BRKsEAGLE's Flight Towards Greatness

[Eagle]

Another weird update, I know, but I have also obtained the plat for Far Cry 5, taking advantage of yet another free multiplayer weekend, courtesy of the Days of Play event.

 

We Always Had Faith in You

 

I have already talked about the story mode before, so let's not dwell on that for the sake of brevity. But then, you might be asking, how was my experience with Far Cry ARCADE? Well... wonderful and horrendous at the same time. You'll soon see why.

 

ARCADE is divided into two parts: solo/co-op and multiplayer. In solo/co-op, you need to succesfully complete 10 featured maps and play the ARCADE Hero mode 5 times; in multiplayer, you need to win 10 featured maps and get 100 kills - while also getting level 20 across both of them. Sounds easy enough, right... and well, actually, you could reasonably say it is, since, y'know, only took me a weekend. But it certainly wasn't as easy as I imagined, taking me ~10 hours, which I think is about the same time I spent platting The Order: 1886.

 

Solo/co-op was really fun. The process of doing the 10 maps took longer than I expected, but the community did a really great job with the Featured maps, so I didn't have any issue going through them, and to be honest, I kinda miss them already. ARCADE Hero was a bit more lame, but it comes with its nature (testing new maps and rating them), plus you don't even have to complete the maps if you just wanna rush it. Level 20 also came naturally throughout the entire process, since it's fairly easy to achieve as well.

 

So, that was the wonderful part, done and dusted. The horrendous part? The multiplayer. All the fun I had with the solo maps was completely thrown out the window when I had to endure the snorefest that was Shovel Dodgers, just throwing shovels at your boosting partner (speaking of which, first time using a boosting session, hooray - thanks so much for the bajillionth time, @IsaacDK503 and @rene_gustavo, for enduring this with me) until you get 10 map wins or you die of sheer boredom, whichever comes first. "Why, then, didn't you do it the legit way?" Because multiplayer's deader than my grandpa...

...OK, forgive me for the morbid joke, but seriously, it's a game from 2018 and I didn't find a single person when searching in the lobby. I think I could find decade-old games that still have some players from time to time.

 

Oh, well. It's all done now. Going back to Resident Evil, which I had to neglect for a bit because, besides the sidetrack I just mentioned, school's being a pain in the butt, my TV stopped working for a while and it's a difficult game, alas, one that I have to be focused to play, which doesn't happen as often as I would like to. But such is life.

 

Edited October 3, 2021 by Eagle

[DrBloodmoney]

On 05/05/2021 at 3:33 PM, BRKs_Eagle said:

So, while I was attending my online classes due to this awful pandemic, I had a spontaneous thought... what if I find a game good looking at it from an objective point of view, but don't enjoy it? "Quality" doesn't make sense then, just as "enjoyment" didn't before, as I might like a game I find objectively bad. So, I changed terminology again to "rating," which is more neutral, to try and find a balance between these two. 

 

Dude - tell me about it - the most difficult parts of my whole 'game ranking' thing is when I get to a game I know people love and I didn't - I end up spending most of my review finding new, interesting ways to caveat my dislikes in a sandwich of "While I can appreciate X..." or "I can see the value in X, but..." ?

 

Sometimes, you just gotta grab the bull by the horns, know the goring is coming and just state, loudly and proudly "I don't like GTAIV!" ???

 

[Eagle]

Hello again, humble folk of this forum. Have you noticed anything different?

 

...

 

That's right, I'm now a premium member, courtesy of some anonymous donor. I have already stated my thanks in a status update, but in any case, thanks again, mysterious benefactor. After testing it for a bit, I don't think premium is anything groundbreaking, but it certainly brings neat features to have. So I'm happy. 

 

Anyways, what's new in my life? My birthday is on Sunday (I'll be turning 16 ), school is still kicking my ass (but I'll soon have a break from July to August, so if everything goes right, I plan to complete RE by then), and I decided to change the thread's banner to showcase the improvement of my editing skills and hopefully give a better insight into my gaming tastes. Here's old banner vs. new banner for comparison:

 

Old banner. Couldn't think of what to do, so I just grabbed a picture of Ikaros from AC: Odyssey and dramatically reduced the brightness in it, because... why not?

 

New banner. I wanted to keep the Brazil theme going, as you can notice by the colored shadows, but making it more about myself and not only my alias, by putting three of my favorite gaming characters, side-by-side. I was going to include more, but I fiddled around a bit with it and I think it's better this way, especially since I noticed they kinda fit into the Id/Ego/Superego trope (Wrench being the Id, Ezio being the Superego and Niko being the Ego). Lemme know what you guys think.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Eagle

[Eagle]

Hello, folks. I'm back. Y'all missed me?

 

Game #12 – Resident Evil

 

Story

Despite laying the foundation for the games to come, the story is actually very simple, and most of the details are told through text files (and they're actually fewer than you'd expect). Which is not bad, per se - after all, not every game needs to have a super-complex story, but I'll admit I expected a bit more. But, as I've said before and I'll say again: I'm a strong gameplay > story advocate, so it didn't detract much from the experience.

 

Gameplay

First off: as I said in AC2's review, I hate fixed camera angles. So you can imagine how well I fared with a game based solely on fixed angles, especially when they seem to switch at the worst times possible. Yes, I get its purpose, but I really don't like it, and it's by far one of my biggest gripes with the game.

 

Anyway... now that I got that off of my system, the gameplay's actually more fluid than I'd expect from a 2002 game. Sure, it can be kinda clunky and weird in some situations, but the movement's not tanky (even though you can opt to use the D-pad if you want those tank controls, and it can even help sometimes when precise movements are needed) like I thought it would be - of course, it's nowhere near the level of fluidity of modern games, but again, it's a 2002 game and I'll judge it as such.

 

Secondary content

It's a linear game, so there's not much side content apart from collecting every item. Not what I usually like to see, but whatevs.

 

Ambientation

In my humble opinion, they nailed it with this one. It perfectly describes what I would call a "psychological horror" game: instead of trying to spook the player like most so-called horror games nowadays like FNaF (and no, I don't like it, sue me), it actually tries to scare them - it has some jumpscares here and there, sure, but doesn't rely solely on them. With the limited resources, relatively frail character, creative sceneries and scenarios, not being afraid to punish you if you make mistakes and whatnot, it always makes you anxious when entering a room, trying to think of what could come next. Then again, it's kinda to be expected for a game that was basically the pioneer of an entire genre (yes, I know there were horror games before this one - you get what I mean by "pioneer").

 

The soundtrack in particular is a big part of what makes this game so terrifying. No track really stands out, but each of them (apart from contributing to the fear factor, of course), gives an unique feel to the place they play at, so that they end up being even more memorable.

 

Technical aspects

Apart from those damn chimeras, no bugs whatsoever, at least in my experience. Completely smooth gameplay (besides the friggin' camera angles... but that's not a bug, so eh).

 

Miscellaneous ramblings

The optimal number of playthroughs for a noob like me is 6... which I suppose isn't that bad considering it's a short game (and yes, I know I took 3 months to finish it... the price you pay when you have quite a few interests at the same time, I guess), but it still gets a bit tiring after a while, considering there's not much change from one to another. However, I went for a playthrough order different than what the guide suggests:

• First, two casual playthroughs as Chris and Jill, both on Normal, to get a feel for the game and all. I struggled quite a bit at the beginning, but got used to it later on, which certainly helped me get through the later runs.
• Then, a knife-only playthrough as Chris on Very Easy. Actually easier than I expected - only enemies that gave me trouble were the Crimson Head Prototype (sturdy and agile) and Plant 42 (kept stunlocking me with its damn acid or whatever the hell it keeps spitting).
• Another playthrough as Chris on Very Easy, this time on Invisible Enemy mode. Again, easier than I expected, especially since Very Easy gives you a ton of resources anyway.
• I decided to mix the Real Survival run with the speedrun, since you're focusing on minimizing engagement with enemies and carefully managing your items on both of them. Followed a TrueAchievements guide and got it with quite some time to spare.

So smug.

• Last but not least, the no-save run. Not difficult when you have the infinite rocket launcher, but some moments like Lisa Trevor's fight and refilling the fuel capsule (where you cannot run, else you'll explode) had me really tense.

 

What's the next stop in the flight?

For my next game, I'll aim for my first UR plat with Just Cause 3, which I got recently as a birthday gift and looks exactly like my kind of game. I've heard it was very buggy at launch and that made many people end up disliking it, but I tested it for a few hours on my alt account and had no problems whatsoever. But hey, I'll never know for certain until I actually go through the whole ride.

 

See you in a few months, at the rate I'm going. Oh, well. At least, I can say I got something done in my one-month break before school comes back on the next monday.

Edited April 10, 2022 by Eagle

[YaManSmevz]

Three months is pretty good for a game you have to beat six times! It took me almost twice as long to complete Resident Evil 2.

 

Great review. Good reminder of how well those early RE games really put you in these characters' shoes. I need to blow the dust off of my copy one of these days...

 

Also Jill does look pretty smug there, now that you mention it.

[Eagle]

On 01/08/2021 at 6:43 AM, YaManSmevz said:

Three months is pretty good for a game you have to beat six times! It took me almost twice as long to complete Resident Evil 2.

I mean... it's a game that can easily be done in 3-4 hours if you know what you're doing. So yeah, considering I do one game at a time, it was more about me just not being able to find the time sometimes.

 

Speaking of not being able to find the time sometimes... I think you've noticed the pattern by now, and don't expect it to change anytime soon. But hey, since I'm here anyway, lemme talk about how JC3 is going.

 

So, it's harder than I initially thought it would be, but easier than what the rarity suggests. Most of the difficulty comes from the challenges, which usually have some tight requirements, but due to the game's open-ended nature, you can often circumvent those requirements - for example, say you're struggling with a race... most of the time, if you have it unlocked, the game lets you use a literal racing car, which is as OP as you'd expect in that aspect. And, if you hadn't noticed from the WD2 review, I absolutely adore that aspect in games. Gameplay is extremely fun, and one of the most addicting I've experienced in quite a while. Other than (admittedly a bit frequent) frame drops here and there, really smooth experience, completely different from its state on release (according to what I've heard, anyway).

 

So yeah, I'll elaborate more if I actually get to it before I die of old age, but I really recommend it if you're looking for some dumb fun - don't expect a technical or narrative masterpiece.

Edited October 3, 2021 by Eagle

[Eagle]

So, I actually got to it before dying of old age. Hooray. Let's get to it, since it's really long (and that's because I oversimplified most of the explanations).

 

Game #13 – Just Cause 3

 

Story

So, as you probably expect from a game whose selling point is the nonstop action and explosions and destruction and whatnot, the story is merely used as a justification for the numerous antics the protagonist Rico Rodríguez commits. Basically, Rico is a specialist in "dictatorship removal", and his mission is to remove a dictator from his home country Medici, a fictional archipelago country in the Mediterranean - this dictator is called Sebastiano di Ravello, and he's your typical bad guy that has no redeeming qualities or ambiguous morality whatsoever.

 

I think you can predict exactly how it ends, and if you do, then you're correct: it ends exactly like you'd expect it to. So yeah, as I've said previously, if you're looking for a narrative masterpiece, there are plenty other games out there you could go for - this is not one of them.

 

Ambientation

You might be thinking: "wait, why did you skip gameplay and secondary content?" I'll get to those later, as it is the main focus of the review... so I gotta keep some suspense, y'know?

 

Anyways, I'm not a guy that lives anywhere close to the Mediterranean and it's not the kind of place you're shown in media all the time (and not historical or fantasious, if that word even exists, either), so I wouldn't know how a country on there would look like - I've seen people here that say it's not an accurate representation by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and just address what I actually have the capacity to address.

 

The sceneries and vistas look beautiful, but the cities and outposts (which is where you'll be spending most of your time on if you're a completionist, which is how I'd recommend playing the game) start feeling too samey after a while, with the exception of a few here and there. The military bases avert this, but I feel that's mostly because of the Destruction Frenzy challenges (more on them later), else you'd just have a bunch of challenges that are exactly the same. As for the soundtrack, no track really stands out, but it's certainly not bad. 

 

EDIT: This didn't really affect me all that much considering I played with the Portuguese dub anyway (which is why I originally forgot to put this part in), but wow, what's up with Rico's voice? Maybe it's because, again, I played with a different dub in the first place, but it sounds way too deep and doesn't really fit with the character - a few of the characters have accents that seem a bit too forced as well.

 

Technical aspects

OK, so this is a complicated one. Again, basing myself out of what I've seen people here say, this game was an absolute mess on release, with multiple crashes and etc. Now, it's certainly still not a technical masterpiece - there are still frame drops whenever there's too much action on the screen, which tends to happen often considering the game's objective, although thankfully not to PowerPoint levels; the loading screens are a bit long; froze on me two times; etc. But it's definitely playable if you don't mind a few hiccups here or there (I personally don't).

 

And yeah, there were a few funny bugs I encountered throughout the journey... enjoy.

 

Everyone seems to have learned how to levitate as of recently... where are they all learning this from?

 

Sleepy time.

 

Gameplay

Now, this is where the real fun of the game begins. One of the best games I could recommend if you're just looking for some dumb fun and addicting gameplay, like I did, since it's the whole objective of the game and one it nails quite well at that.

 

So, as I've said, the story is merely a way to get you to the big setpieces they've created for you to feel like all those action heroes from the movies and test your toys - and the setpieces, especially on Act 3 (the last act), don't disappoint. But you need to obtain the toys for you to test on those missions in the first place, and how do you do so? By liberating the map, which is why I'm considering the outposts/cities/military bases part of the primary content, even though you theoretically don't need to liberate the vast majority of them to complete the story (which is definitely not how I would recommend approaching the game anyway).

 

These places all work in somewhat the same way - you destroy all the Chaos Objects located within and then they're liberated, with your rebellion taking over command. Chaos Objects are things that Di Ravello's army uses to keep everything operational, ranging from fuel tanks to water towers, and they can all be destroyed in multiple ways. Want to use your grappling hook to attach them to the walls and pull them down? Explode them with bazookas or grenade launchers? Just go the ol' reliable way and shoot them until they explode? Use attack helicopters to destroy everything from the skies? You can do all of that, and much more - your creativity is the limit.

 

Even going from point A to point B is fun, given you have many options of vehicles to choose from. A Formula 1 car? A monster truck? A fighter jet? An old, rusty tractor? Again, you have all of that, and much more. And if you just wanna say "screw it" to vehicles, you can also do that and just go with your combo of grappling hook + parachute + wingsuit to everywhere instead. No railroading, just do whatever you want how you want to do it - and, if you've read my other reviews, you know by now creative freedom is a thing I deeply value in games, which is why I loved this so much.

 

Secondary content

But hey, if you want some challenge to go along with the fun, you can always go for the appropriately-named challenges, which are basically minigames, each with a different objective - those are the reason why the plat is UR (speaking of which, first UR plat, woohoo!), but they're nowhere near as difficult as most URs you'll find out there, even though some of them are no slouch either. The best part is, given the creative freedom, you can probably find a way to cheese if you really want to, or find a really specific way of doing things that works for you. The challenges are:

• DESTRUCTION FRENZIES: Unlocked upon completing military bases, these challenges consist in using a given tool to destroy as much Chaos Objects as possible in a time limit to get to a required point threshold - different objects give different amounts of points, and, if you're fast enough, you can build up a combo that multiplies the points you get from destroying the objects up to 8 times the usual amount, but be careful not to let it drop. Really fun, even though there's a "problem" - you theoretically load an altered version of the world during those challenges (where the objects are restored, but the enemies are gone), but the vehicles that naturally spawn in the bases are left there and you can use them normally. Those often include attack helicopters, so you can cheese the majority of the challenges by using them. But there are a few ones where you don't have access to them, and those are likely the ones where you'll struggle the most.
• LAND/AIR/SEA RACES: Those are pretty standard checkpoint races - go through all checkpoints under a time limit and you win. Not all that original, but it is the ol' reliable minigame for open-world games, and it works well, as you'd expect it to. My major gripe with this mode is that, later on, you can't win the races with the standard vehicle that the game gives you (why even offer a standard vehicle then?), so you either have to unlock what I like to call the "cheat code" vehicles or do multiple races getting only a few of the gears (more on gears later on) instead of all of them to unlock Nitro II, and then you can do it with the now not-so-standard vehicle. The "cheat code" vehicles are the Farina Duo (F1 car, you either unlock it by being lucky and finding one abandoned in the side of the road after a towing fail or by quitting a specific race that gives you one as the standard vehicle, so you can use it in free roam and then take it to a garage) for land races, the Squalo (luxury speedboat, check the wiki for instructions on how to obtain it because it's easily the most pain-in-the-ass vehicle to take to a garage) for sea races and the Thunderhawk (automatically unlocked after liberating the Griphon military base) for air races.
• CRASH BOMBS: My least favorite ones, only because of how finicky they are and because they're basically races in disguise. You have a vehicle with a bomb and you have to take it to a given point, where there are lots of vehicles to explode... but the explosion gives a tiny amount of points, and what really matters is how fast you arrive to that point while above a certain speed limit (else you'll lose your "supercharge", which basically means you'll lose a ton of points and be forced to restart). So yeah, once you realize the big explosion in the end is just for show and you have to treat it as just an ordinary "point A to point B" race, it gets significantly less thrilling.
• SCRAPYARD SCRAMBLES: My favorite ones, because of how fun and straightforward they are (there only being a few of them helps, since there's a low risk of them boring you). Attach a magnet to your vehicle, activate it - the game doesn't tell you how to do so, but you press L1 - and go around collecting bavarium (fictional mineral that basically does everything the plot wants it to) while enemy vehicles try to break down your pile. When you have a big enough pile, take them to a pit with doors (you'll recognize it when you see it, hard to miss), deactivate your magnet to let them drop and then leave as the doors open and they all fall through the opening giving you points - rinse and repeat until you get the required points (tip: blue bavarium is high-quality bavarium, which is more difficult to obtain but gives you more points, so it's worth the hassle), remembering to mind the time limit.
• SHOOTING GALLERIES: Also an ol' reliable minigame, and it's pretty standard - shoot as close to the center of the targets as you can with the given weapon, without missing or hitting the fake targets in order to not lose your multiplier. There are only a few of these as well.
• WINGSUIT COURSES: The most common challenges, in which you fly through various checkpoints with your wingsuit (going through the small red ring instead of the big white ring is more difficult, but gives you much more points, so it's what you'll have to aim for when getting all the gears) to get points until you reach the required threshold. Sounds pretty standard, but these can get quite taxing later on, especially the ones on the Falco and Montana provinces - although, if you have the Sky Fortress DLC, you can use the bavarium wingsuit, which has a boost and brakes, making it slightly easier.

By completing the challenges, you get gears, which are used to unlock upgrades, most of them being really cool or useful - that's why I recommend the completionist mindset for this game, since it's the way to enjoy the experience as most as possible. The better you do, the more gears you get (up to five).

 

There are also the collectables, which come in several different types, each one offering different rewards:

• DAREDEVIL JUMPS: Pretty standard stunt jumps, and you don't even need to land the vehicle - it counts the jump if you simply take off at a reasonable speed. Unlocks three vehicles, one for each region (although two of them are pre-existing vehicles with a custom paintjob, which kinda sucks).
• DI RAVELLO'S TAPES: The standard lore collectables, which tell more about how di Ravello came to conquer Medici. Would be cooler if the story wasn't bare-bones, but still cool for what they are and they give you di Ravello's personal helicopter once you collect all of them (which is also a custom paintjob for a pre-existing vehicle, unfortunately).
• ANCIENT TOMBS: Only found in the Insula Striate region, although you don't really collect them - you go up to them and pay your respects to the deceased. Once you pay all the respects, you get a portable mortar, which sounds really cool in theory, but it's a really gimmicky weapon that you're not likely to use much in practice.
• REBEL SHRINES: Similar to the ancient tombs, but found everywhere - you go up to them and light a candle to honor the deceased rebellion members. They offer the least useful reward of them all, which is free fast travel from that region (because you get free fast travel from a given province once you liberate it anyway, and liberating a province shows all collectables located in it on the map, so you'll probably have liberated them all by the time you get to all the shrines anyway).
• VINTAGE PARTS: Parts of vintage vehicles/weapons that are buried in the ground, with a shovel conveniently nearby for you to recover them. Three rewards, one for each region - specifically, a sawed-off shotgun, a revolver and a WWII fighter jet.

In addition to these two activities, you can also take some vehicles to garages to unlock them for your rebel drop (which you can use to call weapons and vehicles to your location at any time, given you have beacons - which can be found in every outpost you liberate plus a few other places, in case you need more).

 

DLCs

I got the XXL edition on sale, which comes with the three DLCs. In general, I'd say they're quite fun and unlock some really nifty vehicles and weapons, although they're unfortunately quite short. The best order of playing them is the one in which I'll list them, since they have their own storyline, which involves the eDEN Corporation and the mercenary organization Black Hand - but be warned, it's still not the focus, so it's not particularly better than the base game's story anyway.

1. Sky Fortress (set on an airship; introduces drone enemies; gives you the aforementioned bavarium wingsuit, as well as a high-tech assault rifle and a drone you can call through rebel drop to aid you, although you don't control it directly; adds three more wingsuit courses and a new challenge called Sky Terror, in which you use the weapons on your bavarium wingsuit to destroy as many drones as you can under a tIme limit)
2. Mech Land Assault (adds a new island, which is Insula Lacrima; introduces the absurdly awesome and OP mechs as well as a new weapon which isn't really all that great; adds a new challenge called Mech Arena, in which you use a mech to survive eight waves of enemies while trying to score as many points as possible - the best way to do it is basically to use the GRIP in everything that's nearby for the style points and shoot everything that's distant to complete the waves quickly)
3. Bavarium Sea Heist (set in an eDEN research center called Stingray; introduces the outrageously OP Loochador, which is a boat with rockets, and eDEN Spark, which is a weapon used to summon lightning bolts from the sky; adds a new challenge called Boat Invaders, in which you use the Spark to destroy as many boats as possible under a time limit while avoiding the antennas that shock you if you get nearby)

 

Miscellaneous ramblings

Who the fuck made the bikes so janky? Holy moly. First game I've played in which I wanna avoid bikes as much as possible, because they're so clunky to control.

 

Weirdly specific rant aside, definitely look up the easter eggs after you complete the game and do them - not spoiling them so you can see for yourself, but there are quite a few and they're really cool. I read a quote from the director in which he tells about how much the team liked doing the easter eggs, and it really shows.

 

What's the next stop on the flight?

I planned on playing Resident Evil 0 after this one, but I'm not really in the mood - so I'll do an Uncharted marathon (and yes, I'll be doing Brutal difficulty). So stay tuned for my next update, probably in a few months or so.

Edited March 14, 2022 by Eagle

[Eagle]

Now, I technically haven't finished the game yet, but I just couldn't wait to make this write-up and I'm halfway through my Brutal playthrough, so I know I'll definitely have this finished soon... so, without further ado, here's:

 

Game #14 – Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Story

Uncharted is known for being a heavily cinematic franchise with many big setpieces and places where the gameplay slows down to allow for characters to both connect to the player and build relationships between themselves, but this is surprisingly not much of a thing in the first game. From what I've read, this was supposed to be a "playable action game" of sorts, which means more focus on the bang-bang and less focus on character interactions, heavily scripted moments, and whatnot. And I'd personally say they succeeded on achieving what they were aiming for, but I still prefer the balance between bang-bang and slow moments of 2 and 3 (from what I've played of 4, it tips the scales too heavily on the other side and makes it so that most of the game is slow-burns and setpieces, but I'll analyze further when I actually get to it).

 

Why am I saying this in the story section? Because the "playable action game" they had in mind made it so that, while Nate/Sully/Elena are still very good characters (and would only get improved in the games to come), the rest of the characters are "eh" and the plot itself is pretty basic, as it's merely an excuse to get you from one shootout to the other. For that reason, Sully is absent for a big chunk of the game, Elena decides to split up and rejoin you at the most random of moments (so you wouldn't have help all the time), the villains are as one-dimensional as they come and show up twice or thrice before their demise, etc.

 

Nate's character makes up for all these shortcomings, though – Nolan North truly did an excellent job there. Is he a bit of a Gary Stu? Perhaps. But you can't deny he's absurdly charismatic, even if he doesn't get as much opportunities to do his quips and bantering here as he would in further games (which also show his more serious side when appropriate, of course).

 

Gameplay

The gameplay basically is made up of two aspects: parkour and combat, but mostly combat. Puzzles are few and far between and are as easy as they come, and there's not much exploration to be done for the treasures (will be discussed further in the "Secondary content" section). Both of them really surprised me... one for the better and the other for the worse.

 

The good stuff first. Combat is much tighter than I was expecting from such an old game (even considering that it got the remaster treatment), which is good as it's the main chunk of the game – if it was bad, let's just say the only chapter that doesn't feature it is chapter 2 (some other chapters have combat sections, even if it's not present throughout the whole thing)... although the vehicle chapters have a different form of combat, but more on that afterwards. Sure, the weapon variety is lesser than in the sequels and there's no denying that the big setpieces can be good if done in the right way, so it's an aspect that still has room for improvement. But you can tell they made it the whole focus of the game for a reason – it works, and works well.

 

Can't quite say the same for the parkour. The franchise as a whole tends to have some janky parkour at times, but this one somehow manages to be even more jankier, mainly because of two reasons: the first being that this game over-relies on collapsing objects, so you have to always be moving quickly; which wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the second reason, which is Nate most of the time not looking towards objects you can hold to, so you're never sure whether you can actually jump to somewhere or if you'll just leap to your death--oh time's over, whoops guess I'd better do the whole thing again. Once you memorize where do you need to go to, it's not that big of an issue, but it does make for a frustrating experience until that happens.

 

Chapters 7 and 12 (and a relatively small section of 8) are unique, however, as they are vehicle chapters – the former being an on-rails shooter where you're on a jeep's mounted turret as Elena drives and has to shoot the pursuing enemies, and the latter being a jetski section where you head upriver to reach a monastery while avoiding barrels and enemies positioned along the way. I know there are a lot of people who hate them, and while I personally didn't mind them all that much, I can definitely see why. They're abrupt and end up messing with the pacing as a result, not to mention that the mechanics sometimes aren't done all that well; the turret has you completely exposed as you shoot at the enemies and it's basically a matter of RNG whether they hit you before you can even react or simply don't engage with you at all (obviously much more of an issue in higher difficulties than in lower ones, but still), and the jetski's handling is a bit wonky, not to mention that the damage from the barrels is inconsistent and using  to drive can take a while to get used to at first.

 

Secondary content

The only secondary content here is the treasures. They're fun little collectables that can be obtained quite easily with a guide (and you could definitely go without using one, as well; would take a little more time, sure, but they're usually not that out of the way and the areas tend to be on the smaller side) and offer a few cool skins for Nate, but they're not all that special otherwise and most of them are reskins of each other.

 

Ambientation

This is another aspect where the franchise has always shined in. Soundtrack's amazing, as always (especially Nate's theme – no wonder they used it for all the other games), and the different areas you go to, while relatively simple, are well-done and set themselves apart from each other, and the game does a great job in setting up suspense by having colorful and vibrant sceneries as you traverse through the jungle slowly changed by dark and bleak buildings, which fits perfectly with the narrative's progression, especially as the more mythical elements start to be introduced.

 

Technical aspects

If you play through the game normally, you are very unlikely to find any issue whatsoever – loading times have been drastically reduced by the remaster, consistent frames, no bugs/freezes/crashes, etc. It's a very polished experience, through and through.

 

You can find all sorts of easily-replicable glitches that allow you to completely bork the game to your advantage, though. Recommend reading up on them for a better understanding of how they work, but three of them in particular are the most essential ones for Brutal: crouching wall shuffle, standing wall shuffle and the tweak exploit. There's other stuff, like the airwalking and the sky launches (which I personally didn't manage to pull off), but these three will make the mode that's supposed to give you a major headache into a breeze.

 

Map boundaries? Who needs them, amirite?

 

Miscellaneous ramblings

Yes, I did use exploits and skips for Brutal. It's basically Crushing (which I already did legit), but the ammo pickups are tiny, which would make the experience living hell if not for the tweak exploit that gives infinite ammo. Basically inserted in the remaster just for the sake of saying "look, new difficulty!", in which case I don't mind using "cheats" at all – I'll always do legitimately things that would provide a genuinely fun challenge, though.

 

Another thing introduced in the remaster (besides minor stuff such as leaderboards and photo mode) is a Speedrun mode, which is basically the normal game but there's a timer in the top-right corner of your screen. Pretty neato, but there's not much reason to play it other than for the trophy (which has a much tighter time than I expected, BTW).

Could have made this screen slightly less basic... but eh.

 

What's the next stop on the flight?

"WAIT A MINUTE! Where's the verdict, you dolt?" Calm down, I can explain. Just wait a bit, will ya?

 

So, I plan to finish up the collection by doing U2 (no, not the band) and then the third game afterwards... and I was thinking of doing the fourth game afterwards, but I might wanna mix it up with a game that's more along the lines of what I usually tend to enjoy more. Or not. IDK. But I'll definitely finish up the trilogy before moving on to something else.

 

Some changes and things that happened in my life since the time of the last review (in red to differentiate it from the actual review, so you know what to skip if you don't care for this part)

 

So, I mostly wanted to talk about two things here: how I changed up the checklist yet again, and an incident that happened in the middle of my playthrough (unrelated to the game itself).

 

And yes, you read that right – I changed the checklist up yet again. Yes, I'm indecisive, if you couldn't tell by now. I changed the banner to the new one you can see now (which I think retains my personal identity, but is much more pleasant to the eye; I'm quite content with it for once, and don't plan on changing it for a while), removed the "Changelog" thing (I saw it in another checklist when I first created mine and liked the idea, but it just becomes too much of a pain to keep updating after a while), and, most importantly, removed the "Verdict" section and its associated scores from all updates. I find that giving numbered scores to things not only makes it so that it looks like more of a review and less of an update about what I'm currently playing, which I want to avoid at all costs, but also... I just don't think numbers can adequately describe my feelings towards a game, and I'd much rather people actually see what I have to say than just look at the score at the end.

 

As for the incident, it happened right after I finished my initial playthrough (I did four playthroughs: casual run on Normal while collecting all the treasures, Crushing run to unlock Brutal, speedrun and, finally, the Brutal run): one day, I came home after a long day of school to play, to find out my controller wouldn't work for some reason. Tried everything I could find on the Internet, but to no avail. Had to send it to my father to get fixed, and he discovered it was a Bluetooth connectivity issue in the console that was preventing it from recognizing my controller; did manage to get it fixed, but it required a factory reser, which ended up in me losing all my saves as a result since I hadn't bothered to learn how to upload saves to my USB. Woo-hoo.

 

Took a while to get all the settings to the way I like them again and download all the stuff I have, but it worked out on the end. Bothered to learn how to upload saves to my USB, and it's much easier than I thought it would be. The only problem now is that, if I ever get the DLCs for the games I haven't 100% completed yet, I no longer have my previous saves, which is fine and dandy for some instances (like FC5), not so much for others (like Odyssey). Didn't affect me for this game specifically, since I could just do the Crushing run like I planned to anyway, but would have been a pain if it happened in the middle of a playthrough for a bigger, non-linear game.

 

(And no, me learning how to use USB doesn't mean the pictures will be better. Still too much of a hassle to send them to PC and then to my cellphone – yes, I did change my ol' reliable tablet I mentioned in the beginning of this checklist for a cellphone, and I've had it since the beginning of 2021 – considering how slow the household PC is, not to mention that my photos are all funny glitches/personal records for challenges anyway, as I believe you can find regular photos of the game anywhere on the Internet.)

 

Have a good one, everyone, and I hope you're all doing well.