Jinzuku
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The setting for this is certainly a unique one for me, in a building where the walls shift to block and open up different areas when it's cleansed. Not that many enemies or weapon types but the combat can be fast-paced, especially you unlock more abilities like the dash or fly. The side quests are interesting, some even grant new abilities. The game offers no direct waypoints to your objective, requiring you to read the in-world signs to get around the building. While this heightens immersion, it can make it frustrating trying to get to where you need to go. You only have one weapon in the game but much like the building it can shift into different modes to behave like a pistol, shotgun, SMG, etc. Overall the game is great but slightly too long, especially with the two additional DLCs, one of which adds story that really should be in the main game.
It's largely inconsequential due to it being a prequel to The New Order. It gets a bit weird near the end but overall the same experience as the previous games.
It's a shame I played this before Wolfenstein II as it sets up and adds a lot of context to it. While the gunplay is the same as the sequel it has a few things missing, which would make sense for the first game of a series. As a result, the game is much rawer and in your face with its brutality.
A stealth based game where you have to use all the tools at your disposal to get through an area, avoiding the guards and rats that block your way. The game is set during the Black Plague but where the disease is on Steroids. The rats are so numerous they are like a sea and are extremely bloodthirsty. You'll find yourself searching for materials to either craft or upgrade your arsenal. You play as a 15-year-old girl armed only with her sling and quick wit. Solving the puzzle of how to get past a certain problem isn't all that difficult, although some will require a few attempts to implement. The graphics are gorgeous and the sheer number of rats on screen is frightening.
Set in an alternative future where the US surrendered during WWII, the game is fast paced and brutal. The weapons, while your usual affair, can all be dual-wielded and mixed and matched, resulting in some deadly combinations. The cast is fun and the story has some expected and unexpected developments. The difficulty seemed to have the right amount of pushback as I had to retry some encounters multiple times. They require careful consideration and not simply standing in a corner blasting away.
A lazy remaster of one of the hardest turn-based JRPGs around. So much so, the remaster added an easy mode to entice new players. The game forces you to think of strategies and team composition when tackling bosses. In some cases, you wouldn't even be able to grind past them due to certain mechanics. The game itself has the usual things of an SMT game with similar demon designs and an in-depth fusing mechanic. The extent of the remaster is simply to upscale it to fit modern TVs, other than that, the textures are pixelated and the cutscenes are still 4:3. The world and environment are bleak with not a lot to it, you're pretty much playing this game for its difficulty.
This is nothing short of a showpiece for the PS5. The load times, ray-tracing and overall graphics are the best I've seen on the console to date. Even without that, the game is a joy to play. There's some good exploration and compulsion to collect all the side items as they either give you lore or powerups. The story is fairly well written and the locations you go to are very distinctive and fun to traverse through. Even though there are two main characters, and you find yourself switching between them frequently, they share resources so you don't have to buy/upgrade weapons twice. The only thing the game could do better is having it so those two characters actually feel different to play as, rather than just being carbon copies.
Taking place during the events of part 1, but this time you follow Yuffie, something that was never part of the original game. Seeing what she was up to before meeting up with the party is great. She controls different from all the other characters in part 1. All this does is hype me up even more for part 2 and I'm all for it.