An amazing text-based RPG unlike anything I've ever played. Its character building is incredibly unique- your different skills all represent your inner monologue arguing with itself??!?!?! An awesome idea when you have a text-based game where the only real gameplay is skill checks. Characters are well written, believable, and sell the fact that this is a very sad place to be.

I don't think this game truly says anything. It exists more as an inwards/outwards mirror to yourself and the different ideologies that it represents. You get made fun of regardless of what side you take, and no matter what, there is no "correct" answer to a situation, you are always a piece of shit. It's not a game that makes you feel good. Its ending lacks any real closure or feeling that you've actually solved the mystery, but I was still enraptured by the magical undertones surrounding it. Regardless of some internal conflicts I had with its ending(the only thing I can probably write about though because there's just so much you can talk about in this game that I haven't organized my thoughts enough), I thought this was a great game.

9/10

Holy mid. What a strange game. High highs and LOW lows back up to each other in a middling story that was clearly underbaked and confused as to what it wanted to be. With a half-and-half amount of missions I enjoyed/really liked and ones that truly did not make sense or were just bad. The idea of telling the story via flashbacks during the climax of the story is reminiscent of movies like Pulp Fiction or Sunset Boulevard, but in this case, it didn't work. It feels like a cheap hook in the beginning, with enigmatic characters drawing you into the politics of the world they made, but by the end it's heavy handed exposition and over-explanation of things the characters should 1. already know being the war has been going on for well over a year at that point and 2. be talking about in more cryptic terms as they are definitely things that should be an unspoken knowledge becomes incredibly grading.

That's not to say I didn't like many parts of it, though. Many level designs, even on some of the lesser missions, were quite good, including the more linear parts of the last two levels. I am always a sucker for an FPS campaign that ends in an assault on the big baddies' base, and this game had quite the finale in that regard. It's just sad that the strange narrative choices, poor pacing, and flat characters that didn't have the room to breathe since the game had to go at such a breakneck speed to fit everything in kept me from enjoying my time more. 

Hard 6/10 for the story. I'm not going to be able to really talk about the multiplayer for several months/years, like usual, there's so much there to unpack and so horribly complex that I cannot write at length about it yet.

There were a lot of interesting things about this game. The gameplay, generally, was not one of them, as it was so horrifically cover-shooty that it often hurt me to play. There were a lot of areas, specifically the time finding your way to St. Dismas’ Cathedral and the one scene where you had to cover whatever Nate’s wife’s name was(Sarah I think, I’m not looking it up right now; it just goes to show how kind of forgettable she is. Maybe she was more in past games,) when she was sending the car up the stupid 17th-century pirate elevator that was excruciating to play as it felt like you were left out in the open with nowhere to go and nothing to do but sit there and wait for health to regenerate. In most situations, though, I found the level design found ways to get around the basic combat in this game, from the inclusion of grappling hooks(my love), slides, chase sequences, and those two glorious chapters in Madagascar proper. 

The best part of this game by far, though, was my realization right after I finished that Nadine, the main antagonist, could actually be seen as a Christ figure, with Nathan and Sam, and Rafe acting as stand-ins for Dismas and Gestas, respectively. Some places don’t add up entirely, namely, the whole first part of the game where Nadine is assisting Rafe with his treasure hunt. Obviously, though, the point of biblical references in fiction is not necessarily to make an entirely accurate retelling of the bible but to simply frame these characters as larger cogs in general human experiences. The main pieces of evidence that had me arrive at this realization are as follows - 

1. Nadine is betrayed by her soldiers: Rafe’s words to Nadine stand out to me as I think of this. “The thing about mercenaries is that their allegiance can be bought and sold.” This is one of the quotes that stand out to me the most, especially considering what Nadine’s loyal following was bought out with: heaps and heaps of old Spanish coins that they were simply promised on the boat ride to the galleon. Obviously, the betrayal of Judas comes to mind with this scene, as Nadine is forced at gunpoint towards the large ship where she could ultimately meet her demise, alongside Nathan, Sam, and Rafe. 

2. Sam, Nathan, and Rafe are indicative of the concept of the penitent and impenitent thief: A recurring theme throughout the loot-fueled egotistical shrines Captain Avery built to his own pirate ideology is the repetition of Dismas and Gestas. Even Nathan comments that this pirate cannot get enough of Dismas, and for good reason as well. Avery obviously saw his attempt at creating a pirate utopia as him achieving his own level of sainthood. In the more modern part of this story, Sam and Nathan depict the side of the pertinent thief while Rafe does the exact opposite. This conclusion is clearly drawn in the final moments of the game, after Nadine's declaration that those who let this treasure consume them get what they deserve. Nathan’s quickness to accept this whole treasure hunt as a sinking ship(heheheh) is sharply contrasted against Rafe’s continuous bloodlust as he refuses to internalize his failed conquest. These two’s reactions to the idea of a battle to the death in the final scene are what solidified my thoughts that these are the figures these two characters represent.

3. There had already been biblical undertones established, connecting mainly to Dismas: Sort of self-explanatory. Examples include the previously mentioned repetition of the imagery of his crucifixion, his cathedral in Scotland, or wherever it was, and the dozens of other references to the theme of dealing with the consequences of your actions throughout the story, the most important being the death of the old historian.

4. It’s a modern Naughty Dog game written by Druckmann; he is incredibly conceited in his writing abilities, so he was probably looking for a way to make himself feel like some sort of literary genius.

Overall, it's a pretty good game, not sure it deserves this much writing, but who knows, I’ve never seen anyone else mention this.

Strong 7.5(ish?)/10. Didn't regret playing it at all during the moment, felt like it drug on, will never replay it except for a few specific chapters, but altogether an overall fun game. Extra parts of a point for having a Crash Bandicoot section.

This game was SO much fun! I am not normally partial to horror games, mainly because I don’t much enjoy running from big scary things 24/7, which is what most horror games revolve around, but this game did it all in a way I enjoyed. The gameplay loop was brilliantly designed, partly attributed to the natural simplicity that the game would have considering its’ age, and every single level felt like they knew EXACTLY what I was going to do next as a player, a tribute to the incredibly smart and talented game and level designers of the 90s and the 2010s. 

Visually, this game is quite literally nothing like I have ever played before. Its fidelity is outstanding, and minus a hiccup here or there, they were able to create some pretty convincing humans, avoiding some of the major pitfalls newer games fall into with face contours because of modern subsurface scattering technology. (That is something that I just recently realized after watching some random person I follow have a full-blown autism-fueled meltdown on Instagram over it.) The character design is absolute perfection, and I loved all the little details on Clair and Leon’s characters - namely, that every single weapon you have in your inventory is shown on their character visually. The zombies and other various monsters are also incredibly detailed, with brilliantly rendered injuries that in most cases depict entry and exit wounds better than other, more “realistic” games. Obviously, heads still explode from small-arms fire, but unlike a lot of other games, it REALLY adds to the style here, as it's a surefire indicator that the enemy won’t be coming back. All of the body deformation is fantastic and fairly realistic considering its all tissue in various stages of necrosis, making for a gnarly experience, to say the least. 

If I had to pick one thing to complain about the visuals, it would be that the upscaling options left a lot to be desired. Having a game this complex in the modern day with ray-traced lighting but no option for DLSS seems like a massive technical oversight, and only having the option for FSR or native rendering seriously hinders the visual experience. For instance, my 2060 can usually do some light ray traced lighting and full reflections at 60 fps without any real visual degradation IF I have access to DLSS 2.0(1.0 gets to about 30-45 depending on the game). Here, I could get 60 fps only by lowering some of my other graphics settings. It still made for an intensely beautiful viewing experience, as ray-traced lighting can make most things look like the closest thing to God if done right, albeit a little fuzzy here and there. It also had the FSR issue where it turns people's hair into blobs, and no matter how hard I try to overlook it I will not un-see when it happens. Regardless, it still looked amazing. 

The part where I read too far into it- 

Resident Evil 2, to me, is a game about contradictions and natural opposites. There are several examples of these contradictions. Firstly, and probably one of the more humorous in a game filled with many existentialist undertones, is The Knights Construction Company. The game takes many creative liberties to write off some of the strange 90’s game design that it has, and one of their explanation for the chess piece theme spark plug puzzle is the Knights Construction Company, where they didn’t spend time “losing sight of our two core principles of ‘playfulness’ and ‘superior industrial design,’” two obviously humorous contradictions that are readily obvious to the player. On the darker side of things is the concept of the Umbrella Corporation and the G-Virus. 

(Originally written in 2024, I have exactly zero idea where I was going with this.)

7.5/10