I came back to Cal Kestis journey with some slight trepidation, I enjoyed the previous game but felt it dragged in a couple places and frustrated me in others. I'm happy to say I'm very glad I decided to re-join the Mantis crew, this is a thoroughly enjoyable game, movement feels fluid and extremely satisfying, combat is sufficiently difficult while still making you feel like you really are crossing sabers with formidable foes, and the story and characters are incredibly well written, this outpaces Episode IX's clumsy pacing by a huge margin. Highly recommended to those who played through Cal's previous outing, fans of Star Wars and anyone who knows just how damn good Respawn are at designing levels that are a joy to traverse.

I've now run through this game twice and I think my second run has really cemented my opinion of this game: a great concept with a pretty flawed execution. Starting out both times I thought to myself "this isn't as bad as I remembered" but it's the back half of this game that is the real bastard. The twin stick control, while odd, isn't the problem. The problem is the challenge modifiers, that's where, to use a British phrase here, the game really starts to take the piss. An example is a room where the game is asking me to find a key hidden in the room, another key guarded by an enemy and to not kill any skeletons. The problem arises where the key is guarded by a vampire who hides in her coffin and can't be damaged until she opens the lid but just refuses to do so. My solution then was to find and kill the skeleton, prompting the game to spawn the one hit kill Grim Reaper as it always does when a challenge is failed, and kite him to the vampire, killing her and releasing the key. There are many such instances in this game and rather than being fun challenges to keep things fresh they just become annoyances that turn the game into a slog. Telling the player what to do but then hindering their means of doing it isn't my idea of fun. This is, in my opinion, another instance of Rare coming up with a fun conciet but absolutely fumbling just about everything else.

The enemy design is fun at least?

After 13 years of wondering whether a sequel to the original would ever materialise, nothing makes me happier than saying that this game is fantastic. Alan Wake 2 is Remedy absolutely swinging for the fences as hard as possible and nailing it. Taking notes from it's survival horror contemporaries, the game creates an incredibly tense and eery atmosphere that is actually frightening, unlike it's mostly campy and only mildly creepy predecessor. Artistically striking and visually impressive, use of FMV gives the game even more of its own character and also brings levity into the otherwise very dark story. Soundtrack also absolutely stellar, playing quite a central part to the plot, and further elevates the already incredible work on display. No game is perfect but, for me, this is damn close.

You can really feel the makings of a truly great Sonic game bubbling under the surface here, and much like the recent games that came before Frontiers, the main thing that majorly needs addressing is the way Sonic controls, too may times I will be speeding my way along one of the games many open world obstacle courses when I'm suddenly flung off course through seemingly not fault of my own. Also, unsure if I maybe wasn't paying attention but very unsure about what was happening in the story here, had to read a plot synopsis after I finished and feel like I missed a plot beat somewhere?? Either way Frontiers is a great step in the right direction, a solid groundwork to build something truly amazing. Also miles better than Forces, though it doesn't have to try too hard at that.