If there's anything I want to bury into your mind through reading these reviews, it's that for the most part a simple concept executed amazingly will always trump an ambitious concept treated halfheartedly. And Jamestown is no exception.

It's a SHMUP, which is something that's honestly rare outside of the Touhou series nowadays. It's got a stellar art style, a very good if short story, enough ship variation to keep things interesting, and enough difficulty states to both let you relax and go your own pace while also pushing you to slowly creep up to that peak difficulty level.

It's good on your own, like really REALLY good. But if you can get a few friends together to huddle around your computer like a bunch of cultist gremlins worshiping some sort of evil god, you will have a fucking blast with this game. I'm certain.

A game that lays so much of the groundwork for the rest of the Metal Gear series that if you're approaching it after playing Metal Gear Solid it practically feels like a 'demake' of that title. Takes all of the impressive stuff from the original game and adds loads of new ideas - all things that are eventually used again throughout the Metal Gear Solid games - and begins to really find that sweet spot for Metal Gear storytelling. You know, the one that lands directly between the utterly absurd and the deadly serious commentary on war. I remember during the pre-MGS release hype a few magazines running statements from Kojima saying that 'MGS was the technology finally allowing him to deliver the Metal Gear game he always wanted to' and I remember finding how close to MGS Metal Gear 2 actually is when I first played through it but on this recent replay, I think this is a game that holds up remarkably well 33 years on.

I can't quite get my head around the fact that this game was doing all this in a world before Sonic The fuckin' Hedgehog existed.