persona 3 was a game with identity, intent, purpose, intentionality, heart, and, most importantly, creativity. i don't enjoy the lot i've been cast in life where i have to play bad versions of persona 3 and say why they're bad, whether it be the answer, portable, or this. reload is not just a bad remake of persona 3, it is a bad game that tells an interesting story in a ho-hum and pedestrian way. it takes so many narrative risks and choices from the original presentation and either waters them down or overly explains them to make sure the lowest common denominator doesn't have to interpret art. even divorced from its source material, this game fails to create a gameplay experience worth investing time in. as a remake, it fails to capture what persona 3 meant. as a JRPG, it is a dull affair with little challenge or complexity. persona 3 reload fails to be worth the effort it takes to play it.

the design doc of persona 3 reload had a very clear goal: leave no one behind, whether it be in story or gameplay. this results in story cutscenes being more explicit and less interpretive (compare the opening FMV with yukari) and gameplay that refuses to obstruct the player in meaningful ways. to be more specific, reload sacrifices any need for the player to become competent with its systems to make sure that anyone can beat this game. theurgy makes the game brainless and poisons basically every boss fight (ken can get a theurgy skill a little over halfway through the game that casts mediarahan + samarecarm + tetrakarn + makarakarn on the entire party). resource management is embarrassingly easy to trivialize (yukari can cast media for literally 1 (one) SP; there is a veritable buffet of SP items that you can trip over in daily life for little to no investment; theurgy overall negates the importance of SP and running out of SP is not the death knell it could be in orginal). social links as a whole are extremely easy to manage both due to point requirements being lower to accommodate for needing to spend more days on new content like linked episodes. hell, remember persona fusion? now it's been greatly dumbed down such that even triangle fusion isn't available anymore. this game is a concession that persona 3 was too ambitious and needed to be toned down. this is a remake that asserts that persona 3 did too much and tries to do less instead.

i'm not even beating the dead horse that is my opinion on party control because there's so many more issues to address. on basically every level, this game has either simplified or deescalated the complexity of its mechanics to accommodate a mainstream audience. i don't think there's inherently anything wrong with making persona 3's systems more accessible, but i think these capitulations go overboard and rob the game of compelling gameplay moments. there are no bosses in the game that truly force me to approach a challenge in a new way or think outside the box in the way that bosses like change relic did. every boss in this game is made longer to accommodate for theurgy damage values without any sort of intelligent design to make the fights feel more exciting for that length of time. boss fights are longer and easier because it's more cinematic to see mitsuru skate around and use her theurgy instead of letting the player use their own competency-based skills and strategy to end the fight. i am not the person who's going to cry that atlus sold out or whatever, but i am the person who's going to tell you that persona 3 reload feels like an undercooked experience because it consistently refuses to ask anything of the player. this game is easy, this game is simple, and this game is uninteresting.

above all else, this game begs one question: who on earth is telling atlus/sega that persona games need to be longer and have more content? persona 3 was a game that had a slowburn start that reload now turns into a bloated nightmare. everything takes so much longer in reload and everything feels more belabored, so i can't blame anyone for getting burnt out or even fucked off from this game's plot by the time things start picking up steam. on top of this, a lot of the new slice of life content wastes so much of the player's time. why do we need multiple scenes dedicated to kenji's performance on job day? i remember when saying that persona 3 was 70 hours felt like i was talking about this gargantuan piece of art. meanwhile, in reload, i hit 70 hours somewhere between september and november. these games do not need to be this long, and it actively ruins the experience to do so. persona 5 being a triple digit hour experience was a bad thing, not something to aspire to.

it's hard to not be at least a little offended because, whether or not P Studio intended it, they have basically hollowed out what made persona 3 so unique, so special. reload looks drab and unimpressive in UE4, and so much of the moody visuals get lost in the graphical fidelity. iwatodai dorm feels too bright, and then when january rolls around, they make the color scheme so muted that it is genuinely comedic. and there's just some really baffling and ugly visual decisions they made, like how everyone in club escapade stands motionlessly in pose. meanwhile, lotus juice has his fingerprints all over the OST in a way that just doesn't work ("mindin' my biz, so mind your own biz"). persona 3 was more than just a game with impressive systems that engaged the player, it was also a piece of art that had an aesthetic that gets lost here. this game feels completely identity-less when compared to the original because the original was both a deconstruction and a hybrid of genres. in many ways, reload doesn't just fail to live up to that artistic intent, it outright doesn't seem to know it was even there in the first place.

and i get it, as a fan of persona 3, my opinion has a giant asterisk at the end of it. why listen to a star wars fan tell you about why phantom menace is the worst movie ever? i will own up and openly admit i expected this game to be bad and had greatly wanted it to not exist. i had a feeling atlus would fuck it up somehow. i don't like being right about that. at the same time, i think there are missteps here that would stand out regardless of familiarity with the source material. yukari's edginess is completely deleted from her character here and she now just sounds and acts like chie on vyvanse rather than a girl with abandonment issues and trauma. fuuka got turned from "weird girl who serves as the empathetic core of the cast" to "girl who could have a thrilling conversation about spoiled milk". and reload isn't the first time akihiko's been sanded down to "protein fanatic who trains a lot", but it's probably the most offensive here. wouldn't it be really fucking funny if, the whole time you were studying with him, akihiko was doing something wacky like squatting above his chair instead of sitting normally?

these characters have been reinterpreted so much that they've lost their core identity that was integral to the plot of persona 3. i don't get the feeling that i'm seeing akihiko or mitsuru, i instead sense that i'm getting how someone interprets them after nearly 2 decades of fandom and spinoff content. yukari still has those "mean" lines but they lack any emotional root, so they come off as nonsense mood swings rather than a scared girl lashing out. and i'll just say it, karen strassman clears the fuck out of dawn bennett when you compare the final aigis monologues (fwiw, in both these instances, i blame the direction, not the VAs). these characters have been done better and it's really jarring that reload tries to flatten them rather than give them more dimensionality.

there's room to broadly interpret these characters, but constantly trying to make a self-serious character like akihiko the butt of a joke that he's in on speaks to how much he's being mischaracterized here. when akihiko was in a comedic scene, it was because he was the straight man, not because he was a this big goofball constantly playing to the crowd. these characters don't feel like themselves in a profound way, and i'd have to wonder how much that comes across to anyone who hasn't played original. does akihiko just seem like a wildly contradictory character to new players? truthfully, i have no idea if any of these people would've resonated with me had this been my first exposure to them.

i don't hate what all of reload's new content wrt characterization, and i honestly really liked some of the stuff they added for shinjiro and ken. but there's just as much that is unnecessary and outright bad. when we said they wanted more backstory on strega, we didn't mean that we wanted you to turn takaya into another akechi. if you're going to remake persona 3, why even bother if you're going to do such a disservice to its characters and setting? sure, you made some of the UI stuff look neater and more Persona 5-y, but what does that meaningfully add to the experience? when i saw the trailer for reload, i immediately asked myself "what does the water motif have to do with persona 3? why is the main character sinking into water? what are they going to do with that?" and it turns out they just wanted a cool main menu animation and nothing else. i want to say that P Studio was just misguided, but some of this content is so actively bad that it makes me wonder if any of them even liked persona 3. so much of this feels like it's trying to fix something that isn't broken, like it's an apology for the source material. this isn't a persona 3 remake for people who liked persona 3. but, then again, who else was it supposed to be for if not people who wanted another persona 5? persona 5 is the new cash cow and my dread for this being a P5ified version of persona 3 was well-founded.

i kept trying to go "how would i feel about this game if it wasn't a remake of a game i love?" and that's an impossible question for me to answer. i can never know because i will never play this with the eyes and ears of someone who didn't play the original. again, as much as i've come to detest this game, i don't have it in my heart to give this a lower score, mostly out of pity, but also out of overcorrecting my harsh opinion as a fan of the original. still, i think many of reload's failings come from a place of trying to simultaneously be a remake and game for everyone. i don't think it's wrong for games to put off people. in fact, the best games often aren't for everyone because they can't be. P Studio emphasized making a game that was so mainstreamed and accessible that it would never present any obstacle or mechanic that could alienate players at the cost of making a game that players could actually be engaged with. i can't think of a broader way you could miss the mark with a persona 3 remake.

Look, I love the Kirby games. They've been a part of my life for basically as long as I can remember. They always look and sound great, have charm from here to eternity, and almost always play really well. They are, however, with a few exceptions, almost always a very solid 3-3.5/5 experience. They are extremely loveable, but I feel like very few manage to stay interesting and have enough unique ideas spread out over the whole game, which leads to them starting to feel a bit uninspired by the end (though never the final bosses, mind you), with me feeling sort of like I'm just going through the motions.

Planet Robobot should feel the same way. It's a fairly short experience, but it's still pretty clear that the game runs out of gimmicks by the last two worlds and doesn't really iterate on those in any particularly interesting way or even really upping the difficulty, rather just doing basically the exact same thing as in previous stages.

Thing is, none of this really matters when every component of the game is as good as they are here, but also thanks to the developers being extremely smart about always shaking things up at the right time, even if it means recycling something I've definitely done before (and often more than once).You have your regular stages that are standard Kirby, i.e. a fun, fast-paced time through a colorful (this is a beautiful game, by the way. Frame rate can't really handle the 3D at times, though) platforming stage with a good mix of action and actual platforming, and they're a good time since the developers at HAL have done basically the same kinds of stages since Sakurai directed Kirby's Dream Land way back in 1992. Not top tier in the genre or anything, but made by people who have a formula down that they'll always play well, and good enough art directors for every game who can make them feel distinct and fun. Feels like this manages to come up with a few more and more interesting stage gimmicks than usual, like the train or Waddle-Dee traffic. That might just be because the last Kirby I played was 64 , though, which is a 3/5 game I truly love (also loved the surprising amount of references to it in Planet Robobot), but also one where the levels barely have anything going on for almost the entire journey.

What really elevates the game from simply being another "fun, but unremarkable" Kirby game is its main gimmick, the Robobot itself. This era of Kirby had issues with their main gimmicks, especially Triple Deluxe's Hypernova ability which is cool once, but then gets less and less interesting as it keeps showing up since it's basically just a win button and a way to give the player a cinematic experience where Kirby just becomes an indestructible killing machine, which isn't really needed in a game of this kind. The Robobot feels so much more thought out, getting its own copy abilities and puzzles to solve throughout the stages, plus giving HAL an excuse to throw in vehicle stages where Kirby either drives in fast-paced, almost race-like stages, and shmup stages that gives something completely different from the rest of the game. It's not just walking in a straight line and killing everything in sight, but it actually builds upon the regular Kirby gameplay, and tweaks it just enough to always be a welcome mix-up whenever the robobot appears. The added firepower also does give it that satisfaction of something like the Hypernova, but it never really diminishes since I am always the one controlling the action rather than it feeling so scripted and more like a pseudo-interactive cutscene. Really impressed by the restraint HAL also showed, not constantly using the Robobot on each stage, but seemingly very deliberately giving one to you at just the right time, when I'm feeling "This sure is a Kirby game" the most.

The final boss is also among the most insane things I've seen in a video game, so, you know, even if the rest of the game had been pretty mid, it'd probably have been worth the playthrough just for that experience alone. No, wait, the latter half of the final secret stage might honestly be the highlight for me. One of the best power trip sections, like, ever in a video game and it's somehow in a Kirby of all franchises.

Rating 5.8/10 - Bad

Doom 3 starts off fine for the most part. You're in a mars station with little visual distinction between areas but the lighting and high quality models and assets (for the time) still make the place cool to look at. The weapons are mediocre and the shotgun is horrible but the enemy design is decent. The game isn't scary but at least manages to keep a consistent atmosphere.

It's not all bad... at the start. That's when repetitiveness settles in and the game's length turns this into a slog.

The more you play, the more the problems become apparent and the lack of enemy variety starts being noticeable, as well as the very clear comparisons to half-life and how this game falls short in comparison.

Doom 3 is a game I can only recommend to people who want to experience the history of FPS games or people who really want to try all Doom games. Otherwise, don't bother.

Gone Home was released August 15, 2013 by The Fullbright Company, designed by Steve Gaynor (who worked on the BioShock games) and built on the Unity engine, whose story starts you off with a brief voicemail from the airport (although actually featuring the airport would be too much work apparently) and finally, at the Greenbriar home. You play as Kaitlin Greenbriar, a twentysomething college grad who just came back from her trip to Europe, only to find the place completely empty, with boxes and the like scattered here and there with your name on them. Alas, you have gone home; but the developers also left anything of sentimental value like any form of linear storytelling at the door outside.

Playing through this game was a chore, at best. I kept on asking myself what am I doing as I walked through the decrepit hallways; struggling what to make of my predicament. As I went towards the bathroom sink to wash up, I came to the unpleasant realization that there was not a single mirror in this game. Is the Greenbriar family a bunch of a vampires, or are they just not very self-conscious? I think that sentiment might be the deepest thing about this game game.

Still, graphically speaking, the graphics aren't all that bad. A lot of things are high-resolution, and its refreshing to see an indie game that isn't retro for the sake of being lazy. Still, the graphics are by no means a groundbreaking use of the Unity engine.

And, since there are no mirrors in this game to tell you who you are; you're stuck living in the shadow of Sam and Lonnie's sapphic relationship, your parent's marriage troubles, and some other irrelevant shit -- like your aunt dying and that's why you have a mansion for a home. The only way I feel one can empathize is if you're going through a similar situation. Otherwise, its just a well polished house explorer, with a unnecessarily convoluted plot that masquerades as an avant-garde discovery thriller.

Take out that context, and Gone Home is merely a caricature, perfectly summing up how to not address LGBT representation, which at the time was still fairly nascent. It treats the attribute of being a lesbian as a convenient prop, ripe to be picked as an excuse for clever storytelling. Still, for this gimmick, gaming journalists will go wild to prove that indie games can also get 9/10 scores without the use of bribes. Beg to differ in opinion? Congratulations, you are now a sexist.

(This review was written about a decade ago and updated with only minor changes to the syntax/grammar)

This one started off really strong but then I lost interest as it went on. The game is a strange mix of vibrant and kid friendly silliness mixed with adult issues and body horror. I'm not sure it meshes very well, but it's a very interesting game nonetheless.

You catch Bugsnax and basically talk to other vibrant muppet type characters (grumpus's I think it was?) and solve their issues. These issues have a wide range too. From anything like marriage woes to "OMG I want to get buff" to "I want to eat a Fryder, go get me one." It's kind of jarring going from solving relationship and communication issues between folks to then just grabbing a silly Bugsnak for them to eat.

Then on top of that, as you collect Bugsnax, you find out that it changes the way all these muppet people look. You can change their arms, hands, legs, feet, ears and eventually even their body. AND THEY LOOK HORRIFIC! Having a guy walk around with potato chip ears and a sushi body was just...ugh.

No spoilers but I feel like if I saw the final boss of this game when I was a kid, I would've had nightmares. It's like the cutest foody-hellraiser inspired enemy you'll ever see. YIKES!

Anyway, the reason it gets old after a while is because after a few hours, it feels like you're just going through the motions. Catch a Bugsnak, solve an issue, feed them, repeat.

Also, the dialog at times goes on and on and on and on and on. And it's not really clever, it just feels like talking for talkings sake some times.