Video Game Review #152: Gears of War 2

Gears of War 2

Xbox 360

Nostalgia Factor:

There isn’t much for me to say here. Up until last year, I had never even played a Gears of War game. I thought the first game was… fine. Looking back at my review for it, I said it reminded me of a video game version of a Michael Bay film, and I gave it a C+. Honestly, there wasn’t a whole lot about it that was very memorable to me. It was a good, quick time waster. I recall having a fun time while it lasted. That’s about it.

Storyline:

I don’t remember squat about the first game’s storyline. All I remember is that humanity was at war with a hostile, possibly alien species that liked to burrow up and attack from belowground. Here in the sequel, this war is still going on. Rather than simply engaging in a defensive battle, you and your fellow troopers take the war to the aliens. You lead a strike team below the surface of the planet to annihilate the threat once and for all.

I do think Gears 2 struggles with its storytelling. There is actually a lot more going on with the game's storyline than just that small little paragraph above. It is just that everything moves so quickly in the game it is hard for me to remember a whole lot of details. I looked at the game's Wikipedia page and it has this long, detailed plot synopsis. I don't remember anything from that synopsis happening in the game, though! All I remember is a lot of running from point A to point B and shooting enemies. Eventually you make your way deep underneath the surface of the planet where you set off a bomb that hopefully kills the bad guys once and for all. All the other stuff mentioned on the Wiki page, I don't remember at all from the game. I don't know if that is just from me not paying close enough attention as I played, or if it was the game not getting its point across clearly enough. Either way, whenever it is that I play Gears 3 I am going to try to think back and remember what happened in the first two games and I am going to draw a complete blank. I am calling it already!

Gameplay:

Don’t expect a whole lot of variety while you are playing this game. You run, you take cover, you shoot things. You run, you take cover, you shoot things. You run, you take cover, you shoot things. Got that? If I had to compare the game to something I have already played, I guess Uncharted would be the closest thing. Not Uncharted as a whole, just the combat sequences. The way you take cover, the way you fire, the way you reload, even the way you change your weapons are all exactly the same. You are given the opportunity to use vehicles or to man defensive turrets from time to time. You’re still going to be shooting stuff, but you are not going to be running or taking cover for the time being. As far as variety goes, that is something, I guess?

I hope it doesn’t sound like I am being critical of the game. While, yeah, it is a little bit repetitive, it is also a lot of fun. I never got tired of playing this game. It never felt like a drag. In fact, I was having a great time for most of this game, much more so than the first game. A lot of it boils down to how impressive the stages and the set pieces are. My particular favorite is when you and your buddies have to enter a massive worm. Your goal is to find all of its hearts and cut them out with a chainsaw, putting an end to the destructive creature once and for all. The whole thing is incredibly clever to me, especially when the screen starts filling up with blood that threatens to drown your characters. It is so violent and gory and over the top, and I love it. Play through this sequence of the game and tell me you don’t feel like a complete badass after you finish it. I dare you.

So yeah. You big man. You have gun. You shoots things. The premise may be a bit shallow and to the point, but it is FUN. That’s really all that should matter, right?

Graphics:

I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with the game’s visuals. There were several points in the game where I had to stop fighting and simply pause to take in all the impressive sights. Some of the game’s landscapes are quite beautiful. Interiors look really good too, especially when the game’s action takes place in the “real world” on the planet’s surface. I put real world in parentheses because I don’t even think this game is supposed to take place on Earth, that's how much I don't remember about the game's storyline. But whatever. Even though buildings are damaged and in partial ruin, there is still an impressive level of detail that was put in to making things look authentic as possible. You can really see in your mind how things used to look BEFORE all the fighting started.

The characters look great. So do the enemies. Water effects, lighting, smoke, and explosions all look fantastic. The action is fast and furious, and although there is almost always a lot going on onscreen at one time, the game’s framerate never slows down. I can’t believe this game is ten years old. It looks better than some newer games I have played that have been released within the last few years. Good stuff.

Sound:

Everything sounds exactly as it should for this type of game. You are in a war zone, so expect to hear lots of gunfire and explosions. No complaints for me in this category. The characters voices all sound pretty good, certainly miles better than Shenmue, which I had just finished before starting this game. Again: no complaints there.

If I had to criticize one aspect of the game’s sound, it would be its music. Not that the music is bad, necessarily. I just don’t remember any of it. Most games have at least one catchy tune, one memorable track that gets stuck in your head. Gears of War 2 did not. In fact, if you were to play a bunch of the game’s tracks for me, without telling me what game the music was from, I wouldn’t be able to tell you where the music was from. And I just finished playing the game! So yeah. Very forgettable. On the plus side, the music wasn’t BAD. At least I don’t remember it being bad. You’d think I would have noticed if it was.

Overall:

Gears of War 2 is a relatively short game. There are five chapters, and I would say that, at most, each chapter lasts about two hours. So I finished with this pretty quickly. I know that most people play Gears of War games for the online multiplayer aspect, but I don’t care about that. I have never been a big online shooter person. I don’t even know if people still play this game online anymore - it is ten years old, after all. So that aspect of the game is a wash to me. I only care about the single player campaign.

And even though the campaign is short, I still had a lot of fun playing it. All the running and shooting and death never got old for me. Which is weird, because I thought the opposite when I played the first game. I think the game’s set pieces and its bigger battles and grander scale of action was the difference maker for me. It certainly wasn’t the game’s storyline. Even though I just finished the game a few days ago, I have already forgotten most of what the game’s storyline entails.

So yeah. This is not the deepest video game experience I’ve ever had, but that doesn’t mean much. I enjoyed myself. And really, that’s what it is all about. If you don’t have a good time playing a game, then what’s the point? If you are into mindless destruction and want a short, relatively easy game to bide your time, you should check this out. I can’t give it a higher score because so much of the game is not memorable in any way, shape or form. But it is fun while it lasts.

Final Grade:

B

If you liked my review of Gears of War 2, please check out some of my other reviews:

Gears of War

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception

Resident Evil: Revelations

God of War II

Video Game Review #151: Shenmue II

Shenmue II

Xbox

Note: I am not exactly sure what console to file this review under. Whenever an HD re-release of a game comes out, I almost always credit the original system if the game is basically the exact same thing with the addition of graphical upgrades. For example: I counted the first Shenmue as a Dreamcast game even though I had played the re-release on the PS4. My reasoning: I own the physical copy of the Dreamcast game, I grew up playing it, and I am most familiar with that version of the game. I didn’t see enough changes in the HD re-release to consider it a PS4 game. Using that logic, I would consider this to be an Xbox review, since the Xbox copy of Shenmue II is the one I played first and still own a physical copy of. I only played through the Xbox version once, and according to my memory these games are identical. However, I hear that the Xbox port of Shenmue II is garbage, and that it suffered all kinds of problems that were fixed with the PS4 port, which is supposedly far superior. I do not remember any of those issues, which is why I am still counting this as an Xbox title. If in the future I go back and play the Xbox copy and find it significantly worse than the PS4 re-release, I may change my mind. But for now: Xbox it is.

Nostalgia Factor:

I was always an enormous fan of the original Shenmue, but its sequel was never released for the Dreamcast in the United States. For the longest time, I never thought I was going to be able to play it. Eventually it was ported to the Xbox in the year 2002. One problem: I didn’t have an Xbox. After several years had passed, however, my girlfriend at the time was given an Xbox by a friend who was moving away. It didn’t immediately dawn on me: “oh yeah, you can play Shenmue II now!” I was more focused on finally being able to play the Knights of the Old Republic games. But when I went to a local buy and sell used game store, one of the first titles I saw on the shelf was Shenmue II. Memories of the first game came flooding back to me. A rush of adrenaline ran through my body. I was finally going to be able to see what happened next! I didn’t care what the price of the game was, I was going to buy it. It was MINE!

I popped Shenmue II in and I was immediately blown away by the larger scale of the game. Everything the first game had done, the sequel managed to ramp up to a much grander scale. Looking back on my first time playing, specific memories of the game are a little hazy. This was, after all, smack dab in the middle of the perma-drunk/stoned phase of my life that I mentioned during my Snake Eater review. I remember a woman on a motorcycle. I remember catching leaves. I remember visiting the martial arts school. I remember Kowloon and all the planks. I remember having to work my way up, floor by floor, through that Yellow Head Building towards the end of the game and how tedious it was. I remember the absurdly long walking and talking segment after you meet up with Shenhua. I did not remember the game’s exact ending. I also recall not liking the game as much as I did the first.

At the very earliest, this took place around 2004. At latest, 2006. I would not play the game again until 2018 when I got the Shenmue I and II collection for the PS4. I quickly burned through the first Shenmue in five days. Part of me wanted to go right into Shenmue II, but I didn’t want to burn myself out on the series so quickly. I played a few other games first. Then, after a week or two had passed, I realized that I didn’t care about getting burned out on the series. All I could think about was jumping back into the world of Shenmue. So I did.

Storyline:

This game picks up shortly after the first Shenmue left off. Ryo arrives in Hong Kong, fresh faced and ready to track down the man who killed his father. His only clue is a letter he received in the first game. The letter was addressed to Ryo’s father, warning him that Lan-Di was going to be coming looking for the mirrors. It was sent from Hong Kong by a man named Yuanda Zhu. Ryo sets off to find Yuanda Zhu, but runs into several roadblocks along the way.

First, his bag gets stolen. Mission number one:  track down the thieves to get it back. He does, only to discover that all his money was removed first. All that cash you carried over from the first game? Yup. Gone forever! Ryo is forced to get a job moving boxes (just for one shift, luckily). This gives you a little bit of cash to play with as you set out on your quest. You are going to need more money later on in the game, but how you earn it is up to you. You can take on more jobs, like the box moving. You can gamble. You can participate in arm wrestling matches. You can even sell your collectible baubles at pawn shops if you are in need of a little extra money.

Even though your goal of finding Yuanda Zhu seems pretty straightforward, it is not. Hong Kong is a big, BIG freaking city. And the game is set in the 80s, so you can’t just search for him on Google or anything. You have to go around and talk to people and gather clues to find his location. If you’ve played the first Shenmue, you should know how this works. The whole game pretty much is following one small clue to the next. Each clue you find, each path you go down brings you just a tiny step closer to Yuanda Zhu, and ultimately one step closer to Lan-Di.

Honestly, too much happens in this game for me to be able to recap it all for you for this review. Long story short: your quest eventually takes you out of Hong Kong and into the Walled City of Kowloon. In the game’s final act, you head to Guilin, where the mirrors were created. There you meet up with Shenhua, the mysterious girl you’ve been dreaming about since the first Shenmue. After a lengthy exposition sequence, the game ends on a cliffhanger when Ryo uses a mysterious glowing sword as a key to open up a cavern with a giant mural of the Phoenix and the Dragon mirrors located inside.

The end.

What? That’s it? You can see why people are so miffed that it has been almost 20 years and we still don’t have a Shenmue III yet. Thankfully, that is coming soon.

Gameplay:

The game’s controls are exactly the same as they were in the first game, so I am not going to go into great detail about them. Ryo still has his tank controls. The fighting system is still exactly the same. If you played the first game, you will be able to jump right into this one without missing a beat.

Quick time events are still aplenty, although they are more annoying this time around than they were in the first game. You don’t get a whole lot of time to react to them this time, especially in some of the game’s faster paced action scenes. As fast as I am, I failed many, many QTEs throughout the course of my playthrough. Most QTE sequences simply start back up again when you fail them, so this wasn’t a huge issue for me… for the most part. There is one particular spot in the game where you have to ascend a dilapidated building, using wooden planks to cross large chasms. As you are balancing,  a QTE sequence starts up where you must hit the proper buttons to keep your balance. One slip up, ONE, and you fall to your death. You then have to start at the bottom of the building and make your way up again. Seeing as how this is a lengthy and time consuming part of the game, you absolutely do not want to have to make your way up again. I found myself saving the game after each and every wooden plank in order to save some time. I could just load up my last save again whenever I fell (which was often). I don’t remember much of my initial playthrough of Shenmue II on the original Xbox, but I do remember this segment with all the wooden planks. I don’t think that the game let you save whenever you wanted like this one does, so I had to trial and error my way through it, writing down the button prompts one at a time and memorizing them so that I would not fall. That had to be a major pain in the butt.

Conversations work a little bit differently in this game. Instead of simply talking to people with your generic pre-loaded questions and getting their generic and predictable pre-loaded responses, you are often given the option of asking specific questions. If you have multiple objectives to take care of, you can pick which objective you want to ask people about. You can ask where certain destinations are. If you are in need, you can also ask questions about where to make money. This isn’t Knights of the Old Republic, however, where you have long and detailed conversation trees to pick from. Things are much more basic than that, although this is a step in that direction. I also must note that NPCs are much more willing to help this time around. 90% of the people in the original Shenmue basically told you to screw off whenever you’d approach them. This time around, everyone is SO much more helpful. You still get a few A-holes once in a while, but they are few and far between. Some people even go so far as to walk you to your destination if you are lost. They walk at a god damn snail’s pace, but they will take you where you need to be. Eventually.

One major improvement upon the original Shenmue is how you no longer have to kill time while waiting for events to happen. Need to meet someone at a bar that opens up at 7 PM, but it is only 10 o’clock in the morning? No problem! The game gives you the option to speed up time so you no longer have to wait around for hours at a time. Yes! Thank you! That was my number one complaint about the first game, all the waiting. I am so glad they fixed it. It is a little ironic too, because there is so much more to see and do in this game. Killing time in Shenmue II would have likely been a lot less dull than it was in the first game. But still, I am very glad this addition was made.

Graphics:

The game still looks really, really good. Sure, it shows its age in a few areas, but I don’t care. You can’t hold a game from 2001 or 2002 to 2018’s graphical standards. The characters look nice. The cityscapes look nice. All the shops, stores, restaurants, and the like are all extremely and painstakingly detailed. They look like places that could have legitimately existed back in the 80s. You can go inside a great many of them. I explored a LOT, and there are still dozens and dozens of rooms I did not enter. I am willing to bet, however, that even though going into these rooms is not essential to advance the plot in any way, that they are still intricately detailed and filled with small personal touches. That is some dedication. The atmosphere this game creates is sensational. It is just so easy to get completely lost in this game. Just as the first Shenmue made me fall in love with Japan, this game does the same with China. I’ve never been to China, but I feel that I understand what life over there would be like just from playing Shenmue II.

The landscapes in the game are beautiful too. I feel as if the first Shenmue was a bit more scenic than this one, which mainly takes place in dirty, crowded cities. But the cities are still really nice to look at. Kowloon not so much, but I did enjoy gazing out over the water while in Hong Kong. Aerial shots of the city always made the city look really appealing to me, too, although I hear it is polluted and filthy and disgusting there in real life. In this game it is all sunshine and clear skies and crystal blue waters

The game's final act takes you out of the city and into a lush, green forested area in Guilin. Guilin looks pretty beautiful, and it was admittedly very nice to get out of the city and see trees and some water and some nature.

Sound:

I thought that the voice acting and the sound quality of the game's conversations was one of the weakest things about the original Shenmue. While I think it has improved perhaps a tiny little bit, it still is not the best.

The game's music is still very good though. It blends right in with the game's intricately detailed environments. The graphics and the sound go hand-in-hand to really deliver an immersive experience for the player. Put on some headphones and dedicate a few hours to this title. You will completely lose yourself in the game.

Overall:

The original Shenmue meant a lot to me, and when I reviewed it I was tempted to give it a perfect score. I didn't, however, as I only give perfect scores to games that I believe to be absolutely flawless. The first Shenmue was not flawless. The long wait times, the tank controls, the hundreds of NPCs that were always too busy to talk to me. It was an outstanding game, but not a flawless one.

Shenmue II takes everything that the first game does, and makes it even better. The cities you explore are enormous, filled with hundreds of explorable rooms and businesses. The NPCs actually talk to you and help you out on your quest. The storyline of the game moves along at a much quicker pace, and is filled with all kinds of action. There were dull moments aplenty in the first Shenmue, particularly when you had to wait around because you could not speed up time. That is not a problem here! Everything clips along at just the right pace.

But when the game needs to slow things down and step back for a moment, it can do that too. When Ryo has to catch the red leaves falling from the sky. When he duels with Xiuying, who teaches him new moves. Learning about Wude under a sky of shining stars. This game does an excellent job of balancing exploration and fast paced action, while at times toning it back and delivering a heartfelt storyline at the same time.

Not to say it is without flaws. I don't know if it is just me, but I found some of the brand new QTE combo sequences to be hard to duplicate, simply because I could not see them properly. For example, it would look like it was saying to hit down, down, then right because of the way the buttons were flashing. But it would actually just be down then right. The way the buttons flashed up on the screen were very misleading, in my opinion, and often led to a lot of frustrating deaths.

Speaking of frustration, don't get me started on the plank segment of the game again. What a chore! And when you have to scale that building at the end of the game, floor by floor? Ugh. That part of the game seemed like it would never end. Just get me to the damn roof, or the 17th floor, or wherever it was I needed to be. It was so unnecessary to have obstacles that you had to dodge or enemies you had to fight and then long conversation sequences on nearly every floor. That whole area of the game was a bit dragged out for me.

And speaking of the phrase "dragged out", need I mention how boring the Guilin segment of the game is? All you do is walk and talk with Shenhua and pick different conversation topics for her to talk about. Seriously, that is all you do is walk and talk. For two freaking hours! I shit you not. That is how they end this game, with a two hour walking and talking sequence. I fell asleep in the middle of a conversation one night when I was trying to beat this game. When I woke up, Shenhua was still freaking talking and I swear I must have been asleep for at least ten minutes. She was just babbling on the whole time.

The first three quarters of the game are stunning, A+ material. The last quarter though.... ehhh. It is a bit tedious. The planks, the Yellow Head Building, the walking and talking Guilin segment; this game ends with a whimper rather than a bang.

So by my own admission, the game is not flawless. And I only give perfect scores to flawless games. The first Shenmue was an amazing game and it got an A. This game does everything that the first game does, but several times better. I can forgive the fact that the game ends with a whimper because everything leading up to the end is so incredibly entertaining. Plus, the ending does set us up for Shenmue III, which thankfully we can now look forward to as it is coming out next year in 2019.

Anyone who knows me knows that I often let nostalgia interfere with my reviews. Going simply by nostalgia and from memories, I would have originally told you that the first Shenmue was better than the second. After playing both games in the span of just a couple of weeks, I can now safely say that nostalgia served me wrong. Shenmue II is actually the better game. It is absolutely brilliant and is filled with dozens of breathtaking and memorable moments from start to finish.

No, the game is not flawless. But simply giving it the same grade as the first game when it is SO much better seems wrong. Shenmue II is simply an amazing game, and in the years since its release, its legacy has helped to shape the face of gaming. As innovative as the game is, it is also incredibly unique as well. I have never played anything quite like Shenmue I or II before.

In the past, I have heard Shenmue II mentioned as one of the greatest games of all time. I always used to scoff at that notion, particularly because I always preferred the first. Now, I am not so sure about that. I think those people might be on to something. Once I got started with this game, I couldn't put the controller down. When I wasn't playing, I was thinking about the game. I was really hooked. I hadn't been this invested in a game in a long time. Too long. For that, Shenmue II, I award you with this blog's highest honor: the A+. This game sets the bar ridiculously high for the upcoming Shenmue III. It has been nearly an 18 year wait. I sure hope its worth it.

Overall:

A+

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Shenmue

Beyond Good and Evil HD

Beyond Two Souls

The Walking Dead

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Video Game Review #150: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

PlayStation 2

Nostalgia Factor:

Dating back to the original game’s release back in September of 1998, I have always been a huge fan of the Metal Gear Solid series. I avidly devoured both the original game and its sequel – Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It should come as no surprise that I was super excited to play Metal Gear 3 Solid: Snake Eater when it first came out. While most critics out there hail this game as one of the best, if not THE best game in the series, I have always been completely neutral on it. I don’t hate it, but it has never been one of my favorites either.

I’ve always been someone who wants to see answers. Certainly, Metal Gear Solid 2 raised more questions than it ever answered. I think one of the reasons I didn’t like Snake Eater as much when I first played it is because I was hoping for a direct sequel to MGS2. Going backwards with a prequel, when there was still SO much plot left out there to explore, was super irritating to me. I wanted to know more about the events that took place after the end of the second game, like what happened to Ocelot. I didn’t care about what happened 30 years ago. This game didn’t even have the “real” Solid snake in it. What the heck?

It didn't help that this game came out in back in 2004, AKA the perma-drunk/stoned portion of my life when I was living with my ex-girlfriend Jessica. I probably didn’t even know what the hell was going on half the time as I played this. My most vivid memory of the game from back then is the part where I had to face off with The Sorrow. For the life of me, I absolutely could not figure out what to do, and I kept dying over and over again, to the point where I thought my copy of the game was broken. A simple Google search nowadays would reveal what I needed to do in about four seconds. In 2004 or 2005, however, the internet was not as easily accessible. We certainly didn’t have it in our apartment. I ended up discreetly opening the plastic packaging of a Snake Eater strategy guide in GameStop, and looking to see what I needed to do. Then I put the guide back on the shelf and scurried out with a guilty look on my face. And you know what? I have no regrets about that.

Overall, my initial impression of Snake Eater was a middling one. As a game I enjoyed it, for the most part. As a Metal Gear Solid game, I was very disappointed.

In the years since, I have played this game from start to finish a small handful of times. My overall impression of it HAS improved over the years, but before my most recent replay I still considered it the worst out of the main entries in the series that I have played. Would playing it in 2018 change my opinion? Read on to find out.

Storyline:

The storyline for this game is actually quite simple when you stack it up against other games in the series. 30 years before the events of the first Metal Gear Solid game, Snake is sent into the forests of the USSR to rescue a brilliant nuclear weapons engineer named Sokolov, who wishes to defect from the Soviet Union. During the rescue mission, Snake's superior officer, referred to as The Boss, teams up with rogue supervillain Colonel Volgin. They nab Sokolov for their own nefarious purposes and use the Shagohod (an early Metal Gear prototype) to wipe out his old base. Snake is attacked and left for dead during the mutiny. He recovers, however, and it becomes his mission to track down and kill Volgin and The Boss, and to get Sokolov back and destroy the Shagohod.

When I first played this game, I had no idea that it was a prequel. I was very confused as to how Solid Snake could appear to be the same age 30 years before the first Metal Gear Solid game. The game doesn't come right out and say it, but using deductive reasoning you can quickly figure out that you aren't actually playing as the "real" Solid Snake as we know him. You are playing as Big Boss in his younger days.

Expect some twists and turns along the way, but as I said the game's plot is much more simple and straightforward than Metal Gear Solids 1 and 2. Characters you meet along the way are Eva - a mysterious double agent who appears to be on your side, a Fox-Hound like gang of enemies with unique special powers, and a young Revolver Ocelot.

Gameplay:

If you have played any Metal Gear Solid games in the past, you should feel right at home here. You control Snake using the analog stick or the D-pad, The left shoulder buttons bring up your equipment, the right shoulder buttons help you manage your weapons. The game introduces a close quarters combat mechanic that was absent from previous games. Rather than just punch and kick your enemies, you can now grab them, hold them up, knock them out, body slam them, slash their throats from behind, and much more. The body slam function was quite useful for me as I played.

The way you heal in this game is new to the series, and it is a bit annoying if I have to be honest with you. Rather than simply having a health bar, where when you run low on health you can pick a healing item and use it, there is now this weird injury/health/stamina system in place. Snake can endure things like cuts, bullet wounds, broken bones, and even poisoning. While on the surface this sounds pretty cool, it is a lot more labor intensive when you want to heal him. You have to pause the game, navigate a menu, come to the healing screen, and start using items to heal Snake's wounds. You can't just use one item either. If Snake is cut, you have to select the disinfectant, then the sutures, then the ointment, and then the bandage to heal the wound. This is very time consuming. If Snake has multiple wounds, you have to do this for each and every one of them.

There is also a stamina bar in place. The lower your stamina gets, the weaker Snake becomes. You have to eat things to keep the stamina bar up. Good thing you are constantly killing wildlife like birds, snakes, rats, and fish. Eating these things replenishes your stamina bar. When your stamina is high, Snake's health bar starts to regenerate. When it is low, he becomes sluggish and unresponsive and easier to kill. Also, you can only swim as far as your stamina meter will allow. If you wait too long to eat the animals that you kill, they become rotten and actually hurt you if you decide to eat them.

There are, of course, items that will replenish your health bar too. But those are actually pretty hard to find here. All in all, I have to say that I am not a huge fan of the whole health/stamina/injury system. I like being able to catch and eat animals, but the fact that they only fill stamina rather than health, and that the game doesn't tell you when they are rotten is quite obnoxious. I would much rather have the simple health bar system back from the first two MGS games.

As is usual per the Metal Gear Solid Series, stealth is the name of the game. You don't want to just rush into areas and get into shootouts. You want to sneak around undetected. This game introduces new stealth elements to the series, like camouflage and face paint. I never bothered to mess around with them, because it never seemed to matter. I always got spotted everywhere I went, no matter how cautious I was. This happened a lot in MGS 2 with me as well. Maybe I am just bad at these kind of stealth games? It actually is pretty easy to shoot your way out of trouble in this one. Whenever I would get spotted I would kill everyone in sight until the alert would go away. Or I would just keep running until I triggered a story cutscene. Whatever worked for me. I wanted to stealth it up, and I tried, truly. But it just wasn't meant to be.

Like previous entries in the series, you will encounter a series of bosses as you play. This game's bosses are pretty cool, not gonna lie. When I think of Metal Gear Solid 3, the boss fights are usually the thing that comes to mind. You've got a guy who controls bees, a creepy tree jumping guy with a long tongue, someone who makes you see dead people, and a Big Daddy looking dude with a flamethrower and a jetpack. The most memorable (but not in a good way) boss to me takes place with you squaring off against a geriatric sniper. He is constantly hiding and is an absolute PAIN to find and kill. Plus, the fight takes a super long time. It could take over an hour if you don't know what you are doing. Ugh, worst part of the whole game in my opinion. The final boss fight of the game makes up for it, though. That battle against The Boss in the middle of the field of flowers is stunning.

Graphics:

The game looked good for its time, and it still looks pretty decent. Nothing eye-popping. Character models are pretty standard stuff. The buildings and the locations all look pretty good. I would have to say Snake Eater's biggest strength is in its atmospheric effects. The rustling of the leaves on the tree, the wind as it blows through the tall grass. The dripping of water in a dark cave, and the reflection of your torch as it lights your path. There is a lot of attention paid to detail with this game, and it shows.

Each segment of the game has its own distinct visual style. Gotta give the makers of the game kudos for mixing things up. Your view is generally limited to a pretty small area as you play, but during cutscenes, you get a chance to step back and check things out. It is easily the best looking of the PS2 Metal Gear games. I wouldn't say there is too much of a huge jump in quality over Sons of Liberty, but a jump was definitely made.

Sound:

Everything sounds exactly as a Metal Gear Solid game should. David Hayter is once again back as Solid Snake, and it is always a pleasure to get to listen to his gravely voice all game long. The rest of the cast is brand new, but everyone does a tremendous job with their voice acting. All the characters feel like they belong right at home here in this game.

The game's music is great, too. I particularly love the Bond-esque Snake Eater song when you load up the game. In-game music is excellent as always, although there aren't as many memorable tracks in this game as there are in the first two MGS games.

Sound effects are fine. Gotta love the classic Metal Gear Solid alert sound returning once again. When I get spotted and I hear that sound, and the music changes to its frantic "you've been seen!!" alert, I still panic as I did when I played the original Metal Gear back in 1998.

Overall:

I really like this game. I do. But my opinion on where it stands when placed against the other Metal Gear Solid games has not changed. Maybe, MAYBE it is better than Sons of Liberty. Maybe. This game definitely did not annoy or frustrate me as much as that one did. Thinking about it more, it is probably right up there with that game, neck and neck. But it doesn't stand a chance against the original Metal Gear Solid game or Guns of the Patriots. And I haven't played any of the other ones yet.

Just because it is not my favorite Metal Gear game doesn't mean it is not a good game. I do like it. I can see why so many critics out there consider this game to be one of the best in the series. It is a fine game. It just isn't as interesting to me. The whole combination: the setting, the storyline, even the time frame the game is set in. Not as interesting. Is it possible that I missed the convoluted messes that were the plots of Metal Gears one and two? Maybe.

I'd still recommend this to anyone interested in the Metal Gear series. It might even be a good starting point for someone who is new to the series and has never played any of the other games before. Its simplicity and the fact that it is a prequel makes it very beginner friendly.

Best Metal Gear Solid game? No. Still a really damn good game? Heck yeah.

Final Grade:

B

If you liked this review, please check out some of my other game reviews:

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

The Last of Us Remastered

Thief

Video Game Review #149: Shenmue

Shenmue

Dreamcast

Nostalgia Factor:

Shenmue originally hit store shelves about a month before Christmas in the year 2000. At the time I was a devout but disappointed Dreamcast fan. I was a huge fan of the system itself, but there were not any games available for it that were considered killer, “must-have” properties. I had high hopes that Shenmue would become that game. I followed Shenmue’s progress closely while reading through video game magazines from the library. I thought that the game looked amazing, and I was completely in awe of the fact that they were creating a game with a living, breathing world full of characters that had jobs and daily routines. This was unprecedented stuff back in the year 2000.

I got the game for Christmas that year, and you can bet that I played the living heck out of it. In addition to the game, I got a snack basket for Christmas as well. My parents wanted me to eat healthier snacks and less junk food since my 18 year old skin was so acne riddled back then. Pistachios were included in this gift basket. I vividly remember the first night I had this game, sitting up and playing this and eating pistachios well into the early hours of the morning. Every single time I eat pistachios now, they remind me of this game. I just thought you all should know that.

From the end of the year 2000 to the end of 2001, I must have played Shenmue to completion about four or five times. In the 18 year gap since then, I have played through it twice. Once when I lived with my ex-girlfriend Colleen and once after I bought Shenmue II for the Xbox a few years later. On the whole, I’d say it has probably been a good 11 or 12 years since I last played this.

I have always been wanting to come back and play Shenmue again, though. In fact, about two years ago I tried to play it, but my Dreamcast froze up on me in the early moments of the game while I was still exploring the Hazuki household. I tried to play through it multiple times, but it froze up each time. So I gave up on the game. Fast forward to 2018. When I found out that a collection bundle containing both Shenmue I and II was going to be released for the PlayStation 4, I immediately made it a goal of mine to get this bundle. If I couldn’t play it on the Dreamcast, I could play it on the PS4. I was so excited at the chance to play Shenmue again that I even pre-ordered it, which is unprecedented for me. I will still, however, count this as a Dreamcast game for the review, since that is the version of Shenmue I am the most familiar with. They made very few changes to the PS4 port of the game.

Storyline:

Let’s get one thing straight: you don’t play Shenmue for its intense action or for its strategic battles and puzzle solving. No, no. There is none of that to be seen here. You play this game for its storyline.

Shenmue begins in the mid-1980s, in a small village in Japan. The game’s protagonist, Ryo Hazuki, comes home to find his family dojo under attack. A unknown man named Lan-Di is looking for a mysterious artifact simply referred to as “the mirror”. Lan-Di tries to beat this information out of Ryo’s father, but is unsuccessful. When Ryo walks in, Lan-Di threatens his life and uses Ryo as leverage to get his father to reveal the location of the mirror. Ryo’s father cracks under the pressure and tells him where the mirror is. Lan-Di then has Ryo’s father killed. Ryo is beaten and left behind as the bad guys collect the mirror and make their escape.

The game picks up either the next day or a few days later. Controlling Ryo, you must head out and start investigating Lan-Di and his cronies. Your journey begins as just a simple, polite, door to door search where you ask neighbors if they saw anything on “the day of the incident.” Eventually, you gain some intel on the type of car the attackers were driving and what location they were coming from. So then you head to that area of town to investigate. You walk around and you ask people stuff. They point you in a new direction. You head there and ask more people stuff. They give you a clue in a different direction. You head there and ask people stuff. You get another clue to go to another location...

The game basically has you running around and investigating a bunch of clues as you attempt to unlock the mystery of Ryo’s father, the mirror, and Lan-Di. I don’t want to spoil anything for this review, but I really like the way the story unfolds. It is very deep and there are lots of mysteries that really make you wonder. Considering that the focus of this game isn’t combat, action, or puzzle solving – it better have a good story or it is going to be really boring. Luckily, this game has a GREAT storyline. My only complaint is that it ends on a cliffhanger, but that was to be expected for me considering that Shenmue was originally supposed to be a series that was six or seven games in length.

Gameplay:

The game’s controls are a bit dated. I am sure you have heard the term “tank controls” before. Shenmue definitely has tank controls. Using the analog stick or the D-pad, you turn Ryo’s body left or right. You hold up to make him go forward, down to make him do a 180 degree spin. I am not going to lie, the controls are one of the worst things about the game. Plus you often have to be lined up 100% perfectly to enter doors or go up and down stairs. If you are not lined up perfectly, you have to make small, minute adjustments to get your body positioned to where it needs to be. This can be a pain in the neck sometimes. Don’t even get me started on when the NPCs walk into your path and get in your way. You can’t just slide by them or push them out of the way,  you have to either go around them completely or wait until they move out of your way. In tight spaces, this can be very problematic.

You are often going to find that you need to enter first person mode to check things out. You can’t move in first person mode, but it is an essential tool for investigation. For example, in the beginning of the game you start out in Ryo’s room. In this room he has a dresser, a bed, a closet, a desk, all that good stuff. Let’s say you want to check out the desk. You can’t just walk up to the desk and hit a button to investigate it. What you do in Shenmue is walk up to the desk, enter first person mode, and use the camera to scan the desk. If there is anything interesting to be seen, the camera will zoom in on it. Some items simply look interesting but can’t be interacted with. Other items can be picked up, checked out, or even added to your personal inventory. If you want to open a desk drawer, simply look at the drawer in first person mode, the camera will zoom in on the drawer, and then you hit the action button to open it. Not all drawers contain items, in fact a very small portion of them do. But if you are thorough like I am, you are going to want to check each one out regardless.

A good portion of the game will be spent talking to other characters. To talk to someone, you can just stand in front of them and hit action. If you are in a crowd and need to talk to one specific person, the first-person zoom feature works very well to ensure that you are striking up a chat with the correct character.

As I mentioned before, action is not at the forefront of Shenmue. That does not mean that there is no action, however. I am sure that Shenmue did not create the Quick Time Event, but it definitely helped popularize it. Several fight and chase sequences utilize QTEs. If you don’t know what a QTE is, it is basically a button prompt that you have a short period of time to respond to. Say you are chasing someone down the alley. The person you are chasing jumps over a small crate that’s been left on the ground. The up button would start flashing on your screen, meaning you have to hit it too. If you hit it in time, Ryo jumps over the crate and the chase continues. Fail to hit it in time, and Ryo stumbles and falls and you lose the person you are chasing.

The only other action sequences you will see in this game are in its battles. The fighting mechanics in this game are similar to Virtua Fighter. If you know how that game works, you should have no trouble here. If you don’t, just treat the battles like a fighting game and you will be okay. When a fight begins, your health bar pops up in the bottom left corner of the screen. A nice feature here is that if you can manage to avoid getting hit for a certain period of time, your health will start to regenerate mid-battle. Your goal is simply to defeat everyone before they defeat you. Rarely do you ever fight just one foe. Usually there is a small group of enemies that try to gang up on  you. The end of the game even throws 70 enemies at you all at the same time. I really wanted to like the combat system, but overall I found it to be a little unpredictable. Characters often teach you moves as you progress through the storyline, but I found that these moves rarely work as they are intended in the heat of battle. Some fights are absurdly easy. Some are “throw your controller through the TV” levels of difficult. All I wanted was a little consistency.

Towards the end of the game, your character gets a job driving a forklift while investigating a shady group that hangs out around the dock. You spend several in-game days going to work and moving boxes around from one warehouse to another. You even have a lunch break where you can talk to your coworkers and investigate while everyone is on lunch. Reactions to this portion of the game are definitely mixed. Some people like it and say that it helps you feel even more like a real part of the Shenmue world. Other people find it tedious. If they wanted to go to work, they would go to work and not play a video game. Personally, I liked it. It does get a bit tedious if you think about it, but if you don’t, it is kind of fun. I just look at the forklift driving as an entertaining mini-game that I got really good at.

Graphics:

This game is nearly 20 years old, but that doesn’t mean it is ugly. In fact, it holds up quite well compared to some games released in today’s age. Particularly in the scenery. Everywhere you go, the scenery looks absolutely beautiful. Parks, buildings, trees, streets, storefronts, the ocean, everything! I took full advantage of the PS4’s ability to take snapshots as you play. The amount of detail poured into the game’s environment is just staggering. Not just exteriors, but the inside of buildings as well. The game does an incredible job transporting you back to 1980s Japan. I have never been to Japan, but this game made it feel like a second home for me. After one marathon session where I played this game for hours on end on my day off, I actually felt a little disappointed that I had to “come back” to such a mundane existence here in the States. I wanted to live in the Shenmue universe!

One thing that could use a little bit of criticism is the amount of detail when it comes to characters’ faces. Everyone looks good, but a lot of characters have expressions that remain blank and unchanged, regardless of what is going on onscreen. Still, though - considering the game’s age this can be forgiven. Put this up next to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which came out two full years after Shenmue, and Shenmue looks like a Picasso while Vice City looks like something a little kid scribbled on a piece of paper. You'd think Vice City came out 10 years before Shenmue ever did. It looks REALLY good.

Sound:

Sound quality may be my biggest issue with this game. When you first start playing you are immediately going to be taken aback by Ryo’s voice. The quality of the recorded voices is terrible and does not mesh at all with the graphics, which are so good. Each character’s voice sounds poorly recorded. It is not necessarily the voices themselves that suck, I am sure the actors here did a fine job. But the audio quality… man. It just seems so fuzzy and out of place. I could easily see some Shenmue noobie giving this game a try, hearing the voices, and immediately coming to the conclusion that the game sucks before giving it a fair shake. Not cool.

One way I coped with this was to tell myself that it was done on purpose. A lot of great kung-fu flicks have really poor voice dubbing, and it can actually be charming given the right circumstances. I repeatedly told myself that Shenmue was attempting to emulate that feel on purpose. I honestly don’t think they were, but hey that is how I coped. I’d like to think that the longer you play, the more comfortable with the voice work you will become. You won’t notice how bad it is after a while. You just get used to it.

It is interesting that the voices are so bad, because the music for the game is actually quite good. The game has a fun, memorable soundtrack filled with everything from sweeping orchestral tracks to charming little Japanese jingles. Some of my favorite tunes are the song that plays when Ryo is at home, and the music you hear when Ryo is on lunch while working at the docks.

Most importantly, the music blends well with the game’s visual aesthetic. The game creates many stunning, completely engrossing environments. As nice as some of these locales are to look at, they wouldn’t feel the same without the game’s music. The music turns these things from being simply nice to look at into real, believable places. The graphics and the sound work perfectly together to create a remarkable feeling of atmosphere in this game.

Gripes:

As much as I love the game, it is not flawless.

The game operates on an internal clock system. You start out each in-game day in the morning. An ever present clock shows you that it is 8:30 AM when you wake up. As you play, time starts to pass. While there may not be many people out and about that early in the morning, if you wait until the evening and the afternoon, the streets start to fill up with people. Some people have daily routines. You will see them walking to work every morning. You will see them packing up shop, closing their stores, and heading home in the evening time. Bars are empty during the day, but fill up at night. The weather and the position of the sun change as the day goes on as well. Like I said, in the year 2000 this was basically unprecedented stuff. Heck, I still think it is cool now.

But as innovative as this clock feature may be, it has its definite drawbacks. I was totally okay with the clock for the longest time. Then all of a sudden in order to advance the story, I had to meet someone at 4 PM the next day. The problem was, it was only about 5 or 6 PM on my current day. There is no way to advance the clock or speed up time, aside from going to bed - which you can't do until after 8 PM. And even then you can't sleep in. You have to get up at 8:30 AM each morning. So I was stuck basically hanging out with nothing to do until 4 PM the next day. Each in-game hour is about four minutes in real time. I am not going to do the exact math, but that meant just chilling for about a half hour in real time.

Then when I met the person I was supposed to meet, he told me to check back in four hours. Great. I walked around and killed time, but came back too late. The store was closed. So I had to come back in the morning. What did I then have to do? I had to go to bed, come back, and kill even more time until the store opened at 11 AM. Luckily I had stuff to do around the house as I played, or I would have been REALLY bored. I just put the controller down and came back later after I'd done some dishes and taken out some trash.

Stuff like this happened to me a lot, especially in the latter half of the game. I get wanting it to be an immersive experience and all that, but an option to speed up time should have been included. Forcing your players to put down the controller and kill 40 minutes in the middle of a gaming session is NOT good game design. The game does try to remedy this by giving you lots of characters to talk to and different mini games to explore. A nice touch is the video game arcade containing playable versions of Hang-On and Space Harrier. But still. They should have let you speed up time! This is borderline an inexcusable mistake.

The only other gripes I have are minor. The voice acting, the tank controls, the combat system, the non-playable characters that are always getting in your way. Those I can deal with because the story is so good and the game is so immersive that you stop noticing these things after a while. The time thing is impossible to avoid though. It flat out stinks.

Overall:

It may sound like I have a lot of gripes about Shenmue, but I really did love the game. I loved it back in the year 2000, and even now I still found it gripping and nearly impossible to put down.

The game's story is its bread and butter. You're going to want to know more about Lan-Di. You are going to want to know all about Ryo's father and his history. You are going to want to know what this mirror is. You are going to want to know how everything is connected. You are going to want to know a lot of things. One thing this game does brilliantly is give you little clues along the way that hint at a bigger picture, but without ever bringing that bigger picture itself into focus. It's there, you just don't know what it is yet.

Not only is the game's storyline terrific, but man does it create such a believable in-game world. If you are like me, you are going to completely lose yourself in this game. Who wouldn't want to run around Japan in the 1980s? You can visit restaurants, gamble, visit a psychic, play arcade games, train in a dojo, walk around and check out all the street vendors, make phone calls, you even get a job driving a forklift around. The combination of terrific music and graphics really bring this world to life. Just playing this game for one weekend really made me long to get on a plane and visit Japan. I can't say that a video game has ever made me want to visit a real life destination before.

If this is your first time playing Shenmue, you might not "get it." I am curious, actually, to see what people think about the game who DIDN'T play it back in the early 2000s. I am sure there are some people who were like "WTF is this shit?" I will acknowledge that the game is not for everyone. If you are looking for something fast paced or full of action and suspense, Shenmue is not for you.

Whenever I give a game its final grade, I always use one criteria and one criteria alone: did I have fun playing the game? The answer to that question here is a resounding YES. I couldn't put it down. I beat the whole thing in just a few days. For someone with such a short attention span like me, that is almost a miracle. Not only is this game an absolute blast, but it is also one of those games that brings warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings to heart. I want to give it an A+, but there are just one too many flaws for me to give it a perfect score.

Final Score:

A

If you liked my Shenmue review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Beyond Two Souls

Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Nights Into Dreams

Video Game Review #148: Candy Crush: Soda Saga

Candy Crush: Soda Saga

Mobile

A few years ago when I got my first smart phone, I decided to check out the game Candy Crush. Facebook was always giving me notifications from friends who were playing the game, and honestly it was a bit irritating. I didn’t intend to sit down and play it for a long time. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Little did I know that I would end up getting completely sucked in by the charms of the game. I became one of those cell-phone obsessed people that I had always previously judged and looked down upon. Whenever I had a free moment, I was on my phone playing Candy Crush. This lasted for months and months on end, and eventually years! It opened the door for me to play other mobile games as well. Although I mainly play these other titles now, I still come back to the original Candy Crush from time to time. Mainly when I am out of lives on my other games.

One of those other games is a spinoff of Candy Crush, simply titled Candy Crush: Soda Saga. It released back in 2014. I was such a big Candy Crush fan that I immediately rushed out and downloaded this game right away when it first came out. When I started playing it, I quickly realized that it was very similar to the original game, but with a few added twists thrown in. For example – in this game you can combine four colored pieces into a square shape. This will create a fish piece, which when activated will swim off and help you out. For example if you are trying to clear the board but have a pesky piece in the corner that you can’t seem to get at, you can create a fish and activate it. It will swim off and take out that troublesome piece for you. If you need to eliminate all the chocolates in a stage, fish automatically seek out and destroy chocolates, leaving everything else alone. The fish do different things depending on the type of level you are playing. Whatever your goal is, those fish are going to help you out. I am not going to lie, they help a LOT and are probably the single biggest addition to the Candy Crush series that this game has made. When I switch back to the original Candy Crush game I am always sad that you cannot create fish over there.

Another new item you can create is the “coloring candy.” This is created in a similar fashion to the color bomb in the first game. You create it by matching up five colors in a row, but the middle candy has to be the same color as the next adjacent colored candy in a row. This candy, instead of eliminating a color like the color bomb does, will turn all candies of one color to the same color as the coloring candy. So if you create a coloring candy that is yellow, you can swipe it into a red piece and it will turn all the red pieces on the board to yellow. This move comes in big handy sometimes, especially when you are combining it with a fish or a striped candy. It creates double the havoc that a normal color bomb would in the same circumstance. Combine a coloring candy with a color bomb, and it destroys virtually everything on the screen. This is SUPER handy, but rare to make happen.

Those are the two new candy pieces that this game allows you to create. Otherwise, everything else about the way you play the game is the same as in the original title. Create an L shape to make a bomb. Create up and down or left and right shooting striped candy by lining up 4 pieces in a row. Five in a row creates the aforementioned color bomb. The games does throw in a few wrinkles at you the deeper you get into it, but nothing too hard to figure out. It introduces honeycomb pieces that act as obstacles you have to break through. There are also these weird frosting chunks you have to destroy. New here are white chocolate pieces that take two hits to destroy, and regenerate at twice the rate of the regular chocolate pieces first seen in the original game. None of these changes are too groundbreaking though. If you played the original Candy Crush, you should have no trouble jumping into this game and immediately getting the hang of it.

Why is the game called Soda Saga, you may ask? You find out pretty quickly. Certain stages contain bottles of soda that you have to break. Break the bottles, and soda starts to rise up onto the playing field from the bottom of the screen. This affects the game’s gravity, as any pieces you destroy located within the soda will be replaced from the bottom of the screen as opposed to the top. If you break any pieces above the soda line, replacement pieces continue to fall from the top of the screen. Some stages simply require that you break all of the stage’s soda bottles. Other stages have bears that float in the soda, and it is your goal to get the bears to the “finish line” by raising the soda level and maneuvering the bears to their destination.

There is a little extra variety in the stages this time around. Certain stages contain bears that are hidden below candy pieces that are covered in ice. You have to break away the ice and uncover all the bears to pass the stage. Other stages have bears hidden in honeycomb chunks. There are the aforementioned soda stages. Certain stages demand that you eliminate all the chocolate on the playing field. Others have you spread jelly to every square on the playing field, kind of the opposite of the stages in the first game where you have to destroy all the shaded tiles. There are probably more, too, that I am not remembering. Gone are the timed “high score” stages and any stages where you have to create a certain number of items in order to pass.

Honestly, there is a lot about this game that is superior to the first Candy Crush. Better “graphics”. Faster paced gameplay. The ability to create fish. Better level variety. The stages themselves just seem a lot more fun and action packed this time around; there is a lot more going on onscreen in this game than there is in the first. I have basically abandoned the first game in favor of this one. But like I said, I do come back to the first one from time to time when I am out of lives on my other games. But in a way, this game has made the first one a bit obsolete in my mind. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee a higher score than the original though.

Let’s get to what I didn’t like about this game. First of all: some of the earlier levels seemed to be broken when I first started this game. I am sure they have all been fixed through patches by now, but HOT DAMN were some of those stages nearly impossible to beat back then. I specifically remember a level where you had to raise three bears to the top of the screen while destroying honeycombs to expose soda pieces that you needed to destroy to keep raising the soda level higher. But halfway through the stage the game would stop giving you soda pieces, making it impossible to get your bears to the top of the screen. I was stuck on that one for weeks and weeks on end before they fixed it. Another stage had you trying to free all the bears trapped in honey. OK, cool – there are a lot of stages like that in this game. But this one in particular was virtually impossible to beat because they only gave you a few spaces at the top of the screen to make moves, while only giving you a tiny amount of moves to make to begin with. The screen would shift down three times there was so much honey to destroy. But with only 20 or so moves to beat the stage with, every single move had to be some kind of giant combo cascade in order to even have a shot at beating the game. Again, I was stuck on that stage for weeks on end before it was fixed and made winnable.

I don’t know if that is a deliberate thing the makers of the game did in order to slow down the players while they created new levels… or maybe to force players to buy items and extra continues. Who knows? But wow was it frustrating! Even though it is not as bad now, I still encounter stages that I get stuck on for days and weeks on end. And it is not like I am dumb or don’t know what I am doing when it comes to Candy Crush. As far as stages go, I am in the thousands in all three Candy Crush iterations. So I know it ain’t me being dumb. It is just flat out bad level design.

The game also seems to be more luck-based than the original Candy Crush. There are a lot of stages that start off with a limited number of moves you can make. You make a move, and then there is only one possible move you can make, so you HAVE to make that move. Then there is still only one possible move left, so you go ahead and make that move. Then another. Then another. Before you know it, you have wasted six or seven of your moves and accomplished absolutely nothing with those moves. I don’t know what it is about this version of Candy Crush, but this happens to me quite often when playing this game. I have even invented a term that I use in my head whenever I come across this problem: floundering.

The game was also very light on “extra” features when it first debuted. Meaning there was no way to earn items like the first game where you could spin the prize wheel. What you started the game with was what you got. This has been fixed through updates, however. Now you earn a daily bonus for playing the game every day, where the rewards get progressively better the more days in a row you play. I got up into the 80s or 90s once, but then I took a long nap after coming home from work one day and did not play the game before the clock turned to midnight. I ended up dropping all the way down back to day one again. I was so mad! The game also gives you overall goals that you can work on to gain extra items, things like “destroy 1000 cyan colored candies” or “progress through three hard stages”. Complete these goals and you get free stuff. New goals then pop up for you to complete. And thus the cycle continues. So there are lots of ways to earn items here, which is great!

It is hard for me to attach a grade to this game because the game as it appears now is far different from the game that debuted back in 2014. If you had asked me to grade the game back then, it would have gotten a really good score. It was new, it was fast paced. Although it was lacking in features, it was still a lot of fun. Then it got stagnant for a while with the impossible to pass levels and no way to gain extra items. It would have gotten a crap score at that point in time. Then it got good again with all the updates and new ways to earn items.

What I am going to base my grade on is my overall impression of the game. While the game may NOW have fixed its issues and become a lot more fun to play, I can’t forget about all the lows the game has suffered over the years. The impossible levels, the dearth of added frills and bonus items, the slog I hit a few hundred levels in that nearly killed the game for me. At the same time I have to acknowledge the fact that NOW in its present state, the game is technically probably a better game than the original Candy Crush, which got an A+ from me. That said, part of the reason the original game got such a high score was how groundbreaking it was, and how it had left such a huge impression on me. This game, unfortunately, did not quite leave the same impression on me. Which is not to say I don’t like the game, because I do. Ask anyone I know - I am always on my phone playing this damn thing.

Candy Crush: Soda Saga gets everything right that a sequel should. This isn’t just a straight up clone with no changes made. It also is not so drastically different that you would not recognize this as a Candy Crush title. It takes the original formula of the game and expands and adds to it at the same time. The end result is a really fun game with its own distinct personality that sets it apart from its predecessor. You can’t just say “I’m playing Candy Crush” when you are playing this game. No. You are playing Soda Saga. There is a HUGE difference between this game the original.

If you are anti Candy Crush and oppose everything that the series stands for, chances are you won’t play this game. If you like Candy Crush, chances are you are probably already playing it. Personally, I think the series gets far too much hate than it should. People who dislike it without having played it are probably the same kind of people who hate things simply because they are too mainstream. I know people who refuse to watch Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad or drink pumpkin spice lattes for this very reason, and it is stupid. This is an excellent game. I also don’t believe the theory that mobile games don’t count as “real” video games. As someone who has been gaming my whole life (I was born in 1982), this is just as valid as a video game as something like Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, or Tetris.

Fun game, sensational time killer. All of its growing pains, however, are what is keeping it from a higher overall grade.

Overall:

A-

If you liked my Soda Saga review, please check out a few of my other game reviews:

Bubble Witch 2 Saga

Candy Crush Saga

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine

Frogger

Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Second Edition