POSITIVE:
- The blending of live action scenes and in-game visuals look amazing.
- The game's horror vibes are immaculate; I was stressed out by everything
- They copy pasted Resident Evil 2 Remake and added some Remedy weirdness. It's awesome.

ISSUES
- It made my 3070 weep, getting 75 fps on Medium consistently was a challenge
- Character movement can feel a little weird, I got stuck on geometry
- Saga's characterization feels all over the place, from a worried mom to a stoic David Lynch character.

I was a sucker for the two previous Alan Wake games. The stories about troubled writers felt tailor-made for my college interests. But, I felt like the game play was weak and the characters were not super interesting. I couldn't recommend the game to others without caveats. Alan Wake II doesn't need caveats; it's a strong third-person survival horror game with some of the best story presentation I've ever seen in a game.
The FMV and gameplay combination seen in Control and Quantum Break are shades of what Alan Wake II does with storytelling. At this point, nearly everyone has seen the musical number in the game. That isn't even the best part of it. There is so much in this game that I haven't seen elsewhere. People who have liked any of Remedy's previous games owe it to themselves to give Alan Wake II a shot.

Phantom Liberty is the coda to the Cyberpunk 2.0 update. It takes everything great about the 2.0 update and puts it in a focused package for new and existing players to enjoy.
The art direction is phenomenal. Games have highlighted so many apocalyptic scenarios and showed people trying to get by in the wreckage of the world. The art and design of Phantom Liberty highlights the class divides of Night City and how the extremely destitute can live in an entirely different world than those of means. Being able to go from a star-studded gala with electronic waterfalls and a chrome-skinned pop-star to right back among the filth of Dogtown is such an interesting dichotomy to me. The base game did explore these class struggles, but having the map separated into different boroughs, gives the players brain time to adjust. In Dogtown, the player goes from a swanky bar to being hunted by so-called "junkies" as soon as they enter the street.
The other really interesting thing about this expansion is how it illuminates Johnny Silverhand's political outlook. Seeing his character in opposition to Reed, the diehard government agent, and Songbird, a woman looking out for herself in dire times, he is shown to have a pretty two-dimensional view of the world. Johnny is forced to reckon with the fact that he identifies with Reed as a man of principle and that he is a coward for not really developing his own socio-political views. It made me realize how Johnny has no theory for bettering the world, no true alternative to the corpo-run kleptocracy. All he cares about is burning it down, letting no one tell him what to do.
The betray Songbird ending was legitimately scary for me. I struggled with Alien: Isolation and this DLC adds that mode in just for fun. I can't believe how versatile the engine is, and it made me disappointed that we aren't going to get more DLC.
Here is hoping the next CDPR game can capture what made this expansion so good.

I didn't think they could do it. I beat this game with the day one patch on PS4, and it was a mess. An intriguing mess with a lot of interesting lore and great art direction, but still a mess. There seems to be a revisionist effort to say that Cyberpunk 1.0 was a functional game. I am here to tell you, it was not a functional games on console. I really thought that release was the end of CDPR.
The 2.0 patch is the game that should have been released. They completely reworked the driving model, the skill trees, the crafting system, and how many of the weapons work. It feels like an "enhanced" version of the game made by Nightdive Studios or the best mod you've ever played. These changes allow the story, art, music, and other work to really shine.
This is a success story, albeit a painful one. Games should not release in a broken state and developers should be given the time they need to put out the best product. I hope that other business owners will take that investment to heart.

THE GOOD:
- There is truly nothing else like it out there.
- The game play options are varied and the shooting is actually good when you get the hang of it.
- It's so bizarre, if you are the kind of person who reads game reviews, you are probably the right kind of pervert who should play this.

THE BAD
- It hurts my eyes
- It hurts my ears
- It hurts my soul

THE GOOD
- Birds are cute and the character designer is extensive.
- The music is pretty good (if you like ska)
- Anthony Hawk won my heart.

THE BAD
- The skating can feel really, really bad and you might fall off your board without knowing why.
- If you dislike ska, just turn off the music.
- Levels and missions can be frustrating as hell.

The vibes are immaculate but the skating is challenging to say the least.

I saw the trailer for the game when it first was announced and was super hyped about it. Tony Hawk birds sounds great.

I started the game on gamepass and quit almost immediately. The skating is not intuitive or easy to control.

A year later, I got Skatebird in a humble bundle and decided to give it another shot. I turned all of the difficulty settings to as low as they would go. It was a way better experience. The skating did get better as I played but the seemingly random bailing when you hit a surface slightly off-kilter still feels bad.

The character designer is great and the birbs have huge personalities. If you aren't into borderline twee birds talking about their problems, then this game isn't for you.

I've only played Doom before using mods with GZDoom. I decided to try this official release because I wanted to see what vanilla-Doom actually played like.

I was so surprised by how much I loved it. Just like in Dark Souls, you can feel the intention of the game designers in the levels. You can feel them fucking with you and laying little traps for you to run into. The feeling of opening a door and being able to predict when a trap will trigger isn't a feeling I get except from FromSoftware games.

I also loved the puzzles. They are archaic and strange, but there is a logic that you can follow. There is also so much to find. I finally found the last secret in E1M1 after playing it for years.

The only kind of bad mark against this game is episode 4, Thy Flesh Consumed. It feels like the designers kind of phoned it in and decided to make it extremely challenging. I'm glad I finished it, but I think most people can skip it unless they want to play a survival horror resource management game.

The Ascent is so promising, but the game play is so boring. I loved the look of the game, especially the varying look of the arcology's levels. The alien races have fun designs as enemies and allies, even if they fall into stereotypical roles of little dudes and big bruisers. My main issue is the RPG and combat mechanics. My build was based around using a giant laser, exploding mechanical spiders, and an auto-aiming gun. In the guides I looked at, it was described as the "easy" build. To me, the game was not easy and often bordered on tedious and frustrating. The boss battles in particular didn't offer much in the way of strategy, rather relying on running away while waiting for powers to recharge. The basic enemies were either just cannon fodder or incredibly difficult. I liked the game, but I can only imagine the frustration of someone not playing with a guide who is trying to create their own build. Just play it on easy, I wish I had done the same.

Brawlers can be boring to me and licensed brawlers can be even more dull. That's why I was so surprised by this game. The combat is serviceable and straightforward, the animations are cute and emotive, and there is much variety and fan service. I'm not even the biggest TMNT fan, but the amount of different boss characters drove me to look up back stories on the wiki. I would never have known that the turtles fought the literal personification of a video game in one episode. In summary, it's a short, straightforward brawler that is oozing with fan service.