After a couple months of messing around with Dead Space's spin offs and extended universe, I have finally reached the actual sequel for the game I played all the way back in January, and I must say, the wait was well worth the wait. The team over at EA Redwood Shores identified the few shortcomings of the first Dead Space game, and rectified them, creating one of the most true survival horror experiences that I have played in a while. Honestly, it felt more akin to the roots of the genre than I think even the Resident Evil remakes did when I played through those. A lot like the series signature plasma cutter, Dead Space 2 is a tight, clean, efficient experience; it wastes none of the player's time and is extremely tense throughout its entire run time. Though, I do think some of the parts that make it such a tense experience are where a lot of its downsides come from.

In my review for the first Dead Space, I mentioned how I felt the game struggled with creating a terrifying atmosphere, as well as being somewhat bland with its environments and overall aesthetic. These complaints stemmed from the fact the game refused to leave the player alone, always having someone talking directly to Isaac, or by not leaving any ambiguity and leading the player directly to where they need to be; this not being helped by the very bland looking environments that looked like scraped concept art for Doom 3. So, I am very glad to say that they improved on both of these aspects quite a lot. Firstly, Isaac talks now. I never would have thought that simply having the player character talk could be so integral to creating tension, but it is. By giving Isaac a voice, the developers dissolved the need for the other characters to be constantly hounding the player with objectives, and trying to force agency where there is none .Now there is clear and effective agency because Isaac is his own person who can express personal wants and create his own objectives; no longer does he feel like an errand boy to the other characters, instead he actually feels like the main protagonist. As well, by having Isaac be more independent, there is much more room for the fear to build, and for anticipation to fester. There are now long stretches of time where the player goes without any sort of meaningful interactions with NPCs, meaning that they are going to be alone with their thoughts way more often, which is the key to creating good horror. To add to the fear factor, the game's environments are so much more varied and creative than that of the Ishimura. The game’s setting is a giant city colony orbiting Jupiter called The Sprawl, think the giant ship from Wall-E, but way bigger. Throughout his journey, Isaac stumbles through every possible corner of The Sprawl; from the medical wing that he wakes up in, a (formerly) bustling entertainment complex, an absolutely terrifying elementary school sector, a decadent Unitologist church, a sprawling mine and cave system, to, what is most definitely my favorite area, the quarantined remains of the Ishimura. All of these environments are so much different from the last, each offering new aesthetics paired with challenges that are appropriate to the area. A few of my favorites would be how the new velociraptor necromorphs use the church’s daunting collection of pillars to play mind games with the player and flank them; the necromorph babies and children that wander the halls of the school, and how the Ishimura is just this imposing scar throughout its entire chapters run time, filling the player with memories of dread with every familiar area they come across. As well, the general pacing of each chapter feels so much smother; gone are the individual levels of the first game that start and stop with a tram ride, in their place is now a much more Resident Evil 4 style structure that flows into itself very well, letting the world feel interconnected and not like individual parts. The RE4 comparison doesn’t stop there, however, as I think the developers finally got what made RE4’s combat so great.

Again, to reference my review of the first Dead Space, I described that game's combat as an imitation of Resident Evil 4’s, but without the understanding and nuance that made it so great. I think I can confidently say now, though, that they not only understand it, but made it their own thing. The first Dead Space took the surface level ideas of focusing on location based damage and a wide arsenal of weapons, and kind of did only that. The stasis concept was neat, but definitely not fully explored, and while the focus on cutting off enemy limbs is really cool, it is functionally not different than a headshot. Dead Space 2, however, fully expands on both of those ideas, while also fully embracing the RE4 style sense of momentum that made that game such a classic. RE4 does a lot of things right, but what it does obscenely well is creating a sense of forward momentum; it is hard to describe what I mean by forward momentum, but I think the best way I could is that the make the player constantly push forward, and that is the same feeling Dead Space 2 invokes. The player is constantly pushing through hoards of necromorphs,and through set piece after set piece at lightning speed, constantly keeping the player engaged and on their toes. I got physically exhausted my first time playing RE4, and I get the same feeling here; my heart rate is through the roof every waking minute. Stasis has now been revamped so that it can also launch, as well as freeze and carry them. Because of this, there is a much bigger focus on using the necromorphs severed limbs as projectiles in order to save ammunition. This creates a whole new layer of thinking for the player, on top of prioritizing targets based on who they perceive as more deadly, the player must also think about which enemies have the easiest limbs to cut off so that they don’t have to use up ammo, completely flipping the dynamic of the game on its head, and leading to really intense combat encounters. As well, ammo pickups have been made more scarce in order to encourage this playstyle. This is a great addition that really makes the game stand apart from both its inspirations, and even newer games. But like with every game, there are still some less than favorable aspects that accompany it.

While the combat is way more dynamic and way more exhilarating, some of the enemy placements and spawns are just baffling. There are a sizable number of encounters that have the necromorphs just appear behind the player out of thin air, and while I am sure that they had some animation that showed them coming out of a vent, in the heat of combat when I am facing an entirely different direction, with my back to the end of a hallway that I new was clear a second ago, it feels really cheap. I think this could have been made slightly better if maybe each of the necromorphs had more distinct sounds, or at least some sort of doppler like effect that would let the player know if one was coming. Alas, no, the player just has to suffer. But really that is my only complaint, because other than that it is a fantastic game that is well worth anybody’s time. The atmosphere is great, the combat is phenomenal, the story is very intriguing, though I don’t want to discuss it for spoilers and what not. As well, the voice work in this game is very well done and really helps to make deeper connections with the characters; I am also very glad to see they kept with the very diverse dialects and accents from Extraction, that was something that I thought made the universe of Dead Space feel a bit more real. Again, highly recommend.

Before playing through Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, I was led to believe by years of watching videos and reading information about the game, that it was an unbearable broken mess that is one of the worst experiences in gaming. I am happy to report that it is, in fact, not that bad. At worst, it is a slightly glitchy, kind of annoying basic platformer; and at best it is a little distracting romp through an otherwise barebones Spyro game. Don’t get me wrong, the game still isn’t very good, it is littered with half baked ideas, technical glitches, and just some of the weirdest aesthetic choices I have ever seen in a game; and from what I can tell, a lot of these bad design choices are the result of a troubled development. But I think the overall experience is ultimately fine, definitely not as dreadful as most people make it out to be.

The big elephant in the room with the entirety of this game is its lack of anything interesting. Nothing stands out, it is all just standard Spyro structure really. The player goes through a linear stage, even more linear for this game's case, collect gems, gather the special items, here they are dragonflies, and the player is done. The Insomniac trilogy, for the most part, proved that this was a winning formula, but what made it so much fun was those slight deviations and changes to the status quo that shook up the players' train of thought. Think of obstacles like the egg thieves, or the entirety of Tree Tops, that recontextualized the environment and the players abilities and asks them to think outside of the box. Enter the Dragonfly does not do that, at all. It is a shallow, hollow imitation of what came before. The game tries to do this; Spyro has a handful of new elemental breath types in conjunction with his fire breath, but nothing is ever done with them. At the most, there will be a section that requires hitting certain objects with different breaths; put out the fire with the ice breath, burn the scarecrows with the fire breath, and electrocute the poles to turn on the power. These breath types would be so much more interesting if, lets say, the player could create platforms on water or lava with the ice breath, or melt metal doors/ice barriers with the fire breath, or maybe even have to electrocute watery areas in order to turn the power on in a level, thus creating a new hazard in the process. But no, the new abilities stop at very surface level challenges that require very little brain power. As well, if it was not clear with my description of what this game considered to be a puzzle, the stages themselves are severely lacking.

Something I really appreciated from the first Spyro game is the abstract sense of nostalgia its set of levels gave me, it was like a happier version of the whole liminal spaces phenomena, like I had been there long ago in a dream I had when I was younger. All of Enter the Dragonflies levels are the exact opposite of this feeling, I have never been to these places before and I would really like to leave. The range of aesthetics this game goes for are just boring as all be; there is a dojo, an island with a luau theme going on, two separate farm levels, a very basic ice level, and a jungle temple. These themes are extremely basic and uninteresting and offer no real intrigue beyond the initial concept; they are quite actually just linear straight shots from the beginning to the end of the level; no alternate paths, no secret hideaways, and barely any of the now standard mini game side missions. Although, I am rather grateful for that last part, but I want to cover that later. The only level that doesn’t follow this structure is the Thieves Hideout, a level where all the egg thieves in the dragon world hoard their treasure, and is themed after The Thousand and One Nights. Not only does it have probably the most interesting concept for a level in the whole game, maybe series (so far at least), but the Arabian theming makes it stand out amongst the much more boring levels in this game; and, of course, there are many winding pathways to traverse and secret areas to find in this level, because what kind of thieves hideout would this be if it didn’t have those. But sadly, this is the only level in the game of this caliber, everything else is just fine. Actually, they might be worse than fine because of just how buggy this game is. There is a decently high likelihood that whenever the player enters a stage, something is going to glitch the hell out; I think I can recall a moment from each of the game's nine levels where some glitch made itself apparent. In some of them, gems would just fall through the floor and be unobtainable unless the level is restarted, others had problems with collision, where some platforms Spyro would just fall right though like he was a ghost, and in one instance in Honey Marshes, the level just refused to load in, leaving me walking on invisible ground unsure of where to go because I couldn't see anything. So, on top of already being rather boring levels, there is a good chance the level is just going to be broken whenever the player hops into them. But, all of this aside, I do think there is some good that this game has, albeit very minimal.

During the games development, one of the bigger issues the developers faced was building the game from the ground up, as they did not have access to any of the original source code or assets from the original trilogy. It is unclear whether or not the publishers, Universal Interactive, had denied them access to those original files, or if they simply didn’t have them on record to use, but either way, this led to many of the games shortcomings. Specifically, the one I want to point out is the change to how Spyro controls, here he is much stiffer, or tighter, depending on your perspective. Spyro in the original trilogy was much more floaty and less precise, which helped those games achieve the more free and dreamlike atmosphere they were going for, but it didn’t work so well in the more critical platforming sections. Which is why I was very happy to find out that Spyro is much more predictable to control here, making the few difficult platforming sections present more palatable. Additionally, like I mentioned earlier, the side mini game missions that plagued the last two games have had their presence greatly reduced; as well, I think they are better designed too. There are now two special gates in every level that lead the player to their respective side mission, these missions vary from piloting vehicles like tanks and UFOs, to sliding down giant mountain sides toboggan style. I like this implementation better than how 2 and YOTD did it because there being two per level doesn’t take away from the level itself, and the new mini games are based on the player’s abilities rather than having their own independent rules and control schemes, allowing them to flow much better into the pacing of each level. On top of this, the bugs that I mentioned earlier aren’t as bad as I made them out to seem, a simple restart of the level will likely fix whatever problems arise, this leaves the levels to be their ok sleeves; they aren’t bad levels, just not all that interesting, distracting for a little while than anything, which I will take a million times over having to a stupid trolley minigame over and over again.

Truly, I don’t think this game is that bad, it has problems, no doubt, but the overall game is fine. I understand why people scream to the high heavens that this game is an abomination, but I just can’t get behind that sentiment, especially when I have played games far far worse than this.

I don’t think I have played a game that so perfectly fits the description of a troubled masterpiece better than Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The game has so many great features and gameplay mechanics that really elevate it to the top of the cinematic platformer genre that this series started. But for every great idea that presents itself, not too far around the corner is an equally worse one that just sours the rest of the experience. This game is coming off the back of Prince of Persia 3D, which is not really a game most like to remember when discussing this series. Where PoP 3D struggled with being derivative of the games the original duology inspired, such as Tomb Raider, and was plagued with a disastrous development; Sands of Time is much clearer in its design intentions, and instead of trying to catch up with the industry that had left it behind, Mechner and the team at Ubisoft carved out their own corner of the industry, which then would go on to have an arguably bigger impact of the industry at large than the original games. But, like I mentioned, this game has plenty of problems with it, which may be expected with a game that is truly the first of its kind, and it's these setbacks that prevent me from calling the game great, as much as I really want to. Don’t get me wrong, it is still enjoyable by all means, and maybe a more patient player can call it perfect, but for me, these flaws are too big to ignore.

Let's start with the good, because I think the gravity of the bad only makes sense in the context of the good. After the release of Prince of Persia 2 in 1993, the so-called cinematic platformer genre was continued, and then practically owned by Tomb Raider. The original PoP games were heavily precision based, having the player precisely time their jumps and actively think about spacing in everything that they did; Tomb Raider followed this up by taking those elements and putting them in a 3D space, and then using that 3D space to create gigantic and elaborate levels. But where I think Tomb Raider lost the plot a little bit was when it started focusing more on spectacle rather than skill; starting with the second game, Core Design began to shift their focus of design away from the skill based platforming that the first game heralded, towards using dramatic set pieces that lacked a lot of depth. Now, I believe that shift was mainly due to the yearly release contract that Core Design had with Eidos, so the more surface level, “cinematic” moments were an attempt to hold player intrigue without having to drastically change the core gameplay. But, nonetheless, by the end of the original series run, Tomb Raider kind of lost what made this genre special and unique, and it is here where Sands of Time steps in. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time is still a very cinematic game mind you, the dramatic camera angles and more linear structure reflect that, but those elements supplement the very skillful and challenging platforming. The Prince has a rather simple set of moves: he can jump across ledges, run up and along walls, wall jump, shimmy along and climb up ledges, and spin into a jump from poles. All of these moves are simple to understand, but the game really challenges the application of these abilities. The pacing of each of the moves introduction is really well done and doesn’t overwhelm the player, this leads to a train of thought that builds upon itself with each new introduction, culminating in sections that have the player on their toes the entire time; the descent into and out of the prison, as well as the final climb up the tower were the pinnacle of this. Additionally, the reverse time mechanic really allows the player to try out different options and test new abilities whenever they might get stuck, it is the perfect crutch for new players. The animations also play a big part in this. Much like the original duology, The Prince moves in a very natural way, a way that is predictable, for the most part; this creates a great sense of flow and cohesion whenever the player is doing long platforming sections. But, as good as the platforming is, it is the combat that brings it all down.

Between each of the longer sections of wall running and jumping from ledge to ledge, there is a pretty sizable combat section, that almost entirely overshadow the platforming, and not for any good reason. At first, it looks like it functions very similarly to how combat worked in Prince of Persia 2, with The Prince being surrounded by a group of enemies that he must duel by attacking, dodging, and counter attacking; and it actually goes slightly deeper than this too, letting the player vault over enemies and hitting them from overhead, as well as using the walls to bounce off of and strike a diving blow. But, as soon as the higher tier guards are introduced, it all begins to fall apart. Up until this point, the vault and wall bounce had been the players go to for taking down enemies, but the royal guards upward, enemies are able to block even the strongest of attacks, and whenever a hit gets blocked, it stuns The Prince or knocks him down. Now, this wouldn’t be that bad if there were some invincibility frames on the getting up animation, but there are not, so what usually ends is that The Prince ends up getting damage locked whenever he gets knocked down because each enemy decides to attack one at a time at the precise moment the getting up animation begins. Add on top of this an absolutely awful camera that almost never cooperates, a control scheme that correlates with the camera position and not player position, and an auto targeting system that just doubles all of the aforementioned problems, and you have a combat system that actively screws over the player. And honestly, this is not even the worst part, really what kills any fun that could have been found with this system is just the sheer amount of enemies. There are too many enemies in every single encounter that doesn’t take place within the first hour; the player will constantly be hounded by every manner of high tier enemies, which just perpetuates all of the problems this system already had. Not to mention, The Prince's partner, Farha, isn’t invulnerable, meaning that there is a very high likelihood that an enemy will stray off from the pack and target her, effectively being a game over if this happens. This entire system is plagued with so many issues that it almost overshadows any good that the platforming had.

As per usual with these reviews, I do have a couple of notes that don’t exactly fit with the structure of the rest of the review. I really love all the small nods and references to the original duology, from the little cinematic that plays after a combat encounter is finished, to some of the minor 2D sections that are very reminiscent of its forebears, and just the fact that both of the original games are straight up unlockable as extras, being the only way to legally play these classic games in HD. Thank you Xbox backwards compatibility program. As well, while not explored to its fullest extent, the time reverse mechanic is a neat little feature that I think really sets It apart from; I wish it was explored more though, Tears of the Kingdom I think created a lot of fun puzzles and utility out this idea if you want an example. Also, it absolutely baffles me that they take away the entire mechanic for the last stretch of the game, like, the entire marketing factor of the game is just absent from what is supposed to be its climax. That is such a backwards way of designing a champion's road segment. That's about it I think, it's a game with a lot of good, but just struggles with some poor execution and one of its biggest aspects. So, while I don’t think it exactly stands the test of time, pun intended, it still is a classic and worth a playthrough.