So I guess I'm going to throw a few words in about the multiplayer offerings for the PC port of MCC at the moment since I've done really everything I can at this point in terms of this current "season" of progression.

I have the game marked as "shelved", but I'm certainly not shelving this game. Master Chief Collection will continue to be a game I progress in as time goes on, essentially being my ideal "forever game" with the insanely replayable campaigns and robust multiplayer offerings, but that's more the Xbox version at the moment. I really wanted to have some words about the PC port.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection on PC is a pretty great experience. While not being the most flushed out in terms of totally customizing the experience (unless you're modding), the game on PC has enough on offer at the moment to be an attractive offer for people to play. Currently, on PC we have both the campaigns and multiplayer offerings for both Reach and Combat Evolved, which are both great for completely different reasons.

To get my positives in first: Halo is just fantastic to play with a mouse and keyboard. I have heard some grumblings that PC controls feel "off" to some people, but I haven't had that issue, myself. Overall, the game just plays fantastically and it's always jarring to go from throwing down constant headshots and quick-turns with a mouse and keyboard setup, to then feeling like a fridge with little stumpy legs when playing on console. As more Halo titles get released onto this version of the game, the less and less I will be touching the Xbox version of this game.

Visually speaking, MCC's current games look rather great. There's apparently some visual upscaling done to Reach with graphics options available for toggle, but the differences for each options seem minimal to me, overall. Nevertheless, there's some good customization options on offer including a FOV slider (praise be), but there isn't a whole ton on offer to severely customize your own Halo experience, here.

The games themselves are great, at least the multiplayer offerings. I love that new modes are added to both Combat Evolved and Reach to keep the games feeling fresh as time goes on, so I can go through long play sessions of this game without getting too stale.

Lastly, the multiplayer framework for this game feels rather solid. As someone who holds a 250+ MPS download/upload speed, whenever I encounter connection issues I can pretty safely pose those complaints onto the game, itself and not my connection, yet MCC runs really without a hitch! While I may see some lagging players from time to time, my connection is always extremely stable with no rubber-banding, no server crashes, and no "time outs" when I'm in the middle of the game. As a day-one purchaser of MCC on Xbox One, seeing the game actually work the way it's supposed to is extremely refreshing nowadays.

As for the issues I have, there's one in particular that severely hampers the experience for me...

Similar to the original release of Halo Reach, MCC has an unlocking system put in place to earn armor pieces for your customizable spartan that'll be shown in both singleplayer and multiplayer. To unlock new pieces of armor, you have to progress through the free battle pass season that's on offer. As you gain XP, you can earn tokens to get armor and further progress. Everything is free, so that's all good with me; the issue lies solely within the grind.

Originally, Halo Reach was pretty freakin' grindy, like, you had to invest an ungodly amount of time in it to get anywhere within the game, and as someone who spent a lot of time in Reach both during and after its hayday, I can attest to how painful it was to progress, but there were two things done better in Reach's original release than here:

1. When you got XP, you were able to take the "credits" of said XP and allocate them to any unlocks you wanted to. Reach did have rank requirements locking off specific kinds of armor at any point in time, but once you hit that rank, you could used any banked up XP you previously had to unlock your desired armor. MCC instead has a more linear progression system where you earn tokens by passing ranks, which then can only be used on the next item available in the pass. I hear that 343 is working on changing that to make the progression not feel so linear, and I would hope that's the case because the system we have at the moment certainly works, but it's not ideal.

Next, let's complain about the grind. As I previously stated, MCC is not nearly as grindy as OG Reach, but it's still a hassle. Earning XP in matches can be rather rewarding at first, seeing great progression rewards flowing in and constantly getting new items, but soon enough, a grind wall is put in place that slows the pacing to a halt, and continues to do so as you go through the separate "tours" (prestige) of the multiplayer. Now, there's two different things I take issue with this grind.

1. THERE ARE NO CAMPAIGN PROGRESSION REWARDS! Besides a "pat on the back" in form of achievements to flush out your Steam/Xbox profile(s), MCC has no XP or token rewards for playing the campaigns. If you want to go out and play any campaign, you're earning jack for playing them. 343 is supposedly working on a challenges screen for players to do specific in-game things to get rewarded with XP/season tokens, but they're still seemingly a long ways away, and as someone whose put in 95 hours on the PC version of the game alone, not to mention the time I've put into the Xbox version when I'm sick of just playing CE and Reach, that's absolutely crazy. I am just now approaching the end of the current season's pass. The amount of time needed to get these rewards is just unacceptable, even with the permanent XP increase we were given a while ago. I know it de-incentives people from investing in multiplayer in the long run, but the XP caps per match need to be increased, or the XP per medals needs an increase; either way, it would shorten the grind and make it more manageable. The combination of giving campaign rewards and having the multiplayer dull out higher XP caps would make this whole system flow much better, especially when there's insane XP requirements to hit a single rank.

As an example, I just barely hit "tour 4", and there's 11 total. Right now, I hear that you can't pass 6, and that makes sense because I rarely see people much above my current rank, but I've seen people in tours 5 and 6 from time to time. To leave tour 3 and enter 4, you have to earn a total of 400k XP to rank up. Now, on a double-XP event, that's not too bad as long as you perform well, but not everyone is going to have banger matches after banger matches, meaning that it takes hours even during an XP event to hit those requirements. Just think how long it takes to hit those milestones without the assistance of 2x XP! I cannot begin to imagine how much time people in significantly higher ranks than I am have invested in this game! If it's already getting to be borderline unbearable to grind in tour 3 of 11, then there's a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

Okay, this has gone on long enough, and I doubt anyone will actually read this to conclusion, but right now, MCC is an attractive offer on PC. I would say that even if you're considering on picking this up that you do so at your earliest convenience, because it's worth every penny. Hopefully as more titles are released and we get more features, that the game shapes up to the masterpiece potential it has. In the meantime, the PC port of MCC is great, but far from perfect, yet is still something all FPS fans have to pick up.

A complete waste of time and effort. Halo: Spartan Assault is an unplayable piece of garbage that's horrendously optimized for PC. Even working with a mid-range machine, you should easily be able to get the thing working without a hitch, and at the very least hit 60 frames per second with no issues. The problem is, is that Spartan Assault doesn't bother working in the slightest when trying to keep a consistent framerate, jumping from 26-60 constantly making the gameplay experience sluggish at best, and infurriating at worst. Also, if you're like me and like to play your twin-stick shooters with actual twin-sticks and not a mouse and keyboard, you're shit out of luck because the game will refuse to load if you have a controller connected to the computer.

I remember not being a big fan of Spartan Assault when I originally played it on Xbox One, and it may still be the mediocre twin-stick shooter I remember it being, there, but on PC it's a joke and a half, and nowhere near worth the literal pennies it goes on sale for on a frequent basis.

Obviously, not as good as RE 4, but it has its charms.

RE 5 controls rather well, and runs for a rather alright length that isn't too short nor outstays its welcome, but there are real issues biting at the game.

As a start, this story is just completely unengaging like 4 or any other RE story before. I didn't care about Sheva, rarely cared about Chris, and thought the whole setup was just super bland.

In terms of the combat, again, it's rather good, but there's a severe issue in just how long ecnounters can last. Enemies are far more powerful than they were in RE 4, and with that, even standard enemies take so much longer to kill than is acceptable. This issue also relays into the boss fights, which are so overdrawn to the point of lasting 15+ minutes. I know JRPG fans are laughing at that with their 90-minute boss battles, but I have more things to do that sit around and just mash the triggers all day at an annoying sponge masquerading as a boss fight.

While I played RE 5 on PS4 with a friend, I figured to try the PC port for a go, and couldn't stand it. This game NEEDS to be played in coop. I know some are fine with the AI partner, but I couldn't stand the sheer idiocy of the AI and how frequently she got herself killed and with all the obnoxious menu organizing you have to do with her since she picks up everything like a vaccuum.

This leads into another complaint which is the inventory system. By god, this system is so terrible comparred to not only Resident Evil 4, but the current remakes releasing. 9 slots total, with gigantic guns taking the same amount of space as a little vial with a green herb in it? Give me a freaking break! This is all implimented to engage in coop more, and it is remedied with a partner that streamlines the process better, but I will never dare go through this alone for a whole playthrough due to all the timewasting needed to request, collect, and trade items with the AI.

My last complaint is one many will scoff at, but yeah, RE 5 is rather racially insensitive. Now, the whole game isn't racist or anything, that's nuts, but after going through the shanty towns towards the beginning chapters, all the bigs in the jungle are filled with the most jingoistic racial stereotypes one could imagine. The jingoism ends rather fast, though, going back to normal as soon as it starts, but it's an issue, nonetheless.

Overall, okay, not great. Certainly do not play this solo.

As my very first Animal Crossing experience, I'm mixed on how I truly feel about New Horizons. On the one hand, I find it rather relaxing to traverse your island, talking to your adorable little villagers, collecting materials and formatting the place to look as exquisite as possible, yet on the other hand, you're running around doing virtual chores for several hours a day, and the loan system can eventually require so much financial investment from you that it can easily turn into grinding of the same things every single day to seemingly no end.

I'm still playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I'm having fun with it for the most part, but I can't see this sticking around for much longer. I honestly wish there was a way to just pause time in the game so I could just take a breather from it for a while yet still engage with the special events, as well as not run the risk of losing my villagers, but I understand how that goes against the core philosophy of the game. Enable for New Horizons to continually engage me with its mechanics, it needs to do the following:

1. please explain how long I can go without engaging with the game so I can actually take a damn break but not run the risk of losing villagers
2. let me craft more than one item at a time at benches, as well as let me bulk-buy items at shops/Nook terminals
3. let me have more than one construction project active at a time for god's sake

Seemingly menial changes, I know, but they'd do a lot in honing the pacing of this game. I still really like this game, and may provide further thoughts on it in the future, but this is where I stand now. I like this game, but I'm far from loving it at the moment.

While still being in early access, World of Horror has a ton of potential to be something fantastic. Right now, it's great, yet not perfect.

For a game such as this, I guess I'll just list out things I really love about the game, then list out grievances and call it there for now.

For what I love:

1. For pixel art being as garish as it is nowadays, the art of the game is rather superb; there's some wonky images here and there, but for the most part, it's phenomenal.
2. I usually hate turn-based-combat, yet World of Horror engaged me in a rather simple to learn, hard to master system of complex battle sequences mixed with obtaining abilities in the roaming bits of the game.
3. Mixing elements of "choose your own adventure" type stories with rogue-like elements, all formed together as a point-and-click adventure RPG is an insanely creative design, and I love it.
4. The damn this is SURPRISINGLY scary! I've encountered a few jumpscares here and there, yet the horror truly comes from just looking at the malformed abominations that you encounter, as well as the crazy situations you find yourself in.
5. Mod support!

For what needs fixing (in my eyes):

1. Typos. Typos everywhere.
2. The leading gameplay loop of "investigating" areas with this point-and-click style mixed with random encounters gets really confusing, and sometimes goes against the narrative you're currently engaged in.
3. Overall story arcs could go for a bit longer. Most end relatively quickly. There could be additions to current narratives, or maybe some longer ones added down the road.
4. The insanely large menu systems of World of Horror need serious tweaking to not be so overwhelming. Many options available seem useless at the moment (maybe that'll change with newer updates down the road). The UI can get so cluttered and confusing that it's nice the game offers a tutorial on how to operate it, yet that comes after your initial campaign tutorial run. Please include the "what the hell are all these buttons and menus" tutorials right when you start up the game, or right when you start what feels to be the full tutorial.

The mixture of praises and grievances can sound like I'm mixed, overall on the game, yet that's far from the truth. I'm loving this game so far, and I'm actively excited to see what comes of it down the road.

Decided that since it's been a while since I played the original Super Mario Bros., it was worth giving it another go via the Nintendo Switch's NES emulation.

Where I stood on the original Mario platformer back in the day is where I stand now: the game is great, has lots of retro charm to it, yet the advances made in Mario ever since this first entry have rendered this game seemingly obsolete besides revisiting it for nostalgia's sake. The controls are too floaty for my taste, and the level design is a tad bland; not bad, though, by any means.

Playing via the Switch is also not that recommended in my opinion if you're planning on playing with the joycon controllers. The lack of a true D-pad on the Switch makes the game a real hassle when wrestling with the wonky directional buttons. Play this on the OG console, the litany of other ports, other forms of emulation, or if you're going to give this a go on Switch, use a dedicated controller and not the joycons.

Just insane. Resident Evil 6 has become my new favorite "trash game", but not like the sludge such as Ride to Hell: Retribution. Resident Evil 6 is refined chaos; an experience that's consistently shocking and hilarious, yet is also a terrible Resident Evil game.

I played this co-op with a friend, and while I'm yet to experience the AI partners, I've heard they're better than the nonsense of Resident Evil 5. Nevertheless, don't expect me to comment on the AI in this game, since again, I played this via online co-op with a friend.

Resident Evil 6 has a lot of refined qualities to it that make it a rather enjoyable gameplay experience. Finally, you can aim and shoot at the same time, the menu system received a notable overhaul that makes weapon switching much easier (yet still a tad cumbersome), and there's a lot of mobility options that make the overall gameplay experience feel like a chaotic action film you're in control of. Long gone are the days of the Spencer Mansion, with tank controls (or tank-like in games like RE4 and 5), where you plant your feet on the ground and use a little laser to aim at your targets; now, it's unbridled chaos smacked with additional doses of adrenaline. Honestly, I'm in favor of how the game controls. Resident Evil 6 offers a multitude of ways for the player to navigate the game and craft unique combat scenarios as they progress. RE6 isn't explicitly a cover shooter, or balls-to-the-wall speed-fest like Vanquish, yet it marries many of these types of gameplay styles to have the player consistently experimenting with different movement tactics and weapons. Overall, the combat is excellent, again, it just doesn't feel like it belongs in a Resident Evil title.

I'm not going to further bore anyone about combat mechanics, nor go in-depth about level design and the like. I instead want to provide brief thoughts about each campaign, from worst to best.

Chris:
Chris' campaign is easily the worst for the slow, military-shooter crawl that makes up the first two chapters of the experience. Waiting for AI allies to complete objectives while you just point and shoot things is frankly a bore. The slog of the first two chapters does lead to a great later half with stupid vehicle sections, crazier boss fights, and the usual amount of unintentional cheese that makes the rest of the campaigns great.

Ada:
Ada's campaign falters in just not being too interesting. While being the shortest campaign of the bunch, the puzzles and the lack of more open-ended levels make it feel weaker than the better campaigns that preceded it. Playing this campaign in co-op is also a total mess, which adds a bit of charm to it, since this campaign wasn't designed with co-op in mind. If you're the second player during the Ada campaign, get ready to just sit around and do nothing for long stretches of time.

Jake:
Consistently stupid and often hilarious, Jake's campaign feels like a mishmash of the more bizarre elements of RE6 with some "hulking indestructible monster hunts you" moments like in RE3. The final chapters of Jake's campaign easily provide the biggest laughs of any of the other campaigns, which is fantastic, yet the over-abundance of mandatory stealth sections and a tad too many vehicle/turret sections drag it slightly.

Leon:
Le creme of le crop. Leon's campaign is consistently stupid and hilarious, spreading out the laughs and great action much smoother than the other campaigns. There are a few aggravating moments like some of the other campaigns, yet they're not often noticed. The sheer amount of dumb quick-time-events and other outrageous moments make this campaign the most enjoyable, with Jake's taking a close second.

Yes, Resident Evil 6 is a bad Resident Evil game, but if you're looking for a "so bad it's good" gaming experience where the actual "game" part of the game is solid, then this is definitely up your alley. I would highly recommend playing this co-op as well to share laughs with a friend as you tear the dumbest video game story ever to shreds. Resident Evil 6 is so chaotic, it would make Michael Bay blush.

I've only touched Streets of Rage, before, and I've always found that blasphemous considering the fact I love the beat-em-up genre. Upon seeing gameplay for this new entry into the series, I negated the fact that I'm not well-versed in this franchise, and decided to pick this up to play with my brother. Although Streets of Rage 4 ties into the other games, in typical beat-em-up fashion it doesn't matter what you've played and what you haven't, because punching the living daylights out of things isn't what we'd call "narratively complex."

Anyway, in the 2-ish hours it took for my brother and me to slam through the story mode on "normal" difficulty, we had a great time. Phenomenal art style/animations, fluid, fun gameplay, and a cool mix of visual customization options permeate the experience, which is exactly what I'd want out of a beat-em-up experience.

I honestly don't have much in terms of complaints in the game except for some relatively minor ones. To start, I think the game needs a tad bit of difficulty returning. The game is manageable on "normal" and we beat it well, only hitting "game overs" a few times, yet there's some enemy attacks and especially some heavy-hitting boss attacks that seem impossible to dodge and deal hefty amounts of damage. One boss in particular towards the mid-point of the game had a large charge-up for an attack, which we couldn't break, then proceeds to do said attack across the entire arena, knocking out a whole HALF of your health bar when it connects; either that charge state needs to be more easily broken, the attack only needs to happen once, or the damage output needs to be severely dropped to make that feel remotely fair.

My other complaint is just a lack of overall content for the game. Outside of some tiny secret levels to find, the only other gameplay offerings besides the main story is an arcade mode where you've got one life to finish the game, a simple boss rush, and a half-baked arena duel you can participate in with another player; not all that engaging I must say. The story, itself is super fun so going through it multiple times is certainly not an issue; the replay value of this game is high like many other beat-em-ups, but an extra mode or something would've been appreciated to flush this out a tad more.

Anyway, Streets of Rage 4 is a super solid experience; fun, difficult, and an audio-visual treat to experience. The game is completely solid in performance no matter the platform (so far as I've seen), so if you're like me and have been starved for some well-polished beat-em-up goodness, you cannot go wrong with this game.

I think it's rather interesting to look back on this game, after all the hype of the franchise completely died out, and the usual annoying "scream into my webcam" YouTube personalities moved on to other things.

The first FNAF is the only one I ever bothered to play, because right from the beginning, I knew what the game and all of its sequels were going for, and I frankly never cared for it. A simple point-and-click game where you poke around menus and do basic camera/door management while you helm a striking fear of having a piercing (and frankly obnoxious) screeching sound effect stab into your ears; simple, and effective for those who enjoy the very bare-minimum of horror, but as someone who needs more than artificial tension paying off with a loud sound in my ears, I just can't find myself caring about it.

Honestly, it's the lack of interactivity that kills FNAF for me. I frankly find it boring to be locked within a set location, with little-to-no movement options while I await the inevitable jump scare. When things just feel so out of your control, I can't feel invested in it. Games that helm jumpscares like any horror-centric Resident Evil, Alien Isolation, or even Amnesia allow some sort of player control to handle your situations; you're still going to be spooked, but when I actually feel in control of my actions and not just plopped into a seat and told to just click buttons until my ears get murdered, I can't muster any effort to actually play it.

If this is for you, then I'm glad. The major success of not only this game, but the series overall proves that there's a market out there for these kinds of games and it's clear that plenty of people like it for wholly legitimate reasons; I just require more from a horror experience than the game version of blockbuster horror movies that think "scary" is only loud noises.

I won't lie, expectations were pretty low following up the ultimately milk-toast and frequently boring Resident Evil: Revelations, but as far as I see, there's no real connection between that game and this story-wise, so that's good, I suppose.
Anyway, in the effort to chase down the "episodic game trend" of the mid to late 2010s, Capcom thought it'd be cool to piecemeal release a game that honestly didn't need to be. The scattered release of Revelations 2 isn't an "issue" anymore considering the physical releases that contain all the content being out for the console platforms, as well as all content, is available to purchase right from the get-go, now.

Confusing release patterns aside, Revelations 2 feels like a total mechanical upgrade to the first Revelations, while also fitting in with the overall Resident Evil canon quite nicely. Across 4 main episodes and two short side ones, Revelations 2 is a good, fleshed-out experience that harkens back to the horror atmosphere that was ditched a whole decade ago in this series. While not strictly "survival horror" (you maintain a rather solid inventory of weapons and ammo types consistently through the experience), seeing anything close to "horror" coming back is refreshing. Like any standard Resident Evil title, the game is fraught with camp, some good spooks, nice gameplay, and even some well-designed puzzle sections come the latter half of the game. The issue is, is that despite the formula returning back to Resident Evil's standard loadout, there isn't a lot here to distinguish itself from its contemporaries, and on top of that, it can be argued to be hampered because it's a Resident Evil game.

As someone who's enjoyed basically every Resi experience, thus far, the typical plot and location formula that permeates Resident Evil is honestly getting old; I'm not going to spoil anything, but if you've played Resident Evil, before, you know exactly what you'll be doing throughout the story, and where it'll conclude. Don't fix what isn't broken, but add a little spice to the formula to not make it feel so samey. I understand that when attempting to cater to two separate types of Resident Evil fans, compromises have to be made, and they're certainly here, keeping a consistent and enjoyable experience, but it's time for old Resi fans to just accept that times are changing, and doing the exact same thing across decades of game releases get stale over time.

As for the four episodes, themselves, each of which have a central gimmick to hone in on to deliver a specific type of experience. Episode 1 is a mysterious trek through an unknown location, fighting strange monsters and doing rudimentary puzzles; episode 2 is more of the same, drawn out a bit, and also hold escort-type mission design; episode 3 (the best one in my opinion), stacks up the puzzles for a good brain tease, but is never all-too difficult; episode 4 acts as your standard Resident Evil finale, especially if you get the "good ending", but all in all it works out well enough, but is considerably weaker than the rest of the chapters with repetitive boss designs and cheeky "all enemies have to be eliminated so an arbitrary action can unfold to progress" moments.

In terms of gameplay, Revelations 2 is solid, although hampered a bit by a few episodes that have their dull moments. The story is rather good, fleshing out characters that were rather absent for a considerable amount of time in the Resi canon (ESPECIALLY Barry), and working the overall tone back to a horror-centric experience is much appreciated. The "Raid Mode" is also considerably better this time around, with more to do and the gameplay just feeling better than the first Revelations did even in its "HD" ports, but a lot can be said about its nickel-and-diming of inventory slots, characters, and costumes for rather annoying microtransaction DLC. If you're only caring about the campaign, though, the DLC isn't going to affect you one way or another.