Mezu5

ANNIE is a bizarre game. To enjoy the game you need to be invested in both the gameplay and the story. You spend most of your time in combat broken up by exploratory interludes, but the game's systems and enemy designs don't evolve throughout its run time, which puts responsibility on the story to sustain your attention. I'd normally start by discussing the gameplay, but the entire point of this review is to highlight how weird the game's tone is, so let's describe the story quickly: Imagine a storyline about a zombie outbreak, written completely seriously, exploring themes of adapting to a broken world, and the ruthlessness of a post-apocalyptic society. You'll meet unempathetic leaders, you'll see those who aren't willing to give up on their values suffer a sad fate. That's what this title's story is like... partially. Now imagine a storyline like Resident Evil 6's - villains are ripped out of a comic book, with no clear motivations or sufficient exploration of their character. Events are confusing to follow and nothing has enough proper setup to feel engaging to witness. That's also what ANNIE's story is like. To finish it all off, that confusing tonal mix is delivered through writing that falls somewhere between "work of a 15 year old" and "translated by a person with limited grasp on the english language". This bewildering tonal conflict bleeds into the gameplay as well. At the very start, the game seems like a more action focused take on the classic Resident Evil's formula for combat - you use twin stick controls, have much more mobility and are less starved for resources, but the zombies still move fairly slowly and deal lots of damage in return. The game also uses its preset camera angles for tricks reminiscent of what static camera angles allowed survival horror developers to do in the past. However, the same game frequently adds enemies to the field by dropping them down from the sky, has you fight zombies while dodging cars speeding down a road, dodging bullet hell patterns of nondescript projectiles, or killing crates of crab sticks. Crab sticks? Yes. ANNIE's zombie apocalypse was started by the distribution of crab sticks that were purposely mutated by a mysterious organisation to take over the world. I hope all this illustrates how confounding this game is to experience. As for whether any of it is good: it's fine. The gameplay's biggest issue is that both controls methods available - controller and keyboard & mouse - have pretty big drawbacks. The game simply isn't much fun with a controller, because the aim snapping is so heavy that you practically cannot choose which target to aim at. I've had situations where the character would point 90 degrees away from where I directed my right stick. You can't lead your shots when trying to hit moving targets because of this either. With a keyboard and mouse aiming works completely fine, but the 8 directional movement is pretty awkward. There's no movement acceleration to help you move at weird angles by tapping wasd keys and the game's long dodge roll can't be controlled after the animation starts, which means you'll just have to put up with not being able to dodge in more than 8 directions, even when you need to. Enemy designs are fairly solid however. The majority are standard zombie archetypes for the most part, but done well enough to make fighting them enjoyable, and there are some curveballs the game will throw at you as well. To kill said zombies, you'll get weapons fitting into 4 slots. Pretty much all new weapon unlocks are clear linear upgrades, but different tools work for different situations and enemies, and firing at the infected has enough impact to be satisfying, as long as you're not using the admittedly useless shotguns. ANNIE is not a great time, or a bad time. If you approach this game with very tempered expectations, you can easily have fun witnessing the game shift between atmospheric exploration, comical setpieces, unsuccessful attempts at building a solid storyline, and brief appearances of great ideas - all that while engaging in combat that stays fun enough for the whole duration of the campaign. However, if you're looking for something with truly gripping gameplay or a well realised story, you might end up disappointed by the amount of emphasis put on the game's writing and its wildly inconsistent quality and tone.

The best Roguelite around. Makes Hades look pathetic in comparison. + Some of the best melee combat in all of videogames - smooth, satisfying, expressive, in depth and very skillful + The best implementation of roguelike mechanics to date - the game actually lets you be in control of your run instead of letting luck determine your success + Clear, readable enemy animations + Very impactful items that directly affect core mechanics without requiring building stacks of them for any appreciable effect

Despite some frustrating sections, tedious process of unlocking the post-game levels and lack of checkpoints in the post-game that made me quit due to losing a lot of progress, this is clearly still the best platformer I've played. It does virtually everything right.

+ Stealth is great and fluid + A lot of toys to play with for those who like a sandbox + Technological marvel - LONG unskippable cutscenes aimed only at MGS nuts - Long intro sequence that ruins replayability - Weak and repetitive second half - All sections that aren't regular missions just don't work as they take away stealth mechanics to a degree or completely

+ Combat is great and fast paced + The world is well designed and non-repetitive - Soulslike mechanics go against non ecclectic exploration that is somewhat important to metroidvania games - The map can be very unclear/unhelpful and sometimes misleading - The layout of the world is pretty weird - big things are hidden, there's no sense of what's important and what's not or whether you're progressing - There's a limit to how big a metroidvania world can be for me, and Hollow Knight has found it. The game's ridiculously good value, but also the most overwhelming in its genre that I've played.

+ Amazing puzzle design + Accessible for people who don't play puzzle games or FPP games + Fantastic writing + Timeless visuals The still unmatched king of puzzle games.

Best singleplayer FPS to date. + Satisfying, quick, offensive gameplay with kill-to-heal mechanics and no ranged hitscan enemies + Great level design (for combat) + Fun, varied enemy designs + Very well balanced high difficulties - Extremely monotnous visuals - Surprisingly overpowered shield enemies - Extremely easy bosses - Unskippable story bits limiting replayability in early levels - Glory kill animations interrupt the pace of gameplay and can end up with the player taking unavoidable damage - Subpar performance and potentially permanently broken audio

One of my favourite games even though I am not an avid fan of score attack or twin stick shooters. + Great feeling combat - high lethality in both ways with a way to reliably dodge damage. + Simple moveset with hidden depth - move, aim, shoot and dodge+switch weapon. Tying the two last actions into one input introduces a fair bit of hidden depth, as you need to make sure you can afford losing access to your current weapon and stopping your attacks for a moment, since either could end up with you either dropping your combo or getting knocked down + A clever battery mechanic allows for a coop experience where no player is left behind. Players can get knocked down, but never killed - the failure state is only triggered when the battery, shared by all players, depletes. The battery level decreases over time, but can be replenished with an item that drops when you kill an enemy, but only after you've killed enough robots since the last recharge. + Fantastic enemy designs with meaningful synergies and a lot of variety. + Good (though not the best) level design with a lot of replayability thanks to leaderboards and a grade system that tracks your performance with each indifidual character separately, which motivates those who don't care about leaderboards and incentivises you to master all characters. + A lot of characters with totally different playstyles + A combo system that introduces depth into prioritising targets - dealing damage doesn't keep up the combo, only kills do, and you need to manage the crowd in a way that allows you to quickly kill a small or damaged enemy when the next target is too far, behind an obstacle or has too much health to be killed as quickly as the timer neccessitates. + Fantastic optimisation + 4 player local coop + Great bonus modifiers - Some levels have visuals that make enemies difficult to see - One really bad level - Slightly floaty keyboard controls (mouse is fine) - No mapping tools

+ Timeless enemy designs and general gameplay balance keep L4D2 the best co-op shooter of all time so far. + Workshop integration ensures near endless content and customisability + The "director AI", a system which alters enemy and item spawns on every playthrough allow for unprecedented replayability + Excellent performance, support for high framerates and custom resolutions, great controls and Steam Input integration + Online, LAN, splitscreen and mixed coop. - Gunplay simply isn't great. If you're not playing offline, zombies often react to damage with delay, the weapon accuracy and recoil feel wrong, the reloading animations are tragically out of sync with the actual moment when the weapon is ready to shoot. This cannot be fixed with mods if you want to play online. - Insufficient tools for online play, including muting chat messages from other players or removing them from the lobby you own, information about how far along the game you're joining is and so on. - Friendly AI is awful. Enemy AI is also bad, but it doesn't ruin the challenge; friendly AI being awful ensures a miserable solo experience and can be frustrating even with 2 players at times. The main issues are not helping players who are pinned in time or at all and getting killed by the bosses - Witch and Tank - because they don't treat them as a threat.

I despise open world games, but Yakuza 0 is too good to dislike, even for me. This might be the only game I've ever played that not only isn't ruined by its open world, it's great thanks to it. The way that is achieved is by throwing out most garbage ideas like copy-pasted busywork and instead making optional content either extremely well written, hilarious side stories, or equally amusing minigames, some of which have enough depth to where they could easily be adapted into completely separate videogames with a bit of effort. Yakuza 0 makes Witcher 3 look like a desert with an unexciting plot and scarce, low effort sidequests. + Extremely dense, compact open world with things to do in every corner + Very well written serious main story + Amazing quality side-activities with no copy-pasting aside from (optional) random combat encounters and absolutely hilarious writing (and a lot of it) + Flawless PC port - Mediocre combat that is only bearable thanks to the variety in the player's moveset

DRG can be played in split-screen via NucleusCoop! A great game taking inspiration from the best co-op shooter in the business - Left 4 Dead 2. It improves on said classic mainly via breadth of gameplay mechanics - the players now have objectives to complete other than simply going through a level, and Ammo and health have to be actively worked for instead of being given out at the whim of a director AI. On paper, the game should also have more replayability thanks to different character builds and character progression, random level generation and variety of mission types. The reason it doesn't succeed is how much less satisfying it is to finish any given level than in Valve's magum opus. Here are a few reasons: - Character progression makes difficulty fluid, taking away from the feeling of beating a set challenge - Missions are singular levels, which doesn't feel as substantial as a full L4D campaign. Instead of something that makes you feel accomplished and quit the game for the day, DRG's missions feel bite-sized. - The former issue is exacerbated by how boring the meta progression is after promoting each dwarf (you just grind for minor cosmetics and occasionally resources necessary for obtaining and crafting weapon mods, most of which are uninteresting) - Randomly generated levels simply can't be as interesting as hand-crafted ones. They don't have any pacing or distinct sections - just rooms that don't lead into one another in any intentional way like they would in a well designed, hand-crafted level. - Restarting levels takes ages, so you're heavily disincentivised to pick difficulties outside of your comfort zone That being said, it's in close second place to L4D for the title of the best co-op shooter. + 4 very distinct classes that synergise very well in co-op + Alternative weapons for each class that feel and perform significantly differently + Reasonably flexible class/weapon tuning system without excessive grind + Good gunplay + Great, pleasing aesthetic that doesn't really get old + Variety of mission types + Generally good netcode + Low skill floor - All issues previously mentioned - Bad solo experience. The game tries to adjust for having only one player by giving them a robot you can use in combat and to complete some tasks, but there are objectives a single player will have a disproportionally harder time completing even if they can hold their own in combat just fine. Even for those who prefer playing alone, co-op is a must for the game to be even close to as good as in multiplayer. - Performance could be better - Aim friction on impossible to turn off on controllers, reloading and interaction are both bound to a normal press of the X button, which causes a lot of issues - Mixed input (gamepad+mouse/keyboard) makes some buttons behave in unexpected ways - Steam can't crossplay with any other platform, whereas Xbox console players can join up with PC Xbox App/UWP players.

The only Dark Souls game with any amount of polish. It doesn't have the extreme jank, horrible performance or wild changes in quality that the original had and it's not a somehow worse dumpster fire like Dark Souls 2. This is the Dark Souls that should be the gateway for new players and the only title worth playing for many. + Great bosses + Interesting, varied enemies + Mostly great level design + Great implementation of soulslike mechanics + RPG mechanics don't ruin skill based combat - your build affects the difficulty a lot, but the game doesn't just break down when you're underpowered - Janky controls - locking onto enemies can fail and turn your camera in the direction your character was last moving; due to the sprint being bound to hold dodge, dodging is delayed (since the game has to wait to make sure you're not holding the button to sprint) and can sometimes not come out at all if you press it for too long - Some checkpoint placements, whether long before a boss or a long walk from the nearest place of interest - 60 fps lock on PC - **** implementation of co-op - Some annoying enemies and levels

The game was already dead when I played it years and years ago, so this is about the memory of playing it rather than the experience at this point in time. + Extremely unique gameplay with an emphasis on cooperation between crewmates. + A lot of possible playstyles + Detailed ship damage (in a mechanical, not visual sense) - High skill floor causing frustration for both new and seasoned players - Insufficient tutorialisation/ opportunity for practice without ruining the chances of your crew - Subpar performance and visual glitches - Requires a lot of players to have an interesting match - Extremely slow matchmaking - pretty much a 1:1 waiting to gameplay ratio

+ Great puzzles that avoid the common pitfall of wrong solutions being too close to correct. It's always clear why something does not work. + Good writing - more characterised than the original, though with more shortcomings. + A level editor and Steam Workshop integration (for both solo and coop maps) ensuring plenty of post-game content + A high level of polish + High quality 2 player coop campaign online or in split-screen - Messy Steam Input integration

This game's content is included in the sequel in full and it's the best content in that game. The main reason to play this, or better, use a L4D2 mutation that emulates the pure L4D1 experience, is the enemy balance - there are only 5 special zombies in the original, 2 of them appearing about once per level, but that results in a better balance, less instant team wipe potential and an actual chance to keep track of most ways the enemies can attack.