Far and away superior to the dreadfully boring thud of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves, somewhere on par with the first two games. Even still, if there's one major flaw here - aside from the ruinous ending which of course sucks hard - it's that the gameplay feels really dumbed down in a lot of areas despite appearing to add way more features on the surface. I know a lot of people hate this stuff but anytime there's a game-within-a-game, I love it - and there's a fair bit of that here which I'm all on board for. It also happens to be one of the greatest looking games on the PS3 - with seriously stunning art direction and well-designed hub areas, this game's Feudal Japan section is the most beautiful level in the franchise. But the story feels like it was written in three seconds (then again all of them do I guess), Tennessee is the only one of Sly's ancestors worth a damn (the rest have attributes locked only to a few super specific instances and feel like a weaker Sly), and the already underwhelming final boss is a fucking QTE sequence (this is the seventh gen after all). Feels like it should be fantastic, but a surfeit of new material can't entirely mask a lack of any real difficulty. Still like it though, worthy sequel.

Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

Leon's campaign > Jake's campaign > Chris's campaign > Ada's campaign

Special people with special relationships - by far the best entry out of RE's "dumb era", totally encapsulating the series' long-standing theme of beauty versus beast: pitting male models, flawlessly gorgeous women, and massive hulking tank behemoth bros against the most disgusting, warped destructions of flesh imaginable. All that goes double the distance when it's one of the best looking video games I've ever played, every cent of its ludicrous budget is right there on the screen at any given moment. Imagine spooky haunted house horror mixed with early 2010s Call of Duty ripoff mixed with hilariously over-the-top action setpieces that would make Michael Bay quiver in his boots - then you get this beautiful specimen. I get why we all scoffed at this on release but it oddly seems like the antithesis of most of its criticisms in the current day. Great shit, needs to be seen to be believed. I guess everyone just forgot about quicktiming away from a colossal robot statue and doing Hollywood judo kicks to waves of enemies in glorified combat arenas in Resident Evil 4 because this really isn't much dumber than that.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Hardly even a phone game, takes everything that made the Rock Band series special and effortlessly replayable then dilutes it into this samey, cheapo toss-off. Soundtrack is mostly antiseptic, a scant mix of of-the-era stinkers and songs you've already seen in these types of games like 18,000 times before - but even with Rock Band 3's DLC support this is still a chore to play through. Its point system is just so lame, mashing all the instruments together into the same screen gives way less of an incentive to replay songs. Plus now it isn't even playable anymore lmfao.

Terrifically fun kart racer. More of a Crash Team Racing clone than a Mario Kart clone, with even some of the tracks appearing to be direct riffs on what the former had introduced the year prior. And while it never truly reaches the heights of those games, it comes surprisingly close. Kind of a bummer that the last track is by far the weakest, but they're all tons of fun to race on - requiring complete and total mastery of its mechanics if you want to stand a chance. Because if you thought Mario Kart 64 had devious rubber-banding, you ain't seen nothing yet - and that's not even taking into account how aggressive the A.I. already are on their own. If you can get past its nightmare-fuel opening cutscene, the art style here is really self-assured - with tremendous graphics and music for its day. Not quite on the level of something like Jet Moto 3, but still a great time and highly overlooked.

One of the few games that's every bit as bad as the online hate train insists - if not, worse. Project 8 and Proving Ground were already quickly veering into bad territory but at least they stuck to the controller and had freely-explorable levels, boring as they were to do so. Even if this godawful plastic peripheral worked properly - which it doesn't, it's almost entirely unresponsive - it still feels beyond awkward to use. The damn thing is always tilting over, and you almost fall off of it with even the tiniest of movements. And as if that somehow wasn't bad enough, this is also a bastardized result of the last, dying gasps of casualcore gaming culture (where things like Spanish coaches and step-counters got full game releases) so the levels are linear and completely watered-down. Soundtrack has a few goodies as is the case with even the worst of these - but against Robomodo's reliably butt-ugly visuals, a bevy of glitches, and half-assed progression it's a bandage on a bullet wound. Should be required learning on what not to do in Game Design 101.

Alice's beast leg kick remains undefeated. Very sturdy fighter that refines the previous game in every conceivable metric (sans a weaker opening menu) and comes tantalizingly close to the high caliber of the franchises of which it cloned. Now instead of being just distracting, it's become addicting - has serious "just one more match" energy. Story mode being the best new addition, yes they mostly consist of my old foe .png cutscenes but the plot(s) are so bombastic, asinine, and campy in the same vein as like an 80s cult movie that it's too hard not to let yourself follow along astutely and tear through as many campaigns as you can in one sitting (though it's kind of weird that this has the same basic plot as X-Men). Still nothing spectacular, and some of the fights - to be frank - are bullshit (Long's last two fights, I love being caught in an unavoidable combo attack that wipes your whole health bar in 3 seconds!) but it certainly deserves a visit.

If the original Borderlands had some of the worst, most boring combat you'll ever touch in a video game - imagine emphasizing it even more in a deeply terrible series of combat arenas with splitscreen play that doesn't even look coherent (dead serious) no matter how much you screw with the settings. "CoD Zombies - but shitty" is a concept that seems like it would fit this series like a glove, but there's no flavor here - Moxxi is barely an entity at all in her own DLC and the levels are mid at best, horrible at worst. Duke Nukem Forever's Hail to the Icons Parody Pack is unironically a far superior multiplayer shooter add-on than this, ten-fold. Acutely tedious, still somehow not the worst of the base game's DLCs.

Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes

Not quite as miserable as the base game but still features each and every returning flaw from it - including but not limited to its mind-numbing shit combat, drab visuals, torturously repetitive + unfunny humor, forgettable missions, annoying RNG loot system, and a map that is a monumental bore to navigate. The type of game that exists only to see how far the medium has evolved since its primitive simplicity, so we can appreciate the type of stuff we get now. Also if you ever needed a reminder how obnoxious 2010's "le epically trolled"/"random XD" shtick was, here you go.

Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

Fun addition to the base game, but also like the base game it feels like you're over with it way too quickly - I'm talking like an hour tops here. I can respect that the game (and its DLC)'s main goal at the end of the day is just to fuck around with its funny physics and laugh at all the bodily mayhem you can cause within it - and make no mistake, it is absolutely a hoot to do that. But to that end it lacks the same continued quality-of-life support that Human: Fall Flat offers (for free no less - while this and the Cyberfunk add-on are paid). So this can't help but feel sadly tossed-off, flash-in-the-pan in a way - even though there's so much potential for more in it.

One beefy expansion, like the base game it's infused with some pristine vibes - thanks to once again drop-dead gorgeous graphics and another insanely moody soundtrack (with a few recycled [but still excellent] songs from Watch Dogs 2 that Ubisoft still had the license to peppered in). Though when it comes to the actual campaign I think the realism sort of shoots itself in the foot, getting ridiculously repetitive even before the halfway mark. Get ready to complete the same exact mission three or four times in a row over and over and over again! Seems like it's a touch too easy compared to the base game, as well. Though some of the challenges here highlight just how wonky these controls can feel (the grinding feels like it only works 25% of the time). Still, it's hard to reckon with an aesthetic like this. Shame it got delisted, bought a brand new sealed copy of the Winter Games Edition (despite owning the standard version already) with an unused code just so I could play it.

Mercy killing. Not as good as Chains of Olympus, better than the first one, about on par with the second one. I still think these games are some of the most fun to 100%, but as an actual game by itself I gotta say I respect it more than I like it. I never thought the story in these early GoWs were that great or anything, but this has one of the relative best despite still being too frantically paced to fully settle into its fittingly epic scale - the stuff with Pandora and Kratos (the best parts imo) feel far too rushed-through to work as much as intended, and the Gods just sort of pop in at random rather than having the looming presence they really needed in this narrative. That having been said, I like the way this game portrays the interconnectedness of the best and worst aspects of human existence - hate has just as much of an effect on your life as hope does whether you deny it or not. Also, this has absolutely earned its reputation as a violent, blood-gushing, cold-hearted motherfucker all these years later. Like WOW. Even I'm in awe of some of the brutal shit they make you do in this, gotta love it. Graphical powerhouse for the PS3 which still has some stunning images even today (Kratos looks incredible) but I'm just not as smitten with the environments here as I was with past entries - lotta of-the-era greys taking up about 90% of the color palette (even before there's a plot reason for it!) which dulls the whole thing down imo. Also kind of stinks that we're fighting the same old enemies with so many repeated tit-for-tat animations. Stacked voice cast though (in particular the always reliable Rip Torn's gravely, emotionally broken turn as Hephaestus). Zeus boss fight is God-tier (no pun intended) and the fight with Cronos is an all-timer - but the ending twist or whatever that was is really, really stupid. Some of the best QTEs in all of gaming. Good shit, but something just isn't clicking here on a deeper level for me.

Nice try, but I'm still not listening to Tool. One of those games where the release itself felt like a historical event - and all these years later it doesn't disappoint, very likely the greatest GH entry. Neversoft showing you how much money Guitar Hero III made by rubbing it right in your face - one of the best looking, sounding, and playing games on the PS3. I can feel my wealth bracket rise up a few notches just looking at this expensive beast. A few filler songs but that's a small, forgivable price to pay for having such a diverse, jaw-dropping, Herculean setlist (for the first time all glorious masters) filled to the brim with underheard beauties and classic titans - not just your expected shouts. Obviously the first one to introduce full band support, as well (with some nice customization options to boot). I also prefer the new tiering system, that combines both vibe as well as difficulty - it's so much more exciting. Some of the most fun charts to play in rhythm game history on a watertight engine, I haven't been this fully enraptured with a game in what feels like years. Tap notes make you feel like a GOD if you don't use the stupid slide bar. I think in the late 2000s' effort to artificially extend the lifespan of shitty casualcore gaming by forcing this poor franchise to cough up multiple major tentpole releases per year, we forgot just how adept these games are at escapism - no one does it like these did, man. Addicting and euphoric.

MY FAVES:
Weapon of Choice
VinterNoll2
Lazy Eye
Band on the Run
Obstacle 1
Some Might Say
Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)
Beat It
Rebel Yell
Stranglehold
Our Truth
Do It Again
Freak on a Leash
Heartbreaker
La Bamba
The Wind Cries Mary
Mr. Crowley
Eye of the Tiger
Stillborn (wish it was the far superior "ft. Ozzy" version though, especially considering he's in this game)
((Cutting this short because I could just say... like 99% of this setlist))

"Are you afraid?"

I'm not adding anything new to the mix here by saying how much better this story is than the base game's - with lots of melancholy themes about how memories are a crucial and intrinsic part of the human experience; and not only what we're driven to do when we lose them, but when we let them define who we are if/when we ultimately do retrieve them. You're missing out on at least half the experience if you don't bring Nick Valentine with you, who is built upon as a character so much here. Like Fallout 4 it still has a mostly unremarkable open world and sporadically tiring, repetitive quest structure - but the music and graphics in this are very pretty, and have a nice aura of mystery enveloping them. Also those memory puzzles are God-tier y'all are tripping, legitimately genius move to turn their settlement building system into a Minecraft-esque series of digital riddles. Incomparably better than Automatron and the base game itself.