Probably the best 3D arcade beat-em-up of all time, but considering the competition that isn't saying a ton. Probably really fun with a friend, but singleplayer turns into a battle of attrition after the first two stages. I spent about ¥3,000 of Ichiban's hard-earned cash to beat Normal mode in Infinite Wealth. It was really early on, so I was afraid I would run out of money! Definitely worth a shot, though. And the final boss is.... interesting. Still an awesome prototype to the Yakuza combat system. Spike is somewhat similar to Kiryu, and I think the lady's kicks were possibly an inspiration for Akiyama, but that might be a stretch. Definitely play it in Infinite Wealth if you feel like it.

hooooly shit okay, so, this is definitely going for a different vibe from max payne 1, much less standard vengeance noir and much more complex and multifaceted, which is great for the story, but causes there to be a lot of gameplay segments that break the flow that max payne 1 was so good at keeping up. it's not a straight line anymore; levels can sometimes turn into winding labyrinths, and you are sure to be turned around at lesat once or twice, but all of these complaints are MORE than made up for by the other aspects of the game.
the game feel and game systems:
improved across the board. if Max Payne was smooth one way yet prickly in the other like a leg gone unshaved for a week (forgive the simile, it's the best i could come up with), Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne is a freshly shaved leg lightly coated in vaseline. It's REAL smooth. Gunplay feels just right, and I actually had a lot of use for bullet-time in this one since I didn't have to stand still like a shooting gallery target to turn it on. You also get a lot more time to use rifles, which are by far the most useful weapon type since shotguns have also been nerfed somewhat.
With the structural changes of Max Payne 2, Sam Lake gets to exploit his writing chops a whole lot more, even introducing what would, I believe, later become a staple of Remedy games, television programs! Sometimes you can sit in front of a television in the environment which will begin playing an episode of one of three television programs which happen to relate to the current events of the game's plot and the events of the previous game, reinforcing an overarching theme of both Max's psychosis and how media sometimes happens to overlap with our personal lives at the strangest of times. On that topic, there are a lot of instances of characters mentioning video game violence, likely lampooning the " violent video games are corrupting our youth" craze of the era. Anyhow, Max Payne 2 feels both like a passion project from Remedy and an obligation to follow up on the breakout success of Max Payne 1. The story never feels like it takes any major asspulls, though, and it almost feels like a rough outline of this game's plot was already ready to go in case Max Payne 1 went well sales-wise and Remedy got to make a sequel. The somewhat vague nature of Max Payne 1's ending and the "to be continued" message at the end of that game somewhat signifies this, but certain aspects definitely seem like they were "we need to make a sequel, think of some shit quick" ideas. They never really contradict the end of MP1 though. This game also ends very similarly (although the ending music choice is a lot more elaborate and impactful than MP1's "just play the main theme that you've heard 50 times already" thing.)
To wrap up my ramblings, I just think Max Payne 2 is awesome. I hadn't really expected much considering how it seemed to throw away so much of the original game's visual identity in its transition to being a game emblematic of the early 2000s, and it would have had to follow up on a somewhat clear-cut ending with a new, even bigger conspiracy - involving a lot of romance this time, which I'd say is hit or miss - but I think it manages to do it really well. I'd certainly play this again sometime, which isn't something I come outright and say much.

"We keep driving
into the night
It's a late goodbye,
such a late goodbye"

John Woo should have just worked with Remedy instead of trying to make his own game studio. This game is VERY good, at least after you install a patch to remove the broken adaptive difficulty on Fugitive. The animations and presentation also hold up extremely well for a game from 2001. Max's animation work makes everything you do feel so responsive and satisfying. It's kind of amazing that Remedy just outright made the first good third person shooter ever as their first high-production 3D game project before RE4 would get credit for the same thing a few years later.

now thats a motha fuckin VIDEO GAME!!! Dracula and Death (especially Death) are bullshit bosses but generally the level design is actually quite fair in this game until the later levels. Played the Japanese NORMAL difficulty, not EASY. The music is good and the graphics are generally appealing, but for some reason enemies break when they near the corners of the screen, this shouldn't be a tiling issue so idk why that happens. Weird. Good game though. Both under AND overrated. Super Castlevania IV clears.

This is a really cool way to go about making a documentary for games. It lets you take a good look at every little bit of Jordan Mechner's game development history up to and including Karateka and even some after in extreme detail, with tons of incredibly high-quality scans and fully playable game prototypes. It's super neat! I hope this kind of "Gold Master" series catches on and we'll see more releases of this type for classic games. The reimaginings themselves are at least worth half the cost of entry and an extremely cool addition.

this is an incredible game but it's so hard to recommend to people because if you talk about anything deeper than surface level you run the risk of spoiling things so i'll just say this. this game has incredibly cute and cool characters who are written very well and all given adequate development and screentime, fun SRPG gameplay, great art, and a really engaging story that never drags or feels too drawn out. the pacing is basically immaculate. VERY good game! i recommend it heavily!! big shoutouts to the cool bros and the oomfie squad

now THIS IS A FUCKIN VIDEO GAME! probably one of the best classic arcade-style beat-em-ups i've ever played, if not THE best. great difficulty curve, mostly fair enemy and encounter design, the final boss isn't actually total bullshit, the graphics are really pretty, and the sound is AMAZING. yuzo koshiro knocks it outta the fucking park with the music and the sound effects/voices are nice and crunchy. Incredibly satisfying soundscape. Ground Upper feels amazing to use, Axel's kit is really nice, and the only real annoyances are the jetpack guy, freaky spinny claw guy, and your attack button being the button that picks items and weapons up off of the floor which can lead to some really nasty situations given how vulnerable you are while picking something up, like an enemy's weapon laying right where you happen to be knocked down and standing back up. regardless of those nitpicks, i bet this would be amazing in multiplayer if it's this good even in singleplayer.

Now I know why nobody mentions Streets of Rage 1 when talking about Streets of Rage. It's a pretty mediocre beat-em-up with some poorly balanced enemy and encounter design, especially on some of the bosses, some of which rely on trial-and-error to find the gimmick that will surefire beat them, and others just relying on your reflexes being that of a 14 year old boy hopped up on his third bottle of Coke. It also feels like it wasn't balanced well for singleplayer, but I do understand that for brawlers like this the emphasis is usually placed on multiplayer and it's balanced around that. It feels pretty good to overcome the odds when you're fighting all of the trash goons that come your way throughout the stages, punching 10 goons all around you and keeping them all in check at once, feeling like a badass action hero, but all of that enjoyable momentum stops the moment you accidentally grab a foe and can't react fast enough to evade all of the enemies you left hit-stunned around you all coming for your ass at once. I also appreciate the role the whip ladies play in combat, but the moment the ones in black start playing dead only to come for your ass the second you walk away it just feels like a bit too much. Fuck that twin ladies boss and don't even let me get STARTED on the final boss. Also, this isn't exactly Yuzo Koshiro's best score. It's alright, but there isn't a ton I love about it. It's just okay. This game is a total 5/10 sandwich. An unremarkable beat-em-up.

(Played partially in VR and the rest in normal screen mode)
I've played a little of 1993 Myst. It's pretty alright, but the layout of the screens and clunkiness of the format combined with the just-obnoxious-enough-to-actually-be-obnoxious puzzles made it a tough sell for me, and I've never even progressed much past Myst Island. This is Myst again, this time in full 3D with 2020/21's graphical sensibilities, redesigned for complete freedom of control and a with a VR-friendly environment in mind. It takes a lot of liberties, but it stays internally consistent. If you weren't comparing them side-by-side or hadn't played the game since the 90s you probably wouldn't notice a decent chunk of the differences. Some are for the better, and some are for the worse. Of course, with more control and graphical differences, the atmosphere changes from mysterious and daunting, almost haunting and surreal, to something more... bland. Like, it is what it is. You don't think much about it. You can tell that much of it was created for limited perspective and control. Everything complex feels smaller, but everything open feels mind-numbingly large and empty, where they were a simple screen or three of distance before they are now real travel time. This is of course never much longer than a few seconds, but the clicking of a mouse is always faster.
What I'm getting at is that this is a game out of time, a forefather of its genre, trying to put on the skin of something recent. It feels anachronistic, but there's charm in its anachronism. This early 90s CG world is Ship of Theseus'd into the modern era, and VR at that, while trying desperately to keep its core intact. It illicits both good and bad results. The 3D modeled humans look and animate somewhat bizarrely, but match the new art direction somewhat decently. An option for the classic FMVs is available, but they clash horribly against their surroundings, and even lack subtitles for some ungodly reason. They might as well be unintelligible at some points. It's baffling. The desire of this game to change and "improve" fights against the desire of this game to stay the same. What hasn't changed a bit, however, are the archaic designs of the puzzles. Some are clever, and about half of them are able to be easily intuited with a second of thought, but a majority of them rely on note-taking and memorization. The new Photo system assists here, and the romantic notion of creating a notebook much alike Atrus does in the game itself is not lost on me, but there are many auditory puzzles that cannot be accounted for with the new Photo mode, and some are quite frankly ridiculous without the optional "contextual gameplay subtitles." I believe the rocket puzzles should have found a way to integrate those directly without a need for an option to be selected. The fact that the original required perfect pitch of the player is baffling. The cardinal direction sounds of the Mechanical Age returning at the very end of the game is also diabolical, especially when they end up mixing them. And on an unrelated note, the Stoneship Age's direction of a setting sun clashing against the degrees of the telescope corresponding to a compass rose seems to be a glaring mistake that punishes active engagement in a long, multi-step puzzle. All in all, I think the puzzle design stemming from a 30+ year old game is in some cases poor. Big whoop, I know, but it still effects the enjoyability of the game when its atmosphere has been somewhat cheapened by free movement control and modern design sensibilities on top of 30+ years of general advancement in the medium. It makes the game feel somewhat hollow, like it's missing something integral to the experience, the sauce that should be there. Perhaps this is the obvious result of a CD-ROM tech demo adventure being put in a modern setting without blowing our minds again with the 2020s equivalent of mindblowing computer generated graphics, which are now so ridiculously expensive to produce that Cyan would never have a chance. Regardless, it makes me sad. This game is good, but it feels like it has missed potential. Oh, also, I know about the deadline issues, but having no Rime Age or even any original content other than that is further saddening. Random mode is a great addition for people who have played the game's multitude of other releases and versions before this, but it doesn't add any practical replay value. The puzzles are still the same at their core, the admittedly stellar story loses all of its steam on a second playthrough, relying on environmental storytelling for a series of twists and turns that will never change, and don't carry any of the same weight once you already know the answers.
7/10, I guess. It's pretty, and it's still a major part of gaming and computing history despite its shortcomings, and this New Thesis version is an adequate way to to experience the classic recreated for modern audiences, despite all of my criticisms. Maybe your mother would like it.