Hogwarts Legacy is a good game that might just be an amazing game for big Harry Potter fans. PortKey's greatest accomplishment here was how expertly they brought Hogwarts Castle and the surrounding grounds to life. The castle and its surrounds are indeed wonderful and captivating to traverse. There is intrigue at every corner, with interesting lore and conversations to be uncovered. What's more, it is graphically stunning at times, especially around the castle. It is impressive just how much of this world is rendered at any given time, even with some minor loading circles appearing on occasion and pop-in throughout the open world.

The game is whimsical and fantastical in a way that serves it well. The open world design does leave some aspects to be desired, filled with tiresome side quests and a meaninglessly bloated number of collectible tasks (the Merlin Trials being the biggest culprit). Poor dialogue from a majority of the many characters you meet also can be a bummer, but a handful of the main cast (i.e. Poppy Sweeting and Sebastian) are more interesting. The most frustrating aspect of the game, aside from a notable trophy bug preventing me from completing the conjuration collection, is repetitive dialogue. Never again do I want to hear anything from the Foo Flame lady, or any Hogsmeade talk from the protagonist. These flaws are partly remedied by a serviceable story, intriguing companion quests, and a surprising strength: the combat. There is quite a lot of fun that can be had with the combat in Hogwarts Legacy, with a nice spread of spells and combinations at one's disposal. Enemy variety is narrow for such an expansive game, but combat scenarios nonetheless were highlights throughout. Accompanying systems are also strong: broom-riding, beast management, herbology and potion making all can play a significant role in one's playthrough. The game does well to serve multiple play-styles through these systems and accompanying combat skill trees.

Hogwarts Legacy acts as a mesmerizing love letter to the franchise, albeit with a notable, conceited effort in some areas to distinguish itself from the deleterious views' of the IP's creator. All and all, Hogwarts Legacy delivered on the long overdue promise of realizing the Wizarding World into a AAA video game.

Overall, Wo-Long is a pretty good game. It shines during its chaotic combat sequences, bolstered by flashy animations and bombastic boss battles. Boss encounters, character customization, and the "spirit" system all serve as notable strengths for this title. Graphics and level design are sadly quite outdated, yet still yield strangely long loading screens. The game runs fairly well on Xbox Series X, and I personally experienced little technical hurdles and no crashes. Although the minute-to-minute combat is fantastic, it becomes hard to enjoy it with enemy encounters that prioritize cheesy hidden placements of enemies and overall bland enemy variety to unleash your growing skills upon. As one masters the game's parry system, the difficulty becomes manageable and quite rewarding, but it is hard to not grow frustrated as you traverse redundantly designed levels (i.e. draining a moat to enter a monotone tunnel 3+ times in one mission) in hopes of reaching the next exciting boss fight. The morale system, while neat it in concept, is also hindered by the frustrating enemy layouts. Working diligently to raise your morale can easily become instantly negated by some foot-soldier hiding behind a corner, ready to instant hit you with a critical strike just because you so dared as to explore the world. This nerfs you going into the next encounter, and in a way would sometimes discourage me from engaging with the combat system at every chance… despite it being the game's strongest facet. The spirit system, in contrast, is well realized. Balancing overall offense, defense, wizardry, martial arts, and parries while considering your fluctuating spirit bar is a core means by which the combat stays splendidly exciting. This dance shines during boss fights. These boss encounters proved to be a consistent highlight throughout the entirety of the campaign. Although the deflect system is critical to nearly every one of these fights, there are enough differences in visual design and attack patterns for these fights to all prove wonderfully distinct. Fans of fast-paced, challenging combat will most likely enjoy their time with Wo-Long: Fallen Dynasty. For a completionist, this journey's runtime (excluding NG+, and only considering achievements/trophies) will likely fall in the 40-60 hour range for most people.

7.5 / 10

The Old Hunters is an essential piece of DLC for an already outstanding game. The lore and world-building embedded within this expansive yet non-gratuitous experience is deeply additive to the disturbing propositions of the base game. The boss encounters are top class, representing some of the very best produced for Bloodborne as a whole. The environments are eerie in a way that is intuitively in-line with the base experience, but unique in their own right. Overall, The Old Hunters content represents a top-class expansion that should be experienced by anyone who already finds themselves captivated by Bloodborne's lore or combat.

Twisted Metal 2 was an overall improvement on its predecessor. The level design is more inspired and interesting, with the overall "Special" and regular weapons available to the player being more interesting combat contributors than in the prior game. Still, even beyond the ice level, all the cars feel as though they're driving with skates on - the hypersensitivity applied here does not lend itself well to the vehicular combat. AI can be excessively oppressive on higher difficulties, seemingly doing no damage to each other throughout the match and spamming the player with near-infinite abilities as well as absurd precision with even backwards attacks. The boss fights too feel a bit unbalanced, yet can be overcome with player knowledge of special button combos (not explained in-game, but the shield is your friend!). Twisted Metal 2 is a thoughtful continuation of a wonderfully weird world, and at the time of its release unique in its promotion of pure vehicular combat.

Alan Wake, as a game: ★★★★
Alan Wake's remastering efforts: ★★★

An absolutely unique gem, special for its time, and with a narrative intrigue that ages well. Alan Wake is a wonderful, contained action-adventure oozing with style. That style takes influence from a slew of television, cinema, musical, video game, and literary sources in an endearing way. That said, Alan Wake is in itself, fresh and novel. In addition to the well-crafted story, I especially enjoyed the soundtrack and the general atmosphere of the game's setting. I look forward to exploring this deeply weird world more with Control, American Nightmare, and Alan Wake's imminent sequel.

If I were to rate the remastering effort itself, my reception would be much worse. I do not think the remaster offered much in the way of updated performance or gameplay. There is a significant visual improvement, but it comes with a compromised product laden with bugs. Oddities with audio are persistent. However the most frustrating items were the progression glitches. Upon completing the game, the title deleted 2 episodes (and roughly 3 hours) of progress… disabling my ability to replay the final episode and resetting collectible statistics to their prior state. This is frankly unacceptable for a 'remaster' that has been out for as long as this one has. If such a bug is not prevalent in the backwards compatible version, I would recommend playing the game that way instead. On Series X, via FPS boost, the original can still be played at 60fps.

My high takeaway from Control is the same as it has been for other modern Remedy games: It is wonderfully weird. The Oldest House and the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) are formidable to understand at first, offering many questions upfront but stringing along the answers over a roughly 10-15 hour main campaign and a healthy offering of side content. The world Remedy is building here is nonetheless engrossing. Navigating The Oldest House might not initially be as invigorating as the narrative threads, but I found myself quite comfortable with the task after a couple hours with the game. There is a lot here to love. Jesse Faden, the protagonist, comes across a bit blunted at first. She speaks with a flat affect, but ultimately a subtle tone of dry humor and unnerving acceptance regarding the bizarre series of events that unfold. Other characters are written with contrasting enthusiasm, such as the excellently acted Dr. Darling who appears throughout various Live Action recordings littered through the game world. Ahti, the janitor, is a particularly excellent character. He leans into the sheer mystery and unabashed quirkiness Control builds its identity on.

The Oldest House itself, as a character, surprises. I approached exploration in Control with incredulity, fully expecting the excellent visual fidelity and art direction to be marred by repetitive environments. However, this is proven untrue by The Oldest House's unwavering commitment to surprising the player with its shifting structures and secretive connections. Yes The Oldest House and the side quests it harbors are absolutely worth exploring, further unraveling the nature of what the FBC is. There are some outstanding highlights throughout the main missions too, particularly one sequence involving a "maze," to put it vaguely. Remedy also outdid themselves with the combat in this game. Telekinesis has never quite felt so good in a video game, especially while coexisting with a smooth 60fps performance, environmental destruction, various explosive effects, and some of the best visuals in modern gaming from a pure fidelity perspective. 1000 enemies later and hurling a fire extinguisher across the room is still exhilarating. Gunplay and other abilities are similarly fun, giving an overall polished combat experience. The game would be better off without its incessant commitment to spamming you with personal/weapon "mod" drops and also with time-dependent radiant quests that serve no purpose beyond giving you more excuses to dabble with the combat. Another point of criticism I could see leveraged towards the game is its convoluted storytelling nature, albeit this is something I found charming and rewarding to solve. While the narrative delivery might be obtuse to some, I would wager the scattered puzzles are more likely to be appreciated as being quite clever. I normally don't clamor for more puzzles in games, but I think some of the interactive ones on display here justified having more in the game than we got.

Overall, Remedy has constructed something masterful with Control. Its intricate connectedness to the world they have built with "Alan Wake" intrigues to a degree that might be unparalleled in terms of connected universes we see in the gaming medium. The combat is slick and satisfyingly unique. The art direction and overall wackiness of the experience elevates it, even if some of the flavor text comes by way of collectible notes or non-mandatory side content. From music videos to sentient refrigerators, Control surprises with glee and charming distinctiveness.

Tchia is a beautiful tribute to the tiny nation of New Caledonia. The developers have built a gorgeous world that is bustling with personality and quirks attentive to New Caledonian culture. The music and use of native language were aspects I found to be particularly effective. Unfortunately, I did find the overall pace of Tchia dragged at times. In many ways, this charming world is undermined by bloat and haphazardly scattered map markers or upgrade economy. Similarly, the strong and heartfelt story Tchia tells is held back by redundancies in the gameplay loop and sequences that are dragged out without purpose. Traversal in Tchia is also laborious. The game has limited fast travel locations and frequently tasks players with lengthy travel, but does not provide ample means for efficient transportation.

Tchia is an impactful game that I would recommend without hesitation, but the initially charming gameplay loop overstays its welcome. This game truly wears its heart on its sleeve, and is an inspiring tribute to a pulchritudinous landscape and endearing culture.

A wonderful ode to a nostalgic franchise for many. The Legend of Monkey Island DLC is more substantial than I initially thought, bringing to life what was essentially full-length puzzle game, running me some 8 hours in length at least. It's clever, charming and is bolstered by its reverence to the source material. The familiar faces here are well voice acted and animated with the endearing charm Sea of Thieves clearly prides itself on. Although a bit long in the tooth in some parts... this root-beer glorifying, quip laden, insult-sword-fighting romp is worth your time if a "3D point and click adventure" sounds like something you'd fancy.

Receiving the Monkey Island theme as a reward shanty for doing all the DLC's commendations was a wonderful bonus :)

Dave the Diver is an incessantly charming game that boasts gorgeous pixel art, a satisfying gameplay loop, and an entertaining cast of characters. This sushi bar + dive sim succeeds in constantly rewarding meaningful progress, but begins to feel a bit drawn out if you seek out trophy milestones that go beyond the runtime for the base story. The game arguably has too many systems at play, with many being interesting but with some components being obnoxious in implementation (i.e. the tamagotchi-like mini-game). Others add burdensome work that prolongs the gameplay loop without offering upgrades that help automize the experience in the late game (i.e. the farming mechanic). Stardew Valley represents the pinnacle of these sort of work-sim games that also incorporate combat, exploration and narrative charm. Dave the Diver doesn't quite reach this apex. It also forgoes some of the social link and "life sim" mechanics, but it is an incredibly fun game in its own right.

This is a pretty awesome season so far. The content cadence has been great, with events and meaningful playlist updates being made quite regularly. Infection made a triumphant return with interesting tweaks to its base mode. New maps, both from Forge creators and 343i have largely been great. "Squad Battle" 8v8 is a resounding success... this is some of the most fun I have had playing Halo Infinite since launch. If you ever wondered if adding Infinite's sandbox to Rat's Nest and Valhalla would be awesome, the answer is "yes." Troublesome bugs have been quashed with this season, including settings resets. However, de-sync remains an issue. Other complaints include the slow rollout of "cross-core" cosmetics, the banshee continuing to feel like a papier-mâché plane (desperately needs a defensive and offensive buff), and missing modes (griffball, assault, etc).

Upon completing the S4 battlepass, I was at the Gold Cadet Grade III Career Rank. The career system is a welcomed addition to Halo Infinite. The custom games browser is also a reliable source of a great time. I aim to continue to play this season, working towards platinum career tier, and am eager to see "Husky Raid" return as 343i promised. The new live service leadership has Halo going in the right direction.