Recent reviews by Alien Rope Burn

Maybe you're old, maybe you remember Red Faction, or Red Faction 2, where you were shooting people in a mine, and could dig holes in terrain to get anywhere, but it didn't really matter much. It was mostly just a gimmick.

Here, digging is the game.

There's definitely something satisfying about just breaking things, and that's largely what you're tasked to do in various ways in Deep Rock Galactic, usually just to mine, but sometimes to lay pipe or fuel a vehicle, while waves of bugs descend upon you to harass you. Sometimes there are big bugs that are bosses. But fighting is a side activity to liven things up. Different characters have complementary abilities, helping you get at hard-to-reach ore or to navigate the mine more effectively.

Though aspects of the gameplay are similar to crafting and survival games, you're not building a fort or trying to fill your stomach. While gathering stuff is useful for upgrades, once you plateau with those, it quickly becomes another form of currency for cosmetic upgrades and the occasional mug of beer.

To some extent, Deep Rock defines a game done as a labor of love, festooned with the technically unnecessary delightful, like a home base with its jukebox, toyetic beers, a barrel-kicking minigame, and more shenanigans to mess around with between rounds. It could be easily passed off as fluff, but part of the appeal of Deep Rock is the obvious fun the developers have been having with the environments and gimmicks.

And moreover, it's seen regular, free updates in addition to reasonably-priced cosmetic DLC. I personally find the addition of a Battle Pass to be generally exhausting in its demands, but at the same time it's completely free. In many ways, Deep Rock borrows elements of "live service" games without the strict, predatory money-grubbing. Though it uses some of the tools of larger development, they're put there for those that enjoy that sort of thing rather than to necessarily reach for your wallet. And while it runs repetitive, it's got a fairly satisfying loop that can provide enough memorable experiences from time to time to stay lively.

Overall, Deep Rock is probably one of the best team shooters out there right now, but it's an overall strong experience. Mind, it's an experience to be built with friends; there's little meaningful narrative, and the unlocks are modest and drip-fed. But the *game* itself is strong, and that's what keeps me dipping back in. Though I don't obsess over it, it's a fun planet to stop by in from time to time.

Put in over a hundred and fifty hours, near universally as engineer, to a silver rank, generally at mid-to-high difficulties with two or three friends, along with various events, mission types, and gimmicks.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is the definition of a Good Enough Game.

That's not to knock it. The gunplay is very satisfying, The different classes ("loadouts") are distinct and fun to explore. The enemies pop good when you shoot them. It's just not much more than that.

If you've played Left 4 Dead or one of its many descendants, you know the drill; most enemies are just pop-up targets to eliminate before they get up close to claw, with a few unique enemies that ambush, explode, spit, or charge to keep you on your feet and to keep you from just putting your back to a corner and treating the game as a pure shooting gallery. Some levels feature androids that shoot back, turning the game into more of a cover-and-advance shooter. There are big timed events and bigger monsters to give the game a sort of pacing to compliment the algorithm-based spawning system. Rinse and repeat. Level up your character to add tiny incremental bonuses that eventually add up to make a difference. Similarly, this is a game to play with friends or at least single-serving strangers; it's not really meant to be played alone. Unlike L4D, there's no ability to play the aliens or engage competitively; this is solely a break-the-waves affair.

Various cards let you take drawbacks or advantages to mix things up for replay, but rarely are anything too wild; enemies are faster, maybe you can't use grenades, etc. While the intent seems to be that all players pick a card and one is pulled randomly, more likely you'll just have one player pick a single card while the others don't, to ensure it's the one that's "picked randomly". Disappointingly, you can only select one card--the ability to mix-and-match lower-impact cards would be welcome.

Similarly, self-expression is a little too limited. While you can gussy up your guns with paintjobs, sadly you can't do the same for the myriad outfits, most of which are just different flavors of military or spacesuit; the ability to apply paint jobs to at least some of the more mechanical outfits would be welcome. Sadly, the hair options are criminally limited; I had hoped that Sigourney's amazing eighties hair would at least be on display, but no such luck.

There's no cinematic bells and whistles here, which isn't usually an issue, but when it comes to things like the big climax that leads to a big explosion, you're... informed there was a big explosion, and that's that. Not even a view of the planet as it pops off. This is strictly a mid-budget affair, and while that's fine in that it doesn't disrupt the multiplayer action, things like having voiced characters staring blankly between missions without even lip-flaps helps the story feel off and disconnected. While it's good the focus went were it needed to be (alien bang bangs), trying to connect with the narrative, full of lore nods for franchise aficionados, is difficult at best.

Of course, it's impossible to escape the irony of a game like this. While in the movies trying to meet the "xenomorphs" is a laughable affair, with the overconfident marines of the movie Aliens being absolutely clowned upon by the acidic invaders, here it's taken at face value that the marines are badasses eliminating the bugs in style. If you're looking for a game that fits the tone of the movies more closely, Alien: Isolation is the game to seek out, while this treats the titular monsters as nothing more than wingless wasps to be exterminated. While that's become the norm for videogame adaptations since Konami's arcade adaptation, make sure to leave any expectations of gravitas behind.

In general, it's Good Enough, especially if taking a smart gun to Hans Reudi's byblows feels like a good time. Just don't set your expectations too high. While the franchise has done a lot worse, this doesn't break new ground, instead just letting you shoot your way down a comfortable, well-worn trail. I'll be interested to see what Cold Iron Studios does based on this game's success, but for now, Aliens: Fireteam Elite is Good Enough.

Finished the game with two friends on Intense, swapping between different classes often but favoring the Phalanx. Did some replay for extra rewards or unlocks before moving on to the expansion.

Guilty Gear had a reputation for being obtuse.

Notice the "had". Granted, Strive is still a fighting game, complete with lots of quarter-circle motions, charge moves, and the occasional HCB+F. Thankfully, there's not too many of those, if you don't know what that is.

But what it does is move away from is the combomania that defined many earlier games, where a lot of matches banked on your ability to convert a hit into a string of complicated follow-ups and bounces that were your ticket to big damage. If you couldn't have reliable chains, you weren't competitive. And building those combos required labwork and reflexes most players struggled with.

Strive turns this on its head by making big damage follow from short combos, power hits, and counters. Timing plays an important part of the tit-for-tat, with well-placed punishes being aptly rewarded. Most characters have been simplified towards their core, avoiding the most complex systems seen in previous games. It feels more satisfying and meaty, and though the cost comes at some of the wilder options of previous games, the options that remain present tend to be more useful than some of the niche mechanics and moves like Faust's tiny little flower. It was an adorable flower, to be sure, but it wasn't exactly something you used out of your well-labbed combo.

All of this is pretty inside baseball nonsense typical of fighting games, so the tl;dr is that Guilty Gear is a more decisive fighting game that's simpler to get into. But why get into it, anyway?

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say Guilty Gear has some of the best character designs in fighting games, both in terms of visuals and mechanics. And if you've looked at the trailer, you don't need me going on about how good it looks. Or going on about the wonderful collection of buttrock that powers the whole thing. If you haven't, stop this and go do that. The game is just fun and oozes style from every messy pore that it has.

All of this makes Guilty Gear one of the best fighting games currently available. The netcode is solid and the fighting is fantastic. What else could one want?

Well, single-player content, unfortunately. If you like grinding against a CPU, you'll find things a bit lacking. There's an arcade mode with hints of story, survival, training, and that's about it. There's a story mode that's largely just watching a 3D-animated Guilty Gear TV series, that while entertaining in its ridiculousness... doesn't really interface with the game in any way.

And while the netcode in a match is fantastic, the game takes several minutes to. load. up. every. time. There's something weird about how it connects to the server, and also just the fact it demands to do it at the start. You can't even watch the breezy story mode without being lag-blocked at startup. The match-finding system also continues Arc System Works' love of obtuse lobbies, and while it has some strengths--like making it easier to recognize regular foes--it basically makes it just take longer to find a match. While there are ways around it, the game does push you towards it. And sometimes, the game just doesn't want to let you match.

Still, those are comparatively modest issues for what's probably the best modern fighting game at the time of this writing. It may not always be the most approachable or the most recognizable, but it's definitely the most rewarding.

Experience: played about 60 hours, mainly in online versus, getting up to floor 9 but hovering largely around floor 7-8. Beat the arcade mode but not the hidden boss. Watched most of the way through the story so far. Fished more than anybody should have to fish.

One of my favorite fighting games now, and it came out of nowhere.

Not that I wasn't familiar with the mobile game, but I feel like Granblue Fantasy took a lot of the lessons Arc System Works learned from Dragonball FighterZ and toned it down for a more footsie-focused, grounded fighting game than they've done since Battle Fantasia. Granted, it's a lot *better* than Battle Fantasia, but it has a similar feel in terms of harkening back to games like Street Fighter II and III.

Characters feel fairly distinct, despite having familiar toolkits for a 2D fighting game. Sometimes it can be a bit subtle, with but the design is very deliberate, with even similar moves providing distinct advantages. If there's a criticism, it's that it doesn't get too "wild", but it also means the game's balance is relatively strong.

Arc System Works is at the top of the game when it comes to animation-inspired 3D graphics, and the middle ground between their style and Granblue mobile's heavily rendered art is sharply done. Moreover, the effects and remixed tracks are second to none.

Though the game relies on season passes for its game, they've avoided the train of suspiciously similar spiky-haired guys that characterized FighterZ. Arcsys has proven with their first pass that they can use it to deliver new and unique designs to freshen up the game, but it may be a financial paywall for some.

The weak point is the story--though the characters remain true to form, the actual event writing is fairly standard. Which, yes, it's almost the stereotype for fighting games, but Guilty Gear Xrd proved they can do better. Add in the surprisingly solid writing that's in the mobile game, and it's a little sad they didn't have the original scribes pen this one. Moreover, the additional single-player systems from the mobile game feel like extra busywork just to unlock weapon skins and colors, which really could have just used a more straightforward means of unlocking than gacha rolling. Similarly, though the matching is solid, it involves the weird lobbying system Arcsys seems enamored with that.. mostly adds confusion to the experience.

Overall, though, I appreciate it avoided the airdashing antics of Arcsys' other games to deliver something really different, and to show they can dial it back to a game that feels like it requires more reading to play. Either way, if you're up for fantasy stabs going sideways, it's worth picking up.

Played through the arcade mode with some but not all characters, finished story mode on normal difficulty, toyed around with the tower mode, and played my fair share of online matches.

Hellblade is one of those games I put down and go "did I like it?" and find myself just staring off. I liked *parts* of it, definitely. As an entire package, though...

Most of Hellblade's appeal is going to be in the visuals and sound design. And the sound design is amazing. A lot of the visuals are fantastic, or at least wild enough to be memorable. But some elements get reused and recycled to the point of weary familiarity. Some sequences are genuinely unnerving. Others just throw so much visual input at you that I felt just irritated and wanting to punch through quickly just to move on. I get it, she's fighting her traumatic memories, you don't have to beat me over the dead with it for minutes straight.

Sometimes I feel like a sword-wielding genius, parrying and dodging around. Other times the game gets me stuck against an invisible wall mid-combat, or unable to dodge past a slight protrusion in the environment, or in one notable moment, respawning as invincible and bugged out, unable to die but unable to fight. Some bosses are really cool... the first time. They're still neat the second time. And after that, they just become another mook in a conga line of Norse grimboys. The combat is straightforward and serviceable, the puzzles are... find the right point and click on the thing. Apparently there's more depth to the combat than apparent, but since the game has no combat guide or tutorial, I found myself just relying on the same bread and butter responses over and over.

A lot of noise has been made over the mental health angle of the game. And they clearly tried to do their research, and it results in some great sequences, but the game definitely isn't going to teach you anything meaningful about mental disabilities. In fact, the game wants to play coy on the "is it real or is it supernatural?!" angle, to the point where I seriously didn't care. Look, either tell a story about mental health or tell a story about going and playing out Norse myths. But neither does the other justice. Either the myths are false and you just went through eight hours of psychosis, or the psychosis is being insensitively used to spice up a relatively straightforward--if strongly told at times--revenge tale.

It really does work for spurts. Moving in the darkness, trying to avoid blurs of body horror, or battling a god of illusion with a wide variety of attacks, and I'm enjoying myself. Sometimes I really do feel like they're on to something, and other times I feel like I'm just being buried in pretension. The game takes about forty minutes before you actually interact with anything. The ending tries to drip dramatic pauses like it's being paid for its runtime. Every findable has a audio log that volumes down to silence if you walk too far. Oh, man, this boss looks exciting, I- oh, I'm just fighting grimboys and old bossese instead. Huh. Can we stop blowing our wad in the first half of the game, devs?

Ultimately, what pushes me over the edge recommending the game is a straight-up lie the developers tell early on. (You can look it up by just googling "hellblade lie".) And I can understand wanting to manipulate players to add tension to the game, but it's done in such a blunt and hackneyed way that most people will realize it was a lie--defusing it entirely and revealing the wizard behind the curtain. Yes, they're trying to invoke a real sense of psychosis with that lie, but that doesn't excuse it--not because it's a deception, but it's such an embarrassingly *bad* deception.

Also the game has a "true ending" locked behind finding every collectable, and that can take a long leap off a short pier, as far as I'm concerned. Ditto with having a female protagonist who is largely guided by and for dudes, with the only other female character being a victim.

I don't regret playing it, it does some clever things with sound and visuals, but I feel it definitely overplayed its hand.

Finished on "auto" difficulty. Found about 90% of the findables, for what's that worse. Rarely died.

So, I'm hiding from a troll. Under its crotch. At one point, it steps on me, its foot clipping through me.

Through the Woods was originally pitched as a love letter to classic survival horror. Well, that's not what we have here. It has stealth mechanics, a few monsters to ward off with your flashlight, and findables. And that's pretty much it. It isn't truly a "walking simulator" (not that I say that derisively), but it's pretty close to it.

On the positive note, they did do a lot of research on the folklore and mythology they draw upon, and the theme is evocative and compelling, even if the storyline itself is fairly straightforward. The creatures are appropriately creepy for the most part, except...

There I am, under a troll's crotch. It marches off, none the wiser.

With the stealth elements, at times I couldn't tell you exactly what triggers a creature to spot you. If you're still in shadow, are you never noticed? The flashlight mechanics are straightforward, and we're at least blessed with a flashlight that manages to hold to a realistic battery time. The sound design is sharp and memorable. I can easily tell what direction a monster is approaching from.

And yet, here I am, falling through a floor. I see a wall with no textures, causing my screen to distort badly. But it's in a place I need to hide, or so I think. I'm not sure. How easily can the creature detect me? No idea. In a better game, I'd be smoothly guided through the sequence and not worry about it. Hiding, uncertain, I can all too easily notice when the terrain causes the troll to levitate above the ground, not properly interacting with the terrain. When wolves are hunting me, I'm not sure what direction I'm supposed to take. Where's my goal? I find it, but it largely just by guessing.

As the main character's backstory comes out suddenly towards the end-- I don't know if they're supposed to be sympathetic, revealed to be awful, or what. I think they're trying to be ambiguous, to let me decide. Well, I decide I don't actually want the character to necessarily "succeed" at that point because of how awful they've been. Whatever bad thing might happen to them--I'm fine with it.

Though the game's ending is haunting, it... feels... anticlimactic. Grim for grim's sake. Which is too bad, because I'll remember the climax's haunting visual, which the game then skips past to deliver an ending that immediately undercuts itself.

There is promise at times, and the designers clearly had some interesting ideas and visuals to work with. If you're into horror games, it won't take up much of your time--it ran three hours on my Halloween playthrough. But it's just too unfinished, too unrealized for me to recommend. They clearly did their research and it shows in the enjoyable lore, but the the cool bits end up being fine decorations on a skeleton of a game and plot.

Played through to completion. Didn't get every findable.

Dishonored's a hard one to go back to.

Arkane are clearly trying to invoke designer Harvey Smith's history with Thief and Deus Ex. And what you get with Dishonored is a more modern version of those games, albeit with straightforward magic at your disposal and a variety of toys. Sounds good on paper.

The clear design goal is, like those games, to try and provide a variety of ways of going about your mission. The problem you run into is that most of the ways will be obvious to those who have played the past twenty years of stealth and action games. And that'd be fine if both were great options. But stealth is, generally, simpler and cleaner. Moreover, the choices are familiarly binary at this point - sneak or fight? Kill or don't kill? Whatever your choice, it means leaving toys on the table, because you won't need them, which always feels like a waste.

The issue going back to Dishonored eight years later is that neither choice is all that compelling. The mechanics veer towards entirely clowning on your enemies or avoiding them entirely. There's just not a sweet spot of where things feel tense, where you might run and hide or find yourself in a pitched battle. Corvo is often cartoonishly safe on his perches, but if enemies spot you it's a near-instant alarm that calls all the boys to the yard. It gets worse when you're dealing with monsters, since there's even less you can do with them. Avoid them or kill them, but trying to distract them or otherwise trick them is usually a fool's errand because the enemies are just that dumb. They won't notice a distraction unless it practically lands at their feet, which doesn't take them terribly far from their existing patrol route.

In later levels, I would hack enemy traps, but it barely mattered, because enemies would usually have to be led by the nose into leaping into them. They didn't notice if I turned off the traps. I could leave sleeping bodies around that alerted them, but they soon returned to their predictable routes, perhaps edgier, perhaps not- I couldn't tell when I eventually took them down or bypassed them. There's no much reason to worry about convoluted plans when I can just summon rats from an unseen overhang to murder a guy, or just put a bolt in his head if I felt like using ammo. And I was playing on Hard.

One level features hot-air balloons. I decided to teleport onto one to see if I could use it as a stepping stone to reach higher points. This turned out be a bad plan, as it immediately exploded under the igniting touch of my feet. I crashed down, only to see the framework land on top of a guard. He looked at me, unable to see through my clever disguise as a ring of debris rested comfortably on his head, just remaining at his post. I waited to see if he reacted, then just walked back into the party. "Nobody cares. Nice mask. What are you trying to look like, a deadly assassin?"

The last portion of the game featured a small gauntlet of guards. I stopped time, ran past them, then choked out the final villain before flinging him off the highest point on his tower. Oh, uh, spoilers. Bad guy in a tower.

The essential issue is that it's a toybox game that doesn't reward you for dipping into a good chunk of that toybox, because its design is purposefully unfocused. It gives you grenades, which I used maybe two, three times. It gives you incendiary ammo, which the only time I ever busted it out, it had little effect on the foes I used it on. Only the supernatural powers really seemed worth my time. Of course, even those were a headache, since the most useful one--x-ray vision--requires constant activation and a miserable sound effect / filter that gets very tiring to listen to. But it helped more than anything else, so whoever made that sound effect? Congrats, I got to listen to that for a good 33% of the entire game.

Of course, the only want to level up those powers was by finding "hidden" items throughout each level. Those became my main goal, ironically, and presented most of the challenge. Actually finishing the level at that point felt like an afterthought. And so the mission never felt important, because it's not what rewards you: faffing about in enemy basements earns your rewards. There were more advanced tricks you can do for alternate mission completion, but they're pointed out to you with all the subtlety of a Vegas casino sign. And because two tricks made up the majority of my playstyle (x-ray vision, teleport), I never felt like I had a "build" like in Deus Ex that was unique. I felt like just The Optimal Corvo. And since the minor upgrades vary from "massively useful" to "barely noticeable", it felt my choice of buffs was purely on their efficacy.

Much ado has been made about the world, and it's more creative than most games, but it feels like the most interesting parts are kept just out of view. I felt the writing was predictable throughout--the big twist came when I expected it, was exactly what I expected, and followed through in predictable fashion thereafter. Though the world-building is interesting, few of the characters were. And when it came to moral dilemmas--well, nearly everybody you can put a knife into is presented as unquestionably evil, so taking the nonlethal route felt more like a character quirk than making a difficult choice. I just decided on whether or not I felt like killing people on a case-by-case basis.

It's frustrating to give this a thumbs down, because it's pretty close to a thumbs up. In the end, I see the game the developers had in their head, and I really want to play it. But that's not the game I played. Maybe it was just overblown and I expected too much of it.

Would I recommend it? Well. It's interesting. But I'm not sure it's amazing. Also, to hell with invisible walls.

Finished the game on Hard, collected every upgrade item I could get my grubby assassin mitts on, didn't touch the DLC.

Quantity over quality.

Doom Eternal is more. More demons, more demons, longer fights, and on paper that's great. In practice, it becomes a matter of learning to manage chaos. Keeping track of every demon quickly becomes impossible.

Eternal doesn't hold back. It feels like the kind of game that would be perfect to jump into a few days after finishing the original, because the difficulty jump is noticeable right from the start. Part of it is, as is the tradition, Doomguy has lost all his weapons and upgrades from the previous game. And that inflates the difficulty early on, particularly on Ultra-Violence, and it feels awful rough as a result. I died. A lot. And not to really tough enemies, but relatively basic ones.

As I upgraded, though, the game opened up. New tactics and means of survival became available. And once that happened, the game became fun again. Doom Eternal needed to start you off stronger and have the upgrades be more gradual, or at least deliver them faster. Once you get the hang of everything, it's a blast to fly around the map, picking off demons and delivering killing blows while never remaining too far from death.

But there's some issues. Additions of "weak points" and more subtle weaknesses of certain demons remove some of the violent, creative problem solving from the 2016 Doom. If you're not hitting Cacodemons with a shotgun grenade, you are generally Doing It Wrong, which is a disappointment. Conversely, the ability to shear certain demons' weapons off is a useful tactic, but it's usually not as effective as just... killing them.

Though the challenges return from 2016 Doom, they vary in quality. Some of them just a nice encouragement to master a certain skill, but some are the tiresome "execute this demon in one specific way". The worst are a particular shielded type of demon you have to fight in one specific way. Or you're Doing It Wrong, and you're dead. Similarly, bosses often require a specific target or weapon, or you're... Doing It Wrong. I just wanna shoot a thing with a cool gun, not get quizzed on the dev's ideal way to dissemble a Mancubus!

It also goes on long, definitely longer than it needed to. At certain points I just felt exhausted with the gameplay because it was the same loop over and over, often with little pacing or breathers inbetween. I ended up welcoming lore and dialogue just to break things up. Still, it's definitely a challenge, and once your kit is filled out, utterly satisfying to punish demons.

This features a lot more platforming, and while most of it isn't too hard, it involves more blind jumps and pattern recognition than I'd like. It feels like we just needed enjoy to make sure we understood the new platforming elements for actual fights, but there are timed areas, chained jumps, and just a lot of leaping around to do that largely feels put in there because they added the platforming elements than it being that exciting on its own. In addition, there are the aforementioned "blind jumps" from time to time, where you can't recognize your destination or next step until you're already into the process of defying lava.

With all my complaints, it may be surprising for me to give it a thumbs up. And that's because the core gameplay from Doom 2016 is still there, in the end. It involves a much more defensive approach to combat, moving and picking your fights and often punishing the more aggressive gameplay of its predecessor. But I did appreciate that it was willing to be unbashedly a video-game, harkening back to elements like extra lives, more power-ups, and gimmicky stages.

But it's also more unfocused as a result. Doom 2016 was a stronger game, but Doom Eternal is still good. It just keeps trying to be things that it's not.

Finished on Ultra-Violence and grabbed every collectable.

Lara, honey, no. Don't steal from the villagers! Don't take the sacred artifact home! Don't invade somebody's land!

Well, it's what she does. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the third descent into the current Tomb Raider franchise, and as it goes lower and lower, all of the cracks become apparent.

And it's frustrating, because the amount of research and work that goes into a game like this is astounding. They obviously did a lot of work to bring their world to life with a lot of authenticity - well, the parts outside of the Mayan tombs somehow built on lava. Moreover, the gameplay, particularly when the game goes into full spectacle, remains exciting and thrilling. The myriad puzzles vary in satisfaction, sometimes being too easy, sometimes being too obtuse, and occasionally - they're just right, and show off all of the potential this series has.

But there's several cracks running through the surface of this game, and the longer you spend with it, the longer they become apparent. The game opens up boasting of how they hired cultural sensitivity readers, but as the game goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that they didn't realize - or perhaps weren't really concerned with - the issues with pulp adventure narratives and the themes of colonialism therein. While they clearly wanted to update the structure of Lara's adventures, it's a half-hearted notion that only highlights the fact that Lara is walking into a local's home and tearing an animal skin of the drying rack, because it's hers now. She needs that bow upgrade!

The pacing also suffers heavily on account of the open-world design. While they do answer the criticisms of the 2013 Tomb Raider not having enough tombs to adventure through, this time it overloads the player with missions, tombs, and other activities disconnected to the main story. And while I'm grateful for their efforts, it also results in the game just feeling directionless. While tombs felt like a treat in earlier games, I find myself finishing this one with the distinct feeling of having just been overwhelmed and exhausted. I'm actually surprised I've only put in 39 hours - I feel like I've put in 60 to 80.

Oddly, this means combat rarely fills much of the airtime, despite it clearly being the most robust and thought-out funbox in the game. Though you get armloads of toys - new weapons, new skills, new outfits - geared towards the enjoyment of making goons sorry, most of the time is spent on either platforming or traversing. There's also just the strangeness of the pack-in DLC weapons, some of which are so farcically overpowered as to render the notion of collecting or upgrading other weapons in their class entirely moot.

For a series that's supposed to show us Lara's growth, she barely seems to have evolved much at all. Most of her story beats are given over to her being sad over the death of her father. Which is understandable, but aside from her gasping at wonder at sights or being determined to stick arrows in baddies, there just isn't much to her. I understand they wanted to go for a more grounded storyline, but you start to suspect most of the cast have had any self-awareness or sense of humor surgically removed. Other characters are pretty much there to serve up quests - save for the villain, who mostly just seems extremely confused about what he's trying to do.

Ultimately, we have a game that's just kind of past its prime. 2013's Tomb Raider was, I felt, an underrated rebirth for the series, but later games have just added more content without really expanding the gameplay, and the writing has taken a serious hit since Rise. I really, really wanted to like this game, but stagnation has hit this series hard, and it just doesn't seem to know what kind of story or experience it wants to focus on. Well, it definitely let my new graphics card show off its stuff, certainly.

Sometimes, more is less. And yet, where's Survival Mode? That sandbox mode was the best part of Rise...

Finished the game on hard difficulty, finished every tomb and the majority of side missions and DLC. Something like 90%+ completion? I can't be bothered to boot it up again to check.

A game yearning to be a movie instead.

Forgotton Anne's primary draw for most is going to be the hand-drawn animation, and for the most part it looks fairly sharp. The environments in particular are standout, but it all comes at a price. Secondary characters are usually animated with only a few frames, giving them a stilted, jarring look. More problematic is how the animations impact controls- slight delays to service the animation gives control a stilted feel, resulting in the occasional missed jump that feels more like the game's fault than your own. The puzzles themselves are rarely too taxing, usually making themselves clear in short order. Though an adventure game, there's almost no inventory to speak of - all the tasks you have will be usually be doable just with Anne's existing tools. There are a few puzzles where the solution is obtuse, relying on an obscure interaction that won't be obvious, but for the most part it's just a matter of figuring out what switches or wires to activate in what order.

The story itself is buoyed up by a charming collection of "Forgotlings", animated objects that make up most of the settings' inhabitants. They're well-voiced and often come across as sympathetic and diverse. Unfortunately, they also work against the story mechanisms that underpin the tale the developers had in mind. To some extent they expect Anne to have the option to be a real jerk, but there's no real impetus to do so. It very much falls into the "pet puppy or kill puppy?" school of branching game story design. There's the question, I suppose, if being the option to do a good or bad thing is self-affirming as a value in and of itself, but the moral dilemmas were somewhat facile. The notion of siding with the villain seemed like an utter non-starter to me, but YMMV.

Not overlong, Forgotton Anne is a tough one to judge. It doesn't anything too badly, but it doesn't do anything too well. It's pretty and evocative, but doesn't have much depth under the skin. Ultimately, I felt very neutral on the game by the end- which may be more damning than it actually being bad. It's an ambitious trip, and I don't regret it, but I have a hard time recommending it. It feels like they would have been better just doing this as an animation film than a game - as it is, I'm not sure being behind Anne's controls adds much to it.

Completed the game, no particular difficulty settings of note. Was a good Anne.