Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4): A Charming Case of Vertigo.

This is one of those games I took a flyer on. I didn't own a vita until way late into its cycle, so really all I knew about this game is what the Title was called, that gravity was involved, and that the main character appeared in an iteration of hot shots golf. Cute blonde character who also dresses like a Maid. Worked for me.

But then I started hearing rumblings about it getting a PS4 HD release (because apparently they don't make "new" video games anymore), and I started seeing articles about what a darling this game was that didn't get the love or respect it deserved. I also hear similar reviews from some friends who have played it, so I decided why not give it a shot.

GRAVITY RUSH: REMASTERED:(PS4)

The story of Gravity Rush is confusing. We start off with the Amnesiac trope as we take the role of a girl named Kat who plummets to a floating city called Hecsville and wakes up knowing nothing about herself. In her ambling confusion she comes across what appears to be a spectral cat she dubs "Dusty". This cat somehow gives her the ability to shift the direction of gravity for her giving her a makeshift ability to fly.

In the opening moments of the game, a gravity storm threatens to further pull apart the city, with a small child clinging for dear life. Kat uses her new found ability to try to rescue the child before he is pulled away into the abyss. Kat manages to succeed in saving the child, but was unable to save their home. Instead of being grateful, the father and rescued son vilify her for not saving their home, showing an intense disdain for "shifters". 

Kat gets mixed reactions from the people in the city, and decides that before she starts anything she needs to find a place to stay and clean. After situating herself, she sets out into the city to try to find out clues of who she is, and hopefully fend off the gravity monsters (called Nevi) that stand in her way and rescue and assist the citizens who cannot defend themselves.

Gravity Rush I guess can be consider to be sandbox game at its core. You start off on a section of the world map with pretty much the freedom to explore it at a whim. On the map you find number of locations where you can do quests or missions, and as you play through the game the map continues expand giving you new locations and more missions to do. I wouldn't say its as expansive as the Grand Theft Auto universe but its a pretty sizable environment for what was a handheld game. 

Gravity Rush is one of those bizarre enigma's of a story. From the base onset I find the amnesiac trope to be kind of a weak starting point because its just been so overused and played out. Very early Kat decides that she wants to be helpful to the people of the city, who for the most part do nothing but shun and berate her, or take her for granted. Its sporadic because it feels like it is constantly throwing various story elements at you as you play it, but many of them feel like they deviate away from the main story of finding out who she is rather than complimenting it.

Apparently, she doesn't remember that this is a major plot point either.

That being said? There is something incredibly charming about Kat as a protagonist that I found myself really liking. She's got an adorable little voice that matches the cutesy facial expressions she makes in cutscenes. It sounds vaguely french but I am fairly certain it is just gibberish with french accents. But she's earnest, playful, helpful, even sarcastic at times. She is also flawed as she is easily distracted and manipulated, so I wouldn't consider her to be a "Mary Sue" either. Actually with all honesty, if she didn't have Dusty the only thing separating her from the day to day citizen would be her clothing (which people love to point out to her).

Much of the main story seems to be delivered by means of comic book stills for the major point of exposition and questing, and actual animated cutscenes for the major pivotal moments of the game or scenes meant to increase tension such as the appearance of an adversary or a giant monster of some kind. Honestly I think it kind of adds to Kat's charm when it was told this way. It also produces some hilarious out of context screenshots. Also, for one of the more useless features you can rotate the controller to tilt the pictures a few degrees in any direction. 

It works as a means to frame the story, without cut scenes getting too long winded.

As mentioned once you have the freedom to explore, the game turns into a sandbox and you are free to do missions and challenges at whim. But it would be a good idea take some time to just fly around the city and explore. One: because the flight controls can be a little wonky since you aren't actually flying, but falling in different direction. And Two: You need gems to upgrade your abilities and unlock additional challenges.  Thankfully there are hundreds of them scattered all about the city for you to collect, some worth more than others. 

The real place to make gems though is in the challenges. Many of them are basically variants of time trials or races. Some of them require you to fly from point to point, some of them only use the gravity slide mechanic, some of them are moving items to a specific zone within a certain time period, and some of them are more combat centric. When you complete them you will be rewarded depending on how well you did. There is a bronze, silver, and gold tier reward so it is in your best interest to try to hit that gold in each one.

Once you master the Grav-Kick. you master death.

There is an abundance of abilities for you to learn. Sadly though, there is is really only a few things that you need are of any actual use, which seems like a shame considering all the nifty tricks you should be able to do with gravity based abilities. There are really two things that are immediately useful to you: Gravity Gauge Usage, and Gravity Kick. Both of these should be obvious. Usage lets you stretch out how long the gauge lasts while you suspend in gravity, and the kick basically fires you like the dart at your aim point while you are suspended.

The Kick especially because as long as you are partially decent at aiming up your shot, you can basically use your gravity kick like a yo-yo and be constantly bouncing back and forth at targets without ever needing to hit the ground. I have played through what seems to be nearly the entirety of the game with this ability. It's one of the strongest attacks you have, its the easiest to use, it functions as a dash. It's just the most broken ability in the game and you get it at the onset. 

There are a handful of abilities you might want to level later, but they are all window dressing.

Some of the abilities seem like really good ideas but then end up just being really stupid. One of them is basically a telekinesis that allows you to lift, carry, and throw things. Sounds great, but you basically trigger it which causes a singularity to makes you hover and float in the air, so you lose the level footing you had, so you have to try to re-aim a drifting camera which is already difficult, and the shot is never as precise as the reticle makes it seem. The challenges that force you to use this ability are the hardest ones. 

Really, after you max out Usage and Gravity Kick, the only other things I found worth getting was more health and anything that affected my movement or flying speed. Since most of the challenges will require you to slide or fall as fast as you can, it makes sense to bolster the speed. You can upgrade some of the carrying challenges so you can pick up multiple things at once, but 100% honesty? I played through the majority of the game without ever needing to upgrade my health. Usage and Grav Kick first, everything else is secondary.

Maybe it's just a personal preference but for some reason, I find that falling is more fun that flying. I noticed it's something I enjoy in almost any sandbox game I play. If I have the ability to get the highest point of elevation in the game, the first thing I do is get up there so I can take the plunge. To cite an even older example, there is a PS2 game you've probably never heard of called Kya: Dark Lineage that used a number free falling mechanics where you had to control the velocity and direction of your descent. They were some of my favorite parts of that game.

Which is probably why I got so wrapped up in playing Gravity Rush because that honestly is the game's major mechanic. I'll try to keep it as spoiler free as I can, but there is a segment of the game later one where you are being pursued by a rival trying to stop you to reach your goal. In it, you have this massive free fall segment which makes you feel like you are falling down to the core of the planet. You have to shift and dodge attacks, pick up collectibles along the way, and make landings on platforms to recover your ability to shift. It wouldn't say it was difficult, but it was certainly a memorable and satisfying mission to do.

Raven makes several appearances during the course of the story, because each
good heros needs an antagonist, even if Raven doesn't really have a reason to be one.

If you are like me and you purchased the HD remaster on PS4, you are also treated to the extra DLC missions included in the full game, which is a gesture that I appreciated. They could have left it off and sold it separately, so I appreciate when a game makes a definitive edition.

Being a vita port there is only so much I can say about the graphics. They were glossed up a bit and cleaned to look much nicer on the PS4 and I'm sure the frame rate is improved as well. Although the I will say the overall design of the game is kind of flat and boring. Because the game reminds me of steampunk, I find the color pallet to be boring. It's washed with greys, browns, bronzes, and off yellows. The only color that really stands out is Kat's hair. All the environments are interchangeable brown buildings so even though I travel to new area's of the map, it feels like I've already been there.

Your choice of locale is: Generic steampunk town, other generic steampunk town,
ANOTHER generic steampunk town. or under generic steampunk town.

So what didn't I like about the game? Well, the control of this game is loose at best, and that's if I am being generous. Basically you hit one of the shoulder buttons to go into stasis as I call it. You hit that button and you start to hover in place, but since there is no center of gravity you begin to spin or flip. So the camera doesn't stay put which makes it a headache if you are setting up your fall. You then hit it again and the direction you are facing becomes the next downpull of gravity, causing you to plummet that direction. It's essentially how you fly, and this is what the races are usually based around.

But because you are falling and not flying, you have very little control of your aim sans using the grav kick. And since that is the direction of the gravity, anything you hit then becomes the floor. This can make for frustrating situations where you will be trying to thread a tight needle and find yourself suddenly tight-roping a street lamp or fence. If you are doing a time trial this will completely fuck your run, and there is no quick restart outside of finishing the race and doing it again.

The game can be disorienting. especially in combat. So remember that when you
land on a surface, the direction Kat's hair moves is where down actually is.

Combat can also be frustrating. They give you a base kick to use on the ground which isn't a horrible alternative, but some of the enemies are huge and all of them only have one exposed weakness. So it doesn't make any sense to level your base attack doesn't work on half the enemies, and as we established the telekinesis isn't worth using either. So that leaves you with the grav kick, but even that can be frustrating as if you miss your target it basically sends you rocketing past the combat, scrambling to remember to stop your flight. You can find yourself disoriented, far away from solid ground, and without any more gravity usage to keep you afloat.

I feel they could have done more with the monster design. The Nevi aren't inherently bad looking, but they fall under a kind of generic trope. Shadow monsters with minimal features outside of a glowing weakness is kind of played out and over done. But thankfully this prevents them from using pallet swaps for the most part. You can tell by their weakness if its a standard baddie or elite level monster, but outside of those two it forces the game to at least design all the Nevi differently so you have a varied difference of flying and land monsters.

All enemies have exposed weaknesses, but some of them don't get exposed immediately,
Some you have to wait to expose, others appear as you take out other weak points. Stay offensive. 

The music is... ehh... It's not great.  I suppose the best compliment I can give it is that its not grating and annoying. It's just uninspired, generic. I couldn't hum a single bar or melody for you of any of the songs in the game because its so plain you don't even notice it. The only song that you will be able to recognize is the little melody you hear when you get the results of doing a challenge. Because you will probably be retrying them a few times so you can get the gold level prize, you will probably be hearing it every minute or so.

One of the biggest issues is the story never seems like it goes anywhere. As I play through the game I seem to keep getting introduced to new plot threads and while little side quest plots get wrapped up, I never feel like I am getting closer to getting any explanation to the main story. What is happening? Why are there gravity monsters? Why does Kat seem inexplicably ok with not knowing who she is? Why is every single citizen in this fucking city an absolute twatknot? Seriously, no amount of good deed you do seems to end with anything other than the person you helped being shitty in response.

As you can see, they gave the graphics a real nice gloss over for the PS4 port.

For all the mysteries and plot threads they lay down, a very surprising few of them ever seem to get solved. There is no explanation of who two of the major antagonists are, we never get any indication of who Kat really is outside of one throw away slide in the final credits and even that isn't explained. There is no explanation for why the timeline suddenly jumps ahead just before the last chapter of the game. Maybe these will all be answered in the upcoming sequel, but considering this came out in like 2012, that's a long time to wait for some story closure.

The biggest problem that I have with the game is that it was very easy to put down. When I close a stream I keep saying that I am going to go back to it, but then I never end up doing so. Because of the constantly spawning plot threads, I never seem to be getting any closer to the finish and while I am enjoying the game its inadvertently causing fatigue. And with each game release it gets pushed a little further down the pile. As it turned out, I put it down for several weeks with only about an hour or so left of game play. Live and learn.

The actual context for this image is a lot less funny than its screenshot

Ultimately though, despite all the flaws I was able to find in Gravity Rush, I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad game. Far from it really, no game is perfect and what I didn't like wasn't game breaking. I felt it laid down a foundation for what could possibly be a very good series of games. It has a good original concept, it was fun to play, and has a charming protagonist. This game feels like it just needs a little more direction and a bit more polish to really make it shine. Now I know that they recently announced that there is going to be a Gravity Rush 2 coming out for vita and PS4, so that gives me hope that they can use this as a starting point.

I probably wouldn't have paid 60$ for Gravity Rush, but at it's currently price of 30$ (and often on sale for less than that) it was absolutely worth the jump. It took a little bit of extra prodding to get me to finish it but I did enjoy my experience with it. I think with a little more direction, focus, and commitment to a coherent story this game can really be something special. Here's hoping they learn from this game and improve on it for the sequel. 

I'll play any game that has a maid costume in it, won't I?...
Ugh.. I'm such a creep. 

Yakuza 5 (PS3): This Blog Has Finally Come Full Circle

Way back in 2011, there was a guy who had an assignment in one of his graduate college courses. The assignment basically wanted this guy to create and make a post on a new blog. That student decided since all he really did with his free time was play video games, he would make his blog about game reviews. And for the first review he did, he decided to do it on a highly under-appreciated gem on the PS3. A game by the name of Yakuza 4.

That was five years ago. I have been basically barfing text onto this thing for minimal traffic because it was a great way to put my thoughts on games into words. Some of you have stuck around from the beginning. A couple of you might be newer readers, and the other 97% of you are google bots clicking my images. Either way this blog has finally come full circle. After years and years of begging, emails, and tweets (that I didn't do) the west finally convinced Sega to release this installment of the game outside of Japan. Three whole years I waited for it, and now I have it. Let's get to it.

YAKUZA 5 (PS3)

As has become the norm, the story of the Yakuza franchise has been broken up in multiple chapters divided up amongst longtime protagonist Kazama Kiryu, his adopted niece/daughter Haruka, Yakuza 4 returning cast members Taiga Seijima and Shun Akiyama, and new character to the series Tatsuo Shinada.

Kiryu is currently living away from the sunshine orphanage he runs and is working as a taxi driver in the city of Fukuoka. After a less than chance meeting with current Tojo clan head Daigo Dojima, Kiryu learns that the leader of the Omi alliance is on his deathbed, and when he passes war will break between Tojo and Omi once again. Dojima looks to build his strength to prepare for the coming war, but inexplicably goes missing. Kiryu is once again yanked into the affairs of his former clan to try to set things right.

No matter what Kiryu does, he just can't seem to stay out of things.

Haruka has also left the orphanage in Okinawa after being scouted by a talent director by the name of Mrs. Park. She currently is living by herself in Osaka and is working and training to become a pop idol. She is gaining in popularity and has been making a name for herself in a televised idol show called the Princess League but the road has not been easy for her as she is trying to juggle training for stardom on top of adapting to a new school with none of the people she knows and loves around her.

Seijima has willingly surrendered after the events of Yakuza 4 after having his previous prison sentence commuted and is currently serving a two year prison sentence in Hokkiado. He is nearing the point of his parole for good behavior, but life inside prison has been difficult as groups appear to be out to get him, and nearing the end he hears some troubling news about his blood brother and friend, Goro Majima.

Akiyama is still the eccentric proprietor of Sky Finance money lending. Giving out exorbitant sums of money with no interest or collateral in return for it, and instead forces people do seemingly odd challenges or tests to earn their loan. He arrives in Osaka on business business trip to open up a new branch of Sky Finance, when he receives word that one of his clients with 300 million yen loan has turned up dead.  Being in town, he goes to investigate the circumstances behind the death.

Shinada is an adult entertainment writer who is basically scrapping a living. He lives in a shack, is behind on his rent, and is in some serious financial debt with a shady lender. His real problem is he is serving a lifetime ban from professional baseball for gambling and game fixing. He only played one at bat where he hit a game winning walk off homerun, and immediately took the fall for cheating. Now a mysterious client is willing to pay him a significant sum of money to try to learn the truth behind what really happened that game. 

Shinada is one of the more sympathetic characters in the Yakuza universe.
Just an honest guy caught up in a bad situation.

So obviously, the zombie infested events of Yakuza: Dead Souls clearly were not considered canon, so the game picks up a few years after the events of Yakuza 4, although in this installment we actually have the story take place in a number of different locations over the course of 5 cities. That's actually a pretty significant jump in space from Yakuza 4 which was held specifically to Kamurocho. The good news is despite having more characters to control all with different motivations, the story in this one felt a lot less convoluted. They pretty much punch out why each character is motivated in a single line: Kiryu is trying to stop a war, Akiyama is investigating a murder, etc. etc.

At its core Yakuza 5 doesn't shake up the the formula of its base gameplay if you are a regular fan of this franchise. It plays as kind of this hybrid of an on foot Grand Theft Auto style sandbox game fused with elements of JRPG styled "random battles" with a 3rd person brawler style of combat. If you have played any of the previous Yakuza games outside of Dead Souls this won't come off as a radical change of pace.

Yep, Seijima's insane superhuman strength is still on display.

But at the heart of Yakuza game is its ability to cram as much different possible shit into its package, and its even done so more here. I think I have discovered the proper way to explain this. The Yakuza franchise is like a Sega singularity. It is a swirling vortex at the center of the Sega universe and any game that exists under their fold eventually has bits and pieces forcibly drawn into the Yakuza games to contribute some of its own to the new iterations. In short, there is even more off the wall shit that you have to do in Yakuza 5. Some of it story related, some of it optional.

To give you a brief rundown, here are some of the things I have done in the first 40 hours of play: beat the shit of a lot of people, played Taiko Drum Master, worked as a Taxi driver being scored by my ability to obey the laws of the road, lost 50k on a pachinko machine, drag raced against a gang of sexy female street racers, broke out of prison, eluded my pursuers while riding a snow mobile, played Virtua Fighter 2, got into a fist fight with a grizzly bear, hunted for deer, took part in a comedy troupe audition, guest starred on a tv variety show, performed a j-pop rhythm game concert for a crowd of screaming fans against a rival act who performed simultaneously, went bowling, shot pool, threw darts, participated in multiple handshake events, received beauty tips from a transvestite, dance battled strangers on the street, swung someone by their shirt collar spine first into a light post, and a shit ton of other things I am not remembering.

You seriously fist fight a goddamn bear.  Seijima is a bad dude.

Yakuza 5's ability to cram so many different methods of gameplay into a single game is mind blowing to me. The only comparable game that I can think of that does that much is obviously Grand Theft Auto but even that franchise doesn't put in other games from its parent company within its own game. Honestly it makes reviewing a game like this difficult for me because I like to go into detail on how the game plays and how well it works, which I can't really do with Yakuza 5 because the game is constantly throwing so many different elements at you, you are constantly learning new controls. There is almost too much.

So lets focus on the main mechanic of the game: the fighting. This was always the Yakuza games bread and butter and for the most party it hasn't changed here. You get jumped by some random shlub on the street and the pass pedestrians for a ring for your and your attacks to fight in. You get a series of Light and heavy attacks that when pressed in certain order execute different move types, you can lock on and block, you can dodge, there are weapons scattered about the street that you can pick up and wail one you opponents with. Essentially the core of the Yakuza fighting engine hasn't changed.

All of the characters have unique tricks for fighting, but none of them slug it out better than Kiryu.

Fighting charges up your heat gauge, and when you hit a certain point you and you are in the situation that fills certain conditions, you and nail a heat move for big damage. I will say that the visceral of the heat moves do feel like its been somewhat turned down, but not a lot. Make no mistake about it, there is nothing easy to watch about a guy pinned on his knees and getting repeatedly kneed in the face before taking a massive kick in the neck. (But somehow also always fun to slam a bicycle on someones chest and jumping stomp on it.). I think its the lack of blood or teeth flying out of a dislocated jaw that was so prevalent in Yakuza 4 that is making it easier to stomach.

There is now also an additional red heat gauge that gradually builds over the course of several fights. This can be used for a big essence attack that usually can bring down a group of baddies (or a single enemy depending on who you play) for massive damage. There are also a few little tweaks to the combos which give you a little more to try out, but if you have played the Yakuza games before the combat doesn't change all that much. It doesn't have to because its works.

Which is funny when I think about it, because when I compare the button layout to the recently reviewed Senran Kagura: Shinovi Vs I find myself wondering what is it about that game that made the combat feel a bit more bland, while Yakuza's feels so much more skillful. Perhaps because Yakuza's is a bit more precise. Blocking takes effort, and you can't really mash at random to pull off the more damaging combos, and the multitude of different heat moves you can do the punish your opponent makes the game's combat blow open even more. Perhaps it felt like I was just performing the same combo in Senran Kagura over 15 characters, and I feel like I'm mixing them up more in Yakuza 5.

People still attack on the street for some of the most ridiculous reasons and they are just as hilarious this time around as well, but I think they got the sense that they were getting annoying to some people because now a number of them just transition right into the fight sequence without hearing Johnny Nobody explaining his imagined slight against you.

Way back when I wrote that first review for Yakuza 4, I had one major "complaint" about the game, and that is was that seeming out of the blue in this convoluted story of seedy gangsters betraying each other I had to break in the game to make a girl looking for a major loan play pretty pretty princess dressup at a hostess club 3 tortuous times. I suppose it gave context to how Akiyama does things, but it was insanely out of place and took a bit longer to do than I cared for. I couldn't blame anyone if they stopped playing the game because of it.

You may not run them anymore, but you can still go to hostess clubs to go on dates.

Yakuza 5 steps it up a notch by giving you a whole new insanely out of place chapter. Now lets be clear here, Haruka has been around since the very first game of the franchise and she deserves to be a part of the narrative as much as any other character does. But she's not a grizzled veteran of the yakuza, she's not a debonair bad ass money lender, she's not a thuggish ogre who took out 16 people at once, or any of the other character types that have graced this series. She's a young girl growing up.

So I guess the play to make her relevant was to send her down the route of a pop idol. So while she does have some major events that happen with her that do pertain to the story, all of her missions involve game modes that are a major departure from the combat. For lack of a better way to explain it, it seems like Haruka's chapter is a means of getting the player to try the minigames Yakuza 5 has to offer. Some of them are original just to her like all the dance performances, TV appearances, and so on. But some of them are just ways to get you do things you could already like shoot pool or throw darts.

Who am I kidding? I am a sucker for a rhythm game....

It's almost as if Yakuza 5 is afraid you might miss all the extra stuff you can do in the game, so it gives you Haruka's chapter to make sure you don't miss any of it. That being said, I didn't feel it was as much of slog to get through than the hostess club thing was. And its actually in Haruka's chapter that kind lays the whole foundation for why Akiyama gets involved, which of course ties into Seijima's chapter and... well you see how this works out. Yakuza is always pretty good at weaving together a compelling narrative.

Naturally, as with any game there are a handful of things that I didn't much care for. Most obviously in the case of Yakuza 5 is how fucking long I had to wait to get it. THREE YEARS! Come on Sega! Sonic is a dead horse that does not draw appeal anymore. Give it up. Please start localizing the quirky and different, the tired and overused just leads to disappointment.

Accurate depiction of Sega western localization announcements. 

I mentioned that this installment of Yakuza felt like the combat is less visceral. And while yes I felt it made the combat easier to stomach and get through, it was that sense of violent uncomfortableness that kinda made it original. It made the actual combat feel like it had some weight behind it. To give an example, say you play God of War: from the press of the start button your gutting and disemboweling people pretty much at the moment you take control of the game, and inside of minutes you become desensitized to it. The weight is gone, it becomes meaningless because that's the norm.

Now say take a take a game like Heavy Rain: there is some violence, but virtually no combat. Only on a few pivotal scenes you're character takes excruciating damage, and he reacts accordingly. Its absolutely brutal and almost impossible to watch. Because you barely see it. I feel that's the balance Yakuza 4 had managed to strike. The combat is regular, so you wail on baddies and its not unsettling because its what you do, but those finishing heat moves are cringe worthy because they are a quick snap of brutality in an otherwise "video gamey" fight. I dunno, This is just a personal nitpick.

This might be the first time I've said this but I think Yakuza might actually be trying to do too much now. I love how much extra stuff they put in these games and it really is become a bit of a staple to the franchise. But I like them more as extras. When you try to put them in as required story mechanics, it feels like you are trying to pad out the playtime. You are building this really interesting narrative of betrayal and impending gang warfare, so I feel the grizzled battle hardened Yakuza member doesn't really need story segment where he needs to fish for trout. Let me know the extras exist, but don't force me to put off the story to do it.

This is why this review has take so long to put out. I had the game purchased and was playing it way back in October or November of last year. At time of writing I've got to be close to 60-70 hours of play time, and I am still working my way through the final chapters of the game. Unless I make a conscious effort to skip side missions, the progress has been slow. And slow progress is big reason games get put down. A game should never feel like a slog to complete.

Yes, I still make time for bowling. Shut up. 

Being digital only kind of sucks. I prefer a physical release with case and instructions but at this point I was willing to take this game in any iteration I could get my hands on. Unfortunately even with my download speed, a 60 something GB download is a bitch and a half to wait for to download and install. My heart goes out to those with slower download speeds and god forbid data caps/overages.

While the story is less convoluted, some scenes do run longer than I feel they need to. This has always been a bit of an issue with the Yakuza games because there are so many repeated points and pauses for reaction when they could be getting to the point. There is a particularly tortuous scene near the end of Shinda's chapter where he's basically held at gunpoint for no joke 10-15 minutes. It drones on forever like a scene out of Metal Gear when the point could have been made in a few lines. But then again, if you have played any of the previous Yakuza titles this will not be something that surprises you.

I very much enjoyed the story, but a little editing down couldn't have hurt.

The game eventually brings you back to Kamurocho, which has been the main location for the most of the Yakuza series and honestly, I was kind of  disappointed when it did. When I was playing at all these new locations it felt like the story was evolving. But finishing here makes me feel like I'm playing Madden: Yakuza Edition. The city hasn't changed, everything is where it was. I've been here for 3 games now. I was kinda enjoying having new maps to learn. It just kind of makes the game feel like a copy-paste after such a strong start. So when I finally got back to Kamurocho, I just skipped all the sidequests because I just wanted to finish the game.

This continues to bug me, but for some reason I never feel the character models look good for the average. All of the man characters look very human and realistic. Yet any somewhat major NPC for the story just doesn't look natural to me. For lack off a better of a better explanation they feel some what slapdash and quickly put together. I guess on the whole its not too much of an issue, but when you are doing romance missions at a hostess club, its in full frame and just looks bad. Now, I know they are actually interviewing Japanese hostesses for later installments of the game, so maybe this will be fixed in the future.

Obviously, Haruka doesn't fight. So the game has dance battles to give you conflict when wandering.

Handshake events just feel like the worst thing in the world.

So I guess the ultimate question is, did it live up to 3 years of expectations? Well, yes and no. Did it provide me a new Yakuza storyline with new characters, locations, and plot twists? Yes, it certainly did on that front. Did it give me new gameplay mechanics: Yes, it added it multitude of different things to shake up the regular sandbox play. Did I get my money's worth? I would say 60+ hours is money well spent for a video game.

But at the same time, the longer I played it, the more it felt like I've played it before. It probably would have had more punch if the play time was shorter. There are lots of new minigames, but they feel shoehorned in. It didn't feel like it changed enough. I think I would have really liked the not localized Yakuza Issin because that turns the game into a period Samurai piece. That would have shaken up the whole formula and made it new and interesting. I would have been into that. But continuing the modern day narrative requires more change to keep it interesting. It started stronger but had a weaker finish.

That being said, Yakuza 5 is another satisfying installment to this series. The game is still very good despite starting to feel a little repetitive. It has no shortage of different mini games to play so there are a lot of different distractions. But I do think the game is going to need to change soon lest it wear itself out for future installments. Fans of the series will play it. I enjoyed and recommend it, but you could get a similar experience from Yakuza 4 for 20 bucks.

T-Set, you were horrible twats. I will never forgive you.

Watch Dogs: "Hack" might be a bit strong, but....

The hype machine is a dangerous mistress to have in the world of gaming and she is no greater personification of the double edged sword. Take something like Dead Island which had an absolutely phenomenally done trailer.  It generated a ton of hype and when it came out, it sucked. Because of this, I try to be more wary around hype.

But some people hype right.  This game was unveiled the right way by showing off like 15 minutes of completely uninterrupted game footage, showing you all the cool innovative tricks you could do. It was cleverly done and made me very excited to get my PS4. But sadly it was pushed back like 6 months. Finally it has come out and now I finally get to see if the hype was well deserved when I sit down with....

WATCH DOGS

Our story takes place in a semi-futuristic incarnation of Chicago. The entire city and its inhabitants are wirelessly a part an online data service called ctOS which allows everything to be controlled smoothly via electronics and smartphones. However, this makes it a primary target for the hacker community, hackers such as Damien Brenks and our protagonist Aiden Pearce.

In the prologue, Aiden is at a fancy shindig at a classy hotel known as the Merlaut. He wanders in as hacks into the ctOS there to give access to Damien, who beings to hack through the personalities at the hotel and siphon out their financials for a very hefty load. But they catch the traces of another hacker. Aiden motions to leave but Damien wants to explore the intruder, which results in them tripping the alarms and sending the police in pursuit. Aiden narrowly evades capture.

But the second hacker was able to find their identities and the fixers (a freelance mercenary group), are issued a contract to kill Aiden. The gunman sides up on Aiden while he's driving with his niece and nephew and shoots out the tires, causing the car to flip and kills Aiden's niece, Lena. 11 months later, Aiden has taken to vigilantism, attacking those who use the system to cheat people all the while trying to find the person who took his niece from him. He's got a lead, he's on the move, and this is where we pick up.

Aiden mourns with his Sister (but takes it harder as he feels its his fault)

What made the E3 showing of this game so fuckin cool is that it showcases how integral hacking was to the game. You were in a crowded club and it showed you how you manipulate your surroundings via hacks. When you exited it showed that the police were incoming and you were able to hack the surrounding traffic lights to have them crash and evade capture. Very cool, and that got a lot of people excited.

However as the showing continued the play started involving a bit of parkouring, and gun combat. I should have taken it as a warning sign but whatever, lots of games use guns. And that had never been a deterrent for me before. So that shouldn't have been anything to worry about, so I didn't work about it.

But then the record breaking Grand Theft Auto V came out and basically killed in all the reviews, sales, and awards. Watch Dogs precariously got pushed back to May even though supposed to be a next gen launch title. THAT was the red flag I should have heeded. That was where I should have realized this game is hiding something. Now I know this paints a pretty negative light, and I haven't even started reviewing the game yet. So let me get into that and all will be explained.

At its face value, Watch Dogs is a semi futuristic sandbox title. Still for the most part firmly rooted in the present but just far enough for the premise to have a completely networked city in the US. It plays exactly as you would expect a sandbox game to play, right down to the fairly similar controls. I'm sure the folks at Ubisoft hate the comparison, but if you played Grand Theft Auto V then a lot of the controls will feel familiar to you.

It always comes back to guns... Sigh.

There is a bit of weirdness in when you press up on the dpad you bring up your phone menu much like GTAV, but unlike it, you can't use the dpad to navigate it once its open. You have you use the right analog stick and I have to tell you that doesn't feel natural to me. Its from this menu you can order specific vehicles or upgrade your abilities, check online rankings, and so on. I would think it was more integral to the game but if I wasn't boosting my abilities I rarely went in here.

The on foot controls are smooth and intuitive. When holding R2/T you break into a free run and if you hold down O/B you fly over obstacles or parkour up walls with ease. When you are in pursuit of someone and you get within a certain range, Aiden will fly at them with a very aggressive takedown. That plays smooth and feels good when you do it. You can tell it has an Assassin's Creed feel to the way you fly around or on surrounding environments. And when you are stealthing around or getting into a fire fight, it is very easy and fast to slip in and out of cover.

I'm not a fan of much cover based shooting, but for stealth the cover mechanic is seamless.

Unfortunately, and this was probably my biggest issue with the game, is that the driving sucks an entire satchel of diseased boners. There is GTA IV driving, which is a tad too realistic for my taste. There is GTAV or Saints Row driving, which is a bit arcadey but fast and fun to play. But now we have Watch Dogs where it feels like you are trying to drive a formula one car over a frozen lake.

My first few missions that required driving turned into an unmitigated disaster. If I had to akin the driving to something, I would say that every single 4 wheel vehicle in the game operates like you were driving a fork lift. Every time you go to adjust your car or take a turn, It feels like the back of the car moves into place before the front of the car does. Maybe its the swing of the camera angle, but it was incredibly disorienting and it usually resulted in me smacking into every single other car like a pinball stuck between the bumpers. No matter how nice or how fast my car was when I first sat into the thing, I would be parking a twisted, smoking (and occasionally burning) heap of scrap metal.

Unlocking the steam pipe hack basically ruins pursuits and convoys.

Thankfully, although equally wonky, I found the motorcycle controls to be much more forgiving and easier to handle. So like most sandbox games before it, the cycle quickly became my vehicle of choice. For pretty much the duration of the game. I did eventually get the hang of driving these cars, but not till close to the end of the game and even then I avoided them unless I was evading pursuers and needed a desperate lift.

I'm torn on the shooting controls. Switching between your guns is fairly easy, hitting L1 brings up my menu and I can quickly scroll through 4 weapon slots giving me access to the all the weapons I own, so that is definitely a plus. I can also access all my various hack items (which I'll get into later) which I can also scroll through with relative ease. Moving from cover to cover as mentioned before is pretty smooth and intuitive. Its not the lock on assisted aim that GTA V had and I wasn't really expecting it to be, overall the shooting works well.

What I don't like about it though is the bizarre strengths of weapons. The it feels like when I pecking at people with an AK-47, it takes way more rounds than it should to put people down. When firing with a silenced pistol if I tag a head shot they drop like a rock, that makes sense. If I hit them in the body, it takes 3-5 rounds. OK, seems like a few but I can follow it. When I'm near point blank rank and I've unloaded 10 rounds of a fully automatic shotgun? OK, now our balancing issues are off. A fully auto shotgun should lay waste to absolutely anything that walks in front of it, no matter where it hits on the body. Ubi fucked that up as far as I'm concerned.

But I think the reasoning behind that possibly is the games big draw is the ability to hack, and using said ability to get out of hairier situations. For example, in a number of missions you will have to sneak your way (or assisting someone else in sneaking) into an area and there will usually be a number of fairly heavily armed patrols around impeding your progress. To sneak by them, you need to slink around cover, hack nearby things to draw their attention away from you, or in worst case scenarios fling out these little noise makers that will pull their attention to them so you can sneak by.

The guided stealth is actually pretty cool. You manipulate your surroundings
to kill baddies and help your target escape. Sometimes frustrating though.

The problem is, if one fucking person sees you and you don't take them out in the milliseconds of being caught? They will open fire, which results in the other people being alerted, which results in them opening fire, which leaves you pinned down with about 30 billion bullets raining down on you till one of them flings a grenade at you. Even with pretty stacked weaponry the odds are usually against you in a fire fight and ever worse there doesn't seem to be a very easy way to escape them. And boy does it let you know because you will be gunned down in this game, A LOT.

The key is to use your skills properly. Having a silenced pistol helps, you can trigger a car alarm or a retractable barrier to get some dopey guard to walk towards it, use your focus boost ability (IE: Slow time) to line up a shot, and pop an easy head shot. If another guy sees the body chances are they will go over to investigate allowing you to tag another one. Or, you can fling one of your noise makers near a steam pipe or transformer, then blow the thing up as they walk by. If things start to go tits up, you also have a tool that will black out the city for a few seconds, which is the god tier of your hacks in my book. Using hacks to take out patrols was easily the best aspect of the game for me.

Since this isn't GTA you can't open fire or throw bombs from your car, which makes the chases a bit more difficult, but not terribly much because you still have access to your hacks. Most of the time you can change traffic lights with a short quick time event, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But once you are able to burst steam pipes while you drive, chases because laughably easy because you can take out one or two cars at a time easily. If any stragglers follow you can block them with road posts or another light. 

But it has some very bizarre car camera angles as well, which makes it incredible difficult in some lights. For example, you earn a hack that allows you to disrupt a chopper in pursuit. But the camera never seems to swing enough for the camera to see it so you can use your ability, so the recourse is to stop your car mid chase so the stupid chopper can get ahead of you. It's ridiculous.

I think one of the biggest problems of the game is the sandbox tends to bombard you with side missions and they are kind of distracting. If you are keeping to the actual story, then fine, its pretty easy to follow along with. But say you are moving to the next story point, you will get this messages that appear in your HUD that notify you that a crime is about to take place, or that you unlocked a side mission to perform, or that somebody is hacking into your game.

Oooooohh.. Let me rant about this shit for a bit. OK, pervasive online? FUCKING stop with it. I understand online multiplayer is kind of a big deal right now, but you know what? Not everybody wants to fucking do it. Some people (such as myself) want to sit down with their game and play the story and enjoy the game for what it is. So when an alert pops up and says "HEY, This asshole is hacking into your game and stealing your money. You better find him in the crowded area really fast!" and then I end up not doing that, and I get penalized for it. Fuck you. I didn't ask him to be in my game, and I didn't want him there. Thank you random fuckwit for ruining my game experience for me.

I was OK with this in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls because this is was a relatively new idea. But ultimately, if I didn't want to deal with it, there were ways to avoid it. But in Dark Souls 2 the only way to avoid it was to play offline. Which is bullshit because I still wanted to be able to summon help, you assholes. Now with Watch Dogs and this past E3 it seems like more and more devs want to build games that force you to play with other people. You can piss right off, I don't like other people, and I don't want to play with them if I don't have to. So quit trying to force me.

I am the king of keeping a low profile. 

Something I recently discovered that is stupid with this game is that it only has one save slot. If you start a new game it erases your old game. I hope that some day we will eventually have video game consoles that have a large amount of memory for multiple saves. A hard drive of sorts perhaps. But alas, sadly humans haven't developed such mind bending space technology that only lives in fantasies, but its fun to dream. Seriously, fuck you Ubisoft. I've got 500 gigs of space, a 2nd save slot couldn't be that hard.

What bothers me the most about the game is that overall it has some really original ideas, but ultimately bobbles the execution by focusing on the shit I've already done in a billion other games. Yeah stealth and 3rd person shooting is fun and all, but there are like 30 other games I could probably go to a gamestop and get right now and get Stealth and 3rd person shooting. And its not like the hacking isn't core to the gameplay, it just seemed a lot more optional than it should have been to really drive this title home. Should have involved different ways to hack and more missions centralized around using them. Instead nearly every side mission is drive somewhere really fast, beat up this guy, or shoot these guys. Yawn.

Why is it when devs think of adding hacking in a game, its just Pipe Dream?
is there seriously no other minigame variant we can use to simulate hacking?

Even the story tends to bobble horribly. Its like a mix of Batman mixed with Assassin's Creed mixed with Grand Theft Auto mixed with Hitman and then poured over what could have been a good idea. Aiden is a gravely voiced protagonist who narrates to himself in a way that never seems to flow naturally. The whole premise and tone reeks of The Dark Knight (especially the final monologue), and I'm told there are similarities to the female character to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Its staggering to me how a game with such an original concept feel so unoriginal the whole way through it.

And really, a large portion of the story just doesn't really feel like it goes anywhere. I keep moving from story mission to story mission, but a good portion of the characters don't feel like they have any connection to the overall goal of the game, and their tie-in with Aiden seems token at best. I mean yes it all does connect by the end of it but I never really had that eureka "oh shit!" moment of the game. Just a "oh, its that guy. Ok then. What now?" kind of feeling.

Clara falls under a bit of a predictable trope, but I liked her as a character.

I find myself thinking about Remember Me as I played through this game. It was a game that had some really cool ideas and concepts, but then spent all they time focusing on everything else instead of what made it original. That's what Watch Dogs has done here. The game is playable, and if you can stay focused on the story, its not awful. But given all the hype that came into this game they dropped the ball badly. If this gets a sequel it could be an opportunity that this concept can work and with the right tweaking could be something really innovative. But the bottom line is it just isn't there yet and that is really disappointing.

Of course, this review isn't going to stop anyone from buying the game. Hell, PS4 has sold nearly 1.8 million copies and 3.75 million copies across all platforms according to vgchartz.com. But if you haven't bought it yet, I suggest going for it used, redbox it, or borrow it from a friend. It's pretty average across the board and I couldn't blame you if you skipped this one. I played Grand Theft Auto V again before this and that was still fresh and better than this was. Aside from the hacking, everything it brings to the table has been done better elsewhere. Hope you are happy, hype machine. You got me again.

Seriously though, its a game about Batman without Batman in it. 

Infamous: Second Son (PS4): Short but Sweet

So if you've read in the subtext of this blog, you'll note that I have some pretty positive feelings towards the Infamous series. Just a good set of sandbox games that are well built, fun to play, and have a decent story. Neither of them ever really got a full write up on this blog.  Now, I was pretty excited about the idea of a new Infamous on my shiny new PS4, but I wasn't crazy about the look of the main character and the story seemed all but wrapped up with nowhere to go. But why stop a good thing right? So with the first major PS4 exclusive I've been waiting on, lets knuckle down with...

INFAMOUS: SECOND SON (PS4)

It's been 7 years since the incident in New Marais back in Infamous 2, where Cole MacGrath fought back the Beast and used the Ray Field Inhibitor to kill the Beast, cure the plague sweeping the nation, and sacrifice himself and everyone carrying the conduit gene. Cole was given a hero's viking funeral and all seemed to be restored to order.

Now the conduit gene begins to resurface, and activated conduits are heralded as Bio-Terrorists and being rounded up and arrested by the DUP (Department of Unified Protection). The DUP is run by Brooke Augustine, a conduit with the power to control concrete at her whim, and has used said power to forcefully detain other conduits. 

Delsin Rowe is an Akomish Native American, graffiti artist, and a small town delinquent. While tagging a billboard to harass his brother Reggie (the local sheriff) and his subsequent arrest by his brother, the DUP military convoy carrying a number of conduits crashes in front of them. While Reggie immediately goes into police mode and tries to pursue two of the escapees, Delsin finds a fallen conduit named Hank in the wreckage and tries to help him out, but by grabbing his hand the contact from an activated conduit activates his own conduit gene and awakes Delsin's latent abilities, allowing Delsin to copy the ability to absorb and use smoke like powers.

Reggie is obviously the straightman and moral compass to Delsin's "tude".
He's a bit of a D-bag but his heart is generally in the right place.

In a panic, Delsin pursues Hank try to get himself fixed, but they are stopped and confronted by Augustine. She encases Hank in concrete and confronts Delsin about what he had heard, stabbing through his leg bones with spears of concrete. Delsin blacks out from the pain, and comes to to realize Augustine tortured many of the Akomish tribe, leaving them with painful and terminal concrete shards in their bones. After a brief confrontation with his brother, Delsin realizes the only way to fix this is get Augustine (or her power) and bring her back.

I was somewhat curious if this game was going to follow along with the story line from the previous Infamous titles or not because it seemed like the story to the previous titles pretty much had a definitive ending, which is something you don't really see anymore these days. While it does find ways to link the stories together, Delsin's story really should be taken by its own merits since there is a significant portion of timeline between Cole's death and the events that start the Second Son story.

There is sort of a dystopian feel to the overall story and setting. It takes place
farther in the future so it makes sense, but I don't know if I care for it.

Infamous has always been a beacon of solidly built and fluid control in gaming, and for the most part I would say that remains consistent here. There are no wasted buttons for the most part, flying around town is easy, combat is fast and fun. Its pretty much everything that I would like in a sandbox title. If I had to nag on something, I would say that its climbing controls feel a bit more sticky this time around. Infamous 1 you could fly around and climb with relative ease, but you were occasionally only stopped by a chain link fence. Infamous 2 added the addition of the Ice Launch which would rocket you up the building making things even easier.

And to be fair Infamous: Second Son has something similar for rocketing up buildings depending on your powers, but if there are moments that require precision climbing or a ledge that might just be out of reach you will be falling to the old mash the jump standby to keep springing off the wall, and for whatever reason Delsin never seems to grab the section that I would like him to or I get caught in this loop of kicking off the same area of wall trying to get to the ledge I'm aiming for like 40 button presses. Its annoying, but not a common problem through game play to make it a jarring flaw.

Climbing is not as tight as before, but still fast and functional.

The powers "bases" seem to be a bit more abstract this time around. Cole had the lighting which was a good base and fun to use, and the addition of fire and ice powers made sense in a logical standpoint. But Delsin didn't get something so cut and dry. After coming into contact with Hank, he absorbs the ability to manipulate smoke. Which is cool in concept, for example one of the fast ways to scale a building with smoke is to find a vent near the bottom and pass through that in smoke form, allowing you to rocket up the building a fire out the top like a cannon.

Although, with smoke a few liberties are taken as a good portion of his attacks could have easily been "fire" instead and had the same kinda effect. But since that was done with Nyx in Infamous 2 I suppose they didn't want to copy it straight off. There is a cool ability that nearly breaks the game in his smoke grenade. It does non-lethal damage but stuns that whole area for a few seconds. So instead of engaging a firefight you can smoke the area, charge in and then execute or subdue the enemies in a single pass. It may not get all of them but you can tear through the fodder with ease.

In addition to the smoke abilities, as you progress through the game you will also be able to harness the abilities of Neon and Video, which each have their own cool little tricks to it. A number of the main differences between them are more or less how you get around. Neon is weaker than smoke but it makes you move super fast and also functions as your snipe ability, and the grenade puts enemies in a stasis so you can pick your shot.

Video is more of a stealth options where you can leave an after image for the enemies to shoot at while you sneak behind them and pin them down with digital swords. They all have their varied strengths so you can opt to level them as you please if you put in the work to find the blast shards to level them all. There are melee attacks too with a chain, but they cease to be useful pretty much after the first few encounters. While they do enough to play differently, I felt some wider variance to the abilities might have been nice.

The neon effects in this game are really fucking cool.

Like the previous Infamous titles, the story is also followed by a moral choice system. As you travel around the city, there are various little "to-do's" you can do to affect your alignment. You can fly around the city and stop drug deals from going down or released captured suspects for a moral boost, or you can just attack random street musicians or protesters descend into infamy.

But as you play through the game, there a handful of major story events where you have to make a moral decision, this will have a stronger affect on your alignment and it alters how the story conversations play out giving it either a more feel good or darker tone. Replaying the opening mission and then choosing different options showed me that the story can take two incredibly different vibes depending on how you chose, which is great because this means multiple play throughs.

What bugs me about it though is in the weeks up to the games release there were news rumblings on sites like Kotaku, Destructoid, or QJ saying that Sucker Punch Games "wanted you to really think about the decisions you made". Guess what, you failed.  Each decisions that you make its literally sugar coated with GOOD and EVIL dressings. Aside from having bright blue and red text, the decisions are like "Turn yourself in" or "Sell out your tribe."  Or when you are at points are about to get a new power, the options are "Redeem" or "Corrupt".

Along the way you will meet other conduits for abilities, and they play
the main factors for the game's moral choice system.

I love the concept of a moral choice system, but so far I don't think I have ever played a single game that has ever gotten the system actually right. There are two major problems for this is: One, you are rewarded for going all one direction or the other. If you make one good or bad decisions, you better be prepared to make all of them go that way because if you don't you are going to be stuck with middling abilities that are lack luster while all the real powerful gear or abilities are locked away because you tried to make your choices naturally. If someone chooses to play neutral why not just make their current abilities stronger, just having less of them?

Two, there is no fucking grey area with the decisions. Like I said a paragraph ago, there is no thought process required in making these decisions. For example, say in a game like this an elderly woman falls down in the street. The moral choices in a game like this would be something like "Stop all traffic and then help them up, carry them the hospital and cover the medical expenses and mow her lawn while she recovers" or "Strangle her brand new puppy to death in front of her while pissing in the face crying grandchild before walking away to back her car over her." Couldn't I just walk away? Why can't there be a middle ground, why is always the worst of two extremes? Or at the very least make the two options that you have viable but difficult for different reasons.

I guess you have to look like a smug mother fucker for a super move.
Because when you hit the ground you ruin a lot of people's days.

If you look at something like TellTale games The Walking Dead that is a game that at least gives you some difficult decisions to make that have some serious impacts on the game at large, and gives you varied degrees of middle ground in each case. It likes to put you in situations where you are basically fucked either way you pick so you have to deal with consequences regardless, and that never seems to be the case in moral choice games like these. Mass Effect has gotten close but again, its better to be all paragon or renegade than middle ground. Since we are getting to the point where games are taking up 50 gigs of space, I really want to see some serious thought coming in on future moral choices.

The game is visually stunning. I'm never one to throw a hissy fit when my game isn't constantly running at 60 frames a second, and the only time I every actually complain about it is when it gets as bad as Mugen Souls got. To the point where game play is so choppy it makes it almost unplayable. For the most part all of the animations and transitions are smooth, and the game never slows down. This is impressive with all the smoke and neon effects as you are constantly absorbing abilities and firing off beams and explosions.

When looking over the visualscape (which I think is a word I just made up), I did have concern that things were going to be dark and gritty since that appears to be the trend in games. There was also a concern that because the game was set in Seattle, I was afraid we'd get just a generic city setting and a constantly rainy atmosphere. To be fair, there is a fair amount of that, but when you are skimming the rooftops you will also be treated to beautiful sunsets, a glimmering coast line, and colorful neon lights around the city.

You can often find yourself just looking around at things. The game is stunning.

I think graphically the only thing that I am kind offset by is the actual character models. The Infamous games are actually pretty notorious for this in the fact that the characters somehow manage to look incredibly lifelike or cartoony at the exact same time. It is very strange to me and I can never seem to put my finger on why it is it just feels so... off. This game was mo-capped like Beyond: Two Souls was, but has a very different look. This was compounded by fact that I was already a little sketchy about Delsin's overall look. The beanie, the jean jacket it, the skinny jeans. Bleh.. that is so not my look, I don't care how punk rock he is supposed to be..

But then he spoke in a very familiar voice, and I think its official: I'm totally gay for Troy Baker. This guy's voice is in everything. Kanji from Persona 4, Joel from The Last of Us, Vincent in Catherine, Booker in Bioshock Infinite, Male voice 1 in Saints Row, even in roles I didn't much care for him in (James in Silent Hill 2), Baker just continues to knock it out of the park in every role he portrays in every video game he is in, and Infamous: Second Son is no exception. Inside of two or three cutscenes I went from "Delsin is a douchebag punk" to "Delsin is the coolest guy ever". Yeah, perhaps that is biased journalism but I don't care. Troy can have the lead role in every video game for the rest of ever for all I care.

I think we are reaching a point where video game motion capture is becoming a legitimate
form of acting. Like Onimusha before, characters are modeled after the actors portraying them.

I suppose the biggest problem in this game, is the one that everyone has already bandied about. The game is short. REALLY short. Like can beat in a 24 hour span kinda short. I received the game later on a Tuesday and by Wednesday evening I was pretty much already done with the story. Sure there were a handful of additional missions and collectibles to do but for the most part I had completed Infamous: Second Son. I could go back and play it again making the other decisions but essentially for a single play though I didn't feel the length a 60$ game should be. There is some additional content like the paper trail DLC missions but I don't know if that is going to grab me the way I would have liked it to. You know what this game needs? An online mode. CTF or deathmatch with conduit abilities on a massive map? Sign me up.

Here's the deal: Infamous: Second Son is one damn good game. They have the sandbox formula pretty much down pat and if they keep creating content for this series than all the better. They teased some very cool ability ideas that I would have loved to see put into practice here, but as it stands right now, we get a very short but fulling experience. This somewhat feels like a game that was rushed out a bit to try to start moving Playstation 4 units and to that end it is succeeding. But you are really still paying 60 bucks for a 5-8 hour experience. A really good experience mind you, just a really short one too. If that price tag for that length is too hefty, I wouldn't blame you for holding off on this one.

I really need to find a better name for this blog.

I haven't raged at a game in fucking months.