Updated review: November 11th, 2023.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is the game I have the most hours played. I started on Operation Blood Orchid, almost two years after the game's initial release. The reason I've been going back to this game is because there's nothing else like it. There's a lot of sandbox elements with the destruction, reinforcing, maps and especially the operators. It's all so unique that no two rounds never play the same. I love trying out different ops, learning new maps and using that knowledge to create a legitimate strategy that'll win my team the round.

However, glorious moments like those are rare in 2023 and that's because of the TDM meta. All people do is pick an op with a "good" gun and a 1.5x scope. No gadget play, no team coordination and no fun. I shit you not, I went on a 17 game win streak that got me to champ, the highest rank because some Iana-Warden main would play aggressive and go for kills, which he would get at least 10 every game. Sure, winning is nice and so is hitting champ, but it's not rewarding because I didn't earn it. I just sat back and let him to all the work. How's that fun? It sucks how frequently this happens now and I believe there are many external factors as to why. What I mean by external factors is that it's not Ubisoft's fault (for once). No, I fully blame the Siege community!

Ego. "I got a high kd, I got the most kills, that means I got the biggest dick and pull all the bitches". It's so stupid how many people care about this when the game at its core is a chess-like strategy game. But what's the advantage of using your brain when you can just effortless kill everyone, still win and brag because you're somehow better? There is none and that's the problem. If I want to win, I have to play this game like a COD TDM match. If I wanted to play COD, I would. I want to play Siege and the way it's meant to be played!

Lack of competition. On the console side, there's no real first person shooter games competing with Siege. COD is just shit (wait for my review on MWIII, it's a rollercoaster that one) & Overwatch 2 doesn't fair much better. The half decent ones with more players like CSGO 2 or Valorant are PC exclusives. Not everyone wants to play PC or can afford a PC. Siege is 8 years old that constantly goes on sale for relatively cheap and PlayStations and Xboxes are cheaper and don't require you to play geek squad with all the parts to maximize frames per second and resolution and all that. The other fps games that people used to play didn't require much forward thinking. They were pretty casual. However, since they've all gone to shit, people want to play another fps game. So, they hop on siege and play with that "don't give a fuck, kill everyone" mentality to every game. It's repetitive and boring and sadly there's nothing I can do to change that.

Jynxzi. The most subbed twitch streamer as of 2023 is Jynxzi with over 100000 subs. The guy mostly plays Siege. So, naturally his viewers will buy the game their favorite streamer is playing. While I do admit Jynxzi is entertaining to watch, he is not someone you should use as a reference to learn the game more and play better. However, since a lot of people are sheep and like to fit in a crowd instead of being their own person, they copy him. Copy the way he plays, but more annoyingly, the way he talks. It blows my mind how many people suck his dick so much that they end up talking like the guy. This year, Siege has seen a resurgence in player count and it's all thanks to Jynxzi. It's nice to see the game grow and have more people playing it, but all these new players are linked to the Jynxzi hive mind and it's poisoning the game. It's the reason why the game feels so braindead now.

Rainbow Six Siege back in the day used to be the guy in the Chad memes. Now, Siege is the shit that Chad took. It's depressing to see how one of my favorite games fell off so far from greatness. The reason why I'm not giving it a lower score are those few matches where strategy, tactics and teamwork are at the full front and not bettering your kd ratio. Those matches are so much fun, even if I lose, and it's why I keep coming back. For better or worse depends on the day.

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.

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.

If this won game of the year, 2014 must have been a bad year for video games. Shadow of Mordor isn't bad per say but it's not a 10/10.

My favorite thing about this about is the Sauron's army mechanic. Taking out captains, helping them rise through the ranks, pitting warchiefs against each other. That was a lot of fun and very unique too. Only complaint is having to open the menu so frequently. Combat is pretty fun and so is the stealth only I wish there was less of it.

There's not really a story here, it's just a series of events that take place until Talion decides he needs to move on with the plot. Game's main story feels like a bunch of side quests stringed together. Speaking of side quests, 10 missions for each weapon and 24 outcasts missions is a bit much. Fighting captains and warchiefs always pauses the game so you can hear them say some dumb line. Open world is dull and the inconsistent climbing makes it a slog to traverse. The two final bosses are The Tower and Sauron respectively. I have never fought a more underwhelming boss fight. The Tower, you just sneak up on him 3 times. Sauron is just 4 quick time events and 1 mashing the button moment. I was so confused I made to look up if that was the real ending. It was, but I think it's supposed to be a set up for Shadow of War. Making a video game just to set up a sequel instead of standing out individually is not looked up too highly by my eyes.

I do believe Shadow of Mordor is a fun game with great Lord of the Rings lore despite talking more negatively about it. It sucks because the issues I have don't make it a bad game, they hold it back from being a great game which it certainly has the potential to be. Or maybe I expected too much from a game my dad has been bugging me to play since it came free on ps plus and the fact that it says "Game of the Year"? So much so to the point where nitpicks made me rate it far harsher than I should have. Guess we'll never know.

This game is what will happen if the writers win the strike lol.

On a more serious note, I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed playing this game. One thing about me is that I hate the horror genre. Movies, TV, games, you name it. I never found them compelling. They either were trying too hard to scare and they weren't or they were trying to hard to be gruesome to the point where I was super grossed out and wanted no part. Also, one thing they all have in common is stupid storytelling. Alan Wake's story is probably one of the dumbest and most confusing I've ever played through but the premise is so interesting that I was engaged till the very end. Normally, I would doze off if it were any other horror story. It's really strange. I should hate this but I don't.

Gameplay is pretty unique where light is your best weapon and not a shotgun. There is way too many collectibles but at least the game has a statistics menu that tracks everything. Really helpful for the trophies.

My biggest complaint is how the camera is always shifted towards the left. I don't there's a single game I've played where I've had this issue. You could shift the camera to the right by pressing down the right stick (R3) on the PS5 controller but the camera will always shift back to the left. Meaning I have to press R3 practically every 10 seconds. That really pissed me off. And it's so avoidable too. Why isn't there an option to set the camera in a certain position to the player's liking? Or why doesn't pressing R3 shift the position from left to right and stay that way? I would rate the game so much higher if it weren't for the stupid camera positioning.