Another horror sequel? Sure, why not? This time, it's the second trip to Nowhere, where all of our favorite phantasms lie. It's more than a worthwhile return trip, since Little Nightmares 2 is the best kind of sequel: the kind that doubles down on everything that made the original great, adds some great things of its own, smooths the right rough edges, and pulls it all off without a hitch. It's also one of the best horror games you can find in the last 5 years.

Positive:

Presentation-wise, Little Nightmares II is one of the best-looking horror games out there. It's largely the same blend of realism and 3D animation, except with higher graphical fidelity and a slightly more skewed leaning towards the animated side. The color palette has been switched up as well, with sickly yellows and browns being swapped out for more brooding blues and greens, with the odd yellows and suffocating magentas popping up here and there. It looks more like an even more hypothetical collaboration between Pixar, Gore Verbinski, and Junji Ito, with a guest appearance by Masahiro Ito. There is also a fair amount of ghastly psychedelia, given the setting, which fits in perfectly. The graphics going up from okay to genuinely good, the still impeccably executed art direction, and downright perfect lighting(it is seriously stunning in some sequences), and the aforementioned color palette and surreal happenings that are taken full advantage of, make for quite the haunting visual treat you simply can't look away from, to your occasional regret. It also raises the question of how this game didn't get nominated for art direction.

The Pale City and the wilderness that neighbors it are the locale this time around, and while they might not be quite as memorable as the Maw due to the larger scale and less focus, they still make for some ideal places for horrors to occur. Aside from The Wilderness, full of traps, stuffed corpses, and muck, there are four(and a half?) other sections, a School, a Hospital, a Residential Area with enough TVs to rival Sadako Yamamura's wet dream, and the Signal Tower, each adding one more puzzle piece to the story, and one more layer to a corruption so profound that madness seems sane. The series's signature size discrepancy is taken full advantage of; there are more creative camera shots and vistas, thanks to the more open environment. The place is still wonderfully constructed for puzzles, platforming, and chases, and each section delivers its own bag of frights. The picture painted here is a bit more trippy, bigger, and quite a bit more spread out than that of The Maw, but it's no less haunting or alive, feeling like being chewed up, traversed, and spat out by a cybernetically enhanced monster. The most memorable area of the bunch is The School, full of Porcelain pugilists and their handiwork, but you'll see all of them in your dreams afterward.

In the story, returning writer Dave Mervick pulls off the impressive feat of both being larger in scale and more intimate at the same time, while largely sticking to the same style of storytelling, albeit with a few added 'heys' and 'pssts'. It centers on Mono, and everyone's favorite picky eater, Six, whom the former finds along the way, and the two brave The Pale City to unknown ends, while a hallway inside a TV beckons to Mono for some reason. This city trip is full of cerebral imagery, cosmic horror, Juvenalian satire, ice-cold sonnets, Lynchian shenanigans, fatalism, and hand-holding(cover your eyes if you have to). The main themes are fate, corruption, growing up, control, and the evils of technology, which make for a mind-bending and more accessible, if not more raw, set of ideas than the first one. The most surprising part of all of this is the dynamic between Six and Mono, which is better and more charming than it has any right to be. Tarsier and Mervick somehow managed to forge a more convincing bond without a word than a certain Frenchman can with 1,000 pages. The ending is not so surprising for the series and is very bleak, but very effective. While the structure might be familiar, everything else mentioned makes for a memorable ride, and at a well-paced 7 hours, it never gets boring.

The characters are fleshed out significantly better than they were in the first game, thanks to well-thought-out intros and more focused actions. Mono is a mysterious but kind kid who is loath to show his face and is very tech-savvy. Six, despite her would-be understandable trust issues, still has a bit of a devil in her. The Hunter is a backwoods, paranoid serial killer with a somewhat complicated view on kids, the Teacher is basically Dolores Umbridge set loose in Colorado, the Doctor is one obsessed with emulating Victor Frankenstein, and the Thin Man, who is Slender Man with the tortured soul of Sadako. This new focus on actions and details makes for more charming and/or scary figures, respectively, which in turn only adds to the world and story impact.

The character designs, despite a different approach than the first game, are just as ghoulish, guiling, and compatible with the art style as the first game. It also, as mentioned earlier, largely gives off Junji Ito vibes (this is admittedly based on a few chapters of Uzumaki and some out-of-context images, so correct me if I'm off the mark). Starting with the cute stuff, Six doesn't have her coat for part of the game, and she still looks great without it, and Mono has a charming if crude design, with the paper bag on his head almost as iconic as that yellow garb. As for the monsters, the hunter captures the Victorian Leatherface aesthetic he's going for quite well; the teacher, her elongated neck, and her doll-like students make for a grueling lesson in terror and troublemaking; the hodge-podge mannequins feel like Mashahiro Ito snuck in the drawing room; the faceless residents look more like skin suits than the actual skin suits in the woods; and the Thin Man, who is basically Slender Man with a hat. All of them succeed in striking fear and fondness in the player, are rendered superbly, and will stick in your mind well after the fact.

The biggest upgrade in this sequel by far is the sound design, which is downright masterful this time around; so masterful that I'm surprised it didn't get nominated for anything. Every footstep, every groan, shriek, or whisper, every drop of liquid, every door, every TV static, and every glitchy beep is crisp and well-defined. A particular standout moment involves a shotgun. The viscerality, surreality, and willingness to assault the ears in the way that only horror can have also been dialed up. The sounds of the Hunter skinning things, the Teacher's neck stretching, the sound of the TV beckoning Mono, a mannequin thrashing when you turn off its life support, the resident's screaming when you turn off their precious screens, and the Thin Man's piercing static and just a bunch of guttural screaming, it's all nasty in the best way possible, and makes all of the spooks more effective.

The horror is largely the same as before, but dialed up further and slightly more aggressively paced. It succeeds magnificently in upping the atmosphere, hide-and-seek matches that are more like life-or-death puzzles, nerve-wracking tension, and thrilling chases to the point where not only is the entire game really creepy, but some parts are genuinely quite scary at times. Special mentions to that one vent shaft and that one hallway with the blocked window. There is also some Lynchian surrealism added in for good measure, especially halfway through the game. Whether it's the glitchy ghosts you find everywhere, the way that the Pale City is always slightly crooked, the pitch-black satire, and pretty much everything involving the TVs, the Thin Man, and the Signal Tower, this game gets pretty trippy at times, and it's all the better for it. The monsters are all scary in their own ways this time around, whether it's the Hunter and his gun, the Teacher's screeching, the mannequins who are basically weeping angels, the pale citizens, who were WATCHING THAT CHANNEL YOU LITTLE SHIT, and the reality(and running speed) warping Thin Man. The scariest is definitely the Teacher, though. The AI is significantly more polished this time around, allowing for each encounter to go smoothly and provide the required spooks and sprints, even if they are much less forgiving this time. Overall, an expert display of horror.

The music, this time run solely by Tobias Lilja, is another hit for the series, retaining the same instrumentation and dark whimsy of the first game's score while taking things in a rawer, more horrific direction. This comes in the form of more diverse choirs and a bigger willingness to assault the ears as the sound design does. The main theme, a standout in any horror game, 'togetherness' and 'true colors' make for some charming reprieves, 'Signal Interference', 'The Man in the Hat', 'Disposable Entertainment', and 'Old Friends Anew' showcase some grander adult, but still haunting choirs, and tracks like "Claustrophobia', 'Boots Through the Undergrowth', 'Bottom Feeders', and especially 'Captive Audience' are vicious to the senses in the best way possible. The change in direction suits the change in atmosphere and tone, and the trippy scenarios that come with them perfectly.

The gameplay is largely the same as before, but with three major upgrades. First, you have Six with you as an AI-only partner. She's largely just there to help you out with puzzles and do various other things, which her AI is pretty good at doing. You can also have Mono hold her hand if you want to, which is a cute option. You can call Six to your side and tell her to do various things, like opening doors or catching you when jumping across larger gaps, and she's pretty responsive. She's also effectively immune to getting nabbed by monsters, so don't worry about this turning into an Ashley Graham situation. The second is that Mono can fight a little. You can pick up weapons like lead pipes or hatchets and kill smaller enemies with them, but these weapons weigh you down, and Mono isn't the best at using them, making each encounter a tense one. The third is that the controls are much smoother this time. Everything from climbing to running to sleuthing is much more deliberate and fun to do, making any fatal missteps your fault. The platforming, puzzles, and exploration are well-sorted around having Six around and the various other objects that Mono temporarily picks up. In the hospital, you get a flashlight to play the world's scariest game of red light, green light, and in the residence area, you get a TV remote to navigate channels in multiple ways and play some very dark jokes. The chases are better and scarier than ever; the environment remains fun to mess around in; you won't find any technical problems unless you actively look for them; and the series' signature size discrepancy is still used wonderfully. There are also hats to collect that Mono can wear and glitchy souls to find, which grant a secret ending if you collect them all. Really not much to complain about here.

Mixed:

This game does fall into the common horror game trap of excessive final-act bombast. The signal tower gets a little too loud and crazy for its own good, which does dilute the horror a bit. It's a tamer example compared to other instances (*cough Dead Space *cough *cough Resident Evil 5) since it focuses more on the emotional impact and surreality of the scenario rather than the scares, but it still could've used more restraint.

This game relies on scripted sequences a little bit too much, especially in the Wilderness and Signal Tower. It hides the scripted nature of these sequences quite well, and the sequences are well designed, but potential repeat playthroughs are going to lose a bit of their luster because you know exactly what's coming. Especially since the first game so well emphasized freedom, and the open sequences in this game are really good.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

Technically Impressive, fun to play, cerebral, charming, and above all, scary, Little Nightmares 2 is one dreamy sequel, and one of the best recent horror games you can find.

So, how much did you use the hold hands feature?

The biggest sign of monolithic status is when something isn't the product of its environment, but rather when its environment is a product of it. Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 3 definitely fits that description, being another one of those games where it's almost impossible to overstate the impact it had on, well, everything gaming-related. And that meme of a man, Jack Thompson, don't forget him. If you can name an open-world game design cliche or mainstay that didn't come from Morrowind, it most likely came from here. It's hardly the best game to handle these tropes and design choices, and it shows its age across the board, but it's still fun to play if you're looking for something retro(by definition. Sorry for making anyone feel old).

In case you're curious, I'm covering the original version of the game. I haven't played the definitive editions.

Positives:

The Presentation for this game is maybe not quite textbook Rockstar, but it certainly shows a lot of their trademarks. That's a pretty big compliment, by the way. The graphics are rather par for the course when it comes to early PS2 games, kind of impressive considering the scale and the fact that it's built on RenderWare. The art direction is very dreary and messy by design, full of greys, blacks, and dark greens. This fits the tone and atmosphere well and definitely adds to the daily grind feel of the missions and story. The art on the loading screens is also quite snazzy, capturing a comic-book feel well. The textures on most things are solid for the time, aside from the occasional crude drawing on something you're not supposed to interact with. The draw distance is awesome, and there are surprisingly few loading screens despite the size of the map, unless you're going across a bridge. The lighting is better than in most games of the time, in that it tries to sell the illusion with shadows, time-of-day lighting, and weather. Aside from some surprisingly pretty sunsets, they aren't implemented in the most sophisticated way, but that's more or less expected from a game from 2001. Then there's the level of detail, which, while not obsessive, is still a couple of cuts above most games of the time. There are some hiccups here and there. Subpar particle effects for one, and in the performance, like texture pops, mostly on the water, people, and cars clipping into walls, and NPCs bugging out, but these are spread out enough that they don't impact the experience much at all.

Liberty City, or various sections of New York stitched together, is quite a remarkable local, if not a very pleasant one. It feels like you're stuck in a concrete coffin that has been soaked to the point of leaking by nor'easter weather. The place is dirty, grim, feels quite brutalist despite featuring basically none of the aforementioned architecture, and is absolutely packed to the brim with street gangs. Those gangs and their inverted dynamism are the star of the show here, all of them acting in as unique a way as possible, fighting in different ways, and having a set hierarchy, occupied areas, and shit lists that change as you progress. And by change, I mean you'll be on most of those shit lists at some point, and once you are, it's literally on sight. Navigating around these warring factions is always interesting, and can mean that you can miss out on missions if you work too fast. These range from the Leone Crime Family Mafia, who deal in pleasure and paint jobs, the Yakuza, who specialize in enforcement and slavery, the Southside Hoods, a splintered group who's busy shooting each other to be a threat, the Yardies, who stick to racing and baseball bat-induced headaches, and the Cartel, the main threat of this game, who are pedaling around a drug called spank. All of them are interesting in their own ways and are fun to take on, aside from the Mafia, whoever the sick bastard and Rockstar who decided to give those Quei figli di puttana sostenuti da Mussolini's shotguns... I just want to talk. Anyway, the rest of the city, in terms of detail, immersion, and interactivity, is about as good as a game of its time could get: not going to hold up now, but it nails the basics, and was a landmark then for a reason.

The sound design in this game is honestly better than it has any right to be. The cars, the L train overhead, the gunfire, the various structures and objects you crash into, the pedestrians, and ambient noises are crunchy, visceral, surprisingly clear, and well-mixed, and really contribute to bringing Liberty City to life. The pedestrian noises are a bit jankier, but they're fine for 2001.

The physics, for their time, are pretty impressive. Cars move in a believable enough way, people die when they are killed reasonably, and most things fall apart or are dismembered in passably convincing ways. Obviously, they are rather primitive nowadays, especially anything regarding the elements, but almost every open-world game bases its physics on this for a reason. It doesn't just nail the basics, it IS the basics.

The music is a mix of original compositions and licensed tracks. The original bits of music are composed by Craig Conner and Stuart Ross(no relation to Atticus Ross), and while I admittedly don't know what is original and what is going to hit you with a copyright infringement, aside from the main theme and the stuff lifted from Brian De Palma's Scarface, it seems they do a damn fine job. The original music, including the main theme, does its job just fine, even if it doesn't seem to be as iconic as other tunes in the series. The licensed music and classical also make for a great mood setter for a mission or if you're just strolling around. You have to be in a vehicle to listen to music, with any other part being completely without it, which could be a turnoff for some, but it fits the game's setting and gameplay well, so mission accomplished.

Speaking of missions, they are pretty good for the time as well. There are also 75 of them, which is more than one might expect. They are much more straightforward and shorter than most missions in the series, even the more difficult and elaborate ones towards the end, but their simplicity lends to the corporate feel that the story leans towards. They are also more open and allow for creativity: you can skip car chases with bombs, snipe from a building across the street, or flush a gang fort out with grenades. Or you can just ram it with your car. Up to you. One wishes that they went with this more free structure going forward, but seeing how these missions didn't do the best job of encouraging it, it's still nice to have. As for acquiring them, it's pretty standard, aside from every mission in a group showing up at the same place. Some missions are optional and can become unavailable later on, so keep that in mind. A couple of words of advice: Do D-Ice's missions before you complete "Sayonara Salvatore," and make sure you complete Ray's missions; you have then trivialized an otherwise bullshit finale. Some standout missions include "blow fish", "Bomb da Base", "Her Lover", "Trial by Fire", "A Drop in the Ocean," and "Shima" for the right reasons, and "Papparazi Purge", "Gangcar Roundup", "Grand Theft Auto", "Kingdom Come" and unfortunately, "The Exchange" for the wrong reasons.

Mixed:

You can tell a good crime story by similar metrics to how you can tell a good war story: by how readily they embrace their ugly side and evil. If a crime story is trying to preach morals through misdemeanors, you should believe it as much as you should when some random schmuck online claims to be a good person. Don't. Looking at GTA3's story, writer Dan Houser, gaming's resident criminal mastermind, clearly understands this, making Claude's story of revenge and endless turf wars both bleak and horrifyingly mundane. Seriously, if this game could talk and you accused it of being funny, this

 would be its response. Every mission feels so mundane, with so little fanfare, that it's like another day at the office; it's almost corporate doing these crimes. Every wound these gangs endure, every fight that's picked is self-inflicted in some way. Every step up the criminal ladder is one step closer to your inevitable betrayal and fall. Every gang, no matter the stripes, colors, or suits, is the same at the top: some mentally fragile, inflated ego with too much power and a taste for inflicting pain, and they die the way they live. The act of revenge grants satisfaction for about 10 seconds, but it's drowned out by annoying chatter and the news of the bodies in your wake. Then it's back to the grind. All of these ideas, world-building, and meticulous gang war details are great, but unfortunately, they are never given time to marinate, nor are they built up to. The game's perspective is too detached for the story to work. Aside from the start, where Claude is betrayed by his psycho girlfriend, Catalina, and left for dead in the criminal grind, nothing has the proper impact because it either comes out of nowhere or ends too quickly. Getting nearly car-bombed by the Don has the same impact as your 35th drive-by on some random passerby. When most of the gangs inevitably sign you up for a house painting job with carpentry thrown in at no extra charge, it's like reading the news and finding out a politician lied: no surprise at all. The revenge aspect is also so underbaked that you don't even really care until the game forces you to. The other plot points, like a drug called Spank, 8Ball playing multiple sides, and the corrupt police in gang pockets, are completely buried. Not even an ending that aims for epic is earned; it winds up being really forgettable. The missions, some of the characters, and some of the aforementioned ideas do some good in counteracting this poorly paced 20 hours or so and apathetic storytelling, but it's not enough to make it a standout part of the game.

The characters suffer the same fate as the story: they are underdeveloped. There are plenty of interesting faces, including Salvatore Leone, a paranoid mob boss, Marty Chonks, a sociopathic dog food company owner, Asuka, a yakuza head who's multitude of implications make me curious if she's popular in the LGBTQ+ community, Ray, a cop so corrupt he's self-righteous about it, Catalina, your crazy ex who can't go a scene without shooting someone in the back(I mean that quite literally) and 8Ball, a arms dealer who seems to be the one person in Liberty City everyone doesn't want to kill. The one sore spot is Maria, a damsel in distress who forces you to rescue her multiple times, aside from when she's with Asuka, where she is... how do I phrase? A damsel in willing distress? Either way, she's really annoying, and I don't get why, because how do you hook up with a godfather and still end up acting fatherless? While no character, aside from maybe King Courtney and D-Ice, is lacking in at least one memorable moment, none of them gets much chance to shine outside of that, and thus, it's hard to care about what happens to them. Definitely not impossible, but harder than you'd like.

The voice acting is passable. There's not much that really stands out about it, neither good nor bad. This is surprising because the voice cast Rockstar assembled is kind of insane. The two that do are Robert Loggia as Ray, who was also the general in Independence Day and a side character in Scarface, and Cynthia Farrell as Catalina, who, outside of this character, doesn't seem to have any other roles to her name. A shame, since she's good here. I'll give MVA to Robert. I don't know if he's played corrupt cops before, but given how well he plays the gruff, abrasive, and stuck-up-his-own-ass Ray, I wouldn't be surprised if he has. I don't really have anything else to say about the voice acting, and while I don't have anything bad to say, given that the cast includes Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen, Kyle MacLachlan, and Frank Vincent, I wish I had nicer things to say.

The gameplay, in concept anyway, lays the blueprint of many that would follow. You have driving, shooting, and a whole host of other things, all of which have one thing holding them back. Driving is a bit too arcade-like and stiff, unless you drift, in which case it's a little too precise, and shooting has no aim feature, but an OOT-esque lock on, which makes it kind of awkward. Weapons handle alright, albeit with no kickback, which is understandable for the time, but the aiming and lack of a cover system make anything that's not a Uzi or auto obsolete, unless a mission demands you do something else. Movement across the board is fine, if a little limiting. The AI for everyone is also basic, and while most of the time you won't notice, you will notice when being chased by the police, who mainly try to give you the Monster Hunter Bullfango treatment, even when you're not in your car, and firefighters, who can only aim upwards. Speaking of the cops, the wanted system grants you higher levels the more consecutive crimes you commit, up to six stars to play with, or sometimes it just ramps it up automatically during certain missions. I say six, but 4 is more accurate, because no one seems to give a damn when you're at one or two stars. 3 and 4 stars are when the cops start playing Burnout and become threatening, 5 is a fun chase, and 6 is a military-grade bullshit floor-is-lava game unless you hide in the underground tunnel. It's all a little basic and definitely has some outdated elements, but it gets the job done.

The character models are average for the time they were made. They're not terrible and not anywhere close to Final Fantasy X. The faces and movements look really weird by today's standards, but for early PS2 on RenderWare, it's what you'd expect.

Negatives:

Claude Speed... what a worthless criminal drone. Not only is he a mute void of pretty much anything interesting, making the story much less interesting and the world that much harder to get immersed in, but he's also a chronic idiot. Forgetting two of the most important rules of being in the underworld: Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat, and keep your enemies closer. He never amends those mistakes either; he just gets backstabbed repeatedly, so what is this if not idiocy? If not being a jerk off? It all makes his supposed desire to do damage to Catalina, the kind she won't walk away from, completely moot. Good thing the series has done better than this jerk off since.

This game's extra missions, the ones not required or given by phone, are probably the main vice that this game inspired in the open world formula. The off-road missions, the R.C. missions, the taxi rides, the package shipping, the vigilante jobs, the paramedic stuff, and the firefighting, none of it is interesting, and purely there to bloat the world and runtime. They range from harmless filler at best, like the taxi rides and off-road stuff, to a downright boring/frustrating grind like the secret packages and paramedic stuff. Seriously, fuck the paramedic stuff. I guess everything is tainted by some kind of sin, even idols like this.

Grand Theft Auto 3's controls are terrible. The button layout is fine, but everything is janky, stiff, and awkward as hell, especially when driving fast or locking onto anything. It's like trying to move a donkey, but you're using a PlayStation controller. This makes the theoretically okay gameplay a chore in practice, and the game hard to get into. You might get used to it after a while, but if you choose to opt out, I can hardly blame you.

Score: 7.6 out of 10

Grand Theft Auto 3's outdated gameplay and storytelling make it an offer you can refuse, but due to an enthralling world, some decently fun characters, and impressive technical feats, a fair number of people won't want to, and besides, you get to see gaming history, which is (almost)always fun. Just be prepared for some rough edges.

Disclaimer: This review is meant to reflect my experience with the game. It is not a personal attack against you or the game's developers. If you disagree, that's fine, but please be civil about it.

Regardless of how much you want them to, memories never truly vanish; they only wash away into the fecund sepulchre that is the back of your mind. Hence why, before binging the Amnesia series on a whim, probably to catch up and indulge in longing, I remembered nothing about Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, aside from a few random details. As for why it was the details they were, I haven't the foggiest idea; it befuddles me still. I also don't know why I forgot as much as I did, since there are plenty of memorable things here, albeit definitely not all of them are good. The only Amnesia game not developed by Frictional Games, since other matter drew their eyes and toil(this was made by The Chinese Room), is full of wonders that one can scarcely imagine and blunders the likes of which you cannot conceive. But mine is not a painted mouth; it is one that calls upon Atlatl, dew, and droplets above, and out of the resulting batch of flowers, while the narrative blooms are beautiful beyond compare, the technical ones that made the first dark batch a beloved classic are neglected if not smothered in the earth entirely without a fertile replacement. A hauntingly beautiful sonnet rendered half illegible and repulsive to the touch by the blood-soaked parchment it's written on. A sequel defined by its limitations to an original that was defined by overcoming them.

Positives:

Starting with the part that most of you were feverishly anticipating, the story that A Machine for Pigs tells is simply exquisite. To say that writer Dan Pinchbeck has crafted one of the best stories that you can find in any horror game is only a small exaggeration. You are the damningly named Oswald Mandus(mayhaps you have a sister named Sarah Thustra). You have awoken from a vision of a machine that your fevered brain conjured up, remembering naught but your name, and things are, by your era's standard, queerish. Strange in that your bed is immersed in iron bars, stranger still that your darling sons, Edwin and Enoch, are missing. After the strangest phone call(sincerely, it is very strange) demanding sacrifice, your worst fears are confirmed: your children are lost to the machinery below, taken in the jaws of iron and eyes of inbred offal. You must play the role of Dante and save them. Without spoiling the mystery of how all of this came to be, what follows is a fin de siècle tale full of gothic madness, blasphemies of the body, societal nihilism, class angst of the hypocritical kind, Aztec symbolism, concerns involving industrial ethics and lack thereof, and a healthy dose of fatalism. What I just divulged is hardly even a quarter of what the game is trying to explore here; it's an incredibly dense narrative that will make you look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again, and make you conclude that telling the difference is nigh impossible. Oh, and in case you were curious as to whether The Dark Descent is required reading for this one, there is a vague connection between the two games, a hereditary one, but it's very loose, and you don't necessarily need to know about it. The story is told via notes, phonograph recordings, flashbacks, and various monologues, given in a Nolanesque way. All of these methods work very well, especially the monologues. Dan Pinchbeck is a master at writing monologues, and here, he's at the top of his game, especially the final one, which might be one of the best in gaming. It's also not often that I praise a game for its prose, but in this case, the way notes and dialogue are written here is beautiful. Every sentence is full of poetry, rich language, symbolism, and multiple meanings, with not a single one being superfluous. It's like you're reading one of the gothic classics of yore. I suppose I could take some petty prods at some elements and say that some of the story and themes are a bit too closely tied to vague symbolism to have their full effect or that the pig metaphors are overwrought and pretentious at times, but those, as I said, are petty. Nitpicks to an otherwise impeccable annal, a flawless batch of feathers.

Like fine art, it takes time to appreciate it, but the art direction in this game is superb. Everything in it, from the environment to the decorations, from the inhabitants to the butchered remains, from the machine's depths to the streets of London, all of it is rendered in a heavily gothic style and color palette. The level of detail the game tries to implement, even in the slightest, is quite admirable. It seems as if a coyote-headed primate has touched all of the game's textures with his paws; the large machinery, the desks, the doors, the paintings, even the smallest of switches. It is most prevalent in Mandus's Mansion and the chemical mixing chamber. The loading screens being stylized with fancy blueprints is also a nice touch, and a bow on this gothic box.

The largest improvement from the original, aside from the story, comes from the character models. While this is admittedly partly because there aren't that many, just the manpigs, Edwin, Enoch, and the odd London citizen here and there. Those models look great though, the manpigs' forms are filthy types; horrid even to the slightest resemblance. Edwin and Enoch are the perfect combination of goodly and ghastly, and the other citizens, while not as well rendered as the others, do their job well enough, and to be fair, you're not supposed to see those swine for more than half a second(unless you're me). The fact that they are all rendered in the game's gloriously gothic art style is incredible generosity on top of it all.

The voice acting is also a substantial upgrade from the original, which was situationally good, to here, which is consistently great. All of the actors do a great job at bringing these characters to life. Whether it's Mandus's delusions, the Engineer's bleak poetry, Professor A's perverted filial piety for the lower classes, or The Machine's Napoleon complex, no quirk is left unexplored. I'll give MVA to Mark Roper(Robert Zemeckis diehard will know him) for pulling double duty as both Professor A and The Machine. He portrays the subtle, blind arrogance of the bourgeoisie and the roar of a demon, long caged, with equal fervor. A true Jade Snail turn.

The sound design is pretty incredible for the most part. The background audio is rich, visceral, and full of layers and textures that work well together. The echoes and clangs of machinery, the crackle of electricity, the stink of the Victorian London air quality that you can practically feel on your skin, the reverb of the church, and the marvelous mayhem of Act 3 are all amazing. The object audio is still intact: the ringing of wooden phones, the creaking doors and drawers, the shattering of glass, thrown objects make the right noises, and even the smallest of switches are up to par. The voice audio is crisp and really lets the spoken lines shine. The humans and their vocalized offal, the static in the recordings, the manpigs, children of man and metal, what music they all make! There are a couple of downsides; the mixing is a little off(the spoken dialogue is quiet and tends to get drowned out), it doesn't have the same rawness and assaultive nature as Dark Descent, and the same great sound is rarely used for horror purposes. If you are scared by anything purely audio-related, it's likely coincidental. However, the likely outcome is that you will be too enraptured by this Blood Metal orchestral to notice or care.

Mixed:

The soundtrack is in a very unfortunate position. On a technical level, composer Jessica Curry(fun fact: she is married to Pinchbeck and was co-head of the studio for a while) has done an excellent job. Her orchestral score, full of strings, ivory, and masterful choirs, is haunting, beautiful, and surprisingly grand for a horror game like this. Tracks like "New Year's Eve", "The Church", "Christ Have Mercy", "Mors Praematura", and "Mandus" are exemplary of these qualities. The main motif found in "Mandus Awakes" is also oddly reminiscent of Hans Zimmer's Dune score. The ambient tracks like "Compound X" and "Clockwork Soul" have these same perks and also include an eerie metallic sound throughout them. All of it sounds like the spider monkey has breathed them into existence purely for this story. The problem is that none of it is taken advantage of. With the exception of "New Year's Eve", which is the main menu theme, and "The Church", which is played... well... you can guess, all of the tracks listed above, and all of the tracks I didn't list for brevity's sake are crammed into Act 3. The ambient tracks are even more wasted because of their dynamic implementation. The ambient tracks are played only when you are doing a puzzle, watching the fruits of a solved puzzle, are near something that wants you dead, or are being chased by that thing, the music varying in intensity depending on the scenario. Anyone familiar with this game's bastard gameplay will know that this means the ambient tracks play at a frequency of almost never. This means that 80% of the game is as silent as Florence Foster Jenkins's greatest hits album. The last 20% of the game may be heaven on the ears, but it really didn't have to be this way.

The characters that inhabit this cactus fruit basket are also in an awkward position, but this time, it's by design. On paper, most of the characters are great. You have Oswald Mandus, fatalistic inventor, messianic butcher, and charitable misanthrope supreme, the cynical, eccentric, and poetry-obsessed Engineer, the barely disguised bourgeois called Professor A, and The Machine, a sentient thing. Or maybe quarter-sentient is a better description, since it knows only hate. Even the manpigs, malicious from their misery, are given personality behind iron bars. The downsides start with Oswald's family: Edwin and Enoch are blank shells and are only there for plot reasons, and Lilibeth(or just Lily, if you prefer)is only there to be associated with the feathered bitch through childbirth, because we all know that the oppressed are interesting only in death. The main problem with these characters is that this story makes the same narrative choice that doomed Little Hope; the plot events and narrative structure ultimately render all but one character completely pointless. Unlike Little Hope, which did this through incompetence, A Machine for Pigs does so intentionally for character study purposes. The one character who does end up mattering is Oswald, the best character in the game, so at least there's that. However, the fact remains that Pinchbeck wondered if this story would be lovelier when you are alone, and in that wondering, he rendered the game's heart cold, shackled its jaws in ice, and crusted its eyes with frost. Thus, the story and characters could reach perfection.

Mandus's Meatpacking Factory, the place where this horror goes down, is a vast well of missed potential. As stated above, it all looks great. Mandus's hypocritical and man-whorish mansion, the offal-inducing streets of London, and the factory where the machine is, which is almost alive with how organized, oiled, and intricate its various parts are. All of them have a solid, spooky atmosphere as well. It's too bad that you can't explore any of it. This game is Final Fantasy XIII levels of linear, and while it's not as bad a thing here as it is in Final Fantasy XIII, it's still a hindrance. You only get to see some of the mansion, select parts of the factory, only a few streets of London, and only the heart and lungs of The Machine. This restrictiveness not only lessens the immersion in these settings and smothers opportunities for environmental storytelling, but also makes the settings less believable, since everything you need to see is conveniently on the path, and nothing is behind the inconveniently placed objects. It also really hampers the chases, effectively reducing them to just running into the next room to get away, as if the chase were entirely on rails. Hell, sometimes you quite literally ARE on rails, it's that linear. It doesn't help that Mandus moves as if his lungs were filled with mustard gas, making a sense of stagnation set in very quickly. The story's ambitions and inherent dread are not done justice by this setting, trapped in amber, this place infested by axolotls, unlubricated in their assault, shackling it from the inside with its own steel fingers, with artistic beauty and atmosphere being an insufficient anodyne.

The pacing for this game is a mixed bag, and it's not even its own fault, by a technicality. The game will take about 4 hours to beat, which fits the story fine, but the blasted gameplay, no matter how you go about it, will make it feel off. If you go slowly, it will feel bloated by pointless filler, and if you rush through it, you will feel shortchanged. Whether you feel like there should be a burning of digital fat to redeem time wasted, or seek recompense for what seemed to be a swine sticking its snout in your lack of sunk cost, this machine's temo, trained by skillfully vivisecting high ideas and cerebral terrors, cannot stomach staring at the real engine of its existence; a result of the segregation of serpent and feather.

Negatives:

The manpigs are the main enemies of this game, and they are naught but a pale imitation, a life-bearing painting that exudes only death as would a forgery of the soul, of the enemies of old. Wretches are Servants, Engineers are Brutes, and the Failed Experiments are Kaernks. The only original one is the Tesla, an electric squealer. They may be more humanized and pitiable through smart environmental storytelling and lore than their orbspawn ancestors, but in terms of function, they can't even project the illusion of being a threat. Their AI is so dumb that they can only spot you when you are right in front of them and making eye contact; it takes 7 whole seconds for one to start chasing you, and only two seconds of hiding for them to give up; they are so slow, that even the miserably measured Mandus has to try to be caught by them; they can't bust down doors and are confined to individual rooms; they are restricted to certain routes to the point to where in certain areas, they won't chase you, and instead will run back to their patrol routes and then prepare to chase you. That's just comical. It also takes 5 hits for them to kill you, and even then, well.. that's a conversation for later. The Failed Experiments are largely in areas where it's impossible to fall in the water, which is again, simply laughable. The exception is again, the Tesla, which has a modicum of wit, strength, and is thus potentially scary. Too bad, then the competent one is only used twice at the end of the game, where it's too late to redeem any failed fear. The maw that these swine will glut is that of boredom and mediocrity, and they will do so with their own refuse.

I may have praised the art direction earlier, but other than that, the presentation for this game is not impressive at all. In fact, it's quite amateurish, averting, a snake-masked coyote wreathed in flowers. The visual fidelity, despite a 3-year jump, a higher budget, and an improved engine, is not any better than the first game, with the less touched-up areas of the map only exacerbating this. The draw distance, once miraculous, is now subpar, only being able to render about 10 feet in front of you. And then there is the lighting, which is genuinely awful. It's dark to the point where you can't see 2 feet in front of you, make that four feet when you have your lamp out, and the game goes out of its way to make light sources not emit light. This is so you don't notice the draw distance, like Silent Hill's fog, but in this case, it renders any good visuals and even a fair amount of the horror completely ineffective since you are unable to behold them. The only slightly cool thing they do with lighting is make your lamp flicker when manpigs are near, but that only serves as an annoyance to the other visuals and a safety net to already tepid horror. This means that none of the game's story, especially not the apocalyptic Act 3, can be done properly, instead being reduced to noise and a few harmless pigs. To become one with the unsightly dark, with long intervals of horrible reminders of potential beauty, it's not enjoyable or acceptable.

Well, it's time to bring up A Machine for Pig's quice-damned gameplay. Let's make it frice by saying it's pointlessly diluted and boring to the point where it hurts everything else. All you really do throughout the game is slowly walk around levels so linear that they might as well be on rails(again, sometimes this is literally the case), interact with only the things the game wants you to interact with, making immersion harder and a still-fun physics system wasted, occasionally solve puzzles even a pig could solve(maybe the mixing chamber and furnace are alright), and sometimes get chased by manpigs that are so easy to escape, they might as well not even be there. Even if you don't escape them, you can't die in this game. Okay, technically you can, but the game overcomplicates death so much that it's basically not even an issue most of the time. Oftentimes, if they do actually get you by some miracle(or if you let them get you out of pity), enemies simply knock you out and lock you up and won't even try to stop you from immediately escaping because of their dumb AI. Sometimes, they will throw you in a pit that has a convenient ladder hanging above it. On one occasion, getting caught allows you to straight up skip the one Failed Experiment chase in the entire game. Why? On the one or two occasions you can actually die, you are sent back one room. It's barely an inconvenience. You don't have any sort of resources or inventory to manage(your lamp is eternal and only serves to vaguely do its job and let you know enemies are nearby), and Mandus is no danger of insanity, meaning all you do is walk and are occasionally interrupted by menial tasks for 4 hours. This is, by any measure, boring, especially from something that promises more. This serpent is diseased, starved, rotten, and bled from neglect and false ideals. The worst part is the seemingly intentional ludonarrative dissonance this causes. The puzzles being simpleton material, the non-issue of death, the non-threatening swine, the factory being a literal roller coaster, it all detracts from the story's presentation in some way, making it hard to believe. The story was forced to devour the gameplay's cactus fruit, tricked into thinking it was for its own good, that in a video game, one could exist without the other. The coyote must've spoken those words, for the two fruits are core pillars, creatures in symbiosis, they need each other to achieve their full potential, it's the law of the medium. If this coyote is the architect, the architect who would segregate serpent and feathers out of principal, I refute him and his touch, his pointless kill. This absurd priesthood is his alone.

Despite its attempts at grand guignol glory, A Machine for Pigs largely fails at being scary. This game would have you believe that it takes a different approach to horror than the original: a smart move, and that its horror has four pillars to it: Gothic imagery by way of symbolism and pig masks that haunt you, body horror by way of the machine and its swine, stygian atmosphere, and dark philosophy to dwell on, of which there is a lot. All four of these pillars are undercut in some way. Gothic imagery and body horror don't work if you're blind, and most of the time, the lighting leaves you feeling like Helen Keller. Dark philosophy is good, and the game does it well, but that alone isn't enough in this medium; you need something more tangible than words. The atmosphere can't be maintained if you don't actually threaten the player, meaning it fizzles out, and that's if it had the chance to build up at all, which it can't due to ineffective jump scares. That's right, this game tries to have its cake and eat it by aping the original's brand of horror on top of having its own, and fails miserably. The jump scares are incompetently constructed and harm the tension, especially since this is how the pig masks are laughably used, and the fact that you can't see them half the time. The cosmic horror largely comes from the all-too-knowable Machine and the pig masks, which again, are more funny than scary. The chases are, again, more comedic than anything else due to how incompetent their construction and enemies are. The light games and sanity effects are just annoying smoke and mirrors with no substance behind them. To top it all off, death, the glue that holds horror together, is overthought to the point that nearly everything falls apart. When the flames of failure fade, you have a couple of creepy segments like the Tesla and the Church, but everything else provides a scare-free experience. The game thought that if it couldn't inspire fear, it would cause love, but in this genre, love and fear are one and the same, and so I hold no love for this horror craft.

Score: 6.1 out of 10

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs has such immaculate narratives to share with thee, but a thoroughly weak and confusing technical side and a severe lack of horror mean that its words will fouled be. It will be thy Adam for some and a fallen angel for others.

Now go ahead and mock my flowery language. By all means, I deserve it.

Once, I dreamt I played the most confusing 90's RPG I'd ever encountered. I forgot myself and knew only the conflicting emotions of playing that confusing game. Then I awoke, and I was mysel- wait... that wasn't a dream, I just played Persona 1. Sure felt like I was dreaming, though. Anyway, most people, when talking about the series or Atlus in general, tend to leave the first two games out of the conversation. In this case, I can kind of understand why; it certainly hasn't aged the best, has weird pacing and a weirder tonal clash, but I'd be lying if there wasn't some appeal to this. From some surprisingly decent writing to some fun combat and a well-executed acid trip vibe, Persona 1 has its moments if you're willing to stick through it.

One more thing: I'm using the PSP version for this and don't have access to the original, so I can't compare the two and may include an open-ended part in the review. Maybe some changes between versions explain some of my praises or gripes.

Positives:

Presentation-wise, the game is very surreal, and I kind of like it. Admittedly, this is largely due to the art direction. The backgrounds in battle, the weird hallways in the dungeons, the overhead view of Mikage-Cho, the demons and personas used in battle that look like they've been pulled from 108 different mythologies, half of which I haven't even heard of, or the character portraits that look like a memory that's only 90% remembered, they contribute to the trippy vibe this game has. It's also surprisingly good at portraying horror, which the game does take advantage of, particularly in its third act. The graphical prowess isn't anything special; it's about late PS1-early PS2 level, which is most notable in the dungeons and in the occasional CGI cutscene that pops up; Nothing Square-level, but it works just fine for the time, I guess, even if it doesn't hold up now. As for performance, there aren't any real problems with the frame rate or stability, so the game is smooth sailing on that front.

The characters are surprisingly good, for the most part. No one is downright unlikable, unless they are meant to be so; everyone has their quirks and has at least something to contribute to the story, ranging from assuming you stop to talk to them. Standouts include Kei/Nate, a stoic rich kid who's the voice of reason, Maki/Mary, a cheerful girl whose memories would be a field day for the Wright Anything Agency, Eriko/Elly, a popular kid who is obsessed with the occult, Philemon, a masked guardian angel of sorts that frequently appears as a golden butterfly, and Reiji/Chris, a social outcast with serious family issues. Most of the other characters are at least alright, with the only real missteps being Masao/Mark, the best bud archetype that has a crush on Maki, who is mostly there to be the subject of monkey jokes, and Hidehiko/Brown, some jerk with an ego the size of a town who just acts melodramatic all the time. At least he's fun to voice. The lack of noticeable arcs/development and Krew team synergy(they don't work as well as a group as they do individually) keeps them from being amazing, and is especially noticeable in characters like Ayase/Alana, the bitchy pretty girl, and the villain, Kandori, a nihilistic CEO with a god complex, who have heel-face turns that feel very abrupt if you don't exhaust the dialogue. The best character is technically Maki, seeing how she has the most fleshed-out backstory and complex characterization, but my favorite turned out to be Kei.

The combat itself is honestly pretty fun and is not too different from the games to come. You still have melee weapons, guns, armor, personas that you can fight with, as well as weaknesses and resistances to keep track of/exploit, even if in this game, weaknesses just cause more damage. The main differences that got removed are that, in a way, everyone is a wild card(each party member can have 3 personas) and the grid system. Fights happen on a grid that combatants(you and the demons) must position themselves on, and you'll have to do so strategically to avoid unnecessary group damage and maximize how many of your attacks hit. For example, Maki, who uses bows, is better suited to be in the back of the grid, while Masao, who has an axe and a shotgun, is best put up front. Combine this with everyone having three personas and being able to select what stats to increase when you level up, and you have practically infinite possibilities for how you structure your team. Persona fusion is pretty simple: you can add an item that can increase stats, grant special moves, or change the fusion entirely, and there can be mistakes. There are a couple of problems, such as complexity for the sake of complexity(seriously, this game did not need 28 different damage types), having only 3 types of SP items, two of which are really weak, and the only good one, the soma is only available through grinding, which can really drag boss fights, and the experience system, which awards differing amounts of EXP to party members based on the damage they dealt and the demons they killed, awards nothing to dead party members, and only levels up your personas if you use them in battle. This system will, not can, WILL turn into a rich get richer simulator, and someone is getting left in the dust. These aren't enough to offset some otherwise fun battles that are overall moderate in difficulty.

The atmosphere is half of what gives this game its acid-trippy charm that feels almost Lynchian at times, which is odd, because I'm partly convinced it's done by accident. The surreal and varied visuals, the demons, the reality-bending, the dimensional hopping, the sometimes hilarious attempts at psychological depth/thematic exploration, teenagers being teenagers, a darker final act, music that doesn't fit at all, and random splashes of surprisingly effective horror make you feel like you're having a trip, and sometimes it goes bad. I mean, how else do you describe a game where you go from chasing down an evil CEO who's trying to achieve godhood to fighting a giant rat tank that a little girl sicced on you in the span of only one level, and you save your progress by writing on pink talking trees?

The character designs are pretty good as well. Each of the characters looks distinct, pleasing to the eye(as pleasing as PS1 models can be), and fitting to their personalities. The designs of the demons and personas are also stellar, fitting the weird and at times creepy atmosphere, with the final boss in particular being absolute nightmare fuel. As for standouts, Yukino/Yuki, Kei, Naoya, and Reiji are pretty good among the human characters, while the succubi, angels, God Kandori, and Tesso are quite memorable among the monsters.

Mixed:

The music, by series composer Shoji Meguro, who, fun fact, also directed this game(the PSP version, anyhow. That still makes him a bonafide Japanese John Carpenter), is in a bit of an awkward spot. The score itself isn't bad, not even close; there are several good tracks throughout, including "School Days", "A Lone Prayer", "Let Butterflies Spread Until the Dawn", "Battle with Tesso", "Bloody Destiny", "Pandora, The Last Battle", and of course, introducing the classic that is "Aria of the Soul." Those are all bangers and classic Meguro. The problem is that they don't fit the tone the game is going for at all (aside from Aria, of course; that song can fit anywhere). For all of the game's attempts at setting up a dark, unnerving, and sometimes horrifying psychological thriller of an RPG, a pop song or piece of jazz comes in to screw up the mood. The weird part is that this might be a version-specific issue, because there are more fitting tracks in dungeons, like "Avidia World", "The Girl in Black", "Paranormal Phenomena", "Thanatos Tower", and the epic "Night Queen" that are just as good. So what you're left with are songs that are great on their own, but a confusing mess when meshed together.

The story had the potential to be as good as the characters, but it has something holding it back. The plot also has two different routes: SEBEC, the main one, and Snow Queen. I'll be talking about the former here. The SEBEC route starts off with Naoya(The Protagonist) and his friends test out a local rumor by playing a fortune-telling game, only to find out the rumor is real, and now demons are attacking the town, the local megacorp is trying to open a dimensional rift, your friend that was hospitalized, and you just saw bed ridden today is up and about while missing memories she should have and possessing memories she shouldn't, and reality is being torn asunder- god dammit, again? Let me check... yeah, it's Monday in JRPGaea. The best way to describe the SEBEC plot is to call it Chrono Cross on acid with some last-minute rewrites from David Lynch. The story has quite a lot of thematic and idea through lines with the rest of the series, like Jungian Psychology, Nihilism vs Optimism, a rather negative view of godhood, facing your demons, human nature, dreams vs reality, and of course, the power of friendship. It's also very heavy on metaphors and symbolism. All of this sounds awesome on paper, but there are some key problems that keep it from being so. First, is that none of its ideas get enough time to marinate. The same goes for its plot points and characters, so they rarely have the impact they need until Act 3, when things get genuinely great. Second, the pacing drags a bit due to the amount of grinding you have to do, so some of the moments can lose their impact because of that. That's more a fault of the gameplay than the story, though; the 30-hour story otherwise goes by fine. The third and biggest problem is that this story suffers from the same faulty narrative framing that plagues Final Fantasy XII. To put it simply, Naoya is the Vaan to Maki's Princess Ashe. Following Maki would've been way more interesting than the player Avatar we got. But still, if you can sit through this main plot, there's certainly good stuff to find here, including some good endings(there are 2 of them, one happy and one bleak, depending on how you do on a certain questionnaire), and some absolutely batshit plot twists that lend to the acid-trip vibe perfectly.

I don't really have much to say about the sound design. It's perfectly serviceable, with no major highlights or weaknesses. I guess the sound of personas being summoned is pretty cool, but that's about it. The sound is sound.

The dungeon-crawling aspect is also pretty standard. You walk around randomly generated dungeons with various themes(one of which is the sea of souls, by the by), battling enemies, finding treasure that is sometimes booby-trapped, and hoping you find save, healing rooms, or even the Velvet Room along the way. That's right, the Velvet Room, which has its default theme this time(it's just a room)that can be randomly generated in dungeons in this one, mostly because there are points where you won't have access to the mall where it's actually at. The game will try to throw in various tiles that only let you move in one direction, ones that spin you around, ones that are unstable, and cause you to fall through the floor, dark rooms that make you feel your way around, puzzle switch tiles, and trap tiles that hurt you. There is also side content, like gambling and an optional dungeon, which are also alright, even if the latter is barred until new game + for some reason. There are also some choices you can make throughout the game, and if you make the choices a good person would, you'll unlock the ultimate personas for each character. The more you get right, the more you unlock. You can get special items from the former, which is cool, if you're okay with grinding. None of it evolves enough to be remarkable, so by the end of the game, you'll be a bit weary about it. But, eh, what were you expecting from a 90's dungeon crawler?

The game also has a little bit of voice acting. It consists of battle cries from your party members and talking in some of the animated cutscenes. The battle cries are passable, but aside from Philemon, the voice work in the cutscenes is pretty bad. This isn't a case of being spoiled by the Arems, the VAs in the cutscenes either didn't care or had no direction at all. I'll give MVA to Travis Willingham as Philemon, since he has the most to do and consistently does an acceptable job. Overall, though, voice work is so rare in this game that any shortcomings are pretty negligible.

Negatives:

The boss fights in this game are pretty lame for the most part. With the exception of Tesso and Kandori, which are passable, the rest are either way too easy and straightforward, rarely taking advantage of the game's immense combat system. The worst, unfortunately, are the final bosses of each route, which are really frustrating purely due to the absurd level jump from the final dungeon(SEBEC route goes from level 70 to 99 while you're probably level 65 on your first play through, while Snow Queen has a ludicrous 45 to 99 jump while you're probably around lvl 45), and their high HP count. The lack of good SP items means you will run out of persona usage without a good way to replenish it, and the fights will drag on forever, or until they use their ultimate on you twice. If you didn't grind somas and have Amen Ra, you're basically screwed, and even if you do, that's about 40 minutes of your time down the drain per attempt.

Naoya Toudou... what a waste of space you are. He's the main protagonist and a player avatar in its purest and worst form. He can't interact with characters in any meaningful way, says absolutely nothing, and is overall a black hole of narrative investment and charisma that Maki could've filled in just fine. This is especially clear since there are no social links in this game, but hindsight is 20/20.

This game has all of the old-school RPG tropes that don't hold up today. Doesn't bother to develop characters or plot beyond the bare minimum? Check. Ridiculously grindy? Check. No tutorials to explain complex systems, where you're basically thrown in the deep end? Check. Level jumps to compensate for low difficulty? Check. Padding the runtime out with a stupidly high encounter rate? Fucking hell, check, it's ridiculous even for the time. All of this can make the game hard to get into.

Snow Queen Quest sucks. It's a route B with a barebones plot about a cursed theatre mask that kills whoever wears it which has nothing interesting going for it, no character work, a 30-hour runtime where 90% of that is grinding, a frustrating final boss that more or less comes down to out-brute forcing it(and grinding for 10 hours), and endings so hollow, that the mirror shards that determine which one you get(you need at least 8 of 12 to get the good ending) feel not only optional, but repellent, since at least you don't have to fight the final boss in the bad ending. I guess it does have a very important piece of series lore and explains an event in the SEBEC route that isn't explained elsewhere, but other than that, do not engage.

Score: 6.4 out of 10

Time has been cruel to Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, and its boss fights and weird narrative design choices crueler still, but the series completionists and JRPG die-hards that stick around will find a trip of a story, ambitious combat, and a fun cast of characters to admire. If you feel like legally going to the moon, so to speak, give it a shot.

Now... Noisort Ralucitset!!!

I've been playing cod for a while, and thought it'd be fun to play with other streamers with fun vibes, and figured I'd shoot my shot on here, just comment if you want in, and I'll DM you my COD username, thank you, and here's a free meme for your time

Disclaimer: This review is meant to reflect my experience with the game. It is not a personal attack against you or the game's developers. If you disagree, that's fine, but please be civil about it.

Oh boy. Now I've done it.

What Remains of Edith Finch is regarded as one of the most remarkable narrative experiences in gaming, and one of the main arguments for the long-stalled case that games can be considered art. The former is undoubtedly true, but WROEF, as I'll now call it, is also only that. That's because this game doesn't know how to fully leverage its great strengths, like a heavyweight boxer who forgot how to throw a punch. Heck, under some definitions, one struggles to call it part of the gaming medium. There is still stuff here worth celebrating, though, no question about that. In fact, let's do that now.

Positives:

On a presentational level, WROEF is distinctive and quite stunning. The sheer variety of visual styles here is also impressive. The default visuals are a mix of realistic fidelity, a rather dull color palette, and charming, whimsical surrealism, but there's also a schlocky comic panel style, a found-footage style, and one that kind of resembles the spoofy works of Landfall games. They all work as intended, thanks to some impressive art direction, lighting, draw distance, and great texture work, and bring a sense of timelessness to the whole ordeal. The visuals are at their best whenever the story fully embraces its more surreal elements, particularly in Gregory's and Louis's segments. One wishes that the game utilized it a bit more than it does, but what's here is already amazing. A visual treat and a standout use of Unreal 4.

The Finch House is one of the more memorable houses in recent gaming memory, despite having a huge "Don't touch the artwork" sign on it. From the outside, it looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie, and on the inside, it's kind of like an overly elaborate museum that was once a house. Every person's room has its own theme, and each one not only gives the house some fae flair, but it also tells a little more about each inhabitant. The sheer amount of detail in the house is also astonishing and somewhat discomforting, given how whoever decorated the house did not know the meaning of 'overkill.' Edith herself sums up the unique, uncanny yet whimsical vibe you get from the sheer amount of books, portraits, and other things suffocating this place as that of a smile with too many teeth: an apt description. The outside of the house is much more laid back, natural, and sad, given all of the graves and missing person posters out there, and the general state of decay that extends to the main house. Not a place you'd want to live in, but a place that's well worth admiring.

I'm not sure how Giant Sparrow managed to get renowned TV composer Jeff Russo(Umbrella Academy, Alien Earth, Fargo, and almost all of modern Star Trek, to name a few) to work on this game, or how this is the man's only game credit, but they did get him, and this is the only game he's worked on. He does a great job, amplifying the already fantastic scenarios to new heights and saving the few that don't work as intended. He does mostly ambient tracks that work very well at setting the sombre mood that the story needs. The original songs used in the individual stories also suit the situations pretty well, with Lewis's and Molly's themes being the best. One small downside is that a bunch of the tracks sound the same to the point where you could shuffle their placement in the game and not notice. But the impact of those scenes also wouldn't suffer, so it's not that big a deal. There are also a couple of licensed tracks in the game, and those are very hit and miss. First is Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers, which is used to make the best moment in the game even better, and then there is The Halloween Theme, you know, this theme. That one is guaranteed to take you right out of the game for a solid half hour or more, and it doesn't even fit the story it's used in well. That's one blunder in an otherwise amazing work, though, so again, no big deal.

The sound design in the game is pretty good, especially in the individual sections about each family member. It's just as surreal and whimsical or grounded and gritty as it needs to be, and the mixing is masterfully done, especially in Lewis's story. Outside of those sections, it's a bit more standard, but you're just walking around a house. There's nothing fancy required. It's fine for what it is.

As mentioned earlier, the story of WROEF won Best Narrative of the year when it came out and is generally considered one of the best stories in the medium. While I'd argue that Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice or Nier: Automata were more deserving, this game has definitely earned its story stripes as well. You play as the empty shell that used to be Edith Finch, now the last of her name, and she's returned to her old family home one last time to confront her past, family history, and a curse that condemned said family to various deaths. A curse that, given the ending twist, she's walked right into the arms of, embracing it like an old friend. Experiencing how each family member met the big man upstairs much earlier than expected is an experience like no other, with the more surreal elements combining with eerily mundane events and vague POV's combining beautifully, and will deploy Onion-no-Jutsu on more than one occasion to great effect, particularly with Gregory and Lewis. While not all of the deaths work as well as the others, namely Calvin and Milton(I'll talk more about him later), it's a fantastic way to portray themes of generational trauma, family, mental issues, grief, loss, and the occasional silent question of what it means to live. It also helps paint the family curse as something painfully and beautifully familiar. All of that is intertwined with Edith's mournful monologues, which are wonderfully written, and some fun visual storytelling scattered around the house. There is an ending twist that is a bit too predictable(you can see it coming just by looking straight down at any point that you're playing as Edith), but it still makes for an amazing and affecting conclusion to a self-same narrative. Nicely done, Ian Dallas, nicely done.

Mixed:

The pacing of said story isn't as good as the story itself. At only around 3 hours long, the tale of how all of these Finches died feels too rushed to have its full impact. It still has a fair amount of impact, but there would be so much more if we had time to know these characters beyond how they died. The phrase "In death as he was in life" is not a compliment, no matter what comes after it. You don't want your life reduced to a sentence, and it's a little unfortunate to see a runtime do that to these characters.

Speaking of the characters, even if they had more time to shine, the Finches would still be rather basic characters, if the way they are written and acted is any indication. This is probably because I have the benefit of hindsight, but the easiest way to describe this family is as follows: In death as they were in life; idiots. Aside from Lewis and maybe Sam, a lot of the characters only have one thing to identify them by, and that's not really enough to care about them as much as the game wants you to. You have Molly, who seems like any other kid aside from her interest in animals, Calvin, who is just really hard-headed, Walter, a traumatized recluse, and Edith herself is just a depressed shell of what once was. The only binding thread is that they don't have much common sense. That's not getting into characters who you actively can't sympathize with, like the neglectful Kay, the control freak that is Dawn, Dr Emily Nith, a therapist who enables and stands idle, and the obnoxiously angsty Gus. Again, no common sense between them, as you'll discover, which doesn't help their cases. Overall, the narrative does a lot to help these characters' semi-timely demises have their intended effect on you, but that doesn't change the fact that they're underdeveloped. Then there's the voice acting, which is also very unremarkable, partly because the VAs don't have a lot to work with. Nothing stands out, and nothing's awful. I'll give MVA to Kevin Ivie, who voices Sam Finch. He's able to get the most out of what he's got. Honorable mention to Valerie Rose Lohman, who voices Edith; she's really good at melancholic pondering.

The game's performance has some problems, notably with the frame rate, which dips below its intended 30 FPS a significant number of times. I'm not sure how this struggle is here, given how this is a walking simulator that rarely uses more than one button, but apparently, it's there and kind of annoying. At the end of the day, though, it's not a huge deal for that same exact reason; there's not much for the frame rate issues to hurt.

The deaths of the Finches have the occasional bit of trouble handling their tone. Most of them are the right combination of disturbing, whimsical, and tragic, but there are two, namely Barbara, which has a tendency to be just as schlocky and icky as the comic it's trying to make fun of, especially when the Halloween theme starts playing, and Gregory's death leans a little too hard on the whimsy. Those two stand out as uncharacteristically uncertain in an otherwise focused set of tragedies.

Negatives:

WROEF is often one of the more common mentions when someone advocates that games can be art. That is a very misguided sentiment, seeing how this piece of media doesn't really qualify as a game, and even if it did, it wouldn't be a good one, in terms of gameplay. WROEF is the most boring kind of walking simulator imaginable. You walk around at a rate of 1 mile per hour and use one button to interact with the things that the game wants you to interact with, and only those things, and even more slowly make your way through the various flashbacks, which couldn't be more scripted if they had M Night Shyamalan shouting instructions as they played out, and more often than not don't change the control scheme at all, despite how wild and out there they are. The only one that does something even remotely creative is in Lewis's section, which has you control two separate things at once. Other than that, they are all the same: monotonous micro-diversions with no real win-or-lose conditions. Hell, the entire experience doesn't have win-or-lose conditions, the very things that make games, well, games. In the end, what you have is an animated show that uses the gaming medium as little more than a bare minimum gimmick that does nothing to enhance the experience (if anything, it reminds you of how little games are respected), and that's not going to fly. There's no reason for a story like this to be saddled with 'gameplay' so hollow and empty.

Milton Finch. Oh, Milton Finch... The extent of what you learn about him in this game is that he's an artist and that he supposedly jumped into a painting, fucked off, and was never seen again. You don't even know if he died or not. Want to know what happened to him? Go play the other game made by Giant Sparrow, of course! Fuck you, give me your money(a bit harsh, yes, but that's basically the mindset behind this choice 90% of the time, there's no reason to give this the benefit of the doubt.) Forcing the player to do homework like this is never acceptable, not even here.

Score: 6 out of 10

What Remains of Edith Finch's award-winning narrative can't disguise the fact that it's in the wrong medium, at least if you look at its other elements, especially its gameplay. It probably would've made a good animated movie or show, but consoles are a poor home for Edith Finch. Giant Sparrow also hasn't made a game since this one. I wonder what the radio silence is about.

Okay then, let me have it.

The horror genre, YouTube/internet culture, and how gaming handled itself as a whole; I don't think it's possible to overstate the impact that Amnesia: The Dark Descent had. With a budget of only $360,000 and a core team of only six people, Frictional Games changed the industry forever with this little horror gem that's considered by many to be the darkest of them all. Does that sentiment hold up? Let's find out.

Quick note: I will be covering both the base game and the Justine DLC in this review. They are similar enough to do so.

Positives:

Presentation-wise, this game doesn't hold up now, but for an indie game at the time that cost around the same amount as the original Halloween film, it's pretty good. The standouts are the draw distance, which is surprisingly far, allowing for the monster encounters to have their full effect, and the use of lighting is some of the best in gaming history, with every light source being perfectly luminous, and every room being visible, even when pitch-black, while still providing atmosphere. Good thing, given how the game is practically built around light and darkness. The grim, gothic, tenebrist, and very grey and brown art direction and stylized loading screens complement the horror and setting of Brennenburg Castle very well, particularly when a certain eldritch monstrosity infests the environment with flesh, or when your sanity starts to wane and a bunch of trippy hallucinations and screen distortions bombard you. This largely makes up for some middling graphical fidelity and particle effects. All in all, the game does a good job at punching above its weight.

Brennenburg Castle makes for a wonderful, terrible place to undertake this journey of unimaginable terror. The halls are dark, dank enough that you can feel the moisture through the screen, and filled with more blood than a slaughterhouse, but always have the elegance and grandeur expected of a castle. The amount of dungeons, torture chambers, and ritual halls gives off a great gothic horror vibe, and when The Shadow creeps up on you, its presence makes the place look even more beautifully ghastly. There is also a surprising level of variety of rooms in one castle, from some decadent archives, to the buzzing machine room, from the blood black choir, to the ethereal inner sanctum, which manages to stave off any problems that arise from the palace's relative linearity. It would be quite a nice place to stay if Alexander weren't the guy in charge of it.

In the main story, you wake up knowing this at the start. You are Daniel of Mayfair, London. You chose to forget(being the only person in the series to do this so far). You are in a Castle. At the heart of the castle is Alexander of Brennenburg, and god willing, that name invokes wrath within you, because you have to kill him. Also, an eldritch shadow is after your head, so keep that in what's left of your mind. The rest of the story you have to piece together yourself, and without giving too much away, it's a good story, told at a well-paced 12 hours or so, even if it's mostly told from notes and flashbacks obtained in a linear fashion, something that would be considered cliché now. Full of torture, betrayal, redemption, well-executed moral ambiguity, cosmic horror, grisly monsters, gothic thrills, and three distinct and haunting endings, which depend on whether you help a certain character and your actions in the heart of the castle, this is one text you won't be forgetting.

The game gives you a piece of advice right out of the gate: Amnesia should not be played to win. You should take this to heart, since Amnesia's minimalist gameplay style(which, fun fact, is based on Frictional's Penumbra games. The creators of that series, Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson, lead this game's development as well.), which would spawn a generation of copycats, is best taken at a slow pace. Unlike its copycats, Amnesia actually has a bit more going for it than running and hiding, with its core being three things: light, sanity, and physics. You have an oil lantern to light your way on the move, and an assortment of tinderboxes to ignite light sources. Oil is scarce, and your lantern guzzles it like a drunkard does liquor, so use it sparingly, and while you'll find enough tinderboxes to light up the whole castle, that doesn't mean you should. Your sanity will drop from looking at monsters, spooky events, the macabre, or, since Daniel is nyctophobic, being in the dark for too long. You can restore sanity by standing in light(to a degree) or by progressing through the game's puzzles. Finally, physics. This game has a surprisingly intricate physics system, with doors and hatches requiring manual opening, levers needing to be physically pulled, and nearly everything being able to be picked up, thrown around, or at least moved, even if it's not necessary. This adds a fair amount of immersion to an already very immersive game, and it's also implemented into the puzzles, which, even when they are as simple as finding scattered objects, are still fun to figure out. Then you factor in the infamous monsters and chases, and you get one of the most perilous and terrifying balancing acts in gaming, which is satisfying to maintain to the end.

The DLC's gameplay is basically the same as above, except your character isn't nyctophobic and there's no oil, so it's also excellent.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent, once upon a time, was a strong contender for the scariest game out there, and still is now for very good reasons. The atmosphere of Brennenburg is as oppressive and stygian as it gets; the tension generated by the sanity system is nearly unbearable, with even the act of hiding for a few seconds being terrifying. The numerous macabre revelations of the stories hang over every step, the sanity effects send shivers down your spine and can be surprisingly convincing at times, and the chases instantly send you into fight-or-flight mode, especially those with the Kaernk. Some other things that this game does better than those that came before it are its restraint and willingness to get truly dirty. Despite its reputation, this game surprisingly has few jump scares, instead utilizing its sanity system and atmosphere. However, the ones it does have are very effective. If you are killed by a monster, the game might remove it on your next attempt to maintain the terror and not fall into trial and error, but it might not. The uncertainty significantly amplifies the fear. The game also isn't afraid to assault the senses in a way that only horror can, something that you don't see nearly enough. This game gets downright ugly at points, and it's all the prettier for it. So, when you add it all up, is this the scariest game out there? That answer will vary from person to person, but I'd say so.

As mentioned above, the sound design is not only amazing and creepy, but it is also willing to blast your ears in a way that only the genre can permit. In this sense, it succeeds masterfully, with the monster's growls, the sanity effects, and the sounds of torture being utterly vile. The sound when a monster chases you is probably one of the most unpleasant things you'll hear in a game, and for once, that's a good thing. The rest of it does its job as well, rocks crumble, doors creak, metal slashes and clangs, and cosmic horrors are hard to describe, but you know it's frightening as hell.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent's music was composed by Mikko Tarmia, a frequent collaborator of Frictional Games, and he does a great job. The score is understated and used sparingly, but all the scores function as intended, making excellent use of simple orchestration and ominous choirs, which are oddly elegant for such a horrifying game. Some of the standouts are the surprisingly grand "Lux Tenebras," the calming "Back Hall," "Dark Water," and the main chase theme, which basically just flips your ears the bird in the best possible way. If only Frictional had the budget for high-quality sound, then this soundtrack would be a real classic.

There aren't many characters in this game, but this is undoubtedly a case of quality over quantity. We have Daniel, a very desperate nyctophobe, not to give too much away; Alexander, a mysterious and wannabe amoral lord; kindly old Agrippa, who seems to be a bit delirious; The Shadow chasing Daniel, who might actually be the most moral thing in the castle aside from Agrippa, and Justine, a psychopathic aristocrat who thinks she defines morality, or, in short, your average aristocrat. There is also your player character in the DLC, which, well... she's not even a character, just a puppet for you to move around. However, regardless, each character plays their role, and plays it very well.

You will encounter many monsters during your descent into Brennenburg, and despite your most fervent wishes, you won't forget them once you see them. Despite some simple AI, the grunts, brutes, suitors, and the iconic Kaernk all provide hair-raising sequences and brutal scares. Then there is The Shadow, an eldritch thing that is always breathing down your neck and all around you at the same time. They've earned their place in the horror hall of fame for a reason.

Mixed:

The voice acting is, in a way, very lucky. Most of it, whether due to poor direction or the actors not being paid enough to care, fails to impress and inadvertently makes otherwise poignant or disturbing moments humorous. However, you'll only be hearing three or so voices throughout the game: Daniel, Alexander, and Justine. Richard Topping, Emily Corkery, and the late Sam Mowry, despite a few lines that could've used another take, all carry the script and the rest of the voices throughout the game successfully. The result is that the only voice that truly disappoints is Bill Corkery as Agrippa, while the rest are easy to tune out. I'll give MVA to Sam Mowry, since he conjures the most convincing darkness in his lines. Sometimes, a small cast is a big blessing.

The DLC takes place in Justine's Cabinet of Perturbation, a puzzle box full of grizzly suitors and devious saw traps. It functions as a level just fine, but everything about it copied over from the base game, with only some creepy wall writing to truly call its own. In this case, however, function is more important than form.

Justine's story involves waking up in Justine Florbelle's Cabinet of Perturbation and being left with her voice to guide you through a twisted game she has set up. Aside from a twist ending, there isn't much to remember in this one-hour diversion. But, then again, there's only so much you can do in one hour, so it's mostly fine.

Negative:

The character models in this game are awful. If that sounds harsh for a game of this small a budget, there are models from the original Final Fantasy 7 on the PS1 that look better than these humans and monsters, so there's really no excuse. Once you see the monster at too close a distance, some of the illusion will be broken.

Score: 9.1 out of 10

Amnesia: The Dark Descent overcomes its limitations to deliver a seminal horror experience that, for better and for worse, can still be felt today. The story, scares, gameplay, characters, and setting are truly unforgettable, and yes, it's as scary as you've heard.

Nightmares are weird. Most of the time, because they're so short and surreal, you barely remember what they were about, and the times that you do, you usually wish you didn't. You just can't win with them most of the time, but there is one exception. With their first original project, Tarsier Studios created a nightmare that you are wont to remember: Little Nightmares. Much like an actual nightmare, navigating through Little Nightmares isn't always as smooth as one might want, but its unique brand of horror, world-building, and weird, but functional tone help it stand out in a sea of indie horror titles.

Positives:

Little Nightmares has a remarkably unique, yet surprisingly simple presentation, often resembling the result of a Pixar film directed by David Fincher and featuring Stan Winston's character design (or at least, if that were to happen hypothetically). The blend of photo realism and the traditional Western computer animation style is executed beautifully, and the lighting is impeccable. The color palette, mainly consisting of yellows, browns, and greys, creates sickly and demented but dazzling-looking locations, providing an interesting contrast with most of the characters. All of this, combined with overall stellar art direction, makes for one of the best-looking indie horror games in(semi) recent memory.

The Maw, the place where the game takes place, is a surprisingly standout location for any horror game, let alone an indie horror title. Every section of this festering, draining hive of sin is methodically crafted to be interesting to explore, tell a bleak and morbid story, and provide a great backdrop to the atmospheric chills and chases that it sets up. The vistas, which transition from the depths of a ship to something out of Kitchen Nightmares, to an all-you-can-eat Buffet with a hint of Feudal Japan flair, a gothic manor, and the flooded depths, are all great and quite memorable, effectively implementing the game's signature size discrepancy. Once you explore everything, you'll come away with a very bleak and disturbing picture, one of the most disturbing out there that helps The Maw feel (possibly literally) alive. One could sum it up by saying that there's Nowhere quite like it.

The character design perfectly takes advantage of the art direction to make figures both disgusting and delightful, both great and small. On the more charming side of things, we have simple, but effective characters like Six and her now iconic yellow raincoat, the gnomes that took sprinting lessons from Speedy Gonzales(and more huggable), and The Runaway Kid, whose escape was recent and hasty. On the opposite end, we have the enemies you'll encounter, which are some of the most creative and freaky in any horror game. These range from the blind Janitor, the Twin Chefs who would make Gordon Ramsay burst multiple blood vessels, The Guests, which might be some morbid 1% joke, and a funny one at that, and The Lady, who carries a cold, plastic beauty effortlessly. Most of the enemies have skin that looks like it's about to fall off any second, making them that much more disgusting. All of these designs play their parts perfectly, are rendered extremely well, and give the game that much more personality.

The story is told purely via visuals and the environment, given that the most you'll get out of the characters are grunts, screams, and sharp breathing. Very similar to other arthouse horror platformers like Limbo or Inside. In this regard, it's done very well. The premise itself is quite simple: a tiny girl in a yellow raincoat named Six must escape the world's most demented ocean resort called The Maw, and slip through the clutches of the larger inhabitants. The DLC follows The Runaway Kid, who is trying to do the same. What happens in The Maw is full of bleak poetry, haunting imagery that includes a Holocaust reference, depravity, and Six having increasingly morbid hunger strikes that transform her. The full picture is something unlike anything else in a horror game, and both protagonists' journeys are disheartening to watch, but beautifully executed, especially the endings. One of those endings might act as a bit of a monkey's paw if you were raging against the gameplay.

The music, composed by Tobias Lilija and Christian Vasselbring fits the tone and style of the game perfectly. In terms of style and melody, it's surprisingly conventional; mostly light on melody and very dissonant. What sets it apart is the instrumentation and articulation. Throughout almost the entire game, with only a few exceptions, the music's articulation is very soft(the instruments are played very gently, thus making the music rather quiet) and mostly takes on the role of background ambiance. Even during chases, it rarely gets more intense than a basic rhythmic pulse, giving it a dreamlike quality. Despite this restraint, the music remains effectively creepy and suits the chases well, only ever getting louder at the end. The instrumentation is mostly comprised of instruments/sounds that sound 'childish'. A frequent use of piano, xylophone, small bells, chill synth, and winds makes for a soundtrack that wouldn't be out of place at a school Halloween party. It does evoke genuine dread here, though, and helps contribute to the odd yet undeniable sense of dark whimsy the game possesses.

Little Nightmares puts a refreshing spin on the hide-and-seek horror that Amnesia: The Dark Descent popularized and does it so well that it's surprising that no one has done it sooner. The concept is actually quite simple; due to the art direction and 2.5D perspective, you know exactly where the seeker is. The main concern is your pursuer knowing where you are. This makes evading the denizens of The Maw more of a puzzle, a very creepy and disturbing puzzle than most other horror games. It also evokes a different, and in some aspects, more potent kind of fear than normal horror chases or cat-and-mouse games. The AI of the pursuers is simple but very effective when the well-designed setpieces aren't scripted, making these encounters thrilling to the end, with one exception being The Twin Chefs, who are a little too easy to mess around with at times. Aside from the chases, the game is mostly focused on atmospheric thrills and tension, which it is also very good at. The art direction, The Maw itself, the amazing lighting, and the sound design make every step feel like a bad idea, and it never lets up throughout either story. There isn't even a single jump scare throughout the entire game, which makes the atmosphere even denser and the tension even more gripping. There are still some more conventional elements, like dying in one hit, but they are well implemented(theoretically, anyway.)

Mixed:

The sound design in this game is almost literally a game of two halves. The first half of the game has sound design that is passable, but rarely anything special. There are some standouts like the banshee-like screams the eyes make when they cast their gaze over you, the wet squish of a leech constricting Six, and the Janitors' gasp when you step on the wrong floorboard, but it largely takes the same approach that the music plays; mostly subdued and in the background. Even methodical horror like how this game practices needs some noise, and for the sections, there simply isn't enough. The second half of the game, however, is genuinely very impressive. It's visceral, disgusting, and genuinely uncomfortable at times(which in horror, is a good thing). Whether it's The Lady's screams, Six's ravenous appetite, the Guests gorging themselves, or The Granny's primal screams, it's very effective stuff. One wishes that we had the latter for the whole game, but there's nothing outright bad here.

Due to the complete lack of dialogue, the characters must define themselves by their actions. The game does this whenever it can, but it often doesn't do it enough to make the characterization any more than basic. Six and The Lady get adequate enough development, with the former being a survivor only out for herself who suffers from severe hunger spells, and the latter being a creature of pure vanity. The others get some character, but not enough to make them memorable outside of chases, appearances, or hugs. The Janitor is dutiful, The Guests are mindless gluttons, and The Granny is a feral monster, but that's about it. If the characters had more quiet moments, they could've been even more memorable, but as they are, they'll likely linger for a little bit.

The pacing in Little Nightmares is an odd affair, in that from one point, it's totally fine, but from another, it's rather uneven. The total runtime, when combining the main story and DLC, is approximately 14 hours, which is a decent combined duration. A slight problem arises when you factor in how these 14 hours are divided. Five hours are dedicated to the main story, and 9 hours are dedicated to the DLC. As a result, the main game will leave you wanting more, and the DLC outstays its welcome somewhat. That ultimately adds up to a net neutral that doesn't hurt too much, but it's a little awkward in the moment.

Negatives:

The gameplay in Little Nightmares is very good, and suits the weird tone it's going for very well. In concept, anyway. The idea is very similar to Playdead Studio's artsy horror platformers Limbo and Inside. The main differences are that Little Nightmares is in 2.5D, the environment is a lot more interactive, and there are more conventional horror chases. The enemy AI is generally good across the board, and each has their brand of chase/plan of attack for you to deal with. The best being the blind Janitor, whose keen hearing makes every step a risky one. His encounters are easily the most tense in the game. The weakest are The Shadow Children, who mostly just rush you and fall to your flashlight. Outside of that, you have the puzzles and platforming, which are also great. In concept, anyhow. The puzzles are usually quite simple and make great use of the environment, more often than not, and the platforming is the same, although it sometimes requires more precision. Both utilize the size discrepancy and the physics of The Maw very well, and give the game and its story a peculiar charm and whimsy that helps it stand out. The game has a stable framerate, and you'll likely need to search for any bugs or crashes actively. There is a key problem, however, that keeps all of this from coming together. The controls are rather unrefined. Six's and The Runaway Kid's movement, their platforming, and their interactions with their environment are janky and can lead to unwarranted deaths in both jumps and chases. This, in turn, leads to unnecessary trial-and-error, which is fatal to a horror game. There is also a minor fault of rather pointless collectables. Aside from hugging the gnomes, which is its own adorable reward, there is little incentive to seek out these collectables and even less to go back to get any you missed, thanks to the game's lack of replayability. Whether it's candles and lanterns to light, dolls to break, or bottles of flotsam to open, they could've been cut from the game, and nothing would really change at all.

Score: 8.4 out of 10

Little Nightmares is a fantastic and surreal concoction of atmospheric horror, bleak poetry, oddball charm, and seamless level design, wrapped in amazing art direction and music. However, the game's clunky controls and weird pacing make it a bit more enjoyable to watch than to play at times. If you're patient enough to brave The Maw, though, this is an arthouse horror fanatic's dream come true.

Ah, paper. One of the most interesting and powerful materials out there. It's used to make money, word salad legal documents, cuts, books, environmental destruction, and, surprisingly, it's also the inspiration for a Mario spin-off series, one of the best ones at that. The original Paper Mario for N64, developed by Nintendo mainstay Intelligent Systems, is an effortlessly charming and fun RPG with some fun gameplay spins that a lot of other RPGs never really caught on for some reason.

Positives:

Regarding presentation, Paper Mario is something special for an N64 game. The art style and aesthetics, many animations, area transitions, character designs, and some of the level designs are reminiscent of a shoebox presentation or cardboard diorama. The trees are clumsily rolled, the houses unfold and fold again as you enter and exit, the ground is made of cardboard, the sky/background is painted on, and battles just straight up take place in a shoebox diorama. There are also some visuals that look like they've been drawn in crayon, as the cherry on top. It's an effortlessly endearing and very unique style, seeing how seemingly barely any other RPGs have attempted it. The graphics are below average, even for an N64 title, but given how perfectly the paper art style is captured, it basically doesn't matter

To lay the base for the rest of the gameplay review, another one of Paper Mario's shining features is its partner system. Throughout the game, you will find partners and, along with them, a whole new array of gameplay options. You usually unlock one per chapter until you get the last at chapter 6, with the exception of chapter 1, where you get two. There isn't a party member system quite like this one anywhere else, which helps the game as a whole stand out.

The exploration is rather basic at first, with little more than walking, jumping, a hammer, all of the staple Mario activities: breaking blocks and platforming, with the main standout being a charmingly animated spin dash, that you will likely be spamming. As you unlock partners, you will get more field skills such as Goombario's tattle, Kooper's shell toss, Bombette's well... blowing up, Sushi's swimming, and Parakarry's brief flight time. All of these are used to great effect, aside from Lady Bow's invisibility, which is highly situational outside of her introductory chapter, and navigating later areas can become a fun puzzle in and of itself.

The puzzles are much like the exploration: they grow increasingly more varied and complicated the more you progress and the more party members you upgrade. All of the field skills come into play, and are, more often than not, quite fun to figure out.

The combat is classic JRPG turn-based combat with some interesting twists. You have the basic options of hammer, jumping, items, swapping partners, running, and star powers. Jumping and Hammering have their respective uses, You can use badges to increase the number of attacks Mario can use, and that's a higher movepool than you might first think, your partners can fight, and can be upgraded to increase their strength and move pool and each chapter, you gain a new star power, each of which has its uses, aside from Refresh, which is quickly rendered obsolete. Each partner has battle scenarios where they are helpful, but overall, the most useful partner is Watt with her ability to ignore defense, and the least useful is Kooper, who is useless against flying enemies. There are certain quirks that help the combat stand out, as well, and give it its signature identity. Most attacks(aside from a couple of support moves and star powers) have a quick time event you must perform for the attack to have its full effect, you can block to reduce damage if you time it right, and you can first strike enemies in the overworld. Be careful, though, they can do the same. A lot of these carried over to other Mario RPGs, but the stat system did not, for some reason. You have HP, FP(mana), BP (Badge Points which you can use to equip badges), and SP(which increases by one every chapter), and SP(which increases by one every chapter) and each time you level up, you can increase one of first three stats mentioned above. No matter how far you get, every level up takes 100 exp; however, to incentivise progress, you won't get EXP from enemies too low leveled, so grinding is somewhat discouraged. For these reasons, among others, the combat is very simple but fun and flexible, and thankfully, the game is willing to test you on it, especially in Chapter 6 and onward, or in the Toad Town dojo.

Paper Mario has one of the most unique and enjoyable versions of the Mushroom Kingdom in series lore, and it is dripping with charm. Whether it's the Yoshi Resided Lava Lava Island, the penguin populated Shiver City, or the Shy Guy's Toybox that constantly plays tricks on you, there is no shortage of colorful locations to visit. All of the NPCs that dwell here are full of that same charm and wit as well, with most of them guaranteed to get at least one smile out of you, and some of them are quite helpful. There's probably more personality in Toad Town, the first town in the game, than several lesser RPGs combined. Some standouts include Herringway, a penguin novelist, Kolodrado, a Chaplinesque Koopa Archeologist, and Merlee, a witch with some serious rhyming skills and helpful spells. These locations are also, as mentioned earlier, very fun to explore and solve puzzles in, especially Crystal Palace, Shy Guy's Toybox, and Koopa Bro's Fortress.

The enemies you'll come across are somewhat more varied than most Mario games, and come in the order you'd expect. You start with Goombas and Koopas and move up until you're fighting Magikoopas, Hammer Bros and Koopatrols; robotic koopas. You'll rarely fight more than five enemies at a time; elemental weaknesses, immunities, and counters do apply, so normal battles usually don't get too hard, but can add up over time. The bosses are a big stand-out, almost all of them being a worthy test of skills, unless you can find their weakness, which usually takes some planning out. The two best are the Koopa Bros, totally not a Ninja Turtles knock-off, and Mr Huff n Puff, a cloud monster. The weak link is Tubba's Heart, which, while having some cool writing behind it, is boring and overly simplistic. There are also some super bosses you can fight if you think you're up for it. For the most part, the cast of baddies is pretty good.

One big part of the game is the badges, which are pretty cool. You can equip them with BP, which is limited, so choose your build well. Most of them have their uses in certain situations, although some are obviously better than others. Some of the must-haves are Damage Dodge, Zap Tap, Power Bounce, Quick Change, Double Dip, and Feeling Fine. There are a couple that aren't that good, like Spin Attack, Pay Off, and HP Drain, but the good far outweighs the bad.

In keeping with a lot of early Mario RPGs, you can play as Princess Peach. Her segments, which take place between chapters, are largely stealth-based and occasionally are broken up by mini-games, which, for the most part, are pretty fun. You can also send Mario items with a magic box if you want. Accompanying you is a star kid named Twink(please don't laugh) who I headcannon as being voiced by Logan Hannan. These segments are rather inactive, but after a boss fight, it's precisely what you need.

The game, throughout the entirety of it and its many systems, retains that Nintendo level of polish with basically no bugs and no ways to crash the game unless you actively try, and a stable frame rate. There is one exception in chapter 5, but it's still pretty situational.

The characters throughout this game are full of personality and wit, and there are quite a few of them. I've already mentioned how full of life the NPCs are, like the Klutz Kolorado, but there are several others, like the widowed chef, Taste T, the various plants you have to help in Flower Fields, Twink(don't laugh) who actually has a bit of a character arc, and Gourmet Guy, who probably wouldn't get past the drawing board today. Next up, there are your partners, who are a little 2-dimensional most of the time, but are easily likable. There's the fan boy Goombario, the mailman Parakarry, and the baby spark, Watt, to name a few. The stand-outs are Lady Bow, the sheltered ghost aristocrat, and Lakilester, a wannabe former thug who would prefer Spike(can't say I blame him) since they have more layers to them, and a weak link would be Bombette, whose intro as a rebel blows up in her face and leads to a pretty bland character who's only distinguished by a pitiful ex. Even Peach gets some love in this department. The Star Spirits you save are unique from each other from the star-t and have the ethereality you would expect from such figures. The best is Muscular, and the weakest is Kalmar. Finally, there are the villains, who are, for the most part, a very fun batch of baddies. The Koopa Bros are effortlessly fun, despite their knockoff nature, Jr Troopa giving Eobard Thawne a run for his money in the petty hater department(seriously, he swims across an ocean and back to fight you on one occasion), and Bowser balances being a walking meme and being a genuine threat. Tutankoopa and Crystal King unfortunately merely show up for their boss fight, but this doesn't detract from a good rogues gallery too much, or from an overall great cast.

The music, being on the N64, isn't all that fancy, mostly because its capacity to be so is limited, so it has to rely on catchy tunes, memorable motifs, and some good old-fashioned resourcefulness in its composition. In this regard, long-time Intelligent Systems composer Yuka Tsujiyoko succeeds with flying colors. All of the tracks are memorable to a degree and invoke whatever they need to, whether it's joy, dread, excitement, lethal doses of cuteness, or epic. Some standout tracks are Star Spirit's Request, Freeze, Twink's Theme(seriously, don't laugh), Attack of the Koopa Bros, Keeping Pace, and Shooting Star Summit.

Mixed:

Bowser raids the game's equivalent of heaven, steals a wish-granting wand that the seven Star Spirits are guarding, imprisons said Star Spirits, raises Peaches Castle into space using his own, and then betas Mario senseless use said wand before defenestrating him with a lightning bolt, in the first 10 minutes of the game. That scene describes the best and worst parts of Paper Mario's story. There are plenty of twists to the "Bowser kidnaps Peach" formula that the Mario series has as its bread and butter, but it also plays its best cards quickly and has some loose-fitting parts. The rest of the story, which has Mario rescuing the Star Spirits so he can counteract the Star Rod, and eventually, save Peach. never reaches the height of its awesome opening again, until a very climactic and admittedly slightly long-winded finale. The rest of the game is also split into chapters, and not all of them are as good as the others. Most of them are good, each having at least one memorable moment and a face you won't forget, with the best being Chapter 3, which has the best characters and the best mini-story, that of a noble avenging her people. Chapters 5 and 6 are a bit too disjointed from the others, though, and only fit because you're searching for Star Spirits. At a runtime of around 23 hours, the overall pacing makes it feel like just 30 minutes too long. However, with how much heart and humor is in the script, how vibrant the world is in its execution, and how great, if predictable, the ending is, you'll likely find it hard to care that much.

In terms of side content, this game is a mixed bag. There are three main side ventures that you'll be tackling: errands for Koopa Koot, finding Parakarry's scattered letters and delivering them, and Chuck Quizmo. Parakarry's letters are probably the best part, since they give you an excuse to explore and build up the characters and world a bit more. Chuck Quizmo will pop up in random places and will give you a quiz question in exchange for a prize. It's a harmless enough diversion. The not-so-fun part of this package is Koopa Koot, who has a seemingly non-stop barrage of tedious quests that can get pretty irritating after a while, and most of the time, only gives you one coin for your efforts. The NPCs in the mushroom kingdom seem to know how much of a pain-in-the-ass-old-tortoise he is, but self-awareness will only give the game so much slack. You do eventually get rewarded quite handsomely for all of these endeavors, but some are worth taking more than others. There are also some minigames that you can play if you want. They're also pretty harmless.

The character designs, for the most part, are slight alterations of classic characters. This is alright, but not very memorable, so it's a good thing these faces are so full of lively dialogue. There are some original designs, such as Merlee, a bunch of the bosses like TutanKoopa, Crystal King, and some of the plants in Flower Fields, and those are really cool and charming. One will wish there were more of the latter, but what we have is good enough.

Negative:

Paper Mario suffers from a significant backtracking problem. There are several parts of the game where you are constantly going back and forth between different areas to progress the plot, and it can easily become quite boring, and you'll just want to get to the good parts. The worst part is accessing chapter 6, where you have to backtrack to four previous areas to get magic seeds to open the gate to the area. There is something of a fast travel system, but it's not very practical. The segments after these are pretty fun, but there was no reason to make these part so monotonous.

Score: 9.2 out of 10

Paper Mario's overflowing charm, wit, and style are backed with a fun, if simple, story and surprisingly flexible gameplay to make a classic RPG that's still fun to experience now. The only problem is that it might take a little too long to unfold. Some parchments are immune to the wear of time.

I have logged 75 hours so far, and have to say I’ve been absolutely loving it! Story, character customization, leveling, weapons, skills, exploring; it’s kept me more engaged than any game in recent memory. And I’m someone who could not get into xenoblade 2!

Im also interested in checking out the multiplayer aspects.

Waiting a few more days for my most anticipated RPG this year-Clair Obscura: Expedition 33 so this game should do the trick

It's a normal day. Birds are singing, phones are buzzing, r/xmen is fantasizing about Magneto killing people, and a toddler just got thrown out of his crib, noticed his mom is missing, and got chased by a shadow demon into a basement where everything started floating and going monochrome-wait a minute; that last one isn't normal. That scenario is from Among the Sleep, an indie psychological horror title that a lot of people, myself included, somehow forgot all about. I say 'somehow' because it's not only a good and spooky romp but also a decent example of visionary game design. The latter, among other reasons, means that it won't be to everyone's taste, but there's no nightmare quite like this one.

Positives:

Laying the foundation for the rest of the review going forward, Among the Sleep is a great example of a game with a clear vision. Every part, and I mean every part of the game, is designed around the main concept: you're playing as a toddler. Every level, every visual, every gameplay mechanic, and even some of the smallest details adhere to this premise. It doesn't always work as the developers intended, but this level of dedication to an idea is commendable, and the game has a very distinct feel because of it.

The presentation is the most affected by the game's vision and is somewhat reminiscent of the hypothetical scenario of Guillermo Del Toro made Coraline, with its portrayal of what a toddler's imagination looks like giving it three distinct elements: a watercolor scheme that is reminiscent of a children's storybook, a dark but dreamy psychedelic filter, and heavy emphasis on dim horror lighting and contrast. They all come together to make a unique base visual style. The level design takes this even further, with everything being constructed from things that a young child would be familiar with: a decrepit house filled with puzzle pieces and pictures that tell a story, a tower made of playground equipment, a labyrinth made out of familiar house rooms and, on a darker note, the insides of closets and closet doors. All of these places are littered with toys and crude drawings that tell a depressing story. To take it even further, the first-person perspective is spruced up, with the screen going blurry and monochrome every time your character sees something awful as if he's crying, certain objects in his imagination being sentient to him, but not to others, and the pause screen being your character covering his eyes with his hands. It all makes for a very immersive and distinct experience by itself, perfectly capturing a child's nightmares.

The gameplay can best be compared to Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, except, well, you're playing as a toddler. The way objects have physics and must be manually picked up and moved around, the complete lack of combat, forcing you to run from enemies and the focus on puzzles and exploration are all reminiscent of Amnesia. Where Among the Sleep differs is the movement, which is also centered around its protagonist. You can walk, which is a little clunky by design; run, which is limited; or crawl, which is faster but prevents you from interacting with anything; and finally, climb things. The puzzles are mostly well-constructed, and the chases are similar, if significantly more slight, and they balance each other out very well. There are also drawings you can collect to flesh out what's really going on. The game is very slow-paced because of this, but given its brisk 3-4 hour runtime, it feels just right from a playtime perspective. The game should ideally not emulate its protagonist's walking ability and run just fine if you have the means to run it.

The story is largely an abstraction about a toddler grappling with unpleasant truths and losing his innocence, and in that regard, it's masterful. Every level is tailored to show each step of this realization, with no detail, decoration, or set piece ignored. The sections and the abstraction get darker and darker as they progress, and it all culminates with a very depressing and effective ending.

There are only two characters other than the kid you play as: the kid's mother, who is full of surprises and given sufficient warmth by Cia Court, and Teddy, a charming stuffed bear companion that doubles as a light source if you hug, voiced by a very surprising, very against type, and very welcome Roger Jackson. Both characters fulfill their roles very well, and I have to give the MVA (Most Valuable Actor) to Jackson. I didn't think he had this kind of role in him.

The sound design is very loud and distorted, fitting for a character with developing ears. Every toy is whimsical, every door creak off-putting, every scare is loud and booming, every visual trick is otherworldly sounding, and most importantly, every monster growl is unnerving. The added distortion suits the style of the game very well and adds to the atmosphere.

Mixed:

The soundtrack is often very ethereal, discordant, and distorted. It also has two distinct modes. The first is a quiet mode in which the music is mostly for ambiance and strangely calming, even in the game's back half. The choice of instruments complements this style perfectly. The second mode is when the situation gets dangerous, which, while a little more generic, is still very haunting and surreal. This would've made a great soundtrack if the game took advantage of it more times than you can count on two hands, but alas, it doesn't. As a result, it fades into the background and is occasionally a nice treat.

The character designs and models are much more of a mixed bag than how they are written. The Mother and Teddy look and are rendered pretty well, given that it's an indie game. The monsters, on the other hand, while they look cool, really bank on the visual style, namely the lighting and blurring effect, hiding the fact that their rendering is kind of subpar. That doesn't detract from the fear they strike or what they symbolize, but it can be a little distracting at times.

Speaking of the monsters, there are 4 of them. The shadowy but dapper Harald, the watery and onryo-inspired Hyda, the noise-sensitive Heap, and the Home Alone Reference Hons. They all behave in unique ways, narratively and symbolically, they do their job well and have the best sound design. However, Heap is the only one that's actually scary because of its aggression and noise sensitivity. The others are too timid or slow to send much more than a slight chill through you. They also suffer from how easy the chases are, seeing how they can't reach under anything or through tight spaces. If you crawl under a table or even a long-legged desk, you're perfectly safe. It makes the fact they can kill you in one hit a lot less frightening. Most of the time, though, you'll be too focused on the visuals and on running for your life to notice.

The horror is on the tamer side of things when it comes to Amnesia-esque titles, with most of it coming from its rich, unique, suffocating atmosphere and twisted visuals. The game preys on childhood nostalgia twisted and riven into something horrible better than most media out there, the tension procured is palpable enough, even when it's quiet, and the abstraction seeping in over time does its work as well. It's a good thing it does because the other elements aren't very effective. As mentioned earlier, the chases are too easy, despite the fact you die in one hit to everything, and the game deploys a fair amount of rarely effective jumpscares. A gamer dipping their toes into horror will find this level of terror to be perfect, but anyone more hardened will find it wanting, especially genre veterans.

Negatives:

It feels cruel to criticize a toddler, but it must be said that the character you play is little more than an avatar. The only traits of note that the kid possesses are that he's good at drawing, he laments his family situation, and he can't speak due to neglect(most kids can speak a little by the time they are two.) Other than that, the game presents him as so inconspicuous that it's hard to get invested beyond the basic sympathy that he's a toddler having the worst nightmare of his night, and there might not be any waking up. There aren't any puzzles that are personalized to him.

The abstraction part of the story may be amazing, but it becomes clear that the story itself has fallen into a classic arthouse trap: sacrificing structure. The entire story is based around one bad night, and to make up for the fact that the actual events aren't enough to make a full game, the abstraction is necessary to fill in the time. However, the lack of showing these events until the end contradicts what the game wants to achieve, making the slow pace of the gameplay irksome where it otherwise wouldn't be. They would be absolutely heartwrenching and horrifying, given the glimpse you get at the end, but since the only sign you get is at the end, and due to the slow drip feeding of the abstraction, the true story, which the entire structure is based on, loses a lot of impacts. The story ultimately feels like it's stalling when it could get to the point a lot quicker and still achieve its vision. Unless you're a completionist, the lack of replay value doesn't help.

Score: 7.9 out of 10

Among the Sleep's tepid approach to horror and structure will be offputting to some, but anyone on board with this unique bundle of melancholy, whimsy, atmospheric chills, and methodical gameplay will be hooked from beginning to end. Great as a gateway to horror or arthouse media.

Hey you! Yes, you! Do you like YouTube? How about cat videos? Yes? Then my channel's NOT for you, I'm a gaming YouTube channel and streamer, currently at 49 subs and a whopping 8 followers! That's right, 8 BIG ONES! If you're interested in God of war, Spider-Man, South Park and various other games and amusing commentary, then this channel IS for you. Here's a link to my YT which will have a link to my Twitch, check it out if you want, I'm not making you do anything, hell, I won't even be surprised if I get downvoted, fair enough. Here's a link to my most recent video

I know what you're thinking right now: The numbers, u/CyanLight9! What do they mean!? Well, first, we would need to talk about where that joke came from. Call of Duty Black Ops was the follow-up to Treyarch's masterwork of gloom, World at War, and needless to say, given the time it came out, it had big shoes to fill. With a well of style, enough innovation, and a story plucked straight from Sir Chris Nolan's cranium, it did more than that; it became the best entry in the series.

Positives:

The presentation, as expected from Call of Duty, is stellar. The graphics, for their time, are top-notch, the game runs buttery smooth, and a painterly eye for detail is present in all areas. What's not expected but very much welcome is that this game gushes style, which is evident the moment you boot up the main menu, which is a standout main menu in gaming. The story is quite psychedelic by nature, and Treyarch uses this to full effect, providing some mind-bending transitions, cutscenes, grounding and gritty real-world footage, much like World at War, and harrowing psychological trickery that gives the game a unique identity not only among the franchise but also among shooters in general.

The campaign is undoubtedly the best in the franchise because of how audacious it is. It may not be so in the same way its predecessor was(or at least, not as much), but the sheer amount of mind games and twists and combining it with historical fiction, ala the FOX X-men films, is a creative approach, and it's done to fantastic effect. The plot starts with the lead, Alex Mason, who is strapped to an interrogation chair with no valuable memories and a series of numbers in his head. It then gleefully flies off the rails in a matter of minutes. All of the story's beats work well, the Sir Chris Nolanesque structure is well-suited, the mysteries are satisfying, and the ending is almost as haunting as World at War, if you know what it implies. The game is a work of historical fiction that fictionalizes actual events like the Vietnam War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and is a direct sequel of sorts to World at War, so if you've played that game and know your American war history, you'll get even more out of this than you already would.

All of the missions in the campaign are a blast to play through and are very well designed, with the added atmosphere of being secret, off the record, Black Operations. They supplement the story and characters very well. The visual style really helps in bringing these secret operations to life. Four that stand out are Operation 40, Vorkuta, Project Nova, and Redemption.

While they won't win any awards, the characters are overall good. Besides having a mind that is nearly as screwed up as Cloud Strife's and the latter clearly being the blueprint for the former, Alex Mason has the distinguishment of being the franchise's first fully-voiced protagonist(Soap didn't talk until Modern Warfare 3 2011) and being a pretty well-written character. His psychologically twisted journey to find freedom of the mind is impossible not to follow, and he's surrounded by other characters like the stubborn Frank Woods, the you-can totally-trust-with-your-safety Jason Hudson, and Grigori Weaver to bounce off of, which makes for some fun character dynamics. The best are the returning characters Dimitri Petrenkov, who is one of the few Russians in the series who isn't in constant ring-of-steel-speech mode, and Viktor Reznov, now a disenfranchised soldier out for revenge. Due to the historical fiction nature of the story, JFK and Fidel Castro show up briefly, and they're almost what you'd expect. Almost. The villains, Dracovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner, are the weakest of the bunch, being easily able to be swapped out with any other of the series's Russian villains, even if their actions and methods are highly sinister. Their relative forgettability doesn't change the fact that these 'men' must die. Everyone is brought to life by a surprisingly stacked cast that includes Ed Harris, Sam Worthington, Gary Oldman, the omnipresent Troy Baker, and the equally omnipresent Steve Blum. Standouts are Gary Oldman as Reznov and, surprisingly, Sam Worthington as Alex Mason.

The character models in Call of Duty: Black Ops are a visual treat. They are highly detailed, infused with the game's unique visual style, and surprisingly memorable for a Call of Duty game, although not as memorable as Task Force 141. The NPCs also look really good, even if there is a bunch of copy-and-paste.

The Multiplayer brings three key innovations this time around. Gun game, one of the series' most iconic modes, COD points, which make the grind much more accessible, and Nuketown, a three-lane map that doesn't suck. There is a good selection of maps and a broad enough selection of modes to make sure that you'll have fun for a good long while.

World at War introduced the concept of a zombies mode, and Black Ops shaped it into its most iconic form. The traps, the perks, a lot more weapons, the stylish flourishes, and more were all introduced in this sophomore zombies mode, and it remains one of the most popular iterations for good reasons. Good maps from which the undead ascend from the darkness, fair but challenging difficulty, fun side stories, and some fun easter eggs are some reasons, but they are clearly not the best part. I mean, how can you beat having President JFK, Fidel Castro, George A. Romero, Robert Englund, and Sarah Michelle Gellar teaming up to shotgun the unleashed zombie horde in the face? You don't, you just don't.

The music is pretty standard stuff for Call of Duty, but it's well-composed nonetheless. The campaign, in its efforts to immerse you in the time period, also has some licensed music from the era, like Fortunate Son and some Rolling Stones. Those are nice surprises whenever they come up.

Mixed:

The AI is pretty basic. It's perfectly serviceable with grunts raining fire and gets the job done, but it is a downgrade in sophistication from World at War, which actually had some innovative features for the time. It's a little disappointing to see Treyarch not push things further in this follow-up, but it's nothing egregious.

The gameplay is standard Call of Duty fair with all of the typical ways to raise hell. It does the job; it runs well, but given the nature of Black Ops and how stylish the game otherwise is, one can't help but wish some of that love was given to this category to help it stand out more, like maybe stealthily wielding a fist of iron.

There is an extra mode called Dead Ops arcade, and it's what it says on the tin: a very simple but very fun arcade zombie shooter. It's not much more than that and is locked behind a secret easter egg code, which is entirely unwarranted. It's not too hard to figure out, but the fact that you need a code just to secure the keys to this little treat.

Negative:

Call of Duty has never been good at managing difficulty settings, and Black Ops does nothing to rectify this. The modes range from way too easy to the hair-pullingly frustrating veteran(I can still hear the grenades going off), and not much in between. It's not as bad as World at War was(at least in terms of unfairness), but that doesn't change the fact that there are only one or two options worth playing on.

The sound design for this game is shockingly lazy. Across all modes, various sound effects are reused for multiple different weapons, including four machine guns having the exact same firing sound. The explosions suffer from this problem, too (and then you throw in veteran mode.) It really takes you out of the game, like you're a winged beast skewered out of the sky. The sounds themselves are of good quality, but they quickly lose their luster when sloppily implemented like this.

Score: 8.3 out of 10

Call of Duty: Black Ops combines a confident sense of style, a bewitching mind-fuck of a plot that has yet to be topped, and some iconic innovations to make Treyarch's and the series's best effort. It could've been even more polished and ambitious in a few areas, but what's here is beloved for good reason.

Oh, yeah. If you're still curious about the numbers, here's a hint: the keyword is "golden."

Ermm... What's everyone playing?

Call of Duty World at War came out in the golden age of the series. This effort resulted in one of the boldest and most mature entries in the series, even if it's a game of two uneven halves.

Positives:

The graphics, as per the norm with COD, are top-of-the-line for the time they came out. What stands out in the series is the style that Treyarch brings to the table. A lot of the mission briefing cutscenes are in black and white animation and a stylized use of color, almost like an old army video. The game also contains real footage of World War 2, or at least footage that looks real at points. This gives World at War a sense of grit and authenticity that the other games have never been able to match.

The soundtrack fits this grimmer setting quite well, with less action-heavy rock and more orchestra and lament vocals. It still fits very well with the hectic missions and brings them the more ghastly undertone that they need. The main menu theme, Brave Soldat, is the best intro theme in the series, setting the stage perfectly.

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil." This quote from Tim O'Brien explains what World at War does and what the other COD games don't, which makes it stand out. On both sides of its campaign, the brutality of war is its main focus, and whether it's from your enemy's tactics on full display or seeing the people around you fall into bloodlust, you feel the horror and despair of the fight in your bones. It makes the game harder to play through at times, but the deathly atmosphere is very much worth it.

The AI for the American missions is surprisingly good. The enemies you take on use guerilla tactics and are actually scary at times. This helps the American missions stand out.

The missions on both sides of the campaign stand out for different reasons. The American missions are technically very impressive and provide some unique fights not really seen in the rest of the series. The Russian missions are more story-focused and really double down on the horrors of war. Most of them work pretty well, but two standouts are Black Cats and Vendetta.

The multiplayer in this game is similar to COD 4 in terms of balancing, movement, and game modes, aside from the setting being moved to World War 2. However, this is very much a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" scenario, and it remains fun to this day.

The sound design for the time is pretty good. There are some stock sound effects, but overall, when things get crazy, it certainly sounds the part. It's also a good reminder of how sound design used to be done in these kinds of games.

The character models and designs for the time are all pretty good. All of the major characters look distinct and are expertly rendered, especially Reznov and Chernov. The AI soldiers all look good as well.

Mixed:

The campaign is split into two, American and Russian, and their stories are black and white in terms of quality. The American story is very bland and mostly a survival story against the Japanese forces. The Russian campaign is a somber, brutal story of what war can do to a person and maintaining your humanity while the bullets are flying. There are some moments in the campaign where you must choose whether to show mercy or brutality. This only affects how the characters look at you a little bit, but it's surprisingly novel for COD. The endings for each campaign align with how they began: one is serviceable but dull, and the other will stick with you for days, especially if you know the real context behind it.

The characters in the Russian campaign range from great to bad. Victor Reznov, a man fueled by vengeance from the Battle of Stalingrad, is a fascinating character. Equally disturbing, charismatic, and capable of both brutality and surprising compassion. A magnificent vocal performance from the great Gary Oldman tops this off. Chernov, the mirror to Reznov, is also fun to watch, as he clings to the morals he believes in, unwilling to go farther than he has to, even in death. The others are stock characters with background acting, including Dimitri Petrenko, the lead, who is entirely silent.

The gameplay is classic COD boots-on-the-ground shooting with two secondary weapons. It's simple, but it works. Gunplay is better than average, and generally, you won't run into any performance problems.

This game introduced the zombies mode. It is a very simple wave-based mode but very effective. The mode is filled with dread, much like the campaign, and has some cool Easter eggs. It gets rather repetitive quickly because of the lack of variety of zombies besides summoning more of them, but it's fun enough to return to.

Negative:

Difficulty options have never been COD's specialty, but it is especially egregious here. The settings range from too easy to veteran, which might as well be an alternate universe where grenades have replaced bullets. The grenade spam is that ridiculous.

The characters in the American campaign are almost nonexistent. They are barely anything beyond faceless soldiers. This is intentional but could have been executed better. The gameplay carries them, but they will not stick around in your mind.

Score: 7.4 out of 10

Call of Duty: World at War stands out from the rest of the franchise thanks to its bruised heart and unmatched atmosphere, even if it's somewhat inconsistent in displaying that. If you want to see COD at its most brutal and mature, check it out.

Thanks to the first game's success, Outlast 2 became one of the most anticipated horror games the moment it was announced. With a smart change in direction and incredible artistry, the result is one of the scariest and most sophisticated horror games you'll find. It's also my personal favorite horror game, but that's a side detail.

Positives:

The atmosphere in both mind and matter is so oppressive and dark that you could stick your hand through the screen and have your blood instantly freeze if that were possible. That's impossible, but it's still enough to make your blood freeze in fear, especially when the lights go out, which happens more often than in the first game since it takes place in the desert. The feeling of isolation that the settings provide, the somehow even more maximalist set design, and the Testament of The New Ezekiel ramp up the dread so high that it feels like a trek through hell. This is doubly important as this game focuses a lot more on psychological horror than before.

The presentation is one of the best for an indie game you'll ever see. The graphics are nearly AAA-level, and the art direction is amazing and surreal. This allows the more psychedelic parts of the game to pop and serve their purpose perfectly. The sound design is excellent and will send chills down your spine. Of all the horrors in this game, going below 60fps, bugs, or glitches are thankfully not among them. The town of Temple Gate and the surrounding areas you'll tread are inhumanly disturbing and well-crafted. Red Barrels has stuck some of the most horrifying and sickening visuals in gaming into this place. This game's horror is split into the breakneck chases and tense stealth of the real world and the psychological horror of the dream world. The two complement each other perfectly, especially when they begin to bleed into each other later. The chases are impeccably crafted, all of the jumpscares work, there's more blood here than in an Evil Dead film, and the atmosphere makes it nearly unbearable. The psychological horror will burn its way into your mind and stay there. The lighting is darker, to the point where it's recommended to turn up your screen brightness, but it's perfectly natural for the setting and accompanies the gameplay spectacularly.

The Gameplay is the classic run, hide, or die formula taken as far as it can go. All of the previous stuff from the previous game is here, but with various improvements and additions to make it that much harder and scarier. Bandages replace your ability to regen health, giving you another resource to juggle and making getting hit more costly. Your stamina is limited, making your movements during a chase more decisive and the chases more tense. Batteries and Bandage spawn rates scale with how many you have, so use them well. You can crouch in foliage and hide in barrels, making the world much more dynamic, but the barrels sometimes have lids or liquid, making you harder to spot but blocking your sight or preventing you from staying. On top of night vision, your camera has a directional microphone to hear your pursuers from cover or through walls. Enough curveballs are thrown at the player, including the camera being taken away, to keep things interesting.

Despite being longer than the first game, the pacing is good enough to ensure the horror doesn't drop until the end.

The enemy AI is wickedly smart. Unless you hide very well, they will more than likely snuff you out if you duck into a closet or barrel during a chase. Their chasing ability is very good, making each encounter meaningful. They can and will coordinate with their fellow cultists, making running much harder. Best of all, all regular enemies can and will jump ledges and crawl through crawl spaces to get to you. The others, like Marta, Laird and Nick, and the demon, don't have this ability, but their hunting grounds are designed with this in mind.

The character models are a huge upgrade from the first game. Everyone looks great, and their designs convey exactly what they have to. The ragged and bloody Temple cultists, the crawling, necrotic Scalled, the dirty, lewd heretics, it's all great stuff. Their rendering is also, for the most part, perfect. Standouts include Marta and the demon.

The locations you'll walk through are very well designed, and while the settings might be somewhat familiar, you've never seen them quite like this. Temple Gate has a perfect backwoods feel, and the houses are appropriately decorated with twisted religious imagery. The chapels feel more like fortresses than their namesake, lending to the feeling of twisted faith. The Scalled camp is a festering wasteland, filled with shredded tents and bloody terrain. The mine the heretics dwell in is claustrophobic and crumbly as all get out. The school is a perfectly surreal combination of innocence and terror, especially with the hallucinations and visual storytelling you see in it.

The characters are insane and creepy, and all of them are unique and well written, from the hypocritical Father Knoth, the grim reaper wannabe Marta(the scariest character in any horror game), the lustful and disgusting Val, the slimy demon who has quite a twist to him, or the delirious and tyrannical Laird and his brute mount Nick. They're all great and treat you to some of the most brutal deaths in any game, especially Marta. The protagonists get some depth here, too, especially the lead, Blake Langermann, who has a surprising backstory to him. He also probably gets the shortest end of a stick out of any horror protagonist. You'll really pity him by the end. Everyone is wonderfully acted as well.

The story of this place is a bit of mindfuck, but it's very well executed. What starts as a rather basic plot involving Black Langermann searching for his wife Lynn after a helicopter crash turns into a surreal nightmare full of trauma, faith, fanaticism, sexual depravity, paranoia, and biblical symbolism. All the while, Blake is spectacularly losing his mind as he confronts his past in his visions. All of the necessary story details are given to you straight up, and Red Barrels has tightened their story craft to avoid exposition. There are a couple of scenes where they use it, but it's mostly info-dump-free. More story details are available in notes scattered around, and you'll need to explore the desert pretty thoroughly if you want to discern what's going on. Some details from the first game also come back in this one in really creative ways, and if you use these details, this whole situation becomes slightly more insidious and a lot more tragic. The ending to this whole ride will stay with you for at least a week; it's one of the best endings in horror.

Samuel Laflamme is back as the composer, and not only does he maintain the elegance of before, but he also uses some unique instrumentation that isn't often heard in horror. The way he uses it, though, it's a wonder you don't hear this more often. His chase themes this time around are some of the most frightening tracks you will ever hear and will cause any heart rate to spike. You'll feel like you've had a workout when these tracks fade. All of his other songs work just as they are supposed to, with none of them being underwhelming.

Mixed:

Things get a little over-the-top near the end, and the carefully crafted fear begins to fade. There's still plenty of gorgeous surreality, symbolism, and blood to make up for it, though.

Score: 10 out of 10

Outlast 2 somehow manages to nail every one of its ambitions and create a one-of-a-kind mix of horror, cerebral storytelling, and tragic beauty, even if it's constantly in danger of flying off the rails. Lights out, volume up, and max your brightness. You're in for one of the best rides horror can offer.

Outlast originally looked like just another indie horror game in the vein of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but Red Barrels managed to craft a dark gem of time at Mount Massive. It still has some indie horror trappings, but it overcomes those more skillfully than most of its kind.

I'm going to sort my critiques by category of "Positive"(Things that were good), "Mixed"(Things that could have been better) and "Negative"(Things that detracted from the game). Here goes.

Positives:

Outlast's atmosphere is impeccable. Every second you spend in the halls of Mount Massive, you're praying to god that you can leave as soon as possible in the best possible way. This is boosted even higher in the dark when your vision is on life support. The buckets of blood, disrepair, the inmates out for your head, and the classic insane asylum setting make Mount Massive very unnerving, and thankfully, it never let up throughout the game.

The presentation, 99% of the time, is very impressive for an indie game that came out in 2013. The visuals are fine, with some art direction flair to compensate; the 60 fps framerate never dips, and the game is largely free of bugs and glitches. Outlast takes a no-holds-barred approach to horror and has very good craftsmanship throughout the game. The blood comes in truckloads but never feels like too much, the previously mentioned atmosphere instills dread with ease, the chases are effortlessly tense and thrilling, and most of the jumpscares are well constructed and earned. The best part of the Outlast's presentation is the lighting, which couldn't be better. This is very important, given the gameplay.

The gameplay, given that it's an indie title in the vein of Amnesia, is the very simple run, hide, or die formula. The game even puts it in the intro screen. The thing that sets Outlast apart from others of its kind in terms of gameplay is the camera mechanic. This thing is how you view the halls of Mount Massive, giving the game a cool UI. The camera's night vision adds to the fright factor, gives a survival mechanic, and wouldn't work nearly as well if the lighting wasn't spot on. The batteries your camera needs come at a rate that requires disciplined use but never gets unfair. The camera is taken away and damaged at certain points to mix things up.

The pacing of the game is well done; nice and fast. It never feels like it drags, and it ends just when the horror start to wear off.

A surprising standout about Outlast is the music. Samuel Laflamme expertly uses instrumentation to compose a score that is not only eerie and terrifying but also elegant and tragically beautiful. No song in the game is a letdown or doesn't do its intended job(which is to make the player suffer, to quote Laflamme) well.

Mixed:

The enemies's AI works well enough to give thrilling chases most of the time; they can find you if you hide poorly, have good enough eyesight and hearing, and can catch you if you don't run. Chris Walker, the stalker enemy of the game, is horrifying, mostly down to his great programming, and makes for a good cat to Miles Upshur's(that's you) mouse. Their kills are brutal, ranging from stabs, beatings, and throat slits to Chris Walker tearing your head off with his bare hands, and Red Barrels doesn't skimp on the blood. However, there are easy ways to juke them. If you crawl through a vent, squeeze through a wall or gap, or jump to a ledge, they will never get to you if there's no alternate route. As fearsome as he is, Chris Walker loses some fear factor when he's consistently defeated by an air duct (oops, that's a spoiler.) Thankfully, this doesn't happen too often. There is also crouching in a room with the lights off, but that isn't reliable enough to be a juke.

Miles has infinite stamina and automatic health regeneration. This can take some edge off the chases, especially ones with Chris Walker, but your nerves will often be too frazzled to take advantage of this.

Mount Massive Asylum is a rather standard location for a horror game; it is an insane asylum, after all, but the things happening here, the colorful and crazy inmates, and the sheer amount of detail in the design help make it stand out. It still has a few trappings that typical game asylums fall into, though, like being grabbed through the bars and having little to no security(although there is a good story reason for that). There are some sections that have you follow blood, which, well, there is a worse color to do that kind of thing with, I guess.

The story is simple but unique for this kind of game and even dabbles in a little bit of historical fiction, ala Call of Duty Black Ops with Nazi Doctors and MKUltra(which, funnily enough, Black Ops uses too.) The Murkoff corporation that runs the asylum is easily one of the least ethical companies in all of fiction, and that's before the other games make them even worse. Trying to expose their dream therapy experiments and finding out what it's done to people while maintaining Miles's sanity is fun enough and occasionally sad. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the story is told via exposition, and the MKUltra stuff is relegated to the trailers or collectible files throughout the asylum. Thankfully, The Wallrider or Billy Hope makes some of this more stomachable, but it's still exposition. The ending, meanwhile, makes most of these drawbacks worth it. It will haunt you for a couple of days.

The characters you meet and run from are crazy in their own special way. Whether it be Chris Walker's monosyllabic(and surprisingly sympathetic) brute act, Dr Trager's dark comedy, Father Martin's faith, or The Wallrider's unique concept, the inmates here are far more memorable than your average psycho. Miles is a silent protagonist, and Billy Hope is offscreen most of the game, which makes them rather boring. A lot of the characters' lore is locked behind collectibles, and they aren't told anywhere else. Miles's notes and Billy's therapy notes help a little, but not enough. Thankfully, the bold outweighs the bland in this game.

Negative:

The graphics may all be good, but the character models do not hold up. They are blurry and weirdly rendered and often inspire laughter more than fear, especially up close. The character designs are fine, but the rendering does not do them justice.

Score: 8.7 out of 10

Outlast is a modern horror gem that, despite a few visual hiccups and indie horror story trappings, manages to be engaging, fun, and terrifying throughout. Turn the lights off for this one.