ToshLichev

404 not found every time I try to post my review. But this gets posted. Fix your **** Metacritic.

As a **** for PS2 era collectathon platformers Battle for Bikini Bottom is right down my alley. It's perfect if you just want to turn your brain off and enjoy the brutally saturated environments and childish plot for a few hours. There really isn't anything special about it but it manages to do just about everything well enough for it to be a fun experience.

I just don't get it. Sonic is fast... why is he in a car? I get the gimmick of putting well established characters from a huge franchise in easy-to-sell types of games, but this makes no sense at all. Just run lil' blue bro. It's what you do. The gameplay is decent but far too simple and arcadey for my taste. On a technical level everything is just alright. Surprise - there is no plot. It's always 3 lines of exposition followed by a few races. Cutscenes ? Not a chance. The servers are absolutely dead so there is no online. But still.... Why the **** is Sonic driving a car? A confused 4/10

An intriguing and unique experience that could have been truly amazing if it wasn't compromised by fairly unresponsive controls.

I can't wrap my head around why everyone loves this game so much. To me it represents an evolution of all of Hazelights' strengths and weaknesses from A Way Out with one exception - unlike A Way Out, It Takes Two is actually fairly good-looking and has some very well designed levels which wasn't the case with A Way Out. But being a better version of a terrible game is nothing to brag about. So the pros are back, the game constantly introduces new mechanics and is constantly changing - it never really allows itself to get boring. The cinematic moments are back and better than ever with some of them being so good that me and my co-op partner said "yooo that was awesome" out loud. Unfortunately all the cons from the past are also back and so much worse. While A Way Out's plot and characters were dull and boring the plot and characters in It Takes Two are aggressively bad and obnoxious. Considering this annoyingly lengthy game relies on a divorce storyline it's baffling how the writers managed to make two protagonists who could never, would never and should never have gotten married in the first place, let alone have a child. It's like they are an amalgamation of everything terrible you could have in a SO and the things they do show that they really don't care about their daughter, they just want to get out of the situation they are in, making the ending just laughable. Add to that a love guru who made me roll my eyes every time he was on screen and you really start to wonder " If they tried, could they make this any worse?" . The other problem is that once again Hazelights' game is a jack of all trades but a master of none. Almost all mechanics feel cheap and uninspired. There were a few that were fun but the vast majority just failed to impress. If it wasn't for the bonkers amount of different and well-designed levels, the few amazing cinematic moments and the few fun gameplay segments I would say this game is another dud. Instead I'll say that It Takes Two is a step in the right direction for Hazelight but a marathon run away from a genuinely good game. Please guys, fire all your writers and hire new ones. A very mediocre 5/10

Assault On Dragon Keep misses out on a chance to be a fun bite-sized adventure by giving you too little of the fun character interactions and far too much of the annoying bullet sponge enemies and grindy RPG mechanics. Would have given it a higher score due to how much it has to offer in terms of locations and content (it IS very cheap) but the fact that the game made me clear out a whole level twice when my save spawned me at the start of a map I had already finished and respawned every damn enemy along the way made me lose my **** ****.option. Epitome of mediocre - 5/10

As someone who has never played a "Souls" game I thought Mortal Shell would be a great place to start - it's free on PS+, seems a bit simpler than the From Software games and is supposedly easier due to the "Harden" mechanic. Safe to say this was not one of my best decisions. After the first few hours I spent with the game resulted in me absolutely hating it, I sat down to play it with a friend who is really great at Souls games in order to see if it's actually a bad game or if I just hate Souls-like experiences. It ended up being a bit of both. On my side the constant respawning enemies and backtracking are a harsh gameplay mistake which completely denies you of any sense of progression. The setting and "plot" felt dull and uninspired and at no point did I feel the urge to explore. But it wasn't just me. My friend echoed my concerns saying that the game felt like a knock-off. We both enjoyed the Shell mechanic but mostly because it functions as a safety net, compensating for the absurdly overpowered regular enemies, the off-beat dodge mechanic and the general gameplay clunkyness. Everything from build customization and combat to fast travel and boss fights were bad versions of already established mechanics. Overall Mortal Shell is a painfully mediocre attempt at copying the Souls formula which lacks any of the polish and fine-tuning its predecessors have so it tries to compensate with cheap difficulty and "get-out-of-jail" mechanics.

A fun, mindless romp through a **** castle and its surroundings. Old Blood lets you play at your own pace, at whatever difficulty you want and even though it's fairly short it keeps introducing new ideas that keep things fresh. The plot is pretty bare and it straight up jumps the shark towards the end. There's nothing new or innovative to speak of here, but the overall experience is definitely positive if you want a fast-paced shooter you can just turn your brain off to and it serves as a great chronological starting point for the modern Wolfenstein games. Pretty good 7/10

As a massive ME fan it felt great to come back to a franchise which I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours playing. While the core 3 games are by far the best trilogy in gaming history, this remaster does manage to tighten up some gameplay aspects that felt a bit archaic by 2022 standards. ME1 in particular has become far more polished than it used to be ad the addition of all the DLC is a nice touch. Overall this is a great way to experience this masterpiece of a franchise. It isn't perfect tho, during my playthrough of ME1 I experienced quite a few bugs which is something that had never happened to me in the past - even game breaking ones. ME2 fared much better but still had awkward graphical hiccups and the same goes for ME3. Would have been nice for this to have been a bit more polished since it obviously needs some patches but even in this state I'd call it the best way to play gaming's greatest trilogy. P.S. : Don't listen to the russian trolls **** about russian dubs and reviewbombing the game. This is meant to be played in english, if you don't like it, don't play it and shut up.

Overall Mad Max does nothing new and fails to be noticeably exceptional in any of its mechanics. Everything it has to offer has been done better by other games but that doesn't mean the game is bad - it's just a bit mediocre. It makes the most of the Mad Max setting and while the plot is far from noteworthy, a combination of derivative yet fun mechanics and a good open world and setting makes for a decent if a bit forgettable game.

As a newcomer to the Yakuza franchize I have to start off by saying that Yakuza 0 is an absolutely massive game but not in the conventional way I'm used to. It doesn't have a huge open world, gorgeous cinematics or exciting traversal. In its essence "0" is actually pretty old school and in some aspects even archaic but it compensates with character and content. Where Yakuza 0 blows you away is the fact that not only does it have an intriguing and amazingly acted 30 hour storyline, it also has hundreds of hours of side content which is anything but filler. Every mini-game feels fleshed out and almost like a separate game within the Yakuza world. You also get not one but two open world areas which, although quite small, feel unique enough to each of the two protagonists. Speaking of which, both protagonists have their own fighting styles which gives depth to an otherwise fairly basic fighting system. All the characters feel like real human beings and you start to care about them sooner or later. Most of the time the game completely manages to immerse you in its world, however... There are more than a few problems with Yakuza 0. For starters the presentation. This does not look like a 2017 game, there are moments at which I felt like I was playing The Sims. I get that you can't animate every single conversation in this type of game but considering how dialogue heavy it is, the amount of actual cinematics and/or fully animated scenes is absurdly low. The lack of a dub is a respectable creative decision seeing as the japanese voice acting is superb, but when around 15 hours of the game is spent pressing "X" while reading walls of text, constantly reading subs can really become a problem because it takes you out of the game and even at some point starts to put a brutal physical strain on your eyes. The camera in many cases is absolutely broken. The constant random fights on the streets quickly go from fun to unbearably annoying - they earn you very little cash and are a waste of time. The game also seems stuck in the past with its menues and the fact that there really isn't a "restart" button for side missions or mini games which means that every time you fail you have to quit, go back to the NPC, go through all the conversations and only then can you try again. A huge waste of time. Yakuza 0 is a mostly great game and if you're willing to look past some of it's archaic game design and are ok with it blatantly wasting your time at certain points, then I think you'd like it quite a bit.

My opinion about Crimes & Punishments is the exact same as for its sequel so I'll just copy my old review. I am 99% sure this is the same game with different cases. It feels the exact same. The only difference is the sequel has better location variety. "On the surface, TDD is a AA PS3 game that plays like a PS2 game on a PS4 and while that may sound like a trainwreck it's actually not half bad. Graphically it's far from impressive with FPS drops plaguing the game every 10 mins or so, the VO is usually good or at least serviceable and the gameplay is usually wonky and just feels a bit ancient. So why did I still sort of like it? Well, while playing it you could just see that whoever made the game actually wanted to make a great game and there is a good bit of interesting ideas in here that prove that if the studio had a decent budget, they maybe could have done something impressive. There's a pretty good variety of locations, gameplay features and the actual mysteries and investigations along with the deduction system were pretty fun. Combining them with a decent if a bit short Sherlock story and the pros manage to even out the cons. So why isn't it a 5/10? Lol, easy platinum, this is how games of this nature should structure their trophy lists. If you're into Sherlock Holmes I'd say that you should probably pick this one up, specially if it's on sale. "

The best thing this game has going for it is a great art style and a charming main character. Everything else is pretty run-of-the-mill. The gameplay is classic point and click and the story is as basic as they come. The puzzles are quite alright if a bit too specific at certain times - they work. Machinarium is pretty short but at the end of the day it is quite cheap so you can't really complain about that. A fun little game that won't blow your mind but is still definitely worth playing.

As someone who's never played a Hitman game in his life, Hitman 2 was tough to get into but quite fun when I got the gist of it. I'm not a fan of stealth and the great thing here is that you can approach every mission however you like. Want to go guns blazing? Sure. Wanna spend 3 hours on a mission analyzing everything on the map? Go for it. It really lets you do you. Gameplay is nice and tight, the A.I. is truly brain dead which is both fun and a bit frustrating. The locations you visit are pretty rich and allow for lots of exploration and different styles of play. The option to play missions from Hitman 1 with the new mechanics is a great touch and the sniper missions are a nice change of pace. Graphics are pretty meh, but they get the job done. My main gripes are the fact that the plot is so bare bones and so pointless that you might as well skip it entirely and that sooner or later you will get tired of the way the game plays. As much variety as the game may present to you, it does get tiresome at some point and I think the main reason for that is exactly the lack of plot. You have no good end goal so you stop caring. Additionally there is a bit of a steep learning curve. I feel like the tutorial missions really oversimplify the gameplay and what follows after is way tougher and complex. You go in feeling unprepared. Hitman 2 is pretty fun and once you get into its gameplay you can pretty much do whatever you want but the lack of substantial plot makes it feel like a non-essential game.

Considering I only play Monopoly every once in a while, this is a pretty good way to do it without having to bust out the physical board. Nothing amazing, but no real complaints either.

Technically improves on everything from the first game - much better graphics, the fighting feels tighter and more fluid, more gameplay options and the addition of gear, while allowing MT's, works due to the way it allows you to personalise your favorite characters. Unfortunately it ends up delivering a far weaker story than its predecessor, which ultimately nulls a major chunk of the improvements. A great DC fighting game, but a fairly poor continuation of the Injustice universe.

As someone who is neither a fan of fighting games nor MK in particular, Mortal Kombat X just seemed mediocre to me. The fighting mechanics felt a bit more stiff than those of the Injustice series and none of the over the top violence ever managed to impress me - it honestly felt like it was trying a bit too hard. The story was also not something I was too crazy about. It essentially only exists to stitch together 50 or so fights - perhaps it might feel more enthralling for fans who have followed the series over the past few decades but for me it was a dud. There is also an obscene amount of ads for other WB products. Nevertheless I can't ignore how deep and expansive the combat mechanics are and how much fun fans of the genre and or series can have with MK X, despite it only being an ok game for me, so I can't rate it too harshly.

Prototype 2 is a noticeable improvement over its predecessor. The combat and traversal feel tighter and the story, while still as uninspired and bland as before, takes itself a bit less seriously, giving us a protagonist who better fits the absurd nature of the world the game is set in. The biggest improvement however is New York. This time it feels far more lived in and detailed unlike the cardboard cutout city from Prototype 1. Even considering all the improvements, Prototype 2 is still a slaughterhouse simulator with a paper thin plot and pretty standard gameplay. It's not something incredible or too memorable but at least it's what Prototype 1 should have been.

It's impressive that something is free only when that same thing has value of any kind. In the case of eFootball 2022 "FREE" is a terribly high price to pay because this is a mobile game that is in a "few months away from alpha build" state and is being released on consoles. Currently there are only 2 modes: online match or exhibition match. It's been over 24 hours since launch and I am yet to connect to a single player so I guess no online for me - aces. So how is the single player? Well, horrible. You have 9 teams, 5 of which anyone would actually play with so it really has less teams than a standard FIFA demo. The graphics are atrocious by mobile game standards let alone console... It usually runs at about 10 fps which makes playing all the more fun. The actual gameplay feels like a mix of the worst that PES and FIFA have had to offer over the past few years - core mechanics are missing, there are control decisions that are just baffling, players go from feeling like they weigh a ton to flying around at the speed of light, shooting makes no sense, even sprinting is broken. Glitches and bugs are constant and at least for me there has yet to be any commentary. Lastly the menues and music just scream out "CHEAP". Everything feels like it was downloaded royalty free. Even Messi doesn't look quite right on the cover. If this is KONAMI's Fifa-killer, I'd say it's time for me to go back to FIFA after a few years of being on team PES. It's a shame because PES had gotten to a point where it really only lacked a bit of visual and presentation polish. As it is now eFootball can't even be considered a video game.

NFS (2015) is a game that is good at its core but is ruined by a plethora of EA-isms. While the driving feels quite good and there is a fair bit of customization available, those are the only real positives. Although the open world isn't ugly at all, it's so monotonous and dead you will fast travel everywhere just to save yourself from it. The story features horrendous live action cutscenes which include some of the worst writing I've ever witnessed - no way to tell if the actors are any good as the material they had to work with was straight up garbage. Despite the great driving, races suffer from laughably obvious and aggressive rubber banding. Doesn't really matter how far ahead you are and how much better your car is - 10/10 times 1-2 km before the finish someone is going to spawn behind you going 800 km/h and they'll usually beat you unless you've upgraded your car to the max. And now for the worst problem... The online component. Make no mistake NFS 2015 is a strictly offline game - nothing about it suggests online play or even a need for an online component. Yet for some reason EA have made an online connection at all times mandatory. It makes zero sense and results in nothing more than server crashes and other racers crashing into you, thus ruining your race and forcing you to start over. Why this decision was made is beyond me and I truly hope whoever made it realised they don't belong in the gaming industry and left. Absolute joke Need For Speed (2015) could have actually been quite a good game but EA did what EA does best and destroyed it.

As someone who knows little to nothing about UFC, this game seems like a carbon copy of the previous entry. It's just as empty as every other EA game and while the visuals and fighting do feel quite nice, the game modes are far too bare bones and there is very little to actually do.

While the game ceretainly manages to deliver on the fighting style we've come to expect from Naruto, a stunning lack of presentation and mind-numbingly repetitive story progression make this a decent starting point for the series, but an overall underwhelming game.

Far Cry 4 for me is a sequel that manages to top its predecessor in most ways but also suffers from feeling a bit too familiar. All the bugs and problems I had with Far Cry 3 are still here - graphical mishaps, inconsistent fall damage, a story that easily falls into the background. We get a better main villain in Pagan Min but he also ends up featuring far too little similarly to Vaas. Thankfully the negatives aren't the only thing that made the jump from 3 to 4 - everything good has not only been brought back but in most cases it's improved. Gameplay feels tighter and you have more options for combat and traversal. The location is a much more interesting and beautiful choice this time and the plot, if a bit forgettable, feels like it has bigger stakes than the one in Far Cry 3. Far Cry 4 is a better version of Far Cry 3 but it never ends up becoming anything more than "a good yet similar sequel".

Sea of Solitude is a game that means well but ultimately fails in most aspects. It tries to tell a deeper and emotional story but it fails due to laughable writing and amateur voice acting. The gameplay is far too basic and simple to impress and that really only leaves a cool vibe and art style to do all the heavy lifting. If the concept is handled by a more capable studio and the plot is rewritten by actual writers and performed by professional voice actors Sea of Solitude could turn into a pretty interesting game but what we have here seems more like a proof of concept demo rather than an actual finished product.

There is very little you can say about Hellblade without spoiling the game because it is an entirely narrative experience. The gameplay really is just a more or less rudimentary component that only serves as a way for you to experience the story the game wants to tell. Thankfully the plot in question is quite intriguing due to its spin on mental illnesses and our perception of them, although I do have to note that some of the praise it has been receiving may be a bit over the top. While I do recommend that you play Hellblade I can't ignore the fact that it is more of an interactive movie which gets rudely interrupted with unnecessary combat sections. I also can't forgive the devs for not fixing an absurd collectible glitch which makes you miss out on the platinum due to a bug in the rune count - if you can't do it perfectly you add chapter select, if not you lose a point.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider is a decent if not too notable farewell to the new Lara Croft trilogy. It's never bad per say but it also never really manages to hit any high points - it always just works. From a gameplay perspective everything is sort of ok with space for improvement being present in just about every aspect. Climbing mechanics don't feel tight enough and sometimes you end up with awkward camera angles which force you to take a guess at where you should be going. Combat is fairly rare which is good because the mechanics don't exactly feel great, a bit too floaty on consoles. Graphically the game holds up well, but once again - never really impresses. I did have odd lip sync problems and some fps drops but nothing too jarring. The torture porn aspect of the game however is too much - it's funny when it happens to someone like Nathan Drake but when it's Lara you just feel bad - her character is written in a way that makes these situations feel like she is constantly being beaten down by everything around her. Storywise Shadow Of The Tomb Raider ends up being derivative and unmemorable. It never presents us with anything new or interesting. You just go through the motions of a cliche "stop the prophecy" storyline. You can tell what's going to happen every step of the way and the ending fails to serve up any real closure for this part of Laras life. The only reason to keep going is because the protagonist is fairly sympathetic and you want to go on with the journey for her sake. Not a bad game, but ultimately bland and forgettable.

Tennis World Tour 2 is a failure in every aspect. The game modes are bare bones and uninspired - they get boring in less than an hour. The roster feels limited and none of the players have any personality. The graphics look like they came straight out of the early PS3 era and movement is clunky, buggy and inconsistent. All of that could have been overlooked to an extent if the gameplay was good, if it felt like you were actually playing tennis... but it doesn't. Tennis World Tour 2's gameplay is just horrific. Shots are inconsistent, aces are impossible, very often your player wont even react and he'll just look at the ball as it passes by. Difficulty means nothing as a match on "Very Easy" can be much harder than one on "Expert" and the lack of licensed tournaments makes this nightmare **** feel even more bottom of tha barrel. Tennis World Tour 2 feels like a game that is a few months away from pre-alpha and the fact Sony considered this would be an ok addition to PS+ is an insult to PlayStation players.

Playing Prototype for the first time in 2021 really makes it hard for me to enjoy this game the way people enjoyed it back in 2008. The world and gameplay feel archaic at this point and while I had a few moments of nostalgia-based enjoyment due to the fact I've played similar games back in the day, I really can't say Prototypes' exploration, combat or open-world New York are good. The story is painfully edgy and basic. You never connect with Alex as an individual which makes the plot twist feel like a dud. The voice acting ranges from decent to laughable and characters just pop in and out of the story with no explanation. While I can sort of accept all the problems due to the games' mindless nature, something I can't forgive is the terrible difficulty spikes. At certain points Prototypes' mechanics just can't keep up with damage coming at you from everywhere and you start getting punished just for playing. The aiming system is terrible and traversal during combat is just a nightmare. Prototype could be fun for some people but for most it'll just end up as an hour or two of mindless destruction before getting deleted and forgotten. 5/10

Death Stranding is a weird experience to say the least. While i enjoyed much of it the lows are so bad they could probably convince you to quit the game. Weirdly enough it's a game I want everyone to experience but I don't know if I would ever recommend to anyone. It's like nothing you have ever played before and while it takes quite a bit to get into, once you get used to the gameplay loop you will fall in love with it as long as you have patience. It does start falling apart towards the later parts of the story and it really feels pointless after the credits roll, but during the first 20-25 hours of Death Stranding there is a lot of enjoyment to be had while playing. Visually it is also absolutely amazing, although the world can start getting a bit boring after 30-ish hours. While the story starts off very well and you become very immersed into the world's lore, it becomes quite stale after about 20 hours or so and Kojima ruins it all with his mandatory government conspiracy plot twist. It is pretty sad to see great actors trying to do the best with a truly horrendous script. There isn't a molecule of subtlety in any sentence of dialogue anywhere. It's all just a mess of terrible exposition and painfully preachy statements that repeat over and over and over. The last 3 hours of the game feel like punishment for every moment of fun you had in the prior 25 or so hours. If Death Stranding had ended on a high note I probably would have been able to look past all of its weaknesses but instead it just keeps dragging on and on after which it finishes with a whimper. For that I can't give it more than a 7/10.

Long story short, WWE 2K Battlegrounds is ugly, boring and insulting to anyone who decides to pick it up. If it was free you could maybe turn a blind eye to the early PS3 era graphics, the repetitive and laughably basic gameplay and the non-existing storyline mode, but even that wouldn't explain how this "game" is both crazy buggy (ruining matches lvl of buggy) and has microtransactions. An embarrassing entry even considering it's coming from 2K.

I never played Spyro as a kid but after a good amount of hype by a friend about the remaster I decided to give it a go and I'm glad I did. The gameplay in all three games is more or less the same and that is great because it's mostly good all across the board. The first game barely has any story, the second one tries a bit harder and the third maybe tries a bit too hard but none of that really matters because at their core these are collectathon games for kids and you only really need enough plot to make an excuse for all the running around you're gonna be doing. Spyro is fun if a bit shallow as a character and the world around him is interesting enough. When the games keep things simple it's a true joy to play but the problem is that they progressively try to put in more and more unnecessary mechanics and the more you play the more it starts feeling like a chore. At a certain point you are forced to play with other characters who aren't Spyro and they all control poorly and feel like an afterthought. The huge amount of annoying side missions and the growing amount of backtracking you have to go through the more you play is also a notable problem in the later games. While I would definitely recommend Spyro The Reignited Trilogy, I'd keep in mind that these are games for children after all and can become a bit too dull. One more thing - DO NOT play all three games one after the other like I did. I decided to go for a platinum run on all three games back to back and can surely say there is such a thing as "too much Spyro". By the end of "Year of The Dragon" I never wanted to see that purple little **** ever again.

Even in its "complete" state Battlefield V is a disaster. Let's get the positive out of the way. The multiplayer is decent, nothing of note, the big battles can feel epic but way too often you end up stranded on the huge map having to run to the battlefield. Nothing to write home about but I could see how someone could enjoy it. And now the Single Player. In my 13 years of active gaming I have never played a worse single player and that is if you can even consider this **** a single player campaign. There are only a few mini-stories which could easily be completed in about 2 hours if it wasn't for the absurdly cheap difficulty. For some reason the single player is incredibly stealth focused which makes no sense since the gameplay doesn't offer a single stealth mechanic. You are always underpowered, the AI eats bullets for breakfast and you go down in 5 hits max. You essentially have to resort to cheating the game itself to save yourself from the terrible gameplay. There are also somehow tons of bugs. But even if all of that could be fixed it wouldn't really matter because what we have here are 4 laughably overproduced, bland, generic, boring, uninspired and at times painfully preachy stories which fail at every aspect of telling a story. Overall, never consider playing this. Ever.

Ratchet and Clank was the perfect breath of fresh air I needed after playing a few more serious games over the past few months. It tells a lighthearted yet interesting enough story with some great easy-going humor and fun characters. It both looks and plays great, there is an awesome variety of weapons and locations and the story takes just the right amount of time to finish. While I definitely enjoyed playing Ratchet And Clank I do have a few gripes with it. First off, Challenge mode is unnecessary and only exists to pad out the game-time and ruin the trophies. Aside from that I also had some problems with controls not being as responsive as I wanted them to. Overall Ratchet and Clank is a great time as long as you don't expect too much from it.

Days Gone is a good game that is weighed down by the amount of missed potential that is constantly on display. Starting off with the good - The open world feels both big enough and lived-in. Exploring is a blast and every location feels like it has its own backstory. The gameplay is also quite fun although the mission design leaves a bit to be desired at times. Hordes are just as terrifying as you would expect and when you get to the point where you can take them on you really feel like a powerhouse. Moving on to the cons, the game gets progressively worse the more you play it. The first 10 or so hours are amazing. The next 10 feel like you're stuck in the same place and the last 10 are a downward spiral of both plot and gameplay quality. By the time you get to the end the game feels like it was finished by 1/5 of the team that started it. Both the plot and the characters are nothing to write home about and the pacing is all over the place. Graphical problems are nowhere to be found in the first 10-15 hours but after that you can't go 10 mins without FPS drops, textures not loading correctly or clipping. There is also an obscene amount of loading screens toward the end of the game. Overall Days Gone is the Walking Dead game we never got but it lacks direction and is riddled with technical problems. P.S.: Whoever made the "Burnout Apocalypse" trophy can go **** themselves. Also good choice by Sony for a PS+ game.

Gotta be honest, I only played Subnautica for the platinum trophy and during my playthrough the game seemed more like a half-finished proof of concept rather than a full on game. The bugs were horrendous and the crashes constant. My biggest fear wasn't the underwater monsters - it was the fact that my game could hard crash at any point for no reason.

While I respect the ideas and concept of the creators of The Witness and the style and gameplay are fun at first - line puzzles, as complex as they may be, can only take you so far. A lot of the logic behind the puzzle solutions is poorly or not communicated at all and while that may be fun for a while, towards the end you start hitting a Souls-like difficulty curve which is represented through puzzles which are more or less "the creators of these puzzles can solve them and so should you" levels of obnoxious and hard. The Witness is a decent game if you have a ton of free time and enough patience to play it but it fundamentally fails at being a good game. Most of the praise comes from pseudo-elitist journalists who think that if they don't get it - it must be genius. Unfortunately in this case, it's just bad game design.

While I enjoyed Journey, ABZU just doesn't do it for me. I liked some of the visuals and I specially liked the final level but bland gameplay, bad controls, a 2-hour game time and an uninspired plot make this a slog to get through.

Pros: - As someone who had never played a FF game, I'd say this was the perfect entry point for me. - Visually the game looks amazing. Specially when you compare it to the original and you see the graphical evolution that has happened in the past 25 years or so. - The gameplay never stopped being fun during the 30 hours I played it. - Although the japanese style of characterisation can feel a bit odd at first, you get used to it pretty quickly and really fall in love with the characters - The story offers a mostly great mix of seriousness and goofiness. Cons - The game has the tendency to drag on in certain sections. The natural flow of the story gets halted multiple times by obvious filler that really wasn't needed considering that the game is pretty long as it is. - There are a few levels where the music really gets on your nerves. - The platinum trophy forces you to replay the game multiple times which is always a major con in my book - The biggest con - at no point do you smash Tifa... Overall a really great game that made me interested in the franchise and hyped to try other JRPGs. P.S.: Big ups to Sony for the last few months of PS+ games. These are the types of games we expect and deserve as players - not throwaway indie games and B-level flops.

Considering that this is just a season update, 90% of what I said about PES 2020 is applicable here as well. While there is slight improvement in gameplay, making it a bit faster and tighter, once again pushing it far beyond what FIFA has been offering in the past 3-4 years, there really isn't much change. The biggest cons are the price, the soundtrack (it has gotten even worse) and the fact that they've lost more licenses. This is not a full game and while I appreciate the fact that they sell it at half cost, this is only a pro if you aren't coming from last year's PES 2020 - for all of us returning players we're essentially getting a kit pack (which is tiny considering that KONAMI have licenses for like 50 clubs), we lose the San Siro and we have to start over our Master League and MyClub. The price is great for newcomers but veteran players should have received this update at a much lower price. Overall a decent update, but it really doesn't feel like a solo product. More like a DLC at the price of an indie game.

While Heat may be a definite improvement over Payback it still feels lacking. The story is as bland and uninteresting as it always is when it comes down to an NFS game, but at least this time it feels like it knows its place and doesn't get shoved down your throat as much. The driving feels a bit better and the fact you don't have to keep a garage full of specialized cars allows you to focus on a few vehicles which leads to a more personal connection with your rides. The customizable character was also a decent touch. The Day/Night gameplay concept is a good idea and makes you consider your choices, whether to focus on rep or cash but this is where the main problem of Heat comes up. The cops are nigh indestructible and they are far too hard to lose. After a certain point they become impossible to shake off, they rubber band straight up to your ass and deal far more damage than you can. Losing all the rep for the night is bad enough considering how monotonous the races can become, but losing cash which you cant deposit anywhere during the day - absolute **** Other than that, the world feels a bit too small and lifeless and the soundtrack is straight up trash. Heat feels like 5 steps forward and 3 steps back, but it is still an improvement. Not really good, but decent.

After 3 years of being on team PES I started feeling that there HAS to be a better football experience so I decided to go back to FIFA just to give it a try. The last decent FIFA I played was 17, 18 was quite bad and 19 was just unplayable and that is where I switched to PES. Sitting down to play FIFA for the first time since 2018 was certainly quite a shock. To sum it up - this has nothing to do with football, it's a football game for people who have never watched football. Let's start with the pros - good soundtrack. Volta is also ok. Now time for the cons: The gameplay is disgustingly awful. Nothing has weight to it, the scripting is absurd, players are flying all over the place, you need to attempt a body slam to get a foul and the skill moves are pulled straight out of shaolin soccer - this is not what football looks or feels like. The presentation is actually awful. I had gotten used to people telling me that PES doesn't have good presentation but I decided that I was making a trade - presentation for good gameplay. But nah, most of the players look NOTHING like their real life counterparts, a hefty amount are using VERY OLD (we're talking 2015) player models and a very small fraction are actually up to date and looking like the real deal. Menues feel laggy and the graphics have this "coated in vaseline" feel to them. The only game mode that has received any attention is FUT which has always been a waste of time to me. Everything else is more or less the exact same as it was back in 2018. EA have once again managed to hit a new low... and no one is surprised.

Concrete Genie is the epitome of chill-out gaming. It delivers a pleasant story with fun and fresh gameplay mechanics and pleasing visuals. The world of Concrete Genie is small but just big enough to serve the game's needs. The art style is great and the game's gameplay never gets old, mainly because it tends to change up and always gives you something new to play with. The concept of the geenies is very well executed and truly gives the player the feeling that he is bringing life back into the city. The story could have been a little bit longer but it successfully manages to tell a heartfelt tale without being preachy or cringey which is harder than you'd think. Overall the only real problems I had with the game were a few technical bugs that made getting a plat a bit annoying towards the end. Other than that it is a great experience from start to finish.

When a friend of mine and I sat down to play A Way Out we were expecting an interesting story and fun co-op gameplay that would have us glued to our seats for a day. 6 hours later we found ourselves having turned off the audio at around hour 2 and started listening to music while imagining absurd scenarios that would serve as our version of the game's plot. We were doing everything possible to extract a bit of joy out of this slog **** and were even tempted to quit it after earning the platinum before starting the final 2 missions (absurd trophy list decision right there). A Way Out is a bland, quite visually ugly game, that relies on an abundance of plot cliches to tell a stunningly boring and uninspired story. The gameplay tries everything from puzzles and platforming to driving and shooting and manages to fail at just about everything. The only reason for me to not give A Way Out a lower score is because my friend and I DID have a few moments of genuine fun during our playthrough - most of which were due to us screwing with the game but **** did manage to have a little bit of fun.

While I can certainly appreciate the awesome art style, fun characters and overall intriguing world, Grim Fandango, for me, just doesn't work as a gaming experience 20+ years after its creation. At first I was set back by the horrendous tank controls, which are mandatory if you are doing a platinum run, but was able to negate them due to the great story and fun-ish gameplay. However that all changed midway through when the puzzles went form logic-based to trial and error based and the plot started losing steam very fast. By the end of the game I was tired of dealing with bad controls and an annoying gameplay loop, and I had fallen out of love with the characters and plot. While Grim Fandango probably was a masterpiece back in the 90's, today it's more of an interesting window to a simpler time, that couldn't really stand on it's own when compared to the modern gaming landscape.

The best that could be said about Vampyr is that it's an ambitious AA game that manages to accomplish quite a bit considering its tiny budget. Unfortunately its biggest accomplishment is its existence, being a complete game with quite a bit of content, but when you look at it as an actual experience it falls apart very quickly. Let me start off by saying that I couldn't care less about the generic plot, I truly wanted to get into it seeing as 60% of the game is an obscene amount of dialogue and exposition (an insane amount of side missions). However around 3 hours into the game I stopped trying and just started skipping the poorly acted dialogues, saving myself what I can only guess to be around 4 hours of boredom. The plot is paper thin and the character development never amounts to anything of substance. The gameplay and world don't hold up much better. London is tiny but getting around it is tedious. Because of the endless dead-ends and locked doors you spend hours just trying to figure out how the hell you can get from point A to point B - the hordes of respawning enemies are also frustrating since you never feel like you are progressing - they always spawn in the same places and in the same numbers slowing you down in the cheapest way possible. The combat feels like it's pulled from an early PS2 game, hit detection is terrible, locking on is a 50/50 bet and due to the adaptive difficulty, all of the enemies level up along with you so you never feel as though you've gotten more powerful. The game's worst element is it's adaptive difficulty which is based on the way you play. A pacifist playthrough results in endless grind, absurdly long battles and an overall feeling that you are always the weakest around. If you go wild and start killing everybody (which is what I did at one point when everyone was 10lvls above me and combat became nearly impossible) you will quickly start overpowering most enemies turning the combat into an annoying chore untill you reach the end where you will experience a truly absurd difficulty spike during the final boss battle (good luck fighting someone 15lvls above you). One final thing I want to mention is how badly optimized this game is. During my 30 hours with it I experienced over 20 hard crashes, endless loading screens which drag on far too long and hundreds of freezes which left me guessing whether my game had crashed or was just stuck, loading some textures. Overall, if you have 50-ish hours which you are ready to sink into a very mediocre AA game that feels extremely last gen, maybe Vampyr will be perfect for you and you'll be able to play through everything it has to offer. For everyone else tho, skip this one, it's yet another bad PS+ free game Sony got from the bargain bin.

Just Cause 4 is what I imagine mid 2000's outraged old people think video games are like. It's so bad I'm just gonna list all the cons, no time for a whitty review: There is no plot to speak of, the characters are dull and bland stereotypes of some of the most played out archetypes out there, the world feels empty, every mission is a side mission, there is 0 gameplay variety, the game controls like **** the physics engine is broken, at times it feels like it's in a pre-alpha state, the graphics are stuck in the late 00's (not even AAA graphics from that time), it's supposed to be fun but rarely is and the trophies are ****. Oh and here are the pros: I had a total of 15 minutes of fun... during my 10+ hour playthrough. I also got a cow gun, that was semi-cool. It's essentially the B-roll footage that gets left on the cutting room floor of a Michael Bay movie. Yet another **** PS+ game.

Control was the first game in quite some time I was truly looking forward to playing and while I absolutely fell in love with its world and lore, there were quite a few technical problems that held me back from enjoying it as much as I would have wanted to: Pros: - Control's world is intriguing and really makes you want to read every collectible you come across. While the main story itself may not be groundbreaking, you always want to learn more about the FBC and their history - The Oldest House is an incredible setting that oozes style and diverse environments - Gameplay feels nice and tight and the abilities Jesse (the protagonist) has give it a great sense of verticallity. By the end you are essentially playing as Jean Grey with guns. - The universe it shares with Alan Wake seems very promising - Quite visually impressive... when it isn't glitching out. - The game's use of architecture and colors combined with it's supernatural setting provide for some of the best levels I've played this year - While not all of the characters are as memorable as they should be, Dr. Casper Darling makes up for all of them and has turned into one of my all time favorite fictional characters ever - The game has a well structured trophy list Cons: - Bugs, bugs, bugs and more bugs. Control runs very poorly at times on a PS4 slim, with FPS drops that are as bad as 5-10 fps. This usually happens when **** is going down and tends to take you out of the game. Constant texture pop-ins are also a problem. - Control has a serious difficulty problem. Jesse usually dies in about 3-4 hits which is very punishing considering how many tough enemies you usually end up facing at once. The devs have added an invincibility mode you can use which is nice if you get very frustrated but it doesn't compensate a poorly made difficulty system. Overall Control is a glitch-filled masterpiece which could have been a 10/10 if it was well optimized and had an ending that was a tiny bit better. However it's still a must-play and serves as an amazing origin for the Remedy-verse. It gets an 8/10

I'm baffled by the positive reviews this game has received. Shadow of War is a horrible amalgamation of Arkham combat, AC traversal and Saint's Row IV-like powers which feels as cheap as it gets. Every aspect of it's gameplay is a bad bargain bin version of something that was astonishing and new 10 years ago. The only original idea it has, the nemesis system from the first game, feels like a gimmick at this point - it was cool the first time around, not as cool the second though... The story, although I am in no way a LotR fan, is so bland, boring and predictable that you just end up zoning out during most of it. There are a few sort of funny dialogues here and there but 95% of it is the tale of the most generic and characterless warrior in all of the realms, who's personality and appearance you forget immediately after pausing the game, and his annoying warrior friends who never get more than 30 seconds of character development. Together they have to fight millions of orcs to get a thingy. When you add the fact that the game is very buggy, it's got idiotic micro-transactions, the graphics are straight up 2008 PS3 levels of unimpressive and the world itself feels both annoyingly big to traverse and too small to be considered even decent - there just isn't anything good to say about the game. I usually have a final statement with which to finish my review but since Shadow of War didn't feel the need to have an actual ending and just gave us 20 fort defense missions to grind through for hours, I don't feel the need to summarize my review. Absolute **** 3/10 P.S: PS+ really keep hitting a new low every month...

My experience with Hollow Knight boils down to 2 parts - the first being my first 10 hours with the game and the second - everything after. The vibe, world and gameplay had me hooked at first and I genuinely liked it but at a certain point I realized I couldn't get anywhere without a guide. Not a problem - started following one and everything was fine untill I realized what the game really is - backtracking, grinding, hyper specific quests you are never really notified about and difficulty for difficutly's sake. After that it was all downhill. Around my 20th hour I was only in it for the plat and even that was thanks to the invincibility glitch which made this slog **** more bearable. I tried telling myself that the game just isn't for me but I can't say that a person who would be willing to put hundreds of hours into a game like this would be someone with an adequate gaming opinion. Overall I'm just happy I finished it, because at one point I wasn't sure there would actually be an ending... it just kept going and going and going and... I appreciate the care that went into making Hollow Knight but in the end - it manages to put together almost everything I dislike in gaming in one package. 4/10

A sequel that truly redefines the genre and makes you contemplate life itself. It's missing about 2% more mayo but I'm able to look this over and slap a 10/10 on this bad boy. Masterpiece!