Recent reviews by Magpie

Yeah screw it I'll join in too

If you like mech games but don't know what EDF is, don't buy it. If you want EDF that's literally also just a botched, stupid, god-awful silly version of Armoured Core 4.... yeah. This is that, more or less. We're used to paying these sorts of absurd prices, so don't ask.

First experience online was a giant train covered in firework launchers and power drills that could barely navigate the city streets, alongside a tried-and-true mech which had a shield permanently attached to its feet so as if to look like the silver surfer as it glided through the air.

We beat the mission. Quite confidently, I might add.

Literally the best FromSoftware game since Bloodborne, and the most accessible game since Tetris.

Instructions unclear, unsure how to proceed.

This ♥♥♥♥ is fantastic

The dialogue isn't so much cringe as it is just nostalgically absurd, and if you think hiring Steve Blum wasn't enough of an indicator that their early-2000s tropes and trash wasn't incredibly self-aware, then you're well out of touch with the awkward plague FUNimation gave us back in the day.

Also this game ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slaps.

Best RE game to date.

EDIT: As of 2023, Resident Evil 4 Remake slaps harder. But I also played Resident Evil 5 again, and quite frankly it's better than all of them combined, tenfold, multiplied.

It's a sweet game. It touches the base roots of classic FPS level, weapon and enemy design and serves as a reminder that there's still so much to learn and appreciate from mid-90/early-00s game design. The world feels sincere and the environments are wonderfully varied though thematically similar. There's a nice sense of progression and a real journey explored. Definitely one of the better total DOOM conversions.

There's an unshakable sense of ego from the developers on their design philosophy for this game. They don't preach it, but I feel it choking me around every corner. Through all the 'not-really-gameplay', such as the traveling, the time spent collecting resources, the time spent warming up or cooling down, the time spent managing your backpack, sleeping and managing abilities through the mediocre-at-best menus, etc... the developers feel they've created a world that warrants all this padding. As if me and my friend, walking from one end of the map to the other, for the fifteenth time in just 10 hours of gameplay, is worth it for what comes after.

Although for fans of survival games, that criticism might seem absolutely absurd, I can't possibly consider Outward a survival game. It's an adventure game with survival elements. But here, the adventuring comes first, with the survival as some all-too-interfering upholstery. The core gameplay elements of what make this game fantastic to many aren't these unintuitive mechanics but the story, locations and meaningful, active interactions with things existing within the environment.

I'd really like to highlight just how much traveling impacts this game. It's easily at least 30%~ of the experience, being generous. Walking. Running. Emptying your stamina. Refilling it with a potion or waiting for it to recharge. Repeating. The single over-world song that plays per area, the sparse amount of bushes or trees that fail to hide the barren plains and mountains ahead of you, the lack of life (given that enemies never seem to respawn in the over-world) to interact with, etc.

It's a chore. But unlike washing the dishes so you can sit down and boot up your favourite game, this chore isn't met with any real kind of reward. The game is considerably vague on its storytelling outside of the main quests, and I see very little environmental storytelling to accompany you when you're off on your own in the world. This is agony when you're doing literally nothing but running for anywhere between 5-10 minutes from one location to another with nothing in your way. My friend would disable split-screen and go make popcorn while I ran, and then when they got back, I'd pass them my controller to keep running, while I had a toilet break. It's not amusing or a good use of a player's time.

My biggest gripe is just how often these developers conjure up some beautiful interior full of unique assets, only for it to be used for next-to-nothing. The most prominent example of this I found is when you find the largest building up in Berg, where inside this gigantic, parliament-like structure, there stands just one person who teaches you a skill. That's it. Even if this area is used later, to see it wasted this hard in my first encounter feels disrespectful to the time they spent making it. Another scenario had me raiding a fortress, killing armoured guards all around, only to bump into their sleeping quarters, where several NPCs were sleeping in their beds... only they don't wake up. At all. They just stay there, with no way to interact with them. It's immersion-shattering.

The combat, I think, has already been shamed enough. It's not so much difficult as it is restraining. Even if they try to promote sophisticated actions, a lot of the melee combat comes down to whacking something hard enough that you knock it down for a few extra hits, hoping your fresh new armour will save you from the fact enemies constantly attack you in the middle of your attacks, as if unbothered. Managing abilities, especially as a wizard, later on becomes a rather convoluted juggle as your slots feel rather limited in having to manage what slots warrant items and which warrant spells or equipment.

The game is shameless towards its treatment of second players, even in split-screen. My friend couldn't even obtain the fire sigil from the mountain as I'd already been granted it (the host/first player). I didn't even want to use magic. They did. But it wasn't until 8 hours later when we got to Berg that they could even find a real set of spells to use. That's the gist of how hard the second player gets dumped on.

Perhaps the saddest thing about the time I spent playing this game with my friend is that, even though we still enjoyed the concept, we had no desire to enable the nonsense of any useless traveling, as all the mandatory traveling was time-consuming enough. The only thing that was selling this game to us (mystery and adventure) was replaced with a desire to simply Google our answers to some more confusing or hidden items/locations, as discovering it ourselves would only be met with more mindless, empty traveling from town-to-location-to-town-to-distraction-to-location-to-town.

Overall, I want the developers to know that they've built a very competent, lovely fantasy world. It really is. And even through all the struggles and tripe I'm put through, it feels really rewarding when I find a new piece of gear or a valuable weapon worth using, more-so than I've experienced in most other games. But the design philosophy here, the idea that everything has to feel like some 'long-haul' adventure when all that's done is empty padding and long walks on a long beach on a long road for a long distance... it sucks.

If it's about the journey and not the destination, then why does the journey have nothing, and the destination have everything?

Capcom have finally discovered the ingredients required to bring one of the most historically divided fanbases together under one banner again. There's a subtle embrace and acknowledgement of all their previous titles here, taking bits and pieces from RE7, RE5, RE4, RE2, etc. to concoct a new era of survival horror with slight action and comical undertones.