It's a particular scourge on the video game industry that old games are not easily accessible without emulation. Since I don't have a PC build, I had to resort to paying more money than I should have to get just the PS2 disc with no case included. The Silent Hill 2 experience however was shockingly worth the hassle.

Silent Hill 2 is old and while it is one of the most prominent examples of its genre, psychological horror, you rarely ever see a game that looks quite like it. In game, the developers worked wonders with their use of shadow. Its impossible to completely hide that signature polygonal roughness that comes with the PS2 era games, but the first time I wandered the halls of the Silent Hill's apartment buildings I was completely blown away by how good the game looked. The fully rendered FMVs also work extremely well for this game. Graphically, they're leagues above what we see in engine, yet they have a surreal uncanny quality that feel intentional rather than a failing to capture realism. Silent Hill 2 is also rife with visual symbolism and absurdity that perfectly aligns with its visual style. Apartment doors leading directly into brick walls, basements below basements below basements, inky black pits that you must delve into over and over again, and water everywhere you don't want water to be. In this way, Silent Hill 2 creates a nightmarish vision that works because of the limitations on the hardware it runs on, not despite it. The visuals are also helped out a lot by the amazing audio work done for this game.

Out of all the things I was expecting out of Silent Hill 2, I was most surprised and floored by the quality of its audio design. I had previously watched a lets play of this game some 10 years prior to me actually picking up the game for myself, and while I remembered some of the visuals from that experience 10 years ago, I completely had missed out on the audio design. Despite not having headphones, this game still sounds amazing. I'm not just talking about the soundtrack produced by Akira Yamaoka, which may just be an all time favorite of mine now. While playing Silent Hill 2, you will experience a large range of sounds that get under your skin. At times you will hear a disorienting cacophony when faced with some of the monsters in this game, other times you'll be alone in the dark with the sound of dripping water that always sounds like its coming from the back of your real life room. Several times I actually paused the game just to make sure my house hadn't sprung a leak. It delighted me, it terrified me, it disoriented me, it made me paranoid. By even modern day standards, the audio design team deserves the highest of praises.

I don't want to conclude this review without at least touching on the story of Silent Hill 2, yet I don't want to delve to deep into either. It is easily the most interesting part of the entire game, but if I even dip my toes into it I know I'll lose the rest of the plot of this review by gushing over it. If you haven't yet played the game and would like to, just do it whatever way you can. The story covers extremely heavy topics so beware. I will say this: even knowing the big twist at the end of the game, I was still heavily invested in everything the game was presenting to me narratively. The effectiveness of the narrative is not placed in where it ends up, but rather the maliciously winding path it takes you on.

22 years late to the party, I don't have much to say about Silent Hill 2 that hasn't already been said 1000 times over. Everything that has aged poorly with the game has been outmatched by the wild success it finds with what it was trying to accomplish. Even by modern day standards this game stands above most psychological horror games. It's rare to see a game sync up audio, visual, and story telling themes so effectively to deliver one cohesive product, but Silent Hill 2 does it all.

The Delicious Last Course is a great DLC that got me back into Cuphead yet again. Almost all of the bosses here are some of the best this team has put out yet in terms of charm and quality of animation, and most are incredibly difficult. My biggest criticism of this DLC is how they implement this difficulty. I love a good bullethell bossfight, but with some of these bosses the levels aren't as readable as I would like them to be. The complaint I'm voicing is NOT that its hard to dodge these bullets, the complaint is that its hard to see the bullets themselves. The last boss of this DLC is a particularly poignant example of what I am describing as your eyes struggle to read both the background and foreground at the same time. None of the fights in this DLC are ruined by this design, but when you inevitably lose to some of these bosses it leaves a more frustrating feeling than most of the base game fights. All in all I had a great time with the DLC, and if your a fan of Cuphead you should play this DLC.

- This review is edited and now takes into account the epilogue added Patch 5. For a quick summary of the changes I am making, this patch addresses all of my issues with the games ending, so I have revised that paragraph. I decided to add extra notes as well about the performance patches for Act three, but as this is a review of MY experience with the game, I kept the majority of that part of the review the same.

Baldur's Gate 3 absolutely blew me away and ate up so much of my time this year. On the first week of the PS5 release, I sank an ungodly amount of time into this game, exploring every corner of Act I and trying to pick up on all of the diverse mechanics present. As someone who has never played DND before or any of the previous Larian Studios games, there was a bit of a learning curve, but that didn't matter; I was immediately immersed in everything Baldur's Gate 3 had to offer. For me, Baldur's Gate 3 offered an experience I so rarely have in games today. When I played Baldur's Gate 3, it felt magical.

Maybe it's odd to use the phrase magical to describe a video game, but I mean it sincerely. As someone who plays a lot of games and has had his fair share of experience with all sorts of RPGs, Baldur's Gate 3 feels special in the way that it is distinctly different from most of the other games in the genre. My largest gripe with most RPGs is the lack of consequences to the arbitrary choices they present to you. In games like Skyrim, you can be the Dragonborn, an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, the Jarl of Whiterun, and the most powerful mage in the land. None of this means anything in the terms of the main narrative of the game. They are all side stories, disconnected in any meaningful way to the main storyline and your character's development/role within that story. Obviously I have played other RPGs since the release of Skyrim and this is a problem that permeates most RPGs at some level. There is simply no way to account for every single action you have taken as a player and have it meaningfully contribute to the narrative of the story. When I say Baldur's Gate 3 is magical, I say this because for a lot longer than I expected, I couldn't see this problem within the game. The game was a black box. Every thread I pulled on, even the most absurd ones, had some sort of worldly consequence, or was at least referenced back to in some meaningful way. It felt like this game was something that should have been impossible to make, and I absolutely loved it. The façade I'm describing does eventually show itself to be just that, a façade, the further into the game you get and the more choices and decisions you stack upon each other. As I progressed far into Act 2 and Act 3 it became a lot easier to make out the cogs in the system just as I had seen in all the other RPGs I had played. But at that point I was so sold on this game, so invested in the characters including my own avatar, that it didn't bother me. I was still determined to do everything and save as many people as possible on the Sword Coast, and after 140 something hours on my first playthrough I did just that. Unfortunately, the game does suffer a bit in Act 3, and really that is my only complaint with this game.

I had heard Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 did not stack up as well as the first 2 acts of the game. It was a long time until I reached the point where I could see it, but by the end of the game I had some noticeable experiences where I felt like the game could have handled its story threads better. The patch I was playing on at the time also had significant performance issues with Act 3 as well. It never ruined my experience, but at times it did take me out of the game. As I understand, these performance issues have been largely addressed post patch 5, but for the purposes of my review I was still impacted prior to this with Act 3.

Post patch 5, I absolutely love the ending of this game. The recently added epilogue was a much needed piece to the narrative. It brought each party members storyline to a much more satisfying end point, and it felt extremely personalized to me. It was exactly the ending I was hoping for and felt so fitting to my in-game experience and narrative I had been building in my head. I wish it had been there from the launch of the game, but I'm extremely grateful its here now.

I would also like to specifically compliment each of the writers and voice actors for the party members. Every single one of their storylines is compelling, and every single performance given is amazing. It's rare for an entire cast to knock their characters out of the park, but they all wildly succeeded. I loved them all.

To wrap this long review up: Baldur's Gate 3 was the most jaw dropping RPG i have played in a long time. My time with the game was some of my favorite in recent memory and I already feel that bittersweet sadness you experience when something you love has come to an end. It seems Larian Studios keeps adding things in updates to the game, so it'll be a game I continue to keep my eye on for a long time still.