EasyGamerBoi

I wasn’t nearly as hot on Jedi Fallen Order as most people were, & unfortunately I’m not that hot on Jedi Survivor either. I’m thinking 6.5/10 for both games but I don’t know if I like it more than Fallen Order or not yet because it did make meaningful improvements on the gameplay as a whole, not enough to make me like the games more though. I think it’s due in part to the general Star Wars fatigue I’ve been suffering from, I’m not like those neckbeard reddit incels who hate modern Star Wars because they have a black woman as a character or whatever other bs they’re peddling now, I just struggle to care much anymore. Even as someone who mostly liked the sequel series except for Rise of Skywalker, there’s just TOO MUCH Star Wars media nowadays.I don’t HATE this game, all of the performances were on point. I loved Cameron Monaghan in Shameless & seeing him as a Jedi is still wild lol. Hearing Invader Zim (Richard Horvitz) & Legion/Albert Wesker (D.C. Douglas) with prominent voice roles was awesome too. Merrin, Cere & Bode were all great characters too. It is also a pretty looking game although I have zero idea why this game is 150gb. I liked how Cal’s dark side was teased in the last game and REALLY teased more in Survivor, if you know YOU KNOW, best part of the series so far. Let’s hope it actually goes somewhere in a 3rd game instead of being completely dismissed like they usually do in Star Wars media!Unfortunately I didn’t like much else here. The combat is still hit or miss for me, it’s still more souls-like than Force Unleashed which is fine, it’s just a style of gameplay that’s oversaturated at the moment but this game does have difficulty sliders. I’m also really happy they finally have dismemberment mechanics too. The story is fine for what it is, in typical Star Wars fashion a lot of development happens off-screen in between entries so you have to play catch up for a bit before things settle down & you get exposition. I’m still a little in the dark as to why the team from the first game split off? I remember some reasonings but it felt more like a cliche method to get them to separate before coming back together in the sequel. I don’t know much about the High Republic era either so those parts of it fell flat for me. The ending felt really abrupt & underwhelming too, I hate when conflicts that can easily be talked out just spiral out of control, it really takes me out of the experience. I think what truly tarnished the game for me were the bugs & general jank. Fallen Order had its moments but nowhere near as bad as Survivor. I’m glad I waited months to finally play Survivor given how bad the performance was at launch & for months after. With the newest update I didn’t drop frames too substantially but they didn’t bother to fix any of the other issues I encountered. Enemies floating in the air during kill animations or actual fights, Cal not latching onto a surface during the MANY horrendous parkour sections & falling to his death, rideable mounts not moving their limbs when traveling, dialogue getting cut off prematurely + losing all sound during certain fights, enemies & arenas going full low-poly like I was playing a Switch port version, the list goes on. It wasn’t a fully miserable experience like a Pokémon Violet playthrough was, but I HATE having to reload my saves & losing tens of minutes of progress at times because the game obviously came out too soon which is weird because the time between announcement & release was less than 5 months. Don’t even get me started on the PUZZLES. I HATEEE this trend of action games breaking up the gameplay with mind numbingly stupid puzzles that do absolutely nothing for me. I hated it in the new God of War games & I hate it here even more because if I do get stuck in an area, I either automatically assume it’s bugged out like most of the game was or I require a hint to progress. God of War will give you hints before you even have a chance to think about a solution, when the prompt for a hint DOES come up in Survivor, it’s ABSOLUTELY USELESS INFORMATION. “I need to open this door somehow” THANKS FOR POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS CAL. Ugh. I just hate when a game is actively punching me in the face when I’m trying to enjoy it. That’s just how both of these Jedi games have felt so far to me & I don’t think I can stomach it for the inevitable 3rd entry unless they overhaul certain systems & take their time with the 3rd. Unfortunately I just don’t think these Jedi games are for me & that’s ok, there’s plenty of better things out there especially this year. Is Survivor a general improvement on most things from Fallen Order? Yes. Is it also more of the same & could’ve have done so much more? Absolutely.

I’m truly not a fighting game person, I usually tend to mash buttons to accidentally make long combos lol. Injustice, Mortal Kombat & Street Fighter 6 are the only exceptions, NetherRealm just have fighting games boiled down to a perfect formula!! I really just love the stories that NetherRealm always craft, I’m wasn’t super deep into Mortal Kombat lore at least until MKX but they still are able to account for fans like me with their storytelling. I really liked MK11 & didn’t like the Aftermath DLC much, but I do see how it was very much needed for MK1. I think the series did need another soft reboot & I’m happy to say MK1 just might be the best in the series hands down! Story-wise, kombat-wise, graphically, almost everything!The stages are all so beautiful to look at & the character models look great too. Why is ALMOST EVERY CHARACTER in this game so attractive?! It’s insane. The kombat doesn’t feel as deep as previous entries but I don’t mind it, like said I **** at fighting games lol. Kombat did feel heavier & a little clunky at first in the story but once I got back into the groove of things that feeling went away. The story is what really made me fall in love with this game, yes it’s painfully short like always (and I’m sure it’ll get another big expansion in the next year) but so many of the new & returning characters are just great to watch. The ending is CRAZY awesome but it did feel very rushed, if it had a few more chapters to build it up it would’ve left a better impression. I absolutely loved seeing new versions of characters like Mileena who were antagonists in other games be good once again, as well as some protagonists going bad. I really can’t wait to see more of these characters in another expansion! The roster is packed as it is & adding HOMELANDER is gonna be nuts, but it was kind of sad to not have access to more klassic characters like Sonya except for the unplayable kameo fighters. Those were a neat addition but it’s nothing really new with fighting games. I’m glad a lot of lesser known fighters got a chance in the spotlight after years of inactivity though. All in all, I’ll probably update this review once an expansion drops so we’ll have the full story then. MK1 is probably the best fighting game I’ve ever played & I can’t recommend it enough!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I. LOVE. RESIDENT. EVIL. This is one of the best DLCs ever made, PERIOD. I felt like Ada was really underused in the main game (I never got around to playing the OG RE4), but she’s back in all her glory here. I really don’t care about the whole voice acting drama bs, that stuff is for chronically online racist reddit folks. It was so cool seeing her side of the story, how she was alongside Leon for most of his crusade was awesome. A lot of the “cut” content ended up in Ada’s story, the RE dev teams remixing stuff for the remakes is just so cool to watch even if I know little about the originals for the most part. One thing about me, I LOVE a good recontextualisation. Makes me wish RE3R got this added on content to patch some of the holes it had! Capcom went full sicko mode for soundtrack in Separate Ways, BANGER AFTER BANGER, the chapter end screen didn’t need to go so hard. I’m a firm believer of adding a grappling hook to every game regardless of if they need it or not, which means it’s absolutely GOATED in this DLC. It feels pretty substantial for only $10 too! The free mercenaries update that dropped alongside the DLC is incredible too, I wish Capcom would make an entire game based on Wesker just from how fun he is to play as in mercenaries lol. These add-ons just make it even easier to crown RE4R as one of the best games of the year REGARDLESS of being a remake, y’all need to shut tf up with that goofy discourse already.

RE Village is one of the best experiences in the genre & a prime example of why Capcom is on their A-game still. Although I waited for the 3rd person mode to be added to play it since I’m not a fan of 1st person horror, I still got my fair share of spooks & fun out of it.Village’s gameplay felt much faster than 7’s & RE2R’s, but not as fast as RE3R’s if that makes sense. A great middle ground was achieved here, even if it can still have that signature Resident Evil clunkiness to it. There are some combat gauntlets in this game that didn’t feel 100% designed for the 1st person horror experience that ended up feeling much better in 3rd person. Still was overall very fun to play! The graphics aren’t mind blowing but still very visually appealing, the RE Engine never disappoints! The story is also surprisingly heartfelt, much better than the dud 7’s story left with me. And of course Village has Lady D, who needs anything else? All of the villains had memorable personalities for the most part. I enjoyed every minute of the story even if the middle part of Village is pretty flimsy. Horror-wise, Village has some of the tamest set pieces in the series while also having maybe the scariest horror moment of the last few years, you KNOW what I’m talking about if you played. One of my favorite parts of the RE series is how it’s not afraid to get campy & ridiculous & Village doesn’t hold back in that department, it was very clearly inspired by RE4 & in a few ways also set the table for the remake we just got.Aside from the flimsy middle portion of this game slowing things down considerably after the AMAZING castle level, I really can’t think of too many negatives for the base game. It’s so wonderfully paced other than the middle that I want to replay it over & over for better times. Also playing as Lady D in Mercenaries is AMAZING, **** that the DLC doesn’t advertise itself as having to grind to unlock her instead of at purchase. -_-As for the Shadows of Rose DLC, it’s much more horror focused than Village’s action packed moments and it was enjoyable, just not all that fun to play. I get Rose is a young girl just trying to help herself & she won’t control as smoothly as an adult like Ethan, but things felt significantly clunkier jumping right into the DLC after finishing the base game. I appreciate the horror focus & there are some genuine moments of terror in the DLC (THOSE FORSAKEN MANNEQUINS).. But other than that you don’t get to fully experience the powers of Rose until the literal end of the story. It feels great but I wish we could skip ahead to RE9 to maybe play as a powered up Rose trying to save the world or whatever they introduce in that sure to be jam packed game. Overall the DLC was a nice addition but not a necessary **** Village is probably the most fun I’ve had with a Resident Evil game so far, it’s not the perfect experience but it does so little wrong aside from some story pacing & clunkiness that I highly encourage anyone trying to get into the series or horror in general to start here. I LOVE this game y’all.

RE Village is one of the best experiences in the genre & a prime example of why Capcom is on their A-game still. Although I waited for the 3rd person mode to be added to play it since I’m not a fan of 1st person horror, I still got my fair share of spooks & fun out of it.Village’s gameplay felt much faster than 7’s & RE2R’s, but not as fast as RE3R’s if that makes sense. A great middle ground was achieved here, even if it can still have that signature Resident Evil clunkiness to it. There are some combat gauntlets in this game that didn’t feel 100% designed for the 1st person horror experience that ended up feeling much better in 3rd person. Still was overall very fun to play! The graphics aren’t mind blowing but still very visually appealing, the RE Engine never disappoints! The story is also surprisingly heartfelt, much better than the dud 7’s story left with me. And of course Village has Lady D, who needs anything else? All of the villains had memorable personalities for the most part. I enjoyed every minute of the story even if the middle part of Village is pretty flimsy. Horror-wise, Village has some of the tamest set pieces in the series while also having maybe the scariest horror moment of the last few years, you KNOW what I’m talking about if you played. One of my favorite parts of the RE series is how it’s not afraid to get campy & ridiculous & Village doesn’t hold back in that department, it was very clearly inspired by RE4 & in a few ways also set the table for the remake we just got.Aside from the flimsy middle portion of this game slowing things down considerably after the AMAZING castle level, I really can’t think of too many negatives for the base game. It’s so wonderfully paced other than the middle that I want to replay it over & over for better times. Also playing as Lady D in Mercenaries is AMAZING, **** that the DLC doesn’t advertise itself as having to grind to unlock her instead of at purchase. -_-As for the Shadows of Rose DLC, it’s much more horror focused than Village’s action packed moments and it was enjoyable, just not all that fun to play. I get Rose is a young girl just trying to help herself & she won’t control as smoothly as an adult like Ethan, but things felt significantly clunkier jumping right into the DLC after finishing the base game. I appreciate the horror focus & there are some genuine moments of terror in the DLC (THOSE FORSAKEN MANNEQUINS).. But other than that you don’t get to fully experience the powers of Rose until the literal end of the story. It feels great but I wish we could skip ahead to RE9 to maybe play as a powered up Rose trying to save the world or whatever they introduce in that sure to be jam packed game. Overall the DLC was a nice addition but not a necessary **** Village is probably the most fun I’ve had with a Resident Evil game so far, it’s not the perfect experience but it does so little wrong aside from some story pacing & clunkiness that I highly encourage anyone trying to get into the series or horror in general to start here. I LOVE this game y’all.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

After an underwhelming start, I can safely say Xenosaga 2 is where I grew to love this series. Weird isn’t it? The most hated Xeno game is actually really good? Don’t listen to the internet on this one please cuz they’re smoking something strange, this game *mostly* rocked. The bliss I felt playing the first 2 hours of this game compared to the first lesser 2 hours of Ep I are night & day. DUNGEON MUSIC. A BATTLE SYSTEM THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME FEEL LOBOTOMIZED. HIGHER PRODUCTION VALUES ON CUTSCENES & WORLD DESIGN. EVERYTHING IS QUICKER NOW. Literally EVERYTHING is improved right from the start in Ep II. I was shocked the first time I played it, all the general irritation that built up in me from playing Ep I vanished so quickly for Ep II. I know 2 & 3 were put together by different people than Ep I, so it all makes sense.Positives first, the soundtrack is SO GOOD. Do not trust anybody that calls it inferior. I also don’t mind the shorter length of Ep II compared to the other games & JRPGs in general. Events have a more brisk pace in this game compared to everything being drawn out in Ep I. I really love the combat here though, I can see how it set the groundwork for the Xenoblade series too, I love little premonitions like these!! It’s so fun figuring out how to totally break the game against every enemy with the stock & break systems, even if it did get a little slow towards the end setting everything up. I also really liked the bigger focus on Jr in this game, he might be my favorite character from this series & he really got the chance to shine here. The mech battles are also much improved, but still lacking compared to what comes next in the series. The sheer spectacle of the game’s final hours is truly stunning for the era it came out in, MonolithSoft was always ahead of their time!The graphics are a more mixed bag, environments look nice while characters do look kind of.. strange in a way that they don’t look in the other 2 games. But I do prefer the more realistic look compared to the goofy anime look of Ep I. I’m also on the fence about the story again, it’s SO much more engaging than Ep I’s narrative, but I also can agree to a certain extent that it doesn’t push the overarching story forward all that much. I’m not sure if the devs knew they’d be cut to 3 games instead of 6 by the time this game was in development, either way I still found a lot to love in that **** a lot of negatives here, but I truly think the game ran out of steam in its last 2 dungeons. Enemies with break requirements that need 2 characters (one normal, one on a boosted turn) in order to break them & actually do decent damage get introduced very late into the game & while you can break the game in a lot of fun ways, it isn’t afraid to break you back with RNG. It can get very frustrating when the character you need to attack next to continue your chain isn’t able to be boosted to be next if they’re on the turn order, such a stupid design decision that made things drag out for far too long at times. I don’t think I was playing the game wrong, I was breezing through it for the most part aside from these moments. The dungeon puzzles are also extremely annoying. Keep a guide handy if you aren’t good at them like I am. It was a weird choice to get rid of shops & equipment in a JRPG, the customization here was admittedly lacking even if I don’t mind spending less time in JRPG menu hell. There are weirdly long load times for EVERY battle that feel really awkward, as well as sort of frequent performance issues. The Xenosaga games were really pushing the PS2’s limits lol, I just find it funny how this 20 year old game is faster than the modern Pokémon games! Overall, Xenosaga Ep II is a vastly improved experience over Ep I. It falters here & there but I loved this game & would definitely replay it in the future if it were to get a HD re-release!

BOY! This game is amazing!!! Damn near everything is perfect and improved upon from 2018’s God of **** only negatives I can think up are about the puzzles, the majority of them annoyed the piss out of me, even the obvious ones that characters would tell you the solution to before you had a chance to breathe in the room. I also feel like the Ragnarök payoff wasn’t fully earned like it would have been if the Norse saga had 3 games with more time to build up in between, however I really respect Santa Monica for cutting things short & not wanting to make this game filler for a big payoff in a 3rd entry.Everything else is 10/10 quality. Every actor in this game is immaculately cast & aces their roles. The characters all come ALIVE in such a magical way that only Sony’s best teams can really pull off. All of the emotional moments hit hard & the badass moments go SO DAMN HARD. The combat is improved too, things felt slightly quicker in this game too. Mind you I’m bad at both of the Norse games & by the time I got into a groove, the games were both nearly over. The fact I still had a blast even when getting my head caved in is a testament to how great this game is. Every environment looks amazing & felt great to travel through. The music was also incredible as usual with Bear McCreary. The narrative is so much better than 2018’s, which was also great, but hooked doesn’t even begin to describe how much I loved almost every moment of this story aside from the kind of rushed payoff. Everybody gets a moment to shine & it’s a crime that Freya’s performance didn’t get any awards. I also LOVED playing as Atreus, which I’m shocked the devs kept a secret until the game came out. In some parts I actually liked his kinetic action more than playing as Kratos!Aside from the irritating puzzles & some pacing issues, this game is so close to perfect. I’d love to replay the Norse games back to back someday just to witness pure peak fiction once again.

I distinctly remember reviewing Star Allies not too long ago, it was a fun game but it also revealed how tired I & many others were growing of the standard Kirby formula (an issue for A LOT of the big Nintendo headliners) & I remember asking for a breath of fresh air to the Kirby series as well. Thankfully a Nintendo intern must have taken notes because that’s what we got with Forgotten Land! It’s not perfect by any means, but this is the right direction Kirby needs to take for future games.Positives first, yknow for a Switch game, Forgotten Land is remarkably pretty at times! Some of the environments (though still generic like the ice world, grass world, desert world) all have unique properties about them that help them stand out more in the crowd of generic platformer worlds. Especially the “post apocalypse” look to a lot of them REALLY helps set a more unique atmosphere. The lore is also extremely interesting as always, with darker & deeper meanings behind the story, which unfortunately fades to the background for most of the game like all Kirby games do. I’m not saying Kirby NEEDS a deep story, but when there’s so many interesting things going on towards the end & in subtext, I just want more! I think we’ll get there someday, but for now, it’s still a Kirby game at heart which is not a bad thing. Kirby going full 3D is the big selling point of Forgotten Land & I’m very happy they pulled it off so nicely, and while the combat isn’t perfect, if you try to play this game like Bayonetta you will have SO much more fun, even though I embarrassingly didn’t discover Kirby’s new dodge until the 2nd to last world. And the music is amazing as always to nobody’s surprise. I also like how the collectibles in the game kept me looking for every secret throughout the entire adventure, most of the time with platformers like Kirby, Im invested in collecting everything, but before the middle or so of the game I kind of just stop & play the game straight through instead, but Forgotten Land is one of the first titles that kept me engaged throughout.Negatives though, there really isn’t many. Aside from sometimes unresponsive buttons during the heat of battle. What did drive me off the wall during battle is how often Kirby would lose his copy abilities. It doesn’t seem to a set number of hits before you lose your ability, but 90% of the time I would get hit ONCE and my ability would go flying. Other times I could get hit 5 times in a row before losing my ability. This has been an annoyance for me with the Kirby games for YEARS now, but here it felt much more noticeable & annoying. Some of the post game stuff is a let down as well, like why would I want to go back through all the worlds I just completed, fighting the same 6 bosses for the 3rd time in a row? All while looking for easily missable collectibles (that you need a MAJORITY of just to get to the finale, god I hate content locking like that, even if I didn’t have a issue finding said items) And yes the finale is great, but you have to go through a bunch of needless padding just to get to it. That’s a problem I have with so many modern Nintendo games in general. Wether it’s Mario, Pokémon, Kirby or etc, nearly everything leading up to their universally awesome grand finales always feels so “been there done that” and I need to stress that I DID have fun playing Forgotten Land, but it’s still a basic Nintendo game at heart.With that being said, I still consider this a step forward for the series, but there’s still room to grow. I wonder where the future of Kirby is going next, maybe Nintendo will take him open world like they are with all of their flagship franchises.. Hmmm… Now THAT would be a sight to see..

About time I got to this! I’m in the minority of having finished Xenoblade 2 before ever touching the first game & time has only made me look back more fondly on 2 despite dragging it a little in my review. But I can safely say I have a lot of the same love for Xenoblade 1, as well as some of the same complaints. What I really love about this series is the story & that’s no different here. The story absolutely HOOKED me from beginning to end & makes me wish I got into the original on the Wii back in the day (although the type of gamer I was in 2012 is a completely different person than I am now so who knows if I would’ve clicked with it at all) But this is one of those absolutely essential story experiences that should be seen by anybody with a Switch, though I still have a higher place in my heart for 2’s story above 1’s. The soundtrack is absolutely PHENOMENAL to nobody’s surprise, most of it has been remastered for the Definitive Edition so I had no prior attachment to original tracks, but no duds that I can think of. The game is also beautiful at times for a Switch game with a Wii game as a skeleton. That sounds backhanded, but anything I play after Horizon Forbidden West on PS5 will pale in comparison. The environments are huge & something to admire, as long as you don’t look too closely. I also mostly prefer the combat of 1 compared to 2’s slower more health sponge combat, there’s 1 glaring issue with it that I’ll get to later but I really loved how battles went so quickly, even most boss fights, compared to some of the absolute slogs of 2’s fights. The Future Connected epilogue was good, I really liked the open & more laid back feeling of the journey, but the way it was hyped up by some I was expecting a bit more, even though I’m certain we’ll be getting more answers during Xenoblade 3! :) What didn’t I like? To start, a big nitpick would have to be the jankiness of the non-cutscene dialogue animations. I get this game & the original didn’t have the biggest budgets in the world, but for a 10 year remaster I feel like things could’ve been touched up better with how good the rest of the game looks & runs. It was an issue in 2 as well, I hope 3 alleviates this because it’s distracting. Something that was beyond annoying was the vision mechanic in battle when using Shulk, who I used for 95% of the game as my main just like I did with Rex in 2. Can’t rely on the AI to do the life-saving moves in a pinch after all, but the vision mechanic is designed to help you avoid a deadly attack or debuff. But if your party is low on health & within knockout range, the vision mechanic will keep activating until you have enough health back. This was a problem for me in harder battles of course (the game really wasn’t hard aside from some roadblocks) because the pacing of battles is CONSTANTLY grinding to a halt to watch a death animation over & over again, basically leaving me begging for whoever to take the deadly hit so the vision would end & I could get back to actually playing the damn game to avoid the vision. BEYOND grateful they ditched this mechanic in every game afterwards, even Future Connected ditched it & its included in this bundle LOL. Story reasons my ass, they KNEW it was annoying & you can’t convince me otherwise. I also don’t like equipment systems in any type of games at all, even some of my favorite games of all time suffer from this. Spending half the play-time in menu’s reading stat changes with CONSTANTLY dropping equipment & items isn’t fun & never will be. I remember staring at all the charts in both 1 & 2 while asking myself “Do I have to fill all this crap out? Why can’t I auto assign this stuff?”. Doesn’t appeal to me at all I’m sorry. The last thing I didn’t like was the sudden spike in difficulty in the later chapters, but some of these late game fights were total BS imo. Especially the final boss, who shredded me on my first attempts. It’s not like I was level 65 going into it either, I was mid-70’s steamrolling 95% of the game without needing to grind once when I got to the finale. It was so frustrating that I debated giving up on it & just watching the rest on YouTube. I hate grindy experiences that the JRPG genre is known for, so for it to sneak in here in the 11th hour with it never having been an issue beforehand really rubbed me the wrong way. I swallowed my pride, acknowledged that I’ll never get the time back wasted on grinding & did it for a few more levels before going to test the waters to see if I could beat it with an extra 4 levels added on. And I beat the game on my first try after that lol. All in all, I really love Xenoblade despite me constantly clashing with some of it’s systems & trappings. Xenoblade 3 is easily one of my most anticipated games of the last few years at this point, so let’s hope it ties a neat bow on top of one of my absolute favorite storylines in gaming history.

Ghostwire is truly a unique experience. So much of it works so well that when it falters, it doesn’t hurt the overall experience too much. I went in mostly skeptical, Bethesda games are really 50/50 for me, especially FPS ones, so Ghostwire had an uphill battle to overcome. Few FPS games can hit that sweet spot for me, but I’m so glad to say Ghostwire mostly nailed it.Lemme get the negatives out of the way first, one of the more noticeable issues was the frame rate tanking during certain sections, a lot was going on screen for sure at times, but performance was mostly solid apart from those big drops. Another thing I didn’t like were the sections when you would get de-powered for a bit, I get adding a little variety to the combat, but normal de-powered Akito wasn’t fun to play as. Movement can be kind of clunky at times too, mostly when crouched. All of these issues came to a head during one of the end chapter bosses, you’re stuck without powers to SLOWLY sneak around an arena to wait for a moment to strike with your bow, all this against a very fast enemy you can’t fight back against. Once you get spotted, it’s very hard to get back to a safe spot without getting clapped from behind by the boss, just because movement speed is so heavy feeling when crouched trying to get into the vent. Aside from that rock bottom experience, most of the bosses aren’t that good. Another one involved jumping over shockwaves, but jumping is slow as well so needless to say I used a lot of healing items just because the game wasn’t designed to be stretched this way in combat. I was also bummed out that there’s only Air, Water & Fire attacks, nothing else hidden away from the trailers for you to discover at launch. I think in a sequel they could really iron these issues out.That sounded like a lot of negative stuff, but I promise I thoroughly enjoyed this game. How people were calling this combat boring & repetitive is something I have no idea about. It was always fun & exhilarating beginning to end. Ripping cores out was always extremely satisfying & switching between the limited number of elemental attacks on the fly kept me on my toes, especially since a lot of the enemies are deceptively fast & can be in your face in seconds if you give them the chance. The visuals are really pretty too! It’s no Forbidden West or Rift Apart, but not everything has to be. There’s a good amount of muddy textures that could look better, but this isn’t a huge budget game. Not everything has to be Elden Ring y’all. Tokyo’s neon lights are an aesthetic I’ll always love. The story is what I really liked though, I got attached to KK & Akito’s butting heads relationship very quickly & I was glued to the screen to see what would happen next. The ending was also surprisingly emotional & satisfying as well, it definitely touched my cold heart a bit. Like I said earlier, I think if this game gets A++ funding for a sequel it would truly be elevated to something astronomical, for now it definitely stands out from the crowd & is WORTH YOUR TIME.

Resident Evil is a franchise I never expected to like, horror wasn’t my thing until a few years ago, but ironically thanks to a certain pandemic I finally sat down with the RE2 & RE3 remakes & fell in LOVE. This was my first experience with RE4 & I’m so glad I finally experienced the magic this & the original have. The amount of love & care put into this game is so rare to find nowadays, this crazy win streak from Capcom since 2017 NEEDS to be studied in universities! Also screw GameStop for canceling my collectors edition pre-order 2 weeks before the game came out. Nearly everything in this game is perfect, it has the best combat in the series by a mile even if I miss Jill’s dodge rolls, but we get a new parry system that feels so good to use. This game is tougher than previous entries even on lower difficulty settings but it never felt unfair, THAT is great game design. The music was amazing & atmospheric, speaking of atmosphere this game isn’t as spooky as RE2, but I found it spookier than RE3. The Verdugo fight in the cryo tunnels made me pause the game & wait for my partner to get home so I could muster the courage to keep playing. I haven’t been that tweaked out at something since Village’s DLC with the mannequins! The boss fights were AWESOME too! I love the cheesy humor in these games, plus almost all of the characters were memorably remade as well. I also really loved how long the campaign could be if you wanted to do everything. If I had to nitpick, some of the puzzles weren’t the best. A couple flat out just annoyed me. I wasn’t as invested in the story as I wanted to be as much as I LOVE Leon & would name my first born after him. It was a great narrative don't get me wrong, I just prefer the original trilogy’s overarching story to 4, 5 & 6’s stories. I know it’s an easy target and it was vastly improved upon in this remake but I didn’t like escorting Ashley around. The only times I got game overs was because there was an adjustment period of getting used to escorting her. After getting used to her being around it was still stressful but that’s intentionally by design. I’m also usually not into side modes, so I bounced off of Mercenaries mode after having a little fun with Krauser for an hour or so. I weirdly preferred Village’s merc mode (mostly because I can play as the tall vampire lady in that). I’m so happy this game is as wildly successful as it is, I want to jump back in for a campaign replay but I’ll wait for the Separate Ways DLC, which I’m manifesting everyday. It’s gonna be tough to dethrone RE4 from my game of the year spot!

This game killed any hope I had left for Pokémon. Wether it be Pokémon Presents full of mobile game ads for 25 minutes with absolutely no substance, the lack of effort & passion from GameFreak & the mentally ill take that we NEED a Pokémon game yearly. You could be fooled by the disgusting amount of money these games made, but this franchise has ROTTED from the inside out. The sense of hope that Legends gave me was obliterated, I really can’t put into words how much Violet crushed me. At least the music is still good even tho I wouldn’t put it in my top 5 of the franchise’s OSTs. Area Zero is my favorite area in the history of Pokémon with it’s Xenogears-like theme. There’s some new Pokémon that have good designs but I wouldn’t call most of them super memorable. But this is easily the worst looking “modern” game on the market & the worst optimized. It’s been talked about to death but these games are nearly a year old with ZERO updates to fix the CONSTANT frame drops. It turns my stomach that they’re selling $35 DLC before addressing a SINGLE ISSUE that got this game clapped in review scores. Nothing will change either, cuz YOU IDIOTS keep buying these broken PS1 products. Sorry Nintendo **** eaters, merchandise deadlines are NOT a valid excuse for how these games were released. When you really want to suffer, just play online! The raid system & online functionality + interface is *somehow* even worse than Sword & Shield. Raids are simply broken, they weren’t even fun for a short time like D-Max in the last gen, they are a SLOG to this day & you’re better off doing it with AI trainers offline. After playing other RPGs this year like Final Fantasy X & Xenosaga III, there is no reason the battle & catch systems are so SLOW in these games. Those are PS2 games that I could do 2-3 battles in by the time the slogs in Violet were done. BTW, Legends Arceus fixed this issue LITERAL MONTHS EARLIER, if they didn’t have time to implement the QOL features from PLA, MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE DELAYED THESE PILES OF CRAP. Why ditch PLA’s lighting fast catching mechanics? Why ditch PLA’s shiny spawn noise when this game forces you to look at the 240p environments for the slightest difference in a Pokémon’s model, some being too small or indistinguishable to even notice? Especially when a lot of them don’t spawn until you are LITERALLY RIGHT ON TOP OF THEM, WASTING EVEN MORE TIME GETTING IN & OUT OF BATTLES WHEN THIS WASNT A PROBLEM IN PLA. The gulf in quality between the 2022 games are staggering. This game seems custom made to waste more of the player’s time than ever. Fans had the nerve to overlook the CONSTANT technical issues cuz “the game is still fun”. This is the most MISERABLE I’ve ever been playing one of these horrid modern Pokémon games. Were they going for a Death Stranding ripoff? Cuz 90% of this game was mind numbingly boring, an entertaining ending doesn’t save the rest of the game. But I’m giving it too much credit, who thinks this Jurassic Park wannabe plot was well written? You’re telling me SCIENTISTS wanted to bring Pokémon from the past & future to live among the present? I shouldn’t even bother talking about a Pokémon plot but this is the same franchise that gave us the Unova games & we’ll never get a level of quality like that again from these duds. The sad part is I saw the potential, open world is a direction that can work for Pokémon. But TPC needs to close GameFreak’s doors & get a dev team that has a shred of competence. THEN give the team enough time to make a complete game instead of these yearly proof of concept games we keep getting. A console that’s not weaker than an Xbox 360 would help too! In a just world, we’d get Legends style games as the new norm instead of outdated copy & pasted garbage. Sword & Shield are still worse games, but I can’t lie & say I wouldn’t rather play them than S/V ever again. At least they had a playable frame rate! My love for Pokémon is 6 feet under by now, year after year of trash followed by a bit of hope in PLA, only for it to crash back down in the grave again with S/V. Unless we get a Legends style direction for the series, I’m leaving this toxic relationship I have with Pokémon. I’d rather play games that are made with a shred of passion, from people with a shred of dignity. Pokémon Violet is the last Pokemon game I’ll ever touch otherwise. I just wish more fans would’ve stood for something & followed suit in wanting better from a franchise that IS capable of such, instead of giving Nintendo their biggest paycheck yet. The biggest media franchise of all time only has this skidmark to show for itself. Self inflicted wounds tend to **** like that.

This was hands down one of the most miserable gaming experiences I’ve ever had. This game took me over 3 years to finish. The entire pandemic came & went in the time it took me to roll credits. Had the game’s setting not been mildly interesting to me I would’ve dropped this game after a few hours & forgot it existed like pretty much everybody else basically has. It’s not 100% bad but I will never touch this game again for as long as I live. The few positives I do have pale in comparison to the positives in other games I’ve played in the last generation. The graphics are great, the sound design is immaculate, the music is really good, the online functions were pretty novel & the story FINALLY got interesting towards the end. I really loved how the Big 5 mass extinctions were incorporated because I’ve always found them so interesting to study up on. Glimpses of peak fiction don’t erase the misery I felt for 90% of this game though. In no universe should a game EVER take as long as Death Stranding does to “get good” like others have said. 10 hours my ASS. I didn’t rise from the coma this game put me into until the 25 hour mark, so should I have listened to my gut & uninstalled the game at the start of the 2nd area to watch the rest on YouTube? Yup! This game should have been 10-15 hours max. The walking simulator gameplay loop was the equivalent of watching paint dry for over 30 hours. The driving mechanics are god awful, I honestly think they’re worse than driving in the Mafia games. The majority of this game is just.. walking & making deliveries. If that’s what Kojima thought was good game design then I guess that’s his vision, but why did he have to subject it upon us? The middle of this game is the reason why I fell on & off this game for 3 years straight & if you played this “game” you know which sections I’m referring to. I know humanity **** but I don’t think we deserved this level of punishment. After an intriguing opening section, the story just stagnates for 15 hours straight. I would’ve had more fun cleaning bedpans at a nursing home. Call me an old man but weren't video games meant to be FUN? This product just OOZES that Kojima pretentiousness in its direction & writing & it’s so damn insufferable a lot of the time. We get it Kojima, you’re sooo artsy fartsy. Nobody cares. Stop wasting my time & money & stop making games that are way too far up their own asses. Even the gunplay ****! I could see this game being tolerable on PC with some crazy mods though. I really can’t stress how well over half this game should have been scrapped to make a more streamlined experience that maybe would have reviewed better & sold better instead of the convoluted mess we got. I’m shocked that this game is getting a sequel but I hope it’s actually able to BE a game instead of a walking simulator tv show, this coming from someone who ended up mildly enjoying the story & is a fan of story focused games in general. Once the sequel is done huffing it’s own farts like glue, at least the story can maybe go into some interesting places given where things left off? All I know is that I’ll be catching DS2 on YouTube, not with a controller in my hand. Just go listen to the soundtrack & watch a recap on YouTube & you’ll be fine skipping this one. Also, YOU CAN TAKE MY HEARTTTTTT HOLD IT TOGETHER AS WE FALL APARTTT!!!

A lot of people wrote this game off before it came out but I’m glad I was one of the few who saw the vision! I’m not as huge on the Guardians as some people but I enjoyed all of their movies so far & appreciate how they tend to go to some weird & wild places, so a game longer than all of their movies combined had the chance to do the same thing and it definitely accomplished that! Positives first, the game is just plain FUN. This game could’ve been made in the PS2 era & it would’ve fit right in, which I’m using as a compliment! Just a straightforward single player video game that feels so rare nowadays. The combat is hectic in a very satisfying way too! Some people complained about only being able to play as Star-Lord but that would’ve made things wayyy too messy with this combat system, if there is ever a sequel that goes completely over the top I could see it happening though. The graphics are great & the soundtrack goes hard too. All of the Guardians’ actors gave a great performance despite me being so used to the movie actors for them. I also really liked the choice & dialogue systems, I love replay-ability options like these. The complaints I do have are more minor, nothing in this game aggravated me to the point of dinging the score lower but I wasn’t hooked by the story as much as I wanted to be. At times it truly shined, ESPECIALLY the parts with Peter & his mother which really tugged at my homesick heartstrings. I get how the bickering between the Guardians makes sense in-universe & is how they usually are, but there’s SO much dialogue in this game even if it’s idle talking. Sometimes it just got a bit too much for me even if I liked all of the characters & their performances. The most glaring problem is the weird optimization that still hasn’t been patched on PS5 almost 2 years later. There are strange large frame drops often & a lot of bugs. Some of the bugs were really funny like when enemies would die & randomly have their bodies do a 180 twist before ragdolling across the room. Other bugs were annoying clipping issues & I would get stuck in the environments at least once per chapter, making me have to reload an auto save which thankfully never cost me a lot of progress, One part during a mid-game combat gauntlet a large mini boss enemy got caught in the ground and died instantly, leading to the rest of the combat encounter’s arena not opening up and allowing me to proceed. I had to sit through the dialogue all over again though. Overall I had a lot of fun with the Guardians & I hope one day a sequel gets greenlit, there’s so much potential for future titles!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I’ve mentioned before how as I’ve gotten older my passion for turn based games has faded, Final Fantasy X didn’t change that trajectory but it was certainly an unforgettable experience that gets bogged down here & there. The story of FFX is truly special & timeless. I’m obsessed with every part of this narrative & haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for months on end. It’s emotional, fun, heartbreaking, tragic & absolutely worth experiencing in any way you can. I wish I could experience it for the first time again. The soundtrack is AMAZING, remastered or not I love the majority of these tracks & bought the FFX Soundtrack CD as quickly as I could. The main characters are great too, some get more attention than others for sure & while they can’t compete with some of my favorite RPG parties of all time, I still care about them all in their own unique ways. Everybody is memorable which is hard to accomplish (except for the R*cist). The world building for Spira is as wonderful as it is gorgeous despite all the death, destruction & corruption. There’s few games out there than can make you actually FEEL like you’re on a long adventure with your favorite people, but FFX achieves that. I don’t mind the linear locations either! The combat is also good, I think this is where turn based combat tends to peak for me. It’s extremely fast, the animations are on point to this day, there’s some timing mini games required for some powerful moves, all of this makes me think WHAT IS POKÉMON’S EXCUSE? Why are 20 year old RPGs quicker than most modern ones? Sigh. Well it can’t all be good, the PC port of this game is not great. I have a stronger PC but why is FFX locked to 30fps (60fps in menus only) with semi-frequent frame drops? There was a few occasions where the cutscenes glitched out & turned the whole screen green, only fixed by me closing the game & reloading it, one of the most important cutscenes in the endgame got tarnished by the screen turning puke green for no reason. It doesn’t help that not every cutscene is able to be skipped if you have to reload the game, or if you die in battle. I’m not sure why the game picks & chooses which are skippable even after you’ve viewed them. Also weird how this feature & other PC features are absent from the console versions of this remaster. The HD coat of paint looks very good for environments, but after seeing the original character models vs the HD ones, yeahhh the originals look less uncanny. If you aren’t an important character in FFX your character model will suffer GREATLY for it, the difference in quality is distracting tbh. The voice acting gets some flack but it never bothered me all that much. While I enjoyed the combat, at the end of the day it still doesn’t grip me as much as a non-turn based RPG does. Some enemies & bosses are a **** to deal with & made me consider dropping the game all together. I’m not great at job-based RPGs & may never be. The sphere grid isn’t my favorite thing isn’t the world, I would’ve preferred a regular level up system instead of rotting away in menus for hours. Blitzball was a MISERABLE experience & I never touched it again after the one mandatory match. The puzzle sections of this game can BURN in the fiery pits of the underworld too. I think this game would benefit greatly from a full remake (ideally all in one part Square..) It’s a great experience but I didn’t have as much fun actually playing it as I wish I could have. In terms of RPG storytelling & music, FFX is one of the mandatory standards for this genre. There is room for improvement imo, I would buy a full remake in a heartbeat if they modernized the gameplay. Take my money Square!

Sonic games aren’t my go-to, the amount of Sonic games I’ve finished could be counted on one hand. That being said I was still excited for this new take on Sonic, even though it came out a day before God of War… whose bright idea was that? Despite shotty pre-release footage I still had my hopes up since the concept of Frontiers was so intriguing to me. It ended up being a good game, but far from a great one. Positives first, Sonic never lacks on great soundtracks, even games I haven’t played I’ve heard amazing songs from, but OMFG Frontiers has one of the best soundtracks in recent gaming history. I haven’t been able to stop playing the vocal tracks since I finished this game months ago (yes I’m very slow at writing reviews). This game truly excelled at its main boss fights, the first 2 are some of the most hype s**t I’ve ever played. I would play an entire game with this style of super combat! The graphics are also really nice if a bit drab in certain locations. Area variety wasn’t all that colorful for a Sonic game. There’s also a surprisingly relaxing fishing mini game that can bust the game in half if you use it enough LOL. The main story is also enjoyable but didn’t hook me as much as SA2 did. Now I have to use everyone’s fav buzzword for gaming reviews, JANK. Sonic Frontiers isn’t utterly broken but I don’t think I’ve ever played a jankier game. Playing Pokémon Violet then Frontiers back to back was absolute hell on Earth. I don’t go out of my way to play rushed or broken janky games for content, so my tolerance with unpolished games isn’t that high. Sonic Frontiers TANKS it’s own rating for me just off of how it controls. The collision detection feels random, the running speed feels too slow for the fastest thing on Earth even when upgraded, at the time I played this game there were no immediate updates to fix any speed or collision issues. The amount of times I flew off a rail randomly or a jump had absolutely no momentum drove me to near madness by the 2nd zone. Controlling Sonic feels BAD & soured the entire experience. Combat can be fun at first but other times it’s a clusterf**k. The gameplay loop got old by the middle of the 2nd zone too, collectathons aren’t my cup of tea. The first zone was the only one I enjoyed to the end, simply because it was all new to me. I’m not a fan of the mini games required for Chaos emeralds either, thankfully I got lucky with that pinball one on my first try that everyone seems to hate lol. Some of them were fine on paper but made so much worse because I had to actually play them with all this jank. It all culminated in the abhorrent 3rd zone, a string of volcanic islands separated by impassable gaps in the sky that are connected by single points, making you wonder why the islands are so damn big for no reason. It’s such a pain to travel to said singular point just to go to another island with the same trash gimmicks. Have fun flying off the rails on the way to the next island too with this game’s non-existent but also overbearing physics. The boss of the 3rd zone is also one of the most frustrating fights I’ve ever experienced. The jank of Frontiers really ruined Find Your Flame for me. That’s unforgivable. The 3rd island also emphasized another dumb decision, why doesn’t the map clear as you travel it? I did a lot of the dumb 2D side missions to clear some fog but after the 2nd zone they just feel like janky time wasters. The map should clear out as you travel so it’s not just a huge empty unhelpful blob of nothingness should you want to ignore annoying side content. Speaking of, Sonic needs to ditch these cyberspace 2D levels if they ever want a truly great 3D Sonic experience. These levels all blend together & annoy the piss out of me whenever I was forced into playing one. I’m sure they would be fine in any other game, just not in one with barely basic control of your character. I don’t mean to be so negative & act like this game is unplayable & broken because it’s not. But playing Frontiers felt like I was fighting it to have a shred of fun nearly every step of the way after the first zone. Which is unfortunate because I really was looking forward to this direction for the series, it has potential & I hope if there’s a Frontiers 2 we get something polished to a finer degree.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Bingeing massive JRPGs before a new entry in the series isn’t an easy task, but it’s one I had to take on following Xenoblade 3’s release date getting moved early up to July. Xenoblade 1 was a fantastic game with some major gripes on my end, same with Xenoblade 2. Many in the Xeno fandom claim Torna as one of the best games in the series despite technically only being DLC for 2, so what did I think? I think they’re both right and wrong on that claim. I prefer 1 & 2 to Torna, but despite some fumbles this huge expansion does some things SO much better than it’s predecessors that I can’t help but be even more excited for 3! Torna’s battle system is without a doubt the best in the series & it’s really not even a competition. Nearly every battle went by quickly without the tedium in the main game of 2, and without the frustration of some aspects of 1’s combat. It’s all incredibly kinetic and fast paced, it just might be my favorite battle system out of any JRPG I’ve played. I only avoided fighting enemies in my way if they were too strong to take on, but even sometimes I threw myself at them just to test how my skills grew, the combat is THAT good!! The general tone of Torna takes a while to get going but once it sets in, MonolithSoft flexes their incredible storytelling skills with one of the most devastating plot turns a JRPG has taken, playing 2 beforehand and knowing what happens to Torna still didn’t prepare me for what this expansion had in store for me. I liked all of the new and returning characters as well. Absolutely fantastic musical score & cutscene work as well. All the environments are lovely looking as well, but I still wish we could get ports to a more powerful console that could take full advantage of Xenoblade’s world’s potential (in an alternate timeline lol.) However, there are some major pains in my neck that I encountered during my playthrough. The biggest complaint I and many others had with Torna is the padding, specifically the infamous Community system. If this didn’t exist, the DLC would probably be half the length which is understandable, but for as amazing as Monolith are, they really get stuck in some stupid design decisions. Content locking based on side activities is one of the worst gaming tropes and it completely **** the placing of this DLC. “Hey the big bad has what he needs to end the world soon, but first we have to run off and help out 46 people with their minuscule problems!” Absolutely baffling. It did go quicker towards the end, but that doesn’t eliminate how horrendous of a time I had doing mostly FETCH QUESTS for an extra 5-6 hours. Early 2000’s game design should STAY in the early 2000’s. It’s designed to make you care about the side characters before the end, but why would I want to invest my time into characters that aren’t gonna make it in the end? Forcing the player to do SIDE activities for a MAIN quest is one easy way to make the player hate the side activities. That ****, but what I also still couldn’t stand were the field skills. Not as bad as the main game due to the shorter length of Torna, but still completely grinds the pace to a halt if you don’t have the right ones unlocked. Extremely solid DLC!

Destroy All Humans was one of the biggest franchises I enjoyed during my childhood, I have endless fond memories of the series before it went on hiatus for half my life. But the first game never really clicked with me even back then, mostly because I played the other 3 games before it, so it felt really outdated & lame by the time I got my child hands on it. That feeling didn’t really go away with the remake if I’m being honest. It’s obviously an improvement over the original but still feels outdated in a lot of ways, ways that I’d still rather go back on the PS2 & play the original 2nd game or even Path of the Furon which is an immense guilty pleasure. The new graphics are stunningly gorgeous, the framerate is pretty solid on the Series X and I really liked the new dash feature they added, along with various QOL updates. The humor is still great, Crypto & Pox are one of the funniest duos in gaming & I’ll never not love hearing Invader Zim’s voice in literally anything. The game can be a blast to play but not always. This is where I get into the negatives & I wish I didn’t have so many.. First, the story is just.. kinda there? I know these games never have groundbreaking stories but I thought I recalled there being a little more than what we got here. I guess not, but it’s really just an excuse to destroy all humans. Which I wish I got to do more often, but there only being 7 weapons in the game (4 on foot, 3 in Saucer) makes things get old FAST. Once you’re fully equipped it can be fun to blow up cities, but they didn’t bother to update the way your saucer can move & aim like in later games, so you’re stuck going barely higher than a medium sized building for the whole game. When you can barely fly higher than one of the final bosses, it gets really irritating & makes the saucer feel way more sluggish and handicapped than it should. Speaking of the final bosses, lemme address this **** of a finale. This has got to be one of the WORST ending chapters in any recent game I’ve played. The original fight wasn’t a cakewalk either, but to make it so brutally difficult out of nowhere when the rest of the game was simple enough for a 4 year old to finish is insane to me. Trial and error gameplay is not fun & is bad game design period. Same for all of these bullet sponge bosses! Speaking of bad game design, some of the missions here are goddamn terrible. Rage inducing doesn’t begin to describe the early 2000’s chapter design. Escort missions, “protect this spot” missions, stealth missions where you can’t be seen at all plus regular filler missions that have no bearing on the plot. The pacing is all over the place. I didn’t expect them to overhaul every single thing about the game but at least TRY to modernize it! I don’t wanna get too upset about this because it’s a “faithful remake” (I really f**king HATE that term) of the 1st game of a series that’s been dormant for over a decade & they probably put all of the budget into making the game look gorgeous, but I can’t help & feel that if you’re gonna do a remake, GO ALL IN ON IT. Don’t be like modern Pokémon remakes & simply put a fresh coat of paint over a wall with a hundred holes in it. I’m sorry I didn’t enjoy this game more. It’s really being uplifted by my joy of the series being back, I just wish they didn’t put so much focus on the weakest game in the series without fixing most of the flaws it had back in the 2000’s. I’m still really excited for Destroy All Humans 2 ReProbed coming out next month, 2 was always my favorite & I have a ton of nostalgia for it, but I hope it doesn’t fall into the same pitfalls as this first remake did. Hopefully we end up getting a proper Destroy All Humans 3..

I know it’s easy to say this game didn’t need a $70 remake and while I’m 50/50 on that topic, I’m in the minority on playing the original Part 1 AFTER Part 2, so a lot of the improvements of Part 2 were missing from Part 1, which harmed my initial experience with the Last of Us (more on that later). Overall tho, I was very open to the idea of Part 1’s remake from the very first rumor of it existing since everything except for the story of Part 1 felt outdated to me personally. I’m glad to say it’s a complete upgrade in nearly every single way compared to the original! Losing the multiplayer is a downside yes, but it’s not like I ever played Factions or planned to anyway.. The only 2 issues I can think of is yes, this game shouldn’t have been $70, I would’ve been much more comfortable paying $50. The biggest issue I had with this remake is that it didn’t incorporate any of the combat improvements from Part 2, still no dodge button! Sigh, missed opportunities. The rest of the package was incredible tho, the graphical improvements are AMAZING. It’s up there with the Horizon games visually. I really love the DualSense haptics too, I can’t go back to any other kind of controller tbh. The story is still immaculate as always, the new facial expressions really did make more of the emotional moments hit harder than in the original game. Overall I really enjoyed the experience, Naughty Dog successfully made the gameplay experience feel modern and new, and I’m very much looking forward to Part 3 in 2037!

Bayonetta is one of the best & most underrated series in gaming PERIOD. Replaying this game in 2022 right before 3 comes out made me love it even more than I did all those years ago in my first (admittedly rough) playthrough. The Bayonetta games may have my favorite combat system in any game (rivaled by the new Spider-Man games & some others) And I may be in the minority, but I really enjoy the stories of both games! I prefer Bayo 1’s story to Bayo 2’s, but the combat of 2 >1. The story pacing is a bit wonky, but things always escalate out of control by the end, I truly love how ridiculous and campy these games get. Bayonetta herself is the icon, the legend & the moment.

Bayonetta is one of the best & most underrated series in gaming PERIOD. Replaying this game in 2022 right before 3 comes out made me love it even more than I did all those years ago in my first (admittedly rough) playthrough. The Bayonetta games may have my favorite combat system in any game (rivaled by the new Spider-Man games & some others) And I may be in the minority, but I really enjoy the stories of both games! I prefer Bayo 1’s story to Bayo 2’s, but the combat of 2 >1. The story pacing is a bit wonky, but things always escalate out of control by the end, I truly love how ridiculous and campy these games get. Bayonetta herself is the icon, the legend & the moment.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

As I’ve gotten older my love for turn based RPGs has slowly diminished in favor of action RPGs, while Bravely Default II didn’t do much new to drive the needle back in favor of turn based RPGs, it was a welcome reminder of why I used to love them so much. I truly enjoyed the story of this game, even if parts of it were definitely uneven (in my opinion the first chapters were the strongest and got weaker basically until the ending), but I LOVE a cycle of destruction based storyline, thanks Mass Effect! On PC this game looks gorgeous too, the character models not so much but it never truly got in the way of all the environmental eye candy. It runs silky smooth too, I’m very happy that I didn’t play this on Switch lol. The best part of this game is easily the soundtrack, DEAR NEPTUNE this is one of the best OSTs in recent memory. Revo is a musical genius & deserves all of the awards, almost all of the tracks tie together in a blissful way. However there is a fair bit about the game that I didn’t like much. Having to do random side quests in order to see the real ending of the game always rubbed me the wrong way, even if it’s only 2 quests. One of them is without a doubt the most excruciating part of any game I’ve played in the last few years, a stupid card game in order to get an Asterisk (an item you NEED to see the real ending) but it’s completely up to RNG if you can beat the person for the chance to battle them so you can actually get the item, oh & if you lose the card game then you get a GAME OVER & have to reload from the title screen. INFURIATING didn’t even begin to describe that experience. All of that to get the “REAL” nothing burger of an ending too! Ugh. I also tend to dislike equipment systems in any type of game, I seriously hate how common it’s become outside of traditional RPGs like this one, but I actually didn’t mind it too much in BDII! It was scratching a certain itch in my lizard brain of getting to a new town & decking out the party with the next level of strong weapons. Like most RPGs, BDII does have a pretty snail paced start, the story did a lot of heavy lifting so I could stay engaged. I wasn’t huge on the turn based combat though, it is a lot to keep track of & can be downright brutal at times even on the easy settings. It’s unfortunately also a very grindy game. Without the exploits I discovered, there’s no way I would’ve kept my sanity long enough to finish this adventure, even if I was very invested in the plot. But overall I came away from Bravely Default II with a positive experience, I really would like to go back to play the first games on 3DS sometime soon. Their soundtracks alone convinced me already!

I’m always looking for the next game to scratch my Resident Evil sized itch in between their releases, so Callisto Protocol seemed like an obvious choice. I never fully played through the Dead Space games (the new remake is definitely near the top of my backlog right now), so I went into Callisto with no preconceptions. What did I find? Well it’s a gorgeous game with some lofty shoes to fill, but overall it didn’t meet my expectations as a spooky game to hold me over until the Resident Evil 4 remake. First things first, nobody can deny how jaw dropping the visuals in this game are, how they can be visceral but also hauntingly well designed, almost like a year of development went into touching up the most minute details in the environment. I took many screenshots during my playthrough lol. It’s a learning curve for sure but I also grew to enjoy the combat, even with its inherent simplicity. It’s definitely gonna need to be redesigned a bit for taking on more than a few enemies if Callisto gets a sequel though, I totally understand the complaints even if they are a bit overreactive (welcome to gaming culture). Callisto is a very linear game unlike from what I know about Dead Space but I don’t have an issue with linearity in gaming, if anything I think we need more linear games. Thee are a decent amount of negatives that’s been slowly eroding Callisto from my mind since completing it. The soundtrack is pretty forgettable typical horror screeching from what I’ve heard for one. The characters & story are also just duds all around. The plot attempts to make itself more interesting but it’s too little too late in the last 5% of the game, I absolutely HATE this storytelling trope. The bits & pieces you do get are nice but there’s no decent payoff, just a horrible cliffhanger ending that really soured my final moments with the game. I know this is a horror game, but not much about it is genuinely scary. Relying on jump scares every chance you get is NOT good or even memorable horror design. Does every hallway have to end with something jumping out screaming? It gets old in record time. Off the top of my head I can’t recall a single moment where I was actually scared to move Jacob forward. Callisto is good at giving you anxiety but not good at delivering much else. At least shooting & beating down whatever jumps out screaming felt nice I guess. The performance on Series X is also not the best, I didn’t encounter anything gamebreaking like in the PC port but Callisto can make my console CHUG in spots. I’m not a frame rate snob but it was noticeable enough to see. Wish I picked it up on PS5 instead, which is easy to see as the best console on the market right now more & more with every game release doing better on PS5 than Xbox. Overall, Callisto Protocol is a flawed experience but one that I liked regardless. It won’t stick in the mind as much as it’s contemporaries but is still worth experiencing for those that enjoy their anxiety spiking, not at $70 though.

I’m a dog person through & through, but Stray has me wanting a little kitty of my own since completing it! This game is seriously too cute to handle at times. I really loved my time with Stray even if it was painfully short lived. This game is gorgeous on PS5 & fully takes advantage of the Dualsense controller in masterful ways. I love the dedicated meow button too, instant 10/10. Leaping around obstacles as a cat while causing some mischief here & there never got old. The level design is really something special, the sound design & soundtrack help add layers to it as well, I really loved the ambience of Stray’s OST. The game also tends to go into horror-lite places at times & it was honestly more effective than some of the actual horror games I’ve played recently! I didn’t expect a cat game to have an engaging story but we did get one with a lot of intrigue & lingering questions. I was invested in the characters even with the short time they got to shine. The main downside to Stray is sadly the same complaint most people had with it, the short length is a real detriment. While there’s only so much you can do as a cat in a cat video game, I truly wouldn’t have minded a few more hours of doing whatever cats want to do, that’s how enjoyable the gameplay was to me. I really hope the developers take what they did right here & take some of the criticism to build a truly great sequel, if that’s possible. I have too many questions with the subtle story & a creeping need to play as a cat again. Overall I‘ll be fondly reminiscing on my short time with the little Stray & their robot companions for a while to come.

Xenoblade unexpectedly became my favorite game series of all time rather quickly, so it’s only natural for me to search up every little detail about the series’ history. Finding out it had a “sister series” from the PS2 era isn’t what I expected to discover, although it’s upsetting there’s no modern way to play these games on consoles aside from shotty emulation, playing on a regular PS2 with an HDMI upscaler works too! Jumping into Xenosaga blind was expensive to do (mostly because the PS2 from my childhood unexpectedly shorted itself out sometime in the last few years, plus Retro gaming is pricy) and risky to do. Would I like these games as much as the Xenoblade trilogy? The short answer is no, I didn’t. But Xenosaga is still worth remembering and experiencing. Episode I is controversially my least favorite of the trilogy for a variety of reasons & I can’t say I wasn’t very underwhelmed when I finished this game, knowing the pure PEAK of what Takahashi is known for nowadays (maybe a bit unfair since these games are 20 years old & his experience wasn’t nearly what it is today). Positives first, the cutscene direction is all around great. I can’t believe reviewers complained about them being too long & frequent, they never felt like that for me & I love being told a story. The graphics aren’t all that but I think they hold up for the most part. The soundtrack is more lowkey compared to Mitsuda’s other works, but he always does a fantastic job ESPECIALLY the two vocal tracks for the game courtesy of Joanne Hogg. I unfortunately have a lot of negatives though.. For one, it may have been a conscious decision to not have dungeon music until the last 2 dungeons but WOW does it make the game feel so lifeless. I’m glad the sequels fixed this problem because listening to loud footsteps for 20 hours was really not good at all. I know when this game came out it was part 1 of 6 as the developers didn’t know they would only get 3 games, but the story is just so.. inert. There are some great moments don’t get me wrong, but the entire game is basically an introduction to this universe that leaves almost everything up to interpretation or leaves things to be answered in another game. WAY TOO MANY cryptic sentences that don’t go anywhere until Episode 3 at times. Characters will almost always exclaim a term or noun like it’s a big deal, when the audience usually has absolutely zero context for what’s supposed to be this big deal. The writing in this game is quite literally like holding a treat in front of a dog’s nose while making it run after the treat on a treadmill for 25 hours. Like I said, I understand why it was made like this but that doesn’t make it any less irritating until you get context from later material. If I had played this game back in the day before Xenoblade was around it would have for sure deterred me from playing its sequels, that’s how miserable it can get at times. With added context from the sequels it holds up better but I still couldn’t see myself playing this game ever again, largely due in part to the snoozefest gameplay that drags this game down even further for me. This is part of the reason this trilogy needs some HD re-release, a speed up option would be a GODSENT. These battles & attack animations are so painfully slow & repetitive that I lost almost all interest before the halfway point of the game. Enemies respawn every time you leave a room, so if you need to backtrack (Spoiler: it happens a lot as there’s NO MAP feature in any of these games, seriously wtf?) Sooo get ready to do the same exact battles with the same exact 30 second attack animations until the end of time, bogged down by the slowest walking speed ever. If I ever hear the battle theme again I’ll probably tear my eardrums out. Oh yeah, they only gave us TWO BATTLE THEMES FOR THE ENTIRE 25+ HOUR JRPG. THE SECOND THEME IS ONLY FOR THE FINAL BOSS. All of the battle mechanics & customization options were poorly explained, I found them irritating to tool around in with the clunky menus. The AWGS system also feels like such an afterthought. I want to be forgiving because the devs were rushed but there’s just too much going against Xenosaga I. I’m glad the majority of these issues got fixed in sequels but I genuinely can never see myself replaying this game, which is something I can’t say for 2 & 3. I consider this game the only miss in Takahashi’s catalogue.

This game is exactly why the Xeno series became my favorite video game franchise in the world. This is truly one of the best RPGs & games in general I’ve ever played, if it came out this year it would undoubtedly be my GOTY. It was SO worth the $200 scalper price on eBay! After the lackluster Ep I & step in the right direction of Ep II, this game knocked nearly every single aspect of those two games out of the park & then some! I finished it a month ago & I still think about it every single day. I truly haven’t been this obsessed with a game in a while. How this game didn’t get proper recognition back in its day & with time is a travesty & I’m going to do my best to spread word of this game. PLEASE play this however you can! The only big complaint I have with this game is the rehashing of the Miltian conflict that strangely takes up half of the game. I appreciated the new revelations & the gameplay section was still of high quality, but it definitely should have been shorter. The devs really had A LOT to wrap up with one final game instead of 3 more after it so it’s understandable. The beginning is a little bit slower than I personally liked & the religious stuff is kind of confusing occasionally. The game also suffers frequent & sometimes severe frame drops, maybe if there was an HD RE-RELEASE we could nix that issue Bamco. Everything else is so perfect. The soundtrack is GOD TIER. The graphics still look great to this day & would look even more incredible on modern platforms. The cutscene direction is immaculate, the voice acting is on point, all the emotional points hit like a truck. The story is so damn good. If you didn’t know about the development hell this series went though I don’t think you could tell in this entry, that’s how beautifully MonolithSoft crafted this game. The gameplay is the sharpest it’s ever been. Some fans complain that it’s been dumbed down but I really could care less. It’s so fun, I can’t remember the last time I went out of my way to get into fights in the endgame of an RPG! Usually I avoid late game fights like the plague. The E.S. fights are even better, they don’t have as many moving parts as normal battles but they’re still so much fun. Everything in this game is LIGHTNING FAST too, loading times are near non-existent, battle animations are mere seconds long, character movement is so quick that it makes it hard to go back to the last 2 games’ more sluggish pace. Makes you wonder what modern Pokémon’s excuse is for everything taking 5 years to do when a PS2 game loads things in a 16th of the time. All of the characters get their chance in the spotlight too, some more than others for sure, but rewatching cutscenes a month later still gets me in the feels for everybody. Xenosaga 3 is truly a triumph **** & a journey that’s rarely found in games to this day. Just typing this review makes me want to pick it up and 100% it, then replay from the start again. I love the Xeno series so much man. And maybe after the ending tease of a certain recent DLC, we may hopefully be revisiting the Xenosaga series again after all these years… Nothing would make me happier. PEAK FICTION!

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of my favorite games I’ve ever played, so naturally my expectations were sky high for Forbidden West, and I’m happy that most of those expectations paid off! Is it better than Zero Dawn? Objectively yes, it improves upon nearly everything from the first game, but I think I still prefer Zero Dawn to this, mostly thanks to the pacing of Forbidden West’s story. First things first, the graphics in this game are absolutely phenomenal, I think it may have actually surpassed The Last of Us 2’s graphics! I didn’t see a single spot in this game that’s wasn’t a visual feast for the eyes, truly a technical achievement in gaming, makes me even more excited to see God of War Ragnarok later this year!! The framerate is buttery smooth too, just don’t play it on the mode that doesn’t prioritize the framerate, trust me you won’t notice a difference visually. The story also goes to extreme sci-fi lengths that I’m still processing 24 hours after finishing the campaign, the implications make me BEYOND excited for future DLC & a 3rd Horizon game!! The lore of this world is still so good, like a homemade soup that I need to sip up every last drop of. I’m glad they went as far as they did with the story, the payoff was really good at the end & also left me wanting copious amounts more! The combat is also fantastic, although that’s not a surprise considering Zero Dawn’s combat was as well, melee not so much. But they added so much more complexity to melee & combat in general here, it’s hard not to be impressed! All of the new machines are awesome too, I found myself wide-eye staring at some of the new designs when I first came across them, eager to see what damage they were capable of doing to me. Also, the facial animations & motion capture are AMAZING. Everybody felt so alive & real compared to the stillness of Zero Dawn. I only have a couple of issues that dragged this experience down for me in comparison to Zero Dawn’s near perfection. First is minor, just a bug that only occurred once for me, made me to reload my recent save because the game started to chug randomly & during a cutscene made the audio completely out of sync during a key story moment, among other various non-gamebreaking bugs, and at one point only the lights on the Machine’s heads loaded in so it looked like a pair of walking eyes instead of a huge mechanized velociraptor lol. I also really liked doing Tallneck quests in Zero Dawn, but here they almost all fell flat for me, none gave me the satisfaction of scaling these huge beasts like in the first game. I’ve also seen the “Ubisoft open world” insult thrown at this game & yeah I can kinda see it here, it’s incredibly overwhelming at first, as are all the weapons & inventory upgrades & such, as someone who played Zero Dawn for dozens of hours & doesn't recall having these issues with an overwhelming amount of things thrown at me at once, I was a bit puzzled. Eventually everything clicked though, so just stick with it! My biggest issue is the pacing of the campaign though.. It’s still a very good story but in comparison to Zero Dawn, this doesn’t come close to it for me. The beginning starts out extremely promising but once you go to track down the 3 things that you need, the pacing can either slam on the gas pedal or slam on the brakes for hours at a time & it’s jarring to say the least. You barely see any of the main antagonists either, you hear about them plenty, but their appearances basically bookended this story, which yeah happened in the first game too, albeit the antagonists are MUCH more interesting this time around, which makes me more disappointed we didn’t get the proper amount of time with them. Zero Dawn’s story had so much intrigue which kept the pacing snappy as you went to the next exposition dump over many hours, here it feels like there’s massive dumps followed by empty space. Again, I really enjoyed the story but the whole middle of the game just didn’t click with me the way I wanted it to. Hopefully in the next game they go full unapologetic sci-fi, I know Guerrilla is especially capable of it after this game. This game is fantastic & a worthy follow up to Zero Dawn despite stumbling in some areas. The future is bright for Horizon!

I had rock bottom expectations for this game up until the leaks if we’re being honest here. If you ever plan on playing/buying this game, do NOT watch anything Nintendo or Pokémon put out before the release date because the marketing did such a terrible job selling this game. But given Game Freak’s track record of the last decade, I’m shocked they were able to pull this off. Being a Pokémon fan in the last decade has been rough, ORAS was awesome & Sun/Moon were good too despite repeated playthroughs making me sour on them a lot, but everything else has been just short of a trainwreck. Gen 6 was the definition of lazy repetition aside from bringing everything to 3D, US/UM was the laziest rerelease I think of all time, the Let’s Go games were yet another unnecessary remake of the awful & boring Gen 1, we all know how bad Sword & Shield were despite their DLCs doing it a slight bit of justice & BDSP finally showed a lot of fans how much passion for this series has been lost by falling flat on their faces trying to “remake” their best games, they’re more of a remaster than a remake. But let’s get into it, Legends Arceus is a fantastic game & it’s THE breath of fresh air that we’ve needed for YEARS now. I might just have recent bias now but I wouldn’t mind if they didn’t make a main series game for a long time if it meant more games like Legends! Negatives first, the elephant in the room since this game got revealed were the god awful graphics & I can say they definitely touched it up quite a bit since then, but it still just looks plain bad. Like I’m playing a PS2 game in 2022, yikes. Immersion breaking graphics in your billion dollar franchise is inexcusable when this console has given us Breath of the Wild & Mario Odyssey, LEARN HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR GAMES ALREADY! There’s no reason that every previous Switch Pokémon game looks better than this one. The pop-in is so bad too, sometimes things just spawn right behind you or in front of you as you’re running around & it can get annoying when you want to catch a rare Pokémon that’s been giving you the slip. Also the button layout is really weird in Legends, to the point that almost 40 hours in I’m still hitting the wrong buttons when trying to open the map or open the bag to heal my Pokémon. Why is Y dodge?? Also made my hands cramp up a lot after long play sessions, PLEASE put out a patch where we can change the button layout. The Braviary flying feature needs work too. Why is there no accent button?! Having to take back off again & again after SLOWLY landing in these huge open areas is so… dumb. I think the biggest flaw aside from optimization is the lack of any voice acting. It was awkward in more recent games but never as awkward as in Legends. This game truly needed it, so many of the big story moments DESERVED more than a text box with that annoying ass boom sound effect. But there’s also so much this game does right, catching Pokémon & completing the Pokédex has never felt better & will never feel the same in the slow mainline games ever again after this. Despite some Pokémon being annoyances to get, at least I didn’t have to shell out an extra $60 for a 2nd identical version just for 10 Pokémon they didn’t put in my game lol. The new boss battles are incredible too, actually fighting a Pokémon ON FOOT? I swear I had fever dreams about a game like this when I was a kid. I feel like the only person who didn’t black out during the story, Returnal has conditioned my reflexes to dodge effortlessly I guess. The wide open areas are all distinct & a ton of fun to explore, I actually really loved the Wild Areas in Sword & Shield so knowing this is what they had up their sleeve, bravo. Just wishing they looked like a 2022 game. The story, in true Pokémon fashion, is very lowkey up until the end as always, but this time I actually felt something! I was hurt, I was stunned at the stakes the story established, & the whole time I was filled with nostalgia feeling like a kid again. Impeccable line to walk there & that deserves a lot of praise! Just talking & thinking about it fills me with a childlike joy that has been gone for so long with Pokémon. It’s even got a fair bit of challenge in the new pretty good battle system, who woulda thought? Of course a lot of these positives have small quirks I didn’t jive with 100% of the time, but Legends Arceus is an amazing foundation to build sequels off of that will (hopefully) perfect it’s formula. At the end of the day, the damage previous games have done to my love & trust of Game Freak & Pokémon may never go away, but this game has done the impossible of giving me hope for the franchise again, I truly think this is a turning point for the franchise & I hope they go full speed ahead & never look back. 8.5/10

Took me long enough. Life stuff happens but WOW. This game is simply amazing. I can’t speak for the multiplayer portion but the campaign reignited a love for Halo that I haven’t felt since the Bungie games. It’s so good that I was actually sad when the achievement popped up for beating the game! And I actually want to complete things on a big open world map for once! How did 343 pull something this stellar off? As usual let me start with some negatives first, there aren’t many. During cutscenes sometimes the framerate would TANK, there was one instance when the game was chugging so badly I thought I was playing Halo on the Switch! These issues can be ironed out in a patch but not so much the story based ones unless there’s story DLC. I played & replayed the ENTIRE numbered Halo games a few months ago & I still felt kind of lost in places during Infinite’s campaign. I’m not well versed in things outside of the core series like comics or movies but it’s annoying when games do that nowadays. But in the same breath I also like reading up on buckets of lore after I finish a game so I can’t be too annoyed by it I guess, I just wish there was more info in the game itself. The end of Halo 5, for as average **** it was, set up some VERY interesting events that would happen in Halo Infinite but instead, we skip almost all of what it set up to the aftermath without many refreshers on what actually happened in between 5 & Infinite. I didn’t play Halo Wars 2 yet either but I know the general story of it, but I don’t think that would’ve helped much aside from more knowledge on the Banished. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVED uncovering the secrets of Infinite’s campaign & had a ton of fun with it beginning to end, I just wish the story didn’t leave me with more questions than answers & had a decisive finish, for this being the 3rd in 343’s trilogy and all. I loved pretty much everything else about Infinite though, the soundtrack is pretty damn good, it’s a Halo game after all. The world of Zeta Halo is beautiful & every weapon feels distinct & fun to use even if I only stuck to a couple of my faves by the end. My favorite thing by a MILE is the new grappling hook, why wasn’t this thing there from the very beginning of Halo?! It adds so much to the gameplay that I firmly believe any FPS should be required by law to have it implemented into their games, that’s how good it feels to use! I dare say it’s better than Doom Eternal’s! It’s so fun to use that I never used any of the other abilities that were given to me aside from once or twice. Climbing up a mountain and slingshotting yourself over it to smash Banished on the other side never got old. It doesn’t help that I just replayed Spider-Man on the PS5, so now Chief can go web to grappling hook with him lol. Overall, fantastic game. Exceeded my expectations despite some story hiccups that I hope are tied up in future DLC that I would gladly buy & play. It’s so good that I have the urge to 100% it, which is VERY rare nowadays for me. 343 has finally delivered!!

My disappointment is IMMEASURABLE. I was so heartbroken upon finishing my first day with this game, genuinely crushed with tears of stress coming down my face. It’s inferior in nearly every way to the original, something I’ve seen thrown around in the reviews for this game is the exact opposite so allow me to explain. Positives first; the graphics are still lovely! The dinosaurs & reptiles still feel alive & do more in their pens now than just walk in circles. I also appreciate Frontier bringing back almost every species from the first game. The new dinosaurs & aquatic/aerial reptiles are all great! That’s where the positives end. In JWE1, you could unlock all the dinosaurs if you took your time in the campaign, but you only unlock a handful of the 84 species in the campaign this time around. Why change a perfect system, aside from padding out the game for dozens of hours? It took me 48 HOURS to unlock every species. That’s INSANE. Your playtime can obviously vary, but it’ll still take DOZENS of hours to get every species, most of them locked behind arbitrary goals in the research tab. The easiest way is to grind them out in Challenge mode, but it’s one of the most GRINDY experiences you can have in modern gaming & some dinosaurs are exclusive to certain maps! WHY? Not to mention you don’t actually unlock the dinos for Sandbox until you HATCH THEM. Why isn’t the genome enough? Setting the game to 3x speed only helps so much with the tedium. The campaign is so barebones that I’m shocked it’s even here in the first place, finished it in 4 hours. Can’t forget the 2nd mission which usually glitches & causes you to restart the mission! JWE1’s campaign barely had a story, but had engaging gameplay for a 20ish hour campaign. I also DESPISE the new scientist system. You need them for literally EVERYTHING. In JWE1 none of this complicated-for-no-reason crap existed, you had research/expedition teams do multiple tasks at once for you, so this is one of the most massive steps back I’ve ever seen. Your scientists only do one expedition at a time, with no way to expand it & you’re limited for some reason on extracting DNA from fossils. It’s beyond tedious & BORING relying on these drones to do everything for you instead of taking some initiative like in JWE1. Instead of carefully multitasking everything, your mind never has a chance to rest with JWE2, there’s always a problem going on & it’s really not my fault! I put 100’s of hours in JWE1, I know how to build a Jurassic Park by now! What also hurt is that releasing a new dino felt like a moment of accomplishment in the first game, here it feels like just another box to check with no fanfare & immediately worrying about their unforgiving environment needs instead, which makes putting 2 different species in the same enclosure a headache I never felt like dealing with. The new paleo healing mechanic is GRATING as hell too. Every time a dinosaur has a tiny fight or gets sick you have to send a separate team to scan them & their AI is HORRIBLE. Expect to transport your dinos for a small boo-boo every 5 minutes if you have 1 slightly unfriendly member of a species! Why’s the transport button now it’s own option at the bottom of the control panel instead of a shortcut on the R1 button like in the first? WHY THE STUPID CHANGES? The new hatchery mechanic with the dinosaur genes is frustrating too, so many negative genes too often even w gene editing. Chaos Theory was too annoying to get any enjoyment out of & throttled by insane expenses of the dinosaurs. Despite the scenarios being interesting, I’d just catch them on YouTube if I was you. The new systems added in are terrible & add so much aggravation that was never there to begin with! That’s what frustrates me so much about JWE2, all this to make the park management more “complex” but only added an unnecessary hassle to nearly every moment you’re playing it. What made me give up on JWE2 is the Sandbox mode, they BUTCHERED it. You can’t turn off the ridiculous scientist mechanic in Sandbox & you can’t turn off Dino fights either so if you want a T. Rex with a Spinosaurus you’ll have to wait until they hopefully fix their stupid mistake WHICH WAS ALREADY FIXED IN THE FIRST GAME. To get a good amount of dinos for Sandbox you’ll have to grind for DOZENS of hours in other modes for them, no jumping right in! Dear God game is a colossal disappointment. Say whatever about JWE1, at least it was put together competently & with respect for the person playing it! This is BAD. Play the first & leave JWE2 to rot. I don’t think the same post-launch roadmap can save this one. You have no idea how much it pained me to say all of this, my heart hurts. I won’t be touching this game again until it’s fixed, maybe. Moral of the story; next time you’re thinking of fixing something that isn’t broken, DON’T.

These games (& Platinum) were such MASSIVE parts of my childhood that I still love Pokémon to this day, but that’s not to say they don’t try EXTREMELY hard to shake that love out of me with nearly every release this decade. These aren’t trainwrecks like Sword & Shield or LGPE, they’re quite literally the same games we played almost 20 years ago with a new coat of paint which is fine.. But to call these games remakes is a borderline insult, REMASTER is much more fitting but even then they really didn’t deliver in the way TPC has with the previous remakes. This is such a disappointment guys, my favorite Gen feels so.. hollow & soulless. The sad part is we all saw it coming since that abysmal reveal trailer back in February followed by a suspiciously long amount of radio silence on the game, what’s sadder is by being Gen 4 remasters they’re kinda the best Pokémon games to come out since the end of Gen 5 by default, remnants of a bygone era when TPC cared about their games. I can try to find positives.. if you liked Sinnoh then nothing changed, you’re still gonna love the region & all the Pokémon in it even though you’ll see the same ones 10 million times in the campaign. Things in Sinnoh don’t fully open up until the Post Game which is still one of the best in the series. The new OST is mostly good, a lot of hit or miss tracks thanks to a lower budget but the remixes that they got right, they KNOCKED out of the park (ex. Cynthia, Giratina, etc). Speaking of Cynthia, she’s as brutal as ever! I never had issues with her as a kid somehow (had a lot of trouble with Lucian instead) but this time she was on my NECK, I was genuinely shaking & sweating for my Pokémon’s lives. I literally can’t remember the last time I lost against an in-game trainer, it was EXHILARATING. For as heavily Pokémon uses nostalgia as a crutch for their stupid design choices, keeping everything the same here had me remembering things from playing these games in 2007 somehow! I would remember a different way to proceed through a route or a hidden item laying somewhere, all just coming to me naturally while exploring the world, I thought that was really neat. The graphics being at a smaller scale also look a lot better than they did in the sometimes hideous Sword & Shield. But for negatives we have a lot to unpack here. Firstly, this game is BUGGY as hell. It was very obviously rushed, the day 1 patch was over half the game but the level of bugginess is INEXCUSABLE from a billion dollar franchise like Pokémon. I’m talking over half the time you try to start the game from the Switch menu, you’ll get a “something went wrong” error & restart the very long wait time to get to the title screen, should I mention how many times this game has just randomly crashed in gameplay too? Despite an auto-save system, it can be wonky & not save for long stretches for some reason, leading to lost progress & anger. The chibi art style is lame too, I don’t care if that’s how it was in the original games, it was left in the past for a reason. It’s a bad sign when Cyrus is trying to destroy the universe & your immersion is **** as it shows his tiny chibi model, expected to take any of this semi-seriously is impossible. Yes the game is still fun to play & I’d rather play it over the originals, but the general consensus around this game is that it should’ve been a PLATINUM remake, or at least have the enhancements brought by the Platinum re-release. This game is horribly unbalanced & retains so many of the asinine gameplay decisions that were weird & stupid even in 2006-7. BDSP REEKS of a lack of effort & passion, which is a blow to the gut for people like me who just watched their favorite Gen get the “who cares it’ll print money anyway” treatment that is indicative of every modern Pokémon release of the last 10 years, & I’d still defend Sun & Moon most days of the week! At this point I can’t be convinced otherwise that Pokémon is headed for a major crash, they’ll sell well regardless, but it will be tossed in with the likes of Call of Duty & other milked to the max franchises that even the developers don’t care about anymore, being crunched beyond what should be legal to deliver passionless projects year after year, & looking at Legends Arceus coming in the dump month of January… I doubt that can save it unless it completely reinvents the franchise, which we know Nintendo & TPC will probably never do until their wallets start to hurt. It’s a shame, compared to every remake we got from Pokémon before excluding LGPE, these remakes COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE like ORAS was, & we shouldn’t feel bad demanding more from a franchise that is comfortable doing less than the bare minimum. This isn’t “ungrateful” behavior, these games are not gifts. They are products. We deserve better.

No More Heroes is yet another franchise I’ve always had an interest in but never got the chance to play until now. There was no way my Mom would let me play the first 2 games at my age back then lol, so they just escaped my mind for the longest time after that until I got the chance to try out NMH III. So this game is pretty damn fun despite some glaring flaws. Positives first; the soundtrack SLAPS & I NEED to download the full thing on YouTube for my workout sessions. The story is insanity personified honestly, I really don’t know how to make sense of it so I won’t & will enjoy it for what it was! I’ve heard even an extensive knowledge on the NMH games that came before can only help so much here, so I don’t feel as lost as I thought I would’ve. I’m sure some of the story beats would’ve hit harder had I played the first 2 (3? If you count Travis Strikes Again), so that’s obviously on me. It’s still off the walls enjoyable to a complete NMH stranger like myself & it truly felt like conquering impossible odds going through the story. The combat is awesome too! I’m still shocked that the weak Switch can even hit 60fps but it RARELY fell below 60 during a fight for me. I also appreciate how i almost never had to grind for money, something the reviewers said was a big issue but it’s really non existent if you do all the designated matches before bosses lol. Almost all of the big bosses themselves are AWESOME spectacles too, but some were better than others. But this is where we have to get into the downsides, which will start with the combat unfortunately. I stand by it being fun as hell, but it did kind of get repetitive towards the very end, and it didn’t help that the enemy variety is pretty slim. I’m talking the last 2 hours here, but for the whole game you’ll be fighting different combinations of the same enemies over and over. A little more variety would’ve been welcome, kind of a minor issue for me personally but I can see others growing tired of it quicker than I did. I also REALLY didn’t like the Deathman arcade game you had to play during the story, it was only twice but it was annoying & pace ****. Yes the story is all over the place, I think that’s by design but it doesn’t help make a super memorable story. It was entertaining like I said, but nothing fantastic. But the biggest problem everyone has with this game from what I’ve seen is the performance & open world. I understand art styles but this game looks downright UGLY a lot of the time. I get it’s not a big AAA game but damn, it looks straight off the Wii at times! The open world is pretty bad too, besides being empty and virtually lifeless, it’s just ugly to look at. Especially the extremely grainy war torn area, it’s not good when your game is hurting your players’ eyes just looking at it. The grain goes away during the cutscenes of that area so that begs the question of why the hell it was there in the first place. The open world barely hits 30fps riding around on your motorbike, going from the smooth 60fps combat to the sluggish 20fps of the open world is jarring to say the least. There’s nothing completely game breaking here, but there’s enough flaws to justify saying this game needs some serious polishing in certain areas. But the game ends on a very interesting note & I will be tuned in to see what the future of NMH becomes, and will possibly be diving into the past games to see what makes this series so special to so many. And yes, to partially make some sense of the story I witnessed lol.

Wasn’t too sure what to expect going in besides a beautifully made but short journey & that’s exactly what we got with Hoa. I definitely chose the right time to play this game, I had an extremely stressful day (more than usual) and had heard this game is a good way to unwind after a long hard day. It was definitely relaxing & made me temporarily forget about the awful day I had! The music and atmosphere of Hoa is impeccable, but the gameplay isn’t as stellar. It’s VERY simple and that’s totally fine! These types of games always have a place in the world. What I didn’t exactly expect is to finish the game in one sitting! I rented the game so when I hit the final area (which was spoiled in a review of the game for me) I was a little surprised to say the least. It was a fun and calming 2 hour game, but the $40 retail price is wayyyy too much to ask for at this time. It’s a soothing time and did leave me wishing there was more to do afterwards, I nearly Platinum’d the game on the first playthrough and I only missed 1 trophy. It’s a good game, just not that much to it besides a cute & lovely looking aesthetic & a zen soundtrack.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

One of my most anticipated games of the year! Although I still haven’t finished Before the Storm, I was still so excited to play this new adventure from the same people who made that game. So first things first, I’ve seen A LOT of people saying this is a “return to form” for the series after LIS2 and I just want to say… huh? What was so different about LIS2 that made y’all not like it? Did we play the same game? Because on some days I prefer LIS2 to the original. Controversial I know, but they’re both masterpieces to me & it’s hard to pick a definitive winner in my mind. Anyway, I’m happy to say that True Colors fixes a lot of the most glaring problems the series has had so far! Eliminated the episodic release structure that I don’t think anybody liked other than it adding to the suspense. Made the graphics FINALLY look up to snuff for a modern day game (I get they have art styles but LIS2 came out like 2 years ago and did not look good half the time on modern consoles, the OG aged even worse) but seriously, True Colors is visually STUNNING to look at and might be one of the best looking games to come out this year! And mostly got rid of a lot of the horrible “teen slang” that plagued the first game and parts of the others. “Are you cereal?” is a line from the first LIS that makes my entire body cringe, seriously nobody talks like that.. Thankfully there isn’t much dialogue in this game that sounds.. like that. As with every LIS game, the atmosphere is immaculate as well, Haven Springs is an adorable small town and that’s high praise from somebody who can’t stand small towns! Colorado is a beautiful state that I’ve been meaning to vacation in someday and I think this game truly sold me on going there sometime soon! The story feels more toned down than the previous entires though, I don’t mind telling a smaller tale but after the huge stakes of the last games, True Colors didn’t take it’s story as far as I wish it could have. The emotional moments are definitely here though! Life is Strange has the rare power to actually make me emotional while playing and they’ve carried through yet again on that, had I not been playing with other people in the room I definitely would've shed a couple tears like I did with previous entries, but I’ll settle for getting choked up! I also felt very attached to a lot of the characters, they all have personalities that set them apart from each other and keep them memorable for the next time you run into them, I ended up caring about what happened to them in the end. But it’s not all perfect in Haven Springs. Like I said, the main story is still good even with smaller stakes and a good mystery at it’s core, but if you’re the type of person who expects the unexpected like I am, you won’t be 100% shocked at the big twist of this game. The romances in previous titles always felt kinda hollow to me, even Max & Chloe & especially in LIS2. I understand romance is far from the point of these games but if you’re gonna have them in the game, make them more important! Also (spoilers maybe?) but the romances in True Colors felt kinda… there just to be there by the end of the game. I loved Steph and Ryan as characters and their romantic scenes were built up so naturally with Alex depending on who you go with but once you make things official with one of them, you only get 2 real scenes with either of them as a couple. I get that there’s more important things going on in the game but this is why I think having longer chapters (and a longer game) would’ve helped flesh out these romances that you build. But even with that being said, I think I still prefer Ryan/Steph over any of the other romances in the LIS series (maybe that will change once I complete Before the Storm). That leads me into my least favorite thing about True Colors, it’s the shortest game in the series by far, I finished it in 7-8ish hours, and that’s with me doing a lot of the side activity stuff during the main chapters. Previous full games were around 15ish hours all together, so I’m not sure if the pandemic affected development & had to cut unfinished corners before the release deadline, or if they just wanted a shorter experience, but the $60 price tag is a bit steep in my opinion despite being a huge fan of this series, I’m pretty sure the previous games were $40 at launch for the full season, so the developers upping the price while making the game about half as short with paid DLC in the future isn’t the best look if I’m being honest.. It’s still worthwhile to play if you’re fan, trust me. Just know that you won’t get as much out of this full experience like you would with the other LIS games. It’s definitely worth playing and experiencing for yourself though, despite bumps in the road I thoroughly enjoyed it & would recommend it to anyone who wants to get into the LIS series!

Monster Hunter is a series I’ve been trying to get into for years but has never fully clicked with me, so naturally I was skeptical of an RPG style MH game because of my previous experiences with the series. Up until the demo I wasn’t sold, but when MHS2 sunk its claws into me it never let go for WEEKS. I was convinced to bring my Switch with me on vacation JUST to play it at the hotel at night because of how addicted I was. Let’s start with the positives, I really love the majority of these monster designs & it helped that I was familiar with a lot of them already from watching playthroughs of Monster Hunter World & it’s DLC. But everytime I entered a new area I would spend hours finding all of the new monsters to hatch and fight, yeah a lot more are re-skins than I personally would like them to be, but Capcom are experts at post-game DLC so I’m sure the roster will only diversify and grow over the next year even more. The usual hook of the MH series, farming resources from monsters to make better gear, is also simplified as you only need a certain amount of parts to add up to the required total instead of certain pieces, I love this addition so much even though the game is very generous with resources & it’s simple to get any pieces you need quickly with the instant finish feature once you get a high enough level. The areas can be generic (beach area, ice area, volcano area) but they’re all great to look at even if the Switch is a weak console. Speaking of, the framerate should’ve been capped, who’s decision was that? I wish I had a PC to play this game on but.. the performance can be really shaky. It does hold up surprisingly well on handheld mode though, at times it runs better than docked mode too lol, but Nintendo is known to progress 3 generations behind the competition. The story is pretty decent, it had me invested enough to care and at times had me glued to the screen, but nothing to rewrite the JRPG genre about. And aside from some difficulty spikes in the last quarter (mostly the last 4-5 hours of the story), the game is pretty breezy and as long as you pay attention nothing is much trouble, which makes the sudden difficulty spikes all the more annoying. Something else I want to complain about is the multiplayer. I haven’t played a lot of it yet since I just finished the game, but from what I have played I’m not impressed. Also how the hell are people level 99 already? The game is barely a month old! To each their own but.. makes me feel like I **** at the game when I know I don’t lol. I haven’t been disconnected yet but just like with Pokémon Sword & Shield’s god awful multiplayer UI, this repeats a lot of the same mistakes. Only a handful of players come up at a time, many of which will be joined by other players before you finish reading them, so you’ll have to exit the multiplayer menu and go back in over and over if you want to see a new page of people. Why the hell are most expeditions only available if you have a pass for them? You have to go back through the same cave structures over and over to farm bottle caps to buy more passes, which you may not even get anything good from. Speaking of, so many of the dens are reused over and over AND OVER again to the point that it’s tedious to travel through the same cave with a different coat of paint for the 150th time. I’m not sure if they’re procedurally generated but damn, step it up. I also don’t care for games that instantly throw you into the deep end right after you finish the main story knowing you need to grind A LOT to do a lot of the post game activities. I’d love to do them all eventually plus the multiplayer ones but I don’t think the time investment is all that worthwhile when I have so many other games I still have to play. Other than that I truly did have a blast playing this game & I’ve been hooked longer than most games can grab me for, one that made me genuinely excited to get home after a long day and play for hours to see what was next is a feeling I’ve seldom felt since I was a kid. It’s definitely better than any Pokémon game I’ve played since the Gen 5 games. I’m very excited for the future updates & what monsters they’ll bring (PLEASE GIVE ME ODOGARON!!!) and if anything this game just makes me wish I could get into the mainline series even more.

So I definitely don’t hate this one like everyone else seems to! But I don’t really like it a lot either.. the positives are pretty obvious, the visuals are gorgeous still & the score is still good, Halo never slacks in that department, although it is the least audibly interesting of the series in my opinion. The gameplay changes are something I’m torn on.. I like fast paced shooters, Doom & Wolfenstein are what got me into the FPS genre after all, but Halo never was a hyper fast shooter. There was always breathing room in fights & yeah you could say it’s been on this trajectory steadily with each game but idk, seems like they went all in on this fast paced upgrade to the shooting. I played all 5 main Halo games back to back so maybe I’m just getting whiplash from that, but the controls are changed almost entirely from previous entries & despite there being an option for the Halo 4 control scheme (which was already different from the trilogy, this new scheme is similar to it but not entirely the same) It was a big adjustment to say the least. It was a very fun experience don’t get me wrong, I had more fun playing Halo 5 then I did Halo 1 & 4 but at least those had more interesting stories to go alongside the slower and “tougher” gameplay. But fast paced shooting isn’t what I come to Halo for, which is one of the most disappointing aspects of Halo 5 for me. A problem I had with Halo 4 was a feeling of genericness which PERMEATES Halo 5 to its core, it feels more like every other futuristic shooter on the market right now (& in 2015 when it came out) & that’s not a good thing. Halo is a unique IP and I wish they didn’t try to conform to the norms despite some quality of life improvements. I appreciate how they tried to integrate Halo 5 into the series at large, something Halo 4 tried too hard to stray from in my opinion. Although they definitely nostalgia pandered at times, it’s an effort nonetheless. Any additional screen time for the Arbiter is welcome in this house. The story was decent (better than what i was expecting based off internet reactions) but took too long to get into motion & I struggle to remember anybody from the main squad you play 85% of the game as. Especially Locke, what a boring hollow shell of a character. Buck was memorable only because he’s just Nathan Fillion playing himself. Can’t remember the others. Master Chief steals the show as always and a certain AI returns with admittedly “I've seen this before” motives, but it was still cool to have them back. Speaking of the Chief, which “genius” at 343 thought it would be a good idea to unfairly split the game up 85/15 for the characters? And not make the team you play as interesting? Chief had like 3 missions in the 15 chapter campaign. THREE. Somebody needs to be fired for that. Some of the chapters are barely chapters too.. on 3 instances you walk back & forth talking to people then the chapter ends when you proceed. I hate hate HATE games that do this & count them towards the chapter list to further pad the game, Halo 4 having its prologue & epilogue as their own chapters was stupid as hell too but Halo 5 shouldn’t have continued that trend. Overall, Halo 5 is a fun time if you like FPS games, but if you’re a fan of the franchise you’ll end up disappointed, a trend I’m not enjoying with the 343 Halo games so far. Hopefully Infinite ends the new trilogy on a high note.

These reviews are only for the 4 mainline Halo games as Reach & ODST don’t come pre-installed in this collection, I’ll review them at a later date on my 360. Halo: Combat Evolved - This wasn’t a fun way to start the series for me.. I hope this doesn’t discredit the rest of my reviews here but I didn’t like this game.. the story is good & the soundtrack holds up but that’s where the positives end for me.. for the Master Chief collection it would’ve been nice if they fully remastered this game too cuz it seriously needs some fine tuning after all these years, even with an enhanced version I still can’t get past a lot of the flaws here. This is a issue I have with the series as a whole but I’m not a fan of the physics. Yeah, jumping 10 feet in the air, having Moon gravity for vehicles or when you get melee’d by an enemy is funny sometimes but.. when it’s the cause of deaths is when I have an issue.. nothing will ever be worse than the vehicle sections in the first Mafia game but DAMN do the Warthog sections come in a close second for worst driving in a game ever. Especially the last one, I nearly tore my hair out. Not a fan of the control scheme either. I beat the game in about 5 1/2 hours even with the amount of times i got lost in the empty environments. Were they going for open world but gave up halfway through? Ugh. Don’t let your nostalgia cloud your mind on this one, I can see this getting a full remake in the near future & I think it would be much better for it. 4/10, maybe a 5 if I’m feeling generous some days. Halo 2: Anniversary Edition - Halo 2 was the only game I never got to play from the original series since I never owned an original Xbox. I played the remastered version why wouldn’t I? The game looks STUNNING in its updated glory too, on par with some games coming out today. I love the feature they implemented for Combat Evolved & 2 that lets you switch between the OG visuals & the updated ones with the click of a button, it’s a cool little feature I wish more remasters would take on. The story is more fleshed out this time, as is the gameplay. They improved upon everything from the 1st game, the mark **** sequel. I really enjoyed how we get to see the Covenant’s side too, it’s always fun to play as the bad guys, especially when they’re aliens! The physics still aren’t my thing but from game to game they seem to be toned down a little more. It’s been talked about to death but the ending leaves a lot to be desired, the painful part of being the middle chapter in a trilogy. If I had to wait 3 years for Halo 3 like I’m sure many of you did back then, I’d be mad too. Still, it’s a 5 hour campaign that’s a ton of fun! 8/10. Halo 3 - Both Reach & Halo 3 made up a lot of my childhood. I sunk HOURS into the multiplayer modes with my little brother over the years & I have the fondest memories of 3 more than any other, so did the nostalgia hold up over 10 years later? YUP. This is still my fave in the series. The story never stops which can be exhausting in other games, but I finished the campaign in a little over 4 hours (shocked myself on that one tbh) & it’s consistently engaging with obviously massive stakes that I can finally appreciate as an adult. Somehow they improved everything even more since Halo 2. The linearity might be an issue for some but i appreciate Bungie making these games less open over the years. The short story might be an issue, I would’ve loved to play hours more of it but if it can cause such a good reaction in me in a short amount of time, I’m glad I experienced it. I would’ve loved to see this entry get as much love the other remasters got (despite it still looking great for a game from 2007, wow I’m old) so maybe someday we’ll get a remake of this one too. 9/10! Halo 4 - So I never actually played this one, I watched my lil bro play it when it came out &.. we both hated it. Now almost 10 years have passed & I’m playing it for the first time, I definitely don’t hate it anymore. However, it’s still flawed. The visuals are still stunning to look at, despite being a late 360 title. The soundtrack stands out a lot too, but all Halo games have bangers. They did change the gameplay a bit though, Chief can run now & they seem to have played with the physics again, not for the better imo. The story is more cinematic which is both good & weird to me. Some parts just kinda made the game feel more generic, something Halo never was in my mind. Seems like 343 had a lot of big ideas but only paid off a few of them here. The enemies are more bullet spongey than in other entries, & it definitely got on my nerves. Overall, it’s not bad, I’m glad I finally experienced it first hand. Visuals & soundtrack are solid, gameplay is good with some annoying as hell parts & enemies, & the story had so much more potential even with a decent pay off. Campaign took me a lil over 5 hours. 6/10.

This game is beautiful. Like wow, I really think it’s in the Top 10 most gorgeous games I’ve ever played. The score is incredible too. The story is so heartfelt but also isn’t afraid to get dark at times. The moment to moment gameplay can be tough but so rewarding and addictive. It’s a fair kind of difficulty that challenged me but didn’t break me. Of course at times I got very frustrated at some chase sequences & puzzles, but for a Metroidvania style game I never felt lost. Ori & Ku are adorable & I’m really curious as to where Moon Studios can take the series next. The biggest downside aside from momentary difficulty spikes is the tendency for the background to get blurry, like a motion blur but a lot more distorted. I highly HIGHLY doubt it’s my Xbox, this is the first game I’ve played on my brand new Series X & I played it on 4K 120fps. Not sure what the blur was about, but it cost me more than a few deaths at times. There wasn’t an option in the graphic settings to turn off any motion blur so I’m at a loss as to what design choice that was. I still highly recommend this title to anyone with an Xbox as long as you’re ok with tough but fair platforming.

Wow. Insomniac might be one of my favorite developers right now. Between the Spider-Man games AND R&C, they have a pristine resume. This game is so close to perfect I’m still fighting internally about bumping the 9 to a 10. As someone who isn’t well traveled in the R&C series, I felt right at home the entire game! It’s hard to do that with a series as old as R&C, making it inviting to newcomers and old fans. I only have 2 complaints that hold it back from a 10 (both of which are easily fixable with a later patch) Occasionally Ratchet or Rivet would momentarily get stuck in the geometry of the environments when using the rocket boots, not gamebreaking at all but it would halt my pace randomly & leave me confused for a few seconds as to why I stopped in a wide open field. The other issue is during the Clank sections, it didn’t happen at every Clank level but in half of them I ran into a weird graphical glitch, it’s a little hard to describe but the entire background would get these black “scratch” looking things that would flash VERY quickly & hurt my eyes. It would be all over the environment too. The only way to get through it was to either physically walk Clank into them so they’d disappear (they’d reappear if you got far enough away) or try to complete the section with them giving me a headache. Did anyone else run into this?? Aside from those minor flaws, the rest of the game is so incredibly polished that I was actually stunned most of the time I was playing. Last time I experienced something so meticulously crafted with love like this was both of The Last Of Us games. The attention to detail is just.. immaculate. Every environment is gorgeous, all of the characters are charming and heartwarming, the story is extremely engaging till the end & has so much heart & genuine stakes. Dr. Nefarious remains as entertaining as ever & EMPEROR Nefarious is just as intriguing & is one of the best villains I’ve seen in a while, he’s actually intimidating! His accent & demeanor are badass too. The Dualsense feedback is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced playing a game, Rift Apart is THE new standard everyone else has to catch up to. One of the best games I’ve ever played hands down. If you’re fortunate enough to get a PS5, play this game. You will never regret it. I really hope Ratchet & Clank doesn’t take as much time off as they did with the PS4 era, because I’m BEGGING to see more.

On the one hand, I love the new Wolfenstein series but on the other, I’m not sure why this game exists. I had fun with it sure, I’ll take any new Wolfenstein content but I’m not a big fan of the RPG mechanics in this entry. It kinda makes sense story wise as the twins aren’t as skilled as their dad BJ, but not totally as they become skilled **** murderers in record time. The story is a noticeable step down from the previous games too, the bits & pieces we get are genuinely really good & have me excited for Wolfenstein 3, but over 10 hours there just wasn’t enough to totally hold my interest aside from the gameplay, which is still very good, just not as good as The New Colossus. The RPG mechanics make some of the enemies bullet sponges & at launch the game was totally unplayable for me because of them. At least they fixed it I guess. But yeah, above average game, can’t wait for 3!

The Wolfenstein series is probably my favorite FPS series ever. The alternate history storyline is both horrifying & interesting. I think the sequel was a little better but The New Order is the first game that comes to mind when I think of a fantastic story in a FPS. Although it hasn’t aged beautifully even for being a cross gen release, I think it could definitely slide towards the 360/PS3 era visually a lot of times. Compared to the much more kinetic sequels, this plays like a more standard FPS. The ugly grey & brown visuals was a phase I wish our society never went through, even if it fits the world Wolfenstein built. It’s easy to look past all of that for the story though! Still hits just as hard years later. Wolfenstein 3 is gonna be a jaw dropping event.

Wow. Just WOW. The best FPS I’ve ever played hands down. The game that finally made me comfortable with the at times disorienting view of a FPS game. I’m literally in love with the story, visuals, gameplay, EVERYTHING. I don’t think there’s ever been a more perfect concoction in a FPS game, literally everything has been turned up to 11. The only thing I think The New Order has that was better was it’s soundtrack, but The New Colossus has some bangers too. Mick Gordon doesn’t miss. Play both of these back to back if you haven’t, you’re truly missing out. *chefs kiss*

Like I said before I’m really not a fan of horror games, but this was something special. In terms of PS4 exclusives, I feel like this one tends to get left out of the convo a lot. Goes to show how many amazing games the PS4 got this generation but ANYWAYS, this game is a gem. Surprisingly gripping all the way through, there’s never a dull moment. The characters aren’t annoying either! I only lost 1 person through the whole game too so I call that a win! The visuals still hold up really well too, can they make a sequel already??

One of the most gripping and impactful games I’ve ever played. I’m still thinking about it 6 months after I finished it. Gameplay is smooth as butter & it set a new graphical standard for any game I play in the future. Story was a little too long but held my attention the entire time. Y’all really need to let that hate go lol