A gameplay upgrade in every way is let down by a slow start, uneven graphics and awful story.

Going through the city has never felt so good with the inclusion of the wing suit. It made a mostly recycled city from the first game feel new. The brawling felt concise, but not dumbed down from the first game. You can still pull off stylish combos for days and it feels impactful. Even the dreaded stealth missions feel better with the removal of instadeath scenarios. The gameplay is top tier, which is why I am so let down by the missions.

In the first few hours the game is a slog. The design for most of these (especially Miles parts) was shoving a lesson first and fun second. The game greatly picks up when the Kraven plot intersects with the symbiote. From there the story is interesting with Kraven hunting reformed supervillains and Peter acquiring the suit in a life or death scenario. It is a nice twist on the whole symbiote saga until the end. The Gears of War scenario is awful and profoundly stupid. I get they want to get MJ in the spotlight but the way its done here is abhorrent. At least come up with a bullshit reason to keep a bit of symbiote in her and not make a human who took some lessons fight an army of superhuman creatures. At least the stupidity is cut by the awesome portray of Venom and the Spider duo fighting it. Graphically its amazing every second the characters have their suits on. Every character thats not Peter or Miles look like a melted claymation error.

Heres hoping the third entry concentrates more on the comic book side of the Spider-man mythos because I think Insoniac got lucky with the first game's character relationships and story.

A western horror brawler that takes God of War's (2018) battle mechanics and mixes it with Xbox 360 era level design. Its a strange and fun 10 hour ride. The cool art style based on Old West horror genre is fantastic and the levels are varied. Story and characters are more of an excuse to go from level to level but they are never annoying. The world building does the heavy lift here.

The battles, especially in the second half, can become overbearing, forcing you to spam the lightning dash combo alongside your extensive arsenal. While this can invoke the spirit of the excellent Doom Eternal, the controls do not feel as tight in some situations. Using the D-pad to change weapons is just obtuse and the electric whip is downright unresponsive at times. Puzzles in each scenario are a welcome break from the constant brawling even if they are brain dead easy.

This is Flying Wild Hogs best game to date. Its a flawed gem with a memorable style and world.

For all the praising this game gets for its movement, its leagues below a typical 3D Mario. I do not expect to reach those highs but I also do not want a 3D platformer with such stiff, slow and sometimes unresponsive running. If you want any type of speed you need to spam that jump. Level design borrows from 32 bit games or more famously, Super Mario 3D World in a tepid manner since exploring the levels is not very rewarding nor interesting. I can see speed runners getting the most enjoyment out of going fast, ignoring most what the level is trying to offer and comboing the various dashes available. The best part of the game is jumping into dash to wheel or swing in a fast manner.

The presentation is a candy vomit artstyle that thinks a high color vibrance is a substitute for personality. Character designs do not fare better with their "we have quirky PS1/Saturn designs at home" aesthetics. The music gets a lot better past the first world with its Sonic infused melodies. It baffles me that the introductory track is pure annoying and embarrassing bloops made by a sugar abusing fiend.

Performance is great at 4K with a steady 120fps but this game came out under cooked with the multiple amounts of visual glitches and instances of getting stuck in terrain. A massive disappointment after Sonic Mania.

An absurd and absolutely charming Zelda CD-I tribute. Thankfully the developer, Seedy Eye, did not go 1:1 on the recreation. The controls and level design are good this time. This type of action platformer with metroidvania elements is very rare these days. A reason for this could be that its a drag to replay levels several times when you acquire new weapons, abilities or need some type of item. The pacing is awful when you need to go thrice or even more times through levels. It is excessive padding. Even it those CD-I games had this structure, it is no excuse and a blemish on a good game.

Fortunately the action can be fun, level design is varied, characters are the good kind of weird and the Secret of Mana inspired OST is a banger. Most impressive are the cutscenes. All the charm and weirdness from the russian made animations on the CD-I Zelda has been recreated to a surprising degree. The game is worth a play through for them alone.

A survival game grind more than a Pokemon game. The game integrates a bunch of mediocre game systems together to form an average playing experience. Movement, climbing, exploration, hunger and combat mechanics feel a league below other copycats but the addition of capturing different type of monsters in an open space and using them for traversal or base management is engaging. Co-op is Mandatory with its insane early game grind.

You dont ever feel like a Pokemon Trainer here. Your avatar does all the fighting with a monster controlled by AI. You never give it any direct orders unless youre riding them, and when that happens the stiffness of the controls hampers the experience. Capturing the Pals feels good most the time when the thrown ball does not have a mind of its own.

Exploration is not great either. Climbing, movement and stamina mechanics that are directly copied from Breath of the Wild are janky and unresponsive. Every cave is a procedural generated bore with uninteresting loot. The only thing that sets it apart is the fundamental change using a flying type Pal to move around the islands brings.

Maybe with a couple of years of work this can turn into a good game but with this developer's history of abandoning its Early Access games and funding its next game (look up Craftopia) tells me a big change aint happening, no matter if theres a million concurrent players.

You get what you see in the first 20 minutes. I got a loop of oversimplified QTE's for catching fish and materials, going to town, selling and upgrading. This never changes in the first 10 hours. Theres no wrinkle, interesting story or event. The game feels like a mindless MMO fetch quest stretched over a dozen hours. You level up the ship, have more space and repeat the same tedious process over and over. Some might call it cozy or meditative, to me its just boring.

The art style and controls are nice at least.