Not without its issues (The Miles Morales storyline and some narrative decisions in the third act are a little sketchy) but this is easily the best game in the series just on a gameplay level alone.

Insomniac can sometimes struggle to tell an engaging story all the way through to the end, but man, they consistently nail those big emotional moments every single time. The side stories here are wonderful and show just how the developers love and understand what Spider-Man should symbolise as a character. Yuri Lowenthal also absolutely nails the role of Peter once again.

As soon as that first boss started blasting Nine Inch Nails, I knew this would be my kind of game. Such an absolute blast from start to finish. The combat is incredibly snappy, and after trudging through The Callisto Protocol at the same time as this and having to deal with endless amounts of plodding animations and lumbering gameplay, that was needed. After this and The Evil Within 2, Tango Gameworks is quietly becoming one of the best developers working today.

Got all the way to the final boss and had such a miserable time trying to complete the game that I just gave up. Callisto Protocol is a very visually pretty game, but once you go beyond the looks, you're left with a confused mishmash of ideas and not much else. What an utter waste of potential.

One step forward. Two steps back.

Better than Fallout 4 but far from Bethesda's peak. For every fun component here (campaign, space fights, companions), it's bogged down with confounding designs on a fundamental level that seeks to let the game down at every turn. I had a lot of fun with this one despite my problems but man, Bethesda really need to start remembering why their games work so well. It's not about the "Legendary" weapons and the never-ending radiant quests. It's about exploring a hand-crafted space and seeing what secrets the devs have hidden within. Bigger isn't always better. What fun is there in exploring thousands of planets when the majority of them are completely empty or stuffed with the same three outposts?

Literally a mix of Twin Peaks: The Return and The Matrix: Resurrections with a massive dose of the survival horror genre on top so you'd have to be incredibly dumb to think I wouldn't be calling this one of the best games ever made. Call me hyperbolic but it's incredibly rare that I get a game that speaks to me as a person as much as Alan Wake II does. Remedy has mastered the art of the cinematic game and if developers/publishers were smart, they'd start to take notice. Sam Lake is a genius.

The best PS1 survival horror game in years. Wears its influences a little too much at times (the Nowhere segment especially just borders on copying Silent Hill 1) but man I enjoyed the hell out of this. A really cool narrative and responsive gameplay just make this sing. A super impressive debut.

The best game in the series imo. Irrational took the lessons they learned from SOMA and while this doesn't reach that narrative peak, it offers something beyond the excessive lore dumps that cursed their previous main-line game. It suffers from some major bloat and unfortunate game design that lacks consequence but the emotional narrative keeps everything engaging. It's nothing mindblowing but it's far more effective than it gets credit for. Bloober Team should take notes.

A fascinating misfire. The atmosphere you'd somewhat expect from Amnesia is still present and accounted for but the sanity, tinderboxes and the tension of your lantern running out are pretty much completely gone in lieu of something more akin to a walking simulator.

For the record, I'm a big walking sim guy but here, it's easily where the main problems of the game lie. For about 2-3 hours or so of the five-hour length, this is a deeply boring game with shockingly easy puzzles and a story you can spot the twist of a mile away. However, once the machine of 'A Machine for Pigs' rears its head, the game picks up substantially and really begins to have fun with itself with multiple sequences offering some much-needed tension.

It's bizarre that this is even an Amnesia game as so many links of that series are almost cut out entirely but as it stands, it's a fascinating game to play through and think about not in terms of what the game has to offer but more so how strange this was to release around the same time you'd expect a mainline sequel to the first Amnesia game to come around. Making a spin-off that rips out most of what Amnesia what it was is a strange choice but to do it essentially at the peak of the actual franchise is even stranger.

Aggressively okay. lncredibly influential but those influenced by it ended up improving upon it. Really fun and bleak atmosphere but the actual horror of it feels cheap. Perhaps that's because years of seeing this entirely through lets plays killed the actual tension of it for me but as it stands, this is a fine game in my opinion that hasn't quite aged the best.

2021

A short and devastating little game that is superbly written. Suffers from some technical hiccups but besides that, this is a gem that's worth checking out.

Had the urge to play this for the first time in about six years or so and fell in love with it all over again. Buggy and filled with issues both in narrative and general quest design? Absolutely. Is it still one of my favourite games of all time and one of the most transformative pieces of art in my life? You bet.

Despite a really poor ending and a slightly underwhelming second half, I was very much into this. It won't convert those who aren't into these games but for those who enjoy these, it's absolutely worth playing through.

A fun enough game but one plagued with the worst technical issues of this series so far. Besides that, definitely a step down from the tightness of House of Ashes. I appreciate their push to have more gameplay overall but I hope they actually give them more urgency in the future.

Really good! Definitely think this has the best story for these Supermassive games since Until Dawn but not without some caveats. The game's over simplistic design when it comes to the QTEs makes the core gameplay feel a little stale by the end and the graphics are...inconsistent to say the least.

For all the issues that The Quarry has, I think it manages to get by very nicely thanks to the mostly strong performances and as I mentioned before, the engaging narrative.

I was a big fan of Observation and the recent announcement of this team working on Silent Hill reminded me I hadn't looked at this one yet! I'm glad I finally did though. Besides some annoying obtuse gameplay (Episode 3 specially) this is a pretty creepy little beast of a game. It's short but manages to tell a very strong simple story that comes together very nicely at the end. No Code are an absolutely perfect team to work on SH and this game is a great example of why. Give it a look!