I think after playing Halo my expectation for PS360 era first person shooters got shockingly low. This game, however, managed to be better. Not in terms of gameplay, mind you. It's still as clunky as the FPS on console could be. The plot is capturing the essence of simple times when nobody expected anything good from video games. It's your typical military gung-ho we good they bad we shot they die story. But with a little something prepared for the end. And that something made it rise above all other garbage shooters from two thousands' in my eyes.

But it is still a console shooter from PS360.

For a one hour experience it's amazing how invested and tense I was.

Basic premise is you're a prisoner. They sent you here on a random moon to explore what's hidden on the floor of the ocean of blood. Your only equipment is a fucking submarine built from shit and snot. Your only way of orientation is a shoddy satellite scan map. They told you if you get all those photos which they marked, you'll be absolved. Your only window was blocked because of blood pressure.

Was that your iron casket screeching or is it something alive out there? Pipes are bursting one by one, oxygen supply is coming to an end, you're most likely not going to make it. But if you hold on just a little bit further until the last photo is taken... maybe you'll survive.

Another game of "Ooh, they got a game with my music album" genre.

Let's be real, the game was robbed back in 2022 of its award as the best original score. But is there anything other than that?

Surprisingly, yes. Hellsinger presents a solid boomer-shooter gameplay with a fleur of a rhythm game. The music is getting more refined the higher your score multiplier is. Imagine Doom Eternal but fun. Design-wise though there aren't a lot to say about. All levels are rocky hellscapes with almost nothing going on. Enemies are bog standard demons of which I remembered only the puppet and the bug. Gun sounds though are heavy and bassy and slick and dare I say pretty good. Fire and reload animations are clicking in tune with music both audially and visually. Except for machinegun. That bastard plays a chaotic song of its own. And a sword is just... weird to use.

Where the game shines except soundtrack though is plot. I mean not how it was presented, but the concept of it. So you're playing as a Jane Metal who was robbed of her voice by the ruler of hell and you're tired of being mute. It's time for you to go up there and get your goddamn voice back even if it means killing everyone in hell multiple times over. The beautiful thing is, a little part of your voice is still with you and you can sing your song of death while being at the edge of the battle rage. Every trap, every attempt to stop you can slow you down but will not end your path. You're literally too angry to lose. Holy shit did I enjoy thinking about this idea. I just love stories about absurd rebelling sending stakes into overdrive with narrative explosion at the end that sends the stakes even higher for a somewhat stupid but personal reason.

No idea how to end this patch of text. Bye.

I will never understand why did insomniac change Peters face. He looks weird now. Like he isn't my boy I spent hours with protecting the city. And is that Elon Musk being the evil boss man?

Miles Morales, an overpowered spider-man straight from the ghetto is our main hero for today. Is he good? Is his journey good? Are his vibes in check? I don't want to say it, but yeah, pretty much. It's not an oscar-winning tear-jerking drama story, but a simple personal one with pleasant atmosphere. Web swinging through New-York was fun a hundred years ago when dinosaurs lived there and it's still as fun today and tech progress is where this part shines the most. All those fluid animations conveying Miles personality are a joy to behold. Jameson podcasts together with upbeat in-battle banter with honest criminals simply trying to make a living bring a smile to my face. I love almost everything regarding how the world is portrayed in this universe.

I don't get why Tinkerers personality stopped existing after she almost killed Rhino though, this was the most important part of the story and it really underdelivered in that front.

The combat is a little junky, as it's still the same beat'em'up from Batman Arkham but still not quite giving that oomph, you know, some odd counters aren't registering or getting shot while dodging, all that. Batman was a fridge and I guess that's what gave him the edge, Spidey is just too agile for that system. I don't really remember what was it like in the previous game but I think it's pretty much the same.

What's good though, is that you can now use your powers while swinging for additional height or speed. This brought back good memories from Infamous and deserves a little credit.

By the way, oi New-York, where are your trees, mate? I get that it's a concrete jungle but come on. How can people live there, entire city is just brown-gray, no green spot in sight as far as eye can see. Disgusting.

I get that this is a glorified DLC, but thank you, developer dudes, for making an open world game that can be hundred percented in fifteen or so hours.

So this is what it feels like playing Call of Duty at the Ace Combat's home.

The story goes like this. You're taking the role of a John Ace and your goal is to combat russians who got their hands on a super nuke. You also have a couple of friends, Jack Apache and Jane Bomber. They will give you small intermissions when you get tired of chasing enemy planes on a jet. But don't get cocky, evil russians have their own Ivan Aceov who will be the last boss of your story. He'll try to super nuke your favourite goddamn country. And it's up to you, Ace, to stop the evildoers and protect our taxpaying citizens! Oorah!

The dog fight mode which this game advertised as much as it could was a mistake. The point of it is that you press button - you get epic blockbusting sequence of you chasing fleeing enemy, exploding their plane with your testosterone missiles and get an influx of endorphins from oil and debris hitting your face. "Make metal bleed" they said on the cover. Unfortunately, this system works like auto-pilot and boy is it fun to sit there scratching your ass doing nothing but pressing a button to shoot missiles. Moreover, some jets have their scripted sequences of you chasing them through falling cranes, exploding warships and so on. And God forbid you from entering the chase mode in some off-script location. The enemy will take maneuvers designed to explode your insides just to get to the starting point of a scenic route and you can't even damage it. This is atrociously bad in the last boss chase as it took me five or ten minutes fruitlessly chasing Ivan just to understand that he's invincible until the background chatter is over and I knew that I killed his wife and daughter back in Saraevo and he's trying to get revenge.

The apache attack part was a mistake. This mode has two or three missions and for some reason each of them is taking more than one fucking hour of real time to complete. Add to it wonky camera placement and movement, so your flying brick takes half of a screen (the most important half in the center, of course). And add to it braindead gameplay of just flying from point A to point B pressing R2+Square over and over again watching blue rebel Fords blow up. And don't forget, half of the cast is owing you an infinite amount of beer when they get back to base. Oorah.

The helicopter minigun part was a mistake. In this obligatory turret sequence from every shooter from PS360 era you press a button. This button sends enemies along with your camera to shit. It's next to impossible targeting anything so you just press a button and wiggle the stick until someone on the radio says they own you another can of beer. Yes, the AC130 part is still a turret sequence with a thermal filter on top of it.

The bomber part wasn't a mistake. It's scripted as fuck, yes, but I had fun navigating almost straight paths occasionally dropping bombs and looking at explosions. These missions I really can count as actual intermissions to relax a bit after insufferable abomination of a system that is dog fighting mode. I also like callsign Spooky very much, thanks for asking.

Music part is meh, lot of orchestral fluff with no kick to it. And it hurts knowing that that Keiki Kobayashi actually wrote music for this. Looks like every department fumbled it this time. Dogfight theme is pretty cool though.

Eh, could be worse.

Part three? Are you spoiling me?

What? The sniping is actually working? And feels nice? And fun? Yo what the heck?

Oh, it seems the devs are feeling like challenging themselves with open world. Well, it looks pretty small, like a nice start. Will they make something good out of it?

No, they won't. Fuck you, devs. I would like you to never make a game again, thanks. Holy shit it feels worse than odyssey. The only saving grace is that it takes "only" 20 hours to finish. Those hours still feel like some kind of chinese torture though. Ok, ok, a little more concise.

So. Let's begin with movement. FUCK YOUR CAR! Those fucking polish bastards were so proud of their goddamn animations that every single time you have to use a car you HAVE to sit through 15 second animation of open door -> sit -> close door -> turn key -> wait for car to start -> move car 100 meters -> stop -> open door -> get out of car -> close door -> wait for two seconds for animations to finish. Don't even try to enter from passenger seat, save yourself a minute by walking around the vehicle. You would think walking would be better? Well, sorry to disappoint, because there is climbing in this game. That's right, CLIMBING! Which consists of you jumping from ledge to ledge. Obviously this jumping won't even register half the time, making you jump to your death or hopping in place like a two legged dog trying to piss, hoping that this time you will finally catch the bloody stone crack with your spaghetti hands. Then comes another movement part. The drone. I think I'll make a safe assumption thinking this is one of the worst drones in videogames. First, as in everything in this game, you have to sit through a five second animation of your drone whirring up its rotors and if you make contact with any surface while flying, be it wall or ceiling of a cave or floor or anything really you'll experience first hand how those astronauts felt while training on the centrifuge. I sent this little bastard to the tech orphanage around 2-3 hour mark and have to call it back once later to solve some cave puzzles and cursed throughout whole experience.

Shooting. You'll be surprised but it's the only system that works and feels pretty decent. You have a nice variety of guns and everything, including shotguns, feels comfortable to shoot. Really no complaints here, especially after two previous games. Good job. I would say if you didn't have three second long animations of you turning your shit stained magnification wheel every time you try to change scope zoom. I see you fuck nuggets were extremely proud of your animation work, weren't you? Well, too bad you weren't as thorough in making player experience less miserable.

World exploration. Oof, you've read up to the good part. It doesn't work. At all. Ok, hear me out. No, let's do this another way. Repeat after me. Useless.👏 Resources.👏 Are.👏 Not.👏 A.👏 Point.👏 Of.👏 Interest.👏 Now everything together and a little bit louder. USELESS RESOURCES ARE NOT A POINT OF INTEREST YOU BRAINDEAD ORANGUTANS! Half the fucking time I arrived at question mark on map I got +34 ml of cum to my white and sticky storage jar. Do you know how often I crafted anything in this game? ONCE. And that was for an achievement, not because I needed it. Consider that every such locations require you to drive your car there and then struggle to find a microscopic wallet dropped somewhere in a pile of shit half buried in textures and you'll get an unforgettable experience of misery and resentment. But what else have we got in store? We have hostages to save. And imagine my astonishment when the entire camp of enemies disappeared together with hostages right before my eyes after I marked everyone there with my drone. How is it even possible? Is the drone camera renders entirely different map or something? No surprise I kicked my drone off the cliff after that and never used it again. Ah, yes, the drone puzzles. There are those too. And there was a particular cave you have no access to, which has a clearly visible generator you have to disable but no way of doing it. The usual prompt is simply not appearing. Ok, you think, there is a guard there, maybe I should lure the guard into shooting the drone and he'll shoot the generator on the way. Nice thinking, but no. The prompt just doesn't appear. But if you fly low enough while spamming the required button voila! The generator turns off. Sigh. There are also those climbing instances about which I already told above and I also want to mention that you only have one car that spawns on the fast travel points. There are a lot of cars around, of course, and all of them show that they are closed. That tricks your brain into thinking that you'll acquire a key for them some time in the future. No, bad brain. You'll get nothing in the future. Get sad.

The only complete region (and by complete I mean at least remotely playable) is the first one. The other three remind me of an abandoned building site currently occupied by always intoxicated and aggressive hobos. That one time I cleared the village while searching for some collectibles. On the next mission I needed to go to the same village to do some stuff and every enemy there was just menacingly T-posing at me. No, they weren't dead, but I couldn't kill them. That bricked the mission by the way, I had to restart the game. Another time I had to cover the helicopter when it tried to fly away. But just as it started to lift off the ground I got a mission failed screen. Turns out, the timing for the heli fly script and RPG dude shoot script were off, which caused the failstate, and I had to shoot a random dude chilling on a mountain to progress. Unkillable enemies, not spawned in targets, random heart attacks, not working weapons, this game has it all. I wont even count how often I was stuck in object collision with no way of moving. By the way, the game has no method of restarting from a checkpoint other than restarting the game.

Thank God Almighty though for a return of my favourite twelve year old script writer. The only ray of light in this everconsuming darkness.

Return of polska gamejunk that's more junk rather than game?

Where are my upside down videos? Where is my headache inducing assault rifle action? Is this game trying to be good?

Well too bad because it's still as broken as the first one. BUT! We now have different backgrounds, not just crysis forest. That's neat.
And the plot. Man, the plot. It brought me so much joy watching it unfold after all those heavy heavy serious deep deep depressed stories of late. Absolutely degenerative writing of a twelve year old kid and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The game still takes around three hours to finish, but feels a bit dragged on. Maybe because of all those call of duty parodies. Shame.

A refreshing polska gamejunk that's more junk rather than game.

The shooting mechanic is almost unplayable and anything but satisfying. Your sniper rifle shots drop down three notches down on 15 meter distance. Your assault rifle shots give you a headache because of how much the screen shakes.
Enemies either can't notice you when you crouch right in front of them or will fire with pinpoint accuracy at your location after discovering a bullet hole in the wall.
The location is a poor mans crysis island level with nothing interesting to see. The plot is nonexistent. And the best point is that opening movie and credits are both showing upside down.

I loved playing this game very much, thank you for asking.

The game clocks in around three hours which is approximately one hour less than a goddamn film about retards in spandex.

It's ok boys, I've used a troll magic to put a curse on the bastard responsible for those stone stacking bullshit. You can sleep safe now knowing he will spend 1/4 of his remaining lifetime suffering from explosive diarrhea.

Speaking of shit, I want to congratulate ubisoft for making first game in my life, where I willingly changed my character from female to male right after the first hour. It's unbelievable how atrocious the writing is. You know kids, no matter what anyone tells you, female and male brain chemicals are different. You can't think and act like a man in a woman's body. Yes, absurdly strong, stupid and straightforward women exist in media, but their presence falls apart aside comedic roles. You absolutely cannot make such a character and expect audience to feel like it's a real human bean.

Regarding setting, how come every single one of those unwashed pagan vikings can read and look like they came right out of spa salon (except for women of course because we cannot make them sexy, twitter degenerates are constantly watching us)? How come if I kill civilians on a raid with a cleave of my huge axe I get desynchronized? What the actual fuck? What in history lessons told you that vikings were merciful or educated?

Ok, let's relax a bit. You know, first couple of hours, around the end of first england region are actually fun. The side quests provide little silly stories like couple fucking in the middle of a fire and everything feels like a decent game. But then it turns into goddamn stone stacking, mushroom eating, view angle finding, quest fetching suffering that hid underneath first hours and you desperately start searching for something to garrote yourself with. It reminds me a lot of those shareware games of old, where developers put all their ideas into first couple levels which were free and then made a filler bullshit designed to scam you out of your money. If only this game was around a hundred or so hours shorted, I would sing it praises. I want shorter games with worse graphics. Fuck your infinite hour grindfests with hollywood faces. But we get what we got.

Relaxed? Great, let's continue. I challenge you to find one working mechanic in this game. Stealth? Does not work, enemies either see you from another region or can't notice that you killed their buddy they were just chatting with. Combat? You either oneshot everything in your wake or slash a fucking regenerating sponge with a wet noodle providing neither the crunchy impact nor enjoyment. Parkour? Ha ha, your parkour only works for mountains, if you see anything more advanced, like a window, prepare to cry while watching Eivor do everything in his power to jump across or around it but not even thinking about coming through. It makes me extremely sad seeing this after almost perfect parkour iteration we saw in unity and syndicate. Even fucking fishing is one of the most horrible implementations I've ever had displeasure of experiencing. But you can say "Oh, but Hawl, you magnificent stud, the stealth is an actual stat, you need to level it up for it to work" to which I will answer fuck you, go level up your adaptivity in dark souls 2. Nothing in this game is working properly. Even bloody in-game store loads half the time.

Ok, plot. Uhm, was there even a cohesive story? You come to england with your brother, who gets captured in the beginning, who you rescue fifty hours later and then he just sits on his bed for another fifty hours doing nothing before saying "Aight, time to go into ending area". What the fuck? The story is so thinly spread it reminds me of my poor times when I had to spread my butter on a piece of bread so thin you couldn't even see it. Tasted good though. The only thing I remember after finishing this slog is hating every second of plot except retarded out-of-the-ass love story arc in one of the regions. We did nothing, we got nothing. I hate Sigurd, I hate Dag, I hate almost every one. I especially hate Layla Hassan who can't shut up for a second and is named after first assassin because obviously the audience is so retarded they couldn't get who she is.

How come after three games the only good one is the one with the worst setting imaginable? How come drab yellow desert with square minecraft dirthouses plays and feels a hundred times better than anything coming after it?

I feel like I have to say at least one good thing about this abomination. I'm feeling generous today, so I'll give you three. Firstly, the rap battles were shallow but fun. Secondly, the first cursed totems you see are designed beautifully unsettling, I want to give a thumb up for a dude responsible for those little locations and would like to see something like that in hexe, which I'm obviously going to play because I have room temperature iq and learn nothing from my suffering. And thirdly, this game has one of the mostest bestest chunkiest fluffiest pettablest cats in gaming history.

Played it on release, platinumed it recently.

Still think this is a better remake than RE4. Greatly enjoyed feel of police stations' tight corridors and juicy zombie gore. Yeah, we lost scenario B in the process of remaking the game which is a shame, but I still think this is an example of how remakes should be done. I actually felt a little unnerved while playing this. At the day of release I almost came when I heard how the bullet cartridge actually made a sound falling down on the floor.

I also wanted to compare my memory with how controls are made in RE4. And yes, Leon actually controls like a sober human being. No hand tremor, no weird input lag. But we still have a ton of additional animations for rain and falling enemies on you and all that stuff.

As a last point, this game still has the best meat-wall last boss out of all evil presidents. I want a signed postcard from the person responsible for that beauty.

This all came from someone who never actually played original RE2. I mean I tried. But just couldn't.

"This is definitely one of the games ever made. Beautiful drab brown environments. Amazing dudes with knifes as enemy and boss designs. Like reading air freshener ingredients in the toilet." - That was young and naïve me who still had a spark in his eyes and just finished the game for the first time in feburary 2023.

But as I am today writing this in may 2023, rugged and depressed, having tasted the entirety of the content this full-course meal made of shit has to offer, I'm telling you this. Why in the sake of the fuck couldn't they make a simple game you can sit down and simply enjoy with your buddies?

Here's how it went. We started the game and ventured out into the city. Cool, we thought, orange gamma, looks post-apocalypse-y, you can throw yourself out of the window from third store, good fun. Then we went into the next area. Same orange gamma, same buildings, same amount of cars at the end. "Wait, is this game procedurally generated?" I said. "Nah, dude, developers are just incompetent monkeys and didn't give a fuck about level design" replied my buddy. We laughed it off and continued on. But the thought that something is off did not leave me until we finished the game. I mean, why loading screens constantly told me how to enter sniper zoom if there is only one sniper rifle in the entire game? Why is there two and a half armor sets that all look like something from a fashion magazine for hobos? I started my investigation. I looked far and wide, and the revelation hit me like a brick.

Lets talk a bit about what random generation means. It means that you could have a perfect campaign filled with all those hand-crafted experiences and cool weapons and armor. Or it means you could hit dogshit RNG and all you get is a cum-drenched rag as armor and a couple of half cooked wet noodles as a weapon. And all the bosses you get are just B E E G versions of the same enemies you fought for five hours already. Try to guess on which end of the spectre did we end up. You know what? It took us more than thirty bloody hours dancing around a bonfire to get the stars to align so that we could get elf-parasite-queen set on swamps. Thirty hours for one fucking ring for 4% more damage with unarmed attacks. I hate myself.

**

Next I'll divide the text in two parts. First, my take on all the content the game has. Second, our quotes from our first playthrough as three joyous prancing little boys.

Let's talk weapons.
Opinion of tired me about what the game has to offer: the only weapons not making me want to vomit design-wise are beam rifle, default sniper rifle, winchester and revolver. Three out of these four are located in first area. All weapons are just brown blobs of polygons not creating any theme. There are no sexy ridges or anything your eye could catch. It's unbelievable how consistent these designers in producing shit. Are they warframe refugees or something? I refuse to believe someone finds these beginner artstation designs eye-pleasing. I won't even touch melee weapons because you won't use them anyway. And I'm saying it as a melee build who slashed his way forward without any resistance or impact or any joy for at least thirty hours. Sorry, forgot to mention the crossbow shooting literal rails which cause bleeding. That was hilarious.

Joyous boys quotes:
"Goddamn dude why is every single weapon we get is garbage? It either looks like shit, or fires like shit. The only cool thing apart from starter winchester is an SMG-Flammenwerfer. We're already near the final boss, why didn't we get something cool and not rusted over?"
"Dunno, I'm running with railgun and starting SMG which shreds everything, the weapon variety overall is pretty ok, I just don't feel like it's worth changing. The melee is absolutely useless though."
"The sniper rifle is pretty cool, especially with a 4x crit ring. Some smgs are acceptable, melee is shit. No idea why it's even in there. I mean, yeah, you could build a melee boy, but what's the point with such boring attack animations? The skills you can insert are okayish, diverse enough at least."

Let's talk bosses.
Opinion of tired me about what the game has to offer: shit, garbage and disappointment. If you played the game already, I'll let you try to remember how many bosses here were presented without a horde of trash mobs constantly spawning in arena before I'll give you an answer. Five. And four of these are from dlc and two of these are already 2v1 fights by default. Almost all bosses are literally common enemy but big. I have no idea what's the point of making those especially if your fucking excuse of a game is procedurally generated. Why did you not remove those placeholders as bosses and focus on creating a nice linear journey with unique bosses instead like in dark souls which you, developer bastards love so much? Ah, but of course, the reason of this is because "we are different from dark souls". Eat my ass. Also thank God Almighty for slapping you on the head and giving you an idea of Leto's armor, which breaks every insufferable boss encounter and is located in the first area. Truly an intervention of forces from above.

Joyous boys quotes:
"Wow, cool, another L A R G E common enemy. We completed the game and the best boss is that one dude who was running around and farting and then his pathfinding broke down and he just stood there until we killed him."
"It's cool that some bosses have gimmicks like those beetles where you can summon the second one early but with less hp. The overall boss design is dogshit."
"The bosses are pretty meh as a souls-like, honestly. I don't remember anything hard or interesting. Although I liked those two flying moth girls, they were fine. Also have you nothing else to do other than asking me that?"

Let's talk locations.
Opinion of tired me about what the game has to offer: have you seen any screenshots? Can you imagine walking through the SAME corridors for eighty plus hours? What is the reason in creating one single corridor and then copying it with another name? Were you lazy? Incompetent? You can tell me, I wont blame you. I just want to know why every single location looks as a creative wasteland. There's your standard city, standard forest, standard snow forest, standard brown swamp. I felt like those decorations siphoned away my ability of art appreciation. And there are fucking quake levels in a desert, que mierda?

Joyous boys quotes:
"Ok, so there is a skill that lets you throw yourself out of the window faster and the only location with windows was earth. What the fuck, game? Ok, even if those locations are randomly generated, you could at least make more than three bloody corridors. Goddamn I hate it. I won't even speak about fucking swamp and desert biomes. The only one left for a shit bingo is sewers. Wait, there are caves in swamp area. Yay, we got a bingo! And in the end we'll get another extremely disappointing boss or another ring for AIDS status application while vomiting +0.5%."
"Pretty much, yeah, the city is cool though. I also liked the forest. Well, that hanged city area."
"There's just too little things to populate areas with. I have no focal point in my memory. It's just blandness all around."

**

Story is nonexistent but the game has those random lore dumps in loading screens which most likely were written by Timothy Dexter. The one particular world-building phrase broke me. It was "Folks don't believe it, but they once used this stuff to make tanks that fly." Now tell me, dear game. Why did people forget how helicopters are called but remembered tanks? Why are there "assault rifle" or "chiсago typewriter" weapons? Why only helicopters were wiped from mankind's memory? Oi, developer cucks, do you have a childhood trauma regarding helicopters? Did they do something bad to you? Show me on this doll where did they touch you.

Ah, yes, I forgot that there is a survival mode. Well, making a rogue-like mode without any way to put the game down and continue another day is definitely a game-development thing. Especially considering one run could last for five motherfucking hours. Or you could just get a vermintide biome in a first wave and call it a day because every goddamn boss there is bloody broken. Great job, game. I also want to tell grandma selling estus burgers to suck my dick for refusing to speak with me and leaving me with four burgers and a hundred heal bottles for the rest of the game.

Fuck this game and fuck you, dear defensive reader, for loving it.

If you read through all that wall of text I want you to know that you are amazing and deserve to be loved. Unlike this monstrous abortion survivor of a game.

Can't wait for a second one! 👍

That's right, we're back again! Last time was not the end!

I love it. You can stop reading now.

Although I said I love it, there are still some point I find frustrating.
The soundtrack department is still producing great bangers, but half of the OST here are tracks taken from first game. Surely they are still amazing, but I feel like I was cheated. For some reason minigames are not suited for two players, making one of you slaving for another. Why did I had to beat the dance record and pull weights on my own while my buddy was chilling out sipping soda on the background? Bring him with me to the thunderdome so I could laugh at his pathetic attempts at dancing! Backtracking is kind of bullshit. You have to find the cats, find the cards and find the selfies in addition to finding other scattered stuff and bringing it back to the start of an area. Speaking of selfies, why didn't you made unique art poses for each of them? There's like eight in total. I don't believe it was too expensive to draw a couple more pictures, you're just lazy.

Lets get to the good stuff now. Fuck god of war and his super mature game design and avant garde explanation of why did Kratos lose his powers again. We have the most relatable reason right here. Our girls were playing videogames for half a year non-stop and turned into couch potatoes. THAT'S game design. Yes, the story is bullshit, yes, the characters are absolutely retarded. But that's exactly what I expected and wanted to see. And I thank wayforward for this. Fuck your drama. Fuck your le arte. Cringe writing and voice acting all the way! Overall the art is still amazing, the movelist is expanded and in a good way too, my girl Kyoko is still dabbing, the black-haired-girl-with-the-heart-backpack is still doing what she was doing before I guess, the gameplay itself is as solid as my cock. I eagerly await what will we see in the future. Hey, wayforward, I want to see a moving arenas next time.

This game also has best designed Jam.

I feel like IOI just can't help themselves with adding at least a spoonful of shit into a cauldron with liquid gold that is this game. I can only praise the game itself, the amazing level design, wide array of opportunities and astonishingly snappy and responsive controls, compared to previous games of course. Yeah, for some reason, IOI keeps bringing their beloved jungle level everywhere they can. It was obnoxious in Codename 47, it is even more obnoxious now. Glad to see some things don't change.

Great to see that all those previous Hitman games actually are canon and happened before the start of this story. Except for Absolution, because we don't talk about it in this house. Knowing all those iconic murders like the fat bastard in the basement were actually acknowledged brings a smile on my face. And I'm interested what will IOI do with this story, considering that ICA and Illuminati are no more. Say what you will, but I still like this franchise story.

I have nothing but good things to say about gameplay, but what I can bash is godawful interface. This shit could easily go into my top-10 most unintuitive UIs ever. The main menu is a mess of square blocks which represent everything you actually don't want to press. Instead, you want to use small horizontal menu at the top of the screen because fuck you. Do you know where the exit button is? In the fucking settings! You want to check challenges in-game? How about we always switch off all your filters so you'll need to make three extra clicks just to open the menu you want? And that inventory screen. How many godforsaken years has it been since Blood Money where it first appeared? IOI, I am a game kleptomaniac, I can't let the hammer or a bust just lying around minding their own business. I NEED them in my inventory. And why after ten minute run through the location I need to scroll my inventory for half a minute to find what I want? Even Hitman 2 did it better. Just give me a grid or a list to choose from. I don't need that horrible wheel of shit.

Level designs also show how tired the team becomes with time. It was the same with London and Hawaii and it is now the same with Mendoza and that jungle level. There are just not so many things to do there and everything feels like team was more focused on their 007 game rather than continuing with this. Guys, you did a great work already, you don't need to keep pumping levels when you know you don't want to. We still love you and will wait for your next project as long as it needs. But I guess this is where the management comes in.

Ah, yes, the management. I don't know how unhinged you have to be to make a single player game always online citing some shit nobody cares about like leaderboards and cheaters. Come on, bastards, bring this game offline. I don't give a shit for elusive targets I have to wait 12 hours to try again or leaderboards so I know I'm 640509040147th in that particular level. I just want to play the goddamn game. But wait, customer, there is more! What about a hundred different ways to buy our game? You only need a bachelors degree in storefrontology to figure out what do you NEED to buy to have full experience. Well, fear not, as we updated our latest game and merged all editions into one even giving you an opportunity to bring stuff you already bought to the latest entry. Ah, wait, that opportunity passed, sorry, you now have to buy two fucking levels that are not even that good to begin with but still come with bits of story so you definitely need them again for only ten bucks. What a bargain, amirite? No, IOI, you're everything BUT right.

Well, all I can say is this is an amazing game like none other marred with batshit insane business decisions. But I still love it because it's just that good.

I thought the game from 2005 doesn't need a remake. After playing this I am sure of it.

So this is a game where you play as some dude named Leon, spec ops operator tasked with rescuing presidents daughter from the hands of evil spain people. Unfortunately, Leon arrives just in time for Barcelona Beer Festival, in which he was obligated to participate. I can not find another reason for our hero to move as awkward as he does in this game other than being absolutely shitfaced. You can only give him vague suggestion to where he should place his legs and hope for the best. Same with weapon handling. Looks like our star of the military academy was absent in all weapon handling lessons but passed the parrying-chainsaw-with-a-toothpick exam with flying colours. Maybe that's the reason of his hand tremor. Ah, yes, I also want to tell that managing inventory in this case is one of the most unresponsive experiences I've ever had. It's absolutely unbearable with a mouse pointer and infuriating with keyboard. How did this happen?

Capcoms race after "hyper-realistic movement" turned the game into an infuriating slog. No, capcom, waiting ten seconds for reticle to narrow down only works in RE2, where the battles were slow. I don't want to stop and scan some granny face while her husband is running at me with a pitchfork and their family dog is gnawing at my leg. No, capcom, shooting ranges do not work with this shooting mechanics because shooting down that one last skull at the far end of a range is just random, there is no fun.

After you arrive to the village and drop a pendant into a puddle of shit, you're getting acquainted with this locations mayor, Rasputin. He is a great dude and shows you how updated the boss fights in this game are. The boss is a great entry point to the game. He feels pretty fair, all his attacks can be dodged or blocked and he doesn't take much resources to deal with. After fighting him you move onwards to the castle with a smile on your face, after all, you can't wait to see how all other bosses were updated. And there's that statue-running sequence waiting ahead. But you feel like something is a bit wrong.

Once you get to the castle, you get it. Characters lost their charm. Yeah, the jokes and one-liners are still here, but their delivery is extremely lackluster. I see sassy writing spoken by brooding super serious dudes in uniform. It feels like your mom started to utilize memes in her everyday phrases. "But, well, the iconic scenes are still there, right? The bosses are now good, right? Right?" Let me tell you what I remembered from my old days. I remember how Leon shot the gramophone after being thrown down the pit and pulling a grappling hook out of his ass. I remember the red-robed dude in a minigun turret. I remember running from a giant statue. Are any of those scenes in the game? Well, Leon does shoot at a gramophone at one occasion. But there is no impact, Napoleon doesn't even react to it, it feels like "look player, our hero did that scene you remember! we cool, right?". Is there a turret guy? No, there is no turret guy. Well, at least the most iconic statue sequence is in the game, right? No. No, it is not. They even took our free rocket launcher.

"But what about the bosses?" You know what, dear reader, both Napoleon and his bug-buddy were two bosses where I always had a rocket launcher. For first because it was free and for second because it was too bothersome to fight it. That feeling didn't go away. The bug is easy but for some reason takes illegal amount of inventory to take down. I had a full case of hand grenades and found even more on-site and even that was not enough to bring him down. My entire inventory went down the drain just because I wanted to see if this shit is fixed in the remake. I should've bought a fucking rocket launcher. But if the bug was not changed in any meaningful way, Napoleon was remade entirely. And to that I can only say fuck. that. dwarf. This goddamn abomination who decided to cosplay main character from Carrion can go fuck itself in its eye. His attacks are not readable, his tentacles create a visual overlap, preventing you from shooting the face when it's open, and he jumps from one end of arena to another then torpedo slams your hangover ass while you beg Leon to go out of its way. Considering this boss in the original was proto meat wall, I expected capcom to place one of their now iconic meat-erpieces here and make me amazed by another eldritch horror they created but no. Jumping turd is all you get. Take it and get out of castle.

About island level I remember next to nothing. I remember the regenerator, lasers and that burning dude from oven. "Are they still here and as good as before?" For some bizarre reason, capcom decided to bring burning dude back, that's true. And it makes me even more sad after missing my turret boy. There are no lasers, because no fun allowed in this game. And the regenerator... eh, he works fine right until the moment you find out you can literally turn him off for ten seconds with a single knife-counter. I think his introduction was extremely poor because he just walks into a room with you but I think it's just because developers didn't know how to present him in a nice spotlight and be faithful to original at the same time. Also that find a wrench quest can kiss my ass. And as we got this out of the way pretty quick let my mind wonder a bit about treasure hunting. I think we could go a bit further with it. Both castle and village have those shrines we can open after like a half of an area later. Why not make it so we get the key from a merchant near the point of no return for that location and all those shrines contain a piece of a unique treasure. Hell, you can even make a little puzzle of how to assemble it. It would both diversify merchant quests a bit and give an incentive to backtrack the location to see how some rooms changed, because there ARE changes. Ah, what could have been.

But bosses. Man, my boy Krausers performance almost makes it worth suffering through this torment. He was almost silent in the original, but here he is the only pure, even cartoonishly evil character and acts like it. And even the fight with him in a concept should be amazing. After all, you must utilize all your knife experience and fight him with sharpened steel pieces mano a mano. You know why in concept? Because the goddamn knife degradation. I upgraded my knife all the way through and still somehow managed to get it broken right when I came to the last area. Tell me, capcom-san, why the fuck ultimate upgrade for a knife is a fucking attack speed increase? Who in their right mind would look at a weapon which can one-shot convulsing cultists on the floor and say "yeah, I wish I could slash the air faster". There is absolutely no scenario where you would use knife attack outside prompts because every single attack chips away at your durability. Why not make ultimate upgrade indestructible knife? Too powerful? Ok, make it so it regens its hp overtime. Because dumbasses like me will come at Krauser with a fork they found in a nearby wall and he'll just break it with his asscheeks. So yeah, my fight with Krauser came down to throwing my inventory at him and I didn't like that one bit. For fuck's sake, give me an indestructible knife just for that fight and lose it in a cutscene or something, come on. No complaints with Saddler boss-fight though, literally the same as before, nothing changed, and it was pretty ok in the original already. Although they placed their meat wall as his final form and it's... disheartening to see. A dragon ball with a couple of tentacles is extremely meh.

Yeah, I think this game would be a fine entry point for newcomers but I don't feel like it's the same but updated RE4. It's tonally different game with the same name. Capcom decided to let go of its original 2005 silliness in favour of the serious and sad people telling their sad and serious story. For some reason though, developers still tried to bring some of original bullshittery back only to get bitten by it in the ass. The only bright light in this sunless well is Luis and I wish there were more of him. But one can only wish.

Sprinkle a bit of uninspired voice acting and we get an example of how not to do remakes. Capcom took one game and stretched its skin over another, which feels exactly opposite of what should be. Please, don't remake RE5. The "boulder-punching asshole" was pretty awkward in RE8, I can't bear to witness how the company will embrace the memes this time.

And to think I lost my Revelations 3 with Rebecca to this pile of garbage. Pathetic.