I absolutely understand that this game was revolutionary for its time - time however, has not been quite so kind to Tomb Raider.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good game, however it reeks of potential for all of the things that the series would achieve in the future. I feel that the original, while it deserves respect, has been left in the shadow of its superior sequels and its own reputation. The janky controls feel outdated and stiff, the lack of a sufficient aiming system led to many an unfair death, and the replayability factor feels very low.

I enjoyed my time with the original Tomb Raider, when I was actually making progress. However, unlike a game like Dark Souls, frequent death did not teach me anything about the way the game works. Due to the aforementioned outdated control scheme, I often felt like Lara had a mind of her own, and so death left me frustrated and with nothing to show for the last 30 minutes of playing time after each death.

In spite of my overall enjoyment of this game, I feel it is unlikely that I will return to it for any reason in this day and age.

As a very late-comer to the Silent Hill franchise, I finally sat down and finished this game, and there are a lot of great things; the atmosphere is one of palpable dread throughout, combat is surprisingly smooth for a first outing in the series - not nearly as clunky as the first Resident Evil (1996) imho, and a lot of puzzles have those great "a-ha" moments when you figure it out.

Only a few elements that brought the score down for me - some of the puzzles were far too difficult to figure out, especially in the later sections of the game, but I've heard they're slightly more forgiving in the later games which is good to hear. Other than this, I found the story a little too abstract, and I found it hard to get sucked into it for this reason, in spite of the fact that I really cared about Harry and seeing him succeed. Somehow I was absorbed by every element of this game except its story!

Onwards now, to my first ever playthrough of Silent Hill 2!

I spent so much time playing Jedi Power Battles as a kid that it's hard to separate the nostalgia, so I will say that the opening cutscene never fails to excite, and the co-op play is always fun with a friend - it certainly helps you to forget all of the classic PlayStation jank that accompanies this game. Playing alone, you have to deal with all of the more irritating elements on your own, and the game absolutely begs for a friend to experience this game with.

It's a rather barebones hack and slash game at its core, with some very janky platforming included for good measure, and I don't know how worth it is revisiting this game 20 years later, but I know I sure had fun playing this, and probably will anytime I find myself loading it up.

The only things that sports games and fighting games have in common is that I really enjoy playing them no matter how God awful I am at pulling off combos

Copy and paste this review for every sport/fighting game I play that has over 2.5 stars

For real though, this game was the original, set the template for everything to improve over it, and will always hold a special place in my heart, no matter how bad it may look by today's standards

I mean it's Soul Calibur IV but you can take it on the go, what more could you want?

Well, for one thing, a story mode

or a morsel of single player content

or perhaps some unlockable content

or literally anything that made the previous games so beloved

You can literally only fight against random custom characters, or play online, what the hell happened with this game?

I'm sorry to everyone out there who will call me a heathen, but I just don't have the time for a game where I can lose potentially hours of playtime because of an arbitrary limit on how many times you can save your progress.

I know that this game is good, and I love me some horror, but I don't understand why I should have to potentially never finish this game just because of the high difficulty and unforgiving save system.

I want to enjoy this game so bad, but if the save system was better, I honestly would; Silent Hill lets you save as many times as needed, and at least when you lose your progress due to the difficulty on Dark Souls, the game automatically saves AND you can regain everything you dropped. If you die on this game, you gain literally nothing and lose everything - that is not a system that makes me want to come back for more, it is frustrating and makes me want to quit.

This game, perhaps more than most others, is so personal to me. It's one of the first videogames I ever remember owning as a child, I even remember the day my Mother surprised me with this present on a holiday. I spent the rest of the holiday reading the little PS1 manual cover to cover and looking over the box, itching to get home and play it.

And that's exactly what this game feels like to me - home. The soundtrack, the sound effects, even the wonky dialogue, it all feels so comforting and familiar to me.

I know this game is no work of art; I know it hasn't aged in the grandest of ways, and that it can be beaten in like four hours, but there isn't a bad word I could truly say about this game, it's too close to my heart for that.

I will always love this game, jank and all.