Going into this I was expecting a lot of environment manipulation designed to make you question what's real or not and if you saw something in the corner of your eye. Instead what I got was a stealth-heavy game with "zombies". The story wasn't very compelling, which goes nicely with the bland, uninteresting characters. Far too much wasn't explained, leaving you to wonder if certain things were an afterthought. The main character has a serious case of "how did that not kill you?". In the end, I wanted more of the Horror and less of the Survival.

I enjoyed this way more than I expected to. The empty streets of Tokyo are very creepy, not to mention the headless schoolgirls and faceless suits that are oddly attached to their umbrellas. I was a bit worried going in that the hand movements would be jarring but I ended up ignoring them in favour of the action unfolding on screen. My biggest criticism is that there isn't much enemy variety, you'll largely face different versions of 3 base enemies. Boss encounters are slightly different but for a game that digs into the occult and demons, there's a lot of room for things to get weird. Speaking of stuff getting weird, I was also hoping there would be more situations where the environment would warp or shift to mess with your mind outside of the odd set piece here and there.

The brutal difficulty of SMTV cannot be understated. You can't simply grind yourself through the game as each boss requires you to organise your team of Demons to cater to them. This is due to the Press Turn System which rewards you with extra turns if you hit an enemy's weakness. However, this works both ways, so you can't be complacent otherwise you'll find you've been destroyed before you even get a chance to look at them funny. Due to the difficulty spike each boss presents, progress can take a lot longer than you may like as you have to go away to acquire & fuse your Demons to get the desired team and strengthen them to even stand a chance. If you love JRPGs but feel they are too easy, then this is one to try. You'll have a hell of a time playing it to credits.

I've been longing for one of these since I finished the second one all those years ago, and overall, I had a blast. While the graphical upgrade is welcome, you do feel how much the Switch holds back its potential. It looks decent in handheld mode, but as soon as it's docked, it's stretched so much you start to see the stitches. The story revolves around the Infinity Stones and Thanos, which at this point feels a bit tiring and limiting. Your mission is always some form of "Retrieve the Infinity Stone" and you don't even get to use them. Despite all of that though, it's still the game Marvel's Avengers wishes it was.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.