Issue 13 of the Official UK PS2 Magazine, published November 2001, came with a demo disk containing a handful of levels from the then soon-to-be-released Klonoa 2. Playing this demo tens of times as a wean would be my only exposure to Klonoa 2 for nearly 23 years. Despite Klonoa 1 being a childhood favourite, and a formative cornerstone that had no doubt informed my tastes and passion for videogames; I only managed to get around to Klonoa 2 proper earlier today. I’d have gotten around to it sooner, were it not for the fact that Klonoa 2 was one of a few outlier cases of games that emulated horribly on PCSX2. Fugged to the nines until relatively recent revamps in compatibility were instated. Aptly enough, it was so surreal playing the levels from the demo once again - it all came flooding back like fleeting memories returning to me from a dream fighting to be recalled.

Soberingly, I don’t think I’m anywhere near as red hot on this game as I still am with Klonoa 1. Perhaps K2 had spent too long being gassed up, cooking and stirring in my head as an elusive cryptid. On many fundamental levels I think this is absolutely beautiful work. Demonstrating incredible emotional maturity in its final hours of the narrative representative of a slightly aged Klonoa, through heartfelt writing and vocal performances. A soundtrack brimming with disparate ideas and delivering them w/ confidence, grappling a wide array of influences and energies. For such an early PS2 game, these cutscenes are composited so brilliantly, giving characters illustrative frames to act in, staging the environments in striking ways… we still get things like this wrong!! I particularly love how the camera would move during boss fights, not only tracking the boss’ movements but also working to sell their scale and let them act on the stage! Incredible level design too, making great use of unique stage quirks to impose puzzle-like ordeals - the colour changing enemy was an enlightened addition. Klonoa 2 is the proud owner of an amazing final level, too - a true sum of all of it’s works with stellar level design, and thoughtful use of music and visuals.

I’m less keen on how weak a handful of the stages in the game are, both visually and in terms of level design. I’m even less keen on the repetition the game will impose on you, it’s not enough that they’ll re-use levels at certain points; you’d also need to run a few laps around some levels as you collect keys/activate elevators and such. It’s a bit more draining than it’s necessarily worth, in my humble, made worse due to the fact that levels in this game are wildly long and can be a bit plain. If I had to be brutally honest, I think Klonoa 1 does a better job at conceptualising its levels around its many disparate worlds, wrapping around and winding between the background geometry in a way that makes it all the more satisfying to explore. It would be nice if Klonoa himself had more of an active role in the story than an optimistic errand boy. It stands in stark contrast to the first Klonoa game where he’s incredibly emotionally invested in the proceedings, but I’m sure the plan here was to demonstrate that he’s an older and wiser character this time around, more clear on his Unico-like role in life and letting the world speak for itself. There’s tremendous merit to that and I can’t help but feel more of a relation to a Klonoa who isn’t thrashing out at the world when playtime is over, but I’m a theatre kid at heart I suppose oh god.

Admittedly I played Klonoa 2 in a bit of a goofy way, where I'd finish a level, and then skim a longplay of the same level from the 2022 remaster for comparison. I can only be honest here, but I think both of them have merit! The remaster fucks up the vibes in key locations with awful colour choices, blown out bloom and weird fullbright lighting. The level in sheer darkness, necessitating you to use a limited light resource to be able to see the geometry is ruined in the remaster because it’s already so well lit you don’t even need the light spirits! But I think the additions to the geometry and character models made in the remaster are really well considered, fleshing out the world enough for them to feel closer to realisation without diminishing their overt dream-like quality. My annoying brainwyrms are expertly trained to hate the aesthetic haemorrhaging that occurs from changes and concessions these remasters tend to make, but my ideal Klonoa 2 sits somewhere between the two versions..... (I want to know what the remaster changed the weird Full Metal Jacket cypher into)

I have a more sympathetic view of James than I think most people do.

At the very least, I believe that my understanding of the game is less emphatic on his flaws and failings than an awful lot of the interpretations I’ve seen others form in fifteen-plus years of playing, thinking about and growing into Silent Hill 2. I also think a lot of these interpretations scrub out a lot of Mary’s worst traits and have a very one-dimensional view of the two’s marriage and relationship, especially given the all-too-great extent to which I can find myself in James’ shoes and understand just what being in the sorts of situations he’s been thrust into can do to you. This isn’t to say that I think Mary is outright an antagonistic figure, that she was necessarily an abusive partner, or that James’ reaction to that pressure coming to a head was justified, nor do I think James is necessarily an innocent or pure soul. I mean, let’s face it, Silent Hill 2 is a 12-hour manifesto about just how much James Sunderland sucks, but… Mary sucks, too. So does Angela. So does Eddie. So does Maria. So do I, and so do you. Don’t we all?

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In spite of Silent Hill 2’s unapologetic and uncompromising portrayal of the rot within the souls of its cast, we’re never given reason to believe that these people necessarily have to be defined by their pain and the maladaptive manners in which it manifests. Not the banality of Americana left to decay nor a grindhouse of grisly guts-and-gore undercut the beating heart within each one of these individuals’ chests; if anything the desolate atmosphere and steady throughline of sorrow amplify the moments of kindness and connection even more.

James, for all of his single-minded spaciness and passive suicidal ideation, routinely makes an effort to treat the people he encounters with dignity and respect, and that effort is often reciprocated if not paid forward in its entirety — though Angela’s concern for James is largely rooted in bouts of self-depreciation and self-loathing, there is still a consistent pattern of the two wishing one another well as they part ways. Even Eddie, who seems to go out of his way to alienate everybody he meets so that he can be truly alone and therefore exempt from judgment, makes a point of awkwardly telling James to take care of himself after their first meeting. While Laura appears to be little more than a menace for much of the story’s runtime, even she pays James’ concern for her safety forward once it becomes clear that they have a common goal in the Lakeview Hotel.

Each of these people are suffering in their own way, and have convinced themselves for one reason or another that they must carry their burdens alone — even James, for all of his tendencies to try and support others where he can, insists on marching upon his chosen path in solitude where he can help it. But even then they appear to acknowledge that perhaps it’s better to be united through suffering, even temporarily and even through acts as evidently-insignificant as acknowledging one another’s hardship. Misery loves company, and even in the midst of a corporeal Hell each and every one of these people are willing to let their innate tendencies towards decency and understanding shine through even as they teeter upon the precipice of their own individual downward spirals. Their best traits and worst traits exist not as compartmentalized aspects that function in dichotomy to one another, but as two parts of a greater whole. They are human. They are people. Silent Hill 2 concerns itself more than perhaps anything else with this duality that exists in all people, the eternal conflict warring within between our best impulses and our worst impulses.

It’s only fitting, then, that each of these people have already let their worst traits win once, before the story even started. Angela, Eddie and most infamously James have all already taken a life before fleeing to Silent Hill, the darkness within them exacerbated and pushed to an irreconcilable breaking point by circumstances largely outside their control. Angela and Eddie are largely victims who were burdened with their worst traits by a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their family and peers respectively, whereas James’ more general negative personality traits and failings were ingrained by systemic prejudice and toxic ideals of manhood and men’s role in a relationship being strained by a marriage slowly falling apart over the course of three years. It isn’t their fault that they have these negative aspects, nobody is born bad (Laura perhaps represents this more than anybody; as a child she is inherently innocent and sees Silent Hill as a normal town for she has no darkness to exploit), but as unfair as the responsibility of keeping these traits in check might be it is a responsibility nonetheless.

As much as I think Angela’s family and (to a lesser extent) Eddie’s bullies had it coming — I am a full-faced proponent of victims’ right to revenge — I think most people would agree that you aren’t allowed to hurt the innocent people around you just because you have been hurt in turn, and that self-destruction often leaves little but a smoldering crater where a person once stood. Angela’s hostility towards James’ attempts at extending a hand (while understandable and outright justified considering James’ own sins and views of women) does little but dig her further into the hole that she was kicked down into as a little girl, and Eddie’s slow descent into serial murder makes him even more of a sinner than the bullies who pushed him to the brink to begin with. Both of these people are given chances to take steps to right their personal wrongs and make an effort to let their best traits emerge victorious, but eventually choose to spiral out and allow themselves to be consumed by their pain, sorrow and trauma. The story frames them with nothing but a level of empathy and respect still largely unseen in game narratives even to this day, and yet it remains frank and up-front about the simple truth of the matter: you cannot heal if you don’t choose to do so.

Where does that leave James, then? What is his role in Silent Hill 2’s portrayal of the eternal struggle between the good in us and the bad in us? His fate is in your hands. As in, you, the player’s.

You see, James is in a unique position compared to the rest of the cast. While he has a backstory, personality traits, characterization and dialogue that is wholly independent of player input, at the end of the day the choices he makes and the ways in which he carries forward in the face of despair are wholly up to the player. Silent Hill 2 actually isn’t a game about killing monsters and surviving in an environment born and bred for hostility. Konami’s been lying to you this entire time, the guns aren’t actually guns. Silent Hill 2 is a game about a man navigating the tightrope path to recovery and trying to make use of the resources presented to him to accept himself, heal, and let go. Will he make it to the other side, shaken and scarred but still breathing, or will he let himself fall and be sent into the depths below?

It’s all up to you.

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You often see people talk about how Silent Hill 2 is actually a pretty easy game all things considered, more or less nixing the “survival” element of “survival horror” wholesale, and I’ve seen a lot of people make a connection between this and James’ apparent need to be coddled and supported unconditionally. I get where they’re coming from there, but I think that Silent Hill 2’s abundance of resources and player agency as far as minute-to-minute gameplay decisions serves a greater narrative purpose. I don’t mean to sound like an “it was all in his head” ass creepypasta dude here, but work with me: weapons and ammo aren’t actually weapons and ammo, health packs aren’t actually health packs, monsters aren’t actually monsters. These are manifestations of James’ ability to fend off negative impulses and the bad parts of himself rearing their head. These are manifestations of his ability to take care of himself and know how to healthily cope when he eventually falters and stumbles on the road to recovery and normality. These are dark thoughts and self-destructive ideations raising up from our subconscious to haunt us, always lurking in the shadows and ready to strike if we aren’t careful. Even Maria’s role as a literal sexual temptress, while certainly representing James’ idea of an ideal, perfect Mary and his desire for gratification battling with his need for catharsis and honesty with himself, embodies the idea that temptation and indulgence in negative thoughts and habits are a means by which we lose touch with the greater picture as far as our mental health goes.

After a point of stumbling around in the dark and eventually making use of whatever resources you can — medication, therapy, the support of friends and loved ones — you begin to get a feel for your own psyche and learn to know yourself, and you also know how to deal with problems when they come up. This is what Silent Hill 2’s gameplay loop is ultimately about, and why James’ minute-to-minute gameplay decisions influence the way his story ends up rather than compartmentalized routes or story choices like most games that play with the idea of multiple endings. If James fails to take care of himself and makes a point of letting his worst traits get the best of him over and over again, then it’s no surprise that his story ends with him viewing redemption as only coming through his own death. If he gives in to temptation and focuses on the wrong things to try and fill the void left by his trauma, he’ll end up stuck in the same situation and look for the wrong way out, repeating the cycle over and over again until something changes.

But — if James is smart, and careful, and puts in the work and effort to take care of himself and fight all of the rot inside him by using the resources and good habits he’s picked up along the way — he might not be able to really ever get better, but he can live with it. He can start to define himself by his best traits again. He can heal. He can look at all the pain that’s got him to where he is now, turn his back, and leave it all behind.

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The greater Silent Hill fandom has found itself locked in arguments for years over which ending of Silent Hill 2 is canon, the “true” ending, or the one that the developers had in mind when crafting the rest of the story. I understand why — and I understand why people find the framing of Silent Hill 2 as a cautionary tale with the In Water ending compelling — but I think to view it all as a series of compartmentalized possibilities and not as individual parts of the same greater statement is cynical and dehumanizing at absolute best. Silent Hill 2 isn’t about one specific outcome of the duality within us all, but exploring the duality itself and how different people might struggle with it in different ways. At its barest core, it isn’t a game about healing, succumbing, or being trapped in self-perpetuating cycles — it is a game about the very act of struggling and the multitudes that this act encompasses. It understands what it means to grieve, to fear, to hurt, to hate, to decay. It understands what it means to relish, to rejoice, to love, to grow, to live. And it understands more than just about anything else in the world the spaces in the margins where these things meet, intersect, clash and struggle for power.

Myself, though, I have my preferences as far as how I like to view the story ending. I find myself in James’ shoes more and more often these days. It’s been a really rough eighteen months or so, man. It just keeps getting worse. Some of it is through circumstances out of my control, some of it is my own doing, but all of it is mine to deal with and mine to choose what to learn from. I’ve lived the selfish, petulant parts of James who doesn’t want anything more than to be loved unconditionally without concern for the people doing the loving. I’ve lived the same experiences as the James who puts his neck out for the people around him only to get bitten and drained dry in turn. I’ve done much the same as James when he lashes out and hurts people around him to try and make sense of his own pain. I’ve been in the same position of James where I have to let people take advantage of me by letting them hurt me and then acting as their solid rock of support immediately after. More often than not these days I’m the James that we see at the very beginning of his descent into Silent Hill: glass-eyed and empty of the spirit, moving on auto pilot as if not quite sure he’s really here to begin with.

But I don’t want to feel this way forever. I don’t think anybody does. Silent Hill 2 understands that, and it understands that getting better isn’t as easy as it might sound on paper. But I’m trying, man, I really am. I want to let the best parts of me prosper and emerge victorious over all of the worst parts of me. I want to return to the point where better days seem like they’re on the horizon and not twenty miles behind me.

And I want to one day be able to look at all of this that I’m experiencing, turn my back on it, and leave.

I was really having fun with this. It's set up like a TV show; broken into episodes complete with recaps and previews and credits for each chapter. It's a lot of fun, over the top nonsense, like a guy punching a guy so hard it breaks the entire planet in half. Even though it has a lot of QTE-laden cutscenes I was really enjoying the wild characters and art style.

Uuuuuuntil chapter 10. In this scene, apropos of nothing, our hero visits some sort of hot springs resort. There the player is treated to a first-person interactive scene in which he first spends time ogling the staff, then moves quickly on to exposing himself, before finally just straight up sexually assaulting a service worker. But don't worry, because it's all played for laughs! Technically it's only an attempted assault, because he's comically punched by his father figure as a "Denied!" achievement pops.

I just don't know. This is so normalized I couldn't even find mention of it in any reviews. The IGN review, written by a woman, specifically mentions the scene but carefully leaves out the attempted assault. Instead it's described as "the objective is to stop Asura from staring for too long at the generous assets of a hot-springs attendant" which as far as I can tell is completely false; you cannot progress in the game until you've gone through the whole menu of sex pest behaviors.

Like I didn't just fall off the fucking redneck truck I know women have always had it bad. But the misogyny in some of these Japanese games in particular feels almost compulsory. It's like there's some regulatory body that comes through and is like, "You allowed the player to go 5 hours without being horrible in some fucked up regressive way to a woman. Back to the drawing board!" From my many minutes of googling about it I know everything about how shitty it is to be a woman in Japan. Obviously nothing I do is going to change any of that, I just wish we as gamers were, like, slightly less inured to it.

Anyway, in Chapter 9, you're a badass demigod going through a wild narrative. In Chapter 11, you're a badass demigod going through a wild narrative, and for no particular reason, a hilarious wannabe rapist! Somehow the experience lost its luster once I realized I was playing as Donald Trump's self-image.

As a kid, I was absolutely obsessed with subways. Whenever my family and I traveled to a new city, my immediate fixation was not the city’s many attractions but rather the intricate infrastructure linking all these various locales. While my family handled the destinations, I handled everything in-between. I wanted to know the most efficient way to get from point A to B, if there were any loopholes or special conditions necessitating an off-the-beaten-path itinerary, and most of all, I kept tabs on any planned changes regarding the evolving transportation so I could make notes of where to adjust and prioritize for future trips. I never realized it back then, but there was a certain satisfaction to memorizing every station and optimal route and running the simulations in my head that eventually led me down the path of engineering.

Mini Metro is essentially my childhood fascination with subways conceptualized as a video game. It’s super easy to pick up thanks to its minimalist design and intuitive controls; passengers are depicted with geometric symbols headed to corresponding symbolic destinations, distinctly colored subway lines are constructed by dragging your mouse between stops, and you can easily manipulate existing lines without disrupting progress by simply clicking and dragging sections of a line to new stops. At the same time, it can quickly become challenging, but this skill ceiling feels fairly approachable because the game is less about memorizing specific formulas and more about understanding implicit guidelines. For example, having a line that hits every stop in the area sounds appealing, but what’s less appealing is how much more time is subsequently spent traveling and loading/unloading passengers; you can at least somewhat account for this by toggling specific stations as “no-stop” to create express lines. The AI is fairly predictable and will always calculate the shortest path to the corresponding destination, but this also means that there’s real potential for them to overload the capacity of certain stations while in-transit between different lines. Alongside this, the game is great at organically iterating upon its basic formula to escalate difficulty by introducing more stops, altering the shape of stops to create more unique passengers and necessitate different routes, and increase the system’s load with more passengers while forcing the player to juggle their already limited number of lines, cars/carriages, and tunnels/bridges as also dictated with newly unlocked maps. At its core, it’s a game that’s great at subtly teaching players how to recognize bottlenecks and micromanage individual elements to fully understand how minor changes can quickly ripple across the fully intertwined system.

My only real nitpicks are that picking apart subway loops can get a bit annoying since you can only fiddle with one exposed end at a time while in loop form; it’s a minor complaint considering that you can pause the game at any time to more carefully reconstruct lines, but adding extra steps to reconstruct common subway loops is fairly noticeable considering Mini Metro’s elegant interface. Also, I do wish that there was a way to construct slightly longer paths along rivers instead of automatically building across them between certain junctions and using up my already limited supply of tunnels and bridges. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that this last gripe is mostly personal, and I think this game absolutely delivers upon its premise with precise execution. With so many different maps and daily challenges to boot, there’s plenty of content to exhaust within the game, and if one finds the basic experience too stressful or is more interested in sheer experimentation, then they can simply turn to endless and creative modes instead. For an accessible yet deceptively deep management game that gives great bang for your buck, I’d say Mini Metro is a fantastic entry point into the world of optimization simulators that more than holds its own against its more daunting peers.

The original Alone in the Dark, while certainly not the first survival horror, planted the seeds for which the genre would soon flourish. The story goes that it served as direct inspiration for the original Resident Evil, which would then define and popularize what survival horror was and would be for the next few years. Where, then, does that leave Alone in the Dark, having not had another release since the underperformance of Alone in the Dark 3? Reinvigorated, apparently. The success of Resident Evil brought forward a slew of other studios trying their hand at survival horror, one amongst their number Infogrames, the original developers for Alone in the Dark, who hired developer Darkworks to capitalize on its status of fathering many of the things that Resident Evil went on to popularize. This… was loosely a double-edged sword, however. While it is true that many particular aspects — the mansion setting, giving their player a choice of two different campaigns to go through — were things originally devised by Infogrames, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare ends up feeling more like Resident Evil than any of its survival horror contemporaries, and in some ways feels like an imitation: a comparison that does not lend New Nightmare any particular favours.

New Nightmare imagines itself a reboot of the original Alone in the Dark, and as part of that, reimagines the series for the (at-the-time) modern day. You have the choice of playing as either Aline Cedrac, a young university professor searching for her missing father (a spiritual successor to the original Alone in the Dark’s female PC, Emily Hartwood), and Edward Carnby, a private investigator and possible descendant of the Carnby you played in the three AitD games preceding. When Carnby’s close friend winds up dead after attempting to investigate mysterious goings on at Shadow Island. Teaming up with Aline to investigate, their attempt at approaching the island is foiled as their plane crashes, leaving both separated as it soon becomes clear there are dangerous forces on Shadow Island. Regardless of whether you're Aline or Carnby, it’s up to whoever you pick to reunite yourself with the other character, find out the goings on of the island, and try and stop the Morton family, and their attempts to bring about the... "World of Darkness (c)."

The game does a decent job of making both these campaigns feel distinct from each other. While it doesn’t particularly matter doing both, or which one you do first — ala Resident Evil 2’s Leon/Claire A/B routes — the game you play is considerably different depending on who you choose to play as in the beginning. Each character takes a separate path through the game, does different things at different times, and goes through whole areas the other player character doesn’t, up to the point where both main characters have different final areas and bosses. Playing as Carnby hews a bit closer to your traditional survival horror experience: you’re given ammo from the start, you’re able to scrounge for resources, you must solve puzzles and fight increasingly tough enemies in order to find your way out. Aline, however… plays loosely like a proto ObsCure. Emphasis on loosely: because she’s a woman Aline doesn’t get to start with weapons like Carnby does, and instead must use her flashlight to repel monsters, either to kill them directly, get enough distance for you to get out of the room, or for you to find the lightswitch and instantly kill everything in the room. It’s… rather clunky in execution (and the game does go back to familiar survival horror tropes after a certain point, giving you weapons and pitting you against a Nemesis-like recurring boss) but I love there’s a concerted effort into making both characters feel different to play. Really works to add replay value (even if I was rather ready to call it quits once I’d gotten a cursory taste for how Aline played like), and it makes those moments of slight intersection — meeting the other character face to face, having them radio you what you need to do — a little bit potent, making you curious about what's going on in the other side of the story.

It’s a bit of a pity, otherwise, that this game doesn’t particularly iterate much on the formula it takes from. Or even particularly feel like its own thing. If you’ve played the original Resident Evil... you haven’t quite played Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, but you’re certainly not playing anything you haven’t played before. Again, it could merely be a consequence of how the original Resident Evil took inspiration from Alone in the Dark — and how any subsequent attempt to make a new Alone in the Dark would then provoke comparisons — but I think the real problem is that anything it does to stand out does not stand out for the better. Aline’s flashlight combat immediately shows how clunky it feels to use: feeling visually unclear whether your flashlight is damaging the enemy or merely forcing it to move, having to hold the flashlight in place for a long time before it kills the enemy/pushes it back far enough to matter, and enemies having long enough range that they can attack you from halfway across the room the moment you dare move the flashlight off them. Carnby (or even Aline, once she gets methods of fighting back) doesn’t fare much better: enemies freely, constantly respawn upon you killing them, which… is loosely horrible juxtaposed to the limited resources you’re capable of picking up. It’s never worth killing anything you theoretically could avoid, given they’ll come back the moment you re-enter the room, and eventually most rooms become flooded by enemies you’re just constantly running from. You have more ammo than you need to be able to get through everything, sure, but it doesn’t stop combat from feeling mostly irritating: fighting the same enemies again after going in and out of a room, getting hit an enemy spawned right in front of you when you entered a room, having to backtrack and having to duck and weave around every enemy on your way there and back.

There are other things that bog the experience down. The game goes rather overboard with its background lore: while previous Alone in the Dark games (and survival horror as a genre) were fond of their diary entries explaining the background lore, it never went quite so far as to give you any that was nearly 50 pages long. Nor do they ever tend to give three 15+ page diaries one right after the other. The game is kind enough to highlight any information you actually need to progress through the game but I feel like if the goal was for the player to understand the grander picture of what went on in the past that particular approach feels rather counterintuitive: if the player (especially someone who… rather struggles to learn via merely reading the information, like me) isn’t immediately compelled to skip it all under the sheer weight of how much there is to read, it’s rather difficult to retain anything in particular when it’s all dropped on you at once, and when it’s all in the midst of so many other things. The game feels… quite buggy and unfinished in places: there’s a boss I faced with Carnby, who, because I had happened to save in a specific room, would not go through its death animation upon reaching 0 HP unless you hit it during a certain part of its pattern, which caused me, at least, to reload the fight several times wondering what exactly I was doing wrong (not helped by the rather specific/non-indicative way of actually doing damage to it). The final area… is aesthetically interesting in how it jumps between several different biomes and inspirations, but is a total slog to play: throwing endless respawning enemies in your face as you wander through constant mazes all while you think ‘okay, this has gone on long enough, maybe the end is somewhat soon’ right before it gives you another maze for you to find the exit to. It’s mitigated, partially, because it gives you a gun that obliterates everything it comes in contact with and respawns ammo for it everywhere, but it’s rather clear just by spending what felt like a full hour inside it that it doesn’t feel quite as polished as the previous two acts of the game, and as a finale… is certainly the weakest point of the game.

Overall… this is honestly rather complicated to talk about. While I certainly do like the way the game utilizes its choice between which character you play as (and, in addition, what campaign you go through), it’s a bit hard to talk about how the game mostly… just feels like I’m playing a knockoff Resident Evil. Most of what it does competently is something I feel other games of the time did well, and the things that do differentiate itself from the pack… aren’t exactly fantastic. As a game meant to revive Alone in the Dark as a big name for the horror genre (the credits outright say “Edward Carnby will return”), The New Nightmare feels like a thing of the past compared to its contemporaries, and perhaps not the boost needed to bring the series into the modern day. 5/10. And while Darkworks’ attempts at a direct followup eventually became something else entirely, Edward Carnby did, eventually, return… for better or worse…

Despite being a fan of Mario Kart, I only ever played the newer games (DS and onwards). I never touched anything that came before, and that's like half of the games. While I'd still like to play 64, Super Circuit and Double Dash, I figured I'd play the game that started it all. My dad used to reminisce on how he loved playing this game with his friends back in the day, so I figured it would be a fun time. Sadly, I was mistaken as I found it to be kinda sucky.

I'll start with the good parts though. The game's visuals are pretty nice even if the mode 7 can be sort of weird on certain stages. In general though it's nice and colorful and looks good for a SNES game. The ost is also decent with some really solid tracks here and there. I also found the first cup to be alright course-wise even if I ended up only getting 2nd place.

That's it for the positives however, because as a whole this game is just unfun. I said the first cup was alright course-wise and while that's true, I still had an issue with the controls while playing through it. This game is so slippery, if you bump into anything you go flying. The drift feels so loose and is tricky to use, so you'd wanna use it as little as possible. However a good majority of the courses have so many sharp turns in them, you're forced to use the drift. That plus the bumping everywhere aspect just make's it super frustrating to play.

That's not even getting into the CPU's that actively cheat by just having stars whenever they want. I played on 100cc and they were brutal, I'm surprised I was able to get 2nd in the first cup. Once I got to the 2nd cup, I lost halfway through and because I wasn't having much fun to begin with, I just decided to play through the rest of the courses on time trial mode. You can't even unlock special mode until you beat the first three cups on 100cc, which I just said screw that. Oh also the courses are lame for the most part in terms of theming cuz, with the exception of Rainbow Road, they repeat two to three times each (with Mario circuit appearing a whopping four times) and just feel so samey.

Sadly I wasn't able to enjoy this like I thought I did and I think I'm maybe being a bit generous with giving it a 4/10 cuz I really did not have fun. Rainbow Road having an absolute banger song may be why I am not rating it any lower idk lol. Now I'm worried for Mario Kart 64 even tho I've heard good things about it.

What a beautiful game from start to finish! It's been over a week since I finished it and it took me about 90 hours to do so. This is just one of those games where you'll just be staring at your screen for hours after you complete it because you simply can't process the absolute masterpiece you just played. I genuinely think it's that good which is why I put it in my top 5, not sure when I'll get that feeling again after beating a game but it won't be any time soon...

It's been years since my Yakuza: Like a Dragon playthrough but luckily my friend recently played it so I have a fresh memory of the combat from that game and all I can say is that Infinite Wealth takes it to a whole other level. Simply being able to move around in a circle literally changes everything because now you can easily go for back attacks, combo attacks with your party members, hit an enemy into more enemies for additional damage, proximity attacks if you're close enough and finally you can use the environment to your advantage to grab items to attack with. The new jobs are great, I didn't try them all at max potential but the ones I did felt really good.

Infinite Wealth's soundtrack is REALLY good however I do think I prefer Yakuza 7's OST just a little bit more. I also have to bring up the Karaoke track list because it is the best out of any Yakuza/Like a Dragon title. I mean, have you heard "Honolulu City Lights"? That's a certified banger right there.

I don't wanna talk too much about the story, this is something you just have to experience for yourself. Only thing I'll say is that this is without a doubt RGG's best work so make of it as you will.

It's raw, kino, peak fiction, swag, goated with the sauce and life will never be the same. The Yakuza/LAD series will ruin your life and that's why you should join us.

Tekken is a game about decades long family feud so here’s my story of Tekken-related patricide.

When I turned 6 my dad decided to gift me a Playstation 1. We weren’t rich so we bought it second hand. He found some guy willing to sell his console and we visited him together to make sure it works. I remember his room being cluttered and messy. I also remember the game he showed us first. It was Tekken 3. It blew our minds. Never have we seen 3D graphics that looked so detailed, so animated, so lively. Coming straight from shitty famicom clones it looked unbelievable. My excitement about graphics peaked right there and I’m still trying to catch that high. That dude sold us his stack of discs as well (I also remember a shitty Mission Impossible game), but really we only cared about the “game with brawls”. When we got back we played Tekken 3 all night long. That was maybe the most memorable day of my childhood.

Years passed and I “grew out” of PS1. I didn’t have a PS2 or PS3, I got into PC gaming instead, so the rest of the Tekken series passed near me. I played some T5 on friends’ PSPs (I even showed them how to do cool Law kickflips that still worked exactly how I remembered) but otherwise it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in anymore. I’m into “smart” games now, not those meathead fightings.

But my dad, it turns out, never stopped caring. Now living a pretty prosperous life he bought his new son a PS3 (we stopped living together by then) with, you guessed it, Tekken 6. And this time it was a deliberate ploy for him to REALLY get invested in fighting. He started maining Hwoarang, actually learning his moves, trying out online. I remember my lil bro’s excitement when T7 got announced for PS4 because he knew dad would WANT to play that one, so yet another birthday Playstation was imminent. In T7 he got addicted to ranked play so he got really good. The meme about 40yo old dudes playing Kazuyas perfectly wavedashing and putting you in nasty mixup is real, except it’s my dad, he’s 50 now and he’s Hwoarang.

And of course whenever I’d visit Dad's side of the family he’d invite me to play Tekken for old time’s sake. And since he got so good it’s gotten pretty miserable. I played a bit of T7 as well since it was on PC, but never on the level that invited understanding, just mashing here and there with friends. Of course it wasn’t enough against Dad’s Hwo. And whenever he’d perfect K.O my ass he’d laugh straight in my face. Look at the gamer son who can’t play fighting games! I very much gave up on reaching his level, I just accepted my beatings at occasional family gatherings.

That is until Tekken 8.

Something clicked with me in this game. Maybe it’s fantastic learning tools, maybe it’s yet again great graphics, maybe it’s Jun Kazama being an amazingly fun character, but it got its hooks deep in me. Now I know how to apply pressure, how to put an enemy in a mixup state. I understand the concept of taking turns, the difference between crush and evade, when to use my 13i and 10i punishes. I know my character’s moves and available tools. I’m actually learning.

My Dad of course also hopped on T8. He bought an entire new laptop for the game, justifying it as a working expense! And yesterday we finally got to play some sets.

These were my most nailbiting T8 matches so far. Turns out Dad doesn’t like it when I’m ducking his highs. He also can’t do much when it’s me who’s putting the pressure and forces the mixups. I put everything into this… and finally got him. We went 4-3. I defeated my Dad. I truly am the son of the Mishima family.

If you ever thought to yourself "I want to play Journey to Jaburo but good" then here's the game for you. The secret ingredient? Being able to actually land hits on the enemy reliably.

Journey to Jaburo covered the first half of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime, and Encounters in Space appropriately follows with the second half - and a fairly large assortment of side stories and alternate scenarios - which entirely takes place in space. No ground combat to be had here, your mobile suits move in a decidedly more fluid fashion, you're permitted to use the analog stick, and despite combat taking place in the void of space, it's surprisingly more easy to keep track of where everything is at than it was in the previous game.

Really, the only part of Encounters in Space I found disorienting is its targeting system, which has a tendency to lock on to the nearest enemy rather than what you're pointing the camera directly at. There were countless instances where I had a command ship in my sights but the game decided to spin me around because I had a Ball up my ass. You think I give a fuck about a Ball? Those things just like, explode on their own. They're colloquially referred to in-continuity as "spherical coffins," stop targeting them!

The main "White Base" campaign is enjoyable from start to finish, though it is very short, only taking one or two hours to complete. Gundam fans might get more out of all the side stories, which focus on different ace pilots, including deep cuts like Shin Matsunaga. It's fun being able to take different mobile suits and mobile armors for a spin, and having arcade-length runs through shows like Stardust Memories definitely adds a lot of replay value. However, these ace pilot substories also suffer from some pretty awful difficulty pacing, with the Thoroughbred episode placing its hardest mission directly at the start for some insane reason.

Still, for someone like me who has suffered immense brain damage from ingesting Tamiya Mr. Mark Setter (I like to take a hit for "inspiration") hearing Char's theme kick in when you summon him as a support unit during Gato's A Baoa Qu mission is all I need to have a good time. Gato even comments on the Zeong not having legs! Gato you dumbass, you're in space! You don't need legs in space............

uh, four of five

Given the touchy subject matter I find it hard to review this game without having proper experience. But it is worth the try. There is room in this for a dialogue to ensue, at length, about mental illness and the role social networks play in how the youth comes up. This is pertinent, it affects us all to varying degrees. We all have our own problems, and the fair share of us can probably relate to having friends or loved ones who’ve gone through so much. Contact information and resources for the suicide prevention lifeline are provided, in the event anyone plans to play this and happens to need it or know someone who does.

As for the game, I’m on the fence about it. On one hand, it is novel, and the fact that there is no entry fee is admirable. It has a strong sense of direction, at least in its artistic intent. The pair in Akira Yamaoka and Masahiro Ito returned and they worked it hard here. The cherry blossom motif that pervades the game is stark and lends to the rest of it, thematically and aesthetically. In the end credits sequence we get to hear “My Heroine,” which is an excellent bookend to the game.

On the other hand, there are parts of this game that actively bring it down. It doesn't try to be subtle about anything it brings up and honestly, it is poorly written at times. I don't know if this is a lost in translation sort of thing, but maybe that wouldn't make much of a difference. Summing it up, this game is worth playing. It may not resonate, it may even make you uncomfortable, but it is an earnest game, it was made with the best intentions in mind and there is enough here that someone out there can take something positive away from it.

Music highlight. Estimated read time: 3~ minutes for OpenRCT2, 3~ minutes for venting. lol.

"Do I put my review on RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 or RollerCoaster Tycoon 2? And which version..." I don't know why I fretted over this when I played the entirety of both base games via OpenRCT2. It's also with this that I break my oldest "running gag" (implying it's funny) with this account, which is that I'm always playing RollerCoaster Tycoon 2; by unmarking it as "playing" and replacing that status with this. More on this later.

I could gush endlessly about RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 & 2; they're in my mind the best jumping-off point for getting into management games, which in turn would make the entry into things like RTS easier for many. They're not without their flaws, though; I'll knock those out immediately. The most obvious one is that many things aren't explained to the player, but 95% of the time they are shown; the remaining 5% can ruin your scenario play, though, such as guest weight or ride requirements to avoid stat penalties... wait, hold on, don't go anywhere, I know that sounded like nerd shit... okay, it kind of is, but it's not that involved, I swear. "Learning" these games is incredibly easy if you observe interactions; though one plugin/mod I see people use is automatic price manager, and I personally think it takes a lot out of the game; you can find out how much you can sell something for by simply raising the price until people stop buying, or the inverse by lowering until people start buying. I mention this interaction specifically because this is how most things go with the game; if you're not sure, just do something and observe; it's not a particularly obtuse game except in some edge cases. That said, I'll recommend some very basic plugins for OpenRCT2 that help immensely with onboarding; they do not make the game easier, they just integrate relevant information that you would be wiki diving for in the first place.

Where these games shine is in the sheer player expression they allow for completing the scenarios, or in ride recreation, or scenery/decor, just general theming. The scenario difficulty scales fairly linearly in RCT1 with enough wiggle room to allow most players to not only learn but also express themselves (reasonably; don't spam too much or you'll go broke!). RCT2 had the problem of inexplicably ordering scenarios within each difficulty category alphabetically, meaning for many, they had an arduous first scenario in the form of Crazy Castle, which more experienced players almost unanimously agree should’ve been placed in Intermediate rather than Beginner anyways. OpenRCT2 now defaults to a difficulty sorting for RCT2's scenarios I believe, which essentially everyone recommends. Of course, this is mostly irrelevant if you played one or the other to completion and then started on the others' scenarios, as you'd already be accustomed to it, but it's yet another tweak OpenRCT2 makes that improves the experience for everyone.

...

"More on this later.": There is a weird fetishism from the more.. "niche" side of game review/criticism/analysis, a patriotic sense of obligation and pride in always playing, reviewing, and talking about The Original Version of something, often knowing full well that better versions of the game exist, and to not just make it a matter of preference but to actively disregard or dissuade playing games or such projects. To a degree, I felt this rub off on me from about 2015-2018 when I started collecting retro consoles like the PlayStation 3 and my dozens-long list of CRTs (essay on this some other time)
This isn't wholly unjustified, however, as for years and still going, many gamers will wholesale write off anything older than them as being outdated and not worth playing. In the case of OpenRCT2 all it really does is make the game playable on modern operating systems with the utmost basic quality-of-life changes (such as raising and lowering single tile placements without having to adjust the terrain first; things people far more into the game back in the day would enable tile editor for anyways, or one more significant, immensely helpful thing; but I'll let you see if you can figure out what that is in my playthrough of Micro Park. (timestamped to nudge you closer to it)

Somewhere along the way, I feel like the relatively young medium of video games skipped from being underbaked to overcooked in their analyses; a lack of brevity and/or concision, often over-analyzing every minute gameplay interaction for seemingly no reason other than to point out that they notice these things exist. It really shouldn't be warranted as a baseline component to a review unless you're clarifying something in active debate; most of it comes off as petulant bickering for little reason other than wilful disengagement.
To make matters worse, it's often coated with almost twice as much wordage trying to justify its position in the first place, as if the opinion piece of a cold, pessimistic burnout─the alphabet soup concocted in a flurry with more passion than any second given to the actual piece being discussed─ever needed one to begin with. It's just an opinion, after all. But maybe that's what's most upsetting from that perspective? That it is just that, and even if influential to a degree most can only dream of, still ultimately means little towards swaying the perception of the object of discussion.

O hypocrite that I am, for herein lies borderline word salad lamenting such an angle in the first place; oh well. It all wraps around to being fetishistic about things deemed historically significant, assigning them prestige and sacrality to be both immune from criticism and ammunition against that which deviates even a little.
Perhaps a more concentrated example is the inconsistency in perception around Minecraft (2009), specifically ""old"" Minecraft, where a very loud minority decry the game as having fallen off, being altered too much, etc.; the inconsistency of when it fell off would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing and laden with real-time demonstrations of parroting and a density of nostalgia bias so immense it makes Ocarina of Time look like a contrarian's pick. A defense of the old does not need to be propped up with slander of the new; that's just conservatism for video game art hoes.

Video games died in 1999, they'll say, which is news to me, but if that's true, then I'm pretty happy playing whatever this software is called from 2002, 2012, and 2022 as well.


Where to buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 1: GOG or Steam
Where to buy RollerCoaster Tycoon 2: GOG or Steam
OpenRCT2 project, for playing the games on modern operating systems: OpenRCT2
Launcher/updater for OpenRCT2/OpenLoco: OpenLauncher
Recommended OpenRCT2 plugins: Stat Requirement Checklist, Live Ride Measurements, Park Rating Inspector.

I have never played a Silent Hill game before this one, so this is my introduction into the series. I saw all the backlash this was getting on here and figured, it's short and free, why not join in. I didn't despise it like some people did (though I also can't reference any other SH games) but I definitely didn't think it was good overall. Tho there were a couple things I liked.

While I didn't think the story was executed well, I can kinda see what they were going for with the themes. I feel like a lot of people, younger people especially so, can relate to some of them which is nice. I also thought the ending was kinda nice, mostly when those ending messages popped up cuz sometimes you really do need someone to talk to about this stuff. Also the live action segments were neat.

The rest of the game however, sadly sucked. The story overall is just not given enough time for you to really care about these characters, considering the game is only 2 hours long. It feels like it's just trying to spread the message rather than tell a good story. Which is further proven by the warning they give you 5 times throughout your play time, which broke my immersion every time it appeared after the 1st time. Maybe I'm being insensitive but I also thought the whole likes and followers thing giving kids anxiety was silly. That definitely took me out of the story whenever it was mentioned.

The game is basically just a walking sim with one notable puzzle in the game where you just find numbers on a wall to open a locker. So the majority of the game was boring, (because it also just wasn't scary). Besides the walking sim stuff though, are the chase sequences and they aren't fun either. Especially that last one even if it wasn't that troublesome once I knew what to do, it just wasn't fun!

I guess I can't be too harsh since it's such a short game, and maybe I would have been if I was a long-term fan like a lot of people that played it were. As it stands however, it's just a poor introduction to the series it seems. I really should play Silent Hill 1 soon though, I'd like to have a better opinion on the series than just this game lol.

better sense of scale than the first regarding both its central mystery and its locales. for one, you're given much more room to stretch your legs, with the second half of the game taking place in an area roughly the size of the entire first game and the first half having a few beefy areas of its own. the multiple mysteries in this one indeed also expand beyond the big endgame twist, and more care has been taken to drop breadcrumbs of intrigue throughout the adventure rather than the meandering approach of curious village. at the same time, the larger cast of characters and tragic lover's bond at the heart of the narrative makes the lack of attention paid to their actual characterization more noticeable. an examination of the folly of a rich family mining the earth and bringing ruin on their workers becomes didactic quickly when it's conveyed entirely through history lessons and layton's personal observations, and the writers' preoccupation with preserving the shock of the primary mystery keeps the actual humans at the core of the conflict from expressing themselves until the final ten minutes. I've cooled off on curious village's twist in the couple of years since I played it, and even though this one is probably more interesting, it still feels like a sudden burst of passion at the end of another meandering 15 hour adventure. then again, more pretty backgrounds than last time, so it all comes out in the wash.

puzzles in general are now better integrated into the story; layton still lives in an alternate reality where everyone is obsessed with puzzles, but at least he's actually using his skill at solving them in practical ways to navigate the world and solve mysteries. I'll hesitatingly say that conceptual puzzles seem to be fewer in number compared to curious village, with more focus on various physical layout puzzles and some math ones here and there. conceptual puzzles have the strength of obfuscating a solution space and thus making the exercise feel more like a product of reasoning and less trial and error, but I do also appreciate the variety of layout puzzles here, especially when it comes to ones like chopping wood in the right place to make a square or placing lanterns to cover every path of a forest. tired of maze puzzles tho; really no mental leaps required for them beyond just following each path to the right place. those are really the other extreme compared to conceptual puzzles, where the whole solution space is there for you to look at and you just check off whatever path leads to the finish. the best conceptual puzzles come on the critical path at least, so you won't miss any of them.

there's also better scaffolding around the ADV parts of the experience to keep exploration fresh thanks to some new integrated minigames. there's a persistent puzzle with an exercising hamster you must lead around a grid in order to have him reach a step count, and by solving puzzles around the world you can win items with new properties for him to chase. the puzzle itself is cool, and having a variety of ways to reach the maximum step count goes a long way to making the puzzle feel less prescriptive. when that's reached, he'll pop up in the world to tell you where you can find hint coins, removing the pixel hunting component of the game completely. there's camera components you can find as well that, once assembled, can be used to take pictures of specific rooms in the game. this opens up a "find the differences" type game that will open up a bonus puzzle; another neat addition that complements the main draw nicely. the third is less interesting: you can win different tea ingredients to make people tea? in-game there's no benefit to doing this, although I have a feeling some of the post-game puzzles will unlock if you can serve all the different kinds of tea. problem is figuring out all of the different brews is complete trial-and-error, and although some NPCs will give you recipes, others are much more vague. would help if some NPCs who want tea didn't suddenly stop wanting tea if you fuck up their initial order, though considering that they randomly re-enable later I have a feeling this is just some scripting issue.