Stays true to it's predecessors and brought me back to being a kid trying to build the perfect mech in the original armored core games. An old school game for capital G Gamers where fun gameplay is the main attraction rather than a compelling story, deep world, interesting characters, or moral conundrum being the focal point. This is not to say that the story, world, or characters aren't compelling, but the gameplay is clearly the star of the show here. Combat is fast and frantic yet a touch of that Dark Souls DNA still shines forth during the boss fights that are challenging and require attention and disciplined dodge timing. I will say however, that this is the first Fromsoft game in a long while that didn't totally blow me away and suck me into it's world immediately.

Don't get me wrong the game is super fun and I really enjoyed it, but I think two main things somewhat soured an otherwise amazing experience. The first issue is the way the game is structured with individual levels giving me a really clear stopping point every 10-20 minutes when playing so I didn't find myself as deeply immersed as I did with Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Bloodborne, or Sekiro for example. The second issue is that pretty early on I tried dual wielding the Zimmerman shotguns for a boss fight I was struggling with and never felt the need to experiment with anything else because they felt worlds better than anything else I had tried previously. This left me somewhat shoehorned into a certain build only ever really customizing my shoulder weapons based on what mission I was on. "Why not just use different hand weapons to change it up a bit?" I hear you say: Because why would I purposely make my build less effective just to shake things up? This is why balance is so important in games with lots of build options, you have to save the gamer from their own tendency to optimize the fun out of the game. Later on I found out that double Zimmerman's had basically become a meme so I imagine many people can relate to this one.

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.

Whoever it was at Playground games that responded when asked what they can do to improve on the success of Forza Horizon 4 with "more cutscenes of clay faced dweebs saying how cool you are and a non-skippable phone call packed with cringey dialogue after literally every race" should be forced into a piñata and have the life beaten out of them by children with baseball bats. The graphics are marginally better, the collection of cars is marginally more expansive, the map is new and interesting, but ultimately it feels identical to the previous game except for one major difference. In Horizon 4, the focus was rightly set on the racing, whereas in this game there is this weird focus on Mexican culture that just feels so out of place in a racing game. I get it, we are in Mexico, but I don't care about the little parades, or the jade statues, or Aztek ruins I just want to race... Leave me alone. And I literally laughed out loud during the character creation section with all the inclusive junk like being able to have prosthetic limbs and hearing aids for some reason... There's nothing inherently wrong here, but was it really worth it in a game where you spend most of your time sitting in a car and when you do see your character in a cutscene he is usually saying something so cringey it makes you want to cut off any remaining limbs he has and beat him to death with them? I mean honestly there are roughly 8-10 male hair styles yet literally over 100 different types of hearing aid, like wtf were they thinking? This and the over the top celebration of Mexican culture just screams of white people at their worst and most pandering... And it honestly put a sour taste in my mouth regarding this game. Though the racing, as usual, is quite good.

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.

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.

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.

The gameplay hasn't changed much since the original but I found it to be plenty enjoyable. Adding to this probably the best bodily trauma/dismemberment system I have ever seen in a video game makes for some pretty enthralling minute to minute gameplay. However the gameplay doesn't evolve much throughout it's runtime so it starts to get stale before the credits roll. Speaking of the credits rolling, this is another one of those games that doesn't ship with a complete story, opting to leave you hanging on an abrupt and blatant DLC-bait ending. This is a terrible industry practice in my opinion so for that I have to dock a point from the game. With that said, the game does what it is trying to do really well. This is some of the most fun I've had hacking and slashing zombies into ribbons I've had in a game and for that it's easy to overlook the rather generic and unfinished story, some less than likeable characters, and some pretty corny dialogue.