Signalis is my favorite game this year, at a glance it looks like just another PS1/PS2 style horror game like the multitude we've seen the last few years, but this is an entirely different beast altogether.

Gameplay:
A pitch perfect mix of old and new, it feels exactly like playing Resident Evil on the PS1, albeit with the perspective of MGS, but with a slew of modern conveniences, quality of play improvements and a masterful knowledge of balancing. The enemy encounters ratchet up in difficulty at a perfect pace, the exploration becomes more and more complex but never throws too much at you, and the puzzles are challenging but never feel unfair; staying true to the spirit of the classics whilst not being afraid to add unique interactions or gimmicks. This game will have you scratching your head but never quitting out of frustration, it feels great to play but never sacrifices the characteristic 'clunk' of a classic survival horror game.

Story:
Taking place in an interesting sci-fi world, with well-developed and engaging characters, and finely balanced surrealist elements interwoven throughout; this is psychological sci-fi horror at it's best. The story is where the inspirations for the game really rear their heads; the king in yellow is directly referenced in the first moments of the game. And whilst the writing shows a lot of literary influence more than anything else; the structure of said writing and the presentation of the characters narrows down the video game influence from general survival horror to a very specific selection; Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2. The way characters are treated and appear in the world, the way the world acts as an extension of the characters psyche, and of course the true surrealist machinations of everything that happens reek of those first two games; I'll say no more here, but if you know, you know.

Art:
Where to start... from the striking and affecting direction of cutscenes, to the beautiful anime-inspired artstyle characters within them are rendered in - to the fantastic character animations and environments that drip with atmosphere. Every character design is perfect and every location feels distinct and storied. Moreover there's more to it than that; having dreams be told through a first person perspective helps them stand out and almost feel more real and present than reality, making you wonder what is keeping Elster outside of her body and wowing you with more amazing visuals. The pixelated yet detailed look of the game makes for a unique look even amongst it's PS1-inspired contemporaries, and the way puzzle areas look and how the puzzle zones reflect back out into the 2D art in the game proper is genuinely impressive. Every puzzle feels like it's had unique mechanics made for it and every room oozes with steamy, fleshy, dark atmosphere.

I could go on for days about this game, I've been chipping away at it for a week now and even before some of the late-game events I was already sure this is easily one of my games of the year. Signalis does everything right, and it's two-person dev team should be proud of and adulated for this achievement.

A phenomenal title, and anyone who knows me will know that whilst I prefer the second, this is still great. In fact, almost all of my issues with this game only exist as comparisons to the sequel.

Problems that don't come from the sequel are that the art design, whilst functional, is very colorless, this isn't neccessarily an issue, but when the enemies are so close in color to the only color that environments are made of for the whole game then some issues may occur, especially accessability issues. Moreover it just makes the stretches of nothing that happen a few times during this game feel even more bland, it really feels like some sections of the game only exist because they needed to be working on something whilst figuring out what the next 'real' part of the game was going to be.

Issues I have comparing this to the seuqel, first the art design, yes I know I just mentioned this but when you look at the incredible environment, enemy and general art design of Dead Space 2 it really puts in perspective how much they didn't do here. You get to see everything the game has to offer visually within the first 40 minutes and it never even tries to surprise you, which is a shame.
As well as this the combat, This game was made when EA asked for 'Resident Evil 4 in space', but it feels more like a more traditional Survival Horror game in the actual combat. It has a lot less of the difficulty in killing enemies than you see in both RE4 and DS2; in this game enemies fall apart like they're made of styrofoam. I understand they wanted to show off their fancy dismemberment (they remind you that's how to kill enemies enough times), but they sacrifice some of the challenge in the process. This as well as a lot worse button assignment compared to the sequel, worse movement (the zero-g sections in this game are so lame they even took Dead Space 2's zero-g for the remake) and weapons that feel a lot more alike than they do in the sequel, where each weapon has a lot of unique use cases, whereas here it's either a rifle or a line gun.

This game does have some better enemy placement than the seuqel, with enemies almost constantly being hidden around corners, helping with the atmosphere which is largely held back by the inferior art design and sound design, it really gains a lot from these easy scares that make sure you're always on edge.
Also, because it happens less often than the sequel, although there's less variety and less impressiveness to the setpieces here they feel more impactful on the character as they feel much more punctuative.

This is a great game, equal parts Resident Evil 4 and The Thing for PS2, and I cannot wait for a remake, especially as it's going to be changing a lot about the game from the looks of things, I'm very interested to see how that goes. This is a must play, and for sure the second best Dead Space game and one of the best survival horror games ever made.

Undoubtedly one of the best games ever made, with a perfect balance of story and gameplay, some of the most meaty and engaging character work in the medium, a combat system thats a fresh take on its character action past that feels familiar yet is utterly unique, with new ways to combine and use moves, combos, specials, tunics, Atreus, Atreus specials, the different weapons, dodging, blocking and parrying as well as parry attacks and dodge attacks seemingly crawling out of the woodwork, feeling like I'm discovering it all for the first time even on my fifth playthrough, with the highest tier of art design and music you can find in a video game. It is, quite simply, a monumental achievement of this hobby we all love so much and it never seems to get old. It even retains the classic DMC-like level structure that character action games use as a Bible and adds more puzzles and a small open world element that is totally optional and fits wonderfully in with the main story.

But I'm always praising this game, what about things it does wrong? It's not perfect, Alfheim is a pretty frustrating level which is wierd because it's basically the first level, but there are more pressing issues with the game which I've been able to really pinpoint starting from a fresh, clean save. Firstly the big issue that everyone brings up, the camera, whilst for the most part it works really well, and helps make Kratos feel more lumbering in his age, there are times where it feels like just having it be more dynamic camera that pulls out to accommodate enemies would work better, especially once acquiring the Blades of Chaos a little under halfway through the game. The little arrow they give you to try and compensate simply doesn't do the job, and it's a shame because it leads to occasions where it really feels like I'm not at fault, the game is, which should never happen. Also, whilst the rate at which you unlock new moves and abilities feels great past a point, the segment of time before you first meet Brock feels like it's really holding back on letting you play with all the toys it has for you. I'm already wowed by the way everything feels by the time the Balfour fight happens, why do I have to wait all the way until Brock (about 1:45-2:00h into the game) to start unlocking better abilities. And speaking of Brock, another issue that is always raised is the upgrades and gear system, it feels half-assed and not fleshed out. I don't care about all these vague stats my armour can give me that have no meaningful and immediate gameplay impact, the things I can put on my weapons that offer different abilities, those are good, they make me really think about my loadout, but having to upgrade and craft and buy things with no satisfying outcome is tedious.

But at the end of the day the camera being bad only interrupts gameplay once in a blue moon, the holding back from giving you moves barely affects the first two hours of the game (in a 20 hour game), and you could play the entire game ignoring the armour, crafting and upgrades systems and not feel like you're missing out on anything integral, they're very minor qualms, surprisingly.

So there, whilst I still think this is a masterpiece and I very much worry that Ragnarok couldn't possibly hold a candle to it, I've now replayed it, from a clean save, in preparation for its release, and boy is the hype train chugging along!

Much like it's predacessor the campaign ends just as it adds it's most interesting mechanics, however this game improves on the last by adding even more post-game content and it's great! I can see the modding community becoming HUGE for this game, and I can't wait, especially with how accessible they've made the modding.

This is great, a sequel that doesn't reinvent the wheel but also doesn't need to. I've kinda not got much to say, in fact I'm going to cut this review short so I can go back to playing it.

After finishing every DMC game it was only natural to come to this, and unsurprisingly I'm happy to report that this surpasses every game in that series other than maybe 5, and that could be purely by virtue of being almost a decade that game's senior.

First, what doesn't work;
I won't speak on derivity, from the story to the gameplay loop this game makes it clear that it's the quintessential DMC-like and it wears that on its sleeve, I have no qualms with that. What I do take issue with is some of the art design, I can excuse repetitiveness in enemy visual design because they stand out, work and telegraph well, I can't do the same for the environments. Considering the huge variety of places this game takes place in on paper it's a shame that they all look so similar, it's almost impressive how can you make such a huge selection of locales feel like they're just a doorway away from each other, but not impressive in a good way.
Next up is the combat, whilst great in the boss fights, in regular battles against smaller enemies it feels like there's no higher level play, you either don't know the combat, or you do, and there's not much going on beyond that, once you can do a perfect dodge and have five or so combos memorised you've basically mastered the game as far as there is to master. This is an issue I've lamented over in all DMC-likes, from those games themselves to 2022's Soulstice earlier this month. And this wouldn't be as much of an issue if it weren't for the next thing on my list.
The game seems confused when it comes to introducing new mechanics and gameplay ideas, and in differing ways throughout the gameplay cycle; during the exploration segments the game introduces mechanics and then oveuses them to the point of annoyance, for instance the sun statues or the key blades. Then during combat it introduces mechanics that it proceeds to use the absolute minimum it can, and I miss them before I really get to know them, for instance otherworld enemies and elemental enemies.

These are all a real shame but overall are a tiny dent in an overall fantastic experience. The combat is silky smooth and satisfying, not to mention rewarding when you get into its flow, and not all new mechanics in combat aren't expanded on, for instance moonlight walking seemed like a level gimmick but is used to great effect throughout the game from then on, in both exploration and combat. The boss fights are interesting and engaging, and all just different enough to keep you on your toes. It's a shame it takes a bad leaf from DMCs playbook and boss rushes you unnecessarily at the end with all the previous bosses but it's a forgivable crime.

I can see myself coming back to this one easily, but we'll see how I feel after beating the second, I can't see how it could top this as opposed to being just... More, but I've been surprised before. I feel like my rating could go up in future playthroughs, but we will see!

Happy anniversary (yesterday) to one of the best games ever made, like top 10 of all time easily.

Anyway, I'm at the point now where I can beat this in a bit under 5 hours, but considering I can do SH1 in like 3:30, so I need to get those numbers closer to each other!

If you're reading this and you haven't played the game then you're wasting your life and need to reconsider your priorities, DO IT!!!!

Ok yes it's not worth the price, but I borrowed it anyway so I can't comment on that. There are two types of remakes, first are ones that try to take what the original did and say 'what if it was made now', keeping what people loved about the original but completely refreshing it for the modern day, for instance Resident Evil 2. The other type is what this game is going for, to give you the experience you remember having when you played the original, and half the time it actually works really well, there are times I forget I'm playing a ground up remake and I'm just playing The Last of Us, what was one of my favorite games for many years. Those times are whenever it's night time in the game, or whenever the characters are in dark and dingy places like sewers and tunnels. During the day, it's a different story, but why?

The team managed to capture the fantastic art design of the original game perfectly, keeping everything precisely as it was most of the time, but adding extra flare and details occasionally both big and small, so why do I not think it works? It's a really simple, little thing that encompasses a huge amount of what is presented, lighting. PS3-PS4 era naughty dog, yes I'm just talking Uncharted and Last of us, were masters of artistic and utility lighting usage. They revolutionised how lighting was used to lead the player around the levels in their games, and the use of lighting to create color, contrast and vibrance in natural, diegetic ways is unmatched in things like the PS4 uncharted games and the original last of us. This game ignores and sometimes completely disregards all of that. As we move into a time of advanced lighting techniques and ray-tracing, this artistic baked-in and pre-calculated lighting usage looks to be a thing of the past, but is it possible we're losing some of the artists touch from the past? These are great questions, but ones for a different day, because as far as I can tell this game does use baked in and pre-calculated lighting, almost identically rendered and generated to the PS4 'remastered' version of the game. It's an active and upsetting decision then that the team decided to suck the life and personality from huge portions of this game, turning the oranges and yellows and reds of the first section of the game to creams and greys and browns. It's a real shame for a game as subtly (and unsubtly) breathtakingly beautiful and horrifying as this, but I'll be the first to admit, for most people it's probably not even a consideration when buying.

On the gameplay front it's… the last of us, this is where the 'feel like the game you remember playing' mindset comes in, the animations transition beautifully smoothly, something naughty dog perfected in TLOU2, and enemy AI is greatly improved, in fact maybe TOO improved, in grounded mode it feels almost unfair, and the famous fist-lazers feel like they are utilised more often and more smoothly than in any previous version of the game. I do, however, finding myself wondering if maybe just a couple of things from the sequel could have squeezed their way in here, I'm not asking for Joel to be as agile as the characters in that game, hoisting himself over 7 foot tall walls and crawling around in prone, but it's not like you would have had to redesign the whole game just to add the dodge button, please ND, just give Joel a little tiny dodge button, if Abby and Ellie can do it then Joel-y boy can! Again, I'll admit, this isn't a real issue, just something that kept coming up in my mind.

And other than those two things… this is definitely the last of us. It's still just as great as it was, and whilst the smothering of the original art design that's present in this game does make the pretentious gamer part of me want to go 'no this isn't the REAL last of us experience', I'm not going to act like an actual baby and say that. This is an absolutely worthy last of us experience that's an impressive technical feat, bringing one of the best games of the PS3 to the 4k HDR world. And yes, it's not worth the amount they're charging.