I feel really, really bad by doing this. Look, I love the first game, it's probably my favorite indie game of all time, but this? What the hell, Dennaton?

I find Hotline Miami 2 to be a very unenjoyable experience, and the main reason for that has to be the level design. This game basically consists of ridiculously open football field sized buildings made entirely out of glass that are packed with dogs, fat dudes, and gun-wielding enemies that react to you in a nanosecond and kill you off-screen. This game is fucking hard, but not in a good, fun way like the first game. It's hard in a frustrating, bullshitty way.

In Hotline Miami 1, when you died, 90% of the time it was totally your fault. This time around though, 90% of your deaths are due to the god awful level design or to some cheap glitch. Hope you like doing nothing but using guns to try and snipe off-screen enemies two miles away while constantly holding shift for the entirety of the game, something that contrasts greatly with how you could almost exclusively use melee weapons to complete most levels in Hotline Miami 1 (with the exception of quickly picking up a gun to kill fat guys or enemies in inaccessible areas). The fact is, there are less ways to get through each level compared to HM1 since the level design often forces you to play in a specific way only. The game barely ever allows for creative strategies. The first game encouraged you to be reckless, it told you it was okay to fail, but this game forces you to be slow and methodical, which just feels like the antithesis to what Hotline Miami should be about. Something else that contributes to the levels being poorly designed is readability, which can often be abysmal. Sometimes it's very hard to differentiate between what you can be shot through and what is proper cover. Honestly, most stages feel like they were ripped out of some hardmode fangame: they're poorly designed and unfairly hard.

On the technical side of things, this game is an absolute mess. Hotline Miami 1 wasn't exactly polished but, in my experience, I've encountered far more glitches with this game that often got me killed, and the fact that a single floor in HM2 can take several minutes to get through just makes dying to a cheap glitch MUCH more frustrating than when it happened in the first game. The enemies react more like robots than ever, like how common it is for them to witness dozens of their buddies dying right in front of them and not react at all, as well as hearing gunshots going off right beside them and not get alerted. There are some "special" enemies like the dogs and the prisoners that run at a supersonic speed to try to strangle you that can just materialize through doors, and if you are even near a door when one of them is chasing you have absolutely zero chances of surviving. Also, HM2 has a lot of input lag by default because turning VSync off in-game doesn't work, you're gonna have to do it manually through your graphics card's control panel. Wish I knew this earlier, because I played through the entire game (INCLUDING HARD MODE) with that horrible input lag at first.

The game carries something that was a minor annoyance in the first game and turns it into a major one: there's no way to know what weapon you'll get from a pile of guns. Since the best strategy to kill enemies in this fucking game is to show yourself for a second to lure them to a corner, you'll just end up with dozens of weapons stacked on top of each other, and then you'll try to pick up one of them to kill that fat guy that is running towards you and you'll just die horribly because you picked up a gun with no bullets or a melee weapon.

Another thing that heavily frustrates me is how you are now unable to get points by knocking enemies down, unlike the first game. It's absolutely infuriating to accidentally knock over a large group of enemies now, since HM2 has excruciatingly long animations for executions and no way to cancel them, so knocking enemies over can easily make you lose you combo or even get you killed. Thanks to this mechanic I never even try to go for highscores here, which is something I loved doing in HM1.

And then there's hard mode. I'm willing to believe this is just a sick practical joke implemented by Dennaton to laugh at our faces. It's pretty much impossible to finish the game on it without cheaply dying at least a couple hundred times. Forcing myself to beat Hotline Miami 2 on hard mode was one of the worst experiences of my life, not even joking. I got no gratification or feeling of accomplishment from it, just a feeling of "thank god that's over."

Now, some people might appeal to the braindead """argument""" of "you're just bad at the game" while ignoring all of my points entirely. My dude, just check my Steam stats for both this game and the first. I got all the achievements, which means I finished the game on hard mode, and I'm able to get an S ranking on most stages with relative ease, so these opinions are coming from someone who's very experienced with both Hotline Miami games and probably much better than you are. I don't wanna come off as being arrogant here, but some people are just unbelievably dense and can't provide a single counter-point to refute me outside of that.

One thing I feel like could have been done to improve the game quite a bit would be the implementation of a system where, after you beat the level for the first time using the character that's supposed to be there for the story, you could choose any other character when you play that level again, like in the LEGO games. Maybe let you play as Jacket (with all the original masks) and maybe even Biker. From a story perspective that wouldn't make sense of course, but why should that matter? Fun/replayability/variety should be the priority here.

Now, for some actual positives. The soundtrack is absolutely incredible, as expected. Go and listen to Roller Mobster, The Way Home, Le Perv, In The Face of Evil, Bloodline... Hell, just listen to the entire damn thing. Graphics also look fantastic. Very stylized like the first game while managing to look much smoother and being able to pack much more detail into every level. Only problem is, that detail can sometimes make enemies harder to see, and there were times when I died to an enemy that was behind foliage or something like that, but again, that's more of a problem with the level design than anything else. Animations are also pretty good and generally smoother than the first game. And finally, I actually think they did a pretty good job with writing an interesting story, deepening the lore, and tying everything together with the first game, but (without spoiling anything) the ending just felt like a lazy cop-out.

So, in conclusion, if you're a HUGE fan of Hotline Miami 1 you might want to grab this for the story, but if you're just looking for some reckless, fast-paced and fun gameplay you're better off playing through the first game again.

Despite essentially codifying much of the genre, Thief stands head and shoulders over most of the stealth genre even today, in my opinion. Every single mechanic, from the light gem that shows your current visibility to the difficulties giving you more objectives and restrictions rather than arbitrarily cranking up some stats, is so well thought-out and meshes so well with the open, layered level design that it's honestly impressive this isn't a sequel to some much more poorly aged first game.

Some people might take issue with the less stealth-focused levels and while I agree that they're the worst half of the game, I still think there's a lot to love about them. Also, the worldbuilding and atmosphere are extremely good, as is Garrett's character.

That said the Thieves' Guild sucks on anything higher than Normal, honestly just use the level skip cheat code if you want, or play it on the lowest difficulty.

I wasn't the biggest fan of Breath of the Wild, its radical departure from Zelda staples was cool exploration wise but left me missing the reoccurring themes, items and tropes of previous games. So when the sequel was announced and shown off I was hesitant since it looked like more of the same. Turns out it was more of the same, but better.

Two of my major complaints from BotW were quickly addressed. A More focused story and a return of classic form dungeons. The dungeons aren't amazing but they're distinct and feel more like older games dungeons than BotWs very repetitive Divine Beast segments. The story is a real stand out, a compelling mystery in the past mixed with an evil all powerful threat in the present, the way it all comes together is very cool. Ganondorf is also a nice more traditional Zelda feeling inclusion, I just wish he got more screen time or back story to really sell his threat. Also there's a very good twist at one point in the story that's very affecting, but then the ending undermines it lessening the whole impact of that moment which is disappointing.

Exploring is very fun. Like the first game roaming the large world is satisfying, and this games world is more populated and lived in, another corrected grievance I had with BotW. The two new areas are cool in concept, but become repetitive the more you return to them. The depths especially seemed to lack a reason to explore more to me after I finished the minimal story content in them.

Weapon durability also returns and I'm still not a fan. While the game sorta addresses this with the fusion system letting you increase damage and durability, the constant breakage and cycling through weapons is annoying and makes every treasure chest containing a disposable weapon feel like a waste. Especially since there's cool looking special weapons and even weapons from previous games you can find. Why can't these function like the Master Sword and be reusable instead of just ending up as pointless wall decorations for Links house?

I did enjoy the Ultrahand abilities for the most part, they lead to some fun moments and creative puzzle solving in both the open world and shrines, but the building mechanics felt superfluous a lot of the time. I would often just climb or move something manually rather then spend a bunch of time making some contraption that might not even do what I want it to.

Still with all that said I did enjoy my time with Tears of the Kingdom. I sunk over 100 hours in, found every shrine, did every story and major side quest, collected lots of cool armor, and explored a lovely looking world. While I still have my issues with this new BotW style for Zelda games, this one brought back enough of the old to meld the two into an enjoyable Zelda game.

Zelda Series Ranked

The definitive version of Resident Evil 1, with gameplay mechanics lifted from future games, like quick-turning, reloading without having to empty the clip and your knife being it's own dedicated button which are nice additions alongside that, there's better models, skippable cutscenes, including doors and 60fps which lead to smoother play and animations.

The biggest selling point is the new "Rebirth" mode, which adds quite a number of changes to the core gameplay making it more action-oriented, the most major of which is the increased enemy count and variety alongside new puzzles which utilize the NDS' functions.

I'd highly recommend playing this version of RE, whether you're a newcomer to RE1 or a veteran wanting to replay it.

The ultrahand ability is an apt metaphor for the game: TOTK doesn't actually fix any of the problems with BOTW, it just glues a bunch of new shit on top.

There is an incredible physics system, and they do fuck-all with it. Every non-combat shrine is a physics puzzle for babies. Their lack of trust in the player's ability to reason about a problem is genuinely insulting.

The combat system still sucks. The companion system is a total mess, and every time you get a new party member they tell you the exact same fucking story about the Imprisoning War.

The sky islands are surprisingly sparse, and the depths are just a darker, less interesting version of the main map . The temples are barely an improvement over the divine beasts, and in some ways I actually consider them a step back.

Above all else, the absolute worst thing about this game is the sheer amount of progression and quests locked behind tedious resource farming. Just awful.

Overall, a very flawed follow-up and one I had to force myself to finish. I am a Zelda Hater now