Ghosts and Ghouls Double Review ("Code Vein" and "Luigi's Mansion 3")

It seems to be a running theme this year that I have difficulty keeping up with my reviews, so here I am with yet another multi-review package! The month of October has passed us by, but the two items left on my list to review are both pretty Halloween-y, so I thought it fit to have them together in one package! Unlike most of the multi-reviews I do, however, both games we have on the agenda today are pretty good! So, without further ado, let us jump right in with Code Vein first, followed by Luigi's Mansion 3!

Code Vein

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows

Reviewed for: Playstation 4

Code Vein has been on my radar since its reveal at E3 a couple of years ago. A soulslike game about vampires that also sports an anime art style? That concept had a lot of promise! But then the demo came out a month or two ago, and my confidence in this concept was...lessened, shall we say? I've only played 3 demos in my time (including the one for Code Vein) and I'll say this...the only good one of the bunch was Nier: Automata. The other one was for Prey, which was not a strong first impression, but as we know, the final product was quite good. The same can be said for Code Vein. The more demos I play, the more I'm convinced that they just aren't a good indicator of a game's eventual quality.
But enough about demos, what about Code Vein itself? Well...what if I told you it was one of the best games of this year? Because it is! Gameplay, story, characters, music, all of it is friggin top-notch! To put it another way, I thought that I was going to go back to Borderlands 3 a second time after I beat this game, but what did I do instead? I went on to play through Code Vein 3 times, nearly 100% it, and feel extremely tempted to put off playing The Outer Worlds (I started writing this part of the review before I got too into The Outer Worlds, so as you can imagine, I now wish that I had put it off) just to go back to it yet another time to see about getting the full 100% completion! There are a couple reasons why this didn't happen, but we'll get to that. For the time being, however, I encourage you to don your gas masks, practice saying the word "Baka" as angrily as you possibly can, and join me as I tell you why Code Vein is outstanding!

Where to start with the story here...I guess the place to begin would be with who you are. Code Vein puts you into the shoes of a player-named "Revenant," a species of semi-human creatures that thirst for human blood, have retractable sharp fangs, and cannot die unless their heart is damaged (so, vampires). From the start, it's established that every individual revenant has a "blood code" that serves as a kind of blood type (or a class, from a gameplay perspective), except that it's unique to the individual. No two revenants have the same blood code, but the general rule is that they only have one blood code. This is all turned on its head when you awaken from a slumber with no memory of your past, only to find that you have the ability to store multiple blood codes within you. So you're not exactly a chosen one, but you're different from the rest. Anyway, in this world, revenants and humans alike live inside of a giant stretch of land bordered on all sides by a giant red barrier. The world you're in is either called "Vein" or "The Gaol of the Mists," depending on the sentence, but the gist is that anybody who approaches the borders of this world starts feeling extremely sick, so nobody can leave the area. As a result, society has pretty much devolved into revenants desperately searching for "blood beads," which can give them the blood they need without having to draw it from humans. As with any soulslike, the story and world aren't 100% defined, and attempting to accurately describe it all is a futile effort, so that's where I'll stop with the worldbuilding. But I'll say that after waking up, teaming up with a character named Io, who knows nothing of her past other than that she has to stay by your side, and being forced into servitude by a gang of devious revenants, you end up teaming up with a revenant named Louis. Louis' mission is to investigate blood beads and eventually determine their source so that he might be able to free revenants from their thirst...and as with any soulslike, this is only the beginning of where the story will end up taking you!
So, that's all I'll say on the story, but what about characters? Well, this being an IP with anime-based art, no one character is super complex, but they all do the jobs they're meant to do within the story. Beyond that, if you really try to get to know each of these characters, you'll find that there isn't a character introduced (even in the most indifferent passing) that doesn't get a lot more development if you try! Not all of them are winners, but you can't deny that effort went into even the unnamed characters.

Gameplay-wise, it's a soulslike, so you should know what to expect: skill-over-numbers combat consisting mainly of dodging and hitting. But there are some unique diversions from the formula in Code Vein, namely in that it doesn't treat leveling up like other RPGs do. See, whereas in Dark Souls and its sequels/successors you'd choose specific stats (like vitality, stamina, etc) to level up, in Code Vein you simply level up the character and certain stats happen to be increased as a result. This is due to the game's "Blood Code" system. I briefly referred to it as Code Vein's answer to class systems, so let me elaborate. You receive blood codes from characters or find them in the environment, and these blood codes, essentially being the blood type of their owners, contain their owners' stats. So, by equipping, say, the "warrior" blood code, you'll have a much larger strength or health base stat. Likewise, by equipping the "caster" blood code, you'll have lower strength/health than you would with the warrior code, but you'll have more ichor (magic points) to make up for it. In addition, each blood code also comes with the skills their owner can use. At first, you can only use these skills when the respective blood code is equipped, but if you play around with the blood code or use the necessary "haze" (souls) to fully learn a skill, you can use a skill with any blood code equipped. In this way, constant experimentation with blood codes is encouraged and rewarded if you do it smartly. As you progress, you obtain several blood codes, some with interesting handicaps and strengths, and given that you can change your blood code at literally any time, there's a ton of freedom to be found here. I'll say that I didn't see too much tangible difference in the stats. My first playthrough I used one of the mid-game blood codes more geared toward direct combat, while in my second and third playthroughs I used the caster blood code from the beginning of the game. I absolutely excelled in the latter playthroughs and had some trouble in the first one. Part of that is definitely familiarity, but it does also serve as a reminder that in spite of the freedom at your disposal, nothing counts more than your base skill at the game.
There is one negative to mention in terms of gameplay, and that's the way in which the game tries to emulate the challenge of Dark Souls. It takes the cheaper elements from Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 and uses them pretty consistently, to the point where it's no longer a surprise and by extension, no longer that much of a challenge. I have two examples of this to point to. The first is ambushes. If there's an item by the edge of a cliff, literally 99% of the time an enemy will be hanging from the cliff waiting to climb up. If you're about to round a corner, 90% of the time there will be an enemy just far enough outside of the distance you can see past the corner waiting to hit you when you can't see him. It's constant, and while it doesn't exactly get annoying, it does get quite predictable. The second example to bring up is cheap environmental deaths. These are far less frequent, but there are sections here that feel like (significantly less annoying) emulations of the Shrine of Amana from Dark Souls 2. See, a lot of levels take place on thin stretches of land by cliffsides, so falling off and dying is a pretty regular thing early on. Similarly, later on there's a snow level that has disguised ice panels that crumble and send you falling into the void if you stand on them for longer than a millisecond. These sections of the area are easily noticeable if you look, but it's easy to let your guard down and lose progress. As I said, this piece isn't too pervasive, but it did annoy me at times.
Look, I've talked at length about the particulars of gameplay, but the fact of the matter is that if you're a fan of soulslike combat, you're gonna have a good time here...it's just there are some differences that you'll want to be aware of, and I've already covered that.

Before I move on to the technical side of things, there's a positive that I want to really emphasize that I haven't touched on yet. Code Vein sports the single best character creation system I've ever seen. It's not just that there's an overwhelming amount of freedom, it's also that the developers knew exactly what kind of creation system this game needed. This is an anime-inspired game, so what kind of character creation system did it need? One that allows you to make the most stupid, overdesigned, absolutely laughable character you can imagine! The sheer level of stupidity you can bring to your character is unrivaled by anything I've seen in gaming thus far, and it's all measured stupidity, not just "I slid the RBG slider all the way over here and I made Shrek." See, first thing you do is design the hair, voice, and overall look of your character. This is already anime enough as you can make the eyes friggin huge, but then you get to customize the accessories. You can add as many as 10 (I think) accessories to the character, and the potential is staggering. For instance, you can equip an eyepatch on each eye, a monacle over one of those eye patches, two angel wings on your back, a halo over your head, a fleur de lis coffin on your right arm, cat ears beneath the halo, a dog tail, etc. The combinations you can come up with are just fascinating, and it's like Bandai Namco knew exactly what kinds of stupid things people would want to customize an anime character with. The depth of creation possible is already staggering, but when you take into account the fact that it's this self-aware, it just gets even better! For my first character (male), I went with a Hellsing-esque scarecrow hat, steampunk monacle, one yellow eye, one red eye, all sorts of ridiculous tassles on my sleeves, and a coffin on the back of my belt. For my second character (female), I decided to push the limits of inherent Japanese sexism by making a character with as big a bust size as I could manage, the girliest hair bows I could find, heart-shaped makeup patterns, the biggest, most doe-esque eyes I could select, you get the drill. All this to reiterate the sheer freedom available to you when making your character.

Now, onto the game's only sizeable weakness: its technical strength. This is a game that just doesn't run well. Strangely enough, it's at its worst in sections without enemies, but in these sections, the framerate drops to nauseating levels. The framerate also has a tendency to drop during action, though not to as large a degree. In addition to this, it seemed like this game...sort of lost track of my controller a couple of times? Like, the camera would rotate around the character a couple of times when I lightly circled the right stick, things like that. I'd normally say this was a problem with the hardware, not the game, but it happened constantly during Code Vein and hasn't happened once during The Outer Worlds or Death Stranding thus far (and The Outer Worlds is objectively terrible, so if it were a hardware thing, surely it would've happened then). Also, while I never experienced any crashes (soft or hard) during my three times through the game, my brother had the game soft crash at the last moment of the penultimate boss fight, so that's something for potential players to keep in mind. I'd like to say that's the end of the technical negatives, there's sadly one last thing that isn't small. See, I played the game a third time so that I could get the last of the endings and by extension the trophy for experiencing each ending. Well, I finished that third playthrough, got the ending, and got the trophy for seeing that specific ending...but I didn't get the trophy for experiencing all 3 endings. So, in addition to the previously stated technical problems, at least this one trophy seems to be bugged.
But how about a bit of positivity to end this paragraph on? The soundtrack that Code Vein sports is simply fantastic. It's every bit as unapologetically bombastic and overblown as a concept like "anime vampire Dark Souls" needs, yet in its quiet moments it manages to be breathtaking in its beauty. Even the track that plays during the events of the "true" ending, which absolutely does not fit the tone of the game at all, makes up for its tonal out-of-placeness by just being incredibly pleasant to listen to.

Opinions on Code Vein have been pretty divided among both the critics and the general public, so allow me to lend my voice to the side that says it's good. I loved this game enough to play it as many times as I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses and almost as many times as I played Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. It's a game that you can probably tell if you'd like just by looking at it. If you're a fan of Dark Souls combat, you'll probably like it. If anime instantly repulses you, you'll be very repulsed by this game. It isn't the strongest technical package by a long shot, but if you'll allow yourself to look past that, you'll be in for one of this year's best titles! And if you're very simple and play this game, you can make an anime babe and listen to some good music. A little something for most people!

Let us review:

Poor illusion of challenge - 0.3
Technical problems - 1.0

The final score for Code Vein is...

8.7/10 - Great
Good work, Bandai Namco, good work!

Luigi's Mansion 3

Available for: Nintendo Switch

Reviewed for: Nintendo Switch

Folks, whenever I have nostalgia for something, I like to be upfront about it. My first game console was a Nintendo Gamecube that my siblings and I received when I was in 4th grade. We didn't get games very often at the time, so any time we got a game, we'd always milk it for all it was worth.
One of these games was the original Luigi's Mansion. I don't believe I ever finished it, but it was one that I played and enjoyed quite often. Since then, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon came out, and I didn't play it because the entire idea of a Luigi's Mansion game on a handheld console is ridiculous and counter to the whole point. However, on Halloween, Luigi's Mansion 3 came out for the switch, and I decided I'd play it. The point of me bringing up my nostalgia for the original game is to give a bit of context as to why, despite being a good game and despite looking forward to playing it every night that I did, I started to forget about Luigi's Mansion 3 the second I put it down. It's a fun game with many objectively good qualities, but it just isn't that memorable.

I'm going to operate under the assumption that you have a basic understanding of the Mario universe, dear reader. Luigi's Mansion 3, in a move that renders the title a misnomer, sees our green-clad, less-popular Nintendo hero checking into the "Last Resort" hotel in preparation for vacation with Mario, Princess Peach, and 3 of the Toads. However, on the first night of their getaway, things take a turn for the spooky! The owner of the hotel, Helen Gravely, reveals that the entire hotel is run by ghosts and that she's working with King Boo to trap all of our stereotypical Italian heroes in paintings. By the time Luigi comes to this realization, all of his comrades have already been captured and he must make a desperate escape from the floor his room is on. From there, Luigi happens to find the vacuum that he's been using to capture ghosts since the first game, and he embarks on a quest across all 17 floors of the Last Resort to rescue his friends and defeat King Boo...
It's a Nintendo story, so it's obviously nothing at all to write home about, but that's not the point.

Gameplay is pretty much what you've come to expect at this point if you've ever played a Luigi's Mansion game. You stun ghosts with your flashlight, then use your vacuum to wear them down until you finally capture them. Additions in this game (assuming they weren't in Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon) include a darklight beam that reveals hidden things, a ground pound, and the ability to create a plasma clone named Gooigi that can do everything Luigi can do except he can squeeze through tight spaces, has lower health, and dies instantly when he comes in contact with water. That's pretty much the gist of it, but Nintendo being Nintendo, there are plenty of little variations in this formula. You might be faced with a ghost wearing sunglasses (who is therefore immune to the flashlight) and have to suck up the sunglasses with the vacuum first. Likewise, you might come up against a ghost in a hoodie doing a dance, and the only way you can get them stunnable is to do a ground pound that shakes them out of their groove. Compared to the original game, the enemy variety is piss poor, but the sheer variation of contexts in which this measly handful of enemy types can exist and the number of ways in which they can make you think about how to beat them more than make up for that fact. The basic ghost designs are absolutely eye-rollingly generic, so there's no saving the visual aesthetic, but from a gameplay perspective, Nintendo makes it work. For all the variety to be found in basic enemy encounters, however, it doesn't hold a candle to the variety of gameplay ideas to be found in boss battles. Luigi's Mansion 3 and Borderlands 3 definitely are neck-in-neck in terms of their boss design! In one boss encounter, you find yourself waiting to launch bombs into the open mouth of a possessed piano, whereas in another you find yourself using the expel (because I will NOT use the word "blow") function of your vacuum to move yourself around a small water area in a rubber duck tube while avoiding a hick mechanic rowing towards you full-speed in another rubber duck tube. Furthermore, in another boss encounter, you can't actually do anything against the boss without switching between Luigi and Gooigi to turn one lever. Not all of these bosses are winners, but they're all varied and they all force you to think! Now, in spite of what I've said, the fact that you're almost always having to think about encounters to some degree doesn't make the game challenging. I died exactly twice in this game, and each time, it was just because it took me a little bit longer than normal to get the gist of what was going on around me (because it was exclusively in boss fights). It's not...exactly an easy game, but you can tell just by playing that this game was made with a couple markets in mind:
1) inherently smart kids,
2) kids who can learn quickly with subtle cues, and
3) adults who enjoy a light-but-present challenge.
That isn't a diss to anyone not in these categories who might've had more difficulty...it's just a fact that the game's puzzles (combat or otherwise) are made for these demographics. If this were purely a kid's game, I wouldn't/shouldn't have died even once. However, there's a little bit of brain-bending for anyone, and it's pretty expertly balanced so that for little kids, they'll have to work for it, and even for adults, there'll be times where you're stuck. That applies to both gameplay and collectibles. See, in every level, there are a number of "gems" that can be uncovered by completing various unnamed side puzzles. In every level, you're going to be challenged to really use your head to uncover them all...and that's really all there is to say about collectibles.
Now, before I move on, there are a few things I need to address about the gameplay. When it comes to Luigi's Mansion, Nintendo just doesn't know how to balance making basic enemy encounters challenging and making them infuriating (this bleeds over into one or two boss fights, albeit to a lesser extent). It isn't as prevalent in this title as it was in the original, but every so often, the game decides to do things like have enemies throw banana peels on the ground to make you slip and lose track of ghosts while you're battling them. If you had more control over where Luigi moves when sucking up ghosts, this would be a great design decision, but as it stands, if this kind of thing happens, you're going to slip 99% of the time. There's no real strategy involved, it's just "if they throw it, you're going to have a bad time." The banana peel is only one example of environmental threats that don't actually test you in this game, but on the whole, the concept isn't utilized nearly as much here. Despite that, it's still present, and it still made me swear under my breath every time, so it just goes to show that Nintendo doesn't always learn with its sequels. The other thing to address is forced backtracking. On two occasions, a ghost cat steals an elevator button you just acquired from a boss and disappears into a lower level of the hotel. On these occasions, you have no choice but to chase this cat around multiple floors, defeating it in combat three times total in each iteration. The strategy for beating the cat never changes or gets any harder, so it really only amounts to forced backtracking, and it's annoying every single time. Like I said, it only happens twice, so it isn't an earth-shattering problem or anything, but I still never enjoyed the game when the cat was involved.

In spite of a couple issues, thus far I've been singing this game's praises. So...why is it exactly that I wouldn't say it's memorable? Well, oddly enough, it may have something to do with the level variety. Each of the hotel floors has a different "theme," with each theme coming hand-in-hand with different styles for the gems as well as enemy trappings. One floor might have an Ancient Egypt theme, for instance. Another might have a pirate ship theme, etc. Each floor is quite small, so Luigi's Mansion 3 is essentially a ton of variety packed in a very small space. The ultimate result of this is that the hotel doesn't really feel like a cohesive location. The game is at its most memorable within the first few floors, which are all essentially hotel-themed, but after that, the style just bounces around way too much for it to feel like you're exploring one hotel from top to bottom. I can appreciate that Nintendo didn't want the game to feel same-y throughout, but they went a little too overboard here, and it makes the whole package less memorable. I get that I was complaining about too little enemy variety in the previous paragraph, but some middle ground between the two would've been fantastic.

That takes us to the technical side of things! This being a Nintendo title (that isn't Breath of the Wild), it's pretty darn solid! I never had any texture pop-in, no crashes, no framerate stutters, no animation or gameplay glitches, no sound or lighting glitches, no nothing. Everything works exactly as Nintendo intended...but with that in mind...I would've liked for this game to be less...cartoony. This complaint is based off the game's lighting decisions as well as some of its artistic decisions. The original Luigi's Mansion had a sense of humor, but given how dark and spooky every room of the mansion was, you could tell why Luigi might've been trembling in his boots throughout. In the original, lighting up a room, a hallway, or a floor was your way of being rewarded for braving all the ghosts in the vicinity. Luigi's Mansion 3, however, is well-lit to an excessive degree on every floor. Every single floor has millions upon millions of light sources, and not a single area is even the least bit spooky. So...why does Luigi enter every floor shivering and shaking and holding his flashlight as if he's staring into the void? The original casted Luigi as a scaredy-cat because he had reason to be afraid...this one, however, casts him in the same role just "because he is." The other side of this complaint is...artistic decisions. See, the original game took itself seriously to some degree, so every cutscene tried to paint the ghost boss in question as some kind of super powerful and spooky being. It didn't matter that they were ghosts in a Nintendo game starring the less popular Mario brother, it tried to sell you on the fact that it was scary. In Luigi's Mansion 3, however, every cutscene that ever plays wouldn't feel out of place with Bugs Bunny and "The Barber of Seville" playing in the background. Ghost bosses try to be funny almost all the time, their animations are greatly exaggerated, and the whole thing is obviously meant to entertain kids rather than force them into slightly spooky situations. Now, the humor lands a lot of the time, so it isn't a total loss, but as a fan of what Luigi's Mansion used to be, I can't help but think that Nintendo sold out here. Come to think of it, this might also contribute to the game's lack of memorability. The original game had atmosphere, and though it wasn't super scary even as a kid, specific sounds, animations, and lighting choices still stick in my mind because it was an unusually dark property from Nintendo. Luigi's Mansion 3, however, just feels like another cartoony, inoffensive Nintendo title. To this day, I can remember the exact lighting, animation, and creaking sound that came with Luigi trying to open a locked door in the original game. I can remember specific sounds that optional side bosses made while going about their business (the fat ghost eating the giant block of cheese comes to mind the fastest). If you asked me, "hey, do you remember the exact layout of certain rooms including the locations of money, collectibles, and elemental damage boosters from the original Luigi's Mansion?" I'd say "yes, the grand dining hall, the kitchen before the backyard, and the ballroom." However, despite a much higher budget in this title, I won't remember even one animation, sound sample, or even specific level details from Luigi's Mansion even a year from now.

Folks, it feels like I start my conclusion paragraphs with notes about how I probably sounded conflicted pretty darn often. Luigi's Mansion 3 is an odd case in that I've definitely been 50/50 between my praises and my criticisms, but it's objectively and (mostly) subjectively good. See, memorability isn't a factor I actively rank games on. It seems to me that taking points off because I don't see myself playing a good game again in a year's time will lead us down a one-way road to "live service" hell. Nintendo did a lot subjectively wrong with Luigi's Mansion 3, but the fact of the matter is that it's still a cut above most other games. It's still not a perfect game, but the point of this paragraph is to say that the vast majority of my complaints have nothing to do with the game's measurable quality or immediate entertainment value for its players. In spite of the score I've decided on, I wouldn't expect it to be close to GOTY for me, but that's not the point of these reviews. If you're like me and the last game in this saga you played is the original one, you're going to find yourself disappointed in some super-specific areas, but you'll still find a lot to love. If you're a newcomer, you're in for a great time. No matter who you are or how immediately predisposed you are to dislike this game, it's a win-win.

Let us review:
Returning + new gameplay problems - 0.5
Schizophrenic level design - 0.2

The final score for Luigi's Mansion 3 is...

9.3/10 - Fantastic
Great work, Nintendo, great work!