Sonic Robo Blast 2 conflicts with me so hard: on the one hand I really do like this fangame's visual style. The pixel art and the general environments are really well made and look very pleasant in motion, and surprisingly I found the music to be pretty good as well. Everything else though...not so much.

For the record, I HIGHLY recommend not playing this with a game controller. This game was just not built for it whatsoever. That's not to say I'm not gonna take points away from it for not designing the game around controller at all, because, like...that's how I primarily play platformers, but KBM is a marginally better alternative. That aside however, I really don't like how this game controls. KBM did make steering your character better overall but no matter what you use, Sonic and co still have incredibly jank acceleration issues. Much like Sonic Forces, you go from 0-100 way too quickly and it's super jarring, the main difference is that the turning isn't as stiff as Forces. General platforming and even just moving around never ONCE feels precise or natural, compounded by the fact that you have almost zero air control if you aren't going at a high speed. The general level design is a mixed bag, a lot of it is very expansive with little to show for it, or it's just incredibly convoluted and messy with (quite frankly) terrible stage gimmicks. The boss battles aren't really good either, they start out alright but the further you go in, the worse they get. I don't who in their right mind thought the Metal Sonic boss was a good idea, trying to hit a target that has the hitbox of a mosquito who flies around you in nonsensical patterns WHILST you're in a boxed arena with electrified fencing and bottomless pits, but I want whatever they were smoking that day. The camera is a mess too; again it is a little bit better with KBM than with controller but it never really gives good viewing angles, constantly needs to be readjusted and absolutely freaks out if you get close to any form of geometry, oftentimes I come across a wall, try to turn around and Sonic's gigantic sprite blocks the entire screen and makes things practically impossible to follow, doubly irritating within boss arenas.

There is a commendable amount of customization options on display via community made mods to change just about any aspect of the game you want, but bottom line, I shouldn't have to rely on mods to make the base game enjoyable. That's kind of a major problem methinks.

In some ways, I can certainly commend Dimps for attempting to greatly improve elements that were sorely lacking in episode 1: the lackluster, cheap looking environments are now replaced with really quite good 2.5D backgrounds and environmental details. The bizarrely animated and somewhat deepfried Sonic model of the first game is vastly improved as well, and there's a lot more polish to his animations and expressions on top of it. The stage themes are more original, the music soundfont is improved (...somewhat, Oil Desert 2 still exists), the special stages are better, Sonic even feels less stiff to control. By all accounts this should've been a marked improvement over the first episode, but unfortunately a lot of elements still aren't where they need to be, and in fact, some elements ended up being DOWNGRADED for some baffling reason. The level design is a lot more automated and homogenous than Episode 1, wheras that game had some issues with placing springs and boosters everywhere, it at least allowed for some semblance of decent design here and there. In Episode 2, the boosters and springs are even more prominent than ever before, and any semblance of original level design is replaced with homing attack chains and the game browbeating you into using the newest gimmick: the Tails Combos. Basically you press a button to combo with Tails, use it in the air and Tails flies you up, use it on the ground and you both spindash together at ridiculous speeds plowing through everything (you'll be using this basically a majority of the game). The rolling attack is so fundamentally broken that it essentially trivializes 90% of the game's design, and it ends up being very mindless. But if that weren't enough, without the Tails combos, the lackluster physics are laid bare plain to see this time. In the first game at the very least you could get a dopamine rush by spamming the broken airdash to gain a ridiculous amount of speed, but here that option is considerably nerfed due to the game wanting you to use the funny 69 rolling attack in order to gain speed. In general, this game has almost no sense of flow whatsoever; whenever the game wants you to use the Tails combos, the game freezes for a second as Sonic and Tails need to high five, do a little pose, and THEN initiate the combo. Because it happens so frequently the pace gets halted and restarted so many times it'll make your head spin. And dear god, the bosses in this game are abysmal. The bosses in Episode 1 weren't anything to write home about but the bosses here take so unnecessarily LONG, and there's so many periods where you can't even interact with the boss at all, just sit there and watch it do goofy nonsensical things until it finally becomes vulnerable again.

Despite being slightly lesser than Episode 1 in certain key areas, this game is still just ok at best, mediocre at worst. Both episode 1 and 2 are experiences that go in one ear and out the other. Like the old saying goes, you can do better, but you can also do worse.

This is most certainly the Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 of all time

Let's just go ahead and get this out of the way: is this a good continuation of the classic games? No. Is it derivative and unoriginal? Absolutely. Is it stiff, unnatural and mostly awkward in design? Pretty much. Is the music ear grating? Not necessarily but I can see why some would be thrown off by it. Is it the worstest thing ever made in all humanity and a plague upon this once great franchise? Absolutely not.

I feel as if you can view this game on 2 separate merits. If you view it as an honest to god continuation of the classic titles, it completely fails at that aspect. If you view this game on its own merits, as an isolated 2D Sonic game, it's...bleh. I still don't really think it's that good but it's not horrible. You can do some wacky stuff, spindash jumping up slopes to get some crazy angles, spamming the airdash to get a ridiculous amount of speed, all that's well and good, but the level design never really goes above "kinda fun" and some levels are just plain awful. Still though, Sonic 4 is a mostly largely inoffensive game of which I have not very much to say about. I'm 100% certain I'll be labeled as "blasphemous" for not thinking this game is the spawn of Satan, but I'm sorry, if this is the lowest point of Sonic or games in general...play more Sonic games idk. I have played far FAR worse than this, both from this franchise, and in platformers in general. Call it Stockholm syndrome if you want, but this game isn't the 1/10 everyone makes it out to be, sorry to say.

Me when visual novel: 😐

Me when visual novel but it has Sonic attached to it: 😁😁😁

jokes aside, not really much of a visual novel person at all but this was really really charming. Great characterization, fantastic artwork, a fun sense of humor, there’s just so much love and passion for the series pouring out of this game. Despite being a (I think non canon?) April Fools joke the Social Media team put on Steam for free, this somehow managed to be both incredibly entertaining and endearing. I actually wouldn’t mind Sonic expanding and branching out to try different types of game genres like this, would be very fun to see.

…though I now have the sudden urge to sift through whatever trash cans I come across. I swear there’s gotta be something in them…

Xbox really just up and dropped this absolute banger on us day 1 without warning huh

Hi-fi Rush is an absolute joyride from beginning to end, by far one of the most visually stunning and mechanically creative games I've ever played in a long long time. Combining a character action game with a rhythm game honestly is such an ingenious idea that I'm surprised that this hadn't been done before. Essentially, it's a standard character action game where all of your actions sync with the beat of the music. Your attacks will perform to the beat regardless if you actually input them on the beat, but doing them with the rhythm deals more damage and grants you more score. You get a plethora of combos including launchers, quick damage dealers, ground to air, multihit and huge AOE attacks. You even get a healthy selection of charged super attacks with 2 you can choose and swap between, partner attacks you can also swap between, partner SYNCED attacks, the list goes on. It took a bit to get used to but eventually this all becomes incredibly natural. Admittedly the parry somewhat trivializes most enemy encounters with how everything is synced to the music, and the character synced attacks also felt incredibly strong despite how little cost they had, but both also felt satisfying and fun to use so I'll let them slide. You also get ranked at the end of every combat encounter and at the end of every chapter. Your attacks aren't the only things synced with the beat of the music currently playing: EVERYTHING is synced with the music; the attacks of your enemies, hazards, the environment around you, you even get a togglable option that shows the "beat" of a song to better follow along and deal more effective damage for a higher score. This also makes general platforming and exploration a musical treat, both visually and audibly. The visuals in general are some of the best I've ever seen in a game, incredibly stylistic and comic book-esc and the way the world around you moves and pulses to the music is a huge treat. They're incredibly vivid, and I especially get a kick out of the stylistic onomatopoeia exploding in a crazy fashion on screen after a finishing blow. The animated cutscenes and in game animation of the characters are also top notch, and the transitions this game has are some of the slickest I've ever seen. I'm honestly doing the game a massive disservice by just describing how the visuals look, just...watch some gameplay footage to see what I'm talking about, it's genuinely that good looking, crisp and runs smooth as butter basically all the time. The characters are genuinely likable and fun to watch as well, the story was engaging in a fun silly way and this game actually managed to make me laugh quite a bit or at the very least crack a smile for a majority of my playthrough.

I do have some grievances, though most of them are minor. The chapters are generally way too lengthy for a replay of them (say, if you wanted to play on a higher difficulty or for better ranks/looking for secrets) which can be tiring to go through. Platforming never really feels solid, Chai's double jump feels incredibly stiff and the airdash often overshoots platforms more often than not. It gets the job done sure, but not in a particularly graceful way. Combat in general suffers from a lack of a lock on system, there are a few attacks that are downright irritating and annoyingly inconsistent to activate. The dash heavy attack for instance, I can't count how many times I inputted this move towards an enemy facing behind me, only for Chai to slowly wind up a normal heavy attack like an idiot. The scoring system and game as a whole is fairly easy, I did manage to die a few times on hard mode but still at MINIMUM managed to get a B, A or even S on most stages. That being said, Spectra Room 16 is absolutely abysmal and can go jump in a ditch for all I care, but I digress. Also while I appreciate the variety of your arsenal, a lot of the super attacks kinda felt interchangeable and superfluous. I basically equipped the AOE one that deals a ton of damage (uses 4 gauges) and the one that instantly heals you by quite a lot, particularly broken if you execute this immediately after a combat encounter has finished.

If you haven't yet, I absolutely IMPLORE you to give this game a try. It's already done really well via word of mouth, but hey, even more attention isn't a bad thing, right? Still crazy to me that the same team that developed The Evil Within games did this as well (and yes, I did appreciate the few TEW nods this game had lol). Shinji Mikami really is a jack of all trades.

Chai is my spirit animal.

Idk how I managed to miss this, I completed this way back a few years ago when I finished all 3 of the Mario games on this collection. I guess I just forgot to log it during that time which…I suppose speaks perfectly for the quality of this collection as whole.

So here’s what you get with this collection: you get all 3 games in HD, Mario 64 with some amount of visual improvements, Sunshine in widescreen, Galaxy with (frankly unintuitive) joycon pointer controls, the soundtrack of each game…and that’s it. All games are locked to their original framerates, none of them are native ports, the presentation is shockingly barebones, Galaxy 2 isn’t on this collection for really no discernible reason, there’s no customization options to speak of nor are there any extras to browse like concept art or…ANYTHING really outside of the soundtracks. The features on this collection are so desolate it’s insane, even Sonic Origins has way more to offer than this. On top of that, Nintendo had the absolute GALL to not only charge $60 for 3 old roms that have barley been improved in any meaningful way, but on top of that they decided it would be a fantastic idea to make this a limited time release, because artificial scarcity is what gamers truly desire. At the time of this writing it’s basically impossible to buy this collection on the Nintendo eshop, the only way to experience this collection is to get it physically, which isn’t too much of a hassle as I still see a boatload of copies of these games on store shelves, or…yknow…Vimm’s lair, because honestly that’s a way better option and is far more morally correct than giving Nintendo any of your money for this sorry excuse for a collection.

Maybe some day collections can reach the absolute peak of Sonic Mega Collection. Some day. But not today.

Just a heads up, I had initially started playing this game before all the Justin Roiland stuff went public. Put the game down and focused on other games on my backlog, eventually I decided to try and go back and fully beat it.

Not much I can really say about High on Life, it’s a very fun visually super creative shooter. Gameplay somewhat reminds me of Halo with how you get packed into arenas you need to freely maneuver around to take people out, picking up health and shields along the way. Though instead of scavenging for different weapons to pick up and use, you get 4 permanent weapons each with different perks, abilities and customization options. Each gun has a distinct ability and alt fire, the combat in general can be pretty fun with how much you zip around and straight up juggle enemies in the air. On top of this not only do you get some pretty fun traversal powers (airdash, jetpack, grapple, straight up power sliding), but the alternate abilities your guns have also can provide access to different secret areas, albeit it’s contextual (you can only shoot the alt fires at specific looking geometry in order for them to work, the one exception being the time slow but you only use that on one thing anyway). On top of that the level design outside of combat is a mix of linear areas and open ended environments, encouraging exploration for hidden treasures to purchase more upgrades, extra collectables and secrets, all that jazz. The main draw of High on Life is the focus on comedy, and that your guns are alive and constantly chat with you. Here’s my take on the game’s humor: I think that for the most part, it actually works. There are quite a lot of jokes that work pretty well, the weakest elements of the humor are when Justin Roiland does his typical “improvisational stammering” schtick. It’s not Portal writing or anywhere close but it also didn’t make me want to die like Sunset Overdrive’s writing and ESPECIALLY not Forspoken’s writing, so for the most part the game is actually pretty funny. It definitely is an acquired taste though so I understand why not everyone is on board with the style of writing High on Life has.

Overall though it just feels like a game that was crafted for the sole purpose of being fun, and very rarely do you see games like that nowadays. There’s so much energy and creativity everywhere throughout the game. Even if it ends up being mixed to a general audience I can appreciate what they were trying to accomplish. I wouldn’t mind seeing more games like High on Life in the future…uh…preferably ones where Justin Roiland isn’t involved in any capacity. That would be nice I think.

Welp, here we are: the end of the X series. With the double whammy of back to back terribleness in the form of X6 and X7, at the very least I was somewhat hoping the X series would end on a high note, and if not a high note then something I wouldn’t end up hating at least. Thankfully at the very LEAST X8 manages to bump itself into the latter category, but just can’t quite grasp the former.

Don’t have much to say about the story, there’s a lot of religious themes and symbolism in this game oddly enough, and as a religious person myself, I don’t really have much of an opinion on it. I find it more so amusing than anything, the first stage being called “Noah’s Park” made me laugh a little bit. The voice acting is leaps and bounds better than any Megaman X game I’ve played thus far though which is a massive step up, apparently it’s the same actors who did that “day of Sigma” short which I really ended up enjoying. Honestly the only voice I’m not a fan of is Alia’s but everything else is pretty good.

To start off with the good stuff, the pace is noticeably much MUCH faster than X7, feeling much closer to how a traditional 2D X game usually feels. In fact, despite still being 2.5D, 3D sections are removed altogether aside from a couple of vehicle sections which I feel was a smart decision. Wall jumping, dashing, airdashing, all of that felt as good as before. You can have 2 characters simultaneously that you can switch between on the fly, and now you also have this super attack that you can pull off to either screen nuke any enemy in your vicinity, or it can be used to take a huge chunk out of a boss’s health bar. I also really like how they handled the armor upgrades for X, you get the benefits of the armor part as soon as you get them again, but now you can freely mix and match armor parts to simultaneously mix and match the different properties they have, the drawback being you don’t get the special properties you would get if you equipped all parts of the same set. I thought this change was pretty cool, even if I thought the design of the 2 armors you get were super bland looking. Axl got a bit of a rework from the last game, he now fires rapidly in all directions making him ultra-precise with aerial threats instead of having an autolock feature. His copy ability is still here too and while it’s still too situational I didn’t find it AS pointless as before and it did eventually lead to some neat hidden extras. In the end though I still ended up sticking with Zero and X, not particularly because I found Axl bad or anything, he’s perfectly fine, I just happened to like what Zero and X can do more, and thankfully I can say that as Zero is nowhere near as clunky to use as last time. In fact, he gains some pretty crazy abilities to use that I might as well get into:

New to X8 is the chip system. Well, alright, a chip system in and of itself is not necessarily NEW for the X series, but the way it’s implemented here is. Chips in X8 sort of act as a mix of both temporary and permanent character upgrades: you can use them to get extra lives, subtanks, weapon tanks, and other extra items that you need to refill constantly once used up, but they’re also used to permanently upgrade a character’s health, weapons, and used to give characters additional perks as well. You can even give characters new weapons entirely, Zero in particular gets an assortment of completely bonkers weapons. The D Glaive has such a ridiculous range and was basically my go to pretty much any common enemy encounter and could even be used to cheese bosses. In order to equip chips though, you need to buy them with in game currency scattered throughout every stage no different from like, coins in Mario. You get them from killing enemies and can get a huge amount from finding hidden secret areas. You can even find rare metals in these secret areas which are used to unlock the more powerful upgrades you get for specific characters. I actually really like this addition, it feels very arcady in nature and offers a fun feedback loop of “killing things, getting things, upgrading things”, a solid sense of progression throughout the game. I almost ended up maxing out every character before the final fight, X being the only one I got to 100%. There are a lot of other extra things you can unlock with this system too, apparently you can unlock the navigators as playable characters which is a cute bonus. Speaking of navigators, alongside Alia, you get 2 other navigators alongside her, Pallete and Layer. Each of them specializes in different areas, Pallete specializing in finding secret areas and Layer focusing on a boss’s weakness and attacks. I actually really like this idea: I stuck with Pallete for the most part though if you don’t like any of them the game does give you the option to turn off navigators altogether which is much appreciated. Also, I don’t know where else to put this and this may be a hot take, but I think that they FINALLY made the ride armor unironically honest to god fun to use this time around. Ride armors in the previous titles felt very superfluous, it felt like they were supposed to be this “massive spectacle mash buttons and go crazy and kill everything” gameplay mechanic but they never felt good to use. Not least of which because controlling them felt clunky and unnatural with much of a pain it was to dash and dash jump, but the “powerhouse” aspect never felt fully realized both because they still felt somewhat fragile and blew up too quickly, and the attacks themselves not having a whole lot of oomph to them, X3 in particular decided that it would be a fantastic idea to lock pretty much all of its secret areas behind Ride Armors that never felt fun to use. Meanwhile in X8, as dumb as it is that you only can use the Ride Armor in a single stage and if you lose it, it’s gone for good unless you restart the stage entirely, the Ride Armor in X8 is by far the best Ride Armor in the entire series. You can dash basically forever by holding the button down and this dash can also kill enemies, you can hover for better platforming, you can airdash, the armor itself completely shrugs off weaker attacks making it truly FEEL like the “crazy strong powerhouse machine of death” that it was supposed to be, you can even jump on enemies and squish them to death. It’s just kinda a shame it took them like 8 games to make Ride Armors fun but I digress.

If I had to pin down what I didn’t like about X8 in a nutshell, it would be the level design. There are a select few stages that are fine at best, but most of them are either dull or completely obnoxious. I don’t know who exactly thought that Gigabolt Man O War’s stage was a good idea but both his and (to a lesser extent despite being much longer) Avalanche Yeti’s vehicle sections are genuinely terrible and drag on for an absolute eternity. Optic Sunflower’s stage feels like a giant drawn out gimmick, even if the Cutman easter egg was pretty cute. A whole lot of X8 is just enemy rooms, being stopped in a thin hallway needing to kill a specific number of enemies to proceed, I think this happens like every single stage too. I didn’t get much out of the boss fights either, if anything a lot of minibosses in the main stage were more irritating than the main bosses, Earthrock Trilobyte’s miniboss being a not so flattering standout. Vile sometimes appears randomly to attack you but he doesn’t even reward you with anything when you beat him, he just leaves. I don’t really get the point of his encounters. Burn Rooster’s stage consists of 3 drawn out incredibly mundane autoscrollers. Does that sound like fun to you? Also, while I praised the movement of X8 compared to X7, I HAAAATE how they gutted the dash in this game. In X4 to X6 (heck I think even X7 had this, it was just unnoticeable with how agonizingly slow the movement was), if you held the dash button down while jumping you could dash jump repeatedly which felt extremely fun and fluid to pull off consistently, in X8 it’s just…gone. The only way you’re gonna move faster is to spam the dash button over and over again, it’s such a jarring feeling game where some aspects feel tight while others feel completely gutted.

Megaman X8 comes so close to being a genuinely decent game, if it had a few tweaks to movement and better level design, I think it could likely be one of the best X entries in the entire series. The chip system is fun, the combat is back to being fluid, the new ideas it introduces gameplay wise are pretty good but the level design is just either too boring or too irritating for me to really get super invested. Not the worst, not the best, just kinda ok. With the X series over and done with, I now have to ask the very real unfortunate question –

WHAT AM I FIGHTING FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooor?

I guess in a way I can consider this another parallel to yet another franchise I’m fond of.

Pokémon Sword and Shield, despite releasing to critical acclaim of which I will never understand, were and still are incredibly shallow, boring, mediocre games in my eyes. They are the TEXTBOOK definitions of the term “going through the motions”, boring world and characters, a laughably bad story, an incredibly lame gimmick that adds nothing to the core of battling, a couple of potentially interesting new ideas that never once felt properly explored or fleshed out, (subjectively) pretty uninteresting Pokémon designs, a by the numbers INFURIATINGLY hand hold-y experience, immensely lackluster visuals and animations, it…pretty much ticked all the boxes. Now, saying this, I never really swore off Pokémon or anything crazy like that, I’m not that extreme, but what I was hoping for was something fresh in the future, something to really reinvigorate this otherwise stale yet functional formula. Now the thing is, did I EXPECT them to do this? Not in a million years, but after playing through Legends Arceus it was clear that Pokémon was experimenting and evolving in rather interesting ways, and I was very intrigued to find out what they had planned. That being said I…definitely did not expect this game to be the result, and to be honest it’s very complicated to discuss how I feel, but overall just on a general description I do believe I like Pokémon Violet. In fact, just thinking about the stuff I do like, it honest to god comes SCARILY close to being one of my all-time favorite Pokémon titles, but where do I feel it all comes together as a cohesive whole? That’s a far more complicated matter.

I figure I should start off with the things that I do end up liking. The first thing I should bring up are the characters. I love them. I honest to god love every single one of your classmate allies that accompany you in Violet, it’s like the friend group in X and Y but done a bajillion times better in every conceivable way. Even when separate from each other, I thought they were extremely likable. Nemona is a great friendly battle obsessive rival to pal around with (and she has a great reason WHY she’s incredibly passionate about battling you), Penny was really great too (albeit you don’t know much about her until the end of her side quest), and Arven especially good lord. I blew off his side quest for a hot second because I thought “making fun sandwiches” wasn’t exactly an enticing headline for a side quest, but as soon as I saw WHY he was doing this and how his relationship both with his Mabostiff and with the protagonist was genuinely so sweet (I liked that he calls her “little buddy” constantly lol it’s too cute), It became the one I ended up finishing first (and yeah the upgrades you get to Miraidon’s traversal mechanics are pretty worth it too). And then when they all come together in the end game as a group was a true highlight, I love their friendship with the protagonist and how they constantly bounce off each other, it’s not only incredibly endearing but it’s also super believable as well. I never expected to have characters THIS charming in Pokémon this soon after the assortment of nothingburgers in Sword and Shield but man I’m all for it. The story is also really good, it goes so incredibly bonkers crazy towards the end that it’s insane, and is honestly another reason to like Arven even more. I was admittedly slightly put off by the character models at first but I warmed up to them quickly and they actually each have a lot of expression to them. I was very pleased to see my character have a wide range of expressions on her face depending on what was happening in conversations around her in the story rather than just doing the Sun and Moon style “sinister smile of death” for 90% of the game’s runtime.

The main game setup is placing you in an open world and basically presenting you with 3 big side quests to tackle before the final section of the story starts. How you tackle these quests and in which order is entirely up to you, a nice change of pace from how railroaded the previous games have been. My playthrough was actually fairly difficult in a few select areas, but that’s mainly because I went “out of order” from the intended gyms and titan bosses as the game doesn’t level scale, which I don’t mind but I do wish the game had a better indication of which areas were more difficult so you could judge how to approach each gym/Team Star base/Titan Pokémon individually. I’d personally recommend doing the Titan quests first, or at the very least prioritizing them. Not least of which because Arven is a homie, but also because your ride Pokémon Miraidon gets some extensive upgrades to its traversal, basically becoming all of the ride Pokémon in Legends Arceus rolled into one (climbing, gliding, water traversal. speedy overworld travel), and I actually think Miraidon handles better here than the ride Pokémon did in Arceus (climbing especially is a vast improvement). The multiplayer aspect, though I didn’t get to experience a whole lot of it (my friend Lex helped me out in order to evolve Finizen to the funny superhero dolphin Pokémon Palafin since he can only evolve while leveling up in someone else’s game) but I’d imagine it’s a very fresh idea for Pokémon. Terastallizing is the new hot “gimmick” Violet introduces and at first glance before the game came out, I thought it was stupid. “Oh, the Pokémon get funny hats and become all crystally and get a lame power increase how exciting", but when I played the game I ended up loving Terastallizing more than any gimmick that the series has introduced, possibly maybe even more than Megas. Terastallizing basically makes a Pokémon change type, depending on what terra type they have (which can be changed later in the game), and the moves that shares the same type that the Pokémon terastallizes into become beefed up considerably. This has so much strategic fake out potential it’s kind of insane, immediately negating the weakness your Pokémon might’ve had while simultaneously powering up an attack you might’ve given it for such an occasion. It can even get rid of the potential weaknesses a dual type could possess; for example, Quaquaval is a water and fighting type and is weak to psychic, but during the battle against the psychic gym leader I was able to turn his type into pure water, eliminating his weakness and simultaneously boosting his already STAB boosted water attacks. This also worked against a particularly tough battle capping off the Team Star side story, terastallizing Ceruledge into a pure fire type to completely negate an otherwise devastating super effective Shadow Claw into just a typical damaging attack. It also allows for the Gym leaders to pull out a complete wild card Pokemon, completely different in typing to all the other Pokemon they have, and give it the typing all the others have via terastallizing. There are all sorts of creative combinations you could probably put together but by and large I really ended up liking this gimmick, more than I thought I would. My thought process is that if a gimmick in Pokémon affects the enjoyment you get from typical every day battling, it did a good job (see also: Strong and Agile style from Legends Arceus). The music is absolutely superb, probably one of my favorite soundtracks in all of Pokémon which was quite a surprise considering I don’t really…enjoy Pokémon music much but the songs in this game were great. The gym leader music progressing for every Pokémon sent out was a particular highlight, and even some of the wild Pokémon themes slapped. I won’t spoil the ending area but it was a particular standout, not just story wise but aesthetic wise too it was really cool, reminds me a bit of the Distortion World and what we could’ve gotten if we had a Platinum remake on the level of openness as this, but alas. I also managed to really like a lot of the Pokémon designs this time around, my team consisting of basically nothing BUT new mons (Quaquavel, Ceruledge, Garganacl, Palafin, Espartha, and Tinkaton).

There are some minor problems I have unfortunately. I don’t like what they did to buildings in this game, there’s practically no houses to enter considering all the shops and whatnot are relegated to menus only. It doubly sucks since the towns in this game are super cool in design, like I want to actually EXPLORE these locations. The customization options are kind of half baked, I mean the game gives you a ridiculous amount of options to choose from when it comes to customizing your face, hair, alongside an assortment of clothing items: shoes, gloves, glasses, hats, etc. (My character ended up being somewhat of a hat connoisseur with how many hats she owned lol.) The main problem is that you’re stuck with 4 school uniforms and nothing else. I kiiiiinda understand why they went through with this but it’s still very underwhelming with how many other options the game presents you with otherwise. The world itself is also still somewhat lacking I would say. I think it’s better than Arceus’s vistas but we still don’t have any true interesting dungeons or other sort of cool mini side deals like contests or the movie studio in BW2, maybe some day we’ll get there I suppose. Also, I appreciate making the Pokémon look more “to scale” in the open world fields but the small Pokémon were pretty irritating with how frequently I ran into them with how hard they are to see. But these are just minor complaints thus far, and unfortunately, I feel it’s time to address the elephant in the room.

Let’s just get this out of the way: on a technical level these games are unmitigated DISASTERS. These games don’t just struggle to run, they struggle to even maintain a slightly brisk jog. At BEST the game hovers around the low 20fps or so region and it only goes downhill from there. The game constantly stutters and lags all over the place, most of the time you feel like you’re playing the game in slow motion. It’s genuinely one of the worst performing Switch games I have ever seen on this system, and I’ve seen the first port of Ark Survival Evolved for God’s sake. Now, one could argue that for an RPG the bad performance doesn’t matter much, and to SOME degree sure, like when you’re actually in battles and only worry about menus and whatnot then it’s not really much of an issue, but when you’re just walking around or riding around on Miraidon it just doesn’t feel good to do at all. But the terrible framerate is just one thing, the visuals are another. Toward the beginning of the game where Nemona and my character climbed the lighthouse and she showed her the area of Paldea, she exclaimed that the region contains “beautiful nature stuff as far as the eye can see!”, while not so flatteringly the game showcased primitive rock formations with unappealing muddy textures so proudly front and center. Violet, despite being the company’s 4th installment on this system, somehow manages to look even WORSE than Arceus in terms of environmental design, and Arceus wasn’t even good looking either. Textures are either so blurry and muddy that they’re hard to make out or they’re just tiled and repeated endlessly in a rather tacky garish fashion, the pop in is atrocious with Pokémon only seeming to blip into view when you get right next to them, the camera can constantly clip through the ground revealing the endless void below the world, both NPC and object animation have terrible reduced animation rate issues relative to distances, oftentimes you see trainers and other NPCs just sorta flickering into existence until you get really close to them, the lighting is all over the place, there’s no anti-aliasing at all which leads to a jittery looking image. This isn’t even going over the dozens of game breaking bugs and crashes I’ve been seeing other people have (I’ve only ever had one crash myself, haven’t encountered the ridiculous bugs I’ve seen people post online). It’s bad, it’s REALLY bad. It feels as if they used every single trick in the book possible to try and cut back on visual quality to improve performance to such an extreme degree, and yet the game STILL runs horribly. However, for once I don’t necessarily blame the Switch for these grievances. Yes, I have constantly trash talked the Switch hardware on numerous occasions, and for good reason, but here I don’t think it’s just because of the Switch that this game looks and runs as poorly as it does. The Switch has put together some genuinely impressive open world titles relative to its hardware: Xenoblade Chronicles is an obvious example but even Breath of the Wild, a Switch LAUNCH title that was also released on the Wii U looks way better than Violet. This absolutely stinks of rushed development and crunch, no doubt with how many Pokémon games TPC are forcing Gamefreak to make every single year, but it also sucks because the games are selling like hotcakes so it’s not like they have a reason to drastically overhaul their tech or change their release schedule.

It’s because of these issues that I can’t in good conscience give this game anything above 3.5 stars. There’s no excuse for something that runs and looks this bad. Though don’t misunderstand me, technical problems aside, I still had a great time with Violet. If this game ran and looked better than it does, it would easily catapult itself up to being one of my favorite titles in the entire series and I’m not even kidding; the characters are extremely likable, the story is great, the Pokémon are great, terastallizing is a fresh and interesting gimmick that adds to the experience instead of just being a “making things easier” button, but the horrific performance problems are simply too great to ignore. Trust me though, if this were like, Sword and Shield’s story characters and overall game design coated in Violet’s technical problems, this game wouldn’t even get above 1 star let alone 3.5. That speaks to how great the underlying design is. If you can try and put up with the technical problems or if, somehow, these issues never once bother you ever for any reason, you’ll have a great time no doubt.

TLDR: this is a really great Pokémon title with great ideas but it’s also coated in a thick moldy layer of crust.

The backloggd tagline for this game is certainly accurate alright. We sure have waited long enough for this game, I think almost 5 years judging by the date of the initial reveal teaser. Come October 2022, all the many excruciating years of waiting and coping with "there is no news" memes had finally come to a close. Although not necessarily helping things is the major voice acting controversy that came towards the tail end of the game's release, with the original Bayonetta voice actress Helena Taylor...basically lying saying she was getting paid for much less than usual. I never really got around to playing and finishing this until a few months after launch (I had too many games on backlog to finish that I was more interested in playing), which is...notably bizarre. Bayonetta is one of my favorite franchises...EVER. Why would I ever want to hold off on playing the long awaited 3rd entry in this franchise? Maybe it was all the controversies surrounding the VA and even the story that deterred me from playing at least somewhat.

I mean if we're gonna start off this review talking about the story, I don't really have much to say on this matter...or, wait, actually I do. It sucks. In fact, I would go as far as to say it REALLY sucks, and part of that reason is because it's just so...boring and repetitive. You see the same sort of things play out over and over again, Singularity is a forgettable villain with not much to his motivations outside of "I'm bad and I want to destroy da world", a lot of big reveals and dramatic revelations ring incredibly hollow because you don't really care about what's going on, and there are even issues I have beyond that. Bayo's personality herself is so much...lesser than what it was in 1 and 2, and idk how much of this is just because "oh we're playing a different Bayo from a different Universe" or whatever. And yeah...a big part of that is the acting. Look, I know Helena is never ever ever ever ever going to come back, she screwed over her own chances basically permanently. And I think Jennifer Hale does a decent enough job playing Bayo, she has a couple of cool deliveries and she'll only get better and more experienced with time, but that's the problem. Currently it just sounds like she's PLAYING a character instead of BEING a character. There's so much confident playfulness and energy in Helena's performance that's just not here at all, it feels empty. I do like Viola a whole lot though. Maybe not so much them shoehorning her to ||REDACTED|| but I just love her goofball dorky personality and her voice actress did a great job with her too. There are some good highlights that put a smile on my face, either for the sake of zany silliness or the overall hype factor of "WTF WHAT JUST HAPPENED", but these moments should be just that: moments. Things to supplement what should've been an otherwise engaging narrative. I mean I know Bayonetta stories don't exactly have a good pedigree, but man at the very least I actually KINDA felt something with the previous 2 stories, this story had me feeling empty and devoid of interest. Overall though the story was just mostly boring and repetitive fluff that also managed to piss off a lot of fans for a multitude of reasons. Maaaaaaybe later games can correct, fix or "explain" to try and help the events of 3's story seem less bleh, but at this point I just want a story I can get invested in, and this fails to deliver on almost all fronts.

But of course, Bayonetta excels as a game first and foremost. So how exactly does this element hold up? To tell you the truth it's somewhat...mixed. For one I can say I appreciate how fresh and innovative this game is, it feels less like a tired sequel just doing its thing and going through the motions, it feels like there was a genuine effort to reinvent the wheel and see how many new ways they can improve the game, it's just that not all of it works. I mean, if we're talking raw combat, it's arguably the best this franchise has seen thus far. You once again have a multitude of attacks at your disposal (honestly to an overwhelming degree), with all sorts of heavy finishers, launchers, ground to air combos, combos with special properties, pause delayed combos, etc. Witch Time is back to how it was in Bayo 1, enemies behave better than 2 so no more of that pesky permablocking out of your attacks, and good lord the weapon variety is out of this world. You get stuff like a spinning fire yo yo, a microphone stand that can give you stat buffs temporarily, a magician hat and wand that can do literal magic tricks, razor sharp fans and even a chainsaw that looks like a choo choo train...a trainsaw, if you will. There's so much crazy variety to the combos you can pull off, even if you can't equip different parts to your hands and feet anymore, they're more so just static weapon sets you switch between. Demon masquerade is the first new mechanic introduced and it's basically just the different wicked weaves like before, though instead of summoning the limbs of a demon to initiate the finisher, Bayo transforms into a demon to perform the finisher herself. The main difference lies in the different forms of traversal. Personally I thought the butterfly form's glide and dash were all I needed but I really liked swinging on the spider form like a grotesque Spider-Woman, and seeing Bayo dress up as a half demon conductor half train hybrid was equal parts disturbing and hilarious. All this is great and all but unfortunately, much like DMC4, good combat alone is not enough to prop up an entire campaign: there has to be good elements around it to make the package a cohesive highlight.

The second new mechanic is Demon Slave, Bayonetta literally controls the Infernal Demons directly like a puppetmaster and has them fight the enemy directly. Bayonetta herself is completely vulnerable to attacks while she dances to control them. This gameplay mechanic is not something I enjoy, even in this game. Like, I do think it's more fun and is better handled than V's gameplay in DMC5, and there are some neat quirks to it like being able to cancel out of it entirely to swap back and forth, and even the ability to queue up attacks while you use Bayo herself, but fundamentally I don't think controlling someone else to attack for you has ever once felt right, especially in a game like this. It feels incredibly sluggish, disjointed and honestly somewhat disorienting, because you're not the one initiating these attacks directly, you have someone else do it. There is some cool interplay you can do with Bayo's standard combat arsenal and Demon Slave, how you can use DS to stun otherwise giant heavy enemies unaffected by Bayo herself, and by doing so you can seamlessly launch and juggle them as normal Bayo. There's a lot of crazy creative setups by people pushing to be Donguri level MLG pro at this game which is great, and you can even use the summons as a secondary finish with Wink Slave, something introduced in Astral Chain a while back. The problem is that the game...doesn't really WANT you to do this. The scoring system is so heavily skewered to you spamming Demon Slave to get a platinum or above, and that just isn't fun. When I'm busy styling on regular common enemies with different weapon switches and maybe an infernal summon startup combo every now and then, only to be greeted by a gold medal because I didn't use the giant monsters enough, I start to get deflated. On top of this, the camera stays locked where Bayonetta is so trying to figure out what direction these big lugs are facing even further complicates things, particularly an annoyance with the Umbran Clock Tower.

Speaking of the camera...jeez louise guys, what happened here? It's so easy for the camera to be lost or obscured by basically everything, because the game constantly has you fight enemies that fill up the entire screen and has you fight them with allies that...ALSO fill up the entire screen. Everything becomes far too cluttered and unintelligible far too often. What's worse, you can also get completely blindsided by something OFF SCREEN. This is just baffling to me considering that this WASN'T an issue in the previous 2 games, because they did the DMC thing where enemies stop attacking when they're off camera, but here I guess they just forgot?

Viola is the new playable character, and while she is fun (her katana is satisfying to use), she feels less like a unique character and more so just a slightly different Bayonetta. To bring up an analogy, Nero in DMC4 and 5 had things that separated him from Dante, not only did he have his buster and devil bringer as an enemy grapple and shield breaking attack (and in 5 he has the breakers that each have different abilities), but he ALSO had Red Queen's unique properties of having every attack have different stages of "charge" you could rev up mid combo that changed how they executed. The problem with Viola is that Bayonetta can do...pretty much everything Viola can already do. A fast slashing weapon? She has that. You can charge it for more damage? She has that too. Parry for Witch Time? There's an accessory. A single demon summon? Bayo has like 15 of em and can swap between 3 equipped demons seamlessly. The most unique thing about Viola is her faerie form (which is somewhat different than the standard super attack Bayo can perform) and the fact that her one demon, Cheshire, attacks automatically; Viola doesn't control him. Meaning she can actually attack independently while Cheshire does his own thing, albeit she fights bare handed without her katana. I kinda like this idea, and barring wink slave I do wish you could have more interplay with Cheshire in general.

This game's structure is largely the same, chapter based point A to point B levels with verses to be graded on to evaluate the chapter's overall performance, but this time they decided to make the levels absolutely ENORMOUS. Most of this was done to accommodate for Demon Slave but this unfortunately has a negative impact on traversal as levels take too long to meander through and finish. There's a surplus of extra stuff to find per usual: Niflheim portals, Umbran tears of blood (this time as different animals than just crows), treasure chests full of either witch hearts or moon pearls, hidden verses containing fights against the usual Angel enemies (because screw it, they aren't doing anything in this story) or Bayo 2's demons, there are even some hidden platforming challenges that, while I would normally appreciate, they feel awkward to execute because of how they changed the traversal mechanics from Bayo 1 and 2 to 3. Eventually though, I just stopped caring about any of it and just wanted to get a move on, there's no good reason why these places are so unnecessarily huge, it's just a hassle to simply explore because if you do so then you waste like 30 or so minutes when you're not even halfway done with a chapter.

There's also an important disclaimer I'd like to give you: if you're a fan of Kamiya inserting wacky gimmicky minigames or alternate playstyles, then you're going to LOVE this game because Kamiya's nonsense is practically nonstop all throughout. Jeanne has entirely 2D stealth sections, there's a minigame where you play a 2D, 3D AND a top down shootemup section all in one go, you ride on spiraling rooftops, you ride on a train to shoot down enemies, you play as a giant demon that pierces the clouds and then proceeds to use the clouds to...blow bubbles to trap enemies in them, you get a rhythm minigame and even a giant rock paper scissors kaiju boxing match, it's flat out unrelenting. I find Kamiya's typical nonsensical distractions to be charming at best (that one motorcycle ride in Bayo 1), annoying at worst (Bayo 1 Space Harrier and the DMC1 underwater shooting sections), and Bayo 3's are mostly ok I find. Though because of these constant distractions the entire game feels somewhat uneven as the game throws everything and the kitchen sink at you, but if you're a fan of these, you'll have a good time.

Visually Bayonetta 3 is...decent. That's the best I can come up with it. The backgrounds are vast and full of eye candy but the areas are super dull and muted, not to the degree of Bayonetta 1 but it's nowhere NEAR as vibrant and full of color and detail that 2 has. The textures are dodgy, and this game doesn't run particularly amazingly. It's not like, Bayo 1 on PS3 levels of unplayable, most of the time it FELT like it got close to 60fps, but the moments when the game does chug and slow down are frequent and super apparent (love having this franchise locked on the Switch yessirrrrrrr :DDDD). I do love the enemy designs though, they're super creative and detailed, even if it means that a lot of the attacks the big homunculi enemies have just sorta blend together. The music is phenomenal though, chock full of original bangers and AMAZING remixes of classic Bayo tunes. Might actually be my favorite of the entire series. Not even kidding.

Overall though, while this is definitely a good game unquestionably, I can't help but feel disappointed by Bayonetta 3. The story being as bad as it is would be one thing but I've grown sorta numb to Bayo's stories so I'm not super angry at it. While the gameplay is tight and tries to innovate with so many different interesting ideas, so many of these ideas feel annoying or half baked, like they threw darts at a dart board to see what sticks and went "sure why not, put that in there". This is unfortunately the weakest game in the series for me. This game is good, again don't misunderstand me, I still had a pretty good time playing it, but since I consider the other 2 games to be absolute masterclasses when it comes to action games, having this one just be "good" is kind of a major step back for a franchise as wild as Bayonetta. After the upcoming release of Cereza and the Lost Demon, I can only wonder what they'll do for the franchise going forward, and if we'll have to wait like 5+ years again for it to come out. Time will truly tell.

The shadow remains cast.

January has barely just ended and I already have a potential GOTY candidate right off the bat. Hopefully the rest of the year will follow suit lol

There’s an argument to be had with EA as a whole when discussing this game, and I feel there’s two different sides to this issue. On the one hand, yes, EA is the main culprit in why Dead Space degraded and eventually stopped by the 3rd entry, they’re the ones who killed off Visceral games, and on TOP of that, the only reason this remake was made in the first place was only because “horror is popular now and the REmakes were popular so let’s just capitalize on that trend”. I get why people are turned off from that kinda practice and why they wouldn’t want to play or support something like that, but on the OTHER hand, the team and the devs behind the remake are so lovingly passionate about the franchise and what they do. They clearly care about and are huge fans of the source material, and were super open to feedback during development, implementing changes that people wanted to see and offering tons of open insight during the aforementioned developmental process. And…man I think the result payed off ten fold. It’s one of those instances where the passion and love of the devs creates an amazing product that I can, maybe not IGNORE the practices of an awful company, but it no less doesn’t change my feelings on an absolutely incredible remake.

In all honesty this basically surpasses the original in every conceivable category. The obvious being visuals and atmosphere, where as the lot of the the original game was…extremely bright in lighting a lot of times, a ton of areas in the remake are very VERY dark and hard to see through and I LOVE that, it makes walking through the Ishimura’s hallways rooms and corridors that much more tense; you never really know what’s gonna pop out at you in the inky blackness, with nothing but a couple of flickering lights and your own flashlight to guide you. Combine this with the game occasionally dropping in an enemy at random in an area I backtrack to, or just spooking me with a vent exploding or some other muffled mysterious noise playing in the distance, it’s a great system that constantly kept me on my toes for basically the entire duration of the campaign. Of course, the visuals themselves are absolutely stellar but that’s to be expected with a remake that came out basically 15 years after the original game, but man the remake is super impressive in terms of sheer detail, it runs smooth as butter (basically a locked 60fps on Series X in performance mode), the particle effects are top notch (I especially love the electric sparks and how they realistically bounce off of other objects, even Isaac himself), and hoo boy the sound design. Not only do the weapons pack more of a satisfying crunch, but it also enhances the aforementioned excellent atmosphere, as sounds behind doors become muffled, and sounds across hallways, rooms, or corners bounce and echo in a more unnervingly realistic manner. Even something as subtle as Isaac’s suit having frost accumulate from the cold vacuum of space and then immediately melting when returning inside, leaving visible mosture all over his suit is appreciated. The only thing I would say I’m not a fan of is Isaac’s new face, but I eventually got used to it and it is apparently based off of the voice actor for Isaac, Gunner Wright.

Speaking of Gunner, Isaac is actually voiced in this game unlike the original, something I also see as a vast improvement over the original game. I’m gonna be honest I never understood why people preferred Isaac being mute than speaking in the original Dead Space, for multiple reasons. Not only is Gunner Wright amazing at what he does and is so iconic as Isaac’s voice, but on a narrative level having Isaac be mute made a lot of story driven aspects come off as unbelievably weak, and some elements just didn’t work at all. The game desperately tried to pull at our heart strings with visions of Isaac’s girlfriend and tried to make us feel sorry for him, but it fell completely flat because Isaac was a mute character with zero personality, zero characterization, and with zero reaction to anything happening around him. As Yahtzee Croshaw once said, it’s like trying to feel sorry for a brick because its brick children never write it letters. On top of that, mute Isaac never speaking meant that a lot of dialogue was just reserved for video calls of Kendra and Hammond butting in to boss you around and tell Isaac where to go as Isaac just unquestionably obeys like an obedient dog, bicker at each other for way too often or to…give you the solution to puzzles you need to solve lol. Isaac actually reacting to what’s happening around him and Nicole herself leads the story to be a lot more engaging as a result. I’ve heard people say that being mute gives a better sense of isolation and atmosphere but I couldn’t disagree more, because while the idea works in principle your comm buddies constantly chatting and arguing kinda already ruined that sense of isolation in the first game anyway, and besides that Isaac in the remake only speaks when spoken to by his crewmates, and in game he’s even less chatty than, say, Leon in the RE2 remake, and as far as I’m aware that game pulled off atmosphere and the feeling of isolation and fear pretty dang well, you don’t really NEED a silent protagonist to pull this off. Here, Isaac actually has legitimate conversations with his two crewmates and they’re actually kinda likable now, especially Kendra Daniels near the end with how she still has a lot of respect for Isaac. Isaac doesn’t just follow orders no questions asked, he instead suggests ideas HIMSELF and follows through with them, no matter what. Characters who were just one note audio log fodder in the original game now play actually fairly clever and integral parts in the remake’s narrative. Mercer is a lot more threatening and menacing than he ever was in the original, Elizabeth Cross plays a great roll too, there are even some references to other Dead Space games to more naturally tie the games together in a cohesive fashion (when I heard the audio log between Nicole and Isaac that was from the beginning of Dead Space 2 I literally enacted the “guy pointing at the TV” meme irl). I haven’t gotten to the alternate ending yet at the time of this writing as to not spoil myself but it also apparently better ties into Dead Space 2 more naturally. There are even subtle showcases of personality throughout, particularly with Isaac. I remember the scene where he has the captain turning into a Necromorph right on top of his body, and his quick thinking and improvisational nature ends up saving his life. I just really really enjoy what they did with the story so much man. That final line of dialogue from Isaac when facing off against the final boss goes so incredibly raw: “COME ON THEN, ‘CAUSE THIS IS ALL I GOT LEFT!!”

Narrative and visuals aren’t the only thing the remake manages to improve either. Instead of a linear stage to stage sort of structure, the Ishimura is now this completely seamless fully explorable location. You can backtrack anywhere you want, and later throughout the story you’re definitely encouraged to do so with a vastly improved map system and the new security clearance feature, granting Isaac access to specific rooms containing extra goodies so long as your security clearance is at a high enough level (which you get throughout the story, and if you collect all the missing rigs you even get a master security clearance). Not gonna lie though it’s honestly kinda weird seeing how there are now no lockers in the entire game that are inaccessible, with a high enough clearance every single locker and storage area in the Ishimura is ripe for the picking. There are even side quests that, while neat and does contain extra story bits for further context to specific characters, feels more like a feature added at the last possible second considering how little side quests there actually are. There’s an insane attention to detail with these too, I remember doing the side mission where Isaac discovers who the Hunter necromorph originally was, and when he eventually killed him, he mourned him by name. However, if you didn’t clear this side quest, Isaac will have no idea who he initially was and basically just goes “good riddance stay dead” when he kills him, it’s stuff like this that showcases how much effort was put in with this remake as a whole. Even with all these features, backtracking never became dull due to the vastly improved atmosphere and the randomized encounter system, it’s actually pretty naturally integrated into the game. This also makes the Ishimura feel more alive (despite the circumstances) than ever before, an actual ship with reasonable locations rooms and routes to take instead of a series of spooky video game levels. There’s also a lot of subtle touches that add onto the already tense atmosphere, the way Isaac’s heart rate starts to audibly rise as he encounters disturbing scenes or after a combat encounter, the way his voice delivery changes and becomes more strained and exhausted during dialogue scenes depending on how much damage he’s taken, it’s all great stuff.

General gameplay was also greatly enhanced. The new “peeling” system during combat is not only a visual treat on a technical and a cathartic level when shooting the limbs off necromorphs, but it also serves gameplay purposes too. It indicates the “health” of a necromorph or the limb of one, when all the skin, tissue and muscle is peeled off, all that’s left is the bone, indicating low HP. Necromorphs that are visually stripped to the bone are on the verge of death, and certain weapons either benefit from this change entirely or were reworked to take even better advantage of this system. The flamethrower went from one of the most pointless weapons in all of the Dead Space franchise, to a weapon I basically had on me at all times, if not for the new flesh melting properties it now possessed, but for the incredibly useful alternate fire which walls off and separates enemies with a literal firewall. All of the weapons are back to being incredibly fun and destructive tools (well, except for the pulse rifle. I still never really got anything out of it aside from the alt fire, sorry 😢) and the other mechanics also got a significant upgrade. Kinesis is back to being as satisfying as it was in Dead Space 2, and they even managed to bring back the special upgrades from 2, though now EVERY weapon gets multiple special upgrades and there are no longer empty node spaces: every node contributes to upgrading your RIG, your weapons, everything. The zero gravity sections are full 360 flight again also like 2, unlike the incredibly clumsy somewhat frustrating and disorienting “jump from this wall to that wall” system the first game had. Some sections that flat out sucked in the original game are either scrapped or completely reworked altogether; for example that godawful turret section where you shoot asteroids is now replaced with a spacewalk where you sync your aim with the ADS defense cannons to blast meteors. It’s miles better in comparison sure, but it felt too short to have an impact on me…until I found out that it was brought back AGAIN later on in the game as a defense against the returning Leviathan boss, where you need to use the synced cannons to blast its weak points all while avoiding its attacks by using Zero G to duck under or float over them, as well as manage oxygen due to being in the vacuum of space, it was a truly fantastic highlight of this game. In all honesty, part of the reason I didn’t jive super well with the original is because I played Dead Space 2 first, and going back to the first game’s clunkier slower paced mechanics wasn’t exactly flattering. It’s like playing Arkham City first and then going back to Arkham Asylum: it’s still a fun game but it’s not a favorable comparison if you ask me. Sticking the improvements 2 made in the first game on top of all the reworked/enhanced features already introduced was just the cherry on top of the cake. I was also thrilled to see a New Game + feature come back because jeez louise when’s the last time a modern AAA game offered any sort of replayability at all instead of being a deflated one and done experience? There’s even extra things to look out for in New Game +, such as hidden Marker fragments that grant you the aforementioned alternate ending, as well as the chance to fully max out your arsenal.

I guess the only REAL gripe I have with this remake is the bugs which, yeah there’s a bit too much for my liking. Most of it is harmless goofy physics bugs, bodies and corpses spasming out against a wall because they were shoved in incorrectly and whatnot, it’s harmless and funny and basically what’s kinda to be expected about a game with a physics based system like Kinesis. Less flattering are the crashes…ok well, it’s not TECHNICALLY crashes but it’s just as irritating. At completely random points throughout my playthrough the game would abruptly and in a rather glitchy fashion cut immediately to a black screen, and afterwards bring up a loading screen that never actually loaded anything, forcing me to exit the game and reboot it. It didn’t happen super frequently and the game was incredibly generous with checkpoints so I never had to redo a huge chunk of game I already did but it was still largely frustrating. I have no idea what causes this issue but I’m hoping this gets patched out/fixed eventually. It’s primarily because of this reason that I won’t touch impossible difficulty at the moment because I’m afraid all my progress will be erased because of sheer dumb luck. There’s also still the issue of areas looking too homogenous and samey but I also realize that it’s kinda the point due to the fact that the Ishimura is a (rather old in terms of in game canon) mining ship and not a sprawling city like Titan Station.

(Quick edit: I have now beaten impossible mode and have gotten all achievements. I have officially entered the epic gamer club now)

If you couldn’t tell already, I absolutely adore this game, it’s an absolute master class in terms of remakes. It’s faithful enough to not feel alienating (haha get it) to people who truly enjoyed the original, and yet it’s also fresh and innovative enough to improve nearly every element possible and offer surprises at every turn. The visuals, gameplay, and even the story have received significant boosts across the board. After experiencing this, I absolutely SALIVATE at the thought of this incredibly talented team to remake Dead Space 2 and what they could possibly do to make that game even more amazing than it already is, and there’s also the huge untapped potential of a remake of 3 down the line. Whatever the case may be, I’m so looking forward to it.

This game has officially made me whole.

Erm…well THAT just happened!!!

Played and completed the demo so my experience will be based on that because I am NEVER spending $70 on this game lmao. Not least of which is because I don’t have a PS5 nor do I ever plan on getting one, but also because the game runs like crap on my PC (I cranked the resolution down to 720p and it still stuttered like crazy) and the game itself is very…blah. Combat is actually kiiiinda fun with the different spells you can mix together, but it’s also pretty easy to kill things and lacks any satisfying crunch + enemies barely react to your attacks at all nor do they really try to attack you. Parkour is kinda fun but it‘s mechanically shallow and the game performs most of it for you as you automatically vault over obstacles, there’s very little skill expression to be found outside of the context sensitive grapple pull. The world itself is pretty boring, the most lifeless and generic grass forest wasteland I have ever seen in a video game, barring like one or 2 setpieces, and the dialogue that comes out of Frey’s mouth makes me want to die. It’s not overly offensive like I thought it was gonna be but I’m also positive I’ve seen everything the game has to offer in one fell swoop.

It sucks because like, I loved the slick presentation and polish on display, and I was down for a Smash clone staring WB characters but this is a mess. It’s unfathomably grindy to unlock anything in this game because guess what, free to play baybeee!!! And on top of that the actual fighting mechanics feel so sluggish and disjointed. Characters have like 15 billion abilities to memorize that cause different effects that you ALSO have to memorize, a sort of fun easy to understand simplicity to the actual fighting mechanics that was completely lost compared to Smash bros. I put it down after a few hours and sadly I don’t think I’ll return to this any time soon

Also my homeboys Grizz Panda and Ice Bear are nowhere to be seen, make them playable you cowards!