Despite the game's shortcomings (balance, length, imprecise pressure controls, absurd story with lore easily missed during loading screens), it's more than worth playing because of its incredible style, good music, replay value, and impressive overall presentation

Shinji Mikami, Akira Yamaoka, and Suda51 join forces to have EA shoehorn a bunch of changes to their original vision, and still release a gory, macabre banger that isn't afraid to laugh at itself and is effortlessly cool despite its immaturity

some of the most absolute bonkers UI sound effects ever put in a game

also, Tifa is here

The Walker has guns that feel nice to shoot and fairly impressive visuals, but the game just doesn't feel finished. There are sound effects completely missing at times, maybe 5 enemy types total, a magic system that looks cool but doesn't really seem to work, and the game is described as an "adventure game" but you stand stationary in one spot and use a sword and gun to dispatch waves of enemies annnnd that's it. One rather frustrating issue is that when selecting levels, the game shifts from VR to standard view, you watch the headset buffering symbol, a loading screen comes up, the game loads, it converts back to VR (another black screen with a buffering symbol) and then the level starts. The times weren't long (I was playing on PS5), but I can only imagine they're slightly lengthier on PS4 systems.

I was given upgraded weapons at the end of my first completion of the game, but it looks like you just use those to go through the game again with a slightly higher difficulty. I think I'm done 😅

HotD 2 still probably has the funniest voice acting of all time, even over RE1; it has to be heard to be believed.

"DON'T COME!"

You will suck toes, chests, and shoulders before eventually facing boss battles against a backflipping mother and then a father who's attached an insect repellent strip to his head and has resorted to using his forbidden ki blasts to rid you from his home.

This game is like nothing else; a great example of the PS2's wide range of weirdness

The peak of sixth-generation Mortal Kombat games.

Macabre stages, dark jams to punctuate the combat, plenty of content to unlock, hara-kiris (fatality yourself before you opponent can!!), a fun Puzzle Fighter knock-off, Kombat Chess mode, and a janky but super charming way to explore Mortal Kombat's realms in the open-world "Konquest" mode which makes up for its shortcomings with what I can only describe as a N64-style relaxing ambiance featuring a night and day cycle and plenty of battles against a myriad of fighters from the MK universe.

Plus, the intro is one of the hypest cutscenes of all time, pure kino

How am I the only person in America that's played this game? The cover-art is sick, c'mon.

A simplistic, fairly low-budget turn-based JRPG made special by its setting, aesthetic, artwork, enemy designs, job system, and the uniqueness and depth of tank customization.

Using your characters' special on-foot abilities vs attacking with one of your stronger tank cannons that has limited use vs attacking with less powerful weapons that hit enemies' weaknesses and may break their shield vs grinding to build 5 incredible machine-guns (which have unlimited uses) and equipping them on a tank along with a chip you found while exploring an obscure part of the map that allows for all machine-guns to be fired in a single turn and raining hellfire on enemies makes for interesting decisions both before and during combat. I'm 3/4 through the game so far and I'm reallllly enjoying that last option.

An absolutely incredible survival-horror/action blend. A bunch of unique and interesting monstrous enemies, weapons that feel great to shoot, unique locations with lots of bespoke geometry, gorgeous and realistic visuals (especially with ray tracing turned on), mysteries that kept me hooked throughout the plot, and interesting connections and delightful references to previous RE titles. Every boss fight in this game feels like it would be the over-the-top FINAL boss fight in a lesser game.

There's plenty to unlock after you've finished it, four difficulty modes in case you want either an easier or more challenging time, new game plus, and Mercenaries Mode, an arcade-y score-attack combat extravaganza after you've completed the story.

Resident Evil Village is a game that feels like it had love and effort put into it, and was given the development time it needed. I'm enamored with it.

I kept thinking while I was playing this:

"This is a game-ass game."

I don't mind when games lean into what they are (dialogue in tutorials where characters literally state what buttons do what, Resident Evil 4's arcade-y light trails indicating ammo and money pick-ups, Deadly Premonition having collectables visible in cut-scenes) and I don't mind when games try to hide their "game-ness" for the sake of being cinematic (skipping title-screens and booting straight into game with SH2 or GTA, minimal UI, cutscenes blending straight into gameplay), but I think this is a case of a title trying to do the latter and not knowing how. Horizon seems like it wants to be scifi Uncharted, but feels more like PlayStation's own Ubisoft game (a formula Ghost of Tsushima would later perfect) and the facial animation and dialogue outside of mocapped cut-scenes really cements this. Mechanics and tasks stack in a perfectly reasonable way, but I just didn't feel that motivated to engage with them.

Beautiful to look at, pretty fun traversal, and the combat is interesting and the enemies are unique, but overall the game just felt kind of tedious to me.

This isn't just a bad licensed platformer, but a Pikmin clone???

Characters created by the character designer of Cowboy Bebop, music from the sound designer/score composer of Killer 7, some of the funniest bad voice acting outside of Chaos Wars, and an inventive control scheme and scenario that has you controlling a human in third-person and then switching to their first-person viewpoint to look at and control your mech with stuff as wild as alternating the shoulder buttons to take giant steps and swinging the analog sticks to throw punches with your Meganite.

Definitely worth trying!

The versions of this game are very different from one another, Genesis is the best by far and worth trying; I'd avoid the rest 😅