Some of the best sword fighting combat you'll find only bested by Sekiro: shadows die twice in my opinion. Story starts out quite compelling but begins to run out of steam during the final third of the game. However there is plenty of side missions and points of interest to keep you busy if you are in to that sort of thing. I usually am not, but this game is just so fun to play and beautiful that it held my interest until the end. However ,when I completed the story I didn't stick around to finish all the filler content.

One of those games that I had to save and quit at almost every lull in the action because it just stresses me out too much. I essentially played through the game in small 15-30 minute segments. It's not really the big scares that get to me honestly, it's the oppressive weight of the environment and the sheer hopelessness it radiates. It's dark as hell most of the time, you are running low on batteries, everything wants to kill you, and hopefully you remember where the closest closet is because that fat ugly guy that keeps calling you "little pig" just spotted you! It accomplishes it's goal of being incredibly tense and scary... If anything, maybe a little too well. The thought of replaying this game makes me anxious. I made my wife play a little bit and she actually cried, it was pretty funny.

All roguelites are essentially like trying to become a boxer from scratch by fighting prime Mike Tyson over and over again. At first, regardless of how naturally gifted you are, you will get battered over and over again. After a while... And some quantifiable amount of brain damage you will eventually develop your skills and become less easily bashed by Ol' Iron Mike. Keep pushing further (hopefully before you start slurring your words) and you will finally reach the pinnacle of boxing and best the champ. This formula understandably doesn't work for everyone and to be honest on paper it sounds horrible, but I seem to enjoy it.

Silly metaphor aside, I find Dead Cells to be one of the best roguelites out there. Really tight and responsive controls, plenty of build variety to keep each repetitive run somewhat fresh, and progression that you actually feel make this game stand out amongst the ever growing pool of roguelite games.

What a disappointment this game was. After the success of the first game the sequel failed to improve on any of what made it's predecessor so good. For a start the writing was amateurish and even laughable at times. The decision to make a significant chunk of the game on land was a bad one considering they didn't update any of the out of water mechanics so the land sections feel tacked on and low quality. The map is way smaller, way less deep, and way more empty. It's almost like someone at Unknown Worlds wrote a list of all the things that made the first game good, and then decided to reduce all those elements for the sequel. I just don't get it.

Naughty Dog hadn't quite found their footing in the narrative driven story department at this point as this was their first attempt. The game doesn't let you breathe enough, seemingly every room is a shooting gallery full of a ridiculous number of enemies who take way too many bullets to kill. The story is fine, but somewhat generic. Maybe if I played this when it was originally released I would have liked it more, but playing it after games like the last of us and the tomb raider reboots really made this game seem dated and poorly designed.

I love the world and the freedom that you are given to decide your own journey. I would just pick a direction and go explore and usually found something interesting to do. I enjoyed the cooking system that promotes experimentation. The story was entertaining, if a tad predictable. However, to me this game is not the masterpiece that everyone claims it is. If the game was graded purely on its world and exploration then sure but that would be ignoring the fact that the combat is pretty simplistic, the weapons break way too quickly, 90% of the enemies you run into are either pigs or lizards, and the puzzles just aren't challenging. Is this a bad game, no obviously not... Is it a masterpiece that redefines what a game can be, also no.

Honestly though my biggest issue while playing the game is that the joy-con controllers are clunky, unintuitive, and uncomfortable to use in my opinion. I really wish I knew Nintendo made pro controllers that were designed more like Xbox or PlayStation controllers before I played this game because it really dampened my experience.

I never played the original so I don't have the extreme nostalgia for it that some seem to have. But after watching a YouTube Video by Jacob Gellar titled "The Decade-Long Quest For Shadow of the Colossus’ Last Secret" which I highly recommend you watch, I decided to give the remake a try. I was immediately enthralled by the mysterious empty world, and my first few Colossi fights were a magical experience. The concept of fighting an enemy so large that you have to climb up its body and cling to its fur to stab it in the head was just awesome to me. The puzzle solving aspect of each fight was intriguing and I was genuinely enjoying the experience

However, the gameplay loop is repeated 16 times and somewhere around the 10th or 11th Colossi I began to fatigue of this repetitive loop. The world that was originally eerie and mysterious became dead and devoid of anything interesting. The bosses who were breathtaking and fun slowly became tedious and in some cases annoying.

With that said the game is worth playing and is definitely a unique experience if you are looking for something different. Just be aware that it gets quite repetitive and doesn't give you much in terms of variety in gameplay but I respect a game that is designed with a singular experience in mind, this is the brain child of Fumito Ueda and it definitely doesn't suffer from the "too many cooks" design by committee issue that a lot of triple A games do so kudos for that.

Everything Fromsoft creates is gold! They really are one of the only companies that never seem to release a flop. The combat in this game when you are in the zone and parrying perfectly feels so good. It's the best feeling sword fighting game I can think of. The sounds of clashing steel from a successful parry is just mmm... Chefs kiss, great sound design. And I loved the decision to go with posture instead of the normal health bars. Fromsoft have always been masters at designing their games to promote a certain style of play and rewarding players for playing how they want you to. For example, using posture meters instead of just health bars rewards you not only for attacking but also parrying properly and staying on your target. This is what pushes you towards staying in the thick of it and not dodge rolling away to gather your composure like you would in previous souls games. Without ever outright telling you what to do or how to play, they subtly guide your hand towards that "in your face" intense clashing of swords style of play... They simply nailed it. Great game design.

It's been a while since I've played a game that is a true sandbox like this and boy did I have a good time. Most games nowadays seem to pull you around by the hand telling you where to go and exactly how to accomplish goals. Teardown shatters this mold by giving you seemingly infinite options to experiment and find your own solutions to the problems presented. This design choice gives the player such a feeling of freedom and is so conducive to experimentation and creativity that it reminded me of being a kid just goofing around with friends in a video game finding our own fun while completely ignoring the main objectives of the game.

Most missions fall in to one of two categories:

a. Specific items are scattered around throughout the level, you have to steal them and bring them to the escape point. The catch is that upon picking up the first item an alarm starts that creates a fail state if you don't get all the items to the escape point by the time the clock runs out. This leads to planning out the fastest most efficient route possible by smashing holes in walls and setting up vehicles in the right spots to save time walking, building makeshift stairs, and whatever other ways you can figure out to shave off a few seconds. These are the puzzle levels, they are challenging yet fun and promote experimentation and creativity.

b. I call these the "fuck shit up" levels. In these levels you are tasked with causing some specific form of destruction and are given carte blanche to use whatever tools you have at your disposal to get the job done.

These two types of missions are balanced pretty well though, I would have liked to see more of the category b missions as towards the end the puzzle missions do start to become a little tedious. This issue starts when you begin to collect a massive arsenal of equipment like explosives, guns, boosters, sledgehammers, blowtorches, etc. In order to justify all this equipment the game cranks up the difficulty of the missions and can being to feel like a grind to get through. Towards the back half of part 1 the developers seemingly start to run out of fun ideas and just start making the maps more and more tedious to travel through by adding obstacles like omniscient immortal attack helicopters and flooding a whole area that makes traveling across the map take more time. This subtle change feels hostile and makes you keenly aware of the developers hand trying to hold you back from success compared to the beginning where you felt like you were in a fun sandbox that wanted you to succeed in a way that was uniquely your own by finding ways to bypass locked doors, gated fences, and barred windows to snatch up all the loot in the quickest way possible.

Thankfully after you finish part 1 (which I imagine was all that was available at launch) you get to play part 2 which adds a new island sandbox for missions, a few new interesting ideas for mission objectives, new obstacles like extreme weather and attack robots, and even some new tools to unlock. Part 2 seems to mostly fix the tedium of the back quarter of part 1 and becomes pretty fun again. The game really does peak in the first half of part 1 though. I honestly feel like once you unlock all the explosives, rocket launchers, and such you can just blow holes in everything so a lot of the magic is gone. Where the massive toolbox at your disposal becomes insanely fun however is when you start dabbling with mods.

At one point I downloaded a New York City replica map and caused mayhem with an arsenal of destructive tools. After over an hour of rampaging like a maniac I finally took a moment to look at all the havoc I had wrought and revel in my psychopathy. Something about this experience was magical and will stick with me for a while. No quest giver told me to destroy New York nor did I earn XP for doing it. I simply had C4 in my inventory and saw in my head that scene from the Last of Us with the collapsed skyscraper being held up by the other skyscraper and wanted to recreate it. And recreate it I did. It's this style of "get an idea and do it" type gameplay supported by awesome voxel physics that allows you to destroy stuff in such a creative way that really makes this game stand out. Along with the first half of part 1 of the campaign this is the most fun I had in the game.