(Replayed on Ultra-Violence with the DOOM CE Conversion)

DOOM has always been one of my favorite shooters ever made, a very influential game to me and gaming as a whole. Looking for different ways to experience it after getting the urge to play through all of it again, I heard about the PSX port that is apparently a large tonal shift from the original game. After playing, I can definitely say that much is true. The atmosphere has been made much more sinister and dreadful with the new lighting, the music has been taken from an adrenaline-pumping thrash backtrack with occasional slower groovy tracks to a full-on droning and haunting ambient soundtrack that makes the world around you much more hellish. Playing on the Ultra-Violence difficulty is the way to go, not frustratingly brutal and but too forgiving. Absolutely my favorite way to play DOOM, very close to perfect, still think that the last chapter is way too easy to get lost in though.

“In short, contingency and freedom, it all means creation; freedom for us is creation.” - Henri Bergson

Prey is a video game about action. An immediate question may arise: what video game isn’t about action? A fair enough question since I haven’t set forth any terms. What I mean here is the specific action that philosopher Henri Bergson defined in his book Matter and Memory where he writes, “The degree of independence of which a living being is master, or, as we shall say, the zone of indetermination which surrounds its activity, allows, then, of an a priori estimate of the number and the distance of the things with which it is in relation.” For the most part, video games are constricted experiences, designed in ways that create illusions of action and what action always becomes: creative choice. Video games are limited in a way that we voluntarily ignore; the individual act of playing them already satisfies most base desires. This is not a critique of the medium, but an explanation of how it functions. Video games cannot account for choice (and usually when they try to, they fail spectacularly). The BioShock series is all about this for example. However, Prey, and by extension the entire genre of immersive sims, were created with the intention to capture real-life agency in a virtual world. Prey does this best, partly because these philosophical underpinnings are finally brought to the surface and commented on in meaningful ways — a cohesion only really found in games like Cruelty Squad, Disco Elysium, Pathologic, and Planescape: Torment. If video games are by design vessels for determinism, then Prey is the yolk finally breaking and providing an argument for free will. Again, in the Bergsonian sense, with free will forming from the actions that reflect the personality of a self (an idea explored in his book, Time and Free Will). In immersive sim fashion, such agency is expressed in every crevice of its game design with Prey having an untold number of ways to approach each situation you find yourself in.

In this manner, the game itself plays remarkably like System Shock 2. I had dropped Prey years ago because I played it like an FPS, I am not sure why I exactly did this; having played Dishonored as a teenager I knew what immersive sims were on some level, but I wasn’t making use of any of Prey’s systems. My old save was still there thanks to Steam’s cloud save feature and by the time I got to where I had left off originally, I had put six hours into the game compared to two. This anecdote alone is proof to me that immersive sim deserves to be categorized as its own genre, an opinion with some detractors who only want it to be labeled as a “design philosophy” or think these games are at their core just RPGs or FPS’ like I originally treated Prey as and had a monumentally worse time. Back to System Shock 2 though, having now played that game and it now sitting comfortably in some nebulous top 10 spot for me, Prey clicked from the start. And now that I have finished it, I can comfortably say that Prey is a better game. The freedom of Prey’s mechanics isn’t only there to birth emergent gameplay, the hallmark of immersive sims that makes it my favorite genre, but to make a point about video games and like all great fiction, life itself. The number of tools and systems at play in games like System Shock 2 are there so you can have a different experience with them each time and treat these virtual landscapes as real, lived-in spaces; this design is so open-ended that the developers themselves cannot account for every variable. I was able to sequence break Prey in a few situations thanks to getting creative with the GLOO gun and instead of that feeling only like an emergent discovery, it felt directly tied to how the game presented itself on every level. The choice to act in these ways, like reverting back to a newborn who lacks spatial awareness and forgetting where a staircase was so I created a needless parkour arena out of the reactor core while various Typhon attempted to slaughter me and constantly made me fall back down — while proof that I need to get a new prescription for my glasses — revealed the game’s core philosophy as a game where choice finally matters and the creative potential of freedom that brings.

Prey’s response to System Shock 2’s psi abilities is the ever-creative Typhon powers which you can get by installing neuromods, the game's version of upgrade modules. There are six total categories for neuromods with many different sub-pathways in them, although three of them are for human upgrades like hacking, repair, and stealth and then three for the Typhon powers which you gain through researching the various types of Typhon on Talos I. You can mix and match these to your heart's desire, or only play with one, or neither. Here again, though, Prey is able to take a standard element of game design and breathe new life into it by exploring how neuromods are made and their effects on the people who install them. What exactly does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be human when you alter yourself with the ability to morph into a coffee cup and roll around before transforming back and hitting an unsuspecting goo monster with a wrench?

Having only talked about Prey’s gameplay up to this point, gameplay that if you have played one of the other 40 immersive sims that have been made in the last 30 years might not strike you as needing such philosophical analysis, it is then paramount to detail some of Prey’s thematic elements from its story, where all this philosophy is at the forefront. It isn’t that Prey is such an obvious standout in its own genre gameplaywise but that it coalesces so seamlessly with its story-driven themes in fully artistic and emotional ways.

It is then of course no surprise that Chris Avellone helped write this game alongside Raphaël Colantonio and Ricardo Bare (Prey’s director and lead designer respectively), for Avellone’s magnum opus Planescape: Torment is centered around the principle question, “What can change the nature of a man?” and it has a definitive answer: choice. Prey follows this path, not in a derivative way, but in the same philosophical fashion. According to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, the foundational aspect of our reality is that of difference, in this regard the entire notion of a Being, or anything static, or any notion of a true self or an essence is shattered and disposed of. All we are, all there is, is Becoming. Identity is forgone in the place of a multiplicity of difference and any repetitions will always be different; change is the only constant, as the character January states near the end of the game, “the ‘real’ Morgan is a fiction.” The process of Becoming is integral; it is not that Morgan Yu is there to be a measly projection, there are far too many videos and audiologs of them to be considered a blank slate character, it is that with every action they take Morgan becomes someone new — it is difference all the way down.

This underlying ontology gives way to a system of ethics as well, which is most notably present in how the game goes about its main quest and endings that January, Alex Yu, Dr. Igwe, and Mikhaila Ilyushin all play their respective parts in. Prey makes use of the trolley problem — a notoriously boring thought experiment that exists to make utilitarians think too highly of themselves — in a thought-provoking way. Which is frankly speaking revolutionary. While the more overarching elements are not something I can delve into without taking Prey’s climactic catharsis away from anyone reading this who hasn’t played it yet — the ethical parts of Prey are just as present in its side content. Talos I, the setting of Prey, has one very striking difference to the Immersive Sim in Space that it owes its existence to: humans who aren’t dead the second the game begins. Another revolutionary design choice from Arkane. How you choose to interact with these struggling survivors is going to define you, to the point that if you play the game “empathetically” you will receive an achievement titled “I and Thou,” which I will eat a shoe if that is somehow not a direct reference to Martin Buber’s book of the same name. Side quests where you can find Mikhaila’s medicine or get a piano recording so Dr. Igwe can hold onto a song that he and his now-dead wife loved, to helping a stuck escape pod launch all exist to reflect your approach to Talos I and a seemingly unstoppable threat that has the potential to reach Earth and likely drive humanity to extinction. All throughout these side quests you will receive radio transmissions from January, the most extreme deontologist in fiction, commenting on your behavior. It’s a small station, orbiting a moon that orbits an even bigger world. Who are you, who are these people, in the face of a threat this large? Should you be taking all these diversions to give them comfort, especially if this robot with your voice wants you to blow up the whole place? Well, you’re a human, aren’t you? The choice is yours.

While much of Prey uses high-concept philosophy to get across its sci-fi adventure, it is in these moments of humanity where the game truly shines. There is much art that falls on its face for trying to intellectualize itself, combining theory with fiction in a way that is fun to experience is a difficult task, but Prey excels at it. In a medium that so often plays it safe, Prey goes as far as it can to question you. Our bodies are constructed by action, our perception is tied to the freedom this gives us, and so all we are left with is an endless sea of choices. We all stand on the precipice — anxiety becomes overwhelming in the face of it, but the task at hand is to push forward. These choices will constantly change us or be changed by us. You are not the same person you were yesterday. Neither was Morgan Yu.

In 1992 the company that would go on to become Looking Glass Studios created the beloved “good game” genre known as immersive simulations with the release of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and in a multitude of ways changed the medium forever. Seven years later an off-shoot company named Irrational Games made up of ex-Looking Glass staff who still used their former company’s office space would co-develop the game this review is posted for which nullifies any sort of build-up I had in my mind because this isn’t a printed essay. Anyways, they made System Shock 2.

In more ways than one, it is hard to find anything fresh to say about System Shock 2 in 2023, 24 years after the game's release. I was only four months old when it hit shelves and the one thing that needed to be said about it was uttered in its first week of existence: System Shock 2 is one of the best games ever made. More so than any other game I have played I would consider agreeing with that statement to be a proper litmus test for if you should even be allowed to talk about video games.

It’s just that good.

As with every immersive sim ever made till the heat death of our universe, System Shock 2 is a game about its systems. And in utilizing the Dark Engine that was made for Thief: The Dark Project, Ken Levine’s team at Irrational, and those few helping over at Looking Glass, they were able to create the foundations for what immersive sims are meant to look like in the modern era. Along with Thief, System Shock 2 brought immersive sims into the fully 3D landscape of the late 90s — and it allowed for the entire genre (which at that point consisted of precisely four games) to reach new heights that games being released today can barely even touch while standing on their tippy-toes. Ultima Underworld I and II, along with the first System Shock, make up what I affectionately call boomer immersive sims; they were the first attempts, and while they were majorly successful and amazing video games that are unparalleled by anything in the medium of video games up to that point, it is in System Shock 2 where everything reaches perfection. Ultima Underworld’s biggest flaw stated by its own creators was its dialogue system which they viewed as functioning as a second game rather than feeling like an interwoven experience with the overall gameplay and was fixed by Austin Grossman’s idea to make the original System Shock’s story and dialogue be told to you through audiologs that are scattered throughout the world. System Shock 2 also utilizes this method of storytelling to a much greater effect. I adore the games Grossman has worked on and written. Still, System Shock’s audiologs are a bit heavy on exposition, and also due to the scuffed nature of memory on floppy disks and CDs Looking Glass seemingly didn’t know how much of the recorded dialogue they could fit onto disks and so when playing the game you are likely going to have to stop dead in your tracks and read text that in no way matches up to what the characters are saying which hurts the seamless nature the team obviously wanted. No such thing was happening in 1999 though and so the audiologs are not cut at all and you are able to listen to them as you traverse the horrifying corridors of the Von Braun. This allows for more audiologs as well, which lead designer/writer Ken Levine has proven himself to be the master of — while some still serve the function they did in the first game in giving you information on where to go next or a code needed to open a door, most of the audiologs in 2 are dedicated to cataloging what happened to the crew leading up to the start (and sometimes during) the game and you get to hear the final thoughts of those who — unlike our protagonist Soldier G65434-2 — do not have military grade implants and so died brutally at the hands of the Many. These logs are not only able to fully achieve a sense of immersion in the world but also able to generate a bountiful amount of empathy for those on board who are long dead by the time you wake up.

System Shock 2’s overall story was Levine’s first at-bat for his comic book-inspired approach of pitting two extremes against one another that you find yourself in the middle of. This time composed of Shodan, the egotistical, fascist AI who hates all things weak and composed of flesh, and her offspring the Many — the hybrid creations she began to create in the first System Shock, who are, well, made of flesh (and so clearly the inspiration for the Flood in Halo, it’s uncanny how similar they are). Naturally, they don’t like each other much. During the course of development, the team was at odds with Levine for his idea to make Shodan not the principal antagonist and rather begrudgingly need your help throughout the game to defeat the Many. I am glad that he stood his ground because she is a much more nuanced character in this game and rightfully deserves her spot on every “Best Video Game Villain” list because of it.

And then there’s the infamous/meme’d-to-death ending. Really I can only say one thing: if you aren’t doing backflips for the last ten minutes of the game then — like the Many — you probably have worms in your brain.

On the gameplay side of things is of course where all immersive sims shine and System Shock 2 is no slouch. The introduction of RPG mechanics to immersive sims started here and would continue to be seen in the genre, even just a year later with the release of Deus Ex (which sadly makes some people think that immersive sims are just RPGs with a pretentious name, but that’s a rant for another time) and led to what these games are likely most known for: multiple styles of play. Want to play stealthy? This game is using the same engine as Thief: go nuts. Want to only use melee weapons? Max out strength and get various OS upgrades just for that. You joined the marine core at the beginning and only want to blast things with hot lead? The game practically begs you to. Energy weapons? Become a literal space wizard? The list goes on. And depending on which difficulty you select at the start you can probably mess around with 2-3 options to your heart's desire.

And do I really need to talk about level design for an immersive sim? Does everyone checking this page already know that this genre does levels better than anything else? Well if not, let me be the first to inform you that the Von Braun is one of the most intricately crafted locations in video games. Everything in it is seamless, while I would occasionally get lost while playing both Ultima Underworlds and the first System Shock that never happened here. The number of different paths you can take to get around never feels complicated but instead organic with a plethora of secrets strung along the way depending on your aforementioned chosen playstyle. While there are two more locations near the end of the game, they are quite small and still work as an interwoven structure — unlike another beloved game for its interconnected world design, System Shock 2 never falters.

System Shock 2 is a wonderful game. It is also a game that only sold 58,671 units during its initial release and I am unsure how many it has sold now in its fate as a game that more people seem to know and reference through making Shodan their social media profile pictures than actually playing it, but I’m sure of those couple dozen thousand fleshy bodies the majority heralded it as one of the greatest games they’ve ever played — and I’m glad to be able to count myself among their ranks.

“In those dreams…
I loved one woman
No matter the day
No matter the era…
That did not change…

Nor did her name”...

Xenogears is everything that art should strive to be and goes beyond any piece of work I’ve experienced. It’s everything I could ever truly want. Ever since first finishing the game in August of last year I’ve thought about Xenogears at least once everyday. All its moments have etched themselves into my subconscious. All those painful, passionate, and loving moments that make all of Xenogears become one whole. My revisit here was not me playing, but a dear friend of mine playing while I sat on the sideline and gave advice. It was an incredible time to both re-experience these moments and to share them with another person. We laughed, cheered, cried, and all the other emotions you could possibly think of. It made me fully realize that Xenogears is an important part of the person who I am now. It inspires me to keep on living and making the most out of an imperfect existence.

It also made me realize that this is also the most life affirming work of art ever created. Throughout the entirety of Xenogears there’s a strong emphasis on the power of the human connection. We follow Fei build on himself and his life experiences through the people that he meets. He has these moments with people that neither he or the player could ever forget. You could argue that characters don’t get enough time in their own spotlight, but it doesn’t really bother me too much personally. Mainly because of the moments and how they impact Fei makes it all the more worth it to me by the end. We humans aren’t meant to be alone and Xenogears reinforces this belief. This is represented beautifully by the one winged angel statues introduced in the Nisan cathedral. To me those angel statues are the personification of the emotional core of Xenogears. Those angels correspond with each other and they need each other to fly. I’ll have moments in life where I am bitter towards humanity and am frustrated to be amongst the horrible people that are out there. However there are also the people I know who are kind and caring, and have helped me become the person that I am today. Humanity is worth preserving because of people like them. The people who are embracing the ideas of love and coming together. That is the human experience, even in spite of everything we have each other, and that’s the most important thing of them all.

A whole lot of the cast in Xenogears come from broken and unfortunate circumstances. The game portrays these characters and their lives with a careful, complex, and tender understanding of circumstances. There is that coming together I mentioned earlier that creates the beating heart emotional storytelling of this game. These people are able to comfort each other in the help that they provide in their companionship. Bart gave Fei a home after the destruction of his village, the party were able to help Billy cope with what happened to The Ethos, they helped Maria confront her “father”, and then there’s everything with Elly.

Fei and Elly is the greatest romance ever written without a shred of doubt in mind. It’s a relationship that so perfectly shows what love is and how it transcends everything else. From their first interaction in the forest you can tell something special is there, especially when Fei was able to guess her name in an instant. Which hit me incredibly hard on this revisit, those who’ve played this game will understand why. Same with the scene in the Nisan cathedral where Fei says that Sophia reminds him of Elly. As we get deeper and deeper into the game we see their relationship get richer and richer. Showcasing that these two will do anything to help each other. At first they turned to each other because they had similar situations and that they could run away from them by being with each other. However they realized that they need each other out of true and earnest love, not solely because they are sanctuaries for their own problems. They are separate pieces that become whole when they are with each other. It’s that sort of loving connection that can topple any kind of cycle of tragedy that our universe can present us with. Fei was always told to “Live!” in spite of everything that had happened. No matter the day and the era that message never changed. However now both Fei and Elly have a home to return to. Love is the greatest power in the universe.

AC2 is a very important game to me, it introduced me to the series as a kid, and I still hold it very dear to my heart.

However, the game is most definitely a product of it's time, and has aged pretty poorly in regards to its mechanics, especially in the parkour/free running. To put it bluntly, it's a very clunky and honestly infuriating thing to deal with, especially considering how fine tuned it is in the recent games, but despite saying that, it definitely adds to its charm.

The story is a bit lacking in the middle chapters, sequences 1-4 offer great worldbuilding, and sequences 10, 11 and 14 are great at setting up what brotherhood and revelations would later explain in their own stories.

The music in this game is also incredible, Kyd's creation of the titular "Ezio's Family" has gone on to be the flagship track for each future entry, and for good reason.

All in all, I still love this game, but a remaster in Mirages engine (since they said they were going back to their roots) would be very welcome indeed.

Just consider that this is a very obvious product of its time, as I mentioned above.

Hadn't tried any of the Ninja Gaiden sequels so this was a new experience for me. And holy hell does it lean into the narrative of difficulty surrounding the original game with reckless abandon. If not for save states this would not have been something I got very far in. Unlike the original game which has a pretty solid difficulty curve, this one immediately throws you into what I feel is the most difficult section, where you are forced to platform and fight with constant wind pushing you every which way. The environmental hazards in general were a feature of this entry which I never could enjoy. Enemies seem placed in some of the cheapest possible spots to further frustration, and the issue of constant respawning still exists. Enemies are significantly faster and less predictable as well, making on-the-fly reflexive strategizing feel impossible at times. None of the issues would be there, however, if not for the game's hit detection. Compared to the first game, Ryu's hitbox is absolutely massive and I was constantly being hit by enemies nowhere close to touching a single pixel on my body. Similarly, enemy hitboxes seem to have shrunk to a severe degree, as I found myself whiffing direct hits on enemies, only to take damage due to this. I don't see much discussion on this when I research so maybe it was an emulation issue? Either way, it ruined the experience. I think the game would've been fun if not for this, but it happens to be a fairly crucial part of the action platforming genre, so that's a shame. 2/6

Lack of consequence is the real killer here. While the EMMI encounters are pretty enjoyable to navigate, the fact that you're given an automatic checkpoint before and after you enter each one of their areas negates the majority of their potential. When getting caught by one barely inconveniences you, there's no tension or fear, let alone any dread. The worst part is that the standard Metroid save system would've worked perfectly for these sections, which makes it one of the most frustrating changes to an existing formula I've come across recently. Just imagine how thrilling landing an escape parry would've been if the threat of losing progress loomed over your every move. Beyond that it's your standard Metroid game, but with all the ups and downs that come with modernization. I guess it was foolish of me to hope that the storytelling through gameplay that the series has historically excelled at would continue into the modern age, since Dread's story is told entirely through cutscenes and text boxes. As chatty as Fusion is, wordlessly stumbling across Ridley's frozen body is one of my favorite moments in the entire series- Dread never attempts anything similar. The game also has the tendency to "let you out" right in front of where you're supposed to go next whenever you get an upgrade or fight a boss, meaning it's only possible to get really lost if you purposefully get yourself lost, which I can see rubbing some people the wrong way. Ultimately, this one gets a "worth playing" from me due to some changes that make the world pretty fun to traverse, like the new mobility options and improved elevator system, but more importantly the presentation. The backgrounds are especially well done- they're so detailed and they really do great work to make the areas feel distinct and alive in a way that the older games in the series couldn't capture. But there were also some small decisions that really caught my eye. Samus being the only source of light in a save room before she saves. The loading screens being silent, wordless cinemagraphs. The map being divided into much smaller squares than usual, making it impossible to reach most tiles until you get some upgrades, which mimics the entire Metroid concept. That's what I want to see more of.

Very very good. For lack of a better word, this game has a lot more soul in it than I expected. When I first attempted to play this game on my Xbox, I was immediately turned off by the high difficulty and sprawling Firelink hub. I ignored the fact that the enemies I fought in the prologue were leading me to the place I needed to go, and the ones I chose to face near the Catacombs kept respawning and dropping very few souls. Looking back on it, I can now recognize this as one of the many examples of Dark Soul's subtly powerful game design. Enemy placement, difficulty, and even some of the platforming sections undoubtedly exist to challenge, but they are not in the game for the sake of difficulty and beating the player down. This is further strengthened through the clever linearity of the many zones and their shortcuts, as well as intertwining with the game's core mechanics of trial and error as well as perseverance.

Giving humanity a desirable and useful physical form is goofy, but works incredibly well within the context of the world and gameplay. This allows for many comments on humanity and the human condition throughout this game, whether it be from slaying insane versions of characters once thought of to be great or saving several imperfect but well-meaning and determined characters such as Siegmeyer and Solaire. Even the less optimistic characters such as Patches and the Crestfallen Warrior have their own unique views on how to live life, often as a ways of dissuading defeat and nihilism. Some of these guys' questlines are shrouded in a mystery that I'm not sure I would've been able to crack on my own, but even still I enjoyed interacting with them any chance I got and didn't mind relying on help to assist them.

These two aspects, the clever game design and thematic exploration, turns this into one of the most uplifting games I've ever played. Of course the atmosphere is grim and the bosses are either tragic or grotesque, but the game doesn't feel the need to stomp these aspects into dust. A focus on exploration, personal betterment, and perseverance in the face of great difficulty is much more prevalent and refined than any of the negative aspects of this game. My favorite parts of this game have to be the online interactions between other players though. Seeing other people's phantoms running around and completing the same trials as you, leaving messages, and even showing you what NOT to do in the form of deaths feels comforting and uplifting in a world full of oppression. Backtracking through multiple areas in order to grind for some souls and advance the game and being serenaded with the victory bells of other players is not short of incredibly inspiring (and dare I say... strandlike?). A game truly full of despair and contempt for it's players would definitely not allow for so much heart and souls to be gained from this aspect if it did not wish to. I'm really glad the reputation this game has garnered in its 10 years of internet cult fame is more a surface level interpretation of difficulty more than anything else. Of course the game is difficult. You know this, I know this, the game knows this. But how difficulty is explored and treated as a surmountable achievement through the eyes of NPCs, bosses, and other players, this game is elevated to a status of true meaningful interaction with little filler and many aspects to admire and truly take a look at from another angle.

Besides a few uninspiring bosses, platforming sections, and a few glitches and moments of "...yeah OK game" this definitely stands among the finest video games ever made. I had an absolute blast playing this with two of my friends, and I look forward to eventually getting the platinum trophy in my subsequent NG+ runs.

I think it's also worth nothing that I accidentally closed this review without it saving multiple times, forcing me to restart, and the thing that killed me the most in the game was the wooden Blighttown elevator. Take this review with a grain of salt. Welcome to Dark Souls.