Jinzuku
BACKER
2021
The sleuthing side of the Yakuza franchise calling back to their more action focused combat. The game has built upon the first game, adding Yokohama from Like a Dragon. The main thing I don't like about it is its focused on a private school and the people that go there. It tends to lean a bit into stereotypes and has beating down kids, who in fair, deserve it. The main mystery is fascinating and expertly weaves everything into it. Aside from that, the game is solid, beautiful, mysterious and fascinating to just be a part of the world. Saying goodbye to Yagami due to real world politics is a shame but I'm excited to potentially play as Kaito in future iterations.
2021
This feels like a Tales games with some real budget behind it. They've finally ditched their old engine for a more modern on and it really shows. At first, I was worried that the change in combat would an issue, but after getting used to it I came to enjoy it as much as the old school counterpart. The characters are as memorable as some of the previous ones and the story really hits home about how everyone could be a slave to someone or something, whether it be a person or way of life.
As far as a remake goes, it's a big visual improvement over the original. However, compared to Sword/Shield, and functionally, the original it's a very lazy remaster. GameFreak doing their usual minimum effort to print money. It works though, because, at its core, Pokémon is unbelievably fun, something that none of the many clones has been able to recapture. This is the kind of game that you know whether you are in or out, and if you're in, you know what you are getting into and what to expect.
2016
Despite this game being 5 years old, the graphics and game hold up. Set many years after the original trilogy, you play as a different group of people who are mostly ex-COG. The game does feel a bit forced with an enemy you thought was originally defeated, but not really. However, the gameplay is fun and chainsawing an enemy in half will never get old.
Extremely filler, but it did have cool little challenge in each chapter to spice things up, like only being able to fight with certain weapons, reduced visibility or changes in enemy behaviour. In this, you follow Baird and Cole with a different group of people in a prequel to the original Gears of War. There's also an extra campaign that coincides with Gears of War 3 where Baird and Cole reunite with that team to get supplies.
This is the Avengers Endgame of an MMO, with callbacks to characters and plot threads going back many expansions. There is no better way to honour & respect a person's time, money & effort on a game. I am eagerly awaiting what the future holds for Eorzea. The game continues to justify every penny I've spent on its subscription. My biggest issue isn't with the game itself but the difficulties getting into it with the queue times. However, if there was ever a developer that I felt was doing everything they could to help their player base, then it's Yoshi-P & his team. THE best in the business.
Mechanically & graphically has to be one of the best Gears games to date. There's a couple of "open-world" sections during the game that are interesting & fortunately doesn't overstate their welcome. They are akin to the likewise section in The Last of Us 2. The situation is a bit odd as you spent Gears 4 actively against the COG & now in 5 we are back working with them again. A nice addition is that you can upgrade Jack the Bot to make it useful in combat. It has abilities that range from forcing enemies out of cover to turning your group invisible for a short time. There are collectables throughout the levels that allow you to upgrade Jack to suit your play style. When playing co-op, a player can choose to play as Jack too. The DLC campaign Hivebusters was a nice take on a different set of characters but is more of the same, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Takes the things that makes turn-based RPGs great and puts them in a single package. Even with this though, its story and character do little early on to draw you in to entice you to keep playing. The aesthetic and animation are top-notch, they give it a unique feel. The addition of a Speed and Power lane along with effects occurring at certain points in the ATB are interesting. However, it can sometimes feel that you are fighting the ATB gauge rather than the actual creatures in the encounter. They've done a really good job to make every character fit a different use, which can make it a difficult choice who to put in your party. I had quite a few crashes but nothing that sets back progress too much. Due to the limited array of locations, there isn't a lot of variety in the places you visit.
While this is one of the best Pokémon games in nearly 10 years, it's still where the franchise should have been 5 years ago. If any other games were of the quality, it would be slandered for being plain and unadventurous. However, because of Game Freak's unwillingness to change, they are instead praised for showing some actual effort. I did enjoy the game, the battles and exploration are what I've always wanted, with being able to walk around during a battle is something I never knew I wanted. However, the blocks the games put up around getting a specific star to continue the story does knock the wind out of your sails a bit. The biggest selling point of this game for me is that the characters fear Pokémon and the chaos they can realistically wreak to the planet. I hope this series continues with other legendary Pokémon, like Mew or Celebi.
I was not prepared for how emotional this game was going to be, where one scene in particular nearly made me cry. They've somehow made a game that is way better than any of the GotG MCU films. I've come to understand and love these characters so much more as a result. There is so much great dialogue, from the constant quips being thrown around to deep conversations spurred by discussing the collectables you find. It's refreshing to have a team go from initially not liking or trusting each other to developing a deep bond over the common history of tragedy and loss. The old-school soundtrack is stellar with songs being expertly put in the right places. Despite having some odd facial animations, this is a flarking amazing game.
This shows how much Lego games have come a long way. While it was largely enjoyable, the sheer number of bugs made getting some collectables way harder than it should have been. Character variety is seriously lacking as you get a lot of repeat characters while only having one character that can blow up silver bricks. Unless you are a hardcore fan of the franchise then this might be one to skip.
The graphics are way more "realistic" than it ever needed to be, it simply looks fantastic. My main gripe with how it looks is that the camera feels too close to the character. Annoyingly, every time I went idle for a long period of time, the game would sign me out and I'd lose all progress since the last checkpoint. This happened on numerous occasions and took a while to get back to where I was. I'm not a fan of the challenges they added to each level, it's another checklist where you have to play the level in a certain way in order to achieve. Some of these force you to replay levels multiple times to get them all. Any game that has more than 1,000 collectables is too much and could certainly be streamlined, sometimes less is more. My favourite part of this is that a lot of the voice actors from the shows and movies come back to voice their characters, which really helps as it makes the characters familiar with those we love and remember.
If this had a charm stat it would be through the roof. The art style has a child's storybook feel, to the point that the battle transition is flipping a bunch of pages. One of the biggest letdowns, however, is that all the side quests involve you treading over old ground very slowly to either pick something up or kill something and then traipse back to the quest giver for a reward. Battles are turn-based, not that challenging and can get a bit repetitive after a while. The game certainly has heart and has moments when it will capture yours.
Short and very sweet. It was great to get to know Kaito a lot better as the main game focuses so much on Yagami. There was plenty of story for DLC, but would have liked two or three side stories to flesh out his interactions with the city. While his fighting skills are back to the brutish style of Kiryu, he doesn't quite live up to his level of awesomeness. That being said, I welcome any excuse to walk and fight through the streets of Kamurocho.
I'm such a D&D fanboy that this game had its teeth in me from the get-go. There's no beating around the bush, this is a Borderlands game through and through and functions as a sequel to the D&D DLC from Borderlands 2. The only real differences are that you can equip an actual melee weapon and your grenade is swapped out with a spell. At the start of the game, you select a class, which functions similar to picking a character in the other games but they only come with one skill tree. This is because, after a point in the game, you can select a skill tree from another class and use them at the same time, resulting in some inventive combinations. My favourite part of the game is that the overworld is set up like a physical D&D table, with real-world props like a bottlecap being punched over to form a bridge over a river of soda.