I'm a big fan of the series, having tons of nostalgia for Pro Skater 2, and American Wasteland in particular. I remember playing P8 on the PS2 back in the day and enjoying it, but never beating it. I can see why, as the PS2 version's level were clearly not retooled enough for the different engine, leading to some very very wonky physics.

As for the HD version, there's stuff to like: the every level is interconnected thing is really really cool. Going from one level to the other in one big combo (without the loading corridors of AW) is tons of fun. Sadly, there's a bunch of things here that drag the whole thing down, making it ultimately annoying:

The ragdoll physics missions are awful. Just bad.

The engine is clearly not quite there yet. They're going for more "realism" while still trying to keep the arcade-y feel, leading to this weird hybrid. Everything feels harder to do than previous entires

* And worst of all, the framerate. We're down to 30FPS here folks, and it makes a world of difference. You could get used to it, but there's also slowdown. Very frequent ones, I think this bitch gets to 15FPS sometimes.

I really wanna like this game, but it was very clearly rushed, and it's difficult to say I do like it.

Never let anyone convince you that this is "a great action game".

I just beat Leon's campaign actually, and it might be enough: this game is kind of a mess really. It infamously had close to 1000 people working on it, scaterred across the world, and it sure as hell shows as there's no clear focus here, and it's amazingly disjointed as a game. The worst thing is that it has a really fun melee combat system, but the game never explains any of it, you have to rely on internet guides or trial and error to even know it's a thing. When you hear people say that RE6 is a great action game but a terrible RE, they're thinking of the moment to moment combat.

Unfortunately it doesn't really matter that much, because this game insists on cheap setpieces (that are clearly trying to replicate Uncharted), and every now and then it kinda remembers it's supposed to be a bit scary, and you get the lamest "atmospheric" sections imaginable.

The symbol of the game’s lack of focus and communication, to me, is on Leon’s campaign: it begins in media res, and once you play enough for the story to get to where the prologue begins... the characters are using different clothes than before. How? HOW?

And as fun as the combat system is, I feel like the action took a step back from RE5. What was the most satisfying thing about 4 and 5's gameplay loop (aside from the delicious headshots)? That killing enemies gave you money to further upgrade your shit. Here, killing enemies just drain your resources, a design choice I really don't understand. They're going full action, and yet ammo is more scarce than 4 and 5.

Not only that, but they completely ditched the fun weapon upgrade stuff from previous games for an incredibly unremarkable perks system. I can't stress enough how lame those are. Instead of upgrading your Red9 and immediately noticing the difference, here, have this perk that won't make you feel any different.

If you were to make a highlight of the game's best parts, you would indeed get a pretty good action game. But the package as a whole... It was decent enough to make me enjoy most of my time through Leon's campaign, but the thought of going back for Chris, Jake and Ada isn't very exciting.

This "great action game" is buried beneath all sorts of nonsense here. As with most games though, I'd imagine co-op makes it more fun. I've played solo.

I did end up thinking it was better than Revelations though, that's for sure.

Guys and gals, this is my golden standard for terrible writing. You know that rule, "show don't tell"? Whoever wrote this never heard of this - every single cutscene consists of the characters saying out loud how they feel, and how current events have changed that. This all culminates in a death scene (of a character introduced like 30 minutes earlier), where she monologues for ten minutes or so, telling us everything that's going through her mind. And, there's a flashback of a scene we just saw 5 minutes earlier. It's not hyperbole, it actually happens exactly as I'm describing.

You couple that with terribly directed cutscenes (it's all close-ups on the character's awkward models, with zero dynamism or excitement - think the Star Wars prequels), and following this game's plot is almost torture. The best way I can describe the quality of animation, is by saying that someone took a bunch of PS1 models, increased the polygon count, polished it a little bit and called it a day.

The battle system is fine, and I quite like the game's art direction (some cities and vistas are downright gorgeous) and the soundtrack is actually really pretty good. I might be able to one day go back to this game and skip every cutscene, who knows

Gameplay-wise, it's Assassin's Creed, now with sailing. If you enjoy mindlessly checking boxes in these super shallow Ubisoft sandboxes, it's more of that. I find it relaxing, and with legitimate merits in the art Direction/production design – the Ubisoft teams really know how to sell the ambience/atmosphere of the unique historical settings.

Story-wise, this thing is super incompetent and boy do I have a lot to say about it. The way it feels, it's like they wrote the bullet points, but then couldn't be bothered to properly connect them, and just did the bare minimum. And it greatly annoys me, because this could have been a simple, easy to enjoy story. Instead it's just a series of barely connected events. This isn't a story.

Stuff just... happens in this game, there's ZERO impact for anything. Side characters are introduced, you spend a couple of missions with them, then they just vanish, and maybe come back hours later to, more often than not, be immediately killed. Every single time, my reaction was just "Oh. Okay"

Sadly, this also extends to the main character: Edward's arc is amazingly truncated. This story apparently spans like six years or so, but I didn't even realize it was that long until some character acknowledged it. That's because the only indication that time is even passing, are the dates that appear on the beginning of sequences, which are so easy to forget or just plain ignore. And the reason I say that's the only indication, is because Edward does not change AT ALL.

You know where Edward's character is going, and you spend the entire game expecting him to start getting there, yet they only actually start doing something when you're like... 99% through. For pretty much the entire game, Edward is exactly the same person, until there's this one single event, where he actually goes "wow, time to change!", with all telling, and no showing. There's this one thing that happens at the very end that I think should have this big emotional impact, but I don't care at all, because it's just not earned.

I can only assume they didn't actually care about the narrative, especially since the story-gameplay segregation is at an all-time high here. When you begin the game, Edward isn't even aware that Assassins are even a thing, yet he can do anything that an endgame Ezio could do. Fully proficient with the hidden blade, leaps of faith, it's all here.

The funnier part is the Assassination Contracts, which are available from the get-go. But Edward isn't introduced to them until like halfway through, so you'll have one character explaining to him what are these contracts, and the player has already done like ten of these things by this point.

It actually makes for better pacing, gameplay-wise, than previous entries, though it's even slightly incosistent at that: the rope dart is only available at the last few missions, for some reason.

FUCK. THE FINAL BOSSES.

The stages are pretty fun. They're difficult, but designed around your lack of mobility; only once or twice did I run into something that I thought was bullshit. The final bosses though, require either an agility you do not have, or sheer memorization, and that's always fun. To be fair, the other bosses are somewhat overly simple, but this... is just bad, and I cheated my way through them. Luckily, the rest of the game is still fun, so I can see myself playing this again, but stopping right before the final bosses.

Never let anyone tell you that 8-bit Castlevania is "hard but fair". I used an infinite lives code, and a patch that improves the control and allows you to jump off the stairs (no jumping on them, sadly), and it was still pretty hard, but noticeably less bullshit. I've avoided plenty of cheap hits thanks to these improvements, and there was still some cheapness to be found (enemies sometimes spawn right on top of you for some reason. It was possibly an emulation quirk though)

With these improvements/cheats, it was a healthy challenge. Without them, it's too bullshit to say it's fun. Frustrantingly, it gets so close, but the balance is ruined by 80s videogames design.