What a piece of shit video game.

I'm actually giving this a serious review or at least the points why I hate it so much.
The first reason: This game has probably the BIGGEST potential out there.

Setting + graphics are insane, the atmosphere is good, it's a funny idea to play in co-op.

But then, there are SO MANY downsides:

1. Game fucks newbies actively
As a newbie, the game goes like "get fucked you asshole!" because it doesn't tell you anything. You play a "tutorial" that tells you 3 things that don't help you at all while you're playing.

2. The questlog is a shit-show.

3. No guidance at all
There is no story, no reason to play, no guidance. You just get thrown in there like "Here's a boat, try it."
But then there are 30 merchants, a town, different "missions" and tools. And you are sitting there like "What is the purpose? Why do I have... What?! Why is..."
There is no reason to play it, which brings me to my final point.

4. FUCK THIS GAMEPLAY
The "Sea of Thieves" experience goes like the following. You are getting on a boat. Okay. Then you're sailing out to the sea and you're pursuing a "quest". This quest being a "Go there, bring a chest, get back"-entry mission. Okay, let's go there, kill 3 skeletons and head back. Okay, sounds cool.
Then you're doing this again, and again, and again. The first 3-5 hours are 30-40 minutes of "sailing", which is standing on a boat looking at the water. Then you're looting an island for 5 minutes and you go back to the outpost where you got the quest. So it's 60-80 minutes of waiting and 5 minutes of "doing something". Cool. GREAT GAMEPLAY!

But hey, this isn't even the best part, you asshole video game. No, because the BEST PART is... You play this shitshow for 80 minutes and go back to the outpost, then a team of experienced assholes joins your way, spams "AHOI!" or "AYE!" into the chat and then they're like "EAT SHIT YOU LITTLE ASSHOLES HERE FUCK YOUR ASS WITH THIS BURNING GRENADES, YOU FUCKS!". Then they just completely penetrate your inner organs with weapons you haven't even heard of on a ship that is bigger than everything and you and your little asshole boat get fucked that hardly in the ass that you spawn in heaven and go back through a green door and get spawned on the piece of shit boat again just to be killed again and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GAME!?

I hate this experience so much, you wouldn't believe it. This is no fun at all. And the sad thing is, that it would be a great coop-experience if you just had a little pirating game with a story, cool opponents, no online-bullshit except you want to have it, an immersive world like in Skyrim and boom... Game of the year.
But like this, this game sucks Dennis Rodman's dick. 24/7. While it's getting fucked from behind by Kim Jong-Un.

What a shitshow.

First of all: We played it because the game was included in Xbox Game Pass.

And with that in mind, this game is a solid experience. We played it in Split-Screen coop mode and it's actually a lot of fun. (we are now around 6.5h into it and we'll keep playing)

What is this game?
A turn-based, tactical shooter with a nice science vs. zombies-/ghosts-/other horror creatures-setting. You run around and plan ahead, then you shoot down enemies or heal yourself and so on.
It's quite similar to Mario & Rabbids, although that one is cuter in my opinion.

Research and Destroy offers some nice battles and it's perfect for some calm hours of gameplay.
There are some downsides too it, but overall I'd say:
+ local coop
+ nice concept
+ lots of weapons and upgrades
+ fun to play once you get the rhythm and style of it
+ funny presentation

- meh graphics
- average strategy options
- lifeless levels and buildings

And if we keep in mind the first sentence of this review? That's right, we just had it in Game Pass and for that it's more than fine!
Just try it and if you like it (like us), the there are quite some hours you can put into it.

The Dynasty Warriors series will always be something special for me. I love the soundtrack, the simplicity, the gameplay or the feeling of power you get after crushing 1,000+ enemies.

But even some story aspects like Lu Bu's appearance or some smaller details like Dian Wei's impression on Cao Cao... There are so many great aspects to this.

#4 is my favourite among the series, even #5 is still great. But nowadays it just feels like a cash-grab with 800 season passes and so on.

It might be nostalgia, but I have never played a shooter that hit my heart like Halo 3. This is the best game of the franchise and probably one of the best games ever.

I could go on for hours now typing stuff, but I wanna keep it short:

Wake me, when you need me.

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.

Temtem is the best Pokémon game ever made. There are so many reasons why I like this game more than Pokémon titles, especially the modern ones (since the 6th gen).

I'm gonna list the main aspects here:
- there is ACTUALLY A GODDAMN STORY
- coop gameplay right from the start
- great combat design without randomness
- superb Temtem design
- no paywall (you can get EVERY Temtem without having to pay for two different versions)
- brilliant soundtrack
- enjoyable quests
- different islands
- higher difficulty
- cool raid design
- great breeding system
- useful online mechanics
- cool level system for Temtems
- Lunas (shinys) look amazing

Overall, this is better than Pokémon in every aspect imaginable, except nostalgia.
Apart from that, this is by FAR the better experience and I absolutely love this game.

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.

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

Celeste is among the best platformers ever created. The artstyle, the level design, the challenges, the gameplay, the story, the soundtrack... It's a masterpiece! 🥰

Edit: After exploring the endgame of this masterpiece, I was just stunned. I collected all strawberries and crystal hearts. I'm currently working on all the B-sides, C-sides and the 9th chapter. This game unraveled plenty of hours of perfectly executed gameplay. This is by far the best 2D platformer out there, if we talk about the vanilla game experience. I'd say not even Super Mario titles can match this one... And I looooooove Mario!

I played Skyrim for the first time in 2023 and I am still on it. This game aged like a fine wine. It has great quests, compelling quests, so much freedom, cool dialogue and so much interesting stuff.

Skyrim is fantastic and if it keeps being that good, I'll rate it with 5/5 stars. ♥

Edit: Masterpiece.

This is a great room escape adventure and a fantastic coop-experience.
The riddles are fair, the "story" is cool and the game feels original. As an escape room fan, I really enjoyed that.

The only "downside" is that in coop-mode there were some very wanky controls, although I still don't think that's the games fault. It may have been the controller.

But this is rock solid and I am really looking forward to the DLC. Plus, to all Game Pass subscribers... Currently (January 2023) it's in there! Go get it!

This is such a nice game. Nowieso (the creator) really created a great 2D platforming experience within the Super Mario universe.

This hack is tough for a beginner like me. It took me 10+ hours to beat it with over 4,000 deaths. But in the end I felt incredibly happy.

I am now ready to try other Kaizo hacks and I am so excited to come back here in a year or so to see my progress.

It's tough, but it always feels like a fair experience and at every single death you can point out YOUR mistake.

What I really liked:
- the soundtrack
- the level design
- the overworld
- many creative concepts within the levels
- the difficulty
- that I've finally beaten it! ♥