Buckshot Roulette is a short and simple game of shotgun Russian Roulette between you and a… thing that calls itself “The Dealer”. The Dealer loads up the shotgun with a random number of shells and blanks, and you each take turns shooting the shotgun at either yourselves or your opponent. If you opt to shoot yourself, your opponent’s turn is skipped. You’re each hooked up to a defibrillator with a certain amount of charges that will bring you back to life if you get shot, but there is a limited number of times the defibrillator can be used. The game ends when either you or The Dealer run out of chances to use the defibrillator.

The game does spice things up a little bit by giving you items at the beginning of rounds that you can utilize to help yourself get an advantage. You can get a knife to saw off the end of the shotgun which causes it to do twice the amount of damage, a magnifying glass which lets you peek and see what round is currently loaded into the gun, handcuffs that prevent your opponent from taking a turn, a can of beer that lets you eject whatever round is currently loaded, and a pack of cigarettes that will restore a chance to use the defibrillator. However, The Dealer is also given these exact same items. This adds another layer of strategy to the game, where you’ll have to think about when you want to use the items you’re given, while also considering the items The Dealer has and when they will use them as well.

The game has a pretty cool, yet measured concept. Despite how intriguing The Dealer and the setting are, there isn’t really a narrative to speak of. If you win, you get a results screen and a case full of money. That’s all. The game itself can be figured out pretty easily and beaten in about 30 minutes. The core gameplay, while decent, doesn’t make for something that’s especially replayable in my opinion. I love its low-poly artstyle, and I really dig the techno track that plays in the background. Its presentation in general is really strong and immersive, especially given the game’s setup.

There’s just not a whole lot to this game, which is its only real issue. I had managed expectations going into Buckshot Roulette. I didn’t think that it’d be anything mindblowing considering it’s on sale for $3 on Steam (actually, I guess it technically is mindblowing now that I think about it…). I expected a short, but decent time and that’s exactly what I got. It’s a fun little flavor of the month type of indie game that I do think is worth the $3. Just know ahead of time that you’re really not going to get a whole lot of mileage with it.

I was born too late for the SEGA Dreamcast, but I was born just in time for the Nintendo GameCube, and one of my favorite games growing up was Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut. I loved this game immensely growing up, and I played and replayed it over and over again, to the point where the disc wore out and stopped working. As the years went by, and I got older and came to play a wider variety of games, I eventually stopped enjoying Sonic games as much as I used to when I was little, to the point where nowadays I view the franchise with nostalgic indifference. It’s something that I definitely used to love and I might check in on occasionally, but it rarely occupies a space in my brain these days. Recently, those feelings of nostalgia took hold of me when I learned about how the DX version of Sonic Adventure was apparently a lot worse in comparison to the original. I read that it introduced new bugs and glitches, and it changed the game’s overall visual style for the worse. So, out of curiosity, and because I wanted to be reminded of old times, I decided to emulate the original Sonic Adventure to see how much better it actually was in comparison to the allegedly maligned DX version, and in all honesty, I don’t really think that DX is as much of a downgrade as I was led to believe. The game itself wasn’t as much of a fun nostalgia ride as I’d hoped it’d be, either.

Dr. Eggman has returned with a new plan for world domination, and this time he’s in command of a creature known as Chaos, a liquid monster who grows more powerful and changes shape after being fed the legendary Chaos Emeralds. Sonic and company all get involved with Eggman’s plot in some fashion, as they attempt to stop him from feeding Chaos all seven emeralds and wrecking untold havoc upon the world. You play as Sonic and five other characters, each with their own style of gameplay and personal narratives that occasionally crossover with one another.

I have to admit, reviewing this game is rather difficult for me. I played DX growing up so much that I know the game like the back of my hand. I’m used to the physics, I’m used to the boss fights, I know where I’m supposed to go and when, I can quote so many voice lines… basically I can play this game almost without thinking. There may be aspects of the game that I find easy that other people might struggle with. Sonic Adventure is a bit of a finicky game, and getting acclimated to how the game feels and controls may not come as naturally to others as it comes to me. Once you get used to it though, the whole game is very much a walk in the park. Each character shares the same core controls, but they also have their own abilities which make them unique.

Sonic’s campaign is by far the most fun in the game, and clearly where the most attention was given. His stages simply take the speed focused platforming approach of the 2D games and apply it to levels made in 3D. Sonic’s stages are often long and made up of multiple sections with a variety of different environments and music tracks for each section. Sonic for the most part feels pretty good to control, especially when you manage to get him going at higher speeds. The biggest problem that I have both with Sonic’s stages and with the game in general is easily the awful camera. The camera often acts like it has a mind of its own, and when Sonic or other characters go at high speeds, it often can’t keep up with them, or it’ll get stuck on level geometry, freak out, and prevent you from seeing where you’re going. The only times I ever died during my replay of this game was when these camera issues happened, and they happen most frequently when you’re going at high speeds through tunnels like in Sky Chase or Speed Highway. Sometimes to get the camera under control, you just gotta slow down and give it a second to catch up, which can be annoying, but it’s not the worst.

As mentioned, the rest of the cast all have their unique styles of gameplay, but for the most part, they all reuse various sections of Sonic’s stages. Some characters have sections of stages unique to them, and there is one stage (Hot Shelter) that Sonic doesn’t have that other characters do, but 95% of the other characters’ stages are reused or slightly edited sections of Sonic’s stages, and their gameplay for the most part isn’t different or interesting enough to really feel substantial. Playing as the other characters can feel rather repetitive and boring as a result.

Tails is easily the best example of this. His stages involve racing an AI-controlled Sonic through chopped up sections of Sonic’s stages. Tails can’t run as fast as Sonic, but he can fly, and there are these booster rings he can fly through that allow him to take shortcuts that Sonic can’t utilize himself. It’s never a challenge to outpace Sonic, and Sonic can sometimes get stuck on level geometry and not even advance forward at all until he rubber bands and teleports right next to you in order to catch up.

Knuckles’ stages have him searching for broken pieces of the Master Emerald. His ability to glide and climb walls allows him to explore stages in a way Sonic can’t, making the stages themselves a lot more open and exploration focused. His gameplay is different enough from Sonic’s that replaying stages isn’t really that big of a deal. His stages are my next favorite after Sonic’s.

Amy’s campaign is surprisingly fun. Amy has to flee from an invincible robot called Zero, which chases her across all of her stages. Amy’s on the slower side, but she has her own special movement abilities and attacks she can perform with her Piko Piko Hammer to make up for it. She also has the most unique content compared to the other playable characters that aren’t Sonic, as she has sections of Sonic’s stages that he doesn’t get to experience himself, such as the fun house in Twinkle Park. My only complaint is that she has the least amount of stages in the game (three in total).

Then there’s Big’s campaign… Big has always been rather infamous when it comes to discussions surrounding this game. As opposed to every other character’s gameplay, which is generally focused on exciting action, or high speed setpieces, Big the Cat’s gameplay involves fishing for his pet frog named Froggy. There are pools of water in stages that are occupied by Froggy as well as other fish, and you have to catch Froggy in order to clear Big’s stages. I think it’s pretty understandable why people don’t care for Big’s campaign. His gameplay is so different from everyone else’s, and if you want to complete the story, you have no choice but to do them. The fishing itself isn’t especially fun either, and it can be confusing because the game itself doesn’t really explain how fishing works. I remember being so frustrated and angry with Big’s levels as a kid because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, and didn’t realize that you needed to flick the control stick down whenever Froggy bites onto the lure in order to actually hook him onto it so that you can start reeling him in. To the game’s credit, fishing is explained in the game’s instruction booklet (both this version and DX’s), so it’s a bit hard to blame it for not telling you what you’re supposed to do. That doesn’t change the fact that the fishing itself is still not particularly engaging. At the very least, it’s not difficult at all once you figure out how it works.

Finally, there’s E-102 Gamma’s campaign. Gamma is a robot built to serve Dr. Eggman. His stages involve running and gunning, blasting enemies and obstacles and defeating a boss at the end of each stage. I don’t really know how else to describe Gamma’s stages other than braindead. That might sound a bit harsh, but I genuinely can’t think of any other way to put it. You hold down the action button to target obstacles, wait to target as many as you can, and then Gamma will fire auto-homing shots to destroy targets. It’s also hilariously easy to just stun lock all of the bosses at the end of Gamma’s stages and keep them from fighting back at all.

The story, much like the gameplay, is ambitious, and I do actually think it’s executed well enough. However, the horrible dialogue and the stilted 90’s voice acting can really knock the wind out of its sails. It’s charming enough to find it funny, but very much in a “so bad it’s good” kinda way. Eggman’s voice actor is an exception though. Deem Reginald Bristow actually kills it with his performance. It’s really lively compared to every other character in the game, and he sounds like he’s honestly having a lot of fun with the role, as opposed to everyone else, who just sounds like they’re phoning it in.

By far the best part about this game is its soundtrack. God, to this day nothing really hits me like this game’s soundtrack. It’s honestly pretty damn close to perfect. Each track just adds so much to the immersion of each stage, while also being immensely groovy or electrifying songs on their own. Some of my favorite tracks include Run Through the Speed Highway, Red Hot Skull, and Pleasure Castle, but in all honesty, pretty much every single song is a banger, and aside from maybe some of the vocal tracks, it’s really difficult to find a song that isn’t great in this game.

As for how this compares to the DX version, I think that visually, environments look a lot more appealing in comparison. The textures in the Dreamcast version are a lot more colorful, and places like the Mystic Ruins look far more lush and appealing. Other than that though, I’ll be honest: I don’t think that this version has much else that makes it worth playing over DX. For the sake of making a good faith comparison, I did play through a chunk of Sonic’s levels really quickly in DX to see if I could run into any obvious bugs or glitches, but I didn’t encounter anything, and I don’t ever recall running into any particularly notable glitches in the DX version during the several playthroughs of it when I was a kid. If anything, I feel like I still prefer DX a bit more because it has a free camera option you can turn on during stages, which is a huge blessing since the auto camera is so terrible. You can also skip cutscenes in DX which is super convenient. I feel like the glitches and bugs of DX are overblown, it seems like you really gotta go out of your way to experience them. You could argue that since I didn’t play DX from beginning to end that I’m not making a fair comparison, and y’know what, I won’t argue with you. I just really don’t have it in me to play this game from front to back a second time.

It’s clear that there was a lot of passion and ambition that went into Sonic Adventure and I have nothing but respect for that. I feel like this is one of the most experimental games I’ve ever played, especially for its time. It’s just that not all of its ideas pan out very well, and it causes the game to feel bloated and boring at times. Sonic Adventure, no matter which version I play, is always going to be a big source of nostalgia for me, and I’ll definitely treasure those memories I had of playing the game as a kid. But it’s impossible to deny how rough and flawed the game truly is.

After rising from the ashes of a long and tumultuous development (which at one point had to start over from the ground up), DOOM 2016 managed to surprise just about everyone with how high quality its final release was. Part sequel, part soft reboot, the game does a phenomenal job at bringing the core appeal of the original games into the modern age, while still carving out an identity unique to itself. While it does lack some polish and refinement in certain areas, the game overall is an excellent, adrenaline-fueled first person shooter with immensely satisfying combat and a hellish heavy metal aesthetic that is 1000% My Shit™.

In the far future, the Union Aerospace Corporation, directed by the cyborg Dr. Samuel Hayden, has discovered a new form of energy known as Argent Energy, which comes directly from Hell itself. From their facility on Mars, the corporation creates portals and sends teams into Hell to farm this power source and use it to solve humanity’s energy crisis. During one of their expeditions to Hell, they also discover a sarcophagus containing the series’ protagonist, the DOOM Slayer, who is the DOOM Marine from the original games. After Hayden’s protege, Dr. Olivia Pierce, falls victim to the seduction of power promised by the demons that occupy Hell, she converts staff members of the UAC into a demon worshiping cult, and opens a portal to Hell that allows an army of demons to invade the facility, brutally decimating just about every staff member in the process. Hayden awakens the DOOM Marine as his failsafe measure, and attempts to guide his actions, but the DOOM Marine pays him no heed, and sets out to put a stop to the invasion by doing what he does best: visceral demon slaughter.

Just by playing the game, it’s clear that the team behind 2016 had a huge love for the DOOM franchise. Behind the scenes, they were committed to making sure that above all else: this game felt like DOOM. In fact, they even canceled an entire initial concept of the game that lifted a lot of elements from other first person shooters that were popular at the time of its initial development (specifically Call of Duty), simply because they didn’t feel like that direction was suited for DOOM. After going back to the drawing board and making a dramatic effort to embrace their roots, they managed to really nail their goal, as 2016 definitely captures the core appeal of the original DOOM games. All of the elements that make DOOM what it is are here: the playful “popcorn horror” tone, the huge arsenal of weapons, (almost) all of the different types of demons, the fast paced combat that requires you to manage all of the different resources your weapons use, and the heavy metal-inspired music and imagery. It’s all here, and it’s all unabashedly DOOM. There’s a phenomenal documentary from the YouTube channel Noclip called DOOM Resurrected, which features interviews from many key members of the team that worked on the game. The documentary gives great insight into their creative processes over the entire course of the game’s development, including a small look at the original “Call of DOOM” concept phase. I highly recommend giving this documentary a watch, as you can see the clear love and passion that went into making the game, and it’s an all-around delightful watch, especially if you really enjoyed 2016.

The gameplay of the original DOOM games is translated rather faithfully, though 2016 has some slightly different takes on certain gameplay elements. You’re still exploring environments, searching for keys and eviscerating demons. However, navigating levels is more straightforward in comparison to the original games. The level designs aren’t quite as maze-like, and while you do need to examine your environment and look for unconventional ways forward in order to progress at times, you’ll almost always have an objective marker you follow that will take you to your target destination. However, there are still plenty of secrets to find if you opt to ignore the objective marker and explore levels as thoroughly as you can, including various collectables and plenty of fun throwbacks to the original games. My only issue with exploration is that there will sometimes be areas where you will be required to platform, and falling into a bottomless pit will instantly kill you and cause a game over, forcing you to sit through a loading screen that’s just a bit too long for my liking. This is more of a nitpick in all honesty, but it’s enough of an annoyance that this was changed in 2016’s sequel, DOOM Eternal, where instead of instantly dying, you just respawn while losing a chunk of health.

Combat is where 2016 differs the most from the originals. Over the course of a level, you will be locked into arenas heavily reminiscent of the multiplayer maps from DOOM’s sister franchise: Quake. These arenas are where a majority of combat encounters are held. You’ll have to survive an onslaught of demons whenever you enter these arenas, taking them out one by one until you’ve ripped and torn your way through them all, after which the arenas will open up and you’ll be able to progress further into a level. I absolutely love these combat arenas, as well as 2016’s approach to combat in general. Being locked into an arena with all of the demons, each of which have their own strengths and weaknesses, creates combat encounters that force you to constantly stay mobile, frantically switching between your different weapons depending on the situation and the demons you’re fighting in order to stay alive. Standing in one place is the fastest way to get you killed in 2016. You need to constantly be moving throughout these arenas, or you will easily get overwhelmed and pummeled or blasted to death by a Hell Knight or Revenant. The combat arenas themselves are also fantastic. They’re designed in a way that makes it easy to learn, memorize, and traverse their layouts.

Another unique addition to combat are the glory kills, which are cinematic finishing moves you can perform on an enemy after doing enough damage to them. While I have seen some mixed responses towards these, I personally love them, and find them to be a big part of why I adore modern DOOM’s combat so much. You can perform a variety of different glory kills based on the position of yourself and the demons, so you’re generally seeing a decent variety of glory kills depending on the situation you’re in during combat. Being able to perform glory kills at all of these different angles really adds to the immersion of combat in a big way as well, as they prevent the flow of combat from being broken. Glory kills are also generally rather short, they rarely take more than a second to perform, keeping them from being particularly intrusive. Though, larger enemies do get longer and more dramatic glory kills, which makes it even more satisfying when you manage to perform one on them. For me, glory kills add such an immense level of satisfaction to combat. Performing one on a particularly stubborn enemy or towards the end of an especially difficult combat arena provides me with unheard of levels of dopamine.

DOOM Guy’s arsenal of weapons sees a rather large expansion in terms of their capabilities. You can tell that they were attempting to give each weapon in the game a dedicated purpose, but unfortunately the balancing of the weapons just doesn’t quite work out that way the farther you progress in the game. The Chainsaw has been changed so that instead of being a melee option, killing enemies with it will grant you additional ammo, at the cost of requiring fuel charges in order to use it. As long as you’re not burning your fuel, you’ll almost always have an opportunity to not only instantly remove an enemy from the battlefield, but replenish any ammo you spent as well. Since ammo management isn’t that big of a concern, once you get the Super Shotgun, the Rocket Launcher, the Gauss Cannon, and the BFG 9000, you’re pretty much set for the rest of the game, and your other weapons feel rather superfluous. The Super Shotgun in particular wound up being a little too overtuned in what I’m sure was an attempt to stay true to the strength of the original weapon in DOOM II: Hell on Earth. It has a wide spray, does a lot of damage and staggers enemies at closer ranges, making it the go-to weapon for almost every scenario. You could honestly get through the entire game with just the Super Shotgun and then using the Chainsaw on enemies to replenish your ammo for it, if you really wanted to.

There are also the new weapon modifiers, granting special abilities to your weapons, but these also are made redundant by the more powerful weapons in the game. This is my biggest issue with DOOM 2016. A lot of your weapons and their modifiers just feel like excess baggage by the halfway point of the game. They don’t serve too much of a purpose, nor do they feel especially satisfying to use. As a result, I find little reason to use pretty much half of your arsenal. Hell, I forgot this game even had throwable grenades until I replayed it, because you never need to use them for anything. Thankfully, DOOM Eternal goes above and beyond to address this issue, but I’ll definitely go into more detail regarding that once I review that game (and I gotta say, I’m hella looking forward to reviewing it).

There’s more of a focus on storytelling in comparison to the original games, in so much as there actually is an in-game narrative. iD’s approach to storytelling in 2016 is interesting. For the most part, it’s there if you want to experience it, but if not, you can ignore it and move on. However, there are still certain cutscenes and cinematic setpieces that you’re forced to experience and can’t really skip. If you are playing to experience the story as well as the gameplay, it’s no big deal, but I can’t imagine the folks that don’t care about the story are especially fond of these unskippable moments of the game. They also can make the game a bit of a pain to replay as a result as well. The story itself is one that suits DOOM. It’s not particularly detailed or complex. It’s simple, straightforward, and easy to digest. There is actually a lot more lore under the surface that’s explored in the game’s codex entries that’s an entertaining read if you take the time to look through them.

Since 2016 primarily takes place either on Mars or in Hell, you spend almost the entire game traversing through red or orange environments, and it can make the levels bleed together a bit in terms of their visual design. There are still elements that make these locations look distinct though, for example, the Mars facilities are a lot more science fiction inspired, whereas Hell more so resembles fantasy, with environments that look like they were ripped straight off of a Slayer album cover. The artstyle of the characters translates the old school designs of the DOOM Marine and the demons from the original games into a modern look very faithfully. The demons manage to look kinda scary, yet they still have that 90’s charm to them that keeps them from being super terrifying. I like the design of the new Praetor suit for the DOOM Marine as well. It’s not my favorite suit (I think Eternal’s blows it out of the water) but it’s not at all bad.

Mick Gordon’s soundtrack, which has received a lot of praise, is undeniably solid, but I don’t quite share the same enthusiasm for it as other people do. Despite Mick specializing in the genre, and despite the fact that heavy metal music has always been a core part of DOOM’s identity, in part three of the DOOM Resurrected documentary, Mick mentions that he was specifically told early on in development that the soundtrack should NOT be heavy metal focused. He only went back and started adding more heavy metal elements to the soundtrack after initial fan feedback. As a result, the soundtrack as a whole is mostly very atmospheric and electronic based, with a lot of extremely bass heavy synths with the occasional opera singing when in Hell. There are a couple of tracks that do utilize guitar, and in my opinion, these are the more standout songs of the soundtrack, specifically Mick’s rendition of At Doom’s Gate which plays as the level cleared theme, Rip and Tear, and of course, the iconic BFG Division, an anthem from this game that I honestly believe deserves to be held in the same regard as all of the other classic and memorable DOOM tracks. The soundtrack as a whole is great in the sense that it suits the environments that you explore very well, but it doesn’t have enough guitar for my tastes.

Revisiting DOOM 2016 for the first time in quite a few years was pretty fun. I’m not going to lie, I kind of really had to hold my tongue and keep myself from mentioning DOOM Eternal more than I already did throughout this entire review. All of the good things that 2016 does are improved upon tenfold in that game. As a matter of fact, Hugo Martin even at one point said during marketing for Eternal that once you play it, it’d be hard to go back to 2016, and in all honesty, he was right, but I digress. 2016 is still an accomplishment worthy of celebration. The team that worked on it went above and beyond their goal of translating the experience of the old DOOM games into something new and modern, while still retaining DOOM’s core identity. It’s exhilarating in all of the ways only a DOOM game can be.

Paranormasight is a horror and mystery-themed visual novel/adventure game hybrid that stars multiple protagonists with intertwining stories. The game has a ton of really unique and strong ideas both narratively and mechanically. Unfortunately, this is ultimately its biggest downfall, as the game is rather overambitious. It tries to do way too much, and it doesn’t have the time to explore all of its ideas in a satisfying manner. As a result, the experience feels rushed and rather unfulfilling.

The game takes place in the city of Honjo in 1980’s Japan, a time when fear of the occult was on the rise. Throughout the city, several people with an interest in a ritual known as the Rite of Resurrection, which allows whoever performs it to bring someone back from the dead, come into possession of cursed stones. These cursed stones provide them with the ability to inflict a curse upon others if their victims meet specific conditions. Everyone in possession of a cursed stone must use it in order to kill people and obtain enough “soul dregs” from their murders to be able to perform the Rite of Resurrection, and other cursed stone users provide far more soul dregs than regular people. As a result, the cursed stone users must compete with one another in order to be able to use the Rite for their own purposes. You play as several protagonists, each with their own narratives that intertwine with one another.

The gameplay is heavily reminiscent of the investigation segments from the Ace Attorney games and A.I. The Somnium Files. You explore environments that have various objects you can observe and people you can talk to. Normally in these games, locations are comprised of just one or two screens that you can swap back and forth between, but in Paranormasight, the locations are actually full 360 degree environments that you can turn around in. This makes the places you visit a lot more immersive, and early on, the game establishes a sense of paranoia with a couple of jumpscares from behind you, giving you the impression that you need to be vigilant, as you can never be sure whether or not there’s something or someone behind you.

There are other unique mechanics as well. There’s one mechanic in particular that I thought was really clever and executed extremely well, but I can’t really talk about it because I feel like it’s a bit of a spoiler. Aside from that, there’s the story chart, which is where you can view and pick between the different characters and their stories. Sometimes, you’ll need to perform actions in or gain knowledge from one character’s story in order to progress another’s. This generally works rather well, and is one of the game’s biggest strengths. However, it can get convoluted at times, especially during a section in one specific character’s story, which hinges on experiencing one of the most random, out of pocket, highly specific conversations ever in another character’s story.

Despite these unique and well thought out mechanics, the game barely utilizes them at all. As a matter of fact, you don’t even really do that much investigating in general. The vast majority of this game is just talking to people. You rarely need to inspect areas, and that cool and well executed mechanic I mentioned earlier is only used like - twice throughout the entire game. The game as a whole feels too short, despite being a little over ten hours. It isn’t given the time it needs to explore its mechanical ideas to a satisfying extent.

This problem applies to the story as well. The story in general is very heavy on exposition. It’s heavily rooted in Japanese folklore as well as the culture of the era the game takes place in. This means that characters constantly have to explain said folklore, such as what the seven curses are, how they work, the history of the city of Honjo itself, etc. This is in addition to having to explain the different characters, factions, and events unique to the story. Exposition ultimately takes up a huge chunk of the overall narrative, which makes it feel like you’re waiting almost the entire time for the game to get on its feet and kick things off. But it never really does, and then it starts to wrap things up when it feels like there should be a lot more to it. Potentially impactful aspects of characters, certain plot threads, as well as social issues the game brings up aren’t explored to a satisfying degree, making the whole thing rather flat as a result.

I think what ultimately harms the game the most is the prologue with Shogo. It inflates expectations way too much by introducing the game’s mechanics and establishing a tone as well as a majority of the plot threads that you expect the game to have major payoffs for. However, that ends up not being the case at all, and it’s really disappointing.

I really like its presentation. The character art looks nice, the music is appropriately moody, and I think it's really cool how the whole thing is framed as if you were watching it on a colored television set from this time period. It's one of the better elements of the game, and plays a role in keeping you immersed in the story.

In the end, Paranormasight didn’t really leave me feeling much of anything at all. While I wouldn’t say that the game does anything bad, I can’t help but feel that the experience as a whole was rather mediocre. It promises a spooky and thrilling mystery, but it never really lives up to that promise. It is still an interesting read, but it evoked little out of me in terms of emotion. It has some unique spins on adventure game mechanics, but these mechanics are extremely underutilized. The whole game oozes potential that it sadly never quite lives up to.

Golf With Your Friends is a mini golf simulation game where you play on gigantic and elaborate mini golf courses. The courses all have their own unique themes and obstacles to them, and the game actually does require and reward having a good amount of skill and mastery over its physics. It’s a game that can be aggravating to play at times, but that’s part of the fun. As long as you’re playing the game with a group of friends that don’t take the game too seriously, it manages to be an overall good time, but there’s still a degree of frustration that comes with this game that can be inescapable for some.

I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that makes me as irrationally angry as this. I have never been able to play this game without getting a little bit worked up over it, and while that is certainly part of the fun, the frustration can really get to you at times. I think that the attitude of the friend group you play with can also impact your enjoyment as well. If no one’s taking it too seriously, it’s not a big deal, but I’ve played the game with former friends in the past where everyone would just constantly heckle each other and it makes the game way more frustrating to play than it otherwise would be.

I’ve had good times with this game, and I’ve had bad times with this game. I think your enjoyment will primarily hinge on the people you play with, so make sure you only play it with good people (or at least people that aren’t obnoxious when they do well/put others down when they’re struggling).

Psychopomp is a perplexing, and unsettling 3D dungeon crawler that’s currently free on Steam. It’s intentionally esoteric in just about every aspect in its design. It has a kind of vibe that’s very reminiscent of other indie games like Milk inside a bag of milk or OFF, a sort of dark perversion of early-to-mid 2000s nostalgia with its fuzzy polygonal visuals and its ambient downtempo soundtrack. It’s not a game that especially blew me away, but it was a nice palate cleanser. It’s something different, something new that I hadn’t really played before. It’s very short, only an hour long, and it feels more like a small experiment than a fully realized project, but it was still a pretty solid time.

You play as an unnamed protagonist who is clearly very paranoid and believes everyone in the world is keeping secrets from her. She may even possibly be suffering from psychosis-induced hallucinations. She develops a helmet which she refers to as the “Psychopomp” that allows her to see “a world hidden in plain sight, with all sorts of animals and creatures and dead bodies.” According to her, “there are catacombs hidden underneath every public government building”, and she sets out to infiltrate those hidden catacombs and uncover their secrets.

Despite the game’s cryptic dialogue, I think the themes of its narrative are very clear. It’s very much a game about capitalism and how the system is abused to keep those with money in power while the common people suffer through neglect. The dungeons you explore are located beneath a sewage plant, children’s hospital, and a public school, and you discover how each of these locations feed off of or drain resources and materials from people. It’s commentary on how these institutions can fail those it was meant to provide for. Despite the protagonist’s behavior giving the impression that she’s insane, I think that her belief that everyone is keeping secrets from her is supposed to represent how complacent we as a society are in letting these institutions get away with a lot of the awful things they do. To the protagonist, any sensible person would realize that something needs to be done about the people who are running these places, but no one is doing anything about it but her. For the sake of transparency (and to hopefully avoid any sort of debate in the comments) I will be fully up-front and say that I don’t feel that I’m educated on these topics enough to be able to hold an extensive conversation regarding them, nor do I feel my stance on these topics is necessary to elaborate on for the purposes of this review. I’m just sharing my interpretation of this game’s narrative themes.

I’ve never played a dungeon crawler prior to this, so it was a bit of a challenge getting used to its controls. It may be 3D, but you don’t have a full range of motion, you can only move in the cardinal directions. You’re also limited in your ability to control the camera, you can only look around if you stand still and hold ctrl while moving your mouse. Despite being unusual and taking some getting used to, I didn’t really have any major issues with how the game controls until you’re forced to engage in combat. Combat feels really clunky. It’s very difficult to gauge your range of attack, and I found I often had to get in the enemies’ faces in order to be at a range to do damage to them. This basically forced me to stay in one place and mash left click while I prayed I killed them before they killed me. Thankfully there aren’t really many combat encounters in the game, but I definitely found this to be a sore spot. If you die, you do have to redo the entire dungeon from the very beginning, but the dungeons are so short and easy to navigate that it’s not as big of an inconvenience as it sounds.

The game’s biggest appeal to me is its presentation. Its art direction is excellent. The designs of all of the different creatures you encounter ride a fine line between grotesque and playfully unsettling. While environments can be very dark, the game uses various colored lights to great effect in different areas. I love the artstyle the protagonist is drawn in, it reminds me heavily of that late 2000s anime/Invader Zim-inspired art that could be found on DeviantArt back in the day. The soundtrack is also such a great listen, ambient downtempo is one of my favorite music genres and I really wish that more games used this kind of music in their soundtracks.

Psychopomp was a very refreshing game to play. It’s a neat trip that managed to really enthrall me with its aesthetics. It’s not revolutionary by any means, but I’d be hella down to play something like this that’s longer and more fleshed out, especially in regards to the combat. If you’re looking for something short but different, give this game a shot. It’s definitely not a game that’s going to be for everybody, but it’s free and it’s only an hour long, so you’ve got practically nothing to lose by giving this game a try.

An anticipated update to one of my favorite games ever that absolutely managed to deliver. The Noise Update is a great New Game Plus mode for Pizza Tower that makes you feel like you’re playing the game for the first time ever again. It features The Noise as a brand new character to play as with his own unique moveset and different takes on the transformations Peppino undergoes. His moveset and transformation differences are primarily what makes this mode feel fresh and exciting. They're not too drastically different from Peppino, but they're enough to rejuvenate the experience.

The Noise somehow manages to have even faster mobility than Peppino, with lots of ways to keep his momentum going. He can immediately go into a super jump without needing to build speed, his uppercut goes way higher than Peppino’s, and he has his own version of Gustavo and Brick’s Stomp ability. All of the levels in the game feel a bit different thanks to The Noise’s moveset. Going through those stretches in levels with long and wide halls gives you a chance to really relish in just how fast The Noise can go. Aside from hazards, pretty much the only thing that ever slows the Noise down is your own mishandling of his abilities. Controlling The Noise is a challenge in itself, as his speed and movement options require a tad more precision compared to Peppino. Even more so than Peppino, it feels really bad when you run into a hazard or you do something that causes your momentum to falter or come to a halt, simply because of how enjoyable it is moving at top speed. I don’t think I’ll ever set out to get a P-Rank in every level in this game as Peppino, but that goes doubly so for The Noise. I can’t imagine the skill and dexterity required to be able to achieve and maintain the score level necessary for it while also being able to do a Lap 2 during the escape sequences, especially since you’re given less time to complete them than the base game’s.

The boss fights are unchanged, with all the bosses still having the same attack patterns as before. However, the way The Noise fights bosses is different from Peppino. During these battles, The Noise will fight with bombs that he kicks at his opponent. There’s a bit of a wind-up before The Noise kicks the bomb, so you have to time your kicks for the bosses’ small vulnerability windows. There can also be obstacles out on the stage that can block your bombs as well, so you’ll have to manage those while also doing your best to steer clear of the bosses’ attacks. This new approach to fighting bosses is excellent, it’s a great way to make them challenging again, even if you’re already familiar with how they work.

Those are the primary additions to The Noise’s campaign. There’s also some new and hilarious gags, as well as a few great new songs for the soundtrack. The Noise Update is an excellent way to re-experience Pizza Tower. It’s a fresh spin on the core experience while maintaining a standard of quality equivalent to the base game. If you enjoyed the base game, then I consider this a must-play. It goes above and beyond what you’d expect for a New Game Plus mode, and is a substantial and highly enjoyable addition to the game.

I went into Alan Wake II with tempered expectations. My experience with Remedy games thus far has consisted of the first Alan Wake and Control, and I found both games to be lacking. Alan Wake 1 was a mediocre third person shooter with straightforward exploration, repetitive combat, and a story that spent more time paying tribute to the media that inspired it rather than directly fleshing out its characters and world. Control was another third person shooter that had great art and cinematic direction, as well as a story that was actually fleshed out as you played, but I ended up bouncing off of the game entirely because its lack of visual clarity in combat kept getting me killed, which resulted in frustration. Alan Wake II is a bold new direction from those games. Instead of a third person shooter, this sequel is a survival horror with greater emphasis on cinematic storytelling, as well as some of the best presentation and most engrossing atmosphere I’ve experienced in any video game I’ve played.

Thirteen years after the original Alan Wake, a series of ritualistic murders being perpetrated by a mysterious cult has been taking place in the town of Bright Falls, the same rural town the first game takes place in. They attract the attention of the FBI, who sends agent Saga Anderson and her partner Alex Casey to investigate. They end up encountering the supernatural “Dark Presence” from the first game, which has once again been possessing locals and turning them into monsters referred to as “The Taken”. They discover there’s far more going on in Bright Falls than meets the eye, with everything seemingly tying into the written works of Alan Wake, who hasn’t been seen since he disappeared during the events of the original game all of those years ago. Meanwhile, Wake himself is still trapped in the Dark Place, an alternate dimension whose reality can be manipulated and altered via works of art. He’s been caught in what seems to be an endless, nightmarish loop, desperately trying to find a way to escape and return to the real world. You play as both Saga and Alan, who each have their own interconnected stories to play through.

Alan Wake II takes the core gameplay of the first game and puts it into a survival horror blender. It’s actually amazing how well the mechanics of the first game transition through this shift in genres. The game plays very similarly to the modern day Resident Evil remakes, specifically Resident Evil 2. The combat loop from the first game is essentially the same here. The Taken are covered with a shroud of darkness that makes them invincible, so in order to do damage, you need to make them vulnerable by shining a flashlight on them until the darkness that protects them is gone, after which they can be harmed by your weapons. The Taken are a bit more dangerous than they used to be. They require more shots from your weapons to put them down, and you don’t face them in the same amount of large numbers as you did in the previous game (though there are times where this is an exception). Since encounters with Taken aren’t as frequent as before, this makes the combat loop feel a lot less repetitive in comparison to the first game, which constantly threw hordes of Taken at you over and over again, to the point where you just became numb to them. They actually feel like a threat now, as opposed to just being disposable.

Levels are more open now, and far less linear than they were in the first game. There’s a much greater emphasis on exploring the environments you find yourself in, and there are actual puzzles to solve this time, which greatly supplements the core gameplay. Minimum levels of resource management is required now, as opposed to the first game, where you didn’t really have to worry about running out of ammo or supplies unless you were just intentionally wasting them. It’s not especially difficult managing your resources in this game. As long as you’re keeping your eyes open and inspecting everything you can, you can maintain a decent supply of healing items and ammo. Still, certain sections of the game will really leave you down to the wire after completing them, so it's important to always keep an eye out for any opportunity to replenish what you’ve used up.

While Saga and Alan both share the same core controls and combat, they each have unique mechanics, and their stories have their own horror atmosphere. Saga explores various locations within the town of Bright Falls while attempting to connect and solve all of the various mysteries that pop up over the course of her story. At various points, you’ll need to swap over to what Saga refers to as “The Mind Place”, a location within her mind that takes the form of a cabin where she can collect her thoughts as well as the facts she’s learned regarding the mysteries of Bright Falls. You can switch over to the Mind Place at any time with the push of a button, and it loads almost instantly. The game isn’t paused when you do this, so you need to make sure you’re in a safe position whenever you do so. Saga organizes everything that she’s learned on the Case Board, a flow chart where you need to manually place all of the different pieces of evidence for a case and tie them all together in order to solve it and progress the game. It’s rarely difficult figuring out what piece of evidence goes where, and even if you get stuck, there’s no penalty for simply guessing until you’ve pinned the evidence in the correct spot. It’s a great way of keeping track of elements of the plot, but as a mechanic, it’s fairly underwhelming and feels like wasted potential. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a more complicated mechanic at one point that got dumbed down because they were worried about people struggling with it.

Alan spends his story trying to escape the Dark Place, which takes the form of a nightmarish version of New York City (so I guess just regular New York City). Since the Dark Place is an alternate reality, Alan’s section is extremely surreal and trippy, as you explore a series of macabre environments trying to find some way to return to Alan’s home dimension. Alan’s story primarily studies him as a character, in a similar vein to the DLC of the first game. Since the Dark Place can be manipulated through works of art, Alan has a mechanic where goes into the Writer’s Room, an area that works in a similar way to Saga’s Mind Place. Here, he can use story ideas on the Plot Board to shift reality and change the environment of certain areas within the locations he explores. You’ll need to do this at various points in order to solve puzzles and remove roadblocks preventing further exploration. The ways in which the environment changes makes this mechanic almost always a thrill to use, as areas can go from slightly off-putting to hauntingly hellish in the blink of an eye. Between the two characters, Alan’s story and gameplay are by far the best in the game. Not that Saga’s section is bad, far from it actually. It’s just that the supernatural nature of the Dark Place as a setting allows for way more interesting level design and setpieces compared to the more realistic, and thus mundane Bright Falls. Furthermore, Alan is a lot more enticing as a character, especially given how the game explores what haunts him and makes him tick. Granted, he had an entire game and DLC to build himself up as a character, but I also feel like making Saga a bit less enticing than Alan was by design, as the game frequently makes it clear she’s an outsider that’s quite literally been written into Alan’s ongoing story.

I think my only and biggest complaint with the game is that the camera is zoomed in way too close to the player character. I get what they were trying to do by going for a claustrophobic camera view, but Saga and Alan take up way too much of the screen, and there are times where you can die and have no idea what even killed you because you couldn’t see what you died to. The problem with visual clarity in combat carries over from Control, but it’s not nearly as bad, since combat isn’t as frequent or quite as hectic. Also, I think more enemy variety would’ve been nice. Much like the first game, pretty much every single enemy you encounter is some form of the Taken. There are some twists on the Taken, such as in the Dark Place where they can disguise themselves as the shadowy figures that populate the environment, as well as the amalgamation Taken you fight as Saga, but they’re all defeated in the exact same fashion. I think the game would’ve benefited greatly if certain sections had a recurring stalker character like Mr. X or Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil. They wouldn’t necessarily have to follow you the whole game, but I think that having one or two sections with a character like that would’ve added some much needed variety.

It almost goes without saying that this game’s narrative is far better told than the first game’s. A majority of the first Alan Wake’s narrative and worldbuilding was told indirectly through the manuscript page collectables, as opposed to the sequel, which tells almost everything in an upfront and direct fashion. The manuscript pages do return, but not only are they a lot simpler to find, they’re not the source of the bulk of the narrative’s details. They’re usually supplemental and expand on things that the story has already made clear. This game fleshes out the world of Alan Wake extensively. It manages to be a thrilling, gripping mystery that takes the lingering plot threads of the first game and turns them into something that I truly did not expect. The commentary on artists, their struggles, and how their work affects themselves and the world around them was something that I, as a wannabe writer myself, could deeply relate to on a personal level. I loved the use of symbolism even though it’s so in your face that the themes of the narrative are practically shouting at you. The story is just executed so well and told with such clear sincerity and immense passion that it completely and totally won me over.

The presentation is some of the greatest I’ve ever seen in any video game I’ve ever played, and I say that with absolutely no exaggeration. It isn’t just the high graphical fidelity that makes it so good. It’s the use of lighting to invoke strong emotions, the sound design which does an excellent job of making you feel like you’re never alone while creating feelings of paranoia, and the way the game seamlessly overlaps live action footage with in-game cinematics that absolutely took my breath away. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so immersed in a game’s world since playing the early Silent Hill titles.

I’m genuinely shocked and completely floored at how much I ended up loving Alan Wake II. It was absolutely worth sitting through the first game for this, and it’s actually made me consider giving Control another shot, as well as trying my hand at every other game Remedy has put out. While I’ve played other horror games that have frightened and disturbed me to a higher degree, or had tighter game design with more enemy variety, Alan Wake II stands out from other horror titles by wearing its creative heart on its sleeve. Its striking visuals and setpieces, its passionate and honest narrative, and unique gameplay mechanics make it absolutely unforgettable. You can tell that so much love went into the making of this game, and I feel like I’ve got no choice but to reciprocate it.

This review will mainly be evaluating Persona 3 Reload as a remake. I replayed and wrote a review on Persona 3 FES late last year, specifically so I could best compare it to Reload. If you’re interested in my thoughts on that version of the game, you can check out the review here. I do consider it to be a companion piece to this review, but it is rather long, and not at all required to understand my thoughts regarding Reload. This review also turned out to be rather lengthy, so don’t feel obligated to read both.

Persona 3 has always been a pretty contentious game amongst fans of the series. The story is generally well-loved, but almost everything regarding its gameplay and structure have always had a mixed reception. It doesn’t help that there are multiple versions of the game that have been released over the years, with content exclusive to each version, as well as their own pros and cons. Persona 3 FES was a second version of the game that released on the PlayStation 2, and included an additional campaign known as The Answer, which served as an epilogue to the original story. It also had several minor changes and additions to the original game, which was now referred to as The Journey. Then, there was Persona 3 Portable for the PlayStation Portable, which introduced its own unique additions, including a female protagonist that had exclusive new story content to her. However, to compensate for being on a platform with weaker hardware, many elements of the original game had to be changed or scaled back. Several 3D environments were removed, anime cutscenes were replaced with in-engine ones, and it lacked The Answer altogether. As such, there was no “definitive” version of Persona 3, one that included all of the content introduced in FES and Portable without any of the drawbacks of either version. This is what made the notion of a full-on modern day remake of Persona 3 an exciting prospect.

For better, and in some cases worse, Persona 3 Reload is an extremely faithful remake. It maintains the core structure of the original game, and it delights and surprises with its own excellent new additions and quality of life changes to the story, combat, Persona fusions, social links, and Tartarus. In other ways, it feels lacking in certain regards, specifically the presentation of certain areas in the game. It does incorporate various features that were introduced in both FES and Portable, but it currently doesn’t include the biggest draws of both titles: The Answer and the female protagonist. While The Answer will be an upcoming DLC release, the staff has sadly confirmed that FeMC will not be added. The lack of FeMC is a huge bummer, and making The Answer DLC when the game already costs $70 is not at all a good look. Though I have to admit: in all honesty, I can’t really see a world where something like The Answer isn't made into DLC in the current video game business landscape. I’m not defending the decision to make The Answer DLC, it's just a sad fact of the industry. If The Answer being DLC and the absence of FeMC is enough to convince you that the game isn’t worth it, well, I think that’s a reasonable position to have. Despite this, however, I do think that Reload still provides an excellent time thanks to those aforementioned additions and quality of life changes that genuinely enrich the original game.

The additions that were by far my absolute favorite were the ones that dealt with the story. The male party members did not have social links in the original game, so Reload introduces new “Link Episodes”, which function similarly to social links and give more insight into how the events of the story are affecting these characters. I think they’re written excellently, and fit very naturally within the structure of the game and its narrative. Shinjiro’s in particular is especially moving given the context of his role in the story. You can also do activities with your party members when you return to the dorm in the evening, such as growing plants on the dorm’s rooftop, studying together, watching TV, or making food in the kitchen. These hangouts feature special dialogue where you bond with your friends, and they also provide additional gameplay bonuses, such as increasing your social stats or providing exclusive recovery and support items. Persona 3 has one of my favorite video game casts of all time, and being able to spend more time with the cast like this was an absolute delight and very heartwarming.

The rest of the main story doesn’t really see much in terms of drastic changes. Everything unfolds the same way it does in the original. However, there is one change to the story that I am not a fan of. Yukari is noticeably a lot nicer and far less stand-offish compared to how she was portrayed in the original. They didn’t make any major changes to her lines as far as I could tell, but she’s a lot less angry and aggressive in her delivery. When she chastises Junpei for example, she sounds disappointed and tired as opposed to irritated or annoyed. I’m not sure if this is more in-line with what was intended by her creators or not, but I’d be shocked if it was. I understand a lot of people have gripes with Yukari’s attitude in the original game, but I think that’s missing the point. Yukari gradually overcoming her bitchiness, opening up, and becoming close friends with the people she had problems with was a big part of her development as a character, and I think that minimizing that aspect of her personality was a mistake.

Combat has been heavily modified. In response to the backlash of being unable to directly control party members in the PlayStation 2 versions of Persona 3, Persona 4 re-introduced the ability to do so, and Atlus have kept this option in all of the releases/revisions for every mainline game in the series ever since, including here in Reload. The tactics system has always been a controversial and heavily debated topic, with people constantly arguing over whether or not the system even worked properly. I discussed this in more detail in my review of FES, but to reiterate my opinion here: I thought that the tactics system in FES generally worked as intended outside of minor instances. I actually like the tactics system a lot, and I thought that it made the characters feel a bit more real. However, the security of being able to pick and choose which skills to use at any time was the reason why I never used the tactics system again since direct commands were introduced in Persona 4.

Long time Persona modder MeovvCAT has explained in a couple of Tweets that the tactics system was heavily gutted in Persona 4 and hasn’t functioned properly in pretty much any Persona game ever since. I think that is why there’s an overall negative perception towards the tactics system. MeovvCAT has also mentioned here that problems with the tactics system have carried over to Reload as well, and while the vast majority of the people who play these games use direct commands, I don’t think that it’s too controversial to say that I think the tactics system should still be fixed, and the fact that it hasn’t in Reload after there have been problems with it for so many years is pretty disappointing. I do miss how the AI party members in FES felt like they had a sense of individuality, but I was still able to immensely enjoy combat in Reload with the direct commands regardless.

In comparison to FES, combat in Reload feels significantly easier. I typically play games on normal difficulty, but for Reload, I actually cranked it up to hard and was able to get through it just fine. It was still challenging at points, but I think playing through FES a few months ago actually prepared me very well for Reload’s hard mode. The Shift mechanic, which is equivalent to the Baton Pass from Persona 5, goes a long way towards making fights easier. At the same time though, it’s really satisfying using this mechanic to keep the opponent from being able to do anything. What I feel is the most notable addition to combat are the new Therugy attacks. These are big cinematic special attacks that the cast can perform which are extremely strong, especially if the Therugy has an element the enemy is weak to, because it can knock the enemy down and leave them open for an All-Out Attack. They can trivialize bosses on normal, but I found that they were absolutely necessary against red Shadows and bosses on hard. They’re also beautifully animated and a great spectacle to watch.

Fusing Personas has largely been simplified. You’re no longer capable of fusing more than two Personas at a time. You can now search to see what you can create with the Personas you currently have. There are still special Personas in the game like Thanatos that you can create by fusing a set of certain Personas together, and the game now tells you what Personas are needed to create these more powerful special Personas, and what level you need to be at before you can make them. Honestly, I can’t see these changes as anything but improvements. While it wasn’t too hard to get by with the original system, I think that these changes make it more encouraging and less of a headache to experiment with fusing. In FES, it felt like fusing specific Personas was impossible unless you had a guide handy because of the overwhelming amount of different types of combinations. In Reload, I felt a lot more encouraged to go out and make these special Personas in particular since now I know what to look for and when.

The only changes Social Links see are that they’re fully voiced, and you can now complete female characters’ Social Links without dating them. This was a very welcome change and I’m glad they added it. The rest of the Social Links are pretty much the same, including the more infamous ones like Kenji and “Maya”. I feel like these probably could’ve been changed, but it is what it is. They’re a product of their time, and you technically don’t have to do them.

Tartarus functions in much the same fashion, but it’s been given a much needed facelift. Each block of Tartarus now has its own small group of floor layouts, as opposed to FES, which felt like it used the same small number of layouts throughout the whole game. Tartarus has also been supplemented with a lot of new features and events that make the climb a lot less monotonous. Since this review is already as long as it is, I’m not going to list them all, but these new events are introduced gradually as you make it higher and higher in Tartarus. I think spreading them out the way the game does goes a long way towards enriching Tartarus and making it feel a lot less repetitive. It’s still not quite clear how much you should grind in Tartarus before you fight the boss at the end of the month, but you now have the option to go back to a specific date if you find yourself stuck.

While the game does mostly look great with its new combat animations and its tremendously sleek UI, the game’s presentation is lacking in a few areas. The lighting in general looks very off, and this was a very common complaint amongst Reload’s most vocal detractors. The game as a whole just looks very bright, and while I do agree that it doesn’t look especially good, you can simply turn the game’s brightness down, which fixes the issue. I’m not going to lie, I find this complaint to be very overblown. What I don’t think is overblown however, is how the game handles NPC crowds. I think that areas where there are a lot of NPCs like the school and Club Escapade don’t look good at all. The NPCs don’t have facial features and barely animate. It looks especially bad in Club Escapade where everyone just looks like they’re frozen in time, barely moving or dancing at all. This is more of a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, as there aren’t very many crowded areas in Persona 3, but I do think it is something worth acknowledging.

I’m probably in the minority, but I never felt that Persona 3 really needed a full-on remake. FES used to be one of my favorite games of all time, despite being a little rough around the edges. The thing is, Reload manages to smooth most of those edges out. I don’t feel like Reload as a whole is significantly better than FES, but I really do love what it adds to supplement the original experience, especially the new story content. Reload manages to be a great new version of Persona 3 to enjoy. It does suck that The Answer is a DLC expansion and that FeMC won't be coming to the game at all, but Reload's own unique additions really made me happy, and I think this version has enough heart that it justifies its existence.

I really wanted to like Control. It has a very intriguing story premise, and a striking art and cinematic direction. Its biggest problem is with its combat, which makes up most of the content in the game. Combat has some rather frustrating issues, and as a result, a majority of the game isn’t especially enjoyable to play. I eventually got to a point where I realized I was forcing myself through it, and decided I didn’t want to commit to it anymore.

Control has an intricate setup that can be difficult to summarize. It takes place inside of a location known as “The Oldest House”, a surreal magical office building that is a gateway to other dimensions and serves as the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, a government organization dedicated to the research and combating of the supernatural. It is being invaded by a paranormal force referred to as “The Hiss” which is infecting members of its staff and security forces and is wreaking havoc all throughout the building. The Bureau holds many dangerous magical artifacts, referred to as “Objects of Power” within the Oldest House, and the invasion of the Hiss means that these objects can potentially be released to the public, which poses a great danger to humanity. You play as Jesse, a telekinetic woman who has arrived at the Oldest House in the midst of all of this in search of her brother, whom she suspects is being held captive by the Bureau. You primarily navigate the dreamlike and labyrinthian Oldest House while battling Hiss-infected enemies with a combination of a supernatural gun that regenerates ammo and Jesse’s telekinetic powers.

Combat is decent, but I don’t think it’s varied enough to remain interesting throughout the entire game. You’re introduced to your core abilities and a majority of enemies fairly early, so you’ll go through very long stretches of the game fighting hordes of the exact same enemies over and over again. I do mean hordes of enemies, because you’ll tend to face a large amount of enemies in waves over the course of a single encounter. This causes combat to drag out and become tedious as a result. There are also several factors outside of your control that bring down combat even further.

Fights are frequently visually cluttered due to a combination of this game’s lighting and the destructible environments constantly obscuring enemies and incoming projectiles. In areas where light is strong, it washes the environment out, while dark areas are too dark, making it difficult to be aware of your surroundings. It’s especially frustrating during fights with the Hiss, because I would be getting pelted with projectiles or shot at with rockets and grenades by enemies whose location I just cannot determine because of the harsh red lighting in areas where the Hiss infection is at its strongest. It makes it feel like the game is randomly blowing you up or killing you. It’s even worse if you’re close to death because the screen will turn red when you have low health, making it even harder to see. There are pits you can fall into and ledges you can fall off of in areas where you’ll be fighting in, and falling down these just adds to the frustration of the lack of visual clarity in combat. If my issues with the combat weren’t there, I’d enjoy the game a lot more. In areas where I can see what’s going on, combat is at its best and is actually pretty fluid. Its fun managing your gun's ammo and your telekinetic abilities, using them in conjunction with one another.

Combat is what makes up the vast majority of this game, there’s not much else to it besides the occasional simplistic puzzle and surreal set piece. The layout of the Oldest House is intentionally convoluted, but locations are sign posted and it’s not super difficult figuring out where you need to go, making exploration not particularly difficult or engaging. You’re mostly just going from point A to point B while clearing out the Hiss on your way there. Since this game is mostly combat, and I had such serious issues with the combat, I decided to put the game down. I got about three quarters into it and I realized I was just forcing myself through it while not having a great time.

The setting and story of Control were primarily what kept me invested, but the issues with the combat are keeping me from progressing any further with it. The main reason I picked up Control is that I heard it has ties with the newest Alan Wake game, but at this point I think I’d rather just look up how the story plays out. Maybe there are mods out there that help to reduce the visual clutter, but I’m not invested in Control enough to really look into them. I’ve got other games I’d rather play.

The majority of the past few games developed by RGG Studios have mostly been a transition for the world of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise. Kazuma Kiryu, who had been the series’ extremely popular main protagonist for nearly a decade, was essentially retired from starring in the mainline games in 2016’s Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, after being featured as the lead or co-lead in numerous entries of the series. The mainline games then shifted genres entirely with 2020’s Yakuza: Like a Dragon, going from a 3D beat-’em-up to a turn-based RPG, while the beat-’em-up gameplay was delegated to the new detective-themed Judgment spin-off series. These games each featured fantastic new protagonists with their own charming supporting casts. It felt like RGG Studios was testing the waters with these new characters and approaches to gameplay, and since the Judgment games and Yakuza: Like a Dragon went on to be successful despite not starring Kiryu, it was time to officially pass on the torch to the new generation. RGG Studios does just that with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. It’s a seminal entry for the series that eclipses just about everything that came before it in scope.

The franchise has always been defined by its large and elaborate overworlds that are filled with stunning amounts of content to discover, including substories, mini games, mini bosses, and an assortment of other fun challenges and things to do. Infinite Wealth somehow manages to take that standard to the next level. The game primarily takes place in Honolulu, Hawaii, one of the largest overworlds the series has ever seen, in addition to including the cities of Ijincho and Kamurocho from the previous games. Each of these locations has an abundance of things to do, to the point where it’s honestly a little bit overwhelming. The first half of the game in particular has several back-to-back tutorials regarding how its systems and side content works and it can be a bit difficult keeping track of it all. This is a very enormous and lengthy game though, and as long as you give yourself time and breathing room, you’ll eventually get used to… most of it.

The turn-based combat is heavily improved from the previous game, with a ton of quality of life changes. A new and vital element of combat is that you now have a limited range you can move your characters in. This allows you to position your characters in order to make the most effective use of their special attacks, adding a whole extra layer of depth to the combat. Drink Links and Bonds, which are conversations that you can have with your allies that lets you get to know them better, are a lot more important in this game. Completing them unlocks additional combo attacks, which you can perform by knocking enemies into your allies, as well as chain attacks, where your allies will perform automatic follow-up attacks after landing one of your own. I can’t stress enough how much I love these. It is indescribably satisfying having all of these different methods of attacking an enemy come together all at once. Even if your party is outnumbered, it feels like you constantly have the jump on every enemy you come across.

Despite all of the quality of life changes to combat, there is one element of it that I found to be lacking. Perfect Guards return from the previous game, where timing a button press to the enemy’s attack allows you to mitigate some damage. It has been some time since I last played Yakuza 7, so I can’t trust my memory on this, but it feels like pulling off perfect guards in Infinite Wealth is a lot harder than the previous game. The timing of the button press won’t always align with the enemy’s attack and it can be difficult determining when you’re actually supposed to press the button. In addition to that, the camera won’t always shift to the character that’s getting attacked in time for you to see the enemy’s attack itself, so you’ll have to guess when you’re supposed to press the button. This is especially frequent with attacks where the enemy will quickly bounce from ally to ally, though thankfully, there aren’t very many enemies in the game that do this, it’s mostly reserved for boss fights.

In addition to the combat, there are a bunch of other quality of life changes that I really want to highlight. The job system has been changed so that you can choose any skill from any job and assign them to a character, which allows for an insane level of character customization. Enemies spotting you in the overworld doesn’t immediately start a battle. Now a battle will only start if you remain in their field of vision for a certain amount of time, or if you just run up to them. You can also immediately take out lower level enemies with the Smackdown option, which allows you to instantly win the fight and can help save time. These are all godsend changes that I’m so thankful for.

I didn’t engage with all of the side content because there is just so much of it, but I did want to highlight Dondoko Island. This is the equivalent to the Ichiban Holdings mini game from 7. This single mini game honestly feels like a fully-fledged spin-off title in its own right. It takes extremely obvious inspiration from Animal Crossing: New Horizons where you’re customizing your own island resort by breaking trees and rocks, collecting materials, and placing all sorts of different furnishings and attractions all over the island. You can invite several guests to experience your island where they’ll spend Dondoko Bucks, a currency which can be converted into actual money. While you won’t break the economy to the same extent that you could in Yakuza 7, you get pretty damn close, and it’s a side activity that’s not only very worthwhile, but also engaging and genuinely relaxing.

Infinite Wealth’s story left me with a lot of mixed, but mostly positive feelings. I wasn’t as moved emotionally by this game as I was with Yakuza 7, which by the end had me in tears. Despite that, I still think the story is really good overall. It handles both Ichiban and Kiryu’s stories extremely well. Ichiban’s importance to the story isn’t diminished or overshadowed by Kiryu, which was a worry of mine going into this game. A major plot point is that Kiryu is suffering from cancer and doesn’t have much longer to live. One of Kiryu’s biggest flaws as a character is that he is always undertaking the brunt of burdens unto himself, rarely letting people in and sharing his own personal struggles with others. While he did originally meet Ichiban in Yakuza 7, which left a huge impression on him, it isn’t until here in Infinite Wealth where he finally starts sharing the burden with not just Ichiban, but the rest of the playable cast as well. It’s not just fantastic character development, but it really feels like a passing of the torch between these characters. The biggest downside to the story I feel is that it doesn’t do the best job at balancing the party members and the roles they play in the game. A few characters like Zhao and Joon Gi Han feel like they’re kind of just along for the ride. You still get to spend time with them with the Drink Links and Bond system though, so it’s not the biggest deal.

The game celebrates Kiryu as well as the franchise’s legacy with side content exclusive to him. I don’t want to give too much of this away, but if you’re a fan of the series, then this side content should be considered essential. It’s not just a trip down memory lane, but a way of tying up some loose ends of the series as well. Still, I really want to talk about it as well as the ending to the game, so I’ve made a spoiler Pastebin where I discuss them.

I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the game with this review. Infinite Wealth is really the perfect title for this game, as it really does feel like it provides an endless treasure trove of sheer enjoyment. Time just stopped existing for me when I played it. I was locked in, having way too much fun and I couldn’t put it down. It’s a wonderful celebration of not just the series’ past, but its future as well. It’s truly incredible, and I genuinely cannot fathom how RGG Studios could possibly make a game that’s bigger and richer than this. It is overwhelmingly phenomenal.

Sigil is a set of nine new levels for the original DOOM by series co-creator John Romero, self-described as “The Unofficial Fifth Episode of DOOM”. These new levels are okay, but I wouldn’t say that I was the biggest fan of them.

I do like how elaborately designed they are. Finding the correct switches to open the way forward was really satisfying after being stuck for a while. It’s just that my least favorite types of levels in DOOM are the ones where you have to navigate in the dark, and Sigil has those kinds of levels in spades. You end up encountering enemies frequently in tight and cramped spaces, and you’re constantly ambushed by a ton of enemies all at once in areas where you can barely even see them because of hilariously cheap traps. You’ll end up dying frequently, and the levels can feel very tedious as a result.

I really like the use of textures that give this series of levels its own distinct feel, and I enjoyed the music a lot. Otherwise, I didn’t care too much for these levels. They aren't completely awful, I did enjoy a couple of the earlier levels. As a whole though, I didn’t really dig this expansion. I really hope that Sigil II tries something different from this with its levels.

I've enjoyed what I've played so far quite a bit, but the lack of a map is a real sore spot for me. The developer is currently working on an in-game map, so I've decided to just shelve this game for now and I plan to come back to it when the map update comes out.

As far as my current impressions go, movement is great once you get a few power ups, combat is kinda meh (might get better with upgrades?), and I love its retro aesthetic with its music and visuals. Nails the look of an early 3D platformer. Not much of a story from what I've seen.