I’m going to do what I will now call a “late to the party” review of games that are not new, but not really old either. First up, is a game that I’ve got really mixed feelings about: MediEvil on PS4. To sum up the story for those not familiar, you play as Sir Dan Fortesque, a soldier who’s killed in the first volley of arrows while fighting the wizard Zarok. 100 years later, Zarok casts a spell over game’s world of Gallowmere to awaken his army and take the souls of the living. If it makes no sense that the game starts with a war then somehow presses pause while Zarok goes into hiding, then starts it back up when he decides to make with the voodoo, then we’ve got something in common. Anyways, he accidentally brings back Sir Dan to life, and Dan decides to not only pick up where he left off but also hopes to become a true hero in the process and properly ascend to the Hall of Heroes.

Originally released on the PS1 in 1998, this is a remake that was came out on PS4 right around Halloween. It has a nice new coat of paint on it, the world is a perfect mix of gothic AND colorful, and the writing and characters are funny. So why do I have such a hard time writing a positive review?

When it comes down to it, the camera and the combat. The 2 things that were pretty screwed when I played the original and they are the only things that somehow didn’t improve with the remake. It’s kinda sad too, because I haven’t been all that impressed with Sony’s 1st party games lately and when I heard about this I thought they’d fix everything, especially the 2 items that were its biggest problems when it first came out.

So to be clear, the combat does have variety. There’s a ton of weapons to collect. Everything from swords, axes, bows, a chicken leg, and even Sir Dan’s own arm as a weapon. You can charge up a weapon for a special attack, though more often than not it’s a waste of time to do it. The reason for that is because most of the melee weapons require you to get in REALLY close to your enemies to hurt them, and at that point the enemies almost never suffer any knockback from your attacks. This means you’re basically just trading blows until one of you dies. It’s normal to get into a fight with a group of enemies, kill them without thinking they landed a hit on you, then you look at your life bar and it’s at 50%. This did not improve until I got all of the weapons in the game.

This game is old-school in the most irritating ways.

Your life bar consists of your normal health, along with these little energy vials above them that double as your extra lives. Run out of health? One of those vials will be used to keep you going. Fall off a cliff? Or accidentally jump off the end of the level where you shouldn’t be allowed to jump off? Lose another vial. You get them back y either picking up more vials as you progress, or standing in a health pool and letting it recharge. Which is really exciting to just stand there and let your health partially charge back up. Nothing like breaking up an action game with having to stand still in one spot. The first half of the game I spent chucking throwing knives and shooting crossbow bolts at bad guys instead of fighting up close because I stayed alive longer that way. Luckily the enemies won’t engage you if you stand far enough away from them that you can just kill them without them noticing. Because good game design.

So if you lose all your lives, then you restart from the beginning of the level. No checkpoints either. This game is old-school in the most irritating ways. Thankfully the levels are mostly pretty short. Like there’s one later in the game that’s about 30 seconds long. Not kidding.

And really the difficulty wouldn’t even be a big deal if the combat and camera were fixed. With that said the camera can’t make up its mind if it’s going to let you control it yourself or if you’re going to have to play with it fixed in one angle. Some areas even let you move the camera but only in a certain direction. Ever play a platforming game that doesn’t let you see what’s ahead and you get killed? Well you are in for a treat! An angry, rage inducing treat. It’s really disappointing because I think something like that should be really easy to fix these days.

So I mentioned the game gets some stuff right. The writing is really clever. Dan himself sounds a lot like Mr. Bean if he were recording himself in a garbage can (it’s a lot more charming than I’m describing it), and a lot of the conversations between him and the other dead heroes consists of running jokes about him getting killed so early on. I always felt that if I were to be in an action movie, or have to do anything outside of my day job and recording these sub-par videos, that I’d likely get killed almost instantly as well, so this is humor I could identify with. The graphics are great and don’t need much explaining. The music is exceptional also. Lots of gothic Danny Elfman sounding music in this. You could stick this music into a Tim Burton movie and it’d be right at home.

The game’s not very long either. I think it took me the better part of a weekend to get to the end and that’s more because I got mad, put it down and walked away, then came back and tried again. Had I acted like an adult I would’ve finished it sooner.

So even with all the production values it has going for it, I just couldn’t get over the combat or the camera and ultimately that hurt my whole experience playing it. Not to a point where I wouldn’t recommend it, especially at it’s current $30 price tag, but know that you’re getting a remake of a 1998 action game that looks and sounds amazing but still plays like it’s from 1998.