234 reviews liked by Jacob
Chibi-Robo!
2005
this game has FAR too much yapping getting in the way of silly robot antics for my liking
Persona 3 Reload
2024
This review contains spoilers
"Tell this asshole if he wants to learn how to (re)make my product (game), he's gotta do it my way, the right way!" - Jesse Pinkman
Persona 3 Reload is ultimately a barely passable remake of what I consider the greatest game ever made. I find a large amount of the game’s flaws go ignored among the myriad conveniences the game adds, but they make the game feel like something of a hollow shell of what it used to be.
This can be seen in every aspect of the game, from the very beginning, It’s been well documented already, but the atmosphere that was dripping from the animated cutscenes of the original is completely absent. The opening scene that disorients you, makes you feel as if nothing is as it should be, is replaced with Persona 5 cutscene.mp4. It conveys the story, and that’s all it does – it’s an extension of the same flaws that purveyed Portable. This is an unfortunate trend, as in taking a variety of elements from a game that already seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the source material, it worsens it further. It draws worthless lines from portable that are only there to compensate for a lack of visuals, adds menial things like Junpei’s perversion joke in the train scene, and most offensive, adds the Portable exclusive scene after Minato returns from the final battle. Where the original cut directly from Aigis crying to 3/5, the group now have to announce their individual reactions, turning one of the most beautifully poignant scenes in the game into something standard, dull, and thoughtless.
The modern sheen the game has feels like a coat of paint that hides Reload being a fundamentally worse, less cohesive piece of art than the original. The lighting in the dorm is ruined, draining the atmosphere from one of the most prominent and beloved locations in the game. The dramatic, perfectly framed lighting of the Nyx fight (conveyed acutely in the dancing game) is replaced with…pure green, as is thoughtlessly thrown at every other dark hour scene in the game, which betrays a total lack of thought or care, and makes the game feel like a total rush job. The Orpheus awakening scene, previously a definitive tone setter that acts as the most striking piece of imagery and sound design in the series, can now only be described as underwhelming. Most to all of the little animations the models would enact that made SEES feel so well characterised and alive are absent – and why? For all the bells and whistles the game feels like a sanded down version of what was ultimately a very small-scale game.
Most script changes feel thoughtless and for the worse, making many lines less impactful for no good reason – I can appreciate the attempt to provide a more accurate script to the Japanese version, and this works in some cases, but scenes like Akihiko’s awakening are betrayed by this. Nearly every line change here feels like it lessens the impact of the scene, with worse framing to boot. This is demonstrative of a fundamental lack of understanding of the original that can be seen in the worsening of Akihiko’s character, now adjusted and simplified to be more like his P4U counterpart, one of the most horribly flanderised depictions of a character that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why anyone on the team thought this was a good idea. Most of the cast do not suffer as much as Akihiko does, but characters like Mitsuru do to a lesser extent, with traits being further emphasised to fit into molds that have been further solidified since the release of the original. One of my favourite scenes in the game is the meeting on the roof between Minato and Junpei, acting as a perfect capstone to one of the most well-thought-out arcs and dynamics in the original game. In reload, it gets replaced with a relatively generic feeling scene between the second-year trio, for seemingly no reason – Junpei does have a link episode that I assume was meant to compensate, but it fails entirely to capture what made that scene great and ends up totally forgettable.
Nearly all of the music is definitively worse – there are highlights, such as the new remix of changing seasons, but the majority have a strangely amateur quality, with the mixing feeling frequently unprofessional. Much of the instrumentals lose all of the impact they once had and Mass Destruction is infamous for this, but for me the worst example of it is in Iwatodai Dorm. I do admittedly love the new vocals, but they can’t save how poor the rest of it sounds. What makes this even more confusing is that all of the original songs are incredible, with Colour Your Night being one of my favourite songs in the franchise, an issue that I can only imagine was from trying to hard to be different from what was already perfect.
Lastly I’ll bring up where I think the game shines – a few key areas that I think fail to elevate the overall package. The combat is wonderfully fun and fluid, and I think theurgies are a satisfactory evolution of the showtime mechanic, but this is undercut by how ludicrously easy the game becomes with barely any effort, an issue that extends to even merciless. While the original was ultimately not a hard game, Reload becomes essentially thoughtless if you know what you’re doing. The combat animations are one of my favourite things the game does, with the way each character shifts to the other never getting tiresome, conveying their personalities and dynamics perfectly. Another is a few of the new character pieces added – I think the game massively elevates Shinjiro and Ken, the tragedy of both characters being emphasised in a way that only makes them more compelling, and Ryoji especially benefits from the greater degree of screentime Reload gives him. I’m glad the bond between him and Minato is now firmly grounded in a version other than the movies.
Personally, I think Persona 3 Reload is a disappointment, and not because it fails to be the “definitive” version many begrudged it for not being. It misunderstands, ignores and discards much of what made the original great, and it fails in aspects I could have never anticipated it would; I think the way the original uniquely excels deserves to be recognised. I still like the game overall, because the skeleton is one of my favourite things ever. But if I had to choose between Reload’s existence and a simple port of FES that bumped up the framerate, it would be an incredibly easy choice; a game that feels so deliberate against a pale imitation.
Persona 3 Reload is ultimately a barely passable remake of what I consider the greatest game ever made. I find a large amount of the game’s flaws go ignored among the myriad conveniences the game adds, but they make the game feel like something of a hollow shell of what it used to be.
This can be seen in every aspect of the game, from the very beginning, It’s been well documented already, but the atmosphere that was dripping from the animated cutscenes of the original is completely absent. The opening scene that disorients you, makes you feel as if nothing is as it should be, is replaced with Persona 5 cutscene.mp4. It conveys the story, and that’s all it does – it’s an extension of the same flaws that purveyed Portable. This is an unfortunate trend, as in taking a variety of elements from a game that already seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the source material, it worsens it further. It draws worthless lines from portable that are only there to compensate for a lack of visuals, adds menial things like Junpei’s perversion joke in the train scene, and most offensive, adds the Portable exclusive scene after Minato returns from the final battle. Where the original cut directly from Aigis crying to 3/5, the group now have to announce their individual reactions, turning one of the most beautifully poignant scenes in the game into something standard, dull, and thoughtless.
The modern sheen the game has feels like a coat of paint that hides Reload being a fundamentally worse, less cohesive piece of art than the original. The lighting in the dorm is ruined, draining the atmosphere from one of the most prominent and beloved locations in the game. The dramatic, perfectly framed lighting of the Nyx fight (conveyed acutely in the dancing game) is replaced with…pure green, as is thoughtlessly thrown at every other dark hour scene in the game, which betrays a total lack of thought or care, and makes the game feel like a total rush job. The Orpheus awakening scene, previously a definitive tone setter that acts as the most striking piece of imagery and sound design in the series, can now only be described as underwhelming. Most to all of the little animations the models would enact that made SEES feel so well characterised and alive are absent – and why? For all the bells and whistles the game feels like a sanded down version of what was ultimately a very small-scale game.
Most script changes feel thoughtless and for the worse, making many lines less impactful for no good reason – I can appreciate the attempt to provide a more accurate script to the Japanese version, and this works in some cases, but scenes like Akihiko’s awakening are betrayed by this. Nearly every line change here feels like it lessens the impact of the scene, with worse framing to boot. This is demonstrative of a fundamental lack of understanding of the original that can be seen in the worsening of Akihiko’s character, now adjusted and simplified to be more like his P4U counterpart, one of the most horribly flanderised depictions of a character that I’ve ever seen. I don’t know why anyone on the team thought this was a good idea. Most of the cast do not suffer as much as Akihiko does, but characters like Mitsuru do to a lesser extent, with traits being further emphasised to fit into molds that have been further solidified since the release of the original. One of my favourite scenes in the game is the meeting on the roof between Minato and Junpei, acting as a perfect capstone to one of the most well-thought-out arcs and dynamics in the original game. In reload, it gets replaced with a relatively generic feeling scene between the second-year trio, for seemingly no reason – Junpei does have a link episode that I assume was meant to compensate, but it fails entirely to capture what made that scene great and ends up totally forgettable.
Nearly all of the music is definitively worse – there are highlights, such as the new remix of changing seasons, but the majority have a strangely amateur quality, with the mixing feeling frequently unprofessional. Much of the instrumentals lose all of the impact they once had and Mass Destruction is infamous for this, but for me the worst example of it is in Iwatodai Dorm. I do admittedly love the new vocals, but they can’t save how poor the rest of it sounds. What makes this even more confusing is that all of the original songs are incredible, with Colour Your Night being one of my favourite songs in the franchise, an issue that I can only imagine was from trying to hard to be different from what was already perfect.
Lastly I’ll bring up where I think the game shines – a few key areas that I think fail to elevate the overall package. The combat is wonderfully fun and fluid, and I think theurgies are a satisfactory evolution of the showtime mechanic, but this is undercut by how ludicrously easy the game becomes with barely any effort, an issue that extends to even merciless. While the original was ultimately not a hard game, Reload becomes essentially thoughtless if you know what you’re doing. The combat animations are one of my favourite things the game does, with the way each character shifts to the other never getting tiresome, conveying their personalities and dynamics perfectly. Another is a few of the new character pieces added – I think the game massively elevates Shinjiro and Ken, the tragedy of both characters being emphasised in a way that only makes them more compelling, and Ryoji especially benefits from the greater degree of screentime Reload gives him. I’m glad the bond between him and Minato is now firmly grounded in a version other than the movies.
Personally, I think Persona 3 Reload is a disappointment, and not because it fails to be the “definitive” version many begrudged it for not being. It misunderstands, ignores and discards much of what made the original great, and it fails in aspects I could have never anticipated it would; I think the way the original uniquely excels deserves to be recognised. I still like the game overall, because the skeleton is one of my favourite things ever. But if I had to choose between Reload’s existence and a simple port of FES that bumped up the framerate, it would be an incredibly easy choice; a game that feels so deliberate against a pale imitation.
Max Payne
2001
In the back room of an apartment, I am cut loose from the city. It watches me pass with sharp neon eyes. The sun has gone down with practiced bravado, twilight crawled across the sky and laden with foreboding. The night has gilded the monitor in silver. Every pixel is covered with light. The image of one mean sonnuvabitch called “Max “Payne”, is repeated over and over. The Drug. The red and yellow of a beretta’s muzzle flashes fiercely on the white screen’s snow.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me I’m playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no one’s laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
“Remedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.”
“The result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.”
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. I’d been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. I’d died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friend’s brains looked like splattered across a wall. I’d been writing a review in the style Max Payne’s dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. I’m dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alex’s brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepad’s joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this would’ve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
Something goes clank in the night, and the sound is close enough to remind me I’m playing Max Payne on a PlayStation 2 with a broken controller. Wanted to give the boys at Backloggd something to joke about.
Except no one’s laughing now.
The poindexters at IGN explained it to me:
“Remedy ported this PC code to the PS2 pretty quickly, and simply chopped up the levels into smaller bits in order to work around the 32 MBs of PS2 RAM.”
“The result is smaller levels, with more loading, slightly rearranged AI placement, but even worse is the heavy disruption to the flow and tension of the story, which tries desperately to feel like a movie, but instead feels like a TV show with hundreds of commercials shunt into it. It nearly ruins the experience.”
Thirty-two megabytes of RAM.
Poor kid never stood a chance.
Neither did I.
A couple of days ago it had all come crashing down. The bad PS2 games arrived like a winter storm: Monster Hunter 2. Devil May Cry 2. Sonic Heroes. The Bouncer. I’d been pushed over the edge by a cabal of games junkies who were ready to explode in random acts of senseless posting at any minute.
I found myself in the cold no-man's land between kamige and kusoge, no road signs on a crash course to a 3D Realms rush job with nothing to lose. I’d died to jank before. I could die to jank again.
A gunshot. My last meeting with Alex before Max found out what his old friend’s brains looked like splattered across a wall. I’d been writing a review in the style Max Payne’s dialogue while the loading bar crawled across the screen for mercy. Now I was awake, brought to my senses by the rapid fire of an AK alarm clock.
Buckshot pierces through me like a wind of rusted razor blades. I’m dead. Again. Two more minutes of dead-eyed disc-reading before I see Alex’s brains. Again. A console port purgatory I wouldn’t wish on my own worst enemy.
Drawing from my vape pen like Bogart, I enter the big house once more with the odds stacked against me. Third-person aiming in an early PlayStation 2 game was nigh-on impossible, and the gamepad’s joystick had been busted for a decade or more.
I could relate.
Game like this would’ve been a pixellated piece of cake in my younger years, a fresh-faced gamer on the sixteen-bit beat. But the strain of sleepless night after sleepless night spent on the graveyard shift with a chain gang of falling tetrominoes had shot my dexterity all the way to Hell. I was no pro gamer now.
My thirteenth gunfight of the night. Unlucky for some, and the way this one started didn't promise anything better than the last dozen. Bullets and bastards coming at my face, an army of dead men with only a few brain cells of artificial intelligence between them holding one-way tickets to the river Styx. I was trying to look for the answers, but every gunshot created a hole with more technical issues leaking out. A spreading labyrinth of questions and QA tickets spreading like a pool of blood on the snow at six frames a second.
Somewhere in the background of the game-goon banter and stock explosion sound effects, I heard the end howling after me. Polygonal hatchet men sped by on fast forward, rooftop water towers disappearing in 240p darkness, a dead forest of antennas and chimneys, all a blur beyond the draw distance. Another level come to a merciful end.
They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the plastic trigger, and then it was over.
This game is a Rebirth in the way that Buddhists believe you will be reborn as a hungry ghost with an enormous stomach and a tiny mouth as a punishment for leading a life consumed by greed and spite
I have forced myself to finish this game so I can properly warn everybody.
The graphics and music are good, and the gameplay itself it´s kind of fun but a little bit too repetitive, full of minigames that are hit or miss. But every good thing this game does it´s ruined by the plot and the writing.
It´s overly convoluted and doesn´t understand the appeal of the OG game. If you didn´t like the whispers before get ready for something 1000 times worse. They ruin some of the most iconic moments in gaming history.
The writing is even worse than in part one, everyone reverted to being oversimplified versions of themselves. Childish, overacted, and annoying, they are no longer the characters we used to love, especially Sephiroth. He is basically Ansen, appears out of nowhere says something cryptic, and leaves. The character is completely ruined.
Stay away from this game if you have any respect or love for the OG and good storytelling in general.
The graphics and music are good, and the gameplay itself it´s kind of fun but a little bit too repetitive, full of minigames that are hit or miss. But every good thing this game does it´s ruined by the plot and the writing.
It´s overly convoluted and doesn´t understand the appeal of the OG game. If you didn´t like the whispers before get ready for something 1000 times worse. They ruin some of the most iconic moments in gaming history.
The writing is even worse than in part one, everyone reverted to being oversimplified versions of themselves. Childish, overacted, and annoying, they are no longer the characters we used to love, especially Sephiroth. He is basically Ansen, appears out of nowhere says something cryptic, and leaves. The character is completely ruined.
Stay away from this game if you have any respect or love for the OG and good storytelling in general.
Spec Ops: The Line
2012
They draw you in with the "This is your fault", they hook you with the "How many Americans have you killed today?", and they reel you in with the "If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So, really, he's the lucky one."
Shows immeasurable guts and measured sincerity in critiquing American's most respected and well-regarded foundation: The Troops. No one has ever, or will ever, have the guts to say "War Bad" again.
Shows immeasurable guts and measured sincerity in critiquing American's most respected and well-regarded foundation: The Troops. No one has ever, or will ever, have the guts to say "War Bad" again.
Absolutely terrific. Despite writing this years after finishing it, every aspect of Myst remains stuck in my head. The atmosphere, the puzzles and their respective solutions, the corny live-action FMVs, the stories in each of the journals, everything about it.
Myst is such a wonderful and unique game that it's no wonder it's stood the test of time. The only reason I can't give this version a 10/10 is that the realMyst remake, despite its many improvements, has some annoying rough edges to it.
That being said, if you can look past a little bit of jank and don't have the patience for the imperfections of the original, realMyst is a very accessible way to experience Myst for the first time without sacrificing the vibes that make it so lovable like the 2020 remake.
Myst is such a wonderful and unique game that it's no wonder it's stood the test of time. The only reason I can't give this version a 10/10 is that the realMyst remake, despite its many improvements, has some annoying rough edges to it.
That being said, if you can look past a little bit of jank and don't have the patience for the imperfections of the original, realMyst is a very accessible way to experience Myst for the first time without sacrificing the vibes that make it so lovable like the 2020 remake.
Lies of P
2023
Before Lies of P, I'd never finished any 'Soulslike' game before, they've always seemed like cheap imitations to me and were simply not fun to play.
This is one of the best games of 2023 and easily the best Souls inspired title that I've played.
This is one of the best games of 2023 and easily the best Souls inspired title that I've played.
Hi-Fi Rush
2023
ITS SO FUN everything is to the beat, the songs are so good and the animations, everything, just give it a try if you like music based games
Mass Effect 3
2012
Great game for the time, the multiplayer was awesome, great community, with DLCs it really feels like a proper send-off to the trilogy. Play it in the remastered version
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