Shenmue revisited

I asked for Shenmue as a Christmas present the year it was released, 2000 to be precise. It was heavily hyped at the time because of its supposed innovation. I had only ever seen screenshots in magazines, and with no Youtube at the time I had little to go on in terms of its actual gameplay mechanics. But it still interested me nevertheless, it was also clear that martial arts would play a crucial role within the game, and I was heavily into all things martial arts at the time.

To make sure that my mum got me the game, a few days before the big day I found out where all the presents were hidden. So I looked through the big, black bag where it was being kept, and to my relief, it was there alongside one of the Harry Potter games.

Given the acronym, F.R.E.E (full reactive eyes entertainment), Shenmue was something of a revolution at the time, with its night and day weather cycle, its semi-open world, and non playable characters that seemed to live their own daily lives.

I instantly fell in love with the game once I got my hands on it, I was completely immersed in the world and the story that unfolds as you play, as well the combat and quick time events that were thrilling to take part in. I must have completed the game at least four or five times, even to this day it’s not often I come across a game that hooks me in such a way.

With the Dreamcast dead, I mistakenly got rid of my Shenmue disks, and I have always wanted to go back to the game. I genuinely thought it would never happen because buying a second hand Dreamcast with the game is fairly expensive. But my luck changed, with Shenmue 3 on the horizon, there was demand for a port of the first two games. A demand that became reality when it was announced that they were to be ported to the current generation of consoles.

I was obviously ecstatic but a little wary, I would once again get to replay one of my top 5 favourite games of all time. But, how well would the game hold up to my current standards of gaming? With all of my doubts and expectations out of the way, I recently bought the Shenmue bundle with both games for £22.49 on the PS store.

So have my expectations and doubts been met? Yes and no is the short answer. Shenmue is unquestionably still an immersive experience that brings back a lot of childhood nostalgia for me, but if I take my nostalgia glasses off, I have to admit that it has many problems that hold it back, problems that were far easier to ignore nearly two decades ago.

Despite being semi-open world, at heart Shenmue is an adventure game set in 1980s Japan, with a blend of other genres mixed in. The game is heavily driven by its investigative narrative as you go in search of Lan Di, the Chinese man who killed your father in front of you. So there is a lot of going here, going there, talk to this person, wait to go talk to this person. And in-between that you have some exploration and combat to get through, including a rather difficult but enjoyable forklift racing section.

Let’s begin with the positives, the game still hits me emotionally, the music is subtle but always engaging. While the world is small, and rather bland when you compare it to modern game settings, It still pulled me in and it made me feel like I was living in a real place, and one that I would want to visit. There are so many little nuances in the world that poke at your immersion, no matter how dull it can be.

While the lead character Ryo Hazuki has little in the way of personality, the supporting characters are really interesting, and elevate what is an engaging but otherwise lightweight story. There’s not too many of them, but the quick time events that the game pioneered at the time, are intense and cinematically choreographed. Every time you complete a sequence, you really do feel like you’ve accomplished something.

The voice acting and script writing is objectively bad, and it might be really off putting for some, but I actually think it’s funny and gives the game some charm. It has the impact of one of those badly dubbed Hong Kong movies from the 70s and 80s.

With everything said, even as a huge fan of the game, it has unquestionably dated in a lot of ways. This is to be expected for a game that was trying to do something that had never been attempted before, from both a technical and conceptual point of view. The game could be best seen as a prototype to other games that came after its release.   

Aside from the obviously dated graphics (which don’t take any heart away from the game), the combat is serviceable at best, the controls while given an update are still cumbersome. Although they aren’t terrible and you’ll eventually get used to them.

While the locations have their charm and character, they are rather mundane and you’ll quickly get to a point where you’ll have nothing left to discover.

But the biggest issue I had on replaying the game was the abundance of free time that you have from one plot progression to the next. There are points in the game where you’ll have to meet someone the following day at a certain time, leaving you with nothing to do of any great substance. You can lose yourself in the in game arcade where you can play darts or the classic Space Harrier, but that won’t keep you busy for too long.

This is just one example of where the game’s ambitious realism holds back its pace in a bad way. For first time players this might not be such a big issue, but it just made me feel disengaged.

After nearly two decades, I’m glad I went back to Shenmue, it is still one of my favourite games of all time, simply because of the wonderful first time experience I had with it. It leaves me excited for Shenmue 3, which has now been given an August 2019 release date.

If you have never played Shenmue 1 and 2, I’d recommend giving them a try for the price that it’s being retailed at. For a decent price you have two games with a hefty amount of content. However, make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into, so I’d recommend you watch snippets of an early walkthrough on the internet. Despite its glaring flaws, Shenmue will leave you with an experience like no other.

Reflecting back on Mad Max (the video game)

Back in April of this year, Mad Max was one of the games that was free with the PS Plus subscription. It was a title I'd always taken a look at but never went over the line to purchase, it wasn't the price because you can get it for under £10 in most places. I think it was the repetitive nature of its open world, a genre that I had briefly grown tired of at the time.

I like open world games as much as the next person, I certainly like them more than I would have if you asked me five years ago. But I'd become a bit bored of them, it was one of the reasons why I never warmed to Horizon Zero Dawn, and why I never completed Assassin's Creed Origins. But with the game still in my library at the beginning of June, and with nothing else to play, I finally jumped in, and boy am I glad I did.

I finished the game over a two week period, and I have been meaning to write this blog since, but I've been busy with other things in my life. But on reflection, the game is still fresh in my mind.

Mad Max is not too dissimilar to what you might expect in an Ubisoft game. There is a big map which is divided up into different sections, in these sections there are a truckload of collectables to chase, enemy bases to ransack and beat through, with the customary mini games included, such as racing.

In terms of its presentation, the open world in Mad Max is a bit of a deviation from the norm. This world is no urban sprawl full of skyscrapers and wonderful beaches, this is a post apocalyptic landscape that has been devastated by the remnants of nuclear bombs. The map is big and rather sparse of anything to really explore, what could be the game's weakness is actually its strength. This world is full of sandstorms, damaged terrain and abandoned signs of life that existed in a world that was long gone. One of the collectables you pick up are old photographs of places and people, these are littered around the map, and create a sense of depth to what is an otherwise threadbare plot.

To get across this barren world, you have a car that is essential to the game, you have to upgrade it to progress further in the story, and upgrading your car is by all accounts the focus of the game. At face value it isn't anything we haven't seen before, but the vehicle controls are probably the best I have ever played, nothing has quite come close to the thrill of blasting my way across the landscape in this game, or breaching an enemy camp while using a rocket launcher or a harpoon that is attached to your car. It really is bags of fun.

The combat is the other aspect to the game that I found myself completely immersed in. Although you get a shotgun, ammo is rare to come across, and the gunplay is secondary to the hand to hand fighting for the most part. The combat is based on the Arkham games, which I'm not a big fan of. But unlike the Batman games where the combat system is created to make the player feel powerful and the combos look cinematic, in Mad Max, while the combat has been designed to feel cinematic, it's nowhere near as floaty and derivative.

And unlike the Arkham games, the combat can be difficult to master, counter punching and blocking play a pivotal role. The enemies will generally try and surround you, and then attack in numbers. The camera has a tendency to not keep pace with the action, so you'll have plenty of moments where an enemy will suddenly appear from nowhere and get a cheap shot on you, It's only a minor negative nevertheless. Your combat skills can be upgraded just as your vehicle can be, this will involve the usual video game tropes of improving your hit power and health bar, but they do genuinely mix up the action for the better.

While you will be in the same fights with the same enemy types over and over, the combat was absolutely delightful.

The game does have its problems, as I stated earlier, the gameplay loop can be very tedious, the mechanics are pretty solid, but there's no doubt that some people might get bored or rather disengaged with the whole experience. It doesn't help that the story is threadbare, until the last stages of the game, the narrative is pretty much non-existent. Although I wish there could have been a better plot to drive the game, it didn't stop my overall enjoyment, the world was extremely immersive, and so much of the subtle details like the collectable photos nearly made up for it.

All of these are just little problems that I had with the game, but my biggest problem was the controls and the invisible walls. Controlling Max can at certain points feel like a real slog. I understand what the developers were going for with the realistic feel to the game, especially when you consider the kind of setting you're exploring. But I just wish that Max was just that little bit more agile, just so it didn't feel like I was getting a delayed response from my controller. 

In conclusion, Mad Max ended up being somewhat of a hidden gem for me, I generally think it's a little underrated. A game that was probably released at the wrong time, and one that didn't quite change up the formula for a lot of critics. If I were to score it, I'd give it a respectable 7/10, it's good game that really lacks a narrative foundation that could have lifted it higher.

If you missed the PS plus free copy, you can get a second hand one for real cheap. So I'd recommend giving it a try, especially if you're into your open world, Ubisoft type games. 

The good and the bad of Massively multiplayer online role playing games

Until recently I have only ever really dabbled in Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, and I’ve watched others play them with a careful eye. But I’ve never stuck to any of them for more than the introductory first few hours. Those I tried are Elders Scroll online, Star Trek online and DC online, and I have watched at first hand people play Warcraft and City of Heroes.

I have always wanted to get into Warcraft but I’ve never had a PC that could run it, and last summer I had the sudden urge to play an MMORPG. For some reason I wanted a game that could give me a richer experience than those I was playing at the time, which is where I discovered Final Fantasy 14. I had heard of it before, but for whatever reason I took little notice of it, probably because no one I knew was playing it.

But from what I'd read and seen, it looked like a good alternative to Warcraft, and I was able to play it on my PlayStation 4. So I bought the base game and expansions all on one disk. After a solid month of playing, where at one point I kind of became addicted, I stopped playing because although the experience was enjoyable for the most part, it eventually became unfulfilling for several reasons.

I’ve been wanting to write this blog for a while, and I only just recently returned to the game for a fleeting moment, hoping that perhaps I might find something that wasn’t there before. But I’m still getting the same feeling I was when I first played it, and I can’t see myself holding out for long, but we’ll see.

So in this blog I write down some of the good and bad points that playing an MMORPG gave me. Although this is drawing a lot from my experience of playing FInal Fantasy 14, I think it can also be applied to others as well.

The good

• Plenty of content:

Role playing games are generally quite meaty in terms of length, it’s one of their appeals, and that is no exception for massively multiplayer ones. With the online functions included, the amount of questing and side activities is breathtaking. The questing is linked with not just the story, it’s also linked with levelling up, grinding, hunting, as well as crafting.

The social aspects enhance the content as well, there’s one thing playing with strangers, but playing with friends can add a lot of laughter as well as tension. It also helps that you can coordinate your way through dungeons much easier.

• Social

MMORPGs can be a great way to meet new people, the chances are you’ll be on a big server with thousands of active players. There are great ways to meet new people running dungeons or raids. But the best way to meet new people is by joining or setting up a guild or free company (which is the case in Final Fantasy 14).

These are places where a set of players can be part of the same community, in a free company you can share the same house. In the house you could have your own room and decorate it how you want, as well as sharing and storing items with your fellow players.

It allows the player have a sense of belonging in the world instead of it just being a passive background to the game’s narrative.

• Progression that’s organic and diverse

You can create your own character from the beginning, and you'll also be able to pick a character class you wish to play as. For example you might have the choice of playing as a healer, a tank or a damage per second role. This is just an example from my experience, different games will have different roles that you can choose from, but there should be a choice of picking a role that you’ll enjoy best. In Final Fantasy 14 I played as an Archer, a ranged DPS.

As you progress you’ll be able to customize your character in even further ways, this can be both in the way that you fight in combat and the way that your character looks. From experience, Final Fantasy 14 is fantastic at doing this.

• A place of being

As I said previously, a good MMORPG will suck you into its world and make you feel like you’re living in another alternative reality. There are downsides to this which I’ll get to later, but the possibility of striking up virtual friends with other people, and creating your own little virtual home can be really addictive and fun at the same time.

The world can be a very grim and depressive place, and all forms of entertainment are an escape from it. An MMORPG has so much to escape into and become an actively involved participant, rather than just being passively involved for short term gratification.

The bad:

• Tedious questing and grinding

On face value, having loads of content is a good thing, as long as the content is of good quality and the grind is worth the reward. From my experience, MMORPGs are a mixed bag. Nearly everyone one I have played has moments of inconsistent quality in terms of questing. Be prepared to have to do plenty of fetch quests of going here, delivering this, go here and talk to this particular person. A lot of it can get very tedious and feel insubstantial in terms of game-play agency.

Some people will like this, but I’d often come away from a session of playing Final Fantasy 14 and wonder whether I actually did anything that I really enjoyed. You’ll find that a lot with the genre, they are addictive but not particularly fun for long sections of your play time.

• Time suckage

To get the best out of an MMORPG will require a lot of dedication, especially if you’re playing catch up having come into the game late, as I did. This can be a problem because you might find yourself exploring locations with very few other players, and having to wait a long time for other players to join you when you want to go through an early dungeon.

Because the games in the genre are designed to be addictive, they have a way of hooking you in, no matter how much little or to no enjoyment you're actually are having. There’s always a relentless amount of content to drill through, of course you have the choice not to pursue all these endeavours, but if you don’t the games can make you feel like you’re not getting the best experience.

• Toxic communities

As with any online game you'll get people who are absolutely toxic, and by that I mean people who will needlessly either gloat or abuse a particular mechanic in the game. Gloating in certain games is okay, some even encourage it, such as For Honor. In MMORPGs, the toxicity comes when you’re a running a dungeon. Because each player will have a class that has a particular role to fulfil, other players might criticise you if you’re not playing to their standards.

On some occasions they will try and help you, which is always nice, but more often than not they will flatout abuse you, and I’m talking swear word abuse. For new players this might stop them from playing the game, it certainly had that effect on me for a short time.

There are also players who aren't social when it would be best if they were, for example when you join a guild or a free company (which are more or less meant for the purpose of creating a community), there will be players who will not take part in any of the social activities, or simply refuse to communicate with anyone else. This issue is a minor gripe that I have because I’ve not always wanted to be chummy with other people.

So should you play an MMORPG?

If you like doing tedious quests but want to feel like you belong in another world for a potentially rich experience, MMORPGs could be just for you. It comes with its caveats as I have outlined in this blog. If you have never touched one but you've always been curious, my advice would be to try one when you have nothing to play and little in the horizon that you’re interested in. The same way that I first started playing Final Fantasy 14.

The gaming scene at present is quite dry until September, so it’s the perfect moment to get stuck into Final Fantasy 14 for a month or so. If you play for just an hour or two each day, it should be enough time to let you know if you want to stick with it.

  

Streets of Rage 2 memories

A few weeks back I bought the Mega Drive collection for the Playstation 4, although I am an avid fan of the console I was originally intending to wait until it was a bit cheaper. I had already played most of the noteworthy titles that were included in the package, so I thought I could wait. But I caved in to the temptation and bought it, and it was for one reason only, to play Streets of Rage 2.

Before I get into why Streets of Rage 2 is so good, I'd like to first talk a little bit about classic games and why I think nostalgia blinds us to how good they actually were. The collection has some great games that stand the test of time, such as Sonic 1 and 2, the Streets of Rage series, Golden Axe 2, and the action packed Gunstar Heroes. Unfortunately I'll only play most of the other games just the once or twice with no intention of going back, due to sheer frustration or the lack of fun that they give me.

When you go back to old games you forget just how unreasonable they were, this is expected due to the technical limitations of the time. But time is still the best way to judge how good something holds up, and Streets of Rage 2 is one such game that holds up very well.

I first played Streets of Rage 2 around the age of eight or nine, it was somewhere in the mid 90s. It was not something that was bought for me, and in all honestly I don't think it's a game I actually owned a personal copy of (unless I never returned it to the rental store I got it from). And it was a rental store close to where I lived in Wood Green that I first got the game from. I remember the moment I walked through the front door, partly because there was a big cardboard cut out of the forgotten Bill Murray movie 'Larger than Life', it's the one with the elephant on the poster.

Ever since that day I have gone back to Streets of Rage 2 at various points in the last two decades, and it's always just as much fun each time I play it.

To those who don't know, the game is a 2D side scrolling beat em up game. It isn't a one v one with the computer, instead you go through levels like a normal platform game of its time, as you go from point A to point B, fighting your way through hordes of enemies until you reach the end level boss. It wasn't an entirely original game, there were plenty similar to it at the time, from the top of my head I can think of Double Dragon, Final Fight, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games on the SNES, as well as others.

The beauty of the game is its simplicity, the range of attacks is fun to pull off but fairly limited, even for the time. But it's just so extremely satisfying to go from level to level beating up different enemy types as the music fizzles in the background. The grapple and throw function is one of the best additions to the game that wasn't in the first one. To pull it off all you had to do was walk into an enemy and you'd instantly grab hold of them, you didn't have to press another button to lock onto them, it was all seamless.

The presentation of the game is top notch, it still holds up to this day, the levels are crisp and varied. The settings are all pretty much in realist environments, as you go from your average city streets to motorways, to a theme park, and a boat, amongst others.

And let's not forget the co-op play that adds so much to the game, especially if you crank up the difficulty, it really is tons of fun, and it still is as I play it now with my brother who is nearly two decades younger than me.

Along with the original Sonic releases, Streets of Rage 2 is one of the few Mega Drive games that really stands the test of time, and encapsulates the best of what video games can do, and that's pure, entertaining escapism.

        

Detroit: Become Human review

I loved Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain when it was relesed in 2010, at the time I hadn't played a game quite like it before. It had a lot going for it, the multiple choice scenarios, an intriguing mystery, an interconnecting cast of central characters, and its presentation and atmosphere was dark but splendid. It wasn't flawless, the story was inconsistent and the final resolution was surprising but lacking in any logic. Quantic Dream's next game was Beyond: Two souls, which I didn't particularly like much, it rectified some of the problems from Heavy Rain, but created whole new ones and never addressed so many of the flaws it already had. I personally didn't like it for gameplay reasons, too often it felt like a spot the dot, point and click adventure with little player agency.

With five years passed, Quantic Dream's latest title focuses on a near future (2039) where androids are a major part of life. They have taken the everyday manual jobs and roles that would have once been done by humans, which causes fantastic economic growth but dire consequences for much of the working populous, with unemployment rates at thirty seven per cent. Beyond the great facade there are many problems that bubble under in this interpretation of the future, some of these themes are explored directly, while others are only scarcely in the background.

There are three protagonists that you control throughout the game, all of whom are androids built for different roles within society. Kara is a housekeeper who finds herself brought into a broken family with an abusive father. Markus is a carer for a rich artist, and finally we have Connor, an investigative android who chases down deviants. Deviants are androids that have deviated from their programmed behaviour.

From a pure gameplay perspective, Detroit doesn't diverge too much from Quantic Dream's previous games. The plot unfolds by controlling your character through a particular scenario within a contained environment that you have to observe in great detail. The narrative moves forward with the dialogue choices you pick, and the consequences overlap with the other stories in the game. I can't think of a better word to describe it, but it's like taking part in an interactive movie. Of all the three characters, Connor has the most agency in terms of gameplay, because there are numerous scenarios where you'll have to reconstruct crime scenes.

The amount of consequential choices in this game is breathtaking to say the least, far greater than any of Quantic Dream's previous games. On your subsequent playthroughs you'll likely come across entirely new scenarios in locations you hadn't explored before. To best illustrate this, a flowchart comes up every time you complete a scenario, this chart will show you the amount of diverting choices you could have made as well as those that you chose. It also shows you the percentage of people that made the same choice as you. It's really intuitive, and it adds so much to the replay value of the game, however, I would try to avoid it as best you can on your first playthrough. It doesn't give too much away but it will make your return through the game feel more immersive if you don't scrutinise it in too much detail.

The presentation is sublime, the art style and graphics have a level of detail I have only seen in a handful of titles before. The settings aren't just backdrops but characters in themselves. You'll feel the urge to search every nook and cranny, which I'd advise you to do anyway. Because this is a narrative game, the environments do have invisible walls, which does restrict the feel of being in total control of the experience, but it's not a big deal when you consider the type of game this is.

There is a problem with the gameplay though, and it's the controls, they have not changed since Heavy Rain, and the controls were a problem when that was released over eight years ago. They feel clunky, and the characters feel too weighty to move, but the bigger problem is when you move around the environments, which are dotted with things to pick up or interactive with. Too often I'd waste time having to line up precisely with what I wanted to observe, it's not a game breaking issue, but it's a minor frustration that you'll have to endure.

The ideas and tropes that Detroit delves into are in no way new to any form of media, let alone videogames, but the game succeeds and fails on its own premise in equal measure. Let's start with the good shall we. I was thoroughly invested in all three of the main characters and the roles they play in this alternative future, as well as the plot which tries to present us with the social issues of inequality that advanced androids could potentially unleash onto society if we're not careful. Such as the rise of homelessness if manual workers were replaced by androids. The game is also full of small but inventive nuances that had little to do with the gameplay, but are delightful to spot.

Now to the bad. While Detroit tries to deal with complex issues, it does so in a scanty and rather surface level way. Nothing becomes larger than the sum of its parts, it's sad to see big ideas transpire into nothing more than cliched tropes. You could argue that the story is character driven more than it is plot driven, but the writing could have still been a bit more ambitious and wider in scope.

It doesn't help that there is surprisingly few human characters that we really get to know, there is Connor's investigative partner, Hank, but most of the other moments of interactions with humans are too fleeting, and too many fall into the old cliched person who hates androids trope. The game might have benefited from a playable human character, so there was another perspective that could have been woven into the narrative.

Some of the metaphors can also be a bit too on the nose and misguided, while it's easy to see a future where androids are treated as nothing more than servants. I'm not sure if it was a wise idea to include similarities with civil rights protests, and androids having to sit at the back of public transport. Much like the human populous of the game, the androids struggle isn't explored in great detail, it's just given a point of view.

Despite its issues, I loved Detroit, and I'd say with confidence that it is now my favourite Quantic Dream game. It's so refreshing to play something that isn't really like anything else on the market, and for that I applaud David Cage. For all his flaws, his games have an underlining ambition to make the gamer think, rather than just be a passive participant.

I'd recommend this for anyone who is looking for a heavily narrative focused game, but If you have never liked a Quantic Dream game before, stay well clear.

Verdict: 8/10 

Solo Movie review

Director: Ron Howard
Running time: 135 minutes

I don't have to tell you that no one really asked for this movie, to make yet another prequel to the mainline Star Wars saga is not a bad idea within itself, just as long as it can tell a worthwhile story within the universe. To which Rogue One achieved for the most part, it has its problems with character development, but I have come to enjoy it more with every subsequent watch since its release.

What makes a Han solo prequel so unnecessary at face value is that the character had an amazing arc in the original trilogy, he went from being a selfish rogue to a responsible man. He basically grows up within an ensemble of other good characters, so Solo has a lot to live up to, and it's actually a decent popcorn flick, without being much else.

The story begins with Han escaping his homeworld, Corelia, and enlisting as a pilot in the Imperial army to escape the clutches of an underground gang. Three years later he leaves the army, befriends Chewbacca and joins a band of pirates led by Tobias Beckett (Woody Harrelson), on a heist. When the job goes wrong, the group is given one last chance by a crime lord, Dryden Vos (Paul Bettany) to redeem themselves. Coming along for the ride is an old love interest, Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke), and later in their journey they run into Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover), as well as the Millennium Falcon.

Unlike The last Jedi, Solo feels like an old fashioned adventure story, in that there's plenty of planet hopping and action set-pieces. The action is fun but a bit too long, the two major set-pieces simply go on for far too long. It doesn't help that there's no real stakes involved, because we know the two main characters inevitably survive, taking away any form of tension.

However, I was pleased that the movie didn't do what most blockbuster movies do these days, and that's have a string of small action scenes that eventually build up to one big massive final battle before the credits roll. The final act in Solo is relatively small and it served the purpose of the story and characters, which made me feel invested the entire time rather than it feeling like an overblown distraction.

While the movie's tone is more light hearted compared with the rest of the Disney produced Star Wars movies, it's still very dark and moody in the visual department. While the story takes you on a journey from one locale to the next, nothing is particularly memorable, especially when you consider some of the spectacular and diverse worlds we've previously seen in the Star Wars universe. Much like the movie itself, it doesn't really go beyond being more than adequate.

I actually quite liked the characters in the story, and found them interesting, each of them had their own understandable goals. The cast are all good in their roles without really elevating the script, and that includes Alden Ehrenreich, who I actually rather enjoyed as Han Solo. If you just look at it as a different interpretation of the character (which it is), I think there's enough here for you to go along for the ride. And you know what, I wouldn't mind seeing him play the role once again. Donald Glover is charismatic as Lando, but the script doesn't really explore the friendship he has with Han in any great way, and it was good to see that Emilia Clarke's character wasn't just a love interest.

Chewbacca is better than ever, he plays a pivotal role in a movie for the first time since the original trilogy, and his chemistry with Han is just as adorable as we remember. Be warned that there is an annoying droid called L3-37, if her role was any bigger it would have been on the level of Jar Jar Binks annoyance.

Solo is fine, it's probably better that it really ought to be, which is a low bar to set, but it's decent, and I would have enjoyed it a little more if there wasn't an action scene in the middle of the movie that slogs on for far too long, with no real tension. I'd recommend this for any Star Wars fan, and a family who have time to kill over the half term, but it's no more than a decent action/heist flick. It does just enough to justify its existence and little else.

3/5

God of War review

This review should have been up quite a while ago, but after completing God of War I needed time to process the experience that the game gave me. I had only previously played one other game in the series and that was the remastered version of the third game for the PS4. It was good overall, but I actually never completed it because it eventually ran out of steam and I got bored. With its platform sections and combat, the core gameplay was pretty decent, but its shallow protagonist and story couldn't make up for its repetitiveness.

So I was never particularly hyped for this game even if I was planning to purchase it, so it was good to see it get near perfect reviews from most mainstream critics. So the question is, does it live up to the hype? The short answer is yes and no. It is without question an excellent game, is it a masterpiece? I don't think so.

The story sees Kratos and his son Atreus living in the norse world of Midgard with the intention of spreading the ashes of his second wife and Atreus's mother at the highest point of the nine realms. It's from here that they journey through six of the nine realms, fighting all kinds of gods and creatures along the way. The story at face value is nothing much to write about, but the lore behind it is extremely fascinating and it fits wonderfully into the world the developers have created. And the story is far more character driven than it is plot driven, some of the emotional moments feel forced but there is genuine character development and growth that's a bit of an exception in videogames.

The game is semi-open world, Midgard is not exactly massive but it branches into different sections that you can reach when you have certain abilities to progress. If I were to compare it to any other game it would be the Tomb Raider reboot games, where the open world consists of several hub spots that you return to to either pick up collectables or to complete side-quests for supporting characters. If you decide to do a lot of the side content none of it feels like a compulsory check list, it's there to enrich the experience. I personally did some of the side stuff but not a whole lot, I completed the game in the region of around 20-23 hours, but I've read that if you do most of the extra content, you can get through your first playthrough in the 35 hour mark.  

But let's be honest, much like its predecessors, God of War is still an action game at its core, gone is the high camera, fast paced hack and slash combat, and in comes an over the shoulder camera, a more refined but slower paced combat and very little in the way of platforming. The combat is fluid and feels weighty, you start off with an axe that you can throw and then recall back, think of it in the same way that Thor throws his hammer and it returns back to his hand after hitting something. It never gets old and it always feels good. Thankfully, Atreus is not a nuisance, he is equipped with a bow so you can command him to help in combat in a limited but effective manner.

While the combat is satisfying it never really excels beyond being adequately good, there's no imaginative way to kill off a large numbers of enemies, and a lack of a jump button makes it even more noticeable. While there is an upgrade system that gives the combat a bit of progression and variety, it's the only aspect of the game that I outright didn't like.

For me a good upgrade system is one that gives the player agency over the way they like to play the game, it's not just there to make you feel a bit more powerful to overcome enemies that gradually get a bit more difficult. Which is sadly not the case with God of War, not only is it overwhelming at first but there's too many little mechanisms within the different upgrade components, think of Destiny but without the polish and execution. It's not particularly bad it just feels like its been included for the purpose of padding the gameplay loop.

In-between the combat and walking sections are environmental puzzles that are not too dissimilar to those in the third game. They are not particularly complex and rather easy to overcome, they seem to have been included to add an extra layer and obstacle to the gameplay structure, and they work for the most part. However, there was a glitch in one of the puzzles at the end of the game that made me have to restart from an earlier checkpoint, I only lost about twenty minutes of game time but it's a minor nuisance in a game with such a high budget.

As I wrote earlier, the original God of War games had a decent amount of platforming, this has been removed entirely. There's a few moments in the game where you do some climbing and jumping to traverse from one place to another, but it's hardly intuitive, merely requiring you to push the analogue stick and pressing the circle button when it shows up. Some of this has been done to focus on the characters dialogue with one another.

After a while you begin to notice that the game follows a specific pattern, as you walk from a narrow corridor and into a large open area to fight a group of enemies, once they're cleared you have to deal with an environmental puzzle. Once that's done you are then treated to a dramatic cutscene or a slow walking or climbing section. Nothing wrong with this, I just wished that the traversal was as exciting and as central to the game as it is in other titles like Tomb Raider and Uncharted. 

If there is one part of God of War that is unquestionably masterful, it is the production design that lays the foundations to the good but not great gameplay mechanics. At various points the visuals left me awestruck, while the game's world has a reasonably dark palette, the combat visuals, the enemies, and certain aspects of the art design are utterly breathtaking. Unlike most game locales, the world of Midgard has an abundance of character and the level of detail is to be applauded.

As well as the overall production, the script, the voice acting and the cutscenes are amazing, allowing for an immersive experience. This is one of the few games I've played that felt cinematic in a good way, with the narrative arc of what you'd read in mythical srory. The supporting cast of characters such as Freya the witch and Brok the Dwarf, add a little levity to what can be a very stoic and contained experience.

Until God of War came along it had been awhile since I'd lost myself in a truly worthwhile gaming experience, partly because it's a rare that a game tries and succeeds in reaching beyond the sum of its parts. Now that I have completed it I plan on returning and giving it a go on a harder difficulty, but it's not perfect, the core gameplay is good but nothing special, and held up by some of the best production design and world building I have come across. The ending of the game is intriguing and thought provoking, but I couldn't help but feel that it's nothing more than a setup for future instalments.

At the end of the day this game is a must have purchase for anyone, it's not only one of the best PS4 games but one of the most delightful of this generation.

Verdict: 8/10