I knew nothing of the survival horror genre until I played Silent Hill 1 a few days ago. It reminded me of the things I loved about PC adventure games mixed with what I loved of horror movies. It was short and sweet and I loved it but I needed to know why it's squeal is widely touted as one of if not the greatest game of all time.

Now gameplay is identical to the first, run from place to place finding clues to go to the next place, with the occasional kill a monster in between. That's not a knock against it, I seriously loved going room to room exploring. Finding new buildings running around the town and enjoying the amazing atmosphere of everywhere it brought you, which going from PS1 to PS2 lets you have a much better soundtrack, (The best audio presentation bar none) terrifying visuals; a near perfect presentation.


But what did this do that pole vaults it over the first.

The Story.

James is such a fascinating person and his motives for finding his dead wife is easily the most interesting story in a game. EVER. I was glued to the TV for my full 9 hour play through and then watching every possible ending. Waking up across my 3 day playthough and couldn't wait to finish it and once I did wanting to chase that feeling of discovery. I came in with the biggest possible expectations and it not only knocked it clear out the park it set a new standard for what I look for in a game.

I used to play Super Mario Bros. 3 as a kid and all I would ever do is crouch on the white block on 1-1 run behind the scenery and then once I beat the level I turned it off. That's true because I was a really dumb child, but now I'm a really dumb adult and wanted to go back and beat it.
Going into it I had the preconceived notion of "its a simple 2d platformer not really going to be surprised by anything" but wow is this game fucking incredible. Seriously this game is constantly throwing new challenges, puzzles and really difficult platforming at you and I was hooked until the end. People forget how fucking hard worlds 6-8 are but also some of the most fun I've had playing a game this year.

Growing up I played Super Mario World more than any other SNES game. I just thought the movement in it was perfect and the cape and Yoshi made exploring the levels so much fun, the variation between the worlds which felt huge, ghost houses and castle were all so different. But little did I know how much of this game I was missing.

I never saw a single key, a single switch, I thought you just played straight through and there was no end, but wow this game is so fucking WEIRD, for a Mario game that is. I can put it off as me being a dumb kid who didn't want to read but making these levels have so much reliability trying too find the hidden areas really add depth to them and hunting for the hidden exits and keys make some of these levels seriously nonlinear at points.

Considering I also played through Super Mario 3 this year it is only right that my brain made comparisons. I feel like the level variety in 3 was so much greater than what there is here, too many Levels In World feel the same with not much variation. Even finding 90% of the secrets this felt like a much shorter game, which isn't bad I just wish there was more here. Super Mario 3 is so fucking hard while this there were very few moments including the final Bowser fight that felt like a cakewalk.

This is still such a great game but you really see where Nintendo was going with the Mario series and while it's a weird followup to Super Mario 3 I think it's the perfect prequel to Super Mario 64.

My history of Zelda is a complicated one. I would always rent them from Blockbuster, get the same distance into the game than give up when it got hard. When I got older I'd buy the strategy guides and still find myself getting stuck and putting the game down. Every generation I'd buy the games and play maybe 3 hours and drop them and I don't know why.

I'm 25 and finally think I think I know why.

This year I tried playing Zelda 1. The original Zelda is way too archaic to have fun playing and I don't have fun just staring at a walkthrough so I don't think I'll ever play it but I'm always told that A Link To The Past is the one where the magic started and I can see it but it still feels rough.

Every time I thought it was a masterpiece it would spit in my face and make me hate it and then my mind would be blown and then back to wanting to never play it again.

I'll start with the good

This game has so much fucking charm, from the world to the enemies to the town, it's not anything super special but I just loved looking at it, the pixel art has aged perfectly and I wanted to explore just to see it all.

Every single dungeon, aside from one, I thought was expertly designed much like most great puzzle games made you think there is no way you can figure out what to do and then feel like a genius when you figure it out. Exploring the dungeons was always interesting and everyone truly felt different.

The boss fights were the real show-stealer, there was magic to each one and they were always exciting how to tackle each one and even on a 2d plane they were epic in scale.

Now that's the bulk of the game which is why I think it's great but then there are the parts I hate.

Traversing the overworld is a chore, not because of poor map design because of how janky it all feels, after loving every dungeon I DREADED going to the next one because I knew I would lose half my health because I would move to the next screen clip into a bird get stuck in a rock and die. Multiple times I'd just kill link to get reset to a central position because I couldn't be bothered walking across the world. And you also don't receive the flute until halfway through if not later.

Another issue is the exploration, too much stuff in this game is like old point and click adventure bullshit, like why do certain events trigger after clearing certain dungeons, WHO KNOWS?, it just is how it is and you would have to visit every house after every dungeon to know but it just feels like a waste of time because of how much of a chore traveling through the world is.

Also, I stated how I loved the puzzle mechanics but it actively punishes you for experimenting in dungeons. The worst example is when they set rules out for how a mechanic in the game works then it just doesn't work for example the breaks in the walls means to place a bomb and it blows up simple enough. Okay well this dungeon has 4 cracks and the bombs only work on one of them and even then if the bomb is a little off the correct spot it doesn't work, so now I wasted my bombs because the logic behind the game is thrown out the window. Sam goes with the magic meter so I always felt discouraged to use it because of how limited it is for most of the game.

I would've put the music in my positives section, I think the Zelda overworld song on the SNES sound chip is great a lot of the boss music and dungeon music is enjoyable not my favorite SNES soundtracks but still very good. BUT THAT FUCKING BEEPING IS INDEFENSIBLE and it literally ruined my enjoyment of the music in the GA me causing me to have to mute it if I knew I'd be at low health for a period of time. The most obnoxious fucking noise repeated every 2 seconds not even if you have 1 or half a heart, just less than 3. This is so fucking terrible and I would pay for this dumbass feature to be removed because honestly, it's torture.

So overall I get why I always bounce off Zelda games but I get why I was wrong to not tough it out because the Great is really great the bad is really bad, I'm excited to see how they refine the formula playing through Ocarina and Wind Waker and BOTW.

I had really low hopes for this game. I love Wolfenstein 3d, being 10 and playing the shareware version in my basement was my introduction to First Person Shooters. The atmosphere of that game sticks with me until this day and I would never think I could love a Wolfenstein game more than that, but somehow this masterpiece happens.

This game has no right to be as fun as it is. I think it's important to say I think this is due to me playing it on Über, which in my opinion transforms this into a whole different experience. What would've been a pretty great FPS with a fun revenge story turns into a Brutally Difficult tactical arcade shooter where you can't just run and gun you are force to survey an area before running in guns blazing and require 10-20-30 runs through sections till you know the location of every enemy, exactly how many shots you need to drop him, and exactly what gun you are going to use to do it. It makes you feel like an absolute master at the end of a level when you are rewarded with the next section of the game excited what scenario the game holds for you next and threw curve ball after curve ball at you to force you to max out every skill so you can stealth, duel wield, and blow your way through every level.

The story is great, if you needed any more reasons to hate nazis the opening of this game makes you personally want to topple the regime they set up around you. This is alternate history done properly and gives an amazing sense of a resistance army building up through the game and seriously the fight keeps getting bigger and bigger as you make it to the final sequences, it feels like you've had an impact on the world they build. The characters that they surround you with are so enjoyable and it's one of the first times in a game I went out of my way to talk to characters to get to know them more.

This was a flawless execution that made me realize what a single player FPS experience should be something you can't replicate online.

To preface I have not played any Yakuza game prior to this one, so I really went into this game with really no idea what I was getting into. The phrase, GTA in Japan does this game such a disservice for so many different reason.

The focus of my insane love for this game is due to the story. In all 17 chapters there are at least 1-5 moments in EACH that will bring up some kind of emotion. I don't have reactions to most stories, but I caught myself visually reacting to multiple parts of this story. It goes places and there is truly not a single moment where you are not 100% engaged waiting to see what happens next.

Which is why this next parts even crazier, the sub-stories that you run into naturally in-between missions are always engaging and even funny enough to draw your attention away to do because you truly feel like you are making an impact in the world and are well rewarded when you do the right thing. There are too many to talk about but there wasn't a single one where I thought, "Well that was a waste of time" They all just fleshed out main characters and made you that much more engrossed in the world.

Leading into the most important part of the equation the Main Characters. Kiryu and Majima are the single two most likable characters in any game. I love these two guys so much and they just kept charming you every time they swapped stories. You constantly want to see what they do next and you just always want to be with them. They are so cool and so likable and noble and funny they are both the complete package and by the end of the story you are ready to go on a 10 year journey with them the 50 or so hours spent with them isn't even enough.

As a kid who wasn't allowed to play GTA a young kid, my open world fix was brought to me by River City Ransom, that was the coolest game and it felt like a huge world where I could go anywhere. Little did I know that 20 years later I would be playing the spiritual successor to my favorite game without knowing it. The combat in this game is so fucking satisfying. I played it on hard so I would never be able to mindlessly button mash I constantly had to be on the top of my game. Utilizing all 3 fighting styles was always always felt like a good change of pace considering each characters 3 styles all felt different, and each boss required you to be proficient in each. Every boss was so challenging and really made you use what you've learned in every previous fight, and there was an importance to each fight.

I can't overstate how much I fucking love this game and to me it is truly perfect.

This is the worms game I wanted as a kid. It's hard to explain but as a kid who wasn't allowed to have games with guns in them I always got away buying the worms games because of the cartoony nature. But in my little mind I always wanted it to be real time instead of turn based and honestly this brought me back. I got this as the free game of the month on the PS5 and its so funny that the game they gave away is unironically the equivalent of early XBLA game progression and all, and that was honestly part of the charm. It was just a regular old deathmatch of the mid 2000s era it rocked like I'm not sitting here thinking it's a masterpiece but this made me so like nostalgic of the 360 era and my early days with turn based worms game. All the weapons played like I wanted, I loved dressing up my worm and giving him the German accent just like I did 20 years ago, there's a holy hand grenade and a sheep bomb. It's fucking worms and that's all it had to be for me, wish there was more of a community (It's already difficult to get a game a few months after launch) which is why I'm putting it down but was such a fun little side game I can't help but have a soft spot for.

I think I'm done with this game. I always hated the criticism of "a game not respecting your time" but this game felt like bashing your head against a brick wall. This was my monthly iPhone bathroom game at work and honestly the first 2 dungeons Incredible 4 and half to 5 stars, the combat felt fun and rewarding the rouge-like grind of one more run was great but holy shit you hit a wall where all the fun is sucked out of it. I was ready to 100% this game and I just deleted it off my phone. Seriously the only way I see ever coming back to this is if I have no other iPhone games to play because fuck the insane ramp up of difficulty and the only way to progress is replay the 2nd dungeon to farm gold. Really went from 100 to 0 so fast on this game so dissapointed.

Okay, so about a year ago I played through Earthbound and it was my first RPG that I ever finished. Now I had played the Super Mario RPGs but always bounced off early and thought that Turn Based JRPGs weren't my thing, but decided to try Earthbound and it unironically changed my life, in short it was perfect top to bottom and I never stopped thinking about it but I didn't want to burn myself out on the series so I forced myself to take a year break before playing this and I'm glad I did.

Now I'm not glad because this is more of the same just so I had time to digest the first game and see Mother 3 as it's own thing which it is. It blows my mind how much charisma and charm this game has and that can't be overstated, it's unreal for how simple the story is that you'd want to talk to everyone in the town and search every little nook and cranny of the map because you loved being there and loved everyone in the game down to little side characters and I ended up clocking over 70 hours and got all my characters to almost max level just because I didn't want to leave this world because I knew there was nothing after it. The way the story is broken up really gives you time to get to know everyone and makes them teaming up for the second half all that more engaging and even when side characters stop back in you get excited to see them. While I feel this game is much more linear than earthbound I don't see that as a fault because as I said this is more about each of the set pieces they set up and all of them hit. It's incredible how perfect every beat of this game is. The music, the art, the writing all of it works for the full playthrough oh and the gameplay...

I loved Earthbounds' rolling health battle system but with the addition of the rhythm it made it perfect. It made every battle feel completely tense to try to either keep your party alive or rush though to the end hoping no one fainted. The battle system really shines at all of the boss encounters, this probably falls into the set-pieces but I always felt like the dungeon leading up the boss perfectly prepared me for the fight and they all felt epic in scale. I would look forward to these fight because it wasn't about grinding out levels it was about being strategic and not getting stupid, which is what a good RPG fight should be and when you were drained and you killed the boss right before your health rolled off it was an unmatched feeling.

I don't want to spoil any story moments in this just my final thoughts are this is a flawless game it blows my mind how they were able to follow up one of the best games I ever played with something that surpassed it in every way. I truely feel like you must play Earthbound before playing this game because any reference just hits that much harder. The "The End?" Screen made more emotional then I've been about a game and tempted me to start another playthrough right there just to get back into that world.

Tonda Gossa.

It's funny, someone on 4chan once said, "Zelda games were made solely to sell strategy guides" and it's something that stuck with me when I played Link To The Past, which I played with a guide and I honestly didn't enjoy it that much. And man fuck whoever said that because playing this made me realize the magic of the Zelda Series. I played this without using any of the Sheikah Stones or a guide (Except for not knowing you had to feed a fish to get into Jabu-Jabu belly, fuck you), and the magic of figuring out how to progress is what makes this game so perfect. So I actually reluctantly played this I had a 4 hour break at work and the only game in my 3DS was this. After my experience with LTTP I was super hesitant to start playing this, growing up I always bounced off the Zelda games because I was an idiot and would play 1 dungeon get discouraged and put it down. I've bought this game maybe 3 different times (N64, Gamecube, and Wii) and never got past the Deku Tree dungeon again because I was a fucking idiot. But on this break I powered through, refusing to look at guide and just figure out what the hype was all about. And wow did it fucking hit me. I get the feeling of the grand adventure, traveling to different parts of Hyrule and the puzzles of the dungeons and when I would hit a wall knowing there had to be a solution and I'm a moron but like solving some of the Dungeon puzzles made me feel incredible. The adventure this game takes you on is incredible and seriously never gets boring, each area comes with new challenges and each dungeon felt wholly unique. I loved meeting the people of each town and the dialogue felt fresh for an almost 30 year old game. The combat feels weighty and while it was never challenging it never felt like a slog to fight regular enemies. The boss fights are a huge highlight that felt like they were all larger than life and again while not sure challenging really still had a joy of beating each one. But just the scale of it all is what kept me salivating for more like I loved every area and when I unlocked the whole map I was wishing there was more to explore. As someone who really wasn't crazy about any Zelda game, finally sitting down and playing this through I get why people call it one of the greatest games of all time and now you can put me in that category. Now obviously I played the 3ds version which has a million quality of life changes, the fast item switching, better graphics, second screen, 30fps etc.) I'm sure that is what made this game still feel new but either way it is just a masterpiece from the beginning.