I'll be writing a review on my thoughts for the series as a whole with the collection, so this will be a short one.

I thought this was a really amazing end to the series. While the combat is still not great it does feel like a bit of an overall improvement. The animations outside of real cutscenes are still a bit jank/some scenes are cut really quick and can take away from the urgency or impact sometimes but this has plagued the entire series and I'm kinda used to it by now. Then theres the whole ending debate. I am pretty satisfied with the "Destroy" ending and ngl I cried a bit during it, but I still feel like it could of been stronger given the storytelling capabilities the series has already illustrated. Other than that honestly it was just a great end to the trilogy. It ties up some series-spanning plotlines really well and is full of both heartfelt and badass moments.

Trophy Completion - 87%
Time Played - 39 hours
Nancymeter - 95/100
Game Completion #35 of 2022
April Completion #4

A lot to say about this game. First, I played this game when it came out on PS4 and was completely turned off by the bugs and abysmal performance. But after a year of dedicated fixes, patches, and new content, I came back for the free trial for new-gen consoles, and the difference was night and day.

The first thing I noticed that was remarkably different than the PS4 version was just how stellar this game looks on the PS5. I played on the performance mode and still, the game looks incredible. The aesthetics of bright neon lights and shiny chrome let the lighting tech shine and everything blends together to put this game up there with Horizon: Zero Dawn in terms of the best-looking games of this generation. I also absolutely adore the design of Night City, the setting of the entire game. Night City is a contender for best open-world environment ever. The city is layered and deep, with high roofs and low undergrounds. Pieces of the city are built on top of other parts, it has an impressive sense of verticality where other open-world cities feel flat and one-dimensional. Different regions of the city feel aesthetically distinct, and traveling between them felt like going to a new city entirely. Gangs that control the local area make their presence known with graffiti and random encounters with the police. Night City feels like a city where things happen with or without you interfering. At times random explosions or gunfire would go off in the distance, creating an atmosphere of disorganized chaos. Even the Badlands, the space outside the city, is made visually distinct with solar panels, wind turbines, and other things that populate the wide desert space. I love the design of all the characters and enemies, with varying levels of cyberware creeping into their design. Weapons have this incredible futuristic yet retro feel, where they feel like futuristic weapons designed by people in the 80s. Cars look amazing, and I love that all of them have a modeled interior, it adds a lot to the game. Cyberpunk's aesthetic is what sets it apart, and by far its strongest aspect.

Combat feels great, I never got bored in over 30 hours of playtime. All of the guns sound amazing, each having their own powerful punch. Power weapons are similar to guns you'd have in any other game, with the ability to ricochet that makes them feel interesting to use. However, the weapons I had the most fun with were tech and smart weapons, with environment piercing and tracking bullets respectively. The gun pool here is great, with each weapon feeling distinct and powerful in its own right. Melee weapons also feel great, with a good selection of perks that allow you to run around chopping people's heads off with a katana as a completely viable option, or picking people off with throwing knives. Another great aspect is quickhacks, which if properly invested in, can allow you to clear an area without even drawing your weapon. Quickhacks offer some cool options like detonating a grenade in someone's pocket or forcing them to commit suicide by hacking the cyberware in their body. The breach protocol hacking minigame is also cool, allowing you to get some quick cash or debuff your enemies. Stealth also felt pretty good, with a good selection of options to dispatch enemies quietly, although its best paired with quickhacks and silent weapons. Coming up behind an enemy and dispatching them with the same exact animation every time can get stale. Driving also feels pretty good, I like that the cars feel weighty and difficult to control if you're not careful, but it did make me more prone to using fast travel.

The writing of this game is much better than I expected. The main story kept me engaged with some really good beats and a fantastic ending. I really appreciate that there isn't a "best" ending, each ending is really just different and can make you feel differently depending on what you value as a character, but each have you leave Night City, but not before it takes a piece of you with it. Each ending is dissatisfying in a different way, cementing this theme that Night City takes and takes and doesn't give back. I think the characters are all really well written, they all feel like real people just trying to make it in a city that doesn't cut anyone any slack. I especially like the dynamic you develop with Johnny Silverhand over the course of the story. He never stops being bitter and cold, but its because of all that he's been through, and by the end he develops a soft spot for V, the main protagonist. I also loved of the other characters, specifically Takemura, Panam, and Judy. I think this game strikes a good balance of keeping one singular story thread that you can go down, while still allowing for lots of choice in how you go down that path. There are certain missions that everyone has to complete, but their outcomes can be different depending on how you completed the mission. It feels less like a traditional open world game and more like a real tabletop RPG, where you're on a predetermined campaign, but how the stories smaller moments end up and how the campaign ends are up to you. Cyberpunk is not afraid to cut you off from content entirely if you don't select the right dialogue choices in some key places. I would have appreciated more integration of skill checks, they provide for some really good flavor text and role playing capability, but I only came across a few instances where a skill that I had changed the outcome of a quest. Those few instances are really cool tho, and I would have loved to have seen more.The quest design and writing for all the smaller side jobs is also excellent, each feels distinct and feels like a real job you'd get as a mercenary in this kind of city. There were some quests that really impacted me and made me think about what the best option would really be, and what option my character really would pick. Even gigs, smaller offshoot quests that are supposed to be smaller opportunities to get some quick money, have interesting backstories and oppurtunies to change the outcome through dialogue.

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally the game it should have been at release, and for those who were interested in it before, should give it another shot. I am throughouly impressed with the game CDPR managed to put out, and even more impressed that they've been able to fix it in such little time. I'm excited for the new content they have coming, and I encourage anyone who's been holding off on this game to give it another shot.

I heard a handful of claims before playing Dread that it was THE best Metroid game. Surely this was hyperbole, right? Surely. And then as I played more and more, I understood. Every new ability, every old ability, every cutscene, every boss fight. More and more, my image of Metroid Fusion as the pinnacle was slowly being overwritten by this masterpiece. The level design can't be described in any way other than immaculate.

Each zone is fun to navigate and presents its unique set of challenges and they are all sensibly interconnected. It is designed in such a way that it is fun to both blast through as fast as you can, as well as methodically as you fill in every square on the map like an insane person (me). Mechanics such as the counter and other new abilities add a lot of great depth to the combat, and from a narrative perspective this is unquestionably my favourite portrayal of Samus.

I could go on and on about how wonderful Metroid Dread is, but the best thing I can say is to just play it. This is an unmissable entry in the Metroidvania genre and it absolutely shows that Mercury Steam know exactly what they are doing with the IP. I really do hope we continue to see side scrolling Metroid games, especially if they will be of this caliber.

It's really difficult for me to write about Metroid Dread because while it is something I wanted after loving Samus Returns, I kinda expected it to be more groundbreaking. I liked playing it, the animations and the boss fights are very good, these are the highlight of the game for me. In the beginning I felt like Metroid Dread really was gonna break some conventions, you start by going up instead of down like every other 2D Metroid, it takes quite a long time to get the Morph Ball and this is usually one of the first upgrades you get in previous titles, a great start. But then it becomes very guided and you can't even return to some areas due to some objects placed to block your path. And you have to find that one invisible block to progress, and you don't even have the pulse radar in the beginning like in Samus Returns, you get it much much later here and this doesn't help. This is probably a problem just for me but I couldn't get the counter right many times in this game, it seems like they change the timing too much, I don't know, this wasn't a problem in Samus Returns and it was for me here. I'm not sure I like how they handled the Emmi too, it's scarier than I tought, but the Emmi being limited to their areas takes away much of the unpredictability. I want to end on a positive note by saying that I really liked the new power-ups, I liked the story and cutscenes, and Samus has never looked cooler than she looks on Dread, the suits are awesome. I liked Metroid Dread but I wanted to love it.

What is there to say about Bloodborne that hasn't already been said? So much has been said about this game I feel like I agree with nearly all of it. It's a game where the modern FromSoft formula had been solidified but they still wanted to experiment with it and see what they could play with while still holding onto what makes a FromSoft game a FromSoft game.

A couple of notes before I get into it: my previous 'Souls-like' experience is the Dark Souls trilogy and Code Vein but not much else. I made sure to get the secret ending. I beat all the base game bosses and three of the five DLC bosses. This review doesn't have much coherent flow to it as it's just a rambling series of thoughts on various bits and pieces of the game. Please enjoy.

One thing I feel like I should note, is that I feel like the difficulty of the game has been somewhat overstated. Or, at the very least, like the talk around it is a bit misleading. This isn't some "oh this game is so easy" proclamation, not at all. Before playing this game, I had been lead to believe that this game was centered around using the gun to parry which, would've been a miserable time for me because I am absolutely terrible at parry timing in every game that has it. But, outside of a few select enemies, you can cruise through the game without ever bothering with parrying. I mostly used the gun for pulling enemies or getting a cheeky 20 extra damage in here or there. So while I thought this game was going to be ludicrously hard for me, it ended up being comparable to any of the Souls games.

One of my favorite parts of modern FromSoft games, and the 'Souls-like' genre as a whole, is the very special sense of exploration I get with these games. It's not just about visiting a new place and seeing what's there, but the specific feeling I get when I can look back and see how an area wraps around on itself or connects to other areas. I build this map in my mind of what it all looks like and how one area connects to another and the moment of realization when I open a new shortcut and figure out where I've just gone back to is unparalleled. It's one of my favorite feelings in games and is one of the biggest reasons I enjoy FromSoft's Souls games. Bloodborne absolutely continues that and while some of the areas felt relatively small, it still delivered time after time.

Something that perplexes me about Bloodborne, though, is how FromSoft looked at their games and decided to un-solve some problems. The first of these things is Blood Vials. I feel like with Dark Souls 2 they had kind of nailed the way limited healing worked. You had your Estus Flask changes that refill endlessly whenever you rest plus consumable healing. It was a good balance. Bloodborne is that but minus the Flask aspect of it so if you ever ended up in a position where you ran out of Blood Vials, then you had to either risk pushing on with no healing or backtrack and farm. And, to me, this sort of FromSoft game isn't about farming. Farming is never the solution. It may be beneficial and you could use it to get a leg up here or there but there never comes a time when you need to go farm something. It was a problem with the various healing grasses in Demon's Souls that they figured out better options for in the Dark Souls games and yet with Bloodborne they went back again. Normally I can look at something like this and see some reason why a developer might make this sort of change even if I disagree with it but in this case it feels like a step backwards for no benefit at all. It doesn't make for any interesting tension and just adds the potential for frustration. Just make the stash in the Hunter's Dream have infinite vials, problem solved. You maintain the limited healing but are never going to force someone to farm for more. A bizarre problem to re-add to the game.

On a related note, the way fast travel works is also a strange step backwards. It's a relatively minor thing, but having to travel to the Hunter's Dream and then to the lantern you want instead of directly from lantern to lantern is a bit tedious. And if you accidentally travel to the wrong place? May god have mercy on your soul.

On another, different, related note, I think there's a particular elegance to the flow of a FromSoft game. You know how I said you never really need to farm? I think it's pretty crucial to the way their games work. As long as you clear an area without losing too many Souls (or Blood Echoes or whatever) then you can probably level up and upgrade your equipment enough to safely move on to the next area without too much trouble. It's an important bit of design work that goes mostly unnoticed until you stop and think about it more.

The way Bloodborne encourages aggression is really fascinating. There's the obvious things they do such as the 'rally' mechanic of regaining a portion of your lost health by attacking after you've been hit or the lack of shields or heavy armor (and the one time you do get a shield, the description is a jab at the idea of blocking). But there are some other, more subtle ways they do it as well. What I found is that with quite a few of the bosses, there are attacks that it's better to move towards the boss rather than to try and back away or dodge out of danger. It's a minor thing but it's a very clever bit of design. They want you to push the attack and to be on the offensive and are looking at each aspect of the game and saying "how can we encourage this particular play style while still allowing people options?" It's very smart game design on their part.

Chalice Dungeons are an interesting idea that I found to be dreadfully boring. I like exploring areas. I like figuring out the weird lore. I like seeing interesting sights. So having a series of dungeons that are the same handful of tiles repeated over and over with little to no reward to them beyond more Blood Echoes is perhaps the most tedious thing they could've done. So even though I only did a few before I tapped out on those, I do hope they iterate on the ideas here in some way in a future game. I will say that I was surprised at how much unique asset work there was in those areas. The enemies, the areas themselves, and the bosses were entirely new from the base game. I was expecting it to be similar to the Depths from Code Vein where it was content from the main path of the game being recycled and remixed into little dungeons. So that at least was a welcome surprise.

Something that I was a bit surprised by was how, about halfway through my playthrough, I felt disappointed by the amount of items in the game and, more specifically, looting items off of enemies. In the Dark Souls games, getting an item drop from an enemy is always interesting. Maybe it's a weapon buff item or maybe it an upgrade material! Maybe it's a consumable item to heal a status ailment or maybe it's a new kind of hat! Sure, most of that stuff just gets thrown in a stash or sold for souls but a thing I like in RPGs is getting loot from stuff. Bloodborne feels like it really pared down the amount and variety of items in a way that makes a lot of logical sense, there is still an illogical part of me that is like "yeah but I like getting two dozen worthless swords".

A note about the DLC: Lady Maria is my wife and we were married atop the Astral Clocktower after she romantically ran me through with her sword and spilled my blood across the floorboards and left me there, bleeding to death.

More seriously, I really enjoyed how the DLC started off with an area that is familiar but also changed and how it plays with your knowledge of the area. My favorite specific example of this is at one point in that opening area, you find the building that is relatively early in the game that has an item on the ground and an old man in a chair that, when you pick up the item, he attacks you. You probably know the one I'm talking about. In the base game, you can go from that building to find a shortcut to a lantern. So when you get there in the DLC, you might think "oh, maybe there's a lantern near here, neat." And the thing is, there is a lantern nearby. But if you take the path that the you would in the base game, there isn't a lantern but instead there's a hunter who really wants to fuck you up. It's a great moment that only comes about because of how memorable the first area is and how the DLC plays with your memories of it.

The DLC definitely had one of my top moments. I got to the Living Failures fight and barely beat them on the first go in a very close fight. So to ride that high into the Lady Maria fight immediately after that felt great. I didn't care about how much she murdered me because it was such a stellar session of gaming to have those fights back to back like that. Incredibly fun pair of fights.

So, that's it. I'm happy to have finally checked this one off my backlog of games after staring at it sitting on my shelf for three or four years now. I'm not sure if I'll ever play it again (I rarely replay games these days) but I'm more than content with my time spent in the world of Yharnam and beyond.

I think this one is a four star game? It's damn close to five, though. Maybe my opinion will change with time as I think back on the game.

I'm going to be real with you here, This game sucks. It has really cool levels but none of them are actually that fun to play. The hubworlds only make progression way more tedious and the game doesn't benefit from having them. The first two Advance games having a map worked better. The levels design sucks but the gameplay kinda smells bad too. I never felt incentivised to use the tag team actions even if there's a lot of cool combinations. Are there redeeming qualities? Yeah. The graphics and music are really nice but a game with a fantastic presentation can't carry a game that is fundamentally flawed. This game is easily bottom tier and the worst Advance game. Fuck this game

For the first game Dimps ever developed let me just say, they made an absolutely terrible first impression. This game has aged about as well as milk.
A brand new 2D Sonic game with multiple characters and on a Nintendo system? I'm sure Sonic fans in 01 were collectively losing their minds, and I'm sure back then they had fun for what it offered: a bite size Sonic game on GBA. Though, coming back to this game was nothing short of a nightmare. It feels like a surface level understanding of what makes the 2D games good, and more often than not will you be slowed down by terrible enemy placement, random spikes, bottomless pits, and rising platforms that crush you. The bosses are also some of the absolute worst you will ever encounter in any Sonic game, specifically the bosses of Ice Mountain, Cosmic Angel, and the Final Boss. As someone who is well accustomed to the physics and small design quirks of the original Genesis trilogy, I'd also like to add the fact that when you're fighting Eggman in these bosses, his hitbox is small, as for most you can only hit him on top instead of the sides like most games. There are segments where he will be on the ground in a vehicle and Spin-dashing into him deals him damage, but it phases you through him, leaving you on the opposite side of him running into his weapon. This didn't happen in the Genesis games as every time you hit him at any angle you would bounce right off of him. Rail Grinding is introduced in 2D here for the first time, and while it does look cool, rail detection is insanely finicky at times. It doesn't help that only Sonic is capable of doing it in this game (and apparently Amy? Maybe it's just a hedgehog thing). Special Stages return with the same directive as Sonic 2: Get enough rings to traverse through the next phase to get to the Emerald. Sonic 2's special stages were never really my favorite but I would take that over these. The movement in these segments is slower than you want it to be, and there is NO leniency with the amount of rings to get. You practically need to get every single one to go to the next phase. The sprite work is very good, but even the level aesthetics themselves aren't super original. Neo Green Hill is nice and pleasant, but then the second zone Secret Base, which for some reason has a spy theme to its music is overtly brown and design wise reminiscent to Metropolis Zone (Why is there lava here?). Casino Paradise is like a boneless Casino Night from Sonic 2, and Ice Mountain and "Angel Island" (quotations because its nothing like its Sonic 3 counterpart) are equally boring to look at. The music is nice, and much like Sonic 3 and Knuckles, Act 2's tracks are remixed versions of Act 1. Overall, I wouldn't really recommend this game too much. You're better off just playing the original Genesis trilogy. Hell, you'd have more fun playing Ultimate Flash Sonic than this.

Sonic Advance 2 on the other hand.....