This is the most conflicted I have been on a game this year. There is so many fun details and aspects to this game that had me smiling such as how big ratchets eyes get when he begins to slide on ice, or the really goofy hologuise ability to sneak into a robot base (you wave at your fellow robots to break in its really cute). The issue is that every time you think "hey maybe this game is fun" it throws some bullshit at you to immediate sour the experience.

Starting with things that I enjoyed about this game I was immediately drawn to the cutscenes and interactions between Ratchet and Clank as well as other characters such as Qwark and Drek. I caught myself smiling and even laughing a few times at many of the cutscenes presented in the game. I am firmly convinced that if these had been worse I would have dropped this franchise and never looked back.

The other main draw is this game gives you a lot of items and tools to work with. Some of my favourites being the decoy grenade, the controlled missile and the earlier mentioned hologuise. The game gives you a steady drip of tools throughout and I enjoyed wondering what new tool/weapon I would unlock as the game progressed.

We start to get into some hit or miss territory on a planet to planet basis. Certain enemies such as the aliens on Blarg station (probably the worst level in the game off the top of my head) and those damn flying gunners towards the end of the game turned an incredibly lukewarm combat experience (this game is clunky as fuck) into a downright awful time. Not only are you constantly fighting the controls and praying your blaster will lock onto an enemy, but you frequently just...run out of ammo and health. This games ammo and health drops are abysmal. While the ammo situation gets trivialized in the late game by the PDA allowing you to spend more money to get ammunition anytime, the health is a constant nightmare to manage. It really felt like the perfect storm to cause tilt because of the very unforgiving checkpoints, very infrequent health pickups and just constant lack of ammunition. The icing on the cake is that ammunition spent before dying is lost for good. You end up spending bolts restocking your ammo supply,which depletes your total amount of bolts. This eventually leads to the exhilarating gameplay of farming up bolts to progress the game.

To be honest the only reason this is a 5/10 for me is because I played this on an emulator with save states because my first foray into this game on the ps2 frustrated me too much. I used save-states at points where I felt there should have been a checkpoint, but would frequently wait to see where the game would actually put me back to and they were...rough. The game in its base form would most likely have been unfinished and been rated a 4/10. With the wonders of modern emulation I found myself enjoying this game more than I disliked it (barely). Despite the 5/10 this game is really more a 5.5/10 (the smallest margin into enjoyment I can give a game). I wouldn't recommend this game without emulation. I for one and relieved that its over.

A really good game that could have been a really great game. Nailed the aesthetics, tone and soundtrack. The music in particular really stood out to me and was a real highlight of the game. A few tracks such as the one that plays in the main castle made me stand still and just listen for a bit. This wasn't a one off encounter, but constantly throughout the game I just had to pause and think to myself, "nice". Really great stuff.

Where the game fell flat for me is in plot progression and characters. I think what was most frustrating to me was clearly he was able to write some fun dialogue and banter, as the two leads were enjoyable to read and watch interact. The rest of the cast just didn't work for me due to lack of proper development. It felt like a waste of what could have potentially been one of the best games I played this year. I say all this but I did give this game an 8/10. This game was a joy to play and I easily recommend it. Its cheap, its short, its a novel gaming experience. Go play it.

I feel like I played this game at an incredibly fortunate time in my life. Struggling to commit to any game for more than a few hours I was burned out on most modern game genres such as shooters, platformers and RPGs. When I first saw this recommended to me on steam during a sale I was intrigued by the art-style and main gameplay mechanic. I didn't have particularly high hopes I just knew it was highly rated and had a unique aesthetic. If you had told me I was going to play through the game in one long 8 hour session whilst losing track of the time I'd have been shocked. This game is good. REALLY good.

Mechanically the game is fairly simple. You walk up to a corpse, use your stopwatch on it and you get several pieces of information. It starts with fully voiced dialogue of the moments leading up to the death. Then once that finishes you get the big picture, the actual moment of death in frozen tableau. One of the most impressive things about this game for me is the way it sets your expectations for what the game will throw at you and then continually makes you re-assess what in the actual fuck is happening.

Once having viewed the scene you are asked to fill in notebook and describe who died and what killed them, and later what happened to the passengers who went missing off screen. Did they die? Did they escape? You don't have the answer spelled out for you and have to make a lot of educated inferences to finish the game. While some games are easy and use puzzles to make you "feel" smart, this game feels both challenging and rewarding. I never got stuck and had to use a guide. Meticulous checking off of names and revisiting scenes with newfound context is the name of the game here. Really great stuff.

This game and Outer Wilds are two games that completely changed how I viewed what games could be. I can easily say I have never played anything quite like it. A must play.

I played this game a back in 2022 for the first time and was utterly baffled at its quality. It controlled and played better than almost every single game that I'd ever played in my life. The fact that a game that came out before I was born AND was good enough to leave me constantly in awe of its quality should speak volumes. Rarely do I go back and play a game THIS old and enjoy it THIS much. Even on replays the game just works.

Sure there are some segments I don't love like controlling the missiles through hallways or the insanely long tower climb full of enemies, but god damn if this isn't one of the best games I've ever played.

Worse lethal company. In concept this game is fun. In practice it is also fun...for about an hour or two. This game is as entertaining as the group playing it. Actually going on the drop to the old world played second fiddle to whatever manic shit my friends were cooking up in their video. Realizing that he spent the first 60 percent of the footage posing next to backdrops in the starting zone before immediately cutting to us screaming and dying will forever be a massive plus in this games favour.

My favourite co-op game of all time. I have convinced 2 separate friends to play through this with me, one beat it twice with me on the ps3 back in the mid 2010's, and the other once through on PC in early 2020s. I have watched a fraction of the cutscenes from of this game through fully, most of which simply because one of us needed to pee (lets just say they were NOT a highlight). Despite having completed this game through to completion 3 times I could not tell you what the story is about, even with my newfound context of having played most of the games in the series. It's really not where this games strengths lie.

Resident Evil 5 is at its best early on, with probably my favourite segments being the very first mission where you need to hold out. The game definitely starts to lose steam when you start dealing with enemies who can shoot back with RPGS and machine guns. But that early game is peak co-op gameplay.

I have redone the horde segment on my own multiple times simply due to it being an incredibly fun sandbox to fight enemies in. I have farmed gems with the games airboat, memorizing all spawn locations of gems and treasures, finding a kind of zen state of mind trying to find the perfect line. When the regenator bugged out and would not die I KNEW where to easily grab an RPG. I to this day think about the sheer aggressiveness in which Chris yells "SHEVA, HURRY" and Sheva's "CHRIS, IM COMING" with the sound queue that plays as your friends spams the prompt.

This game is absolutely dear to me, I've played through it three times through completely, twice through partially, and done my favourite missions solo many times through. There is a lot wrong with this game but it is easily the co-op game I have the fondest memories with specifically playing splitscreen on the ps3 back in early high school. I would literally lug my ps3 in a backpack to my friends house, grabbing a 2L of Coke Zero and some chips from the convenience store along the way. Macking down chips while raging that about the rail shooter segments being bullshit (especially against el gigante on higher difficulties).

No one else (not even the friends I forced to play this game with me) liked this game even half as much as I do. I am incapable of being objective with it. This isn't just a game to me, but warm memories from a simpler time. Really really really love this game. I can't wait to eventually convince another friend (victim) to experience it with me.

Played just under 2 hours and while it certainly isn't terrible (really enjoyed the presentation and the guns felt good to shoot), there was something off about the gameplay. Surviving hordes of enemies at the end of a mission where they spawn in gradually with no real indicator of progress felt bad. You just had a mark at the top of the screen saying Purge the Heretics, and had to shoot the same enemies spawning in for what always felt like an excessive period of time. When I think back to why Doom worked for me it was frequently the level design that gripped me. In Boltgun, at least from what I played, it never felt all that fun to explore. Just walking down hallways shooting really easy to kill AI. If it gets better that's great, but after two short sessions I've felt no desire to revisit this game.

The only thing I disliked about this game was that it ended too soon. The vibes? Impeccable. The music? Cozy as fuck. The gameplay? Really intuitive and satisfying (dive bombing from the top of the mountain to build speed only to neatly land in front of my aunt was deeply, DEEPLY satisfying). Even the writing had me smiling constantly. This game is the gaming equivalent of being snuggled up under a blanket with a cup of tea reading a good book in the middle of winter.

The only reason its not rated higher was that far too short and far too chill to leave a lasting impression on me. It's simply a good time with good vibes. As of the end of March 2024, it's the best game I've played all year. Highly recommend.

I really enjoyed this game despite the pony gameplay being really dull. But the narrative was fun, the puzzles made me feel smart and there's a fourth wall break that made me momentarily think a friend I hadn't talked to in months was hitting me up on steam...so thanks for that? Totally not bummed. Maybe its a sign to initiate the conversation myself.

Game was short and sweet, played it all in one session. The final core challenge was easily the highlight for me, really really enjoyed it. Shame most of the game was side scrolling pony action with the same few enemies over and over. Really brought down the enjoyment. Good parts real good tho.

This game took me several tries to get into, being the first game I played that wasn't 0 or the two Kiwami titles. I knew in my head that yes, this would be a downgrade in terms of gameplay, but actually experiencing it made it so that I had to take a long break and two separate attempts to finally get into it. On my third and successful playthrough I just said fuck it and put it on easy to focus on the aspects of these games that I actually enjoy; the side stories and main plot.

The orphanage segments could have been handled better/been a bit less grindy (did I really have to do EVERY SINGLE KID?) but there were a few moments in them that I genuinely enjoyed. My favourite would probably have to be Kiryu hitting balls into the air and seeing the little ones run around trying to catch them. Conceptually I didn't mind it, execution wise solving the kids issues were some of the shortest sessions of me playing this game, doing them in 30 minute intervals each day. Once the game got going though I was playing around 3-4 hours a session and having a blast.

Gameplay wise I was playing it on easy and so never really felt a lot of the frustration I've heard of online with really block-heavy enemies, or getting gang beaten by every npc at once. I kind of just mashed buttons to get to the next story beat.

Probably my second favourite Yakuza game of the 4 I've played, not really close to 0, but wasn't a painful slog to get through like my experience with both Kiwami 1 and 2. I really liked the Okinawa setting itself, the sound of the waves crashing outside as uncle Kiryu goes around being a dad to a bunch of little shits. I idled the game a few times on the beach while browsing the internet, and the first hour of free roam in Okinawa I just went first person and looked around at thing (which is also what I did in Yakuza 0 way back in 2019). For what many consider to be the worst/one of the worst, I was pleasantly surprised. Now onto 4...

Solar Ash initially caught my eye with its cover art, and reeled me in when I learned it was by the same developers as Hyper Light Drifter (a game I’ve yet to play myself but have heard good things about). Seeing as it was on Xbox Game Pass I had no reason not to try it out and from an audio/visual aspects alone, it delivered. I love how the game looks and sounds. The gameplay however took a bit more for me to really come to grips with. This game is more of a puzzle platformer than action game, and I am relatively bad at the genre. This meant early on I failed at a lot of the easier puzzles (like really easy). What I liked however, was that the game will give you a task that is unachievable unless you learn certain mechanics of the game. For example, a boss fight where no matter what I did I couldn’t make it to the next spike (the spots you have to hit to fight the boss). I was forced to do something I hadn’t really felt the need to do before; I dashed to build up enough initial speed. While it seems simple enough (really should have been doing it earlier), I had no reason to do this prior so I simply... hadn’t. Same with using the slowing down time mechanic. It can extend your grapple range, allowing you to draw closer to monsters and grapple points. While yes, it's obvious this would simply be useful, I was instead just running forward and hacking away. It wasn’t until I HAD to grapple enemies to effectively kill them (high up enemies shooting projectiles), that I started to truly add it to my kit. It's these kinds of lessons, explained and then immediately being required that made me start to enjoy this game from a gameplay perspective as well.

The main objective of this game is to clear a series of mini platforming puzzles to unlock the boss, and then defeat the boss to unlock the next area. Usually these mini puzzles are designed to familiarize yourself enough with the mechanics that will soon be required to fight the boss. I appreciate that instead a wall of text telling me what to do, I had to instead realize what wasn't working and then change my gameplay. (As an aside, skating on top of giant creatures while it squirms around just felt insanely cool. The way the music changes when the boss is about to be defeated coupled with the spectacle of riding up them lead to an incredibly memorable experience).

There are also several side objectives, one of which offers a reward and the end and the other seemingly just for story reasons. The former offers a new suit as a reward, which will give perks such as letting you slow down time more frequently, letting you acquire more plasma (the games currency) and letting you have less cooldown on your dash to name a few. While none are necessary to progress the game, I found they added enough draw to make me fully explore the nooks of the map which in turn, progressed the more narrative driven side content as well.

One criticism I have in this game is the characters and writing not being strong enough for me to care about anyone/thing going on. In particular a man in the Mushroom region and these journals you can find on the ground completely had my eyes glazing over upon reading/listening to them.

Another gripe I had was that the game doesn’t control as nicely as I’d want it to, especially when it rips control of the camera out of my hands. While the only particularly egregious example was when it forced me to do one of the mini platforming puzzles at a static far away angle, frequently during boss encounters your camera gets forcibly tugged in a direction the game wants you to head, but counter to what was intended I’d frequently get disoriented and fall off, leading me to have to restart that particular encounter. Nothing too bad, maybe got genuinely annoyed at the game 3 times in its entire runtime.

The real worst aspect of this game is its combat. It feels awful, I felt that I was forced to take trade damage with the enemies I was fighting at times, and I think the game knew this would happen due to the insane amounts of health packs they have littered around the place. There isn’t really much to it other than walking into said monster and whacking it a few times. The issue stems from how bad whacking things feels. You can hit a monster twice then need a cooldown, and can also slow down time to close the distance. I however felt that doing the attacks left me always open to being hit due to the awkward dodging mechanics, and that the range of your tether grab move was never long enough to be truly as useful as I think the developers were hoping. I wonder if the range was nerfed in the hopes to not use monsters to skip parts of the platforming but that's just speculation. I think the game would have been significantly more enjoyable if I could platform in peace.

Overall I’d recommend this game if it was heavily on sale, or if you can play it on game pass such as I did. The beautiful visuals alone were what kept me invested, as well as a few really amazing tracks of music. Give it a whirl.

It took getting the third orb before the game clicked for me. I think part of the reason for that is the game starts off extremely simple and then constantly builds upon the mechanics. What left me a little nonplussed at the start of the game I felt completely rewarded with towards the second half, where the puzzles solution had me grinning like an idiot.

Took me around 3 hours to beat, never overstayed its welcome. Probably my ideal type of puzzle game (my dumb ass never even felt compelled to look up a solution). Very pretty game with wonderful aesthetics and relaxing vibe, let down only by its very short run time and pretty easy puzzles. The truly good ones were far and few. Easily recommend.

This fucking game man. If I told you I immediately fell in love with it I'd be lying. This game has so many elements that, to the uninitiated, will seem like cons that its no wonder myself and others quit this game in the first act. All you need is a shift in opinion. Is Rex's battle shouts awful, or are you watching one of the funniest cutscenes you've seen in a jrpg? Does the lack of synching for english VA taking you out of the scene, or are you giggling to yourself when the lips move and no sound? I've got to say though when this game clicks, it fucking clicks.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game that took me the better part of 4 months to complete, sometimes not playing for weeks, sometimes hours each day. This is not to say the game is particularly boring, its just that I really wanted to take my time with it. The sheer amount of random shit you can do (all very optional at least for my non-completionist brain) really allows for both short sessions before bed (levelling a blades affinity/doing side quests) or a big meaty session such as exploring a new area/progressing the main story.

The music alone carries whatever damage the awkward voice direction and occasional bad voice acting takes away from a scene. This is perhaps the single greatest soundtrack I've ever heard in a game, taking the place of my former favourites, the Nier franchise. No game has been shuffled and played in my day to day life quite as much as the Xenoblade franchise, and out of the I've played, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's is just unfathomably good. Nothing but the sweet promise of good music kept me from continuously loading up the game again. That first cutscene of the game, where you hear the orchestral soundtrack paired with the cloud visuals is, for the brief few moments before Rex opens his mouth, one of the most enchanting starts to a game for me.

After completing this game I just sat there for at least 10 minutes just kinda numb. A 4 month endeavour, finished. When something is such a constant in your life like this game is, the void left behind is palpable. For some reason despite having done side quests/blade affinity grinding in bed almost every day for 4 months (20 minutes here and there after work, or before bed) I knew I was done. Sure there were more generic fetch quests to grind, and yeah, I could farm core crystals and get all the blades. But when those credits rolled I knew I was done. So I sat there, tearing up just thinking about what a fucking ride it had been. I'm glad I played this game, I'm glad it has a stupidly large amount of content and has perhaps the GREATEST SOUNDTRACK of any game I've ever played. I'm glad I got to play one of the most enjoyable combat systems in a jrpg and an incredibly strong story (once it gets going). Really great game.

Only real complaint I have is pacing, which is my gripe with most jrpg's. One that immediately pops into mind is in Gormott, you can't just hop on a boat, you need to first find the titan and feed it. Or the implementation of field skills requiring you to menu just to open a chest/barrier. Just little blips in the matrix that take me out of the experience. Not a perfect game, but still insanely enjoyable.

Basically once you take all the cons (lip synching, questionable voice directions/acting, cringe anime tropes) into pros (this game is fucking hilarious), it really becomes something special. You just gotta fucking dive in and embrace the game in all its cringey and goofy glory.

There are some games where after playing you can look back and say "man, there was a good game under all of that", but in exoprimals case, even after unlocking new games modes, several new characters, I was like "man, there is a completely bland game under all that padding and obtuse progression".

Intriguing in concept due to my enjoyment of the EDF franchise but really fell flat, with the friends I tried it out with tapping out after a bit over 1 hour. I was a bit more optimistic towards the game, but the fact of the matter is that the lobbies frequently take you into one map where you walk a few steps, kill dinos, walk a few steps, kill some more dinos, over and over until you get a PvP or PvE end scenario where you FINALLY learn if the match is going to be evenly matched or not. Thats a lot of down time to just get absolute diff'd in the final stretch.

When the game worked at its absolute best (two or three times in the 10 hours I played), the game was actually pretty fun. The problem was the enjoyment I experienced in-between all the other shit was less than playing any other online game that I enjoy. Hard pass on this one, especially with the length of matchmaking at the time I was trying it out (November 2023).

I'm sure there are other modes to unlock and new dino variants, but I have neither the free time nor the patience to unlock them. I honestly would have rated this game lower if I had bought the game instead of playing it on xbox game pass. I'd pass on this one.

Shockingly good. This is only an 8 out of 10 due to a few levels (mostly in the later half of the game) that really annoyed me, particularly e4m2 (fuck the platforming) and e4m6 (fuck lava floors), which felt designed that upon first run through you'd be out of heals and die. While e2m6 has the benefit of once you know what to do its fine, e4m2 really just...sucked.

I definitely plan on replying this one day with a secrets guide, and could easily see myself trying to beat levels faster and faster. The fact that a game from the early 90s is better than most games coming out today blows my mind.