excerpt from heather's fps museum:

sorry, everybody: i think f.e.a.r. is just ok. those here only for the wonderfun slow-mo shotgunning (listen to that shell hit the ground, holy hell) and the fancy enemy ai are gonna have a good time. i find f.e.a.r. underwhelming in nearly every other facet.

my main gripe is the combo of flaccid storytelling with shallow and repetitive environments. i cannot remember a single facet of f.e.a.r.'s plot, despite how often the game insists of dragging down the pacing to convey it. i had to look the details up up just to write this entry. it's soooo mundane and the weak ambience throughout the every level only makes it more painful. the finale is the worst offender. i should be eating paxton and alma's relationship up. alma could have been one of history's great traumagirls (please give me a darkness-esque game starring her). in practice, i found it hard to even pay attention when i wasn't being forced to play target practice with the ghosts. everything feels rushed, rushed, rushed.

thing is, i don't think f.e.a.r. was supposed to be monolith's definitive statement for this series. that rushed energy to everything other than the legendary combat makes sense if you view the game as a tech demo or a pilot episode with the bones of an interesting world and aesthetic. the problem is that the series that followed got screwed over by publisher bullshit. regardless, i'm going to try f.e.a.r. 2 and see if my hypothesis is right. perhaps it will be the full experience i'm looking for.

first of all: this IS the superior version of the game. sonic r was made FOR the saturn and i adore it in all its graphical crust and cascading render distances. seriously, the way they handle the low render distance in this game is gorgeous and amplifies the look of tracks like radiant emerald. i'm getting aside of myself though

sonic r is a misunderstood gem. i was thinking about this a lot in my free time the other day- i've been on a sega saturn binge lately and i played sega rally championship back to back with this game. intentional or not, sonic r and src are definitely similar games, yet sonic r has a 2.8 and sega rally has a 3.7.

"well, sonic r has slippery handling and inconsistent physics!" yeah, so does sega rally. stop playing sonic r like a kart racer

"well, sonic r barely has any content!"
sega rally has 4 stages, yet nobody complains. i guess cuz its an arcadey racer and you're supposed to master high scores? i'd definitely argue that's what sonic r goes for as well.

"the music is bad!"
nobody says this about either game i made it up

so the biggest complaints about sonic r come down to misconceptions. i think this is also why people complain about the "difficulty spike" for 100%-ing the game! the game demands mastery of the few stages it has for the same reason any arcade racer would. it provides a solid testing grounds for your fastest pathways, and the shitpost-tier ai in the standard races makes it less of a pain in the ass to get back to the challenge again. i don't know what design decisions were legit decisions here, but it all flows together quite nicely. though, obviously, the greatest part about this game are the track layouts and the MUSIC. i cannot say anything about sonic r's soundtrack that hasn't already been said. just listen to "work it out". it is the most bright, bubbly energetic music that fails to ever get old when you're practicing routes through those stages. and those stages do have hella routes- they're essentially 3d sonic levels that loop. it's super fun to use each character's power to "exploit" things. the speedrunning scene for sonic r is probably insane. maybe that physics engine was good all along? the artstyle is damn perfect too, featuring signature sega sunny skies as well as sparkley space voids and shiny metallic sheens. exploring is fun and satiates my need for a 3d platformer on the sega saturn, cuz this is way more interesting as a genre hybrid.

yeah sonic r is basically perfect. best racing game i've ever played

this game is silent hill 3 spooky moments compilation for 5 hours so it is good. do not read the rest of this review

ok fine i'll say some boring reviewer stuff

in a world of trite unity horror, lost in vivo serves a reminder of what a smart indie developer can pull off. the pacing tight enough to keep shit scary. there's a change of scenery, a minor mechanic, or a new monster around every few corners, like a 2010s horror greatest hits. it felt amazing to be scared by a game in a way that didn't feel manipulative or momentary, as the designer knows how to keep things tense without being upsetting.

edit: adding as an addendum the next day - much ink has schlorped over this games use of "liminal spaces" and "claustrophobia horror" and this is one spot where i'd say it too often tries to have its cake and eat it too. it pulls off both being atmospheric and jumpscarey but the fact that i easily can tell when an area will and will not have an enemy or item interferes with that tactile style. it is not silent hill 3 kino. soritris' section handles this problem by making the pickupables much more abstract, believably sequencing the rooms, and using a chaser enemy that requires you move slowly. unfortunately. it also takes place in an area that i'm not as fond of as the warmly orange tinted train station or the p.t. ass loop hallway. if you have no idea what anything i just said was, remember that this sequence of thoughts has been marinating in my rotten brain juices for many hours