Hunting the giant machines and unloading the entire kitchen sink of weapons 'n' shit is like the biggest allure to me in these games. I hate comparing it to Monster Hunter, but it's the closest thing I can compare the combat to conceptually. The open world is alright. It's pretty much generic AAA chorefest. I doubt it even took the devs that long to design the open world since pretty much every biome except for the beach area is ripped straight from Horizon 1.

The story and character writing is solid enough for me to be engaged for most of it, but I think they get to self indulgent on the lore of the world that they forget to tell an actually cohesive and understandable plot. The first Act was a slow burn, the second Act was pretty good, and then the third just was all over the place and ended really abruptly. It's crazy how they got so caught up in setting up an even bigger conflict for the sequel that they forgot to write an actual ending for the game.

EDIT: I'm trying not to gas this game up too much or else I'll get flamed by some people, but I actually grew to really like the main cast of characters in this game. Especially Sylens. I'm a bit sad though as this will probably be the last time I'll ever get to see Lance play that role. He absolutely killed it here man.

RIP Lance Reddick

Went into this very cynical that someone could actually go in an salvage Sonic 06 and at first I thought I was going to be proven right. The first two levels Wave Ocean and Dusty Desert are mired by shit I hated about 06. Rail-roaded segments, piss poor camera controls...

But inexplicably, the game started to become fun. The high speed stages didn't frustrate me. Instead it was actually exhilarating going that fast. Then Radical Train and Kingdom Valley was where it peaked when it came to Sonic stages. If Sonic 06 was as fun as those two levels for the whole entire game, this would so easily be my Top 5 Sonic game. Unfortunately, every other stage is still kinda a mess.

Also in a weird turn of events, playing as Shadow is somehow WAAAAAY more fun than playing as Sonic.

Definitely looking forward to playing P-06 again when it's finished.

Oh yeah, also Silver still plays like shit. On my hands knees begging Silver gets massively overhauled. He don't deserve the stain that 06 left on his reputation.

Spider-Man 2 is the perfect example of why new isn't always better.

Throughout my playthrough, I experienced 3 crashes and 9 softlocks. Couple that with one of the trophies being impossible to get in the post-game (Slack Line) and I concluded that this is hands down one of the most unpolished, rushed current-gen games from Sony's first-party studio.

The story is also just mediocre all around. The first Act is just extremely boring with nothing of note happening besides finding out a bunch of villains getting killed off-screen by some jobber named Kraven. Speaking of which, having Kraven be one of the central antagonists of the game had to have been one of the worst decisions they could've made because Kraven just so happens to be the most uninteresting and flat villain in Spider-Man's rogues gallery.

Venom could've saved this story and to be honest, he almost did. Unfortunately, the entire symbiote invasion just turns the last two hours of the game into complete and utter babble where the main goal turns into retrieving some thingamajig so that the other guy can't have the thingamajig.

Now as for gameplay, it's one of the most positive things I can say. It is fundamentally just the gameplay of Spider-Man Miles Morales which was already solid. New combat abilities are great and the new traversal techniques are fine additions. However, what is dull are the side activities which somehow feels like has less content than the first game despite having a bigger map, which just makes New York feel unnecessarily empty. The villain side quests are especially disappointing. They either A) End with you kicking their ass once and then fucking off, never to be brought up again, or B) End with you not even fighting them at all, the villain escaping, and then unexplainably is never a threat again.

I wanted to like this (and trust me I fuck with Marvel comics and Spider-Man media heavy) but this is just immensely disappointing. Makes sense why this shit didn't win any awards now. 💀💀💀

The No Kinect Patch turns this game from a dogshit mess with probably one of the worst control schemes ever made, into an actually decent racing experience. It's crazy the world of difference being able to play on controller instead of shitass Kinect makes. With that said, this is still the worst Sonic Riders game even with an added patch. The courses are basically glorified Kinect gimmicks and they'd honestly feel completely lifeless if you removed all the gimmicks. Not to mention the story is still boring. There's no memorable cutscenes or cinematics and it plays out entirely like a low-budget VN. That being said, I did have fun. Going back to get S Ranks on every mission in order to unlock Super Sonic was a pretty fun challenge especially with the game's somewhat unique Trick and Air systems.

I'm keeping this at a 1 star because I don't think a mod should have any bearing on what the base game should've been. Especially if that mod is the thing making it actually playable. With the mod, this goes up to a solid 3.5 star experience.