Skyward Sword on Wii was already one of my favorite games of all time. I now have no reason to ever touch it again.

Skyward Sword HD took a game that I loved despite its flaws and fixed everything I had an issue with. I've already done a lengthy review on the original game, so instead of repeating all of that, here are my impressions from the 39 hours I spent completing this remaster.

- Ghirahim is still my favorite Zelda villain. He's so deliciously camp.
- "Romance in the Air" might be the most beautiful bit of music in any Zelda game ever: https://youtu.be/T6x5bEr_UUU
- The resolution and buttery-smooth framerate take this game to a new level. I know Breath of the Wild 2 is gonna chug just like its predecessor, but it would be a TREAT to have all Zelda games in 60fps from now on.
- I still adore these motion controls. For whatever reason, they just click for me. Wish I could have 1:1 sword controls in every Zelda game, just like this one!
- The side characters are so good here. Meaningful, memorable interactions with NPCs make this such a fun world to be in.
- These are still some of my favorite Zelda dungeons, especially the ones in Lanayru.
- I really like returning to areas multiple times with different stuff going on. Seeing things change in an area is one of my favorite things in games, it makes the world feel more alive.
- I adore the Silent Realm challenges! A little bit of survival-horror in a Zelda game works really well. I recommend going for the difficult tears first just in case you get caught though, no need to ruin your whole run by saving the ones surrounded by floaty ghosts for last.
- Timeshift Stones are so rad.
- I liked the Demise fight much more this time than I did in 2011, but that might just be because I knew what to expect.
- I replayed BotW right before this, and that game really lacks an ending. In contrast, SS's ending is solid, probably right behind OoT.
- Fi is great, and it's much easier to appreciate her with the now toned-down number of interruptions.
- Bring back Scrapper!!
- My only real complaint is that I wish there were even more side quests, but if a game just makes me wish I could keep playing for longer, that's hardly a negative!

That was kind of word vomit, but I think that about covers everything. I love this game!

I played ds2 originally in 2017, so a lot of my memories from it were very blurry and incomplete. From my original playthrough i can honestly attest to not enjoying a single second of it. However, the general consensus seems to have changed, and suddenly this is the best game ever made. I decided to replay it with an open mind to see if theres something i potentially missed.

No, i was right. This game feels bad. Character creation is extremely limiting with basic things like hair, and im pretty sure they gender-locked certain options so if i wanted short hair i just had to roll with the anime Ellen Degeneres look.

Dark souls 2 has a very bland sense of style, ive always thought that every single thing from this game felt extremely generic. What if hollows just looked like basic zombies? What if the fire keeper looked like she got her outfit straight from Party City? The giants are the most iconic thing from this game, and they still were almost just bland, basic trolls you could see anywhere. The design is bad, there is no solid or unique sense of a look. The only thing i can say is that the environments look nice and have color, which is something actual dark souls lacks.

Alright, so i thought, this isnt a good dark souls game. But maybe it could be fun as its own thing.

No. The gameplay still feels utterly wretched. Its been a long time since ive controlled something so awful. Everything about it just feels wrong... the design philosophy of this game just feels like "hey, this aint your MOM'S dark souls!!!! You only get ONE flask!!"

I could play dark souls with one flask, but not this one. Why does it take so, so long to drink. What are life gems, why would you not just give me more flasks. Why are there so many random items that are just variants of an already existing item. Why does my character move like shes walking through mud. Everything takes so long, nothing feels smooth to do. In fact, the only things that feel nice are the things that arent really important, like climbing a latter and jumping. Combat feels equally as bad. Everything feels like its a joke at the players expense, for example why can i break chests if it just destroys whatevers in it? What purpose does that have other than to deny me a reward? Why does dying reduce my health pool when ive already been punished for failing? Nothing here feels natural or good to play, or worth my time.

I didnt even get to the first boss this time around, i got to a room that killed me immediately with javelins upon entering and i turned off the game. I refunded it for dark souls 1, and to be honest i really just do not get why people like this game so much other than the fact that they know its bad and they just want to say the opposite. Dark souls 2 does not feel good at all to play.


Shoutout to smelly joe...

despite its central premise being very inspired by Life on Mars, so much of Driver: San Francisco feels like the pinnacle of racing game stories. or just car games in general. the original Driver was one of the first games I played. I was one of the thousands who never made it out of the opening garage tutorial. I've always had a rooting interest in this series, even if Driver 3 and Parallel Lines slipped me by and I wrote this off for years as the final nail in the coffin.

turns out I was incredibly wrong. at worst, it fulfills the promise the original Driver gave me - a fantastic, free-flowing open-world racing game with impeccable real world detail, from the layout of the SF streets to the use of many notable real life cars, as well a deep love for replicating the vibe of late 60s and 70s car chase movies.

the story is both insanely stupid but it's told in one of the most ingenious ways. it holds up as a video game story almost better than any game I can remember. the tone is perfect. the little snippets of dialogue throughout are all nice.

where this shines though is the creativity on display. not even with the shift mechanic that's almost flawless, but the concepts for events are all so good. riding under a semi-trailer to defuse a bomb like you're in a Fast & Furious movie? gold. the goddamn level where your POV is from the driver's seat of the car chasing you? that was beautiful and inspired. the ways in which the game reminds you you're in a game by reminding you your character is in a coma? really great. following an ambulance around to keep your heartbeat down while you're in cardiac arrest is some really compelling that not only other racing games never aspire to but few contemporary games manage to pull off.

one of the last real ps3 gems.

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
more like "DRIVERS" because although the main police drama revolves around a single protagonist, the truth is that thanks to a diegetically justified supernatural mechanics we will be able to possess any driver in the city and inhabit his vehicle with a single button, like a specter , a creative multi-level approach to changing vehicles that is often seen as it avoids the process of stopping / lowering and raising / starting a car, you only change cars while driving, simple pleasant and fast, but you also enter for a short time in the lives of those drivers; Maybe a rich mother who just bought her daughter a car, an engineer lamenting being an engineer with his brother-in-law, a kid training for a driver's license, a couple of cops on patrol, two Japanese brothers involved in a series of races illegal ... whatever you can think of, 150 characters (or something like that, dunno) in any case, the writing leads to very funny, imaginative and varied micro situations.
"sure, why not ?,"
It is a constant thought within the game, but always focused on movement, in contrast to other racers that look like high-end car porn, Driver: San Francisco is motion, and for the first time in a long time, I get excited driving, drifting alleys and I choreographed in the opposite direction, I no longer walk and just fly. i am true to the name "Driver.

Couple of thougths:
The world as a driving track and challenges has been explored on many occasions, but it has never been completely justified diegetically, nor has traffic been given so much importance as inhabitants. It is curious because when reinterpreting the world through a vehicle, perhaps giving importance to traffic as something more than fluctuating obstacles would be a cool idea.

Throughout the 20th century, San Francisco became synonymous with cultural experimentation and alternative thinking and the creativity with which this Driver takes the formal elements of open world driving games perfectly matches the description of this city.

It's the original Doom, with an additional weapon, new enemies, and bigger maps! Unfortunately, it feels less like the superlative original trilogy and more like the Thy Flesh Consumed expansion in all its cheap janky glory. The levels have some interesting gimmicks to them, but they're often needlessly sprawling and obtuse, and don't compare favorably to the atmospheric homerun of the original thanks to their largely scattergun approach to design.

Part of this game's level design issues can be attributed to its level structure compared to the original, which had multiple episodes, each 8 levels long. 8 levels was a good length for each episode as you gradually increased the size of your arsenal and faced off against a big boss at the end, and then you would start off the next episode afresh - the beginning of episode 3 which pitted the player against a Cacodemon with nothing but a pistol made a strong impression on me. Doom 2, on the other hand, is made up of one unbroken episode 30 levels long, which leads to two issues. Firstly, you normally attain all the available weapons and ammo upgrades like five levels in, depriving you of the feeling of 'powering up' for the rest of the game. But more crucially, the lack of cadence and pacing created by this single overly-long episode leads to a general lack of direction, and there are so many filler levels that make it apparent that the developers seemed to be running low on ideas.

In the end, this is still Doom. It's still lots of fun, it's still competently designed, it still excels in capturing the feeling of flying by the seat of your pants and always being a mistake away from death - a feeling enhanced by the greater variety of threats and size of enemy formations, although as mentioned above it can sometimes get a bit cheap. But it's also an unfortunate reminder that bigger isn't always better.