A very fun and fluid combat system that blends a multitude of elements into an explosive eye-candy gameplay loop. A pleasing visual style with fast-paced shooter gameplay and (mostly) excellent level design made this a joy to play. Sadly, as a person who is always a sucker for narratives and great characters, Neon White falls completely off the mark. It's not horrificly bad or anything, but with such a generic plotline and archetypal characters, it ultimately does nothing for me except make me want to hit F and skip through literally everything to get to the real heart of the game.

If you ignore the story, this game is a blast and makes you really feel like you're cut out for the speedrunning business. Unfortunately, ignoring the story is hard for me to do. But I liked it for sure.

I'm always a sucker for the GTA titles and their formula when it comes to brainless fun but when said formula also comes with a strong story and the series best protagonist, it's hard to just approach the game as brainless fun.

A very strong story in the scope of not only GTA games but in the greater medium. It isn't the most well compiled plot and there are definite slow points and missions that just don't fit right into the overall story. GTA 4 instead excels in its character building and the overall tone of the story which both complement each other effectively in making a tragic story about the American dream and the cycle of revenge. The ending is potent to this day and even the PS3 era's grimy, brown overlay over Liberty City only serves to add to the game feeling like a visual metaphor for the land where dreams are chased and lost.

I'm honestly so fond of this game in a lot of ways. While I don't think its high art by any means, its so interesting to play this game and see the special qualities that it possessed that were lost on GTA 5 makes me a little sad. It's a unique title in the GTA series in that it's the only GTA story that really drives in its themes and message in a direct & effective manner.

I hope Rockstar at least acknowledges how good the story was in this game for GTA 6, but judging by the teaser, can't say that'll be the case, which really is a shame.

Pentiment is immensely impressive in its construction and detailed analysis of faith and art within the Middle Ages, all wrapped into a neat little murder mystery. It's distinct style captured me almost immediately, yet it's mechanics may be seen as anything but at first. But the point-and-click style narrative leans heavily in favour of the game's central murder mystery narrative as the detailed level of player choice given is wholly impressive. You really get to decide the fate of many and your choices really, truly, can affect the future whether you may realise it immediately or not.

While the murder mystery is what got me at first, I'd say that the game's overwhelming focus on faith (going as far to highlight any mention of God) is what kept me the most interested. Seeing the clash between the creation, sale and preservation of art from the Abbey under God vs the rejection of Tassing's people, who have no one else but God to turn to in face of hardship, was an incredibly compelling narrative that resulted in quite a strong climax.

I'd say the third act is what somewhat lets this game down for me. While the concept of the mural and the preservation and artful retelling of history ties right into the game's themes, I think the slower pacing of Act 3 and how it somewhat veers away from the strong points of the first two acts is a little disappointing. I'd say the ending and the reveal of the murderer was pretty great, but ultimately it feels like more could've been done on the whole art vs religion aspect of the game.

Overall though, this is a truly unique game amongst a sea of games that advertise player choice yet cannot emulate the same feeling that Pentiment does when you can unknowingly change the lives of one or many for years on end through either your own inaction or hubris. A stronger final act could've cemented this higher up as a true pantheon amongst story-rich games, but Pentiment more than makes up with it with a compelling narrative that heavily emphasises unity within faith and the importance of art and history, amongst many, many other things that I can't seem to put to words straight away. A great game worth checking out.

If this game hadn’t taken itself so seriously it’d be a little more enjoyable but it’s still a hilarious game in all the wrong ways. Has the highest ratio of “why the fuck does this take so long” bosses ever and amidst all that on PC you have to deal with the clunky ass controls alongside some terribly aged mechanics & an unseriously serious story to boot. Had I not played this co-op, I wouldn’t be writing this review because I’d have dropped it within the first few levels. Still, if you have someone to play it with it’s an admittedly somewhat enjoyable co-op experience once you have someone to share your frustration with.

Borderlands 2 is an airtight experience that is best experienced with another person, and for the most part serves as a fun-as-fuck co-op game. While most looter shooters fail for being ridiculously repetitive, BL2 doesn’t fall under the same level of scrutiny because there is enough quest variety to keep it mostly refreshing. In fact, I’d say the side quests are some of the best I’ve seen in a title like this; on pure variety alone, I’d say bare minimum the objectives are refreshing even if you end up just killing people on the way there. Some of the quests have some interesting story & character implications and help flesh out the world just a bit.

On the topic of story, it’s…. ehhhhh. Handsome Jack was hyped up to be this amazing villain but at best he was incredibly charismatic and entertaining, beyond that he isn’t anything too special. The plot is serviceable and the stakes are hardly felt, there’s as much to get out of Borderlands 2 as there is a Resident Evil game… so like, nothing. The humour is absolutely early 2010s but I found it oddly charming even though it was cringeworthy at some points too. I didn’t hate the humour and I get it’s part of BL2’s quirks but it just led to a lotta eyeroll moments. Though, it does fit how I feel about the game holistically. The game is meant for shutting your brain off and shooting shit and in that regard it’s a solid game.

However, some gameplay quirks were a lil annoying. Endgame enemy damage scaling got ridiculous at points even when you’re at their respective level and honestly if you don’t get golden keys to get the special weapons in the cases, then you’re stuck with some really shitty and boring weapons.

It’s fun, but I don’t know how much I’d like it had I played it solo, and especially if I didn’t find out about the special crate weapons. But from what I’ve experienced, I liked it!

Very satisfying combat loop that rewards an understanding of the games mechanics, and uses death as an interesting mechanic to encourage further re-runs. Just "beat" the game's story but I definitely will be doing replays to truly master the game since I ended up struggling through it initially.

Though it's not the most satisfying combat loop ever and I did end up feeling like the story was just bad, but that's whatever, it's not a game I played for the story.

Pretty fun game, great visual design, (mostly) fun bosses and a unique experience wrapped into a pretty short package.