Perhaps it's cos I'm ill (the reason I treated myself to the PS5 upgrade and bashed it out in a day) but this was nowhere near as amazing my inital playthrough a little over a year ago.

Maybe I just needed to give it more air before revisiting because the action setpieces in this game are easily the best in the series and therefore very memorable so they're gonna lose that intensity.

The slower character moments still held up, though. I love the Nate & Elena bits so much. I also warmed up to Sam more on this playthrough too.

In addition, I'm not too sure how well The Last of Us-isms fit into this game. Some of them translate excellently but some of them should stay in Last of Us.

Overall, I still love this game. When I first played it I struggled to determine if I preferred 3 or 4 but this one clealy takes the cake for me. The action is better even though this is the most grounded. And the emotional moments hit the hardest.

I think it would've been interesting to see Hennig's original vision but I think Druckmann naturally kept some of it while adding to it gracefully. Uncharted was known for it's small characters but big plots, Last of Us for its big characters but small plot. I think he found an excellent balance for this perfect conclusion for Nathan Drake.

Sidenote: was this buggy for anyone else? The original on PS4 was flawless. Played on Fidelity Mode and experienced some pop-in, character animations not activating at the correct times, wouldn't let me climb at points, etc. which were all pretty harmless but still take you out of it. The most damning one was when I somehow got stuck inside of a wall and had to restart from the last checkpoint.

Held out on buying it for a while but this really exceeded my expectations.

People blasted the game for having terrible endgame content and they're not exactly wrong but, for the past month, I've been doing a chaos chamber run nearly every day.

Very nice to get back into the Borderlands formula. It may feel dated in terms of design at some points but I still love it.

However, there's some stuff in this game that I feel was put in to annoy people and only that. Some of the bosses are incredibly unbalanced that they're just not fun. The primary thing for me though is that one trophy must've been made to tick off trophy hunters (or had DLC plans to make it more achievable but cancelled it).

If you don't know, there's a trophy for buying the final tier of every type of inventory upgrade. With 50 hours played, I only just completed one of them. Hence why I'm logging now and removing from 'playing' because I'm only one trophy away from platinum and I've come to terms with the fact that it's just not happening any time soon.

After BL3 came out, I've been very scared to return to this cos I assumed it would feel very stale compared to the gunplay and movement in that. But this still feels so fresh!

I just have a pure addiction to this formula. This game will never get old for me.

I'm fucked in the head and actually find it funny cos it's so stupid. The story itself is really solid. Fantastic characters and so much replay value. Over 10 years later and I still come back to it and have loads of fun.

This game's DLC is also masterful. The longevity they added to the game with them is insane. Excited to replay them again now I've finished the main story once again.

The trailer really gripped me, I liked the artstyle and the old, cheesy yet charming atmosphere it had. But it also looked very cheap and likely wouldn't be that great and... I mean, it's not. But it entirely depends on the context of when/how you play it. If you play it during a stressful exam season (like me) it will be a fantastic, calming way to end or start a day.

I played it in real time (played each day in the game on the same day IRL, you get it) and I think that's the best way to consume this. You gotta play it over a long time. Otherwise, the repetitive gameplay will feel incredibly tedious and the lack of character animations will get on your nerves. But playing it over two weeks, 30 mins every day, was perfectly fine.

The world was nice to drive around and explore but the biggest highlight is the voice acting. People said it was good but I felt like that's what people sometimes say instead of "at least it looked nice". But, no. it's actually surprisingly good and it felt very natural even among the soulless faces they're paired with, perhaps why the perception of the VA is ameliorated? However, some dialogue didn't feel right. I'm no expert on Oregon dialect of 1986 but it felt more like a British dialect of recent, maybe an attempt of localisation of the English publishers? It slightly bothered me and so did the dialogue options the player is given. You pick one thing and Meredith will just say the option 2 right after anyway.

I also wish choices had more impact. Like, you can make plans for after delivering mail and it would've been cool if you had to cancel some or decline some instead of doing both to add some stakes to the game and enhance the character relationships. I do appreciate this made it easier to 100% it and get that sweet Platinum Trophy, though.

If you're on the edge about buying it, Wait for a sale. I got it for £12 instead of the usual £16 and I think it's worth that price. It's good to support indie developers but it doesn't exactly feel like the people wanted to make THIS game, specifically. The plot isn't anything original and it felt more like an exercise to hone their craft to put on their showreel to hopefully go onto make the games they want to make.

But yeah, it was nice. I liked it. A game this cheap is obviously gonna have its faults but they're pretty easy to overlook when the ambiance is charming and peaceful.
Also, it has gay people and that's very cool.

"Fate is just what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwing you over."
-Lois, Malcolm in the Middle (2000)

I added this to my Switch Wishlist about four years ago but only got around to playing it thanks to PS Plus Extra. Although I'm glad I didn't pay for a shittier version on the Switch, I might buy this when it's on sale to support the indie devs because this was actually pretty good!

Halfway through the game, I didn't think I'd write a review as it would've been negative with the saving graces being the art direction (nice colours, dreamy watercolour depth-of-field, great animations) and its accompanying score. I got what is was doing. It showed how you shouldn't misplace your anger because the world is deterministic and you replaying the SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN is exactly like how you replay things in your head in order to rationalise your own mistakes before admitting that you just fucked up. I got that, it just wasn't fun to play.

But once you get the four main puzzles out of the way (70% of the game), it ends superbly and outweighs the tedium. Perhaps it was intentional to disarm us with such boredom in order to catch us off-guard with the emotional ending as the writers are clearly smart. But they also made me watch that car crash 40 times with an overly loud and comical explosion that it lost all weight and would make me laugh so... I doubt it. Seriously though, the ending to this made my body feel weird and numb which was ridiculously surprising. The voice-work meshing with the pensive score along with the repetitive gameplay of the Old Man level really filled me with such dread. Not to mention the trophy/achievement names adding to that which is a really nice touch.

Overall, I think it's worth it for the ending but even without the ending, it is a gorgeous game to look at with some clear heart and passion put into it that has its charm. But it still is, overall, a poor execution of a good concept in my eyes.

I dunno. Hope that makes sense. Make your own mind up. This is one of those one-sitting indie games that people either love or hate.

People have recently said this about Sonic Frontiers which I completely disagree with but I think you just gotta stick with this and it gets good. Not because you're conditioning yourself into liking it but because the beginning (like most platformers) is undercooked. Not a fault just the necessary difficulty curve.

I bought this for £30 to be my "lil bro" game. Both he & I wanted it but when we first starting playing it, I started wishing I hadn't spent that much. It was Mario 3D World [one of my favourite games] but sooooo slow. Like, for real 3D World is so fluid and with this you have to break the O button to get a fraction of the speed you get in that game.

But you get used to that, especially thanks to the Knitted Knight Trials and Remix levels, and the game becomes a total blast. I didn't like any of the music levels apart from Toxin but it is cool that the levels sync up to the beat. Aside from that, the original score is fantastic. Really great stuff!

Visually, it's fantastic. Level design in, not just gameplay, but appearance is marvelous. But in terms of gameplay, the boss fights do stick out to me. This is just a really good co-op platformer collectathon. The friend levels are great. The puzzles are solid. Collecting orbs were never too easy or too difficult. Character customisation is a lot of fun.

It's no 3D World but this does have a lot to offer that 3D World doesn't! But when it comes to core gameplay, 3D World really has it beat. Still, playing this charming little romp and getting the platinum trophy was really rather swell. I know fans of the Little Big Planet didn't really appreciate this spin-off all too well but I would really welcome another one of these as someone who only played 3 and did not care for it at all.

lil bro rates it: 3.5 cos he kept dying a lot