Its been 20 years since I first played FFVII in January 2004. I was 11/12 and spent about the same amount of time on this game as I did back then exploring the world up until the end of disc 1. The flood of nostalgia for a lot of these areas, experiencing them in a way I could only imagine, is not really something I can put into words. FFVII has always meant a lot to me as a game and this is no different. How the hell did they churn out 400 songs for this game. How is there a whole song for a dog escort mission, how does it have it's own battle rendition?

FF titles defined what I always wanted in video games during my adolescence, yet each one after playing the PS1 titles, X, X-2, XI, and XII always felt like it was lacking in some department. I love most of the titles that have come out since then, but they were missing something. Trilogy decision aside, this game feels as though it achieves everything I want out of a FF title. I'm really not too sure how I feel about the story itself, but the experience is definitely close to perfection.

Video games do not “age poorly”

Everything about Tomb Raider’s design is deliberate. The tank controls, the grid structure, the delayed jump, these “dated and clunky” mechanics are what allows TR to have platforming that is extremely precise; to have seemingly insurmountable gaps. The tank controls make lining up jumps natural. The grid structure is what allows the jumps that take advantage of every last inch of Lara’s jump (and allow the small dev team to make an absolutely huge game very quickly). The delayed jump is automatically timed perfectly when the player presses square 1 block away (or one back-dash).

The game is never at fault. It is always the players’ mistake when you miss a jump. TR requires the player to have patience and fall into its deliberate design. Rush a jump and you fall. Engage with the mechanics, you’ll pass the gap just fine. TR is player agency dialed up to 100. It is immensely satisfying.

The level design is masterful. TR’s stages are enormous with many secrets to find. Levels in TR require the player to solve platforming puzzles, engage in light combat, and think critically to progress. The levels combine the games’ mechanics (block pushing, swimming, shimmying, slopes, etc.) constantly to create new and engaging puzzles room after room. It never gets old. I find it hard to put down.

The atmosphere and OST are both great. TR is a very lonely game; all the player hears are Lara’s footsteps and the occasional grunt. The music helps create an inspiring feeling of discovery when arriving in new areas. It’s so exciting seeing a new area wondering what challenges await me.

TR’s final level can be exhausting on console. While the platforming itself is fun, as it takes all the elements from previous levels and creates a gauntlet of traps and obstacles to traverse, it becomes tiresome doing the same section 10-15 times as you inch your way forward. There just needed to be one or two more save crystals in my opinion. The combat in Tomb Raider isn’t good. It’s not devoid of strategy, but it all boils down to jumping and holding down the fire button. At least there’s not much of it, and there is a decision to be made about the weapon you’ll use.

Tomb Raider (1996) is a litmus test game. It completely filters out those that have no idea what they’re talking about. Like I said in my title, video games do not age poorly. I’m 22 years old and played TR for the first time 4 years ago. There’s no nostalgia, there’s no yearning for better days, it’s just one of the greatest games ever made.

9/10

Since the great "Winter Update" Halo Infinite has been firing on all cylinders. Forge continues to provide a plethora of diverse, creative and competitive experiences to enjoy. However, where Halo Infinite continues to shine and separate itself from prior Halo games is the robust incorporation of these experiences into matchmaking. As it stands, there are probably well over 80 unique maps in Halo Infinite. The sandbox continues to expand with the likes of the "Bandit EVO" and new Repair Field equipment. Firefight has made a triumphant return and is accompanied by the unprecedented creative power of 343i's Enemy AI Forge Toolkit. The "live service" aspect of Halo Infinite is thriving at the moment. There has been meaningful, calculated roll-outs of content to keep the season fresh since its launch. Halo 3 Refueled, Combined Arms, Firefight's Mid-Season Update, and the upcoming Holiday event all flesh out this season. Season 5 marks a maturation point for Infinite as a live service game, one that I hope continues to shine.

343i has a roadmap of interesting items to continue to explore, including a Match Composer, cross-core shoulder pieces, new net code built from the ground up, and other items. I personally would love to see the return of Griffball, now that the Hammer feels particularly great. Additionally, Bomb Assault medals have been spotted in the game's code, which is also encouraging to see. More Forge map implementation into BTB and Squad Battle would also be welcomed additions in the seasons ahead.

This review is made for the base game only, taking into account the base game mechanics as well as the storylines that occur in base game zones.

All in all, this is one of the fairest and most decent MMOs out there. Yes, it has a microtransaction store, but at the end of the day, a massive server infrastructure and constant maintenance cannot be funded from thin air. Someone must pay. This is, as far as microtransaction systems in MMOs go, is a relatively fair system, offering cosmetic rewards such as mounts, costumes and housing furniture. Yes, there are items such as potions and XP boosts that can be bought with real money, but the solo PvE experience is so easy and hassle-free that there is little need of them, and challenging content will require a lot more than just a higher level or more potions (in fact, both will be rather useless).

To begin with, it must be admitted that I am a sucker for TES games. I love the world and its lore, so I try to greedily read and consume absolutely everything there is to consume about TES. For a very long time, I was skeptical of ESO – I am not a real fan of MMOs, I absolutely despise MMO grinding and level-gating, I did not think that a TES-like dialogue system and storytelling would match with a multiplayer environment, and I was rather afraid they’d ruin a relatively “pristine” lore of TES by introducing dumbed down lore explanations.

I am happy to admit that all of my worries turned out to be stupidity on my own part. This is probably the least grindy MMO out there – there is no level gating for story content (which includes practically ALL overland content minus world bosses) as everything is level-scaled, and (probably because of that) there are seldom any quests that are pure fetch-and-kills – usually they include a proper story that takes you places. That being said, I am somewhat saddened that most quests consists of talking to people, fighting enemies and interacting with objects by pressing E. Not a novel quest design philosophy.

The storytelling is obviously solo-focused, with characters clearly addressing you and you alone as the hero, but there are sometimes off putting moments when a nice dialogue can be ruined by having other players and their spells and their various nonsensical Daedric pets hovering around while you’re trying to figure out how many actual characters are in the room, and how many are just other players. It’s all a bit messy at times, but I could count on my fingers the total instances when that was a problem.

The overall gameplay is fun, there’s a TON of non-quest content to indulge in – world bosses, exploration, zone completion, lots of achievements, delves, public and instanced dungeons, crafting, PVP alliance war etc. Some new features and obviously a lot more of the same was added with subsequent DLCs and chapters (larger expansions).
Now let’s address the elephant in the room – the lore, story content and its overall quality in comparison to mainline TES games. As I mentioned, I was originally quite afraid of Zenimax and mistrusting of the sketchy lore additions that were all the rage back in the day in the TES lore community - things like THE Elder Scrolls (which are non-temporal uncountable divine pieces of knowledge of past and future events) being gamified to a literal capture-the-flag element that must be taken and held by a certain alliance to earn points.

However, once the initial rage settled and I slowly explored the zone stories, actually listened to dialogue, read the new lorebooks and (most importantly) indulged in side quests, I came to respect ESO a lot more. They have both the required knowledge and the willingness to expand TES lore in a meaningful way. Yes, this is not mainline Elder Scrolls – it will never, not until Todd Howard flops TES VI and bankrupts BGS, interfere with certain lore beats that push the overarching story forward. This is your encyclopedia to a historical novel – it’s filled to the brim with text, dialogue and in-depth knowledge about the various cultures, places and races of Nirn, and it is a perfect, even essential, companion to the mainline games, but it will always be an encyclopedic type of worldbuilding, in comparison to a groundbreaking, plottwisting mainline TES games. ESO is interpolating, mainline TES is extrapolating.

However, even THAT is not really a good explanation, as there are plenty of examples in later DLCs that not only paints within the canvas, but extends the canvas altogether. I think, over time, Bethesda gave more and more freedom to writers and the lead loremaster of ESO, and they clearly should – especially with the unclear success of future TES games, as evident from lukewarm reception of Starfield.

pretty nice step up from World in a lot of ways, although it carries forwards a lot of it's issues like the butchering of some weapon identities and the far worse armour skill system which encourages ridiculous levels of power creep in it's design. On the plus, mantles, the slinger, and the clutch claw are gone in favor of the wirebug, a game element that works like a toned-down version of hunter arts from XX/Generations while also expanding mobility to better navigate the persistent maps which also carries over from world. What doesn't carry over from world in the maps, thankfully are that game's accursed tech-demo-tier layouts. No more Ancient Forest! Yay! While there's still a good deal of verticality the individual zones in the maps are generally much flatter, making them far better suited as arenas for Hunting Monsters In and the overall layouts feel far more functional rather than World's environments which felt focused more on Looking Good but not Feeling Good to play in. We're also back to having separate village and hub quests which means, at least compared to world there's actually a relatively decent amount of content in this one for the high-rank version... I think the new mounting system is mostly pretty good, and in how it works definitely feels like an evolution of the mechanic from it's inception in 4, although it's a little too easy as is to get mounts, which is kind of a minus depending on what you value in terms if the game's difficulty. If you're the boomer who's more into the older games Rise is probably still far from the perfect MH for you, and it is for me too; but it's overall still a very enjoyable experience with mostly solid gameplay and a nice story.

A well-needed pallet cleanser after years of mediocrity. It feels fun to finally play an expansion that values your time and feels like a game more than a mandatory job. That being said, the in-game narrative direction and presentation are still pretty poor despite having very well-done side quests and an expanding lore that only grows more intriguing. I think viewing DF as the foundation for a future of WoW that's more grounded and is a return to form allows me to appreciate it a lot more than something that attempts to rectify what came before.