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Joel - er, I mean Barry remains the MVP of this game, even with his piss-easy 'stealth' sections in tow. An improvement over the very non-attention-grabbing Episode 1 but still feels like a tossed-off rehash. Like this is actually just worse Resident Evil 6. Actually somewhat impressive how they made a story revolving around a fear-triggered virus with hints of Cronenberg and Kafka featuring returning OG characters so BLAND.
Top-to-bottom mediocre, more of the exact same boring enemy spam that this series (at this point) had used to replace its once trailblazing sense of eeriness and slick, cruel charm. Brings back beloved characters only to do nothing with them, and in such uninspired settings - wow, another dilapidated warehouse-esque environment? I'm such a lucky boy... Enemies feel like an exact copy-paste job from the previous three games. Babe wake up, they sterilized Resident Evil Code: Veronica X!
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
I'll be honest, I got pretty much nothing out of this. Strips everything Resident Evil 6 brought to the table in terms of style, nuance, personality, grit, and raw enjoyment factor - leaving nothing behind but a barren experience which people tout as a "return to form" for survival horror despite not being scary at all. Lacks both the bombast of later RE installments and the terror/dread of earlier ones, clearly wanting to toe back into its original genre but being too terrified of upsetting seventh-gen shooter addicts to fully commit - leading to a game that's confused on what it wants to be. I mean this is at least the fourth or fifth time they've tried recreating that Resident Evil 4 cabin siege. Like congratulations, you've made this competent... but it's also nothing else. Turning Barry's sections into a Last of Us ripoff actually isn't a terrible move, giving him the most character he's ever had here - but the overall story makes the grievous fault of trying to not only narratively continue whatever the hell Resident Evil 5 had going on, but also give credence to anything in Resident Evil: Revelations' total non-story. If this went out and did its own separate plot it'd be 100 times better, I should never have to hear the word "Terragrigia" ever again. The Kafka stuff works for a franchise about grotesque and indiscriminate bodily transformation but they don't lean into it hard enough, and the "True or False" stuff is just cringey. Even dismissing all that, the graphics are mid for their era and the mechanics are clunky - tell me with a straight face that you think the running feels good in this game. Deeply uninteresting villain, too (her rotten form is pretty dope though). Never thought I'd say this ever, but Raid Mode is actually the best part.
I'll be honest, I got pretty much nothing out of this. Strips everything Resident Evil 6 brought to the table in terms of style, nuance, personality, grit, and raw enjoyment factor - leaving nothing behind but a barren experience which people tout as a "return to form" for survival horror despite not being scary at all. Lacks both the bombast of later RE installments and the terror/dread of earlier ones, clearly wanting to toe back into its original genre but being too terrified of upsetting seventh-gen shooter addicts to fully commit - leading to a game that's confused on what it wants to be. I mean this is at least the fourth or fifth time they've tried recreating that Resident Evil 4 cabin siege. Like congratulations, you've made this competent... but it's also nothing else. Turning Barry's sections into a Last of Us ripoff actually isn't a terrible move, giving him the most character he's ever had here - but the overall story makes the grievous fault of trying to not only narratively continue whatever the hell Resident Evil 5 had going on, but also give credence to anything in Resident Evil: Revelations' total non-story. If this went out and did its own separate plot it'd be 100 times better, I should never have to hear the word "Terragrigia" ever again. The Kafka stuff works for a franchise about grotesque and indiscriminate bodily transformation but they don't lean into it hard enough, and the "True or False" stuff is just cringey. Even dismissing all that, the graphics are mid for their era and the mechanics are clunky - tell me with a straight face that you think the running feels good in this game. Deeply uninteresting villain, too (her rotten form is pretty dope though). Never thought I'd say this ever, but Raid Mode is actually the best part.
Seeing this thing still top-of-the-class in terms of the ocean of GAS copycats it spawned is honestly endearing - if you're willing to accept blatantly predatory battle passes and endless microtransactions this is, as expected, just like old times. As someone who stopped playing regularly way back in 2018 (i.e. the exact time frame of players this is being marketed to) it's such a warm feeling seeing this classic map fully populated again with updated graphics. Sweats still suck now more than ever, but I never thought I'd be saying that playing this is as great of a time as it ever was. Even in lieu of its massive bloat of... stuff, this proves that Fortnite always shined the brightest in its simplicity. So glad this experiment is going well.
As expected, a mixed bag: yes you've got Tour Paris Promenade (a new classic), GBA Sky Garden is brisk and pretty, Toad Circuit is a perfectly fine starter course, and Shroom Ridge remains underrated as fuck. But you've also got the weakest version of Coconut Mall which just makes you wish you could play the 3DS or Wii versions, a completely bastardized N64 Choco Mountain, Ninja Hideaway is alright I guess but I'm sorry Tour Tokyo Blur just feels mid to me. And as everybody else has all rightfully mentioned, this looked mostly like crap when it came out compared to the base game - and even though I'm glad they were cleaned up a bit since then I still think Tour's visuals are really unappealing even when upscaled here. Still fun to race on most of these tracks but it's a shaky start.
1994
Impossible to overstate just how revolutionary this was for its time - now... it's still not bad! Certainly not a masterpiece by today's standards of course: movement can be a chore, driving feels impenetrable, and worst of all precision is way less than ideal in a game that really calls for it in middle/late maps. But this very clearly has its own appealing style, and systems/mechanics that are accessible enough to crack yet fleshed-out enough to always remain relatively intriguing. The American Revolt DLC is essentially a meme.
2012
Awful, awful, awful. I expected to find some underappreciated, perhaps ahead-of-its-time value here but this is a rare case where everybody was right, it sucks. It's easy to forget with how spoiled we are now on the genre, but horror games after the Left 4 Deads and before Outlast were (mostly) in dire fucking straits. It's a shame that so many spectacular ideas on display here (the overall A.I. protector system, contamination disguises, the puzzles ain't bad either) are snuffed out by a viciously atrocious execution. Even with a brand spankin' new 1 TB SSD this thing still runs like super glue and takes forever to load, and even if it did perform well - which, I cannot stress this enough, it doesn't - its systems are still finnicky and reliably unreliable. The of-the-era bullshit sci-fi aesthetic stuff is totally unnecessary, controls are hot garbage, and if The Order: 1886 was only half a game then this is like 1/4th of a game. Just makes me feel bad how shitty this is
2012
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
A deeply stupid spectacle that I have an unbreakable love for. Forget for a moment that it has Dante's best character design ever, forget that it has an atmospherically trippy story reminiscent of when you're at that perfect level of high and you start imagining super creative but nonsensical scenarios in your head (I particularly love the way in which in depicts how the corporate world still has a grip on the demon world), and forget that its wide array of enemy/boss styles are absurdly badass (magma bats, fleshy tanks/choppers, dapper suit-clad businessman with a revolver, a skyscraper that literally comes to life, and the penultimate boss is a chaotic blob of all the previous bosses) - even without all that it's still a blast. The broken 'square-button-mash-hell' combo system is really fun to manipulate to its limits, and even the big barren environments work imo - there's an eerie sense of isolation while being in such vast cities that are totally unpopulated. The true Achilles heel for me - making this feel its most unplayable - is its obtuse lock-on system which is by far one of the most inconvenient in all of gaming. But even still, I wish the other games acknowledged this one more. Is it the weakest DMC? Sure, but it still absolutely has its own, supremely dopey place in a series known for its madcap elements which don't at all feel out of place here. People who say this is one of the worst games ever made need to play more games.
A deeply stupid spectacle that I have an unbreakable love for. Forget for a moment that it has Dante's best character design ever, forget that it has an atmospherically trippy story reminiscent of when you're at that perfect level of high and you start imagining super creative but nonsensical scenarios in your head (I particularly love the way in which in depicts how the corporate world still has a grip on the demon world), and forget that its wide array of enemy/boss styles are absurdly badass (magma bats, fleshy tanks/choppers, dapper suit-clad businessman with a revolver, a skyscraper that literally comes to life, and the penultimate boss is a chaotic blob of all the previous bosses) - even without all that it's still a blast. The broken 'square-button-mash-hell' combo system is really fun to manipulate to its limits, and even the big barren environments work imo - there's an eerie sense of isolation while being in such vast cities that are totally unpopulated. The true Achilles heel for me - making this feel its most unplayable - is its obtuse lock-on system which is by far one of the most inconvenient in all of gaming. But even still, I wish the other games acknowledged this one more. Is it the weakest DMC? Sure, but it still absolutely has its own, supremely dopey place in a series known for its madcap elements which don't at all feel out of place here. People who say this is one of the worst games ever made need to play more games.
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
Possibly ruined this one for myself by playing Hitman (2016) first, but I can certainly see why people love this - the story is kind of cool, the levels are kind of cool, the weapons and open-endedness are kind of cool, so on and so forth. But that's the thing, they're only kind of cool here - if you so happened to play most of the later games first then this just feels pared-down in comparison. Obviously for its day this was revolutionary and it still sports that classic PS2-era charm which is hard not to respect, but I refuse to subscribe to the idea that just because something was revolutionary at one point means that it will always stand the test of time. And even despite all that, the controls are shoddy and the executions are mostly lame, sometimes broken/janky, and stupidly specific to the point of not being that fun in general. But I digress, that final mission is - to put it frankly - fucking awesome, and it does feature the best version of "Ave Maria" which has rightfully since become iconic. But also... whatever, I have no idea what I would get out of this over playing the more refined 2016-and-on installments. Slightly better than Hitman: Absolution because there's more charisma, the narrative isn't dogshit, and Agent 47 doesn't look like a hemorrhoid. Oh, and the disguise system actually works.
Possibly ruined this one for myself by playing Hitman (2016) first, but I can certainly see why people love this - the story is kind of cool, the levels are kind of cool, the weapons and open-endedness are kind of cool, so on and so forth. But that's the thing, they're only kind of cool here - if you so happened to play most of the later games first then this just feels pared-down in comparison. Obviously for its day this was revolutionary and it still sports that classic PS2-era charm which is hard not to respect, but I refuse to subscribe to the idea that just because something was revolutionary at one point means that it will always stand the test of time. And even despite all that, the controls are shoddy and the executions are mostly lame, sometimes broken/janky, and stupidly specific to the point of not being that fun in general. But I digress, that final mission is - to put it frankly - fucking awesome, and it does feature the best version of "Ave Maria" which has rightfully since become iconic. But also... whatever, I have no idea what I would get out of this over playing the more refined 2016-and-on installments. Slightly better than Hitman: Absolution because there's more charisma, the narrative isn't dogshit, and Agent 47 doesn't look like a hemorrhoid. Oh, and the disguise system actually works.
Even though I think this is only marginally worse than the highly praised Hitman: Blood Money, it's interesting to look back on a time in gaming where so frequently franchises asked themselves: "What makes our games not only work, but really stand apart from the pack?" and then proceed to absolutely fucking break them lmao. Takes almost everything that makes the Hitman series what it is and turns them cheap and un-fun; every so often you'll get a couple levels reminiscent of the IP until you're immediately reminded of its completely nonfunctional disguise system or some of the most heinously butt-ugly cutscenes ever put into a video game (including but not limited to Agent 47's worst design ever, his face looks like a bad bowl of bread pudding). I'll cop to having fun navigating its bizarre collection of levels in fits and starts (being able to knock out like 150 people in a bar for some reason being a highlight) and its voice cast is totally innocent - including Traci Lords and totally unhinged Keith Carradine + Powers Boothe. But so often its mechanics and rules are just godawful, and its equally terrible story betrays everything this series/character is. So it's just too much crap to justify a little dumb fun in the end.
Airless. Even by the standards of the reboot this feels dinky, and this is speaking as one of the few defenders of that game and literally every single other DLC from it (yes, even the cosmetic/vehicle packs). Like seriously, no Gwen homie?? The base only has 3-4 homies as it is, you couldn't have even given us the MAIN follower for this questline (who imo after The Nahualli is the best character in the game) as Volition continues to sweep these other three side characters who they once propped up so high under the rug? Not like the characters were all that good anyway, but damn this is embarrassing. The Chill Queen is a total nonentity in her own expansion, and the missions mostly feel rehashed and overwhelmingly mechanical - in fact this whole addition already seems like a lesser version of the LARP plot in the base game as it is, which actually was my favorite storyline from it! Some of the rewards are cool, the Ban Hammer is neat - and I actually decently enjoy the ghost events. But Vallejo << Sunshine Springs.
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
"There's a corpse born every minute!"
Consistently amusing, intense, hilarious, and more methodical than your average class shooter - assuredly the best of the Saints Row DLCs, though not without its caveats. Feels like Volition's stab at a games-as-a-service type deal without the always-online requirement or predatory microtransaction shops - which is certainly something I can get behind. Yeah it's nothing but blowing through bodies at the end of the day but come on, which one of these types of class-based shooters isn't repetitive? And people sang the praises of those other ones, this honestly really isn't all that different than a lot of those 2015/2016 GOTY contendors lmfao. Really emphasizes why the base's Takedown system is God-tier imo, you can't just sit behind cover and regen over and over - you have to act at every move, always thinking three steps ahead before and during each battle. And once again the art design really shines through here, the mangled carnival meets nuclear waste dump aesthetic is seriously splendid and lends itself nicely to the LiveLeak/Nerve (2016) aura this expansion manages to create. My biggest gripe is the same one I have with the other SR2022 products - and it's that this does sadly feel like a rushed product that didn't get the time in the oven it would have benefitted from (arbitrarily caps level progression at 8??). But as someone who can't spend a lot of time on these sorts of games anyway, it's still an unfortunate smudge but not quite a crushing blow of death. Enjoyed my time with it greatly. Chief Justice MVP.
"There's a corpse born every minute!"
Consistently amusing, intense, hilarious, and more methodical than your average class shooter - assuredly the best of the Saints Row DLCs, though not without its caveats. Feels like Volition's stab at a games-as-a-service type deal without the always-online requirement or predatory microtransaction shops - which is certainly something I can get behind. Yeah it's nothing but blowing through bodies at the end of the day but come on, which one of these types of class-based shooters isn't repetitive? And people sang the praises of those other ones, this honestly really isn't all that different than a lot of those 2015/2016 GOTY contendors lmfao. Really emphasizes why the base's Takedown system is God-tier imo, you can't just sit behind cover and regen over and over - you have to act at every move, always thinking three steps ahead before and during each battle. And once again the art design really shines through here, the mangled carnival meets nuclear waste dump aesthetic is seriously splendid and lends itself nicely to the LiveLeak/Nerve (2016) aura this expansion manages to create. My biggest gripe is the same one I have with the other SR2022 products - and it's that this does sadly feel like a rushed product that didn't get the time in the oven it would have benefitted from (arbitrarily caps level progression at 8??). But as someone who can't spend a lot of time on these sorts of games anyway, it's still an unfortunate smudge but not quite a crushing blow of death. Enjoyed my time with it greatly. Chief Justice MVP.
Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes
A better Cyberpunk gaming experience than Cyberpunk 2077. Also a little better than the Stunt Sets DLC, though I have the exact same issues with both - you're done with them each combined in like an hour or two. But still, the amount of off-the-wall fun you're able to conjure here in those couple of hours is not insignificant (especially if you've got a friend). The entire setting looms over the map, shrouded in fog and laser lights with some really cool designwork - and you can blast from one end of it to the other via improvised jetpack, bust your shit on the top somewhere, and comically tumble all the way back down. I'm pleased with that!
A better Cyberpunk gaming experience than Cyberpunk 2077. Also a little better than the Stunt Sets DLC, though I have the exact same issues with both - you're done with them each combined in like an hour or two. But still, the amount of off-the-wall fun you're able to conjure here in those couple of hours is not insignificant (especially if you've got a friend). The entire setting looms over the map, shrouded in fog and laser lights with some really cool designwork - and you can blast from one end of it to the other via improvised jetpack, bust your shit on the top somewhere, and comically tumble all the way back down. I'm pleased with that!
An energetic, pretty, and very adept beat 'em up that unfortunately has its possible greatness muffled by a series of crushingly annoying bugs and crashes. The amount of softlocks, visual glitches, and general momentum-halting errors in this is way too high to forgive for a game with such speedy and demanding play (especially on hard difficulty) - which is a damn shame because otherwise this runs like a dream (minus its half-functioning lock-on system). Does exactly as advertised - lines up a docket of fan-favorite Spidey villains to be knocked around by four different Spider-Men with distinct playstyles and appearances. If that sounds awesome it's because it totally is. Personally my favorites are Noir and Ultimate, but they're all cool in their own way. One thing this does very well is how it manages to subvert of-the-era stereotypes which I'm normally averse to and makes them fun again - you've got QTE Hell and proto-MCU "uh... so that just happened!" millennial humor in no short supply here, but there's such a sense of infectious vitality to them that it's impossible not to be roped in and have a good time. They fit this world like a glove, and I honestly have no real complaints about them in this case. Deep, methodical combat; wonderful voice acting from a stacked cast; crisp comic book visuals; cutscenes that look great; and even Stan Lee narration - this is a good one, but it could have been even better.
2016
Top 50 Favorites: #20
All the different ways you can sign yourself up for a garotte to the neck. Whether it be a high-end fashion show, military coup, or the cover-up of an unscrupulous celebrity's transgressions - the respective trigger being held often has matching fingerprints that are unable to be washed off. The inhuman, dangerous things people will do for knowledge - and how we reckon with them. Pathologizing/humanizing Agent 47 so successfully after the huge misfire of Hitman: Absolution's story seemed like an impossible task but by God they've done it. The concept of "just enough": Drip-feeding you only what's necessary about these people piecemeal, going only ever so slightly more in detail with each new piece of info ended up being such a profound choice in the end - opening itself up so many more windows and always has you pondering. I remember the episodic nature of this being criticized on release, but I honestly think it's the best way this sort of gameplay can be delivered. And even if it wasn't, it'd be hard to complain with mechanics this tight and humor this macabre (the always-online requirement sucks though). There are a seemingly infinite amount of ways you can take out your targets in this - in such gorgeous, meticulous environments no less - this is the first one of these that really felt like the Hitman series had finally gotten to where it had been trying to land for the previous 16 years. Unlimited retribution, a playground of calculated violence. This is more like it.
All the different ways you can sign yourself up for a garotte to the neck. Whether it be a high-end fashion show, military coup, or the cover-up of an unscrupulous celebrity's transgressions - the respective trigger being held often has matching fingerprints that are unable to be washed off. The inhuman, dangerous things people will do for knowledge - and how we reckon with them. Pathologizing/humanizing Agent 47 so successfully after the huge misfire of Hitman: Absolution's story seemed like an impossible task but by God they've done it. The concept of "just enough": Drip-feeding you only what's necessary about these people piecemeal, going only ever so slightly more in detail with each new piece of info ended up being such a profound choice in the end - opening itself up so many more windows and always has you pondering. I remember the episodic nature of this being criticized on release, but I honestly think it's the best way this sort of gameplay can be delivered. And even if it wasn't, it'd be hard to complain with mechanics this tight and humor this macabre (the always-online requirement sucks though). There are a seemingly infinite amount of ways you can take out your targets in this - in such gorgeous, meticulous environments no less - this is the first one of these that really felt like the Hitman series had finally gotten to where it had been trying to land for the previous 16 years. Unlimited retribution, a playground of calculated violence. This is more like it.