I'm not well versed in the Thief modding scene and only played Thief 2X before (guess I'm drawn to full campaigns instead of single missions) but I can confidently say that this is a great Thief mod. I'd be shocked if many fan missions are better than the ones in this 10-Level campaign.

I was constantly blown away by the sheer size and details of pretty much every mission. I unironically whispered "holy shit" numerous times when opening a door and being hit by another huge place I was about to explore.

If you're a fan of the original two Thief games you owe it to yourself to play this. It's at least on par with the main games, if not better.

Huge respect to the modders who must have spent countless hours crafting this amazing campaign.

Really fun 3D platformer which have gotten fairly rare these days. The comparison to Medievil seems obvious, but it's way less of a puzzle game and more focused on pure platforming and fighting.

The controls are pretty responsive and the level design fairly good, but it starts getting a little stale towards the end. Luckily the game is very short, so it isn't really an issue.

The fights are probably the weakest part since they mostly consist of spamming the attack button and occasionally dodge and it's almost funny how many weapons they added to this game. It's pretty pointless tbh.

The bosses were really creative and well designed though. I would recommend it if you're into PS2 style platformers.

It's fiiiiine. I'm not huge on the artstyle, but the soundtrack is great and I enjoyed the Kingdom Battle - type of combat quite a bit ... until I didn't.

Playing on hard, I still felt like the game started to get really stale. Only being able to use three units, all of them having very samey moves and enemies not really demanding any special treatment made the missions feel very repetitive. It mostly just boiled down to Garu them out of cover, shooting them with a once more to walk even further and then try to abuse the all-out attack which does massive damage.

Cover protecting characters despite flanking them took away lots of tactical depth in my opinion and characters regenerating so much after every battle made the sheer amount of reserve units pretty much useless.

The story didn't quite captivate me either. I enjoyed the newly introduced characters, but it all felt like "been there, done that" ... I caught myself not really being able to pay attention to the dialogue at some point because I just wanted to play the next mission already.

Some kind of meta game (something akin to Xcoms base building, research etc.) probably would've helped to make the game more engaging for me, but as it is it simply grab me enough to justify putting that much time into it. It does have it's qualities, but I'd rather play the second Mario & Rabbids or the Donkey Kong DLC I never touched instead.

My suspicions got confirmed after this replay ... I vastly prefer the original game. The game has a way better pacing and I was never bored playing it, while I was happy when the remake was over. (Though that final chapter is still a bit lame, but whatever) It took me 2,5 hours longer to beat the remake and that's despite me doing none of the sidequests, which are a horrible addition as far as I'm concerned.

Visibility is way stronger here. In the remake the constant darkness and really busy design of the Ishimura sometimes made it hard to tell where to go and where the enemies currently are. You can definitely call this a me problem and I wouldn't contest it, but in the remake I often lost orientation. Especially in the middle of battles.

I played both games on the same difficulty setting and while I would say that the new version is more challenging, it's for the wrong reasons. The amount of shots basic enemies take is pretty annoying, while here enemies die fairly quickly and the challenge results from positioning and having your weapons ready in time. Just like the story, I never really felt like I want battles to be over, because they never hindered my progress too long.

I also prefer silent Isaac ... Which is probably an unpopular opinion, but I think it adds to the atmosphere. Since I really did not care for the Zero G stuff in the remake I prefer the more limited approach in the original as well.

I will say that the remake had better balancing. The original game threw tons of ressources at me. I sold so much ammo and other stuff and often could not carry all the stuff I found. While in the remake this rarely happened to me. Also having to open the inventory to check your ammo is an unnecessary extra step, though you could argue it adds a realistic layer to combat of counting your bullets and not having a perfect overview of your ammo.

So yeah, whatever. Had way more fun with the original version, both version are readily available, play whatever you prefer. Stay hydrated.

I dunno guys, I liked the campaign ... The approach to not make every mission a linear movie set you have to follow but instead making you play an entire open roam mission where you need to gather equipment yourself is pretty nice. It probably helps to play on the hardest setting, because it helps making encounters actually threatening. You really need to play somewhat consistent to not repeat multiple minutes of gameplay.

The linear missions were standard CoD fare ... Not bad, not particularly good either. Enjoyable enough, though.

I only played a little of Zombie, but it seemed pretty fun, but I'm hardly an expert in that regard.

Lots to love here ... Really enjoyed the game's combat system, the music and the storyline with it's stylized cutscene that heavily reminded me of the MGS games on the same system.

However, it suffers a little from the sheer amount of fights that start to become old due to the A.I. not being particularly smart and random encounters being too easy. Also the slow walking speed and how hard it is to avoid enemies on the street makes traversal a bit tedious. Doesn't help that most of the side content isn't particularly good either.

I really enjoyed unlocking new fighting styles and leveling them up though. It's something I would've loved back in the day on a proper PSP when I was still aching for grindy games that unlock more shit.

Definitely worth a playthrough if you're into Yakuza, but I wouldn't call it a "must play" either. Curious to see how the second one improves the formula, if at all.

I was actually shocked at how little I enjoyed the remake. And now I'm questioning if these games simply aren't for me anymore or if the remake's just straight up worse. It crashing three times and the boss not transitioning properly certainly didn't help.

The whole thing just felt like a braindead shooting gallery with samey enemies and environments. Exploration isn't fun and dumbed down by constantly following a literal line to the next objective and it's way too long. While the weapons are fun to use, lots of enemies just don't behave in an interesting way to make creative use of them all that enticing.

The original game was never scary and I genuinely never understood how one could think it is and the remake doesn't change that either. But at least I always enjoyed the gameplay back on PS3. I might go back and replay the original to solidify my thoughts because I'm confused rn.

I was afraid this would turn out to be a quick money grab. A DLC disguised as a full game to cash in. However, Gaiden turned out to be a surprisingly meaty game. It's hard to measure without just playing the story and nothing else, but to me it didn't feel that much shorter than Y1 or 6 did. Might not be true, but I can't say the story felt rushed or too short and I also didn't feel like it was lacking anything.

The side content did not provide much new, but instead brought back some classics like pool or darts. I did really like the coliseum and Joryu clan thing though and wish it went even deeper. Manually activating your companions skills would've been nice for instance.

The platinum trophy being so easily achievable might trick one to think it doesn't have much to offer, but realistically, if you played all the minigames to the same degree they want you to in the other games and demanding a legend run you'd easily reach 50 hours. By making the trophies easy this turned out to be a welcome breeze.

The new agent style was a really fun inclusion, though it only really starts making sense after purchasing a good amount of upgrades. For the majority of the game I just mainly used the Yakuza style. I'm still not the biggest fan of Dragon Engine combat but it is what it is. I never cared for these games for the combat.

The storyline managed to tell a compelling story that explains the events that lead to Kiryus appearance in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A timeframe that makes sense to explore and provides some additional context for the action of the Omi Alliance and Tojo Clan. The ending however was a serious gutpunch, carried by the performance of Kuroda. Couldn't help but shed some tears because of it. I feel like they made this story worth it.

As for the upcoming Infinite Wealth ... I'm really excited for it, but I wonder about Kiryus role in it. Definitely feels like they can't quite let the character go and while I do love him too, I really don't want them to ruin his storyline. But so far I have no reason to be doubting RGG.

A huge step-up from the first game. The added crouching and knocking on walls already give this a way more engaging stealth feel, but also the bigger levels, the radar and the different screens, guards can walk between, makes it feels way more like a huge place you're infiltrating.

The progression is not quite as cryptic as it was in Metal Gear 1 ... there were some instances where I looked at a guide real quick, but I'm confident you can beat this on your own without taking ages.

The keycard system luckily got a little better. There are now cards that combine multiple levels, so that you don't have to switch between all of them to try them out on a door. And generally the map/radar helps getting around the map a lot ... I never got lost, like I did in the first one. It's all really neat stuff.

Bosses are pretty well done in this game. Not all of them are great, but you can tell they tried to give all of them a unique gimmick and some of them require a specific strategy to overcome them. The Running Man in particular comes to mind. It's just a bit of a shame that the final onslaught of story-relevant bosses are kind of a cakewalk and especially the last one feels pretty lackluster in terms of gameplay.

The story still isn't nearly as intricate as they'll become later in the series, but there are a decent amount of twists and character moments and I'm pretty fond of the 4th wall breaks, even if they went a little overboard at times.

Good time, I can see myself replaying this one some time.

For what is essentially the very first stealth title on consoles, this is a pretty impressive game. There's lots of ingredients in here that became a staple not only in this series but in the genre as a whole.

However, it obviously isn't perfect. There's plenty of areas where stealth simply isn't possible and fire fights are forced on you. This can be fine, but triggering those without a warning is a bit off-putting. Alerts also don't always matter all that much ... Often you walk a few steps, enter a new screen and you're fine. Later MGS games do this too, but the small scale of a screen in this game makes this a bigger issue.

A way bigger problem is the progression, though. Freeing hostages for information or using your codec for instructions is a great feature, however it doesn't always work well enough to figure out the location of cryptically hidden items or the path forward. Having dozens of doors that need different keycards and don't show what level of keycard they need makes exploring a huge guessing game. Having to try out like 6 different keycards for some of the later doors to check if you even got the right one is dumb. At least let a higher leveled one open every lower level door too.

As for bosses ... They did a good job at making these very varied and they had some good ideas. The execution is just pretty lacking most of the time. The final boss in particular is very underwhelming.

What I find fascinating however, is how many ideas there are in this game, that later get reused. The keycard thing, getting captured and thrown into a cell, electric floors you have to deactivate with a remote missile, hallways filled with gas, lasers you have to spot with goggles, a Hind D boss, the "turn your console off" line ... All of that is already in here.

The storyline is very barebones, which might be surprising considering what franchise this is, but I suppose for the time this was normal. Some select moments are pretty cool though. Can't imagine many games having character lie to you to hinder your progress for example. That still isn't something that's happening all that much.

Last thing I would mention is the music. Not all of it is amazing, but overall there are quite a few catchy tracks in this. I caught myself humming along quite a bit.

So yeah, a decent Metal Gear prototype that only continues to be build upon. I'd say this is worth your 3-4 hours you'd invest in it, but definitely have a guide ready, or maybe just use maps. It makes it all more tolerable and fun.

This game reminded me a lot of the new Kirby in multiple ways. It's very creative, has lots of different ideas and variety, plays pretty well ... but it's also just way too easy for my taste. There is nothing particularly wrong with an easy game, but I think in a 2D platformer there should be some level of tension when trying to get through a level. Granted, this is mostly a problem of the badge system, since some of them are simply way too OP and I might try to play without them at some point, but ignoring a central mechanic like this to balance the game always feels wrong to me.

Anyway, rating is still pretty high for a reason. Had a good time with this. I really enjoyed the online aspect and interacting with other players and when getting 100% there are at least SOME levels that are quite demanding. Especially that final final test ...

The Wonder Flower thing is a pretty cool idea, but it also gets old after a while. I ended up not really caring much after a certain point and some just actively make the levels worse by making you invicible or some shit. I preferred the ones where the levels go crazy instead of transforming your character.

Really good game, not sure if it's my favorite Mario overall, but time will tell.

After feeling a little mixed on the first one, I went into the sequel with lower expectations. A bit afraid of more slow pacing and drawn out jury segments. However, Resolve proved me wrong.

The way the whole overarching storyline comes together in this one is simply amazing. Each case in this game is at least good and escalates to great. The last three episodes are all top-notch.

I still felt a little downtime in some parts and despite loving Herlock Sholmes, I don't really care for the detective sequences that don't really require much thinking but overall the pacing felt way more smooth in this game, despite having insanely long cases at times.

Also really fell in love with the cast of characters and will miss them.

As a console player for most of my life it feels a little wrong to admit it, but Deus Ex feels like a swan song of the big PC era, which eventually had to bow down to the 'consolization' of the industry. You can tell this simply by looking at the sequel and how much more simplistic it had to be, to be released anywhere other than PC.

The third Thief and especially Bioshock and it's huge success hammered this home. Complex systems, player agency and open level design aren't what most people are looking for, and instead a cool setting and twist is enough apparantly. And I can't deny that I was one of those people who loved Bioshock around it's release. Granted, I WAS a pure console player at the time and simply did not play any other Immersive Sim, so it's streamlining went right past me, but it seemed to get praise all around, so it's hard to blame the industry for going more into that direction. But, this is supposed to be a review about Deus Ex, not the 0451 genre as a whole.

Deus Ex feels very much like a complete experience. I know nothing about it's actual development (might change that) but it seems like the developers weren't in a huge rush and able to just go all-out. You can tell this by the amount of little details and secrets all over the world, but also simply by the virtue of how long this game really is while never feeling dragged out. There was a point in the story where I felt like "this is the point where a modern version of this game would use a cliffhanger" and it just kept going.

It feels almost impossible to see everything of this game in one run. Surely you could explore every single room and route, but you'd really need to go out of your way to do so. And often it feels like the limited amount of lockpicks and multitools make that pretty much impossible ... which is good! It almost makes me want to go through the entire thing again and try different approaches this time around.

Exploring these open areas with the chilling music in the background is a great experience. Having these small hub areas with lots of density and stuff to find everywhere makes the open world craze seem more and more unreasonable. Familiarizing yourself with a small place, exploring each room and getting to know each NPC feels like you're actually getting to know the place. I think that's something modern Deus Ex still handles pretty well, however those new games almost feel a bit ... TOO designed if that makes sense? Like every corner there is a vent to go through, a terminal to hack or a giant crate to climb onto. Which is nice, but there is something appealing about some places being empty or just containing some local people you can talk to.

The gameplay might feel a little sluggish at times. Especially the shooting. But the cool thing is that this is totally by design. Your character starts off very inexperienced in shooting and it's your call to put your points into it. Having to aim for a few seconds, to get an accurate shot, because you haven't invested enough points into pistols is a decent trade-off for being able to get through more doors or hack more terminals. But it still can be a little infuriating to set up a shot perfectly, feeling you targeted the head accurately, only to see the enemy not get down by your arrow. It results in a very "Quicksave - Quickload" heavy type of experience, which was very common around that time, but I don't think it ruins the experience. It just makes every room become a puzzle to figure out and it's your call what ressources to invest. And I suppose you could always choose your own saving ruleset. Overall I was happy with the moment to moment gameplay. It definitely feels like a game focused on stealth, even though you can surely hold your ground in open combat with the right augmentations and weapons. Just be smart about it.

The augmentation system and how it controls make it feel like you're actually controlling a machine in a way. The amount of buttons on a keyboard and how you need to get your finger to the F12 button to turn the light on or the F8 button to activate your aiming mode give this game a computer interface feel, that fits surprisingly well with our protagonist being part machine. It's like you're actually "activating" something. This comes with the drawback of not being able to react fast enough sometimes and to be fair, is probably just a result of circle menus not really being a thing yet, but it has this neat side effect of feeling authentic.

The storyline was surprisingly engaging. Of course I was familiar with some of the memes surrounding this game and the voice acting sometimes made it hard to take things seriously, but the script is pretty great and fits perfectly into a time where Matrix and Metal Gear Solid just came out and X-Files was at it's peak. There is this charming sillyness to it all, while it takes itself 100% seriously. Meanwhile it actually tackles some serious societally themes and can get quite philosophical. The ending of this game is the only one out of the three Deus Ex games that I've played that actually seemed like it was doing something interesting and I like how your story progression and decision making isn't tied to markers or dialogue options but actual player agency. Your actions result in consequences, not your press of Button A or B.

Deus Ex is something that I should have played earlier, and a game that should have been more influential. The way this title has more complex mechanics and systemic gameplay than 99% of games coming out today is honestly pretty sad. It makes it feel like we took a wrong direction somewhere and this is the point where the split path began.

Okay, I'm being dramatic, but it really feels that way because this is preeetty much the point where the genre started to die and all the studios were closing that were making these games. Looking Glass was already dead, Ion Storm only continued to make simplified versions of older ImSims and died shortly after and Irrational Games were the ones who continued to thrive by creating the more simplistic Bioshock. System Shock 3 also seems dead at this point. Arkane being the shining star that still keeps the genre alive, but recently put out to bad to mediocre games in a row.

It makes me wonder how the industry would look like when consoles weren't the dominating thing around that time. Maybe ImSims weren't a niché genre most people don't even know about. Or maybe we would tire out of complex system driven games and crave more cinematic stuff, who knows.

Deus Ex is definitely a milestone in gaming that I finally got to. In a way it was pretty cool that I saved this for last, after beating the Thief and System Shock games. I was considering giving this the full 5 stars, but I typically only do this with games that are absolutely favorites of mine. Deus Ex is not quite there yet, but it might be in the future.

Pretty much exactly what I wanted from this sequel. The previous game of the series was fine, but it felt very small, limiting in exploration and choice and not having a party felt like a wasted opportunity.

Dragonfall fixes these things for the most part. It still doesn't really have real "exploration" in the sense of exploring a big city or worldmap and doesn't actively make you look for optional areas and "dungeons", but the hub area provides a nice homely feel and there are at least some hidden optional quests you only get by talking to the NPCs.

The party of this game is a big reason why I enjoyed Dragonfall a lot. Every member has an interesting backstory to tell and turns out to be very likable. Of course it once again falls into the trope of slowly opening up to you over the course of the game and everyone has a dark past that you slowly uncover that results in a character quest, but I'd say this formula has some merits, because you always have something to look forward to between missions and it definitely makes sense to have characters opening up to you gradually, even though it feels a little formulaic at times.

The storyline was pretty good, as well. Once again you're starting off on a quest for revenge, but you can instantly tell the story is going in a very different direction, which it does. You could probably criticize the game for it's lengthy middle section, which consists of collecting money and doing missions that are unrelated to the main story to gather it, but each of those missions was really well written and I went out of my way to do them all. Their lack of connection to the story didn't really bother me as a result.

Combat got some improvements thanks to a better UI and the new armor system adds a nice layer of depth to encounters. Overall it's pretty much the same, though. Having a set party that gradually unlocks new moves is a nice touch and I could really notice how my strategy got better and better over the course of the game. Familiarizing yourself with the moveset of each character and coming up with synergies of certain skills was pretty nice. Even if it ended up in an almost disappointingly easy final act, even on hard.

This time I went for an elf decker instead of going full combat focus and the beginning in particular was pretty rough for him. My character was barely hitting a thing and pretty frail. But it was a nice challenge and it made sense for the hacker guy to not be the toughest fighter.

What brings the game down a little is probably the amount of fights and how lengthy they can be. I enjoyed combat most of the time, but some missions definitely could trim some of the fat. The animations of enemies could also need a speed-up option, because seeing 8 seperate enemies walk towards cover isn't that exciting.

I think it would've also been a nice bonus if you could actually equip and skill your party members. I get that they should feel like their own entities, but since you're controlling them in battle I feel like that's a moot point. In a way it was nice to have them refill their items and not having to worry about it, though, so maybe it was actually for the better. Not sure.

So yeah, a great step-up from the first game. A way longer (25h), bigger game with a great cast of characters that really grew on me. You might want to start here if you want to give the series a shot.

Will definitely play Hong Kong at some point, but I don't want to burn myself out, so probably not for a while.