Origin is an interesting entry in the Ys series, as it drops many qualities that I would generally expect from one. The biggest one is that instead of an adventure, we get a straight-up dungeon crawl exploring the tower from the first game. There are various biomes, although I still ended up missing some variety. The game also has to be completed 2-3 times to get to the canon ending with most of the layouts remaining the same - something I am also not a big fan of. It is quite short as is and I feel like making the paths more unique would have added a lot to the experience. The saving grace here is that the combat is damn solid. Very similar to Felghana, but just a tiny bit tighter. It just feels really good to play. It was nice learning more about the lore of Ys as well and getting to beat different incarnations of all the bosses from the original game was very fun. Not fun enough to be in contention for my favorites in the series, but a damn good game regardless.

Evoland is such a cool idea, but sadly it never manages to land the execution. It is very charming near the start, but it soon becomes clear that apart from the idea every actual gameplay mechanic you touch during your evolution is incredibly shallow compared to the history it is channeling.

That being said I do find the story of how this game got made and the rise of Shiro Games inspiring. I am glad that Evoland found an audience because from what I have seen they took this idea and polished it a lot in the sequel which I definitely plan to check out!

Slightly better version of Risen 2 due to just including more narrative elements from the first game. I still like the Pyranha Bytes formula and you can have a lot of fun questing, but these last two games have just lost a bit of that charm. I feel like the two biggest contributors here are the visual design and the combat. I dislike the cartoony look the series decided to pivot to and I absolutely hate the combat. PB combat up to R1 was nothing to really praise but I didn't active hate it. It was nice and something I was used to. This new style is just awful.

This game had so much promise but is ultimately brought down by lack of variety and content. Car variety is awful, no tuning, and the inclusion of people shooting at you while racing brought my enjoyment down. That being said this game included some of the most thrilling moments I have ever had in a Need for Speed game and the highest highs (The entire snow region from start to finish was 10/10). The tracks are gorgeous and fun. Best looking scenery in the series. The sense of speed is such an improvement from most titles and weaving through the traffic just gets your heart pumping. If there just were more types of racing and just shit to do this would have been one of my favourites but I just have too many nitpicks to have a positive mindset looking back at this game.

Call of Duty plays and feels like a slightly enhanced version of Allied Assault. It is clear that the team knew how to make an FPS game that feels mechanically strong. The set pieces are awesome and finally being able to aim down the sight is a godsend. However, a lot of these improvements are made hollow by some pretty annoying checkpoints and the enemy AI being particularly laser sighted. It just felt unfair a lot of the time. The campaign structure itself also suffers a bit from jumping around aimlessly. The missions themselves are often interesting, but there is little connective tissue and it doesn't hit as hard as it could.

I also played some MP which I had fun with although the server availability is pretty bad so the choice of maps was rather limited and I was dealing with high ping so a lot of that precision from the SP version did not apply. That being said IF you get a good populated server it is actually pretty fun and somewhere in that low 7 range.

Hogwarts Legacy is quite an odd title, because in theory I like all the elements that the game comprises of, and I had a lot of fun in the first 20 or so hours but then something just snapped and I didn't really see myself wanting to play any more.

The environments are beautifully crafted with the Hogwarts Castle being exceptionally well done. I enjoyed the combat, the story and I think the initial exploration was nicely done. There's definitely love for the universe in this title. The game started running into more issues once the wider world opened up, and it just sadly became a bit of a chore. It's a tiny bit repetitive and the more time I spent in the open world the more I realized that I want to be in the actual castle more than anything else. Once I realized that a bunch of omissions like proper focus on the actual school life became more apparent and the magic was lost for me.