If nothing else, an interesting test run for what could have been an alternative approach to third-person shooters instead of the RE4 template that ended up becoming widely adopted. It's a neat concept - the success of the player depends on their ability to dodge incoming attacks and tap the attack button as quickly as possible rather than emphasizing the aiming aspect of shooting - but the surrounding pieces feel shockingly scant for what was part of the infamous "Capcom 5." It's even weirder knowing that Shinji Mikami directed this game as well, since there's almost no indication of his fingerprints beyond the tightness of the mechanics on display. It's difficult to describe how little there is to dissect/discuss here outside of the gunplay: the writing is flat and borderline unfinished in how threadbare it is, and Vanessa has virtually no characterization beyond wanting to get paid and being a proto-Bayonetta with her spicy mid-combat posing. It's just so...nothing. I can't say I didn't have a good time, as the actual game is decent enough for a quick playthrough, but I'd be hard-pressed to describe it in any meaningful way beyond its combat. Disappointingly shallow.

Cuteness can go quite a long way in making a game more palatable. Gameplay-wise, this is a run-of-the-mill platformer with almost no challenge bar a handful of weirdly tuned levels. Aesthetically, though, this is a total treat - every level has this adorable hand-crafted feel to it, and the soundtrack being made up of mostly recorders and kazoos (instruments predominantly used by children) adds even more wholesome energy to the experience. Not my favorite game of this kind, but I wouldn't trade the straight vein of good vibes this gave me for anything.

Finally went back to beat this after starting it multiple times at friends' houses growing up without finishing. For what it's worth, my adult appreciation of this is far more holistic than than the one from my childhood - this isn't just a fun Scooby-Doo game but a genuine love letter to a property from a talented team of creatives that clearly loved the source material. As a lifelong fan of the Scoobster and his multiple spin-offs (there's a few "Pup Named Scooby-Doo" references I definitely didn't remember seeing before), it warms my heart to see something I was once passionate about be given such a carefully crafted experience like this.

That being said, I have a few bones to pick with the game itself, namely in the unnecessary difficulty spikes and wonky camera controls. Levels like "Aghast at the Mast" are so frustratingly designed and padded out that I'm almost glad child me never had to experience them, since they nearly killed my playthrough this time. And the camera exacerbates the awful levels by not allowing for player control, instead relying on the direction of approach from the player to determine what visual information needs to be on the screen, often omitting important platforming details just because you walked in the wrong direction. Absolutely infuriating stuff.

Still, I found a lot to love here despite the glaring issues. Would love to see this get the Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated treatment - a new coat of polish might be just what this needs to be a real cult classic.

Charming stuff, if still obviously retaining bits and pieces of it's origins as the first iteration of Resident Evil 4. What little plot there is feels almost like the bones upon which Leon's adventure through the Spanish countryside was built, even down to the final vehicle escape sequence right after finishing off the final boss. I may not feel the need to return to this super often considering how well the later games evolved on the systems and formula set out here, but there's more than enough on offer to justify trying this out at least once.

Not gonna make some grand contrarian gesture here and say that this is totally underrated game that folks need to give a second chance, but I will say that the vitriol this gets seems a bit overblown. Doesn't help that the game makes its worst mistake right off the bat by having you start with Dante's campaign, which has clearly been so slashed to pieces and stitched together that it's hard to believe it was shuffled out the door in this state. DMC has never been a franchise for story people and I'm well aware of that, but even with that caveat I find it strange that no one at Capcom stopped to wonder if the player may need some degree of context to understand why they're doing anything here. It also needs be said that Dante plays terribly here - he's been defanged of almost his entire arsenal of moves from the prior game and is shockingly sluggish considering how vast these levels are. If there is a prime sin this game makes early, it's that it ends up being painfully dull for the entire first campaign.

But then you get to Lucia, which I feel is the part of the game that gets damned with faint praise by most. Sure, she's not the magical band-aid that fixes all of the problems here, but compared to Dante, her campaign feels paced and groomed to somewhat resemble an actual game, and the story finally starts to make sense due to the cutscenes providing actual plot context for what you're doing and who all is involved in the drama. Still, her campaign still suffers from the lack of challenge inherent to the whole game and adds in a couple of shitty water levels for good measure, so it's not like I can call the back half of the game a total resuscitation of the experience.

It's weird - I heard the overwhelming consensus that this was a front-to-back dumpster fire with no redeeming qualities, and by the end of Dante's campaign I was inclined to agree. After Lucia's campaign, though, I feel like this is less a "dire black sheep" entry in the franchise and rather a "merely mediocre misstep" in a franchise I'm learning to fall in love with.

Absolutely incredible atmosphere in this one - you don't get too many horror games with frozen aesthetics (off-hand, I can name the PS2 The Thing and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories) so it's refreshing to see a game embrace the potential of them in earnest. Learning what happened to the decrepit ship you wander is surprisingly engaging, especially with the novel mechanic of reliving the sailors' last moments to change their fates and save them for the unfortunate events that killed them in the first place. Combat's a real slog, though, and the story set in the present is...well, odd is probably the best way to describe it. You go from finding an abandoned ship in the Arctic to fighting frozen monster men to literally fighting monsters before ending it all with an unexpected game of "get to 10 first" with the titan of time, Chronos. There's so little in terms of cohesion or logic to it, and yet I can't help but get swept up in strangeness of it all and the effectiveness of the setting. To call it overlooked would be underselling how much more credit this deserves.

Didn't play the original, but frankly I don't see the need to considering how middle-of-the-road this is. It's your typical isometric dungeon crawler in the vein of Diablo sans the charisma and fleshed-out world of that property. There's just a blandness that pervades the whole experience here, and it's hard to shake how much the lack of character drags down the game on the whole. Credit where it's due: the art design for some of the creatures is sporadically neat, and the atmosphere, while still milquetoast, does manage to be effective in a few areas. Not worth hating, but not entirely worth playing either if you aren't a hound for this kind of thing.

Not gonna wade into the politics of the representation of indigenous folks here, but it does come across as a disappointingly misguided type of exoticism that tries its hardest to be read as reverence. Besides that, I don't have much to critique here other than the length - there's something to be said for a game that doesn't overstay its welcome, but the absolutely frantic pacing can't help but make things feel abbreviated to a fault. In terms of positives, nearly everything else is here is rock solid, from the art design to the gameplay to the voice acting. Very much deserving of the "underappreciated" moniker it receives nowadays even if it doesn't quite scrape greatness often enough. Extra points for the commitment to showing the horrors brought against the humans so bluntly and directly. Seeing a kid get forcefully impaled was not what I expected to see playing this, and I guess that's a compliment in itself.

Respectably solid in nearly every way but narrative. It's kind of crazy to go back and see this weird, melancholy beast of a game with its aesthetics of crumbling opulence and political undertones of a dangerous fascistic empire that the literal earth wants to overturn after so many years and games that have cribbed from it wholesale. I still think the storytelling is too sparse for its own good, but the mechanical foundations are hard to deny in how airtight and well-oiled they all are. I should really get around to the remake and see if that shores up my issues with this game, because there really is a skeleton of something I could love in here beneath the frustrating elements.

Best skyboxes in MMO history, hands down. The rest of Outland? Mostly ok, honestly, despite the incredible environmental design and atmosphere the spaces give off. The new zones are all pretty pedestrian in their questing, and the new dungeons deal with the same issues of early Vanilla dungeons in how they're full of cool looking bosses that have very little mechanical depth to speak of. I enjoyed my time in Burning Crusade quite a bit, but I'd hesitate to call it the "Golden Age of WoW" that a lot of folks proclaim it to be.

Ironically enough, I think the new Harry Potter game that's coming soon may take some notes from this bland movie tie-in game. All the prior games had a charming degree of exploration and open-endedness, but this one chose to follow the aesthetic approach of the film it was adapting and translated the physical space of Hogwarts as it was presented in the movies to an insanely accurate degree. The game itself is mostly mediocre, but I can imagine the developers of Hogwarts: Legacy taking some long looks at the level design and layouts of this game before they built up their own version of the world. A curio of a game, if nothing else.