This game really wants you to regret your murder spree, subjecting you to scenes that are downright grotesque at times. Yet they went out of their way to not only reintroduce, but refine the third person combat so it feels better than ever. Putting aside the story, it never knows how to reconcile the tension of those two desired emotions: you shoot an enemy and it gives that satisfying red “blink” on the cursor, only to listen to them scream in agony for a solid 30 seconds.

“Ludonarrative dissonance” was a popular topic around the time of the Uncharteds: much electronic ink was spent asking how Nathan Drake could yuk it up with his body count. But if The Last of Us Part 2 teaches us anything, it’s that a light-hearted pulp hero shooting an entire standing army is less disingenuous than a gratifying shooting gallery that demands you THINK about what you’re doing.

“Don’t you feel terrible about shooting this dog?” My brother in Christ, you put the dog in the game to be shot!

(We’d also like assurances that the people behind that one awful arm scene are doing all right)

The investigative loop here is deeply mediocre, to the point where we felt like we were sleep-walking through each day's events. And the Switch version is riddled with errors: our "time played" counter never activated, there were typos galore, and there were moments where we could see code in the text boxes instead of the actual text.

In spite of all that? We're suckers for this sort of story. A close-knit group of friends who drifted apart over the years reunite after our meddling protagonist arrives, poking and prodding to find his mysterious pen pal: said friends must do whatever they can to stonewall this person, but find their secrets unwound one by one. It's emotionally cathartic and often funny, especially if you're playing with the over-the-top live-action sprites turned on.

Root Letter: Last Answer was endearing enough that we saw it through to the end, playing through all five routes. We just wish this story was wrapped around a better game.

Rebirth fails to clear the lofty narrative bar Remake set for itself, settling instead for walking back every interesting piece of setup from the previous game. It fails to accurately represent the characters, reducing most of them to Flanderized shells. It fails to provide an interesting open world, settling for rote checklist work that drags and drags. Aside from the finely tuned combat and inventive music, this game is an utter failure on nearly every imaginable front. At this point, we’re confident in saying we won’t be back for Reunion or whatever the fuck they end up calling it.

We can't tell if this is Silicon Knights' fault or the controller's (maybe both?), but this controls so much worse than the PS1 original. We found ourselves making platforming mistakes here that simply didn't occur in our PS1 playthrough. And Jennifer Hale is practically sleepwalking through her role this time around. That said? The cutscenes are a delightfully goofy time, and the added fidelity means that Liquid Snake actually looks like Solid Snake now. We don't regret playing through it, but it's easily inferior to the original in most regards.