FromSoftware’s success with Elden Ring is undeniable. Starting with its announcement, the game grew into a mighty wave, expanding with every drop of news, sweeping anticipatory communities into Shabiri-level Madness, and finally cresting by eclipsing six years worth of Dark Souls 3 sales in less than three weeks. The Lands Between offer incredible opportunities for freedom, exploration, and storytelling in enthralling landscapes that manage to feel both impossible and natural at once, yet at times the game seems to embody the region’s moniker - stuck in limbo on crumbling ground. At the core of Elden Ring whirls a tornado of passion and raw energy, yet that same rawness also breaks pieces of the surrounding game’s framework and widens cracks in the FromSoftware formula.

The Lands Between are massive in scope, narrative, and player choice, offering an incredible amount of content to discover and explore. Traversing the environments generally feels smooth and exciting with the mount, Torrent, and FromSoftware have done an incredible job of scattering in the tailored moments of awe that they’ve become known for in their more streamlined games. Exploring the world provides its own intangible rewards, as there are countless breathtaking vistas as well as emergent moments - exiting a cave or confined area to have the world explode around you - that are infused with spectacular surrealism. This is a triumph in a genre that can often turn into a treasure hunt for items or quests with the player beelining head down through an environment to get to their marker. Instead, Elden Ring turns the journey into a reward in itself. Some of the strangest creatures and twisted environments make their home in the Lands Between, and discovering them for the first time is a fascinating and thrilling experience amplified by the small terror of knowing that you are never safe.

The characters and narrative of Elden Ring are equally as strange and varied as the landscape. Whereas in the Dark Souls trilogy most of the characters with stories are human, in Elden Ring they also consist of four-armed dolls, wolf-men, goblinoid creatures, or anthropomorphic jars to name a few. The quest chains are also longer and more involved than almost anything else in FromSoftware’s history, some spanning the entirety of the game’s main story, which is also larger in scope than its predecessors. George R.R. Martin’s presence can be easily seen through the tangled web of relationships that weave between major and minor characters alike, though with the certain Miyazaki sprinkles of quite literally other worldly beings, as well as the tragic type storylines expected in his games.

When following questlines, heartbreak in the Lands Between is inevitable, as well as plenty of shocking moments that range from the fantastical to the grotesque and horrifying. Unfortunately, this heartbreak can also rear its head as dissatisfaction. Due to the open nature and size of the game, it is incredibly easy to miss a location for a character’s quest, causing it to sit unfinished without the player ever knowing why. Even when in the correct areas, it can be easy to miss a character’s information, as new dialogue options are buried at the bottom of the menu when resting at a particular grace point. This could be easily solved by placing the dialogue option first in the menu. Even worse, however, is that several of the quests were incomplete upon launch and some are still incomplete after several patches. Elden Ring is already hazy enough about its quest structure, and the fact that some quests are unable to be completed at all is dissatisfying and frustrating while playing and not knowing if something was missed and needs to be explored more, or if it is quite literally impossible at the moment.

With how much exploration is available, multiple endings, and a variety of character builds, as well as the built-in propensity to miss quest triggers or quests being added and fixed via patches, Elden Ring begs to be replayed in order to experience all that the Lands Between offer. However in another sense, towards the end of the game, the player will have already seen everything there is in the game. So many enemies, bosses, and assets are reused throughout the game that within the first three areas of the game, the only non-recurring enemies are two of the major bosses. Everything else reappears later in the game. This is incredibly jarring with a region like Caelid which the game tells us is unique because of a certain lore-event within the world, and yet its twisted inhabitants show up en masse in later regions of the game. Even major questline bosses end up being dungeon bosses later on, cheapening not only their second appearance, but making their first encounter feel less special. With one main boss in particular, it is reasonable for a player to come across the secondary version before fighting the original, making that questline just as Tarnished as the player. Dark Souls has always re-used enemies or bosses, often as a way to show the player just how far they’ve come since the beginning of their journey, but Elden Ring takes it too far - imagine if Quelaag or Pontiff Sulyvahn came back as another boss randomly. It is even worse when some of the repurposed enemies and bosses are paired together for seemingly no other reason other than, “what if there were two?” Duo bosses can be a fun combat challenge when they are paired together with purpose - one of the most famous bosses in the FromSoftware gallery is a duo boss - but when they are thrown together without care, it comes off as unsatisfying and uninspired. This constant reuse hurts replayability because, in a sense, the player is already replaying pieces of the game by the conclusion. When playing to finish quests that were incomplete, assuming they can actually be completed, all of this repetition leads the player to beeline head down towards map markers rather than continuing to explore - the exact opposite of what the game desires to accomplish. Elden Ring does not expect players to find it all during one playthrough, but at the same time it offers little to incentivize further exploration, as the reward will likely be an enemy which has already been fought, in a dungeon whose mirror image has already been seen multiple times. This is something that all open-world games seem to struggle with, so it’s not necessarily FromSoftware’s fault, however it does feel miles apart from the usual focused and polished experience players have come to expect.

This lack of polish also bleeds over into the otherwise excellent combat system of Elden Ring. Much like the enormity of the Lands Between, players have never before had the same amount of variety and choice in designing builds, choosing weapons, and synergizing spells. Summoning Spirits also offers the player unique opportunities to have companions with different styles and abilities to take different approaches in tackling challenges and bosses alike. Except while these things sound fantastic in theory, gameplay doesn’t always work this way, and the dividing line between player experience has widened into a canyon of difference.

Most of the disconnect between builds and playstyles won’t be encountered during the majority of the game unless the player is focused on comparing numbers. Most of the early and mid-game bosses are exciting to fight, and Elden Ring has some of the most well executed spectacle boss designs in FromSoftware's boss catalog. However towards the end of Elden Ring, the bosses begin to highlight build design and combat balance flaws more readily through their design. Playing as a solo melee character can feel extremely frustrating, especially if using a large weapon, as many of the bosses have small punish windows, or can switch up their punish windows as they cancel combos into new attacks. These cancels and redirects control the entire fight, as it seldom feels safe to retaliate because while the bosses don’t change up their combos every time, the mere fact that they can forces the player to play more defensively. Some of the bosses also do so much damage that new techniques such as the guard counter are neutered in their effectiveness since trading hits is not as viable for survivability. This makes several late game fights exercises in watching the boss attack and look cool while the player stands doing nothing, or runs away. One of the most consistent ways to dodge the most punishing attack in the entire game, for example, is to start by running away from the boss. This same attack is also random in its execution, so the player is forced to play defensively while waiting for the attack to come out - its entire existence governs the fight because if the player is hit with this attack it often equals defeat or at the very least wiping away the progress the player has made during the fight. Defensive play is not reactive or fun design when there is no gain from it, unlike in something like Sekiro where defense is actually rewarded, making both offense and defense both viable ways of overcoming obstacles. In Elden Ring, defense means boredom and frustration that becomes exacerbated when one slip means death. Another late-game boss can kill a 60 Vigor player with a three-hit combo that locks the player into a stun animation - if the first dodge is missed, the player dies. These are not insurmountable odds by any means, nor does it mean that bosses are nigh unbeatable - it just means that for a solo melee player many late-game boss fights are spent waiting which is not fun or engaging. For the first time in a FromSoftware game, it comes across as the player’s playstyle being the wrong choice. All playstyles are obviously not created equally, but Elden Ring punishes certain builds much harder than others due to design. It does seem like FromSoftware agrees with these issues, as they have recently patched the game making attacks for Colossal Weapons faster as well as adjusting the difficulty and behavior on several bosses, including at least two in the end-game.

Elden Ring does offer tools to mitigate this type of experience, however, through the use of summons or magic. There are 64 different Spirit Ash summons that can be used during the game, though they vary in usefulness and must be upgraded in order to be of any effectiveness later on. The result is that most players will only upgrade either one or two Ashes fully and use them throughout the game rendering 62 other Ashes useless to never be utilized unless the player inorganically goes out of the way to try them out. With the late game bosses being so punishing, it also means that most players using spirits are going to stick with the strongest spirits rather than experimenting. This issue of quantity over quality could easily be adjusted by having a smaller number of Ashes and making them non-upgradeable with different niche abilities, thus incentivizing players to actually use more than one or two.

While Spirit Ashes are an interesting wrinkle in design that deserves to be further explored, they too highlight issues with boss design. FromSoftware Boss A.I. is still as capable of handling two opponents as it was during Demon’s Souls, which is to say it is not. With the behavior of bosses built around leaving little openings for solo players, it might be easy to surmise that Elden Ring was balanced around the use of Spirit Ashes, however if this is true, that design is a failure, as bosses and other opponents become soulless and dull on the other end of the spectrum. If solo melee play becomes tedious due to waiting, spellcasting with Ashes becomes dull due to possessing little-to-no challenge. These two play styles seem like completely different games, neither of which are balanced very well. This is not to say that this balance issue exists within the entirety of Elden Ring - only in the latter half-to-quarter. However, it does dampen subsequent runs through the Lands Between, as the player knows what to expect at the end of the game, and as such must build characters with that in mind. Much like bosses having certain attack chains or mix-ups control entire combat encounters, the very existence of these balance issues influences everything else in the game upon replaying.

Build balance issues have carried over to PvP as well, which has been a step backwards for FromSoftware in almost every way. The reduction of players from six to four has removed the cooperative nature of fight clubs, as well as the thrilling chaos that ensues with several covenants fighting each other in the open world. Left over for those craving contests of skill are lopsided invasions or duels - neither of which are a bad option on their own, however build issues have changed the way these contests operate. In Elden Ring, Ashes of War have offered the player more flexibility than ever, offering the ability to customize their weapons to their playstyle. However, just like Spirit Ashes, not all Ashes of War are viable and players tend to stick to one or two higher damage weapon arts - notably bleed. Just like the end-game bosses, these weapon arts deal massive damage, as well as building up status effects even while being dodged, leading to either short fights or highly defensive play styles. In Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne, armaments had weapon arts or trick-weapons with different forms and abilities which were used as compliments to the main move-sets of the weapon. In Elden Ring, the weapon arts do so much more damage than normal attacks, they take over the weapon, leading to spamming without strategy. Some of the weapons’ Ashes of War are even stronger than some of the most powerful spells builds have to offer. Faith builds in particular are more effective using a certain sword’s weapon art rather than using a spell both for damage and FP cost. FromSoftware seems to acknowledge this as well, as they have recently patched incantations to use less FP, added poise, and increased damage on some of the spells, however their response to imbalanced gameplay seems to be to buff everything, which only exacerbates the damage issues. Even with patches, there are balance issues that have not been addressed - notably Quality builds are worse on every single weapon in the game compared to Keen and Heavy, even with optimal stats.

Despite these issues, Elden Ring still stands as a triumph of excitement and adventure. It is a fantastic game and world to delve into and get lost in with gorgeous views, wonderfully written characters, and a haunting OST. FromSoftware have set the bar so high with the amount of polish and care they’ve given to their games from Demon’s Souls to Sekiro, so it is easy to see design flaws and blemishes because they’ve already proven they know how to do these things right. Ultimately, Elden Ring stands as one of the best open world games ever created, and hopefully a gateway for many players into the wonderful catalog of soulful games that came before it.

The station was abandoned long ago. Through its corridors of twisted metal and fire, among the mazes of green overgrowth, and deep in an abandoned cavern, there walks a robot. A robot designed to discover the Lovecraftian mysteries of the station, and to teach the multitude of enemies and bosses that await one lesson - in space no one can hear you scream.

Environmental Station Alpha is the Metroid game that I always wanted. While the majority of the game takes place on a man-made station, the atmosphere feels genuinely alien and isolating, yet somehow still comfortable in a way that encourages exploration. The best example of this would be the juxtaposition between the 8-bit art style, which lends just enough clarity to let your imagination run wild - like trying to see a whole image in a rippling pool of water - and the soothing soundtrack, which enfolds you like an electronic blanket of fuzz. It's all at once exciting, unsettling, and comforting.

Part of this comfort comes from the map design. Throughout the game, you are given checkpoints to reach, but no route is specifically laid out for you. This allows for free exploration to use new abilities, discover secrets, or just time to pause and catch your breath. The environment traversal is done through platforming sections that test your skill with ability upgrades such as a double-jump, dash, and the grappling hook, and the movement is precise and fluid. The grappling hook works on nearly every surface in the game, making it satisfying and easy to use after some practice. All of this combines to make traversal and exploration much more meaningful than meticulously bombing tiles or scanning walls with radar in order to find the path forward. After a certain point in the game, teleports will become available for fast travel, which also helps encourage exploration, as you won't fear having to backtrack to the ends of eternity if you stumble upon a dead-end.

Checkpoints throughout Environmental Station Alpha are also placed in sensible locations as well, such as before difficult platforming sections and bosses. Boss fights range from fairly easy to challenging but fair, and rely on pattern recognition and planning rather than aggressiveness. Your only weapon is a laser, which can be upgraded up to three times, which means you'll be quite familiar with its range and limitations while in combat. Victory over bosses does feel well-earned, and often comes with an ability-upgrade as a reward. There is an easy-mode for the game which increases health and decreases damage done to the player, and the creator of the game even condones save-file editing in order to further tailor the game's difficulty to your skill level (this can be done with using notepad or a similar text editor with ease). Just like any good Metroidvania, you will start the game feeling nervous upon any enemy encounter, but by the end, the Station's denizens become nothing more than environmental obstacles as you make your way across the map.

While the gameplay is certainly fantastic, it's the strangeness of the world that showcases Environmental Station Alpha's genius, specifically the post-game sections. The beginning of the game plays like a straightforward Metroidvania - you fight bosses, earn upgrades, discover hidden items, and unravel a bit more of the station's mystery, however the post-game throws the entire narrative into Lovecraftian overdrive and switches the gameplay into a platforming puzzler. In some of the most bizarre yet compelling post-game content in any game, you'll be dashing through a deadly maze of spikes, translating an alien language with real-life pen and paper, solving non-Euclidian puzzle rooms while being chased by a ghost, fighting through a glitched version of the station, and earning the ultimate upgrade in order to unlock three more endings to the game.

Each of the endings are satisfying in their own way, but most of the story-telling is done through computer logs in an esoteric fashion. The main story of the game is actually quite simple and does become clear by the end, but don't expect to have all of your questions answered - the story isn't even necessarily the point of the game; the journey is. Knowing that, the post-game puzzles become an interesting insight into a world that our robot isn't fully prepared for or able to understand, and like any good cosmic horror narrative, that's what draws the excitement. Honestly, the most impressive part of Environmental Station Alpha is that a game this ambitious and outside-the-box was created and developed by just one person. While the game certainly owes its existence to the Metroid franchise, for me ESA manages to not only capture the soul of those classic games, but it improves on them in nearly every way for a much more satisfactory and enjoyable experience.

“Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death...I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle...and wonder if we’ll ever get the chance to kill him.”

These are the first words spoken in NieR: Automata, and their implications and intent reverberate throughout the game - echoing over and over throughout the smallest details and largest revelations, including the game’s structure itself. Even as you slice through it as 2B, a physical manifestation of the duality of sex and death, the world reveals itself to be saturated with questions of philosophy, metaphysics, and ontological conundrums - constantly asking, "what is choice, what defines life, and does it even matter?" Through multiple endings that circle each other and spiral on top of themselves, both the player and the characters are given the opportunity to discover and question these ideas themselves. Unlike literature, games, as an art form, have a tendency to offer too much to the player, diluting personal experience and discovery for the sake of spoon-fed meaning. However, NieR: Automata deftly eschews offering these types of answers, instead forcing the player to come up with an interpretation on his or her own. This could be seen as frustrating to some - just another exercise in nihilism that the game offers, but with the many layers and nuances within the game's world and narrative, it's more satisfying to discover a variety of meanings than to be handed one nice moral wrapped up in a bow. If there's any one unified message within NieR: Automata's spiraling, splintered world, it's that you are responsible for discovering truth and meaning for yourself.

All of this philosophical contemplation is juxtaposed against fairly pure action gameplay. Though the combat isn't as deep as something like Devil May Cry, there is enough variety and flexibility to keep things interesting. Being able to equip two different sets of dual weapons is really nice, and each of the weapon combinations have different combos and animations. Being able to further customize character builds through plug-in chips (which also have sets you can switch between) enables the player to be prepared for any type of encounter. All of the characters control incredibly well and are very responsive, so world traversal feels great as well, and quality of life features are there - fast travel, increased movement speed, etc. - to keep things moving along. Though the game doesn't force you to use all of the combat tools on the lower difficulties, I found that bumping it up a bit gives more incentive to try out new tactics and use different combinations of chips and weapons. NieR: Automata also offers several arenas with increasingly difficult challenges and qualifying rules, so that the player can make the best out of the sleek combat system if they are interested in doing so.

NieR: Automata's unique implementation of philosophical world-building and narrative as well as smooth action gameplay combine to make a truly great game that is both intellectually engaging and fun to play.

"What can change the nature of a man?"

Any attempt at un-ravel-ing the world and narrative of Planescape: Torment must center around this question. It's the anchor of the game, spidering out like tiny tendrils of silken web from the central plot onto every piece of dialogue, every character and even the setting itself - connecting it all as it envelops and cocoons. Sigil is a ring of infinite doors, and Planescape: Torment could be described in the same way - revolving around itself with each door a different question leading to the same place.

If this seems like insanity for a video game review, that's ok. Planescape revels in absurdity and esotericism in an attempt to be unlike any other fantasy game. Released a year to the day after its Infinity Engine sibling, Baldur's Gate, Planescape doesn't contain many of the hallmarks of Dungeons and Dragons - there are no elves, there are no dwarves, and there are no stories of epic heroism laden with the trappings of treasure and fame. In fact, Chris Avellone didn't even want swords to be in the game. Instead, the first companion of the game is a floating skull, the first area of the game is a mortuary filled with grotesque dead and undead, and your epic quest is simply: who am I, and why can't I die?

Traveling through the city of Sigil, the literal center of the DnD universe, the nameless protagonist slowly begins to un-ravel his story and the stories of his companions. Each companion character is written with delicate care, providing richly textured stories that interweave with your own. This is not a game that can or should be rushed without speaking to others - it is more like a novel that should be scrutinized over. Each line of text is meaningful. Science Fiction and Fantasy are a their best when authors use the impossibilities of the universe, whether magic or science, to push the boundaries of human thought and storytelling, and Planescape is a testament to this through its explorations of mortality, fear, love, regret, good, evil, justice, and chaos.

The Infinity Engine, while dated, lends a certain grimy charm to the world and character visuals. Beamdog have done an excellent job of modernizing the UI with quality of life improvements while still holding true to the spirit of the game. The original game had a sparse menu bar, forcing the player to utilize a wheel to control the characters and action. This unwieldy setup has been replaced by a simple toolbar with hotkeys that makes things intuitive and easy to use. The addition of a zoom-in and zoom-out feature also allows for easy adjustment of the originals claustrophobic FOV.

The one thing that Beamdog could not update without affecting the gameplay is the combat, which does blemish the experience. Planescape is not combat focused, however there are certainly sections which could be considered combat heavy. Though these are fairly rare, they can be frustrating, as the goal of the game is not to defeat enemies, but rather to gain knowledge. This frustration is doubly apparent when comparing Planescape to something like Disco Elysium, which accomplishes many of the same goals while having no combat. While not an ideal solution, turning the difficulty slider to the lowest setting makes the combat bearable and quick, allowing for much easier exploration.

The writing, characters, and narrative shine as the centerpieces of Planescape. Each character provides different perspective to both the protagonist and the absurd, yet tragic, world around them. Though the central question to un-ravel is "what can change the nature of a man," Planescape offers up many other avenues of introspection and consideration - it's hard to stop questioning, theorizing, and imagining, even after the credits roll.

The fictionalized West of Red Dead Redemption 2 finds itself being constantly pulled between the forces of pastoral freedom and ordered law, pushing this conflict through not only the main storyline of Dutch's gang, but reflecting it within the game design as well.

Once the game finally spits you out of the tutorial area, the player is granted an immense amount of freedom - the world is yours. Taking full advantage of this, I ran around trying to experience everything possible and was fully rewarded with an amazingly immersive world. I hunted down gunslingers, found buried treasure, rescued hostages, took no prisoners, bought and customized my own guns and horse, fell victim to a kidnapping, and had so many other unique and memorable experiences off of the beaten path that I was truly in love with everything I was experiencing. I had freedom in how I interacted with the world, and the world actually responded to my choices in how I wanted to handle things, while still remaining mysterious and massive.

The geography available to explore is breathtaking and provides much variation while still holding true to realism. It's surprising how you can ride from snow covered mountains to fictional New Orleans and still feel like the world around you is cohesive and tangibly real. Rockstar perfectly blended the environments into one another both visually and through gameplay, as so much of this cohesion owes itself to the random encounters being flavored for whatever part of the wilderness you are in - you may run into fierce wolves and mountain men in the snowy peaks, or people panning for gold in the western reaches, or southern moonshiners in the swamp. All of it blends together and you are able to live in it, riding your horse back and forth, meeting people, exploring, and just being a cowboy supporting your gang.

Running side-quests with the array of characters are also rewarding experiences with depth and complexity, especially in the ways the game fleshes them out compared to their presence in Red Dead Redemption 1. They do a fantastic job of characterizing Arthur as well, while still giving the player agency in how to handle situations both in and out of combat. The side-stories are often made up of more intricate, down-to-earth style dilemmas and storytelling, which again makes the world and your choices as a player feel more tangible and real.

This was my experience through the early game chapters, and if I had stopped here, you would see several more stars above this review, as I absolutely adored my time with the game. I was hooked. Then, the main plot took over and my feelings toward this game plummeted.

Dutch's gang finds themselves lost in a world that doesn't want them anymore. They seek freedom and excitement, but can't escape the law which seems to be ever looming over their shoulder. As the presence of law becomes stronger in the game, the structure of the game becomes more strict as well, and my frustration began to mirror the characters' frustrations - the game didn't want me to have freedom or play the way that I wanted to anymore either.

Red Dead Redemption 2's main narrative and story-based missions are set on train tracks, and unfortunately rather than being the outlaw able to pilfer through the train for nuggets of excitement and happiness, the player is tied to the tracks and forced to watch the obvious conclusion approach steadily with the realization that this train actually moves at a snail's pace. I understood what was happening very early on (as anyone who played the previous game would), and rather than expand or deepen the ideas presented to make me question things or alter my perspective, the game insists on hammering down the same point over and over again at every possible opportunity.

The game doubles down on this during story quests, inhibiting even gameplay. Over and over again the game took away my customized weapons that I paid for, upgraded, and spent time making look exactly how I want, and replaced them with generic guns it wanted me to use. In one mission, I already brought a scoped rifle, and the game forced me to use another rifle because it had a scope. Other times, antagonists would disappear, teleporting out of existence for the sole reason that they were needed to advance the plot later. The player is constantly forced to play the story missions in the exact way that the game wants, down to the exact guns it wants you to equip, despite large portions of gameplay and themes of the game being based on viewing freedom as a good virtue.

This causes such incredible disconnect that Red Dead Redemption 2 seems a game at war with itself. Much like the narrative within, the game can't decide which virtue to extol - freedom of the world or control of the narrative. In the end, this is an unnecessary choice to try and make, as many games have shown it is possible to embrace both by creative framing of the central narrative around player agency. Red Dead's failure to understand this is the biggest flaw in an otherwise excellent game.

After installing Resident Evil 7, I sat quietly and listened to the somber yet calming piano play through the PS5 menu for a few minutes before finally embarking on my first foray into the Resident Evil franchise.

I had watched a friend play pieces of RE4, so I expected zombies, guns, and some kitsch. I wasn't worried. I wasn't daunted by the divergence of a happy, sweet video into one of fear, and I wasn't taking Mia's warning to "stay away" seriously. As I was treated to what looked like a beautiful fall afternoon in Louisiana, I should've known that my wandering in the weeds, through the beams of sunlight shining through the tree canopy, lackadaisically searching for clues about Mia, would be my last few moments of peace for a long while. Until I entered that damn house.

What followed was nine and a half hours of pure terror-driven tension. Biohazard does an amazing job of throwing you into the deep end from the get-go - pushing you off balance, and using your anxiety against you. The Baker family are a force to be reckoned with, to be sure, but, like any good horror film, so much of the tension comes from the fear of what might happen. The haunting and hostile atmosphere cultivated throughout the game is top-notch and really essential to the success of the experience. Stray noises, flickering lights, and shadows (even your own) work to keep you on edge as you explore, keeping the tension ramped up even when you begin to feel safe. I honestly can't imagine trying to play this game in VR. After all of the terror and anxiety of exploring, finally getting to confront my tormenters in boss fights were intense but cathartic events that were incredibly satisfying to pull off.

The first half of the game is masterful, and I found myself constantly thinking about the game, even after I had put down my controller. The characters were fascinating, the gameplay was exciting, and I couldn't wait to figure out what was happening and where to go next. I do feel like Biohazard reaches its heights around the midway point of the plot, as the latter half of the game eschews the horror pacing and replaces it with buckets of ammo and exposition overload through pamphlets and notes. I still enjoyed the second half - feeling a little more powerful was a nice way to turn the tables, but some of the choices regarding pace were strange. For a game that spends most of its time delivering story through gameplay, the decision to dump answers via text felt cheap, and while thematically the ending sequence makes sense, the execution was incredibly lackluster and somewhat unsatisfying in regards to actual gameplay. Resident Evil 7 would be as close to perfection as possible if the ending sequence lived up to the bar set by the previous segments of the game.

Overall, despite a somewhat frustrating finish, I still felt fulfilled by the game as a whole, and I will never forget my time in the Dulvey Mansion. The characters, mystery, and story-telling throughout the game triumph over the short-comings, and made RE7 one of the best gaming experiences I've had in recent memory.

Opening with a magic-filled fairy-tale reminiscent of Harry Potter's Deathly Hallows, Resident Evil Village immediately removes itself from its predecessor's shadow, and sets its own expectations for both narrative and aesthetic. Whereas Biohazard rooted its horror in the contrast between normalcy and corruption, Village sweeps Ethan and the player away and into an unknown land, governed by the intertwined powers of legacy, mystery, and the Other.

The beginning of the game poses the largest threat to both Ethan and new players - you are dropped into a (not-so) abandoned village and forced to contend with fearsome lycan monsters with little ammo and protection and no clear objective other than to survive. I will admit that I failed at this objective at first, feeling more frustrated that I ever felt in Biohazard's first few hours, despite the setting being less terror-filled. However, this helplessness feeds into the existential and at times nihilistic theme and narrative of Village. Shortly thereafter, the game does open up and begins equipping Ethan with all sorts of tools needed to survive and explore the village. The bevy of weapons and upgrades offered by the shop system help keep things fresh, and provide small goals to work towards, offering a solid sense of progression throughout the game. It's not perfect, as newer versions of weapons acquired are just straight-up better than their counterparts - some trade-offs would've been nice for replay value, but the system is serviceable. It's incredibly satisfying to upgrade a weapon and run through the levels frightened but prepared to punch through monsters or whatever else may come your way.

Village does an absolutely fantastic job of keeping all of its areas unique but thematically consistent as well. The faded opulence of the Dimitrescu castle, the Innsmouth-esque fishing village, an industrial mad-scientist's laboratory, and the traditional haunted house all boast near flawless level-design that ensures the player learns every inch of their locales, while still keeping them grounded within the central hub of the village itself. In a game that contains some wonderfully designed characters, the landscapes themselves are as much a part of them as their motivations, dialogue, and stories.

The spectacularly fun action gameplay and the masterful world design both combine to support the mystery and narrative of Village in exciting and impactful ways, as well. The game never drops its atmosphere - even the most campy and kitsch moments find footing within the world of the game, though it may not always be obvious in the moment. Though I'm not sure Village quite reaches the peak moments of its predecessor, Biohazard, the total of the game is much more consistent and satisfying. Village is a triumph of action gameplay, character design, and thematic storytelling, providing moments of both gleeful terror and adrenaline-fueled action for fans of the genre and franchise.

Greater than the sum of its parts, Shadow of the Colossus delivers a cinematic experience from start to finish. It's success is rooted in the atmosphere the game cultivates - a beautiful, tranquil landscape juxtaposed against chaotic, epic battles with the colossi. The former teaches you to develop a routine. I became very comfortable with riding Agro around, searching the wilderness for my next opponent, and the pre-battle ritual of finding a shrine and catching a lizard. The boss fights themselves teach you to think differently and throw you off-guard.

It's this atmospheric thread that flows throughout the game structure itself as well, and binds the story together. In the beginning of the game, everything is presented as simple - you are to gain the power to bring back Mono by defeating evil colossi. However, as you progress towards your goal, it becomes apparent that everything is not as it seems. The treks to the boss-fights become trickier, the bosses change from relaxing puzzles to dodging things like fireballs, and things begin to take on an un-easy feeling.

If I wanted to put on my literary criticism hat, I could also tie the playfully mischievous camera into this as well. The camera, oftentimes, seems to work with its own agency against the player. It's designed to create sweeping cinematic angles, most easily seen when riding Agro, which are indeed beautiful, but they aren't practical. In the beginning, I kept trying to wrest control from the camera in order to control it myself, and while it is possible, it always took great effort and threw me off of my game. I got used to the camera while traveling pretty quickly after I learned that faithful Agro will never throw you off of an unsuspecting ledge. However, I'm a little embarrassed to say it took me until the 10th colossus, Dirge, to actually give control over to the camera. I realized that it showed me exactly what I wanted to see on its own, and I could focus on fighting the colossus instead of the controls. Another sign of the Wanderer being driven by an invisible hand, unable to act with his own agency? Maybe. But I'm no longer an English teacher, so I won't force you to take my more literary perspective on game mechanics.

The colossi battles themselves range from spectacular to frustrating, though most of the time, the frustration is with the Wanderer's limitations rather than his opponent. Lying on the ground for what seems like eons after being hit, awkward aerial controls that sometimes send you a different direction than expected, and his penchant for falling over at the slightest change in momentum by a colossus all can be fairly frustrating. Overall though, I really enjoyed the puzzle-like nature of the battles. In fact, I wish there were more multi-layered puzzles in the vein of Pelagia and Argus that took full use of the environment and multiple weak-points rather than an over-reliance on the massive enemies just shaking endlessly. I understand that they need a defense against the Wanderer's attacks, but you have so much stamina by the end, that shaking isn't a deterrent - it just makes things take longer.

I realize that my take on the colossi battles borders on nitpicking for a game that came out on the PS2. I never played the PS2 version, though I can only imagine how vast and epic the game and world must have seemed in that time. That's the true heart of the game anyways - the feelings of awe, comfort, solitude, struggle and triumph you get while playing the game, all culminating in an ending which truly brings the pieces of the largest puzzle together, and provides satisfying closure to the experience.

“You don't need mutations to strip men of their humanity. I've seen plenty of examples.”

I’ve never played a Witcher game before, nor have I journeyed into the world of the novels. Knowing nothing about the world, I was expecting a high fantasy universe of thrilling swordplay, bombastic wizards, and heroes triumphing over evil. The Witcher 3 did indeed have all of those things, but honestly, those were the low-points in my journey as Geralt of Rivia. The meat of the game lies in the “ordinary” NPCs – relationships between peasants and lordship, husbands and wives, fear and shame, and the reconciliation between justice and prejudice. The game deftly weaves these stories in as side-quests that offer more moral conundrum that the standard RPG fetch-this-item and kill-this-monster quests. Which is a little ironic, since the point of being a Witcher is to kill monsters, however CDPR does a fantastic job of making each quest fairly unique – never missing an opportunity for world-building in the process.

I will admit that I was not hooked during the tutorial area of White Orchard, but once I got a greater peek at how the politics, both between nations and neighbors, worked, my interest was officially piqued. The first true area available in the game is Velen, the most beautiful swamp and bog-ridden video game land I have ever seen. The landscape perfectly represents its ruler(s) and people as well – brimming with dingy life, dirty and twisted. It sets up perfectly for the rest of the world. The vistas and areas do become more visually pleasing, but corruption still lurks under the surface. I honestly think Velen is where the game works best, as you’re still trying to figure everything out in the main quest, but you are forced to run Witcher Contracts as well. You are dead broke, trying to understand it all like everyone else. The only difference is that Geralt is a Witcher with his swords.

Novigrad is also a triumph as one of the best medieval cities I have ever seen in a game. The streets really felt alive, and the inclusion of so many different areas like Hierarch Square, the docks, and Far Corners really helps immerse you in this town. The map, twisting and turning on itself through the buildings, also brings Novigrad to life in a way that many RPGs fail to with their miniscule cities.

The main quest, unfortunately, does not live up to the rest of the game. I am sure that a good portion of my distaste is because Witcher 3 is a sequel of a sequel of the books, but everything became much more esoteric the further along I progressed. Not much is offered in way of explanation of the Wild Hunt, and everything becomes over-the-top magic oriented. There are also some pacing issues which arise from the game giving the player false-expectations. Suffice to say, I was a little burnt out after finally finishing the seemingly marathon sprint of the game’s last act.

Part of this burn-out was also a result of the combat and leveling systems. The strength of the Witcher 3 is its stories and characters, and the gameplay/combat is simply a means to experience these events. So when the stories suffer, the other flaws begin to show. Geralt’s leveling system could use a focus on gaining new abilities rather than the generic “gain X damage,” “make X ability more powerful,” and etc. Give me a different way to approach an enemy; maybe a leaping attack, or a disarm move, or even some combos to pull off between the heavy and light attacks. Help me chain the signs and attacks together in some meaningful way. There are different attacks to unlock in the combat tree, but they don’t come until very late.

In the same way, the enemies and world also become static after a while. Higher level enemies are the same as their ordinary counterparts, just with more health. They need different attacks or tactics that differ from dodge-attack. Some of the best enemies in the game are the Rotfiends that require you to back away when you see they are preparing to explode, or the wraiths that require you to use a sign to even deal decent damage to them. They represent a mix-up from the standard, vanilla combat that makes the encounters feel fresh and exciting. Even the world traversal needs more work – more ways to approach an objective other than following a road. Let me climb, let me jump onto more things; let me fall further than 3 feet without dying instantly. Why make a giant world and then not let me play with different ways of traversing it?

These things converge into the main flaw of the game’s design for me – it’s stuck between an RPG and an Action/Adventure game, indecisive as to which way to lean. The combat is a low-light in the experience, and the RPG elements aren’t vast enough to meaningfully change the way the world is experienced. The player is Geralt, and they will always be Geralt. There are different builds within the leveling system through prioritizing signs, combat, or potions, but at the end of the day, you’re still going to be fighting things with your two swords. The ability to unlock companions to travel with would be a wonderful way to deepen the interaction with the world and allow you to indirectly experience different types of combat while still staying true to Geralt.

Overall, the Witcher 3 is with a deep and intricately crafted world of interesting stories, characters, and politics. Sure, the gameplay itself certainly has flaws, but the journey and experience outweighs those issues. The folktale-esque lore of the Witcher universe stands on its own as some of the best in the fantasy RPG genre.

I'm such a D&D fanboy that this game had its teeth in me from the get-go. There's no beating around the bush, this is a Borderlands game through and through and functions as a sequel to the D&D DLC from Borderlands 2. The only real differences are that you can equip an actual melee weapon and your grenade is swapped out with a spell. At the start of the game, you select a class, which functions similar to picking a character in the other games but they only come with one skill tree. This is because, after a point in the game, you can select a skill tree from another class and use them at the same time, resulting in some inventive combinations. My favourite part of the game is that the overworld is set up like a physical D&D table, with real-world props like a bottlecap being punched over to form a bridge over a river of soda.

Without a doubt the worst narrative focused game I've ever played. The main character is insufferable and the fact that anyone was able to put up with her for a full 10 hours is beyond me. Everything she does is entitled and she makes herself the victim of every social situation. She does nothing to rectify the issues that she creates in her own relationships and expects them to be solved because of the universe or whatever. Mae is a toxic individual on every level and worsens the life of every around her, and then complains and realizes she needs to change, and then doesn't.

There's also very little gameplay to speak of, but games like that are usually cushioned by having a pretty compelling story. I found literally no way to relate to the main character, or any of the characters, and about 8 hours in I gave it up altogether. I hated pretty much every character in this game outright. Guitar mini game was fun and music was good though. Cannot believe the universal praise it received.

What an awesome game. The way it was described to me didn't even make me think for a second about how nice and detailed it is. The entire setting is very cozy and warm, like lying down under the sun on a Saturday afternoon.

At first glance, the game may seem to only come down to this: "You are Claire, a blue bird, who needs to climb the peak of the highest mountain in the place to fulfill a family tradition. To fly and climb higher, you need to collect golden feathers. Complete objectives and collect the feathers. The end". The game is too rich to describe just that. The entire complex of islands which the game takes place is alive, the background with characters walking, interacting with you, that are much more than just ordinary open-world game NPCs. They're not just for saying to you “do it. Take that”, they chat with you, and even after you interact with them and complete some goal, they continue to chat with you using new lines. The way it all happens, it seems too natural.

When it comes to open-world triple-A games, A Short Hike slaps so many out there. For example, San Francisco from Watch Dogs

Hike's small map seems much more rich in their small space than San Francisco. The map is full of details and little things that you might even miss if you don't explore enough, like a forgotten tower, a Beachstickball game, a sunhat you get after helping to clean up a coastal island, a fishing minigame, and much more.

Honestly, I could have finished the game sooner, but being there as Claire, I wanted to continue walking around the islands. I wanted to solve the adventurous riddles and find out what was hidden near the traffic lights. I wanted to go after the lucky bandana to help my bunny friend.

The ending is perfect for the game. It might even be a little anticlimactic, but I think the journey was worth it to reach the top of Hawk Peak. Besides, after the end, there are still things to be done around, and characters to talk to.

A detail that I want to emphasize here is the soundtrack. Lively, fun, exciting, all in the right tone. I plan to come back again to this place and explore it more. Definitely one of the best games I have played in 2021 and from all-time

Excellent music, great style, good use of environmental storytelling, although it sometimes relies too much text on the walls which does not fell natural.

Unfortunately, it is also extremely flawed. On the technical aspects, for example, the resolution of most textures on the Switch is very low, and the movement is very awkward.

On a more fundamental level, the objectives are not very creative. I'm pretty sure the developers can come up with something better than "find the word XCF". They were very creative with the setting and environments, but the objectives don't rely too much on the exploration of these environments. The structure of the objectives is very similar to the first Tony Hawk games, perhaps more inspiration could be taken on the objective design of those games.

The bonus objectives of finding film canisters feels like trying to find needles in a haystack, and I have no idea how anyone find this fun.

There are a lot of rough edges here, but it is a fun game in the end. I honestly think that in sequel they can improve a lot on this base. I'll be looking forward to whatever these guys develop next.