EN: When I heard that this game was being created by Ubisoft Montpellier I couldn't wait for this game, who have created gems like Rayman Origins, Legends and Beyond Good and Evil.

I had high expectations and they totally exceeded them, it's amazing how they took advantage of a dead franchise to modernize it and create new things in it. You can see the passion behind this game, taking the best of modern metroidvania (Metroid Dread, Hollow Knight and Ori).

The combat is pretty good for what you would expect in this genre, with several combo options, it doesn't get tiring thanks to the fact that as you advance more powerful enemies come out in old areas. I would have liked another type of sword to make more combos.

The bosses are the best part of the game, they take everything you've learned from combat and test your reaction, the parry is extremely satisfying and an important part of your defense against them.
Excellent exploration, all areas connect and good progression system, note that the map is gigantic, even bigger than Hollow Knight apparently.

They also innovate in the genre by adding a mechanic to take a screenshot and have it marked on your map, it's a game that asks you to explore by yourself, no indicators of where exactly you should go and have a self-made map of the things you are missing to get.

The movement is so satisfying, running, sliding, jumping and the fluid animations add to that feeling, it reminds me a lot of Metroid Dread (I wish for a sequel that adds something similar to Metroid's Shinespark, the movement would be perfect with that addition and more satisfying).

Good skill set, my problem is with the ability that you can carry bombs with you, it's tiring to have to fetch bombs in certain areas to go back to a golden door and destroy it to get in.

Another thing I didn't like is that although there are a lot of amulets, many of them are directly useless, something that doesn't happen with games like Hollow Knight, where most of them are useful.

Although you can tell that Ubisoft wants to give another face with this game, you can tell they are still part of Bugisoft, it is frustrating the amount of bugs, I just beat a major boss being invisible and basically immortal, the dialogues are repeated, the golden doors don't open when you throw bombs at them, etc. I hope they fix those bugs, they ruin the experience a bit.

I also suffered from several crashes, especially for running out of internet and putting my PC or Steam Deck in sleep mode, it's unforgivable that they ask you for internet for a singleplayer game, it's really annoying to lose progress because of that.



ES: Cuando escuche que este juego estaba siendo creado por Ubisoft Montpellier no podía esperar por este juego, quienes han creado joyas como Rayman Origins, Legends y Beyond Good and Evil.

Tenía grandes expectativas y las superaron totalmente, es increíble como aprovecharon una franquicia muerta para modernizarla y crear cosas nuevas en ella. Se nota la pasión que hay detrás de este juego, cogiendo lo mejor de los metroidvania modernos (Metroid Dread, Hollow Knight y Ori)

El combate bastante bueno para lo que cabría esperar en este género, con varias opciones de combo, no llega a cansar gracias a que a medida que avanzas salen enemigos más poderosos en zonas antiguas. Me hubiera gustado otro tipo de espada para hacer más combos.

Los bosses son la mejor parte del juego, toman todo lo que has aprendido del combate y te ponen a prueba de tu reacción, el parry es extremadamente satisfactorio y una parte importante de tu defensa contra ellos.
Excelente exploración, todas las áreas se conectan y buen sistema de progresión, nótese que el mapa es gigantesco, incluso más grande que Hollow Knight aparentemente.
También innovan en el género añadiendo una mecánica para hacer captura de pantalla y tenerla marcada en tu mapa, es un juego que te pide que explores por ti mismo, sin indicadores de donde exactamente debes ir y tener un mapa hecho por ti mismo de las cosas que te faltan por conseguir.

El movimiento es tan satisfactorio, correr, deslizarse, saltar y las animaciones fluidas añaden a esa sensación, me recuerda mucho a Metroid Dread (deseo una secuela que añada algo similar al Shinespark de Metroid, el movimiento sería perfecto con ese añadido y más satisfactorio).

Buen conjunto de habilidades, mi problema es con la habilidad de que puedas llevar bombas contigo, es cansino tener que ir a buscar bombas en ciertas zonas para volver a una puerta dorada y destruirla para entrar.

Otra cosa que no me ha gustado es que aunque haya un montón de amuletos, muchos de ellos son directamente inútiles, algo que no pasa con juegos como Hollow Knight, donde la mayoría son útiles.

Aunque se nota que Ubisoft quiere dar otra cara con este juego, se nota que siguen siendo parte de Bugisoft, es frustrante la cantidad de bugs, acabo de vencer a un jefe importante siendo invisible y básicamente inmortal, los diálogos se repiten, las puertas doradas no se abren cuando les lanzas bombas, etc. Espero que arreglen esos bugs, arruinan un poco la experiencia.

También sufrí de varios crasheos, especialmente por quedarme sin internet y poner mi PC o Steam Deck en modo de suspensión, es imperdonable que te pidan internet para un juego singleplayer, es realmente molesto perder progreso por eso.

Resident Evil: Revelations: I guess this may have impressed me if I played it on a 3DS, but I didn't, so it doesn't. This feels like the mere concept of “Resident Evil” was painfully streamlined into something so watered-down that calling it “handheld” or “mobile” doesn't quite do it justice; I feel like I won my copy of RE: Revelations in a box of cereal. It retails at $30 which is a crime.

I really think the only positive things I can say about this game is that, infrequently, some textures look (relatively) crisp. Like I can recall seeing Parker's Kevlar vest and saying to myself “The shine on that looks good, I can see creases that look nice.” The loading times are comically fast, too, though this is simultaneously false because the doors that act as loading screens go through their entire animation despite obviously being done immediately. It reminds me of Mass Effect 2's loading animations making things take longer than needed for no reason, and replacing them with .jpgs made loading instant.
The Raid mode is kind of neat for a few minutes and maybe could be brought into better RE games, but it never will.
The campaign was short, only taking away five hours from me.
I think I'm done with the positives.

Every person looks ill, except for maybe Jill Valentine, who only looks like she needs to cool it on the lip filler, and Chris Redfield, who is still Big McLargeHuge from the RE5 model. Parker looks like a bloated drunk, even in his “prime” shown in flashbacks; Raymond looks like a Dollar Store's knockoff Joker toy; Morgan looks like he was yanked from a vampire novella; you get it. Some more new faces include Quint and Keith who are simply cringe incarnate. “That would be tits,” says Keith, codename Jackass (not kidding). I would feel deep regret if I had anything to do with either of those characters.
Jessica is sexy, though, even when she's dressed like Harley Quinn about to go scuba diving. At least they gave us that.

The world isn't looking very good, either, but its crime is one of banality. When you first walk in its Hall, you may think “Wow, the Queen Zenobia will be easy to get lost in!” but you would be wrong: there's really only three ways out of it and you'll see each route several times. I understand retreading areas is sort of a staple of the series, but ideally you'll have a new weapon or keycard that gets you access to something new. That doesn't really happen, here; you just have to go to the Bridge again because that's where the next cutscene is and it's your third time there.

It plays like something between RE5 and RE6 which, if you're a fan of bad games, may be good news. There's no inventory management system and herbs are as simple as possible with one choice: press Tab and you're back at 100% instantly. You can move and shoot at the same time if that bothered you so terribly (I can't imagine being unable to play the original RE4 because of this), but dodging is still quite the horrible system of mostly luck.
You're swapping between character pairs every few minutes, because apparently this was needed to keep a frenetic pace or something? Calling it “exhausting” would be a stretch, but no pair is given enough time to really do anything before we cut somewhere else, it's just not a good choice.
There's a whole system with a scanner where you go into first person to scan enemies, accumulating points that at 100 give you a green herb. You can also find hidden ammo/items with it. Your movement (and the gameplay) grinds to a halt when you use it. I do not like this thing and I doubt anyone disagrees with me, I'd rather the ammo just be on the ground to begin with.

The plot is vapor. It feels a bit like a farce of the Resident Evil series, but not quite funny enough to be a good show. How exciting is it? There are no zombies and the big bad guy isn't the final boss after injecting himself with Super Mega Deluxxxe T-Virus or anything -- he just goes to jail. The final boss is a guy you just met and, really, you don't have any problems with. But this ride can't end without fireworks, so RE: Revelations lights a sparkler for you to enjoy. How fun.

An easily ignorable, insignificant Resident Evil franchise entry. If you don't own it, I don't see any reason why you need to. I'm not looking forward to its sequel, but unfortunately, I own that -- so here goes.

I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2: Irredeemable garbage that should bring deep shame to every single person in the credits. I will live a worse life having experienced and beaten this. It shouldn't be for sale. Anyone giving this a thumbs up in the Steam reviews needs to be banned from the platform before seeking mental help.

The first Revelations game felt like the IP of Resident Evil farted onto a disc: it burned your nostrils but despite being faint, the spirit of the series still lingered there.
Honestly, the Resident Evil franchise really knows how to make you go back and think that last game you did not like wasn't that bad after all. I was lukewarm on Resident Evil 5. After 6, I thought 5 was a masterpiece, comparatively. After Revelations I thought “At least 6 could be fun in a co-op Michael-Bay-movies-while-hammered kind of way?” and after Revelations 2, I wish I played the Raid mode of Revelations more instead.
Are there more bad Resident Evils than good at this point?

What's good, here? Moira's voice actress is good. Her lines are shit, but she still gives it her all and sometimes it bleeds through the awful writing. She said “Fucking statue!” at one point and I actually thought “Damn, girl, what's your name?”
The main menu has a startling jumpscare that I like. It's not great, but I like the look of it.
One time I said out loud “Turn on your fucking flashlight, Barry,” and he did. That made me laugh.
It looks better than the first game (mind you: that was a 3DS port).
The only reason I gave it 1 star instead of 0.5: the dedicated dodge button was a good choice considering the speed of everything.
That's it.

Quite simply, this is not a Resident Evil game outside of a couple names that don't have any impact on you. They can say “Claire Redfield” all they want – I don't care, it's not her. The “zombies” are more like tweakers than living dead, except for the ones who are way too dead as they look like skeletons in clothes and are no challenge to kill.
This feels like cheap junk that you'd find in your Steam library on accident, not realizing it was part of a Humble Bundle you bought several years ago. Why was this made?
It follows the duo style of play except you control both partners. Each duo has an “Eye” and a “Muscle”: Moira and Claire, Natalia and Barry, respectively. The Eye's duty is to find secret gems, ammo, and hidden enemies. The Muscle shoots anything moving that isn't their Eye. It's not too exciting: you will play mainly as the Eye, looking around in corners for shiny points that you then focus on to make an item materialize or perhaps for the hidden symbols that earn you point multipliers at the end of levels. When baddies emerge, you press Tab and swap over to the person who has guns and kill them all. That's it, over and over again. It's a boring loop.
There are puzzles that Homer Simpson wouldn't even need to think about to solve.

The plot is half-assed gibberish. You're on an island, you want off, figure it out. There's a second Wesker named Alex and she's orchestrating some evil nonsense. I don't think you even figure out what, exactly, just that's she's wiping people out to make a virus... probably. She's trying to turn into a bug because she read some Kafka, maybe? I don't know, but don't worry: she's dead, now.
I got the bad ending because I was too quick at pressing the F key during a certain segment. I was supposed to just push Tab, but I didn't even see it because I'm simply too good at video games. What's weird is apparently the whole journey was so Moira could overcome her fear of guns. She shot her sister when she was young and, understandably, doesn't want to touch another one. I would have thought making her use a gun would be the bad ending, then, but apparently I'm an asshole for thinking so; guns are always good and everyone should want to use them all the time to solve every problem, and they're mindbroken and in need of forced-fixing if they think otherwise. Alright, Capcom.

I was going to play the DLCs but I raged out of The Struggle (feels appropriate) and didn't even try the other one or Raid mode. The game is off my computer and back in the nether where it belongs. This piece of shit crashed on me twice when I alt-tabbed, too, very frustrating.
The episodic content was a shitty idea and apparently Capcom added DRM to this thing recently, several years after it came out (as they did the first Revelations). Why? I wouldn't even recommend torrenting this game, it's THAT bad.

Like the first game, I do not recommend Resident Evil: Revelations 2, except I strongly recommend you avoid this one. Some games are just bad for you.

Praising its atmosphere while admonishing its unrefined gameplay is the obvious route to go for a review of Demon’s Souls. Some people aren’t drawn in by its dark tone, some can’t adjust to its weighty combat, this is the sort of analytical static that will probably surround it forever. However, there is one aspect to it that completely eclipses its successors which is a little less obvious, in the brilliant way it structures itself as an open-ended game. Just as Demon’s Souls has the endless static of “atmospheric but clunky”, all three Dark Souls games carry the criticism of “great when you don’t have to constantly warp between locations” to some extent. So, how did Demon’s Souls actually manage to get it right on the first try?

The best way to point out what makes it so good is to start with the counterpoint of Dark Souls in particular. After gaining the ability to warp between bonfires, the first of the four open-ended areas you tackle will probably be a decent challenge, but after that, your character will be so kitted out that the rest will be trivial. Not only that, but the quality of these areas varies dramatically, with Lost Izalith perhaps being the nadir of the entire series. Meanwhile, Demon’s Souls doesn’t just set you loose to tackle each of its zones in a linear fashion, it encourages you to mix it up by giving each area multiple layers of incentives. The most obvious is the supplies you can farm from each area: healing grass in Boletaria, upgrade materials in Stonefang, magic spice in Latria, souls in Shrine of Storms, and lotuses in Valley of Defilement. The next layer is with the titular souls themselves, which heavily incentivize players to challenge themselves for great rewards. Magic users don’t just run to a shop and buy the best abilities, they have to brave one of the most punishing areas of the game for a basic kit, then actually defeat bosses and use their souls for the best abilities. Similarly, miracles can provide great utility, but you have to actually go defeat some bosses and use their souls to earn that advantage. The last layer is the way that each of these incentives were intelligently balanced around which players would want to come there first. Strength-based warriors would want to go to Stonefang for its upgrade materials, but most of the enemies there are highly resistant to slashing damage. Mages want to go to Latria, but it’s filled with a mix of low-level enemies to waste your spell power alongside highly powerful spellcasters who can demolish low-HP builds in one shot.

A counterargument to all of this may, counterintuitively, arise from the biggest fans of the game. If you know where everything is, you probably only need to kill three or four bosses in total before your build is online. However, this is a case where you need to put yourself back in the mindset of a blind playthrough. This game was designed for people who had never seen anything like this before, and the designers worked hard to convey the information we can take for granted in a naturalistic way. Players can be counted on to try and find the most efficient path forward, so by mixing layers of incentives with a difficulty level that forces characters outside their comfort zone, players wordlessly get sucked into exploring every corner as a real adventurer. They make decisions about which areas are worth exploring right now, which to avoid, and which bosses might give the most useful spells, relevant weapons, or simply the highest amount of souls. Players poke at the defenses, make mental notes, explore, and learn while jumping from place to place and making progress one step at a time. This is the genius at the heart of the game’s nonlinearity: in breaking into distinct areas, it constructs a cohesive adventure. I think that’s a major factor of why the hostile atmosphere is a commonly discussed topic, since it’s such a perfect fit for a game that wants you to feel threatened and to be observant for any possible advantage. Really though, it’s not just the atmosphere, it’s the mechanics, difficulty, and even its story that harmoniously build upon its open structure to create one of the best adventure experiences in gaming. Other games may have refined its ideas, but none of them quite replicate the unique feel that Demon’s Souls achieved. If you haven’t played it, please give it a try, it’s been a longstanding member of my top ten for all these reasons and more.

P.S. I haven’t played the remake or even seen much footage from it, so I can’t comment if it’s an adequate substitution. If a PS5 is all you have available, it would probably be fine, but when in doubt, I always lean towards the original.

Lies of P copies from Bloodborne and Sekiro like a child does from his friend's homework, it has all the answers but it doesn't understand the assignment.

Developer Round8's main takeaway from Dark Souls is that you die a lot, and everyone seems to really like that about it. After all, it's telling you to Prepare to Die right in the title, so clearly that's what people show up for. Well, Lies of P would like you to die too, only it's not so invested in making anything about that loop fun. Round8 has not read deep enough to figure out what makes Dark Souls so engaging and has produced a frustratingly clumsy imitation for it, one that is at times mean-spirited and cheap because that's what Round8 assumes Souls to be.

Lies of P's combat system places a significant emphasis on perfect-parries, which are initiated by hitting the block button a few frames before the enemy's attack lands. Against normal field enemies who throw out one or two attacks at a time, this feels pretty good. Bosses, however, love to initiate absurd 15-hit combos full of staggered animations and straight up fake-outs intended to trip you up and punish you, and that's where I start to fall off with how Lies of P operates. The speed at which your parry is initiated and the level of precision involved makes this system unreliable against flurry attacks, and a severely neutered dodge roll gives you little to fall back on. The game also takes a very Dark Souls 3 "poise for me but not for thee" stance, so I hope you don't mind watching Timothee Chalamet slowly get his wooden ass back up until you save enough Quartz to upgrade his P-Organ so he can dodge while prone.

Perfect-parries, fable arts (see: Dark Souls 3's weapon arts), and charge attacks are all necessary for quickly building stagger damage, because of course this game has a stagger mechanic. It also makes no attempt to convey when you should be pressing the attack or playing defensively, because it obfuscates its stagger meter for absolutely no good reason. Almost all bosses have a second health bar, too, because they all want to be the giant monkey from Sekiro so badly. At this point, I think Sekiro's impact on game design has been a net negative.

Round8's rote copying doesn't end there, however. The door knights from Dark Souls 2, giants from Dark Souls 3, sawtooth blade from Bloodborne, and animation for attempting to use an out-of-stock consumable from Dark Souls are all here. A veritable greatest hits. Round8's wholesale theft isn't limited to Fromsoft, however. Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to spoil some late game character beats and reveals:

Lorenzini Venigni, a friendly NPC who upgrades your Legion Arm (think Sekiro's shinobi prosthetic), is an orphan turned playboy millionaire whose parents were murdered after watching a fantasy-adventure film with their son, leaving him in the care of his faithful butler. The identity of his parent's killer? The King of Riddles, of course. Italian Riddler saying "riddle me this" is as funny as it is brazen, but the biggest laugh Lies of P's borderline-litigious character writing got from me was the post-credits reveal of Giangio being a double agent, which is presented in an extremely Metal Gear-esque way, complete with a "Mr. President..." level name-drop that sets up a potential series of public domain Souls-likes.

Doing something new with something old seems to be the overarching theme of 2023, and Lies of P plays hopscotch on that thin line between inspiration and mimicry. Thankfully, Round8's attempts to recontextualize Carlo Collodi's Adventures of Pinocchio do often result in success, and a strong emphasis on narrative helps pull together borrowed and original ideas to tell a cohesive story that builds upon its primary source material in interesting ways. I was way more invested in the lore of Krat and its inhabitants - yes, even Italian Batman - than I thought I'd be, and some solid art direction and excellent music left me flirting with the idea of a second run.

I also had a great time with the crafting system. You can strap a gigantic blunt wrench head to a pole and use it like a spear, which is exactly the level of stupid I want out of something like this. Hilts determine scaling and attack animations, while blades affect speed and raw damage. Being able to configure a greatsword that's usable on a dexterity build made me feel more inclined to try out weapons without ever feeling like I built my character wrong or locked myself out of something. It's also nice that throwable items remain viable throughout the game, meaning I always had them in my kit whereas I typically phase them out pretty early in most Souls games.

I'm sure this game will attract some annoying people that are very good at video games who will insist Lies of P is beyond reproach, where every flaw is in fact borne from a lack of skill, asserted in a way that reads more as veiled self-aggrandizement than serious criticism. Par for the course with Souls games and the "get good" crowd they attract. I firmly believe that Lies of P is a deeply flawed and derivative game in dire need of re-balancing and new ideas, regardless of how long it took for me to realize I needed to continually dodge left to beat the King of Puppets.

Anyway, I should've stolen Larry Davis' review and changed one or two things about it. Really give you all the true Lies of P experience.

Going into Silent Hill 3, I had no idea what to expect. There’s a divisive (if you can even call “it’s really good, just not as good as the first 2” divisive) reputation surrounding this game that had me very intrigued when booting it up for the first time. Putting the TL;DR at the start: it was an incredible experience. I recommend anyone interested in playing it to play the first 2 before it, but other than that, let me share my thoughts.

Let me get the obvious out of the way: this game looks phenomenal. It's nothing short of wizardry how much the team improved the lighting, hair effects, facial animations, and textures in only 2 years. But something I appreciate even more is that the rusty and depraved atmosphere from the nightmare sections in Silent Hill 1 and 2 not only return; they return with a vengeance. Unlike its predecessors, the nightmare sections feel unpredictable and horrifying. The hallways are bathed in blood and filth with mutilated corpses in caged boxes hanging from the ceiling. Later in the game, rooms (and your flesh) will be consumed with squirmy tentacles of black ooze. Some hallways are a high contrast orange that make you think your eyes are bleeding. Random yelps of pain will sound off right as you exit a room, accented by shuffling feet and beastly groans in the hallway outside.

When you find the source of the groaning, you'll discover that the atmosphere is thanks in large part to the skin-crawlingly disturbing enemies. The PSX limited Silent Hill 1 from going too crazy with the models and Silent Hill 2 kept itself limited in scope on purpose, but Silent Hill 3 takes the training weights off and cooks up some truly awful looking bastards to chase you around. 10 foot tall flesh pillars who come in packs. Living piles of bloated, dead flesh. Disfigured humans who crawl on the floor, gnawing at your feet. And if it wasn't bad enough, the typical dog enemies aren't just dogs anymore, their heads are split right down the middle: exposed brains and all.

It wouldn't be so bad if you were playing as Harry or James. But you're playing as Heather. While Harry has the luxury of killing dogs in 2 handgun shots and a kick, Heather has to take a whopping 6 handgun shots for the same kill (and it's a miracle if you can land them all before they turn her leg into a chew toy). She also isn't granted the power of invisible walls: it's very possible to fall off any unguarded ledge if you don't react to her stumble. The game does a good job mitigating her fragility with lots of health packs, weapons, and even a bulletproof vest. But it just doesn’t outweigh the forces you’re up against. When all of these ingredients are mixed together (unsettling enemies, terrifying level design, and a frail teenage girl to protect you from it all) only one word describes the experience: intense.

In its intensity, it's Silent Hill 3 that brings to light a frustrating aspect of the series, and that is backtracking. Going back and forth fetching items and reading memos to solve puzzles is one of my favorite aspects in the series! But due to the more intense nature of SH3's atmosphere, you dread having to backtrack anymore than you have to. James wandering around the apartment building or Harry wandering around Midwich Elementary never felt especially stressful, as the environments were very slow paced and you had ample defense against anything thrown at you. But playing as Heather feels like you're getting kicked in the balls constantly. Room after room is filled to the brim with the fastest and most dangerous enemies the series has seen yet, so just running the risk of having to go all the way back through an area brings a mental anguish I haven't yet felt playing Silent Hill. This might be the game's biggest strength to some, but I'm admittedly a huge pussy, so this was torture for me.

You might get the vibe that I hate Heather after saying all this. After all, I keep talking about her like she can’t do anything. But don't get it twisted. Heather keeps it fucking real and is, by far, the most entertaining protagonist in the original trilogy. All of her dialogue, spoken or otherwise, is brimming with personality and teenage angst. While Harry and James never had much to say when looking at an object, Heather gives well written commentary on pretty much everything you choose to look at. Her voice and motion capture actress Heather Morris gives a fantastic performance as well, ranging from tongue-in-cheek comments, to heartbreaking scenes of utter defeat, to indescribable rage and frustration. Never have I seen a Silent Hill hero so fed up with this shit and it's extremely relatable because I'm also fed up with this shit! Claudia is pissing me the fuck off! Let's get her ass together, Heather.

This is as good a time as ever to touch on the game’s relation to Silent Hill 1. It’s by all means a direct sequel to what happened in the first game and I think it does a wonderful job continuing that narrative. While I prefer Silent Hill as an anthology series tied together by the titular town, they pulled off a continuation surprisingly well. Ambiguity isn’t as important for Harry as it is for James, so hearing more of what happened to him post god-slaying made me smile. It also elaborates on Claudia and whatever the hell is going on with the cult she’s a part of without spoiling the “less is more” storytelling that SH1 was going for. All in all, it’s everything I can want out of the direction they chose.

This review is admittedly coming from a Silent Hill newbie. I decided to play Silent Hill 2 for the first time just a few weeks ago. So while I’m still falling in love, take a lot of these opinions with a grain of salt. Otherwise, I adore pretty much everything about my experience with SH3. Was it difficult and stressful? Definitely. But will I be thinking about it for years after this review? Even more definitely.