It's absolutely wild to go from the simple, multiplayer focused SRB2 Kart to this mechanics-rich racer with a metric ton of singleplayer content. Like, holy shit, they actually made a mascot racing game with more mechanics than Sonic Riders. I think I'm in love!

Don't get me wrong, the mandatory, hour-long tutorial is very unwelcoming and the fact that you need to unlock online play and mods via singleplayer content is absolutely baffling. Even so, there's so much to enjoy here and it's all presented with so much charm and style. It's going to take a good amount of time to fully digest all the mechanics and unlock all the secrets, and I think that's really refreshing for a racing game, much less a (free fan-made) kart racer.

What an unbeliavable surprise to top off the year.
Were just a few months shy of Eviternity's 5th anniversary (holy shit how has it been this long), what many, including myself proclaimed to be the greatest megawad of all time. I've got nothing but praise to give it's sequel.

Maps are gorgeous, layouts simultaneously feel unique and straight forward, both combat encounters & puzzles are well thought out, dehacked monsters feel completely fair, and the midis are excellent.

Highlights are Maps 1,3,4,8,9,10,14,18, and especially 32. 32 might be my favorite level released in any wad, ever. 36 is also noteworthy for effectively being a sunlust map in terms of cruelty towards the player.
That being said, barring maybe Map33 (you'll know why when you get to it) you could release any 3-4 maps as it's own seperate entity and it would end up being a noteworthy wad of the year.

Nevermind greatest megawad anymore, Eviternity 2 is an easy contender for greatest pwad of all time. An absolute MUST play for anyone interested and/or invested in Doom's modding scene.

Those demonic bastards are gonna pay for turning my girl into a texture.

I haven't been having a good October. My tulpa has been out there opening new lines of credit in my name, and the spooky games I picked out have all ranged from middling to bad. I swear the plan wasn't to theme the whole month around mediocre horror. I actually thought I'd like Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and I didn't expect to fall off so hard with Fatal Frame's combat. At least I'm finishing the season strong with Blood, which was recommended to me several months ago, around when I was starting to post reviews for the classic Doom games.

I can definitely see why Blood was suggested to me, as it sticks pretty close to the boomer shooter script as laid out by Doom. You have a shotgun that acts as the centerpiece of your arsenal, levels are often maze-like and require the collection of keys to progress in, and you'll need to claw your way through hordes of demons in one perfect run to the exit button - unless you're a save scummer, like me. Some of the weapons aren't quite as good as what you'd find in Doom, but for my money, Blood has the best dynamite in any first person shooter I've played, and the inclusion of alt-fires for almost every weapon adds a lot of versatility. Your normal shotgun can fire off single bursts or you can empty both barrels at once, for example, and I'm not sure any other shooter at the time was playing around with ideas like this.

There's also a lot of Duke Nukem 3D in here, specifically with Blood's protagonist Caleb, who loves to mouth off and amuse himself with corny little one-liners. Caleb is great. He's such a weird little freak. Stephan Weyte's performance is on the same level for me as Jon St. John, and I love the way he holds on certain syllables when growling out his lines. The way he says "Llllocked!" or "I need a keyyy" is tattooed on my brain, and Caleb's "Ohhh myyy, what a WONderful smell I've discovered~" when entering an outhouse (and just before diving into the toilet) is going to stick with me. Caleb may be very Duke-like with his shamelessly sourced movie quotes ("DON'T play it again, Sam..."), but his sense of humor is more off-kilter and suited to his role as an amoral former cult member.

Holding Blood back from being as great as Doom, however, is the whole of Episode 3, "A Farewell to Arms," which drills into Sandy Petersen territory with how labyrinthine and confounding many of its levels are. I got stuck for an unreasonable amount of time in the level "Spare Parts" because a grey elevator door blended in with the rest of the scenery, looking indistinguishable from a non-interactive wall. "Raw Sewage" and "Monster Bait" are dull levels that overstay their welcome and contribute their fair share to Episode 3 being a drag, with the highest point probably being "The Sick Ward" which is mostly just fine. 

Episode 4 brings things back around with shorter, more focused levels, and though the Plasma Pak and Cryptic Passage expansions included in Fresh Supply do have some levels that are a bit too meandering, they are mostly solid, so Fresh Supply does recover from that mid-game slump. It is a shame that the expansions lack the same janky CG 3D cutscenes as the core game, though. There were better looking real-time graphics in 1997, I love it and can't imagine Blood any other way. The real-time shadows and lighting in the game itself do look great, though, so at least Blood looks good where it counts.

I have no idea how to tie all these thoughts together and wrap up this review, so I'm gonna hit this exit switch, listen to a bunch of dudes go "ohhhh owwwww!" and just reflect on how Blood saved my October.

"You've got it all wrong. You were the Lightning in that rain. You can still Shine through the Darkness."

I wanted to open this review with my favourite quote in the entire mgs franchise. Even though game have too many damn fanservicey moments to the point it becomes bothersome, I really admire it's dedication to go with a bang for solid snake's last journey.

This sentence is actually enough to convey what I think about this game, but of course I will add more detailed thoughts.

this game's trailer is actually the first time I had met with mgs when watching a game show at tv. I already told this on my mgs1 review but I wanted to rephrase here again. I also thought this game franchise related to something like xmen somehow because they were showing a cutscene about a old man that manages to down entire army without doing anything while doing a finger gun pose on a boat. Now, knowing the context, it's actually funny to look back on it.

Anyway, years later when I was searching about best ps1 games then I came across to mgs name again and then got the mgs legacy edition for ps3 immediately and started from there to here. So what did I think?

Gameplay
Gameplay feels smooth as a butter, you have millions of moves, easier camouflage system, better cqc system, lots of new weapons, even a remote robot to control. Heck Yeah! To the point I can confidently say that this game is the better than mgs3 in gameplay.

Also level design is peak mgs. You have lots of alternate routes now! More than any past mgs games! Use ladders to get from the rooftops or use ventilation pipes to slip past everyone, or use buildings in the environment to stay away from open areas etc.

It's too bad that this is the least punishing mgs game tho. I understand that it's about infiltration at war. But still, alert status is so generous in this game that, you can play the entire game like a call of duty game, like just run and gun no one can stop you(at least for the normal difficulty). To the point you can lead the resistance army if you play your cards right and can become a pmc leader somehow. Because of that I am pretty sure lots of people that played this game didn't take advantage of alternate routes and thought this game is just a bland cod copycat and that's just sad. Not just that, this game have 3 times more setpiece action moments then mgs3. This also doesn't help for it's reputation either.

I am not the biggest fan of cutsceney setpiece moments. But I still enjoyed really a lot with exploring every level to their last corner and had a great time myself, so I think gameplay is on the positive side.

Story(Warning I put Some spoilers)
Story is both emotional, hearbreaking and exciting. Also both confusing, unnecessarily too twist heavy and too much fanservicey.

This game's story is about teaming everyone we can find to learn about what Ocelot is trying to do and stop him once and for all while solid fights his biggest opponent. His deteriorating health.
It looks simple at surface, but mini stories adding onto it is what makes it slowly goes haywire to the point super confusing

When the first screen came in and when I saw the old snake. I felt sad and emotional but also praised Kojima. Not all writers have the decency to actually age their million years old characters. Also I loved this incarnation even more to the point for me: He is the best Snake.

In mgs1 he is nothing more than a confused soldier, in mgs2 he is a cool looking hero that saves the day. In this one he is a mentor to everyone. He knows his time is limited so he does his best to wake up everyone from their messy life problems and motivates to take the gun and continue fighting.

I also loved the returning mgs1 cast a lot. Everyone aged now and learned The reality. They learned what it means to just get thrown to the wayside after their mission done. Meryl, Colonel, Naomi, Mei Ling. Not just that they are thrown in this never ending Ocelot's war with each passing day. While they are fighting both Ocelot's soldiers and the reality, we are the one that pushes them for one last mission to get them up to their feet and for me this the greatest strength of this tile. One. Last. Push.

Get. Back. On. Your. Feet. One. More. Time.

Another thing I loved is ongoing comradery between Hal and Snake. Also Snake and Raiden. Watching them motivate each other to continue on is nothing but pure heartwarming.

Also I love Sunny. I love Sunny. I love Sunny. She is just a pure kid between all the grumpy old guys and her struggle with them to communicate is really fun to watch.

But I didn't enjoy how Raiden's relationship with Rose went to fire after mgs2 or how the ai fight affected his mental health not shown. I assume they were hiding this for planned mgs rising's first planned version. But unfortunely that thing turned into a straight kill the bad guys kinda storyline somehow. So... I am not happy about this situation.

I also didn't enjoy the Beauty and the beast unit. I liked the premise, I don't have a problem with that. They are supposed to be puppets of war that lost their emotions in the way just to get used for this meaningless war. But why they are just a meaningless versions of the previous mgs bosses? Why they are not their own characters? I don't get this. This feels like really unneccessary pandering to fans and feels like a missed oppurtunity to make them their own strong characters. Also why the heck it's implied that Psycho mantis is also with them? I really really disliked that. Why do you resurrect your character for no damn reason? To take them less seriously with more fanservice??

Also why Johnny the fart guy is back? Like seriously why? Also Kojima expected us to take him seriously while half of the cutscenes he is in, he is busy with just stumbling while everyone do their job. If you want us to take a dumb character seriously then you make him slowly more intelligent rather than suddenly doing that in the end in my opinion.

Also there is the infamous retcon of course. The mgs3 cast behind the ai work. I feel like this is a last minute addition rather than a considered one. Because mgs3 ended with the call with the Cia director just like the first mgs's end where Ocelot talks with the president. So that means first consideration was cia director to become the force behind the ai work. But I guess mgs portable ops wasted that oppurtunity so Kojima did a last minute addition because of that. Of course it's not a good twist and just like Raiden's sudden turn, this comes from nowhere because there is no build up to go on with. But also I always felt like people take this point a bit too much. All mgs games have retcons in their own way tbh. Mgs1 had the sudden unlogical clone conspiracy, mgs2 had the sudden impossible perfect brother thingy, mgs3 change the snake's villainy. Not just that, we don't know anything about the mgs3 cast other than they like movies and also they care about the mission. So that means they probably maybe changed after that. My problem isn't with the twist. It's with again, not showing why that happened. But even if I disliked the twist I don't think it suddenly "destroyed the whole mgs franchise" just because this twist exists like most of you.

But I loved, I loved, I loved everything with Ocelot. He brings everything full circle and finishes the mgs right there and there. The perfect finale. The ending point. It's just perfect ending. So because of this even tho this game have it's downs, it's ups are more on the positive side for me.

I would want to have less in your face fanservicey moments and less sudden twists but all in all I liked this game. Because of it's downs I don't think this is the best mgs. But ups are really strong that this make this game a perfect mgs ending. Nothing more and nothing less.

It's sad that this franchise didn't end here tho.

If you asked me my thoughts on this game a year ago, I think the score would honestly be lower. I've come around to this game a lot over time, but its still pretty heavily flawed.

The gameplay is honestly pretty good, but my main issue with this game is just the plot. Despite my love for MGS2, it left the franchise in a bit of a rough spot because of its purposeful ambiguity. It works for that game very well, but makes it a pretty hard point to continue off of. The way this game handles it, through its numerous retcons and reveals, is mostly kind of stupid. Between making the MGS3 crew the people behind the Patriots, to the way it explained away a lot of the supernatural aspects of Metal Gear with the infamous "nanomachines" excuse, its not the greatest. It doesn't help that the cutscenes this time around, aspects I've never actually minded despite others complaints about them, are very noticeable when they go on and on with exposition. Not all cutscenes are bad though. The Raiden vs Vamp fight was excellent, for example.

Metal Gear has a pretty big problem with misogyny in general , but its really rough in this game. The Beauty and Beast unit are almost comedic levels of terrible and the way it handles Naomi's character turns an intriguing character from the original MGS into another fridged woman to traumatize Otacon. EVA's also used as a tool for exposition before also dying to make Solid Snake sad, but at least that served more of a narrative purpose along with Ocelot and Big Boss' deaths. I do enjoy how Meryl is potrayed in this game though, as well as seeing Mei Ling again. No idea why she got paired off with the gag character who shits himself.

I've been pretty negative to this game so far without mentioning the fact that I actually genuinely like the way they end Solid Snake's character arc in this game. While the way it resurrects Big Boss is a bit stupid, getting that closure between the two of them is bittersweet and feels like the most appropriate send off for both of these characters. Ocelot was also handled excellently in this game, the final fight between you and him is amazing and features great callbacks to every game. I have some issues with the way they handle Raiden, but I overall think they handled the character well, as well as the dynamic they had with Solid Snake in this game being honestly a highlight to the writing.

So yeah, overall a pretty mixed bag. I think it concludes the series well enough for me not to hate it, but its definitely the most rough game in the series.

I didn't know what to expect going into AC: VI. I've never played an Armored Core game, or even a mech game really. I don't particularly enjoy Fromsoft's Souls-like formula either. But the spectacle and the METAL of ARMORED CORE drew me in from the start. On completion of the game, I could not have been more pleased.

If you're ready for a puzzle game disguised as a high-intensity action game then AC: VI is for you. I say that because the difficulty really is determined by how you build your mech. The moment you find yourself loading into missions with the same gear as the mission prior, the game will start to become tough for you. Now, playing this way isn't impossible. Put into different terms, it's more a matter of how hard you're willing to shove a wax cylinder through a square hole. Do-able. Even rewarding when it happens. But it doesn't have to be that hard. And it's not rocket science either. If you're willing to spend time analyzing the gear on a basic fundamental level you'll be fine. Lots of small enemies? Multi-lock missiles. Boss battle? Spec for a 1v1. Determine how fast you gotta move per encounter from there.

Another note about the difficulty, which is a personal belief of mine, but I want to share. I think my sucking at Soul's games is directly linked to my expertise in AC. Battles are frenetic, conducted by split-second decision-making, and pure unbridled aggression toward the enemy. The way war is waged in AC almost directly contradicts a souls-like playstyle. There are times when battles may echo a feeling of a souls-like, where you memorize attack patterns, and go all-out after you've staggered your foe. But, and I can't stress this enough: It is not soulslike, and it's very possible that your skills in those games, will not transfer here. There have been plenty of Elden Ring enjoyers who have been 'filtered' out of AC's player base to somewhat prove that. That's why I think this and my previous paragraph are important to bring up right from the jump. Get it in your brain. Go in with proper expectations. It's likely you won't enjoy it otherwise.

That said, I tell you what. This is a really fun game. The dopamine really kicks in the back of your skull with all the slo-mo boss kills and explosions. Building my mech to accommodate missions, finding my favorite mech parts, and just making a mech I was comfortable using in any situation... It's all done very well and it's all entertaining. Domineering the arena ladder alongside the mission structure was also incredibly rewarding. Despite my own warning above, I did do some parts of the game with an "unoptimized" mech, and while in this state, I did end up beating more "difficult" bosses and missions alike. I relished those awesome victories. In a way, I chose my own difficulty by sticking with those parts during those sections but felt I was equally rewarded, despite my stubbornness.

The mission design I thought worked really well, and in a way scratched a similar itch to that of something like Ace Combat 7 (strange it shares the same concatenation, AC), where you load into an area designed around an objective, and you complete that objective and move on to the next one or whatever. Eerily similar feeling. Missions could take minutes or a whole half hour, again... depending on how you decide to play it.

The story I actually ended up enjoying, I know some people haven't been that enthused, but the lore you get fed through missions about the planet Rubicon, the Mega-Corps, and your place as a Merc, came together well and made it all very interesting. The banter the characters have with you in their little snippets over the radio or in briefings I thought was pretty great and helped make some fun characters. I grew to appreciate its little twists and turns throughout the runtime and found the ending I got to be satisfying. The game does boast multiple endings and branching decisions so your repeat playthroughs don't feel the same... but I'll be honest, 2023 is not the year for me to go back and try and get those. Maybe next gaming dry spell? But I dunno! The first completion satisfied me quite a bit, so we'll see.

By way of critique, the missions aren't very balanced with their time which always felt jarring to me. Some missions are strictly jumping in to do a boss fight, and others can be 25 minutes of running around AND THEN you do a boss fight which is like another 20 minutes. My only other complaint is the boss fight in the ending I got. Felt impossible. Even after all I learned about the game, parts, the systems, it felt impossible to the point where I just had to cop a build I found by Googling. I completed it after several more tries with that build but still felt cheated. After everything I had been taught, the boss had a kit that was so unfair that nothing I had learned in my playtime helped me. In puzzle terms, the solution felt too specific.

Overall, I do recommend Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. I had a really fun time playing and enjoyed its spectacle missions and boss battles. Building your own mech is great, and experimenting with all the parts and finding what you like to bring on jobs is where the bread and butter of AC: VI is. If you're prepared to do that and to accept that there's a bit of a puzzle hidden within here, then you're going to really vibe with this game.