This is Dark Souls Remastered all over again.

Bottom line, if you haven't played these games before and this is the only/most convenient way for you to play them, then give it a shot. These are very competent versions of fantastic games.

If you have played these games before and/or are upset at what was done here, complain as much as you want. Your views are justified, and more could have and should have been done here.

Both of these statements are true and they can co-exist.

This should not work.

This game absolutely should not work.

The amount of questionable design decisions stuffed into this one game is very worrying on paper. 1. You have a finite amount of ammunition in the game, meaning you can softlock yourself if you don't have enough to take down mandatory bosses.

2. Narrow hallways can have as many as four enemies at a time that can potentially all come back hours after you've killed them off, stronger and faster than before.

3. You have a whopping SIX item slots (yes I played Chris) to carry guns, ammo, healing drugs, keys, and whatever other items you need to progress, and because of that,

4. there is a shit ton of backtracking.

5. You have a finite amount of saves throughout the entire game. If you fuck up and save too often too early you can completely screw yourself (it's this exact thing that's part of the reason I can't stand Ori and the Blind Forrest).

And despite all of this (or perhaps in light of all of this), it is beyond brilliant.

I don't think I've ever experienced anything that so genuinely makes me feel dread. It's a horror game, but aside from a few jump scares it's not even scary. But it is undeniably so fucking stressful, and I love it. All of these things that sound terrible on paper put you so on edge, and the sound design and cinematography doubly so. The gameplay is literally just a point and click game: get things to use on other things, but it works perfectly in this horror theme. I cannot possibly praise this game enough, I had no idea I would love it this much. There's nothing I can even say to do it justice.

This started out as a scary game but has transitioned into a comfort game to me, as weird as that sounds. Sometimes to relax I will throw on a youtube video essay (Sherlock is Garbage and Here's Why is a favourite) and just blast through Leon or Claire's campaign. I think I know my way round that police station better than a lot of the places i've worked at this point lmao- it's like a second home to me.

On a first playthrough though, this is one of the few horror games to actually scare me. I LOVE horror games but they don't often really scare me. Whoever programmed Mr.X and how he moves around is a genius because it feels so random, which makes dealing with him on repeat playthroughs way more interesting. Sometimes I barely have any trouble with him at all and others it's as if he's lurking around every corner, you just never know. And the times his encounters are scripted, it's like they predicted exactly how the player was going to react, often leading them into even worse traps. Amazing game design.

One thing I will recommend if you can, turn on the option for the original soundtrack as you play. I have no nostalgia for the 1998 game outside of watching youtubers play lol, as it was before my time, but the music adds so much to the atmosphere, it makes everything feel so eerie and sad. and is also just great music on its own. I never play without it.

After playing the disappointing remake I decided to boot up the original to wash that taste out of my mouth.

Resident Evil 3 isn't the huge leap that 2 was to 1, but it does add quite a few interesting elements that it took Capcom a while to reintroduce to the series.

The dodge is actually a big game changer here. Before, dodging enemies involved a tricky bait and switch hopscotch in order to scoot past enemies. It became less useful in 2 where you would be dealing with 4-5 zombies at a time, but in this game a well time dodge can knock down multiple enemies at a time to clear a path. It's difficult to master, but is a hugely valuable tool once you get it down. It's absolutely essential if you're planning on fighting Nemesis.

The gunpowder system is also used quite well. You'll pick up far less bullets than in the previous games and ammo for weapons like the magnum or grenade launcher are incredibly rare. It requires you to make some real resource management decisions based on how you're playing: Should you save up the gunpowder for powerful grenade rounds or magnum rounds? Can you afford to?

Then there's Nemesis which is the biggest gimmick here. Aside from the additional fear factor, Nemesis is just really fun to fight whether you're in a stand up brawl or getting him caught on level geometry. Fighting him requires you to really skilled with the game and the decision on how and when you want to fight really influences how you play the game. The way that the Resident Evil mechanics aren't really made to fight against something moving that fast and also shooting back at you makes it fun to learn he meta mechanics of the game. It's almost like a fighting game at times.

It's also an honorable mention that this is the only classic Resident Evil game with a final boss that's more than just running from corner to corner emptying bullets. My first go around I found the final boss a little frustrating, but on this playthrough I found it far more thrilling.

The criticisms against this game are valid, if a little unfair. There's some reused assets and music from 2 here, but I found that the models looked a little better and there's some new enemies introduced as well. The only repeated environment is the police station, but that whole segment is maybe 15-20 minutes and the rest of the game is new environments.

The game is also criticized for being short, but my playthrough came in at roughly 5 hours (add another 30 minutes onto that for game overs). It doesn't have the multiple campaigns of Resident Evil 2, but there are some nice extras. There are some alternate paths and scenes and the Mercenaries Mode is fun and challenging with some really great rewards.

This game made a few small, but notable changes and improvements to the Resident Evil formula and refined the pacing, but this is definitely the point where Capcom had squeezed every ounce out of this formula that they could. It's strange thinking that Code Veronica would toss out almost all the things that made this game interesting. This is probably my favorite PSX Resident Evil.

Tears of the Kingdom definitely improves upon the gameplay of BotW in terms of crafting and combat. And yet it falls flat on one very big aspect - the exploration.

My problem is not the map being reused here, I'm talking about the changes on how to traverse this map. TotK introduces a lot of (recycled) aerial islands which allow you to glide down to whatever location from the skies. It's cool in theory, but takes away the very core aspect of Breath of the Wild - exploring the map. You no longer need to climb mountains and horses are now completely useless in this game, all thanks to the new verticality introduced. Don't even get me started on the craftable Hoverbikes.

The novelty of the depths also wears off rather fast and navigating in the same dark caves just becomes a pain over time. They suffer from the same problem as the sky islands, they're too much of the same thing and thus come off as recycled and boring.

Despite those flaws, I still had a good time with the game. The cities are way more lively than in BotW and seeing what has changed over time is pretty cool. Hyrule still manages to feel fresh after spending many hours in the previous game. I also liked the new dungeons.

TL;DR: If you're a Zelda fan and liked BotW, you'll have a lot of fun with this game and the new spin on BotW's Hyrule. But don't just buy it for the sky islands and the depths or you'll be disappointed.

Super Mario Odyssey is a very difficult case for me. On the one hand, tt arguably has by far the best movement in any 3D MarIo game. The seemingly simple act of moving around has so much depth, just because of how many movement options the game provides to the player. Mastering Odyssey's movement feels absolutely perfect. Seriously, just look at how fluently pros can move around in Mario Odyssey and tell me that shit isn't satisfying to look at.

On the other hand, the levels do basically nothing to accommodate for the game's insane freedom of movement. Answering questions to a Sphinx? Spotting taxis in the sky? Moving in a circle?! You've got to be kidding me. And FISHING?! If you played or even did so much as hearing about Sonic Adventure, you know how well suited fishing mechanics are for 3D platformers. And even in the rare cases where Mario Odyssey let's you do some platforming (you know, because it's a 3D platformer), it's the easiest stuff I've ever seen. In the first few kingdoms, that's absolutely fine. You gotta ease the player into the difficulty. But by the last few worlds I was seriously baffled at how easy the game still is.

But that's not it. So many moons are just repeated content. You can buy a moon in every kingdom, you can get a moon for cosplaying in every kingdom etc etc. As a consequence, the end result of 880 moons feels fluffed out. I know, that was done to ensure that you can progress through the game in many small steps, even if you only have a few minutes on your hands, but that leads to the moons not giving me a sense of accomplishment. How much of an achievement even is a moon if you can get one in like a minute and there are literally hundreds of them in the game?

And I know, you're not supposed to grab every moon in Mario Odyssey, but damn it, I want to complete all of the 3D Mario games whenever I play them, especially when the movement is this good. However, getting every moon just made me feel burnt out, because of how MANY DAMN MOONS THERE ARE and because of how boring most of them are to grab. And only getting the minimum amount of moons felt even worse. It felt like I barely got to explore in a kingdom and then I was already done.

It's frustrating to see how amazingly well Mario Odyssey controls paired with how shallow and lackluster the game's content is.