Fantastic simulator. I got this simulator back in 2012, where I used a joystick to push forward and backward for gas, and side to side for steering. I am disabled, so I cannot use my legs well, but luckily this game has many control options. Today, I am using an actual gaming steering wheel for steering, and a joystick for gas and brake, just how I do in real life.

Story: N/A (career mode, not much of a story)
Graphics: 6/10
Mechanics: 7/10
Fun-Factor: 10/10
OVERALL: 23/30

~My Personal favorite Persona Game. I acknowledge all of the cons this game has; The Answer is easily the lowest point of the game, traversing in Tartarus isn't fun and not being able to control your party members during battle does suck. But the execution of its themes and a majority of the social links is still worth the playthrough. Social links like Akanari and Aigis are some of my favorites in the entire series. Every time I think about this game, I always get emotional. The soundtrack is easily my favorite soundtrack in any video game. And The ending is easily my favorite ending in any video game; the last section of The Journey is where it really peaked for me. I just love this game too much and will gladly say I am looking at this game with rose-tinted glasses. The game is still worth the time investment btw, even if it hasn't aged well, it's still a game any fan of JRGPs should at least try once in their lifetime.

What's legitimately interesting to me is how the problem of remasters is unique to videogames. How these embiggening projects almost always bear fruit when it comes to album remasters or movies and tv using original film to improve what was previously strictly standard def. One of the best examples of this I can think of is the painstaking amount of work that went into bringing Star Trek TOS and TNG into high def. For me, there's the more personal example of the Twin Peaks blu-rays being impeccable, managing to keep that VCR warmth and fuzziness in its translation of film grain and colour bleed. There may often be cases where music rights were lost in transition, forcing awkward song changes, or the cack-handed handling of an aspect ratio, trimming important visual cues from a piece, awkward colourisation of b&w - but in a general sense, it's very rare for these remasters to be seen as anything but superior. The added visual fidelity, allowing fans to take in more detail like subtle facial acting or the intricacies of set design that were previously blurred, tends to be lauded.

But games are very different. In this tech-head driven industry engrossed in 4k 60FPS and the latest graphics card magic tricks like Raytracing and volumetric fog or whatever, the audience is utterly convinced that HD is the standard. There seems to be an added pressure on publishers to go the extra mile with their remasters of titles from the 6th console generation, as it’s no longer enough to simply do a faithful port of the title to 1080p. In its attempt to please the increasingly discerning crowd, the modern remaster's attempt to improve visual fidelity can drastically shift the base game's artstyle so as to almost be contrasting with what it used to represent. Something as simple as a general shift in colour scheming can be surprisingly effective at making a game feel a certain way, and this remaster noticeably lacks that sunbleached orange I found so characteristic of SA, among too many other minor things to list off. CJ may have a much greater level of visual detail on his character model, but the animations are the same, it's all playing into that uncanny valley thing where the lack of cohesion genuinely seems to make the bigger picture look worse. It’s definitely going to play into why people are feeling weirded out at his hand clipping through doors or contorting incorrectly etc.

Generally, issues with remasters tend to come as a result of these projects being handed to a separate team to the one that developed the original. I for real don't want to begrudge the people making these remasters, nor would I ever pretend to know how these sausages are made; I’m sure it's an enormous task to reverse engineer titles from a generation with infamously poor ethics regarding the backups of source code. It's just... wild to me how this keeps happening. How much more divided people tend to be between the og game and the remake than to film or whatever. Like them or not, it's curious to me to see just how much of a tonal shift is accomplished in remasters like the Shadow of the Colossus one, despite the game sharing what is essentially the same foundation. The way gaps in visual fidelity are filled in by people who weren’t present on the dev team, where the needle begins to slant and the remaster begins to feel more like Bluepoint’s vision than Team Ico’s. It tends to be soundtrack reorchestration that frustrates me the most, one of the most effective ways to belligerently throw a stick of dynamite in what the vibes used to represent. It’s almost expected to have some things lost in translation, and not even just by cultural differences, but through the team’s personal preferences on top of the mandated requirements to use each available teraflop of the microchip. It’s a game of telephone.

Granted, in the case of these GTA remasters, the recent example of XIII and the infamous Silent Hill ones, people seem to share a closer consensus. But what can the average consumer do? Rockstar pulled the original versions from PC storefronts essentially requiring prior ownership or piracy. Until emulation becomes elementary on all hardware, this is the “definitive edition” and you’ll have no say, because they have ambient occlusion now.

Labor of love, the absolute definitive way to experience any of the first three games. The game's difficulty curve is perfectly paced, both across the eight stages as well as across the various difficulty levels. After a few short playthroughs in which I steadily learned more and more about the various tools available to me, I was able to enter 'the zone' where I was anticipating enemy actions, positioning myself optimally, and even timing my attacks to take out the maximum number of mooks with one throw (I may or may not have done this as Max while yelling "I'm the Juggernaut bitch, I'ma hitchu with your own pimp!").

The game's genius is in how customizable the experience is, and in the wealth of unlockable content. Most of it is gimmicky stuff like 'swords are lightsabers' or 'enemies explode when KOed' that you'll turn on once for the novelty and never use again... but I unlocked everything anyway because deep down I'm one of Pavlov's dogs I guess. But this wasn't one of those games where you unlock everything and then promptly drop because you have nothing left to unlock; once I had played enough to unlock everything I had gotten quite good at the game and still found it fun enough to play and replay endlessly. As a relative novice to beat em ups, finishing Mania difficulty without continues is one of my proudest gaming achievements. But there's no way I would have had the patience for that if the game weren't so damn solid.

There's a man who has artistic vision,

He's showing up Rockstar with each decision,

He makes it in a flash,

And all the assets clash,

Do his artistic skills know no boundaries?

Rockstar, hire this man,

Rockstar, hire this man,

He's using Unreal Engine in any way he can,

Take Carl Johnson's model for the first step,

And put him in a field filled with stock assets,

Then adjust the lighting gain,

And though it runs at 40 frames,

This man's still a master of the medium,

Rockstar, hire this man,

Rockstar, hire this man,

He's using Unreal Engine in any way he can,

Make a model's textures look realistic,

With no regard for artstyle or the aesthetic,

Oh, crank the bloom and then,

It'll really look next gen,

This man truly is a fucking genius,

Rockstar, hire this man,

Rockstar, hire this man,

He's using Unreal Engine in any way he can,