The God Of War Knockoff Collection

god of war my favorite franchise in fact recently in the sparse free time i've had i've gone back and replayed the original trilogy just to reassert the fact that i love the series and guess what i still do and i'm apparently not the only one because in the late 2000s and early 2010s god of war imitators were sprouting up like weeds in an abandoned game of animal crossing makes sense it was a proven success so why wouldn't every developer in the world follow suit and since there are so many god of war knockoffs i think it would be fun to take a look at them much in the same way we took a look at twisted metal knockoffs a little while ago with that said god of war type games tend to be a little bit more extensive than your average twisted metal game so to make sure this video doesn't end up being two hours i'm gonna limit it to five games this time around as opposed to ten like last time which is why i'm also putting a big fat part one here because there's a whole hell of a lot more than just five to cover also i suppose it's probably worth it to clarify what exactly quantifies a god of war knockoff because it's up for debate in fact some even consider god of war itself a rip-off of devil may cry now god of war is obviously inspired by devil may cry as well as a number of other things as clarified by the man himself david jaff who made a response to one of my videos recently check it out it was really surreal but i think it's a gross exaggeration to call god of war a devil may cry knock off they are similar but have distinct styles devil make fry is more about the insane chaotic frenetic action it specializes in short-ranged melee combat with guns as a buffer where god of war is more about graceful combat and precision then it specializes in medium-ranged combat with varied magic attacks as the buffer it also has a heavier emphasis on puzzles and qtes the point is what's inspired by devil may cry versus what's inspired by god of war are two very distinct flavors castlevania lords of shadow is distinctly god of war where bayonetta is distinctly devil may cry as for the specifics of what quantifies a god of war knockoff well i'd say it comes down to this melee combat engine built around building combos against multiple enemies fixed camera qtes linear design weak attack strong attacks and a grab a combo counter and so on there is room for some differentiating elements but within reason for example i saw a website claim that spider-man web of shadows is a god of war knock-off but that gets disqualified for a number of reasons most of all it's an open world game and that's just too far out of the design sensibilities that we're looking at also be fair the majority of these games i've never played before so i'm obviously not going to be as good as somebody who's played them 10 times over and there's probably going to be some details i miss so keep that in mind and one more thing this video is going to be full of surprises as a matter of fact the final game i'm going to be covering itself is going to be a surprise i've got tricks up my sleeve so i ask you not to spoil it neither for yourself nor anyone else so with that said let's start with one of the most blatant god of war knockoffs on the list [Music] ah yes lords of shadow konami's attempt to reboot the castlevania series after they killed off the original timeline because konami is known for many terrible things and apparently necrophilia is among them i was recommended this game a long time ago in a different life by a trusted friend who knew i was a fan of god of war i played it for a few hours and didn't really find myself particularly gripped has that changed on account of a second playthrough kinda yeah if you're gonna pick this game up i would definitely recommend starting on easy difficulty for most games especially modern games i like to start on medium because i ain't no we little baby but lords of shadow has fairly brutal difficulty scaling in that easy feels like medium medium feels like hard and so on so going through a first playthrough on medium will probably be pretty hectic and given how long this game already is making it longer by having to replay various bits would probably be the silver bullet that kills this werewolf because that's exactly what happened to me on my first playthrough you see this is a mighty ass game usually i can gauge how long a game will take me on a first playthrough by finding the shortest long play on youtube and adding about 25 to 30 percent and the shortest long plays i could find were 10 to 13 hours so you're certainly gonna be getting your money's worth here if you enjoy the game to be honest i feel bad about saying this but i really don't think the game needed to be as long as it was there are a few chapters with minimal relevance at best that could have been cut or reduced without compromising much of anything so it makes me feel like they were trying to pad the game out and make it as long as possible just for the sake of making it long whether that was the intention or not that's how it feels i'm sure saying 16 hours is too long would be laughable to people who are fans of say jrpgs for example but if you're into those sorts of games they usually have things to keep you invested i don't think lords of shadow's story is good enough nor do i think the gameplay is novel enough to hold my interest for the whole run time a philosophy of mine is that length for the sake of length is rarely a good thing you need to earn it and i'm not sure if this game does is it a problem that there's too much of this game not necessarily i appreciate that they went all out but sometimes less is more that goes for most things including videos like this so in the spirit of not patting things out let's move on you are gabriel belmont a member of the brotherhood of light whose wife is dead because of course she is the brotherhood of light in short is basically a treehouse club of elite demon slayers the forces of darkness are becoming so powerful that earth is at the brink of total chaos as a result gabriel is sent to take out the lords of shadow the evil aspects of three humans turned godly beings left over on earth when said beings ascended to heaven the combined power of which might be enough to bring salvation to the world and bring back gabriel's dead wife now that's the short explanation but the game being long doesn't just mean lots of gameplay there's a hefty amount of cutscenes that establishes the loren characters to the player way too much to get into here but i appreciate just how much effort went into building the world now that they've decided to completely reboot the franchise and i think it's a well-realized world they've built here with fully fleshed out history monsters and mythology it's just a shame that the plot itself is almost entirely static there's very little plot progression you just spend most of the game chasing after the same unwavering goal right up until the bat insane ending sequence which felt like somebody spliced 10 minutes of decadence into the middle of the prince of egypt and we'll get into that later it's also a shame that we're seeing this well-built world through the eyes of such a boring protagonist gabriel is about as white meat as you could possibly get i couldn't really describe his personality other than being a generic noble warrior i think zobeck the lead supporting character and the game's narrator is probably the highlight of the story but that's mostly but not entirely because he's voiced by patrick stewart and patrick stewart could sound noble and dignified while reading sonic fanfiction but the abbot has barricaded himself inside and filled the building with deadly traps to deter visitors beyond that there are a few colorful characters you come across most of which die but one character you seemingly don't come across is dracula who is kind of the linchpin of the entire castlevania franchise although to say there's no dracula is a bit misleading dracula's in there somewhere you just have to be patient unfortunately the twist i'm speaking of was spoiled for me long before i played this game i think lords of shadow has the bones of a really good story but really needed to flesh out its characters more because what are stories if not the actions of characters given that gabriel himself doesn't have much time to talk and patrick stewart spends most of the game summarizing events gabe really could have used something like a permanent companion character to bounce off of and bring out his personality even when he is bouncing off characters they shouldn't have been afraid to make him a little bit less gabriel belmont and a little bit more gabriel morton to those who understand the reference still i think this game makes up for it on the gameplay front castlevania had a rough transition to 3d with the n64 games and i feel that's a stigma that kind of stuck with castlevania for a while they experimented a bit on the ps2 but i guess since those games didn't do so well they looked to god of war for inspiration though to be fair unlike other games of this type lords of shadow attempts to elevate the concept like having two separate rage of the god style meters one with white magic that heals you while you attack and one with dark magic that makes your attack super powerful plus you can unlock unique attacks for both modes differentiating the separate magic and adding to the combat strategic depth in how you approach the balance of powers the game also has a combo system that rewards not getting hit enemies will drop orbs for said meters if you can remain untouched in combat for extended periods although lords of shadow is a bit easy to cheese in this regard because with regular combos it took a little while to fill up but if you just do this jumping slam into the ground it fills up almost instantly but it's a neat combat system that rewards good reflexes and crafty playstyles so lords of shadow has a few unique and fun ideas but at the end of the day it is a true blue god of war knockoff in controls and gameplay but as you'll see that's not necessarily a bad thing the combat is the real meat and potatoes of the game and i think it's solid it hits real hard and feels great of all the god of war knockoffs i've played this is the one that i think has the best combat animation because something about it is just so graceful there's a beletic smoothness to how gabriel moves that i find weirdly mesmerizing to watch it really feels like they studied how a weapon like this would operate most effectively and animated accordingly or found an expert in whatever the closest real world equivalent to this combat cross would be and got them to mocap the game honestly that element of realism makes the combat that much more impactful this game has a lot of combos but i only really defaulted back to a handful of go-to ones because for some reason a lot of combos require you to do extra things like hold down one of the buttons mid combo or do an extra input before or during the combo like the combos that won't activate until you do a somersault but even still just because i preferred only doing some combos over others doesn't necessarily hinder the combat in any way it leaves it open for people who have different play styles and are willing to indulge the different combat elements and hey having fun is having fun if enjoying the combat my way and sticking to certain attacks is wrong then i don't want to be right for example things like throwing knives are largely useless and you can't carry that many they're so useless that i often forgot i even had them but who cares if there's one minor issue i can bring up about the gameplay that actually affected me it's thus blocking is with the left trigger button and dodge roll is done by hitting the block button and pushing in the direction you want to roll with the left analog stick it was a slightly poor design choice to map block and dodge rolls of the same button because usually when i'm blocking i'm rarely not also pointing in a direction because you know i'm usually pointing in the direction of the enemy i intend to attack as soon as i'm not blocking but it's also fair because i find myself dodging a lot more than blocking in these games because i have a lot more of an aggressive play style by default but i do kind of wish that dodge and block were separate commands just on a basic design level especially because the right analog stick doesn't do anything this game has an entirely fixed camera so it doesn't even let you tokenly jiggle the camera like some other fixed camera games leaving them no reason not to have the guard and dodge roll be separate buttons but that's actually a surprisingly common thing in this genre otherwise the combat as a whole is fairly solid and the other aspects of gameplay really add to the experience i like the enemy variety in particular and how different tiers of enemies affect the gameplay of course there are plenty varieties of minor enemy that feel interchangeable like they just put a different model on the same enemy type but then there are plenty more that are unique in their own right flying devils anyone although there's one enemy in particular that can suck a nut if you were to ask me how i would cut some of this game's run time down item one on the docket would be the chupacabras they literally exist for no other reason than to pad the game out they're these little imp dudes or dude as the case may be that steal your items so you have to chase after them before continuing it's easily the low light of the gameplay and it's not even a contest otherwise there are a bunch of what's called mounts that are all utterly unique they're effectively minor bosses and once defeated you can mount them not like that in order to reach new areas there aren't so many flaming walls hindering your progress until you finish a combat sequence like in most god of war type games lords of shadow has more instances of needing one of these enemies to get past a natural roadblock which makes the level design feel much more organic and organic really is the word they put a lot of effort into making the level design feel more plausible and how you interact with it and how the gameplay ties into the levels although in being organic it also means that some of these levels get a bit convoluted this level in particular i was wandering back and forth trying to find the second key and kept wandering in circles not knowing where to go but that comes with the territory so it's something you just have to be willing to deal with in order to enjoy the game because the frustrating parts are still in a minority to the fun bits the organic level design runs a bit counter-intuitive to the actual level progression unlike many of its contemporaries lords of shadow is level-based and i'm not sure if i like that so much historically i've preferred games like this to be one unbroken sequence of environments that bleed into each other because it makes the world feel much more well realized and goes to make the game feel like a true odyssey it's less interesting to me if i'm cutting away to the menu every 20 minutes i think the level based structure is meant to emphasize the backtracking elements where certain parts of certain levels won't be accessible until you come back with the correct upgrades that way you can basically warp jump to the area you need to rather than having to backtrack through half the game which makes sense from a design standpoint i guess each chapter is ended by having a major boss fight which signifies a bit of a deliberate flow to the level progression although some chapters have as many as 9 levels and as few as 2 so the boss frequency can be a bit inconsistent especially when lords of shadow actively breaks its own rules and has more than one boss fight per chapter there's also something else notable about the boss fights but i'm gonna digress for a moment why is it that the god of war formula specifically is the one that got ripped off so much i guess it's a broad enough concept that you can fit the controls and gameplay formula into many different settings and stories which i guess is why you don't see so many rip-offs of things like say shadow of the colossus because that's a more specialized gameplay setup that requires more specific context oh wait a minute right this game rips that off as well oh i'm sorry they're actually called titans oh yeah is this iapetus this hyperion maybe this is typhon off their colossi i guess the statement for the entire video is if you're gonna rip something off rip it off well and these fights are actually pretty good there's only three and the first two are fought the same you climb to their weak spot stab it a few times and that opens up the path to the next weak spot then the third is a big flying boy and it's probably the highlight of the game for me just as avion was in shadow of the colossus because fighting a giant flying creature while climbing all over its body is about as innately thrilling as something could possibly be although if you fall off it's doubly frustrating because climbing to its weak spots takes like twice as long as the other titans but that just comes with the territory and i'd say the excitement balances it out all told despite really liking the combat as a whole this game does start to fall apart later on especially because of the other aspects of gameplay quick time events for example are almost inseparable from the genre and this game has a lot of them i found them mostly tolerable but i found the timing got way too precise later on leading to a few frustrating deaths more importantly though this game has puzzle elements just like any number of these types of games and they started off almost mindlessly simple but by the end started to become obnoxiously obtuse you have the option to sacrifice the bonus you get for solving puzzles in order to unlock the solution to the puzzle and sometimes i had to start doing this just to figure out what i was even supposed to do and the platforming also started off fairly inoffensive it was mostly simple and contextual but then they decided to get more ambitious with the platforming and you come to realize this game's controls aren't equipped for that the platforming feels clunky and slippery and sometimes my long jump just stubbornly refused to work plus the fixed camera causes perspective issues sometimes leading to leap of faith gameplay i almost quit here but screw it i thought i'm just gonna brute force my way to the end so i did and what i found was certainly interesting first of all you find yourself in this one level which is just a bunch of floating islands so it emphasizes the platforming again and this entire level weirdly reminds me of that one level from rygar why am i seeing that game everywhere now and then you make it to the final boss and this game metal gear solids hard before the final boss it has something like a 17-minute cutscene that has two separate villain reveals and something like three or four major plot twists hideo kojima was apparently a producer and designer for this game but it almost feels like he ghost wrote for this scene it's kinda ridiculous ridiculous although unlike metal gear solid 2 at least i still understood who the villain was by the end apparently this game has a few dlc chapters that helps flesh out the ending but for various reasons i won't really go into i couldn't play those so yeah i'm definitely not as positive on this game as i was halfway through but i still played it to the end there are a lot of things i liked and even the things i didn't like only became an issue in the back third of the game it's very playable and if you enjoy this type of gameplay it's worth checking out especially if you have a lot of time on your hands i give it a solid c-plus and now for a game that i still refuse to believe actually exists as i've said many times i'm not really a sonic fan i don't hate the series it just never really grabbed me but despite knowing very little about this game beyond the infamous ign review unleashed has intrigued me for a few reasons for a start it came out in 2008 there were a few minor releases between 2006 and 2008 but this was the first major sonic release after o6 so it was when the series was at its lowest point from a pr standpoint and i'm interested to see how that affected the game but more importantly unleashed has a very bipolar reputation from what i've seen people either love this game or despise it there's very little in between as a person who loves the genre i wanted to see how a sonic game inspired by god of war holds up just saying that sentence makes me feel like i'm living in the truman show just for the record the closest version of this game i had to hand was the ps3 version and i do not recommend it the ps3 frame rate is extremely unstable if you're gonna play it pick it up on the xbox 360 or play it backwards compatibility style with the xbox series x which is the only way to play this game in 60 fps officially just figured i'd mention that so with that out of the way the first thing i noticed about sonic unleashed is that this is a game where the money is absolutely on display the only other main series sonic game that i've played at least of those made after 2005 was sonic forces you know for the walls it absolutely astounds me to see how nearly 10 years of poor reception absolutely gutted the production value sonic forces felt like a mobile game at times where this is a full-fledged aaa release with absolutely stunning presentation like i can't think of many examples of 2008 cgi that looks as good or better than this even beyond that the cinematography and choreography is really impressive the in-game graphics don't nearly look as impressive but i'd say it still holds up really well you could tell they were really trying to push the technology to breaking point more modern games in the series look polished but bland whereas this is a little bit more rough around the edges due to the time period it came out but is much more visually interesting the plot near as i can tell has to do with eggman having staffed the power from the chaos emeralds into this enormous and slightly phallic orbital space laser subsequently making the earth go kaplooey releasing an ancient monster in the process surprisingly of all the games we're covering today unleashed isn't the only one where a major plot point is the world being broken into pieces i wasn't sure because it wasn't really explained but at this point sonic is apparently corrupted with dark gaia energy transforming him into what they call a werehog the setup is weird but they're not even making the pretense of real world logic here so i can dig it it's a compelling type of weirdness that tries to have fun with its out-there premise the tone seems at odds with itself though because after this excellent and very dramatic intro scene we immediately cut to a slapstick comedy scene it's not that you can't do dramatic with a sense of humor ghostbusters for example but unleashed tries to occupy both ends of the spectrum at the same time and it just seems wishy-washy this scene is where we're introduced to chip this game's companion your enjoyment of the story will largely depend on how charming you find the dynamic between sonic and chip and to be honest i find chip insufferable oh man what am i gonna do what can i do where do i go from here what a light i'm hungry the voice the dialogue the personality it's just a perfect storm of everything i could possibly hate in a character i know this game received some praise back in the day for having gotten rid of most of the side characters but to be honest i don't think that's really a point in favor of or against this game because excruciating dialogue is excruciating dialogue regardless of who's saying it i remember at this specific moment chocolate chip sundae supreme i actually stood up out of my chair and said i hate this and those feelings didn't really change to the point that i kind of had to stop paying attention to the story after a while but hey if this is what sonic fans wants if this is what they enjoy then who am i to say different and i mean that genuinely i'm not the target audience here even still this setup is the framing device for the gameplay split they're putting forth so you spend half the game as vanilla caffeine free sonic going fast and the other half of the game as the werehog ripping off god of war despite the equal amount of levels the split is anything but even because the regular sonic levels never go past 10 minutes even if you're really bad at the game and the werehog levels even at their shortest don't go under 10 minutes but they'll usually go on for 20 or 30 minutes which is why i'm covering this game today because if it were a true 50 50 split i wouldn't even really consider it a god of war clone but the heavy split in favor of the werehog is what puts it over the edge however let's not ignore the regular daytime gameplay i think the reason why traditional sonic gameplay has never really clicked with me can be isolated to one word foresight you basically already need to know exactly what's going to happen before it happens because everything is coming at you way too quickly this is what an idiot i am for my inability to predict that this series if you play the game 20 times that's not going to be an issue but for someone like me just picking up the game out of curiosity the first playthrough is a disaster this is why i'm not as interested in the hardcore sonic fan's opinion because with all due respect the hardcore sonic fan's opinion is not going to reflect the opinion of the average person in any way the playthrough you're watching was my second playthrough i played a couple of sessions to get the hang of the game before i started recording it because speaking of foresight i had the foresight not to record my first playthrough because i knew it was going to be a disaster and low was it so memorizing specific positioning and being able to flow through the level like a based gamer god is certainly an appealing thought and i'd be more willing to meet this game halfway if the punishment for failure wasn't so steep at times sometimes you just need to redo a bit of the level but other times your punishment for not knowing exactly what to do and when to do it with split second accuracy is immediate death and considering they still insist on having the live system a game over is not out of the question which means undoing significant progress at times especially during the extremely long werehog sections but we'll get back to that if they did away with a live system this game would immediately become like one letter grade better it's a game that all but requires trial and error in order to get the best times the best grades the most stylish looking gameplay etc etc etc so with that in mind a system that undoes progress is once again working counter-intuitive to the other aspects of the game what's even more questionable is that a lot of times i didn't feel satisfied with how i was playing a level and so decided to restart it there was also one time where i got trapped in a wall and was forced to restart but restarting a level loses you a life i understand that so people can't chicken out if they're about to die but that's only doubling down on a system of progression that was already archaic in 2008 if you just didn't have lives this wouldn't matter anyway so if you notice my lives counter is weirdly low at times usually that wasn't me dying it was just me wanting to play the levels better but let's not get ahead of ourselves i'm not one of those people who thinks that sonic can't work in 3d and this is actually quality stuff the controls are intuitive the gameplay is responsive performance issues aside and honestly when you get down to it and you're able to seamlessly flow through these levels like a badass few things in the world feel more inherently cool there are multiple paths for you to take creating very organic feeling level design then the set pieces and spectacle are through the roof like half the appeal of this game is just the sensory overload of having all the lights and sounds thrown at you while you maneuver around the environments it's pretty cool and the fast pace means that the levels never get tiresome there's no doubt in my mind that at its best this is peak contemporary sonic gameplay to be honest though and this comment is probably going to run basically counter-intuitive to every single review of this game you'll see i actually prefer the werehog sections i feel like it's the one thing in this game that doesn't require any prerequisites i can pick it up and just immediately get it i was going to comment on the absurdity and unexplained nature of sonic's stretchy arms but to be honest i'm okay with it because the alternative was to have really short-ranged attacks which as we'll see in other games doesn't really do a combat system like this any favors but sonic's attacks have a good range and honestly pack a serious wallop you can really feel the weight behind these swings and the enemies act accordingly i'm a little bit iffy on the finishing attacks you only need to do a bit of damage before you can grab them for a finishing blow but if you mess up the qte sequence they'll get most of their health back you'll get longer to do the qte sequences depending on how low the enemy's health is but by that point you might as well just wail on them until they're dead although a fun exploit i was told about is that if you pause the game the button prompt won't disappear so you can get a little bit of extra time to hit the right button if you're a dirty cheater this is a game that takes after god of war to an admirable degree it has some puzzle elements a rage of the god style mode called unleashed mode a bit of less than pleasant platforming a combo counter light attacks heavy attacks and a grab and so on it's a tried and true system and it's pretty solid you don't start off with too many attacks but this is a game that also has rpg elements you can collect these yellow things and upgrade any number of different stats i'd recommend sinking your first bit of exp into your combat and then start to go for life and strength because those are the real difference makers the shield isn't as important because for some reason the shield is a limited resource so i didn't use it much at all and the unleashed mode isn't as important to upgrade because you can activate it at the same point no matter how big your gauge is the only thing that the upgrade does is give you more bar to work with so it lasts longer but it's equally useful no matter what and speaking of equally useful i never found any combos that were overtly more or less useful than any others which reflects good balance the bass movement speed can be a bit obnoxious especially when puzzle solving but thankfully you have a dash which makes you go faster in all instances of using the werehog so yeah both daytime and nighttime gameplay are pretty solid the thing is if this game was just level after level with bonus levels being accessed through the menus i think this game could have very well sold me on sonic but this game does so much to prevent you from really getting into it during my first playthrough i had to have friends walk me through it because it seemed every five minutes i wasn't really quite sure on what to do or where to go it starts off straightforward enough but then after a while you're expected to run around these hub worlds to find the correct people to talk to and find the area where you can actually access the game levels i had to be told a lot of things about how this game operates like how act 1 is the only important act in every world and when in doubt go speak to professor pickle to find out where to go because this game is incredibly bad at explaining these things but then sometimes you can't access certain areas because you need to bounce from hub to hub to get the necessary items and then on top of that you also need to be collecting the sun and moon metals just to be able to play these levels so sonic unleashed is putting everything it can between you and the actual compelling parts of the gameplay it amazes me how egregiously padded this game is it's more padded than an nfl player with a fussy mother and of course every transition from the world map to the hubs to the level hubs within the hubs to the levels themselves each have their own loading screen this game doesn't have loading screens the same length as sonic 06 but it has just as many and you can't access the world map unless you exit the level manually i can't fathom why they wouldn't just put an option in the menu to exit straight to the world map so if you're in the wrong spot you need to sit through upwards of three loading screens just to get back to the world map and then sit through upwards of three loading screens just to get to where you need to go sonic unleashed seemingly almost takes pride in wasting your time and having as much non-core gameplay as it can sonic unleashed spend so much time working against itself that it's almost admirable but i worked through it i played by this game's rules and did everything i could to get to the end and then came the breaking point the moment i decided i was done with this game's it was during skyscraper scamper act one aside from the game's performance becoming unbearable by this point i was faced with a werehog level that took place mostly on skyscrapers i thought no big deal i can get through this i got all the way up to the final enemy in the level this giant brute holding a big stick the arena was small and he could knock me back like nothing he stunlocked me with attacks that shouldn't have hit me knocked me back like crazy and used this wave attack to just knock me off the edge over and over and over it was the last enemy before the end of the level and it as well as a similar enemy from earlier in the level drained all my lives i had to restart the entire level from scratch i decided no my time is too valuable to be jerked around like this redoing a 5 to 10 minute daytime sonic level fine redoing an entire werehog stage from the beginning when i was right at the end all because of some frankly atrocious design no thanks at first i thought this game was a d tier game and then i played it again and i thought this game was a c tier game but now after getting as far as i was willing to go i think yeah this is a d tier game because despite all the positive attributes of sonic unleashed any game that's so obnoxious to play that it makes me not even want to play it anymore well i can't exactly give it a passing grade and there's really not a lot that this game would need to do in order for it to be good or even great nuke the live system give us better instructions on what to do and where to go an objective screen a mini-map with objective markers reducing the prominence of or outright removing the sun and moon metals and so on i will admit there are a lot of things i'm just not mentioning here challenge levels helping possessed residents the levels where you man the turret for tails but this was never meant to be a thorough examination of sonic unleashed there are plenty of people far more qualified than i who can give you a thorough examination of sonic unleashed this was just meant as a look at how this game holds up as a god of war knockoff and how it feels to a new player to that i feel this game could be a lot more enjoyable on further return playthroughs but i believe the onus should not be on me to come back to a game that i simply did not enjoy i'm sorry i don't relish the idea of hating games and hate is a strong word i just really really really don't like sonic unleashed i can only speak on my experiences and my experiences were not positive no amount of caveats will change that but once again i will fully admit i'm not the target audience here oh and before anybody asks no i haven't played unleashed and no playing on the xbox 360 wouldn't have changed my opinion take me sweet death and so begins the triple d combo three games like god of war that all begin with a d or at least that's what i thought i'd heard a bit about darksiders over the years but never actually played it myself in fact i'd never really even seen it in action all i really knew about it was that it was considered to be god of war by way of legend of zelda and it really doesn't help its case as a god of war knockoff when you're literally playing as the embodiment of war as in you're playing as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse incidentally if i ever get like saudi oil prince money i'm gonna see if i can greenlight a remake of these games except instead of playing as the four horsemen of the apocalypse you're playing as the four horsemen of the comment section people will probably have their own interpretations of what these are but to me the four horsemen of the comment section are as follows the horsemen of cringe the horsemen of nonsense the horsemen of contrarianism and the horsemen of drama it became immediately clear to me that of all the god of war knockoffs i'm covering today this one was the least like god of war as a matter of fact i would go as far as to say that this game is to god of war what god of war is to devil may cry they have similar elements and you can definitely tell there was some inspiration there but they're different enough to have their own unique identity like i said you play as war you have quick time events you have rage of the gods a pretty bombastic combat engine flaming walls that hinder your progress until you complete the combat in the current room and a few other minor similarities but otherwise it's unique so this probably shouldn't even be in the video but i've made my bed and now i have to sleep in it but just for the sake of fairness i'll try to make this quick so here's the plot as i understand it since the dawn of time heaven and hell have raged war what else is new however to maintain the balance of power and to intervene when the time came a group called the charred council created the four horsemen of the apocalypse through that peace was achieved the kingdom of man rose as a middleman between heaven and hell and the seven seals were established as a means to indicate the end times the inevitable war between heaven and hell that will end existence as we know it flash forward to the modern day and all hell breaks loose literally and the horsemen of war shows up however he's been tricked into thinking the seventh seal had been broken but despite this being about as apocalyptic as you could get the seal was still intact so there's clearly some shenanigans going on that war is caught in the middle of humanity is wiped out hell is declared victorious and war is blamed because he jumped the gun so he's held in stasis for about 100 years until he can convince the charred council to let him prove his innocence to do this he's tasked with taking out the destroyer the leader of hell's armies but first he must kill the guardians of the black tower where the destroyer resides there's more to it than that but that's the gist it starts out as a deceptively simple story that takes on more layers of intrigue as the game goes on war himself isn't the most interesting character to view the story through he's just kind of a soft spoken badass but the characters he comes across brings out some of the game's personality like the blacksmith all thane the most scottish man ever that's what you get from touching what ain't yours or you have your sarcastic ghost companion the watcher looks like our trajectory was a little off not so fast horseman man he sounds like mark hamill's joker oh wait that actually is mark hamill's joker huh go figure and then war himself has his moments do i look like i'm afraid of death boy it's not death you should fear so yeah the story is more than what it appears at first the gameplay on the other hand what you see is what you get you see i don't even know why they gave you a list of combos because there's only one attack button per weapon so the only combos are done by hitting the exact same attack button multiple times the combat is just too simple there are plenty of moves you can unlock but they're all single command single strike moves and yeah you can pick and choose between them in order to strike optimally for the current situation so that at least gives the player some choice that is until you find your favorite utterly broken attack for me it was this i used this attack for the majority of the game and you know what you need to do to pull it off you hold the square button or the y button or the x button or whatever the left face button on your controller is literally on the ground it's the attack that launches your opponent into the air but in the air it does this spinning ground slam so you don't even need to time your presses you just need to hold it and it'll automatically activate the combo and most enemies are absolutely helpless to stop you you knock them into the air and then you slam them back into the ground this was on medium difficulty as well i can't imagine what this game is like on easy the only enemies that gave me trouble were enemies with ranged attacks or enemies so big that their rib cages could be repurposed as makeshift jail cells unlike the other games on this list i don't consider the combat so good that i'll sacrifice effectiveness for the sake of having more fun because there really isn't much more fun to be had here even if played as intended the most fun additions to the combat are the secondary items like a spinning saw blade or the gun called mercy that's pretty badass some of these are pretty useful in combat while others are pretty well solely useful for other more passive parts of gameplay you see if this game were a cocktail i would say it's about one part god of war to two parts legend of zelda because the meat of the game are these dungeons for the lack of a better term you run around solving puzzles in your immediate vicinity which open up the way to the next set of puzzles and so on until you get a new item which further opens up the dungeon eventually you find your way to the boss at which point you beat them and will get a health upgrade the world is a connected series of hubs that gradually open up as you acquire new abilities giving an organic sense of progression viewing this from the point of view of a zelda game i think that's where darksiders comes into its own because the puzzle design is competent and often relies on your observational skills and craftiness the constant march forward that the game puts you in as you solve puzzles and progress to the next area is compelling it means that there's very little down time if you're having to travel long distances you're probably in the wrong place plus the new abilities and items you gradually get makes the gameplay more and more complex which leaves the level design open for more interesting ideas so if you play this game for the puzzle elements and view the combat as sort of a means to an end it's pretty excellent unfortunately the combat takes such a heavy slice of the cake that i can't really ignore it like for example the entire third chapter is an extended combat sequence you sort of don't have a choice at that point and when the combat's not being mid it's straight up frustrating like the tiamat boss fight you can't dodge while you're aiming so throwing a bomb at it and then hitting a lit torch and the bomb in one throw between its fireballs is a pain in the ass but then later in the fight there are no more bombs and after a few minutes of trying nothing seemed to damage it i had to look it up and now as it turns out i was doing the right thing it's just that you have to hit it with the crossblades no less than 16 times before you stun it once give or take three or four depending on what counts as hitting it what genuinely was i doing something wrong here or what about silitha a boss you can damage in any standard way but due to its speed you can use the hookshot type deal to close the distance but the arena is huge and the abyssal chain doesn't have enough range so you have to already be really close before you can even use it on top of that silitha has so much health that i was honestly questioning if i was doing any damage at all once again was i doing something wrong here honestly i don't think there's a single good boss fight in the entire game but despite the simple and at times questionable combat design can i really fault darksiders that much when most zelda games have even simpler combat no i don't think that's fair i don't think that's what they were going for i do however think this game puts a little bit too much between you and the fun parts at times because first you need to find which of these scenic paths take you to where you need to go then you need to travel down several large environments then at times you'll come to a point where you have to do several challenge rooms before you can continue and then they might even tack on some extra bits before you can get to where you need to go like on your way to the second dungeon you're forced into this friendly competition with ulthane to see how many of the hell guard you can kill and this goes on just shy of forever so there's a lot of padding to this game at times which is funny because darksiders isn't a short game they really didn't need to pad it out but it's tolerable mostly because this game always makes sure to let you know where you're supposed to go and what you're supposed to do looking at you sonic unleashed i'd say if they cut the challenge rooms alone and use the extra dev time to maybe add one more mini dungeon i think that would be a perfect balance but i'm not too hung up about it because at least it's user friendly and they do get better about putting you right into the action in the later parts of the game you know right around the time they're ripping off portal yep i think the overall statement for this game is when it's good it's really good but when it's mid it's mid as i think it balances out relatively well it's a game of three parts combat puzzles and everything in between the combat and in between aspects are perfectly serviceable and the puzzle aspect is good enough to compensate with the other aspects present it means that no one part of the game ever gets tiresome so it gives you a nice contrast meaning that darksiders balances out as a solid enough game while it didn't blow my mind personally i could see this as being someone's personal underrated gem i could see it as having a small but very hardcore fan base similar to something like the legend of dragoon darksiders may not fully click with me but it has all the elements in place that somebody with the right sensibilities would probably consider it truly great and it's hard to really argue personal preference so i'd say darksiders is definitely worth existing although am i the only one who laughed his ass off the first time they saw that gliding animation yeah war really does like to assert his dominance [Music] once again like other games on this list i've never played dante's inferno it was heavily publicized while it was coming out but it quickly faded i only ever knew this as what is generally considered the most blatant god of war ripoff ever made i guess we'll figure out how true that really is by the end won't we dante's inferno is an adaptation of the first third of the divine comedy an epic poem by dante alighieri that took 12 years to write i'm not too familiar but it's considered one of the preeminent pieces of classic literature i'm not sure how accurate dante's inferno is to the piece it's based on but given dante's inferno's a liberal showcasing of tits and bums i'd imagine basically not at all and i do mean liberal i counted four gratuitous titty shots within the first 10 minutes or so so i guess this game's really running with the god of war style self-indulgence just without the poetic dialogue layered story or scent of dignity which i can appreciate for its sheer audacity dante's inferno is the quintessential edgy juvenile power fantasy game and i can't help but love it for that it has no shame that said i don't even know how much of this game i can show you i could go over an entire list of examples why that's the case but i think there's no better example than this literally the second level boss is a giant topless woman except her nipples are actually mouths that dispense minor enemies imaginative in a very please see me after class kind of way the story is a bit jumbled and hard to follow at times due to being told in a non-linear fashion except unlike god of war which lets flashback scenes breathe in this case each flashback is like 15 seconds and they don't really give you enough time to internalize what's happening or grasp the context but this is what i gleaned you are dante alighieri a crusader knight from the third crusade you've done many horrible things but managed to cheat death when denied absolution however for your sins your wife beatrice was taken by lucifer to be his new queen so led by virgil whom you can find at your local olive garden sunday nights eating all the breadsticks you have to fight through the nine levels of hell to rescue your wife and cleanse your soul the flashbacks are mostly for the purpose of establishing what your sins are and i like the detail that each of his sins are embroidered on the tapestry that's sewn to his skin had it not been for the gratuity and well everything else dante's inferno could have been a much more mature and dignified experience but then again that's not the selling point despite being an m rated game this was definitely a game aimed at a juvenile audience so it's best not to take it seriously you probably aren't going to get any video essays discussing the hidden depths of dante's character which is fine the story gets the job done while also giving you an unintentional laugh or two it's the gameplay that really sells dante's inferno with that said this really is a shameless god of war ripoff but that's not to say it's a bad game it's one of the cases where if you're going to rip something off rip it off well and dante's inferno from my experiences is just that fixed camera hack and slash spectacle fighter light attacks heavy attacks dodge with the right thumb stick rage of the gods gore more excessive than the white house in the 90s shirtless male protagonist with prominent red body art the list goes on but the combat is really good it flows really nicely the physical feedback feels great the controls are responsive the attack range is balanced really well this is genuinely a god of war ripoff done right it knows what it wants to be doesn't try to be anything else and it's pretty solid at that there are a few notable changes though the controls are pretty much identical to god of war except the circle button is not grab grab has been moved to the right trigger the circle button is instead your ranged attack aka the jesus beam from symphony of the night it's a little bit overpowered in that it has theoretically unlimited range and costs nothing to use it doesn't do as much damage as your melee attacks but you also don't have to put yourself in the line of fire to use it so it's probably the easiest way to play the game personally though i just found using proper melee combat to be more fun so i didn't use the jesus beam all that much the jesus beam is one of the things that ties into the rpg elements this upgrade tree you have two trees that represent the different experience points you can get for most enemies you can condemn them or absolve them the same goes for these damned souls you'll find and i mean damned in the literal sense but you'll need to play a 30 second rhythm game to absolve them at least until you get a specific upgrade doing either or will give you experience points for one tree or the other and only once you get to a certain level on that tree can you use experience to buy upgrades from that level the holy experience building primarily towards various types of jesus beam and the unholy experience building mostly towards your melee weapon i quite like this system because instead of blanketly upgrading a weapon or an ability you can pick and choose what you think are the best abilities to complement your playstyle this does mean the gameplay starts off a bit shaky because the amount of attacks available to you and your giant off scythe at the beginning of the game is pokey at best but once you spend some upgrade points and find a play style that works for you this game really hits the ground running one thing i really appreciate is how the upgradeable combos bleed into each other for example i unlocked this combo which is just triangle four times it's powerful but really slow and so it gets interrupted really easily but i found out you can actually start off with a different combo and end it with that combo as long as you end it with a triangle attack this isn't a combat engine that i'd like in every game of this ilk but in this one instance i think it works it means you can mix and match to your heart's content and swap out fast attacks for more powerful attacks as the situation requires you get less combo variety overall but that makes for a more free-flowing combat system you can even start a combo with ranged attacks and end it with the scythe which is very useful for some enemies and the reason i specify scythe is because it's really your only melee weapon to be fair most games in this genre only go with one option for melee attacks which i don't actually mind so much in god of war the blades of chaos the blades of athena the blades of dave or whatever they're called at this specific instance are really the only weapon i use because they're the ones that i'm used to and as such they're the ones i sink all my upgrade points into because you're a lot more deadly with one fully upgraded weapon than two half upgraded weapons so as a rule i'd rather they make a really elaborate combat engine with one weapon than try and balance it for multiple weapons dante's inferno kinda does this it doesn't have a crazy amount of user preference or customization but it's definitely more nuanced than some other games of the genre for me the same philosophy also applies to the magic items there's four varieties of magic in this game and the only one i found i used that much was righteous path because the other magic abilities were either not very useful or functionally the same as other things like why would i use sins of the father is a ranged attack less useful than the jesus beam and costs mana the righteous path though that's where it's at the combat is further deepened somewhat by these relics you can find that each have a different minor effect though minor really is the word i played most of this game not even bothering finding these and other collectibles plays into the minor puzzle elements and exploration that this game goes for but these instances are usually pretty simple and include combat anyway this further ties into one of my favorite aspects of these games which the first god of war was an example of especially which is the level design because each environment was extremely sprawling but bled back into themselves really elegantly the temple of pandora is the apex of this for me dante's inferno goes for something similar in that the descent into hell is a single continuous environment similar to a giant staircase and it does give me similar vibes with the puzzles unlocking the way forward and the sprawling nature of the level progression but the level design as a whole isn't quite as elegant no more is this more apparent than in the city of dies which is apparently pronounced dite in italian in this level there's a bit of mandatory backtracking and i guess the qa testers had some trouble with that because they had to throw up a text box straight up telling you to go back that's the worst of it though and there are some instances of level design i quite like like how the greed level folds back into itself courtesy of a giant monster and ends where it starts here i was thinking that was just a door i missed entirely despite all that i think the most damning thing about the gameplay is the difficulty balancing which is off that's not to say dante's inferno is harder than god of war it's just a different type of difficulty i put that down to the fact that most standard enemies don't drop health unless you get a high level upgrade so most of the time losing health is a long-term setback but that's only really an issue at the beginning of the game because that's when you'll still be getting to grips with the game you see the enemy variety is somewhat lacking and the ones that are there don't get more powerful as the game goes on so as soon as you find a playstyle that works for you and you get more health and mana enemies that might have been intimidating at first quickly lose effectiveness and the game starts to become much easier almost too easy this is definitely a game that favors the offensive strategy rather than the defensive because the parry timing is a bit awkward and most enemies are absolutely powerless to stop you once you get a good combo going thanks to invincibility frames there's only really two enemies in the game that gave me much trouble by the end and one of them is like the second enemy introduced that being the siren enemy the topless women who attack you with tentacles coming out of their yeah there's a reason why i'm not showing you them right now they don't really leave themselves open very much and even when they do they're really quick and tend to counter attack with ease then there's also these invisible enemies that only become solid to throw fire in your face the only way to attack them is to catch them while they're attacking using the jesus beam to make them solid and then hit them with the scythe other than that though most of the enemies aren't that much trouble after a while especially the most minor of minor enemies because just like the most minor enemies in god of war you can just grab them and rip them apart instantly in a move that i like to call the oh this there's no reason to do anything but that anytime you see them and these enemies are kind of ever present when you'd think enemies this week would eventually be phased out i wonder if they were intended to be phased out in favor of other enemies but then the game was maybe a bit rushed and they didn't have time to implement a replacement that would explain the overall lack of variety of enemies and honestly this game feels like it didn't quite have enough raw content to fill its run time and that especially becomes apparent by the end the 8th circle ends up being just 10 challenge rooms which would normally be reserved for an optional side mode then after that you're only a couple rooms from the final boss lucifer himself and the final boss is a little bit of a pain in the ass but that might have also partially been my own fault you see for most of the fight you're supposed to wait for these openings where you can stun him then i would get to the final portion of the fight time and again and just kept waiting and waiting and waiting for a stun opportunity that would seemingly never come i didn't realize you could just throw jesus beam in his face to stun him is that on me or is that on the game for not clearly establishing the rules and then changing the rules on me you decide the second stage of the fight is pretty good though it's just a very pure fight to the finish and the ending is somewhat satisfying although i won't show you the final scene because it's the most nsfw scene in the entire game and that's that dante's inferno is definitely a more self-explanatory game than other games in this genre but it's also one of the better examples despite an abundance of nitpicks i thoroughly enjoyed my time with dante's inferno if you've exhausted your options for a classic god of war this is a good alternative it doesn't quite reach the heights of classic god of war and it has some issues no doubt but it's solid in its own right definitely worth a look [Music] and now the mystery game what's it gonna be drum roll please [Music] that's right the legend of spyro dawn of the dragon now you may be asking yourself why i didn't advertise that i'm covering this game ahead of time because once upon a time i promised myself i'd never cover spyro again so this is sort of a contractual loophole of sorts because at least i know nobody's going to be watching this video specifically for coverage of spyro so here we are back with the dang purple dragon oh man this brings me back in multiple ways i remember in 2008 during the run-up to this game's release all my local game shops were absolutely plastered with promos and advertisements for this game they were pushing it like crazy the epic conclusion to the trilogy you're definitely going to be confused if you haven't played the other two games in the trilogy which makes it weird that they completely overhauled the design for the third game but hey ho what you gonna do of course the absurdity of taking spyro and making it into a fantasy epic is not lost on me but you kinda have to be willing to look past that and meet donna the dragon halfway to enjoy the game see it for what it is not what you want it to be it's weird in a sense but then again anything can work with enough conviction and there is quite a lot of conviction on display here all told donna the dragon is probably my third favorite spyro game and i've played all of them which one of the original trilogy do i think is worse than dawn of the dragon take a guess the answer may surprise you the story follows on a few years after the eternal night spyro cinder and sparks are set free and later get rescued by hunter of avalar only to find out that the world is in shambles as the dark master malaphor broke free from the well of souls as a result of the events of the last game so now you have to fight against his armies take malaphor on directly and stop ragnarok i mean the destroyer like i said there's a lot you have to already be aware of to get the most out of this game but i will say i'm quite impressed by the names included in the voice cast christina ricci elijah wood wayne brady blair underwood gary oldman freaking mark hamill it's a really solid albeit not quite a-list cast they do a fairly good job with the material they're given i'd say christina ricci as cinder is probably the standout performance in the game she's feisty and has an appealing dry sarcasm and christina ricci delivers the material really believably for the most part follow my lead why should you leave uh-oh take cover [Applause] okay good idea you lead she especially likes to pick on sparks i'll keep it up sparks i think it's working also shout out to this line cinder you're a genius i have my moments that's literally my go-to when somebody compliments me but then you have some pretty unfortunate performances mark hamill as malaphor could have been great if they didn't alter his voice to this extent can you even tell that's mark hamill can you even understand what he's saying kind of a waste of money if they're gonna make his voice this unrecognizable then there's wayne brady as sparks who is just awful no big deal risking out lives saving people dodging danger taking it to the man it's an occupation sparks in this game and in the rest of the trilogy for that matter is probably on the list for the top 10 most insufferable video game companions of all time he doesn't serve any consequential gameplay function and in cut scenes he only serves to be a comedy relief with comedy in andre the giant hand-sized air quotes he's a carryover from the original series but they never really figured out what to do with him about two-thirds of the way through the game spyro was forced to leave sparks behind and it's supposed to be this emotional scene but i was relieved that i didn't have to deal with the little anymore i could discuss the story in more depth but to give a brief summary i think it's mostly really well told it's dramatic without being pretentious it's epic it spaces its beats really well the script is pretty good and it has a real sense of climactic tension fittingly with this being the payoff to the trilogy it even has some tender moments that will melt the hearts of even the most stony cynics though it kind of falls apart in the final act i have a feeling that this game's development was rushed towards the end and i have a sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the vivendi activision merger in 2008. it's not too egregious but some things feel really half-assed like the biggest casualty i think is dark spyro at the end of the previous game spyro was corrupted with dark magic and i feel this was supposed to be a bigger deal than it ended up being you know fighting your inner darkness before you conquer the villain type of thing but he turns into his dark form for all of 10 seconds before being talked down and this form is never to be seen again that just felt like a waste of what could have been a great plot point basically the same thing happens with cinder when they confront malaphor she turns evil briefly due to malefor's influence and then something like 20 seconds later she's back to normal again it really just feels like the back third of this game was truncated somewhat and i wish they could have fleshed it out more still i think the story balances out pretty solidly once you get into the game itself this is arguably the most egregious rip-off of god of war out of all of these games although i think dante's inferno still takes it but hey as long as it's copying god of war well who cares right well that's the thing this game is a quality ripoff of god of war but it's barely within spitting distance of the real thing at best the best way to describe the combat is that it's good enough there are plenty of combos the enemies react accordingly and there's a good amount of enemy variants the hit connection is good the combat is impactful and there's a surprising amount of nuance that i didn't notice before like i didn't realize until this playthrough that you can actually disarm certain enemies to break their guard and i appreciate that with eight elemental powers in total there's always ways to mix up your playstyle for the current situation plus each elemental power has a functional difference like ice freezing enemies or shadow having cinder burrow into the ground and launch up with ferocious strikes i find the implementation of armor sets to be clever you collect various pieces of armor that will give you various buffs like increased attack speed or regenerating health ass slappage my only issue with the armor is that i like the designs of spyro and cinder and having them wear armor muddies the visual design somewhat and just looks plain goofy at times but the buffs are too good to ignore there is some good stuff here but to be honest the reason the combat is good enough and not just plain old good is for a few reasons first of all your melee attacks are very short range i understand long-ranged melee attacks aren't as easy to justify here as god of war but the long-ranged attacks were kind of necessary to be able to attack multiple enemies yes but they served a greater importance because kratos attacks were very large and distinct you could easily tell from afar what attacks you were doing and how far through your combos you were but because our character's attacks are so small here and there's always a bunch of chaos going on around you it can be hard at a pinch to see how many attacks in a combo you've done if you've seen one claw swipe you've seen them all so it's harder to pull off combos because it's harder to distinguish at a pinch how far through your combos you are at any given moment in order to strike optimally with attacks of your choice that little bit of nuance removed leads to button mashing over strategy and honestly having to constantly be attempting to get within range is a bit of a chore also in god of war i'm not sure if this was a deliberate design choice but between the aforementioned large attacks and kratos being white as the driven snow he is always very prominent on the screen spiral and cinder can get lost in the shuffle at times because they're so small and can sometimes blend into the saturated color scheme or just the general chaos so the battling is simply not as good as it could be and just a few nitpicks before we go most of the enemies were fun to fight but some were a bit obnoxious particularly these absolute units they had tons of health and would spend most of their time blocking so it was a bit obnoxious to find an opening they're not hard to fight they just take forever then i wish there was a run button because your movement speed is a bit slow also the guarding has the same issue as it did in lords of shadow in that the dodge roll and block are mapped to the same button then the health pickups don't scale to your current health bar when you have your default health bar a single health crystal is almost guaranteed to fill it up all the way but at higher levels you might need multiple health crystals which kind of defeats the purpose of having upgradeable health to begin with once again compare this to god of war where a single health chest will fill your health bar up no matter how upgraded it is i understand not filling it up if it's only a partial health crystal but otherwise it forces you to backtrack or wait for the regenerating health crystals just to fill up your health bar which really kills the pace but moving on from the combative elements of gameplay i think the highlight of the gameplay is the puzzle aspect because with spiral and cinder each having four unique powers it gives you the opportunity to utilize most in a unique way and combined with the utilization of having two separate characters working in tandem you get some real clever puzzles like how if spyro uses his earth power he'll transform into a giant boulder but if cinder is on a wall spyro can use the link between them to transform himself into a giant wrecking ball and that's just one example a lot of this game combines the unique elements of play to make some real head scratchers that are satisfying to solve the ruins of warfang level is the highlight of this it's just four extended sequences of puzzles in combat and it leaves you to figure out the details excellent and notably unlike something like lords of shadow which had the tendency to introduce mechanics for single puzzles dawn of the dragon's puzzles are all based around well-established mechanics so you're never fighting against the game to figure them out and the two-player aspect also makes this game rather unique amongst the genre normally these games are very solitary games so being able to play couch co-op is kind of novel and thankfully in single player the cpu doesn't hog too much of the fun and enemies tend to ignore them so in single player the other character ends up being more of a backup health bar which is really useful at times especially if you tend to go after the elite enemies the optional boss fights which will absolutely wreck your day you need absolutely every advantage you can get with these guys especially towards the back half of the game but outside of them i just chose to play a spyro most of the time after all he is the principal main character it's not the legend of cinder now before this game came out i remember one of the big features they were touting was permanent full flight a first for the series unfortunately the flight is limited and the controls are slightly unwieldy i think they added full flight because it meant they didn't have to base the level design around needing a constant solid path forward but they made it deliberately limited so it also wouldn't hinder the puzzle design it's probably the best compromise it's a lot harder to challenge the player when you give them full freedom of mobility because then not much can really get in their way kneecapping potential challenges so i'm fine with it and it opens up the level design to different ideas here and there like the floating islands level where they set you loose to find eight different torches to ignite by the way can i just say this level is gorgeous in fact can i just say this entire game is absolutely gorgeous even with the limited resolution it still holds up to this day every single time i get out of the catacombs into the twilight falls i find myself gobsmacked at the sheer beauty of it all i literally sat there for a couple minutes just gazing into the digital night sky hey cinder could you stop spazzing out for a minute i'm doing a thing here even before this i found myself sightseeing a bit and the valley of avalor is probably the absolute peak of this game's beauty in my opinion if i decided to pack it up one day and become a nature dwelling hermit i'd want to live somewhere like this unfortunately though if you're a fan of trivium i'm sure you'll understand where there's beauty their sorrow and boy are there some sorry excuses for technical performance in some of these levels okay that was a bit tortured point being that the frame rate is really bad at times although like unleashed the game is better optimized on xbox 360. that said it still has some pretty hectic drops at times i won't even mention the lengths i had to go to figure that out so taken as a whole i think this game is good veering integrate but where i think it becomes truly great is in the ending sequence because a truly great ending sequence can be the lasting impression that elevates an experience and that's certainly the case here the three-part fight with malaphor in the sky then on the falling platform while the planet is shattering this is the definition of epic this is how you pay off a trilogy and that's followed by the spirit of fallen dragons trapping malaphor in the planet's core and spyro finding the strength to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to reassemble the world all while cinder confesses her love to spyro [Music] i love you damn that's heavy and the perfect way to pay off the trilogy of course despite the dragon emblem in the sky the chronicler admits to ignitus who becomes the new chronicler that spyro and cinder are in fact still alive the ending always makes me misty-eyed well young dragon where might you be [Music] seeing spyro and cinder happily frolicking in the fields of avalor it's just so cathartic to see them happy after living in chaos for so long and this follows on from the credits which has the already gut-wrenching duet guide you home [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] damn that's hard to listen to but for good reasons it truly does feel like the end of an era and in many ways it was considering that this was the last thing spyro did before being absorbed into skylanders the last impression will always be the lasting impression and i can pick knits all day but when it's all said and done i enjoyed my time with the legend of spyro dawn of the dragon it's not for everyone and even as i was playing i still felt that it was a little surreal to consider this little guy collecting gems ostensibly under the same ip different timelines sure but that's still spyro i think it's in our nature to viscerally reject change but i think change can be good not only good but necessary at times only with evolution are we able to accept our flaws the things holding us back and become better and yeah sometimes change isn't for the better and sometimes you won't like how things change but you'll never know if you don't take the chance stagnation is easy and evolution is risky but sometimes if you take the chance and accept change something can become better and more successful than ever was that necessarily true for the legend of spyro no but it was something new they tried and made something unique and special i think the world is just a little bit better for having the trilogy because the alternative was more stagnation if you've never played the legend of spyro trilogy i'd say that this is the one that's really worth your time a new beginning has already gameplay but the story is by the numbers and the eternal knight has a much better story but the gameplay was butchered so i'd say if you're interested just look up a story summary before playing this one you've fallen a long way since you led the black dragon you don't tell me about the black dragon i am the black dragon and that's all the games for today if i were to rank all five games i've covered i think in the last place would be sonic unleashed then there's a pretty vast gulf in my enjoyment after that i'd probably put darksiders then lords of shadow and dawn of the dragon are fairly neck and neck and at the top i put dante's inferno because dante's inferno is based and i will not hear anyone tell me otherwise thus concludes the god of war knock-offs collection part 1. this is definitely going to be something i come back to considering how many of these games i found as a matter of fact here's the list of all the god of war like games i'm currently aware of and will cover in future videos if you see any that aren't on the list be sure to mention them in the comment section and i will update it in the pinned comment otherwise i hope you enjoyed the video and if you did consider supporting my channel by hitting the subscribe button and the notification bell so you're always up to date on what i'm doing and don't forget to leave a like as well otherwise i've been the king of snark style right here on tactical bacon productions and i will see you next time peace

Channel: Tactical Bacon Productions

Views: 632,884

Keywords: god of war, god of war ragnarok, god of war 2018, god of war 4, playstation 3, darksiders, darksiders review, sonic unleashed, sonic unleashed review, dantes inferno, dantes inferno review, castlevania lords of shadow, Castlevania lords of shadow review, the legend of spyro, the legend of spyro dawn of the dragon, the legend of spyro dawn of the dragon review, tactical bacon productions, tactical bacon productions god of war, god of war review, god of war ps4, god of war 3

Id: IE1aubulrIw

Length: 69min 59sec (4199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 14 2022