God of War: Ascension is a fine enough game but it struggles to earn its existence. On one hand, I think the combat is a lot of fun, more fun than the usual for these games. The chains being used more and the increased emphasis on grabbing with them makes the gameplay a lot more fast paced, very rarely did I get frustrated with it. Elementals effecting the blades also was a good feature. Im not sure how much of this is new and what was added in GoW3 but I liked it nonetheless. That being said, thats about the only praise I can give this game.

The story is well, it sure is a story. While God of War isnt known for peak story telling outside of the newest entry, I found most of the games to have pretty compelling and enjoyable stories to them. Besides this one. As a prequel it doesnt really bring anything new to the table. The characters are uninteresting, the cool set pieces are few and far between and the story is just unapologetically mid. Its not bad, but compared to past entries I was incredibly less interested in it and all the villains are completely forgettable.

I think the biggest problem with this game is how much it feels like just an attempt to modernize the series and make itself relevant. Sure, graphically its impressive for the PS3 but the art style itself looks ugly and bland like so many other games in the era, it loses most of the charm even the PSP games were able to retain. The menus look like a generic action game and lets not forget everyones favorite 2010-ish single player game feature: tacked on mutliplayer. Its dead now of course but I wager it was never very lively to begin with. All of this just makes the game feel like a bit of a cash grab. Not an effortless one, mind you but a cash grab is a cash grab.

All this being said, I still find it to be a pretty good game overall. The combat is very fluid and although there arent many, the dope moments are certifiably dope. If you've finished the rest of the series and want more God of War you are sure to get something out of this, but it might just make you long to be playing the previous entries instead.

Trophy Completion - 91% (34/36)
Time Played - 13 hours 16 minutes
Nancymeter - 69/100
Game Completion #66 of 2022
June Completion #1

*no I did not forget to change the playtime from my FFA review, they legit both have the same playtime

NFS Underground is a blueprint for it's sequel and the single most important game in the series, which set the direction the series would mostly be going in for the next 20 years.
However, on it's own this game is broken, repetitive slog, which forces the player through repeating tracks over and over again while also having the opponents cheat their way to victory no matter what difficulty you pick. Each of the player's wins feels like luck since most of the time the reason why it happened is because the rubberbanding AI wasn't as broken as it usually is, the game's hyper realistic collision physics haven't flipped his car over on a straight road for no reason, or the traffic car hasn't spawned right behind a blind turn, sending the player's riced Honda Civic spinning 360 degrees and flying 3 meters into the air.
Do I recommend playing this game? Eh, purely for historic value. It looks really good for the time, the car selection is overall solid, and the modding options can look cool.
The music also has a silly childish charm to it, looking at it in the retrospect. Since it usually forces itself to be cool so hard that it turnes to being cringey, which in itself provides unintentional comedic value, making it great, albeit again not in a way it was originally intended.

Honestly coming out with surprise that I enjoyed this as much as I did. Really like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Gamma while Amy and Big were kinda duds with Amy easily being the least enjoyable. Specifically enjoying Knuckles and Gamma was a gigantic surprise to me, considering I really have a dislike for what followed their styles in Adventure 2. Loved the hub worlds, Sonic should absolutely do more of em since they're just really fun to run around in (Exception being the jungle of mystic ruins lmao). Anyway, all I really have to say now is that I like this game, Open Your Heart bangs, and this game really got me to remember why I even care about Sonic in the first place.

⌚ Time to finish - 11 hours 00 mins
🤬Difficulty - easy (Not much console shooter experience, but played TONs on PC)

🔊 Soundtrack - Great soundtrack! I know the cultures represented here so I could see the cultural queues they took in making the music. Great touch!
🌄Graphics – Great! I played the trilogy version (Nathan Drake Collection) on ps5 and it was great with updated graphics! Sure its not going to hold up for modern standards but I still liked it a lot.
🌦 Atmosphere – Excellent. Loved the music and atmosphere. I really did feel like a raider.
📚 Main Story / Characters – Great story (expected plot holes)! I felt like i was in a summer action blockbuster movie. I thought the characters were all great and fit the typical action movie tropes.
🤺 Combat – Sometimes repetitive gunfights but I always enjoyed them as they did mix up here and there instead of cover and fire. I wish stealth was done better but its Drake so, no need for that. :)
🧭 Side Activities / Exploration – No side activities or exploration.
🚗 Movement/Physics – Good, overall made sense and responded. Sometimes the roll to find another cover was clunky but rarely.
📣 Voice acting – Excellent!

📝 Review:

I overall LOVED this game. I love games that really transport me to another world and make me feel something. In this game I felt a sense of adventure, a bad ass against all odds, an action hero! From second 1 to the end it was tense. My wife also enjoyed watching a bit of the game because its like watching a movie.

The stand out to me was the AMAZING set pieces and escape sequences. Wow I will never forget in the middle of the game climbing some amazing structures. Sometimes i will stop and pan the camera to enjoy the views.

💡Final Thoughts:

Must play! This game is for everyone and everyone needs to experience it. On my quest to finish the Uncharted series, I have 2 more to go and if it keeps it to this level I will be such a happy camper and will go down in history as one of the best series of games behind God of War for me :)

A nice bonus little DLC level for Rise. It's basically a zombie level, and I do like my zombies. Stealth is basically not an option, the density and respawn rates of the enemies make sure of it, you're gonna get spotted no matter what. Although this was annoying at first, once I learned to ditch the sneaky approach and run around crazy hipfiring everything, it got a lot more fun. Theres also some randomly generated puzzles that I found entertaining enough. Going for all the trophies was also pretty manageable, completing it without dying may sound tough but if you equip the right cards its easily doable. Overall a good time, not something you'll remember fondly, but if you want more Rise you'll have a good time.

Rating - 75/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (10/10)
DLC Completion #8 of 2022