My opinion has shifted on Tekken 8 since it made a splash back in January. What started as a global event and a celebration of Tekken and the FGC as a whole has turned into perhaps the most tilting, dishonest fighting games ever created. I’m not writing this all pissed-off after a lackluster night on ranked. I’ve stopped playing for a few days and I feel no reason to go back.

Tekken 8 is miserable.

The first obvious issue is the heat system. It’s horrible. With a press of a button you get an attack that is fully tracking, plus on block, fast, armored, and launches if opponent is airborne. Once in heat, many characters get insanely powerful moves that do everything. Launch, plus on block, infinite range, you name it. Not only are these moves incredibly unbalanced and braindead, but they rip much on the integrity of Tekken straight out. Tekken has always been a knowledge check type of fighting game. There has always been bullshit moves that you need to lab. However, that’s not the case with these heat attacks. There’s absolutely nothing you can do. There shouldn’t be moves in fighting games with no counter play. They feel cheap to go up against and they feel dirty to use. It’s so disingenuous and braindead.

Heat is not the only problem however. Everything is just so over-tuned. Defense is a guessing game. It seams like every attack clips you if you try to sidestep, even with plus frames.
So many strings jail on block so you can’t duck and punish. Neutral is gutted by insanely powerful WR moves that are nearly homing and grant plus 7 if not more. Low parry was nerfed significantly making defense much worse. Many of the best characters in the game have heat smashes that fully track and grant plus frames, leaving you a sitting duck in neutral.

Defense has been gutted. Neutral has been gutted. Offense has been simplified with braindead moves. Pluggers are still a problem. Rank boosters quit after one lose. Feng still isn’t nerfed. Dragunov is still doing 70% on one launch. Devil Jin still has his heat smash. Xiayou still has a mid-mid-mid string that’s plus and a non-launch punishable unseeable snake edge. Counter-hit and homing throws are still a problem.

With all these factors, I find myself wondering: “is this even better than Tekken 7?” I hold out hope that with some balance patches and some key nerfs that Tekken 8 can still be the greatest Tekken. But as of now? It’s probably the worst Tekken of my lifetime.

I'm not a big fan of the horror genre in general, but if the other Resident Evils are as good as this one, I might change my mind.

Love the aesthetic and the puzzle solving. Not too complicated but it also requires you to use your brain. Similar gameplay to The Last of Us where items are scarce. However, they're even scarcer here with how much health the enemies have. I like it. Requires you to be conservative and plan ahead. Kind of like how you would go about it if a zombie apocalypse happened in real life. I like it when game get realistic.

This game is almost perfect. Almost. The one draw back for me is how many times you got to play through it for the platinum trophy. 4 playthroughs for both characters and both scenarios on Standard. Additional playthroughs may be needed to S rank, but I got them all on my first try somehow.

1 playthrough on Assisted for the no item box, no using healing items and walk less than 14,000 footsteps trophies. It's possible you won't get all these in 1 playthrough so you might need to do 1 or 2 more. Lastly, there's 2 hardcore playthroughs for both Leon and Claire. In all, that's 7 playthroughs minimum. I appreciate that the game's not too long, but considering both characters and their 2 scenarios are 80% the same to each other, it gets repetitive real quick.

Sure, the opening segment is different, and so are the puzzles, but you always got to get the 3 medallions, get a parking garage pass, get the chess pieces, use the crane to knock the dude over, get the pesticide solution, and fight the dude again. I love single player story games, there my favorite types of games, but one flaw they all share is that they're not all that replayable. 1 or 2 100% playthroughs is enough, but 7?! Playing the same story 7 times minimum can kind of numb your mind and take out the enjoyment the more times you play it.

Resident Evil 2 is still a great game. I would give it a perfect 5 stars if the trophies were a little more forgiving and didn't require so many playthroughs.

Compared to RE2, RE3 substitutes the puzzles for more shooting & action. I don't think this was a good idea considering how clunky and awkward the movement is. The rolling feature is nice, but is kind of inconsistent.

The biggest flaw with RE3 is Nemesis. It is such a horrible boss. You fight it like 10 times thorough out the game. Dude's practically invincible yet it can't seem to kill you. At one point, it picks up a rocket launcher and shoots it at you, but the rocket's have a blast radius the size of a frozen pizza at the supermarket. Tyrant in RE2 was scary & you always had to work around him. Every time Nemesis showed up, I was annoyed.

Jill is pretty and badass, but doesn't stand out as much as Leon, Ada or even Claire for that matter. Carlos is forgettable & Nicholai is such a nonsensical villain. His motives make no sense. I genuinely would have enjoyed the game more if he never existed.

Overall, I still had fun with RE3. It's an above-average game, but not good enough. This game feels like such a shadow of RE2. I do appreciate not having to do 6 or so playthroughs for the platinum.

The back third is a complete slog. As soon as you revive humans you better get ready for vague objectives and fetch quests galore. Kinda reminds me of Breath of Fire's end-run, but even worse. It's super ambitious for an SNES title I'll give it that, maybe with only Chrono Trigger or FFVI in competition for what it was trying to achieve.

I get that they were trying to make this almost world-building simulation take place within the confines of a JRPG, but figuring out what to do is always a problem at this point. The western portmanteau for the title, Terranigma (Earth/Riddle), is definitely more apt than the Japanese, Tenchi Souzou (the creation of heaven and earth). But it's less Zelda puzzles and more what do I need to do to progress? Lots and lots of that.

First third is amazing and now I realize why I always lost interest somewhere after that.

If we're being real this is the culmination of ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Ilusion of Gaia as it has traces of all of those games directly in its story and design.

I might want to do a more in-depth review later but I'm just glad I finally beat it now. I liked the ending quite a bit, but getting there was pretty rough. This went from a 4.5 to a 3.5 game for me sadly. Mainly due to the vagueness of the story and the translation.

One more bucket list title completed.

The Room but without Tommy Wiseau.

The black sheep of the original four Team Silent games, but is that rightfully so? Well it for sure is understandable. Henry Townsend is the definition of a dull and one dimensional character. Pretty much in contrast to Heather who is arguably the most 4-dimensional character I have ever witnessed. However SH4 has the series most interesting villain. Tommy Wisea...I mean Walter Sullivan. He sure looks like Tommy though lol.

Anyway the story about Walter and the 21 sacraments is pretty damn intruiging. The enemy design is great. Enemy sounds are pretty damn odd though, especially those burping monsters. Combat is worse yet easier at the same time. Once you got the axe you become invinvible ruining much of the horror. Imagine how dangerous those Twin Victims (one of the best and most underappreciated monsters in the franchise) would be with Silent Hill 3 gameplay and combat mechanics. The handgun is kinda like a shotgun shooting through multiple enemies sometimes.

The level design is great but I miss the radio and flashlight. The escort mission isn't as bad as in RE4 but witout it and the backtracking is something I could do without but I don't really mind it. Akira Yamaokas score is a masterclass. Room of Angels anyone?

9/10 Ghosts haunting your apartment.

Everyone that follows or knows me might know that I'm a huge Dinosaur nerd and I'm also a huge fan of the Resident Evil franchise. What do you get when you combine these two things, correct Dino Crisis. Because of that I always wanted to play Dino Crisis for years but for some reason my Dino Crisis 1(PC) Version doesn't let me save my progress. Then I tried to play Dino Crisis 2 and luckily I can save my progress in this game. So here we are and the first thing that I noticed quickly is that Dino Crisis 2 isn't a survival horror game in the style of the Resident Evil like the first Dino Crisis was. It's more of a arcade like game and the majority of the game comes down to mowing down hoards of dinosaurs this may sound repetitive but the game manages to stay interesting by frequently giving you new weapons to fight all kinds of prehistoric reptiles like Raptors, Oviraptors which are your main enemies but you will also encounter Allosaurus, Triceratops and even Marine Reptiles like Plesiosaurus or Mosasaurs. I was surprised that Dino Crisis 2 even included lesser known prehistoric animals like Inostrancevia. Yes, I said "prehistoric animals" on purpose because Inostrancevia, Mosasaurus, Plesiosaurus and Pteranodon aren't Dinosaurs but this was just the Dinosaur-Nerd in me getting the upper hand. Visually the game is still beautiful if you consider when it was released and same can be said about the surprisingly good looking cutscenes.
The controls are arguably the best and most responsive tank controls which is necessary for the arcade like gameplay. Dino Crisis 2 also throws in a few rail-shooting segments which were extremely fun and a a nice change of pace. All in all I really enjoyed this game, it's not hard to beat because of it's focus on action and the arcade like gameplay that rewards you for high combos. I would have like a bigger focus on survival horror but thanks to the genre shift Dino Crisis 2 manages to create it's own identity. Yes the story is nothing special, still the big variety of enemies, weapons and set pieces made the gameplay very entertaining. But the water segment can go fuck itself. Now Capcom, please give us a remake of Dino Crisis 1.

Games I finished in 2024 Ranked