DavidBondy

This is the worst shooter I have ever played. At its best moments, Shadow Fall is mediocre. At its worst, it is downright infuriating. I tried to complete this game, but quit during chapter 8 because of how full of BS that section is. Nothing about this game is worth experiencing, and good visuals alone are not enough to mask the massive issues in gunplay, enemy design and AI, level design, stealth, story, writing, or characters.

Put simply, Baldur's Gate 3 is the best and most well-rounded RPG I have ever played. It has incredible combat, incredible quests, incredible reactivity, outstanding characters, great writing, a good story, I could go on. This game is so strong that anyone who appreciates RPGs must play this. Video games by their very nature are not capable of fully recreating a TTRPG experience, it's a fundamental limitation born out of the lack of a Dungeon Master. That said, Baldur's Gate 3 is such a dynamic and reactive game that it is the closest any game has gotten to emulating a TTRPG.

The game's graphics and gameplay were slightly improved at the cost of removing literally all content present in NHL 14 besides HUT (the mode with loot boxes.) I don't know or care if the game has improved since its release, its release state was nothing short of a scam.

Gameplay is king in Trepang2. I'm seriously impressed a small indie team was able to create a shooter with gameplay that measures up to some of the best-feeling shooters I've played like Halo Infinite, DOOM Eternal, and Titanfall 2. The game is incredibly fun. It's a very visceral and responsive game in every regard as well, from the visual side to the enemy AI. The only gripe I have is the game's story is just fine, and I did not enjoy the side missions later on in the game. Either way, hats off to the developers of Trepang Studios, y'all did a fantastic job with this one.

Minus some issues with traversal stutter that still persist, Dead Space remake is absolutely incredible. This is the first horror game I have ever played, and it set an extraordinary example for what is possible in this type of game. The atmosphere in this game was so unsettling, at any point it felt like I was walking into a jump scare or an ambush or something horrifying. I can't really compare it to other horror or survival-horror games (minus some imsims like System Shock and Prey,) but I an tell you that if you're interested in getting into the horror or survival-horror genre, I seriously recommend this as the place to start.

Metro Exodus really left an impression on me, and I deeply respect it. This wasn't the most viscerally entertaining experience I've ever had, nor is it the most mechanically sophisticated. However, I definitely can appreciate how immersive it is. Some games are best played with headphones, and this is one such game because the audio design is so amazing. The slower movement speed and short time to kill for both you and enemies made the game feel very grounded in a way I'm not used to experiencing in modern shooters. The graphics are top notch, especially if you have a ray-tracing graphics card and play the enhanced edition (which I did.) It's one hell of an experience.

This game requires mods to run properly on modern hardware. If you're willing to mod, oh my god Deus Ex is an amazing game. I beat it for the first time this year: 2023. This 23-year-old game still holds up extremely well due to how unbelievably well-designed the whole experience is. If you are a student of game design, you owe it to yourself to play Deus Ex as it is a tour de force in this regard. The story and story-telling are top-notch. The game's systems regarding choices and consequences are so subtle that I am still learning new things about the game even after multiple playthroughs. I love how Deus Ex emphasizes choices in gameplay, like how you help someone, or who you kill, or the simple reactivity that an inventory system can bring if you mismanage resources. It's such an amazing game, and I cannot recommend it enough.

I would say there are two different audiences that should be discussed regarding Legendary Edition: new players and veterans. If you're a Mass Effect veteran and have all the content on your PC already, you're missing nothing new. It's a barely noticeable upgrade over the original games in terms of gameplay. One thing I will say in its benefit for old fans is the remaster of Mass Effect 1. While 2 and 3 have minimal changes, Mass Effect 1 feels like a completely modernized experience. My metacritic review for OG Mass Effect 1 is a 9/10, but in terms of how it felt and how I enjoyed it as an RPG in the year 2020, it was more of an 8/10. Legendary Edition boosts it to a 9/10 by fixing issues with optimization, lighting, character models, and some of the overall jank (although the experience is still janky by today's standards.) The visuals of Mass Effect 1 received some subtle changes that made the game look pretty meh to absolutely gorgeous in places. It still feels out of date in places considering it's an early 7th-generation action RPG by a studio who has seemingly always struggled to make games with fun combat (in my opinion,) but it's a much smoother overall experience that I absolutely adore. Legendary Edition made Mass Effect 1 go from the game I looked forward to the least to the game I looked forward to the most in any trilogy playthrough, and I want to give BioWare a ton of credit for that. However, if you have never played a Mass Effect game before and are looking for an RPG, I cannot recommend this game enough. For $60, you get 3 great RPG's that go well over 100 hours when all is said and done. This includes all DLC and all features of the original games except for multiplayer in ME3. You get a great story, good combat, and meet some amazing characters as you battle foes throughout the Milky Way galaxy.

While the scale, open world, non-face visuals, and combat are easily the best of any Mass Effect game, it fails to deliver on what truly makes a Mass Effect game great: story and characters. At least some of the characters are pretty entertaining and well-written, but they fall far short of the original trilogy in general. I can't help but feel that this game was rushed, and it's a damn shame because there is a ton of fun to be had in Andromeda.

This game is an absolute masterpiece. The Witcher 3 is one of the best-written and paced games I have ever played despite it being an open-world RPG. The main quest kept me interested throughout the entire playthrough, and barely faltered. I also love the exploration, combat, and leveling of this game. While neither three stand out as spectacular, I thought they all worked well together. The sidequests in this game are also super strong. Witcher 3 isn't on the same level as New Vegas in terms of sidequests in my opinion, but it's easily the game that has come closest. It's an overall super strong package that offers hundreds of hours of content. I absolutely love this game, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Easily one of the greatest first-person shooters I have ever played. While the gunplay isn't that great, the pacing of the combat is excellent. Half-Life 2 also manages to still have really strong AI even 18 years later. Hell even the visuals hold up surprisingly well after 18 years. I absolutely adore this game, and I wish we got more shooters like it.

Halo 3 is a masterpiece, and I only have two gripes with it: the mission Cortana and the gameplay aging a bit. I think all Halo fans know that Cortana is a terrible mission marred by so many of the problems with the flood, and the gameplay aging is a given considering it's a 15-year-old game. That all being said, Halo 3 still remains incredibly fun. The level design of Halo 3 is superb, with the game managing to pack a ton of variety. I struggle to recall moments when the game copy/pastes areas like in Halo CE. The game manages to have strong hallway fights while also providing tons of great open areas. In terms of level design in a shooter, Halo 3 is one of the absolute best of the best in my experience. The campaign for Halo 3 is another strong point. Every single mission except for one is a quality mission in my opinion. Halo 3 also manages a surprising amount of locational variety. The whole campaign is just amazing, I cannot recommend it enough. Lastly, this is the first Halo game released on 7th generation consoles, and in my opinion, the visuals still hold up. While faces and bodies don't look amazing and the graphical quality is obviously old, the visuals of space battles, faraway locations, and the starry skies still remain beautiful. I cannot recommend this game enough, it is a masterpiece.

The only thing preventing me from recommending this to everyone without any caveats is the poor optimization that requires an unreasonable amount of mods to fix. If you have the willingness to mod a game, and you also want an RPG adventure in a post-nuclear world, then you owe it to yourself to play this masterpiece. New Vegas gives the player so much freedom that no character is protected by plot armor. You can kill major characters (generals, politicians, leaders, businesspeople, etc) and still progress the main quest. The game also questions the player on ethical and moral questions. Moral questions are not as simple as the "do you want to genocide or not?" that you see in Mass Effect or the "do you want to nuke a town or not?" that you see in Fallout 3. Decisions force the player to think about what decision they will make rather than just choose generic good guy or generic bad guy. It's a refreshing take on moral choices that I wish more games took notes from.

Halo 4 is simply okay. While elements of the sound design, graphics, voice acting, and overall polish of the game have improved from the previous Halo titles, the game is a significant step down in terms of gameplay. The enemy AI, a long-standing strength of the entire Halo franchise, is one of Halo 4's biggest weaknesses during the campaign. The new faction is also pretty unfun to fight. They're better than the flood, but that's a really low bar. The level design is sub-par by the standards of Bungie's Halo games (but probably average compared to most shooters.) It just feels average on all accounts of gameplay. I think it's telling that out of all the games in the Master Chief Collection, this is the one I would least enjoy replaying. I do recommend the Master Chief Collection, which this game is part of. However, if you're looking to only buy some but not all the games in the MCC, then feel free skipping out on this game. You're not going to miss much.

For what it's worth, a lot of this is based on memory. I last played Syndicate a year ago. So these are the thoughts I remember when I last played this game. Syndicate is fine. I don't remember it being anything more than that. I just didn't enjoy exploring London all that much as the areas all feel very similar. Hell, the only way I can tell the difference between areas are the unsubtle changes in an area's difficulty. There is a lot to do in this game, but very little of it is actually fun, and the open-world content will quickly begin to feel repetitive. The story itself is pretty meh. The characters are pretty unmemorable, and this extends to the protagonists as well. The one thing that kept me enjoying Syndicate was the combat. Assassin's Creed decided to finally make combat challenging in Unity and add some light progression, and it really helps the combat of those games feel much more rewarding than that of the previous games.

This game is a nonstop violence fest, and I love it. Everything about the game is laser-focused on fast-paced, aggressive combat, and I love it. Even as someone who traditionally favors medium to long range combat in shooters, DOOM's emphasis on being aggressive and playing almost exclusively at short range makes the game super fun, and the game is designed beautifully around that.

Absolute masterpiece, and chronically underrated. Prey is the most immersive video games I have ever played. It isn't trying to be a horror game, but it is super terrifying. Walking around Talos 1 as a simple researcher while a hostile alien species takes over the station feels so damn real. The game also has masterful level design and a great sandbox, allowing you to solve problems in unique and creative ways. While the game doesn't have amazing story telling or characters, it really doesn't need either. The premise, tension, and immersion take precedent, and the game works masterfully with all three. If you enjoy immersive sims, play Prey. You will enjoy it.

Fallen Order is a Star Wars classic. It is by far the Star Wars game I have enjoyed the most, and it's a game I keep replaying. I have replayed the story mode at least 3 times now, and each time it still feels incredible. The combat system feels a bit clunky, but it also feels very real. It makes Cal's struggles seem all the more relatable as his struggles don't conflict with my gameplay experience, which is one of getting up after failing again and again. It's a theme the game repeats at many times, especially during Cal's flashbacks to training. However, the challenging and rewarding nature of the combat system is what sets Fallen Order apart from other Star Wars games, at least for me. It made beating a difficult area or a difficult boss feel rewarding, and it was an experience that left a permanent impression on my gaming memory.

I cannot recommend this game at all. Scholar is just unfun. Encounters throw waves upon waves of enemies at you, and while it is a valid skill for a game to check in a player, the overuse of this is nothing short of frustrating. Dark Souls, by contrast, rarely throws large quantities of enemies at you, making the few times that does happen feel like an actual check of my skills rather than a frustrating way of making the game harder. The game also has significant issues with hitboxes. That being said, Scholar has some things going for it. It's visual style is superb, and I like many of the locations I encountered. Majula is my favorite hub area of any Souls game by far. It is such a gorgeous place and feels like a comfy respite from the dark, dangerous world. It is worth noting that Scholar is also significantly different from the original Dark Souls 2. I have not played the original, but from what I've heard, I'd recommend playing that instead. It still has some issues with convenience and bugs, but the major issue of enemy placement and encounter design is fixed. Do not take my word for this, instead read what people have said about the original Dark Souls 2. Consider Scholar an optional hard mode.

It's a bit difficult for me to come up with words to describe the Division because of how little it evokes from me. It's just such an average experience all the way through. I enjoy the gunplay and loot of this game, and those two elements were enough to keep me going for about 100 hours. However, the story, level design, enemy design, and enemy variety is just bad. It is one of the most repetitive video games I have ever played, and I cannot recommend it.

I'm a big **** for bang-for-your-buck games, and the Master Chief Collection (MCC) is easily one of the best out there. The fact you can get six good first-person shooters for the price of $40 is an absolute steal. The fact that this bundle includes three all time classics, two great games, and one good game plus the multiplayer for each game is an outrageous deal for $40. My only gripe with the game is the broken co-op campaign in Halo 2 Anniversary.

Gran Turismo Sport is my first foray into sim racing. Even though it isn't a proper sim (like iRacing, Assetto Corsa, Project Cars, rFactor, etc.), it's an excellent launchpad for people who want to get into sim racing and start with something a bit simpler. Gran Turismo Sport does several things well. For one, I love the driver rating system. It allows me to race against people with a similar amount of pace and skill as me, and it has really helped me improve quickly. I like the presence of Daily Races, albeit I wish there were more than 3 daily races. I also love the FIA races. The Manufacturer's Series and Nations Cup are two of the most competitive sporting environments I have ever experienced, and they're extremely fun. Next, the heads-up display in Gran Turismo Sport is outstanding. It is intuitive and extremely beneficial for new racers. It even allows you to enable and disable traction control mid race, a minor feature that actually helps many users with standing starts. However, the standout feature of the heads up display is the radar view. Radar view allows you to see if there are cars next to or behind you, and it is extremely helpful. I wish more racing games had something similar to it. If you want an introduction into competitive racing, this game offers that. However, there are things I want to see improved. First off, sportsmanship rating was not created well. I have driven against countless dirty drivers who somehow have the highest possible sportsmanship rating. That's a problem, and it has created some frustrating races. I also find the track selection to be quite disappointing. There are 31 tracks in the game as of this comment, some of which are original circuits, but most of which are real circuits. I just find that to be quite limiting. Next, we have the tutorials. While there are many great tutorials, there are many driving techniques that you don't learn. For example, the tutorials do not cover how to drive with no assists on. This makes the jump to online racing very difficult as online races will only allow anti-lock brakes and traction control. It also means you don't learn how to perform a non-TCS-assisted standing start. Finally, the penalty system is an absolute joke. I understand that it's difficult to build an algorithm that can properly determine what is an is not dirty driving, but it is completely broken. I have had races where I punt people off the track and get no penalty, but later get a 5 second wall collision penalty for getting nudged off the circuit and into a wall. The wall collision penalty has made street circuits impossible to race on, and the poor implementation of the game's penalty system has ruined so many races for me. It needs to be fixed. I noticed that the online nature of this game rubbed some the wrong way. The lack of career mode and lack of offline features were central to their comments. I think these people have misplaced their expectations for what GT Sport wanted to achieve. I haven't played the other Gran Turismo games, but in my experience playing Forza Motorsport 2 more than 10 years ago, I understand the thrill ****, offline racing game. I also understand the frustration over the necessity to buy Playstation Plus. My comment is this: if you want a game with tons of offline racing features, STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME. The offline features are severely lacking. However, if you want to get your feet wet with sim racing, buy this game, because it is extremely competitive, extremely fun, and an excellent place to start before graduating to a proper racing sim (such as the ones I mentioned.)