Spider-Man honestly exceeded my expectations. The phenomenal movement of web swinging and the immersion within a bustling New York City make for a really great time. Web swinging in this game just felt so satisfying that I never wanted to use the fast travel option.

The story is surprisingly deep and emotional at times with fantastic cinematics. Sadly, this experience is not without its flaws. I didn't enjoy some forced stealth sections, since they kinda dragged the pacing down for me a bit. The puzzles also got old really fast. The city is obviously gorgeous and you can feel the love Insomniac put into this game, but the side missions felt repetitive and the poor collectibles that litter every corner of the map felt like a chore that I didn't feel like doing anymore near the endgame.

Traversal and the quick, fluid combat are definitely the best parts of the game.

Making a big choice based narrative rpg game seems like a nightmare in ambition and effort. These kinds of projects require an intense workload and consistency across a whole team. Writing all these competing factions that are (ideally) well-written, building a decent stat system, ensuring all these systems mesh together, making sure its all FUN by the end of it all... its a huge task! I don't envy the sheer effort it all took.

I think its inevitable, under these conditions, that a game like this turns out to be rife with bugs. In fact, I think sometimes you need a game to have bugs. As much as some people may crave a perfect, fully immersive experience, I think the real heart of video games is laughing at a goofy glitch. And its a good reminder to an audience just how difficult it is to make a video game. They dedicated hours and hours of craft to force these disparate programs to play nice together, here's the stuff that slipped through the cracks. There's a sincerity to the flaws. Its almost community building in a weird way. We're all enjoying our passion for games here, why not share that awkward passionate sincerity alongside the devs, rather than against them?

And god damn can you feel the sheer weight of this studio's passion in this game. Troika studio was collapsing as this game was rushed out the door, but the team cared so much for the project, they worked on community patches to help even out the flaws they couldn't fix in house. In the decades since the game's release, the fan community built a more elaborate patch with rediscovered lost content, quality of life features, and little touches for a better experience. I could ramble about the clever writing or how the different upgrade systems add a specific challenge and thrill to the game, but it really comes down to four words: the game is fun! Its just fun to play! Playing all the politics, maneuvering different clever set-pieces, its all fun to dig your teeth into.

The two main flaws of the game are more issues of the time it came out and the nature of production. In the latter case, the final hours lose the game's perchant for multiple solutions to problems and kind of descend into endless corridors of enemies. I've heard some modern complaints lodged at new narrative rpgs for letting you talk down endbosses or things, claiming it means your villains don't actually stand for anything. While I understand that critique, I'll take that any day over the absolute slog that is the final hours of this game's combat. The combat is at its best in short chunks. Relying on it too much makes for a more exhaustive experience.

The other problem is, well, it is an 00s game. Split personality storylines, weird asian stereotypying... This is all coupled with a tendency towards some edgelord dialogue. I generally tried to play my character with the mentality of "bro i just work here." My character's been a vampire for like two days and the game wants me to be saying lines like "you will bow before ME, mortal!"

This is particularly noticeable when dealing with Heather Poe. The game gives you the chance to give a dying woman some blood. This is a clear good guy action to do. Save the human, gain some humanity back. Well, things aren't that simple. Giving a human vampire blood quickly makes them an addict. Heather quickly tracks you down and leaps all the way into putting herself in the role of slave. She calls you master, she offers you her college fund, she starts luring victims to your apartment, you can demand that she change her appearance... the whole situation is profoundly fucked. While the game does let you try to treat Heather gently, its all with an air of condescension. I'm not allowed to say "hey girl, wanna hear about my work day?" The options are all "Ah yes, you have been a good loyal pet." The writing is inclined to being a cool edgy vampire who's just better than humanity. That's excellent for that kind of roleplayer, but sometimes I want my character to just be a normal guy. I guess that speaks to a wider problem in video games though. Video games are inherently designed for the player. You will always be the big special person who everything revolves around.

Still, the game is a cult classic for a reason. There was love put into this game, from both creators and fans. The VTM universe is a complicated world and putting that system into a video game was a huge challenge to begin with. The fact this managed to pull it off despite everything going against it is truly a marvel.

This is a Video Game™️. Level based campaign structure, variety in level locales, perk tree, money upgrades, collectables off the path in levels, story that doesnt matter to context the levels, its all there baby. I'm back in 2008.

The gameplay is fun, though I do find some enemies really fucking annoying (really the flying shield givers/tentacle wall clingers), but not too bad, it makes the fights tense. It feels good as fuck to punch and thats always a BIG plus for me.
I do feel like the dodge kind of sucks, but its fine enough.

Also, I really wonder if the dev's read Blaster Knuckle, cause the similarities are there. And if you haven't read Blaster Knuckle, you should read that shit, it rules.

Absolutely fantastic collection. I struggle to think of another series so... complete? Everything that happens in each game is directly related to something in another. Every planet, race and character has lore and history. So many major conflicts and key details about things that may be discussed or learned about during a mission are built upon down the line, often tying into the story in ways far more significant than I would've expected. Rarely is something explained without later being shown, it's pretty amazing, and it makes every resolution to a conflict all that more fulfilling.

I could understand the complaint that Shepard serves as this Mary Sue of the universe, somehow becoming involved with just about everything and always at the forefront to correcting anything that can be, but honestly I can't agree with that being a negative. Commander Shepard is a hero, and I finally see now why the character is so beloved by so many.

It's strange to think that games with so much player-input and dialogue options could still have a protagonist that doesn't feel like a self-insert. Despite me choosing everything that she said, I still found myself looking at Shepard and respecting her as a character. I'm not sure how to really explain this but idk, I really love this series.

I've reviewed 1 and 2 already (although my review of 2 is p much just adrenaline-fuelled gushing bc I love it so much), I'm hoping to review 3 on its own page as well but as of right now I'm almost overwhelmed with the simple fact the journey is over. All I know for sure is that I loved it, this franchise has skyrocketed to my favourites of all time and while I understand why 3's ending is divisive I can't understand how anyone could call it bad.

That's all from me, this collection was free on PS+ recently, anyone that has that has no excuse not to experience it for themselves :p

Finally some good fucking Fire Emblem.

After having played the previous entries in the series I thought some of them were definitely overpraised by the FE community. Path of Radiance is no masterpiece by any means, but it's one of the better FE games.

It's nothing special, mind you. The story and characters are pretty simple, but the game still conveyed both good enough that it kept me engaged through out the whole thing.

While it's certainly not perfect, I had an absolute blast playing this. The action is intense, dramatic and totally ridiculous, which I absolutely loved. It's been a while since I played a game where I loved every second I played of it. The swordplay is just so satisfying and addicting. I mean, you can cut your enemies into a hundred pieces and then rip their electric heart form their chest, what's there not to love? This game proves once again that Platinum can make an over the top crazy action game, because this is one of the best Hack n 'slash I've played. Revengeance is an action game that indulges your greatest power fantasies and it really makes me wish there were more games like this.

shit game
hate the v-tuber art style
hate the overall style as well
main character looks ass
don’t care if it’s an anniversary title, the fanservice is garbage
time wheel again
embarrassing plot and characters
the opening song is worse than the worst seven deadly sins opening

game looks unironically like it was developed with ai tools