Getting a taste of this game was way enough for me.

It confirmed all the bad things I'd heard so far. The writing is abysmal, the main character inconceivably annoying, and the general vibe very macho and unlikable.

I was surprised though by how bad it handles. Never has an FPS given me motion sickness, but the first few fights here are unbearable.

At least, there's a lot of personality to the world and art direction, but everything else is just too grating to enjoy what's good about Atomic Heart. .

Solar Ash is really quite a disappointment to me.

Since its reveal, I've been curious about it. The art direction seemed amazing and it sold itself on a kind of hyper-space skating and trippy game.

What we got was a lesser The Pathless. Movement feels stilted most of the time, and in my short two hours of gameplay, I felt way more confused at the timed «syringe break» sequences that I ever should have. A game like this with subpar game feel is really a big problem.

It is still a very pretty game, but one that didn't impress me much at all. I feel like I've seen it all in two hours, and that's plenty for me.

Playing Quantum Break right off the heels of Alan Wake 2 and a replay of Control is a very interesting thing. Add to that the fact that I had no idea this game existed at all prior to looking up Remedy's catalog lately, and it did make for a pleasant surprise.

This game really feels like a stepping stone for future Remedy games. Many of its faults have been adressed in future games. For instance, jampacking all the narrative pickups in cramped corners just completely kills the flow of the game. In Alan Wake 2, there's way less flavor text of the sort, and it's trickled through the environment at a much more pleasing pace. Improvement.

The same could be said about the FMV episodes. They are an interesting experiment which has some merit, but always cut the gameplay when I just felt like shooting bad guys. Once again, it was handled so much more seamlessly in Alan Wake 2.

The best things about the game are absolutely the time stutter sequences. They have that signature Remedy vision about them of creating something wholly unique in a game that is such a pleasure to experience.

And so, the game kind of works. It's also got a decent story with mostly generic and unremarkable characters, but hey, its functional. From my perspective, it was more of an fun experiment to play this to see the process of Remedy maturing into a new form storytelling and game design.

The studio still has stuff to improve on the Alan Wake 2 formula, but if we compare the progress made between that and Quantum Break, we can estimate that we have some truly fantastic games to look forward to in the future.

I absolutely loved Cocoon.

It was a very successful exercise in simplicity. The puzzles never feel like an annoyance as they're all briskly solved. It's just a joy to explore the meticulously crafted world that's on display while figuring out the weirdo puzzles.

The boss battles were surprisingly fun as well considering there's only one button to press !

But the main strength really is its visual flare. Animations are all so detailed, just opening a door is always a wonderful experience as they all have unique and intricate designs.

It does not overstay its welcome at only a couple of hours of runtime, but that's perfect. Every second feels catered to perfection, and that's just what I like.

Very simple and touching.

It's shirt and sweet, but Venba uses its cooking mechanics to great effect to delve into a quite rich story about identity and immigration.

Just a joy to experience all around.

Jusant is cute and has a good set of mechanics to work with, though it doesn't develop anything beyond that solid starting point.

Granted, it's not such a long game, but it does become repetitive even in that short 4-ish hours of runtime.

The worst thing it does is give the player terrible collectibles that crush the curiosity of exploring the environments. Huge chunks of text or items that stun-lock you in a 30 second video you can't skip... I have no clue why they thought these would be a good idea.

Even then, Jusant is an enjoyable little adventure where climbing is center stage. It's nothing mind-blowing, but a pretty good indie game nonetheless.

I came to this game with a genuine curiosity, having never played a Yakuza before. I just don't think these games are for me.

I can recognize the fun and addicting nature of its combat system, the enthralling story, the funny side content... But ultimately it felt boring.

The whole experience feels padded with so much superfluous dialogue, you're mostly flicking through endless text blocks rather than any substantial gameplay. It's a lot closer to a visual novel in that sense. The writing isn't half bad either, it's just that there's so much of it that it becomes a drag.

And then, all the game asks of you is to walk from point A to point B to get to the next text heavy mission.

Sadly, I wanted to see more of the story, but it was told in a way that really stretched out the good parts and made for an experience that totally lost me after about 8-10 hours. I hope newer games remedy this ? But either way, I'm not that impatient to visit this franchise again for a little while.

Well this was mostly miserable.

There are a handful of fun sequences from what I've played... But most of everything in A Way Out is unbearable.

The writing is abysmal, the gameplay menial, the art direction lifeless, and the characters are laughably bad. The main two guys are just braindead idiots that spout useless nonsense all the time and have no personalities whatsoever. Nothing makes the least amount of sense in the plot as well which can at least be very funny at times.

I'm not the biggest fan of It Takes Two, but it at least shows the amazing growth this studio had in just one simple project.

This was a commendable first effort, but a cheap and hollow game all the same.

Control was much easier to appreciate the second time around, and also right after having played Alan Wake 2.

It doesn't entirely succeed in what it sets out to do though. The story is not that riveting altogether. The world surrounding it really is where the game shines. The whole idea and execution of the Federal Bureau of Control is something to behold.

Characters are a weird mix... Some are amazing (Ahti and Darling) but then others are completely insufferable (Arish and Pope)... It makes the whole disjointed and some parts much better than others. It's really far from being smooth sailing the whole way through.

The game feel is amazing as it allows for destroying everything in combat, but it's not deep enough to keep it interesting for hours after the main story has wrapped up in my opinion. Things start to feel samey pretty fast while doing optional sidequests.

I feel like this game serves as a very solid foundation to what could be an incredible «Control 2» with deeper and more nuanced gameplay, and a more affecting story with better characters.

So good. One of my new favorite stories about meta-narratives.

Everything really hinges on the story here. This game coils on itself again and again in a way that's deeply confusing at first, but very clear and legible in the end. It's truly a feat to take in all the levels on which this game operates.

The one weak point has got to be the gameplay, mainly the combat. Every other mechanic works well to fit within the theme of the story, and the gunplay should too. It's just wonky and never really amounts to something good as the game goes on. It's serviceable but that's about it.

Just about everything else fucking rocks. The artistic direction is immaculate, the humor and horror are on point. The pacing of it all and the story twists are meticulously crafted to a tee. And the sound design ? Maybe one of the best things about it.

I'll end on saying that one level in particular concerning music has got to be one of my favorite gaming moments of 2023. The ideas are so wild for such a big production... It's really a treat.

An ever-evolving, graphic design treat of a puzzle game.

I really commend this game on sticking to its idea of shaping puzzles around a central story that makes sense and keeps a momentum going from beginning to end. It's much easier to make a puzzle game where levels chain without rhyme or reason, but this takes it to another level.

I rarely got stuck on a puzzle as they all felt quite challenging, but fair. Constant rewards kept things interesting and drove me to wanting to find all the secret Goldies.

And boss battles in a puzzle game that rock ???

A forward-thinking, great time all around ! Oh, and you play a dog. That's nice also.

Spider-Man 2 is good, but not great.

I think the technical marvel that this game is is worth the price of admission alone. The city of new york, the animation and FX work, it's all quite a thing to behold.

The one big thing holding this game back is its narrative. The first Spider-Man had a simple, yet heartfelt story that chugged along at a very tight pace. Characters were charming and it was interesting to get to know them. This second opus on the other hand is filled with lifeless characters and villains. I was ready to be surprised by what Kraven would be like, and he's such a generic russian villain, it's almost funny. Most characters are also written in very stilted ways that often undercut the emotions the larger narrative is trying to sell.

The gameplay also feels so over the top that it becomes overwhelming at some point. The first game, which felt a bit leaner in gadgets and weird super powers, felt more enjoyable by comparison.

So Spider-Man 2 is good. It falters quite a bit more than it's predecessor, but is still a quality experience nonetheless. I just hope the next game in the franchise will get more of a hang on developing the characters in a more in-depth way and fixing the across-the-board generic dialogue.

This is, no doubt about it, the most boundary breaking game I've played this year, and it will surely not be topped.

Baldur's Gate 3 is a massive, and I mean beyond undersantably MASSIVE game. Knowing this, it is unavoidable that it has some kinks here and there. For now, later parts of the game have trouble loading all necessary textures at once, and some tiny freezes happen in combat which forced me to reload previous saves. I'll also mention that, knowing almost nothing about D&D before starting this makes it hard to get into. Tutorials are almost non-existent and auto-saves very rare. I had to restart a few 30-minutes of gameplay before I learned to quick-save by hand often. There's just a lack of guidance for completely new players that makes it hard to approach, though I do like this better than having a million tutorial pop-ups every 5 seconds. It just takes a long (and confusing) while before gameplay mechanics an story start to coalesce into something clear.

But really, all of this doesn't make a dent in the immaculate video game experience this was.

The deep freedom that every moment, area, NPC and party character affords is unparalleled. The writing is so, so, so good. Seeing all the other open world games with flat «video game» writing gets me thinking at times that nothing better can be done. Baldur's Gate 3 simply smashes those preconceptions. It's at once poignant, hilarious, charming, surprising, and genuinely jaw-dropping more than once. I love and care for more characters in this one single story than all of the combined Horizon and Hogwarts Legacies' NPCs out there. It's just that good across the board. Original ideas and characters keep coming in such a frequent flow that it seems easy to just pump out all those fully fleshed, one-lined, throw-away NPCs. But it's not easy. It's terribly hard, as most other games keep showing us. This is just an even bigger compliment to everyone at Larian that it works as well as it does.

Gameplay is basically as good. It's full of choices, in and out of combat. Everything feels deeply affected by you, and the experience of playing Baldur's Gate really made me engage in Role-Play. Most RPGs don't really let you go that far in this aspect of actually playing a role made by you. This game provides that ultimate fantasy through and through and give the player so much room to experiment, it's mind-boggling.

I simply cannot believe all the cogs in this game come together as well as they do. Not only is it massive in scope, it maintains a level of quality in gameplay, graphics and story throughout that's hard for most AAA studios to even touch for a couple of hours. It was an absolute joy to discover and partake in this epic adventure, and I'm glad to see such a heartfelt effort by a big studio be celebrated for making something intelligent and different.