This game had a lot of potential, that thankfully was exploited in the sequels. This game is basically an action-movie morphed into a video-game. Also, it also doesn't take itself seriously, like at all. The plot is ridiculous, and very fun because of it, the animations on deaths are hilarious (shoot someone with a sniper and they'll do a flip 90% of the time). This game's first half really is a guilty pleasure of mine, because of how stupid and fun it is.
The gameplay is mainly shooting, with a few puzzles (that aren't good). The shooting isn't fully brainless, but it isn't the most advanced thing in the world either. It's main strength is the level design. Basically, the challenge if this game is to try and take an advantagious position over your enemies, and the game doesn't always give you a good cover spot out of the gate, so you'll have to take down a few enemies to get to that good cover spot, and even then, you may get a grenade thrown at you, forcing you to move. The use of coverage is what makes the game fun, so when the last hour of the game just shoves it out of the way to make way for bullet-sponges enemis that you just have to unload in, the gameplay takes a hit. Sometimes, the game can feel a bit unfair, by just having every one fire on you at once, giving you an insta-kill if you pop your head out for even a milisecond, but overall, the gameplay is good.
However, the gameplay's flaws are made apparent by the game's pacing. The first half of the game are just shootouts, and that's fine because the level-design is great until that point, though you will be feeling a bit tired of the formula by then. Afterwards, the game gives you avried gameplay for an hour, with vehicle sections (which are fine, not good, not terrible, fine) that are a welcome change of pace. then, backl to shooting, but not just any shooting: poor shooting. The level design takes a hit, it doesn't feel as well designed, the game feels unfair at times (it can be blatantly easy for enemis to flank you at this point because of large arenas), and then the final hour hits, and wow its not good. I was intending on giving this a 3.5 rating, but the ending just took me out of it. It's just emptying round of ammo after round of ammo into enemis. It isn't fun. Yeah, getting a headshot kills them, so you're supposed to be going for the head, but the enemies move too fast to actually be aiming at them, so you just empty bullets until A/ they die, B/ you somehow get a headshot. A shame to be sure. So basically: the base formula of the game isn't bad, but the vehicle sections being more spread out around the game and the last hour being either trimmed or reworked would have hid the flaws of the system way better. Also, it lacks variety. The weapons that the game introduces arrive quite late in the game, and are just upgrades of previous weapons.
But, Uncharted is supposed to be an action movie, and it has the story and characters to go with it. The great cinematic setpieces aren't exactly there yet, but the rest of the story and characters reek of 2000s action-movie. The story is so over-the-top it's ridiculous. It involves spanish conquistadores, nazis, Francis Drake and zombies. That pitch is insane. The game puts a U-boat in the middle of the jungle. It isn't high-art, sure, but it's hella fun, and perfectly fits the "doesn't take itslef seriously" vibe of the game. The characters are great, at least the good guys are. the villains are forgettable, the twist villain sucks (and the final boss battle against him sucks too). But Nathan Sully and Elena are one of the best trios in gaming. Nathan is charismatic, quick-wited, and funny. Elena is often the one doing the rescuing actually, a strong female character that perfectly complements Nathan's goofiness with her more serious tone, and Sully is Sully. He shines more in later entries, and doesn't appear much in this game, but he already shows signs of greatness here.
This game is no masterpiece, it's pretty unremarkable overall. However there was a lot of potential in the gameplay and story, as well as the characters. It feels rushed, as I said the first half of the game had me giving it a 3.5/5 score, that later dipped because of less-than-steller level design. It's interesting to go back to, I enjoyed it way more this time around (which was my second time playing the game) than I did my first, though the ending reminded me why I didn't really love it the first time around.

It cannot be stressed enough : GTA V is Rockstar's magnum opus, and one of the most impressive and immersive game ever. The radio stations are an example of this: so much licenced music, and in my 30 hours with the game, I didn't hear a single repeat radio talk-show segment. There was so much voice acting done for this game, it's very impressive.

On the gameplay side of things, GTA V is, once again, very impressive because of how much stuff there is. You can play tennis, you can go to see your therapist, you can run a triathlon, you can fly a plane, ride a boat, shoot, make stuff explode, fist fight... It doesn't do anything amazingly well (even though the flying is quite impressive honestly), but the sheer diversity of things that there are to do more than makes up for the average gameplay of everything. I do need to talk about the driving though: it is insanely fun. Thankfully, Rockstar remembered that this game is called Grand Theft AUTO, and they really made the driving very good. Every car feels different, it's fun to try and go at high speeds without crashing into other drivers. I would've liked the CPU to put a turning indicator when it switches lanes, because it happened quite often for me to drive on the back of a car that was switching lanes abruptly, but apart from that, the driving is perfect. A big difference between this game and Red Dead Redemption II is that I actually didn't mind coing to the other side of the map for a side-quest, because getting there is fun, and I just can't say the same for Red Dead, where horse-riding is not fun at all.

The shooting isn't fun though. The auto-aim is a bit too powerfull (you just need to flick your stick up to get a headshot, because you'll automatically aim for the chest of the enemy), and I honestly can't tell the difference between most weapons. The shotgun doesn't feel like a traditional video-game shotgun because of its range for example.

You may think that the underwhelming shooting makes the missions dissapointing, but that isn't quite true. The missiosn focused on shooting are a bit boring. I noticed this during Trevor's first missions, where all you do is shoot stuff, which is pretty in line with Trevor's character, but underwhelming from the gameplay perspective. However, most missions focus on other things, or at least have other things in them (driving, flying a plane/helicopter) or put the shooting in an interesting context (a heist, an infiltration...). Often, there is a "drive to this point on the map" part to the mission, which is used to dump exposition dialogue, but these are fine because, again, the driving is terrific. These travel sequences are way worse in Red Dead Redemption II (I do prefer Red Dead II to GTA V but let's just say my love for that game comes from other places than the story missions).

Furthermore, the stories these missions tell are often quite good, so you're encouraged to complete them. They're often wacky, funny, crazy, featuring good dialogue. This game doesn't take itself too seriously, which is good. The overarching story however isn't bad, but it is held back by a lot of pacing issues. This game does not know how to end itself. Just when you're about to get the big heist going, which gets you excited, Trevor decides to go back to North Yankton, and shit just hits the fan, both for the characters, and for this game's pacing. Before you get to that Heist you really want to do, and that you've already started to plan by the way, you need to : save Michael, do another completely different Heist for the Bureau, end the bureau ark (which gets Trevor back in the story), end Michael's family ark, save Lamar (who gets completely forgotten for half the story) and then you get to do the Heist. Don't get me wrong, I like those arks individually, but they should've ended sooner to not clutter the end of the story. This game simply does not know when to end its different arks. And the actual endind to the game is... dissapointing. They force a multiple endind story, which really doesn't make sense, or feel earned. You can guess that getting Trevor killed is still on the mind of the Bureau, but the "kill Michael" option just comes out of left-field and comes out as just an option to make this a three-way choice rather than a binary one. But even then, the first option doesn't feel all that deserved: the game doesn't do a great job at making it clear that the Bureau still wants Trevor dead. So that option to kill Trevor is weird, because it feels like the end to a storyline that started before the game's main action takes place, and isn't really developed throughout the game.
So, you can either kill Trevor, kill Michael, or save both. Clearly, the way Rockstar wants you to pick is the third option. Killing Michael makes no sense for Franklin's character, and Michael is pretty much the main character of this game. Killing Trevor is a bit more plausible, because he is clearly the principle antagonistic force of the game, but why would the player stop himself from using him in the future by killing him ? Furthermore, why would Franklin, a character who is known to be loyal to a fault, kill a guy who helped him multiple times ?? The multiple choice ending is forced, and the Rockstar-intented ending isn't very good. You just kill every antagonist in the game, and all your problems are solved somhow. So firstly, why did no one do that before if it were that easy ?? Secondly, the game doesn't really have a main antagonist, so the tail-end to the game, which doesn't even see you kill the most unlikable antagonist of the game, is a bit meh.

I do have to end on what GTA V is most known for: the free-roaming. It is excellent. Everything is fun, the web browser was a great idea, full of fun little things to do. The stock markets are a really underrated part of the game in my opinion. You can't make tons of money with them, but they're fun to fuddle around with, and see the stocks of comanies you interact with fluctuate depending on your actions in the game. Getting in trouble is fun, even though losing the police is a tad too easy in my opinion. There are so many activities that I won't even start to talk about them here, I'll just list a few I liked : street races, triathlon, plane trials, shooting range. The side quests, entitled Strangers, are fun. They highlight gameplay elements you don't necessarily see in the main story, and develop everyone's characters quite well, through interactions with fun characters. The towing missions aren't amazing gameplay-wise, but they really show how loyal to a fault Franklin is, which make him even more likable to me.

GTA V is an amazing game, and is a fun version of Red Dead II. That game is amazing in its own right (again, I prefer Red Dead II to GTA even though I think GTA is the better game), but the gameplay wasn't that fun, because it tries so hard to be immersive that it becomes realistic, which isn't the same at all. I can feel immersed in a game without having to sit through a 3 second animation every time I want to loot someone. GTA V is immersive becaus eof how varied it is in its gameplay, because of its presentation, but it doesn't sacrifice fun. However, the story, while it is fun when looked at mission-by-mission, is terribly paced, and it really kills the enjoyment I had of the game in the last few hours, and made me put the controller down immediatly after I was done with the last mission, which is a shame.

It was hard to not blink given I had tears in my eyes the whole time.

Yes this game is a gimmick, that gimmick being "blinking makes the time pass". But, the story it tells about accepting death, the wish to relive past memories and to forget others is gripping. I tried my hardest not to blink in certain memories, because they were beautiful, happy memories, and on the other hand I'd blink non-stop during others because of how horrible they felt.

Before Your Eyes is an experience more than a game, I almost want to call it an interactive movie. Please play this. Even if, like me, you have a macbook pro that sounded more like an airplane taking off than a computer cooling down while playing this. It is worth your time.

Crunching down an 82 hour experience into a short review is going to be insanely hard. I already know I'm going to re-read this in a few weeks time and say "Oh I forgot to talk about this". So I'm sorry in advance.

Persona 5 was already one of my favorite games of all-time. It did have a problems though. The main problems I remember having was Mementos being a bit of a chore and the game taking its time to kick into gear, as well as having too many times where you were "on rails", with Morgana ordering you to sleep for example.
Persona 5 Royal doesn't necessarily fix these problems, but it does make those weak points better. The addition of José to Mementos is easily the best fix to one of the base game's problem, as he gives you a reason to go to Mementos. In Mementos, you can now pick up flowers and stamps. The first ones allow you to buy (very useful) items from José, and the stamps allow you to "change mementos' cognition", basically meaning that you can apply boosters to how much money, items and XP you get while in Mementos. This may seem like nothing, but it made going to Mementos feel worthwhile. In the base game, I explored Mementos because the game told me to first and foremost, and I found comfort in knowing I would at least be getting some XP and money. In Royal, I went because I felt like it would be an easy, less grindy way to get XP, items and money, all thanks to José. It's a simple fix, but it's very efficient.
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Apart from these small tweaks, Persona 5 Royal adds a ton of content to the base game. mainly, it adds the Thieves' Den, new combat mechanics and an extra story-arc.
The thieves den may be my favorite addition to the game. After long play sessions, I would often go and visit it, just to chill and enjoy the jazz music and play some tycoon. It's a great idea, basically a virtual museum where you can expose statues of the foes you defeated, of the personas that helped you along the way and remind yourself of great memories through photos or cutscenes. I will say though, I would've liked more spaces to put statues and getting to choose where to put the different pieces of art you bought. Having the possibility to have statues of the second and third personas of everyone would've been nice too.
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The new combat mechanics are pretty great. The best change is that now, guns have limited rounds per battle instead of rounds being limited per infiltration, which is such a game changer. I found myself using them way more often in this playthrough.
The hookshot is amazing, really helps the game feel more epic and makes Joker so much cooler than he already is. It's also used to ambush enemies, with the "chainé hook", which gives you a chance to inflict an ailment to an enemy before even starting the fight, which is incredibly useful if you're going against a foe that doesn’t have a weakness.
The will-seeds also have a direct effect on combat. The most apparent one is, of course, the amazing crystals they morph into. The Okumura and Shido crystals spring to mind as particularly good accessories. But they also allow you to use more magic, as collecting them restores a good amount of SP per will seed (I'd say somewhere around 10%, but I'm not sure). Given that there's three per palace, that makes around 30% SP being restored, which is a game changer, as it allows you to use more magic attacks, and not be as shy about tackling a strong foe that what you could be in the past.
Also, you can now get more SP by doing Baton Passes, as long as you have maxed out that party member's baton pass stat, which you do at the all new darts and billards hangout spot. Darts is an extremely fun minigame in of itself, and is very useful, as it boosts HP and SP recovery through baton passes and increases the attack buff, as well as making you deepen your bonds with the other phantom thieves. Billards allows you to increase the usefullness of technical attacks as well as deepen your bond with your teammates. Once you reach the max level at billards, a technical attack will guarantee you to down the enemy, as well as inflicting a lot more damage. Darts and billards may be the best change to the overall balance of Persona 5, as it allows you to try very different strategies to what you're used to, and also allows you to not use as much SP, not only because you recover some with baton pass, but also because physical attacks become a viable alternative to exploiting a foe's weakness thanks to the baton pass. So instead of using Ann to target a fire weakness, then baton pass to Ryuji to target and electrical weakness, you can just use one to target a weakness, and use the other to use a physical attack on the other enemy and take off a huge chunk of health. In this scenario, you’ve done as much damage as in the base game, while using half the SP. Sure, you don’t use the all-out attack as often, but all-out attacks were maybe a bit too useful in the base game.
The most apparent change in gameplay is probably showtime attacks, and I'm personally very mixed on them. They look great and fit the tone and presentation of the game very well, but they are a tad too OP, because they trigger in these circumstances (not all circumstances are listed here, just the problematic ones): Joker is in danger (ailment or low health for example) / a party member has been killed / the party member whose turn it is has just gotten back up from being downed and wants his "revenge". Basically, showtime attacks trigger when you're in trouble and about to possibly lose the fight, which is so dumb. you may say that in that case, I should say that Oracle's interventions, or Harisen recovery or a party member sacrificing himself for Joker is dumb as well. Good point, but there is a major difference here. First, on the scale of the fight, showtime attacks nearly always kill the enemy they're targeting, meaning you went from losing the fight to winning the fight with a simple button press. The other passive skills I mentioned only rebalance the fight, by no means have you won by avoiding Joker's death or getting a stat buff, you only avoided losing. Secondly, on a larger scale, unlocking the aforementioned passive skills requires you to deepen your bonds with the phantom thieves and select them in your party. There's a strategy to it, you may choose a party member over another because they have this passive skill. In the meantime, every party member has a showtime attack, and they unlock through story progression, so they feel like the game giving me the win, rather than the game congratulating me for understanding the relationship mechanics by giving me a second chance. Overall, I'm happy these showtime attacks are here because they look great, It's just a shame that I had to restrain myself from using them, as I only allowed myself to use them when I was pretty much certain I would win the fight.
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And finally, the added story content. The game features a new location, that being Kichikoji, which is very cool, as it has the aforementioned darts and billards, as well as a jazz bar you can buff party member's stats at. The temple gives more SP to joker, but given that hanging out with Doctor Maruki does that as well, it isn't very useful.

The biggest changes are the apparition of three new confidants and, of course, the playable third term. Let's go by ascending order of who I though was best.
Yoshizawa-san is amazing at first, but in my opinion gets pretty insufferable by the end. She was my favourite confidant until the story starts focusing around her. Hanging out with her is fun, as she is a lovable character that's full of charm. But once the third term starts, her ark feels like it just stops. I swear there are at least three moments in her arc that are basically the same beat over and over again. This is tagged spoiler so I'm going to spoil : her awakening, when she helps out in Sae's palace (which really builds intrigue when you first play through that section at the start of the game but is really out of place when you place it in the context of the story at that moment tbh), and her "second awakening" after she fails to bring forth her persona during the second infiltration of Maruki's palace. When she first awakens to her persona, I was so hyped because it felt like she had finally properly arrived in the main plot rather than just being a new confidant... then she disapears. Then she comes back in Sae's palace ! but she disappears again from the final act of the base game because "it's too dangerous for her". So by her third "big character moment", I wasn't really interested. She does have pretty good confidant skills though, as she is the one that unlocks chainé hook.
Next, Maruki. Hanging out with him grants you 5 extra SP, which is very useful, and gives you « Flow » and « Detox ». The first gives a random chance for Joker to have a big attack boost at the begining of a fight, the latter allows him to cure any ailment, again with a random chance. These are very useful. Also, his arc is very interesting, both as a confidant and a palace ruler. He asks really interesting question and his character is a very mature, interesting and uplifting vision of what it means to grieve and get back up, as well as the importance of fighting back when life fights you, and not let yourself die in the gutter of destiny.
Finally, best boy Goro Akechi, the singe best character in this game. He was great in the first game, but his relationship with Joker felt forced. I never really bought their twisted rivalry/friendship. In short, I felt like Akechi was a great character, but did not buy his relationship to Joker. Having him as a confidant fix this problem. You really feel that Akechi loves having a rival in the form of Joker which makes the latter a friend, but hates that he's better than him, which makes him public enemy number one. Having to beat him in a one on one fight to grow closer to him is a prime example of this weird relationship the pair have. If you liked Persona 5, I'd say this extended focus on Akechi on its own is a good enough reason to go back. I love the fact you get to have his evil version as a party member. His all-out attack animation changing to read « I decide the truth » after it reading « I shall bring forth the truth » is amazing characterization.
As for the extra semester and palace... It's good. I must admit, going from fighting a god to fighting your therapist isn't exactly the best story structure. Of course they didn't want to change the base game's story and ending, so they had to do this weird thing, but I would've preferred if you fought Maruki a few months after the god of control. You could, for example, let the original ending play out, and then have Joker come back to Tokyo a few months later and discover that everyone is living in Maruki's reality. I feel like that would've been better. The palace was very big, which is good. i do have to say though, I would've appreciated it if the developer's had introduced an adaptative difficulty to this final palace. See, I was level 88 when I started Maruki's palace because I had fought the Reaper earlier on (which I highly recommend doing, as it he gives you like 5 extra level sin one fight and makes Shido your b*tch during his fight), which made me a lot stronger than almost every enemy in the palace, making it so that I didn't even have to fight them, as I had unlocked the insta-kill ability through Ryuji, allowing you to gain XP, money and items from a fight, without doing said fight, as long as you're at least five levels more powerful than the shadow and you run at them while also ambushing them. So I would say it was too easy for someone who had put effort into doing every fight in the game. The boss fight is cool though, and the ending is magnificent, and does feel worthy of replacing the original one, even though it doesn't feel as climactic.

Persona 5 Royal is still Persona 5 at the end of the day, it's just been made better in every way. I see no reason to replay the base game after this one. Should you buy Royal if you played through the base game ? Yes. Absolutely. Not for the story content, or any other addition this game makes. You should buy this game because you should replay Persona 5, as I felt it was much better than it already was on a second playthrough, when you know which confidants you like, which are useful, what activities are worthy of your time and so on. And if you're going to play Persona 5 again, might as well play the best version of it. Just prepare yourself to be as heartbroken as you were the first time you left your virtual best friends behind.

Little Nightmares is very similar to INSIDE in concept, but in execution, it just isn't as good, at least in my opinion.

I played for and hour and a half, and was simultaneously bored to death and fascinated. On the one hand, the game does have memorable and shocking moments, seeing a child starve to the point where he lets himself capture like a rat will stick with me. But on the other, the game's pacing is off. Most of the time, the game is slow, but suddenly the game will make you have to think on your feet. This is more of an action, instinctual-oriented game than INSIDE, which focused more on puzzle, but the thing is the action only kicks in after walking for what feels like forever.
The art style and animation's aren't anything to ride home about either. Usually, 2D games (or rather 3D games presented like 2D games) really shine with their art, but Little Nightmares feels like any other game I've ever seen. The decors can get interesting, but most of them are really bland and forgettable. In only and hour and a half of playtime, there were two distinct occasions where I thought the game had made me respawn ten minutes back because of how similar the rooms looked.
Also, small quirk, but the game doesn't give you any tutorials, except if you're stuck which is just dumb. Like yeah I see the point, but just put the "press X to do this" prompt immediatly and don't let me look like a dumbass not managing to solve a puzzle for 2 minutes because I don't know that there's a sprint button.

Summary: Assassin's Creed III is, at its core, a decent game, flawed by many delusions of grandeur in terms of story choices and size of the open world, which lead to the game's main problem: pacing. However, the combat system is good if not clunky, and the story can get good when it gets going. The remaster is ass on the technical side though.

It's a shame most people will have abandonned this game by the time it gets good. The pacing is completely off in this entry: the first 8 sequences suck, the last 4 are some of the best I've seen so far in an Assassin's Creed game. The main antagonists are great, the game really manages to present everyone in the game (except Connor) as morally grey, really capturing just how grand yet hypocritical the American Revolution was from a civil liberties standpoint.

However, those first 8 sequences are horrid. Firstly, you get your Assassin outfit 6 SEQUENCES INTO THE GAME. You do half an Assassin's Creed game, without being an Assasin. And it's not just that you don't have the (really) cool outfit that sucks, it's the story, the gameplay, everything really. If you took out 4 of the first 6 sequences of the game, the story would remain unchanged. The game doesn't use the extra time it gives to the origins of the villains to flesh their character out or anything, because it needs to hide their "evil side" in order to get the big reveal that you've been a Templar this whole time. So, most of the characterisation comes in the second part of the game where you hunt them down rendering the first half completely useless.
As for the young Connor sequences, the same applies: most of his journey from being a whiney, blindly optimistic teenager to a more nuanced and cynical adult comes from the second part of the game, and gameplay-wise, nothing good come sout of these sequences. But by the end of the game, I actually liked Connor. He got passed his borderline stupid optimism and became more nuanced, without being cynical. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his character was inspired by someone like President Obama.

The gameplay blows hard. The open world is not interesting, ugly, and, for the frontier and the davenport homestead at least, is empty. The game also loves to make you run from one side of the map to the other just to watch a cutscene, making the size and emptiness of the open world stick out even more, so my tip is to abuse fast travel, you aren't missing anything anyway. The missions can be pretty good and original, but a lot of them are sluggish and uninteresting.
The combat is actually pretty great when it works, but as will be discussed later, the whole game feels sloppy and is quite glitchy, so that hurts what was, in my opinion, a great system that struck a great balance between Brotherhood's overly simplistic but really cool-looking combat system and the other games' grindy combat. Now, enemies will attack you even in the middle of a combo, so you always need to be aware and ready to counter. Also, the animations are great.
The climbing is faster, better, and climbing trees is a cool addition, but nothing amazing to be honest.
As for side content, it's just a worst version of déjà-vu systems. Recruiting assassins was really cool in Brotherhood, but this is the third game to use it, and it doesn't really feel earned story-wise. It doesn't really fit Connor's character to lead a Brotherhood as he's more of a lone wolf. Also, the Davenport Homestead didn't seem very appealing to me, a bit too complex for an Assassin's Creed game (I'm here to split heads open, not resell wood) , so I didn't engage with it but I will salute the effort to not redo the "buy shops" gimmick for a third time.
As for "special" gameplay scenarios, they are enjoyable. The desmond sections are fine, but they are so weirdly placed in the game. The first one comes right after you the assassin's outfit, which is such a pace killer. Putting one in the middle of the first part of the game would've been way better, breaking up the monotonous start to the game. The boat sections are great.

Finally, I want to talk about the "Remastered" part of the title. I never played the original, but even I can tell this is a bad remaster. There is this weird fog that appears so often, the characters faces look really weird sometimes, there a lot of glitches, especially in combat where inputs will be ignored by the game (maybe that's a skill issue). This is a shameless cash grab, that doesn't adress any of the game's issues, which is a shame, because there is a good game somewhere in there.

Back when Horizon Forbidden West first released, I decided to play it on the toughest difficulty, to force myself into playing strategically. Also, since I had loved the first game so much, I was set on 100% completing the sequel. That left me with 27 hours of playtime in which I accomplished only half of the game's story, a dull experience where even the simplest enemy is a damage sponge, and an overall dissapointing experience.
I was however keen on going back to the game eventually. I believed that with an easier difficulty setting and a focus on main quests accompanied by a few side quests, this game could be pretty good. Turns out, I wasn't completely wrong, but the experience still wasn't up to what the original accomplished.

Now don't get me wrong: Horizon Zero Dawn is no absolute masterpiece. It's one of my favourite games of all time, sure, but that's more down to the story and worldbuilding than anything else. Sure, the gameplay is really interesting with it's focus on targeting parts, mixing arrow shooting and trapping, really excelling at makign you feel like a hunter stalking it's giant mechanical prey. The sense of scale of the fights is immaculate, the sense of progression is really well done, the quests are mostly pretty good, the side activities are abundant but not overwhelming... Horizon Zero Dawn is a good game made great by its lore and worldbuilding. It's also a game that knows its ambition, and limits its scale in consequence. The game is by no means small, but the upgrade system is on the simpler side of things, there aren't a thousand different weapon types, and the skill tree is small but really gives you a sense of progression, as you unlock new moves. Zero Dawn wasn't trying to be the best game ever, and it made it great.

Forbidden West on the other hand, clearly wanted to put its name next to the likes of The Last of Us, Uncharted or God of War as a Sony classic, and it shows. The game seems to be trying to justify its own existence so bad, it really hinders the experience. The simple, coil based upgrade system from Horizon Zero Dawn ? Add a crafting based upgrade system on top of that. The amazing skill tree from the first game ? Replace it by one of the dullest skill trees ever, where every "skill" is just a stat boost. The limited but perfectly decent weapon selection from the first game ? Add more weapons, most of which are useless or very context sensitive, more ammo types, so that no two weapons play alike to such a degree that the player is confused as to which ammo goes with which weapon and what each does, which discourages him from engaging with shopkeepers and using different weapons. The map from the original, which is (relatively) dense compared to other open worlds ? Make it twice the size with the same number of activities, including an introductory part of the world which could've been cut off without any problem.

Forbidden West feels like it was scared of being told it wasn't enough of a sequel, so it just kept adding stuff to justify its existence, when it really didn't need to, because the stuff we actually wanted to see a sequel to, that being the worldbuilding, really excells. The tenakth are fascinating, the Faro twist is great, the world is beautiful (although I was severly dissapointed with San Francisco). It's a shame that Guerrilla didn't believe in its project's strength and felt like they needed to do way more than necessary. Sometimes, less is more.
The story sucks though. It just feels confused, and the theme of "Aloy learning to accept help" was interesting on paper, as it made perfect sense to push Aloy's character in that direction as she grew up an outcast, but it doesn't really have any meaningful beats. She just suddenly accepts help. There is no emotional low point, she just changes her mind. Not great.

Less is more, especially in a gaming landscape saturated with way too big open worlds. I truly do believe that there is a huge gap in the market for a small, dense, linear open world with a well crafted story and measured ambition, something even smaller than Zero Dawn. Instead, Forbidden West decided to fight fire with fire, to combat the other huge open worlds of our day with something even bigger, and the result is a nauseatingly big game that most will never want to touch again.