In a lot of ways, Tropical Freeze is the best DKC game. The over-the-top set pieces are a feast for the eyes and the cohesion between some of the level themes and mechanics is genius. Yet, when I reflect on this game, I remember two things: spectacle and exhaustion. While the set pieces are gorgeous, they are utilized so often that the levels blur together. Maybe that’s unfair considering the ideas on display, but I couldn’t help but feel burned out by the time I got to Donkey Kong Island. The bosses were also a huge step backwards from Returns. Too much waiting before you can damage most of them. The final boss in particular stretches this design beyond reason. It disrespects the player’s time so much I’m confident in saying it’s the worst boss in the series.

Really fell in love with this game far more than I was expecting to. It has an amazing atmosphere and gorgeous colour palette, lots of dim blues and greens, beautifully lit. I loved how much freedom it gives you to explore, how it buries away secrets and encourages you to find them. There’s a great balance between how cute and funny the characters can be, and how dark and dangerous the setting and plot is. Straight away I fell in love with the Knight, the grubs, Hornet, Greenpath and the City of Tears, and knew I wanted to see more.

The soundtrack took me by surprise with how beautiful and melancholic it is. It adds to the atmosphere and adds to the identity of each area. There’s a great mix of areas that feel like the heart of civilisation, to wilder gardens and further reaches, to others feeling very mysterious and dangerous. The controls also feel superb too. The jumps, dashes, wall climbing, pogo-ing with your nail, it’s all introduced very well until the point it became second nature. It has a bug-like springiness to it, giving you both a sense of overcoming great odds, but also feeling a growing sense of power and expertise in your own character and abilities. I was also impressed by the upgrade charms, which all felt distinct, worthwhile, and fun to experiment with.

This game is BIG, especially if you delve into the optional stuff, which I did after I beat the story. I’ve still got some to do, which I’ll pick up as and when I feel like it. But I’ve done a lot of it and have beaten the Radiance, which felt like a good cut off point. I’m sad that there’s not really much more for me to discover, as that aspect of the game is second to none, but it’s still a lot of fun to jump into and try to beat a challenge. Really I just want to keep playing it, and like many people I will now be waiting eagerly for Silksong to arrive. No pressure!

Cult of the Lamb would be more impressive if ActRaiser hadn’t done the same thing a whole lot better decades ago. The dungeon crawling lasts too long for how uncomplex and imprecise the combat is and the lack of meaningful dialogue or events when managing your cult removes a big emotional hook from the proceedings. Also, do NOT play this on Switch. Loading times are abysmal and I experienced two crashes. Hard to get too upset since it was free via game trial, but these technical issues should have been patched by this point.

Resident evil 2 remake is the game that taught me what horror games should actually be like.

Let me tell you a story

Im playing Claire B's route on hardcore, just starting off. I get to the first spot with zombies and they instantly wipe my ass. I stood no chance with Claire's puny little revolver and miniscule health bar compared to Leon-Standard's almost neverending HP pool. After a bit of wiggling i get to the RCPD building and notice all the slight differences in item placement and enemy health. I'm a little bit annoyed by this but i chose to play on hardcore so whatever, its on me to suck it up and deal with it.

After a bit of exploring i get to the west wing, go through a dark hallway, and find Mr. X.For the next 4 hours i strategize and route my way through the three statue puzzles, making sure i pick up everything i need and use everything i got. I slip past the zombies and lickers and Mr. X until finally, after so many dead runs with no ink ribbons or health pickups, i unlock the central statue and start the first fight with Birkin.

they were the most exhilarating 4 hours of pure gameplay in my life.

Playing Claire-Hardcore was a lesson in management. Both managing my resources and the enemies. You're never alone, not for a second, and the constant ticking clock of your shit running out makes you hurry up and deal with the cards you're dealt with with no backsies other than risking going back to another save and losing anything you potentially earned through sheer luck in the time between that save and where you are now. Genuienely one of the most electrifying experiences ive ever had with a game.

The greatest video game of all time, and perhaps the greatest work of art, period.
Not only a milestone in the 'cinematic game' but one which pulls you into its inescapable (foggy) atmosphere and makes you complicit in the mystery of Mary Sunderland.
Every detail about this game unnerves on a profound level, from the illogical level design and subtle ambient hums to the distinctly Lynchian dialogue and even lines of description: 'The door that wakes in darkness, opening into nightmares.'
On top of that, the soundtrack to this one is not only Akira Yamaoka's best work but just one of the all time greats.
There is, quite simply, no other work of horror so concise and masterful.

Only FromSoftware copy their own homework and get away with it. From Demons Souls to Elden Ring, the iconic brutal combat gameplay remains, only midly adjusted with each title.
I'll admit I'm late to the game, quite literally, but Dark Souls is my favourite of theirs so far, and maybe an all-timer.

The same level of immense satisfaction comes from conquering seemingly impossible forces, but it is the connectedness of the world here that makes you feel existentially insignificant and all the more bold in exploring unknown territory.
Whilst a notch down from the visual flair of subsequent titles - Bloodborne, Elden Ring, etc - the level design here is still superb: I think it is the vast size and sonic emptiness of places like the Demon Ruins or Great Hollow that make them utterly terrifying, especially upon uncovery of the indifferent creatures that lurk there. And if you don't have that special fast travel item, you must traverse between these places, miles sometimes deep into lava pits underground or at the peaks of castles in the clouds; I can't express enough that wondrously epic scale acheived here through such variation - it's probably not as big as Skyrim but by god it just feels bigger.

Another key strength is character design: from smaller, comical side characters such as the onion shaped knight Siegmeyer of Catarina to otherworldly beasts such as the primordial serpent Frampt (almost shat myself when I first saw him).

But essential to the bleak atmosphere of Dark Souls, alongside the sparingly used music and foggy, dingy locations, is the abundance of characters who simply sit there, beaten and tarnished - they have truly lost. In a game that places so much emphasis on dying, this highlights the whole point (of Souls games and gaming in general): you can die as many times as you like, but you only lose when you give up.

It’s fair to say a good portion of the survival horror fandom still yearn for the halcyon days of fixed-camera classics - I don’t need to mention which ones. And there’s plenty of recent homages to just that: Song of Horror, Alisa, Murder House, Dawn of Fear, The Medium, Post Trauma, etc. Tormented Souls, with a story as generic as its title, is neither the best nor worst of them.

In its favour, the fixed camera gameplay and combat are pretty solid, appropriately challenging in moments of confinement with a monstrosity trying to tear you up. My hottest take is that Tormented Souls boasts some of the strongest puzzles we’ve seen in horror gaming for a long time: some puzzles are the standard ‘find a thing that wouldn’t normally combine with this other thing but somehow combines anyway and does something cool’ type thing and others involve hopping into alternate mirror dimensions and even a bit of time travel to alter the state of the real world. The sound design is also rather accomplished, evoking the oppressive soundscapes of the first Silent Hill game. The score is good and, while not always perfect, can be unsettling - the music that plays when the ‘stalker’ monster is near had me spinning around and immediately running back.

My only gripe, beyond the voice acting that leaves a lot to be desired, is the aesthetic coherence: while I appreciated the cluttered ‘lived-in’ design of the setting, it’s sort of ugly? Maybe this is just my personal preference as a purist for Silent Hill’s stripped back design where emptiness creates ambiguity and unease, but this place leans into the curious over-design of a steampunk fantasy world. Or is it just me? In other words, this game, which somehow gets away with placing some of the all-time classic disturbing paintings (The Nightmare, Judith Beheading Holofernes, etc) in its world, does not manage to conjure any unique visceral horror of its own.

Lots of strong elements but there’s certainly room for improvement. And if there’s any lesson Tormented Souls’ upcoming sequel should learn, it’s that homage can only get you so far.

Good intentions, bad results.
They 100% nail the atmosphere and feeling of a true 90's Survivor Horror game; the scenario, music and level design of the hospital is superb. The puzzles are good, very cryptic and challenging. But the rest... the rest is AWFUL:

The character models are horrendous. Caroline, the priest and most enemies looks so bad that they seems like coming from a whole different game, looks and behave like mannequins. The contrast against the rich and detailed environment is way too big. Now add one of worst VA i have seen in a videogame and you have the cringest cutscene in history. Every scripted interaction in this game is awful.

Another big problem is the performance, bad framerate in a lot of areas and way to long loading screens. (PS4)

The story again, was good intention, bad execution. It's kind of close to Silent Hill, but with dumb mirror-time-travels, lame dialogues and a disappointed final boss.

So 3 stars for environment, music and puzzles. Nothing more in there.

(another replay of a game I last played 10 years ago)

Playing this so soon after the original, there is one thing that I can say I miss about RE1: the isolated and creepy atmosphere of the Spencer mansion, and the more interesting puzzles, which were far more straightforward here.

But this daring change (different characters, different setting) worked so well because it was replaced by something equally compelling. Setting this game in a ruined city and derelict police station gave the locations a much more lived-in feel where every room told a subtle story, from the festive decorations meant to welcome Leon on his ill-fated first day to the main office which is literally crawling with zombie cops. The less isolated feeling also created the opportunity for more side characters, and the fact that so many of them appeared in later entries shows how much of a hit they were. And while the RE series isn't as horror-focused as something like Silent Hill, this does have some very effective subtle scares, like how the camera angle in one of the early rooms you unlock is positioned just right so you can see a licker crawl by outside the window (when you don't even know what a licker is supposed to be yet).

This game also feels infinitely better than its predecessor. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but it's probably tighter controls and more refined graphics which makes navigation a lot easier and more intuitive. On top of this, the game actually features some proper physics - enemies can be staggered, and shoving a zombie into a crowd causes the other zombies to stumble.

Unlike RE4 which delivers a much more action-focused experience, these refinements actually serve to enhance the survival horror aspects. The original Resident Evil had more than enough ammo to kill every enemy (though it's scarce at first), so the best approach was to memorize which order to enter rooms so you would never run out of ammo. But in RE2, dodging around enemies feels much more intuitive and consistent, which adds weight to the fight-or-flight decisions you inevitably have to make whenever you run into an enemy. This lent itself very well to this particular playthrough for me where I still remembered the mechanics but forgot the layout - I spent a good chunk of the game fumbling around, half-lost, low on supplies, juking around zombies and lickers. It felt gloriously stressful!

One exception to the better game feel was the boss fights. They were a little more action-oriented than in the previous game, and unfortunately the claustrophobic feel created by the fixed camera angles became more of an annoyance, never affording me a clear line of sight. The lack of a quick-180 or auto-aim function also felt like a hindrance, ensuring that many boss battles felt anticlimactic because the optimal strategy was to just stand in one place and DPS-race the boss.

Overall this is a fantastic refinement of the RE1 experience, feeling so much better to play without straying too far from the feel of the original. The different scenarios and unlockables gave it respectable replay value too. RE3 is next on my playlist - I haven't played it yet, but this entry will take some beating!

(played as jill)
awesome game!!! very fun puzzle solving, great audio design and beautiful pre-rendered visuals make RE1 an absolute treat. story is engaging the whole way through, the voice acting is great in an endearing sort of way but the localized text is genuinely great, i love reading all the lab reports and such. the item management can be a little difficult sometimes, i'd often go out of my way to put away certain weapons and key items only to realize i needed them 3 rooms ahead from where i was. (not entirely sure how much of this is my fault!) i think it's cool that this is basically just a sierra/lucasarts style adventure game with combat. remains to be seen if i will do a chris run... excited to check out re2!

Something that always turned me off about the original release of Prime was the control scheme; having no camera aiming is a struggle to get around. The remaster with a 'modern' control scheme leaves me no excuses.

That being said, this is an excellent experience. Exploring Tallon IV is a joy, constantly opening up new areas and finding secret areas for items never gets old. Even regular backtracking, a feature synonymous with the Metroid franchise, is never boring when you consider optimizing your routes and revisiting areas to use newly collected upgrades.

Speaking of upgrades, Samus gets several across the game, including suit upgrades (Nothing new if you haven't played a Metroid game), missiles and beams for your blaster. As opposed to previous metroids, these have to be switched manually. Each one is distinct enough to offer clear advantages without mitigating the rest, especially when incorporated into solving puzzles and defeating enemies. That being said, switching beams quickly to kill enemies with specific weaknesses can be a juggling match if you don't want to lose several bars of health.

The last major point of discussion, the story, is interesting, however it does require that you are invested from the start. If you aren't scanning major logs from the start of the game, you're likely to miss the mountain of lore around the old and new civilizations of Tallon IV. Under the dangerous and infested surfaces and depths of the planet is a story about loss and despair coupled with greed and power, and the outcomes of both.

Overall, Metroid Prime Remastered is an excellent game that every gamer should experience at least once in their life.

Fuck the Chozo Artifacts though, that can suck it