This is a phenomenal experience, especially in couch coop. I bought it for 11 euros including the DLC and it‘s worth every cent.

- great design
- nice gameplay
- motivating
- cool music
- funny characters

It feels like a mixture of an old 2D-Zelda game and Super Mario Odyssey with all the different transformations.
I highly recommend this game if you can play it with a friend! ❤️

## Edit after beating NG+ and 100% ##
Well, I sort of got addicted. I love this game! The deeper you dive, the better it gets. Building whacky builts or just crushing through a dungeon with zombie familiars etc. is so fun to do.
This COULD be my GOTY already! ♥

I love metroidvanias, so I picked this game up because it was on sale, the trailer looked nice and it only costed 3 euros.

Uh, and because I liked Skul: The Hero Slayer, which was published by NEOWIZ too.

What can I say?
- the graphics and design are cool
- the music gives a nice atmosphere
- the story exists, but I didn‘t care
- it‘s fun to explore and move through the world
- the bossfights are good
- the difficulty is easy-medium for advanced metroidvania players

It‘s a nice game total and I‘d call it a lite-version of Hollow Knight, which is my favourite game of all time.
So if you liked that, I think you‘re gonna have a great time. Just wait for it to be on sale.

There are certain aspects to the game that I really like:
- building your camp
- helping pals that you can assign to tasks
- fighting and capturing
- interacting with a variety of pals (as mounts, weapons, etc.)
- relaxing atmosphere and gameplay

However, the game‘s current, technical state is worrying and according to videos, the developers don‘t continue to work on their Early Access-titles, eg. Craftopia.
So I could play this on Game Pass and it was more or less free, but if I had paid 20+ euros for this game, I wouldn‘t have been satisfied.

Why?
- tons and TONS of glitches
- empty open world
- no story, dialogue or interesting locations

For instance, there is a small town in a desert area. 60% of NPCs are glitched under the surface and no dialogue whatsoever makes any sense.

- many copied elements, that don‘t always work
- not many things to apart from running around and capturing pals
- coop-gameplay on Xbox only works, if the creator of the world starts the game
- only XP-grind is capturing pals as in Legends Arceus
- pals don‘t do anything in the wild, they‘re just standing around in places
- …

So, there are immense, technical downsides to the game. It‘s still a funny mix, as it as a lite-version of ARK, but it could‘ve been a gamechanger for the whole genre. Maybe some other company learns from it and gives us a game like this. As long as it is not Ubisoft…

There won't be any spoilers in this, I promise.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a "masterpiece" and according to its Microsoft Store card it won over 170 GOTY-awards. Well, I didn't even know that many awards existed, to speak frankly.

So how was my experience with it?
First of all, I had hated this game a couple of years ago and I had already abandoned it. My brother, however, got me back to it with one simple sentence: "Yeah, it's a long game, but you just gotta see the time back then. Imagine living there."

And that I did - and boy did that help me enjoying the game.

Here are my pro and cons about the game in a nutshell:
+ the visual presentation is incredible
+ the music and sound design is astounding
+ the characters (most of them) are well written
+ the voice acting is probably among the best I've ever heard in a video game (right up there with Naughty Dog games)
+ many of the side missions were pretty creative, but still the gameplay in it was boring (the story of Edith Downes is insane for instance)

- the mission design is soooo goddamn repetitive
- the mission design is way to lengthy and boring
- the map is too big with too little to explore (there aren't so many points of interest, I stumpled upon cool stuff randomly)

So what is the typical experience of RDR2?
This is the only thing that really bothered me. This game fells like a movie and I've looked at YouTube videos where people only edited together the cutscenes and wow... that is amazing!
The dialogue, the atmosphere, the surprising twists, so much cool stuff happens in there... But then there is the massive downside...

The game is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY to long and it's so stretched out and repetitive. Almost EVERY mission in this game plays like this:
1. You ride 3-5 minutes to a certain spot (if you do it with the cinematic camera, you only have to press the A-button to ride)
2. You start the mission and ride to another spot for 3-5 minutes (if not longer)
3. You arrive at the mission spot, get of your horse and usually start shooting 40-80 people down
4. You ride back to the original location (3-5 minutes again)

So I've spent 15 minutes doing absolutely nothing but just going into a direction where the game starts. Now if we multiply that by 50 missions (especially the epilogue 1+2 missions are really hard on that one, there it's even longer at times), we get 750 minutes of doing nothing but pressing the A-button. That's 12.5 hours...


And here is the easiest fix for people like me who are fed up with that system:
Dear Rockstar, why don't you let me skip the boring shit in between those missions? Why do you force me to press the A-button for 3-5 minutes straight and not let me skip this "long ass loading screen" in order to start the mission. This is honestly beyond insanity to me. I simply cannot understand that.

This feels so tedious and I'm really unhappy about that, because at its core there is a great game. The level of detail is great and Rockstar gifted us with one of the most realistic open worlds ever, but this time in between prevents me from ever touching this again.

I don't want to go into detail about the story itself, as I've mentioned above there won't be any spoilers. Nevertheless, there are so many missions and chapters that you could just cut from the game and it wouldn't make any difference:
Chapter 5 especially is nonsense
Epilogue 1+2 can be cut down to 2 hours (why do I have to milk cows now and press a button for it?)
Chapter 1 is also incredibly long, but in retrospect it's honest because it prepares us for what to come

So yeah... I will definitely never touch this game again or revisit it. I am glad that I've finished it today and I am currently not looking forward to GTA 6. But let's see, I just need a break... :D

Gris is a wonderful journey. The artstyle is extremely refreshing and the soundtrack is touching and beautiful.

The gameplay is "platforming", although it's rather simple and the riddles are mostly self-explaining as well.

I have wanted to play this game for a long time and now - thanks to Game Pass - I completed it. 😊

I love platformers, but Rayman Origins just doesn't appeal to me. I have startet it multiple times, but unfortunately it never kept me entertained.

The biggest issues to me are two things:
Whacky controls and one immensely stupid design choice...

WHY ARE YOU SHOWING THE COLLECTED ITEMS AFTER THE LEVEL AND WHY CAN'T I SKIP IT?!
This is something that really bothers me in games. It's the same with the Hitman series. Why are you giving me points directly after a mission? I wanna explore the game, have fun with it and feel its atmosphere...
And in Rayman I ran through a level and after every jump I have to think "UHHH DID I MISS SOMETHING NOW?!"

I don't wanna play like that, because this really disturbs my sense of exploration. There is nothing more infuriating to me in a game than when you had fun with a level and you get to an endscreen that just tells you "EF YOU YOU EFFIN PIECE OF TRASH. YOU MISSED ON STUPID COIN-THINGY THAT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL BUT I WON'T LET YOU SKIP IT BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO SEE THAT YOU FAILED HAHA!"

Why should I replay that? To do the exact same run but just get the timing better on ONE single jump that I had missed earlier. I just can't wrap my head around that design choice.

So to me.. I love Rayman, I love platforming, but this game just sucks ass in my opinion, I'm sorry Ray-jay-may-jay.

Hades is a tremendously great video game. The visuals, the soundtrack, the character design and...

THE GAMEPLAY! HOLY DUPES WHAT THE FLIP IS THIS LEGENDARY GAMEPLAY?!

The baseline is that it's a roguelike which automatically turns it into a special experience. If you don't like the concept, then shame on you, because I hated it too. When this was first released on Game Pass, I played it for approximately 30 minutes and thought: "WTF IS THIS GAME?! NO WAY!"

I uninstalled it immediately and thought that the hype was unjustified and stupid.

But then, we suddenly write the year 2023 and my best friend was like "Ey man you know I think I am buying Hades are you interested?" and I thought "HOW CAN THIS GUY BE MY BEST FRIEND?! SUCH A PIECE OF TRASH GAME! WHY DOES HE LIKE IT!"

But then we started it together and OH MY GOD I cannot tell you how wrong I was.
In all fairness, without SKUL: THE HERO SLAYER (also highly recommended for all Hollow Knight fans out there) was the first rogue like I played after my terrible first Hades experience. And there I learned the concept of roguelikes and I started to like them.

And now comes Hades, the pinnacle of roguelike gaming. It's fluid gameplay, the combos, the different builds, the weapons... This is just perfection in gameplay.

Until you hit the final boss for the first time, what a dick. But then eventually you beat the crap out of that mofo and think "WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT THAT HUH?!", but then you realize "SHIT! This is a roguelike type of game..." and boom you are back at the beginning and you have to take that bitch on again.

Well, then you do it and you fail horribly and then you try it another 30 times and then you beat him again and everything just repeats.

So, if you haven't gotten it by now:
Hades is good. You should play it.

This game starts off WAY better than Gears of War 4. Better setting, better graphics, better sound, better fights... This is not only a great - if not the best - Gears game, it's a sublime shooter experience.

It has everything that part 4 lacked, especially in variety and dynamics when it comes to fighting.

The first act of part 5 alone has been more fun than Gears of War 4.

Finally, a nice Gears game again! ♥️♥️♥️

Edit:
We finished it and it's a great game. However, one thing that bothered me was the "insta kill". It happens way too often that you're dying instantly and can't be revived by your mates, especially in sequences, where it's tight hallways or anything like that.
But that is the only negative point I see. :)

I started this with a friend of mine in local coop. It's a solid experience, but as a fan of the old games I didn't get the hang of it completely.

Why?
Well, the new cast isn't as cool, funny and dynamic as the old one. The story is a bit "boring", especially in the first act where you're fighting the robots. Then you're hunting down "something" for at least 2 more chapters. It feels like a constant chase for something that is really close in front of you, only that it can vanish within another second.

The next thing: gameplay.
It fealls extremely repetitive. Yeah, the Gears gameplay is rock solid, I get that. But this is really just room after room after room with the same old enemies. Robots, little Locust, Locust, those "jumping around assholes", the big guys with the machine gun... I don't know, it feels really undynamic. Which is sad, as the first act especially (this tutorial/recap thing) feels soooo powerful as a start.

So in general: This is a solid game. In coop it is fun, but compared to the other Gears games, it falls a little short for me. But, as it is on Game Pass, it got 3.5 stars from me and I'd recommend it to play with others.

I am still excited for Gears 5 though. :)