Where Ridge Racer 4 felt buttery smooth and gorgeous in every way, V tests your limits with some truly unforgiving AI and harsh penalties for the smallest mistakes. The mood is darker to match this, the story is completely absent again and the soundtrack has shifted gears; DRFTDVL and Fogbound are excellent. The handling is precise to a fault and never feels off, and the return to arcade-like 60fps helps massively. I see this and R4 as complimentary to each other, though the full package isnt quite as smoothed off. I wish I could turn the announcer off, there is very little track variety, the resolution feels less crisp than it's PS1 predecessor thanks to poor software-level interlacing.
Still, this is just as worthy as Ridge Racer 4. An excellent sequel that treads new ground without forgetting what made it so great. Unbelievable that a game launched the same day as the PS2 can play this well.

A PS1 game running at 30fps has no right feeling as good as this. Insanely good OST. A beutiful and cohesive aesthetic. Well-paced GP mode that gives you time to breathe in between races with some light story (also reactive to your performance in the races) and even allows you to save partway through so you can return to it later, making this an easy one to pick up and play for a quick few minutes at a time. I can overlook the small number of tracks when everything is as tight and perfected as this.

Poorly programmed and inconsistent, though the immensely unfair challenge was somewhat satisfying in the first half when you figure out some of the tricks to break the game. Looking up speedruns made it clear you can just jump right on top of an enemy and stealth kill them that way if you get the angle right.
Unfortunately even this wasn't enough to make me want to push past a certain point when the ridiculous difficulty and AWFUL checkpoints outweighed the satisfaction of overcoming it. I looked it up and I still had just under half the game left to go so I cut my losses.
Was a nice surprise hearing Zim's VA though.

Breaks more ground than Bayo 2 by virtue of not simply being a worse version of the first game (which is perfect). This has so many differences in visuals, engine, gamefeel and story that it doesn't even feel like the same developer.
The sheer amount of stuff fucking crammed into every corner of this game is in of itself incredible and it makes for a fun time overall even if the general balancing isn't close to being as tight as the first game.
I didn't see what the fuss with the ending was about until the literal last five minutes of gameplay. They could have stopped the game just a tiny bit sooner. Probably could have gone down better if it didn't play out so rushed but the story in general feels like a million ideas happening at once that they attempted to make coherent (fitting metaphor for the game). The series was never known for it's incredible writing but the characters definitely feel even more inconsistent than in Bayo 2.
Sadly lends itself very poorly to replays thanks to very weak setpieces and gameplay that wears thin. Like Bayonetta 2 the poor animation timings for enemies really comes out on higher difficulties.

Despite all of my issues I'm still glad a game like this got made even if it only resembles my all-time favourite game in spirit, but really what other series would lend itself so well as an excuse to just put EVERYTHING in a single cartridge? Truly bananas game development, we may not get another like it.

Very cool looking game with some extremely tedious combat and puzzles that are just there. Simultaneously some of the maddest and unforgettable imagery I've seen in games yet doesn't go far enough compared to the artwork it's based off. Some things appear toned down from the initial trailers, focusing more on the gory aspect rather than the explicitly sexual for the most part which is a little disappointing considering this is otherwise a fairly unrestrained piece of work.
The puzzles are more of an excuse to flesh out the world and work to sell the mechanical, unfeeling nature of it all much like Silent Hill sold it's downright devious world through riddles. Unlike Silent Hill, the combat actively gets in the way and becomes a massive chore very quickly, especially when it ramps up in later levels. This serves to take you out of the world more than suck you in, they could have at least made the enemies a bit more terrifying rather than annoying to deal with. As it stands you're just playing a very basic survival horror, but it's from a first person perspective so the (likely purposeful) jank feels more out of place than if you had tank controls.

This should have leaned more towards being a walking simulator, or a very fucked up variant of Myst. It tries too hard to be a videogame when it really didn't need to be. They should have committed to making it a good, proper game, or stuck with the puzzles and put more resources into making them feel more unique. It is only slightly charming that this reminds me of some low-budget Japanese Xbox-only games.

That said, I can already tell some parts will be impossible to forget and I have to commend the artists and animators big time for working so hard and for so long to bring this very specific vision to life. I definitely enjoyed the main draw of the game despite it's many, many problems everywhere else.

'Please create an account to pla-'
NO! I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!!!!!!
deletes game
Warner Brothers is screwed! AAHHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
cries myself to sleep over being locked out of playing the funny anime Shaggy character

At first I was absolutely in love with this. The zombies manage to strike fear in you and the way the police station is laid out is interesting while the robust map system removes the backtracking from the PS1/early HD Resi titles, keeping the pace fairly brisk.
Everything after the police station does slowly decline in quality though. It becomes more linear which by itself isn't a huge issue, but it does start to wear thin at this point when you're relying on the gunplay more and more. The guns work well for a survival horror game but as it leans more on the action you start to wish you were playing Resi 4 instead - they even have an enemy that you defeat the same way as the Regenerators. This is exacerbated when going through the bonus content. The original has a completely different perspective and control scheme so I don't find myself pining for a better third-person shooter while playing it.
Visuals are drop-dead gorgeous even if Claire's facial animations seemed a bit off. Story still maintains some Resident Evil cheese but tones it down enough to suit the bigger focus on a horror atmosphere compared to most of what came before (including the original game which was nowhere near as dark as this one).
Still highly recommended even if I personally didn't feel like replaying it past the 2nd Run. The first impression this leaves for the first few hours is incredible and worth playing for alone, and the tedium that sets in never stopped me from finishing.