Fantastic, exhilarating gameplay. Some of the most satisfying adrenaline rush fun I’ve had playing a video game.

Story and characters are insufferable and are unfortunately an integral part of the Neon White experience. This is one of the only games I’ve ever played where the writing is so obnoxiously bad that it's impossible for me to ignore it in service of quality gameplay. Remembering the dialogue in this game legitimately puts me in a pissy mood as ridiculous and embarrassing as that sounds. I’d be giving this a much higher score if it weren’t for the writing.

Absolutely fantastic stealth game whose influence can be very clearly seen in more recent games. Sound design is the star here. This is probably the only stealth game I’ve ever played where sound is the primary signal of enemy location. Due to the excellent sound design this works surprisingly well and is really fun to take advantage of. Extinguishing a candle and then listening to enemy footsteps in the dark so you can plan exactly when to pop out with your blackjack is incredibly immersive and satisfying. This game really makes you feel like you’re in Garret's shoes.

My biggest critique is regarding the presence of levels that don’t really lend themselves to a pure stealth experience, which is where this game excels. There are quite a few instances where the game either forces you to break stealth and run from / fight enemies or fills a level with enemies that can’t be effectively avoided using stealth. The resulting gameplay can still be fun and challenging due to Garret being relatively weak in combat, Theif's fluid and satisfying movement, and the abundance of places to hide and shake off pursuing enemies, but it’s not nearly as enjoyable as the pure stealth segments. These segments end up feeling more like you're playing a survival horror game or a Tomb Raider style action adventure game with immersive sim elements as opposed to a stealth game. (A quick note on this, Thief can be surprisingly scary during some of these segments. The noise that undead enemies make when they're nearby creates a powerful sense of unease. Hearing a Hammer Haunt close by but not knowing exactly where it is can be frankly terrifying. These are some of the most powerful enemies in the game being both lightning fast and able to kill Garrett in only a couple hits, and their sound and visual design definitely reflects that - it's great. So while Thief is at its best when it's a pure stealth game, it's able to pull off the other genres it leans into surprisingly well.)

Gold adds a few levels on top of the ones from Thief’s original release. These are all fairly large levels, but they’re surprisingly intuitive to navigate and offer multiple avenues for players to approach their goals. These levels can drag on a bit due to their size - taking me around an hour a piece, but they’re thankfully all pure stealth levels. The thieves guild level in gold is a bit infamous from what I've seen, but I actually enjoyed this level - mostly due to the open ended map design and the player needing to look / listen for clues to figure out where to go in this sprawling maze. The Mage's Towers level was the one that really started to drag on for me. The central keep area is great - it's very open ended and fun to explore - but the towers quickly became a slog due to their incredibly linear design and emphasis on platforming, which are two things that don't compliment Thief's mechanics or controls very well.

Overall this is an excellent stealth game and truly a must play for fans of the genre. Thief's sound and light based approach along with its open ended levels and unique visual aesthetic creates an experience that you really can't get anywhere else. While Thief does have its flaws and definitely has some levels I don’t like, the majority of the game is excellent. I’m looking forward to doing a replay at some point on a higher difficulty so I can experience the additional quest objectives present on hard and expert.

Very mixed bag. Charming story and some very cute Link / Zelda moments. Improved upon PH in terms of dungeon puzzles and bosses which are often fantastic. While the game is at times great, there are things that make it very frustrating. There are an absurd amount microphone blowing mechanics (i dont think i have to explain to DS owners why this would be an issue. God forbid you try to play this on an emulator).

Quite a few otherwise very clever puzzles with phantom zelda also require finicky and annoying interaction with the DS touchscreen. I personally don't mind the stylus control scheme in PH and ST. It isnt ideal but it worked well enough in PH. The combat and movement mechanics in ST are generally more complex, however, especially in sections with Phantom Zelda. This increased complexity really reveals the flaws with the stylus control scheme. You will inevitably run into situations where you know exactly what to do but end up fumbling around with frustrating controls to do it.

Other than this the trains you ride for much of the game are very slow, and you lack means for convenient fast travel like the glyphs in PH. This wouldn't be a big issue if the train travel wasn't widely implemented but its an absolute core part of gameplay. You'll probably be spending 50% of your time in the game or more conducting your train - even more than this if you decide to do the side content, which is pretty much all transporting people and supplies in your train.

Overall this is a very charming and unique game with a lot of potential that gets bogged down by some pretty massive flaws. I would recommend that big Zelda fans play it for at least a couple hours to try it out. If you like it enough to keep going it can be an enjoyable experience. If you find it frustrating don't hesitate to put it down. There are far better Zelda games to spend your time on.

Tbh the first true survival horror game I’ve ever played and holy hell what an amazing introduction to the genre. Feels legitimately perfect from a gameplay perspective. Cohesive in its design to a degree I don’t think I’ve ever encountered previously. Absolutely everything - the backgrounds, the camera angles, resource scarcity, health pool, carry capacity, the save system, the crimson heads - works in concert to create an experience of constant tension and uncertainty for the player. An experience where you have to really think about every item collected, every item left behind, and every route taken because making the wrong decision means losing significant progress. RE requires the player to respect its gameplay systems and in return it respects the players intelligence and their time; deaths absolutely never feel cheap or unavoidable. Honestly worth playing just to see how well designed it is even if you - like me - don’t have a ton of interest in the survival horror genre.

The dialogue written for the teen girls in this game is some of the most unintentionally cartoonish I’ve ever seen in a teen drama, regardless of medium. This is like faith-based movie scaremongering about the lifestyle of modern teens cartoonish. It actually boggles my mind and makes me kind of depressed to think that this is viewed by the gaming industry and a large portion of the community as a serious and insightful examination of… I don’t know what exactly.

I have nothing against dialogue that’s kitschy or cartoonish as long as that quality lends itself to the overall effect of a piece of media. I also have absolutely nothing against media that many consider low-brow. That’s not my critique here. When you put cartoonish writing in a piece of media that takes itself intensely seriously and that quality of the writing isn’t intentionally used to a worthwhile end you get The Room or Doug Walker’s The Wall or well… Life is Strange.

I really don’t know what else to say. This game and the fact that people like it broke my brain. Is this a case where people who like this game like it in spite of the bad writing? I guess I could see how that’s possible, but what is there to like in spite of its writing? I just really don’t get it / would definitely appreciate someone explaining it to me.

The nicest thing I have to say about this game is that the setting is quite cozy and nicely designed. I’ve spent some time in the Pacific Northwest and the game’s representation of a medium sized town in that region feels fairly accurate. I can also understand people liking the music, which mostly consists of indie folk that feels heavily influenced by the Bright Eyes album “I’m Wide Wake It’s Morning.” I adored that album as a teenager, so the music kind of worked for me (although it mostly just made me wish I was listening to Bright Eyes instead). Lucky for me the publisher did pull out the cash to license an actual Bright Eyes song so I did get my wish for a couple minutes.

Another positive - Life is Strange contains the most unintentionally hilarious NPC dancing I’ve ever seen in a video game. Please go onto YouTube right away and look up gameplay from the Vortex (?) party to see for yourself - I promise you won’t regret it. Video games - especially 7th-gen and earlier almost never get NPCs dancing at a party to look natural or convincing (big props to devs of Hitman 3 for absolutely nailing this though). The dancing in life is strange is something else though - it has to be seen to be believed.

Those are pretty much all the nice things I have to say. I probably would have liked this game had I played it when I was a precocious 13 year old back in 2009, who felt very cool for listening to Beach House and Animal Collective and who desperately wished the Max Caulfield of his school would walk up to him on the bus and ask if he wanted to share earbuds to listen to the Juno soundtrack. Unfortunately for me I played this game as a somewhat cynical 20-something , and the adolescent indie vibes only served to make me realize that the mindset that would have allowed me to be won over by them had been inevitably left in the past.

So I suppose I can understand people liking the vibes in spite of the writing. I like plenty of things that are quaint and twee but not this. For me, the writing is bad enough and disruptive enough to prevent me from genuinely enjoying anything in spite of it, and the vibes simply aren’t appealing to me at this point in my life. The vibes would definitely be more appealing if characters spoke like actual teenagers.

I’d still very much appreciate hearing from someone who loves this game. People’s enjoyment of it has been frankly puzzling to me for years, and I’d like to have this cleared up.

One of my favorite if not my favorite game of all time despite having quite a few glaring issues.

The reason it’s probably my favorite game of all time and why I’ve spent around 400 hours on it is that playing it just makes me happy. Despite having some dark themes, this is a feel good game if there ever was one. The characters and the world are just so charming. Playing this game feels like going on a relaxing vacation.

My main criticisms are twofold. First, the dungeons can definitely be a bit monotonous at times especially if you find yourself over leveled which is very easy to do. The dungeon design was improved in persona 5 but the ease with which you can become over leveled is a flaw present in pretty much all the persona games. This is a small criticism however. The game is still very fun and the dungeons aren’t really the reason to play it anyway.

My other main criticism regards many of the writing choices. The notable one is with the characterization of Kanji and Naoto in regards to the suggestion at various points of the game that they’re both queer. Now, these characters don’t have to be queer for them to be well written - that is not my critique at all - they could still be compelling and well written characters without that. My main issue is with the way the question of their queerness is resolved by the game. It honestly feels like some of the writers wanted to go further with it e.g. have Kanji be gay and come to terms with that in a positive way - but some higher up told them they couldn’t do that. This seems even more likely if you think about it in the context of the scrapped Yosuke romance option and the fact that even persona 2 had the option for the main character to be gay and confess his feelings for a male party member. If this higher up scenario was the case they should have ditched the focus on queerness altogether. As it stands we get a strange sort of half measure where the character arc feels at times very unnatural. The same goes for naoto, whose queerness is handled even more poorly IMO. The pinnacle of this being Yu getting to decide whether or not Naoto wears women’s or men’s clothing based on his preference if they’re dating. There’s actually a mod to change the dialogue in this scene to make the girl’s school uniform scene happen because Naoto wants to experiment with wearing girl’s clothes.

This is getting kind of rambling but here’s my main point: in a game where the main message is supposed to be coming to terms with your true self having two arcs where characters think they’re maybe queer and then realizing “oh wait I’m not” (either genuinely or due to social pressure) feels really bizarre. Why even bring up the question of their queerness in the first place if you’re going to do that. Kanji easily could have been a guy who likes traditionally feminine things and is embarrassed about it and has to come to terms with that and nothing else. Naoto would be a bit harder to fix since her wearing mens clothing is central to her character. It's really hard for me to imagine a way that arc could work without Naoto eventually identifying as gender non-conforming in some sense. Some people have proposed that Naoto's arc could be about a cis woman who crossdresses to fit in at work and then learns how to be comfortable with being a woman in a male-dominated profession. This, however would be an incredibly fraught and honestly quite boring route to take with Naoto. In Persona 4, Naoto's arc ends up being this really strange and confused story where she clearly feels more comfortable presenting as a boy in all situations but this is implied to be because she is just insecure about being a girl. The arc ends with the conclusion that naoto should just learn to be more confident about being a girl, which is a very unsatisfying and depressing conclusion for her arc and honestly just a very anti-trans sentiment that kind of stains what is otherwise a very likable and charming character.

My main point with all this - either go all the way and have realistic arcs about characters coming to terms with their queerness or scrap that angle altogether. It’s such a shame because Kanji and Naoto are such wonderfully written and likable characters in general. Their arcs, for all their flaws also have some really touching and wonderful moments. I just wish the entirety of the arcs was like that and didn’t suffer at times from confused and indecisive writing where it feels like two different people with very different ideas of where the arcs should go were butting heads. This issue of character development that seems to fly in the face of Persona 4's supposed theme is present to some degree in pretty much every main character arc.

All of this said I still adore this game and it’s still one of my favorites. It is however a very flawed game and by no means the best I’ve ever played. Replaying this game necessitates me relying on extensive head canon as well as mods to fix some of its more glaring writing issues, which is honestly a shame. To anyone reading this review who really loves this game - these criticisms aren't meant to spoil your enjoyment of persona 4 or make a claim that you're bad for liking it. It's totally fine to love this game and it's also totally fine to really dislike this game - there are certainly a lot of valid reasons for people to dislike it. For everyone who does love this game, however, I think its important for all of us to be critical of media we enjoy. It's very possible to admit that a piece of media is flawed or problematic and still thoroughly enjoy it in spite of that. After all, Persona 4G definitely has a lot to enjoy despite its flaws.

I absolutely love this oft maligned addition to Persona 3. While I agree that most criticisms of this game are factually accurate - not having a demon compendium does make gameplay and team composition much more difficult and sometimes tedious, yukari’s characterization in this game does make her a difficult character to sympathize with, etc. - I honestly think that these qualities are what makes this game so unique and so wonderful.

This is a game primarily concerned with how people deal with grief and more specifically how they deal with it in a social setting. The social aspects of grief, how people retroactively understand and define their relationship with the deceased in the context of that person's other relationships, can often be very messy. In my experience, this social element of grieving can take many forms (not all mentioned here of course) - some people find comfort in the presence of others, some people seek isolation, and some people become quite jealous and possessive over their relationship with the deceased and quite suspicious of the motivations and intentions of other mourners. People aren’t always perfectly rational or even fair or kind in these situations. With that said, Yukari’s characterization in this game - while at times frustrating - is entirely believable to me, especially knowing her characters back story. One of the most beautiful things about this game is how it challenges and encourages us to empathize with and forgive Yukari. The game guides us towards this with the way we see her relationship with Aigis evolve and heal throughout the game.

The conflict between Yukari and Aigis in this game also serves to highlight the really unconventional and beautiful romance Makoto can develop with Aigis through their social link and how that might relate to a potential romance with Yukari. I’ll explain what I mean. One of P3’s flaws IMO is the player’s inability to max social links with female characters without romancing them. As someone who is generally a completionist this is kind of an annoying and immersion breaking part of the game. One of the happy accidents of this feature, however, is the players ability to romance one of the conventional options - like Yukari for instance - and also engage in the unconventional romance arc with Aigis. This combination, IMO, feels entirely believable and is somewhat supported by the writing of The Answer. Makoto’s relationship with Aigis, if you compete their social link is kind of strange. It’s not traditionally sexual - possibly by necessity from what the game portrays but it’s also possible this just isn’t the character of their relationship - and it’s also not traditionally romantic, instead existing in a strange space between platonic and romantic. It certainly doesn’t bear the hallmarks of the traditional monogamous and heterosexual relationships Makoto can develop with other characters in the game. Makoto’s relationship with Aigis, however, is deeply affectionate - significantly more affectionate than the romances he can develop with other characters.

The way Yukari talks about Makoto in the answer strongly implies that she was either secretly in love with him or in a defined relationship with him. It’s also strongly suggested that Yukari was aware of Makoto’s unusual and deeply affectionate connection to Aigis and was jealous of both that as well as Aigis being present at the time of his death instead of her. Part of the narrative of the answer involves Yukari coming to terms with this and letting go of her animosity towards Aigis. If the player goes into this assuming that Yukari was just secretly in love with Makoto this is a rather straightforward narrative of someone letting go of feelings of jealousy and inferiority. If player goes into this assuming that Yukari was in a relationship with Makoto - a possibility definitely supported by The Answer - this instead becomes a narrative of Yukari accepting that Makoto’s feelings towards her and his feelings towards Aigis aren’t incompatible and don’t invalidate each other. Why do I lean towards this instead of thinking the narrative would be Yukari coming to terms with Makoto cheating on her? Given Yukari's characterization throughout Persona 3 it seems incredibly unlikely that she would be able to come to terms with this whole situation so quickly if she viewed what was going on as cheating. The only option then, in my mind, is that Yukari viewed the Makoto's relationship with Aigis as something other than cheating and was able to come to terms with it on those grounds. This certainly isn’t the definitive reading of the game but it certainly is A reading that the game allows for, which I think is really cool in the way it represents the very complicated and multifaceted nature of romance and affection - the way these feelings often don’t conform with traditional expectations and aren’t invalid just because the conventional understating is that they should be. I also think its really cool that The Answer is able to raise these questions and get the player thinking about these topics regardless of whether or not this was the intention of the developers. As someone who practices non hierarchical polyamory - primarily for the emotional and romantic freedom it allows - this potential reading of the game immediately leapt out at me and it definitely made me think of my own experience coming to terms with what romance and affection means to me and how strong feelings towards different people aren't necessarily invalidating.

The gameplay of the Answer, while more difficult and more of a slog than the rest of P3, is for me a fun challenge and also fits the tone and themes of the game really nicely. When a new player starts The Answer they’ll quickly notice a few substantial changes from vanilla P3. 1: You of course play as Aigis and therefore don’t have access to Makoto’s collection of personas. 2: Aigis’s and all the party members’ progress is reset. They’re now all at level 1, which causes them to lose HP and SP as well as all the moves their personas learned throughout the base game. They also lose any weapons or armor collected from the base game. 3: There’s no persona compendium when using the Velvet Room as Aigis, which makes optimizing persona builds very difficult without substantial grinding. 4: The Answer’s default and only difficulty setting is P3’s hard mode. Realizing all of this can definitely feel like a big setback, and the player will probably find themselves wishing they could just continue their progress from P3 instead of having to cope with all of these changes. Aigis and the rest of the characters in the answer are similarly forced to go through the difficult process of coping with hardship and continuing on with their lives without Makoto. The Answer demands that the player cope with and overcome the gameplay changes brought on by Makoto’s death and makes this experience accordingly arduous and difficult to adjust to. By the end of the Answer; the player will have leveled up their party and learned to adjust to changes from the base game just as the characters have been forced to grow as people and learn to face their own world without Makoto.

Overall I think this is a really wonderful and thematically consistent addition to the P3 story despite being a difficult one both emotionally and gameplay-wise. I get that most people don’t really like the answer but I would highly recommend giving it another chance if you replay P3FES. I ended up finding it to be really unique and impactful - especially regarding its portrayal of the social aspects of grief, which aren't often explored in videogames. Hopefully this review gives a nice perspective on some of the positives and unique qualities of this game and maybe even gets some people to replay it or reconsider their opinion on it.

N.B. - Also grateful to this game for giving us the door-kun meme, which tbh makes me laugh whenever I remember it.

There’s something very darkly funny about the trophy for collecting all treasures being called “they belong in a museum” which is a line from Indiana Jones - a character that famously seemed to disregard various international laws regarding the transport and sale of antiquities - often behaving more like a grave robber than an archaeologist. Either intentionally or not this draws attention to the fact that Chris spends a lot of this game stealing jewels and precious relics from innocent mind controlled villagers so he can sell them on the black market in order to buy better guns to kill said villagers with. I love the idea of someone slipping in that trophy name to draw attention to this and find it darkly funny that someone could potentially manage to select that trophy name without realizing this would be the effect.

Totally agree with everything said about this game re: racism and poorly aged 7th gen trends. It seems very clear that the developers didn’t actually do much research into their setting or try to treat it in a respectful manner. One of the most obvious elements of this is that the game takes place in an unspecified Western African country but everyone is speaking Swahili which isn’t widely spoken in that region. This is like such a basic error that could have been avoided by a simple google search. Decide what real western African country this is going to be loosely based on, do a Google search for what languages are spoken in that country, and then translate enemy dialogue and monster names into one of those languages. Depending on what Western African country the setting is based on they could have even had enemies speaking French or English. Would have probably at least been a bit easier for the devs to get translated if that was a concern. Also would have avoided making one specific group feel singled out by their language being selected as that of the enemies you kill during the game if that was a concern as well.

My first impulse is to assume this sort of thing is just laziness and not feeling the setting deserves serious research but it’s also possible the devs were fully aware of all the inaccuracies in the game but decided to go with them because they would feel more stereotypically African to mainstream audiences. This possibility also makes a lot of sense to me and would explain why the setting feels more like Africa as a monolith as opposed to one of the many distinct and culturally different regions of the continent.

There’s something to be said for the main plot and conflict in this game attempting to be anti-racist by having the plaga and orobouros infections being a result of colonialism, but this ultimately isn’t particularly effective. Despite any potential good intentions on the part of the developers you can’t tell a compellingly anti-racist story without giving the subject matter the respect and research it deserves. If this sort of well researched depth and respectfulness was attempted by the dev team it certainly doesn’t show in the final product.

Still managed to have a fun time with it though mostly due to the presence of my beloved Wesker and the gameplay which is similar to RE4 and fun because of it but overall inferior due to some alterations in enemy behavior and level design. This is overall a much faster paced game than RE4 with movement and controls that feel more in line with typical 7th gen 3rd person shooters. You still can’t move while shooting but you are more agile in this game and generally don’t feel as vulnerable. The slow and at times awkward shooting controls in RE4 are one of the things that makes it unique and keeps it in line with the disempowering survival horror elements of its predecessors despite being much more action oriented. RE5 is a straight up action game on the other hand, and there’s a decent case to be made for calling it a 3rd person cover shooter. There were maybe one or two instances of contextual cover shooting in RE 4 but it’s all over the place here. This is mostly due to the large presence of enemies with guns in RE5’s final 3rd - something that would be unheard of in RE before RE4 decided to introduce a single very rarely implemented enemy with a mini gun. In RE5’s latter levels you’ll end up fighting as many assault rifle wielding Majini as you do ones armed with melee weapons or grenades. This shift overall makes RE5 feel like a typical 7th gen cover shooter but with an RE plot and a few mechanics carried over from RE4. Thankfully it’s pretty good at being just that and a fun time overall. Just probably important for fans to realize that this is the case before playing.

It’s also important to know that this is very much a game designed with co-op in mind and will probably be the most fun if played that way. A lot of the bosses require you and your partner Sheva to coordinate your strategy. For instance one player needs to distract a boss while the other shoots the weak spot on its back. This sort of strategizing is much harder and at times almost impossible when playing solo - I found the boss fight with the flamethrower to be incredibly frustrating for this reason.

That said, solo play works pretty well - significantly more so than I was expecting. Your AI companion is actually pretty smart and good at the game and I encountered only one instance where Sheva’s AI fucked up and caused her to do something really stupid or annoying. The AI companion is also generally good at handling most of the segments of the game where you and your partner are forced to do two different things to defeat a boss or solve a puzzle. There are only a couple instances where this isn’t the case, which are frustrating, but again this happened far less than I was expecting. I still would have preferred playing this game solo or with a mostly inactive companion like Ashley from RE 4 but Sheva is overall well implemented, which is rarely the case for an AI companion as central to gameplay as she is. It’s abundantly clear that the designers wanted to make this an experience where solo play as well as co-op would be excellent. This definitely doesn’t feel like a co-op experience where the option to play solo was lazily tacked on and plainly not the intended way to play the game. Both solo and co-op feel equally valid for RE5. The only thing I really felt was missing about the AI partner in this game was the ability for the player to give them more specific commands. This game definitely could have used the option to tell your AI companion which weapon to use or to ping an enemy for them to concentrate fire on or tell them how much to conserve ammo or healing items in their inventory. Games with AI companions have been giving players these options for decades and I have no idea why they weren’t present here. On the bright side like I said before Sheva is programmed to act like a player that’s legitimately good at RE5 so letting her do her own thing doesn’t cause any major issues - just ocasional annoyances and the need for the player to find work arounds to get her to use a specific weapon in her inventory.

Honestly don’t know who I’d recommend this to. I feel very conflicted about this game. It does a few things really well and I certainly had fun with it but it has some pretty massive flaws, and loses a lot of what made previous Resident Evil games - 4 especially - so charming and unique. RE 5 feels pretty bland and forgettable at times. I can definitely understand all of this compelling quite a few people to never bother trying this one out.

Really interested to see if Capcom tries to remake this game and improve on its flaws. Gameplay, atmosphere, character, and writing can all definitely be improved, but I can’t see how they could possibly fix the issues this game has with racism and lack of respect for its setting and subject matter, which is sort of baked into a lot of the core plot and mechanics of the game.

Surprisingly fun light gun shooter that does a really good job at condensing the plots of RE2 and Code Veronica into short more cinematic experiences. For example in RE2 Claire and Leon are together the entire time which allows for fun character development between them and keeps the experience nice and tight by eliminating the need for two scenarios which would probably be a bit much for this kind of game.

Biggest standout and the only reason I’m bothering to write this review is that this games retelling of Code Veronica fixes everything that was wrong with the writing acting and directing in the original game and actually produces an engaging and enjoyable story with fun chemistry between Steve and Claire and a more restrained Alfred Ashford. Steve is still kind of a brat but is actually likable in this game instead of being a a cartoonishly angsty teenager that might as well have been yelling “shut up mom!” whenever Claire spoke to him.

Biggest rec is for fans of Code Veronica so they can see an actually good version of that story. Wish this had been the case for the original game because gameplay in CV is great but it has by far the worst writing of any RE game I’ve played so far - to such a degree that some people say it ruins the game for them, which is saying a lot since this is a Resident Evil game. The standard for an RE story to be passably good is generally pretty low.

Play this if you’re one of these folks or someone in the mood for a pretty good light gun game that’s surprisingly challenging at points and has nice replay value and the option for 2 player couch co-op, which seems fun and likely adds to the feeling of playing an actual arcade light gun game.

This is a game that oozes charm and really nails the postmodern take on neo-noir it’s going for. Tone, atmosphere, and writing are top notch. Gameplay is good but doesn’t shine in the same way. This is a pretty difficult and at times rather unfair game that starts to creep towards a trial and error experience due to enemy placement and the power of their shots. Your pattern of play towards the very difficult endgame will probably be like this: enter room, bullet time shoot the two enemies in the corner, get one-shotted by a barely visible enemy with a shotgun who’s 50 feet behind you, reload your game, make sure to shoot the shotgun enemy as well, keep resetting until you can successfully kill him and the other two. This isn’t a great gameplay loop but Max Payne’s charm and the tension and challenge created by its gameplay allowed me to mostly ignore this issue. Moreover, even when gameplay boils down to trial and error there’s enough creativity and dexterity demanded of the player that Max Payne never feels monotonous and can’t be beaten simply through rote memorization of enemy positions. I would definitely recommend this game to people who like shooters and people who enjoy playing games with a really clear and well defined artistic vision. I would also recommend downloading some community fix mods because the game has some bugs and can be quite difficult to run on modern machines.

TL;DR - it sucks but probably not quite as much as you would think. Contrary to what many say, the story is also pretty bad but at least entertaining in how unhinged it is.

I was honestly expecting it to be much worse. The way people talk about this game I almost anticipated it bricking my pc or being a soulless half life clone with a coat of Deus Ex paint. It's definitely not THAT bad, but its by no means good and obviously comes nowhere close to living up to the original.

Here's my description of the game: imagine if the simplified gameplay of human revolution existed on the original xbox and was less balanced, polished, well designed, and less fleshed out. That's what this game felt like to me. The game exists in a strange place where its mostly an fps with some very light stealth and immersive sim elements. Like the original you can hack security systems, move objects to make alternate paths, shoot through glass to make new exits and entrances, blow up doors instead of unlocking them, etc. All of this however is far less extensively implemented than in the original. Unlike the original there are no skill points or stats, so you can use any weapon you want right off the bat. Hacking now requires an augmentation instead of skill points. Opening doors and electronic devices is now done with a generic multitool that isn't governed or improved by any stats.

In terms of level design, the levels are far smaller and less open than in the original. In the original most situations had 5 or more ways of approaching; in IW you're lucky if you get 2. The options are usually hallway 1 or hallway 2 and sometimes hallway 1 or vent. The levels can be fun to explore for their own sake and comb through for supplies and upgrades but exploring rarely nets you a new way to interact with the level or approach a challenge.

The immense codex of notes, emails, and passwords that you collect in the original is also missing here. For the simplified console experience this is a sensible change but I really found myself missing it in IW. The levels and tasks required of the player are far simpler than in the original so you don't need all of this information to complete the game. This change does however do a good job at illustrating the differences between the two games. Completing levels in the original was like solving a big puzzle using your own creativity and clues found around the environment. Solving levels in IW is literally just walking down linear corridors and shooting or avoiding enemies.

Gunplay in IW is far closer to a standard FPS than the original Deus Ex which I suppose could be considered a stats based shooter. Shooting in DE needed to be done very carefully and intentionally. In IW it's much easier to just whip out a gun and start firing away. Stealth mechanics in IW are mostly fine. The levels and enemies, however, are clearly not designed around stealth. There is no reliable one shot takedown melee attack like there is in the original if you hit enemies from behind. Not even basic grunts go down in one hit. You can upgrade your melee attack with augs and EVEN then it takes multiple hits to take down enemies from behind. I even switched the game to easy mode to see if it would work there and it takes at least two hits to take down basic grunts. There are also several enemies that you cannot practically take down with stealth based melee attacks. In the original, if you had the right weapon - like the dragon's tooth - you could take down even bulky enemies using stealth. The only ones that you couldn't practically do this with were the MIB, which were sparsely implemented and provided a nice challenge for players. in IW basically every enemy by the end of the game functions like an MIB - injuring the player if taken down using melee - and thus incentivizing gun play as opposed to stealth. By the final level of the game you'll be rushing down corridors blowing enemies away with your rocket launcher and headshotting them with a sniper rifle in a relatively mindless way.

This however doesn't mean that the game is easy. IW is shockingly and nonsensically much harder than Deus Ex when played on normal mode. Enemies will regularly one or two shot you in gunfights. This was also the case in the original but was much easier to get around due to the effectiveness of stealth, the multiple avenues for facing each challenge and the various augs and pieces of armor that could be used to buff your stats. IW is of course far less open, doesnt have any stats, has few defensive augs, and doesn't have armor. In IW when the only method of approaching a situation is sometimes a gunfight the game can get very frustrating - especially if you've only been purchasing and upgrading stealth-based augs.

The most interesting element of the game is definitely the story. It takes place a few decades after the original deus ex and hilariously assumes that all three endings took place at the same time. Writing is overall quite a bit weaker and less memorable than in the original but is still serviceable. IW does make a genuine effort to allow the player to make choices in which factions they support and does somewhat alter character interactions based on this - sometimes having characters unexpectedly return later to reward players for helping them in a side quest or deciding to spare their lives. The freedom players have to support different factions, however, is often implemented in a rather nonsensical way. There's no hidden or visible faction reputation mechanic so players are literally free to switch sides every single mission and kill important faction members with absolutely no consequence until the game decides to make them pick an ending during the final level. If you decide to pick a faction and stick with it from the beginning you probably wont notice this element of the game's design, but it can be very jarring and a bit laughable for anyone else.

The themes of IW are also similar to the original deus ex being about surveillance, privatization, class, and what it means to be human. The way these themes are presented, however, is only sometimes effective and generally much less nuanced than in the original. The more successful moments usually happen with simpler critiques along the lines of basic commentary about consolidation of power in large corporations. The subtext of the game and especially that of the endings, however, can at times be truly unhinged. Beloved characters from the original return in IW but instead of fighting to free humanity from oppressive power structures now work to serve that same power they once resisted. This is possibly a depressing commentary on human nature and how power continually grinds down those that try to resist it with punishment and incentives until basically everyone bends the knee and becomes a servant to it. Its also possibly a total reversal of the themes of the original game if taken with the context of the endings which seem to imply that these systems of power are our only options and that any attempt to resist them will basically destroy humanity in one way or another. Either way, it's a fascinating albeit very disappointing shift for the series in the case of the latter. There are multiple endings in this game which are honestly hilarious in how massively they change the world of deus ex depending on player choices. I wont spoil anything but your adventure in IW could easily be remembered in the history books of the deus ex world as the most important series of events in human history.

Overall this game is a somewhat mid FPS with light immersive sim elements and a sometimes effective story that seemingly tries to follow in the thematic footsteps of the original game. I would really only recommend this game to hardcore deus ex fans that are curious to experience where the series went. That said, those fans probably wont enjoy this game but might find it interesting, which was the case for me. Its really not as bad as people say it is but it understandably left a VERY bad taste in people's mouths due to the expectation that it would carry on the legacy of one of the best games of all time. It's relatively short - around 10 hours long. I would normally criticize it for this but in the case of IW this is probably a positive.

N.B. - make sure to download community patches before playing since it can be difficult to get running on PC.