nascent

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the best games this century, and whilst the gameplay can be grindy and the subplots weak, I was excited to see what Forbidden West was going to bring to the table. Whilst gameplay is more of the same, for better or worse, the game is beautiful and the world exploration is fun. The biggest issue with Forbidden West is the main story is pretty rough and less interesting to the original game's. The idea the game is going for wasn't bad, but it definitely felt a lot more shallow and rushed than the original story. Also, whilst the story hinges off the original game's plot, it sounds tacked on, rather a slice of the story. The only elements that tie the two games together are fairly loosely attached together, and the main antagonist of the game (or at least the person that caused everything) was featured in Forbidden West in such a weak way, it barely mattered. Also the final mission of the game was just flat out mediocre and shockingly dull to play. Pseudo stealth levels that you can run through with no consequence, and arbitrary climbing with a couple of unexciting battles that are overshadowed by mini boss battles earlier in the game. I enjoyed playing Forbidden West, right up until the receptiveness hit me, just like it did with the original game. Only this time, the story wasn't enough of a reward to justify it. Whilst I replayed Horizon Zero Dawn more than once, I can't see doing the same with Forbidden West. I hope the DLC is better, I'll take a break before playing it, and a 3rd main entry in the series better be remarkable to convince me to spend the money on it.

We played the hell out of 2017's Everybody's Golf. The open-world design of the game was great, full of character, and we loved driving around in our golf cart, unlocking things, and entering competitions. The golf matches were great, the japanese audio with english subtitles set a good atmosphere and gave a cute feel to the game. The level designs were varied and interesting too, with even having the ability to unlock legacy levels from classic Everybody's Golf games. The touches of character like spectators exclaiming "boooring". We looked forward to its sequel for 8 years, and now it's here - we're disappointed. 2017's Everybody's Golf is a much better game.

We played the hell out of 2017's Everybody's Golf. The open-world design of the game was great, full of character and we loved driving around in our golf cart, unlocking things, and entering competitions. The golf matches were great, the japanese audio with english subtitles set a good atmosphere and gave a cute feel to the game. The level designs were varied and interesting too, with even having the ability to unlock legacy levels from classic Everybody's Golf games. The touches of character like spectators exclaiming "boooring". We looked forward to its sequel for 8 years, and now it's here - we're disappointed. We're stuck with only American English audio, which as a non-american is like nails on a chalkboard. Driving the world with a golf cart is gone, replaced with a traditional yet boring menu navigation. This game lacks character. I honestly would rather just replay 2017's game. Why are there fewer options in this game over that? At least add the ability to set the audio language.

I really enjoyed Spider-Man. I ended up buying the game a year ago but not getting a chance to play it, so when the remastered version came out on PS5 I had to play it. The remastered game is pretty especially with the weather effects. The glass buildings are also pretty, it's only the brick buildings that let things down a little. The gameplay is very fun. Swinging didn't initially interest me, but once you get used to it, and become optimal, it's really a lot of fun. Also the game allows for fast travelling which helps reduce it getting boring. One thing this game made me thing a lot though is how great the Rocksteady Batman Arkham games were. A lot of spider-man felt directly copied, and the combat and gadets did feel like knock offs of the batman games. However, the game is still fun despite this I just hope the batman games are revisited on ps5. I highly recommend spider-man remastered if you haven't played that version. I only had a few crashes playing the game after beating the story and side missions. So no crashes until then.

The Spider-Man games are essentially clones of the critically acclaimed Batman Arkham games. The combat is similar, the progression is similar, and the gameplay is similar. That being said, Arkham Asylum released 15 years ago and Arkham Knight 10 years ago, so the Spider-Man games are the best we have now. They're also very well made in their own right. The story and the way it integrates both protagonists and changes to their movesets were very well done. Switching between Peter and Miles keeps things fresh throughout the game, and reminds me what GTA5 tried to do, only this time around it actually felt well done and justifible. The graphics are a significant step up from Spider-Man Remastered and it actually looks like a current generation game. The city feels more alive and the visual details are impressive throughout. The web-swinging continues to be a highlight and feels even more refined than the first game. I had few bugs during my playthrough. The only serious one was that I was **** into a cutscene I'd already seen and couldn't exit out of. I had to restart from checkpoint to be able to play the game again, and didn't seem to be able to resume the Unidentified Targets side mission as the mission marker never came back. However, going through the missions in the settings, I was able to reactivate it. In Spider-Man 2 the player is given the web wing suit quite early on, and it meant I did little swinging in the game, I feel it should've been unlocked much later in the game, like the first one. Flying around the city made me long for Prototype and Prototype 2 remasters though.

As a PlayStation console owner since 1997, I've never had an Xbox, as there never seemed any reason to. It always offered weaker-specced hardware, mostly games, and focused on TV and DVR instead of gaming.There were a few games that did pique my interest, that didn't show up on PlayStation: Forza Horizon, Gears Of War, Flight Simulator and Mass Effect. Fortunately, these are now on PlayStation, so I got to try them out. But so far, Forza Horizon 5 has been disappointing. The often compared racer to the beloved Gran Turismo games seems more like the arcade racer GRiD. Instead of being a traditional racer, most of the game seems to just be interactive cutscene-style sprints where you rarely get control of your car, and when you do and finally get to drift the game eventually just takes control away from you mid-race. I've never seen a racing game, where half the time the game is preventing you from actually racing. When you do get to race, the number of self-driving assists that are on is crazy. Plus the pseudo "event" commentary and NPC dialogue is cringeworthy. Playing Forza Horizon just made me want to switch back to Gran Turismo with PSVR2.. It seems like I really didn't miss out not having an Xbox.

As a Playstation console owner since 1997, I've never had an Xbox, as there never seemed any reason to. It always offered weaker-specced hardware, prone to high failure rates, mostly the same games, and focused on TV and DVR instead of gaming. There were, however, a few games that did pique my interest that didn't show up on PlayStation: Forza Horizon, Gears Of War, Flight Simulator and Mass Effect. Fortunately, these are now on PlayStation so I got to try them out. Yet, so far, Gear Of War has been disappointing. The much-praised cover-based combat system seems like a worse version of Uncharted. The plot (so far) has been completely lacklustre, and the world design and colour palette is muted and dull. It seems like I really didn't miss out not having an Xbox. The incredibly linear level design basically makes this game feel like you must walk forward 100ft and shoot a mob then watch a cutscene, rinse-repeat ad nauseam.

This game looked like a fun, silly throwaway game that after a couple of hours of playing, you'd never play **** the contrary, I've played hundreds of hours of this game over the past few years.Exploring the open world and finding the secrets has been thrilling, and the quests are well-designed and fun. This is one of the very few games I've 100%, just from having so much fun doing everything. It's also one of the best coop games I've played, both doing quests and exploring, as well as having fun in the open world sandbox. But also in the replayable 'jobs' and arcade mode.Years later, I've continued to enjoy playing this game occasionally, and it has received numerous big updates, with the latest offering an entire new (space) world. It's been a joy to 100% this game each time content has been added. Years of fun. Best £20 I've ever spent.

I've yet to be able to play this damn game. The main component requires an always on connection and signing into a capcom account, but capcom wont let me sign in with my username and password. If I try to reset the password (I know the password so shouldnt need to) the password reset email never arrives. The other gameplay options in the menu fail as the content cannot be found. I bought a lemon that cannot be played.

I missed out on the God Of War series back on the PS2 days and only really became familiar with the franchise from the PS5 rebooted series. However, before playing the rebooted series I wanted to play the originals so started with the PS3 version of God Of War and then 2. Initially, I thought I wasn't going to finish it as it seemed a bit hack n slash which I typically don't enjoy. But as I progressed and the cinematics revealed more of the story and saw the gorgeous camera positioning and puzzles throughout the game, I really started enjoying it and being impressed. While the level design is fairly samey for the most part, the plot was fascinating and the style of the cinematography during gameplay held my interest. I wasn't sure i'd play more of the original series past the first one but after enjoying the first so much I had to play 2. Now Iknow I'll try 3, I am undecided about the PSP games of the series.

I missed out on God Of War back on the PS2 days and only really became familiar with the franchise from the PS5 rebooted series. However, before playing the rebooted series I wanted to play the originals so started with the PS3 version of God Of War. Initially, I thought I wasn't going to finish it as it seemed a bit **** hack n slash which I typically don't enjoy. But as I progressed and the cinematics revealed more of the story and saw the gorgeous camera positioning and puzzles throughout the game, I really started enjoying it and being impressed. While the level design is fairly samey for the most part, the plot was fascinating and the style of the cinematography during gameplay held my interest. I wasn't sure i'd play more of the original series past the first one but absolutely will after enjoying the first so much.

Clunky controls and awkward puzzles. I had high hopes for Brothers based on the severely high ratings but it felt like a mobile game to me. Also the harsh arabic-influenced language without any subtitles spoiled the farytale-esque style they were going fo

I've only been playing the game for one day, but I know right away, that this is the vr shooter of my dreams. If really feels like Call Of Duty in VR, and shooting and aiming is a joy. I've tried many vr shooters so far and I find them unfun to play and I get seriously motion sick very quickly. After playing crossfire for hours just messing around, I've not felt motion sick yet and have been having lots of fun. If I had know how good Crossfire Sierra is I'd have saved time and money not getting and playing all the other vr shooters I have no intention to go back to.

Despite it looking mediocre, due to the huge amount of priase for this game I bought it with anticipation. Alas, my first impression was right, it's incredibly mediocre. Firstly, the story is incredibly shallow. However that's fine, I was mostly interested in the gameplay. But the gameplay consists of walking around tiny, open world levels scanning for clues like a knock off LA Noire. Except with a whole lot more of bugs, and glitches. Frequently RoboCop would refuse to turn at all. Sometimes important NPCs would just spawn right in front of you, like a B-Horror. There's little combat initially, which is good as combat is awful in the game. Imagine a shooting game before Call Of Duty 4 existed and defined how good console shooting controls and mechanics can be. Stiff, awkward, amateurish. But this is tolerable at first until the game basically turns into an FPS with constant janky combat and nothing else. The final boss might win a prize of being worse than steroided-out Joker from Arkham Asylum. After 3 painfully long and repetitive fights I repeatedly got glitched by the game and couldn't move, so died. It made me restart the whole level each time. Unbelievable. Eventually the final boss was the one that got glitches I to a wall, so I just walked up to him and repeatedly shot his back until he died. What a joke. I'm just glad I didn't buy this at full price despite the hype. I regret spending any money on it at all.

I was hugely surprised and impressed with Horizon Zero Dawn back when it launched on the PS4. It has a standard Ubisoft open world formula, with quests, collectables, hunting/crafting and combat/stealth.What impressed me most with Horizon, is the premise/over-arching plot. Which reminded me of what I liked about the original Assassin's Creed games. What I didn't like as much was that the gmae felt like it was trying to be an RPG, with needing to level up experience points, many different NPC characters that have different dialogs that ultimately lead nowhere, incredibly unlikable main-quest characters, and a fairly repetively gameplay loop. However, the more I played, and pushing through the initial grind, and the more I leveled up the character, and the more I unlocked the skill tree, the more enjoable the gameplay became. Also, once I realised that mots NPC dialog was completely superflous, and didn't affect gameplay at all, I stopped trying to talk to every character, and sped up the dialog scenes by pressing X after reading each sentence. The game stopped feeling quite as arduous and less boring. I also enjoyed the combat a lot more. So once the remaster was announced and with a cheap upgrade cost I jumped at the chance. I was even presented with the new game plus relay option as I'd previously beat the game. So was excited for a less grindy, and upgraded experience this time around.However, once the initial cut scenes began something felt off. I looked up a comparison video on youtube, of the original vs the remaster, and the remastered scenes seemed worse at times. Overall though, the game seemed mostly the same, and the textures has been improved so I carried on my re-adventure. I bathed in the great over-arching plot, wishing there was more to it than just a few holograms and audio recordings, but alas it was the same in the original Assassin's Creed which I equally love.I skipped a lot of the unecessary NPC dialog, and because I already had a lot of the unlockables from my last playthrough figured I'd enjoy battles more because I already had good gear. This ended up not being true, I enjoyed the combat much less on this playthrough, constantly running out of ammo mid-fight and having no way to find the resources needed without having to lose all the progress of the quest so far. Despite having good weaponry this time around and knowing how to look for enemry weaknesses and change ammo to combat it, each fight felt a long drawn-out chore. Also despite having levelled up and unltra rare weapons, its regularly only took a few dozen health off enemies with tens of thousands hp. Once I got to the Frozen West DLC parts of the island, meeting again wit hthe FireClaw enemies, I'd spend hours fighting, and dying against fireclaws with health that never semed to go down.I would often recall the Horizin themed levels in Astro Bot and miss their fun and simplicity, over having to feel like each battle in the real Horizon was a completel grind. Despite the fact that the combat felt like a constant grind, the quests throughout the game felt dull and uninspired assassins creed knock offs, and the dialog through the game was embarrassingly boring. I still ended up loving the main plot of the game and wish more was done with it. Horizon Zero Dawn has the building blocks of an imcredible series and great story. If some of the grind can be reduced, and the quests more interesting this would be one of my various series.I've yet to play the sequel so still hold hope they made the game feel less grindy and more fun.

A brilliant turn-based game, that seems complex on first glance but is actually pretty straight-forward. You are presented with a shotgun which contains a mix of shells and blanks. It is up to you to decide if you want to shoot yourself or the other player. By shooting the other player, if the chamber has a shell loaded, the player takes damage and it becomes there turn, if the chamber contains a blank, they take no damage and it becomes there turn. However, if you shoot yourself with a blank it continues to be your turn, with the obvious implication that the longer you control possession of the shotgun the less the other player has a chance of shooting you. There are many different items presented to you randomly on each round which can affect gameplay. From items to restore health, to skip other players' turns, double the damage of the next shell, to reveal whether the chamber contains a real shell or a blank, as well as other interesting items. The game was initally released as a single player and gained ground for how fun it was, but now with multiplayer the game is even more addictive.

For those that love card games it's a must play. But the hype and praise for the game is excessive. The game is overly complex with little introduction. There's standard cards, plasma cards, glass cards, steel cards, gold cards, nebula cards, tarot cards, planet cards, spectrak cards. Then there's lucky modifiers, enhanced modifiers, bonus modifiers. Then there's seals, stamps, stickers, vouchers. And finally there's jokers, many different types of jokers. There might be more types as it's impossible to understand them all without committing a lot of time researching things by yourself outside of the game. There's a brief introduction on your first play that is extremely basic and brief and absolutely nothing else after that point so you're completely on your own. The concept of the game is you get a hand and you must play your hand to earn chips, and a certain number of chips will beat the level. Each level (boss) has different handicaps placed on your hand to nerf your cards to make it harder. The different types of card or modifiers affect your hand in other ways, mostly positively, sometimes negatively. The idea is interesting, and the idea of "permanent unlocks" is most intriguing. Alas, despite the game repeatedly stating there are permanent unlocks. Once you die, they're lost, and so the game gets incredibly grindy and repetitive. Trying to find modifiers or cards that give you a chance of progressing before you lose them all again. Eventually I realised I just want to play traditional poker again. Also, the game recently released on android, but has no optimizations for small screens so is incredibly difficult to play comfortably. Best played on PC.

One of the most enjoyable games I've played in many years, and the first I replaced immediately after beating it, for the first time in decades.Great controls (even better refined from the predecessor), good puzzles and fun gameplay. Additionally, the game is pretty to look at and it filled to the brim with character and personality.

VR and FPS seem acombinationthat is a dime a dozen. But the reality is more VR FPS games are pretty terrible, and even those that are considered good, are fast paced and induce motion sickness like no other. So when I heard about Operation Serpens, and it having a big bulky, almost childish design, whilst being fun and simple - I had to give it a try. I've only been playing it a day so far but indeed it is fun, and the haptics and control are pretty great. The opening tutorial is very strange as it teaches you things that are completely wrong, such as reloading by putting the gun by your hip. But this is not true, andelsewhereon the screen it tells you to reload with square or circle, which is much nicer. The level design is simple, but that suits the game well. My only wish was that the game was on-rails, as moving around with the joysticks whentheres no cover systemdoesn'twork very well. Otherwise,I recommend this game.

Updated review now that I've completed it. As a recent user of the PSVR2 I wanted an arcadey variety game to have different experiences of playing with a VR headset. Arcade Paradise VR seemed to come out at the perfect time. Arcade Paradise starts as a laundrette simulator, where you must wash and dry clothes for customers, and clean and maintain the laundrette. Whilst this seems fairly random and unexciting, it's a good vr interaction tutorial, and the more you progress through the game the more arcade machines you unlock and the less laundry-related stuff you need to do. The more arcade machines you unlock as you progress the more your income is outside of laundry. I tend to only be able to play VR in short bursts before I feel a bit sick, so the short bursts of some laundry and a few arcade games suit this game well. I do a day or two of laundry, then unlock a new arcade machine, and get to play it. An interesting mechanic of the game is that there are two currencies (dollars and pounds), dollars are received from customers from the arcade machines and laundry services, whereas pounds are received as rewards for fulfilling goals (such as beating scores or progression in arcade games etc), this is good because it breaks up the monotony of trying to grind laundry or one or two arcade games. This system encourages playing the variety of games in order to maximize revenue and progression. There is a 'story' to the game, but it's mostly just providing context clues on what to do next and is given to you in bute-sized chunk, and mostly in text which you can skip though so doesn't feel burdensome. I actually appreciate it being a way to stagger your access to arcades. If they were all available straight away, you'd play them all once and then only play your favourites and get bored quickly. The main criticisms of the game is that some of the arcade games have controls that could be a bit better, although this only applies to a couple of games, for example, a UFO game where unlike all the other games you have to press a virtual button instead of using the buttons on the controller. Whilst it's an original idea, it's absolutely awful to use and incredibly imprecise. It's the only game to require this type of interaction but it makes me not want to play it. One of my favorite games is Smoke Em, a shooter. But it requires you to constantly hold the R1 button to hold the gun, whilst using R2 to shoot. After a few minutes this gets uncomfortable and I find I keep dropping the gun. There are game settings to make holding items a toggle rather than a hold action, but changing this changes holding for the entire games, making things like basketball or trash throwing impossible. Another gun game, Balloon Jack solves this by holding the gun once you press R1 once. I'm not sure why they fix this for Balloon Jack but not Smoke Em. Another criticism is that you also get to hire staff to do monotonous stuff like collecting money from the machines but there's no way to pay a cleaner to clean up the trash. It's fine to do for a dozen days or so, but once you've progressed through the game a lot it'd be nice not to have to do that anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed Arcade Paradise VR and now that I've unlocked all the arcades will return to this game in the same way I'd visit an arcade. Playing a few variety games within the game. My only wish is they had a racer like Outrun. This is a really good game for the sheer variety and the various vr interactive methods and strongly recommend this as my definitionof the ideal vr game. Variety, progression, fun.

A great idea for a VR game. Essentially Papers Please in VR.I also appreciate that the game supports standing or sitting, however unfortunately the sitting mode is a little broken. All sitting mode does is sets your height from the ground higher, and doesn't modify the game controls or world in any way.This means anything that requires you to interact with lower down elements of the world (such as the badge tablt, or the inspection button) requires you to reach into your own leg or seat. The number of times I injured myself or have tried to push through my leg or the sofa to reach things is uncountable. Sitting mode should give you a button to switch from low and high heights, or low things should be accessible when sitting(in the same way the inspection level lets you raise and lower robots).Aside from that it's a great game, albeit a bit too verbose. But the broken sitting mode adds a lot of unnecessary frustration.

On-rails shooter, literally. Rollercoaster mixed with zombie shooter. Far better designed than you'd expect. Really good VR experience, with an option for unlimited ammo/no reload which makes it far more fun. I do wish there was an option to disable the need to keep ducking from virtual obstacles though, as it's difficult to make these sorts of manoeuvres sitting in a chair.

This is my favourite "modern" game. I can pick this up and enjoy it any day. I can play it for half an hour, or hours upon hours depending on pure willpower. The only limitation is your own music collection. One of the best gaming experiences I ever had was trying different genres and tracks and seeing which fit the game the most, and trying to get the world record on every track. At one point I was a competition with a random guy from halfway around the world that was trying to beat me on two tracks I had world records with. Every time he beat me I would spend a few hours shaving off a second trying to beat his score, and every time I beat his score he'd do the same. I've played this game on my first gaming pc, my laptop, and now my steam deck. I wish there was a VR version now that I've played Thumper (201) on PSVR2 which has much a similar style. I liked AudioSurf 2 but never quite liked it as much as AudioSurf 1.

Discovered this game as a random suggestion looking around for PSVR2 games. Never heard of the game prior to that. This is instantly one of my favorite VR games, the pacing, style and gameplay loop is fantastic. I strongly recommend this to anyone that enjoys Res. This game makes me wish for a VR version of AudioSurf as the visuals are so similar.

Have tried a few Wipeout "clones" in hope of finding a worthy successor to the now dead franchise.Ended up only trying Redout today after having the mistaken impression it was a mobile game. However, after buying and trying it I am shocked how good it is. It is the most Wipeout-feeling game I've found, the atmosphere and racing feels a dead ringer for Wipeout, and the track design and graphics are much higher quality than I expected. The actual terrain/background of the tracks is much lower quality, but the vehicle and track itself are beautiful and that's all you have time to look at when racing anyway. I do have a few criticisms though, the game captures the speed of wipeout, which is good, but there are no airbrakes, which was a fundamental part of Wipeout, especially at making sharp turns at speed. Instead Redout 2 has strafing. I haven't played the game long enough to make a full decision on this difference, but so far I am really missing the air brakes which allowed sharp turns coming out of high speed, whereas strafing just slides the entire ship and not just the front of it. Now one issue with Wipeout's airbrakes is that it takes the triggers away from acceleration which was how racing used to be controlled. I very much like Readout's using of the triggers for braking and accelerate. So in that case moving the sharp turns to the right stick makes sense. But the strafing seems far less effective over air brakes so I find I just don't use it and instead just decelerate and use the normal turns instead, as Redout's turning seems stronger than wipeout's. I'm not sure what would be ideal with this, maybe just making the strafe more effective. There are no weapons. I have seen the developers firmly state that they don't like weapons as it spoils the game for other racers, and I do respect that - although I only play against ai. I also prefer no weapons, to bad weapons which is my chief complaint against the Wipeout clone Pacer/Formula Fusion. So in that case I think Redout has done the right thing. But any time I go back to the old Wipeout games, I always trying to skip the time trial levels, as the races with weapons are by far the more fun part - even if you end up shot. I see redout also made a spinoff game "space assault" so they do understand the fun of weapons.

Have tried a few Wipeout "clones" in hope of finding a worthy successor to the now dead franchise. Ended up only trying Redout 2 today after having the mistaken impression it was a mobile game. However, after buying and trying it I am shocked how good it is. It is the most Wipeout-feeling game I've found, the atmosphere and racing feels a dead ringer for Wipeout, and the track design and graphics are much higher quality than I expected. The actual terrain/background of the tracks is much lower quality, but the vehicle and track itself are beautiful and that's all you have time to look at when racing anyway. Also the music is great. Many wipeout clones seem to screw this up, but Redout 2 nails it. I do have a few criticisms though, the game captures the speed of wipeout, which is good, but there are no airbrakes, which was a fundamental part of Wipeout, especially at making sharp turns at speed. Instead Redout 2 has strafing. I haven't played the game long enough to make a full decision on this difference, but so far I am really missing the air brakes which allowed sharp turns coming out of high speed, whereas strafing just slides the entire ship and not just the front of it. Now one issue with Wipeout's airbrakes is that it takes the triggers away from acceleration which was how racing used to be controlled. I very much like Readout's using of the triggers for braking and accelerate. So in that case moving the sharp turns to the right stick makes sense. But the strafing seems far less effective over air brakes so I find I just don't use it and instead just decelerate and use the normal turns instead, as Redout's turning seems stronger than wipeout's. I'm not sure what would be ideal with this, maybe just making the strafe more effective. There are no weapons. I have seen the developers firmly state that they don't like weapons as it spoils the game for other racers, and I do respect that - although I only play against ai. I also prefer no weapons, to bad weapons which is my chief complaint against the Wipeout clone Pacer/Formula Fusion. So in that case I think Redout has done the right thing. But any time I go back to the old Wipeout games, I always trying to skip the time trial levels, as the races with weapons are by far the more fun part - even if you end up shot. I see redout also made a spinoff game "space assault" so theydo understand the fun of weapons.

Beautifully designed arcade racer that looks like it could be a futuristic successor to Ridge Racer. Has the same emphasis of high-grip, high-speed racing with drifting, however has much more focus on drifting controls than typical arcade racers. Despite this, the drifting has little bearing on the actual game. The focus is still to win the race, but the developers decided to make the direction stick have very little effect on movement, so 90% of the steering is through the right stck to control the drift. I tried switching the left and right stick and just mapping drift to the right stick and not using directions at all. This seems to work however with most racing games, drifting slows the car, so ideally you should be avoiding unnecessary drift, but this is difficult when the direction (left) stick does very little. I ended up having to hold both sticks for each turn, so ended up restoring the mapping back to defaults. So ultimately you need to use both the left and right stick at the same time but together they still have little affect on steering so you also need to let go of the throttle to start turns and then drift back into the racing line. I found this sounds much better than it feels, I really used to love the drifting of the original Ridge Racer games, but also enjoyed the Need For Speed games and Juiced 2 which had mechanics to fill boost bars with drifts, but Inertial Drift has no actual benefit from drifting aside from being a necessity to actually turn. Each race is repeated 3 times. With ghost racers then real racers. Which gets very repetitive. Also I tend not to care that much about music in games but I need to say that I found the music in this game grating. It's incredibly generic music, but it's so bad I ended up having to turn off the background music. One of the tracks sounds like someone with constant flatulence. I ended up not enjoying myself playing this game much, it's fun but frustrating and it just makes me want to pull up Ridge Racer on an emulator.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with Red Dead Redemption when it debuted in 2010. Immersed in the role of John Marston, I relished the freedom of camping under the stars, traversing the vast landscape, encountering enigmatic characters, and uncovering hidden treasures. I was utterly engrossed, playing the game tirelessly upon its initial release and eagerly diving back in for the Undead Nightmare expansion. Returning to the game upon its re-release in 2023, alongside Undead Nightmare, filled me with excitement. Once more, I embraced the role of John Marston, delving into the wilderness, discovering secrets, and encountering strangers. However, a significant aspect of the game was conspicuously absent: multiplayer functionality. Gone were the days of joining forces with other players, tackling gang hideouts, and engaging in lively rounds of poker, blackjack, and liars dice. The absence of these features left a palpable void, leaving the experience feeling incomplete.Despite this setback, Red Dead Redemption remains an extraordinary game, albeit somewhat unfinished in its current state. Additionally, it's worth noting a frustration with the inability to save progress at camps in the base game, a feature present in Undead Nightmare. Countless hours were lost due to glitches, underscoring the need for more robust saving mechanics.

I love the idea of a rhythm game that's also an FPS. One of my favorite games is AudioSurf which is a rhythm racing game, so when fps is one of my favorite genres, a rhythm fps sounds like it would be a lot of fun. However, Hellsinger doesn't seem to be it for me. I'm not sure if that's because of the constant **** popups that need to be accepted to get rid of, or the fact that the level design just seems to be walking forward a few steps and enemies just continually spawn on top of you with little room to move around them or ability to plan methods of attack because they either spawn on top of you or behind you. Or perhaps it's difficult to keep attacking on a beat when the enemies hurl themselves at you faster than you can move, meaning you don't really have the luxury of waiting for the next beat to hit them. On an unrelated note, I feel like the game should have a screamo checkbox in the settings. Whilst metal is a popular, screamo is less so, and as the screamo of the music seems to be a layer that gets toggled on and off dynamically, it'd have been a good idea to have a checkbox to disable it entirely.

Clearly inspired by Max Payne, but without anything that made Max Payne good. The narration is flat or in fact particularly interesting at all, and the combat is absolutely awful. The combat is frustrating and awkward, have to shine torches on enemies to weaken them but torch runs out of batteries? You get weapons but they do little damage until enemies are weakened by torch, makes multiple enemies frustrating and eventually torch batteries and gun ammo runs out, but enemies seem to continue spawning. In chapter 2 I had to take on about 12 enemies at once, but ran out of torch batteries and gun ammo, my stamina ran out so even dodging attacks became impossible. I finally ran to a place with a generator to produce light to give me a safe space, but the enemies were so fast an relentless I couldn't activate the generator. I spent about 4o minutes at that section before deciding to stop playing. Nothing about this game is fun. Audio issues: I spent my first half hour of the game constantly tweaking the audio sliders because the cinematics were very quiet despite being max, and the sounds effects and music of the game drowned out the in-game audio, before I gave up and just turned on the subtitles as it was impossible to hear audio correctly.

As a huge fan of the original Dead Space on the PS3, I figured I'd never have the opportunity to play this game again as ps3 aren't emulatable at this time. Now that it'd been remastered I have thrilled to say it's an incredible job, the game feels like a brand new game released for this generation. Dead Space is in my opinion the best sci-fi horror. It perfectly recreates the atmosphere of a Resident Evil game, but in space and without the puzzles. It's very much a survival horror, and whilst inventory management is in the game, it's pretty minimal - which I'm thankful for. What Dead Space does incredibly well is leaves you along to play the game. It's fairly linear and even offers a waypoint path finder system to illuminate where you should go next, yet the game doesn't feel heavy-handed in forcing you to a path> Without the puzzle-solving to unlock paths, you'd be forgiven for assuming this game would get boring but the atmosphere is thick and the game doesn't hold your hand with combat encounters. Ammo is sparse and upgrading armor (suit) and weapons takes time. The story is also pretty interesting. Again very resident evil, that half the story is told by logs lying around, both audio logs and text logs. The rest is in-game cutscenes and video calls. I like this method of story telling as it allows you to immerse yourself as much you you choose. I very much hop they remaster Dead Space 2, as that was also a fantastic game.

Expected this to a childish and simplistic game, and on one had it is, but there's a lot of hidden puzzle-solving and challenge if you hunt around. Exploration is rewarded. Most of all the game is just fun, the quests and mini-games remind me of an old school rpg like Zelda, the only difference is that there are no enemies. There's cave and mine exploration, character quests, item hunting and character upgrades in the form of clothing that gives abilities. Also, it's great to see a truly multiplayer game again, both online multiplayer and local split-screen. A friend can hop into the world and do their own thing, or join you on quests. I've already sunk many hours into this game since the playstation release and continue to look forward to jumping back into Wobbly Land whenever I can. It's insane how much content is in this game considering how cheap it is. I do hope more character quests are added as a DLC. I'd happily pay to extend this game. The only negatives of this game is that any time the game wants to load or autosave there are huge frame drops, which doesn't happen the majority of the time. Also, I've had my saves corrupted so many dozens of times I lost count. There is an auto restore function to load a previous version of the save but once it kept telling me the previous save was also corrupted and it took me about 5 minutes to finally get it to load in a save. This has led me to constantly worry that I'll lose all my progress. Regardless, this is the most fun I've had gaming in a while and have recommended it to everyone.

I got this on April Fool's day thinking it'd just be a quick and silly game based on the day it was released. Ended up really enjoying it, the style was far point point-and-click adventure than visual novel and you're essentially just solving puzzles and unraveling the mystery. However, these point-and-click chapters are broken up by 2d (on an axis) Sonic mini-games that can get extremely challenging, where you must collect a certain number of rings whilst avoiding a magnitude of obstacles and threats under the guise of the main character thinking and constructing an inspection. I found some of these very tough but manageable, however, the final boss fight and one other towards the end were extremely tough, much more so than any of the others and could've been dialed down a bit (although sonic games often have insanely hard final battles so it's not out of character). This was a solid game and could've easily sold for money, it being free is a very welcome surprise, and its April Fool's release date shouldn't put anyone off playing it in the thought that it's not a legitimate game. It is.

I was incredibly surprised and thrilled by how good Doom 2016 turned out to be. After chaos of Doom 3 and Doom 4 and not knowing it's own identity, the Doom franchise was in a strange place, but despite being very apprehensive, Doom 2016 was the absolutely perfect modern Doom game. So I was excited about it's sequel and what might be next. Roll on Doom Eternal, recapturing a lot of what made Doom 2016 good, expanding on it by adding some new monsters, a lot of unique boss battles, and an actual story. There's a lot that Doom Eternal got right, and a fair bit it didn't. I for one like the puzzle areas and the exploring to find all the secrets. I know a few people find the puzzles weak, but I made my peace with them, they're not particularly challenging and break up the combat. I also like a lot of the new enemies, however the Marauders are just painfull, you can only attack at one point in time, and only once or twice if you're fast enough. As a boss they'd be challenging enough, but chucked in with dozens of other enemies is just unfair. I like the grappling hook, the vertical climbing, flamethrower, the new and improved plasma rifle. Also this iteration of Doom has added inventory management, which to a degree is fine, but even with cycling through all weapons and being resourceful, there are a number of times I ran out of ammo entirely, and was stuck right at the end of massive combat encounters. Some of the boss fights are just masochistic, I'm not sure why they're so much harder than the game itself but fortunately they do give you an option to replay with "Sentinel Armor" which buffs you up a lot, but the bosses are still challenging. I really hope for the next Doom, they tone down the inventory management, running out of ammo so often in a Doom game seems wrong.

I bought the remastered trilogy of hearing for years nothing but praise for the series, especially the plot and characters, and wanted to give it a go now it's remastered. However I found the games incredibly dull and shallow. This is also true for Mafia 2 however the plot does start to get more interesting towards the end, but by that point I was waiting for the game to be over. The characters were 2 dimensional and the plot was daytime-tv level. The gameplay was pretty unexciting and run-of-the-mill. Also the remasters force creation of online accounts. I had instances where my game completely locked up on playstation because it mid-game asked me to create a 2k Account and I clicked the refuse button. I had to force close the game to be able to do anything. Then one time, whilst playing the game, I got screen lag whilst pressing buttons, only for a privacy policy screen pop up saying it wants to remove my privacy and do i accept, immediately followed by a thank you for accepting message.

I bought the remastered trilogy of hearing for years nothing but praise for the series, especially the plot and characters, and wanted to give it a go now it's remastered. However I found the games incredibly dull and shallow. This is especially true for Mafia 2. The characters were 2 dimensional and the plot was daytime-tv level. The gameplay was pretty unexciting and run-of-the-mill. Also the remasters force creation of online accounts. I had instances where my game completely locked up on playstation because it mid-game asked me to create a 2k Account and I clicked the refuse button. I had to force close the game to be able to do anything. Then one time, whilst playing the game, I got screen lag whilst pressing buttons, only for a privacy policy screen pop up saying it wants to remove my privacy and do i accept, immediately followed by a thank you for accepting message.

I bought the remastered trilogy of hearing for years nothing but praise for the series, especially the plot and characters, and wanted to give it a go now it's remastered. However I found the game incredibly dull and shallow. The characters were 2 dimensional and the plot was daytime-tv level. The gameplay was pretty unexciting and run-of-the-mill.

Sonic Mania is the best Sonic game since the original Sonic trilogy and Sonic CD. This is what Sonic 4 should have been. I skipped it Sonic Mania on release as every Sonic game I've played in the past 2 decades has been trash, but when Sonic Origins released (a remaster collection of Sonic 1,2,3 and CD) I found Sonic Mania mentioned as comparison reviews a lot, so decided to give it a try. It truly feels like a Sonic game that could've released in the 90s, it fits within the original trilogy so well that I'll always consider this the spiritual Sonic 4.

I am a huge fan of the 2d sonic games. They don't get much love when compared against mario, and have a million re-releases and emulators out there that it feels like the last thing we need is another re-release, but I am so glad they did Sonic Origins. Sonic Origins is like the Final Cut of the 3d collection. widescreen instead of 4:3, character select screens, checkpoints and persistent saved. Unlimited lives to end the punishment of casual playing, and a new coin system, which is, if you ignore the museum unlocks which are pretty much pointless, are a great system to allow replaying of chaos emerald bonus levels. The launch price was obviously a bit much for such old games, but it went to half price sale very quickly, and will continue to drop in price. This is the version of the original sonic games I'll be coming back to whenever I have a sonic itch. My only wish was that there was was a way to get this on the PSP, but least it's on the Switch.

One of the best game experiences I've had this year. Despite being a shorter game, I still thoroughly enjoyed exploring every nook and cranny, meeting as many characters as possible, and finding as many badges and memories I could. I would classify Stray as a puzzle/rpg. I don't typically like rpgs but there's no backtracking or side quests in stray. It's faily linear. I love the gameplay and movement, and the art style is great. The story is pretty good, albeit simplistic, but enough to hook you in emotionally. I have looked forward to this game for years since it was announced before the PS5 even came out, and I ought it in the day of release. I am glad to say it didn't disappoint, this is a must play.

I enjoy the ubisoft far cry games a fair bit, the gameplay is very enjoyable and it's easy to lose yourself in the sandbox. I've even enjoyed some of the DLC /spinoff games like Blood Dragon which was great fun, and Primal, which was enjoyable and fun despite it being a bit bloated for the simple story it had. Far Cry 3 and 4 were the pique of the series so far, Far Cry 5 had it's moments but Far Cry 6 had real potential. A somewhat gritty and interesting story, with interesting characters and somewhat based on a real revolution. Far Cry 6 pulled me in with a trailer that hasn't impressed me so much since the earlier Assassin's Creed games (also a Ubisoft series), stunning music, great visuals, and Giancarlo Esposito as the antagonist. Plus it's the first PS5 Far Cry game, so hopes were high. All that being said, the story of Far Cry 6 was pretty poor. There was tons of potential, but it didn't really go anywhere. Firsty, open world games just tend to **** at narratives. You spent tens of hours doing side quests and battles for a 5 minute cutscene of the antagonist every now and then. Few games managed to make the stories interesting despite being open-world. Assassins' creed 1-3 actually did manage to pull it off (again a ubisoft series). Far Cry 6 did one thing well, and that was the protagonist. Normally Far Cry protagonists are shells with no personalities that the player is meant to insert themselves into, however, Far Cry 6 has a great protagnist for once. And the Protagonists were well cast, and had potential, but nothing really came from their characters. WIthout spoiling, the plot just falls flat. I'm glad I waited for Far Cry 6 to be on a sale, I think I'd be more upset if I'd spent hundreds of dollars on it.

I absolutely love the Crysis trilogy. I loved Crysis 2 and 3 on the PS3, and am loving replaying the entire trilogy on the ps4/ps5. I love the inclusion of the bow, it makes stealth an absolutely incredible experience. I also love the level design in Crysis 3, it really captures the apocalyptic overgrown nature-urban feel. That being said, Crysis 3 Remastered is so buggy I couldn't finish it. The first two thirds of the game were fine, but I got to a level where it was like I was just walking through string. Multicolored lines where assets were being stretched in thousands of directions. I couldn't see the enemies shooting at me, and after trying to close and restart the game, I then got stuck at the Crysis 3 loading screen for 2 days. Anything I tried didn't help, close and reopening the game, restarting the console, moving the game to internal ssd from an external usb drive. Eventually, I managed to find a Reddit post about the same issue, where he fixed the game by moving the game to internal storage. I tied this too by moving games around to free up space, and the game started working again for me too. I then played for a bit stopped, and again got stuck at the loading screen for a day until it magically worked again, where I completed the rest of the game, got to the final boss, defeated the final boss and again it crashed. I searched online and the internet is plagued with "crysis 3 crashes after killing the final boss" results. So I finished the game, the final third crashed and glitched like crazy (and besides that the level design really deteriorates, it's just openworld battles with no real purpose - it's not fun even without the crashing), and the bow is essentially useless in the final third. And an impossible to beat final boss. I really hope they come back to fix the game, but I don't have hope, I'm not the only person that got screwed over by this bug, the final boss crashing has existed since the original Crysis 3 apparently (although I didn't experience it back then). WIth fan-made bug fixes and patches to resolve the crashing because Crytek wouldn't. As this is a ps5 we can't even install fanmade patches. Crytek need to either fix all of these bugs, but they won't.

A lot of negative reviews about this, but the game looked good, and this is the first time it's available on PlayStation at all. It was great fun to be able to play Crysis on a PlayStation and it looked decent and handled well. I'm just happy to get ps4 ports of the game whether they're remastered or not. I've since had to buy the remastered trilogy as i loved the sequels a lot on ps3, and it's a pity not to be able to play them on ps4/ps5.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Hitman Absolution takes the series in a very strange direction. Gone is the beautiful atmosphere and stunning music. Gone are the contracts and the progression as a hitman. And gone is the open-world freedom to do things in any order/method you like. Hitman Absolution is a very linear, quicktimey, dark, game, with no in-game saves, and few checkpoints. Absolution is clearly a stealth game, as were its predecessors, however, the earlier games allowed you to kill everyone and complete missions as a "mass murderer" if you really wanted to. Absolution punishes you for killing, punishes you for not being stealthy, and punishes for being stealthy too. You can no longer disguise and free-roam. Disguises still get you spotted, so sneaking around and hiding is mandatory, whether you like it or not. Besides you can't really free-roam anyway, the levels are sliced up into little pieces and must be completed linearly (go in one direction, along fixed paths, trigger cutscenes to get to the next sections). Also, there are MANY enemies in this game, few civilians. No longer can you avoid people and use a single syringe or anesthesia. You can choke out anyone in this game, and as long as you put them in a storage crate (why are there 30 storage crates per level in places that don't even make sense) To me, choking out dozens of people and hiding their bodies in creates sneaking and hiding everywhere you go is a VERY different game than other Hitman games. Gone is the freedom and creativity. Hitman Absolution is now just a very different stealth game, more like Theif than Hitman. Absolution is the least fun Hitman game and I don't particularly like the story and the direction. The game is split into 3 parts, yet the prologue was hours long, was extremely dull, dark, repetitive and boring. It's also longer than the 3rd part of the main story. A mess of very linear, dull, dark missions full of quicktime event style interactions and I dislike many of the changes introduced in this game, such as the Instinct superpower. I tried to avoid using the Instinct superpower as it totally killed the immersion for me, but the game really wants you to use it. There are times you're surrounded by dozens of enemies that are all constantly detecting you and changing into a disguise makes little difference. You can't even close doors anymore such a strange thing to remove for a stealth game. I do like the new improved aiming controls though. Some of the worst levels in the series. very liner. For example one level "run for your life" which has horrible quicktimey sections like trying to sneak past armed helicopters. I had to do this tiny piece of the level about 20 times because even sneaking and hugging corners the helicopter still sees you. Can now carry rifles inconspicuously, not that it matters, as being unarmed and in disguise still gets you detected. Everything is locked behind upgrades, just being able to run fast or carry multiple items, you have to complete challenges (like finding hidden items in levels) to get basic abilities like running fast. Additionally, you cannot complete some levels (such as rose wood) with silent assassin, without first completing all the challenges of the level. I feel that locking actual gameplay ranks behind superfluous challenges is a really **** move. I found the atmosphere and music terrible, many of the levels are very dark and ugly, and the sound design is horrible. I later found out jesper kyd wasn't hired again by io interactive for absolution and it really shows, the sound in this game is poor. Additionally, apparently, they weren't going to use David Bateson's voice until the last minute either. Shocking. I do like the cinematics and story-telling in the game, and the idea of Victoria was a good one, I just found the story messy and poorly told, and anything with Diana or The Agency, very cringeworthy and uninteresting. I hope I never have to play this game again. And fear Hitman 2016 is anywhere near as bad as Absolution.

An incredible game. The pinnacle of stealth and with some very memorable levels and moments. Blood Money has some truly memorable levels and is a lot brighter and prettier than previous games. To me the worst thing about Blood Money is the plot. When compared with the original Codename 47 game, Blood Money is a mess. Told in some weird past-tense memory type format (similar to contracts) and some weird twists that I think fall flat. I do wish the plot was different, otherwise, this is an incredible game. The only bad level in the game in my opinion is the training level at the start. Some weird racist level with weird level design and gameplay mechanics. It took me half an hour to figure out that you use a dedicated coin-throwing button to progress through the training, and it's neither mentioned in-game or in the controller configuration screen. But alas, it's one half-level and doesn't really matter.

The Hitman series is incredible, the best of the stealth genre in my mind. I also love the level design and how many different ways levels can be completed or replayed. Contracts is the weakest of the original hitman series, The biggest disappointment is that it's some sort of **** remake-sequel of Codename 47. I'm unsure why. Many levels are ripped right out of Codename 47, others are 'reimaginings' (for the worse), and it cuts out all the plot of codename 47 which is probably the best thing about the entire hitman series. Contacts doesn't even have a story of its own, it's some weird fever dream of playing random levels as if they're memories. However Contracts does have some great new levels and it is also the only way to play some codename 47 levels on console. But I wish they just ported codename 47 to console and made a new game with the newer levels.

An incredible game. The pinnacle of stealth and has a great plot with some very memorable levels and moments. I remember playing some of the levels in this game hundreds of times over, even after completing them, just because there were so many fun different ways to complete them. Silent assassin is the first hitman game on console, and it holds up incredibly well by itself, however considering how important the plot of the first game is as it establishes the character and the plots of subsequent games, it's a real pity silent assassin was the first console hitman game. Many players started their experience to hitman via Silent Assassin and must've been very confused without knowing what agent 47 is and his origin. Hitman 2: Silent Assassin is the best hitman game of the series, and the music and levels are incredibly memorable. I am glad it was remastered in HD, and I replay the game often. I wish Codename 47 was too. The gameplay is incredible, and it really represents the best of stealth, but also offers numerous ways of completing each level with a ton of inventive options such as disguises, weapons or environmental interactions. The weakest part of the game is the Hidden Valley level, mainly because it's dark and boring, (just going through a tunnel), and the ai is frustratingly buggy, but even still, the game is incredibly fun to play and I love the idea of collecting all the different weapons in the game and filling up the tool shed. I didn't feel the same excitement with subsequent games.