Mister Jack

It is kind of nice being able to just pick up your units and drop them down where you want them to go.

The VR version specifically.

This is VR specific but usually in a VR shooter that doesn't use a weapon wheel you'll have sidearms at your hips and one gun on your shoulder, maybe two shoulders if you're lucky. Metro Awakening gets around this by having all the two-handed holsters you need on your backpack, and you can access them depending on which shoulder you grab the backpack from. Grabbing your left shoulder gives you access to your filters and lighter and portable generator on the front of the pack. Grabbing your right shoulder turns it around so you can access all your guns hanging from the back side. It's a pretty nice compromise and you still have to reach for the weapon you want in real time so it's not like you can just break your immersion by rapidly hot swapping between them. I hope more VR shooters do something like this. I never really liked the Halo style restriction of only two guns at a time.

Metro Awakening At the risk of sounding weird I'd call this more of a horror game than a first person shooter. A very effective one, too. Oh sure, you use guns and you shoot people and they'll shoot back at you and that's all fine, but the parts of this game that really stood out to me are the segments where you're not fighting against other humans. The mutated animals of the Metro have tunnels all over the place that they use to flank and ambush you, and I'd say at least 50% of the time you'll discover a monster when you hear it skittering in your blind spot and then turn around to find it suddenly jumping at your face. It's extremely tense and it's not a bunch of cheap shots either. The monsters can't just teleport behind you. They have to physically run through their tunnels to set up their ambushes so if you listen closely and have good situational awareness you can make a reasonable guess as to which hole they're going to emerge from. These bastards are quick though, so even if you see them coming you have only a split second to shoot them before they leap at you. Backing yourself into a corner to minimize your blind spots is ironically a good survival tactic when it's available. This is a Metro game so you'll be doing things like using a portable generator to power devices and keep your flashlight lit along with looking for air filters for your gas mask when moving through radioactive zones. There's not a whole lot of VR interactivity outside of your weapons and inventory, but considering this is a world that's been blown to shit by nukes it's not like there's a whole lot to interact with besides rubble and cabinets in your search for ammo. Ammo is scarce too so you best get in the habit of emptying out the guns of everyone you kill. Don't throw away your empty magazines, either. You'll need them to hold whatever spare bullets you find. There's a decent plot here and several segments where you're not shooting anything at all but merely walking through haunted areas and absorbing the story, so if you want constant action this is not the game for you. Traveling through pitch black tunnels while hearing the wails of the dead all around you is pretty damn creepy though. I do have a few small criticisms. If you want a Russian dub, you're not getting it here. I don't know if the Ukraine situation has anything to do with this decision but it is what it is. Several maps also get recycled. They're different on return visits, owing to the supernatural nature of the metro, but the fact remains that you'll be seeing certain locations multiple times. Lastly, there's one too many turret sections for my liking. Still, this is a very solid VR title and if you've been looking for an excuse to bust out your headset again you could do a lot worse. By the way, I don't have arachnophobia but if you do this game is going to be your personal hell. Giant spiders not only creep all around the walls and jump directly onto your face but they'll also crawl all over your body, forcing you to grab around your shoulders to catch them and yank them off. Sometimes you'll even go to grab ammo or your backpack only to discover that a spider the size of a small dog has clamped itself onto your hand. There's no arachnophobia setting either so you best be mentally prepared for that.

Forgive Me Father 2 I am honestly not sure what to make of this sequel. It's not bad but at the same time it changes so much it almost feels like a different game and I can't decide if it's better or worse for it. The graphics are objectively better, no questions there. The leveling system is gone now and it's 100% an action shooter. There's only one character now, the priest, but rather than getting four unique spells you can use together you now have a spellbook and can choose up to three different effects for it to have whenever you press the magic button. In theory this offers more build variety but I found it hard not to always keep the lifesteal ability in one of the slots because these enemies hit hard and the maps can be stingy with healing items. The leveling system is gone. Instead you now find token in the levels that you can exchange for new weapons in the shop between stages. There are 24 weapons now with six categories of four weapons each, which is more than last time, but you have to choose six of them to bring with you into each mission. It does give you a chance to try out more guns since you don't have to commit to a specific path this time, but since I didn't find every token in my playthrough there are some guns I never got to use. New game+ is a thing, but it was still kind of a bummer. The gunplay feels better than the first game, although the first game already felt pretty good so that's not a knock against it. Some of the weapons got rebalanced too. The abyss shotgun no longer bounces projectiles all over the walls and now it's just a rapid fire shotgun. Yeah, it was overpowered before but...damn it, I miss my overpowered shotgun! I'm on the fence about which game I prefer. I know I had a lot of complaints just now but this one still does feel better to play while you're actually moving and shooting things. The last game forced you to choose between holding a gun or holding a lantern to light up dark areas while this one gives you a crank flashlight you have to occasionally rewind, which is easier to manage. You jump slightly higher in this one too, which makes platforming sections much easier to deal with. You can also quicksave now instead of being limited to specific checkpoints. I dunno. I guess I'd say both games are good for different reasons.

Forgive Me Father This is a retro FPS based on the Cthulhu mythos. I'm no expert in it so I couldn't tell you how faithful it is, but what I do know is that this is a pretty underrated game. While it has the usual retro FPS formula you would expect, complete with colored keys to find in every level, they still added in some other things to give this game more of its own identity. For starters, there are two different characters to play as, each of them getting access to different eldritch spells over the course of the game. I played as the priest, who is more about healing and buffs. The other character is a journalist who gets access to offensive spells, though I haven't tried her yet. In addition to that, there is also an upgrade tree for your spells and weapons. Upgrade trees are nothing new, but what I found interesting is that you can choose whether you want your weapon to be upgraded with human technology or eldritch powers. Both paths are valid, although in my personal opinion some variants are just straight up better (the eldritch dagger is an enemy garbage disposal and way more useful than the throwing knives). If you decide you don't like the path you chose and want to try something else, you get one reset point for every boss you kill. Gunplay is pretty good and every weapon feels useful. Even the basic pistol also functions as your medium-range sniper weapon and will never become obsolete. Enemies burst apart into satisfying showers of gore and there's a decent variety of monsters to kill, although it can take a while for that variety to really start showing itself in the early stages. Racking up kill combos builds up madness, which is actually a good thing in this game because it not only fuels your spells but also makes you deal more damage while taking less until the meter drains. It's pretty easy at first, with basic zombies shuffling en masse right into your knife swings, but later enemy types can become so dangerous that they almost feel like mini-bosses. You will absolutely need to use your spells to survive. There's no in-game map, but the levels are fairly well-designed and easy to navigate so I found myself not really needing one. I only got lost maybe twice during the whole game, and those levels were intentionally designed as mazes. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack is full of absolute bangers. I would listen to it on Spotify if it was on there. I've never heard of the composer, Tim Fialka before, but in my opinion he deserves to sit at the cool kids table with Mick Gordon and Andrew Hulshult. Just listen to this:

Enemies getting new attacks on harder difficulties. I went into a Silent Hill 2 run on hard mode and quickly discovered to my surprise that the starter enemies who spent the entirety of normal difficulty shambling slowly and vomiting in an arc were now charging me headfirst and vomiting in a direct line straight at my position. As you can imagine it has completely changed how I engage with them. I'm looking forward to seeing what tricks the other enemies have up their sleeves now.

Batman: Arkham Shadow Hot damn, this game rocks. Before I go any further I will address the elephant in the room. A lot of people are upset that this game is VR exclusive but I have two things to say to that: 1) This game, while still huge for a VR title, is smaller in scope than a mainline Arkham game. If this were a flatscreen title it'd be nothing special, but as a VR experience it's amazing. 2) Meta funded this game. If not for that, it wouldn't exist. That's just how it is. This has all the staples of the Arkham series you would want, that being combat, predator sequences, and clever puzzles to solve for collectibles. I don't really like to use the cliche "it makes you FEEL like Batman" but they implemented the controls in such an immersive and engaging way that it's hard to think of a more appropriate phrase. Knocking out guards from behind is done by yanking them back with your arms and then wrestling with them from side to side until they pass out. Gliding with your cape is done by grabbing the cape at both sides and spreading your arms. Knife slashes are dodged by ducking and weaving. It all just feels so natural and right. The real star, however, has got to be the hand-to-hand combat. If you wondered how Arkham's iconic combat system could be translated into VR, I'm here to tell you that they passed the test with flying colors. Batman will lunge toward whatever enemy you're facing when you punch forward, and then combos are performed by a blend of jabbing at targets and swinging either your left or right fist, depending on which direction the arrow is pointing. You can also grab people when prompted to perform finishers or jump on them while they're on the ground and punch the crap out of them to knock them out. In a way it's kind of like a rhythm game, except you're being attacked on all sides the whole time. Even when you're being attacked offscreen, I never felt like I was taking cheap hits because the game very clearly warns you which direction you're being attacked from and gives you the means to do a side counter to stop them. Enemies can and will attack you in huge groups and taking them down is a balance of getting in your hits where you can while also defending yourself from the sucker punches other goons will try to get in while you're focusing on the guy directly in front of you. You can, of course, also use your gadgets during fights like any other Arkham game and they also throw special enemies at you like shield or stun baton users that require specific maneuvers to take down. It doesn't feel dumbed down at all and I dare say it might be the most fun I've ever had with the Arkham combat system. Just be forewarned that it's extremely strenuous and unless you're already jacked you will probably end up sore as hell after punching criminals for several hours. The story takes place after Origins and took me a little over 15 hours to beat without getting all the collectibles, and I have to say it kept me invested to the end. Unlike Arkham Knight, where it was insultingly obvious who the Arkham Knight was from the beginning, I really had no idea who the Rat King was until the climax. There are some big reveals here, as well as appearances from villains who have never been in an Arkham game before. This was far from a throwaway plot or "good for a VR game." I don't really have much to criticize. I did run into a few game breaking bugs but it worked fine after I reloaded the checkpoint. The game is fairly generous with them too so I never lost more than a minute or two of progress. It looks really good inside the headset as well. $49.99 might feel steep for a VR title to some people, but I absolutely feel like I got my money's worth, especially considering I haven't even done the challenge maps yet and the devs already promised to add more for free. This is the Quest 3's killer app, full stop.

Batman Arkham Shadow is so good. It's the Batman VR game that I was expecting to get back when the original Batman VR came out but turned out to be a very short and disappointing experience. This one is a proper, fully realized game and the only reason I haven't already beaten it is because it is a surprisingly strenuous workout. I played it for three hours on release day, punching my way through many packs of goons and working up quite a sweat in the process. The next morning I was so sore that I had to take a break from the game to recover. If you own a Quest 3 and have been both looking for a great game and wanting to exercise more, this will give you the best of both worlds.

Silent Hill 2 Remake As someone who did play the original, I can say this is about as good of a remake as you could hope for of that game. The interface has been streamlined so you spend as little time in menus as possible. Swapping weapons is done on the fly now and James can dodge in combat, which makes encounters much more intense since monsters can also dodge and counter you, meaning you need to always be on your toes and you can't just mash your way through every encounter. Looking at the map is also done in real time now, which means you can be attacked while reading it if you are careless. Sadly, they did remove a couple of unlockable weapons (no Pyramid Head knife this time) but they make up for that by greatly improving the boss fights. In the original game you usually just had to run around the boss room with tank controls and turn around to take potshots whenever you had enough distance, but now they're much faster and more aggressive with their attacks, meaning you need to learn to dodge. One remade boss in particular doesn't really do anything more than charge you and try to grab you, but the new fight with it still has so much atmosphere and intensity that it's become one of my favorite survival horror boss fights ever. I bet anyone who has played this game will know which one I'm talking about. I really can't think of much to criticize about this game that didn't already apply to the original one. Not that many enemy types, limited weapon selection, easy to get lost if you aren't paying close attention. All that is just baked into the series, so if you already liked the original Silent Hill 2 then I see no reason you wouldn't like the remake. If you never played it, now's a great time to see what all the fuss is about.

Evil Within 2 definitely feels way better to play.

It's the Spooky Month!

Yeah I've been using the 8bitdo Ultimate with my PC for the past year and it works and feels just as good as it did on day one. I think we're past the days of third party always being shoddy Madcatz pieces of junk.

Mmm...monke.

More and more I feel justified in just going with a prebuilt.

HEARD SOMEONE TALKIN' SHIT IN HERE.

Blasphemous II As I suspected, this sequel solves just about every issue I had with the first game. The Soulslike mechanics are still there, but this game leans more into the Metroidvania side of the formula than the Souls side, which I think is for the best with this genre. The Penitent One is now more agile, the controls are better, movement upgrades are pickup items rather than hidden behind cryptic soulslike quests, and oh yeah... SPIKES AREN'T INSTANT DEATH ANYMORE. Thank GOD for that. In fact, spikes in general have much less of a presence here than they did before. They're still around and they still hurt like hell, but if you fall in them you'll be teleported back to the platform as long as you have life enough to spare. The combat is also much improved with three weapons instead of one, and now you have two swappable magic abilities instead of one. You also don't have to go back to a specific location to buy upgrades. The weapons all have their niche too and I got plenty of use out of all three of them depending on what I was fighting, though my favorite would have to be the heavy flail since it swings in such a huge arc. If there's anything to complain about, it's that certain bosses in the game are such a ridiculous difficulty spike that I was tempted to quit a couple times. I pushed through it, but I at least thought about it. It only happened with two of the bosses, but those two were so much harder than every other boss in the game that it felt like going from Elden Ring to Sekiro out of nowhere. It was painful. Really great sequel otherwise, though. I'm glad to see the developers took player feedback into consideration when making it.

Blasphemous The first one. I beat it once before after it launched, but later on they added DLC that included a true ending, so I figured before I play 2 I should go back and get that. Ho-ly fuck is it cryptic. If you don't use a guide like I did I don't know how you'd ever be expected to figure it out on your own. In fact, even with a guide I ended up having to play the game twice because I accidentally fought a boss too early and locked myself out of the true ending. Yeah, I was pissed. It's still a good game but while playing it I was reminded of some very aggravating things about it, such as the instant death spikes, flask upgrades decreasing how many you can carry, and needing to spend 20,000 tears at the donation box in order to be able to teleport between shrines. Does it ruin the game? No, I wouldn't say so, but it did make it less fun. I'm done now, though, so I can finally play Blasphemous II and see what the devs learned from the first game. I'm excited.

Also these huge spending sprees you guys have been going on got me feeling like

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Took me a while to find time to finish this one. I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said. It's fantastic DLC. My only real gripes are that some enemies seem to have infinite poise and some bosses are designed in such a way that if you don't like using summons, you're gonna have a bad time. Is it possible to win solo? Sure, but you are given very little room for error.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Switch version, obviously. I never actually played the original Gamecube version, so I'm actually kind of glad that I got to go into this remake completely fresh. Since I have nothing to compare it to I don't know how exactly they improved the quality of life for this version, but I know they did add new features meant to reduce some of the tedium of the original, or so I have read. Putting that aside and just judging this game on its own merits, I can see why people are so fond of this one. The turn-based combat with no stupid gimmicks like later on in the series is just so much better. I suppose you could maybe consider the audience during battles a gimmick, but it's a very unobtrusive one that doesn't demand the whole battle system be reworked around it. I like the characters, I like the story, I like the music and the graphics and the exploration. This one really should have been remade a long time ago but better late than never. I do think that some of the chapters drag on for too long, particularly near the end, but that doesn't bring it down much for me. I'm just happy that I got to finally experience this game everyone loves so much.