"This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game."

man. this was so bad that it made me start getting really annoying about gaming remakes on twitter which I'm continually embarrassed by, but it's hard for me to not be cynical about this thing on a level greater than 'i don't like what they did to a game that i think is good' bc to me it speaks to almost everything I find frustrating about the games industry at the moment

and like, I don't like to be miserable about media that isn't actively harmful! so what a shame that this remake feels actively miserable about the original game itself. it feels like the gaming zeitgeist at large sometimes have to be told when they're allowed to like old games instead of giving them the sweeping dismissal we generally give to anything older than a decade. if a game hasn't had a popular youtube essay about why it's good, actually, then it needs a remake to be playable in the modern age, right? jim ryan got absolutely demolished for asking why anyone would want to play a ps2 game nowadays, but we'll still eat this up because it has pretty lighting or w/e?

anyway to actually speak about the game itself, I think a lot of really questionable details in its presentation were largely overlooked when it came out. most people agreed that the new UI kinda sucks, but I've seen much less focus given to the janky facial animations (which will look worse in a few years than the original's lack of animation does now btw, there's a reason fromsoft straight up didn't bother) and questionable cutscene lighting and direction. a lot of scenes that from's team evidently gave a lot of care to in the original, like the dragon cutscene in 1-1 and king allant's entrance, look flat and lifeless in comparison - perhaps lit more realistically but cinematographically botched and much less effective. NPCs emote too much when they don't need to, and too little when they do, and every edge on most of the character designs has been sanded down to an unreasonable degree. the voice acting is a huge step down, the animation is all more weightless, etc, etc

fromsoftware are such an unlikely success story, and demon's souls has a weird place in their catalogue where it often gets dismissed as a kind of janky dark souls prototype instead of being taken on its own merits, so it kinda sucks to see it finally given mainstream attention only when its original paint job is stripped away in favour of something that exists primarily to show off the ps5's ability to push polygons. fromsoft's name isn't even attached to this in public, the vast majority of their original work taken out and replaced with presentation that's completely detached from the original's quiet, subversive style, despite bluepoint insisting that it's the same because they kept the gameplay intact or w/e

anyway this review is way too long and idk if i'm even allowed to post this here when it's so irrelevant to the game itself but I think this thing's mixed reception should prompt a lot of us to reconsider how we think about criticising games. is it an example of obnoxious purism when someone criticises the sweeping change in architectural style here, or the brighter colour palette? personally I think we should appreciate those details a lot more even before a new studio arrives to replace them wholesale, I have a lot more fun getting nerdy about the little things in games than I do trying to not be pretentious about them, and I think the push for better game preservation is allowed to point this stuff out without being shot down for nitpicking or w/e

(mask off, I think bluepoint are artistic terrorists and sotc ps4 was just as bad as this! give me my atmospheric haze or give me death, cowards)

checked out the ign walkthrough to see how far through this chore i was and almost started crying when i saw the video linked for "how to find the infinity gauntlet easter egg" guys i can't do it

this is literally stale white bread in video game form like i don't get it!! what do we all like so much about this?? i see the upgrade menu and the quest log and all the useless extra skills and my eyes glaze over instantly. i literally have not felt less of a drive to keep playing something since i trudged through bioshock infinite. this thing is 20 hours long apparently and even with my relatively generous amount of free time i absolutely cannot imagine getting through all of that

also the combat is barely functional and contextually boring as shit, i've been spoiled by other games that make an effort to characterise their enemies bc seriously - what is there to be engaged by while i'm fighting generic troll #8 or a fucking stone golem. at the worst of times there's absolutely nothing here

i'm gonna go retreat back to my cave. fallout 2 here we come babeyyyyy!!!

I haven't even FINISHED this yet and I already need to comment on how good it is - it's fucking insane how quickly you learn to parse all the insane shit going on in these levels and reach that state of intentionality + flow, for me stage 5's combat gauntlet became a kind of "holy shit i get it" moment where everything just CLICKED

hoping the last few levels aren't too much of a wall bc i want to get into treasure's catalog so bad, I started this and alien soldier on the same day and both have me v excited to dive in more

update: the last few levels were - in fact - quite the wall LMAO, I've finished harder stuff so this isn't going on shelved just yet but god it's hard to find the motivation to get good enough at the final stage to complete all those consecutive bosses, especially when green is kicking my ass so hard

one of the best games I have literally ever played, consistently ahead of its time to the point where the rest of us probably haven't caught up

also nowhere near as hard as its reputation had me expecting! it is near-impenetrable at first but supereasy mode is plenty forgiving and it has a surprisingly well-considered difficulty curve, it ramps up pretty gradually with the exception of a few "wall" bosses to serve as proper skill gates, like sniper honeyviper, seven force, etc

I need to also point out that on supereasy there's a fucking manual slow-motion feature!!! the madmen including an accessibility feature that's STILL rare all these years later back on the mega drive... insane

I do almost yearn for a version of this game made for the genesis 6-button pad but the insane, unwieldy control scheme is better than it has any right to be and mostly serves as a reminder of how bold treasure were willing to be, and besides, only having to move your fingers between three buttons probably does help with how manic things can get

but yeah, game is a technical masterpiece and damn near perfect, anyone want to go 68000 THE HEART ON FIRE with me

fromsoft's strangest, most disturbing and effortlessly surprising game since demon's souls, and one that feels like it absolutely should not exist

i have more issues with elden ring's gameplay than most other souls games but i seriously think this thing has a lot of fromsoft's best, most haunting art & direction ever, and it's a real success compared to the exhaustingly rote version of souls seen in ds3

i like it a lot :)

1: richter is a hunk. best belmont i think

2. this has a really good difficulty level on a richter-only run RIGHT UP UNTIL the stage with shaft's ghost. fuck that part

3. the copy-paste CV1 dracula fight these games love to trot out sucks so bad! it's so tedious... at least he doesn't teleport on top of you so much in this one though

game is fun! I can see why CV fans love it and it did occasionally get me v hyped up when it was at its peak w/ music and level design

unbelievably ahead of its time, the meta storytelling & unwaveringly ambitious presentation give this game an atmosphere and general vibe like nothing else - it feels like it belongs to the same band of hugely accomplished 5th gen games as silent hill and vagrant story but you can definitely feel its influence pop up in some v different gaming circles, the team ico vibes here are exactly as potent as you might expect

I didn't come out of it feeling like I had just experienced a total masterpiece or anything but I was still VERY into its sense of subtlety and restraint, the team's attempts to turn saga into a genuinely countercultural jrpg consistently shine through. the character design is strange and hard to parse, the cutscenes have a consistent sense of quiet tension and the gameplay often takes a backseat when it needs to, it's really great!

I love the decision to keep the voice acting in japanese in all versions as well, I'd probably prefer a pseudo-language so that the untranslated version would have this too but the sense of mystery it gives the dialogue when you can't understand it is fantastic, it's a shame 'panzerese' generally sounds kinda goofy but something like NieR's chaos language would've been perfect. as it stands it seems very well acted to someone not versed in the language, I just can't be bothered to dig up any japanese discussion of the game to find out whether that's true lmao

anyway i'm going to steal azel's gender. thank u for reading