"Remember me, and your true self as well, also that which you must become. The one who will lead us to Paradise with blood stained hands!"

I'm not a really big fan of survival horror games, or horror games in general, because I get scared easily, so I feel like I never get to fully enjoy these games and their qualities, mostly because I end up looking for guides and walkthroughs online.
Before the Silent Hill games that I played for the first time last summer, I had only played RE 2 and 3 remakes, and those were both games that i didn't like very much. Luckily,  that wasn't the case for the Silent Hill games, because I loved them. After finishing Silent Hill 2 in one day and loving it, I decided to play Silent Hill 3, which quickly became my favorite in the series, even more after playing Silent Hill 1. After one year, while watching my friend play sh2, I decided to replay sh3, and my opinion on it hasn't changed.
I think that Silent Hill 3 is the best game in the original trilogy for a different number of reasons, from the gameplay to the even more absurd horror elements and the incredible story and characters.

First of all i wanted to talk about how good all the different "levels" in this game were, they were all perfectly crafted and scary but fun to go trough, my favorite one was the hilltop center, mostly bc i really liked the change to the otherworld and also i feel like they are the most scary ones with the church, that is one of the best parts in the game with the recalls to silent hill one, the shopping mall and the subway were also good but in this replay i found them really fast to go through and didn't think much of them other than the fact that the mall is a perfect preview of what the game is going to be, then bookhaven hospital is in my opinion the least fun one because you already go through it already in sh2 so its a bit repetitive in its normal form; overall i think that every place visited is good in its own way and doesn't fail at making you feel scared thanks to the perfect sound design but also to its little eastereggs like the cutscene in the subway that always freaks me out.

The gameplay is also better than in sh2, thats because theres more types of weapons that make the gameplay more fun and engaging, also i love the ng plus weapons like the infinite flamethrower, the infinte submachinegun and my favorite one which is the beam saber. Also the costumes add to the game a lot of replayability thanks to all the different shirts and outfits that Heather can wear, even though in my opinion her original outfit is the best one bc its more iconic and particular.

I loved the cult story and how it managed to deliver an interesting and particular narrative, even though it can be considered more "common" than the one in Silent Hill 2.

My favorite characters were Heather, Douglas, and Vincent. The best one is Heather, who has probably become my favorite female character, she acts like a real person during the game by showing a wide range of emotions but also by her interactions with the world around her, and I love how she has her own unique personality, i also really liked Douglas because i think hes a really intricate charachter and i love how the game makes you hate him at the start but then not only he becomes a very important part in the plot, but he also becomes an important person to Heather, then theres Vincent which I really liked because of its contrast with claudia about their beliefs and their different view on the same religion.

The themes of the game are very delicate but at the same time very important to talk about, like unwanted pregnancy, abortion, and womanhood in general. I would love to talk more precisely about each one of them, but I think that since they are a big part of the game, I would end up spoiling something.

I can say that Silent Hill 3 is, at least in my opinion, the peak of horror gaming, and even if I don't play a lot of horror games myself, I don't think that there will ever be a game that surpasses the feeling of anxiety, terror, and also sadness that Silent Hill 3 gave me. This game is a must-play for everyone, even for the people who, like me, aren't really big fans of the horror genre.


PS:
Even though the review is finished, I wanted to share 2 of my favorite quotes from the game:
"Is every person here a mental case?"
"Monsters? They looked like monsters to you?"

Sei não hein mano esse daqui foi um pouco difícil de engolir, tanto que demorei literais anos pra terminar. Se tem uma coisa que esse jogo gosta de fazer é enrolar, um dúzia de tutorias para explicar cada singela mecânica do jogo e suas nuances (AS VEZES MAIS DE UMA VEZ INCLUSIVE). Em questão de apresentação até que o jogo é bonitinho é bem animado e a trilha sonora mantém o padrão alto que essa franquia tem. A parte dos sonhos é legal e tals mas pra um conceito que é tão bacana de ser explorar visualmente eu acho que eles pegaram bem leve, não rola nada de muito criativo durante os segmentos dos sonhos. A narrativa é OK, nada inovador, as alusões dos jogos passados até que são bacanas, o Bowser por algum motivo é bizarramente sem sal nesse jogo, irreconhecível do jogo passado, o que pra mim é bem ruim já que ele era um dos melhores pontos do Inside Story. O combate é aquilo que nos conhecemos mas caralho no final você já ta massacrado e os inimigos normais ficam mais parrudos e em maior quantidade no geral e fica parecendo que seus ataques normais não importam de merda nenhuma, só da pra usar Bros moves.

I now have two big regrets when it comes to gaming. The first is that I have gone through life having never owned a PlayStation 2, and the second is that I didn’t support and play Tango Gameworks’ Hi-Fi Rush before the studio was unfairly axed by Microsoft in 2024. The year prior was a crazy year in terms of the amount of quality game releases, and it was quite frankly, a tad overwhelming keeping up with them all. Despite all of the praise being given to Hi-Fi Rush, there were just so many other games that were coming out, or games that I wanted to get to, that I just threw it on the backlog thinking that I’d get to it eventually. Unfortunately, 2023 was also a year with a heartbreakingly large amount of game studio closures, and this is something that is continuing in 2024, with Tango Gameworks themselves being a recent victim at the time of writing this review, despite all of the success that Hi-Fi Rush had achieved the year prior. Coincidentally, the game also had gone on sale as part of a Humble Bundle around the same time the studio was shut down, and fellow Backloggd user duhnuhnuh had an extra key for the game that they were offering (huge shoutouts to him by the way, I’m extremely grateful). Given the timing of everything and an opportunity to play the game in a way that doesn’t directly support Microsoft, I leapt at the chance to give this game its due diligence, and I was absolutely floored at how much the game truly lived up to all of the praise people had given it.

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based action game that takes place in a city in the far future. It stars Chai, a sarcastic and oblivious slacker dude with a disabled arm who really wants to become a rockstar. He volunteers for a cybernetic limb replacement program being run by Vandelay Technologies on their very own campus. Shortly before the process begins, CEO of Vandelay Technologies: Kale Vandelay, a callous CEO stereotype, observes Chai’s records. Unimpressed, he harshly dubs him a loser before he carelessly tosses Chai’s music player away, causing it to fall into the testing site onto Chai’s chest. During the limb replacement process, the music player becomes embedded within Chai, giving him electromagnetic powers while also causing his environment to sync up with the music itself. However, this causes him to be labeled as a defect by Vandelay Technologies, whose security forces attempt to bring him in. As he flees, he meets up and makes a deal with Peppermint, a robotics prodigy with a grudge against the corporation, who helps him escape in exchange for helping her investigate them. Together, the two team up to uncover the shady secrets behind the scenes of Vandely Technologies so that they can expose them to the world and stop their plans from unfolding.

The gameplay is that of a character action game like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, but with rhythm game elements that supplement the combat and platforming. Before I played the game, I heard a lot of people comparing it to Devil May Cry, but I wrote those comparisons off as an over-exaggeration, since I feel like a lot of people will compare any action game with combat they really like to Devil May Cry. I was delightfully surprised to learn that no, the game really is essentially Devil May Cry, but with rhythm game elements. You can perform a variety of combos that are dependent on the timing of your button presses, you’ve got a stiff yet highly vertical jump, you’ve got short platforming segments to serve as variety in-between the combat, you’ve got a ton of different upgrades and additional combos you can purchase with the game’s currency, and you’re graded on your performance after every battle and level with a letter ranking system.

Everything in the game is tied to the beat of the song that’s currently playing, and I do mean everything. The attacks and movements of your enemies, platforming hazards, sound effects, and even animations in the background are all tied to the music, and the game tests you on your ability to not only perform well while in battle, but doing so while also staying on beat with the music. I did find it a bit difficult to get used to timing my attacks to the beat at first, but I got better and better at it as time went on. I can’t tell you how satisfying it feels when you’re able to successfully perform attacks in sync with the rhythm. Just like in Devil May Cry 5, the music will add additional layers of instrumentation the higher your letter score, and the game will also play the sound of an audience chanting Chai’s name as well. The better you do, the more ecstatic the game feels, and performing really well during a fight can feel genuinely euphoric.

The rhythm game elements don’t stop at syncing your attacks to the beat, however. There are a number of quicktime events where you need to press the correct buttons at the correct timing, such as during certain special attacks Chai can perform. Additionally, when close to death, more powerful enemies and certain bosses can force you into a one-on-one segment where you’ll need to successfully parry or dodge their attacks, which are telegraphed to a series of specific beats that you need to replicate with your button presses, and successfully doing so allows you to finish them off with one final strike. As someone who is a big fan of character action games, it’s extremely surprising how fresh and satisfying adding rhythm elements to this genre’s gameplay makes the game as a whole feel. This melding of the genres works fantastically. There is a great sense of cohesion between the two, and for the most part, elements of one genre don’t overshadow the other.

There’s only one element of combat that I have some small issues with. As the game progresses, you will meet additional characters who become allies that you can call upon during combat to aid you in battle. They’ll perform a special attack that has a cooldown once it’s executed. Your allies become a pretty key part of combat, as these special attacks are needed in order to make certain enemies or bosses vulnerable. The issue is how inconsistently your allies’ attacks function. You can’t manually target enemies, so when you call on your allies to use their attack, they can sometimes use it on the wrong enemy, or they’ll miss entirely. If this happens, then you’ve just wasted that summon and you now have to wait for the cooldown to finish before you can summon your ally to attack again. This was especially annoying with Macaron, who needs to use his ability twice in order to break the shields of certain enemies, and whose cooldown takes twice as long compared to your other allies. If he misses or targets the wrong enemy, then you’re basically a sitting duck until his ability recharges, which can be very frustrating. You can purchase some upgrades to make the cooldown slightly better, but they do cost a lot of currency, currency I’d rather spend on other things that can enhance the gameplay experience for myself, like additional combos I can perform, or items that increase my health or special attack gauge.

The game’s tone is very playful, upbeat, and fun, complimented by a gorgeously colorful artstyle that’s inspired by a combination of western and eastern comic books/manga. It tells a story that is a not at all discreet criticism regarding how the leaders of corporations frequently interfere with, mismanage, and ruin the lives of those who work under them. It also goes into demonstrating how much this hurts when the job is something that people have aspired to do for much of their lives, and are very passionate about. The story is extremely straightforward, but you can tell it’s one that comes from very real experiences that I’m sure the folks that have worked on the game have gone through, and considering what ended up happening with Tango Gameworks, it’s a story that resonates now more than ever.

The characters are decent, they serve the story well enough. I will say I’m not the biggest fan of Chai, but he did eventually grow on me. He’s a huge dork who’s very self-serving, unmotivated, and oblivious to those around him. He does get better as he starts to take the situation at hand more and more seriously and comes to care more about the people he meets and works with to take down Vandaley, though his ego remains pretty big still by the end of the game. He’s not at all a bad character or protagonist, he’s just a little too white bread for my tastes. The other characters don’t get much of a focus during the game’s main story, but talking to them in-between missions at the hideout allows you to learn more about them and how they feel about the unfolding events of the narrative. I think I might’ve developed a stronger attachment to them if they had a larger presence in the main plot, but this is still a fine and fun cast of characters.

While I personally would’ve preferred the tone be a bit less playful and to have had a little more edge to it, like the old school Guitar Hero games or Brutal Legend, I feel that would’ve made the game somewhat of a harder sell, not just to general audiences but to get approval to make the game in the first place. The exaggerated, Saturday morning cartoon-esque personalities of the game’s characters (the villains in particular), really manage to offset how personal, and in a way, sad the message that’s being communicated under the surface is. The villain Zanzo in particular is an excellent demonstration of this. His manically over-the-top demeanor and constant Jojo posing, to a certain degree, masks the very real, outrageous, and constant demands the person in charge of a team may have, and how their ego can get in the way of seeing the project to completion, making the efforts of the overworked people underneath them all for naught. The game’s current tone isn’t at all a bad one either. I can see some folks not jiving with the comedy, and I can also see certain people writing it off as “reddit humor”, but even if the game didn’t necessarily make me laugh out loud, I still found it to be endearing.

I’ve really enjoyed the rhythm games I’ve played, but I don’t play too many of them because the vast majority of them don’t appeal to my taste in music, so I’m really glad this game exists. I played the game with its original soundtrack instead of the licensed music (in case I decide to one day stop being a coward and start making YouTube videos), and I gotta say, it was pretty fantastic. I’m more of a metalhead than a rock guy, but this game’s music is still really good. The soundtrack has a lotta groovy riffs and decent solos that are never tiresome or boring to listen to.

Hi-Fi Rush was truly a surprise for me. I went into this without much in terms of expectations, but its fluid and immensely satisfying combat and complete banger of a soundtrack kept me hooked the entire time. I’m heavily debating doing a quick second playthrough of the game even though I’ve finished it because I was just that hooked and enamored by its gameplay. If the game had a different tone and a heavier soundtrack, I genuinely think it would’ve ended up being my dream video game, but even as it currently stands, it’s a brand new favorite of mine. The irony of a game condemning the actions of corporate dickheads becoming a massive success while the studio that made it gets shut down a year after it launches is honestly extremely tragic. It’s not like my $30 was the $30 that would’ve kept Tango Gameworks from shutting down, but I still feel really bad after finally playing this game that I didn’t purchase it and support Tango while they still existed. If you haven’t played Hi-Fi Rush, I implore you to, and I also implore you to learn from my mistake and actually support those games that don’t get AAA marketing, yet gain an outstanding reputation via word of mouth. Don’t just put them on your wishlist forever and wait. I can’t stress enough how much we need more games like Hi-Fi Rush, and if we don’t make our voices heard with our wallets, we hurt the chances of these games being made in the future.

Forever and always: Fuck You, Microsoft.

Uma jornada fantástica através de reviravoltas, suspense, homens musculosos e tatuados brigando sem camisa e conflitos complexos entre personagens ainda mais complexos.

Um roteiro de ouro precisava de um palco tão brilhante quanto, então nada melhor do que a glamourosa Kamurocho da década de 80.

Não foi minha primeira experiência com a série Yakuza, visto que já havia jogado o Yakuza Kiwami, mas foi definitivamente a experiência que me impulsionou a querer continuar a minha maratona da franquia.

Se tratando de uma prequel, automaticamente parte da narrativa se concentraria nas origens de personagens que foram apresentados em Kiwami, tal como Kiryu e Majima, que conduzem os capítulos com suas respectivas perspectivas e problemas a resolver.

Cada uma das perspectivas são incríveis da sua própria forma, com as mesmas doses de tensão e a curiosidade incessante de descobrir o que viria a acontecer a seguir. Cada passo da história rumo ao inevitável encontro das duas perspectivas é feito de maneira sensacional, bem como a forma que as duas se alinham.

Grande parte do que torna tudo tão especial ao meu ver são os personagens presentes. Dos protagonistas aos antagonistas, dos secundários aos centrais, todos cumprem muito bem o seu papel e suas relações são muito convincentes.

O jogador sente o peso das decisões e deveres de Kiryu. O jogador sente o desejo de proteção vindo por parte de Majima.

"𝘐'𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘯𝘦𝘥. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘶𝘯𝘬 𝘬𝘪𝘥'𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥... 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦 𝘺𝘢𝘬𝘶𝘻𝘢."

Apesar de não ser o maior fã do combate, principalmente por se tornar rapidamente repetitivo, acredito que não seja um ponto que justifique uma queda de qualidade do jogo como um todo. Além do mais, usar as heat actions é extremamente satisfatório.

A franquia Yakuza tem tudo para se tornar uma das minhas franquias favoritas em um futuro próximo, mas não acho que jogar todos os jogos em sequência seja a melhor alternativa.
Com uma espécie de "maratona parcelada", a experiência será preservada e provavelmente terá uma melhor conclusão.

Um tempo atrás eu lembro de ter ouvido "Busca e Ação" como uma boa definição para o que entendemos como metroidvania, e Animal Well prova que realmente, ir de encontro com um level design não tão linear pode ser benéfico para a atmosfera do jogo.

Me senti perdido muitas vezes, mas a sagacidade entre os encontros e quadros de puzzle me seguraram por todo o tempo. Entretanto, ainda sinto que o jogo perde a mão em ter tantos coletáveis (que acabam sendo importantes para um "final verdadeiro" e um ARG mais pra frente) o que fez que me sentisse fora de uma conversa legal, mas que pedia demais pra eu participar.

No mais, como que o estrupício do VideogameDunkey botou as mãos em uma joia tão interessante quanto essa?

O sentimento de se jogar Wanted:Dead é de que o jogo estava pronto a anos, mas não viu a luz do dia até ano passado, sua estrutura, sua estética, seu combate, são muito semelhantes ao que se veria num jogo base da sétima geração de consoles, e vejo isso com muito bons olhos e um sorriso no rosto.

Imaginem que Suda51 e SWERY estão trabalhando num projeto e o melhor de dois mundo se juntam (espero que Hotel Barcelona seja foda, ok?) essa é meio a ideia que eu tenho desse jogo, o combate é muito divertido, serio, e a primeira vista talvez soe estranho, mas serio, é muito daora, e por se tratar de um jogo com tanta personalidade, é o que adiciona ainda mais gosto em tudo.

Apesar das atuações de voz super blasé e fps cair durante cutscenes (igual Deadly Premonition, quem diria) o jogo se segura pelo seu carisma, partes em anime, momentos rítmicos, os diálogos ala Tarantino ou até mesmo, a galhofa pela galhofa são algumas das coisas que tornaram a minha experiencia com Wanted:Dead agradável.

De certa forma, dentro de um contexto aonde cada vez mais os jogos se parecem uns com os outros por causa da reprodução das tendências (leiam Walter Benjamin) é muito interessante ver um jogo ir contra a maré, usando de técnicas e forma do passado agora com estética, o que me faz pensar em Wanted:Dead com um jogo anômalo para o seu momento dentro da indústria.

Chants of Sennaar is a great little game that could've been way way better had it delved deeper into the language puzzles. I would've loved for the languages to have more glyphs and more complex grammar, even if it meant sacrificing the other type of get-this-use-there puzzles. That would've probably been for the better, but how can you sin a game that looks straight out of a Moebius comic?

The solutions to the puzzles are fairly simple; they're not necessarily easy (I didn't consider them hard anyway) but they're not obtuse like in other puzzle games, where a combination of unlikely reasonings was sometimes the correct answer. All the pieces are put in front of you, and it's your job to put the puzzle together. The only gripe I had with the game were the stealth sections and the fact that I sometimes would miss on some things that were just out of focus: like the helmet for the disguise in the Fortress being on the left side, or the stairs that lead to one of the terminals in the Laboratories being barely visible on the right side of the screen.

Overall it was a great game to complete in under 7 hours. It has a lovely art style, a fantastic soundtrack and it's honestly just a treat to play for any language enthusiast. Would it have been better with less regular puzzles and more complex languages? I think so, but it wouldn't have been as accessible. In the end, nothing really beats the feeling of coming across a Rosetta Stone and working out the glyphs by yourself. I'll probably revisit the game playing it in a different language and see how it compares.

What is this game? Well, it is every playstation game:
Third Person action game, open world, basic boring stealth elements, a bow that instantly kills enemies if you headshot them, basic good enough story, basic good enough combat and a big budget presentation.

It is an ok game. The combat is what entertained me the most during my time with the game. It not only feels cool, but looks cool. Finishing enemies is so satisfying because the animations are so stylish and feel good to control. This is why the boss fights are the best part of the game. They require you to learn their moveset and actually beat them with your reflexes and skill (like how boss fights are supposed to), instead of having cheap tactics available like the smoke bomb and so on. The biggest problem with the combat are the enemies and the posture system. The enemy variety is LOW. You'll be fighting the same enemy types over and over again and to defeat them you need to use thee corresponding posture. Truthfully, you don't need to use it, but if you dont, it feels artificially harder to break the enemy's guard, turning the combat into rock paper scissors or relying on cheap tactics to kill them in a more efficient, but boring, manner.

None of the open world activities are particularly compelling. It's just go here, press this button, done. Go to the next one. The world is GORGEOUS and I mean it. However, I see no reason for this game to be an open world. I think resources could have been better spent elsewhere.... more enemy types and boss fights for example.

The story is ok and nothing more. It gets cool near the end but it is never satisfying enough. The beginning is especially dreadful and the story is SO predictable at times. It is easy to guess what's gonna happen between the characters from the moment you meet them. That one? WIll betray you. The other one? Will die. This one? You will have a fallout with said character. And so on.

The presentation can be really good at times, even though it is clear that it is lower budget than a lot of other sony exclusives. Certain animations, certain textures, how the cutscenes are laid out sometimes. It is obvious, but I do not mean this as an insult. Quite the opposite. Most games nowadays have clearly overinflated budgets and I think this is more and enough. Not everything has to look as good as the latest spider-man game, which did not look that much better than the first one and this game does not look that much worse. Art direction wins over big budget. That has been proven time and time again.

There is nothing terribly wrong with this game, but there's also nothing great about it. It exists. It functions and it can be fun. Really fun sometimes. It is at is best when it is linear and focused on its missions. It just makes me wish they had focused their time on things that are not open world crap. More enemy variety, more mission types and objectives, better platforming challenges. Because this people have done it before.

If you like PS First party games, you will love this game. If you like AC you will like this game. If you're interested in other types of games and are getting a bit tired of PS Exclusive formula, like me, you will probably not enjoy this game as much, I still gave it a chance because of the team behind it and while I don't think it is bad, it was not as good as I wanted it to be. It is ok and that's ok.

EU AAAAAAMO FANSERVICE. Mesmo que seja um jogo menor, tendo só 5 capítulos, parece que tudo funciona como uma celebração da franquia. Todos os melhores minigames estão de volta: o Kart, o coliseu, o karaoke com várias músicas fodas e mais um monte de outros joguinhos que eu passei horas jogando. O combate é bem fluído, o estilo novo é bem bacana bem único, a ideia de utilizar vários dispositivos em conjunto com porrada é muito bom, e o segundo estilo é o bom e velho moveset clássico do Kiryu que a gente conhece e ama. Agora, falando da história, apesar de ser meio ridículo que esse é o segundo jogo que a RGG faz pra servir como 'despedida' do protagonista Kiryu, a trama é bacana até por passar até que bem o sentimento de que o universo da franquia está mudando e o Kiryu é uma relíquia do passado. Mas o melhor mesmo em relação à história desse jogo, para mim, é o final: tanto o confronto final, com o visual e música ímpar, quanto a cutscene final que é feita de uma maneira muito foda. De verdade o maior problema do jogo é não ter mais dele.