This feels like a waste of potential. For context, I lean much more towards remakes being something that stands on it's own from the original. This is the exact same experience from Demon's Souls on PS3 with a worse coat of paint and faster load times.

I don't want to discredit Bluepoint like they did a terrible job though, there was clearly a lot of effort put into the visuals and making it run smoothly on PS5. But I honestly feel like that's kinda it. Like they were tasked to just make a pretty looking remake with not much else going into it. If that was the goal, they succeeded. But I don't think it's worth replacing the original over.

The new music also sucks.

Edit: Went back and beat it. Yeah I still feel about the same. The OG filter cuts out a bit of my complaints about the worse coat of paint and some of the GRAPHICS are actually pretty impressive. But it's still original Demon's Souls underneath all that with some QOL mixed in. Not the worst but still kind of a waste of potential that a remake for DeS could've been.

Music still sucks, too.

It's difficult to put into words the ringer this game put me through. If Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a game that you can play 100 times and learn something you didn't know the last time with each playthrough, Spelunky 2 is a game where you can die 100 times in completely different ways and then learn nothing.

The magic to most of those deaths is that, most of the time, you'll realize it was entirely your own fault.

Died to a long drop? Check how far down it is next time.
Dart trap? Just use your eyeballs, nerd.
An elevator going up and down that you were just a tiny bit too close to one side and got crushed when passing by a wall? Yup, that's also your fault.

This game gets 5/5 stars because I loved bashing my head into this wall. It's a very hard game to put down once you've gotten far enough in. And having multiple paths that lead to a few different zones and endings made my drive even stronger. I still play this game on occasion just because getting in a run just fills time so efficiently. I love this game, and it easily makes it's way into my top 5 of all time.

Curse of the Moon is a game that I really like, but I get this feeling that the game doesn't like me. On one hand, I LOVE that you have multiple characters you can swap between in a party that you unlock as you play the game. My favorite character to play as is definitely Gebel in how simple his bat attack and transformation are, but for giving me that small feeling that I now get to play as Dracula. On the other hand, every time I lose a party member because I misjudged a jump over a death pit, I want to curl up into a ball and cry.

The game itself isn't very difficult on Veteran, but I'll be damned if I'm going through the level the long way AND going to miss any secrets because Gebel scraped his knee and died.

I'd probably like this game a lot more if I could make it more difficult without losing a character every time I die, but that also ties into the challenging aspect of the game that I don't think is replicated enough in a lot of modern games these days that try to go for a classic Castlevania style. I want to love you, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. I suspect in time, I will. I just wish you would love me, too.

Katamari Damacy is my new happy time game. Whenever I've had a bad day at work, I can always look forward to rolling into my bed and then rolling up a bunch of objects into a giant ball that I can shoot into space.

In a way, rolling up the katamari is the perfect stress reliver if you're not bothered by the nonconventional control scheme for moving it in the game. The Prince and, by extension, the player really have no concerns for anything that they're rolling up. And yet the game is much less violent of a way for you to virtually vent your frustration than mowing down pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto or throwing around cars in The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

I can derive satisfaction in the giant katamari I've created for The King of All Cosmos, who always appreciates my work more than my boss at my job can really ever express.

I also just want to add that I love how The Prince waves you goodbye when you turn the game off. Little gestures of kindness like that after a long day at your job that you hate can really keep a person going, and more games should be so delightful as this one.

Resident Evil 4 might be one of the best video games ever made. The reality is that most people already know this, so I don't have to say a whole lot. This game excels so much in being just an incredible ride from start to finish. After I was thoroughly disappointed by Resident Evil Village, I booted this up just to wash out the bad after taste. It worked, and I was amazed that my ability to play the game on a DualShock 4 translated over perfectly from when I played it on GameCube and Nintendo Wii controllers. This game is incredible, but don't make the mistake in thinking that Resident Evil 4 is what Resident Evil as a series is all about. It's an absolute banger on an entry, but it took a risk in changing up the identity of the franchise up to that point. A risk that I think did pay off in the years to follow with similar formatted Resident Evil games (Resident Evil 5 and 6 are good and you should feel good about liking them).

Resident Evil Village is the "I wish I was playing Resident Evil 4" of Resident Evil games. This feeling was so strong throughout my entire first (and only) playthrough of this game that it almost feels like the developers intended it. The game shallowly tries to recreate the camp that made Resident Evil 4 an all time classic without ever really wearing it on it's sleeve the same way Resident Evil 4 does. It's a shame because some of the segments that go for a more action set piece can actually be really engaging in how you try and manage your ammo cache versus how many dudes you have to smoke. But the same magic just isn't there, yet you never lose that feeling like the game is genuinely trying. It's like watching someone do flips exclaiming that they're Spider-Man, but you can plainly see the price tag they forgot to take off their costume just as they face plant onto concrete. It's sad, and you just want to go home.

I don't care that this game isn't as robust as Animal Crossing: New Leaf, or even that the new QoL changes come with just as many backsteps that they still haven't changed in it's first year of being released. I was looking for a pink durag to go with my house cleaning outfit and Fauna just gave me one within 5 minutes of playing without me ever even saying it out loud. This game reads my mind harder than my phone listens for when I name drop products I'd buy. Giving it anything less than 5/5 stars could mean that I'll be killed in my sleep tonight. Stay safe everyone.

Did you know that it is against the law to say anything bad about Bloodborne? It's true. If you ever even think about how it would've been better as an action game rather than trying to be like a Souls game, you'll see police officers outside your house. They'll say you have the right to remain silent and that anything you say can and will be used against you. But that doesn't scare you. You shriek as they drag you away about how it's not fun making a build for a weapon you only get after beating the final boss. As you're waiting in your cell, your provided attorney will try and work out a plea bargain, claiming that at the very least you did play the game for 300+ hours on your PlayStation 4, way more than the weekly amount that all PlayStation 4 owners are required by law to play. While on trial however, you lash out. You say that it's not fair that Bloodborne can't even be ported over to PC, and that not getting an FPS boost for PlayStation 5 is even more outrageous. The judge bangs his gavel. You've dug your grave. You find yourself some years later, serving a life sentence because you couldn't play ball and just have fun with your hyper Lovecraftian atmospheric action adventure game. Guards walk by your cell and wince, and your fellow prisoners whisper nothing good about you. They're intimidated by you. And not because you were so brave to say that Bloodborne has flaws. But because of the same repeated phrase you have carved all over your cell. A phrase that only says... “cummmfpk”.

Yakuza 4 is a modern retelling of Frankenstein's Monster. Dr. Victor Frankenstein (played by Toshihiro Nagoshi) creates a monster (Shun Akiyama) so powerful, the village (everyone developing Yakuza after Yakuza 4) had to destroy him to restore the natural balance. The moral of the story being that the greatest sin committed was not trying to create unnatural life, but harboring nothing but hatred for it, making no attempt to understand it, and seeking it's destruction.

The game is pretty good, too. The story is dumb. I love it.