Bayonetta Origins is an incredibly unique game and this alone is a reason for this title to be celebrated. Its ideas aren't often seen in other games, and it explores gameplay ideas that are very satisfying to pull off. The visuals are amazing, the storybook aesthetic is charming and cute, I love the fact that we have a narrator. The relationship between Cereza and Cheshire has an interesting development, and the story pleased me as a whole. I love how I can't exactly fit the game into one specfic genre, metroidvania? Maybe, but it is also divided into chapters. Controlling both characters can feel weird at first but I tought I got better after some hours playing. The combat is fun and refreshing, exploration is rewarding as new skills are tied to it. Most of the Tír na nÓg, think of it as like Breath of the Wild's shrines but in this game, have really fun mechanics but I wish there were more of them that wasn't just another combat encounter. I also wish Cereza had some sort of attack other than binding enemies, but I guess this will be in Bayonetta Origins 2. And I must complain about the map, its very confusing and it's not helpful at all, the areas are too vertical and very confusing to navigate, I wish the map showed magic upgrades too. But all in all, as a huge Bayonetta fan I loved Origins, and I want more games like this!

I never had the opportunity to play the original as a VR title. My first encounter with the world of this game is I think the same as most people, via Gunfire Games' other title Remnant: From The Ashes.

After a few hours of playing Chronos I was finding the overall clunkiness a little frustrating, but the thing I found most interesting was seeing this perceivable arc from this game to Remnant. It's palpable what the team at Gunfire learned with this game and what they took into Remnant to make that game as good a game as it is.

Chronos is largely a pretty rote action RPG that is similar to other Souls titles in that the world is largely interconnected and it gives you very little information on how to proceed. That's about it for the comparison though, as the progression system is mostly a basic EXP level up system. They also have an interesting age mechanic, which raises your characters age as you die. This has an impact on your leveling by changing the cost of individual stats based on your age. When you're young, strength and agility are cheap stats to buy with your skill points, but arcane is expensive. The opposite is true once you hit your forties (about 25ish deaths, give or take). This is a pretty interesting system and I did find myself engaging with it by actually thinking about when I wanted to put my points into agility, etc. Good system.

Beyond that, the game is pretty okay. The bosses aren't that great, and there are a few enemies that are pretty un-fun to fight against up until you realise you can extremely easily stun-lock them against a wall and they stop being a problem and the game becomes more fun.

I recommend giving it a go! I got access to it via PlayStation Plus Extra and that honestly feels like the best place to play it at the moment if you're worried about financial investment.

Facilmente o melhor jogo rítmico que eu já joguei na vida. Ao mesmo tempo que é simples entender como jogar, ele consegue ser muito desafiador e se tornar o inferno completo como qualquer bom joguinho de música.

Acho que a coisa que mais me pegou foi o quanto é natural e o quanto você consegue sentir a música jogando - a melhor sensação pra mim é quando você roda o círculo, já clica e volta a jogar super rápido. Mesmo em dificuldades médias, eu me sentia animado e seguindo a música, é realmente incrível.

Se você gosta de jogo rítmico, Spin Rhythm XD é um jogo obrigatório, sem dúvidas.

Pretty torn on this one. I love its visual design, and how inventive and tactile the potion crafting feels. The overwhelming variety of ingredients and the traversal they allow on the alchemy map are wonderful, as are their cleverly color-coded designs. I enjoyed how the clients and the flavor of their demands changes depending on who you refuse service to (serve too many scoundrels and suddenly you’re only getting bandits and necromancers in the door). I don’t love the repetitive grind of the retail simulation, or the way it gates progression behind waiting on certain merchants to show up or certain ingredients to regrow in the garden. I also hated the way the alchemy formulas for the Salts and Stones depended on the same Stone from the previous stage, since I pretty much never wanted to make any of them a second time (it’s novel the first time, but tedious busywork after that).

Based on the dev’s roadmap, it seems like some of these complaints might be alleviated in the future; maybe I’ll pick it up again then, but for now I’m satisfied having created everything but the Philosopher’s Stone and a couple of higher level Salts.

played aprox. 8 hours? i love the concept but feel it asks for a little too much time commitment to play through completely. i only made the first crystal out of the machine, but once i saw that second recipe i knew i wasnt up for it. getting a level 3 brew requires some really precise planning as if you overshoot your movement, its done and will almost always require another ingredient. i think the haggling minigame is perfect as it takes exactly as long as it should. the cursor speed is a nice cruise and the refresh when you hit just feels so nice. but the whole game revolves around this singular mechanic of moving around the map, using these items to follow wacky paths. the problem comes in when it wants you to mortar and pestle every fucking plant to extract the most distance. i wish there was more "free" ways to move around as watering it down only gets you so far.

don't get me wrong, im harping on it alot but i do genuinely like what this game is doing. i wish there was a more relaxed version where i didnt have to economize each and decision i have to make.

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked. Figment is an enjoyable, fairly lightweight action/adventure, with a beautiful graphical style. Set in the unconscious mind of a person recently involved in a car accident, Figment sees you exploring areas themed around creativity (expect to see gardens, music and similar) and logic (where clockwork mechanics are prevalent), with charming hand-drawn graphics, an impressively dynamic musical score and dialog based around rhyming, frequent puns and, as a stand-out, singing boss enemies! With combat encounters being fairly trivial, gameplay is primarily focused on exploration and puzzle solving, which, while again never really getting difficult, is still generally satisfying, especially with the puzzles fitting in very nicely with the world themes - for example, progression might require planting seeds in the garden areas, or setting up mechanics in those based around clockwork. The simplicity of the game might be a detractor for some people and it's fairly short (perhaps 4-6 hours for an unguided playthrough), but I had a good time with Figment.

Nearly 16 years later we finally get a sequel to one of my favorite platformers and games ever in Psychonauts, and also the first game I ever backed! Of course many know the horror stories of MN9 and other disappointing sequels/spiritual successors, but there was also games like Bloodstained and A Hat in Time to prove there was still hope for these fan backed projects. Fortunately, this was absolutely a case of the latter.

Most games receiving a sequel or some form of successor after a decade have to change in some form whether I like to admit it or not, standards for what the public enjoyed back in the 2000s might be different than now. For example, we've reached a point of consumption of media at such an expedient rate that something like summons from FF7 which have such a long animation would be a detriment in the 2020s if there was no skip/fast forward button for a good majority of players. The shocking thing about Psychonauts 2 is outside of the graphics (which look amazing), the game could've come out 3 years after the original and not felt out of place at all. The team really seemed to look at what worked for the original and show the charm still has a place in the modern era.

For one thing the characters are just as fun as they were in the original game, with a new focus on Raz's family and overall a really sweet narrative focused around forgiveness that really got me emotional in certain parts. And alongside that we got whole new worlds and they're all so much FUN and stylish with the first world alone being a contender for one of the best in the game and series. While the first game had a lot of variety a lot of the focus was on how people internalize their own little worlds, but in 2 there's a lot that went into what can absolutely break down our minds and in general trying to heal these pains that haunt us. I think my personal favorite world has gotta be PSI King's world, there's just too much to love about it.

I'm just so glad that there was a follow up to one of my favorite games that managed to do everything right that it ended up being even better than I could've expected.