It was fine, but it didn't have nearly enough thought put into its design to rival DOOM. It does carve out its own space, but when it feels so close to another franchise, you can't cut a lot of what made the inspiration work and have everything soar.

The problems with dodging and general gunplay really revealed themselves whilst fighting the copy paste bosses at the end of each stage. I just couldn't organically dodge most attacks and it completely broke the fun for me.

The fact that the game always locks you in tight arenas with a lot of enemy waves and forgoes any platforming didn't help the flow of the game either. The repetitiveness set in much too quickly.

All in all, the musical concept works well enough, but I didn't feel Metal : Hellsinger was built on a strong enough gameplay foundation to leave much of an impression, or keep me hooked until the end.

Yakuza 5 is probably the most conflicted I have ever been about a game in this series. It excels at so many things and yet there's an almost equal amount of stuff I wish were done better. I'm torn to the point that you could tell me Yakuza 5 is either your favorite entry in the series or the worst one and I would probably see some merit in both views - for me it ends up somewhere in the middle.

It continues what Y4 did with the multiple protagonists and I am still not sure I like this approach. In my opinion they did not end up cracking the code to satisfying multi-protagonist progression / story until Yakuza 0 which came a few years afterwards. This large cast creates a problem with progression since you only get a limited amount of playtime with each character which means levelling is happening at supersonic speed making you an instant powerhouse and then you are forced to start all over again as you switch to a different character. In Y4 each character got around 7 hours of playtime which made it all feel comically fast, while in this one I clocked out at around 10-15. It feels a little better, but by improving one aspect the entire game as a whole started to drag for me. It's not necessarily the length itself, but rather the structure. This approach itself is very difficult to get right, but the feeling of slowness is likely made worse by the main narrative.

In Y4 the main narrative between each of the protagonists was closely intertwined with reveals that keep up a constant level of tension; Y5 acts more like a collection of short stories following the lives of each of our characters, but it is frequently undermined by forcefully inserting points of an overarching story that seems like it has no place in the narrative or reason to exist there apart from "well there has to be some connective tissue". Due to the insistence of all that being there, the personal stories feel a bit unfocused and drag more than they should. It is a shame because the individual tales are really well done. Not only are they interesting, but they are actively supported by all the side content both narratively and gameplay wise.

Something that really works well with that is the addition of Side-Stories, which are a collection of optional tasks, minigames that tie into the journey of your character and are far more robust than substories. Kiryu is trying to hide so he becomes a taxi driver with a fake name. There is actual driving, street races, contained narrative and a separate progression just for that job. Saejima gets stranded in a village during winter and has to learn hunting which comes with a proper system for all that where you out on hunts, and fulfil requests of villagers while trying to uncover a local spooky folk tale mystery. Haruka is an idol, and her entire Side Story is about going on talk shows, dancing, battling rival dancers etc. All of this is the heart of Yakuza 5 and is what makes the game special. I know I come across as really negative up above, but it is only because I feel like if the developers had chosen to go all in with this individual journey approach this could have been something truly magnificent. I understand some of the desire to have it all be connected by a more traditional 'Yakuza' story, but I think that would have worked much better if it was perhaps condensed to a single character and tied to their journey instead of forcing it on every single one of them.

So yeah there are things I hate about this game, there are things I love about this game, but in the end it just wore me down.

Just Finished "A SHORT HIKE" Man what a cozy and chill exploration experience this is, been on my backlog for a while and I am glade to finally played it.
as the name suggest u can easily finish this game within an hour and half, what can I say about this game amazing visual design, and even gameplay being chill can sometime being challenging(not much tho clever thinking can easily pass obstacles).
and the ending is also very heartwarming, and after the ending u can do various stuff to help folks in the island .

highly recommend it solid 9/10.

Finished my replay of TR2013, back in the day when I 1st played it in 2013-14 I was like what a phenomenal reboot, this here they got something special, and I can’t wait for what they do in sequels, but the sequels were pretty disappointing to me as they dragged Lara origin story but that’s a story for another day.

But as far this replay goes I have to let the negative out of the way 1st , the Writing and the voice acting was pretty shit at the 1st 2-3 hours of this game, and story was retread of FC3 u trapped on the island and stuff, but it later own redeem itself with those tape recording filling in the gaps and relationships of the characters and the amount of stuff lara have to go through and endure, I think that about it as far as negative goes.

But Got damn these VISUALS and GAMEPLAY and wide open seamless LEVELS still holds up to this day, this game practically make bow weapon and wide open level design (which is linear but make in such a way that it is interconnected through out and feel like ow) in video game popular. Gunplay responsive enough but had to say it had the worst rifle in any video game tho lol but stealthing around is fun af and head shotting enemies with bow never gets old, the Platforming is also pretty great imo better then Uncharted as there is some risk involve here and it is integrated into setpieces in such way that it feel exillerating, exploration is also great fun with worth while upgrade system for ur weapons and stuff.

The setpieces are also pretty great.

The movement can sometimes be sluggish during slow walks sections but that’s nitpick ig.

Overall this game was amazing back then and is still holds up pretty dang great. idk I feel like this game could've been easy 8 or 9, but the amount of fun I have I think I gotta go with a solid 9/10.

The game that started it all, the reason I love linear action-adventure stories, and I am a gamer.

Storytelling time, I was little I wanted to play this game so bad I love the whole concept of time, but I didn't have a powerful PC but when I get the PC around 2005-6 and Played and finished, the whole POP sands trilogy, I fell in love with linear action-adventure games.

and after finishing my replay of SOT holy fucking shit what a phenomenal game this is, I am happy to say the younger me was a man of culture.
game aged gracefully, the story holds up, the whole journey of Prince and farah is peak fiction.

Gameplay is superb the platforming is amazing, the combat is basic but its strategic, e.g that each enemy has diff Immunities and weaknesses
Gray enemies are immune to wall attacks but can be 1 hit kill by jump attack and dagger absorb
Red enemies are immune to jump attacks and dagger absorb and wall attacks but can be killed by jump attacks
Blue enemies are weak to everything but 1 wall attacks can stun them.
like there is good amount of strategy in a basic combat system and there are blocks, parry and special time powers

I fucking love this trilogy back then and I fucking love it now.
10/10

You know? It had been a very long time since I last played this game so I’d kind of forgotten just how much I loved it. It absolutely still holds up for me as one of my favorite games. It so wonderfully thrives as a tautly paced, breathlessly fun, and downright swashbuckling action adventure experience. The game boasts butter smooth and engaging platforming gameplay that only becomes more complex and challenging as it goes on, level design that is well wrought despite being highly linear, mechanically simple but still immensely satisfying combat, as well as a very charming story with endearing and affably likable characters that you come to really root for and get behind by the end. The soundtrack and atmosphere are aces as well. Every ounce of passion that was poured into this game by the developers is more than evident throughout and it coalesces effortlessly into a remarkable final product that (no pun intended) has more than stood the test of time. Oh how I wish that ubisoft still made games that go this fucking hard.

The more I think about Firewatch, the more I appreciate the experience and its theme of escapism. Though the ending didn't quite hit at the time of playing, the game's deliberate way of disappointing both the main character and you as the player is admirably unique. I'm still unsure whether it was ultimately worth trying to tell this sort of story, but the experience was worth it nonetheless, especially because of the two main characters who are so well and believably written and voiced that it's just great to be a part of their lives and conversations.

I played the initial few hours of it and yea sadly this game had a good premise, some great voice acting and good investigations mission design even tho they are on rails game does 95% of the job for u all u do is move and interact with things, but the decisions are urs to make, the setting of 1600's and the locations are also really cool not much explored in gaming landscape either, all in all this had great freaking potential but it all crumble down when it comes to gameplay.

the combat is Mid feel like its pre alpha or someshit, the platforming is straight from GOW on rail stuff.
the only thing that works and responsive is moving around in the world.

i wanted to like this game but I like this when I wasn't playing but watching the cutscenes the characters talking but when I got control of character I kind despise playing it felt boring so yea this isn't for me.

As a big fan of rhythm games and a new Persona 5 fan, I had to check this game out. It is exactly what I wanted, and I really enjoyed my time getting the platinum trophy in it! The gameplay is really addictive, making it easy to just get in the flow of following the beat and the music. The dialogue is also surprisingly funny, making me laugh multiple times while doing the social links. My only complaint is that the song list is quite small and filled with duplicates, but they did get most of my favorite tracks from the main game.