"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to gratness"

Metal Gear is, over anything, a creation idealized and nurtured by Hideo Kojima, and his departure tied Konami's hands in how to progress with the franchise, but I'd much rather see the franchise being frozen instead of what we received, a shoddy, coward and absolutely safe remake that goes against the core principles of the franchise: originality and boldness.

I know this is less of a review and more of a rant, and it's good to note that Delta is not a bad game per se, since the original Snake Eater is an unparalleled masterpiece, but almost nothing of it represents what made the franchise so special, and this game seems to appease only a new audience that has allergy to older-looking games or nostalgia blinded fans.

Not to mention that, even when using Unreal Engine 5 and it's hyperrealistic visuals, the team caters to older fans in order to avoid any criticism, delivering a whatever filter that emulates the greenish visuals or even a classic top-down camera mode, against the new Modern gameplay that plays with a third-person camera that does not fit the older game design that has been kept intact, leading to too-hard or too-easy boss encounters and making the soldier confronts seem non-sensical.

I have no doubt that developers at Konami love MGS and are also a very talented team, and I don't know if this is creative fear or the hand of the executives hampering MGS from being more than it is - which I have no problem with, Kojima surely doesn't care and fans can dismiss new entries as they see fit (I do that with MGR ☺️) -, but I know I would love to see Konami and its crew try to do MORE instead of cashing in easy money.

Not that the game is devoid of surprises, and the few additions are surely welcome and sounds very true to the legacy of the original creator, such as recreating Guy Savage, courtesy of PlatinumGames, to even updates pin-up photos from the original models 20 years later or The End chastising the player for using cheat codes during the fight, but that only left me hungry for more, and I hope someday Konami gets its ♥♥♥♥ done and decides to do so.

I wasn't really bought into the Silksong hype for a long time, and even when starting to think it was irresponsible of Team Cherry to keep fans without notices for such a long time, my interest was rekindled when they announced the release date and explained the process of what TC called "development heaven".

And well, they did it, to put it simply. The metroidvania aspect here is amped up to the thousands, and the shallow combat, which was a big let down for me in the first title, is non-existant, sporting a wide range of builds and tools to circunvent any problem.

While I do think that sometimes the Team lost their way in balancing the game, and specially in frustrating players on long runbacks and repeating gauntlets before bosses, most of these walls can be ignored for a while, and when you come back, your approach and challenge will surely be different, and hopefully easier.

The variety of content is astounding, and the faith in their fanbase is so high that you will only see special minigames, interesting twists to the gameplay and even heavily-marketed bosses near the endgame, and that's something very bold that should be acknowledged, specially when games try so hard to convince the players right by the beginning.

Hornet, the talking bug from the first game, STILL TALKS! and despite the story carrying narrative and thematic weights that sound very similar to the former HK, the charisma of the protagonist during the dialogues is an extra layer that adds a lot to the experience, not to mention the lore tidbits which explain a lot of the situation in Pharloom, making Hallownest sound like a paradise.

With a gigantic quantity of bosses, diferent scenarios, tools and combat, the slow-burn beginning of this game paves the way for an outstanding experience for those brave and passionate enough to insist and progress through a barren and hostile environment, and even if some segments are absolutely rage-inducing(yes I'm talking about Bilewater), the final result is nothing short of amazing.

Back in 2022, Silent Hill was pretty much a long-dead franchise. That is, until Konami announced Silent Hill Transmission, an event which had showcased a lot of projects involving the franchise, and most specially, the highly sought Silent Hill 2 Remake robbed the attention of every fan present. However, my perception was elsewhere, in the eerie and mysterious teaser of Silent Hill f , the supposed new title of the series.

As years went by, f became a reality and oh my, how happy was I to be hyped since day one. The whole concept of "beauty in horror" is elaborated in a splendid way throughout the game, and despite purist criticism, going further from the titular american town in both time and space seemed like a no-brainer choice, specially if you're familiar with Team Silent's former history of leaving the comfort zone in every opportunity they could.

Despite being cautious with the new studio, they delivered it. Not only Ebisugaoka feels like a true Silent Hill in its atmosphere, but everything surrounding it is amazingly put. I get that the focus on melee combat, specially with stamina management can fall flat to some, but luckily for me, that was far from the case.

Narratively, this may be one of the deepest and best well-written games for the series, which is quite a feat, provided by none other than ryukishi07, a somewhat niche auteur that's highly lauded by its community, and one I'd never imagine would work tightly with Konami of all companies, but thankfully, that happened. One of the best aspects of its plot is that, despite being heavy on symbolism and subjectivity as a SH would require, it's bold enought not to shy away from its themes and critique of the female repression in the 60s.

The development of Hinako Shimizu makes her stand as one of the best protagonists in horror games, delivering a big deal of charisma while also embodying the numbness expected from a protagonist of the series, and as the game progresses, she is sure to grow on you, not only alone, but with all her peers which are finely interwoven for the whole duration of the game, not to mention the brilliant blend of both the psychological and the occultism facets that make a flagship for the saga in a tighly packed experience.

I know the horror aspect is not the biggest ever made, and those who look for scary experiences may be left wanting more, but I know I've felt a lot of different things here. The game walks between the ugly, the tense, the gross, the agonizing and the excruciating without any fear or hesitation, and I know some people may be negatively affected by the more action-packed sequences, which can be reasonably criticized, it happily didn't affect me in any sense, even though I question such decision, because it's obvious it would not be overlooked by a lot of fans, but at least I'm happy no one swerved the team from what they felt it fit right for f .

Boasting a gigantic quantity of fine tuning such as the little nods in the scenario and notes, the tighly told stories via environments or even the always-evolving Hinako's journal(full of beautiful sketches, btw) prove that once again f can stand up to the care and attention to detail of Team Silent, making this game feel very special and rewarding to those who wholeheartedly play the game carefully, and by the end of the first playthough you probably have more doubts than answers, but that's a tale for another day, since a lot of the story such as new cutscenes and notes is thoroughly hidden in the new game plus runs, another bold move by the game's idealizators.

Tales from the Borderlands is a real showcase of how much potential Pandora holds in telling good stories with rightly measured humor.

Trading the fast paced shooting and looting gameplay with simple dialogue choices and quick timed events, telltale used the Borderlands' mythos to build something new and equally important to the overall narrative of the series.

With new and returning characters, almost all of them have a chance to shine and develop themselves in moments equally funny, tense and dramatic, and both Rhys and Fiona are complex, multi-sided characters that can be strongly shaped by the player even if the plot itself can't be changed that much.

The high point of this game is the humor. It's a staple of the franchise but it almost always struck me as childish and outright annoying sometimes, which absolutely didn't happen here, with jokes and punchlines that are well-crafted and caught me some good laughters.

Of course, using an actionized franchise to deliver a slow burn game has its fair share of problems, the first one being the difficulty to overlap fans of both genres, making this game a financial shortcoming. Since it was developed in an episodic way, the budget thinned and the last chapters felt a bit rushed and not ingenuosly crafted as previous ones, but still had a heartfelt and emotional ending, connecting older titles with the then-new Borderlands 3.

It's amazing how this game exists. Back when the PC RPGs tried as much as possible to come close to the freedom and density of tabletop games, BioWare premiered into this venture with a prime example of how to make a complex and engaging game.

The system of Real Time With Pause was innovative back at the time, even if not as pleasant to play as a normal turn-based combat, it will demand you stay alert at all times, learning positioning and micromanaging potions, abilities and spells all the time.

Of course, no good RPG is made without party members, and this game has TOO MUCH of them, making them outside of party banter and dedicated quests very shallow due to large quantity of them.

One of the biggest highlights of it is the responsiveness and ability to do almost whaterver you want. Many systems interact together, not only direct combat and spells, but dialogue, charisma and other skill checks, stealth, lockpicking, backstabbing and many other thieveries make almost mandatory that you put one or two thiefs in your party.

Last but not least, the story itself is not revolutionary, but it presents its own mythos in a good way, with an interesting kickstart permeated by unrelated and isolated plot points during the rest of the game, that incredibly all converge and unite together by the climax of the narrative.

Bringing now a totally new story with new mechanics, Citizen Sleeper 2 doesn't actually falls far from the tree it came from.

The gameplay feeling is the same as before, in which you patiently roll dices and pray to RNG help you in each action, accruing supplies and itens to survive and complete the quests under the pressure of its deadlines.

Artistically, it suffers from the same problems as the first, in my opinion. The artstyle is good, but restrained to character portraits while the backgrounds are mere space structures, without cutscenes or painted backgrounds to relieve the heavy texts.

The writing is very good and also delivers a great story with great dialogues and questions, altough the atmosphere here is less solitary due to relying in companions all the time.

Talking about companions, they come in a good enough variety and are essential to the new mechanic: Contracts. In addition to freely going on and under to any place in the map, you can also take these missions, both obligatory and optional, with a strict time limit and exclusive quests to complete, and the extra dices that comes from your companions are a welcoming puzzle, since you need to think about their builds and what would be optimal to do in order to make the quests as smooth as possible.

It's a good addition and it provides a greater sense of urgency in contrast to the slow-burn of the main gameplay loops, but still not as outstanding as I think it could be.