Jade Raine

They retconned a bunch of stuff from the previous games, changed the formula, and made this dumpster-fire of a generic zombie slasher with a protagonist that is loosely based off the one from the first game. He definitely isn't the same guy, even though they try to pass it off like he is.

While I was really mad at this game earlier, give the game a chance. It is worth however much it is. It turns out this game is just really hard on you when you first start out. When the story requires you to go to Alexandria, do everything in Siwa first. Those assassination missions for Aya are meant to be done later on and not early on. Upgrade everything in your inventory for higher lvl gear. What I hate is that I have access to all the quests, but I have to sift through to find the lower level ones. There's still some annoyance but the game gives you a clear goal. To level up and end up being able to wreck everyone. So it's a pretty fun goal to work towards. There seems to be plenty for me to do and I think the immersion level is almost with Rdr2.

I rewatched the Matrix trilogy before this movie. I was pretty hyped watching it when it was released on HBO. The transition from 3 to 4 was like disembarking a luxury yacht to go on a tugboat. I feel bad for people who went to the theater for this. The movie immediately starts out with some blue hair lady I know nothing about doing parkour while screaming something we haven't been filled in on. Then fake Morpheus appears and stumbles and laughs unlike the original Morpheus. When we finally got to Neo I realized what I was getting into. The tone is completely different from the other movies. About everyone except Neo tries to be all trendy and new age, the movie apparently loves name dropping irl companies and using hipster slang out loud. I didn't understand it at all, everything they were saying was just weird and nonsensical. Idk how they thought they could recast Smith and Morpheus. You know what the first thing fake Smith said on screen? "OMG". I wish I was making this up. He said the letters out loud, O M G. It made me think I must be hallucinating. No disrespect to Groff, who didn't even know he was playing Smith until after the audition and kinda just went with it. That's fine. Idk what happened to Trinity. Same actress but she acted like a whole different person and they treated her as such. It felt like a fever dream. Maybe if I kept watching it might have made more sense but I couldn't. It didn't take long for me to realize this was absolutely a parody disguised as something we were meant to take seriously. I turned it off on the office montage scene. What were they thinking. I got filled in on the rest of it by the internet, and as the movie proceeds nothing really happens. I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 was a better spiritual continuation of the Matrix, and Johnny is better than this depressed "Neo" who the film seems to just make a joke out of. But that's a video game, so I say watch John Wick instead or something.

Not for casual gamers who usually don't play medieval rpg games where you have to constantly look after your party and prefer fun over being constantly challenged. I wanted to get into it for the voiced protagonist and it played more like Mass Effect than Dragon age origins. I played for a few hours and I started to feel really bored and had a headache. I'm sure it was from navigating around the stupid map and getting killed all the time. The combat system isn't so great, the MC literally gets knocked out too much. The dialogue system tries to be good but it feels like it doesn't flow well a lot. For example when I chose the first flirt option for someone. My character said "how bout a kiss now?" Or something. It was a bit too forward because I hadn't flirted with that character before. I actually felt second hand embarrassment for how dumb my MC sounded. Of course because your dialogue choice barely effects anything in this game, my follower completely disregarded the overly flirtatious comment and carried on with talking about her reaction to city life. My character wasn't even partially acknowledged for being creepily forward and a horrible romantic. Shepard from Mass Effect is way better at romance dialogue and this game is a Bioware game so I hate how it feels dull in comparison. A lot of the times it felt what i was saying didn't matter at all. I don't know why it doesn't feel like a lot of care got put into the game. Animations feel stiff and a boring city that I had no fun walking around. Usually I get new gear fairly easily after the prologue because I hate having to wear the default weak outfit in games. But all I found was stuff the game refused to let me wear and was stuck in the default armor for way too long than I was ok with. I like that character customization mid game is possible, but seriously why make me go all the way to a sorcerer and stand in front of a magic mirror just to change my character's hair. People can alter their hair without magic, you know. I never understood why rpg games don't let you customize your character in the player home, instead you gotta go to some person to do it for you. Also, all the male beards look horrible. If you look from behind, it's noticably pasted crudely onto the character's face, even if you're the default preset. I tried origins a couple years ago. I can't really speak for it because I barely played but maybe it's better than 2.

Ok so i wrote an essay and I don't expect anyone to read it unless you were as disappointed as me in the flaws of this game. So this game was hyped up by Ubisoft from the beginning. As one of the only people who actually enjoyed the first Watch Dogs and didn't think of it as just another GTA clone, I was excited for Bloodline. I gotta say that's the only reason this game is worth anything. They had a lot of ambition with the "play as anyone" mechanic. It excited me to have that freedom so I got the game on release date. It was way different than I expected. It just shows that it doesn't translate well into a video game to "play as anyone". They force you to grind on noticably repetitive missions if you want to unlock characters. Literally everyone in the city just "happens" to be a questgiver who needs you to do them a favor/favors. I realized nobody had a likable voice and everyone started to sound the same. Some voices were pitch shifted to sound deeper in an attempt to add variety, but it made me cringe at the obvious voice changer effect. That AI talking all the time and mocking you constantly gets old. Not to mention he tries to talk like he's the boss of your whole crew. I don't know why they thought making our crew have an AI that just hates us was a good idea. If you get hospitalized, "Bagley" just makes fun of you for failing and it switches to another teammate, who is usually totally insensitive and think their buddy deserved it. I remember when it switched me to a grating woman almost laughing while saying "what an idiot. Shoulda surrendered". It's as if Ubisoft just likes to make you feel stupid all the time. And as I was saying about that talking robot. I don't need handholding from him. The tone is kind of a mix between WD1 and WD2. I got bored pretty quickly until I was able to play Bloodline. (Got the Season Pass for xmas 2020, Xbox provided NO holiday discount whatsoever which is stupid but not the reason I give 2 stars) After that I used Aiden for campaign and loved all his unique quips in the story mode, and he actually says smart things to his teammates. He has a funny dynamic with Bagley sometimes. He's still mocked by him and spoken to like an expendable convenience like everyone else. When he is defeated in campaign he's hospitalized or jailed for atleast a half hour usually, and you HAVE to play as someone else for the alotted time. Pause and it won't count. That feature really annoyed me. I was really enjoying the campaign as Aiden rather than as multiple random NPCs. But then my save got corrupted after I was close to the end and I never figured out why. I made a new one and started over anyway but the game could've been made to better prevent that, and Ubisoft eventually gave on updates which were always lackluster for the most part. The season pass gave us 4 "unique heroes". Only 2 of them are unique, the other 2 have generic voices. Get the game to continue Aiden's story if you liked WD1. He's cool, has a new outfit (sadly can't get the original trench coat but he can wear any shop clothes and actually dress like a normal guy unlike WD1 where all his clothes were reskinned coats, so thumbs up for letting me wear a tux) WD1 had a lasting effect on me, so back in 2019 I used to brainstorm him fighting crime in another city wearing a new outfit, so the best thing about this game is it made my imagination a reality. If you liked Wrench (imo one of the best parts of WD2) he is a playable protagonist too.

Let me start out by saying FC2 is lots of fun. The realism is also a nice touch. The only real complaint I have is the way enemies run you over out of nowhere. You die instantly and it's a needless feature. I could be in the middle of the desert then some jeep just rams me. For me, the game is HARD. Especially on act 2 when they start blowing you up with mortars all the time. But it's just so liberating and fun to just drive around in Africa and reach "sickness level 0" and "reputation level 5". The malaria is really kinda inconvenient and annoying sometimes, but I kind of enjoy the underground missions to get the pills. I feel like if someone actually had malaria in irl they'd be messing themselves and curling up in a ball, so I don't know how the protagonist has the energy to just go around fighting. But whatever. Let's say that the nanomachines from the constant use of the health syringe are lessening the effects. The soundtrack while driving around is nice to listen to.

Just cause 3 is a worthy successor to the 2nd game. Rico is back, and he's visibly aged a bit. This time he is keeping the peace at an Italian continent he grew up in. The map is beautiful. You can tell they focused on the scenery looking good. There's a bit more story than just cause 2 this time around and it's more accessible. Rico has actual friends and family. I think it kinda humanized him more while maintaining the traditional aspects of a just cause game. I do admit that I prefer to stay away from NPCs because they all know Rico and bombard him with repetitive comments. I don't care if "I'm your hero" and I'm really not into being praised. No outfits at all, which could've been a nice feature considering it is a third person game after all. You can put a blue accessory on Rico with DLC that makes him look slightly different.

Dying light is an incredibly made game. It reminds me of Far Cry with parkour and zombies (especially in the following DLC, driving around is very reminiscent of Far Cry) It's essentially a playable open world Walking Dead with a main character that feels straight out of that franchise. You play as Kyle Crane, initially a tool of some faceless government agency. Watch him change into someone who forms his own opinions and path, and ends up caring more about humanity and saving lives as the game progresses. The map is HUGE. And it can be difficult to traverse. But this gives me plenty to explore so I'm happy with it. The main campaign is about getting around with parkour but the DLC map you drive a buggy which I have a lot of fun with because the map is so expansive with open roads. What I really hate about this game is the way the checkpoint system works. You die, you get sent back out of the way of where you were, and any medkits, ammo, whatever you used doesn't appear back in your inventory BUT anyone you killed will stay dead when you respawn, making it easier to deal with the area. It's a weird system and I don't really hate it. It helps in a way. But sometimes they put me so far back I rage. Hard. But I love this game. Initially I got it in 2016 because a friend had it and we wanted to do co op. I wasn't hooked. We both stopped caring about the game. In 2021 I restarted the story, actually paid attention instead of skipping cutscenes like I did in 2016 just so I could unlock co op with my friend. I got really invested and got back into it last week. I just beat the main campaign. The game can have weaknesses. Sometimes it insists on being a puzzle game and that can ruin the pacing of a mission like when I'm going after some dude and being made to do parkour puzzles when I'm meant to be in a hurry. I was underwhelmed by the final boss and would've rather just fought em with a melee weapon in-game than what we got. A QTE that I must've died 10 times to, which ruined the flow. There are multiple side quests that just end off with Kyle being trolled and having his time wasted with no way for revenge, so if that's a trigger for you (it kinda is for me) then just be wary. I just now found out this game is available on the switch. This may be one of THE best games you could have on a portable handheld device, and I'll probably buy the game again for mine.

Older games like this have way more charm than most newer ones. I like games like this where you just have an interactive city to explore that you're trying to take over and by the end of the game you're a playa who owns the whole city (in a kingpin sense) and have all the properties. The clothing store system in this game is one of the best, because of all the customization you have with the clothing items. You can choose the color out of a huge spectrum and other stuff. You can hit the street and discover all the minigames. Some are funny, some stupid, some disturbing. Overall it's a lot of fun and "GTA clones" like SR2 prove that GTA isn't the only game that gets this kinda thing right. What a lot of open world games don't do right is they don't include many enterable buildings. Saints row 2 there's just a lot of places you can enter. There's clubs, bars, stores, a mall with many stores, and a hotel with a full lobby and multiple stores in it plus a purchasable penthouse. It's way better than the 1st game and has a brighter more vibrant feel to it in the city and with everyone's personality including the protagonist who now speaks a lot more. But if you want to feel like you've come far and understand more about the gang's history, play 1 and then recreate your character for 2. For example, I liked how my character went from mute errand boy who owed a gang favors for saving his life in SR1 to the leader of said gang who tells everyone what to do in SR2. It's a sense of accomplishment.