Smevin's Regular, Every Day, Normal Ass Gamer Attempts at Trophy Hunting

[YaManSmevz]

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz

May 2023

 

Summa, summa, summatiiime.....

 

Well, for those of us above the equator at least!

 

What it do, boo? June is in the buildin, and the 2023 halfway mark is right around the corner. When the shit did that happen??

 

..oh, what's that? How was my May? Sure, let's talk about that!

 

93.44% Overall Completion (+0.59)
373 Unearned Trophies (-20)
3.73 Trophies Per Day (+0.02)
104 Platinums (+5)
Level 406 (+4)

Game of the Month

 

Another month of bangers, slaps, bops, and jams! Finally gave the mighty Resident Evil 4 the time it deserved, and overcame my irrational fear of Broforce, which ended up far more addicting than I'd anticipated. Also completed the long neglected XCOM: Enemy Within, can't believe I always forget what a good time that one is.

 

Not to mention finally being introduced to Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space and Mafia, the former charming the hell out of me and the latter satisfying a twenty year curiosity.
 

Not a dud in the bunch, but the Super NBA Jam RPG whirlwind of Pyre pretty much had this locked down from the jump!

Rating the Month

 

Once again I missed a few games, but made some progress towards Kaleidoscope  challenge and got back on the PS3 backlog, nabbing five plats in the process. What I'm happiest about, though? Knockin out Broforce's Ironbro campaign, Mafia's infamous Classic Difficulty race, and WWE 2K22's torturous MyFaction Lifetime Challenges. Shaysh.

 

Gotta cut May some slack, I'm givin it five out of five Scribe Trials!

June Goals

 

1. PS3 Backlog. We're around 75% done with it, although I'm only about 36% confident in that guess (and only 17% confident in that one).

 

2. Pick an incomplete game towards the bottom of the profile, then find its ass. And then beat it.

 

3. After three consecutive months with six completions each? Don't worry about it. Just play what you want and have fun, cuz this is the time of year where you start to get gaming fatigue. And that's caca, you don't want that.

Gaming Hitlist

 

 

Almost at the point where we can't do a stack anymore! ....though granted, two of those cases have five games between them?

 

Anyway thanks for reading, Happy June Gamin'!

[YaManSmevz]

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz

June 2023

 

Hey, what's up, hello, and a Happy Julio to you all!

 

We did it - we made it halfway through the year. I hope everybody's hitting their gaming goals, getting adequate time to play the games they wanna play, and all that good stuff?

 

I have officially made it six months sticking to my 2023 goal of not buying any new games! There have been a handful of PS+ cash-ins, but for the most part it's done wonders for helping me concentrate on the backlog. And with all that out of the way, time to give June one last look before closing up shop and movin on.

 

94.08% Overall Completion (+0.64)
343 Unearned Trophies (-30)
3.76 Trophies Per Day (+0.03)
108 Platinums (+4)
Level 410 (+4)

Game of the Month

 

I been overdue for a minute on playing a basketball game, so NBA 2K23 has scratched a very unique itch! Trek to Yomi was a flawed but stunningly stylish experience that I really enjoyed, Unpacking was charming as hell and came with a ton more depth than its simple premise would suggest, and the last minute addition of Sam & Max Save the World gave me a really fun visit with a few characters I can't believe I only met a month ago!

 

The top of the heap was never in question though, it always belonged to Final Fantasy IX. The amazing feeling of those jumps finally clicking, revisiting the spectacular story, remembering how insanely good Uematsu's score was, I mean I could go on all day.

Rating the Month

One goal I had was to pluck an old thorn from my profile's side, and finally putting FFIX to bed definitely accomplished that. Still managed to swing five completions too, so although I once again dissed my PS3, I'm quite happy with my progress. June gets four out of five Oglops!

July Goals

Trying to take down some mean mothas this month, so it may be a slow one and I'm just gonna have to be cool with that. Hitting 94% was a wowwee wowwow moment for me though, so I'd at least like to stay in that percentile!

Gaming Hitlist

1. NBA 2K23

It wasn't long before I had a Gob Bluth "I've made a huge mistake" moment with this one. I am trash at these games, and it's really hit me just what a time sink this will be. Still, it's fun, and I wanna say that I made the effort. I believe the season that just started is the last with any sort of bonuses so it's now or never.

 

2. Silent Hill 2

STOP SAYING YOU'RE GOING TO PLAY THIS THING AND JUST DO IT ALREADY, JESUS CHRIST

3. Silent Hill 3

I mean it's the same disc, so may as well.

4. Ghost of Tsushima

Maybe Yomi reignited my Samurai love but this one's been chillin on my profile with untouched (and free, for that matter) DLC for too long.

5. That's it, really. I'll probably dig through the library for something quick or EZPZ-ish but I don't want this to be another month where I say I'ma play something and get flighty about it after. This about accountaBILITY, dammit!

 

Alright, here's to a solid July?

[Heather342]

3 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

 

4. Ghost of Tsushima

Maybe Yomi reignited my Samurai love but this one's been chillin on my profile with untouched (and free, for that matter) DLC for too long.
 

If you want a co-op partner for the Legends mode I'd be happy to jump back into this one with you ?. The multiplayer on this game is actually pretty fun, and I really liked the wave survival mode. I kinda lucked out with the raid though, had some random join my party who knew exactly what to do (as it's not overly clear when you first go into it), hopefully there's still enough helpful boosting groups for that part. Let me know ?

[YaManSmevz]

5 hours ago, Heather342 said:

If you want a co-op partner for the Legends mode I'd be happy to jump back into this one with you . The multiplayer on this game is actually pretty fun, and I really liked the wave survival mode. I kinda lucked out with the raid though, had some random join my party who knew exactly what to do (as it's not overly clear when you first go into it), hopefully there's still enough helpful boosting groups for that part. Let me know

 

Ooh, I might take you up on that! I genuinely enjoyed Legends mode and thought the concept was outstanding but the grind of leveling up turned me off at the time, and for the raids I couldn't find partners who knew what they were doing to save my life?

 

While I have you here, what were your thoughts on the Iki DLC? I think you may have mentioned it in a challenge thread before but my memory fails me at the moment!

[Heather342]

27 minutes ago, YaManSmevz said:

 

Ooh, I might take you up on that! I genuinely enjoyed Legends mode and thought the concept was outstanding but the grind of leveling up turned me off at the time, and for the raids I couldn't find partners who knew what they were doing to save my life

 

While I have you here, what were your thoughts on the Iki DLC? I think you may have mentioned it in a challenge thread before but my memory fails me at the moment!

I enjoyed it ? it doesn't really add anything new in terms of gameplay mechanics. It does flesh out the story between Jin and his father through flashbacks, and the main mission story for the DLC is pretty good. 

[YaManSmevz]

Platinum #85: God of War III

 

When I get what I want and I never want it again

 

What a ballsy game God of War II was.

We all loved God of War, and given its runaway success a sequel was very much an inevitability (it's also outright promised post-credits, so there's that). But then here comes this cocky little shit, flashing its superior understanding of established franchise functions and abilities, cranking that familiar score up to 11, and drawing us so much further into Kratos' world that our past deeds with him almost feel insignificant. Ares? Pfft. That guy was an appetizer, at best. Now the REAL story starts.

So we gain all these new skills, we claw our way through another bloody adventure, we go over the gods' heads straight to the titans, we manipulate time itself. Surely this is it, surely that sweet, sweet closure is at hand. And we're treated to this incredible scene, complete with brilliantly bombastic music, a tension heightened to the point where something HAS to give, and a roaring Kratos leading the charge. And in this rousing, jaw-dropping moment, what happens??

We get a cliffhanger. It stops mid-action, and we're told that's it for today, come back in three years. No conclusion for you, thanks for coming out.

Is this how Kratos felt every time his vengeance was denied?? Cuz I think I get it now!

To be fair, while many peeps experienced three years of sitting in their own anticipation to be handsomely rewarded upon the game's rapturous release, I sadly wasn't one of them. My personal backstory with the God of War games ended at the sequel, which was a few years before I sat out damn near a whole generation of gaming. I don't think I even finished II, cuz I absolutely would have remembered that ending! So this saltiness is merely me wondering how that must have felt back in the day - I had God of War III at the ready and even I was like "are you serious right now??"

So this past January, I finally made it right and played the game for the first time. After my recent Kratos kick had me playing the PS2 games on a PS3, I copped the remastered third God of War and played the PS3 game on a PS4, and I gotta tell ya, it definitely completed the trilogy.

That's it, that's my write-up, the end.


....okay, it's not. But after reading this, you may wish that had been the ending!

Seriously, this game is spectacular.

We pick up right back at God of War II's intense ending without missing a beat - Kratos and the Titans are raiding Mount Olympus, seeking blood. After a fucking glorious battle with Poseidon, Kratos emulates every soap opera I've ever seen (What will you do, FAHTHAH) only to be met with betrayal from Gaia (after all that narration too, talk about a long con), and hurled once again into the Underworld. That's when he stumbles upon a billboard that changes his life:

Are you an angry Greek demigod?

Were you promised vengeance?

We say you have rights too. Call Angry Demigod Attorneys now!


Okay, I made that part up.

That's when he stumbles into Miss Higher Plane of Existence herself, Athena, who seems to have had a change of heart about the whole killing Zeus thing now and is down to help out. So once again, we're off on an action-packed deicidal mission with floods, burnt out suns, and a general sense of the world collapsing altogether to make our way back up to that mountain and at long last, finally, for reals this time, take our revenge.

I don't know how much of what I saw was PS4 trickery, but God of War III is a stone cold stunner. There is incredible detail in every area, creature, human, and object you encounter. This is a lil goofy, but one of the first things that really seduced me graphics-wise was the updated look of the chests. They look like real, beautifully made chests with an ominous glowing light. Immediately upon seeing these, the chests from the first two games may as well have been the ? blocks from the early Mario Brothers games!

You'd think it would've been the widely varied stages of the stupendous Poseidon fight, or the immaculate depiction of such a bleak, apocalyptic setting, maybe even how stupidly good Kratos looks on the menu screen, but my dumb ass is like "wow, look at those boxes!"

In spite of its tremendous looks, I get the sense that the developers didn't always know quite what to do with all this new digital might. There's a few areas where we catch it trying a little too hard... namely, those toothy ass mouths. They really tryin to be like "Look at how realistic their mouths are, you can see their teeth!" an I'm just like "Kratos, you look like a damn horse." When he's feeling sudden torment over what's to be done with Pandora, all I want to do is feed him an apple.

This thing looks incredible, but it also has some of the series' best levels. The Labyrinth is dope as all hell, and had me feeling like I was inside the brain on the cover of the Meshuggah album Chaosphere. That portal-laden ballista room was a lot of fun as well. And Hera's garden with the Escher aesthetic?? Ten out of ten, no notes.

The God of War games have always played like a dream (well, maybe excluding walking on planks in the first one), and it's a testament to how solid GoW's gameplay is that we get a third tutorial of basically the same shit and we don't care, it's still fun. The approach of tweaking instead of overhauling where gameplay is concerned may have reached the end of its usefulness here, as it's basically GoW2 again with a nice new sheen to it, but I mean... do you care? I don't! One notable new feature is how much more intuitive it is to switch weapons, which is a long overdue additon. And as usual, most of the new weapons are kinda meh, but holy shit is (are?) the Nemean Cestus bad ass!

The QTEs have been changed up here as well, and very much for the better. Each button prompt is on a far side of the screen, so it's easier to just enjoy the action instead of taking your focus off of it to hit a corresponding button. I don't like QTEs, in fact at this point in my time with Kratos I was pretty burnt out on them, but this is a huge improvement and deserves a shout.

Boss fights are another area seeing the series reach a zenith - they're littered all throughout the game and paced very well (a few are a bit of a stretch, but they are gods so I suppose they count), but everyone who's played this game knows it's all about Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus.

It's not even the highly inventive stages of each fight, but how each one ends for me. Poseidon is ripped out of his own godly form and utterly brutalized. Hades is killed, and then has his souls (yes, all of them) extracted from his body. Zeus is impaled along with the heart of a Titan, and then given the Edward Norton on Jared Leto in Fight Club treatment. You thought God of War II was violent? There are bits so gruesome that I couldn't help feeling like the Director from Manhunt would feel right at home here!

We're also given different perspectives in some of these beatings, namely Poseidon's as he gets his eyes gouged out (Pressing R3 and L3 should only do this sort of thing, I'm convinced) and Kratos' as he continues bludgeoning a surely already lifeless Zeus. It's pretty fuckin savage, and I'm not even gonna front like I didn't love it.

An area I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about is the depth they try adding to Kratos himself. The reminders of what a shitstain person he is really gets pushed here - is it bad ass that he literally ripped the God of light's head off to use it as a flashlight? Fuck yeah, it is! ...then you stop to consider that now NOBODY IN GREECE HAS NATURAL LIGHT. Except for Kratos, and only when he feels like it. He is either completely oblivious to the carnage his solipsistic pursuit is causing ("It appears the servants of Olympus are dying of some sort of plague... I'm sure it has nothing to do with me") or so beyond selfish that he simply doesn't care. Neither of these exactly scream "Father of the year," and yet here comes Pandora to bring out his dormant fatherly instincts.

There's a wacky "he wasn't ready to be a dad" Netflix show treatment somewhere in that set-up.

Kratos' relationship with Pandora is an interesting curveball. Does he actually give a shit about her, and even if he did is it merely because she made him think of Calliope? Is he processing his guilt? I don't think even he knows! Whatever the case, the conflicted anguish in his face is very real when the issue of sacrificing Pandora comes up. She's like "I'm literally supposed to be sacrificed, you're being really girly about it" and Kratos struggles with why he suddenly, and quite bizarrely, doesn't want to hurt someone.

Then there's the ending, where he gets his idealized seppuku moment. Did he really see the needless havoc he'd brought about, the price that others had to pay for his petty actions, and have a selfless moment? Did he want to give hope to the survivors of a decimated civilization after realizing what he'd done? Or was it just the last refuge of a scoundrel?

I don't know how much of all this is genuine, or if I'm even supposed to be entertaining this curiosity, but I'd argue that it counts for some character development, even if I have to meet the game a little more than halfway for it. Given what I know now about the reboot, and how Kratos becomes a full on dad rockin New Balances and an "Old Guys Rule" T-shirt, I think it works.

Once everything is wrapped up, Kratos vanishes. Off to be the manager at a Cinnabun in Omaha or something. It's a little Friday the 13th, this whole but where did he go thing, but I liked it. After all the bombast of him being killed and fighting his way back from the other side over and over again, it's nice to see him finally just limp off and lick his wounds, left with nothing but the weight of his actions and the knowledge that the vengeance he so longed for accomplished absolutely nothing.

Well, actually it accomplished quite a lot, if his goal was to wipe a civilization off the face of the earth, but you know what I mean.

So now I guess it's time to answer that question... do I think this one is the best?

I... I think so!

On paper, there's just too much going for it. The graphics are amazing, and still hold up. The score and the control scheme both feels like they've finally been perfected after feeling damn near perfect two times in a row. It had a lot to live up to story-wise, and while it's a bit more one note than its predecessors, I felt quite satisfied with how things ended. The Athena thing was kinda weird, but I mean fuck it, maybe she was always weird, who cares?

Huge apologies, I don't know how I got so carried away with this one! I've started writing notes while playing so that's likely why, and also the fact that it's been quite some time since I've written a review. In any case, thanks to anybody who read all this silliness! God of War III 4 lyf!

Stray Observations

- What a killer intro. Is it essentially a glorified Previously on Raging Butthurt Manboy segment? Sure. But does it look cool? Double sure.

- Right away we get to kinda sorta pay our respects to Ares. That is one big tomb.

- Forrest Gump as Kratos: So I died, again. And I met the souls of the Underworld, A-GAIN.

- Forgot to mention this, but we can rotate puzzle pieces now!! At the risk of sounding ungrateful.... the fuck took you so long?

- Kratos assuring Pandora that she shouldn't trust him is seriously the best advice in the entire mainline Greek series. Like I would listen to him if I were you, I've seen what this man is capable of!

- Shame on me for forgetting to mention the absolute adrenaline rush of the flying sections. They're nicely ramped up from the previous game, with this almost arcade-y feel to them. Very quick, and only a few, so they don't wear out their welcome either.

- "HOPE IS WHAT MAKES US STRONG." Okay, Andy Dufresne.

- The personalities given to the gods are great. Hera as this drunken middle aged housewife cracks me up, right down to calling Pandora a "little whore." Hermes too, I weirdly enjoyed how annoying he was, and his ear-splitting pronunciation of Kratos' name (KRAY-TAUSS).

- Kevin Sorbo as Hercules... what a great idea!

- I LOVED the harp game, wish it was longer, and I know this isn't a popular opinion but oh well. It's basic af but I really had fun with it!

- Near the end it looks as though we're being treated to what Kratos' nightmares were like... and apparently, he played Max Payne too.

- The box was empty, so Kratos presumes that he didn't have the power to kill a god after all. Except for Ares, Athena, Poseidon, Hades, Helios, Hermes, Hera, and Hephaestus.

THAT Trophy: Unhuman

Ah, your standard "Play the game on the hardest difficulty" trophy. I thought I'd go with the challenges again, but they were pretty chill this time around, and there were some sections in this game that I found really difficult - namely that Zeus fight.

I know that this is the dramatic conclusion to our story and I would've felt slighted if it was just that first Mortal Kombat-ish phase and then done, but damn if it didn't just keep going. Between the constant QTEs (which I was sick to death of at this point), Zeus regularly healing himself, and his laugh sounding like the villain from the movie Kevin McAllister watched in Home Alone, I started to tire of this fight fairly quickly. But, you know how that goes - just makes that "holy fuck I'm DONE" moment that much sweeter.

Also, 3/10 difficulty? Get the fuck out of here PSNP?

Edited July 30, 2023 by YaManSmevz
It's Ares, not Aries. I blame comedian Aries Spears for this mental hiccup!

[Platinum_Vice]

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Platinum #85: God of War III

 

IT'S HAPPENING!!

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

This is a lil goofy, but one of the first things that really seduced me graphics-wise was the updated look of the chests. They look like real, beautifully made chests with an ominous glowing light. Immediately upon seeing these, the chests from the first two games may as well have been the ? blocks from the early Mario Brothers games!

 

? The lighting improvements in the 7th and 8th generations are pretty amazing, right? The step up in fidelity was a big deal for me when I played GOW3 too. I'm pretty sure that the Art Director from prior GOW games took over as Game Director for GOW3.

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

One notable new feature is how much more intuitive it is to switch weapons, which is a long overdue additon. And as usual, most of the new weapons are kinda meh, but holy shit is (are?) the Nemean Cestus bad ass!

 

Agreed. I wish Hades' Claws (whatever they're called) were a little stronger. They were my favourite yet weren't as effective as the Blades or the Cestus.

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

She's like "I'm literally supposed to be sacrificed, you're being really girly about it" and Kratos struggles with why he suddenly, and quite bizarrely, doesn't want to hurt someone.

 

"I dunno, Kratos, you're being kind of a bitch right now."

 

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Given what I know now about the reboot, and how Kratos becomes a full on dad rockin New Balances and an "Old Guys Rule" T-shirt, I think it works.

 

Oh dude... he's gone full cargo shorts in GOW2018. Full sneakers-and-jeans, dude.

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

The personalities given to the gods are great. Hera as this drunken middle aged housewife cracks me up, right down to calling Pandora a "little whore."

 

Yeah this felt right on when I played it too. They really brought Hera into the 21st Century in this game.

 

2 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

The box was empty, so Kratos presumes that he didn't have the power to kill a god after all. Except for Ares, Athena, Poseidon, Hades, Helios, Hermes, Hera, and Hephaestus

 

??

 

3 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

Also, 3/10 difficulty? Get the fuck out of here PSNP

 

☝️

 

 

Loved this, dude. Worth the wait!

[YaManSmevz]

10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

IT'S HAPPENING!!

 

Thanks, homie? You and Rob both gave me the encouragement to get back on it and finish something. Inadvertently, of course, but it still counts!

 

10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

 The lighting improvements in the 7th and 8th generations are pretty amazing, right? The step up in fidelity was a big deal for me when I played GOW3 too. I'm pretty sure that the Art Director from prior GOW games took over as Game Director for GOW3.

 

I think you're right, that sounds really familiar about the Art Director and it's likely we both read about/saw that somewhere. And duuude I can't help wishing I'd played this on a PS3, I mean the PS4 incarnation is fucking flawless but I'm still curious of how the original version looked! On the PS4 though, it's just worlds away from what came before it.

 

10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Agreed. I wish Hades' Claws (whatever they're called) were a little stronger. They were my favourite yet weren't as effective as the Blades or the Cestus.

 

I may have been a bit reductive with that part, but I just never found myself going for any weapon other than the Blades or Cestus unless I needed a certain magic or to attack gently so as to get a thousand hit combo, which was totally not just for a trophy or anything.

 

10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

"I dunno, Kratos, you're being kind of a bitch right now."

 

 

Dammit. Yours was better???

 

10 hours ago, Platinum_Vice said:

Loved this, dude. Worth the wait!

 

Again, huge thanks mah man! 

[YaManSmevz]

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz

July 2023

 

Hi-diddly ho, my gaming neighborinos!

 

I'd say something like "wow, I can't believe it's August," but the ever-present heat has constantly made it very clear to me what time of year it is.

 

Plus, wifey has been binging 90 Day Fiancé (or Married at First Sight... I mix them up every time, so probably that one), which means I'm gaming upstairs quite a lot, and it gets mad stuffy up there?

 

But of course, that's neither here nor there. Let's pull up those July numbers and see what we're working with!

 

93.84% Overall Completion (-0.24)
350 Unearned Trophies (+7)
3.70 Trophies Per Day (-0.06)
109 Platinums (+1)
Level 412 (+2)

 

Game of the Month

 

Unlike recent months, the pickings are a bit slim here. First up we have The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, an FMV game that, along with Telling Lies, washed down the unpleasant taste of Erica. I liked how dark and just plain weird it gets, and the ability to ask your own questions, while not as fleshed out as it could be, was a lot of fun.

 

Then of course there's NBA 2K23, which is where the vaaaaaast majority of my month went. It's a testament to its high quality that even after grinding out 19,525 points in one mode and 150,000 in another over around 200 hours, that I still get a lot of enjoyment from it!

 

That makes our winner Silent Hill 2, which I finally started and am so glad I made it these last twenty years without getting anything spoiled. It's so wonderfully nightmarish and uniquely unsettling, I mentioned this before but it's an absolute lock for end of the year considerations!

Rating the Month

 

July has seen a significant dip in productivity, and it's pretty much entirely because of NBA 2K23. However, while the trophy count doesn't reflect this, the horrific grinds that make the NBA 2K games such a pain to platinum are completed, and that alone has made me insanely happy.

 

Even though this is among my slowest months, few have made me feel so accomplished with so little (on paper, at least). Add to that the fact that I'm finally dippin into the Silent Hill 2 pool? July gets five out of five Pyramid Heads, hands down!

August Goals

1. Get back to writing! It felt great to finally post something other than a monthly update, and there's no longer a self-imposed pressure to write about one specific game. Shit, I've got a LOT of catching up to do, so options galore!
 

2. PS3 Backlog needs some love! We're getting close to the end, can't be lettin up now.

 

3. The stats took a bit of a beating last month, let's see what we can do to build them back up?

Gaming Hitlist

1. NBA 2K23

 

The MyTeam nightmare is over at long last, leaving just a few MyCareer Trophies (including a bit of a grind) and the Jordan challenges (yet another grind). But the worst is over, and I'm that much closer to my first NBA platinum!

 

...and last. Seriously, I'm not doing all that again!

2. Silent Hill 2
 

Really would like for this to be the last time SH2 features here. Last month I had an excuse with NBA 2K, but this month...
 

3. Silent Hill 3
 

I hope the PSN difficulty/time estimate didn't lie to me, cuz I'd love wrapping this one up right after its predecessor.
 

4. Ghost of Tsushima

 

Apparently I can't buy the Iki Island DLC because I got the Legends DLC for free - but I'm 95% surr I got it upon release, not off of PS+. Unfortunately I'll have to sort that out.
 

5. Metal Gear Solid 2
 

This franchise has been on deck to follow Silent Hill for some time before NBA rudely came along and interrupted everything. I've been dreading the VR missions, but after the MyTeam grinds, I'm just like hit me, let's fuckin goooo.

 

Okay! Another month, another long, fart-sniffing post! As always, if you read all that you're a real one... yeah, I really gotta stop giving my editor the night off?

[YaManSmevz]

Platinum #107: Unpacking

 

Everything, everything, everything in its right place

 

The Forgotten City taught me a very important lesson - when trusted opinions are all going on about how great a game is, just go with it, and the sooner the better. So when two particular giants in my gaming sphere, @DrBloodmoney and @realm722, turned in two excellent reviews of this game within a month of each other, I knew I had little choice in the matter.

 

It is also because of those two that I'm gonna have to get over my reluctance and play some deck building games at some point, but that's for another time!

 

Unpacking is exactly what it sounds like, a game about unpacking boxes and putting things away. On a base level, it appeals to the joy of a clean and tidy space, something I long enjoyed and maintained until ironically falling to the wayside in my married years, as wifey is a bit on the messy side, and I must admit that I've let that rub off on me.

 

Huh? No honey, I was just telling everybody about how neat you are!

 

Whew.

 

Anyway, just that alone would have sufficed, as the gameplay is quite satisfying. There are parameters on where you can put things, most of which are pretty obvious, but there's still enough freedom to where players are highly unlikely to set our girl's room up in the exact same way, even more so in the later levels where we're tasked with filling up the entirety of apartments and houses.

 

There's also a universality to the basic functions in the game - I feel like the vast majority, if not all of us, have experienced a move of some sort, be it a room or a full on house. The game presents us with that feeling of a new spot being an empty canvas, and the responsibility to make it our own. As you progress through the game, you get that feeling in different scenarios, most of which I've personally experienced (as I imagine is the case with most peeps my age): Your room as a child, your dorm room at college, your first place with roommates, your first time moving in with a significant other, moving back in with your parents, moving into your very own place, having someone move in with you, and finally moving into the dream house that will afford you the space to start a family.

 

Most games have a final level with you acquiring an ultimate weapon or ability, solving a mystery, maybe taking revenge on a long time foe or something like that. Here, we get a walk-in closet. And let's be real, this is the win that most of us every day people can actually relate to!

 

The presentation is charming as hell, too. I love the sound effects, developer Witch Beam just nails the sounds of placing down books, CDs, clothing, etcetera onto different surfaces, and while it isn't a towering graphical achievement by any means, there's a charming look to the game, and it is packed to the gills with details.

 

And that's what brings us to the real meat of the game, which is the story being subtly told as we move on from place to place. Everything is so painstakingly detailed with no item there without reason, and right away we are learning about our girl and who she is.

 

We see her go off to college for art, and then get a place with some friends, who she remains close with as evidenced by their pictures being happily displayed on her fridge well after her time living with them. She meets a guy and moves in with him (more on that later), but it doesn't work out and she experiences the defeating move back to her childhood home. Then she turns her art into a career and meets someone new, a woman, and it works out wonderfully for her.

 

The girlfriend is very neat, and has a clear influence on our girl's moving methods. When we get to the final house, everything is packed much more systematically - before, the boxes in the bathroom would have pots and pans, and bathroom stuff would be in a bedroom box, where as now the boxes are packed much more thoughtfully. Honestly, I need to be more like our girl's woman and maintain my cleanliness with my partner too!

 

Honey? I'm sorry, me being less neat is not your fault, it's mine. I need to own that and make the effort that I used to.

 

.....no, I'm not drunk!

 

Alright, where were we?

 

Based solely on handling her possessions, I know that she's a lifelong lover of art. I know she worked as a barista during her college years and it made a coffee enthusiast out of her. She's Jewish, and embraced her faith more as she got older. She loves to bake, she's a Nintendo loyalist, and she's traveled Europe pretty extensively. I also know that she is ailing from some form of physical disability, as she started using a cane rather early in life and she parts ways with most of her fitness equipment over the years.

 

Oh, and can we talk about the pig for a second? It's the one stuffed animal she's held onto since her childhood, something she's never had the heart to part ways with. She becomes an author and/or artist of children's books, which we learn about when we find a box full of copies of the same book along with what appears to be an award (or in the very least a poster with praising blurbs) featuring the book covers image. And who is her main character? A pig. How sweet is that??

 

I know I went on for quite some time there, but it was important for me to emphasize that this is just a simple game about unpacking shit, and I walked away with all that. For such a small game that you could platinum in a few hours if you wanted to, that is impressive as shit.

 

PLAY THIS GAME. It is cute, it is charming, and while it won't ask for much of your time, it will reward you handsomely if you're willing to stay with it for a while.

 

Stray Observations

 

- Thank you for hanging your toilet paper in the proper overhand fashion!

 

- You can't store pots and pans in the oven, which confirms that she is not Mexican.

 

- While I felt kinda judged on my placement of many things, I got a lil judgy about a few things myself. The mixing bowl goes under the sink? Next to the cleaning products and bug spray??? Don't talk to me.

 

- I like imagining exchanges between our girl and her girl, like "How have you never had a dish rack??"

 

- Y'all are cute, genuinely, but... how many chicken knick knacks do we really need, I mean come on now.

 

- Everything upgrades over time just like in real life. For instance, I can relate to finally spending the extra money on a nice trash can after years of keeping the same old crappy plastic one!

 

- Ah, the basket of miscellaneous electronics, yet another thing we've all got hangin around somewhere.

 

- The girlfriend has a cherished stuffed animal of her own, just like our girl! And getting them reupholstered and putting them together for the baby?? MY HEART.

 

- "Thanks for joining me on this journey." Aww! No, thank you! Love you in that hat, gurl?

 

- I didn't realize this til after my playthrough but the save file screen is a stack of photo albums, I'm dead.

 

THAT Trophy: Too Cool

 

As with any game like this, picking out the most difficult trophy is more difficult than actually getting any of the trophies, but it didn't take me long to come to this one. The parameters on where you can put things are at their strictest here, and there's already so much in place, with the apartment being so established, that it's tricky to squeeze everything in - she even comments on this herself!

 

That's not the only reason, though.

 

We see her moving in with a boyfriend, and at first I was excited for her, like daaaamn look at the view, look how sleek this place looks, he got moonneeeyyyy. But before long, I found myself switching into dad mode, gradually becoming a lot less impressed. You sense the anxiety she may be feeling, with how little room there is for her things. Dude's stuff is all spaced out, and it's clear he made no effort to make this easier on her.

 

In fact, where ARE you, sir?? You're not gonna help your woman? You got no space for her DIPLOMA?? Mm mmm. I actually made it a point not to mix her books, DVDs, or games with his, cuz I knew this shit wasn't gonna last?

[realm722]

5 hours ago, YaManSmevz said:

PLAY THIS GAME. It is cute, it is charming, and while it won't ask for much of your time, it will reward you handsomely if you're willing to stay with it for a while.

 

  Aww, thanks for the shoutout. Unpacking was a really neat tidy title. Goes to show you how avoiding ALL super easy platinums would be a mistake since there are some undeniable hidden gems amongst the sea of crap. I think the game's most lasting impact aside from being a simple, cozy puzzler is the way it manages to convey a story and emotion without saying a single word. I've read 5-6 reviews on the game by posters here and EVERY single one has mentioned being impressed by the moment when you can't hang up the old picture anymore and you have to hide it away in a drawer. Some just as you picked up on the diploma at the bf's place never having a single spot where it could be hung up. Remarkably simple and yet the game has conveyed a message better than many others with triple, quadruple its. budget. 

 

Your kind words also got me kinda inspired for another article idea... "The 5 Games I've Played That You Should Drop Everything And Play If YOU Haven't". That'd be a fun exercise. 

[YaManSmevz]

 

4 hours ago, realm722 said:

Your kind words also got me kinda inspired for another article idea... "The 5 Games I've Played That You Should Drop Everything And Play If YOU Haven't". That'd be a fun exercise. 

 

Dooo it, dooo it!

[StraightVege]

On 8/8/2023 at 2:41 PM, YaManSmevz said:

- You can't store pots and pans in the oven, which confirms that she is not Mexican.

 

Haha, I'm mildly embarrassed to inform you that we Italians also do this. Maybe it's just a poor people thing? But, I mean, it seems like such a waste not to utilize all of that space between cooking sessions! ?‍♂️

 

On 8/8/2023 at 2:41 PM, YaManSmevz said:

- Ah, the basket of miscellaneous electronics, yet another thing we've all got hangin around somewhere.

 

And in 15 years or thereabouts, only once can I recall ever needing anything from that silly container. Why are people like this?

 

Doesn't sound like my sorta game, but I quite enjoyed reading this one (and the GoW3 write-up) regardless. You infuse so much of your personality and humor into your reviews that I doubt I'd have difficulty recognizing the author, even if the text was presented out of context. Hope you keep at it, since you've fast become one of my favorite writers on here.

 

I think what this game really needs to catch my interest is a "California Repacking" DLC, requiring you to swiftly load your most important possessions into boxes under a time limit, so that you can evacuate before that encroaching forest fire arrives. Now there's something I can relate to!

[YaManSmevz]

7 hours ago, StraightVege said:

Haha, I'm mildly embarrassed to inform you that we Italians also do this. Maybe it's just a poor people thing? But, I mean, it seems like such a waste not to utilize all of that space between cooking sessions! ?‍♂️

 

??? I love it! I couldn't even say, I just know my mom did it, so I did too - maybe it started as an 'in a pinch' type thing where you're trying to clean up quickly? You're absolutely right though, that's some solid real estate!

 

The only downside is that every once in a great while, I'm making something for a family function, or something else that puts me in a rush, and I go to place something in there to bake and hear that clank?

 

7 hours ago, StraightVege said:

And in 15 years or thereabouts, only once can I recall ever needing anything from that silly container. Why are people like this?

 

Seriously. I swear that I might need something in that box, but I've literally only seen it when I move, and it's a pretty safe bet that it's just Blackberry chargers and coaxial adapters...

 

7 hours ago, StraightVege said:

Doesn't sound like my sorta game, but I quite enjoyed reading this one (and the GoW3 write-up) regardless. You infuse so much of your personality and humor into your reviews that I doubt I'd have difficulty recognizing the author, even if the text was presented out of context. Hope you keep at it, since you've fast become one of my favorite writers on here.

 

Thank you so much man, that means a lot - particularly since I've grown pretty fond myself of reading your posts in the Latest Platinum thread. It's always nice to hear that someone enjoys them, and it goes a long way to help with motivation. I appreciate you?

 

7 hours ago, StraightVege said:

I think what this game really needs to catch my interest is a "California Repacking" DLC, requiring you to swiftly load your most important possessions into boxes under a time limit, so that you can evacuate before that encroaching forest fire arrives. Now there's something I can relate to!

 

Yoooo you ain't lyin???

[YaManSmevz]

Platinum #91: Dead Space

 

Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

 

While I have very little interest in entertaining any "good old days" talk, I do gotta give a shout and state that the seventh generation was just built different. I know this because when I returned to gaming in the mid 2010s, it was already over, and the mass of amazing games waiting to be played had me thirsty as shit. I mean it's 2023 and my ass is still catching up.

When I got my 360 (and my close friends on the site can attest to this), I went absolutely overboard and bought a metric fuckton of games cuz I didn't have the years of grown-up gaming experience that I do now. For instance, I didn't understand that sure, you can buy every single game that looks good or that you heard about or you saw on a "top ten 360/PS3 games" listicle, but good luck finding time to play them all. And as a result, a lot of amazing games got played for a half hour and wowed the fuck out of me, only to be filed under "Play Later." Like Sleeping Dogs. Like Red Dead Redemption. And, as I'm sure you've guessed, Dead Space as well.

 

TLDR: The PS3 backlog has been good to me!

It was the "Resident Evil in space" description that set off the deafening PING in my brain, but having played it now I can see what an oversimplification that is. Sure, there's a lot of RE4 here, but there's a lot of other influence as well, among them a few cult classic films, and we all know what they are so I'll try to take as few whacks at that dead horse as I can.

500 years into the future, we're part of a team looking to find out what happened aboard the USG Ishimura, with our protagonist Isaac Clarke having a personal stake, as his girlfriend was among the crew. Upon arrival, our team is decimated down to three by a pack of terrifying monsters: our boy Isaac, and two people playing a game of 'Which One of Us Can You Trust.' We uncover more and more evidence of the events that occurred on the ship, are constantly presented with new life-threatening situations, and generally watch things get further and further out of hand and feel more helpless at every turn to a relentless degree.

It's fucking great man, that's all I can say.

I love so much about Dead Space, the first being the masterful atmosphere. It reflects that the Fuck Around has already gone down, and we are firmly entrenched in the Find Out. Right off the bat, the Ishimura just looks like it's been through some shit: flickering lights, malfunctioning equipment, and oh yeah smeared blood and severed limbs all over the place.

Before long we start hearing freaky whispers that seem to travel right through our heads. We encounter logs in text and audio form, with the latter really capturing the heightened fear and desperation these people were experiencing, one in particular featuring someone driven to remove their own limbs with a shotgun.

The few survivors you encounter aren't much better off, as they're clearly shell-shocked beyond belief and have very much lost their minds. Seeing someone laughing as they slit their own throat or repeatedly banging their head against a window coated in their own blood (nice Jacob's Ladder bite there) tells you all you need to know about the horror that the crew has seen. All of this would be enough to put us on edge even if we never saw a necromorph for ourselves, but thankfully we get to see plenty!

The necromorphs are gloriously grotesque, like giant cockroach people with blades for arms. The comparison comes to mind because of all the times I stomped out a necromorph only for it to get caught around Isaac's foot, which always provided a great eewwwwww moment. They almost sound as if they're in pain at points, letting out these blood curdling shrieks. You'll stumble upon more different varieties of the enemy as you progress, and they only get more disturbing and frightening. For me it's the ones attached to walls, popping out smaller necros with this anguished, almost human face. They can slice off your head you if you get too close, so there's also that.

The score will go absolutely wild when enemies appear, which brings me to the overall sound - the score is textbook horror film (complete with awesome fake-outs), truly top notch, but the rest of the audio absolutely kills it. The stressed and creaking metal, whirring engines, and other industrial sounds mixed with more organic fare like distant screams, footsteps, and the fleshy necromorphs go a long way towards keeping you uneasy at all times.

And I do mean all times. Dead Space teaches you real quick that you're never really safe. Sure, something like getting swarmed after accomplishing an objective is to be expected by any seasoned gamer. But to get ambushed when you're in a room with a shop and a save point, or literally right when you're at a chapter's exit point? Stuff like that throws you off, and I got to a point where things were so tense that the loud burst of static before a transmission would startle the hell out of me!

All that atmosphere building goes a long way. It builds such a sense of urgency and tension that the repetitive GTA-esque "go here, get this, do that, move on" set up to each chapter barely distracts at all, and even then not til your second or third playthrough. I should've gotten to a point where I was over being an errand boy, like "Are you shitting my dick* right now, there are two other people here and they can't pitch in?" But I didn't. For the same reason that the jump scares felt earned and authentic, the game just did too good a job of immersing me into the story.

*Gen-Z for "Surely you jest."

The immersion, in fact, is something the game is quite famous for. And not just things like your suit and weapons having clever displays to negate having an HUD to remind you that you're playing a video game - I'm talking about Isaac himself.

Something like Half Life will sell Gordon Freeman as an untrained everyman, even though he sure seems to get the hang of those shotguns and submachine guns awfully quick. Isaac Clarke, however, I totally bought as being nothing more than a standard engineer. He's in a bulky space suit made for the elements, not dodging flying enemies or being hacked and slashed at. His weapons aren't even weapons, they're power tools, and since we're in the 2500s it's easy to believe that stasis and telekinesis are also commonplace tools for an engineer to be using. Even his melee attacks are wild and exaggerated, leaving him wide open for counterattacks, the same as how any desperate untrained fighter would be.

All this paired with the shabby state of the Ishimura will land you in a lot of tense situations, like barely managing to evade three fast moving creatures only to get to a door and it takes FOREVER to open. I found myself in so many jams like that, some I made it out and some I didn't, but every time I was gripping my controller just a lil bit tighter than I needed to be!

Also, and this is just a quick aside, but I love how brutal the deaths are. The animations are so dope, whether it's seeing Isaac ripped apart by a necromorph or violently jerking after running out of air. I will say, though... at times (particularly in the Impossible run) the death animation just kinda keeps going. You're like yeah, I get it, I'm dead, and the game's just like "OH I DON'T THINK YOU DO! SLASH!! STAB!! SLIIICE!!!"

Great. I'm chopped in half AND I've been decapitated. Freakin terrific.

In the interest of wrapping this up (because good gawd am I chatty these days), let's jump straight to the obvious: Dead Space is an incredible game, deserving of all the praise it gets, and if you haven't played it, well shit, do I envy you. It does wear its Alien Vs. Jacob's Resident Horizon influences pretty prominently, but everything is put together so well that it's hard to be mad.

The atmosphere is expertly crafted, and you feel like you're right there with Isaac in the midst of all this madness. It reminds you how fun horror is, and why so many people love to be scared in the first place! After the PS era, I figured that horror games had already had their time in the moonlight, but Dead Space proved to belong alongside the big dogs of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Frankly, I wish I'd played it in full the second I bought it, but it's all good cuz it made my 2023 gaming that much better!

I'm sure I'll be checking out the remake once I move onto the PS5 side of town, maybe by then they'll have remade Dead Space 2 as well. My homie Drunkenengineer wrote a great (and faaarr more concise) review on the remake, which I can finally read now that I've finished my write-up of the original!

We made it. Whew!

Stray Observations

- A more playful opening lyric for this would've been "Welcome to the Space Jam, here's your chance, do your d-aaAAHHHHHH!!!"

- "Guess you really miss her." Who, my girlfriend who I haven't seen for six months and might be dead? Yeah, I guess so.

- CUT OFF THEIR LIMBS. Simultaneous atmosphere building and playing tips. Now that's efficiency!

- Dat stomp tho. That's some Derek Vineyard fierceness there, and the Ishimura doesn't even have curbs!

- One thing about the sound I forgot to mention, that digital fart noise whenever you buy something. When you buy something on repeat several times, it sounds like a robot jogging and farting when each foot lands.

- You can't even be bothered to physically reach out and pull a lever down? Man, Isaac... kinesis made you a lazy bastard.

- I love how Hammond can't believe that the Captain is dead. "What? How?" I mean...

- I liked the moments where you see someone getting obliterated in a room and go to the door and it's like "busy" until it almost cheerfully becomes available, like a suicide chamber from Futurama or something.

- In the open space segments you can't hear anything, and it somehow makes enemies even more frightening. In fact, if you hear anything at all, it's Isaac struggling to breathe as his oxygen grows scarce. Oof.

- I don't think of this game as having puzzles in the traditional sense, but there are several points where it'll take some time to figure out what to do next.That giant room with the asteroid in place comes to mind, it took me SO LONG to figure out that I had to maneuver my way outside!

- Is it just me, or did we really only need one cannon section? Either would've been fine, but adding a second just felt a bit cartoonish to me.

- The lone blemish to the music? Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I'm sure I'd feel differently if I'd played this in 2008, but in 2023 the whole "slow and eerie version of a song everybody knows and loves" is played out.

- If this game had been named Live Space, and it was just existing out here free of necromorphs or markers or anything like that, I would've been down because of the zero gravity basketball alone. How cool is that??

- Oh my god how could I forget Challus Mercer, the absolute lunatic who sics Dead Space's version of Mr. X on us! And it's not even just him that's this type of insane, they have a freakin RELIGION. People are weird, man.

- Yet another fine example of seeing the twists coming a mile away but not caring, because the ride is just that fun.

- LOVE the ending. Perfect way to close us out!

THAT Trophy: Epic Tier 3 Engineer

Once again, it was a hard mode that proved to be a bit of a snag. Now, we're not talking God of War III levels of difficulty, where when people brag about how easy the hardest mode was and I'm just thinking "Oh, fuck you." This one can be rough, but it's literally meant for after you've already played through once, so you already have a good idea of where the ambushes are, what weapons work best for you, and so on.

I will say that the difficulty spike kept the game from getting chill in the horror department, because even though I knew where certain things were, knowing I could be ripped to shreds from a split second of carelessness kept the tension levels just as high.

So I guess this is one of those trophies where it's the hardest to get, but.. it's... great?

[YaManSmevz]

Platinum #105: Trek to Yomi

Are you a warrior? Killer? Slicin' shit like a samurai

 

You know what it's like when a game catches your interest, but not quite enough to pay full price, or really any price for that matter? Because PS Plus knows. When Trek to Yomi was announced as a free game in June, it felt like the service was personally telling me "I gotchu, homie."

I first saw Trek's trailer around the time of its release, and the presentation floored me. It was incredibly reminiscent of the famous samurai flicks from the 1950s and 60s by that one director... super influential dude, his name is mentioned in literally every review of this game, but it escapes me at the moment. I wanna say... Fellini?

...no, maybe Bergman.

I'm just kidding, we all know who it is.

While Ghost of Tsushima had something called a Kurosawa Filter, which was black and white with a layer of grain, Trek to Yomi was clearly built from the ground up with this look. It's more than just a black and white filter, there's a surprising sense of depth and intimacy. The shots are impeccably framed, with a healthy variance in scales, endlessly clever angles, excellent use of shadow, and great use of obscuring foreground (be it rubble, trees, even hanging bodies). It really feels like you're playing your way through Yojimbo or Seven Samurai or something, it's just so well realized.

This is to the game's detriment sometimes though, as all this creativity can compromise the gameplay. Sometimes the foreground gets directly in the way of a battle and you can't see what you're doing, or a breathtaking wide shot renders you and your enemies as tiny little ants and you can barely make out who is attacking whom. There were also times where a shot would just be so distractingly gorgeous that I'd be at risk of getting myself killed purely from forgetting that i was playing a game!

The light and dark dynamics are not always your friend either. White subtitles over a white screen works about as well as it sounds, and I learned this the hard way, but don't even bother trying to play this game with any daylight coming in through the window!

The audio is every bit as much a triumph as the visuals. The score is dominated with native instruments, with biwa type strings and bamboo percussion expertly enhancing moments quiet and tense alike. Voice acting is off the charts as well, theatrical but believable, yet again highly reminiscent of those old samurai flicks. Villagers weeping or quivering in fear, enemies screaming in pain when stabbed or laughing when you die (or sometimes even when they're dying, and they truly sound unhinged).

As you may have guessed, it's all in Japanese - there's an English dub too, but... yeah, I wouldn't suggest using it unless you're in need of a laugh.

The foley is mesmerizing all around, notable for the swordplay alone. From being unsheathed to clashing against another sword to slicing flesh open to finding an entirely new home altogether in an opponent's body, it all sounds so real and like it's happening right next to you.
 
The story may not quite reach the same heights as the overall presentation, but it doesn't bring things down a bit. We're put in the wajari of a samurai named Hiroki, and things start out pretty standard with a tale of revenge until we take a kinda sorta survival horror turn. I'm not versed in Japanese mythology, so I didn't actually know what Yomi was, but the depiction looked pretty on point to me.

We're taken to more places than you'd expect, taking a surprisingly inward journey. You're really put in Hiroki's position and asked what would be most important to you. Love? Revenge? Simply trying to do the right thing? There's an ending attached to each of these, which was a great touch. Now, for three endings, could the story have gone a bit deeper? Sure, maybe the alternate paths could've been differentiated a bit better, but each ending was still pretty satisfying.

Now, remember how I was hinting that the trailer hadn't quite convinced me that this was anything more than a "Wait for the Right Sale" type of game? It's because the gameplay looked awfully repetitive. And just as with the glorious presentation, playing the game proper proved that the first impression was correct. Before even getting into things, I'll let the game's wiki page say it all for me.

 

 

Okay, that's not really the wiki page. But it should be!

Trek to Yomi is a 2.5 dimensional side-scroller, so the basic needs of this kind of gaming are met, but even still the combat is one note as fuuuuck. I won't say that it isn't fun, but it's so simplistic. Generally, your opponent attacks, you block or parry, then you counterattack. That's basically all you're going to be doing. It's pretty clear how they want you to play too, because there are a few moves and combos that beg to be cheesed and make the game infinitely easier, which is a shame because there's such little variation as it is. I avoided this on my initial playthrough, but succumbed to it on the higher difficulties because of the other issue the gameplay has, its unreliability.

The parry timing feels a touch off, and often times it will feel like you nailed it and get a sword in the chest for your efforts. There are other potentially unresponsive functions as well, namely a weird delay with turning around. A lot of bosses require you to literally roll up on them and spin around at a second's notice, so not being able to consistently will result in quite a few frustrating moments.

This is not to avoid taking responsibility for those overwhelmed, panicky deaths, mind you (there were plenty, and were all decidedly my fault) but this issue didn't help!

There's also a puzzle element introduced about halfway through, but it's so tacked on and devoid of thought that it quickly becomes annoying more than another dimension of challenge. Like towards the end of production somebody was like "Yo, is it too late to add puzzles??" "Barry? God dammit... yeah, I guess we can add some puzzles. Just do a spinning wheel with Kanji or some shit and call it a day."

I haven't seen anybody else mention this so it could just be me, but every once in a great while the collectibles menu would pop up out of nowhere, and I could never figure out what did it. Only guess I have is that it's supposed to appear when you hit up on the D-pad, but occasionally it will register when you're holding up on the joystick.

When trying to articulate whether this game is worth diving into, I'm reminded of The Hong Kong Massacre (oh, we gotta lump the Asian-themed games together, is that it?? REAL NICE). There is so much great stuff here, such an original take on a potentially hackneyed premise, and yet it feels frustratingly incomplete. With Massacre it was the storytelling, with Yomi it was the controls. Maybe we could get these developers together so they could cover each other's blind spots and make something genuinely S tier!

...shut up, I can dream.

For me at least, time has been kind to this game (yeah I know, a whopping two months) - I remember less about the lackluster controls but still recall with great clarity what a gorgeous game it is, and what a sincere love letter to Kurosawa it proves to be. And as such, while it is a cautious recommendation, I recommend this game all the same. For all its flaws, it deserves to be experienced. Just make sure the price is right!

Stray Observations

- The game starts with Hiroki as a child, training with his sensei. There's a commotion and our sensei tells us to stay put, which we naturally ignore because we're a nosy little shit.

- "Aiko!! Who has seen Aiko??" Everybody dead, my guy.

- You can almost smell the smoke and bodies in the village chapters, the sense of doom is suffocating. So good.

- Yomi is the Shinto land of the dead, and while again, I'm not the most knowledgeable on this corner of the mythological world, it's just so detailed and lovingly crafted that it was too easy to get swept up in these levels. Even with those sorry ass puzzles!

- I really dug the flip with the enemies being portrayed as civilians protecting their villages, as if you were the bloodthirsty invader. They could've done more with this, but the mere fact that it's there is dope.

- "Am I here? Or am I over HERE??" Great, we have to fight Milhouse in his camo gear.

- I get the rules on the one hit playthrough, but it feels really cheap to get killed by a kick!

- Forgot to mention this earlier, but the game will also freeze up for a second or so at a time, like a frame rate issue or something. Can't say that was a favorite feature of mine either!

- The collectibles are pretty reasonable, but this is negated by the lack of chapter select. Not cool, y'all.

- I was far from the right headspace for writing reviews, yet I still felt compelled to write a lil quickie on Trek to Yomi when I initially completed it. That's gotta be worth somethin!

THAT Trophy: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

Same thing as last time - I liked how much more tension the hardest difficulty lent the playthrough, but because of the aforementioned control issues, it was more often than not frustrating as opposed to challenging. Especially with some of those bosses, sheesh.

Edited August 29, 2023 by YaManSmevz

[DrunkenEngineer]

Your review jives with what I've seen from others, that Trek to Yomi can be pretty divisive and was a great fit for PS+ Essential!  I've redeemed it and it sounds like the perfect game to crank through in a slow weekend.

[DrBloodmoney]

On 8/29/2023 at 12:48 AM, YaManSmevz said:

Platinum #105: Trek to Yomi

 

 

 

Damn - I totally missed that you posted this one!

 

That's a great review - and not quite sure if it makes me more or less likely to dip into this one sooner! I've had the game on my list for a while, and other games just keep shunting ahead of it, but it defientely sounds like it falls in that... "oooohhh... so close" kinda category...

...that isn't a dealbreaker, but with so many good games out there, doesn't always help!

 

 

also...

 

On 8/29/2023 at 12:48 AM, YaManSmevz said:

- "Am I here? Or am I over HERE??" Great, we have to fight Milhouse in his camo gear.

 

*snicker*! 😆

 

[YaManSmevz]

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz

August 2023

 

Happy September, boys and girls!

 

Firstly:

 

On 8/29/2023 at 2:59 PM, DrunkenEngineer said:

Your review jives with what I've seen from others, that Trek to Yomi can be pretty divisive and was a great fit for PS+ Essential!  I've redeemed it and it sounds like the perfect game to crank through in a slow weekend.

 

Nice! That's pretty much how it went for me too, "I like samurai films, I need something not terribly time consuming to play, let's fuckin go." I say go for it; for all its flaws, it's still a pretty good time😎

 

On 9/1/2023 at 4:21 AM, DrBloodmoney said:

That's a great review - and not quite sure if it makes me more or less likely to dip into this one sooner! I've had the game on my list for a while, and other games just keep shunting ahead of it, but it defientely sounds like it falls in that... "oooohhh... so close" kinda category...

...that isn't a dealbreaker, but with so many good games out there, doesn't always help!

 

Thank you, sir!

 

"Ooooh... so close" is an unfortunately accurate category for this one. I always feel the need to point out stuff like that cuz I'd be mortified if I glossed over a game's shortcomings only to have a friend play it and be like "well that sucked." I will say though, while it's far from perfect, I'm really glad to have played it, and I get the sense that a cinephile such as yourself would feel the same.

 

So! August. What was it, what was its deal? Well, for the first three quarters of the month, I found myself in that familiar gaming meh-laise, which it seems is impossible for me to evade for at least a month out of the year. But in the last week, the desire came back to knock out some games, and with the help of a few shorties I managed to get back on track and complete four games this month. Wrote a post about it, wanna read it? Here it go!

 

94.17% Overall Completion (+0.33)
338 Unearned Trophies (-12)
3.68 Trophies Per Day (-0.02)
112 Platinums (+3)
Level 414 (+2)

 

Game of the Month

 

After taking the honors last month, the love affair with Silent Hill 2 petered out a tad. I'll get to it, but at the moment I'm overthinking it too much, if that makes sense. Stories Untold scratched that same itch for unsettling content tho, and while exceedingly brief I thought there was a lot to love about this one. Jazzpunk treated me like the hysterical woman on Airplane!, with the line of armed people waiting to "settle her down" being the relentless jokes ready to slap me across the face. The perfect game to play after Stories really - goofy absurdism has a knack for washing down bummer endings!

 

NBA 2K23 needs a shout too, I can’t tell you how happy I was to finish all its grinds and find that I still wanna play it, it's just so fun. I actually can't remember off the top if this guy had won the prize a few months back, but I didn't even need to look because at the last minute a thief came out of nowhere and snatched the title from everyone.

 

VA-11 Hall-A, a name I suddenly find myself typing with ease, seduced me without any apology whatsoever and I loved every second. How well it captured the bartending life and its great synth soundtrack (which is still in my head) were enough to clinch, but the story and characters are great. This and 2064, ironically enough, kinda make me wanna not seek out any more visual novel games - I feel like I oughtta stop while I'm ahead!

Rating the Month

 

It was last minute as hell, but I got my completions in and renewed my spirit with this whole trophy hunting thing. And finally got writing again! Though the new format exposed my recent technique of writing at my leisure and copy/pasting with those big, ugly letters... I'm probably being an Oldman Grumpypants but I'm not so sure I fuck with the new format!

 

Who am I kidding. By the time this month is over I'll have forgotten what it was even like before😄

 

Anyway, a good month snatched from the jaws of a bad one. We're rating it four out of five Sugar Rushes!

September Goals

1. First and foremost, we're resetting the hitlist. I get tired of putting in the same names and then not feeling like playing them, that is not a fun loop to be in.
 

2. First card in the Kaleidoscope Challenge is almost done, I just need Yellow. May as well wrap it up, no?

 

3. Keep writing. I almost forgot how nice it feels!

Gaming Hitlist

1. Mortal Kombat 11

 

Because what's another step out of the comfort zone? I haven't played a Mortal Kombat game since I was a kid, could be fun! Fifty hours of decapitating fools, here we come!

2. The Fractured but Whole
 

I don't know why I've slept on this one for so long, I loved Stick of Truth. Only thing was I missed stuff in two consecutive playthroughs and had to painstakingly follow a guide to.. oh yeah, that was why.
 

3. The Swapper

 

I had a few reminders in August of how nice it is to have something short and sweet on deck, so we're gonna give this guy a shot. What am I gonna do, be mad at a few wasted hours? Not bloody likely.
 

4. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2

 

I don't even know that I'll make any progress with this one, but who cares. Scrolled down the ol' profile to see what incomplete game I'd like to try and chip at, and this was the first one that didn't make me go "eehhhh...."
 

5. Metal Gear Solid 2
 

I think this one gets to stay because I wanna see if it was Silent Hill or the PS3 in general that lost me. But this is a revisit I'm genuinely excited about - will I still be excited on the fourth or fifth playthrough or when it's time for the VR missions? Probably not. But that's a problem for later in the month.

 

Alright! Thanks for reading as always👊 Hope everybody has a great month and gets to play some awesome games. August has been given its flowers, it's time to move on to September.

 

Do you re-membah?

Edited September 30, 2023 by YaManSmevz

[YaManSmevz]

Platinum #112: VA-11 Hall-A

 

Drink some of this, it'll put color in your cheeks

 

Visual Novels have long had a big, comfortable space on my "Miss Me with That Shit" gaming list. I take some responsibility for that, as it's unfair to assume that every game in this genre centers around dating anime girls and has trophies with names like "Tell the Cops She Looked Eighteen," but I mean... y'all know where I'm comin from, right? Like, I'm wrong, but maybe not 100% wrong?

 

Anyway, upon reading @rjkclarke's fantastic review of this game (which you really ought to read if you haven't already), I saw some things I really liked, realized I'd been a bit overly dismissive, and decided to give this one a shot.

VA-11 Hall-A takes place in Glitch City, your standard brightly lit, grimy ass future dystopian society with the growth in technology every bit as stunning as the regression in human rights. The twist, however, is that you're not gonna take the type of role you'd typically get in a game with this setting - no sentient robot, assassin for hire, private investigator, hacker, or valkyrie for you.

Oh make no mistake, VA-11 Hall-A has these characters! You just don't get to be them. Rather, we play as the local bartender, and instead of experiencing the adventures these other characters get, we hear about their exploits secondhand and make them drinks while they tell us about their respective worlds.

Hey wait, come back!

On the surface, this is decidedly the less interesting approach, but really it makes it so much easier to immerse yourself into Glitch City's world. You’re just another person going to work, exchanging thoughts and opinions about the goings on in the city, then going home afterwards to read blogs, tabloids, and other outlets. The story, of course, isn’t even about Glitch City, but we’re made so aware of what’s happening around us that we feel like we’re right there with our protagonist.

 

Oh yeah, that’s Jill.

Jill is a bartender in her late twenties, and she had me fondly reminiscing when I was that age myself, doing the same thing. Hell, the same thing most of us are doing in our twenties! Going to work, and wondering if this is the job for us. Interacting with people, and not quite believing everything you hear, but being fascinated with how different people can be. Having that strong moral compass being tested with the occasional blindspot where you yourself are concerned. Getting accustomed to managing your money, and finding a balance between buying the fun stuff and keeping your bills paid. Maybe drinking a bit too much beer, watching a bit too much porn. 

 

I mean uh, no! Hah! I never did that! Gross!

For the first half of the game, we’re getting to know Jill’s world and the people in it, offering that famous bartender ear for anyone coming in, with the personalities we meet fleshed out to a surprisingly deep degree. In the second half, Jill is forced to confront issues she’s been wrestling with herself, fleshing out her own character in the process, and that’s pretty much all I can talk about without giving shit away, but it's consistently engrossing.

 

There's this great nuance in the dialogue, which of course you’d hope for, as this is what most of the game does, but so many unique moments arise and are introduced expertly. That sensation of being in the presence of somebody having a hard time, and knowing there’s really nothing you can say, and the best thing to do is just listen. Or someone crossing a line and making you uncomfortable, leaving you searching for ways to continue the dialogue without retaliating but maintaining your boundaries. You don’t actually get to pick what Jill says, but the level headed, often neutral way she speaks gives her the universal appeal that games with silent protagonists strive for.

 

When we're not reading, we're engaging in the game's bartending mechanics, and as someone who bartended for over a decade, I can confidently say that they knew what they were doing when they decided to take this perspective.

The drink mixing is great. All the recipes for drinks are made available to you, categorized by name and type of drink. So when people are vaguely asking for something either sweet or strong (which in real life does happen often), you can refer to the recipes and pick something out for them. I also really liked that all drinks boil down to five fictitious ingredients (why isn't Bronson Extract a real thing??), all of which have their own profile and contribution to each drink. Karmotrine, the lone alcoholic ingredient, is the fun one. It's optional in many drinks, so you can serve up something non-alcoholic or load it up and get your guest faded as fuck (and they say some funny shit).

So the main elements of bartending, mixing drinks and guest interaction, are fantastic, but it's the little details that really sold it for me. At the start of your shift, you load up the jukebox and can put on whatever music you want. There's always something on the television in the background, and sometimes your mind will wander and your eyes will be drawn to it. You cherish your break and are eager to step outside to have a moment to yourself. You talk to that co-worker you're crushin on, and you're simultaneously excited and nervous. After the shift, you get home and the quiet serves as such sanctuary from the hurlyburly of your job - left to your own devices to read, play games, wander around online, and talk to your cat. I literally did all of these things in my bartending years.

 

Oh fuck, the MUSIC!

 

The music is outstanding, and fits the game's cyberpunk vibe like a damn glove. The tracks vary a bit, ranging from gentle new wave to glitchy, harsh industrial, but overall retains that cool futuristic electro feel. Garoad's original soundtrack has joined the club of game scores that I can vibe out to on my way to work - and can I just say "what a time to be alive?" I love how much effort has been going into a game's music these last few generations. Picking a favorite soundtrack for that year-end list was already going to be so difficult, then here comes this motherfucker!

VA-11 Hall-A (it's amazing how quickly that name got easy to type) is also crammed with with alternate dialogue - for when you made the right or wrong drink, or got a guest too hammered, or if you didn't buy something that Jill wanted and now she's distracted, with her internal dialogue running amok. It begs for additional play, and don't us gamers love that!

 

So yeah. For anyone still reading (I swear I just saw a digital tumbleweed rolling through), this game is wonderful. I'm not gonna say I'm converted and am gonna be on the lookout for Visual Novel games, but I'm pleased to say that I've found one I really enjoyed. The music's dope, the characters are well written and developed, the bartending mechanics are fun, and both the story and environment really grab you. I have the benefit of having lived a lot of what goes on in this game (like that time I had to escape a massacre at a bank by making a dramatic leap and crushing half of my body in the process, yeah I totally did that), but I think there's some heavy relatability for just about anybody. Y'all should play this game, full stop.

 

Stray Observations

- "Grab some drinks, some snacks, and enjoy!" Not since The Forgotten City did the very first moment of a game make me feel so comfortable and trusting with where it was gonna take me.

- I don't know the precise context, but I don't need to - I love that "SLUT" shirt Jill has chillin in her closet.

- "FINALLY, THE DOROTHY HAS COME BACK TO VALHALLA!!" Welp, somebody's an Attitude Era fan.

- The message boards are eerily lifelike. "Meh, I think I'll just quit gaming. Nothing but trash as of late." Pretty sure I read that in the PSN forum two or three times today alone.

- Art Von Delay. Welp, somebody's a Seinfeld fan.

- Gotta agree with Jill's aversion to the 'mixologist' label. Even at the craftiest, most complex bars I've worked at, it's always been a word I'd feel pretentious as fuck using to describe myself. I feel that term requires a handlebar mustache, riding a unicycle to work, and always bringing an acoustic guitar to parties.

- Ah Virgilio, the obnoxiously pompous blockhead whose toxic stream of consciousness nonsense always got me nauseous. He has a lock of hair over his forehead that I eventually realized was a big question mark - one of those "can't unsee it now" things, and it somehow made him look like an even bigger idiot!

- "Palms sweaty, knees weak, arms spaghetti." Welp, somebody's an Eminem fan.

 

- Dorothy’s Santa “prank” killed me. One of those gags that walks a very thin line between funny and not funny (thus becoming super funny).

 

- A buddy of mine works in the IT sector and some of Alma's descriptions match things that he's said to a T. Again, it just goes to show the dedication towards fleshing out these characters and their lives.

 

- Love the Jill reveal when she sits on the other side of the bar, that was a cute moment.

- "I'd like a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man's hat." Welp, it's official, they've hit all the right buttons.

- Should you have skipped October's rent to buy a wifi router dildo? Maybe not, but god damn, talk about a conversation starter. Whenever people would come over and ask for the wi-fi password, I'd be like "shit, I don't remember, but it's on the router, it's right over there" every time.

- After you beat the game, there's a slight change to the main menu that I found really sweet.

THAT Trophy: In the Name of Beauty!

Just reading a bunch of text and get a platinum? OH, YOU THOUGHT.

There's a retro game called Model Warrior Julianne you can have Jill buy, and it's a fantastic side scrolling shooter that took a few more tries than I expected! If you don't stay on top of the enemies, it can get NES hard levels of bullet hell pretty quickly, but it's a fun challenge, especially coming after all the, y'know, words.

There's actually another reason I'm glad this exists - the guide on PSN says VA-11 Hall-A can be completed in two hours, which I presume is true if you're just blazing past all dialogue (though why in the fuck anyone would want to do that is beyond me), so I like that you're forced to actually play something. I'm not the type to take joy in anybody getting cockblocked out of an easy platinum, I've always been in the "doesn't affect me, it's none of my business" camp, but for such a lovingly crafted game, I'm glad they were sure to wring at least a bit of effort out of all of us!

[YaManSmevz]

Monthly Update with Ya Man Smevz

September 2023

 

They never showed the anchor for this show on Daria, so this will have to suffice. Hopefully you can hear in your head "Gamers keeping track of insignificant statistics to feel better about their otherwise lackluster lives? It's coming up next on SICK SAD WORLD."

 

From a very upbeat, positive me at the start of the month to a rather beaten down, morose me at the end, we shall get in to the sadly rather lousy month of September. It was a shitter, folks, a real stinker. No desire to play, and frankly a rough month on a personal level. Shit sucks, we all know how it is, sometimes shit's just gonna suck and there's nothing you can do about it but power through and try not to get too much shit in your mouth. Yesterday was the first time I've even been on PSN in a few weeks, which is very unlike me - very grateful I had the VA-11 Hall-A review almost ready to go, otherwise I wouldn't have written a damn thing.

 

So that's me, how about the numbers?

 

93.00% Overall Completion (-1.17)

415 Unearned Trophies (+77)

3.64 Trophies Per Day (-0.05)

112 Platinums (+0)

Level 415 (+1)

 

Ah. Shit as well, I see!

 

Game of the Month

 

Started three games, two of which being very much out of my comfort zone. South Park: The Fractured but Whole is a lot of fun, reminding me what a blast Stick of Truth was without the need of a guide for missable collectibles (don't we all love that). Need for Speed Heat has been a pleasant surprise given how racing segments of open world games are generally my least favorite, and I've been having a good time with Mortal Kombat 11.

 

....South Park wins, sorry but no drama this time!

 

Rating the Month

 

My first ever ground floor rating! One out of five Morgan Freemans. And September certainly earned all one of those, lemmetellya.

 

October Goals

 

Eat something. And play something! And also stop saying "I dont care," because even if you don't care right now, you very much will at some point. When you're back to your usual self, you'll be like "you mean I didn't play anything in October?? What a dork!"

 

Gaming Hitlist

 

It's not important. Play fucking Candyland if that's what you wanna do, just something.

 

That's it for me, sorry for the bummer post. But at least it was quick! I hope October is good to everybody, including me. Cuz that would be nice.

[Redblaziken8]

Sorry to hear you've had a rough month. Hopefully this month will be better for you! Don't push yourself to game too much if you aren't feeling it 😊

 

Certainly felt the feeling like a sad sack for trophy hunting myself this month, and nearly burned out with some bullshit RNG trophies then the Trials DLC in Dante's Inferno that me and Rob are currently suffering through.

 

I enjoyed your VA-11 Hall-A review a lot by the way, and always like seeing you post, they're always funny and upbeat to read😁

[Platinum_Vice]

Thinking if you Smevz. Keep that chin up and push through. I'll send you a PM if you're in the mood to chat.

[DrunkenEngineer]

Keep on keepin' on Mr. Smevz.  Hope October treats you better than September has!

[jonesey46]

Here's hoping October is good to you man. I always play an old favourite to perk me up when I'm feeling down. I hope you're feeling better soon!