Easy 5 stars if you are into drifting and “frustration games”. The game is nails, it’s not pick up and play. It’s pick up, master the mechanics, start playing the game.

You have to get good at the basic mechanics before this game will be fun to play. If you don’t want to get over the learning curve, then you won’t find it enjoyable and you shouldn’t buy it.

The art style is pure class. It looks and feels like a giant canvas and your tyre marks are like paint brushes. Colour is sparsely used and highlights important obstacles / points of interest.

The drifting is spot on and when you hit the zen state of flowing through every corner effortlessly with the perfect throttle and angle you’ll be blown away by how simple and rewarding this game is.

Now, obviously this isn’t 5 stars in the same way a AAA game may be, but it’s 5 stars for it’s niche, gameplay loop and perfect execution of what this game set out to do.

Review may be super biased as I have the Platinum.

So this is one of the best AAA attempts at a Rogue-Like game.

The combat feels doom-esque with the pacing. Shoot, dodge, zipline and melee your way through enemies all whilst battling the bullet hell nature of enemy attacks.

2 problems with the game exist though.

Collectibles in a Rogue-Like game don’t make sense. Having to replay the story after the alternative ending to grind out collectibles is tedious and a poor design choice.

Secondly, occasionally the game has graphical glitches, clipping and other weird interactions between character models. Rare enough to not ruin every session, frequent enough to notice.

I’ve given the game an extra half star however for the free DLC Tower of Sisyphus. This is the true Rogue-Like experience in the game. Ascended floors of randomly generated levels and enemies for a high score. The perfect addition to the game.

I will concede you’ll either love this game or hate it. I loved it and it is a must play in my opinion.

So first off, docking a star for server quality, lagg issues etc. its frustrating to play because of the servers just being trash.

DMZ (even though it is in Beta) is one of the best modes to come out in a COD game for a while. Extraction Royales have always been an opaque, hard to get into genre that is often poorly done. Its right on the money here so much so that it could of been a standalone game. The fact that it’s an additional mode is great.

It needs some kind of economy system to make it more rewarding for exfilling good basic loot like 3 armour, large backpack etc. Fix the crashes and we’re on to a good co-op PvPvE shooter here.

Actual Warzone it’s self is fundamentally the same as last game except with the balances to Loadouts and ensuring they are less frequent. This has made the game better as fully kitted out Meta weapons are harder to come by, as are perks like cold blooded etc. The floor loot actually has relevance in this game.

The changes to a backpack system don’t phase me as a long term Apex player. Bag looting and snatching gear during a fire fight is a skill check. Bad players will get caught out and complain, good players will know where and when to dive into a bag.

The 3 ring split is a novel idea that is interesting in concept but doesn’t really do much for gameplay.

As usual, gunplay is spot on and I can’t fault Warzones Arcade take on it. Time to kill is lightning fast but tbh, it always has been.

Losing another star for lack of content at the moment. As with any live service game, we don’t have the full package. Content is sparse in order to be dished out incrementally so when more maps, modes and themes are added I’ll reassess.

They made it worse... I don't even know how.

Addressing the most obvious thing about the game, it just feels like a balance patch for Overwatch 1 that removed a player slot from the game. The shift from 6-5 is meh and doesn't noticeably make the gameplay better.

Yes we've addressed double shields as a META but we've also junked every off tank who just isn't viable to hold the line against any main tank. Good job.

The game is sparse on content at launch, losing a lot of the ported over content from the first game.

The servers don't work properly and will have you kicked out of games randomly. This still happens after the launch fiasco of the game where no one could get in to play it.

The biggest change to the game is the change in monetisation structure. It's taken them 3 years to remove lootboxes and add in a battle pass. Are you having a laugh?

Controversially, the removal of stuns from the game has also had a huge negative impact on how the game is played. Dive is so good and the only way to play the game. Genjis, Winstons, Tracers and Sombras just run riot unchecked with their ability to smash your backline to bits and then get out.

Queue times are stupid long for what is a game that just came out... 7+ minutes for a tank slot. No-one will play support characters and even so the brand new support is locked behind a premium battlepass or the last page of the free track.

At this point, even if the PVE was the best game in the world, this is too far gone. It was nice for half a day upon launch before violently reminding everyone of why they stopped playing Overwatch 1.

Overall, a downgrade from the first game which considering it was left on critical life support is embarrassing for a studio like Activision Blizzard.

Ahh Apex... It's a great game, im not going to lie. The two main problems are this:

1) Smurfs and absolute sweats just tank the experience. It's not fun having a professional 3 stack run around your pubs game and just tear it up.

2) The servers are just absolute trash at times. Lagging all the way through a game, randomly being kicked back to the lobby, stuttering etc. Everything that could ruin gameplay server side does happen.

When the above isn't happening however, you have a really unique BR with an incredibly high skill ceiling. Even something mundane as Armour Swapping from a box mid fight is a skill check that needs to be learned in order to get good.

Guns feel responsive and hit appropriately, the "cracked" sound is so satisfying and initiates this Pavlovian response to mindlessly W key in.

The Peacekeeper is one of the best designed Shotguns in a game since the Gnasher from Gears of War and it's actually balanced!

Movement tech in this game is also just incredible. Apex combines speed, with parkour, sliding, wall jumps and other ankle breaking techniques that just make you feel like a god when you string them all together and 1 vs 3 a team.

Sadly though, it has EA as a parent company and therefore monetisation is problematic. Everything is incredibly expensive outside of the battle pass although the battlepass awards you with enough in game currency to buy the next battlepass for free should you complete it each season.

Balance and the META can also be problematic at times. Having countless agents with legal wall hacks and the ability to see through smoke is just annoying. Why bother trying to rat when you're inevitably just going to get run down by a Bloodhound / Seer combo.

Lastly, cheaters/community.... It's not as common as people would lead you to expect (at-least at my level) but it is still sus when you get beamed from 100m away and every shot hits the head. I don't really know how to fix this, but it is a serious downer when it happens.

Community (like most in gaming these days) is a mix between normal, fun loving people and racist misogynists. Not strictly the games fault, just that the experience seems to attract them a lot.

Potentially the best competitive BR available at the moment.

4 stars for Nostalgia alone. Everyone knows you don't come to Runescape for gameplay, but rather the dopamine boost of watching numbers grow bigger and your account level up.

Having said that, for what is essentially a point and click game it's stood the test of time and been consistently good for a while.

New content is constantly being added into the game, the community is being listened to on a level unprecedented in most games (through the polling system), monetisation (through membership) has been made somewhat more consumer friendly by allowing players to exchange in-game funds for membership.

To be blunt, it's a second monitor game. If you play this exclusively, you are too far gone down the rabbit hole. On a second monitor / phone, it's the perfect low concentration game to play.

Stars being docked for how grindy this game truly is though. Maxing your account in Runescape is not a viable goal for most people who don't have thousands of hours to dedicate. The repetitiveness of tasks is also an issue which leads to burnout and boredom at times.

Lastly, the community has become uber sweaty with tricks like tick manipulation etc, youtubers will spend 100s of hours in the same spot, at the same content because it's "efficient" to level up this way.

Basically, the fun has been optimised out of the game in exchange for an optimal levelling up experience to reduce the grind down. You can still avoid this by just switching it up, but it's noteworthy.

Overall, nostalgic but not going to win any modern gaming awards.

I don't understand the somewhat universal hatred of this game. 5 stars it is not, but 1 star? No way.

I always like to say this game is a cross between overwatch and CS:GO. It has the heros/abilities of Overwatch with the tactical shooter elements from CS.

The game plays well, I'm yet to experience a game breaking bug or glitch after a good chunk of hours. I enjoy the simplified economy of simply save one round, full buy the next. It's a welcome change from doing the mental maths needed to work out a good buy in CS.

Ranked (at-least at my level) is balanced and feels competitive. The same cannot be said for casual which often ends in these blow out games of people getting absolutely wrecked.

The worst part of this game is easily the community. Playing this has never got me so racially abused in my life. People throwing tantrums because you locked in their character, people griefing because you've gone 1 round down.

The list is endless. I would be doing a disservice if I also didn't mention that this community (more so than other gaming communities) is incredibly sexist and misogynistic. I'm not surprised women tend to not open their mics up.

Monetisation is egregious. Skins are just so convoluted in their pricing that by the time you've spent £20 on a single skin it will be too late to realise.

Agents are cool, and balance is relatively good. There is a big disparity between perceived balance and the actuality of the situation. See Reyna as an example of this.

Lastly, you might as well become a controller main, you'll just be spending all your time with instalock duelists who don't know how to entry, initiators who team flash and a sentinel who doesn't watch flanks. If you want to have some semblance of control/ order you'll need smokes to dictate the game.

Overall, a decent tactical shooter deserving of a play.

So I enjoyed this game but not for the reasons I enjoy the series.

Obviously this game shifted the focus towards action over puzzles and platforming. Also, Lara is a murderous psycho.

She kills so many people in such a brutal fashion, this is meant to be her origin story. It’s not bad, it’s different. It is weird that she is presented as constantly frightened when gameplay doesn’t reinforce this idea.

The progression systems are fine, nothing revolutionary and very safe.

Overall a very safe game to bring Lara into a newer era of games whilst riding the adventure game hype that Uncharted brought in.

Ah Rocket League. At first it’s just a silly car football game and then you are 100s of hours deep screaming when your team mates don’t know how to rotate back post.

Mechanically the game has so much depth it’s insane. From fundamentals like aerials to advanced moves like wave dashing.

Although the game hasn’t seen any crazy overhauls since it’s inception, it’s stayed relevant, fun and engaging.

The community content after several years has made the game more accessible than ever but this has also come at the price of the skill floor being raised considerably as the game has gone on.

Monetisation is there but it’s not as sinful as other games.

The real reason this isn’t 5 stars is because the developers have boxed themselves in.

Other than cosmetics, and maybe some forge style tools, the game has no other content to offer.

The devs can’t change the core gameplay without invalidating several years of muscle memory and therefore the most we may ever get is some meme game modes.

So it’s getting 3 stars for these reasons.

1) The support this game has received is staggering. Content is always being introduced.
2) It was a global phenomenon that broke into mainstream culture and cemented it’s self there.
3) Building was one of the craziest skill gaps we’ve ever seen in a game.

Having said that, I just don’t like this game. Shooting feels lacklustre and like every gun is a pea shooter. The art style is too cartoony for how sweaty this game can be.

I’m also just simply bad at it and don’t enjoy getting dumpstered by cracked 12 year olds.

Lastly the game feels like it’s balanced in a way that the latest thing added is powerful to force players to use it.

Fun with your friends, but even a terrible game is.

This was just left to stagnate with no real support for years. Gameplay was polished if not just boring.

The first platform fighter to have mainstream appeal that can get close to SSBU.

It’s got solid fighting game fundamentals, its fast and attacks can feel meaty when hitting. Dodging is your only real defensive option, and it does get spammed a lot.

The problem is game balance and strings. Almost every high dps character can put you in true combo from 0-100 with no skill checks to get out of it. Normally this would be fine, but not when they have easy confirms just after this.

Roster is also lacking although it is being developed.

Monetisation is on the bad side. I understand you have to fund the game, but items are expensive and don’t always work together. E.g an emote for Shaggy ripping off his shirt only works with his base skin.

Although it released in “Beta” i feel this was a cover up for the lack of content at the time. You can’t release a game in beta for months, you have to make meaningful progress in that time and I don’t feel like MV did.

Will continue to periodically check in as it’s developed further.

So Doom is great. I stupidly decided to play it on too hard a difficulty and have turned it into a bit of a slog, my fault, not the games.

It’s very simple premise of shoot, move and glory kill is a very satisfying loop that continues to stay relevant all the way through the game.

Story is there, and you can follow it but are you really here for that? Surely wrecking demons is the reason you play Doom.

One day I hope to come back and fully finish this game.

So 3.5 stars… whilst I recognise that this score is an outlier I think it’s fully justified. Nintendo games have always been good, but they have also constantly been protected by hardcore fans who refuse to acknowledge their shortcomings.

The game feels good to play, but it isn’t the gold standard best game ever that people make it out to be.

Puzzles and general traversal are great but I can’t overlook how simplistic combat is, weapon breakage is just annoying and disincentivises using your best equipment for fear it wont be there when you really need it.

We are also still doing the climb the tall tower to scan the map deal which is a tired trope in gaming as a whole.

I never played any other Zelda game and therefore this is my first exposure to Link vs Gannon. As a result, the story is rather meaningless to me. Yes Gannon is trying to destroy/take over the world, but thats it?

I do intend to come back and finish this game one day, and may even adjust my rating accordingly but at the moment it’s staying in the backlog.

I was beyond gassed for this game. Let me tell you, this is a fantastic game in terms of it’s mechanics, systems and overall gameplay feel.

It’s just not a metal gear game.

And where is the rest of the game? I feel like I was thoroughly robbed of a meaningful part of the chronology of Metal Gear that i’ll never have a chance to get back.

Worth a play for gameplay alone. Forget the story and everything else, you need to basically of played every other metal gear game to understand the significance of anything.

Star docked for being incomplete and throwing away the metal gear esque cutscenes and story we came for.