Dispatch

• Genre: Visual Novel? TV Show?/Strategy
• Spoiler Free Review: Some allusions to spoilers, but mostly indirect.
• Time Played: 6 hours
• Too Short/Long: It was solid, maybe even just a little too short. I would have liked to have seen a bit more filler content, and maybe even a couple more dispatching missions. Some felt a little long, and I feel putting a couple more shorter ones in between to make sure all the characters get a bit more attention really would have hit the sweet spot.
• Did I cry: I did tear up a bit.
• Soundtrack: Great soundtrack, already acquired. Has some great synthwave backgrounds and some great closing chapter tracks as well.
• Why I played: Dispatch got a lot of praise and while I haven't played tons of Telltale games, I know this one specifically was from people involved with The Wolf Among Us, which I did enjoy a lot.
• Jank: Similar to Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, it seemed like a couple occasions the selector was stuck and I had to just press other buttons to get things to "reset" so to speak. Also trying to select a mission when there are a dozen things on screen to select and you only have second to select them isn't the most intuitive. Both are games maybe most optimal on PC.
• Difficulty: There were times the challenges seemed pretty difficult, I failed a few hacking scenarios and wasn't necessarily able to save everyone every mission, but I didn't fail a mission and don't know if you can? I know you can turn off the ability to fail hacking if that's too hard - and it is, arguably the hardest part.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased with Dispatch. I probably liked it a good bit more than I thought I would. 
• Recommend to others: I definitely would, with the caveat that it's probably not for everyone. It can be a bit crude at times, and it feels like the obvious thing to say, but if you like stuff like The Boys or Invincible, this is right in line with them.
  

To elaborate on that, Dispatch is right in line with a more wholesome version of The Boys and Invincible. Both of those are crude, juvenile and cynical takes on subversive superheroes. Dispatch is basically the same thing but far less cynical. It know how to have a good time and let you enjoy the moment. The world that exists outside our story isn't inherently depressing and rotten. The heroes are "true heroes". Even their Super Man analog that is really just a Omni Man except what if he was dumb and not evil - at worse he considers doing bad things just because he's super depressed, a "take the whole world with me" type scenario but he more or less just says that as an offhanded comment rather than actually considering it... I think.

All that said, the majority of the cast aren't heroes. They're villains who have been given a second chance but aren't exactly having the best time of it. This is why Dispatch succeeds in still having a lot of the same abrasive and crude aspects you see in stuff like Invincible and the Boys, and yet somehow manages to be wholesome about it. These are people who have a bad history who are trying to be better, but they haven't shed their rough exterior and bad attitudes.

This made it really fun to watch them grow into their new roles. This is where I think Dispatch misses the mark a little bit though, because for the sake of keeping the story moving along at a more or less brisk pace, you aren't offered enough time to sit with any of these moments before things are shifted, before the pot needs to be stirred. So there is a little bit of emotional whiplash there. That's why I think the game would have benefitted from just a little bit more of a filler of doing some more or less standard dispatching mission gameplay with maybe a little filler scene between, here and there.

 

I'm not entirely sure how much the missions actually have an affect on the game. I never fully failed, so I don't know if you can, and I don't know if doing better or worse affects and aspects of the story, dialog, or interactions, but I would be surprised if it didn't, as it seemed to have a good number of variables for you to change up the scenes. The dispatching is fun, especially when you get more experience with it and get better with it. Which is another reason I wish there were maybe a couple more smaller/shorter missions sprinkled throughout.

All and all a really good game, with a fun story and set of characters though. I really enjoyed it.

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

• Genre: Visual Novel
• Spoiler Free Review: Not entirely, it's mostly story, so hard to not talk about that.
• Time Played: ~10 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine.
• Did I cry: I choked up a couple times, maybe got moistened eyes.
• Soundtrack: Really good. Definitely need to acquire.
• Why I played: It just looked like a cute game, and even though I haven't played it, I always hear/see how Red Strings Club is so great and it's made by the same people. I also like witches and thought the card making might be neat.
• Jank: I played it on Switch and it was quite a bit janky when it came to the controls. You wouldn't think so, but the pointer would often get stuck and instead of being able to just use left/right to select things, I would have to move it via free movement of the right stick. This wasn't a consistent issue, so I know it wasn't meant to function that way. A minor inconvenience all-in-all but you would think something with so few controls would have the issue.
• Difficulty: Zero. There is no way to lose.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Both pleased and disappointed. I really liked it at first but it kind of diminished as it went on.
• Recommend to others: Maybe? I still really like the card creating aspect and actually wish there was more to do in that regard. Story options may affect perception and the game is certainly interesting. It's a hard call.
  

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a game where you play as an exiled Witch and create your own divination cards - many story paths/elements are dictated by your readings. It's is kind of an odd case because I feel like it's both good and bad. Sometimes the writing is clever, cute, fun. Sometimes it's crude, tactless, amateur. The mechanics are fun and neat, but restrictive and confining. Besides the mechanics behind the choices you make, at least in my playthough, I was barely provided with enough resources to continue making cards I wanted to make. Even toward the very end of the game.

Silent Hill f

• Genre: Survival Horror
• Spoiler Free Review: No, all the parts I want to talk about are spoilers, and the more I go on, the more overtly spoilery it'll get.
• Time Played: ~40 Hours, kind of hard to tell because PlayStation timer and in-game timer are dramatically different. I don't feel I left the game idle too long, but I noticed the game doesn't actually count any time spent in menus, reading the journal and documents and such, which in my perspective, is actually a large part of the game, that I do count.
• Too Short/Long: Too long if you really wanna delve into the story, that is, play it multiple times. I was looking at closer to 15 hours for a single playthrough. They don't do enough to mix things up or shorten replays. There was an option to skip one section that takes a few minutes in subsequent playthroughs, but it doesn't do much to shave off time overall. Apparently it was added later, maybe people just complained that part was tedious? But I found running through corridors to do the same sections over and over again more tedious.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Perfectly eerie where it needs to be, great outros, and while a bit of a shift from standard Silent Hill fare, it's still pretty good and even makes children chanting a banger.
• Why I played: I'd never otherwise work up the courage to play a Silent Hill game if it weren't for seeing some of the cool stuff in this game while my wife was playing. She played it when it came out, but after giving Resident Evil requiem a shot, I felt up to the task.
• Jank: It's got some time where responses don't seem to go perfectly and it's controls are a bit clunky at times, but both of these complaints are minor, it's not really that janky.
• Difficulty: It's difficult in the way a horror game is meant to be, like it's scary, and things can more or less kill you right away if you're not ready for it, but it's not punishing at all, and on the standard difficulties isn't that hard overall.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm actually very pleased with this. I still found it harder to play than an average game due to the horror element more than anything else. The paranoia I have, having to check every corner, concerned something is going to get me every step of the way. It definitely hinders the experience for me a bit, but I still enjoyed it.
• Recommend to others: I definitely would, especially if you have any interest in the mid-20th century rural Japanese aesthetic, or Japanese folklore, or Japanese style horror. It nails them all. I'm also sure that anyone who gets any enjoyment out of the horror elements would find a lot more to love here.
  

Since I tanked Resident Evil Requiem, and was still in a bit of a rut of what I personally wanted to play, I figured I'd maybe try tackling Silent Hill f as well. I of course had already seen a good bit of gameplay when Alice played it and saw some pretty cool stuff. Had I not seen the cool stuff, I probably still wouldn't have ever considered touching this.

Compared to Resident Evil, I would say that some of the more tense moments in Resident Evil were actually more tense - because of what it has you do and the fact you could instantly die, and you legitimately were against things you couldn't kill, or you could more easily get overwhelmed. So Resident Evil was more tense from a gameplay perspective, for sure, and one thing it did have going for it in the horror aspect - for better or worse, was it had more "dark and scary" places. Obviously relying on the fear of what you can't see is something many if not most horror games do, and Resident Evil relies a bit more on dark - it has less of a supernatural element, whereas Silent Hill can just make things be there that weren't before. Or perhaps worse, make things just disappear all the same.

Resident Evil requiem

• Genre: Survival Horror/Action
• Spoiler Free Review: Yeah
• Time Played: 16:50
• Too Short/Long: It was longer than I expected, having heard a bunch of people say they played it for "about 10 hours". Now my "Time Played" is based off the timer they give at the end, and with deaths, reloads, etc, and I don't know if menus/cutscenes count, regardless it's probably another hour or so - as my PlayStation shows 18 hours.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It's okay. As most of the sound is atmospheric and to set the mood, it is appropriate, but it's not a soundtrack I'm going to hunt down to listen to.
• Why I played: My wife has been obsessed with this game. For the month following it's release, she played almost every day. Each day we were home, with no prior engagements. She tried to take small breaks so she wouldn't burn herself out, but ultimate returned to the game time and time again. She'd attempt to engage me in Resident Evil discussions which I could not really partake in except with speculative insight and second hand experience. She absolutely loved this game, and even spoke to how it changed her perspective on gaming as a whole.
  
  Since I played nearly 200 hours of Pokopia, I've been meandering on what to play. Sure I could do other things, but I felt most like playing a game at times, but few things were scratching the itch. I weirdly landed on Yoku's Island Express a bit, but otherwise maybe played an hour-two tops of maybe 30 different games. Since I was so undecided, I thought it might be a good opportunity to invest some time into a game she held to such high regard and has not been able to stop talking about for a month.
• Jank: This is a pretty polished game. If there is any jank I even thought of it was so seldom or infrequent that I can't recall any at this time.
• Difficulty: I played on Modern mode and it wasn't too difficult. I may have died a couple times due to carelessness, but I also spent a lot of time Conserving Ammo(as Grace) and playing it safe. When it came to boss fights, they were mostly pretty easy. Though some aspect of classic probably round it out a bit, this genre isn't my forte and I needed whatever I could to get through it. I even considered playing it on easy, but it probably would have been way too easy. 
• Pleased/Disappointed: Overall I'm pleased with what it offered and it was fun. I probably wouldn't have played it of my own accord, or even if Alice liked it just a bit less and only played through it 3 times, instead of 5 times.
• Recommend to others: I'm not in a place of recommending this type of game to anyone, but I would say it's a good enough game that if anyone is a fan of the series, there is little reason to skip this one.
  

I am not really a fan of the Resident Evil series. I have Resident Evil 4 because that was such a revolutionary game when it was released, but I never quite finished it. I never went to the Castle - though I think I only stopped just short of it. So really, this is the only... oh, it's actually the third Resident Evil game I have finished. I completed The Umbrella Chronicles and The Darkside Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. The on-rails shooters that play abbreviated chapters from throughout many of the games up til that point, which also feature some original content leading up to the events of Resident Evil 4.

Other than that, I haven't really played any "real" Resident Evil game to any extent, outside maybe a demo or two, and considering the Chronicles games were the better part of twenty years ago, and played mostly for the novelty of the on-rails shooter on a platform that made that genre easy to adapt, I haven't really invested much into the series as I usually can't stand to play horror games. I'm usually too nervous to advance, and am constantly doubling back, saving over a save I just made, too filled with anxiety to comfortably play. The aforementioned entries to the series have more of an action approach, than horror, and even requiem maintains that for at least half of the game.

I think Resident Evil requiem is largely for the fans. There seem to be a lot of references and easter eggs for the long-term, dedicated fans. Stand-alone it's gameplay is fine, but the story only just manages to stand on it's own, and even then I have some assistance as someone who isn't entirely oblivious to the world of Resident Evil. Maybe if I was more dedicated the game would have meant more to me, as is, it was serviceable, and even if I wouldn't have approached it on my own, I don't feel like I wasted my time having played it.