch time slows down the surrounding enemies for a short duration, but you get to attack at the same speed. This means you can dish out monster combos and gain the upper hand when outnumbered. Activating which time is done with a perfectly executed dodge. The more enemies attacking, the easier it is to activate witch time because there will be many projectiles and melee weapons attacking at once. Even though you may not hit your perfect dodge on your intended target, there are collateral dodges that happen and out of nowhere witch time is activated. You'll spend a lot of time dodging, jumping, shooting, and unleashing hell on enemies.

Story

I spent most of the time confused by the story. The game starts and all you know is you've been awoken from a slumber, you're a witch, and forces from the light are after you. You're then introduced to a love interest that is a journalist, but he's convinced you've murdered his father yet his this strange compassion for you. Then a little girl that calls you Mommy appears and you're trying to protect the little girl and the love interest from angels. That being said, the execution and presentation of the story was fantastic. The cinematics, animations, and voice acting were top notch. Bayonetta comes across just as she looks: charismatic, powerful, and ethereal. The actual story was not good or engaging for most of the game, until the ending where things come together and make sense. The game is driven by the fun of combat, not necessarily the narrative. If you wanted to, you can skip every cinematic and watch the last scene and know exactly what happened. If the design and animations of the characters was not excellent, the writing would have been exposed as being a huge flaw.

Animations

 A number of combos, cinematics, and unique enemies stresses the importance of unique and clean animations for each character. Many times games will be filled with unique characters but they have re-used or only a few animations. This is not the case in Bayonetta. Almost every enemy feels unique and they have to be handled differently. There are even enemies that have the same character models with slightly different skins, however, they will have different attacks and powers. For example two dogs, one blue and one orange. The blue one moves and attacks entirely different than the orange one. They also have different powers which influence their attack styles and movements. The blue being electric, while the orange is a molten rock creature. The electric dog moves around all the time and is aggressive, while the molten rock dog is defensive. Bayonetta moves extremely fluidly transitioning from running as a panther to doing cartwheels and shooting upside while airborne. Nothing feels choppy and the smoothness enhances the gameplay.

Environment

You've never been to this place before. Unsure if you're on Earth, in hell, or some heavenly realm, everything about this world is unique. Angels are characterized as having gold and white tones to their attire, but hideous looking faces. Some of them are complete atrocities with huge blood boils on their bodies. Some of their worlds are angelic like you picture in heaven, while others are just normal looking cities that have a nice stickly gold architecture to them.  The level designs are not repetitive and will keep you on your toes. Bosses might destroy the ground right beneath you, forcing you to jump to another platform. You may have to transform into a super fast panther to escape a rolling boulder down a hallway, or navigate along the sides of buildings during a flood. Not paying attention can result in a death, which reduces the rewards at the end of the level.

Summary

Bayonetta is a high octane adventure that mixes great action, platforming, and cinematics into an expertly paced experience. The characters are so developed and consistent you'll be able to predict their behaviors or responses to dialogue. The boss battles seem to be never ending and are always interesting. If you're looking for a game that doesn't try to do too much "realism" and lets the imagination fly, you'll want to pick this one up. 

Design: 10
Art: 9
Story: 7
Tech: 9
Sound: 9
Animation: 10
Total: 9

Saints Row: Gat Outta Hell

Happy Price: 4.99

Rating: 7.0

Gameplay

As a standalone game, you feel a bit cheated because Gat Outta Hell feels very much like DLC to Saints Row IV. It is pretty much the same game with a different narrative and reskinned guns to make them more hell themed. As you fly and sprint through hell, your job is to create as much chaos as possible in order to piss off the devil and have him confront you. 

Narrative

The most unique and best feature of the game was the story. After playing with a Ouija board a hell portal opens up and steals the president. Johnny Gat goes into hell to rescue his buddy, because he's Johnny Gat and a complete badass. The devil is to marry his daughter to the president, so that the union can assist the devil in corrupting humanity. The president has great leadership skills and is ruthless, so he's the perfect candidate for a son in law. There are many surprises inside the story including musicals and many unique endings the player can select. The voice acting and animation are superb making the story immersive and worth your time.

You'll find prominent figures from history down in hell, both fictional and from the SR universe. These figures include Blackbeard, Shakespeare, the Twins, and Vlad the Impaler. These characters have found themselves new roles in hell, and each are favored by the devil in some way due to their work on Earth. Exploring these is fun and entertaining, as it makes you think how their talents would translate to modern society. For example, Shakespeare in hell is an EDM DJ, begging the question if his talents would have rose to the surface in the modern age or would've been diluted by the lures of modern technology.  

Combat

If you've ever played Saints Row IV, skip this section. It is the exact same. If not, keep reading. Johnny Gat has two main ways to navigate the area and avoid enemy gunfire. That is sprinting and flying. Upgrading these two movement mechanics will greatly enhance your experience defeating tons of demons and hellspawn. In order to conserve ammo and generally move around as fast as possible, I sprinted around and kicked people in the nuts as much as I could. The benefit of doing that is health would drop right next to me, and I'd get to see a sweet animation like a wrestling move. 

In terms of shooting, you get a small selection of weapons. There are the pistols, sub machine guns, machine guns, melee, special, and explosive. There are two to three variants of each of these weapon types, and each must be individually upgraded so choose carefully on which you'd like to build out, because you won't be able to build them all out. Don't think the hell version of a weapon is going to be superior than the Earth version, for example the rocket launcher and shotgun are superior than their hell version counterparts. Early game, I assumed since the hell versions looked cooler they'd be more powerful, so I wasted money upgrading them. When the opportunity arises, make sure you get the couch gun. It is by far the most powerful gun in the game, and eventually it can be upgraded to the point where there is unlimited ammo and no reloads. This made defeating the devil a cakewalk.

You do also get super powers, but pick one and upgrade that as much as possible. The currency to upgrade them is limited, and is annoying to obtain early game. Once you've upgraded flying enough it gets a little easier, but it's still a task. Each prominent figure you help out in hell will award you a different power. There are four that were stated above, each with something to offer you. These super powers assist in battles, but are far from the main thing that kills things. Those are still going to be your guns, but when in a tight situation the super powers help. I stuck to the stomp since it cleared out areas which would help when I had to stay and protect an area for long periods of time. A few mission types require this, and it suited me well. The three other options include spawning imps, an arcane blast, and an aura. 

Environments

Hell is a difficult thing to create because it's not real, but at the same time this makes it awesome because you can create it however you imagine it to be. The environment is very underwhelming and I feel like I'm in a hell skinned version of a city from Saints Row IV. No pun intended, but there is no soul to the environment. It feels like I'm in a test version of the game or something, and the details have not been fully fleshed out. There isn't any real soundtrack, so when you're getting place to place it feels dreadful. This clashes with the theme that Saints Row has created, where hell would likely be a fun place. I expected there to be music that got my energy up, but instead I got something that made me want to shut the game off. To me it seemed like there were a lot of assets from other games that were re-used, and just were re skinned. That was disappointing.

Summary

Probably not worth your time. The narrative was the most fun part, and you an youtube that online. This is miles from SR III which is one of my favorite games. SR IV took a step back, and this takes a step way back. It has it's moments of great polish, but It's still taking and building off of a highly polished franchise. 

SUPERHOT

Rating: 8.5

Happy Price: 9.99

Gameplay

When you move, time moves. When you don't move, time moves very slowly. Bullets move very fast, so not moving for long periods of time is not a smart thing to do, but the game provides enough time to evaluate each situation. However, it's up to you on executing your plan which is harder than it sounds when you think time stops and you have a gun in your hand. 

Time

When time is moving at a normal pace, your brain can predict where or how something is going to move based on trajectory and direction. However in SUPERHOT this perception we take for granted goes away. When time stops, bad guys stop as well even while in a full sprint. Shooting where a bad guy stands is a sure miss, since they are running. Instead you must look at their feet or hips to determine what direction they are running in, and somehow have to determine how fast they are going so you can aim properly. This is balanced by having one bullet shatter bad guys, because two shots would be far too difficult.

Art

Only red, white, and black are the colors used along with some nice lighting. The models themselves appear to just be test models that are used for sample animations or test projects in UDK. However, the simple approach works and I feel stupid they beat me to it. Had I known I could incorporate laziness into my story and create a fantastic art style out of it, I'd be all over it. Kudos to the team for focusing on design and mechanics over artwork. Instead of looking at suspect character models, I look at neutral enemies so I can focus on the task at hand. It's not something I would have though in a million years would work, but it does. 

Story

Because the entire game is destroying red bad guys, there is some importance on the narrative, and the way it's incorporated into gameplay is quite innovative. It starts as you are a normal guy that just downloaded a game from a file sharing community, which escalates into this singularity that eventually leads you into doing things in the game that effect reality. How it all unfolds combined with the gameplay creates a steady flow and great pacing. The only thing that made me put my controller down was frustration. However the story is extremely short, hence my low price point on the game.

Summary

SUPERHOT is a must play, must buy game. You will play something you've never experienced before and for that reason alone it's worth it. I paid $25 for it and don't regret it, however if I could, I would wait for a sale. I will let this montage speak for itself.

Battleborn

Rating: 7.9

Happy Price: 59.99

Gameplay

Battleborn is a first person MOBA which has three different primary multiplayer game modes. The blending of a MOBA and FPS is brand new which creates a fresh experience for experienced MOBA players, and something different for typical FPS players. This also creates a bit of a clash with players, since those are two different audiences which makes matchmaking a mixed bag.

PVP 

There are three different game modes: a minion guiding mode, domination, and a linear point capture mode. Meltdown is the minion guiding mode, and unless you have a team of people that are communicating, it's a frustrating mode to play. Many players that come from FPS assume this is a team deathmatch style game which throws things into chaos. This was great for me individually because I'd constantly bait players who were dumb enough to play that way and score kills, but the problem is your teammates also play this way. I can see how the games were suppose to go. Groups of minions meet in an area, and then the player controlled characters duke it out in an area, winner of that battle will score the minions. The problem is there are five people on each time and no jungle, and the minions spawn at the same time with two lanes. This essentially takes the idea of having 2v2 on each lane with a jungler out of the picture. I think games would be more competitive and balanced if they were 6v6.

Domination is just not very interesting. The game mode is very familiar to most FPS players and there really is no need to discuss it much

Incursion is a decent experience since it's objective based and very team deathmatch oriented. The objective is very clear, and the strategy straightforward. Each team has two points that must be captured. Those points are guarded by a very tough sentry that has to be destroyed. There are numerous powerups and defenses that can be purchased and upgraded by killing minions and enemies. In addition to building defenses, there are mercenary camps that unlock powerful NPC characters that help attack other players and the objectives. Hiring mercenaries takes teamwork, you have to go to the mercenary camp and kill the mercenary(s) there, if you defeat them, you have to sit on a portal for about five seconds. During this time, the enemy team can steal the mercenaries. Doing this solo is very difficult and requires coordination, and mercenaries are necessary to win the game. A good solo performance can make the difference in this game mode, but if the other team is coordinated and frequently hiring mercenaries it turns into a 5v7 matchup and that will seal the game.

Character Variation

There are five factions and five class types in total. The class types include the Assassin, Tank, Healer, Sniper, and Warrior. Characters need to be unlocked by leveling up your profile or accomplishing specific game tasks like finishing story level four. It can take hours to unlock the entire roster, which is a bit detrimental to the experience of the game. Of the five starter characters, I'd say two of them are able to compete against players that have leveled up and have new characters. Thorn the Sniper and Roth the Assassin have very powerful skillsets that can do tons of damage. The other three characters that start the game are pretty average and underpowered, so when match up against people that have played the game longer it's unbalanced. When new characters are unlocked, they generally all play the same depending on class. At times it feels like it doesn't make a difference which assassin or tank I use, the only difference is their special attacks. When comparing to a game like Overwatch, it's a bit disappointing. There are 25 total playable characters with DLC on the way, but it will take hours of gameplay to ever experience all 25 players.

Story/Campaign

The campaign opens with this beautiful anime style animation that really kicks off the story and gets the player inspired to play the campaign. It's probably one of the best introductions to a story I've ever seen. I was really hoping that would continue throughout the experience, but it didn't. You would simply finish a section of the campaign, then move on to the next mission. It didn't create a cohesive experience, however the in game story writing was entertaining enough to keep you drawn in. The in game story writing was humorous and clever, which is consistent with Gearbox game leading back to Borderlands. Claptrap's personality is all over this game making light of the serious situation everyone is in mixed with the dark humor.

The way the campaign is structured is the team has lives. Each time someone dies, an life is lost for the entire team. What I found to be the most irritating is when you would get paired up with a crappy player that would constantly die, and would drain the team of lives. Because of this, I tended to do solo missions. The game was designed to have multiplayer missions with large areas to battle and mixing special attacks to create an awesome cohesive experience. I don't think Gearbox did a great job at creating these moments since it was so frustrating to see teammates constantly dying which would effect the whole team. Nothing is more annoying than spending 40 minutes in a mission, dying one time and having to start over from the beginning. While everyone else on the team died two or three times. Another frustrating piece was if internet connection was lost during a SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN you would be disconnected from the mission and it would not restart you from your last checkpoint when attempting to replay it. I remember vividly the third mission I had the final boss at 25% health SOLO and losing connection for less than one second (I was wired in with an ethernet cable since it happened to me once before when wireless). This is an ongoing problem, and made me cautions of doing the campaign since I lost about 90 minutes of my life due to disconnection problems on a 50mpbs line wired in.

Art

I've always enjoyed Gearbox's style of the 3d cell shaded characters, it's their style and how the studio is recognized. The different character types are interesting to look at and there are tons of character models in the game from minion, to sentries, and multiple NPC race types. Each character has a high level of detail like Golden sniper rifles with engravings and telekinetic rapiers. Each faction has their style and it's consistent with all the characters which created a cohesive visual experience that felt tight and clean. I'm pretty sure every LLC character had gold and engravings somewhere on their bodies, while the Jennerit all had red and plasma based weapons. The art style and quirky animations definitely enhances the experience of the game.

Summary

Battleborn makes a great initial impression, but it slowly begins to fade as you continue to play and unlock characters. It becomes clear that unlocking all the characters will become a tedious task that will take hours to complete, and for what? A game like Overwatch took the opposite approach, where you can pick any character and can switch each death. That game is more fun, and Battleborn will pay the price for it. It's a game I will likely keep in my library as they make updates, but I don't know for how long.   

Just Cause 3

Rating: 8.7

Happy Price: 49.99

Gameplay

Just Cause 3 is an action packed 3rd person shooter that uses unrealistic concepts to create the "extreme" feel, opposed to a game like GTAV which has a more simulation type of feel. The player has access to countless vehicles, explosives, and weapons to destroy bases in a variety of ways.  Access to this arsenal is easy with the Rebel Drop mechanic that allows a cargo plane to drop off whatever the player needs. Missions are regularly repetitive, so creating your own fun with the variety of weapons will determine how fun of a game this is for you on a personal level.

Vehicles

There are over 80 accessible vehicles including cars, boats, planes, helicopters, tanks, and utility vehicles. During my 40 hour experience I spent a lot of time in helicopters, they had the ability to rapidly shoot heavy missiles which would obliterate bases in a relatively short amount of time. The only real defense against a helicopter is a SAM anti air weapon, but those can be avoided or even hacked prior to taking down a base. Because there wasn't any real reason to use a boat in a situation, or a tank in another, taking down bases was not as fun as it probably could have been. The typical course of events for me went destroy as much stuff as possible with a helicopter until it blew up, then finish it up with a tank. After that, do everything on foot, and repeat. So even though I had 80 accessible vehicles, I tended to only use three or four consistently. There was no real reason to use a valuable rebel drop for a Volkswagen Beetle or a slow city bus, unless I decided it would be fun to try and take down a base in a bus. Let's make one thing clear, driving around in tanks and helicopters is fun, and this game gives the platform to do that as much as you'd like.

Story

The narrative is similar to previous iterations of the series. You play Rico Rodriguez and are a borderline rebel superhero causing millions of dollars in government damage and initiating a revolution. This time around the evil dictator has developed a nuclear weapon infused with Bavarium that is more powerful than your standard nuke, which is suppose to make this small island into a superpower. Taking down this dictator will not only save the world, but also the oppressed people of Medici. As unrealistic a plot this is, the writing itself does not lend itself to this being a real scenario either. Rico Rodriguez as a character is far too casual and cocky to make it feel like anything is really at stake. He carries an attitude of "this will be easy, nothing bad will happen" which does not create much tension. To add, finishing up a main campaign mission does not end with an upgrade or access to new upgrades. This is all done outside of the main campaign. Doing main campaign missions seemed to be more of a chore, as I'd prefer to have a reward after doing something difficult like taking down a large military base to unlock a better helicopter

Weapons

Having 80 vehicles, I expected to have a much larger range of weaponry at my disposal. There are only a couple variations of pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, LMG, and heavy weapon. With 40 hours of gameplay, I wanted more. The assault rifles had four distinct and predictable types of specs. There was the fast shooting low damage, slow shooting high damage, 3 shot burst, and one shot burst rifle. I felt very constrained having only able to pick one main weapon, one sidearm, then a heavy. With as much variety, I want to flip between shotguns, assault rifles, LMG's, and heavy weaponry quickly. This element of only being able to hold two weapons contradicts the cartoony nature of the game. At times I felt very under-powered using even the most powerful assault rifle. Multiple head-shots to enemies or unloading an entire clip for them to die.  Whenever I was outside of a vehicle, I typically would parachute around throwing grenades and using my heavy weapon, until I could hijack a vehicle. Most of the time is spent using the grapple hook escaping gunfire and running for your life, which isn't really too fun. 

Progression

The flow goes as follows, liberate a base, then get access to a variety of challenges to obtain "gears". Gears are the currency to upgrade Rico. These challenges include: car races, boat races, plane races, shooting ranges, skydiving, and few others. This was the most fun part of the game. Liberating a base, then your favorite type of challenge is unlocked. There are leaderboards attached, and you get to compete against friends all the while working to upgrade yourself. Doing well in car races allows for upgrades to be unlocked for said type of vehicle. Doing so does not necessarily feel like you are progressing in the game, but makes things feel more convenient. For example, instead of grenades doing more damage, you get upgrades like "can hold more grenades". Having more grenades that do more damage doesn't really help me that much, I just don't have to find a resupply point as often. If you really wanted to, the entire game can be beaten without upgrading yourself. The game can likely be finished in 15 hours, but it would take hard work to do so. Because I spent time doing the challenges, I didn't have to constantly resupply myself with valuable ammo to keep my reign of havoc going. Spending hours doing challenges only to have a max heavy ammo be increased from 5 to 11 did not seem justified. For some reason though, I had fun doing the challenges and wanted my experience to be more convenient. Having double turbo in my helicopters made navigating the 400 square mile space much faster.

 Art

When creating assets for a space the size of Rhode Island, I think shortcuts are expected. However they are not easily pointed out. Surprisingly the terrain always had purpose. There were flat areas that were cleared of foliage, then areas that were heavy with foliage, but all of these locations made sense and had a great flow. Enemy outposts and bases are placed in strategic locations that are surrounded by canyons with small entry points. Then randomly there will be ruins from some ancient South American civilization. It's fun riding around in a plane or helicopter and seeing these ruin sites, and then hopping down to check them out. Turns out doing this will add a collectible most of the time, which is a nice reward for exploring your curiosity.

The color palette was very bold and uplifting which played nicely into the feel of the game. Vehicles and weapons are very detailed with fine details like different axel behavior in an indy car from the rest of the other cars in the game. Explosions are some of the best I've ever seen in a video game, too many on screen can cause frame rate issues, but most of the time it was in extreme cases of blowing up five gasoline storage containers or something along those lines. The main characters had unique attributes like burned faces or scars, and the facial expressions during cut scenes we're very good, some of the best I've seen in a video game. The expressions reflected each characters personality beautifully and was the best part of the campaign. 

Summary

The first 10 hours or so are very addicting, but it tends to get repetitive after that point. It took many play sessions to complete the game, as I would play for about one hour and then get bored. It's every easy to pick up and put down, and I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not. After about 24 hours of not playing, I'd get the urge to blow some stuff up, but then it goes away, and the process repeated itself for about a month. There are many good games out there, but if you need something that isn't going to conflict with your social life, this game is for you. 

Undertale

Happy Price: 9.99

Rating: 8.5

Gameplay

Undertale is a narrative driven RPG with a unique battle system that allows the player to fight or negotiate, most of the time. There are several different outcomes to battles and a short campaign that encourages replay ability. It combines classic elements of top down 8 bit games and modern gameplay storytelling which creates an experience of it's own.

Battle System

I was very excited to play this game and not kill any enemies. The first couple of battles consisted of me talking and enjoying the writing, often laughing out loud. I noticed however I was not getting XP or gold and not leveling up, surely I was doing something wrong. I then started to fight and kill my enemies, which allowed me to level up and get large amounts of gold. This is surely the path to go, and that's what I ended up doing, because it felt right. I did not really understand why the system was created like this. I wanted to experience the dialogue, and not kill anything, at the same time be rewarded for it to upgrade my character. To me, this is the most addicting part of RPG's. 

The player can select what they want to do via JRPG style battle screen. When the enemy responds with an attack, a dodging or other small mini game type is enacted. Quick reflexes are needed to get through each battle. The best part is, each character has a different attack which invokes a different mini game for each battle. The game in this sense does not feel lazy and very "craft brewed". There is a lot of thought and personality brought into this, and Toby Fox put a great deal of effort to make all this feel like it was thought out in a detailed way. I just wish exploring all the writing was rewarded with a conventional progression system so I felt like I was doing the right thing.

Story

The story is the main reason to play this game, which is rare for a video game. The best part is there aren't any cut scenes, the story is told through battles and level design. The art style is very simple and there isn't any voice acting, but the subtle facial expressions in the dialogue window convey the emotions just right. I was able to tell when a character was being devious, the designer knew I could tell, and when I made a decision based off of all that, I WAS CONFRONTED ABOUT IT, it was the best. I just thought to myself, that was done so well, I felt smart about doing one thing, but the designer in a way outsmarted me. I'm used to those things not really mattering, but in this case it did. I don't want to spoil anything, but things like this occur in the game.

Sound

The voices are distinguished by different tones and beeps that are mixed together. A fat character will have a set of machine tones that are low, lazy, and have bass. As dialogue runs across the screen, these tones will play and it sounds like the character is talking, which adds humor to the whole thing. I thought it was a great way to convey dialogue with limited resources. The soundtrack of the game is great. There are unique scores for each area of the game and even battles. All of which are addicting and make the experience pleasant. It's reminiscent of LISA, where I just loved the soundtrack, and it created a great mood for each area of the game. 

Art

For the most part, the quality of the art can be ignored. At times it appears lazy, but it doesn't really matter with the amount of depth that went into the writing and soundtrack. Nothing is really going to impress you, and honestly, I didn't really want anything to. I liked how I was focusing on the soundtrack and narrative. The downside is I never really looked around much, I was always trying to find the next story point or battle. I had no reason to stay in one area and examine my environment, because it wasn't really that appealing and I wanted another section of my brain to be activated as quickly as possible. Hopefully if there is a sequel, the same art style can be used, but more details and backdrops will be used. I think it will create a more pleasant environment for players to navigate and explore.

Summary

This is a must play for any gamer that is looking for something fresh and new. The story is short, around 6-8 hours so it doesn't take a huge time investment. The writing alone is worth your time and money, and add in the gameplay elements and you have a great game. The is the underlying counter intuitiveness of an RPG that exists which bothered me, but I think for most people it didn't bother them. Many people love this game, I certainly liked it.