Update: i finished it, my main problem is that konami lied that it runs in 1080p when in reality its 720 with no way to change it and the audio sounds muffled at times, other than that mgs 3 is still incredible and it's nice that i can play it whenever i want on steam
only speaking on mgs 3 as thats the only one i bought, its good, it's nice being able to open steam and just boot it up, there are some weird audio things but other than that i cant complain, probably won't be buying 1 or 2 since i own the gog versions but i'll update my review if i ever end up buying them on ps5

now THIS is the game I wanted 2018 to be.

improves SO much of what 2018 laid out but it wasn't afraid to call back to the original series. combat is satisfyingly similar to God of War 3 in its animation, down to the executions. animation itself isn't afraid to let loose, no longer stiff in combat and in transforms and allowed to actually flow nicely.

the story blows 2018 and even arguably most of the 'prestige' Sony games out of the water. They did not hesitate to make you laugh, make you cry, and make you feel a satisfy end to Kratos's story (and the beginning to Atreus's). This game has what 2018 didn't have - personality. Hell, at time I felt like I was watching an actual play!

nearly every problem I have in the new series has been addressed and fixed in this entry. i'm glad i had the privilege to actually play it right to the end, and it's post credits content

every time i booted up this game, i was reminded of the fights that were going on in 2018 over this game and rdr2 - which one was better in terms of graphics, storytelling and gameplay. that imploded when this game won GOTY; twitter was hell for 2 weeks

anyway, i think rdr2 was more deserving of the award

this game is the right step, kratos's end in gow3 was fitting, but we always knew his story will continue, after he releases hope to the world and to himself. but how could they continue his story? how could they give this man more reason to live, after everything he had done to his family and to others?

the answer was to move on and try to create anew in midgard, land of the norse gods, with a new son. but with this, it really didn't do it for me until really late in the game. the main problem of this is game is that it tells you kratos is a terrible father, that he is absent and was never there for his son.

but the game, its gameplay, even the storytelling says other wise! i didn't watch a terrible father treat his son horribly, i saw an alright dad giving his son space while trying to teach him how to survive! hell, i played and seen several other GOW games that tell me he's an alright dad! it's kinda insane to me this basic storytelling aspect suffers the "show, don't tell" mistake you would learn in creative writing 101 class, this could've easily been rectify by showing us, the players, kratos's interaction with his wife and his son before she dies. i believe kratos is an awful man, but not one second will i believe he's an awful dad. compared to most dads, he gets the best dad award

speaking of most of the story, i did find the whole thing to be boring mostly cuz i feel like i've seen it a million times. i really only got into it once the norses gods were introduced, and how their introduction plays into kratos's and atreus's journey. the game asks questions about kratos and his godhood, and it plays beautifully to their dynamic. but overall, i would look into other things for this type of relationship of parent trying to be better for their kid. hell, TLOU did these themes better and it pretty much stole most of its material from a movie

what i was mostly disappointed in was few mentions in kratos's past life. when they started talking about it, i was hoping he would start mentioning the family he was lead to kill, his friendship with athena, anything that was just not "i killed my dad...i was a god....i dont want you to be me." perhaps this is something they will talk about in the next game, but if you wish kratos to be more open with his son, then you gotta do a little push to show his anxieties he has with atreus. the only real fun i had was when they talk about norse mythology, the blend of the tales with the story's own mythology is perfect, and they did a really good job of expressing both

gameplay wise...it was underwhelming, disappointing. the axe felt snappy, but not satisfying. i'm not impressed by the retrieval mechanics at all, on god i felt it was more annoyance than anything else. when i finally was able to play with the blades, that's what i was looking for in a god of war game. i finally felt like a powerhouse dad i was hoping when i started this game. gameplay loop and the menus and shit it's pretty much your standard triple A game you expect to see at this point, nothing i can really say that you don't already know. though one thing i can say, the menus feel like ac origins barfed all over it and somehow made it worse

i dont know man, i dont hate the game. i did like it. at the end of the day, there's really nothing wrong with it. its just...average. it's a serviceable sony, triple A game that makes you feel things because games are becoming Serious in the eyes of people who don't play indie games. games are like movies yall!

speaking of movies, it's okay to use cuts in cutscenes. 'one take' wasn't impressive in kojima games, it's not impressive here

Days Gone has some interesting stuff in it, but I didn't find enough here to keep me playing.

Encounters in Days Gone can be fun and varied. The stealth works well and it is very satisfying to take out a camp without being spotted, or to cause a pack of zombies to take it out for you.
Once you are forced into combat it is even fun and hectic to try to survive. I haven't felt as overrun in any game as I did in Days Gone, just from the number of zombies that can swarm you and seem to come from nowhere. Seeing as many zombies as this game throws at you swarming over a countryside is definitely a unique experience that can be interesting, but too often degrades into kiting a horde of enemies around, killing them one at a time.

The story in Days Gone is pretty standard. There are some interesting hints at what differentiates the 'freakers' in this game from regular zombies, but there isn't much else I find compelling.
Character development for the various factions and the humans that lead them failed to hook me and even Deacon himself doesn't have enough of a unique voice or even any agency in his story to make me want to find out what happens to him. It is a VERY slow burn too, with essentially nothing of real importance happening up until I decided to abandon it. The plot could probably use some heavy editing -- it seems like things may pick up further in the story than I was willing to play.

There are definitely some cool environments in Days Gone -- I haven't played a game that has this particular mix of forests, mountains, and swamps. It is fully realized and traveling around the world can be very chill and cool, even with zombies screaming at you intermittently.
The camps and other encounter areas are also well done, with tons of interesting spaces to sneak in and fight enemies. These and the combat and stealth mechanics you get to explore within them are what kept this game above one star for me.

Even if you are a huge fan of open world games, there are so many other games that hit harder than Days Gone. The horde tech is cool to check out, but doesn't carry the game far enough to make it worth really recommending.

i came into this for the first time after 9 years thinking "man this's a solid 8/10!" i left it thinking "why did i ever think this was particularly great, let alone better than pikmin 1?"

this run was spurred in part by a conversation i had with someone else in the comments on this site, and in part because i really wanted to get to pikmin 3 but didn't wanna skip an entry. now i wish i had just skipped it and kept the happier memories from when i played it as a kid.

the first part of the game is pretty alright, just being a lesser pikmin 1 but still being solid because of what it's based on. the caves in the early to midgame are tolerable, too, since they're short and quick. it also helps give the game a little more direction, as the lack of stakes and the fairly weak premise give the player little motivation on their own.

i'll take a quick detour to go over caves. i think plenty of people have probably said this before, but the cave design often discourages multitasking and come across as lazy due to them being mostly created through rng. you're given two captains at once - perfect for multitasking! - but in any given cave there are often traps and enemies everywhere that mean you can't leave your captains anywhere but back at the ship whenever you want to "multitask". otherwise, you risk losing half of your platoon. it's just not a great time.

anyway, i'd say the game peaks in quality around the perplexing pool. the overworld is challenging but not ridiculous, and the caves are some of the better ones in the game.

however, it's when you finally relieve yourself of debt that the game takes a nosedive in quality and enjoyability. not only is the motivation for your collectathon dashed in a single cutscene, but you're now given an unnecessarily enemy-filled map with the worst caves in the game. if you don't already know which cave louie was in, you'll have to go through the absolute worst caves in the game for a process of elimination. long, boring, and full of unbalanced enemies or traps, these things were the bane of my run and cut my sessions short very quickly.

this would all be easily forgiven if the game allowed the collectathon to become optional after the first part of its runtime. however, to get the ending you need to get every single item from every single cave and overworld map. not only is this painstaking, but it also takes away from the open-ended nature the game seemed to take in its attempts to expand upon the first one. you can't just pick and choose high-value items to pay off your debt and then move onto the louie rescue. with pikmin 2 being significantly longer than 1, this becomes a lot more painful for casual players who wouldn't normally be completionists. no, 100% is an inevitability in pikmin 2, and it sucks.

i have a fair bit more to say about this game but i'm not in the mood to make another neo twewy tier review on it. the general story, atmosphere, stakes, and premise of this game are incredibly weak without even having to compare to pikmin 1, and as a sequel it does next to nothing to justify itself. its positives are almost entirely based on the fact that it's a mechanically improved version of pikmin 1 with reused maps.

i think this rating is pretty fair for the experience i had as well as for what i described in the above block. the game was pretty good for the first part and turned shitty in the second, had a solid base and was certainly functional. i didn't think it was good, but i don't think that it was bad or straight up unlikeable. i'd guess that people who think "more content = better" would get a lot out of this game, as would people who prefer saccharine nintendo comedy and wit to more hands-off atmospheric entries. it's definitely not a game for me. as a kid i trusted reputations deeply when judging things and thought more content was always good, which makes it pretty unsurprising why i had such a shitty time coming back to this game.

i'm hoping pikmin 3 is gonna be a better time than this one. i'd be sad to find out pikmin 1 could be the only one of the games i really like, as i thought once upon a time that this was a very me-core series. i'd really like to not have to deal with another animal crossing situation, but i guess we'll see.