Good lord, what a game. There's really nothing quite like the Metal Gear Solid series. The way the gameplay and story meld together in such a way is just special, and had never been replicated in quite the same way (aside from MGS 2 and 3 of course). This game has an amazing story, good atmosphere, and gameplay that is decent most of the time but aged like milk (specifically a few of the bosses and some combat encounters). Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, and Rex are some iconic boss fights that still holds up as thrilling engagements. Liquid's three phases and "Deepthroat" (hehe) were downright frustrating though. Especially that awful turret section at the end... protip: use first person view for that turret section.
There were some memorable sections as well, like the torture section that actually tortured you, the player. This was brilliant, if not physically painful. There are also sections like the comms tower chase, which was a memorable moment for the wrong reasons because they bring out the game's jank in full force.
As an arcade stealth game, it's serviceable, but there isn't as much stealth gameplay as I remember there being. It's mostly an action game against a myriad of bosses and crazy encounters, interspersed with the occasional lackluster stealth section and tedious backtracking. It's especially poorly paced in disc 2, when it's just balls to the wall action until the game is over. Overall, a great game, but I prefer the sequels.

Going from the original NES/GBA Castlevania games to this one is like leaving an abusive relationship. Don't get me wrong, it's still a very difficult game, but the challenge in the first 2/3 of the game is extremely fun and fair, and you're properly equipped to handle most of the extremely difficult things the game throws at you. However, the final few stages return to the abusive ways of the old Castlevania games with unfair enemy placements that require memorization and extremely long boss rushes that were just begging to be save scummed. Overall an S tier game in terms of gameplay, atmosphere, and graphics. It's a shame they never utilized the 8-directional whip again, because it seems like a wasted mechanic with regard to future games.

In a stunning coup de grace, all-American developer Berkan Deneziaran opens up a riveting cinematic thread in the Half-Life universe by positing the question: who or what would Gordon and Alyx run into when Half-Life 3 inevitably comes out and they go to the Borealis? This game is filled with challenging gameplay reminiscent of the Dark Souls series (one could even call this the "Dark Souls of Half-Life". The main character Mitcher has the exaggerated swagger of a HECU soldier. The reveal of the antagonist Adam is a plot twist on par with the likes of Shutter Island and the Sixth Sense, where it turned out Bruce Willis had hair the entire time. The villain's death was made memorable as he uttered his iconic catch-phrase, "Mitch, Please!"
Talented and morally upstanding voice actors Sky Williams and Pyrocynical join the star-studded cast alongside President Keemstar.
The level design explores a bold new frontier in terms of gameplay, and immerses the player in the world of the visually impaired by refusing to put proper lighting in most areas, rendering the player unable to see.
I look forward to the GoldSrc port of this masterpiece.

A fun short arcade style romp with a ton of replay value. It's very forgiving and plays almost like a cross between Max Payne and God Hand. The aesthetics are peak mid ps2 era vibes. I wouldn't be surprised if someone made a handful of breakcore songs based off the soundtrack either.
I was surprised at how well they pulled off stylish third person shooting without copying Max Payne. The only complaint I have is the one healing boss and the absolutely atrocious camera angles, but ps2 games are required by law to have terrible camera angles.

This was a very fun game about blowing things up with a giant robot. The story is hilarious and over the top, the explosions are satisfying, the soundtrack is incredible and unique with its funkiness, the graphics look great for a game made in 2004, and the missions are really fun. However, this game also has some serious issues. The difficulty curve is all over the place. The game is either way too difficult, or stuck on easy mode once you get the higher tiers of machine guns and bazookas. If you grind the early missions a little bit, you'll unlock the best guns in the game by upgrading your research all the way to the top for machine guns and bazookas. This is an automatic way to win the game, and completely neuters the experience. That being said, the game is far too unforgiving without these weapons because it kicks you to the beginning of the level if you fail. There's really no "happy medium" when it comes to the difficulty, so it ends up being as satisfying as a wet fart. This is not the "tough but fair" FromSoft challenge that you'll get with their other games. The final boss was also complete garbage. He's far too difficult to fight fairly, but taking pot shots at him from behind a piece of level geometry makes the boss far too easy. Thus, emblematic of my entire experience with the game. It still gets 3.5 stars because it's still a ton of fun, and the cheesy story and voice acting made this fever dream of a game live in my head rent free. Plus, the game is set around the current year and our next president will be our 47th, so I'm looking forward to president Michael Wilson, 2024!

Bayonetta, like most Platinum games, is a very fun, but deeply flawed experience. Unlike its cohorts (i.e. Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden Black), Bayonetta constantly interrupts the flow of the game with cutscenes during missions, as opposed to the beginning and end of a mission. The cutscene's role in this game goes from being a welcome reprieve from the action to experience a simple yet well-fleshed out story, and instead becomes an annoyance that will constantly return to pester the player right when they reach proper momentum in the gameplay to continue delivering a nonsensical, hard-to-follow story. Of course, some of these cutscenes have instant death quick-time events which come out of nowhere to punish the player for having the audacity to mentally check out. Aside from the cutscenes, the action is solid (if inconsistent due to certain enemies not following the rules of witch time), and the stacy-tier protagonist keeps things entertaining with her flambouyant antics and varied moveset. The graphics and art style are fine, but there is so much filtering over the game that it lends itself to a fever-dream atmosphere. To be fair, this is a common hallmark amongst seventh gen games that had to hide the fact that they came out on inherently limited hardware, but Platinum games is a pretty big offender with this, especially with Metal Gear Rising and Vanquish. The soundtrack is perfect for this type of game, filled with frenetic bubblegum pop that will get stuck in your head despite not understanding any of the lyrics. The gameplay also has a tendency to be punishing and full of trial and error moments that will lead to many a quick and cheap death on the first playthrough of a mission, not just from combat but also traps and quick-time events that are not telegraphed prior to occuring. This, combined with the overly strict ranking system (this game is quick to give anyone a stone award, they aren't lenient in the awards system so you'll either get a stone or gold/platinum award and rarely get the ones in between), can lead to feeling enraged at the end of the level when you see Enzo's stony form gracing your screen. That being said, Bayonetta is not a bad game by any means. It just suffers from the unchecked, scattershot ambition of a man like Hideki Kamiya and a developer like Platinum Games.

This is the second entry in my quest to play all of the mainline Medal of Honor games.
So, to get a few things out of the way first:
This game would be a 4/5 if it ended after the fifth chapter.
Normal, sane people would use an emulator to avoid the severe performance issues plaguing this game. However, I am not a normal or sane person, so I played this all the way through on original hardware because I hate myself.
That being said, this game had a lot of potential but was dragged down by several nagging issues. I'm not one of those people who plays through the first few levels of a game to wax nostalgic about playing the easy levels as a kid, then gives a game five stars. If you read my Medal of Honor 1999 review, you'd know I'm tough, but fair in my analysis. That game was a fairly flawed, but very good game with some issues dragging it down towards the end. It had a lot of heart and soul poured into it that made it a fun experience, despite being a first person shooter on the PlayStation 1. Its sequel, Medal of Honor: Underground, on paper, should be the better game. It has better graphics, better lighting, a better soundtrack, a more interesting story that has you playing as Manon, a female French resistance soldier who sabotages the Nazi war machine on behalf of the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. The problem is, it's not.
To start, the first five chapters have some fairly low points but as a whole, I would say are better than the first game by a long shot. Especially the missions in Africa. They almost feel like a prototypical version of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a game that released about a year after this one, with their more supernatural and medieval elements.
The guns you are given are inferior to those in the first game. You get no good medium-range rifles like the M1 garand when playing as Manon. You are mostly stuck with submachine guns, pistols, a shotgun, and a sniper rifle. The sniper rifle would be great, were it not for the abysmal draw distance. A rifle without a scope, such as the M1 garand, would be a much better offering. The BAR was an absolute godsend in the final missions of the first game, but you are not given a weapon like that in this game for the more difficult Manon missions. I understand why you aren't given American weapons for reasons of historical authenticity, but still, some of the weapons Jimmy Patterson had in the first game would've been nice. Especially because you are given these missions by the OSS.
The story, just like the one in the first game, is your standard World War II shooter fare. You kill Nazis. Sometimes you do it in castles, sometimes you do it in a labyrinth, and sometimes you do it in the streets of Paris. This one has more interesting set dressing, like supernatural elements, but other than that it's your standard game about the French resistance.
The graphics are great, but the bad lighting returns from the first game. This predates the time when most games had a brightness slider, so if you want to see, then you'll have to turn up the brightness on your TV. The graphics are more varied, but the levels are more complex, so it evens out the complexity of the levels.
The levels themselves start off really fun and engaging, and the game feels a little smoother to play. That is, until the last few levels. The game always has an issue with performance, but there are so many enemies in the final two chapters with Manon that the frame rate drops into the single digits and you could fry bacon on your Playstation. You'd think they'd tone down the difficulty and number of enemies because performance drops like that are a really bad look for developers, but they didn't.
The enemies have more advanced and more obnoxious AI as well. They take cover, they duck, etc. The ducking is annoying because, even with bullet magnetism turned on, you have to aim like a foot lower than the actual soldier because the crosshair is askew. This is a problem in many situations, and with multiple weapons. The enemies also have this annoying habit of zipping around like meth heads (which, to be fair, is historically accurate) and being impossible to shoot. This is especially bad with the tankier submachine gunners, who will zip right up to you and mag dump right into you without you even noticing what happened. The game is plagued with these submachine gunners in the later chapters. It's even worse knowing that this is from an era where developers didn't respect your time and sanity, so you have to restart the entire mission when you die. These enemies also slow the game down much more than regular enemies, so you end up having to memorize their positions and anticipating them. You can't pick them off from a distance either, because they take cover behind impenetrable walls and don't aggro until you're right in their faces. They also love to corner camp so much that they'd make your average MW2 2009 player call BS. The Panzerschreck enemies also make a return, but they're not as numerous as they were in the first game. They'll still completely ruin your day if you're not careful.
Over the course of this entire game, I had a lot of fun and would highly recommend playing this for the first five chapters. The sixth and seventh chapter have genuinely unfair design that tanks the performance. I'm no stranger to hard games, but the last two chapters make me say that this is a bad game as a whole. It makes me wonder if everyone except a scant few played a different game altogether, because no one on the internet, not even Gmanlives, talks about the horrendous final levels.
There's also Panzerknacker Unleashed, the joke epilogue where you play as previous protagonist Jimmy Patterson. These missions are also horrendously difficult, with the developers continuing to indulge in their SMG fetish. The first level has you don your ATF hat and shoot a bunch of dogs, some of which wield our favorite firearm. You're just given a shotgun and pistol for this one. The second level has you fighting exploding zombies with SMGs and knights. These zombies, like the soldiers in the base game, have insane reflex time and aim. The mission is straight up unfair, like the last one. Luckily you get a BAR, which will carry you through the whole thing. The third has you killing nutcrackers. Enough said.