I think a lot of this game is truly excellent, but with all of the bugs, the frame rate, and numerous other technical issues I can't bring myself to give it anything other than three stars.

It's both a big improvement over Fallen order (which I liked a bunch at the time) and a bunch of steps backwards. It's got some real PS2 era energy platforming (not a complaint), and at times can feel a little like earlier Ratchet & Clank games, but then the combat can swing wildly from "this is a blast" to "fuck me, this is frustrating" in an instant. Honestly, I think they should do away with a lot of the Dark Souls-isms. I just don't see how collecting your "souls" upon death even benefits the player when skill points don't really upgrade you in significant ways. While I do enjoy the exploration, the game is far too big for its own good, by the end stretch there were like 75 icons for cosmetics or buying cosmetics all over my map, just totally unnecessary fluff that detracts from the games biggest strengths. A bit of optional puzzle platforming is good, but the game excels when it drops you into structured, more linear story missions, with truly excellent presentation, and exciting set pieces peppered with some of the better character writing in video games.

Despite the downer the game ends on, I found myself excited to see how this storyline plays out. I just hope it's a little more focused next time around, which I know won't actually happen, cos, y'know, modern video games and all that, but I can hope... I'm also hoping that whoever designed the map in this game goes to video game design jail, but it is what it is.

There's two ways to come at this. It's either a three star game with a LOT of problems or it's a two star game with good art, humour, and charm... Unfortunately, I veer a little closer to the latter.

I found my patience seriously tested the further I got into this. The best way for me to deal with it was to keep adding assist features until some of the rough edges were sanded off. Keep getting killed by unfair, gotcha! ambushes on small ledges? On goes the keep souls on death option. Keep slipping off or falling through ledges you clearly landed on? On goes no fall damage. But the real problem is that none of the assist features can fix the game's numerous technical problems. The stuttering when hitting new areas can be overlooked to a degree, but suddenly depleting health or falling through the world makes the game feel really broken. The final big area had me fall through the world three times, two of those times I got blue and red screens with a bunch of text from NPC's I hadn't hit yet, and the third time I fell back into the dark area below, but couldn't interact with anything.

I was so irritated with the game by the time I hit the final boss I just switched on the gun, and killed him in two hits. And by that point even the humour and fun aspects of the game have given way to serious storytelling that feels completely unearned.

I was going to play this on Switch, which I assume is borderline unplayable with the state the Xbox version is in, but thankfully, I opted to just play it on Game Pass which is definitely the way to go while it's so wonky. The technical stuff is fixable, but things like terrible enemy placement/density and a volume of platforming that requires much tighter controls than what's on offer aren't.

There's good things in here, and I'd definitely try a sequel if it ironed out a bunch of this game's problems, but as it stands, I think this maybe needed a little more time in the oven.

started this the week it came out, and have picked away at it a couple of times in the last few years, but I thought it was about time to just get on with it.

I always seemed to bounce off of it for the same reasons. None of that "It's too hard business", just this sense that I wasn't really improving. I'd stealth an area, kill some mini bosses, then fight a big boss that would generally seem impossible on the first attempt, but after a couple of goes would show ways you could probably exploit it, and that's generally how I made my way through it. A little parry, parry when the game demanded it, a little bit of cheese when it was useful. I don't think it takes anything away from it, but I always had the feeling like there was a lack of progression. Sure I could get better at deflecting strikes and reading patterns, but that isn't half as satisfying as rolling up on a boss or two ready to wreck it in thirty seconds with a mega powerful weapon.

I think there's a good reason why so many more people are enamoured with Elden Ring, and Sekiro seems to be the most bounced off of when it comes to modern From games. Did I enjoy my time with it? Yeah, sure. Would I have probably liked it a little more if it had a few more ways to make parts of it a little more forgiving? Most definitely. And just to be clear, I fully understand why some people love it, as on paper it's my kind of shit, but honestly, it ain't no Bloodborne.

More like Sonic Pooperstars...

This game launched three days before Mario Wonder, and was £20 more expensive... I also paid £23 for this and it dropped to £15 a week later on Amazon, so my opinions on this have been further negatively impacted.

Much of this game is completely on rails, and occasionally if you even touch the stick during these sections, you will die.

The bosses make me want to die.

The music makes me want to die.

(There is a handful of things I think are cool, but as a long suffering fan of Sonic, I'm once again reminded that good games are a complete anomaly... Lets see how they manage to fuck up the rerelease of Generations... sigh)

Absolute piece of trash. I like the idea of a short action movie romp of a video game, but this just feels bad from start to finish. The combat, which is all the game has to offer outside of incomprehensible cutscenes is so sluggish and unresponsive, and every single encounter (outside of the bullshit final boss) can be beaten with a single move. If one of them doesn't work on a certain type of enemy, just cycle through all the available moves until you find the one that can stunlock that punk in a corner. I was initially charmed by its goofy character designs and awful dialogue, but as the two hours went by it all started feeling a little like I'd been playing it for two weeks. Even for an older game it has some baffling design decisions, and almost feels a little unfinished. I don't recommend this, even as a curiosity. It's bad... BAD-bad.

I was pretty excited for this when it was announced, I'm a Sega Mega Drive kid at heart, and SoR 2 was a real favourite of my childhood. I first played this when it launched on Game Pass, and my thought was that it seemed like a really well made game with great art, music, and controls, but I was glad I didn't pay full price for it.

It's one of those games I always wanted to return to, because so many people love it, and a friend at the time kept telling me it was the best beat em up he'd ever played. Unfortunately, despite acknowledging it's made with a lot of heart for the earlier games, I just don't think there's enough to it for where I am with my gaming tastes. I'm all for simple, arcadey games, but I just need a little more from the genre. I ran into this exact same problem with the TMNT game from a couple of years ago. I'm glad they're getting made with this level of talent behind them, but just beating the hell out of punks wears out its welcome within the first twenty minutes.

I do have some other issues with it, like there being a little too much enemy spam in a couple of spots, lots of annoying, high damage stage hazards, and enemies just throwing junk that seems a little too hard to avoid. But my main issues are all personal to me, and I'm sure if you like this type of game , you'll have a very good time with it, and probably an even better time with likeminded friends.

I just don't know where to start with this one.

I enjoyed the first game, enough to finish it six or seven times, but found this to be a rather unpleasant experience after some initial enjoyment. I'm honestly baffled at a lot of the love for the game, it honestly feels like Timewaster: The Video Game. "Go to this guy, now go to that guy across the world, now go back to the other guy"... Which is all pretty common game design, but when the encounter rate is so high, and you find yourself being loop-headbutted by harpies or gangbanged in a corner by goblins, paired with an annoyingly expensive fast travel system, it all becomes a big old chore. The big issue being that none of it is worth that time, there's barely anything resembling a story or characters, even the endgame is the same old bullshit, now it's on a time limit.

All of the first game's problems exist, and in cases are made inarguably worse. I'm just shocked about how broken and wonky a lot of this feels. I feel like this was sapping away at my soul with a thousand little cuts. "No, I don't give a fuck about that ladder!" "Why do I keep sliding down this hill with a seekers token on it!" "Why won't this fucking dragon land!? I don't have a bow!" "It's weak to fire! my weapon gets enchanted by ice" "In an other world I met one master who only travelled with furry's" shutupshutupshutup.

I had one star moments with this, but there were glimpses of what I liked in the first game from time to time. This game seriously bummed me out. I was so glad when this got announced, but to be honest, I think I'd have preferred Itsuno to have given us a new Devil May Cry instead.

You'll know what I mean if you're a Tokusatsu fan and you've ever played one of those Kamen Rider musou games or whatever. You recognize the things, the sounds, the images, and you're compelled to finish it because of that. the only problem is that the thing you're playing is bad, but that's not going to stop you buying them, in fact, you'll continue to buy them hoping, fingers crossed the next one will be good.

They will never be good.

As a piece of fanservice this is fine. It's got the ships and some of the songs... and I mean "some" of the songs in that you'll never hear the whole thing because you'll either finish a level or kill a boss long before you hear most of it. Even then, the end credits just fades the songs out, like they somehow only licensed a bit of these songs.

As a shooter it's oddly punishing on the normal difficulty, in fact I couldn't do it unless I used some of the assist features. It's mostly down to bullshit difficulty in that enemies can just spawn in on top of you and the visual noise makes bullets, pickups, and missile trails blend into one another. It's crazy how it has less clarity than your average Cave shooter. You can even make things harder on yourself as a couple of the ships feel so underpowered you feel like more enemies are flying past you off screen than dying. It's pretty long for one of these games, coming in at over an hour but there's a bunch of collectibles, artwork, and modes that all sorta feel the same, so it's all pretty thin. The game is also only in Japanese, which they've said they have no plans to change, it's one of these things that fans of the franchise will have had to have dealt with for years, but the trade off is that this has Do You Remember Love? content in it, including Minmay's song from the movie, and a worldwide release would have had to have removed that because of harmony Gold, and fuck Harmony Gold for holding Macross hostage all these years. It also looks like a cheap PS2 game, which feels like a joke to say at this point, but it kinda does. (or an early XBLA game if you want to be kinder)

Anyways, here was a lot of words on a game you'll never play or even knew existed. If you like Macross a lot, you probably already bought and played this, and probably tried to convince yourself it's good.

It isnt.

It doesn't matter the genre, Vanillaware have an unmistakable style you can instantly spot. This has all of their trademark presentation, along with some pretty uninteresting writing, which outside of 13 Sentinels has always been the weakest element in their games. As a tactics game though, this packed with seemingly endless options to set up your perfect murder squads, and with endless options come many broken setups, which at times can make the game seem like a complete cakewalk. It all gets by on its stunning art and fantastic music, and while it does become a little too braindead easy, I had a good 20 hours where it was challenging and engaging to fight through the battles, in fact maybe the game would benefit from just being shorter, something I've also felt about the Fire Emblem games on the Switch. I generally had a good time though, and despite some problems with difficulty (including it swinging the other way for a stupid hard final boss) and length, this takes all the right lessons from other tactics games while also having its own unique spin on things. Let's be real though, there's a big bear with a hammer that strikes a pose when he wins a fight, that's surely GOTY material, right?

Little conflicted on this one. Without question Remake was my favourite game the year it came out. A love letter to part of a game that ups the drama for a modern audience, but still keeps a lot of the silly goofiness of the PS1 original. Rebirth retains all of Remake's best qualities, but adds in a giant open world with Ubisoft towers and side activities busting out of a giant Cait Sith Moogle's seams. And while I enjoy the variety on offer, maybe some restraint was needed as this goes into minigame overload, one chapter is 90% minigames, and while some are pretty good, others feel barely formed. It would be fine if it wasn't for so much of it being mandatory to progress the story. This also extends to one-off or barely used mechanics. The game decides Aerith needs another one in the final handful of hours, and honestly it could just have easily been a single button press. A lot of it is emblematic of a game that seemingly has endless amounts of money thrown at it... And that's the thing - musically and visually it's astounding, even the combat with its enhancements is more than just flashy spectacle, it all just feels like a little too much fluff. If I was to break down moments and sections of the game I'd try to trick myself into thinking it was a 5/5, and it's so packed with life and personality that it's a hard game to hate, but I fear what more they will feel the need to add in the final part. That said, the bits I enjoyed, I enjoyed massively, and I think it's worth seeing much of the side content, as there's cutscenes and story moments that most developers would demand the player see at all costs. It's definitely a lot more interesting story and gameplay wise than a game I feel like a lot of people will just want to watch a playthrough to know if they "did the thing" or not. Definitely uneven, but it made me feel things, and that's a positive. I really just hope they cool it on the minigames next time around though.

After about 65+ hours I think I'm done with the game for the time being. I think it's a very good game, with some incredible audio/visual presentation, and weapons that feel great, but if you play it enough, you realise just how limited it all is. Too many things about it encourage awful playstyles, which applies to a lot of games, but it's so boring getting thrown into endless, easy wave defence missions and one guy speedrunning the objectives. I really do hate just saying a thing is "boring" especially when I've put a significant amount of time into it, but a little of that shine has worn off pretty quickly after initially being blown away by it. Hoping they add some significant things down the line, but for now I am done.

YOU'RE UGLY. NOBODY LIKES YOU. CRYBABY. GO AWAY. LOSER. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT. JUST DIE!

This game is laughably bad. I'm fine that it's trying to deal with some pretty mature topics, but it's doing it with a kitchen sink approach, and in the process comes off as a little comical. I'm not the biggest fan of the "run away from not-scary scary monster" thing, and I think those sections make what is a pretty uninteresting game worse. I just don't think Konami really know what to do with Silent Hill... What even is a Silent Hill game in 2024? This is clearly trying to be an attempt at a PT kind of thing and it really, really misses the mark.

I have a lot of thoughts about this game, it's hard not to because there's a lot of game... probably too much. I've played bits and pieces of the Kiryu games, but never finished any of them, and my first real Yakuza game was 7, which means I'm firmly in the Ichiban as best leading character camp. While I'm glad this is still primarily an Ichiban game, about halfway through the game it starts introducing Kiryu chapters, and while I enjoyed his character in this entry (yeah, English voice acting and all) I did find that most of my time spent with him leant a little too hard on "D'you remember that guy?", and a lot of it was just dry and boring compared to the bonkers insanity of crustacean love stories and eel powered diggers back in Hawaii. I just think the main story feels a little too loose for one that's so long, it seriously needs an editor, there are so many redundant conversations and overlong cutscenes, and it's hard to feel this way because I think the character work is a real upgrade from the last game. Unfortunately, like everything else there's just too many of them, with two returning characters just being here because they were in the last one.

Thankfully though, I do think there's a lot more positives over the bloated runtime and excessive amount of side activities. The combat is similar, but is massively improved with positioning, and there's a bunch of very welcome convenience options added. The game gets by on having a hugely loveable cast, and some of the most insane cutscenes and attacks I've ever seen in anything ever. The game just has a lot of charm, and while the story really lacks the personal edge of the previous entry, I'm fully on board with the crazy evil government, crazy cult, spy adventure, Metal Gear-isms that they seem to have gone all in on here.

It feels like both a better and worse game than what came before, but ultimately I spent over 130 hours getting the Platinum and most of that time was pretty pleasant, even if I'd happily never visit Dondoko island or fight another Sujimon ever again. I'm looking forward to seeing where they go from here, but I fear that the escalation in content is just going to increase from here. Also, Spikeout is complete bullshit... that game is messed up!

I think this is very cool, and like all the other Cave games I'm super terrible at it (unless I play it on Super Easy mode), I think it has some really cool art, and I'm sure the story is very interesting (I have no idea why I'm murdering all of those screaming girls in one stage), but I do find it hard tracking the bullets a lot more than in later Cave shooters. There's so much information scrolling and flashing on the screen that my mind might actually explode, I'm sure you can turn it off, but I don't know Japanese so I guess I'll deal with it. You murder a little maid girl shooting a bazillionty bullets at you in the final battle, that's four stars minimum!