Similar to the first game this is a hard one for me to review. The positive is this game is a huge step forward from the first. On balance it controls a lot better, the game structure is more open and free with the interconnecting levels, and you aren't being hounded by police every two seconds. Things are shaken up pretty often, you are spraying graffiti, racing, tag racing, fighting, and more. The game also has a wonderful charming style that holds up today, great art, cool designs for the different playable characters and rival gangs, and of course an awesome soundtrack (Aisle 10 was my favorite).

However this game really needs a modern remake (I am glad we are getting a reboot!) to fix some issues. The jumps are so floaty yet they have so many areas where you need to be super precise that it just leads to frustration, honestly without save states I am not sure I would have pressed onward in certain sections. The map also might be the worst one I have ever seen, it is almost indecipherable in some sections where the text is just on top of the map entirely and you have no idea what you are looking at. There are other issues but they are pretty of the time, such as a rough checkpointing system and a lack of clarity at times on what you should be doing, but I can accept a lot of that since this is a 2002 game.

Ultimately I think the back half of the game will make me think of this game a lot more fondly than I was working through the horrible sewer level earlier on, and that helps me look past a lot of the issues. Great style and I look forward to a modern take on this, I think it could be special

Very light spoilers
I have been a Spider-Man fan my entire life and read more Spider-Man comics than I could even count, so to say I have a love for the character and his world is an understatement. I can safely say this is one of the best adaptions of the character and even surpasses the original Insomniac game in basically every single way. Plot wise this game really excels to me, it showcases both Peter and Miles giving them each a lot of character development and plot lines that really resonated with me. Their supporting casts are also done extremely well, Mary Jane, Harry, Rio, and Ganke are all wonderfully done, and original character Hailey steals the show multiple times. This game is also loaded with villains, I won’t spoil them all but seeing so many of this famous rogues gallery given time and care made me extremely happy. Kraven and Venom are both imposing, frightening figures that bring a lot of intensity to the story and creating amazing set pieces. The plot itself isn’t too crazy if you’ve seen the movies or read the comics but it is well done and very nicely intertwines multiple famous storylines together while adding a unique spin on it all.

The gameplay is somehow even better than before. The combat feels amazing and more streamlined, losing some of the gadgets might be sad to some but I didn’t miss bringing up a gadget wheel personally. Having powers and gadgets mapped to L1/R1 made it super fast to jump between all your different abilities, and the upgrades make you feel powerful which is half the fun. They somehow made movement even better which I didn’t think was possible, the web wings just fit in to the swinging and launching so seamlessly it honestly might be hard to go back to the games without it. The fast travel is lighting quick but swinging and gliding is so fun I hardly used it.

The side content also got a make upgrade in this game. I liked it in the original game but it got pretty repetitive, whereas this game has a ton of different types AND most importantly captures that Arkham feel by incorporating different villains not in the main story. This makes the whole world feel more fleshed out and I love it. There are even a few that really make you feel emotional. MJ stealth missions are also back but much improved and didn’t take away from the experience at all.

I could say a lot more but ultimately I can just say that this is my favorite Spider-Man game ever, one of my favorite versions of the world, and I look forward to seeing where they go next.

I used to be a big Assassin's Creed fan, but like many my interest waned post Black Flag for quite awhile until I jumped back in with Origins, which I enjoyed but the RPG system wasn't really what I wanted. As they went further and further in that direction I feared the series was done for me for good until this game got announced.

This isn't a perfect game by any stretch, but this is almost exactly what I wanted for many years. The stealth focus is back in a big way, I was able to play basically the entire game sneaking around assassinating from the shadows, utilizing multiple different tools to get the job done. The upgrades you got felt very useful and powerful also, by the end I was a true stealth assassin and felt like a badass. I really liked the investigation style of progression, where it just gives you a bunch of different directions you can go and you can tackle objectives in whatever order you want. While lots of the missions are pretty small scale there are also some big areas that allow you to find your own route to the objective which are really fun.

You can still see some of the RPG influence in this game, which isn't my favorite but honestly I was able to avoid it almost entirely. I played the game only upgrading my suit and weapons a few times each, so it does feel mostly like an addition if you want it. The story is totally fine, Basim was a solid protagonist but nothing really stood out to me in any strong way (I have no idea what is happening in the lore at this point so I was confused a few times but that ultimately didn't affect my enjoyment).

I think for me this is a great step back in the direction I would prefer for the series, I know the RPG games are well loved but I hope they continue to at least do spin offs in this style.

I am a fan of the OG FF7 game but I have no nostalgia for it because I didn't play it until last year, so going into this game I wasn't totally sure how into it I would be. Turns out I was into it a lot even if I have some issues with it.

The combat system is amazing to me, I like the real time combat mixed with the ATB where you are juggling items, ATB moves, and materia all at once. Each of the four playable characters feel super unique and I honestly couldn't say which I enjoyed the most. I loved swapping between them all and mixing up the combat at a moment's notice, it keep things fresh and allowed for tons of viable strategies in each encounter. Also as a very light fan of RPGs I loved how this game didn't rely on grinding or leveling up almost at all, you could build your characters how you wanted and it kept things moving which I love.

I also enjoyed the plot, its a little slow at times and suffers from insanely slow pacing (it is mainly just the first few hours of the OG game so I expected that) but it turns that into a huge positive for the characters. Cloud, Aerith, Barret, and Tifa all have tons of great character moments and development throughout this game, and they even flesh out tons of side characters like Wedge, Jessie, and Biggs to make you really care about them. As cool and weird as the plot gets later in the game I think what I will remember most fondly about the game is these wonderful character moments.

The Yuffie DLC is a very good additional story, I was a big fan of Yuffie in the original games and she is done a great service. She is a really fun character, full of life and really made me laugh multiple times. The story is definitely light but it has some great character moments and I am excited to see Yuffie in the next game. Also Fort Condor is really fun.

Going into this game I was both excited and skeptical, the original Resident Evil 4 is one of my favorite games of all time and I played it to death growing up. Being the first horror game I ever played it will always hold a special place in my heart and I can still to this day remember most of the game in vivid detail. Could a remake/reimagining of this game hold up for me? Turns out the answer was a resounding yes.

I think this is everything a remake should be, it isn't a total 1 for 1 copy of the structure but it keeps almost every single iconic moment but plays around with the order and specifics to keep things fresh. You still have the iconic opening town fight with the chainsaw man, the fire in the burning barn, the claw wielding garradors, and so much more that kept me smiling and so impressed with the way everything was handled. There are even sections of the game, like the knife fight, where they took an iconic moment and made it better and more engaging.

The graphics and presentation are also key here, I don't think RE4 was ever a true scary game and I still don't here, but it is much more atmospheric and eerie than it was before. The settings are all amazing (the island is much improved in my opinion) and the monster designs really shine through. Story wise it isn't a whole lot different, it is a bit better fleshed out but it still is not the draw here. Some creepy and fun character keep things going but like other RE games it doesn't take itself too seriously. Ashley is much improved here though, she doesn't feel useless at all and she has her own moments to shine.

The biggest improvement is the gameplay for sure. I never minded the way the old game controlled (and I still don't) but I would be lying if I didn't say this felt immensely better. Being able to shoot while moving is obviously a game changer, but also the sprinting and movement is so much more fluid so you can easily navigate around the environments avoiding enemies while taking them out. Combat feels better than ever, you still are shooting enemies in key areas to bring up context takedowns, but they add new mechanics as well. Stealth is actually an option now which is a nice change of pace even if you don't get to use it a ton, but that is tied into the new knife mechanics. These are a lot of fun, allowing you to take out prone enemies or deal damage to enemies who grab hold of you. This was a great addition to the gameplay and felt totally natural.

All in all this was an amazing special game to me. It channeled everything I loved about the original game while still being it's own unique thing in many ways. I am not sure yet if it surpasses the nostalgia and love I have for the original but we will see where my feelings go when I inevitably replay it down the road.

A game with two totally different feels that I greatly appreciated. A fun rpg that never got to complicated and was full of whimsical environments, characters, and ideas that invoked a feeling of childhood wonder and longing for those days again. On the other side was a very dark story touching on complex feelings of guilt, suffering, and the feeling of losing touch with those you once held closest to you. There is a lot to take away from this game such as its really wonderful character work and emotional ending. I have conflicting opinions on the latter but it really showcases the high level of story telling and presentation regardless on what I would have changed.

This is a weird one, at its core the gameplay is very good. The combat feels as good as ever, the weapon selection is quite good, I like the classic enemies with some additions, the vehicles are all here and are fun to use, the AMAZING addition of the grapple hook, and minus some glitches the co-op worked well. I just can’t be too high on the game though because a lot of the stuff surrounding it is just so meh to me.

The open world I actually didn’t mind, it’s full of enemies to fight and it’s not obnoxiously big like most games tend to be aiming for these days. However the purpose of the open world is nebulous… there are different things to do like taking bases or fighting mini bosses but to what end? You unlock the ability to spawn guns but almost all the missions are long drawn out corridors so you are swapping guns around anyways. There are no real side missions either, it just feels like padding which is a shame cause I like the idea in theory, it just needs some actual reasons to want to do activities. The campaign missions are fine but really nothing memorable about them, you wander hallways and get stopped for cutscenes constantly, where the story is okay but nothing I really was enamored by personally (granted I’ve been out of the story post Bungie so I’m not going to pretend I was fully prepared with all the context needed).

This review came out pretty negative, I was pretty disappointed with a lot of the game, but they truly did really nail to combat and grapple hook so well that I had to give the game a boost for that. I could see myself jumping in to clear a bit more of the map some time just to get that combat loop, but ultimately pretty forgettable campaign to me.

This one started a bit slow to me but once it picked up I was super into it just like the rest of the series. I was scared at first that the Akame Network little fetch quests totally replaced the substories but once those got introduced I spent hours going through basically all of them. Substories are my fav part of the series and these didn’t disappoint, there aren’t a ton but there are some high quality ones, especially if you’ve played the whole series cause there are tons of references. The combat is really good too like always, the two styles are quite different and both fun to use. Agent style took me till almost the end to really vibe with but I finally found my uses for it and used it a ton to finish up this 10 hour adventure.

The plot is pretty standard Yakuza for most of it, some drama between shadowy crime organizations with some twists and turns. It’s a really great companion to Like a Dragon, with it tying directly into that game in a major way. I would definitely not play this until you’ve played that game, I feel like you would be a bit confused. Really this game provides a huge benefit to those who played every game, because the final part of the story drops all the crime drama and really hits home the emotions and character of Kiryu. It is full of references to other games and this is the absolute peak of the game. This was a very worthwhile mini adventure in the series, it’s better than quite a few of the main entries which is an impressive feat.

A Donkey Kong Country style game that may not be the most original, but still has a lot of creativity and polish. The animation is beautiful and the character designs have a lot of personality, I love how Kaze the rabbit spins her ears to hover and uses them to climb or swing. One of the mechanics in the game is she finds four different masks depending on the level that transform her into a shark, tiger, dragon, or eagle each with their own gameplay style and wonderful animations. These shake up the gameplay enough where each level feels pretty fresh, ranging from flying stages, underwater, auto run, chase levels, climbing, and many more. The worlds are also varied and stray away from the usual platformer world palettes which was a nice touch.

The game also has a perfect balance of secrets in each level, getting 4 letters like DKC spelling KAZE gets you one gem, then getting 100 little diamonds (think coins) is another, then the third and final is finding 2 secret challenge stages (which are fun in their own right). It has just enough to keep you looking around the stages as you go but not so much that it is overwhelming, I naturally got about 70% of the gems so I will be going back eventually to get the rest. The game has a bit of a challenge to it, not so hard I was ever frustrated but hard enough that I had to try some things quite a few times to nail the timing. Luckily it always felt doable and never unfair. Last shout out is the bosses were very well done, they were each unique but didn't fall into the trap a lot of platformers do where they feel the need to introduce weird mechanics for fights. They were all pure platforming skill and I loved them for it (especially the final fight, really great stuff).

I have been a Pokémon fan most of my life, while I’m not as into it as I was many years ago I do like to play each new generation and see how things are going in the series. This was a big leap above Sword and Shield, I like that it took the open areas from that game, combined with Arceus elements, and just made that the whole game. After the usual slow start it is cool to just be set out into the world to complete the different objectives and find Pokémon without hand holding.

The usual 8 gyms are here (combined with some bizarre pre-fight mini games/tasks) but there are also a couple other interesting sets of primary objectives: titans and bases. The titans are large scale Pokémon fights (with a surprisingly tender story) and the bases are a little gimmicky but I did like this twist on the typical Pokémon villain “team”. Exploring the world gets better as it goes too, you get moves that make it faster and easier which is nice. Combat is what you’d expect, the new terra mechanic seemed a bit pointless to me but otherwise it’s solid and I enjoyed a lot of the new Pokémon.

The story that unfolds in the last third of the game I actually found super interesting which I can’t believe I’m saying, but I did actually find this to be entertaining. Where I have to dock the game is of course performance, I am not someone who is a stickler about this but it’s pretty rough. Drake drops, studdering, horrible draw distances, times where you can’t throw your Pokémon out to roam cause it can’t load, and full cutscenes with no sounds. A Switch 2 could elevate this game a lot, as it stands for me this is my fav generation since the original Nintendo DS and I see a great path forward between this and Arceus.