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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun lacks in substance it makes up for sheer, unadulterated viscera; it is a boomer shooter to its very core. Nothing else matters other than painting the walls of each of the game's 24 chapters crimson with the blood of the heretics that dare stand against you. The game asks you not to think, just kill without discrimination.

The weapons appropriately match this sentiment; the guns are blunt, with disregard to any sense of utility in exchange for raw fire power. Not to say they all do the same thing though; there are of course situations where the shotgun is going to be better than the titular boltgun, and the plasma guns splash damage is particularly handy in some scenarios, but really just holding down the trigger and letting bullets and blood fly is often the best way to approach encounters. As well, the sound design of the guns play into this play style; all the weapons just have a punch and power that makes them unendingly satisfying to fire in long bursts, to the point where I would often use a gun because I just wanted hear the sound of the projectile shooting out of the barrel and the shell hitting the floor. The game also provides copious amounts of ammo to ensure that you can fulfill this desire, there was never a single time where I didn’t have a sufficient amount of ammo, say for the game's BFG equivalent. The level design also encourages this run and gun strategy. The levels vary from being linear hallways where enemies are lined up like bowling pins for the marine to knock down in absurdly bloody fashion, and gigantic open maps where, to open the exit door, you run around and kill everything in sight, and sometimes then some. As well, health packs, armor (called contempt here), ammo, and secret power ups are all scattered around these arenas; so if you want to live you are going to have to run, jump, and pile drive through the environment.

However, as fun and cathartic as running through enemies with the force of god, it inevitably loses its luster after a while; and that is where the core flaw of this game lies. The game has no nuance. Like I mentioned, the guns only exist to do damage, they have no utility outside of that, which makes deciding which one to use for a given situation a matter of which one do I have the most ammo for. The enemies are also just as blunt as the weapons, they only exist to do damage and offer no other way of inconveniencing the player; the only real determining factors on which enemy should be dealt with first is how big their health bar is and how fast they can take yours. Compare this to the likes of Doom Eternal where the game constantly asks to understand the abilities of your guns beyond just damage and to apply them to dynamic combat encounters where enemies are designated to affect the players actions and train of thought in different ways, serving almost like a puzzle that is repeatedly un-solving itself.

Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is still a good game, don't get me wrong, and it will certainly make a name for itself in the ever growing pantheon of retro boomer shooters. But I still feel like it doesn’t fully understand what makes for engaging design in this genre, and instead decides to fully engross itself with a lot of the surface level concepts that people think about when discussing the retro first person shooter scene.

I would like to preface this review by saying that I think Dead Space is a fantastic game, and it does a lot of things really well, but I can't help but feel that it wears its influences on its sleeve a bit obviously, as well as not fully understanding what made those influences great. But I first want to start with the good, cause like I said, I think it's a fantastic game when looked at and played in a vacuum.

The atmosphere is what is considered to be the games strong suit, and I think I can agree for the most part. The USG Ishimura is probably up there as one of the best settings in a horror game; the nature of being on a gigantic mining ship in the far off future lends itself to easily alienating the player. The halls of the Ishimura are long and lined with air vents that build dread with the sheer potential that something might come crawling out of them; the scattered bodies of former crew mates and their deranged ramblings written in blood on the walls serve as a grim reminder of the situation at hand; and the moments where you are outside the ship in space, where you can catch a brief glimpse into the vast emptiness of space, leave the player with a feeling of overwhelming sense of isolation. But, like I mentioned earlier, Dead Space wears its influence on its sleeve, and I think that is most apparent here in the games world. It is extremely similar to both Doom 3 (yeah I know) and Prey 2006, all the way down having anti gravity mechanics and weird, alien, fleshy stuff overtaking the facility as you progress; and I can't help but feel like those games did what Dead Space does but better. Doom 3’s first person perspective allows for much more immersion into the environment, and Prey just goes all in on all the weird and trippy stuff Dead Space only flirts with. Dead Space also makes the mistake of never leaving the player alone; the atmosphere works well in Doom and Prey because there is ample time for the player to digest the environment and create their own fear. Dead Space has a constant need to explain and guide the player on absolutely everything, there is no getting lost or ambiguity in the game's objectives, either a NPC tells you exactly how to solve a problem or the game literally gives you a line to follow on your map. I am not going to pretend like Prey and Doom aren’t linear games, but they at least give the player the freedom of discovery, and that is just something Dead Space doesn’t allow.

As well, I think combat suffers from a similar problem. Again, I think when looked at on its own, it is great. The necromorphs are terrifying in looks and varied in design, they all have different ways of attacking the player which leads to the player needing to prioritize threats beyond just which enemy is closest to you, a problem that I think even the Resident Evil games struggle with. The necromorphs physical design also plays really well into the dismemberment mechanic; the dismemberment is a direct evolution of Resident Evil 4’s combat where enemies would respond accordingly to where they were shot, the difference here is that instead of just staggering the enemy, you completely sever their limbs off, and it is as glorious as it sounds. Crippling an enemy by shooting off its leg with the plasma cutter, or cutting down a whole group of enemies with the line gun is endlessly satisfying and only got more enjoyable as the game went on and acquired more weapons and faced bigger necromorphs, but where I think this fails in comparison to to the likes of RE4 is that the player is too powerful. RE4 struck a balance between a power fantasy and helplessness by having a combination of highly resilient enemies and pretty standard firearms; yes the guns were satisfying, and yes Leon could supplex and roundhouse kick enemies to timbuktu, but he could die just as easily because he couldn’t move and shoot, and because of the sheer number of ganados. Here in Dead Space, however, Issac can move and shoot, and while the enemies are about as aggressive as in RE4, the weapons are far too powerful. Being able to knock an necromorph on their ass with the force gun over and over again makes them feel like a joke, and having the ability to freeze enemies in place at the click of a button kind of dissolves any tension the combat encounters had. There was never a time where I felt out of control; I always had enough ammo, always had enough med packs, and, while I didn’t always have a full stasis meter, I always had it when I needed it. Don’t get me wrong though, I still think the combat was really well done and was by far my favorite part of the game, I just think it fails to understand what made its primary influence so great, as well as failing at creating meaningful tension.

There are also a couple things that I left out but still feel are worth mentioning; the sound design is great, if it did one thing right from RE4 it was definitely the sound design; The story was very intriguing, and while I personally haven’t done any research into its meaning, I can tell that it has something to say and was presented in a thoughtful way; and lastly the game just looks gorgeous; I know that it wasn’t built using ID Tech 4, but it is very reminiscent of that engine and is probably why it still looks great today (it also may be why Doom 3 and Prey kept coming to mind while playing).

Dead Space Is a game that has aged gracefully, it is truly incredible how this game's mechanics are still enjoyable and comparable to games coming out today. And although I personally think it is rather derivative of its influences, I can’t ignore the fact that it is still fun as all hell; and hey, I am very analytical when I play games, but if you’re not like me you probably won’t notice all the little flaws that I did.

Spyro is a deceptively simple game, or at least its mechanics are. The story, if can call it that, abruptly starts and abruptly ends. Gnasty Gnorc is the main antagonist, but I would forgive you for not knowing that as he only appears twice throughout the entire runtime, once during the opening cutscene and then and then again when you get to his boss fight; this leaves Gnorc feeeling like a non threat during your playtime cause you just never see or hear from him. As well, Spyro has absolutely zero character growth, he is the same when the credits roll as he was when the player hits start. But I am willing to let all of this slide because the story was clearly not the primary focus here.

Like I said, Spyro is simple, the dragon has only a handful of abilities, he can run, jump, glide, charge dash, and breathe fire. These moves are all static; he gains no new ones, nor do they inherently change. But what does change is the environment and how these abilities interact with it. The game starts with levels that are intended to let you get your bearings with the controls and physics of it all, then the next set of levels asks you to start performing more daring jumps and glides, then the next makes you master super dashing, and before you know it you're having to juggle and combine all of theses abilities in order to get 100 percent in each of the levels. But the amazing thing is how natural it all feels, there is no sudden spike in difficulty, and the levels are ordered in such a way that it gentle guides you into certain trains of thought; the pacing really is just incredible. And even if you do get stumped on one section or puzzle, one of the many dragons you need to save in order to progress will likely have a hint to help you out. I think the best demonstration of what I am talking about is the level "Tree Tops"; the whole levels is this big open area with lots of winding paths and dash ramps, and in order to get all the collectables you have to experiment with all the paths and chain dashes together to reach maximum speed.

Despite this praise however, I do still have some critiques. The camera is just bad, not as bad as other games from around the same time, but still not good. In the options menu there are two modes for the camera: Active; where the camera moves almost entirely on its own, and Passive; which lets you control the camera, while still moving on its own when needed. I would recommend playing with the passive setting, it causes the camera to spaz out less in enclosed areas. As well, the jumping and gliding can feel a bit too punishing at times, some of the jumps need to be near pixel perfect in order to connect which was slightly annoying. Though I don't want to knock it to bad for this because these types of jumps were usually relegated to optional areas for 100 percent completion.

I think I can confidently say that Spyro the Dragon has stood strong through the test of time. Its mechanics and worlds are timeless and easily accessible, while still providing a challenge for those who want it. I would say it is definitely worth you time.

Despite having an entire different title, and being part of different hunting game series, Ultimate Deer Hunt serves as a sequel to Coresoft's previous Cabela's game: Big Game Hunter: Ultimate Challenge. It is almost the exact same experience as the first game, the same type of equipment, guns, character selection, and practically the same locations, though they are technically different locations. The only big difference that sets it apart from its predecessor is that here, instead of hunting a variety of big game animals, you are hunting different breeds of deer, bucks, and elk. Personally I found this way less interesting and kind of frustrating to me. Each location in the first game was occupied by several species that are from that region; here, however, it's just deer; and if you are someone who really loves hunting and can differentiate breeds of deer good for you, but personally I can't, and so it feels very repetitive to me after the first two areas. This complaint also affects the gameplay itself; you are punished for killing game that you don't have tags for, which is completely fine and is expected from a realistic simulator; but when all the animals in the area are just deer and I can't tell them apart, getting fined $400 and getting kicked back to the main menu gets really annoying. other than that, some quality of life improvements have been made; the player moves slightly faster and the cross hair on scopes can be adjusted. Outside of that it is really just the same game as the first, just with more deer.

I have never been a big hunting person, but I thought it would be fun to go through and try out all of the old Cabela's licensed games just for the fun of it. Big Game Hunter: Ultimate Challenge was not the first licensed game from Cabela's, but it was the first released on consoles; so this is where I decided to start.
The game is exactly what it says on the tin, it is a hunting simulator where you track and hunt big game animals. It is surprisingly in depth for a licensed video game in the early 2000s; there are animal callers and scents that you can equip to draw game towards you, at least I think that is the intention; you need to bring the right type of clothing to both blend into the environment and survive the weather conditions; you can bring along a tent to camp out to regain stamina and wait out the night, and there is a day and night cycle, which I find really novel in a PS1 game. But those are really the only good things I have to say about the game, everything else is either just okay or just not well designed. The guns feel okay, the sound good, but that's it there are no reload animations and the view models are a pixelated blur. The graphics, while standard for middle market releases of the time, do not help because the draw distance is incredibly short and it makes the animals almost impossible to see if the aren't right in front of you. The game tries to compensate for this by having giant red dots mark where animals are, but this doesn't really work either cause the dots don't tell you how far away the animal is so you could end up traveling all the way across the gigantic maps only for your target to disappear out of bounds, which they can do for some reason.
Big Game Hunter: Ultimate Challenge is an alright experience, but when it comes to hunting simulators, you are better off playing a more recent one like Way of the Hunter or Hunting Simulator 2.

This game is straight up awful, I don't know how people think it's better than Super Chargers. They nerfed all of the old characters to the point were the are practically useless on any difficulty above easy, attacks that used to do upwards of 200 damage coming from fully maxed out skylanders now do less than 20, and they did this so that they could show off how powerful the custom skylanders are, which is just the worst type of power creep. The imaginators themselves are just awful too, all the parts are just reused assets from previously existing models, the attacks that are offered for them are not interesting because they lack the personality of the core skylanders, and they just look bad too. The levels aren't too far behind either, with the best levels in Imaginators being comparable to the worst of the other games; it doesn't help them much either that by far the best levels in the game, The Lost Imaginite Mines and Cursed Tiki Temple, are locked behind two of the most expensive figures in the series, costing over $1000 for both. It also, somehow, has less levels than Spyro's adventure; it tries to make up for this with the sensei realms, but those are just glorified elemental gates and offer nothing of substance. The story, if you can call it that, is dreadful. It has complete disregard for all of the lore and stories from the previous games and just haphazardly reuses assets and characters from the previous games. It also just feels like a scrapped episode of the Netflix show, which this is 100% an advertisement for, if the main three characters you interact with being the core cast from the show wasn't enough of a dead giveaway. The only decent thing this game has to offer are the sensei characters; personally I think they are some of the most fun and well designed characters in the series, shame their trapped in one of the most miserable games of all time. I don't want to blame Toys for Bob too much here though, it's clear they wanted Super Chargers to be the last game in the series, and that Activision forced them to make a tie in to the Netflix show, but they still could have tried a bit harder to make something at least halfway decent. At least they would go on to make Crash 4, which I hear is pretty good.

Firstly, I am aware that the SNES port of Prince of Persia is not a one to one translation, there are eight new levels, the levels that were already there have been remixed, and the game now gives a whole two hours to save the princess. But, from what I can tell, the original design and feel has been brought over gracefully; the weight in the prince's movement is still there, and the core design philosophy is intact, if not improved. But even with that, I understand if some consider this to be a wholly original entry in the Prince of Persia series; but for me, I am gonna treat this the same as the original, albeit slightly upgraded. Now with that out of the way, here is my review of the original Prince of Persia.

There is a level of detail and precision that comes from a game designed by an individual person. In most modern, big budget releases it is highly likely that each aspect of a game is worked on by different teams of people who all have different concepts that they want to pursue, and when all these ideas are combined they can sometimes stagnant and conflict with each other, take a look at the modern Wolfenstein games if you want an example. Here, though, there is none of that; there is a consistent and coherent pacing that shows through every element of the game. Jumping starts out as just a means to get over a gap, but it soon evolves into tool for spacing; killing an enemy is introduced as a simple obstacle to get through, but it is later implemented into the puzzle solving by having the dead bodies land on switches to keep gates open; the trap floors that fall from away from under the player are used to negate obstacles that you otherwise couldn't pass by letting them fall on top of them. Hell, on a grander scale, the entire game revolves around time, specifically, wasting time. The reason the player stutters when he falls is not just to show the impact of the fall, but to also punish you for making a mistake by wasting your time; rewards like health vials are purposely place out of the way in order to make the player question if they want more time or more health; and sword duels aren't just there as a challenge, but to also stop the player in there tracks so that they lose more time. This type of interconnected, multilayered design can truly be achieved when one person is allowed to be creative and fully understand each and every facet of their ideas.

To close out, while I did really like the first Prince of Persia, I still have a few criticism. I think the combat can be a little cheap, like if your timing isn't perfect the opponent can get like four hits in and you just can't do a whole lot about it. The inputs had a bit of lag with them, like I would press forward and jump, and then after I competed the jump the prince would just run forward again, sometimes into a trap. I don't know if this was the games fault, the emulator, or my brain going faster than the game can process. Other than that I think it is a fantastic game that holds up very well. Highly recommend.