Review - Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening Special Edition (2006, PS2)

Released two years after the dismal Devil May Cry 2, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is a prequel that shows the audience the devil hunter Dante's first big mission. The Special Edition, released a year later in 2006, is the definitive edition of the game and is the version included in the recent HD Collection. The Special Edition adds new boss fights, a much fairer continue system, the ability to play as Vergil after completing the main game, and more. DMC3: Special Edition still has its own flaws, but it's the first game in the series that really starts to do things right.

Review - Devil May Cry 2 (2003, PS2)

Devil May Cry's 2003 sequel is a messier, uglier game that makes a few improvements to its predecessor but mostly makes everything worse. Once again, devil hunter Dante leads the charge against a world full of monsters, this time accompanied by Lucia, a second playable character whose story feels like a rehash of the first game's Trish, albeit with less stupid fashion, or at least stupid in a less pandering way. With shallower combat, a much more boring story, and repetitive stage design, DMC2 is the low point of the franchise.

Review - Devil May Cry (2001, PS2)

Capcom's 2001 title Devil May Cry set a new standard for combat-focused 3D action/brawler games. While DMC wasn't the first game of its kind, it was the first to really get things right, even if the original game in the series has aged poorly in some areas. From massively popular titles like Sony's God of War series to perfections of the genre like Platinum's Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to new takes on old franchises like Konami's Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, modern brawlers owe pretty much everything to Devil May Cry.

Ico HD

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are two critically acclaimed titles designed by Fumito Ueda and released on the Playstation 2, now available as HD re-releases on the PS3, in digital form individually and on disc as a compilation. I've gone into detail about Shadow of the Colossus previously, and now I want to take a look at Ueda's first game. Ico arrived on the PS2 less than a year after its release and was one of the standout titles of its time, and, in an unusual turn, was released in North America before it came out in Japan. Now available in a remastered form, how well does Ico hold up eleven years after its original release?

Review - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Today is Patriots' Day, a holiday no one celebrates outside of Massachusetts and Maine, so what better game to review today than Metal Gear Solid 2? Metal Gear Solid 2, originally released in 2001, was one of the most anticipated sequels of its generation, and in the end, it left a lot of players angry, in spite of being a huge step up from the previous game when it came to controls, combat, encounter design, and audio/visual qualities. Whether the story is a step up is a more debatable topic, but suffice it to say, I'm a big fan of MGS2, even if I know the pacing's undoubtedly messy and some of the plot threads are unfortunate.

Review - Shadow of the Colossus HD

There have been a lot of HD collections of PS2/Xbox games released in the last couple of years. Some have been well done, others have been cheap, poorly optimized, or otherwise lacking in some way. Re-releases of older games really seem to bother a lot of people on the internet, but the way I see it, it's no different from re-releasing a album previously released on tape on CD. As long as the price is decent and the conversion is well done, it shouldn't be a point of anger. You don't need to buy every version of a game you love, but it's a great option for people that never played them before. In 2011, Sony released HD versions of two of their most critically acclaimed titles, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. I'm happy to say that this collection gets pretty much everything right.

Review - God Hand

A few months ago, Sony announced that they'd be re-releasing a series of classic (and some not so classic) PS2 games in downloadable format via PSN. As long as the games chosen were good, this would be a great deal for those of us without backwards compatible PS3's, those that no longer have a PS2, or just people who would rather not deal with tracking down used copies of old games on the secondary market. To my complete surprise and joy, one of the games announced for the first pack of releases was Clover Studios' God Hand. I happily bought it, anxious to see how well it's held up over the years.