Recent reviews by Abdul

The game is too much in love with itself to bother creating an engaging or enjoyable experience.

While I wouldn’t give this game a negative recommendation, I was disappointed by many aspects of my playthrough.

Resident Evil 9 allows you to control two separate characters, switching between them at key points in the story. Grace’s sections resemble Resident Evil 2 Remake, while Leon’s are clearly a continuation of Resident Evil 4 Remake. In practice it feels as though the developers tried to satisfy two different fanbases without matching the quality or depth of either title.

Grace’s opening segment strongly evokes the police department from RE2. However, because it represents only a small portion of the overall game, it never achieves the same complexity or layered design. The puzzles are simplistic, and progression lacks meaningful depth.

Leon’s early sections are brief and focus on fast-paced action reminiscent of RE4, albeit with minor twists. Later in the game, a significantly longer Leon segment allows his mechanics more room to develop. Even then, it never reaches RE4’s standard. Progression remains limited, enemy variety is extremely lacking and a huge disappointment, and encounter design feels overly straightforward.

RE9 also repeats a structural issue common to many Resident Evil entries: the experience weakens as it progresses. The game opens in a large, detailed environment (such as the police department, Spencer Mansion, Baker estate, or care center), then transitions into sewers or industrial facilities that are visually bland, and ultimately concludes in a laboratory setting that feels formulaic and uninspired from a level design perspective.

Minor spoilers ahead:

The game relies heavily on nostalgia. If RE2 Remake did not already exist, the return to the police department in RE9 (which was revealed in trailers) might have carried more impact. Instead, it feels redundant. Compared to returning to Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4, this moment lacks emotional weight, further undermined by the unnecessary reintroduction of a familiar boss. Ironically, the police department sequence uses the original RE2 soundtrack, despite the remake replacing it.

There are additional issues I could discuss (including “Wesker 2.0”), but these points capture my main concerns. Despite its shortcomings, I still recommend the game. Although it falls short of other Resident Evil entries in several respects, the overall package remains enjoyable. It looks impressive, if not consistently so, and performs well. Maybe wait for a sale though.

The game tries too hard to be "authentic" and that becomes obnoxious sometimes. The pacing is really good and the dispatch gameplay is surprisingly engaging, although the hacking minigame is super annoying. Overall it will definitly please the fans of old Telltale games.

So far my experience with extraction shooters was mixed at best, but Arc Raiders, together with Hunt Showdown, are the exception. The main factor for this is probably the deep PvE elements with many different enemy types which have unique attack patterns and weaknesses. Compared to Hunt Showdow, this game even features vastly more sophisticated meta progression systems. On top of that it's also simply a rock solid, well made game, which looks good, runs well and feels good etc. It's almost like a singleplayer game but with a much higher and more complicated threat behind everything you do.

I really tried to like this game. It has so much going for it. The incredible art style, the great music, the perfect snappy combat. But it never clicked. It has moments which feel ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, for example enemies doing unblockable attacks where the red indicator is outside the screen. The rogue-lite mechanics are alright, but most runs feel exactly the same, especially in the beginning. It's nothing like Hades for example in that regard.

When I first played through the Metal Gear Solid series in 2014, I was completely blown away. Despite being long past their original release, the games still had a huge impact on me. That said, the experience wasn’t flawless. Certain sections were genuinely frustrating, especially the opening of MGS2’s Big Shell chapter and MGS3’s Virtuous Mission, which rely heavily on stop-and-go pacing between cutscenes and brief gameplay segments.

To enjoy these games, you need a high tolerance for goofiness and a great deal of patience. They take time to really get going. However, that patience is rewarded. The payoffs (often multiple ones as each game progresses) are unlike anything else and consistently made me forget what had annoyed me earlier.

MGS3 is arguably the “best” game in the series when considering all aspects together, offering the most rounded experience. MGS4, on the other hand, delivers even bigger payoffs and stronger gameplay, but it also comes with more narrative issues and demands even more patience and tolerance from the player.

One of MGS3’s main issues, which is preserved in the remake, is the pacing between gameplay and cutscenes. Gameplay sections are often short, and there are few lengthy, uninterrupted stealth sequences. This is an area where a remake could have made the biggest improvements. At the same time, I understand why the developers chose to stay as faithful as possible to the original, avoiding changes that might risk damaging the overall experience.

The writing could also have been improved in certain sections. I genuinely believe that expert revisions could elevate the game further, but doing so would require an extremely deep understanding of what to change and what to preserve. Any misstep could easily strip away some of the unique charm and greatness the series is known for.

For newcomers, this remake might seem like a reasonable entry point into the series. It is the most modern-feeling MGS game (although MGS5 plays much more smoothly) and it is also a prequel. However, many of the game’s narrative payoffs work best if you are already familiar with the first two titles. Those games also help build the patience and tolerance needed to fully appreciate MGS3. I can easily imagine that someone starting with MGS3 might struggle to fully grasp or enjoy the experience.

On a technical level, the remake looks incredible. Some character models are stronger than others, but Snake, the most important character, looks absolutely fantastic. The game also allows you to enable optional tips that were not present in the original. While some may worry that these are modern hand-holding features, I personally appreciated them. They explained many obscure mechanics, especially in boss fights, that I had never learned before, and they significantly increased my enjoyment of the game.

That said, it’s disappointing that the game is limited to 60 FPS, and there are some noticeable graphical artifacts in certain scenes. However I would glady take a remake in this style of the other three MGS games.

I would give this a slight recommendation if I could. While the combat is really fun due to sick weapon designs and solid movement, everything story-related, especially the voice acting, is absolutely abysmal to the point where it`s ruining the experience for me. I turned off voices and started skipping all cutscenes at some point. Some enemy designs feel janky. Movement controls in the air when dashing and trying to wallrun are nowhere near the level of a game like Titanfall and sometimes were pretty annoying. Environment variety is near zero. Finally there are "ball" sections in the game which feel so incredibly unnecessary, I would really like to know why they thought it's a good idea to include something like that in the game.

My perception of Silksong changed over multiple playthroughs. After my first run, I was disappointed by a few aspects, yet the overall experience was still fantastic. With each additional playthrough, I began to understand certain design decisions better, and some elements I initially feared would hurt replayability turned out to have a clear purpose.

One example is the fetch quests. At first they seemed unnecessary, but they actually encourage players to return to earlier regions, which is essential for a metroidvania. This backtracking allows players to discover new rooms and unlock previously inaccessible content using new abilities. The game also had a rough difficulty curve at launch, but many issues were polished through post-release patches.

That said, some disappointing aspects remain. I still believe the game would be better without the corpse run mechanic. The developers encourage players to explore alternative paths when stuck on a difficult boss, yet corpse run actively discourage this behavior. Additionally, shards being a limited resource initially made me hesitant to use tools, which is unfortunate since tools significantly enhance the gameplay once you get comfortable with them.

My opinion on the tool system also improved over time. After replaying the first game, it became clear that Silksong offers far greater build variety. The movement and combat systems are nearly perfect, the art direction is highly inspired, and the diversity of enemies and environments is outstanding.

Once Act 3 begins, the game reaches a whole new level, although the final boss did not have the same impact as the true ending boss from the first game. Considering the game costs only €20, it is an easy recommendation, and even at €60, it would still be one of the best value propositions available. I will continue playing and replaying Silksong for many years to come.

This feels like a rogue-lite built to stretch playtime rather than deliver real replayability. Every run plays out the same: identical enemies, no varied compositions, and predictable pacing. Encounters quickly become monotonous, to the point of being dull.

Weapons barely differ from each other, and medallions mostly provide flat stat boosts with little impact on gameplay. Runs lose depth fast and become repetitive after just a few attempts.

Compared to something like Hades, the lack of variety stands out even more: no unique weapon playstyles, no meaningful upgrades, no diverse enemy pools, not even mini-bosses.

Overall, the game misses the core of what makes a rogue-lite engaging, variety, unpredictability, and evolving playstyles, and falls into monotony far too quickly.

It doesn't have nearly as much content as something like Balatro, it has way less personality and style, and it does not have the highs of Balatro when things escalate completely. But it is extremely polished and does everything it sets out to do well, and is offered at a fair price.