Unfortunately, after not playing for close to 5 months now, it's about time I retire Control (for now!). Sorry Control fans, I did give it an honest shot but after roughly 11 hours I have mixed feelings to say the least.

I will say, the great parts of this game are fucking STELLAR. Control plays into it's terrifically bizarre setting to perfection which makes some of the puzzle sections absolutely enthralling. Some of the more imaginative sequences in this game, supported by the freakin' nutzo art direction which I'm always staring at, are some of the most fun moments I've had with a game in recent memory, which is perhaps Control's most crushing downside for me.

The reality is: my playthrough was not what I hoped it'd be. The majority of my time was not spent with these high peaks, but instead spent wading through a convoluted overworld encountering bug after bug along the way, and maybe this is blasphemous, but I'm sorry, the combat here is nothing more than serviceable. It's not bad, at it's best it reminds me of the jedi fantasies present in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but I found it fairly forgettable outside of a few confrontations. It's perhaps THIS that makes the game so frustating for me, somewhere in here is a truly fantastic game but it's wedged between hours of... well, meh. It's like a sandwich with two of the most perfect, golden toasted, delectable buns your taste buds have ever dreamed of, and as you bite you're shockingly greeted by the all too familiar taste of a kraft single and Kroger brand deli meat.

Is Control worth your time? Probably, I doubt the troubles I had, especially with bugs, are present for everyone that plays the game and once again I'd REALLY like to commend just about everything Remedy pulls off on an artistic front, but it's been somewhat of a battle for me to play, and one that unfortunately will end pre-maturely.

"If a stupid pothead with barely enough time spent enjoying this game like me can do it on Level-Die, I have no idea what is wrong with certain people whose job it is to inform the gaming public."

This quote was in the description of a video that was meant as a response to IGN's now infamous review of this game by a user named Saurian, 14 years ago. All there was to the video was a demonstration of the user's skill with the combat system. (You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyfbtSyX3mc)

Everyone knows of IGN's infamous 3/10 review. Before I knew of God Hand, I knew of that image that compared this game's 3.0 score to Imagine Party Babyz 7.5 score, which was meant to show the sheer incompetence of IGN. Now for me, I'm a little more laid back when I see mainstream game reviewers' scores since the majority of them are written by independent writers which may not reflect the whole staff's opinion, yet is put onto review aggregate websites as the companies score, rather than the independent writer. Chris Roper, the man who wrote the God Hand review, didn't even do the review for Imagine Party Babyz, but people look at both reviews as it was written by one entity, which I feel is a major problem with mainstream game reviewing outlets as a whole.

That being said though, Chris Roper's review is still awful, the whole thing is written with a clear level of frustration towards the game, to the point where it becomes condescending, but that doesn't mean there aren't valid points within the review. It's got weird tank controls that feel out of place for a 3rd person action beat 'em up. The level design revolves around basic geometry and shapes and textures look very low-res (The cage that's used for the Chihuahua race isn't even textured), the game uses random elements for spawning items and even spawning demons from dead enemies, and the game doesn't refill health upon entering new sections in a stage.

I think what caused such backlash from game critics for God Hand was its time of release. God Hand was a late 2006 PS2 release, and the PS2 gen saw what was considered the golden age of character action games. We got Devil May Cry 1 & 3, Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Resident Evil 4, God of War, among other games. Comparing to all of those games that released within that time frame, God Hand's tank controls and basic level design looked outdated and primitive. The budget for this game was most likely 5 dollars and was used so Shinji Mikami could get lunch for the single day it was developed.

Here's the thing though: None of that fucking matters.

Never before have I played a game that didn't give a single flying shit about looking pretty or adding in less samey enemy types or making the game easier to give it more appeal. God Hand sacrificed all of those things to make it the game it is: a game about constantly testing the player.

God Hand's most notorious mechanic is the dynamic difficulty system. Similar to Resident Evil 4, the game will make enemy AI more aggressive, do new moves, or even group up in pairs more depending on what level you are at (it goes from Lvl 1, 2, 3, Die) but unlike RE4, God Hand doesn't hide it in the background. It's constantly in your face at the bottom left-hand screen at all times, letting the player know what level they are at and when they'll get to the next one. When playing the game for the first few hours, you'll most likely stay around the level 1-2 area, but later on, when you get more accustomed to the game's mechanics, you might start staying around the level 3 and level Die area, even if the game starts throwing more challenging enemy types at you.

That's when I realized something special about God Hand. It subtlety fixes one of the biggest hurdles in the action game genre: Ranking systems. Most action games have a system where at the end of each level, it tallies how well you did on certain aspect like time, combos, and even collecting currency and gives the player an award adjusted to how well they did (be it a higher letter or a shinier trophy.). While these are meant to encourage repeat playthroughs, they can also be frustrating to newer players, as they are constantly being told they aren't doing good enough, despite action games being about learning mechanics and repeating those levels to get better at them. You aren't encouraged to know what to look out for on each level to even get a good rank for your first time either, which that in itself causes more confusion or frustration to newer players.

God Hand instead takes those ranking systems and discards them, and rather than tally you at the end of a level, you are being shown just exactly how good you are doing, and at the end of each stage you are rewarded with more money based on how many enemies you killed at the rank you were in, rather than giving you a trophy that's only meant for bragging rights. I believe this is what makes God Hand so inherently fun on the face of it. It's not only a great action game with tightly designed combat, enemies, and bosses, but also a game that actively encourages the player to get better at it. I first feared that moment I hit level 3, but as the game went on, I kept wanting to get on level Die. Weaving effortlessly through your enemies punches and counter-attacking crowds of enemies with your sweep kicks, or launching them in the air and hitting them with a Shoryuken to a kick in the face sending them flying. Your adrenaline starts pumping as you see that meter go higher and higher. You think you are getting good at God Hand, and it's starting to take its gloves off for you, the player. But you start to feel like a god yourself. You feel like you can punch a hole through concrete, the game's challenge is just so exciting... and then it kicks your ass! You feel like you've been brutalized. I've had this happen to me with each death, but never once I did I ever get tired of this game. I kept going at it, because every time I hit level Die and survived those encounters, I never felt a more satisfying feeling in a video game.

I think about the quote I introduced in the first paragraph a lot, because despite God Hand being one of the most challenging games I've ever played, it is also a game I think anyone can enjoy, and I'm very glad I got to play it myself. It's compromised in so many areas, but what it does right left me with one of the most satisfying and memorable action games I've ever played. So, from the bottom of my heart: Play God Hand... it's probably better than Imagine Party Babyz.

perfectly imperfect. it's not my intention to unleash Gamer Mode but this game's profile, for me, was really heightened due to three separate yet interrelated factors: the addition of a crisp 60FPS included in the ported edition, opting for the mostly well-tuned hard difficulty, and playing on a controller that isn't the dualshock 3. these components were tangible right from the start and coalesced to create the kind of flow state vanquish so often strives for very early-on in the experience.

it's kind of a misunderstood game sometimes, even by its supporters. rabble rousers who didn't engage with the mechanics will tell you it's a generic third person shooter, but they wouldn't exactly be wrong; what makes the cogs in vanquish roar to life has far more to do with the speed of the title as you boost slide from cover to cover and intelligently utilize your suit's reactive time-slowdown to dispatch droves of robots. getting to that level of play can be difficult for first-timers who either approach it as they would any other unseasoned third-person shooter or attempt to play it with the community-ascribed mechanical gravitas burdening their playstyle, when in reality, the optimal way to play is a mix of both approaches. and when these efforts work, they really do shine brilliantly. there's a certain level of madness here not seen in other third person shooters that i'm sure i'd somehow enjoy even more if i had the chance to play on pc and could use the suits timing to kill more than 3 or 4 bots at a time, something closely resembling a high-octane max payne. fluency promotes fluidity which leads to battleground dominance, and there's enough light weapons experimentation and tactical play stringing the replayable experience along to make the game worth the first run and then some. it's at its best in these sterile futuristic halls as you vault over cover, wipe the floor with three enemies, then in one gambit slide around a romanov to fire a shotgun shell into his achilles heel before delivering a coup de grace with your melee. sam gideon's the most unassuming middle-aged looking guy but you trap him in that gear and he'll have the combat expertise and battle readiness of any other platinum protagonist. you ever seen those first videos of tom brady at the NFL scouting combine where he just looks utterly pathetic running drills? same deal. that's football quarterbacks for ya

it's the melee system here that is one of the most questionable mechanics on offer, so i want to pivot a bit more here to where vanquish fails to deliver, because in so many ways this titles in dire need of a sequel it will never receive. many have pointed out that the melees in this title detract from experimentation because completely depleting your resources seems too harsh a penalty, and i would agree despite what i think the intention might be (i.e. your melee as a desperation move - completely rote). what's more interesting to me is that this highlights a meaningful failure to synergize melee and gunplay together into a cohesive whole from the person who directed resident evil 4. there are shades of what this game could and should have been when you come to learn that sliding melees, when utilized on terrain like cover or walls, will give you enough airtime to fire a few slugs into mechanical skulls at no cost, but these are negligible in the grand scheme of things. considering how many CQC techniques sam uses in the cutscenes this is a bit of a missed opportunity to create some really fun opportunities for combat experimentation. it didn't need to be about space control ala RE4, but it should have been incorporated into the movement as well and i think melee techniques designed to keep momentum going operating in tandem with melee techniques that are about halting momentum to safely deal massive damage could have been a step in the preferable direction

instead we have a repertoire of weapons meant to facilitate said experimentation, which is fine save for two things: the situational tendencies of your armory and the abysmal weapon ranking system. i see no reason to delve too deeply into the first other than to say the assault rifle and the shotgun are consistently two of your best weapons and that you'll probably want the rocket launcher for a bit whenever it comes up. the real problem here is the knowledge that in order to upgrade a weapon, you'll need to either hope an enemy drops an upgrade chip or you'll need to conserve that weapon's ammo entirely and hope you can find an equivalent pickup. for instance, to upgrade an assault rifle, i'd want to not use the assault rifle so i can hopefully, by the grace of god, find three more ammo pickups to slot in an upgrade necessary to make the weapon perform. just utterly baffling, made slightly worse by a strange checkpoint system which punishes these rankings upon death, which conceptually makes sense but given that these aren't meaningfully tied to the (also not good) scoring system they're hardly a galvanizing incentive for players to achieve mastery, either. ironically this whole bit is made worse in the remaster where i quickly learned that, thanks to better load times, instead of using a checkpoint that would reset my ranking, i could simply go to the title screen on a game over and reload my save for a few extra seconds without suffering any debilitations, which further hampers an already dull and arbitrary scoring system

the last point to be made here is just that this game's full of conceptual detritus. i've warmed up a bit more to the premise and tone of the title but it occupies a strange nexus between platinums over the top sensibility and sledgehammer satire (ala madworld) and a westernized gears of war-esque romp. you could liken this narrative approach to something not too dissimilar from metal gear but given the high concept behind the playable supersoldier in question it would have been nice to have something that made a bit more of an aesthetic splash. it's a surprisingly drab game without a lot of memorable hooks beyond the mechanics. making something that was a bit more like neo-human casshern in its flavoring would probably have made this game stood out a bit more, for me, but i think the direction the game went for makes sense considering the context of its development. this game's already as westernized as it can be and you had braingeniuses like arthur gies say, and i quote, "it's repetitive, clunky, and irritatingly punitive. very japanese." how do you get past consumers like that

anyways yet another feather in the hat for the general rule of thumb: the best third-person shooters have 'shinji mikami' somewhere in the credits. sasuga platinum

(edit for posteritys sake: im gonna be chipping away at learning god hard difficulty on my lonesome and i expect some of this review may be untrue by the end, at least with regards to ranking and armory)

It's weird. I wasn't really expecting a Resident Evil game of all things to get me teary-eyed.

There's a lot of things about the game in general that are a weird intricate combination though. It's oozing with blood from RE4 despite being nowhere even close to that game with 8's current gameplay of keep-stepping-back-and-shoot. It has Silent Hill vibes that eclipses any scares in every other RE game with the dollhouse. Iconography of the series is embroiled in, culminating in a particular 'hype' scene that while nowhere near earned, directly references the action side of 5 and 6 in one extended sequence. A theme park ride and attractions is what I've constantly had the game called around me, but that's really selling it short. They're practically full on Zelda dungeons that you go to between the overworld, each of them tying neatly to the setting and tension and never missing a beat.

And overall it's just grand! A celebratory but earnest almost standalone piece in its own right. Its heart is so strong that thinking of the game now I can only see it retrospectively as an emotional journey about and surrounding Ethan and about family, despite how really the general structure of the narrative only has that come in less subtly in the last quarter, and how it is extraordinarily goofy and far less grounded than 7 was.

Yet I don't think I would have it any other way. I imagine that in time I might even call it one of my favorite games, despite me not really even being attached much to the RE series in general. I'm excited for what the year will bring when stuff like this manages to land familiar punches with meatier landings than anything else of its ilk.

When someone plays a game you’ve recommended, don’t you get a warm and fuzzy feeling? It’s an odd thing to get excited about, but it makes sense in a way, since it shows a level of trust in you. That person took the time out of their day, chose not to play the games they were certain of, and committed to the investment that goes into starting up a new game, all because you assured them it would be worth it. That’s why I take recommendations fairly seriously, both in giving a chance to the ones I receive, and carefully specifying the audience when giving them out myself.

I recommend Crazy Taxi.

I feel like I can do that without the usual parentheticals because this is a game that was designed to recommend itself. An arcade game had no other option but to try and be the flashiest, easiest to pick up, and most exciting attraction in a room full of competitors doing the same thing, and as one of the most enduring titles from that setting, it naturally excels at all the criteria. You just push start and immediately have fun, the 90’s jams start blasting, your wheels screech towards your first passenger, there’s no wasted time where the game tells you to invest your patience to hopefully get a return later on. The controls require no explanation if you’ve seen a car before, you don’t have to memorize locations around town when a giant arrow points the way, picking up and dropping off passengers on a timer is a simple premise understandable to anyone, it all just makes sense and feels good no matter where you are on the skill curve. Importantly, rounds also only last a matter of minutes, so no one needs to commit their time to getting oriented or in the zone; you can pick it up and put it down no matter how much free time you have.

So, if the formula for a recommendation is weighing the time investment and learning commitment against the possible payoff, how can I do anything but recommend it when the former side of the equation is nearly zero? The risks are low, but the return is high. I can speak from experience, this was another game taken from my “Games YOU want more people to play” list, suggested by users LukeGirard and DustyVita, with the former even taking the time to explain some of the optional techniques from the manual as I streamed my first play session. Connections like that are why we’re on this site after all, so go give some crazy games a chance!

I suppose I should thank the near-universal negativity surrounding this game, as it allowed me to go into it with my expectations in the toilet and come out the other side feeling pleasantly surprised. It's not a great game, but it has some properly pulse-pounding moments and I think it's a more successful translation of it's predecessor's mechanics into an action game than the original RE3. Jill's dodge roll is very satisfying to pull off, and makes the vast number of nigh-indestructible zombies you face on Hardcore deliciously manageable. R3make isn't a game about mowing down hordes of zombies, it's about doing just enough damage to slip through by the skin of your teeth, and that loop works very well with the breakneck pace.

The story sets that pace well, but unfortunately nothing can really be said about it beyond that. The narrative that engages here is the cat-and-mouse game between Jill and her monstrous stalker (a read the game leans into at a few points), but sadly the game seems far more interested in the travails of a generic mercenary and their shadowy benefactors. Why is Nicholai's boring ass even here?

I've seen more than a few complaints about this game "removing" content from the original RE3: Nemesis, as if they had the assets for the big worm boss lying around and chose not to put them in the game out of spite. If this was a straight port then I'd maybe understand that line of thinking, but this is basically a completely different game than the original that happens to have a similar plot, (in fact it probably diverges the most from it's source material in terms of level design and structure of all the REmakes, which is something I appreciated) so what's the point in just going down a checklist of things the original had and this didn't? R3make succeeds and fails enough on it's own merits, it doesn't need to be compared to a game that it isn't trying to be a direct emulation of. There's something pointed, I think, in how the game's use of the original's most iconic line is almost certainly going to be interrupted by an enemy attack. Trying to be Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is futile, because Resident Evil 3: Nemesis already exists. The same scares and delights cannot be captured by repeating them, because we've already seen them. So, R3make opts to try to surprise and delight you in new ways. Things like how Nemesis bursts into Jill's apartment within seconds of the game starting represent a refreshing willigness to put the pedal to the pedal and really go nuts with ramping up the adrenaline, but sadly the game doesn't always live up to that standard.

R3make is not a disappointment because it fails to be Resident Evil 3 Nemesis, it disappoints because it fails to fully be itself. The story is too tied to the original's plot to embrace the parts of itself that are legitimately interesting, and while R3make is perhaps the first Resident Evil to not have a really shit bit, the Carlos sections are just less interesting to play. The last third in general feels like kind of a slow, bum note to end on after how exciting the first two thirds are, but it does manage to avoid becoming a total trainwreck like many Resident Evil games fall into for their finales.

It's not a patch on the Resident Evil 2 Remake, but for what it is, a more linear, action-y expansion for that game, it's a fun evening's rollercoaster ride. Unfortunately, Capcom didn't seem to understand that, and instead chose to price this as a 50 quid full boxed release. I think this price/value question is what drives down a lot of feelings about this game, because it's very short and has almost zero replay value, especially compared to other Resident Evil games, and that makes it very difficult to recommend, especially when the Resident Evil 2 remake is better and cheaper. Still, I got it on sale for about 15 quid, and had a thoroughly fun time that I will probably never think about ever again.

played the switch version of this and it is so fucking bad. a couple nice qol improvements and better performance over the pc version can't fix a port with a bug that renders one ammo type totally useless (at least on hard difficulty), and most damning of all is that the 1st person aiming feels TERRIBLE. played with the options as much as i could and it never stopped feeling way too jumpy for shooting accurately. and the gyroscope feels like dogshit and doesnt help!!! i have a lot of problems with the pc hd release, but at least i was able to play it acceptably enough. i kept my expectations low and was still disappointed

then went back to the xbox version for an hr or two to make sure the camera was not actually always that bad (whatever complaints you may have it was never THAT bad at least), and its still the best version thats hardly aged, yet is unfortunately inaccessible. its treatment of "run n gun" each as two ontologically distinct yet inseparable modes of gameplay is so inspired, constantly having the player move from the third person perspective's emphasis on movement speed and gathering inertia to its more sluggish but far more combat-flexible first person mode, and back and forth as needed. they work not just to support each other's weaknesses, but they also create a cool visual and mechanical friction in the transition between them that's unique to itself, without sacrificing how naturally you internalize the switching between. kind of like how the sprint button in fpses disallows shooting to give a tactical specificity to sprints, but here its assigned to an entire perspective with its own allowances outside of first person, delineating more sharply and obviously between "the movement mode" vs "the aim and shoot mode" in ways i really really like. neither mode is necessarily masterful when taken individually--though running at full speed itself feels so good to me, especially to ram an outlaw with an AH HOO HOOIE like a freight train or dart through gunfire to find cover and shake off wounds--but its how they work in tandem, how you tactically juggle them, that works to make you feel unstoppable in its best moments.

i also love its general escalation leading up to its sudden shift in game design which, imo, is linked into the narrative very well. theres light stealth elements throughout the game but especially for the front majority of it, as its preferred to bounty enemies alive than dead for greater payout, and its easier to pick them off one by one for that purpose. but there are a lot of big open firefights where youll be greatly overnumbered, and all stealth can do in many of those cases is shift things a little more in your favor until shit inevitably goes down. some would criticize this inevitability of conflict as watering down the stealth, but for me stranger's wrath is at its most memorable when you are taken out of the comfort zone and forced to fight. battles just get more and more explosive building up to a drastic turn for the last 1/3rd of the game which, while admittedly taking a hit in level design, largely makes up for it by essentially giving you a ringing endorsement to overcome its even more ballistic encounters with an even greater upfront viciousness than you mightve had in you before. its not just that your arsenal and moveset gets improved for greater violence, but the incentives change to accommodate too, essentially allowing you to (mostly) lose the restraints of needing to maximize bounties and go guerilla.

this unshackling also relates to stranger's critique of the western myth, which is the best handling of that in games for being so shockingly direct and no fuckin nonsense about it. no condescending faux-humanist air of "someday we in america can learn from and understand those people". its destruction of the lonesome cowboy archetype is not simply some tragic affair of the heart ground down by society, but a realization that "independence" itself, as we commonly hear of it, is an insidious misdirection to be washed away with the empire that loves its so-called independence so much. its actually hilarious to me that stranger's wrath could be considered part of the mid 2000s trend for platformer mascots going all badass, yet it somehow both cleverly subverts that trend and becomes the rare case of truly earning that tonal shift, with a dead set ferocity in its conflict and conclusions that even games today feel too cowardly to step to. you could argue the game contradicts itself in its usual superficial video gamey elements, or certain contrivances of its "western-ness", but whatever, that doesnt matter to me. what matters is how stranger's wrath unflinchingly goes there, and its absolutely spiritually correct to do so.

one of the most underappeciated action games of the 6th gen for my money, and way more different than the other oddworld games that it's worth it even if you aren't into those. it will surprise you, in one way or another. if you dont have an original xbox the pc version will have to do (or the similar ps3 or vita versions, while the latter lasts, if you have those but i havent played those ports). prob best with a gamepad, unless you insist on keyboard and mouse for the fps half but good luck with the other half.

6 stages of enlightment:

1. dp is bad

2. dp is so bad its good

3. dp is good in a genuine way, despite the controls and graphics and everything else besides the story and characters being bad

4. dp is good in a genuine way.

5. the endgame and the final bosses are bad for reasons relating to how dp treats its characters in need of the most crucial care, with the turn of events throughout being too dumb for its own good. and in retrospect the sequel may have only made it obvious that swery is not all that great of a writer, as far as the main stories around his protags and major supporting characters in general goes. every other problem with the game that has been talked to death about, i really dont care. the scale of greenvale and the scripted lives of its residents remind me that swery is a genuinely good director/designer if nothing else (not to ascribe too much credit to him over others). york in this game is a neurodivergent king and im not interested in anything to the contrary. the lynch comparison is inevitable even if its a little overspoken, and you can say that swery's attempt to translate the humanity of loss that made twin peaks what it is yielded mixed results, at the very best, of dp's climax. but expressing mundanity in the weird is dp's greatest asset; its more self-aware in its camp than it will get credit for, and it is always sincere in its ambitions to make the player become accustomed to both the socially oblivious weirdo you play as and the people of a pacific northwest town that is not so far off from him in their own quirks. and i think it does have some humanity in its more understated moments, particularly the series of sidequests that kicks off after talking to anna's mother, or from talking to certain character once they are arrested. even if there is some kind of auteur excess type ugliness to be found underneath the "ugliness" of the gameplay that is truly not as bad as its made out to be, sometimes monotonous and something to just get out of the way wrt the combat sections at worst imo--it can never detract from the passion within this game i feel when i am simply in it, without any flair or tonal whiplash to disturb that. a lifechanger for me that, in all the ways that really matter, still mostly deserves that title.

6. tee hee (executes a mathematically perfect 90 degree turn with a flick of the e-brake, blowing off the police investigation YET AGAIN to collect [Right Hand Bone] while york feeds me tremors movies trivia bc im about to starve to death) yay!

It was okay. Sonic can be speedy but to many times he had to wait for things to happen. I died more than once because of impatience, and that is an interesting reaction to give players when you call your character 'Sonic'. Weird level design choices, but i guess that can be forgiven since it's the first game in the series. They were obviously still experimenting. The secret emerald levels felt really weird and the backgrounds in them made me almost puke. It felt a bit tagged on just to create repeatability in an otherwise really short game.
The bossfights were a complete joke and uninspired. The highlights are the art (i can't believe this is from 1991, it looks better than most snes games at the end of the console lifespan). Some nice music tracks, and a few good levels.