I've been trying to think of bigger blunders humanity has made than letting the Sega Saturn die, shit like the Hindenburg Disaster and the invention of mayonnaise are peanuts compared to this catastrophe.

When I was in the mood to finally fill the massive gap in my Sega console lineup, I had to slap down a decent amount of didgeridoos for a working console and an ODE. It was a big down payment for only one console, but I essentially told myself that all it took was one copy of NA Saturn Bomberman for the entire thing to be paid off. It's insanely fucked up, more fucked up than someone inventing mayo while the Hindenburg was exploding, but these are the hurdles I'm willing to hop over to fix the hole in my heart that's the shape of my missing childhood Sega Saturn. I wanted to experience all the hypothetical final forms of two-dimensional art on my own coffee shit-stained clunker CRT TV, and emulation kinda smelled during that time. Worse than mayo.

I'd imagine there has to be some kind of heavenly timeline where the Saturn survived, and we weren't so quick to ditch 2D. I love my low poly original PlayStation, but if you had crafted a giant colorful sprite of a pizza in this game and made it scale up and down constantly while spinning all over the screen, it'd be second only to an actual pizza, and even then I'd be complaining about my pizza not getting more pixel-y as it approached my mouth, with similarly pixel-y cheese dripping from it ala a TMNT cartoon.

The Battle Mode is the literal life of the pizza party, and they even got a cast of Hudson all-stars to round out the playable characters. Bonk, the Adventure Island guy, that loser from Milon's Secret Castle, and even fuckin' Yuna goddamned Kagurazaka is here. I don't think Konami even remembers they own Galaxy Fräulein Yuna, and it makes me want to dive into the Turbo library a bit more again seeing all these peeps here, who are absolutely not getting let out of Konami's storage locker anytime soon. I mean, christ Bomberman himself didn't even get the common courtesy of an AV collection or any NSO releases. No respect, no respect at all I tells ya. Not even the common courtesy of a reach around. Konami don't give two shits about my man's history, cause he ain't their boy.

The only way you could make the battle mode more fun in this game would be to mod in all the voices from Atomic Bomberman, where all the Bombers were inexplicably voiced by Mr. and Mrs. Bighead and the Red M&M Guy. Maybe a lovely person could do that for me one day...

One day, one day maybe in 2050, Fightcade will have Saturn and 8P support....and the funny voice clips. There it is....the perfect bummer man.....you'd love to see it....

"time for a fuckin' dirtnap ya shitfuck" ~ Konami's last words to Bomberman after Super Bomberman R 2 bombed

Despite essentially codifying much of the genre, Thief stands head and shoulders over most of the stealth genre even today, in my opinion. Every single mechanic, from the light gem that shows your current visibility to the difficulties giving you more objectives and restrictions rather than arbitrarily cranking up some stats, is so well thought-out and meshes so well with the open, layered level design that it's honestly impressive this isn't a sequel to some much more poorly aged first game.

Some people might take issue with the less stealth-focused levels and while I agree that they're the worst half of the game, I still think there's a lot to love about them. Also, the worldbuilding and atmosphere are extremely good, as is Garrett's character.

That said the Thieves' Guild sucks on anything higher than Normal, honestly just use the level skip cheat code if you want, or play it on the lowest difficulty.

After the disappointment of Soul Reaver 2 and Blood Omen 2, I am very happy that Defiance managed to live up to my expectations, despite some flaws. Unlike previous Kain games, Defiance chooses to focus on both of the series' protagonists at once, alternating between their stories. I think this is to its benefit, switching around makes for a more engaging storyline.

Let's start with the gameplay, which I would say is a mixed bag. Defiance's combat is much more free-flowing than previous games, and resembles something like Devil May Cry (quite presciently, given DMC3 would not come out for two more years). Kain is actually very fun to play, thanks to his Telekinesis' mechanics: At any time you can pick up the enemy you're targeting and toss them in a direction of your choice- into pits, spikes, fires. What's particularly fun is that if the enemy hits you they'll be vulnerable to your attacks, acting as a combo starter/extender. You can hit an enemy into the air, hit them with your air combo, interrupt it and pick them up with TK, throw them against yourself and combo them again all before your feet touch the ground. It's a really clever mechanic that allows for a lot of experimentation and I'm shocked that more games of this genre haven't tried something like it.

The rest of the combat is more by the numbers, but this would be fine if it weren't for two issues. The first one is that Raziel does not have Kain's TK, being instead limited to simple energy blasts, which makes his combat a lot less interesting - The game seems to realize this as his chapters rely more on exploration and puzzle-solving, but they're still mostly combat.

The other is the game fails to live up to its potential in terms of combat encounters. There's few kinds of enemies in the game, and none of them are interesting, running the gamut from common fodder to annoyingly spongey big guy. A lot of people end up feeling burned out by the end and while I wasn't too frustrated, I did feel myself having less fun by the end of the game. Doesn't help that enemies respawn when you leave areas, and one of the late game dungeons will be seeing you do a lot of that.

On that topic, Defiance intersperses mostly simple puzzles in-between the story and combat. The Forges, which were the highlight of Soul Reaver 2, are unfortunately now all extremely simple and formulaic dungeons with roughly identical architecture, appearance and progression. However I did enjoy going through Vorador's mansion, a positively massive dungeon which while a bit frustrating, I thought was quite fun. There's also some platforming to do and unfortunately it all sucks because of the fixed camera. For the rest, not much to say, but nothing awful either. I'd say that's a good breakdown of Defiance's gameplay quality overall, some points of brilliance and some bits of mediocrity. Honestly, I'll take it, all things considered, I had fun!

Presentation is better than it's ever been. Music is good, the game looks great (although unfortunately the all too common Forges are the exception), and the characters' models finally escape the uncanny valley, for the most part. Cutscene and gameplay animation are both great, and I find the game to be quite atmospheric at times.

Now obviously, the real reason anyone would play this game is the story. And I am pleased to finally say that Defiance is my favorite Kain story and easily a worthwhile end to the series. Alternating between Kain and Raziel you get to see both of their journeys slowly escalate to heights never before reached- all of Soul Reaver 1 to 2, and Blood Omen 2 to a degree, were building up to this, and the conclusion is worth it, although maybe a touch sudden. Defiance was not meant to be the last chapter of Kain's story, and that is clear, but at the very least it works as a satisfying ending, and that is enough.

In my Blood Omen 2 log I voiced worry on whether playing through all of these often janky games was worth it, and I'm glad that the answer is yes, yes it was.

Not only is this just peak Splinter Cell, this is peak stealth action gaming period. I can't overstate how well designed this game is an how much it refined the genre.

Firstly, this is a pretty good looking game for 2005. The dynamic lighting and shadows were very crisp and clean and added so much atmosphere to even the simplest looking room. The reason why I bring up visuals is because of the way they add to gameplay mechanics. Just like the original Thief series, you stay hidden from enemies in the dark and can be easily seen in the light. The clear, crisp shadows really adds to the consistency of whether you are hidden in the dark or not. I wish more games had visuals that impacted their core mechanics like this.

So the gameplay is good, it's really good. But what I really want to talk about is the soundtrack. This is, honest to god, one of the most refined and creative soundtracks I have ever heard from a videogame. Written and produced by electronica artist, Amon Tobin, the music mostly consists of heavy bass and percussion, and eerie, droning synth instrumentals. It's the perfect infiltration music and really goes the extra mile to pull the player into the world of Splinter Cell.