i've always found post-apocalyptic fiction very interesting due to how it forces us to deal with humanity at its rawest and most vulnerable, the conflict between the characters, the struggle between the "good" and the "evil".

the last of us takes all these factors and uses them to make a story about humanity, about a father/daughter dynamic and the harsh realities we face in life.

i also really like the gameplay. its mix of stealth and action is something i really enjoy.

the complex relationship between joel and ellie is something that really stuck with me, the game really shows how difficult the world is, how the actions of people can impact someone so much. i've always been very interested in human relationships, they are so complex, yet they're so simple at the same time. the way the game shows them is so human, so real, the way you both sympathize and hate them.

the way the characters are explored is pretty good too. as i said, they feel real and human, they do things that feel real and human, not just action movie tropes. the dialogue and voice acting are brilliant and really bring these characters to life. the relationships are explored very well.

i don't have any reason for this to be at "only" 4 stars other than i guess some of the navigation is a little busted. but that's a nitpick really. i enjoy this game a hell of a lot, and it's something i'd put up there with some of the most thoughtful games i've ever played.

I remember playing the demo for this game constantly back in the day. Trying to get a higher score per kill and trying to creatively dismember every freakzoid that ran past me. I thought the mechanics made the shooting so cool. I memorized the set pieces and where each weapon drop was. It felt the right amount of Arcade yet console.

So when I ran into this same space at the end of the game, everything became so familiar. All game I've kinda just played it as a shooter with the mechanics given to me, not really maximizing what I could do because well... I already maximized all my weapons and upgrades. But when I got to this part, It kinda felt like that ratatouille scene with the critic. I was having a blast trying to recreate that optimized run I did so many times, playing through the demo once more. It was second nature to me.

Second Nature is a good review of Bulletstorm. At first, the slow motion of the kick and leash feel weird, but very quickly they become second nature to your arsenal. Sliding, kicking, pulling, thumping; the core movement and non gunplay mechanics all bleed into one another that just feel good to use. They allow for positioning and forcing enemies to fear for you instead of hugging cover every 5 feet. It's all super addicting. Once again I found myself sitting on my porch, playing this on my Steam Deck damn near until completion.

The biggest surprise for me was the story. Funny enough, I just talked shit about Borderlands 2 like a month ago for the same caliber of writing, but for some reason it just feels....right here. General Sarrano is a supreme asshole. Every time he spoke, it made me mad I couldn't pull the trigger my damn self. For the chaos that occurs just off one shipwreck, you can understand why the tone is irreverent. Though the ending sequel teaser is kinda lame.

After Call of Duty 3 it seemed like the PS2 will not get an another Call of Duty, especially since Modern Warfare skipped over the console entirely. The PS2 was the main battleground for the Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games, where the two giant would show the world how to do a proper WW2 shooter. Medal of Honor made a final attempt at a PS2 game with Vanguard (which I though was okay), so Call of Duty needed to show something too, and this is how we got World at War - Final Fronts.

Final Fronts was developed by none other than Rebellion, who are known for the Sniper Elite games nowadays, but they did a lot of stuff back then, especially on the PSP. Despite being called as World at War - Final Fronts, this is not a port and have nothing to do with the original game, instead, this is a different take on that game's campaign. This one has two main campaigns, namely a Pacific and a European one, each having a handful of missions. These are all pretty familiar to an average Call of Duty player, as they are mainly about "destroy xy, clean this building, do this, hop into a turret" and the usual stuff.

On the technical side, Final Fronts runs way better than 3 or Big Red One, offers short but fun campaigns and as a bonus, the voice cast in this game is insane. Steve Blum, Kiefer Sutherland, Nolan North (wtf), Brian Bloom and the list goes on. Also, the european campaign has these amazing snowy locations, which I always love in a game to be honest.

To be fair, after Call of Duty 3 I just wanted a short and simple experience, and I got it. At the time, this game was considered really bad, but Rebellion did a fine job and I like the short nature of this one. It is nothing special, but as a final PS2 game, it is really decent.

“It’s common knowledge that irradiated cats have 18 half-lives”

I think something that is pretty infamous about me is that I don’t like western RPG’s. When I mean western RPG’s, I’m talking about open world games which have many RPG elements to them. You know like the Witcher, the elder scrolls, stuff like that. But it was never a case of ‘oh I just hate those types of games cause I feel like it and I’ve actually never tried them’ I’ve tried western RPG’s many times. I tried the Witcher 3, and hated it. I tried Skyrim and found it boring and pretty tedious. I also tried fallout new vegas but didn’t find much inspiration to continue it after the first few hours. However, a friend of mine pushed me to try and give the fallout series another try and recommended me fallout 4…and I really didn’t like that either. I was pretty much ready to give up. Ready to throw in the towel and declare ‘western RPG’s just aren’t for me’. But then there was one last game I hadn’t tried yet: fallout 3. I’d purposefully stayed clear of it because let’s just say it has a pretty infamous reputation for being not the greatest game ever made. However, there was a part of me deep down that wanted to like a western RPG and there had to be a game that I’d like. So I caved in and decided to give it a go. I was hoping to try just an hour and see if it hooked me, that hour became 2 and then before I knew it I’d spent around 3 hours on it and it ended up becoming a game I’d play each day for around 2 weeks. So after giving it a go and finishing it, these are my thoughts on Bethesda’s fallout 3.

“Democracy is non-negotiable”

The story I think is probably the most simple and basic story I’ve probably ever seen. So in this you play as Liam neeson’s son in his quest to find his dad after he left vault 101, where you both lived, without saying anything. This sends you out of the vault and into ‘the capital wasteland’ which is the land in and surrounding Washington DC after a nuclear bomb hit it. The story sends you kind of all over the place where it’s revealed that Liam neeson actually wanted to finish off a project he had started years ago to purify the water in the wasteland. We then find him and he tasks us with helping him set up the purifier but everything seems to go wrong when the enclave show up, kill Liam neeson, and take over the purifier. After joining up with the brotherhood our mission after that is to find a thing called the G.E.C.K. which would then help us have an advantage over the enclave, however they take the G.E.C.K. from us as we end up having to do a last stand against them. The story then finally ends with either us or someone else turning on the purifier and sacrificing themselves. To be perfectly honest, how this main story ended up winning the gdc award for best writing is kind of beyond me. It’s fine, it’s serviceable but I wouldn’t exactly call it a masterpiece in modern fiction. I also kinda dislike the fact there aren’t other endings that aren’t tied to the main quest line. It put the wind out of my sails a little bit when I realised that every ending no matter what stems from whatever you do at the end of the main quest and to me it doesn’t really work? This is just my opinion but if you become a slaver the last thing you’d probably want to do is help your dad with a purifier but I digress.

“You must like having such a good looking butt”

I think with the lack of a great story, fallout 3 makes up for it with really good and understandable gameplay. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t the greatest combat out there but it certainly gets the job done. I do admire how easy it is to grasp. One of the systems that definitely makes fallout…well fallout is the V.A.T.S. System. This is a system where time freezes and you can pick a certain part of an enemy to shoot out such as a leg or an arm. This can be really helpful actually as if you shoot, for example, the right leg enough, it’ll cripple that certain body part, giving you a further advantage in the battle. To be honest I’d go on to kinda say that vats is kinda broken in this game because with the right weapon and the right distance you can essentially get through an enemy encounter very quickly. Weapons also have durability to them that affects their damage output. So if your weapon has very low durability, its damage will be very low compared to when it had a very high durability earlier. There’s also the radiation system but it’s not really a part of the game I ever notice much surprisingly. You’ll have a secondary meter that shows how high your radiation level is, which usually comes from eating radiated consumables or being in an area with high radiation levels. This ends up increasing your radiation level and can end up making you radiation sick, although I never really had trouble with it nor did it stick out. The gameplay isn’t too bad and honestly I quite enjoyed it. It gets the job done and it has some aspects I kinda like.

“My experiments are of a complex nature and would take a scientist to explain… oh wait! I’m a scientist! How marvellous!”

My favourite part in the game by far has to be the atmosphere and the world created for fallout 3. Ok sure, the screen does look like someone pissed all over it but how do you expect to look after a couple of nuclear explosions? The world feels absolutely desolate and yet also very desperate as there’s never a place that can’t be discovered and heck those places are extremely unique. From the child run town of little lamplight, to the completely rebuilt and functional tenpenny tower, the whole world feels like it’s brimming with different stories just waiting to be discovered. It would also be pretty bad of me if I also didn’t mention the ruined city of Washington DC. Going through it is actually quite unsettling. You see a city that’s almost completely destroyed with many of the once famous landmarks being nothing more than parts of a greater battlefield.

Fallout 3 isn’t perfect. But it definitely surprised me. Me and Todd Howard might not get along but I have to admit, this is one of the grimmest worlds I’ve ever seen, and I like it. It truly works in the context of the game. The story, whilst basic, does have a little charm to it. I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t dedicate a sentence to my favourite companion Fawkes. And the gameplay, while pretty basic, was very easy to pick up and understand (although vats do make it real easy but I digress). Overall, fallout 3 was def a game that made me realise how wrong I was about western RPGs, and I hope I can give new vegas another try.

Ok story, easy gameplay, grim and clever world, unique locations, Fawkes

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review nine more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review eight more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review seven more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review six more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review five more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review four more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review three more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review two more times for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Read this review one more time for my true thoughts on this game.

I think Hades is pretty mid and the fun enough core mechanics aren't worth trudging through a script with such a Joss Whedon ass stench to it that Zagreus literally says "Well this is awkward" upon encountering the first boss. Get every achievement on Backloggd.com for my true thoughts on this game.

Project: Snowblind is an interesting attempt to create a Deus Ex like experience that focuses on going in, guns blazing and creating chaos, except that this was supposed to be a Deus Ex game, which was redesigned as a new IP!

To be fair, Project: Snowblind is much more than a generic FPS from the PS2 era, as I mentioned, it has many elements similar to a Deus Ex game. You can stealth around, use various gadgets and weapons and even drive vehicles to achieve your goals. Mostly, shooting does the job but why would you keep it simple when you can use spiderbots to do the job for you, throw gas grenades at your enemies or even become invisible.

Well, this game came out in an era, which I would like to call the "power shooters", where every FPS or TPS had some kind of a gimmick element to it. In this era, devs tried to implement teleportation, time manipulation or telekinesis into the plot and the gameplay of the game to try something new. These games were largely experimenting with what can a shooter be and after this subgenre died out, it became this awkward point in videogame history, where everyone wanted to do something unique and often failed in result. Fortunately, some achieved at least some form of greatness, like this one!

The game is super short, around 3-4 hours, even if you seek out the HP and energy boosters, which will increase your max health and the above mentioned energy, which will deplete every time you use your augments. Project: Snowblind leans heavily on the dystopian tech stuff, where anyone can create a supersoldier, and you just became the newest model thanks to an explosion.

You can slow down time, create a shield around you and the usual stuff. The fun comes from the gunplay, because every gun has a secondary function and there are LOTS of guns to use, and I did not even mentioned how much gadgets there are. EMP grenades, flashbangs, the above mentioned spiderbots, regular grenades and the list goes on and on. There is even a small shield that you can deploy or a nano thing, which can resurrect you if your health reach zero. The game itself is super fun, even if you are playing it in a simple style, rather than hacking and using the tools.

What makes this one a tiny bit tedious is the fact that it does not like modern things at all, and it crashes randomly. I noticed that it crashes (for me) roughly after one hour of playtime. This is not that big of an issue, because there are plenty of save points (you cannot save manually) and the length is not that long, so you will do fine but it still annoyed me.

Overall, Project: Snowlind is a gem of a game, a very fun "power shooter" that gives you enough tools to stick around until the end.

WET is a nice idea but a bad execution, its one of the games that uses the "piss filter" and it looks really bad.

The story is poor , soulless and it lacks depth. The only redeeming feature is the protagonist, Rubi, who looks cool but has a flat personality. The gameplay is good (when it wants to work properly), let's say its a combination between maybe Stranglehold/Max Payne (the shooting) and Prince of Persia (the wall running and climbing) but its a bit of a stretch.

I enjoyed the two chapters set on the highway where you jump from one car to another, as well as the sections where Rubi enters her Rage vision, turning everything red, white, and black and... that's about it? I guess... beyond that, there isn’t much to praise.
The soundtrack is nice, although I would have preferred a more metal-oriented selection to make the game feel more alive. Still, i can dig the soundtrack, it's alright.
Achieving the Platinum was an awful and tedious experience, requiring five playthroughs. This is not the kind of game you'd want to replay that many times.

The third installment of the Uncharted series was the first one I played, and despite not knowing much about the story from the first two games, I still enjoyed the hell out of it. It was also the first game I ever earned a trophy in, which adds a personal touch to my experience.

Once again, Nate is searching for an ancient mythical city, this time: Iram of the Pillars. The Islamic myth of Atlantis of the Sands is a neat idea that originates from the Quran, and truth be told, I know of it only because of this game. I like it when games revolve around mythical places that aren't the most mainstream thing ever, adding a unique flavor to the narrative.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception builds upon the foundation set by its predecessors with refined mechanics and new gameplay features. The melee combat system was significantly improved, making fights more dynamic and fluid, allowing for seamless transitions between punches, counters, and contextual actions. You can use the environment to your advantage during fights, such as slamming enemies into walls or using objects to attack.
The gunplay felt good, with shooting mechanics that are more polished, better aiming, and recoil management. Drake's climbing and traversal abilities are smoother and more intuitive thanks to improved animations and control responsiveness. The game features a variety of puzzles integrated into the environment and story, adding variety to the gameplay. Drake's journal often contains clues and hints that help solve the puzzles.
This game also features more robust stealth mechanics, allowing you to silently take down enemies and avoid detection. This adds a layer of strategy to certain encounters. There were sections where I would restart if detected and keep trying until I cleared the area undetected, but this was hard to achieve on higher difficulties. Surprisingly, the multiplayer was great, and I had a lot of fun playing it. It's a shame it's no longer available.

⚠️SPOILERS⚠️
Uncharted 3 is known for its cinematic set pieces, such as the famous cargo plane sequence, the sinking cruise ship, and the collapsing castle. These moments are seamlessly integrated into the gameplay, making the game memorable. When I think about "Uncharted 3" these great moments pop into my mind.
Adding to the list of great sequences are the young Nathan moments in Colombia where he first met Sully, the chase in Yemen, the desert visions, the ghost town, the horse riding through the desert, and finally, Iram of the Pillars/Ubar. The mythical city is gorgeous, and I was mind blown when the gates of the city opened and I got to see this great interpretation of it.
But.... why the hell does everything that's ancient in this series need to be destroyed, what's up with that? If an Uncharted game was set on an extraterrestrial planet, that planet would be destroyed by the end of the game.
Just like in Uncharted 2, It ruins the ending for me, once again. The entirety of the game you chase the discovery of an ancient mythical city only to destroy it, every fucking time.
Anyway, I really liked the pacing of the story; it probably has the best pacing out of all the Uncharted games. The cast is great with the likes of Nate, Sully, Elena, Chloe, Charlie, and Salim. I especially liked Sully's bond with Nathan, which is central to the story, providing both emotional depth and invaluable support.

That being said, Uncharted 3 is my favorite out of the first three games for its memorable moments and the bit of nostalgia it holds for me. It's a standout entry in the series, filled with thrilling adventures, compelling characters, and unforgettable set pieces.