This was laughingly bad. The only saving grace was that the parkouring was half decent, but with one of the most confusing level designs of all time it was difficult to ever truly get into. Characters move at 5 FPS when you're 20 feet away from them, set pieces are empty, voice acting is horrendous, and enemy AI either lets you creep up on them or will one-hit you as soon as you enter a room.

Speaking of the voice acting, I couldn't find any confirmation of this but I swear they had one of the voice actor's pitch shift from normal to low from one line to another towards the middle part of the game. It was so jarring to me that I was starting to wonder if they had two different actors voice the same character.

Skate 1 - best soundtrack & most optimal progression system
Skate 2 - best map
Skate 3 - most fluid gameplay

If I had to only choose one it'd be the second but I love them all equally.

Great sequel. Virtually improved everything about the gameplay and added even more. I also thought that the map worked a lot better here than it did in the first game, mainly because each part of the map flows into one another.

If I had to pick on something it would be the reward system. The first skate game made a big deal out of getting your first (and subsequent) sponsors. Whereas, in Skate 2, all you needed to do was pick a brand without much though, and you could move on to the next challenge. Although I didn't mind the concept behind the story, this made it feel under-baked.

The multiplayer shines here as there's a lot of QOL improvements made over the first game, as well as narrowing down the classes to 4, which provided balance and really encouraged diversity among squads and/or teams to achieve the objective.

The campaign was nothing to write home about. Although I did appreciate this game being more linear than the first (one gripe that I had about BC1 was the wasted time of having to travel back and forth across the map), by completing it in 2 sessions it felt too concise and to the point.

Story is pretty forgettable as it rehashes a lot of the same archetypes used in mid to late 2000s shooters, but done in a much lighter tone. The takeaways for me have to be how great the game sounds, and how the destruction system looks.

Pretty fun multiplayer, albeit it can be unbalanced at times because of the spawn camping and the vehicles being overpowered. Having a team full of the 5 classes did lead to the best results, so it did encourage me to cycle through classes and kept gameplay fairly interesting.

Pretty cool launch title. Still looks great visually, the collisions are well done, and the soundtrack is solid despite being really short (After a couple hours in my playthrough I decided to just listen to podcasts/music while playing).

The single player mode really leaves a lot to be desired. I like the concept of racing within the backdrop of a festival (Forza Horizon would go on to nail this), but with a limited number of maps, it becomes repetitive. I understand not having licensed vehicles to really make use of the collisions, but more should have been done to differentiate the unlockables besides just the appearance of them.

Awesome first entry into the Red Dead series. Controls, game mechanics such as the cover system, and the appearance are all of its time, but its serviceable and often times added to the experience.

With the multitude of boss fights (reminiscent of the mini bosses from Borderlands games), bullet-time elements you might see from a Max Payne or Stranglehold, and the story and its presentation, all results in a very enjoyable playthrough that is paced fairly well and keeps you wanting to hit a conclusion.

Some gripes I have is that although the difficulty does progress, some missions can be unfair with its checkpoint system. Although I liked the idea of playing stages with other characters, and understand why the decision was made, but I felt it took away from Red's spotlight. At the most, other playable characters should have bene limited to Jack and Annie.

My first RTS experience, and although it isn't a traditional entry into the genre as it made changes to cater towards consoles, it didn't too much to keep me invested in the storyline, the gameplay, and the genre as a whole.

The lore does seem interesting, but wasn't presented well within the context of the game. The third person view does provide some nice views that are reminiscent of the Recon series, but I found it too overwhelming to control the entire army as your camera view is limited.

I went through about 2 hours of gameplay until I hit a stopping point, and lacked the motivation to continue.

Combat system was enjoyable with the use of the 3 stances. I found that although a shorter game, you're still able to make use of and master the game mechanics. Boss fights in this game are implemented well; some are a breeze while others make time some retries to get through.

The Kai sections are a bit of a drag (and that was without using the motion control function). One last critique is the mesh of cultures leading to a lack of identity, as you have East Asian set pieces and characters, but with British voice actors, supplemented with a Middle Eastern-inspired OST.