What I find most interesting about Tekken 4 is its general vibes: it feels like a transition period between the PS1 games' early 3D design and the extravagant confidence of Tekken 5 and onwards. The graphics are obviously much more detailed than Tekken 3's, but it doesn't have the extra flair and pizzaz that Tekken 5 exudes, making it feel like almost surreal at times, in a way that only uncanny 3D CGI can conjure. Other than the character faces, its evident in the stage environments: the Airport stage (which is my favorite one here) has a overly clean and shiny look, and the distant early morning sunlight in the skybox gives it a dreamy quality to the entire frame. You can just feel it without being distracted from the actual fight. The game definitely tries to look pleasing to the eyes, not with overloading your senses, but rather through painting a strong vibe with loose brushstrokes.

You can also see it seep in the character designs. Compared to today's Tekken, T4 seems much simpler in comparison, and I appreciate it a lot. The characters don't have as many visual elements tied to themselves, but you can quickly tell the personalities that they embody. For instance, Lei's wildly loose open jacket is all you need to see to understand him. It's not to say that I don't like how extra Tekken goes with its design nowadays, I think most of the reveals of Tekken 8 has been quite pleasing, but it's nice to be reminded of this old era of less wacky Tekken.

It's also interesting to see how T4 experiments with the Tekken formula, although I don't think that it quite lands. I'm pretty sure I accidentally cheesed out my AI opponents a couple of times by just repeatedly smashing them to the wall, it's definitely nowhere as airtight as it should be, haha. Some of the stages also have slopes and different elevations, which is kinda novel but also a bit annoying in gameplay. I'm not quite sure about this but I think I missed a couple of my high attacks because I'm at a higher point than my opponents, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Also, I don't usually notice or complain about hitboxes but I've had a couple of funky missed attack moments that confused me. Other than that, the fighting is still fun and mindtaxing.

Highlights from the character roster and story mode:
- Wei is probably my favorite of the character here, his drunken master style is cool as heck and I like his lighthearted klutz vibes. Hwoarang is a close second, but his story ending is definitely my favorite one, it's cheesy and kinda wholesome.
- This iteration of Nina might be my favorite design of hers, her professional killer vibes feels like the strongest here, and I like her subtle eyeshadow. Also liked her story ending cutscene a lot. Still don't quite like how she plays though, haha.
- The new characters are just... meh, for me. I don't quite like Christie as much as Eddy. Don't really care for Combot and Marduk. Steve is cool though.
- This is most evident in Hwoarang and Julia's ending for me: the English VO here reminds me a ton of The House of the Dead 2's infamous VO. Take that as you will.

Tekken 4 might be not good enough to take too seriously, but it's still fun as heck, and its art direction scratches a specific itch that the other Tekken games just doesn't do to the same extent.

As somebody who used to be a big Far Cry enjoyer but fell out of the series after FC5, New Dawn reminds me of why enjoyed these games so much, but also showed me that the series really needs a dramatic change.

Obviously New Dawn takes a lot from FC5 and mechanically feels the same, but there's enough changes here that makes me like this more. For instance, the story presentation is much less intrusive than in FC5, which was a big annoyance for me. There's also some interesting live service-esque features, like replayable missions/activities with increasing difficulty, which actually works quite well in practice. Not to mention that the colorful open world area can be quite breathtaking sometimes, I especially enjoy the night time skybox. Also, pretty good photo mode!

But as you might expect from a modern Ubisoft game, the story and writing can be... uninteresting, but its at least inoffensive. The live service stuff also creeps in through the microtransaction features, which is quite annoying to see every time I'm browsing for new vehicles or weapons. I also think that the FC formula is especially showing its age in the main missions, it feels like some of the worst parts of the PS3-360 era shooter craze being brought back to life (and this is coming from somebody who loves that era of games).

New Dawn certainly tries to be fitting to its name, but it's still just another day in the life of a Far Cry game. There's some fun, small changes to the formula but you can't dress up an aging mannequin too much.

I also wrote another "Photo Journal" for this game, it's basically an article filled with screenshots from the game that I took myself, and I try to narrate what's going on in my playthrough and my thoughts of the game using those screenshots as visual aid. If you're curious check it out here.

It's the fifth time I finished this game, and somehow, I ended up liking this game even more than before. It's a honest attempt at a homage to the adventure movies of old, and it mostly felt like Naughty Dog were doing the best with the resources and experience they had. It's a big departure from their previous cartoony franchises, and they managed to stuck the landing. Most importantly, it sets the groundwork for future titles to improve on, and oh boy they certainly did just that.

Normally I would write a more detailed review here, but I did something slightly different: I wrote a "photo journal" instead! I took a lot of screenshots using the in-game photo mode throughout my playthrough, and I used them as the base for talking about my thoughts and feelings of the game. It ends up being similar to old video game magazine reviews, but much longer in word count. If you're interested, you can check it out by clicking here. Full spoilers warning! I won't be doing this too often but it was a very fun endeavor that I want to repeat again someday.

When a new FF mainline game drops, its hard to look away. This old franchise's only constant is that it keeps changing, and its always exciting to see whether this is truly the one for you. Took me a while to beat this game, but I can safely say that is is indeed for me.

Lets start with the story. What impressed me the most about it is how well it satisfies on both fronts of main and side stories. The main story has a rollercoaster-esque pace to it, with slow-ish buildups leading into the incredibly epic Eikon fights, where most of the biggest story revelations usually occur in close proximity, and it almost always delivers. Meanwhile, the side quests are nothing to write home about gameplay-wise, but the stories they tell successfully fleshes out many topics and themes that the main quest only hinted at or briefly showed. How cruel people can act towards another perceived to be lesser beings, the importance of fighting for the people you love, using your qualities for the good of everybody, and so on. Aided by the ingenious Active Time Lore system, allowing you to view supplementary information about the current story scene in a brisk manner, it's hard not to be instantly and continuously invested in FFXVI's dark but hopeful fantasy.

There are definitely kinks in the story's armor. The quality of the facial and body animations in most of the game's dialogues are passable at average, but the strength of its writing and voice acting are more than enough to compensate. The game nicely ramps up the amount of accessible side quest early on, but especially in the third act, the amount of side quests being thrown at you can mess with the main's story pacing in unnecessarily head scratching ways. If you're looking to do all the side quests like I did, its very much worth it since most of the side quest arcs have satisfying endings (shoutout to Jill and Torgal's quests, almost made me cry), but I feel that the pacing can be done better. I need not to look far behind, since last year's GoW Ragnarok achieved much better synergy between its main and side stories, although Ragnarok has less side content to grapple with.

You can't have a long story RPG without a cast of characters to fall in love with (or hate, oh boy we certainly got those), and XVI delivers with flying colors. Near the end of the game, there's a simple panning shot of all your allies in one place, and the fact that those few seconds almost drove me to tears just goes to show how much I care about these people. Hard to pick favorites but Jill, Gav, Byron and Cid are my instinctive picks. I also think that Clive is probably one of the best examples of the "punished main character" trope, he sincerely believes that his dream is possible, and that makes his every action much louder.

Moving on to the combat, I think it is quite successful on many layers. On the surface, the Devil May Cry-esque action is eye catching, intense, and hard-hitting. The act of playing it gets progressively more exciting as you unlock more of Clive's full potential, and you get to play with a wide variety of abilities that can be suited to your sensibilities. The common enemy types are fine enough, but the game absolutely delivers in the minibosses, monster hunts and bosses that you'll fight. And in its insides, the Eikon ability point and ability loadout systems manages to both limit the player to make it interesting and challenging, but also offer a substantial amount of freedom to thoughtfully maximize that which is available. I find it incredibly satisfying to discover how the new abilities interact with what I already have, and how I can "gain the system" to make my combination ideas possible. Being allowed to mix and match abilities of different Eikons and resetting your upgrade abilities at any time are some of the smartest game design decisions in this game.

The combat also has a few holes on it. For instance, its quite disappointing that the game never really fleshed out its air-to-air combat, since there's not a lot of moves and abilities that can support it, not to mention the lack of flying enemies other than the weak grunts. It gives me the impression that they chose to stop expanding the air-to-air combat in the middle of its development for whatever reason. There's also the problem of the common enemy grunts getting progressively less exciting to deal with as you get stronger, but the game also throws more tougher enemies at you later on, so it's almost balanced out. I also think that the progression and customization of your equipment and accessories can be done in a much more interesting way, it's pretty linear and basic for the most part. I wanted more accessories/equipment which changes a crucial aspect of the combat, like the Berserker's Ring, which temporarily gives you a different set of normal attacks after a perfect dodge. This could also be tied to the game's economy, where I had almost 400k in gil by the end of the game and there's nothing interesting to spent them on. It would be nice if I can buy some crazy accessories with only a lot of cash.

Now, lets talk about some other things before this review gets much longer. It's not exactly the most technically impressive game around, but I adore how beautiful many of the game's environments are. I only wished that we get to see more of the man-made landmarks outside of story missions, and I also thought that the weather got a bit too gloomy later on. The soundtrack is just so good, Soken-san killed it, I'm especially impressed by how much longetivity he squeezed from the main combat music motifs. And I think its wonderful how often the game updates NPC dialogues to respond to the most recent happenings in the world, even after side quests.

For its every single stumbling step, which are not few, FFXVI beautifully glides in many other areas, and I can't help but be mesmerized by what it has achieved. What you have here is a world filled with lovable allies, awe-inspiring rivals, and dark history; all connected by flashy combat and effective writing. There are a handful things in FFXVI that I feel mixed about, but ultimately it triumphs in its quest to deliver a meaty, heart pumping action RPG. This is easily my favorite game of the PS5 generation so far.

I admit, this game absolutely did not make a great first impression on me. I picked Sweet Tooth first because he's like the mascot of the franchise and the only character I knew of before (other than Calypso), and boy, his ice cream truck handles like shit. It didn't help that the enemies are quite gung-ho on Normal difficulty, which lead to a lot of annoyingly quick deaths. It could have been a one-and-done for me, but I'm glad that I stuck around to try out all the other characters, because this game can actually be quite fun.

There are 12 characters to play as, each having their own vehicles with different attributes and special weapon. If you're like me then you'll probably enjoy characters like Mr. Grimm the most, which have the fastest and most responsive vehicle, combined with a hard hitting special weapon, but also having a small health bar. The vehicle physics definitely feels janky, and the controls will also take some time to get used to, but it's not a big hurdle to climb over. Being able to turn the difficulty down also helps. I do wish that the combat is more punchy and energetic, as the visual and sound effects of damaging and destroying other cars are underwhelming.

There are six levels, all of them set in Los Angeles, and from a design standpoint they are pretty okay overall. I thought the last level was the one level that is actually interesting, the other ones are quite basic and same-y in comparison. Typical American urban hellscape stuff. I guess being limited to LA doesn't help that fact, huh?

My favorite part of the game are probably the character story endings. These range from being straightforwardly dark to somewhat silly, and I thought most of the characters had satisfying endings. I especially enjoy Outlaw and Mr. Grimm's endings. Sadly the production value is so low, the endings are just text paragraphs without voice acting, and the background visual is an extremely dorky picture of live action Calypso.

The first Twisted Metal is certainly a fun game to look back at. Its very barebones, but its quite forgivable considering that its the debut of the series, especially since its from the early years of 3D video games. It manages to be a fun romp with its own distinct personality, and it also sets up future successors for success.

And before I'm done, yes, the PS5 port job is pretty good. The platinum trophy is a quick one, provided you take advantage of the password system.

I basically already written the review for this, but I'll probably never post it because of the insanely unfair final mission. I truly don't understand what kind of psychopaths would design such a terrible mission. I've been stuck on this mission for literally 30+ attempts. I thought the game's difficulty was quite fluctuative for most of its runtime, and I had fun dealing with the game's somewhat randomized chaos. Then they just had to throw in insanely fast enemy cars and the most slippery car handling the world have ever seen in the last level. Unbelievable.

Toem is centered around completing requests from various creatures you'll meet, which will get you stamps, and if you have enough of them you'll unlock a bus ride to the next location. Very wholesome solution for public transportation, btw. These requests are usually about finding a certain item to take photo of, or using items you collected to solve a problem. While most of these requests are quite basic, the game keeps it fun by making a world that has its own quirky personality. It's fun to see the cute animals you'll run into, the creatures you'll be helping out, the weird problems they're facing. It's very much about the joys of exploration, and making memories with your camera along the way. By the end of the game, it was nice to see my photo album being filled, and I felt that typically dissonant "ah, it flew by so fast" feeling that one would have while viewing an old photo album, even though this game is actually pretty short, so it's not exactly dissonant. I wasn't particularly impressed by anything in the game, it doesn't have a special "Wow!" factor, but it is a pleasant short adventure that didn't feel like a waste of time. It's like going out on the weekends to a place that you're familiar with, and you're having fun like you always have.

I've mildly enjoyed the Killzone games throughout the years: the PS2 original didn't impress me at all, but Killzone 2 and 3 were solid FPS games that had just enough personality to make it feel memorable, particularly in its heavy gameplay feel. Shadow Fall was pretty average in comparison, sadly. But before I played any of these games, there was Killzone Liberation, which is my entry to the series. I enjoyed it back then on the PSP, but never got to finish it. After finishing the PS5 port, I can say that it actually holds up quite well.

The most obvious difference in the gameplay from the mainline titles is the isometric view. It plays like a twinstick shooter, except it's single stick, since the PSP only had one. Moving and aiming are one and the same, but you can lock to a target you're currently aiming so you can strafe around said target. You can also lock on objects in the environment, like an exploding barrel, but only when you're crouching. Crouching is also used for hiding behind cover, and you can roll forward to dodge some projectiles if needed. With all of these mechanics in mind, its a heavy, relatively slow paced shooter that is more about executing a plan you thought of in the moment rather than just fast reflexes. The most flawed part of this is that the targeting system can be a bit flimsy and awkward sometimes.

The gunplay experience depends on the weapon you have, like being forced to get close to enemies if you use a shotgun. There's good enough enemy variety to make you want to change weapons before/during the gunfights, which I thought was a fun way of pushing the player to be more adaptive. You can only change weapons at specific weapon caches throughout the level. You also don't have regenerating health so you have to find medkits. Even when you have a lot of ammo and grenades, its not that easy to properly defend yourself, so the game always keeps a decent level of challenge.

There's a solid selection of weapons available, and more are introduced as you go. All the weapons offer their own style of approach, and that's cool, but there's just certain weapons that are obviously better in most scenarios (looking at you, Helghast Chain Gun). I particularly take issue with the sniper rifle, which is not very fun to use because of how slow it is. But hey, it's real fun to blow up enemies with explosive weapons and see them fly around in classic late 2000s era ragdoll fashion.

You can pick which weapon to start a level with, but you need to unlock enough collectibles in the levels to do so. There's also unlockable extra perks if you do well enough in the challenge missions. I'll say that these side objectives are worth doing for the rewards. Unloading my 8 bullet hard-hitting upgraded revolver with unlimited ammo makes me real happy.

I think the biggest weakness of this game (other than the boring story) is the variety of the missions. The level design are usually decent, but there's a few missions early on that backtracks through previous levels, and when that is over, the missions are usually still along the lines of finding an item that allows you to move on, like a C4 or a keycard. But the last chapter does have more interesting objectives and level structure, which is nice to see. And I do appreciate the relatively short length of the missions, which fits the intended portable experience.

Playing this makes me appreciate these kind of portable spinoffs more. Back when portable systems had limitations other than just a lack of power, the difference in designing a game for handhelds compared to console/PCs were much more obvious. Liberation is a good example of a spinoff that respects the best qualities of the mainline games, but succeeded at being a good handheld game first and foremost.

I started playing Jak X thinking that I wouldn't enjoy it too much. Kart racers aren't exactly my thing, and it seems like people didn't like this as much as Crash Team Racing, which I only mildly enjoyed. I'm glad to say that I am proven wrong.

As a massive ND fan, I enjoyed the main Jak trilogy quite a bit, but I have to admit, I remembered very little about the story in those games. As such I wasn't expecting too much out of the story here. It's a okay story for a racing game, you won't get anything close to deep character moments here but I was satisfied enough with what it had. I especially appreciate how it ended. I was only annoyed with one particular detail near the end of the game, but that's really it.

Now to the meat of it all. The core of what makes modern ND games great are all here: relatively simple gameplay mechanics that feels much more satisfying than they should have, and a good variety of gameplay types that keeps the games feeling fresh from start to finish.

You will get killed a lot of times in the races, and the most exciting part of the game comes when you have to catch up to the other racers and quickly try to dispatch them. The vehicle combat is mostly about knowing when to use your obtained weapons and properly defending yourself with defensive powerups, but there's a lot of things in this game that makes blowing up enemies satisfying. The visual and sound effects of blowing up other racers are on point, and the surprisingly decent mid 2000s Rock soundtrack adds to the energetic "screw em' all" attitude of the combat.

The singleplayer campaign has many game modes, like the typical "race to the finish line" stuff, Death Races where you have to destroy as many vehicles as possible while trying to finish laps so you can get more points from each kill, and a capture the flag-esque mode. All of these mission types are good at the very least, and most importantly, it makes the campaign feel not too repetitive. Most of the "missions" in the campaign are in the range of 4-6 minutes average, which is great, because there's a lot of them to go through, and it can feel tiring if they go on for too long.

My complaints with the game are mostly due the faults of the mechanics. The car handling and physics aren't airtight, and it can feel annoyingly wobbly at times (especially in the horrible Haven City sewer track that has a lot of slippery surface). It will lead to losing situations that feels unfair, and it happens enough times to make me avoid the worst tracks in the game entirely if possible.

While you won't find a masterful racing game in Jak X, it will provide lots of dumb and explosive thrills, if you can vibe with its sufficiently edgy 2000s feel.

On the surface level, Thymesia seems reliant on its obvious influences pulling in interested parties. But the game has enough interesting ideas, and executes the most important elements well enough, to make it a gratifying and worthwhile game to check out.

It is fundamentally in line with other Souls-likes, but the main twist is that enemies have two health bars overlapping with each other, and you need to deplete them both in order to kill them. You have regular sword attacks that will mainly deal damage against the main health bar, and claw attacks that will only deplete the secondary bar. There's also plague weapons, which are secondary weapons that has different damage properties depending on the weapon. This system is the very basis of the game's aggressive and ferocious feel, since the main health bar can regenerate according to the secondary bar if you don't damage the enemy for too long. Most of your moves are also not limited by a stamina/energy bar (only plague weapons), which only supports that feeling.

The game has limited character customization, in exchange for progression systems that feel closer to hack and slash games like Devil May Cry. There are skill trees that provide ways to tailor your abilities to your sensibilities. For example, widening your deflect/parry timing period in exchange for lower damage against enemies, or choosing to double down on your deflect damage instead. You have many plague weapons to choose from, like a scythe that can heal you when you hit enemies with it, or a whip that can help you close the gap against enemies. Even the Estus Flask equivalents here are customizable, being able to switch different potion types and add ingredients to introduce extra effects. In my experience, these systems are quite flexible in letting me play how I wanted to play, and making the game bend to my will is very satisfying. It helps that you can freely unlearn skills, which lets you experiment to find your favorite way to play the game.

Unfortunately the levels and environment designs are not as well done. The level design is just mediocre, nothing really sticks out in my mind right now. There's some atmospheric environments that are quite nice to look at, but most of the time it fits the bill of a "generic dark fantasy world on a low budget" world too well. Same goes for the enemy designs (although mechanically they're varied enough for a game of this length, about 10 hours for me, I got all the endings) and soundtrack. At least the bosses are pretty damn good overall, especially the optional bosses, with the exception of one terrible gimmick boss.

The story here is pretty decent, it definitely won't be the main driving force of your experience. It's mostly told through text logs without any voice acting, which isn't very exciting, but I do appreciate its relatively straightforward nature. Find enough of these logs and you should have a good grasp of the story, the game isn't very vague about this.

Overall, Thymesia delivers on its intent of an approachable and reasonably sized Souls clone, while still managing to provide a challenging and aggressive combat experience. But it is let down by visibly middling budget, low production values, and a general lack of memorablity.

This is one of those games where it feels like the developers were given a lot of creative freedom to do what they wanted, and combined with the challenge of dealing with GBA hardware, it results in an unmistakable, jolly, quirky game. The frantic nature of its minigame gauntlets are addicting but also perfectly bite sized for portable consumption. The game also has very well made cutscenes for the main "story", which are honestly better than a lot of modern games made on consoles much more powerful. It's impressive how well the game can build a whimsical cartoon world through the art direction and cutscenes, especially considering the limitation at hand. It goes to show how far human ingenuity can take you. My only complaint is that some of the basic minigames and boss games are too frequently repeated.

It's a shame, I really felt that this game properly did a good job of translating the console/PC version's overall design goals into a 2D handheld game. It turned out to be a slow paced platformer that used simple stealth mechanics in order to make the player patiently observe their surroundings before making their move, which is very true to the series' ideals. Even the feel of the movement and combat feels authentically Splinter Cell: slightly heavy, deliberate. But the game just keeps making the game more and more annoying to play as you progress. There's a couple difficulty sections later on that can feel far too reliant on trial and error gameplay. The console/PC Splinter Cell had this too, but it's cushioned by the fact that quick saves existed, and there's more ways to cheese it. Pretty much everything from the Oil Refinery level onwards is poorly designed, with the game trying real hard to be a challenge. I finally quit at a "puzzle" in the second to last level, it doesn't make sense and the controls just kept failing me. But I still believe that the core mechanics here are quite good, so I might give the other Splinter Cell GBA titles a try anyways.

I have to say, I'm quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this game. It takes a lot of effort, time and energy for me to fully be invested in a game of this ilk, and thus I demand much more from these games. Most of them usually don't deliver, but Blasphemous does.

I think the game's best quality is the exploration. All the areas are interconnected in such fun ways, and each have their own design quirks that does more than enough to differentiate them. Not to mention many of these areas are drop dead gorgeous, making the most out of the art style. There's a couple areas where I find the obstacles to be somewhat annoying, but these are few and far between. Finding a hidden area or shortcut never gets unsatisfying, and there's a lot of them. The game is designed in such a way, that you could stumble upon some of these secrets by chance or accident, and these experiences will give you insight on how to find/access the other secrets. There are also side quests that are based on this hunt for the unobvious, which adds a lot to the inherent addictiveness of finding new things.

The design of these secrets leads to another point: approachability. Many other games try to present themselves as puzzlingly vague, and in my experience, the level of confusion that I have to deal with doesn't line up with what I'm getting as a reward. Blasphemous gives you just enough straightforward hints to enjoy most of its gameplay and narrative inner workings, without losing the satisfaction of figuring out its puzzles. It is relatively modest but filler-less in scale, which makes for a condensed-feeling game that doesn't overwhelm you. There's also a very helpful map system that allows you to process all the areas in a much thorough manner without overworking yourself.

But all of this would have been for nothing if the game is not inherently fun to play. Thankfully the basic movements and combat in this game are good enough. Jumping, dashing, and air thrusting through all the levels feels pretty responsive, although the game can feel a bit imprecise sometimes, especially in the more demanding areas. The combat takes a while to fully flesh out, since you have to unlock some moves by progressing far enough to upgrade your sword, but once it does, there's a lot to enjoy here. The combat is very fundamentals-based, it's all about fast reflexes and proper positioning, which is my favorite kind of combat. Many of the items you find will help tailor the gameplay experience to your liking by providing helpful buffs, although you have to explore thoroughly to find the best ones.

I do have some complaints. While the bosses are all visually striking, most of them are pretty unsatisfying in terms of mechanics. The last two main bosses, and the two optional bosses for the hidden ending are the only ones that I find to be legitimately fun bosses. I also wish that the music wasn't so ambient most of the time, it rarely struck a chord with me.

In a sea of challenging games, Blasphemous stands out as a focused and thoughtful game that truly respects your time, and it satisfies without asking too much from you.

Downhill Domination is one of the most exhilarating extreme sport games I've ever played. What makes this game so fun to play lies in its strong fundamental gameplay systems. You need to constantly sprint whenever its possible, and this requires energy, which you can get by nailing tricks, damaging other riders through bike-on-bike combat, or getting energy powerups that are placed in the level. You have to properly time your jumps and set up your trajectory in order to get as much airtime for tricks as possible, but sometimes it might be better to get minimal airtime and save your tricks for another time. For the combat, you can upgrade your attacks by getting powerups, but if you fall off your bike for whatever reason, it'll revert back to a weaker attack. The powerups themselves are meticulously placed, and it requires accurate control of your bike, but it can also be stolen by other riders. All of this paints a picture of a game that rewards prior knowledge and experience, precise in-the-moment decision making, skillful play, and situational awareness.

All the game needs are solid levels to blast through, and this game certainly has lots of them. The variety of the level settings are simply impressive. You'll be going through dry desert canyons, urban inner city areas, mountain hot springs, snowy mining sites, and many more. The quality of these levels are consistently high too, especially the harder levels where the game gets more creative in its obstacle and terrain design. For example, using the steam of hot springs to limit your visibility, or having to deal with ladders in urban levels.

I also like the game's light-hearted personality. There's some silly elements in each level, like a polar bear that could maul you if you get too close, or the overly dramatized weather effects. It's good that the game doesn't try too hard to be comedic, which is a trap that has taken the lives of many of its peers.

If this game gets released today it would easily be the best extreme sport game since THPS 1+2. Which says a lot about the sad state of modern extreme sport games. At least this game has a lot of stuff to unlock and such, won't stop playing it for a while.

Ah yes, The Original Cover Shooter, the one that kickstarted it all. It's really interesting to play this myself, as to me, this felt closer to on-rail shooters like Time Crisis instead of modern cover shooters. There's a certain rhythm to its gameplay: finding cover, locking on to enemies, popping up from cover and gunning them down when it's safe to do so, and so on. This sounds like a typical cover shooter, but the way this game controls has that same kind of step-by-step process like how one would play a Time Crisis cabinet. Stomping on the pedal to take cover, waiting for the red enemies to finish their shot, and so on. This strategic routine is cemented by the fact that you don't just do things instantly, there's a short period before you actually finish your animations, which makes the game more about planning ahead rather than pure reflexes. It definitely takes a while to fully familiarize with the controls, but once it clicks, it's actually pretty fun.

Sadly there's just other aspects of the game that does not hold up at all. The level design is just straight up annoying most of the times, it really feels like you're just mindlessly looking for enemies to kill, and all the other objectives you do are only meaningless obstacles that gets in the way of getting into the next "new" location. I put new in quotations because there's a lot of backtracking here, and this adds to that feeling of not being in sync with what the game wants you to do, because its usually not clear why you're backtracking, but its the only way to progress.

It's a bummer, because the gameplay itself is genuinely fun and interesting, and I find the early 3D era story cutscenes to be charming. I just don't want to go through these dumb-ass levels, man.