Quintessential. Nearly everything in this game has purpose and adds to instill a specific feeling. The action is tense and extremely fun, the inventory management and preserving resources remains engaging to this day, and this might be the best version of quick time events integrated into both cutscenes and gameplay. The game effortlessly balances the fear due to the atmosphere with how funny the dialogue is. The dialogue being so cheesy and funny helps reset the tension, keeping the pacing well balanced.

While the controls can be weird if you aren't used to tank controls, it isn't inherently worse. Mastery of these controls is extremely satisfying, and it proves that having a homogenized control scheme isn't always going to be a good thing if a team wants their game to achieve different things.

Even though this game has a remake which is also amazing, the original will always be a fundamental work and worth playing on it's own merits. Don't let there being a prettier and newer version have you miss out on peak video games. The game is iconic for a reason.