I honestly think this game is wildly overrated. Don't get me wrong, the window dressing is great. Voice acting is well done, the home base is well designed and constantly adding new dialogue to add to the story after each failed run, the characters design is cool and an interesting take on Greek mythology.

However to me the core gameplay loop leaves much to be desired. This isn't to say the game isn't fun, it definitely is. The controls are sharp and the combat is fast paced yet deliberate in nature. The problem is that for a roguelite to really hold your interest there needs to be a wide variance in gameplay on each individual run. This stops the game from getting too repetitive and eventually causing you to lose interest. The problem here is that there are only a handful of weapons and these are really broken down into two categories ranged or melee. All melee weapons play roughly the same and the boons you get during each run don't really change the way that you use them that much besides whether you will be using primarily the special attack, main attack, or dash attack. These boons also don't significantly alter the function of the attack, but rather just add an effect like a dot, pushback, extra damage, chance to crit etc.

There also seem to be a number of "must have' boons for a run to have a realistic chance of being successful. In my experience there is a clear and obvious best build that includes getting divine dash which allows you to reflect projectiles when dashing. This ability is simply a must have for any successful run. You then want an attack that causes doom and the dash ability that automatically procs doom. This to me is by far the best setup in the game. A game like this shouldn't have a clear and obvious best build and no item should be a must when each run is randomized.

Ultimately I didn't dislike this game, but was a little disappointed based on all the hype it got. I mean this game won GOTY awards so I was expecting to play one of the best roguelike/lite games ever and Hades simply didn't live up to that for me, not even sure if it would crack my top 5 roguelike/lites to be honest. Hades had all the extra components that add to a great game like good voice acting and dialogue, cool character design, an interesting narrative, etc. but missed the mark on the core gameplay loop that is simply necessary for a repetitive game like this.

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.

The first level/boss of Returnal will almost certainly drive off a large chunk of players before getting to see the greatness the game has to offer. I almost didn't make it myself as the start is so rough it almost broke me in it's bleak, oppressive, and unforgiving corridors. You begin the game weak, fragile, and unfamiliar with most of the games mechanics. Adding to this, the loops are long... like way too long for a roguelike built around repetitive trial and error progression.

For the lucky few who do get past act 1, rejoice as you do not have to clear it every loop and can now skip to the next level without having to best the stage boss again. the game really opens up after this and becomes less of a mind numbing irritant and more of a tough challenge that rewards you for the grind. The story that unfolds is well worth the investment and is truly one of the most impactful stories I've seen in a game in a while.

I've heard it argued that act 1 does a really good job of encapsulating the main themes of the game, and this is true to some extent. But a game where you are literally stuck in some iteration of hell due to not being able to beat the first level is just rough. Because of this I can't give the game the stellar grade it would deserve if it didn't have such a big padlock on the door to the best parts of the game.

Sifu is a tough but fun kung-fu fighting game dripping with inspiration and references to all the classics from Bruce Lee movies, Oldboy, Kill Bill, etc. When everything is going right this game feels amazing to play. I just wish the game focused more on the fun yet challenging stylish combat and not what I can only describe as trying to be like dark souls. To pull off dark souls difficulty without feeling unfair your combat system has to be super polished and tight, Sifu misses this mark.

There are a number of boss fights and other encounters that just feel unfair or cheap to play. Instead of relying on fast twitch reflexes and well timed counters you have to go into pattern recognition mode or find a guide online for the easy way to beat them and that's just not fun... Especially when enemies do like 10x more damage than you and don't have to deal with the somewhat cumbersome controls. Block, up dodge, down dodge, and parry all being tied to the same button just causes problems sometimes. And the lack of easily identifiable audio/visual cues to determine what type of attack is coming your way makes it even harder to manage the proper defense. This creates a scenario I'm sure pretty much all Sifu players hit at some point where they have to backtrack to master earlier levels to make sure they aren't a senior citizen by the time they get to the endgame.

What starts out as a really interesting mechanic where every death ages you giving benefits and detriments as you age, turns into a grindy annoyance where you keep running through the same levels over and over again in hopes to add as few years to your counter as possible before progressing. This turns the aging mechanic into almost a grading system and forces you to play like a completionist trying to get an S rank on every level so instead of it being fun or even tactical it becomes tedious and annoying. This could have been fixed by simply making sure the combat was always fair and not leaning into the pattern recognition mode. I feel like the default difficulty should have been right in between easy and normal because I found normal to be frustrating and a chore to get through, but easy was just way too easy. This is mostly due to the fact that on normal dying once or twice isn't a big deal, the real pain comes when you die a bunch of times back to back on one boss. You can easily add 10-15 years on one botched boss fight.

Luckily most of the truly annoying stuff is towards the end of the game, the first couple of levels were really fun and really scratch that kung-fu movie itch that made me want to try the game out. I really hope developers realize that not every game has to be super difficult and unforgiving like dark souls to be fun... And this is coming from a fromsoft fanboy.

As with most Blizzard games the level of polish is outstanding. They created an interesting world with tons of interesting characters who all felt unique and paired it with some really engaging gameplay that when in sync with your group feels great. Sounds almost perfect right?

The issue is it's almost too well produced, like it was made to appeal to literally everyone, it comes off almost soulless to me. Every map is intricately designed for skirmishes to happen in very specific areas. You feel the heavy hand of matchmaking purposefully pulling you towards a 50% win rate so everyone can be happy. It's just such an intensely curated experience that it felt wrong in some way. It reminded me of modern music and how it being all digital and autotuned nowadays has removed the human error that gives music its feeling, it makes me think of smart phones that are indistinguishable from other brands and the apps on them that have been meticulously designed to draw your attention for long periods of time.

This isn't to say I hated the game, on the contrary it was really fun and I enjoyed it very much. After a while though, playing it just felt wrong to me, not sure exactly why.

It's weird because on paper this game is kind of crap, but in my heart it is one of the games that I truly loved playing. The story isn't special, the combat is janky, the world is sometimes pretty bare, and there is the typical Bethesda jank sprinkled on top. Why do I like this game so much?

Simply put, It's one of the few open world games that actually earns the moniker, this is not a game where you just run from one quest marker to the next and stop every now and then to climb a radio tower to unlock a portion of the map. This is a game where you pick a direction, go exploring, and within a few minutes you will find something that pulls your attention-- An abandoned factory, a bandit camp, an NPC asking for help, or a group of Radscorpions ready to tear your face off. New Vegas also continues Bethesda's trend of masterful environmental story telling. Not every building you enter has a quest per-say, but pretty much every one has some sort of story to glean from the environment.

Fallout New Vegas is not the best open world game ever made but it does meet all the specific criteria of what I look for in an open world game. To me a large percentage of open world games don't really need to have an open world because they are mainly focused around doing story missions and the open world elements are repetitive and usually boil down to running from one mini-map icon to the next clearing objectives like some checklist. To me a good open world game rewards exploration and curiosity, be it with new gear, a cool boss fight, or an interesting piece of storytelling. Where you feel like you might be seeing something that no-one else has seen. Where you are given the agency to complete a mission in whatever way the games many systems allow for and not held to some strict sequence of actions to complete a mission successfully. New Vegas hits this nail on the head and for that I applaud it.