Solid epilogue to Layers of Fear that wraps up the storyline nicely. While it doesn't innovate the original game, the perspective of the daughter is unique and interesting if you enjoyed the main story. Unfortunately, re-exploring the house just isn't as enjoyable as it was in the first playthrough, as the majority of the mysterious atmosphere disappears. Inheritance attempts to address this through childhood memories, but only with minimal success. The best parts of the hour-long DLC were (1) the endings, which I felt wrapped up the Layers of Fear story excellently, and (2) most of the additional soundtracks, which were just as great as the original game's. While the Inheritance is definitely worth a playthrough if you enjoyed Layers of Fear, don't expect anything more than an epilogue with the same mechanics and themes.

What I like most about Layers of Fear is how unique it feels amidst other modern horror games. Outlast, Amnesia, SOMA, and many others in the genre create fear in the player primarily through the use of external sources. Grotesque enemies, a violence-crazed antagonist, and the struggle to survive are all great fundamentals around which to build a horror game. And while some of these elements can be found within Layers of Fear, the game designs its horror aspect around surrealism and atmosphere, and succeeds at it brilliantly. The abstraction and transformation of the luxurious Victorian mansion as the protagonist descends into madness was captivating to play through, all while complemented by a fantastic score and sound design. I was especially impressed by how much the paintings around the mansion added to the experience, often adding respite, fear, mystery or other emotions to a scene. While there are minimal gameplay mechanics, walking and interacting with doors and containers are both well designed and feel great. The story is told entirely through dialogue flashbacks, notes and images, which work surprisingly well. There are enough details to be found to give the story sufficient explanation and development, but not too many to overwhelm or bore the player. Not relying on jumpscares, disturbingly excessive amounts of gore and/or violence, or even the threat of a traditional death system, Layers of Fear's creative theme and innovative approach to horror has cemented it as one of my favorites of the genre. I'm disappointed to see that many others didn't have the same positive experience with this game.

Fun for awhile, especially with friends, but ultimately a hollow experience. Enemies all become bullet sponges very quickly, and the weapons don't feel different enough from each other to warrant any objective other than increasing their damage numbers. Not really much of a story here either, as logs and a couple lines of dialogue when accepting or submitting missions are all that's here (big missed opportunity). Pretty lackluster endgame content as well, unless you were interested in the Dark Zone, which could produce some exciting moments.

Timeless, groundbreaking and marvelous in its simplicity much like its predecessor, Half Life 2 remains a masterpiece even two decades on from its release. There is something wildly entertaining about moving, shooting, and even just interacting with the world in the Source engine that drives this game. The memorable characters, masterfully crafted world, and mysterious narrative are all bonuses. While some aspects of the game do show their age such as combat encounters, animations and overall visuals, Half Life 2 deserves all the praise it's received over the years and is a definite must-play.

Black Ops III is a weird one. On one hand the MP is fun with the mini thruster pack you get and a bunch of cool "Specialists" with hero-shooter abilities, Zombies had some cool map ideas and the remastered Zombies Chronicles was neat...but on the other the campaign was completely forgettable and just plain boring. There are also many other things wrong with the above modes, most notably the whole loot box system that was the cool new thing back in the day. Overall a decent entry definitely better than Ghosts, AW and Infinite Warfare, but I guess the bar had fallen quite a bit for COD by this point.

I don't remember anything significant about Halo 5's campaign, which is strange considering how important campaigns are is to the history of the Halo franchise. 343 completely lost touch with a huge portion of the fanbase right there.

However, as a semi-competitive player, I had a ton of fun with this game's multiplayer. Halo 5 has one of the most fun multiplayer sandboxes of any game in the series, with a huge assortment of weapons, vehicles and abilities, as well as requisition "variants" of each. Warzone, the PvPvE mode where you can play with pretty much anything using Req Points, is great for casual play. But where the game really shined competitively was in Arena MP. The movement options you're given make for tense firefights and fast-paced gameplay. I can see why most were turned off this game quickly, but for more competition-minded players, Halo 5's multiplayer had lots to offer despite the game's overall mediocrity.

THE BEST Pokémon games (imo), but make sure to play B&W first. These games have more to do, more places to go, more Pokémon, and more characters and more story than the first games, but being familiar with Unova is important to get the most out of them. Originally I was wary at the thought of sequels to B&W (how much could they really improve on?), but man was I wrong. These games are some of the most important to the series, the end of Pokémon's "golden age" on the DS and do an amazing job of showing what Pokémon is all about and how awesome this series can be.

This game was hugely innovative for the COD series and kicked off a new era for the series focused on
aerial movement. AW almost feels like a spinoff in all the things it does differently from the other games.
During my time with it I remember times when the movement and gunplay worked really well together, making for
some really fun moments. But the multiplayer mostly felt awkward, and the gunplay was weak and
unrewarding. Along with the whole lootbox system and forgettable maps & modes, the multiplayer experience isn't
really worth returning to aside from the novelty of the exo-suit movement and abilites.

As for the campaign and "exo-zombies", I'd say don't really bother. The other games do it all better. You'll
get your standard dose of cool moments and a handful of fun missions, but it's all mostly lackluster. Unless
you really love the exo-suit stuff, skip this entry - you're not missing much.

Despite being one of the most universally hated COD games alongside Infinite Warfare, the biggest problem
Ghosts had was that it was the follow-up to Black Ops II (regarded by many
as one of the best entries in the series). Ghosts had a bunch of interesting ideas including the
character-based prestige system, dynamic maps, and several unconventional killstreaks which became heavily
criticized throughout the game's lifecycle. Sure the TTK was frustrating, many of the maps didn't really work,
and the game oftentimes felt strange, but looking back, Ghosts was still classic COD, the last entry before the series really went off the deep end with Advanced
Warfare and beyond.

I can understand the community's general dislike for this entry, but I honestly had a good time with it. The
campaign wasn't half bad, and Extraction was a unique idea for a third mode to play with friends. Although the
multiplayer isn't the strongest of the "boots on the ground" CODs, it's not terrible, and provides refreshingly
simple FPS gameplay in an era bloated with microtransactions and live service.

One of the most influential RPGs ever made. Absurdly massive open world packed full of content, strong story, memorable characters, and great combat (although many would argue is dated). Visually stunning when it first released with graphics and an art style that still hold up today. A masterpiece in its own right, but made infinitely better by one of the best modding communities out there. It's one of those rare games that you'll always end up coming back to at some point whether it be to mod, try a new build or approach the story differently.

The best example of "it just works".

The Gen 6 Pokémon games did a lot of things right, but don't really live up to the earlier entries in the series. Gen 6 was the start of Game Freak making the series more accessible through a lower overall difficulty as well as designing the story and characters to appeal to a younger audience.

X & Y are still good games that adhere to the tried and true Pokémon formula while also making some nice changes. The move to 3D was revolutionary for the series, and well done overall. Fun additions include new Pokémon animations/renders, roller skates, and Mega Evolutions. Aside from these, however, the story and characters were mostly forgettable in the wake of Gen 5, and I'd agree with most other series veterans that say this generation did little to move the series forward.