Part of Spooky Season 2023.

What you see is what you get with Blood: a late 90s DOOM-inspired boomer shooter with a cheesy comedic horror tone that’s reminiscent of films like Sam Riami’s Army of Darkness. There’s even an enemy type that is literally just Ash’s possessed hand from Evil Dead 2. Blood wears its inspirations on its sleeves and manages to be a pretty decent time… depending on what difficulty you set the game to.

Blood can be brutal and not in a way that feels like an actual test of your skills. The game has an abundance of hit scanning enemies that can melt your health like butter from a rather far distance, before you can get a chance to register that they’re even there. I initially started off with the game’s second hardest difficulty “Well Done” and was struggling to get past the second level, so I decided to play the game on “Lightly Broiled” instead and I don’t regret my decision. Even on this difficulty there were some aspects of the game that just felt cheap, particularly the placements of enemies behind the corners of entryways. I got into the habit of quicksaving frequently just because the game loves to ambush you with dickish enemy placements quite often.

Despite this though, I had a pretty decent time with it. It has a solid arsenal of weapons that feel pretty fun to use. The enemies were alright, I feel like they were kind of lacking in terms of variety and design compared to something like DOOM or Quake. I wish more enemies had specific methods to effectively take them down, like using a combination of the Flare Gun and the Shotgun to dispatch Axe Zombies as quickly as possible. Most enemies are just weaker to specific weapons and that’s about it. The Gargoyles were extremely annoying. I hate how they fly higher than you can actually aim so you can’t really do anything about them until they land close enough to where you can shoot them. There’s also an enemy type here that shares my username - Phantasms. I was… never really clear on what these enemies are supposed to do besides annoy the hell out of you. It just charges at you and gets in your face while this really loud screaming sound effect plays over and over again. I couldn’t even tell if it was ever actually damaging me, I would just shoot it with the Shotgun whenever it stopped being intangible and never gave it a second thought.

I actually really enjoyed this game’s level design. I had a really great time making my way through the haunted mansions and various mazes in the game, it was really satisfying. I will say that some of the levels in Episode 3 were a little longer than I would’ve liked, especially E3M5: Spare Parts and E3M6: Monster Bait. I actually had to look up a walkthrough for these levels because I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do at times.

The story is… there. It’s told over the course of very short cutscenes that usually play at the end of an episode. There’s not really a whole lot to it, and it ends extremely suddenly, making it very underwhelming. I was disappointed with the protagonist, Caleb too. He doesn’t talk nearly as much as I expected him to. I like him when he does talk, and I dig his personality being essentially Duke Nukem if he was a freaky black magic guy. But he’s pretty much silent unless you’re blowing stuff up with TNT, which is when he laughs maniacally.

Blood is a solid time as long as you’re not playing on the higher difficulties. I have to admit, I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it because I don’t think it really stands out all that much from other boomer shooters of its time. I love the horror aesthetic, I love all of the little pop culture references, the weapons and level designs are neat, and that’s about it, really. It’s a really standard title for the genre. I think if its horror aesthetic appeals to you, or if you’re just hungry for more classic DOOM-inspired FPS games from this point in time, then I think you’ll enjoy it. Otherwise, it’s definitely fun, but I don’t really know if I can say that it’s a must-play. Still, it’s a neat cult classic game, and the perfect October game if you’re ever looking for something horror-themed to play around this time of the year.

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

If I had to describe Silent Hill 3 in one word, it would be intense. While not much in terms of gameplay has changed between this game and the previous ones, its structure and balance have been adjusted in a way that really stressed me out and made the horror more effective than it's ever been in the franchise. I actually had to take breaks and play through it over the course of shorter sessions because I found the game to be immensely draining, even despite its short run time. Silent Hill 3 is a treacherous, suffocating nightmare from start to finish, and is quite possibly the scariest game I’ve ever played.

The previous titles in the franchise had a general pattern they’d follow. You’d usually explore the monster and fog infested town of Silent Hill for a bit before entering one of the indoor dungeon-like locations. These mostly consisted of large, dark and decrepit buildings with multiple floors, long narrow halls, various locked rooms that you’d need to find keys for, as well as several puzzles that you’d need to solve. You’d usually fight a boss once you reach the end of these places as well. These locations were generally where the games’ horror was most concentrated, as rooms contained gruesome imagery and setpieces to experience. Once you successfully clear one of these areas, you usually experience a cutscene or two and then head back into town and explore it a bit more as well as develop the story further before traveling to the next big indoor location. Rinse and repeat until the game’s climax.

The treks through town offered the player a momentary sense of relief and a chance to breathe a little bit after making it out of those dark and terrifying labyrinths. Now, the town wasn’t completely free of danger, as writhing and contorting creatures still roamed the roads and streets, but because you were outside in a more open environment, you’re generally able to maneuver around them rather easily, to the point where they’re not too much of a threat. However, Silent Hill 3 does things a little bit differently. Here, you spend almost the entire playtime making your way through those indoor dungeon-like areas. From the start of the game until a little over halfway through it, you go from one horrifying maze to the next. You really don’t spend much time exploring the town at all. This dramatically lowers the amount of opportunities for the player to catch their breath, limiting them mostly to tiny rooms void of any danger where you can save your game.

In my review of Silent Hill 2, my main point of criticism was that the game gave you way too much ammo and healing items. This dramatically lessened the effect of the horror, as there wasn’t really anything stopping you from playing safe and shooting just about every enemy you come across. Silent Hill 3 feels like an angry, vicious response to that criticism. Not only are ammo and healing items much more sparse in comparison to previous games, but the enemies are also far more aggressive. A majority of them are also designed to be either really tall, wide, or both. Most enemies eclipse Heather in size. Since you’re constantly making your way through cramped and narrow corridors, it makes avoiding and moving around these enemies rather difficult. As a result, strategic decision-making and resource management during combat is extremely vital. Even though this game came out twenty years ago, it really feels like Team Silent heard my Silent Hill 2 complaint and went above and beyond to address it here, to the point where I feel like it borders on overcorrection. Still, I do think that Silent Hill 3 is better off this way as opposed to the stockpile of ammo and healing items you’re left with at the end of Silent Hill 2.

Once again, the art direction and sound design are both handled in true masterclass fashion. The art direction in particular is extremely visceral, especially during the Otherworld sequences. It’s very reminiscent of the corrupted industrial look of Silent Hill 1, but with the PlayStation 2’s higher graphical fidelity, the game’s visuals are more striking and impactful than ever. The reddish-orange color palette that covers many areas of the game and the sadistic and violent imagery really makes you feel like you’re trapped in hell on earth.

The minimal amount of town exploration, the lack of opportunities to safely collect yourself, the greater focus on combat and resource management, in addition to the already horrifying art direction and sound design on par with the previous games, all come together to make Silent Hill 3 an immensely stressful experience. The stress in turn made the fear and horror more effective than it’s ever been in the series. I was constantly worried about my resources in addition to already feeling tense as a result of the horrific environments you have to find your way out of. Aside from the other two Silent Hill games, my horror experience up until this point has been limited to Resident Evil titles as well as Signalis. None have been as successful at making me constantly feel sheer terror and dread as Silent Hill 3 has. I fully admit that this game freaked me the hell out, and I applaud it for that accomplishment.

My biggest complaint is that while exploring a couple of areas in the game, you can stumble into rooms or areas that I consider to be traps. These are rooms that have enemies in them but otherwise serve literally no other purpose. There’s no supplies you can find, no reward for combatting the enemies, nothing. If you wander into these rooms trying to find something that you need to progress, you’ll wind up wasting your very limited ammo and healing items clearing these rooms out, only to find nothing for your efforts. I will cut the game a bit of slack because I did notice that these “trap rooms” are often very close to save rooms, so you can reload a save if you end up wandering into one of them and wasting your supplies. Still, I think that their inclusion in general is pointless and frustrating. All they do is waste time, as well as needlessly confuse and punish the player for exploring.

My next biggest issue is one that’s shared with Silent Hill 2: the camera really sucks. Just like in that game, the camera will sometimes just refuse to cooperate in narrow halls, and trying to force it to will just cause it to spin around wildly and make it nearly impossible to see what’s in front of Heather. It’s especially frustrating here when there are enemies in a hall that you encounter, and you can’t tell if your gun shots are actually hitting their target, meaning you have no idea whether or not you’re wasting ammo.

In stark contrast to Silent Hill 2, storytelling is less of a focus this time around. After the very beginning of the game, cutscenes and story development in general mostly take a backseat until a little over halfway through. Despite that, there’s no less of a focus on strong themes. Silent Hill 3 is a game all about the fear and pain of being a woman. The locations you make your way through are mostly places that women have been known to be typically harassed at, either verbally or physically. There are constant, violent depictions of motherhood and childbirth. The fact that so many enemies are much bigger than Heather could also be reminiscent of how men are generally larger than women and able to physically overpower them. I don’t have especially strong feelings about the main plot. It does have some impactful moments, especially if you’ve played the first game, but as a whole, it feels rather poorly put together. I find the imagery, symbolism and the unspoken implications of the environments to be far more stand out aspects.

Silent Hill 3 goes all out in trying to make the player feel afraid, and in that regard it absolutely knocks it out of the park. The thing is though, fear is all the game really made me feel. The previous Silent Hill games made me feel a lot more in terms of emotion, especially Silent Hill 2. There was a sense of mystery and tragedy to them that isn’t as present in Silent Hill 3. Tragedy is certainly present here, don’t get me wrong, if you know, you know. But I feel like it's limited to only a single instance. If you’ve played Silent Hill 1, then it’s pretty easy to just assume what’s going on, there’s not really much in terms of a mystery to figure out here. If you haven’t played Silent Hill 1, then I feel like the emotional moments will just go over your head even if the game does try to accommodate the folks who missed out on it. This is an extremely minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still something I wanted to make note of because it was an element of the previous games that I loved and its absence really stood out to me.

This game really put me through the wringer, but in a good way. I think it’s the most well structured and focused of the Team Silent games I’ve played up until this point. The only aspect of it that’s lacking compared to its predecessors is the quality of its main plot, which again, isn’t really that big of a deal. Still, as great and successful as this game is, I ended up feeling extremely exhausted by the end of it. I have to admit that I don’t really want to play this game again for quite some time. I didn’t even play on Hard difficulty, yet I still found it to be very draining. I do highly recommend Silent Hill 3, but make sure that you’re mentally prepared going into it. This game still managed to freak me out despite the fact that I usually enjoy dark and gruesome media. If you don’t have a high tolerance for this sort of stuff, then I’m not sure if this is the right game for you. If you do have that kind of tolerance, or if you just want to challenge yourself, then I’ve yet to find a better way to test your courage than with Silent Hill 3.

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

My original experience with Silent Hill 2 was about six years ago. I played through it alongside an old friend who would constantly tell me what to do and where to go while reading a walkthrough online. Even though we did have a good time getting spooked and making fun of the stilted and awkward voice acting and dialogue, we ultimately hindered our experience. We thought the game was kinda “meh” and never really got what made the game so special. Over the years since that original playthrough, I’ve watched numerous video essays and read several articles and fan sites for Silent Hill 2 in an attempt to better understand the story, the symbolism, and why the game in general is so beloved. Despite my initial apathetic feelings towards the game, it managed to occupy a space in the back of my mind for years. Much like how the titular town calls the characters to it, I keep coming back to Silent Hill 2 and the unsettling journey into the depths of James Sunderland’s mind and soul, learning more and more about it each time I do, even if I’m not directly playing the game. After finishing my second playthrough, despite knowing just about every little detail regarding the game’s narrative going into it, Silent Hill 2 still managed to leave a rather large impact on me, even if there are some parts of it that sadly tear me away from what is otherwise one of the most captivating games I’ve ever played.

With the change in console generations, Team Silent chose to refine the elements that made the first Silent Hill standout. The visuals and sound design, which were already some of the best in the medium on the PlayStation 1, manage to get even better here. The biggest improvement overall though, is in the game’s storytelling. While the surface level narrative of the first game was solid, the storytelling was at its best with what wasn’t explicitly shown or explained. The environmental storytelling and the ambiguous nature to certain aspects of the plot in conjunction with what was being directly shown was what made that game’s story great for me. Silent Hill 2 takes the same approach, but to a far greater extent. The game tells a story that is so hauntingly personal and horrifically tragic that words which can convey how effective and emotional it is fail me. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a piece of media where the pitch black, bottomless emptiness of immense guilt and despair is communicated so well.

Almost every aspect of Silent Hill 2 has been expertly crafted to communicate details of the plot, characters, or the themes of the narrative. The town and the locations you explore within it aren’t just dark and frightening labyrinths. The monsters you encounter aren’t just creepy flesh abominations. They all represent something, they’re all telling you things about either James or the other characters of the game’s story. The symbolism compels you to reflect upon the places you go to and the things and people you encounter, consider what it all means, and why things are the way they are. This is how Silent Hill 2 manages to suck you into its world and keep you thinking about it long after you’ve finished playing it. It is truly excellent storytelling that I haven’t really seen in many other video games I’ve played.

In terms of structure and gameplay, not much has really changed between the first and second Silent Hill. Both titles play almost exactly the same, and as a result, they both share many of the same strengths and weaknesses (which I discuss in greater detail in my review of the first game). Controls and combat are virtually unchanged aside from the guns feeling like they pack more of a punch. Boss fights are once again rather simple, though they do actually require you to occasionally move now instead of just standing in one spot and tanking attacks while you shoot them with your best guns. Still, they never get more complicated than just running to one corner of the room, firing a few shots, rinse and repeat. Once again, I found the game to be at its best when exploring the indoor dungeon-like locations such as Wood Creek Apartments or Brookhaven Hospital. You do spend more time in these sorts of locations and less time exploring the town this time around, which is honestly a huge plus. It’s clear that the goal of the devs wasn’t to really expand or alter the way Silent Hill 2 is played in any significant way, and instead to just stick with what worked.

The biggest gameplay change is how the difficulty works. Instead of an all encompassing Easy/Normal/Hard difficulty setting, Silent Hill 2 allows you to choose the difficulty for combat and puzzles separately, letting you customize your difficulty experience. Being the casual that I am, I chose Normal for both. I thought this was fine for the puzzles, which were a lot less cryptic compared to the puzzles on the same difficulty in the first game. They still require you to think outside the box, but I was able to solve almost all of them on my own. However, the Normal difficulty for combat is way too easy, and I don’t think it’s just because this is my second playthrough. What makes combat so easy is that the game showers you with ammo and health items, to an overbearing extent. Silent Hill 1 had a similar problem, but it’s even worse here. There was actually a point in the first game where I nearly used up all of my handgun ammo because I wasn’t thinking and almost put myself in a difficult position. This stressed me out and really forced me to reconsider my ammo usage despite the fact that I was eventually able to rebuild a large amount of ammo during the rest of the game.

In Silent Hill 2, you never have to think about item management on Normal difficulty. By the time I reached the final boss, I had over 150 rounds of handgun ammo, over 100 shotgun shells, as well as dozens of rounds for the rifle. I also had roughly 20 different healing items in total as well. The final area in the game in particular has a ton of ammo and healing items you can easily find. I don’t know if playing on Hard would make any difference or not. After looking into it, I’ve seen mostly mixed responses regarding the difficulty from people online. A lot of folks say that it doesn’t make that much of a difference, and that Hard also makes certain set pieces such as the Brookhaven Hospital Basement and the controls for the Boat more difficult in a detracting way. I didn’t play through Hard myself so take that with a grain of salt, but if that is the case, then I’d say that this is the biggest problem with Silent Hill 2. Since you have so much ammo and healing items, there’s no risk to just blasting away almost every enemy you come across, which dramatically lessens the threat they pose and takes you out of the horror experience. As a result, I actually think Silent Hill 2 plays slightly worse and is a bit less tense compared to Silent Hill 1.

I also feel like the camera is a lot worse compared to the first game as well. Oftentimes, especially in long and cramped hallways, the camera just won’t cooperate and rotate to a view of James from behind. It’ll swing around wildly, making it very difficult to see what’s in front of James. This is especially frustrating if the Radio is detecting an enemy nearby and you’re trying to rotate the camera so that you can check to see which direction the enemy is in, and I have gotten injured by enemies as a result of the camera not cooperating. This was also an occasional issue in Silent Hill 1, but it happened to me so infrequently that I didn’t even bother to mention it in my review of that game, and it’s a surprise that it’s a much bigger problem here.

If you are the type of player who prioritizes gameplay above all else, then I think that Silent Hill 2 may end up leaving you disappointed. Gameplay is not where the title shines, and is honestly it’s weakest aspect. However, every other element of the game is handled in a masterclass fashion. There are very few games that I have played that even come close to being as immersive or that tell a story as expertly as Silent Hill 2 does. Team Silent really played to their strengths and crafted an experience that very few games I’ve played have even come close to matching. After all these years, despite thinking that I understood it before, now I feel like I can post that Always Sunny gif of Danny DeVito and say that “I get it”. I get why this game is heralded as a masterpiece, why it’s still being talked about to this day, why I keep randomly thinking about it even after all these years since my first playthrough, and why it’s deeply impacted so many people. Despite its blemishes, there’s still a lot of beauty to it, and I think that it’s a game that’s definitely earned its cult status

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

Blasphemous is a Metroidvania that borrows many elements from the Dark Souls series. Coming to this game with primarily Metroid experience makes it easy to see the impact the Soulslike influence has on the Metroidvania genre. This combination of genres is one that definitely works, though as someone with far more experience with Metroidvanias than Soulslikes, certain issues I have with Blasphemous mainly boil down to my preferences regarding how a Metroidvania should be structured rather than problems Blasphemous actually has (though the game does have some problems). Blasphemous as a whole is very good, but it’s also very demanding of the player in a way that may turn people off. In fact, “demanding” is the key word to approach this game with. It can be cryptic, cruel, and extremely frustrating at times, but it’s also a challenge that’s immensely satisfying to conquer.

The world of Blasphemous is far more open compared to the other Metroidvanias I’ve played. Aside from a portion of the map that’s only accessible in the later half of the game once you’ve completed certain objectives, the entire world is open for you to explore from the get go. The only problem with this is that certain areas can be rather difficult to traverse early in the game without upgrades. You may wander into an area where the enemies are particularly difficult to kill and also kill you very quickly. This can make the early hours of the game very frustrating, and it makes the world feel more linear than it actually is. Once you’ve gotten some upgrades, the world opens up more and more and becomes very satisfying to explore.

There is one major thing about exploration that I greatly dislike however: the game has instant kill bottomless pits/spikes. Most Metroidvanias I’ve played don’t have these. You can fall into hazards that can be difficult to escape from and can potentially shave a huge amount of your health off very quickly, but nothing is an instant death. I don’t think hazards like this suit a Metroidvania. It makes platforming and backtracking through certain locations an absolute chore, especially if you happen to die and you need to go through an area with a lot of these instant kill spots over and over again.

Nothing in Blasphemous is given to you for free. Nothing. The game really makes you work for any and all items and upgrades you can acquire. Whereas some Metroidvanias titles would throw you a bone and leave some upgrades in easy to reach places along the primary path you need to take, Blasphemous is almost always placing items beyond either tricky platforming sections, strong enemy encounters, or just completely out of the way in spots that are difficult to get to or easy to miss. You need to be extremely thorough when exploring the world, as items and upgrades are vital to your survival. Given how open the world is and how easy it is to wander into areas where you can die frequently and easily, I do wish that the game was just a little bit more generous with upgrade distribution. Not too generous, just a couple of upgrades that you don’t necessarily have to work super hard for.

Whereas other Metroidvanias usually provide you with new weapons or powers that can dramatically affect your ability to traverse and explore the world, Blasphemous instead primarily provides you with upgrades to base stats such as health or damage. You do get unique magic attacks you can perform, but they’re mostly used during boss fights or to give yourself some space if you’re in a room with a large amount of enemies. There’s no Shinespark or Screw Attack or Soul of Bat or anything like that. You don’t even get the ability to double jump. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but if you have experience with other Metroidvanias, it’s noticeable and can make platforming feel a little stale the more you play the game.

I really enjoyed the game’s boss fights. They’re surprisingly easier than I had anticipated them to be. Given the nature of the Dark Souls influence, I expected them to be intensely challenging gauntlets that I’d have to constantly throw myself at over and over again. While that was the case for certain bosses, there were some I was actually able to beat on my first try, albeit by the skin of my teeth. Every fight managed to be fun, nail biting tests of my reflexes and execution.

My biggest issue with Blasphemous is how cryptic the requirements for completing both primary and secondary objectives are, especially when it comes to figuring out how to get the good and true endings of the game. Completing certain side quests, as well as unlocking the alternate endings all require their own specific series of steps that are barely communicated to the player. I can’t imagine most people would ever figure out the steps for either the side quests or the endings playing the game naturally, and it can lead to you missing out on pretty significant items, upgrades, and even entire sections of the map, in addition to defaulting to the bad ending. I myself got the bad ending, and while it does make me want to eventually replay the game in New Game Plus, after looking it up, I don’t feel like I would’ve ever figured out how to get the alternate endings without using a guide. The steps for the true ending (which was added as post launch DLC) are particularly specific, and not properly following those steps can lead to you getting locked out of significant amounts of content. I don’t typically mind when a game has alternate endings that require you to do very specific things to unlock them when the most you miss out on is just the endings. It's easy to look those up on YouTube if you really want to, but missing out on big chunks of content really rubs me the wrong way.

Finally, it’s almost impossible to talk about Blasphemous without mentioning its hauntingly gorgeous presentation. The game has easily the best pixel art I’ve seen in the past decade, maybe even longer than that. Its art direction is also extremely unique and executed perfectly. I don’t typically see Spanish culture represented in media very frequently. I have very little knowledge of it, and I think that allowed the game to frequently surprise, terrify and fascinate me with the design of just about every npc and enemy in the game. The art is complemented by the somber and eerie soundtrack, which you can hear the Spanish influence in as well.

Blasphemous can be a very taxing game. In order to see all that it has to offer, it expects a lot out of the player, and in some ways, it can be a bit unreasonable with those expectations. I honestly recommend using a guide if you want to play this game, simply because of how easy it can be to miss out on factors that quite frankly are crucial to enjoying this game. As a Metroidvania, I wouldn’t say I prefer it to the majority of other titles in the genre that I’ve played, but the game is still a truly one-of-a-kind experience that really sticks with you. It has its problems, but I still recommend it. Looking forward to getting around to New Game Plus as well as the sequel.

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

It’s easy to see why the Silent Hill franchise is one of the two pillars of the survival horror genre alongside Resident Evil. So much of Team Silent’s first title has aged like fine wine. While it doesn’t quite stick the landing in every single regard, the aspects that the game excels in are done in a truly unparalleled fashion that very few games can compare to.

This game has some of the strongest presentation in the medium. Its art direction is succeeded only by later entries in the series. This is absolutely one of the best looking games of its generation, and I think that age has only made the game look even better. From the worn and weathered look of it’s industrial environments where you’re never quite sure if the floors and walls are covered in rust or blood, to the horrific imagery of bodies that have been merged and entangled with steel cages, to the enemies that appear to be animals and people that have been twisted and corrupted by some truly evil force that is impossible to fathom… it's all breathtakingly striking and leaves a tremendous and lasting impact.

Then there’s the game’s utterly phenomenal sound design. Words fail to truly describe how perfect it is. It does such an impeccable job at making you feel like you’re never truly alone, that the world around you is alive and is constantly watching your every move with utter hatred and contempt. There are short music tracks that just consist of noises that sound like something angrily stomping on a metal floor or high pitched whining that will play either in certain locations you discover or after you complete an action. It feels like the music and sound is constantly reacting to you and what you do, and combined with the disturbing art and imagery, it makes Silent Hill one of the most immersive games that I have ever played.

The story definitely requires you to have a taste for ambiguity to truly appreciate it. You’re going to have to put bits and pieces of the story together for yourself, as Silent Hill never really gives you the full picture of the events that lead up to and take place over the course of the game. I really like the optional items that you can find in the world that add clarity to what’s going on, like the video tape, or the various newspaper clippings you can find across different areas. I’m especially a big fan of how the game tells elements of its story through its environments.

Silent Hill’s gameplay is the survival horror standard that was established by it and Resident Evil. It has the tank controls, clunky (complimentary) combat, puzzle solving, and inventory management that the genre is known for. Compared to Resident Evil, Silent Hill seems to be a bit more encouraging of combat, and it doesn’t really place as much focus on inventory management. You’re not limited in how many items you can pick up, so you really only have to manage your ammo. Even then, the game tends to be pretty generous with ammo drops (at least on normal). However, if you’re just shooting everything, you may still end up putting yourself in a difficult spot like I nearly did. Thankfully the game has plenty of melee options to choose from (though the hammer is pretty much the go-to as far as these are concerned), allowing you to engage in combat without having to spend ammo. You are a lot more likely to take damage when engaging in melee combat, but the game is also pretty generous when it comes to healing items as well.

I think that the game is at its best when you’re exploring the various… dungeons I guess? I’m not really sure what to call these locations, but I’m referring to places like Midwich Elementary School and Alchemilla Hospital. They’re similar to dungeons from The Legend of Zelda or the Spencer Mansion/Raccoon City Police Station from Resident Evil. They’re multi-floored buildings that have various locked rooms with corresponding keys and puzzles to solve. These locations are phenomenal. They’re immensely satisfying to explore and navigate, and I especially love when they transition from a simple and mundane location to their corrupted horrific counterparts, as that’s where the game plays very clever tricks on the player, such as the bathrooms that teleport you between floors in the Hospital.

The last quarter or so of the game before the finale gets rather slow and a tad annoying. The sewers and everything leading up to the amusement park aside from the optional quest you can do at this point in the game was just really straightforward and very boring. You travel through these more linear locations that have an abundance of enemies, too many to fight, so you need to run past them in order to stay alive. There’s so many enemies in fact, that the game’s framerate will actually start to drop here. These locations aren’t nearly as interesting to explore, or even particularly frightening outside of the music and environmental noises. I think this section would be even worse if you miss out on the optional stuff you can do at this point in the game.

The bosses in this game are okay at best. They’re all pretty simple and mostly involve just blasting them with the best guns in your tiny arsenal of weapons. There’s little strategy to them, and in all honesty, thanks to the generous amount of healing and ammo you get over the course of the game, you’re able to just stand in one place and tank hits while firing at several of the game’s bosses, including the final one.

The puzzles are a mixed bag throughout the entire game. I found a lot of them to be rather decent, and others to be very obtuse. I was able to solve a few of them, but I had to look quite a few of them up, more than I was happy with. I really don’t know how much of a skill issue that is on my part and how much of it is an actual issue with the game’s puzzles. I was able to figure out the infamous piano puzzle on my own for example, but other puzzles like the zodiac one left me completely clueless as to what I was supposed to do.

Another issue I had is that it can be easy to miss items and objects you can pick up or interact with. While most of the time, items do contrast well with the background and aren’t too difficult to spot, there were times where I did miss and had to backtrack for a key or other important item simply because I didn’t see it. I also nearly missed an optional but sorely needed weapon because I barely noticed it was even there. I don’t remember off the top of my head if early Resident Evil games did this or not, but in certain titles in the series, items that you can pick up and interact with would have a little twinkle on them, which made it a lot easier to see them, especially in cluttered environments.

Despite its flaws, which I think can be mitigated slightly if you choose to follow a spoiler free guide, Silent Hill is still an extremely impressive and well-crafted game, especially for its time. It is immersive in ways few other games I’ve played can possibly compare, and when it’s at its best, it’s a satisfying and thrilling survival horror experience. It might frustrate and annoy me at times, but overall, it's still a worthwhile experience that is very much worth playing today.

For many years I’ve held Persona 3 in high regard as one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. With the upcoming release of Persona 3 Reload on the horizon, I wanted to give this game one more run before the remake comes out and play it with a fresh perspective after having not played it in about eight years. Coming back to this game after so long, there’s still a lot about it that I really love and respect, and finishing it still left me in an emotional mess. Despite that, however, this playthrough reminded me of many aspects of the game that don’t really sit well with me today, things that I hope Reload is able to improve upon.

Persona 3’s biggest draw to me has always been its story. The game has one of my favorite casts out of any JRPG I’ve ever played. I love how all of the characters grow and develop throughout the entire game. They all have emotional and generally very well-handled character arcs. Though some characters like Akihiko and Ken finish their character arcs a lot sooner and end up being flat for a good chunk of the story, I still think that the game overall does an excellent job with all of its characters, especially in comparison to the Persona games that come after it. One of my biggest problems with Persona 4 and 5 is their general story structure, and how each character goes through their arc before becoming flat for the rest of the game after completing their corresponding dungeon, only getting minor additional character development through their Social Links. Persona 3 isn’t like that at all. Up until the very end of the game, the cast is met with very personal challenges that they are able to overcome and learn from, which is what makes this cast and story resonate with me so much. Then there’s the game’s ending, which to date has made this one of the only games where I’ve actually cried while playing. It’s beautiful, tragic, and wraps up everything extremely neatly.

Aside from the story, another aspect about the game that I admire is how all of its unique systems are linked with one another. The combat system, Persona system, and Social Link system are all intertwined with one another in a way that’s extremely cohesive. Social Links affect the strength and progression speed of your Personas, which affects how efficiently you’re able to perform in combat. It’s very difficult to talk about one system without talking about another, and while that makes writing this review a bit more challenging, I think it makes for a very satisfying gameplay loop, as it constantly feels like you’re improving upon something in some fashion with every action you take on an in-game day to day basis.

The combat system is pretty standard for most JRPGs, though I really like Persona’s spin on it as it leads to more interesting decision-making. While you’re typically trying to find out the enemy’s weakness and exploit it, doing so allows you to knock your opponent down, causing them to lose their turn as well as take another turn for yourself. Knocking down all enemies on screen allows you to do an All-Out Attack with your party, which deals massive damage to every enemy on screen. However, this aspect of the combat also applies to yourself and your party members as well (though enemies can’t perform an All-Out Attack), which is why you need to make sure that you have the right Persona and party members when fighting enemies and especially bosses.

While aiming to get an All-Out Attack and wipe out the enemy as fast as possible is the general strategy, that strategy doesn’t always work nor is it always applicable at all times. There may be times where the spell you cast to knock the enemy down with misses, which gives the enemy a chance to retaliate. You might just not have a Persona or party member on hand who can exploit the enemy’s weakness, or the enemy might not have any weaknesses at all (which is the case for most bosses). Instead, you’ll have to form a strategy around what physical/elemental attacks your Personas and party members are strong and weak against and engage in more of a back and forth turn-based confrontation.

One of the most criticized aspects of the game is how it handles party members in combat. You don’t directly control what your party members do. Instead, your party members are controlled by AI. You are able to issue them general orders via the Tactics menu, however. You can assign party members specific enemies to target, tell them to focus on exploiting the enemy’s weakness and knocking them down, have them concentrate on healing/supporting the party with buffs or debuffs, etc, but you can’t select a specific ability of theirs during their turn. Personally speaking, this doesn’t bother me very much. For the vast majority of my play time, party members generally behaved as one would expect them to and did the most logical action during their turn. There were a few key instances where I found the AI consistently making decisions that aggravated me, though.

The first and more minor instance is that whenever you’re fighting a boss and you haven’t had the chance to analyze its weakness yet, Ken and Koromaru will almost always waste a turn trying to cast an instant-kill Hama or Mudo skill that will never ever work because bosses are always immune to them. There are also times where characters that don’t have a dedicated healing spell will give someone low on health a healing item. On paper, this isn’t a big deal, but in practice, wasting a turn to give someone an item that only heals a small amount of HP can be very frustrating, especially if they could’ve spent that turn knocking an enemy down, or you or someone else in the party is capable of healing people for more HP the very next turn. The biggest outlier however is one character in particular: Mitsuru. When Mitsuru is in your party, you need to be especially vigilant when it comes to assigning tactics to her, otherwise she will almost always waste a turn and magic casting either Marin Karin (a charm spell) that doesn’t work 90% of the time, or later in the game, she’ll cast Mind Charge instead, which can be more helpful since it boosts the damage of magic attacks, but isn’t really necessary since it’s generally more efficient to just knock the enemy down and do an All-Out Attack as fast as possible.

Still, despite the occasional frustration, I do think that a lot of people’s criticisms towards not being able to directly control your party members is fairly overblown. I actually like this system a lot, it makes the characters feel a bit more real. I understand that it’s not super popular, since the ability to directly control your party members was re-introduced in subsequent Persona games. Even though AI party members is still an option in those titles, the security of being able to directly pick which skill of my party members to use in any given situation is just too tempting to pass up on, and I fully admit that I likely wouldn’t ever use AI party members unless it was the only option I had.

The Persona system is both simultaneously easy to understand as well as very esoteric. If you’re just trying to play through the game normally, and you’re not trying to create a specific Persona, it’s fairly simple to just test and see what the results are of specific combinations of Personas. As long as it makes a Persona with a specific skill you’re looking for and is of an Arcana whose corresponding Social Link you’ve made a lot of progress in, then you’re generally good to go. However, if you’re trying to create a specific Persona for something like Elizabeth’s Requests or if you’re looking for one to help with a particularly difficult sub-boss in Tartarus, I do not see how you are supposed to reasonably be able to do so without some sort of guide. There are just far too many combinations and no real in-game way to tell what makes what. As long as you’re just sticking to the main game and not doing anything optional, you don’t really need a specific Persona for anything though. You’re generally able to make do with what you have as long as you’re consistently fusing Personas that are near your current in-game level.

The Social Link system is very conflicting, for a multitude of reasons. While the system itself I think is great and is an excellent way to tie-in gameplay elements with the thematic elements of the narrative, coming back to this game I initially thought that the narrative quality of the Social Links was generally very poor. In order to progress certain Social Links in the fastest and most efficient way possible, you’ll be required to constantly reinforce the beliefs and choices of the character whose Social Link you’re currently working on, even if they’re very poor, like Kenji or Hidetoshi. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that was kind of the point. As opposed to my original playthrough I decided to use a guide to see how best to progress through the Social Links, and I found the dialogue choices that would progress them the fastest are the ones where you have to kiss up to them at all times. This resulted in some Social Links being incredibly boring, with little to no conflict to them. I think this is the game’s way of saying that no friendship or relationship is ever perfect, most relationships have conflicts to them, and what’s most important is being able to overcome those conflicts and emerge from them with a stronger bond. Now, that could just be me reading too deep into the Social Links on a thematic level, admittedly. However, the Social Links do still have serious problems, some of which have already been addressed in future Persona titles, and some that I hope the remake rectifies.

The most obvious problem with them is that you can’t fully complete a female character’s Social Link without dating them. You have no option to just be friends with them. Thankfully, this was something that has already been handled in future Persona games, and I have no doubt that will carry over to the remake as well, but this was a very baffling oversight that wasn’t even addressed here in FES, the second version of Persona 3. An even bigger issue is that there are various Social Links that either involve or allude to romances with extremely uncomfortable age gaps. Kenji is a sixteen-year-old high school student whose entire Social Link is about his oblivious pursuit of his completely one-sided romance with his teacher. Maiko is a nine-year-old girl dealing with parents who are going through a divorce, and at the end of her Social Link, she falls in love with the high school age Protagonist, and you don’t have the option to directly say “no” to the idea of the two of you becoming “a mom and dad together”. One of the most problematic ones is “Maya”, the MMO player who is revealed to be an adult in the Protagonist's life with a crush on him. I really do hope that the remake rewrites these, “Maya”’s especially, because these are just not acceptable, especially in this day and age.

Tartarus is where that previously mentioned intertwining of systems is on full display. It’s a single 264 floor dungeon that you spend the entire game climbing. It’s here where you build up you and your party’s levels so that you’re strong enough to face the boss that appears at the end of each in-game month. Tartarus has always had a very mixed reception, and my most recent playthrough really opened my eyes to its problems. I think it’s biggest issue is that it’s not clear how much time you should be spending in Tartarus before you face the boss at the end of the month. The game does suggest you try and make it to the top of a block of floors before each fight, specifically via Elizabeth’s Requests, but even if you do make it to the top of a block, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you fought enough enemies and that you’re strong enough to fight the end-of-the-month boss. Persona 4 and 5 solved this problem by letting you fight the monthly bosses at any point within a certain period of time, giving you a deadline to defeat the boss as opposed to only allowing you to challenge and defeat a boss on one specific day. Given the narrative concept of Persona 3, you can’t really do that here, but hopefully Reload will give you some idea of what level you should be at to face those end-of-the-month bosses.

In addition to that, the sheer length of Tartarus and the unchanging layouts of its floors can grow rather tiresome and repetitive over the course of the game. The longer you play, the more of a grind it is, as more party members get added, which means you need to level more party members up, which means you need to spend more and more time in Tartarus. I do like the decision making that Tartarus forces, as you have to consider whether or not it’s worth challenging every Shadow on a floor, or if it’s better to try and continue the climb so that you make it to the next checkpoint without having to redo a section of floors again. It can be fun and an interesting challenge, but by the time you reach the end of the game and you make it to the top, you’re likely sick to death of it.

After all of that has been said and done, at the end of the day, I still greatly admire and appreciate Persona 3 despite its flaws. It doesn’t excel in every single regard, but if you stick with it, I think that it’s a game that can ultimately feel very rewarding, with a story that remains deeply impactful to me. There’s a lot this game does right, and even a bit it does better than the games that come after it. I hope that Persona 3 Reload is able to patch up the areas where it’s lacking, because I think that with a modern touch, Persona 3 could end up being not just the best game in the series on a thematic and narrative level, but on a gameplay one as well.

When I got into the first Darkest Dungeon, it was during the Pandemic, towards the end of that game's support. By that time, the game had many post-launch updates that really made the game feel tightly put together and complete. Darkest Dungeon II doesn't feel like that. In fact, in many ways, it still feels like it's in Early Access considering how the game is still being patched with new updates to how the systems work. I don't play many rogue-likes, or single player games that get frequently updated, but this bothers me. I think I'd prefer to wait until at the very least the base game is no longer getting frequent updates before I play Darkest Dungeon II again. As it stands right now, it's fine, but I think some areas need to be reworked before I invest dozens more hours into it.

I think my biggest problem with the game is that it doesn't really encourage experimentation with the playable heroes. In it's current state, it seems to value high damage more than anything, and once you form a party around that fact, I find little reason to choose any other hero. Especially considering how long it takes to upgrade a hero and unlock their additional skills. The amount of time it'll ultimately take to upgrade your hero at the Altar of Hope and acquire their skills via memories is way too long.

The first game forced you to experiment with party formations with the stress and disease mechanics, so if you didn't want to lose your hero, you'd have to swap them out between expeditions for someone else that you had on hand, and figure out how you could succeed with the heroes that were currently available to you. In Darkest Dungeon II, if one of your party members die, you're given another hero at random after their death. You might as well just end your run, especially if the hero isn't upgraded.

I'm disappointed with the game's current state, but considering how frequently it's getting updated, I'm hoping that in the near future, it'll evolve into a game that I enjoy a lot more. I'll probably come back to this in a year or so.

Two fantastic titles and great additions to the Ace Attorney series. Both games manage to be gripping and endearing, star a fantastic new cast of characters, and introduce fresh gameplay mechanics that really invigorate the Ace Attorney formula.

I do think that the games have some pacing issues, as there are times when they will slow down to an absolute crawl, but when they kick things into high gear, they nearly reach the heights of peak Ace Attorney.

I don’t think they quite surpass the original trilogy of Ace Attorney games for me, but they at the very least manage to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. These games are a delightful time, and are an easy recommendation to fans of the original series.

The second Great Ace Attorney is a pretty good and straightforward continuation of the first game. It doesn’t really add much of anything new, nor does it change anything in terms of gameplay/mechanics, so I don’t have as much to say about it as I did regarding the previous game.

The story is very consistent with the first game in terms of quality. However, I do feel like the plot can progress at an agonizingly slow pace at times. It can also get very repetitive, as it constantly teases and hints at the bigger mystery that needs to be unfolded over, and over, and over again while it drip-feeds tiny pieces of information regarding that mystery up until the very end of the game. It doesn’t help that the first two episodes are mostly unrelated to said big mystery. In fact, the second episode takes place during the events of the previous game, and feels largely out of place. It makes me wonder if the only reason the second episode exists is so that the game could meet a five episode quota, because in all honesty, I don’t really think that the second episode was truly necessary given how long the subsequent episodes are. Personally, I feel like they could’ve split Episode 3 in half to meet the five episode quota if they really wanted to. I was hooked when the game finally started to pick up and unravel the great mystery during Episode 3, but it took a really long time to get there.

Slow pacing aside, the game is still just as comfy and enjoyable as its prequel, with even more colorful characters to enjoy. I had a pretty decent time with it, and wouldn’t mind another entry featuring these characters, as they’re all rather delightful.

I really wanted to enjoy this game. I’ve heard a lot of great things about it from friends as well as content creators I really admire, and the fact that it took major inspiration from Zelda made me very interested. After about 16 hours, I came to realize that the game just isn’t for me, and I’m bummed about it. I had to really force myself to play through a large chunk of that 16 hours as well.

My biggest problem with CrossCode is its level progression system. In most games I play, I despise doing sidequests that require a lot of chores or busywork, such as collecting a certain amount of materials or defeating a certain amount of enemies, and only ever really do them if it’s convenient for me. CrossCode requires you to do a lot of these very types of sidequests in order to be properly leveled for the main campaign. The game will let you know that you’re underleveled as you enter an area, or encounter enemies that are a higher level than you. I was surprised at how frequently I happened to be underleveled, as well as how many sidequests I needed to complete in order to reach the recommended level for an area or boss. I tried to go along with the game’s expectations and did a lot of these very sidequests, but this made my experience with the first half of the game a huge bore, and from what I’ve been told, it doesn’t really get any better.

The puzzles are also not my cup of tea either. They generally consist of just pushing and pulling blocks in a room, or shooting your VRP shots at different angles to ricochet and hit specific targets. By the halfway point of the game, I was already sick to death of both types of these puzzles.

There’s a lot about the game that I did enjoy. Its presentation is fantastic, with beautiful pixel art and outstanding music. I also really enjoyed the combat, even though it felt like I didn’t really progress far enough through the game to get a deep grasp of it. These are the elements of the game that really kept me going and made me want to stick with it. As for the story, I don’t think I made it far enough to be able to comment much on it. So far, from what I’ve experienced, the characters are charming enough, but I can tell I’ve barely scratched the surface of the plot, even though I’m apparently halfway through the game.

I don’t know if I’ll ever come back to CrossCode, but I’m shelving it for now at least. I really feel like I’ve been forcing myself to play it up until this point, and it’s leading me to resent the game a little, which I really don’t want to do. I really, really wanted to like this game. It’s clear that a lot of passion was put into it, but so much of the game up until this point has consisted of extremely boring busywork that’s left me immensely unsatisfied.

The first Great Ace Attorney is an entertaining and interesting shakeup to the Ace Attorney series with charming characters and an excellent new setting. It’s an endearing adventure that takes a rather unique look at the historical period of the late 1800s for both Britain and Japan.

Each episode’s writing quality is generally pretty good, even if they can get a little slow at times. Episode 3 is definitely this game’s highlight, which is funny because the third Episode in an Ace Attorney game is typically the weak “filler” episode. However, this game’s third episode manages to be one of the most suspenseful and captivating ones in the series. It is then followed by Episode 4, which is this game’s low point, but still wasn’t necessarily terrible. I greatly enjoyed all of the characters in this one too, especially their extensive character animations. These animations are really well done, and do a great job of establishing the unique quirks and personalities of each character. Herlock Sholmes is by far the best example of this. His eccentricity is infectious, and you can tell that they had an immense amount of fun animating him.

Despite the overall writing quality of this game, it does feel like a large amount of it was written as a build up to its sequel. There’s a number of plot points that aren’t addressed, and while the game does end on a really good note, there’s a hefty amount of plot elements that are left unresolved, especially after the final trial. Assuming that everything left unanswered will end up being addressed in the sequel, I think I’m glad this game didn’t come overseas for so long, as I feel like playing this game without playing the sequel soon after might’ve left me with some overall harsher negative feelings.

The new additions to the trials and investigations are neat. Having a jury as well as cross-examining multiple witnesses on the witness stand offers the opportunity to feature even more of the colorful characters the Ace Attorney series is known for, and I quite enjoyed the summation examinations as well for the same reason. I also enjoyed the new Dance of Deduction sequences, but I do think that sitting through them twice, much like how you listen to a witnesses’ statement twice during a cross-examination, gets a tad tiresome. The cinematics of Herlock Sholmes confidently missing the point with his deductions are quite fun, but I think they’d be paced better if Naruhodo interjected the first time Sholmes gets something wrong as opposed to letting the whole cinematic play out before Naruhodo makes his corrections.

The game is a comfy and enjoyable time. It definitely does feel a little lacking without playing the sequel, but if the sequel lives up to the promise this game has, then I think it’ll be worth it in the end. Adventures doesn’t quite hit the ground running, but by the end, it definitely starts to pick up steam, and I’m very excited to play the sequel.