Whelp, this game was polarizing to say the least. Right off the bat some fans decided that The Last of Us Part II was a disgraceful sequel to the first game, mostly because of one major plot point early in the game's narrative. While of course some gamers took it way too far with the death threats and all of that, it's not too surprising to me reactions went this far. They knew this was going to be polarizing and ultimately hoped it would be worth it for the sake of an effective story.

The Last of Us Part II is another technical showcase but a gruesome and bleak title, even moreso than its ultimately somewhat optimistic predecessor. At times the violence here is so extreme that Naughty Dog seems to be pushing toward tastelessness, partly to prove their point but also for the fun and intense combat encounters.

A million things have been said about this game and it's story direction and ultimately I landed somewhere on the spectrum of liking it. It's definitely not a homerun the way the last two Naughty Dog titles were and lacks the subtlety it thinks it has but it gives you a lot to think about despite its flaws.

Mostly I just love this sort of super-AAA experience where everything is super refined and cinematic. The Last of Us Part II is very much that and therefore made for a pretty enjoyable 25 hours or so it took to finish the story. I don't see myself returning to this one as much as I did many other Naughty Dog titles but still think it's a noble effort that mostly hits its marks.

I enjoyed this game more so than the others, as I felt that I could connect with it on a much deeper level. It’s themes of identity, regarding sexuality if you make the choice, and brotherhood.

I felt many of the choices were impactful on me as a player and definitely left me thinking for a bit.
I also connected with the single parent element and how this effects kids, and in a way, it was therapeutic. I’ve revisited this game a few times now, and it’s never gotten old.

Love it!

I have some amount of respect for Half-Life. The game's eye for set-pieces, and constant insistence on re-inventing itself, makes for a varied experience that seems ahead of its time in some ways. The game also did a lot for immersive storytelling in games, though this aspect of Half-Life comes across as very clunky nowadays when contrasted against what followed in its footsteps. I will also say that, despite the harsh words that are about to follow, I enjoyed playing through Half-Life quite a bit more than my rating indicates; I played through the game in the company of friends, and everyone gently mocking the game's failings throughout helped make for an enjoyable time.

The problem is, for all it managed to do for the medium Half-Life has sadly aged almost impressively horrendously. The opening couple hours, which play out almost as survival horror, manage to still capture some amount of the tension they likely had a couple decades ago, but almost everything after the point where soldiers start showing ends up being some brand of frustrating with awkward enemy placement, cheap deaths, and myriad moments where I had to look up what I was even meant to do. Following this downward trend in quality to its natural conclusion fighting the final boss was an intensely unpleasant experience, all to get an ending that for me fell flat on its face.

I also deeply disliked the quick-save/quick-load feature and how the game seems very much designed with it in mind. Maybe I just suck at FPSes but there are countless moments in this game that only really make sense in a world where you assume most players are actively using quick-saving. Actually using this feature though leads to what feels like a very disjointed experience, robbing you of any feeling of genuine accomplishment and making every moment of disaster only a button press away from having never happened. Talking to friends I get the impression that a lot of PC games of this era were designed with this style of play in mind, and wow do I not get on with it at all.

There is no doubt that Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game packed to the brim with enthralling content. One of the most precise definitions of an "open world" as it allows you to explore a vast, beautiful, wild west frontier with striking detail paired with one of the most enthralling stories and empathetic characters in video games.

Although you're playing a game filled with outlaws in nearly every definition of the word, there's beauty in the souls of repeat criminal offenders. The player comes into contact with several different people among many different walks of life, leading to dynamic encounters both scripted and even player-driven (if not in a railroaded mission) that make this world and its characters feel so genuine. The sheer number of "important" characters to the narrative is intimidating, leading to an expected lengthy runtime; a runtime that is understandably a bit much for many, and itching close to a dealbreaker for me. Thankfully, the aforementioned strong narrative guides the player through an often dark, sometimes beautiful, and tear-jerking narrative that you won't forget anytime soon.

Red Dead Redemption 2's story and aesthetics are admittedly its saving grace among a litany of long-standing issues with Rockstar's game design. There's no need to go over every one of them, but if you've played any other open-world Rockstar game, you'll find yourself in the samey travel, talk, shooting gallery, talk mission structures found in their games of yore. Be prepared, come the later chapters of the story, that's going to be a large majority of story missions.

As long as you stick to Rockstar's strict guidelines on what it wants from you in its story, you'll have an amazing time with this game. While I did enjoy my time, I found being railroaded through extensive - and sometimes quite boring - missions and travel bloated the completion time more than it should have. Red Dead Redemption 2's scenery does make the tedious-to-swallow travel time easier to digest. Eventually, the player will even gain access to fast travel, yet like many other mechanics in Red Dead Redemption 2, it's buried under heaps of poor UI and the game's assistance in sticking to its underwhelming survival mechanics.

In this attempt to create a more "realistic" open-world experience, you're bound from the beginning to engage with some (mostly optional) survival mechanics. Some of these may be fun and even turn into decent companion missions (ex: hunting, fishing, ambushes), but many slog down the pace of the game and introduce more burdens on a game that demands a lot of your time. Having to worry about babying Arthur around to make sure he eats, gets proper sleep, bathes, as well as cleans and feeds his horse gets old when you need to do these things and have to take extended breaks from the story. All of this comes from someone who hasn't had many positive experiences with survival games as it is. I know that in the grand scheme of survival games, Red Dead Redemption 2 doesn't go very far; that begs the question though as to why they'd bother to implement these features if they weren't going to go all-in?

It's sad to know that many developers literally hurt themselves for the production of this game; something we should never excuse or forget. With that crunch and strong ambitions for what Red Dead Redemption 2's world was to be, there are some problems worth discussing. Many have pontificated already about the need for these 100+ hour work weeks to code in your male horse's balls shrinking in the cold (obviously unnecessary), but that also sheds a dichotomy to Rockstar's overall mission structure. With how many obsessive little things there are to find and do throughout Red Dead Redemption 2, the gameplay structure of many story missions buckles down into drawn-out shooting galleries with a janky cover system and less-than-stellar shooting controls. There's good reason to question Rockstar's priorities when it comes to game design.

At the end of the day, my experience with Red Dead Redemption 2 is obviously a positive one. That said, when you're expected to be railroaded through very specific mission structures, with specific half-baked survival mechanics, and with clunky, outdated gameplay on behalf of an overly-detailed animation system, I begin wondering if Rockstar is ever going to evolve beyond its writing and tech prowess and will begin providing better gameplay experiences in the future.

Worst game I ever played.
A boring, terribly paced dumpster fire that progressively gets worse.
None of the characters are interesting or worth caring about, they're all 2 dimensional and boring and it is impossible to care about them because of how badly they are written.
There is no real chemistry between the main cast, it feels like they are held together by duct tape, they don't feel like an actual friend group but rather people that gather together just to talk with the protagonist.
It's also terribly easy, there is not a single fight that is challenging even on the merciless difficulty, a massive step down from the previous entries. Most encounters end within seconds and you don't even have to make use of the weakness system to defeat them in one turn.
Soundtrack is good though

Again, a lot of the game doesn't work for me and doesn*t make sense. The rampant sexism that the female character has to go through is disgusting.

Who gets to flee from the serial killer? Who has to dance suggestively in a club? TWICE? Who dreams of a rapist attacking her while she's in her underwear? Who has sex for no reason with the protag? Who get's the shower scene?

One or two of these things are not a problem. All of them happening to the same character IS.

This game starts also the trend of "I know too much about David Cage's preferences than I want to" with our female protag having short hair and dressing casually. Wait for Beyond Two Souls and Detroit.

Elliot Page has at one point the same hairstyle and color and when he has to dress for his date the "sexy" dress option is a shirt and a T-Shirt. D:

In Detroit, Kara cuts her hair soon in the game and has the same style as Elliot Page and his Heavy Rain counterpart. You have the option to die the hair dark but you don't have to.

Thank god for small mercies. But I admit, she never wears a T-Shirt and Jeans. Whoever I have to thank for that: Thank you! ;)

I also found out who the killer is because of a shitty cutscene that made no sense. That's not exactly ideal. :/

Every year I have to sucker myself into getting hyped for something heavily story-focused because there's just something about telling primarily cinematic stories through the medium of video games has always been alluring to me, going all the way back to 2002's The Getaway, an undeniably flawed game that still captures my imagination decades later.

Last Stop shouldn't have been that game this year, except for the nagging thought that this was made by the same development team that made Virgina, a 2016 release that promised Lynchian thrills married the sort of inventive art styles that always feel exciting to wander around in...only to come out the pot completely on fire. It felt like experiencing a student film in game form, so assured it was in its profundity only to swing and miss on just about every element.

Last Stop, I'm happy to report, is not that same level of highway pile up. It's got...decent writing, I suppose, some gameplay elements that feel like gameplay elements and a series of tropes mashed into an anthology that at least promises if you aren't feeling one storyline, another is just around the corner.

Funnily enough, the one thing that Virginia had going for - a striking, highly individual aesthetic - is Last Stop's greatest flaw. Removed from the heavily stylized art style and camera work, Variable State's animation work is shockingly shoddy and its framing of scenes disarmingly maudlin. Last Stop is never a thing you're happy to look at, a striking problem for any visual medium. Mediocre voice acting and writing paired with completely unbelievable human subjects who move like animatronics sucks, plain and simple, and that vibe never feels like an intention so much as lack of talent.

I got through the third act and realized I just wasn't interested enough to see this through. For what it's worth, each character's arc in each act is a crisp 30-50 minutes, so if you check out some footage of this game and aren't as off put by its look and feel as I was you can take solace in the fact that it's essentially a 15 episode TV show which makes it very easy to cut up into little bites, or binge if you're into that sort of thing.

Remember Me is a brand new IP from Capcom. I always welcome new IPs because you never know when you’re going to get the next Assassin’s Creed. Once I started to Remember Me I instantly fell in love with it. The art style is fantastic, the story is engaging, and the characters are memorable. This will be a game I talk about for years to come…at least the story anyways.

you are Nilin, a memory hunter fighting against M3morize. M3morize is a corporation that invented technology to let you forget any memory you want and gain memories. As you can tell, this leads to a civil war because everyone eventually becomes Leapers who are completely corrupted and bereft of memories. It turns out that there is some sort of new world order to wipe out everyone’s memories and make them all mindless soldiers. That’s the jist of it, and if I say any more I will give too much away. The story is fascinating and really plays well with the art style and atmosphere.

The problem with new IPs is that the developers concentrate on just one aspect of the game and the rest of it gets left behind. This is apparent in Assassin’s Creed 1 after playing AC3. You can see the difference. Remember Me has an amazing story and characters, but the gameplay is just lacking, it just feels useless and unnecessary. The tools you have to play don’t really mean anything in this game, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. The first thing is the combat system. While it’s unique it is very limited and actually holds the player back. Nilin has four different combos she can do over the course of the game. You fill these combos with two different attack buttons called Pressens. These Pressens can increase your health, decrease S-Pressen cooldown timers, give you more powerful attacks, and cause a chain reaction. This seems really interesting, gaining health during combat? It’s more frustrating and limited than you think. With just four combo chains you have to memorize all four of them and also remember what Pressens are in each one. I had one as a focused cool down combo, then one for health while the third was for power. The further in the combo the Pressen is the bigger effect it has. With just four combos combat gets really repetitive and super boring, it just never picks up.

Once you unlock S-Pressens things get a tad bit interesting but only during boss fights. These are powers that can let you attack really fast, stun everyone, place a bomb, and even turn invisible and get a one-hit-kill on an enemy. You can use two different ones on robot enemies that will attack you. These S-Pressens are key to winning tougher battles later in the game. That’s all there is to combat, and it is so limiting and repetitive. I actually only kept going because of the story.

Another part of the game that is never fully developed are the puzzles. There are only four in the entire game. These allow you to remix people’s memories to make them think something happened a different way. You watch a cutscene then rewind it looking for glitches that can change the scene. You have to set off the right glitches to change the memory. The problem is that there are no multiple outcomes. You just keep retrying until you get it right, there’s no fun in that. If I mess with someone’s memory, let me decide how it goes. I also wish there were more of them. There are also Remembrance puzzles that you interact in the world with. They are usually really easy and the answer is given to you after just a minute. I hate how these things were so underdeveloped, they are great concepts. There are a couple of move-the-stuff puzzles using your arm’s special powers, but I felt these were useless. You unlock a gun type of thing that can blast enemies and move things. Why do I need to unlock this throughout the game? Honestly, the moving and blasting open doors just felt like pointless filler.

Lastly, the exploration is very linear. The controls respond well, but the best part is just viewing everything. You get taken from the slums to the richest areas of the city. The journey is fascinating and breath-taking. Remember Me feels like a mix of Mirror’s Edge, Steven Spielberg’s A.I., and Blade Runner. I ate it up and the characters are very memorable. I just wish it had better gameplay to compliment it.

After you finish the game you will be talking about the amazing story for a while. While none of these mechanics are bad, they are just underdeveloped and feel like they need more work. The combat is interesting but very limited and repetitive, the same 5 enemies repeat often, and the puzzles are underdeveloped. I hope Remember Me comes back because I love Nilin and her journey through this break taking world, just give us better tools to explore it.

Irony doesn't even cut it when saying Remember Me has been utterly forgotten by even the most devoted Dontnod fan. Dontnod's first project had an admirable scope with Alain Damasio's gigantic story bibles and the aim of its female protagonist, and if one actually plays the game, the well built world (and the multitude of supplementary material the player can read if they collect all the Mnesist Memories) showcase this ambition in spades. Yet, the dull combat with its five and only five combos—albeit customizable to a large, kind of arbitrary manner through Pressens—dilute the singular best part of Remember Me: Memory Remixing. Dontnod should've focused exclusively on Memory Remixing and its explorative functions to carry its narrative and supplemented small segments with combat—because whew! Nilin and whoever the fuck else was in the game are not at all memorable, except Jax, you murderous son of a bitch. I can't complain too much for something I had yet not played for years, but Dontnod really came out with the most pathetic whimpers for a studio who followed this with Life is Strange and Tell Me Why, vastly superior games with characters I actually like.

Whenever I play indie games, its hard not to think about the emotional toll the gaming industry puts on devs to just survive. Stories of creators putting all their chips into one basket before reaching burnout or going bankrupt are dime a dozen. Its an exhausting, saddening harsh reality that's just so depressing to live with. The first creation is never going to be someone's best, but all these creative minds never get a chance to evolve their work beyond their first ideas.

Its one of many reasons I'm also really excited by the work of Chilla's Art. A team of two Japanese brothers, putting out 2 to 3 short horror games a year. They've been at it since 2018, with pretty negative reviews to start with. Yet over time, you can see this style emerging as they become more familiar with what they want to do. As of 2020, they've crafted a deliberate PS1 aesthetic to create a quiet, disquieting vibe as you navigate these uncomfortable dynamics.

That's not to say it doesn't have problems. The dialogue for Missing Children (and research suggests this is a common Chilla's Art problem) has some pretty rough translations. It can often be pretty unclear where to go or how to progress. There's a real heart and powerful story hiding beneath these problems, but these obstacles make it hard to see it.

Still, its just nice to find a group that's still working and improving and honing their craft. You don't see it often enough. And its games like this that are motivating my current interest in learning another language. There's a whole universe of storytelling waiting out there that I want to explore.