in my opinion the best movement shooter ever made, massive depth to movement and combat. the soundtrack is amazing, and it really compliments the fast paced gameplay. artstyle is really nice and most of the levels look amazing even with the low poly graphics. you can even change your graphics to be so shit it's practically unplayable with the psx settings.
this game really shines in it's movement and gunplay. you have a slam, a slide, a walljump, a dash on ground and air, and a ground jump. these movement options can be used on their own as normal, or combined in different ways to gain crazy speed and mobility. in terms of weapons, at the time of review there are five guns, a pistol, shotgun, machine gun, railcannon, and rocket launcher. each of these have variations which add different abilities to each weapon. this includes a pistol variant that allows you to throw coins in the air and shoot them for an instant ricoshet into an enemies weak point, a railcannon variant that shoots a red explosion laser beam, and a rocket launcher variant that can freeze your rockets in midair. weapons can be used together in interesting ways, such as shooting multiple midair coins with a charged pistol shot to deal huge damage or shooting a launched shotgun grenade with the explosive railcannon to detonate a massive nuke that decimates everything around you. some of these weapons can also be used in conjunction with movement to give even more speed, like the explosive railcannon + grenade nuke can launch you massive distances under the right circumstances.
you have one arm to begin with, called the "feedbacker" which can be used to punch enemies and also parry attacks and projectiles. this can also be used to punch coins out of the air, which can hit enemies and stack damage for some very quick kills if you can consistently punch the same coin. it can also be used to punch your own shells out of your shotgun, which propells them much faster and causes them to explode on impact. you can collect two more arms as of this review, the "knuckleblaster", which has a much more powerful yet slower punch, and a shockwave that activates when holding down punch that can deflect projectiles and damage/launch smaller enemies. the last arm is a grapple hook that can pull yourself towards bigger enemies and reel smaller enemies in towards you. these all flow together to create some of the best fps gameplay i've ever seen. the game has a style meter, which encourages swapping and combining weapons, as well as moving fast and not getting hit. the style meter affects your end of level score, as well as reducing the amount of hard damage you take based off of how high your style is. the way you regain health is through absorbing blood from enemies, and that incentivizes up close combat as well. this all comes together to create one of the most fluid combat systems in any fps game i've ever played.
the end of level score system relies on three things. style, time, and kills. you can get between a d and an s in each of these catagories, based off of specific par numbers for every level. if you get an s rank in every catagory without dying once throughout the level, you can obtain a p rank for that level. if you get all p ranks for a specific act, you can unlock a "p door" which leads to a secret boss/level that is vastly harder than anything else in the game. these are where the game shines in terms of difficulty, and are some of my favorite levels in the game.
there are four difficulties at the time of this review, with two easy difficulties, one normal, and one hard. i did my playthrough on violent difficulty, (hard) and found it to not be too bad, so if you are decent at fps games than go with that, normal difficulty seemed pretty easy.
ive fully completed every level, every secret mission, and most secrets, as well as p ranking every level on violent difficulty except for the second p level, which ive p ranked on standard (normal). this game is in early access atm, which means that theres much more content being added, but it is easily worth the twenty bucks if you like movement shooters.
amazing game, ive sunk over 200 hours in it by now and damn is it fun

portal 2 is a great game.
soundtrack is nice, sound design is nice as well. artstyle and visual design is beautiful and really fits with the post-apocalyptic setting, even if it's entirely underground. the puzzles aren't too challenging, but they still are satisfying to figure out. the portal mechanics are nice and feel satisfying to use. the story is great and dialogue is some of the best in any video game ever imo, and the characters feel real as well.
the coop multiplayer is fun as well, but it lacks the story and interesting dialogue of the main campaign so it's not as fun for me.
amazing game.

so many hundreds of hours wasted... i haven't gotten all achievements for this game because there's like six hundred but believe me i'll keep going.
some surprising depth to the systems and automation here, but nothing too crazy.
i played on browser some years back, found it on steam about a year ago and bought it for five bucks. only important thing the steam version adds is music, which is surprisingly good. it's composed by c418, the same guy who did the classic minecraft soundtrack, so honestly no wonder it slaps.
it's pretty fun lining up the combos to gain massive amounts of cookies, and theres even a prestige system which allows you to purchase upgrades in the afterlife to affect your next cookie playthrough.
pretty sick ass game, a little over 350 hours at the time of review.

greatest metroidvania game of all time in my opinion, and definitely in my top five games of all time. the artwork is beautiful and incredibly detailed with each area having very different but equally beautiful art. the sound design is satisfying and the soundtrack is one of my favorites in any game. the story is not very clear for most of the game, and if you want to learn more about the world it will not come automatically through playing the game. you need to explore and find information through environmental storytelling mostly as opposed to direct dialogue about the story. the movement is not particularly in depth, although it's satisfying and clean. given that it's a metroidvania you gain movement abilities throughout your playthrough, including a dash, walljump, and double jump. all of these interact very smoothly with the combat, which is mainly focused around usage of a sword, called a nail. the main healing method in this game is through the "focus" ability, which uses up your "soul" meter that is refilled by hitting enemies. you can learn spells, which use the soul meter and can deal massive damage, and you can learn nail arts which take time to charge up but can deal more damage with more range than the normal nail swings. all of these abilities flow together to create my personal favorite combat system of any 2d platformer game. exploration is a large part of the game, meaning that it's pretty non-linear. there are certain areas you will need to go to to complete the game, that contain certain things you need to progress, but a large portion of the world is not necessary to beat the game, at least not the easiest ending. the game has five different endings, which i won't go into here, but all of them are achievable if you try hard enough.
you can gain the game's currency, geo, by killing enemies or finding chests and rocks with geo in them. this can be used in various shops around the map to purchase charms, items, and upgrades. it can be also used to buy and update a map, which fills in as you explore each area. this is helpful because backtracking through areas is a massive part of post game and even main game content.
the bosses in this game are easily some of the best in any 2d game that i've played, and most of them have unique and interesting patterns to learn. there are 46 bosses in the main game at the time of review, including dlc. (all dlc is free). boss fights are when the combat in hollow knight truly shines, as you can use every trick in your arsenal against one massive opponent.
one issue i have with the game is the lack of boss health indicators, which makes it pretty difficult to track your progress in the harder boss fights. another smaller annoyance is the amount of unskippable cutscenes, including the end credits which (as far as i remember, might have been patched) are not skippable or exitable and if you alt f4 during the credits it's possible you could lose your progress in the final boss fight. those are not major complaints though, and there is a mod for boss health bars. speaking of mods, there are many modded boss fights and character skins that are available to download, and some of them are very high quality.
i have spent over a thousand hours in this game at the time of review, and gotten all achievements + beaten all extra content. this is one of the greatest games ever made in my opinion.
it's also only like fifteen bucks so buy it !!

incredible sandbox game, infinite possibility for things to do. shines in multiplayer, and the modding scene is massive. it's impossible to make a comprehensive written review for this game given the absolute scale of content there is. only reason i give it 4.5 instead of 5 is how mojang is kind of fucking it up with newer updates, but even with that it's still incredible. older versions are still available thankfully, so you can always go back to before the 1984 shit.
the original soundtrack by c418 is some of the best music in any video game ever, and the newer additions to the soundtrack are also good, though they do feel somewhat different.
art is simple yet effective, and sound design is great
movement and combat are simple but clean, and in terms of multiplayer pvp combat there is quite a bit of depth to it. i feel like i'm the odd man out in saying that i like the newer combat system introduced in the 1.9 update more than the older combat, but both are fine.
not much more that i can say about this game, it's massive and everyone knows about it.
ive probably spent way over two thousand hours on this game over various computers.
so many memories playing this game.

i did not fully complete this game, and by that i mean get all endings, but i did beat the game fully for the neutral ending. the soundtrack was nice and the story was interesting, but didnt captivate me in the same way it did many people apparently. gameplay is fine, nothing special, and the pixel artstyle isn't great by any standards. boss fights were cool, and some of the environments were pretty nice to walk around, but it's not as perfect to me as it is to other people. still, i can see that people love it, and good on them.

great couch fighting game to play with friends. beautiful art and great soundtrack. gameplay centers around shooting opponents with arrows, stomping on their heads and killing them with various environmental hazards. it's so massively satisfying to trickshot someone from across the screen or bait them into dropping through a portal just to shoot them in the ass. i don't actually own this game, but it's one of those games that i'm sure i've sunk at least 20-30 hours into over years of playing it with other people.
there is a coop mode that i've never tried out, but it looks fun enough.
amazing game, absolutely worth it