As a longtime fan of the Armored Core soundtracks I am tremendously underwhelmed by AC6.
Also the performance on PC has been abysmal in my case. No idea why a 10700 and 1660ti can't run this thing properly without severe framerate chugging in combat. I managed to make it playable by disabling some unwanted post processing and reducing shadows and whatnot, but it still irks me and reeks of poor optimization in the first place.
Obfuscating S Rank requirements does the game no favors either.
But seriously what happened to the driving anthems from the last 4 games?! Stargazer isn't enough, I need m o r e.
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btw the actual game is fine tbh

Trepang makes a stellar first impression with two excellent first missions, but I feel it fails to deliver a campaign as impactful as its progenitor F.E.A.R.. F.E.A.R.'s narrative wasn't outstanding, but it was competently delivered and lent itself to making the experience more memorable. Past the second campaign mission, Pandora Institute, I felt Trepang became comparatively bland from a narrative standpoint.
In terms of gunplay Trepang is frantic, manic even, with a great deal of spectacle during firefights from all the particle effects popping off. The biggest detractor to my general enjoyment of the mechanics is rooted in the developer's decision to impose a two weapon limit, and I was already irked by F.E.A.R.'s 3, which resulted in me heavily relying on dual wielded shotguns paired with sliding and cloaking to clear almost every encounter.
Subject 106 does feel great to control overall, his ability to leap over obstacles and slide-dash lead to a much more freeform movement experience compared to F.E.A.R.. Oh and the slowmo feels just as good to use, so that's a plus!
If Trepang shipped with two more campaign levels on par with Pandora Institute, I think it'd be a standout release rather than "Pretty good actually".
Regardless it's well worth a play for anyone who enjoys high intensity action and knows they're in for a short campaign.

I'm so fucking tired of people claiming that Warren Spector coined the concept of Immersive Sims, when the man himself will tell you it was Doug Church, all the while these people bash the concept of such a genre even existing. Their arguments are uniformly rooted in prejudicial ignorance every single fucking time. Often making some idiotic remark about how the name is misleading because flight simulators have nothing to do with them, WHEN THE ACTUAL OG IMSIM DEVS MADE FLIGHT SIMS TOO. The entirety of the Looking Glass output were ALWAYS simulations. I'm inclined to believe that the people who were the original developers at the forefront of Simulation focused game development are right in attaching such a denomination in one form or another to their RPG and FPS outputs as well. There's a very simple litmus test you can employ to discern why the bulk of modern first person video games do not deserve to be brought up in conversation by halfwits mistakenly complaining about the genre being "meaningless" because "all games strive to be immersive" (lmao even) or what have you when that's clearly not true. The litmus is whether or not the game is implementing its mechanics via scripted interactions or SIMULATING systems to allow for a rationally comprehensible and predictable game world. Yet somehow people keep bringing up Elder Scrolls, Metroid Prime, et al, in conversation.
I suspect this is an unfortunate effect of general human neurology struggling with comprehending nuance and abstractions, all the while putting much too much emphasis on definitions. Thus the incessant roundabout arguments throughout all of history that often boil down to nothing more than fucking pedantry.

Anyway, as I see it what makes ImSims most consistently identifiable, rather than pedantic slavish insistence of finding individual shared mechanics, is observing how systemically implemented game mechanics end up informing and recontextualizing a game's Level Design.
I feel the need to point this out because I've seen far too many people think that statpoints and skill trees are of chief significance, when they're really just a tool by which developers can choose to allow players influence over their characters. Too few people have played the OG System Shock which is quite lacking in all the ARPG frills that have come to define a particular subset of this criminally misunderstood peak genre of PC gaming. A genre that arguably IS PC gaming.

Oh, yeah, the game. Deus Ex is okay. I made the mistake of playing on Hard and had to suffer through the mediocre gunplay. It was still good though and definitely a must-play. I willfully restarted the Hong Kong level a few times because I wasn't ready to move on before trying several different approaches just for the hell of it. Truly an excellent level.

For all my complaining of pedantry, I wish such widespread flagrant misunderstanding and misapplication of terminology didn't piss me off so much, but I simply can't tolerate besmirchment of PC gaming's most engrossing lineage.

BioShock is a corridor shooter.

Replaying the Quake II campaign via Yamagi has only made me appreciate the Remaster even more. There's so many small gameplay tweaks in the Remaster that sum to an overall smoother and more engaging experience. My biggest peeve with the original is how movement down slopes feels so incredibly shitty.

I'm surprised it also took me this long to start using the Power Shield. It trivializes the entire game. At least the remaster more strongly incentivizes burning cell ammo against enemy shields, but I'm not sure that's enough to fix the overarching issue of Quake II turning into a cakewalk at the press of a button. It's a real "just don't use it" piece of design that mars the title.

Play the Remaster instead.

Sadly this title has flown under the radar with so many big releases this Q1 and releasing the same day as Dragon's Dogma 2. It deserved more attention the combat is great and it's a fun game all around. It's loaded with content and has tons of weapon variety.

My main complaint would be I found it to get a bit repetitive near the end. Mostly due to lack of enemy variety, you won't be fighting monsters or anything to shack it up a lot since the is routed in japanese history.

An assassin's creed style open world game with team ninja's combat. Do I think it's ground breaking no, but as a first attempt from team ninja this is solid and happy to have played it.

Deeply satisfying to set up your autobattler-Roombas and agonize over their every maneuver, running the numbers on each encounter ahead of time. The overworld shortcuts and crazy crit builds hint at some really cool speedrun tech I'm excited for.

Plays it disappointingly straight narratively, but you already knew this game had delightful character designs and stunning environments pouring out of every scene. Even the score swept me away sometimes - particularly in the overworld night themes and at the end.

Completed on Expert, and while I had to fight tooth and nail to see credits, I did it!

A fantastic entry and easily the best game in the franchise when it comes to bosses (and they're the main draw of the Souls games). Many cool designs and movesets with a good soundtrack make for some memorable fights.

Unfortunately Irithyll Dungeon exists. The person who made this ten-minute-long 'experience' is probably still laughing, knowing they've made the most unfair level in the game.

But overall an easy recommendation from my side, awesome game. If you've liked ANY other Souls game before, you'll very likely love this one too.

I haven't been this enthralled by a game's atmosphere and stylization since maybe Hollow Knight, and that's saying a lot since Hollow Knight has probably my favorite atmosphere in any game ever. But this, oh hoh hoh... this is one delicious game. Batman: Arkham Asylum is Die Hard meets Half-Life, where you're Batman. That's kind of all you have to say to describe how incomparably COOL this game is. This game FUCKS. Since Arkham Asylum is so old now, the rest of the praise I have has already been said many times before, so the last thing I'll say is that despite it's age, it holds up incredibly well to modern standards. I adored this experience, and playing this while currently going through a DC phase makes it all the more enjoyable.

Had to end my journey with the Portal mods with the real MVP, unmodded Portal 2. You know it's been too long since you've last played this when the surprises hit with full force all over again. I mean this story is fucking juicy, from the intimidating revival of GLaDOS, to the shocking take-over of Wheatley, and all the fantastic lemon-based rants in between. I absolutely adore this game, and I nearly forgot that it's one of my favorite games of all time! (Remind me to change my Backloggd Profile) Despite how excited I'd be if Portal 3 were to ever be announced, I genuinely think this game would work best if it never got a true sequel. The story is perfect the way it is.

This is gonna be a conflicting one.

In 2021, I first saw the trailer for NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139. I was a huge fan of Automata and had also played a bit of Gestalt before dropping it, so I was no stranger to the series. I wanted to play Replicant but also wanted to play every prior game beforehand. Alongside going back to Gestalt and finally beating that, I also decided to buy both Drakengard and Drakengard 3 since I knew they were connected to the series somehow. Fast forward to 2022, I randomly decide to finally dive into the Drakengard games. I play up until like chapter 3 or 4 I think and drop the game due to a skill issue. What did I think of it? I thought it was shit! Not only did I not like the gameplay, which most people don't ofc, I also just thought the story was super boring up to that point. The story was the main reason you'd be playing the game, so for me to not be into the characters or story at all, I just wasn't motivated to continue playing it. Fast forward to present day, fellow user Lemonstrade eggs me on to play it as a joke. Well I didn't back down and decided to beat it this time. The first mission or two, I immediately thought "yup this is still shit". But then I remembered some of the gameplay mechanics that made the game more tolerable and bada bing, I started to enjoy myself more.

So let's get into the absolute most contentious aspect of the game, the gameplay. The biggest issue I had with it, and it's still its biggest issue now, is it doesn't flow the best due to the camera. It's a fixed camera depending on what way you're facing and the right stick only tilts the screen a bit and goes back in place when you let go of it. If there's an enemy behind you, this can be really clunky feeling as you manually have to face the enemy before you can see them in front of you. I got used to this pretty quickly but this is the only major issue I had with the gameplay tbh. Otherwise, it's just a perfectly fine hack and slash/musou game. The actual gameplay, not including camera issues, is perfectly serviceable I felt. It actually does get satisfying killing hoardes of enemies while the side characters talk about how brutal Caim is. That plus there's combos that can knock enemies down which makes the gameplay more tolerable, there's summonable characters that can just mow down hoardes of enemies like nothing and the magic that changes depending on what weapon you're using. The combat is surprisingly more in depth than you'd think, and that's not even getting into the air combat. I found that more enjoyable from the start tho that can be even more frustrating than the ground combat at points just because how slow it is to aim sometimes. That's only an issue with later encounters and bosses but either way, the combat in this game? Not bad honestly, it's not great ofc but in the end I found it a lot enjoyable than when I played the game initially.

The music is honestly super fitting and also really experimental and out there. A big chunk of the songs sound like looping messes. It kind of sounds shit at first, and look I aint listening to the OST outside of the game, but it really is memorable. Playing this 2 years later, I still remembered all the early game songs. I wouldn't say I actually "like" the ost, except for maybe a couple of the more comprehensible songs, but it's still a good ost since the game is trying to drive you crazy.

Diving right into the story, I'm gonna just say it. I didn't think it was mind-blowing at all or even that amazing. My issue with not caring about the story or the characters still applied to a good chunk of my playtime here. It wasn't until like the last third, and all the endings, where I was actually interested. I really really enjoyed how crazy it got near the end, and I really loved the dark fantasy elements. I just wish more of the game was like that, and that the earlier chapters weren't so boring. But I also think that was the whole point, it was to subvert expectations and make you think it'll just be a boring fantasy game only to surprise you with all that craziness in the endgame. It also wasn't until post ending A, where you got cutscenes with all the side characters. Those were entertaining every once in a while but I just did not care about the cast in this game. Even Caim, who has an iconic design (which may have been caused by a very iconic user on this site) I just didn't like as much as I should've. I know the whole point of him not speaking is for the characters to describe how awful his slaughtering is and for you the player to basically take his role. That's a cool concept but it just made me not care about his character. It's funny how I'm more positive on the overall gameplay than the story, but the peaks of the endgame story cutscenes overshadow everything else at least. I just wish there was more idk. Also, that final boss, holy shit idk how you're supposed to do that without the pause trick or looking up inputs. I had to do both cuz otherwise I would've just not beaten the game lol.

Additionally, I may not really care about the cast in this game, but I can't deny the voice acting is actually surprisingly good. It's a mix of British and American voice actors but it works surprisingly well, especially for a game from 2003. Aroch, specifically when you summon her and she screams "WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN", holy crap is it satisfying. Idk who voices her but that voice actress was cooking.

So yeah, like I said, it's a very conflicting game for me. Usually you see people either loving or hating this one but I just personally think it's a decent little game that does some really unique things. I'm glad to finally have beaten this as a huge NieR fan and I'm glad I did end up enjoying this one overall. Excited to play 3 in the future, tho I also own that physically too and idk if I'm ready for the framerate lol.

6.5/10