This game is a narrative experience more than a game. It follows the story of an immigrant couple from southern India, raising a child in Canada.
The story raises themes of the immigration experience, cultural differences, raising a child, racism, and really delicious looking food.
The game element is a simple affair where you are asked to assemble meals based on partial recipes. The colourful food and tactile cooking methods make these sequences brief but fun. And if you hate cooking, there's a hint system that will tell you exactly what to do.
The game is very short, I finished in about ninety minutes but it's a fun, powerful experience. I'm glad this sort of game is available on Game Pass as it's likely something I would never have tried out otherwise.

A fun but flawed entry in the Yakuza/Lika A Dragon series. This is a standalone historical adventure which require no previous knowledge of the franchise. The characters in the game are based on real historical figures but modelled on series protagnist Kiryu Kazama and his roster of allies, frenemies, and antagonists.
The combat is a refreshing change in this edition as guns are reintroduced and permanently available as part of two fighting styles. There is a weapon crafting and upgrade tree which is complex but rewarding if you put in the requisite grinding and resources. If you don't want to grind through side activities, you can get by in the game by using weapons awarded to you from defeated bosses.
The farm is a fun addition at first but quickly becomes tiring and dull due to overlong animations and very repetitive gameplay. The gloss comes off once you've prepared the same meals over and over again to meet orders or grind for money. Still, you can fill your farm with cats and dogs so that's a big plus.
The story is overly long and comes with plenty of twists and turns that eventually become a little overwhelming. It doesn't help that the cutscenes can sometimes run up to 20 minutes long. This is nothing new for the Yakuza series but this time my tolerance for the story was worn out by the final three chapters. There is historical context to the story that is lost on me as a Westerner who knows very little about Japanese history so that did hinder my enjoyment somewhat.
There are many substories (sidequests) dotted throughout the game. Most are fun stories, although many are just repetitive requests to feed resources to an NPC. This was disappointing as although attempts were made to make them amusing, it's still boring to feed someone vegetables for the 5th time and read the same dialogue until you fill their friendship bar.
I sound like I'm down on the game but I did have fun with it. I think part of the issue I had was that I put too much time into it without too much reward. I would recommend engaging with the side content but to not devote dozens of hours to it as they rarely pay off in satisfying ways. Play for a good time, not a long time, is my advice.

Way too long. By the time I reached the point where I had to buy another three or four machines with costs in the tens of thousands, I decided enough was enough.
The arcade cabinets are fun recreations of old titles that I remember from the 80s and 90s, but for me it wasn't enough to hold my attention for the 20+ hours the game demanded from me.
It's a shame but if the story were shorter, say a dozen hours or so, then this would be a more enjoyable experience. As it is, it outstays its welcome and made me regret the time I'd poured into it.

So who predicted Obsidian's first release post Microsoft purchase to be a medieval murder mystery RPG? This is an incredible game that's clearly a passion project. I don't know how Obsidian convinced Microsoft to let them go ahead and make this game, but I'm extremely glad they did.
The art style is unique and very appropriate to the period and subject. They managed to pack a lot of character into the animations and the models.
The writing is absolutely top notch. I felt that the last few releases from Obsidian have been a little lacklustre in terms of dialogue and quest design but Pentiment features a compelling mystery and an indepth look into late medieval society. Through the effective writing and dialogue you will learn about this place and period in time, and come to love or hate various members of the community you interact with.
This is a game that made me feel varied emotions, think about faith, history, and how people remember others and their deeds. It's a beautiful game and one I hope will be played and remembered for a long time to come.

I played for about 4 hours in MYRISE mode and encountered so many annoying issues that I quit. Long loading times on the Series X makes switching between menus and matches a slog.
The career mode often traps you in matches you must win to progress rather than having an alternative fail path. The career mode stories/feuds are generally just presented via Twitter posts. There seem to be bugs with the career mode too as in one of the few stories/feuds with cutscenes I won the US Championship after a series of matches. Then the game seemed to forgot that I won it and gave the title to someone else on Twitter. My title win was never recorded and it seemed like the multi part story just didn't happen.
The grappling system has been changed to an old combo system that I haven't seen since the end of the 90s and games like WWF War Zone. The game has a barebones tutorial but doesn't explain many of the control inputs and just expects you to pause the game during a match and look up your moveset and other actions. I preferred the original, more simple but gratifying, Smackdown method of grappling/reversing.
I think it's time to give the licence to someone else.

A boring, plodding game where the main activity is driving slowly to the next mission on the other side of the city. It's also bug ridden and suffers constant frame rate drops in cutscenes, and contains crackling/distorted audio for some dialogue.
Awful stealth sections and laughably easy melee combat combine to make anything that's not shooting other gangsters a dull chore. The gunplay is from the mid to late 00's school of third person cover shooting. Take cover, pop up, shoot, duck, regenerate health.
I found the story dull and predictable and it ends without a real conclusion. Seems the devs ran out of time and just ended it. I did enjoy the small tie-in to the first Mafia though.
The game was clearly designed to be a GTA clone but something must have happened to reduce the scope. Left behind are signs of open world activities that don't exist (you can buy guns, outfits, and steal cars, but there's no reason to do any of it) and NPC's that seem to be quest givers are introduced then never used again. You can revisit them but they state dumbly at you while you hammer the 'Talk to NPC' button.
Easily the worst remaster of the trilogy but the original game had very shaky foundations to begin with.

Rogue-like turn based tactics game with deck building. Set in a post apocalyptic fantasy setting (just like D&D's Dark Sun campaign world), you will be tasked with exploring a map filled with random encounters and boss fights.
The deck building is interesting and the tactics element is appropriately challenging. You will unlock new classes and cards after each playthrough and there are multiple campaigns to play and explore. It's a very generous package.
That said, the rogue-like nature of the game may turn off some as you can't carry over levels and equipment from previous successful runs. Each scenario begins with characters armed with basic equipment and decks and they need to be built up again.
I believe there's potentially many hours of entertainment here, I only stopped playing as I felt it might take over my life as some kind of endlessly replayable (and enjoyable!) game.