The past is MY playground, bitch!

REBECCA'S BACK!!

That "press X" screen being as good as Rogue's is like Gordon Ramsey when he's starting too cook some good fucking food.

Another that starts you off as an Assassin from the very beginning? I smell a masterpiece.

I love how the cinematic after assassinations is like in the first game. They even do the feather thing except it's a handkerchief.

Also, train levels are the best, and starting this game with one is promising.

This is my dream Assassin's Creed game. Victorian England with a female protagonist.

I can't believe that it's taken this long to have a main game installment with a female protagonist. But even then, she can't be the only protagonist.

I adore how they're literally speaking English, but the subtitles still translate certain words to non-slang English.

Characters are better written and more memorable than in Unity.

I feel like street enemies are less of a problem and take longer to go to the attack. Thank fuck. And with upgrades, they just won't.

And I LOVE the score.

Entering through windows is a lot easier than in Unity. Like, it actually works.

I feel like I'm more in control of the traversal in general.

Basically, everything is Unity, if Unity worked.

I've hated the idea of the grapple hook since I heard about it, but once I saw the wide streets of London, I understood, and I didn't even know you could use them as a zipline, and this game is so much fucking fun.

And, listen, I like swords, but going around absolutely fucking people up with a cane is just superior.

And the gang and territory element is fire.

It's like Need For Speed: Carbon if you murdered all the rivals.

I love how they basically give you free reign to go through the territories in whatever order you like, but that they still give you a recommended order.

The structure is fucking fantastic. I fucking love it. How the twins go off in different directions each sequence and God this game is so fucking good. It makes the sequences actually feel like separate sequences.

The gang missions are challenging enough to make you stop and think about your approach, but still just straight fun enough to make you want to do them perfectly, with the bonus objectives, and easy enough where you KNOW that you can do it.

Even the box opening animation is way faster and better, which is such a small thing, but makes the experience so much better.

I don't love the Thames, but I love that getting across it is just Frogger.

Side activities are an absolute BLAST. The fight clubs are fun as all hell. And all the London Stories side missions are intriguing and have characters that I actually enjoy, and remember. Even in Revelations and 2, games I consider masterpieces, the side-missions truly feel like side-missions that are just slapped in there to pad out what you can do. Here, in Syndicate, they legitimately just are a part of the game. They feel like a part of the world that you actually want to play to completion.

The Dreadful Crimes are killer. I only did a single murder mystery in Unity because it was so deadly boring and having to actually walk all the way over to the crime scene was murder, but this is just so good. And the last mission blew my mind.

And do not—DO NOT—even get me fucking started on the Lydia Frye shit. Absolute masterpiece!

Load times on console are a bitch, though. If the load times were better, I would have zero problems with this game. The more frustrating sections are only frustrating because every time you die, you have to wait 30 seconds before you can try again.

When it comes to story and characters, while it's probably not my absolute favorite, it's definitely in the top 3. Rogue and Revelations are still just such peak stories. But if I had to choose an Assassin's Creed to play at any time, or could only play one for the rest of my life, this is it. 100%.

This is the only Assassin's Creed where I've bought any DLC. And I've bought every DLC.

WELCOME TO HELIX!

This series has me so badly that I'm legitimately exited about the fake software the evil company in the fictional video game universe has been working on.

It's like a swashbuckler. But it's a video game. Or I wish it was. That's how it starts.

The traversal is a LOT less liberal with the specifics. And the controls just don't work.

I HATE the difficulty and level system they created. Like, why? Why do I need four different kinds of currency? Just give me my abilities! And the outfit thing seems like a neat idea, but it's just a whole bunch of time you could have spent somewhere more important.

And the cover system sucks and never does what I want it to do.

I thought the new eagle vision system was cool at first, but during stealth and more tense moments, it just doesn't work. I hate how enemies disappear from the minimap. Enemies will be right in front of me and I won't even know.

Enemies spot you without you even knowing that there are enemies there or where they're spotting you from.

People see you in the street and immediately try to kill you.

I don't think I've died in combat since Brotherhood, and I've died more in this game than I have in all the others combined.

And I think the game is way too punishing with where it places you after you die.

The stealth is so infuriating, I wish they would have just not incorporated it at all. Just fully made a swashbuckler video game. Instead, not even the swordplay is that enjoyable because the new combat system really loves watching you die out of pure slowness.

And the new wannabe-Hitman assassination system is fucking stupid and repetitive. It adds nothing. It was cool for one mission, and then they gave up. It just makes the game more tedious and the missions longer. And if you fail the mission, you have to restart the whole thing, so, no, fuck you and your game.

Élise being a Templar has no point between the moment you find out, and the moment she stops being one.

The French Revolution feels less like a part of the story or a set piece, but rather more just like something that happens to be going on at the same time as the plot. They never really give a shit about it. Some stuff happens, and then the king is being executed and it means nothing to you because it hasn't before now.

And the modern day stuff doesn't really continue what Black Flag and Rogue did, and is basically just nonexistent, so, garbage game.

The real tragedy in the whole thing is that they didn't spend their time polishing this game to be THE next-gen Assassin's Creed title.

The foundations are all here, but it's bare bone, and for some of it, it doesn't even feel like they haven't polished it, it's like they just didn't finish making the game. Like it's 70% done. There's shit missing.

And FUCK Marie Lévesque and her fucking gala!

This is peak Assassin's Creed.

From the "press X" screen to the end, this game is way more fire than I thought it would be.

It's actually kind of brilliant.

You START as an assassin. Just right off the bat. Which makes way more sense for the story, but still. It's just nice to not have to wait until you get the blade and clothes in the second act.

I didn't know that this was another Abstergo Entertainment story 'cause I thought Black Flag was the only one like that, but I am more than happy to welcome it back. I actually rose up out of my chair and shouted when I realized. And it's even way better than Black Flag's. Pretty much everything is better than Black Flag.

I find the sea environments a bit more intriguing, and cool to look at, even though it doesn't have Black Flag's warm and colorful aesthetic because this is a much grayer story.

The scuffed traversal from 3 was heavily improved in Black Flag and a bit more improved here.

Better boating? Better boating. It has better boating. Both the traversal and combat.

It's just better. And the direction of the actual game is the coolest in the series.

Literally having the 1755 Lisbon earthquake as a set-piece, and you causing it, is fucking brilliant.

All this said, this still sometimes (in the first half) feels very much like it was supposed to be a spin-off like Liberation and Freedom Cry. But it's still peak Assassin's Creed.

It might be my favorite Assassin's Creed story within a single game.

It's almost unfair to compare it to the Ezio games because the tech and the team have actually evolved so much in between that they can do so much more in this game.

Next to last mission MIGHT be my favorite mission in the whole franchise.

And I haven't played Unity yet, but I know the basics, like the setting and the main character's name, and I know how the game starts, and playing this last mission was a fucking trip! I'm telling you... PEAK!

PEAK ASSASSIN'S CREED!

When I first played this after it came out, I did not like it. It was my least favorite in the series up to then, and a big contribution to the reasons why I stopped. The only parts I actually liked were the modern day stuff.

Replaying it now, many years later, I see it. I see the charm, and the pull. The gameplay is rather smooth, with a very interesting and intriguing story. The visuals are vibrant and attractive, especially opposed to the predecessor's dull and grey tone. Most of all, it has characters that I actually sort of care about. Everything here makes a good game. A great one, maybe.

The game makes it very clear that Edward is a good lad because his quartermaster is a black man, and his later quartermaster is a woman, which is fucking cool as shit.

And when the story hits, it definitely hits. I probably wouldn't cave for a 7/10 if it weren't for the last hour. Ending is an all-timer.

And Matt Ryan is great.

I couldn't appreciate it as a kid, but the sense of progression you get from upgrading your ship and expanding your crew is great. At first. Then it just sort of becomes a thing you're almost forced to do unless you want to die or if you just have nothing else to do with your days.

The traversal is on the same branch as Assassin's Creed 3 (bad), but it's heavily improved and has much better environments for it (very good).

The combat can get pretty weird and unresponsive sometimes, both on sea and land.

But I really like the Uncharted-esque meshing.

I think I've grown. I can accept this as a great installment in the Assassin's Creed franchise, even though it's the first one after Desmond, and he—and his relationship to the characters—was sort of the whole reason why the series worked and was so effective for me.

"Maybe I'll hit your weak point, for MASSIVE DAMAGE!"

Immediate start. Ninja Theory knows what the fuck they're doing when it comes to cinematically presenting video games.

Nariko legitimately looking straight into the camera and asking the player why they sent her here, saying that they turned her into a killer, and telling them she's not ready to die yet. And shouting "Do not abandon me! Not now I need you the most!" as I'm getting ready to turn the game off for the day.

Masterpiece?

Controls feel a little scuffed and a bit slow and unresponsive. But I'm so used to the DMC/Bayonetta super-quick style of hack-n-slash, and less of the rhythm-style of gameplay.

But I love how the gameplay never lets you settle down and go "this is what the game is." It's constantly switching things up, and breaking up the hack-n-slash with different gameplay sequences.

The aftertouch is one of most batshit things to watch. You literally make cannon balls go in upwards arcs.

The voice-acting is pretty fantastic, and Andy Serkis is a hoot (he was also one of the writers and directors). And the lip-syncing is surprisingly advanced.

And Kai is the best character ever created. And her voice-acting is beyond this world.

The script is legitimately funny. And legitimately dramatic. And legitimately tense. And seriously sad and frightening sometimes.

And one specific sequence, coupled with Kai's voice-actress, is seriously bone-chilling.

The gameplay can feel aged and unpolished, and you have to replay entire sections if you die, but the story, and structure, and pure execution of this game, more than makes up for it.

I found myself wishing it never ended.

That's actually really fucking cool.

He's no DMC5 Vergil, but it can get pretty groovy.

This is the only Devil May Cry game that ever had any DLC levels, and that alone is cool, but I actually love the structure of this.

I wish it had an end boss fight, though. Just Mundus or Dante. Something.

This starts with strippers, and Dante getting blown. Best game.

Don't do it, but this game just feels like you should drink energy drinks while playing.

Dante doesn't give a fuck. He's great. I love him. He isn't #MyDante, but he isn't #NotMyDante. He's also from Jersey.

This is like what I think a live-action adaptation of DMC would be like.

I love the way they cut from gameplay to cutscenes. It's not as jarring as most games.

I love the text.

I love the balls-out all-in insane style.

Some of this level design is just the fucking best. And, I mean, what the fuck, you're inside a news jingle.

It's funny that they used the Succubus dialogue during the marketing 'cause that's, like, legitimately the worst part of the game.

The second worst part is when you're underground and shit and you're heading to the tower. It just isn't that nice to look at.

I think it's really fucking cool that they sort of adapted Nero's grab attack 'cause that was the best addition in DMC4.

I love the blend of the more modern world with almost a more traditional depiction of angels and demons.

The weapon switching system (inspired by Heavenly Sword) is my favorite of the series. It's so easy and lets you string different weapons together a lot more controlled than in the other DMC games.

"Angel Mode"? "Devil Mode"? This is the most gloriously 2010s edgy game ever made.

Fuck you, Joe. You've tricked me into thinking this game was bad for 9 years.

Honestly? I sort of wish they ran both series at the same time.

If it wasn't for the fact that the combat gets a bit repetitive towards the later half, and that some of the level design isn't that interesting to look at, I'd give it a 9.

And white-haired Dante becomes the "Standard" skin after you beat the game, so everything it changes about the lore is justified.

"How many fools can I kill today? Too many to count, don't get in my way."

Featuring probably the saddest quick-time event prompt.

Okay, I remember I didn't like the character models in this game, but it's actually worse than I remember. WHAT HAPPENED TO REBECCA?!

Climbing? Climbing? Flows like water. 2 is still smoother in the overall traversal, but this climbing is faster. I find the rest of the traversal a lot less reliable. In an attempt to stop occurrences of the player shooting off in directions they don't want to go, I feel they've made the controls less responsive, and thus eliminated minor changes in direction, even when you're the one who instigates them.

And they've done something weird with the jumping across platforms. Every jump almost feels scripted. Like, in 2, you run to an edge, and Ezio jumps, and then maybe you land on a rooftop, or you don't and you have to catch the edge, or something. But here, when you get to the edge, the game stops and calculates whether or not you're going to make the jump, and everything slows down, and they play this scripted animation of Connor jumping and landing. It's very jarring, and breaks immersion so fucking fast.

Haytham's section of the game is way too long. Like, at least twice as long as it should be.

Those three boat missions are only effective as a way to break up the gameplay those three times. Glad it's over, and that everyone will realize how awkward they are in an Assassin's Creed game, and won't put any more of those in any future games.

These guys' answer to two thirds of the Brotherood map being annoying nothing is to have whole maps in this game just be fucking forest.

It's so fucking empty.

Even when you're in the cities, the streets are so wide that you can't jump between buildings, so what's the point? Just run on the street.

And do I need to do everything?

Ratonhnhaké:ton is supposed to go to this guy's house to ask for training. So, you have to get through the forest, to the guy's house, and interact with the door. He doesn't answer, so then you have to go to the stables to spend the night. Then, the next morning, you have to go up and interact with the door again. Then you go and interact with the back door. Then you go and interact with the balcony door. Then you go to the stables.

I get it. Just fucking do a cutscene, I don't care. I'm not here to knock on doors.

Pacing is nonexistent.

It's 2013 and we've already reached the point of "so realistic, it's tedious and boring."

You can't open the game with one of the coolest missions, and then make me play hide and seek, and hunt wildlife.

You don't get the assassin's suit until almost halfway through the game.

I feel like the reason the Ezio part of the Assassin's Creed story was so special, beyond the fact that there were three games, was the fact that Ezio knew about Desmond (after 2). It made the story feel much more like one whole rather than two halves. And then the fact that Ezio was an Altaïr fanboy made the Altaïr part more connected with Ezio's. Connor just doesn't really have that.

But...you know...at least Desmond's fucking there!

And I feel like most of the criticism I ever heard about this game was about Connor as a character. And I have no problem with Connor. The problem isn't the protagonists, it's literally everyone else. They're all so fucking boring. The whole world is boring.

But I do love how Connor's and Desmond's stories are both about fathers and sons.

The story itself is bad-ass and cool. It's the actual game that sucks.

I feel they should have waited with this for the next game. I don't know why, but the transition of setting from AC1 to AC2 feels natural. Way more natural than AC2 or Revelations to AC3.

It's so different. AC2 felt like a more polished AC1. This feels like they're starting over. Connor even speaks like Altaïr.

But I love fire in video games, and there are a surprising amount of segments surrounded by fire, so that's cool.

"A Sort of Homecoming."

If it wasn't clear from the previous games, Ezio is the biggest Altaïr fanboy.

Replaying the first game was definitely worth it. Just from the reaction I get when Ezio says "Acre" in the intro.

You thought Ezio was a bad-ass in his 20s? You thought he was a bad-ass in his 40s? You ain't seen shit.

Finally. Hook blade.

DEN DEFENSE!!

Best game.

There's even a part where you get to beat up Italian minstrels. "I am going to enjoy this."

They literally call the first Assassin's Creed game "frankly primitive."

And then you start Desmond's Journey, and it turns into one of those really cool simplistic Steam indie games that actually hold really deep and meaningful stories and go viral every few years. Except this isn't as good as that, but it's still pretty cool.

But your notorious level goes up WAY too easy in this game.

Fixed camera angles can look really nice in big spaces. And they do. But can you please stop it when I'm supposed to make precise jumps? I cannot see where the fuck I'm supposed to aim.

And I honestly sort of wish they would have kept Altaïr's monotone American voice. It was kind of iconic. But you get used to the new one, and those Altaïr sections are the dog's bollocks.

In 2 and Brotherhood, the secret locations were cool. But here, they're some of the coolest parts of the series.

And, listen, 2's characterizations are great, near perfect, but this is THE masterpiece.

And it definitely has the worst Desmond side of the story (because it's barely existent), but that just doesn't change THE masterpiece.

This game packs an emotional punch like no other Assassin's Creed.

Not only the perfect end for Ezio, but also for Altaïr.

Truly the end of an era.

These guys really know you always start a game with a quick-time event.

THE LIFTS!

Everything feels even faster, and even smoother than in 2.

I can definitely tell why this was always my favorite. It's like 2, but better. And smaller, which is a surprisingly good thing. And more 2012 stuff.

The second game added the cutscenes, but here we're really doing cutscenes.

Truly a sequel. Immediately starting off with a bombastic action set piece.

And, even though I don't like Rome as much as Florence or Tuscany, I'm glad that they sent us somewhere we hadn't REALLY been before, because I don't think I'd be able to handle having to unlock those cities again.

But I do not like the terrain outside the Centro District. At all.

But horses IN the city? Bruv.

I will say that renovation was a lot more satisfying in Assassin's Creed 2, and just less of a hassle.

They made Desmond's lines a lot more Nathan Drake, and... Gotta be honest, I don't think it's entirely within character for him to speak like this, but I do love it. It's like he's actually comfortable with the crew enough to just be a person.

And the crew is the best crew to ever crew.

I love how Desmond starts doing that thing that we do. Like, Desmond says "I" when he means Ezio. And we usually say "I" when we mean the player character.

I think I enjoy Ezio here a bit less, but Desmond a bit more, so it balances out.

I love that the combat is easier, but one would probably say it's too easy. I mean, except for that one piece of armor you're told to buy, I didn't buy a single armor piece or weapon throughout the entire game. You just insta-kill everybody.

The Assassin Recruits element is a saving grace to break the game up a bit. And it works. It fucking works, man. It's genius, and so obvious, and I love it.

With the added punch of the Cristina missions, this is a masterpiece.

I would probably say it's no Assassin's Creed 2. But maybe it is.

I did fall through the map at one point.

CUTSCENES!

THE MUSIC!!

FEDERICO!!!

I legitimately cried during that title sequence. Assassin's Creed 2, I've missed you.

After replaying the first game after not having touched this franchise for well over half a decade, and not really liking it, I was scared that I wasn't gonna like this one as much as I remembered.

Two years. How were there two years between these games?! One hour into this, and it's already a masterpiece.

Instantly. Even the main menu is eras better than the first game.

This game probably has the greatest basics tutorial of any game. You're a literal toddler.

Ezio. This fucking Italian.

"A minute is all I need."

Ezio's voice lines, even just while in-game, are fucking magnificent. Fuck Altaïr.

"I'm mostly innocent!"

Look at these streets! The freedom!!

Look at that climbing! LOOK at that climbing! Teenager Ezio climbs this motherfucker twice as fast as Altaïr in his prime! In the first game, I would legitimately run around buildings rather than climb them because of how slow Altaïr was, but here... I still have that in my head, and almost run around, and then I remember which game I'm playing, and I look up the building, and I start climbing... Bliss.

And it never really hit me in the first game, but my acrophobia legitimately settles in when I'm up high enough in this game.

And when you first see those wires between the buildings? Bliss.

This game is like when you go from Devil May Cry 2 to Devil May Cry 3, and you're like "How was this made by the same people?!"

They introduce a system where you invest and renovate a town, which—on paper—sounds like it'd be the most boring shit, but it's one of the things I'm most invested in in this game.

The game's tone is less dull, yes. But that doesn't mean it can't get legitimately creepy and mysterious at times.

It's like a "dark" renaissance.

That's not to say this game hasn't aged a day in 13 years. It has. It definitely has.

Fuck Venice. FUCK! VENICE! I love the aesthetic and look of it, but fuck Venice's canals!

The story has a problem with time. It doesn't feel like any time passes by. Up until the last sequence, the story takes place over the course of 12 years, but it honestly could have been a couple of months and I wouldn't have noticed a difference. And I honestly don't know how they could have improved it.

But the story itself is magnifico. Pure brilliance.

I always feel so bad for Ezio at the end. "Who is Desmond?" But that's sort of what really makes this game, and Ezio as a character. Really the cherry on top.

Finishing this game is like finishing that TV show you've been binging all 6 seasons of. But it's not like that. You could just go right into Brotherhood, but it still feels like, "Well... What do I do now?"

At the end of the day, I enjoyed this game more than the first one, by a longshot. In the first one, I didn't even do the viewpoints. I did one for each city, and that was it. No more. I could walk right past a flag, and would not deviate a single foot to go grab it.

Here, I've done every single viewpoint, every Assassin Tomb, every glyph, grabbed all 100 feathers, every codex, done every beat up mission, every courier mission, every race, every assassination, and renovated a whole-ass city. Because I legitimately want to. And not because I think I'm gonna get a reward or anything, but Maria is grieving for fuck's sake, she needs these feathers!

This does not work.

This is definitely a tech-demo. There's no way this is a full game. This is a proof of concept. This is an early-access pre-alpha build for a Steam indie game.

How DARE this game be this long?!

And how dare the environment be this open?! There's nothing in it!

You know how we say a game is "unfinished" when it's buggy and stuff. But this game is barely even started. WHO SAID THEY COULD RELEASE THIS?!

These guys have never seen a cutscene before.

These guys have never played a stealth game before.

This color grading sort of works in what it wants to do, but everything looks so fucking boring.

They're lucky they put the game on the Revelations disc for free 'cause if I paid money for this game I'd legitimately burn their offices down.

This gameplay sucks.

It probably has the worst basics tutorial.

The traversal is a good starting point, especially for 2007, but it is SO SLOW! And it's not even slow as in just physically slow, it's almost never smooth. You climb up a building because it looks like you should be able to climb up it, and then Altaïr stops halfway up because he can't climb the rest of the building, even though it legitimately looked just like the bottom part of the building, and very much looked like you should be able to climb it, so you have to slowly shimmy your way to the side and climb another part of the building while people are throwing rocks and shooting arrows at you. Fun. Sometimes I might hold the stick a bit to the left, because the left thumb's axis is on the left, and Altaïr will just shoot out to the left and die.

The goal in this game is to get from point A to point B, and then listen to a boring-ass conversation, and then get from B to C, and hit a button, and then go to another C, and then another C, and then walk back to B, and then go to D, hit a button, and then walk back to B, and then back to A, and do it again, and again, and again. And while there are different B's and C's, they still look and play exactly the same. D is the only thing that sort of changes enough to not feel too monotonous.

This structure could be really interesting, if it wasn't for the fact that every segment of the game is the same as the rest. And there is some beauty in its simplicity, but there's also boredom.

Oh, side quests? You want me to do side quests? You want me to collect 420 flags? Hehe... HAHA... HAHAHAHAHAH! You fucking idiots. Why in the FUCK would I do that?

And also, there are just random-ass pedestrians whose only goal in life is to push you. Fuck them. Fuck whoever programmed that shit. It does nothing but annoy me.

Informer Assassinations reset if you get discovered. Even if you kill both, and then bump into a fucker two feet from the informer, that will reset the whole thing and you have to kill both again.

There's a part where you have to jump across small boats and posts to get to a ship to assassinate a guy. What happens if you touch the water? Instant death. INSTANT DEATH!

I'm sure that, if this was the first game of the generation that you tried out, it probably blew your mind, but this is not a game. It is a "wow, this is so cool" experience demo for the new generation. But it isn't new anymore.

Now, I'm not gonna lie. Desmond's story is fucking gold. It is gold. I love the atmosphere of it. And even Altaïr's story goes hard towards the end.

I don't like that Desmond can't go faster than a slow walk, but that's the gameplay aspect again, and you just have to deal, because this is the most interesting part of the game.

I honestly couldn't remember if I had finished this game before this replay, until I hit the credits and instantly remembered the absolute perplexity and stupefaction I felt at how jarringly this game ends, and I had the same experience this time. These guys were on some other shit. You really have to get past the disappointment of the ending before you can really appreciate how fucking ludicrous it is.

As a storytelling technique, I absolutely love it, but fucking tell a story, assholes.

If I could have the atmosphere and story of this, with the smoother and faster and just more polished gameplay of the sequels, then great. But I can't.

Great storytelling, great world-building.

3/10. I love this game.


It's this dilemma. Between knowing that I love the story and atmosphere and everything like that, but also knowing that I did not have fun playing the actual game part of it.

But, now knowing how much I enjoy the last couple of hours of this game, I definitely have to replay it at some point, hoping that, just by having that knowledge, it'll be without the first hours of boredom. But it'll be after I replay all the other AC games, so it'll definitely also be more jarring. So, it loses anyway.

But all this makes sense because the Animus was made by Templars.

Gameplay is a 2/10, everything else is a 7, nearing an 8. I hate splitting ratings up like that because that's not a thing, that's not how this works, but I have to with this fuck.

8/10 tech-demo. 3/10 game.

Masterpiece opening to a game.

This game is fucking AWESOME!

This is among my favorite tones for a game. Just the overall feel and concept is definitely me.

This game is so me that Nick made the EXACT same Punk'd joke that I make all the time. I had no idea.

Also, that one song from Tokyo Drift plays while you run up on the final boss, so that's an extra point.

"Whoa! Zombies suck dick at driving!"

I love the style and the overall gameplay. The way they've set up combos is obviously very neat, and the little segments with gameplay switch-ups are really nice.

But the camera can be pretty garbage at times, especially when you just start up the game for the first time in a while.

And the combat does get kind of clunky. The recovery time between combos is kind of ridiculous, and the fact that you can't exit out of those combos with a simple push of the dodge button.

But the style, and the era, and the dialogue and everything there just completely makes this game.

This game doesn't need a remake. At all. But after the remake, let's finally have a sequel that starts with Juliet and Nick going out to a cabin in the woods and then Nick gets bitten again and Juliet has to chop his head off again.

If a game doesn't have 'Lollipop' by The Chordettes playing on a loop in the items/upgrades menu, it's pretty much a flop.

"My favorite president is Warren G. Harding."

"To be continued..."

I love this game so much, I wish it was better. That's how I feel about this game, summed up. I love it to absolute death, but that's why it pains me so much that it is so flawed and held down by (I'm assuming) rushed deadlines and (again, assuming) straining budget. It could have been such an absolute masterpiece, it really could have.

I did not expect the flood of nostalgia that hit me when I booted this game up, and the music screamed at me, and the main menu started. Just great.

There's some shockingly good level design and composition sometimes, and sometimes also just not. Just fucking not. But the look of it all is fantastic. Even without the behind-the-scenes videos, you can tell these people had a lot of fun making this game.

And the pre-rendered cutscenes are stunning and great.

I always loved how this game started like Ghosts 'n Goblins.

I don't know who's better at sucking Dante's dick; these guys, or Dante himself.

Hack-and-slash protagonists: Devil May Cry: a half-demon devil slayer; Bayonetta: a 500-year-old witch; God of War: the God of War; Dante's Inferno: just a guy, but he's basically as effective.

However, the game is not as fun as any of the others (or at least DMC and Bayonetta). After the two first circles, you can sort of feel the development team going "Oh...shit. Is this gonna work for a whole game? I don't know if we have the time or money..." Almost half of the circles don't even have end bosses, not in the traditional sense anyway, because, even with their obvious liberties, sometimes they actually do at least try to follow the original story as closely as possible.

It's a pretty ambitious and unconventional approach to a game, especially in the hack-and-slash genre. But, looking at the behind-the-scenes stuff, there is SO MUCH stuff that they didn't end up using in the final game, and it all looks great, even fantastic. It all just sort of breaks my heart that they couldn't go all in, because this game means a lot to me.

Either way, this game doesn't give a fuck. The second thing you do is kill Death, and the final boss is Satan, and he's got his dick and balls swinging about and everything.

I love the ending to this game, with all my heart, and would completely accept it as an actual ending, were it not for the fact that they literally say "To be continued" on the God damn screen! Other than that, perfect ending.

With all of its flaws, this is still probably the coolest concept and execution of an idea for an adaptation. The concept alone is enough to carry the entire game on its back. I mean, it's a fucking hack-and-slash game based on The Divine Comedy! Come on!

Make Dante's Purgatory, with the original team.

"'Let's rock, baby!' (Dante, Devil May Cry, 2001)" – Bayonetta (Bayonetta, 2009).

All of these people deserve every award.

A testament to how truly fantastic this game is, is that I'm playing it on the fucked up PS3 version, and it's still a god damn masterpiece.

When I first played this game when I was, like, ten, I wasn't really accustomed to hack-and-slash titles (the only one I'd ever really played was Dante's Inferno, and that game is cake), and the combat's advanced skin kind of put me off, but now I realize that it is so easy to pick up. It is genuinely terrifically made. The moves list can look scary at first glance, but once you've played for an hour or two, that thing is your dance partner and you're tearing up the floor.

The way Bayonetta moves during combat is absolutely flawlessly cool and smooth. Locking together a five-hit combo on a fool, without getting hit by some other enemy, and ending with a Wicked Weave that drains the final bit of their health as they dissolve will never not be satisfying.

The story is delightfully rich and engaging, and actually has twists and moments where I legitimately gasped, either in shock or pure awe of the insane direction behind this game. And beyond these cutscenes being some of my favorite cutscenes in a video game, all of the dialogue in this game is fantastic, and has such a tight, but rich, cast of characters speaking it. All of these characters leave an impression on you. Kind of like how I'd like to leave an impression in

I was unsure if I felt okay with maybe liking this a single bit more than Devil May Cry 3, and then they hit me with a 3-minute dance sequence, and yep.

In other words, Bayonetta (2009), I love you.

Tell me another game that rolls credits over the protagonist pole dancing. Exactly. Masterpiece.

Fuck you, Nintendo.