Though it did take a while to click with me, alongside a few updates that really smoothed things out, I really enjoyed this game. Firstly, the obligatory observation that the game is extremely unpolished. Updates helped but as it stands, it is still pretty rough around the edges. That aside, the game really did surprise me with how good it was. Roaming around the islands with my finely-tuned physics settings/controls was so much fun and the traditional boost levels were a good time too, if a bit same-y aesthetically. The boss titans were a blast, too, with some janky mechanics and straight banger tracks accompanying them. The music was also excellent, as is usual with Sonic games (my favorite tracks were Find Your Flame and Rhea Island).

I'm glad I pushed through it all and finished Sonic Frontiers. It is a surprisingly unique take on recent Sonic games and I imagine a sequel to it could be truly great.

After such a strong start with The New Order, The New Colossus really needed to deliver on its promise of depicting the liberation of America from the Nazis by being bigger and bolder in its gameplay and particularly its story. In some ways, it surely delivers on that, and in others, it does not.

To start with its story, for the most part, The New Colossus towers above its predecessor, delivering a much more involved narrative that explores B.J.'s abusive, deeply troubled past and digs into his psyche as he's brought back from the brink at the end of the last game only to emerge as a broken man.

It's riveting stuff and the stakes are surely high this time, as, despite their previous victories, the Kreisau Circle is no less close to liberation from the Nazis than they were before. However, that's until the new cast of rebels joins on, including the incredibly written Grace, performed wonderfully by Debra Wilson, as well as the tenacious Horton, performed by Chris Heyerdahl, who leads the New Orleans communist revolution.

Really, the writing in this game is top-notch, not just in the new characters but across the board, with truly some of the best dialogue I've ever heard in a video game, particularly when B.J. first meets Horton at their hideout and argues with him into joining the resistance. Overall, there's a fantastic cinematic flair and presentation to the narrative this time that really come together.

However, that narrative is not without its faults. For one, this game is kind of all over the place tonally, more so than the first game. While, for the most part, I didn't mind the balance they struck with comedy and drama here, I can easily see why some would not be on board. I equate it to Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman movies, particularly the second one, where the script is so down to clown that you're not entirely sure if you should take the serious moments seriously, lest there be a comedic rug-pull at the other end.

Like I said, I was personally fine with it in this case, but I can totally see why some may not be into it.

The ending is also something I take umbrage with. Not so much the ending scene itself but the fact that that's where they end things. It feels much more like the end of the second act of the larger story than the end of the story altogether. I can only assume that they were confident that Wolfenstein III would soon follow this one, since it's a bizarre choice for a conclusion.

The terrible heavy metal cover of 'We're Not Gonna Take It' they use over the end credits is also a bizarre choice.

As for the gameplay, it does deliver a heavier, harder combat experience compared to the last game. I wouldn't really say on the whole that it's better or worse than the combat of The New Order; it's just... different. The guns, takedowns, and general movement feel like they have more weight to them, and unfortunately, as a trade-off, stealth feels less like a viable plan of attack than it was in the last two entries.

As a result of this heavier feeling of combat, perhaps my biggest issue is how difficult it is, even on the normal and easier difficulties. While there were issues with difficulty imbalances in the combat arenas of The New Order, here it feels like the entire game is a crapshoot of varying levels of challenge. Whether that's down to AI or encounter design is neither here nor there, but it's just more frustrating than anything else.

Regardless, I still believe The New Colossus to be a good sequel to The New Order. In terms of story, for the most part, it delivers on writing, characters, and plot very well, although its tone and choice of ending scene stop it from being out-and-out superior to the first game. Gameplay-wise, its heavier, faster combat delivers too, but at the expense of some uneven difficulty in enemy encounters.

Overall, though, it's surely enough to make me wonder where Wolfenstein III is already.

7/10

Wolfenstein Youngblood is an interesting beast. It's billed as a 'side project', under the stead of another development team (Arkane Lyon), yet its premise is one that's presumably important and vital enough that it feels like it should be required reading for anyone interested in the series. Instead of focusing on new characters in a new setting of the same world, Youngblood jumps ahead in time and tells the tale of B.J. Blazkowicz's twin daughters, 20 years after the somewhat ambiguous ending of The New Colossus.

It's a truly bizarre choice, narratively, since the last game's ending leaves things on such a major cliffhanger that it seemed as though the third game was just around the corner. Yet here we are, jumping well ahead of that story and giving piecemeal details of what went down in the yet-unseen Wolfenstein III, with the one key detail being that Hitler was killed off-screen and his death led to a freak weather apocalypse.

What's most bizarre of all, though, is that there's no clear reason or moment where it all clicks and you go, "Oh, that's why this came out before Wolfenstein III." It really does just feel like a side project in terms of its importance, despite what it spoils about a potential third game in the series.

Both of the Blazkowicz twins are fun characters and fit right in with the universe and the audience's expectations of what the daughters of B.J. and Anya would be like—Jess is more like Anya in her being reserved and calculating, whereas Soph is much more gung-ho and bloodthirsty. They're also joined by Abby, Grace's now-grown-up baby daughter from the last game, who serves as mission control and is a fun character in her own right.

As for everything in the story besides the characters and their dialogue, you can take it or leave it. It's woefully generic filler compared to the high-stakes mayhem and antics of the previous MachineGames Wolfensteins. It largely comes across as a lesser rehash of the events of The New Order; the twins meet up with a resistance network and must eliminate Nazi targets for them and do odd jobs here and there until they can square up with the big bad Nazi general at the centre of it. Sure, perhaps that's a gross oversimplification of the broad strokes of the plot, but nothing really interesting happens in between.

Though perhaps the muted story is by design since Youngblood was built as a co-op game after all. They do, of course, give you the option to play it solo, which is what I did, but I can't say it's any better or worse for it. Most likely the latter, as the companion AI for the sister never feels as helpful as it should be and just highlights how imbalanced the combat is.

It seems like if you're playing solo and you want to have something at least approaching a decent time with this, you need to play on the easiest difficulty and always be upgrading your preferred weapons to their maximum efficiency. Even then, I wouldn't say that it's still all that fun. You can tell Arkane had a hand in this game, as there's much more of a focus on movement and verticality than there has been before in Wolfenstein, but it's not exactly a gamechanger.

Sure, it can help spice combat up a bit and give you some room to work with, but the stealth mechanics, or lack thereof, are perhaps the poorest yet, despite giving you an invisibility cloak as a core ability. The introduction of healthbars to all enemies now means that silenced headshots, even with a fully upgraded pistol, are rarely ever one-and-done, which is much the same with throwable weapons.

Despite having moments of fun with the game's gunplay and abilities, it's overall just disappointing, especially coming from two passionate, immensely talented studios and game directors working in tandem on this title. Perhaps this was a case of too many cooks, but whatever the case, the trailers make it look and sound more fun than it is to play (though perhaps that's mainly thanks to Carpenter Brut).

Story-wise, it's a bizarre tangent to take things on. The characters and dialogue are as fun as they always are, but the crux of the plot is super generic, and the choice of setting it after the potential Wolfenstein III is just baffling.

If you have a spare afternoon and a friend to play this with, there's surely fun to be had, but otherwise, you might want to save your time and money with this one.

4/10

What if Yoko Taro made Dustforce after he’d just finished playing The Sands of Time, was on a Crypt of the NecroDancer kick and liked rats? That’s a really reductive description, but it’s also probably the closest thing to a box into which you can pigeonhole Mad Rat Dead. Rhythm games mixed with other genres are like crack to me, so even with the high standard I hold them to, it’s probably a sign that it’s done something very right whenever I start replaying levels for S ranks before I’ve even finished it.

The game's differentiated from most similar rhythm-plus-something-else hybrids in that, instead of maintaining a consistent beat, its songs’ BPM actually change throughout each stage and you’re expected to adjust the timings of your actions on the fly (which, without spoiling anything, goes into maximum overdrive on hard mode). There’s great foresight shown in some of the design decisions implemented to prevent this from becoming too overwhelming, namely how there’s a three second countdown after you close the pause menu to give you some prep time, Mad Rat’s basic movement isn’t tied to the beat and the game briefly goes into slow motion whenever the beat switches tempo. Considering how taxing it can be to mentally juggle the sheer amount of obstacles it’s often chucking at you with the need to time all his dashes and jumps correctly, these do a pretty remarkable job at avoiding frustrations which would have easily been prevalent in the hands of a lesser team.

Iffy situations can still arise sometimes despite how thoroughly thought out it is overall, though. Dying in Mad Rat Dead works like the 3D Prince of Persias’ time rewinding mechanic except it subtracts from the time limit instead of a collectible resource and any source of damage kills you in one hit; there were consequently a few instances where I’d found myself in enough of a cyclical death trap that it was more beneficial to just restart the whole level instead of trying to work my way out of a situation where (for example) I’d eventually ran out of disappearing platforms to rest my weary rat legs on. On the initial playthrough there doesn’t seem to be any way to skip cutscenes either, which can become grating in some of the especially difficult levels. That said, I’m hesitant to pour too much haterade on this partially because most of your time’s likely going to be spent playing through the level select menu (which wisely makes cutscenes optional), as well as the old adage: never attribute to flawed design that which is adequately explained by skill issues.

The third part is because it’s ultimately outweighed by what a joy this is to control. Without hyperbole, Mad Rat himself’s got to be one of the most fun characters to fundamentally just move around as in any platformer. He doesn’t get any new moves or abilities over the course of the game, but that’s because he doesn’t need any – familiarising yourself with all his quirks, like being able to jump mid-air if you’ve dashed off of a ledge, breakdancing while airborne to maximise airtime or shortening his dashes to a custom length by tapping the opposite direction you’re dashing in, intrinsically progresses you from feeling hapless at the start to like a champ by the end. There are lots of segments I initially couldn’t stop dying during which’ve eventually become ones I now occasionally boot up the game specifically to replay, just to dance around the proverbial litterbox of hazards that once gave me so much trouble or party with bosses that feel like you’re at a particularly malicious concert, complete with moves that resemble strobe lights.

Something you might notice in the first of those clips is how much the soundtrack’s reverbs sound like the mewling of an angry cat, which reflects another one of the game’s specialties: conveying character through music. Take a second and picture in your head a morally dubious cartoon rat breaking out of his cage with the intent to kill his owner, then imagine what a soundtrack to that scene would sound like: chances are it’s exactly like this. Now do the same for this scenario: that rat’s feeling like a hero with a newfound sense of purpose after developing a moral compass and saving the life of a young girl – same situation. The fruit of looking at a rhythm game and going “the music’s good” hangs so low it’s effectively underground, so it’s just as well that Mad Rat Dead’s soundtrack goes the extra mile and evokes all the right emotions so effectively (which is especially impressive considering how many different composers it has and how tonally scattershot it could’ve been as a result; clearly some strong direction going on here).

Speaking of strong direction, there’s a reason I mentioned Yoko Taro at the start. How many funny rat games kick off by interviewing you about whether or not you hate other people, if it’s always right to do what benefits the most people and whether or not you’ve the will to realise your dreams, complete with booting you back to the main menu as a joke if you pick the particularly suspect options? I don’t know either, but this one does. It’s not eccentric for the sake of itself, either, because these concepts tie in with the events that unfold throughout the story far more neatly than you’d expect; such a mechanics-driven game could easily get away with not putting this much effort into its narrative, but they did anyway.

It's what it says on the tin: platforming madness with an extra helping of heart. Don’t be a scaredy rat and give it a go – or else.

Been waiting for this franchise to return with a good entry for so many years I've lost count. It's not what I expected, but it's good to finally stop waiting.

The switch back to side scrolling was a welcome one, it plays wonderfully. The traversal is easily the games greatest strength, it's so fun and responsive and can really push you at times to utilise all of your tools (especially with a lot of the collectables and side missions.) Combat is fast and engaging, pretty easy to learn but is more in depth than it first lets on, particularly when you get more and more upgrades. Boss fights are incredible here, they were always something to look forward to.

My only real complaint is that I think it's longer than it needs to be. Part of that might be my fault as I was doing as much exploration and side missions as I could, but I thought it was worth mentioning that it felt as if it was running out of steam towards the end. Thankfully, the ending is strong and I felt more than satisfied when credits rolled.

As with the original PS4 release The Last Of Us Part II is a phenomenal game of revenge, redemption, brutality, and horror. Graphics, animations, and gameplay are top tier.

With this PS5 version of the game I was mainly looking forward to the No Return mode which I really like. I love all the different encounters and how whacky and chaotic it is. My favourite rounds are the holdout levels and thankfully you can create a custom run of all holdout levels, which basically turns No Return into a horde-like mode. Really fun and addictive. 👌🍄🧟‍♂️

"No victory, no defeat. The survivor will carry on the fight."

Finally playing this after years of being told that it's a must-play for any gamer was almost surreal. I couldn't believe that it was finally time. Coming off of 2, it did take me a while to get used to the controls, but once I did, it was smooth sailing from there.

The gameplay improves upon almost everything from MGS2, and it was a pleasant experience that had me going back for more immediately after the game had finished because it was just that fun. Unfortunately, though, I do have to admit that I didn't connect to the majority of the story nearly as much as I did with Sons of Liberty. It isn't by any means a bad story; it's great. I was just personally a lot more emotionally invested in Raiden's story throughout the game than I was with Big Boss's. The last hour of the game is nothing short of phenomenal, and that entire chunk is definitely my favourite thing about the story. The story is a lot less complex than Sons of Liberty, and while I do prefer 2 for being more ambitious, I think it works brilliantly for the story that Kojima is trying to tell here, and I wouldn't change much about it.

The game does have a few problems, including, of course, the extremely annoying escorting section (need I say more?) as well as the overly-long bike chase (which coincidentally happens right next to each other). I can forgive these for two reasons, though. The first being that many game developers around this time decided to have an escort mission in their game. And two, the rest of the game is just so damn good.

In all honesty, I'm still a little stunned by how this game has somehow managed to live up to my ridiculous expectations that have been built up over the years. To all those people who have practically begged me to play this for many years, yeah, this game is actually pretty good.

"With my dying breath, I curse the poor!" - Greg the Dragon seconds before magically obliterating the Gransys Slums for absolutely no rhyme or reason

Dragon's Dogma is that sort of game where it feels like it shouldn't work at all, but by sheer force of will it does anyhow. Godawful slow traversal across a mostly empty world? Oh, you bet, and yet I got sucked in and happily wandered around that barren repetitive landscape with almost nothing to see in it, fighting all of like 5 enemy types and having a great time while my pawns chattered incessantly about things hating fire. The story is extremely thin and lacking in detail, but do you think I'm really gonna sit there and just let that bastard dragon take my heart without giving him a piece of my mind? Hell no, give that back, that's mine! It's an incredibly weird game that stands out as one of the more experimental and interesting works Capcom put out during the entire PS3/360 era - despite its flaws, there's something unique and compelling here that lands just right. Definitely interested to see what they do with the sequel, and maybe I'll check out the post-game and DLC content before then.

It's rare to find a good stealth game, but the Hitman trilogy does everything it strives to be in the right way.

Immersive locations, well structured level design and a ton of possibilities to execute your kills make the modern Hitman games really stand out amidst the crowd. There's just so much replayability by going for certain challenges or just goofing around doing sandbox things.

And if you ever find yourself bored from the normal missions, you can take on the roguelike Freelancer missions, sending you on randomly assigned missions across the world, with an own progression system and a safehouse to upgrade.

Overall just an amazing package and a must-play for everyone who's into stealth or sandbox games.

To not only save and elevate your series from niche middle market eurojank to a name any Cool Gamer Worth Their Salt cares about, to not only be one of the only western studios to survive Square Enix, but then also to now provide one of the best deals in gaming through bundling every map in the reboot trilogy into one mega-game AND THEN put it it on Game Pass, this version of Hitman 3 is truly special. There aren't many stealth franchises around these days but I'm glad one of them is also one of the greatest games of the cross-generation.