Signalis was a game I really wanted to try out based on user reviews and the idea that it mimicked the classic survival horror atmosphere of the PS1. In playing Signalis I struggled to find what everyone else sees in it.

Graphically Signalis is very unapealling if im being frank. The whole color pallete is pretty monotone and a lot of the backgrounds and characters models are way too dark to really make out anything. I know they were going more for a minamalistic approach but I think it hinders it more than it helps it. Most of the zombie enemies just look like brown blobs without any defining features. It doesn't help that it feels zoomed out as well. Still if your a fan of visuals that can't quite make out what it is and that's univerving to you than maybe Signalis is the game for you, me it annoyed me.

Gameplay is it's strongest point, at least at first. I think the game does pretty well at feeling like a open exploration world that focuses on limited resourses and limited item management. Exploring and figuring out what item goes where and solving pretty fairly balanced puzzels does scratch that survival horror itch. The map system is also really useful and works well with open exploration and helping the player remember or find where key items can go. The first third of the game I think does this rather well and the middle section starts cracking and has some really obnoxious backtracking, backtracking that is worse than the average survival horror. Then the last third of the game thought it was a good idea to just delete the map feature and have all the enviroments look the same. Hope you rememer how to get back to that item box or save point. When it comes to the enemies they are flat out terrible. They hardly respond at all and when they do they are just mindless drones. Yes i get they are zombies but there is barely anythreat. Walking doesn't even trigger them, even when your in their direct line of sight. You have to be stand directly in front of them for them to notice you. Hell most times they will just be annoyingly sitting in front of a door you need to get through and won't move at all. It's really dumb too cause most of my damage was not from the enemey hitting me but it was just me touching the enemy. You take damage just by touching enemies. Not a fan of that.

The story of Signalis was completly uncomprehensible to me. I really tried to follow it but it's presented in such a minamalistic but schizophrenic way that I struggled to care by the last third trying to figure it all out. There are barely any characters or cutscenes to begin with and the erratic nature of loose notes and complex terms became grating to keep up with. Worst of all I feel like the game just ends out of nowhere. Maybe I got a bad end but it was extremely unsatisfying. I don't think Signalis is as deep, provoking or a good survival horror game as its reputation lets on.

Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl is trying to be Double Dragon 4 just as much as DD4 is trying to be DD4. It plays exactly like that warts and all in the year of 2020 actually says more about it than anything else. It has so little depth there really is not much to say at all. It's short enough to be inoffensive but it's not something I'd ever want to play more than a single time. I like my kevin smith characters as much as the next guy but that all this really is. Felt like a quick hack of a nes game done by one guy in an afternoon. Still I"ve played worse beat um ups.

art restoration is a subject thats been broached since the days of babylon - we, as a people, have dealt with the minutiae of this delicate work, with its chief dilemmas and hermeneutics, for as long as civilization has existed. there's a particular technique with regards to reconstruction of architecture: anastylosis. this occurs when you take a crumbling edifice, monument, or structure and you restore it, using the original elements and components, to its untouched, initial form - at least, to the extent that you can. this is to preserve the original texture. it's a noble, aspirational endeavour, one rooted as much in aesthetic appreciation as it is in simple respect for past achievements and a desire to transpose oneself into bygone eras. on a macro-scale, you see this practiced in countries like greece, india, and turkey - any country with a rich tapestry of culture and history, really - but id wager it occurs in everyday life on a micro-scale, too. there's a hindu temple in my region that causes a lot of trouble for its proprietors because they've imported all the necessary construction materials from india so as to bring it in line with the specifications of their native temples. those materials arent made to last canadian winters, so the temple get absolutely battered in frigid temperatures, which leads to frequent reparation and reconstruction in other seasons. still, they go ahead and continue to toil away anyways, in large part because, well, it's important to them, and they're deeply committed. is it the same temple that it once was, originally? is it even an edifice with the same rich history as its predecessors? probably not, but thats fine.

games partake in reconstruction and restoration as well, but it cant be said that we practice anastylosis. anastylosis, no matter how well-intentioned the practice is, attracts criticism, particularly in the finer arts, because crafting a representation of the original state of being yields a host of problems from a theoretical standpoint. while this opens up dialogue with regards to other forms of art im a bit too out-of-my-depth to tackle, a few of the same questions can be raised for games. as the discipline continually evolves, how do you become so acute in execution, so empiricist in approach, that something can functionally resemble the original? moreover, with something as ludic as the simple act of 'play', should you attempt to craft a representation of the original in the first place?

some give up, some dont even try, some bend the knee towards market pressure. remakes, remasters, and ports have been in news cycles frequently over the past few years, and it's clear that the industry - let alone your average consumer - doesnt have a unified approach to this, nor do they often care. there are several remasters and remakes that have attracted as much staunch criticism as they have fervent praise - demon's souls, final fantasy vii, crash bandicoot, shadow of the colossus, resident evil 2 and 3, ratchet and clank...the list goes on. botched remasters exist as well, haunting the original forms like specters, such as the silent hill hd collection, the arkham collection, diablo II, and so on. or how about cases where preservation has failed from the outset, like when developers fail to preserve source code, leaving the world with inferior versions of the same product? the recent ninja gaiden collection comes to mind.

whatever your stance on any of these remakes or remasters are - one thing that unifies them is that they're all beloved intellectual properties that are routinely and steadfastly discussed. less attention is given towards works that havent penetrated this cultural consciousness, or dont quite so easily belong to these strata of iconography. if you google any niche game that taps into that endless well of childhood nostalgia, you will hear the cries and pleads for a remaster or remake. blinx the cat hd longplay on youtube? "this needs a remake!" scaler, on the ps2? "ahh, underrated gem from my childhood. there should have been a sequel or a remaster." metal arms: glitch in the system? the suffering? robotech invasion? you betcha.

obviously these developer-sanctioned treatments will never come, despite the sincerity of these wishes. but, again, with a medium as ludic and experiential as games, maybe there's an argument here. and im certainly willing to hear some of these arguments out, particularly when they’re a direct result of passion. you want to hear about a dispassionate restoration? how about when demon’s souls was treated with no respect during its development by a plethora of executives, only to then resurface as a remake, missing its aesthetic expressive core and led by a completely separate team a decade later because those very same executives knew they could push hardware at retail in such a way? and there is precedent for touching up older titles that are given far less reverence. were it not for the dedication of a few, we would not have discovered that aliens: colonial marines, a title infamous for its lack of polish, could be somewhat fixed by simply altering a typo in its code.

this is what makes redriver 2 – a fanmade project which exists to reverse engineer the PS1 copy of the game, allowing for a fully playable, unofficial PC port – a fascinating exercise. driver 2 released to mixed reception because it was too visionary. developer reflections’ ambitions to improve their in-house formula severely taxed the processing power of the PS1, resulting in performance issues, a litany of bugs and technical issues, poor draw distance, bad load times, and so on. this is an open-world, mission-based wheelman extravaganza featuring four sweeping, painstakingly rendered maps, dozens of high-octane car chases, several animated CGs, licensed music (kenny rogers!!), an on-foot mode, and so on. pedestrians, vistas, cars – everything we take for granted in the open-world format is utilized in nascent form here. it may not sound like much, but driver 2 is very much an early precursor to grand theft auto III and games of that particular species, all of which resulted in an icarus-like title that couldn’t excel in its environment.

redriver 2, through grit and precision, fixes a lot of these issues. it’s still a smidge prone to glitches, but the draw distance has been improved, the performance is stable, the load times are near instant – it results in a game that doesn’t have both its shoelaces tied together anymore, and can be taken on its own terms as a direct sequel to the original driver, no longer shackled to its original form. it’s like it’s been given a healthy dose of nitrous. it’s a game that’s exceedingly fun as a result, improving on the original in myriad intelligent and easily discernible ways.

reflections work here is really something special. the original driver is strongly self-assured – the most infamous tutorial in gaming is simply a reflection of how well-tuned its goldilocks-esque handling, vehicular weight, and driving mechanics were. it was intuitive, very much designed for the PS1 controller and not in spite of – a crucial difference of approach in a racing title. but it was very much a prototype, nonetheless. its maps were too gridlike and disorderly, too littered with straightaways to fully capitalize on its frequent cat-and-mouse chase missions; its difficulty was inconsistent, vicious, and unflinching; its approach to immersion was appreciated but conflicted with errant AI and a non-diegetic UI.

driver 2 ameliorates many of these concerns while retaining the excellent driving mechanics of the first. wetting one’s whistle as a wheelman here is still every bit as improvisational and reactionary as before, but the game is far more playful and granular. the most impressive thing here (and something redriver 2 so excellently preserves) is how well textured and moody these worlds are. weather effects, a canvas of painterly skies, and catchy jingles set the tone here, but reflections is excellent at landmarking their maps and making streets visually distinct and legible in spite of issues with draw distance. this is really impressive work with regards to creating a sound representation of a city for its era across four maps, particularly considering the genre we’re dealing with. on top of this, maps have added complexity in structure – no longer beholden to straight roads, driver 2 packs plenty of curvy roads, twisting alleys, underground tunnels and highway ramps that allow for more player expression and more opportunities for evasion. for instance, winding between trees and weaving a path in and out of traffic, effectively creating a slalom route, is something i found myself doing to a much greater extent than in the original, specifically when these opportunities actually exist for once.

the difficulty of driver 2 still subscribes to the same few tenets – the AI remains as predatory and uncompromising as ever, cars are still difficult to takedown, missions still have very little margin for error, time limits are still strict, RNG means traffic patterns will always reset on a re-attempt of a mission (and occasionally the path your enemy will take does as well), when youre chasing somebody you have to be roughly within 100 m of them or they will escape – but the game remains more playful in mission variety and execution. it’s a heartpounding moment when you have a set amount of time to take down an ammunition supply truck, only to then have your hopes dashed the minute you actually take down the truck because now you have to commandeer a heavily damaged truck to its new destination under the same time limit. my fingers practically seized up when i actually made it there, and then with ten seconds on the clock i was still told i had to open up the garage, park the truck, and close the garage. and then in the next mission you chase another truck except its throwing a grenade every second at you. so the difficulty is as nailbiting as ever, but tuned for least amount of frustration, save for a few borderline kaizo instances. the most infamous of these is chase the gunman – a mission which inevitably combines every single element of driver 2s difficulty, revolving around drifting alongside a narrow canyon to take down a gunman while contending with jutting out fences, trees, and other traffic – but even this is far less frustrating than the presidents run from the first game, and despite its hardcore difficulty, at least feels within the realm of human execution. when i finally cleared it i had essentially achieved a perfect run, my car in delicate lockstep with my opponents, drifting in perfect synchronization and carving a path to exploit traffic patterns and put him down for good. just about the only annoyances here are inconsistent time limits on retries.

the on-foot element of the game is frequently cited as a distraction but i found it charming and unintrusive, and usually achieved appropriately within its mission design. driving on to a boat and veering to a halt to clamber out of the vehicle and plant c4 charges, then rushing back into your car and accelerating to jump off the boat….beating a train and exiting your car to save someone in the trunk of another car on the brink of railway execution…it’s charming in execution, perhaps not vital but fresh for its time and respectable. this element, too, is greatly improved from its PS1 incarnation by simple virtue of improved performance.

all this and more from a title left in the dust, but rebuilt and re-enforced so as to highlight its strengths.
cesar brandi has a particular view on restoration which i happen to like. he posits that restoration is "the methodological moment in which the work of art is recognized, in its material form and in its historical and aesthetic duality, with a view to transmitting it to the future." i think this is what redriver 2 accomplishes so compellingly, so deftly, in a way that a lot of remasters and remakes fail to capitalize on – and in this climate of publishers and developers routinely exploiting the audience’s desire for regressive nostalgia, for re-experiencing puerile, unchallenging, dopamine-inducing entertainment from youth, i think it’s an almost necessary title. it certainly gave me a lot to think about, and its staggering how the right craftsmanship can elevate a title previously deemed inferior. im really hoping for more of these cleverly considered projects to blindside me in the future.

github for download and installation instructions: https://github.com/OpenDriver2/REDRIVER2