Sure the combat could be better but if you think its bad clearly you've never impulse mega flare permafrost dancing steel into stagger will-o-the-wykes lightning rod gigaflare zantetsuken level 5-ed before and it shows :/

I struggled a good bit throughout my playthroughs of Final Fantasy XVI. It is now the third mainline game in the series I've beaten but at the time I started it I had intended it to be my first. Its a series I've always known i needed to try to get into, and the demo of this game was absolutely amazing, it completely blew me away. I was very unexpectedly hyped for this. And playing it I was like oh yeah this is def 5/5 material, after the Garuda fight I was so sold on the game. The music is fucking fantastic and I've never seen such awesome boss fights. But then after that the game felt like it had already peaked. There are still great boss fights through the rest of the game but they never were as impactful as the first 10 or so hours were for me. I felt myself increasingly disinterested in the plot and all the lore and by extension - the game itself.

All that changed near the end when I finally actually started doing side missions. I surprisingly ended up becoming quite fond of all the side characters in the Hideaway and to a much lesser extent the different characters out in the various towns and villages. The game has a pretty damn good cast. It was around that point that I was pretty hype for the end. And for the most part the finale delivers. Its plenty epic, and I was having a great time. But in the end, I was a bit disappointed in how everything wrapped up. That's not to say that there's really anything wrong with the ending, it just wasn't what I was wanting. How i feel about that is how I feel about Final Fantasy XVI as a whole. Plenty of great moments, but in the end still just a little disappointing.

Now that I've explained that I still think FFXVI is great, I have a lot more to complain about. Mostly minor things but it all added up over my 90 hours spent with the game. Some minor annoyances like enemy phases being tied to health bars so sometimes when you set up a stagger and start unleashing, the game just lets them sit there and recover without taking damage and you being unable to do anything for like 20 seconds before the next phase begins. There's also some battles in the wild where if the fight naturally goes a little further than where it started, enemies may just become immune and run back to their spawn point at full health. There's also without fail after every big boss, a main quest that's meant to let things settle but it just kills the pacing and feels like the game is wasting your time by dishing out forced side quests, sometimes several in a row. In the more dungeon-y areas the game is also pretty bad at leading the player along, there were several times I ran completely in the wrong direction because it doesn't make it clear what doors you can open unless you're right next to them. My final complaint is that Final Fantasy mode, the supposed hard mode for NG+, is a complete joke. Now I'm sort of glad it wasn't hard because it made the platinum obtainable for me and now that i have one for a mainline game in the series I don't ever have to bother again. But like, the games idea of hard is give every enemy 50x as much HP. For normal enemies it ain't nothin a level 5 Zantetsuken can't solve but any enemy with a stagger bar doesn't actually feel harder to fight, they just take ages to fucking kill. Even though i skipped every cutscene and did minimal side content, my FF playthrough felt longer than my first where I did basically everything. It just isn't very fun.

So that's about all of my thoughts with Final Fantasy XVI. But to end on a more positive note: Jill is hot and Titanic Block + Counter is one of the most satisfying moves of all time.

Thanks for reading <3

-----TLDR----
+ Great cast
+ Amazing soundtrack
+ Awesome boss fights throughout
- Story quality and pacing is wildly inconsistent
- Didn't like the way it ended
- Too many little gameplay grievances that add up

Nancymeter - 85/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #278)
Time Played: 92 hours
Completion #6 of November
Completion #210 of 2023

I know a lot of people were kinda soft on it but I really loved the story mode for the base game so I found this DLC to be a bit frustrating. Its good, expected comic book-y stuff like the rest of Mortal Kombat but I don't know. My favorite part of the base game was the mom-daughter stuff with Cassie and Sonya. So of course this DLC focused a lot on the worst mother character of all time, Sindel. It does make for an interesting contrast and the focus on villains is cool but I just am not sure the ending is satisfying enough to make up for how it felt like all my favorite characters got done dirty. The most frustrating aspect of this DLC is that my opinion on it entirely depends on what happens in the next two Mortal Kombat games lol.

Other than that I like the three new characters (Fujin the most) and having Robocop is sweet but I already had my mains so wasn't too interested in trying them out.

Overall Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath is a pretty solid expansion with a good if somewhat frustrating conclusion to the story and good new character additions. I do think the original 40 dollar price tag for it is positively ridiculous but thankfully you can get it for much cheaper on sale. Its a solid add-on to my favorite fighting game and I can't ask for too much more than that.

Just wanted to leave this little mini review. I also recently got the platinum for both the PS4 and PS5 version of the basegame if that doesn't tell you how much I enjoyed it. I currently have MK1 installed and I def need a bit of a fighting game break but I am very eager to play it nonetheless, will definitely be reviewing that as well 😌

-----TLDR----
+ Good new additions to the roster
+ Interesting set up for the future of MK
- Too many of my characters got disrespected in story mode lol

Nancymeter - 70/100
Trophy Completion - N/A
Time Played: 2-4 hours
DLC Completion #2 of November
DLC Completion #35 of 2023

I absolutely love walking simulators and adventure games. Any day, I will choose a game with a fantastic story over anything else. The complex story and moral choices in 1000xResist initially drew my attention, but ultimately, it left me with a walking simulator filled with anime tropes and more questions than answers. This game swiftly teaches you that there are no definitive answers or absolutes. The game begins with a reasonable number of questions, but towards the end, only a few remain. What remained for me was a game I will soon forget.

You play a character named Watcher. She is one of the Six Sisters, who are part of some sort of post-apocalyptic society or group. The environment is very sterile and too perfect. It almost feels like a starship or something else. The game thrusts you into an unknown part of this timeline. It is up to you to unravel and follow the linear path that the game leads you on. There are a few instances where you have more control over Watcher, specifically when you explore the "center" and engage in conversations with people. This ends up feeling like a chore because you have to do it multiple times, and only yesterday (as of this writing) did the developers patch in a map. There is almost no gameplay. If you consider zipping around the sky on some flying orbs as gameplay, you shouldn't expect much more. You will likely navigate through thousands of lines of spoken dialogue. The voice-over is decent, if mundane. Even side characters and NPCs speak in every scene.

The pacing is the only thing the game has going for it. While the first few chapters feel repetitive, as you commune with various sisters, you go from location to location, simply walking around in small rooms and engaging in dialogue. This will bore anyone who isn't an adventure game fan. The story is hard enough to follow, and when you try to make sense of it all, you get more characters to trust you. The game advances when you talk to the correct person. At times, the game presents this as a task, while at others, it becomes more evident.

This game defies easy description or explanation. At times, the dialogue and story can be quite poignant, touching on topics such as adolescence and parental conflict and separation. Additionally, the game heavily references the COVID-19 pandemic, with characters donning masks and discussing a disease that could potentially wipe out humanity. Honestly. I can't even tell you if that's exactly what the story is about, as it's so vague all the time. We don't get any true, hard facts on what's going on in this world. The "Allmother" named Iris serves as the foundation for these Six Sisters, who have the ability to replicate themselves. It's just a bunch of confusing threads that don't really lead anywhere.

I had a strong desire to enjoy this game. The narrative exhibits promise, featuring numerous characters on the verge of likability or memorability, yet it succumbs to the anime conventions of guiding you through a perpetually perplexing plot, only to leave you feeling let down at the conclusion. At times, the narrative excels, presenting you with a flurry of answers towards the conclusion. This can be satisfying and memorable, but 1000xResist just refuses to give in. I just wanted the game to end, but it goes on for 10–12 hours even if you read all of the dialog and skip most of the voice lines. The choices don't really matter until the very end of the game, and even then, you aren't sure if there were choices earlier that mattered. 

1000xResist is hard to recommend, even to anime lovers. The animations, visuals, and everything else are fairly generic, forgettable, and mostly dull. The game's overuse of bloom and lack of lip-syncing during dialog gives it a cheap, low-budget feel, which is normally acceptable if executed well. The game drags the player along for so long that, in the end, you expect a massive pay-off but end up with a fizzle and sputter. I can't really recommend this game to anyone outside of die-hard adventure game fans.

The game is broken up into two gameplay styles. An adventure/walking simulator-style mansion exploration where you solve puzzles. This part of the game is rather dull and uninteresting. Many other games do house explorations better (Layers of Fear, Gone Home, What Remains of Edith Finch) as the game slowly opens the house to you, but the key is to find objects to solve puzzles and find something that triggers a dive into Paul's mind and thoughts. Each chapter (there are three) consists of one of his family members represented as a horrific monster. You can either choose to kill them or let them live to get different endings. Most of these "boss fights" require you to flip switches and run away for the most part, but they are rather intense, so I didn't mind them.

The second part of the game is the trenches gameplay, in which the horror part sets in. You need to run around solving the occasional puzzle while also hiding from enemies. There is no combat in this game, so you have to sneak around and find your way through the dark in various environments. The creature designs are awesome, but this is probably the most exciting part of the game. It was intense sneaking past enemies, and thankfully there's only one small section in each chapter, but the horror elements that are actually good can be counted on one hand. There are moments in which each main monster is introduced, and these scenes are fairly creepy, and outside of weird sound effects and haunting ambience, there's not much else here. The game does portray the gruesome horrors of the war, with bodies spread everywhere, the barbaric medical practices, and the overall brutal nature of everything people endured during that time.

With the game being as linear as it is, there isn't a lot of room for exploration outside of finding dog tags, and this only grants an achievement. There are a few extra gameplay items you can find, such as a pickaxe to break down walls, a dynamo flashlight, a gas mask, and wire cutters to cut down barbed wire, which is actually quite annoying. The barbed wire moves and is related to the story (I won't spoil why), and you have to cut the non-moving wire or it will grab you, and that will trigger a quick-time event. This could have been done better. To be completely honest, all of these items don't really add anything to the game. The gas mask is used a few times to get through corridors with some gas, and it lasts a few seconds. The flashlight is annoying to use, as it only lights up for a few seconds before needing to be charged again. 

The game overall isn't very exciting. The horror elements fall flat, and the walking simulator-style gameplay is void of almost any gameplay. The story itself is convoluted and difficult to figure out if you don't read the papers spread throughout the game. The visuals are at least good, if not necessarily unique or interesting, because of the monster designs. There are nice lighting effects, but the character models are something to be desired. The mansion areas are also a chore to play through, and it just feels like mindless wandering through rooms to find objects.

Overall, Ad Infinitum doesn't do anything particularly well or is interesting enough to not be forgettable. There are some good horror moments, but they aren't anything special, and the game overall lacks a cohesive story or a way to tell it. There are many games out there that are similar and do a better job of everything listed.

I never thought that a GTA game would be in handheld format. We had the original two games on the GBA, but that was kind of expected. Chinatown Wars is a brand new hand-tailored experience for the DS and later shoehorned onto the PSP. There are touch-screen controls, a whole new interface, and mini-games galore. This game feels like what GTA 3 would have been if it hadn't gone full 3D. You get the over-the-top perspective, but everything is still in 3D. The game looks really good for a DS game and feels like a unique GTA experience.

The story is your typical GTA gangster revenge story. You play as Huang, whose father was murdered for an ancient sword that was passed down to mark the next mob boss leader. Huang flies to Liberty City to avenge his father's death, get to the bottom of the Triad and gang squabbling, and get that sword back to help his uncle move to the top. The story is full of deceit, betrayal, deception, and revenge and is mostly uninteresting. It doesn't have the charisma, flair, or flavor that the console versions have, mostly due to the lack of voice acting. The story is told through stills and text, which makes sense on the DS, but definitely doesn't give the characters any well-being. Many of the mob members are stereotypical drug and sex addicts, power-hungry, stupid, and Huang can't trust anyone. The story has around 50 missions, and they play out similar to the console version.

The main interface is custom for the DS. You get a PDA-style screen that you can touch. The map is displayed here as well as your radio stations, throwables, and weapon switching, and the menu in the PDA will show your trade info, emails, settings, stats, etc. It's very intuitive and just makes sense. New story missions are given via red emails. These will also give you a shortcut to place a waypoint on the map leading to that new story. There are a lot of quality-of-life things like this thrown in. The GPS map has shortcuts for everything you need, from odd jobs to your safehouses. You can also order ammo and weapons from Ammu-Nation on the PDA as well. They show up at your house, and you get an email telling you when it's ready.

Running around the world of Liberty City feels lively because of the limitations put in place. You can run and jack cars, drive off and kill everyone on the road, and gain your infamous wanted stars. Stars can be dropped by making police cars crash, which will help lower your wanted meter faster. I did feel there were way too many cops around in this game. It seemed every 5–10 cars was a cop car or a pig walking around. I was constantly caught carjacking or running over someone, and I was always running into cop cars. This felt way overdone in this game. Driving around Liberty City does feel great. The game never slows down, and the ambient sound effects of the original radio tunes (they're instrumental and not licensed due to space limitations on the DS carts) make it feel like a living and breathing GTA game on the go.

Missions are varied, but some elements of missions can get quite annoying, causing multiple deaths and restarts. The auto-lock-on feature for shooting isn't that great. You don't always lock on to the closest enemy or an enemy at all. This caused many deaths when I locked onto a car instead of a person shooting at me. You can roll around and dodge people, but many times I was stuck without a weapon and would have to order something from Ammu-Nation, go to my safehouse, wait, pick it up, and go back and restart the mission. Thankfully, you can trip skip if you get to a certain point in longer missions, which saves you time, and you can skip cutscenes. A lot of mini-games surround missions, such as tapping the screen to break locks, mini-games to use cranes, plant bombs, scratch cards, tattoing, and many others. These were a lot of fun, and I was always looking forward to the next one. However,  trying to jack a car and being stuck in a mini-game of hot starting it for the 100th time got old and would make me get busted as you can't back out of it. Most missions vary from shooting, following, and chasing, and some put you on turrets or throw bombs out of a car. Overall, the mission variety is awesome, and I never got bored.

The biggest setback in the game is the new feature of drug dealing. You can use your PDA to see the drug turf map for who buys and sells what. This is required to actually make money for weapons and sometimes even start missions. Some missions require a certain drug type or a large amount of cash. This means setting a GPS waypoint for a dealer who sells said drug and buying some from them. You need to make large profits, so it's best to wait for an email when a dealer is selling at a discount and then turn around and sell it. This takes a lot of time—driving around and waiting around, however. Buying and selling drugs at market value won't get you anywhere. Odd jobs can give you a few bucks, but they don't pay out enough. This really slows the game down and hampers an otherwise fast-paced game. 

When it comes to visuals, the game really shines on the DS. There are small, subtle things, like street lights turning off when you hit the poles. Weather patterns such as lightning strikes casting shadows on the ground, sparks, fire effects, and even being able to close the driver door if it's still open while driving (let go of the accelerator and Huang will close the door). These small changes help make this a high-quality DS experience and set it above the rest in terms of production values. Chinatown Wars may have a forgettable story and characters, some control issues when shooting, some frustrating missions, and a drug dealing mechanic that hinders more than helps, but overall the game is miles above what I thought a portable GTA game could be and in some ways feels better than the PSP GTA games.

I finished this game the other day and ever since I've been collecting my thoughts about it. It's odd, usually when I finish a game, I have a concrete opinion on it, I've seen basically everything the game has to show me and my memory is usually pretty good, so I'm able to form a full opinion pretty quickly, which is also why I don't like leaving games unfinished. But Galaxy 2 is different, in my opinion, it doesn't really feel like a whole new game. Its development started out as an expanded version of the original game called "Super Mario Galaxy More" but later became its own thing, it's an innovative sequel on the same engine, similar to Doom II: Hell on Earth, Thief 2: The Metal Age and Far Cry 4. But, similar to games that follow this philosophy, I feel as though it doesn't quite live up to the original. Let me explain.

I like the original Galaxy for a few key reasons. For one, it was incredibly consistent. Before putting down the game I had gotten around 90 stars, I didn't bother to do the purple coin missions, though I may go back now, and I think that the motion control levels are pretty terrible; trust me, I actually like motion controls (more on them later). However, I did like a vast majority of those 90 stars. I don't think many of the levels were particularly excellent but the fact that the only ones I disliked were ones based around poorly implemented mechanics is a testament to how consistent the general gameplay is.

This is also mostly true for Galaxy 2, with some caveats. Level design is pretty good across the board, to explain how great it is, I'll use two examples: Fluffy Bluff Galaxy and Melty Monster Galaxy. Fluffy Bluff Galaxy begins with a small, but open area filled with shallow water, and within that water are various coins and star bits to collect; this is important as this Galaxy's main gimmick is the Cloud Mushroom, and the Cloud suit will disappear upon contact with water. Having the area be open is also a plus because, anyone who has ever watched or read a review of Mario 64 will know what I'm about to say, it allows the player to get familiar with the unique mechanics, this being how the Cloud Suit making Mario much more floaty as well as giving him placeable platforms, giving Mario significantly more distance and height. After this, Mario is either lead onto a large cloud platform or up onto a cliffside, with some cloud platforms along the side, but even if the player fails at platforming up these cloud platforms, the area below is mostly solid ground, so there is little reason to worry about falling down. This cliffside stops at a bottomless ravine which would kill any player if they fail to cross, with a couple of cloud platforms along the way, so therefore, these elements incentivises the use to the cloud suit to pass. However, players with a keen eye will notice that a well timed long jump can make it across the already placed cloud platforms, which creates some level of a skill gap. After a pretty mediocre section where we collect launch star pieces, we reach another section with a bottomless pit, however now we have platforms that disappear into the wall after a certain amount of time. This further incentivises the use of the cloud platforms whilst also adding a sense of urgency, which is then finished off by another pretty bland section that's basically just a repeat of the section with the ravine. This is level design 101, introducing a mechanic and then increasing the stakes as you go along the level.

If you couldn't tell, the game has an issue with levels becoming redundant after a while, where they figuratively repeat sections; not every level suffers from this but there is another thing to praise about the level design. Going back to that large cloud platform from the beginning of the level and feeding the Hungry Luma 100 coins (which rewards players whom had explored the open area below) we gain access to a brand new area, which is a 2D section with moving platforms. The moving platforms are important since it asks more of the player with their timing and tests their knowledge of the Cloud Suit more closely, whilst also utilising different mechanics than the primary star to do so. This is what I like to call "tree-like" level design, and it's most prominent in 3D Mario game, where you have a singular mechanic taken in one direction for one star, but taken another way with another star, and it is a major strength of the Galaxy games.

But Galaxy 2 doesn't just offer tree-like levels with branching evolutions of its ideas, it also features level design that does continuously innovate and expand upon its core ideas within singular stars. Melty Monster Galaxy star 1 is probably my favourite star in the entire game for just how good the level design is. We start off at a very basic pull star section with Lava Monsters attempting to damage us and in turn, kill us, lava and these "melty monsters" are this level's main mechanics; it's not too hard and even if you are hit, you can fairly easily pull yourself back to safety. We then blast off with a launch star, where we come across a trope of the Mario series: rising lava. It comes in waves and isn't too difficult, but it still requires a tiny bit of skill and patience to cross. This leads into a section without that rising lava (more on that later), replaced with rotating platforms which float like icebergs upon lava, but they only start rotating once you start moving on them, which is then intertwined with those lava monsters from early; this keeps the level fresh and interesting whilst also going back to the central mechanic. This then leads into an entirely different section with tornados, seen before in a previous game, where once you spin you activate a sort of "helicopter" form and slowly descend to the surface below, which happens to be lava. Once again, fresh and interesting. The final section involves a bunch of those lava monsters acting similar to the rising lava from before, in one final test of patience and platforming skill, where you have to traverse small planetoids, all with their own gravity, and then eventually break the star free whilst under constant pressure from the lava monsters.

This star shows everything great about Galaxy 2, it's got a lot of variety and it's consistently fun to play. But, there's two issues with this level. For one, see how there are many mechanics that are just placed in and never brought up again? Yeah, Galaxy 2 does this a lot. It's not bad, it stops levels from getting repetitive, but it also results in a lot of the mechanics feeling shallow. Perhaps this is simply because I've been spoiled by Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze which continuously innovates upon mechanics whilst intertwining them with entirely new ones, but I definitely think more could've been done in Galaxy 2. The second issue is, do you notice how I only mentioned the first star? That's because the 2nd star of Melty Monster Galaxy is easily one of the worst. Why? because Galaxy 2 has a major issue with theming, as many secondary stars are just trivial minigames that have barely anything to do with the primary star, and nowhere is this more evident than Melty Monster Galaxy Star 2, where it's essentially just a challenge course with the rock mushroom. It's a fun level and pretty good for grinding star bits, but how the fuck is this related to the first star? Why would you put a minigame involving a power-up that was barely present in the original level? Of course, it was in the original level, but it was only present in a "hidden" section where you play... bowling. Do you see the problem here? Both of the negative points with the galaxies I've analysed can be lead back to one central problem: consistency. The game really does have some great levels but they're placed alongside these underwhelming levels that have little to no theming, and/or are just rip-offs of galaxies from the first game. But this sadly isn't the only issue with this game.

The progression in Galaxy was also another highlight of that game. I have not finished Mario 64, and that's because I don't like that game's progression. While levels were generally open, I didn't like a lot of them, and felt that only about half of the levels were competent, for one reason or another, but because of its consistency, Galaxy 1 comes out on top. I mention this because the progression is basically the same as 64, you can only play a select few levels at a time before fighting a boss and moving on, and only when you have reached a certain amount of stars can you progress. In Galaxy 1, it's way more lenient, so it doesn't feel like a chore getting those last few stars. There's 119 stars to obtain before you fight Bowser for the last time, and you are only required to obtain 60 of them to actually fight him. It's not that much less than the 70 of 64, but it's a welcome change nonetheless.

This is where my third complaint with Galaxy 2 lies, the progression isn't as good as the first game. This was an issue with Mario at the time, because ever since NSMB Wii, the series had begun to simplify itself to a very severe degree, some may argue that it started with the first NSMB game but that's not important; the progression goes like this: You must complete one star in a Galaxy in order to progress forward. This, of course, once again raises the issue of consistency, as if there is a level you don't like, you will still have to play it regardless. This was an issue solved by 64 and Galaxy (which was apparently absent in Sunshine but I haven't played that one yet) by having your progress be dictated by how many stars you have, and you're pretty much free to do what you want in that case. Thankfully, the game doesn't have any particularly bad level which would warrant this sort of criticism, the closest one I could think of is "Rolling Coaster Galaxy" from World S, which forces you to use motion controls. It's thankfully very short and isn't very difficult, I beat it on my frist try, but to some people it may be a much bigger issue, and because of that, I think it would've been better if they retained the structure of Galaxy 1.

From my previous statement, it would be reasonable to infer that because of the motion control levels, getting 100% in Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be tedious. This is true, but motion control levels were also present in Galaxy 1 and they were still pretty bad, and there is another major issue, but for the sake of being fair, I'll go into why the motion control levels are so bad. Simply put, the technology wasn't there at the time. The gyroscope in the original model of the Wii remote wasn't very advanced and really could only pick up on whether you were waggling the controller, which is why waggle was used so frequently in Wii titles, they literally couldn't do much else. "Wii Motion Plus" was supposed to be an answer to this, but it came near the end of the Wii's lifespan and, as far as I could tell from my research, it isn't compatible with Wii games outside of a few select titles; I say this because Wii Motion Plus specifically has to be calibrated, and Galaxy 2 has no such feature (plus there is also a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_Wii_MotionPlus). This is completely fucking baffling to me, Galaxy 2 was released a whole year after the launch of the Motion Plus accessory and a few weeks after the release of the "Wii Remote Plus" which had Wii Motion Plus built in. Similar to the Classic Controller on the Wii and the Wii U Pro Controller (to a lesser extent) it seems Nintendo has a habit of just straight up not using its technology for absolutely no reason. Okay, maybe you don't want to alienate consumers by making them buy more things with the console they already brought, but why make it in the first place then? Even if it does help the motion controls , they still feels like shit, which only furthers the point that the technology wasn't there at the time.

Okay, this has been very conflicted so far but I would like to mention, up until you defeat Bowser, this game is pretty much on par with the first game, and for those first 6 worlds, I recommend this game regardless. However, the straw that broke the camel's back on whether this game was better than the first game comes after you've defeated Bowser, in the post game. It's terrible. Now, the first game was also tedious to 100%, simply because of the motion control levels, but this game takes it way too far. In the first game, once you've defeated Bowser, you unlock some purple coin missions; they're basic collectathon missions but they add some good variety to the game. In Galaxy 2, you have the green stars. Fuck the green stars. They are the most blatant, most unashamed form of padding I have ever seen. Okay, re-using levels for stuff like prankster comets is fine, it is a form of padding but at least they add something new with new challenges and sometimes adding entirely new elements to levels; the green stars however are way too excessive and don't add nearly enough to the game to warrant there being so many of them. They're basically how stars in Mario 64 worked, where you collect one, get kicked back to the level select, and are forced to go back and find more of them in the exact same level. They're very bad for the game's pacing and they make getting 100% a chore.

I've been pretty harsh on this game but that's only because its shortcomings are really major considering the expectations I had going into this game. This is heralded as one of the best platformers of all time, and I kind of see it, but even if I do think most of the game is pretty good, I can't say I think its praise is entirely deserved. I do overall recommend this game, but don't do the post game if you don't want to, because it's not good.

Wasn't intending to review this game but ever since I finished it I can't stop thinking about it, so here we go.

I am a holder of many hot takes and now I'm adding a new one into the collection: RE5 is better than RE4. Before I get into this game proper, I need to emphasise that you really need to play this with a friend because it is much better, the AI in singleplayer isn't nearly as good as having another human by your side.

To begin with, the inventory system has been drastically improved, as while the Attaché Case wasn't a bad inventory system, it being in an action game just wasn't a good fit for it; constantly stopping and starting, it was a massive pace breaker, alongside some elements such as green herbs and grenades not stacking would mean your inventory would be bloated. RE5's inventory is a straight upgrade, it's much smaller, relegated to 9 slots, but almost everything stacks and you don't have nearly as many menial things such as attachments holding you down, on top of it not pausing the game which creates a lot of tension and emphasises my favourite thing in action games: on-the-fly decision making, which you will need.

The difficulty of RE5 is a drastic improvement over RE4, the dynamic difficulty of 4 does make it a very smooth ride from start to finish, but it meant that people like me who wanted more of a challenge couldn't get one consistently as my victories didn't feel entirely deserved; while dynamic difficulty isn't completely gone from RE5, it has been downplayed to a point in which I am comfortable with, since the only things which are effected by it are only some enemy placements and item drops. It's very minor and playing on the Veteran difficulty gave me and my friend a hard but fair challenge and the few dynamic elements never detracted from the core gameplay and that core gameplay is a ton of fun; aside from the previously mentioned inventory system, all the core mechanics from RE4 have been carried over and improved, you can still stun enemies, shoot certain projectiles out of the air and perform context sensitive melee attacks, but then you also have combo strings of melee attacks you can do with your partner, as well as an execution for when enemies are laying on the ground. The melee attacks can now be performed by both players at once to do extra damage, and while that may initially seem like overkill, it is very good for taking out mini-boss enemies, because there are a lot more of them compared to RE4.

This is where the co-op element really comes into play as having 2 people simultainiously making on-the-fly decisions and helping each other adds so much to the combat, a massive improvement over Ashley whom, while not bad (and I'd argue overhated), didn't really add anything to the game. Let me give you an example: it was in the final hours of the game and I was on a raised platform while my friend was down below where a large enemy was, and it was one of the more dangerous large enemies, I had a magnum which will stun any large enemy and open them up for a melee attack, so I shot the large enemy in the head and began a stunlock string of me shooting it and my friend melee attacking it, doing a ton of damage and finishing off the fight. It was such a brilliant sequence of events and it was all intuitive, all my friend had to say was "gimme another one (opening)" and I knew exactly what he was talking about, and I'll say right now, games that have depth in gameplay and have that depth be intuitive is one of my favourite things ever.

Another complaint I had with RE4 was level design, not because of how linear it was, but because of its basic nature; many arenas are just hallways or large circles, there was nothing to manipulate enemy AI or really outsmart enemies, the game is a borderline shooting gallery because of this. RE5 manages to distinguish itself by having way better arena design as a whole, it's really good to the point where it actually made me like cover mechanics when they were used later in the game; it's got more verticality, more space to move around, there's much more room for interesting interactions and decision making. However, that doesn't mean every level is consistent, as many of them also fall into the trap of hallway shooting, and there is an entire turret section chapter which was mediocre; RE5 has lower lows than RE4, but it compensates by having higher highs, as the final hours of the game are great, some of the most co-op fun I've ever had in fact, and chapter 6-3 is such a well design and well paced conclusion that I couldn't think of a more perfect way to end a video game. This is on top of having various open ended sections throughout the game which game you more freedom to explore which I definitely appreciated as they added some much needed variety.

Weapon variety was a big positive of RE4 for me, and I'm glad to say that it's mostly still here, with a few more issues; whilst RE4 had a lot of weapons, each of them had a small amount of customisation to them with attachments, and they're basically all gone in this game, alongside the fact that a lot of weapons in the same class mostly feel the same to use with too few changes to distinguish themselves. This isn't a massive issue however because I think having the inventory be improved over having a little more weapon variety is a worthy sacrifice, and there's enough weapon types and a few select variants that do set themselves apart so that this game isn't lacking in weapon variety, but on that same topic, its enemy variety is pretty good also.

Enemy variety was probably my biggest criticism with RE4, you're fighting mostly the same enemies throughout the entire game and the little variation there is wasn't really that good. RE5 does also have a similar issue but it is far better than RE4, as many enemies have different ways to approach them, such as the aforementioned large enemies, on top of the different enemy types like the townsfolk, the tribal enemies, the tough as nails bug enemies, as well as some ranged enemies among others. I was initially not fond of those ranged enemies but as the game went on, it started to use them in more creative ways and ultimately I came back around on them. All this makes for a gameplay experience that is just far more enjoyable than RE4's gameplay for me, there's so much more going on and way more stakes at play. However, despite having overall better enemy design, the bosses are kind of bad for the most part; uninteresting bullet sponges with little going on, they're not terrible, aside from the 2nd Ouroboros Mass fight (genuine Z tier fight), but the last few bosses were a genuine surprise, they had some unique mechanics and a decent amount going on in them; they're not fantastic but for shooter standards, they are a cut above most of what the genre offers, without a doubt.

However, that's not what makes me give this game such a high rating despite its reputation as one of the "bad resident evils", counting all of this game's pros and cons and I'd think I would feel the same way I do about Quake 4, a competent shooter that has a few bumps in the road, but is overall well designed, and kept my attention from start to finish (for more of my thoughts on that game, read: https://www.backloggd.com/u/mirphy/review/304849/). My affinity for this game would be thanks to its DLC. Lost in Nightmares isn't anything to write home about, it's a throwback to the original Resident Evil games with some neat ideas but it ultimately feels like a fart in the wind dude to repetition and being far too short. Desperate Escape on the other hand is excellent, fucking incredible even. The difficulty curve picks up right where the main game left off, and it just keeps going and going, it's a great experience from front to back, putting everything you and your partner have learnt to the test in an exhilirating rollercoaster ride. It's the perfect example of DLC done right, so much so that I struggle to find a single thing wrong with it.

RE5 and Desperate Escape are, together, a brilliant co-op experience. There's good gameplay, good level design and a lot of content on display, I thoroughly look forward to dumping many hours into the Mercenaries mode. I know this review will not click with a lot of people, and that's fine, but hopefully I've shed light upon how some people can view RE4 in a bad light, and maybe have put the thought of giving this game a 2nd chance into your minds. If I did, I hope that you finish the game feeling,

S A T U R A T E D.

I haven't played Eternal yet but even if the combat in that game is better and anywhere near as good as anyone says, I don't think Eternal can live up to the perfect balance of grit and exaggeration. 2016 has so many things that should be goofy in theory, like the Cacodemons just floating around like little meatballs, watching a Mancubus explode from shoving a part of itself down its throat or watching as this regular sized man rips the limbs off of enemies 3x his size.

But it all just... works. Everything down to the visual design, the music, the general audio design and even the more subtler movements of the Doomguy all work towards making this admittedly dumb setting and story work extremely well. It's more than just a heavy metal album come to life, it's an entire discography.

Doom 2016 holds a special place in my heart. I may prefer Doom 64 for its level design and Plutonia for its challenge and visual variety but 2016 was so influential to my taste in media that I don't know where to begin. It got me into retro shooters, it reminded me of my love for Metroid-like progression and level design, its OST got me into metal, its world led me to finding series I love such as Chainsaw Man and Berserk, its main character got me into series with cool protagonists who don't quip every single second, like John Wick and Samurai Jack.

This one is a bit odd for me since I'm very much a gameplay-first kind of guy but Doom 2016 is so irrationally important to me and my tastes that I have to give it special treatment.

In my short review of Sonic Robo Blast 2, I mentioned how I didn't really enjoy Sonic that much and how that game was the most fun I had with anything Sonic related.

That has now changed. I played Adventure 2 and enjoyed it decently enough but this game? I had a blast. Not perfect by any means but this has so much of what I want from a platformer. My only big complaints are that the conditions for ranks are kind of stupid (being point-based rather than time-based) and that the wisps, whilst offering more opportunities for replayability, exploration and speed, don't compliment Sonic's movement abilities very well.

But, to Sonic fans: I am sorry. This game is really good. "Sonic was never good" my ass.

Weak story when compared to the other games in the series, I couldn't get attached to any of the characters but for Mihaly (Mr. X) which might be the runner-up for best antagonist in the series.

This game shines in the presentation department, the graphics are beautiful and breathtaking along the set pieces and the soundtrack is easily one of the best in the series as well.

The mechanics and controls are up there with those of Ace Combat 6, I didn't find them to be a major improvement but one thing I noticed and really hated is that all enemy aircraft seem to be very aggressive and only focuses on you, I have played all the previous mainline entries and this was the only one where I couldn't really listen/read the radio dialogue most of the time because all I could hear was MISSILE MISSILE.

The last missions were amazing but before that there were a lot of missions/locations from Ace Combat 4 and I think they overdid it with the nostalgia a little bit.

All in all, I thought the game was great but not as good as previous entries.

Never has a videogame -or anything else for that matter- made me feel and care so much for an AI.

I always wanted a dog growing up but my parents were not okay with it - I feel like The Last Guardian filled that small void in my childhood memories.

Did I say AI? Scratch that, my heart doesn't feel right when calling Trico that ugly word.