Recent reviews by Cam

The best thing I can say about Sparking zero is that it looks nice. A lot of this game just looks great. The models look like a great adaptation from the Anime/Manga, the textures and colours pop especially on an OLED screen. Effects like the Supers or Ultimates look drop dead gorgeous with the lighting engine. Plus the roster is gigantic, with a lot of familiar faces, and some first timers for a Console/PC 3D Dragon Ball game.

That's sadly where my like for this game ends... Sparking zero sufferers from style over sustain a lot of the time. Or in the worse cases, suffers from total consumer/player dissonance.

The first major issue for Sparking zero is menu navigation, its the first thing you will encounter when playing the game after all. To go from the episode select menu, you have to press the right bumper on your controller of choice, watch an 3 second animation play, THEN, watch another 2 second animation as it transitions to the menu. You can-of course, spam the bumper and force it to move to the next menu quicker. Though the characters on screen will t-pose, or the camera will get a little buggy. Oh and of course your controls will get locked up for a micro second. I get why, they did it, it looks nice and is unique. But using it feels not great, especially when you just want to quickly get to the store or something, and you've wasted seconds of your limited time on this mortal coil fighting a computer game menu.

Once you win against the main menu selection and get into the story mode, you face even MORE SLOWLY FLASHY MENU SELECTION SHENANIGANERY. You don't get one big story mode where you play as several characters throughout. You get to play specific characters like Goku, a little known background character you probably haven't heard of, in specific mission that are specific to them. Sounds great right? Kinda like how Budokai did it.

You're 5 paragraphs into a review that's opening with fighting a menu, where do you think I'm going with this

You select the character, hit continue, and watch ANOTHER animation play out as your character rocks off to the sphere of 240 GIFs. Oh... and this is UNSKIPPABLE. You can skip it by choosing to go to that characters mission road map. And this road map is how you replay missions and view the clear conditions for certain missions. Good on paper right?.... Right? Well bad news for you ya goober, you want to replay the first mission when you are at the end of the road map? You have to scroll ALL THE WAY BACK TO IT SSSSSLLLLOOOOWWWWLLLLYYY.

This is more insanely worse when you have a character like Goku, who has alot of missions to play through so you're scrolling past mission after mission, past some Goku can't even play cause it's not for him. Or... OR. You press one of the bumpers, and you get a submenu of a mini road map condensed to JUST that characters missions.... You look at the screen and scream in a tongue you know not of "Hey, why wasn't this just the road map to begin with.". Till finally, finally, you get to the mission you want to replay, and look to see what the other clear condition is... Until your godless eyes gaze upon the devils best friend. "Defeat X/Y/X" and his partner in crime "???"

That's right bucko, you have no conception of what the clear condition for a mission is until you either stumble upon it, or roleplay Cole Phelps and deduce it. That's... if you're lucky. There are certain what if mission that have such vague and absurd clear conditions to clear, that you would have no idea that they were even in the game. "Beat X/Y/Z in a certain amount of time", what amount of time? Yes!

That then ties into the next glaring problem. The AI has dementia, and really should be taken to a home.

The AI flops between the easiest pushovers on the schoolyard, to representations of fear and dread themselves. Sometimes the AI will stand completely still and stare at you, begging for you to end their life, or their laying on the ground not getting up wishing to return to dirt. To it's extreme twin brother, where the AI learns the concept of C H E E S E.

Where they will perform a 60 hit combo within 5 seconds, and you're stuck there, cause the breakout/vanish counter has decided it's not coming into work today. Oh, OH! When you are the one with the slick combo, suddenly Mr counter is back and is coming to collect names, cause the AI will counter vanish perfectly while you're fumbling to do the same. Though most apparent, is when you launch an ultimate that misses, and the AI decides its earned a vacation on the other side of the map as it super boosts into the invisible wall for 20 seconds.

That's not even getting into how sometimes the skills will... just not work. The controls are slightly autistic, where you might of move onto hold down the trigger to trigger an ultimate or something, but it's still 10 paces back into convo talking about its special interest of ki blasts. Congrats, you've actually managed to trigger you skill and... it either misses point blank, or you speed past the other character and look like a muppet, hand up your crack and all. Super SUPER inconsistent.

The only other points I have against this game are kinda minor so I'll speed past them for your sanity and mine.

- The shop where you buy your characters and alt costumes for said characters is fine, but I want to throttle the neck of Bulma who will not shut up while you are just browsing.

- Some characters costumes are lacking/are missing outright, someone like Vegeta will have his Broly movie and Whis armour, but not his classic Z/Super one. Or someone like Jiren who's full power form has him shirtless, but it's not a costume for his base form, even though it was in the Anime.

- Character forms being weird or wrong. Vegeta's Blue Evo isn't technically a form you can use, it's a power up that you can use, but sometimes you wouldn't even notice that he's in Blue evo, or that he has, which is annoying since Goku gets both UI-s and UI but you can't pair that up with Vegeta Blue evo outright. Future Super Trunks has Rage, BUT, has the wrong hair, the correct hair is on the boxart of the game, making it even more confusing why they've made this weird fusion of his SS2 and Rage.

Overall (Yes, I'm wrapping this up don't worry)

Sparking Zero, on paper, is a good game. But is brought all the way down by bad execution, and ideas that don't even sound that good when said aloud. It feels like this game was made in a lab, by people who THINK they know what the general consumer wants, but got so lost within their own wants. I don't dislike this game, far from it. I want to like it, but for every good thing I like about the game, I get ambushed in a back alley by jank or bad design.

6/10, is the best I can give it. Good, but needs refined at the fundamental level. I wish I could give it a meh or a in-between rating on Steam, so I can only go negative.

Oh, and to try and charge me almost 30 buckazoids for actually good music when I paid almost 100 smackers for the Ultimate edition is so not ok, not ok, you hear? Have the balls to slap me in the face next time.

Snake Eater is the third instalment of the Metal Gear Solid games, and the earliest point in the entire Metal Gear timeline. Following the main event that led to Naked Snake becoming Big Boss, and why he became the evil man that sold the world. The game follows Naked Snake as he traverses the Russian jungles to stop his old mentor “The Boss” and her cobra unit, who are now working for a power mad man named Volgin. The game also shows us how certain extremely important characters to the MG lore met, like how Ocelot met and fell for Naked Snake/Big Boss.

Snake Eater is the first game in the series to feature the over the shoulder camera, instead of the previous two games’ fixed camera. Introduced in the Subsistence edition of MGS3, which was featured as the default version in the HD collection. Gameplay wise, the game only slightly improves on MGS2 in someways, as well as taking a step back in others (IMO). The first change is that health now depends on the stamina meter. Snakes health will regenerate if the stamina bar is high enough, and will gradually go down as Snake goes about his business and needs to replenished repeatedly.

IMO, the stamina system is kinda crap. I get it’s supposed to make the player pay attention, as well as be an incentive to keep their health full by keeping Snake fed. But at no point in the game did I ever run out of food, or actually worry about the meter running dry. At worst, if the meter goes low or empty, Snake’s tummy will get upset and growl… that’s it, Oh and your aim is a little less accurate, but you can just compensate for it.
The shooting and sneaking are ripped straight from MGS2, ASIDE from one new feature. The camo system. A cool system… that I also feels a little jank. It works by Snake equipping different face paints and changing his fatigues texture out to match what’s around him. Doing so will change his “Camo index” which is a percentage in the top right corner that shows an approximate value on how well Snake can be seen. Sounds good on paper? Well in gameplay it either works or just doesn’t.

If you get an index of 80% or above, Snake is practically invisible, he cannot be seen by guards three feet away from him, unless he starts walking or moving. But on lower difficulties, you can just walk past them, enemies just stop caring as soon as its high enough.
But if you play on a difficulty such as Extreme or Euro Extreme, then it matters a whole lot more, when the enemies can see and hear you from further away. Where the system really lets itself down is how you use it. You must pause the game, select camo, select either face or uniform, and go from there. If you wanna change, you must do this… EVERY TIME. And God forbid you have to reload, if you haven’t saved after changing your camo, then you gotta do it again.

The shooting itself remains unchanged from 2, you can either hip-fire, or use the first-person mode to precisely aim and shoot. It’s all well and good, but the controls feel VERY awkward on modern controls. Aiming with the R1/RB button, and firing with square or X. This doesn’t sound bad, and it isn’t for the first hour or so. But when you’re 4 hours in, and your thumb tries to move the camera over someone’s head, but the dead zone makes you go either too far, or not far enough. The movement also doesn’t feel amazing, Snake manages to get caught on every little rock and pebble known to man. Meaning he’ll just stand up out of cover, or start spinning in place. I can’t count the amount of times I triggered the guards, because snake just decided that hide and seek was over, and gets seen.

As far as this PC port goes. It works. That’s the best thing I can say about it. The game is locked to 60FPS, as well no way to up the resolution from 720p…. in 2024… where 8K exists. I know the response will be “There’s mods to fix that. And yeah, there are mods that solves this. But there legit is no reason, why they couldn’t do this in the first place. This is the highest form of laziness.

So
game wise, the game is a solid 7.5/10.
Port wise… 2/10. It works, but is such a lazy port, that its embarrassing.

Ground Zeroes is a good tech-demo/early demo for Metal Gear Solid V, it shows off most of the base features, as well as gives a micro sandbox for the player to get used to the controls and systems of the game. The game controls great, it’s not as in-depth as TPP, but its enough so someone could enjoy what’s on display and go into the main game to get more.
I think that’s the main problem here… Why play this and not just V?
With V’s release, it’s made Ground zeroes effectively mute. Story wise, sure, you get to see the fall of mother base, and it sets up the main hook of V. But you could read a synopsis of the game and get the same level of depth. Why play this when the main game has 100’s more content and stuff for you to do? when you finish, the game just shrugs and gives you random missions that don’t fit into the overall main plot. Plus, they suffer from the curse of being REALLY BORING.
Even when it first released, the price tag was too much for what is here. At least now it comes free with MGS:V “Definitive Experience” which means you don’t have to waste money on it. But it is super annoying that this glorified tech demo has the nerve to still be sold as a separate thing. It wants to pretend it’s an AC!D or a Peace Walker type spin off experience, but it comes no where close to those in terms of value. I beat this whole thing in less than an hour… AN HOUR!
Overall, if you just want to play this as a prelude to V. Then go ahead. But if you are looking for a solid piece of MGS gameplay and story… then just go play one of the others. 5/10.

Basically, The game mechanically can be fun, and has really fun moments scattered in. However, the game is 70% padding, as the enjoyable content is married to; hourly timers just to upgrade vital equipment, uninteresting side-content that repeats just to extend game time for no reason, resource grinding if you want the "True" ending. AND "Harder" missions reused as new missions, legit, you'll replay a mission you've already done with extra stuff added on-top JUST CAUSE.

5/10, This game doesn't respect you or want to give you 100% effort. It wants to pretend it says everything and offers a full experience, but honestly, the game can barely sling a coherent sentence together to save its life. Download mods to remove timers and fix other stuff.

So. Not only did you not give this away free to those with both the 1st and 2nd games already, but you charged more for something that don’t work as well? Missing/corrupt textures, sound effects either incorrect or too loud OR too quiet. While battlefront 1 far less broken than 2 in this collection it isn’t free from jank, MP hit detection will just go out of the window in it feels like it, you fired a rocket directly onto someone? Nah you didn’t.

You can’t even get into B2’s multiplayer for a second before seeing something go wrong. You hit quick match? Sorry there aren’t any servers open. Then you open the server list and see empty or available servers. Load into a hoth match, everything rubber bands like crazy and the camera will lose control and spin like crazy.

Genuinely, how dare you sell this for the price you have; when you couldn’t even be bothered to make sure it was ready.

What can I really say that others haven't about this masterpiece of Sci-Fi.

You play as the amazingly recently revived Commander Shepard, on his quest to prevent aliens from kidnapping humans for their very evil plot. For this, you have to create a big crew of different races, professions and moralities. Together, led by Shepard, you will trek across systems of planets to discover clues and allies to help defeat the Collectors, who are puppets to the even great threat of the series antagonists, the Reapers.

Overall this game is amazing, from the characters to the immersive worlds you get to play through, the game rarely lets you down aside from a few things here and there. The greatest aspect of the game however is the feeling of actually stepping into the boots of Shepard, and feeling like you're actually viewing all this from their perspective which makes you feel like you're actually becoming a space marine kicking Alien butt.

Game systems have been either removed or improved since the first game. For instance, the game now works on a more Gears of war-esk system of cover and ammo as apposed to the heat sink mechanic of the first one. The dialog system is roughly the same say for an increase in NPC's you speak with during the game, and can freely talk to whenever to ask questions. Speaking of dialog, more romance options were added to the game to further give players more choice. Characters now romanceable of note include Tali and Garus from the first game, two of the more popular team members that return for more action in this outing. Their romances honestly are some of the best in the game, where through these romances we learn some of their fears, desires and maybe a hint of longing that has been there since the beginning.

While I can sit here and speak for hours about how perfect this game is... There are some flaws that need to be spoken of. For instance, a lot of the early game feels slow and dull. Grunts mission being a huge bore from beginning to end. This can be chalked up to that it's the first part of the game, and you need to wait to get into the real meat. Which only really starts at the 7-8 hour mark if you take your time and play through the game properly. Another flaw is that while the vast majority of the squad are amazing characters, some you will never pick and just kinda forget about. They also just feel like people that disappear and hide away on the ship till you seek them out to burnout their dialog tree until the next chapter in the game. Which contrasts to the first game, where there were times all the crew got their shine in the main story, where they had things to comment on and do during the main part rather than just their side stories that it felt organic.

Here? You meet them, get a cutscene, maybe romance them, get their loyalty mission, and maybe get a conflict cutscene where you need enough points to calm both sides down. And that's about it... I would of much preferred at least some members of the crew to comment on and help during mainline missions. .apart from Mordin, when his part is over her gets shunted away again.... It unfortunately, also suffers from 7th gen brown screen, where most of this game looks like it had a can of Irn-Bru spilled all down it, which makes the game look really awkward and ugly in some places.

Overall, I love this game to death, I can live with its flaws and they don't stop me from playing the game from start to finish every time I pick it up. I can say honestly this is the best game ever made and I will die on that hill. If you want an epic romp across space to be a badass, then you found the right game for you.

Is Arkham Origins the best Batman game? No. Does it even live up to either Arkham Asylum and City? No.

However, I can say with 100% certainty that I enjoyed my time with Origins. I did enjoy a more early take on the Dark Knight's career, which was beautifully shown through the design of his Batsuit and his more unpolished fighting moves during his animations. Really makes you feel like a depressed Billionaire with repressed anger. I joke, but the game does a decent enough job to show the progression of going from some angry vigilante breaking bones, to a more focused superhero by the end who’s more open to help.

Another aspect I can say that I liked was the variety of rouges Batman gets to face during the game, whilst someone get better treatment than others, it’s still nice to see more than just the Joker being a problem. And of course, this game introduces a better Bane to the lore, and he was a great and interesting part to this game.

Though this game does suffer for a few major issues. Like how the game looks bad for a early 2010’s game, textures look flat and blurry whilst some environments are bland and extremely uninspired. The combat system is fine and slightly reworked from City where you now have to really keep track of Batman during combat, as his counter is slower and doesn’t activate during takedowns or other special moves. This is fine, but the auto target system sometimes brakes and you attack the person on the opposite side of the fight than what you wanted.

Another big problem I had with this outing of the dark knight was with the performances. Overall the acting for the game is good, but most of the time, main man Roger Craig Smith’s interpretation of Batman is flat and doesn’t really change from gruff man all too much. Which is a massive shame, cause Roger is an amazing voice actor; and I felt he could make a perfect Batman if he was allowed to express a little more.

All in all, it’s not the best game you’ll ever play in your life, but if you love the Arkham series as much as I, then if you can convince yourself that this is like an Xbox Live Arcade game more than a full release, then I think you’ll also enjoy playing through the earliest point for this version of the caped Crusader.