It's like they spent a long time making a nice-looking world map and then quickly and awkwardly laid a game on top of it. The actual content is stretched so thin it's mildly insulting.

I will never forget the terrible sinking feeling I had about a quarter of the way through the (embarrassing, weightless, cliched) story when I realized, oh God, I've seen everything this game has to offer haven't I? I have all the items. I've seen the ONE dungeon type. There aren't going to be ANY other interiors. And these ten or so enemies are really gonna be it for the whole thing.

Bad experience. Not a Zelda game.

I honestly believe that this has a claim on being the worst video game ever made.

Are there shooters with worse controls and movement? Yes.

Are there games with worse visuals for their time? Tons.

Are there games with a more clumsily told, bloated story? Uh, sure, probably some.

Are there games with worse audio? Animation? Enemy AI? Shooting? Item management? Shameless male gaze? Insulting 'puzzles'? Out of place assets? General jank? Yes to all.

But is there ANY other game that is THIS BAD at ALL of those things, simultaneously? While also being one the biggest AAA releases of its year, from a world-class publisher, who spent more money and manpower on it than literally any game they had EVER made before? Has there EVER been a bigger swing and a bigger, more embarrassing miss?

I honestly believe that this has a claim on being the worst game ever made.

Are there shooters with worse controls and movement? Yes.

Are there games with worse visuals for their time? Tons.

Are there games with a more clumsily told, bloated story? Uh, sure, probably some.

Are there games with worse audio? Animation? Enemy AI? Shooting? Item management? Shameless male gaze? Insulting 'puzzles'? Out of place assets? General jank? Yes to all.

But is there ANY other game that is THIS BAD at ALL of those things, simultaneously? While also being one the biggest AAA releases of its year, from a world-class publisher, who spent more money and manpower on it than literally any game they had EVER made before? Has there EVER been a bigger swing and a bigger, more embarrassing miss?

What a weird game. The developer's all-consuming desire to top themselves and finish off their trilogy on the highest possible note produced something impressive but bloated and wildly uneven.

First of all, and most confusingly, the fidelity of both the visuals and the sound are all over the place. You'll have a genuinely incredible-looking Kratos standing next to other characters who seem like they're straight off the PS2, and some of the voice performances (especially the Ghost of Sparta himself!) sound like their lines were recorded in one take on someone's old Talkboy.

The combat is more complex than ever, but most of the new weapons are totally extraneous, and the game is about twice as long as it should be. Even with how much fun combat was, I was begging for the game to end long before I got to the (honestly pretty unmemorable) final boss fight.

It's like every single idea anyone at the company had over however many years of development made it in, and they were all cobbled together at random with no standard of quality or polish between it all. Hits and misses, weird diversions, redundant and repetitive areas, shaky writing, desperately out-of-place fourth-wall breaks and game references ... I was baffled the whole time. But that's not to say it was a bad experience. If the combat wasn't so good, it might have been intolerable, but thankfully they had that foundation locked down well enough, so it was easy to see it through.

Less is more, guys!

What a weird game. The developer's all-consuming desire to top themselves and finish off their trilogy on the highest possible note produced something impressive but bloated and wildly uneven.

First of all, and most confusingly, the fidelity of both the visuals and the sound are all over the place. You'll have a genuinely incredible-looking Kratos standing next to other characters who seem like they're straight off the PS2, and some of the voice performances (especially the Ghost of Sparta himself!) sound like their lines were recorded in one take on someone's old Talkboy.

The combat is more complex than ever, but most of the new weapons are totally extraneous, and the game is about twice as long as it should be. Even with how much fun combat was, I was begging for the game to end long before I got to the (honestly pretty unmemorable) final boss fight.

It's like every single idea anyone at the company had over however many years of development made it in, and they were all cobbled together at random with no standard of quality or polish between it all. Hits and misses, weird diversions, redundant and repetitive areas, shaky writing, desperately out-of-place fourth-wall breaks and game references ... I was baffled the whole time. But that's not to say it was a bad experience. If the combat wasn't so good, it might have been intolerable, but thankfully they had that foundation locked down well enough, so it was easy to see it through.

Less is more, guys!

A memorable standout amongst light gun shooters thanks to thoughtful design and some truly ridiculous English dialogue.

Great enemies for a zombie game, first of all -- instantly identifiable by their unique palettes and silhouettes to make crowd encounters legible at a glance once you get to know them. And every new monster you run across is always exciting because they're all so full of character. (You can tell the designers loved dreaming them up -- they're all given names in the instruction booklet.)

The levels are carefully designed as well with a unique setpiece every few seconds. It feels very stuffed with ideas, but that's not to say it's disjointed. When your game is only a half-hour long, you kind of need to pull out all the stops!

The English script and VO is, of course, a trainwreck, but that only makes things more fun. This isn't a game that takes itself particularly seriously in the first place. Although sometimes you think that it could! Some of the levels are quite intricate and beautiful, and the European setting and some of the goopier undead guys give off a bit of a Fulci vibe, which is welcome given that so many other zombie games seem so uninspired.

The shooting action is quite good. The regular difficulty seems tuned pretty well and enemies are powerful but never feel like bullet sponges. You're rewarded for skillshots on every monster type but you can also just shred them with enough rapid fire which is wonderfully gory and satisfying in its own way.

The Dreamcast port is a great example of a good home version of an arcade great. They added some training minigames, a boss rush, and an "original" mode that has tons of items to collect for subsequent playthroughs. Again, this is, by its nature, a very short game, but they put in quite a bit of effort to expand on it meaningfully for replayability's sake. I honestly don't know what more they could have done.

Possibly the best light gun shooter -- certainly the best I've played.

(boy I wish I could have been there for the meeting that made this game happen)

This is a big winner just on concept alone, obviously, but it's actually a pretty well fleshed-out and useful learning tool, if you can handle some quirks. Not to mention it's funny as hell.

It probably could have used a couple more passes in testing, as there are some occasional rough edges where they awkwardly bolted the typing gameplay onto the original THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2 framework, and a few of the UI elements aren't as well thought out as they should have been. But these are minor annoyances at worst.

Beats MARIO TEACHES TYPING, that's for sure.