Ever since Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 got the Taxman treatment in 2013, I've been aching for home console ports, just as was done with Sonic CD. For whatever reason, Sega opted to keep both titles strictly confined to mobile phones and Android devices. Nearly ten years later I'd all but written off the possibility of getting the original games in 16:9 on a home console or PC, and it would seem more resourceful fans felt the same way if projects like Sonic 2: Community Cut and Angel Island Revisited are any indication.

With the announcement of Sonic Origins it seemed Sega was finally prepared to fix all that, with a ground-up remaster of Sonic 3 & Knuckles to sweeten the package. But anyone with as much of an affinity for these titles as I have has probably lived long enough to build a well developed level of cynicism towards Sega, a company that is seemingly incapable of stepping out of its own way. Suffice it to say, Sonic Origins delivers on the bare minimum with so many compromises that you have to wonder if it's worth it at all.

The Taxman remasters are ostensibly here, reworked for this collection by the fine folks at Headcannon. For the most part Sonic 1, 2, and CD play fine and come out the least scathed, though there's some odd things about each. Sonic 1 and 2 feature the upgrades from the mobile game, like the inclusion of elemental shields, or the seventh emerald in Sonic 1, but these options are buried in each game's level select rather than baked into the main menu, which is a frustrating level of obfuscation. CD appears to be a straight port of the Taxman release rather than a rebuild as evidenced by the Taxman version's bespoke menus being present. A consequence of this is that switching between the American and Japanese soundtracks requires you to launch into the anniversary mode and toggle between regions in order for your choice to reflect in the Classic and Story Mode versions of the game. Also, you can't play as Knuckles in CD because he wasn't in the Taxman version, sorry!

The drop-dash has also been added to each game, but the implementation into 1, 2, and CD seems dodgy at best. There's a brief moment in the animation that gives the trick away: for a single frame the moment you touch the ground you can see Sonic curled up, mid-charge for a spindash. It's an interesting way to fake it, but it also causes the drop dash to feel distinctly off, and I found myself disregarding it outside of one specific use case in CD where you can simply drop dash back and forth to time travel more reliably.

The main attraction of course is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which hasn't been rereleased for quite some time due to legal issues concerning Michael Jackson's contributions to the soundtrack. At this point you've probably heard the whole story and all its twists and turns, and I actually have to wonder if Sega would have remained blithely unaware of the problem if not for the story gaining more and more attention online. The solution was to remove these tracks and instead use those found in the beta version of Sonic 3, which themselves are used in the original 90's PC release of the game. Personally, I don't think these tracks ever fit in the first place. Their melodies sound inconsistent with the rest of the soundtrack's style, and outside of Carnival Night, they don't really match their levels either. Ice Cap is a poppy upbeat tune that betrays how isolated and cold the level is, which is something Brad Buxer's reuse of Hard Times captured perfectly. The audio quality is also piss poor, but really all of Sonic 3 sounds weirdly muffled here, with the exception of the new Super Sonic theme which pipes through crystal clear. This isn't too surprising as it's very obviously not using the Genesis sound font. I am perplexed by why it's even in the game, as the original Super Sonic theme is still present in this collection. Was it to alleviate how annoyingly short the original theme's loop was? If so, replacing it with something that sounds gratingly similar to the music from Sonic 4 doesn't seem like much of a solution at all. I am begging someone to keep Jun Senou away from synthesizers.

Music aside, Sonic 3 is buggy as hell. I had the game lock up multiple times on PS5, and Sonic has a nasty tendency to stop moving entirely when hanging from objects like vines or monkey bars. A couple times I had to restart the PS5 because the game became completely unresponsive. The rest of the games are much more stable by comparison, though Sonic 2 has an issue with Tails failing to rejoin the player after scrolling off-screen, resulting in constant jumping sounds, and an audio bug with the drop dash that causes a high pitched chirp out of the right channel that sounds like a smoke detector beeping.

There's some cosmetic changes to Sonic 3 as well, including an impressive amount of new sprites to fill in some of the gaps present in the original sprite sheet. Things like Sonic facing forward and looking up, and a few tweaks to cutscene animations. They look quite nice and only really stand out if you're intimately familiar with the original. More broadly, special stages are redone in each game, allowing for much smoother scrolling. This cuts down on the difficulty of collecting Chaos Emeralds tremendously and is a welcomed change.

There's a variety of other modes on offer, including a Classic mode that allows you to play each game in 4:3, mirror mode (which isn't a wholly original idea, but a fun novelty), and boss rush. Tying each of the games together is story mode, which allows you to play the Anniversary edition of each game in chronological order with newly animated cutscenes serving as connective tissue. These cutscenes are by the same people who did Sonic Mania Adventures, and they're really great. Humorous, but a bit more serious and true in tone to the games. And if you aren't completely burned out by this point, you can jump into the mission mode, which allows you to take on bite-sized challenges in remixed levels from each game. These aren't terribly difficult and I S-ranked most of them on my first attempt, so don't expect to get much more than an hour of out it.

Rounding out the collection is the museum, which features an audio library, illustration gallery, and movies which can be unlocked when certain conditions are met or via the use of coins earned from missions or Anniversary mode. Most of what there is to unlock you've probably seen by now, but there's a few gems in there. I wish they found more concept and game plan documents to throw in as opposed to style guides, but considering Sega has lost track of a lot of masters over the years, it wouldn't surprise me if their backlog of design docs is similarly limited. The audio gallery is a bit underwhelming, however. There's so many Sonic games with excellent soundtracks, but Origins restricts itself to only songs present or related to the games on offer, unless you pay more for DLC that adds Spinball, Knuckles Chaotix, and Sonic 3D Blast to the track list. You can also set up a playlist if you like, but you can't actually do anything with it.

The pricing and DLC plan for Origins is just as much a mess as the collection itself. The base game is 40$, which is asking a bit much already, with additional DLC setting you back 8$ total, unless you opt for the deluxe edition for 45$. Do not pay for the DLC, it does not add much to the overall package. The quantity of "extreme" difficulty missions is meager at best, the extra soundtracks can just be found on Youtube (and god knows you can do more with a youtube playlist than one that tethers you to your Playstation), and the extra character animations on the menu or borders for the 4:3 mode just aren't worth the price of admission. It is mildly infuriating that some of the menus are designed around Sonic Spinball and Sonic 3D Blast when neither game is included, too. I'm not expecting full remasters of these, the market just doesn't really exist for that, but would it have been so hard to toss in a few extra ROMs as unlockables?

To be fair, just because the presence of Sonic Spinball art and music tricked me into thinking it might be int he game doesn't mean I should've trusted that it would be. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I'm gonna keep buying this garbage.

Being a Sonic fan is exhausting. A port of the 2013 and 2011 remasters along with a new port of Sonic 3 with widescreen support by Headcannon should have been a layup. But a lack of features, messy user interface, and glitchy compromised titles hold Origins back from being the definitive collection it could and should have been. No doubt this frustration is shared by Headcannon, as their founder Simon Thomley recently aired his grievances with Sega on Twitter. It's a shame Thomley has to jeopardize Headcannon's partnership with Sega, but his honestly and unwillingness for all the blame to be pinned on his staff is admirable. It should come as no surprise that Sega is still mired in self-sabotaging behavior, of course, and I can't imagine it being any different moving forward.

Sadly, the ROMs Sega was offering on digital storefronts for the original Sonic games were all delisted ahead of Origins release, and while this doesn't mean much from a preservation standpoint given how easily accessible they still are off certain sites, digital scarcity is never a good thing. Fans have long been using these ROMs coupled with fan projects to upscale these games legally, and those versions are still the best way to enjoy Sonic in 16:9. Your choices are to mod the games the way they ought to be or settle on a product that is buggy and compromised. When it comes down to it, that too is a celebration of what Sonic is: a series consistently outshined by the efforts of fans.

Correction (6/29): According to Digital Foundry, Sonic CD has some differences that make it clear that it is also a unique build for Origins, so I really have no idea why the 2011 menus are still present in it.

I have a real fear of the ocean. The shallows of a beach is about all I can handle. Subnautica was designed to truly kill me.

It is the best survival/crafting game I've ever played. It gets everything just right. Lovely feeling of progression as you explore and get a bit better at living in this hellish wet place. A bit braver each time you head out with new equipment. Places that were once the scariest thing you'd ever seen now paddled through nonchalantly because you killed the big threat there by freezing it in place and dropping thirty farts on its head. Less "bending the land to your will" and more "becoming confident and tooled up enough to make it".

It's actually got a great story too, not the usual thing where you're stranded with some baddies and maybe you find a couple of diaries/audio logs. It ramps things up so well to such a satisfying payoff and feels like you discovered it all organically.

I cannot believe how much I enjoyed it. A game I rightfully should have played ten minutes of, then got too scared and deleted. I'm putting this on the All-Timers list, easily. Most survival games aren't fit to swim in Subnautica's wake.

Well, we are at the end of my little Character Action Game marathon. At the same time this is also my 350th review on the site, so what better game to cap both of these off with than the underappreciated Capcom cult classic, God Hand.

I have known about this game for, I wanna say the past 2 to 3 years thanks to my buddy Simon who showed me of course, the SsethTzeentach Review of the game. What I saw looked like some of the most comical shit ever made in a video game, and made it all the more surprising to me that this was the last game created by its developer, Clover Studios.

My friends have all gassed this game up to me for years now, and so I finally decided that 2022 would be the year I would play God Hand.

So now allow me to make a huge disclaimer: I fucking suck at this game. I doubt that's a huge surprise, God Hand is known to be a very challenging game and it will kick your ass, as it brutally did mine.

So do not take my opinions here as fact, but just as my personal views for my first playthrough, as God Hand is meant to be played many many times.

Right from the offset, God Hand comes at you in full force with its vibes, showing the "Graphic Violence, Discretion is Advised" statement that had been put in both Devil May Cry and Resident Evil games at the time. The image of course showing a screen of our protagonist Gene kicking an enemy in the testicles until his face turns blue.

Then there's the menu theme.

I sat there for a solid 2 and a half minutes just, absorbing the absolute bop that is the menu theme. All of the music in this game is fucking excellent, from the theme of Fat Elvis, this absolute bop filled with Elvis Presley sounding noises and a sensual backing track, to the intense rocking theme of your rival Azel, quaintly named Devil May Sly. It's all fucking phenomenal and gets you in the mood.

Of course, what follows after the music is also one of the funniest games ever made. Usually I find weird voice acting to be laughable for the wrong reasons but here I'd honestly argue that the weirdness is 100% both intentional and what makes the game work. Elvis being the most stereotypical version of a Hispanic male, which I also am (Hispanic, not stereotypical lol), gave me a good amount of laughs as he cracks Spanish curse words calling Gene all sorts of things from "pendejo" to "puta" and all that in between.

There's just so many funny moments, like when you encounter these Super Sentai looking mofos and they have these weird Stich like voices, doing weird poses and then you kick them into the ground like a nail and proceed to stomp their heads into the dirt. Or the scene with Gene kicking the thugs out of the window, and the last thug agreeing to get kicked out midscene with a tiny head nod.

And that humor stays in the gameplay as well. You have various ridiculous moves that you can and will use on your opponents, like your Roulette Moves. These can vary from beam like attacks, a flurry of punches, getting a Home Run with a Baseball Bat you summon, or my personal favorite: Kicking people in the balls.

The attention to detail is great too, because that kicking in the balls move only applies to male characters, and will not effect female or robotic enemies, and a specific boss who lost their testicles in the war.

Going more into the combat, my friend referred to it as a "spiritual sequel to Resident Evil 4", which makes sense given that both are Shinji Mikami titles. Both games work with an adaptive difficulty that changes depending on the skill of the player. It's a lot more subtle in RE4, but in God Hand it is the game.

The better you perform at the game, the higher the Tension Gauge goes up. It grows from Level 1, to Level 2, Level 3 and finally Level Die. Full transparency, the highest I ever got was to Level 2 because even on the lowest levels this game absolutely dominated me with its Alexander the Great obsessed cast of characters.

Combat works as follows: You use the Square Button to use the combo chain, which you can customize, the Triangle Button is your combo cancel move, and the X button is your spacer move, with Circle being your Reaction Command button.

All of the moves, for all buttons except Circle can be customized to whatever you wish. You want your Square Combo Chain to be an assortment of kicks, or a near infinite juggle combo, you can do that. You want your combo cancel to be a Pimp Smack, you can do that. The level of customization is endless, and even outside of that you have direction based moves that can also help you.

Let's say you do a spot dodge, you can press Triangle during it to do a slide kick which can easily knock down crowds of opponents and works great as crowd control option. If you're particularly skilled, you can knock an enemy high up in the air and press Back and Triangle to do a Shoryuken, and chain it multiple times until you do a forward triangle to kick the enemy in front of you, using them as a projectile to knock down other opponents.

All of these can help to take down the hordes of enemies you face, alongside the power of the God Hand. When you raise your God Hand Meter high enough, you can press R2 to activate the awesome powers of a God, and absolutely decimate your foes. They cannot block the attacks, and you are invulnerable while using it. Truly, an awesome ability.

This does bring up though certain other aspects of your playthrough, resource management. In your first playthrough of God Hand, unless you are some supernaturally gifted God of Video Games, you are going to suck ass. You will often find yourself breaking open various containers be it boxes or jars to get health, Roulette Wheel meter, God Hand meter, and cash. These drops are entirely random, as the game doesn't want you to rely too much on them.

This creates a system I call the "Gamble". Where you have to base your current battle situation around the resources available to you. Do you get a fresh fruit that restores your health while you're topped off and let it sit for later on in the fight, or do you get a Roulette Wheel card. You gotta take the risks and see if you'll survive.

Gambling honestly is a central mechanic to this game even outside combat, your hub for God Hand's sake is a fucking Casino on a remote island. You can play Slots, Blackjack, Poker, or even bet on racing these Poisonous Chihuahuas. (Always bet on Lucky Clover, should be obvious enough). Gambling is a major way of winning money both in combat and out of it, so to say that this game is very much about gambling is correct.

Of course a skilled enough player can work well without luck, but that was not me and it will not be you either on your first go.

In another refreshing sense, God Hand also lets you avoid entire encounters if you have what you need. If you just feel like you want to proceed through a level and aren't locked behind keys or the like, you can easily avoid combat in general. I wouldn't recommend avoiding all combat obviously, but if you're in a risky situation it is a completely valid option for progression. You aren't given a grade at the end of the level, the only thing decided is the bonus money you receive, and when you die you keep any money you gained from before hand. It results in the game not actively demoralizing new players unlike in other CAGs, which I find gives it more of an appeal than most. It also helps that the individual levels are themselves, very short. With there being 9 stages, with various small levels within each. It makes you feel like you aren't losing much progress when you die.

It's shit like this that makes me question how this game flopped. Everything here is incredibly appealing to a casual player, and there's all sorts of tech that more advanced players can learn and master. So why is it that this game got a 3 out of 10 on fucking IGN. You want my guess? The reviewer got to the first boss, thought it was unfair, and dropped the fucking game.

God Hand is a game that instantly brought a smile to my face, and even when I would get frustrated due to the many challenges, there was always a funny moment or a goofy encounter that would soon follow.

You can kick men in the balls, suplex a man in a Gorilla suit, fight Elvis, spank dominatrix women, get your ass beat by actual clowns, and save the world. What here is not at least somewhat entertaining?

Also this game had a ending dance sequence before Bayonetta did, so Bayonetta is easily the inferior copy of God Hand.

I implore you to play God Hand, or else I'll dragon kick your ass into the milky way. I'm Alexander the Great, and this has been God Hand.

P.S.

COME ON, HOW WAS THIS CLOVER'S LAST GAME?!?!?!? YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS! YOU KICK MEN IN THE BALLS!!!!!!!!!!

Bayonetta has been my number one favorite game pretty much since I first played it back in 2010, but when I had that initial realization I’d honestly barely even scratched its surface. To this day I’m still finding new ways to play and improve my strats, which speaks to just how hard it nails that sweetspot between mechanics that are intrinsically satisfying, malleable, but also highly intentional; somehow it’s the one action game that does everything. The control system is so smooth and flexible it’s influenced every genre title since; knocking dudes into each other or tearing through the battlefield with Beast Within offers a sense of physicality other comparable games still don’t come close to; the enemies are some of the most aggressive, varied and polished you’ll ever encounter in a melee combat game; and all of that is wrapped up in a scoring system that miraculously manages to give you clear rules to work with while still allowing for a huge degree of expression. Even the ridiculous Angel Weapons make sense from that perspective — they give you a generous buffer to use whatever playstyle appeals to you in and still earn a Platinum combo in the end.

Between Witch Time, the equipment system and Dodge Offset, Bayonetta makes it easy to name-drop its most obvious gimmicks and leave it there, but those last two in particular are an insane step up for the genre when it comes to freedom and intentionality. How to trip an enemy up, where to launch them, whether to use magic or not: no other action game makes you consider these questions so actively at this fast of a pace, and I can’t get enough of it.

The trouble with calling something “ahead of its time” is that it implies whatever made that something so special has become standard since its release. It’s easy to describe Fallout like that, or to say it’s “impressive for 1997” as if standards only ever improve over time, until you look around and realise how few RPGs since Fallout have even attempted to replicate what makes it such an excellent game, including its own sequels. Had they, it’s doubtful that Fallout would be subject to as many hyperbolic horror stories as it is today.

Among the most infamous and exaggerated of these is the time limit of Fallout’s main quest, which isn’t just arguably more generous than it should be even if you don’t choose to extend it, but also disappears halfway through anyhow. That makes it sound like a non-factor, but it’s an essential part of what makes Fallout a step above. No matter how generous it might be, the fact that it’s there at all creates a kind of congruence between player and protagonist that isn’t there in any other Fallout game, or many RPGs in general. Everything you do in Fallout is coloured by the underlying sense of urgency that it’s game over, literally and figuratively, if you spend too much time gallivanting about the wastes instead of on your core responsibility. The plights of Arroyo, Liam Neeson and Hoover Dam can wait until the Chosen One, Lone Wanderer and Courier feel like doing something about it, but unlike them, the world doesn’t revolve around the Vault Dweller. It probably doesn’t need to be said how much more synergistic this is with Fallout’s harsh setting than any its follow-ups, or how relieving it is when you finally get your hands on that water chip.

What this is indicative of is Fallout’s larger design philosophy – it isn’t afraid to let you make mistakes. Yes, you’re going to have a particularly hard time if you don’t dump points into your Agility, but why shouldn’t you? It makes sense that someone who isn’t quick on their feet shouldn’t be able to easily get by in such a hellish place. You feel the consequences of neglecting a particular S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat more palpably here than in any other Fallout bar 2, most famously with how low Intelligence makes every single conversation in the game more strained (to say the least).

This design extends beyond character building, too. Fallout trusts players to figure out for themselves which dialogue options are affected by a high speech skill, instead of highlighting them for you as all of the 3D games do. Choose your words poorly upon meeting someone for the first time and their opinion of you can be permanently dampened for the rest of the game, signalled to you organically with a change in their facial expression, potentially locking you out of quests or causing others in the locale to distrust you. If things go really south, no punches are pulled in terms of everybody being expendable – you can go as far as to kill children, and making a good first impression with even evil characters becomes an uphill battle if you do.

In general, I don’t think killing things in Fallout is anywhere near as much of a drag as it’s often made out to be either. Weighing up how much AP to spend on either moving to get to a more advantageous position and reduce the amount of actions enemies can potentially take, or on attacking them definitely gets the gears in your head turning to some extent. Damage sound effects in this series never sounded anywhere near as satisfying after ditching the thumps and thwacks of this and Fallout 2, which make for some nice feedback on attacks when taken in tandem with the wonderfully gory sprite work. Being able to destroy or pry open doors enables ways for you to creatively manoeuvre through combat encounters and lets you progress quests in ways that you can’t in later titles, plus the amount of different hit reactions for each part of each enemy’s body is also pretty novel. You won’t be making any Combo MADs out of this, but if you don’t get even a hint of enjoyment out of seeing somebody gently slide across half of Los Angeles after they’ve been smacked with a sledgehammer, I probably don’t trust you.

What I do trust is Fallout’s ability to engross me in its world every single time I play it. Listen to how haunting this is, and then be aware that every other track in the game is at least on par with it. The ambient clicking and clacking of now ancient wartime equipment, the cosy boxed-in presentation of the HUD and its descriptive flavour text in its bottom left, the freaky architecture with all its giant heads... they all combine to sell the feeling of really being there, rivalling the best of any other game that predicates itself on immersion. When you encounter a voiced character and the music cuts you know you’re in for a proper event, bolstered by across the board stellar performances from tons of classic 90s voice actors that utterly command your attention. Meeting the Master and hearing him jolt his way through his iconic monologue about the Unity is like one long lesson in why he ended up defining the guy-with-good-intentions-does-the-wrong-thing-for-the-right-reasons-and-also-you-can-talk-him-to-death archetype. No Fallout antagonist has come close ever since (as cool as Frank Horrigan might be), be it in terms of motivations, the lengths you have to go to convince him that he’s in the wrong, anything.

Fallout is a remarkably pure translation of vision to game, and as another comment on here points out, it’s simply not given its dues as often as it ought to be. Even with this proverbial Vault of text, I still haven’t touched on everything it does well – for one thing, I can’t believe the Tell Me About feature didn’t become standard in every RPG made after this game’s release – but I hope this does it some justice all the same. Do give it a chance at some point if you haven’t already, and don’t be put off by any claims of “jank” or “clunk” or whatever other nebulous jargon you could just as easily apply to any of its much more recent successors. I first played Fallout well over a decade after it came out after being introduced to the series with 3, and even as a kid, I never found myself wishing it was more like the modern RPGs I was accustomed to. Quite the opposite.

I wanted to cap this off with a twist on “you’re a hero and you have to leave,” Fallout being the hero, but my Int is too low to make it sound clever. In the interest of avoiding a critical miss, I present a rare but thematically appropriate Todd. Will trade for either 20 caps or an iguana on a stick.

Franchise revivals have become big business across pretty much all forms of media, but rarely are they as good or as boldly willing to fly in the face of modern design trends as Streets of Rage 4, a short but sweet concoction that invites replays not just through brilliantly varied characters, the high of chasing better ranks or funky beats, but for how intrinsically rewarding it is to master its fighting game-esque systems. Look no further than this for proof that bringing back something old can have as much value as making something brand new.

I detest it when "modern" is used as if it automatically means "better," so be sure that when I call SOR old I mean it in the best way possible, i.e. that it’s cleverly designed around its limitations. SOR4 largely refrains from perceived-as-modern features like running not because the devs were too silly to consider it – they did – but because deliberately not including them makes things more interesting. If you want to quickly get from one end of the screen to the other, you have to consider whether to risk losing some health through a special move that lurches you forward, to use a different move that might leave you vulnerable or pick a character who has extra movement options like Adam or Shiva’s dashes (which also bolsters the variety between the cast). One of the best parts of SOR4 is that it’s an exercise in constant problem solving, which isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be if your movement was less limited, but that aspect of it is enhanced because it's the way it is.

Risk taking in general is something that SOR4 excels at encouraging. Being able to regain health after using a special move just seems less punishing on the surface, but it feels absolutely crushing when you get lose it all by getting hit after, and equally as relieving when you manage to get it all back. Using special moves has more layers to it than in its predecessors thanks to this balance of risk and reward. That, plus nothing sends your dopamine tubes on a rollercoaster ride quite like getting all the way up to the highest tier of the new combo system only to have it broken by a sneaky Galsia. It helps that it goes up much quicker if you vary your moves, a bit like DMC’s style meter.

There’s not much else to be said for other areas of SOR4 that hasn’t already been said to death. The hand drawn art’s nothing short of inspiring and the clarity of enemies’ animations means that occasions where you feel like you shouldn’t have gotten hit are impressively rare. The music lives up to the series’ legendary standards and then some. Smart difficulty design and the randomised nature of the survival mode means that it’ll take a long, long time before fatigue sets in. The only reason I don’t rate SOR4 higher is because of a persistent feeling that something’s missing.

It feels almost rude to say so, given that Mr. X Nightmare makes this one of the most feature-complete beat ‘em ups ever made right next to Fight ‘N Rage, but I find it hard not to wish that there was an alternate route through the story or something. While not every beat ‘em up needs Fight ‘N Rage’s 200 gorillion endings, I don’t find SOR4’s stages 5, 7 or 8 especially interesting compared to the rest of the game - I regularly forget stage 8 in particular exists despite having beaten the story six times - and they’d probably be more digestible if they weren’t mandatory. There’s even precedents for this within its own series. SOR3 has alternate stages, and SOR1 has really creative alternate endings where you and another player have to fight each other if at least one of you chooses to join Mr. X at the end. Just a little bit of extra flavour along those lines could’ve made what’s already quite easily one of the very best games of the 2020s even better, and maybe have prevented the occasional labelling of it as Streets of Rage 2: 2.

Let this be a reminder of why numerical scores are so arbitrary, that not every 8/10 is the same, and also that John Backloggd should steal Letterboxd’s like feature at some point. Regardless of a couple of small faults here and there, Streets of Rage 4 is exemplary and everybody with even a passing interest in beat 'em ups or action games should play it. Pop it in and be mesmerised as the system of your choosing becomes a souped up Mega Drive on command.

Absolutely floored by how good the AI in this is. Today, Monolith are probably more well known for Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system or the fact that F.E.A.R.’s AI is so clever it had a short MIT paper written about it, but you can see their talent for this sort of thing on full display in No One Lives Forever too. Ideally, when we wheel out the phrase “feels like it’s from the future,” we should reserve it for special games like this which genuinely outclass stuff being released over two decades later in crucial areas like these.

“Enemy variety” is often conflated solely with the number of different types of enemies a game has, and NOLF’s enemy AI is a good showcase of why that’s misleading. The vast majority of NOLF’s enemies are humans, mostly being differentiated via the weapons they’ve equipped or which parts of their body are armoured (accentuated by a really cool limb-based damage system), but it never, ever feels stale because of how versatile their behaviour is. They can duck, lean, dodge roll, sway from side to side, knock over environmental objects to create some makeshift cover, blindfire over that makeshift cover, work together with other enemies to flank you, even run in a zigzag motion to throw off your aim if there’s no cover nearby, and probably more that I’m not aware of. Combine these kinds of dynamic behaviours with level design that often presents you with more than one path forward plus all of Cate’s weird gadgets, and the sum is a game where any given encounter can play out in any number of ways. Bear in mind that this also came out an entire year before Halo CE flexed on the competition with its similarly brainy AI. The boss fights aren’t quite as flexible as the enemies, but considering how few FPSs even attempt to have bosses at all, it’s nice to have them here for the occasional breather. Y’know?

When it comes to sneaking about in NOLF, enemies are less consistent – their line of sight varies between a few feet and what feels like miles depending on which level you’re playing – but not nearly to the point where stealth should be a point of derision for the game. I can’t imagine looking at NOLF’s stealth with the mindset of “this doesn’t work as well as it could” instead of “it’s impressive that this works as well as it does.” Again, bear in mind that 3D stealth games as we know them had only existed for about two years by the time NOLF came out. Taking that into consideration along with the fact that it’s not even a pure stealth game, it’s ridiculously ambitious. We’ve got different sound levels depending on the type of surface you’re walking on, gradient light/dark levels, various gadgets to misdirect specific kinds of enemies, and don’t get me started on its sound propagation – apart from Thief, this is the only (pseudo)stealth game I’ve played in which you can rely purely on audio to reliably tell where enemies are. It’s pretty conspicuous that you can’t lean around corners (something Monolith themselves must’ve noticed considering they added that in the sequel), and more grapple points to reach higher places would’ve been appreciated, but those are about all it lacks.

What NOLF doesn’t lack is charm. Do you love anything as much as the guys who made this clearly love spy movies, funky basslines and the 1960s? Don’t be so sure. The writing’s so witty at times that one of my favourite parts of the game consists purely of dialogue choices, where you interview one of the clumsier villains who’s clearly in over his head with this whole terrorism business. The swing-y music’s a pleasure to listen to, but it also serves a helpful purpose since it dynamically switches between a bunch of remixes depending on whether or not you’ve been spotted. Cate’s a great protagonist and bounces off the funny, visually distinctive supporting cast really well. It even has a silly post-credits level of dubious canonicity themed around monkeys. Why do games not do fun stuff like that anymore?

Basically, if you’re hankering for an old-ish school single player FPS in the vein of Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Half Life which is absolutely dripping with soulfulness, you owe NOLF your time. The trouble is you can’t buy it anymore, but fortunately there’s a top notch fan revival site where you can download it, the sequel and the spinoff all for free, with support for modern resolutions and glitch fixes among other stuff. I don’t think the publishers will be too bothered if you do considering none of them are sure who owns it anymore. No One Lives Forever™, but thanks to the fans, this series hopefully will.

Hell yes to this game. I would inject it into my veins if I could. If there's another 3D platformer that completely capitalises on its movement and pushes it to its absolute limit as hard as Super Cloudbuilt does, I haven't played it. No potential is wasted; both players who like to carefully go at their own pace and those who like to absolutely blitz through levels like a playable Judas Priest song are rewarded here. And I don't just mean through actual in-game rewards, like its dozens of unlockable outfits and power-ups or its creative extra modes - feeling yourself get better at this game the more you play it is easily one of the most instrinsically satisfying gaming experiences out there, in part thanks to how it feels like the devs made it their mission to make the simple act of moving around fun.

The absolutely delicious schmovement of Super Cloudbuilt complements the expertly crafted levels so well. No matter which level you're in, you're always coming across alternate paths and nooks & crannies with collectibles or easter eggs that constantly had me thinking "these guys thought of everything." On the rare occasion that there seems to only be one way through a given obstacle or challenge, you have such a flexible array of movement options at your disposal that you can almost always make your own way through it with a bit of clever thinking (hint: jump on your bombs).

Outside of all that, the art direction is really pretty & atmospheric and the soundtrack is stunning from start to finish. The story that's there isn't Legacy of Kain or anything, but it's endearing for what it is and its core theme of pushing yourself to overcome your struggles is both appropriate for the game's difficulty (dare I say, ludo-fudo-wudonarratively harmonious) and helps make Demi a decently charming/relatable protagonist.

Incredible game overall. The team behind it deserve every success for the passion they poured into it.

Capcom’s no stranger to top of the range action platformers and Demon’s Crest is no exception, which makes it all the more unfortunate that it was so overlooked in its day. I think you could release it today almost totally unaltered and it would gel quite well with the tastes of certain modern audiences, albeit probably at a relatively low price. From its good degree of non-linear exploration, gloomy atmosphere and reasonably tough difficulty level it has a lot of hallmarks of recent hits big and small, and yet it still feels like we have a lot to learn from it.

It’s impressive that Demon’s Crest manages to live up to Ghosts ‘n Goblins’ challenge despite how much more versatile its movement is. Explore a bit to find some crests and Firebrand can fly in any direction, cling to or climb up walls, shoulder bash his way through heavy objects, the works. The reason you can’t just dance around everything all willy nilly is because Capcom employed some sensible restraint. Firebrand has to position himself to push away from a wall before you can jump off of it (think Super Metroid), his shoulder bash has a hefty amount of start up before it kicks in and he can only jump so high before flying, a bit like in Kirby & The Forgotten Land. This is all great because, while Firebrand has enough weird and wonderful abilities to give you some semblance of a devilish power fantasy, you still have to be patient when using them. There’ll be plenty of moments where you have to stop and really analyse your surroundings, lest you subject yourself to repeated clumsy deaths and Firebrand’s “AH!” that seems to become more maddening each time.

Dying itself never becomes annoying thanks to the surprisingly generous double whammy of infinite retries and pretty brief levels. Don’t let the levels’ shortness trick you into thinking that Demon’s Crest doesn’t have some bang for your buck, though. Whether to find hidden levels and bosses by clearing obstacles with upgrades you didn’t have before, collect indispensably useful life upgrades or to unlock the true ending & final boss, there’s plenty of reasons to revisit each area. Action platformers had had branching paths and secret alternate levels before this, Rondo of Blood being my favourite example, but they didn’t let you crisscross between them all in whatever order you please on a quest to become the coolest demon on the block. Progression-wise I suppose the closest thing would probably be Mega Man, but even it’s not quite the same.

What would be truly demonic is if I didn’t draw attention to the soundtrack or the art. Cartoony horror tickles my fancy like you wouldn’t believe, and the only other game I can think of that does it so effectively is the also superb MediEvil. As with MediEvil, you’re in for a lot of moody church organs, and to that end, one of the first tracks you hear in Demon’s Crest is a masterclass in tone setting. Melancholic as befits a world where demons rule the roost and humans are all gone, dilapidated buildings littering the backgrounds of the game’s gorgeous sprite work, but there’s hints of vengefulness in there too, maybe even hope. Definitely piles on the atmosphere something fierce.

As excellent as Demon’s Crest is, I did say ‘almost’ unaltered, and there’s at least one niggle that you’re bound to notice – you can only switch between crests through the pause menu. It’s really quick in the grand scheme of things, but still. If it were ever to get the Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection treatment, it’d be great if you could switch crests in real time, probably with the shoulder buttons considering they go unused. There’s also a more minor issue of the fact that one or two crests are a bit redundant, one in particular being a high damage weapon for Firebrand’s base form which you’ll probably only get after already having obtained his ultimate form that does higher damage anyway.

Neither of those are egregious, though, definitely not enough to be offputting. With Capcom throwing so many well handled franchise revivals our way in the past few years, I’d love to see Demon’s Crest join them sometime (I did buy two copies of DMC5 like the good little pay piggy I am, so y’know, throw me a bone, lads). There’s plenty else to love about it that I haven’t covered, but you should really try it and see for yourself. Just make sure to keep exploring if you get the bad ending in the span of, like, an hour.

While I don’t regret getting a PS4, it marked the first time I felt dissatisfied enough with a console to go back and hook up an older one. Part of the beauty of the PS2 isn’t just its gargantuan library, but that so much of that library is so "out there." It hasn’t had a new release since 2013, and yet I still find it exciting to think about all its underappreciated, oddball titles I missed out on when I was little which I’ve now got the opportunity to try for the first time. The first “new” game I decided get was Viewtiful Joe, and it was a rainbow V ranked decision.

Little did we know that cinematic-ness in video games isn’t achieved via claustrophobic over the shoulder cameras or unskippable cutscenes, but through sick action sequences with fancy window dressing. Weaving Joe in and out of swarms of enemies, most of whom attack simultaneously on higher difficulties, is best described as like playing through the corridor scene from Oldboy as a Power Ranger. It’s relentless, but you have just the right amount of tools to always be able to shirk your way out of sticky situations and look viewtiful while doing it. Ducking, jumping, sliding, using Red Hot Kick to create some space or automatically dodging in exchange for a hefty amount of your VFX meter ensures that things never feel unfair, while also making Joe a joy to control. Slap a cool cel-shaded art style and lots of film bars on top and you basically have your own playable, self-directed tokusatsu show.

All that stuff helps make Viewtiful Joe deceptively complex, which can be said for the combat too. Even standard punches and kicks have some nuance to them you might not initially notice, with the former always launching enemies straight up or across and the latter always launching them at diagonal angles. They also nudge Joe forward a bit on use and can be instantly cancelled into each other, which can help you stay in the air or with spacing whenever sliding is too committal. Important stuff for making the most of Rock On attacks (i.e. knocking enemies into each other), which apart from funny slapstick value are pretty integral for getting good scores. Like seeing numbers go up? You’re in for a thrill. You WILL grin the first time your score counter taps out at 9999 even though you’ve clearly gotten more than that, amidst enemies bouncing off walls and CMON BABY YEAHs echoing ever into the distance.

It’s impressively lean for a Kamiya game too. There’s only one part that could be considered a minigame(!!) and it isn’t even, arguably. All that really changes about the core mechanics in the Six Machine segment is that you can’t turn around or jump and you shoot instead of punching/kicking. I don’t mind most Kamiya minigames in the first place (maybe that’s my Stockholm syndrome talking), but this is probably his best for how it twists the gameplay in a way that keeps things fresh without deviating to the point of making you dread it on future playthroughs.

And you are gonna be revisiting this for future playthroughs. You’ve got your standard action game shtick of switching up enemy placements on higher difficulties (I call it “standard” but it’s leagues better than how most games outside this genre handle difficulties), for one. But it’s bolstered by the short runtime (not counting the time you’ll probably spend dying, a lot) and other clever ideas, like removing enemy attack indicators on Ultra V-rated, plus the fantastic incentive of unlocking a new playable character for beating each difficulty. This version specifically even has Dante. And not just any Dante, but Drew Coombs Dante for all you Reuben deniers out there. How about that? I doubt I’ll ever forget the time I finished off the final boss with Dante, pushed to my limits and one hit away from death on my last life, with this game’s equivalent of a taunt. Just like one of my Japanese Devil May Crys.

I play Viewtiful Joe and think to myself, “what about this would I change?” And I always come up short. There’s no level select, I guess? But it’s short enough that you can blast through to whatever point you want to play in less than an afternoon anyway, which also enhances its arcadey feel. I suppose it’d be nice if you could use Rock On attacks on bosses instead of zoomed in punches being the go-to for all of them? But the homogeneity of how to best damage them is more than made up for by the variety in terms of actually getting them to the point where they’re vulnerable; no two play alike in that regard. There’s not much else to be picky about outside of these. Music, art direction, pacing, humour, you name it – it’s all 10/10 stuff.

Kamiya isn’t my absolute favourite game director, but he’s up there to the point where I keep an eye on pretty much anything he works on, and not just because he’s literally me. This and The Wonderful 101 aren’t just two of my favourite games ever, I think they’re also both good showcases of what I can only assume he's really like beneath his coarse, Twitter-addled exterior. Goofy, free of cynicism and dedicated to putting a smile on your face.

Raphaël Colantonio’s decision to leave Arkane stemmed from wanting to get away from the bloated-ness and inefficiency of AAA game development – he often used the example of how chairs would take 2 days to model during the making of Prey 2017, while during the days of Arx Fatalis it was closer to 2 hours. So how’s his first experiment in scaling down to the indie realm gone? Pretty well, all things considered. I’ve felt for a long time now that Colantonio is one of the best game directors currently working and I’m happy to say that Weird West is another solid attestation to that, with the caveat that it takes a good while before it clicks.

For anyone who’s familiar with immersive sims, the most immediately offputting part about Weird West is its camera perspective. I almost fell prey to this myself, but once you become more comfortable with the game, you’ll start to realise that all the juicy emergent goodness that makes this design philosophy (or, if you dare, this genre) tick is still there, even if you’re not witnessing it from the same point of view as your character. More than once, I set off an unintended chain reaction of events via independent but interlinking gameplay systems that ended up revealing a new path through an area or which allowed me to complete a quest in a roundabout, unscripted way, and these sorts of organic, player-directed experiences are what Looking Glass Studios ultimately predicated the term upon in 1997. Where so many games popularly touted as living up to the definition just don’t, Weird West surely does.

Environmental interactivity arguably doesn’t quite approach the craziness of Prey 2017, but Weird West’s integration of status effects into its physics engine gives it a leg of its own to stand on. I’m a huge fan of how soaked containers dynamically fill up with water for loads of reasons, but special mention also goes to the sheer amount of stuff you can set on fire, because there’s nothing quite like accidentally burning down an entire farmstead or patch of forest in the process of fending off an ambush. I like how these properties are applied to character abilities too because of the room for experimentation it allows, especially when you combine several at once. I particularly enjoy secreting poison pools as the Pigman and then setting them alight with explosive shotgun shells to make a porky mini-nuke on demand, but the beauty of games like this is that I'll probably look back on a current favourite tactic like that and eventually think of it as rudimentary compared to what's possible when you dig deeper into its systems.

Weird West’s story is more interesting than it’s being given credit for on here, but I don’t blame anyone for tapping out before it gets to the point where you can say that. I get the need to ease people into an unorthodox setting with a vanilla premise, but Jane Bell’s narrative hook goes beyond vanilla and pivots itself on something that you as a player have no reason to care about. Jane might be fussing about where her husband is, but I’m not. Who is he to me? It runs the risk of driving a wedge between the player and their character, but the other four protagonists (especially the one immediately after Jane) more than make up for this in terms of intrigue and how elegantly they fill the “blank slate player avatar” role, albeit not quite as perfectly as Morgan Yu.

In terms of niggles, the movement comes to mind. Dishonored 1 and Prey 2017 have some of the most liberating, intrinsically satisfying movement in the medium – you explore every nook and cranny of Dunwall and Talos I not because you're told to, but because it feels so good to do it that you naturally want to. Despite the impressive size of its world, I never felt that same enticement in Weird West because its movement options are so paltry in comparison. And how’s about those character portraits not matching their models? Like, at all? I’m willing to chalk this up to a case of “small indie company please understand,” because I can’t imagine anyone actively wanted lean, bearded, grizzled veteran gunslingers to share the same in-game appearance as (oddly abundant) overweight, alcoholic Asian women. It’s true that this camera angle allows for some mental abstraction on the player’s part – Fallout 1&2, both big influences on Weird West, use one animation for loads of different stuff – but past a certain point, I feel like I’m being asked to deny what’s in front of my eyes. Or even what’s happening around me, sometimes, considering how often my companions would try attacking invincible children or be rendered immobile by an ankle-high step, the deadliest of all the west’s creatures.

In the grand scheme of things, though, issues like these are probably worth looking past. Immersive sims have been around for longer than I’ve been alive, and in that time, there's not been nearly as many breakout hits or unambiguous commercial successes as you'd assume from the notoriety of examples like Deus Ex or System Shock; we’re pretty fortunate to still be getting any new spins on the formula at all. And as a new spin on the formula, Weird West’s definitely an impressive first showing for WolfEye, but also one with more than a few holdovers of the days when its staff were still under the watchful eye of Bethesda’s investors – hopefully their newfound freedom permits them to become a bit bolder and weirder from here on out.

This is potentially the most immersive video game ever made. The haunting music, well-crafted dungeons, ever-present environmental storytelling, and plethora of missable content in the form of hidden areas, items and enemies make this an absolute gem, sure to fill the player with a sense of wonder and make them feel rewarded for every bit of exploration as they delve into the depths of the Ancient City, provided the player is armed with enough wit and patience to make it through the perilous journey.

I tend to dislike games with ham-fisted stories, which seem to think that they are movies, and can keep the player invested into their story. Some games, like God of War 4 and Silent Hill 2, can pull this off, but most games stumble and embarrass themselves, leading to an experience focused on a stupid, unsatisfying gimmick. With this perspective, it's easy to appreciate a game which lets you discover the story for yourself by observing the environments trodden down by the pressures of civil war and the forces of time, and taking in the sights, taking note of whatever feelings passing across these intricate structures and barren landscapes might bring.

Overall, this is a game which arouses a true sense of adventure within me — genuine intrigue, awe and amazement at what can be achieved with sounds and images within the realm of video games. Sure, the game may not have much literary value, but if you come in with the intent of going on a real adventure into a treacherous land, you might discover an experience that will forever stick with you, making all other exploration games pale in comparison.