Metal Gear Solid 2 might not be an objectively flawless game, but every complaint I can think of somehow connects to or gets mitigated by the themes it tackles. The gameplay improves on everything the first game had, the characters are still great, and the story is crazy ahead of its time with how it portrays AI and information access. I like the setting of Shadow Mosses a bit more than the one here and there are still some tedious parts, but as I said before those personal issues don’t hold much weight compared to how well Metal Gear Solid 2 explores it’s amazing narrative. I’m super excited to start the third game and it amazes me that it apparently gets better than this.

Signalis is probably a dream game for lovers of old school survival horror, and even without experience with this style I can tell how amazing it is in some- if not most areas.

The style is sooo good. The ps1 style polygons with sprites, draped in a bleak colors with bursts red and black fits so perfect with both the setting and narrative. I think the story surprised me the most, it gets a bit surreal but in a way that fits the themes nicely. The only parts that struggled to keep me invested were with the gameplay, I can deal with a limited inventory but the enemy swarming and one area where they take away your map gets really tedious.

I still think Signalis is definitely worth playing though, and I’ll try to play more games in this genre in the future.

Madworld does an amazing job at having its own identity, the black and white comic book look with red blood looks super cool. Combined with the stage variety, bosses, soundtrack, and those commentators. It has a perfect style.

That doesn’t mean it’s flawless though. Some stages are way too simple or complex, the camera can be awkward, some motion controls feel forced, and the game crashed on me a few times when too much stuff was happening.

Comparing this game to No More Heroes shows some obvious similarities. While I think No More Heroes is better, Madworld is still a great game that deserves more recognition. A remaster would be amazing to see.

“This story will eat us alive. This story is a monster.”

It finally clicked. Glimpses of the potential Remedy had to make a game like this definitely existed in Alan Wake 1 and Control, but this game feels like all the pieces came together in the way they needed to.

The lean into horror creates an amazing atmosphere of light and dark, the mix of live action is super cool, and the unique gameplay elements Saga and Alan have make both sides feel unique (even if I prefer the Saga sections a little bit). The sometimes vague puzzles small story gripes I have don’t even bother me that much, just because of how great everything surrounding it really is.

Seeing what they’ve done here makes me super excited for Control 2, and I hope Remedy can continue to make games as amazing as this.

Yeah I don’t really have much to say about this game that hasn’t already been said. It’s just worse than the first game in every way with a nonsense story and some frustrating areas. At least it’s short though, and the easy difficulty make this an ideal game to blast through listening to a podcast or something.



Also why is Dante Two-Face??????

Ok I have sooooo much to say about this damn game. To start this feels retro in a good and bad way. The background art, character portraits, and soundtrack make everything such a vibe while playing helped by the solid writing across every route. The drawbacks to this are that the music is very limited and there are a lot of baffling choices made in general.

From the elongated pacing some parts have, the pointless ‘good’ endings that (almost) all feel like ass pulls, and the insanely unnecessary sex scenes that are all bad. I still think the writing good, but I can’t ignore these issues.


Now to get into each route specifically, I’ll just go in order.

Arcueid: As the ‘first’ route I think it being way simpler than all the other ones puts at a disadvantage, and it’s not helped at all by how I personally feel pretty neutral on Arcueid herself. She’s well written and her relationship with Shiki has some great moments, but something about her never clicked with me. I still think the foundation this route lays is pretty solid and only suffers from being dragged out a bit.

Ciel: Objectively this route feels weaker in a lot of ways especially when compared to Arcueid’s. The plot beats are way too similar and everything involving Arcueid feels like a waste of time when Ciel is supposed to be the focus. In retrospect knowing how little screen time she gets in the far side routes makes me appreciate her presence here more, but she still could have been implemented better. Even with that issue though I think this route gets way more interesting once it starts changing things up. The tone feels more ominous, Shiki get way more depth, and Ciel has a ton of cool moments once the story actually focuses on her. I still can’t say it’s better than the Arcueid route but I like the ideas here more and think there’s a lot of missed potential.

Akiha (+ Satsuki): It feels weird to not talk about Satsuki, I thought it nice that they finally expanded on her but it all feels a bit rushed. Before I knew Satsuki was in all the far side routes I thought the shift to Akiha would be too forced but it felt surprisingly natural here (and in Hisui & Kohaku’s routes). The route proper could be a little faster, but once it gets going it stays pretty interesting. The Akiha and Shiki relationship is, uh… weird. It doesn’t kill the route but that doesn’t make it any less weird. I think the ending and interesting villain make up for it well enough though. I’m honestly underselling this route cause with a few tweaks it could be the best one.

Hisui: Damn, I wasn’t sure if this route would live up to the hype but I’d totally did. It wasn’t how I expected it to go though, the focus is much more on building up suspense and plot twists, and while I figured out some before they were revealed others totally blindsided me. The ending is also amazing, which is true for basically all the routes but this one really stood out. Plus this is the only good ending where even though it’s still unnecessary, it doesn’t feel like a total asspull so bonus points for that.

Kohaku: Compared to everything that came before it this route feels the tightest. Since you’re literally required to do Hisui’s route before this one there are a lot clever switch ups and twists I didn’t see coming. The ending here is pretty good, but honestly my least favorite true ending of all the routes. If it had more punch this route could be better than Hisui’s but even though it isn’t for me it was still great (also no good ending is still a plus).

If I had to rank each of them I’d probably go.
Hisui > Kohaku > Akiha > Arcueid > Ciel


To conclude there’s just something about this game I can’t shake. I genuinely love some parts of it but it feels to held back by its flaws most of the time. I’ve heard the remake fixes most of these problems so I’m excited to check that out, but I still recommend Tsukihime to anyone that may be interested in it.