Assassin's Creed Odyssey review (PS4 version)

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is the eleventh title in the mainline series of the franchise, released only a year after the much praised Origins, a game that came out after the franchise took a much needed break.

Odyssey is set four hundred years before the events of Origins, moving from Ancient Egypt to Ancient Greece. You now get a choice as to whether you want to play as a male or female character, Alexios or Kassandra to be precise. I personally chose Kassandra for no particular reason other than she’s aesthetically more appealing, and it’s rare to have a playable female in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.

After an epic reimagining of the Battle of Thermopylae between the Persians and Sparta, the game jumps forward and begins with you taking control of an unassuming mercenary doing odd jobs for people. After a slow start the narrative progressively entangles you into an adventure of family lineage, betrayal and the unravelling of a secret cult acting as puppet masters, all against the backdrop of a war between Sparta and Athens. The story is compelling from start to finish, but it never really hooked me in, the narrative generally jumped from one point to the next without ever making me feel emotionally involved.

Like Origins before it, Odyssey is somewhat of a diversion from the typical Assassin’s Creed game, in fact it goes even further than Origins in turning the franchise into an action RPG. For the first time there are dialogue choices that make a genuine difference depending on what you decide, as well as opportunities to romance non playable characters. The romance addition seems like a bit of an afterthought, as it’s neither deep nor meaningful, it usually just means you get the chance to shag someone.

The map on first look is intimidating with its large land areas surrounded by small islands, all of them gated off with different progression levels. At the start you have a choice between exploration or guided mode, the game specifically states that the developers want you to play in exploration, but I chose guided. I like to play open world games with a bit of structure on top of their layered content, it gives them more linearity and focus for me.

The campaign progression takes you from one area of the map to another, inside of these vast areas are side missions and side activities for you to discover, as well as equipment to collect to either use or farm off for cash or resources. In this aspect the game hasn’t changed too much from what we’ve come to expect from the franchise, but it is noticeably more level grindy compared with previous entries. There are certain points where the level gap between one story mission to the next is quite drastic. The biggest level grind I had to make was three, but with so much content this wasn’t a problem that really hampered my experience, but I must warn you, Odyssey is a challenging game. The enemy AI is relentless and they attack you in numbers if you’re spotted. So trust me when I say that you’ll get your arse handed to you if you try and overcome enemies that are any more than two levels above you.

Combat is engaging and responsive, but it feels rather floaty and weightless. It’s identical to the system used in Origins, but the camera hangs higher above the character making it slightly easier to fight groups of enemies. Which is still a bit of a problem, a good example of this is when you take part in conquest battles, they are large scale battles that you can take part in after you have diminished the power of a leader within a certain region. This is where you’re surrounded by tens of enemies at once, so locking onto the right target can be cumbersome to say the least, this isn’t helped with the removal of a shield you can use, so there’s a bigger emphasis on parrying and dodging.

However, the upgrade system makes up for all of this, choosing from different damage types such as assassin, hunter and warrior, you can assign yourself with a specific set of skills to use in combat. This can range from firing arrows that explode on impact, one time healing, as well as engraving your weapons with fire or poison effect. The skills tree is not as vast as the one in Origins but it’s far more focussed, giving the player more agency over the way they’d like to approach game’s obstacles.

I was initially dreading the naval stuff going into the game, it’s one of the reasons why I never got that far into Black Flag. But I had a lot of fun upgrading my ship, recruiting people, and fighting in the open sea. And the sea is visually gorgeous, while so much of the travelling from one area to the next is sparse and rather lonely, it gives the game a wild sense of adventure and charm to what is a beautiful but often hollow world.

Assassin's Creed games have always created detailed and engrossing open worlds, in the visual sense at the very least, and Ancient Greece is no different. Whether it’s walking through the gates of Athens or Sparta, or climbing the statue of Zeus, there is a lot of beauty and scale that’s jaw dropping. But for all the visual beauty none of the areas on the map look specifically distinct from one another, you begin to notice the same assets used abundantly over and over. The same could be said for Origins, but the topography of the maps and the locations felt distinct and aesthetically more memorable in that game. It doesn’t help that the transversal can be a terrible burden, at some point you’re guaranteed to find yourself getting stuck in certain spots of the terrain, whether it’s climbing up a mountain or riding through a forest.

Which brings me onto an issue that bogs down most open world games, and that’s the sacrifice of intricate level design, which was integral to the franchise before Origins came along. You can now climb pretty much anything in sight, which is a shame because outside of the brilliantly crafted historical locations that they are set in, one of the reasons why Assassin’s Creed stood out amongst the plethora of open world games is the fact that the worlds were designed around the gameplay mechanics. But I understand why this change has happened, for all of these issues I’ve highlighted there is no doubt that Odyssey takes place in a fully interactive and immersive world to explore.

Another minor but drastic flaw that hindered my overall enjoyment is the addition of mercenaries that hunt you down if you cause too much civil disobedience. On one hand it works because it adds to game’s difficulty and tension, and if you choose to kill them you can loot good equipment from their dead bodies. But they become a problem when you haphazardly run into one on the map unknowingly, or if they suddenly decide to turn up when you’re in the process of clearing out an enemy fort or camp. You can pay these people off but it’s easy to forget the red bar at the bottom of the screen that tells you how much of a bounty is on your head. The idea also feels a bit half baked, outside of giving the game an extra layer of difficulty, it’s just a convenient mechanic so that you hire people to be part of your ship’s crew.

The cultist members that you have to hunt down also feels like a lost opportunity, not only is there plenty of them, but the majority are given little more than a short profile in the menu system. You’re rewarded with legendary gear if you kill them, but I think it would have been better if there were far fewer and their roles expanded within the core narrative. Not only would it have gave the story more gravitas, but there would have also been more satisfaction in killing them off.

It took me sixty three hours to see the ending to the main story campaign, and for most of that time I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But like most Assassin’s Creed games, by the time I got to the last third I was beginning to feel exhausted by the whole experience. There is just way too much bloat and niggling flaws that hold the game back from being something truly special, it’s a fantastic game that’s just shy of being better than the sum of its parts. Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood still remains my favourite in the franchise.

Verdict:

4/5

 

     

    

 

What Call of Duty gets right

It was not until 2017s World War two edition that I personally went out of my way and purchased a Call of Duty title for the first time, and it wasn't something I had much intention of doing. It was Christmas Eve and I was about to stay round my mum's over the holidays, aside from Christmas day itself I knew I'd get bored, and I had some money to spare. So with Call of Duty in the sale I decided to buy it, I hoped that it would keep me busy for a few days, and if it was any good I'll play it when I'm listening to a podcast or if I'm not in the mood for anything else, thereafter.

After waiting an incredibly long time for it to download I managed to get stuck into multiplayer, which was the mode that I was really looking forward to playing. Although I did come to like the campaign for what it was, with all of its bombastic set-pieces and linearity. 

WW2 wasn't my first experience with the franchise, in the spring of 2013, during my university break I had a ton of fun with Black Ops 2. I played it on a friends Nintendo Wii U, he used the TV screen while I used the small handheld device. My other experience was with Black Ops 3 on my brother's Xbox One, I couldn't have played more than a handful of matches, which isn't enough to really get a grasp of the game. On both occasions I was pretty terrible, rarely getting more kills than deaths.

Going into Call of Duty multiplayer as a first timer can be a daunting experience, it's not the most arduous of games in terms of skill, but you're going up against people who're usually experienced with the franchise. The time to kill is extremely low and the maps aren't too big, but big enough for the type of fun that the game is trying to achieve. At first I was utter crap but over time I got better, to the point where I was competitive, even now I would never consider myself particularly good at the game. From one match to the next, I can go from being excellent to piss poor.

Having liked last year's game, I bought the recently released Black Ops 4 on its first day of release. With no single player it hasn't been without its controversy. Although I was a little disappointed with the lack of a real campaign mode, it wasn't going to stop me from buying it, I play it for the multiplayer anyway, so I could cut my losses. The new battle royale mode, Blackout, the standout feature the game is being sold on, made up for it in my opinion.

I'm not too interested in battle royale games, but from the little time that I have spent on Blackout, I can safely say that it's a lot of fun. Few games have replicated the same tension and fear of being one of the last survivors on the map. So far I have only played one Zombies map and it was the Titanic one, it was good but the skills and upgrade system seems really complicated and bloated. I will play more of it soon, but if it turns out half as good as WW2s zombies I'll be happy.

But it's the multiplayer that I play Call of Duty for. A Cynical person would call it a brainless, pew pew fest with people getting killed left, right and centre. Which has some truths to it, but the accessibility and instant gratification can't be rivalled. The customisation is not too grand, but there is enough weapons and special classes so that you'll be able to find a loadout that suits the way you want to play.

Even with the manual healing introduced in Black Ops 4, the time to kill is still low, but the quick respawn helps nullify this, as soon as you die you can get straight back into the action within seconds. The quick respawning works because it means that you always feel involved, dying in Call of Duty feels like shit, the same way it feels fantastic to get a kill. There are matches where I'll be absolutely raging because I'm playing badly, with that frustration inside of me the quick respawning makes me want to get right back into the game and make amends. You also have a killstreak, this is the amount of points you collect from kills that rack up your score. Get a certain amount of points and you'll be able to use a one time special weapon such as a rocket bomb or a drone. It's the ultimate payoff for playing well, and an incentive to keep playing.

The movement in Call of Duty games is agile and swift, while the gunplay feels light, the impact of the bullets is weighty. Trust me there's no better satisfaction than the feel of firing bullets that puncture through someone's head in a multiplayer match.

For all of the hate it gets from some corners, there is a reason that the franchise has lasted for so long with such high sales, even if its popularity is past its peak. For quick instant gratification there's nothing that really comes close, Battlefield and Rainbow Six are more complex so to speak, and they're heavily geared towards playing with a group of people. Destiny 2s multiplayer is the definition of mediocrity, the maps are boring and the guns are so unbalanced that it lacks any intuition on the gamer's part.

For me, Call of Duty is the perfect game I go to when I just want to sit back and have some (frustrated) fun when I'm bored, or if I'm listening to the radio or a podcast in the background.



          

Shadow of the Tomb Raider review

Shadow of the Tomb Raider summary and review

I absolutely loved the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, until that point I had only been an on and off casual fan of the series. I’d played the groundbreaking first title, but It wasn’t until Tomb Raider Legend was released in 2006 that I really got my hands on another title in the series, which was the first to be developed by Crystal Dynamics rather than Core Design. I played the subsequent Anniversary and Underworld, which I liked without really loving either of them.

With the changing state of the games industry and the brand in dire need of being relevant again, the developers took a bit of a hiatus to change things up. Although it might lack in certain areas of what we’d expect from a Tomb Raider game, and the emphasis moved further into the action genre, as a package I thought the reboot worked wonders. The exploration was great, the platforming always intuitive, and the combat was fun and rewarding.

The sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider was more expansive with a semi open world, as well as a richer upgrade system. Overall it was a more than worthy sequel, hampered slightly by its meek story, wasted early Syria section and the overall locale nowhere near as interesting as the first game.

So now we have Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the last in this reboot trilogy of Lara Croft’s pseudo origin story. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the game, in comparison with the others it represents the best and worst of the trilogy.

This will not be like the majority of my reviews, I will instead narrow it down to what I liked about the game and where things could have been better, because there’s only one minor aspect of the game that I out and out didn’t like.

The good:

Raiding tombs is pivotal:

One criticism you could lob at the 2013 reboot was the fact that the tombs were optional for the most part, this didn’t change much with the sequel, although the tombs were woven into the locales far better. Shadow’s has the best of both worlds, there are plenty of optional tombs that you can explore as part of the progression. While the narrative that drives the story forward is set within contained environments that require a lot more puzzle solving.

Combat takes a backseat, compared with the last two it’s surprisingly sparse, and when it does occur, it focuses far more on stealth. You can go all out, guns blazing but you’ll only make it harder for yourself.

The stealth is serviceable, it’s pretty basic but effective. Lara now has the ability to cover herself in mud and hide within the settings foliage, you can then kill off enemies with the simple press of one button when they are close-by. The kill animations are quite entertaining, but the stealth does the job and not much else.

The environments are incredible and interesting:

The game is set in two locations, beginning in Mexico and then to Peru for the vast majority of the game. Like the two previous games in the series, the locales are rich in detail and elegant to the eye. While there is no breathtaking individual moments like the first time you saw the Mongol ship hanging from the frozen waterfall in Rise. But overall I would say that Shadow’s has the most alluring, intriguing setting in the trilogy. There is a far more diverse range of topography, as you’ll explore the underbelly of a dark and atmospheric jungle, to climbing along sunlit vistas.

In the past two games the settings never really had a location that was brimming with life, none felt like places that people had lived in. Shadow’s changes this in two ways, first, the game begins in a small Mexican town where the day of dead celebrations are taking place. It’s only a short section but it’s a situation we haven’t seen in this reboot trilogy. Secondly, the biggest hub in the game, Paititi, is a little more packed and filled with human life.

Platforming is the best it has ever been:

With the combat taking more of a backseat, the exploration has a bigger role, with the platforming as good as it has ever been. At heart, right from its birth two decades ago, Tomb Raider has always been an exploration game, traversing its level design has always been the highlight. And the same is no different for this game, using the pick axe or the bow to get from one place to the next is still intuitive and a joy to do. All of the tools from the previous games return with the inclusion of a rope ascender that allows you to pull down from higher reaches. It’s hardly a game changer but it gives the platforming a little more immersion, especially when you consider that the tombs are far better this time around. I also have to applaud how agile Lara is to control, the feel of the character has the perfect balance in weight and movement.

Where improvements could have been made

The story is weak, and Lara’s characterization is inconsistent:

The stories in the reboot trilogy are good on paper but mediocre in execution, and I think they have gradually got worse with each entry. The first game masked a lot of these issues because there was a sense of urgency as the whole plot unfolded, seeing as you were in the shoes of an inexperienced and stranded Lara. In the background was also the pursuit of a mythical Japanese queen that gave the narrative a bit of gravitas.

In Shadow’s, Lara is in pursuit of Trinity (a secretive organisation that steals ancient artefacts), and she ends up having to stop an impending apocalypse. The story just never really feels convincing, so it’s hard to ever get invested in it.

The characters are even more of a problem, and they have been from the beginning of the trilogy. Jonah is the only one aside from Lara who has appeared in each game, and to be fair he’s a sympathetic character whose had a bigger role in each subsequent game. He is Lara’s moral guidance, a wrench on her recklessness, he also appears to be the only confident in her life, so the chemistry between the two works really well.

But Lara is a bit of a paradox in this one, in the earlier games, particularly the first one, she had a certain innocence to her. I sympathised with her despite the fact that you kill countless amounts of in-game enemies. But in this version she is entirely in pursuit of selfish needs, the opening section of the game in Mexico is a perfect example of this. There is also an uncomfortable rambo type moment at one point, that felt out of place not only from a gameplay point of view, but it precedes in an awkward moment of brutality.

Although she gradually grows as a character, it’s really hard to care for her, and she’s kind of unlikable for the majority of the story. The ending implies that she has learned from her mistakes, but I think it’s a little unfortunate that the developers too often reduced her to a two dimensional, action hero archetype.

The gameplay is sometimes far too scripted:

It might just be that I have seen the series do the same old tricks before, but there were far too many scripted setpieces in this one, and outside of one particular moment in Mexico, all of them are boring. As I said, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem if we hadn’t seen them done to death in the previous games.

The game’s pacing is a little all over the place, and I’m not just talking about the plot. Having gone back to the previous two games in the trilogy, it’s noticeable how much you could play for long stretches without any interruption to the flow of the game, and this includes the story. When its at its absolute height, Shadow’s has some of the best moment to moment gameplay in the trilogy,  but there is far too many interruptions to the game that grinds it to a sudden halt. On too many occasions it felt like the game was playing me rather than the other way round.

The skill tree feels superfluous:

I won’t dwell on this too much, but not only is the skill tree ugly but its actual impact on the game is minimal, by the end only about two or three skills I’d upgraded felt like they had any impact. Which is a shame because I thought the skills and upgrade system in Rise was not only user friendly, but it got the right balance between making the upgrades noticeably impactful, while giving the player a certain level of agency in the way that they wanted to approach the game.

The skill tree isn’t helped by the sparse combat in the game, which is why I find it baffling that you have four weapon slots. As much as I loved the focus on platforming and exploration, the game could have done with a bit more moment to moment action that didn’t include forced stealth.

The bad

The final boss:

So bad I really don’t want to go into the details.

Final word:

If you liked the previous two games in the series, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a must buy, despite its flaws it’s still a damn, good game. I’d rank it third in the trilogy, only just behind Rise. It certainly left me the most conflicted out of the three games, it’s also one of the few games of this generation that I have an urge to play for a second time. Just to see if I come away with different feelings on the experience.

In regard to the future of the franchise, I’m stuck in two minds, because there’s a part of me that would love to see this Lara Croft return, and see her go onto more adventures. But at the same time I know a more interesting character can be created, either way I hope a new Tomb Raider isn’t too far into the future. I’d like to see a more bright, vibrant setting, perhaps in Egypt or India. While the reboot trilogy has been visually impressive, a lot of it has been quite grim and dark to say the least.  

Spider-Man review (PS4 game)

Spider-Man is one of the few Superheroes I’ve ever had much interest in, there’s something about the struggles of Peter Parker that relate to me more than a vigilante billionaire or a super powered king, or alien. He has a certain humility that we can all relate to, so I ought to have been really excited for this game, but I was kind of ambivalent to the whole thing.

It was only closer to the release that I decided that I wanted to buy it, and I’m glad I did. After a brief introduction at the start, you are immediately thrust onto the streets of New York, swinging seamlessly from one building to another. This brief moment captures so much of the fun of the game, not only is the open world of New York city brilliantly realised, it’s fun to effortlessly traverse through.

For me an open world game lives and dies on how engaging it is through the agency it gives its players. And while Spider- Man does in many ways steal all of the typical tropes from the genre, it actually makes the setting immersive and the overall package utterly fantastic.

Set years after the death of Uncle Ben, we are thrown into a world where Spider Man is an already established hero, this is no origin story. Much like the comics, Peter is a good natured person who is just trying to get through life, in this interpretation he is working for Otto Octavius as a lab assistant.

The plot twists and turns along the way, but without going into spoilers, the driving thrust of the story is set around a group called ‘Inner Demons’, they are led by a villain called Mister Negative, and it’s basically up to Spider-Man to stop them from terrorising the streets of New York. Throughout the story you will encounter many familiar faces within the Spider-Man lore, from Jonah Jameson, Aunt May, the Osborns, Mary Jane, amongst others.

All of the characters live up to their namesake, fulfilling new and surprising roles within this alternate Spiderverse. Jonah Jameson as an Alex Jones type pundit for a news network is a particular highlight. The characters are generally outstanding and lift up what is an otherwise decent if unremarkable story. The relationship between Mary Jane and Peter is a real highlight.

The open world is dotted with activities alongside the mainline campaign, with newer challenges and side missions unlocked the further you progress in the story. It will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played any open world game in the last decade. Completing side activities exist to gain XP and tokens that you use to upgrade your skill tree, your gadgets, as well as all new suits. The amount of extra suits really took me by surprise, my personal favourite was the Homecoming suit from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  

The collectables are not a chore to get through and add depth to the experience. They come in two forms, the first are backpacks which give you items from a time in Peter’s past. Aside from giving you upgrade tokens, they have no effect on the gameplay, and work the same way the artefacts work in the new Tomb Raider games. A voiceover from Peter will come on when you pick them up, to give them some expository context. The other collectable activity is taking photos of landmarks that are placed around the city. These are a mix up of real life locations such as the Empire State building and others that are set within the Marvel lore, like The Daily Bugle for example.

A lot of the story missions try and tempt you to use stealth to get through areas littered with enemies, you can do this by using your webs to get from one place to the next in the same way Batman used his grappling hook in the Arkham games. But it’s nowhere near as good because the environments were far more contained in those games, and Batman had a lot more environmental gadgets at his disposal. I rarely went down this route too often, and that’s because I enjoyed the combat quite a lot.

The combat leans heavily towards counter attacking, with combinations playing a pivotal role when you’ve made a dodge. Even with the upgrades and skills you gain, it can get slightly repetitive, but it’s always intuitive and fun because of the abundance of moves and gadgets you have to experiment with.

While the game is never too challenging, the enemies gradually get trickier the further into the game you get. They tend to attack in numbers and generally do a decent amount of damage if you’re not careful, so there’s no spamming one button to victory in this game. The only real gripe I had with the combat was the camera, Spider-Man moves so fast there’ll be times when the camera can’t keep pace, so you’ll end up with an enemy getting a cheap hit on you.

The story campaign has the best content, like so many open world games it’s the meat of the experience while the side missions are filler to supplement your progression. But it’s not all good in regards to the campaign, there are small segments of forced stealth missions where you’ll be controlling another character such as Mary Jane or Miles Morales. There isn’t too many of them, and they do allow you to see a different perspective within the plot. But they're generally bland and severely grind down the pace of the game, leaving them feeling a tad out of place.

There are puzzle segments within Otto Octavius's lab, some of these are optional but they are compulsory at certain points in the campaign. I really enjoyed them in small doses, some were real brain scratchers, but the game hits you over the head with far too many of them all at once. Another slight nag are the boss battles, while cinematic, none are particularly memorable and a lot of them rely too heavily on quick time events and waiting for the villain to telegraph their attacks.

Outside of the story and side activity, there is also a photo mode that will keep you busy. New York is visually stunning and realistic, while retaining its own Marvel identity that we’re so familiar with from the comics as well as the movies. As someone who has been to the city several times, the level of detail and lighting took my breath away, the beautiful vistas above the cityscapes is truly inspired. So there is plenty of opportunities to take selfies and share them online.

In a year full of exemplary games, Spider-Man has been the most fun and entertaining one out of the lot. It’s an open world game that not only rewards exploration but it allows the gameplay mechanics to interact and flourish along with it. It’s not flawless, and I think it’s just shy of being truly great, but the ending left me wanting more, and really looking forward to the direction the inevitable sequel takes. This is an absolute must buy for any PlayStation 4 owner, if you miss out you’ll have passed up on something truly special.

Verdict

4.5/5

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.