this took me way longer to complete than it should've but with all the previous souls games being (mostly) linear, I played them almost fully co-op with a couple of friends. I foolishy thought we could do that with Elden Ring, but I can't stress enough how much you shouldn't do that. Too many invisible/visible multiplayer walls, missing features (making your way around the lands between without Torrent is mostly just tedious) and archaic network features; I almost made myself fall out of love with the game. I started again, totally solo, only summoning when I needed help at boss doors, and the pure sense of discovery on offer here with that approach is almost unmatched by any other video game. It's totally baffling how much of this game is optional (meant as the highest compliment) - some of the most creative enemy designs and boss fights are just a step in the opposite direction. Get on your horse, ride somewhere that looks interesting, and die. Over, and over (again, the highest compliment).

It's definitely aged a fair bit but GTA IV is still Rockstar's crowning GTA achievement, particularly in terms of character and story direction; Niko is still so much more interesting than the cold blooded killer counterparts that have come and gone with the series. That being said, when he starts to question the morality of his decisions and his seemingly innate violence later in the game, I was in the middle of driving so fucking fast that I had killed at least 15 random people and a few cops on the sidewalk. I suppose it's just something that video games like this can never escape - it's just too much damn fun to be a bit of a murderer even if the protagonist is having a bit of a midlife crisis about being a murderer.

It looks stunning and it plays beautifully, but I could write an essay on how the music in this remake compared to the original completely changes the tone of the game. In 2010 the Demon's Souls score was recorded with very small instrument sections and close microphones - there’s simply no way of knowing if that was a creative decision or a budget constraint, you’d need to have a conversation with the original's game director/composer to get any kind of concrete answer but regardless, the musical tone that was created for the groundbreaking original was lonesome, melancholic and rustic. What we get in the 2020 version is epic and bombastic; It's still mostly great music! But it isn’t Demon's Souls.