My favourite co-op game of all time. I have convinced 2 separate friends to play through this with me, one beat it twice with me on the ps3 back in the mid 2010's, and the other once through on PC in early 2020s. I have watched a fraction of the cutscenes from of this game through fully, most of which simply because one of us needed to pee (lets just say they were NOT a highlight). Despite having completed this game through to completion 3 times I could not tell you what the story is about, even with my newfound context of having played most of the games in the series. It's really not where this games strengths lie.

Resident Evil 5 is at its best early on, with probably my favourite segments being the very first mission where you need to hold out. The game definitely starts to lose steam when you start dealing with enemies who can shoot back with RPGS and machine guns. But that early game is peak co-op gameplay.

I have redone the horde segment on my own multiple times simply due to it being an incredibly fun sandbox to fight enemies in. I have farmed gems with the games airboat, memorizing all spawn locations of gems and treasures, finding a kind of zen state of mind trying to find the perfect line. When the regenator bugged out and would not die I KNEW where to easily grab an RPG. I to this day think about the sheer aggressiveness in which Chris yells "SHEVA, HURRY" and Sheva's "CHRIS, IM COMING" with the sound queue that plays as your friends spams the prompt.

This game is absolutely dear to me, I've played through it three times through completely, twice through partially, and done my favourite missions solo many times through. There is a lot wrong with this game but it is easily the co-op game I have the fondest memories with specifically playing splitscreen on the ps3 back in early high school. I would literally lug my ps3 in a backpack to my friends house, grabbing a 2L of Coke Zero and some chips from the convenience store along the way. Macking down chips while raging that about the rail shooter segments being bullshit (especially against el gigante on higher difficulties).

No one else (not even the friends I forced to play this game with me) liked this game even half as much as I do. I am incapable of being objective with it. This isn't just a game to me, but warm memories from a simpler time. Really really really love this game. I can't wait to eventually convince another friend (victim) to experience it with me.

WHAT A REVOLUTIONARY GAME! IT CHANGED GAMING FOREVER!

And those are all the good things I can say about this game.
In 2024, this game is just mediocre.

The story is bland. Some characters are interesting but none are fleshed out enough to be memorable. Radio music was alright but very limited amount of songs available. Mission structure was repetitive and some were just irritating and difficult for no reason. Cars also broke with the slightest breeze. No planes, no bikes, no choppers.

It's the base of what's to come so at least that's something.

Now onto Liberty City Stories...

As is with any open world game of this style, there are a lot of things to collect, lots of side missions, and an overwhelming amount of traversal. That being said, Ghost of Tsushima is among the most refined in its genre. Make no mistake though, it is still recognizably formulaic, just in a far more creative way.

The presentation is outstanding visually and serves as yet another blockbuster PlayStation game. Creative details like the Guiding Wind system are very impressive and have no equal, especially when compared to more commonplace, hideous HUD elements like a compass at the top of the screen.

Gameplay never gets old; slashing enemies, parrying attacks, and using special abilities is addicting, especially on the appropriate Hard or Lethal difficulties. Sucker Punch did a fantastic job of making the combat approachable and unique. Jin feels very capable and maybe even a bit overpowered.

The side quests are also very well-written and interesting. However, the actions you take during them will become tiresome eventually. I can only have fun staring at the ground following footprints so many times.

Being dedicated to 100% completing nearly every game I play, I can confidently say this game is not for the faint of heart; there are seemingly endless things to do which becomes exhausting. However, if you carefully pace yourself, it is doable. For most players, I would just recommend doing all the side missions and completing the main story.

The main story is fulfilling, although Jin's voice actor leaves much to be desired. He's supposed to be stoic, but his performance comes off very flat most of the time. There are compelling moments, but nothing monumental; it's just a good experience throughout, especially if you love graphic depictions of misery and violence.

A disturbing yet emotional ride into living hell.

This is probably the 24th or 26th time I played thru this game. I just love it. It's the greatest horror game ever made and my #3 game of all time. Were to start?

Heather is arguably the closest that I would consider a "4-dimensional" character. You could make her a mute and the flavour texts alone, while clicking the X-Button to investigate on things would still give her more personality than 99% of all other video game characters. The story about her finding out about her true self and how she deals with it along with another tragic incident that is going to happen to her, is very intruging and gives alot of depth to her character.

The side characters are well written aswell, better than those of SH1 for the most part but inferior to those from SH2. The voice acting for all characters is flawless as long you play with the original voices, avoid the HD collection as far as possible.

SH3 is also pretty much the best looking game of the PS2. The only games from 6th gen that come close to it are SH2 and 4, the Resident Evil 1 Remake and Resident Evil Zero and Black. It's art design is truly magnificent. The character faces look closer to reality than most games of 7th gen.

The score once again composed by Akira Yamaoka is terrific. It's sad, moody and scary at the same time.

Now lets get into the gameplay department. It's the most polished game in the series. If you consider tank controls clunky, you might not consider them that clunky anymore after playing SH3. There is also an option to play without tank controls so there is actually no reason, not to play this game. It improved on the little things when compared to SH2, most notably the inventory. There are also plenty of unlockables like a lightsaber for example.

The level design this time offers a lot of variety even though I still consider SH1 level design the best in the franchise but this is a close 2nd.

So for all the people that just circle jerk around SH2, give SH1 and 3 a chance. You will not regret it if you love storytelling in gaming. This for sure is an underrated hidden gem and I think it's the best game in the franchise and of the survival horror genre.

10/10 puked out demon fetuses.

Check my review for the abysmal movie on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/xgmanx/film/silent-hill-revelation-3d/

This review is dedicated to Going Merry and Artax, two of the best horses who's lives were cut short by random bullshit enemy spawns

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that genuinely should be a live-action Western movie instead. For as good as the story and writing is (I won't deny this, but I will avoid discussion to keep this spoiler free), the game itself that this runs on only hinders it at every turn. After 50 hours of this I can honestly say this game broke me on several levels, none of which were from any impactful story moments or groundbreaking gameplay. This game broke me through sheer frustration at how stiff the scripting was to how terrible its gunplay felt, this game broke me through the absolute slog its last 2 main story chapters were, this game broke me through finally starting to get some enjoyment out of the experience only for that to be completely rug pulled from me and ripped to shreds multiple times.

GRAPHICS (4K, Ultra settings)
I wanted to get this point out of the way first; while I appreciate visual design and fluid animation in games, there comes a point where it becomes completely unneeded and distracting. Red Dead Redemption 2 blasted through that wall for me, to where I felt like the aesthetics were just a coat of paint over the sheer clunkiness of under its hood. Having to cook each piece of meat or tonic at a fire or cleaning your gun for 5 seconds and watching the same animation over, and over, and over got so old I avoided hunting/maintanence alltogether. Walking through the towns and cities was nice, but I could care less about seeing each set of foot/wagon prints, nor do I care about individual blades of grass. Whatever poor artist that was chained to their desk to crunch on this I feel for, but only because they were made to work on something nobody gives a fuck about seeing. The water in this game looked terrible to me, someone who has a 7900XT gpu and set the water on Ultra. It looks like gel more than water, the entire body should not move when you do. Pokemon Legends Arceus has better looking water to me because at least motion of water is localized to the object displacing it rather than the whole segment of stream moving like a piece of fabric. I additionally had other weird graphical issues with finer objects like flowers and hair causing extreme tearing, but that I will let slide as that could be due to FSR, the shaders, or something else unintended.

RIGIDITY OF SCRIPTING
One main thought/thing I noticed early on with this game was how rigid some of the missions and ai scripting was. Was I overly sensitive to this after having just come off of Deus Ex, the ultimate genre-defining Immersive Sim? Perhaps. Would it have still been an issue otherwise? Absolutely. Even in one of the first few missions I felt this, where you had to hide behind a rock for cover. But wait, oh no you arent at the right spot to hop the fence so we won't let you at all, you have to walk 5 feet to the left and THEN we will let you. All the while in this sequence you were somehow detected so now the stealth is broken and your gang is yelling at you because you didn't walk the EXACT way Rockstar wants you to. This then happens later on when riding with your gang; I rode up a rocky pass for a better vantage point on a camp but OOPS you fail the mission because you were more than 10 feet away and not directly riding into the ambush WE setup for you because we built setpieces like legos. I had this issue throughout the game, I was able to work past it at times, other moments it would rear its ugly head and rubber band me back into position. "Oh wait a moment, I know you are taking cold damage which we JUST told you about as soon as you dismounted, but because you left your horse you can't go back on it to change. Your punishment is to stand A Framed on top of your horse while we Divine Intervention style snap you back on the ground on the side of the horse." I understand the careful design of missions, but in the same token there has to be some form of give and take or freedom associated with it. In some missions they give you that freedom and punish you for it, but in a lot of them they would rather just fail the mission outright and send you back to a checkpoint. At one point in the story you are in a shootout with a massive gator coming at your boat. I could not figure out the magic script for this encounter to where I would survive it, unloading all my guns did nothing, Dead Eye unloading of my guns did nothing either. I had no choice to skip that checkpoint, as I had nothing to go off of for what else to try. There are other moments like these that will be touched on in the other section as well, trust me.

GUNPLAY
By and around the weakest aspect of this game for me. Gun differences didn't matter at all when only headshots are a 100% kill, 100% of the time. Otherwise its a crapshoot. I directly coorelate my enjoyment of a sequece by the sheer number of enemies you have to face. The more enemies you have to shoot, the worst the guns were and the worse I felt. This was especially apparent at the end, when you are fighting literal armies of men. Each gun is slow, clunky, and difficult. None of them were standout, one size fits all weapons. They were all bad in larger combat fights unless you spent 5 minutes for each wave behind cover. Not only this, but I ran into the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced with a combat system. I had a fight with an enemy at point blank range, I unload an entire repeater into his chest. Not a SINGLE hit registered; only because he was scripted to be killed by Generic Indian Warrior #4 ONLY via a "badass" tomahawk kill animation some intern probably spent a whole year making. The rage I felt in that moment overshadowed all else, and that was on my second attempt at the mission after my game crashed during the ending cinematic forcing me to play the entire mission over.

No spoilers here either, but the final FINAL gun duel with <REDACTED> was the stupidest, most bullshit fight. Completely pointless. I unloaded an entire magnum into their skull, visible hole and all and they just walk it off like its nothing. Garbage.

OTHER THOUGHTS
After 50 hours of this, I really can only say I'm burnt out on Open World games, more specifically Rockstar open world games. Majority of the side content I found were all useless collectibles. Which is fine, but not to the degree of what's on offer in RDR2. It was WAY too much padding out of a game. I don't want to devote 100s of hours of my life filling out compendium after compendium for little to no reward. Thats asinine. Before I get comments asking "oh did you see so and so, their quest is pivitol to character development," my rebuttal to this statement is, if its such a cool key moment why the hell is it not part of the main story and missable? I'm not stopping to smell roses and waste time here, unless such things are marked on my map so I know where to go.
The bounty and honor system in this game was also insanely bad for me. If bandanas are your way of commiting crimes without being noticed, why the hell am I still getting bounties for completing story missions that REQUIRE me to do crimes? Why do you encourage me to loot bodies at cleared out bases, yet punish me with an army of bounty hunters/lawmen after 1 minute of mission completion and a wanted level? I don't get it. I went with a High Honor playthough as a roleplay of a Gunslinger that wants to be reformed. I hated how much your gang hates this choice and actively call you a pansy for being a good person, when its obvious that is what Arthur wants the entire time. Let me play how I want to, don't further ridicule me.
There is a segment in Chapter 5 where you are sent to a new map where all there is is 4-5 missions. Absolute worst of the worst section. Made no sense to the story, added nothing apart from one action a character takes that we already knew they were capable of doing. Never discussed again afterward. Why is this here? Useless filler.
If you are playing this on PC, do yourselves a favor and use a controller. This game is designed for it. I have no utter idea why Rockstar thinks Mouse and Keyboard should be layed out by a masochist but some frustration was alleviated for me by switching to controller.

The real thing, the REAL THING that fully broke me and made me dislike this game as much as I do though, was said in the opening dedication of this review. I bonded with the first horse you get in the first mission of the story. This horse carried me thorough the first 1.5 chapters, until a random mugging event where I was locked into the prompt to surrender. By the time I was able to break out of the scripting and pull my gun out, I was already dead along with my horse. The game saves this and counts your horse as dead. No chance to revive. I respawned in a field with no horse in sight. I wanted to quit right then and there, but I managed to eventually find a new horse and begrudingly continued on.
Artax was a much better horse, I got through a lot of the game with her and everything was enjoyable once more. It then happened again, random enemy mugging. Only this time they had a minigun that shredded me and Artax instantly, with zero chance to react. It was at this moment that I lost all desire to try and enjoy the game, all bets were off. The horse it gave me was it, I used this one to the end of the game. No name. No attachment. I was an empty man and only wanted to see this through to the end.

This game was a slog that I really am glad I got on sale. I did not have a good experience with it.

With Resident Evil 4 being one of my favorite games ever made, starting this remake was not only elating, but also conflicting. I was one who said Resident Evil 4 didn't need a remake; it's a near-flawless masterpiece and one of the all-time greats.

This was a tremendous mental hurdle for me, because I, like many, know Resident Evil 4 inside and out: every item, every enemy placement, the precise routes to take, and the minute techniques that allow players to be on another level in terms of skill. I didn't want one of my favorite games to be outclassed or replaced with an inferior version, and I certainly didn't want this remake to feel like it was pretending to be something it's not.

Being hung up on this notion, I didn't realize the game wasn't being remade to replace the original—it was being remade to supplement and honor it—something uncommon for many remakes to do. This game quickly qualmed all of those fears as it was crafted with an extraordinary amount of love and respect.

For first-time players, the game is a fabulous, fun ride, and Capcom could have just stopped there. However, it's the extra steps they took to ensure veteran players of one of the most beloved games of all time had their expectations subverted and tested that truly set this remake apart.

The developers clearly respected the vision of the original and its many fans' assumptions. Careful attention was paid to not only the narrative and fun factor, but also the unique iconography and visual queues of Resident Evil 4—even down to the smallest of details that trigger our brain to recognize and accept this remake as having the same DNA as the original.

However, this game also makes you realize how much we took the original voice cast for granted; several key characters in this remake leave much to be desired in terms of vocal talent, and for a game as narratively dependent as this one, it greatly affects the experience. Luckily, Nick Apostolides as Leon and Genevieve Buechner as Ashley do a fabulous job.

Much like the original, the game begins to run out of gas as we enter the island: the third large section of the game. Unlike the original, the island in this remake is far less exhausting and more of a brief, action-packed conclusion to the game.

Expanding in several areas, adding context to story aspects, and rearranging scenarios, this remake exceeds with flying colors. A visual and technical showcase, this remake will go down as one of the best in its genre and perhaps one of the best of all time. The remake of Resident Evil 4 rides the fine line of originality flawlessly as players new and old experience one of the best action-horror games since... Resident Evil 4.