There's a lot of Ghostbusters games but this one stands apart for it's authenticity - a return of the original cast, the 3rd film script on hand, and gameplay that lets you live the fantasy the movies sell.

Almost all of the original cast are back (minus Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver) along with you playing a new recruit. You're lead through a variety of call-backs and scenes from the original film mixed into the new plot. The original voices add a lot to the story but the trainee you play feels shoe-horned into the script. The story ends up being fun in parts and functional overall, but the environments feel very phoned in. They clearly had original ideas but it's like they built them from cheap pre-made parts. The biggest effort went into re-creating locations, objects, and effects from the films.

The entire thing plays out very cinematically and gameplay is very straightforward - you zap the ghost until it gets tired while dodging attacks, then you deploy a trap and pull it in. There's a few different beams and tools you'll get as you go, but it's really just 'zapping mode' or 'scanning mode' throughout. The scanning will let you find your way and unlock some achievements but that's about it. The combat can be brutal at times as ghosts do a lot of damage which makes you focus on dodging, that combined with health-sponge enemies results in some very drawn out sections.

I'd say it's worth a play if you're looking for that 3rd movie experience or if you're a fan of the original films. It's hard to recommend this to newcomers because it's so closely tied to what came already. The gameplay feels like the films, you play scenes from the films, there's a lot of catchphrases. Lacking all that context you're walking into some very simplistic gameplay and a story-heavy experience.

If you loved New Vegas for it's deep and interesting characters, well designed open world, strong writing, and versatile game design - expect absolutely none of that in this DLC which answers the question: What if FONV was a corridor shooter with dick and fart jokes?

Old Wolrd Blues is in every way the exact opposite of the base game. It kicks off with a 20 minute non-stop exposition fest from a group of badly written unfunny characters who make at least 3 dick and fart jokes before you even start the DLC proper. Your objective is to travel 3 paths, find 3 items, and beat the cartoonishly evil bad guy.

As I've mentioned in the main game review, Fallout's shooting is the weakest aspect of its design. There's no mobility, the vats is clunky and interrupts, and shooting is more RPG than simulational making it feel like you're trading numbers with bullet sponges. So treating FONV as any other FPS game of its time and inserting a bunch of shooting corridors is one of the worst directions to take the game. It's laborious, slow, and un-fun.

Meanwhile all the content that made FONV is entirely absent. The open world is replaced with a small domed city with 3 main paths and a few extra labs to explore. The extra areas are themselves incredibly mundane and have little to discover. The characters are incredibly shallow, unfunny, and cartoonish so there's no depth to explore there. You have no companions. Your skills do not factor into the mission design. But you do get a new gimmicky sound gun which does nothing to spice up the awful combat.

I get that whoever made this wanted to produce a light-hearted silly low-stakes story that gave players a break from the bleak serious tone of the base game but it gave me whiplash coming into this off the ending. It actively erodes the nuance, seriousness, and depth of the game - entirely evaporated by the end of the opening monologue. It nosedives into the most banal and generic FPS action imaginable of its time, discards every strength of the core game and wallows in it's weakest design aspects. It actively undermines the creativity and effort that went into avoiding that with the base game. It feels lazy, uninspired, and tonally divorced from the core game.

I couldn't stomach even finishing this DLC and, since I can't go back to the main game without finishing it, if I ever play the other DLC it will be on a new play through of the core game. I hated this experience and it actively harmed my appreciation for the base game. Do not recommend.

A psychedelic surrealist metroidvania that tries to do a lot of new things in combination with a stark and vivid art style. While I was initially excited to delve into the game I quickly found myself bouncing off it.

The art style is probably what stands out most about the game and granted it is beautiful, with vivid colours and creative animations all blending biology with technology. Unfortunately the game lacks an understanding of contrast. There is so much detail and colour that it's difficult to tell what is foreground vs. background. Interactive vs. inert. The visual language games have - colours that communicate qualities and mechanics, sparkles and particles that denote interactivity - all become lost in this haze of overwhelming colour and movement.

The combat itself is trying to stand apart in a few ways. Your first sword has very short reach and you are encouraged to pull off a combo with minimal repeated moves - though it doesn't specify what actions count as repetitive, and this early on I only have two attacks so it seems obtuse to demand variety. Equally the combat is very rigid with a dodge-and-counter approach that requires you to learn to 'dance' with each foe - learning the patterns in a very structured way that feels at odds with the ultra natural and flowing world. The limitations end up feeling like enemies have a 'correct' way to be killed in spite of your options.

The skill tree also feels very messy. Killing enemies rewards food items (portions of their body) and the quality depends if you killed it 'elegantly' or not. Food items fill some amount of the four bars that represent your nutrition, and these bars can be emptied to learn new skills. It's a nice idea albeit convoluted, with quantities being very imprecise so you can't plan ahead (maybe I'm being too rigid now). In the first hour I unlocked maybe 5-10 of these upgrades but they were for small granular things I hardly noticed or for features I hadn't even learned to use a 'normal' way yet so my choices didn't feel very impactful or meaningful. Not that the upgrade tree seems to have any coherent structure either.

In the same way my first hour of play didn't feel like I was really accomplishing anything. Part of this is contrast again - the signal to noise ratio on all of the dialogue is mixed. Everything is intentionally obtuse and seems to be style at the expense of substance, you just vaguely understand that someone needs to be killed because they're preventing you from leaving. Even item descriptions are surrealist contradictory nonsense - things 'taste of time' and 'smell of Elysium'. Part of my attraction to the game was that it seemed to have a detailed and cohesive alien world to learn about, but it feels more like everything is being made up as the artist goes. The detail is there because it looks cool not because it's functional, the writing is flowery nonsense because it sounds cool, not because it means anything.

In conclusion, I get the feeling Ultros is a result of inexperience. Not that it isn't an impressive looking game - but the level of presentation betrays a lack of fundamentals. There are essential game design elements that are missing or roughly hewn, it's not unplayable but certainly sets up some expectations that miss the mark. I'm sure some folks will get everything out of this they want, but for me it just hit all the wrong buttons unfortunately.

Definitely one the first 'open world survival crafting sandbox' games I've enjoyed in a long while, sucking me in from start to finish while managing to capture the atmosphere the original games were so famous for.

The stories here are top notch with great writing, characters are interesting, nuanced, thought-through, and the central tension resonates through the game world at every level. Don't get me wrong there are some swings that miss like 'Hard Luck Blues' and 'I Don't Hurt Anymore', but these are few and far between. My only real gripe is the occasional lack of closure - some mission chains end abruptly, and others seem to end without any of the NPC's acknowledging what happened which took me out of the experience a bit.

Combat meanwhile is more stagnant. Gunplay especially feels clunky and oddly numeric. Movement doesn't feel like it makes a difference so I tend to stand in place aiming and trying to avoid anything thrown my way. It doesn't feel like a firefight, it feels like trading numbers. This extends to the gun progression as well since the upgraded laser weapons just feel like you need less hits, and from the start to finish I didn't 'develop' any combat skill short of learning to trigger VATS for bonuses.

I'm chalking a lot of that clunkiness up to the oblivion engine as you can feel the devs putting heart and soul into it regardless. The mission design and the way in which skills directly impact speech and action options is where all the fun of the game lies, making it as easy to talk your way out of a problem or negotiate a peaceful solution as to draw your gun and start blasting. The depth with which the skills enable and limit your interactions makes multiple playthroughs far more interesting to explore.

Having completed the main story I was surprised how enjoyable FONV was given that it's in a genre I try to avoid - but Obsidian did their best to address the homogeneity and shallowness that tends to make these games unplayable to me. Don't get me wrong it's still graphically dated and missing a lot of quality of life features, but if you can get your head around the mods that can be mitigated. I'm curious to try 4 at some point, but for now I have the DLC to go through so I'll come back to this at some point to grind those out. Overall, a fun and deep revitalisation of the classic fallout formula, imperfect but full of charm and care.

A fusion of pinball and metroidvania aimed at younger players. It's a unique idea and has potential but Yoku only implements the obvious, keeping things relatively short and sweet.

The core game is enjoyable enough. Each area hosts a variety of enclosed pinball play areas which are interconnected with pistons and rails themed as platforming sections. The pinball rooms are fun but not too challenging and many of these areas are accompanied with some unique mechanic that acts as a progress gate - be it a boss fight or simply unlocking the exit.

Sadly the longer you play the faster the novelty wears off. The quests and achievement's are largely filler, the increasing need for precision becomes frustrating, and there's very few mechanics so the boards get very samey despite layout changes. Navigation around the world can also be tedious as the island isn't really that big and you do a lot of backtracking.

The stand out part of the game is the gameplay which presents an innovative idea, it's just not explored very deeply which is a shame because it is fun to start with. The rest of the game's substance - the story, characters, and music are serviceable but aren't doing anything special, it's just game filler and padding to get you from one board to the next. Overall good for a single play through but the 100% didn't feel worth the effort.

A stunning puzzle platformer that combines tight mechanical design with a vividly dream-like pixel aesthetic. This game is the best of what's come before blended with plenty of fresh innovations that make it a joy to explore.

Plenty of games have done the pixelated look but this game truly stands out. The combination of dynamic lighting, the way every little shrub, vine, and light moves as you pass it, and the vividly dream-like wispy lighting and particles leave Animal Well feeling like nothing I've played before. The result is something equal parts haunting and surreal, enriched further by the beautiful soundtrack, foley, and sound effects. The audio combines to create a blend of commodore chirps with more realistic sounds that heighten the already rich atmosphere.

Gameplay consists primarily of tightly designed classic platforming throughout the vast labyrinthine world which plays host to a variety of feature rich biomes. Each screen feels thoughtfully crafted and given the immense depth of the world it's no surprise. As you explore you'll begin solving puzzles to access new tools, as is tradition of the metroidvania; But Animal Well is uniquely original in this regard making innovative use of very simple and well implemented gear with stacking mechanics galore. Of course getting the tools is only the first step down a long and winding road of gameplay I won't spoil here - but deep as the rabbit hole goes there are plenty of stopping off points for those who know their limits.

If you enjoy a good puzzle platformer then Animal Well is worth the play for the excellent design and ethereal aesthetic of its world. There's an amazing game just on the surface that anyone can see through to the end. For those who want to scratch deeper though (or just follow guides to explore all the content) the game will treat you generously. AW epitomises the heart and soul of indie gaming - hand crafted, generous in content, lovingly made, and charming from start to finish. An incredible start for Billy Basso and Bigmode.

A simple cute idle game that doesn't waste your time. I'm more familiar with unending exponential idle games like Cookie Clicker which literally never end, and Gnorp keeps things achievable, concise, and doesn't out-stay its welcome.

The game is built around attacking a rock to generate shards and collecting those shards to spend on resources. The pile in the middle grows and if it builds beyond a threshold you go up one tier, the number of shards is halved but their value is doubled. With 10 tiers this makes the task of balancing your damage vs. collection the key to growing your supplies.

The units available are a cute and quirky mix that I won't spoil, but beyond the variety of unlockable structures and ways to affect damage/collection, there's also the traits. By reaching collection rate thresholds you earn special points that can be used on a skill tree of sorts that applies gameplay modifiers. These are key to winning the game so expect at least 3-4 runs and can make the strategy of how you win different - albeit not wildly so.

Overall the graphics are simple, the music is serviceable, and gameplay is enjoyable. In the 2 days I 100%'d it I saw just about everything it had to offer and was ready to stop anyways. There is replayability if you want to experiment with units and the skills but I don't think there's much motivation to. Good for people testing the waters of idle games, but lacking length and breadth for hardcore fans of the genre.

A simple well designed arcade game seemingly inspired by pachinko. The gameplay is very straightforward, morish, and tightly designed making this a fun little time passer. There's a variety of characters that give your balls unique mechanics and keep things interesting throughout. It's not very long but has a variety of levels to keep you busy.

Peggle doesn't do anything revolutionary, the art and music are serviceable and have that mobile 'broadest appeal possible' vibe. The score system is engaging and ties into the mechanics nicely but I don't think anyone is 'competing' at peggle so it seems serve just as a brain reward neuron activator. It certainly introduced and popularised the concept of pachinko in the west to some degree, but it also doesn't try to weaponize the gameplay as traditional pachinko or modern games do. It just provides a solid game loop and lets you indulge in it.

Feels like the kinda game they could have bundled with windows back in the day and its genuinely refreshing to see a small self contained game that doesn't spread itself across DLC and a cosmetics shop. Exactly the kind of self contained robust design you only really see from indie now days.

The west's answer to Earth Defence Force, and man does it live up to the title. A great combination that takes on some of the best aspects of sci-fi to create a uniquely fun satirical take on authoritarians conquering the galaxy.

Visually this game is highly cinematic. There's a large variety of planets each with their own weather effects lit in day and night, with vivid colour schemes and contrast. All of them make for wonderful backdrops for your destruction to rain down on and you'll regularly be recreating the cinematic moments from classic action films just by playing the game. There's a lot of film references and inspirations that are worn on its sleeve and all of it used fantastically, down to the hilarious satirical setting and voice lines peppered throughout. The music adds to this as it's highly atmospheric and while the title theme is the most memorable tune I appreciate the tense 80's synths that fill the space between bot attacks.

I've mentioned this idea before of 'generosity' as a design concept and HD2 encapsulates it perfectly. You have a ship that is bedecked with orbital weapons, heavy weapons to drop down to you, and a hangar loaded with attack ships to call in. You have your standard array of light and medium arms, grenades, and all of these things deploy in style. You start off where most games leave off and while you do have to unlock and upgrade a lot of this, you still feel like a one-man army from the get-go.

The next thing this game gets right is not only giving you a ton of stuff to play with, the vast majority of it has a reason to exist. The two types of enemy have very different units that require very different equipment to take on properly. Bugs come in huge numbers, low armour, and prefer melee while Bots have smaller numbers, heavy armour, and prefer ranged firepower. So while some gear is made obsolete by upgrades, there's still plenty of weapons and stratagems to experiment with along both tactical lines.

The enemies themselves are takes on familiar concepts, Bugs being 40k Tyranids by way of Starship Trooper bugs, and Bots being 80's Terminators by way of 40k Orcs. Even the human faction of helldivers have a 40k space marines by way of Destiny 2 guardians feel. While the comparisons might sound reductive, the focus here is on high quality DNA being used in ways we all wished the respective IP owners would use them. The bugs are a fun and simple introduction to the game's core mechanics and as you increase the difficulty new enemies are introduced that require you to make use of your weapon and movement options, coordinate with your team, and communicate with them.

The bots being so tactically different, heavily armoured, and coordinated make them quite a steep difficulty curve to adapt to as you'll need that late game gear to stand a chance, but once you get to grips with their fighting style and weak points it's every bit as satisfying to shoot down drop ships and bomb their heavily reinforced bunkers. Don't get me wrong, you'll still get curb stomped occasionally but you aren't penalised for lives lost. Quick reinforcements and those powerful stratagems to back you up mean it's easy to bounce back and it makes the victory feel all the more hard fought for.

Missions meanwhile offer something to do besides blasting waves of enemies. You'll have to make your way across the map to various way points, interact with terminals to play mini-games, and adjust the settings on radars, open pipes, and unlock ICBM silos. It's simple stuff but easy to keep in mind amdist the chaos of enemies baring down on you at the same time. That said there can be some tedious wait times for bars to fill, long walks from one side of the map to the other, and at later difficulties you'll want to avoid setting off encounters you don't need to. This can slow things down but it's never long before you're back to combat. Plus while the objectives are a fun 2nd layer of things to do, they can get repetitive at the 30hr mark - thankfully the simplicity leaves plenty of room for new tasks to be implemented down the line.

Speaking of expansion it's also worth addressing the Warbonds. Functionally they're a masterclass in non-abusive ways to implement battle passes. I genuinely never thought I'd see the day! Still part of me feels like for the way it works and what it is, they could have built this points > shop system in any number of ways besides the structure of a battle pass. I almost feel like it sanitises battle passes conceptually and I don't know how to feel about that as I'm quite against the abusive trends they're historically associated with. At the very least HD2 shows the rest of the industry that live service games aren't the problem just the predatory practices that accompany them.

In conclusion HD2 is beautifully presented, designed, put together, and most importantly fun to play. It has its flaws of course, going single player isn't nearly as strong of an experience, there's some bugs which show up from time to time (from visual issues to straight up crashing mid-game), but when it works it easily outshines those blemishes. The studio are rolling out patches with new weapons, vehicles, and balance adjustments regularly so I'm confident this will all get dealt with - not to mention that it's exciting to have a game releasing new content that isn't exclusively paywalled and actually builds on the existing content. Since everyone can have it by default the playerbase isn't weirdly broken up and segregated which is surprisingly rare. In an age of the games industry taking, this is a game that gives a lot back and I respect that.

Koji Igarashi returns to deliver a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, but the end result is a re-tread of overly familiar territory that doesn't add anything new to the genre he helped create.

Bloodstained feels like a combination of Castlevania and Bayonetta, but plays closer to something like Valkyrie Chronicles or Shantae. The game does some work to set itself apart as a legally distinct IP for the advertising, but spends far more effort on homage and pastiche to make sure you know it's related the moment you start playing. You aren't a vampire, you aren't a dude, and you aren't fighting Dracula, but it is very much a game about gothic era heroes fighting demons using swords and sorcery in a gothic castle. All of the most fundamental aspects of the game are borrowed and recycled in a 'copy my homework' kind of way while failing to deliver anything meaningfully original.

Gameplay is clearly trying to evoke memories of Symphony of the Night but ends up feeling far too clunky and slow by comparison. Symphony was defined by it's flowing movement, attacks without interruption, a variety of interesting mobility options, and a subtle nuance to its simple combat design. Bloodstained meanwhile has attacks that interrupt movement, basic speed improvements locked behind late game equipment, mobility options that are highly circumstantial and inconvenient to use, and a slew of 1 dimensional enemies (some of which feel oddly sci-fi or just don't mesh with the setting at all). As beautiful as the levels are no thought has really gone into how you move through them and enemies are positioned just as arbitrarily, requiring the same attack / dodge / attack pattern until you can just tank and mash.

There's a very shallow streak that runs through bloodstained that leaves every sub-system feeling underdeveloped. Much of the game's design revolves around % drop shards and materials. The shards are unique to each monster and grant a different game mechanic while materials fuel the incredibly tedious crafting system. Both of these are designed with quantity over quality in mind featuring close to 120 shards (about 5 are required to beat the game) and over 120 materials used to craft a staggering number of weapons, items, equipment, and food, but the majority are redundant. In both cases you'll be fine to pick one damaging shard and one type of weapon to serve you, just swapping out to whatever does the most damage at the time. None of the enemies or levels require you to switch tactics or make any meaningful choices leaving all of these 'options' inconsequential.

Much of the game's design, then, feels vestigial. Only the strongest attack really matters, you have 10 types of weapon each with different special attacks to unlock but never a reason to use any of them. You can use magic or melee but neither meaningfully affect gameplay or challenge. Even the feature that makes managing your equipment easier is itself tedious to constantly update as you unlock and change equipment during a playthrough. All of the most practical ability and gear unlocks are saved for the very end of the game when there's barely any game left to use them on, and of course all the late game achievements involve unlocking every weapon, armour, item, and shard which would be fine if looking up items, monsters that drop them, and where they are wasn't also somehow designed to be a slow annoying process of going through 3 different menus each time you want to look something up.

It's stunning to me how the person who created a game as genre defining as Symphony could end up making a game that misses the mark on every aspect that made the original so fun. Bloodstained emulates the visuals, music, and character, level, and combat design of better entries that came before it. It is a game in structure alone and fails to ever really capture a sense of 'fun'. Its features are shallow and there is no interaction between magic, melee, and movement options, nor any enemies that might inspire you to experiment with them. The variety that exists is superficial padding to a bare bones platformer that adds nothing to the genre and does nothing that hasn't been done before. You'd be better off just playing the classics than playing a game that wishes it was them.

Afterbirth+ may have been a bit of a wet fart, but after Antibirth pushed the limits of what a Binding of Isaac expansion could be Ed and the team stood up to the plate and knock Repentance out of the basement.

Here we see a return to the sheer quantity and quality that Afterbirth initially gave us. You have all new environments, atmospheric effects, power ups, item combos, unlockable characters, bosses, more monster variants, challenges, room designs, and more.

While AB+ was clearly meant to be more of a community oriented expansion with lofty goals around the ARG element, it was clear that what people really wanted was the gritty in-game substantive content. An IRL prize that benefits the few hundred people able to take part in it doesn't compare to 5000 new room layouts that everyone can enjoy.

This expansion simply does what made AB so great in the first place - it add more of everything you care about, and makes for a great excuse to get back into the cellar if you haven't visited in a while.

FFXIV is a very broad game with a storied history that I'm sure many are aware of so there's a lot to say about the game. While I know XIV is very popular I think this comes down to it being less of an MMO as I've come to know them, benefitting from being more of a theme park single-player focused JRPG with a heaping load of fanservice.

I was around for the original launch of the game and I think it was best described as... a confusing experience. From the insistence on in-universe words and phrases for things, to very unintuitive interfaces for the crafting and gathering systems, combined with a huge lack of tutorials or explanations for how anything actually worked. It made for a very off-putting experience.

So when ARR launched I was eager to give it another go. Of course the result is a much more polished experience and while it does a lot very well such as the crafting mini-games and the fact you can be so independent, I think it does so by eschewing experiences that only an MMO can deliver. It does so in favour of what is fundamentally a single player experience that epitomises the MMO design World of Wacraft popularised. That is to say that for the majority of the game you are playing a single player game where you are the protagonist and everyone else plays the extras and fodder to your personal story.

Since I started playing MMO's back in 2000 the narrative design back then was largely that you are an individual in a fantasy world and often by banding together and co-operating with other players you shape the world and forge your own stories. Be it building and exploring player made worlds in star wars galaxies, or forming vast levelling parties in ragnarok online to fight gods and craft for others, players collective actions guiding the story in matrix online, or the intricate player driven economics and politics of EVE online. The focus was always on players being the shapers of their world and gameplay literally relying on co-operation.

WoW really set a precedent when it created a questing system that allows players to completely solo the game to end-level, with parties and guilds being largely optional albeit encouraged. All of this was heavily structured, built with one solution in mind, and players were expected to fill the slots, perform their role, and earn their loot to share. It stripped away the organic open-ended player-built nature of MMO's of the past and replaced it with a framework where if you perform the role dictated by your class, you get your shiny. And FFXIV really picked this up and perfected it - not that it's inherently a bad thing, knowing exactly how to play your class and what to do in multiplayer events so easily is a boon but it comes at a cost in my opinion.

In FFXIV you have your class, you have your responsibility in the tank/dps/healer trinity, you have your very strict skill rotation to follow for every battle in the entire game that slowly grows in complexity, and if you press your buttons in the right order for long enough you are often assured victory. The real innovation in XIV's combat is taking the WoW raid mechanics and granting them to ordinary mobs. This means occasionally moving out the way of flashing templates on the floor. As is the case with the 'Holy Trinity' combat design anyone can jump in and perform a role but because the game is built around independence you don't 'need' other players other than in the designated 'multiplayer' content like raid bosses and dungeons. Otherwise every class has some amount of healing, damage, and defence that can only be improved on by others joining you but never makes them a necessity like games of the past would have.

So is independence a bad thing? Not at all, but it does kinda undermine the multiplayer component of an MMO and the types of experiences you can have. Yes you will be playing with many other people in the Trials / raid bosses, dungeons, and FATEs, but FFXIV's gameplay is so structured that this is never dynamic. As long as you are following your rotation and avoiding the flashing ground you never actually need to care what anyone else is doing other than doing the same thing. That does make 'playing with others' very easy and fluid as groups can form and dissolve in minutes without any conversation, planning, or tactics - but that interaction of stopping, meeting people, and talking to them is arguably the very essence of multiplayer. When the game auto-groups you, everyone auto-knows what to do, and never has to interact with anyone - sure you technically 'played with others' but only in the very literal sense.

The other half of the game then is the core story and quests which largely centre around the obtuse good vs evil plot that basically all final fantasy games now revolve around, recycling all the most iconic FF characters, names, enemies, and mascots, endless dialogue boxes of badly written anime filler, and plenty of monster grinding. I think a lot of my issues with this boil down to the way that Enix have always handled the FF IP since they merged with Square. The artistic vision of the older games was driven by Yoshitaka Amano's abstract blend of western fantasy tropes with eastern cultural aesthetics and fashion design. Every game had a very west-meets-east style that was incredibly distinct. I'm not anti-anime, but the way that every new FF game and many of the remakes get fed through the anime filter feels like it's actively destroying and ret-conning the artistry that made this series so distinct to begin with.

So in conclusion, the multiplayer is largely single player, the actual multiplayer is shallow, the story is the same 'Summons are out of control, but a Hero of Light™ will thwart the Villain of Darkness™ to save the kingdoms' stock storyline that every modern FF is about. The world is more focused on being a theme park than being believable, the cutscenes are fully stocked with all the anime tropes, the gameplay is simple and repetitive, and it's stocked up with fan service at the expense of having any integrity in its world, premise, or characters.

Is it a good game? Sure, it's insanely popular and you can dress up your character like an anime doll, pose, and take cute pics. Is it a good MMO? You can check a box saying you played with other people and don't have to actually work with, coordinate, or even talk to any of them. Is it fun? Apparently yes for most people. But it's also a big example of how both the FF brand and the MMO genre have been eroded and homogenised to appeal to the broadest demographic possible. It makes sense that its popular, but it got there by getting rid of what made it special.

While many were introduced to the FPS genre by legendary games like Doom or Quake, I landed at just the right time to pick up Unreal Tournament. It was a visceral and eclectic introduction to the genre with an all-in-one package that featured a little bit everything and a focus on variety.

From the incredible map designs like Phobos and Facing Worlds, the chaos of everyone having personal teleporters, and the various character models to play with, UT was a game that took the best of everything that came before it and put it in one place. Each of its weapons feel like it's own playstyle (a design that would go on to inspire the modern hero shooters), it had the iconic announcer voice, and of course there were so many different game modes and modifiers - aka Mutators.

You could play a very grounded and tactical capture the flag game, or go wild with a deathmatch on a low gravity map, and insta-kill weapons. While you can say that UT never really came up with any of these concepts it did put them all together to create a fun game that was at just the right time for anyone to pick up and play. You didn't have to be the best at everything, know all the glitches, or adopt a meta. If you were new you could grab just about any weapon and get some kills while the more experienced players knew tricks like how to make the shock rifle bubbles explode and master rocket jumps. And of course you could always find the Redeemer nuclear rocket launcher and even the playing field by sending gibs bouncing around the room spraying blood everywhere.

While later versions of the game would focus more on gimmicks, elaborate game modes, and battlefield style vehicular combat, UT was very much the purest form of it's own playstyle. It exists now as a kind of perfect bubble that encapsulates the features, mechanics, and gameplay from that era. It may not be as ground-breaking, prolific, or well remembered but for me it still holds many of my favourite FPS experiences before the genre got so bogged down by legacy IP's and homogenised gameplay.