I actually enjoyed this a lot. I think the PS3/360 era was the peak for open world games when they were made with a focus on fun rather than tedious collectibles. Everything here serves its purpose well and instead of feeling like a meaningless collectathon like modern AC games I found myself enjoying traversing the city like I was playing GTA.

The best part of this game is how it drip feeds you new powers and tools to play with that make combat seem fresh. The story is nothing special but it kept me engaged and I liked the characters. Traversal was fun but a way to launch off the ground like in Second Son would have made it much more fluid.

Overall, it's a little dated yes but it reminds me of why I loved the PS3 generation so much, first party developers weren't afraid to work on their own new IPs and be creative. It's also pretty cool that this stands up there with other superhero games despite not having any licensed or popular characters.

Wow this game sucks. I remember playing the original and its DLC in 2019 and having a pretty good time. The dialogue in the first hour of this game is some of the worst I've ever heard and the plot is actual nonsense. Characters are stiff and the game is constantly trying to force overly sentimental emotional moments that are awful.

This isn't even to mention the gameplay. Gunplay sucks and there's no weight to anything. You run like Sonic the Hedgehog but the game wants to make you stealth every encounter - with the stealth system itself being extremely basic. I don't remember the first one feeling this bad. At least I didn't pay for it.

I never really wanted a sequel to The Last of Us. The first game was and is still one of my favourite games of all time but I thought it ended perfectly. In the run-up to this game I was not really excited at all. I thought it would be pretty derivative and sour the experience of the first game - and then I got almost the entire script spoiled to me.

I thought the game sounded pretty dumb and never got around to playing it, I bought Ghost of Tsushima instead and moved on.

Getting through my backlog recently though has made me want to go back and catch up on the actual game, not just what was spoiled to me, as it has been a pretty big blind spot for me in terms of AAA games.

Playing the game detached 3 or so years from all the controversy and discussion, I was struck by two things:

Firstly, the strength of the gameplay pretty much carried the experience here for me. I was never someone who found the first game boring, I spent over 770 hours on TLOU 1 with about 150 or so in the story mode playing grounded, grounded+, and about 600 or so hours in the multiplayer which is one of my favourite online experiences ever. The encounters, enemy AI, weapons, and overall fluidity of the gameplay systems are all so much better here though. Sweeping through the Scars encounters especially were always fun. The game's at its best when you get caught and have to improvise and there's so many ways you can do that now. Set pieces are as fun as ever and there are plenty of moments that stand out as exciting. The only problem really is the setting being pretty samey and slow which brings me to my other point.

The pacing and overall story are a bit less impactful than the game's predecessor. The plot of the first game was never that exciting, being 'get Ellie to the Fireflies', but the characters were special and memorable to me even 9 years on from when I first played it. Characters like Bill, Tess, David, and Henry and Sam have stuck with me for as long as I can remember. Here the characters are noticeably lesser. Without spoiling anything, outside of the main characters, Owen and Lev were the only characters I felt had room to grow. Nobody gets enough character development for me and there's nothing that feels remotely as special as the relationship between Joel and Ellie from the first game. The plot, especially for the first 15 hours of the game basically extends to 'kill these random guys' as well which means rather than playing for the story and characters, for the better half of this experience I was playing for the gameplay with the hope that things would improve.

The plot does develop, but exceptionally slowly. The pacing is glacial and hits a mid-point climax before dropping all the tension to essentially return to ground zero. It never really feels like it's going anywhere until the final few hours to be completely honest.

That said, the quality of the game is immense in terms of visual fidelity, art and sound design, and voice acting. It has that AAA wow factor that you expect from Naughty Dog and when it hits the mark it feels amazing. Sometimes it falls short but it's different enough from the first game for me to feel like it was worth making. It's not derivative in the slightest and takes the story in a completely new direction. I applaud that ND had the guts to make something so different and I hope that part 3 feels equally as unique.

Pretty much everything I wanted and could have asked for in a 2D Mario game. Except from the repetitive Bowser Jr. minibosses, there are almost no problems with this game.

The levels are so full of new ideas and everything is focused on pure fun. The wonder seeds, new enemies, and the overall creativity of the game makes every level feel unique and the controls and visual design make everything pop. Mario controls intuitively and the levels have never been more visually distinct. The music is good but doesn't really stand out amongst other Mario games, however.

The difficulty of the levels is pretty much perfect. It rarely gets to the extreme difficulty of later levels in Mario 3 and the challenging levels in the special world are just challenging enough to entertain those looking for more difficulty but not crazy enough to be impossible. The 'final-final trial' was exceptionally tough, but I felt a sense of achievement from finally getting through it. Saying this, the extra content is very well put together. Compared to the special zone in Mario World which feels a little tacked on, the special world in Wonder functions more like the Star World with a challenge for each main world hub. The collectible coins are rarely obnoxious and usually pretty enjoyable to find and the decision to make them function as currency was great. There is finally some function to getting them.

Everything is just so well designed and this game just perfectly embodies how an extremely talented group of developers, given the time and resources they need and the encouragement to be creative and bold (this game had no set deadline or budget), can deliver something of almost unparalleled quality. The attention to detail, the quality of life features, the creativity. Everything is here.

2D Mario hasn't been this good since the 90s. Tied with Resident Evil 4 for GOTY for me.

Honestly quite disappointing.

The characters we love are still here, and they are given a lot of meaningful development throughout. The new characters of Thor, Heimdall, and Odin are also interesting and make for interesting antagonists.

However, the quiet, introspective narrative that made the first game so impactful has been replaced with a Marvel-esque plot and the tight-knit cast has been expanded tenfold. Not all of these new characters are interesting, necessary, or well-acted, and the plot often feels tangential and contrived. 'Ragnarok' also features very little in this game; when we come to the final battle, it only lasts around 20 minutes.

I feel like this game suffers from just being more for the sake of more. We could have spent more time with Odin and Thor but a lot of time is spent introducing new, irrelevant characters and areas. The combat feels worse and a lot of the boss fights (berserker especially) are phoned-in and ganky. The menus are somehow even worse than in 2018 and the RPG elements feel increasingly unnecessary.

I don't want to take away from the effort Santa Monica has put into this game and the love they've put into this God of War reboot, but I feel like God of War III did nearly everything this game tried to do (except from the characters), but better.