while i found that yakuza kiwami 2 was able to overcome the feeling of being a repainted ps2 game like kiwami 1 was not - it comes at the cost of a lot of charm, and the introduction of more new stuff than i'd deem necessary. it is unclear to me why this game changes so much. i thought the story was a serious highlight with a massive improvement on yakuza 1 - but other than that? i really don't think that this game has that weird "Secret Sauce." if anything, it feels like the complete opposite of kiwami 1! they changed so much, that the game now feels stiff and sterile despite, on the face of it, doing a lot of things right.

i didn't hate this, and i enjoyed it overall - but the combat, the strange changes to an otherwise great story, the reintroduction of cabaret exclusive substories (the bane of my existence) and just the lackluster optimisation for PC users all come together to make a remaster that achieves the complete opposite of kiwami 1's inexplicable charm.

MGS2 is a hard title to write about because there are already like, several 800 page essays about the game and its themes on this site alone, I’m not even factoring in video essays and other sites and articles. So why am I writing this regardless? Well, the answer is quite simple, I can’t get this game off my mind even a week after playing it, and as possibly redundant this review could be, I need to get it out there.
Playing MGS2 for the first time, after seeing a playthrough in my earlier teens and wanting to try it myself for nearly half a decade, was cathartic. I could not be more glad that I finally got to try this. While I was pretty terrible at the stealth gameplay even on the lowest difficulty, just the satisfaction of making progress and exploring every little nook and cranny of the Big Shell made it for me. While it doesn’t have the heavy winter night atmosphere of Shadow Moses that defined the previous game, Big Shell is beautiful in its quaintness. It’s simple but has effective coloring and theming, and honestly how could anyone hate the almost tranquill outside areas with the bright skies, blue oceans, and crying seagulls?
I mentioned that I watched a full playthrough of this game several years ago, and I actually revisited it recently to see if it held up. While I still enjoyed it, it felt surreal seeing that even in 2018 many people didn’t like or respect the direction that MGS2 took with its heavier reliance on themes than sensibility. “Overshot” was the description that hit me the most. While, sure, there are things about this game that are fucking ridiculous (honestly despite my high praise for this game I do have choice words about the Liquid hand thing), I think the absurdity was intentional and defines MGS2. It’s not for everyone, which I understand, but it seems that even just a couple years ago 2 was given a lot of shit for its direction, whereas now I feel that it’s almost universally praised as a masterpiece.
Lastly what I wanted to touch up on was how much I despise the nihilistic circlejerk that surrounds this game’s final codec call. While in the moment it can be crushing and feel like something to make the player feel used, it’s like people completely ignored everything that happened after the final boss. Or even in the codec call itself, where Raiden pretty much says “nah, I’m good” despite everything he’s been told trying to devalue him and dispose of him after his “purpose” has been fulfilled. Both of Snake’s speeches afterwards are the icing on the cake. Honestly during the rewatch of them I did shed a few tears, it hits a lot harder when I’ve given more thought into it and it's an uplifting message that leaves the story on a high note after the brutality of the final codec. Snake essentially goes “hey, there’s a lot going on and misinformation will spread, but don’t freak out yet, you’re your own person and you get to decide what you do or don’t believe in,” how you could see all that and then only hyperfixate on “kojima predicted the internet and AI lol!” is not only ignorant, but blatantly disrespectful to everything else going on. There’s more meaning to MGS2 and its main gimmick was not just “predicting the future.” It’s about individuality and finding what we believe in. Becoming nihilistic and focusing on all the bad in the world is exactly what the GW wants you to think. Why can't some recognize that?
It was nice finally going through this amazing, amazing game firsthand. I’m taking a bit of a break before I tackle 3 because I wanted to dedicate more time to thinking about this game. It’s something that I don’t think will ever leave my mind anytime soon. There’s a lot I didn’t cover here, and it’s simply because many people have already said it or I don’t even know where to begin in wording it, but I am totally up for discussion if you’d like to ask.
Thank you for reading, and a happy new year.
Choose your own legacy.
It’s for you to decide.
it's up to you.

“Ciel.
Trans me now.”
Congrats Zero 🏳️‍⚧️!

Only docking a half star because the forms are a cool feature but getting some of them is just asking to get your rank docked.

Great game. Shinada alone makes this game all worth it. Then this game goes the extra mile and has great music, great combat, all the protagonists are great (even Haruka), and a legitimately good main antagonist (no, the final boss of the game is not the main antagonist, get that through your head)
Any criticism I've seen directed towards this game is almost always applicable to Yakuza 0 as well, which people curiously don't criticise even though it has the same problems
It's better than 0 anyway

Incredibly detailed and intricate in some ways, shockingly inept in so many others. Taking a walk through an updated Black Mesa is just as awe-inspiring as you would think it is, especially if you have Half-Life as committed to memory as most fans do. The amount of work put into making it feel as exciting and novel as it was in Half-Life is not to be dismissed, they nail a lot of the minutiae that that made that game feel so disarmingly real in a medium where the game world's tangibility was not the priority.

But throughout the mod there is this weird push-and-pull going on between wanting to put new and interesting spins on the experience and spinning its wheels with fanservice or ideas that aren't very good. The awkward "They're waiting for you Gordon, in the test chamberrrr" is preserved for no good reason, the JUMPING PUZZLES are for some godforsaken reason even more prevalent, and Xen is capital T Terrible. They've made it longer! I actually like the Xen levels in Half-Life and generally think the hatred for them is overblown, but not in a million years would I have suggested making Interloper a TWO HOUR level to improve its reputation.

Xen is definitely visually stunning, but even then that loses what makes Xen so frightening and hostile in Half-Life: it looks like shit! It's a bunch of otherworldly nightmare platforms in a Hell dimension, it shouldn't look like Metroid Prime! I am at odds here because it definitely IS a new take on something old, which I appreciate. But it feels like such an obvious attempt at a course correction that it still ends up feeling desperate for approval.

There are other things I hate: the gunfights. The gunfights in Half-Life kick ass. They are chaotic, loud, exciting, and genuinely make you feel like you are solving problems when you just barely survive every one. Black Mesa just feels turgid in a way that is hard to quantify. The Marines feel less dynamic, like they just backpedal while dumping magazines into you. It's the same problem that keeps the Combine from ever truly being exciting to fight. Not to mention the updated artstyle means they blend in with the environment more, which while certainly more realistic, makes it feel less carefully designed than Half-Life 1.

That is the big difference, really, is that Half-Life is such a carefully and smartly designed game that every time Black Mesa stumbles it only manages to enhance Valve's brilliance with the original game. Realistically, should the BMRF have more doors around instead of room sthat lead to nowhere? Yes, but it also makes the design more cluttered and less elegant at guiding the player through the facility. It feels like they used Freeman's Mind as a design document at times.

I also have to say the music is completely at odds with the game's tone. Half-Life uses a lot of alien sounding synths and samples, creating a tone of mystery and unease, cold and careless science that goes too far. When action picks up you get very synthetic tracks with pulsing electronics. The rock music playing dramatic minor chords during action scenes just doesn't fit at all. Again, I respect the desire to try something different, but it's so wildly off the mark that I'm not even sure what they were going for.

There's other things that annoy me as a fan: I don't like the Nihilanth's voice, he doesn't sound quite as unknowable and more like a generic monster. I miss the maze in On A Rail because navigating it IS a puzzle. The ending is deflated by feeling like the game wants us to stand up and start clapping when we see the G-man instead of having the original's understated mystery. A lot of this is coming off like I'm an irritating fanboy, which is true, but the game is so indecisive if it wants to be a complete overhaul or a fresh coat of paint that I don't feel bad about doing so.

There is one thing here they do SO WELL, better than I could have anticipated, and that is the amount of world building here. I just absolutely adore the radios scattered about that gives you an idea of what is happening outside of Black Mesa. It makes the world feel so much larger and real, while also making you feel more isolated and out of your depth. It's little things like that that makes it hard for me to truly Hate this game, even with all of the irritating shit they add to it.

This is not a suitable replacement for Half-Life. I think that game is still so readily available and instantly playable that if you can't get into it that seems like a genuine personal failing on your part that you SHOULD be ashamed of. But if you do dig Half-Life, i think Black Mesa is a fine companion piece to get a second look at the same events. But I would never suggest you throw Half-Life in the dumpster and just move on with this, because it will make you think Half-Life wasn't that good.

While I wont be going into too much detail on any specific plot points, I'll be talking about the themes of the game in general, so be warned I suppose


"All is in the name of guiding humanity down the right path"

Over the past 6 months, I've been dedicating the majority of both my free time and what was supposed to be my non free time to going through Ryukishi's main (and most well known) franchise, that being the No Naku Koro Ni series (or, as it is more well known in the west: When They Cry).
From the quintessential VN classic that is Higurashi, to the somewhat flawed but still ultimately beautiful masterpiece that is Umineko, these games have been an hell of a ride to experience even with all the quirks that are oh so common with works written by this guy. And while I've been loving going through these, I've never felt like writing up something about them, mainly because of the feeling that I would never be able to do these games justice.
This time, however, it's kinda different.

Let's get the obvious jokes out of the way: Ciconia Phase 2 is never coming out; GouSotsu was trash; Umineko Gold is dead; what the fuck was 07th smoking when they came up with Beako; Ryukishi is an hack and a fraud so on and so forth.
That being said HOLY kerokero Ciconia Phase 1 is without a shadow of a doubt (at least in my eyes) the single best introductory arc of any WTC game EVER, and one of the best works by Ryukishi IN GENERAL (at least from what I've read, I'll read Higanbana and RGD eventually I swear).

When looking at the synopsis, it's clear from the get go how much the scope has expanded. A story of global conflict, conspiracy, and military action makes it a far cry from the series' old settings of a rural Japanese village and a small island turned catbox of infinite possibilities, and even if this isn't Ryukishi's first rodeo when it comes to alternative history/speculative fiction/whatever the fuck you wanna call it, just the sheer girth of this game's setting would make it seem like it would end in failure at first, but as the game progresses it's very clear that not only does Ryukishi have a really good grasp on competent worldbuilding, but he also does it while providing interesting discussions on the game's various themes.

Even if the game's writing comes with all the Ryukishi quirks you would expect, like repeating ideas ad nauseam or classic Ryukishi Bloat™, aside from the first half being admittedly a bit too much expository the writing is without a doubt excellent. While at times feeling somewhat preachy, the game discusses a lot of relevant stuff without feeling too much patronizing. From the game's setting you would probably expect the characters to repeat stuff like "errm war... bad!" over and over again, but instead Ryukishi just assumes that the reader is intelligent enough to already know that, and uses that time to discuss and explore surrounding ideas like radicalism, mob mentality, the nature of the military outside of war as a means of stability, as well as various other things. However, and probably most surprisingly, the game doesn't really discuss directly what its arguably the most prominent issue in this story, the nature of child soldiers, but while the game's character don't really discuss this at length (after all, in this society this is already not only normalized, but also needed, so it really wouldn't make sense for the characters to do that at lenght), the game instead uses its extended cast to explore this.

Ciconia's cast is... big. Really big. Even when only looking at the gauntlet knights, we're talking about 24 of them. And while of course not everyone has gotten their chance to shine in this phase, the ones that did get screen time are for the most part pretty fun! The main two squads that the game focus on in particular were very much highlights. Although seeing these kids goof off is fun and all, at the end the game is sure to remind you that at the end of the day, the situations they've been put in are not good in the slightest. Being the carriers of the most advanced form of weaponry in the game's world, the weight they carry is a lot, way too much for anyone to carry, let alone a child.

And as the game progresses, as it becomes more and more clear this is going to end in tragedy, as the cast discusses what it means to be a soldier, if they really have free will, or if they really are just pieces on a gameboard, to be discarded after they got no more use, the game reaches its climax, where their individuality gets stripped of them and they turn into what they're supposed to be... soldiers.

Without spoiling what actually happens, saying that the game's ending is great, would honestly be a severe understatement. The game shows you, at the start of every chapter, the Doomsday Clock. And as its hand reaches the end, you realize that what's about to happen is inevitable... And yet, that doesn't stop the ending from being absolutely tragic, with an incredible last chapter+epilogue combo that will leave you feeling betrayed, angry, confused, sad, and most importantly of all, craving more.

Early jokes aside, it really is worth pointing out that as of writing its been 4 years and a day since the release of Phase 1, and while this wait hasn't been exactly radio silent, with Ryukishi giving a couple of small updates here and there that basically boil down to "I'm still working on it guys!", the fact that he's probably busy with other projects like Silent Hill f means that we might still need to wait a while to see this story get continued.

But, to be honest, I'm willing to wait, because what I see here is something that, even if it hasn't reached the peaks of his previous works yet, absolutely has the potential to be Ryukishi's single best work yet. And hell isn't the notion that in order for a miracle to happen you need to believe in it one of the biggest messages in Higurashi? So I guess I'll believe in Phase 2.

However long it takes, I'll wait to be welcomed again to A3W, even if I have to wait 2 more years for it to come on a white horse.