Peak RE content like the base game.

May or may not have almost shat myself during the dolls and statues section lmfao

Extremely interested in whats next for the franchise

Ok get the bad out of the way: so the loot system is not the best and feels a bit unnecessary. The Boss fights of this game are poorly designed and on hard difficulty, one of them literally took me over 10 minutes of just punching the bosses health down, occasionally dodging. However, this is not a repeat of Square Enix's Avengers.

If you can look past that, you have a game that explores 4 interesting characters that haven't received much love outside of the comics (rip Batgirl movie). Court of Owls makes for an interesting story you want to see through. This game is much better if you have a coop buddy to go fight crimes in the open world with. Even on hard, we naturally did enough side stuff that I never felt the need to grind. To me, this game is just a fun open world experience.

This game didn't overstay it's welcome, which is a huge problems with these types of games now (Horizon and Assassin's Creed for me suffer from this). A big open world game you can play most of and finish a playthrough in 20-30 hours is great. I rolled credited as Robin and my friend as Batgirl and during the credits we were already contemplating running it back and playing as Redhood and Nightwing. Well worth the $50 I spent on GMG for a key.
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this is one of the primary titles on a list of childhood favorites that I've been reluctant to go back to... "heart-breaking" is too strong of a word to describe a reevaluation like that, but maybe "unpleasant" is a better one.

+a lot of what the game's riding on is general nintendo "cute" things, in the sense of them filling in little winks and flourish in appropriate places. luigi whistling the main theme, the clever remarks he makes through the game boy horror, nods and riffs upon classic mario music, the wide collection of boo pun names, among other things.
+the vacuum combat is decidedly tactile in its execution. pulling away from the ghost's wildly gesticulating escape will reduce their life at a steady rate, and entering that angle parallel and opposite to them will immediately drop their life by a point. thus, by wiggling the stick in the quadrant opposite the ghost, you can drain life very quickly. chaotic and natural once grasped. to actually expose them for capturing, you must flash them with the light first, which has a great SFX attached that really highlights their freezing animation. I totally forgot in this game you hold the flashlight off before flashing it when the ghosts are close; iirc it's like a charge you have to do in dark moon.
+one of the main draws is as a tech demo for the gamecube in an oddly unassuming way. besides generally featuring better shape fidelity and lighting effects than the flatly-lit, blocky contemporaries on dreamcast and launch-era ps2 (barring shenmue/sa2/etc.), there's also some neat cloth effects when the vacuum is used on various table coverings and drapes. not as convincing when used on toilet paper, but can't fault them for trying. fire/ice particle effects/transparencies are pretty as well.
+the main loop consists of clearing ghosts out of each room to turn the lights back on and then shaking everything down for treasure, but here and there portrait ghosts appear for you to catch. each requires a simple environment interaction puzzle in order to reveal their heart and allow you to capture them. if nothing else, getting to meet the variety of denizens of the ethereal mansion is fun in a The Haunted Mansion kinda way. personal favs to solve/fight: shivers, biff atlas, clockwork soldiers, sir weston.
+a few rooms feature specific gimmicks for how their ghost fights work that I appreciate for playing the nature of visualizing ghost location. these include the projector room where ghosts appear only as shadows on a screen behind the light of the projector bulb, and another where the ghosts can only be seen through a room-length mirror.
+love the astral chamber and its indoor balcony and miniature moon that leads to mario's star. lends the mansion a sense of abstract, amorphous space that isn't shown anywhere else.
+music is great, obv the motif is classic but there's an eclectic mix of house and other Y2K-era genres infused that make it stand out even among nintendo's other OSTs.

-was surprised upon replaying to find the game is excessively linear. in areas 1, 2, and 4 the entire order of rooms must be completed in a particular order, with a couple isolated detours for optional portrait ghosts. for me the sense that I'm actually exploring the mansion is greatly diminished when each step of the process is directly communicated to me. area 3 avoids this by having a typical RE-style "find this set of key items to unlock the next area" and the results feel much more organic in terms of discovery.
-not really a fan of all of the portrait ghost puzzles. the "shoot the ghost with a sphere you sucked up" ones like nana (yarn balls) and slim bankshot (pool balls) have some odd issues with their ball collision, specifically when luigi accidentally whacks one on the wall closest to the player, which is invisible. others like uncle grimmly or the floating whirlindas seem to have really no puzzle to them at all (other than grimmly requiring backtracking). I would say any that I haven't mentioned so far is pretty much just "ok", not standout or interesting but also not obnoxious. actually capturing the ghost is generally not the most interesting part of these mind you. using the wiggle technique I mentioned earlier I think I managed to clear about 75% of them with golden frames (though my overall rank was an E unfortunately).
-the boos are a terrible addition, especially since they constitute a significant portion of the game. they do not get trapped in your vacuum "beam" as other ghosts do and instead have more of a stunlock effect to them; a good permutation of their AI will allow them to stay within your grasp for a while, but if they manage to get away from you or don't want to stay close to you, they will happily leave the room and force you to run after them. every fight is the same other than later ones having more HP (300 is way too tedious with no gameplay changes). the game makes you capture 40 of 50 total; I captured 45 and didn't bother with the rest given how much they were aggravating me. surprisingly enough I still have a few of my old files and one of them featured 50 boos, so I'm gonna rest easy knowing I've suffered through it before.
-mansion structure is overly linear; it doesn't seem that way from the floor plan but it's basically one line from the foyer (or the basement hall) to the third floor east hall rooms. there's one shortcut one can take to skip needing to go around the back of the house every time you want to go upstairs, but it's hidden inside of an innocuous interactable that I had to look up a guide to refresh myself on. if you're messing with each object it's certainly possible you'll find it, but locking a huge time save behind that is frustrating.
-area 4 is particularly heavy on backtracking from bottom floor to top floor and vice versa. if the game had allowed the player to plan their own routes and opened up more of the mansion at once, this wouldn't be as much of an issue.
-bosses are all pretty bleh. the king boo fight is especially bad: the bombs are finicky to pick up, you can't aim them vertically, and certain attack patterns will render them pointless (if you stand too far away from the boss they'll throw the bombs and then jump immediately after, ruining your chance to hurl them back). boolossus is trivially easy to split apart and yet frustrating when it comes to freezing the individual boos. chauncy is fine for a first boss, and bogmire's fight I can barely remember even though I played it less than a week ago.
-the controls in general are a little odd: in normal cases luigi has typical 3D movement (controlling as if you were looking at him top-down on a 2D plane) but when using the vaccuum he switches to a strafing mode where turning/vertical look are handled on the C-stick. not terrible on its own, but the devs attempted to make it more palatable by adding in auto-aim, which gets hairy. sometimes it's great (particularly if you line up the boos correctly or have a chain of ghosts to flash with the light), but when there's a lot of ghosts on-screen or tiny ghosts in the fray the auto-aim wrenches away control from you in a very uncomfortable way. rather disorienting unfortunately.

did not really find this all that fun to replay to be frank. I think it plays a lot of its hand on the first playthrough, and its well of gimmicks doesn't shine quite as brightly upon a revisit. what I will give it credit for is being a great kid's introduction to the horror genre. for me as a child this met me on the level I needed, including things I listed as detriments here such as the basic puzzles or the extreme linearity. a proper survival horror game with the occasionally obtuse puzzle solutions inherited from point-and-click/ADV games would have been too much of a strain for me as a child I think given how many games I bounced off for even having slight brainteasers involved, and in that sense I can appreciate what it meant to me in terms of design when I was younger. this was the game in particular that gave me the urge to actually set out to finish games rather than tool around in their opening areas; it'll always be notable to me for that reason. I think it's unfortunate that it doesn't hold the same interest for me as an adult. whether I would've enjoyed it more had I been playing it fresh or felt the same way that I do now will remain a mystery to me.

Kind of a shame - this one initially presents well and seems like it's going to be a bit of a step up from the other two LEGO Marvel games with a much, much more interesting world map than boring old NYC for the hundredth time, and some unusual picks for the main plot characters. Unfortunately, it's a buggy piece of shit, the traversal somehow feels way worse than ever before, and the writing is painful imitation-Whedon. I ended up quitting because I couldn't get a side-quest to stop soft-locking itself, but it was actually more of a relief than anything. I usually 100% these, glad to have an excuse to not this time - it deserves it even less than usual.

Contrary to 90% of the people reviewing this game, I have actually PLAYED it. As of writing this, I've got around 15 hours of time played on this game, so I feel like I have some legitimate grounds to review it. I'll definitely play it more and probably enjoy it with my boys if/when they eventually get it. With that being said, the best way to review this game is sadly (and predictably, might I add)... Mid. The fact that this game has mostly positive reviews is depressing to me, because this is literally Generic: the Game.

I had very low expectations for this game. Which is funny because when the first gameplay trailer came out, I was beyond excited. An Arkham game with Batman's allies? I GET TO PLAY NIGHTWING? THE DICK GRAYSON? That was enough to warrant a purchase for me in itself, but I suppose it was wishful thinking that this game would play like the free-flow combat & traversal oriented Arkham games. When the second gameplay trailer came out, after more than a year, everyone was very disappointed and for good reasons! The gameplay looked very basic and barebones, with no added flairs or cool niches. It was the bread and butter system of a fighting game but with a little butter and burnt toast. Light attacks, heavy attacks, a dodge and a special ability. Woohoo! Innovative! Needless to say, I (and many, many others) was very let down. And with less than half a year left for the game to come out, our wallets began to shake in anticipation of the inevitable disappointment that Gotham Knights would be. And wouldn't you know it, it got delayed! And also cancelled on PS4 and Xbox One which in all honesty, I think no one was expecting. The game looked like a mid-level PS4 game, and yet it was getting canned?

I suppose that, to give WB Montreàl some credit, they did manage to patch up the terrible aftertaste that people had after all of these happenings by showing off cosmetics, story missions, concept art and open world traversal in a way more in-depth way. But no real fixes were done in that time. Gotham Knights has come out and, to no one's surprise, it is an average game at best. In the moments where the game TRULY shines, it's a 7 out of 10. But when it's at its worst, and it happens way too frequently, it basks in it. I remember when people used to call it a mobile game as a joke and while I sorta agreed, I figured it was just that. A joke. But it was way more relevant than I would have ever thought.

Let's start with the most controversial thing about this game that's behind the reason so many people review-bombed it. The performance. A few weeks prior to the release, some folks leaked that the game was locked at 30FPS on console and it not only had NO performance mode, but it also ran horribly. So many people cancelled their pre-order and cursed at WB Montreàl for keeping it a secret and hey, I don't blame them. Having seen how it performs on PS5 and Xbox, I am actually shocked by how terrible console gamers have it. But personally, while I did feel it was scummy to not reveal this up until the last moment, I felt no real impact since I was gonna play it on PC. But boy, oh boy. Now I understand how console players feel!

I'd say my PC is very good. I can run most titles, including recent ones, at 60+FPS with high settings at 1080p. So imagine my surprise when, while playing Gotham Knights for the first time, it ran like absolute dogshit. I'm not kidding when I say that I dipped into the 20FPS range during some sections even while playing on medium settings. The game is horribly optimized and sure, it'll probably be fixed in the future, but that is something I'll talk about later on. As of now, the performance is inexcusable. The game runs like ass and unless you have the hefitest gaming rig on the planet, you'll have a hard time running it at a stable 60FPS with ultra settings. I suppose that's the one thing this game and Arkham Knight have in common!

But hey, I'm not one to only look at the graphics. My priority has always been performance and, after tweaking a lot of the settings, I managed to get stable frames and some pretty good fidelity nonetheless. But when the performance problems aren't the main issue, the game itself is.

Listen, I'm a huge fan of both the Arkham saga and classic beat-em-ups, even if their mechanics are very outdated. Hell, I've enjoyed TMNT: Out of The Shadows way more than I'd like to admit and this game has basically the same gameplay. But I believe that's the problem. If 10 years ago, a game like that with a very small budget was acceptable, it is utterly disrespectful for a modern game with a huge budget to have those same mechanics (sometimes, even less refined) and lame problems. I appreciate that the developers wanted to distance themselves from the Arkham games in a way that would make it feel like they were similar but not set in the same universe. But this is NOT the way you do it. They removed the "free-flow" part of free-flow combat by having your character constantly dance and jump around from target to target like a drunken ballerina, barely even hitting anything because the lock-on is incredibly awful, and worst of all they took away the counter button. I understand that every game's combat does that "counter+spam attack" thing nowadays but it is incredibly jarring to have a game about the Bat-verse without its signature combat. I mean, Arkham games invented it for christ's sake!

Marvel's Spider-Man has the same base mechanics that this game has, yet I have a blast playing that. Why? Because it's polished and fluid. Gotham Knights has characters move very stiffly and awkwardly from target to target, with a dedicated dodge button that is very unresponsive at times and rarely (if ever) flows well into combat. I played Nightwing, one of my favorite superheroes and like 90% of the reason why I even bought this piece of shit, who's arguably the most athletic of the bunch but I STILL felt so janky when doing virtually anything! Even the fortnite glider, as goofy as it looks, isn't that bad compared to the combat itself. And you know, I wouldn't be so angry for this if it wasn't the MAIN GAMEPLAY MECHANIC. If the system your whole game is based on is buggy, underwhelming and unfun then you kinda have it coming for the game to be so heavily criticized. I mean, this is the ONE thing they had to get right! Anything, from the graphics to the story, would have been excused if the combat was somewhat engaging. And yet, here we are, with the upteenth game of this calibre to be a light attack spam-fest. When this game was compared to Marvel's Avengers, I believed it was just the usual "people being harsh" thing. But as GOD IS MY WITNESS, saying that shit is disrespectful to Marvel's Avengers. I mean it. At the very least, Marvel's Avengers had variety with a few abilities and a wide range of characters. This game has 4 characters which basically all play the same, as much as I'd want to let the placebo effect tell me that they're super different, and nothing is done to reinvigorate the formula that so many games have used even going as far back as the freakin' PS2.

It's disappointing that a game which heavily relied on how varied and different each character would feel ended up being so shallow. Sure, Red Hood is a damage-focused tank (whatever that means), Robin is an agility focused attacker, Bat-Girl is a hacking focused attacker and Nightwing is a damage-focused support but at the end of the day you're still just spamming light attack and dodging. There is no quirk or interesting playstyle change to any of them. Take for example something like inFamous Second Son. Each superpower, while sharing the same buttons, plays heavily differently and it feels like a "class" more than anything. So while I did, even if very little, somewhat enjoy the combat I can't honestly recommend buying the game if you like action games. It's repetitive and the punches don't feel satisfying, even if there IS a health-bar/level remover in the options. The enemies are damage sponges and it takes no real skill to win. In Arkham Knight, players had so many options to express their skills through gadgets, combos, dodges and counters. Here, you probably wouldn't be able to tell a new player from a seasoned vet.

I've ranted enough about the combat. Let's talk about the traversal.

Oh boy. Okay. It's not HORRIBLE. It's passable. I suppose. The momentum is pretty much non-existant (which is hilarious to me because at least 3 out 4 characters are the most agile characters in the whole Bat-verse) until you get further updates but I have to admit that the different batcycles were pretty cool and fun. It was a nice addition and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The grappling hook was almost better than Arkham Knight, in my opinion, and it was the only thing that actually felt somewhat fast. I wouldn't play it just to have fun traversing around Gotham though, unlike Arkham Knight and other superhero games like Marvel's Spider-Man.

Also, I have to talk about this. Okay. The suits were amazing. Almost all of them were masterpieces. But... HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOW IS THE HUD THIS BAD?! IT'S 2022 AND WE STILL HAVE THESE CONFUSING, CLUTTERED AND MOBILE GAME-ESQUE HUDs?! I swear, the mobile game thing was a joke guys! You didn't have to go and make the HUD and menus ACTUALLY look like a P2W something something Injustice 2 mobile game. The menus are confusing and pretty ugly, but I'd be okay with it if it wasn't for the god-awful RPG elements that clutter the whole screen. Rant over. Good god fuck the HUD and menus. All my homies hate the HUD and menus.

Let's talk about the story. As of now, no DLCs/sequels have been announced so I'll take the story for what it is.

The story is... Okay. It's not bad, I admittedly enjoyed it, if a little bit predictable, and I thought it felt very serviceable to the game itself. It offers a very comic book-y story with a few twists and a lot of cameos that I enjoyed. Clayface is a great rendition of the character and it's definitely the best we've seen so far. I also thought Harley Quinn was uh... Interesting, I suppose. Mr. Freeze was also a highlight, but in all honesty Freeze is a great character by itself so it's no surprise. I also thought all of the Knights were characterized very well and I really loved them all. Dick, who of course was the one I looked forward to the most, was very very well written and coherent with his comic counterpart and there were a few nods to the 90s run that made me smile. He was definitely (and obviously) my favorite character but that doesn't take away from how great Robin and Bat-Girl also were. I enjoyed that they included the fact that Barbara was shot in the spine in the past and the way she was back in action was explained pretty well and realistically. I also loved how much Tim was clearly the most affected by the story because of his attachment to the Bat-Family and his youthful optimism. Red Hood on the other hand... Yeah, Jason was okay-ish. His main character trait was "yo did you know I died?" and I FELT that there was gonna be so much more to say but it never came. He was slightly two-dimensional. Very, very slightly. And so, this all leads to... The Court of Owls. Or might I call them the Court of Jesters because they were absolute clowns the whole game. I don't think we'll ever see a good and/or faithful adaptation of these scary, mysterious and powerful characters at this point. The whole game, my hopes kept getting crushed more and more as I realized that they were simply "the guys you have to beat" and rarely, if EVER, were they a threat. Especially during the half-way twist that just kinda made me go "Aww... Really?". I get it, they're hard to get right and I'm not one to cry about things not being comic accurate all the time, but MAN AT LEAST FOR ONCE I'D ENJOY SOMEONE GETTING THEM RIGHT! But alas, it is what it is, and the final reveals/boss sections kinda made me roll my eyes at how corny and predictable they were. Nonetheless, I can't condemn the story for what it is. It's not bad, it's just very... Vanilla. It doesn't take any risks and it just goes from Point A to Point B. Something I very much appreciated, though, was the fact that depending on which character you were playing as, you'd have different dialogues and cutscenes. That definitely makes the game a bit more replayable and I like that a lot.

I haven't been able to play COOP yet but I'm not expecting too much out of it. I'm sure it's fun but that's kinda expected, isn't it? Also, I still don't understand why they decided to make it 2-player only. What sane person makes a game whose whole gimmick is that it's a multiplayer Batman game with 4 majorly different protagonists and thinks "yeah no we should make it 2-player max".

The game feels like the developers constantly saying "look guys! We're different!" but with its constant fear of being like everyone else, it forgets that at its core, it's supposed to be fun. No counter button, no free-flow, no interesting traversal mechanics, no bold storylines, no 4-player COOP, no Live-Service aspect (which I swear to god was supposed to be the original plan but it got scrapped after the failure of Marvel's Avengers) and absolutely no real redeeming qualities turned this game from a potential GOAT to a total flop. And sure, many people are saying to wait and that it'll eventually get better, but isn't that getting tiring? Is it just me? I feel like every game that comes out is bad, unfun or underwhelming and it "eventually" gets patched and fixed but is that what we really want? Games are supposed to come out in finished fucking form. I don't care that 2 years after its release, Cyberpunk is slightly better. It's shit, it was shit and it will always be shit simply because of how dishonest, disingenuous and straight up careless the developers behaved. They announced a game they couldn't finish and eventually started to finish it AFTER everyone had already paid for it. It's disgusting and 99% of games do this now. Off the top of my head I can think of numerous! Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, Dying Light 2, No Man's Sky, Mass Effect Andromeda, Marvel's Avengers, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, any recent Halo game. It's shitty and disgusting to take advantage of the hype community that generates after an announcement and it legitimately scams the paying customers.

Please vote with your money and don't pay for a game that is underwhelming on release. It's only gonna push more companies to do this exact practice and take advantage of consumers.

Overall, Gotham Knights is okay. It's a game that is not gonna be remembered in 10 years time and it's not a revolutionary title. Its main quirk was executed in a barebones way and while the characters are well-written, this is a videogame and not a movie so it's not excused. I suppose as of now, we can't know what the future of this game will be. But so far, I doubt the developers are gonna make bank on it.

So I'll leave it with a statement. In Batman Arkham Asylum, I became the Batman. In Arkham Knight, I became Joker. In Under The Red Hood, I became Red Hood. In Gotham Knights, I became disappointed.

First time ever playing a Resident Evil game from start to finish and oh my god. I get it. This is a spectacle of game design. Oh my god.

It's campy its cheesy its heart pumping its just the right amount of difficulty and it's just. So. So so good.

also leon is cute and ashley is my daughter

This is probably the most stylistically pleasing racing game I've ever played. From the start of the intro video, browsing the menus, to actually racing in game, it's audiovisual perfection. The late 90s graphic designs, trademark PS1 style 3D graphics, and of course, the outstandingly catchy techno-jazz soundtrack, it all supports and completes each other. Oh, and did I mention that the game has great sound design? The way they implement the stereo effects is really good, especially considering it's a PS1 game.

As the race starts, you'll be treated by mostly great and varied track designs and arcade-leaning controls that holds up quite well. Whether you're eating through those corners by drifting, or just cleanly doing your job with a tight grip machine, it's all good fun. Maybe if you're like me and are used to modern, less arcade-y racing games, you'll need some time to get used to the controls, but that's just a matter of time.

In terms of game modes and features, it's a solid but relatively light package. The main attraction, the Grand Prix, is a series of races you can finish within an hour or two, featuring light stories that is actually more impactful than I would have expected. You can tackle it with one of four different "teams", which will decide the difficulty of the GP (and also decides which story/characters you get to see), and one of the four "sponsors", which decides what kind of cars you'll be driving. The GP mode is essentially a relatively quick tour of the game's best features. You'll be put into high stakes races and short story monologues that makes you care even more about the races, while the game's impeccable presentation supports it all. Want more racing? There's other modes like time attack and VS mode that'll keep you in check once you're done with the GPs, which you could finish in one sitting (by which I mean finishing all the four team's story). It is quite light on the quantity side, but it's hard to complain too much when everything maintains a high quality bar.

R4 is a must play, not just for racing fans, but for everyone in general. No matter what, there's something here that will amaze you, whether it's the gameplay, aesthetics or soundtrack.

the jointed, scythe-like arms on the necromorphs stick out for multiple reasons, but there's a subtle trick the designers pull with it (intentionally or unintentionally) that fucked me up so many times playing through this game. with the camera in the traditional claustrophobic over-the-shoulder view, there's virtually no way to view what's behind the player without carefully swinging it around. when one of those necromorphs silently creeps up on you and dangles their arms right over isaac's head, letting them peek right into the frame... it elicits such a snap reaction from me anytime it happens. in an otherwise quiet situation there's a hope that hauling ass without looking back will put enough distance between you and them to turn around safely, but god forbid it happens when you're already firing off shots at enemies ahead of you. that heart-sinking feeling of realizing the crowd you had carefully herded together isn't the extent of the danger in the room and that you're actually completely flanked turns tense strategy into desperate flailing. rarely does isaac lack for available weapons or resources, but encounters like these reinforce that it's a constant struggle for survival regardless.

in many ways this is the bastard heir to the resident evil 4 throne, and it even attempts to be a "regular" survival horror game to boot. besides the perverse way bodies are reanimated and mutated into angular beasts, intestines dangling and writhing outside of the torso, there's some gesturing towards explorable environments and puzzle-solving. each chapter is located in a different wing of the ship, with each of these areas arranged in a spoked hub design with linear branches leading to key items towards some sort of general puzzle located in the center. no real brainteasers here -- most of it's either just picking up key items or manipulating interactables with the kinesis ability -- but I found the scenario escalation here surprisingly appealing. driven on by various talking heads over the diegetically-integrated hologram comms, the pace feels brisk, and the game rarely stumbles in regards to directing the player to their next location. it's certainly not organic, but this is the re4 model, not re1.

the first five chapters or so were novel but felt overly dependent on fetch objectives, and it was in the second half of the game where it seemed like the designers stretched their legs a bit. setpiece loaded areas such as the USS valor and its power outages, fiery engine interiors, and wide-open bridges ripe for combat arenas elevate what otherwise would have been dry encounters into a strained flow of ratcheting tension from room to room. much of this is helped by the disorienting zero gravity sections that open up some minor platforming and release the shackles on isaac's otherwise-lethargic movement. at their best they hinder typical combat and make ordinary enemies more threatening through spatially-foreign positioning that plays with one's typical mental layout of encounter locality; at worst they are perfunctory beyond the clunky fun of watching isaac bounce from wall to wall. the sections exploring the vacuum of space are less interesting... any attempt to constrain the player by tethering them to a countdown (in this case an oxygen meter) risks them struggling to execute within the limit or becoming anxious at the impending doom. the designers punt on these issues by introducing heavy guardrails into these sections along with frequent oxygen refills, which take what should be the threat of venturing beyond the limits of human existence into the void of space and reduce them to a dog leash.

these are just the bits of downtime between the combat, however, and each encounter feels like a proper challenge to optimize and strategize within. shooters generally use the general projectile model of impact: momentum (and thus kinetic energy) demonstrated by the jitter of firing of a clip and the repeated thud of the bullet meeting its mark. dead space sets itself apart by dispensing with this and introducing the slice. much like how simply unloading rounds into a zombie's torso is inefficient in resident evil, dead space heavily discourages aiming for the easiest targets in favor of severing appendages. the hooked arms and stubby legs of necromorphs come in a variety of configurations from wildly dangling to tucked in to swaying alongside a jaunty waddle, and learning how to properly dissect each orientation is key. this makes lining up shots less focused on quick reactions and more on careful placement, and no weapon handles this better than the handgun equivalent: the plasma cutter. it evicersates even late-game enemies with ease so long as the player properly places its linear crosshairs perpendicular to the extremity, which requires instinctual understanding of both its vertical and horizontal firing modes. the other weapons are equally as impressive: the line gun and the contact beam both hail from applications in excavations and provide extremely powerful severing power with a wide horizontal blast for the former and a focused vertical shot for the second. the ripper in theory was one of my favorites as well with its remote controlled sawblade that could easily trim opponents down to size, though its stopping/staggering potential is low and prevented it from keeping a permanent spot in my inventory. indeed, most of these extra weapons have excellent specific uses but lack that high reliability and versatility of the plasma cutter. if I did a second playthrough right now, I may as well just do a handgun-only run.

the typical crane-arm necromorph comprises most of the alien cast, but it's worth mentioning that many other enemies take advantage of your special abilities as well. where I fall regarding whether this is a good or bad thing is mixed... after all, the bread-and-butter of the game is severing, and when the game attempts to introduce additional factors it's hit or miss. take for example enemies that split open into reams of parasitic spawn upon death, specifically when the arms have not been severed. the little tykes are finicky to dispatch with anything other than the flamethrower, and when not getting picked off one by one they have a bad tendency to leap upon you and force you to perform a mashing QTE to remove them, something the game leans on a bit too heavily even with regular enemies. anything with projectiles is also sketchy, as isaac struggles to maneuver around them thanks to the camera angle; the damage is less the issue compared to the obnoxious hitstun. even then, much of the annoyance is combat stems from ignoring the severing gimmick, and I more or less understand the designer's intent in slapping the player's wrist for attempt to play guns ablaze, but no one is a perfect aim (esp on ps3 at ~20 fps). I could do without lethargic segments of carefully sniping single-tendril projectile minions strewn across the ground when I could be thrown into the actual fear inherent in the quickly-moving enemies of regular combat. plenty of the necromorph variants don't have the issues regardless and enrich the design no matter the apperance whether it's the occasional invincible stalker miniboss or the shuddering valor crewmembers that move at lightning speeds.

which is to say, the game is frequently great and occasionally fantastic whether wading through a sea of aliens or being a handyman around the decks of the ishimura. for perspective, I believe this game took me around nine hours, and at the same time by re4 rules it bats a lower average in terms of overall scenario/encounter creativity, regardless of the praise above. the bar is high! I'm putting it in this context because the other, possibly more intended context of tense space thriller is less appealing to me. bioshock-esque audio logs, frequent yammering from people never properly introduced, an extremely on-the-nose analogue to scientology, pointless intrigue that never affects your actual tasks around the station... how many times must I watch an NPC soliloquize from behind plexiglass before executing something supposedly shocking before I get the point. it was de rigeur to do shit like this tho in the 360 era, and the absence of traditional cutscenes makes it easier to swallow for sure. it's just odd none of the staff ever realized how goofy it is for isaac to be running around digging through receptacles for spare items while someone is solemnly shooting a random crew member. in 2022 you're not here for the story though, you're here because you want an early HD third-person shooter that doesn't lean on a cover system as a crutch. in that respect dead space is a lot more clever than it originally lets on.

+combat is extremely fluid and responsive. I think the choice to allow parries at any time with no startup encourages aggressive play that focuses on quick reactions to enemy's moves and constantly keeping abilities in use
+I appreciate how relaxed the game's plot is at the start, with island exploration and day-by-day events taking precedent
+there's good variety in enemy design and the game takes care to give each one wind-up animations/tells so that you aren't taking potshots when encountering new enemies.
+it's a little odd to call this a positive quality but there's a dreary element to the game's plot and environment that makes the game feel like you really are trapped on an island; a pervasive sense of claustrophobia and sadness to each of the characters as they grow more and more accustomed to their new lives away from their families and trapped in an unsafe environment. a unique atmosphere that few games have tackled
+adding to that previous point is the search action-esque world layout: this is not open world but instead a gigantic interconnected series of rooms filled with landmarks and hidden treasure. the acquisition of exploration items make revisiting previous areas rewarding as well
+side content isn't excessive and it all has story elements that flesh out the characters around the main base. many of them have subtle arcs over the course of the game, and as you'll be returning to base frequently it's easy to keep up with everyone's different stories
+there's plenty of extra optional combat content, including endgame and post-game raids (base defense) and hunts (capture the flag), the large multi-level sanctuary ruins both solo as dana and in the post-game, a small true ending dungeon and extra final boss, and another optional endgame dungeon as well
+bread-and-butter action mechanics at its finest: so many bosses and a laundry list of every possible action rpg mechanic you could ever want. bullet patterns, traps, huge AoEs, stage gimmicks, multiple bosses at once, multi-phase fights, bosses that swim around your platform; it's a vertiable tour de force that never gets tiring
+as the island escape plot winds down in the back quarter of the game and the larger, eon-spanning narrative takes hold, the game goes into some rather somber directions that I feel were executed excellently. there's few tonal whiplashes to be found here and a lot of serene character interactions in their place, where the heroes keep their required-by-genre jrpg stubborn determination while actually mourning those lost along the way and pondering the different civilizations they've been exposed to. I was honestly not expecting how much I would enjoy the story here, and even the somewhat abstract ending

-very obviously a vita game in the graphics and UI, giving it a bit of a cheap look. ymmv on how big of a deal this is for you, I sometimes find it charming. what's less charming is when it begins to chug... though on ps4 this really only happened around castaway village
-certain map features are a little wonky, specifically with how it picks up unopened treasures on the map. some of them didn't appear even after 100% map completion, and I had to use online resources to clean up

a truly impressive action rpg that takes simple controls and turns it into a fast and franctic experience that feels more responsive than perhaps any other hack-and-slash I've ever played. it feels like it took me forever to beat, but only because I couldn't stop myself from doing as much optional content as I could whenever given the opportunity. I've always had falcom on my radar, but this game really has made me more interested in their work, and I can't wait to dive into whatever ys game (or trails or whatever) I choose to play next.