Recent reviews by Capndrake

I was immensely apprehensive when this was first announced. Both Konami and Bloober Team haven't particularly had the best track record, with Konami temporarily leaving the game industry almost entirely only to come back with a bunch of low effort cashgrabs, and Bloober being known for the consistently poor handling of heavy themes in their games. It simply seemed like this was a disaster in the making. When Konami revealed footage of the game's combat at the start of this year and that looked awful too I was just about ready to write the game off then and there.

I'm glad I didn't.

Bloober managed to blow away all expectations and then some. Everything you love about Silent Hill 2 is still there, all the characters, all the cutscenes, all the weapons, all the enemies, all the locations, all the puzzles, all the different endings. But you can tell immense love and care went into this - the original voices are iconic but the new voice acting sounds excellent and makes the characters come across a lot more human (James especially). Both the enemies and you have more varied movesets that make combat a lot more fun (instead of just stunlocking every enemy with a plank/pipe) and perhaps best of all, Silent Hill itself has been massively expanded. Not only that, but it looks absolutely gorgeous too.

In the original game 99% of all buildings were inaccessible, but Bloober has cleverly made it so that a bunch of different stores, houses and apartment buildings are now traversed naturally as you make your way through the game. You can also explore on your own and find more optional places that weren't there before, with some of them even introducing new puzzles, and all of the major "dungeons" have also been expanded significantly. And these aren't just hastily thrown together additions - all these places are just as detailed as what was already there. Some of these rooms genuinely make you wonder what happened in them.

The dev team also loves playing with the expectations of people familiar with the original game - some puzzles have been changed slightly and some cutscenes/enemy encounters take place in different areas entirely, but elements of the original puzzles and the original locations are all still there - and if you happen to recognize them and look around a bit the game will even acknowledge as such. For example, a certain cutscene involving a pizza is now in a different building, but the original location is still there and you will notice a very obvious nod to that fact when you go there.

Even though all of the original content is intact, the fact that there's so much new stuff and everything's been changed ever so slightly practically makes this feel like a brand new game, and I mean that in an extremely good way. This is one of the biggest surprise comebacks I've seen in a long time - all early signs had everyone worried but Bloober Team not only managed to deliver, they went above and beyond to make one of the greatest horror games of all time even better. Can we get a Silent Hill 1 remake next, please?

Hotate.

Tetaho.

Rean's route: I sleep
Lloyd's route: I'm awake
C's route: **** just got real

Much better game than CS4, which was a disappointment on numerous levels. The plot moves at a nice, reasonably quick pace for once, there's a ton of fun side content and the three routes mean there's quite a bit of variety. It's also the only game in the series so far with significant post-game content that doesn't simply amount to "play NG+ for one additional cutscene/dungeon/boss".

Now let's hope we never have to see Rean again.

Decidedly underwhelming.

Great setting you don't see very often (most sandbox games take place in American cities after all) with plenty of mythological Japanese creatures as enemies and magic instead of guns. That should all combine to be a great game, but something went wrong somehow. Despite the hundreds of collectibles scattered around, the city feels empty and has very little to do, the story and characters are all incredibly forgettable, combat lacks any sort of punch and gets dull within an hour and even the side quests are the most boring drivel you could possibly think of.

It's decent if you can get it for cheap (20 bucks or less) but don't expect too much out of it.

It's Yakuza in all but name. While it has a few small blemishes, the strong story and amazing cast of characters make this one of the best games RGG Studios have put out - a must-play if you like their other titles.

We've now reached the point where Life is Strange games cost over twice as much as the original did for almost half the content.

The game, for the most part, is fine, nothing more, nothing less. Good characters (probably the most likable ones in the series) and a great upgrade in graphics and animations, but the main story is very underwhelming and honestly felt rushed. There's a lot of good character moments - episode 3 in particular has lots of fun stuff. But by and large almost nothing interesting happens, with the main plot even feeling secondary at times.

Lots of different story threads are introduced as things that'll seemingly be important only to then just... hardly matter at all. And it keeps doing this from start to finish, like the writers had no idea what they actually wanted the focus of the game to be. In the end, it felt incredibly incohesive, and I was left wondering what kind of story the game was actually trying to tell.

Another sore point is the lack of variety in locations. All of LiS1 and Before the Storm took place in Arcadia Bay, but you still visited many different, interesting places. This wasn't a problem in LiS2 either due to the game's entire setup. In this game though, well, I hope you like the main street and its four explorable stores, because you're going to be seeing them a lot. As in, 90% of the entire game a lot.

One last thing is that the music has also taken a noticeable hit, with the VAST majority of the soundtrack being from the same two people (instead of a variety of indie bands) and most of it being incredibly forgettable, coupled with many of the more impactful scenes not even HAVING music. Oh yeah, remember those cool moments at the very end of episodes in previous games, where you'd get a montage of emotional scenes with no voice acting while some very fitting music played? None of that here, all episodes just kind of abruptly end.

All of this, paired with the average episode length being 2 hours (or LESS) instead of the 3+ hours from previous games means I can't in good faith recommend this for 60 bucks - it would probably be a decent get for 20 on sale or something. Enjoyable enough, but easily the least impressive Life is Strange game. Do better, Deck Nine.

Local viking girl has a manic episode and suffers through mediocre puzzles, obnoxious combat and frequent, overly long cutscenes which tell an incredibly simplistic story in an excessively convoluted way. At least the graphics are nice?

Mostly similar to the previous Yakuza games, except there's a new protagonist and the combat changes from being real-time to being turn-based. That might not be up everyone's alley, but after around 10 games that all used pretty much exactly the same combat system it's a nice breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately, this does bring with it some problems: 4 characters ganging up on someone who's been built up as being super strong for hours upon hours just doesn't have as much impact as a one on one fight, and most of the game's encounters are honestly laughably easy up until a handful of bosses near the end of the game, with no way to increase the difficulty until you've beaten the whole thing once. Hopefully this is something a sequel will improve on.

The beginning and end of the story are great, but most of the middle of the game focuses on a pretty dull subplot, and the overly long cutscenes (for Yakuza standards) don't really help much. At least there's plenty of other stuff (minigames, substories) to mess around with, as usual.

Overall, it's not the best game in the series by any stretch, but when it shines, it still shines bright. Just be prepared for some downtime in the story.

Surprisingly not much like Dark Souls at all. You're a lot more agile while moving around the maps which adds a lot of fun verticality to the game, combat is more about parrying than dodging and you have a lot more moves available. Fun stuff.

Captures the essence of what made River City Ransom so great 30 years ago. It might be one of the few games in the series to drop the original 8-bit look in favour of a different art style, but this new take looks absolutely gorgeous. On top of that, the soundtrack is incredibly catchy, the gameplay's as fun as ever and there's a decent amount of replay value because of the different characters. The only downside is that the game's a little short, but then again, so was RCR.