This is definitely the weakest of the original three thief games - by a pretty wide mile IMO. I went into this expecting an Invisible War situation, but it’s thankfully not that bad - not even close actually. This is a pretty decent experience with a lot of the DNA of the first two Thief games but also with a lot of significant problems that weren’t present in those titles.

The biggest and most immediately apparent issue is Garrett’s movement. Deadly Shadows ditched the engine used for the first two Thief games and movement in this new engine is really janky and at times just bad. Mandalore’s review of this game is illuminating in this regard but to quickly summarize - most of these issues come from the poorly implemented 3rd person perspective and the way the position and physicality of Garrett’s body interacts with objects in the environment. Garrett’s movement feels sluggish, he regularly gets caught on the environment, he frequently glitches out and starts floating around the level, and trying to jump on and vault over objects is an absolute nightmare. Whenever you try to climb through an open window there’s a 90% chance you’ll just jump in place, alerting every nearby guard in the process. Using the blackjack to stealthily knock out guards is similarly janky. Unlike in the previous games where the blackjack can knock out a guard from any angle as long as you’re undetected, Deadly Shadows requires you be at a very precise angle behind an enemy for the knock-out to work. If you get the wrong angle (which is very easy to do even when you’re directly behind a guard) you’ll just give them a weak little bop on the noggin causing them to turn around and immediately stab you in the chest. All of this jank pretty much necessitates frequent quick saving unless you’re willing to let the game’s bad movement mechanics blow a stealth run for absolutely no reason. This required save-scumming likely won’t bother people who would be doing that anyway i.e truly elevated players that realize save scumming is one of the proudest PC gaming traditions and a very cool thing to be mildly addicted to, but it can be bummer for anyone who quick saves infrequently because they enjoy being forced to adapt to mistakes they might make. I honestly thought about ditching the game during the tutorial mission due to how bad movement felt. It’s incredibly jarring if you’re playing it right after finishing the previous two Thief titles like I was. I got used to it after about an hour however, and the game can still be fun in spite of it. All in all movement is serviceable but at times very frustrating and generally just a huge step down from the near perfect movement mechanics of the original two games.

Level design and gameplay follow in the footsteps of the original two games with a large focus on light and sound, slow meticulous movement, and the creative use of Garrett’s tools. DS is, however, a lot more linear than the first two games, which takes away a lot of the immersive sim elements present in those titles. The atmosphere in DS is very strong though. Ambient music plays a much larger role in this game, frequently veering into full on horror territory, and it creates an emotional experience that can be very different from that of the first two games. In levels that really lean into the horror tone there can be a tremendous amount of tension, which does work well in short bursts. “Robbing the Cradle” is one of these levels and has risen to somewhat legendary status due to how scary it is. It’s a master class in atmosphere and level design and definitely one of the highlights of the game even if it doesn’t engage with DS’s stealth mechanics as effectively as other levels do.

The biggest intentional difference between Deadly Shadows and its predecessors is the presence of a hub world. In between missions you’ll be given the opportunity to explore various districts of The City. In The City you can sell your loot to a fence (something you have to do manually now, which I found to be a fun and immersion increasing gameplay feature as opposed to a pointless annoyance), you can take on side quests, look for loot, and also search for maps that you can use to get your bearings in future missions. All of this is generally pretty fun and works relatively well. It has a lot of potential but unfortunately fails to fully realize it most of the time. The City is pretty samey and can get boring to walk through after a while. Side quests also usually boil down to hints about where loot is stashed and nothing more. There are also moments where DS seems to be going for a dynamic hub world that reacts to the player’s behavior during missions, but this ultimately isn’t fleshed out. There are only a few instances of very minor dynamic interactions between the hub world and player choices. These all work well and feel rewarding and immersive, but I just wish the game leaned into it more heavily. Using the hub world to actually make you think about what you steal, who you steal from, and how violently you behave on missions is a really interesting idea for a Thief game. That’s sadly not the game we got with Deadly Shadows though. Different factions roam the hub world and depending on whether or not Garrett has done some quick side quests to raise his reputation with them they may or may not be hostile to him. These factions also interact with each other in the streets, which is a cool idea, but is implemented horribly. By the end of the game, five different factions are in an all out war with each other - and seemingly with civilians as well. During this part of the game you can just hide and wait for the factions to kill each other, so you can walk around the hub world mostly unopposed. It’s ends up being unintentionally hilarious just how chaotic and ridiculous this all is.

Another intentional difference between DS and the previous two games (Thief 2 in particular) is the simplifying of in game maps. The maps in Thief 1 were often vague and didn’t include every area of a level but would highlight where the player was roughly located. The maps in Thief 2 (likely to make navigating its large levels more manageable) were a lot more detailed and would update when the player explored new areas even if they weren’t originally included on the map. Deadly Shadows features much simpler and much vaguer maps. The player’s location is no longer highlighted, you often have to locate maps in the game world before they’re available, and they’re rendered so simplistically and gloss over so much of the actual level that it can feel like the map itself must be incorrect. The maps also aren’t always drawn so that up is north and often don’t have a key signifying their relationship to the cardinal directions. All of this can be a positive or a negative depending on who you ask. It took me a while to get used to, but I enjoyed the maps in Deadly Shadows. It adds some additional challenge to the game, and the levels are generally small and well designed enough that one rarely finds themselves pining for a more accurate map.

Deadly Shadows also focuses more on story and lore than the previous two games. DS has quite a lot of cutscenes as well as readable notes and books that shed light on its world. This is in contrast to the notes and books in the first two games that mostly functioned as delivery vehicles for hints on how to complete a level. I found myself actually getting sucked into the books and notes scattered around DS because I wanted learn more about the lore and story of the game. In the previous games I mostly just skimmed through notes for information on how to find secrets or complete the level. The story also does give a nice ending to Garrett’s character arc, which was a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting DS to try to tie all three games together and give the story a sense of completeness but it does. There’s nothing particularly creative or subtle about the way DS does this, but it was nice nonetheless and provided a sense of closure to the trilogy.

Deadly Shadows suffers from a lot of significant problems, which causes it to be an enjoyable but ultimately frustrating experience. The bones of a good Thief game are there, but its lack of polish and largely linear nature prevents it from living up to the high standard set by its predecessors. I would really only recommend this game to fans of Thief that have already played the first two games. It’s a satisfying and enjoyable send off for the series and one that I think most Thief fans will enjoy in spite of its problems. If you’re not a Thief fan, and you’re just looking for a solid stealth game there are a lot of much better options out there.

N.B - the sneaky upgrade mod is absolutely necessary for playing this game on PC. I won’t go into all the reasons why but trust me - you don’t want this game to be even jankier than it already is. I initially tried playing DS unmodded and found it to be literally unplayable without all the movement and sensitivity options enabled by the sneaky upgrade. Even if you’re the most hardcore “I only do vanilla the first time around” player you need this mod. This is the only game I’ve ever played that I would say this for. Just enable the fixes and disable any graphical or gameplay changes. This game goes from a fun but flawed title to near-unplayable without it.

Wow what an amazing game. This is a step up from the already great Thief 1 in every way, building upon and elevating its complex and open ended stealth mechanics to near perfection.

Everything good about the original Thief that I mentioned in my review of that game returns here. Sound and light mechanics are once again implemented wonderfully. There are few things in gaming as tense and satisfying as hiding in a darkened doorway, unable to peak around it for fear of being caught, and carefully listening to the footsteps of a guard so you can know when it’s safe to pop out and attack or make a break for it.

Movement once again feels fluid and sneaking and takedowns work perfectly. There wasn’t a single instance in my playthrough where a takedown didn’t work properly or I felt like I was spotted unfairly, which is something that almost always happens at least once in stealth games.

One notable improvement over Thief 1 is regarding the focus on pure stealth for every mission. Thief 1 mixed up gameplay a bit from level to level. The majority of levels were pure stealth missions but quite a few ventured into experiences more akin to a tomb raider style game or a survival horror game. These levels worked relatively well but paled in comparison to Thief’s stealth focused levels IMO. Thief 2 thankfully focuses entirely on stealth. Every single enemy is able to be taken down stealthily; there are never any moments where you’re forced to break stealth (even if an alarm goes off for story reasons); and there aren’t any levels where the layout doesn’t lend itself to stealth gameplay.

Thief 2 also has a greater focus on open ended level design and just better level design in general. While Thief 1 gave you several options for approaching challenges most levels had a somewhat linear path of progression. For instance Thief 1 would give you multiple ways to move from point A to B and B to C, but the level could only be completed by progressing in a specific order: A, B, C, etc. Thief 2’s levels are much more open ended and take the classic immersive sim approach of plopping you into an open sandbox, giving you a loose goal, and telling you to figure it out for yourself.

The settings and conceits behind Thief 2’s levels are also generally more interesting and engaging than Thief 1’s. Unlike Thief 1’s levels, which were designed around the games story, Thief 2’s levels were designed first with the story being written around them later. One wouldn’t be able to tell that this was the case just from playing the games, but once you know about it, you can very clearly see this difference in the design process. Thief 2s levels are like a greatest hits of stealth and infiltration scenarios. There’s a bank robbery, breaking into a police station, an art heist, infiltrating a secret underground base, and carefully navigating a maze of rooftops just to name a few. Some of these levels also require that you never engage the enemy at all, which creates and interesting challenge and for players like me, who usually like to knock everyone out before exploring, forces them to change up their gameplay style. A lot of later stealth games would also make use of these scenarios and settings, but Thief 2 does them better than any other game I’ve played.

Interacting with Thief 2’s levels also allows for a lot of player creativity and ingenuity. Thief 2 adds secrets in each level that allow you bypass areas and find extra loot if you’re willing to look for them. There are also a lot of opportunities to use Garret’s tools in unexpected ways - more so than in the original. One of my favorite instances of this was in the penultimate mission. You’re tasked with stealing masks from a room where poison gas will be released if you touch the floor. The player is expected to solve this by finding a way to turn off the booby trap and then walking into the room. Instead of this, I was able to use Garret’s vine arrows (scalable ropes essentially) to rappel from the rafters Mission Impossible style and grab the masks without touching the ground. This isn’t the most out there emergent solution but it was still incredibly satisfying.

Story has never been the focus of the Thief games but T2’s story is surprisingly compelling. It’s nothing terribly deep but it has a well written and incredibly well acted villain, a unique and well rendered setting, and enjoyable interactions between Garret and other characters. For a game like Thief where the story doesn’t need to be anything more than a vehicle to get players invested in gameplay it absolutely shines.

This is an absolutely wonderful game. Undoubtedly the best stealth gameplay I’ve ever experienced and one of the best immersive sims I’ve ever played as well - second only the Deus Ex IMO - and I would recommend this to anyone that has even the slightest interest in stealth games or immersive sims.

I don’t have a lot to say about this game but feeling compelled to post a review to perhaps draw more attention to it. Only NES game I’ve played where someone could tell me this was a recent release and I’d believe them. Not really a game to marathon but incredibly satisfying and fun puzzles in relatively short bursts (playing maybe a world or two a sitting for instance). Really cute art style that makes use of the NES’s graphical capabilities and actually feels enhanced by it. A lot of NES games (Castlevania or any of the black box sports games for instance) look like their gameplay would be better served by a console with superior graphics like the SNES but not this one. NES feels like the perfect home for this game. Don’t let the terrible title and box art fool you; this game is an absolute treat to play. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys simple but challenging puzzle games.

Has a lot of potential but ultimately undone by some pretty significant problems. First off, the animal friends are a great concept, which was fully realized in Dreamland 3 but not so much here. They're incredibly cute, and the idea of using them to expand Kirby's move set is a good one, but there are just way too many animal friend copy abilities that are utterly useless or decidedly inferior to their kirby-only counterparts. Level design is okay - about on the same level as Dreamland 1 but a bit harder. This game, however, is significantly longer than the first Dreamland and does get monotonous rather quickly.

Biggest gripe is with the rainbow drop collectibles required to get to the final boss, which is really what dooms this game for me and makes me never want to replay it again. These require you to utilize one or more copy abilities to reach a secret area with the collectible. This is fine when only one copy ability that can be found in the level is required, but the vast majority of them are far more complicated than that. Most of them require multiple copy abilities that you need to use in a specific sequence and often require that you replay multiple levels to obtain and bring said copy ability to the secret area you're trying to reach. It can also be quite difficult to determine which copy ability you need to use due to the sheer number available when you factor in the animal friend variants. Combine all of these and you get a situation where you need to replay levels multiple times just to try a new copy ability / animal friend combo that might not even work. It's incredibly annoying and tedious and unfortunately required to beat the game. This would probably be more tolerable if I were playing this on a Gameboy bit by bit and over the course of several weeks as a kid, but I have far less tolerance for this sort of tedious time wasting as an adult. Replaying levels to try a new copy ability combo doesn't add anything of benefit to the game and just serves to waste the players time.

Another point: this might not be a negative for everyone, and I feel rather neutral about it, but this game has one of the most insane difficulty spikes I've ever seen. Apart from some ridiculous screw you player moments where death is unavoidable without luck or trial and error the game is mostly easy up until the final boss level where the difficulty ramps up significantly. You have to fight three bosses in a row, two of which are legitimately difficult with no healing items and no checkpoints. Its honestly insane for a Kirby game. Its not a bad fight once you figure out a decent strategy, but it was truly shocking. I personally didn't mind the difficulty spike but I'm sure it will turn some people off this game - especially given how unexpected it is for a kirby title.

Overall this is a game with a lot of potential - which was thankfully realized in the far superior Dreamland 3 - but a lot of significant problems that make it an absolute slog to get through.

Pretty decent NES pinball game. The most important thing with a game like this - and something I wasn’t sure Nintendo would have gotten right in 1984 - is that the physics of the ball and the bumpers and paddles feel realistic, which they do in this game. Playing this feels like playing a real pinball machine which is definitely to be commended. That said, this is a very simple pinball game. The different bonuses you can earn are pretty blah and don’t really add anything exciting to the game. There’s a pretty boring breakout style bonus game but that’s really it. No interesting graphics when you get a bonus, no second ball, just the bonus game and the potential to earn a stopper by your paddles to prevent you from losing a ball. I played this normally for a while and then used save states until I could see every potential bonus, so I’m fairly certain this is the extent of them.

Also - unsure if this is part of the game or a weird glitch but your paddles turn invisible if you score 100k points. I’m assuming this is intentional but it’s implemented in a way where it’s quite difficult to tell. The paddles don’t flash before disappearing or anything they’re just suddenly gone.

Overall this is a fun little pinball game and definitely one of the better black box NES games I’ve played. It is a very simple pinball game however. I’m not a connoisseur of pinball games but I’m certain there are much better ones out there if you’re into that sort of thing.

Easily my favorite 2-D platformer. Absolutely beautiful and unique art style. Yoshis Island IMO is definitely a contender for best looking game on the SNES.

One of the things about this game that really strikes me looking back on it is just how memorable it’s levels are. I’ve played through this game twice - most recently a few years ago - and I can still remember and describe several levels and bosses like I played it yesterday. For comparison - I just finished playing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the second time yesterday and while I can remember the theming for all the different worlds I definitely couldn’t describe any levels in detail. The only exception to this is the first level but that’s only because I played it countless times trying to beat the game as a kid. In case it seems like punching down to compare this to an NES game here’s another example. When I played New Super Mario Bros for the DS a couple years ago I would have struggled to describe any levels just a couple of days after beating it (this is in spite of my enjoying the game quite a bit).

This is a bit of a scatterbrained review but if you haven’t please look up a 100% speedrun of this game. It’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen and really makes you appreciate how versatile and dynamic yoshi’s movement is in this game.

Would tbh recommend this game to anyone. It’s forgiving enough that a little kid or someone who’s never played a video game before could have a fun time with it but still challenging if you try to 100% all the levels.

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.

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.

The game that mostly saves the Fates trio due pretty much entirely to gameplay and map design, which is strong. Game is satisfyingly difficult on normal, which definitely isn’t the case for the other Fates games. Story and characters fall short of Birthright for me, but are far superior to Revelation. That said, the story and characters aren’t particularly engaging in any of the Fates games, so this isn’t really a big deal. I’d definitely recommend you turn your brain off and not get too invested in story or characters when playing the Fates games. Taking the story seriously in any of these games will most likely just lead to annoyance and frustration. If you don’t care about story in FE games or if you’re able to ignore ones that aren’t particularly enjoyable this is a very solid FE game.

I have a feeling my soft spot for this game is very much based off my very personal connection to the specific James Turrell exhibition this game features.

So for context - this game specifically concerns the massively popular 2013 James Turrell retrospective located at LACMA in Los Angeles. I grew up in LA and was just beginning my senior year of high school at the time. I grew up in a solidly upper middle class community where attaining cultural capital and going to a prestigious college were the primary aspirations that parents had for their kids and that most kids had for themselves by extension.

Given this context one would imagine that going to the big ticket art exhibition in town would be popular but good god I cannot overstate just how popular and lauded this exhibition was. For a few months in the fall of 2013 basically every kid at my high school as well as their parents were talking about and posting about the god damn James Turrell exhibition almost non stop. For anyone not familiar James Turrell does what could be called light art in layman’s terms (my language when it comes to fine art). His works are very accessible and aesthetically pleasing and create an experience closer to an immersive art installation than a traditional exhibition. His 2013 exhibition predates but creates an experience for lay viewers that is shockingly similar to the heavily corporatized and Instagram friendly “art experiences” that would come to dominate the landscape of big American cities in the 2010s. The way most people talked and posted about this exhibition was also very similar to the way they would end talking and posting about faux art installations like “the museum of ice cream” some years later. The James Turrell exhibition, however, obviously has a lot more going for it than one of these Instagram experiences. I’m not trying to say his work is crap or disingenuous or anything - just that the way people talked about and approached the exhibition felt very similar to how they would talk about and approach aforementioned “Instagram art experiences”. But anyway - the exhibition was massively overhyped and there was a very real sense of FOMO surrounding it. People didn’t want to miss out on what seemed like this crazy aesthetic experience where you’d be transported to a surreal and abstract world and also didn’t want to miss out on the cultural capital to be gained by “having seen the James Turrell exhibition”.

Is this game partially responding to the geographically and culturally specific hype surrounding the exhibition? Maybe I guess? I have no idea. It does however immediately make me remember this somewhat comical time period from my youth, and I have a definite soft spot for it because of that. I saw this exhibition on a second date with the person who ended up becoming my first ever serious partner, which heightens the nostalgia factor for me a lot. For all the ridiculousness surrounding this exhibition seeing it in real life was a very memorable and frankly beautiful experience. Given its sheer popularity it’s also something that’s probably associated with fond memories for a lot of people. I hope Bubsy at least had a fun time at the exhibition like I did :’ )

A somewhat relevant aside: I had a friend in high school whose family owned this very post modern looking house. In the entranceway there was this strange rectangular hole in the wall leading to a small white room that would light up with bright green light if you flipped a switch. Nobody in the family knew what this room was for and they used it to store piles of literal junk for the entire time I knew them. After the exhibition got popular this family realized that their junk closet was very similar to the James Turrell pieces on exhibit at LACMA and did some investigating into its origins. It turned out the rectangular hole was indeed a James Turrell installation and they very quickly cleaned the junk out and bragged to everyone about having a James Turrell in their house. The story was even publishing in the LA Times. I don’t have any incisive commentary about this event. It’s just something I find supremely ridiculous and quite funny and also very depressing all at the same time.

This is going to be a bit of an unusual review because this obviously isn’t an actual game. This is a database companion app for MGS4 that attempts to compile and organize all the Metal Gear lore up to and including that game. To that end, this app does a pretty good job. It features detailed entries on every character, organization, and event from the Metal Gear series. You can organize these entries in quite a few ways, and the app features a handy series of graphs that show how different characters and factions relate to each other throughout the timeline. These features can be invaluable in parsing the lore of the series and gives utilizing the app a huge advantage over simply reading a wiki for instance.

This is a truly comprehensive collection of information. There are quite a few entries I really didn’t expect - chief among them being the inclusion of every boss from the original two Metal Gear games as well as the presence of Portable Ops in general. Portable Ops is widely considered to not be canon by MG fans, so it’s inclusion here is a bit of an oddity. It’s honestly really charming and kind of hilarious to see the somewhat unhinged plot and characters of Portable Ops being treated with the same respect as everything else from the series. Seeing this largely forgotten and mediocre game, one that has seemingly been discarded by both the fans as well as Konami, being preserved here makes me smile. Being able to see the creators of the database attempt to tie Portable Ops in with the rest of the series is honestly one of the most entertaining things about the app.

The biggest failure of the database - and what makes it so interesting to me - is it’s ultimate inability to fully contain and untangle the Gordian Knot that is the plot of the Metal Gear series. The database, at quite a few points, seems to either contradict itself or fly in the face of story elements from the actual games. This doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does happen it can be quite noticeable. One can spend hours reading and re-reading the database entries, studying the charts, and sorting the information in every way the app will allow, and after all that they still won’t have a comprehensive understanding of Metal Gear lore… and I can’t tell you how much I love that.

It’s no secret that the Metal Gear games have some of the most convoluted and at times incomprehensible plots in gaming. Fans have tried to parse the exact details Revolver Ocelot’s arc for years and still haven’t come to an agreement about it. This sort of thing might seem like a huge flaw of the games first glance, and I’m sure there are a lot of really smart people that don’t like the Metal Gear games for this exact reason. It is my opinion, however, that convoluted nature of the Metal Gear storyline not only isn’t important in the grand scheme of things but is actually one of its major strengths.

The most obvious example of this is MGS2, which uses a convoluted plot to support its core thesis and give the player a gameplay experience that almost perfectly mirrors the narrative experience of its protagonist. In the other games, the confusion the narrative can inspire in the player serves to refocus their attention away from the finer details of the plot and towards the deeper themes invoked by the narrative and the emotional experience created by the game as a whole. Fans can sometimes be a bit too preoccupied with canon consistency and plot holes and end up missing the point of a narrative because of it. The way the Metal Gear games actively thwart the players attempt to engage with them in this way is brilliant. The MGS4 database serves as an almost certainly unintentional testament to this. The writing of the Metal Gear games essentially thwarted an attempt by the series’ official database to pin down all the particulars of its plot.

The MGS4 database only fully unlocks after you have a completed save file for MGS4. If you’re like me and think that the core of the Metal Gear series ends with 4, this database serves as it’s unintentional epilogue. What a better way to send off the series and give players a final suggestion of it’s artistic mission than to tell them a database is going to finally explain everything and then have it ultimately and inevitably fail to do so.

Pleasantly surprised to see how many people on this site think this game is better than the first Bioshock. Bioshock 1’s greatest strengths are its atmosphere, novelty, and presentation. My opinion of the story and writing, which was very positive when I was a young teen, has definitely lowered with time. Bioshock 2, while lacking the novelty that made the 1st game feel so special, is superior in terms of both writing and gameplay. Bioshock 2 definitely benefits from its more human and character driven story. Once you know the twist and general premise of the first game there’s really not a lot to sink your teeth into. There’s a lot more emotion and depth to engage with in B2. Gameplay improvements aren’t huge but can make a significant difference. Hilariously, one of the best things B2 changed about the gameplay was removing that fucking hacking minigame. I would love to meet somehow who genuinely enjoys that minigame so I could convince them to let a team of doctors and psychologists study what makes them tick. I think it would be a real boon for our understanding of the human psyche. Overall this game is definitely somewhat of an under appreciated gem. Would highly recommend to anyone who enjoyed the first game and hasn’t gotten around the playing it. I’d also recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed the atmosphere and gameplay of bioshock 1 but was turned off by the story and writing.

System Shock has a reputation for being incredibly awkward to control and sticking the player in labyrinthine levels that are impossible to get your bearings in. A lot of people have probably passed over this game because of this reputation. Most of this review will consist of arguments for why people shouldn’t be afraid to play this game.

Contrary to what I expected System Shock Enhanced Edition was actually a pretty accessible game to pick up and learn. The enhanced controls aren’t particularly clunky or hard to get used to due to the addition of optional mouse look. The biggest hurdle to getting started is learning how to navigate the UI which definitely can be overwhelming at first.

The levels, while sprawling and maze-like are actually pretty easy to navigate. The artists and level designers did an amazing job at making the different areas of each level look and feel distinct. I was also expecting the levels to consist entirely of winding and claustrophobic corridors, but they’re actually surprisingly open and at times highly vertical. Playing this game really does feel like being in an actual space station as opposed to navigating a labyrinthine 1st person dungeon crawler, which is more of what I was expecting.

System Shock rarely makes you feel like a rat hopelessly trapped in a maze. It’s very possible to find your way around through visual recognition alone in all but one level IMO. The fact that you have an auto mapper readily available makes navigation surprisingly intuitive and rarely frustrating.

There’s a lot to love about System Shock. Combat and exploration are fun and rewarding, SHODAN is a really engaging and well written villain, and figuring out how to progress the plot is a fun challenge for the player to puzzle out. I won’t go into any more detail about these qualities of the game and instead let people who want to play System Shock discover that for themselves.

I decided to play System Shock mainly for its historical value. This is a massively influential game and one that despite looking and feeling dated in various ways was decidedly ahead of its time. When I actually started playing the game, however, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up and how easy it was to get into. If you have even the slightest curiosity in this game I’d highly recommend giving the enhanced edition a shot.

N.B - Purchasing the Enhanced Edition on steam also includes a copy of classic System Shock, so if you decide you want to have the old school using a graphing calculator to control a tank experience that’s a possibility as well and seems like a very rewarding control scheme to master.