A unique premise and good mystery are dragged down by dull characters, plain environments, and an erratic difficulty curve.

I enjoyed my first couple of hours with Control, following along with the story, reading new files, meeting new characters, but Control soon loses its charm when you realize it's not all that interesting. The map is impossible to read, the level layouts are a fucking gray maze, any sidequest you happen upon kicks your ass, upgrading yourself and your gun is a confusing mess, and almost none of the characters you interact with are worth caring about.

My favorite character was someone who you never even meet, and is only seen or talked about in files or in video scenes. I certainly didn't care about Jesse, boring as she was. I was interested in finding out what the hell happened to her, but not in her, the character.

It's just one of those games I wanted to end quicker than it did, and the two DLCs only added more runtime on top of that neverending dullness. The worst thing about the game is for some insane reason, despite not having any other mechanics to warrant this, the game has Souls bonfire checkpoints. I can't for the life of me understand what that added but additional wasted time when I was retrying hard areas/bosses.

There are a few fun moments (Ashtray Maze, holy shit) but overall, this game unfortunately didn't impress. I can't see myself going back to it, even when the sequel eventually comes around.

It's such a step down for Alan Wake. When the flashlight and shooting mechanics are put into faster paced combat arenas, it really falls apart. And I dunno who is responsible for making you do the same boring areas 3 times, but I pray they have no more say in game design over at Remedy. The characters, what characters there are, were bland and terrible.

The only thing redeeming about this game is the villain. The combat feels worse, the manuscripts and dialogue are done so poorly this time, you'd swear Remedy had nothing to do with it. It just feels totally different. Like, cheap in a bad way. All except Mr. Scratch, the most hilariously evil villain ever created. It makes me sad, all his great scenes were wasted with this story built around them. He deserved a much better game.

Giving money to this, because I love Mega Man, and to Yooka Laylee, because I loved Banjo-Kazooie, are two of the worst decisions I ever made in my life. I will never contribute to any kickstarter after getting burned by these travesties, no matter how the game looks. After Mighty No. 9 I'd be worried about even giving a homeless guy on the street a single penny. What's his angle??? What long dormant franchise is HE claiming to revive? Hell no man, I'm not giving you any money!

So kudos to Keiji Inafune I guess, you made me wary of any form of charity.

[Campaign Review ONLY] Battlefield V is mostly boring but at least short. It felt like almost none of the stories got any focus, and the game was full of half-baked ideas. Like stealth. Hey, game devs that are not used to creating stealth gameplay, can you please stop trying to force stealth into your games? Because it plays like shit. Or at least hire another developer to help you who actually knows how to program a stealth game. I did like at least that you weren't sitting behind some asshole with the word "FOLLOW" written above his head for the whole game. So kudos for that, I guess.

Worst thing is the game has so many fucking bugs and technical issues. Load times are fucking UNGODLY. Up there with some of the longest I've ever experienced. Think PS2 late 2000's Smackdown games and Bloodborne at launch. The worst were things like my gun becoming de-selected, and that would block my character from doing ANY input at all! Can't shoot, can't throw grenades, can't reload, literally the only thing you can do is pick up another gun, which fixes it, but this happens randomly and often. And coupled together with the fact that you die so quickly and checkpoints are such shit, that just brings my piss to a rolling boil.

The closest the game came to feeling like it had anything worthwhile to show me was in the French and German campaigns. Just like the other campaigns however, we never get time to spend with the characters, to go on the journey with them, because each campaign is pretty much one level. The opening of the campaigns is genuinely well done, it's a shame the actual gameplay and stories of campaign feel like such shit.

But it is surprising however that a Nazi focused campaign was present at all in a modern game. And that it was probably the most quality of all of them. It almost makes you want to commend that DICE had the balls to tell a story like this, but then there's weird little things and inaccuracies, like the complete absence of any swastikas in Single-Player mode. Like, I surely get not including them for multiplayer, no asshole should be identifying their game profile with them, but not putting them in Single Player? Even Wolfenstein got that right, and that game is as inaccurate as you can go with WW2 storytelling.

Because I have always enjoyed stories in the setting of WW2 , I gave this game a fair shot, but BFV has SO many problems, and almost nothing good. I enjoyed myself the tinest bit because of the French and Nazi campaign, but I could never recommend this game to anybody else. And all I ever heard about the game's multiplayer was fans complaining about it, so I'm imagining there ain't much good there either.

I'll probably forget I ever played it in a couple of months.

This was a brilliant introduction to a series I've only seen my friend play up til now. It was every bit of the rich, conspiracy filled, double-turn twist, over the top action I expected. I'm honestly not sure why THIS is the one that finally broke through with western audiences, it doesn't really seem too different from the other games in the series I've seen. But it's a hell of a game to kick it off for new fans. Even though it's got its share of problems.

The story was intriguing, filled with some big twists and great characters. I didn't expect Majima's story to be so compelling. Although I wish I understood a little bit more why he's so serious here, but so insane in the other games, it didn't feel like a believable transition. But that's okay, his story was still mostly interesting. Kiryu's started slow and boring, but eventually picked up, and I was happy to see that.

Combat feels great, but battles all feel the same, so it's easy to get sick of them. And with Majima's slugger style, the game just kind of ended up playing itself. So not difficult, but just long with so many waves of enemies. At least the music for fights was great, and the boss fights and especially the boss characters were EXTRAORDINARY. Props to the guy who played Kuze, I will never forget your performance here. S+.

Music, I mean, what do you say? Incredible. IN-fucking-CREDIBLE. These composers are geniuses.

I will say that I thought the final parts of the game were filled with a little too much time wasting, and taking out all those unnecessary scenes and fights, the game would have felt a lot more snug in its runtime. I'm excited to see the rest of the series, I just hope this isn't the peak at the very start and it's all downhill from here.

I often see this game called "ahead of its time". But considering what's ahead of it is a far too long era dominated by the most boring, bland, brown and gray modern war-battle shooters of all time, is that really saying anything?

The game is graphically impressive for the console it released on, and the shooting mostly feels pretty good, but almost everything else about this game is drab. The levels are ugly, the enemies are way too goddamn spongy, and the story is so boring, I just stopped listening during one cutscene and just listened to podcasts for the rest of Black's runtime. This is the kind of game that when it was over, I didn't hesitate to hit the delete button, get it off my console and out of my memory.