Games Completed 2025

[Scrustle]

23/02 - Umurangi Generation (incl. Macro DLC)

When I first played this a few years back it was through my short time using Game Pass, but it impressed me so much that I always wanted to own the game properly one day. Recently it happened to be on sale for super cheap, so I finally made good on that desire, and so did a fresh playthrough while I was at it.

I still really appreciate what this game is all about. It’s got a great and vibrant sense of style that has a scrappy lo-fi feel to it that is a bit janky, but in a way that actually feels in line with the experience because of how strong a sense of personality it has. It’s got a rebellious and anarchic streak to it, and a clear perspective it wants to convey that it does so through the background worldbuilding, which the photography-based gameplay makes it hard to ignore. Said gameplay is really engaging too. It does a good job of pulling a creative instinct out of you. It manages to balance structured goals that can require a bit of problem solving to achieve, while still giving you a lot of freedom to go about them in your own way. Playing through this game a second time does make it feel a bit restrictive in early levels though, having got used to having more to mess around with already.

The soundtrack is really cool too, it’s a big part of the vibes of this game. It’s also a really creative mix of unconventional beats that can have a bit of an abrasive edge to them, but in a way that comes across as playfully unorthodox. Also it’s funny, having played through the Silent Hill series since I last played this game, I now recognise how much of this soundtrack lift samples from those games. Giving me another layer of appreciation from how such a different feel can be drawn out of these same component parts.

[Alex79]

JAN - 12 Minutes (Android)
JAN - The Last Of Us - Part I (PS5)
JAN - Tunic (Switch)

FEB - Lost Pig (PC on Android)

Lost Pig is a text adventure in the classic style of The Hobbit, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy or any one of those games you'd play on computer back in the early 80s. I loved these games as a kid, and wrestling with the language, or 'parser' as it seemed to be known as back then, was half the fun. You literally type in the commands like, "NORTH", "WEST", "TAKE KEY", "EXAMINE CHEST", "USE KEY IN CHEST", that sort of thing.

I found a Z-Machine interpreter for Android last week which is basically just a wrapper that lets you play 1000s of these old text adventures - some of the commercially available ones from back in the day and many, many more which have been written since. I had a look at the Interactive Fiction awards from the last few years and downloaded some that looked interesting.

Real talk, playing this games on Android is far from optimal. Whilst you can play every one of them perfectly well, typing on a phone keyboard is an exercise in patience as much as anything else, but I'm enjoying it still.

Lost Pig was a runner up in the awards a couple of years ago and purports to be a beginner friendly game, not too tough and not very long. It probably took me a couple of hours over the space of a few days, and the game sees you take control of green orc searching for his lost pig. It's amusing, the puzzles are interesting and it's well worth a play if you've ever been in to these types of games.

If anyone is interested, and I know it's a bit of a niche genre these days, let me know and I'll send you some info about how to get the games up and running (it's really no more tricky than downloading a couple of apps and the games themselves).

[Truk_Kurt]

Parking Garage Rally Circuit.
What an incredible driving game this is, the most fun I’ve had with an arcade racer in years. For those who don’t know it’s a time trial based game where you speed your way around car parks trying to achieve the bronze, silver or gold times. It has a drift mechanic similar to Mario kart which gives you a speed boost at the end of the drift. I have found it to be incredibly fun and addictive as the mechanics of it are spot on. I love it’s aesthetic and even the soundtrack is great. Had I played it last year it would have made my top 3 games of the year. Only cost me £6 on steam sale too. 9/10

[Michiel K]

25 February: Smash TV (ARC)

First time I ever credit fed all the way through this one. And I did it for the upcoming Cane and Rinse podcast. I'm kind of curious about the SNES version now and if that's a bit more fair when it comes to the difficulty.

[ratsoalbion]

A little.

[seansthomas]

Jan 12th - Resident Evil 2 (PS5)

Mar 5th - Nier Automata (PS5)

Let's start with what I liked.

It's an interesting story and concept.
The structure is very unique.
The character and enemy designs are very original.
The music is awesome.
The opening and final hours are pretty epic.
I like that it tried to mix up combat and shooting.

Sadly that was about it. I really had to force myself to beat this game. I found so much of it infuriating.

I never understood fully the combat. It's seems to punish you getting in close, but is insanely dull when further away. It lacks the tightness of Bayonetta nor the variation of Astral Chain, and isn't Platinums finest hour.

There is so much repetition in this game. I suspect that's by design, given the plot, but you see the same enemies, places, bosses, action etc over and over. The 2nd of the 3 main playthroughs needed to unlock a true ending is also incredibly dull. Not much changes at all. And I found myself relying on the same weapon over and over because I never had any materials to upgrade others.

The map. Oh God the map. I don't know how many times I fast travelled somewhere, next to a red dot on the map, only to find it was accessible via some tiny access path in another part of the world entirely.

Saving was infuriating. There are large, 40 min spells with no option to save. So if you die, something entirely possible when some bosses can two hit you and using a health pack requires a totally unintuitive button prompt, you are doing it all again sonny.

I was so over the hacking by the middle of playthrough 2, let alone 3.

I read so much about the amazing side quests here. Yet I only found one in the entire game that wasn't a fetch quest.

What else...

The combat arenas are dull. The village area is harder to navigate than that bloody hub sub in Wolfenstein 2. The music outlasted it's welcome. The beserk action was not worth the risk. If you don't do tons of side quests, it's easy to be way under levelled and have to grind for multiple hours. 9S is a whingy little guy. The sections where you limp along injured or you lose visual clarity went on for way too long. The chip system was hard to fathom. Losing your shit when you die was galling here, and not just a case of a few lost Souls. Your item menu is full of utterly pointless shit. Most of the pod secondary functions seemed to be useless.

I don't think I've been so out of sync with popular feeling on a game in many years. I don't get the love. For me this is a slightly dull experience, like Killer 7 or P.N.03.

I get that's it's unusual, with a story it wants to tell and a strong personality. It's bravery is welcome and I'm glad people get to make stuff like this, for those who love it.

But for me, it just was never an enjoyable game to actually play.

[Rhaegyr]

Echoes my thoughts on the game exactly. I ended up giving up halfway through the second playthrough.

Glad it exists but it just didn't click with me, despite loving Platinums work.

[markfm007]

The repetition has left me on the fence with playing Automata. I've seen conflicting opinions on how different each playthrough is. Plus you sort of have to commit to playing it five times too in order to get the 'proper' ending. Even if it's a fairly quick run through by the end, that's a lot, especially if I end up disliking aspects of it. It's also likely to be hanging over my head how many I've got left each time. I'd be tempted to play it on the easiest difficulty to ensure I've got less to worry about.

[seansthomas]

I do think the complaints about replaying the game 3 times are a bit unfair. The first and third playthroughs are totally different. And the second short cuts a few sections, adds new ones and also gives you new mechanics to mix it up. So whilst I didn't like it as I said above, it's more because of how he plays Vs seeing the same areas again.

So the structure of repeating it wasn't as big a deal for me personally. I actually quite liked that.

The bigger issue I had was in the gameplay itself being so repetitive and samey. But that could be on me. I found levelling up weapons hard. Only found one extra pod. Relied on the two things that worked for me repeatedly.

But that was slightly because the game is obtuse and doesn't help open up other avenues through gameplay or tutorials, like say Xenoblade or Astral Chain do.

I should also say I doggedly stuck at Normal level Vs lowering it. Which many recommend doing.

-------

Just listened to the Cane and Rinse show and hasn't realised there was an ending E! I bailed after A B and C (with two joke endings).

Will have to watch that online. Sounds like that might have altered my opinion a bit.

[Alex79]

I must admit I gave up on Automata after about half an hour. Just didn't click with me at all.

[markfm007]

Ah ok, that's good to know. Knowing the repeated playthroughs are different was the biggest hurdle for me. I'll give it a go eventually and if I bounce off I bounce off. I'll stick to normal too if it's encouraged.

[seansthomas]

Some of the C&R podcast crew recommended dropping to Easy. I wish I had done Vs soldier on.

[Scrustle]

12/03 - Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

With the sad news of late of Monolith being closed down, praise for this game started showing up again. I have been a little curious about it on and off over the years, so this recent surge in relevance got me to finally give it a shot. Better late than never I suppose.

The things that dampened my interest in this game initially did turn out to be true in a lot of ways, but even in light of that it had some things of value of its own, and I ended up increasingly enjoying it as I went through it.

On first impression it’s clear that this game is very derivative of the major AAA design trends of the era. It lifts its structure and mechanics almost entirely from pre-RPG era Assassin’s Creed, including the awful side content. Things I had more than enough of years before this game came out. The combat takes cues from the Batman Arkham games, coming across as shallow and with such aggressive auto-targeting that you don’t feel like you have true control over fights.

Despite me warming on the game over time, most of that remained true throughout. The story never really gets interesting at any point, and it even ends with an anti-climactic QTE as well. The whole game has a very popcorn entertainment feel to it. Aesthetically it’s pretty drab too, but I guess that just comes with the setting.

But as you get deeper in to it, certain parts of it do end up getting fleshed out and show they have more substance to offer. The combat does get more interesting as you unlock more abilities. Even if it can’t fully escape the limitations of its base design concept, the number of different things you can do does lend it a reasonable amount of variety, allowing encounters to feel more dynamic and like you have a sense of agency over how you engage with them.

Then of course there’s the infamous Nemesis system. At first I thought it was a neat way to make generic enemies feel a bit more unique, but little more than that. But over time it grew in to something much more that I have to admit is pretty impressive. Over a longer period of time with the system, it allows you to craft a relationship with particular orc leaders through how your run-ins with them go. It throws in a big dose of unpredictability to the experience, as their actions can be unscripted, leading to interesting outcomes, like having multiple captains show up at once when you’re trying to take down a specific one. I also really liked how if you fail at taking one out, that isn’t the end of it. You don’t just retry the exact same mission like your failure never happened. Next time you come across them it will be in a different context, perhaps allowing you to have a better shot.

But the thing that finally fully won me over was when later on in the game you get the ability to mind-control members of the enemy ranks yourself. You can have an ally in the orc army and command them to attack other members, letting you manipulate their hierarchy from outside. There’s a point in the story where you need to have control over all the top level orc war chiefs to progress, and I failed at going after them directly, accidentally killing them in combat. So instead I went after the lower ranking survivors, and then just let time pass so they got promoted in to the empty war chief positions, and that counted towards the goal. It was a really cool unscripted moment that felt like a reward for using these systems in not the most straightforward way.

So even though there is a lot about this game that can feel rather uninspired in the moment-to-moment experience, the Nemesis system really does elevate this game over the long term. I was somewhat sceptical of it at first, but given time it ends up showing that it has something worthwhile and unique to offer, even if it comes surrounded by a framework which is less so.

[seansthomas]

Jan 12th - Resident Evil 2 (PS5)
Mar 5th - Nier Automata (PS5)

Mar 14th - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)

Been playing this on long commutes on and off since launch. It's a weird 6/10 game.

It rekindled memories of how I felt about Zelda after playing Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. I liked those games, but also found them intensely irritating.

All 3 needed modernising and speeding up in terms of interface. For example, theres a tedious ton of text to skip through, and every chat could be half the length. The cutesy character arcs feel like you've seen them so many times before. Making recipes one by one by one, over and over, with no ability to skip the tedious shopkeeper chat is galling; just let me batch make 4 smoothies Nintendo. There's a sequence of boss fight phases that never ends and where the solution is obvious, but hard to do. And of course, there's the companion who witters on endlessly pointing out the bleeding obvious.

But like those games, there's also some great moments. It's got some proper devious puzzles and sections where I was stumped what to do, more so than I ever was in the 3D Switch Zeldas. There are 2 really good, properly tricksy dungeons in the second half. And a couple of the characters you meet are really charming.

I'm also really torn on the games central premise of playing Zelda and using Echoes. It's good they tried something different. When it works, it's really interesting, largely in the end game where you need to mix up combat, traversal, elemental attacks and environmental puzzles on the fly. But the game gives you way too much stuff to manage that's pointless, so you end up using the same handful of stuff a lot. And it gets very tedious stacking beds on top of one another to get across gaps. I should caveat that I totally forgot about an ability you have until my son accidentally rediscovered it tonight during the final area, so that might have made some of that playtime less dull.

The fact you unlock Links traditional fighting traits at one point might also point to the game knowing that the echoes combat is a bit hit and miss. Echoes often don't do what you want them to.

It runs better than Link's Awakening. The overworked is nice to explore. There are tons of secrets. And the music is really lovely; there's some cracking Zelda tunes here.

But all in all, it's probably still the worst Zelda game I've ever played.

[Truk_Kurt]

Jan 12th - Resident Evil 2 (PS5)
Mar 5th - Nier Automata (PS5)

Mar 14th - The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)

Been playing this on long commutes on and off since launch. It's a weird 6/10 game.

It rekindled memories of how I felt about Zelda after playing Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. I liked those games, but also found them intensely irritating.

All 3 needed modernising and speeding up in terms of interface. For example, theres a tedious ton of text to skip through, and every chat could be half the length. The cutesy character arcs feel like you've seen them so many times before. Making recipes one by one by one, over and over, with no ability to skip the tedious shopkeeper chat is galling; just let me batch make 4 smoothies Nintendo. There's a sequence of boss fight phases that never ends and where the solution is obvious, but hard to do. And of course, there's the companion who witters on endlessly pointing out the bleeding obvious.

But like those games, there's also some great moments. It's got some proper devious puzzles and sections where I was stumped what to do, more so than I ever was in the 3D Switch Zeldas. There are 2 really good, properly tricksy dungeons in the second half. And a couple of the characters you meet are really charming.

I'm also really torn on the games central premise of playing Zelda and using Echoes. It's good they tried something different. When it works, it's really interesting, largely in the end game where you need to mix up combat, traversal, elemental attacks and environmental puzzles on the fly. But the game gives you way too much stuff to manage that's pointless, so you end up using the same handful of stuff a lot. And it gets very tedious stacking beds on top of one another to get across gaps. I should caveat that I totally forgot about an ability you have until my son accidentally rediscovered it tonight during the final area, so that might have made some of that playtime less dull.

The fact you unlock Links traditional fighting traits at one point might also point to the game knowing that the echoes combat is a bit hit and miss. Echoes often don't do what you want them to.

It runs better than Link's Awakening. The overworked is nice to explore. There are tons of secrets. And the music is really lovely; there's some cracking Zelda tunes here.

But all in all, it's probably still the worst Zelda game I've ever played.

I'd give it a 7 but agree with a lot of what you say. I forgot to mention the overlong chatter in my review further up in the thread, it was really annoying.

[Jobobonobo]

Spoiler: show

Jan 2: Shantae: Risky’s Revenge
Jan 20: E.V.O.: Search for Eden
Jan 22: Super Smash TV
Jan 26: Demon Turf
Feb 11: Mother (Earthbound Beginnings)

Mar 15: Metroid: Samus Returns

Finished this a while ago but was way too sick to write about it until now. Will save my full thoughts for the show but it is a solid Metroid game. Does the basics right, some cool powerups which are fun to use and the additions put in this remake I also liked a fair bit. Two thumbs up.

[Scrustle]

21/03 - Sonic Unleashed

I played this through the recently released fan-made PC recompilation port, and I have to say they did a very impressive job with it. It runs very well without any noticeable issues or weird quirks, and it has a wide range of settings to fiddle with as well. It feels like an officially made port, and it cleans up all the technical shortcomings of the console release flawlessly.

As for the actual game itself though, I’m somewhat torn on it. Some parts of it I think are genuinely really good, but I also think it’s deeply flawed in a lot of ways. Yet at the same time I’m somewhat hesitant to go in to detail about it. I’m very aware of the conversation around this game and how it has changed over the years. Despite me not really being a Sonic fan myself, with limited first-hand experience with the series outside the Adventure games many years ago, I have long been kind of fascinated with it as a sort of cultural phenomenon, through all the tumultuous twists and turns it has had over the years, and the way people have reacted to that. So I’m familiar with how this game has had a reappraisal over the years, with that positive energy being a large driving force for the existence of this port in the first place. I’m sympathetic to that idea, that a game might not be fairly appreciated when it comes out, and that the people who care the most about it can help shine a new light on it and help others have the same positive experience that they had.

So in light of that I’m aware that a lot of the issues I have are things that are not exactly new criticisms of the game. It’s stuff that fans of this game probably got tired of hearing over a decade ago. But I can’t second-guess my own reaction to something. The feelings I had are the feelings I had. I also think there’s the issue of what perspective someone is coming to this game from. For me it was a first time run from someone who is not that well-versed in these boost style Sonic games. For a lot of the fans, they are very familiar with its quirks and rough edges, and so to them they are not issues they need to think about. As well as them likely not having had to deal with the unlock progression system in a long time either. I think perhaps over time they may have forgotten how it felt to have to deal with all that stuff for the first time.

On a more positive note though, the game is visually very impressive. Environments are very pretty, with lots of character and detail, full of vibrant colours. The lighting in particular is fantastic. This game is a quantum leap over Sonic 06 that came out immediately before it, and it still looks very appealing now, arguably better than most of its successors. The globe-trotting theme is great for showing off lots of different visual styles too, which does a lot to get the most out of the graphical presentation. The soundtrack is also great, full of a lot of catchy tracks that also follow that theme of different cultural styles. This version also has the option to turn off the combat music that plays for every single fight in the game, which can get really grating after a while. That definitely helps the soundtrack shine much better when you get to hear more of the unique level themes.

I actually do like the nighttime werehog levels too. They are a very strange addition to this series, and do perhaps overstay their welcome at times, but are still on the whole are actually pretty fun. These parts of the game basically are kid-friendly God of War. But it’s a pretty decent example of that. The combat mechanics are pretty fun and satisfying, and actually have a level of depth to them. You can create combos and juggle enemies, with moves that all have considered functions. Enemies also don’t despawn for a while after you deplete their health too, allowing you to continue beating on them as long as you can keep the combo going. The werehog itself also has a cool animation style, with a stretchy, almost rubber hose style to your moves as you swing you arms around. It’s visually appealing and gives the character more personality than just being a slightly edgier version of Sonic.

That said, these missions do have problems. As mentioned, they can drag on for a very long time. They can often take 20-30 minutes if you’re trying to be thorough. The platforming they make you do in these levels is also not great. Often you’re expected to grab ledges and swing from poles and such, but the context-sensitive prompt to do so is often extremely picky with timing and distance. It’s really not helpful when these sections frequently happen over instant death pits. The fiddly grabbing controls can also be a big problem when you need to pick up objects that you need to throw at a specific enemy. Having to wrangle with that while having attacks coming at you is really not a good time. There’s also a lack of coyote time on normal jumps too, often leading to slipping off edges when you’re trying to extend your pretty meagre jump distance. So while these levels can be surprisingly fun, at other times they are definitely not.

As for the daytime levels with the more traditional high speed platforming gameplay, I had a harder time enjoying them. They can be a pretty cool visual spectacle admittedly, thanks to the aforementioned high quality graphics and art design. The blistering sense of speed they can deliver is also fun at times. But I rarely felt like I was properly clicking with them. There’s a sense of not being in full control a lot of the time. Both because the physics have an odd slippery feel to them, and because the game frequently shifts in to scripted sequences or to different camera perspectives that take away control from the player in some way. It can feel very restrictive, but also ambiguous with what restrictions you’re actually under at any given time. The fact that the boost is so easily available also kind of takes away from the thrill of building up speed as you can just instantly get it from a simple button press a lot of the time. These levels are also very short, usually taking in the ball park of 5 minutes, often less. It makes the game feel very uneven when so much of your play time is spent not playing these levels that are ostensibly the core identity of the series. The sheer level of speed combined with their short length can make these levels feel somewhat underwhelming, like they just blast by too fast to really take in, and are over very quickly.

Then there is the progression system of this game. Something I also had problems with, but which perhaps ties in to my issues with the daytime levels. In order to unlock new levels and progress through the story, you have to have collected a certain number of medals that you pick up in previous stages. This means that it is very possible to hit a roadblock and simply can’t progress because you don’t have enough of these completely arbitrary trinkets, something which I ended up coming up against. I can see the argument in favour of these things though. One could say they exist to encourage mastery of the game by making you go back and replay older levels, solving the issues of length and their awkward controls through repeated practice. I do appreciate when a game does incentivise mastery through replayability, but in this case I don’t think it works too well. Picking up one or two tiny objects in a whole linear level doesn’t really feel like a good way to get players to engage with it on a deeper level, especially when even being able to spot the thing in the first place can flash by in an instant. I did actually try to go back to old levels and do this, but it wasn’t very fruitful. Instead I just decided to install a mod that drastically lowers the number of medals needed to unlock new stages, which seems to be one of the more popular mods out there, so I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this system is not great.

So a very mixed bag overall. It is visually attractive, and the gameplay can be fun at times, but there’s a lot dragging it down. Maybe some of that can be ironed out with more time with the game, but for that to be something I would be motivated to do, I would rather have something that starts off good and gets better, instead of having to learn to get used to things I don’t like. Maybe the games that came after this would be a better experience, as I know they did work on developing this formula.

[Indiana747]

(Jan) Atlas Fallen - PS5.
(Jan) Tiny Troopers: Joint Ops - Series X.
(Jan) A Plague Tale: Requiem - Series X.
(Feb) Daymare: 1994 Sandcastle - PS5.
(Feb) Scarlet Nexus - Series X.
(Mar) Age of Empires IV: AE - Series X.

[Scrustle]

29/03 - Monster Hunter Rise

In timely fashion I have been plugging away at this game for a while, and just reached the end of the story content of the base game. I liked it a lot, but I’m not sure I enjoyed it quite as much as World. To be fair it’s been a long time since I properly played that, so it’s hard to compare directly.

The core Monster Hunter gameplay is as great as ever, with complex and satisfying combat that has a sense of weight to it. The weapons are a lot of fun to get to grips with, as is going up against these monsters and gradually learning their move sets and behaviours that are impeccably crafted. I did like the Wirebugs quite a lot too, with that being the big addition for this entry. They add a lot of mobility that can be extremely useful in a lot of situations. It provides a whole new way to explore the levels that is more vertical. How useful they are for specific weapon move sets varies depending on the class though. For some it was great, while others they felt not quite as revelatory.

I started off focusing on the Long Sword, which is my usual go-to weapon when trying out any new MH game. It’s still good here, relatively easy to learn and reasonably mobile and powerful. But I don’t think it’s quite as good as in World, from how I remember it anyway. A lot of the more fancy moves of the weapon in this game have been integrated in to the Wirebug skills, and I just didn’t think the way they were organised felt as good as they were in World. Still fun in their own right, just not quite as much.

I also spent some time using the other weapons I did in World. The Dual Blades were also very good. They were already very mobile and so the Wirebug stuff added even more on top of that, giving you easier access to more aerial moves. The Insect Glaive was also fun, but honestly this felt barely changed from World. The new skills it had felt somewhat redundant, considering how it was already an extremely mobile weapon that could do a lot of that sort of stuff before.

After messing around with those I ended up landing on using the Switch Axe for most of the game. I did always want to pick this up in World but never could click with it in that game. The Wirebugs massively change how this weapon feels, giving it way more movement options and makes the play style flow together much better. It was really satisfying to use, with a heavy chunky feel that deals massive damage, but also a fun switchable move set that has you swapping between each mode depending on the situation. The Invincible Gambit move in particular was super useful, allowing you to close a lot of distance in to a big opening attack that has a ton of hyperarmour too.

I really liked the final boss monster too, as it had a very cool design that felt really unusual for this series. While it feels hard to really spoil anything in these games, I guess this is something that would count as that, so…

Spoiler: show

The concept of this thing being an almost etherial levitating serpent that has a strange upside-down orientation is really cool. It makes for a very interesting visual that elevates this monster above the others that make it feel more mythical. The air sacks on its body that are presumably what keeps it in the air are reminiscent of Phalanx from Shadow of the Colossus too. The attacks it does are also pretty unique. Lots of electrical energy balls and ring patterns that you have to weave between, giving the fight an almost shmup-like feel to it. It was a fun and unexpected twist to the gameplay.

But there was one pretty major thing that did stand out as a bit of a flaw that was hard to ignore. The visuals of this game can be kind of rough in some areas, thanks to the original target platform of the Switch. There’s more to it than that though. I wouldn’t call this an ugly game overall by any means, and there is a lot that is appealing about it. The traditional Japanese style aesthetic is great, the character models, armour sets and weapons are all very detailed and impressively stylised. The monsters themselves similarly look great, with fantastic designs and high quality models. The animations on both hunters and monsters is top notch, as one would expect from this series.

But when it comes to the levels where you actually do your hunting, honestly I think they look kind of rough. They look sparse in detail, and there’s a lack of post-processing effects, with what effects it does have being pretty low quality. It gives the image a kind of flat, aliased look where obvious flaws stand out. It hurts the illusion that these are believable habitats for these imposing creatures that you find within, and instead I am very aware that I am looking at computer graphics. It really feels like this game is stretching the RE Engine beyond its lower limits, and thus the effects and techniques it was designed to take advantage of simply weren’t available for this game, resulting in something where you can figuratively see all the seams. One level in particular stood out as especially bad to me, that being the Flooded Forest. As the name suggests, it’s supposed to be a damp environment covered in wet surfaces and pools of water. So everything has a simple specular layer applied to it, which makes the lighting look really unnatural. All the ponds show off how limited the reflections are too. But the real reason this level is so aesthetically disappointing is that it’s a returning stage from the third generation of MH games, which I am familiar with through my time playing MH3U many years ago. That version of this level is way more atmospheric and believable. Despite it probably lacking a lot of detail in an objective sense, if you were to calculate the geometric density, texture resolution, shaders, etc., it ends up creating something much more effective at portraying the feeling of what existing in a place like that would be. Shady, murky, overgrown, humid. I even booted up the game again to wander around the level to make sure it wasn’t just my nostalgia, and it really is much better. It goes to show that it’s possible to create something much more artistically appealing when you’re able to use tools for their intended purpose, within their intended limitations. Even “better” tools can create a worse outcome if they are pushed out of the context they were meant for.

Despite my issues with some of the visuals, it’s still an amazing game. Mechanically dense and very rewarding. Highly polished gameplay with a lot of depth to dig in to. Changes to the formula are interesting and give it a fun spin to keep things fresh. I do intend to carry on to Sunbreak as well, after perhaps a little break.

[Alex79]

Did you play much online? I restarted this on Switch a few weeks back and was surprised how easy it still was to find other players, even after Wilds had been released.