If there's anything that was on my mind about Resident Evil 4's development, it's how it branched off into the creation of Devil May Cry. After experiencing it for myself, I can see a good chunk of DMC1's DNA in this game. Both of them are incredibly tight action-based experiences that are tonally in sync with both their oppressive atmospheres and campy storylines. The main difference I picked up on from DMC is that RE4 is a comparably more linear experience. Not to say that DMC was anything close to a search action title, but RE4 felt more like a rollercoaster ride of action. I think this works to its benefit, though. It allows RE4 to keep a strong level of momentum throughout the entire experience. In fact, I think its pacing is more similar to DMC3 in that regard. What I believe this showcases is how RE4 reflects the direction of the action games that followed it and how they focus on more linear, moment-to-moment experiences that build up over the course of the game. It makes RE4 that much more interesting to analyze as a cornerstone of gaming history.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."














I've been meaning to replay the AC series for a good while, given that these games are some of the most influential pieces of media for me that I experienced during my youth.

Like many others I went through a pretty violent disconnect towards the franchise after Syndicate came out. Origins was announced and its sheer premise served as the final nail in the coffin when it comes to my interest on the series.

It's been almost 5 years now tho and I missed my good old flawed but introspective adventures with the hoodie boys. Now that we have Odyssey and Valhalla sinking the franchise's bar even lower I have warmed up to the idea of trying Origins now which will be interesting since I did not follow that game's development cycle, thus am completely unspoiled.

Before we get there tho we gotta start from the beginning, with the father of it all.

AC1 is an aged game. I don't think that's a shocking revelation. However it is considerably less aged than I remembered.

This game introduces the skeleton of the series but lacks the added meat that its sequels introduced gameplay wise. The combat is extremely simple and the social stealth mechanics are really shallow. The parkour is definitely the only area I'd say aged decently even if it's still somewhat clunky compared to the likes of Unity or even III.

Visually tho this game still looks quite good, the scenarios and the eerie ambience in particular hold up remarkably well.

The highlight and the heart of this game is definitely Altair. The story acts as a character study of the man and his journey towards redemption and philosophical enlightment, growing from a selfish cold asshole acting with no ideals behind his blade to a caring and perceptive leader, challenging the ideals he was taught and reaching their true meaning. I particularly really like how the gameplay cycle of this game reflects that narrative, making Altair go through an extremely repetitive hitlist with pretty much 0 emotional attachment to any of his victims. The way its final missions become more dynamic and less mechanical and cold serves as a pretty cool storytelling for Altair's development. It's quite a fascinating story and a great spin on the tale of the old man of the mountain. The main issue during the past storyline is a lack of interesting side characters since only Al Mualim and Malik get character work outside of Altair (it's pretty crazy Abbas shows up in this game for literally 10 seconds and has 0 bearing on the story considering his role in Revelations), leaving the templars especially quite one dimensional in this entry, even with most of them sporting really good confession scenes.

Meanwhile on present day we follow Mr. Desmond and tbh this is easily the worst part of the game. Desmond doesn't do anything in this one and we only get an extremely brief introduction to him before the game locks his importance to a cycle of worldbuilding exposition dumps with absolutely no payoff until the next game (this game's ending is quite awkward since it just kinda ends with no conclusion to either of the main characters, something that is thankfully fixed in the next games).

Basically this game is not quite up there as a favorite but it's still an extremely respectable and unique game even inside its own series, setting out to be its own beast and not giving a shit about anything else that was out in the industry at the time. Really can't appreciate it enough.

I have never played a game that's so paradoxically terribly designed but also underneath all the annoying, insufferable pitfalls is incredibly fascinating as an in-depth look into the mind of a self-important "tortured" indie developer who genuinely believed everything that was done was done for the best.

The entire philosophy of the game feels like a developer struggling to settle their love-hate (arguably more hate) relationship with RPGs as a gaming genre. It takes every critically acclaimed RPG you could think of and created this bizarre patchwork of a game that's trying very desperately to say and be: "I CAN DO THIS BETTER". Ironically, with a game which title includes "A Postmodern RPG", indulging in it's own grand self-importance within its own genre, it somehow single-handedly becomes the very worst example instead. This is bad, like, REALLY fucking bad. There is not a single thing this game does that it succeeds in where countless other games it "references" have set the bar and nailed. The plot feels like it was completely improvised as it went along, the characters range from being card board cutouts to genuinely insufferable, the dialogue is overwrought, the combat is an utter disaster of turn-based design trying to implement a grab-bag of several dozen RPG mechanics without ever realizing if any of these even work together. It also has one of the absolute anti-climatic endings and final boss I've ever seen.

There's no other game quite like this, probably not worth suffering through a play-through but just watching one instead.