The Division - Thoughts

I have no idea where I stand on Ubisoft's The Division. My biggest roadblock to forming an opinion is that the game performs abysmally on my computer for some reason. I met the game's specifications—an i5-6600K, GTX 970, 8 GB of RAM—but my playthrough was rotten with unloaded assets, to the point that The Division wouldn't even allow me to take cover behind its low poly vehicles. I bumped my settings down as low as they could possibly go but it wasn't a cure-all: Times Square was still littered with incomplete shapes and menu icons outright refused to load even after a minute of waiting. I'd classify my time spent with the game as "fun", but I can't overstate how frustrating it is to play something that "kinda sorta works but not really".

The biggest (non-graphical) hurdle to getting into The Division is that it's missing a unique, gratifying hook. The first Destiny had the same exact problem—the gorgeous exterior belied a shallow interior devoid of a compelling plot. The campaign supports over twenty hours of playtime, but by that point you'll have seen almost most of what the game has to offer. That includes abilities, weapons, enemies, locations, and modes—basically everything barring the DLC content and raids. And while I was curious about the latter, one youtube video was all it took to extinguish my fascination; The Division's raids still looked to be in their formative years.

Plus, the game is all but dead in 2020. My only expedition into the tense and chaotic Dark Zone—an area where players were allowed to kill one another for loot—was so anticlimactic that I didn't bother trying it again. Nary a single other player showed up to waylay my team; in fact, I didn't encounter another player (besides my brother) outside of the hub area for my entire playthrough. Even the traditionally boisterous chat box was inhabited solely by Chinese players dropping dubious hyperlinks. There's a chance people were hanging out in the max level zones, but my desire to play the game vanished well before I could get there.

The main reason why I didn't want to continue is that The Division is shamelessly repetitive. There's only a handful of mission types and enemy factions, all of which blend together after a while into a lukewarm "shoot guy in hoody" broth. The Division taught me something important thing about my tastes: I really dislike shooters where similar-sized humanoids are your only enemy. Specialized foes are denoted by an icon next to their health (like a grenade for a grenadier) but you still approach them the same way you tackle everybody else. It's probably the reason why I never fell in love with franchises like Uncharted or Call of Duty—I can only handle two hours of shooting dudes in the head before I start to get bored.

Like with Destiny, the polished gameplay at least helps to obscure the repetition. The absolute coolest thing (which was accentuated for me after recently playing the Mass Effect games) is that going to and from cover is as natural as slipping on a pair of loafers. Entrenched enemies are easily countered by zig-zagging your way around bits of cover to flank them, a process made effortless thanks to the way the A button auto-sends you to wherever you're looking. If you haven't played The Division before, you don't know what you're missing; playing without this system feels as cumbersome as not being able to move and shoot at the same time. Being able to vault over a car and dash into nearby cover, without a worry that the controls will muck up your actions, is The Division's greatest strength bar none.

The gunplay is excellent as well, but not nearly as varied as I would've liked. Once I found the 100 bullet magazine LMG, I had no incentive to switch off from it even when I found weapons of a higher level. And I don't think it's because the LMG was perfect for me as much as sniper rifles and shotguns didn't have the stopping power I wished they had. Every single enemy in The Division is shockingly tanky, demanding up to a full magazine of damage to drop. The most effective method, in my experience, was loading an extended magazine onto my LMG and stabilizing my sights over the enemy's noggin, allowing me to drop an elite baddie in one go if they remained stationary. I came to adore the LMG's ferocity during my time with The Division, but it was largely a bonding out of necessity, not choice.

Likewise, I appreciate how many abilities are crammed into the game, though I felt little to no need to experiment. The problem is that enemies are as dangerous as they are beefy, requiring you to focus on 1) healing allies and 2) stunning foes. And with only three ability slots available to you (one of which is on a ~10 minute timer), you're likely going to prioritize things like a full heal over a minimal damage boost while in cover. Thankfully you can choose which heal you prefer and which stun you like (I was a big fan of the flashbang roly-polies), but once you find your winning combination it's easy to forget about the other options entirely.

I jumped into The Division to preface myself for The Division 2, and I don't really regret doing so. It was kind of a dumb idea since my game ran like crap, and they're mostly similar experiences anyway (yet another apt Destiny comparison!), but I liked seeing The Division's bold blueprint for an MMO FPS devoid of class types. I also enjoyed unearthing the game's pitiful shortcomings, thanks in large part to the ingenious cover system that kept the combat engaging even when the missions were not. It's tragic that the first game in the series is little more than a bygone relic of... four years ago, but having played The Division myself, I totally understand why it was ultimately abandoned.

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team - Thoughts

Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is a decent RPG infested with text boxes. What's great about it is that it's bright, light-hearted, and fairly creative... none of which alleviate the text box plague. The animations are fluid and lively—unlike the text boxes—and the game is surprisingly challenging, which helps to keep the combat exciting—though I can't say the same about the text boxes. Beyond that however, there's not much left to praise; honestly there's quite a lot to bemoan, like... what was it? Oh yeah, text boxes! And if you want to shout "look, I get it!" well... let's just say we're just getting started.

Because it's hard to refrain from shouting "look, I get it!" the entire game. Dream Team is downright mired in superfluous dialogue every other screen. You're saddled with not one but two chatty caretakers, neither possessing characteristics beyond being short tempered. People thought Navi was unbearable, but her prompts were mostly optional; Dream Team's aides are far more similar to Fi from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, taking every opportunity possible to point out the most obvious stuff in the world. I know to press the R button to access my abilities, I know a red button should be hit with a hammer, I know the one path I can go down is literally where I need to go! And it's not just endless tutorialization—your guides tell you what to do every step of the way so that you're practically on rails for the entire of the game.

Plus the game is long too. Mario & Luigi titles occupy this sweet spot of being action RPGs not only in style but length, rarely lasting beyond 24 hours. But when I had eclipsed a full day of play time in Dream Team, I still had two large zones to explore with god knows how many text boxes lying in wait. And still—still!—the game had the nerve to explain what a shortcut was at the 30 hour mark! I found myself hoping the experience would end soon, not just so I could play something else, but because it was impossible to have fun. There's just no feasible way to make a Mario & Luigi game endearing for this length of time: the simplistic story line doesn't support the play time, locales & obstacles become repetitive, and the combat system loses its luster the longer you engage with it.

Everything else in Mario & Luigi: Dream Team is decent for the most part, though each of the game's positives come with their own negatives. The delightful animations are probably the best part about the game, although it's not like the charming art style was absent in previous entries. Combat is as engaging as it's always been, but the endgame boils down to "spam your best Bros. Attack on annoying enemies/bosses, jump on everything else." The colorful foes and their tricky counterattacks are fun, but there's roughly two enemy types per area, which gets stale incredibly quickly. The lore behind Pi'illo Island is mildly interesting, but the main villain is dull, forgettable, and takes a backseat to Bowser (snore). And the dream sections provide a brilliant idea blueprint, continuing the gameplay dichotomy introduced in Bowser's Inside Story but giving it a clever twist. However, Dream Team barely does anything with this concept, which is a damn shame.

Diving into Luigi's dreams to explore his version of reality is promising ground for some humorous hijinks, but the game treats it as a simple 2-D mirror of the zone you were just in. Dream-version of allies manifest to aid you, but they're exactly like their real world counterpart, and even "Dreamy Luigi" still uses the same old Luigi sprite. In certain rooms Luigi can control the background to give Mario more traversal options, or multiply himself to provide Mario... more traversal options, but that's the extent of the "dreaminess" the game delves into. Combat is nearly identical—which is a huge disappointment considering in the last game you could control Bowser—and the giant dream boss battles look nice but are WAY too goddamn long! Like, there's no RPG elements involved in them, so why would Alpha Dream make them last over twenty minutes?!

I also have some major gripes about the final boss (it was the worst endgame struggle I've had since Final Fantasy III on DS), but my agitation for this entry has reached its limit. All I'll say is that giving a boss the ability to 1) become invulnerable, 2) heal nearly 20% of their health, and 3) spawn enemies that provide the boss immunity until they're dispatched, is a bunch of bull—especially since there's no limitation on how often this ability can be spammed! Halfway through my first attempt on this colossal pain in the ass, they re-used this ability until they healed back to full health—and there was nothing I could do! A day later and I'm still flabbergasted at this absurdly obnoxious design choice.

I've complained a lot about Mario & Luigi: Dream Team in large part because I've always been a fan of the series. I adore the first game on GBA and think highly of Bowser's Inside Story (the second game is ok). But all Mario & Luigi: Dream Team did for me was affirm that I'm not interested in picking up Paper Jam any time soon. There's still a lot to like about the game, and a few moments that will elicit a good chuckle, but the slow pace coupled with a crushing length is a poisonous combination. Throw in a drought of enemy variety, a poorly explored dream premise, and an asteroid belt worth of text boxes, and suddenly Dream Team takes Mario & Luigi from a great alternative to Paper Mario to "maybe only play it if you're a fan... a fan with plenty of time on their hands."
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Images obtained from: youtube.com, ebgames.com, gaminginvented.com, theicecave.org, 

Mass Effect 2 - Thoughts

Mass Effect 2 has an amazing opening. An interstellar cruiser with an asteroid hull teleports out of nowhere and obliterates your ship, ostensibly killing your main character Commander Shepard in the process. Of course Shepard doesn't stay dead—and your ship gets reconstructed—but the bold start does more than just thrill: it establishes for all intents and purposes that the first Mass Effect has also been obliterated. Gone are the cumbersome inventories, the worthless RPG options, and the low-stakes conversations of the past. Mass Effect 2 is cleaner, more cinematic, and a categorical upgrade to the first game in almost every way. And it's not only a superior title—it's one of the best games on the Xbox 360.

That's not to say that Mass Effect 2 doesn't stumble. The worst part about the game is that it happily throws only two types of minigames at you over the course of thirty hours, meaning you'll "play" them over a hundred times. They're better than the droll Simon Says nonsense in the first game, but since neither minigame increases in intensity or complexity, they get real old real fast. Besides that, there's a slew of BioWare Bugs™ that will inevitably force a reload, and the UI remains in need of improvement. For instance, your upgrade catalog is sequestered to a computer terminal, ordered alphabetically instead of by type for some reason. And you can't even see what your squadmates' abilities do unless you bring them on a mission! I also have some reservations about the combat, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Mass Effect 2's failings may agitate, but they never really pull the game down. For the most part the rambunctious ride through space is smooth, fascinating, and always entertaining. What helps is that rather than embarking on a disconnected goose chase across the galaxy for an agent gone rogue, Mass Effect 2 is centered on two well-worn premises: building a team and getting revenge. The fabulously-designed Collector ship is an enigmatic vessel that hounds you throughout the story, its eerie, insectoid inhabitants popping up right when you start to forget about them. And your squadmates are as distinct as they are dangerous, being well-worth the effort it takes to recruit them thanks to their diverse designs, colorful backstories, and powerful abilities.

When I call their abilities "powerful", I don't mean it as some bizarre form of fictional flattery—your team in Mass Effect 2 frequently does heavy lifting. Taking cover has become a fundamental part of the series, as any unit left without it will get shredded to bits. Your allies are a key part of that "shredding": they unleash good damage, soften armor, and can pull entrenched enemies airborne so you can fill them with holes. I found myself constantly thanking my squadmates as peripheral foes flew back from concussive blasts or were ignited in a blaze of fire. Whereas the first Mass Effect had me babysitting my squadmates, in 2 I was trying my best to keep up.

Combat is no longer the clumsy slog it was in the first game, but it's not especially deep either. I don't think that's an indictment of the game's quality—I found the action to be plenty serviceable—it's just that you'll bereft of options most of the time. Battlefields can range from narrow hallways to larger stadiums, but since being out in the open is a death sentence, you'll find one piece of cover to plant yourself at and fight from there. And holy cow does Mass Effect 2 love throwing scores of enemies at you, making every encounter feel twice as long as it should be. The rock-paper-scissors system of having to deal with shields-armor-barriers keeps the gunplay from feeling brain-dead, but linking all abilities to the same cooldown pushes you to use same 2-3 routine powers. Again, the combat is satisfying for the most part, it's just that the longer you play Mass Effect 2, the more repetitive you'll notice the encounters are (and nowhere is this more evident than in the Arrival DLC).

Thankfully your journey through the galaxy is no longer comprised of dull rocky wastelands. Mass Effect 2 structures its campaign around recruiting allies and gaining their loyalty, which keeps the story strong, your tasks varied, and the narrative relevant. When you do decide to take a break and explore the unknown, the side missions are all surprisingly unique. True, Blood Pack is a lot like Blue Suns which is a lot like Eclipse, but the backdrops behind the mercenary groups offer the diversity that the first game desperately needed. On one planet you'll infiltrate a quarantined robot facility, on another you'll wade through a misty maze, and on another you'll tip-toe atop a crashed frigate teetering over a cliff. And those are just the side missions, the stuff BioWare is fine with letting you miss!

Lastly, the story retains the same level of excellence, both in content and prose, set by its predecessor. The removal of a lot of casual conversations might be disappointing to some, but I felt that Mass Effect 2 delivered a good mix of discussions both pertinent and incidental. The mystery of the Collectors has a good (though slightly ridiculous) payoff, and you'll come to love chatting with your staggering squad of twelve—or at least find a few to grow attached to. In the grand scheme of things, Mass Effect 2's plot is mostly connective tissue binding the first and third games together, but the enthralling story woven here outshines the tales surrounding it; 2 is the meat of the trilogy's sandwich.

Mass Effect 2's leap over the first game is practically cosmic. It's unarguable that in 2, the promising blueprint of Mass Effect has reached its full potential, culminating in one of the best experiences in gaming's seventh console generation. It's in no way a flawless game, but Mass Effect 2's problems come across as blemishes, not scars. It's an impressive, tense journey loaded with hours of content to ruminate over, managing to never overstay its welcome even if you 100% the game. I don't think any planet-hopping sci-fi video game has topped Mass Effect 2—and though it could be nostalgia speaking, I doubt any ever will.

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Images obtained from: NightSolo.net, etgeekera.com, youtube.com, NorthernLight.org

A Way Out - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

I'm not sure where I stand on A Way Out—I've been left kind of... confused and unimpressed. The premise behind the game is amazing: it's a cinematic, co-op-only campaign about busting out of jail and getting sweet revenge. Despite both characters having their own distinct personalities and motivations, there's a lot about them that just doesn't mesh with the gameplay or the story. Honestly, A Way Out makes a good case for why realistic dialogue was removed for Brothers.

Hazelight's first game, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, is an excellent experience about two kids on a journey to save their father. What sticks out to the player the most throughout it (besides the purposefully awkward controls) are the moments of levity the brothers can engage in, as well as the gut-wrenching ending. Strangely, A Way Out unabashedly mimics these two facets, but comes across as more confused and dissonant due to it.

The main characters being playful and absent-minded in Brothers is great because they're literal kids. But in A Way Out, a mere day after escaping from prison, our convict protagonists invade someone's house and can... play piano? Smell flowers? Build a house of cards? The miscellaneous activities the players can partake in are fun, but they detract from the urgency of the story. Players can opt to avoid silly things, but then they risk missing out on dialogue and character flavor—the ingredients the game is built around. And humdrum activities like watching TV or petting an animal may be within the realm of realism, winding up a sewing machine serves no purpose other than to say, "Hey, look what we programmed into the game!"

Likewise the dialogue isn't natural in a plot that demands it to be. Tonally, Hazelight hits on all the right points, but conversations are frequently stilted, weird, and forced. A Way Out is written with the script consciously in mind, instead of an ear for how conversations should carry from line to line. And even when the dialogue doesn't sound foreign, there's usually not enough substance to what's being said. Most of the game (barring the final act) is played at face value, giving you few reasons to invest in its characters or loathe its cartoonish antagonist. You're better off enjoying the characters for their archetypes and thinking of the story as a pulpy 70s revenge flick.

The reason I'm so down A Way Out isn't because it's terrible; the game was just surprisingly mediocre. It looks alright and is entertaining for the most part, a couple of good co-op ideas popping up now and then. For example, there are occasionally forks in the road that ask the players if they want to solve a problem quietly or with violence, and being forced to row a boat together provides for some good laughs. The cinematic framing of the cutscenes and gameplay—which allow you to view the world through both character lenses at once—is a brilliant touch as well. There's also some fun gunfights the players get to partake in, which is laudable considering this is Hazelight's first crack at that style. However, at the heart of A Way Out is its narrative and its protagonists, and neither one really escapes being a shortcoming of the game.

I like the director behind the game, Josef Fares. I think he's a strong visionary that handles tragedy in his works very well. I believe the problem, however, is that he's a subpar writer—or at least, A Way Out has shown that the script needed more revisions and a serious editor. There's a little bit too much residual DNA left from Brothers here, and while the final act is the strongest moment of the game, the intrigue it brings is too little too late, and honestly comes across as forced. A Way Out's template could be used to make an interesting game in the future, but 'll likely always remember it as a goofy co-op adventure that left me scratching my head.

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Images obtained from: ea.com, ShyGuys.io, VentureBeat.com, TechRadar.com

Mass Effect - Thoughts

The beginning of the most epic trilogy on the Xbox 360 is as rocky as a cliff's face. BioWare's Mass Effect is an active struggle to play—it fights back against your RPG and TPS instincts, trying to blend both but being good at neither. What it is, however, is an extremely stable bedrock to one of the best video game universes of all time. Mass Effect's aesthetics, characters, and interlocking political struggles are second to none in the seventh console generation, and no amount of clunky combat or barren worlds could ever change that.

I think an interesting distinction should be made here: Mass Effect's universe is engrossing but not particularly poignant. It doesn't have a deeper statement to make about our society like Papers, Please, nor is its plot something that can only be done in the video game format like Undertale. What it does well is delightfully simple: it gives you a fully 3D, novelesque sci-fi/fantasy universe to explore on (mostly) your own terms. You'll get to converse with various species, visit colorful planets, and dive into scads of lore and fictional physics. Mass Effect is a big playground where the goal isn't to find and create interesting gameplay scenarios like in sandbox games—it's to merely learn more. Discovering another codex entry or resolving a dispute between business partners is the crux of the game, not player expression.

This is the main reason why Mass Effect works despite its plentiful shortcomings. At the end of the day, what you'll retain from your experience are the conversations, character struggles, and anxiety over the choices you didn't pick. The last aspect—the choices—can unfortunately have shallow results (especially as the series reaches its close), but it feels meaningful in the moment, pushing you to ponder strange-yet-relatable hypothetical conundrums, like "can this species proselytize on the space-UN's property without a permit?" I think these questions can be enlightening without any kind of consequential follow-through, just because it gets you ruminating over which side of the fence you stand on. That's not to say I don't wish the series had greater ramifications for your actions, but that's not really a problem that the first game has to grapple with.

What is a problem is the gameplay. And no, not just the rubbery Mako sections—the gunplay in Mass Effect is a shockingly jittery and imprecise. Although I'm playing through the series as an Adept on the second hardest difficulty available, the challenge put forth by the game really wasn't an issue (especially once my entire biotic catalog was available). My gripes stem from the fact that fighting enemies is rarely satisfying: the framerate is constantly tanking, your weapon accuracy is laughable, foes are either stationary target practice or blitzing you, re-positioning is cumbersome, and the cover system is so sticky that you're better off manually dancing around corners. Meanwhile, whenever your allies aren't body blocking you or dying to god knows what, they're whittling enemies away at imperceptible rate. Keyword being imperceptible, as its an adjective the game is far too comfortable with.

A big problem with Mass Effect is that it wants to be an RPG without providing the information of one. There are no combat logs or floating damage numbers—the best you can surmise from your damage is how fast the enemy health bar (or tiny shield blip) lowers when you're on the offensive. The game provides you with information on the level up screen, but hard numbers about damage, distance, and percentages are fuzzy when you can't observe them during the gameplay. Leveling up truly feels like an arbitrary experience, outside of grabbing whatever nodes give you access to new abilities. And not even all of them are necessary; by the end of the game I was bulldozing through everything with just Lift and Marksman, the former for disabling foes and the latter for as my best DPS ability. I found that Warp and Stasis weren't even worth the time required to select them from the radial menu.

I don't really like the combat in Mass Effect, but thankfully the player can easily adapt to it. Neither the gunplay nor the (often hilarious) Mako sections reach truly abysmal depths—both are mostly a mediocre roadblock to the story. It also doesn't help that the bulk of side missions take place on the same mountainous, featureless planetoids which all happen to contain one of three buildings-slash-battle arenas. Between sniffing out missions in the Citadel's endless, labyrinthine hallways and having every side mission conclude in one of three drab locations, I was more than happy to be done with the game. I barely even touched its arena-based DLC, which featured endlessly spawning enemies (joy.)

Oh, and the last thing I need to begrudge is that inventory management (on the 360 at least) is a downright mess. You can only delete items one at a time, and any weapons or armor mods you purge return you back at the top of the list where your best gear is, meaning you have to scroll all the way down to find the junk you're trying to toss, delete it, and then repeat the process again. For scores of items. It's cumbersome and on top of that I found a large portion of the mods to be useless—why would you want to pick a mod that poisons enemies or slightly bypasses shields when you can choose the one that gives you nearly 40% more damage to most of the enemies in the game? For a game that prides itself on decision making, the gear you acquire has very little of it.

I don't think my good will for the Mass Effect series was misplaced: the first game spins one hell of a yarn that's ultimately rewarding to play through, even as a stand-alone entry. But it's as adventurous as it is unrefined. Mass Effect's laurels rest on its premise and narrative, not on its combat... or its performance... or its planet variety... combat... enemy variety... AI... or even the game's cinematography, which turns cutscenes into be dizzying shish kabob of quick cuts. But for BioWare to stumble this much and avoid landing flat on its face meant they were onto something truly special with Commander Shephard's enduring debut.

(As a side note: I'm actually of the opinion that driving the Mako provides a nice change of pace and is no worse than the shooting sections. Being at the helm of the galaxy's bounciest tank is not great, but it's no more repetitive and obnoxious than the rest of the game.)

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Images obtained from: steam.com, TheMotleyCrew.com, youtube.com, imgur.com

Spider-Man - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Spider-Man is a better game than it is a story. It may be because I've immersed myself in good comics lately, but I was expecting more from a non-adaptation video game of New York City's favorite webslinger. Thankfully you don't need to have a strong plot to have fun—Insomniac's forte has always been delivering a colorful city for the player to feel like an empowered god in, and it's no different here. And while the combat system wears its Arkham Asylum inspiration on its sleeve, the pendulum-based traversal is the freshest, most exciting way to explore an open world game to date.

Spider-Man ends on a whimper. That's about as spoilery as I'll get for this article. It includes a lot of interesting villains from the series but focuses on two of them, telling a surprisingly somber story about betrayal... which would be right down my alley, except that it doesn't say anything meaningful. I came away from the plot thinking "wow Spider-Man did not have fun" rather than "wow, what an amazing tale!" A greater contrast could've been drawn between the villains, or better yet, a redemptive arc added to the most sympathetic of the two. It could just be that I was expecting more literary analysis out of a story concerned first and foremost with high-stakes drama, but that doesn't stop me from feeling like I was told a video game story from the early 2000s.

Thankfully that's the only truly outdated aspect of the Spider-Man. The biggest surprise for me was how nice it felt being able to swing around a realistic portrayal of Manhattan—or as realistic as a yokel like me could decipher. It's great being able to gawk at the breadth of architectural variety as you zoom between buildings, down congested streets, and fly over roofs hundreds of feet in the air. Like with Assassin's Creed, being able to vertically scale a digitally rendered version of a city is fun in and of itself, without any combat, objectives, or skill trees to meddle with. Occasionally I'd linger over a ledge, spinning the camera around, wondering how both humanity and Insomniac made all of this. And including multiple times of day is the icing on top of this beautiful cake.

But the web slinging! What a cool system! It takes a while to get comfortable with, but once you become familiar with Spider-Man's physics, it's a surprisingly deft mode of travel. The way you can masterfully weave around buildings and rocket from zip points to maintain speed is riveting; slinging around the city keeps the player constantly engaged, even when they're not on a mission. I never played Spider-Man 2 on PS2 so you can only imagine how impressive I found all of this. Not once was I impelled to use fast travel, simply because it was so fun and freeing to be this fast, this nimble, this graceful.

The combat—while fun—is noticeably less impressive. While the "press button when light above head goes off" is straight from Batman's playbook, what I didn't expect was how fundamental the gadgets would be to Spider-Man's repertoire. I was slow to adapt to the combat because I paid little mind to my toolkit in the beginning, earning myself a good butt-whoopin' most of the time. When I finally decided to buckle down and rotate through abilities, I was alarmed at how easy the game became. Spider-Man carries with him multiple tools to disable swarms of goons, and even well-armed foes are no match for a morally questionable kick off a roof (which, no joke, nearly made me laugh every time). In a way there's almost too many tools, making the hardest part about the combat determining how next you'd like to dispose of your enemies.

That may not be a bad thing however; at its heart, Spider-Man is all about empowerment. Every side mission grants a different type of currency upon completion, of which you'll need multiple to unlock improvements for your gadgets and new suits (there's also a skill tree but it isn't really worth mentioning). The side-missions vary in type and rarely repeat, which is a delight (well, barring the active crimes, which are everywheeere). One moment you'll be clogging up holes on water towers, another you'll be taking on waves of enemies in a melee arena, and sometimes you'll pivot away from an armed robbery just to chase after a pigeon. The abundance of side missions with no fighting or timer adds a chill buffer to the main story's combat & stealth focus. And speaking of which: the stealth sections are joyless—their only upside is that it shows you how much it sucks to not be Spider-Man.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess that pairing Insomniac up with the world's most popular super hero would produce a damn good game. It probably won't blow your socks off unless you're a big fan of Peter Parker, but it does a good job of showcasing why it's so fun to don the blue and red and go crime fighting. The missions are rarely stale, the combat is decent, and being able to leap off of a roof and swing through a narrow alleyway, your toes skimming across the hot concrete, provides a thrill I haven't experienced before. If the story was stronger, I'd be more star-struck with Spider-Man—as it stands, I'm mostly walking away pleased I played it.

(Oh, and making J. Jonah Jameson a Glenn Beck-esque fear peddler is a brilliant touch.)

Nioh DLC - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

I am no stranger to difficulty. Nor am I unacquainted with Team Ninja challenges—I often enjoy them for the most part. I think they lean too hard on absurd multi-boss fights (eat your heart out Dark Souls 2) but I appreciate how high they set the hurdle. Team Ninja not only asks you to play perfectly, but to do so in fights where you're hopelessly outmatched for an extended period of time. They make masochistic encounters that only Platinum Games can rival, and even then PG has the foreknowledge not to make the "normal" playthrough of a game as soul-crushingly harsh as Team Ninja frequently does.

Which leads me to the agony of Nioh's DLC triple threat.

This was not an easy endeavor to overcome. Having bested the Souls games numerous times, I can say without hesitation that the Nioh DLC is the hardest Souls-like challenge I've faced*. Each pack contains 6-8 merciless missions that get progressively harder, eclipsing whatever gear you may have scraped together in NG+. I went in knowing I would struggle somewhat, but didn't realize I'd practically have to best most of the bosses suffering less than ten hits (and in some cases, nearly none). The main campaign of Nioh was formidable, but it often gave me the gear I needed to press on and overcome. But here? Maria was a brick wall the likes of which I've rarely seen.

I mean—just—uh—what? I was doing no damage to this boss while she could grab me in the blink of an eye, killing me instantly. I shuffled into heavy gear so that I could survive the grab, but then she would teleport around, break my guard, and kill me instantly that way. The previous two boss fights were lengthy and vicious, but this was a new dimension of cruelty; did I really have to play perfectly for over five minutes? Was this what was really expected of me?

And were the other two DLC areas going to be even harder?

Thus, I finally started engaging with two things I didn't really care about or utilize before: Reforging & Soul Matching. Most of the time if gear I acquired had a better attack or defensive stat than what I had equipped, it was the better choice. Getting minor buffs like "Wind +10" felt like a nice, not necessary, bonus. But now I had to reframe my thinking: what were the weapons I was really using? What was the stance I fought in most of the time? What were the non-attack attributes I needed? It definitely got overwhelming at times (is Break +12 better than Proficiency +13%????), especially when I was juggling multiple weapons and comparing all of their stats to one another. But gradually I honed two swords, a spear, and an odachi that I would use to shake the heavens.

It also helped that I learned slamming two weapons of the same level together resulted in a better weapon (ie two +3 swords can be used to make a single +4 blade). All of the Divine weapons I had horded from various side missions and NG+ could now be used to provide my main weapon with a little extra damage, which helped push me through the rest of the DLC. I still ran into a couple of road blocks along the way—the elite enemies in the second DLC are a nightmare for someone that doesn't parry—but I managed to finish the DLC campaign and most of the side missions solo.

Relief washed over me when I finally completed it, if only for the fact that I didn't let Team Ninja best me. There was some fun to be had in meticulously combing over my weapons in search of improvements, but I'm miffed that the DLC was so punishing—on the base NG no less! I wanted to finish the damn game and move on to other titles in my backlog (I've been sitting on Hollow Knight for over a year), and I couldn't help but wonder if I was wasting my time. A part of me knew I probably was, my personal stubbornness the only anchor keeping the game installed. But the struggle is over now, and even if it's a meaningless accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, there's a small, perhaps puerile joy in the fact that I didn't give up.

I appreciate that the Nioh DLC forces you to examine your equipment. I also like the timed arrows volleys at the start of the second DLC. But... that's about where my praise ends. Nioh's main story is difficult and occasionally unfair, but you can coast through it learning a handful of combos and utilizing your spirit buddy at key instances. The DLC, on the other hand, is a raw challenge befitting of experts. And even though I finished it, I definitely walked away realizing that I am no Nioh expert—and nor am I willing to put in anymore time to become one.


*The Defiled Chalice & Lud & Zallen CoC NG+ excluded.