"We did it, choom."

At long last I have climbed the mountain. I have visited Night City and I have seen V's quest to its fruition. I have bathed in a world that no longer cares about anything. A realm of pain, helplessness, and apathy.

Night City is an absolute nightmare.

But this shouldn't come as a shock. Anyone that's dabbled in the cyberpunk genre of literature can tell you that a future in which humanity has expanded beyond its physical limitations into realms of great power and imagination is also more often than not a hellish nightmare for the common person. Unfortunately for us, the developer team at CD Projekt Red has decided that you are not to be a common person - your V is to become a legend of the streets of Night City.

God. Somehow that's even worse.

Saddled with the left over AI construct of an anarchy-bent rock star and reeling from the death of your best, and perhaps only real friend in the city, Cyberpunk 2077 sends you on a quest for salvation in the world's worst city. The cops are overly aggressive, the people are incredibly hostile, and the city's run by morally and ethically bankrupt corporations that see you as a number instead of a human with a soul. It's a frustratingly somber experience in which you spend much of your journey preparing to embrace a death that you both didn’t earn and can’t avoid.

Christ.

Luckily, in the game’s 2.0 update, which refreshes many of the game’s systems, this desolation is complimented quite nicely by a skill tree that allows you to largely customize your V to your liking. Is your V going to prioritize blades and hacking? Maybe they’ll focus their energies on chasing down the denizens of Night City in a frenzy with a massive hammer. Perhaps you want to craft a V that’s a master of all, king of nothing. Regardless, the revamped perk system makes each path you choose a superbly interesting one - my V specialized in shotguns and submachine guns, dashing around the city with a double jump that made their ability to unleash a bloodlust with a hammer even more terrifying. Combine this with a responsive movement and excellent gunplay and you have quite the formidable first person action game.

So, if the game has many compelling perks and excellent gameplay, why do I feel confident that it’s a three star experience for me? I suspect much of it has to do with the loneliness the experience inspired within me - many of the game’s dense, richly scripted side quests are largely transactional. Everyone is out to destroy someone else through carefully measured psychopathy or wanton destruction and no one seems to care when the population of city seems intent on murdering each other. Though the game insisted that I was good friends with these people, I felt our relationships, even with Panam, the nomad woman that my V developed a romantic relationship with, felt transactional - they’d keep giving me attention as long as I rolled in when they needed to dig them out of a jam. The only authentic relationship o felt during my experience was with Jackie Welles, whose presence is eliminated as quickly as it’s introduced.

I completed every major character side quest and much of the game’s other miscellaneous gigs and more often than not I felt like I was a tool for other’s survival. That feeling did not change as I completed the game’s main story quest. As a result, my Cyberpunk 2077 experience, though fun and engaging, left me quite literally feeling nothing. As V’s life was on the line, I simply didn’t care very much.

The weirdest part of it all is that I’m sure someday I will return to night city and have myself a completely different experience. There’s so much variety and richness here that I’m sure I’d be able to have a completely fresh experience. Till then? Cyberpunk 2077 has left me as cold as the streets of Night City as rain falls overhead.

Wonderful game. Just not what I need from video games in October of 2023.

GUN. IT. OUT.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the team that made the Yakuza games decided to give Kazama Kiryu a gun? And not just any gun....but the biggest, loudest gun possible?

Boy oh boy do I have the game for you.

Set in the distant future after a climate disaster disrupts the world order, Binary Domain tells the tale of a group of mercenaries, led by DAN, who have been sent to Japan to investigate the mysterious robot manufacturing corporation Amada. In the process, they discover horrifying secrets that only they are in a position to save the world from. Their solution? Shoot it fast. Shoot it hard. Yell about it.

Presented as a Gears of War esque third person cover shooter, RGG Studio takes all of the lessons they've learned about writing rich, detailed character arcs and throws it out to make a 90s science fiction action movie with 80s Cannon film dialogue. Every character is a sketch of a sketch, and brazenly so. It's charming to a fault. Dan and his fellow RUST Crew companions just exist to fire their guns, drop bad one liners, and stiffly react to the changing environment around them. It's incredibly endearing, as well as extremely funny in a way that has to be intentional. It just has to be.

Unfortunately it was released before RGG was at the height of their peak fame and international reach....so no one played it.

As far as third person cover shooters go, level design is rudimentary and enemy design is incredibly limited in scope. You shoot robots, and can also shoot their legs and heads off to hobble them. Occasionally there is a bigger robot in the middle of the trash mobs you face, but even on hard mode they never apply any pressure to your position or coordinate their efforts in a way that feels particularly interesting. Cover is plentiful, which means that you and your crew never have to worry about recuperating after every bullet you take to the chest. Weapons in general feel okay to handle, with Dan's assault rifle being the star of the show - a fully upgraded assault rifle in his hands is tantamount to becoming god itself in the world of Binary Domain.

The star of Binary Domain is not its level design or standard enemies however; its the big, loud, angry robot bosses that it throws at you over the course of its six chapters. Playing on hard, this is where the design RGG is known for comes out in big ways - fighting your way to the top of a building so you can launch your self onto a robots back or grabbing a homing rocket launcher to track a flying robot while additional enemies pound you can often lead to thrilling moments of pure adrenaline filled greatness. These boss battles peak early however, and get exchanged for bigger and bigger storytelling beats instead of hot action. Such is life.

There's also teammate mechanics that come into play - dialogue options allow you to ingratiate yourself towards your teammates, as well as high level combat performance. Most of my teammates had full trust bars....but I'm not particularly sure if it changed anything. You can also purchase upgrades for your characters, but after buying the first batch of health and defense upgrades I found the game to already be too easy even on Hard difficulty, so they feel a bit extraneous.

In another life time, with a bit more refinement and quality of life, Binary Domain would be an absolute slam dunk. As it stands, its a decent take on the third person cover shooter that is silly enough with its drama and boss battles to help it stand out in the annals of seventh generation console gaming history. Where else can you find a game full of dudes screaming at you to GUN IT OUT! enthusiastically during a firefight?

The fate of Kamurocho is at stake once again. No one is who they say they are. The only pillar of truth resides in Kazuma Kiryu, who must once again punch his way through the streets to seek safety for the ones he loves.

Welcome to Yakuza Kiwami 2.

A direct follow up to Kiwami, Kiwami 2 revisits the setting of Kamurocho as a war of succession is taking place amongst the major players of the realm - the Tojo clan stands weak after the events of Kiwami. Their only chance of survival resides in a dicey alliance with their rivals - The Omi Alliance. Lead by Kiryu and company, the proposed alliance leads to a schism; old loyalties are fractured. New enemies rise up to shake out the status quo; only Kiryu and his partner in crime, Osaka Detective Kaoru Sayama can resolve the thirst for vengeance that runs through the streets of Kamurocho.

Kiwami 2, built using the RGG Dragon Engine that powers Yakuza 6 and other modern RGG titles, is a rich, strikingly beautiful game that doesn't really know when to say "when," as the waiter grates its cheese. The cheese in this case is melodramatic twists. Kiwami 2 just keeps twisting and twisting and usurping itself into oblivion - its as exhausting as much as its world is rich and its characters lovingly crafted. A full on remake of Yakuza 2, it faithfully recreates the story of its PS2 parent to its own partial demise. There's melodrama, which the franchise is known for, and then there's this kind of wacko plotting.

The story structure of Kiwami 2 is also paired with a refined approach to Kiryu's melee combat - gone are the distinct modes of play from earlier entries in favor of a more limited move set that focuses on charging up your attacks and using the environment to your advantage in the rather large fights it pits you up against. Actions feel heavier in this combat system - almost as if there's minor input delay at times, which makes the game's heavily featured ragdoll physics absolutely hysterical in execution as you and your enemies ragdoll all over the place from the first battle to the very last. Playing this directly after Kiwami can lead to some VERY intense whiplash, but seeing Kiwami 2 as a follow up to Yakuza 6 in terms of its release window makes it feel more cohesive in its place in the franchise. Leveling Kiryu is as intuitive as ever - finishing side quests, fighting random mobs and enemies, and eating meals allows you to build out Kiryu's distinct stats and abilities much like one would have in Zero or Kiwami.

The rest of the meal is just as bountiful as ever - there's a tower defense mini game you can work through, the Hostess club makes its return, and there's enough strange and surreal side missions to shake a stick at. It's a game of plenty; one could easily sink a hundred hours into maximizing every bit of what this game has to offer.

While I still found completing Yakuza Kiwami 2 to be mostly enthralling and engaging as an experience, I do think that it topples over itself as it brings its epic scale story home. Its lack of restraint overwhelms much of the great things it does in terms of character writing and structure, which ultimately makes it less enjoyable than 0 or Kiwami to experience.

This review is ONLY pertaining to the Original Xbox Co-op mode that is playable over Xbox Live or via System with up to 4 players.

Imagine, if you will Doom 3 distilled down to its barest elements. Its guns. Its atmosphere. And its all over in two hours from start to end.

That's the Original Xbox Co-op mode of Doom 3. No meaningful dialogue. No sense of exploration or meaningful progression. It answer the question: what if someone decided to make a Quake episode with the Id Tech 4 engine. And the answer pretty much rocks.

Played in two player mode over system link, this game is a rip roarin time; ammo is plentiful, enemies spawn all around you. Deaths simply send you back to the beginning of the current area with a pistol start, forcing you to climb back to where you left your partner to fend off the demons.

It feels like someone took Doom 3 and gave it a shot of adrenaline. Unsurprisingly, this works incredibly well. If it was any longer it would have been a slog. If it was any harder it would feel like a chore.

I really dug this particular flavor of Doom 3.

John Romero is gone. Carmack remains.

You can feel his absence in every single ounce of Quake 2's single player. It's sprawling hub world design. It's sci-fi setting. The choice to turn power ups into deployable weapons. Its limited application of repetitive music. All of these are the what happens when you take a work of art's identity, right down to its creator, and strip it all out for the sequel.

Released in 1997 originally, Quake 2 is the story of a soldier who ends up stranded on a planet full of evil STROGG. At least....I think they're evil. Anyways. Its your mission to lead a one man army into the STROGG base on the planet with a goal of dismantling the base and murdering its leader. That's it. What little story there is is disseminated through text objective updates, brief radio transmissions, and the game's opening cutscene. I have to give credit where credit is due - they really did try something here with giving Quake some sort of storyline to roll with.

They just appear to have traded story ambitions for any hint of real atmosphere.

Just like with the loss of the gothic horror themes of Quake, Quake 2 is a brighter, far less interesting game to navigate. Gone are the complex mazes and simple puzzles of Quake; they've been exchanged for a hub world structure that loosely ties series of levels together with a few loading screens and an objective that eventually sends you screaming back through a previous level to deposit a disk or unlock a door. There are plenty of secrets to discover and movement puzzles to traverse, but many of the levels feature simple geometry that's easy to traverse, instead exchanging enemy count for ingenuity. Many of the later levels of Quake made you feel smart like solving a Zelda puzzle makes you feel. Many of the later Quake 2 levels made me bored with their rote layout and visible, but boring color scheme. It just doesn't hit the same.

Quake 2 also just feels like a huge step backwards in terms of encounter design - the entirety of the design, playing the game on the hardest difficulty, just felt like more encounter. Just wave upon wave, followed by a hidden wave that swoops in from the sky to further muddle your progress. The conversion of power ups into collectible items that you're free to deploy at will takes them out of the encounter design equation entirely. You just get the sense that although the graphics of Quake 2 are wonderful, that without the magic of Romero and his design philosophies that the id Tech crew just didn't have the same juice for level design.

They also don't really have the juice for enemy design either - enemies in Quake 2 are limited in variety as they were in Quake, but none of the STROGG feel nearly as intimidating or interesting to grapple with. These new sci-fi aliens just don't hit you the same as a SHAMBLER does in Quake - I never once feared for my life as the enemies in Quake 2 came at me. They designed each level in such a way that I always had enough ammo to simply dispatch them, or duck away from them. Variety, as a result, in encounter design, is awfully limited.

Where Quake 2 succeeds is with its series of weapons; the shotgun, grenade launcher, chain gun, and the newly added railgun are all a delight to turn on the dastardly strogg. Movement is also excellent; players can still glide and use explosive weapons to send themselves soaring all over the place to their heart's desire. Although Quake 2 is bland in terms of overall design, it IS an incredibly smooth experience controlling your space soldier.

Quake 2 just doesn't have the same sauce that Quake does, and it never has. It succeeds mostly as a multiplayer endeavor and an exercise in abusing a known brand to cover up for lack of capability otherwise. It only has like 5 music tracks! Like. Give me a break!

It is still fun in limited bursts. But if I can't get chased by a massive, limb ripping shambler, I ain't coming in next time.

After over a year of questing, my Warrior of Light, Cornholia Honkknocker, the factions of Eorzia, and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn have faced the end of days. They have banded together and faced the greatest evil of all: the haunting futility of life itself.

They have walked to the end.

When I started this journey, the realm was reeling from a horrible catastrophe. It was both equally in mourning as it was in reconstruction after a calamity shook the realm five years prior. Eorzia was split amongst many large factions who, while tolerating each other out of necessity, also understood that their existence was threatened not only by the evil Garlean empire, but also by the smaller beast tribes. This massive multi-direction power struggle that constantly threatened to end stability for the major nations had to be resolved and in order to do it would take the machinations of heroes who could rise above it all and see to it that everything would be alright for all who sought to eek out a living on the plains of Eorzia.

These heroes were of course our beloved Scions, who through their own ingenuity and ability, sought to harness the power of the only true force that could cut through the noise and grant tranquility for some over chaos and destruction of all: the power of the Warrior of Light. Acting as a guiding force, their sometimes questionable unity and judgment sought to wield the Warrior of Light's power and influence in such a way that would, and the end of days, navigate the realm to such a place in which peace and comfort could ultimately be granted.

In the end, when the stakes were at their highest, one could say they did, though the plot sometimes got politically murky and morally messy. I suppose that's what it takes to walk a major entry in the Final Fantasy franchise with such a large scale to its end.

Endwalker, the final entry in the current ongoing saga of Final Fantasy XIV Online, seeks to both have its universe ending cake, and somehow eat it too. It pitches a life ending dilemma so great that if left unresolved will end in the destruction of life itself for The Source, while also pitching personal stakes that threaten the life of the Warrior of Light and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn as well. To overcome both, The Warrior of Light and the Scions must travel across time to seek out a great darkness that appears to be causing the end of days in the present due to its feelings of great despair.

I wish I could tell you that Endwalker is a hugely epic tale that properly sets forth the momentum it needs to tell its end of days story. In reading its plot summary, one would think that Endwalker is a grand tale of heroes doing whatever it takes to save their home from destruction. Unfortunately, at its core it is a game that never quite figures out how to get started and stay interesting as it drags through the most mundane end of days imaginable: one full of walking through landscapes, talking to a person, walking back to where you started, and occasionally fighting a few enemies before you have to woefully walk somewhere else. Occasionally this pattern, which has grown nearly unbearable after 200+ hours of questing, is disrupted by a 4 person dungeon, or an 8 person trial activity, but it seldom feels like its enough to really engage you in the high stakes that are established through its pages of texts and hours of voiced cutscenes.

In pitching finality, it forgets to drop the minutiae that would have made it feel exciting. In pitching the end of days, you feel the whiplash as you are once again told to wait in place for people to arrive, or carry a crate somewhere, or pick up an item. Your character has defeated god after god, and yet it feels like you're often one quest step away from filing taxes for the gil you've earned as the story lingers towards its epic conclusion.

I'll admit that I was often frustrated and bored with Endwalker's quest design and pacing of the actual activities that make Final Fantasy XIV so great; the worst part is that Endwalker's dungeons and trials are by far the best the game has ever delivered its players. It makes the long, long, long stretches of tedium between feel all the more like a chore when you find yourself hooting and hollering with your friends when you actually get to do the thing the game promises.

I didn't like Endwalker very much. I don't think its because I've played too much Final Fantasy XIV in the course of a year, or because I just didn't get what it was interested in; 6 dungeons and a handful of boss battles just wasn't enough to keep things engaging for me. I actually enjoyed its big, ambitious finale. but this was the expansion pack that finally exhausted me on the structure and design of XIV main storylines.

The good news is that everything else about Endwalker is amazing; the class expansions to level 90, the combat design and promise of ongoing endgame content. Everything mechanical in nature is incredible. Seriously. These folks know their stuff and it is IMMACULATE.

I just wish the main story quest at the center of it all was as well.

Gitaroo Man is a game that, at a surface level, is about a kid figuring out how to develop good self esteem. This is a good thing.

It just so happens that this also occurs through the process of his dog tossing him a magic guitar, turning him into GITAROO MAN. This leads him on a magical journey into outer space where he faces off against many foes, and through the power of music battling develops said self esteem. Its honestly pretty great.

The loop of Gitaroo Man is simple: find a foe, charge up your health meter, defend and attack your foe during a battle phase, and ride off into the sunset through each level's musical finale. Gitaroo man attacks and charges his bar through timed presses of the face buttons must be made while the analog stick is held in the correct direction. During battle phases when enemies attack you must guard by pressing each of the four face buttons in time to the beat of the music. Do this across a course of ten musical stages in order to clear the game.

It is very simple on paper. In execution it is excruciatingly finicky and difficult. Through charm, both musically and through localization, it manages to be an absolutely wonderful experience.

Gitaroo Man is a generally wonderful weird PS2 game. The precision placement of the analog, and the constant requirement to hold the analog stick in distinct directions makes it incredibly off putting to play at times - that Dualshock 2 stick just ain't made to be loved that way. The way later stages require you to jam your fingers over the face buttons to keep up pace with the game can lead to frequent hand cramping as well.

And yet, though I didn't particularly enjoy playing Gitaroo Man, which took about an hour or so, its charm and enthusiasm for its world structures makes it an infectiously fun experience. It's too silly. Too strange. You can't fight it, even your right hand desperately wants to.

To put it succinctly: I AM THE TRUE GITAROO MAN.

Cal Kestis RETURNS. This time, he's a little bit older. A bit more hardened. And he's on his own; estranged from Cere, Greez, and Marin, we reenter the story of our Jedi Knight at a point of desperation - nothing he does seems to stop the raging fire of imperialism blazing across the galaxy. Following a lead from a 200 year old droid, he embarks on a quest to find a new planet for a hidden base to save those that he loves the most from the power of the Dark Side of the Force.

Jedi Survivor is a bigger, better adventure from Respawn. Built on the excellent foundation of Fallen Order, the team has expanded Cal's move set and abilities to allow for even more variety as you expand upon your Jedi abilities. Instead of knocking you back to the basics as many of its sequel peers do, Survivor allows you to enter the world with many of the moves and abilities that you had at the end of the previous game; instead its progression works through adding new lightsaber styles and giving Cal and his trusted droid BD-1 more tools to allow them to manipulate the environments you must traverse. There's one new lightsaber style in particular that I gravitated towards, but the variety introduced through each one is incredibly tasteful; everyone will find something for themselves in the new and existing combat styles to allow for progress.

Parrying and blocking is still essential for success, and enemies still respawn upon you visiting rest points in the game world giving it a From Software-esque bit of texture that stands consistent with the previous title. I felt the parry timing to be much tighter this time around, leading to a much more difficult experience for me - I dropped the difficulty down from Grand Master, to Jedi Master to allow for comfortable completion of the main story.

Structurally, the game follows up on much of its predecessor's design philosophy; there's one main planet you visit initially, and a few separate planets that you visit that serve you the means to return to the initial planet in order to continue exploration of that planet. This ultimately builds towards you being granted to a final, hidden location where you barrel towards a final encounter with the game's main enemy. Its familiarity is both a comfort and a disadvantage - you start to feel a bit stuck in the routine as it follows the pacing and momentum of Fallen Order a bit too closely.

Where it succeeds in feeling totally fresh however, is its plot; instead of continuing where Fallen Order ends, it uses a time gap to place Cal apart from his friends; instead his companion for much of the game is a new character, Bode Akuna, who is the only remaining member of a new gang of freedom fighters that Cal assembled after leaving the old crew behind. Together, they travel across the galaxy in search of they key to unlocking a planet called Tanalor, which sits at the center of a hostile abyss. Their search leads them to discovering a wealth of artifacts and ruins from the time period of The High Republic, and in turn brushes them up against the politics and mechanisms left behind by a Jedi Order of ages long past and the demons left behind. It leads to some very fulfilling payoff both as someone who was engaged with the game's story pacing and writing, as well as someone who READS THE HIGH REPUBLIC NOVELS.

Unfortunately, despite its wonderful storytelling and expanded gameplay depth, Jedi Survivor is marred by technical wonkery that sets its AAA experience back several pegs. It's frame rate in performance mode is erratic, the game spurts and stutters as you moved through it majestic landscapes, and one more than one occasion the game straight up crashed back to the Xbox Series X dashboard. It genuinely feels bad to exist in Jedi Survivor's game world on multiple occasions. I wish I could say that this is alleviated in the graphics mode, but that mode just feels so much heavier to play for that I couldn't even stick with it for very long. Fallen Order was under baked a bit when it released back in 2019 - this game feels like you get liquid when you stick a fork into it. It's bad enough that I'm willing to detract a star from my experience just for the inconsistency.

Overall, Jedi Survivor is a rich expansion on the ideas laid out in Jedi: Fallen Order. The gameplay, character writing, and storytelling feel so much more mature and engaging; it almost makes the first leg in Cal's journey obsolete by comparison. If the game didn't feel like it was falling apart at the seams, it would be a very strong contender for my favorite game of 2023 so far. As it stands, its very, very good; maybe the Series X follow up console patch will buff out enough of those scratches for reevaluation.

Former Yakuza member Kazama Kiryu, the only man truly born to be a human hammer, has finally been released from prison to find that the Yakuza of the current day is in absolute chaos. The cause of this chaos? A sum of 10 billion yen that has recently gone missing; in the process of attempting to resume his life where he left off, Kazuma Kiryu finds himself stuck in the middle of the race to find this missing money, and perhaps rediscover his purpose in a society that has left him behind.

A remake of the 2005 Playstation 2 game, Yakuza Kiwami is a richly detailed, finely tuned action brawler that leans on role playing game archetypes to allow you to reconstruct the person of Kazama Kiryu. Set in the fictional Japanese district of Kamurocho, Kiryu must not only help solve the the mystery of the missing 10 billion yen, but also find his way through a myriad of side quests that task him with everything from building RC cars to rescuing people from shady characters with large muscles. To play Yakuza Kiwami correctly, one must not just concern Kiryu with the needs of his former Yakuza peers, but the members of the community - these vast number of side quests, which sometimes lean a bit into the silly side of the spectrum, set apart the Yakuza franchise from its peers. You are dropped into a world full of people that Kiryu, simply due to his good nature, wants to help. Through these side quests, a few city blocks feels like an entire world.

That's not to say that the main quest that runs through the veins of Kiwami is not substantial or engaging , however. The twists and turns of its plot and its wealth of intriguing characters makes solving the mystery of the 10 billion yen a most interesting one. The way the narrative design layers characters and Kamurocho concepts on top of each other creates a wonderful synergy of ideas and a sense of place as you punch your way to the next quest marker. The story itself, one of brotherhood and betrayal, is perhaps a little dense and hard to penetrate as it steers itself to its conclusion, but it is excellent; I didn't personally enjoy it as much as the masterful storytelling of Yakuza 0, but it is an excellent companion to that game's greatness in its own right.

The game's combat is essentially exactly what you'd expect after playing the much more recently designed Yakuza 0; its brawler melee combat, spread across 4 distinct styles. Each style emphasizes stringing combos together to activate heat moves; the better you get at activating these moves, the more dynamic and visceral your combat becomes. You build out your moveset through gaining experience through completing main and side story events, as well as through random combat encounters in the neighborhood at large. Your success and engagement in the game's combat depends on how you choose to build out Kiryu's abilities. Do you put your points into developing your body? Do you focus on developing special moves through fighting your bud Majima? It is truly up to you.

Beyond the melee combat, the world is full of wonderful activities to invest in - arcade games, pocket racing, various night clubs and casino experiences. Truly enough to make the game world feel alive like a downtown section of your average major metropolitan area. Its tasteful, but because of its PS2 roots, it doesn't quite feel as fleshed out as it does in later games.

Yakuza Kiwami is an excellent game. A worthy remake of an already excellent Playstation 2 era epic. It is both as engaging as it is densely layered - some late game twists and turns ended up checking me out of the story pretty hard. But it serves as an excellent foundation for the saga of
Kazuma Kiryu moving forward from here - it isn't perfect by any means, but it is a remarkable place to start.....

That is.....if you don't start with Yakuza 0. Which is absolutely what you should do.

And thus did the Warrior of Light find themself transported to another realm, free of the baggage of a half decade of war and carnage ravaging Eorzia. Instead, with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, she must save the realm of The First, which stands to lose everything to, amusingly, THE LIGHT.

Bringing two new classes to the table, a wealth of new dungeons, the single player oriented Trust system, and a brand new massive parallel universe to explore, Shadowbringers makes the correct decision of scaling sideways instead of upwards to continue the story of the player's Warrior of Light character. By setting the third expansion pack in a separate space, the stakes can continue to get higher without being forced into a space where they topple over in size like many long running stories do; its a decision that I found myself applauding after the conflict just continued to escalate throughout Stormblood.

It also allows the story writing team to do what it does best: world building. In crafting a completed alien setting for the player, they get to flex their muscles in a way that isn't hamstringed by a decade of development with Eorzia. The realm of The First feels genuinely foreign compared to previous expansions; you can tell that staff had a good time flexing themselves in creating a space that feels strange, yet familiar. A brand new cast of characters, spearheaded by the mysterious Crystal Exarch, get brought into the fold, as does a new villain, Emet-Selch, whose presence is both as interesting as it is unwanted throughout your quest. In soft rebooting the setting for Shadowbringers, the team was fully able to revitalize momentum with a new quest in a new land that didn't just feel like a further unraveling of Eorzia's map. Its incredibly effective.

Shadowbringers also continues to further the work that the XIV started in Stormblood with wonderful dungeon designs and beautiful 8 man trial events. The game really started to find its own footing with rich mechanics and layers being added in that game, and their work continues to get more and more engaging in Shadowbringers. As always, I cry out for more dungeons, trials, and duties during the main story quest, but that is because it continues to be so so good, and so much of the story telling through cutscenes and otherwise is so so dry. As XIV continues to flourish in the gameplay department, it also continues to become more and more burdened with the density of its storytelling. As much as I enjoyed the plot of Shadowbringers, I did also find myself waiting a bit more between gameplay events. Its not a terribly efficient or effective way of maintaining player interest in its increasing complex story.

Shadowbringers is a remarkable step forward from the messy politics and bland setting of Stormblood. It continues to progress is all areas of greatness that XIV possess, and all of the areas where it tends to fall behind. Its narrative isolation, and successful execution of that isolation means that its follow up, Endwalker, is going to have a much harder time bringing everything to a close as a result. I look forward to walking to end with great intrigue.

Hot on the trails of Mass Effect 2's bombastic ending, Mass Effect 3 drops you straight into the war between all life in the Galaxy and the existential threat, THE REAPERS. Forced to abandon the efforts to save Earth, Command Shepard is once again tasked with preparing the galaxy to strike back and retake what's theirs.

Mass Effect 3 is a departure from previous games in that your main task is filling up a huge green bar on the Normandy that tells you whether Shepard has shmoozed with enough folks across the playable galaxy in order to guarantee their support in an all out assault to retake Earth - of the three Mass Effect titles it is the only one that constantly hammers you with the idea that you are in fact not just a superhuman soldier capable of changing the sway of galactic events, but also a lowly Commander in the Earth Alliance Military.

Gee. Thanks. We needed that.

The structure of the game beyond the inclusion of said bar isn't much different from previous titles, except they shift away from grandiose missions that ensure the loyalty of your crew members to large scale war operations that assure the loyalty of the various military factions towards your goal of saving Earth. These missions are wonderful capstones for each of the major races and locales that have lingered throughout the Mass Effect trilogy. It feels swan-song like; getting the band back together for one more ride, except the band is a huge military fleet.

You also uncover plans to build some super importantly bizarre weapon called, "The Crucible," and like....they do build it....but its bizarrely entirely in the background. It's hilarious.

At each step of the process of building your big heckin fleet, your old buddies from Mass Effect 2, the human nationalists at Cerberus, return and try to stop your efforts in favor of exploiting the riches of the galaxy for their own benefits. This means that Mass Effect 3 has two distinct sets of antagonists and - uh oh - one ends up feeling a LOT more authentic and interesting than the other! I won't say which, but one is literally landing Death Star lasers on planets! And the other has...a ninja????

Mass Effect 3, structure and story wise, falls into the same trap that every big action movie trilogy does; it goes way too big, and spends way too much time trying to tie up every single loose end from the previous two games that it just ends up feeling a bit bloated - this feels way worse due to the DLC being baked into the game as part of the Legendary Edition re-release. It just starts to feel ridiculous that Cerberus is so aggressive in foiling Shepard's efforts, and even more ridiculous that only one man can unite the factions of the galaxy in such a manner. It stretches the limits of both patience and believability as this epic store lurches towards its contentious conclusion (I got the synthesis ending. It was NEAT!)

It feels like the most 3rd entry in a trilogy of any game trilogy I've ever completed: too big, too loud, and unable to hit every mark perfectly - some missed so dramatically that 3's ending continues to inspire vitriol to this day (again, I think its neat that its a little weird!)

All of this is filtered through the absolute best combat of all three main Mass Effect titles; its relishes in the best characteristics of both its predecessors; the full range of weapons returns to Shepard's arsenal from the remnants of Mass Effect 1, and the smooth, responsive cover movement mechanics of 2 become further refined. The guns and overall game feel are remarkably fine tuned and feel so much better. The way the game slows down and the gives you a second to focus after your shield breaks is just beautiful. Powers are more responsive and interesting than in previous games as well. Its like someone sat down and declared that finally there should be a Mass Effect should feel good to play. And it is glorious - unless you play in on Insanity. Then its just absolutely miserable - the encounter design in Mass Effect 3 is excellent on normal difficulties. It is abhorrent and mind numbing on Insanity mode.

I greatly respect Mass Effect 3 - it swings big, and it swings heavy. Its as finely tuned as it is stuffed to the brim with perhaps too much to deal with for one game. Its ending fails to meet the promise of an action RPG that takes every decision you've ever made into consideration all the time, but I know that people make games, not players. And for what its worth, I felt my choices were well represented through the span of Mass Effect 3's experience; they just didn't shift the ending. I felt like my Cheddar Shepard's efforts WERE reflected in the game world he sifted through as he tried to save Earth. And for me, that is enough.

Also. Insanity mode. Christ.

Fresh off the mission to save the galaxy from the woes of Saren and the Reaper Sovereign, Commander Shepard must once again build a team to go on a suicidal mission to stop a new supreme evil from endangering the galaxy: The Collectors. The catch? Shepard finds himself and his crew indentured in service to what essentially amounts to a bluntly nationalist group that pro Human, anti anything else: Cerberus.

Much like its predecessor, Mass Effect 2 is a third person cover shooter in which you command a team of yourself and up to two companions in combat and exploration. This time around many of the RPG elements that had already been sanded down in its predecessor find themselves even further eroded away. Much of what remains that separates it from, say, Gears of War 2, boils down to the conversation trees in which you're given the option to say either mean, neutral, or vaguely nice things to others, and the skill tree that requires you to complete missions to gain experience points, allowing you to customize your Shepard however you'd like.

The streamlining of RPG features is telling; in another timeline this game is an excellent companion to the Xbox 360's legendary shooters such as Halo and Gears of War. Bioware's resistance to shed its RPG shackles makes for an experience that seems stuck in 2nd gear; the duck and cover shooting mechanics are almost good enough to stand on their own, but enemies are clearly designed to require you use the additional abilities left over from when Bioware designed RPGs for the computer audience. It also doesn't help that none of the guns in Mass Effect 2 feel even remotely as good as your standard Gears of War assault rifle. Encounter design also works against itself more often than not - abilities are more easily misfired and partner pathfinding seems to get mixed up in the cover shooter geometry that starts to all blend together as you reach the endgame. There really only seems to be a handful of environments that populate Mass Effect 2's worlds, and after awhile the "freestanding barriers in a sparse space hallway" does seem to wear on your in a way that it didn't in Mass Effect. It's like they took the lessons learned from critiques of the original Mass Effect, and mixed in some misguided lessons from Gears of War 2 and tried to make something that transcended them. Unfortunately, it has neither the charm of Mass Effect, nor the refined sensibilities of Gears.

Where it does largely succeed is in the scope and structure of its narrative; Mass Effect 2 hits you with an Alien 3 style opening that resets the power dynamics of the galaxy for Shepard in a way that is strikingly interesting. Instead of being the hero that saved the galaxy, he's knocked back to working for a second rate organization that's essentially running parallels to pro-human fascism. They let you loose into a galaxy that doesn't trust you or the people you unfortunately work for, which makes building a team feel like it has that much more friction to it. You are unable to lean on your heroism in the previous game; instead you must prove to the people that you need to recruit that you're still worth your weight in gold - that you can rise above the fascism that's funding your operation. In having to make individual pitches to each character, the Bioware staff get to flex their muscles at what they do best: writing interesting characters. The cast of Mass Effect 2 is large and largely interesting; each main party member has a recruitment and a loyalty mission that allows you to understand where they are in the galaxy and what motivates them. Completing these missions endears you to the group of characters as you ultimately send them into a suicidal mission for the fate of the galaxy.

Ultimately Mass Effect 2 sits between two, perhaps not superior, but more interesting experiences in its predecessor and Epic Games' Gears of War 2. It lacks the goofy ambition that led the Mako up 90 degree cliffs, and the polish and spectacle of sawing your way through a massive worm as Marcus Fenix. It's saving grace is that the tasks you're given are much more interesting than the act of shooting your way through the corridors between each conversation or cutscene. Everything collides together to emerge as a cohesive, intense, rewarding package. As a fifteen year old in 2010 I had never seen anything like it in my limited experiences on Earth. 13 years later, its light has diminished a bit, and its seams are more visible than ever, but it still stands tall as a rock solid experience.

Humanity stands on the edge of galactic politics, begging for a seat at the table as a rogue agent, acting with impunity seeds events in the hopes of eliminating all life in the galaxy. One man/woman, Commander Shepard, acting as the beacon of humanity's virtues, must rise up and assemble a team of the galaxy's finest heroes to not only ensure that mankind has a seat at the table, but that there is a table left to sit at.

Mass Effect, Bioware's second attempt at forging a new universe to play in after 2005's Jade Empire, is space drama at both its finest and its stiffest. It works quickly to establish the stakes, as well as socio-political attitudes that run throughout its alien cultures and societal structures. In ways that I can only describe as Star Trek: Enterprise-esque, it moves incredibly quick establishes humanity as a young, hungry player in the game of alien politics, and even quicker in setting the premise that Shepard is only one who stands a chance at seeking peace. This pacing and constant forward momentum in both gameplay and worldbuilding is perhaps Mass Effect's strongest defense against fifteen years of reflection. By the time the game ends, you have a good sense of who the major players are, how they view each other, and more importantly how they view you and your choices. It works.

What maybe doesn’t work so well is....everything else. Mass Effect is a third person shooter that feels like its mechanics are attached together using space duct tape. You're given a choice of classes that determine what weapons and armor you can specialize in, as well as what types of unique abilities you are allotted, in typical RPG fashion. These choices immediately restrict, or focuses perhaps, your path through the game's onslaught of stiff, sometimes unresponsive enemies. I chose a character in this playthrough that specialized in biotic powers and pistols....and that's all my skill tree allowed me to work on. It's fine, but it does not breed much in the way of creativity; it is design by restriction; Shepard is one kind of soldier. No more, no less. In a game with more responsive controls and abilities, this might work better; I quickly found that quite a few of my abilities were absolutely useless in combat and did not particularly enjoy that I had no other options I could invest in to spice things up.

The limitations in combat choices are also exacerbated by its combat encounters, which ultimately boil down to groups of the same enemies over and over again, always acting stiffly and inconsistently as antagonists to Shepard. They consistently walk themselves into danger and charge out into the open; they REALLY like standing still. Occasionally, you will run into some enemies that bounce around like they're teleporting, but even on Insanity difficulty they mostly end up feeling like nuisances instead of threatening enemies. You can pretty much muscle your way through each encounter without using the game's clunky cover mechanics because of how enemies interact with you and their environment. To make matters worse, the shooting just does not feel all that great. Aiming sort of drifts around, and although I am quite adept at working with it, I can acknowledge that is often imprecise. These developers crafted wonderfully responsive systems that allowed us to engage with D&D rule sets; their expertise does not translate as well to 3rd person shooting. Or vehicle movement; all I have to say about the Mako is, "lmao."

And yet....I continue to be compelled by the original Mass Effect. Its dialogue and animations are stiff, but its world feels big and interesting. It's shooting and encounter design is borderline broken, but I absolutely thrive in it. This particular quest to save the galaxy is one that is near and dear to my heart. It is an uneven quest, but it is one where to this player the sum of its parts is greater than each individual piece.

The 3DS is dead. Long live the 3DS.

Man. Mario just doesn’t miss. It’s been 12 years since 3D Land released for the 3DS and it stands head and shoulders above anything it’s peers, including it’s Wii U sibling and Switch cousin have brought to the table.

The premise? Classic. Bowser get Peach. Mario get Peach back. The execution? Perhaps the finest Mario has ever done in the third dimension.

The secret to 3D Land’s excellence is it’s pacing. Each level of the game’s 8 standard and 8 special worlds is presented on the world map as a tight, little diorama. Each level once you enter follows the restrictions set by that presentation - they’re short, filled to the brim with interesting mechanics and secrets, and seldom induce frustration as you March towards Bowser’s Castle. There are skill checkpoints in the way of coin thresholds that one must reach to progress, but with each level having 3 coins to contribute and each level being short and straightforward, it never truly becomes an issue unless you deliberately avoid acquiring them through natural game play. Difficulty does increase on a slow curve as you move from world 1 to 8, but it’s an easy curve to grapple with and shouldn’t be a barrier for most players.

Finishing the game unlocks a series of remixed versions of each level that double the game’s length, and even allow you to play as Luigi.

Unfortunately, once you clear the game traditionally, the game expects you to clear every level twice, hit all the gold flagpoles, and sacrifice a small child in order to access its actual final level.

NEEEEEXXXXXT.