Forspoken is yet another game that I wanted to like more than I did, since I usually have a knack for loving games that draw the ire of chronically online gamers. I was one of the 5 people who truly enjoyed Saints Row 2022 in fact!

Overall, after spending close to 20 hours with it, I think the reviews Forspoken has received from both critics and the larger gaming public are largely true, if somewhat hyperbole (as usual).

Yes, the dialogue has its rough patches, but outside of the handful of scenes that have made the rounds online, it's largely bland as opposed to being painful. The dialogue we hear from protagonist Frey and the entire supporting cast do feel more like 'written by committee' than by one or more people with a clear vision. You can really tell that this game had issues with there being 'too many cooks' in the writer's room.

Frey herself, despite being well-portrayed by Ella Balinska, is a deeply frustrating and stubborn character. It's understandable that she should have a chip on her shoulder given her being a rough and tumble orphan who falls into an generic Isekai story. But it feels like they forgot to make her likable outside of that. The winning moments of her character come almost exclusively from occasional good bits of banter with her companion Cuff (aka 'we have Wheatley from Portal 2 at home') and the various cats you meet along the way.

That being said, while the narrative is lacking and feels like a speedrun of Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero's Journey', the combat, over-the-top magic effects, parkour, and overabundance of adorable kitties REALLY help hold this game together and secure its status as 'decent' for me. Honestly, the traversal in this game alone is up there with Spider-Man PS4 for me. It just never stopped being fun darting around the world and doing sick flips.

So yes, to summarize:
+ Sick flips
+ Fun combat
+ CATS
+ System-overloading particle effects
- Everything else

6/10

It's safe to say that Forspoken ended up a major critical and commercial failure for Square-Enix, what with the very mixed reception from critics and the studio behind this game no longer in existence. With all that said, was this failure warranted?

Forspoken has received a lot of criticism for its writing and having finished the game it's probably one of the game's biggest faults, and the game overall fails to live up to its potential, but that's not to say there isn't anything here that works.

The combat and traversal can come together quite well, and there were certainly times I was actually having a lot of fun, but even saying that, the game can get quite repetitive later in the story, and I didn't really enjoy most of the story boss fights. The enemy variety is decent, though it's hard to remember most of them.

Despite the fact that the main story in this is relatively short, the game can feel soooo slow at times. The early game is incredibly dull, and Chapter 11 specifically had absolutely glacial pacing, just made me want the game to end sooner.

The writing is pretty shoddy as well, with our protagonist Frey becoming very unlikable towards the latter half of the game, and her dialogue comes across as very try-hard, like a 50-60 year old executive's idea of how a modern 20 year old woman would sound. The cursing felt particularly excessive, this has rarely bothered me in a game before, but here it just felt so forced whenever Frey would utter something profane, I could see the game trying to be relatable and it just wasn't working at all.

It doesn't help that Frey and her arm-bound companion Cuff simply do not stop talking. Open a chest, dialogue, defeat an enemy, dialogue, fall from a height, dialogue, find a lair or point of interest, dialogue. After a while you tune it out, but it can be genuinely quite obnoxious how little they shut up. This can be toggled in the accessibility settings, but the frequency on the default setting is already way too much.

I do think the lore and world of Athia is somewhat interesting, and I did want to see where the story was going in spite of how trite the dialogue could be, but the game certainly didn't make it easy.

The presentation can feel PS3-like at times, tons of fades to black between gameplay and cutscenes, stilted character animations during gameplay, poor lip-syncing at times, among many other performance issues like crashes and an unstable frame-rate. The game doesn't look particularly exceptional so I don't feel this is warranted either.

Despite all this negativity however, I do feel the gameplay holds the game together enough that I did not regret my time playing it, and I will probably play some of the post-game content before calling it quits.

5/10 for now, depending how I feel about the post-game it may go up, but yeah wait for a deep sale before considering this one.

The main thing I can say about Fire Emblem Engage is this: It does not put its best foot forward.

Much of the criticism I've seen regarding vibes and characters is really only prominent in the first 5 chapters, and Chapter 6 (when Yunaka is introduced) is the definitive turning point. From that point on, the characters introduced are increasingly interesting and charming, making what appears to be a relatively paint-by-numbers story open up into something worth loving.

The writing still never reaches the peaks of Three Houses, but Engage really delivers in ways that the first several hours don't let on.

It's also worth mentioning that, like almost everyone has said, the mechanics are exceptional. Even if the writing isn't to your liking, the tactics side of things is among the best in the entire series.

Above all, Fire Emblem Engage is a love letter to the entire Fire Emblem franchise, and it truly wears that heart on its sleeve—for better or worse.

If what we've heard about Engage's development is true—that it was in development and nearly ready to go even before Three Houses blew up—the combination of lessons learned from both titles paints a very bright future for Fire Emblem as a series.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is an action game first and a Souls-like second, and that is 100% to its benefit.

Mechanically, I have pretty much zero complaints about Wo Long. It has some weird oversights in terms of UI and Quality-of-Life features, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is exceptional, almost nailing the immaculate game feel that made Sekiro so great.

Additionally, Koei Tecmo continues to have the best template for a character creator in the industry, and seeing your character actually get to do cool choreography in cutscenes never gets old.

As far as the plot goes, it did very little for me. If you're more familiar with the Three Kingdoms stuff, I imagine there's probably some cool moments in here, but as someone who knows very little about it, I felt pretty neutral about the whole thing.

The main sticking point I've seen regarding the story is the dialogue (both as written and the English dub), of which I am two minds: If it's trying to emulate classic martial arts movies, it's doing an incredible job. If it's not, it's pretty rough.

All that to say, again, that the gameplay is absolutely stellar, and if you want a fast-paced, difficult (but not overly complex like Nioh could often be) action game, you can't go wrong with Wo Long.

The level design is some of Team Ninja's best to-date, the controls are extremely tight, the fights are difficult but completely readable, and at least one boss fight in this game is a GOAT contender.

One final note: I know some people have had difficulties in terms of performance, but across the 40+ hours I played on Series X, I only experienced 2 significant stutters and 1 crash, so make of that what you will.

---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ Paint.exe

---{Gameplay}---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It‘s just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Starring at walls is better
☐ Just don‘t

---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape

---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☐ Adults
☑ Human
☐ Lizards

---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☑ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boiiiiii
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press ‚A‘
☑ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{Grind}--- (note that this section is if you setup your difficulty to extreme)
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isnt necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You‘ll need a second live for grinding

---{Story}---
☐ Story?
☑ Text or Audio floating around
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It‘ll replace your life

---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☑ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{Price}---
☐ It’s free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{Bugs}---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs


Additional informations :
Cutscenes plays in french/spanish (mostly spanish) if run on linux. Subtitle remains in english which is fine.

I majored in religion and philosophy with a minor in classics, and New Vegas is one of my favorite RPGs ever. So this could not have been more up my alley. The art direction, concept, decision making, and story all work together harmoniously and make this an absolute delight for me. I loved it. But the pacing and controls are simply not good and hold me back from wanting to play it again. I suspect there are many who will either not try this or drop it after an hour, and that's a shame because it's an incredibly unique title. I'm glad there are people making games like this.

Why this game isn't being marketed as "Knives Out meets 16th Century Bavaria," I'll never know.

Pentiment is a slow-burn murder mystery game that takes its time in revealing every little way it can poke and prod at your emotions through religious themes and social quandaries. It sounds like a lot, and it IS, but it's worth it. The first hour of this game made me chuckle (picking my college? my social identity? ok sure) but it wasn't until I realized this is a solve-the-whodunit game that my interest was piqued.

Obsidian carved out some very interesting NPCs to progress the story, and over time I was surprised at how much of a relationship I had with them in addition to my avatar. It's rare that a video game (let alone one from a major publisher) tackles religion and history in such a singular way, but the results are fantastic.

I always felt like my choices had meaning and weight. They felt individual. Not many games can make the player feel that way. All that and it's a part of Game Pass? It's a wonder Microsoft isn't selling more consoles.

Before anything else, everyone needs to know that: (1) Pentiment is beautiful in every sense. (2) Pentiment is one of the greatest samples of writing in the video game medium.

Pentiment is all narrative, all character exploration, and all player choice. Yes, it's "a lot of reading," but the passion behind the writing is so immediately clear that I couldn't help but find myself engrossed within 15 minutes of starting the game.

Pentiment is an expertly written, tight narrative with a shameless adoration for its setting and characters that's driven forward by its unique and well-executed art style. I cannot recommend this enough, and I will forever be thankful for Game Pass for allowing big studios to make something small and experimental like this.

I liked how this game takes a lot of influence from the Last of Us. I find that type of game to be a kind of comfort food, easy to digest and enjoy. The main focus is on the characters and grounding you in the journey they go on.

It's a stunning game. I loved the medieval architecture, the gorgeous sky and weather effects, the forest and outdoors. The soundtrack is also excellent, both at driving home the tension of the stealth sections, and adding life to the more emotional and quiet moments. The game effectively puts you in Amicia and Hugo's shoes and adds a decent cast of characters around them. I liked how they focused on a younger cast, which helped drive home the vulnerability against the soldiers and the rats.

The rats are a fun and effectively nasty enemy, and I liked the supernatural hordes of them, but it goes a bit too far by the ending. I'm not against the story going the way it did, but I don't think it did it well. Thankfully it was only really the ending that bothered me.

The gameplay is simple and occasionally clunky. I enjoyed the more stealth/puzzle aspects to it, but it fell apart whenever you're forced into action. Overall I liked this game despite some flaws.