Recent reviews by huu

I, like many people, was dubious at the thought of a remaster of Sonic Generations. My trust in Sega regarding this was also particularly low due to the disappointment that was Sonic Origins a few years back - shoddy remakes with technical issues not present in the original games, all the while delisting said original games from digital storefronts forever, alongside developer mistreatment.

With Sonic X Shadow Generations, Sega seems to have learned their lesson, at least somewhat. First of all, the original Sonic Generations from 2011 is still available for purchase, provided you buy it in a bundle with other older Sonic games. While not the best solution to this, this is still a better compromise than what they did with Sonic 1, 2, CD, as well as 3 & Knuckles.

Second - there is actually something new here for everyone. Sonic Generations, surprisingly enough, received new content in the form of re-animated cutscenes or brand new dubs to fit the series' continuity better. This is the first time I've seen them actually rewrite the story of an older game to make it make more sense within the confines of the series' universe canon. The one thing I do not like about the remaster of Sonic Generations here is the nerf to Classic Sonic's movement. The overpowered spindash from the old version of the game is completely gone, making Classic Sonic feel insanely sluggish to control due to years of muscle memory from the older version. Aside from that, if you wanna know what I think of Sonic Generations itself, read my old review on the original version of the game.

Now, for Shadow Generations...okay, first of all - I find it very weird that they named it "Shadow Generations" to begin with. Shadow has had playable main story appearances in 4 games total - Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06. What I really wish they did with the Shadow Generations portion is decouple it entirely from Sonic Generations & release it as its own separate game, with a longer, more detailed and fleshed out story, a few more levels - preferably with more original theming rather than revisiting ones from older games again - and name it "Shadow the Hedgehog 2".

That's just the thing...playing this honest to god felt like a direct sequel to the infamous 2005 game - Shadow the Hedgehog. And you know what? I am so on-board with this idea. I am one of the rare few who actually loves that game, despite its glaring issues with structure, pacing & everything else. And I absolutely adore the ideas they toy around with in the game, be it the new powers for Shadow or fleshing out characters which we vaguely knew about regarding Shadow's past. That whole thing was AWESOME and I genuinely wish they just made it a full blown "Shadow the Hedgehog 2" with it instead.

Granted, I understand why they didn't and felt the need to basically shoehorn it into a remaster of Sonic Generations - marketing. Because Shadow the Hedgehog was critically panned & overall receives mixed-to-negative feedback from the community even in 2024, close to 20 years after its original release, I understand that they don't want to make a sequel to Shadow the Hedgehog, at least not yet.

What I'm hoping for is that Sonic X Shadow Generations is just the testing ground to see how receptive people are to the idea of Shadow starring in his own games again, and my honest opinion? Hell yeah! I've already mentioned that I love the original Shadow the Hedgehog. I love the Shadow Generations portion of this game so much, just wish there was more of it. And I want to see more dedicated Shadow the Hedgehog games in the future.

The game itself is rather short. I completed Shadow Generations in around 3.5 hours - not much longer than Sonic Generations itself. Controls' wise I found it to be pretty much perfect. Aside from the final stage where it's centered around a new ability Shadow gets, everywhere else I found him controlling pretty much perfect. Did not encounter any bugs or anything of the sort in my time playing either. The length of the game though...again - really wish they made it its own separate game & had time to flesh it out, it's so good otherwise!

From a technical standpoint, I ran this game start to finish on my Linux machine and it ran beautifully. Steam Deck & Linux people, you're in for a great OOTB experience with this one!

Overall, yeah I do recommend Sonic X Shadow Generations. For both people who have never played Sonic Generations, and those who know it front to back. There are enough neat additions in Sonic Generations that will make you go "I wonder what else they changed", as well as a very enjoyable Shadow adventure to go through, albeit both games are rather short.

I can't wait to see what the modding scene for this will look like.

Just as it says on the store page - this is a very short game. I beat the whole thing in around an hour or so. But it's short, sweet & to the point.

Didn't enjoy the EX stages as much as the regular game though. Music absolutely slaps, even if it's a small selection. Loved the artstyle & comedic writing.

p.s. t+pazolite's remix of Vitality is genuinely amazing, look it up. Thank me later.

vivid/stasis is a game that was recommended to me by several VSRG veterans back in 2023. The context is that I was looking for a beginner-friendly VSRG to dip my toes in after having found limited success in the likes of osu!mania, SDVX & DJ MAX, just to name a couple. It's a style of game I've always had an interest in but always felt daunting to get into because, well, there is no easy way of getting into it at all.

Initially when I played it, I had an overall favorable impression of the game but it didn't really stick all too well for me. The beginning of the game when you first launched it was cool with the whole "ethereal being conducting an investigation" shtick, but I'm still not sure of the point of it too entirely & the way you progress the story seemed tedious at best, so I dropped it.

After about a year though, I decided to pick it back up. Mainly as a novelty to try to see how well this game can run on Linux, however even after my initial test run with it on Linux ended, I just ended up kinda starting to play vivid/stasis without thinking much, and now I'm kinda inclined to get into it more. For those wondering, vivid/stasis runs on Linux with Proton with no problems. Unlike other rhythm games, it doesn't even have any offset issues for me either, plays pretty much perfectly out-of-the-box.

My personal issue with VSRGs in general is that my hands feel like mush & my brain cannot comprehend what is on screen or when/what to click, while at the same time being gate-kept by so many people on which way to play is the "correct" way, and it just felt very alienating. vivid/stasis seems to solve that.

The main reason why I like vivid/stasis compared to other VSRGs that I've tried is because this game does not mind you wanting to take things slowly. In fact, it encourages you to do so. What most seasoned rhythm game players will find disappointing is that without doing the Node Flowchart (story mode), Course Mode or any of the other modes - you can't play much at all from the very start. For beginners like me though, it is the perfect way (in my opinion) to ease the player into things slowly. Sure, play the one song that you have unlocked, and theoretically you can replay it over and over as many times as you want & farm the relevant currency all you want, sure. But, much like for every human ever out there, that's not very engaging or interesting.

vivid/stasis wants you to focus on its background narrative push a little bit more & get invested in the game beyond the VSRG, which is where I think this game excels at the most. Believe it or not, there is actually a story to this game. Whether it's any good or not - I'll leave it up to you, I've seen the kind of story this game presents many times in the past but I don't mind it personally here, the writing can be very fun & endearing, albeit cringe sometimes.

What I do mind is how tedious it is to unlock everything & progress via the currency system. If you're less experienced in VSRGs like me, it will take a while for you to unlock anything using the branching path system the Node Flowchart has. Even if you get a 98.3% on a Level 10 map, your currency payout for the flowchart could be as meager as 24 batteries (currency for Node Flowchart), requiring you to grind constantly, just to unlock one part of a branching path, or even longer if you want to go for a song or the next story episode. In that way, sometimes the slower pace of the game can feel like a detriment.

What I especially dislike about the Node Flowchart is the fact that you need to spend 40 or more batteries on, well, nothing. Just to get "closer" to the song or story episode within the Node Flowchart to unlock it. At times like that it genuinely feels like an utter waste & I hate it. Personally, I think the paths during Node Flowchart should be shortened to reduce the amount of times you have to buy literally nothing, just to get closer to what you want. Or, if not that, decrease the currency costs for it. The way it is right now is just tedious, and more often than not I'm stuck with the notion of "man, I have nothing to do right now in the game".

The music selection is another point that I'm a bit disappointed on, as I'm not a fan of a lot of the tracks in this game. They fit the genre of game fine & some songs are genuinely good, but most of it very quickly becomes "background noise" to me for most charts and it's sometimes hard to get invested. What I would love to see in future updates is just some more genre diversity & add more tracks that aren't just EDM or trance. I get that that's what this genre of game is most known for, given past experience, but I also hold the same criticism for game series like DJ MAX as well. Given its Early Access status as of now, I hope to see this change in the future.

Overall though, if you're a newcomer to the VSRG genre, much like me, vivid/stasis gets my recommendation for being an accessible game to comfortably dip your toes into it & have a stress-free environment to experiment in & learn the ins n' outs of what this type of game can provide you with, as well as help you learn the necessary skillsets for it.

vivid/stasis, despite its flaws, gets my recommendation as a great free rhythm game.

I've had my fair share of experience with Sonic 4, both episodes mind you. While I do think that Episode 2 is a huge step up compared to Episode 1, I frankly don't recommend either game. Especially not Episode 1.

I never liked Episode 1. I didn't like it as a kid back in 2011 when I got into the Sonic series, since I could just go emulate the Mega Drive games & get a better, more fun-looking game. And now, in 2024, I hate the game even more.

You can tell that corners were cut & that the game wasn't even designed to be anything more than a cheap mobile game pandering towards nostalgia. There is not a single original zone in this game, period.
- Splash Hill Zone = Green Hill Zone (Sonic 1) with a mix of Emerald Hill Zone (Sonic 2)
- Casino Street Zone = Casino Night Zone (Sonic 2)
- Lost Labyrinth Zone = Labyrinth Zone (Sonic 1) (also who asked for this???)
- Mad Gear Zone = Metropolis Zone (Sonic 2)

And to further drive the point home, look at the Ferris wheel in Casino Street Zone. You can see a graphic that says "Sonic the Portable" in the middle of it. That was the game's original working title before SEGA just haphazardly renamed this game to Sonic the Hedgehog 4, and forced this game to be what it isn't.

The gameplay itself is also just...underwhelming. The physics in Episode 1 are just not fun to play. Sonic's jump feels like a rock, he takes forever to start running above a casual sprint, and overall you just feel insanely sluggish controlling Sonic in this game. The special stages are also Sonic 1's special stages, only with a timer as your obstacle & you controlling the special stages, rather than controlling Sonic.

Graphics are something that Episode 2 massively improves on but Episode 1 just looks bad, period. Every environment looks like it's made of plastic & I don't think Sonic has ever been this shiny before, he almost looks like a wax figure honestly. I could go on, like the title screen being hilariously lazy, the environments looking bleak, etc. but you get the idea.

Music-wise, both episodes share the same critique of just having a bad soundtrack. They attempted to go for a more "Mega Drive-esque" OST to really lean into the old game nostalgia shtick but all of the compositions across both Sonic 4 episodes just sound bad. It does make me wonder what if Jun Senoue was allowed to cook with proper instruments & hear how they would sound then.

You get the picture. After Sonic Mania practically wiped this game off its canon & both SEGA & Sonic Team no longer acknowledging Sonic 4's existence, this game, especially with the hindsight we have in 2024, was genuinely just never good. I even tried looking up to see if there's mods to re-imagine this game but found nothing. You know a game is bad when even your community doesn't even want to fix the game. Both Sonic 06 & Sonic Forces got community mods/remakes that massively improved upon the game's core, yet Sonic 4 never did, probably because Sonic Mania exists these days.

Don't play Sonic 4. Neither episode is worth your time or money. If you're genuinely that curious about Sonic 4, please pirate it. If you want an actual good 2D Sonic game to play, just get Sonic Mania. I would also throw in Sonic Origins into that list but I have my own fair share of issues with Sonic Origins which you can read about here.

Despite the big blue "thumbs up" you see, I'll admit - I still don't understand why this game exists, or why Hot Pursuit (2010) was specifically chosen for a remaster. I bought it many, many years later at a steeply discounted price, I think it was something like $3 that I paid for it during a Steam Sale.

The reason I'm giving it a thumbs up is simple - the game itself is really good. I sang praise about the original Hot Pursuit (2010) release as it was a proper callback to the Need for Speed series' roots with a neat modern twist. The graphics of the original game still hold up & the soundtrack selection is superb. In fact, this is one of the last games in the Need for Speed series where the soundtrack both matched the game's overall vibes, and is generally a great collection of licensed music. Some of the best in the series, even. Though that's not a high bar to clear, admittedly.

The remaster does offer neat additions that the original game lacked, such as cross-play between different platforms (which you can also freely opt out of) & a livery editor for those looking for something more "fancy" with their cars, bringing back a feature that many who were used to playing Need for Speed from back in the original version's hey-day, were craving for. I don't use it personally because that's not what Hot Pursuit is to me, but it's nice to have regardless. Oh, and I should also mention - all of the DLC from the original version also comes pre-packaged within the Remaster for no additional cost, so those who missed out on it (like me) have a way to access that content again in a convenient & legal way.

The reason I say this game's existence makes no sense to me is because I truthfully did not see a reason to "remaster" this game in particular because, as I mentioned before, the original game's graphics still hold up. Look up a few side-by-side videos of the original & this remaster and I'll be hard pressed to notice a difference, perhaps you won't notice anything out of the ordinary either.

If the point of the remaster was to bring it to modern platforms - why delist the original game on Steam & force players of the original to re-buy this game? I already own the original Hot Pursuit (2010) on Steam, why not give me either a discount on the remaster or just simply update the old game? Even if I got a copy of the remaster for cheap, it still feels scummy to force old players to re-buy the game all over again.

Hot Pursuit (2010) was great 14 years ago, and is still great now in 2024. It's a game I can recommend to everyone who's just looking for a fun racing game to play - even if you are not a Need for Speed fan. I'm just a little bit baffled by the choice of game & miffed about having to re-buy the game again. But it's a blast & I will recommend it as just a purely fun game to play.

Overwatch 2...I'll be the first one to say - I haven't played much Overwatch 2. This is more-so a recap of my time with Overwatch 1, why I stopped playing it, and why I never came back, even with the release of Overwatch 2.

Let's wind the clock back to 2017. I was getting very bored of Team Fortress 2 by that point. The "Meet Your Match" update, which likely released to try to compete with Overwatch, had killed the way I was used to playing the game for about 4 years at that point, ruining the experience by making it feel more "competitive" rather than a fun, casual, silly game to mess around in. By that point, I was craving something new.

Most of my friends had gone to Overwatch, so I started to want to play the game. Sometime in March 2017, Blizzard hosted a free weekend for Overwatch, which is when I made my account and tried the game. Surprisingly - I enjoyed it. So much so that I started to want to play it, but problem is - I was an 18 year old without a job struggling to finish school. So I couldn't afford it. One of my friends at the time caught wind of this and gifted me a copy of Overwatch (thank you, by the way, Hitzip). I really appreciated this, and started playing, and at that time - firmly left TF2 behind.

When I got into the game proper in May 2017, I was having a blast. I enjoyed the fact that, despite being more competitive than what I was used to with TF2, a lot of the skills I had from that game transferred over. I wasn't the best, but I was having a fun time. Being a Medic main in TF2 meant that I found my home with Mercy. Yes, I was a Mercy main, before the Mercy rework at that. There were a lot of things I genuinely enjoyed about Overwatch when it came out. The Sombra ARG, the Doomfist arc of piecing him together and even wondering if Doomfist will ever be a playable character. I was around for all of it, and following along both with YouTubers & Reddit, solving these cryptic mysteries, piecing it all together - it all reminded me of, well, Team Fortress 2. And its old updates, like Love & War and the bread stuff that came with it.

When I first got into Overwatch back in 2017, it felt like I was part of a growing, accepting community. Jeff Kaplan's videos addressing the state of the game & ways they're taking to improve things was also a breath of fresh air compared to what I was used to with Valve, who would often just sit silent and do nothing, even to this very day. Legit, it was very exciting to play & be a part of the community by then.

However, I bounced out of Overwatch in early 2018, last playing sometime in 2019 before giving up on Overwatch as a whole. And mainly because they started doing mass-reworks of, what felt like, every single character. First came the Mercy rework, which sucked for me as a Mercy main, but I could understand the logic behind it. She was stupidly easy to play and was ludicrously effective with her ultimate being a CTRL+Z keybind put into gameplay. But then came Symmetra, Torbjorn, the nerfs to Roadhog & Junkrat...it all became too much. I felt like I had to re-learn and re-adapt to what felt like every old character being tossed out and replaced with new ones everey 2 or so weeks. It became exhausting to keep up, so I tapped out.

Over the years, I saw Overwatch going in decline. Player numbers dropping. Allegations against Activision-Blizzard. Overwatch League dying - this one particularly stung, as I knew a friend of mine who was actually part of OWL and he basically lost a career out of it - and Overwatch being left in a vegetative state. All for Overwatch 2.

Come announcement of Overwatch 2. I'm sure you know by know. Overwatch 2 was originally meant to be a single player campaign game, where Overwatch 1 would be, well, Overwatch's PvP. Content from OW2 would get ported back to OW1, and the two games would co-exist.

The idea was:
- OW1 for PvP
- OW2 for PvE campaign stuff

This never happened. Instead, Overwatch 1 was effectively killed off and replaced by Overwatch 2. PvP, now instead of 6v6 is 5v5, much like CS:GO & Valorant. Loot boxes have been removed, which, at first glance - awesome! Loot boxes are a tumor in modern gaming, regardless of what company is doing it - be it Blizzard, EA, Valve - I viewed it as a positive that Blizzard was removing the loot box system, and thought they'd replace it with something better, like what Valve did for Dota 2.

Nope. Battle Pass. Two versions of it. Basic one, which gives you ♥♥♥♥-all, and a Premium one, which even has stuff like outright brand new characters. Ones that players who do not pay for it - DO NOT GET TO PLAY AS. One of the core selling points of the original Overwatch is that you buy it, and all future content - maps, events, characters - are FREE. Overwatch 2 ditches this by going free-to-play and opting for a Battle Pass system.

There are other things that drove me away from Overwatch in 2018 as well - role queues in particular just made it feel unwelcoming to play. But what drives me away from revisiting Overwatch with OW2 is the monetization model, the convoluted leveling system which feels like they're trying to reinvent the wheel for no reason, and many issues from Overwatch 1 not being addressed.

Ironically enough, I've fallen back in love with Team Fortress 2 since then. And that's probably the game I'm going to continue playing, even 11 years later. I don't see myself having the same attention span for Overwatch 2.

What a shame, really.

Words genuinely cannot put it how absolutely impressive this mod is. I'd struggle to call this a mod even, this is straight up a full blown game in its own right. It's a crying shame that a project like this is absolutely free (if you own Half-Life 2), meanwhile the stain on the Half-Life community known as Hunt Down the Freeman actually costs money. If anything, it should be the other way around. Entropy: Zero 2 is a game I went in not knowing what to expect, and came out of it just absolutely baffled & shocked at the sheer quality of everything in this game. Let's get into it.

Despite not having played the original Entropy: Zero, I had no problem diving into this and jumping straight in. While some may call it a sin with the way this game breaks the "traditional Half-Life formula" with the game, at times, taking away control from the player and having the player speak, the story is told in a cohesive, interesting way. You are a Combine Soldier. You are tasked with stopping the resistance.

But you're not just any Combine Soldier. You are 3650. You are Aidan Walker. You are special to the combine, for which they decided that letting you retain cognitive control of your mind is beneficial to their goals. And the way your player character reacts to the circumstances around them, explains their reasons for hating humanity - despite not justifying any of them, you can't blame your character for any of it.

The storytelling in Entropy: Zero 2 is genuinely Valve-like. It's honestly amazing and I don't think I was bored of the story at any point, if anything - was left wanting more. There is a reason people say that this game is the closest we will ever get to a Half-Life 3, and after having played all of it - I can't help but agree.

The characterization of the character you play as is also done astoundingly well. Your character is, predictably, full of life and spark which makes playing as him fun. He's always got a funny quip to say either when killing an enemy or when reacting to his surroundings, even his own subordinates within the Combine. Seriously good stuff.

Safe to say that if you've played a Half-Life game before, you will definitely know what to expect here. Entropy: Zero 2 builds off of the gameplay formula last established in Half-Life 2: Episode 2 yet retains a lot of the core design principles of it, which is neat.

Don't expect to go into this game with a crowbar in one hand and a gravity gun in the other though - neither of those weapons are present. The crowbar is, but that's reserved for the rebel NPCs - you do not get to use it, ever. Which, for a Half-Life game would be weird to say, but at the same time I think it'd be even weirder for a Combine soldier to run around with a red & white metal rot.

There isn't much for me to comment on regarding the gameplay though. The one thing I could comment on is that some levels did definitely feel very confusing and, I won't lie, I did use a guide once or twice to actually find out where to go, especially after having combed through an area like 6 times and not knowing where the next objective is. But aside from that - the level design is great, bringing back much of the same open-endedness that Valve's own games contain. Goodies scattered throughout to refill ammo, health and suit charges a plenty, with other various neat references.

Though I will say, this game is pretty difficult. I've played and beaten all of Valve's single-player games so I thought I'd be going into this game battle-hardened enough to have a mostly comfortable time, but playing on the Medium/Normal difficulty - this game kicked my ass. Hard. So hard to the point where halfway through the game I had to switch difficulties to Easy just to progress (and then proceeded to finish the game as such because I forgot to switch back). That isn't a bad thing, by the way. The game was still sufficiently challenging enough even at the Easy difficulty so I never felt as if I made a big downgrade by lowering my difficulty, which is great.

There are a few changes I wasn't a fan of though, namely how the recoil of guns was changed in this game. The MP7, unlike in Half-Life 2, is a pain to use here. The recoil pattern being so massive that it discouraged me from really using it much throughout the playthrough, which I don't get why. The Combine regularly uses this gun in the Half-Life universe, yet I, as a Combine Soldier, can barely use it? Wonder what makes me worse than a Theoretical Physicist with less gun training than me. Instead I found solace in the MP5, Prototype Gauss Pistol and AR2 - those were the most reliable weapons in the game for me and stuck to them as much as I could. The shotgun, while still my favorite gun in the game, gets laughably little ammo in this game so I didn't get to use it as much as I would've liked to, which is a shame.

But as a whole, the gameplay is good. Really good. Well though out and genuinely feels like a Valve-made product rather than being fan-made.

It's amazing what they managed to do with an engine from 2004 in this game. The visuals are honestly stunning, with the environmental design being absolutely brilliant. A lot of assets are carried over from that game so, yes, if you look very very closely - everything does look dated. But that never distracted me from the gorgeous environmental design all around.

The sound...oh god the sound. The soundtrack is fantastic. The sound design - fantastic. The voice acting is done very convincingly. The new voice acting for the Combine just sounds like unused dialogue from Half-Life 2, whereas your own character sounds convincing as a Combine Soldier. The one thing I noticed is Judith Mossman who you can easily tell they just edited together existing lines of dialogue from the other Valve games, which is a shame, though I get it if you can't find anyone that can "match" the voice closest to Judith's from the original. Still, small potatoes for everything else this game has.

Nothing to comment on the optimization side of things. Noticed no framedrops or crashes at any point throughout my entire playthrough, ran absolutely buttery smooth in spite of everything going on at the same time. Honestly, if you can run Half-Life 2, you can run this no problem.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ PLAY THIS. If you're a Half-Life fan itching for more and can't play Alyx like me, PLAY THIS. There's a reason this won Mod of the Year for 2022. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't play this, so MAKE SURE THAT YOU DO.

Massive, high recommend for this. It's jaw-droppingly good.

Need for Speed: Heat is a game I was skeptical of. For an entire decade leading up to this game's release, the Need for Speed series has been on a slippery slope of multiple identity crises, pandering to nostalgia and delivering subpar game, year on year.

2015 marked a turning point for Need for Speed with Ghost Games releasing their soft reboot of the series. 2015 was not very highly reviewed but it laid the foundations for a greater game, which I think culminated in Need for Speed: Heat.

However, my excitement for the game was admittedly muted when in 2019, I was looking at more and more reveals of this game. There was one thing that dampened my excitement for Heat when it was announced. But we'll get into that. You're here to see if I recommend Need for Speed: Heat, after all, so let's get on with the review.

Shockingly, I actually really enjoyed Heat's story. It's a huge step up compared to the previous installment with likeable, memorable characters and memorable events in the story. Several of which are still part of NFS meme culture even now, which is not something I can say for Rivals, 2015 or Payback.

Heat's story is very short and it doesn't take long to get to the point. And while I really like that, I do have some sour points with it. For example, I think certain characters are incredibly under-utilized and end up feeling like they make a big splash at the start of the story and then, after one particular event, they seem to disappear completely and is never brought up again. The game does this with several characters and it's honestly a shame.

I also don't particularly like the self-insert "Player" character, but the way the self-insert handled here is inoffensive at best, and a complete cringelord at worst.

But as a whole - despite being underdeveloped in a few aspects, Heat's story is admittedly enjoyable, albeit short.

2015's handling & physics were received very poorly. Payback improved on them but left a lot to be desired with the off-road model. What about Heat? Heat's driving model is good. Properly good. For most of the game, I finally felt as though I was in total control of the car. Whatever mistakes happened were the result of me making genuine mistakes, and not because the game said so. There were a few instances where I had a physics oopsie, such as my jump being interrupted or my car bouncing off of nothing, so the car did have a tendency of feeling like it was made of Portal 2's bounce gel, but as a whole - a very good improvement on the driving & handling. Dare I say this is the best driving model from the entire decade of Need for Speed that we've had?

The gameplay does have one major Achilles' heel though - the damage system. This is the system that actually ended up with me not wanting to touch the game for a while and put it down after about 4-5 hours of playing initially. The damage system in this game is the worst aspect of it because it disincentivizes you from taking any risk during the night. Now, against traffic and most other general world structures - it's totally fine. You won't take damage by, say, hitting a traffic car at low speed, or by taking a jump and hitting a billboard, etc., however if you get rammed - you take damage. If you hit a wall - you take damage. And your health drains insanely quickly.

The damage system is what breaks the fun in any cop chases for me as well. Heat is the first Ghost entry since Rivals to finally have more aggressive cops in the game, however because of the damage system - their implementation here leaves a lot to be desired. The cops do a lot of damage, which at higher heat levels makes you feel like a glass cannon.

What made the pursuits in games like Most Wanted (2005) and Carbon so exciting is the fact that you are essentially a tank that can go through practically anything yet you weren't unstoppable - one wrong move and you're done. In Heat, they wanted to replicate this, as the police will be insanely aggressive towards you and do bring back tactics like roadblocks, spike strips, helicopters, etc., however their quantities are reduced. The most intense the chases here get would be comparable to, say, Heat Level 3 in Most Wanted '05.

The best way to play Heat, at least for me, was to install an Infinite Health mod. With that installed, Night Time racing became a whole lot more fun because I was no longer afraid of being a paperweight against the cops. And, dare I say, I actually had fun doing police pursuits. So much fun that, by the endgame I was actively seeking them out. With the mod installed, the game genuinely came alive and became a ton of fun for me.
Side note: If you're gonna use it, just remember to disable it for the final mission otherwise it's impossible to complete.

There was one sour spot for me aside from the damage model, that being the racing itself. All 3 Ghost era Need for Speed games share the same issue that doesn't seem like it was ever addressed - difficulty. Need for Speed: Heat, much like its predecessors, is way too easy. Even with the difficulty set to Hard, this game was an absolute joke in terms of racing. I don't even think I was playing particularly well either, this game's racing actively bored me and only served as a medium for me to either earn more money to buy upgrades/cars or earn more REP so I can actually continue the story. Seriously, the AI in this game is an absolute joke and the challenge they pose is trivial at best.

Need for Speed: Heat is neither a step up nor a step down from the previous entry. In fact, I think that 2015 during its night time looked way, way better than Heat does during its night time. The graphics are fine, passable even, however there's one unmistakable thing that Heat has that the previous three Ghost entries didn't - style. Heat is the first game in a long, long time that, to me, feels like it has its own identity, its own unique style and presentation, which makes the game stand out and pop. It's what lead the game to retain its popularity since 2019 and despite the release of Unbound. And for that - I cannot knock Heat. The game has a vibe to go for and it achieves it splendidly.

The soundtrack sucks. By the halfway point, I turned the OST off and just started listening to my own playlists on YouTube & Spotify, the soundtrack is legitimately horrendous, at times unlistenable garbage. But the sound design everywhere else? Top notch. Cop chatter has personality - the cops are corrupt, snarky and always eager to get you. The car engines sound amazing as well as accurate, and the sirens blaring through the night hunting you down make their presence known. It's great.

Optimization-wise, this game is a lot more stable than Payback was on my system. Runs a great deal better too. While I did encounter the occasional pop-in texture and such, there was absolutely nothing game-breaking happening like there was for Payback. The game kept a solid 60+ FPS throughout the entire playthrough, didn't crash even a single time and controller support was bang-on. Heat is pretty well optimized.

Oh and yes, this still requires Origin, much like every other Need for Speed game that's up for sale. Take that as you may.

Do I recommend NFS Heat? Despite my qualms with the damage system and the pathetic AI, I will have to say yes. Need for Speed: Heat finally feels like a true return-to-form. While the story is nothing fantastic, the game shines in style, personality and great gameplay.

With memorable characters & moments, a great driving model and overall polish all around - I think you'll enjoy NFS Heat. Even with the points I mentioned regarding the damage model.

This game is definitely worth getting.

It took me much longer than it should've (several months, literally) to finish this game, but now that I have..well, I have a few things to say regarding this game. Overall, I'd say I definitely enjoyed this game, I think it's aged well considering it's nearing 2 decades in age, but there are definitely certain areas of the game where you can feel its dated design, or limitations thanks previous games in the franchise setting a precedent for it. Without further interruption, let's get into it.

As always, my reviews will try to be spoiler free but do be warned that spoilers might still be unavoidable.

Resident Evil 4's story, to someone who has not played the previous games, is best summed up as "generic" from my perspective. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Even for a 2005 game, I don't think this game's story was anything really revolutionary, though the way it is presented and written here is admittedly entertaining, if flawed.

The premise of "you go in to investigate one thing but end up involved in all this other business" is executed well and I think the game does a phenomenal job building stakes. Right from the get-go in Chapter 1, you get your first taste of it in a cutscene showing what happens to the police officers leading you to your destination. Or later on where the game shows you what sort of demonic abominations your enemies are capable of becoming. It helps build tension and the way the game introduces scarier creatures as you go is genuinely great - some of the monsters, particularly in chapters 3 and 4, made my skin crawl as to how utterly creepy they were.

What does get me though about this game is the fact that the structure of the story is predictable. Once you finish chapter 1 or 2, you can easily pick up on its structure and it doesn't really do anything to deviate from it. While not a bad thing, it does end up being a bit repetitive and, admittedly, has put me off of wanting to continue the game sometimes.

Can I just say how much I hate tank controls? I get that this is what the early Resident Evil experience is like, but god do I hate tank controls. The one thing I did not enjoy while playing RE4 was fiddling with the controls, as I thought they served to break up the action way more often than I would have liked. Of course, this is purely a habit, but I do not find it all that fun to be in a scenario where I have a group of enemies chasing me and all I can really feasibly do about it is run back a rather long way, choose my gun, wait for the game to literally lock me into place so I can go into aiming mode and only then fight back against any potential threats. I can hear the RE veterans chuckling at me for this complaint and I realize that that's the whole point, but that still doesn't make it any more fun to play as a new player, at least from my perspective. To its credit, once you do get used to the controls they're fine, but there are so many little quality of life changes that could be made here that I hope its modern remake will address. At the very least - move while shooting, or be able to hip-fire the Rifle.

Regarding the game's difficulty, I enjoyed the challenge this game provided. It wasn't exactly an "easy" game by any stretch of the word - I found the game to be sufficiently challenging and that really helped set the mood and provide the player with a sense of danger. That whatever you're after isn't exactly harmless. That's partly because most of your guns are actually rather weak - you need to take your time and be very meticulous with your shots, because one missed shot can mean the difference between life and death. And some of these enemies take an ungodly amount of bullets to kill, it can become maddening at times to kill some of them. Also, the enemies that regenerate that also look like walking body bags - actually made my skin crawl, they were just that creepy.

Though some of the bosses...I feel as though some of them had more thought put into them than others. There's a particular boss at the end of the game that gave me a lot of trouble because he dodges very often and moves insanely fast, leaving very little room to attack. I ended up wasting all of my ammo on him, barely had any health to spare and was about to call in the towel - let him kill me to reset the fight. Except he never did. So I ended up storming at him, knife in hand and just slashed away. The stupid part? It worked. I beat him. Did I mention the encounter also has a 3 minute timer? Yeah, I finished with about 15 seconds to spare, got a cutscene and for some reason the timer DOES NOT PAUSE IN THE CUTSCENES, so I ended up failing mid-cutscene and had to start the entire fight over. It just felt sloppily designed.

As for level design, I really enjoyed the sense of exploration. While the level design is very linear, there are enough secrets sprinkled throughout and clever design that rewards exploration that it made traversing the world fun, though that didn't stop me from finishing certain sections with next to no ammo anyway.

The game's visuals, I'm sorry to say, aged poorly. Even with this "touched up" PC port, the game really looks bleak, dull and ugly at times. Actually, calling it "bleak and dull" is a compliment because that's exactly what this game was going for, but "ugly" in the sense that you can...notice a lot of "of its time" things in the visual design. On a CRT in 2005 it would've been totally fine, however blown up into 16:9 with upscaled textures? Yeesh.

Sound design was absolutely excellent. The soundtrack, while sparse, is very very good and I genuinely enjoyed most of the songs. Enemy noises, gun sounds, various sound effects that play when you score a satisfying headshot - great dopamine rush. The voice acting, though...well, it's not really amateur but it is pretty entertaining for all of the absolutely wrong reasons. If anything, the stiff delivery made it more entertaining than I thought.

For optimization, I have several complaints. First of all - poor controller support. Did not expect this - a console-to-PC port having abysmal controller support? How? This game was MADE for the GameCube, then ported to the PS2, which has a standard controller layout! Unfortunately, I had to play with keyboard and mouse this time. But poor controller support aside, I frequently noticed lots of micro-stutters, several instances of the game crashing on me, particularly in chapter 5-4, and the fact that I could not, for the life of me, get this game to run in native full screen on my 144hz monitor, so I had to run it in 1600x900 windowed just to play the game. Yeah, this port is rather shoddy without using any community-made patches to fix these.

Overall I enjoyed my time with Resident Evil 4, regardless of how tiring this game was to play between sessions. The game had its charm with the goofy voice acting and presentation but the engagingly difficult gameplay had me coming back and eventually finishing the game.

If you can stomach its flaws, like the control scheme, dated visuals and at times - poor boss design, I think you can have some genuine fun with this game, even without the remake.

Honestly, if a zoomer like me was able to enjoy this game regardless of its quirks, I think you could enjoy this game as well. Play Resident Evil 4, it's worth it.

Sigh...After Mania was such a smash hit, I was hoping for Origins to be an utter slam dunk as well. I had a lot of hype going into this. The CW versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PC, finally. Sonic 3 getting the same treatment FINALLY after Whitehead was denied doing so a decade ago, fancy new intro/outro animations for every single game to provide context for each game's story and a bunch of neat little extras, such as concept art, animatics, extra songs, etc.

All of that sounded great, even if I think the price for it is way, way too steep for games that are nearing 3 decades in age. But where does it crumble apart? Behind the scenes is where it crumbles apart.

Playing any game in Origins, you can immediately tell corners were cut. The physics, while remarkably close to the original games, still feel slightly off. For example, in Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone, you can't enter the pods if you're standing right next to them because your jump is just ever slightly too high. In Sonic 2, the Aquatic Ruin boss fight becomes weirdly difficult due to the aspect ratio, making it feel more like an oversight. In Sonic 1's Green Hill Zone boss fight, you can effectively cheese the boss by standing under the platforms (which wasn't possible in the original, you still had to dodge).

The one thing that gets me though, is the music. Yes, I'm partially talking about the songs in Sonic 3, but I just mean the quality of the songs overall. Again, launching any game aside from CD, you can just hear the compression and crunch of every song. The quality of the songs is astoundingly low quality. It feels like they're using heavily compressed 128 kbps YouTube rips for every single song, and that's genuinely a shame. You don't need to be an audiophile either to hear the low quality, you can just immediately notice it as soon as it transitions from the Origins menu to the game.

And of course, Sonic 3's changed music. Contrary to what others may think, I don't hate the replaced tracks. And if you don't know - they replaced the songs with compositions from Sonic 3's November 1993 prototype. Except, for some reason, they based the songs off of the MIDI compositions from the S&K collection on 1997. Zones like Ice Cap and Launch Base sound fine, if anything I think they genuinely recomposed the 1993 proto. ver of Ice Cap and cleaned it up, and it sounds legitimately wonderful, but Carnival Night Zone...god, it sounds awful.

And then Sonic 3's Super Sonic theme they added. It's...awful. It sounds like something ripped out of Sonic 4. The baffling bit? They included the Unused Theme in the game's Museum Mode for Sonic 3's soundtrack. Why...couldn't they just...use that? It's just baffling. They can include it in the collection but apparently not use it in the game?

I don't wanna keep going. Sonic Origins is a disappointment. I pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe edition by selling my CS:GO knife to buy it, and honestly - I kinda want my knife back now. The animation work done here is incredible and the extras they gave in the game are nice, but none of it makes up for what feels like shoddy ports of mobile games, poor audio quality and just overall lack of polish.

I read some behind the scenes stuff on Origins' development, including this tweet by Stealth on Twitter and it just saddens me how Sega continues to mistreat its developers and its beloved properties.

Shame on you, Sega. Shame on you.