I very much enjoyed playing this game. Great combat, great graphics ( I played on balanced ), incredible soundtrack, and found the story to be fine.

Combat is probably what I loved the most in this game, parrying and dodging feels very satisfying, and the final few bosses can genuinely be hard.

Soundtrack is incredible, hanging around the camp and hearing the music just feels very nostalgic for some reason.

I liked the level designs, but felt that it peaked with the first area ( Eidos 7 ). Character designs are great, and I love Eve's outfits.

I played on balanced mode, and while the levels are mostly 60fps, in the main hub and in like two boss areas, the frame drops can be pretty noticeable.

Story is fine, but a bit on the shorter side. Can definitely complete it in about 10-15 hours.

I think Sam & Max are the most gay-coded characters ever created and I honestly could not tell you why. Maybe its the suit and the height difference.

Anyway, it boggles my mind just how effortlessly and hilariously witty this game is. I feel like a lot the time attempts at comedy through fourth wall breaks and quippy witicisms come off as really forced and groan-worthy, but Sam & Max are able to pull it off so well. Their dynamic, wordy banter, disregard for the law and morality, and gleefully cynical outlook on the world is just delightful and makes the humor really work. It's paired with absolutely sublime art direction and animation to boot. Sometimes the puzzles are fairly obtuse, but I think that's the price you have to pay with some of these older adventure games.

A massive improvement on the first game in pretty much everyway imaginable. Not without its problems but Just Cause 2 is a way more enjoyable experience than the clunky mess that its predecessor was.

The story is as simple as can be, Rico is once again thrown into a politically volatile country and has to kill its dictator. This time it is the island of Panau. I much prefer Rico in this game than the first, he doesn't only speak in one liners and has a smidge more personality to him. For some reason the entire voice cast was switched so the three returning characters all have new voice actors which is also the case for every game going forward, not sure if there is any specific reason. The main story itself is only 7 missions long but the game is padded out with required side content which I will go on to talk about in a bit.

The gameplay is an absolute blast. It improves so much on the first game through stuff like the grapple hook actually working, making health an actual concern instead of Rico being a bullet sponge and all around better controls. Don't get me wrong there is still a lot of jank, the flying controls are very hard to get used to and the camera doesn't always help and instead of the driving being more like gliding, I found it to feel really stiff. Best way to describe it is if I was trying to make a turn, the car wouldn't turn till the last moment and I would normally go flying off the road. Dont get me started on trying to use planes. Trying to take off on a plane was so weirdly frustrating as if you even breathe on the joystick the plane goes full tilt into the nearest wall. Sometimes it would just hit off something on the road and go flying backwards. It was like trying to ride a scooter on an ice rink. Despite all that they really nailed down series staples like the grapple mechanic and the gun combat. All in all it feels like a less polished version of Just Cause 3 which is to be expected.

Visually its a massive upgrade, thankfully they decided to ditch the uncanny valley cutscenes for more fitting character designs and cutscenes you would see on Xbox 360 games. Nothing really to note score wise.

My biggest complaint with this game is the chaos feature. Which I believe does become a staple going forward so it will be a bit of a reoccurring issue. Basically the main story is 7 missions long, to combat this in order to unlock the next story mission you have to run around doing missions all be it fun missions for the three biggest gang leaders in Panau. Now these missions were fun, none felt stale or repetitive and most where short enough to not drag on. My problem is with the fact that there are only so many of them. While waiting to unlock the last missions I had no faction missions left to do so I had to just fly around blowing up stuff in order to get enough chaos points to unlock more missions. Which again, was really fun but its something that did put me off a bit.

To put it simply, Just Cause 2 is really really fun. You get to fly around blowing stuff up and actually able to have an enjoyable experience in this game as it fixes what was terrible about the first one. Despite the lack of substance in the main story, I had a blast with this game. Im looking forward to replaying Just Cause 3 next to see if its as good as I remember. Solid recommendation.

Gave myself a day to kinda just sit with the whole experience of my first playthrough. Xenogears is one of those games that kinda just existed within the culture in a way where I always heard people vaguely gesture at its greatness, but never actually got any full details about what exactly made it so great. So for years and years and years and years and years I kinda just kept putting it off, playing many other games before and after it, hearing about its complexities but never really the details as of what those complexities were. Finally experiencing it for myself I completely get it.

An experience that is some parts Neon Genesis Evangelion, some parts Gundam some parts sci-fi novels and films, Xenogears wears all of its inspirations firmly on its sleeve and proudly bears it all as it goes into its own psychological, religious explorations of the self.

The ways in which it talks about running away from your problems rather than dealing with them and how that inevitably comes to bite you in the ass, there's a quite good example with the martial arts tournament you enter that genuinely surprised me when it happened.

The ways it delves into how trauma can inform and explain behaviors, can cause people to drift one way or another instead of facing the real problems within themselves, be lead to more and differing kinds of abuses, or completely shut themselves down due to their inability to truly cope with the things that've happened to them. But it also firmly discusses how important it is to continue to live, to continue to fight and go on despite the struggles we face in life, how we have to take responsibility for ourselves and the things we do despite our traumas, that again our traumas can be an explanation for behaviors and actions you may take, but at the end of the day you have to be responsible for your own actions.

There are a few characters I do wish were able to get more from the story (Rico, Maria, Chu Chu) and the very clear rushing of things does absolutely fuck with what was clearly supposed to be this ambitious and sprawling experience, though I will say in spite of the clear rush job that Disc 2 ends up as, I genuinely still quite loved the way they handle the presentation and style. Some of the quick cuts are really sharp and effective, I dig the kinda play stage type beat they do for some of the cutscenes they didn't have time to fully make enviornments for, I like the way they frame each part from differing characters POV's. There's a lot of cool things that make that second disc really interesting, kinda reflecting episodes 25 and 26 of NGE in ways.

It's such a strange feeling in ways cause like I kinda despised the gameplay at times (ground combat relies a bit too heavily on deathblows and grinding them out where-as I feel like the Gear combat is a bit better balanced in terms of building up to your deathblows and having to strategically manage your fuel levels in interesting ways). But even though I wasn't huge on the combat or some of the dungeon design (fuck Babel Tower) the whole thing just really came together for me. Everything it was doing was absolutely fuckin aces, it honestly reminded me of watching NGE for the first time as a teenager AS WELL AS watching both Shiki-Jitsu and Rebuild of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 with what exactly it was going for in its messaging and just how much it resonated with me. How much Fei's character arc resonated with me, how dense and packed of an experience it was overall.

I think I can safely say that I'm getting into the series cause I wanna see what else can come from anyone involved who was able to put this together.

Did I seriously go out of my way to play through a honestly pretty mid-strategy card game and pay an extra 20 dollars for DLC just so I could get the privilege to enjoy a good version of Deadpool..........well....yeah........... :/

I mean don't get me wrong if you like X-Com and other strategy games I'm sure you'll like this, it's just that I honestly don't personally care for strategy games and if I'm being 100% stright with you the game is beyond easy for like the first 20 hours; I just wanted to see a character I once loved actually done well and not like how's they've been portraying every single medium since the movie. Does this make me possibly the most reddit pilled out of all my friends? OH YEAH 100% UNDOUBTEDLY, but at least for me I can pull out the long time fan card and say I like this character before they became completely insufferable and a tool for Marvel's neverending slop machine of a cinematic universe.

When I say that Deadpool that we have in this game is probably the most well written and suddle he's been since his 2013 run that should probably tell you how dire it's been for the last 10 years. For some reason for the longest time Deadpool has been a hard character for writers to work on for some reason, see most hacks writers looked at the movie as their main influence or they think they've understood the character through cultural osmosis which is pretty the much equivalent of thinking you've understood the character by reading an unfunny bumper sticker. Deadpool at his best is when he's an annoying jackass but everyone around him either hates him or feels some sort of pity, He's not a character you wanna laugh at he's a character that bottles up his emotions and pushes other people he perceives to be his friends away while hiding all of his more nuanced aspects behind a super thick wall of irony so no one can hurt him. He can sometimes get better and in the case of his 2013 run even work on himself to be a better person for him and his kid, but at the core of his character he's a sad pathetic worm that can't die and refuses to go away. The movies kinda did that but as soon as Ryan Reynolds signed on to play the character the films stopped being Deadpool movies and instead became another linchpin in Reynold's adventure capitalist money chasing one note acting nepo career.
The game gets this dynamic down almost perfectly, although it stumbles a little bit here and there at times. He still has traces of his "lol chimichangas aren't I clever that I know I'm in a video game" that gets on my nerves but that dynamic of everyone else in the game just hating Deadpool constantly is still there and it works really well; especially with Blade. He’s pretty much an outcast for a majority of his time in the game and since the game gives you the ability to go on activities and hangouts with him you get to see a much more personal side of him. More a majority of the time you try to make a somewhat tangible connection with him he’ll either bounce off the question with a stupid joke or make a light-hearted threat until you get to the very near end of his relationship arc where he’ll finally open up just a tiny amount but enough to where your words actually get to him and make him care, granted it’s not a lot and he’ll still push you away with his annoying jokes but he’ll care more about you as a friend; which is technically growth for him and you know what that’s better

Out of the other characters in the game and even it’s DLC Deadpool feel ultimately out of place because this a game centered around the supernatural side of the Marvel universe and having a pudo-XMan running around killing vampires, demons, and a supernaturally corrupted Sabretooth with Blade and Ghost Rider is…..well…..dumb..dumb..it………it’s really fucking dumb. But like in a way that’s very camp and comic booky and honestly I’ll take this over any of that MCU coded poorly written Insomniac slop shit (My opinion on Spider-Man 2 has soured in the months I played it in). So yes I did indeed play a 50 hour long strategy card game just for Deadpool, and I will probably never touch this game ever again. Could I have just gotten all my info from clips on youtube instead of paying 20 plus another 20 for the season pass…..probably, but do I regret it? ……………..eh it’s still a better version of Deadpool then last comic run so I’d say it was worth it.

(Also in case anyone was wondering what my thoughts on Deadpool and Wolverine are, it looks like a movie scientifically designed to piss me off and to make Reddit soy. I will not be watching because I have standards and would rather go see Sonic 3 or a real movie instead.)

The Devil May Cry format, set up as a rhythm game - and while its not uncommon for the game to fail you for QTEs, the real magic lies in how Hi Fi ties every aspect of the game to the beat. Encouraging (instead of strictly requiring) rhythm promotes a groove within players, a sense that with every action they take they are jamming along with the game - achieving a potent and unbelievably addictive sense of flow when synchronized.

Frankly, I think Hi Fi’s aesthetic would otherwise be a liability for me. Garish color palettes, generic and undiverse enemy design, even the music selection is not my favorite. The supreme, engrossing nature of the combat puts me on a wavelength that elevates every other aspect of the game, I can forgive significant holes in the character writing because I am actually, literally vibing. Any mission thats mostly a gauntlet of enemies is a great time - the opposite of how I usually feel about the genre.