Max Payne 2 is a good time, although I do feel like it doesn't really stand up to it's predecessor which will always be a classic.

The biggest shortcoming is probably that Max Payne 2 doesn't take you to as many interesting places. The first game had Max in dirty slums, intercepting an ongoing bank robbery, going to seedy hotels, secret underground laboratories, demonic cult controlled night clubs. Max Payne 2 just lacks that variety and while there is stuff that is nicely done I just don't find the locations overall to be as memorable. It's a good deal shorter as well which makes the problem stand out even more. The levels aren't even badly designed or anything - it's just the variety and where they are set rather than the layout.

The story is not as crazy as the first game for sure, but it's rather interesting from a thematic and character standpoint. Max as this detective who doesn't really fit in anymore at the force after everything he has been through is great. He feels more at home being in massive firefights now rather than being tied to a desk.

On an even more positive note, the gameplay is glorious. Remedy understood the power of Bullet Time and there have been a lot of changes to make it more accessible and useful. Combat is made more fast-paced in general. Everything feels very snappy and satisfying. I feel like a badass in an action movie every step of the way. The only slightly negative aspect is perhaps that the arsenal of weapons becomes available to you very quickly and there is never really a lack of ammo to force the player to switch up tactics.

This all causes a bit of a dilemma in me because technically it succeeds at what an action game is supposed to be most competent at - the action. It's just that having a varied experience and a satisfying journey ended up being really important to me and I feel like this aspect could have been improved on while keeping the gameplay and grounded nature of the story intact.

So yeah - it's a good game, but it could have been amazing.

With the engine from the last game this return to WW2 looks and feels amazing to play. I loved the brutal approach and it is probably one of the darkest Call of Duty games in my opinion. Sadly it starts falling short soon after. The first misstep came after you realized that instead of a proper narrative we once again get a mish-mash of different battles which immediately feels like a regression in terms of story. Now this was fine for about half the game because some of the missions were definitely cool but after a while this lack of narrative made other negatives pop up way more. Namely I felt like this game was even more unfair towards the player than CoD 4 leading to a lot of frustration during gameplay. The worst offender is likely the crazy granade spam every time you are stationary for more than 5 seconds. Other than that I think the multiplayer was still fun although again a tiny downgrade from the previous game.

Yakuza 3 was always going to be a little jarring, but it ended up being so for different reasons than I expected.

My biggest fear was that it was going to feel dated compared to 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2. Thing is that never truly bothered me. There are some conveniences that aren't there anymore and the movement feels different, but these are all quirks I can deal with. If anything I thought it was charming and closer to the Yakuza games I know than I expected. The remaster also looks good visually. Okinawa was an interesting new location and I was happy to see something with a different vibe. The sub stories were classic wacky Yakuza scenarios and they were so much fun. I guess the minigames did feel a little off at times, but hey I got to play golf so the game has that going on for it. The main plot was also decent although I have to agree with nearly everyone else that the pacing is off. The contents itself were good, and I think the orphanage stuff did wonders for this big set of characters, but the flow of it doesn't really work out as well as it should. That's not the end of the world though and I could have lived with that.

The jarring aspect ended up being the combat and it truly soured my time with the game. I feel like I deserve an award for completing Y3 on Hard difficulty because I don't think I have ever had a more tedious experience with a combat system. Funny part is that it isn't even a difficult game! The combat encounters are essentially drawn out since everyone has massive health pools (including the player), and enemies block the majority of your attacks. Then you just go around and try to exploit your way through their defenses to remove that next little sliver from your opponent. This is frequently made harder by very small arenas and a large amount of enemies. The camera is also placed extremely close to the player and the mob attacks you all at the same time which makes dealing with them all even more annoying (they never do enough damage to actually hurt you much - you are just locked in animations of getting hit).

Now I do agree that the skill cap in Y3 is the highest I have seen in the series because you can technically get past the block by stun locking the enemy and using wall bounds - I just don't think it is satisfying. The enemies generally block most hits after the first one that connects so you can punch the air and waste your weaker attacks and then make the powerful one that knocks them over connect - then just do that over and over again (preferably near a wall so you can get even more hits in).

To make things worse the Remaster took away the one other thing that could have helped get past the blocks. Quickstep distance was lessened by a lot so dodging to get behind enemies became way more difficult compared to the original. There's a mod that reverses that change, but I found out too late. That being said I somehow survived, and luckily Yakuza never returned to this style of combat so I can continue in peace.

Ended up liking the Campaign side of things a bit less than I was expecting to from my childhood. Nice story, great gunplay. Sadly somehow the visuals look like a downgrade compared to MW2 (not strictly talking about fidelity) and Treyarch continues to be poor at creating a game that is difficult but not unfair. I feel like Infinity Ward cracked that code with MW2 but sadly it did not make it to this game.

Now all that being said - the multiplayer is/was glorious and Treyarch deserves a big pat on the back for that. Great job on that front and enough for me to raise the score by a point. Also this is where most of my Zombie mode memories come from which is another +.

Apart from TT fleshing out the hubs more than previously this LEGO game is a downgrade in every single aspect. Basing half the game on the worst movie is already a detriment, but the game itself isn't all that great as well.

Some baffling design decisions like making the vehicle missions (that everyone has complained about in every single LEGO game) even worse somehow. Traditional longer levels that included both puzzles and combat are now split into short ones that do one or the other which severely hurts the combat focused ones. Combat in LEGO games is there to give a touch of variety in between the puzzles or when you are moving along the level, but being dropped into an arena just to fight waves of enemies multiple times throughout the game is just boring. In addition every big section of the game is followed by a completely made up giant bosses that are all very similar and repetitive. This stands out esp. strongly because the adventure focused puzzle missions already have minibosses that are better every single time. Each of the 6 mission sets also follows a very rigid structure of 2 Puzzle levels (which are mostly great, but still worse than in previous games), 1 Brawl (boring), 1 Vehicle Mission (Bad) and 1 Big Boss (bad). It just becomes incredibly formulaic.

In the end the small glimpses of stuff done well like the traditional LEGO humor just don't do enough to make the game enjoyable.