This was a game I played back in 2012 when I got a PS2 copy for it, I did eventually finish it in 2014 and still didn't think that much of it but now having finished the game for the first time in 10 years while also replaying SH1 a few weeks prior, I'm still struggling to figure out this notion that SH2 being considered an "amazing game" and "better" than SH1 even comes from. I consider SH2 to be a medicore game in every respect except music and visuals.

I'll start off with what I like before I start getting to the negative and lukewarm parts, in terms of visuals, I do prefer SH2 over SH1, I also like the latter game's visuals but I prefer like the grimy and dirty PS2 look of SH2. The character models are detailed and the designs of them have them look a bit on the normal side without them looking sterotypically attractive like in a Hollywood movie. The fog is also much more dense and detailed than SH1 and as a result the early game of SH2 can be pretty creepy because it's that much harder to see what's in front of you since the fog itself is so much thicker now.

However one negative with the visuals is with the cutscenes while better directed from a cinematography standpoint has an odd habbit of showing some parts of the cutscene in FMV form and other parts of it in engine, it just makes for a weird inconsistency. Games like Soul Reaver 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 managed to consistently put their cutscenes in engine and not randomly shove in FMV parts then in engine.

The music as usual for Akria Yamaoka's SH music is fantastic and the background music fits the cutscenes well while also being chill and relaxing to listen in their own right.

The story however I am lukewarm on, it's not "bad" but I feel it's overhyped. Most of the characters have little screen time to get attached to any of them and the only one I came close to being so with was Eddie since he just enjoys being a gultonous, violent psychopath. The rest of the characters are just kind of "there". Maria is a sexified personification of James' wife and never really goes past wanting to have his way with James, Angela is just an abused child and Laura I guess is supposed to the child James and Mary could've had together? They aren't terrible characters but they aren't great either. I also prefer SH1's approach of having an actual villain since I'm not sure how much of SH2's story is actually happening or if it really is all in James' head.

Speaking of James Sunderland, much of his personality is dependant on how you act towards Maria and in the game, meaning that cutscene James is hard character to even root for since he's a blank slate for the player. He's not really all that different from a silent protagonist with dialogue. I wouldn't want him to be silent but at the same time compared to Harry's drive to protect his daughter, James I found dull. I also never found a character as interesting as Lisa Garland or a scene that rivals her death from SH1.

The gameplay however is where many of my issues with SH2 comes from. SH1 was by no means an amazingingly designed game but it got the job done. SH2's combat is considered "bad" but intentionally designed but I argue it's just brainless and boring on normal difficulty. SH1's normal wasn't the most balanced but SH2's normal is somehow worse.

SH2's gameplay feels borderline brainless. At first, I was using melee to attack enemies to save ammo and I got less ammo and healing items by comparison to SH1, but by the time I got to Brookhaven Hospital, I disocovered most if not every enemy can beaten with 3 pistol bullets and one round of a pistol has 10 shots, so with one round, I can kill 3 enemies and the enemy count never gets higher than 3 in SH2 on top being showering with lots of ammo. At least SH1 enemies ran towards, grabbed and ganged up on you. In SH2, it's esstentially a game in of itself if an enemy can even land a blow on you.

The Lying Figure isn't even a great enemy but it will be used over and over again throughout the game as if the devs are super proud for making him and he always can be taken out in 3 pistol bullet shots maybe 4 or if it decides to lay down around crawl fast on occasion.

The enemies in the SH overworld are Lying Figures and Nurses and since you have to try hard to get hit by them, it's easy to stockpile massive amounts of ammo and healing items making the game even easier. Compare that to SH1 where enemies in the overworld moved fast, flew and can even grab you making the player be that much on the move.

Due to all of this, nothing in SH2 was even a threat for me anymore, enemies and bosses were pushovers and the only "hard" fight was dual Pyramid Head but that was because the shotgun had a long windup time before it can be fired and the Hunting Rifle had four shots before reload so I had to use the pistol and that did less damage making the fight longer.

The level design in SH2 is shockingingly poor too, SH1's wasn't amazing by any means but SH2 has so many doors that can't be open that it was almost starting to become a running joke. Why do you even have door textures at all if you can't even open the doors? You might as well have them be generic wall textures. That and I had a harder time finding key items or noticing lock doors, this could be me being so bored that I played sloppily but I felt the first game did a better job at tell me what is or isn't interactable.

Overall, I wouldn't consider SH2 to be a terrible game, but time hasn't made me any less lukewarm on it.

DBZ Legacy of Goku 2 was a game I always heard about and especially for being one of the best Dragon Ball games, I owned the poster for the game despite never owning a copy of it or the actual GBA system. I still have it on the wall to one of my rooms to this day, it's a really good poster and it's been there since the early 00s which is crazy in of itself. I was looking for a DB game I never played and all ones on modern consoles I already played or don't interest me so I decided to give Legacy Goku 2 a shot.

As a whole, Legacy of Goku 2 never rises above just being "okay". It's a serviceable game but at the same time even it weren't for a certain grinding spot in the Northern Mountains, I wouldn't be able to beat the game at all. I haven't played Buu's Fury yet but I'd say Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure is the better game if I have to compare the GBA DB games I have finished. I prefer Advanced Adventure being a pure beat em platformer instead of Legacy of Goku's action RPG approach, and this is coming from someone who prefers the post timeskip part of the DB story when Goku is an adult.

Right away, when I start up LoG2 for the first time there is just something I need to accept regarding the game, this is the wackiest and most insane Dragon Ball game ever made, everything about LoG2 is just introducing weird and wacky scenarios that weren't even in the anime and all though the original run of DBZ had it's filler, LoG2 just amps it up to 11 regarding this.

To name some examples, you have an entire section where you play as Gohan adventuring around Goku's house and you have an entire pointless dream sequence fight with Frieza and when the latter shows up in the story for real, he gets beaten in a cutscene. You also have the Garlic Jr. Saga's Black Water mist of all things being used as a narrative reason as to there are hostile enemies in the various environments of the game.

It doesn't just end there either, the game covers the Cell Saga of the Dragon Ball story and it takes at least 3 hours of the game for Androids 19 and 20 to show up in the story, before then you will be fighting dinosaurs, resuing children, getting a key to the city back from an old man who somehow knows magic, and to top all of this, none of this adds anything to the overarching plot, and nothing is new is revealed about the characters. All of this is padding for the sake of padding.

All though this gets toned down the more the game goes there is still other wacky stuff like destroying a force field to Dr. Gero's lab and needing to destroy 3 generators to get to that said lab where in the anime, they just fly there.

This padding is as charming as it is obnoxious since well, I've played so many DB games over the years and they tell the same story over and over so having new content that isn't well executed is pretty interesting but at the same time, it's still basically padding that doesn't add to much of anything.

One great thing about LoG2 is the fact that it uses the Faulconer Productions score of DBZ, I love that score of the series and the music in LoG2 is fantastic stuff, I'd say it's worth checking out for those who don't even like the music that it's based on since some songs are improved like the Super Namek and Cell's theme and other songs are as great as ever like Android 16 and Shenron's themes.

Outside of all this, the game is nothing remarkable, combat is "okay" but it's mainly at it's best when fighting hordes of enemies since it can be fun taking them down with fists and then switch to key blasts to fight them at a distance. Special attacks are mostly usesless outside of Piccolo's Special Beam Canon, since it has a large blast radius and it damage adds up to enemies while they are getting hit by it. Enemies also give plenty of health and energy drops upon death making the combat at the very least feel fair to some degree.

Transformations are also handled pretty well and are true to the source material too since you need ki energy to maintain the transformation and it's draining to use as well but it also doubles your strength and speed upon activation which needs to a few seconds to be activated and can be interrupted. It's nice to have a source material accurate take on this in a game.

However problems start to show during boss fights because it reveals that LoG2's playable characters are basically tanks. You can't dodge, block or no defensive options and bosses don't give health so bosses are tank battles. Hitboxes are pretty large for you and the enemy and there are no attack telegraphs. At this point, you need to grind in the story to beat many of them. You get stronger in the story but not during gameplay. Without grinding and some Senzu Beans late game where you can grind for fish, LoG2 would be hard to beat for me.

The final battle at the Cell Games is really easy because of all this and I breezed through it by that point.

Overall, it's an okay DB game but hard to reccomend to non fans whether it would be the immense grinding to get past the various bosses before the Cell games or how the plot itself which mainly covers the Cell Saga can be have it's fair share of padding.

My beats:

The House of the Dead Overkill - 7/10
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag - 6/10
Silent Hill - 7/10
Killing Time: Resurrected - 7/10
Tekken - 6/10
Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Jack the Ripper - 5/10
Sly Cooper and the Thievious Raccoonous - 7/10
Atomic Heart - 7/10
Star Wars Outlaws - 7/10
Timesplitters: Future Perfect - 8/10
Marvel Super Heroes - 5/10
Assassin's Creed Rogue - 5/10
Resident Evil: Gun Survivor - 7/10
Jackie Chan: Stuntmaster - 5/10
Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2 - 6/10

Had a pretty solid month all though I had some rough patches regarding circumstances involving the people online on other websites turning out to be not so ideal but luckily media and especially video games are there to cheer me up when stuff like that happens. I was hoping to beat the original Silent Hill 2 before the month wrapped but it ultimately alluded November, but I did find the game to be painfully mediocre in every respect except visuals and music.

I didn't find a fresh favorite game this month however unfortunately, I did update the favorites list but it was Sly 1 and Silent Hill 1 which were games I already beaten before, and more so games I have a soft spot towards despite them having their problems. Still, a solid month for gaming considering the circumstances involving my former mutuals online on other sites. I was even able to beat Star Wars Outlaws even though it was a day if not hours after me being mentally distraught and while the stealth sections in that game can be frustrating when playing a decent-great game sure can help you get your mind off the stuff bothering you mentally, it's obvious stuff but it man, it's obvious stuff that can be overlooked. Timesplitters Future Perfect replay also really helped too, it was nice over the top fun game that I needed at that point even mediocre stuff like AC Rogue was interesting since it tackled themes like betrayal even if the story wasn't that great, it was interesting to play a game like that with me just going through one. I've rambled on enough solid month for game beats in spite all that has happened to me.

This was a game that a former mutual of mine loved to praise as one of the best games ever. Looking at it in isolation however, it just doesn't seem like my kind of thing. The whole time loop thing I doubt is something that really appeals me.

lol, its just fun discussion about games... its not that serious

i havent beaten anything this month, but maybe will there is still a day.

It seemed it was getting serious to me. You were seemed playful about it however.

There is some games you can beat in an hour or slightly longer.

im not hitman fan. gameplay is quite clank in lots ways i can agree and i can see how it can be veri annoying game. tbh i dont even disagree with u. i kinda gave reason why i think its pretty cool.

about abosultion idk. it played well looked really good, but it went past and its much more blurred experience like it just faded (it was a game i played guess). blood money is ok. it has best gameplay (if not talking about modern hitmans) yea and it is 4th game already familiarity lots same... i think thats another thing here is that i played hitman games in proper order which makes 4th part more of hitman hitman and not as exciting.

in any case my opinion meeeh. i just rate games as somekinda overall experience. i dont even care which had the best gameplay. contracts felt very hitmany... quite monotone, dark abit horrory someways, cold feeling. good memzies running it on potato laptop which bluescreened if i chose better shadows settings.

Going to be honest and say I don't want this to continue any furthur. Apart of me knew I was going cause a shitstorm and at the end of the day, this is a thread that's about celebrating what people completed at the end of November 2024, and if I keep this is up it's going to be a bigger slippery slope than it already is. I might've not have been the most forthcoming about what I wanted to do, I hear the same opinions being repeated on Hitman so much that I just wanted to challenge them, I just disguised it as curosity. That and well, another part of me was sort of just expecting myself to be ignored since I challenged Finnedorb on this site a few times before and he just ignored me, I was expecting more of the same, but surpringingly he did challenge me but then someone else started to speak for him. Either way, I'll be honest enough and say that I made a pretty big mess. I don't want to resort to insults and get banned so I want to avoid it from getting to that.

I wanna be honest with you, I think some parts of your post are straight up silly. Apparently Codename 47 and Silent Assassin were bad games even for their time and people and critics disliked the game, while you provide no actual source for what people were actually thinking at that time and I also noticed that according to your profile you were 5 and 7 when those games came out. Unfortunately I can't travel back in time and send you the magazines I read, but the reception parts in the respective wikipedia articles pretty much confirm how I remember the reception of those games back then: Codename 47 was a good, but flawed first game, which was improved by Silent Assassin with general ratings going for 7 or 8 out of 10.

But that is not the main point I want to talk about. Let me quote from your first post in this thread:

Coming from someone who is just a causal when it comes to Hitman, I'm wondering what makes Hitman Codename 47 and Silent Assassin better than Absolution?

I'm just curious. I'm just asking and saying all this because I've seen Hitman fans say stuff like that over and over again.

So you were saying you are wondering why people think those games are better and that you are just curious. Now you got three people, assumingly more than just casual fans of the series (though I am only sure of one of them), explaining to you exactly why they think that is and now you are trying to argue everyone of them how they are false in their own opinion? Because according to you these games are just too slow, so everyone who prefers those games are just wrong. Please give me an honest answer for this question: Were you actually curious about the opinions of other people or were you just trying to pick a fight? Because I was writing to you assuming I could clear up your unableness to understand why people think that way, but if this isn't just an unableness and you simply don't want to understand, I can't help you.

Now I also noticed that you criticed Silent Assassin's lack of a cover system, but this is why it's important to look at these games in a certain context. I am not surprised you heard that argument before and I am also not surprised that you dismissed it before, but this is exactly why this matters. Appart for some few exceptions, games back then didn't have a cover system - the expectations for the player was to shoot down the enemies and maybe pick up a first aid kit. Other games that had no cover system and enemies with hit scan weapons: Half Life, Deus Ex. Criticising a game for something that simply wasn't really a thing back then is in my opinion a silly thing, but you are of course open to have that opinion.

Now here some questions you asked me.

you know you can get things right the first time?

Yes, I know. You know developers can sometimes improve the games they made with another game and sometimes get things right the next time? In case you don't believe me, you should play the very first Street Fighter, because it wasn't that one that revolutionized a whole genre. Just like Persona 3 was the game that actually started what people like about that franchise. And yes, not a direct question, but a game can be a classic and not age gracefully in every regard. A great example of that is Super Mario 64. And the fact that 10/10 games were released in the same year doesn't change the fact that a game might be 7/10 or a 8/10.

It does?

I am not exactly sure what you are asking, but Yes, it does! No, you don't get automatically spotted if you run, you have some leeway. And no, you also don't have guards spotting you without a warning, you have that little icon in the bottom corner giving you plenty of warnings. I don't care about other people you claim to exist without providing any source (again), but I can guarantee those points as someone who ranked SA in every Hitman 2 level first and not Contracts.

Getting angry over a game I played over a week to decade ago is hard to do. I get angry in the moment after playing the game, but after a day or two I slowly forget.

So I am honestly not sure what exactly you are going for with this weird flex. but you are also the one pretending to be curious about the opinions of other people and then spending your day telling them how they are apparently wrong in their opinion over a franchise you claim to have only a casual interest in. Just a reminder, but I didn't say I got angry over such a game, I said got reminded what pissed me off about that game.

How is it silly? Sure Hitman 2 was well received at the time but Codename wasn't. Why does my age even matter? At the end of the day, those games aren't timeless and aren't well made if I played them now. Hitman 2 was well recevied because of how bad Codename was.

I was curious, I was wondering whether or not Hitman fans would give me a satisfactory answer for my curiosity and so far I haven't. The fact that you need to speak for Finnedorb already does prove to me how amusing this all is. I never said anyone was wrong for liking the games for being slow, I love stealth games, I just don't think Codename or Silent Assassin are well made ones. Yes, I know games didn't have a cover system back then but at the same time, that doesn't make Hitman 2's third person shooting better than Absolution's which is the point. You can dismiss all kinds of sub par media if you at it from a "certain context".

"A game can be a classic and not age gracefully in every regard".

I don't believe in this. Sure, they might've been revolutionary for their time but if they aren't that great to play now, then I don't care how "revolutionary" they were.

Almost every review of Hitman 2 now will pretty much say eventually you will randomly get spotted in that game. I tried to play it a decade ago and randomly got spotted for even trying to do anything but walking.

So let me guess this straight, me trying to challenge people on their opinions means I'm telling them they are "wrong"? But fine whatever, at the end of the day, I wasn't expecting people to speak for Finnedorb but that was a mistake on my part. I don't want this to turn into a large scale flame war since clearly neither of us are going to budge and magically change our minds.

i do remember the crouch in hitman 2 being so slow and painful... im glad third entry changed that. tbh contracts is my favorite part.

I'm willing to try out Contracts for the atmosphere and music, I could never beat it but it had a cool opening level but I might just gun my way through if I get caught since it is a Hitman game pre Blood Money.

If the series began with Blood Money apart of me can understand the massive dislike for Absolution but this isn't the case.

You are also glossing over a part that Finnedorb mentioned and that is very important to that whole series. Codename 47 established a new and to this day very unique formular, that they nailed with Silent Assassin and upwards. Hitman is a game with sandbox levels, in which the npc's do their stuff and you figure out a way to kill the target. Absolution mostly abandoned that in favor for a more cinematic approach - tight levels to tell a (bad) story. As a result Absolution was just a stealth game and it would have been fine, if it was at least a good one at that, but it just sucked - I say that with stealth games being my favorite genre. Absolution is an unbelieable bad stealth game and saying "you can play on easy and gun your way through" is certainly not a favorable argument for a Hitman game.

It is certainly true that the classic Hitman games did not age gracefully. They did not, but I personally (and dare I say, most other people) look at these games with a certain context in mind. Those games are over twenty years old now and they had been done when developers still had to figure out how to actually make games (not just on a technical level, but also regarding the design).Codename 47 is the weakest one of the classic Hitman games, but when it came out back then it was a good game. Then came Silent Assassin and it improve so much of Codename 47, which is why it's such a classic. Over time some flaws are definitely more apparent, but Absolution on the other hand sucked right at the beginning. Which is why Absolution is indeed the first bad game in the series.

I fail to see how Hitman 2's disguise system is any better, you either walk or crouch very slowly making levels go by painfully slow.

Well, in 2 it actually works. Finnedorb mentioned it, in Absolution npc's can see through your disguise when you are one of "them," making disguises just useless. You might move slowly in the classic Hitman games, but that has nothing to do with the disguise system itself. But also, if I remember right, there is actually not a single level in Silent Assassin, in which you actually have to slowly crouch around. The classic Hitman games have a lot of leeway in that regard and most npc's are actually fine with the player running in disguise.

Man, now I am reminded of Abolution. And how much of that game pissed me now.

Codename 47 and 2 are bad social stealth games on top of being bad games even for the time. Absolution at least has a fast crouch speed. I mentioned this already but eventually and many first time players of Codename 47 and 2 will and they will run and gun in those game too. At least Absolution gives you a cover mechanic where in Codename and 2 it's just hitscanners with no means of even avoiding damage. "It's certainly not a favorable argument for a Hitman game". I'm not talking about it as a Hitman game, I already said I was a casual fan of the franchise. Codename wasn't even a good game when it came out, people who played it at the time and critics pretty much disliked the game. You say stuff like how it's a "classic" and then say they it didn't age the most gracefully. And yup, I have heard this argument defending many awkward or bad first entries in a series, you know you can get things right the first time? This whole, "for it's time" stuff I never bought. Plus Codename came out the same year as Deus Ex and Thief 2 which makes the game look that much worse.

It does? If you run, you get spotted and if you walk the level goes by painfully slow. Hitman Blood Money is where the diguise system actually works properly. The only Hitman games I say does the concept it tries to do well are Blood Money and World of Assassin. Anything outside of those games are just varying degrees of sub par. Comparing Codename 47 and SA to Absolution is like debating which Highlander sequel is the worst. That already says a lot because many who played Silent Assassin recently will tell you that guards spot you without warning even Contracts is said to be the game where they remember SA playing.

Getting angry over a game I played over a week to decade ago is hard to do. I get angry in the moment after playing the game, but after a day or two I slowly forget.

just olden times... really cool vibe and soundtrack and atmosphere and nostalgia too. its weird comparison anyways like these 2000 and 2002 games. i didnt like absolution much either. yea games are more clunk and doesnt control that well, but at the end i enjoyed them much more.

I'm not the biggest fan of Absolution either, I haven't played it since around the time it came out but at the same time, regarding Hitman, Absolution wasn't even the first "bad" game in the series. That's how weird of a franchise Hitman is. If the series began with Blood Money apart of me can understand the massive dislike for Absolution but this isn't the case.

There's an argument to be made that Codename 47 is worse just due to the lack of checkpoints and the general jank of it being the first game in the series, but they had the formula mostly figured out by Hitman 2 and it comes together pretty well with the only real hiccup being that running makes you suspicious to guards. The reason Absolution is in my opinion the worst in the series is because it's the fifth game in the series, yet it does a lot of things worse than even Hitman 2. The disguise system is a core part of Hitman's gameplay in every game so when it's as fucked up as it is in Absolution, it's not a good time. Story isn't that important in Hitman so I don't hold it against this game too much, but my issue with this game is how story-focused it is. Most Hitman games feel like they chose the locations first and then wrote a story. This is the opposite and it leads to a lot of the levels being in pretty samey environments. Then of course not being able to save when you want is just the cherry on top that makes things that much worse and tips it over as being the worst.

Codename 47 is technically the worst game. I fail to see how Hitman 2's disguise system is any better, you either walk or crouch very slowly making levels go by painfully slow. At least Absolution has a moderately fast crouch speed. The checkpoint system is pretty bad admittedly, but you can play on easy and gun your way through, Hitman 2 will eventually be played that way if you don't move painfully slow through the levels. The only thing about Hitman 2 I can say is good is the music.

Coming from someone who is just a causal when it comes to Hitman, I'm wondering what makes Hitman Codename 47 and Silent Assassin better than Absolution? Absolution is certainly inferior to Blood Money but from what I've seen of Codename and what I've played Silent Assassin, they both seem like worse games than Absolution. I really never understood this gaming community mentality of, "disappointing sequel is somehow worse than awkward if not outright bad early entries". Sure the story of Absolution is pretty bad from what I remember, but I don't recall 47 being anything more than an avatar for the character to do the kills and having a cool look. I don't think it's as hilariously out of character as Max Payne going full on John McClane played by Nick Cage in Max Payne 3.

I'm just curious. I'm just asking and saying all this because I've seen Hitman fans say stuff like that over and over again.

I could argue that the genre was still around later just that having a game dedicated to nothing but beat em up combat tend to be hard to find, a lot of the 3D kind tend to have backtracking, puzzles and platforming inbetween. I reccomend trying out Urban Reign, I have a review of it somewhere here and I really enjoyed that.

This was a game I never even heard of for the longest time, I just randomly heard of it because it was one of Radical Entertainment's first games and it was a 3D melee brawler on the PS1 or at least that's what I thought of going in. In reality, Stuntmaster isn't really a 3D beat em up, it's more a 3D platformer in the vein of Crash Bandicot with beat em up sections.

The story and presentation is pretty charming, there isn't much of one and there isn't many cutscenes but what cutscenes there are pretty charming with how exaggerated everything looks and how it seems like they to combine real life with a cartoony art style. I kind of wished there was more of a story and cutscene here since I like how goofy the presentation the game has in the occasional cutscenes that popped up.

The melee combat is kind of okay, I wouldn't really call it outright bad since much of the game I was able to play without using cheats. First things I noticed right away was the geniune lack of invicibility frames and how there are no crowd control attacks, so if you try to take on 3 enemies attacking you at once, it might as well be a game over. However, Stuntmaster much to my surprise has a dedicated dodge button, and while you can't cancel out of a combo, I did spend much of my time, doing the various punching and kicking combos and then dodging after completing them, it was often a game of taking enemies out one at a time rather than fighting groups head on. Weapons also came in handy but they can be a little imprecise to hit enemies with since the combos for them can be a 50-50 guessing game of me landing a hit or Jackie getting hit and then dropping the weapon.

The bosses are surprisingly some of the better on the PS1, they aren't the most amazing, but they have far more going on than survival horror, Tomb Raider or various shooter bosses on the same system, since each one has their own gimmick and you have to wait for the right time to hit and them while you dodge their attacks. It's kind of on par with Crash, Spyro and MGS1 bosses. There's only a few of them though.

However combat doesn't really change all that much, you don't get any new abilties, combos and combat remains the same for pretty much all of the game, I was starting to bored of it so I pretty much used an infinite health cheat towards the end of the game. There is stuff like environmental hazards and how you and even your enemies can fall off various stages but it serves to be more annoying than fun, it can be amusing to see enemies fall to their death but it happening to you just makes it more frustrating than anything, and the game has lengthy load times on top of a lives system so I just abused the save states on emulator.

This is where I get into my next major negative, the platforming is very much like Crash Bandicot, the problem with this is that everything Stuntmaster does with it's platforming, Crash does better. For one you get to see Crash's shadow when platforming and there isn't anything like this in the latter on top of this, if I want to play Crash Bandicot, I'd go play Crash. There is one impressive subway setpiece and it's pretty cool the first time but it gets reused so much that the whole thing gets tiresome and turns into diminishing returns due to how often it pops up in the sewer level.

If you like the 3D beat em up sections, the platforming is just going to annoy you, if you like the platforming, the beat em up sections will annoy you, I wonder who this game is even for at times because of this.

The final big issue is that levels just go on for too long. Usually in a platformer, levels tend to go by very quickly depending on how good you are but combined this with the beat em up sections and this pretty much make the levels feel longer even though all of them are less than 15 minutes since beat em up gameplay in most if not every game tend to be lengthy and like I said before neither platforming or beat em up gameplay is enchanced by each other.

Overall, I wanted Jackie Chan Stuntmaster to be a hidden game and even possibly being a 3D beat em up that predates the first Devil May Cry and Onimusha games that is actually pretty good and it wasn't. I wouldn't call the game terrible but it all in all it just feels incredibly confused in terms of game design.

I had borderline zero expectations going into this game, I heard for years that it was "awful", not very well made and a terrible game but to much to my surprise, I had a decent enough time with it, is it a great game? No. As a whole RE Gun Survivor was a B grade weekend rental spinoff game. I was expecting myself to absolutely loathe it but instead it turned out to be a moderate amount of fun.

The best way of describing Gun Survivor is that it is to RE7 what RE Dead Aim is to RE4.

Gun Survivor in a lot of ways is esstentially a first person shooter, meets light gun shooter with elements of a surivival horror game.

A big point of contention regarding Gun Suvivor is the controls, it uses traditional tank controls while it being in first person, if you dislike tank controls, you are pretty much going to dislike this game right away but if you are accustomed and used to tank controls this is easy enough to get used to.

However a big issue with the game is more so the camera and how this part of resembles more of a light gun shooter. Every time you get hit in Gun Suvivor, the camera tracks and follows the enemy that hits you. This is fine for one or two enemies but when there are more than 2-3, and especially when they are attack you from your left and right flank, it can get disorienting getting hit by one enemy then the camera tracks to it, you shoot it, get hit, camera tracks him and shoot that enemy. I really think either the game could've had 2-3 enemies on screen or just not have enemies that attack you from your left and right side.

This might sound like the game is terrible but here is the thing that makes Gun Surivivor a solid game, the game just knows how to pace out it's ammo and healing items. Every time you took a lot of damage, after a few rooms, you will eventually get some herbs and a first aid spray, every time there are some tougher enemies you got to fight the game will spawn some shotgun, grenade launcher and magnum rounds.

On top of all this, you can run past many of the enemies in it's more open rooms on top of the base pistol having infinite ammo making a decent fallback weapon to kill weaker enemies with. I often combined tactics of running away and shooting enemies.

There is also survival horror elements like collecting certain key items to progress furthur into the various levels of the game. This is nothing too complex but it does do a decent enough job at translating the older RE forumla into the context of a first person game much like what RE7 would do much later. The levels are small enough to have a good idea of which item is needed to progress.

Towards the end of the game I did act like a total moron and used up all my powerful weapons on weaker enemies and didn't save my grenade launcher for the actual final boss on the helicoptor launch pad, this was me being an idiot and I did resort to cheating to beat it but this is more my fault.

The game is also about 2 hours long so many of the issues I do have with it isn't too aggrevating due it's brevity.

However one big negative is that the voice acting is pretty bad and not a funny bad like the original RE. Some parts of it can be funny but it isn't on the level of the original game. It's more on the lines of just dull bad.

The continue system also isn't the greatest, I bypass it with emulator save states but at the same time, you only get a few lives and ran out and it's back to the start of the game, stuff like this is why I'm glad I emulate most of the old games I play.

Overall, RE Gun Survivor much like Dino Stalker wasn't the bad game that I was lead to believe for so many years, is it a amazing? No but at the same time, I played far worse games than this. Go into it with super low expectations and you might have some fun with this game like I did.

AC Rogue was a game I played almost 10 years ago and I didn't think very highly of it even at the time and playing it again around the time of release hasn't improved my opinion on it. I was very antagonistic towards the franchise around that time and I thought me being a bit softer on it now might improve my opinion on this particular game, turns out it didn't. I mainly just played it because it came with the AC Rogue Collection on Nintendo Switch.

Speaking of the Nintendo Switch version, I can't speak for it on other systems, but compared to Black Flag's Switch port, Rogue's isn't very good, there is constant stuttering and even frame rate drops from time to time and the game even crashed on me at one point. I don't know if the remaster is better on other systems but Switch isn't the ideal way to play.

Anyways as for the game itself, I would never consider Rogue to be an awful game, I've played a couple of bad games over the years despite not being a connaisseur of them, however I can say that I'm that for painfully average games and AC Rogue is very much that.

The story is a bit on the messy side, I wouldn't consider to be absolutely terrible but not good either, but as a whole I'd say it gets more wrong than right. Shay Cormac is an okay character since he talks and sounds like a guy who wants to do the right thing and the mission in Portugal does a decent enough job at making the player the feel the weight of Shay's actions while the character himself is slowly horrified by everything he did, this part of the story was handled pretty well or how Shay is pretty conflicted in general in how he doesn't want to kill any of his former Assassin friends minus him constantly saying, "I make my own luck" so many times, this part of the story I think is okay.

The rest of the story besides Shay's character is very messy. The Assassins in this game are portrayed as bloodthirsty power hungry maniacs doing whatever it takes to win against the Templars, this isn't terrible on it's own but the story doesn't really make clear whether or not if the Assassins are on the losing side of the war and would do whatever it takes to win.

The characters are pretty underdeveloped and not enough is done to make me attached to them, this could be attributed to the short length but the interactions never really do a good job at establishing multiple ideas or have anything "pop" out that makes me want to feel conflicted about eventually killing them. Characters introduced in AC3 and 4 like Adewale, Achilles and Haytham Kenway don't really have much to do or any interesting subplots, they just feel like they are "there". It's just hard to picture Adewale going full heel after AC4 and the story does a poor job at making it feel believeable too. Then there is just other prequel related issues like how Achilles never even telling Connor about Shay in AC3.

I've complained about the story but the gameplay is also once again on the painfully average side.

One thing I'll give Rogue over AC4 is that the number of tailing missions has been noticeably reduced and I'm very thankful for that, the missions in general have far more variety to them than AC4 did which is nice.

The problem is that everything introduced in this game, AC3 and 4 already did, I wouldn't mind this if Rogue just did the, "you played AC4, now let's just add to it" but it doesn't there's still multiple tutorials teaching AC players stuff he already knows and it still does stuff that AC4 already did, if you played it you pretty much know what to expect.

The only big innovations are ice bergs during naval combat, stalker enemies, the ability to throw fire from the back of the ship and your ships being able to be boarded. The ice bergs and enemy ship boarding are nice additions all though the ice berg only felt useful once and the enemies boarding your ships came in handy late game. Speaking of which, just be warned, the game never explicity states it, but you will need to grind and upgrade your ship to beat the penultimate mission since you have to might two really powerful ships and if you never upgraded the ship before that point, you are in for a hard time, luckily the requirements are steep and the game autosaves the resoruces you pick up and you retain them even after death but your milage may vary.

The stalker enemies are more annoying than anything, at first it was interesting since it was AC's multiplayer being repurposed for single player and I wouldn't mind a whole game revolving around this but all they really do is just get in your way. They pop up during some of the main missions and all they really do is pop when you want to complete a specific objective, want to kill or protect some guys? Track down the stalkers, kill them, then proceed. It's a good idea on paper but just feels half baked especially when all they do is impeed progress.

Overall, AC Rogue was a painfully average game 10 years ago and it's painfully average today, play out of curosity.

Timesplitters Future Perfect was a game I played back in around 2016 when I was trying to complete all the PS2 games I bought back at a local Flea Market back in 2012. I replayed on emulator back in 2022 and now it's been added to the PS Premium Classics section and I decided to play the game for a 3rd time and I had a blast playing it yet again sure the shooting mechanics might not be the deepest of all time but if you want to play that has charm and is great fun to play moment to moment, then you really can't go wrong with Future Perfect.

The sound design and damage animations were already great but the addition of blood splatter when enemies get shot makes the combat even more satisfying so while the much of the shooting might consist of you fighting hitscan machine gun enemies, the act of shooting and hitting them just feels so graitfying that it can feel very stimulating in the moment. I just love unloading an entire round of bullets on to an enemy and seeing all the exaggerated animations and blood splatter.

There is an actual overarching plot this time and it's surprisingly well written for an fps, the character interactions are funny and Cortez in general feels like he is a parody of the badass space marine protagonist that is so often seen in FPS games. It also makes repeating sections of levels compelling since it's tied to the story and it's interesting play out events you already experienced since they were a mystery and you get to eventually play it out.

The OST is still pretty good, but not as good as TS2's. I also like how there are more checkpoints and that health is actually properly spaced out throughout all the levels. I can actually play this game on Normal difficulty.

The additions of dedicated grenade throw and a melee attack button are an obvious inspiration from the Halo series, grenade throwing gets some good use with you throwing them to defeat some tankier enemies, it's especially useful during the late game when robots gets introduced or to thin out some of the enemies when the enemy count starts to get higher.

Two massive improvements over TS2 is that there is a dedicated targeting ridicule now so lining up my shots and getting headshots doesn't feel like a game of luck and snipers work properly.

Now, the issues, first, Anya's commentary while can be funny, it can also be very grating in that she can point out the balant obvious and the game can be very hand holdy in general comapred to TS2. The Gravity Gun like arm thing barely gets enough use and felt like it didn't need to be in the game at all. It's good for getting the occasional secret armor and health pick up but that's about it. I wish there were some more secnarios with it.

The vehicle sections while decent, does feel like they were kind of borrowing from Halo for the sake of it since there are probably about 2-3 vehicle sections the whole game, they are "okay" but like the Gravity Gun arm glove, I would've liked some more situations featuring them.

The titular Timesplitters are irritating to fight since their projectiles always home in on you and they keep darting around the map and they take an insane amount of damage to kill, the penultimate sniping section might be the hardest part of the game due to how weak your sniper rifle is and how big of damage sponges the Timesplitters can be.

This might not be an issue depending on your point of view, but the game's campaign feels like it adopted the Half Life approach rather than TS2's Goldeneye and Perfect Dark inspired objective system. So the single player can feel more scripted and linear when compared to TS2's approach of, "here's the level and do the objectives in mostly whatever order you want". I might prefer the Half Life style since the objective system sort of feel like it's wasting when you just miss one objective and then look around just to beat the level.

At the same time, having played TS2 again, while TS3 has the issue with the one off mechanics due to the nature of the idea of time hopping, the various themes and mechanics going on for two rather than one, certain ideas can feel like you get to play around with them by comparison. The energy gun in one of the later levels at the very least gets introduced to you and you get to play around with it more to destroy shields and contraptations by comparison to TS2 where stuff like environmental objects being used for level progression or puzzles only happens once. The warm hole sections in TS3 pop up enough that not only adds to the story but it feels moderately fleshed out due to it being a recourring theme in the levels even the flamethrower in the Haunted House mission feels like I'm encouraged to use to save ammo with it plus the level itself being longer where if this was TS2, the level would be short and on top of being a one off.

Overall, TS3 is still a really good game that I enjoy yet again for a 3rd time, it just nails the moment to moment gameplay while also having a good story.

I personally never really cared for award shows that much. It's essentially just a confirmation bias game. I don't mind people watching them because they want to see devs rewarded for their hardwork but a lot of people tend to use these shows as "proof" as why their favorite games are good in some vague battle for supremacy.

On top of all this, most people just watch the shows for the trailers and the reveals and I heard the DICE awards are a proper celebration of games where the Game Awards just skip over most of the actual awards and it's been a problem since forever.

A lot of the games I like every year don't even win awards or even got nominated.

I'm trying not to be a buzzkill here but if you guys enjoy stuff like this than more power to you.

This was a game I was constantly hearing bad or lukewarm things about at launch and how it isn't exactly a "great" game. I wouldn't consider it SW Outlaws to be great but for the most part, I do consider it to be an decent enough and generally compentently designed if nothing remarkable game like a lot of the modern Ubisoft games I played outside of the recent Prince of Persia the Lost Crown. Considering how much questionable content the SW franchise has produced in recent times, I'm just happy I got some enjoyment out of this at all. When it comes to SW games, I consider Outlaws to be somewhere in the middle rather than "good" or "bad".

I'll start with the story and it's just, "okay" more than anything, it's not really terrible or remarkable. Just somewhere in the middle just like the rest of the game. My big issue is that Kay Vass doesn't really grow as a character that much in the middle portions of the game since the missions on each planet can be completed in a random order so most of the game is spent building the crew for the big heist and Kay herself never really goes through any big stuggles or disagreements. ND-5 is a decent character, is well acted and has some decent interactions but since he and Jaylen are the only things connecting all 3 of the main questlines together, I don't think enough legwork was done between ND-5 and Kay to make me want to see them win and succeed. I would've liked some more disagreements and hostility between the two instead of Kay being so "okay" with everything.

Jaylen is a solid character, I do like how he tries to keep calm and make the best of every setback that comes to him, and he comes off as being a decent manipulator, even if one late twist was really obvious due to his character design.

The rest of the characters are also just "okay" and nothing special, this is probably in large part due to Kay not interacting with them that much after their main questline on each planet wrapping up. They pretty much disappear from the story after you recruit them.

It's a decent story overall, it's easy to tell that it's just trying to be a fun heist story rather than something deep and meaningful which I don't mind.

The gameplay is mostly on "it's decent enough" side. There is one thing that will make or break the game for many people and that is the heavy reliance on stealth gameplay especially in the early hours and late hours. I wouldn't call the stealth gameplay in Outlaws "bad" by any means but it's not amazing or stand out either.

I say the stealth is decent because you get much of the essentials to be effective at sneaking like a crouch button, guards don't instantly spot you when they get a glimpse of your body, a whistle, a distraction, and the best part all though it can vary is that when you alert one enemy seconds after being spotted which helps make much of it's stealth gameplay bearable.

However this can vary since the AI can be very twitchy in spots. Sometimes guards can spot you from afar and at other times knocking out guards seconds after they spot you do notice the hivemind, and at times guards can hear me knocking out other guards even it is a distance apart and sometimes they won't, it's this inconsistencies like this that bugs me. This makes the last few stealth sections towards the end of the game feel like a game of luck at times.

The rest of the game consist of your usual fare, there's cover shooting, driving vehicles, and ship combat. None of these things are done suberbly well but have enough polish in them to atleast feel decently stimulating.

Shooting can feel quite challenging in the early game since your base pistol does such little damage but once you get rapid fire plasma, power blaster upgrade, get some upgrades to take more damage and hold more health packs, shooting mostly becomes pretty easy to manage unless if there is an overwhelming amount of enemies thrown at you which can happen during some Imperial base missions. I do love the first configuration for your power blaster since it is very similar to the Spartan Laser from Halo which is a high damage weapon that is projectile and takes quite a little time to charge up. I love the Spartan Laser so it's to something like that in this game. Two handed guns which you can't take with you outside of the combat arenas you find them can take out many of the basic infantry units in the game. Grenade launcher enemies are pretty annoying especially in cramped rooms.

The vehicle combat is borderline non existent since all you have to fight back is the Splinter Cell Conviction mark and execute to fight back, enemies are easy to get away from so I don't mind.

Ship combat is there more than anything, it's just there to complete the idea of the power fantasy of having an "open galaxy" game. Dog fighting generally doesn't involve much skill but I don't mind since I'm not good at fligth games.

Overall, SW Outlaws is an okay if nothing special game like much of modern Ubi's efforts.

Atomic Heart is a game I recall hearing about around the time it came out, it looked pretty cool but I've seen people both praise and detract it. I held off playing it because I thought I wouldn't enjoy it but I did ended up enjoying it, the game has it's issues but it's a game I can say I mostly enjoyed.

I'll begin with the story and the game makes it clear that it's a story driven game, the interesting part is that it was supposed to be a movie but it got turned into a game. I'd say the story is mostly pretty interesting but it has some major problems when it comes to themes and when it comes to making me think, I'll give the game credit for having me reflect on various ideas in the moment like the idea of giving control to someone who seems to act like they have humanity's best interests and the conversations P-3 has with Charles does a good job at making the delivery of it's themes and ideas feel organic within the gameplay and on top of this, much of the story is very direct and you don't need to read notes or listen to the audio logs to get what is going on within the story so I comend the game for all of this despite mostly playing games for gameplay.

However there is just one major flaw with the story and that is the main character P-3, I've seen a good number of people share their immese dislike for the character but the thing is, I don't think he's a bad character on paper since I've spoken to and aruged with many people over the years who speaks exactly like he does. The kind of guy who is overly rude, sure of himself, is absolutely convinced they are right despite how much evidence to the contrary has been shown and puts way too much faith in one person or thing just even though that faith is ultimately misplaced and it's clear they are being used.

I've seen many act like him, and it's not this that annoys me, it's more so that the story shows very little interactions and shows so little of the backstory between him and Scehenov, the story rarely if ever shows why P-3 puts so much trust in him. There's not many interactions between the two and most of the story is spent with Charles. There's rarely if ever any kind manipulative sympathy shown by Scehenov making P-3's lack of professionalism towards everyone seem all the more forced and irrational.

Another issue is that the twist happens too late in the game to be impactful, it has the Metal Gear Solid 2 problem where a big twist that happens late in the game is too hard to sync in because of it's late reveal, the characters have no time to reflect and slowly change because by the time it is revealed, the game is almost at an end.

I still think the story isn't "bad" by any means but if these issues I mentioned was somehow fixed, I would probably like P-3 more, maybe not as much as Legacy of Kain's Raziel but someone I would geniunely find interesting especially for an FPS protagonist. The fact that Atomic Heart's story has me talking about it for so much of my review does speak a lot for how much I found it interesting, I tend to mostly talk about gameplay.

Speaking of that, it's mostly just "fine". The game is very much an FPS game in the vein of something like Bioshock, there's a homage to it late game and the Facility the game takes place is somewhat similar to Rapture, there's powers for the player to use like a shock ability, upgrades, lots of hacking mini games, exploration and looting and so on. I do however prefer Atomic Heart's gameplay since death isn't a slap on the wrist due to the fact that there is no Vita Chambers and I find combat to provide a more satisfying kick to it especially when fighting the biological mutants.

Combat at first is a little challenging since you have some weaker weapons and ammo is low, I had to use frostbite and telekinesis a lot but I eventually just primarily used the shock ability since it becomes deadly late game, you also get weapons like the Dominator which has unlimited ammo but slowly recharges upon energy depletion, but the axe is still pretty reliable even later parts of the game, I used the shotgun on tougher enemies and bosses and once I found the blueprints for Klash, the game became even easier since I had so much ammo lying around for that before obtaining the gun.

You can also craft healing items and ammo in the locker and you get lots of resources by looking around, so you will rarely run out of ammo or healing items.

Enemy variety pretty much loses steam after a few hours since they all get introduced in the first few hours.

I did play on easy, but the combat with how a staggering animation would activate every time P-3 got hit just annoyed me and made combat less fun, and how enemies can be spongey especially in large numbers could make an "okay" combat system possibly aggrevating so I never bothered to raise the difficulty.

There are some annoying padding and fetch quests but the waypoints made them bearable.

Overall, worth checking out if you enjoy games like this.

I usually just time my total play time including deaths and retries, but even some games with in game time tracking might track time in the way you might expect an that can change from a game to game basis.

I find arcade style games hard to give a time for because the games themselves can be like 30min to 1hr, but they usually take lots of practice and tries before you can get to the end. I personally time the totality of my game time including failures because I feel it better reflects the time I actually spent on the game.

I try to include death and retries in my times too mainly as reflection of my actual "skill" at the game as opposed to making me seem like I'm a better player than I actually am, however emulation is where things get on the hazey side since I use save states but PCSX2 will track how long you've been playing it. It's still probably not super accurate.

The game explicitly teleports you to some sort of tutorial arena where it explains what the chainsaw does, how did you miss that lol

Considering the guy I responded to also missed it and how many were complaining about how challenging it is compared to 2016, I wasn't the only one who missed did. It was in 2020 around the time of release, I don't remember 100% how my playthrough went.

I decided to rewatch the first Silent Hill movie for the first time in over 10 years and even after seeing some ridiculing and insulting it, I still think the movie is decent stuff. Is it a masterpiece? No and it has some major problems like the exposition dump towards the end and how the whole movie tends to have a "gamey" feel to it while also trying to be a horror movie where the protagonist doesn't know how to use a firearm but at the same time, the visuals, the monster designs and the fact that they used the music from the games is enough to carry it for me.

There is some other stuff I don't like how Sean Bean's character should be cut out entirely and how Dahlia isn't the main villain anymore. Some parts of the movie are pretty relatable that I see now especially on the internet regarding the whole cult group that the movie has. The end credits is pretty damn awesome, I lost my damn all over again when, "you're not here" played.

I'd say its decent enough. As far as live action game adaptations are concerned it doesn't annoy me as much Last of Us HBO or Paramount Halo.

I sort of want to rewatch SH Revelation but I know it's going to be torture.

Okay, I'm five hours through and not having the time of my life. Doom 2016 was more straight-to-the-point and beginner friendly in my memory (although pretty tough at first). I find Eternal a little tiring for now... Will I constantly be short on ammo til the end? Don't answer that if the answer is 'yes', you'd make me drop the game right away :-/

Use the chainsaw when low on ammo. This was something I never knew until someone told me.

Sly 1 is a weird game even back when I first played the game, I know I preffered 2 but not sure I liked it over 3, replaying it again in 2021, Sly 1 is probably my least favorite game in the series. Having it played the PS5 version recently, I appreciate Theivious Raccoonous more than I did before, however the game does have it's flaws but I still think it's charming.

If you play the PS5 version, it mostly runs fine all though there are some weird crash issues where during the Ms. Ruby fight I rewinded a little too much and it caused the game to freeze up, I loaded the game from the save state and rewind refused to work but loaded it from the in game menu and it worked again. You may encounter this so be warned.

That out of the way, by far the weakest aspect of Sly 1 for me is the story, it's weird considering if you have seen Sly Cooper discourse on the internet, it tends to be the most discussed part of the franchise but for me, I just found the story to be interesting for a platformer story more than anything. It's super charming in that it looks like a typical mascot platformer for children and it has adult themes but it never gets overly indulgent with the latter. It's also nice that the game gives you context and a backstory reveal for the various villains the Cooper gang is about to steal from, it feels natural within the story and the cutscenes aren't overly long.

However, I do have some major issues with the story, if you look past the charming presentation, the actual story is kind of lacking. Bentley and Sly are overly hostile towards each other despite the fact that they have been friends for a while, this gets phased out the more it goes on but it can get grating. Murray is barely given anything to do outside of being cowardly and getting the team in trouble but the devs have to make him seem useful by conviently having the keys for Sly to progress.

Most of the interesting parts like Carmalita getting kidnapped and Bentley questioning why Sly would help her and Carmelita joining Sly are the most interesting parts of the plot. There isn't many twists and turns anything that doesn't revolve around, "Cooper gang steals X".

Clockwork is a weak villain who's motivations are too vague and all of his character is revealed towards the end of the game before Sly defeats him.

It's the framework for something interesting but on it's own, it's just okay.

The gameplay in Sly 1 is interesting in that it has first installment weirdness but in an interesting way.

Gameplay is esstentially Crash Bandicot Warped but framed as a stealth game. It's a platformer with a stealth theme, no this is not what I would consider a "stealth game" but using making a platformer that is themed around not being seen is an interesting concept since stealth games and platformers in some ways shares similar ideas.

The game is at it's best is when it's focused on avoiding enemy sightlines, lasers, and search lights. As much as I scoff at the idea of a contextual cover system to hide from enemies it is mostly done well here since there will always be parts to use it to avoid enemies with flashlights. One really nice thing about the game is that when caught by a search light or laser, it isn't a game over, Sly is given a second chance where the lasers will move faster and will instantly kill him upon touching it and you can decactivate this by destroying an alarm bell.

Another good thing about the gameplay is that most the abilties Sly gets after beating bosses gets actively used in the level design in the following level, cloaking being a bit of the exception.

This is something I wished the game leaned into since not all enemies are going to be unaware of your presence which is why I scoff at Sly being considered a full on stealth game. The Crash Bandicot enemies who only appear in front you and attack in one direction pretty much sap away the stealth fantasy of being someone who is efficient at being unnoticed. Another thing that ruins the stealth fantasy is that the guards who have sightlines will be alerted to you by seconds before you take them out from behind which also takes away from the fantasy since the whole point is to remain unnoticed.

Some other issues is that the mini games while most of them aren't bad, they can get in the way of what is a solid foundation for a platformer like this, you enjoy the platforming? Now do a mini game you don't want to do.

Bosses are mostly fine but Ms. Ruby is particularly bad since her boss is a rhythm game that doesn't even use the base game's mechanics.

The platforming also isn't the most polished since sometimes I press the circle button contextual actions and they work or sometimes they don't it makes the final Clockwork fight a massive drag since now you have to be precise with these circle button actions.

Overall, Sly 1 is a good game even with many of my issues but I really wished it leaned into it's more interesting ideas. It's still a game worth playing.