Recent reviews by Arius Vaitso

It has taken me quite a long time to feel comfortable writing a review for Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Many people that loved the original Life is Strange didn't care for LiS:BtS when it first came out, mostly for subjective reasons that I have tried to avoid falling victim to but that I will briefly discuss first.

The primary breaking point for most people was the absence of Chloe's original voice actress due to the Actor's Guild strike. While I appreciate that this might affect the specific inflections of her character, I was easily able to suspend my disbelief for this problem by ruminating on the fact that Chloe is several years younger than her LiS self during this story. Three years of being a teenager changes a great deal about a person, their voice being only a small part of that equation.

Visually and mechanically BtS is not appreciably different from its' predecessor. The plots of each game are directly intertwined and because I feel that the characters and stories portrayed in each game are utterly paramount in getting enjoyment out of them, I won't comment on them any further in order to avoid any spoilers whatsoever... with one exception.

Prequels bear a unique disadvantage when it comes to storytelling, in the sense that you already ultimately know the outcome of the overarching narrative before you learn the specific details of the prequel. You know where the characters will end up; who will live, who will die, and who will fall in love? It is in direct contrast to this curious predicament that throughout Before the Storm I came to greatly appreciate a character that I had not anticipated liking.

Regarding Rachel in Life is Strange, I will only say that I almost didn't think of her as a character at all. While I felt strongly for - and in tandem with - Chloe because of Rachel, I didn't really feel anything for Rachel herself, regardless of the nature of her story arc. It wasn't until BtS that the emotional impact of Rachel's future destiny struck me on her own behalf... and it struck me very hard.

This marks the first time I have ever experienced a video game that fundamentally changed my opinion of another - directly connected - game's story in so massive a way; the villainy of the antagonist in Life is Strange feels so much more terrible when you can identify yourself in one of their victims.

In all, I feel that Life is Strange and Before the Storm are amazing games and they should be "required playing" in the same way that Romeo & Juliet is "required reading". It's always nice to have a strong female lead in a game and any positive handling of LGBTQIA+ themes is a major plus in our very unfriendly society.

I will say flat-out that the original version of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is my favorite game in the series. I think it's important to include this information because it heavily influences my perspective on the remake of Resident Evil 3 in many ways.

The first thing we have to address is the game's length; do I feel like it's too short for its' day-one asking price? Possibly. There is an argument to be made in either direction, but I personally feel like I got the full $59.99 out of the game on just my first full playthrough. That doesn't mean that I had no desire for the game to be longer when I beat it because there is obvious room for additional content; I'm kinda bummed out by their decision to exclude the City Park location from the remake as it has always been my favorite self-contained location from any game in the series. On the other hand, more is not always better. Many games are too long or have too much repetitive "content padding" for their own good. ::coughAssassin'sCreedcough:: For my part, I feel like this issue is down to a matter of personal taste and mileage will vary from person to person.

Graphically and musically, they have cleared the same high bar that they set for themselves with the remake of Resident Evil 2; perhaps my only complaint here is the lack of an option to enable the musical score from the RE3:Nemesis as was possible in the previous remake. The translation, writing, voice acting, and pacing mark an enormous improvement over RE3:N unless you're a diehard fan of campy horror and/or you're really into seeing where the insanely over-the-top shark-jumping moments that virtually destroyed Resident Evil 6 began to appear in the series; the scene where Jill uses a magnum to shoot down a helicopter comes to mind.

The user-interface is nothing to write home about but serves its' purpose adequately; I feel like the learning curve for dodging is somewhat too high, and quick-turning is less responsive in this game than it was in ReRE2. Overall, these factors make the difficulty fluctuate wildly. At the time that it was released, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was considered by many casual-type players to be quite tough even on the lower difficulty settings. That being said, a lot of the gameplay problems with both versions of RE3 are easily overcome with practice and shouldn't affect most fans of the series or enthusiast-type gamers.

As far as I am concerned, the true selling point for this game are the boss fights, which are especially great when you consider that major battles in the series-as-a-whole tend not to be very good. Without spoiling anything that you can't already guess from the title screen, the second and third battles against Nemesis are amazing and are easily in my top five boss fights in the series. I'd also like to give a small nod to all the content they added to Carlos' role in ReRE3 over its' predecessor; as much as I love Jill, Chris, Leon, and Claire, it's always nice to have a "new" perspective to see things from... unless that perspective belongs to Piers or Helena, but that's a story for another time.

All-in-all, I'd say the game is a very solid 8-out-of-10 or a 9-out-of-10 if I'm feeling particularly generous. It might be a touch too short, the difficulty jumps all over the place, the PC optimization seems pretty good, and the controls rest on a bit of a learning curve, but the game is beautiful to look at, sounds amazing, is well-written, and has some of the best boss fights in the entire Resident Evil series. As a long-time fanboy of the original, this game gets my seal-of-approval as a spiritual successor to one of the greatest survival horror games of all-time.

When one of the most beloved games of all times is remade, there are essentially two possible outcomes:

1) The game is a cash-grab and spits on the legacy of its' progenitor.
2) The game is amazing... no... like, really amazing; everything that could be hoped for and then some.

The remake of Resident Evil 2 falls into the second category. Is the game flawless? No. Does it represent a major leap forward in game design? No. Is it a faithful - best-in-class - representation of what the Survival Horror genre can be? Yes.

While the game differs from the original quite significantly in some ways, other details - many of them easy to overlook - have been painstakingly recreated with obvious love that cannot be overstated; as an example, the original menagerie of zombie faces-and-models have been gloriously updated in what might seem like a strange bit of attention-to-detail, but this greatly helps the remake maintain a generalized similarity to the visuals of the original that might otherwise be lost because graphics have changed so much in the intervening twenty years.

One thing I can't say that I'm an enormous fan of are the redesigns of the three main characters, Leon, Claire, and Ada. We have seen all of these characters in other Resident Evil games since their introduction and - like their counterparts Chris and Jill in Resident Evil 5 - the liberties taken with their design simply don't add anything to their character and might actually distract veterans of the series from what is otherwise an amazing game.

The remastered soundtrack is brilliant in its' own way but the original was, is, and will remain one of the seminal scores ever composed for a video game. In that light, I feel that it might be best to play through the game as one character with the new music and the other character with the old; mileage might vary.

Regarding the actual mechanical components of the game itself... There remains little to be said beyond the age old wisdom: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Under similar scrutiny the graphics can hardly be faulted; they retain much of the campy charm that the original had on the PlayStation while simultaneously being a nearly immeasurable leap forward in fidelity because, well, twenty years of GPU technology goes a long way when everything is dark and covered in blood.

TLDR: It's a great remake and you should play it whether or not you're new to the series or a tried and true veteran of Umbrella's scheming.

Papers, Please is an indie puzzle game that does a great job of addressing political and social problems in a respectful way. This short film adaptation is equally fantastic for accomplishing the difficult task of converting the puzzle gameplay of its' namesake into an entertaining - and visually interesting - cinema experience.

There is an obvious attention to detail and a respect for the source material in the set design, the props being used, the musical accompaniment, and the costuming. I particularly want to give credit to the actors for their outstanding ability to give an emotionally viable performance with relatively little to work with given the time allotment and the nature of the story.

In general, this is an A+ effort and I would highly recommend watching this if you've played the game or if you enjoy the short film medium.

In the depths of time - in the far off year of 1996 - horror games were something of a novelty. Alone In The Dark, Clock Tower, and Phantasmagoria were on the scene and while they certainly drew attention to the niche, they were by no means indicative of how far you could take the theme.

Luckily, Capcom seized upon the opening and brought us a lovely little number called - rather unimaginitively - Biohazard; it spawned a cult following and over a dozen sequels/prequels/tangents. In the midst of all the zombie-fighting fervor, the less accurately but more interestingly named Resident Evil came to be remade for the Nintendo GameCube and all was right with the world... In that whole "mansion filled with unspeakable horrors" kind of way.

Fast forward over a decade and the nearly-forgotten remake of one of the most classic games in the 3D tradition has been HD remastered, had its' controls updated, and been ported to every platform imaginable. While the game is still clearly showing its' age, it more than makes up for it with its' aura of nostalgia.

TLDR: Resident Evil is one of the cornerstone classics of the Survival Horror genre and it deserves to be played, even if it feels a bit old and rough around the edges.

Is the game good / is it worth playing? Yes. Very much, yes.

With that out of the way, here is my rather long diatribe regarding what I consider to be the greatest JRPG of all time.

The history - and ups and downs - of the Final Fantasy series are an extremely convoluted matter and would require quite a lot longer than I have in this review to completely discuss. That being said, I've generally found that four games in the series are routinely listed as people's favorites: IV, VI, VII, and X. There is an argument to be made for each of those as being the "best in the series" but it usually comes down to which one has the greatest nostalgic value for whomever is making said argument.

I've been playing video game RPGs since Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin on the Mattel Intellivision in around 1984, so I have nostalgia for virtually the entire catalog of Squaresoft's flagship series. Why, then, do I gravitate so strongly toward Final Fantasy VI..?

Many of today's more modern-era gamers might find this difficult to understand but back in the days of 8-or-16-bit consoles, graphics were rarely more than "functional" and only served to let you have something to follow with your eyes. RPGs in particular often suffered from a lack of high-end graphics and - seeing as they tend to be very story heavy - the telling of the tale largely had to be left up to the dialogue translator and the musical composer.

Feel free to Google the name "Ted Woolsey" some time if you want to find out what problems tended to befall game translation during those dark times. Mercifully, the more recent versions of the game have been retranslated, but the issue I wish to discuss is the game's soundtrack.

Final Fantasy VI has what is unquestionably the single greatest score ever composed for a video game; whatever opinion you have to the contrary is meaningless. Nobuo Uematsu wrote an opera for a Super Nintendo game. I cannot stress enough how important and unusual that is. Taken out of context every track is a masterpiece, but combined with the game itself, they become an epic poem that builds the tapestry surrounding one of the greatest casts of characters in gaming history.

The gameplay itself is nothing particularly remarkable as JRPGs go and the plot is essentially the one you find in Star Wars but with a steam-punk flavor added to it. No. The most wholly amazing facet of the game is undoubtedly the cast of characters that you set out on the journey with.

If you do not genuinely feel doubt, sadness, anger, regret, exultation, and pity over the course of the travails of the game, then I would be very much surprised. Each character has a heart-wrenching event, memory, or doubt to overcome and while not everything ends happily - and in any great story it shouldn't - they all break the shackles that are holding them back by the time you face off against Kefka at the end of the world.

The long-and-the-short of it is that Final Fantasy VI is absolutely brilliant and if the "enhanced" sprites are what's holding you back from playing the game, then you're not the sort of person that deserves to play it in the first place.

I'll just answer the obvious question first and then go on my diatribe afterward:

Should you play Life is Strange and/or is it a good game? The answer to both versions of this question is very much a, "Yes."

So... I've been thinking for weeks about what I could say about LiS in a review that would both explain why I love the game and also avoid spoiling it for anyone that hasn't played it (or even spoil parts of it for people that have played it, but that I played differently than they did). I have come to the conclusion that there is really no point in discussing the story or the characters because they speak for themselves. Rather, I will focus on what LiS did that very few other games have ever managed to do (at least in my case):

Life is Strange has the power to evoke an emotional response in you. I'm not just talking about the game making you happy or sad because any game can do that in a ham-handed sort of way; it can make you afraid, or disgusted, or hopeful, or empathetic, or even totally emotionally confused to the point that you're feeling all of those things at one time. Telltale Games': The Walking Dead is the only other game that has ever had a similar effect on me, and it should really come as little surprise given how similar it is to LiS in its' basic design philosophy.

Before I sum up, I would like to note that the game has an amazing indie-rock soundtrack and voice-acting that puts it in the top ten games of all time in that regard. Graphically, LiS is nothing to really write home about, but adventure games have rarely achieved the graphical fidelity of the more actiony titles (Myst being one of the few examples I can think of and even that was only the case back in 1993).

In the end, all I can do that will denote my very high regard for Life is Strange is to say that I have never wanted to replay a game more than I do in this case, but I also realize that there is no going back and to attempt to do so will only cast a pallor on what was a virtually transcendant experience. DontNod and LiS get my vote for 2015 Game of Year.

So, my history with hentai-date-sim games goes back to Newgrounds and the likes of "Simgirl" and "Ganguro Girl". In regards to the elements that are common between all the games in that particular genre, HuniePop is neither better nor worse than all the others that have come before it; if the formula isn't broken, don't fix it, just make it shinier and with higher production values.

Perhaps the strangest thing about HuniePop is that once you get past the, "Yay! Boobies!" facet of things, you will probably discover that the actual game portion of the game is pretty great. While essentially a standard "match 3" type of mini-game, there is a surprising amount of strategy to be found when you start to factor in the various "date gifts" and how they interact with the simple nature of the system.

For anyone that is playing this game just because of the ecchi element, I'm reasonably certain there are a thousand more efficient ways of getting your porn fix than by playing a casual puzzle game. If you initially came (pun intended) for the jiggly-bits, then stick around and give the game the scrutiny it deserves by trying Alpha Mode; you'll learn to get a lot better at matching tiles really quick, or get laughed at by hot anime girls... Either way is a win in my opinion.

I'll get the most obvious thing out of the way first by stating unequivocally that as of the date when this review was written, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is the most gorgeous game in existence. The last time I remember seeing graphics that I almost couldn't believe existed was in the summer of 1997 when they began advertising the pre-rendered FMV cutscenes from Final Fantasy VII. There is - quite frankly - nothing to even compare it to graphically at the moment beyond simple stylistic examples, of which the closest competitor might be Dear Esther.

The soundtrack is very good for setting the vaguely-unsettling mood that drives the plot of the game at a nice, unhurried pace. While none of the tracks are overly thematic - you won't be whistling the bridge song tomorrow afternoon - they're finely crafted and handsomely performed.

The gameplay itself is essentially a walking simulator mixed with an extremely easy point-and-click adventure game; in other words, nothing to write home about but effective nonetheless. Mechanically, the entire purpose of the game is to uphold a beautiful story, a function that is served amazingly well, in part because the mythos itself is so grippingly bizarre in a Cthulhu-like way.

My final verdict is that the game is essentially flawless for what it is and what it set out to be; a great many AAA development studios could learn a thing or two from looking at The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.

While I would wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone that is a hardcore gamer because it is an example of brilliant world, level, and game design - and frankly you owe it to yourself to experience it - I would also use this review to make sure you realize just what you're getting yourself into.

FromSoftware has a long history of making great games; I've been following their work with great satisfaction since the PlayStation 1 days when King's Field (which is actually the second game in the series) came to North America. If there is one thing I have learned from this long journey, it is that everyone at their company loves playing games, designing games, and crafting stories... But they don't much care for gamers.

So, what exactly does that mean, and how does it affect the experience you'll have with Dark Souls (or Dark Souls II, or Demon's Souls, or King's Field, or any other game they've made that I have played)? It's really very simple: unlike typical game development studios - and consequently the games they produce - FromSoftware doesn't appear to care whether you finish any of their games... Frankly, the jury is still out as to whether they're concerned with people even deducing how to play their games.

The moral of the story is that if you're expecting any kind of hand-holding phase (you will almost certainly die at least two or three times just during the prologue) or advanced tutorial that explains any element of the game, you will be sorely disappointed, because it's just not going to happen. Just as the enemies are deadly foes, so too is your ignorance, and in similar ways, you must figure out for yourself how to overcome them.

So, yes, the game is well worth playing and you should totally try it out for yourself... But just know that it's not called the Prepare to Die Edition for no reason.