A game made by people who liked Thor The Dark World and decided to make their Avatar. Somehow even worse than Avatar about Indigenous folks.

2004

A vampire survivors- like game where numbers go up while and you can look up in-game what those numbers mean

Dogshit story, the game tries its best to hold itself together, probably the best Flying Wild Hog game. Turns out all of their design philosophies work better for a third person character action game than for a first person arena shooter. It's like Mario on drugs.

Turns out having companions in a souls-like game makes a huge difference. It's like Mario on drugs.

A game for jerks by jerks.

If you want to have a decent time, please level up stats that increase your agility. It's responsible for the amount of invincibility frames you have on your dodge rolls AND makes you sip the Estus Flask faster.

A high fantasy game that has the word "dragon" in the name and has a dragon appear within the first 30 minutes of the game.

Also, you can pick up a giant rat and hold it like if it was a cat.

A game that feels like it's a compilation of PS2 Greatest Hits like Shadow of the Collosus but without their charm. Decides what it wants to be at the end of the game which is too late for this game but a great set-up for the sequel.

Love this game and what it is trying to say about capitalism and colonialism and how it is intertwined and still being done towards African countries.

However, that point is missed with everything else that is in the game: the "tribe village" and a document implying that the village decided to wear racist caricature outfits because of the virus is Not Great. By the way the plot of this game was set up in Resident Evil 0 so there was an intent to tackle capitalism as a theme, it's just everyone else other than the writers missed the memo.

Absolute dogshit of a game but still works as comfort food in how comfortingly bad it is??? This is like playing an uncharted game but without the budget to fool you that it might be good.

Welcome to survival horror. A game that teaches you to be careful at first but after getting beaten encourages its players to take on casual speedrunning. The more you get used to the iconic mansion the more you figure out how to go through it as optimally as you can, where the enemy triggers are, how to not backtrack and always be progressing through the game.

An exhaustingly long game for folks who only buy a few AAA games a year. Nothing wrong with that but if the game does not work for you the positives turn into negatives. Mayhaps open world as a game concept had been run to the ground where playing even the better ones feel like going through a glorified checklist.

2006

One of the best FPS of all time. No other game does pacing like Prey 2006 does and the arsenal has weapons for every situation. In addition, the mechanic of being able to resurrect after dying keeps you engaged while escalating encounters till the very end.

This game is about a Cherokee man who served in the US military and who came back to their reservation but was suddenly thrown into fighting off the alien invasion.

I am not qualified to talk about how well the Cherokee culture is portrayed within the game but based on interviews the devs got Cree actors for the main characters and were very attentive to their feedback.

"Is Gears better than Halo?" I don't know, and, honestly, it's hard to compare them. Both are trendsetters and were the first ones to combine concepts within their respective genres in a way that works but Halo is about Master Chief and Gears is about Cogs. Does that make one better than the other? Not really.

Many years go by and one of the series struggles to stay relevant and still searches for what it wants to be while the other feels like it has found its footing and walking towards a direction. If you have told me that the former was Halo and the latte is Gears I would not have believed you 3 years ago before me and my friend decided to play through both of the game series.

I did not expect vulnerability and nuance from a series that had its first game be this hypermasculine machine of blood and gore. But here I am, thinking about Gears again. And Halo? I barely remember

It's either The Master Chief Collection's fault or I simply don't get it.
Playing Halo 3 immediately after Halo 2 made me really sad about the Arbiter becoming almost irrelevant due to him being a canonical Player 2 for the co-op.
Also, Halo 3 is the most "remember Halo?" Halo game. Yes, I remember Halo. We are only 3 games in. We didn't have time to forget (guessing this was due to Xbox 360 being more popular than Xbox? I am speculating at this point) The game is not interested in exploring anything new narratively other than portraying Master Chief as this icon figure, as a perfect soldier who gives himself to the cause while not letting him speak his mind. The ending of this game is the same escape sequence on a vehicle as the first Halo, reminding you this is, in fact, a Halo game where there are mandatory vehicle sections but at least there is no timer during the escape this time around.

It must have been Microsoft who ruined Halo and not 343 (although they are also responsible)