Has that feeling a lot of my favorite games have of being a game-mechanical nut you don’t quite know how to crack, and the early frustration of that gives way to an immense satisfaction when you do crack it, sorting out that no, there is not enough ammo to kill most of the enemies, that doing so might just make your life harder if those enemies resurrect in more ghastly forms, that your character can see and aim properly even if you can’t due to the preset camera angles with pre-rendered backgrounds, etc.

There’s a fiddliness and patience required to come to terms with the design that adds to the anxious fear. I understand why games as a medium have moved away from requiring that level of patience (what busy adult has the time anymore and how many more busy adults are the target market of games now than they were back then?) but when that sort of design hits, it’s really special.

Also, the pre-rendered backgrounds melded with character/enemy models that the full rendering force of the Gamecube can be thrown at still accomplishes a shockingly effective, grimy vibe of dread, I think it’s a gorgeous game in that way, at least when sort of blurred together into cohesion by the phosphors of an old crt tv. God, I’m an old-man gamer hipster now, aren’t I? But what are ya gonna do?

Horrendously fun, an odd and entrancing mix of tones that somehow works by leaning into its own eccentricities. Largely more thrilling than scary, apart from one particular bit that scared me more than any other single moment in Resident Evil history and gnawed at some particularly adult anxieties I’ve been wrestling with lately… The focus on sprawling gunplay and more out-there antagonists is super fun but is less of a cohesive revelatory experience than VII, so VII is still my golden boi, but damn I had a lot of fun with this one. Probably my GOTY.

The game i think of above all others when i think of game boy advance, an exhilarating and unexpected follow-up to Super, replaying it now i’m struck by how much more dread this game conjures than, uh, “Dread”. I remembered this one being rather linear and siloed but was happy to encounter a number of twists and interconnections between areas as you get locked off of the normal path by the SA-X, perhaps as many interconnections as in any other Metroid?? “Dread” was a bit of the opposite experience in that it appears far more open but for the majority of the game blocks off the wrong path to avoid you getting lost, which was a bit of a bummer for me. Both great games, man this series is an all-timer.