Excellently captures the look and feel of a classic 90s FPS game with some absolutely stellar sound design that really helps to put you in the big stompy shoes of a Boltgun weilding Space Marine. I would honestly love to give this a higher score but unfortunately it is held back by the lack of a map, the Sorcerer boss fight in the arena that is just way too small, and enemies just not dropping enough items when they are downed/a way to get more health/armor ala Doom 2016's glory kills. Despite all this it was a joy to play and is one of my favouirte games I've played this year.

When a sequel to Breath of the Wild was initially announced my first thought was: How on earth do you follow that. And somehow, despite how much I loved BotW, I adored this 10 times more. The encouragement to play with the games systems to see what worked, multiple ways to achieve any given goal, the return of temples (not you Fire Temple, you stink), the truly incredible soundtrack and of course the return of that wonderful art style. These pieces come together in a way that is so close to perfection it is staggering. There are minor gripes I have, some things could use some qol work, hammering the A button to pick up items isn't amazing, less amazing is having sage powers on the same button making it easy to accidentally activate them. Sages would also run away from me in a fight making it even more difficult to use their powers when I actually wanted to and it confuses me why you can detach weapon materials in the menu but not attach them in the same way. These are honestly very minor complaints, my overall experience is one of a game I will not soon be forgetting. It is very rare that I put upward of 100 hours into a game and Tears of the Kingdom is one of them.

So once again my question is: How on earth do you follow this?

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.

When I first initially heard there would be a Remake of RE4 my initial reaction was to wonder out loud if that was really necessary. I worried that the campy action and one liners that gave the original it's soul would be all but stripped out. Now having seen it through to the end, my initial hang ups are all but forgotten. Capcom have perfectly executed and stuck the landing so precisely a re-imagining of a well beloved work that it's honestly a miracle. Albeit it does not stray very far from the source material but it does enough differently and trims enough of the fat that this is almost overshadows the original. Almost. The original still deserves to be remembered and experienced, with the all the warts of its comparatively clunky control scheme.

RE4 Remake is good, a masterclass in how to properly handle a Remake, but maybe let's start making more original games?

(also, the merchants voice, while good, is just not quite as good as the original)

They made Fucked Up Punch-Out and not even that can save it.

Slow, clunky, tells an uninteresting story with mostly forgottable characters, runs very poorly on PS4 with atrocious load times. Some very poor framerates coupled with some weird graphical bugs make this feel rushed. Sets up a sequel hook which: lol. I don't think so.

Won't be playing again.

So so close to being the perfect realisation of the series, marred by the now well documented performance issues and bugs. Overall I do think Legends: Arceus is superior to this in a lot of ways, the aspect of sneaking up and catching Pokemon without entering a battle is sorely missed here but the characters, open ended nature and new Pokemon designs ultimately won me over. A special mention should be made to the games score as well, this is the first time in a while a the soundtrack to a game from this series has left a lasting impression.

In short, a great game that could have been superb had it not been forced out in time for Christmas. I believe having 2 pokemon games out this year was a large contributing factor to the state this game shipped in and The Pokemon Company & higher ups at Game Freak seriously need to step their game up in that regard. The franchise is obviously huge but a bigger backlash from another almost unfinished product being put in the hands of consumers could have serious consequences, I don't imagine Nintendo are too happy with their reputation of delivering pretty solid and concise experiences being tarnished. Or maybe they don't give a shit because the game has made a fuck load of money anyway.

Anyway my point is all game devs should unionise. And this game is pretty good too in spite of its very very obvious issues.