A very fine example of turning shit into gold. Where The Darkness comic mostly sucks ass, the game simplifies the concept to such a perfect balance, and provides a very endearing story with charming characters.

This feels like one of the last non-complacent FPS games out there during this period of video games, where it did not really understand what would be considered the most optimal design document at this point, something being wholly sharpened by the big shooter franchises during this time.

Yeah, it's clunky and slow, yeah the scenes are awkward with stilted acting, yeah the hubworld is kind of just a weird time sink, and ya know what? I fucking love it. I love the action, the darkness powers, the characters, and especially the music. It's all so fucking good, and didn't care how rickety it felt. And long-haired caveman Jackie spoke to me as an edgy teenager.

There's something swimming inside this sea of a terribly designed chase sim that is quality. I think parts of the story are written pretty well, especially the third act. That was the only part where me and my partner were at least somewhat invested. I also don't mind how much this is biting the likes of Silent Hill 2 and P.T. Deriving the work that inspired you is fine if the overall execution is satisfying. Which . . . some of it is, I guess.

However, the majority of the story was very shallow and uninteresting, and the amount of assurance that the message is NOT "Kill yourself lol" (ala The Medium, one of the worst games ever made which was also a Silent Hill biter) looped back around to being funny, speaking as two people that suffered from depression in our younger years.

"Don't commit suicide, everythin' gonna c alright." -This game when you load it, finish chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3

The real brunt of this game's terrible design is at the end, at the 'final chase' sequence where not only are you expected to find 5 artifacts, trudge through a maze of rooms and doors, all while avoiding a thing chasing you, but Anita won't SHUT THE FUCK UP. I HATE HATE HATE this in horror games so much, it's more annoying than the stupid asshole you played as in Outlast. Yeah, she's panicked. No shit she's panicked. It's a panic-inducing situation I don't need her gutteral breathing voice bytes on repeat as I'm trying to solve a chase scene.

P.T. is LITERALLY one of the scariest pieces of horror media ever made, and Norman Reedus' blank ass character didn't SAY A GODDAMN THING. I hate this shit so much. You don't need to assure me that the character is scared, I know it's scary. Fuck off. The voice acting is mostly awful too, everyone sounds like 4Kids dubbers. It's all overacting and don't feel genuine for even a moment.

Anyway, bad (real) start to this Silent Hill resurgence. What a joke.

As someone that is not good at any fighting games, I think this game ROCKS. I went to an arcade with a few friends that ARE good at certain fighting games, and I was actually able to stand up against them in this! That's because this game is the most barebones concept of a fighter, where spacing and reacting is key, but there's so little to the visual feedback that it makes it so much easier to understand than your modern fighters.

The stiff controls also add to how important every single one of your moves are. It adds a layer to understanding the spacing and such.

Fuck the haters, this game is dope. It aged so well, as all of us got really into this and competitive during our time there.

I played this game for hours and hours and HOURS back when it was brand new. Mostly in multiplayer. I played it with longtime L4D veterans, I played it with those unaware of Turtle Rock's work, I played with randos. As the monster, against the monster, I squeezed so much out of this humungous, intriguing game.

I get it. I see the vision, and I completely understand where Turtle Rock was coming from. Just like Left 4 Dead, they wanted "CO-OP" to be the largest, most important element. Just like in said legendary zombie-killing duology, if even a single person on your team is not being a team player, your chance of winning is basically zero.

And that's great, I think that's a very cool and important aspect to these games. I also understand that the main aspect to this game's 'enjoyment' factor is "The thrill of the hunt." The game didn't want you to feel like some crazed super-soldier armed to the teeth killing hordes of enemies. They wanted you to feel like an actual hunter. Tracking the big game's path, arming and supplying yourself along the way in order to be able to stand up against it. But with that comes the caveat of the fact that most of the time . . . you're just running forward.

The 1-man team "monster" side is interesting too, although I'll admit I was a complete schlub in this regard, I always panicked and messed up in nearly every match due to anxiety, as the only person I can blame for my loss is myself.

While I can respect this game for what it was going for, I can understand why a lot of people didn't dig it. I don't want to say it was 'too sophisticated' or whatever, I just think certain expectations simply couldn't be met, considering how much they amped up "FROM THE CREATORS OF LEFT 4 DEAD" and barebones content, while towing huge prices for DLC. I myself got bored with the game often and think a lot of its visual designs are either boring or obnoxious, the fact that your gun usually takes up like 1/3 of the screen is just ridiculous.

A sequel to the original Amplitude (which was called Amplitude) that was marketed as a remake to the original Amplitude.

From a core gameplay perspective, it's pretty great. It makes a lot of small improvements that not only help you improve your rhythmic button-tapping skills, but opens more opportunities for the game designers to be creative with the stage maps themselves, this is easily one of the most tightly-designed rhythm games in Harmonix's portfolio.

The presentation itself is noticeably more cold, and darker in tone. No kooky cartoon characters to customize, and nearly all the music stages are original compositions, as Harmonix likely couldn't license music out for this smaller-scale project. Therefore, gone are those stretched out, billboard-like profiles for each song and their respective artist. There's even a bit of a story behind the main campaign, although most of it are just a handful of voice lines as the stage begins.

To be frank, much of what I'm describing I think just comes down to a money issue. Harmonix didn't have Sony's publishing power this time. No doubt that was how they were able to get so many hit songs for the original game, and why this new title has literally none.

Regardless, the raw gameplay elevates the quality to a huge level, and I thought it was great! Especially impressive that there's very little input lag on a modern console, even with large HDTVs! Good stuff, too bad Harmonix is a shell of its former self lol

At the time, this game was the talk of the town! An uber-violent Wii exclusive installment to House of the Dead, a series that laid dormant for years at that point! And, being from a European studio, it feels like a funny pastiche on violent American media, seeing as it was clearly inspired by Grindhouse films. This is probably the best aspect of the game, as the cutscenes are fun to watch, the chemistry between G and Isaac is delightful.

However, the core gameplay itself is kind of weak. It doesn't have a good pace like the original arcade games, and the zombies have little to no personality behind their designs. You don't have a lot of unique zombies that share a visual style that attack in their desired methods. Just about all the enemies attack the same way, and the most unique ones have these really awful cut-aways that feel like they take forever to deal with. This is one of numerous issues where the pace just kind of sucks from beginning to end, and the boss encounters aren't very interesting either.

This is one of the better home console rail shooters, I suppose, but that isn't saying much, as I don't think it holds a candle to the original games preceding it.

I'm kind of a stickler when it comes to rail shooters. Regarding the entire subgenre, I think House of the Dead and Time Crisis cracked the code on what makes it such a gratifying way to play, and nearly every studio trying to make their own of that ilk do not understand what made those games so great from a game design standpoint.

With all that said, the Silent Hill arcade game is surprisingly good. Not amazing, it still feels lacking in a lot of aspects, but the pace is just right, and the multiple paths and unique bosses make it fun to play through a few times. The challenge feels just below engaging, but it could've been a difficulty switch turned low or something, I'm not sure.

It's very funny seeing Konami delegate some Western yahoos to continue the mainline entries of the series, while gathering a bunch of their in-house devs to make a goofy rail-shooter.

When this was new, I thought it was awesome! I'm not sure how much the novelty of having a brand new, robust-looking installment to Contra on a handheld system added to that general enjoyment when I was in my late teens as an avid Contra fan. And, to rattle off the things I like, it controls totally fine! It plays as it's supposed to (however the fact that it dropped the strafing mechanic from SS/Neo is annoying) and the bonus content was plentiful. They gave you a lot for this quarter-sized DS cartridge!

The overall design, however, is terrible. It has such an awful pace that makes the stages feel even more of a drag than they already are (each of them are too long by at least a solid 30 seconds of tight gameplay). The fact that they utilize both screens for pure gameplay was a poor decision. The grappling hook mechanic is worthless, feels like they came up with the idea but had a hard time implementing it to anything remotely engaging. And where the likes of Contra Shattered Soldier had its fair share of retreating old grounds, at least those returning enemy designs looked fantastic being rendered in 3D and usually offered new methods of attack, mixing up the overall experience. Here, anything returning looks like shit, and just about everything new is lame and forgettable.

I'd like to properly analyze why I severely fell out of love with this game. All I know right now is every single revisit makes this game look worse in my eyes.