bealtiful.

i haven't played the original, most people told me this was definitive version so i jumped the gun, wow i didn't expect this to be such a fun ride.
the weapons feel fun to shoot and customize even if limited, the worldbuilding grips you like a gorilla and chokeholds you through the entire playthrough, they simply don't let go, they do everything in their power to give you the feeling of a poor soviet in the middle of an apocalipse. i bough the damn book after this.
the only thing that keeps it as a 9 instead of a 10 is the librarians and the fact they didn't give me more of hunter, but hey i loved miller just as much. the soundtrack barely creeps in but when it does it gives such a vibe.
this also is a great example of bad ending good ending done right, its the right balance of good deeds to let you experience it without making you do stuff that would make the game boring like ''colect 50 hidden mcguffins'' or ''never kill a single person the entire playthrough'' keep in mind i haven't done a single stealth section, but all the good deeds i could do, i did, and i got the good endind, i only re-did the bad ending out of curiosity afterwards.
overall i super recommend, because MAN, its been a while since a game left me this satisfied.
i walked away from it feeling refreshed, not burned out

originally i had replayed the mgs 3 version in the persistence disc, but that version is actually the phone port which suffers greatly from a much lower framerate compared to the original msx which somehow was a solid 60.

recently i learned that emulating a msx is awfully easy and i did so, the problem was that god damn those controls are awful and you can't rebind them even on a msx emulator.

so pick your poison, as someone who beat both here's what you sacrifice in each

substence port : is actually a re-port of the mobile version.
+most available.
+rebindable, specially on a ps2 emulator.
+ton of guides and extra difficulties.
+it retcons some aspects of the story to properly fit with newer entries (there is barely even any story in this matuzelain of a game tho..)
-awful framerate.
-has its own share of bugs
-this is a emulation of a phone inside a emulated ps2 game, so expect 9 frames of input delay.

msx emulation : not as available, actually yeah it is super available, if you know you know.
+most faithful version.
+the most responsive one, almost zero input lag.
+60 fps native
-no mg2 included
-no retconning, so take the story with a grain of salt
side note about the msx version : it has been ported to pal regions but you will be missing on the better fan translation of the japanese version, and also no 60 fps.

so thats it, i played both versions and finished it with 100% all items (using a guide cuz jesus fucking christ). and here i managed to properly give you some pros and cons about each version, but to be quite honest youre better off watching a video about this game, or run the risk of going insane by spending hours listening to the same sneaking track playing for hours, overal its a 5\10, i wish i won't play it again but i know myself... i will...

a very fun game with a forgettable story

let me get the bad out of the way, i had experience with tomb raider prior to this game, i just decided to start with this one because tank controls give me headache, back when this game launched a storm of internet weirdos flooded it with mysoginistic comments saying this is some sort of sjw game to portrail men and incompetent, it was a shitstorm, thankfully now that i played i can safely say that no, then men in this game aren't portrayed as evil monsters, every character is just really really dumb. events often unfold because lara or the rest of the cast really can't sit still without doing something silly to bring the next shooting section, events often happen because lara sees something happening and while characters tell her not to, her excuse is ''i just can't ok ?'' ok ok thats kind of lazy guys come on, she can't because you guys need her to go to the next exposition point, not because she is making rational decisions, and the same can be said for everyone else, all the other cast is severely unlikeable except for the cool mentor that you will see his canon event coming from a mile away, and the big guy that has a native design, i like these guys a lot, the rest is by god forgettable and at times insultingly annoying.
the cast also constantly makes dumb decisions, at some point lara got worried about glasses guy and the strong lady made sure to tell lara that ''he can take care of himself'' only for lara to find out that he in fact.. cannot take care of himself, in his words ''lara i'm sorry for dragging you out into this mess, i though i could be the star of my own god damn action movie'' now was that to make lara seem smarter or make the strong lady feel dumb because its obvious glasses bro has brain damage. for real the entire time this cast feels like a horror thriller cast in a action movie, but one of those you know director did as a money laundry scheme. back then this caused people to accuse the writers of forcing a strong woman into empowering the guys, come on thats mysoginy, this ain't forced representation, this is just characters being poorly written, i wanted to like everyone and root for their well being but the game constantly bombards you with their dumb decision and downright mean behavior towards lara. one scene that really struck this onto me, with the fact that i was just dealing with dumb character script was the scene
SPOILER :
the glasses guy death.
strong lady doesn't even mourn losses, she goes straight to nagging, for example right after the character death, she throws out a jab ''seems like everyone near you has a poor survival rate'' to which lara replies ''better keep your distance then'', keep in mind that she says that immediatelly after lara announced he died, there was no time for shock, she just went for the jab, to which the big native just replied ''LETS JUST EAT OK ??''.

awful cast aside, how's the gameplay ? Great !
there are only 4 weapons but all of them are incredibly varied in their use, the gameplay crew knew what they were doing and they did good, the fights feel fast and enjoyable, the climbing is fun and easy to get into, the levels are very open and sometimes have multiple ways to go through.
lara herself starts as just another survivor struggling with everything, its almost comical how much of a punching bag she is in this game, constantly getting thrown, cut, squashed, shot, fallen down, pierced and even impaled at times, through the entire time she barely gets any rest and it slowly loses its shock and becomes kind of funny thinking what the game will force lara into, by the end of the game she has so many scars one guy looks at her and gets scared.

overall this is a very fun game with a poor cast of characters and a forgettable story, but with very fun moments of sheer bloody disaster.
many people point out that cutscene lara and game lara have a very strong dissonance due to how much people she kills in game and how frail she acts in cutscene, i wish this game was just lara and maybe one single crew member, no one else as she does all this struggling by herself, it would solve the problem of the bad characters dumbing down the game.

a bit more streamlined than the first game, but much more story focused.

i very much enjoyed my time with it even tho the bosses in this one were such a grind compared to the first game, what i love the most about this one is the setting and the atmosphere, in most aspects its even better than super, but i still can't say if i like it more than super, both are definelly much better than 1 and 2 tho, thats for sure.
that ending is also cute as heck.
side note : the ending claims i finished it in under 4 hours but i dunno, felt like much more to me, specially since i once forgot the game turned on while i went to work and it was sitting there still on when i came back.

For all the praise it gets, i expected more.

the setting might be interesting and sets up a cool world for future entries but the story is a whole lot of a nothing sandwich, game chapters happen due to mild inconveniences that need to be dealt with, it just so happens that there are bunch of grunts for you to kill in the way.

i get that the cover style and the OH SO MACHO characters were very appealing at the time but playing it today after playing more recent and more fun TPS like Spec Ops, i genuinelly don't feel the need to ever replay this again, while spec ops i finished 5 times already.
ive read an article that says the enemies had to be toughten up because at the time the graphics were so cool that if it had too many enemies it would slow down, and thus the enemies became bullet sponges to the maximun, your bullet cap is around 650 but it means nothing when the average grunt will eat 70 of those at point blank, its just not very fun as a shooter because of that, i am still curious to check future entries because most people say they are way better.

this one however, never again, yikes

a charming yet janky old game, i had some fun with max payne, the first act was one of the best shooters i've played, second act was a repetitive slog with spongy enemies able to take 3 or 4 shotgun blasts with the distance of barely an arm.
i did enjoy my time but the jank and literal traps the game set made it drop a in quality for me. still whats here is impressive as it is, i have a lot of bloody respect for remedy after i watched some videos about them.
but the biggest selling point is the cutscenes, they are charming, to some it may be old but they are just my cup of tea, i want a plushie of sam lake, not even a max payne plushie no! a sam lake plushie, he is a cutie in this game.

before i forget, when buying max payne, consider the GOG version as i heard it works better, however i didn't used the steam version that i own, i used the classic revisited version , which is a fan modpack that comes pre-built with the game so you just unzip and play, it features a fuckton of bugfixes, crash fix, the oh so necessary for the engine to work 120fps fix and a lot more, it overal is the definite experience

a little rough around the edges for sure, if i was a kid and saw it on a lan house, i'd probably still go play CS 1.6 on the computers instead.
movement feels a little off with the jumping and the way you can only attack in horizontal even if some situations really demand another type of attack, else you get bonked, i have no idea how people managed to beat the last boss with limited coins. props to those who did, i am a basic emulator infinite coin B¨%$¨, what can i do, its just how i rather play these old arcades.

that being said, i know i sound negative with this review but i am actually VERY VERY glad this game and many other capcom old arcade games are so well preserved, a capcom collection that often goes on sale, has so many games in a single exec, no input delay emulation, arcade customization, rewind, coin limiting, unlockables and roms of games that never came to the west, i am a big fan of game preservation and emulation, but i am so glad capcom did the sega collection thing and made it available for people to purchase these old games and in such a quality state, i know some N companies who should learn from that.
hell you can even bind your mouse which i love to see, more games should let you bind mouse like this, its such a little thing that just makes me happy.
overall while i might not be the biggest fan of this game, it just makes me happy to see a old game that other people enjoy so easily available and in such good quality too for purchase, i LONG for more companies to do that, while i am a emulation fan, i am willing to pay for products like this, what i wouldn't give for more of these.

i jinxed myself hard before playing this.

i never been a fan of visual novels, the ones i ever played where suspicious at best, being interested in the sudaverse i decided to start from the very beggining (not moonlight, can't read japanese !). this is possible one of the worst introductions to visual novels. i am no impatient person i enjoy reading, i have a book case which i keep some pretty big classics, not big in scope or notoriety but lenght, i'm talking 700 pages or something, thats not to fill ego, its just to explain background.
when recomending silver case, the fans don't seem to take into account that this isn't exactly meant to be taken as a 1 to 1 visual novel, its episodic in a way, its mean't to be played like a tv series, one episode a day or two if you have the mindset to it. going in guns blazing expecting a full on novel through and through ruined the experience for me, i almost dropped it.
take one thing into account, this game is long, one could finish in 16 hours of lenght, i ended up finishing in 38, in trying to finish it fast because i wasn't having a good time with the controls or the slow paced story, so i would leave the game open and try to take breaks , sometimes in the middle of the chapter simply because i was fed up, then i decided to take a different approach, get to it like a episodic series, watch one or two a day, read it carefully, get a snack or a drink and enjoy the 40 minute or something chapter, that's when it finally clicked for me, i started to appreciate it more, the game is separated into two chunks, transmitter and placebo, transmitter is the main event while placebo is some sort of spin off to one of the characters, sort of like the riku parts of kingdom hearts where you control him in case youre familiar with kingdom hearts.
at first i couldn't take placeboo, it felt like filling sausage, again simply because of my bad approach to the game, but as i took my time i appreciated placebo, it has sort of a comfy vibe to it, tokio, the main character of the placebo episodes ended up becoming my second favorite, this guy is just fun to watch through even if placebo is much less focused on being crazy like the main campaign, i ended up looking more foward to seeing the reactions through the perspective of tokio regarding the events of the main campaign, having done this, the game was over before i even knew it, and oh boy what a ride.
come into this game knowing what youre getting into, this is not a direct visual novel, it helps if youre familiar with twin peaks style.

will i ever replay this ? probably no, but i'm glad i finished it, its definelly one of these stories that don't give you everything, it gives you enough and lets you wander, i can't wait to try flower sun and rainbow

i never played much of the original mafia, kinda got bored of it in the middle of chapter 1, but visiting this remake i can say that this was a very satisfying experience, with characters that i loved following through, the character development of tom and also a great ending, i wonder how this game doesn't have those sigma males phonk edits because its jampacked with the Goon fantasy.
its only a 8 instead of a 9 because movement sucks, no matter at what fps, i was stable at 70 the whole game on a gtx1650 and it still made tom feel too sluggish moving around, maybe it was to make him feel vulnerable but it just made the stealth sections a chore,.

everyone does say this is a mid game with an alright story, but nobody brings up the fact that the story itself is borrowed, come on guys this is Roman Hamlet.

the story itself even if a bit too heavily inspired by hamlet is still a enjoyable watch (maybe because we don't get many roman based games lately so lemme have this one).
the gameplay however goes from mid to annoying, the game gives you a set of rules your character is forced to follow such as : can't hit more than 1 guy at a time, every animation must be commited, meaning youre stuck with it until done even if it costs your hp bar and cheap hits, for ranged attacks you gotta stop in place while facing multiple enemies that will hit and stunlock you into never being able to retaliate, same enemies that follow the hit hit kick, hit hit kick, it just gets so boring because instead of making the combat more fun, they just increase the enemies gimmick, oh this one you gotta defend 3 times before you can attack, but he can hit stun you so you get two cheak hits if you defend the wrong time.
to compensate for annoying combat and gimmicky enemies they give you a perk that gives you life when you kill enemies, problem is, you gotta do a quicktime event everytime you do it, now imagine a quick time event for every enemy in the game ? since they can cheapshot you so easily, don't play on hard kids.

the game looks stunning but has some very weird quirks, make sure to disable vsync ingame, now go to nvidia panel and lock your fps, enable triple buffering via the panel, also make sure to enable low latency, after that go to pcgamingwiki and do all the tips to fix the game on nvidia cards. there you can finally play without stuttering, weird performance hiccups or constants little freezes.
overall its a 4 but only gets a 6 because it has a nice roman version of the hamlet story.

now i know i sound a little harsh but at the time of its release it was a xbox one exclusive launch title, i dreamed of playing this game so i avoided getting spoilers for years before i got a good computer to play the pc port, i'm as disappointed as you are.

what i like :

- its probably the 20th time i finish this game, and every time i come back knowing a new glitch to beat it faster

- i love the story and how the whole facility feels interconected.

- this game is JANK, you can very early make a glitch that gives you so much life you become nearly immortal, the barney one, if you know you know.

- i love how charming the old models and textures are.

- every sound effect is iconic.

What i don't like :

- no matter how many times i play this, i still very much dislike the bullet spongy enemies.

- the troll parts of the game can go suck a dick, regardless if i know exactly where they are.

- on a Rail.

i do not care what anyone says, Hideki Kamiya made the first game and thats it, the first step towards greatness sure, but to this day he still gets credit to the franchise when this game was the one that kickstarted how people see the dmc series.
all thanks to Hideaki Itsuno, who decided that his legacy was not going to be the rushed DMC 2, he took into his own hands to craft such a masterful experience such as this. when you lose in this game, its your own fault, aside from one single instance, the game gives you all the tools to OWN every enemy in this game as stylish as the time allowed.
Itsuno shaped the true vergil, shaped the proper gameplay that the series would carry foward and for all that i say that the devil may cry series are Hideaki Itsuno legacy, not Kamiya.
the first game is both clunky and unfair at times. its not as hard as dmc 3 but dmc 3 never feels cheap like the first game simply because of the design of every tool at your disposal, be it trickster or royal guard. you can go the entire game without being touched.
is it perfect ? the fight with fake sparda where the game forces your tools out of you prevents it from being so, but this is still one of the best action games i've ever played, leagues ahead of the first game.
Thank you Hideaki Itsuno. i'm probably blocked on twitter by kamiya