YaManSmevz

Hey, what's up man! Yeah, I'm getting more and more excited for Bloodborne! I think I agree with you on Hotline Miami 2, I might actually like better than the first... though that excludes the Hard difficulty, which I'm yet to even start, and the A+ stuff is definitely trying! Lotta bullshit deaths, like some levels you die in a split second over and over at the very beginning of the screen before you can even formulate a plan! And thank you for the encouraging words! It's definitely harder than HKM, but it'll get wrapped up sooner than later! Dude I feel like you would LOVE Laika. It's that sweet spot of challenge, interesting mechanics, and bleak story. I still need to try The Messenger, but as a total Chrono Trigger Stan, I could not resist going for Sea of Stars first😂 I will not harp on your not having played a certain classic SNES RPG, though I will say that even without that, it's still worth a try. It's a game very much made for gamers our age😄 Nah man, don't even trip! We've all got lives. And I feel you on that... sometimes the urge to game just isn't there. It's best to just let that ride out, cuz once you start forcing it, you just ensure that you'll REEEAAALLY not wanna play games for an even longer while, and that ain't nice. Thanks a lot for stoppin by homie, always a pleasure! P.S. Look into My Friend Pedro if you haven't already. That and Laika I think you might get a big kick out of!

Hundo #20: Resident Evil 4 Time, time for some, time for some action I think it's safe to say that most of us have a game or two that seemingly everybody loves, but never spoke to you in quite the same way. You don't dislike it necessarily, maybe you even get the praise and agree that it's a high quality game, but for whatever reason, it's just not for you. I hope that makes sense, because that's been my relationship with Resident Evil 4 since it came out all the way back in 2005. Just to be clear, I am not at all an RE4 hater, more of a not-lover. It's for two chief reasons, the first being my own pettiness - after that knockout PS1 trilogy, the franchise was trying out new consoles, and it left this PS loyalist out in the cold. "Wanna play Code Veronica? Or the remake of the original? How about Resident Evil 0, the prequel??" "Oh my god, yes! I'd love to!" "Well too fuckin bad, Sony boy. Here's three shitty FPS games instead." Which brings me to the other reason. Those three shitty FPS games, along with a pair of admittedly interesting online games and two painfully dull movies, brought about a powerful sense of oversaturation. Resident Evil was everywhere all of a sudden, kind of like a genre of music that was cool til it started popping up in commercials for cars and yogurt. It's unfortunate, because Resident Evil 4 ended up being quite a colossal achievement, even by Resident Evil standards, and I ended up stuck in the "No really, it's great, I'm just not in the mood" camp. And everybody knows those people suck! Our story focuses on Leon Kennedy, who much like fellow RE2 alumnus Claire in Code Veronica, is all grown up after the horrors of Raccoon City. He's a big shot special agent now, complete with one liners and devastating good looks, on assignment to find the president's missing daughter Ashley in a rural Spanish village. After an unfortunate misunderstanding, he finds her at a raucous bingo game, where he wins a jet ski before thanking the Spaniards for their hospitality and taking Ashley back home safe and sound. The game lasts about a half hour. The noticeably different gameplay shines immediately, with so many new elements that it's genuinely difficult to know where to start. The over the shoulder camera, which I'm sure existed before this game but was in the very least popularized here, is a win straight out the box. It feels so natural, even paired with the old fashioned tank controls. The dramatic opening door sequences are nearly removed entirely, making those intense, close quarters encounters feel that much more urgent. QTEs, another concept that surely existed beforehand but was popularized here (well, here and God of War, of course) did a great job of keeping us on our toes without going overboard. We now have checkpoints, a staggerlingly overdue addition to the series, and a brilliant difficulty adjusting feature. Oh, and the interactivity has gotten a huge boost - you can even shoot items an enemy is throwing at you. The first time you blow up a Ganado's dynamite as they try to toss it your way to kill everyone in their vicinity is an extreeeemely satisfying moment! Of course, it isn't perfect, and does suffer from the same affliction as its classic mid-aughts gaming brethren San Andreas with being ahead of its time while still more or less being trapped in it. For example: Leon: “Backflip, roundhouse kick!! Suplex, YEAAHHH!!” Also Leon: “Shut up, I need to concentrate, I can't walk and shoot at the same time.” The shooting is another main thing that dimmed my enjoyment of this game. Not because it's bad, but simply because I never really got the hang of it. I made it through all those challenges, beat the game on Professional, and I'm still garbage at shooting in this thing! The design is fantastic as well - I loved how the environments and enemies are constantly changing, you can tell that Capcom really challenged themselves in this department. There are so many iconic locations in this game, and so many inventive enemy types in a series already known for inventive enemy types. The spiked regenerators towards the end were just as terrifying as the Chainsaw Charlies (not what they were actually called, my friend and I have just always called em that) in the beginning if not more so, and let's not forget the boss battles. El Gigante? Verdugo? The U-3 dude in that giant, suspended cage? Even the Ganados, the most basic enemy here, has a uniquely sinister air that mere zombies can't quite match... hearing the villagers snarling in Spanish about how they’re going to kill you is genuinely chilling! There's been a lot said about the mood, how it's not scary enough, it's too action-packed or whatever, but I can't get on board with that. The faster pace of the game, as well as the switch from having barely enough ammo to get by to having more ammo than you know what to do with is certainly there, but I always say that peeps commenting on that must not have played RE3 beforehand, cuz that shit got wild. I really enjoyed the amount of camp in the script, as it left just enough room for the game to take itself seriously but still managed to be so endlessly charming. Leon is given so much personality, and with far more sophisticated voice acting than before, even if it is in cervice of being a corny action hero. With his quips about bingo, or sassily calling Salazar "BRO," we're chuckling along with him, as opposed to at him like in RE2, with gems like “HOLD your FIRE! I’M a HUMAN!” Oh and also.. I had this vague memory of Ashley being so annoying before I played the game again, only to realize that it wasn't my memory, Ashley was always perfectly fine - it's just the groundless criticism of her that we've all heard countless times, and ironically that dialogue is whinier than Ashley herself! She's a young girl thrust into a terrifying situation, how is she supposed to act? I couldn't help but laugh, like ease up on ol girl, y'know? Oh, and the merchant is the GoaT. Okay! Let's try and wrap this up so we can move onto the strays, cuz I am meandering like a mafucka here... After re-playing Resident Evil 4 in 2023, I still don't love it. Whatever whiny nonsense led me astray from the franchise that I was able to shed with the remake of the original sadly remained strong here. But oh well, y'know? That's okay - not everybody gotta like everything! However, I did get a helluva lot more respect to add onto this game's name. I feel the more I play it, the more I realize why it's such a big deal, why it's so beloved. And that's really all I can ask! Stray Observations - Not the sort of thing I try to bemoan regularly, but when it comes to this game I really gotta say it: y no platinum, dawg? - When Leon shoots planks of wood or dangling necklaces to do something he could've easily done with his hands, it just feels like Homer using a gun to open his beer or change the channel. Special agent my ass. - I wonder what I would think if I'd been in another room overhearing the merchant's first appearance. "Got somethin that might interest ya, hehehe" followed by the very clear sound of a cloak being opened. Sus. - If there were any justice in this world, Leon and Luis would've had a handsome buddy cop type spin off where they're constantly brushing their hair out their eyes and saying dopey one liners. I mean the Dead or Alive girls got all those volleyball games! - “Don’t worry, she’s cool.” Awww is she blushing?? - "Your right hand comes off?" That reminds me of that movie Arthur, when the girl says "take my hand," to which he responds in drunken confusion "but that would leave you with one." - You can hate on Ashley all you want, but that fist pump she does for every plaga you shoot on the gondola is inarguably adorable. - When Salazar leaves the transmission and Leon is still there pondering, I really wanted Salazar to pop back up like "YES YOU IDIOT, THAT MEANS THERE'S AN INTRUDER BESIDES YOU. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST." - "Oh, I remember how he looked at me in that red dress." - Ada Wong, circa 2045 - Shooting the hinges on the bridge before the Salazar battle makes this hysterical noise, it's like when a cartoon character gets an anvil dropped on their head or something. - Saddler told on himself with that "bothersome fly" remark, he totally played Metal Gear Solid when he was a kid. - After the bulldozer sequence, there's this either quick animation or bad edit of Ashley zooming right up to you that cracks me up. - "Leon, you strangled Ada after the parasite took over your sensibilities!" "Huh? Uhh yeah, the parasite, that's what it was." - As much as I dislike QTEs, I really did like them in that first encounter with Krauser, they absolutely nailed it, keeping the encounter nice and tense. Although he's a bit of an idiot, no? "Wait, did you just say Umbrella?" "Huh? No no, I didn't... YOU'RE the one saying Umbrella, Leon! I don't know what you're talking about!" - "Wanna come over and put in some overtime?" "I've already heard you call out my name a few too many times, no thanks." THAT Trophy: What Are They Worth? As mentioned before, I could just never get the hang of the shooting in this thing. The mechanic reminds me of those water gun games at carnivals; no matter how carefully I aim, I am never shooting at the right place to start! Skill issue though, I mean what can you do? Also.... they laugh pretty hard at your ass when you fail, that shit's cold.

Platinum #122: Need for Speed Heat The Need For Speed Collect all trophies Rarity: 11.40% Difficulty: 5/10 Yeah, that's what every image for this game looks like. They were presumably so impressed with their lil gradient that they were like "YO. What if we just made this ONE image, and then used it for EVERY trophy, even the platinum??' "Oh hell yeah, braoh!!! And then we'll just make it into a rectangle for the game's main image!!" "Oh dude, that's fuckin LIT. I GOT THE NEED FOR SPEED, BRAH!!" I have to be real and confess I went into this very much not a racing fan, just wanting to get something out of a free PS Plus game, and my half-hearted hopes that I may be converted to enjoying the genre ended up being sadly misguided. On the plus side, there are several qualities even a hater like me can't deny: it looks fantastic (Palm City is stunning, with solid Miami vibes for days), the driving functions are handled splendidly (once you get the hang of drifting, for instance, it's incredibly rewarding), and um... I thought there was a third thing, but I guess that's it. The story is hot garbage, but I can't be too mad at that - it's clearly from a rejected Fast and the Furious script somebody found in the trash, so it's kind of a fool's errand to expect anything worthwhile there. One thing you would expect a game like this to nail is music, though - sports games almost always get down in that department, but the soundtrack here is shockingly boring. Like they just grabbed whatever dollar bin Hip-Hop, Electronica, and Latin music they could find and were like "That's what the kids like, right? This is gonna slay. Do they still say 'slay?'" The guide rates Need for Speed Heat as a 4 on the Difficulty scale, but honestly I had a harder time than that. Some of the challenges (speaking of which, holy fuck are there an unreasonable amount of those) are severely hurt by the RNG traffic and the completely fucking psychotic cops in particular. I'm glad I now have a racing plat, and that I stepped outside of my comfort zone, but beyond that I didn't get too much from the experience. However, that's just me! Just because I didn't particularly enjoy it doesn't mean I think it's bad, if that makes sense - the basic driving controls all feel great, and the world is a joy to look at and traverse through. If you're an arcade racing fan, you really can't go wrong here. If you're like me though and you're not, this ain't gonna change your mind.

Splinter Cell and SC Chaos Theory. I know that's two, but if I'm not mistaken they're in a combo package for the PS3? Those are just cool ones to have, man...

Final Fantasy X - I know that one is particularly demanding! I'm excited to get around to playing it, but not so much completing it😅

Nice! I'll tell you what Mr. Clarke told me when I started my checklist: Also 21 completions so far this year?? Daaaamn! Off to a great start man, formatting looks great. I'll be keepin an eye out!

I know the feeling man... you hit a percentage you feel proud of, then you start playing new games and before you know it you're back down a few rungs😂 Also 71 trophies away from the current goal? You're gonna do some serious damage this month homie, I can feel it👊 Noooooo this game looked so cool, I've been so excited to play it but this is the second "meh" reception I've come across. And to think I bought it before it went for free like a sucker😂😭 I think this one may have to go onto my wishlist... between you and Copa, I've been getting mad fomo for this one! Looks like the fomo is only gonna get wirse🤣 Great post, my dude👊

I will take that as a request! I'm working on something at the moment (obviously not very quickly, haha) but I'll pick one and get to work. Thank you sir, you've just held me accountable - I like it! You charmer, you! Thanks, homie👊 Thanks, my dude! Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. Been meaning to get into Bloodborne forever, and not only does it seem the most up my alley of all the From stuff, I've just had too many trusted opinions (yours included, of course) telling me that that's the one to kick things off with! Laika and Norco were all you, so I very much owe you my thanks for those! Funny you say that, when I came up with Furry Furiosa my first thought was wondering if you'd already used that one in your review, I had to go back and read it again to make sure😂 Which reminds me - I've been meaning to tell you, but it's such a joy to read a review of yours on a game I don't know, and then after playing it going back and reading it again once I actually get it, does that make sense?

For what it's worth.... .....they're all right. Sleeping Dogs is fantastic. ...also, and hypocritical as this may be, stop making me want to play SoulCalibur VI😂

Aayyyy thank you so much, I appreciate it😁🙏

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz March 2024 Yo! Welcome to April, everybody! I'd love to make some silly April Fool's jokes, lament on how nice it is to be in my birthday month, or comment on how surprisingly difficult it is to find a size-appropriate image of April O'Neil reporting the news that isn't completely sexualized (welp, I'm all grown up now), but we've got a lot to talk about today, so let's get right into it! 94.02% Overall Completion (+0.86) 357 Unearned Trophies (-42) 3.44 Trophies Per Day (+0.04) 121 Platinums (+5) Level 425 (+5) That's what I'm talkin' about!! Game of the Month This is the part I was looking forward to the most... ya man ate very well this month! I played in March with this being my biggest goal - to have a murderer's row of games to choose from, and I don't mind tellin ya that I've succeeded - literally all of these games are makin' appearances in the year-end post! Curiously, they all came out within the last few years, too… crap, am I becoming a more normal, modern gamer??? Quick, somebody get me a PS4 port of Pac-Man!! We started off strong with Norco, an absolutely brilliant adventure game with intensely dark overtones and an arresting knack for surrealism in its storytelling. It's so well-written, so creative, and its music adds so much emotion to the mix (great music will be a theme for the month, by the way), it's just so well put together. Following this was what I can only describe as a heaping key bump of nostalgia in the fantastic Sea of Stars. Sabotage set out to write the ultimate love letter to SNES RPGs, and while it isn't perfect, they got pretty damn close. The soundtrack, the involving gameplay, Garl... playing this is hopping in a time machine, pure and simple... so good. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is next, a delirious skating action platformer complete with a cel shaded, Dreamcast drenched look and a bangin soundtrack. The spastic, unofficial theme song Operator, the twacked out twee of I Wanna Kno, and of course the filthy bass dry-hump of Precious Thing (and that's just off the top of my head) are so fun, so catchy, so.. cool. It's not easy to encapsulate youthful rebellion so convincingly, but it's the whole package here, and it's a total blast. As if we didn't have enough high quality shit to go around, here comes Laika: Aged Through Blood, a bleak metroidvania in a post-apocalyptic world with the Furry Furiosa herself, the titular Laika. She rides her bike all across the desolate landscape blasting enemies left and right, all to a collection of painfully gorgeous folk songs. While the mechanics can be tricky to get down, the gameplay is addicting as all hell, bringing that perfect level of difficulty that kicks your ass, yet you can't stop playing. Finally, we wrap it up with the slab of puzzle genius that is Viewfinder. The simple idea of taking pictures and being able to explore them as 3D environments is so striking in its childlike imaginativeness, and it's so fully realized here. Fuck, man. This one is hard. Any one of these games would be valid as a winner, and come the year's end, I could have a different game winning out... but for now? The one that got the most of a reaction out of me? We gotta go Laika. Rating the Month One of our goals was to write three reviews, and we ended up getting… hold on, let me get a look at the paperwork here …ah yes, none. Perhaps this month what we'll aim for will be to NOT write anything, maybe that'll work! Even still, literally all of my stats went up, and most importantly, I had the most fun I've had in a long time just being a gamer. I can't go the full five, but March had earned a superb 4.5 out of five Viscera Sacks! April Goals 1. Before, we were trying to have trophy hunter months, and this past month we went for full-on gamer. Let's see if we can't regain that delicate balance! 2. Can we stay over 94%, or get under 350 remaining trophies? WE'LL FIND OUT THIS MONTH!! 3. Seriously, pretty please, with sugar on top... write a fuckin review. Gaming Hitlist 1. Need for Speed Heat I think I’m ready to wrap this up. Nice and refreshed, and genuinely wanting to go back and see what I can clean up. 2. Little Nightmares 1 & 2 We need a new beloved indie franchise to fawn over, and I think this is the one for me in April. 3. Outer Wilds After Viewfinder, I'm suddenly ready to right the wrong of passing over this one a few months back, and get into some more puzzly goodness! 4. Hotline Miami 2 I've been too scared to try this one since I finished the first, but... after The Hong Kong Massacre, My Friend Pedro, and Laika... I need another shoot 'em up in my life, and who better to fill the bill than the grandaddy franchise? 5. Bloodborne I had to start thinking about plat #125, and after Mr. Vice's stupendous write-up, it started becoming more and more clear to me that it needs to be Bloodborne. And so it shall be! It's gonna be a challenging month, but I'm really looking forward to it! Wishing a happy April to everybody, as always thanks for reading my insane nonsense!

Persona 5, everybody raves about those games but I also hear they're pretty demanding... they intimidate the hell out of me! Also big up for FF I-VI, that looks clean af👊

Aayyyyy way to slay the PS3 backlog! I need to get back on that mission my damn self... Good shit as always, my dude! I still, even as a grown gamer, have a soft spot for musou shit, even though I know full well it's garbage and would never defend it to anybody ever. So I do have to admit my interest was piqued! Also the name made me ponder if there's a porn equivalent called "Fisting the North Star," but the foul scenario that played in my head soured any potential interest pretty quickly😂 Thank you sir, that was hysterical🤣🤣🤣

Nice! Right away I gotta give props for a profile that not only predates time stamps, but seems to have been consistently gaming all this time! There's a lot of the stuff you usually look for too, a few impressive completions (Catherine?? Aayyy) and a healthy diversity in the types of games you play, but I really like how you clearly are just playing for you, not completionist nerds like me😅 You seem to just enjoy gaming, like a normal person, and keep the tormenting yourself over a game to a minimum! And all the while you still have a respectable completion percentage. I respect it👊