So I went out to my local videogame retailer and they didn’t have it. Then I walked around to the next one and they didn’t have it too. I checked online and I couldn’t order it either. I found out its digital only. Fucking gross, I threw up a bit in my mouth and went home empty handed. At least I got some exercise and had a nice coffee while I was out. It is a shame because this game looks like it might be pretty cool and is getting a positive response. But for now my copy of the first Alan Wake remains lonely.




Haha, seriously though this game should not be digital only and I lost all interest in this game back when they announced this. The push to digital is being done for the benefit of corporations not us consumers. They are trying to screw you. This is about profits and control. Letting corporations control the media/entertainment/culture/art we enjoy and when, where, how you play/access it and how much it costs doesn’t seem wise. Digital is already bad enough but is anyone at all concerned that digital is just a stepping stone to streaming/subscription only where you don’t even get a digital copy?

Remedy stating that this will help keep the price down, the market has shifted to digital and it is more convenient is a load of crap and sounds disgusting coming from them. The price on the Australian Playstation store for a PS5 version is $90.95 and the deluxe edition is $120.95. I bought big games like RE4 and Elden Ring day one physically for $89. I could then get a big chunk of that money back if I sell it after playing. So because the market has changed the remaining consumers get screwed or forgotten. Is turning your back on the passionate consumers that care enough to buy a physical copy of your game a good long term strategy, especially when they are willing to pay more to get that physical copy? The positives of having a physical copy far outweigh any convenience of digital and a physical copy comes with its own set of conveniences. I’ve never had a problem with games needing more than one disc if that would be required in this case. They also said going all digital would give them more time for polish but the game still launched with a bunch of reported issues. It was also delayed slightly. Doesn’t this game have some kind of high requirements for PC too?

So the same old crap only now without the benefits and option of a physical copy. It comes across as treating your customers with disdain and shows a lack of confidence in your product.

I’m still looking forward to playing Alan Wake 2 one day if they release a physical copy or when it is put on PS Plus essential or when it is available digitally for like $15 or less.

This is all I have in the face of the digital tsunami - this shitty little ‘review’ and not buying it. So I guess I have basically nothing but complaining quietly while something I have loved for decades dies slowly in front of me with a sliver of hope that people will realise the significance of what’s being lost.

(This was a knee jerk reaction to remembering this game came out. It was meant as a crap joke followed with a serious message but I may have botched it. I thought writing a silly joke review would be a good way to open before getting into my thoughts on the digital only release. The idea I had was for a joke review of the experience of trying to buy a physical copy (that doesn’t exist). The other idea I had was to write a joke review of the experience of watching a streamer or Youtuber play through. I quickly realised there is no way to do this without it coming off as a cringe-y review bomb. I may lack writing talent and didn’t put much time or thought into it so that didn’t help as well. I removed anything relating to a score and rating and cut down the joke review but still left a bit at the top. Maybe this still belongs somewhere more discussion centered rather than a place for reviews. Anyway, hopefully I haven't undermined the point that the digital only release is shit too much).

sitting at the top of a hill littered with 2010s western independent charmers with hamfisted attempts at satire, post-modernism, genre critique, societal reflection and subversive storytelling is this crown jewel; the crème de la crème example of the self-serving haughty pretentiousness of an entire generation of would-be internet geniuses scrolling through tv tropes page by page in hopes to form contrarian opinions on popular media based on the talking points and consensuses of other people. if you're of a certain age demographic, you know this person - the one who parrots the opinions of your nostalgic critics and mr. enters as if the information they siphoned by lazing about youtube in search of a personality might be enough to make someone go, 'geez, this guy KNOWS his stuff' without having to go through the effort of formulating their own thoughts, or even worse, having to experience the media they're responding to the response of firsthand.

doki doki literature club stands as an indulgence of saturated moe-era anime tropes under the guise of a critique of the wikipedia plot summaries of KEY, ryukishi07 and type-moon games without having the slightest bit of humility or self-awareness in its execution. it, its creator, and its audience herald itself as some massive deconstruction of the visual novel form, when in actuality it's about in line with the actuality of what it's criticizing as yiik is with jrpgs. there is no metatextual subversion to be had. doki doki is a children's birthday magician - a couple of flashy tricks capable of fooling someone who doesn't know how ren'py works, but beyond its cheap parlor tricks which might give the astute horror mastery of, say, happy tree friends a run for its money, the title lacks substance, it lacks any form of personality, and it lacks the competence to warrant these mistakes in the face of a greater picture or experience.

i won't even dip into the implications the creator has made about how this game is apparently a very real and serious approach to topics such as self-harm and abuse - as a survivor of both i find these claims bordering on insanity - but i will offer the benefit of a doubt and suggest that maybe this is a product of genuine, ineffable incompetence and misjudgment... rather than one of deep-rooted pretention and narcissism. you could get the exact same experience intersplicing five nights at freddy's jumpscare reaction videos, one of the upteenth saw sequels, and nyan neko sugar girls as one would have playing doki doki literature club, but at the least, the former is shocking, entertaining and funny when it intends to be. do your wallet a favor and pass on this one - and yes, i know it's free.

You don't know the true horror a bad game can inflict on the psyche until you've played this game. I have a TREMENDOUS tolerance for bad licensed games. But even tag teaming with friends leads to everyone involved curled up in the fetal position, our place in the universe put into question by this bulbous headed child's adventure. Every element combines to beat you down, tear your mental state asunder. An absolute assault on the human condition. The kind of game where you spend 40 minutes slowly roaming around a featureless labyrinth trying to find every maguffin. All to give Jimmy a brain blast, hear his smug hehe I know what to do let's go find somewhere to use this. Aimlessly roam around looking for the spot you need to be, only for his invention to fail entirely, and Goddard remembers he can fly and just flies Jimmy to the next level as though he couldn't have done that from the very start. Thanks for the half hour of brainrot, onto the next level that's guaranteed to be even worse!

Roaming around the school getting slapped by the copy paste school bully character that spams the same lines every single time they see you, I can handle. But you'd never assume the game's going to be filled with increasingly obscene platforming challenges once you see Jimmy can only jump half an inch off the ground. But alas, no mercy is granted.

Give or take 6 years ago I saw one level past the 1st boss. Today I've seen one level past the 2nd boss thanks to a friend donating his soul to this monstrosity of a game. Perhaps in another 6 years I'll see it through to the end and finally have closure to the only game that can make me lightheaded and delerious in the span of just 2-3 levels.

Real happy to see a brand new Fate installment, because it's been a hot minute since Extella Link!
And I loved this one. Really cool new take on the Holy Grail War with Masters that have some really unique motivations and Servants that suit them perfectly.

The cast is fantastic - definitely one of my favorite Fate casts yet, mostly because it's in my opinion honestly pretty rare for them to be as consistent as this one.

The setting is great too, and I love how well it's characters and their motivations are acclimated to that; they all fit in really well.
And the music, although for the most part not too memorable, accomodates it nicely too.

My absolute favorite thing about this game is it's gameplay though, which is admittedly pretty rare for me! Something about the way it portrays the power dynamic between Masters and Servants through gameplay is unlike anything we've seen in the series before, and I love that.
Regular encounters definitely feel like your average musou fight, but when a Servant steps in (or when you've built up enough meter to play as the Servant you're with) the game changes entirely, in a really good way. Bosses can be terrifying here, and that's exactly as they should be when a Master like Iori runs into a fight meant for Servants. They're tough, but really fun and well-paced once you figure out how to fight against them and properly get your Ripostes off, and it makes beating them feel SO good.

Arguably the most interesting thing about this game however (which is definitely recommendable if you're interested in it's cast) is how much it hinges on a replay.
New Game+ is ridiculously streamlined - pretty much everything you've done in your first playthrough is carried over; so if you've done all you could, you won't have to worry about any side-content you've already done. BUT, if you want to - simply because you want to experience a Servant's sidestory again or just get it's rewards twice - you can! It'll simply be counted as Completed either way, and that's really neat.
But more than that, there's quite a few NG+ exclusive scenes, sidequests and even an additional ending that adds SO much substance to it's cast; and it lets you know what is and isn't new by making the original story's text gray and adding a feature skipping through all of that whenever it pops up.
It's a fascinating decision! Adding all of it to the first playthrough would've definitely messed with it's pacing a lot (of which the only issue in my opinion is already big groups of sidequests at the same time, so yeah lmao) and there's also a few scenes that are definitely made in mind with you already knowing the main story and what happens next.
I'm not quite sure if it's solely to preserve the pacing - it could very well be them being too proud of those scenes (they should be) and never being able to figure out how to properly squeeze it into the main game, but yeah, I've never seen anything like that.
I really liked it personally, especially with it being as fast as it is. Takes about 1/3rd of a regular playthrough, of which about 75% will be new content and the other 25% being the route you didn't take the first time around, so it adds a lot to the experience! Didn't feel right making this review until I've explored it fully, because yeah, it's major stuff.

Iori especially profits so much from it. NG+ essentially confirmed everything I thought about him through the foreshadowing the main story contained and goddamn man he's up there as one of my favorite TM protags yet. Insanely unique character.

So yeah, cool game. Definitely unique! In some ways good and some ways bizarre.
I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope there's more games like this in store to keep bringing some new perspectives to the Fate series in the future :)

Mileage will vary per person. Feel cobbled together at times, pop in feels worse. Some challenges require a lot from players comparatively to what was done in the base game. New characters implementation can go from feeling good to clunky at different points. Awkwardness with controls and camera at times...etc...etc.

So naturally, I liked it a whole lot but you might not. Score is reflective of janky nature of it really but I had a lot of fun here since I kept up with the updates and changes to the physics. I do think the challenge offered here can be alienating and very unforgiving for people who simply weren't playing frontiers for the content presented here. A lot of tough "you mess up and have to try again from the beginning" moments here that feel extremely jarring when the base game was a lot more forgiving all around. If you aren't prepared for that and haven't been playing frontiers consistently (and actually play other games like most people) the update can be a major turn off and actively hurt a lot of the worthwhile and fun ideas that are in the update. There's a surprising amount here for it being free but I feel like if they charged money opinion would be a lot more harsh. A lot of good ideas such as the new cyberspace levels and platforming challenges with different characters. But there is also a lot of stuff most people wouldn't want to play in order to get to the good stuff such as the tower climbs and trials.

That said, very excited for the next mainline game. This game always felt like a testing grounds and I think there's a lot done well here for a truly great follow-up. Fingers crossed they deliver. There's always a lot of talk of sonic fans not having high standards for stuff but Frontiers now is a completely different game than how it was when it launched and it was due to active feedback and revision from the dev team. It always felt like a testing ground for a smaller and more solid game. I think a smaller scope with more focus on fun platforming that leads to meaningful new areas and rewards instead of puzzles and upgrade collectables would do a lot if they continue with this sandbox gameplay style. Also more varied set pieces please and thank you.

There IS a lot to like in here, but holy shit is it buried under piles and piles of problems. I was kinda grumpin' on how Tails and Knuckles controlled early on, if only I knew how inconsequential my issues with those two would be in the grand scheme... Just what the hell happened to the difficulty here? I don't really know why people kept going on about how the original was so easy (because it was balanced fine for the most part), and I get the feeling this is a direct response to those criticisms. Basic puzzles in the main game are made incredibly over-the-top here for... what reason exactly? Padding's the only one that I can even think of, but why bother padding free DLC? The towers are fine... until you fall and then you repeat the same BS 3 times over until you get to the top and then get absolutely smothered by the Trial. Oh, but then the next Trial is piss easy. WHOOPS sorry about that how about fighting 3 titans back to back with 400 shared rings and minimum level everything... will that do?
All topped off by one of the most cryptic final boss fights I've ever experienced. Not cryptic because the "epic lore" or some aura it gives off... cryptic as in "I spent 40 minutes attacking before someone told me you need to use the DODGE BUTTON to change the reticle" (a game of telephone happened behind the scenes in my extended circles of people messaging each other telling them this fact because the ONLY way the game hints this to you is locked behind 100% completion of the DLC, always signs of absolutely top-tier design). WTAF?? Also, required cyloops but no visual indication of that fact, and a severe lack of visual communication about ANYTHING that you're meant to do. Just a bombardment of projectiles and a constantly regenerating boss.

A little time on the good now... Cyberspace is a legit improvement! The levels are huge, fleshed out considerably and lend themselves much better to exploration but still quick time attack perfection. The new characters do each have their own fresh flare which I can appreciate. Great presentation for the most part too, and that extends to the phenomenal as always soundtrack (the true standout for any Sonic game, but more than usual here). And also, minus playing it, everything about the Super Sonic boss fight and Ending rules and is a massive improvement over the ending sequence it attempts to retcon (honestly the entire sequence is peak Sonic fiction). But once again, everything but the actual playing of said boss. But I guess that also applied to the original boss too... at least with that one all you had to do was shoot missiles and not guess that you had to press a rarely used button to actually hit the boss...
There I go again.


All in all, the entire package gets so fixated on the concept of being this extremely difficult kaizo finale that it completely loses focus on making an enjoyable game in the process. Half the issues come with the amount of time it wastes. The worst challenges actually come from how long they take and how many times you have to sit through the same experiences again to get another go at the thing you're struggling with. It spends so much time trying to be Sonic Souls that it completely loses focus on what it actually wants to be, and what results is a package full of great ideas, but far too much time was spent thinking how to make this frustrating through wasting the player's time instead of thinking of more rewarding and creative scenarios. A hell of a lot of wasted potential gonna be left to rot here. What a sour note to end Sonic Frontiers' time in the limelight oh.

re4r is a really good game so this dlc being more of it automatically makes it really good

the grappling hook is fun, especially once you get the upgrade for the shield. ada's arsenal is nice, and allows you to absolutely shred through minibosses. most of the areas are already visited by Leon, but they're altered and made to still be interesting when Ada goes through. all of the cut content from the base game is here, and improved upon - U3 has more lore and its fights are more active and fun than the ones it had in RE4 original, the laser segment is just as dumb as ever but ends in an amazing way now and has more reason to exist, and the gondola segment is a nice break from what's directly before and after it. there's also more luis and everyone loves luis

also you get to hear ada call leon a good boy like two times

A sea of good and pretty ideas, but it lacks the substance to surpass even the most generic JRPG out there.

The game is undeniably visually stunning. I'm not a fan of the character portraits, but there are so many other issues to dislike that I simply overlooked them. The entire map, both in dungeons and the open world, is breathtaking. Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the open-world experience it attempts to portray; it's much more linear than you might expect. The story is overly linear, with minimal side content.

The story is disappointing. It doesn't start off well, and you may hope it improves as the game progresses, but it doesn't. The protagonists lack charisma, the rest of the party is uninteresting, and the pacing is terrible. You'll spend nearly 10 hours with only three party members, and about two hours to finishing the game you add another one? What the hell?

Another aspect I strongly dislike is the need to include cameos from The Messenger. A significant part of this game revolves around references, playing songs, and "epic moments" that you won't understand if you haven't played their previous game. Sea of Stars isn't supposed to be The Messenger 2 (or in this case, 0), but it still deviates from the main story to make references...

The combat system starts off interesting, but after just five battles, it becomes repetitive and, above all, boring. Many bosses and regular enemies are damage sponges, and nothing is genuinely challenging. You'll find yourself using the same two skills and basic attacks for an extended period until you finally unlock more than 1 ultimate attack in the very end of the game. The combos are most useless because every normal enemy will die before you even get 1 of it.

In reality, there isn't much to discuss about Sea of Stars. I haven't played Chrono Trigger yet, but you can't create a game purely for nostalgia. If that's what you're after, you should consider playing Chained Echoes instead, which appears to be far superior to this game in what it attempts, and fails to achieve.

Very happy that this is strongly an AC game spiritually and not just “robot souls”, but I don’t think that’s stopped people from projecting the conceptual framework of souls onto it. It’s undeniable that the last 10 years of fromsoft games has had significant influence on this, not just the healing and lock-on and chapter-ending bosses but more generally the animations and level design and art direction, at the same time it’s also been frustrating to see people treat so many game design decisions that are characteristically Armored Core or at least conscious modernisations of it as being solely extensions of Elden Ring. Fromsoft has been making punishing games long before Demon’s Souls was even a twinkle in Miyazaki’s eye and that was originally much more to do with how it cohesively fits with the bleak atmosphere that their games try to evoke rather than any notion that “this is what the hardcore gamerz want”. Souls fans hypostatized this into the “hard but fair” slogan and we’ve ended up in a situation where so many people mistakenly think fromsoft’s games are hard just for the sake of being hard (which is partly the fault of marketing and party the fault of DS2 and partly the fault of the fans), but even then I feel Armored Core has always had a very different “fight bullshit with bullshit” approach to difficulty that’s often more puzzle-like than a mere test of execution or reactions, and the reception to this title more than any makes the difference clear as swathes of soulsheads struggle to make the transition or simply assume that they're struggling "because it's meant to be hard" rather than their build being bad.

I hate feeling like I’m wading into “discourse” but rattling off “bad difficulty curve” as if it’s some objectively bad thing is exactly the kind of abstract “good game design rules 101” thinking that I hate about so much game critique - acting like there’s a universally correct standard of difficulty instead of trying to concretely reflect on the wider context of the thing in front of you. One of the things I like about Armored Core is how it is principally about difficulty spikes, how it attempts to weave together incredibly easy morbid power-fantasy missions where you effortlessly stomp on people who don’t really deserve it and incredibly memorable walls like Nine-ball or White Glint or Balteus who kick you back to the drawing board and force you to engage with the customization without much regard for how predictably-structured or player-friendly the outcome is. This isn’t to say that disliking this blend or any of the boss design here isn’t valid, in a very general sense the flow is not traditionally Armored Core so I understand why oldheads would be turned off by that, nor is it to say it’s “good because it’s different”, it’s good because it works within the uniquely unconventional gameplay texture of this series, in spirit if not literally. If every game had a perfectly smooth difficulty curve, they would all be homogenous and sterile, and one of the things I love about fromsoft is how they’ve always been willing to flaunt such rules in pursuit of more holistically sublime experiences: Common game design dictates that Demon’s Souls’ final boss should have been the epic showdown against King Allant, not a mercy-kill against a defenceless blob, common narrative design dictates that Armored Core’s stories should be conveyed in appealing ways instead of frigid corporate Zoom calls - but I think both are better and more unique and interesting for ignoring such refrains.

This is all to say that Armored Core will alienate people. It’s a game that will be defined by its reception, by the clash between its uncompromising vision of excessive stat spreadsheets, difficulty walls and corporate bleakness against the expectant fans eager to experience Miyazaki’s new game with the souls series as their standard of quality. If anything, I think the cautionary attempts to inject some souls tropes into the affair have actually backfired: Chapter 1 starts incredibly slowly so new fans can be eased into things, but this mostly just creates a poor first impression and bores experienced players while also slowing down NG+ runs. There’s healing now, but the existence of checkpoints means that souls fans expecting something estus-adjacent will be disappointed, and the checkpoints themselves mostly (from what I’ve seen) trick new players into trying to brute force bosses instead of backing off to try a new build, which is admittedly discouraged by the mission structure requiring you to re-do the whole level leading up to the boss if you want to back out to buy new parts, despite the mid-level assembly option. There’s a lock-on now, and there has been an attempt to balance it, but it still mostly serves to make the game less unique and feel less like AC.

All that being said, there’s a lot to love here: Boosting around in your AC is more smooth and responsive than it’s ever been (though not as wild as 4A), so many of the new weapons here are unbelievably satisfying to use, the animations are gorgeously well done and the sound effects are top notch. While I wished to explore them a bit more, some of the environments are stunningly intricate and grand. The charming arena descriptions are back, Balteus’ theme slaps so hard, Rusty feels like AC’s version of Pixy from AC, Cel 240 reminded me of the final boss from Panzer Dragoon Zwei (though this is probably the only boss I would consider outright overtuned in its second phase), and I love how explicitly this game picks up on the thread of augmented humans from older games, I especially love making absolute freakshow mechs and giving them pretentious names and some of the new options here like the tetrapod legs are really unique.

Still need to delve deeper into NG+ and beyond, but I’ve been pretty damn satisfied with this. It’s certainly not without flaws but I think there’s just so much potential in this new style of AC that I can’t help but want it to succeed, and I would love to see it iterated upon and see some of those confused fusions between souls and AC ironed out and working properly. I think 4A might still be my favourite AC overall but this is definitely a promising revival for the series.

A technically impressive game that's about twice as long as it should have been, made worse by its languid pace.

Every side activity is turned into a chore that makes me not want to even engage with it. Why, exactly, do I need to skin the animal, put the pelt on my horse, and then transport it to one of the Three (3) trappers hidden around the massive map? And why is there a limit to how many of them I can even put on the horse? This was the most glaring example, but everything in this game is absolutely glacial. The whole mechanic of retrieving guns from your saddle is bizarre, and maybe the worst example of Halo's wretched "two guns" influence ever to be conceived.

But I suppose that's the point, right? This is almost an Old West Tourism Simulator. You just slowly ride around and soak in the sights. To their credit, Rockstar packed the map full of stuff to do, and strange things to encounter. It's not a Breath of the Wild-style "copy-paste empty field" situation. Still, even if you solely stick to the story, you're in for a long haul, and divergence from the critical path pushes this game into PS2 JRPG territory in terms of length.

The story, meanwhile, is pretty repetitive for most of the game. You get to a new area, Dutch has some wild plan, it goes south, you move to another new area. Rinse and repeat. The main problem is that when it does take another direction, it's... Just repeating the first game. RDR2 is almost the definition of "diminishing returns". The Cuba section in the middle is not as good as the excursion to Mexico in the first game, and the whole finale/epilogue is just a retread of the first game's, but about 20x longer.

RDR1's ending and epilogue were incredible at the time. Nobody had done anything like that in an open-world game, and it was kinda mind-blowing. When I was approaching the end of RDR2, I was like "... oh. They're really doing this again, huh..."

Is it executed well? Absolutely. All of the characters' performances are fantastic. But it's also a shame that Rockstar were so bereft of new ideas that they decided to essentially take a mulligan on a game that's... A prequel. I have seen people advising to play this before RDR1, and to me, that's insane. But hey, there are also people who say to watch the Star Wars prequels first. I assume microplastics are to blame.

8/10