A fun replay with the Mrs for spooky month. While its surprising how fine this game has aged, a part of me was thinking the entire playthrough, "Why don't I just play the remake?". Yet as I played I kept trying to figure out why a remake was even made for a game that can still scare me like it did when I played in 6th grade.

Dismemberment and the thrill of fighting off Necromorphs is still a tense feeling that makes the game for me. This time playing, though, I found myself not really scared as my wife was, but more so hyper fixated on the inner workings of the Ichimura. Issac being the repairman isn't talked about enough. Slowly fixing the ship and traveling to that Tram station made me feel like an accomplished mechanic. Seeing the debris cleared and rotors restarting gave me more accomplishment than fighting claw demons. For me, the necromorphs started to become a burden to my fun little space repairman game.

I'll be hopping into the rest of the series after finishing up some other titles.

I expected nothing, and I'm surprised that I really did get that.

I've kept myself as blind as possible before going into this game, other than whom the main antagonist was from the reveal trailer. I really only wanted Peter from the first game and Miles from the Second fused into one game with some upgraded abilities. I think the luster of these games are kinda wearing off for me. Essentially replaying the same city with the same side quest type, with the same combat shared between both Spider-Man made the game feel familiar, but It didn't really do anything extraordinary.

The out of suit sections dragged on a little too long, the story is great, but the characters are really weak this time around. Most of the abilities that you get further in the game all feel samey, even though they might look differently. Honestly, if this game wasn't so short and easy to 100%, I probably could've enjoyed each power. Or if Miles had more Venom powers while Peter had more Gadgets to differentiate them.

But, I'm also being extremely granular with my nitpicking here. Like I said, I genuinely expected nothing to wow me, just more of the same but polished better with more cool stuff happening, and I got that. Just like Ratchet and Clank before, once you make something killer on the first try, making the sequels feel "worth it" per se is hard to do. At least with a R&C there might be different planets and weapons, but here I'm playing through the same game for the third time now with a different big bad. Which....is what I wanted.... and I enjoyed my time, but I just feel really conflicted about this game in my memory say 5 years from now.

I came to a realization that through my goals for 2023, that I only really wanted to play DMC5 instead of the entire series. Unlike my recent trek through the God of War series, I've actually played this series extensively except for this entry. So my excitement for playing this game just took over to skipping 3-DMC.

While this is the best the series has been yet. There are still some personal flaws I didn't enjoy while playing. I did not like the changes to Nero. The Devil Breaker arms and systems, while cool, didn't feel good to me. I hated the finite charges, and having to unlock on to an enemy to oftentimes miss your DB ability annoyed me to ultimately not diving deeper into the system and working it into my combos.

V is another sore spot for me. Claw gripping to read, use all the summons, and actively dodge and lock on was not fun at all. I didn't feel like I was actually hitting or even in combat a lot of the time. I loathed the few boss fights he had, as I could see them being better with another character.

Dante is the best he's ever been. Every weapon is fun to use, Every style is fun to use. Every mission that I played with him reminded me why I love this series so much. That, and the fact that the story went exactly where I thought it was going to go. I enjoyed every second that Dante and the gang were on screen fighting against the obvious antagonist.

Though I can say I was kinda let down. I'm glad I played it. I was just expecting more. Initially, those expectations were met, but my personal dislike for certain play styles just overrode that. The good thing is now that I've beaten it, I can go back through with my two favorite characters, Dante and Virgil.

WHY WOULD THEY PLAY WITH MY EMOTIONS LIKE THIS!

This is everything I could've ever wanted from a sequel. The gun play is bewildering. The Darkness powers are vastly expanded and are fun as hell to use. The more linear approach allows for the story to take a front seat, which to me was the highlight of the first game. I couldn't put it down. Everything just fits together almost perfectly.

Whereas other shooters from the start of the generation like F.E.A.R were stripped down to conform to modern innovations, those same changes in this game immensely help it. I wanted more carnage, they overdelivered. I wanted more of a look into the Mafia storyline, they gave me exactly that. The callbacks to very impactful scenes in the first game are just as heart-wrenching here.

And the graphics and sound design is just a step above now. The cel shaded look calls back to its comic book origins and allows for the lighting and Darkness powers (no pun intended) to really flow nicely together. I'm kind of upset that we didn't get a third title, but now a part of me wishes we do soon.

There's a specific scene in the very begining that made me shed actual tears. I really enjoyed the world that was built around it. The subway system is neat to learn and explore. I liked that the game allowed me to immerse myself to find the next objectives. Though I wished this game had a PC port because aiming with the PS3, and the overall quality is pretty lackluster. It looks like its running on medium settings, and it struggles to hit 30fps consistently.

I'm curious as to how they evolve this gameplay loop with the second game, because honestly the Darkness wasn't fleshed out as much as I thought it would, and the gun play was subpar if it wasn't for the aim assist. I was more invested in the story of Jackie than I was with enjoy a fun FPS, but it was serviceable enough to get me through to see the ending.

I don't even know where to begin to describe the mixed feelings I have about this game. On one hand, you have a game that's incredibly fun, albeit quirky. Upgrading the different gun parts and mismatching them to fit whatever needs you wanted were fun to me. The psuedo-light gun ass arenas never got dull. I was excited anytime I saw a giant group of enemies in the distance.

Even the dynamic of banking your points for leveling up or extra gil for upgrades was a fun trade-off. I had fun breaking this game. Maxing out the pistol and my favorite parts for it as quickly as I could to have this overpowered one shot revolver that can shoot thunder at any boss and kill it with ease is still satisfying even after starting my Ex-Hard Mode play through.

Then on the other hand, you have a terrible story. If it's not dropping its budget on beautiful CGI movies that don't really explain what the hell is happening, you have the dullest exposition dumps between characters. Even the characters are falling asleep reading it. Shelke as a character annoyed me every time she opened her mouth because her voice acting was chalkboard gratingly boring. The general plot isn't too convoluted or say hard to understand. It's just written poorly and paced even worse.

For my fun little shoot shoot game, I didn't expect to have 35-40 minute long cutscene breaks in between stages. Or even worse the airship level which is just running back and forth between characters to get cutscenes to even progress further. I almost want to call it pretentious. It can stand alone even if you never played FF7 (or like me, you played just the remake), but it wants to stab itself so deep into the minutia of FF7, and Its ending to be a complete epilogue.

The game got more fun in Ex-Hard mode when I could skip all the cutscenes and get to the actual fun part.

Yuck. The switch to teams is really awkward. Even the change to it being a watch and repeat, would be cooler for more engagement, but the older more fighting game style from the first two games is called out to me more. It looks better, that's for sure, but the music is sadly the weakest part of this game. The songs just aren't that catchy and don't feel like the songs I would choose for a dancing centric rhythm game.

I should like this game, and that's the part that's tearing me up inside. It just doesn't feel right. Every time I finished another team's story, I was kinda lukewarm about it. The visuals during the stages are a little too over the place, which took me away from enjoying the dancing once it got too hectic.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the team system, nor with the change in the core gameplay to more simon say-esque button presses. Yet the jump into the next generation didn't necessarily call for such sweeping changes, when Bust-A-Groove 2 was already a great improvement on the first. A more fleshed out story and interaction between characters that the PS2's power would've allowed for could've been the right call for the game. More depth into the actual combat that happens in stages. idk