The faithfulness of System Shock 2023 to the original’s design principles is probably best illustrated with this anecdote: I was still able to beat it after forgetting where I’d put a (theoretically) mandatory quest item.

Axing the original’s unorthodox HUD and control scheme debatably helps this remake carve out its own niche – if anything, it’s more novel to be able to play what’s essentially Ultima Underworld in space with a fairly conventional interface than if it’d just regurgitated something that already exists – but it also makes it appear more different than it really is. As much as I love it when a game demands you meet it on its own terms when it comes to aspects as fundamental as those, I’ve never seen them as the core of System Shock, not least because they didn’t survive into what’d eventually become its own sequel or any spiritual successors Looking Glass’ alumni would go on to contribute to. Progressing through whichever means would make sense if you were really in the Hacker’s shoes, with no arbitrary limitations to tell you that you can’t? Scenarios which would be restrictive, barely interactive setpieces in any other type of game arising organically through the player’s manipulation of overlapping, interconnected mechanics? Lobbing a grenade at something, ducking into a corner and peeking out again to see its giblets gently floating in a gravlift like a cybernetic pinata? These are some of the pillars which much more warmly remind me of what game I’m playing and they’re all here, rendered with visuals and sound which’re likely a series best.

That might seem faint praise, given that this remake’s 24 years removed from its predecessor, but it’s not. System Shock 2 derives its effectiveness in no small part due to its enemies’ (and, later on, environments’) genuinely repulsive visual design, coupled with the Dark Engine’s sound propagation system ensuring that any and all instances of malicious squishing or clanking remain paranoia-inducing no matter the distance between you and their source. It’s a high watermark for the medium in both respects, one which Nightdive’s efforts have adequately followed up on. Seeing a red lens flare in the distance paired with a monotone, faint but increasingly loud “searching” or suddenly seeing the shadow of an invisible mutant under a dynamic light source as you lose your way in a literal maze elicits all the right emotions, as well as some new ones when taken in tandem with a generally higher extent of environmental interactivity than either of the prior two games and TriOptimum’s raddest electric guitars. As much of an earworm as the original game’s MIDIs are, they’ve never instilled in me quite the same feelings as scrambling past inadvertently overturned tables and bonsai trees as a gorilla-tiger barrels down the corridor to the tune of this.

I say generally because there are some odd omissions in that regard, namely the inability to mantle up ledges. Any issues this poses’re circumvented whenever you eventually obtain the V3 hover boots, which allow for an unreal degree of schmovement up down and all around, but (to my knowledge) the earliest point at which you can get those is quite late into the game and long after you’ll have become acquainted with the fact that Shodan’s strongest soldiers are knee-high steps. What exacerbates this somewhat is that you can’t pick up and manipulate objects to more practically stand on top of them – it feels a bit unfair to criticise it for this considering that you can’t in System Shock 1 or 2 either, but given that ostensible influence from one other relatively recent immersive sim rears its head elsewhere, I don’t think its otherwise robust and faithfully labyrinthine level design would’ve been lessened by taking a leaf out of Prey or Deus Ex Mankind Divided’s book in this area.

Prey specifically’s the apparent source of said influence, namely its recycling system, this iteration of which I’d wager is a net improvement. Despite adding to the multifaceted purposes of every item in Prey, there were often cases where recycling was a little too much of a no-brainer; I’m not aware of any incentives to hold on to Typhon organs instead of recycling them into exotic material ASAP, for example. In System Shock 2023, recycling any item always results in the same one resource (i.e. money), but many items take up a hefty amount of inventory slots which are quite precious compared to most similar games, the catch being that you’ll gain noticeably more money if you recycle the item itself instead of first vaporising it into junk (which only takes up a single slot). These two key changes help this system enhance the resource management and decision-making inherent to this series while sprinkling in a bit of similarly characteristic difficulty. Altogether ace.

Difficulty’s one area in which System Shock 2023’s refreshing on multiple levels. Where people seem to equate “gameplay” with “combat” increasingly often, even with reference to games or genres where the latter isn’t the focus and might benefit from there being less of, it’s cool to have a new release which (as the original did) not only recognises that combat comprises just a single part of the experience but also lets you tailor the intensity of it, puzzles and primary objectives independently of one another. So much as figuring out where to go next or even just opening a door’s often as much or more of an endurance test as surviving against Citadel Station’s denizens – with no objective markers, means of tracking your current mission outside of hints in audio logs or even the ability to write notes on your map, this is a game which absolutely doesn’t care if you get lost. Between that, the reveal that Citadel’s intentionally, maliciously designed to be confusing and Shodan’s lovingly re-recorded chastisements accompanying you all the while, there’s surely some ludosomething synchronicity or whatever it’s called to be found as a result of this.

You don’t have to reinvent the proverbial gamer wheel for injecting that sort of experience into the modern zeitgeist to be arguably equally as valuable as the original. Aforementioned omissions like mantling or being able to annotate the map make for occasional frustrations – with respect to the latter especially, you can probably tell without context why this part of the game was my least favourite – but in the grand scheme of things they’re slight relative to what an accomplishment I feel this remake is. It’s an almost totally undiluted translation of Looking Glass’ philosophy which makes smart use of technological advancements since the original’s release in ways which enable it to differentiate itself from the first two games while still feeling intimately familiar, to the level that I can’t really think of anyone I’d prefer the merry go round of who's making System Shock 3 to land on than Nightdive.

Check it out if that’s what you want, because what you want is what you get.

After a second play through, this game still absolutely rules. Serves to modernize and update System Shock for a modern audience while still retaining most of what made it so special all the way back in 1994. There are still certain aspects from the original version that I prefer, such as the old SHODAN design or the music, but everything else is a wonderful recreation and has some fantastic moments.

One of the things that I'd really love to talk about is just how great this game looks. Textures, weapons, enemies, even the particle effects all look absolutely fantastic. The combination of modern rendering techniques with those really pixely textures creates a fantastic look that makes it unmistakably System Shock. It also helps that the weapon and enemy design is still fantastic, and certain enemies which were goofy in the original (such as the hoppers) have gotten a really smart redesign that makes them more menacing and interesting, while still keeping their original design ethos.

There's also the level design, which is uncompromising in it's adherence to the original design. The mazes are confusing but manageable, and you'll likely know your way around the station pretty damn well by the time the credits roll. When achievement hunting during this playthrough I was very surprised at how well I was able to navigate citadel just based on memory alone. It also helps that the jump boots make boosting around citadel during exploration and combat an absolute blast. I originally said that combat was a bit worse in the remake, but I'd like to take that back. After learning how to adapt to enemies attacks and to use the level design to my advantage, the combat loop became way more satisfying. Pulling out the grenade launcher to lob an emp before boosting into the stunned enemy with a lasier rapier never got old, and it made me really feel like I was outwitting SHODAN.

New additions that were confusing to me during my first playthrough also really enhanced this second playthrough. Initially, I was confused by the inclusion of the currency and scrapping system, but this time it made way more sense as a way to prevent the player from getting stuck in any specific area due to lack of one specific resources. Being able to purchase medipatches and ammo really prevents a lot of the softlocking that could have potentially happened in the original. There's also the new "boss" encounters (really just fights with Diego or a Cortex Reaver) that provided a solid bookmark to certain chapters of System Shock. Not all is positive though, I must say I missed seeing SHODAN's face appear on random screens around Citadel as a reminder that she was watching like they did in the OG, and I certainly would've liked to see a new trap or three tossed in to make the game a bit less predictable.

There's also the matter of this game's story which seems to have suffered a bit in its translation to a modern game. There's still just as many audio logs (and even a few bonus lines from SHODAN) that appear throughout the game, but being as this is a modern title it takes me approximately double the amount of time to see the credits roll, about 17 hours vs the 8-9 of the original. This can make the story feel sparse and lacking whereas it didn't in the original, and I would've liked to see some more audio logs in the later levels to counteract this. It's a minor issue, but one that I definitely felt in the later half of the game. I also take issue with how this game handles the soundtrack. It's not bad, in fact it's very good but why the hell does it NEVER PLAY nightdive? There's mostly ambient music for much of the game, and the occasional combat track (which doesn't even match the pace of this game's combat mind you), and outside of that it feels like I never hear the soundtrack. The original's soundtrack was so essential to Citadel's atmosphere and it's a shame that this game didn't take more advantage of how it's used to make some areas more memorable. I highly recommend the "Remember Citadel - Music Restoration" mod with the "Louder and more consistent music" version. It improved the music in the game tenfold and it felt like I finally got the remake's soundtrack that I was missing in the vanilla version.

Outside of those minor gripes, System Shock is a banger. Certified Hood Classic and fully capable of being just as effective today as it was back when it first came out. Citadel and SHODAN are just as memorable as they should be, and the weapons and enemies provide some really fantastic combat interplay compared to the original's more straightforward approach. absolutely worth the $40 price tag for the quality of the product you are getting, and I really hope we get to see more Nightdive remakes like this.

I didn't like Sonic Mania. This isn't anyone's fault. Tee Lopes absolutely annihilates with an impeccable collection of synth funk bangers. Whitehead and Co's reinterpretation and expansion of the classic Sonic aesthetic and structure is sublime. The bells and whistles of its revivalism are a glorious siren song that, for years, distracted me from the very simple truth that I don't actually like classic Sonic! At all!

As platformers always are for me, it's down to the level design. In my mind, 2D Sonic is very mechanical. What they lack is not so much player agency but player input entirely. I recognise that the level design is quite open on paper. There are secrets, shortcuts, and all the regular shebang, but I can't tell because the games are so visually stuffed. It often feels like I'm smashing the right side wall down until I knock my head on another slideshow button. The game will then briefly play itself for me (this is the fun bit) as Sonic moves at maximum speed until I slam into a concrete wall and die. Then, I have to restart from the previous level because we still haven't recognised the futility of a lives system in platformers after a half-century of their existence. Did I mention I'm really bad at 2D Sonic games? That doesn't help.

The problem is, fundamentally, Sonic (and, by extension, the player) is a non-factor. I don't feel like I'm doing any of the cool stuff as much as the cool stuff is happening to me. The levels are a series of exceptionally overdesigned locks that the spin-dash key opens. Many people find this fun, but to me, it's nothingburger gameplay in service of crackerjack aesthetic design. I do not enjoy being a small-scrunched-up ball of paper tossed around a wind tunnel.

You can take the man out of the Sonic, but you can't take the Sonic out of the man. Penny's Big Breakaway wins and loses all the same battles as Sonic Mania, with one major change. Penny herself has a dazzling moveset, probably the most varied in any of this decade's 3D platformers, and it is a joy to unravel. But that one change is all the change in the world. They also added a third dimension. I am a sucker for the z-axis.

Do not show up for the story. Or restrained visual palettes. Or compelling collectables. Or functional hitboxes and boss fights. Or even really the level design itself, which is far more Sonic Adventure than I'd consider ideal. Show up for the swing into dash into roll bread-and-butter combo that feels like a million bucks. Show up for dropping off a cliff and swinging with such immense momentum at the bottom that you shoot yourself up even higher than you started. Show up for DIY movement tech so impactful that you end up dying by knocking into the other side of invisible walls. Show up for spending an entire level platforming out of bounds because why the fuck not?

This could never be a personal favourite. And that's not even because it's a total mess! I am Mr Mario Galaxy 2. Level design trumps all, and I can confidently say that Whitehead and I are out of sync w/r/t what good platforming level design is. But movement accounts for a hell of a lot. I don't just get to do cool stuff. I have a monopoly on cool stuff. You're doing something right if I'm mentally filing you away on the Super Mario Sunshine shelf.

The speedrun for this is going to whip so insanely hard.

i absolutely love animal well. i was expecting to enjoy it, but really i wasn't prepared for just how magical it feels. the map is incredibly dense, the puzzles are intuitively designed and have a great sense of accomplishment, the boss fights (which i wasn't expecting at all) are actually really creative puzzle fights, which i usually dislike.

my only MAJOR complaint is that it does feel a bit railroaded at times, a lot of areas deliberately prevent you from sequence breaking, which is something i find annoying. but other than that, just a ridiculously good game.

Billy Basso, you beautiful bastard, you did it. How did one guy make this?

I've always been a victim of hyperbole. The internet told me that Animal Well was making people feel things. I listened to YouTube reviewers describe it as a game that reminds you of what gaming is all about. I read tweets calling it an obvious front-runner for GOTY and one of the best, most unique games in a very long time. I'm not about to say those people were speaking disingenuously--I truly believe the 5/5 reviews--but I do think that Animal Well is at its best when its understated and allowed to silently speak for itself.

Not unlike your biological mother, Animal Well is a short, tight, and gorgeous experience that manages to rapidly shift between quaint charm and instinctive terror at the drop of a hat. How Basso managed to jump scare me with a kangaroo that many times is beyond me. A friend described the artstyle as "Neon Wet" and that's probably the best short hand I can give for the game's look without really taking away some of its magic. Just go play the game if the visuals even remotely interest you.

Like all the best horror-adjacent games, your combat options here are extremely limited. Unlike those same horror games, Animal Well takes that lack of offensive capability and uses it to empower you. You are challenged to pause, and contemplate, and plan, and observe--to ask yourself "wait can I do that?" And you usually can. It takes a special game to offer you that sort of reward to meet your effort.

I'm not done with Animal Well. I rolled credits but there's so much game still here (think Fez or Tunic), but I do think I'm at a point where its socially-created hooks aren't as deeply in me. I can sit with it now and enjoy it. That may be how I should have approached the game from the start.

If you plan to play the game, I recommend that you don't go too quickly. Poke around. Mess with things that look out of place and let yourself consider Billy Basso's first game as its own world rather than a "GOTY contender" or "reason to game again." Be a little pensive dude and let yourself get swept up in it all. It's worth that.

A religious, philosophical discussion with cinematography that reminded me of Yorgos Lanthimos. It gets weird at times, but I honestly wish it got a bit weirder. The puzzle design feels quite dated, being somehow both quite simplistic but also frustrating with a lack of feedback at times, but they don't take up too much of the game's short playtime.

I switched the audio language over to Russian early on and really enjoyed the performances. The story had some interesting thoughts, and I never quite felt it becoming pretentious, which is a concern with material like this. A good quick game.

Indika is a very short (~4hrs) walking game filled with puzzles and thought-provoking dialogue. Oh, the brilliant voice acting in this game... I loved the emotions that the 'narrator' put into his work. The ending leaves you hanging with questions in your mind. There are many scenes where you can't get what's happening because it's confusing or because it happens too fast.
I also want to state that I dissected the game and they animated every scene; characters are moving even when you don't see them in cutscenes or in the game. And the demon is also a part of some cutscenes, but you can't see it. They put real effort into this game. It's sad that it was short.
The downsides were pretty much the optimization and some less-polished parts of the game.

The secret behind Pikmin’s success was not that it somehow outclassed classic real-time strategy franchises, but rather that it was never competing with them to begin with. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he came up with the idea for Pikmin one day when he observed a group of ants carrying leaves together into their nest. Miyamoto then imagined a game focused on cooperation rather than competition; he asked, “Why can’t everyone just move together in the same direction, carrying things as a team?” Nintendo EAD’s design philosophy went along with this line of reasoning, melding design mechanics from different genres to create an entirely new yet familiar experience. As a result, instead of competing against other players in Pikmin akin to classic RTS games, Pikmin forces players to explore and compete with the very environment itself by introducing puzzle-exploration and survival mechanics. It made sense in the end; after all, real-time strategy is concerned with minimizing time spent to get a competitive edge over opponents, and what better way to translate this than to force players to master their understanding over the terrain itself, managing and optimizing the one resource which governs them all?

Perhaps Nintendo’s greatest challenge was figuring out how to translate a genre considered by many to be niche and technical to an intuitive yet layered game, and even more so, translating classic actions from a mouse and keyboard allowing for such complexity to a suite of simplified controls using a gamepad. Coming from the other side as someone who played Starcraft as a kid and didn’t get into Pikmin until recently however, I’m surprised at how well EAD’s tackled this endeavor. Classic RTS games focus upon base-building and resource gathering through the micromanagement of units. Pikmin’s take upon this is to introduce a dichotomy between the player character Captain Olimar, who is incapable of doing anything by himself but can issue commands to the units only he can create by plucking out of the soil, and the Pikmin, who are essentially brainless but represent the units that must do everything. The player as Olimar must be present to figure out exactly how to best traverse and exploit the environment around him (replacing the base-building with management/prioritization puzzles) while the Pikmin provide bodies to construct, move, and attack the world around them. However, the Pikmin’s AI is fairly limited and as a result, Pikmin will sit around helplessly once they finish their actions and often get distracted by nearby objects while moving around, which is where the micromanagement kicks in. Therefore, the player has to decide how to best build up their supply of Pikmin to allocate tasks to surmount bottlenecks while exploring and opening the world, all while working against the limited thirty-day timer throughout the game’s five areas.

A part of me expected to really struggle with the gamepad while playing Pikmin, but the available actions on offer allow for a surprising degree of control despite the simplification. For instance, consider Olimar’s whistle; as a substitute for dragging and clicking to select units on PC, the whistle on the GameCube lets Olimar quickly rally groups of clustered units. Holding down B for longer allows the player to increase the size of the whistle’s AOE, which allows the player to better control and target how many Pikmin to rally in any cluster (hence, the analog of clicking and dragging to select boxes of units on mouse and keyboard). The Swarm command is another interesting translation. The obvious use is to allow Olimar to quickly move nearby Pikmin by directing them with the C-stick versus needing to aim and throw them by positioning and rotating Olimar himself. However, because it can be used to shift the position of Pikmin with respect to Olimar, it can also be used to swap the Pikmin on-deck for throwing (since Olimar will always throw the Pikmin closest to him) without needing to dismiss and re-rally separated Pikmin colors, and most importantly, it allows you to directly control the group of Pikmin following Olimar while moving Olimar himself. This second application allows the player to kite the Pikmin around telegraphed enemy attacks, and properly funnel them so the Pikmin aren’t getting as easily stuck behind walls or falling off ledges/bridges into hazards. That said, noticeable control limitations do exist. Olimar cannot pivot to move the reticle without changing his position with respect to the Pikmin around him, which can make aiming in place annoying if the Pikmin types you need to throw aren’t close enough to be moved next to Olimar with Swarm. Additionally, there is no way for Olimar to simultaneously and directly control multiple separated groups of Pikmin, which does make allocating tasks a bit slower. However, given that the tasks themselves usually don’t necessitate more than one Pikmin type at a time, this limitation is understandable, especially since the sequels would tackle this challenge with more expansive controls and multiple playable characters on the field.

Pikmin’s base model as a result is a fantastic translation of an abstract design philosophy, but I can’t help but wonder if the original could have been pushed further. Don’t misunderstand me: I absolutely take pride in mastering a game by learning all about its inner workings and pushing its mechanics to the limits simply by following a few intuitive genre principles. As such, I wish that the game was a bit harder in order to really force me to squeeze every bit of time from the game’s solid premise. For example, combat is often optional in Pikmin given how many full-grown Bulborbs are found sleeping, but given that most enemies don’t respawn within the next day after killing them and I can bring their carcasses back to base to more than replenish my Pikmin supply, combat is almost always in my favor, especially since certain enemies will spawn more mobs if they aren’t defeated. If circumstances existed where it would be unfavorable to engage (such as losing a significant number of Pikmin every time, or having so little time left that engaging would waste time), then I feel that this would add an additional layer of decision-making of deciding when to sneak past sleeping Bulborbs rather than just wiping out as many foes as I could as soon as possible. In a similar sense, I felt that certain design elements such as the Candypop Buds for switching Pikmin colors were a bit underutilized; outside of one environmental puzzle, I never had to use the Candypop Buds, mainly because I had so many remaining Pikmin and time to never justify their usage. I’ll concede here that Pikmin’s one-day Challenge Mode does at least provide a score attack sandbox where I’m forced to take my Pikmin stock and remaining time into higher consideration, but it’s missing the connectivity of the main story mode where my earlier actions would greatly affect how I planned later days in a run, particularly in making judgement calls on which days to spend at each site and which days I dedicate towards building up my Pikmin numbers versus hauling in ship parts. Regardless, I found myself completing the main game with all parts in just twenty days on my first run with minimal resets, and I’d love to try a harder difficulty mode with a stricter time limit and tougher Pikmin margins to really force me to better conserve my working force and dedicate more time to restocking my supply.

Gripes aside, I’m glad that my friends finally convinced me to try out Pikmin, not just to better appreciate RTS games as a whole but to also gain an appreciation of how different genre mechanics can work in tandem to intuitively convey concepts without spelling everything out to the player. It’s classic Nintendo at their core, and while I had my reservations coming in as a fan of older RTS franchises, they’ve managed to convince me once again that the best hook is not simply offering something that’s visibly better, but rather offering something that’s visibly different. I still think that there’s improvement to be had, but given how much I’ve enjoyed the first game, I can’t wait to see what they have to offer from iterating upon their memorable beginnings.

I can't think of the last time I played a game where I mulled over its themes like this one. I do this all the time for great movies (I did this for The Zone of Interest a couple of months ago), but I don't think I've seen a story come out of a game that fully utilized its medium and was so artistically unique, quite like this one. It throws a LOT at the wall, and while not all of it sticks gameplay-wise, I still recommend people try this out. It's short (almost too short), cheap, and it'll gnaw at your brain hours after beating it.

Don't mistake me. This is a HIGH 7, and don't be surprised if it's bumped up by the end of the year, as I can only see myself appreciating this game more from here.