Dragon's Dogma Netflix Episode 4: Sloth

 Ah! Where gone those days,

Coming back to Dragon's Dogma Netflix edition is a lot more appealing now that we've put the goblin episode behind us, although as we move into the final handful of episodes the question really is whether or not the show will focus up and get to start making it's ultimate points. And to that end I think that yes, the show has begun to tickle the prospect off paying off those set-ups, albeit with about two or three episodes left to go. Heck, maybe by the end of this there'll actually be a fully competent reason why the episodes are themed after the seven deadly sins, because so far it's feeling a little arbitrary. If I didn't already know that Capcom and Dragon's Dogma's creator hadn't gotten themselves involved with the project I might have accused the anime makers of not having actually experienced the game themselves just for employing such a core central thematic device. But I'm no bore, I'll give them the chance to win me over. (Spoilers, by the way.)

This episode is entitled 'Sloth', one of my favourite of the deadly sins to see represented due to the not-exactly obvious nature of the sin leading to quite some diversity in the ways we can see some one can depict the idea of slothfulness. It's like the old-ball sin next to the odd-ball Horseman of the Apocalypse 'Pestilence'. And how do they represent it in this series? With drugs. Yeah, this is the drug episode everybody! The anime uses psychedelic moss and the stupor it sends it's users on as a metaphor for disassociation and ignoring one's problems, which is totally valid on it's face even if it's simultaneously a bit shallow. Were this a greater length series which was taking a greater look at the concept of 'Sloth', rather than 20 minutes of an anime episode, I might chide this display as situationally reductive; but the episode doesn't linger on the topic too much, so the drug-addiction short-hand works well enough.

As I mentioned before, in the show's attempt to be subversive and therefore unpredictable with it's hard view on morality and karmic retribution, the show does wobble close to predictability for the mere fact that you know something untoward is going to happen to otherwise underserving people. Last episode it was the twist double homicide at the end, this time it was Lennie, wife of the drugged out adulterer, being munched on by a Hydra, if anything the only part of this episode that did honestly surprise me was the fact that Lennie actually survived inside the beast's belly! Although she did lose her eyesight. (There's the typical fatalism I was missing for a scant second! I almost had a hope for a second! Perish the thought.) Aside from that the raw body of the episode was fairly generic to the series' own standards and that would typically dampen the amount of enjoyment I could see out of it, and yet I did end up liking this episode more than the last one.

Part of that comes down to the beast of this episode, the aforementioned Hydra. The fight against this beast is straightforward in choreography, but stands out for the talent of the animation. I've said it before, but in action this show visually sings and that has proven no less true against a beast as large and somewhat iconic as this one, (It's the first proper monster you fight in the game, so I'd call that pretty iconic) if only the action writing and combat staging could match that level of quality then this show could be an excellent action anime. For example, the show remembers enough lore to show us the 'Hydra heads regenerate' thing play out, very cool, but then they totally neglect the whole 'unless you set the wound on fire' caveat which the game touts. It would have fit into the narrative neatly too, as Olivia seem to do nothing else but shoot fire magic about the place, but they wanted a wholly more contrived finale to the encounter which, though narratively significant, kind of diminished the sort of tangible deathly threat that a Hydra should pose. (His Berserker rage could have made him more clever in order to solve the fight, rather than just '/kill' it.)

It was the glimmer of character work being introduced to our character which made this episode really stand out for me for it's decent set-up and execution. Already we'd had it established that our view-finder, Ethan, is something of a typically heroic protagonist, driven to try and solve every problem he comes across and to see the strength in the belittled man. Each episode has shown Ethan be punished for his naiveté, where the people he sought to help end up worse than before or the 'little man' brings about their own destruction. This is the episode where those lessons actually start to take hold, and we're lucky enough to see the shift happen real time over the course of this episode alone. And it's actually this sort of 'answer-response' writing which I think can be the most effective when displaying a journey of character growth, so I definitely appreciated seeing it here.

At the start of his journey to slay the Hydra, Ethan and his pawn Olivia discuss the futility of Lennie' struggles in her hoping that her drug addled husband will magically snap back to normal once the dragon had been slain and structure was restored. Ethan is his typical optimistic self whilst Olivia is stoic on the matter, rather unable to connect to the humanity of the situation. (Being a pawn and all.) After the events of the episode however, with Lennie being briefly vored and the mine camp being all-but destroyed, Ethan and Olivia walk the exact same stretch of land and have an almost identical conversation only with their perspectives utterly reversed. Of course, the key switching moment was when Ethan thought he'd lost Olivia, before learning that Pawns don't die like humans do, and went all red-eye berserk for a time. And I like the interesting implications this opens up for where this series is going.

We know that part of the journey of a Pawn is to attach to it's arisen and leech of their personality and knowledge to eventually morph into a copy of them once their arisen ascends to either Seneschal-hood or Dragon-hood, so seeing Olivia start to cotton onto the 'wonders' of the human spirit is fully in-keeping with that journey. Ethan losing his faith in humanity, however, to the point where he even refers to 'humans' as separate from himself, is atypical to the Arisen destiny. Perhaps we could see this as a consequence of being separated from his heart, but only if we accept the classical biological mythology that the heart is the font of emotion and humanity, and despite seeming to a standard medieval fantasy world in appearance I've never felt that particular concept as being present in the Dragon's Dogma setting before. What's more likely is that we're seeing the slow descent of Ethan, through grounded human stumbling, into the state of a Dark Arisen, perhaps the most fascinating current chunk of Dogma lore which was only ever touched on by the game's first and last DLC.

What on it's face is a rather standard episode of Dragon's Dogma, shapes up as the beginning of the fulfilment of this series' purpose, and that alone made it a more interesting episode for me. I still lament the action and wish a bit more structure could be introduced to how the fights play out, but the visuals are robust enough to keep my attention as it is. (I just think there could be a lot more to it.) I wasn't a fan of the individual story of this episode, doing a 'drugs = laziness' plot feels dangerously close to a cop-out and it's only the wider narrative of the series that saved it, but only just. Ultimately, I think this was a  decidedly average episode of the show with the hope of something more. But I'm going to knock down a mark for the resolution of the action, which was just lazy, so it's a flat C Grade. I have faith that things are going to start getting more interesting from here...

The World has Turned. Club SEGA has burned.

 But nobody is to blame!

Somebody fire the hundred gun salute, burn some incense in your SEGA room, and pour your generous libations as your traditions and various religious observations allow, do whatever you feel is necessary to mourn the passing of what was once known as Club SEGA. Thus is the consequence when a storied part of gaming history fails to survive past it's struggles under the COVID pandemic, inflamed a vastly shifting landscape of gaming interest, and topped off with mass layoffs and an eventual sell off. It's been 50 years since SEGA laid their roots in the arcade club world, and since then their particular brand had become an icon of Japanese gaming. Even as someone who has never been to Japan, I will truly miss the sight of those red doors with the white letters, a sight that no one will get to see once those keys are turned in and the ownership is officially passed on. We've just had word that SEGA's brand will be removed from all previous locations, so those doors are likely due a repaint, and what a sad way to lose a piece of history.

Now of course I had actually covered this little situation once before when I wrote a blog about the troubles falling upon the door of SEGA Sammy, the parent company who rode some tough waters a year or so back in the face of everything that had changed in the world. Back then it was just downsizing, but the writing was on the wall even from that early stage and I don't think anyone was truly taken for a loop once the coroner's final prognosis was delivered. The place was being held together by a shoe string for a while now, and with the rumours that SEGA proper was somehow suffering some finance trouble in early 2021, it only made sense for the extra bulbous fat to be cut. And for a section of the company totally dedicated to hosting and maintaining a workable series of video game arcade bars that most people are medically advised not to visit, offering games that most can play from the comfort of their own homes; yeah, that feels a lot like excess fat. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but the reasoning is sound.

SEGA probably dates as one of the oldest running games companies in the world today, so any seismic change to their business model is going to elicit thoughts on the wider industry as a whole. And unlike Nintendo, theirs is a history not marked with collaboration with the Japanese mafia- publicly. I mean, come on: you can't be making an extended series of great games featuring the Yakuza without being in bed with them to some degree, although SEGA's early years aren't quite as hand-in-hand with that part of the criminal underworld as Nintendos is. Both companies probably wouldn't exist today without ties to illicit gambling back when that was more regulated on the islands, but Nintendo are the only guys looking like they owe some long due royalties back to their old business partners, SEGA paid back thta respect with gusto. As I understand it, the locations that SEGA bought in order to host their gambling dens back in those early years in Japan would go on to become the future Club SEGA arcades, so that's the kind of legacy we're putting to bed right now.

And of course, though it's rarely discussed, SEGA is as much of an American company in it's founding as it became a Japanese one over the years; such that it's surprising how Club SEGA never made it in the states. In fact, SEGA was born in Hawaii when a man set up coin-operated 'amusement machines' (see: Gambling) for military personnel in the bases to unwind with. Known back then as 'Service Games', their expansion into Japan and what they would become from there on in would be all down to their entertainment club routes. (As well as a little bit of running away from regulators to avoid heft fines and/or prison time) The heart of the company was based in that business, and as gambling become more frowned upon and difficult to run, the transition to arcade machines, basically legal gambling because there's no chance of payout or reward, was a natural step. It took all the time that has passed since then, almost half a century, for SEGA to truly leave their home behind and strike out on their own, and in the end they had to be literally kicked out of the house by a global pandemic.

Now of course, this huge development for the company is going to be seen as a sign of weakness, just as it was when SEGA Sammy's financial issues became apparent at the tail end of 2020. Maybe that was why the rumour began that Microsoft was looking to buy out SEGA and incorporate their brand into the Xbox family, although most at the time discarded that as idle speculation boasting little to no tangible merit. I think that the recent Activision purchase will have swapped some opinions on that little matter, as now it seems to be a given fact that any wounded games company limping around the industry plains is at risk of the Leopard know as Microsoft swooping in for the kill. Those guys are provenly ready to toss around billions, and at this point if Microsoft doesn't make a pass at weakened SEGA, I think they would probably take it as a personal insult. "What, Activision is worth the money but not us? What the hell do they have that we don't?"

But let my comments not be misconstrued as me insinuating that SEGA as a whole are on their way out, I'd never claim to be as tuned in to the inner workings of SEGA's economics. Although, casually, I'd say that SEGA are doing much better than just struggling to get by. What with their upcoming Sonic television series, also upcoming new mainline Sonic game that proposes to revolutionise the series and the recent explosion of popularity for the Yakuza series; I'd say that SEGA are doing enough to get by more than comfortably. I think that if I had the sort of spending power that Microsoft had I'd still be interested in them for their properties and reach, but SEGA isn't waving for an SOS whilst drowning on a sinking ship. This selling-off of their arcades was a mechanically cold exorcizing of a now-vestigial limb. I suppose there's only so long you can support a financially stretching venture before you snap and just dump the baby out of the window, bathwater and all. (Hmm, I feel like I got that saying both wrong and absolutely right in the same breath.)

Still, I have to come to the single most important question left dangling off of this whole affair; how is this going to affect the Club SEGA minigame hubs in the Yakuza games? The only reason I have any nostalgic feelings towards these arcades whatsoever is because the long-running Yakuza game franchise featured them heavily as locations you could visit in order to play chronologically accurate SEGA games emulated within that particular Yakuza title. Games like 'Out Run', 'Virtua Fighter' and 'Space Harrier' snuck into those bigger crime titles to provide that extra little bit of spice to an already packed-with-content franchise. How are those Easter eggs going to immersively litter the game world in the new status quo? I mean a lot of these arcade games have competent home releases in big packs nowadays, so within the fiction of the game our protagonist could theoretically just go home and play them on the consoles, but that doesn't even nearly capture that some wonder of entering a gaming paradise world. We won't get to see Kiryu, Yagami or Ichiban climb onto that full-sized arcade bike whilst the non-existent air whips back their head and slaps them into the race. Truly, this is the greatest casualty of the arcade apocalypse.

So we bid farewell and goodluck to Club SEGA as it transcends this soggy, battered plane and becomes something beautiful and intangible in the cosmos. Maybe the time of brick-and-mortar arcades has passed, along with much of physical shopping on the wider stage, but the memories may never abandon us until we let them. Now the only gaming companies out there with the courage to diversify are Microsoft, literally one of the biggest companies in the world, Atari, a company that isn't even really a gaming company at all anymore, and Konami, guys who are actively trying to cannibalise their own good will for a quick buck. At least arcade machines will forever linger as a rich hobbyist collectors item enjoyed by all those old enough to remember their heyday. Rest in Peace, Club SEGA.

WTF is Mech Master?

Down, Down, Down. Would the fall never come to an end?

Anyone with a working keyboard and Internet connection can type up the various methods of making money that have proven most profitable in the past few years. Free for all to see are oodles of empirical evidence detailing the rise of cryptocurrencies, scams, scalping, cryptocurrency-related blockchain scams, and of course, the billion dollar games industry. The way I see it, the universe is very clearly laying out the future all of us need to pursue in order to secure that ever elusive, but oh-so-tantalising liveable wage. (Or it that just the turning gears of capitalism I hear? I get them and the ephemeral will of universe mixed up more often than you'd think.) But it takes a special kind of person to shut-up, pull up their bootstraps, and then sit behind a computer screen making desperate calls all day trying to scam old man Pete out of his pension check with your quick-wit and decidedly deceased morals. The kind of person who isn't going to settle for just ensuring the 15th pensioner that week can't even afford a casket for their own funeral, the kind of person who's going to say: "What if I scammed in the big leagues; setting my trap in the very profitably games industry?"

Now you might think that's a pretty aggressive attitude I've taken right out of the gate without even detailing what this 'Mech Master' thing even is; but that's because I'm on the cusp of getting actual paid-for Youtube ads regarding this thing Mech Master thing, and I just know this is going to become the theme song of every bloody video I watch for the next six months until I've memorised the script even more than those 'wacky zany manscapped adverts where the narrator dances around the topics of pubic hair on your nuts and deflects with puns and jokes to describe the fact they're telling you that your balls stink and need to be shaved.' Hey, here's an idea: my shaving habits have nothing to do with you or your pay master company you insipidly intrusive, unsubtle, pernickety, played out, washed up, irritating, beggarly, schmekle-sucking creeps! (Woah, I got a little of track there.) Look at this as me airing out some future frustrations which are inevitably going to bubble up in a few month's time because of all these impending ads, and make no mistake that this is going to be a mess, considering we're talking about an NFT-based video game. (BOO!)

"Mech Master is a fully immersive 3D Metaverse on the Moon, where each project is a virtual city, interconnected into an ecosystem. Come to Mech City, people can socialize, relax, join in various activities and enjoy life truly in Mech Metaverse Ecosystem in a breath taking 3D Universe!" (Do you want to die yet? I do.) A lot of what is written on the official site detailing the mission statement of ' Mech Master', borders on gobbledygook for the dual reasons that it's all written in buzz word Crypto-bro speak, with perfunctory jargon chucked haphazardly in the middle of sentences to make it look like the writer has a single clue what they're talking about, and the fact that I'm fairly certain this entire project is based out of Vietnam, and the website scribe for the team hasn't quite nailed down perfect English sentence structure just yet. They're really close, but miss the mark here and there. Still, I've suffered through this cringe-topia, so how about I break things down for you?

So Mech Master is a concept that is two fold, it is both a game and a blockchain backed Metaverse social space with NFT addon's slotted in there somewhere. Basically every popular keyword of the year so far, these guys couldn't decide on a singular grift to run. The metaverse side of this project is vague, heck a lot of this site is vague, but as far as I can tell the 'Metaverse' is represented by this idea of virtual cities that 'adopters' take control of, each of which will house your 'project'. I don't know what they mean by 'project', but they use that word a lot on this website without any remote extrapolation. Each player will have their own 'city' which appears to serve as a HUB for all the various metaverse projects that Mech Master will come to represent, from hosting the game to displaying advertising from other cities. (Advertising... something I'm sure) Also, users would be able to engage with the interconnected nature of the metaverse to "interact with (other players) participating in each other's gaming ecosystem." That was all infomation listed under the header that was ostensibly about their Metaverse. So either they've mixed the definition of metaverse and the games they're making into one amorphous clump, or there's literally no sense to be made from what this Metaverse of theirs even is. I'm guessing it's meant to be a theoretical social hub that will seamlessly connect with that theoretical game they're making. Oh, speaking of games!

That was the reason I came into this most-detestable of folds: because there was a mech based game that was supposed to be at the bottom of the deep well. Or 'Mecha' as they say within the text on the site. (D.VA called, she wants you to "Nerf this!") There is an 'arena area' within these presumed metaverse city project things which presumably threatens to serve as our portal into the video game section of this pitch. And this game has got to be a big part of all this, because when I first started getting the ads shoved into my face this Mech Master game was what they led with. All this Metaverse crap is just the extra garbage I've discovered in my journey of discovery. They talked about the game before anything else, which makes it kind of galling that any actual infomation on what this game is amounts to little more than a few haphazard mentions on various pages here or there. (The entire website is named after Mech Master- why not put more effort in advertising the damn thing?) 

Under the 'ecosystem' tab we have the heading "For the first time ever, with only one Mecha, you can play multiple different games in the Mech universe" Which sparks just the cusp of my many questions surrounding the sense of any of this. We're also told that there's a desire from the team to create "highest quality" 3D games (which is going to be a tall-ask given that so far it looks like they've only got 2D stylised assets and one mock-up 3D model of the red 'Legion' mech.) And they've teased how the project may "develop many different game genres" in the future. (Again, slight problems with the basic English here, hurts the professionalism a tad) So as far as I can tell, what we're looking at here is a 'budding franchise' around a brand they call 'Mech Master' (I bet that trademark is totally filed) which will encompass a slew of different game types for their victi- I mean 'adopters' to play around in. The 'only one mecha' rule seems to imply that these machines will each be NFTs, (Which is reinforced by the currently active marketplace selling these, currently still only 2D picture, mechs for Binance Coin) with the big selling point being the ability to play the same machine across their different, as-of-yet-non-existent, games. Now divorcing the fact that offering a mech shooter game where you only ever get to play as one mech sounds totally boring, it also isn't even remotely impressive to tout the ability to share your mech across their one insular gaming ecosystem. Of course I can transmit my progress from one crappy Mech Master game to another, they're being made by the same idiots. You don't need NFTs or the blockchain to facilitate such a system, you just need a miniscule amount of server space.

And of the games themselves? Well, we have the titular 'Mech Master' and 'Mech Frontline FPS', but the FPS game has no details on it apart from a 'coming soon' placeholder, which is a shame because that sounds like the more interesting one here. Mech Master is described as a "3D Mecha showdown on the Blockchain" which is so non-sensical it makes my head spin. What do you mean 'On the blockchain'? Is every hit going to need to be registered on the blockchain before it counts? (Because that would take time, even OpenSea opts for off-blockchain website changes before an actual purchase in order to keep things smooth) Am I going to need to mint my bullets before they're valid? This is peak buzzword nonsense, right here. In gameplay this is said to be a "Strategic Turn Based RPG where players are free to build their own territory with future technologies and protect their homeworld", which, again, is a flawed description on just about every level. 

First 'Strategic turn based RPG', now I may be a fan of those words, but the wider community of mech loving gamers are not. Just take a look at all the big classic mech games over the years, Mechwarrior 5, Steel battalion, Hawken, Titanfall, Zone of Enders; all of them are real-time games that focus on the spectacle of live action and the thrill of commanding impressive mech robots at will without any turn-taking nonsense, sort of hinting that the community veers towards live action titles. Even more strategic mech games, like Iron Harvest, are real time. So either the team are cleverly hopping on a gap in the market, or making a game for an non-existent audience. Then the whole 'build territory' and 'protect their homeworld'. What's that all about? I was led to believe that the Metaverse project around this concept focused on cities, all of which are based on-the-moon. Wouldn't this game, given it's serving a wider Mech Master universe, want to neatly slide into that premise of defending your moon-city, rather than this odd 'homeworld' idea which came out of nowhere, so that each proposed mingame in this metauniverse is immersively interconnected? Did the team even think of that when they wrote this mock-up game description in order to make-believe about this project? I guess not.

But I'm stepping on this universe before they've even put their first game out. (Assuming anything ever does come out, which is already a few steps removed from reasonable expectation.) What about this universe they've dreamt up- maybe the bones are really solid! Thankfully, they've already offered a teaser on their website for what to expect and it's all poorly written with vague names and minimal tangible worldbuilding. You have the main mech called Legion, which is close to being worldbuild worthy in name at least, (although there's no substance to that name provided in the description) and then you have the winged mech called Aerial. It- it's just called 'Aerial'? Because it's an aerial unit? (No- yeah, that's great worldbuilding already, great job.) The big one is called Giant, the transforming one is called Shapeshifter, the weird one is called Alien; you get the picture, right? They're all represented with 2D assets, and I'll be amazed if this project ever gets around to rending a single additional one in the third dimension like they promise, let alone fleshing out the significance of any of these all-important mech units in this mech-themed universe! But that's not all, we also have a preview of the pilots for these mech units and- oh god: they're all 2D boob waifus. I'm not kidding, this is as bottom-of-the-barrel as it gets; no names, no backstories, just three pictures of sci-fi themed anime girls with large breasts barely contained in skimpy skin suits. There isn't a single iota of effort on this entire website, is there?

Finally there's probably the most predatory thing on the entire project- do you remember those cities, which are apparently also projects of some sort, which I let slip were stationed on the moon? Well, what if I told you that they were all based on our actual moon, and you need to buy your NFT parcel of land in order to found this city and, I guess, access this "Next generation of Blockchain & NFT gaming" as website, TechBullion suspiciously puts it. (I'm not accusing them of charging for sponsored articles, especially as no such sponsor is disclosed on the article which would put them in trouble with certain commissions out there. I'm just saying that this article is impressively ill-researched in relation to comments on the desires of the gaming community so either it was written by shills or these article writers are terrible at even the most basic research.) As with Earth 2 and other virtual land scam auctions, (looking at you, Cryptoland, you godawful abomination of man) this is another part of the Mech Master project which is live right now as a storefront, so you can preorder a parcel of moon land in order to get it good and ready for when the metaverse launches and your land becomes worth a vIrTuAl foRtUne. Of course, this is the way the team are trying to amass some funds before they pull out and leave everyone high and dry, and I really hope the several dozens of already purchased plots I see when I pull up the demo moon are bots to make this look legitimate. It would suck if that many people were really suckered in by such an obviously fruitless scam.

Don't be fooled, this is an illustration of gameplay; not actual content.

I've done the gambit, looked through the website, strolled through their Youtube, checked the LinkedIn of the few listed employees who actually link to their credentials, and I can say with certainty that this is a project doomed to crash and burn before it ever even takes off. Heck, it won't even make it through the countdown before bursting into flames! No one on the team has experience with making actual decent budget 3D games, there's just a couple veterans of the mobile-trash circuit, none of their Youtube content speaks to any degree of professionalism, from the bad tech demos to the poorly written 'lore' teaser video and there's not a single actual game company listed under the 'backed by' tab, just Crypto crap companies, implying they don't have any ties to the games industry, let alone a publisher. According to the provided Roadmap 'Master Mecha Arena' (which isn't even the same name as the game they listed earlier under 'games') is set to launch on the PC anytime between right now and next Monday. Which, on-top all the thousands of reasons that seems unlikely, also could run into issues considering its name is dangerously close to the actual mech-based game 'Mech Arena' by Plarium (the RAID: Shadow Legends, guys) which is on mobiles and looks basically competent.

On the off chance that you've stumbled upon this particular blog because you've accidentally happened upon the Mech Master project and find yourself seriously considering getting on the ground floor of something that promises to be revolutionary- please take it from someone who understands some basic things about the gaming industry these numb-nuts claim to be trying to springboard off: this is either a scam or one of the most embarrassingly incompetent indie dev projects I've ever seen. Even if none of the evidence to that point I've already provided does justice, try this on for size; a typical AAA game made by a practised and stacked studio of industry professionals takes, at absolute least, 2 good years of solid non-stalling development in order to come out and be functional; this team at Mirai Studio don't even have a website of their own, and as far as I can tell have been working on this for about 5 months, or at least that was when the Youtube was first made with that single bad lore video. There is no game here and likely never was one, please move along.

The Chaos of NFTs and the Metaverse

Welcome to 2022; it's a mess.

So I really hope you're not sick and tired of hearing about NFTs, the blockchain and Metaverse; because trust me when I say that those buzzwords are due to hit a veritable fever pitch over the course of the next few months. (I bet Elon Musk is kicking himself that he didn't knock up Grimes a few years later so that they could have auctioned of his son's name as an NFT. Better luck next time, Martian Homehunter.) This plaything of the already rich is dripping off every single news story you can think of, stories about crime, national supermarket chains and, yes, even gaming. All because these desperate little gremlins can't bear the though of missing out on the ground floor of this 'revolutionary' new concept; investment with more steps and less reward. That right, don't you want to become financially involved with your favourite game franchise only with a fraction of the returns an actual shareholder would receive, absolutely no power in influencing those games with your money like an actual shareholder can have and the ever-present threat looming over your neck that at the drop of your hat the market might pop and everything you own will become worthless? (That last one actually is enjoyed by some shareholders out there.) 'Cause if not then this topic must be wearing very thin with you too.

For me the funniest new Metaverse-related nowhere-project came from Walmart's giddy adoption of Metaverse technologies. Well I say 'adoption', what I really mean is hopeful dreaming, because this whole concept of an 'Oasis' style virtual world that holds everything you could want to do in real life but in a virtual space is still a pipe dream so far. But Walmart, eager giant shopping market conglomerate that they are, want in on the ground floor, baby; they want to be cooked into the concrete! As such, they released a mock-up video to the public, wistfully dreaming about the pleasures of a fully virtual shopping experience. One guided entirely within a VR headset through the direction of a personalised shopping assistant who's annoyingly present during your entire shop and whom has the gall to make suggestions! That's right, at one point in the video our Virtual Intelligence here notes that we have milk in our fridge at home (How does she know that?) so that we can put the one we picked up back. How far could they take that concept? Amazon has the whole 'other users who purchased that also got this' widget on their store page, so is it so wild to imagine a world where this robot lady spots the whiskey you've just bought and suggests a chaser? "Oh, I've noticed you're an alcoholic; shall we further feed that addiction so that my corporate overlords can profit from it?" I'm sure that will go down well and not cause a single compliant from anyone, ever.

Additionally, Walmart seem to be as confused as to what this whole Metaverse thing will be useful for as much as everyone else is. I mean, general consensus is that this seems like more hassle than current online shopping, but Walmart seems unable to even figure out where someone would make use of this service. During the demo video, the assistant mentions how our car is being fuelled up and that these groceries will be taken out to it. So wait- am I supposedly in the parking lot right now, sitting in my car with a headset on, pretending to walk around the store that is just a few feet away from me? Am I literally wandering around the real Walmart's shop shelves with a VR blindfold on, bumping into other shoppers and causing a nuisance for myself? Or am I actually at home, but my Tesla-powered robot car has been hijacked by Walmart's VIs in order to be my delivery boy for the groceries? Somehow every single possibility there is a bad one. Way to sell the concept, team!

But if that was the most amusing, what has been the most painful? Well that would easily go to another Metaverse proposition; the Cryptoland project. Oh good lord what an ugly, ugly disaster. Typically I wouldn't keep up with the hundreds of pathetic cryptobro scam schemes that flare up and sizzle out overnight, but most of them don't come with a nifty animated video. Oh yeah, these lunatics went all out to advertise their Metaverse-crypto dream project with an extended explanation video featuring godawful animation, eye-watering bad voice acting, kill-me-now jokes, haemorrhage inducing musicals and a romance subplot so bad my skin crawled clean off my body to start a den in the attic. It took weeks for the creators to realise what a horror they had created and take it down, (either that or there was a copyright claim filed for the stolen animation assets and/or obviously unlicensed song soundtracks) but the damage was done. Everyone has seen it, it has been captured and reuploaded, and now we'll have to stare into the soulless eyes of it's Cryptocoin mascot popping up in memes across all unexpected corners of the Internet for the rest of time. Nice going, guys.

Now the obvious question is: what even was Cryptoland's idea? Well it's a little hard to keep track of everything thanks to my active bawling for every awful frame rendered on the screen, but I think it was something like this: Cryptoland is a scheme to create a Metaverse island resort that would be a hub for all kinds of NFT trading, Crypto gambling, and everything you could imagine off the blockchain, all whilst coinciding with a real-life island off the coast of Fiji that these creeps could go visit. So you could buy a property NFT on Cryptoland and then go stay at that place in real life whilst, presumably, sharing airspace with other loathsome wretches who were duped by this scam. The video features an anthropomorphic coin host called 'Connie' who sounds like the sort of amusement park mascot that you would absolutely not leave your children around, a frankly criminal number of embarrassingly outdated jokes and memes, all utilised pathetically badly, (the Bitconnect guy is no longer funny. They killed it.) and this smug sense of 'you know this is the greatest idea ever' that permeates every scene so much that you simply can't settle on whatever the hell it is they're trying to sell here and just instinctively hate it's guts. Oh, and there's a stereotypical boring pixie-chill-girl for the video's main character, Christopher, to poorly fawn over, (Because we need that in our animated marketing pitch musical extravaganza- thanks bunches) who's every line sounds like it was recorded on a mobile phone balancing on a cabinet on the otherside of the kitchen. So at least someone recognised this trainwreck and simply got the bag and left; good on Miss Phone-it-in. Or perhaps I should say that all of this is what Cryptoland was going to be, because they just fell through on their $12 million bid to buy that island in Fiji, and now the land is back on the market. (Yikes, I guess Reddit Island 3.0 is going to remain a dream forever.)

But not every bit of NFT adjacent news was stupidly funny or apocalyptically awful; some of it was just plain sad. (And this is where we come to the gaming side of things.) For one, a member of 'Linkin Park' went full uniformed-boomer talk about the potential of NFTs in games. He spouted wide eyed dreams trying to open gamer's minds with "buying a skin in Fortnite and then using it in Apex, or COD, or Minecraft; all without paying extra because you own the skin!"(I'm paraphrasing, but that is the general gist) Despite this man apparently being an actual gamer and a freakin' Streamer in his spare time, as well as an adult with a fully formed and 'presumably' working frontal lobe, apparently he couldn't possibly spot the massive glaring problem with his own stupid example. Who is going to code these skins into these games? The developers? Of every single online game ever? The very second one company makes their NFT skin to sell, they're just going to smoke signal all other online companies across the world to stop what they're doing and get on coding these skins into their game that instant, completely free of charge, because this NFT's one future owner might someday want to cross this skin over to their game? Genuine nonsensical gibberish rockets around in these people's heads and comes out of their mouths (or Tweets) as 'ideas for NFTs!' How do you reason with delusional people? Someone please tell me. 

And it goes one devotion deeper into the covenant of sad disappointment, because now our most beloved video game voice actors are sacrificing their reputations on the hard alter of NFT praise. (Maybe we should speak their garbled language and explain how their careers are, in fact, Non-Fungible) Tara Strong is making a movie with her friends starring NFTs, but at least her heart is in the right place with that one so I can kind of excuse it in the cold recesses of my soul; with Troy Baker on the otherhand, it's harder. Troy is one of the most celebrated voice actors in the gaming industry with roles in Call of Duty, The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Death Stranding- that's just naming a handful because I probably don't even have to introduce the guy to you- he's a legend. But yes, he advertised an NFT project and its, ah... it's pretty bad.

Voiceverse is this very questionable NFT fuelled prospective service that proposed to gather up AI generated voices of famous consenting vocal artists and sell the rights to generate lines using those voices as NFTs. If that sounds confusing, that's because it is. It's also kind of weird. The idea is for people to have their Metaverse avatars spew personalised lies of dialogue in their favourite famous person's voice, but it easily opens up all kinds of moral quandaries about how this will effect the value proposition of voice actors, as well as hypothetical fears such as people falsifying voice lines for fake evidence on all sort of heinous subjects. All that isn't even touching on the fact that if we're being honest with ourselves, the NFT aspect of this bears questionable relevance to the product. I can see the argument that this is the easiest way to democratize the service they want to provide, but I have to wonder if pre-existing services like Cameo doesn't already achieve pretty similar results without the moral crises, environmental impact and probably with better inflections on the actual line reads. (I've heard AI voice acting, it sucks.)

But of course, when confronted with these concerns, Troy did what most do in the NFT bubble- he strawmanned a little. One of the reasons his original endorsement rubbed so many people the wrong way, was because of the offhanded way that Baker tried to ward off criticism before it could arise with his sign off: "You can hate or you can create. What'll it be?" Which just oozes with the kind of self righteous fart sniffing that makes you just want to go "Oh, go spin on a fat one you pompous pr-" but I digress. That was the only part of this whole PR disaster that Troy addressed. He acknowledged how that was a bit confrontational and kind-of apologised, but not really. Then, of course, it came out that Voiceverse has pirated one of it's sample lines from a wholly not-consenting voice actress and now suddenly all the news sites are saying things like "Troy Baker backed Voiceverse accused of stealing" and "Troy Baker supports Voice actor thieves?" And it all sucks. It sucks because I don't just like Troy Baker, I respect the hell out of him, and seeing his goodwill just melt away thanks to this whole stupid mess is... it sucks, okay? This isn't a hill that anyone should be dying on.

And so there it is: hardly one month into 2022 and everything feels like it's on fire thanks to NFT garbage. Okay, I think that Walmart video and Cryptoland were actually back from December, but I heard about them in this month. (And Cryptoland only lost their island this month.) I don't know what it's going to take for the Non Fungible spell to break over the minds of the online collective, but we really need that to hurry up and get it all over with already before I end up losing faith in everything and everyone I once respected. (Not that I ever respected Walmart at all... yikes.) Troy Baker is still a legend, and no matter how odd his self-marketing choices are, I'll still get a kick out of identifying his voice ringing out of a cool new game character. God this whole topic is giving me a headache, let me go watch a reupload of Cryptoland one more time so that I can slip into that deep coma again.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengence Review

 This isn't my sword

Sometimes all it takes is a good meme to bring us back to something that we love. And given the game in question today, that seems like a rather fitting sentiment: no? When first I happened upon Metal Gear Rising Revengence, it was in the deadly serious context of spin-off to my beloved Metal Gear franchise which looked like it would forsake everything which made the series a phenom. None of the ground-breaking stealth gameplay, none of the all encompassing game detail wrapped into every gnat of code by a passionate auteur director, and no Snake. Didn't we try this before? Removing Snake? It didn't go too well as I remember. And yet to say that MGR won me over is an understatement; I consider it one of the best action-adventure Hack'n'slash games to this day. I adore the game, love the characters, and that was my mindset back when I played this far too young to understand what the story was even about. (And too young to be playing a game so violent, probably.) So maybe I'll love it even more today!

My attention was turned back onto this title after the absolute deluge of memes around this game just from reposting bits of the cutscenes; because they carry enough gold material in them raw. Then there's the parody Youtube channels who make fantastic voice acted spoofs of moments in the game, and the rediscovery of the soundtrack which sounds typically rock-heavy for a game of this type but actually carries a smart edge behind the headbanging melodies. Basically the Internet has been rediscovering what an incredible little gem that Metal Gear Rising is and that encouraged me to renew my vows and pick up the high-frequency blade once more. Thus what is coming your way is not a fresh-faced review, but an old friend meeting with his buddy once more, and the observations I have to make will be coloured by that old fondness as well as the recent playthrough I snuck in during Halo 4 downtime, so keep that in mind. Also, I'm going to go full spoilers here so if you just want my thoughts without the spice, you can find them in the summary at the bottom of the page.

Raiden Returns

To this date, MGR remains the furthest along in the Metal Gear timeline out of any game in the franchise. Further than 'MGS 4: Guns of the Patriots', far beyond Kojima's last game 'MGS 5: Phantom Pain', and in a whole other universe than that abomination Konami turd 'Metal Gear Survive'. And of course, Platinum games, in their infinite wisdom, chose to expand the story of a well established former protagonist, Raiden: the undesignated Snake. All the way back in Metal Gear Solid 2, (2001) Hideo Kojima would pull one of the most successful bait-and-switches in history when he advertised a game featuring Snake through every level only for the actual game to feature Snake leaving after the prologue of MGS 2 and anime-blonde kid, Raiden, taking his place. Fan reaction was- negative would be putting it kindly. Fans hated Raiden, from his anime-school kid haircut, to his toothless youthful persona and just for the fact that he wasn't the gruff solider fans had come to love. They rejected Raiden. And Kojima took that personally.

Kojima really liked Raiden, so much so that when helming the first 'last game of the franchise' (Kojima made that promise a few times) MGS 4, he decided to do everything he could to make Raiden too cool to be ridiculed. He made Raiden a superpowered Ninja with a high-frequency sword capable of cutting through the Gecko UGs in the game like butter. He also had one of those cool automatic eye-visor things that slid over his face by itself and made the noise with the glowing red LED for effect. (So cool!) And Kojima didn't make the little twerp the surprise main character this time around, all of which helped fans get over themselves about Raiden and even somewhat like the white-haired punk with his inexplicable faux happy ending. So the image reform was complete and Raiden was finally an alright guy. "But that's not enough" I can only presume Kojima said when selling this Metal Gear Rising to Platinum Games. "Raiden might be likable now, but that's not going to cut it anymore, oh no! They made fun of my baby, and now... now they're going to worship him! We need to go... further." "But Mr Kojima sir; are we sure his character can handle anything else thrown at it? He had his happy ending off in the sunset with his wife and son." "He can be more, I feel it- don't you? We can rebuild him, make him- cool. We have the technology." And thus; Metal Gear Rising's Raiden was born.

Mr Lightning Bolt

Raiden of Metal Gear Rising Revengence undergoes your typical act 1 evolution after a crippling loss, turning from a retro-futuristic swordman into an actual cybernetically-enhanced metal-high-heel-pumps wearing ninja one-man-army. They redesigned him totally, and can anyone argue with the results? Focusing purely on the way he is framed in the cutscenes, Platinum Games fall over themselves to show you how cool this guy is, from the way that he picks up a freakin' Metal Gear by the arm, catches a molten-hot knife with a high heel, slices a flying air drone neatly in two, and reads one of the most epically stupid final boss lead-in lines of all time. In so many ways it could have come across like the team were trying too hard to make their protagonist badass, thus reversing all that hardwork into points against his cool, (like Sunset Overdrive does) but somehow in the earnest way they just kept piling on layer after layer of cool tech, visuals, actions and lines; they pushed past the contrived-feeling. Raiden is just super badass now, it's the way things are.

Which isn't to say they bungled him down into some impeccable images of coolness that could never be touched. An iconic 'hero character' who's too precious to undergo any real hardship and is attributed only likeable traits and favourable actions to the tune of what is most commonly known as 'the mary sue model'. No, they don't do things like that over in Platinum. Jack has actual substantial character growth, moral challengings and questionable path changes that make him a deep and fleshly little protagonist. He actually has a more believable transformation story over the course of this game than Venom Snake does in Metal Gear Solid V; but the Kojima fanboy in me absolutely can not let it be known to anyone that I said that; so that opinion stays between you and me, got it? Surprisingly great main character work in this game, Platinum, even for you this game surprised me.

Jack The Ripper

But this isn't a character study game, it's an action title, and thus the gameplay is of key 'make or break' importance to the package here. In that style that Platinum Games know so well, Metal Gear Rising is formed to be a typical Devil May Cry-style hack'n'slash game with battle zones, missions and boss fights at the end of every level. But there's a gimmick too. Back in this game's previous iteration (known just as 'Metal Gear Solid: Rising') the stand out feature was the ability to enter a special slow-motion 'blade mode' in which you could slash in any direction you so choose and cut something in any way you want. This carries over to the Revengence version of the game with added visual flair and a handy counter which announces how many pieces you've cut your assailant into. Oh and when I say 'cut any way you want', I am indeed talking about people. And Melons if you want. But the draw is people. So it's fair to say this is one extremely violent and bloody game.

And yet I wouldn't call it gory. Aside from one example right at the end, all the organs stay inside the neat human chunks you cut up, making this more of an cartoon-style anime blood fest, rather than a squelching gut-spewing massacre with actually disturbing carnage going on. At the heart of these games you're supposed to have a fun time, and enjoy cutting through things, so this fictionalised approach to ultra-violence does help keep the tone of everything up and the adrenaline pumping rather than leaking out of your body in cold sweats as you contemplate the virtual warcrime you've just performed. That sort of introspection needs to be reserved until the story bears it down upon you for key-character-arc-moment effect. Only be horrified at the cue card please.

The actual fighting itself, however, just feels so good. Raiden has your light attack, heavy attack two button spread with a bevy of cool combos spread between a mixture of those presses, a speedy agility to all of his actions which encourages players to whip around the battlefield at top speed and overwhelm their enemies and a super intuitive parry system where all you need to do is identify an attack coming your way, push the analogue towards the attacker and hit the attack button just before the attack connects; instant cool parry move. (And it's very important for that parry to be so intuitive and easy to pull off, because it becomes integral to the flow of the boss fights.) My only gripes are Raiden's lack of aerial options and substantial juggling, and his dodge move which needs to be unlocked and activated at the start of the second level of the game. Woe be on you if you buy it without realising that you needed to activate it too, otherwise you'll do what I did on my first playthrough and suffer throughout the entire game without realising there's a dodge button. (But I did beat it. Don't even ask me how I took down Armstrong without a dodge; I don't know.)

We're all Sons of the Patriots now! 

The story of MGR picks up after the events of 'Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots' now that the Patriots legacy have been destroyed and the world is carrying on with it's war business as usual. Okay, I guess things aren't as bad as they were under the Patriots, but it's very clear that the world they built hasn't just disappeared overnight. Raiden stars in a tale that delves into the aftermath of this world shift and, in typical Kojima fashion, delves into the psychology of those who believe in extremism for the good of their own ends. The difference between this and usual MGS games, is that at it's heart Metal Gear Rising is an action slasher game, which means the story is relegated to tiny cutscenes here and there rather than full hour long speeches. Of course, a 'tiny' cutscene by Kojima standards is pretty much the industry standard length- so you're still getting a total full narrative playing out before you, just with the involved characterisation of a normal Metal Gear to spruce things up. 

The first time I played through I'll admit to having absolutely no idea what was going on or what the game was about, and I still had a total blast. Now I can see that the whole game was following the set-up of a conspiracy to cause an international incident in order to change the world precedent, a purpose neatly embodied in the names of the various co-conspirators who are identified as 'The Winds of Change'. That's literal, by the way. You have one boss called Mistral, the southern French wind from over the alps, another entitled Minuano (Aka Jetstream Sam), a cold wind that blows over the Rio Grande, and then there's Monsoon, who's pretty self explanatory. Of course each one of these characters has their own world views and goals which they're more than happy to chat about before your deathly duel, once more highlighting the levels of detail and love that always goes into scripts like these from Kojima. He never does a half hearted job, does he?

Of course, at it's heart the purpose of the narrative on a grandscale is to have Raiden confront his upbringing as a child soldier and question if the influence that has had on him as an adult made him a good person. There's no real consensus and Kojima is far too smart to land on one definitive decided for the audience, but instead we're treated to a buffet of ideologies and world views that assault our sponge, Raiden, until one manages to worm it's way past their moral split and lay seed, even whilst they've duelling under the setting sun. Characters like Sunny retain their faith in Raiden being a hero, however those lingering final few post-credits scenes paint a delightfully ambiguous picture for whatever could be next in our platinum kid's adventure. Really solid character work here, similar to how RGG Studio built up the iconic image of Kiryu Kazama through the narrative of Yakuza 0.

Nanomachines, Son!

But I can't feasibly give an entire review to Metal Gear Rising without dedicating a whole section just to the big bad, now can I? (It wouldn't be right.) So can we just put our hands together for MGR, the game that managed to take something as boring sounding as 'a US Senator in a suit was the man behind it all', and turn that premise into one of the most iconic villains of the entire genre. Senator Armstrong is a confidant, totally self-absorbed, larger than life character bubbling with so much glee and anger that you can genuinely see this man being the cult-like head of the extremist cell he created. There's this utter unshakeable belief behind his ideals that's just infectious, even when the 'dream' he's laying out to you is, in stark reality, that of a brutalist hellhole. In his dream and performance alone this character is unforgettable and the internet has memed about him endlessly, but he can back up his grand talk too.

"Don't F*** with this Senator" as the iconic line goes; because our man has the brawn and technology to stand up as a human tank all on his own! We get to see our protagonist, who up until now has been able to hold himself to a decent degree against the various deathly robotic terror's that have come his way, get tossed around like an American football, literally. The physical aspect of their one-on-one cutscene is just as entertaining as their dialogue, as they have what amounts to a political debate whilst tearing into each other in hyper-silly violent action. (Armstrong even gets an flurry barrage in on Raiden, Star Platinum style.) All of this legendary scene is only made sweeter with Raiden's final declaration, a summation of his moral dilemma summed up in a handful of lines that would be cheesy coming out of anyone else's mouth. "ARMSTRONG! I said my sword was a tool of Justice. Not used for anger. Not used for Vengeance. But now I'm not so sure. And besides, this isn't my Sword!" How do you say lines like that and make them badass? 'Quinton Flynn' is how.

The Winds of Change

The bosses of MGR are really the secret ingredient that keep this relatively lean hacker engaging from start to finish. The enemy compositions throughout the levels are fun, although I personally think it starts to feel like every enemy is a miniboss by the late game, (and so can be more frustrating than fun at times) but the bosses form the real set-piece moments of this experience and that's because they are just wild. You know this game means business when the boss of the prologue is a Metal Gear Ray! That giant aquatic weapon platform gets itself absolutely torn to sheds by Raiden, and from there the pace doesn't slow down. Mistral's fight is somewhat disturbing (What, with all the synthetic-armed dwarf geckos) but feels like a very traditional arena battle with straightforward gimmicks, Monsoon's is disorienting, bizarre, and has brief flashes of an endurance bout during his smoke bomb barrage, Sundowner is all-precision to a frankly annoying degree, Sam is a quintessential samurai-meets-samurai no tricks death battle, and Armstrong... Well, he's a special level of explosive. All of these people are personable enough to be enjoyable outside of the gameplay, and versatile enough to be challenging and memorable inside of the gameplay. This here is the best of both worlds.

And for me, I think a huge part of that comes down to the music tracks cleverly weaved in to tell the story whilst pumping the adrenaline. Stains of Time and the only thing I know for real seem like your stereotypical head-bangers, but they're all written to be sang from the perspective of the boss in question, so that when you get to the lyrics (which for some fights are dynamic depending on the progression of the battle) there's an extra little shade of understanding imbued relating to their mindset. Even if it's subliminally imparted. This comes to it's head, obviously, in the incredible final fight with the song It has to be this way, in which the team managed to circumvent the typically trite 'we're the same, you and I' trope by having the song say it instead. Using song lyrics to compliment the story- man that's going to get extra marks from me and you know it.  

Clever dog

Fans were lucky enough to receive two small DLC campaigns to compliment this package before the game was shelved by Platinum, and they both feature different characters with their own movesets that feel different but are similar enough for you to be able to ease into them without having to go through endless basic tutorials. (Although such tutorials are an option if you prefer.) Blade Wolf's campaign takes a different approach to the main game, having a mission and boss that caters to the stealthy approach more than direct carnage most of the time. (With a rather creative sneaking-minigame crafted into the boss' attack pattern.) Jetstream Sam's mission is much more traditional to Raiden's battle-orgy, to the point where Sam doesn't even have a stealth takedown move. I see Sam's mission more as a gauntlet of tough enemies crowned with three tough boss fights, even though each are recycled from the main game unlike Wolf's one unique boss. There's not much of a story to either of these two DLCs, but the different-enough gameplay warrants their existence and makes their short playtime stand out.

Summary

Metal Gear Rising Revengence is the Metal Gear Hack'n'Slash game that we never deserved, but I am so glad that we got it anyway. With great slashing gameplay, a free-cutting gimmick which is still impressive and unique all these years later and a stellar cast of villains to slice through during this story; this package is already solid enough. But throw in the somewhat intelligent character work with the protagonist, the typically solid Kojima writing for each boss and the subtly clever music tracks in the mix and this game become nothing short of legendary. Some have found it's rather short length to be an issue, but with the replay value here I think the lean narrative is totally reasonable and fine for no other reason than so that the game doesn't out-stay it's welcome; it's hard to note any significant blunder this hack'n'slash game is guilty of. Seeing if this game lived up to my memory only reinforced this title as one of the best of it's genre, easily worthy of a A Grade in my rating scale. Oh, and I recommend it to literally everyone, because of course I do. Just bear in mind that this is a violent and bloody game, and enjoy an incredibly exhilarating adventure that probably ranks as Metal Gear's most accessible entry. Now if only the stars would align for a sequel somewhere along the line, because our beleaguered industry really needs it around about now. "A little Revengence can do the gaming economy good, Trust me!"

Microsoft captured an Activision!

 It's detail were added to it's Pokedex

Okay so I'm going to take a little break from my regularly scheduled blog series to ask the obvious question I think we're all wondering: What the hell just happened? I mean seriously; Activision just folded it's cards under Microsoft for a little shy of $70 billion? (Well actually it's quite a lot shy, $1.3 billion shy to be exact, but you get what I mean.) What does this mean, how does this shape the gameplan of this industry and how many consolidations are going to go through before we start ringing the 'monopoly' alarm? I mean it's always been clear that Microsoft has the kind of 'buy your house just to burn it down' kind of money, but they've never exercised it in the video game landscape like this before. It's as though someone just diverted the annual budget meant for 2022's pharmaceutical research and funnelled it into this buy. Oh wait, I just thought of something- if this has been bubbling up in the background for all this time then how does that frame the recent troubles Activision is going through? There's just so many questions to go over and nowhere near enough answers to stop us chewing our fingers to nubs in anticipation; so let's get started with some educated speculation just as we are so eager to do on this funny little thing we call the Internet.

Firstly, what does this mean for the landscape? Well I think it's pretty clear that lines are being drawn in the sand opposite Sony for these 'console wars' that everyone is always going on about. Previously it's always seemed like Sony has had the upperhand whilst Microsoft has been slowly building up it's own bevy of exclusives, but this is certainly a big move to tip the balance. Before Sony only just conceded and started allowing it's exclusives on the PC, (albeit, one at a time) so I no longer really have a horse in this race; but it's still fascinating to watch how these companies seem to be bringing in studios of differing specialties not so much to compete but to coincide with their bitter competition. Sony covets the great AAA single player developers, whilst Activision is an online-centric publisher through and through, kind of making it seem like Xbox is saying "We've got competitive multiplayer all to our selves; you can have the high quality singleplayer award winners." As though that's a balance which is going to hold.

Lord can imagine the utter shock that all those Call of Duty fans are going to be in when they roll up later this year to the Modern Warfare 2 launch (or re-launch, depending on how you look at it) eager to get that new release on their PS5 only to be slapped across the face with a cold fish. More and more it's becoming far too complicated to be a console gamer anymore, with these petty politics and exclusivity lines ramping up the inconvenience for everyone. And yeah, maybe Microsoft will allow the next couple of Call of Duty's to be cross platform, considering PS5 development is probably already started on them and the contracts have been written up, but you have to be crazy if you think Xbox is going to foot the bill for a big-selling Playstation game forever. That's a rug destined to be pulled and the chaos it will cause once it does is going to be amusing, if nothing else.

As for whether or not this brings Microsoft dangerously close to a gaming monopoly; I think we're certainly getting there. With Obsidian, Bethesda and Activision now dancing to the beat of Microsoft's drum, it feels like we're only a couple of years away from the Ubisoft acquisition, maybe Square Enix, or heck, why not Nintendo themselves seeing as how this asking price crosses their entire evaluation- it seems the only companies out of their reach are the huge mobile developers now. The gaming world shrank considerably with this news and I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible for a AAA studio not to be swallowed up by the big two in the future. And is this even going to healthy in the long run? How are all of these companies being managed under Microsoft's umbrella going to thrive when having to fight for attention and support against now giants subsidiaries also in the stable? Somehow, someway; this feels like a ticking time bomb of a business practice.

But moving away from the bigger picture for a moment; what does this mean for Activision and everything currently under them? I wonder if Battle.net, quite the annoying extra little launcher (although one with a lot of history to it) will become redundant now that Microsoft is in the picture? Or at the very least those Battle.net games not yet on the Microsoft store might see their impending ports soon. Microsoft could see it's stores and severs met with such profitable and promising franchises like Star Craft, Warcraft, Diablo and Overwa- okay, I can't say that last one with a straight face. We all know that Overwatch in 2022 exists purely as fuel for talented 3D modellers to debase over on Rule 34. That series is so dead that the upcoming Overwatch E-sports season is going to be played on an unfinished build of Overwatch 2, just to try and generate some remote interest from those who've forgotten the series completely. But sure... if Microsoft wants they can make Master Chief stickers for that game. (I can't wait.)

There's also the elephant dangling in the room here; and that's how Bobby Kotick and his whole scandal fits into this? Suddenly that ominous Phil Spencer email about 'evaluating their relationship with Activision' rings with a lot more power, even if it was sent internally. (No one expects internal emails not to get leaked nowadays anyway; it still feels like a polite threat.) If Bobby's mismanagement alone really did put $68 billion in potential jeopardy, it's an absolute wonder how the guy wasn't forcibly ejected from the company through cinderblock out the window! I'm serious; that's the sort of money that Shareholders start hiring actual hitmen over, how the heck is that guy still in the fold? And what does it mean for Microsoft's credibility that they went ahead and shook hands with Activision even with Bobby's stink still on it? I mean sure, Xbox are probably going to immediately push him out on his ass, but it just seems like a strange order of events.

What about something that won't change? How about the ingrained money hungry leeching hooks shoved into every orifice of this franchise to bite out at anyone curious enough to poke a limb in? Real industry experts claim that before every Activision game had to be a guaranteed billion dollar generator, which is what limited small scale innovation in the games they put out; they seem to think that now is going to change under Xbox and perhaps they are right, although I suspect it will be in a minute manner. Maybe Activision will publish an indie here and there for the free publicity, but I don't think for a second that Activision are going to suddenly tone down their pan-handling just because they have a big studio keeping them afloat. Guess what: Activision weren't exactly paupers before their $70 billion cash injection; how do you possibly think their way of nickel and diming (successfully) is going to shift in this new reality? Because I suspect the absolute bare minimum. 

Of course, all this is still in the announcement phase and theoretically anything can happen before the papers get signed. You know, if you happen to have a spare $69 billion lying around to come snipe this deal. (I actually don't know how such a deal would go down or if that's even possible; but man would it be funny if Elon Musk decided he wanted to go into game-making suddenly!) But even in the 'best case' scenario where everything goes through, Activision immediately starts welcoming smaller internal projects and Microsoft- i dunno- vows never to abuse their bubbling monopoly or something; Bobby Kotick is still looking at a comfortable ride out of his own office window thanks to the Golden parachute worth 293 million that he's got tucked away. Meaning that there is a point where you are so much of an arse that you can no longer experience failure in anyway. Karmic justice is a joke, free will is a myth; we're all pawns, controlled by something greater. Memes. The DNA of the soul.

Halo 4: Review

 Promise me you'll figure out which one of us is the machine.

And so do we reach the end of our long journey into the depths of Halo gaming; at least until 343 manage to squirrel off enough free time to start porting 'Halo 5: Guardians.' And by that time I'll probably have run out of excuses not to just go ahead and play 'Halo Infinite' and after that I might just be up to date with the franchise! Wow have I come a long way. In the space of around seventeen days I've played through the entire Halo series and become very intimate with Master Chief's journey, his triumphs, his near failures and now, finally, I've touched on his dark period. Or rather, Halo as a whole's dark period. I'll be honest; I knew going into this that there was considerable general disdain towards Halo 5 and so part of me was glad the games in this Master Chief Collection wouldn't stretch that far just yet. What I didn't know, but would soon find out first hand, is that many of those issues stemmed from the very first Halo to be manned solely by 343 Industries; Halo 4. As such, I want in with high hopes for a fresh take on the series; and what I got was definitely fresh... from a certain point of view.

I like to try and form my own opinions when I come across a game, which is why I can look past things like the ingrained general dislike towards Death Stranding to find a genuinely special experience that I resonated with there, or through the unconditional love for the original Halo games to conclude that Halo 3 didn't quite live up to it's direct predecessor in my opinion. I intentionally avoided reading opinions and pieces about Halo 4 and assumed it was just going to be a more modern take on the franchise that would push things one step further than Reach did, given that this was a newer game. So in that sense I hope you can understand that what you're seeing here actually is my own opinion and not words implanted in my mouth from diehards of the franchise. I'm not a diehard, I'm hardly 3 weeks into my own discovery of these games. Take that to heart as you read through my review, and bare in mind I won't hold back on spoilers because they are important to discussing a lot of my feelings on this entry in particular, and jump to the summary if you don't want details but still wish to know my overall take on the game and grade.

Gameplay

The clear and obvious pursuit of 'modernisation' lies at the heart of many of the design decisions that went into Halo 4, and whilst they may have been criticised over the years as 'attempts to copy Call of Duty', I think a desire to be as accessible-as-the-competitor-shooters was the real driving intention here. For one, this is a game that smothers you in waypoints the way any other shooter would, distinctly different to the way that Halo has, up until now, been a series with notably few waypoints which instead relied on it's general level design to point you where to go unless the objective is really out of the way. (Which has lead to the occasional moment of being utterly lost on some more sprawling levels in the past.) Also new are 'gameplay cinematics' in which something special will happen when you press a Quick Time Event button. There aren't too many of these in Halo 4, but in the places they do appear, it's just as lacking in impact as this practise has often been criticised for. (The final boss is three QTE's away from death; talk about anti-climatic) And then there is the sprinting.

Fans of the Halo games will tear each other's throats out over opinions regarding whether sprinting should be in the series; or rather whether it should be as accessible as it is here. In Halo Reach you could pick up a sprinting power-up, but that would lock you off from the other potential powerups the game had to offer, making it a toss up. And that implementation sort of made sense when you consider the fact that you're piloting a heavy Spartan suit of armour, the light-jog movement of typical Halo play conveys a little bit of that weight. In Halo 4 you can just sprint, whenever you want and with whatever other powerup you want, and I'm fine with it. It brings the movement suite of this FPS in line with other modern FPS', and whilst there is the matter of narrative inconsistencies it's mere presence raises, I don't think it ruins the feeling of the game at all. If anything it added an extra movement tool for dealing with more deadly enemies such as Hunters. Others may disagree that the franchise was free without running, but I don't think the spirit of the series was disgraced in anyway. Topic resolved? Good, let's move onto the weapons.

Halo 4 introduced a whole suite of new weapons, including reworks to all the existing ones, but it's here where some of my problems start. First of all, there's a big continuity error in that these new models of USMC guns appear in the first level despite that mission being set in The Forward Unto Dawn ship-half which has been floating abandoned in space for the past four years; it shouldn't have these new models stocked. Secondly, 343 went out and recorded real gun sounds to try and change up the suite of weapon noises in the game, and in doing so made every single gun sound weaker. Let this be a lesson that realism doesn't equal quality; because so many weapons have had their 'punch' totally yanked out of the all-important sound design that it feels a bit criminal, too many classic weapons flounder whilst lacking that all important satisfaction factor. (There's nothing wrong with sprucing up sounds in the editing bay, come on guys!) At least the new SAW sounds good and the shotgun actually works as something worth a damn again. I haven't liked the shotgun this much since 'Combat Evolved'.

And now we come to the elephant in the room, the one thing we have to talk about when mentioning Halo 4's gameplay; the enemies. The Covenant return, for a reason hardly even mentioned in the entire main campaign, which is welcome even if they didn't bring their Brutes. This Covenant are lighter dressed than the old guard, which might explain why they're generally so much easier to take down, and the Sniper Jackals now sport a helpful red glow to their rangefinders so you can spot them when they're bearing down on you. Grunts still can't survive a headshot (Reach's Grunts are laughing somewhere) and Elites felt much rarer and didn't appear to ever show up in groups like they once did. But the Covenant are such a diverse and fun enemy, it's never not-fun to go up against them, so even when they're not exactly at their toughest I still like stomping their face in. Oh, and their new guns are alright additions, nothing crazy. (I much prefer the new Human gun; the SAW.) But those aren't the enemies we need to talk about. No, it's the Prometheans.

A brand new race added to the lore for this game, or rather an expansion upon the Forerunner guardians that 343 liked to deploy in the original trilogy; the Prometheans are a synthetic race with their own new design and arsenal of weapons, taking on the 'third species' slot from the, presumably-now-extinct, Flood. They are awful. In every way. Their visual design sports this shard-like cobbled together look that is indictive of other 'vaguely advanced alien races' in fiction, and it doesn't look good. It makes shape edges indistinct and ensures that enemies, weapons and the environment (all of which sport this design theme to some degree) meld into one gloop. Their 'white with glowing orange' colour scheme doesn't excite the palette of the game at all, and each level sporting their architecture made me want to fall to sleep just from looking at the uniform chaos of their form. But it gets worse.

The enemies themselves are a nightmare and nowhere near as fun to fight as the Covenant, or even Halo 3's Flood. (I consider Halo 3's Flood the most frustrating out of their iterations. CE's were my favourite to fight.) The dog-like crawlers shoot endlessly out of their head-turrets, climb walls and come in packs of 8 of more. Their heads are instakills, but their bodies are bullet sponges, meaning that whenever you lack a precision weapon you're in for the fight of the week. Knights are beetle like forts that act totally unreactive to any form of player interaction aside from when their shields breaking and the moment they die. They eat bullets like no-one's business, teleport when they're in trouble (and can hang around in non-spawn space just to screw with your rhythm) and can create a drone robot which will respawn them if you don't break them too. And they immediately disintegrate on death, meaning you can't even have fun in piling corpses on the floor.

But at least you get their weapons! Only they all suck too. They have that shard design thing going on making them all indistinct, they sound weak when shooting, don't appear to have anything new in function to introduce to the franchise and for some inane reason a few of them have this really long 'forming' animation every time you pick them up. I assume it's meant for the first time you find them to show how 'new' and 'different' they are, but for certain weapons the animation plays everytime and gets old pretty-much instantaneously. All and all, I hated fighting these annoying, ugly designed, and boring enemies and their prominence in Halo 4, to the point where they even fight alongside the Covenant a lot of the time, makes me actually not want to play through a single mission of Halo 4 again. So that's not a good start considering I haven't even touched on the narrative yet.

Narrative

This part is the kicker, because I had no idea what this game's story held for me and so was just as caught off guard as most fans likely were when this sequel took the Master Chief trilogy and veered far off-course. So far, it fact, that it felt like the writers wanted to make their own franchise and got lumped with a Halo sequel, and so they decided to just try and morph Halo into the Science Fantasy story they wanted to write instead. All of it puts me in this strange position where, by itself, the story that I experienced was a fairly competent tale that neatly introduced a new (admittedly rather lame) enemy with a new style of threat and resolved it, but when placed against the frame of the series it's a part of, it all comes across as an intensely short-sighted and ill-fitting story that fights in poorly with it's integer peers. Even for someone who didn't spend hours reading the volumes of, now pretty much essential, reading material that plagues this franchise; I could tell something was plainly wrong with Halo 4.

The problems really start with the Forerunners coming into the story, this time in the flesh through this enigmatic megalomaniac called the Didact who is trying to- what again? He wants to... umm... use the Composer to turn humanity into Promethean robot constructs in order to... oppose the Flood? Which is, by all intents and purposes, currently deceased? But- that can't be right, he seems to just want to microwave humans in revenge for the accidental war they were involved in 10,000 years ago. Wait, 10,000 years? I thought this game was set in 2500... dammit, did they bring out another book of essential lore? Seems it doesn't matter who's running the show, Bungie or 343, basic storytelling techniques elude them. (Okay, to be fair they do actually give a tiny rundown, but it was so barren that I had to look up a book synopsis online to learn that there was a species of space-faring proto-humans 10,000 years ago who were forcibly devolved by the Forerunners in retaliation for the war.)

All this comes to muddy a fairly straightforward premise that the game already had; Cortana has been in service too long and is undergoing a degenerative AI process known as 'Rampancy', so you need to find your way back to humanity in order to have a chance to save her. Throw in an inexplicable new breed of Covenant in the way and you have a basic kicking off point for a story. But then this Didact gets involved and suddenly the fate of the universe is in the balance and we just sort of forget about the Cortana thing until it becomes too bad to help. I'm not opposed to this style of story, where new stakes slide in to trump the initial ones, but it always creates this uneven feeling to the narrative progression which brings me back to the waviness of Combat Evolved at times. But the biggest issue with the narrative is pretty obvious; it's the Librarian.

Not long after the game settles into it's real plot are we treated to some quick series-changing exposition being shoved down our throat by a godlike Forerunner digital-echo-thing called 'The Librarian', during which we are given a decidedly questionable revelation. This Composer has power over all people except for Master Chief- why? Because the Librarian, presumably when humanity was sent to the stone age, imbued genetic markers in humans to guide the evolutionary process through multiple reiterations until he would be born. Yes, 343 turned Master Chief into the chosen one. Ew. Yes, they would try and argue it's a 'deconstruction' of the chosen one trope, because there were more than one 'chosen one's throughout the history of this plan, but a deconstruction typically demands exploration, and even if there were some sort of clever insight here, none of that distracts from the obvious fact: this doesn't really fit in a Halo game.

Now let me just say that I have no problem with the 'Chosen One' trope, nor tropes in general; I think they become repeated because they are cool ideas and building upon them allows new people with new ideas to glean new shades from them. But they belong in a certain type of story. Science Fantasy stories. Your Dune, your Star Wars, series' of that ilk. Halo tried to give us a Science Fiction lite world, with military dogmatism and interstellar warfare, throwing a messianic prophet-figure in there (even though it thankfully hasn't been too heavy headed on the symbolism so far) suddenly reframes everything the series has done up until now and trivialises it. Think- really think about the events that have led up to Halo 4; do they matter now that Chief has been destined to this? 343 bent over backwards to assure us that "of course they do, this isn't a prophecy!", but it is oh-so hard to have your cake and eat it. The mere introduction of determinism in this hazy god-like framing device cuts through all the excuses and faux-deconstructionism the writers have erected in defence, and turns this story into something it wasn't before; a universe where the everything revolves around Master Chief.

Now the Chief has always been important, a symbol of the strength, perseverance, and of course 'luck', of humanity; but this revelations alters that. Instead of being a person made special because of the lengths he goes to, the actions he does and the achievements he earns, now he's special just because of who he is. Because some space goddess ten thousands years ago rolled some dice and said "This one- this is the saviour!" In fact, our Librarian even implies that the technological tools that you take advantage of, your armour and the AI Cortana, were also preplanned by these Forerunners, so suddenly all of human knowledge no longer belongs to it. In a way, it's almost worse that the series wasn't brave enough to commit fully to this concept, because if they did then perhaps there would be space to explore shades of the concept of 'fate' and 'free will', and explore if all the trials of Humanity, the wars, the suffering, the Covenant, were necessary evils too. You know, do the stuff a 'deconstruction' would actually do. But instead we have this limp half-hearted jab at the idea, aimed to try and take ahold of the series narrative, and not really amounting to much of anything. I mean, what does Chief really do with his 'destiny' in this game? He jams a grenade in some dude's chest in a bad quick-time-event and watches him fall off a bridge; truly the sort of stuff that needed several thousands of years of genetic guiding to achieve!

Ultimately, it feels wrong, short sighted, and fangless of a narrative turn. As a result, what was an alright campaign with a villain that was boring, but at least new; becomes overshadowed with this ugly time-bomb of a plot point, ticking away in the back of your head to infect just about everything else about the series. Oh I want to play ODST, but the Chief isn't in it and now that this universe revolves around him, I guess that game's whole narrative isn't really important anymore. Noble Team died on Reach, but their sacrifice is nowhere near as important as Master Chief's life, so I guess it's weird to care about them anymore. It's a frighteningly obvious consequence for this sort of story twist, but one which Halo 4's writers I guess didn't see or just didn't care about. The more I pondered it, the more crappy this little twist felt, and considering my only relief from thinking about the story was going up against those bloody Prometheans; it's fair to say I didn't have the best time whilst playing Halo 4.

Characters

Finally, a section that I can mark as a genuine bright spot; because in character I actually found Master Chief and Cortana to be at their best yet. Both have considerably more lines than they did in previous games, and both get to become a little more fleshed out because of it; even if the whole 'love story' aspect between the two of them does veer dangerously close to a doomed romance at some points. (Which felt like something this series was not going to do previously. Made me a tad uncomfortable.) Cortana's decent into rampancy is startling, and hearing genuine fear come out the vocal synthesisers of our typically cocky AI co-pilot, rings with a vulnerability I didn't even feel when rescuing her from The Gravemind and whatever he was doing to her. (Seriously, did the Gravemind take a coding course? How could that organic fungal growth mess with the mind of an AI?) The Chief has a harder edge to him as well, dedicating everything to protecting his partner, even going so far as to stand up to a superior officer, thus clearly marking the line between morality and duty which had never even been tested before. I genuinely think this might be our protagonists' best characterisation yet. Oh and Cortana apparently dies for the second time in this franchise, but I've read the box description for Infinite, so it's safe to say it had absolutely no impact on me. (The consequence of reviving the dead in future entries; you ruin your previous emotional highlights.)

We also meet the crew of the Infinity as secondary characters, which gives us Sarah Palmer, another Spartan for the first time in forever, but she isn't around too much, Captain Del Rio, who's a typical cranky 'superior officer' trope that exists to be a wall for the heroes to butt up against and Lasky, the plucky young fellow who has our back when nobody else does. Kinda. They were mostly generic and under explored, I literally had to look up the kids name because I forgot him so badly. Then we have our villain, The Didact, and I honestly don't even know what he wanted. I mean I know he wanted the Composer so that he could use it on Humanity- but why? I know he considered Humanity a threat and didn't want the 'mantle' of protecting the universe to be passed onto them- but why use the Composer to turn them into dust? The Flood aren't a problem, so this can't be about transforming Humanity to fight that virus. Why not just set off a Halo? Surely a Forerunner can do that, right? Maybe there's some 5-part book series that goes heavy into every single last note of Mr Didact's goals; but I needed to know them during the game, because he's dead now so I don't care anymore.  

Level Design

As far as raw level design goes, divorcing the god awful Prometheans who show up in a lot of them, I think the levels were very fun and diverse, ranging in both visuals and objective just like I want from my Halo games. But I didn't quite feel the spark of creative diversity from each level like I did from Reach. Even in their raw design, all the Promethean levels just felt the same. (Except for the special Gondola ride section of course! Halo 2 called: it wants it's level back.) Still I found highlights in the level 'Reclaimer' (that Mammoth section is a literal dream set-up for me, I adore the moving-base-of-operations idea and wanted more.) The Broadsword battle section of Midnight was wild and I simply loved all of it's hectic chaos. And pretty much any fight against the Covenant was okay. Just okay. No miniboss fights to speak of, but then Halo Reach didn't have any either so I'm not exactly running thirsty here; I'm used to Halo 2 and 3 being the exceptions.

But then there are the Promethean levels; and you can likely already tell that I hate them. Numerous sections of enemy spam, aesthetically bland locales and typically no substantial variation in environment. They hardly even played around with verticality at all for those sections. (Unless you count the way the Crawler-dogs would jump on the wall just to be annoying.) Even Covenant filled-Promethean levels felt more annoying to fight through, just by merit of the wide-open bland-but-busy platforms they were all hanging around on, doing nothing on. If I could exorcise all Promethean content from this Halo game, we might have a 'Halo 3 level' contender on our hands here- as it exists now though- the chaff brings the whole package down.

A little bit on Spartan Ops

Yes, this game has a secondary campaign in the co-op focused Spartan Ops mode which 343 had big intentions for! These little mission packs were released in episodes and chapters, with each episode being fronted by a meaty well-made animated movie starring characters like Sarah Palmer, Lasky and even Dr Halsey! (Remember her from the introduction? She's important again!) Whatsmore, this mode actually explained who these new Covenant are and where they came from; doing the main game's job for it. If only the gameplay had any effort put into it. It's just a shooting arena where the game throws stupid amounts of enemies at you with no fail state. If you die, you just respawn. Honestly, this might make a decent shooting gallery mode, if it wasn't for the fact that the damned Prometheans infect this mode with their stink too. I couldn't bring myself to stick it out, nor watch the hour worth of professional-grade cutscenes supplied with the package. 343 discontinued the mode after season 1 and scrapped a reported year's worth of content and lead-in footage to Halo 5. Wise move in my eyes; this package was not the mode they wanted it to be. (Cool idea for a semi-live service system though. I hope they don't scrap that concept forever more.)

Summary

Mechanically Halo 4 is on par with the best of the series yet, and it's character writing honestly surpasses previous games soundly and there's a couple of stand-out missions. Too bad everything else is a bit of a mess. The substance of the story veers from decent to awful, the new third faction of 'The Prometheans' are designed terribly, not fun to fight, and take up far too much of the attention for this game and the main villain is pretty boring. I came into this game wanting, and somewhat expecting, it to be the roaring embarkment of a brand new Halo journey, and what I got was sort of a disappointment after all the serious powerhouse games I just played through. Were it just about one of these problems I mentioned, or maybe even two, I would be able to look past it; but all three and I seriously don't know if I want to ever play this game again. (At least not by myself.) I want to give it a passing grade because the shooting is good, but when even the Covenant feel lacklustre because more effort went into the Prometheans, that effort into nailing the shooting doesn't really have a purpose, does it? The range of problems on display, offset by the competence behind a lot of the backbone of the systems leaves me in the peculiar position where I'm giving this game a C- Grade, which the game just ekes out because I liked the character work, even if the wider story it happened in was poor. Honestly, I can't really recommend this as a Halo game, unless you have friends to play with an simply don't care about the story whatsoever. I did not enjoy myself and if people are saying that 'Halo 5: Guardians' is worse than this- than maybe it's a good thing that 343 are dragging their heels about adapting that one for the Master Chief Collection.

Be that as it may, this marks the end of my Halo journey for the immediate; maybe to be picked up again if Halo 5 ever becomes playable on the PC. And I must say that despite the disappointing latest entry, I found this to be an absolute blast of a franchise to play my way through and totally fell in love with the core pieces of these games. The Covenant might go down as some of my favourite FPS enemies ever, for their variety and personality, and I'm just itching to go mod some of those cool traditional Halo weapons into one of my mainstay games like Fallout, and go shoot up the Commonwealth. I was surprised by the sparse nature of one of gaming's longest lasting love stories, but I suppose when Cortana and Master Chief are two figures you've watched grow together across the space of over two decades, the mind crosses the emotional shortcomings in the storytelling all by itself. It's fair to say that this collection has scored the series a new fan, and I'm actually so invested I might go to pick up Halo Wars someday and see what those strategy games are about. Or maybe... maybe it's about time I break my fast and see what Destiny 2 is up to; see the series that Bungie iced the Chief for... Hmm, we'll have to see if I'm anywhere close to forgiving Bungie yet, and currently I'm not so sure... thank you for reading along with my little journey and I hope my reviews have helped guide you on your own journey to discovering this classic gaming franchise. See you again for this Halo review series in maybe never, depending on that PC port.