a word of advice: if you love psychological horror, especially silent hill, YOU NEED TO READ CRIME & PUNISHMENT. i understand how a 600 page book released 150 years ago in a format that doesn't exist anymore can seem off-putting or intimidating; i promise you it hasn't aged a day. crime & punishment can suffocate you with tension and anxiety comparable to any horror movie or game using words alone. the characters are oceans of beauty and flaws that will stick with you forever. without dostoevsky, there would be no shining, there would be no subahibi, and there would be no silent hill. read it and thank me later.

some of the hardest hitting melee combat, slickest environments, and funnest guns to shooteth all in a certifiably awesome b-movie story, dragged to hell by an ever-pervasive and cumbersome looter shooter system (and if you try to half-ass it you get brickwalled cuz it's an action rpg). i am NOT the kind of person to shit on a game for being a little tedious or flawed, but man, this goes far beyond "a little". if i had 20 hours to spend relearning the ropes and getting my hands dirty with the grinding and item management it might be fine? as it stands, i basically have to start from scratch every time i go more than a few weeks without playing this. that's stupid. this is stupid. the gore is fantastic tho

I WANNA LOVE U BUT I CANT...

i feel no hesitation in saying that donkey kong country is my favorite game from the golden age of platformers; hell, my favorite platformer ever. every word of impossible nostalgia-drunk exaltation spilled from the mouths of nintendotubers over the snes drivel they grew up with is fulfilled in dkc's pre-rendered 3d glory. fuck mario. this is what they told me smw would be like. even the water levels are good. if this game didn't play like a dream- constantly challenging you, though never unclear of its expectations or punishing with its lives- it would still have more style than pretty much any game in its genre released then or now. such technical wizardry was performed here that the game's assets and soundtrack look and sound somehow worse uncompressed. every level is a real place and i want to be there. aquatic ambience is cited incessantly in "greatest ost" lists for good reason. rare's nintendoid output would only improve (see: the sequel to this game), but this will always be their greatest achievement in my eyes. it was here first. it came and it conquered. shine on, you crazy kong.