I was initially very excited to replay this. I remember being completely blown away by the presentation when I played a ps3 demo unit at our local Game Crazy when I was 11 years old and a couple years later I eventually made enough money to snag a ps3 slim and this game from a pawn shop (life was tough when I was a teenager but that's somewhat irrelevant I guess). And for the first half...this game held up to my memories of it.

Then you get to the ice planet and the game becomes the Webster dictionary definition of "unbalanced". Suddenly, every weapon but the alpha cannon becomes weak sauce and a single bullet from anything can drop health by 75%- even with the "best" armor in the game. The cragmites are the worst offenders and even when you know how to stun lock them...they still take an eternity to kill and ruin the pacing. Tachyon, the final boss, is equally as obnoxious and nigh impossible to kill unless you have the RYNO. I did it without just to say I've done it, but I don't think it's worth it for the average player. It's almost like this weird case of 90's US rental market philosophy applied to a game made in 2007 when rentals weren't nearly as big of a deal.

Worth playing? Maybe. But even the first game, which the fanbase seems to enjoy crapping on, has aged far more gracefully. Sure, you don't get as many hit points, but at least you'll never be one shotted outside of the obvious scenarios.