I remember seeing Xbox 360 footage of this game back in 2006 and being amazed at how "next gen" it looked. It must have been the per-object motion blur and snow rendering that caught my attention. To be honest, it still looks good today.

As for the game itself, you'll be killing all kinds of weird creatures with glowing orange bits, human enemies, and mechs. Speaking of mechs, you can control them too, and there are several types at your disposal. Oddly enough, your human character feels more resilient than the mechs.

The levels are relatively large, and you can approach your objectives with some freedom of traversal. You also have a grappling hook at your disposal, though to be honest I found it a bit limiting. You can only grab onto surfaces and that's it. You can't use it to pull enemies or items towards you.

The game has this chill, easy going vibe throughout. It's super easy to just pick up and play. It's just challenging enough on normal difficulty without feeling unfair. That being said, expect to be juggled a lot by mechs and bosses if you find yourself on foot.

The final boss deserves special mention. Without getting into spoilers, it throws a bunch of new gameplay mechanics at you, and the whole fight feels cheap and unfair. It kind of soured the experience for me.

I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a solid third-person shooter. The PC port is solid and works really well.

I was really reluctant to try this game. I think all the negative press surrounding it clouded my judgment. Had I not received it as a gift, I would have missed out, big time.

Very few games come close to the quality of writing and world-building here. I was deeply invested in the story and characters from the beginning. Nothing feels out of place, and all the characters react and behave the way you'd expect real people to.

I cannot think of a single bad mission. Even the side quests are very well designed, to the point where they rival the main missions in other games. What strikes me the most is how quests can evolve into something completely different as you progress, defying your expectations.

Not much more needs to be said about the presentation. At this point, the game has cemented itself as a technical showcase, especially on the PC. The soundtrack is also great and fits the atmosphere perfectly.

Not everything is perfect. This is a complex game with many intertwined systems, so it can take a while to get used to it. The story progression can also be a bit confusing, as you often find yourself involved in multiple storylines. This is one of those games that will benefit greatly from repeated playthroughs.

I encountered a few minor bugs, but nothing that detracted from the overall experience. The state of the game seems to have improved dramatically since its release.

I really enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk and was left with a bittersweet feeling when I finished it. Very few games have had the same effect on me, and for that it gets my full recommendation.

The Simpsons: Hit & Run is what you get when you take a collectathon platformer and mix in gameplay elements from Crazy Taxi and Driver games.

There are only a few types of missions, and they all focus on driving. It gets repetitive very quickly.

But the game has a charm that's hard to deny. The world is fun to explore and there's a lot of stuff to collect. Fans of The Simpsons will have a great time.

If you're going to play this game on your PC, be sure to check out Lucas Simpsons Hit & Run Mod Launcher. It fixes numerous issues with the game and allows you to side-load user-created content.

After so many years, I finally understood what all the hype was about. The only thing I don't understand is why people prefer Underground 2 to Most Wanted. The original MW blows NFSU2 out of the water, easily.

Almost everything that was wrong with NFSU2 has been fixed, and only the good parts remain. The linear progression deserves special praise, and I loved how they incorporated it into the game with the Blacklist approach. The open world is still there, but you no longer have to drive from one event to another, which saves a lot of time.

The biggest addition is the cop chases, and they've done a great job with the implementation. The cops are really fun to mess with and you as a racer have a real chance against them. The police chatter is probably the best I've ever heard in an arcade racing game.

I actually liked the story. Sure, it's a bit cheesy, but it motivated me to finish the game and climb to the top of the Blacklist.

There are only a few minor issues with the game. I found the open world a little bland and boring. I also wish they had kept the extensive customization from NFSU2.

Unlike NFSU2, I didn't use any mods to improve the pacing or balance of the game. The only mods I used were to restore the Xbox 360 visuals to the PC version.

With a few tweaks, this could have been the perfect racing game. I'm glad I finally gave it a shot.

This is a Need for Speed game in name only. It lacks everything that made the series so special. Although I have to say that this is by far the best looking racing game on the PlayStation.

The PlayStation version was developed by the same studio that was responsible for the V Rally series, and it shows. The handling model would be better suited for a rally game. The same goes for the track design: while they are nice to look at, most of them have a lot of tight corners and narrow roads, making it difficult to reach high speeds. Expect to use the handbrake a lot, something I've never done in a Need for Speed game before. It doesn't help that the control schemes offered don't provide the precision needed to navigate these tight tracks. On later levels I felt like I was playing an RC racing game.

After finishing the Evolution mode, I kind of wished I'd played the PC version instead. Unless you're a die-hard Porsche fan, I'd suggest sticking to other entries in the NFS series.

This game was not what I expected and I regret not playing it sooner.

Sending in the squad to do your bidding never got old. I also appreciated how the game encourages you to go back and forth between different locations to make the objectives easier to accomplish.

The atmosphere is dark, helped immensely by Jesper Kyd's excellent soundtrack.

I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys squad-based shooters.

I've always been curious about this game. Almost all of my peers at the time had played it, but for some reason I avoided it all these years. Now that I've finally played it, I can say that Gun feels more like a true prequel to Red Dead Redemption than Red Dead Revolver.

It's an open-world third-person shooter set in the Wild West. The map is relatively small, but on the plus side, you never spend that much time getting from point A to point B. In fact, you never spend that much time doing anything in this game: the story missions are quick to complete, and so are the side activities. This game doesn't waste your time, and you can easily finish it in a couple of hours. It could take longer if you decide to do all the side activities. As an added bonus, you can continue playing the game after completing the main story.

As for the main gameplay loop, it's very similar to Red Dead Redeption, but obviously with less budget and ambition behind it. However, I'm willing to bet money that Rockstar took a page or two from Gun when designing RDR. I'm convinced that RDR would not have turned out the way it did without Gun.

Shooting feels really satisfying, and as you unlock new weapons, you start to feel really powerful. By the end of the game, it's almost impossible to die on normal difficulty.

It's a shame that the PC port is really bad. The performance isn't that great as it's stuck at 30fps. It's based on the original Xbox version, which means you won't get all the graphical benefits of the Xbox 360 version. There are also many graphical artifacts, such as no mipmapping, open polygon faces, visible texture seams, and so on.

I had a lot of fun with Gun, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a solid open-world title. I'd especially recommend it to fans of the RDR series.

This might be the worst game I played in 2023, though calling it a game is somewhat insulting to the medium.

You have very little agency as a player: none of your choices matter, and there's no penalty for failure. The entire "gameplay" loop consists of pushing the left stick forward, completing QTEs (or not), interacting with computer terminals, and looking at random objects. There's a lot of backtracking, and it doesn't help that the player character moves at a very slow pace. Oh, and there's no run button.

The story is very weak and as predictable as you can imagine. There was no interesting mystery to uncover. There's only one twist, but you see it coming halfway through. The ending sucks too. None of it mattered.

The only positives I can think of are the visuals and the performances of the voice actors.

It's just as solid as the previous titles in the Arkham series. So if you liked those games, you will definitely enjoy this one.

The biggest change is the addition of the Batmobile. It's a lot of fun to drive around the city in this thing and cause all kinds of mayhem. However, I found that it was still much faster to just glide from point A to point B instead.

The art direction and visuals deserve special praise. The game still looks amazing despite being almost a decade old (at the time of this writing).

The writing maintains a consistently serious tone, without the cringe-worthy Marvel-style tension-relieving humor. There are quite a few twists and turns in the story, though to be honest I was a little disappointed with the ending.

I avoided playing this game for the longest time because of all the negative reports surrounding the PC version. However, I didn't experience any of the performance issues. The game ran very smoothly with all settings maxed out on the PC.

Half Life 2 hasn't aged a day. I was surprised at how well it held up almost 20 years after its original release. Nostalgia has nothing to do with it - it's just that good.

Every single aspect of the original Half Life has been improved in the sequel. The gameplay is tighter, the visuals are better, the story and atmosphere are more compelling. I could go on and on. It may come across as bitter, but playing HL2 in the current gaming landscape was a breath of fresh air.

I do have a few nitpicks, but they are minor. Mostly pacing issues in some missions and a few frustrating encounters, especially towards the end. Still, it doesn't detract from the overall experience. Everyone should play it at least once.

I've always been curious about this game, but never had a chance to play it until recently. It was better than I expected.

Swinging around levels like Spiderman and throwing props at enemies never got old. The game was well paced and flowed from level to level. I didn't get bored or tired of playing.

The inclusion of weapons felt a bit redundant when you have a bionic arm at your disposal. Some levels didn't feel like they were built with swinging in mind. I often found myself crashing into geometry, which broke up the flow a bit. I also wish that the bionic arm's cable was longer so that you could grab onto surfaces from further away.

I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a simple action game that can be completed in a couple of sessions.

Short and innovative puzzle FPS, with a legendary legacy, not helped at all by its obnoxious fan base.

Most puzzles can be solved intuitively, and using the portal gun never gets old. The atmosphere and narrative get creepier and creepier the more you play.

However, some of the puzzles - especially the ones towards the end - were a bit weak. They mostly relied on platforming rather than creative problem solving.

I'm glad I finally finished it, but looking back, I should have done it sooner.

This is a game that most indie "boomer shooters" wish they were.

Had the chance to finally finish the "enhanced" edition of this game in coop. It still holds up many years later, and the improvements made by Nightdive Studios make it even better.

I think it's the creepy gothic atmosphere that sets it apart, helped immensely by the visuals and soundtrack. This could easily have been a horror game with a few minor changes to the gameplay.

There's a fair amount of backtracking, and you can expect to get lost from time to time. Some enemies can also be bullet sponges. But nothing too major to detract from the experience.

If you are a fan of first-person shooters, you have to play this game on principle.