5/5

Aside from the occasional bugs, I had no problems with this Definitive Edition. The new classic lighting update is great (and looks great). A good thing about this edition is that the shooting mechanics are better than in the original, and you can change the controls, though I played with the classic control scheme.

Some bugs that were annoying: 1) sometimes the military chopper is unable to shoot missiles. You have to exit the game and restart it to fix this; 2) sometimes during the rampages no civilians or gang members appear on the streets. Again, you must exit the game and restart it to fix it.

Other than that, this is a great game, a must play for every GTA3 fan. I completed it 100% because I was so fond of its atmosphere and wanted to keep immersing myself in it. I still prefer GTA3 (I think the story is better and, believe it or not, the atmosphere, too), but Vice City is without a doubt a great game.

Last night I discovered an amazing Devil May Cry essay written by AlexxShadenk, titled “I think a big part of why I like DMC 5 better than 4/4SE is because of how the characters are better balanced in the latest game”. The essay starts with the quote seen in the title and then Alexx proceeds to analyze most moves of the DMC series, and how they changed and evolved, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. His analysis is very in-depth, and only DMC players will understand what he is talking about. It is pages of passion, knowledge and experience combined and mixed to deliver an amazing essay. He goes into great detail about the Round Trip move and even ends up mentioning me and my old Nelo Angelo video, saying that I “recorded the most incredible god damn Nelo Angelo boss fights out there”, which was a very pleasant surprise. I laughed at his joke, too, as I wasn’t expecting that at all. I liked also how he analyzed DMC’s lock-on system and how its more specific inputs contribute to making the combat better than the one in other 3D brawlers, which typically use dial-up combos. He managed to put into words something that I had intuitively felt before but was unable to verbalize or even properly conceptualize. Highly recommended reading for any Devil May Cry fan, then.

4/5

As regards the Definitive Edition, I thought the more modern graphics were nice, and I had no problem playing the game on my PC. There were some bugs, but nothing too major, except for a specific mission in a park in Los Santos that felt impossible to beat because the enemies were shooting non-stop from afar just after CJ spawns from a cutscene. Those shots were enough to kill me in a couple of seconds and I struggled to beat the mission because of this. I don’t remember having any problem with that mission in the original San Andreas. Other than that, the atmosphere is not so good in this edition, because the lighting is different, and some weather elements like clouds and fog no longer exist.

As for the game, when compared with GTA3, and Vice City, it has too much filler content. It does do a few things better, though: it has better shooting mechanics, allows you to fly lots of planes (including a fighter jet), the main character can now swim, and the map is huge in comparison to the previous titles. These things, however, are not enough to make this a better game. Both GTA3 and Vice City feel much more compact and go straight to the point. One thing I disliked about San Andreas was the gang wars. They felt like a poorly designed gimmick, implemented just to fill the game with more content. The action was always the same: equip the M4 and shoot from a distance the hordes of gangsters coming at you from afar. The story of the game is uninteresting, with missions that feel like side quests most of the time. Moreover, CJ lacks the charisma of the previous main characters (even compared to Claude, who without muttering a single word, still had a badass aura).

5/5

Playing DMC5 with Vergil makes the game much better. No longer forced to play with V, you can relax and enjoy the full game with an awesome character that plays perfectly. This was the first time I’ve ever played with Vergil in any DMC, and I loved it. Vergil’s moves are impressive and look extremely cool. I’m afraid Vergil is even cooler than Dante in this game. This is because all his weapons are serious: there are no fedora hats or motorcycles now. His weapons look and feel amazing. Less complex than Dante, since he only has three melee weapons, one long-range weapon, and one style, but much more complex than Nero, I think Vergil hits the sweet spot of complexity for a DMC character. Switching between 3 melee weapons on the fly is seamless with him. I can switch from Beowulf to Yamato or Mirage Edge with a single press of a button, whereas with Dante it can take up to three button presses to switch to a desired weapon, if you equip all weapons. And to do that seamlessly, you must do it fast, which means you have to be pressing that button a lot if you want to play stylishly. This is why I could only play Dante properly with three melee weapons equipped, as I stated in my review of the game, and that’s exactly the number of weapons Vergil has from the get-go, which means I was having lots of fun playing with him since the first mission. His Air Trick is awesome, too. While with Nero you use the Devil Breaker to bring enemies to you, with Air Trick you can take Vergil right to the enemy’s face. This makes the action very fast-paced and brutal, if you know what you’re doing. Speaking of brutal, his special moves like Judgement Cut End, which require a level 2 of Concentration and a full SDT bar to be activated, are awesome. They do serious damage to the opponents and look extremely cool.

In sum, I highly recommend playing DMC5 with Vergil, because the game becomes much more fun. This way you can avoid playing with V altogether and thus enjoy every mission in the game.

5/5

If you are a fan of Jet Li movies, you have to play Rise to Honor. This game plays marvelously and is as close as you can get to an interactive Jet Li movie. The plot is your typical martial arts movie plot, which unfortunately I don’t remember much, since I played this game in 2004, but I remember it has a lot of references to various Jet Li movies. There is a part where Jet Li climbs down a building, dropping from balcony to balcony, similar to what he did at the start of Cradle 2 the Grave.

Rise to Honor is a 3D action game that leans more towards a beat ‘em up. You fight a lot of Triad enemies in Hong Kong, and that’s about it. There is some shooting, too, the controls of which are not very well done, but it is fortunately minimal. The brilliance of the game, however, is in its unique combat system. Instead of pressing buttons to attack your enemies, you use your right analog stick to attack in the direction you want. This might seem counter-intuitive, but works very well, especially when facing multiple enemies at the same time. By simply wiggling the analog stick, Jet Li can do incredible combos and attack large groups of enemies coming from every direction. This cinematic 3D beat ‘em up, then, is at bottom a game of crowd control. The focus is not so much on executing complex combos, since the combos are practically automatic, but on controlling the crowds of enemies that swarm you. It’s an innovative mechanic that I have not seen elsewhere, and it feels amazing to use, because it flows perfectly. Jet Li also has an adrenaline bar that gives him super speed and strength when used. There are some bosses in the game, and predictably they are not as fun to fight as the Triad crowds, since as I said the combat system really shines against groups of enemies. If I remember correctly, there were also block and grab buttons, which were useful.

In sum, Rise to Honor is in my view a must-play for every beat ‘em up fan, not just Jet Li fans. It’s an immersive action game that resembles the best Jet Li movies and plays extremely well.

5/5

I think I played Okami for the first time in 2010. I had heard about it since its release, but I had just never found it on sale in my small town. I had also read for years people on the Phantom Babies forum saying the game was a masterpiece, so I had been meaning to play the game for a while. Luckily, I eventually found the game in a second-hand shop, in perfect condition. The next thing I know, I was playing the game 6 hours straight without a break. That’s how awesome Okami is. Firstly, you have to admire the game’s look. The whole game looks as though a Japanese painting came to life. With beautiful cel-shaded graphics, the first reaction I had when I started playing it was awe. As I controlled Amaterasu, a beautiful white wolf goddess, and ran through green fields and other detailed environments while leaving a trace of blooming flowers behind me, I could not help but notice the explosion of beauty around me. It was an impressive cocktail of colors. Simply wandering in the game’s beautiful environments is fun. But the game offers more than that. It has charming characters in a story that feels like an outright saga. You can interact with various characters throughout the game as you progress and hear what they have to say to you, as JRPGS typically do. Perhaps to cut costs, Clover Studio did not put any voice acting in the game. Instead, as the characters speak, we hear a sound effect that mimics the sounds of the human voice. It only adds to the ethereal atmosphere of the game, in my view.

But the game is not just about exploring beautiful surroundings. Because in our surroundings there are dangerous demons that want us dead. Combat, then, is another facet of the game. Being a Hideki Kamiya game, the combat system is good: you can attack, block and evade. You can learn new combos and new moves as you progress in the game, and you can unlock new weapons, too. Okami is an action-adventure game that leans more to the adventure side of the spectrum, so it’s understandable that the emphasis is not the combat system, and that other games sport more complex combat systems. That said, the combat system is still very unique because Amaterasu can use his celestial brush to attack his enemies. The celestial brush draws, for example, a line over the enemy, and the enemy is magically cut. It can summon the powers of wind, water and fire, too. You can also use the celestial brush to draw over the environment and interact with it. It’s an innovative and unique mechanic that I have never seen elsewhere (which I guess makes sense, since it’s so specific to the game’s art style). Basically, when you activate the celestial brush, the action stops, a brush appears on the screen, and you can draw on the screen with it, affecting whatever is there.

Finally, the music in Okami is spectacular. The tracks are inspired by traditional Japanese music and use traditional Japanese instruments, adding a lot to the atmosphere of the game, and making it even better.

I played Okami again years later, in 2021, and was still impressed with its beauty. The game plays amazingly and it’s a joy to control Amaterasu. It’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.

5/5

I missed Bayonetta back in 2009 because I didn’t like how the main character looked. Videogames are mostly visual artforms, and if you don’t like what you see in front of you, you probably won’t like interacting with it either. The game was directed by Hideki Kamiya, though, so it remained always in the back of my head throughout the years. Kamiya directed the original Devil May Cry, so he knows what he’s doing when it comes to action games, specifically 3D brawlers. In 2020, I finally decided to give the game a try. And I’m glad I did. It’s such a fast-paced game, with so much action and so many cool moves. The enemy design is amazing, and Bayonetta’s hair-powered special moves are incredible. She can summon huge monsters with her hair to finish off her enemies, in a fatality-style move. The action is crazy, too. Right at the start of the game we fight a bunch of enemies while falling from a skyscraper, enemies spawning non-stop. The whole style of the game is ridiculous, in a good way, and I wouldn’t expect anything else from a game made in Japan (we already know how weird their art can get). The story is uninteresting, and perhaps even silly but I hardly noticed it amidst all the wild action on display, so it didn’t bother me too much. I wasn’t exactly playing the game for the story anyway. I just wanted to kill beautiful monsters. The environments are cool, too, and some of the music is awesome. I also liked how she can slow down time after a perfectly timed dodge. It feels amazing to control Bayonetta and I felt that whenever I was hit by an enemy it was totally my lack of skill. The combos are done in a dial-up manner, like in Ninja Gaiden, as opposed to Devil May Cry’s more specific inputs, but in no way is that a bad thing, since you can string moves from your equipped weapons on the fly, and thus create insane combos. And you know, Bayonetta’s look even started to grow on me. Her walking animations, for example, were expertly done, and highlighted her sensuality perfectly. Unfortunately, for some reason, I stopped playing the game halfway through, having clocked in around 6 hours of play time. I should play this game again one day, from start to finish.