I can't believe what I'm seeing: Capcom has finally made a DLC that was worth the fucking money.

Even though it, understandably, repeats locations from Re4: it doesn't even matter. The gameplay loop is so good and the arenas are so memorable that, you know what? I think I will take a tour of the village again. RE4 is the one this works best in as I am always willing to play through RE4 again and again.

you are mostly going through truncated sections of the main game, so you never get into the flow that RE4 proper gets you into, but as bite sized bits of RE4 it is such an excellent package.

I am personally not a fan of what they did with the U3 boss fight, as they abandoned the cool section where you drop him in a cargo container in favor of the less interesting cave battle.

Another issue, and as much as i wanted to be nice about this, I find the voice acting for Ada very tough on the ears. I really tried, but I did my Tomb Raider 2013 strategy of switching to the French dub to put some distance between myself and the voice overs. Also, I am so fucking sick of Albert Wesker. He is just nothing. To be fair, every Resident Evil character not named Leon is a total fucking nothing, but the neverending doofus wars of Chris Redfield and Albert Wesker are just an anchor around this series.

I think this is an excellent companion piece to the already excellent RE4 campaign, and is actually GOOD. After playing total fucking dogshit like Shadow of Rose and Not A Hero it is like a gift from God In Heaven that one of these DLCs that I always fall for is not only good, but REALLY good.

Also, unrelated note, but I played this with the mod that replaces Ada's clownish default outfit with Regina's outfit from Dino Crisis. I am always chasing the high of a Dino Crisis game that isn't a total fucking bore.

I think the remasters for 1 and 2 turned out pretty good, but III has been messed up pretty bad in this remaster. The lighting and atmosphere is almost entirely wiped away with the new graphics: what was once a lot of very beautiful, painterly locations with incredible mood lighting is now a big flat nothing. That's not even mentioning how bugged some areas are, including a wall in the Lost City that is just not there at all. I encountered a ton of visual bugs in the remastered graphics, so it's not only ugly, but broken.

The modern controls are still almost incomprehensibly bad but in the more winding levels of III they might as well be the Master Ninja difficulty option: beat Tomb Raider with a hand tied behind your back.

Also, as of writing this, All Hallows is bugged and won't load, so if you want to play the cool secret mission for getting all 60 secrets you'll have to use a cheat engine. I still recommend this Remaster for 1 and 2 but know this version of III is not as polished as the others in the package, and I seriously doubt this is ever getting an update.

Alright, first thing's first: that is some good fucking cover art. When I first saw Resistance in 2006 I was desperate for even half a PS3 just to play this, THIS is a launch title. Like Deadrising, the vast amount of carnage and intensity being rendered was unreal. This game is loud, intense, and honestly, pretty fuckin' good still.

This feels like a game stuck in time, in a good way. It's a war shooter set in an alternate history, battling alien bugmen called Chimeras. Except it's NOT a passive shooter, it's an incredibly vicious boomer shooter in disguise, requiring circle strafing and dodging projectiles, enemies NOT using any hitscans in favor of creating what is almost like a first-person bullet hell experience. This game is genuinely pretty visceral.

A lot of it is down to Insomniac's elite sound design team. The 2 machine guns you are going to be using for the majority of the game sound amazing, the bullseye in particular being not only the game's reliable workhorse, but also one of the best machine guns I've ever used in a game.

The rest of the arsenal feels a little bit more hit-or-miss to me. The sniper rifle is rotten, as nothing short of headshots will do anything to the chimera, and while the slowdown feature is explicitly to help you line up those headshots, the cooldown between shots when you miss is just so punishing. The shotgun is very nice, but combat is so engulfing that you almost never need close quarters weaponry. The auger can shoot through walls, but to balance it out they made it tickle enemies rather than kill them.

The more specialized weapons though, like the trusty rocket launcher, a chain gun that can launch a miniturret, and a bizarre blob mine gun that is actually incredibly handy near the end game. These enigmatic weapons that have come to define Insomniac are really where Resistance becomes something special.

But what is a weapon without an enemy? Insomniac struck gold with the Chimera. They are an underrated shooter enemy, as fun to fight as the Replicas in F.E.A.R and just as brutal to fight. They are incredibly efficient at killing you, if you're running low on health they will just outright rush you, will flank you, flush you out, all of the general behaviors of fun A.I to fight. It's the kind of intensity where even taking out a couple guys is rewarding as, oh thank god, I have given myself more breathing room. It's INCREDIBLE action.

Their design has also stuck with me since I first saw them. The large glowing spines, the insectoid heads, their freaky spindly legs. I have no idea why we don't talk about these guys more, they are stellar. None of the other enemies are even half as interesting and it doesn't even matter, because they nailed the most important enemy in the game.

My biggest complaint though is the downright nightmarish difficulty. Halfway through I had to drop it down to Easy as there was a level that was just kicking my fucking ass so hard that I had to call uncle. In classic Insomniac fashion, the checkpoints fucking stink. Your allies are terrible and will do anything they can to get in your way. Your health is the same little four bars the entire length of the game, no way to upgrade or reinforce it. Even on Easy some of the endgame levels were using me like a speedbag, I can't imagine this on Hard mode. It might as well spawn you into a game over the second you pick it.

The plot is also really confusing. I tried to pay attention but there are so few cutscenes and actual plot events rarely ever happen in them. It'll usually be in the History Channel slide shows that any plot happens, and it never becomes clear exactly what you're doing and why. I'm guessing they didn't have the budget for too many cutscenes, because the plot clearly has stuff going on. The intel you collect showcases a rather interesting lore, but there is just no character to latch onto, no major goal to drive you forward. It's just you and the living firework show Sergent Nathan Hale to just shoot stuff until the game is over.

I also find the premise a little troubling, as humanity is just so fucked it's hard to ever feel like you are making any ground. Halo made this work as you played AS the last hope personified. In Resistance we are just a Guy who is Resistant to the Chimeran virus. That's pretty interesting, but the game doesn't seem to really care about it, so why should I?

Also, bit of a moot point as the servers are gone, but the multiplayer, which hosted FORTY player matches, was unbelievable. The PS3 was absolutely worth buying for this game, no joke. It's definitely still worth buying today...OR if you want to play it with enhanced FOV and unlocked FPS, I'm sure SOME way exists to do that, and I'm SURE it looks amazing to do so. But it's a mystery to me!

At the time of my review I have completed Tomb Raider 1 and 2 in their entirety and am about to start on III. So far I am incredibly satisfied with this collection, as it makes my favorite game series instantly playable without having to deal with the nasty ass PS1 load times or the incredible flimsiness of the PC Ports. Unfortunately, for as long as they made me wait for this thing I'm kind of stunned at how bare bones the whole thing really is.

I want to state first and foremost that the use of A.I artwork is deplorable. I understand this game was no doubt made with a woeful budget by an overworked team, so I'm going to direct my anger more towards the publisher for not giving these games the respect they deserve to have a proper art team remastering the visuals. As it stands, the remastered visuals largely clash with the original artistic intent, don't line up properly along the grids, and generally look cheaper than the original's, as the original game was textured by artists and not a piece of shit A.I.

I am also annoyed at the OG visuals having a frame cap on them, allegedly due to animations being locked to 30 for the old visuals. Even though there are PC Ports available right now that have those same visuals at 60 FPS. There is no reason these games should be stuck at 30 FPS, unless the Switch was having too much trouble running these games, which I would believe.

I also lament the loss of save crystals, which I hypothesized could have been a fun difficulty adjuster for long-time fans of the series, as the save crystals made Tomb Raider 1 and 3 very intense games when you can't save scum through them. Tomb Raider 2 is borderline impossible without save scumming so there no change there.

I think the asking price for some fantastic games is worth it, even though I resent the business practices being used within the package. I also don't anticipate all the terrible discussion we are in for about how these games aged by guys who are obsessed with fucking Pokemon or whatever. If you enjoy these types of games there is a nice handy package here to play them, which honestly, is what I've been dying for for years.

One of the best controlling games on the PS2. Ratchet is as effortless to maneuver as ever, with his movement being some of the best to ever grace a console. Bad news is, they forgot to design any levels this time around!

I feel like with each subsequent Ratchet game, I go back and rate the last one higher for what the sequel is lacking. By the time I finish Into the Nexus, Ratchet and Clank 2002 will have 13 stars added to it.

Up Your Arsenal is widely considered the best in the series, and I've also seen people who despise this game. I can't find it in my heart to hate Up Your Arsenal, but I also am not in love with it either, but I find it a bit weak to say I'm somewhere in the middle. The problem is how unfinished the game feels at points, it makes it difficult TO make any grand statement on it when it feels like a dev studio who has been worked to fucking death is starting to burn at both ends. I wish they had been allowed to, you know, take a break and let this game cook, because there's a lot to love here! When a game is made in not even an entire year and has a multiplayer shoehorned into it, it's a miracle the game doesn't mircowave your PS2.

The biggest casualty here, as I alluded to up top, is the level design. There are very few proper Ratchet and Clank levels here: interesting platforming and combat challenges with branching paths and unique level gimmicks. They had started to dissipate by the end of Going Commando, and in Up Your Arsenal they are almost completely M.I.A. In their place you will find a bunch of repurposed multiplayer maps made into Battelfield missions, which I honestly wouldn't have an issue with, if the enemy design was more engaging. Enemies are nowhere near as dynamic as the old games, and are repeated ad nauseam to the point the action just becomes a lot of noise.

This is a tragedy, as the action is the best it has ever been! The guns look and sound great, they upgrade regularly keeping your rotation constantly relevant, and Ratchet's quickness means you can pull off some awesome fucking stunts during the combat, it's just dying for a cast of enemies that compliment it.

Gone is also the biting satire that gave the first two games an anarchic edge. The toll gates are gone, which for games about how self-serving every single person is, fit perfectly. It feels like everything that gave Ratchet and Clank a unique identity is in the process of being sanded down: a process that will be hideously complete with Ratchet and Clank 2016. Here, it is being sanded down into a very fun third-person action game, so I'm not TOO bent out of shape about it, but I would be lying if I said I didn't miss the vibrant and enigmatic nature of 1 and hell, even Going Commando. The colors are just gone! The terrain is just a straight shot to the end with a couple of jumps here and there to remind you of old times. The menus and hud are nasty fucking orange and lack any and all identity. Also what happened to the main menu?? Insomniac have always had some great main menus but now it's just Fugly Orange Boxes. What They Do To You Ratchet!!! During the Giant Clank fight at the Holovid studio, it occurred to me that the fight was less visually dynamic than the Godzilla fight in Gex: Enter The Gecko, a game for the PS1. It finally dawned on me that this is a visually very ugly game, even while the character animations are at their peak. It's a very odd contradiction for the game to be living.

The story is also here, and it's whatever. Nefarious is entertainingly hammy and his butler Lawrence is a great foil. Qwark's plans, drawn in crayon, showing Ratchet constantly having to put himself into dangerous scenarios is very funny, and Jim Ward continues to deliver absolute gold as Qwark. James Arnold Taylor also gets some incredible voice work done here as Ratchet, after his personality was in a weird transitory period in GC. I still found the dialogue to be entertaining and snappy enough to keep me going until the end, but nothing was as delightfully clever as it used to be. A main plot about an evil robot wanting to destroy humans is so by-the-books, what happened to the game I love.

This is the first game to have actual writers on board, which, along with 2016's putrid stench still hanging around, leads me to believe that professional writers are hacks. Much to think about here.

The forced-in multiplayer, which obviously affected the single player's development, can't be played anymore, so, cool. Nice. It was a lot of fun back in the day though, they were kind of cooking with that one.

No grind-rails, no space fighting, no racing, only one arena, there is just so much missing here from Going Commando that while I think Up Your Arsenal is more mechanically solid than GC, I just can't agree with anyone saying it's some kind of masterpiece when I am really starting to think this series peaked with the first one and just goes downhill from there.

One of the most paradoxical sequels I have ever played. Mechanically a huge improvement on the first game, which adds in features that make total sense for a sequel and refines what was there. It is also much worse than the original and made me raise my star rating for the original.

There is so much here that I love: the opening, first few levels, refined combat and the great sense of humor remain in tact, the fact that Clank isn't with Ratchet at first because he just wants to stay at home and kick back is incredibly funny, and I have to say that the first half of the game lives up to the hype and is where the game is at its absolute best. The combat can offer more unique challenges due to strafing, the platforming is as tight as ever, and the dialogue maintains that snappy wit that made the first game so enjoyable to get through.

The second half of the game, after the Thief's identity gets revealed, is a very dramatic nose dive to the finish line, leading to an interminable final level and shit boss fight before the game just runs out of steam.

A lot of it has to do with the game being over-designed. During development they found that players were favoring weapons, so weapons could only level up once, the hope being that it would make the player have to use more of the weaponry on hand. The problem here is that by the end of the game, EVERY WEAPON that isn't the Minirocket Tube or Plasma Coil is not worth using. Lancer, Blitz Gun, Mini Nuke, all become completely irrelevant in the end. So they essentially took different steps to get to the same problem.

The final level will just become the player picking enemies away with the plasma coil and minrocket, running back to the ammo vendor to refill, and going back to do it again. It becomes as unengaging as the final level of R&C1 being sitting in a corner using the visibomb to deal with every enemy. But at least every tool in R&C1 CAN be used! They don't just completely fall off at a certain point, the game allows you to try whatever method works, whereas Going Commando strong arms you into one playstyle.

I should note that this game was made in about 10 months, which is fucking crazy and irresponsible for a publisher to insist on something like that, and the fact that the game is this good and this packed with content is nothing short of miraculous. But its story being strung together haphazardly and levels becoming very uninspired makes it very apparent that at a certain point a game just had to get done. The story still has the great satire on capitalism and consumerism that defines this series, and is very biting and funny in regards to that, but the actual narrative thrust goes nowhere and the ending is a total flatline. It's like they just ran out of time to actually round things out, compared to the original having an actual for real ending that is the culmination of character arcs.

The biggest issue with the story is not only that Ratchet has been sanded down a little. Nowhere near as dramatically as he will be in 2016, and he still has definition here, but I can't help but find the more dynamic and changing character in the first game more compelling, as we see him become heroic and learn a lesson. Here the game strains to find something for him and Angela to do when they talk but is incapable to extract any character from it whatsoever. WASTED CHARACTER!!! AH!!!

I want to compliment the battle arena though. That is a great idea and is a ton of fun, implemented perfectly and is easily the highlight of the game and a great way to play with the weapon sandbox.

Back to my ANGER!! The hang-glider stinks, throw it in the trash. The tractor beam is so worthless they might as well have not even bothered. The snowbeast yetis are worse than anything in the first game, it's alien to me how no one realized what a stinker they had on their hands there.

That's the biggest issue, is that the shit here is stinkier than anything in R&C1! The bad bits of Going Commando are fucking horrible. Giant Clank might be the worst thing ever put into a game, whenever an enemy knocks you back the camera swings towards Clank, messing with the perspective to such a degree you have to readjust. Bad! The regular Clank sections are still as unnecessary as ever, slowing down the pace to a grinding halt. Stupid! Why do ammo boxes only ever give me visibomb ammo? I am in the middle of the final boss that takes a fucking hour to beat, I need ammo for the guns that actually work on him!!

Oh, and the charge boots. The fucking CHARGE BOOTS. In a game with some really punitive checkpoints, having a device that is basically designed to blast you right off the sides of cliffs is a Dick Move. There's no way to stop it once its started, and you will always do it by accident while throwing your wrench, it's like a troll gadget. You have to turn it off so you don't accidentally kill yourself while playing casually, but you have to turn it back on to zoom through the empty, flat levels when you need to refill on your Minirocket Tube ammo.

I have been nothing but incredibly negative here, and I think the game earns it with some truly nasty design choices, but it's just too well made to truly deserve less than 3 stars. I played through all of it, had fun generally, loved the world design and art direction just as much as the original. I still think it's leaps and bounds better than any of the Jak games, and most PS2 platformers for that matter. I think back to some of the minigames in the first Sly Cooper and am tempted to give this 5 stars just for not being that game, but given how good Ratchet & Clank was, it's hard to not find the ways this one takes a step back to be a massive leap backwards.

I am pleased to find that one of my favorite games as a kid is as fun as I last remember it being. Mechanically, there is a lot rough around the edges here, as is expected from Insomniac trying something brand new, but the amount they get right in this first go is remarkable.

That they were able to nail the tone, art direction, sound design, worldbuilding, and general game feel in this first entry just confirms what Spyro fans already knew about this studio's brilliance. It's the things that they miss on that make their successes all the more puzzling. It's not too detrimental in the year 2024 because, you know, a bunch of sequels came out and addressed issues R&C1 had, but if I were reviewing this in 2002 I would have gone in on Insomniac for not having strafing in a shooter. I was busy being a Child in 2002 though, so no one asked me my opinion.

The lack of strafing is both a glaring omission, but clearly noticed by the developers, as every one of the best guns in the game is designed around positioning and crowd control more than it is precision aiming or dodging. The tesla claw, pyrocitor, suck cannon, and the almighty RYNO combined with large mobs are where the combat has some grease on its wheels, allowing you to have a little more control over the fight and get into it and, you know, have some action in your action game. Ranged enemies that require the devastator or blaster primarily put the fucking brakes on the experience, as the game trains you that the ideal way to deal with these situations is to sit in a corner with the devastator or visibomb and pick them off from afar. It's effective, but completely at odds with the comic-book action the game is clearly going for. Ratchet coldly picking people off from afar just isn't what comes to mind when I boot up one of these games!

The final boss is very bad about this, and also features everything that drags the game down, especially in regards to the terrible check pointing in Ratchet and Clank, where dying sends you back 3 years into the past to replay half the game every time you die. I get you don't want the game to be too easy, but I don't want it to waste my fucking time either!

The combat here is so rudimentary and unpolished that it never ever elevates beyond average. Which is kind of a problem in a game with so much of it! But it's just passable enough and surrounded by so much delightful set-dressing that I personally don't think it does enough to drag the experience down. I don't think nostalgia is guiding my hand here, as I haven't played through this game since at least 2007, so there are many years between me and this series at the moment, and I have given myself enormous amounts of brain damage watching Super Sentai and Family Guy between now and then that I might as well be playing this shit fresh.

One thing I am amazed they nailed is how actually honest-to-god funny this game can be. the 2016 remake being a completely sanded down baby game for toddlers makes me even more angry when I remember that R&C 2002 had some wit and irreverence to it. The dialogue is snappy, well-written, with fantastic voice acting. The plot is very competently structured, and minus some hiccups in the second act where Ratchet has his heel turn for a few levels, has some pretty solid foundation to it. The consistent theme of capitalism ruling everything in the world works both narrative and mechanically, as the game isn't afraid to put toll bridges up to really drive home how Cash Rules Everything Around You.

Plus, it is a beautiful game. I am sickened when I remember this is a 20 year old game, as it still looks so wonderful! The way the game frames the vistas of every planet upon first arriving at them is that artist's touch that really gives this game something special. Its framed so deliberately, it reminds you how everything has such a careful design here.

The pure focus on exploration and platforming is what separates it greatly from its more action-oriented sequels. In many ways, I think R&C1 might be my favorite for that alone, as I love the way Ratchet feels to control, how the variety of worlds encourages exploring every nook and cranny, and how there is no real fat here, they included about as many good bits as they could.

Of course, there are bad bits. The dumpy racing minigame every 3d platformer is legally obligated to have, but thankfully, isn't actually THAT bad. Rail grinding sections where the camera is placed in such a way to make it difficult to gauge where obstacles sit on the rail, very stinky. The hydrodisplacer being a big waste of time that's most likely just here to showcase that water looks good on the PS2. The stuff that doesn't work isn't bad enough to drag the experience down, and none of it is as wretched as some of the putrid minigames in Spyro 3 or Crash 3, but I still don't get why if you have a really solid foundation for a game, you would have the player do something completely irrelevant to it.

Could I recommend Ratchet & Clank? Yeah, absolutely. It's very fun and bursting with charm, and what's here to appreciate is so brilliant. Thinking about how sanitized, charmless, and, to be frank, unfunny the newer Ratchet games are, it is all the more stunning how brilliant so much of the 2002 game is.

Does a game need to be a masterpiece, can't it just be pretty good? Darksiders 3 is a great 3 star experience. Nothing it does will make you sit up from your couch and take note, but nothing is so appalling you will start mailing death threats to the devs.

There is quite a bit of good here: art design is great, the game has vibrant colors and sceney, combat is punchy and fun, and the story, while the same borderline white noise that defines Darksiders, is actually pretty solidly structured and written, with themes and character arcs carrying through the story and paying off.

Level design is also very nicely done, with paths weaving through the different zones really reminding me a lot of Metroid Prime. Especially when you get new powerups that lead you to new shortcuts through the levels. It REALLY is like Metroid Prime, and Prime is like the coolest game ever, so rip it off more please!!

Thankfully, the game doesn't take many ideas from Souls games other than the basic verbiage. I can't stand these games like Lies of P that are totally idea free aside from their slavish devotion to From's game design and art style. Darksiders 3 borrows the souls mechanic and estus flask mechanic but truthfully not much else. I suppose with more money they could have also added terrible hitboxes and bosses with 4 phases but time is money.

I will address the stink though: the whip chain grappling hook is a disaster. It hardly works and sucks total ass. The final area is a mining complex with some bizarre puzzles relating to a tornado that don't make any sense really. Bosses are not anything special, and as long as you dodge appropriately you won't have any issue. The Unreal engne 4 STINKS!! it has glitches, bugs, and crashes all the goddamn time. It freezes anytime it needs to hit a loading zone which always feels like the game is about to explode. There are also a lot of walking and talking segments which are the video game equivalent of a meeting that could have been an email. You are stopping the flow for all this? Give me a break.

There isn't much to wax poetic about here. i enjoyed it, and I bounce off games almost instantly if I think they are really boring or take too long to get rolling. Remnant for example lost me after an hour of fuckin' nothing happening. Darksiders 3 is imaginative and interesting beginning to end, and actually ends with a bit of gravitas instead of just unceremoniously stopping like a lot of Soulslikes have to. Fury is an entertainingly bitchy character who looks straight out of Witchblade or the Darkness, so I really can't ask for more out of games I paid 20 bucks for.

The Woke Media will cancel me for saying this: but this isn't a Souls-like! It's a Metroid Prime-like!!!

Really enjoying it so far. One of the last bastions of the PS2 era we have in gaming. Unfortunately it willingly attached the "souls-like" label to itself, not unlike tying an anchor around your neck before jumping into a lake, damning it to a fate of being hated by moronic fucking idiot Fromsoft fans and used as youtube fodder for "I Played 30 Souls Clones!!!" videos by guys who are inexplicably making $10,000 a month on patreon. Such is life.

I originally gave this a 2 as I felt it was a very cynical remake, and while I think there is some cynicism baked into it, I don't think it's completely without merit or compassion towards to the original. It has a lot of fun playing around with the original's rock-solid level design and puzzles, making it genuinely very engaging for longtime fans of Tomb Raider.

It also goes without saying that, being based off of Core's original game, this is the best Tomb Raider game that Crystal Dynamics ever made, which is ABSOLUTELY the back-handed compliment it sounds like. Without their really rotten design impulses, there is nothing dragging down Anniversary quite like what happens in Legend and Underworld.

Unfortunately, this is still the Gex team, so they show their asses in different ways throughout this experience. The main one to me, being the terrible, terrible combat. Just inept attempts at action, floaty and without heft, a dysfunctional camera not cooperating well when the game spawns in gorillas to gank you in a cramped corridor. Changing the boss fights to include horrible fucking ungodly QTE sequences should be enough to drop this game to a 1 it's so putrid. The T-rex in the Lost Valley is exciting because of how little fanfare there is: the screen shakes and suddenly a giant fucking dinosaur is barrelling towards you. The player has to make a snap judgement on how to react. Turning that into a QTE and a "Get the boss to ram into the wall" fight is something that only the developers of Gex would think is a good idea.

Platforming games are often sewn at the hip to some disastrous combat mechanics, and Anniversary's almost manage to usurp The Sands of Time's Throne of Shit in regards to them. Which is amusing considering how much of this game (and Legend) really owes itself to Sands of Time.

Sands of Time is very silky smooth though. It's like playing a game from the future compared to this.

Sands of Time came out in 2003 btw.

The R1 button being an all-around context button, the more linear layout of platforming challenges, and the camera being very good at snapping to cinematic angles that give you a readable look at the environment are the secret sauce that makes the Sands of Time hum. When you slow it down and start adding complications to the proceedings, it becomes very janky and sloppy feeling. This is doubly so when the development team is the same one who made Gex.

Lara in TR96 controls the same all the time: she is the model of consistency in a video game. There is an unprecedented freedom in that game of mastering her control scheme because once you do, the game is yours to roam free! Anniversary by contrast feels much more rigid in what you can do, as trying to do platforming challenges out of order will have Lara just flatly refuse to grab a ledge or clip through poles, and the Gex team are VERY bad at signposting so you will be doing this without even understanding why you died. In brief instances where things run smoothly, there is a real glimpse at platforming goodness here. The game just refuses to get going or focus on its strengths, instead in a tug-of-war with this insecurity about what Tomb Raider is and dogged desire to make something new.

While it can be very fun and loving in its tributes to Tomb Raider, it mostly feels clumsy and insecure. It's the game equivalent of "I love this game but it's soooo bad" reviews, just totally lacking in the sincerity that makes the original game actually amazing.

Bioshock is one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played. Its peaks and valleys are more expansive than most games will ever hope to achieve, which is a good and band thing. It is truly a rollercoaster, with all the ups and downs that you’d expect of that, riding along in a cart that has been very poorly maintained. It’s unfailingly ambitious, clearly made with a lot of passion and creativity, and when it’s hot and smart, it rolls along better than almost any other game yet made. But when it’s bad, and as it goes along and the wheels start popping off the ride and sparks start shooting off of the railway, it gets VERY, very bad.

But first impressions are everything, and Bioshock nails first impressions so well that it has really MADE the brand. I was talking to my friend @straylight about this; how the game contorts the story into a bit of a contrived place JUST to get that opening plane crash, lighthouse, and Rapture reveal. I don’t want to get into too many spoiler details, but the ultimate twist that reveals why you even were on that plane is so convoluted you can tell the developers were willing to do anything to get that plane crash.

They were 100% right to do that. It is still breathtaking. Back in 2007 everything involving Bioshock was like a revelation to a Dylan that loved Halo and not much else. I remember the original trailer, seeing it on G4 and immediately becoming completely enamored with what I was seeing: the strange vents, the hulking brick shithouse with a massive drill, the grotesqueness of the then unknown plasmids. In a year loaded with incredible games, that trailer was a definite “What the fuck was that?” moment that put the game on my immediate radar. Finally getting it and experiencing the moment that the screen pulls back and shows the city in full was something else entirely: the game delivered. It wrote this hefty check with that teaser trailer and it cashed it out and then some.

In the annals of truly divine video game openings, of which I’d include Prey 2006, Half Life 2, and FF7, Bioshock really does just slot itself neatly in with a lot of those big boys by just putting its cards on the table so confidently and clearly. It goes without saying that they probably spent a sickening amount of time making sure everything in that scene was perfect, and they GOT It. They straight up got it perfect. The first few hours of Bioshock are honestly, and truly, elite.

Unfortunately, Bioshock is a 10 hour game.

This is where the big divide in my head comes in. The first few hours of Bioshock, everything up until the end of Hephaestus, is brilliant. I sometimes bristle up at the notion that Bioshock is superior to System Shock 2, because I am head over heels in love with SS2, but those first 5 hours in Bioshock even have me doubting myself. The levels are massive, winding, brilliantly designed looks into life in Rapture. The music swells and crescendos with such flourish that you almost can’t believe a game like this exists. It really IS that good.

But then, it happens.

I’m sure you know the twist of Bioshock by now, right? You have been around. If not then punch a hole through your monitor RIGHT NOW so you don’t get any spoilers.

As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game inconceivably keeps going for another few hours even though by all rights, it SHOULD be over now. As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game completely falls apart. It doesn’t fall apart in the sense that it gets lazy or unmotivated, because the luxury apartments and Big Daddy labs are STILL very inspired locales with the same masterfully done environmental storytelling that has defined the game so far. But the game has peaked, it has played its best hand, there is NOTHING left for it to do once the reveal is over.

What it does choose to do is truly baffling. Replace the well-spoken and fierce ideologue with an asshole with a brooklyn accent who calls you EVERY TWO FUCKING MINUTES to call you a prick or a wiseguy. Around this time, the splicers all get a huge health boost so you feel like you are fighting an army of dump trucks now, constantly under fire while getting phone calls from the most annoying guy in the world. By this point, I was wishing the game had wrapped this shit up. Hephaestus had all the makings of a final level, and the fact that the game just keeps happening after that point makes me wonder what happened during development.

I did end up watching the developer’s commentary and it did illuminate some things for me: Irrational knew the multiple endings were a joke. It was clear to me that the good ending is clearly the one they cared about and it’s good to have confirmation on that. The other is that they knew the final boss was terrible. Which it is.

I do understand the pivot to Fontaine for the last half of the game though. He represents not only the perfect foil to Ryan, but he represents perfectly the main flaw in Rapture: that Fontaine is the poster child of what Ryan wanted from Rapture. Fontaine is a self-made man, entirely individualistic and ruthless in that pursuit. Narratively, I get it. Functionally, after a great reveal and huge climactic scene? It’s asking a whole lot of the player to keep their investment level up that high.

This is where I begin to remember why I ultimately prefer System Shock 2. Yes, the Body of the Many is a very mechanically painful level due to it being VERY punishing if your build isn’t correct, but it feels like a necessary climax. The game doesn’t peak with the Polito reveal in Ops: it gets kicked into high gear. That is when SS2 REALLY gets going. The reveal of Bioshock is when it functionally ends and ceases to be interesting. I had actually forgotten everything after Hephaestus, and I have beaten Bioshock multiple times. Point Prometheus might as well be a brand new fucking level to me. Ask anyone what happens after Andrew Ryan and they probably will have to really strain to remember, if they even got that far! It’s such a massive and catastrophic collapse that it takes my opinion of the game down with it. Everything up until Hephaestus was a 4 ½ star experience. But I cannot in good conscience rate a game with that final boss that high.

That also doesn’t get into the political implications of Bioshock. I find Ryan’s ideology a little too alien to fully buy into, although a brilliant vocal performance does help mask some of its more confusing aspects. A society based entirely on the individual and what one person can do for themselves is a clearly terrible fucking idea for an entire city, especially an underwater one. But judging from Levine’s comments in the documentary, a lot of this was in service to the setting. Why would a city be underwater? Because a weirdo Libertarian was being a weirdo Libertarian. Understood, makes perfect sense to me. I can’t get a good handle on anything the game might be saying politically because, like its sequel, it’s too divorced from anything tangibly real to meaningfully say anything.

It is more interested in freedom of choice, and on that end, it actually does have some interesting nuggets in that regard. In an entire city focused entirely on the choices and will of its citizens, Bioshock really cares more about the choices that help other people. In the end, Jack’s choice to save the little sisters and give them the freedom to choose a life they want to live is what the game really cares about. Our choices define us, after all. Jack, after all, is a man almost bereft of any choice of free will, so using the limited means he can make a choice to help people is the ultimate Fuck You to Ryan’s ideology. You should help people when you can, even if you don’t have to, even if it doesn’t serve you in that moment. In a game I remembered being insufferable, mostly due to Bioshock Infinite rotting like a banana and taking all the fruit in the pantry with it, I was pleasantly surprised to find such an affirmation to humanity in it in the end.
Andrew Ryan chooses to die with his city, as he is his city, it is his definition. Jack, however, chooses to grant that freedom of choice onto the little girls he saved throughout the story. That is what ultimately defines him.

Before I wrap this up, I really should talk about the GAME part of the game. But there really isn’t much to say. It’s a very fun shooter. The weapons are some of my favorites in a video game, the splicers are an inspired enemy type, and the streamlining of the RPG elements was ultimately the right choice. In the doc, Levine mentions that they realized that Rapture was the most important character, and having the player buried in their character sheet would have taken away from that aspect, and he is completely right. The more you spend marveling at the scenery and less you spend in menus is what the meat of the game really is about.

These are great menus though. Remember when games actually had good menu design? It’s one of the vestiges that tie Bioshock to a long-gone era of artistic expression of bland utilitarianism. I even respect the hissing steam and grinding gears present in the pipe dream minigame. While that minigame is such a bad idea that BioShock 2’s improved hacking system is an actual knock against Irrational for not coming up with a better one sooner, it is a really good looking one! For real though, hacking is absolutely hideous in this game. The first half of the game really is staring at Pipe Dream for a lot of it, and once you can afford automatic hack tools there is no reason to ever do it again because it honest-to-god starts generating UNWINNABLE ones. Nice job, dickheads.

The Big Daddy fights are also REALLY lame in this game though. In the first few hours, they mostly consist of getting stunlocked while unloading AP ammo, and by the time you get the crossbow, the greatest gun in gaming history, they cease to even be anything, as the crossbow just shreds them to bits. The downgrading of Big Daddy’s from “problems,” to “minor nuisance” also coincides with the game’s debilitating slide to the finish line as well!

Is Bioshock worth playing? Christ, yes! When it’s excellent it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Fortunately, it spends the first half of its runtime being excellent! Even when it reaches its slump, it will still drop reminders of why the game is so beloved, and why it’s still regarded as a high point in gaming as a medium. Avoid the Remastered version though, because it’s kind of a piece of shit! On PS4 the hacking minigame honest-to-god lagged, and if you know Bioshock, you know you’re going to be doing that minigame 300 thousand times in one playthrough. Thankfully, this is one of the few remasters that, on Steam at least, gives you the original release alongside the remaster. It’s almost a tacit admission that the remaster stinks!

I’m happy to say that even with Infinite’s overwhelming stink clinging to the franchises clothes like shit, Bioshock 1 still comes out relatively clean. It’s an artistically ambitious game, fun to play, and really, provides a definitive answer on if you should inject random syringes you find lying around into your body. Which you definitely should.

"Remastered" feels like they are underselling just how much work had to have been put into this. Almost every element feels like it had to have been redone for this. I have no way of knowing, but it's a very well-done re-release of what really feels like a forgotten game.

This isn't my favorite Turok game: the enemies are nowhere near as dynamically animated or reactive as Turok 2's, and the level design is very inconsistent between flat, square boxes and more inspired levels. The shotgun still sounds like a Turok shotgun though, and blowing enemies apart is still as wicked as it is in any Turok game.

Plus, Danielle is a cool character design. I wish there was something more being done with her, but I won't complain about a good thing.

Would recommend Turok 1 and 2 over this, but real Turokaholics will want to complete their collection with this.

Incredibly detailed and intricate in some ways, shockingly inept in so many others. Taking a walk through an updated Black Mesa is just as awe-inspiring as you would think it is, especially if you have Half-Life as committed to memory as most fans do. The amount of work put into making it feel as exciting and novel as it was in Half-Life is not to be dismissed, they nail a lot of the minutiae that that made that game feel so disarmingly real in a medium where the game world's tangibility was not the priority.

But throughout the mod there is this weird push-and-pull going on between wanting to put new and interesting spins on the experience and spinning its wheels with fanservice or ideas that aren't very good. The awkward "They're waiting for you Gordon, in the test chamberrrr" is preserved for no good reason, the JUMPING PUZZLES are for some godforsaken reason even more prevalent, and Xen is capital T Terrible. They've made it longer! I actually like the Xen levels in Half-Life and generally think the hatred for them is overblown, but not in a million years would I have suggested making Interloper a TWO HOUR level to improve its reputation.

Xen is definitely visually stunning, but even then that loses what makes Xen so frightening and hostile in Half-Life: it looks like shit! It's a bunch of otherworldly nightmare platforms in a Hell dimension, it shouldn't look like Metroid Prime! I am at odds here because it definitely IS a new take on something old, which I appreciate. But it feels like such an obvious attempt at a course correction that it still ends up feeling desperate for approval.

There are other things I hate: the gunfights. The gunfights in Half-Life kick ass. They are chaotic, loud, exciting, and genuinely make you feel like you are solving problems when you just barely survive every one. Black Mesa just feels turgid in a way that is hard to quantify. The Marines feel less dynamic, like they just backpedal while dumping magazines into you. It's the same problem that keeps the Combine from ever truly being exciting to fight. Not to mention the updated artstyle means they blend in with the environment more, which while certainly more realistic, makes it feel less carefully designed than Half-Life 1.

That is the big difference, really, is that Half-Life is such a carefully and smartly designed game that every time Black Mesa stumbles it only manages to enhance Valve's brilliance with the original game. Realistically, should the BMRF have more doors around instead of room sthat lead to nowhere? Yes, but it also makes the design more cluttered and less elegant at guiding the player through the facility. It feels like they used Freeman's Mind as a design document at times.

I also have to say the music is completely at odds with the game's tone. Half-Life uses a lot of alien sounding synths and samples, creating a tone of mystery and unease, cold and careless science that goes too far. When action picks up you get very synthetic tracks with pulsing electronics. The rock music playing dramatic minor chords during action scenes just doesn't fit at all. Again, I respect the desire to try something different, but it's so wildly off the mark that I'm not even sure what they were going for.

There's other things that annoy me as a fan: I don't like the Nihilanth's voice, he doesn't sound quite as unknowable and more like a generic monster. I miss the maze in On A Rail because navigating it IS a puzzle. The ending is deflated by feeling like the game wants us to stand up and start clapping when we see the G-man instead of having the original's understated mystery. A lot of this is coming off like I'm an irritating fanboy, which is true, but the game is so indecisive if it wants to be a complete overhaul or a fresh coat of paint that I don't feel bad about doing so.

There is one thing here they do SO WELL, better than I could have anticipated, and that is the amount of world building here. I just absolutely adore the radios scattered about that gives you an idea of what is happening outside of Black Mesa. It makes the world feel so much larger and real, while also making you feel more isolated and out of your depth. It's little things like that that makes it hard for me to truly Hate this game, even with all of the irritating shit they add to it.

This is not a suitable replacement for Half-Life. I think that game is still so readily available and instantly playable that if you can't get into it that seems like a genuine personal failing on your part that you SHOULD be ashamed of. But if you do dig Half-Life, i think Black Mesa is a fine companion piece to get a second look at the same events. But I would never suggest you throw Half-Life in the dumpster and just move on with this, because it will make you think Half-Life wasn't that good.

Half Life 1 is like a masterclass in pacing, as it moves from set-piece to set-piece with such confidence and intelligence that the game just breezes past you, on my most recent replay of it with my partner, it was basically just 6 perfect hours of one of the best games of all time.

Half Life 2, on the other hand, has so many bits that go on for fucking ever, and feel like they are NEVER going to end. It took multiple days of playing it where I just outright told them, "I am so sick of fighting the same 10 combine soldiers for today." This comes to a head near the end of the game in Anticitizen One and Follow Freeman, where you are fighting combine soldiers for what feels like 30000 hours. The combat is never engaging enough to carry the game on its own yet in some pivotal chapters it is being asked to carry hours worth of game. The game, ironically, excels when it is doing everything in its power to avoid gunfights. The explosive entrance to Nova Prospekt, the physics platforming of Sandtraps, the incredible finale of Our Benefactors, and of course the standout Ravenholm chapter.

When the game is clicking it reminds you why Half Life is such an incredible series, designed to almost perfection, and to be frank, back when I first played Half Life 2 around 2006, I did not share my current exhaustion with the combat, I found it thrilling and couldn't believe my computer was rendering such a lifelike experience. Nowadays? God why is Highway 17 so long?? Route Kanal and Water Hazard both feel like they are deliberately padded out!! Half Life 2 may have more variety than a game like F.E.A.R, but it is never as fun to play as F.E.A.R for an extended period of time.

But what it does better than other games, it does at a level of perfection few games could ever hope to match. Art direction, sound design, writing, animations, atmosphere, it is all typical Half Life brilliance. For the time, characters had never been this lifelike and well-realized, the main cast are such a lovable bunch with their own quirks and inner worlds, which thanks to the still really impressive facial animations, you can actually read them thinking and making decisions in their heads! It sounds a little odd, but watch Dr. Mossman in the Dark Energy chapter, and you can see her making the decision to betray Dr. Breen by her expression, it makes it feel more real in a way few games ever wore in 2004.

For what it far exceeds its predecessor on in terms of characterization, it really brutally lacks the precision pacing that makes Half Life 1 still one of the few games that could be described as "perfect." It feels desperate to deliver on being Half-Life 2, which in 2004 meant having way too much of everything, so after you shoot some combine overwatch and think, "damn this is kind of bland," I hope you are ready for 10 more hours of exactly that!!