BeeSting1

Good - music really adds to the horror atmosphere and the fear factor. All kinds of creepy tracks and sound effects to increase tension. - some of the puzzles were too hard imo. I have no knowledge of the astral signs, so there was no chance I could've solved that puzzle. I wouldn't even know what to search up since I didn't know those images were of astral signs. - combat was straight forward. It added to the horror without being over bearing. - the graphics were great for a PS1 game. - the fog and visual design of the environments were done very well. Made it all extra scary. - the story was mysteries which kept me wanting to know what was happening. New characters Harry came across also added to the mystery, like the nurse. - Voice acting was actually quite good, except for some of the awkward pauses they put between lines. Bad - lack of map in Nowhere had me very frustrated. Every corridor looked the same, every door looked the same. Backtracking was annoying. - the tank controls in some area were bad.

Good - combat is unique. Charging attacks and timing them one after the other to build up an ultimate move feels great. The variety of moves gives depth to the combat in general. - they brought back the custom level adjusting which gives players a lot of control over how hard they want their experience to be, which is great. - the story and characters were very well written. The dialogue was very hip, and full of present day online references. I also liked how the characters weren't afraid to throw some curse words around. It felt more organic especially for the more hot headed characters. This should be adapted in more games. - the music tracks were of course phenomenal as always, and played at the right time to inflict the most emotional impact. - I liked how they brought back the old characters slowly one by one, keeping me drawn in to want to know who will appear next. - voice acting was very well done. - i'm glad i can buy clothing even if my style isn't high enough, and still get the base stats. Bad - the last ultimate move the game gave me was a little bit too OP. It was super powerful and refilled my health every use. - the hub world got way to repetitive. As well as the progression outside of combat. Felt like I was just trying to get from point A to point B, wait for some dialogue, then repeat. I can only handle so much going back in time. Eating at restaurants was only able to give a tiny bit of variety when traversing the hub world. - there were points where I felt they dragged a story event on for too long.

Good - the co-op combat to build stagger between Arteus and Kratos is fun. Stagger kills were very satisfying to pull off. - many varieties of ways to fight. Hand-to-hand, chains of chaos, and axe. Each has their own unique play style, and uses for certain types of enemies. Cool upgrades on each weapon as well, giving diversity to the way you want to fight. Every attack felt powerful. - the semi-open world was great. Not as linear as the old gows, but also not too big of a sand box to get overwhelmed. - parrying system was awesome. The reaction time they gave felt fair, and everytime I got a parry, it was satisfying, and if I didn't it usually felt fair. - rage mode was a useful way to clutch out fights, like an X factor. Also very satisfying to use. - characters voices and acting were designed very well. All movement and expressions felt real. The dwarfs were a nice comic relief. - Puzzles were generally fun to solve. Not too difficult, not too long. - throwing the axe around was fun. - There is a lot more focus on story, and the story was very interesting. The focus on parent and child dynamics was interesting. - the upgrading system was just the right amount of complexity for me. I would have hated if GoW went the route of heavy RPG like Assassin's creed did. Luckily it did not. Bad - the game felt a tad short, ended a little abruptly. - I don't like how the devs let you continue a boss fight in the middle if you died. It feels like cheating, like using a save state. I would have preferred restarting the boss fight from the beginning. - Would have liked to see more characters mentioned and make more cameos from the past, like Zeus, Athena, Gaia, Pandora, and the other Gods. Athena was a big part of Krato's story, yet she only showed up once in a vision. - not a lot of epic sky combat where Kratos is flying all over the place and fighting a huge monster. This only happened in like one or two fights. GoW 3 had a lot of these epic fights.

Good - can be a linear experience if you want, or it can backtrack for power ups if you want as well. - no more bs hidden passages like in the old games where you need to bomb every nook and cranny. They finally got the scan right - visuals look great - manual aiming is a great addition - new power ups are a great addition. And new environment interactions. - parry system is amazing. Rewards players who have good reflexes. Parrying an attack feels satisfying. - crouching slide is really fun to use. Having samus automatically turn into morph ball when climbing into vents is really convenient. - Turning into morph ball with one button is convenient as well. - Space jump is finally not too annoying to use. - a good variety of enemies, and most have unique attacks. Bad - I wish there were more cutscenes where Samus would react more, or show more emotion, or possibly say something. Or even take off her helmet for a bit, just some kind of interaction aside from fighting or listening to someone.

Good - graphics look great. The structures were very impressive. - autosave makes taking breaks easier. - i like the addition of climbing parts. And the sliding parts were done quite well. Bad - badly placed QTEs made enjoying any cutscene unenjoyable since I had to always focus on the corner of my screen to see if a prompt will pop up - the QTE button color was the form of a light colored orange amber, meaning if it overlapped a bright colored area in the fight, it's really hard to see. Quite a few times I was punished because I simply couldn't see the QTE prompt. Example being the bright bird from the Fury. - The puzzles had only one solution, and despite finding a very logical solution to the puzzle on your own which should work, didn't. Only the developer's logic was correct. There were many false queues in puzzles which made solving them a frustrating experience. - Not enough cutscenes where Kratos speaks. He's also much more passive than other God of War games which is really out of character. I personally really don't like it. I liked Kratos for the rage filled vengence. Not this **** - The parry system is terrible. Not only do I now have to press two buttons L1 and X, but also have to press them one after the other. Parrying is supposed to be a fast execution testing the player's reflexes, but making it this hard to input, makes the experience very frustrating. Especially because some of the enemies have very ambiguous attack animations, the hitbox sometimes come out later. Also sometimes parry would just straight up whiff when it clearly should have countered. Sometimes the enemy is too far and the counter after the parry misses, and I end up getting punished instead, which feels very unfair. The inability to reflect projectiles with parry was also crappy. - having to press two buttons to grab was also annoying. In all GoWs it was just circle. Now it's R1 and circle, which adds and extra layer of annoyance when I'm already juggling trying to hit two buttons to parry. - for a first time play through it's really hard to use much of the rage meter, since without getting accustomed to the fights, rarely could I go on without damage to fully build the meter and use rage, which made it useless. - Magic wasn't clearly defined. Until you've leveled your weapon to like level 3, you can't see that the last level up would give it magic. This caused a lot of confusion, as I see I have a magic meter, but seemingly no magic attack. Not until I looked up that I had to upgrade my weapon fully to unlock it, did I know. - I also ran into quite a few glitches. One where the giant hammer enemy fell through the elevator, and I couldn't proceed the blocked exit because it required me to kill all enemies. - not seeing any of the gods, like Athena, Zeus, or any of the titans really made the game not feel like a God of War game. As those are staple characters. Aside from Kratos himself, you pretty much ONLY see Furies. - the camera angle is terrible sometimes. It could be zoomed too far out and I just can't see whats going on. Sometimes it's fixed in a place where if there are big enemies, I can't see Kratos and the smaller enemies attack me. Meaning if I'm trying to parry, I end up whiffing and getting attacked just because the game blocked my view. I simple fix would have been to make the large enemy momentarily transparent when walking in front of the camera. - overall, they tried to change what wasn't broken. God of War was supposed to be a straight forward hack and slash game, Adding the extra control schemes made the experience more complex than it needed to be. This isn't Sekiro, it's God of War. Don't fix what wasn't broken.

Good - A good follow up to RE7 story - The presentation is virtually flawless. - huge improvement on the variety of enemies in the game, compared to the repetitive black sludges in RE7. - the villains are interesting af. - The themes were varied, from spooky to disgusting and everything in between. - Chris' appearance is back to normal - More tie in with original story like Chris, Umbrella, and BSAA - Funny merchant - puzzles were not too complicated and pretty interesting for the most part. - weapons feel great to use. The amount of ammo had the right level of scarcity - the environment design was fantastic - the voice acting, camera control, and the character movements were great Bad - really small things. Like a bullet being able to knock a lamp into full swing is unrealistic making the puzzle a little hard to figure out. There was one part where yellow paint was misused tractor shovels in the ventilation in the factory, making me confused as to where to go.

Good - good old metroidvania gameplay. The animations are nice. The weapons feel great to shoot. - the progression is more linear, which I personally prefer. - space jumping and wall jumping are easier to execute. The introduction off ledge clinging was also great. Bad - still too many hidden blocks. A few really ambiguous ones that I couldn't be discovered unless I bombed and power bombed every corner of the level. It's not only a waste of resources, but also time. - i hate how hitting up during a diagonal jump cancels the momentum of the jump completely. This really threw me off. This made fighting some of the bosses very annoying.

Good - the animations and cinematics were phenomenal. The finisher animations were nothing but brutal and satisfying to execute. It really made me feel Krato's blood lust and anger. - Kratos was a relatable character to me. His struggles with self-forgiveness and his journey for redemption in a way reflects my own past and my inability to forgive myself for some things in my distant past. So in a way, this game taught me something important. To move on. - the weapons are very cool. I like how they each have different dodge animations. - the new abilities were creative as well, like hermes boots. The way Kratos killed Icarus was crazy. In fact, every boss death animations was just so epic. The presentation is top notch. - Kratos has a lot more character. The attention to his movements and expressions were deep. Bad - there were some awkward puzzles that weren't clear. There was one part where the climbing controls reversed as I climbed onto a perpendicular surface which caused my death. - Some of the areas were huge, and the camera is zoomed way out. This made certain parts hard to see as I was fighting a horde or enemies, or trying to platform.

Good - a lot of new additions from Chains of Olympus. - we finally get some emotions out of Kratos, and some back story - spear and shield was fun to use - some new enemies - amazing game as developed on a handheld - the cutscenes and fighting animations are impressive as ever. Bad - nothing really.

Good - the hack and slash is as good as the first one. Though nothing really new. - the pre-rendered cutscenes are nicer looking - the premise of the storyline is much more epic, teaming with gaia, then fighting zeus, killing ares. - new enemy designs. Bad - Unconventional logic applied to some of the puzzles. Some things I felt could be done, couldn't, but could be only for specific puzzles the devs deemed. - the took out the roll into charge, making traversing slower and less amusing. - some weird camera angles

Good - controls are really unique and challenging on the DS - combat is pretty cool. Fast pace and has a lot of variety of techniques. - music is cool - comic book style cutscene are cool - the story is pretty decent. The protagonist is very relatable, at least for me. Bad - Switch motion controls are a bit weird. Can't always do the moves you want, and the constant cursor re-adjustment ruins the experience a bit. - clothing status menu in shop could've added the option to compare current equipment so I didn't have to switch back and forth to check.

Good - the hack and slash is as good as the first one. Though nothing really new. - the pre-rendered cutscenes are nicer looking - the premise of the storyline is much more epic, teaming with gaia, then fighting zeus. - new enemy designs. Bad - Unconventional logic applied to some of the puzzles. Some things I felt could be done, couldn't, but could be only for specific puzzles the devs deemed. - the took out the roll into charge, making traversing slower and less amusing. - some weird camera angles

Good - linear fast paced action. No breaking of pace. - graphics are really nice. - combos feel fluent, and a having a parry system is great. - story is pretty interesting. - diverse amount of enemies. Petrifying effects, etc. - useful dodging abilities. - a large amount of moves and combos. - QTE feel great, and the animations with it look very cool. - adds enough puzzles to change things up, while keeping the fighting as the main focus. Bad - the lack of custom camera movement makes some platforming sequences look awkward.

I've been a fan of the tales series ever since Tales of Symphonia. It felt like a group of friends going on an adventure to save the world. The dungeons, monsters, and traveling the party did made it all a great escape. Tales of Arise is similar, but the game has a darker approach and the characters are no longer chibi, making the visuals feel more mature. These are all things I welcome, as I am well into adult hood now. However, the overworld is replaced by linear areas, with the main form of travel being fast travel. This took away a bit of the immersion. I understand the devs may have taken out the overworld because traveling did become a little tedious later in the old Tales games, but I felt the immersion was worth it. The combat system is one of the biggest changes. Arise has perfect dodging, which is a great addition. Timing and reflex was now a necessary skill to have. I love perfect dodging, parry, perfect shielding in any games. I'm a big fan of QTEs, as long as it isn't spammed too hard. The fighting animations, the visuals of the attacks all had an omph, and it felt good to cut down enemies. The huge issue however, is the party strategy management, and the enemy HP pool. Bosses specifically are the worst. They have massive HP pools, you can hardly see their HP dwindle unless you stared at ot every 5 mins. It's ridiculous. All those epic attacks you dish out, all those crazy animations mean jack all when after a really strong looking charged up boost attack ends up cutting down less than 0.01% of the bosses' HP bar. As the game progresses the bosses become more and more like damage sponges. It also doesn't help that my entire party are squishy af. A regular boss attack can take away half of a characters' HP. Meaning 2 or 3 regular hits, and my characters' gone. This means a lot of CP is needed to heal and revive. This CP gauge usually runs out about 10% way into the fight, which then I have to use CP recovery items, which cost a fortune. Buying 10 will wipe out all the currency you've collected. Clearly the devs did not intend for the players to use that much. so what to do? Well, there is the strategy modifier. This is where I could customize and change the party's strategy mid-fight. There defensive strats, and offensive strats. The problem is even the most defensive strats, my party eventually dies. There's no option to have my party run away, and dodge everything. Eventually, they're gonna be **** and get hit by a couple attacks and die, or I'd have to waste precious CP on them. I blame this on poor AI design. There's also no option to have the AI heal ONLY ME. When I set it to heal, they bring back the idiot AI, and guess what, they'll die again in a few seconds. Absolute headache. Change strats was also not very intuitive. I'd have to pause the game and press a button a couple times to set the strat I want. This broke the pace, which I'd have to keep doing it every minute. FF13 is a game that relies on strategy change as well, but it could be done on the go without breaking any pace. That's how it should've been done! There is the option to have the AI use only long range spells. This meant I'd have to go through every single one of their spells and see which were long range and didn't have long charge times. This was way too tedious for me. I play a Tales game to hack and slash and have a blast. Not micro-manage AI behavior. I'd be playing an RTA or turn based RPG if I wanted to do that. This is real time combat for f*** sakes, akin to Kingdom Hearts, God of War and the like. I DON'T want to be micro-managing, especially mid-fight. Overall, this game is a huge disappointment, which is really unfortunate because I loved where the story was going. Shionne was also a really interesting character. The topics the story touched on were mature, like discrimination, and oppression. The dynamics between the characters were also kind of interesting.

GTA 5 is one of the best open world games out there. Rivaled by only the new Assassin's Creed games. The voice acting and storyline is well written, and pretty hilarious. This is the first time the series offers 3 protagonists to choose from which really adds diversity to the plot and gameplay. However, things do get repetitive half way through. Missions eventually felt like a chore to complete. The tasks I needed to perform felt too similar. Chase car, kill guy. Go to some place, shoot out. The only thing hooking me in was the story. I wanted to see how it all ended. The heat between the characters also made things a bit spicy. The side missions were abundant, but I focused on the main story, since I couldn't handle anymore repetition. I played on the PS3, which means the shooting was absolutely garbage. I had to resort to snap ADS, which did the job, but didn't take any skill. Driving felt great. The amount of weapons were nice. AI was kinda stupid, but I ain't gonna complain when aiming with a controller.

Good - The animations and overall graphics detail is amazing - the world is immense for SNES game. - dungeon design is very impressive. Puzzles are deep and reasonably challenging. - controls are crisp. Upgrades are cool and fun to use. Bad - the sword hitbox doesn't exactly match the animation. - moon pearl, a required item should not be missable, but it is. I was going in circles wondering where to find it. Turned out to be in a chest in a previous dungeon. - the game doesn't tell me that there are other ways to enter the dark world after beating the dark palace. This causes me to try and enter through the mountain pad entrance and try and find a way off the mountain, which was not possible - swamp palace. How am I supposed to know I'm supposed to randomly walk into a waterfall? 6 waterfalls that look identical. I'm supposed to walk through - I wish locked doors would be marked. And chests would be marked. - no hints were given that i had to use the fire rod to burn the entrance of the dark temple. The skull shows no indication that it could be burned. - Titan's mitts is missable in gargoyle palace, which is required to get into ice palace. Meaning I was completely stuck not knowing what I needed, until I refer to a guide. - game forces player to explore every nook and cranny to get potentially required items - quake medallion is required to reach final dungeon but it's missable. And I have to somehow know the order to hit the pikes to open the warp to dark world for last dungeon. - the game forces you to explore and do random quests to acquire required upgrades like silver Arrow to beat Ganon. I don't like how these important things are missable. - no price tag for super bomb. How am I supposed to know how much rupees to collect?

Good - the way you got to control the past family members is really cool - the labyrinth in the house was interesting to navigate - voice acting is great - the story is mysterious and enticing. Draws you in. The theme is so heavy. About death. Gregory's pov was so cute but outcome was so sad. - Lewis's story was sooo creative in every way. Showing the monotony of his task and how his mind wandered so much he did the unthinkable. - this is probably the first time I actually looked at the credits, because it wasn't just a bunch of names but showed photos of their childhood, which somehow added this sentimental connection combined with the music. It made me want to know who worked on this master piece. - the ending is so sad. Makes you think about life and death. Bad - nothing. For a story based walking sim, it's perfect.

This is the final stop on my marathon. I was hyped to play this game when it was released. Snatched a copy right on launch day. It was almost 10 years since the last full blown 3D Mario game, Galaxy 2. My first playthrough of this game was very fast, I was shocked to see the credits scrolling on my screen after barely 10 hours of gameplay. Though it was probably my own fault, since I only collected the bare minimum of required moons to run the ship. My second time around with the game was much more gratifying since I tried to collect as many moons from each world as I could. Even so, I felt the devs should have increased the required amount of moons needed to fuel the ship. The underlying structure of game progression is the same. Collect a number of these, unlock new worlds, get to Bowser. But I love the fact that the game didn’t boot me out of the world after collecting a moon. This meant each world could have a crap ton of moons, without any discontinuity. Most of them involved a clever puzzle, mini-game, or hiding spot. Among my favorite were the classic 2D platforming sequences. The gameplay really wasn’t anything special, but something about seeing the oldest Mario game, in the newest Mario game made me smile. Other moons warped me to a separate mini platforming game, usually with a little twist. Most were pretty fun, and changed things up a bit. And we can’t talk about Odyssey without talking about the cap, which basically made Mario into Kirby. Taking control of classic Mario baddies was a lot of fun. Even just running around as a goomba was amusing. Each had some ability that would help level progression. Goombas could walk on ice. Latikus could fish out moons. Tanks could blast through rock barriers. Flying drybones could get my past lava. Just a bunch of cool abilities. I found myself throwing my hat at every moving thing to see if I could posses it. My favorite by far were these long legged nut enemies. Winding them up to reach places was a neat way to explore the forest world.

I didn’t expect too much from this game when I saw some previews, since it looked like little more than a console iteration of Mario 3D Land. But after completing the first two worlds, I was proven wrong. Super Mario 3D World adds enough new content making it distinct. The biggest marketed aspect was definitely the new cat suit. It allowed my character to climb walls, which proved to be pretty broken in the first couple worlds, but the game slowly added more suitable platform design that forced me to apply the climbing ability in clever ways. I also had a dive attack which was fun to use, and a nice change from the same old hovering ability the tanooki suit offered for the 100th time. Visually, this game was gorgeous. Everything looked so cute. I guess the cat suit amiplified that. It was hard to resist awww-ing when looking at Goombas in the cat suit trying to dive attack me. Or Goombas in big skates chasing me around an ice rink. And the final showdown had Bowser in a cat suit, struggling to climb up walls. It was hard to take the fight seriously. I couldn’t stop smiling. The worlds were absolutely beautiful. After Galaxy 2, this was the first 3D Mario to have a true HD resolution. Looking at the lush colorful environment made the whole platform experienced a lot more immersive. World 8 was my favorite. There were a lot of night time levels, which made the lighting stand out, creating a feeling like I was in a carnival. The hub world in this one is quite unique. It’s a hybrid. Although, at the heart, it still followed the prayer bead structure, I could go off course and explore the map. Not that there was really anything to explore, aside from random 1-ups and coin blocks. It ended up just giving the illusion of freedom. Littered throughout the map were captain toad puzzles. I thoroughly enjoyed Captain Toad on the 3DS, so this was a big welcome. The puzzle designs always found a way to surprise me. Instead of walking around the area to find secrets, the focus was on rotating the camera to find secrets, which I still find to be a refreshing concept. These segments also utilized the gamepad by having me blow on the microphone to raise a platform, or touch the screen to raise a platform, which was neat. Couldn’t say the same for the action segments that had me use the touch screen though. It was nothing short of clumsy and annoying being forced to take my right hand off the controller, touch the screen to bring out a platform, then quickly put it back so I could jump onto the platform.

This was the last 2D Mario platformer of my marathon. How did it end? Not bad. There was a “new” flying squirrel power up. But really, it was nothing more than a tanooki rip off without the tail whip. I liked how I could view the entire hub world right off the bat, cause it gave me a sense of what to expect, and allowed me to better manage the power ups I had in storage. Speaking of that. The green toad houses put me in a small mini game where two cannons shot 1-ups and bowser faces. Every 1-up I got was a +1 life, and every Bowser I got was a -1 life. The problem was the hitboxes on these cannon balls. Here, you can clearly see the 1-up intercept Toad’s body, yet it wasn’t captured. And another one here. This happened multiple times. I know this was just a bonus mini game, but it none the less still infuriated me cause I got a couple game overs because I was short a life or two, which could have been avoided if the mini game wasn’t broken. Plus, this game reused the bull **** saving system as the other New Super Mario Brother games, meaning I could only save after boss fights. So game overs were extra punishing. Aside from that, the game basically reiterated most of New Super Mario Bros Wii. Though I did like the obstacle design in this one more. Namely, the long retracting platforms that quite a few levels had. The haunted mansions were never my favorite, and it was no exception here. Like this one in world 6. I was stumped for so long. Had the timer run out multiple times, only to learn the solution was to walk into a wall that actually wasn’t a wall. Sure, this has always been a trademark for the mansions, but I’m sick of it. Forcing the player to randomly walk into walls to progress isn’t fun, at least not for me. A little hint of where the false wall is would have been great. I don’t know what they can change, but the side scrolling Mario series needs a change. The kind of change we saw from Super Mario 64 to Super Mario Sunshine...then to Galaxy. The “New” Super Mario Bros series isn’t NEW anymore. The title is a blatant lie. It has turned into the Nintendo version of the Call of Duty series. I want something new. Now, the Super Mario Maker series is great, which I’m not getting into in this video, cause that’s more of a player created content peer to peer game. Nintendo, please put an end to the New Super Mario Bros series. I want a truly NEW side scrolling Mario platforming experience.

Every game that has me collecting things, NEEDS to also give me a good reason to collect it. A work and reward system. I collect machine parts in Horizon Zero Dawn in order to craft better weapons. I collect herbs in Resident Evil 4 to fuse full heals. I collect coins in New Super Mario Bros 2 **** what? For a higher number on the counter? Grabbing coins in a Mario game is of course nothing new, but this is the first one to put so much emphasis on it. Yet the game provided no strong incentive to do so. I could grab all the coins in a level, but did I get a special upgrade? A bonus level? Nothing. There are already star coins. What’s the point of putting so much focus on regular coins? There’s a mode called “coin rush” where players collect as many coins as possible in 3 levels, then have their high score put on a leaderboard. It also lazily reused levels from the single player mode. Why would I want to play through the exact same levels again? Repetitive. Boring. I personally don’t give two **** about a leaderboard in a Mario game, so coin rush felt like all work no reward for me. Aside from that, this game is virtually a carbon copy of New Super Mario Bros Wii. Same physics, same visuals, same upgrades, same everything except level layout. In world 6, there was a really cool level that I wish the devs would’ve used in other worlds. While I was platforming, the Koopa Clown Car would be in the background flashing its eyes every 5 seconds or so. If I was caught in the open, I’d be petrified. My goal was to scramble my way from one cover to the next. It was nice to experience something different for a change. I feel the devs are getting very lazy with the 2D Marios. I’m getting tired of the same enemies, same boss fights, the same obstacles, the same hub world, and the same DAMN blocks over and over. I know how the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But time is starting to really wear on this formula. Innovate Nintendo! I know you’re good at it, so do it.

Good - interesting use of motion controls for platforms. Trying to move left and right while tilting the wiimote to move the platform is challenging. - new power ups. Bringing Yoshi back is cool, adds diversity to the gameplay - the numbered platforms where you had to kill enemies to keep the platform afloat was neat. - the spin koopa cart boss fight was kinda fun - the wiimote controls feel great. The dpad and buttons are perfect for platforming. - underwater level with luminescence jelly fish was creative. Bad - not being to save after each level was annoying. Replaying levels that I’ve already beaten just to return to the level that I lost is repetitive and not fun.

Good - it’s interesting feeling being able to jump off a seemingly endless drop but having gravity pull you around to the other side of the planet. - the motion controls gameplay segments are really fun. Like rolling the ball, and surfing. - shooting star bits at enemies and other things is fun. There’s also an incentive to collect star bits by feeding the fat luma to unlock a new galaxy. - the controls are very smooth. Spinning is a nice “second chance” - soaring through space from one asteroid to another feels great - the power ups are a lot of fun. And a lot of new ones. They are used in a very fun way with the stage designs. - bowser’s hair is styling - the gravity gameplay is really creative and fun. Both 2D segments and 3D. - I like the story book segments. Learning about Rosalina's past was interesting. It provided me incentive to progress in the game to unlock new chapters. Bad - the game is a tad too easy. Your platforming doesn’t even have to be perfect. If you nick and edge, the game will plop you right over it. The overall level designs were easier than other Mario games too.

Good - graphics are good for the ds - a lot of rehashed platforming from SMB and smw series. There are some new twists and platforming obstacles as well. Bad - only firefire power up. Mega mushroom is kinda boring. Shell power is useless. Mini mushroom is interesting but not enough of it. - the wall jump distance is inconsistent with the running speed. - I should be allowed to save any time in the overworld, not only between castles. - boss fights were repetitive. And not creative.

Good - The tropical setting feels very up lifting. - there’s something zen about cleaning up the world in Delfino. - showing a preview of the shine objective is very helpful, instead of going by the small phrase only for the stars in Mario 64. - the camera controls are so much better. Being able to freely move the camera, not fixed incremental movement. And L button being able to auto position camera behind Mario. - movement options are great - using Yoshi was really fun - sliding on the ground with water is a fast way to get around, which is convenient. - the run and shoot water controls makes good use of the unique trigger buttons of the GC controller. - the isolated platforming segments without my fludd were fun. Adds some challenging classic platforming to the gameplay without the crutches of the hover nozzle. - using fludd adds a lot to the gameplay and adds variety. Bad - nothing

Good - controls are smooth - Mario has various animations that makes him feel alive. Idle sleep animation, getting squished when falling from high up, or getting squashed by enemies. - cap power-ups are fun - going into paintings to enter levels is cool. The levels themselves are also diverse in visuals and environment. - when I played this as a kid, I never read the dialogue, but it’s actually not bad. - so much movement and attack options making the platforming very versatile. Bad - a button that automatically put the camera behind Mario would have been great. But completely forgive-able given this was the first foray into 3D camera controls. - I felt like they could have used a more appealing font. The text font used is a little hard to read and ugly. - rotating the camera in fixed lengths messes up with the movement Reflection - This game felt so difficult when I played it as a kid. The worlds felt so massive and detailed. It’s crazy to see how much bigger games have grown since. The worlds we see in Mario games now are so much more detailed.

Good - the drill item is fun to use - yoshi is so fun to use. - the visual, level, obstacle, enemy, and platforming design was incredibly creative. - I like how the devs transitioned the pink moving platformers into 3D - star ball stages are fun - the platform flip using the spin attack was creative and fun. - leading bomb-omb to blow up the glass ball was creative - more creative gravity levels - instead of just collecting coins for a star. Galaxy 2 has you to collect stars then a new planet is born, where there’s a bit of extra gameplay for you to collect the star. Bad - I prefer the hub world in galaxy 1, cause it felt like a home, and going into different rooms to enter levels. The classic hub world layout in galaxy 2 feels too concrete and boring. - the game is brain dead easy. Only thing that kept me going through the levels was the amusing, creative platforming. And the unique level, enemy, and obstacle designs. - Where’s Rosalina? I connected a lot with her in the first game from her life story in her story book. Now she’s nowhere in galaxy 2?

A long journey ****. Good - the sae flash forwards are cool way to tell story - the story behind futaba wanting her heart changed makes me feel the phantom thieves were real, cause I could use a heart change myself. This allowed me to relate to the game on a deeper level - there's a certain appeal and humor to leveling up skills doing random normal daily things like answering questions in class or crafting lock picks or eating a huge burger challenge. - the Japanese locations are well done. Good replication of the real places. - I love the foul language the characters use, like ryuji. It makes the chars feel organic. - the mental symbolism behind each palace based on what the villain perceives their world is interesting to see. Like ATMs for people kaneshiro sees. And art pieces of madarame's students. And kamoshida's view of Ann. It makes me think about what my palace would look like, and the way I view others would be symbolized in my own palace. - the music is awesome - the characters are diverse and interesting. - by the end of it, I felt like I knew the characters personally. It's like I knew them for a life time. This was one positive thing that came out of the insane amount of cutscenes and dialogue. - despite the game feeling it was dragged on during the middle, the ending was absolutely beautiful, and it wouldn't have been so had the game not been so long. I really felt like a journey. An adventure. As if I've made a group of long lasting friends. Bad - too much dialogue. When **** goes down, it's fine. But when nothing's going on, it's tedious going through it. - it's very hard to fuse the personas required by the twins because if the persona needed isn't on my list, I would need to spend yen to withdraw it just to see what the fusion result is, then toss it away to withdraw the personas I had on my list originally. This is so inconvenient to the point where I absolutely needed to refer to a guide. - sometimes RNG can just completely f*** you over. There was one time I got ambushed, one of the enemies inflicted rage on my whole party, so I couldn't heal, and the enemy just wiped me out in two turns. There was literally nothing I could do to save the situation the moment I got to ambushed. - it's unclear when you should spend time with a confidant. The game says bond Wong deepen, so does that mean I shouldn't request them? It's unclear what I should do - there's a lot of unnecessary dialogue. Like when grabbing an item in dungeons, some other party members always have to chime in with a completely useless comment, like oh look it's a treasure chest when I clearly see it, or maybe we should try to press this button, when I obviously will press it already. - the character animations aren't exactly ground breaking. The characters are standing there talking 95% of the time, making the cutscenes visually boring. MGS is known to have a crap ton of cutscenes too but at least you get to enjoy high quality animations, which makes it more interesting. - the negotiations are way too vague. The answers are terribly ambiguous. - it **** that I can't angle the camera freely while running in one direction. This makes scouting for enemies around me while moving difficult

Revolutionary game. Ocarina of Time paved the way for virtually all adventure, puzzle, exploration, dungeon crawling, story telling, target real time combat games that followed. To this day, many games still borrow these gameplay aspects from Ocarina of time. The progression is amazing. Whenever the game introduces an item, the game also makes the player use common sense to see where to apply that item to solve a puzzle to progress. There's a great sense of satisfaction when I did figure it out. Passing by unsolvable puzzles, I knew I'd probably pass by an item later to help me. However, there were some puzzles where the solution was a little vague, forcing me to refer to a guide. However, these were far and few in between. Most puzzles were reasonable. The puzzles within the dungeons were very deep, and fun to play through. Anticipating what new item I'd come across was exciting, and seeing how it could be applied to solve puzzles. The story is amazing. Time traveling between young link and adult link was cool, and probably a mind blowing concept to see in a game back in the 90s. The way some puzzles were incorporated with the time travel was also really neat. The areas were varied. Forest-y areas, watery areas, volcano, snowy caverns. It gave the world so much live on top of the abundance of different characters Link met. Some bad things **** ice cavern was stupid, because my wallet was full, so why would I think about getting the silver rupees when they are worth 100 each. I would go back when my wallet is empty to get the rupees then. But little did I know that the rupees also served as switches to open the gate. The game should have used switches instead of rupees to not be misleading. In Ganon's castle, I needed golden gauntlets to move big pillar in puzzle, but they didn't let me know I had to get it in another room in the castle. In kakaro village, I had to go through invisible opening in the well with no hint aside from "whispers in the area". This was to get the lens of truth which was used to SEE invisible walls. Being required to solve a puzzle using the item which was concealed inside is like trying to open a safe that has the key locked inside.

Takes things from other games, but don't do them as well. I didn't really follow the hype leading up to the release of Cyberpunk. Only ever saw a few images and maybe minutes of a trailer, and Keanu Reeves showing up on stage. Thought I'd pick it up and try it when it released. With expectations so high, I figured this has to be a great game. Cyberpunk takes gameplay aspects from a few other big titles. The open world mission based progression from GTA. The stealth/aggression FPS combat from Far Cry. And the level up perk dialogue options from Fallout. But each of these lack the depth from its' original counterpart. The open world in Cyberpunk a beautiful, and reasonably big. But the traffic AI, the law enforcement, and the pedestrian AI don't feel the most organic. Pedestrians would reply with the same few things whenever you spoke to them. The things you could do were also quite limited in the city. As far as I knew, vehicles you could drive didn't have that much variety as well. Bike, car, or suv. Driving around in Night City was laggy for me, but maybe the problem could be fixed with a better PC build. The game let me approach combat either with stealth, or guns blazing. I love stealth, and that's what I attempted at first. But this proved to be problematic. Scanned objects turned into a jumble of mess on my screen with random objects overlapping human enemies. The game intends for me to hack a radio to distract an enemy, but it takes me some time to actually align my cursor with the radio to hack it, making sure it's not the dude I hack. Hacking to distract enemies is a cool thought, but it serves the same purpose as throwing a rock to get enemies to turn around in many other stealth games of this nature, and it brings out the same effect with much less tedious work. I soon resorted to just going in guns blazing, as stealth became tedious and not fun. Most of the time, I'd be noticed for really stupid reasons. Either they suddenly turned around right before I could get close enough. OR the stupid double tap dodge input screwed me over. At times I'd tap the direction keys to slowly get closer, but that input combo is also for quick dodging, which means I'd accidentally blow my cover. The perk tree is enormous. Like WAY too big. The only way I see anyone can even come close to completing it is if they do every side mission and take on almost every random street conflict. It's not necessary to level each perk, but I can't imagine anyone being able to do it unless they are a hardcore completionist. The dialogue, voice acting, and characters were great. Although, there were many characters I wish had lived longer. I love it when games or shows kill characters, but I really wish Cyberpunk had kept some of them for longer, as I grew attached to them. Really wanted them to stick to, at least, until near the end. The story was interesting. Mind transfer. But it's nothing I haven't experienced before. SOMA and the Observer come to mind. As well as movies like Source Code, and the Matrix. All three arguably portray it better, imo. But Cyberpunk did tell it in a fascinating and unique way. Having Johnny around questioning my every move was interesting, and made me think about my morals, which side I was on, and what I should do. All in all, I did enjoy the game. But it's nothing I haven't experienced before. It's like CD Project Red tried to mesh together a bunch of the popular open world gameplay aspects together, but the result is just an average of all the big games that perfected the formula. The futuristic cyber theme definitely gives the game it's identity, albeit only visually.

The fall from grace continues. How does Nintendo mess up a once critically acclaimed series like Paper Mario? EVERYONE loved Paper Mario on the N64. EVERYONE loved The Thousand Year Door. They did a two story drop kick right onto all their fans' faces with Sticker Star. Alright. Fine. Nintendo likes experimenting with new ideas. Fan reception to sticker star was terrible. Mixed at best. Surely, they would return to their original formula, and give fans what they want right? NO. We get a big **** YOU! in the form of Color Splash. GONE are the diverse species and inhabitants in the first two games. All we get are TOADS, TOADS, and MORE BORING ASS TOADS. A professor? A yellow toad. A merchant? A red toad. A barista? A green toad. Where is the variety?? I had ZERO anticipation going into the next area, because I knew I was just going to meet another ****ing toad. Aside from toads. The game would have shy guys talk sometimes, maybe a koopa here and there, and that's it. It's so horrendously bland. Characters are completely forgettable. THING stickers make a return. Omfg. WHY? I hated this in Sicker Star, and they bring it right back. Though, there was a Toad in the main town I could ask if I needed a thing card. But he wouldn't tell me what to avoid cause it would be futile without the thing card. So, I went into a boss fight with Iggy, thinking my reward would be the thing card I needed. BUT NO, turns out I needed that thing card for the fight. I wasted like 10 cards to fight him up to the point where Huey warned me that I didn't have the required card. WELL **** YOU, give me back my cards AND my time! Don't ALLOW the player to go into a fight IF they don't have what's required to win the fight. SIMPLE CONCEPT NINTENDO, ****! Now the only option was to flee the battle, or restart my console. THEN return to the battle with the required Thing card. **** that. After this, I just gave up. I wasn't going to have my time wasted further with these trial and error **** gameplay mechanics. Want me to have a thing card before a boss fight? Sure. Tell me WHERE to find it, and WHO I need to use it against, BEFORE I accidentally stumble into that fight because I didn't ****ing know. Or at least make SUPER **** CLEAR. Don't force me to travel back to the main town after every area JUST to ask that toad in the trash can to see if I need a thing sticker for the next area. This game is a huge waste of ****ing time. 10 step backwards from where the series started. Don't call your paper mario games "Paper Mario". Call it Puzzle Mario or some s***, cause this AIN'T the Paper Mario I knew and loved. Why can't you be on the same page as your fans Nintendo? Stop turning your good games to s***.

A hollow shell of the OG Paper Mario games. Good - the cardboard and paper themes are really well done, probably the most well done in all of the paper Mario games. The attention to detail when I came to how objects interacted with the elements, like wind, was very well depicted. - the 3D looks really good. - peeling stickers off of walls on the floor feels quite satisfying, and putting stickers onto missing parts of the levels also felt quite nice. - I like how the music transitions into a different remix of the same song when I enter a new world on the map - the roulette is pretty fun to use, as I got good at the timing. Made the random battles go by much quicker. Bad - you don't even need the time block that well. The window to block is so huge that it's really hard to fail it. There's just no challenge when it comes to countering. I'm also really upset at the removal of super guard, because it removes the option of very skilled players to attempt it. - because there is no XP, the wild enemies became a matter of how well i could Dodge them, because there was absolutely no reason for me to fight them since they offered nothing besides some coins, which I could already find plenty of in the level, and after the level. - the combat is also very shallow. There are no special timing moves. All the qte's were timing the hammer and timing the jumps. Which is way less diverse than the original two paper Mario games. - some of the scraps that you have to turn into stickers aren't very obvious as to where you're supposed to use them. And collecting the three tablets that you need to access world 2-5 was also very ambiguous as to their location. It was never made clear that each piece was hidden in a separate world, inside of a chest. The game never stated that I needed to combine tablets, never did they mention that the tablets were scattered across three different worlds, and never did they mention that each piece was hidden in a chest. As a consequence, I was trying to paper eyes random scraps in world 2-5, obviously to know avail. And now my scrapbook was stuck with a bunch of scrap stickers which took up all the space from regular stickers. - it's completely unintuitive and annoying that you must turn objects into stickers in order to use them against the boss. It basically meant I had to fight the boss one time without the super effective sticker, probably lose, restart, go back to deckleberg, make the object into a sticker, travel to the boss again, then fight him. I felt the game should have just allowed me to use the object without having to turn it into a sticker. - because battles gained me nothing, I avoided them. But this caused another issue. because I tried to avoid as many battles as I could, there were many puzzle clues that I missed because I was trying to escape the enemy. - sometimes puzzles require certain stickers to be solved. if you didn't have those stickers, it meant you have to walk all the way back to the entrance, then all the way back to the store to buy the stickers you need, then travel all the way back to where the puzzle was. This was extremely tedious. - Overly cryptic puzzle: 3-5 random hidden blocks to cross broken bridge - Overly cryptic puzzle: 3-4 wiggler segment hidden in random bush - Overly cryptic puzzle 5-5: refrigerator freezes entire volcano?! - Overly cryptic puzzle 5-5: falling rocks don't create hole in cracked ground except on a single crack. How am I supposed to know that one crack is special?! - for the log River level, how does running on a raft make it move? The logs are clearly connected, or else they would have drifted apart. and if they are connected, there is no way one can run on the raft to make it move. They should have just given Mario a paddle, which makes way more sense. - I think the biggest problem with this game is having to convert things into stickers inside of shops. This means that if I encountered puzzles requiring a thing sticker, I would need the thing itself. If I didn't, I'd probably be trying a bunch of different s*** that doesn't work, until I looked at a guide to see the thing that I was missing. At which point, I would have to backtrack to a certain world to get the thing. Then go to a shop to convert the thing into a sticker. Then travel all the way back to the world with the puzzle, and all the way to where the puzzle is actually located. Only then can I apply the thing sticker. This is completely unintuitive backtracking. And is almost impossible to solve if you haven't found that thing when trying to solve the puzzle. - they removed everything good from the paper Mario series. Partner abilities, star Spirit abilities, partners in general, XP, and an actual hub world. Instead of learning new abilities to open the way to the next world, the progression is made way more linear, and when it isn't, you're forced to trial an error thing stickers to attempt to open the way.

It's not a Paper Mario game. Good - it's nice to see peach being a playable character. Her umbrella techniques are pretty cool. - it's fun to flip in different places to see what secrets May lie in the 3D world. - I'm glad I'm able to stay on Carrie pixl and still am able to interact with things, so that I can maintain my speed. In the old paper Mario games all the fast partners couldn't interact or jump high enough for me to maintain them throughout the level usually. - squirps and the chameleons stories were really really funny. The pixl in squirps story using the elder's ancient clue to wipe his ass after 1000 years, so squirp can use the bathroom. And chameleon's play on the stereotype anime loving geek trying to mac on peach. - the ending was very bittersweet. I cared a lot about the story between Bleck and Tippi. Seeing how they sacrificed themselves to save the worlds was noble and touching. Something I've never felt in a Mario game. Bad - I think this is a good game for a Mario platformer, but I don't like how it's considered part of the paper Mario series. Besides the 2D characters being in the 3D world when you use the flip ability, there are no paper jokes like the past two paper Mario had. - not being able to use badges, special attacks, and star Spirit attacks takes a lot away from the diversity of the gameplay known to the paper Mario series. The only thing that remains are the items. And the partner abilities, which are moderately fun to use. - the pixels don't have a backstory, which means I can't relate to them or bond with their character. Every time I find a new one, their dialogue is just a bunch of nonsense. Each time I find a new one, I just want them to shut up, come with me, so that I can use their power. They're simply not memorable at all compared to Mario's partners in the old paper Mario games. Heck, even Yoshi is more memorable than these pixels in the normal Mario games despite not having a voice. - some puzzles are extremely boring and stupid like the one where I had to hit blocks in a long sequence. The game actually told me to write down the sequence and hit the blocks in that order, which was not fun. - the 2D shooting in the squirp levels were pretty boring. I don't play Mario for side scrolling shooting gameplay. - The hub world is too big and too similar looking to navigate. Sometimes it's hard to remember where everything is, especially looking for some hard pillars. I forget exactly obstacle which was in the way, but now I can pass with a new ability, because the areas just look so similar especially between flipside and flopside - in world 8-3, there was a completely non-intuitive puzzle design where I had to hit a block to open a door that was completely not obvious. Pointing with Tippi didn't even help. In 8-3, what is the points of following dementio into all the old worlds again, when there's absolutely nothing new, and I'm just walking down the same paths for the sake of it. It just feels like unnecessary filler. - The combat is too damn easy. The fights required almost no thought. A huge step down from its two predecessors. Very rarely did I feel a threat in a boss fight. And peach had the most OP move, her umbrella made her virtually invincible.

What an adventure! Good - stylish points add extra challenge to the inputs. Super guard is a great addition, it rewards godlike timing. - the chapters felt extremely diverse. The missions in each one and the story, the dialogue, the scenario was very very well crafted. It kept me intrigued. Like in Glitzville, I really wanted to know who was behind all the missing fighters. - the chapter with the train was an interesting change of flow. Being on a train was cool, and taking the gameplay into the station was nice surprise too. - The partner powers and mario powers in the overworld were very cool. Good use of the moves to solve puzzles. Although some were too ambiguous - The story behind the partners were interesting. They did make me care about them. - The dialogue is of course superb. Incredibly charming, and funny. - I liked how they tied in Bowser despite him not being the main antagonist. - The TEC side story with Peach was also very sweet. A little sad, but it was a welcome change from the main story. Bad - the game won't let me turn around hammer quickly. Which makes it hard to counter attack with hammer if the enemy is approaching me from behind. - some puzzles are really stupid, like what the heck is a water hole, how am I supposed to know I can blow these boxes because their paper in the storage room in glitzville - it's stupid how items and coins after a battle can drop into the water. There was a fire enemy that it was fighting very close to the water and after I beat him, all the goodies dropped straight into the water after. - the depth perception in some parts of the game looks really off, making me fall into a water or off a cliff by accident because it was hard to gauge Mario's distance. - some of the story progression events are really ambiguous to figure out period because sometimes you need to talk to an NPC with a certain partner with you, which isn't always obvious. - tracking general white to literally every single world just to talk to an NPC then moving on to the next world was pointless, mundane and not fun. - I don't understand why there are so many sprites in the game, when you max out your partner upgrades super early in the game. - I found much of the offensive and debuff items pretty useless because I could dispatch pretty much all the enemies with regular FP attacks. - there are too many sections of the game where Mario just walks around looking for something or looking for someone. Like in chapter 6 in the train. I'm just constantly running back and forth between passengers. And chapter 7 in the moon fortress. And here I'm just taking elevators and just walking from room to room.

Bursting with charm and humor. Good - The dialogue and cutscenes are charming and hilarious. Really gave life to the whole mario universe. - the combat was a lot of fun. Vvarious QTEs were challenging but fun to pull off, but not too punishing to the point where I would get frustrated. - The character and level designs were diverse. Never was there an area or population that felt repetitive. - I loved how the items all had an image shown with it. It made the whole game more visual friendly. Unlike many RPGs where I feel like I'm scrolling through walls of text to manage items. - The Peach segments were funny, and was a good step away from the Mario gameplay. - Partner abilities in and out of battle were fun to use. - Travelling with the spin move gave me something to do to move faster, which made traversing a little less boring. Bad - nothing

A game filled with old Japanese history and culture. Good - I like how the game uses wind has a navigation indicator rather than the traditional map or bar. - I like how fast quick travel is. There's virtually no loading time. - the game is absolutely stunningly beautiful. I would find myself standing there just admiring how the lights reflects off of each blade of grass and how it reflects off of the ocean. And how the wind interacts with the plant's life it's also serene. - it's interesting to see Jin struggle between the samurai code of frontal combat versus the thieves method of stealth assassination. Should he make his uncle proud by keeping the code or break it in order to get past certain areas more smoothly? - the sound of each sword swing into the opponent's flesh feels very lifelike, and as if you are swinging really in the hands of a skilled Samurai slicing through your enemies like chopping up a piece of steak. The injured and death animations of the enemies are also very realistic, as well as their bloodstatter. - the structure and the gameplay style isn't particularly anything new, but the setting and the accuracy the developers paid attention to in regards to feudal Japan is absolutely incredible. Which plays a big part in my enjoyment of the game. Like the grapple, the climbing, the stealth, and in some way even the combat I've experienced in other games, like assassin's Creed, uncharted, and sekiro. - I was playing with a fan blowing in front of me and it actually enhanced the feeling whenever I swiped up to summon a gust of wind for navigation. - when the sword fights go smoothly and I pair every single attack and Dodge and counter successfully, it feels extremely satisfying, like I'm a badass samurai. - I'm glad this game makes the walk speed of the protagonist the same as the ally's. In many games the Ally has a fixed lock speed and the game forces me to tilt the stick at a certain distance to match the speed. In this game, it is so much more convenient when the Ally will Sprint if I Sprint, and walk if I walk. - kenji's side quest is a nice comic relief to the seriousness of all the other quests. - the game makes it really easy to see what upgrades are available. - although deflecting arrows do not take skill, since I'm just holding one button. It's still really cool to watch jin walk forward slowly, then immediately speeds up when he deflects an arrow, and imagining the impending doom that's enemy must feel as he sees jin approach. - the gameplay is very very customizable, in the sense that you can learn techniques that cater to your playstyle, wether defensive or offensive. - I really like the debates the game portrays in terms of whether a person should fight with honor or use whatever deceitful trick up his sleeve to win. It makes me think about competitive gaming, and how so many players would fight with "honor" and frown on camping and cheesy tactics. At the end of the day, I think a player should be allowed to use every tool the game offers to win. If a cheesy tactic turns out to be the dominant one, then there is a flaw in the game's design, unless that is what the developer intended. - the haiku sections, although are simple, the game makes it very serene. Bad - sometimes the camera angle goes into a really bad position because there's no lock on system in this game. Sometimes it goes into a position where I cannot see the enemies attack animation, which led me to get attacked even though I was ready to Parry. - sometimes climbing down a wall is annoying because I hold down to climb, but there may be a small platform that breaks the climb and I end up walking off the platform and falling to my death. It wasn't clear that the platform was not a climbable ledge until I dropped on for that split second, leaving me no time to react by letting go of the joystick. - I don't understand why ryozu don't hunt for food for his men when there is so much wildlife. Bears, deers, boars, foxes. He would go as far as to burn his own people than to hunt for animals? from a logical point of view it just doesn't make sense. - there's no way to see the bow cool down meter unless I aim with the bow, which is inconvenience during the heat of a battle. - the chain assassination technique should allow me to use Square to chain assassinate. Because when I use triangle to chain assassinate, The prompt doesn't always show up until I am right next to the enemy, meaning if the enemies are not close enough for me to chain assassinate, then I end up doing a heavy strike, which blows my cover and screws up stealth, just because the enemies are a bit further apart than what is required by the chain assassinate technique. - they really need to slow down time a lot more when cycling between gadgets. There's way too many.

An interesting change from its predecessors. Good - paper Mario's attack inputs and defend inputs is a fresh addition to the battle mechanics period instead of the same double jump timing that I'm super bored of after playing through all the Mario and Luigi games. - the papercraft minigame is quite a step away from the timing mechanics of the game, but it's still kind of fun. - the new overworld abilities are fun to use. - sprinting around the larger world map is fun - having 3 buttons to control 3 characters makes this game more challenging. Bad - there was a block smashing minigame where I had to destroy blocks to save toads. On the big blocks I thought I had to time the triple hammer attack on the last hit, because it's the strongest hit which break s the big block. But in actuality I had to use Mario's hammer to stop the block. But how would I know that Mario's hammer would stop a block that is 10 times bigger than him? The logical method would be to time the last hit which is the most powerful. Because of this twisted logic the game used, I was stuck on this puzzle for a long ass time. - that part where you're supposed to guess which hammer bro has The medallion is stupid, because the hint they give is the location of the hammer bro near the m blocks in the back and right, but after having hit all the blocks, I don't remember which area has the m blocks and which area doesn't. - the toad mini games grow increasingly more annoying as I progressed in the game. The mini game surrounding them sometimes feel broken, like I feel I am approaching it correctly but the solution is actually completely backwards. They also become quite repetitive. - some of the attack animations of the enemies were hard to see when it came to the depth of the attack. This caused me to dodge with the wrong character because I wasn't sure who they were aiming for. This might be because I was playing on the 2DS. - Sometimes the papercraft mini games just feel extremely clunky. Maybe that's what it's meant to be, but it feels unfair at times.

A good interactive horror flick. Good - the totem hints are vague enough that you can usually read what it's trying to say, and it is satisfying to successfully save a character based on the hint when the event comes. - the don't move sections are tense - the QuickTime events windows are very small, but not impossible to hit. It actually feels satisfying to get the timing. - the branching storyline is great. My decisions made an impact on which characters lived or died. Most of the choices were a little ambiguous, but clear enough to get through it with common sense. If I ended up killing a character it was usually my own fault. - the game reminds me of final destination. A movie concept I liked. - the motion capture was done very well. The emotions of the characters feel organic. Bad - Chris knows the monsters hunt at night after meeting the old man, so they should have stayed in the basement until dawn. Plot hole. - the game is too short.

A fantastic adventure. Good - I like alloy's personality. She doesn't take s*** from anyone, but yet she has sympathy and is reasonable to those who deserve it. She's also very strong and does not rely on others. - the game touches on the controversial topic of AI singularity. The way they told the story made it such a mystery, and it's really cool how there's this whole new primitive civilization that came out of this apocalypse. And the whole time it made me constantly Wonder what this project zero Dawn was. - it's very interesting listening to all the audio recordings of people in the past, especially the people who worked on zero dawn. And how each one of them came to either accept or decline their fate. - the thought of machines duplicating endlessly consuming biomatter is scary. And how after they've consumed all biomatter, there would be just millions of robots hibernating on the surface of the planet waiting for any new biomatter to appear. Like some kind of grim silent death trap for any alien. - I feel like a tomb Raider of sorts, because I'm reading pretty much tombs of life before the robot apocalypse. Except the theme is a little reversed, because alloy is a primitive person rating the tomb of a more advanced civilization. - the constant back and forth gameplay in the main quest between the present day affairs in the primitive land, and the contrasting tomb rating of the advanced past gives diversity to the gameplay. It's like two parallel storylines, which tv shows use too. - that part when sylens rescued alloy was epic - seeing alloy rise from being an outcast, nobody, to literally a holy figure as she was walking out of all mother was a very surreal moment even from the point of view of the player. I really like how alloy doesn't care for authority and the law if it does not make sense, even from the matriarchs. - many of the side missions are well connected to the two main story lines. Both the primitive civilization and the robot apocolypse past. The game introduces you to characters in the beginning that Branch out into side quests later on in the game. This fundamental introduction to these characters allows me to make a connection with them, and for me to actually care about the quests that they put me on later. Not many games are able to make me care about side missions like Horizon zero Dawn can. - using the rope caster and tieing down robots then hitting their armor parts off or using critical hits on them feels very satisfying. - knowing the sacrifice that Elisabet made was just heart wrenching. - there's a good balance between using melee, projectiles, and traps in combat. Bad - The ledges can be highlighted more vividly. Because they aren't, there are many times where I am not sure where I can be climbing until I started randomly jumping. - some of the NPC facial animations when they're talking doesn't match the expressive voice acting. The facial movements of each character just aren't all that big. - there are a lot of ways to exploit the combat using the environment. Like staying in a spot where the boss can't reach you. Most games would restrict the area you can go but Horizon zero Dawn allows you to pretty much go anywhere in a large area during the fight. - the final chapter ended too fast. I was really hoping the final battle was gonna be more epic. It was alright. It just happened really fast, and there weren't any new machines, just a big deathbringer and other minions. Given the amazing story this far, I also expected a twist to happen, but the ending was very predictable. Still good, but I was hoping for something more spicy.

A delivery sim, with a bizarre story. Good - the game has very realistic aspects in regards to movement and overall human capabilities. Sam feels very vulnerable, which forces me to manage movements and physical exertions. - it's cool how you can use other people's equipment online to navigate the terrain. - the stealth BT sections are very tense. Something to do with the cry of a baby which makes the tense environment even more tense. I guess it's the traditional belief that even I carry that babies can detect supernatural entities. - using sam's **** as grenades is kind of funny. - short cutscenes of BB keeps the mystery up. - The twist at the end of the game was very cool. It was all very confusing rights before the end, and I was on the verge of giving up on the confusing story. But during the last cutscenes, everything was made clear, all the questions were answered. And the twist was pretty crazy. Bad - the gameplay has too much walking. There needs to be a bit more action. More offensive stealth. - can't explore the cities or facilities. - the game focuses too heavily on defensive gameplay which isn't exactly up my alley. But I guess it's expected **** made by Kojima. - the feeling of repetition sets in quickly. Just taking an order, delivering it, looking at a hologram talk to you, take the next order, rinse and repeat. It's also very weird how Sam doesn't say a single word when the hologram is talking. - the stealth sections are tense, but they also get repetitive since there are mostly only two types, against BTs and mules. - there's apparently like 50,000 people in one of these knot cities, but I never see a single soul anywhere around these facilities. Neither am I allowed to see them inside the facilities. I just wish there was some way I could explore the lives of these people while holed up in there. I think it would have been interesting had they included that in the game. - the environment gets repetitive too. I traverse the same Rocky paths, grassy paths, muddy paths. They all look and feel the same wherever I Go. Sure they have their own unique properties, but it's literally these three types of terrains repeating over and over again throughout the world. - the BTs eventually just weren't scary anymore. Rather annoying. Most of the time I just wanted to get to my destination just so I can progress the story which was the only thing I cared about. So I just avoided them as much as I could, craft a bunch of grenades and just kill them and get on with the route, or even just build a timefall shelter and skip the rain completely. I really didn't want to be crawling around the entire map slowly just to get to my next destination. - that part where I was supposed to take that girl with the hourglass to her boyfriend didn't feel very emotional even though I think the game tried to make it look emotional, because I don't know either of these characters. There was no character buildup of any kind prior to the mission. That cutscene and the crying and the voice acting seemed very sad but I felt nothing. - the higgs boss fight felt extremely clumsy to play. Camera angle went crazy and I just kept getting interrupted. Fighting him in person was also really annoying, because using the strand didn't always work period and I tried canceling out his detector, but it never worked no matter what timing I tried. And the hand-to-hand combat had sad music but I felt no emotion, because I just wanted it to end. - the whole buildup with fragile and Higgs, and the hate that fragile had for him didn't amount too much. When she finally got his hand on him, she didn't really do anything besides punch him once in the face then execute him with the gun. The way she explained how she felt about him, I really thought she would give him a treacherous painful end. Maybe have him die in the time fall. But just a bullets the head completely negated everything she's said before. And her comeback about "damaged goods" was super lame, and super weak. - the baby crying during fights or like a big fall becomes annoying. On top of that, I'm really not a kid's person. I can't stand taking care of a kid. So all the crying eventually just got on my nerves.

Game soft locked. Unable to progress. SOFT LOCKED - game soft locked in Mount pajamaja. The massif bros triggered an older cutscene when I interacted with them, halting the progress and rendering the game unplayable. Neither do I have a old save to load. This is why they should allow the player to create multiple save slots to avoid game breaking glitches like these from ruining the game. Would've given a higher score if I was able to continue playing. My review before the soft lock happened: Good - not being able to scroll the map with stylus is inconvenient - 3D battles are fun and different Bad - too many tutorials for obvious things. The game holds your hand on the most obvious little puzzles.

Perfect marriage of story telling and action adventure. Good - Uncharted have the most impressive and dramatic opening sequences in any game. Story-wise and cinematic wise. Uncharted 4 is no different. The game totally had me fooled that Drake had to take refuge on an island because he was being chased down. Then about 2 be taken out back to get executed and had to find a way to escape. Now that's what I thought, but in actuality it turns out he wants to be in this prison and it was actually working with the head guard to access a place with treasure. After this, I already know I'm in for a good ride. - Nathan Drake talking to himself while climbing, exploring, solving puzzles, and examining items it's pretty interesting, comedic, and build on his character and thoughts. I've lived alone for a long time, and I talk to myself quite often. Speaking my mind more like, as not to sound crazy this is actually a common thing for people who live alone for an extended period of time. I relate to Nathan Drake as a character in this way. - the addition of the grappling hook is a good addition for uncharted, despite it's haven't been done in many other platformers like this. It's not original but it fits and it's well done. - I love how with each uncharted title, the devs keep everything that's good, and build on it. They remove everything that's wrong. In this way, the next uncharted has always been better than the last, at least from a technical standpoint. - I like how the game makes you tap x to carry something underwater while swimming. This takes a bit more energy for you as the player, which reflects more closely with Drake carrying the box while swimming. As opposed to simply just holding x, which takes no effort whatsoever on the players part, making it not feel realistic. - at the beginning, when Drake was back in his home after the salvage, he had a bunch of old items that were found from previous games among his storage. Despite having beaten uncharted a very long time ago, looking at these items now brings back so much memories. Each game felt like a huge adventure. It goes to show how immersive each uncharted title truly was, at least for me. The story and the characters have stuck with me. - knowing the relationship between Drake and his girlfriend and all the crap that they've been through, it's endearing to see. They got married and are living a happy life. And the crash Bandicoot section was absolutely hilarious. - when it comes to cinematic heavy games, uncharted is among the best if not the best. But what makes uncharted so special is that it manages to balance gameplay and cinematics. A game like Beyond two souls is a really good cinematic experience, but when it comes to the gameplay portion, it really falls short. Without the few QuickTime inputs, it would just be a straight-up movie. Uncharted 4 though balances it's perfectly. More impressive yet is that there's fighting, shooting, parkouring, swinging, and puzzle-solving. So many gameplay elements, but yet they can make it such a cinematic experience. That is what sets uncharted 4 apart from any other game in its genre. - climbing plus stealth is really fun. Reminecent of assassin's Creed. - using the rope as a clutch last second save during the parkouring feels satisfying to land. - the random banter between Nate as his brother is funny. And it's interesting to learn about the lore and the two of them figuring out the history behind the pirates - off road jeep driving was fun. Crazy off the cliff sequence - uncharted is the king of epic cinematic sequences. The clock tower portion put me at the edge of my seat when Drake was falling down from the tower. - there's always some underlying issue, like Nathan's wife finding out about his lie, his brother hiding something potentially, etc. This keeps my interest in the game outside the main story. - interesting to watch Nathan struggle when he's fatigue state like when he was attacked on the island. It makes him feel human. - using the piton adds diversity to the climbing. Making it less repetitive. - final boss fight was fun. Reaction time based sword fight. - ending with Nathan's daughter was cute. And a nice peek into the future. Good to see Nathan and the gang doing well. Seeing the family of 3 so tight nit and happy makes me wish I had a family like that. Bad - nothing

Some visual issues hold it back. Good - transition between lower screen and top screen when controlling the two duos is fast and seamless. Unlike in Bowser's inside story where the transition takes a few seconds - the battles make use of all four buttons which makes it much more challenging, especially the Bros attack. - being able to separate the past Mario Brothers and the present Mario Brothers, and control them separately is pretty interesting. - the partner battle mechanics and puzzles were really creative. Having to hit extra buttons to perform attacks made the gameplay more challenging. - the dialogue is charming and funny as with all the other Mario and Luigi games. - enemies are very creative. Bad - having to buy bros attack means they aren't readily available for me to use if I run out while in the past world. I would have to go back into the future to buy it in a shop. - too much lag before the hammer counter. makes it hard to time the counter - shadows are difficult to see during battles making it difficult to tell which brother the attack is going for. - certain parts of the level is hard to tell whether it is on a higher level or lower level. This probably has to do with the limitations of the DS hardware.

A remake with a lot more stuff. Good - voices were done really well. - visuals look stunning - boss fights are challenging. Switching chars to counter certain attacks is fun - the ATB gauge maintains the turn based element in the real time combat. This separates it from games like tales - the shop refilling the necessary items on discount reduces the menuing which I appreciate. - I loved the auto weapon leveling. It greatly decreased the amount of menuing I had to do. But it's still there for those who like customization. - once I got a hang of the combat, the fights can become quite exhilarating. - Glad to see the pay homage to Zack at the end. - the themes of the various areas were unique. One second I'm in a steam punk reactor setting, then a busy clubbing street, then the slums, then a haunted factory. There was a lot of diversity, keeping it fresh. Bad - countering should have been explained more in depth. Doesn't seem like I can counter all attacks. What can and can I not counter?? - some of the gestures are weird. Not human like. Over done. Kind of like anime. - Jessie is way too flirty. It's awkward watching her flirt even in front of her avalanche team members. I'm not even in wedge and Biggs shoes, but I'm weirded out in their stead. - some of the movement animations were ridgid. Especially the transitions from real-time movement 2 a cutscene. Last of Us 2 is an example where that transition is done seamlessly, well FF7 still carries on that rigid transitions you see and old RPGs. Facial animations of NPCs are mostly very rigid. - the game is very linear. - not being able to cancel an attack combo into dodge roll is inconvenient. But maybe it's to force the player to plan ahead before attacking, which if is the case, then forgivable. - whenever clouds block animation faces the opposite way of the incoming attack, it looks very weird. I wish they would have made Cloud automatically turn around oh, so that at least it would look like he was blocking the attack. Although the attack is still considered blocked, it just visually looks weird. - the lever puzzle is so shallow and boring and it doesn't work properly I clearly matched the timing, but it still didn't work many times, which was frustrating. - aerith is too overly positive. To the point where she doesn't seem human. Even her "angry" emotion is not angry at all. She's like an android. - feels like I'm watching a chick flick. There's so much focus on romance and flirting themes. The flirting is too blatant. I like when it's hinted, not when it's so obvious. - teammate AI really dumb sometimes. Don't evade or defend properly. And builds docus meter so slow. - parry attack has no i-frames, meaning if I parry an attack I can potentially be killed by another incoming attack during my counter attack. This makes parrying unsafe at times. Cloud should be invulnerable during the counter attack. Either that or let me parry the second hit.

Started off weak, but ended strong. Good - chippy is good addition. It's sassy dialogue adds a lot of humor, especially when it's talking to Bowser. - the map is done better, allowing for dpad to scroll - the flip screen Bowser battles are cool - the puzzles involving switching between Bowser and Mario Luigi are creative. - this game builds on Bowser's character as well as his minions. Gives lore to the villains of the Mario universe, which is cool. - the dialogue and scenarios are funny. Bowser's soft touch guy persona is pretty funny. - the difficulty does ramp up a bit more later, so even the Bowser parts were a little more challenging. - the game gets more diverse and interesting later on when I'm able to control Mario and Luigi in the overworld more. And the interior Bowser parts were also visually different which made the overall experience less bland. Bad - the Bowser segements are extremely easy since there's no need to control two characters for counter attacks. - all Mario and luigi's sections are 2D, which gets boring compared to the 3D puzzles in super star saga. - Bowser's gameplay gets boring. Most of his moveset requires no timing skill. - Mario and Luigi environments look the same in every area. Just gooshy insides of Bowser. It gets visually repetitive.

Like you're playing the movie. Good - swinging around in the city feels so good. The inputs are so smooth, and it looks and feels so organic, just like how it looks in the movies. The city on the ground was done really realistically as well. I could walk along the streets of New York city and just swing on to a building at anytime I want. I could also swing attach myself to a building then climb up. The design allowed for complete freedom for freestyling. - the combats is deep. The fundamental design is Dodge and attack. But I will also need to use my webs to interrupt gunman. And to reposition myself. It feels and looks very smooth especially after the controls are mastered. Yeah I got to say it come back and I'm not used to using circle to dodge stay weird I was actually expecting I do not agree with Cincinnati on the same cited you know Facebook options definitely not - Peter is pretty funny sometimes - I guess it's an interesting balance the devs had to decide on when it came to balancing difficulty and smooth progression during action segments. - being able to grapple to any ledge makes travelling extremely versatile and gave me an immense sense of freedom - Stan Lee cameo - MJ working with spiderman for the stealth section in subway area was cool - the voice work is phenomenal. Peter's voice and dialogue is perfect. - the city looks amazing. From buildings down to the civilians. Really feels like I'm swinging around NYC. - the scorpion hallucinations seems like they borrowed the sequence from dishonored and a little Batman Arkham asylum scarecrow Bad - I'm surprised to see a skip option four puzzles. This is probably the first time I seen such an option. I think they should give a hint instead of giving the player the option to just skip over the content completely. It encourages laziness, and an easy way out. Though this is a single player game so it doesn't really affect anything negatively, but I don't agree with this approach. - no practice arena. I really don't understand why so many hack and/beat em up games like Spider-Man do not have a practice arena where you can pit yourself against a few baddies, some with guns, some without words, and some with rocket launchers, interests practice all your combos and special abilities. Spider-Man does have quite a deep combat system with the dodging, and perfect dodging, and web follow-ups. for me to fully have fun with the game, I want to be able to be very familiar with the combo inputs and all of my options. I don't want to master it by the time I am like 50% into the game. I don't want to have to test my combos during story mode. I want to have mastered my combos before I tackle more of the story. Because by the time I've mastered the combos, there's only like 50% of the game left for me to enjoy the combat system to its full potential. Bayonetta was a deep beat em up game. And it had a practice arena where you can test out any combo you want. I don't understand why Spider-Man and many other beat-em-ups don't have such an arena. Is it really that hard to set up an empty area with some baddy's there for me to beat up and practice my abilities? - I don't like how the Dodge button and the attack button are both on the face of the controller. Swapping from attacking to dodge takes a bit more time because my thumb needs to fly over to the circle button. When I try to react to the enemy's attack I need to account for this tiny delay which could have been avoided if I could remap the Dodge button to a shoulder button. - dr Octavius found out way too easily that Peter was spiderman. Just carelessly walks in room and sees his costume? That's extremely stupid if Peter actually cared about keeping it a secret - there's quite a fetch quest portion to the gameplay than I had initially anticipated. I suppose it's to give me a reason to swing around the city. But the tasks themselves are quite mundane. If only I could do some aerial combat with another aerial enemy, that'd be a lot cooler. - the hardest difficulty isn't that difficult. There are so many upgrades but 90% were completely useless to me as I could get through the fights with the basic abilities easily. - they never talked about the whereabouts of Lee after the demon left him, despite so much focus was put into his character in the game.

The perfect marriage of turn-based combat and QTEs. Good - I really like how the game does the tutorials. They do it and I really funny and amusing way, such that it didn't feel like a chore like most other games do. - the use of the a and b buttons was really clever. It felt so natural to control Mario and Luigi separately both while navigating the world and during battles. - Mario and Luigi games has the perfect balance between turn based command and real time action. I never fully enjoyed 100% turn based command games, because it just felt like a chess game. It got boring. - Mario and Luigi's Italian mumbling voices makes the cut scenes charming. Combined with the music and the funny little animations, and the art style just makes the whole package charming - the dialogue is great - the Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series are probably the only games that gives the world of super Mario context, a universe, and life to the IP. - the extra abilities like **** in water, the different kinds of jumps, hammer all add so much variety to the gameplay. It's a perfect harmony of platforming action and wild encounter battles. - the puzzles built around the mini and dunk abilities are so well made. These abilities are so unique and fun to play with. I expect nothing less from Nintendo, the master innovators. - I like how the game doesn't tell you directly who the enemy is aiming for. Rather you have to figure it out based on what they say, or looking at the shadow the projectile casts on the ground. It really made me pay attention to the animations. - funny how they keep undermining Luigi - I like the anime archetype inspired characters like Prince peasely and the chuckola reserve old man. - I like how I can retry battles immediately. No unnecessary step retracing and no loading time wasted. Just straight back in the fight. More games need to do this. - the matching enemy in hoohoo hooniversity was cool - this is the only rpg where I actually enjoy wild encounters, cause the battles are so fun - save point right before bosses is great. As well as restarting at the start of battle after death, and small Mario puzzle deaths. Its great to get back right into it and master the timing instead of having to do unnecessary reloading and back tracking. - the retro side scroll small Mario is really cool - being able to practice executing supers is wonderful. - the map is layed out well. The white links prevent any cluttering. And the marker is useful. - the double blocks is a clever way using the separate character mechanic to solve puzzles Bad - the map is too simple. At times it appears I can cross to the other section on the map, but in actuality I'm blocked by something that's not shown on the map. - there's an over abundance of currency. - there needs to be location names on the map. Maybe an on off button wouldve helped. - the overworld map lacks way too much detail. When trying to navigate to a new area, it's difficult to tell exactly where I am. Perhaps they intended this. But still frustrating at times when it looks like an area connects but in reality it doesn't exactly. Misleading visually. - A lot of the enemy attacks intended for the player to react to a specific animation to see which bro the enemy attacks ends up being pointless because the game allows the player to hit X to make both jump at the same time, which allows both to dodge or counter the attack. If the game only allowed on to jump for these attacks, it would've made fixed the issue and forced the player to counter with the intended challenge. I felt more enemies should've had attacks that punished the player for using X to dodge or counter.

A lot of grinding, but deep job system. Good - the shop was done very well. I could easily see which items were equipped, directly compare their stats easily allowing me to conclude which items have been obsolete, without having to exit shop and pull up a menu. This is probably the best shop menu I've encountered. - the voice acting is great, but because the characters are so chibi, it'a a bit hard to take the more serious dialogue serious. - speeding up battle is nice. - Being able to adjust encounter rate is very nice. Adjusting difficulty at any time is useful too. - being able to use a heal (treat) even after blind is nice. - the camera angle is actually very well placed. I can see across various rooms in dungeons, saving me time exploring dead ends. The auto zoom out during no inputs also helps - the background is like a big water painting. Pretty cool. - a fast way back out of the dungeon at the end is a very good inclusion, since there's no shop or healing station before the dungeon boss - auto play is nice - the jobs and abilities learned give a vast amount of ways to battle - being able to go back at any time during command selection is convenient - the game remembering my last command selection between battles is very convenient. Makes grinding very fluent - the new item section is really convenient for checking item details right after I picked it up without having to rummage through all the items for it - voice acting is great - hitting left and right in analog to see status effects of enemy and ally parties is very convenient - the little clue guess who killer of the commander was interesting. - the JP requirements for jobs at later levels we're sets very well. Such that I couldn't grind random encounters in a short time to gain the levels and acquire do really good abilities. this kind of forced me to progress in the story, and fights bosses to get the big JP boost - its satisfying figuring out my own job combinations and beating tough bosses - this is an interesting story about the grey area between right and wrong. And the impossibility of trying to make everyone happy. There is no ideal world where no one suffers. Where one person gains, another loses. - the party's growing uncertainty in their own beliefs stirs questions of my own and makes me want to find out the other side of the story. The side that doesn't want the crystal awakened - being able to equip new weapon and armor during battles is cool - after having accomplished my jobs set up and attained all the abilities I want, it's a good feeling applying it in tough battles and seeing it work. - at first I was very skeptical about having to reawaken the crystals again. But having airy explain the ritual again it hinted at the potential option 2 continue hitting x to break the crystal, which is pretty interesting and unexpected. To me, breaking the crystals was a way to end the game earlier, for those who do not want to grind the same battles again. But at the same time by triggering the finale, I missed out on the whole multiple worlds lore. It's an unfortunate dilemma. - the story is really interesting once the multiple world story arc begins, but the game played becomes completely repetitive and stagnant because the same enemies are rehashed only with more HP and higher attack power. I wanted to continue so that I could progressed in the story but I did not want to grind the same enemies over and over again. Had the game introduced new enemies, new areas, and new scenarios in the other worlds then I would have been inclined to continue with the game since it would be fresh and not a repetitive grind. But unfortunately every area is virtually the same, only with different wild encounters and some different cutscene triggers. - airy being evil was an unexpected twist. Didn't expect the whole crystal awakening was a bad thing either. The game did mask it as a righteous ritual really well. Further disguising her was her cute and cheery look and attitude. Plus her presence on the bottom screen. - I also like how the game gave me a lot chances to stop hitting x during the ritual. - the game made me question what it had made me initially believed. It made me trust the crystal orthodoxy, then turned the table. - I like how there are hints of airy being not gemuine, where she slips up and focuses on awakening crystals over even agnes - I think by the time I reached chapter 7, the developers probably assumed that I knew airy was evil and likely also assumed the player just wanted to go on to more chapters out of curiosity. Even the cutscenes are just rehashed Bad - wish there was an auto attack all, if I selected 4 braves. Against random enemies I usually just use all brave and mash attack. If there was an auto select option, it woulda saved me time

Fatal Frame 4 Good - plays on the fear of distorted face. - map shows keys - auto turnaround - using the wiimote speaker for certain sounds was great. Especially that parts when ruka was picking up the telephone. - using flashlight to reveal items adds a deeper element to the dosing gameplay. And it means I don't have to go mashing A in front of random shelves just to see if there an item there - less scary music. Just creeky empty wooden house sounds - hand slowly reaching out grabbing while holding A added suspense. - the hozuki doll gave me a scare - the silence makes the jump-scares even scarier. It also amplifies all the normal sounds of foot steps, door creeking and other noises I would've taken for granted in previous fatal frames. - the bad quality of the audio in the wiimotes actually amplifies the eeriness of the phone calls - this game is much more linear compared to the past fatal frames. there's always a ghost that leads me to my next destination, and if there is an unlocked door, the game will bring up the map automatically and show me exactly which door got unlocked. The layout of the hospital is also much less complex then fatal frame 3. Less crawl spaces, Less ladders and stairs located right beside each other. The map was basically one big circle on each floor. All the places that I wasn't supposed to access yet were blocked off saving me much time from wandering in the wrong direction. I'm actually happy about that's, because it was really annoying navigating the mansion in fatal frame 3. - character flinches after a long fight. - some ghosts really mixed up the timing for fatal frame shot - shaking wiimote to dodge attacks is nice Bad - I have to shake too hard to get the turnaround. - it's awkward having to aim vertical with the wiimote, and then aiming horizontally with the nunchuck. I wish the aiming was all done on the wiimote. - the auto lock on removes a big part of the challenge, which is the aiming - there you needed to be a fast option to open doors. I understand opening it slowly maintains the tension, but when backtracking an area, I know there will be no ghosts, making these long animations tedious to sit through - hostile ghost appearances and non-hostile ghost appearances have no difference when it comes to the filament indicator. Both appear red. Problem is I automatically prepare myself for a fight, meaning I press Z to try and lock on, but cant. Turns out to be a non hostile ghost, so it disappears causing me to miss out on points - the ghosts movements and abilities are not diverse. They seem to all just be sluggish, like zombies and go for the same kind of attack. - it's very hard to examine items. Sometimes I can be literally right in front of it, but I still do not get the prompt to examine it. I end up having to jostle around to find the specific angle. This became annoying when it happens so many times - pointing the wiimote down to look at things below me is very uncomfortable. The vertical sensitivity is very low, forcing me to bend my wrist 90 degrees - using a special was a little tedious because the attack was mapped to the c button, which meant I had to put my index and middle finger on the shoulder of the nunchuck. This left only my pinky and my ring finger to hold the nunchuck, which was quite uncomfortable. I guess if I tried, I could technically control both the z and the c buttons with just my index finger, but it also feels unnatural, since the two buttons have different elevations. - sometimes the anime we'll throw out a long-range attack behind a wall, like the doctor with the flashlight. When they are halfway behind a wall, my attack will miss. This made the shots of little ambiguous when this happened. Luckily the flashlight the doctor had didn't do damage, it just blinded me a bit - there's a lot of symbolism when it comes to the power behind the masks, the lunar eclipse, how its effects the people on the island, the ritual, festival. It's all very metaphorical. this at times makes it hard to follow along with the story, and fully digest the plot. I think the part of it is also because the text, the hole narrative and dialogues were designed around Japanese culture, mythology, and tradition. The game was never planned to be released outside of Japan, so I'm sure the developers had no intention of including any Western friendly explanations in any of the text. The best we had was of course the fan made translation. Which was good, but it was only the direct translation of the text with no extra explanation behind some of the cultural and traditional implications The narrative had. - I didn't really like the flashlight as a weapon, because there was no fatal frame shot opportunity, which takes out the reflex and reaction part of the gameplay. Which is my favourite.

A very emotional game. I completed The Last of Us 1 like 5 or 6 years ago. I didn't read any news, leaks, or comments about the sequel going in. So my perspective is completely untainted. At first, I was very shocked and upset about what the devs decided to do to Joel. I didn't have a problem with him dying. He did kill a bunch of innocent people in the first game, so I wasn't surprised karma would bite him eventually. I have a problem with him dying so soon. It's an enormous waste of a character, that was built up so meticulously from the first game. To me, he was the main character. The back bone to the story. I felt they could have done so much more with Joel, before killing him off. Maybe he gets captured, or something like that. Anything to build on his character more, and it could have increased Ellie's desperation and urgency. I felt it was a missed opportunity, story-wise. After his death, I had a lot of doubts for what they could possibly do to keep me interested. Just like how I can't watch Simpsons without Homer, or Family Guy without Peter. Last of Us without Joel? How? As I progressed, the flashbacks Ellie had of Joel felt absolutely endearing. Bittersweet. A large part of that feeling stems from knowing Joel's gone. It was sad, but in a good way. Kind of like Game of Thrones, minus the ending. People died. It was a tragedy, but it made me love it more. Ellie's flashbacks heightened my need to pursue the killers, and find out why they did it. When I finally got to Abby, I honestly felt a bit sorry for her, after what Ellie did to her friends. At this point, she honestly had nothing. Killing her would have felt empty. I was ready for some answers. Then the game throws me in the shoes of Abby. Instead of a dramatic cutscene, the game put me directly in her shoes so I could see her side. And after seeing it, I completely understand where she's coming from. She went to kill Joel, to avenge her father. A logical reason. Not ethical. But reasonable. I didn't hate Abby anymore. Suddenly, I didn't know whose side I was on. And in the final chapter of the story. The showdown. I was shocked to see the condition Abby was in. I was extremely curious to see how this would affect Ellie's actions. The way it played out was perfect. Heartbreaking. So much emotion evoked in that fight. A fitting climax to the amount of **** that has transpired. By the end, I didn't like Ellie or Abby. They both were flawed. But yet, so human. And now on to the more technical review... Good - hand-to-hand combat is good. The enemies attack animation slows down so that I could react with an input in time. This added a reflex test. Unlike a lot of other games where the hand-to-hand combat window was so small that it was usually not possible to react to, and I have to just pre-emptive block, or attack. - clickers are so well designed. They make the stealth gameplay so much more tense because you have to walk extra slow behind them, but at the same time you have to make an action quickly when you are within their close proximity or else they will notice you even if you stay still. So it kind of forces you to plan ahead a bit, and when I decide to strike I must go through with it. And if things turn south I have to quickly adapt, either with a stun object, shoot, or run away. In areas with regular infected and clickers, it really adds diversity to the stealth. Infected could see but clickers couldn't, which forced me to use cover cleverly, and choose my targets wisely based on enemy position. - the stun and strike combo feel satisfying to land especially when I got it in a tight situation. - the distraction to molotov combo is a great alternative to the stealth strats. Since I had to try and gather the infected into a close proximity before I can pull off the group kill. But when I do manage to bait them all together, then Molotov them all, it's a satisfying feeling. - the narrative, and voice acting is impeccable. The beginning where Abby and the dude found a city, the story didn't tell me who they were looking for or who Mel was, and what was the history behind these two. It's a mystery that drew me into the story, making me want to find out what what's going on. - the balance between defense an offense is perfect. Clickers are one hit KO, and the infected do a decent chunk of damage. So the game does encourage stealth. But if things go south the game also gives ample offensive abilities for me to survive. - checkpoints are really well placed. It doesn't bring me back all the way to the beginning but rather the last major encounter which is perfect, because it doesn't forced me to backtrack unnecessary gameplay. - I like how for most objects that interact with, my partner automatically chimes in.