Mass effect is an incredibly ambitious game that feels so grand and huge it can be overwhelming at times. as soon as you complete the tutorial area, you are thrown out into open space and can follow the main story or explore different planets as you choose. most non essential planets only contain a few side quests, but they feel incredibly cool to explore. The game has fully realized what a world with such advanced technology could look like, and the world feels so alive to explore for it.

Mass effect contains many great characters with their own personalities and stories, most of which you might never see. You could play this game over and over and over again and still have completely different cutscenes and dialogue with different characters. Speaking of dialogue, part of what makes this game so special is the massive amount of custom dialogue you can say as the main character, each piece by piece showing you more bits of the story as if you were actually talking to these npcs to figure out what is going on. This may just be one of the best RPG's ever in terms of its character writing.

The Story of mass effect gets more and more interesting the more you play; its better than i ever could have expected, and the world building is absolutely incredible. every small detail and place in this game seems to have a fully realized backstory behind it, which brings me to the locations. Every place and planet in this game explores a completely different possibility for what a future world could look like, all of them are incredible. they also pretty good for the amount of places you can explore and the Xbox 360's hardware limits.

The combat in this game can be fun, but doesn't deserve quite as much praise as the other aspects. using your abilities on a scroll wheel feels a little but clunky the auto cover system will often fail to work when its supposed to, and the movement is a bit awkward, making for some clunky encounters with enemies. It is fun but nothing crazy.

There is one issue i did have with this game, and that was its performance issues. during combat when there was a lot of enemies around, the frame rate would freeze up and slow to a crawl, and the same during cutscenes. the game pauses quite frequently to save or load, and there are some glitches i ran into such as my character being unable to move making me have to restart the game to progress. I'm not sure if these issues are specific to the Xbox 360 version or not but they are not too big of a deal as the game is still very enjoyable despite them.

Mass effect is a very special game that i feel more people should definitely play. i highly recommend it.

tl;dr: wait for Larian's inevitable Definitive Edition. I was enamored with the first 2 acts of this game but as things progressed and Larian pushed out patches that somehow made things functionally worse I've just become so disappointed. The entire finale of the game became a buggy mess with broken textures, bugged quests and poor performance compared to the first. Up until Act 3 performance was pretty stable but at this point I can't actually talk about the state of the first two acts because of the changes post launch patches have made. This doesn't even address the multiple lackluster writing decisions that very visibly weren't thought out or were stitched together based on poor decisions during development. At the end of the day I cannot recommend this game to people in it's current state, especially given the years of Early Access before being released Early in such a janky and unpolished state. This game may as well still be in Early Access as long as Larian has to keep updating the game until we get the most likely DOS2 style Definitive Edition.

Very nice effort but not executed right.

Warhammer 40k - Kill Team is another effort to leech on the success of the franchise. It is a third person shooter indie game where you can play solo or co-op on an Orc cruiser. It has five story missions and five survival missions.

I must say that all the Orc and Tyranid units look good and reminds me of Dawn of War II, the way it is supposed to. The sound effects are nice, the classic weapons are all there and the bullet cases stay on the ground when you shoot.

But despite all this, the gameplay is horrendous. Cheap deaths by sudden pit falls and Orc Shoota Boyz that kill you faster than a Orc Melee Nob. But that is not the worst, oh no sir, the worst thing in this game is the camera. The game camera is so freaking bad, it made me cry. It is always in a awkward angle, does not rotate with you and sometimes glitches so you get your ass handed to you by enemies of the screen.

One other thing that made me furious is the unskippable cutscenes. There is a lot of them and they take forever. They show you a certain switch you must activate and then the screen stays locked on that switch for 10 seconds. Also, when you die, you need to watch the whole movie again. It made my skin crawl, i pressed every damn button on my keyboard and hoped it worked but no.

So in conclusion, the effort is nice, the Warhammer 40 000 theme is there, the units, weapons and bosses are nice but the way it is played with the drunk camera and the cutscenes you can't skip made it a real chore to finish for me.

DUSK is very simple. Probably, that's one of the strongest sides of this game, considering there's nothing to stop you from just jumping in and starting a massacre. The gamefeel is one of those things you can't relay in a review, especially in the text form, but I think it's safe to say that most people (myself included) find the controls satisfying.

Another thing that draws in is the setting and directional choises. The game doesn't contain any cutscenes, it never asks you to take your fingers off keys. Everything that is shown you have to see for yourself. While the game looks downright ugly, it really captivates your attention with the ideas of levels themselves. Something that is very much enhanced by soundtrack. Sometimes DUSK feels like a game a kid with lots of imagination would make if they were given a sizable budget. And I don't mean it in a bad way, on a contrary, it feels like someone's dream come true.

However it does show that simplicity also one of the main downsides of DUSK. The game is so simple, you could call it primitive. Player has very standard set of guns and even more standard set of enemies that not vary throughout the whole game. Excluding only a couple of examples, most enemies are just the same basic concept put in different skins. They walk and shoot. Sometimes they shoot homing projectiles. Sometimes they shoot grenades. Maybe sometimes they fly. But they never show some complex behaviour. It becomes painfully obvious when you meet first few bosses - they're just the same enemy but with a huge healthbar on top. And if you might think that this would change later in game, I have sad news for you. Really, nothing changes in the way you play throughout DUSK. You don't learn any skills, none of the enemies really test them or push you to your limits. Because every enemy acts the same, you can't expect change in player's behaviour. To really understand why it's true just jump into endless mode for a couple of days, and see how long it takes before you stop having fun. DUSK is so simple, the gameplay feels solid and familiar. Something you already accustomed to and want more of. But if it weren't for presentational choices in the campain, this game easily might've been forgotten because of how shallow game design is.

While I enjoyed my time playing, I just can't be sure that it were enemies or arenas since first ones are uninspiring and second ones mostly serve to set the scene. That's why it should be said that most of the design choices left to be perfected. DUSK is more of a good David Szymansky game than it is a good shooter. Overall, it's okay.

What really sells Chop Goblins is how much game-y it is. Pretty weird thing to say about something that doesn't try to experiment or present some unique with its gameplay at all. The only thing that could be said is that Chop Goblins features lack of jump button just like in first comers of the FPS-genre like original Wolfenstein and first Doom. In that sense, it's definitely retro besides the graphics.
This limitation for the player resulted in more grounded look towards the design of Chop Goblins. While the arenas themselves can't present a challenge for similar game with the ability to jump, here (it seems) player will have to think twice before moving forward. Carelesness is something that most modern shooters try to aboid by giving more options to escape, but this game goes the other direction and asks to just consider your movement.
Strictly speaking, shooters are always about navigation more than anything else. Even the act of shooting a target can't be done without putting your cursor on it. While movement shooters present an additional challenge with more options to navigate, it can be argued that they're temporarily break the 'shooter' gameplay for one moment and become only about 'movement'. Getting rid of options to move helps focus on combat more closely.
Obviously I'm not saying that movement shooters are bad in any way, I just wanted to point that out.

I care for this little silly game too much to admit. It's short and won't waste any of your time.

my hot take is that this, with file#2, is probably my favourite entry in the resident evil series. it's entirely in the adaptable, exciting, varied, scenarios and character experimentation. each scenario has its own pros and cons but all are distinct and memorable; with jack's bar being one of my favourite experiences in all of gaming. there's undeniable nostalgia involved but I don't care. and that opening cutscene!

but to rank them:
jack's bar, as mentioned, perfect momentum and tutorial
the hive, atmospheric, great threat
hellfire, really excellent concept, frustrating with too many loading screens and maze-like layout
below freezing point, always simpler than remembered and my favourite iteration of the umbrella labs, but I just never actively wanna play it yknow?
decisions decisions, hot take but not hot on these puzzles, the poison, or boss

with this said, yeah, all are great and knowing file #2 is arguably even better? excited to replay it this year

70% of this game's campaign is super fun and makes you feel like an overpowered jedi, however when you start to get to the final stages of the game, lightsaber battles become really frustrating to the point where the outcome of the each battle feels random and you need to resort to savescumming before each fight. I'm sure lightsaber controls have a deeper system so that it's not actually random but the game does not explain to you how it really works. Game would have been an easy 8 but I finished the game with a bad taste in my mouth.