MGS3 is a game that needs really no introduction. It's a masterclass of it's platform using the PS2's limitations to craft something that impresses even today on any platform. There's some of the best cutscenes ever created here full of detail and emotion and energy. It's a type of creation that is ahead of the curve even today.

It's also just one of the top tier stealth games with AI that is both fun to exploit while still presenting a solid challenge for the hardcore stealth players. I've always appreciated that Metal Gear has never let you save scummed your way to a perfect ranking. There's every type of self imposed challenge you might want to put on yourself here while the ranking system accommodates and encourages it all. The pacing of the stealth is also just top notch. I think it's better to slow down a stealth game than to make it super fast and the camo and environment do that wonderfully. I also think the survival elements in this game are a perfect balance. Stamina is never a true annoyance and you never have to spend time scrounging around for resources while curing wounds is also a pretty fun procedure too. The game makes it clear it's something you can't ignore without making it a hassle and I'm actually surprised this never seemed to catch on as a mechanic in other action games including this very series.

If there's maybe one problem I have with this game is that the controls are definitely clunky. They were clunky back in the day and they're more so clunky playing the Vita version. Losing those pressure sensitive buttons from the PS2 required some finagling and the end result is having to press several different buttons at once.

It's one of the top tier games of all time no questions asked. MGS3 Ocelot was a peak character too (in a game already full of fantastic characters). I can't believe how dirty MGSV did him.

I'm convinced the Silent Hill fanbase is the worse fanbase out there and actively hates anything in the series that isn't their favorite entry in the series. The immediate reactions I saw to this game have solidified this into my brain. To be honest, can it really be helped though? I feel like Silent Hill's impact on the horror game community can't be understated but also to be honest, I don't think Silent Hill as a concept ever really died even with Team Silent or Climax and Double Helix.

The problem is Silent Hill was embraced at a conceptual and inspirational level by Indie devs. Everything you could do with Silent Hill has been thoroughly explored and recontextualized for someone else's personal story. The amount of indie horror games that are very obviously inspired by and even just list Silent Hill directly as an influence is more numerous than there has ever been Silent Hill projects. In the last year we had half a dozen that have high profile coverage (Go play Lost In Vivo and Signalis, they're wonderful) and another dozen of them on the horizon. There basically is no room for Silent Hill to comeback in my opinion because we just sorta never needed it back.

But obviously Konami has been watching all of this and here we are with a new mood board for the franchise following in the foot steps of PT before it. Honestly, it's OK. I don't think it's ultimately worth playing but I think it's really not that terrible or that disrespectful to the series in terms of themes. It's certainly no different than the billions of other Silent Hill fan games.

I think it's biggest problem is it's largely just kind of nothing on the gameplay front while the story isn't done well enough to make up for it. I appreciate what it wanted to do with it's story about suicide, parental abuse, bullying, young love triangles, and vapid obsession with social media fame. I think it was brave to try to tackle these at all in the way that it did (though really not uncommong) and I appreciate how often the suicide hotline messaging comes up. But it's just also kind of... badly written. It's patronizing most of the times and none of it really sticks the landing well either. It feels like the target audience for this story is largely teenagers and that's fine, they need their stories. But there's not much to really chew on here when everything is so upfront.

That being said, I loved the music and loved the monster design. Love to see Ito and Yamaoka doing cool shit. I thought Yamaoka's score had a modern twinge to it that fit the presentation and had some genuinely pretty ambient melodies thrown in. Ito's new monster captures the beautiful tragedy of the character it manifests and I think it's interesting to see a design that doesn't try to be just generic scary but still menacing in its own right. The low frame movement was a neat effect too.

I've played this over the years and saw how it evolved gradually in order to prioritize ads and in app purchases and I just find myself annoyed at how this could be great. It's a promising concept but it ends up feeling too shallow. It's too easy generally so the game decides to give you some really shitty obstacle spawns that are impossible to avoid. But the grind is so fucking agonizing that you wonder why you're still playing.

Not to mention ads on mobile games have gotten so fucking shitty that half the time they don't even work so trying to revive with an ad is a total crapshoot.

Ultimately Sonic Runners was way better and should have been the one that stuck around if one of these games had to die.

All these later and all these ports later, the game is still perfect.

The pacing, the combat, the controls, the level design. Everything is perfectly tuned to create a pretty flawless experience.

Just avoid the 2007 PC port and at this point you can skip the PS2 and GC port in favor of the Wii and HD ports.

Surprisingly ambitious, but just a bit too janky to really stick the landing. Generally things feel like they're just barely working, but it's really not a BAD game. The first half of the game is very strong in concept and you can see what they were imagining with the gameplay. Something more akin to Dino Crisis 1 and 2 while wrapping it in some modern game design concepts. Given a proper budget, this could have probably been a pretty good 7th console gen game. It's just a shame the second half turns into the worse parts of a 7th gen console game. Dinosaurs disappear almost entirely and it's just Call of Duty. That shift ends up showing more cracks in the walls that are duct taped together. It also just gives you so much shotgun ammo, I dunno why you'd use anything else.

But at the very least, it's short and has multiple endings to check out and it's a clear effort by the dev, so respect.

Monolith Soft is really good at making you like the whole party. The main characters are just usually pretty likeable and charming. Usually prequels don't add much and are just suck, but I think as a prequel game, this works really well. It fills in the areas you care about instead of going overboard on making every little single connection that it's ends up being a vehicle for plot holes and unnecessary details.

Helps that it's pretty lean and doesn't overload you with too much. You can easily 100% this within 30 hours and the main story is well paced if you just wanna run through.

Torna is a fantastic new location. Weirdly it gives me some of the same vibes as Halo visually. I love how the scope of the map gets gradually bigger while never really getting to an overwhelming degree.

If there's maybe one bummer, the sidequests are pretty eh. Most of them aren't exciting. For sidequests too, there's also just way too much flavor text. Sidequests are definitely a big focus too and easily half the time you'll spend in this game. They're not exciting, but the gameplay of this series is still a 10/10, so I ultimately can't be that mad.

If there's two things Monolith Soft excels at, it's world building and making you care about it's characters. If there's one thing they're awful at, it's actually teaching you how to play this game.

There's a lot of times where the anime stuff of this game was just too much. A lot of it the absolutely insane character designs, some of it the awkward shonen plot points, other parts of it the weird shifts in tone.

But again, I don't think I've played many game worlds that feel this fleshed out and lived in. The main cast can be a little generic, but they're all pretty strong characters. And this game ends up nailing the emotional beats despite everything. I think if they had synced the mouths for the english voice cast, it'd be a little less awkward.

The combat is another strong suit of this game. I think it's the best of the 3 games games so far (though I love how fast paced X's was). It's got a lot of layering to it and a lot of great ideas. It has a complexity to it that gives you a good amount of flexibility to your class builds. It's just a shame the game sucks at explaining it despite 3+ hours of tutorials. Expect to be surprised by even when you think you've finally got it. BUT once you finally do (after like 10 hours for me). It's fantastic. Great pacing with a lot of active player engagement. I think for a JRPG, this has been my favorite so far.

I'm excited to see what Monolith does with the series with the 3rd game. Just tone down the anime bullshit though.

This is a game where I think the combat alone saves most of it from it's negatives.

Halo should never have boss fights. Most of the bosses in this are just really annoying to deal with. I also think this has maybe the worst mission design of the entire series. All thanks to the open world component. Sadly that open world is where all the best parts of the level design are too.

It just gets kind of tiring after a point though. You have two locations: the mountainous pine trees canyons and the underground forerunner maze. Compared to previous games, it's lacking variety.

There's also a huge chunk of the story that just feels flatout missing and so much of the game is devoted to trying to fill in those blanks. But it's not done in any interesting way and it still feels lacking. The strongest part here is the characters. They put more emphasis on characters than previous games and I think it largely works. Chief talks a surprising amount but doesn't feel out of character while his new AI friend is fun. The banished are a great spin off of the covenant. The endless though? I can take or leave them (really just leave them).

But the combat, the enemy AI, and the vehicles (except the Scorpion which they fucked up). Holy shit that's a 10/10 right there. It's clear they've been playing Doom 2016. Easily the best the series has ever felt and played. Also the music is pretty sick.

Pretty good as a whole. In everyway, it's better than the original game. There's a surprising amount of content in this game, it looks very pretty, it's super relaxing. There is however something about the pacing I just wasn't huge into?

I think maybe it's just the grind to unlock additional research levels for areas. Those research levels end up being the best aspect of the game (the illumina orbs are kinda weak). So it's kind of a shame the grind to get them is a bit heavy. Grinding for points vs working on better photos just doesn't seem as satisfying. I guess they gotta find a way for you to do all the challenges/requests

It's also just way more efficient to let the game auto-select photos based on it's own criteria, however I had more fun hand picking my photos.

It's not my favorite in the series. For me it was really hard to beat New Leaf and Wild World and when this came out it felt weirdly stripped down compared to previous games. Even all this time later, it still feels a little light by comparison.

I hate how they've done vendors and the pacing feels needlessly slow. The terrain building is especially made needlessly tedious despite being one of the best new features.

But that's not to say this is remotely bad. I still loved it and dropped a couple hundred hours into it. I still love the charm of the series and also think the art style has only gotten better and better each game. The new QoL features are fantastic and I love how much emphasis was put on customization. Being able to fully customize the town is a dream come true.

Also perfect holidays game. Ultimate vibe.

A game that has really started to show it's age sure, but it rides on charm alone. Still love the story here, still love how goofy it gets, love the characters.

The major thing that holds this game back is being the first leap for the series to 3D. They got more experimental and for the most part it's appreciated, sometimes it's a bit of a slog. Combat is quick still, but the animations take forever. Movement can be super wonky.

Probably the biggest thing that holds this back is how awful the english translation is.

I played the switch version this go around and I'm baffled how lazy this port feels as a whole. Very little in the way of enhancements (the 3x mode is great though and should just be standard). Nothing in the way of quality of life improvements. It feels more lazy than Mario 3D All Stars. If you want to see a great port that keeps as close to the original purity as possible with great QoL changes, the Metal Gear 1 and 2 ports for MGS3 Subsistence are still the king.

If this was the first 3D Metroid, it probably wouldn't be so frustrating.

The gameplay is very reminiscent of the earnest attempts to adapt big 2D franchises to 3D. The problem is Metroid Prime nailed it first try while also doing something entirely new. It was simply put the series Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time long before Other M ever got a shot.

Even worse is this game is a serious victim of the main creative mind: the director. There's just a lot of insanely bizarre decisions here that apparently went entirely according to vision and it's solely what drags the strongest aspect: the gameplay, down.

Level design is very boring and samey (despite some great environmental detail), the combat is really easy but kind of exhausting on the thumb (thanks to those bizarre controls), and boss fights are pretty frustrating (going first person is super clunky).

None of this is even talking about the absolute travesty that is the story. It's simply put: Character assassination.

Other M COULD have been great, but it isn't. It's got really interesting and really fun beginning hours, a pretty comfortable middle that lets them really flex the setting, and a mind bogglingly frustrating back third.

Ugh this fucking game.

Out of all the vpets I've played with over the years, I think this one is my favorite and has the most potential.

There's a couple draw backs to over the original 20th anniversary namely in a much more limited roster that is broken up across each device (encouraging you to get multiple devices so you can explore the whole thing and jogress). But I think the monster training and quest mode are very strong additions that could really help the digivices expand a lot more mechanically in the future. I also think the XAI dice is a great modifier to freshen up combat. That and the combat minigame is just a lot more fun with the sliding bar over mashing the button of previous games. Each digimon has a different bar and the effect from the XAI dice gives you a little more to do.

Taking care of one pet at a time invests you more into it's stats and evolutionary path so you feel more attached while also giving you the option to actually pause the damn thing if you're gonna be away for a day or more. I also just like a lot of the x-antibody designs. They're just edgier versions of the OG designs that remind me of Deviant Art OCs (something Digimon already runs a fine line on).

Love the setting, love the presentation, love the story, love the art style, hate the gunplay.

This game has really not aged gracefully in terms of mechanics. Compared to it's predecessor (System Shock) it's very dumbed down which wouldn't be bad if those mechanics felt better fleshed out or varied.

As a result you'll play a lot of the same hacking minigame over and over and shoot the same general 3 or 4 units over and over and loot the same 5 assets over and over. It gets repetitive pretty quick.

Also it's really fucking easy.

But yeah, the positives are absurdly strong here. Saves a kinda mediocre game and elevates it up to being super memorable and considered a classic by many.

Maybe a great example of the 7/10 game. Something that you can see it's intention and ambition but weighted down by what may have been a lack of resources or deadlines due to the launch of next gen systems.

A gritty and gore appearance of a story you expect from the prime days of westerns, a modest (though pretty empty) open world that isn't a huge pain to traverse, a simple but fun combat system. It's got the makings of something that could have been fantastic. It's a game that in a pre-Red Dead Redemption world was really cool back in the day, but it's vision did not age as well today.

While it eventually does land at a better spot with it's depiction of native americans and tries to redeem itself within the story (though it definitely takes a bit of a 180 to get there...), it's still filtered through the lens of the 2000s where America was still openly parodying every culture but themselves and it's very... tropey and downright gross at times. I guess not surprising for Neversoft doing their Rockstar impression, but this is no Blood Meridian when it comes to deconstruction of an ugly era full of the worst types of men. You end up stomping all over yourselves when saying you're depicting the time while you have those subjects dressed like they're in Saturday Night Live costumes. Consider me surprised they didn't go even more hard on the chinese characters...

On top of all of that, despite a very good and star studded cast, the game's story doesn't have enough room to breathe. It often feels abridged and there was a point where I wasn't sure if my game was glitched and missing a couple scenes. I looked up a couple long plays on different systems and no, it is just that way. I thought I had just remembered it being full of sudden changes when I was a kid. Characters come and go at odd times but through the writing you're supposed to understand they have some form of bond/history that developed like entirely off camera while I was looking for gold in the open world. So it never truly feels earned as it presentation suggest. But there's definitely some banger lines here and like all of them from Brad Dourif's character.

Uneven and I don't regret revisiting it. I still think it's a pretty good game. It's largely about as jank as I remember it, but through a modern lens it's not deserving of a remaster so much as it deserves some proper preservation and maybe just a way better remake that is... a lot less racist at it's core.

A quick tip if you're playing the PC version, there's a couple mods out there like a widescreen mod and 60fps mod that aren't too difficult to setup. For the most part 60fps won't cause issues, but there was maybe one or two instances where the game logic was definitely tied to it and I had to go back to 30 for that brief moment. It's not a great port but it's probably the best way to play this game today.