This is going to be an incredibly biased review which is based entirely on my own preferences for video games. Most of my problems with this game are my own fault and are no fault of the game itself. Or at least I assume so. So yeah...

I wanted to try out Unicorn Overlord the moments I heard about it back in June of last year. 13 Sentinels Aegis Rim had quickly become one of my favorite games of all time, so I was more than happy to try out another Vanillaware title. So, I went and pre-ordered the limited edition that came with the little card game and the soundtrack. That was how much I had come to love the studio.

But then I learned at some point that this was going to be a strategy game, and I got really scared. You see, my three least favorite video game genres are, in ascending order of dislike: fighting games, racing games, and above all else, strategy games. But at the very least, there are some fighting and racing games that break the mold for me, and I can still have fun with any of those while playing with friends. But strategy games? In all honesty, anything more complicated than Sid Meier's Civilization V is just way too much for me. I prefer my games to either be fast and adrenaline inducing, or emotionally powerful and tear inducing. And sadly, all that strategy games do for me is make me feel either frustrated or bored.

But hey, I was still willing to give it a shot! And I learned that its apparently a lot like Fire Emblem! Awesome! I liked the very few games I played in that series, so surely I'll enjoy this one.

And I did!

For the first few hours.

When the game was holding my hand, and allowed me to feel like a cool general building my army and ripping apart anyone in front of me, I enjoyed it quite a lot! It felt really unique and refreshing to play, and even if the plot was pretty barebones, I was still loving everything else the game was working with.

But once I got into Drakenhold, everything just changed.

Suddenly, there were just so many mechanics to work with, so many small little details to move around and optimize, so many different characters and abilities... I just got overwhelmed. And then after that, the game stopped holding my hand. And everything just fell apart.

Now main battles were lasting upwards of an hour, I was losing so any soldiers, and I was just getting so damn frustrated. I even lowered the difficulty down to baby mode, which helped for a bit, but even that wasn't enough to push me through.

I know it's my fault for not fully engaging with the game's mechanics, but these kinds of mechanics are the ones that my brain just entirely despises. Having to slowly work through all the characters and meticulously build the best teams and strategies sounds like actual torture to me.

So in the end, even though I really liked the game's art style, atmosphere, world building, and the general game direction as a whole, I just decided that it wasn't worth it. I just wasn't having any fun anymore, and I'd hate to only make myself dislike this game more by forcing myself through it.

I'm giving this game a seven out of ten because I do think its really special and unique, despite how much I ended up really disliking the gameplay. I think my single favorite aspect of the game was how amazing it felt to build up your army. It really did feel like you were building together a huge force and liberating the world around you. I loved exploring the overworld and getting to know everyone, if the game was built more around that, this might have been one of my favorite games ever.

Overall, I think Unicorn Overlord is a really cool game, but since I just don't like strategy games at all, it sadly just isn't for me. If you are a fan of strategy games, you'll probably love this game, give it a shot! But if you're like me, only try it if you really think this will be the one that changes your mind on the genre.

And be mindful, aside from the game genre and general setting, this is nothing like Fire Emblem at all.

Is it fair for me, a man in his mid 20's, to be judging Bluey: The Videogame, a game made for three year olds?

Is it fair for me to point out how annoying the controls are, how buggy the game is, and how much of a cash grab it feels like when the target audience of three year olds probably won't even care?

Is it fair for me to say that the game is just bad even though I'm not a three year old?

I don't know.

But what I can say with a decent level of confidence is that if I was a three year old, I'd absolutely hate this game, particularly because of how poorly conveyed everything is. There were multiple times I had to look up a guide to even figure out what to freaking do in this game for three year olds!

Please, do not bother with this game.
Not as a meme.
Not as a Bluey fan.
Not even as a parent.

Play any other game for kids, you'll have a way better time in every single way. This game is only good for a few laughs at its expense and nothing else. After that, you become the joke.

Like plenty of other people, I assume, I decided to try out OTXO after watching Raycevick's video that showered it with praise. Hotline Miami is one of my favorite games, and favorite game series, of all time, so a Hotline Miami inspired game felt right up my alley. I was looking forward to endlessly playing this for months on end if it was as good as Raycevick made it sound. However, while I understand most of the praise being given to this game, I ultimately just can't agree with it. It sacrifices so much of what made Hotline Miami work in service of its roguelike design that it ends up completely losing what made Hotline Miami so special in the first place.

I'll start of by pointing out what I liked about the game. The art style is pretty interesting, it's not the most unique style I've ever seen, but it gives the game a decently firm sense of identity. I also liked the general feel of the game, while I think it misses the mark of what Hotline Miami was aspiring to by quite a lot, it still manages to create a great combat loop, one that I would have loved a lot more if I wasn't constantly thinking about Hotline Miami while I was playing it.

Okay, now to get onto my big problem with the game.

Something that Raycevick forgot to mention (or maybe purposely didn't mention) while he was talking about Hotline Miami in his video was the importance of the quick restart. When you die in Hotline Miami, you just press a single button and you're thrown immeidtlay back in the fray with no loading screen. You just have to start at the beginning of the floor you died on. I firmly believe that this mechanic is the single most important aspect of Hotline Miami; it's what ties everything else together.

Hotline Miami is a game about aggression. reaction, and memorization. You're encouraged to run through the levels as fast as you can, obliterating anyone in front of you with whatever you have on you. And if you die? So what? Hit the restart button and get right back into it! The more you play, the more you'll memorize the layout of the buildings, the paths of the bots, and the reactions those bots will have. Once you get really good at the game, you can just blow through a level without even having to stop. Even those crazy levels in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number with ridiculously large areas become bearable once you remember death just means a quick restart. You're supposed to be a train going at ridiculously high speeds, and when you get into that conductor seat, there's really nothing else like it.

This is why the game is designed the way it is. Why enemies kill you in one hit, why you kill them in one hit, why enemies don't react to the carnage around them when you're using a silenced gun, and why enemies might not react to you if you're behind an ajar door. Every single thing is designed to make you be as fast and aggressive as possible, and it all starts with that quick restart.

Without that, you just wouldn't have Hotline Miami anymore.

And this is my biggest problem with OTXO.

Since OTXO is a roguelike that forces you to start at the very beginning of the game upon death, the game can't treat death as lightly as Hotline Miami. If the player could just die in one hit and be forced to go back to the beginning, it would be a miserable experience. And so, the game tips the scales in the player's favor in a more explicit manor than Hotline Miami does. It gives you way more health than the enemies, an insta-kill melee attack, and a bullet-time-like ability. And all of these are outside of the roguelike upgrades you can get!

But that's not all! Without the quick restart, the game also can't ask players to memorize layouts or enemy patterns, that would get far too frustrating far too quickly. So, it makes up for that by relying on procedurally generating level layouts, aside from the bosses who seem to all be the same as far as I can tell.

All of these shifts combined result in a game that is basically the exact opposite of Hotline Miami in a painfully frustrating way.

The level design gets so boring and tedious after only a few runs, bullet-time feels like a crutch to overly aid the player, enemies feel random and indistinct, and worst of all, the game doesn't feel fast.

Okay sure, it does feel fast, but not Hotline Miami fast. I'm not charging through these rooms obliterating everything I see as fast as I can for the thrill of it; I'm slowing bashing down doors and killing a few random dudes by going into slow-mo and trying to go quick so I can make more money to buy upgrades that are actually a little useful. Not only does it not feel quite like Hotline Miami, it feels like its in a completely different ballpark.

Also now that I mentioned it, I have to talk about the money system which reward you more money the faster you are. Hotline Miami also had an external reward for going fast, but that was just a high score and ranking system, it only mattered to the people who wanted to get A+ rankings. That way, people who were more timid could still play the game and get through it by doing the bare minimum. But in OTXO if you aren't fast, you're never going to get past the first floor, and that's something I just find aggravating.

There's also a few other issues I have, like how the story tries to be convoluted and unclear like Hotline Miami but fails to understand why Hotline Miami did that, and how you have to spend the money used for upgrades to unlock new weapons and trinkets which I find excessively annoying, but I don't think those complaints are all that important. My big problem is with the game's refusal to understand what made Hotline Miami work all while trying to "enhance" it.

Overall, I don't think OTXO is a bad game, but I don't think its a particularly great game either. It it was trying to be its own thing and had a visual style and gameplay that didn't just invoke Hotline Miami, I might have loved it. But as it is right now, I just can't recommend it to anyone that's coming to it in hopes of getting that same rush they got from playing Hotline Miami for the first time. If you want to play something that invokes the same sense of speed while having unique gameplay, please play Katana Zero instead. Or hell, just download the free community made levels in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. To me, there's just no real reason to play OTXO if you're a huge Hotline Miami fan like I am, and that's a damn shame.

The soundtrack is really good though.

I tried to give this game a shot since I'm interested in playing through the entire Hitman series, but after about an hour or so of playing, I felt no emotions other than frustration and confusion. The controls were baffling, the gameplay was painful, and the overall archaic feel to everything was so mind-numbing. I ultimately just decided that it wasn't worth it, I'll just go on over to the next game in the series instead.

There's one review for this game on steam that said the only reason one should play this game is for a burst of nostalgia, and I completely agree. Maybe if I played this as a kid I might love playing it now, but trying to play it without any prior history is basically impossible.

Hopefully I'll like the next entry in the series way more.

Honestly, I'm not really sure how to feel about Spider-Man 2.
Is it good? Of course!
Is it great? Maybe, depending on who you ask.
Is it better than the first? I mean, yeah? But it definitely didn't affect me as much.
Would I play through it again? Probably not.
I'll try my best to explain why.

In terms of gameplay, Spider-Man 2 is pretty damn good, just as good as the previous games, if not better. The web-slinging is super fun as always, combat is fast paced and engaging, and the open-world checklist style of gameplay still works really well with this series (I know people generally don't like these types of games anymore, but I think there's still a place for them). My only complaints are that the game starts off expecting a lot out of the player in terms of combat and it really threw me for a loop (once I got further in the game it stopped being a problem, but early game was surprisingly difficult for me), and that there's just a lot of new abilities and gadgets that just make the game feel too cluttered. Giving both Peter and Miles eight new abilities is cool, but I never bothered to switch between my active ones sine I just viewed them all as quick damage dealers. And the web wings were nice, but I barely ever used them outside of the times the game forced me to. But honestly, aside from those small complaints, gameplay wise, this entry is just as solid as the previous Insomniac Spider-Man games.

Where this game falls apart though, is with the mechanical pacing and general story.

Now, I just spent a good amount of time praising the gameplay, but that only applies to the times you're playing as one of the two Spider-Men. Whenever you have to play as Mary Jane in her annoying little stealth segments, or play as Miles and talk to high schoolers, or play as Peter and just freaking walk around and do nothing for ten minutes, it is absolutely excruciating. They attempted to make Mary Jane's levels a little more bearable by letting you easily defeat enemies; but all that accomplishes is making the levels feel all the more pointless. Now they're just faster and slightly less annoying, I still wish they weren't in the game. And that goes doubly so for all the times the game makes you play as Peter and just walk around for a bit while shaking your controller like an idiot to make Peter wave his arms. If you can't tell, I particularly despised the one Coney Island segment, though I did have fun flailing my controller around and making Peter raise his arms at the most inappropriate moments. I hope that when they make the next mainline game in 2029 or whenever, they either get rid of these segments entirely or at least make them less abundant, I was nearly tearing my hair out in the first third of the game due to how over present these were.

Aside from that major issue, the story itself isn't as big of an issue, but it was impossible for me to ignore how much it bothered me throughout my playthrough. This game's biggest problem narrative wise is that its just juggling between WAY too much stuff. The symbiote arc and Venom's origin story, Miles trying to figure out who he is, and Kraven with his hunters, and that's not counting a bunch of smaller stuff the game deals with as well. All three of these plots are, by themselves, pretty interesting; but the game just can't balance between the three of them for the life of it. As a result, all three end up feeling substandard. You don't get enough time with the symbiote suit or Venom for either to leave an impact and Miles' arc feels really rushed. When the game just focuses on Venom near the end, it feels way more balanced, but it takes way too long to get there. Oh yeah, and Kraven, OH BOY Kraven! He is by far the absolute worst part of this game's story in my eye.

I personally consider myself to be a pretty big Spider-Man fan, but at the same time, I'm kind of a normie as well. I love the films, cartoons, and video games, but I've never read any of the comics. And because of that, I had no idea who the hell Kraven was before playing this. And I have to be completely honest: this didn't me want to learn more about him at all.
Through most of the story, Kraven functions almost entirely as a walking plot-device. He exists to make the other characters arcs happen. This isn't inherently bad, but the way Kraven's character was handled made him feel like an afterthought through most of the game. It isn't until the end of Kraven's time in the story that he's finally given some characterization, but by that point, it was far too late. I had lost all interest in him and his annoying hunters. And speaking of the hunters...

Oh my god, I could not get over how much the hunters annoyed me from a narrative and worldbuilding standpoint. The hunters invade New York City at the very start of the game, they start killing villains, destroying property, and generally just being a huge menace to the city.
And for whatever reason, nobody seems to care.
Sure, everybody keeps saying "oh man, these hunters sure are bad!" but it was genuinely astonishing to see how little anyone seemed to take them seriously. All the characters would freak out when they were on a mission directly confronting the hunters, but once the game cut to something else, the hunters become the furthest thing from anyone's mind. It is so painfully hard to take Peter's problems with his relationship and employment seriously when there's a private army invading the city in the background. It is so difficult to play a level where you go to Coney Island and flail you arms around on a rollercoaster while the city is being attacked by, again, an invading private army.

I know I've been complaining about this for way too long, but I just have to point out my single favorite line relating to this in the entire game. There's one point in the game where Danika is talking about Spider-Man's symbiote suit and compares it to the hunters. And she says: "Look, the hunters are bad. But this new black suit-" And I lost it.
The hunters are BAD!? They're an invading foreign army that is actively killing people! I don't mind someone in-universe arguing that black suite Spider-Man is just as bad, or even worse, than the hunters, but the only way to achieve that is by downplaying the hunters or uplaying symbiote suit Spider-Man, neither of which the game does.

It became to jarring to me how little anyone seemed to care about the hunters that I started to wonder if the game was going for some kind of commentary on societal-wide apathy. At one point, the game has a few kind of awkward moments that seem to be evoking some sort of Covid commentary, so maybe commentary on apathy isn't too far of a stretch. But if that was the intent, it was not executed well at all.

Okay, rant over.

At the end of the day, I think the story and pacing are by far this game's weakest points, but the satisfying gameplay was always fun enough to make me forget about it. No matter how much I hated the stealth sections, or how much I didn't like this game's interpretation of Venom, or how much Kraven and his hunters pissed me off, when I got back to webslingling, all that frustration just melted away. And for plenty of people, that will be enough.

I have just one final note to make on this game: Despite my frustrations with its story, I still enjoyed my time with it overall. But honestly, I don't really think this was worth waiting five years for. Maybe I'm being a little too hard on Insomniac, they are pretty much the only Sony owned studio that can make more than one game every half a decade, so I gotta give them that. And they released the Miles Morales game in-between the two main titles, so its not like it was an empty wasteland during those five years. But still, with all that in mind, I just don't like the fact that this game released five years after the first. I think this is mostly just me being pissed at how horrible the AAA game industry has become over the years. So many of these games feel the same and take way too long to develop. If this had released two or even three years after the original, I think I would have loved it way more. But having to wait five plus years for a game that feels like a small step forward is something I've become increasingly frustrated with. Spider-Man 2 is still good, but it would have been even better if it had come out in a different console generation, one that wasn't on the brink of total collapse.

Jak II was one of my absolute favorite games as a kid. I loved its grim world, edgy story, and engaging gameplay. And god dammit, I still love it today.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of problems with this game. The difficulty can be absurd at times, the checkpoint system is downright painful, the racing missions nearly brought me to tears, It's WAY harder to 100% than the first game, and the over-use of objectifying sex jokes gets really old really quick. But even with all that in mind, I still can't help but love Jak II.

To me, Jak II is the epitome of what made the PlayStation 2 so charming in the first place. It was a system that had just about anything on it; it was a system for everyone. While the GameCube targeted mostly kids and the Xbox targeted mostly adults and teenagers, the PlayStation 2 was there for anybody who wanted it. You could play fun games for kids like Sly Cooper and absolute blood baths like God of War. And right dab in the middle, was Jak and Daxter.

It was also a system made during the game when gaming was starting to be taken more seriously, but not too seriously. This came out in a time of experimentation. Back then, you could just change the entire tone of your series out of nowhere and go in a completely different direction without having to worry about what shareholders thought. It was a time when big games could be weird, confusing, and edgy; and that's why I can't stop loving this game, no matter how many issues it has.

And aside from that, if you can look past a lot of the game's issues in terms of difficulty, there's a lot to love! Movement feels really good, the guns are all really distinct and memorable, and it really managed to capture the exact feeling I get when playing a Grand Theft Auto game, which was precisely what Naughty Dog was going for.

Maybe I'm just blinded by nostalgia to some degree, but Jak II is a genuinely great game made during a time when big PlayStation releases were allowed to be weird and crazy. Its such a shame that this series is the only one of Naughty Dog's children to be basically ignored outside of PlayStation Now releases. This game deserves so much love, and I'm so thankful I can play this using OpenGoal, if you want to experience this game in the best way possible, OpenGoal is unquestionably the best way to go.

"Pikmin 1" is so much fun!

I was a bit afraid of getting into this one, since I'm almost always scared of big time restrictions in games; but this one ended up working out really well! The thirty day time limit is actually really easy to work with, as long as you get one part a day, you'll likely get the good ending. But it still helps put pressure on you and gives you the impression that you're really trying to survive on this deadly foreign planet. I ended up really liking the mechanic overall.

The gameplay itself can feel kinda weird at times, and there is frankly a massive skill ceiling, but the core mechanics work pretty well and are fun to toy around with. This entry in the series is somewhat restrictive since you only have three Pikmin types, but the game makes great use of all of them. It was rewarding to beat up monsters and grab ship parts the entire time playing!

I'm looking forward to playing the sequels, but this one hit pretty damn well. This was clearly a great start to an amazing franchise.

I didn't really like this mode in the original version of the game, but I had a ton of fun with it here!

Since the moment-to-moment combat was my favorite thing in the remake, this is a perfect slice of pie for me. It feels great to take down enemies, no matter who you're playing as. And since the game is generally pretty nice with its scoring system, I can get a good grade even if I suck! Yay!

Still though, even if this mode allows for a ton of replayabillity with great gameplay, it isn't exactly something everyone will want to play. If you're not obsessive about getting high scores, you'll likely only play through the levels with whatever characters you unlock before you hit a wall and just stop, like I did.

Overall, this is a super fun mode and, in my opinion, way better than the original; but it isn't something I'd really sink my time into personally.

When I played the remake of "Resident Evil 4", I couldn't really decide if I liked it more than the original or not.

That is not the case for "Separate Ways". This is an absolute improvement over the original version of this expansion in literally everyway.

The combat feels like its continuing right off the end of the main game in terms of difficulty and mechanics; the game is way harder and there's surprisingly more to do as Ada. I loved her ability to grapple hook enemy shields, and her abilities for traversal and general movement are really fun. They even managed to make the requests pretty unique and interesting, even if I didn't finish all of them (those bug ones were actually pretty hard for me).

What really caught me by surprise through was how this DLC used segments from the original game that were cut from the remake. When I played through the remake, I remembered asking myself: "Where's the part where you ride those skyrails before fighting the first major boss?" "Where's that one fight with the weird bug monster in the cave?" "Why did they take out the first Saddler fight before he becomes a big monster?" Welp, turns out they were all here the whole time! I wonder why they decided to do this; were these segments just cut for time? Were they removed for pacing? Or maybe they were always just going to put them in this DLC? I don't know, but I'd be very interested to learn why.

My one major complaint about this DLC is that I am very disappointed by what they did to Wesker's voice. I'm sorry, but if he doesn't have that stupid, iconic voice of his that he'd been using since the beginning of the series, he's just not Wesker.

But aside from that, this is the best DLC that Capcom has ever put out in recent memory. This one is definitely worth playing, especially if you enjoying the main game.

When I first heard about a "Resident Evil 4" remake, I honestly thought it was pretty ridiculous. The last few "Resident Evil" remakes were justified from both an availability and accessibility standpoint.
In terms of availability, the older "Resident Evil" games are pretty much unplayable outside of owning older hardware or emulation, so remaking those made sense.
And in terms of accessibility, I'm willing to bet that plenty of players (myself included) wouldn't be fans of the tank controls from older games, so changing the gameplay to be suited for a newer audience was a great idea that allowed more players to learn to love these games. Even if I'm not a huge fan of the "Resident Evil 3" remake, I still love the fact that these games were remade and that I was able to experience them as a player in some capacity.

But "Resident Evil 4"? Well, in terms of availability, "Resident Evil 4" has been ported more times than "Skyrim"! So getting your hands on it wasn't an issue at all; if you owned literally any non-portable console made after "Resident Evil 4"'s release, you could play it. And in terms of accessibility, while "Resident Evil 4"'s combat and gameplay can be a little archaic by modern standards, it is by no means inaccessible. A new player could easily get used to how the game worked after playing for an hour or two.

All of this left me with the feeling that a remake of "Resident Evil 4" would have been completely pointless and derivate. Even after loving the "Resident Evil 2" remake, I just didn't see the point in this one.

But boy, was I wrong.

This game slaps! The combat is so enthralling and addictive! I never got bored of fighting my way through hordes of mind controlled monsters. And I love how fast the combat is! The original had enemies move slowly to work with Leon's restrictive shooting mechanics, but now that he can move around freely, they unleash all hell upon you and it is great! I think my favorite part of combat was using the knife to finish off enemies; in particular, I loved slamming a guy against the wall and stabbing him right in the neck before he even got a chance to get up. It hit me right in the violence loving part of my brain, and it felt amazing!

I also have to give huge props to the writing here which greatly improved upon the original game in every way. The narrative flows much better and the characters feel so much more lively and interesting when compared to the original. The two biggest glow ups are easily Krauser and Luis. In the original, Krauser just kind of shows up and then pretty much pisses off until his fight, but in the remake he feels way more like a malicious entity stalking Leon throughout his adventure.
And as for Luis, his improvements are even better. He feels way more important to the story, and I grew to actually like him this time, while in the original I mostly found him to be either annoying or funny and nothing else.

And on top of all that, I'm happy to say that they removed pretty much all the embarrassing sexual harassment jokes from the original game, all while greatly improving Ashley's character. (I was so relieved when Luis didn't mention her uh..."ballistics").

In many, many ways, this game is a straight up improvement over the original.
However, in many other ways, its also a strangely divergent step down.

I loved most of the game, but having played the original, some changed elements really stood out to me and took me out of the experience. For one, almost all of the bosses are just...not good. Most are stupidly easy, to the point that I was wondering if I should have been playing on hard mode instead of standard. But then there's Salazar's fight which I absolutely despised. It was the only time in the game where I died multiple times, and most of those deaths felt cheap to me. I can say with a pretty strong amount of confidence that the bosses from the original game are way better than the ones here, by a pretty sizable amount.

And my other really big issue with this game is what they did to the inventory system. "Resident Evil 4"'s briefcase inventory is one of the best inventory systems ever conceived in video games. It was so satisfying to just sit down, take some time, and move items around in my inventory until you found the most optimal use of space. It made me have to consider not only the number of items I carried, but the size and positioning of them as well. It was a system that promoted strategy and critical thinking, and it was innately rewarding to figure it all out.
And in the remake, for whatever godforsaken reason, they decided to just give the player an "auto-sort" button that just does that for you.
Why?
Seriously, why?
Sure, I could just try to ignore it and fix up my briefcase myself, but now that there's just a button that figures out the most optimal layout for me without a second of hesitation, why should I even bother? Without the challenge of hindering myself by not doing doing so, there's just no reason to bother with one of the best mechanics from the game anymore. It's just not satisfying if there's a solution to the problem right in front of you that can be achieved by pressing a single button...

There's a few other small problems I have to, like how the minecart section is way too forgiving, and how the game feels way shorter than the original; but ultimately, the boss fights and the auto-sort button are my two biggest issues with the game.

Even now, I'm still having trouble figuring out how I feel about the remake of "Resident Evil 4". It is undeniably great, but does it compare to the original? When I think about how much I love the moment to moment combat, and how thankful I am for the character and story improvements, I can't help but step forward and scream that its a huge improvement!
But when I think about how less satisfying the bosses are, and how disappointing the auto-sort button is, I hesitantly take a step back.

Honestly, I love this game, but I do think the original is still superior. While it has plenty of problems, those problems were born from the time period it was created and how it was created. The lack of story is glaring, but the game (and series at the time) never cared about its story all that much anyway, so can we really fault it for that? The gameplay can be a little weird, but it was one of the first of its kind, so a little bit of chunkiness is expected. The only things I can't really make excuses for are the embarrassing sexual harassments jokes and general objectification of Ashley, the new version of her character is undoubtedly superior.

I don't know, I love both games, but I love them both differently. I love this game for the moment to moment combat and the superior narrative. But I love the older game for its overall feeling and bold direction. I think everyone is going to have their own preference based on what they want out of a game like this. Some will love this one, while others will only love the original. And for me, I love both.

Personally, what I'm really excited to see is if those rumored remakes of "Resident Evil 5" and "Resident Evil 6" actually end up bring true. Up to this point, all of the games they've made remakes for were originally great and well received; I'd be really interested to see what they do with games that have appalling reputations. I'd love to play versions of those games with this type of gameplay (so long as they find a way to fix the glaring racism from "Resident Evil 5"). I'm remembering that one post from either Twitter or tumblr that said something along the lines of: "Instead of remaking good movies, they should remake bad movies with good premises but bad execution to give them another shot." Imagine if "Resident Evil 5" wasn't plagued with vain attempts at recreated "Resident Evil 4"'s success and a general lack of foresight. Imagine if "Resident Evil 6" wasn't made during Capcom's dark years, where they just tried appealing to a western audience in hopes of scoring a bigger profit. Those are the kinds of remakes I would be very excited to play. And if this is the template for them, I think the "Resident Evil" series might be in for a very good time.

Literally one of the best video game collections of all time.

This game had an infamously horrible launch, but now its a must-have for any and all "Halo" fans. Having six games in one with full multiplayer for all of them is just so amazing.

There are a few small things I'd want changed, but overall, this is borderline perfect and the best thing 343 Industries has ever done.

The epitome of mid.

"Halo 4" has all the pieces that it needs to work, and for the most part, it does. But it is just missing that "Halo" shine, the thing that really made "Halo: stand out from all the other shooters out there.

Playing it this time around, I noticed how weird level transitions were and how often the game resorted to teleporting Chief mid-level. All the previous games were great at making a singular level feel really lived in, like you were adventuring across this whole area, and it would only resort to teleportation once the level was over. Just something I noticed this time around.

"Halo 4" is my least favorite game on the MCC, but my cute girlfriend has fun playing it with me, so I can't complain at all.

This was the season that finally got me playing "Halo Infinite" again. I joined in during the tail-end of the season and was surprised by how much more fun it had become.

Challenges were no longer unbearable, there was a good number of maps in rotation, and I could have (a bit) more freedom to choose what mode I wanted to play! It was completely refreshing compared to what came before.

Though, with all that said, the problems with the core concept of the live service model still hurt the game a lot. The battle pass still sucks, daily challenges still aren't all that fun, and the general systems implemented still make it feel so much less satisfying when compared to older titles in the series.

This was a great step in the right direction, but it still wasn't enough to full save the game. Still, I play this game once a day now for whatever reason, so they must be doing something right.

"Alan Wake II" is such a perplexingly interesting game. It has some of the most intriguing uses of mechanical storytelling that I have seen in a game in quite some time. The way the narrative's themes are reflected within the gameplay and general mechanics is so interesting that I was on the edge of my seat whenever I was experiencing one of those amazing moments. Unfortunately, in-between those amazing moments, I was left with nothing but feelings of anger, resentment, and boredom at the infuriating combat, mind-melting level design, and the laughably annoying amount of bugs and glitches. For every one perfect moment the game had me enraptured, it had me foaming at the mouth for ten others. Even though I adored some aspects of the game, the experience overall left me with an intensely sour taste in my mouth.

Let's start with what I consider to be the worst thing about this game (aside from the horrible bugs): the combat. I hate it. I hate it a lot. On normal difficulty, it takes forever to down a taken, and if you haven't supercharged your health, you'll get taken down in two hits. And this is even worse when you realize how much the game just loves throwing enemies at you, especially later in the game. This would probably work well in a fast paced game with really tight controls, which unfortunately, "Alan Wake II" isn't. The controls feel...off. I'm not really sure how to put it, but it feels like I'm controlling someone else's controller who is controlling the character on screen. There always feels like there's some sort of delay and a general lack of satisfaction for everything. This made fighting those annoying ass enemies that just zip around the map especially unbearable to deal with. I ended up hating every single combat encounter in the game, so much so that I ended up turning the difficulty down to easy mode just so I wouldn't have to put up with it. And even then combat was a complete slog that felt like nothing but an annoying waste of time that prevented me from getting to the parts of the game I actually liked.

And then there's the level design which is equally infuriating. "Alan Wake II"'s supreme devotion to realism results in a gameworld that is just frustrating to navigate. I had to open my map just to see where I was even going almost constantly; it got to a point where I stopped even trying to navigate the actual world and instead just opened my map and tried to follow the lines. But man oh man, when you can't use that map, or the map just isn't useful, everything falls apart. I cannot tell you the amount of time I spent just running around in circles only to eventually just give up and use a YouTube video or a guide to figure out where I was supposed to go. My favorite example of this was one time where I needed to find a key for a cult stash in the trailer park. There was an email on a nearby computer that said "I put the key up high somewhere" or something along those lines. I spent about five to ten minutes running around the entire trailer park, looking at every high ledge I could only to find nothing at all. Turns out, it was on top of an electricity pole next to the cult stash on top of a box that I had no idea I could even climb up. Up to that point, everything that was climbable was either obvious or gave me a little prompt to climb, so why would I have even guessed that the random thing in the ground in the corner was climbable? There has been a lot of debate recently about the overuse of yellow paint as an indicator of where to go for players, and I have mostly been on the side that the overuse of it is a little bit silly. But MAN would I have loved to have some god damn yellow paint splashed over everything in this game. It would have at least made exploration a little bit easier.

Speaking of exploration and cult stashes, lets talk about the collectables. They're...fine. They range from somewhat fun to annoying. The best are probably the nursery rhyme puzzles where you have to match little figures with what the rhyme says. Its usually a lot of guess work and the reward isn't really worth it, but they're a fun distraction. The Alex Casey lunchboxes are mostly just annoying since they can be so hard to spot if you don't see the little easter eggs right away. Most of the time, I only found them because Saga would just blurt out "Another Alex Casey Lunchbox..." and I'd just spin around for a bit trying to see where it was. And then there's the real star of the show: the cult stashes. These are a bunch of puzzles that range from finding a key, to playing simon says, to figuring out the arbitrary combination needed for the lock. I'll say that, in all honesty, I have respect for these because the puzzles are actually pretty tricky. Some of them are real brain teasers, but they all make sense when you figure them out. Unfortunately, I hated slowly moving amount the annoying map, and I didn't want to risk getting into more fights with taken, so whenever I came across one of these stashes, I just looked up the answer on my phone. And I have no regret for doing that whatsoever; some of these puzzles really just don't respect the player's time at all, like the one where you have to run across the town to see where one dude painted a few things in a park for the combination. I think I would have melted if I had even bothered trying to figure some of these out. (Even the Polygon article I was using kept pointing out how annoying the puzzles could be! I'm glad I'm not alone.)

The main interactable aspect of the game I was really into was Saga's mind place and the general detective work the game had. I really loved looking through everything, placing it on the board, and figuring out what was going on. Not everything clicked the same, but it was overall the most fun I had with the game outside of the story. Whenever I was feeling bored and drained, I would always look forward to slapping something onto the board in Saga's mind place, that always gave me a little jolt of excitement when everything else left me feeling like a corpse. The game also uses this room for a brilliant mechanical and thematic payoff at the end of the game, that moment was easily my favorite in the entire game by far.

But here's the thing: everything I just talked about is only Saga's half of the game. I haven't even touched on Alan's part, which I hated infinitely more. Combat is even more unbearable thanks to the absurd number of enemies, and the fact that you can't even tell what formless shadows around you are enemies and what are just random guys who won't hurt you. The level design is even more convoluted and hard to comprehend (I fully believe this was intentionally done to make the world feel as confusing as Alan makes it out to be, but in my opinion, it mostly just fails). The collectables are just uninteresting at best, and annoying at worst (following little convoluted arrows around is not fun). And finally, even Alan's mind place is just so incredibly boring. I like the idea of having to enter his little writing room to rewrite parts of the level. On paper, its fantastic. But in execution, it leaves a lot to be desired. Having to look around for an idea near by just so I could rewrite one room which would always just result in a new door opening up made me realize that these ideas were nothing more than glorified keys that made you watch a two minute cutscene when you picked them up. And once that entered my head, it was impossible to look at them as anything different.

Though, with all that said, the presentation of Alan's world is still phenomenal. In fact, the presentation of the game is probably the best aspect of it. When you're not forced to fight hordes of annoying enemies, the presentation and story are just amazing. It honestly made me feel that this game would have been better if it was just some other type of game. Maybe a horror game with no combat like "Soma"? Or maybe even a visual novel? Anything that didn't force me to sit through the horrible combat this game presented.

Though if I had to be fully objective, the worst thing about this game is the terrible bugs and general imperfections. There were three separate times I had to reset the game because of a bug where I couldn't exit out of a screen. One of those times, the most hilarious of the bunch, was when I got hit by a taken while I was trying to unlock a cult stash, causing Saga to jump backwards and pulling the camera with her. But for whatever reason I could still control the inputs on the lock. I then pressed one button and the screen flew back to the stash, and then robbed me of all control, forcing me to reset the game. Its amazing seeing a game that strives for such high fidelity graphics and presentation be riddled with game breaking bugs like this. Even if it has only been out for a few months, I would expect something better.

Now, do you want to hear something crazy? I am actually decently big fan of the original "Alan Wake". And that game suffers from almost all the same problems as this one does. Bad combat, clunky movement, annoying level design, and a bunch of bugs that still haven't been ironed out. So how come I like that game but mostly dislike this one when they're almost the same? My answer to that is the time they released and what they represented.

The original "Alan Wake" released in 2010, a time when the market for shooters was being completely dominated by three big names: "Call of Duty", "Halo", and "Gears of War". If you were releasing a shooter in this time period, you were almost certainly chasing the coattails of these three franchises to some degree. (And you would only find success if you had Sony or EA money backing you up). Every shooter at the time felt the same, or at least similar: regenerating health, two weapon limit, all about the military, featuring some rough military man, etc. It got so bad that the term "seventh gen shooter" came to describe the entire time period of the genre today.
But "Alan Wake" was different. It was a slower game with a big emphasis on story, featuring some writer guy instead of a cool military man. It was all about atmosphere and presentation instead of just killing everything. It really felt like a challenge to the industry in some ways, a bold, weird attempt at trying something different and weird. And that's what I have really come to love about "Alan Wake". That's what made the series special to me.

"Alan Wake II" however, feels like the opposite. The story and presentation might be wonderful, but in the current age of bloated budget triple A games, that has become the norm. There are so many pretty games with bad combat and a big emphasis on story that have come out in the last decade. "The Last of Us" is the big one that comes to mind. If I wanted to play a game with a deep story, bad combat, pretty graphics, great presentation, and one that I won't see a sequel to in seven years, I'd just play any other triple A game out there. Instead of carrying the torch that its predecessor had carried before, "Alan Wake II" chose to just flow with the industry, instead of against it. And that is such a shame.

Overall, while I was incredibly harsh on this game, its presentation and story do a great amount of heavy lifting. If you can handle the painful combat and level design, there is a good amount to love here, but unfortunately for me, even on easy mode, I just couldn't. I couldn't even bother to get the true ending after finishing the game, putting myself through the gameplay once was already enough for me.

So yeah, I like a lot of what "Alan Wake II" does, but I absolutely dreaded playing most of it. I can't say I really recommend it at all, but I know there will be plenty of people that will love it. And more power to them.