Topic: Games you've recently beat

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Note: I liked the use of screenshots in one of @Thrillho 's reviews recently, so I was inspired to incorporate them into my own when possible. Also trying for a more organized and less scattershot approach.

Most of this was written on a cellphone while I was on vacation (no access to PC and limited access to dead trees), so please excuse me if the writing seems rough. I'll try to touch it up when posting, as I need something to do in-between washing the insane amounts of laundry we came back with!

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark + DLC chapter

WHAT IS IT?
A horror game by developer Experience Inc. where you play as a cursed amnesiac (the curse manifests itself as a mark on the host's body that steals their memories before killing them) who, under the guidance of a mysterious talking doll named Mary, investigates paranormal mysteries and helps people confront the angry spirits and monsters that have also given them similar 'death marks.'

PLATFORM
Playstation Vita

LEVEL OF COMPLETION
Everything. Platinumed it.

GAMEPLAY
Similar to the horror game Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, it's a classic adventure game (exploration happens across static screens where you pixel hunt for items to collect, objects to manipulate, and puzzles to solve) with heavy visual novel elements (lots of dialogue and automated, dialogue-driven sequences). Additionally, you'll frequently be confronted with "live or die" scenarios, where a health meter of sorts called "Soul Power" will run down as you're confronted with something dangerous (usually a run in with a lesser spirit), and you have to choose between three or four ways to react. If you react properly (you often get hints on how to react to these sequences based on information you learned earlier in the chapter), you'll not lose health from your meter; wrong answers or actions will see dramatic reductions to your available health meter, and, if it reaches zero, you'll die, and to start over either from your last save (you can save almost anywhere, thankfully) or from the beginning of the live or die scenarios. You'll find talismans hidden in your environment that will boost your available health in each chapter, thankfully.

In an interesting twist, almost every chapter in the game features a boss battle against the primary spirit you're investigating (a different one each chapter), where you have to engage in certain combinations of actions or combine certain items at the right time to either destroy or save the spirit (saving the spirit involves engaging it with items from its past life as a human, almost always found while investigating haunted locations throughout the chapter, that force it to confront the emotions of anger and grief that inform its campaign of terror in the first place; as is usually the case in Japanese ghost stories, the intense karmic impact of human brutality and cruelty continues to manifest itself even after everyone involved is long dead).

You meet new "mark bearers" each chapter, and the game allows you to take one other person with you on your investigation. While this seems like a fluff feature at first, you quickly learn that certain partners have certain skill sets that are required for beating certain challenges in the game (for example, in one boss fight, you'll want to bring along someone who knows how to play the piano).

PRO:

• I love that, if you die in a "Live or Die" scenario or in a boss battle, you can restart from the beginning of the encounter right away. Great feature!
• It's pretty standard for a VN, but I continue to appreciate when a fast-forward button is included that allows me to rapidly skip previously seen dialogue when I replay sections of the game for trophies.

CON:

• Weirdly, in the menu screen, the game seems to assign a set of stats to each character, but these stats never seen to feature in the actual gameplay. It's just a strange bit of misleading design fluff.
• While I appreciate how little of the "rub every combination of items together with every object in your environment to find out how to progress" nonsense this game has, I do find the amount of environmental interactivity here to be extremely limited.
• Text changes color depending on whether the main character or someone else is speaking, but, without names on the textboxes or even character illustrations at many points, it can occasionally become confusing to ferret out who is saying what when three or more characters in a scene are talking together. Especially since this game has little to no voice acting. Not a huge issue, but little niggles like this eventually add up.
• There are a noticeably large number of typos in this game. The localization script job seems a bit sloppy in a number of ways, actually. Count the number of times characters use the phrase "up and [x]" during the game, for example ("up and left;" "up and lied;" etc.)

STORY/CHARACTERS
The game feels rushed to me. Each investigation flies by so quickly that the story never feels like it has time to really organically develop, and each chapter instead goes through the motions of shuffling you through a repetitive formula of sequences. It's a very rote form of storytelling.

The game shifts to an almost entirely new set of supporting characters with each new investigation, which makes it where we never get much time to spend with most of these people. Especially considering the investigations all take between 1.5 - 2 hours. Some of these characters are fun, but the constant turnover means we never really get attached to them.

This is remedied, weirdly, in the DLC chapter, which reunites most of the side characters introduced throughout the game to excellent effect. Actually, the DLC chapter is more developed story-wise and marginally more well-written, too.

ART/CHARACTER DESIGNS/MUSIC
One of the highlights of the game is the art design. Environments are suitably atmospheric and beautifully gothic. Character designs find some middle ground between traditional anime and Junji Ito, and it works well with the horror setting. The CGs that crop up throughout the game, while often creepy and disturbing, are often weirdly detailed, and just gorgeous to look at. Despite the clearly low budget presentation, it still manages to be a reasonably attractive game to look at.

The monsters and spirits in this game are often spectacularly grotesque, but the game does a good job of mostly keeping them off-screen until the climax of an investigation for maximum effect. It's handling of the material is effective

One thing to note is the light but noticeable eroguro vibe this game has. While the game doesn't really feature heavy amounts of what might be called "fanservice," and the designs of the female characters are fairly normal and modest, there is quite a bit of implied, referenced, and after-the-fact sexualized violence against women in this game. You'll see a lot of voluptuous corpses in this game in various states of undress. Sexual assault, while never seen or played for cheap drama, does become a plot point as well. Doesn't bother me, but some people might want to know about this before buying the game.

The music, while not terribly memorable, does its job of communicating the horror atmosphere effectively. Sound design is decent throughout: while it probably wasn't the intended effect, the spooky chime noise and text that slowly crawls across the screen when the game is trying to scare you with something really gave me the giggles. There's a certain cheesiness to the whole affair, but not everything can be Silent Hill. In general, fans of ghost stories will dig what this game has to offer.

CONCLUSION
While the game is saddled with pacing, translation, and QoL issues here and there, it was still, overall, a pleasant experience. One that was, unfortunately, over just a bit too quickly. The genre and art both resonate with me, so I had a good time. There's definite room for improvement, though, and I'm not sure I'd recommend someone pay full price for this.

VERDICT
6.5/10

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Marvel's Spider-Man

How much did I play? Got the Platinum Trophy and also completed the DLC.

In many ways Spider-Man is beholden to the usual tropes generally associated with open-world titles - from the mission structure, multitudinous side activities and collectibles, to even how the story unfolds. The map is gradually unlocked by activating police signals - Spider-Man's equivalent of the ubiquitous Ubisoft tower - and in each district an array of activities are vomited at the player. These same activities are repeated throughout the game ad nauseam. As an open-world game, Spider-Man is far from exceptional. So why did I enjoy it so much?

What foremost elevates proceedings is the elegant manner in which Spider-Man traverses the city. There's an almost tangible fluidity to each swing, jump and launch. Run up the side of a building, launch off the top and hurl Spider-Man into the air before grabbing a building with his web and swooping through on a full swing. It sounds complicated, but is largely operated with just the L2 and R2 buttons. It is this simplicity that is key to the enjoyment slinging round the city offers. In short, it's fast and an absolute joy. Unusually for an open world game and aided by a relatively compact map, I found I very rarely fast-travelled. Insomniac absolutely nailed the feel of Spider-Man.

Web-slinging traversal is joined by an equally flowing, tactile combat system. At its core it is a melee system, relying on punches and kicks and augmented by Spider-Man's unique abilities and web gadgets. To begin with Spider-Man's abilities are almost painfully limited, though over the course of the game more and more are unlocked, using either skill points or various "currency" tokens obtained from completing the large number of side activities. Combat is intensely satisfying when all of these gadgets are available and fully utilised in the field. Indeed, they will need to be, as when surrounded by a myriad of foes half the challenge is in crowd control. Pin enemies to walls, electrocute them, or even hurl them to the air in an anti-gravity field. Manifold combinations offer a surprising level of flexibility. Different challenges in side missions will yield extra XP or tokens, pushing the player to be more creative. Hilariously, although much is made of Spider-Man's non-lethal approach, a common challenge is to hurl enemies over the edge of skyscrapers, which I assume leads to their demise.

Spider-Man is most effective when attacking from the air - indeed he is slow and easily surrounded on the ground. To this end he can grab enemies with his web and pull them up to his level, before unleashing a combo and moving on to the next foe. After filling up a meter, there will also be access to a finisher move, which is best saved for more difficult enemies - the most irritating of which are late-game rocket boosting monstrosities.

Of course, Spider-Man wouldn't be Spider-Man without his spider sense, and here it allows him to anticipate an incoming attack or projectile, giving the player a short window of opportunity to dodge. One unlockable skill (yes, on a skill tree) upgrades this skill further to allow him to counter with a finishing move, or even return rockets to their sender. There's a separate meter to activate a "suit power" - a unique move or ability unlocked through buying different suits. One of my favourites unleashes a flurry of webs hitting everything in sight and pinning unfortunate victims to the nearest surface.

Later in the game, with difficult enemies and so much going on in the heat of combat, things can get a little hectic. There is a lot of button pressing involved, which made it a little tricky for me, even playing on easy.

Stealth is less important, though incredibly useful in certain story missions, or where there are a huge amount of enemies, or in the opening phase of crime warehouse gauntlets. Stealth is as equally satisfying as combat, particularly when crawling on ceilings and hoisting up and webbing enemies.

While Spider-Man is controlled for 99% of the game, there are a handful of story missions where the player is put the shoes of MJ or Miles Morales. These are stealth missions by default, as getting caught will lead to instant failure. Miles uses simple hacking gadgets to distract enemies, while MJ has to rely on knocking over suspiciously placed toolboxes. Neither are as compelling as when controlling Spider-Man and their missions are a touch repetitive.

Spider-Man's version of New York is rendered in exceptional detail. It's on a smaller scale than the real Manhattan, of course, and missing the northern tip of the island, but most major landmarks are there. To tie it into the wider comic book world (or MCU), the Avengers tower and Doctor Strange's Sanctum are also present.

The story hides no real surprises, particularly if you've seen the various films or read the comics, though it is exceptionally presented. Voice acting, led by the ever-youthful Yuri Lowenthal, is outstanding (bar one character, the horrendous "Screwball"). There's also plenty of set-up for the expected sequel, both in the main story and DLC. The story centres primarily on Mister Negative and later the "Sinister Six". Boss battles - from the opening with Kingpin to the end - are thrilling set-pieces and a highlight of the game.

Despite the repetition and severe case of "open world-itis" everything is held together by the exceptional world traversal and combat system. Topped off with excellent visuals and presentation, Spider-Man is a real treat that I thoroughly enjoyed playing. Insomniac have captured the almost intangible essence of Spider-Man, and that is worthy of some praise.