Marvel Snap is in the worst place it's ever been, and I couldn't be happier.

TL;DR: Marvel Snap is both an incredible digital collectible card game AND the worst game I've played for the past 12 months since it's global release.

Confused? Allow me to explain.

Marvel Snap is a free-to-play game design around building a deck of cards, with individual cards being designed around the abilities of their retrospective characters within the Marvel universe. With an initial "easy to learn, hard to master", each player in the 1v1 arena can bring with then 12 cards from their respective collections of digital cards, earned through progression of the players "collection level".

The game board upon which our players dual houses three "locations" which like the cards of the game have their own relevant influences over the game's state based upon the marvel universe.

Each location is typically revealed after each "turn" of the game. Each game, again typically, is played out over the course of 6 turns, with each turn allocating each player an additional point of "energy" which allows a number of cards to be played again based on their amount of energy said cards cost to play. The goal is to win two out of three locations, the winning condition (again, typically) being the player with the most "power" at that location.

Consider everyone's favourite Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man: a 3 energy cost card with 5 power. This is a card that, again typically, cannot be played on turns 1 or 2, given that turn 1 only allows for a single point of energy to be played and turn 2 allows for two. If you were to play the Spider-Man card on turn three on a location occupied by a card of the opposing player, the Spider-Man's card has the unique ability of moving to a random location other than that they were played upon AND using it's iconic web-shooters to drag an opposing card to the same location that card moved to. Not only is Spider-Man a relatively powerful card, being both 3 energy to play but putting 5 power on your side of the board, it adds an additionally technical element in that it disrupts whatever plan the opposing player may of had for the card they played across from the location you played your own card.

That simple illustration above helps paint a picture of how seemingly simple choice of picking 12 cards for your own deck can be, and part of what makes Marvel Snap such a good card game on the surface: do you pair Spider-Man with Angela, a card that gains 2 power for every card played at that location, to allow for both a buff from Spider-Man being played there as well as freeing up a space for another card to be played at that location, further buffing Angela? Or do you pair Spider-Man with the notorious Kraven the Hunter, a card that gains power for every card that moves to it's location, meaning you may power both from Spider-Man moving to that location AND the card he pulled over with his web-shooters?

"Deck building" or "theory crafting" around how these cards interact is one of the best parts of Marvel Snap, and yet... sadly the completive nature of the game does not reward this kind of ingenuity in deck design to it's detriment.

Sure, you could be that guy that recognizes that if you lockdown other locations via cards such as  the powerful X-Men characters "Professor X" or "Storm" (or even the abilities of the locations themselves preventing the play of cards there), forcing your opponents to play in a particular location that you can target with powerful cards like "Alioth", which destroys any cards played at that location leading to an almost guaranteed win.

The sad truth is that regardless if you came up with thee idea first or not, this is 2023. We have the internet. These ideas are quickly distributed to the world and EVERYONE quickly learns of the new hotness, the new "meta", and the wonderful world of unique deck building is quickly shoved to the side. This is a competitive game at it's core, and people have little incentive to play other than to win.

The passed two "seasons" (the inverted commas being necessary, as each "season" last a month) of Marvel Snap have seen incredibly powerful cards being tied to the "season pass" card, the new card players can obtain by spending money on the game (10USD to be precise). So not only are you pushed towards playing the same decks everyone is playing to try and be competitive, but you're now pushed into buying said "season" passes to remain competitive in the space. An added wrinkle? Those incredibly powerful cards have lead to absolutely debilitating nerfs that a lot of free-to-play players have been using to try and remain competitive, further encouraging people to buy those powerful cards.

Consider the most recent release: Elsa Bloodstone. Elsa's unique ability adds a +3 power buff to any card that fills hour a location. Coupled with cards like Kitty Pride, which returns to your hand each turn after being played, lead to a pre-emptive nerf to Kitty's previous 1-energy 1-power, +2 power on return to your hand, to a 1-energy 0-power, +1 power on return to your hand nerf. A heavy-handed approach to a card which, really, wouldn't have been a problem if Elsa's power had been kept in check (but hey, that wouldn't push season" pass sales, would it?).

This isn't the first time Marvel Snap has dealt with this kind of power creep: gone are the days of the initial Zabu and Silver Surfer releases and their inevitable nerfs early in 2023. However the game has grown since then, and the developer's ability to pivot in adjusting powerful cards quickly has long since been established. Elsa's ability to buff a card by +3 power when filling a location could very easily be adjusted to +2 as a quick band aid solution. A more long term solution of making Elsa's ability something that could be targeted and removed by "tech cards", such as making it "ongoing that could be removed or stolen by other cards may require more nuance, but do I see either of these happening within the current season to curb the cards power? Fuck no!

Two things I feel explain Marvel Snap's current knife edge of powerful card's being tied to the game's season pass: either there are separate teams at play designing the cards, and the current teams are the same that introduced the previous Zabu/Silver Surfer era of brain-dead pay-to-win decks. Or, Marvel Snap simply isn't doing well financially and making those "season" pass cards both desirable and behind a pay wall is in hope of keeping the game afloat. Both of which hard push me hard away from continuing to play, despite the manipulative and predatory design of the game to keep players logging in and playing every day, as is the way of any  "free to play" game.

Is there a solution? Not one that I feel will appeal to both casual players of the game or the money-hungry execs at the top that want big returns on their investment.

The "Season" passes cost of 10USD each month and that already makes a mockery of the profits seen from the recent 70USD per game standard established since the release of the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series of consoles.

An "annual" pass for a years worth of content for the equivalent cost of a new Triple-A release, or A cheaper "Season" pass offering of say 5USD which could possibly offers players access to the "Season" pass card but less of the added value the 10USD pass currently offers may encourage more players to spend, but is still less than the 120USD they'd be making from every whale who religiously buys the pass. And a system that allows the use of premium currency, akin to the likes of  juggernauts in "live game services" like Fortnite? Forget it.

Marvel Snap is in a bad place. I feel bad for the developers who have designed an incredible game in a genre I never would have bothered to dabble with. At the same time, I have hated my time with Marvel Snap for about as long as I can remember: I hate the incentive to play lest I lose out on being able to make progress toward my collection; I hate being forced in competitive scenarios every time I log on, meaning I can never log in just for fun or to play around with an idea for a deck that will punish me for not playing something competitive; I hate that my rank is constantly under threat, which in turns impedes the progress I would otherwise be making towards rewards I can earn in the following season.

And I can only assume this is all by design: to keep me playing, despite my desire to do anything else with my free time; to not divert my attention to things more deserving of my attention. What probably isn't intended by design is my reluctance to spend money in support of a game I actually *want* to play. For it to die a death and for me to never spend a moment more thinking about how I miss building decks I want to play, just to see how they work or could be improved.

Marvel Snap is int he worst place it's ever been. And I couldn't be happier.

Spider-Man - 3/5

Spider-Man for PS4 is a game that made me question my hard and fast rule on a five point scale. I considered giving it a 4, but realised that this is a console game when all is said and done, and that right there is where the game falls down.

As a Spider-Man story, it's superb. It's comic-booky as Hell, sure, but really nails down what makes Spider-Man/Peter Parker such a compelling character. He not only has to deal with murderous super-villains and the Great Responsibility that comes with his Great Powers, but he also has to deal with the every day shit we all have to deal with: work, relationships, and the desire to just be a decent human being.

...Ok, so I'm not sure we all worry about that last part. I would hope most of us do.

Peter's relationship with Mary-Jane is the star here, highlighted by a particularly relatable SMS conversation between the two. Literally everyone on the face of the planet will have one of these conversations in their life-time, and it's hard not to love and empathise with them both. They're both trying their best, and that shit is hard, man, even with the proportional strength of a spider. There's lots of other enjoyable nods to the comics, with plenty of in-game references, alternative Spider-Suits, and set ups for DLC and sequels that any Spider-Fan will enjoy.

Another enjoyable part of the game I'd like to touch on before getting into what I didn't like, is the web-swinging. While it absolutely didn't "make me feel like Spider-Man", which is literally all I heard about the game before going in, it never-the-less works very well. Early on I was frustrated, as the particular mechanics where not very well explained until I happened across a tip on a loading screen after failing a mission a few times for simply being too slow. This is something the Arkham games did better (a comparison I'll be making a lot), as it would have explained this mechanic and tested you had understood before throwing you into the mix.

Sadly, every other aspect of the game basically boils down to just that: The Arkham Series Did It Better. That makes it hard for me to go easy with my critique: if you're going to lean on someone else's ideas, you best do a good job emulating that experience.

Combat, for me was frustrating. You hit the attack button in an enemy's direction in an Arkham game, and Batman leaps across the field with an athleticism simply no man should posses. You do this in Spider-Man, known for his incredible agility, and unless you're next to the enemy, and he punches air. I get that there's the button for webbing that lets you zip across in much the same fashion, but I can't help but feel this should have been simply the animation and not required to be input manually. Another obvious and annoying comparison: dodging. You hit dodge in an Arkham game, and Batman will either move well-fucking-away from the enemy, or the character models will actually interact and interrupt an attack. Not so in Spider-Man, who instead does a fancy but pointless cartwheel, often leaving him within arm's reach of the enemy you're trying to avoid.

The stealth sections were particularly disappointing for me. This is partly because some aspects of the game absolutely ignore the fact you cleared a room without alerting any enemies and then flood you with waves upon waves of enemies, making you ask what is the point, and why should you bother doing it again? When this wasn't the case, and you could actually clear the room without having to fight anyone, it just isn't as refined as it could have been. In an Arkham game, they're almost like puzzles, which reward patience and careful execution. You work out patrol patterns and notice subtle but convinient spots littered around the guard's paths where you can take out your target. In Spider-Man, most enemies are static, meaning you simply find a vantage point and either launch at them like a Man-shaped missle, or drag them up to your high place and web them up there. To help marginly with this monotony, there will be occassional groups of enemies which simply require you to distract one while you take out the other, in the same fashion you've already done ad nauseam.

Thankfully, there's no Spider-Mobile sections that would have made me hurdle the disc into oblivion.

Spider-Man is a perfectly serviceable game, but people lead me to believe it was more than that, something special. God of War this is not, which had both a fantastic story and a sold game-play beat. I'd love to see more Spider-Man games in the future, as they absolutely nail the feel of a Spider-Man world. They will need to at least bring any future games up to the Arkham-standard, which they so liberally borrow from but don't execute anywhere near as well.

For me, I'm going to be happy simply watching any future DLC through the medium of YouTube videos.

My thoughts on Filip Muicin.

Boy done fucked up.

For those who don't know, Filip Miucin formerly worked at IGN, and was recently fired on accounts of plagiarising a small YouTuber's review for the game Dead Cells.

I felt bad for him, not because I didn't think he did was he was accused of (he totally, totally did), but because this is a relatively young guy, probably not far off my age, who basically torched his career. A career no one gets into without being passionate about the subject: video games. Something I myself am passionate about. Maybe too passionate, but that's another conversation entirely.

I also knew for a fact that the internet, being the place for scummy, horrid people, where going to be scummy and horrid, not just to him, but his family as well. I knew it, and I don't even get paid to right my shitty little game reviews. Miucin must have known this when he made his choice. He must have known the risks. But then he did it anyway. And got caught.

Like I said, boy done fucked up.

I've just been made aware of his... apology video(?), and watching it definitely left me with some feelings. Enough feeling to make me take to blogger and write about shit I care about despite no one else sharing that feeling.

The video was bad. Just plain bad. I could visibly see that the guy is upset. He knows he made a mistake. He knows he's going to be paying for this for a long, long time. He knows what he really should be saying... and yet, that's not what he did. Maybe he can't. Maybe he's been advised against it. Maybe he didn't have a friend look over the video and tell him...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."

He skirted around actually doing the thing that video should have been. He didn't really apologise to anyone. He didn't take responsibility for plagiarising. He took responsibility for being IGN's Nintendo editor. He didn't apologise to Boomstick Gaming, the YouTuber (who's name I don't know) Muicin ripped off. He said he has nothing but respect for Boomstick Gaming (which is good, I guess. You wouldn't want to rip off someone you don't respect).

His biggest cock up in my eyes is attacking (for lack of a better word) Jason Schreier of Kotaku, another video game news provider for writing a piece on relevant video game news: Miucin's plagiarism. Schreier also had another source providing another situation in which Miucin, once again, appeared to plagiarise another review for another game.

Schreier is someone I have a great deal of respect for. Hell, I bought his book for poops and giggles. He did his job with all the decency Miucin had owed to him, and Miucin threw it back in his face. Shame, maybe. He's been caught once already and it cost him his job. Evidence of him having done the same thing in the past doesn't help him resuscitate his dead career, I guess. If Miucin gets around to apologising to Schreier, I'll think better of him.

I really do feel for Miucin. I feel he's a guy who was plunged in the deep end without learning how to swim. People make mistakes, sure. I'm still dealing with some mistakes I've made in my life recently right now. Maybe that's why I pity the guy. The difference here though is most people make mistakes are manageable. People generally don't make mistakes that will haunt them to the end of their days. Mistakes that will compromise a career and a passion for something they love.

Miucin did. He really, really shouldn't have.

The Evil Within 2: 0/5

I liked this game, but given Bethesda's shitty attitude towards consumers, I'm not going to recommend any of their products to anyone ever again.

For more details: https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/11/17661254/bethesda-sell-used-games-amazon-block

Dead Cells 3/5

Dead Cells is a game for fans of rogue-like games. Which is not me.

In its defence, Dead Cells is the first rogue-like I've ever played, and for those unfamiliar, a rogue-like game basically involves you starting the game mostly from scratch when you die, with some added bonuses to help you develop a sense of progression despite being thrown back to the start.  And die yo will. Often! Maybe you'll unlock some new weapons or tools (like bear traps or turrets) to experiment with, making the next play-through more interesting. Maybe you'll finish unlocking new upgrades or mutations that either complement your play-style or provide you with an extra health potion to get further to your goal.Dead Cells also has a couple of extra game modes to keep you going, such as the Daily Challenge Mode, where you're given a fixed level and weapons load-out and allowed to compete with other players for a high-score (which for me isn't as appealing as being rewarded with a new blueprint for your 1st/5th/10th completion, and nothing afterward), or its Streaming Mode, which is both great for allowing a streamer's viewers to participate int heir game, and useless for everybody else.

Dead Cells is also coupled with the Metroid-vania genre, which is arguably what made the game most appealing to me in the first place. Here you unlock certain character abilities which open up whole new areas of a map, traditionally, which may be hidden away in the very first areas of the game. In this situation, you actually want to go back to the start of the game, not because you died and were made to, but because there's new and hidden content that was always there without you ever knowing. Unfortunately for me, the Metroid-vania aspect of Dead Cells just doesn't work that well. You still unlock those Metroid-vania skills, but there's arguably no reason to, or at least I failed to recognise their benefit. I made my way to the penultimate area of the game without unlocking two of the four upgrades in the game. Those extra areas you now have access to mostly just offer a new game aesthetic to enjoy, and game is certainly pretty in it's pixelated way. Maybe they offer a couple of new enemies to learn how to deal with, which may drop a new blueprint for a new weapon or upgrade, assuming you make it out of the area alive. Thing is, new enemies means unfamiliar attacks, which are likely to kill you and send you back to the beginning which you're already intimately and regretfully familiar with.

Each run of Dead Cells is procedural generated, which you'd hope would breath life into each and every game, despite how many times you've tackled an area. This is not the case, at least not for me. Every crossroad is the same crossroad, every T-junction is the same T-junction, every zombie encountered is the same zombie. It's not so much breathing new life into each play-through, as it is breathing the same air you've already been breathing for 19 hours. That's not to say Dead Cells is a bad game: 19 hours is a pretty decent chunk of time to sink into a 20-30 dollar game. Combat is great, slowly learning an enemies tells makes them easier to tackle next time, and learning the subtle nuances of the game's rolling, which is both generous enough to get you out of most situations while also not infallible enough to be abused. The music has an encouraging rhythm to it, urging you on and on, rolling, slashing, jumping your way a little further than you did before, of farming cells for upgrades a little longer than before, or rushing through an earlier even faster than before. It's very much a game you can play how you like, if it rewards you how you want to be rewarded.

The vast number of weapons you can unlock does initially give you pause to think about how exactly you're going to use them to your advantage against those enemies. After enjoying a combo that allowed you to freeze or trap enemies in place, allowing you to roll past in order to stab them in the back for critical hits, how now are you going to use a sword that engulfs enemies in inflammable oil before you get access to something that will actually set them on fire? That is, you consider these things up until you get handed some trash boots you can slowly kick enemies with for the umpteenth time, and realise you can simply reset the game and hope for better drops. I feel like this game would greatly improve if if gave you the option to either choose your starting weapons (thus giving you the option to experiment later) or at least limit which weapons are dished out at the start (in order to not have to deal with the aforementioned boots).

Dead Cells is sadly not the Metroid-vania I hoped for, but its solid gameplay loop definitely held my attention for a little while depsite that. It's a game for people with half an hour to kill, who typically don't have the opportunity or inclination to devote time to games for extended periods. It appeals to those needing instant gratification, with flash combat and swift traversal, though it fails players who really yearn for a real sense of progression, when adding a new weapons to an already large random loot pool dilutes its worth. Dead Cells is both several shots of fortified joy and the morning after where I ask myself "why, why did I do this again?"

Your mileage may vary.

God of War 5/5

I'm an old, jaded gamer. Sure, I don't have the time I used to have to play games. I can no longer run home from school, through on my console of choice for that evening and voraciously devour my media of choice.

My free-time is not as free as you might think, meaning any game purchases I make now have to be really worth while. I don't want to be an hour in only to discover the hard-earned cash I just put down on something I *thought* was going to be good (ah, game demos...) turns out to be something I'm thoroughly not enjoying. Something not living up to the hype. Something mired with micro-transactions, or made dystrophic by future DLC...

Not so, God of War.

The game is good. Really, really good. It's a fantastic mash of excellent game play and compelling, mature story telling. Not quite the brilliance that The Last of Us managed to achieve, but falling short of that bar in my mind is no great sin given how high the hurdle is.

For the record, I never played any of the earlier God of War games. I didn't know about about Kratos, the main character and Spartan of... Sparta, and his ongoing feud with the Pantheon of Greek Gods, who did various unpleasantires to him, such as tricking him into killing his wife and kid, and concealing from him his own nature as the son of Zeus, and so he proceeds to feed most of them their teeth.

At least, I think that's how it goes.

Fast-forward to non-ancient-greek-times-but-still-pretty-ancient-norse-times, we find Kratos still alive and kicking, or in this case chopping down trees, clearly still haunted by those ghosts he left behind in Greece. Enter Atreus, son of Kratos (or "boy" for short) as the two of them prepare for the funeral pyre of wife and mother, Faye, who's asked her ashes be scattered from the highest peak in all the realms.

And so our journey begins, with one of the Norse Gods picking a fight outside Kratos' wood-lodge for reasons to be explored...

A journey filled with much ass-kicking, axe-throwing, and everything in between. The game's combat is appropriately "arcadey", I'd say, pretty accessible to all but filled with enough nuance to keep people engaged and challenged at higher difficulties. And the game it's self also paces the combat and the story rather well, as Kratos endeavours to be a good father to his son whilst also tearing demons and undead apart with his bare hands. It makes for an interesting dynamic, and the story is told well, only with one part nearer the end of the game seeming a bit blunt and unnecessary, perhaps to be further explored in inevitable sequels.

While the game is mostly linear, there's enough open-world vibes there to encourage one to stray from the beaten path, side-quests to pursue, loot to... loot, and beasties to maim. Littered inbetween the comings and  goings of Dad and Boy are interesting pieces of dialog between the two. These dialogs are thoroughly improved by Mimir, another character who accompanies our two lads (though, accompanies might be a bit of a stretch, as you'll find out) on their trek.

Mimir is great. I love Mimir.

Given my penchant for wandering, I managed to achieve most of what I believe the game has to offer as I slowly plodding along to the end of the game, something which came up rather abruptly, all things considered, but still tied together quite nicely with a nod toward the future, as I have aluded.

I'm eager to see where our lads go next, and surprisingly, not soured by the idea of future DLC. Let's see how that goes.

Nier: Automata - 3/5

This is a game I desperately wanted to love. It's also a game that, apparently, a lot of people enjoyed playing. A combination of those two things resulted a double-whammy of disappointment. I also have to mention that Nier: Automata is yet another shitty PC port rescued by amateur programmers fixing what the developers shouldn't have released in the first place.

Nier: Automata tells a story rather cleverly flung into a far off future, where humans and aliens are at far using androids and robots as their respective proxies. Our main protagonist, android 2B, is sent to Earth where shit hits the fan pretty quickly and acquires support from another android, 9S. They then both go off to fight robots together. Except when they don't. And if that doesn't tell you how little I ended up caring about the story, then I'm not sure what else will.

The game is primarily an action RPG, with the kind of flashy-yet-simple melee combat you'd expect from the guys at Platinum Games. You attack, and dodge when not attacking to get hit. That's about it. One of the things that Nier: Automata sets out to do and achieves rather well is a strange melding of genres. At times, the 3rd person melee focus switches to a sort of 2D side-scroller, other times a bullet heavy shooter. Those transitions are pretty smooth when they occur, and help keep you on your toes, as well as keeping you engaged as your make your way through the game. That said, I did feel that the game comes across as a sort of jack of all trades but master of none. Side quests are relatively simple affairs, but do provide a bit more exposition behind the game's over-arching narrative, and your game-play style can be better tailored through he use of "program chips" that give your characters buffs like extra EXP, or returning health as you deal damage and so forth. This program chip system can be a little overwhelming, however, with limited space for a huge amount of customisation options, which themselves exist in tiers (EXP bonus I, II, III, etc), with better programs taking up more space. While you can pick options that automatically pick "balanced" "attack" or "defensive" chips, it was a real pain when a chip you like it removed, because you'd have to find something else to was the right "size" to be replaced by it. Nier: Automata also wears some more modern gaming influences on it's arm, like Dark Souls "die and get one chance to cover your exp", only with exp being replaced by all these plug in chips you use to improve your combat abilities.

The controls in the game are sadly pretty questionable, and at times just downright awful. For example, there are two buttons that you pretty much have to keep held down while fighting - those being your "lock on" button, and the button that controls your little robot friend (or "Pod") shooting at the enemies. Both of these really should of been toggled on or off to free up your hands when playing, to remove the need to constantly hold them down. I also found it necessary to rebind some of the controls in the game, and it's great that you're given this option, but at the same time also makes you question how much fine-tuning the developers really did before release. For example, switched the "toggle light" button (L3) with "pod function" (left bumper). The pod function is a sort of special attack with a cool-down timer, and without doing this, you're forced to let go of the "lock on" button (left trigger), meaning you have to suddenly aim the pod function with the right analog stick. This would have been fine, but later int he game, you're forced to use a specific pod function which acts as a radar to find something in the game's fairly-sized open world. This part became a royal pain, because the L3 button isn't the best button in the world to hold while using the left stick to move, but at the same time you still have to navigate the world and deal with enemies as you're searching for this thing in question.

The game looks... ok? It definitely isn't making any effort to beat Crysis on max settings, but manages to give you something nice to look at despite that while playing. It also makes clever use of some pretty minimal art direction decisions at times, which both makes sense within the game's narrative and compensates for a graphics engine that isn't trying anything extraordinary. There's also nothing bad that can be said for the design of the main characters, which will no doubt provide us with some excellent cosplaying for the near future. The soundtrack was definitely one of the games highlights, and made me sadly reminiscent of the anime Ghost in the Shell, which simply had to be intentional, given the story's focus on the existential crises these android's appear to be tackling with as they battle robots that it appears they're not entirely different from. I say "sadly" with regards to the soundtrack because where the game really fell down for me regarding it's story. It's portrayed as some big, sad ordeal, with these androids fighting robots, and what exactly is the difference between them. The game seemingly takes this for granted, and never really got me invested in why I should care. One moment, a 9S yells at 2B about how we can't trust what the robots say, the next, 9S is endearingly calling another apparently "child" robot "little guy" after he ran away from his "Mother". 2B's depiction as a cold and uncaring soldier is thrown away almost immediately when another robot simply asks for some help. The story is further undermined with the game being broken up into 3 arcs, with the second you hope goes some way to fleshing out the first by offering another characters perspective, but fails to do so. The third act just fails entirely, setting up for the remaining two characters and set up to kill each because the narrative needs them to.

The replay value this game tries to represent is another disappointment. Unlike Dark Souls or Persona, which I replayed because I enjoyed them, for Nier: Automata, I had to replay the early part of the game as a different character, before really being able to proceed with the "story". While combat is definitely one of the games better points, this replayed section of the game is done using 9S in place of 2B, who is a substantially weaker character in terms of combat. The game compensates for this by giving 9S a "hacking" ability, which takes place as a bullet hell style mini-game to deal substantial damage to enemies, but it's just no where near as enjoyable. There are other hidden endings in the game as well, which are really more "what if?" scenarios if the story took a different direction. I think I'm happier looking them up on YouTube than enduring the game it's self to see them. Another trope borrowed from Dark Souls is detailing some lore through item descriptions. Weapon upgrades, for example, detail a short story about the game's world. Sadly, like everything in Nier Automata, trying to shoe-horn in all these different things didn't leave any single thing seemingly well done.

I'm bitterly disappointed in Nier: Automata, but at the same time I can appreciate why some people were raving about it. There's some seed there brimming with great potential, but it's just not there yet for me. Part of this could be because the bar had been raised so high by what I had read about the game, which resulted in it failing to deliver. Much like Final Fantasy XV, most of my issues with Nier: Automata could have been remedied with a good story told well. I could have looked past the stupid controls, the cluttered customisation, the blatant fan service and the dodgy port if they had just told me a good story. Sadly this isn't the case.