AlienSpaceBats

I played this through three times consecutively; on Normal, Easy and Hard. Normal is a good challenge, Easy is far too easy (where the game practically plays itself regardless of what button you press) and Hard is as hard as a bag of nails. Anyway, Bayonetta is a wonderfully OTT button masher, gameplay is similar to the Devil May Cry and God of War games. I thought the tone was hysterical; a mash-up of camp, cheesecake and Japanese weirdness. I loved the bossfights, music and combat especially, however the game has a few problems: loading times are awful, reloading a failed section takes far too long, it even takes an unreasonable amount of time to open a menu or even for item descriptions to appear on pickup. There is an install option, but never tried it so can't report how much that improves things. The camera is a not great, never seems to be where its needed and often obscures enemy movements when it's damn essential you get the timing 100% right. Also will game-over the player upon failing a QTE, I f**king hate QTEs. Loved the game anyway. "I should have been a pole-dancer!!"

I keep buying this game and have it on everything, I've completed it countless times and I still can't get enough of it. If it was an exclusive, it would've been a system seller. Everything about it is incredibly well designed, from the atmosphere to the controls and the elegant UI (or lack thereof) to the cinematic gameplay and sound design. Reminds me of Resident Evil crossed with System Shock 2; Dead Space is probably one of the best 7th gen games ever made.

It's difficult to properly review a game like this, as it's in a constant state of flux. I've been playing since open beta started, and have thousands of hours logged, so it must have something going for it. I enjoy the general aesthetic, and the controls/visuals/gunplay are very good. I'm mixed about melee, it's been updated but still feels like I'm flailing idiotically in front of enemies. Warframe is a free-to-play game meaning the player has three options; 1. Grind and farm like a monkey. 2. Spend an unreasonable amount of money on in-game items. 3. Not give a **** about the former and just play the game anyway. The grind in the game is sadistically, insultingly steep. As with most MMOs you will be expected to do the same thing over and over just to obtain whatever item it is you're after. In the space of two years I have noticed a steady increase in the 'grindyness' of the game. This may or may not be related to a Chinese chicken meat company owning a majority share of Digital Extremes. The business model is fair however, the in-game currency can be traded with other players for certain in-game items, so you needn't spend a penny. Pay to win is not really a thing here, but as mentioned, the player needs to put time in (re: farm, and farm hard). After all that farming you just did, you can craft items from blueprints you find in missions, or buy from the market using the non-premium in-game currency. Crafting time for items varies, but is repulsive. Weapons can take up to 12 to 24 hours, 'frames' (new suits/characters) have to be acquired in four parts; blueprint, chassis, helmet and systems. These drop randomly from bosses. RNG is a thing, and the drop rates are, again, repulsive. Each part takes 12 hours each to craft, and when they're all done, the suit proper can be crafted which takes 72 hours. You can 'rush' crafting using premium currency, or you can turn the game off for three days. This is to say nothing of the materials required to make each part. Again, found in missions, randomly, and dropped by specific enemies, or not, depending how lucky you are with RNG. The cash shop is disgustingly expensive. There are weekend events occasionally, but these have been showing a steady decrease in quality and are becoming more and more buggy, repetitive, dull, badly designed and poorly explained. As a veteran player, I find myself ignoring them completely. They are wretched, frustrating and a waste of time. Developers promise to alleviate grind and improve quality of life for the player, then introduce double RNG grind footlongs and call it an exciting new feature. Depending where you live in the world, connection problems exist. Warframe uses P2P, which often results in trainwrecks of lag-ridden, unplayable, bug-filled matches. The game isn't optimized terribly well, and in my experience doesn't seem to like AMD hardware very much. It's updated regularly, though new iteration breaks something else. Hotfixes are released quickly, and their support team is excellent. In the end, the crux of the game revolves around destroying enemies, upgrading weapons, destroying enemies slightly easier. and doing it all over again when a new Warframe or weapon comes out. It's shallow, repetitive and getting worse, so get in when you can. May as well give it a try, entry is free.

When it finally let me play, MGS4 was really enjoyable - from a MGS standpoint. Worthy of praise are the controls, graphics and general presentation, and it was a lot of fun - when I was in control. however by this point it's clear that Kojima needs to start showing restraint, or hire an editor. I have only a couple of hours to play a game in the evening, it's hugely disappointing when an hour and forty minutes of that time is spent watching a cutscene, then the game has the gall during one of its extensive loading screens to tell me to take a break because I've been playing for a while. No, I've just been watching cutscenes and getting constantly interrupted by codec calls and coke-drinking, smoking monkeys.

I really wanted to like NeverDead, but found playing it frustrating. It's got good ideas, is kind of unique, and has some neat mechanics on show, I thought the combat was unsatisfying and gameplay in general was dull. It had so much potential - ripping an arm off yourself (whilst holding a gun) and throwing it into a bosses mouth, then firing - is a BRILLIANT idea, pulling your own head off and throwing it down a sewer pipe to operate a door switch is original and amusing, the destructible interior environments are really impressive; everything but the four walls that surround you can literally be sprayed with bullet holes, smashed over and broken. Unfortunately, after the concept wore off, I noticed a few problems that stopped me enjoying myself altogether. Controls feel floaty and unresponsive, weapons lack impact and don't seem to do much damage, and most heinous crime, melee is mapped to one of the analog sticks. This was a bad idea in Death By Degrees, and it's a bad idea now. Movement is constantly hindered by debris on the floor - I couldn't ascend a flight of stairs a bunch of times without doing a combat roll or jumping (?) and the camera is a pain. Bryce (the bloke you're controlling) falls to pieces at the lightest touch from an enemy, leaving the player to roll around rooms as a disembodied head trying to reattach itself to its torso, the fact that you can't die is good, but to circumvent true immortality there are: (A) irritating enemies that threaten to game over the player by eating your dismembered body parts or making you watch yourself fail an irritating quick time event in your miniature Sarlacc pit, or (B) even more enemies appear, ready to knock you to pieces as soon as you've reconstituted, putting the player in an endless loop of fall apart/put yourself back together. NeverDead looked good on paper, but it's just clunky, clumsy and broken in places. Repetitive, next to no enemy variation and offputting screen tearing didn't help either.

A (mostly) enjoyable linear third-person hack & slash adventure in the God of War vein. Visually excellent; a unique style with a lot of effort put into character models, environments, motion capture performances and voice acting. Very much an early 7th gen console game, uses Sixaxis features (but this is horrible, and can be turned off) with lots of bonus materials to unlock. Gameplay is enjoyable enough; button mashy with an emphasis on combos. Some irritating design decisions do appear (for example dodge/roll is bound to the right analog stick, relies too much on QTEs), mostly good in terms of performance with some screen tearing when viewing larger vistas, load times can seem excessive but do not ruin the experience. Pretty good!

Pros: HD remastering is very well done, and all three games look crisp and crystal clear. Bonus content includes most of MGS2's Substance edition, the improved third person camera for MGS3, and both MSX Metal Gear games ("Metal Gear" and "Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake") Cons: Games might feel a little dated to some unfamiliar with the PS2 originals. No Secret Theater. ??? Worth owning for MGS3 alone.

I feel bad disliking this game so much because it was a gift, but after numerous sessions I often felt frustrated and annoyed to the point where I just had quit out of the game, especially during my first ten hours. The game is a work in progress however, and has a long way to go. This is my second or third revision of this review, and I went from outright frustration and hate, to something approaching liking it. Elite: Dangerous makes a terrible first impression, it does a terrible job at explaining itself and has a huge learning curve. To make things more difficult than they already are, there are some vague tutorial missions that explain some basics, and some obnoxious, barebones YouTube tutorial videos that attempt to explain *what* to do, but never *how* (familiarity with the genre helps). I found these are as useful as a wooden compass. I soon learned that I was expected to hit alt+tab to find out everything I needed to know, or check keybinds; something I had to do constantly. There is no manual; to compare, my physical copies of X2 (The Threat) and X3 (Rebirth) came with instructions the thickness of a novella, and a huge fold-out sheet listing key functions. I suppose I was lucky in a sense though, as I know people in person who play the game who I could query on the massive list of questions and issues I had with the game. One could argue that this would form a 'social' part of the game, but I like space sims, so I'm anything but social. A lot of effort has clearly been put into the game, it looks and sounds amazing and has the potential to be truly immersive. The universe is truly huge and the possibilities might be endless - I don't know though, because it's never explained outside of exploration, delivery jobs and combat sorties what exactly I'm able to do. There are peculiar design decisions in place that just serve to make the game more confusing and annoying, polyhedron space stations with one (hidden) letterbox docking entrance (approach vectors would be nice!), fines for every minor infraction from hovering too close to a landing pad that isn't yours (leave me alone, I'm learning to fly!), fines for spending too long exiting a station, timed docking procedures, confusing docking manoeuvres (don't you dare park the wrong way around!) to an unintuitive UI and hidden, dogpiled menus that hide crucial information from the beginner. Currently, I think the main problem is that the game feels like an F2P MMO as opposed to the free-roam sandbox it's supposed to be, as a participant in this game, I feel as though I've no presence or identity, just a faceless blob delivering tea to the outer reaches of space or destroying/being destroyed by the occasional pirate that attempts to interdict me. The experience improves over time, but from the perspective of a beginner, 20 hours may be too much an investment to simply learn the ropes.

To preface, I didn't really enjoy Snake Eater until the Subsistence/HD versions updated the camera. I found this version very flawed in its sneaking sections; apparently some drug addled lunatic on Kojima's team thought that using the same 'fixed' camera setup from MGS2 would work fine in a jungle environment when you have no radar, and no LOS cones. It doesn't. Maybe I shouldn't take discovery so seriously in these games, but I'd like to stay hidden, that's kind of hard when the camera insists it wants to be top-down, or facing Snake from the front, when I need to be seeing in front of me. The R1 first person function is OK, but as Snake is unable to move in this mode, it's borderline useless. In all other departments, Snake Eater is excellent and probably my favourite Metal Gear; it occupies a weird line between all the depth and seriousness of an anti-war statement and the OTT silliness of a James Bond movie mixed in with some Rambo; some genuine laugh-out loud moments sandwiched between some thought-provoking writing and genuinely impressive action scenes. The gameplay is generally much improved from MGS2, sneaking has added dimensions thanks to the 'camouflage', 'food' and 'cure' mechanics, CQC , as well as the simple fact that the jungle is so much more fun to sneak in. Snake Eater might have one of the greatest showcases in a Metal Gear game, the Shagohod/Volgin/Boss section is rivaled only by piloting REX and having a fistfight with Ocelot in MGS4. You can also look forward to more pant-wetting, R1 to boob peeping, sniping bosses early, more crotch-grabbing, anti-Raiden jokes, arguments about James Bond, conversations about movies, shooting green rubber frogs, loads of easter eggs and an impressive level of attention to detail.

This is not MGS, this is Bayonetta with a Metal Gear skin; an exercise in letting the player go to town as Raiden (as we saw him in MGS4); an emphasis on swords opposed to handguns, slicing things into tiny shreds in slow motion as opposed to **** lollipops and running on the walls (though you can do that too), some issues arise like a bad camera and some weird PC port issues; I'm unable to run this in 1920x1080p fullscreen, but it's a fun game all the same.

Hideo, just make films instead! Several years after their release I finally started to dip my toe into the PS2 era Metal Gear games, and my initial feelings are mixed. I don't hold any particular reverence to this series, I did play the NES games but apparently those are a mix of rubbish ports and non-canon. My first impressions had me wondering what the fuss was about - the controls are clunky, the fixed camera angles are a nuisance and movement is non-intuitive - crouching and hugging walls my main problem. The fixed camera angles mean when it's top down I can't see further than ten feet in front of me. There is a radar showing enemies and cones of vision, but I can only use that if I log in to a 'node', stealth is all well and good but goes out the window when I don't have complete control of my field of vision. The story is compelling, but the gameplay didn't do it for me. The constant interruptions from codec and custcenes are frustrating, and I never actually felt that I was playing a game. Of the ten hours it took me to complete, I guess about three was actually myself controlling things, the rest was conversations, cutscenes, explanations and more exposition than anyone needed. At around the point in the game where we enter Arsenal Gear, I was really enjoying myself, but I realised it wasn't because of the gameplay. An important game for sure, definitely influential, but I don't feel that it has anything to do with what goes on on-screen when the player is in control.

One of my favourite games, and a big part of the reason I bought a PS3 (then they go and make a PC port, sigh). It's JRPG meets XCOM, or SRPG, because that's a thing, apparently. A unique art-style helps the game stand out, and the gameplay is excellent, however I suspect many may be turned off by the assumption that this is weeaboo crud (don't be!)

To preface, I've played Demon's and Dark souls extensively, have finished both as numerous classes, and would rate them as two of the best games ever made. It's pretty telling that 4 hours into my first game of DaS II, I ejected the disc and started playing Demon's Souls again. This sequel has nothing that the previous games did that made them great, none of the tone and atmosphere is present, the lucid, elegant design is gone and it looks like a dull, generic, "dark (derp) fantasy" RPG which happens to have the words "Dark Souls" on the box. It's more Dark Souls for the sake of Dark Souls, and it feels like it was made by people who didn't 'get' why the original game(s) were so good. It doesn't feel like a Souls game, and it doesn't really look like one. So as if it could get any more unoriginal, the player is dragged through yet further iterations of the Valley of Defilement/Blighttown and Lost Izalith/Demon Ruins. Somehow parry/riposte and backstab has been ruined, enemies have the most ridiculous, insulting tracking, even when landing an overhead blow (they can literally follow you 360 degrees), hitboxes are an absolute joke, weapons and armoured characters act as though don't carry any weight and world progression is catastrophically obtuse. A lot of the time I had no idea where I was going, why I was going there, or what was going on. The game is constantly wanting me to guess what it's thinking which results in my most hated solution: boring and systematic elimination of possibilities. I constantly had to refer to a guide because there are so many leaps in logic/impasses I felt stunned into disbelief. Contrast with DaS, which subtly and economically keeps the player informed of where they need to be going next, either by means of a short cutscene, or talking with a certain NPC. AI is incredibly stupid, especially on NPC summons, who are borderline useless and seem to just crane their necks to watch whatever 30ft tall monster we're fighting smash them into a Drangleic pancake. You could never accuse DeS or DaS of cheap, artificial difficulty, but this game has loads of it, introducing awkward mobs of enemies (even in bossfights) instead of actual challenge. Most bosses are unimaginative and repeated (Gargoyles, Ornstein, Queelag's Scorpion cousin) and some, like the Iron King and Royal Rat Authority verge on cheap ****. FromSoft obviously heard everyone loved the Ornstein & Smough fight, so every other bossfight is a fu*king tag-team, also, most of them seem to have the exact same moveset. Do not get me started on the latency, lag filled puddle of watery faecal matter that is PVP. So the first 5-10 hours were most offputting, just awful bland areas and dull enemies. However in places it does become a semi-enjoyable dungeon crawler. Co-op is still good, in fact I had the most fun helping others defeat bosses, except where the game forbids you from dropping your sign because 'f**k you, you're doing this one solo". If it had a different name on the box, reception would be completely different. Dark Souls II does NOTHING better than the first game(s), and gets most of what it should get right, wrong. Bad design, bland, forgettable, most irritating game I played in 2014/15. Thankfully, this one has high resale value, I have no desire to ever touch or even finish it ever again.

You can't reinvent the wheel, I guess. Fuse is yet another third person cover shooter with some light character leveling. I didn't think it was as bad as critical reception made out. I had fun with it, which I guess is what' it's all about. It seems built around co-op but even on single player campaign, I enjoyed myself - enough to replay it four times (once with each character) and on all difficulties. Everyone should know the drill by now; move from rooms filled with chest-high walls, beat an endboss and move on to a change of scenery, might not go down well with anyone expecting something unique but as TPS go I thought it was good fun. The game does get frustrating at times however, and for one reason: your team AI is quite bad, and if any of the squad (AI or not) bleeds out, then it's game over. When player health gets to 0 you enter a bleedout state, kind of like Borderlands, except you can't shoot and your priority is to crawl to your nearest team mate - the problem is the AI is so stupid they sometimes don't feel like reviving you, or have no sense of self-preservation and can often be seen standing around doing nothing in the middle of a heated firefight or wandering into certain bosses instakill death rays or security turrets, trying (and failing) to revive each-other; this can get very annoying, thankfully, there are checkpoints aplenty. There is only a very small number of weapons on offer, aside from the player's special 'Fuse' weapons, there's a standard full auto AR, a burst AR with a scope, an SMG, a pistol and a sniper rifle. Some turret sections, some really cool enemy designs, but game is linear. Mindless action, good for co-op, that's it. Ends on a nasty cliffhanger, also has some fun horde mode co-op maps for more mindless shooting.

I can't think of a single other game (other than Demon's Souls) that's so purposely challenging, oldschool and meticulously crafted. Forget quest markers, dull NPCs spouting novellas full of dialogue and even duller codices crammed with useless information, Dark Souls throws that all out the window, and we're back to player driven exploration, the necessity of using your brain and your eyes as well as the most devilish risk/reward system I've seen in a game for a long time. It's not for everyone though, and an unsuccessful first few hours will drive away everyone who isn't utterly compelled by the game.

In the space of about 4 years, I bought Demon's Souls, hated Demon's Souls, sold Demon's souls, bought Dark Souls, liked Dark Souls, bought Demon's Souls again, and realised I was an idiot and actually got to enjoy Demon's Souls. Love was not immediate however, and I'm not sure what I was expecting first time around. Like Dark Souls, the game is not a dumb hack & slash/3rd person action RPG - treat the game like that and a good time will not be had. Strategy, wits and timing are key, as is memorization and a pinch of forethought. The mindset required to play the game was not forthcoming initially. A great challenge.

An improvement on its predecessor and a welcome change in tone, if XIII felt stripped-out, XIII-2 has everything put back in. It isn't perfect, and has some annoying features (some worlds have random encounter rates that get really annoying, really quickly), and some puzzles were clearly designed by Satan himself (Paradox clock) but my issues with the XIII's battle system have mostly been addressed - at least, they weren't a problem in-game. I missed the lack of a proper party, but a Moogle that says KUPO all the time, and being able to recruit monsters - including Cactuars and Chocobos - kind of makes up for it, they have more personality than Snow, at any rate. XIII-2 also has its own version of Golden Saucer, which isn't as good, but it's nice to race Chocobos again. If there is one negative thing I would say about the game, it's that after 30-40 hours of effort, an unsatisfying ending was thrown in my face with a big fat TO BE CONTINUED... sign. Can't have everything, I suppose.

A JRPG aimed at casual players that skips any pretence. FFXIII does not begin well, my first 6 or 7 hours were an internal struggle where I debated putting the game down - I later learned that the first 20 hours would be an increasingly tedious tutorial - all but three of the characters (Fang, Vanille and Sazh) are annoying, angsty, self-absorbed cretins. I suspect this is due to the VAs; talented as they are, I did not care for their characterization - watching the Japanese version in action confirmed this. It's fair to say that the game is linear, and like most JRPGs you need to grind the heck out of your characters, FFXIII isn't coy about that though, it throws corridors at you populated with groups of enemies and asks you to slay them all. Sure enough, by the time you've done that you'll have maxed out your Crystarium and can move on to the next **** there was one thing I liked, it was the absence of random encounters, and the fact that there's no need to heal or use Phoenix Downs after battles - the game does that for you (yay?) The battle system is decent most of the time, but is obviously aimed at casual players and has taken control out of the hands of the player. Both party members are AI controlled and there is no way to tell them what you want them to do, there is no way to direct an ATB stack in more than one direction (ie: I've stacked 2 Curas, I can't send one to character A and one to character B), if I've got Vanille or Hope in a Medic role, there's no way to use Esuna instead of Cure, this applies to all Paradigms. If a Synergist is in the party, I want Protect, not Haste, but the AI goes out of its way giving you the buffs it thinks it should have. Later battles with three or more challenging enemies are problematic, you can not direct them to attack a single enemy and instead they waste time trading blows with un-staggered units. Everything is done on auto, chances are if your party knows the enemies weaknesses they will act accordingly but a lot of the time the lack of control was frustrating. I don't think I started actually properly enjoying myself until Taejin's Tower (25+ hours in), because there's things to actually do there, and getting through requires input from the player (as opposed to a long corridor). Overall a decent experience, but it feels linear, stripped out and dull a lot of the time. The characters aren't the best, the story is obtuse, the world feels empty, but it looks amazing, even for a four year old 7th gen title. Some of the music is absolutely stunning (does that go without saying with FF games now?)

2nd pass. ICO: 9/10. SotC: 7/10. Of the two, I enjoyed ICO a lot more. Puzzles were lucid, gameplay was enjoyable, next to no troublesome mechanics or anything to annoy the player, near-perfect. Though I prefer the aesthetic of SotC, I found it repetitive and frustrating, mostly due to the horrendous camera and the troublesome controls, which a lot of the time were greater foes than the colossi themselves. Poetic and artful, beautiful, even, but not a great game.

For all its hype and anticipation, GTAV plays exactly like every other GTA game I played before it, this is both a good and bad thing. Traffic/NPC AI seems to be the same as it was fifteen years ago, activities are still boring/tedious and exist on a scale of escalating frustration. Controls are a little rigid and clunky, characters get stuck on bannisters/objects and will take cover behind the wrong thing. In most every other aspect, GTA excels. I loved the characters (well, Trevor), the heists were excellent fun and truth be told I couldn't put the game down until I finished story mode.

EA took Final Fantasy X's conditional battle system and mashed it into a Lord of the Rings "RPG". The proverbial film license barrel has been well and truly **** to deliver a non-canonical story and oddly familiar party members (budget Gimli, cut-price Aragorn, etc.) but in spite of this the movie license has been used to great effect and the music and cinematics (from the film) improve matters no end. It's still really enjoyable to play. Linear as all hell, but as far as Final Fantasy X in LotR clothing goes, it's pretty fun. Deserves an extra point for the Evil Mode, where you can play as the Balrog and kill Gandalf.

Graphically impressive with exceptional production values, and a good game, but not the second coming, and definitely not the next big thing in RPGs. Restrictive in the same way console RPGs are, just with hi-res textures, presented as an adult game, yet under the surface it's just as adolescent as the first game was, with it's ridiculous sex cards. Gameplay (particularly combat) is often quite bad, particularly on Normal difficulty or higher - controls feel unresponsive, delayed, keymapping can be altered but not in game and only using the game's config tool. Good, but not great.

Certainly underrated, unfairly maligned. What's in the box? An arcadey dungeon crawler. Choose your character: hack & slash oriented fighter or large-breasted she-elf with a bow and get to it. Setting is typical fantasy fare; orc-things, monsters, dark towns besieged by aforementioned orc-things, deep, dark dungeons, a bunch of puzzles... lots of things to kill. In the end, it's fun to play (I couldn't put it down for some reason), yeah, it's a linear console port, but not a bad game - a few additional features and this would have been golden.

An average, nice-to-look-at corridor shooter (or should I say 'sneaker'?) Metro is back with an unnecessary sequel to do the same thing all over again, no changes have been made to the amount hand-holding, railroading and massive linearity present in the first one... and Christ, ambient "details" do not make a good game! Story is OK, graphics are good (as they should be), all Metro does is make me want to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again.

After years of hearing no end of high praise for this title I finally got around to putting some time in. Whatever those people who rated it 10/10, 100/100 are smoking, I want some. Red Dead is far more removed than just being GTA with horses, it is that, and suffers because of it, because what makes a great GTA game great does not translate into the old west. I found myself constantly unimpressed, bored and disappointed with almost everything the game was throwing at me. Missions and quests were dull; follow the red line, shoot the man, come back, others were mind-numbingly tedious; herding cattle, breaking steers. Overrated bollocks.

This is excellent DLC but I'm undecided; is it great on its own merits or is it great because I'm getting severe Morrowind/Bloodmoon nostalgia from it? A lot of the easter eggs were great, and the Lovecraftian Hermaeus Mora stuff was great ... but it's still buggy, though if you want/need more Skyrim buy it without hesitation. Mod and patch immediately.

A buggy, incomplete mess that suffers from attempts to maintain console parity. Thank Christ for the legion of modders working to make this game a decent experience on PC. Vanilla Skyrim is janky, at best. Quests are broken, game CTDs regularly, a disastrous console port that deserves better for its PC release. Elder Scrolls games have been going downhill since Oblivion, streamlines here, removal of features there, there's reasons why people think Morrowind is perfection. I loved the game, but modders take half the credit.

For one of my favourite games of 2012, the prospect of more Dragon's Dogma was too big an opportunity to pass up, with the enticing additions for players with existing save files, Japanese audio (always a plus) and new areas, I was really eager to get back into the game, being halfway through a 3rd vanilla playthrough when my copy arrived. Slowly but surely, a sense of disappointment began to creep in; the wonderfully extrinsic (yet catchy) B'z intro song ("Into Free -Dangan-") has been removed, and the new area(s) essentially consist of a deep, dark dungeon of masochistic proportions that makes the original's post-game boss Everfall seem like a picnic, in fact there are enemies here that make bosses like Evil Eyes, Drakes etc. seem laughably easy (which they are, for characters of level 60+), but coupled with the close-quarters nature of the environment, certain problems come to light: 1. The enemy behaviour can be unbalanced and a little on the ridiculous side, even if you're level 150+, particularly post-Daimon and they will constantly bum-rush, spam knockdown attacks and some are capable of one-shotting two quarters of the entire party regardless of level. 2. in close quarters, the pawns can be incredibly dumb, annoying, and difficult to command. 3. close quarters combat does not work in the games favour, especially when combat takes place in a room the size of my kitchen with three large enemies, all doing massive damage and knocking player and pawns over constantly. The final boss was a little let-down too, even though you get to fight him twice, in fact he's easier than a Condemned Gorecyclops and Death; two semi-regular enemies that appear numerous times in the dungeon itself. My biggest problem though: I had to buy the entire game twice in order to access additional content, making my initial purchase redundant all for the sake of DLC. Still, Dragon's Dogma (expansion or no) is a truly excellent game that deserves all the praise it gets. I look forward to seeing this IP grow.

Really good fun, plays like Onimusha with the brakes off. It's a little on the easy and short side, but does what it does very well. Has a neat feature; 'Kamui' - special timed feats that allow you to take out entire screens of enemies on successful taps of the square button. Like Onimusha 2, features designs by Keita Amemiya. Recommended for Onimusha/samurai game fans.

The third-best Onimusha game. Lacks the variety of Oni 2 and the finesse of Oni Warlords. Time is spent split between two characters in two times; Samanosuke in modern-day Paris, and Jacques in Japan's Warring States era. Does very much what previous Oni games did better, and little else. Not a bad game, but not universally recommended.

Gameplay is slow, dull and rigid. Whether a mission is successful or not seems to depend more on luck and invisible D6 rolls which determine whether your Bolters miss, jam, or if the marines fail a defensive roll. There is usually only one way to complete a mission, I realized after a a few failed missions that in order to succeed I needed to abandon strategy and tactics and simply force my way to the objective. A squandered attempt.

2014: Hawken arrives on Steam. I've been playing since closed beta, and seen the game come a long way - in it's current state, it's awesome fun, especially with friends, but in the long-term, once I reached an apex (winning matches most of the time, completed the PvE arenas) I didn't see much reason to persevere.

I really wanted to love this game, to get immersed - take a persona to a sci-fi battlefield and have fun, but like Eve the reality is that I might as well be banging my head against a wall. For all its excellent visual design and promise, the game amounts to PvP deathmatch monotony with the added kick to the nads of robbing you of your equipment on death. Several months after closed beta (a frustrating exercise that allowed me to do very little except get sniped by some jackass every 5 seconds) the Academy arrived, allowing me briefly to enjoy some smaller, manageable battles. Soon after, I was thrown back into the main game, where the snipers had gone, and was constantly being run over by some **** in an armoured car. Uninstalled, gladly. Will give Project Legion a go if/when it appears.

To be blunt - Death by Degrees is a badly designed piece of **** A third person brawler wanting to be Resident evil AND Metal Gear Solid at the same time, except the camera and controls are so bad they do nothing but hinder the player and make certain actions difficult or impossible. There's a good game in here somewhere; likely the removal of the ridiculous thumbstick-controlled directional combat would improve matters no end, but then there's the obnoxious load-times that appear every. single. time. you open a door, select your menu, or do anything. Crap, crap, crap.

I enjoyed the game, and it kept me coming back, playing hours on end until I'd finished. That said, it's more of the same. Loved DS and DS2, so can't *really* go wrong. Some additions/changes aren't as welcome, however: too much focus on combat, too many enemies that push you into a corner and f**k up the camera, save state problems (no save points - just autosave) and a stupid cliffhanger ending that the DLC simply exaggerated.

I wondered whilst playing if Till the End of Time was made by committee to try and make the most irritating, tedious and frustrating game experience possible -- maybe that's hyperbole; the first 3/4 of the game were enjoyable enough - what constitutes disc 1 is great fun. Upon returning to the same, boring, medieval planet we've spent the last 30 hours on, the game's shortcomings come into focus; the ridiculous mechanics, stupid, outdated JRPG conventions ground me into the floor. Whoever thought that losing HP for performing an attack, or reaching zero MP KOs your character deserves a swift kick in the backside, the same goes for cheap, pathetic higher level enemies who repeatedly interrupt your attacks and spam knockdown moves whenever able, unnecessary things like repeating two of the larger dungeons from disc 1 at the end of the game for no good reason but contrivance... the only consolation is the lack of random encounters.

A PS2 exclusive sequel to a game that was an Xbox exclusive. Nice one. The game isn't bad though, but in order to play you should tape down the fire button before doing anything. Lots and lots of revisiting the same map shooting the same aliens can get wearisome really quickly, does have some light RPG elements, Japanese weirdness. Didn't like the camera, but the game includes a half-hour's worth of FMV from the first Crimson Sea which you can watch whenever you like (good).

A bright, colourful (graphically impressive) anime-styled brawler; unfortunately it's noticeably repetitive (the formula is: few dungeon levels, fight boss, repeat), though you do have a choice of three characters to break up the monotony; cute dual blade wielding anime girl, cute buster sword wielding anime girl with pigtails, or beefcake with guns. I found cute buster sword wielding anime girl with pigtails the most enjoyable to play as. Crimson Tears is good fun despite its basic gameplay; sometimes it's just fun to enter a dungeon and beat the stuffing out of everything inside.

Capcom clearly went for mass market appeal here; characters straight out of a Final Fantasy game, complete with sub-par, "annoying anime" voice-overs. The survival horror tone from the previous games has given way to hack & slash and hack & slash action. Puzzles remain, but they're pathetically easy; in their place we have irritating time trials (ie: perform 5X finisher moves in 4 minutes). Enemies feel cheap and ****, especially later on, and have nasty habits like ganging up on you and spamming knockdown attacks. Dawn of Dreams also has a really crappy habit of giving you a big boss monster to fight RIGHT AFTER you've just fought a (smaller) boss, and used up all your health, potions, etc. For the most part, these are time consuming, annoying, frustrating and require little skill, much like the rest of the game, it's Mash X to win (square, if you're being picky)... An OK game, but not recommended.

In most respects, Samurai's Destiny is everything Warlords was and more, though I can't help but feel that Warlords' formula has been diluted somewhat. Nevertheless, Samura's Destiny is bigger, has more of everything and is - for the most part - all the better for it. I finished Warlords in 5 hours, this one took me 10.

Resident Evil meets samurai in Sengoku-period Japan. More hack and slash than survival horror, combat is decent, if limited; but was impressive for its time. Features one almost game-breaking puzzle (THE WATER TRAP) and some less threatening demonic entities - easily sliced. Lots of fun, great atmosphere.

Digital Devil Saga returns to kick me in the balls with its random battle encounter rate. Visually appealing, but more of the same from part 1, and uses 90% of the same assets. Again, the combat is the best part though we have more of a story this time, only recommended to those who loved the nuts off the first game.

I really wanted to like it, but Digital Devil Saga tried its hardest to make me hate it, and ended up hating it I did. From the second chapter all the way to the final end boss, it was a repetitive, dull and grindy chore. A non-stop barrage of identical dungeon corridors, random encounters and downright dirty AI scripting. The combat is the game's main draw, and is very strategic. It can be enjoyable with its press turns, enemy weaknesses, etc. but the tedium and monotony outweighs any positives I had during my 30 hours playing the thing.

In a moment of insanity Namco/Ban Dai thought UK/Europe should get Xenosaga Episode II, but not Episodes I or III. To that end, this game came shipped with a 4 hour DVD featuring FMV from Episode I. Subsequently, Episode III was not released here in blighty leaving me unable to play the sequel (and a premature end) to what is one of my favourite games ever. Xenosaga is JRPG meets anime in space. Sometimes you'll be fooled into thinking you're watching a film: you will be watching cutscenes for a half hour at a time. Like with most JRPGs the combat is the main draw, Xenosaga's takes while to learn but once mastered you can take enemies apart very quickly. No random encounters - joy! The game is not annoying! Some of the puzzles and "side-quests" *Global Samaritan Campaign* can be a pain at times, but the upshot is there's no random battles constantly annoying the crap out of you whilst you're doing them.

FFS Final Fantasy. I really enjoyed this game up until somewhere in disc 3, but by then Zidane and co. had outstayed their welcome. By disc 3 we're operating on contrivance, hour after hour of frustrating, stupid random encounters constantly interrupting dungeon exploration, battle scenes that take so god-damn-long to get started (do we really need a thirty second pan of the fighting arena?) redundant ATB gauges that take far too long to fill, irritating enemies, level grind, the same battle over again and again, level grind, boss fight, boss fight. Another example of overrated Final Fantasy bilge.

Deceptively simple in appearance, (an old-school RPG for old-school's sake) Dragon Quest is an unforgiving beast. There are save points only in towns, throws random battles around like confetti and demands that the player grind a level or two before moving from one quest location to the next. Can be cruelly unfair, frustrating, and annoying, but also rewarding.

I found The Second Story too mired in archaic JRPG conventions that made the game impossible to enjoy. I wanted to like it, and I did for a few hours, but the prospect of having to grind (and grind some more) to proceed, ridiculous difficulty spikes, content hidden to all but psychics (suffers from "how was I supposed to know that!?" syndrome) ensured I cancelled my adventure 6 hours in. Unexpectedly weak.

Ridiculously good. Ambitious to the nth degree, massive chunks of dialogue interspersed with plot and turn-based mecha combat, a real Final Fantasy beater.

Like other titles in the Final Fantasy VII 'series', Crisis Core is at its best when recalling the original game, tons of fan-service; familiar characters, music and locations are all great to see, but gameplay is a letdown. Combat is in real-time, hack & slash button-mash, an annoying Phase Modulation (limit breaks?) mechanic constantly pulls control from the player constantly and at inopportune moments and the endgame (final chapters) are tedious and drawn-out.

I think this is my favourite JRPG ever. Probably the best thing I ever bought for my PS3 as well, Tri-Ace and Motoi Sakuraba again and more than a handful of design elements carried over from Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (another excellent title), Japanese audio, amazing combat system, OTT characters and a huuuge learning curve, legitimately challenging without being cheap and once mastered, the game is a pleasure to play from beginning to end.