Reunion is unquestionably the definitive version of Crisis Core. It is a direct facelift using FF7R's combat engine and textures while still retaining the cutscene animations of the original game. This results in a tremendously improved gameplay experience that made me want to do the endless side missions a lot more than I did in the original. Additionally, new QoL features like being able to skip limit break scenes and start over from the beginning of a fight if you Game Over are greatly appreciated.

Hilariously, the hold-over animations from the PSP version result in a lot of uncanny scenes of high fidelity characters still doing exaggerated PSP movements, and honestly I wouldn't have it any other way. None of the charm of the original ends up being lost here.

While we are dealing with a new voice cast as dictated by VII Remake, the new Zack grew on me quite well and the voices of other star characters are as impeccable as they were in VII Remake (maybe except for Reno). I'll always hold Gomez's performance (as the original Zack) in high regard, but it is certainly not enough for me to recommend the original release over this one in any way. If you love Crisis Core and want to replay it with a fresh coat of paint, or if it is your first time through, Reunion is absolutely recommended.

FFV feels like a refinement of everything that they set out to do with FFIII. An improved job system with tons of jobs, no limitations on swapping, a more coherent but still traditional plot focusing on the 4 warriors of light and the crystals, and a sizable world to explore.

As it compares to IV, it is obviously more open in the gameplay regards. It is a bit of a step back when it comes to story and characters (both allies and villains), but I ended up being attached to the main squad all the same by the end. There are certainly a lot of standout moments too, with Gilgamesh being one of my favourite FF characters thus far. The new orchestrated soundtrack is outstanding too, I hope it becomes available for streaming soon.

FFV in my mind is the pinacle of "classic" Final Fantasy with just about every aspect refined. I went out of my way to do a lot more side stuff in this one just because I didn't want it to end yet. Definitely play this one if you enjoy the traditional formula.

There's definitely something here. Driving around an island, doing quests and upgrading your own train while you fight off a demonic spider train is a great concept. It just feels like the game needed a little more development time.

Characters at the very least could've done with some mouth animations during dialogue. Some more variety in the setting would've been great too, maybe even a day/night cycle. Combat-wise, out of the 4 weapons you can unlock, one of them is so much better than the other 3 and it renders the others pretty worthless.

There's a lot that could be improved upon here, but it was a fun afternoon playthrough. I'm sure there are some hidden things I missed, but I'm not currently compelled enough to go back.

For all the incredible games I have played in 2022, I don't think any of them can bear the moniker of being a passion project quite like Pentiment can. Josh Sawyer truly has cemented himself as one of the most brilliant designers in the video game industry.

A narrative adventure, Pentiment takes the form and appearance of old medieval manuscripts. The font different characters spoken dialogue is in corresponds to the type of characters they are - peasants will write more sloppily and sometimes be hard to read, whereas the townsfolk and those of the abbey have more elaborate (and also, sometimes harder to read) fonts. Amusingly, as the game is told from the perspective of the artist - often times there will be typos that are quickly erased and fixed as you are reading. It's a small detail, but one that really adds to the charm.

As this is an Obsidian game, choices and background development are present here. You can choose the languages you understand, alternative educational disciplines you are familiar with in addition to art, and all these choices affect the way you interact with other characters. These choices shape the course of the story, and it really immerses you in the world it takes place in.

From a narrative perspective, the game tackles many subjects. What to do in life, what to believe in, and how to deal with hardship among them. The game is rife with ambient noise and music is used sparingly which really makes a big impact whenever it is heard.

I would really like it if more games like Pentiment were made. Despite being an Obsidian project, the development team was rather small and the scale of the game felt just right, lasting me around 16 hours. It is beautiful, thought-provoking, and I believe most people who play the game will find at least one struggle they can identify with. If you are into more narrative adventures, please do not skip this one.

A great improvement over the first game for virtue of having functioning online co-op. Combat feels great, characters are fun, and the soundtrack slaps too. The plot is structured better too in a way where exploration is more encouraged and most collectibles aren't too unreasonable. The developers seem to have gone the Yakuza route of retaining mostly the same maps to focus on adding other new elements.

I think the only area where this game has lost points with me is that it commits the cardinal sin of co-op games: only the host retains main story/collectible progress. I understand that this is can be a tricky issue to address due to having to factor in players at different stages of the story playing with each other, but having played start to finish with my friend, it is a bummer that I have to start from scratch sans my level/item/move purchases. I suppose it will at least go faster when I replay it.

Still, despite my misgiving about the co-op implementation RCG2 is a direct upgrade to the first game in every way and i daresay you could even skip it if you wanted. Definitely worth playing this if you love beat 'em ups.

It is hard to describe how much joy it brings me that there are a pair of brilliant minds at the helm of rose-engine who truly understand the horror video game genre. SIGNALIS feels like the best of all worlds, having borrowed the best parts of its predecessors to create something unique.

From the moment you open up the inventory screen for the first time, the inspiration is plain. The Silent Hill/Resident Evil is here, and the striking art style comes from a fidelity just above the PS1 era but not PS2. You also aren't locked to tank controls, and can even move around while aiming. There are a multitude of weapons (evidently a couple of which are very missable), but the ones I did not miss sound and feel amazing. The game also even features a radio, but unlike the one featured in the Silent Hill series, there are quite a lot of extra gameplay functions, many puzzles of which make use of tuning it to different channels to find solutions. A lot of the major puzzles lean a little too often on being collectathons to unlock your next area, but they are usually made up of smaller more interesting puzzles to claim the pieces. The map screen is well done too, marking the names of rooms you have visited and the status of doors you have tried (unlocked/locked/broken). It will also mark key interactables if present, but you aren't told if you have picked up every item which I feel is a good balance.

The story is intriguing and emotional with a focused cast of interesting characters and themes, and the tone is a lot closer to something like Silent Hill than Resident Evil. If you love classic survival horror and science fiction, SIGNALIS is unmissable. I'm really glad there are game creators out there who still truly get it.

Norco is utterly captivating. It is a brief point-and-click noir thriller through a bleak cyberpunk world as you piece together the mystery behind your mother's death and search for your missing brother.

The gorgeous pixel art does a great job of painting the grime of Norco, with a soundtrack and story that all work together to capture the aesthetic perfectly. It is utterly strange and very well written, and much is left to interpretation. There are some brief "gameplay" segments of puzzle solving and even combat, but it is largely a narrative adventure. It's quite short, coming in at just over 5 hours for me but I felt that was the perfect length. Fans of this genre should definitely check this one out.

There's a lot that does shine about Tactics Ogre, and a lot I do enjoy about it. It tells the tale of a man as he is trapped in a bloody war, with difficult choices to make and ultimately no truly right answers. In this respect, it is probably one of the best games to depict war and put the question to the player - do the ends justify the means?

It's not perfect - I do have some hangups regarding the plot. The antagonists are cartoonish villains, and one party member in particular (at least in the route I played) makes bafflingly stupid decisions as the game tries to guilt the player over it. It's a bit silly, but it's something easily overlooked in the grand scheme of the plot. The english voice acting for the most part is great. The main character, Denam, has an excellent performance from Max Mittelman who carries the game on his back, and many of the side characters were well done too. I felt the music to leave a little bit to be desired, but I did have a couple of standouts that I enjoyed a lot.

What really brings down my score here is the gameplay experience. Tactics Ogre is a slog. I normally love tactical games, but in this one there is just too much downtime and too many ultimately meaningless battles that feel like filler. There are some decent maps, but most are pretty lackluster and can be steamrolled, with the only real tactical decision I often needed to make was - do I need a dragoon here or not? There are definitely some great fights that do invoke just the right amount of challenge - the final dungeon in particular is fantastic. But the midgame is a bore with not a lot of payoff and retreading constantly over maps you've already beaten. The final chapter somehow both escalates the plot while also ensuring you have a mountain of trivial things to do if you are so inclined. I totally understand why people love this, but it's a bit too grindy for my taste and the fast-forward button is an absolute joke. If it was even twice as fast, maybe I wouldn't care so much.

For a tactical game, I feel I should also mention how strange it is there is no complete glossary of things like buffs/debuffs in-game. A handful are listed in the tips menu, but for most you can only get a description from a character who is actively affected by it. A lot of information is tucked away in those menus, so its strange we didn't get that but we did get a robust explanation of the calendar, which is mostly inconsequential.

Tactics Ogre is very impressive when you consider it came out for the SNES in 1995, and there is no doubt that it is among the best games on that platform. But I feel like it has not lived up to the expectations that its fanbase has left for me, which is a shame because I was really hoping it would. Maybe I'll go back and check out the stuff I missed sometime, but I think 69 hours was enough.

There's a lot to like about Unbound. A nice selection of cars (minus Toyota ever since their new stance on street racing), really cool visual effects, cars handle well, and the map is just the right size too with a good amount of races and collectibles. You start out with a cheap car and work your way up, buying new parts and increasing your stock at the garage to build up during the calendar to the big events. The AI is actually pretty good and can be unpredictable and make mistakes too, which makes each race feel all the more authentic.

The plot is pretty bad and 99% of the characters are poorly written or just plain annoying, but I guess that's how NFS has always been - even back to Most Wanted. You can also tell A$AP Rocky was a hilariously huge component of the marketing. He appears at the end of every Takeover event, he appears in races, and he even talks all through the credits. But despite all that, where the game really falls apart for me is the cop chases.

Cops are an outright chore. Chases are tedious, they spawn constantly (usually right in your path too), and at higher levels they go on for so long. Unlike the original Most Wanted, there are no pursuit breakers or cooldown zones, and their road block spawns are laughably bad and miss the mark 9 times out of 10. By the last couple of in-game days, I just skipped races once I had enough money just so I didn't have to deal with them anymore.

I just really wish they had tuned the cops. I love racing around the city and will probably still go for a lot of the collectibles, but with a couple of changes this would be a 4 or a 4.5 game for me.

FAITH: The Unholy Trinity is a fantastic retro-style horror game split into three acts, released over a span of 5 years. It follows the journey of Father John Ward as he fights various evils with his crucfix.

Chapter I (2017) is a pretty solid base to begin with. You spend a lot of time wandering around in woods that repeat themselves, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the hunting/foraging segments of Oregon Trail. There are quite a lot of possible endings as you progress through, with notes to collect by exorcising various objects.

Chapter II (2019) was a significant upgrade over Chapter I and IMO my favourite part of the trinity. While more linear, it gave way to a lot more environments and plot, as well as some neat puzzles.

Then finally we have Chapter III (2022), which serves as a great finale. Once again we have more multiple endings with lots of well-hidden secrets to uncover, and some really rad segments. One level in particular did go on for a little too long however.

All in all, this is an excellent choice for fans of horror and retro-styled games alike. The animation/cutscenes are incredibly well done with their eerily high framerates and the atmosphere/music is just the right level of creepy.

Atari 50 is a fantastic compilation of Atari games throughout the years, from the arcade, to the 2600, to the Jaguar, and everything inbetween. As you go through the timelines you get to try out tons of classic games, sprinkled with high-resolution scans of manuals, print ads, and interviews from key Atari and other game industry personnel.

As far as game compilations go this is certainly one of the best ones out there, even if quite a lot of the games don't hold up well (if they ever were in the first place). It would have been nice to have some more famous titles as particularly licensed ones (such as E.T.) are absent, but with the quantity and even new creations it's hard to really complain. Especially when none of the games in the collection are half as bad as the penultimate interview, being several minutes with the creator of Ready Player One.

CHOP CHOP
WHERE'S THE CHEESE
AVENGE ME

Utterly goofy game but as always from David, a great time. Cool level designs!