Blanc is exactly what you'd expect it to be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

It's a heartwarming tale of a fawn and a wolf cub that get separated from their respective families and help each other to find their way home. Along the way, each animal will use their specific skillset to open the way for the other and vice versa. This game was clearly built for co-op but it can be played solo. I played this co-op over the festive period and it was a perfect vibe.

Mostly, it controls really well but there are parts where it's difficult to aim your jumps or it's just not clear where you're meant to go. There's one instance where some baby goats help you out and they mirror each of the two main characters. This isn't made abundantly clear resulting in there's a lot of trial and error which almost got frustrating.

Blanc is an incredibly short experience and can easily be done in one sitting. Usually, I don't mind that at all as it encourages me to replay the game several times over. However, whether it's because the game is still fresh in my memory or not, I'm not sure there's enough here to pull me into another play though. At least not for quite a while. It could be a new Christmas tradition? Who knows.

It was a really enjoyable experience playing in co-op, so if you have someone who is a non-gamer and want to ease them in, you could do much worse than this.

I had a love/hate relationship with this game. At times it had me hanging on every moment and I couldn't wait to push the story forward. At others, it felt too smart for it's own good (or too smart for me anyway) and I struggled to keep track of what the hell was going on.

This would have got much higher than 2.5 stars if it wasn't for the god awful Switch port. DO NOT play this on Switch. The game crashed on me countless times resulting in me having to re-tread old ground again and again thanks to a sparse auto-save system and me forgetting to manually save. I don't understand how the Switch can't handle this game as it's not exactly a technical powerhouse, but it really struggles.

It wasn't always clear to me what I needed to do or where I needed to go, but that was a reluctance on my part to delve into too many of what I assumed were side-quests. In fact it's the side-quests that help unlock more and more of the main quest and shine a light on where to go next.

There are countless ways to play this game, with each decision or response you give affecting seemingly everything that happens afterwards. If I had it on another system of PC, I would definitely revisit the game and try to respond differently to see what would happen.

This is a game that will almost certainly be a permanent fixture on 'games to play before you die' lists and with good reason. Just make sure it's on anything but the Switch.

After the opening segment the game kind of felt stale for a little while but once it picked back up again it was hard to stop playing. By the end of the game I'd had the best time.

The biggest flaw is that there's no fast travel. A lot of the game asks you to go from one end of a level to the other (multiple routes open up as you progress) and once you've achieved your objective there, you then have to retrace your steps all the way back to your ship. To make things worse, you have to sometimes revisit the planet you're on and do it all over again. As you gain new abilities and unlock skills, it makes traversal much more bearable and you get used to the lack of fast travel, but still, it would have been a nice feature.

The combat got a bit tricky for me on some of the harder boss fights and with certain enemies. I believe it's similar to the Soulsbourne type of games which are really not my thing at all but at least this was more forgiving. Plus unlocking some of the force powers was very satisfying.

I can't say much about the story without spoiling anything but what I will say is that if you're feeling Star Wars Fatigue like I am, then this is the cure.

I clocked in around 19 hours in total which just the right length to keep me interested and I'll definitely check out the sequel when I get a chance.

Wow! Definitely the best of this remastered trilogy. This takes all the mechanics and style of Yakuza 4 and pushes it further. Once again you play as different characters throughout the game, but now each of them has a very specific side-story/job to do which really sucked me in. I don't want to spoil anything but as this is at the very start of the game, the taxi missions for Kiryu were a lot of fun!

There's a lot of game here to sink your teeth into if you so wish. Other than the specific side-stories, I only dabbled with the regular side-quests a little bit. The ones that I did were your standard Yakuza affair and fans of the series will know exactly what they're getting into but they are still fun nonetheless.

My main issues was that part 4, and to an extent part 3, felt tacked on and mostly irrelevant to the rest of the story. I had a good time with them, but it felt quite shoehorned into the overall plot.

If you've played a Yakuza game before, this will be right up your street. Familiar enough to get into but there's enough new things to keep you on your toes. Definitely not a series entry point but still a really strong episode in the Yakuza saga.

What a fun game!

There were so many creepy parts but it was constantly a joy to play through. It was never too taxing so if I did have to redo a part it wasn't much of a slog to get back on track.

Some might find the game a bit short (I clocked in about 3 hours) but I think the duration and the extra hidden secrets to find make this so much more replayable.

I loved the ending too but no spoilers here. Really recommended, especially as it'll likely be quite cheap in a sale most of the time.

I can understand why the series needed this hard pivot after RE6. It was really refreshing and I found it genuinely scary a fair few times.

There's not much you can say without spoiling things, but parts of the game felt a bit tacked on and unnecessary (as if often the case with RE games...) and it should have been a more tight, concise story solely in the house.

Definitely worth checking out if you have even a slight interest in horror and/or Resident Evil.

I love Persona 5 and Royal but this just didn't click with me properly.

It's not a bad game at all, it's just the style of game isn't for me personally. I love the characters and it's a great continuation from the regular version of P5, but the story can feel a bit convoluted at times.

I had more fun when I dropped the difficulty down to easy so the battles were quicker to get through and I could enjoy the story more. The gameplay mechanics felt like a lot to learn and master quickly which is fine, just not what I'm after right now.

I can see myself revisiting P5 Royal multiple times but I don't think I'll be doing the same with Strikers. I'd have much preferred this to be adapted to an anime and experience the story that way.

I can't give it a rating yet as I've not finished it but the difficulty spike in this from the main game is astronomical! Exploring the island as Amy, Knuckles and Tails was great fun despite some technical issues (the camera when Knuckles is gliding is a bit of a nightmare).

As soon as I got to playing as Sonic and trying the cyberspace levels I hit a wall. They're so difficult they require a lot of time to trial and error them and find the best route, not to mention all the collectables in each level.

Then there's the towers you need to climb. I only managed one before I drifted off playing this. They're so fiddly and one mistake can mean starting from the very beginning again. As much as I loved Frontiers, the intricate platforming was not its strong suit, so to rely so heavily on it in this update is a really weird choice.

I want to come back to this at some point and finish it but I've got too many other games to play to stick with this and keep getting frustrated at this time.

Of the two new characters, Usagi is by far the better of the two. I found him such a joy to play as, especially as you can 'air-juggle' with him, truly making him feel like a worthy new addition. Conversely, I really struggled to click with Karai. I'm not sure what it was exactly but when going through the main story mode as her, I found it much harder and was dying multiple times, a position I've not been in since my first few playthroughs. That might just be me though and other players might find it the other way round with the new characters. Either way, they do both offer something fresh and new.

The survival mode is fun and adds a huge amount of replay value to the game. It does take a lot of trial and error to keep slogging as one character, dying and starting again so that you can level-up that character and use your new abilities to get a bit further along. Unfortunately I've not found it as addictive as the survival mode in similar games (Streets of Rage 4 which I've put so many hours into) but I'll definitely be picking this up and having a quick blast on survival when I want to scratch that itch.

For the relatively low price, this is absolutely worth picking up for fans of the main game even just for curiosity's sake.

EDIT: Ok, I've since played Survival mode online with a bunch of strangers and it was so much fun! Definitely the best way to play this mode and deserves an extra star because of it!

This was my first time playing this game since it came out on PS2 back in 2004. I'm quite nostalgic and usually when I revisit games from my past I have a great time and can overlook any flaws they may have. Unfortunately it wasn't the case here.

Firstly, it's just way too buggy. This whole Definitive Trilogy is infamous for their bugs and problems but having played through the other two, most of the issues seem to be resolved with them. I can deal with textures taking a while to load and similar graphical or performance issues, but for San Andreas I experienced cars spawning from the sky, random piles of bodies during missions and getting stuck in death loops where it was impossible to continue without manually loading an old save.

I won't touch on it too much but there's some content in the game that has aged really poorly too. That's also true of GTAIII and VC but it seemed way more gratuitous here.

Enough negatives though. The game still has fantastic parts and it was great exploring San Andreas. Now revisiting this game after GTA V you can really see how this was the blueprint for that game and the various locations and routes that survived the transition. I've also physically visited Las Vegas and San Francisco since playing this game originally and it's impressive how the game is able to semi-faithfully recreate these cities, albeit on a much smaller scale obviously.

If you can force your way past the bugs and flaws, you can still find a fun experience here but just make sure you wait until it's on sale, and at a hefty discount too!

I loved playing as the four different characters. It was jarring at first having played three games pretty much just as Kiryu, but the fast pace of the story draws you in so you quickly adjust.

The fact that the game is effectively split into four parts with a different character for each section doesn't give you enough time to spend with each of them and as a result, I wasn't as invested in the side quests this time around (although I wasn't with Yakuza 3 either so maybe that's the nature of these remastered games). The different fighting styles and ways of navigating the city for each character stop things from getting stagnant too.

Sometimes the plot of a Yakuza game can feel like a slog in places (hence why side quests are often a great breather) but for better or worse, the story of Yakuza 4 rockets along and never feels like it has a lull or low point.

If it could have struck the balance of main story and giving you a reason to "live" in the world a bit more this would possibly be 5 stars.

A huge improvement over BotW!

It still has the things that annoyed me about that game (see that review) but as I was expecting them this time, the frustration was lessened.

The world feels a thousand times more alive. There's so much more to see and do. Plus the added levels of the Sky Islands and The Depths offer different types of exploration and almost changes the game entirely depending which one you are tackling.

I did find there was a lack of signposting making it difficult to locate where to trigger certain questline (such as how to navigate the depths) but once you realise you have to return to places you've already visited to find more missions it all clicks into place.

The story is a refreshing change of pace for Zelda games too. I often find them too similar and it's only the mechanics the differ from game to game. This however felt like a proper sequel to BotW without replaying the formula too much.

Despite a couple of flaws here and there, I had an absolute blast playing this game so it gets the full five.

Working my way through the Yakuza series and coming to this after Kiwami 1 and 2 was a bit jarring.

As the other two are full remakes, this being a remaster doesn't have the same quality of life improvements and it feels a bit dated.

The main story is fun but I would have liked to have spent more time in Okinawa as Kamurocho felt quite empty in this game. Splitting it across two cities and not having either live up to their full potential holds the game back. I didn't feel compelled to really dive into the side-quests in this one either.

I still had a great time with the game but I'm happy to move on to the next entry now.

I thought I'd come back to this ahead of Tears of the Kingdom and go through it again.

It's still a really great game but it's got a few too many bits and pieces that annoy me for me to give it a full 5. Weapon degradation, the stamina system, not being able to climb in the rain, these are just a few of the features that stop me fully enjoying myself. I do understand why they're there and they add to the experience. It's worth mentioning they didn't bother me as much on a 2nd playthrough.

The shrines are a highlight; providing various degrees of difficulty and teaching you how to use your abilities at the same time. The cooking element is nice but it would be good if the game provided Link a journal to keep track of certain recipes so you can easily recreate what works and suits your playstyle.

It's odd that this game includes the infamous "climb a tower to unfog the map" feature that many an Ubisoft game is scorned for, but seems to get a free pass here for some reason.

Enough about the negative though, this game is truly fantastic and will go down as one of the greatest of all time. Despite my niggles with it, everything does just work and works really well. My 2nd playthrough was quite rushed in order to finish it in time for TotK, but you can spend forever in this game, completing side quests, collecting everything, playing with the ingenious physics and much more. Highly recommended.

Fantastic remake of a fantastic game.

Makes enough changes to keep things fresh while maintaining what made the original so perfect.

Now to go again on new game plus! And probably again after that.