I haven’t played the original RE4 just because I never really wanted to, so I was the perfect target demographic for this one. What I got was a well paced, excellent 3rd person shooter that I could not put down. The gunplay is excellent, the puzzles are good but not annoying, and the inventory management was in and of itself very enjoyable. But it wasn’t the best survival horror remake I’ve played this year. My biggest problem with this game is the general player expression feeling pretty limited. Compared to a game like the Dead Space remake, in which the original’s biggest inspiration was the original RE4, the tools that game gives you to take care of enemies are way more varied, and just more fun to play with than RE4R’s pretty standard selection of weapons. While RE4’s gameplay is something I never really got tired of, 90% of my gameplay was lining up headshots. I played using gyro aim, and I guarantee this was one of the reasons it never got boring. For what it’s worth, playing through this was probably the most fun I’ve had with gyro ever. I heard the implementation is bad on PS5 but you should give it a shot anyway.

Anyways, great game, worth your money, you gotta play it. But play Dead Space too.

A jump into the more cult-y side of the series that I really didn't have experience on, but really had fun with nonetheless. Half of the game takes place outside of Silent Hill, But every level inside and outside of the location was a clever, disorienting labyrinth that I never got tired of running through.

Art direction is a little more confident this time around, really pushing the fear factor up to 11. Silent Hill 2 had a more muted color palette, especially in the hell world sections that followed the regular looking areas. 3's hell sections are blood red, vibrant, and terrifying. I never wanted to get through areas faster, and not because they were bad or boring. They made me feel genuinely unsafe, and I loved every second of it.

Honestly, I didn't care about the plot too much, I found it way less interesting than what 2 had going on, apart from the fact that it was nice reading things that helped me learn more about the inner workings of the town. Heather is a great protagonist though. Not a quip machine, really, but she does have a lot of sass and has great genuine character moments. I liked the idea of her hatred for the person who wronged her being sustenance for the antichrist she was pregnant with, but I don't think they really stuck the landing with that particular plot thread. Would've been a great throughline but they spend too much time on shit that wasn't very important.

They're probably not going to remake this one, and it's not the most accessible game ever. With the PC port being pretty annoying to get working even with fan patches, and the general struggle of emulation, I can't really recommend playing this unofficially. But to my knowledge there really aren't a lot of options. So, it's really up to you.

Fusion is fine. It thrives on its creative and weird enemies, the art direction, which is a fun amalgamation of organic and sci-fi settings, and it’s genuinely clever story that pulls the narrative string loosely holding the previous games together nice and tight. I should love it. Fusion should be my favorite in the series, and for a while it was. I haven’t played it in a few years, and it made me forget how frustrating the moment to moment actually is. I think most of its problems stem from a team trying to extend the runtime of a very short game using its portable nature as a crutch. A normal playthrough is around 4 hours, but I swear if it wasn’t for the absurd amount of “Metroid moments” and insane difficulty it’d probably be an hour shorter. I’ve played through it a few times, but it’s been a while, and while I can remember most of how the game goes, I forget the details, and that made getting stuck in rooms or areas with no visible way out annoying. And I’m not one to be scared of a challenge, but this shit was ridiculous. So many bosses take up so much space in an arena and move in such a way that it’s impossible to avoid damage, and that damage is a nice 2 of your 10 or 11 E-tanks, instantly gone. Ripping my fucking hair out. Who’s idea was this