Games as an art form is a modern concept, it wasn't until the seventh console generation that the technology that was being offered met the needs of developers that had high artistic ambitions; as well, many of the design trends that are associated with high budget, AAA games began in this generation. So, because of this, the general mass's perception of what is considered retro video games, is that of primitive, outdated experiences; games that were good for their time, but are archaic in comparison to the standards of today. Shadow Man, and games of its ilk, stand in direct opposition to this narrative; proving that games not only always had the capacity to be art, but also that these older games are often more ambitious than the games that are coming out today.

Shadow Man's presentation is its main weapon of allure, so is the nature of the cinematic platformer. The game finds itself in the lineage of juggernauts like Tomb Raider and The Legacy of Kain, but were as Tomb Raider drew the player in with it's Indiana Jones parody, and Legacy of Kain with its enriching dialogue and characters, Shadow Man opts to do it with it's world. Being directly based off of a 1990's comic book series, the game's world is appropriately dark and edgy, but in a more sophisticated way that stops it from being too pulpy. The hellish landscapes of Deadside are full of jagged cliffs, winding and warping tunnels, bridges that seem to lead into expansive nothingness, and rivers of blood that flow through the land; but combined with a more mute color pallet, it all feels grounded and real, while still giving off the vibe of something otherworldly. The asylum that stands erect in the center of the map; it is imposing. It offers a kind of grand scale and volume that wouldn't be popular in the medium until Half-Life 2's citadel would make it a trope. The inner contents of the asylum too strengthen this notion, with the inside being a sprawling labyrinth of gothic architecture and brutal torture chambers, all connected, all intertwined. This all serves the purpose of creating a type of world that was rarely seen in video games at the time, if at all; it even rivals some of the greats from today like Breath of the Wild and Dark Souls (appropriately enough). This isn’t all just for show, I would like to add; the world Shadow Man creates plays directly into its core design as a game.

Despite what I said earlier about Shadow Man being a cinematic platformer, the gameplay more resembles that of a Metroid-vania, with the gigantic, sprawling, interconnected areas that feed into one another. The game is designed for the player to constantly loop back, and re-explore previous areas once they have acquired new abilities, in fact, the game out right requires you to do so in order to progress; needing the games big collectable, the Dark Souls, in order to level up and break through gates to reach new areas. This is where the world design overlaps with the gameplay; as the player explores the macabre environments of Deadside, they are constantly asking questions and being left in the dark, but as they explore deeper more and more information is recontextualized. The player remembers weird quirks about the different areas that at first fit right in with the alien and twisted nature of Deadside, but when equipped with new knowledge and new abilities, these areas start to make more sense and begin to open the players mind to more possibilities. Environmental hazards and decorations that may first seem like simple set dressings and obstacles that were meant to seemingly just fade into the players subconscious, are eventually brought back to the forefront of the players mind once they gather new abilities. Compare this to how games, up until this point, would make locked gates and secret areas obvious by having jarring textures or by just straight up telling the player they need a new ability. Even newer games have this problem, with the running industry joke of putting yellow spray paint over anything and everything that can be interacted with. As well, the game offers a refreshing amount of nonlinearity that newer games are too scared to allow, in fear of disrupting the “carefully crafted” narrative. There were times in my play through where I swear I did things and got to areas way before or way after it seemed like I was initially supposed to; but nothing was broken, that is just how the world is structured. Many games nowadays offer worlds that, on the surface, halt the player from progressing farther than the story allows them too; but in Shadow Man, the narrative is open and mysterious enough to allow for the player to get things done in the order they come across them, or however they feel like doing it.

That being said though, there are still some things that haven’t aged the best, or at least they have in the original 1999 release of the game. The controls, while actually pretty intuitive and well done for a pre-Halo video game, are very choppy and require a lot of starting and stopping just to round a corner, the combat is not very good, the ability to dual wield any combinations of items is really fun, but trying to reliably hit any flying enemy is near impossible, and the lack of autosave is really infuriating when my N64 gets nudged and can’t read the cart anymore, making me lose two and a half hours of progress. But thankfully, the good ole boys over at Nightdive Studios have worked their magic and more than faithfully remastered this game for modern systems a couple years ago. So consider these complaints void if you decide to play the remaster.

Shadow Man is a game that was ahead of its time, and even after its time, it still proves itself comparable to even the best of what modern gaming has to offer. It is ambitious, meticulously crafted, and I think stands as a timeless testament to the stance that games are, and have always been, art.

It is refreshing when a sequel actually tries to improve itself over the original. More often than not, sequels fall into the trap of needing to outdo what came before; bigger spectacle, more outlandish set pieces, more characters, bigger guns, and so on and so forth; but with this need to look more fantastical, the nuance and intimacy of the original project is often lost. I always point to the Alien franchise as a great example of this; Aliens is a great action movie with a heartfelt mother-daughter story at its core, and fantastic special effects and tense action to back it up, but it in no way resembles the first movie's sense of dread. Alien is a movie about an small, intimate cast of unique characters being stalked by a lone alien on one small ship, the smaller budget and scope allow for a much more heightened focus on the smaller details like the characters, environments, and overall horror of it all. In contrast, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin not only offers the bigger spectacle, but also hones in and improves on what made the first game great.

Firstly, by far the biggest improvement from Codename 47 is the level design. CN47’s levels functioned more akin to a series of linear puzzles that had, at most, one or two ways of getting the objectives done, which were often tedious and cryptic. Silent Assassin improves on this by making most of its levels into sandboxes, taking direct inspiration from CN47’s best level, “Traditions of the Trade”. The levels are much bigger in scope and have a complex network of NPC pathfinding and environmental interactions, not exactly to the same scale as future games in the series from what I am aware, but still wholly more ambitious and interesting in comparison to its older sibling. I think my favorite example of this is in the first Malaysia mission “Basement Killing”; the mission takes place in this giant skyscraper with multiple floors and tons of civilians and security walking around, and your objective is to get into the lowest basement level to kill a computer guy. At first it seems neer impossible to get to the basement floor because the elevators are behind metal detectors and tons of guards, but if you do some digging around you will find several different ways to get in: you could take a guards uniform, throw you gear down the laundry chute, and then pick it up when you get down there; you could throw a smoke bomb down that same chute to cause the firefighters to go down to the basement, sneak into the fire department to grab a uniform, and then follow the other fighters so that no one will suspect you while triggering the the metal detectors; or you could just deliver the target a pizza and get him when you deliver it. The range of options presented in these levels is sometimes daunting. As well, I personally love the use of multiple floors and levels in the missions, the missions that take place in St. Petersberg has an incredible use of the sewers for strategically getting around the police patrolled streets, and then subsequently using them to make your escape.

There is still a notable amount of jank present, however, and I think this is a result of going for more nonlinear, open level design. The NPC’s are much more fidgety in this one; if the player looks at them too long, runs in an open area, or even just quickly checks the map, the AI will immediately be suspicious, sometimes even just opening fire on the spot. The game does go out of the way to tell you that running is suspicious, and will tell when certain areas are filled with particularly paranoid enemies, but even then they can be a little much and begin to try even the best players patience. On top of that, the bigger, more complex levels can leave the AI with broken pathfinding, or even broken set pieces; the Japan missions are probably the biggest culprit of this issue. The level “Hidden Valley” has a whole system where Agent 47 must stow away in the back of trucks in order to get past security check points, but in almost every single one of my attempts of this mission, the trucks pathfinding just completely broke, along with all the NPCs at the checkpoint, so I had to forgo my want to stealth and just John Wick my way through the rest of the level. The level's size can be mismanaged too; sometimes they are just too big for their own good, leaving to long sections of just running, only to have to restart because an enemy that you couldn’t see because of the draw distance spotted you. As well, these big open levels, open as in space not choice, are for some reason very cryptic, opting to not give the player any information till they reach a certain point in the mission. Which would be fine if they weren’t so big to the point that it takes nearly an hour of trial and error just to scope out where everything is, because the map isn’t really that helpful, especially on higher difficulties. Thankfully, there are manual mid mission saves that the player can utilize; a feature that was not available in the first game, but that still doesn’t excuse the poor design choices.

That being said though, there are a handful of things that I would like to mention that I believe supplement a lot of what the game does well. The overall presentation of the game has been astronomically improved from the first game; the voice acting is no longer stiff and actually feels like these characters have emotions, Agent 47 particular is elevated from just being a borderline blank slate to someone internally grappling with his place in the world as clone only meant for killing. The soundtrack, performed by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, gives much more tension and emotion to the big plot points when they occur, like how in the mission “Shogun Showdown” the score gets more grandiose as you progress up the giant tower, coming to a crescendo when you sneak up to behind the titular shogun at the top of the complex. Finally, the UI has been drastically improved and made more user friendly. I played this on a GameCube controller and it still felt intuitive, and not at all clunky like the first game did.

While the AI could have been better, and the bigger levels more concise, Silent Assassin far and away exceeds the precedent set by its precursor, and lays the groundwork for the intricate design and precision that would be put into the series going forward.

In direct contrast to my last review, Snake’s Revenge is a sequel that not only learns nothing from its predecessor, but doesn’t even know what made the first one so great in the first place. It is the definition of missing the point, it is a hollow imitation, and it is just straight up one of the worst games I have ever seen. But, while I am going to do my best to chronicle all this games faults, no words I write down can describe just how poorly designed Snake’s Revenge is, to the point that I implore you to go and play the game yourself, just so that you can stare in awe at how infuriatingly bad it is.

The first big thing that stood out to me while playing was how the screens were laid out; they genuinely felt like first drafts that had no play testing or revisions. The game starts you out in a jungle area where you have to avoid these gigantic searchlights that overlook the area; on paper this doesn’t sound all that bad, it is a stealth game after all, but as soon as you start moving about, you realize just how poorly these lights were placed. There are a good number of searchlights that are positioned right at the transition points between screens, which means that some of these lights are entirely unavoidable, as the player will just end up under one as they go from screen to screen; and to make matters worse, the screens that have the searchlights are pitch black, except for the small areas being illuminated by the lights, meaning that there is a high likelihood that the player is going to run into an object like a box, get stuck, and then subsequently get caught. Combine this with Snake’s new sprite being about twice as big as it was in Metal Gear, thus having a much larger hitbox, and you have areas that feel like they are almost meticulously designed to inconvenience the player at every turn. What's even worse, I don’t think this is even the worst part of this game; the absolute worst that Snake's Revenge has to offer are the side scrolling sections. These sections take after the extremely small, and insignificant elevator rides from the first game, except here they are drawn out into whole, lengthy sections, that require near clairvoyance to be able to get past. These sections have Snake moving through linear hallways, where the player needs to avoid security cameras, hovering drones, and guards, lest the alarm goes off and you have to deal with all kinds of enemies and hazards. Much like the searchlights, all of the obstacles in these sections are placed in the worst possible spots; oftentimes guards will be staring in your direction as soon as the screen changes; the only way to work around this is just to constantly be crouch-walking into every screen, otherwise you have no chance of getting past alive or without using a good chunk of you’re resources.

Thankfully, I guess, the majority of the game takes place in maps that are very reminiscent of the areas from Metal Gear; big dungeons or facilities with enemies to avoid and items to collect. If you played the first game, it should all feel pretty familiar, albeit very boring. I mentioned earlier how I felt like Snake’s Revenge was a hollow imitation of Metal Gear, and I believe this sentiment shows itself through how the game uses aspects of Metal Gears gameplay, but in a way that shows that they didn’t have any understanding as to why those gameplay mechanics were used. In Metal Gear exploration and back tracking were integral to the games progression, and the items you would collect would help you facilitate that goal, playing very much akin to Zelda or Metroid game; in Snake’s Revenge, the game still asks the player to gather items in order to progress, but they are either entirely optional, solve a problem that won’t be introduced until three levels later, or are given almost immediately after the situation you need them presents itself. The worst culprit of this is the battery for the transceiver; when you reach the first campsite, the battery for the transceiver goes out, so you need to go find a new one. A similar thing happened in the first game, where Snake loses contact with his team as he approaches building two (I think it was building two at least). The difference here is that, in Metal Gear, losing contact created tension within the story and made the player panic because their helpline had just been taken out; Snake’s Revenge doesn’t have any of this, the transceiver calls are scripted events, and the battery needed to fix the transceiver is literally on the next screen through a door. There are so many moments like this in the game, and while I don’t think it does anything to directly harm the experience, it just makes it pretty boring and linear, it still kind of sucks when you have the first game under your belt.

I think really the only good thing I can say about Snake’s Revenge is that it retroactively made me appreciate the subtle design of Metal Gear, things that I didn’t even notice during my play through because I just took good design for granted. Well, that and the music; the music slaps hard, like NES Castlevania type beat.

Before I get to deep into this review, I would like to mention that the version I am playing is the port for the SEGA Genesis with the remastered ROM hack; I was told that this is the best version of the game to play if you don’t want to deal with getting DOSBox or a Macintosh emulator running. The ROM hack, from my understanding, fixes some late game glitches, as well as fixing the music. I cannot confirm or deny that this ROM does what it says because I am not all that familiar with the original, but I can say that I didn’t encounter any game breaking glitches and the music sounded fine. I also believe that the input commands were altered to be more responsive and faithful to the original, which if they were, they did a fantastic job doing. I think I had less misinputs in this game than I did the original. It took me two whole days to get all this set up, mainly because I am not well versed in computer stuff, but I think it was well worth the effort. So with that out of the way, let's talk Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame

I am aware that Jordan Mechner did not solely develop Prince of Persia 2 like he did the first game; he worked on the general outline and concepts, while Broderbund Software did all the technical work; and because of that there was almost definitely some miscommunication on how ideas should be implemented. On one hand, I believe that improvements and innovations have been made to the original’s design philosophy; but on the other hand, I feel like there were a good number of oversights that were made in the implementation of these ideas. The combat is where my mind is drawn to when thinking about this; it is not necessarily improved, there is just a new layer that takes priority over the old. In the first game, combat felt like, and was, a real one on one sword duel between you and your opponent; being unable to leave the encounter while having to precisely time your strikes, blocks, and play around with some fancy footwork to win. Here in PoP 2, all of that nuance is still there, but it is just not utilized to the same extent because enemies are much more varied; there are times where the player will have to deal with encounters that either have enemies who don’t follow the groundwork set by the first game, like the medusa heads who don’t have attacks that can be blocked, or that several enemies that must be fought all at once. These new ideas sound like they could work on paper, but the first game's combat is not built for these types of situations, and leads to encounters that leave the player jaded, rather than challenged. I think this is the most extreme example of the point I am trying to present, but this sentiment is still echoed through the smaller design choices.

I mentioned in my review of Prince of Persia 1 that the traps and platforming challenges were made to inconvenience the player, not exactly halt them, but to waste their time, intentional death traps notwithstanding. Every puzzle functioned in its own little loop that was independent from the rest of the level; there was no way to soft lock yourself inside one of them. That is not the case in PoP 2, you very much can soft lock yourself within puzzles, and it is very annoying. Having save state definitely mitigates this problem, but there is still a major difference between a puzzle wasting two or three minutes of the players time, and twenty because they had to start the level over. That being said though, I do like the puzzles quite a bit, I found them to be more innovative, fully utilizing ideas and mechanics that the first game only flirted with. I particularly like how some levels ask the player to maneuver around and strategically use the falling platforms to get around the level; it makes the levels feel much more coherent rather than a series of screens. But, like I just mentioned, this comes at the cost of a gigantic set back if so much as one pressure plate is activated, or one platform is dropped out of place. It is just extremely demoralizing.

It is not entirely mismanaged though; I really like how much more open the levels are, there is more choice to be had in how to navigate and move around them. There is always a semi-clear main path that the player could follow in order to complete the level with the most amount of time possible, but there are also many other paths and areas that the player could explore that offer health upgrades and other such things. As well, a handful of the levels have multiple exits that will start you somewhere different on the next level, and while I can’t really confirm this, I am sure that at least one of these offers a faster time than the others. The environments are also much more diverse when compared to the first game; moving through ancient temples, forgotten cities, and one level that is just straight up non Euclidean geometry; as opposed to the first games dungeons of various colors. The story too is ever so slightly more ambitious. Yes, you still need to rescue the princess from Jaffar once again, but much more is learned about where the prince came from, and it makes him feel like his own being rather than a puppet for the player to project onto.

The only other real critiques I think I can give this one all come from the fact that the Genesis version of this game is just unfinished, despite how much the remastered ROM hack tries to hold it together. Sprites for things like the sword and dagger, or the different colored potions, are all the same. When I picked up the dagger for the first time I thought it was the sword, and proceeded to be very confused as to why the range had suddenly been shortened. Same thing with the potions, I went the first three or four levels with gaining a single health upgrade because I thought they were all the same basic health potion. As well, this version is straight up lacking every single story cutscene minus the intro and ending; I had to look up the scenes on Youtube because I was very confused as to what was going on. But, I don’t think these are criticisms that I can hold against the game, as they come from an unfinished version of it. Other than that I think it is a fine game, albeit with a handful of flaws; probably won’t be returning to this one anytime soon, but I still think it’s worth a playthrough for any Prince of Persia fan.

I didn’t like Spyro 2. Not entirely, but I do feel like it sours the taste of the first game. For every step forward, and for every improvement, Spyro 2 takes an equal step backwards, and with that step, a new inconvenience is born. It all just culminates in an experience that just feels lacking, especially when compared to the incredible framework set up by the first Spyro game.

Firstly, I want to start with the good, which there is a lot of, despite what I may have made it out to seem. Both the story and that story’s presentation have been greatly improved. In my review of Spyro 1 I noted that the player could go the whole game without knowing who the main antagonist is and why they were the bad guy, strictly because the game spends I don’t think even an actual minute telling the player or getting them acquainted with the world. In this game, however, the antagonist Ripto just might be the most memorable thing here; his voice acting and little animations give him so much life and stage presence. On top of that, unlike Gnasty Gnorc, Ripto actually shows up repeatedly throughout the game, in both cutscenes and boss fights, making him feel like a much more prominent threat. As well, the worlds Spyro visits are way more fleshed out and, for the most part, feel way more alive; there are NPCs who are fully voice acted and that are unique to the world you are exploring, some have side quests for the player to complete that add to the liveliness of it all, and each level has its own little isolated conflict that makes them all feel unique and memorable, outside of just aesthetics. My favorite example of this are within the Breezebuilder and Zephyr worlds; it seems that both of these worlds are in some kind of war between each other, so in one world the player will have to fight off the Zephyr inhabitants and help the Breezebuilders get their war ships back up and running, while in the other you help the Zephyr inhabitants clear their valley of the invading Breezebuilders.

On the non-aesthetic side of things, several quality of life improvements have been to how the game is played and navigated. Off the bat, the useless dodgerolls have been removed entirely and have been replaced with a hover move; the hover move is functionally a double jump, but is only available when Spyro is in a full glide. Normally, double jumps cause a problem of making platforming too easy and making it seem trivial; this hover ability is a great compromise because it still allows the platforming to be precise and require skill, while also giving that slight bit of wiggle room that those gliding sections from Spyro 1 desperately needed. As well, the fairies no longer require the player to interact with them and open a bunch of menus in order to save, now they just automatically save whenever Syro is near them. A map has been added too, allowing you to view the general outline and structure of whatever level you are currently in to better help with navigation; though the game does not tell you this, and would only know about it if you dug around in the options menu and found the button that turns it on. I went the whole game without knowing it was there, but I don’t think it is that big of a deal as the levels are pretty linear and flow very well, much like the first game. Finally, if you are missing one or two gems in an area and just can’t seem to find them, Sparks will pull a point straight in the direction of where those last few gems are; this, along with all the other quality of life features that I mentioned, was something I thought was added with the 2018 remakes, but I am very happy and surprised that it is here.

Sadly, this is where my praises of Spyro 2 end, as the rest of this game ranges from being the exact same as the first game, to some of the most infuriating and stupid design choices I have seen in a game. I mentioned earlier that this game has side quests, and it does. It has a whole lot of them actually, about three to four per level. There are so many of these side quests that I’d argue that they aren’t even side quests and are just the main gameplay. They clog up levels by having you do stupid mini games that are either so easy a baby could do it, or make me want to throw my controller across the room with how bad they are; they are like way less interesting versions of mini games that would normally be found in a Mario Party game. By far the worst one in this whole game is the one where you have to catch these crystal popcorn that come out of the ground, while also racing Hunter to see who can get ten of them first. This doesn’t sound all that bad until you start doing it and realize that Hunter not only has some godly form of clairvoyance that lets him immediately know where one is going to pop out of the ground, but also that he can turn on a dime, something that Spyro can very much not do. This ends up making a level that really shouldn’t take more than ten minutes, take over thirty because you have to deal with the most BS AI I have ever seen. While not as bad as this one was, all of the other side quests suffer similar issues of just being annoying and ultimately destroy the immaculate pacing that the first game had; having you repeatedly start, stop, read text boxes, and do mini games, rather than naturally progress through levels and solve puzzles that are organically weaved into the environment. What’s even worse, is that these quests are mandatory; the orbs that serve as the rewards for these quests are needed in order to progress, and eventually fight Ripto. Not all of the orbs are needed, but you still need at least forty of them, which means many of these mini games are gonna have to be done.

On top of this, there is a decent amount of backtracking; nothing too egregious, or even necessary, but still once again sully the satisfying flow and pacing of the first game’s design. In the first game, every collectable could be obtained in the first go in a level; this is still the case for about 85% of this game, but there are a couple of levels that require a revisit once a new ability is gained in order to 100%. This is just entirely unnecessary and, again, only serves to waste the players time, as well as actively discouraging going for 100%; even more so when you realize that levels reset when you revisit them, meaning you have to do the same objectives again just to grab one orb. It is just baffling to me that Insomniac can go from completely understanding what makes a game fun to 100%, so actively making me not want to spend any more time than I have to.

For all its faults, however, Spyro 2 is still an overall fine experience. The moment to moment gameplay is still the same as the first; running around, gliding, collecting gems, and torching enemies. The worlds are still just as whimsical and enjoyable as the first, if not more so with all the new characters and what not. And despite the absolutely awful minigames and weird backtracking, that great sense of flow and cohesion can still be found at points in the game. I may not have entirely liked it, but I can still see its strengths and understand why others really enjoy it.

I am not at all familiar with the rail shooter/light gun genre of games, I think my only real experience with them is playing those Terminator and Alien arcade cabinets at my local Dave n’ Busters at my friends birthday parties. So needless to say that my expectations for Dead Space: Extraction were very low; I expected it to be just an overall boring spin-off that shared some aesthetical similarities with its older sibling. It wasn’t until I booted up the game and saw that this was an in-house Visceral Games project, that I realized there might be more to this game than I initially suspected; and boy, was I right. Dead Space: Extraction not only coherently translates Dead Space’s atmosphere and aesthetic to an entirely linear experience, but also turns the Resident Evil 4 inspired combat into an arcade-like experience that uses the same mechanics and ideas, but in a much better way.

While personally I didn’t think the atmosphere in the first Dead Space was anything unique, I still recognize that it more than than effective for other people and appreciate all of the different facets that went into building that atmosphere; the sound design, art direction, and level design are all really great and make Dead Space stand out amongst its peers. But, the challenge that Dead Space: Extraction faced was taking all of those aspects that were used to create that sense of dread, and making it work in the much more linear and restrictive format of a rail shooter. The thing is though, the way Visceral went about doing this was not a one to one translation, but instead, a B-movie horror flick reinterpretation of those original ideas. Mind you, it is much more Evil Dead 1 than Army of Darkness, as in it still takes itself seriously, but that cheese is still very much there, almost in an ironic way. Firstly, the cast of characters that the story follows is much more colorful than the ones in Dead Space 1, with each character following typical horror movie tropes; McNeil is the rough and tough PI who doesn’t take shit from no one, Eckhardt is the coward turned traitor, Lexine is the damsel, and Weller is the bastard with a heart of gold. All of these characters are entertaining to follow and their chemistry with one another is honestly pretty fun, though some of the line deliveries from the voice actors are a little off sometimes, but I think this just adds to the endearing charm of this band of misfits. As well, I find it very funny that the entire structure and flow of the games story is the exact opposite of the first game; Extraction starts you out right where Dead Space ended, at the loading bay on the planet colony, and then proceeds to hit all the major set pieces from the first game, nearly beat for beat. It creates this cool situation where the player, assuming they have played Dead Space 1, knows what's coming, or at least they know how that area is going to play out; which I guess is just the nature of prequels, but I still find it cool nonetheless.

The combat also had to shift in order to accommodate the rail shooter genre, and similarly to the story and atmosphere, I think it works way better in this game. Dead Space 1 was very liberal with its use of the necromorphs, which is the norm for the horror game genre. But, what I ended up having a problem with is that Dead Space tried to have its cake and eat it too by having those traditional horror elements, but with combat that is comparable to Resident Evil 4 and 5. This doesn’t work because any tension that the game tries to build up is immediately dissolved once the player realizes that the guns and equipment available lets them absolutely make clowns out of the enemies. Extraction fixes this problem by fully embracing its RE4 roots and just sends droves upon droves of necromorphs, and just lets the player use their arsenal to its fullest extent. The plasma cutter is just as satisfying to use as it is in the first game, the force gun goes from being too good, to actually being used for its purpose as a “get off me” tool, and the flamethrower has gone from just ok, to being the most satisfying and effective weapon in the game; lighting hoards of necromorphs on fire when you get overwhelmed and watching the drop like flies is so much fun. There is even a new pistol that, while initially not sounding that good, ends up becoming a great workhorse tool because of how handy the alt fire is. All of this is elevated even more by the masterful use of the Wii Remotes motion controls; as expected from a light gun, the Wii Remote is used to aim and shoot at enemies, but the game also utilizes the controllers that I would have never expected. The joystick on the Nunchuk is what is used to switch weapons, and not the D-pad like I had originally expected; this creates a great sense of fluidity during combat encounters, making the swapping of weapons like second nature, rather than an inconvenience like it normally does. As well, I particularly like how, to switch to the alt fire of weapons, you tilt the Wii Remote to the side; much like how the Nunchuk makes the switching weapons smoother, this use of the motion controls makes the atl fires so much more usable because you can just switch to them effortlessly on the spot.

To close out, I would like to mention a couple of criticisms of the game. For a Wii game, it runs fine, it sometimes stutters slightly when there is an abundance of particle effects on screen, or when there are a lot of enemies. While I do overall like the use of motion controls, the way they are used for the power saw is just not good; much like how it operates in Dead Space, the weapon fires a buzz saw that the player can then parade around with and cut off necromorph limbs like a chainsaw. In Extraction it still functions like that, but the saw can also be moved along the Z axis, which doesn’t really work because it is very hard to tell how far or how close an enemy is on screen. Overall though, I thoroughly enjoyed Dead Space: Extraction, it is a fun and innovative take on both Dead Space’s original genre, as well as the light gun/rail shooter format.

As much as I loved this game, I don't have a whole lot to say about it, other than it is really good. I have tried writing a long ass review that goes in depth into why its so great, but every time I would write draft I just felt silly trying to describe how this game functions. It is one of those games that you really just have to play to witness its greatness. The one thing I will specially note is that the arm canon is one of the coolest and most versatile tools I have ever seen in a game, letting you blow up and break apart entire sections of levels; it's like Red Faction or Bad Company of crack cocaine. There is not a greater feeling of getting the drop on a group of enemies or cheesing your way to an objective because you decided to blow a hole through the floor, wall, or ceiling. I will say that if you aren't a fan of this type of "Woo Shooter" FPS game, you probably won't like it; but if you are, it is seriously one of the best games out there.

Hitman: Contracts is a much more refined experience compared to its predecessors; where Codename 47 served as a blueprint, and Silent Assassin a exploration of the limits of that blueprint, Contracts took what was learned from that exploration and stripped it down to only what worked. The outcome of this is what very well might be the best campaign this series has to offer, so far at least. It offers a level of depth, matched with a level of efficiency, that is unmatched by the prior games; it is exactly the type of experience that you would want from a Hitman game.

I think the best word to describe Silent Assassin is BIG. The game is borderline bloated; the levels are of a daunting size, the amount of options the game gives the player are overwhelming, and the overall run time is the longest in the whole series, World of Assassinations online notwithstanding. But despite that, there was still a lot of good that Silent Assassin did; particularly the complexity of the levels and freedom of approach are innovations of note. Contracts’ challenge was to take those innovations, and condense them down into an experience that isn’t as overwhelming to tackle; and I think it did an absolutely fantastic job doing so. Contracts gives the player roughly the same amount of information per mission as Silent Assassin did, if not slightly less, but the map size has been greatly reduced, making for a much more player friendly trial and error stage. As well, the smaller levels lead to much more dense areas that offer more of the creative problem solving that Silent Assassin introduced. A lot of these strengths can be seen through the remade levels from Codename: 47; the majority of the Contracts levels are remade or remixed versions of the best levels from the first game. The objective is usually the same, and the process of going about it is generally similar, but the levels have been expanded to include more elements of player freedom. Traditions of the Trade makes its triumphant return here, and serves as a great example of this idea. Instead of spawning you at the front of the hotel with no weapons, the game spawns the player to the left with a briefcase sniper rifle, this immediately opens the door for many possibilities. If the player remembers how the level functions from Codename: 47, they can take the rifle to the right side of the building and take out the guard on the balcony of the room one of the targets is in, making that kill way easier. As well, while I didn’t find it, I am almost positive there is a way to get the rifle past the metal detector and into the building because there is a hole in the roof of the swimming pool where the second target usually is; compare this to the way more linear nature of the first game’s iteration of the level. This is just a taste of what the refinement that Contracts offers, as this level is pretty tame in its changes when compared to the more extreme reworks of the other levels, as well as the few original levels.

I still do think there is a bit of an information problem, however. Not to say that the game doesn’t give the player enough information, it gives maybe slightly less than Silent Assassin, which is fine; the problem I had is just with how busy levels are and how much information they drop on the player. For the majority of the missions this is not a problem, as they are again remade versions of Codename: 47 levels, meaning that the player should have some background information as to how the mission functions. But for the few original missions, while they are really good, there is a lot of information to process because of how dense they are. The Beldingford Manor mission was probably the biggest offender of this. This level is full of winding mazes and secret passageways that make for a very complex and intricately designed level; and while I think this mission is very good, arguably the best in the game, it took me hours upon hours just to digest all that this levels has to offer, and left me feeling more overwhelmed than it did accomplished. Though I do understand that this very well might just be a me problem, so take the criticism with a grain of salt. That being said though, there is one level that I think is objectively bad, and that is the remake of Plutonium Runs Loose from the first game, Deadly Cargo. The objectives of this mission are actually simpler from its original incarnation, all you have to do is get on the boat and kill the target rather than kill him and defuse the bomb, but the method of going about it is entirely different. In the original, you had to sneak your way onto the boat by killing one of the crew members and taking their uniform; in this new one you have to infiltrate a swat team that is staked out in one of the warehouses in harbor, and then kill the target as they’re assaulting the boat. The game never hints that you have to infiltrate the swat team, the most it does is tell you that the police have locked down the harbor, and I guess this is supposed to be the hint, but I don’t understand how you are supposed two and two together with that little amount of information. As well, this solution entirely goes against the philosophy of player freedom that the other levels, and the whole previous game had been building. Again, the rest of the game is wholly a masterpiece in its own philosophy; this one level is just a giant sour spot on an otherwise fantastic game.

Overall, Hitman: Contracts is a fantastic game that breaks down and refines the Hitman formula into an experience that not only is much more manageable when compared to its predecessor, but also offers a new level of depth with that approach. While it does have some slight miscommunication problems, those issues are entirely overshadowed by just how fantastic the rest of the game is. I highly recommend and am eager to see how or if it is topped by what comes next, because I think it will be very hard to do so.

Metal Gear 2 is a major step up from both its predecessors. The sheer scope of the game is extremely impressive for the time; the giant interconnected map, the drama of the story, the creative puzzles and problem solving, and the overall presentation far exceeds that of Metal Gear 1 and Snake’s Revenge, although the later wasn’t all that outstanding in any of those fields to begin with. As well, it really feels like Kojima came into his own with this project; even for somebody like me who hasn’t played any of the future games, and only knows bits and pieces from internet osmosis, Kojima’s signature style can clearly be seen. It genuinely felt like Kojima cared much more about this project, much more than he did the first game; and whether it be because he was much more invested in this entry, or that he just wanted to one up Snake’s Revenge, it has culminated in an experience that is worth any players time, even non die hard Metal Gear fans.

The first Metal Gear’s narrative was nothing to write home about, it was simple and really only served to progress the game forward; in comparison, Metal Gear 2’s story is like The Godfather. Characters are actual characters and not plot macguffins, the player becomes invested in their personal stories and wants to see them make it to the other side, or their demise in the case of the antagonists. But even then, the game’s antagonists are honestly sympathetic at times. The returning Dr. Madnar and Gray Fox are both stand out examples of this; they both have similarly tragic but understandable backstories that led them to where they are, but are still very clearly villains who have done heinous things. Additionally, in what was probably the biggest surprise this game had, each of the characters play into the games overall thesis of war and the never ending cycle of violence. All the characters have been shaped by war in some way, like how Gustava was separated from her partner by the Berlin Wall, or how Snake himself has some form of PTSD from the Outer Heaven Uprising that keeps him from just quitting the operation. Hell, there are even children NPCs that can be found roaming the facilities of Zanzibar Land who have been displaced by NATO’s war efforts against Big Boss and his team of mercenaries; to which later Big Boss calls them the next generation of soldiers to fuel the machine. Mind you, this is all from a game that came out in the year 1990, on a computer system that has all been but forgotten to time; this was during a time where narratives in video games didn’t ever go past “save the princess” or “kill the bad guys”. This story was so far ahead of its time it's almost absurd. Not to say that the story is perfect, or even all that serious; many of Kojima’s “isms” do slightly detract from the story's overall impact; some of the dialogue is particularly campy, and Dr. Madnar breaking the fourth wall by name dropping the MSX and Konami are a bit distracting, although it is rather funny. Additionally, the cinematics are much more dramatic and lengthy, which I assume is emblematic for the rest of the series going forward, as is everything previously stated. But it is not just the presentation that took a major leap forward, the game design is also just leagues better from the first entry.

Both Metal Gear and Solid Snake function quite similarly in terms of progression; the player is dropped into a large, interconnected map where they must collect key cards, weapons, and gadgets to move forward. But where they differ is in the players' agency. For the most part, the challenge in Metal Gear’s design was learning enemy patrol patterns and then maneuvering around them so as to not get caught, which is fine, but it is the only form of interaction the player has; the player does have weapons they can use, but using them will set off the alarm, and the gadgets are all used for puzzles. It is a one sided interaction. Solid Snake fixes this issue by not changing, but rather evolving this design concept. For starters, the enemy patrol patterns are way less complex, but in turn, have become harder to recognize; but that doesn’t really matter all too much because a new map has been added that lets the player see where enemies are and where they are headed. Combine this with the larger maps and the ability to crawl under certain walkways, cracks in the wall, and under crates; the player has much greater control over how they navigate through each area; and when the player does inevitably trigger the alarm, it actually feels like a mistake made by player, rather than the jank of the game. Additionally, Snake’s array of gadgets that he collects are far greater; almost all of the items, outside of a small few, have utility functions outside of their associated puzzle. The camouflage mat is a particular standout, letting the player create their own cover to hide under on the go, letting the player be a bit more risky with their movements. On top of that, the keycards have been ever so slightly altered; they are still numbered and the player has to still equip them to open a door, but now for every three that the player collects, they can then be combined into a colored card that functions as all three of those keys, making the repeated opening and closing of doors when backtracking more convenient and player friendly. On that note, backtracking might be the only criticism I have in regards to this section. The greater majority of the game is paced very well, it is only the last third of the game that has some unnecessary backtracking, but that is a minor negative drop in an otherwise fantastic sea of design.

I would like to close by mentioning the fact that I played Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, as well as Metal Gear 1 and Snake’s Revenge, in the Metal Gear Master Collection Volume 1 that was released last year. I will probably not be returning to this collection for future entries in this series, not because the collection is bad, but because I already own original copies of each of the games on their original hardware, and I think it would be better to play them that way. So with that, I wanted to say that I think the collection is a great value for anybody looking to get into the series. The emulation of the two MSX titles, the NES port of the first game, and Snake’s Revenge are all great; the quality of life features such as save states and virtual manuals really make these the definitive versions of these classic titles, though I wish you didn’t have open a browser on my Xbox to just look at the manual. I would highly recommend all of these original titles, as well as the Master Collection as the format to play them, although you could probably skip Snake’s Revenge and miss nothing.

I am going to be entirely honest with you, I did not finish Prince of Persia 3D. Not because I didn’t want to, there is some good in this one that I think makes it interesting. Overall, it is just a clone of the PS1 Tomb Raider games; the controls are also better I'd say, with lots of customization options for both controller and keyboard, the graphics hit that late 1990’s Quake 2 style graphics that I personally really enjoy, and the music is pretty damn good. The level design, from what I played at least, is ok; again very reminiscent of some of the more ok levels from like Tomb Raider. The combat too is just serviceable, functionally being the same as the duals in the original duology, but in 3D with some fancy particle effects. The reason I quit, however, is because I could not get this game to run properly for the life of me.

To make a long story short, PoP 3D’s development was a dumpster fire, riddled with inner company drama and a bad case of an older developer not understanding newer design principles. For that reason, the game didn’t sell well, and has been abandoned by its current IP holder, left to rot in the annals of the internet. So, currently, the only two ways to play this game is to either get a physical copy for the Dreamcast release of the game, or try to find a pirated copy of the original online. I choose the latter, as the prior was just not an option for me. I was fine with this at the beginning, as I have a little bit of prior experience with emulating games. But, as I soon found out, this was nowhere near as simple. It took me nearly a month to finally get the file I took off of a sketchy website to finally work, something about the format of the file not being right, and not having the proper programs installed to run it; things that I just do not understand. Eventually though, I did get it to boot up, but I quickly found out that the game was just a broken mess. Firstly, the cutscenes didn’t work; secondly, the frame rate moved at a snail’s pace; and finally, the input lag was unbearable. No cutscenes is something I can work with, just look up the scenes on Youtube and you get the same effect. But a shitty framerate and input lag? That is not something that can be ignored; and let me tell you, I tried, I really tried to fix it. I went to every corner of the internet that had even the smallest info on Prince of Persia 3D, which frankly isn’t a lot of places, but nonetheless I did, and I found nothing. The one place that did have a ROM hack to fix these issues didn’t even end up working because apparently the files were not compatible with my version of the game. Hell, I even tried editing the program compatibility to run at a lower resolution and FPS to see if that would work, but all I ended up doing is just breaking the game further.

So, I have given up. This one bad game is not worth the amount of gray hairs it has given me, and I am not willing to teach myself a whole bunch of computer mumbo jumbo just to get a crappy PC game from 1999 to work on my laptop. Maybe if I had just put down the money and bought a Dreamcast, and tracked down a copy of this game for it, I would be singing a different tune, but it is just not worth the effort to play what is just a bad Tomb Raider clone. If you can somehow miraculously get this game to work, I will applaud you, but as for me? I am done trying to get this dumbass game to work. I’ll go spend my time playing something that actually works.

Normally, when I play through a game, I will accumulate about two and a half pages worth of notes on whatever game I am playing. These couple of pages are usually filled with things about the game that I find interesting, as well as any meaningful ideas I find interesting; I find that writing down interesting findings helps me remember the games better later on, as well as help me better write the reviews for them. Spyro: Year of the Dragon has barely a page for its entry. This is not because I think it is a bad game, not by any means; it is honestly a great improvement over Spyro 2. But, that improvement doesn’t necessarily come from a place of innovation, rather a correcting step backwards; a step that was definitely needed, but in the process, creates an experience that is very much more of the same.

What I have come to realize is that Spyro suffers from what I like to call the Tomb Raider dilemma. This is a dilemma where the first game in the series comes out the gate near perfect, and it leaves the developer in a situation where they don’t really know where to go. Either, they do more of what works and risk being criticized as derivative, or they try new stuff and risk alienating the players. Spyro 2 attempted the latter and, for the most part, failed; it ended up being an experience that just lacks the sense of flow and progression that the first game had, and replaced with boring and infuriatingly bad mini games and side quests. Conversely, Year of the Dragon corrects the additions made by Spyro 2 by having its side quests function within the realm of the games core mechanics, rather than them having their own proprietary controls and mechanics. The primary form of these changes comes from the new playable characters; there are five of them in total, and while each of them do play differently from Spyro, they aren’t too dissimilar and the objectives of their stages/quests are the same as the rest of the levels, that being to collect gems and save dragon eggs. Compare this to the mini games from Spyro 2 like the ice hockey and or crystal popcorn section that don’t follow the core gameplay loop and are really jarring in conjunction with the rest of the game. Though there are still a couple of mini game type challenges that made their way into Year of the Dragon, they control way better than the predecessors and are overall more fun; the skate boarding challenges are a great example of this. But, these improvements are not without drawbacks.

Year of the Dragon is a big game, it is bigger than Spyro 2, and it is much bigger than the first game; and because of how this game streamlines and uses the Spyro gameplay loop, it is really noticeable just how big this one is. Spyro 2, despite its bad game design choices, still distracts you from its increased run time by having you do different tasks; but here in this one, it is very much noticeable. The new characters do help slightly with variety, but their sections are so few and far in between, it feels like an eternity before you get to play as one of them again. Because of this, and the prior mentioned streamlining, a lot of this game’s levels kind of overstay their welcome. Personally, I felt really burned out by the end of the game because I felt like I just played a longer version of Spyro 1, which isn’t a bad thing per se, but nonetheless that's how I felt. Additionally, none of the levels reach the peak that they should, there is no real crescendo if you will. Spyro retains all the abilities he gained in Spyro 2, yet there is no level that pushes the player to utilize those abilities in interesting and creative ways; the game is just content with giving the player easy as all get out levels throughout the entire game until it is just over. There is a slight difficulty spike in the final world that I enjoyed, but still nothing stands out. I don’t think I could name a level from this game that isn’t one of the new characters' home world missions. It all just adds up to a game that just doesn't do a whole lot

I know the general fan consensus is that this is the best game in the trilogy, and I can understand that, but for me it's just ok. I think overall Year of the Dragon is a good game, not quite as good as Spyro 1, but definitely better than Spyro 2. It just doesn’t do anything that hasn’t already been seen in the previous games, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetic. It is more of the same, albeit a good more of the same.

A short review for an even shorter game. Dead Space: Ignition is a short prologue to the events of Dead Space 2, and is entirely made up of small puzzle sections, segmented by a motion comic that tells a somewhat intriguing story. There are three puzzles in total: a pipedreams type light puzzle, a reverse tower defense game, and a racing one. The light puzzle is definitely the best and has the most variety with its challenges, the tower defense game is neat but can really just be brute forced every time and that will get the job done, and the racing one is bad because the controls for it suck, they are way to clunky and slow for how fast the player icon is going. They are serviceable and are mostly fun for the games short run time, which the same can be said for the story. The motion comic segments are, again, intriguing, and nothing more really. I have yet to play Dead Space 2, but I can say that this game has got me a little excited to see what happens; but that's all this game is really good for, set up for the next big Dead Space game. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, the game was free with pre-orders and is free on Gamepass, so I don’t think anyone was really expecting much out of it. That being said though, it's still enjoyable, and at the very least doesn’t overstay its welcome

When it comes to the current boomer shooter scene, and really any movement that preys on nostalgia, a lot of the projects that come out tend to label themselves as a retro throwback made to emulate the feel of those old games people enjoyed, but oftentimes that is where they stop. Some choose to wear the guise of an older game in order to subvert expectations and do something new, while others settle with simple imitation of the classics; sadly the latter is more common than the former. Games like Prodeus, Warhammer 40k: Boltgun, and Slayers X, while having merit in somethings, ultimately just feel like hollow echoes of their influences. Ion Fury, at first, looks like it is going to be in a similar situation; a game that is trying emulate the likes of the Build Engine trinity, with Shelly Bombshell formerly being a Duke Nukem character, and the fact that the game is actually built in a heavily modified version of the original Build Engine. But, throughout the game's run time, it slowly unveils itself as something more; it is a direct evolution and improvement over its inspirations, it keeps the same feel but without the clunkiness and outdated design tropes.

The importance of the Build Engine games, that being Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Shadow Warrior, was their intricacy. The levels that make the worlds that these games take place in had a level of detail and openness that other FPS games just didn’t have; Duke Nukem’s levels were chalked full of air vents that acted as alternate routes and consumable items, like jet packs and steroids, that could lead to complete sequence breaks and level skips if used properly. Blood also had this, but added onto it with much more in depth combat and brutal combat, asking the player not just to aim and shoot, but to actively engage with the 3D environment by using crouch and jump to dodge fire, rather than just finding cover. In a modern context, these innovations aren’t anything unique, they have been integrated into the standards of game design, and as such, are just expected. This is the trapping that the boomer shooters mentioned earlier fall into, they replicate the innovation without improvement, creating a flat circle of design. Ion Fury sets itself apart by going beyond this; it uses the design tropes set up by its forefathers and fully explores them. Levels don’t just have one or two ways to approach, they have a hundred; there could be two different sets of air vents that lead to different positions that flank a group of enemies, there could be an explosive wall that kills the enemies on the other side, there could be a series of banisters or edges that can be jumped across in order to gain the high ground, and so on and so forth. Once the first one of these alternate routes is found, the player's brain starts to seek them out and begins to notice more of them as the game progresses; it keeps the player engaged and gives them a sense of freedom in a linearly structured game. It's not just the physical level geometry that keeps the player engaged, the way the enemies and the player interact also has a level of depth to them not seen in other games. The most blunt example of this is how the robot headcrab enemies overload and explode when hit with the electric baton, offering an ammo free alternative to taking out these smaller enemies. My favorite though is the centipede enemies; these guys break apart into shorter and shorter versions of themselves if you hit their body, but will die in one go if you get a perfect headshot, encouraging the player to slow down for a second so that the encounter won’t get out of hand. Additionally, much like blood before it, the enemies that fire projectiles, particularly the grenade grunts and bow grunts, really keep the player on their toes. If the player just runs around standing straight up like they would in any other game, the will get blown to bits; but, if they utilize the crouch and jump as not just platforming mechanics, but also ways to juke out enemies, these types of enemies become some of the easiest in the game. But, of course, these enemies wouldn’t be nearly as fun to fight if the arsenal of weapons wasn’t up to snuff, and they very much are.

I really appreciate the balancing and utility of the weapons in Ion Fury. Most FPS games that feature weapons with alternate fire mechanics make the mistake of either making the alt fires way too good, to the point that they overshadow the base fire, or they are way too gimmicky and not worth using. Ion Fury strikes the perfect balance between these two sides by having the alt fires be not too drastically different from the base fires, but different enough to where scenarios in which one would be better than the other can be differentiated. The Ion Bow is the weapon that I think first demonstrates this. The single bolt base fire is great for taking out the group of enemies right before the first boss because of how precise it is, giving clean head shots to all the singular enemies in that wave. But, the overload alt fire where it shoots out dozens of groups of bolts in quick succession proves to be extremely useful for both the boss and its accompanying flying drones that move sporadically. My favorite weapon in the game, the bowling bombs, do a similar thing, just on a much more subtle scale. The alt fire acts like a traditional grenade, Shelly lights the wick and lobs it in a general direction, and then it explodes, badabing badaboom, simple and reliant. But the base fire is a bit more tricky; it can either be rolled along the ground immediately to hit long range targets, or held a bit longer to activate a homing feature that can hit enemies from around corners, making it an extremely versatile weapon. The only weapon that doesn’t really fit this mold is the Loverboy, the starting pistol. The Loverboy’s alt fire lets Shelly pull a Clint Eastwood and auto headshot up to three enemies at a time, which is objectively better than its single shot base fire. Although, I think this is fine because it is the starting pistol, and it grants it relevance even into the final level of the game; as well it's not the easiest thing to get the hang of, so there is a bit of a skill gap. All the other weapons are great too, I just don’t really want to mention all of them here. That being said though, there are a couple of gripes I have with Ion Fury, but they are mostly to do with the porting job to the Nintendo Switch.

As mentioned, the version of this game that I played was the port released for the switch back in 2020, this is the version I bought years ago when it first came out, and I didn’t feel like buying it again on Steam or Xbox. This port of the game is pretty good all things considered; the frame rate does dip, and sometimes slows to a crawl, when big explosions happen or lots of enemies are on screen, but these instances are few and far between. My main issues come in the form of accessibility and options, there are very few of them. Firstly, there is no button mapping, just two alternate control methods, which is better than nothing, but these alternate options don’t change the things I wanted. The game has bumper jumper set to the right bumper and makes the player use the D-pad to toggle between weapons. The first of these is an issue because it means the player can not shoot and jump at the same time, which I am used to as a console FPS fan, but it still sucks regardless as it was so close to being functional, it just needed to be moved to the left bumper. The second issue is bad because having weapon selection mapped to the D-pad means that the player can't move and select weapons at the same time, which is a big issue. The game tries to mitigate this by having the shotgun’s grenade alt fire be a shortcut to the other side of the selection wheel, but I would have rather had a proper weapon wheel like in Dusk or Doom Eternal. Additionally, the games draw distance can be a little low, leaving things far off in the distance hard to see, this is only really bad in some of the levels set in the open streets or subway tunnels, otherwise it is not that big of a deal.

Ion Fury stands proud as one of the originators of this boomer shooter phenomena, standing alongside both Dusk and Amid Evil. It is a prime example of how to take what was set up by its influences, and improve upon them in order to unleash the full potential of those ideas. As this new genre continues to grow, and more and more games come out that simply want to be like the classics and nothing more, I hope more games look to what Ion Fury has done, to see how to properly create a meaningful homage to the past.

I feel like a bit of a broken record talking about Hitman: Blood Money, because what I have to say about it is very similar to what I had to say about every previous entry in this series, save for Codename 47. It is a direct improvement over its predecessor, expanding on ideas introduced in the previous entry, and bringing new innovations to the table that make the experience even better than before. Again, broken record, I feel like I’ve said this about each game since Silent Assassin. But, it is true. In fact, I would go as far as to say this is the best game in the series so far, maybe period. I am aware that the World of Assassination trilogy greatly shifts the focus of the series, and so I would argue that Blood Money is the finale and peak of the classic Hitman formula, giving the player the tools to create their own path.

The big step that each game in this series has taken is the expansion of depth, and Blood Money dives even further into this by giving the player near total freedom on how to approach missions. I know I have said this with every game in this series, but it rings most true here. In the previous games, the player could be considered an invasive species; each level functions as its own little ecosystem that the player picks apart piece by piece, exploiting its natural systems and patterns. Blood Money’s approach to this is similar, but different in the fact the player is more of a terraformer, sculpting and curating each mission rather than dismantling it. The opening mission serves as a very direct, but efficient tutorial, introducing the player to a sample of the greater scope the game has, and sowing the seeds of creativity for the more complex missions. It takes time to demonstrate that player is in much more control than they were before; items like the coin show that reliance on AI pathfinding and preset routes isn't the only way to get the jump on enemies, and the use of more unique kill methods like from above strangulation and using a chandelier to kill a target make it clear to the player that there are now better, more interesting ways to take out hits than just using a bullet or sneaking up behind them. I particularly loved the remote bomb and used it quite frequently; dropping it in a place I new a target would be stopping at, going and completing an entirely different objective, and then detonating the bomb from halfway across the map, and subsequently making the death look like an accident, just never got old no matter how many times I did it. Additionally, the before mission loadout selection is a great feature, letting the player bring weapons into the mission that better suit their desired play style; I personally am a big sniper guy, so I would bring a rifle into almost every single mission and try to use it, creating so really funny and creative kills in the process. As well, I think the level design plays a big factor in facilitating this level of player freedom and control.

Blood Money’s set of levels are wholly unique unto themselves, and are not only some of the best in the series, but I think some of my favorites in gaming period. On a purely aesthetic perspective, each of the game's twelve-ish missions are fantastic. The game will have 47 traveling across the good old US of A, going from the grimy docks of Baltimore, to the hedonistic casinos of Las Vegas, and everywhere in between, except Texas sadly. This means that the player gets a good look at all the different environments and landscapes that the US has to offer, and serves as a nice breath of fresh air from the usual rainy streets of Hong Kong or snowy government buildings of Russia. From a mechanical perspective, this game's set of levels blow everything else this series has done out of the water. Blood Money adds a new feature that lets 47 volts over small ledges and climb up certain walls, this creates a level of verticality that the previous games just did not have, and lets the player get really creative with mapping out different routes. Sure, missions like “Traditions of the Trade” and “Basement Killing” took place in big, multilevel buildings, but that is not comparable to figuring out that you can bypass a security checkpoint in “Death of the Mississippi” by climbing up one of the support banisters, or doing a similar thing in “A Vintage Year” by shimmying up a drainage pipe to get the drop on the target without having to take out one of the guards. Elevators too have been recontextualized because of this. Every elevator now has a hatch that 47 can climb through, meaning that if the player studies a target's routes well enough, or lures them into an elevator, the player can execute the aforementioned above ground strangulation that not only kills the target, but also hides the body in the process. No spoilers, but I made a great use of this in the penultimate mission. This level of verticality and level complexity opens the door for some of the most absurd and fun ways to complete missions that I have ever seen. But, of course, the game is not without its faults, even if they are few and far between.

I really don’t think any of Blood Money’s missteps are detrimental to the overall experience, if anything they are just ideas that weren’t fully fleshed out. The new notoriety meter is interesting on paper; if the player is too reckless in a mission and is spotted doing suspicious things by NPCs or security cameras, then guards are more likely to take notice of and be more suspicious of the player in the following missions. In theory, this would make the player want to be more cautious with their playstyle, but the game has an option to just pay off witnesses with bribes at the end of each mission, effectively negating any meaning the notoriety meter had. Mind you, though, unless the player decides to go totally postal in a level, they will only gather a small amount of notoriety, even if they are a little bit reckless; I think I only gained a total of thirty points on the meter during my playtime, and that was easily paid off with what was practically pocket change in comparison to what the game gives you for completing a hit. It is neat that it's there, and it definitely had a small amount of influence on how I played, but overall it could be missing from the game and nothing would be lost. Similarly, the story is a feature that has very little presence. I will say that Blood Money is the most ambitious entry when it comes to its story. The premise of 47 being hunted down by a rival agency, and that same agency trying to bring down the ICA from the inside is really intriguing, and the moral commentary of the nature and regulation of cloning rings a bit close to home with the current political climate. But it runs into the same problem that the other games had where the missions and overarching plot don’t feel connected, it feels like a series of unrelated missions that are intersected by a vaguely intriguing story. There are subtle foreshadowing moments that I really appreciate from diegetic NPC dialogue and columns in the end of mission newspaper, but those are only minor things, the overall series of events just feels disjointed. Even the prequel mission to Contracts feels shoehorned in, with it randomly being the third mission, and its fallout only being vaguely mentioned. The story is somewhat interesting at best, and completely missable at worst.

I think I mentioned in my Contracts review that the Hitman formula finally clicked with me, that I was finally beginning to understand the inner workings of this series. If that is the case, then Blood Money is the game that has made me fall in love with it. By simply giving the tools to the player, the developers at Io Interactive created an experience that encourages creativity, and really asks the player to think outside of the box. The linear nature of Codename 47 has been completely shed, and from its cocoon comes some of the best sandbox design ever seen. Not only do I think this is my favorite Hitman game, I think this might be one of my new favorite games of all time.

I am very torn on how I feel about Metal Gear Solid. I know deep down that it is a good game, and I can recognize a lot of the great and innovative design choices that set it apart from both games of its time, and even games of today. But, I also can’t help but feel disappointed with it .While it very well might be the game’s monumental legacy overshadowing the actual game and thus overinflating expectations, I don’t think it is that. I think it is more of being indecisive on what it wants to be; it is trying to be both an evolution of the exploration and stealth based gameplay of the first two games, and a more cinematic, set pieces based, boss rush style game, with a much heavier emphasis on the narrative. As a result, it fails in both categories, these two styles don’t mix well. There are many good ideas and mechanics sprinkled throughout the entire game, but they end up feeling either half baked or void of their full potential. It ended up leaving a taste in my mouth that made me wish it would have fully embraced one or the other, instead of trying to have its cake and eat it too.

The stealth and general moment to moment gameplay has been greatly improved and innovated on from Metal Gear 2, which is to be expected with the eight year long gap in between games. Guards' patrol patterns are much less rigid now, they still follow pre-made routes, but they are much more aware than they ever were in the original duology. They will follow Snake’s footprint trails in the snow when in the outside areas, if Snake so much as lightly grazes a metal grate they will immediately become suspicious, and now they have the ability to look up because of the game being fully 3D. As well, the player’s abilities have been ever so slightly tweaked to make sneaking around more interesting. No longer can Snake just pixel perfect take out enemies with a couple of punches, if the player tries to melee an enemy, they will only knock them on the ground for a short time before they get up and trigger an alarm. As well, the player has access to gear such as flash and chaff grenades that can stun enemies and security cameras/turrets respectively, making the planning process of how to get around obstacles much more interesting and dynamic. On the flip side of the design docket, this game features many, many more linear action sequences and set pieces. From scaling down the side of a tower while being shot at by a HIN-D, to running up a million flights of stairs while being chased by a ceaseless amount of guards, this game really makes the player feel like they are in a big budget action movie. I particularly love how over the top the boss fights are, with fights like the HIND-D and and REX fights being sheer spectacles, and Psycho Mantis really challenging the idea of what a boss fight can be by making the player use real world things to gain the advantage. My problem, though, with both of these design styles is that they don’t compliment each other, at least not in the way they are implemented here.

I think the main problem is that these two styles don’t play into each other. Metal Gear Solid is not the first game to have bosses, nor is it the first to have set pieces, but what other games do right is that they build off of the normal gameplay so that those skills translate to whatever those special segments require of the player. Tomb Raiders traps require the same precision and platforming skills that the ordinary gameplay teaches, and a game like Resident Evils bosses usually has some kind of puzzle aspect because that is what comprises the rest of the game. Here though, each boss fight and action sequence has its own little one off mechanics and gimmicks that are found nowhere else in the entire game; the Sniper Rifle and stabilization meds are only really used during the Sniper Wolf fight, the rope climbing mechanic is only utilized in the HIND-D fight, and the Psycho Mantis fight is the only time the games asks the player to really think outside of the box in that manner. The only boss that doesn’t feel weirdly detached from the rest of the game is the fight with Raven, because it has Snake sneaking around setting up traps and taking potch shots at Raven while trying to get spotted by him. It just feels very jarring going from a small stealth segment that plays like the previous games, into a near 30 minute long cutscene that is then followed up by an equally as long boss fight that nowhere near reflects the gameplay of the rest of the game. It's a complete whiplash in design, and creates a disjointed experience, at least for me.

Outside of that very specific criticism, I do have a couple other critiques that are probably a bit more understandable. Firstly, I'm not a big fan of how so many elements from Metal Gear 2 were just reused in this game with very little changes. Stuff like the temperature sensitive key card, the long chase up the stairwell to the roof, Snake getting jumped by four guards in the elevator, and even the final fight with Metal Gear and Liquid being almost identical to how the fight with Metal Gear and Gray Fox just kind of stuck me as a bit lazy. Though it could be that Kojima included these bits as a way to spiritually remake Metal Gear 2 in a way, but who am I to say? As well, Kojima’s writing style is a bit strange, he is very blunt and doesn’t leave a lot of room for interpretation, and for whatever reason is very horny every time a female character is included in a scene. Lastly, the Sniper Wolf fight sucks, it just sucks, nothing more. Overall, I think Metal Gear Solid is an absolute spectacle of a game, it is a wild ride from start to finish. My only complaint is that it feels a little disjointed going from new idea to new idea, but I do think its greater than the sum of its parts.