This is gonna be a rant. Sorry fellas, I don't mean to undermine anybody else's experience with Rift Apart, as I truly wish I could enjoy it right alongside you, but I'm too hung up on my shit, and really gotta get it out of the system.

I really, really hate to say this, but this was painfully average. If I haven't played the previous Ratchet & Clanks, it'd just be plain average, but with the prior experience, my disappointment for this game is almost bitter, having to witness a cool concept receive this milquetoast of an execution.

I know, I know, "oh boy, here comes another PS2 Ratchet & Clank fan to preach a point they should've let go of 15 years ago," but I'm actually speaking from the point of someone who hasn't played all that much PS2 Ratchet & Clank, of someone who didn't have any means to play the Future trilogy or anything else, and perhaps most importantly, of this being the only game ported to PC, which made it my entry point after many years of not playing R&C. And I know sure as shit that Sony won't port the original trilogy, as I hold the theory that they're only porting games that "hold up to modern-gen standards" (which is why I firmly believe The Last Of Us got that pointless remaster), so, this is it. As much as I'd like to be proven wrong, this is probably all we're getting.

So, anyway. I'm not about to say they should've brought back Ratchet exactly as he behaved in the PS2 era. I mean, he was a right unlikable asshole in the first game, even I couldn't jive with it. It makes full sense for Ratchet to mature over the course of several games, but since when does maturing mean scrapping all semblance of irony and sarcasm? Of wit? Wouldn't you actually become more jaded and sarcastic the older you got?

What actually happened here, is that Ratchet & Clank de-matured. Rather than making the wise choice to go from an edgy teen audience to an encapsulation of young and old audiences alike, they instead went for basically nobody else but children. The writing on display here is so overbearingly obnoxious, with the best form of comedy they could come up with being screams, annoyingly overexaggerated voices, and zany robots that make your protags go "uhhhh that was weird." There was only one joke that landed (the Ratchet sneaking up on Nefarious bit), and everything else completely bounced off, if not made me roll my eyes.

And my god, it never stops. They. Never. Stop. Talking. This is actually a trend I've noticed with a couple recent Sony games (such as God of War: Ragnarok), this almost innate fear of not allowing there to be more than 5 seconds of silence. There's always gotta be a partner character, they always have to say something for everything you do, and let's say you're alone, well, we gotta have the character start talking to themselves of course, while making sure they point out to the audience how silly it is that they're talking to themselves. I consider "atmosphere through isolation" an extremely important element of a game like this, but I will never be able to hear my own thoughts if the characters are always going to project them for me.

You've created this fuckin' phonebook-sized script, but how much of it actually adds to the experience? Were any cuts ever made to this script, or was everything submitted on the first try as is? I'm gonna go with the latter, because the game has so little to say of any inherent meaning, it devolves into this repetitious Canadian-like apologyfest, characters constantly feeling sorry for themselves and for each other, always anxious, always expressing their worries and sorrows and all this wishy-washy bullshit that should've been saved for one or two major important moments of the story, rather than being the entire pull of the writing when it's not busting out its Grade-A sense of humor.

And I mean, we're talking about a franchise with all of these crazy fucking guns, blackhole miniguns, water spewers that turn enemies into topiaries, or a shotgun that pixelizes things. All these fun weapons, all this high-intensity action happening on-screen, just pure stupid fun, and meanwhile everybody in the story is feeling sorry for themselves?? What is this contrast??? The game is at odds with itself, latching on to the old DNA of Ratchet & Clank through its wacky and outlandish arsenal of weaponry, meanwhile the story is way too polite, way too nice, it doesn't reflect the tone of the gameplay at all. It's not the type of fun story that would fire a rocket launcher to blow up a robot's face, it's the type of story that would look at a rocket launcher and go "my parents died because of a rocket launcher... it was all my fault....."

So, yeah, did I get this across yet? This writing sucks. There's a time and a place for emotional storytelling, and this game's unsubtle and constant attempts at one totally clash with each other. Again, if this was your first Ratchet & Clank, I don't think you'd care that much, but seeing how this series started and seeing where it is now, I struggle to fathom how'd we end up here. There were definitely rough edges with the PS2 series, but this was the most patronizing, soulless way they could've possibly ironed them out. And I care about all of this, because I see the potential for Ratchet & Clank, and it always hurts to see a franchise actively reject its potential in favor of safety.

Alright, enough of that. What else? Hey, the gameplay's alright! Kinda. It's pretty mindless, actually, I mean, you really don't do much else in the combat other than strafe in one direction and jump over some enemy shots, there's little thought required. But damn, it does really feel good. Those guns of yours pack a serious punch, and upgrading them to Level 5 really brings out that oomph. Experimenting and finding the right series of weapons for you is encouraged, and serves as some pretty decent popcorn gameplay. It does, unfortunately, get pretty stale after the first couple hours when they start reusing mini-bosses, and the enemy variety just. Runs out. At that point, I started caring less.

More than the combat, I really enjoyed the movement, especially once you get those jet-shoes that allow you to blast off at high speeds. I've found a couple spots during gameplay where I could make some jumps that the devs probably did not intend me to do. Some of them led into invisible walls, but others were rewarding enough as actual shortcuts towards hidden collectibles. It's a pretty broken ability, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

This game has some real pretty graphics, and the gameplay has been refined quite nicely. I wouldn't know if this is the best that Ratchet has ever controlled, but I can't imagine it getting any better than this. Coming back to my rant briefly, it's just... a shame that all of these systems were wasted on a setting I couldn't care less about, and writing that bordered on sensory overload, and led me to turning down the speech volume to 0, something I've never done before.

To imagine a Ratchet & Clank game that plays like this, but under a passionate team that have full creative control to do what they want, rather than what feels the most "safe" to do, would be a dream. But, perhaps I should fuck off instead, and join the rank of R&C fans who have accepted long ago that this is just what the franchise is now. I've made my rant. I've calmed down. It's time to move on with my life.

Years ago, I tried Resident Evil Remake, and quickly bounced off due to the "inventory full again, backtrack all the way to one of the two item boxes in the entire mansion" thing. It was not a fun time. Years later, I became a massive Resident Evil fan, and am one to this day. That not only includes the modern games, but I also greatly enjoyed the original RE1 & RE2. On RE1 in particular, I amassed over 15 runs in a row, as I had a lot of fun speedrunning the game and seeing how much time I can shave off. I also did this, as I felt like when the time came to revisit the remake, I would appreciate it a lot more.

That time has come. I started off as Jill, got a mod that upscaled the graphics, removed the door loading animations, and got to work. The atmosphere was phenomenal. It's no understatement to say that the pre-rendered graphics have aged like a fine wine, they're still incredible to this day. I enjoyed the new additions and puzzles. However, I still wasn't too happy about the backtrack-heavy nature of the mansion, and the occasional (but not as frequent as the original) instances of not knowing which items are essential to bring along with me at the present moment.

And, here's the thing. With the original RE1, this was also a problem. My first playthrough of that game was anything but smooth-sailing, and it contributed to more frustrations than a feeling of dread. Once that 2nd run started however, things immediately clicked as I started cutting corners, optimizing routes, and carrying my knowledge of which items are most important to bring out of the item box for the next chunk of exploration.

2nd run onward, Resident Evil (1996) becomes an incredible game once you know what you're doing. And I figured that this would've also happened with the remake. Miserable first run, godlike second run. So, I cleared the game, thought to myself "some gripes aside, it was worth playing this," began another Jill run after a short break, and started getting around the mansion overall faster... but then, a soul-crushing realization hit me. "I don't wanna do all of this again."

Looking back on what Resident Evil 2002 aims to do, it's to do more. More areas, more puzzles, more items to lug around, more mechanics and more things to worry about. On one hand, I think it's good to expand on your game when you're remaking it. On the other, I'm so used to just how fast-paced the original game felt, remake feels much slower in comparison, and demands much more out of you.

A puzzle that I could've done in two steps in the original, now demands four or five steps. Zombies aren't as easy to dodge as they used to be, and killing them is more likely to cause you more trouble later on. That is, unless you backtrack to your safe room to bring out your lighter and fuel, backtrack to the zombie you want to burn, then backtrack again to the safe room because the lighter and fuel takes up two damn inventory slots, then backtrack again to the next point of progress. Jesus christ, the handling of that burning mechanic sucks in particular.

These things add up over time, and I'm just kinda sad thinking about them. Because generally speaking, there is so much to appreciate about the remake, but its newly introduced mechanics do not lend themselves to a game that's as appealable to speedrun as the original was. It's a much more methodical experience. One that I could see myself revisiting someday in the future, but for the time being, I'm not scared, just exhausted.