First-person leg enjoyer.

All right, I got quite a lot of gameplay time out of Ace Combat 5, which surprised me as the reviews led me to believe I wouldn't enjoy this one. It pleasantly surprised me despite its craptacular story and some braindead game design changes. I am playing this emulated via PCSX2 (kiss a butt, Sony) which is mostly a smooth experience, with all graphics left on default to get as close to the original PS2 look as I can without a CRT TV (yes, 480i looks bad blown up on a 1080p monitor, but I can deal with it), and I have an Xbox Series controller instead of a DualShock or DualSpend or whatever Sorny calls them now, but other than that, it's as close as I can get to what I would have experienced if I didn't have to pay ridiculous money for college books back in 2004.

Anyways, rambling review time.

Goods: It's more Ace Combat, I have grown to like this series and I do wish I could have played it in its heyday (no I'm not preordering AC8), the gameplay is satisfying arcade action with just enough realism to stand out against other more arcadey flight games of the time period (such as Rogue Leader and Rebel Strike on the Gamecube or the PS2's Starfighter and Jedi Starfighter, all of which I did play). The missions are more complex than AC4's mostly score-attack missions, and are more memorable as a result. The music is still amazing, I've played three games in this series now (7, 4, and 5) and this is consistently a winner in the sound department. The graphics are noticeably improved over AC4, especially the planes and explosions. The plane selection is also expanded with all the usual suspects (US "teen series", Fulcrum and Flanker for the commies, etc) but also many more one-off experimental planes, like the X-29, F-16XL, and a few others; I was particularly happy to see the F-20 Tigershark, since I played the SNES game UN Squadron when I was younger and finally saw the Area 88 OVA earlier this year, so hooray for that one. All the little touches seal the deal, like animated refueling probes and such. It's not 100% accurate (like the game's F-35C has an internal gun it lacks in real life) but it already does way more than it needed to do.

Mehs: The flight model is simplified compared to the previous game, planes all feel lighter and less like actual airplanes, but the change isn't too bad (I'd say it feels much more like playing AC7 but without high-G turns or stupid PSM). There are some new gameplay additions which are a mixed bag. Wingmen commands are basic and the wingmen AI is inconsistent, they are either near-useless (most of the time), completely 100% useless (one particular mission set in a box canyon in which they do jack shit aside from rarely scoring non-fatal hits on the enemy helicopters), or randomly overpowered (if you order them to attack enemies in front of you, they will, if the spirit of Dick Bong finds them, go absolutely beast mode and wipe out enemy flights with ease). Wingmen also talk more and will repeatedly ask the player questions, prompting a yes or no response via Dpad, which is distracting but at least it does give them some connection with the player. The game is long, about 30 missions or so, and none of them have checkpoints, while some missions proceed back-to-back without even letting the player save, which is bad, but overall it's tolerable (I beat the full campaign twice, on normal and hard, and replayed many missions in free mission mode to grind for more planes, and I do have all S-ranks on those two difficulties). On a weird story note, the player and his squad are part of a land-based air force, but about 2/3 of the way through are more or less adopted by the navy and switch to F-14A Tomcats, which is their canon plane... and they fly almost exclusively air-to-ground missions after that. Yep. (you, the player, are free to equip them with more sensible options like Hornets but still)

Bads: Holy fuck the story is awful (not as awful as AC7 but pretty close). It's full of unnecessary melodrama and features annoying chatter from both your wingmen and your allied military units, none of whom sound professional enough to belong anywhere near front-line combat. Writer's Pet Kei Nagase is whiny and annoying, no matter how hard the game tries to make her look cool (she seemed normal in AC4, what happened here?). The overall story is supposedly an anti-war narrative (as that was a very popular thing to do for big-money corporate media around this time, since Bush II was doing his thing) but the execution is awful, as the game encourages the player to cause as much destruction as possible and rewards them for doing so, meanwhile the actual plot (written and translated by actual monkeys with typewriters on both sides of the Pacific) is garbage. The big message is the two superpowers duped into an unnecessarily destructive war (Osea and Yuktobania, literally just the United States of America and Russian Federation) are "fighting for peace" by actively killing their countrymen and, in the grand finale, they finally achieve their goal of world peace by jointly invading and destroying a third nation (Belka, aka Germany, the one country you're allowed to hate apparently). It's shallow, it's full of itself, and also...

Yeah, I'm calling bullshit on the sincerity of this game's story.

Bads, continued: The system for unlocking new planes is also pretty bad. Certain planes, you just buy once and that's it, but for others (planes with variants, such as the F-15, F-14, Su-27, etc) you have to fill a "kill rate" meter to unlock their variants (which still have to be purchased with in-game money). So you'll have to grind missions in the air-to-air-only F-14A to be able to unlock the air-to-ground-only F-14B Bombcat, then grind with the Bombcat for the F-14D Super Tomcat. And to add to that, you can choose your wingmen's planes in this game, which is good, but that means you have to buy their planes, too. So unless you want to fly around in a fancy new plane while your wingmen are stuck in F-5E's, you need to get grinding (to be fair, the game does give you four F-14A's for free when you progress in the storyline far enough). Oh, the reason you need to grind this much is that each plane only gets one type of special weapon, and that's it (in addition to the usual cannon and magic Sidewinders). So in the early missions, when you are stuck with the F-5E, you'll have useless unguided bombs hanging off of your wings as you fight solely air-to-air battles (in real life, this would be a horrible idea), this wasn't a good system and it's a good thing the later games ditched it. Also, friendly AI is also hot garbage, with friendly tanks slowly crawling in between lines of enemy tanks, rescue helicopters flying in straight lines over valleys full of SAM's, etc. I did also encounter some technical issues but I'm not sure if it's actually the game's fault or the emulation; specifically, while the game usually ran at perfect 60fps for me, there were occasional hitches that felt like a DVD movie switching layers (any of you remember that?), I don't know if the actual PS2 game would do this so I'm inclined to believe it's just the emulator, and it was a minor problem so I didn't let it bother me. And yeah, not having analog buttons on modern controllers is an issue with PS2 games, but it's still playable as-is.

That was a lot in the "bad" column, and this game absolutely deserves it, but it's still a fun game overall. It's still fun to play, it kept me coming back to replay missions in new planes, and that's what counts. You can skip a cutscene, but you can't skip a good cluster bombing. In the end, I did enjoy AC5.

Since I got back into Project Wingman this year and finally played a real Ace Combat game (AC7 to be specific), I decided to also finally play the old PS2 game, Ace Combat 04. Yes, this is emulated, Sorny can suck every weiner. I also deliberately used zero graphical enhancements in PCSX2, so aside from not using a CRT TV, this is just about exactly how the game would have looked had I played it in the brief time I owned a PS2 back in the day (college is expensive).

Short-ish review time.

Goods: The gameplay is a good mix of arcade action and some realism (hard to explain in words but the planes feel heavier than they did in AC7 and there's no magic high-G turn button). The missions are mostly short and fun, paced a lot better than the later game. The story was interesting, it's told as a background slideshow of a civilian child living under a military occupation; there are no other real major characters in the story which is already a gigantic advantage this older game has over AC7 and its terrible story and even worse cast of characters. The music in AC4 is amazing, no other way to put it. Graphically, for a PS2 launch-era game, it looks pretty good, though playing a 480i game blown up on a modern monitor may not be the clearest, all the planes look great and the moving flaps and such really help seal the illusion of reality. The lineup of planes is also good, it's not as bloated as AC7's "OOPS! All Flankers!" lineup, but all the important planes are here (the USAF/Navy "Teen Series", A-10, F-22, and even a completely unrealistic air-to-air capable F-117 because why the heck not; along with some Euro-Doritos, a few commie planes, and my favorite Euro plane of all time, the Tornado). The 18-mission campaign is just long enough to be satisfying and definitely replayable, and features a good mix of environments and scenarios (such as big island battles, lush forests full of hidden bases to bomb, night missions, and the most memorable, a hazy D-Day-esque beach landing).

Mehs: The controls are okay but since I'm playing emulated, with a modern Xbox controller, I don't have the PS2's analog face buttons which means no variable radar range or zooming in on enemy targets, and no fine adjustments to throttle (the game was designed to be playable with a PS1 Dual Shock with only digital buttons, so it is playable as-is, but the absence is definitely noticed). This isn't really the game's fault, but half of my time was spent fighting my AC7 muscle memory against AC4's keybindings. Not all missions are winners (looking at you, balloon mission) and there are zero checkpoints which can be a problem in the longer 20-minute missions if you get a cheap death right at the end or just barely miss an S-rank.

Bads: I struggle to think of anything that is genuinely "bad" but I will say the missiles in this game sure do miss a lot; I get that this happens in real life but it's super annoying when it happens in a fictional setting in a video game that has other unrealistic conveniences like infinite fuel. I don't know if this is the fault of the emulation or not, but I've heard this game hyped up as being locked at 60fps and it definitely dropped below that for me, but it was mostly fine. Enemy AI is also inconsistent, particularly the super-elite Yellow Squadron, getting into turning fights with them feels like they get to use the high-G turns from later games but the player can't, and doing a turn-fight with one of these godmoders just lets the rest of them spam missiles at the player (and you don't get chaff or flares in this game); alternatively, the player can just boom-and-zoom* and near-effortlessly take them out with a missile or two to the face, so it really feels like you're just exploiting the game before it can exploit you, not satisfying at all. I fought the Yellows fair and square on my first playthrough on normal and earned my victory through blood, then I jousted with them on my second playthrough on hard difficulty and the Yellows stood zero chance, so the moral here is cheat to win.

*This is how our pilots beat the Tojos in WWII in real life, so there's some precedent at least.

I did notice a few of this game's missions got rehashed by AC7 though I can't blame a series for revisiting its own high points, now can I.

Anyway, overall I enjoyed AC4 and sincerely wish that I had played these games back in their heyday, but I didn't, but now I can.

Yep... another one.

I found out about this game The Mute House about a year after its release, after trying the demo for its spiritual sequel, Faithless Water (which was a decent time). The Mute House went on sale shortly after, it was cheap, so I bought it. Yet another indie survival horror, but why not. It's a very short game, and I've heard it described as "Resident Evil 1: hard mode" which sounds accurate to me. I have beaten it twice, once on its default difficulty, and again on the unlockable "Fury House" difficulty, and here is my short review of this short indie game.

Goods: If you like survival horror... it's more of that. This is an Unreal Engine 4 game mostly made by one dude, and it looks pretty good. The music is good, voices are decent, gunshots are punchy, and it has enough vibes of classic survival horror to keep it going. Some of the puzzles are nice and require some logic to solve. Overall the game runs okay. There is also a cat in every save room, and you can pet the cat. That is important.

Mehs: It really doesn't do anything special that other Resident Evil ripoffs haven't done already. You can run backwards, which is nice, but that's the only sort of dodge you get. Main character Emily Newsome, a small town cop, is a blank slate of a protagonist, she's there to rescue her sister and not much else happens in this barely-there plot. There is a small number of enemy types, mostly just zambambos and tankier zambambos, they are not fun to fight, they have magnetic grabs and huge collision boxes, making running past them almost impossible. There are only two guns (starting pistol and a shotgun, though you do unlock an infinite ammo pistol if you 100% the game), you get a laser-assisted free aim (...in fixed camera angles), and the zoomed-out camera makes headshots difficult. The game really does live up to the "Resident Evil: Hard Mode" reputation but not always in a good way. Item boxes are not connected (like "Real Survival" mode in the RE1 REmake) meaning more backtracking, and these item boxes are also only limited to 10 items. Emily starts with six item slots (can be increased to eight) but ammo takes up way too many spaces, each stack only contains enough for a full mag (8 pistol rounds or 6 shotgun shells); if you play decently enough and try for headshots, you can easily have way too much ammo to carry. While there are files that explain the lore, there is no in-game file viewer (more on this later). The game is also really short, while a first playthrough could take 6-8 hours or so (and most of it is backtracking), I finished my second playthrough on hard difficulty in about two hours (including backtracking for item shuttling). The price is good, though, so this is forgivable

Bads: Helps to have a map™. There is one puzzle towards the end of the game, a Fear Effect-esque floor trap with symbols on its tiles, requiring you to either backtrack to five areas in the game (with respawning enemies) to memorize a total of 20 symbols so you can cross the floor (with a single misstep equaling instant death) or just reference your Steam screenshots folder. It's not fun. This could have been solved if the player could view the clues in the in-game file viewer (and there isn't one) like in Ground Zero, but you can't. Bosses are also just huge bullet sponges, one can be killed with environmental damage but the rest are just mindless, boring bullet sponges. Also, the in-game menus are particularly awkward, the options menu shades options in similar colors so it is unnecessarily hard to see which one you are changing, while the in-game inventory is especially awful if you are using a controller, you move a fake mouse cursor at two speeds: left stick for "too slow" and right stick for "just slightly too fast", this will cause problems if you need to change weapons or heal during combat. And yes, it's yet another boring, bare bones RE Engine-esque menu. Oh well.

Overall though, I don't want to be too hard on this game, it is a decent game and the price is right (I paid about $9 for it, it's usually about $13 US and it's now 50% off on the Steam sale). It's not a bad game, and I'd rather see more passion projects like this than more "triple A" garbage. Also, the dev's upcoming game, Faithless Water, does take into account many of the criticisms of this game already (such as a usable map and the ability to kick zambambos), so I'm definitely looking forward to that one.

All right, now for something not horror-related for a change. I remember earlier this year, for some reason the Pootube al gore rhythm kept popping up these short videos about some indie game named Motorslice, and initially I paid no interest, until I saw there was a playable demo on Steam. So naturally, I tried the demo, decided the game was fun, and about a month later, I bought the game... on GOG. Hooray for simultaneous day 1 launches on GOG, I wish more developers could manage that. Anyway, it's a 3D platforming/parkour game full of the usual bullshit you'd expect from that kind of game, and I grew up playing bullshit 3D platformers on the N64 and Gamecube so I'm already inoculated to the bullshittery this game provides.

Silly review time.

Goods: Overall, the gameplay and movement feel fun, you can wall-run and do wall-jumps, and even the game's "Motorslice" move (stick your chainsword into special glowing walls and ride to the end). There's simple combat and some decently entertaining story scenes, but mostly it's about getting from A to B. For the price, it's a decently lengthy game, first run took me about 15 hours (which involved finding each and every hidden optional "orb" in each level, some of these are quite difficult and off the main path), second run after the game's first patch was much quicker, about 5 hours. There are huge bosses to fight, absolutely towering monstrosities, and it's all about figuring out how to get to and/or expose their weakpoints to be Motorsliced™. The game has a nice visual style, relatively minimalist in geometry, and with few colors similar to the outdoor areas in Mirror's Edge with some nice soft lighting; the overall look reminded me of an old WiiWare game, NyxQuest, and I liked that game. Main character P is decent, even if her voice acting sometimes strays too far into "underage anime protagonist" territory. The gameplay loop is fast and even with the game's many cheap deaths, respawning is quick and checkpoints are reasonable enough so you get right back into the game, Hotline Miami-style. Music is nice, there are a few tracks, some energetic and others graceful, it sets the mood.

Mehs: The story is very bare-bones and hints at the game's lore but really isn't substantial. There are optional cutscenes where P will comment about her situation (with fanservice involved) and the player, as her diegetic in-game camera, Orbie, is given two choices to respond, one is usually straightforward and tells P to focus on the mission, and the other is gooner/simp/"horny on main"/whatever you kids say these days. They can get pretty stupid (yes, the foot part especially) but these are all optional and really don't detract too much, they're just silly. Technically, the game ran mostly fine for me but a few areas are very heavy on particles and chugged the frame rate, but it wasn't too bad. Combat is also hit or miss, P tends to whiff melee attacks way too easily, and there are ranged enemies whose attacks are difficult to see coming, they can feel like artificial difficulty but the quick checkpoint respawning reduces them to an annoyance.

Bads: The game's controls are mostly fine but the game still has some awful bits even after the patch. P's movements snap to an invisible grid and this can and will get her killed, a simple hop from one pipe to the next will inconsistently send her flying past the intended destination into a bottomless pit, and she'll even magnetize towards walls, starting an unstoppable wallrun (off a cliff to her death) instead of just simply landing on the ground where the player intended. The type of wallrun depends if the player contacts a wall (or gets close enough for the magnetism to activate) head-on or facing either side, but the game is horrible with detecting the player's orientation and P will just do whatever the game feels like; this has been reduced significantly with the patch but it's still a problem. Even something as simple as stepping off of a ledge to drop to a platform below can lead to P's unnecessary death as she carries with her the momentum of a semi-truck (the patch also addressed this, and not completely). The player will die from the game's inconsistent controls more often than from actual gameplay difficulty. And of course, it's a 3D platforming game, so the game's number one enemy is the camera. Finally, it is relatively easy to cheese the game as some sections can be entirely skipped with wall-jumps (not even super special speedrunner techniques, just basic wall jumps anybody who grew up playing Super Mario 64 could accomplish on the first try), and even bosses can be cheesed; for example, on my first run, the game's final boss either bugged out or I went "off-script" somehow and the boss, a flying train (not a spoiler since it's in the game's official trailers) just stayed lying on the ground, instead of taking off to fly, so I got to Motorslice its weakpoints with impunity. I did fight it for real after reloading a save, but still.