There are games you finish and don't know what to say because they are so unremarkable, and then there are games like 1000x resist where I sit at my computer inmediately after thinking how exactly I could do the game justice without just playing it again whilst taking notes.

I'll try to be brief, but what 1000x resist's sci fi narrative adventure game brings to the table is that its not only dense as hell plot and theme wise, feeling almost like an adaptation of some acclaimed novel, whilst also having stylistic flourishes that are both impressive and also feel purposeful in a way that a higher budget game probably wouldn't. They made a game this visually striking with what feels like cardboard sets and a few unity shaders. The starkness of the environment design and the various shifts of perspective from over the shoulder to first person to top down to side scroller in a way that feels elegant rather than whiplash to the extreme.

The credits have the usual indie game thing where one guy was Modeler, Texturer, Writer, Designer, Costum Designer, Chef, Lawyer and Defender of the Innocent. The game is so impressive as someone who does 3D modelling myself, I have taken a bunch of screenshots of the game simply because I love how they look. One small ass team somehow puts most AAA games I've played to shame in the visual department.

Thats not to say the game's budget or lack thereof doesn't become apparent with the lack of facial animation. Of course the game understands this to some extent, hence the choice of making the sisters require masks to breathe and be clones of each other (hence, only like 5 or so models had to be rigged up) but thats what taking advantage of your limitations is all about.

Story wise, its again hard for me to really comment because its dense but in a way that all great narratives are, like say, Moby Dick or The Truman show, which are enjoyable both at surface level and on a deeper read of the symbolism. Not everything worked for me, and the resolutions of the endings could have perhaps been more elegant, as well as all the Hong Kong stuff carrying the stench of liberalism about it (Incidentally the cops of the provisional government being called the Red Guard was really on the nose) but the game is otherwise so engaging that I don't mind. Strong personal contender for GOTY, it and Extreme Evolution : Drive to Divinity are the front-runners for me.

A fantastic arthouse film experience made for a crowd that will not, or ever, appreciate something as bold and slow burning as this.

Jeanne Dielman energy.

As a gamer I was upset at all of the empty space. But as a fan of arthouse films I've never seen anything like this.

Even though there was alot of empty space (which can and should be fast forwarded through), subtle face expressions can reveal alot of information. It was interesting connecting the dots between responses and I found it more satisfying than "her story" honestly. It felt more believable and personal. There is a great amount of variety when it comes to the scenes displayed. Intense moments, genuinely heartbreaking bonds, twists, an array of different personalities, and even uncomfortable intimacy. When you find an important scene it definitely feels important and revealing. Then you are left beating your head when one that didn't seem important had crucial information because of your own sheer impatience.

The performances were surprisingly top notch. What's more impressive are the very long takes. Long takes like this require alot of focus/planning. Even the little girl was doing great.

This kind of storytelling is very special, and can only be done through gaming. In my opinion it's better than "Her Story" and i cant wait to check out "Immortality". Chronologically, this is "Memento" on drugs and I applaud the audacity.

initially i buried the lede, but i'm angry enough that i won't: this is a story david cage would write wrapped in a game good enough that he would hate every second of it.

lorelei and the laser eyes is a flawless dollhouse construction of beautiful puzzleboxes. the art and design is excellent and when it pulls a gimmick it pulls it excellently. it pushes, dramatically, towards one-upping the mechanical center of outer wilds' climax (with several more moving parts, each with a highlights mathmania's worth of fun little tricks to solve).

the problem is that the game also wants to one up the emotional climax of outer wilds, and it doesn't know what the fuck a human being is. the best it can offer you is a mannequin, with a mannequin of that same mannequin off to the side, in the corner, winking solemnly. it is a sad joke, an attempt at a gut punch so limp that it made me the angriest i've been at a video game all year. it is rare that i am this impressed by a video game i feel for a moment i might actually hate.

the worst part is that i know these motherfuckers can do the work. there is good writing in many inches of the margins here, and, besides, they've made one bonafide goddamn video game narrative masterpiece (device 6, a much better game than this overall) so it's all the more disappointing.

at least the end credits song is basically another sayonara wild hearts track.

probably the most angry i've been at a video game in years. hell, even twelve minutes was funny to think about.

I don't know how anyone can make a departure look cool, but Zero finds a way. Mega Man Zero 2; a slight improvement over its predecessor, but still fumbles in certain areas. Weapon grinding has been reduced, the bosses are fun to fight against, the music is far more memorable than the first, and the levels are decently well designed... in the first half because the second half has its fair share of moments. Screen crunch is still prevalent throughout Zero 2, as enemies sometimes pop up out of nowhere, giving you little time to react like with the robot fishes at the beginning of Poler Kamrous' stage and those damn spike balls that can be found in multiple areas.

Zero has access to multiple forms in this game allowing him to perform certain abilities while playing through missions. These are unlocked by doing various things like defeating 50 enemies in a mission to obtain the X Form for example, that increases the damage of the Buster Shot and can fire more bullets at a time. These forms vary in power, defense, and speed; encouraging replayability in New Game+ playthroughs as each has distinct strengths and weaknesses. I can sort of say the same thing with the EX Skills, but these require getting an A or S Rank when clearing levels for the first time. At least the ranking system has a purpose rather than just bragging rights, but I don't think it's something you should worry about in your first playthrough. If you're curious, try getting at least a few skills to help you out like I have, but the basic sword slashing and elemental weaknesses are more than enough.

In exchange for the Triple Rod, we have the Chain Rod. Great as a weapon, but not great as a grappling hook. It feels unintuitive as the hitbox for this thing is utterly bizarre, leading to occasional moments where the rod should've clung onto ceilings, but didn't register for some ungodly reason. It's even worse when the game requires you to use it to reach across spikes and bottomless pits like in the final level, so I had to execute this cautiously. If this had some fine-tuning, I'm sure the Chain Rod would've been a worthy replacement, but it was more of a mixed bag than anything. The same thing applies to Elpizo; the main antagonist of Zero 2. He has decent motivations, but found him to be utterly predictable given his antagonistic nature and cocky demeanor toward Zero in the beginning; so I didn't feel anything toward the end when we encounter him. His fight is cool though, and I do love his voice lines, so that's some praise I could give.

There's not much more for me to say about Mega Man Zero 2. It ameliorates some things that were present in the first game, but at the same time, created its own set of problems that could've been fixed with minor adjustments, but I still enjoyed it for what it is.

Final Codename: Wounded Warrior

This game is uh, a mess. Primarily while it has a good base going from the first game, everything new is just a rushed mess of a game. The combat is still great and and general setting is well designed but everything else, yikes. The story and characters make absolutely no sense, and it's basically just random bs go. Fallen Order felt like a very refined game and Survivor just doesn't, it feels like its falling apart at every step. It's definitely fun and you can still enjoy it but the more you look at it the worse it gets.

This remake is one of the few remakes I find to be pretty remarkable as far as, respect to the original material, everything new added does not hurt the original story but instead enhances it, some of the new things added because of these also enhances characters(I think Junpei bros might be happy), how good most of the English cast is(Only one I find to be rough is Akihiko), tweaking Baton Pass from Persona 5(I like how it's a simple pass with no stat boosts).

This to me really seems like a remake that only had some MILD interruption from investors which is obviously the elephant in the room the DLC and how egregious it is, the DLC alone keeps this remake from being a 5 for me and not because of "The Answer" being DLC which IS fucked up but the fact that the original soundtrack wasn't included. So If you don't vibe with the remixed music(I don't) and if you aren't on PC then you're screwed. On the subject of negative things though it REALLY is unfortunate that they beat into our heads that it is a faithful remake of P3 original/FES but they decided that P3 MC had to be stuck with one Weapon type which is unfortunate. The changes to Light and Dark are nice and this makes Koromaru arguably one of the best party members where in the original and PSP you would only really use him for grinding and even then I didn't really th ink it was worth it.

tl;dr I think this is a solid remake, I think the new stuff added overall is good, this remake doesn't offend me cause I think it's one of the few games that didn't need a remake and the originals are still great/worth playing(specifically PSP).

Only thing legit preventing it from being a 5 is the forced music if you aren't on PC lol. Looking forward to see how they handle P2, Raidou and other remakes.

January 2022 I played Dark Souls 2 : Scholar of the first sin for the first time, it took a while to click but eventually I fell in love with it and the series as a whole.

April 2024 It is with a heavy heart that I must face facts : I cannot play these games anymore. A similar thing has happened to me before, in 2022 I had the same realization about the total war games, but I have since been able to replay them a few years later. So I'd like to say its not "goodbye souls" but "see you later souls". I've simply grown too used to them, as replayable as they are, there is just nothing to excite me anymore. I will note however, that demons' souls was the last holdout.

Admittedly, this is probably less due to Demons' Souls' qualities than it is to the fact that I have done fewer runs of it than DS1 and 2 which I have played to death, by virtue of having to get my ps3 out of storage to play it, but nevertheless I find myself thinking about IT in particular lately.

Spoilers for Demons Souls I guess

The last time I played it I felt like the protagonist of Shadows over Insmouth or even 1984 when the cosmic horror hit as I made my way through the swamp of sorrows and thought to myself "oh god, I'm actually enjoying this". Miyazaki's psy-op finally got to me, whichever pheromone infused miasma the swamps emanate has made it into my head. Are these thoughts my own anymore? Am I but a vessel for the sacrifice to the great god of toxic swamp water that From Software has built an altar to?

Before any of the Demon Souls superfans get too pleased with their new convert, I think my overall enjoyment of DeS has stayed about the same; case in point I think I fucking hate 1-3 and 1-4. I think DeS strengths lie in atmosphere, in novel challenge revolving around environmental traversal, elemental match-ups, slow, methodical exploration and puzzle bossfights. In terms of straight up combat gauntlets its been utterly left in the dust by later entries, and its my least favourite aspect of the game. My ass also got killed because I accidentally climbed over a railing my rubbing too close to it and jumped into a 3 enemy gank, which felt less like punishing poor awareness and more getting fucked by weird controls. How hard is it to add a button press for mantling over obstacles? Either way, FromSoft abandoned that shit almost inmediately so its nice to know they agree with me.

The Blue dragon fucking sucks. The red dragon as an obstacle in 1-1 and 1-2 works perfectly, thematically and mechanically it serves its role of pseudoboss/setpiece wonderfully. The blue dragon sucks, whether or not you get past his second phase seems more luck to me than anything else given the disconnect between the visual outline and hitbox of his fire breath (especially if you rescue the knight dude) and given he guards the false king, as a player you're going to be seeing him a lot, leaving you to either absolutely master his bullshit timing or do the slow, tedious process of killing him with arrows. I have only ever fought King Allant "honourably" like 2 times maybe, because by the time I get to 1-4 my enthusiasm for DeS has grown thin and the tedium of the dragon and runback occupy such a space in my mind, that I usually just pull out the thief ring + poison cloud cheese combo, and I admit that with 0 shame. Its unfortunate, because the first time I fought King Allant I was legitimately sweating by the end of it, it was an incredible rush of adrenaline, but that fucking dumbass dragon had to fuck it up.

That's kind of DeS' double edged sword. It fucks with you, and dares you to fuck with it back, which is great when you max out health regen items so you can tank the poison and absolutely breeze through the swamp, but less great when you realize the optimum interaction with the world tendency system is to act in such a way that you dont have to engage with it at all i.e kill yourself in the nexus and always go in soul form. I get the logic in body form having the supposed risk/reward of extra health vs the chance to make the entire area harder if you die with it, but the usual obtuseness added to the fact that 25% extra health isn't particularly helpful compared to potentially getting into black world tendency, there isn't much of a choice. The added mechanic of item drop rates going up with black world tendency is also kind of pointless because pure white levels with sub-optimally upgraded weapons are infinitely easier than pure black with maxed out weapons. There's just not much of a choice here. You could argue that maybe there wasnt intended to BE a choice, given that the NPC which explained this mechanic was removed during development, but even as an opaque mechanic it cannot help but incentivise not bothering with it at all. Especially given the focus on cooperation I think they had to have realized people would crack the code on it eventually.

The poise system is weird, in that its an example of a system that is both too punishing and way too forgiving for the player, which is weird. Compared to the later souls games (though admittedly DS1 maybe went a bit too far in making poise OP) it fucks with the usual dynamic of the combat wherein you commit to every attack, both yours and the enemies' being slow and interruptable leading to tense back and forths. In DeS though, there is no poise, just hyper armor given by attacks. This leads to some weirdness. Take the scale miners in world 2. They are extremely tough skinned mindless workers in the mines of boletaria, they are very resistant to slashing damage but vulnerable to magic and pierce (and maybe blunt I think). So you'd think then that they would be able to shrug off any attacks from you and attack uninterrupted. This isnt really the case though, because hyper armor only kicks in during certain frames of attacks, hence if they start their pickaxe attack they are absolutely impossible to interrupt by quick thinking, as the attack has basically 0 windup before it enters the hyper armor phase, but if you hit em before they attack you can absolutely stunlock em into oblivion. The same is true of the blue and red-eyed knights who are way easier than they were likely intended to be because they don't have poise. This is what I mean, its both too punishing (doesnt seem to follow the dynamic of the rest of the combat) and too easy to abuse. The red eye knights in 1-3 are absolute dickheads for this, their charging spear attack can get spammed ad infinitum, with basically 0 cooldown and grants hyper armor. Thankfully I have a bow, but the amount of enemies in 1-3 is one reason why I hate it so much.

But nowhere is this poise problem demonstrated more than with Garl Vinland. Poor garl, serving a corrupt demon without poise. For some reason, of the heavy weapons which get hyper armor in DeS, seemingly the ultra greatswords and his fuck off hammer were excluded, and even if it wasnt easy as hell to parry him / get his hammer to smack the wall harmlessly, his dumbass heavy armor grants him 0 resistance to being stunlocked into oblivion. Compare him to Havel, who can also be cheesed, but at least he shrugs off attacks with a toothpick and hits you with his fuck off hammer regardless.

All that said, I love worlds 2,3 and to a lesser extent 4 and 5. 1-1 and 1-2 are great. Atmosphere and visual design wise they are great treats. I read an article I'll link here which brought up an interesting point I've been thinking about lately, which speaks to DeS' longstanding cult status. In the article they compare the flamelurker design in DeS and its remake, and how the latter looks like "artstation fire demon", which is harsh but kind of true. Its what you make when a director asks you for a fire demon, and if there is something that defines DeS I think, its that it embodies the opposite, for good and for ill. The vanguard demon, the storm king, maiden astraea, phalanx even, these all subvert usual genre expectations and give something rather unique without feeling try-hard. Everything else about its design from its mechanics to the art all seem to follow the rule of not just doing the obvious, the easy, the straightforward.

Think about the tutorial, where after maybe defeating the vanguard demon (which again, is not the type of enemy one would usually put as a beginner boss, both in its lethality and slight goofiness of the design) you are taken to an area with some loot and then are put in front of a giant humanoid dragon, who kills you not by breathing fire and melting you (i.e what you would expect) but by hitting you with a big old punch.

So all my complaints aside, I have to respect Demons' Souls, and if I manage to get back into souls at some point in the future, I hope I get to enjoy being brainwashed into liking 5-2 again. And despising that fucking dragon asshole.