games with great swordfighting mechanics capture the frenzy of the duel and the clashing of blades with an organic touch that centers the arc of the arm and the weight of the weapon. furi doesn't do this. its entire melee combat system is so centered around parries as to become a rhythm game of sorts: wait for the flash of light and the bespoke sfx and then time your button press correctly afterwards. if you get a perfectly timed parry you get to watch a little animation and if not mash your attack to rattle off a combo. actually watching the graceful motion of your opponent with their implement of choice yields no naturalistic ability to time a counterattack, as the animations themselves are choppy and freeze around that little flash. take your lumps a couple times until you get the rhythm down pat and then repeat that tapping pattern like a mantra. attempting to get the jump on your opponent will either cause them to zip out of your way or completely block the attack; at best you can bait out an attack you can parry and repeat the loop all over again. it's purely reactive gameplay, all tit for tat, and chokes out any combat potential from the experience. dare I say it, it's too game-y!

it's perhaps unfair to focus on the melee phases, as even the game minimizes their inclusion as the fights progress. in these close-quarters sections the designers painted themselves into the corner of too few potential attacks. with only those parryable attacks, AOEs (aka dodge out of the red zone, with each boss having different shapes), and boss-specific projectiles to dodge, the encounters simply can't iterate over the course of the game. some innovations such as simply having longer parry strings or changing when in the parry string you can fight back simply further pigeonhole these sections as too tightly wound around the parry mechanic. it's suffocating in a sense. this culiminates in the edge, which is purely melee-focused and suffers greatly for it. while not completely parry-centric, the few projectiles he has are cribbed from other bosses and easily avoidable, meaning the meat of the fight is simply learning a handful of parry rhythms. sure, there's a mix-up where he might delay an attack and throw off your timing, but is this twist enough after a game's worth of repeating this same gimmick over and over?

the majority of the game then is really a twin-stick shooter. outside of melee phases you can instead use your gun to idly chip the opponent's health as they hurl reams of bullets at you with some beams and waves for good measure. the conceit is still simple -- you get your regular shots and a charged shot/beam -- but at least when it comes to light "bullet hell" elements there's much more to work with. basic concepts like positioning come into play and enrich the experience just enough to make it more enjoyable, although in these sections there's still parryable melee attacks which you're highly encouraged to engage with. with the optional final boss the star you get a taste of what the developers could have been working with had they chosen to jettison the melee aspects completely. layers upon layers of bullet patterns, an oddly-shaped field with multiple safe nooks away from certain attacks, multiple targets to choose to focus on, et cetera. this level of sophistication alone allows for an amount of per-phase strategizing that I would expect from a boss-focused game rather than just mere input recitation.

story is neither here nor there -- relies heavily on vague environmental subtext and breezy aphorisms -- and the technicolor mess in most of the world doesn't really appeal to me much. I'm a synthwave hater for the most part, sorry. also there's walking sections between each boss... love the use of fixed camera angles, but on the transitions your held analog stick retains the orientation of the previous shot. threw me off a lot, although I can't complain too heavily because you can easily enable auto-walk, which I usually did.

does anyone think kojima really needed to justify the original mgs trilogy? the chronology between the games is there, but the actual on-going narrative shifts significantly to suit the nature of each game. sewn together by thematic musings yet environmentally distinct, those games crafted their own internal worlds to convey the kinds of story they wanted to tell. video games have traditionally favored self-contained works given both the density of any given game and the need to make any entry a boarding point for new fans, which makes mgs4 all the more puzzling. in likely the only time kojima was truly convinced that he was ending the series, he attempted to string together literally every plot point leftover from prior games into a single nonsensical story as if that's what the series needed. as if some hackneyed sense of closure for each and every character could somehow weave its own web of meaning instead of stumbling so heavily over its own feet.

believe or not it's truly an "everyone is here" moment. meryl? back as a grizzled vet, far from the fresh recruit she was in the first game. olga gurlukovich's daughter kidnapped by the patriots? living with otacon aboard his plane/house/thing. EVA, last seen escaping with the philosopher's legacy in the mid '60s? she's here with her own resistance group and she has virtually no backstory as for why. the guard who shits himself in mgs1 and 2? he gets a name! so many characters from those first three games tumble back into view that it strangles the new additions to the franchise. weapon launderer drebin and his cola-swilling monkey companion rarely solidify their presence beyond justifying the new weapons system, and in particular drebin's suit coat and baggy camo pants locks this into being easily the most 00s mgs ever got. the other new players - the beauty and the beast unit - may be easily the least interesting boss set in the franchise (not that pw or V even really attempt one), especially with drebin's trauma porn backstory dumps for each one. virtually no agency beyond just fusing previous ideas together into some new package. a bit of a microcosm for the rest of the game!

indeed, mgs4's mechanics falter immediately from refusing to build on mgs3's foundation in favor of blending various bits from it and the various third-person shooters from its orbit. this was a post-gears world after all, and a post-modern warfare one as well. the core conceit of mgs4 lies in recreating perpetual war and placing the player as a third party within it, uninvolved in the conflict and attempting to remain unobtrusive. from the moment snake enters the bombed-out ruins of a middle-eastern city it becomes clear that the nature of the classic mgs stealth gameplay has changed. while some soldiers patrol previously-cleared areas, the vast majority of their forces press on towards the front against hostile militias. getting noticed has negative consequences per usual, but in the midst of already-heavy fire simply eliminating a guard and returning to the shadows rarely results in a reset or any major setbacks. in fact, assisting the militia from behind their lines will result in them viewing you as an alley and ignoring your trespassing. in this way the game pushes the player towards more traditional cover-TPS gameplay, with stealth more of a tool than a central gameplay mechanic. while avoiding detection may result overall safer gameplay, it is generally to your benefit to pick off enemy soldiers regardless, and in some instances the combatants are so distracted by the ongoing battle that sneaking past rarely poses an issues. this initial chapter does feature the most raw stealth sequences of the entire game, but juxtaposes this against a straight-forward combat encounter with the haven troopers (otherwise known as the FROGS), which kill the pacing just like similar segments such as the elevator fight from mgs1.

these latter warfare mechanics present themselves more heavily in the game's second chapter, which takes place in south america. should the player squint, they may be able to trick themselves that they're playing a gussied-up version of snake eater thanks to the similar methods of crawling through tall grass in the wetlands that seem particularly useful here. when not in combat, snake has a couple new options for tactical disposal of enemies. the one I found most useful was the metal gear mk ii; this petite cameo from snatcher can roll up on unsuspecting enemies and electrocute them for easy takedowns so long as you yourself aren't caught controlling it like a sitting duck. unfortunately as this chapter rolls on it leans even further into neglecting the stealth altogether, with setpieces such as the mansion really making it clear that getting caught simply doesn't matter in a warzone. at the same time this is the chapter where I really started enjoying the combat for what it was. via drebin snake can purchase weapons at will from a menu outside the purview of the patriots, and ammo refills are easy to buy as well. fooling around with weapons such as the automatic sniper rifle or the nonlethal air shotgun honestly made up for the lack of usual MGS-gameplay. it's evident that kojima was chasing trends with this style, but I can't say he didn't manage to make it work.

which makes the third chapter (and indeed, the rest of the game) all the more perplexing. the setting shifts to eastern europe, where snake must trail local revolutionaries back to their base through dimly lit cobblestone streets. a far cry from the earlier segments though certainly not as bad as it could be. the interesting twist here is that your targets are themselves sneaking around soldiers under the banner of the patriots, and occasionally snake needs to step in to tip the scales in the resistance's favor. discretely handling these close calls for the resistance makes what would otherwise be purely tedious at least somewhat interesting. the second half of this chapter is effectively a protracted light-gun sequence (there's one in the second chapter as I recall), which certainly is an mgs staple but perhaps could have been not been featured so prominently here. virtually no traditional mgs action happens in this chapter, portending the shift the rest of the game takes.

the fourth chapter features a return to shadow moses... at this point the game hits a particular low. the various gekko machines are your main foes for most of these chapters, making the actual "stealth" simply tossing chaff grenades and running like hell. other than plenty of winking otacon conversations about the events of the first game, I could not tell you really what the actual structure of this level is beyond these perfunctory sneaking sections and a deluge of boss fights towards the end. in this latter half of the game boss fights begin dominating the runtime, and overall I can't say most of them are particularly great. having replayed mgs2 and 3 recently I'll admit that a lot of "classic" mgs boss fights are not particularly interesting (notable exceptions include vulcan raven, fatman, the end, and the boss), and mgs4 really has no key fight to really claim as a standout. crying wolf and vamp in this chapter stand out as some of my least favorite fights in the game -- crying wolf may be the most tiresome sniper fight in the series -- while the penultimate fight of REX vs RAY at least gets major points on pure fun factor. it's more of a setpice than an actual fight, but the carnage is so enthralling and the following outer haven reveal so iconically silly that I can at least point to it as one of my favorite parts of the game.

the final chapter launches snake into the maw of outer haven in order to reach the patriot AIs at its core. the opening area here features one of the largest stealth areas in the whole game, and unfortunately it closes out the typical mgs gameplay for the entire game. my first steps here were fraught with danger however; the stark metallic ship deck features little natural cover or hidey-holes for snake to inhabit. thankfully kojima included a salve: the octocamo. in his attempt to rectify the tedious camo swapping of mgs3, snake here receives a high-tech suit that adapts to his environment like a chameleon (or uh, an octopus). on solid backdrops such as the cool gray of the ship, snake receives such a high camo index that enemy soldiers (the FROGS in this instance) will not be able to recognize him as an intruder even when directly examining him, allowing the player to headshot tranq them at point-blank range. abusing this mechanic while also disposing of the gekkos via the nerve bundle on the side of their organic knees makes this section a cakewalk, assuming that you can maintain your composure when said gekkos tip and spin around on the floor, mooing incessantly.

in the closing scenes snake proceeds to muddle through the screaming mantis fight and wade through hallway after hallway of the obnoxious dwarf gekkos until finally crawling towards the core. in the microwave corridor approaching the AI core, snake crawls on hands and knees basking in the radiation while scenes from his allies valiantly fighting play around him. this wonderful scene and the subsequent climatic battle with liquid ocelot manages to salvage some of the pain of the prior hours. as each subsequent classic mgs theme plays, you truly get the sense that in some ways this could have been a perfect "dream match" blend of mgs staples old and new had it not been burdened by simultaneously serving as the ultimate ending to everything the series had been leading towards.

the feature-length epilogue finally draws these threads to a close centered around a truly ridiculous data dump from a somehow-alive big boss regarding his long-term proxy war with major zero and cipher. while enjoyable in its own way ("snake lived a hard life" still hits really hard), it's clear that whatever rich thematic base that kojima intended for this game has been utterly smothered by too much explaining. too many events that happened off-screen that someone needs to relay to snake, too many double-crosses and twists, and far too many random old elements dragged out far past their expiration date. where are the stakes for snake's mutated FOXDIE virus housed within his cells when you know it won't amount to anything anyway, just like it did at the end of mgs1? why cry for raiden convulsing from needing dialysis for his synthetic blood when you know he'll just show up as a deus ex machina again later? does ocelot's endgame reveal about liquid's consciousness inside of him really enlighten us about his character or flesh out his flimsy rationale for anything he does over the course of this game?

in a series coated in ruminations on legacy, mgs4 seems the most focused on the legacy of the series itself. snake's decaying body, unraveling from his imperfect artificial conception, may be the most evident symbol that metal gear's golden era had passed by. david hayter renders his voice in a particularly uncomfortable gravely tone over the course of the game to the point of smushing his capability to effect anything but a monotone. there's a particularly poignant moment where aboard the USS missouri snake drags on a cigarette, sending him into a heart-wrenching coughing fit that leaves him bent on the floor in near-syncope. his existence may truly be an affront to God (portrayed in the game as hideo kojima himself, unironically (or maybe with a tinge of irony)).

but beyond this seeming need to break out of the restrictions of metal gear, there is little to gleam from mgs4's text that isn't muddled by the overwrought web of plot points. the war economy is profitable but bad? very true, but pretty much on the level of mgs1's "nuclear annihilation is bad" moral. and much like the ultimate verdict on whether love can bloom on the battlefield -- snake intones during mgs2 that his whirlwind romance with meryl wasn't built to last -- mgs4 doesn't seem very intent on exploring anything it brings up. that worked for mgs1, but mgs4 has nearly 10 hours of cutscenes; twice as long as mgs2 or mgs3. I have a tolerance for metal gear's cheese, but mgs4 really strained me with just how much needless fluff, bug-eyed callbacks, and empty soliloquies it crammed into the chassis of a game that wasn't up to snuff to the series' earlier outings. for how bombastic of a finale this was supposed to be, it's easy to also see how the formerly-innovative mgs resorted to trend-chasing with this entry. shoving a pointless psyche meter in the game or the usual exclamation point guard reactions doesn't change the fact that mgs4 is just another third-person shooter. even when it succeeds at slotting into that classification, it spends the second half of the game grasping at other styles in an attempt to differentiate itself with poor results. there's so much love here, but it still disappoints.

that is, other than the saving grace that is johnny sasaki. what kojima intended to show with this character is redemption for those who have previously failed and embarassed themselves... [the essay continues on from here for another nine paragraphs]

thought I could hold out to scorned magnamalo, but the solo grind is getting to me and I'm out of podcasts to listen to. made it past furious rajang and still got a hefty 60-odd hours out of it, even if it didn't hit quite as hard as base rise for me.

my thoughts on said base game are a bit complicated now having gone back and immersed myself in the classics for a bit. at the time it enraptured me with its polished-to-a-sheen hunting loop, but in retrospect it all seems a bit dull. frequently fights below master rank turn into combo recitation without much need to attend to what the monster is doing at all. sunbreak requires comparatively more reactive gameplay; movesets have become even more expansive while the increased speed and power of your prey can approach your ferocity with ease. indeed, it's almost a bit jarring how much damage certain attacks can do compared to the usually lax behavior of the monsters otherwise. even endgame armor will never quite protect you from particular chains the monsters have at their disposal, specifically ones that necessitate the use of the wirebug dodge.

and yes, that wirebug dodge may be the most interesting design hiccup between both this expansion and rise itself. compare to generations and its absolute evasion/readiness arts: these tools are highly recommended for g-rank play in generations but require smart use and must refill via the hunter engaging with the monster. they're get out of jail free cards that require you to know in advance your goose is cooked in order to receive their copious I-frames and escape a sticky situation, and every second you don't have one of these abilities you're forced to keep attacking to build up their respective meters.

the wirebug dodge operates differently in rise's resource economy given that the same wirebugs that it expends are used for virtually every other speciality art in the game, unlike GU's arts and their individual gauges. the design necessitates having faster cooldowns for the wirebugs overall (which are not driven by player action), and since the dodges are cheap, they're almost always available. the supposed catch is that the dodge can only be used while being knocked back, but since the window for its use is so long after being hit and its I-frames are equally generous, it removes any danger from a beefy attack so long as you can dodge out afterwards and slurp down a potion. in base rise where you would virtually never die from a single attack, this removed much of the danger from aggressive play given the cheap cost.

base rise inadvertently solved this issue via a smattering of monster patterns that could catch hunters wirebug dodging out on a first hit with a well-timed second hit (see anjanath's multiple claw swipes), but these were so infrequent as to not seem deliberate. this could have been a viable strategy in master rank for curbing the proliferation of spamming this technique. unfortunately I rarely have encountered any punishment for using the dodge; it still remains ultra-powerful for removing one's self from an unwinnable position. the design pattern instead has been mandatory wirebug dodge usage. monsters will now pop you up to let you float about in hang-time before following up with a devastating finisher that will frequently kill. if you do not conserve your wirebugs or dodge the initial attack, you'll suffer a cart without question.

something about this irks me. I'm a gunlance player, and this weapon's meta has skewed heavily towards the all-powerful bullet barrage, which guarantees an easy 1000+ damage for the cost of two wirebugs. if I use this attack and then get hit by one of these moves that requires a wirebug to escape, I'm often powerless to do anything but watch my protracted demise. obviously this is still my own fault: I should have set myself up to evade the first attack. psychologically though I feel like having a smaller first attack lead into a heavy follow-up as a few issues with it. for one: any time that I have a wirebug on me, the danger is nullified and it is reinforced in my subconcious that the attack is not dangerous. secondly: the heavy air-time for which I am helpless without a wirebug is frankly more disheartening than simply just dying from the attack in the first place. in a gameplay sense I am making the same mistake that I am when I simply don't evade or guard against an attack at all, but the way it's presented makes me feel as if I am strangled by this wirebug mechanic. what should've replaced the near-insta-kill attacks of previously G ranks has somehow become more annoying in my eyes. I think I would've preferred learning what times are safe to evade and not evade instead of getting locked into situations where the only outlet is expending a resource I may or not have. consider other monster patterns where gradations of damage occur depending on complex variables of positioning, guard/evade time, and my available skills. in comparison these new hang-time attacks feel rigid.

I wanted to focus on that mechanic specifically because I find the design principles behind it fascinating, but otherwise the expansion improves much over the base game. sunbreak actually launches with a significant amount of content even into the post-game compared to the somewhat shallow one of base rise. six different ranks + the single player follower quests + anomalies easily provided me with ~60 hours of play until I felt the need to put it down. traversal has had some neat improvements, and certain elements such as attacking ridable monsters forcing a mount have been given toggles. what kept me from playing it more when it initially launched was the unfortunately slow start the game struggles with. the interesting exclusive content is mostly walled off behind the higher ranks, pushing base game endgame monsters towards the start of sunbreak oddly enough. something like goss harag that could have perhaps ended up in MR4 or MR5 instead are relagated to an early fight. it doesn't help that the new citadel area doesn't show up for many hours after starting the game in an odd move that results in the first couple ranks feeling dominated by returning maps.

in terms of new monsters, I'm overall pleased if a little hit-or-miss on the actual new additions. every new returner rules, from frontier's rath rip-off espinas to the 4th gen powerhouses like astalos, seregios, and gore magala. garangolm, the first of the horror anthology trio of new foes, has a neat arm shift gimmick that allows him to throw his bulky body across the battlefield with ease. lunagoran, the werewolf-inspired second boss, feels unfortunately slight outside of his ice-armor mechanic. the game's flagship malzeno thankfully returns to the base game's trap/projectile-centric design, and final boss gaismagorm provides a fun siege-adjacent boss fight with a seriously-challenging final phase. there are also a set of new elemental subspecies that change their base monsters' moveset quite significantly to my shock. of these the best of these is likely magma almudron's agnaktor callback, which provided one of my most thrilling fights in the expansion. the others vary in quality, with aurora somnacanth feeling the most slight compared to its unique otter-esque base monster. title update 1's quartet of classic postgame fights has been excellent as well (esp lucent nargacuga's return), and I'm excited how the upcoming updates improve the roster.

as of now the endgame grind are the anomalies, which combine elements from hypers and frenzied monsters with an investigation system that blends the system of the same name from world with the leveling of 4U's guild quests. it's about as comfortably bland as you could hope for, especially when played in endless join requests as I am wont to do. when soloing I find the bloodblight element tedious as I resort to endlessly poking to raise my health cap rather than exploring more fun combat options. I also find the way these new investigations interface with the original anomaly quest system to be awkward... I have many more options in the quest list, but the actual grind is centered around the investigation system, which is a bit of a pain to reconcile. the early stages of this were especially dire, just refighting great baggi and volvidon endlessly. thankfully this system also has added a top-rarity version of every weapon in the game, making virtually any weapon tree's builds viable, and armor can now be upgraded via a randomized system with materials gained from the anomalies. pretty cool!

+re5/re6 are already pretty comfy to play, but this next-iteration of RE third-person shooter mechanics has really refined all the best parts of the prior entries. running is smooth (though understandably not that fast), turning around isn't a nuisance in instances where the quick-turn isn't optimal, and the handling for the guns nails the tense wobble of prior games without the same seemingly inconsistent shots.
+indeed, much of the fear in zombie confrontations comes from their erratic movements. zombies take many bullets to permanently dispatch, and lining up headshots isn't child's play. the undead will seize up, crane their noggins over lopsided, and stumble back and forth; all the while evading your fire.
+the whole police station section from the clock tower above to the dog pound below rules. perfect balance of planning your runs/routes + working out the various puzzles around the station.
+love the concept of the locker room. finding one of the blank keys lit my brain up with thoughts of what goodies I would get next. would have been interested in seeing this expanded.
+the usual resident evil cheese is much appreciated in the notes and emails and such over the course of the game. the cutscenes feel suitably more serious than the truly B-movie ones from the psx games, but the supplementary text belies the schlock under the hood.
+inventory system is cramped enough to not make smart loadout choices pointless, but also far less annoying to manage from when I played REmake. the hip pouches are also perfectly timed as you build out your weapon selection, great addition.
+best jumpscares and overall terror out of any of the REs I've played up to this point. when tyrant burst out of that wall in the east hall first floor my heart skipped a beat.
+ada...

-tyrant was honestly underused compared to what I expected from hearing others talk. he's present for a bit of the police station, but is unfortunately absent from the rest of the game other than a couple obviously scripted appearances. he's not really much of a threat either given that his punches don't deal much damage.
-the sewer and the lab arent't bad but don't have the great design web of the station. the sewer really just requires making like two loops through to get everything, and the lab has one small five-minute area + another area that just takes two loops through. puzzles are stlil fun, but it didn't quite hit the same for me.
-enemies also feel less threatening during these sections than the zombie windows and lickers of the station. the giant water monsters in the sewer are freaky but really only show up in two main locations, while the plant monsters of the lab go down quickly with the flamethrower regardless of their regeneration and their potentially to insta-kill leon.
-given the engine I actually wouldn't have minded an action focus later on in the game. missed opportunity imo, again given that the latter half is missing that je ne sais quoi of the first half.
-the section where you actually play as ada isn't that great. tracing the electrical systems made me feel like I was playing some obnoxious insomniac spider-man mission.

hit the spot as a "no thoughts" game while I recovered from marathoning so many games in the last two months. in terms of pacing I would have preferred a bit more bulk (I came in just shy of 8 hours IGT) or at the very least some way to just mow down zombies for a bit towards the end. the setpieces are good and the bosses passable for RE, but the bar is low, is it not? I absolutely could not put it down in the station though; playing this and onimusha sort of close to each other reminded me how much my brain gets tickled by RE-style puzzles.

another member of the dying gasp of the diegetic rhythm game subgenre along with space channel 5 pt. 2, gitaroo man showcases a young keiichi yano and his team at inis ltd. stretching the concepts previously established by parappa about as far as they could reasonably go. rather than simple call-and-response, gitaroo man attempts musical dialogue between combatants, where U1 and his opponent trade twos attempting to one-up each other with increasingly stylish licks. this isn't a strict memorization game or based in player improv; rather, each phrase is chosen from a pool of possible riffs that all conform to the same chord progression. the format requires a different level of player dexterity in adapting to new rhythms compared to many games of its ilk, and remains possibly the most fascinating aspect of the game design to this day.

the actual input method swaps between two modes: attack/charge and defend. in the former mode, U1 commands his axe via a series of tube-like notes that crawl across the screen that must be followed with the analog nub while simultaneously matching the rhythm with the face buttons. while unorthodox, this system perfectly captures that feeling of bending in a particularly wailing note or leaning into the whammy bar for that wobbly pitch. the defense system is straight-forward by comparison: simply press the corresponding face button as it flies towards the center of the screen. alternating between these two styles generally occurs primarily in the aforementioned random-phrase vamp for the majority of the song where you attempt to whittle down the enemy's health, though the game is smart about mixing up their inclusion so it never gets stale. there's both a full-attack and full-defend song out of the ten-song roster, as well as nuanced twists such as U1 having to dodge attacks in his non-gitaroo man form during the sanbone trio's song or a song change in the middle of the second-to-last fight. structurally the game never rests on its laurels, and instead makes an honest effort to keep the player continually invested throughout the experience.

being of its early vintage, it's easy to spot the cracks in gitaroo man's design unfortunately. it's hard for me to discern quite what the differences between the original ps2 version and this psp port are given that the former is finicky both via emulation and ESR, but my suspicion having read threads on the matter + anecdotal evidence from friends indicates that the directional input for the attack sections can be unfortunately sensitive. on the psp version I've always found it rather forgiving, which may be a byproduct of it controlling pretty smoothly with the nub. however, given that the notes constantly curve and that there aren't visual delineations between measures, it becomes difficult to ascertain the timing of the notes in this mode as the charts become more dense. this is manageable in the main story mode, but in the master mode it becomes utterly overwhelming and lays the limits of the engine clearly bare. the defend sections are relatively lax in comparison given how large the input windows are, but the psp's 16:9 screen makes the square and circle notes appearing from the sides visible far before the vertically-oriented triangle and cross notes, which unfortunately makes their order of arrival differ from their actual rhythmic order. again, not a real issue outside of master mode once you get a handle on each of the songs.

but the mechanics alone aren't what really sells this game, right? 326's scratchy character designs with their deranged spike teeth and determined droopy-eyed stares make the concept pop just from the cover; the gitaroo man outfit and its 70s alien prog color scheme with the winged helmet look so sick. the cutscenes as well jump so desperately from rapid-fire dubbed lines to printed mantras of both despair and honey-love back to wicked character transformations and unexpected left-turn boss fights. rarely has such a soundtrack been as effortlessly eclectic as this one: expect to switch from steady-as-she-goes hard rock to eurobeat to funk to ambient dub within just the first set of stages. far from focusing just on the squalls of cock/butt rock, lead composers/performers COIL (entirely unrelated to another even more viciously experimental duo from a different set of isles) twist U1's titular guitar into a vast landscape in sounds depending on what would benefit the current track, from delay-riddled murmurs to finger-picked flamenco. one of the bands I'm in used to play legendary theme as a warmup before practices; undeniably one of the freshest leads ever written. intro soft machine should've been playable. that riff sits so tall in my mind palace of slacker-y 90s indie guitar fuzz.

I was playing a bit of goldeneye today to test n64 emulation on my recently-purchased xbox one s (spoiler: looks like I'm back to playing on pc), and it was good to get a reminder of why halo was revolutionary. the dual-analog control style that dominates every console shooter today had not yet caught on even though it makes so much sense in retrospect: move your feet with the left stick, move your head with the right stick. most fps titles outside of pc up to now were dominated by tank controls with strafing on the shoulders, and goldeneye follows the same pattern, with strafing on the left/right c buttons and vertical look on the up/down c buttons. workable? yes. comfortable? eh. I'm 23, not 43, so I wasn't exactly playing this shit in my dorm room.

halo in comparison is remarkably intuitive. while not the first to implement proper dual-analog control (alien: resurrection predates it, and one of the rare shooters has a double-controller mode to get dual sticks working), it feels smooth on the xbox gamepad. master chief strafes easily, locks on with subtle (for the time) auto-aim, and glides across terrain without issue. even the vehicle control, while plodding and challenging to master, still gets the job done not only on the ground but in flight as well. each gun is unique and simple to understand from the standard human weapons to the more experimental covenant ones, which keeps the two-weapon limit and the constant scavenging for fresh weapons from feeling like a downer whenever you aren't playing with the assault rifle.

what makes halo ce somewhat disappointing to return to is instead the level design. sure, both silent cartographer and the titular halo still hit hard. the rest of the game unfortunately delves into reams of copy-pasted rooms and confusing backtracking. none of this is surprising given the game's protracted and crunch-heavy development, but it still reflects poorly to those playing the campaign today expecting more variety.

the pillar of autumn: somewhat confusing with its labryinthian structure but for what is functionally a tutorial it does its job. sets up the covenant well and establishes the stakes for master chief.

halo: this is a showpiece level right here. that opening crash leading to you scaling the hill over a gorgeous waterfall while covenant dropships scour the landscape for stragglers. defending the outpost with your fellow marines. receiving your first warthog and storming the bridge within the underground base. and finally, that open area with three different groups of marines to recover... man this is still such a showstopper. exactly paced like an old-school fps should be.

the truth and reconciliation: this hit harder for me the first time I played it a couple years back, and on this replay the section where you're actually on the ship seems dominated by hallways to a deleterious extent. the opening cliffside sneak to the entrance point, still has some neat sniper moments, and the hangar where you first fight the hunters sticks out in my head.

the silent cartographer: another total classic, with the entire level taking place on a small island. there are two outposts you must hit, the first of which having been locked by a separate control center in the middle of the island. there's multiple ways to get around, and the level also features the first appearance of an elite with a terrifying energy sword. conceptually much richer than most of its contemporaries. the story justification and rich sense of connected locality do wonders here.

assault on the control room: first level that really begins to drag. the standard internal room is repeated ad nauseum to the point of feeling almost like you're incorrectly backtracking. occasional outdoor areas break things up nicely, but eventually the vehicles feel mandatory rather than useful tools.

343 guilty spark: what should be the tense reveal of the flood ends up being a confusing mess of near-identical two-story rooms and connective hallways that loops back in on itself. very disorienting.

the library: this level is infamous for being a slow burn, and I can't really disagree. more copy-paste hallways while following guilty spark around. this one also leans heavily on "hold your position" scenarios. probably too much reliance on waiting for guilty spark overall... halo benefits a lot from letting the player set their own pace, and this level fails on that count.

two betrayals: somehow this level is literally assault on the control room in reverse, like one for one identical. to spice it up you have a couple spots where you must fly a banshee up to a room to deactivate some device with your shield, but navigating upwards tends to be trivial so I can't say the level benefits much from it.

keyes: another reused level, but instead mainly from the truth and reconciliation once you're out of the swamp area. that first area is pretty fine, but the second half feels rather stale and relatively lifeless with its dull "get to keyes and then escape" objective.

the maw: much of this level is more hallway battles, but the stakes feel higher from a plot perspective, and the final two setpieces resonate. the engineering bay slowly being overtaken while you methodically destroy the open reactor vents with rockets is a lot of fun to navigate, and the resulting system countdown as you flee in a warthog legitimately stretched my nerves as the numbers ticked down, both from getting immersed in the moment and also the stubborn vehicle physics lol.

there's plenty of good throughout each chapter, but much of the second half melds into sort of a "kill the same enemies over and over again" goo fermented by the rote and perfunctory room-by-room design. without the phenomenal gamefeel this game possesses it would be a launch title curio, and instead it managed to hold up the entire xbox brand for over a decade. a feat no one can take away from bungie without a doubt.

my personal note: lost my save data on my actual anniversary disc, specifically my co-op save. xbox cloud sync sucks. ended up beating it on the master chief collection... wish I didn't have to shell out the money (I bought both from my local mom-and-pop shop at least) but it ran much better in MCC. co-op frankly made me motion sick in the actual 360 version of halo cea.

weird to hear this called the "first million seller on ps2" given the series's relative obscurity now, a victim of capcom's prolific 3D output in the 00's. unquestionably any cultural cachet these interesting action-focused takes on resident evil's structure had was entirely wiped away when a young hideki kamiya pulled off the wildest "hold my beer" in gaming history and dropped devil may cry less than a year later. for how clever and honestly entertaining onimusha is, its conception of combat consists of mashing square to swing your sword and blocking when needed. no stinger, no launchers, and any semblence of juggling completely wiped from the beta builds - though not before dmc's designers got a quick whiff and snuck the concept into their own game.

onimusha in general hews closely to the resident evil playbook much more earnestly than was probably necessary, but the amount of upgrades and changes they made to suit their system still keeps the game feeling well-tuned decades after its original release. the tank controls are excellent, with not only a comfortable turning radius and synergistic hallway geometry but most importantly a full backdash in place of a slow back-up. this is an actual game-changer in terms of keeping protagonist samanosuke agile and frankly for my money beats out the free-roam controls slapped into this hd remaster. it's also a major boon considering that prerendered backdrops and fixed camera angles are used, as the frequent changes in orientation make non-tank controls too erratic. these are issues regardless of the control scheme given that enemies often appear and attack just off-screen; the designers smartly responded to this issue by making samanosuke's block omnidirectional (except against arrows unfortunately) and by giving his attacks a solid amount of draw towards nearby enemies, eliminating the need to precisely aim slashes. on top of all of this is a target-strafing system that I did not even realize existed until the final boss, although using it there felt instantly at home with the rest of the movement options.

the area exploration primarily takes place within a war-torn castle and its east and west grounds, all of which are littered with the usual locked doors, simple logic puzzles, and oddly-shaped keys that you would expect from a game in this vein. if you're into that sort of structure, it's a blast! each section of the game is nicely partioned into no more than a dozen rooms and a few objectives to cleanly take care of in about an hour each with a boss battle to finish things off. enemies don't stay permanently dead unlike resident evil (ignoring the remake's crimson heads), but each one drops orbs that give exp, health, or magic that must be sucked up with the player's gauntlet in a similar if more protracted way to the later ninja gaiden reboot. thus backtracking feels painless, and a few extra fights here and there never hurt in order to upgrade each of the game's three weapons.

I do have a couple of qualms with progression that disappointed me a bit the more I dug into the game. for one: a major component of accessing certain doors is leveling up the gems within your weapons for "higher-level" doors ie a third-level green door requires the green gem to be upgraded twice. this check is arbitrary and would have been annoying had I elected to upgrade my weapons first, which have a tangible effect on moment-to-moment gameplay - I reluctantly upgraded the gems first to avoid needing to grind orbs. there is also a significant portion of the game (maybe about 25% in two sections) in which you play as samanosuke's allied kunoichi kaede. while she's perfectly fit in combat and can hurl kunai for ranged combat, she lacks alternate weapons or the orb system and thus feels overly simplified. in her portions I often found it easier to run around enemies than bothering to fight for no reward. the little bits of fluff in samanosuke's combat like magic and hot-swapping weapons (and eventually a gun) shore up the shallow framework of the combat, and without that the deficiencies of the game seem more apparent.

regardless of these issues the game is a breezy adventure in the sub-5 hour range and hits the spot for those wanting a survival horror-style adventure with less anxiety and more swordplay. for what it lacks in depth it certainly makes up for in unpretentious charm and adherence to a comfortable modality of play. also: for those playing the hd version, make sure you set it to 4:3! the 16:9 seems to just zoom in on the backgrounds with panning and I found it to look rather unappealing.

the suburban pastiche of earthbound (and mother) was comforting thanks to its familiarity. it's a game where you can point at the screen and say "look, that's like my life!" pulling money from an ATM, stopping by the mall to grab a burger, or wandering around the natural history museum, these aesthetic choices work precisely because of how the expected unreality of the game world becomes subverted into a representation of reality. it's novel in its presentation, and enhanced by the quirky charm of the townspeople along with the tangents into both goofy myth and unsettling sci-fi horror.

which makes your first moments walking into a similar world after a between-chapters skip of multiple years in mother 3 such a slap in the face. our protagonist lucas, one of the few remaining denizens attempting to reject a new capitalist order, now glumly walks through these same suburban streets. former stalwart geezers contributing to the town's safety have been all but locked away in a dilapitated nursing home, while lucas's peers scarcely older than he work for wages in the nearby clay mines. the cheerful dialogue from the townspeople now solely consists of those chiding lucas for not getting with the times in between questioning why virtually every other defector's house has gone up in flames. it's the same carefree music of adolescence, the same bright thin-line artstyle, the same casual strolls around town, but tainted by your knowledge of the utopia of the society that came before and the decadence of the modernization that has come in its wake. it is, in essence, a loss of innocence. the unfair and early death of lucas's mother at the start of the game shattered it, and post timeskip you get a close glimpse of its proverbial corpse.

it is indeed somewhat funny the lengths that itoi went to establish the despair of modern civilization; endearingly awkward as his writing is, occasionally it gets into simply awkward territory the more it moralizes. yes, there is a token native american stereotype, and yes, his tipi gets blown to smithereens by artificial lightning post-timeskip. the magypsies as well, in attempt to enforce their alien nature given their status as immortal standardbearers of the world as it stands, are othered via their gender representation... which ends up being rather distasteful "okama" cariactures. my reason for pointing these out is not to discredit the rest of the work, but more to note that itoi bit off more than he could chew with some of the themes. he really wanted to demonstrate how fucked modernization is, man! so in the process some of the imagery gets a little hamfisted or straight-up ???... but that first time you walk into the modernized tazmily it hit me so hard.

likewise when you finally arrive at new pork city late in the game, the ghoulish tackiness of it all is so evident. the bizarre international mishmashes and cardboard cutout buildings, like toy props in a set of figurines (or buildings without polygons in the rear like a video game with fixed perspective) they illustrate gestures towards culture generation with vapid facsimile in place of rich tradition. it's a childlike conception of urban life: video games in walking distance and 24/7 screenings of heroes from another world. the idyllic norman rockwell landscape of earthbound has been grafted onto the communal tazmily like metal plates welded to biological creatures. all of it enforced by heiling stormtroopers in sneering pig masks... ok again, the imagery is really hamfisted. let itoi cook!

somehow even with this ideological shift in the people of tazmily, itoi still goes out of his way to illustrate the cruelty that lurks under the otherwise flawless exterior of their transactionless lifestyle. duster's bum leg, a physical reminder of his abuse at the hands of wess, is openly acknowledged, and yet the weight is silently borne by duster himself. his plain looks and questionable hygiene belie his thief tool mastery and serious upright bass chops, regardless of the verbal degredatation his father puts him through. likewise flint, stoic in his initial voiceless protagonist role, suffers a truly heartbreaking outburst of rage late in his campaign, indicating the dam about to burst on the societal shift to come. even lucas and claus play-act fighting with the local dragos at the very beginning of the game; the language of violence is still engrained in the minds of those living outside of capitalism.

the first three chapters are dedicated primarily to this plot, with the old rpg elements streamlined and the party limited. admittedly I'm not a big fan of the parts of earthbound where you're limited to a one or two person party; I just don't think you can come up with strategies that interesting when there's only a couple of moves to work with each turn. likewise, mother 3 provides different perspectives across each chapter with small parties carefully paced around the relative strength of the bosses they'll face. each character at this point can use special attacks and debuffs for free, removing the resource-management usually inherent in jrpgs. this isn't entirely bad, as it allows the player to experiment with various special abilities, but it would've gotten rather tedious after the six or seven hours it lasted. the point at which I got tired of this setup was in the lucas/boney fight against the jealous bass, which virtually necessitates using explosive items in order to outpace the devastating jam sessions they lay on you.

thankfully after this mother 3 wants to remind you that it's a real-ass jrpg, and thus the party is assembled... lucas, black mage kumatora, duster with his thief tools, and boney the dog. out of these mechanically boney is unfortunately undercooked; his only special move is "sniff" which senses the enemy's weaknesses, and his stats are gimped by being unable to use most equipment. thus most of the interesting fighting relies on the other three characters. I love how the mother series crystallizes the heroism of their heroes through making them healing mages, and lucas is no exception. while he has excellent attack, he's also equipped with a bevy of abilities such as setting up shields, buffing stats, and giving full revives to anyone or everyone in the party. kumatora handles all of the debuffs and attack magic, while duster is able to also apply free debuffs in exchange for a middling activation rate.

in turn the bosses get significantly more powerful, especially in the lengthy chapter 7. this whole section serves as a truncated redo of the same kind of "find the macguffin in each area" structure from earthbound, and with each needle pulled at the end of each area comes a more fiendlishly difficult boss. high base defense, extremely strong full-party attacks, switching between physical and PSI attacks, and even being able to destroy your shields at will all make character death frequent, and without smart planning and exploitation of the series's distinctive health counter system, it will be difficult to overcome some of the late-game fights. to my surprise other than the infamous barrier trio fight I didn't find that most of the fights revolved around simple weakness matching either; there's legitimately challenging turn-based slugfests balanced just right not to require grinding as long as you don't mind taking detours for items here and there.

complimenting the basics here are rhythm game elements which require the player to click the attack button in time with the backing beat to create a combo of up to 16 attacks in a row for a notable damage increase. while conceptually simple, the expansively eclectic soundtrack makes following the rhythm often require a significant amount of concentration. beats are dropped occasionally or sections will have tempos that vary, forcing the player to keep track of when they start attacking to ensure they don't get interrupted and lose valuable damage. following the beat itself rarely varies outside of simply tapping the backbeat however, which is a bit disappointing outside of a couple outliers like the 15/8 timpani-led Strong One. other songs occasionally try off-beat rhythms or more complex bass patterns, but unfortunately all of this is held back by the game's inconsistent timing windows. I played this on 3ds through rom injection which is generally considered to be extremely close to hardware-accurate, and yet I consistently noticed that the windows on certain songs required me to be a touch late. anything with eighth notes is a total crapshoot unfortunately, and thus I can see why they limited the songs that contained these pretty significantly. surprisingly enough the final chapter of the game features few difficult songs, making most of the encounters relatively easy to finish with only regular attacks, and I was hoping to hear the really bizarre tunes come out during the final mobs and bosses. however it's obvious the system was meant to be more of a bonus damage system, and thankfully the whole game can be managed without it if you're crafty enough with your PSI and thieves tool use.

without a doubt when compared to its meandering predecessor mother 3 focuses its satire on actually tearing apart the origins of the americana it draws from. at the same time it's a perfectly enjoyable jrpg with a neat rhythm mechanic and the same counter mechanism from earthbound to make timing your actions carefully utterly important; a rarity for turn-based games. as the game comes to a close those who played earthbound will receive an unsettling reminder of the artifacts from those games and the influence they played upon the creation of the world our heroes exist in, and the ending is cataclysmic and only partially resolved. for a game infused with so much levity, it's remarkably grim at the same time. I can only assume this juxtaposition of tones is what itoi was trying to summon all along.

if metroid is the brains of the search action genre, castlevania is certainly the brawn. build up your level, find cool new weapons, and slaughter your way through hundreds of the undead and the macabre. these are empowering games that let you turn the tables on enemies that hastened your demise in the retro castlevania titles. it's a formula the developers were happy to roll with for seven odd titles, adding new systems to each but generally keeping the same pacing between them. every traversal powerup seems to open up the world in all directions with new areas lurking around each corner compared to metroid's tightly-constrained progression and focused exploration. it's the turn-off-your-brain metroidvania, perfect for when you wanna have youtube on in the background or are couchlocked with your friends.

having only played symphony of the night in the past, aria of sorrow refines the experience that game presents with fewer extraneous systems and expanded combat options. protagonist soma cruz can equip three "soul" abilities at any given time: one subweapon attack, one traversal option/familiar, and one passive. these are gained randomly from the various mobs strewn throughout the hallways of dracula's castle, and every single mob has a unique one more or less. the simplicity of this design is freeing in how it lets you choose your loadout without restrictions or incentives otherwise. experimenting with each new soul feels natural as you slowly accrue a collection of increasing quality. it fits in so naturally for a handheld game and works perfectly for those looking to simply try new ones as they go along as well as those insisting on grinding for each individual soul.

other than that, it's business as usual. interesting boss fights galore (though not quite as many as sotn), meat-and-potatoes combat that forgives the player more often than not, and lots of canceling attacks with the backdash. the overall palette of the castle leaves something to be desired with its light hues and heavy reliance on blue shades, no doubt predicated on the game boy advance's notoriously poorly-lit screen. many microdesign issues I had with sotn rear their head here as well, specifically in terms of hallways of repeating enemies one after another, although I feel like this occurred less often in this game. I also don't necessarily feel like the early game areas feel significantly differentiated from each other; it wasn't until I hit more fascinating locales such as the floating gardens or the clock tower that I could really tell the individual areas apart. these aren't deal-breakers, but rather more a reflection of how staid the formula likely was at this point in the series chronology.

as a bite-sized metroidvania it hit the spot no questions asked. I rather enjoyed the cluttered and projectile-heavy final boss and the truncated true ending area that didn't take quite as much time as sotn's full second castle - though I must admit going on a killing spree powerful as fuck through a whole second castle really did have its appeal. not all metroidvanias can claim to have the same breezy, welcoming style as the castlevania series, and this entry really pulled me back into the series after not touching these games much for the past five-odd years.

been feverishly trying to finish up my last few games for 2AGO recently and I figured it'd be a good idea to do a quickie runthrough mgs3 for some easy points. run it on a low difficulty, skip all the cutscenes, and end up earning a ton of points in return. not a bad idea by the looks of it... until one of the mods suggested that I should run it on the original "snake eater" release on normal difficulty for some extra points. that didn't sound too bad! I legit went and bought a copy of the game to play on a real ps2 with a real sorta tiny CRT on our coffee table. playing mgs3 as it was originally "meant" to be played intrigued me, as it has since I was a high school student playing it for the first time.

I must have been a junior when I first played it. it was fall (I believe I played the whole game in november), and it felt like one of those gaming coming-of-age moments where I had really enveloped myself in something fantastical and totally unique. I had conquered this worldly adventure, defeated each member of the cobra unit, sabotaged the shagohod, and watched the white blossoms fade to crimson at a time in my life when I was still delving into the kinds of classic games that would really define my tastes for years to come. at the time I was actually playing on a crt as well - a much bigger one that my parents had bought two decades prior, with the 16:9 ps3 port awkwardly squashed into a 4:3 composite signal. it was challenging and often stressful, but it infused me with a sense of courage and awe at the same time. it was more complex than anything I had played, broader in scope than virtually any of the (admittedly older) worlds I had ever seen, and crafted more expertly than even most books I had read up to then.

I first knew this was going to be a rough replay when I began a hard run of the hd port after doing multiple marathon dogtag runs of mgs2 back in the early months of the pandemic. the latter I had affirmed was still my favorite (as I've spent much time privately and publically digesting), and I was expecting mgs3 to be a little rougher around the edges... but let's just say I didn't make it far past the ocelot fight. now less focused on the presentation and more on the mechanics, the game just didn't sing to me like those repeat runs of mgs2 had, and I quickly instead moved on to trying mgs4 and peace walker for the first time.

now back to this playthrough: how troubling is the infamous top-down camera that defines the original release, hastily "corrected" in the subsistence release a year later? I'm divided a bit on this. if I had a mind to, I could easily tug some contrarian thread extoling the cinematic framing that the fixed camera provides versus its clunkier free-cam counterpart a la yakuza 2, and admittedly at points I did feel this way. kojima explained the initial camera perspective was to unite the game as part of a trilogy with mgs1 and 2, and while it feels more likely to me that the the 3D camera was deemed too taxing performance-wise (the game as a whole really strains the ps2), I sort of understand the throughline he was trying to create there. playing mgs3 in its original form visually conditions the player to remember their experiences in shadow moses and the big shell, and in the process affixes its areas as extensions of the older environments rather than a full reinvention.

but mgs3 is a reinvention; it may as well be the start of a brand-new series. mgs2 perfected the old metal gear formula - military locales with slight sci-fi elements, smaller indoor areas, no natural cover, truly ghost-like stealth - in such a way that there wasn't a point to continuing on with those design parameters. mgs3 is the rough draft for a new kind of stealth game. old metal gear had its run, but it was time to catch up with titles that really took advantage of the 3D space and the locales it could create. the new metal gear made you a natural predator, slithering through foliage, feeding off the land, disposing of guards, and patiently taking stock of potential openings. and really? it's a concept that kojima didn't really nail until mgsv. in that game you have so much at your disposal that you do truly become the big boss of legend, the punished demon wrecking havoc on soviet troops through countless outposts and bases. you're actually superhuman, and unknowable to those that you prey upon. even through that it never ceases to feel dynamic and punishing if you don't plan your moves, perform reconnaissance, and stay on your belly.

mgs3 never gets quite that far. in an effort to boost believability, the ever-useful soliton radar has been stripped from snake's arsenal. a sad choice but necessary to reach the next level of truly self-reliant stealth action. on its own this wouldn't be a problem, but at the same time the guard's have been granted some sort of hivemind ability to immediately spring into action at the slightest glimpse of your person. mgs2 distinguished itself on having its AI naturally react to your presence with tension and fear, needing to radio HQ to inform the others that you were sighted, but mgs3 cuts down this reaction time to a split second instead. briefly spotted by a guard 100 feet away? now everyone in the location will descend on your location instantly. no chance to get a quick headshot because someone accidentally walked up on you alone or even use CQC. if you happen to miscalculate a single guard's location or miss their existence entirely, you will certainly be punished.

this punishment is more of a light slap on the wrist though. mgs3 leans on far more "get from point A to point B" objectives and in the process kneecaps its ability to punish you for not remaining stealthy. given the amount of lethal heavy weaponry you receive, it's obvious that stealth was never the sole intended option. snake can eat dozens of bullets and outrun guards easily, making simply running to your destination often much quicker and more viable than actually attempting a redo of a given area once your cover is blown. you can't reset to a checkpoint anyway, so might as well just skedaddle and try to get a couple screens ahead before forcing a death and getting to respawn in a later area with the alert wiped.

even when you're forced to actually remain in an area to complete a specific objective, it feels mandatory to tranq virtually everyone. the tranq gun feels somewhat divisive on whether it simplifies the gameplay loop too much, and mgs3 feels like it leans on it heavily for less experienced players to get by. the alternative is CQC - which the game is absolutely effusive about - but in a game where guards can easily hear your footsteps, actually getting close to get the grab and not just awkwardly punch them feels night impossible in many cases. it's worth mention that CQC has a clunky, over-involved set of states that left me with the manual firmly in hand for my entire first run. instead, most rooms initally led me to finding a good vantage spot, getting solid tranq shots on everyone I could see, and crawling about through hoping to death that I hadn't missed an obscured opponent.

and the CQC reminds me: oh god, the controls. mgs2 already had a bit of a stuffed control scheme, but servicable to those who would learn it. mgs3 leans too heavily on the pressure-sensitive buttons of the dualshock 2, and in the process makes certain things like firing a weapon (specifically the AK-47) feel woefully unresponsive. having to look up why I was failing counter-CQC against the boss only to find that I was not hitting the button hard enough felt like a slap to the face. the crawling is also abysmal given how vital it is to progression. it is difficult to turn and you will occasionally get stuck on objects if you go prone too close to something else, making apparent how little they felt the need to update said controls over predecessors that used it far more sparingly. weapons still lack a reticle, and certain weapons require holding L1 on top of already holding R1 just to aim down sights, which makes the motorcycle chase section more uncomfortable than it had to be. it's a system that should have been overhauled following mgs2, and it's unfortunate that this game released before over-the-shoulder aiming became the norm.

this of course is ignoring the "survival" aspects, interrupting the above gameplay with constant detours into the menu. changing camo to get a high index is mandatory if you literally don't want to be seen crawling from extremely long distances away, which forces menuing on many room transitions to adapt to the environment. god forbid you miss an important camo from not exploring, because some of them feel near mandatory (I was often screwed indoors for this reason). the food menu is an easier one, simply letting you refil your stamina with various foodstuffs you've obtained or carved. the cure menu is obnoxious and tedious, but veterans will know that using said menu is virtually pointless on normal difficulty anyway since letting wounds heal on their own is mandatory to expanding the HP bar, so I basically never bothered with it until near the end.

and I could keep going on, just blabbing about how annoying I find playing this game now, analyzing the mechanical interactions that fail, and just generally whining about what may be one of the beloved games ever made. there is no satisfaction in this for me! this particular replay, with a stuttering framerate and no freecam and skipping all the cutscenes and codec calls and just running at the instant I got an alert felt like a sledgehammer utterly crushing my perception of the game. it's so hard for me to discern what I actually think about this game. the gameplay really didn't change at the end of the day: the way I played it just did. with my original playthrough I let myself actually try to embody naked snake, and in the process experiencing his finest hour was cathartic. on this playthrough I rushed through and neutered the game's impact.

one of the ways to rectify this is to lean into the kojima-isms present in the game, which are possibly more present here than any of his other games. you can blow up the enemy's ammo/food supply to hurt their morale and make their weapons useless! blow up the helicopter at the base in the early game to prevent it from patrolling the mountains! throw rotten food at the fear to get him to eat it when he gets low on stamina! but do these really enhance the overall gameplay? or are they just trivia to spout and share? they don't legitimize the game's structure unless your criteria for a game's quality is how many weird things you can know about it. I don't want to let my opinion of the game rest entirely on such a flimsy structure. obviously those little touches are still cool, but my big praises for mgs2 don't revolve around the fact that you can use the directional mic during the emma sniper section to hear her talk to the diarrhea guy. it's still great for discussing the game with friends though; one of my friends is playing it for the first time and when he told me he decided he was just going to kill every guard in his path I had a good laugh at his expense knowing that he'd be complaining endlessly once he got to the sorrow.

so this is the real reason I've been reluctant to attempt to retrospectively review this game. having not played it since 2015, I couldn't really write a review in post without replaying the game, but something meant to be a breezy playthrough like I just finished ended up unveiling ugly aspects of the game I wish I didn't have to consider. however you as the reader conceive of my reviewing style, I certainly self-consciously see it somewhere in the more formalist space, less concerned with conveying experiential nuance in favor of revealing mechanical interactions and the strengths of the underlying rules and objectives of the game. thus it was impossible for me to work through my conception of the game without me in the process undermining my own thesis on how amazing this game actually is and how much it blew my mind back in high school.

so the replay was a bit of a blessing in disguise; it let me split my psychic image of this game a bit, and shunt all of those negative feelings into this playthrough while still maintaining the idealized vision of that First Time. I think the two can coexist, and maybe sometime I'll finally finish that hard playthrough while actually watching the cutscenes and doing everything the "right way". then through gritted teeth I can do my masterpiece review, dissecting its cold war setting and observations on the expendability of even those deemed "special" in order to further the goals of the state. maybe I can do a volgin and solidus comparison, or explain the parallels between bosses like vulcan raven and the fury, or the evolution from sniper wolf to the end. I can share my praises for the gorgeous environments, the sublime pacing, and the top-notch level design. the setpieces, that gorgeous theme, and the heartbreaking credits song. but that review isn't this review, and it may just live in my brain perpetually. mgs3 as I originally played it will continue to live as its own log, potentially review-less. the only context being that date, and the memories swirling around growing ever fainter as I grow older and less connected to my high school self. perhaps laughing at my friend for his killing spree was bit hypocritical; I did coup de grace every enemy my first playthrough, only to face the sorrow in a grueling 20-minute encounter that rattled me quite a bit. the younger me would be proud to learn I killed only one guard on the road to the sorrow fight this time.

there is something definitive I'll pull from this experience though, and it's probably a big reason why I didn't just leave this at "this game hasn't aged well for me." most of the bosses in this game are not really that impressive on a second-go-round, which is fine for metal gear; they're much more about witnessing their monologues for the first time and getting to see the big gimmick of each fight (for the record, I ran my system clock forward to kill the end quickly; I'm doing this for a competition after all!). however, I somehow forgot to pick up the snow camo - I think I grabbed it and then died and forgot to grab it again on the replay - and thus was forced to face the boss naked. the fight was protracted and unexpected, and in that way it suddenly became what my younger me remembered from all those years ago. blindly stumbling around turned to methodically picking new sniping positions where I felt momentarily safe, and desperately flailing against her CQC became praying for chances for free damage. when I finally witnessed the flowers turn in all of its single-digit framerate glory that catharsis of surmounting the challenge returned. it was elation. I did sit and watch those final scenes, and man does it still make me tear up. that graveside view of big boss honoring the true patriot will never not affect me. so that's how I know that somewhere I still think metal gear solid 3 is a unalienable masterpiece, a peak of the medium that no one should miss, and one of the unquestionable most profound games for me at the sunset of my adolescence.

but god if they had just remade this on the fox engine or something I would much rather play that instead. maybe I'll give in and try that 3ds port...

"For Resident Evil 4, I actually didn't stop my frenzy myself. I wanted a producer to step in and stop it for me," - Shinji Mikami

resident evil 4's gameplay mechanics can be summed up as the following: you have four different main gun types accompanied by grenades. enemies walk up slowly towards you with a few different weapon types, and to shoot them you must stop in place and take aim in an over-the-shoulder perspective. generally with multiple enemies, the goal is to stagger one and then run up and kick it, which not only gives leon copious I-frames but also serves as an AoE to any surrounding enemies. the handgun generally serves as your bread-and-butter choice in most close-quarters situations, while the shotgun clears out groups quickly, the rifle can eliminate precise long-distance targets, and the TMP allows a low-damage spray-and-pray solution for specific high-density situations. leon comes equipped with a knife at all times that can quickly kill downed enemies without expending ammo as quickly as well as open item crates strewn across the world. the majority of enemies are identical "ganados" fodder which can wield a variety of weapons, and can generally be taken down quickly with headshots. however, after a ganados's head explodes, there is a potential for a dangerous parasite "los plagas" to extrude from the wound, which can attack from range and generally requires high-powered weaponry (or a flash grenade) in order to kill. with all of this in mind, the core tenets of gameplay consist of keeping leon a comfortable distance from enemies, setting up AoE opportunities when possible, and strategically prioritizing highly-dangerous targets with complementary weapon selections.

that's the "gameplay" in a nutshell. it's a bit like saying super mario bros. 3 is a "game where the player must traverse from platform to platform via jumping, while analyzing the hazard space for the safest path..." blah blah blah. for so many games I feel like you can summarize the core experience with the mechanical interaction description, but when you get to something as unconventionally designed in terms of scenario as re4, it sort of defies being encapsulated by its mechanics. it takes virtually no time for the game to spread its wings, sort of like a biblical angel, literally so complex that it's not completely comprehendable upon first glance. and even this metaphor feels overwrought now that I've written it out because the game is so nonchalant about its own vastness. its almost workmanlike in how stuffed with content it is, treating the abundance of twists and new ideas as simply part of what it takes to put together a AAA.

that comparison with mario 3 wasn't idly tossed in; both games share a need to constantly change the objectives and gimmicks level-by-level, room-by-room. I don't think I can name a single time in re4 where I felt like it reused an idea, or remotely let a concept get stale before the credits rolled. yet the game delicately avoids feeling unfocused at the same time. instead of adding too many ingredients and risking a muddled palette, the designers instead simply rearrange old components in a new way every time you walk through a transition. you don't necessarily need to introduce a new enemy type every five minutes when you can just add switches you need to hit, or hidden doors that flood new enemies in when you hit a certain trigger, or a series of staircases that put leon on his back foot when attempting to attack those at the top, or even wrecking ball controls you need to nurse while facing an onslaught of enemies from all directions. the base gameplay is simplistic enough to apply to virtually any situation you could ever imagine and fun enough to carry whatever you throw at it, so why not throw everything into the pot?

the garradores are a great example of this. the first garrador you meet is fresh enough to stand on its own; you enter its dungeon, grab some key item or flip some switch (honestly can't remember), and attempt to leave, only for it to violently awake and begin chasing you. while its long iron claws make it immensely dangerous, it is blind and thus can only track you by sound. tricking it to getting its claws embedded in a wall or simply sneaking behind it opens up an opportunity to strike its plagas from behind, exposing its weak point and allowing you to dispose of the monster before exiting the dungeon. not long after this it appears for a second time. surely the logical iteration would be simply to add some other enemies into the equation, right? or maybe put it in a room where there are fewer ways to trick it into chasing after noises away from your position?

the game plops you into a cage with the garrador with multiple enemies on the perimeter snarl and take potshots at you, safe behind grates enclosing you in with the murderous creature. attempting to fight back will alert the garrador to your presence, ensuring your swift defeat. there happens to be an door the player can use to exit the cage, but it has a padlock that requires the player shoot it off, again putting the player at risk of the garrador closing in. does the player choose to avoid the attacks from outside the cage, luring the garrador into a spot where the player can take care of them before dealing with the rest? or do they risk leaving the cage with the garrador in immediate pursuit, hoping that the space to maneuver outside makes the encounter easier? one intrepid forum user in a thread I read discussing favorite parts of the game shared their solution: throw a grenade near the door, which instantly disintegrates the padlock, distracts the garrador towards the blast, and allows the player to sneak out and begin taking care with the external opponents. as someone who has always been a bit grenade-shy no matter why game I play, I would've never thought of this (I took the garrador out and ate the external damage before leaving the cage). it's this multiplicity of solutions for any given confrontation that makes the design truly sing.

all of these are strung between simple feel-good classic resi item fetching and some small puzzles here and there that keep the game structured and the locality of each area present in the player's mind. when even with these elements the combat becomes overbearing, the game throws a curveball, letting the player navigate the hedge maze or forcing them to evade the verdugo. that latter boss concept gets repeated later with the U3 without reusing a single lick of content, instead choosing a completely different way to instill the horror of a disgusting entity chasing you. imagine how easy it would've been for them to use multiple elevator-ride fights; the design team threw in a ski-lift section instead. area with ashley operating switches while you provide cover fire? somehow they restricted themselves to only doing it once. which lest I forget, when the game feels like there's not quite enough spice, they'll toss ashley into the equation, who you must escort and protect to avoid an instant game over. somehow they even made this work! the enemies primarily focusing attacks on you and your ability to instantly take care of anyone who attempts to abscond with her in their grasp goes a long way towards making what should be a detestable mechanic overall rather nonintrusive.

unfortunately, with the relative simplicity of the gameplay, bosses tend to be less exciting and more of an afterthought. unload bullets into the boss, run away, reload, rinse and repeat. it doesn't help that virtually every boss is replete with attacks that require dodging via a QTE, which show up far too often in the game in general and jeopardize any real fear or unique qualities for each fight. at worst you can simply use a rocket launcher to instantly kill any boss that is giving you a hard time (I used the free one in the castle on salazar), but overall most of them are more like ammo dumps rather than true tests of skill. on that note, I also can't say I like the regenerators or iron maidens very much. it's a late-game reminder that the genre is technically survival horror, and I think it does a solid job on that note, but hitting the weak spots can be fiddly, especially when they're located on the monster's back like in the first iron maiden fight. for a game that otherwise doesn't really penalize non-optimal shots on regular enemies it's a bit of a nuisance, but I never ran out of ammo regardless and it seems like eventually you will kill one of these enemies with raw damage even if you don't quite hit the final weak spot.

obviously a game this utterly rich with peerless design drew a lot of attention, and like that aforementioned angel, grotesque in its majesty and scope, onlookers and fellow designers created images of it that couldn't capture the vastness of its splendor. more specifically, everyone ran with the novel camera perspective to instead make legions of less-inspired shooters bursting with endless arenas of slight variations on the same theme, with none of the charm or endless inspiration capcom production studio 4 seemed to contain. in hindsight, I don't think resident evil 4 really separates itself all that much from something like gears of war in the sense of carrying a certain level of prestige or dignity. both games simply set out to make great action experiences for those interested. resident evil 4 is humble in its creativity, but frenzied in its drive to never give the player a second of boredom amidst its staggering campaign.

to the best of my knowledge, character movement exists within giant state machines dictated by the player input and the properties of any current collision. if you touch a slope, transition to sliding state; if you press the jump button, transition to a jump state unless you're sliding or etc. etc.. in those behind-the-scenes tales of miyamoto meticulously testing mario's movement in low-poly sandboxes during sm64's development, these state transitions and their corresponding kinematics values were the real meat of the tweaks on the programmers' end. "let's make the flip jump transition available even before the turn animation begins, also if mario jumps onto a slope less steep than X degrees maybe we could try giving him a few frames standing or moving to give the player some time to jump again, also if you collide in the air with a slope steeper than X degrees make sure you don't add horizontal momentum when you transition to a slide" these are just ideas off the top of my head and don't represent the actual code, but this is how I conceive of it. the character is a tightly tuned system that functions as a simulacrum of real movement, realistic where our brain wants it and exaggerated where our hands desire it. code with the model ingrained into its logic teeters the line between pretty and messy, and sm64 perhaps got the closest in its era to actually getting somewhere with this system.

sunshine unfortunately lacks this level of polish. mario's main movement feels tighter and more responsive than in the game's predecessor, but at the same time the introduction of fludd and of dynamic object geometry strains whatever was in the previous character state table. accordingly mario feels at his most chaotic in this entry. floating into a slope could result in him suddenly sliding away with no ability for the player to break out of his helplessness, or a rotating platform could cause mario to stutter as the line between "flat" and "slope" becomes blurred. mario will legitimately phase through objects on the rare occasion he doesn't clip in and out or plummet out of the sky having lost his jump. this distinct lack of polish (likely due to the game's rushed development) pervades each aspect of the game.

second-to-second these movement quirks will likely be the most apparent issue to the player, but zooming out reveals level design and structure indicative of the game's troubled history. immediately out of the gate: no star (or rather "shine sprite") requirements, with the first seven shines of each main area now mandatory and the rest completely optional and pointless outside of bragging rights. the seventh shine of each is a brief shadow mario chase that varies little from location-to-location, leaving just the first six of each area as notable challenges. so how do these stack up?

many of these (at least one per world) are obnoxious "secret" stages that steal mario from the sunkissed vista of isle delfino and drop him into gussied-up debug rooms. the level design here mainly consists of a few half-hearted platforming challenges made from hastily-assembled generic blocks slapped together with a smattering of coins and 1UPs, and none of them are very fun. the rotating objects that mario must ride in a few of these especially aggravate that previously-mentioned unstable character state table, and mastering them requires a frustrating level of practice given how unnatural the physics of these sections are. of special note is the infamous chuckster level, which involves having mario awkwardly thrown from platform to platform over death pits with restricted influence from the player. talking to each chuckster at a slight offset will result in getting thrown at angles that will often result in certain demise, and learning how to best exploit them again requires more frustrating practice in a stage that should be otherwise brief. all of this is exacerbated by the fact that you have no access to fludd, leaving mario with solely the sideflip and the spin jump. these are good moves in their own right, but I can't help but miss a low-and-long movement option like the long jump, or potentially a high vertical option that doesn't require the control stick shenanigans the sideflip/spin jump necessitate.

removing all of the secret stages (of which there are ten) and all of the shadow mario (of which there are seven) yields just 32 unique shines as part of the main game. some more categories of stages quickly become apparent:

sunshine is often criticized for its number of red coin stages, and while the postgame adds one to each secret stage along with a couple other optional ones, the main game itself features just five. the windmill village and pirate ship ones are more traditional platforming challenges, and I'd say the windmill village one is a solid exploration of the titular area in bianco hills. the pirate ship one is frustrating given the difficulty of staying put on the actual pirate ships, but the majority of the red coins are on climbable grating and are much more straight-forward to obtain. the coral reef red coin challenge revolves around sunshine's spotty swimming mechanics (questionable for a game with such a focus on watery environments) and ultimately boils down to a game of I Spy with a fiddly camera. there is also one using the rideable bloopers in ricco harbor (I often failed this one after collecting all the coins by crashing into the pier with the shine on it, which surprisingly enough didn't kill me playing on the 3DAS version), and one that takes place with the underwater scuba controls within a large bottle, which I can't really say is particularly interesting given how few obstacles there are in your way.

boss stages appear frequently throughout each world to little surprise from players of sm64 prior. bianco hills features petey pirahna, whose mouth must be filled with water before he spits sludge at you. his first fight is pretty on-par for what I'd expect from a first boss fight, and his refight is pretty similar with a couple little additions, such as flying about the main area and creating tornados (?). gooper blooper appears no less than three times throughout the game and severely wears out his welcome by his noki bay appearance, although this is proceeded by a legitimate platforming challenge that makes up for it. of note is that his first two ricco harbor appearances are virtually identical except for that one fight requires one extra spin jump in order to reach the arena. wiggler, mecha-bowser (who you fight with rockets from a rollercoaster car), the manta, king boo, and eely-mouth all have singular fights throughout the other worlds that generally are the better shines of their respective worlds. they fall about on the level I would expect from a 3D platformer: not necessarily enthralling, but decent diversions from the actual platforming.

there are also three il piantissimo races akin to koopa the quick from sm64. I would say some of the latter's races are somewhat challenging, whereas the former's chosen routes leave a lot to be desired and thus can easily be thwarted by anyone with a reasonable understanding of the controls. they unfortunately feel like 30-second throwaway shines. there is also a time attack on the rideable bloopers with a couple minor obstacle that seem pulled right out of the secret stages.

all of the above shines removed from the total, we now have 13 shines left. in theory these are the "interesting" objectives, the ones that would hopefully pop up when reminiscing about what made this game special. when I look at this list, the first one that pops out to me is sand bird... the infamous filter for many new players, including myself when I first finished this game. this stage actually involves collecting red coins, although this objective is somewhat auxillary considering the first seven can be scooped up in less than 15 seconds and the final one can't be reached until the bird that you stand upon finally reaches the top of the tower in the middle of the area. rather, the main obstacle is simply that the bird rolls 90 degrees, releasing you into the ether if you don't scramble over onto the bird's side before it completely rotates. learning to correctly time mario's walk over the edge between the different faces of one of the bird's many cubes (I usually do it at the tail) is entirely unintuitive and unforgiving. once it clicks, the stage becomes an auto-scroller without any point or challenge, as it has the last couple times I've played it. there is no sweet spot in the middle where the shine feels obtainable with some effort; it either feels insurmountable when you're first trying it and then rote on each subsequent playthrough.

this describes a lot of these remaining shines unfortunately, especially when it comes to the proper platforming challenges in each stage. the caged shine sprite in ricco harbor atop a large structure of steel girders caused me to tear my hair out initially with the wind sprites that assault you, requiring a full tower reclimb; on this attempt I forgot the intended path and instead skipped about 60% of the area with a well-timed spin jump. the runaway ferris wheel stage in pinna park had the same result for me: on my original playthrough I struggled greatly with the electrified koopas and their unpredictable movement cycles, whereas on this playthrough I skipped past the entire top half of the climbable grating with another spin jump, making the challenge moot. simply knowing the movement tech completely obliterates the challenge, and yet I feel obligated to do it because without using it I'm thrust into the jank. the same goes for those who know how to use the spam spray: timed slime-clearing levels such as the one in sirena beach are incessently precise without knowing how to shotgun your water blasts, but once you do they become pointlessly easy. simply knowing discrete strategies or moves renders the game moot, and thus there is no linear difficulty curve. between my first playthrough and now there is simply a void where a fun game should be; never has sunshine felt like a accessible trial to be overcome. there is simply a gulf between aggravation and tedium.

this is to say nothing of the hub, the optional content, the one-of-a-kind environmental throughline, hell, even fludd itself. it just all feels... slight in its rushed nature and uneven scope. levels are expansive but exploration is heavily discouraged given how scripted many of the individual shines are, and on this playthrough I felt like I missed entire swaths of each level. new fludd abilities or yoshi aren't given bespoke unlock levels such as in sm64, and instead simply are dropped from even more shadow mario chases. the plaza hub does come to life more and more as the game continues, but compared to peach's castle it lacks progression even as it opens up new challenges (among which are the particularly infamous sunshine levels everyone discusses like pachinko or the lilypad death river). the one thing that keeps me going is that sense of locality that few other games of this era can point to, that feeling of seeing the ferris wheel far off in the background of another stage, or the hotel delfino off in the distance. no other game I can think of attempts something so drastically removed from typical delineation of themes between areas like sunshine, and it's a shame that it jettisons a lot of its potential by flooding the shine list with these dripless special stages in a floating void.

in many ways I don't see sunshine as truly mechanically paired with 64 as the "collectathon" mario games. in fact, I don't think 64 was even intended as a collectathon as we understand them today; instead its explorable areas feel more like opportunity seized from technical restraints preventing true linear platforming challenges from really succeeding. sunshine attempts to move more in the latter direction, without the same sense of non-linearity or potentiality that arose from 64's seeming vastness at the time. in this regard it feels more like an ancestor to galaxy; galaxy is hatched from the egg of sunshine, something with the same genes as 64 but woven within a new form and flesh. it may have even been genius in its own right had it not been hastily released in an attempt to bolster the gamecube's faltering performance. in another way it's the reverse of much of nintendo's modern "meh"-tier output: full of soul but completely unpolished.

my high school years coincided perfectly with the sudden success of nu-FE and the proliferation of the 3DS after its sluggish start, so why I never glommed onto the series sort of eludes me. had it just been popular online it would be one thing, but I was flanked on both sides both by people I was dating and by my usual gaming group to get into it, and yet just something about it put me off. if it wasn't the cult fandom the series had accrued on the internet dissuading me for the newer titles, it was certainly the idiosyncratic mechanics of the older titles keeping me at bay.

of course I eventually did dip my toe into the series with an obsessive three houses grind after its release, so it's only natural that I finally try out one of the older ones to compare (ignoring my playthrough of blazing blade a few years ago that sort of trailed off). path of radiance at least attempts to assuage some of my misgivings about older fire emblem titles. at the same time it's mired in the series legacy to an extent that holds me back from truly investing myself in the experience. after thinking it over I've outlined two major shortcomings that left me wary.

permadeath: yes, I am fully aware of why this series has such a feature. in fact, on paper I respect it! this is a series of linear, story-driven campaigns that attempts a semblance of the reality of war, and the permanence of loss accentuates the reality of failure in combat. poor play only results in a potential softlock situation if you truly hemorrhage your roster beyond the constant stream of new units. grieving your fallen allies is part and parcel with the atmosphere the game creates, and the game is designed specifically around throwing alternate implementations of an archetype at you should you tragically lose your early-game mage or myrmidon.

but this simply isn't how we play games; it is virtually everyone's urge to reset the map upon a death. save scumming is inevitable and we will inevitably exploit it to cheat death. to foreshadow my second main mechanical objection, there simply are units I absolutely cannot afford to lose, and a minor mistake could easily result in an hour lost to a reset. admittedly some of these are completely player-driven; if I place a frail or wounded unit in a spot without adequately checking for assailants in range, I certainly deserve to lose said unit from my negligence. god forbid I let an otherwise bulky unit stand their ground and abruptly die from a highly unlikely crit though, or even worse, lose a troop of wounded soldiers I had hidden away because the black knight appeared out of a seemingly vacant house. that latter situation I withstood as an act of fate frankly, even though my freshly-recruited kieran took the fall. truly a bitter pill to swallow.

maybe in a different style of game I could stomach this, but path of radiance is otherwise not very interesting when retrying a map. I now understand why a high school friend of mine had explicitly recommended I try it on hard, as once a given map's various reinforcement locations and stage-specific wrinkles are apparent, their sense of surprise is mitigated and left somewhat bereft of excitement. simply plop titania/oscar/jill at the most problematic spot and guide everyone else to the exit/boss. this is not to say it isn't more involved on a blind attempt, but rather that retracing 30 minutes of troop movements due to a moment of absent-mindedness or an unfortunate roll of the dice drains me. the modern rewind system present in echoes (which I have not played mind you) and three houses alleviates this a fair bit. these allow forgiveness for small disgressions while ensuring that larger tactical failures with unavoidable losses will still require an acceptance of death or a full reevaluation of the player's game plan. thankfully in any case I stopped having notable troop deaths by the last third of the game thanks to increased overall bulk and lucky rolls, lending credence to the saying that fire emblem games often get easier chapter-by-chapter.

character imbalance: again, the narrative reasons for this are sound in some instances. early-game units are split between your long-term initially-weak investments and your stronger pre-premoted caretakers who age less gracefully; your fresh-faced youngins and your battle-hardened vets. character levels and abilities are generally mapped to their story-justified strengths and weaknesses when they arrive, with the most skilled recruits slotting in during the later missions when you need them most.

this is from a broad perspective anyway, as anyone you've held onto from the first couple chapters will be a complete monster by the end, and anyone available from beyond the midpoint will likely barely be functional just a few chapters after introduction. understandably this is partially a way to avoid total punishment for losing an important early-game character, as you'll likely have a weaker replacement available in the late game. however, many of these units come without mounts, and inevitably the real stratifying aspect rears its ugly head: unmounted units suck! fire emblem is not close-quarters tactics more akin to ff tactics/tactics ogre, and having high movement is everything to outpacing opponents, seizing objectives quickly, and staying out of trouble. canto alone (the ability that allows mounted units to move after attacking) makes virtually every option on the battlefield safer, and unmounted units simply can't cut it in comparison.

thankfully, path of radiance introduces the bonus experience system, which the game allocates for meeting bonus objectives + clearing maps quickly. these exp points can be applied freely between chapters to buff up characters who are falling behind or that have little functionality when recruited. not only does this make otherwise-useless characters viable, but it also helps archetypes such as dancers and healers who otherwise build exp at a slow, fixed rate. as I became comfortable doling out bexp I managed to really save my own ass giving fragile units like jill and astrid much-needed growth spurts to get them to the point of being essential. this is a shallow level of customization that still alleviates some of the issues I have with the shoddy balance, and I have to applaud path of radiance for adding such a feature. it may not feel as fun or intensive to me as three houses' incredible level of per-character tweaking, but it works well within the structure of classic FE.

three houses had a surprisingly interesting overarching narrative that made me curious to revisit the older titles even as it was diluted by reams of one-note characters quipping at pivotal moments. path of radiance thankfully lacks this bloat in favor of a more focused plot, especially given that it's missing the common FE trope of having the player character stand in as a silent tactician. in their place is soren, who illustrates much of what I appreciate about the character interactions and intermission conversations. prickly, honest to a deadpan fault, and chronically on-edge, soren never misses a moment to spoil the mood with his lack of idealism. yet the other characters don't bemoan his tactlessness at every turn; they begrudgingly accept it and continue to value him as an essential ally, at times silently using him as encouragement to speak bluntly when they would hold their tongue otherwise. ike especially leans on soren's cynicism to balance out his own naivety, both bracing him for the reality of continent-spanning war he's been thrust into as well as feigning maturity in the audience of those much older than he. this in turn rarely goes unnoticed as self-conscious posturing, often resulting in gentle prodding from those around him; the scene at the end where ike declares he will somehow abdicate his nobility to return to being a simple mercenary after which sephiran bursts into laughter, clearly wounding ike's pride stands out to me. you can wring these subtleties out for many characters, and I appreciate the timbre of the dialogue for exactly this reason, even though the smaller characters really never develop quite as fully.

from a thematic perspective I have to assume that path of radiance treads familiar territory for fire emblem: protracted military campaigns, international politics, and the rift between classes in a feudal hierarchy. the plight of the laguz as slaves and experimentation subjects for the beorcs is explored in detail without feeling exploitative or hokey, which I can only attribute to the even-handed dialogue and characterization. discrimination infests the populace at every level, riling up commoners in crimea's port town only to side with their oppressors, while at the same time driving nobles in begnion to violate the country's tenuous emancipation act to indulge in their fetishization of the laguz. it's thorough in its analysis up until the back quarter, where the plot threads begin drying up and the retalitory invasion draws to its conclusion. the main antagonists have flimsy motivations and face abrupt endings that refuse to let them raise the stakes or truly challenge the main force, and it detracts from some of the interest in the overall plot I had within the closing hours. I also object to the writing of the herons, who are split into "the good tribe and the bad tribe" in such a way that sort of diminishes the agency of their characters to have complex allegiances, though I will say the game at least plays with their sense of morality at times.

enjoyable but admittedly exhausting. I am an action guy at heart, and even with text scrolling at max speed and battle animations turned off I must admit I ended up trapped looking at my phone in the middle of playing pretty frequently. so perhaps take my review with a grain of salt...

I have not played libble rabble as seems to be the comparison of choice for this game, but I have played qix quite a bit, and like both of these qbb is a space-manipulation game that encourages the player to strategically navigate around objects with a stochastic movement pattern. in qbb's case your goal is to herd bouncing atoms into areas to be quartered off by your blood trail, leaving them to ricochet continuously while corroding your trail in the process for points. the atoms can also combine by colliding, yielding larger atoms that both chew through your trail more quickly as well as yielding extra points when picked up by the player.

surrounding this is a trifecta of resources each vying for your attention as you move from area to area. your blood supply is generally the most pressing of the three; the more you move, the more it dwindles, and losing it all means instant death. this forces some level of movement rationing in order to avoid overspending your supply, and encourages the player to constantly seek out scoring opportunities, as each 5000 points gained replinshes your stock. while grabbing atoms for quick points can pay dividends in the short term, it also raises a counter on top of your blood supply that signifies how much blood you lose with your movement. the only way to decrease this is by sacrificing a life - your third stat - via taking damage from a turret. these are somewhat rare as they only are awarded every 10000 points, making casual play a survival task where the player is constantly trying to eke out another 10000 points to ease their blood loss as they progress.

for those willing to jettison their blood supply more quickly, a bloodshot can be taken that creates trail for you and can hit an atom to increase its velocity and damage. this move is the crux of high-level play, and when used well allows for swift pincer maneuvers around atoms nearby or a quick way to speed up atoms and get points churning. to end the bloodshot's movement pattern, you must catch it, expending more blood in the process. catching the bloodshot is difficult and takes a lot of practice and aiming consideration in order to use effectively. I will comment that firing is a fiddly task to learn given the specific chain of steps that must be followed - press down then aim then release down without releasing your aim direction - and I specifically had trouble until I realized that the aiming direction and down button couldn't be released simultaneously.

these aforementioned turrets appear at your location on a timer inversely proportional to your blood supply, thus both serving as dynamic difficulty for those with ample blood while also keeping the player moving. in theory this works well to prevent stalling tactics, but a side-effect of the bloodshot makes them somewhat moot. the player is subject to a gravity effect that both keeps them falling as well as hampering their vertical movement; however, this effect is nullified when aiming the bloodshot. thus, the player can freely stall by aiming without firing all while strategically moving vertically to place columns of turrets out of range, which lets the atoms cook up points without harm to the player. I felt pressured to resort to this when the bloodshot was too risky, and it slowed down the pace of the game too much for my liking once turrets became moot hazards.

this is exacerbated somewhat by the level design, which draw from a variety of imagery related to the text overlayed on each area. it is my perception that this was an intentional choice given goufygoggs's previous video on bangai-o. I definitely agree that this is a liberating choice especially to amplify the overarching story, but I do feel obligated to note that sometimes the areas damage play with certain odd structures. any area with a tight corridor branching off of the main "room" of the level will tend to get atoms stuck in inside given that their trajectory on a bounce is randomized, which can make them virtually inaccessible outside of wasting blood to grab them outright. it also makes the bloodshot difficult to justify using in certain levels, which seems to have been considered given that the later stages reopen the playing field and avoid the claustrophobia of midgame.

I have a few QoL things I would like to mention as well:
-I can live without a keyboard rebind option but a control display on the main menu is conspicuously missing. this wouldn't be an issue except the down arrow key is actually the confirm button, and thus those (like me) attempting to scroll down to the "how to play" section initially will end up starting the game instead
-a option to restart the run or return to main menu on the pause menu would go a long way towards making doomed runs less annoying
-the character square flashes but it is low-grade and can be very hard to make out as the screen gets more complicated. perhaps a different color or brighter flash would be useful
-the constant ridges cause the player to get stuck frequently in the interstitual sections, which is more of an annoyance than anything and also prevented me from paying attention to the text unless I stopped in place. otherwise I think the interstitual sections are a smart way to gate progression and ensure the player is managing their blood supply/drain rate adequately
-evidently the diagonal movement is meant to be the fastest vertical movement option given the gravity mechanic, but it feels jerky and unintuitive when moving from or to the normal purely-vertical velocity. I'm not sure the gravity is necessary at all given that stalling is still present as a mechanic

admittedly I didn't quite paint the entire final room red, but I still felt very satisfied to finally overcome the challenge of slowly learning the game mechanics and determining how to assess each situation quickly. the resource web is tightly interwoven and smartly designed to ensure that you are never truly safe no matter what tactics you choose. in a way, this made it resemble an arcade-tinted survival horror game given the level of resource stress I went under the more I played. worth buying for fans of intentionally-designed and hard-to-master arcade titles.

I was a bit wary of the traversal mechanics being the prime gameplay feature; how are you supposed to vary the challenges enough when the individual traversal tools are so rigid? thankfully ubisoft montreal took cues from ico and instead tried to create intricate rooms where finding out that subtle path to get where you can not walk or jump on your own is its own reward. granted, sands of time is much less concerned with atmosphere and a sense of place than it is showing off how cool and versatile the prince is, but at the very least these sections feel good to pull off and are smartly laid out. at worst you'll have to contend with the occasionally-jumpy cinematic camera as well as the prince's fiddly slipups (it can be a chore to get him to wall-run horizontally when he would rather do it vertically), but overall for the time period they nailed the feeling of doing death-defying acrobatic feats without it getting stale by the end.

part of this is thanks to the sands of time itself, which serves as a glorified soft-reset. in practice: honestly totally necessary to paper over the game's clunkiness at points and make the overall experience seem more fun. given how often you'll likely miss a given jump either from misunderstanding the environment or screwing up the input, the reset makes things a lot more manageable. as the advertised mechanic of the game... philosophically I guess that sits poorly with me, but also whatever, I guess I just expected more use for the time gimmicks other than freezing enemies and rewinding time when you inevitably plunge to your death.

on its own merits it would be a pretty fun early aughts linear romp with constant setpieces and fun little puzzles, but they had to shoehorn combat in. an absolutely embarassing display on all accounts. did they somehow play ico and not play devil may cry at the same time? I don't need a full-on character action game, but at the very least some basics like "require different strategies for each enemy" and "make the soft lock-on subtle" and "don't map too many things to the same button" should have crossed the devs' minds. the fights are monotonous with enemies that blink into existence in waves in what feels like eons before each battle is finished, and occasionally they'll spawn in on top of you and really mess up your day. you're required to suck the sand out of each enemy as well, which is a rather long animation and will often get you hurt if an enemy decides to interrupt it, which happens an awful lot considering that enemies seem programmed specifically not to bother you while you're occupied. there's no hard lock-on and the soft lock-on seems to change targets literally randomly, occasionally making the prince roll completely away from where you intend to attack someone yards away from your original position. because of this issue, your sand-retrieval move will often be preempted by a freeze move on a different enemy given that the game does not take your left stick position into account at all when throwing out the moves, thus wasting your meter and resetting your sands timer down to zero. which by the way, if you retrieve sand from an enemy or freeze them or kill them in whatever way and then you yourself get killed, the whole sands of time reset gimmick isn't going to help you one bit. the list goes on and on with these weird little details about combat (why do they need to teleport? why does the camera seem to always want to get so close to the prince?), it's just absolutely atrocious in every conceivable way. the only thing good about it is that it affirmed that I do consider drakengard's combat mostly competent and that I don't feel bad giving it a good score when a game like this released to near-unanimous praise.

I think that overall critical reception relies a lot on the balance of the gameplay, and thankfully I'd say there's a good 60/40 ratio of traversal to combat here. the majority of what's here is fun, and even the combat can be mostly tuned out once you begin jumping over enemies' heads ad infinitum (this works flawlessly on both bosses as well). the game juices every possible thing it can from the movement and continues adding new wrinkles up until the late game. there's nothing here that makes it dynamic beyond some simple timers and cycle-based platforming, but when the room and scenario design is as rock-solid as it is here there's little to complain about. just make sure to put on a podcast whenever you get to the combat sections.

also I have not played the original version(s) of this but I found the ps3 hd remaster pretty poor all things considered. I'm trying to be nice and gloss over the many bizarre glitches I ran into (including the prince turning invisible and having his polygons stretch out into space whenever he appeared in a cutscene) assuming that they're results of a shitty port job. everything down to the sound mixing and the game select UI is shoddy to be completely honest. it doesn't help that the in-engine cutscenes are very unflattering and the in-game models look blocky and cheap compared to similar work from contemporaries.