I tried so, so hard to like this game. I wanted to enjoy it so bad. Not least of all because I'd spent $60 on it. But good god, it's so boring.
The controls are clunky and confusing, the mechanics are incredibly unintuitive, and the gameplay loop... the gameplay loop. It's like an annoying walking simulator, but to try and make that interesting and engaging, they made walking hard.
It really feels like Hideo Kojima wanted to make a movie and just... thought gameplay wouldn't matter. Character exposition is so long and feels hard to get invested in because they're constantly throwing a thousand different bits of terminology at you that you don't really even understand. You could talk a bit about how some of the storytelling is pretty contrived and on the nose with the whole Bridges Bridges Bridges of it all, but I wouldn't really care about that. My issue is that the game was so boring and difficult to play that I couldn't even get into the narrative like I wanted to. It really just felt like an endless slog with no reward.
I did enjoy the moments during long journeys where music would start to play. The soundtrack was excellent and the visuals were gorgeous, as were the concepts. I just wish it had been even a tiny bit fun to play.

19 INCHES OF VENOM (Spoilers ahead)

This game was absolutely great, another beautiful Spidey adventure on the PS5. I have a lot to say for this one, and very little negative.

The story was very well put together, balancing it's character selection very well. It starts off with a bang and slows down for a little bit, but It really picks up around halfway through the game. The story kept topping itself after every main event, you didn't know exactly what to expect next. It was quite the ride. We got some really nice character development for Miles, and watching Peter and MJ really come together again was very charming. It was also very nice to see Harry and Peter reunited.
Unlike Spiderman 3, this game doesn't suffer from having multiple villains. The 2 big villains are nicely handled, and the side villains don't take anything away from them, yet still add their own nice touch. Not a lot more to say here story-wise. It was pretty peak

Gameplay wise? they absolutely killed it. The abilities and gadgets and super intuitive to use, the new movement mechanics are AWESOME, and the (somewhat) new combat system is extremely well done. This game is a decent bit more difficult than the last 2 games, which is a much bigger positive than you'd think. The best improvement imo is the fact that they greatly reduced the amount of shitty stealth sections. There's only like 2 in this game and they're all decently short. They don't feel like they slow the game down at all, either. (Thank you insomniac) The new parry mechanic encourages the player to make the gameplay a little less more of a dodge-fest. The many boss fights greatly benefit from the new and intuitive combat, as each boss is a lot more fleshed out than ever before. They have health bars finally, meaning the game doesn't force one way to beat them. They are a lot more challenging than before as well, making it all the more satisfying to come over your enemies. There are some absolutely insane gameplay sections, too. And once again, they keep topping themselves over and over again with each one. Absolutely stellar gameplay experience here.

The side content is pretty good. The old annoying wire and chemical puzzles from Spiderman 1 are completely removed and replaced with unique missions, they did well on making sure that you weren't fed up doing the same stuff over and over for story purposes. The new collectibles aren't all entirely new, but they're not anything familiar either. The suit selection is absolutely incredible, and most suits have 4 selectable styles for them. Side missions have also been pretty well done and some provide a little more of a complete storyline than they used to.

Overall, this game was a really, really great experience. This is one of the games this year that I'd say is worth picking up without much hesitation.

Remedy absolutely knows what's up when it comes to making games.
This game takes all the ideas they experimented with in their previous games and cranks them up to 11.

Can't say more without spoiling it.
Definitely go into this one blind.

It's not a loop, It's a spiral.

All right, time to ACTUALLY write about this one. I have a lot of thoughts about this game; of all the titles I've played, this one is the one I have the most complex opinions on. Let's start with Yakuza Zero so I have something to compare it to. With Yakuza, I don't really enjoy the gameplay loop and it just isn't the sort of experience I want to play a game to have, but I can one hundred percent understand why people like it. There's a deep story (the conflict is over a plot of land roughly the size of my bedroom, I have a pretty large bedroom but still), lots of stuff to do and if you like doing stuff and going through a good story I think you'll get a lot out of it. Not something I liked, but something I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

I have a hard time understanding why people like Persona 4.

The game is split up into visual novel social simulator portions along with dungeon crawling parts, but neither portion is particularly interesting. In theory, the visual novel sections make the game more palatable to wider audiences, the characters deeper, and the story more engaging. In practice, they bored me to tears with a sense of comedy that has excellent wit but fundamentally flawed premises for jokes, ruined the characters by placing them at the mercy of said jokes, and made me want to progress the story even less because every cutscene is so goddamn long. The dungeon crawling is very tedious with combat that lacks depth and it feels like you can't quit when you want because it's 100 percent optimal to complete each dungeon in a single day. This also has the side effect of making it feel like you can't play the part of the game you want when you want to play it. This is just two mediocre games clumsily stapled together that theoretically interact but in practice simply glance at each other as they move in completely different directions.

In most cases, dated views on things like women and the LGBT community are just "ah it's an old story, you just gotta accept it's like that", but here it actively hurts the themes the game is going for by not even denying, but refusing to consider in the first place the possibility that someone's true self could be queer. You're just confused, dumbass. I could go into detail about how the theme of truth is kind of confusing and it's not clear what they mean by it, but I just don't want to be angry like this anymore. I can't say I hate it, but thinking about Persona 4 makes me upset. Why is this on Wikipedia's list of games considered the greatest, again?

EDIT: gave it another half star this is now a 5/10 average game dark souls makes this shit look like a fucking masterpiece

Good if a bit shallow outside of the consistently excellent combat, albeit a little long given how small the world is. Some problems with the game; the sidequests are, for the most part, utterly garbage, and while the post game presents a unique challenge, the idea of repeating the same dungeons and overworld areas one more time is infuriating. One last thing, there’s a mission that seems to be mandatory in the post game that is the worst designed piece of content in maybe any game I’ve played in my life, in which you have to kill two enemies in a fight using one finishing move that requires one specific character to be in super saiyan mode, a status effect that happens seemingly at random which you LOSE once you use said move, so, you basically need to be very precise while using it and pray to the gods that you get that status twice in the same fight, which feels impossible, or force it through a very expensive item, in any case is a fucking waste of time and the main reason why I didn’t completed the post game.