Extremely fun.
When you realise the developer used to design the UI for digital slot machines it makes complete sense and elevates this game to gamblecore GOLD.

Do NOT stop betting on black, you're one spin away from everything you dreamed of.

My only complaint for this game is that some maps are enormous to the point of tedium when trying to traverse them for specific unlocks.

My love of From Software begins with Dark Souls 1 and I think that the remaster is the best way to play it, solely for the improvements to performance in Blighttown. There are things to nitpick but on the whole its fine as a remaster.

There is very little to say about this game that hasn't already been said by a million reviews and video essays. Combat is great, the world is great, the lore is great, it arguably spawned Soulslike as a genre, its reach went much further than the previous game.

I don't however believe this game to be a masterpiece. As much as I adore it there is a very significant dip in quality after the half-way point. It can be blamed on From being rushed to release the game but everything after Ornstein and Smough lacks the polish and tightness of the first half of the game. I feel as though people just forget about how dull the Demon Ruins are, or how underwhelming the fight with Gwyn is.

I could replay up to Anor Londo over and over but beyond that I tend to burn out and stop my runs.

That's not to say I don't wholeheartedly love this game for being my introduction to the series and for having a world so thoroughly realised that lore videos still catch my eye every now and then.

This to me was the absolute low point of the Call of Duty series.

It was the first CoD I bought since MW3 in 2011 and it made me feel justified in ignoring the series up to that point. So much so, that I went through the hassle of get a refund via BattleNet.

The game looks atrocious, even back at launch it looked bad, I swear some of the textures here are the same we have been seeing since MW2 and Black Ops 1.

The time to kill is at its worst here, guns are all so inconsistent and it's as if the game wants to be a hero shooter but doesn't commit all the way. What the hell is going on with their solution to grenade spam too?

There isn't a campaign, that's not a negative in my opinion, but I can't even say "hey at least the campaign is fun". We can also blame this CoD for lighting the fire of Warzone.

All in all, looks and feels like a cheap F2P CoD clone. There is A LOT more I could say but I think it doesn't matter, the game is dead now anyway.

I feel bad giving this game anything less than 5 stars but I don't believe it's a masterpiece like a lot of other people.

I have thought really hard about this game and I feel like at some point my review may change. As it stands, I haven't finished my first playthrough, I am very close to the end after taking my sweet time with it, talking to everyone, exploring as much dialogue as possible, etc.

In order to play this game I feel like I need to wake up in a specific mood, the sun needs to be at the right angle in the sky, I have to commit mentally to launching it. It's extremely dense and slow and admittedly my brain has been corroded by decades of mostly enjoying competitive first person shooters and action games. When my idea of relaxing with a video game is to raise my blood pressure as high as possible, asking me to read this much is like asking me to push a boulder up the hill. It's not a knock against the game, more a reflection on me as a person, but it explains why I find it so hard to even just sit down and play this game.

Its world is so well realised, characters are fleshed out, the voice acting is phenomenal, you can tell so much passion went into this. There are so many dialogue branches and ways to interact with the characters and your own player character.

There is no doubt that this is an extremely well made game. I find the time mechanic to be the worst part of it, having to find items to interact with or retread conversations just to make time pass is quite boring but admittedly I am really struggling to find more consequential criticism.

What I have experienced so far hasn't been an earth shattering experience or even a game I would put in my top 10 list. However I don't at all blame anyone who thinks I might just be stupid. There is a lot to love about this game, I am just not the right person to love it.

5/5 for how good of a remake it is.
Some nice graphics, thoughtful tweaks to modernize some gameplay elements and appreciation for the source material.

Unfortunately the gameplay is inherently outdated in some aspects. If you didn't love these games on the PS2 I can't imagine you would be too impressed by what is on offer here.

I, however, adored these games as a kid and happily played this game to 100% completion, something I rarely ever do for any game.

Worth a trip down memory lane.

I've made an active effort to ignore this rebooted series based solely on my experience with this first game, as it was genuinely awful.

I tried this on Steam back in 2015, with an admittedly weak albeit above minimum spec AMD based PC (both CPU and GPU). The game ran terribly but in a way where it was clear there was something more up here than just my PC struggling.

After many hard crashes and trying different fixes it would run smoothly. My problem though came on the first mission where you have to jump out of a plane. My character would sink into the base of the plane and get stuck, unable to move. Or after jumping out I would fall through the map entirely.

I tried reinstalling with no success and shelved the game.
Since then, my PC has taken on several forms with different CPUs and GPUs and every single time I would try this game just out of curiosity. Every single time it would break in new ways, I could never progress past that first mission and I believe my copy was haunted.

Eventually I just stole a save file skipping that first mission online and actually got to play the game. Perhaps it is because the game made such a poor impression on me but I didn't actually enjoy my time with it when it finally worked. Online it was billed as a return to form for single player FPS games but I found it lacking, enemies barely react to getting shot, the guns lack weight, even on harder difficulties it felt too easy. Honestly (and I know some people may crucify me) it felt like the worst elements of a faster CoD mission, something like Whiskey Hotel in MW2 except with more enemies, no reloading and wider maps.

My experience is definitely not universal on this one but it sticks out in my head.

An exceptional third person shooter.

This feels so god damn good to play and looks so good while playing it. The New York levels in particular are some of my favourite levels in any TPS, they are so full of character and atmosphere.

Playing this game feels like watching a gritty TV show from the mid 2000s, it evokes similar feelings in me as watching dark scenes in The Sopranos or something similar, hard to describe.

Unfortunately, the technology that made this game so impressive at its launch now holds it back. Loading screens are hidden behind cutscenes but this means cutscenes are frequent and loooooong, regardless of how good your SSD is. Gameplay comes grinding to a halt due to this.

A lot of fun though.
I heard multiplayer was great back in the day but it's 100% dead now.