Unicorn Overlord is the mirror dimension 13 Sentinels. 13 Sentinels had an engaging and compelling story and solid cast but lacked any gameplay intrigue; Unicorn Overlord has a satisfying gameplay loop, but it's paired with a bland story and horridly trite characters. The whole cast feels like ChatGPT excrement, there're so many characters and they're just mindlessly shat out at every turn. Some positives? The gameplay is great, slowly conquering the world, expanding your roster with new units to experiment with, it was all very engaging... for a while. The first 20 hours of this game are engrossing, it's quite easy to ignore the game's shortcomings during this period. Then we run into another big problem, this game is 50 hours long... once you've played 20 hours, you've seen it all. The game will still throw new unit types and level gimmicks at you, but they're not nearly enough to keep the loop satisfying in the mid to late game. Unfortunately, once the gameplay grows tired, there's absolutely nothing of value left here.

this game gives me light to my existential crisis

i am mentally not okay and after finishing this game i dont think i will emotionally recover from it for a while. its still surreal to me that this is a remake as this may not be my fav persona game but it still hold a special place in my heart

“not everything needs to be for some greater purpose, just caring about someone can be enough, thats all we need to give our lives meaning.” our time is limited and everyday time scares me but doing simple things like caring for someone and spending time with the ones i love can be enough for me to live my life

thank you persona 3, you are just a game but the memories i made and the journey playing as makoto with his friends will be unforgettable i laughed, i smiled, i cried, and most importantly i enjoyed every minute of experiencing this loyal remake

memento mori but remember to live

this is some hella charming shit, but I can’t help but feel like it was playtested by only 1 person. The platforming mechanics just aren’t clicking for me, some moves straight up don’t register when and how you expect them to. levels are structured for speedrunning, but 50% of the time the big segments don’t hit correctly and/or u run into walls because of a lack of direction.

Other than that, a charming technical achievement made by a small indie team on their own fucking game engine, word.

Edit: I’m 8 worlds into the game now and nah this shit is infuriating, too many bugs and inconsistencies with the platforming. Some bosses are also just completely unfair (the pool table and magnet ones). Putting this down until they fix it, Christ.

It was hard to have high expectations of a free Silent Hill game put out by Konami after their numerous gaming crimes - losing Kojima, cashing in on pachinko, Ascension, to name a few - but Silent Hill: The Short Message, a game about grief, suicide and abuse, is WAY better than it has any right to be.

I will admit that the game pinches from P.T and a little Serial Experiments Lain, with a trashy J-emo script that has all the subtlety of.. well, a corridor covered in abusive post-it notes. But I don't hate that, I vibe with it. Sure, I think it could've benefited from being in its native Japanese language rather than English, let alone even the illusion of being set in bloody Germany, as some of the bullying language feels cliche. But the handling of the heavy themes and conclusion it reaches about the victims have a strong emotional impact, and, I must add, a much healthier take than Bloober's offensive The Medium.

But now for the game's main strengths. The boys are back! Akira Yamaoka's score is understated but stirring, the sound design creepy and enhancing the presence of Masahiro Ito's menacing new monster that hobbles after you down corridors with a stop-motion jitteriness. The pursuit sections are reminiscent of Shattered Memories but much more effective, claustrophobic and panic-inducing - they can be difficult and sometimes frustrating but get by on their short length. There’s not a great deal else in terms of gameplay beyond wandering a dilapidated apartment block, but the grimy design and atmosphere are enough to enjoy just moving through the eerie space, uncovering the story in various gameplay ‘loops.’

Of course, it can veer into amateur territory - the drawings are tad too Tumblr, the acting is mostly strong but occasionally a bit off, those sections in school corridors are a bit too 2013 for my liking - but I suppose the game is not made by a bunch of Kojimas.

However, for the first effort in a couple decades from a Konami-led Japanese team, it’s a rather satisfying return to form for Silent Hill. It’s not perfect, but it didn’t need to be, especially not when it had Ascension’s act to follow.

Is it close to the Silent Hills of old? No not particularly.

Does it absolutely stumble on getting across some of its ideas and concepts? Yeah.

Are the chase sequences a bit rough? Yeah.

I still really fucked with this and everything it was doing. It gave me a dose of what I've wanted from Silent Hill for a long time, it had a vision and it sees that vision all the way through while trying to mix things up a bit.

I think it handles its themes of trauma and abuse trapping someone emotionally within cycles of self destructive and self distancing behaviors causing lashing out at anything that harms the ego and whatever normalcy one can cling onto fairly well.

I feel like even if it was a bit heavy handed at times (the beginning really tries to hammer home how depressed Anita is in ways that feel really corny) I cannot ignore the earnestness and the willingness to just fuckin try something here. The art direction, the atmosphere, the music, the tones.

No it's not Silent Hill 3 but it worked for me and captured me in ways that I really didn't expect. That last chunk of the game really fuckin hit me.

After finishing the game I honestly had that feeling where I’m slightly disappointed but rather than blaming the game I just pulled the “well I guess I just didn’t get it”.
After a week of having the game stew in my memories I feel confident when I say that I liked Metroid Prime….untill I didn’t. I’m sorry if that comes off as really youtube thumbnail clickbait but that’s just how I honestly feel.

For the first 4 to 5 hours of the game I wouldn’t honestly give this game a 10/10; I mean that genuinely. From the amazing opening to the extremely well done first area; everything felt well put together, and the atmosphere was just so well put together and everything from the long list of log entries and visual storytelling felt properly placed and all with a purpose behind them. If there is one thing I will say without a shadow of a doubt is that the game nails it’s atmosphere and does a good job transitioning the series into 3D, everything else thought just starts to decorate as time goes on.

Around the second boss I honestly started dreading the idea of backtracking in this map because unlike past Metroid games the map here honestly felt very haphazardly slept together. It felt like they made the maps with a linear progression first in mind and then placed an entrance and exit near the beginning and end of the map, all the while each room feels structured in a way where combat is required for everything you re-enter a room since enemies respawn every time and some of them can range from being one hit kills or time wasting bullet sponges, so when I had to backtrack to find an upgrade or an item I missed I had to slowly go back through these combat corridors and it got old very fast.
Speaking of that topic the actual combat is honestly really mid. Combat in a Metroid game is honestly the last thing I would care about since the whole game is usually structured around exploration, but here it feels a little reversed so I guess I have to talk about the combat now.
For starters your movement is heavily stunted compared to previous games. Now there's nothing wrong with that and I honestly don’t think you could bring over every aspect of the game’s movement over so I can’t really criticize it too much, but when the combat system also doesn't take into consideration how you’re gonna move around enemies in these combat sections it’s kinda frustrating. Your blaster shots don’t feel like they have impact with any of the enemies your fighting and the only viable way to take most enemies down with a charge shot seems to have this weird bit of delay to it making it more frustrating to deal with, and I don’t know if it was just a me thing or not but no matter how many upgrades I acquired I never felt like I was getting stronger like how I normally felt with older Metroid games; it just felt like I started the same as I ended only know I have a slightly bigger health bar and can’t be hurt by poisonous mushrooms. (again idk if it’s just a me thing but that’s what it felt like).
I think most of these feelings started to really set in around the Phazon Mines area. The whole area felt like one big long series of combat corridors with some of the most bullet sponge enemies in the game along with very little exploration or puzzles to break up the monotony.
I don’t know if they were strapped for time or something but it genuinely felt like they gave up around that section, and then the game just dropped any pretenses of trying to string the player along naturally and just said “ok so to progress you need to find a new item that’s either close or on the other end of the map, ok bye.”. I honestly wanted to stop playing around that point because like I said before, backtracking in this game is a boring slog and I deeply don’t like it. But I still did it and beat the boss of the area, and then the artifact hunt began; I’m not gonna go into details about it so I’ll just say the whole experience was a mix of frustration and the immense look up a walkthrough on YouTube.

By the last cutscene I honestly felt numb. I don’t hate this game hell I might sound really harsh in this but I’m only so harsh because I had pretty high expectations going in, and by the end the only thought going through my mind was “Really? This is the Metroid game that fans are ride or die for? Super and Fusion clear this game by a country mile. What the hell are people talking about?” and honestly I still don’t know. I could chalk it up to this game being many people's first Metroid game (although if it was mine I’d probably never touch this series again.) Or I could take what a friend once said where it’s some copium induced GameCube nostalgia taking hold of a loud minority of people that influence the public's perspective of the game, but even then I just don’t know. Maybe I’m being an asshole for even speculating on why people would even like this game but I’m honestly confused, I could throw as much rationalizations into this as I wanted but at the end of the day I didn’t like it and many other people did so I guess it’s just me being a negative nancy again.

It's good to be playing new games again [Metroid Prime, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space...]

2002's Metroid Prime was my introduction to both the Metroid series and the search-action genre it spawned, and as far as first impressions go, I can't fathom it going much worse. I had such an unpleasant time with the game that I convinced myself I just didn't like the genre as a whole and cordoned myself off from it for nearly two decades. However, after playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night back in 2019, I finally found the motivation to sit down and run through the classic 2D Metroids, and I thought they were pretty damn good.

I think it's important to reappraise things. After all, people grow and tastes change. I thought I hated Metroid, but now I am one of the initiated, immersed in Samus Aran's struggles and excited to get lost in strange, alien worlds with her. With the announcement of Metroid Prime Remastered, I thought "Holy shit they're charging 40$ for this, huh?" and went back to picking lint out of my belly button between rounds of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. About two weeks later I saw actual footage from the game and realized it was a more substantive overhaul than I initially thought, and I shifted my thought process to "you know, there's no better time to replay this game than now." So I promptly bought a site-to-store copy from Wal-Mart which was cancelled because they ran out of stock, then I drove over to Gamestop and they were also out of stock, then I called the other Wal-Mart in town and they were out of stock, and then I went to Target and they had precisely one copy left which I bought for full price along with a Spectra Pro Controller because I refuse to ever play another game with those dogshit Joycons ever again and oh my god finally... Metroid Prime. It's been a long road.

Metroid Prime's opening aboard the space pirate's research station is one of the most iconic sequences from gaming's sixth generation. Every beat was immediately recognizable, as comforting and familiar as visiting a childhood home. Even the ensuing two hours on Tallon IV are remarkably smooth, with near perfect pacing and excellent level design that subtly guides the player onto the game's critical path, acclimating them to Samus' ever-expanding kit of suit upgrades in a way that is deliberate yet never overstated. Needless to say, I found a good groove with Metroid Prime early on and started to question what negatives I ever saw in it to begin with.

Having finished the game only a couple weeks prior, my friend Larry Davis has been pontificating to me about how bad Prime is. Worse than Other M, even! I disagree with that because not a single minute of Other M is good, and I've encouraged him to go through the arduous process of whipping a Wii out and refamiliarizing himself with that nightmare, but his greater point that Metroid Prime is a game that only becomes more agonizing the further you progress is one that I agree with 100%. The Phendrana research facility was my personal turning point, and the area that I feel highlights a shift in Metroid Prime's rhythm that is for the worst and which persists until the credits roll.

Backtracking is a pillar of this series, and it is not something I have an issue with inherently, but the way it manifests in Prime feels like it exists to pad time. Upon gaining the thermal visor, you must trudge your way back out of the research facility and march a considerable distance across the map to find your next objective, with little changing along the way other than a few rooms now have the lights off. Whereas the opening two hours has very fluid and naturalistic pathing that doesn't tread on your agency, the remainder of Prime sees you zig-zagging between distant locations with very little sense of where or why. It's like someone at Retro threw a dart at a map to determine where your next upgrade is, with even less consideration given to making the run there enjoyable.

Making things even more tedious is the fact that most areas are designed around specific one-time combat encounters and events. What was once a thrilling set piece is now a hassle that far more encourages you to simply zip past enemies and carry on, assuming you even can as a considerable amount intentionally create bottlenecks to force you into a fight. Unfortunately, combat feels patently underwhelming. Enemies are incredibly spongy and derivative, and the only real strategic element late in the game entails switching to the correct color-coded beam to take out elemental-infused rehashes of previously fought pirates and Metroids. Fun fun fun fun.

Metroid Prime Remastered does make a number of improvements over the original game, at least. The most obvious is in appearance. This might be the best-looking game I've played on the Switch. Environments feel much moodier and more atmospheric, and I really love the soft lighting of locations like the Chozo Ruins. Metroid Prime has always had good art direction, but the increased fidelity really helps it shine. I can only imagine how much better this would look on current hardware, but it's impressive for a game that's a generation behind. That said, I have heard from at least one friend who is far, faaar more familiar with Metroid than I am that the filters for the various visors are straight fucked. He claims the thermal visor made him physically ill, and although I did not have quite that severe of a reaction to it, the processing going on for the thermal and X-ray visors is so intrusive that they rob them of their functionality.

Controls are improved as well, though with a couple important caveats. By default, the game now has dual stick support, allowing you to play Prime like a normal first-person game. To be fair, in 2002 this sort of control scheme had yet to be codified, and I can only think of two games off the top of my head that supported it: Quake 2 for the PS1 and Timesplitters, I believe, although if you wanna stretch it, GoldenEye technically did if you wanted to do some real freak shit and whip out a second controller. (Correction: Halo: Combat Evolved predates Prime by a full year, and I consistently forget this.) However, you can tell that Prime was not built around this more free-wheelin' control method given how targeting still seems to be the most efficient way to approach enemy encounters, though having total control over the camera otherwise makes exploring Tallon IV feel more immersive. On the other hand, I do have some beef with how combo-weapons are mapped. You have to charge your weapon and tap the missile fire button, which requires you to awkwardly paw the controller with your middle finger on the trigger and index on the bumper. This is opposed to, for example, just having it set to charge a combo-weapon by holding the bumper itself. It's archaic and unnecessary and dampens its utility in a fight, which - in all fairness - is probably the point.

By hour four of ten in this game that has no business being longer than five, I started to think about how Metroid Prime is so clearly a game made by an outside studio, not because I have that knowledge in my head already but because that's how it feels. There's a reverence for the material, but a lack of understanding on what makes Metroid feel good that can only be communicated through its shortcomings, and the way it fumbles crucial elements like the routing of its critical path. Playing this again 21 years later has not given me an appreciation for Metroid Prime outside of the quality of life and graphical improvements the remaster has made. It has only reminded me of why I steered clear of the series and genre for such a long time after. Two stars for being Metroid Prime plus an additional half star for looking purdy.

We eat the sacred cow and together we burn.