A bold, new direction for the Pokemon series that was desperately needed. I nearly lost all hope after the disappointment of Sword and Shield but Legends Arceus reeled me back with relative ease. Pretty much any problems I had with Gen VIII have been addressed here. And I think the Monster Hunter-esuqe, segmented world design is a much better fit for Pokemon rather than a fully open map. At least, for the time being. I think Game Freak has finally given us a game that can once again get fans looking forward to the future of this series. Can't remember the last time I sunk 50 hours into one of these games in the blink of an eye.

But is the game kind of ugly? Yeah. They're clearly still working with the old engine but I adjusted to its graphical shortcomings after a couple hours. Any other minor issues I have hardly matter. Pokemon is finally exciting again.

Alright, so after a long year of patches and updates I finally returned to the game and finished the main questline. For the record I played this on my base model PS4. The game was an infamous mess at launch but I did find it at least playable. During that first month I put in about 30 hours or so, which is nothing to scoff at. Definitely saw my share of bugs and framerate dips but I only ever came across a single quest that needed to be patched before I could proceed. This was fixed not long after but eventually I decided to just put the game down and wait for more problems to get ironed out.

Now after Patch 1.5 the game runs much better and even the weird input delays in menus and long loading screens seem to have been addressed. Unfortunately in order for the game to properly run on a PS4 they had to take out a lot of NPCs and traffic to keep the frame rate from dipping. This is a real shame because when you start driving around, Night City turns into a fucking ghost town. NPCs are abundant if you're just walking around but the streets never feel as populated as they should be. I understand why that sacrifice had to made but after a while I just started using a combination of the fast travel system and my feet more often than not.

Which leads me into my main gripe with the game; so now I'm speaking purely in terms of the game design itself. Night City is kind of too big for its own good. CDPR created this gorgeous, vast cityscape; dotted with unique neighbourhoods and melancholic vistas. But when you dive into it you realize there's not a ton of varied locations to see. The city is filled with these massive, towering skyscrapers and yet it feels like there's very few interiors you can actually explore. I couldn't honestly expect fully detailed interiors everywhere considering how dense the city is, but it does feel like there's a severe lack of them. The overworld definitely feels less RPG and more Rockstar-esque than I was anticipating. But the verticality of the map does help set it apart from other open-world games.

NPCs are rarely interactive. You can't talk to people on the street, rob them, antagonize them, or anything of the sort. Only important quest NPCs actually have something to say. The citizens of Night City, not unlike most of the architecture, is purely set dressing. Like, am I crazy for thinking it's weird that there's only four hookers around this gigantic, hyper-sexualized dystopia? In GTA you can find them on every street corner.

Where the game truly shines is in its dialogue and quests. And as an RPG it was really important to get those things right. Cyberpunk 2077 is at its best when you're infiltrating hostile environments, using your tech abilities to hack enemies, camera systems, and using your skills and wits to talk your way out of sticky situations. It may not be the most in-depth dialogue system out there, but skill checks and timed responses keep things interesting and makes conversations feel like they matter. Seeing romances through the end and experiencing the different questlines for those characters was also a delight. I wish there was more to do with your partners after their questlines end, but you can still visit them in their homes and chat a bit. If you crash in their bed you'll even wake up next to them, which I found cute. I had a female V so I dated both Judy and River and enjoyed my time with them both, especially the former. Over time I grew to enjoy Cherami Leigh's performance as V but it was definitely spotty at points. She was fantastic as Makoto in Persona 5 so I'm chalking this one up to a directing problem. She was doing this gruff, breathy voice that just sounded like forced edginess a lot of the time. But Cyberpunk's an edgy universe so I guess it fits. And I would be remiss not to mention Keeanu Reeves, who arguably gives a career-best performance as Johnny Silverhand.

I have a lot more things I liked and things I didn't like that I would love to talk about, but I'm not writing a 4 hour-long YouTube essay here. Overall, I enjoyed my time with Cyberpunk 2077 despite its shortcomings. It had one fucking disaster of a launch but I can't hold the sins of the CDPR executives against the dev team. They truly wanted to make something special and in many respects I believe they succeeded. The ambition cannot be understated. Unfortunately its problems will likely loom over it like a dark cloud for the rest of time but maybe it will receive a re-examination by the general public in the future. Especially now that the next-gen versions are out. I'll probably come back to it again once I have a PS5; only then could I see myself bumping it up to 4 stars. But for now I think I'll give my PS4 a break.

Damn. Consider me a Metroid fan.

This was a series I never thought I could get into but Dread proved me wrong. I was always afraid of these types of games out of fear of getting lost; like it would be impossible to complete without pulling out a guide. And while I did get briefly confused on a couple occasions, the game was expertly crafted to gently guide the player without feeling hand-holdy. The bosses were also a huge highlight and relied on pattern recognition and quick reflexes to take them down. Upon first encountering one the odds may seem hopelessly weighed against you but after a few tries you really start to get the hang of it and feel like a badass. And controlling Samus does indeed feel fantastic! The game controls like a dream; I haven't been this satisfied with moment-to-moment gameplay from Nintendo since like...Super Mario Odyssey. And that is HIGH PRAISE coming from me. Goes without saying that the E.M.M.I.s bring a whole new type of gameplay to Metroid and they were always great fun to avoid, outsmart, and eventually take down.

This is so, so close to becoming an all-time favourite for me. Maybe after I go back and play it again, collecting all there is to collect, it will become one. MercurySteam knocked it out of the park. I can't wait to see what else they get to create in the future.