For the longest time, For Honor has been my least favorite game. Maybe it’s because I suck at the game but I’ve never been more miserable playing a game. That was the case until Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was released. I can say with full confidence that MWIII is the worst video game I have ever played. Here’s why.

Disclaimer: I did not buy MWIII! I fortunately have a friend who is dumb enough to have bought it but also kind enough to lend me his copy so I can try it out for the week. In case you’re curious, he also doesn’t like the game very much. Doesn’t hate it as much as me, but still thinks it’s ass.

Greed. The most obvious problem with COD as a franchise are the masterminds behind it. Activision does not care about quality! They only care about the money, which unfortunately is going to be a lot. Why put in effort making something at the very least half decent when you can sit on your ass, scratch your crack, sniff it, and make billions doing so? That’s the development for this game. Don’t even get me started on the price of this game. Over 100 CAD for a reskin of MWII which is already a reskin of MW 2019. Plus, add in the terrible microtransactions and battle passes each two months. Have fun doing that every year! Jesus! This game is an actual scam and people are oblivious to it.

Identity. People like to joke about COD and how it’s the same game every year. COD games at their core are “the same”, but there’s enough surrounding them that makes them unique and different enough from each other. MWIII is the exact same as MWII last year. Honestly, if you bought MWII last year, what’s the point of buying MWIII this year? Nothing’s new! Nothing’s been improved! Game is worse!

Campaign. MWIII has the worst story and missions. First off, I never played the original MW3 campaign, but I know the important events and that it wasn’t as good compared to MW and MW2 (those I played, and I loved their campaigns). I also never played MW 2019 or MWII’s campaign, but I watched some videos to get caught up on the narrative. First off, the campaign doesn’t even play out like a campaign. It feels more like the SPEC OPS mission in MW 2019, which is not a good thing. Very bad actually. SPECS OPS was repetitive and boring and MWIII’s campaign is no different. They tried replicating “No Russian” and it failed miserably. Soap dies the most unemotional death ever. In the OG MW3, you were devasted, shocked by his death. Here, “he dead, oh well”. A terrible campaign and a disgrace to the Modern Warfare franchise legacy.

Multiplayer. I will admit, I had fun playing the multiplayer. COD’s multiplayer is always fun, and it is what people play these games for. However, like the past 7 COD games, there’s not much content at launch and we must wait months for the game to go from shit to less shit. The multiplayer is fun, for now. A couple of days, you will get bored playing the same maps over and over, using the same gun over and over ultimately making each match the same as the last. Repetition becomes predictable and as a result boring. Also, they need to get rid of the gunsmith! Do you have any idea how tedious and long it is to level up every gun to the max? Then, you have to play Bob the Builder to get the best set of attachments to make your gun OP. I remember the days when COD was simple and super accessible. Here, I spend more time looking up what each attachment does than I do debunking or proving mathematical paradoxes for my university classes. Good grief!

Zombies. This is not zombies! The zombies I knew, the mode that hooked me to COD and is the reason why I even still bought some of these games has been completely massacred! Cool characters are replaced with dull, generic operators again. There’s no solo option so you must play with friends or randoms. You can just build wonder weapons via blueprints and start each game with them. Where’s the sense of progression? How’s a game fun when you start off on baby mode? It’s not round based so you must go around this huge map and do menial objectives. You could say the same thing for Easter eggs in past zombies, but at least those gave a rewarding sense of progression. Since the map is so big, you must find the zombies. How much sense does that make? Map is dull, there’s no unique aesthetic like feeding the dragons on Der Eisendrache, the afterlife in Mob of the Dead, the robots in Origins, nothing. Nothing that says “play me over those over maps. I got this and that that you can’t experience on those other maps”. Feels like I’m playing a beta customs map on BO3. Easter eggs are lame, short, easy. Never doing them again. I really don’t understand why we can’t have traditional zombies and have this as a separate game mode. Cold War had round based zombies and Outbreak. Giving your players more options is good, isn’t it? Activision doesn't seem to think so.

In conclusion, MWIII is a scam. I honestly believe this game should be held in court the same way Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was for its loot boxes. There is an important lesson to be learned here though. “You can put in as little effort as possible. You cannot care about anything in the world. But if you own something remotely popular in the mainstream media and put it out with the barest minimum, people will suck it up and you will make billions.” People like to say, “work smart, not hard.” Activision, they say “don’t work at all, make billions.” Moments like these make me question my life. Is working hard for a good career so I and my family can live a good future worth it when I can just follow Activision’s steps and potentially get better results?

We have a Pokémon Sword and Shield, Scarlet and Violet scenario where the first dlc is fine and it's the second one where shit hits the fan. The ost is great as expected from Final Fantasy, I died for the first time during the Omega boss which I found to be a nice shift in difficulty (it was still pretty easy but not a total cake walk). Wielding the Buster Sword is cool as are the new Fallen Bits accessories. What sucks is that you have to pay to play this. This all definitely should have been a free update! Guess Square Enix are trying to compensate for the underwhelming sales.

Ghostrunner is one of those games that will please its intended audience/hardcore fans while leaving casuals in the dust. I'm one of those casuals. I like the style. It's something new for me and not another open world, tons of side missions and collectibles game that I've played 100 times over. So I can appreciate it for that. It's fun sometimes, but more often than not, I was not enjoying myself. I had to play on assisted mode so I can take 2 shots instead of dying in 1. Thankfully, this game is really forgiving with checkpoints. Platforming is not always consistent which can lead to some frustrating moments. Some enemies are total bs to deal with. Especially that Hel boss. Parrying her was not working half the time and that really peeved me off. The upgrade system is strange. You have to play Tetris to equip upgrades. Huh? Could not care whatsoever about the story or characters. Graphics are nice, but sometimes the bright colors and flashy lights can impair your vision and distract you leading you really unnecessary deaths.

For speedrunners and "hardcore" gamers who really like intense, super fast-paced balls to the wall action, Ghostrunner is a must play. Me? It's not my cup of tea.

The ideas here can make a good or even great game. Free-to-play survival zombie game where you can build and reinforce your base against increasingly difficult waves. You can recruit survivors which can expand your roster of playable characters. You can drive a truck around and explore the map. There's a bunch of different weapons that suit all kinds of offensive playstyles. It all sounds nice, but it's all executed very poorly. It's not even a survival zombie game, it's a dungeon game. You could to three incredibly easy dungeons, beat the boss, game over. There's no point to do anything that I just mentioned. What a waste of time, work and resources that were put into making this. The developers don't care because the game is glitchy and buggy to high hell. I'll give this a whole one star instead of half of one because of the potential this could have been a nice, fun, short, wholesome indie game.

I'm not a big fan of the horror genre in general, but if the other Resident Evils are as good as this one, I might change my mind.

Love the aesthetic and the puzzle solving. Not too complicated but it also requires you to use your brain. Similar gameplay to The Last of Us where items are scarce. However, they're even scarcer here with how much health the enemies have. I like it. Requires you to be conservative and plan ahead. Kind of like how you would go about it if a zombie apocalypse happened in real life. I like it when game get realistic.

This game is almost perfect. Almost. The one draw back for me is how many times you got to play through it for the platinum trophy. 4 playthroughs for both characters and both scenarios on Standard. Additional playthroughs may be needed to S rank, but I got them all on my first try somehow.

1 playthrough on Assisted for the no item box, no using healing items and walk less than 14,000 footsteps trophies. It's possible you won't get all these in 1 playthrough so you might need to do 1 or 2 more. Lastly, there's 2 hardcore playthroughs for both Leon and Claire. In all, that's 7 playthroughs minimum. I appreciate that the game's not too long, but considering both characters and their 2 scenarios are 80% the same to each other, it gets repetitive real quick.

Sure, the opening segment is different, and so are the puzzles, but you always got to get the 3 medallions, get a parking garage pass, get the chess pieces, use the crane to knock the dude over, get the pesticide solution, and fight the dude again. I love single player story games, there my favorite types of games, but one flaw they all share is that they're not all that replayable. 1 or 2 100% playthroughs is enough, but 7?! Playing the same story 7 times minimum can kind of numb your mind and take out the enjoyment the more times you play it.

Resident Evil 2 is still a great game. I would give it a perfect 5 stars if the trophies were a little more forgiving and didn't require so many playthroughs.

Last year I wrote a review saying COD: MWIII was the worst video game I have ever played. Not anymore. Heavenly Bodies is now my least favorite video game of all time. The movement is so terrible that it made me do something I have never done before with a video game...

Quit. I couldn't get passed the second, said "this isn't worth the frustration" and deleted the game. For that, I'm giving this game my first 0/10. There's quite a few video games I genuinely dislike and would even go so far as to say hate. However, none of them drove me to quit. I still finished them to the end because there's always a chance it might get better. Some of them did, some didn't. But, at least they had some redeeming qualities that gave them a point. There's not a thing I can say about Heavenly bodies that won't make my blood boil.

I played video games for fun, escapism and some of them even helped me grow and improve as a person. If I keep playing Heavenly Bodies, I'll just become a worst version of myself and I don't want that.

The Pokémon game we've all been waiting for for 10 years. The most nonlinear game with the big open world and being able to (somewhat) tackle the objectives in whatever order you choose. Love the new Pokémon and its characters.

-1 for frame drops and lag but it wasn't as bad as people on the internet make it out to be. Also, if there was a Pokémon game that needed voice acting, it's this one. Reading the characters talk doesn't work here. The dialogue was written as if voice acting was in mind but Gamefreak or whoever didn't bother to hire any. A shame because if this game had voice acting, I would have looked past the technical issues and given this a 10.

What's so great about video game sequels is that the developers can take all the criticism with the first game and improve upon their flaws and expand into new ideas to keep the game fresh. Shadow of War accomplishes this almost perfectly. My favorite mechanic, the army system has been expanded on and now you can build siege teams to raid enemy fortresses and guard your own. My least favorite thing about the first game, the traversal and open world has been greatly improved. Climbing is more consistent, you can now press the x button each time you grab a ledge to increase your speed. You can also double jump and use up focus to super sprint shortly. But the best addition is the ability to instantly call a creature to mount to reach destinations even quicker than simply running. In the first game, you would climb a tower and hit it with a hammer and that unlocked a fast travel point and revealed all the collectibles nearby. In this game, you cleanse the Haedir towers and use Sauron's flaming eye to look around the area to find the collectibles. I thought that was really neat. Had I wrote this review a couple of days ago, before 100% completing the game, I would have given this a 9 or 10. However, as I near the end the game was losing a lot of steam.

First off is the Pit Fights. Why do I have no control over what's happening? You have to hope and pray your guy wins. I thought this was really stupid, especially since you need to win 15 times (3 for the 5 regions).

Second is the combat. Mechanically, it's not bad or anything, but when you raid enemy fortress and you got 100 different people fighting each all at once, I start losing track of what was going on and I ended up dying because I couldn't figure out where I was getting hit from.

Third is the story. Like in the first one, there's a bunch of side stories that combined make up one big story. This time, it's very clear the main narrative is on Eltariel on her missions. Unlike the first one, the side stories are more interesting, but there's a lot more missions to play. For the most part, they're fun and interesting, but there's also a lot of missions that feel very filler. All the missions are very short which helps keep the fast paced nature of this game.

My biggest problem is the ending to Act 3 and the overall ending. Those were a total gut punch. Warning! There will be spoilers! Celebrimbor, the guy that stood by your side for two games, the guy you sacrificed the ring for at the beginning of this game to save, betrays you and leaves you for dead. There's no real build up, it just happens. I was kind of upset, but I was more curious of how things were going to end. Would you have to fight/kill him at the end? No. Celebrimbor and Sauron fight, which is a pretty lame boss by the way, they can't each other so they fuse into one. Talion sees this all unfold inside a snow globe, does nothing about it and that's the end of Act 3. What kind of conclusion if that? But wait, it gets worst. Talion needed Celebrimbor to survive. But since, Celebrimbor betrayed him, he needed another way to stay alive. So, he wore a Nazgul ring (Nazguls are servants to Sauron). Eventually, Talion gave in to its dark powers and became a Nazgul. Kind of tragic considering he spent two games trying to kill Sauron only to end up as his servant. It would have been cool to end it there and maybe get a third game to save Talion from the Nazgul and properly kill Sauron. But no. Instead, a narrator explains that some decades after this game, the movies happened and Talion is free again. What the fuck? How could you gloss over something important regarding your main protagonist in two minutes like it's nothing? To me, that just says "we need to wrap this up and quick". The games aren't canon, but they are written as in they actually take place in between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Make up your mind. Which is it? You can't have both.

To wrap up, Shadow of War improves upon Shadow of Mordor in every aspect. This is a game I enjoyed playing a lot and would have liked even more if the ending was on the same quality level as the Gollum game.

In honor of the GTA VI trailer reveal, I wanted to return to GTA V and review it. I'll split the review into two, the story mode & the online because I have drastically different opinions regarding the two. When people say GTA V is good, I think about the Story mode. When they say GTA V is bad, the Online mode comes to mind. I am one of those people.

GTA V Online is very unique and cool but at the same time very bland and boring. The amount of customization is extraordinary. From the weapons, vehicles and properties, there's truly nothing like it (that I've played at least). The 4 heists are what I had the most fun playing. All the businesses are cool, but also very tedious and time consuming to manage. For the longest time, you had to go into public lobbies to manage them. Now, you can go into a private solo lobby. The problem with the businesses is that you need other players to help you, to minimize the grind. However, most people won't because they're not really getting anything out of it. So, you're kinda forced to do everything solo which can get really boring really quick.

GTA V Online has some cool missions, in concept. Actually playing them will put you to sleep faster than a tranquilizing dart. They always take place halfway across the map from where you're at. You could say the same about the story mode missions, but at least the characters and plot are interesting and really well written. In Online, your character doesn't speak (which I understand) and you're forced to listen to some of the weirdest dialogue over the phone. My favorite being a government agent talking about shoving his foot in a toilet full of shit. Everyone talks like a super energized immature 12 year old. Sometimes it's funny, often time it's annoying.

GTA 5 Online has to have some of if not the worst NPC programming. When driving, it almost seems as though the NPC are designed to crash into you or drive in a way so you crash into them. It's really annoying, especially with how frequent it is. To alleviate the frustration and fasten the pace, you could always take a helicopter or the Oppressor MK2. But I think that's kinda of lame considering how awesome the cars are. GTA V Online's terrible mission design makes the cars useless and a terrible investment. They're only there for show. Shooting NPC's is terrible because they deal so much damage and with perfect accuracy. You'll find yourself dying, a lot. The snack and armor system doesn't help you because you run through them fast and you have to go out of your way to go to the stores and restock. Again, very annoying. I've already mentioned the irrigating dialogue, but here's a quick reminder.

GTA V Online has so many griefers and tryhards to where I never play in a public lobby ever. As mentioned before, you used to need to be in a public lobby to manage your business. Imagine stocking your warehouse with 111 crates only to have some a-hole destroy it all. All that grind for nothing and this summarizes the GTA V Online experience the best. A complete waste of time.

GTA V Online is only fun if you play it once every 2 or 3 years. That way, there will be a lot of new content to experiment with. Playing this game every game and grinding the businesses is a total waste of time. The last time I played GTA 5 online was April 6th, 2022. I've had some fun returning to the game on December 10th, 2023, but got bored after only 2 days of playing. Safe to say, I'll never return to GTA 5 Online again and wait patiently for GTA VI in 2025.

Addictive game but sadly pay to win. A lot of good memories in high school when everyone was playing this game.

Edit January 4th 2024

In 2019, I stopped playing Clash Royale because it was no longer the rage at school but also because I wasn't having fun anymore. In October 2022, I decided to pick it up again, see how the game was after 3+ years. To be honest, I was having a lot of fun. There was a lot of new cards, new arenas, a new level 14, new rarity in Champions cards and more. I hate to admit but I bought some of the battlepasses. They were pretty cheap sitting at around $5 and gave a lot of value that allowed me to catch up to speed in progression. I was practically playing Clash Royale everyday. All that would change in April 2024.

In April 2024, they decided to change the Battlepass. Not only would the contents of the battlepass change for the worse but of course they upped the price. They also divided the battlepass into a gold and diamond tier, I don't know why but ok. Gold tier is $8.49 and Diamond tier is $16.99. Over 3x the price of the original battlepass and both have the same amount of content within. So I never bought the battlepass again but that wasn't too big of a deal. I saved $5 and I wasn't really missing out on much. Maybe an emote and some chests but that's about it. Clash Royale was always considered pay-to-win but never pay-to-play. At least I could still have fun and play without forfeiting my wallet over to Supercell. Of course, Supercell would rectify this and make Clash Royale pay-to-play in just 2 months.

June 2023, Clash Royale introduced card evolutions. This was to compensate for releasing like 2 new cards every year. The idea was cool even if it ruined the balance and meta. Predictably, this new feature was super inaccessible for free-to-play players. To unlock card evolutions, you need 6 evolution shards. You can either earn two free shards every month through the seasonal shop or pay almost 20 CAD to get all 6 through the battlepass. I also like to mention that around this time they introduced level 15 so the game was even more pay-to-win. This would mark the death of Clash Royale for me. Just recently, they added tower troops which is also pay-to-play. Since Clash Royale's conception, the princess tower leveled up with your king tower. Now, you need tower cards to level up your princess tower and other tower troops. And guess what? It's super inaccessible for free players! Clash Royale was already dead to me but this is whole new level of scum corporate greed.

Other factors that lead to Clash Royale's death was Clan Wars 2.0. It was so time consuming and tedious to the point where I stopped altogether. I could care less if my clan kicked me. Clan Wars 2.0 was atrocious. When I came back to Clash Royale I was 5000 trophies and currently I'm at 7054 trophies. More often than not, my opponent was using these following cards: Mega Knight, Witch, Wizard, Firecracker, Hog Rider, Goblin Barrel, Mini Pekka. Sometimes it was all these cards in one deck. My point is, playing against the same cards/deck every so often was repetitive and boring. Statistically speaking, there's over 10^16 (10 quadrillion) possible deck combinations. So why is it I'm playing against the same 5? These two things also contributed to my disinterest in Clash Royale.