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Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.
2006
Fun until you exhaust cursed memes to search, at which point it becomes a tiresome affair trying to find anything that's even half-distracting. But I digress, rather than that being a problem exclusive to this game I find that it applies on a personal level with all these online-only multiplayer games imo - after about an hour I'm over it. Though there are some really funny and creative levels to be found during that hour, and the customization both for level and character design here is insane. Plus I just love Gen Z memes, so I think the skibidi rizzler Fanum tax shit flooding this is hysterical. Shame about its predatory currency system and that over half the games on PS4 are unplayable.
For me what differentiates this full-priced DLC from Guitar Hero: Smash Hits' full-priced DLC are a couple things: 1. NEW SONGS, 2. The specific point of this game's release making DLC a less feasible option, 3. Even Harmonix's ugly note/thicc fretboard design is better than Neversoft's greasy post-World Tour aesthetic, and 4. despite feeling rushed and contractual this was definitely still before the series felt like it was losing air fast with its nonstop cash-grab releases. Still really fun to play! The 80s-themed reskins are very cute, and a good reduced soundtrack is still better than a large bloat of mid songs (super bonus points for having a primarily 80s soundtrack which doesn't consist of those same 20 or 30 songs that are always on these, like the other Harmonix GH titles these are some really inspired choices). Charming and idiosyncratic in the way that these early GH games were.
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.
The only one of these I don't really care for. If you thought God of War III felt samey while also looking really grey and uninteresting, just wait until you get a look at this! After how much I dug Chains of Olympus I was expecting this one (its other PSP counterpart) to follow suit, but no - I'm shocked at how inconsequential this feels. Its most grievous sin is committing the video game prequel kiss of death: making every 'new' addition to its franchise lore seem completely pointless by setting it up just to delete it immediately after, so everything can go back to the status quo by the end anyway (rather than, you know, telling its own story that actually sticks around). Storytelling here is totally nonexistent, Deimos was done so dirty and even by GoW standards a lot of this is just futile misery porn BS. While CoO benefitted from its smaller scale, this one feels strangled by it - trying to tell this momentous, grand melodrama by rushing right through everything. It's got good things - Sparta is cool, all the boss fights are solid, the Arms of Sparta rock, and we (finally!!) even get some new enemies here that are fun to fight! Still have my usual quibbles with the combat though - stunlocks here there and everywhere, some bad hitboxes, the Wraiths are objectively bullshit to fight in this game, and - while I still vastly prefer it to GoWIII's item meter - one out of every two times you activate the fire meter it just does nothing lol. Strong contender for worst QTEs ever, too. Just an overall hollow, nothing experience. By this entry these games felt like they were starting to suffer from the same genre fatigue as, say, the Guitar Hero games in the late 2000s.
2006
Just damn fine sixth-gen action platforming, very nearly a platonic ideal for the genre - checking off just about every bulletpoint. Top-to-bottom filled with phenomenal setpieces, memorable locales, likable characters, goodass puzzles (remember those things?), and breezy controls that feel great to use. Better than the first Uncharted. I could gush about these PS2/3 Tomb Raiders for days.
2005
It's got your expected warts of a first-entry in a flagship series: some inconsistent tiering for songs, so many bad fake outros, a wonky hammer-on/pull-off system, iffy hit detection, and a lot of graphical ugliness among others (Neversoft style > Harmonix style imo). But overall it's impressive how quickly they were onto what made this series so magnetic in its day (before it was milked to death, of course). Injecting traditionally eastern rhythm gameplay (at the time) into a traditionally western frame was a genius move - and even if master recordings will always be superior, I'll be honest... I've always found a sort of charm to these early GH covers. They're not that bad! And the ones that are are at least uniquely and humorously so. The fact that this is still so playable even today should perfectly showcase how airtight the formula is. Pandora supremacy 🤘
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.
Something something dead game something something paid DLC with a shorter shelf life than canned soup something shit outta luck if you want to do this on console. I'm tired.
2010
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.
Games I Dislike That Everybody Else Likes
Gotta love full-priced DLC! Even as a Guitar-Hero-addicted 5th/6th grader at the time of release (because of course I pre-ordered it) this felt like the DeviantArt inflation-style oversaturation of a once-proud series for money. Six fucking games in the "Hero" series came out this year and this... was one of them (maybe even the weakest tbh). GH3 came out less than two years before this, did we really need a "Greatest Hits" tour of a game from the same fucking console generation? Even if you ignore how pointless this is, it's still - and I'm sorry to say this - ugly in that murky 'seventh-gen grit' way that many games at the time were. Setlist is objectively good but of course it is, that's like saying water is wet - it's still spotty even in spite of this because you're picking from games with already STACKED setlists so you'll inevitably be missing out on so many bangers, further solidifying this game's needlessness. Full-band support and master recordings are nice but if that's the only reason for this existing ($$$) then don't charge full price for what is essentially just an upgrade. Still leagues better than Rock Band Blitz and those awful DS games.
Gotta love full-priced DLC! Even as a Guitar-Hero-addicted 5th/6th grader at the time of release (because of course I pre-ordered it) this felt like the DeviantArt inflation-style oversaturation of a once-proud series for money. Six fucking games in the "Hero" series came out this year and this... was one of them (maybe even the weakest tbh). GH3 came out less than two years before this, did we really need a "Greatest Hits" tour of a game from the same fucking console generation? Even if you ignore how pointless this is, it's still - and I'm sorry to say this - ugly in that murky 'seventh-gen grit' way that many games at the time were. Setlist is objectively good but of course it is, that's like saying water is wet - it's still spotty even in spite of this because you're picking from games with already STACKED setlists so you'll inevitably be missing out on so many bangers, further solidifying this game's needlessness. Full-band support and master recordings are nice but if that's the only reason for this existing ($$$) then don't charge full price for what is essentially just an upgrade. Still leagues better than Rock Band Blitz and those awful DS games.
"Why do you wish to save the world?"
Pleasure cannot exist without pain - the seemingly impossible task of viewing sorrow as a reprieve from joy, instead of the other way around, in order to save yourself from what would surely be a flat, insensate existence; and to deny such a core part of the human experience would subject yourself to a form of disdain we (evidently) haven't even fully diagnosed yet. We have to move on, we have to... even if it's objectively going to suck. You know that feeling you get when you just know you're playing a new favorite? God it's been so long. Was not expecting such mature stories about how hard it can be learning to co-exist with your own emotions, feeling lost in the world until you're reminded of the things that intrinsically connect us all. Despite sharing obvious similarities, this is everything that Pac-Man World: Re-Pac wanted to be. Reminds me of the brand of old-school magic I found in - of all places - Balan Wonderworld's good moments, though there are elements from many of the best 3D platformers in here. What with such colorful storybook art design (the enemies look like Squishmallows and are called "Moos"), effervescent characters, lovable music, and occasionally brain-melting puzzles. My one major complain about the otherwise fun set of moves here is how stupidly specific the wind bullets have to be in order to function, but otherwise I loved pretty much every minute of these. I definitely like the second game more than the first, but they're both wondrous adventures with some of the greatest levels (and feats of platforming therein) in the history of the genre.
Pleasure cannot exist without pain - the seemingly impossible task of viewing sorrow as a reprieve from joy, instead of the other way around, in order to save yourself from what would surely be a flat, insensate existence; and to deny such a core part of the human experience would subject yourself to a form of disdain we (evidently) haven't even fully diagnosed yet. We have to move on, we have to... even if it's objectively going to suck. You know that feeling you get when you just know you're playing a new favorite? God it's been so long. Was not expecting such mature stories about how hard it can be learning to co-exist with your own emotions, feeling lost in the world until you're reminded of the things that intrinsically connect us all. Despite sharing obvious similarities, this is everything that Pac-Man World: Re-Pac wanted to be. Reminds me of the brand of old-school magic I found in - of all places - Balan Wonderworld's good moments, though there are elements from many of the best 3D platformers in here. What with such colorful storybook art design (the enemies look like Squishmallows and are called "Moos"), effervescent characters, lovable music, and occasionally brain-melting puzzles. My one major complain about the otherwise fun set of moves here is how stupidly specific the wind bullets have to be in order to function, but otherwise I loved pretty much every minute of these. I definitely like the second game more than the first, but they're both wondrous adventures with some of the greatest levels (and feats of platforming therein) in the history of the genre.
2023
Breathtakingly designed pop techno-horror freakout - like if Cyberpunk 2077 was good. Dead Island's treatise on A.I., cults, upper-class boredom, and existential angst is every bit as deliciously stupid and totally unhinged as that sounds. Doubles down on its bracing art style fetish, orgasmic music, and brain-rattling faux-intellectual jargon - only asking that, in return, you agree to be fully down for the ride. Which, of fucking course, I am. Fight a hulking pig dude and dropkick BDSM leather-clad zombies down bottomless pits while coming to grips with the horrors of being alive - put literally face-to-face with the rotting alternative, and still not knowing which is the more terrifying option - through Dead Island's trademark gruesome sense of humor about the fragility of the human body and, moreso, its mind. Some truly sick and genius thrusts of mental violence to this one. One of the best things I've ever played, as an apologist for this oft-idiotic franchise even I am beyond impressed - spent much of this playtime with my jaw dropped.
Seems like it would have been a fun spin on the base game but two problems persist here: if you didn't buy this the year or two after it came out on console then you're shit outta luck if you want to even play it, and I just don't care enough about Battlefield 1 to really even sink enough time into it to warrant the purchase if it was within that time frame. Sick water effects, though.
Yay for snow levels, but again - much like all these other DLCs - they're six feet under on console to the point where you effectively cannot play them if you only have a couple of buddies (or less) and no rented server. Isn't paid game content that has a short expiration date so much fun? 😁
Top 50 Favorites: #9
Base game:
The first big-budgeted PS4-era open world adventure game I really got swept up in, one which I'm also terrified to replay due to this genre veering more and more towards empty, boring, overbloated filler passed off as content as time goes on - I fear that what registered for me all those years ago as new and revitalizing will instead ring as tedious and generic these days. Still, at the time anyway this really felt like a breath of fresh air: vibrant colors (the lighting!!), an interesting story (even the collectible-based narratives I found to be intricate and emotional), breathtaking animations, Lance Fucking Reddick, etc. The thing really felt like games had finally hit the point they'd been aiming for since the inception of the medium. Its melee combat isn't the best but the rest of the fighting here felt unique, engaging, and responsive too. I love it immensely, a beautiful gaming experience - cannot in good conscience agree with this coming back into the discourse of why its genre's luster is waning, especially when the much duller and more overstuffed Fallout 4 had already come out and dominated years before this.
The Frozen Wilds:
Just as lush, expansive, and easy to fall in love with as the base game - honestly one of the best expansions ever made. You just can't reckon with five bucks (often less during frequent sales) for all this beautiful content. Still has some current-day AAA sensibilities that I'm not too big on (the piss-easy 'platforming' for one) but all my gripes get swallowed right away when I just take one fucking LOOK at this thing. Snow levels in video games are often some of my favorites, and this is one for the books. Breathtaking, unforgettable environments abound that compliment this game's bracing lighting system perfectly. Not to mention the very respectable uptick in difficulty that makes this feel like its own original experience in addition to flowing into the base pretty naturally. Amazing.
Base game:
The first big-budgeted PS4-era open world adventure game I really got swept up in, one which I'm also terrified to replay due to this genre veering more and more towards empty, boring, overbloated filler passed off as content as time goes on - I fear that what registered for me all those years ago as new and revitalizing will instead ring as tedious and generic these days. Still, at the time anyway this really felt like a breath of fresh air: vibrant colors (the lighting!!), an interesting story (even the collectible-based narratives I found to be intricate and emotional), breathtaking animations, Lance Fucking Reddick, etc. The thing really felt like games had finally hit the point they'd been aiming for since the inception of the medium. Its melee combat isn't the best but the rest of the fighting here felt unique, engaging, and responsive too. I love it immensely, a beautiful gaming experience - cannot in good conscience agree with this coming back into the discourse of why its genre's luster is waning, especially when the much duller and more overstuffed Fallout 4 had already come out and dominated years before this.
The Frozen Wilds:
Just as lush, expansive, and easy to fall in love with as the base game - honestly one of the best expansions ever made. You just can't reckon with five bucks (often less during frequent sales) for all this beautiful content. Still has some current-day AAA sensibilities that I'm not too big on (the piss-easy 'platforming' for one) but all my gripes get swallowed right away when I just take one fucking LOOK at this thing. Snow levels in video games are often some of my favorites, and this is one for the books. Breathtaking, unforgettable environments abound that compliment this game's bracing lighting system perfectly. Not to mention the very respectable uptick in difficulty that makes this feel like its own original experience in addition to flowing into the base pretty naturally. Amazing.