I'm going to go against the grain and say I like the 2020 Remake/remaster by Bluepoint. Not from a stylistic perspective but from a functionality one.
The online of the original no longer functioned, when it did it was so happenstance you'd be lucky to encounter anyone while connected.
There's so many interwoven systems that demons souls has that make up the foundations of what dark souls is lauded for. The durability meter on the side of the weapons is a nice visual cue compared to Dark souls' out of view UI and I'd even argue that the grass healing is better than estus flasks with how free you are to stockpile em and not have to return to a rest spot.

I loved the original demons souls for the PS3, it's quite a muddy and visually low game by todays standards at 720p but even then the artistic direction is amazing. For those looking for the original vision from soft had I recommend emulating the game on RPCS3 and with the upscaled textures mod if your pc can handle it.
Don't wait for the remake/remaster to come to PC. You've already got the means to play either.
My advice for those struggling with the game is one word. Persistence.
This game is so rewarding once you persevere.
Not my favourite souls game but a damn good one.
Will have to go through this version to completion before updating my rating.
3/5 for now

Tomb Raider 1 - Remastered 28 Years Later. A Classic Revisited

There are a few gaming memories that I have interconnected with Tomb Raider despite only playing the game now 28 years after its debut. I can recall while on a family holiday seeing a lady with circular orange-tinted shades and what looked like sporty hiking gear in Majorca Spain which felt completely out of place. Without any knowledge of who Lara was, I just chalked it up to be a unique fashion sense but my dad let out a belly chuckle before rummaging for his yellow disposable tourist camera which felt so light and cheap you wondered how the finished product was going to turn out good at all but it wasn't an everyday occurrence and he knew that this opportunity would never happen again. It was the Lady cosplaying as Lara who saw me and decided to ask if I wanted a picture not knowing who she was was shy and apprehensive as most children and before I could say "NO" much like Lara does when she doesn't know what to do a flash went off and that was it. I'm sure somewhere in a dusty box there are photos of this capturing the awkwardness on my face for all eternity. Nowadays cameras are no longer a novelty, it's become less about rare moments in brief slips of time that are captured and more about vanity exposed for monetary gain through content creation and influencer influenza. There was a certain charm to having photos taken on excursions out and from the Lara cosplayer's perspective there was no incentive to dress up as the heroine except pure admiration of the character, no other angles however how pointy they appeared on a CRT monitor back then. This phenomenon wasn't exclusive to me as years would go by before stumbling upon a video featuring a completely embarrassing exchange between a young boy and Lara on our national broadcast. The Late Late Toy Show is a ritual Irish families indulge in with the lead-up to Christmas that would showcase kids and what they were hoping their parents would buy them or Santa would bring them if they were
good that year. The event was more for the adults laughing at the personalities of these young bucks with an audience of middle-aged to old-age invite-only members who would frequently receive free gifts just for attending. You couldn't be more transparently supercilious to bask in praise from an audience that was being spoonfed gifts periodically throughout and soaking in false praise. The show's facade comes crumbling down with how undeservedly praise is given to the host, it should be judged on its own without self-aggrandizing but alas has been a staple of Irish Television.
It goes against the reserved nature of us Irish people, as many Irish don't like to receive gifts or compliments, we're a candid sort who detest being told nice things.
The falsehood of it shines bright now as an adult but as a child, you couldn't see through that mirage and why would you? With that backstory in place what occurred on one night in particular was nothing short of cringe-worthy.
https://youtu.be/NtHlr9QAzYY
A Paid Lara Croft impersonator poses with fake guns while the plank of wood Pat Kenny does little to break the air in what is an uncomfortable scene for all in attendance and those watching at home. The entire facade shatters, there is no more fake joy and laughs from the audience, just complete embarrassment on display. The Actress isn't to blame but it reflects a deeper and more sinister side to people, how false pretenses can crumble and reveal to all what is truly going on could only happen on Irish TV. The Act fell apart and the result is nothing more spectacular than uncomfortable silence throughout the ordeal. This sticks out in my mind as a defining moment that highlights how the public perceives Lara and the separation between her character to weirdos like Pat Kenny and children who were just playing the game at the time.

Tomb Raider at one point was a pop cultural phenomenon that propelled games from enthusiasts' bedrooms to Hollywood. You couldn't walk through life without hearing her name, seeing her, or even meeting her. This was due in part to the extensive marketing campaigns done that made her the face of the film, perfumes, clothing, and the face of Lucozade.
All the gaming magazines were talking about Lara but there was another side to it all. A B side if you will. There was no question that she was seen as a sex Icon despite the creator's vision of her being an Indiana Jones type in her own regard but it can be impossible to fight back against cultural stereotypes so for the most part they swallowed their pride and let marketing run rampant. What worsened this was the fact magazines pushed a narrative that there was a nude cheat that was hidden and featured screenshots from a fan-made mod that just redrew her textures and skin tone. Not exactly the most riveting piece of pornography, just some pointy polygons but that didn't matter in the late 90s. With the vision of how they intended Lara to be received by people being undermined by the marketing department and burnout from many late nights of overworked conditions many at Core Studios left after the development of the first title.
The money only began to funnel in soon after the passionate folk left which is a shame and the direction of Lara's future would be decided by the remaining team and the prying eyes of Hollywood executive types.

Gameplay:
At its Core Tomb Raider is a strict platformer that requires precision timing, jumps, and most importantly patience. The guns that you have are equipped with unlimited ammunition but that doesn't mean they're the best.
You can obtain weapons such as the shotgun, magnums, and an Uzi earlier by discovering them hidden in levels but you'll probably end up conserving these weapons for such a long time that eventually when the game strips you of them and you have to kill bosses that drop them naturally, the game is almost over. The Uzi floating also looks so out of place in the remaster that it looks less like a secret and more like a bug in the game. The smaller crt and resolution probably masked this but it's not the case here.
Speaking of the remaster differences you can enable modern controls or tank controls and for my playthrough, I had been playing on tank controls and had forgotten there was an option for modern. When I tried the modern controls I wanted to get sick because the game is not designed around them and having full directional control more than often will make you fall and have to repeat jumps so much that it becomes more cumbersome than modern. The updated look of the game is decent but it can't be changed how the level layouts are block based so you'll have modern textures plastered on them that make it look like a Modded Minecraft affair rather than a remaster.
The plus side is Lara looks less like a Neanderthal and more like how she appeared in renders of the time.

Combat wasn't the team's forté and you can tell as the aiming is done automatically by sticking to a nearby enemy which can cause a plethora of issues when dealing with groups of enemies clustered together. One aspect that took me a while to come to grasp was using the R1 button to slowly move Lara back enough from the edge of a block to have enough distance to not fall off without being able to jump.
As for the story, it's barebones and serviceable for a title released in 96 and the remaster keeps the acting and fmvs the exact same so you'll still have that amateur performance with rigid animation. The FMVs have been run through an upscaler and to be honest, do little to nothing except smudge what was already there.
Another slight problem is lighting, the remaster can look dark in several spots that you'll end up swapping to the classic look just to see where you are and what traps are hidden from your view (I've heard this is the case for the later tomb raider games in this collection also).

The game is quite enjoyable at times despite the hard to master controls but once you put time into it you won't have any issue with any of the platforms in the game. Lara's Mansion really should be the first thing you do before even starting the game as it allows a playground for you to master the controls. Modern games don't need to do this because they've homogenised control schemes and player feel for years since the inception of this game that they don't require a tutorial area to familarise oneself with the game feel. The remaster makes a lot of areas pop and the original intent can be seen now unlike the low quality textures that can be hard to makeout what they are supposed to represent at times.


The Worst Levels:
While I enjoyed several levels there are a few that stick out far more than others as a pain in the ass. The 5th level St Francis folly has these giant collums and on the remastered version appears taller ever so slightly than the original graphics (which you can swap to with select) however you will run around attempting to climb without success before leaving the room and going in circles. On a first playthrough, I'd imagine many looked up where to go when stuck as it's not apparent where the correct way to go is at all. The Cistern level can be a loopy situation where you go somewhere too early and then have to repeat the same route that takes over 5 mins to get back to and if you didn't save scum you'd be wasting more time if you fell or died. There's a part in the cistern where you must drain the water in order to be able to stand and pull a switch but it's so remote and disconnected to the adjacent room that it makes no sense to backtrack so far in order to do it that the solution escapes your mind.

Overall Tomb Raider 1 has aged considerably but it's still an important piece of history that will now allow people to delve into it with relative ease with the quality of life features added. The game still requires oodles of patience and if you can make it to the end you'll have a newfound appreciation for taking your time with a game than rushing through it without a second thought. I imagine this was a real test for those who rented it from video stores back in the day to see if they could beat the game before having to re-rent it again. Also having to be wary of the residue that might have been left by the previous player who got stuck on an early level before using the game guide to finish themselves before the game... At the time the likes of crash bandicoot, metal gear solid, Final Fantasy VII, silent hill and other genre defining games were available and as Tomb Raider recieved critical acclaim and sales leading to sequel upon sequel it fell to the wayside forgotten due to advancements in tech and the burn out of the developers who wished to kill the character and series for good after the long run without breaks she had.
While not a sprawling epic like Final Fantasy VII or a tightly knit platformer like Crash, Tomb Raider holds it's own legacy that is a great look back at the time period it was made.
It had it's awkward beginnings before being rebooted in 2013 but hopefully there'll be a redemption coming for the series that shows what the devs originally envisioned for the series and character without the manipulation and distortions caused by those looking to deepen their pockets.

I'll have to give the other ones a go at some point but until then I'm burnt out too and if that's just from playing it, imagine how the devs felt those sleepless nights working on it.

Mass effect explores the vastness of the universe while simultaneously exploring the more inter-personal relationship between player action and reaction
Through mass effect, you're given the role of commander as you designate your Sheppard's background, skills and appearance bad character creator look that lead you down a intergalactic mystery that intertwines that of man and machine.
Being new to an interspecies federation, humankind attempts to assert their place amongst many other species each with their own politics and problems. You play as your own captain kirk, in charge of several crewmates that you order around to varying degrees of competence

You can choose to be a paragon meaning you're a goody two shoes that chooses to be compassionate and acts heroic.
Or you can opt to be a renegade asshole that picks the opposite of a narrative space adventure in favour of playing the game as a gun-ho, that's it just gun ho.
You can also just play how you would in these situations, creating a more nuanced character.

I'm going to be reviewing mass effect 1 and discuss how bioware made a significant impact on narrative driven games back in 2007. For this review I played the game twice and my second playthrough was through the Legendary edition released on ps4, xbox one and PC in 2021.

The prime directive
Before the pains of andromeda
mass effect was a flagship for bioware, being a titular series that would promise synergy between each game in player continuity, ensuring that your choices reflected the narrative that you told through play within the confides of the developers vision.
I think part of the reason that I find myself detached or bored when watching someone else play mass effect is because I want to micro-manage each choice to my vision.
Back seating mass effect is like trying to tell david lynch what to do or tarantino on a set, you just don't do it. In Mass Effect, the person in control is the director of this game flick, customising everything from loadout, spec to dialogue choices.
I remember one evening when having a friend over I decided to show them mass effect 1, the ps3 version I should add that came out long after the game had already been around at this stage and after about 30 mins falling asleep during the opening mission. It's a different experience watching versus playing this series.

The original xbox 360 release still holds up surprisingly well, although it does tend to show it's age on level geometry anti aliasing as well as enabling film grain by default which is most apparent during cutscenes so I tend to disable this.
As for the changes that legendary edition made to this game wel for one the game runs significantly better at a higher than 30fps with a much higher resolution or you can opt for 4k. There's been adjustments to facial models and textures bumped up in resolution which is neat as well as fixing the mako tank.
A welcome change is having the other gender sheppard visible on the character select screen now instead of being hidden away under several menus.
Action really wasn't the focus for the mass effect series so the combat in 1 while lacking in comparison to other 3rd person shooters was intentionally made for you to command your allies to carry out various bionic abilities and order them to form your own little strike team of sorts. You could order them to blindly rush in to draw enemy fire and snipe geth from a safe distance or take a cautious approach and have them use their powers to overload and unearth enemies from behind cover.

Conclusion

There was a tactical element to the combat even though the shooting wasn't as flashy or accurate as many of it's contemporaries, but it was serviceable for the role playing game genre it inhabited.
It played into it's strengths of story telling and character progression, you commanded you and your team on this space voyage making choices every step of the way. A game is a set of interesting choices, and mass effect presents them in it's gameplay and narrative. Legendary edition made the action more streamlined to coincide with it's sequels but there's no denying that the heart of mass effect is in it's world building and choosing what sort of commander you are.

Through choosing between paragon and renegade, you've been granted a small instance of control, but in reality the creator holds true creative freedom over the illusion.
Kaiden ended up becoming a farmer on eden prime, the locals took him in as one of their own despite his likeness to buzz lightyear.

Whether you prefer chocolate or vanilla, the options presented are finite, just as a game can only hold so many possibilities, the plot will always arrive at it's designated end.

Multiple routes in games aren't a rarity nowaday but the way they're conveyed through their writing and mechanics tend to follow a pattern that mass effect and pen/paper stories followed. A film is up to interpretation from the viewers perspective and it's up to the director to deliver a vision that can be viewed as theirs, the viewers and the critics.
This was the first stepping stone and it's not my favourite of the trilogy but the building blocks are here.
The enemy variety could of been better, the final boss re-using an enemies movement while also looking goofy previously with a hover platform could also have done with refinement.
It's a rare game for it's time but you can appreciate what it had to offer back in 2007