Easily the most heartwarming, well-crafted, and emotional pokemon game in the entire franchise. So lovingly sculpted from inch to inch with the best pixel art and music out of anything nintendo has ever released.

The abundance of content and sidequests this game gives you allows you to play hours and hours past the main story into post-game while still discovering new and refreshing stories. New characters, old characters, and characters no longer with us get their own beautiful ending and story. It is difficult to not get attached to the cast.

When I think of games that were made with love and passion, I think of PMD EOS. The many times I've replayed this game and still cried multiple times without fail. If I could only play one pokemon game forever, I would choose this one. Few games are masterpieces, but this is one of them. I used to put my DS next to my bed and put the jutebox on loop and fall asleep to tracks from EOS.

I genuinely do not think I can ever trust someone's taste if they reveal they hate this game. Despite what you may think of it's story, you can not deny that everyone who worked on it loved adding more and more content, and that they enjoyed it. I barely get that feeling anymore with games, and it's nice to revisit this game with the memories of how happy it made me as a child, and how pivotal it was to my development as a person and aspiring artist. If you ask me why I want to make videogames and work as a concept artist and art director, all you have to do is play this game to understand my feelings.

Thank you PMD EOS for bringing me so much happiness in a time where I had none.

I was forced to play this game by my best friend despite it being a horror game to my knowledge, with the caveat that I stream it to her.

I was told it was a game about a museum come to life and that it is not a horror game, and "you're an artist and you love museums, isn't this your dream?" and so, I had no argument and had to play it.

I was tricked.

I proceeded to cry and panic in a room waiting for monsters to come and attack me for 1 hour during my first playthrough.

Terrible experience.

Valuable lesson learned: Don't trust your friends. They all hate you.

One of my biggest gripes with the first game was the fact Joel decided to kill the doctor that was going to perform the surgery on Ellie. I had no choice but to go in and do it. The game did not let me choose, and this game decides to explore the consequences of Joel's actions.

Which is all well and good, but it's execution in how it handled it was poor.

Instead of focus on exploring a character traumatized by Joel's actions (Abby) and desperate need of revenge, the game off's Joel very early to increase player suffering (since they know the fanbase loves Joel) and end up spending the rest of the game trying to justify Abby's actions.

The problem here is that they did this in the wrong order for us to actually feel empathy or compassion for the other character. This game should have been Abby's story, much like the first game was not Ellie's story, or our (the player's) story. It was Joel's story. And our lack of control over who to kill to save Ellie in the end was the selfish choice of a man that had already lost one daughter, and decided to protect his new family member from the entire world, let the world burn around them. A touching sentiment that tests your moral compass.

However, imagine how this game would have played out if we saw Joel kill the doctor brutally first-thing in the game. Only to then give us the backstory. I don't think many of us would be sympathetic to a man that would try to kill a man that would save all of humanity.

The problem is not the concept. The problem is the setup. And the way this game focuses to maximize player frustration and suffering rather than stringing together a cohesive narrative that is easy to follow and understand.

This should have been Abby's story. But there are so many sub-plots and plots that the message of the game gets so convoluted that it feels as if the characters and environment are only there in a way to remind you that the world is a terrible place and that everyone in the game is terrible towards one another.

The ending in and of itself, could have been good, but they squandered the opportunity of telling us to "let go of revenge" when they made Ellie pick up the chase for Abby a second time. In the end, what made Ellie finally let go of Abby was not the realization that she was becoming someone she hated, or harming someone because of her trauma, but the fact she got closure with Joel. In life, most people are not so lucky to get closure, and I wonder if this ending would have played out differently had Ellie not gotten closure with Joel.

There were amazing points in the game that I remember vividly and enjoyed a lot, but I am a person that is invested in characters first, story/lore second, and gameplay third. The characters were all unlikable because of their execution and actions (some were just terrible and existed only to cause a stir), the story was barebones and basic, and gave us nothing new or emotional to add to in the TLOU universe. Having played both games very close together, there's a clear and sharp difference in how the characters were prioritized over the narrative. The point of the first game was not the fact Joel was trying to save humanity. It was never about a noble cause. He was a man that was trying to survive, and found a light where he'd otherwise have continued to live in darkness all alone. Being offered the ability to see again, he chose to protect that light, even if it would mean putting everyone else into darkness as a consequence.

You can relate to him even if you do not agree with what he did.

TLOU2 offers no relatability, unlikable characters, a plot that repeats itself and its themes so many times it gets tiring. I and my friend were genuinely at one point only playing it to see how it ends.

The good parts of this game can be counted on one hand. 1) Abby. 2) Abby's companions and their story. 3) Abby as a character in and of herself without anyone else in mind.

The only reason this game gets 2 stars is because it offered a wide range of playability to those that may not be able to play it as designed because of disability or limitations. And because Abby as a character was so compelling, I ended up only caring for her, and her comrades (save for her shitty love interest, fuck that guy).

Couldn't make it through this review without shitting on mr. CEO of white guy nation, Owain. From the deepest and darkest pit of my cold, tiny black heart. Fuck that guy.

Don't play this game if you value yourself or your time.

If you find yourself with 70 hours you need to waste on something just to waste them, good news, there are a plethora of short and amazing indie games that will give you equally as many hours of playtime combined for a far cheaper price and a far better experience! If you do not feel like looking them up, here are my reccomendations: Gris, The liar princess and the blind prince, She Remembered Caterpillars, The Bridge, She and the Light Bearer, The King's bird, Child of Light, and another one that was actually featured DIRECTLY in this game! - Hotline Miami!

You know when you’re in the queue at, like, Disneyland, or Universal Studios, or whatever, and they have those videos where Christopher Lloyd is pretending to be Doc Brown from Back to the Future or something like that, telling you about the ride you’re about to go on and doing all the little catchphrases from the movie, but it’s sorta hollow - they sound so tired, and it doesn’t last long enough to fill your time in the queue, so you keep hearing it over and over again, this same shit, for what feels like years? Maybe even decades? Yeah. Super annoying! I hate that kind of stuff.

Anyway, remember when the Nintendo Switch came out? Those were great times. Feels like forever ago since I first did a Zelda dungeon while taking a shit. That feeling when you first slid the joycons onto their rails and heard that satisfying click... Oh yeah! The little minigame in 1-2 Switch where you could feel the balls moving around in the pad? So awesome. When was that again... 2016? 2017? Five years ago?! Wow! I remember that first weekend it launched, my friend brought his with him to the pub in the pocket of his cargo pants! Crazy, right? We all played Bomberman round a table, just like in those adverts Nintendo made to promote the console, laughing and smiling and shit. So much fun. What a system. Good times, man, good times.

Horizon Forbidden West is a game that's all about the journey and not the final destination. The game expands on the story by doubling down character development in addition to fleshing out the world lore. The gameplay certainly expands on the first game's for both good and bad. The game punishes poor planning to the extreme and rewards working into strategic traps. That being said it forces you into fights that might go against your Aloy archetype(Example as a melee focused Aloy, you're quickly useless against any large robos.). I was OHKO'd far too many times despite the fact I felt like i was in cover leading to an experience that was poor.

I will say the final 10% of the game to me leaves an extremely poor taste in my mouth(Worse imo then recently released Dying Light 2 which is saying something) but after taking time to reflect I did enjoy my time here, with one mission where you unleash your inner archeoligst as a standout.

HFW ultimately grows from HZD but never reaches the same high's as the original. That doesn't mean it's bad however and is a must play for anyone with a PS5 .

This is mostly the kind of game that I've been waiting for for a very long time, a true "walking sim". Instead of using this term derisively for linear, plot-driven games where you hold W and click things, walking is instead given a full set of mechanics and is your main way of interfacing with the game world.

In that regard, this game is a fucking masterpiece. Using your tools and your mind to navigate this world is a treat and seeing those tools benefit others is one of my favorite parts of any game, period. A special mention goes out to the floating carriers, because finding a good spot to plop that bad boy down and turn this into a snowboarding game is always an excellent feeling. Even the combat with other humans is fun, as it's just difficult enough to pose a threat without being oppressive.

Where this game really falls short for me, though, is the story. It is the kind of dense throwaway lore you should probably expect from Kojima, a world that is dead set on breaking your immersion every possible moment by having everyone repeat the themes of the game back to you every time you have the audacity to interact with someone.

Any time the story ties into the gameplay, it begins to cross the line from "encouraging the player to find fun in minutiae" into straight-up tedium. The game attempts to force you to care about BB by taking him away for a couple missions, but I ended up liking those the best by far. The BTs are literally never any fun to interact with, and the fact that they become comically easy to deal with as you upgrade your gadgets doesn't make it any better. Last but certainly not least - putting boss fights in a game like this should be punishable by a substantial prison sentence.

It is an excellent set of gameplay mechanics bogged down by Kojima bullshit. It's really a shame this is the price we have to pay to actually play this game, then, because you can bet your ass that at any other studio this would be some bonkers scrapped idea that would get an employee laughed back into a coffee-fetching role. Despite all the things that make me groan and all the venom I have for the plot, it's one of the most unique games I've ever played wrapped up in a AAA package, and if every 7 out of 10 I've played was like this I'd never have a fucking dime to my name again.

I can't really mark this game down too much, because I pretty much played it for a week straight and platinumed it, and this is the first game to pull my attention from FFXIV that much in like a year. So that counts for something for me.

But with that said, while HFW is better in almost every way than its predecessor, I can't help but feeling like it still needed a little more oomph.

The sidequests got pretty widespread praise in reviews for their improvement in HFW or HZD and while I agree they're improved...they're still not that great? This is theoretically an ARPG with sidequests and even (rare) dialogue choices but you still have next to no freedom in changing how these side stories play out. I didn't expect to have any narrative input on the main story, but having a little something more to change in the side content doesn't seem like a huge ask. Even with that complaint, yes I admit there are however some legitimately fun sidestories and even a few moving ones as well.

My biggest problem here is combat. It's improved in some ways (the new weapons like the Shredder Gauntlet are very fun) and the basic premise of fighting robo dinos is still cool as hell, but something about the combat balancing still feels off to me.

Enemies hit like a truck and constantly stagger Aloy with these massive attacks that leave her stuck on the ground in animation. "Just dodge dummy!" you say, but then I reply that the frames on dodging feel awful and as though the enemy has actual targeting lock-on to your model until the last like...0.5 seconds before the attack hits.

And then while other aspects like the skill tree are generally cool, the limiting of traps on the ground compared to HZD and the changes to getting rid of the long/short dodge skill seems like an unnecessary step backwards.

Which left me in a weird place where I found a ton of the machine combat to be very easy, but because the rare times that you do get hit hurt so bad, I never wanted to move the difficulty up. I tried fiddling with a few difficulty sliders/options, but nothing felt particularly great to me.

If this seems like an endless wall of complaining, I do still think this is somewhere between a 7-8/10 game. I found the main story to be pretty engrossing if a little off-the-walls towards the end; the new skill trees and weapons were mostly solid like I said above; the world is very pretty (although at first the world was so oversaturated with foliage and color that it took me a few hours to adjust actually); performance mode worked great and I appreciated that they actually let me choose to play at 60fps; the outfits and new dye system are neat little additions; the new characters are generally pretty great additions to the cast; the new tribes are very well imagined ideas for how future generations could misunderstand and adopt weird parts of our military, business or entertainment cultures and misinterpret them; and once again just like in HZD, I found the collectable notes/audio logs to be some of the most weirdly engrossing parts of the game. Entire backstories and histories for cities and completely non-present characters can be found in them, and they're legitimately solid, interesting pieces of "what if" sci-fi.

HFW is definitely worth your time, but do temper your expectations. This is not a PS5/9th-gen defining experience, it's a refinement of and capstone for last-gen gaming and it's solid at trying to do that.