The only Souls games that, after I finished it the first time, I lacked any desire to replay. The game is Good: it handles fine, some of the environments look really nice, online works how it should, has some pretty hype boss fights...but that's all it really is to me. It's just a Good game.

The biggest problem with Dark Souls III is that there really isn't anything special about it. I mean, the Mound Makers are a really interesting idea for a covenant but even they're not enough to make me replay through it again! It has memorable moments and a overall consistent quality but there's nothing about Dark Souls III that makes me want to replay it over any of the other Souls games. Although I will say, that final boss fight...pretty dope.

It's the sequel to Danganronpa! Instead, now it's on a tropical island instead of a school and Nagito is there. Pretty solid follow up to the first game.

Biggest improvement over the original being the quality of the cases. Whilst the first Danganronpa's cases were a bit mixed in quality, Danganronpa 2's cases are all consistantly solid (except for the final one, unfortunately). The new cast are my personal favourites of the series and Nagito is a strong highlight. Only real downside with the game is that, yeah, the ending kinda sucks.

It's more Danganronpa but (mostly) Better!

A return to form for Uchikoshi! Writing is top notch and delivers just the right amount of normal detective intrigue balanced with a good amount of pseudo science, nanomachine technology, conspiracy theory junk. Characters are fun and the focus on some of the human stories behind them in certain routes can be get emotional. Story is fantastic and having a clean slate for Uchikoshi to write from feels to have done him a world of good.

If you love a good investigation mystery novel and don't mind/love some weird stuff thrown in as well, then this game bars no entry.

Deadly Premonition has such a reputation for being either the best thing in the world or the worst thing in the world, so when I finished it for the first time I was shocked to find out that it's actually....good.

The characters, jank animations and swerve from twin peaks into anime bullshit at the end are big highlights. Deffo a game you can have a good time playing through with a pal. Also shout out to the surprising number of unique side quests as well.

Now if only the shooting segments weren't actual ass...

Zero Escape is back and this time they cranked the bullshit up to 110%. An equally good game to 999. Always love the idea of a sequel that takes place somewhere completely different, with a different cast of characters and style that also carries on the story and themes of the original game. Story is pretty nuts but rewarding, giving an ending that leaves a tonne of excitement to the imagination. Only downside to this over 999 is that I feel like 999 nailed the relationship and emotional stuff better than VLR but it's a minor gripe with how strong the rest of the narrative is.

After the build up of the two previous games and the insanity of VLR's ending, it feels hard to blame ZTD for not being able to neatly wrap up the series in a satisfying way but even considering all that...this game is still a big disappointment.

Lemme start with the good. Character designs are fantastic. The key art for this game is awesome. The stuff with the alien Phi's parents is great. There's some pretty cool puzzle rooms, like the pantry and the alien transporter room.

Now with the stuff I don't like. Characters keep forgetting what they did after the end of each puzzle so there's no real character advancement until the very end. Akane acts like an idiot in this game which goes against her character in the first two games. The animations look...really bad. I understand this game existing in the first place is a miracle but....man. Eric is one of the worst video-game character ever. And the ending! Oh my god! I can't believe the ending for this entire series is a bad guy being like "i did it all so you would be motivated!" and then they all go off into the sunset being like "yeah! i'm motivated! let's save the world!" and that's it. It's terrible! As well as the note about Mira post-game! Also, the fact that so many threads were left untouched from VLR's ending is so disappointing because it makes that whole ending feel totally pointless now. Like not even going into the indeitity of Kyle? Come on now.

Whatever, this game has some moments in it and it's not all terrible but in the end it's a complete let down.

A Pretty Nuts game. The first in a series of teen murder courtroom simulators and what a start to the series! I feel like the sequels improved on what this game did but I have to give it a lot credit for not only laying down the basics for the series but also pulling it off in really cool ways.

First of all, the aesthetic to this game is really impressive. The art style and character designs are unique, colorful and bursting with personality. Having them presented as cardboard cutouts is also pretty neat. The OST packs a punch to match the visuals, with infectious electro-pop and rave tunes that help push the personality of the game over the edge. The presentation and music of the game really shine with the courtroom scenes.

For those unfamiliar, the game is about a bunch of teenagers who are locked in a school and are forced to participate in a killing game by Monokuma, a black and white cuddly bear who manages to constantly steal the show in every game he's in. Shout out to the dub version of Monokuma...he's perfect. Anyways, when a student is killed, you investigate the scene to find evidence to try and pinpoint the killer which leads to the centerpieces of Danganronpa: the courtroom scenes.

All the surviving students are gathered in a circle and everybody must present evidence and argue over who the killer is. Sometimes these segments can last for several hours and as I said earlier, the presentation really shines with these. The camera pans, the expressive character potraits, the way speech is plastered as these imposing 3D words on the screen, the thumping rave music playing over the top and the voice acting preformances make these scenes absolute gaming highlights. Unfortunately, this game probably has the worst ratio of Good/Bad cases out of all three of the games but it does contain probably the two best cases in the series (Cases 2 and 6). Man, they're amazing.

And I guess that's the main problem with this game; the quality of the cases can be a bit of a mixed bag. The first case makes it all too obvious who the killer is early on. Some of the cases later on just feel complicated for the sake of being obtuse and lose a bit of impact because of.

But it's really hard to dislike this game because of the wonderful art, music, presentation, characters and world of Danganronpa. If you like the sound of a colourful, punk japanese detective game then boy do I have the game for you!

An incredibly memorable metroidvania. Wanna explore an ancient civilization's ruins? Want to feel like you're constantly treading around in unknown and unfamiliar territory and the fear and excitement that it brings? Then get out of my house and play La Mulana!!

Excellent music, wonderful pixel art, love how different and unique each zone is with their own style and gimmicks, love how they connect together in surprising ways but one thing I love that I particularly wanna point out is how the game really makes you feel like you're exploring somewhere unknown with it's puzzles. The puzzles in La Mulana can be tough to solve and sometimes require some out of the box thinking and hints for a lot of the puzzles are written on stone tablets that litter the ruins. So what do you do as an explorer? Well you write 'em down and keep a little journal of all your discoveries...except you're doing it in real life in a paper booklet or word document and it's so cool going around zones, noticing strange pieces of the environment or blockades and getting your note book out to try and see if there's anything to help you. I know this isn't the first game to do that stuff but it's a really unique feeling that I had with this game that really elevated it to me.

Also I really appreciate that despite how harsh and punishing the game can be to you, it still has a good sense of humour about itself so that it never feels like it's laughing at you sadistically and more that it's trying to sweeten the punishment that you've been handed. Whatever I've talked a lot about this: La Mulana is amazing. Play it.

Damn cool game! Despite being the first of its type, it managed to nail so much right. Like first of all the style meter is such a genius idea and adds to the action way more than you'd think. In my case it lead to me wanting to do a lot more riskier and cooler looking shit just so I could show off to myself despite it just being a letter on the UI.

Action feels great, the move set on both the weapons feel good, bosses are a lot of fun (especially on Dante Must Die), enemies are well designed (Shadows are one of my favourite enemies in games), the locations are likeable, the OST fits the appropriate mood effectively wether is be spooky mansion or intense hell battle and don't forget that cheesy dub and sometimes unintentionally hilarious writing! It's all about the charm, man!

Only negatives I would give this game is that you fight the same bosses too many times and that I wish there was a middleground between Hard and DMD mode, so that you could play with the intensity of DMD mode without having to also worry about enemy devil triggers and insane boss health.

That's it though. Game rocks.

A really, really fantastic open world hacking video-game. The main gimmick of this game is that you can interact with an abundance of objects in this game, anything from doors to robotic turtles, through a hacking interface where you can change the properties of something. So say there's an arcade machine that some dickbag who's dating the girl you like has a high score on, well you can hack it to where you can make the game incredibly easy to play and instantly gain a bigger score than his. Or find the central server for the bank and hack into it to give you infinite money. Or hack a door so that whenever someone touches it they get teleported somewhere else. All these things I mentioned are things I did in the game world and that's not even touching on the other things you can do.

Cus that's what this is, it's an open world hacking game where you get to really change objects. It almost sounds too good to exist and work and well...you're kinda right. The game gives you a LOT of freedom to do stuff but the game doesn't always react to the things you do, sometimes making them pointless. The game's story and ending are kinda threadbare too. I guess some sacrifices were made to make this whole thing work but I think the negatives of this game are negligible compared to the magic of interacting with the world in it.

Experiences may vary, the enjoyment of this game is pretty much based on how much you put into it. Also the game doesn't really hand hold you so it's easy to feel directionless in it, especially at the beginning. If you stick with it though, I feel like you get to play a truly unique experience unlike most other games.