Well as of writing this Season 6 will be complete in about 12 hours and with that comes a very weird review. When I got my PS5 (Which I bought solely for Demon Souls) I had some friends over and I was showing them how good games looked compared to the PS4 and I just so happened to have Fortnite installed just as a comparison. We made jokes about how it looked like a completely different game then the one we used to play. Me and my friends played pretty religiously for the first couple of years and seriously fell in love with every aspect of the game. It didn't rely on people camping in a corner, it actively rewarded you for playing aggressively and it was the game that made me fall in love with the Battle Royale genre and honestly makes PUBG, Warzone and even Apex feel boring in comparison. And that's due to the building. It's an aspect that can seem like a gimmick but it is CRUCIAL to why this game is so perfect, it adds a new depth to every fight and traversal, need cover; build, need height; build, need to escape; build. It allows you to be tackle any fight however you want doesn't make everything who pulls the trigger first it requires more than any other first person shooter before it and and makes me feel the way I did playing Unreal Tournament or Tribes as a kid, a competitive FPS that rewards movement but now with added depth. So that why for around 2017-2019 we loved it but we all fell off. A lot of my friends went to Warzone others to Apex and honestly we were just burned out and I stopped checking in for years almost. Well I picked it up coincidently right at the start of Season 6 and now at the end of the season I have played according to my PS5 520 hours, reached battle pass level 168 and seriously couldn't be more excited for next season after almost playing it daily for all of Season 6. Now this is because this season seriously brought me back to when I first started playing with some great changes. This season was very simple in the best ways. The meta never really got too complicated, you needed a Shotgun, An AR and a Bow, this was perfect for multiple reasons the Shotguns and ARs rewarded multiple playstyles, if you hit your shots accurately you used Mechanical, if you were less accurate you used primal and everyone had a fair chance in a fight now the ultimate mix was what the bows brought to the table. What they replaced were the snipers, people fucking hated this but it fixed multiple problems. 1. you weren't going to get picked off from 500m away without realizing who was there and 2. it was the first real counter to building in a fun and interesting way. Before this the only counter to building was the vehicles which was boring you would just drive or fly into a build and it just sucked for everyone. Now with the 4 types of bows you had such great options. 1. If the person is building with wood (Which most people are, use flame bow it killed them and their build.) 2. If the built tight around them and you had them trapped, use the stink bow it forced them to either move or engage you 3. did they build a dutch colonial made out of brick use the explosive bow and just tear that shit down and 4. do you want to go shoot them point blank range well shockwave bow yourself into their build and fight. The reason the bows made me so happy was why I highlighted the depth of combat before. FPS or TPS in this situation have gotten so fucking generic and not just in terms of visuals in terms of gameplay. Every encounter isn't should I run or shoot there's so may ways to engage in combat and so many ways to counter it that I can almost put this game more in the category of a fighting game than a shooter, hell I will sit alone in lobbies and work on my builds just like I would in a lab working on combos and when you pull of a good build into pump shot gun combo it feels fucking amazing. And just the icing on the cake, the visuals fuck people who complain about the "cartoony" look, Apex and Warzone (Which I also love) are so fucking boring to look at, everyone looks the same the only way to add any color is gun skins meanwhile every different location on the map has so much character and the different music and NPCs and there's just so much life to everything. And I know I'm in the minority but there is a stupid beauty to being a Xenomorph with Baby Yoda on your back shooting at travis scott wearing a batman cape like this is the equivalent to every steam workshop joke game but like it's licensed which is just so insane. This game is perfect and I just could write a million stories from this season but if Season 7 can just keep up this momentum I can't see putting Fortnite down any time soon.

This game was dumb fun, I know that this game is regularly referred to as Dark Souls but with guns and I mean it steal EVERYTHING from Dark Souls, Bonfires, Respawning enemies dodge rolling, but this game never was too much of a challenge and honestly too aimless. While Dark Souls benefits from the mystery of no story this just felt like they were teleporting me to different lands for no reason and I always felt lost in these maps. The shooting was really fun and the melee also has some good weight but nothing too special. I played through it with a friend and had fun laughing at how blatantly they ripped off monster designs from a slew of different movies and games but also that's part of the charm. If you need a difficult shooter to play co-op and want some fun this is for you but don't go in expecting much more

The month that this game was popping was honestly great. Growing up and loving MXC I feel like this is the closest we will every get to it in video game form. A game show where getting to the end honestly felt just as accomplishing as any Battle Royale out there. I loved the visuals and the janky controls even though you sometimes really felt like you were fighting with them it still was a blast to play regularly. But like everyone else the novelty wore off really fast, probably will never pay it again and probably will forget it exists in a year but this was really fun.

I have been meaning to write a review on this and I honestly wanted to wait until I played the campaign but looking at my 894 hours played between all 3 versions I think it's pretty safe for me to review this but just a heads up this is a Competitive Multiplayer review only. I have purchased this game in every single possible way you had an option because for a year this mindless bullshit was my life. Now this may sound like an insult to the game but this took me back to 9th grade when Modern Warfare 2 came out every every day me and my friend would get home from school and play until 1 am and do it again every day for a full year. This game felt like recapturing that magic for good and for bad. This game perfect every thing about previous CODs and filtered out all that was bad. The Movement was the best combination of The Old MW and MW2 while keeping the speed of newer future versions. The guns felt INCREDIBLE there wasn't a single class of gun that I didn't love using including the side arms. Just a blast to fully level up every gun to max... which I did hence my playtime. I loved the grind of this game and it was so fucking addicting and it seriously never stopped like I played this until Cold War came out and the only reason I stopped playing was to play the next game like this kept my attention for a full year. Also as someone who loved putting every attachment on their guns and hated how every previous COD locked you at 2 this was like heaven to me, you could make any gun in the game anything you wanted. What I mean is, if you wanted a Submachine gun with a sniper scope that had 100 round mags you could do it, if you wanted a AR that also fired shotgun shells you could, the magic of the Gunsmith is what made this game perfect, every gun could be made to work in your situation. This game had some of the best maps in the entire series. Gunfight is a fucking blast. Ground war was honestly better than the last few Battlefields like this game hit it out of the park in every single respect and it will always have a place in my heart as the best Call Of Duty ever was... Yes even better than 4 and MW2.

I'm too old for this game to have been my first Multiplayer obsession in my life. It was 2006 I was in 6th grade and I watched a video On IO On Demand about the best games of all time and they talked about how Counter Strike was this masterpiece of Mutiplayer Shooting and at the time I was educating myself about classic video games so I went to my local Micro Center and bought myself a boxed copy of Counter Strike 1.6 and got home and they key didn't work. So I complained to Valve in the early days of steam and they sent me a free code for 1.6, Half Life, Condition Zero basically all the early hits. So I was a complete loner when I was this young and had no previous experience playing games with others, and was I ever fucking blown away by this. I know this is entirely anecdotal but to me this was the best looking game of all time. Now at this point source was out but this game ran on my shitty desktop with integrated graphics, to me the GoldSrc engine just has so much fucking charm and life to it that I just get nostalgic even thinking about it from the visuals to the digital sound effects every gun felt amazing, every map felt massive and every round gave me this insane anxiety. The first server I ever joined was home of the Elite Immortals, there was a group of late 20s and 30s who were all talking like something out of a dive bar shooting the shit and trash talking. I had a shitty little headset that was made for telemarketers and I was so scared to talk. They instantly started taunting me because I had no idea what I was doing and I got kicked, I joined back and terrified to talk I said in my pipsqueak little voice "I'm new how do I play" They all erupted in laughter and jeering and a guy named "}{ells Reaper" said stick with me I'll help you. I played all night and it felt like hanging out with the cool adults, they taught me everything, I learned to joke with them talk with them, play competitive games of Counter Strike, what guns to buy when to save, how to traverse the maps. I went to sleep that night and all I could think of was Counter Strike I laid there thinking of routes to run, plays to make, the friends I made. I would sit in school and draw map ideas plan setups I would get home and talk to my 2nd Family, "Beantown, Johnny Ringo, Sweetleaf, Reaper, Sarah, Green Leaf" they were all this group of alcoholic degenerates who didn't play other video games in fact if you called CS a video game they would get mad because they weren't nerds, they were all rednecks who were just there to have a good time. I remember playing on Office one night and finally getting admitted into the clan, getting to put [EI] in front of my name felt so good, I felt accomplished. I got to play in some scrims and some matches when they needed an extra man, I cancelled a date with a girl because we had a big match. CS 1.6 wasn't a game it was a hang out, a place to go. The clan and server would eventually break up, I would drift in between Clerkz and other US East servers but that wasn't my family. This was the most formative years of my life and it meant the world to me. Cheers to all of the Elite Immortalz, you guys made me who I am today.

While being on 1.6 was like being with my second family, Source was like hanging out with the people who I was hanging out with outside of video games that being spending most of the day 4chan but now I got a name and voice to put to them. Source was not about playing Counter Strike, it was about all the stupid fucking servers and game modes that people made. And also even the servers that were straight Counter Strike was how fucking toxic can you get. This was just stupid fun every single day, seriously for over a year just cruising the server browser to see what a fun map or mode to fuck around in and killing hours just playing the dumbest shit imaginable with just a bunch of degenerates. This game introduced me to surf servers, which was bad addiction for a while, and the closest I'll ever get to competitive speed running but also what if everyone was listening to meme youtube videos on full blast on mic and screaming slurs at eachother aka great fun. Gun game is where this game shined though, the tight beautiful source maps people made just made mindlessly grinding to see who could get through all 26 levels first a thing I did for over a year and a few gun game servers became home to me. Also a good time to say if your gun game doesn't have illegal mario 1 up noise when you get a kill, doom finish him when you get knifed, and another assortment of 5000 copywrited sound effects blasting every 5 seconds and then Butterfly by Crazy Town or a Linkin Park song doesn't play when you win don't even bring that shit to me. This game was the mid 2000's exemplified and it was truly a time capsule, it was essentially counter strike 2 and it fucking rocked. I miss it so much.

After finishing Ocarina of Time I need more, I was hooked and with Majoras Mask being one of the few true sequels in the entire series I risked getting burned out and just pulled the trigger and I am so happy I did. The few negative opinions I had after OOT was that the world didn't feel alive and the side quest felt very inconsequential and this game solved both those problems and not only did they solve them, they revolved the game around them. I recently rewatched Stardust Crusaders and Diamond is Unbreakable and my critiques here honest have a lot of parallels. OOT is a giant grand adventure but in that there is never any real sense of being in the world, I feel like you spend such little time in each of the towns that while exploring them for the first time is exciting they get boring, here each of the 4 (5 if you count clock town) areas you spend so much time in that by the end of my run I knew them like I know my own town and they all feels so alive. Obviously the hook of this game is like has 3 days to solve everyone's problems but it's a novelty that never wears thin. The time aspect works in such an amazing way that I constantly felt myself taking a step back and being amazed at how all these cogs working together that there were a million things all working together and the people in the town felt less like NPCs and more like real people. You learned all their schedules, what they were doing, where they were going and disrupting one of them could change the outcome for anyone else. I felt they constant need to poke around the town just because I was fascinated, and the bombers notebook was such an amazing addition becuase every time I paused I was reminded that there was a side quest for a person in the town I could complete and of the 63 quests I would say at least 50 of them I naturally completed just while exploring because the act of doing these little side missions felt so rewarding and even though everything resets after the 3 days I really felt like I was bettering this town. This is only enhanced by how much charm all the characters and dialogue have, like I never felt like it was a chore going around wearing different masks and talking to people just because I was always curious how they would react and you would always get some funny dialogue or best case you would stumble on a new quest. And another comment on the time aspect not once did I feel rushed over the course of my playthrough I always felt like I had a plan going into each 3 day cycle of what I wanted to accomplish and it always worked out perfectly and coming back to clock town at night to see if I could knock out a couple of more bombers quests was the icing on the cake. Each of the 4 lands felt completeley distinct and there was always so much to do an explore in each one of them. The dungeons were also all for the most part better than every dungeon in OOT, I felt like the puzzles and the implementation of all the different masks and new items all worked perfectly in sync and the puzzles were challenging enough to make me always take a second but when I figured it out I felt so accomplished. The combat here also feels a million time better than OOT, the movement and swordplay felt way more engaging not as much of a chore when you were fighting people in the open field going from town to town. The boss fights were also so fucking incredible because of the variety, now I ended up fighting each boss around 2-3 times and in some cases only because of how much fun they all were. While I had the deity mask for the final boss which makes it laughably easy it still was an amazing set piece. Also on to the masks the way that they made all 3 feel completely unique and like you were controlling different characters really never let the game get stagnant, like the fact that you could feel how much lighter the Deku Scrub was compared to the Goron or how rolling around as the Goron or swimming as Zoras all felt so great and the speed you could pick up just made traversing and exploring that much more exciting. The story here was also so much more compelling due to the dark nature and the real despair that you could feel when talking to everyone and like you wanted to save everyone the reason I 100%'ed this game was because I couldn't leave anyone behind, like I had no idea what would happen after I beat skull kid because that mystery and intrigue was there all game. The beauty of this game can not be overstated from the giants cutscenes after the boss fights where these beautiful creatures are communicating with you and then to not spoil the ending but the sense of satisfaction I had was just unmatched. I also want to touch on the remastering because I played this and was blown away, I think it's a perfect game and remaster and I looked online and had to read these idiots talking about the changes so I want to address this for people hesitant to play the original over this. I cannot over state that the quality of life changes cannot be overstated, having your map, items, bombers notebook on the bottom screen and the ability to switch masks alone makes this the superior version on top of the 30fps compared to the 2. Also how much better this game looks compared to the N64 counterpart. Now while I would agree it's slightly brighter, it doesn't take away from the incredibly dark and depressing tone of the game and makes certain areas shine more, while there is the occasional section where it is too bright. I don't get the complaint about the boss changes because I went through and watched videos of the original boss fights and I seemed to have beaten them in similar ways and while yes they do now point you in a direction of how to beat them there are still multiple ways to play each of the bosses. So I couldn't imagine having this version and opting to play a worse looking, worse performing, and less functional version of this perfect game.

I still can't believe that after playing through Ocarina, I not only played this all the way through 100 percented it, lost hours of progress multiple times (my fault I dropped my DS and the card came out before saving) and even after redoing sections of this games multiple times I just loved it so much I never wanted it to end. This is truly one of the greatest games ever made and it easily sky rocketed into my top 5 maybe even top 3 games of all time. Go into this game blind because it is truly a magical journey and just enjoy the beauty of this piece of art. Seriously I can't overstate how much I love every second of this masterpiece.

Okay so this is my fault. I wanted to play the Metroid games in chronological order, while Metroid 1 on the NES and Metroid 2 on the Gameboy are honestly borderline unplayable now due to the way games progressed I opted into playing their remakes Metroid Zero Mission and Samus Returns 3DS instead. While I though Zero mission was an incredible start, I thought Samus returns was a masterpiece one of the most fun games I ever played. So going into Super Metroid which is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time I had my expectations set really high and while it didn't blow me away like Samus returns I still think most of what's here is honestly pretty great. I'll start with what's better. The non linearity of the map made exploring so much more exciting. Like I felt like I could tackle these areas in any order and looking at walkthrough at the end to see the few missile locations I missed, I honestly did it in a complete different order than any of the guides I looked at and I love shit like that, like my playthrough was unique. I seriously for the first time felt like a true outsider on this planet and each different section felt tonally different, this is also help by the music which is easily my favorite of the series by far. I loved how the combat all throughout the game felt it had a lot of weight and while I honestly missed the parrying system, there was so much enemy variety and ways to tackle each encounter that it made up for it. Finally the thing that I LOVED most in this game were the boss fights, while my one minor critique of Samus returns was the slightly repetitive boss fights that by the end while gaining in difficulty none of them aside from a couple were super unique. Every single fucking boss fight in this game was INCREDIBLE, seriously they way they each had this grand scale to them and the intimidation honestly they felt like Dark Souls bosses with studying their pattern and figuring out when I could attack their weak point. The difficulty was brutal but in the best way and even the gimmicky fights were fun figuring out what they wanted you to do. Seriously I loved each of these encounters and looked forward to them. Now when I say the reasons for me disliking this game is my fault it's because I'm following up a game Made in 2017 with a game made in 1994. The Quality of life changes made in Later remakes make small things in this just too frustrating. First off, not marking if an item was received or not when you go through the room made back tracking SUCH a chore, which was one of my favorite parts in previous games, like not remembering if that dot on the map was a Rocket I couldn't get because I didn't have the right power up or if I did get it SUCKED, and honestly the reason this is the first Metroid game I didn't 100% because I couldn't care enough to try to remember every single location. Second off traversing the entire map while constantly needing to pause because the mini-map was too zoomed in to make me remember where I was and on top of that the inability to not be able to switch different areas on the map so I had to physically travel across the map which in parts are so confusing because if you go through a secret area and then leave and come back that is never marked on your map so I constantly had to keep switching to the X-ray attachment to be like oh there WAS an invisible wall there but I've gone through it a million times JUST MARK IT OR MAKE IT UNINVISIBLE AFTER I GO IN IT THE FIRST TIME. Like my biggest problem was half way through I had to pull up a map of the game on my iPad and make notes of where I've been where power ups I didn't get where and it felt like I was doing home work and I know the graph paper thing is an appeal to people who grew up on Metroid 1 but it just felt like I was doing homework at a point and constantly took me out of the game, which honestly was so fun when I'd get into a groove but it was the breaking up by those things that really just killed me. Also I felt like I was fighting with the controls for sections of the game, specifially the wall jumping and the screw attack, there were just too many points where I know I was doing the inputs correct and Samus would fall and I'd have to wrap back around to make sure the jump went through, same with the grappling hook. When it felt good it felt great but there were too many times where you would SEE it make connection with the block and you would just not connect and that was frustrating. But even with those complaints what is here for the time is such a great game in so many respects and seriously hold up so well, it just makes me want to ROM hack it to add those QOL changes so that it could be the perfect game I wanted it to be so bad. Either way for an almost 30 year old game it holds up pretty impressively.

THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT BABY!
This is what I wanted after being disappointed by Super Metroid. A Metroid game that expands on the simplicity of Zero Mission but kept the Tight Controls and great visuals and added the incredible boss design of Super Metroid. While I called Samus Returns 3DS a perfect game honestly it's hard to argue that the highs of this game may be better than that in Metroid 2. Starting off with the things this does wrong which honestly I just want to get out of the way so I can gush about the great, the fucking Pixel hunting is maybe the worst in the series so far. Not so much in the first half of the game where they do a good job of pushing you in the right direction while not directly holding your hand, there were too many times late game where I would super bomb an area jump and ball up and roll everywhere only to find out after like 10 minutes that the block I was looking for was hidden by some grass and you had to be almost perfect in your jump to land in it. While this was only a few times at the end it really killed the fast frenetic pace of the end game and without it I'd also argue that this was a flawless game. Now onto the Excellent parts because oh boy is there so much this game did right. First off this game plays so fucking well and so tight and so fun and the shooting feels the best it has (Outside of Metroid 2 3DS). Exploring this map was so much fun and while at the beginning I had reservations with the Navigation rooms, afraid that it would take away from the exploratory nature of the first game it really blew me away how the addition of the 6 different sectors actually added to my enjoyment of exploration. While there are times at the beginning where the journey could feel a bit linear, it opens up very quick and all the navigation room will tell you is to go explore one of the sectors each of which has their own unique feel and brings about their own challenges. Those challenges mainly come in the best part of the game which is these fucking bosses which are just really mind blowing that they really outdid my favorite part of the Super Metroid series which was these Set Piece challenges which were not only incredibly brutal and challenging and fun but also really mind blowing even on a portable the scale of these fights and how each one felt wholly unique from each other obviously outside of Ridley which is kind of weaker than it's super Metroid fight and not to give away spoilers but both The Nightmare and the last real fight of the game is one of my favorites in the entire series. There is a real sense of terror in this game which really makes sense given how oozing this atmosphere Super Metroid. While you think for the first time Samus having someone to talk to would make you feel less alone it actually adds this sense of wanting to get to the next navigation center just to talk to make sure everything was okay. And with that comes my final point and that's about the story, while maybe the least important aspect in previous Metroid games, it's really great and engaging here. I really got into the mystery that unfolds through the game and it meshed perfectly with the way the game unfolds and really makes you care for not only samus but the world. It gives the game the life that the previous games were missing and it was honestly something I didn't know I needed in a Metroid game. Considering a lot of people find this game polarizing I didn't think it would arguable be probably my favorite Metroid game in the series. This is really an incredible experience front to back with only a few minor hiccups but outside of those this game really blew me away.

I have put a lot of hours into this game but not enough to say it hooked me. I remember playing the Beta and loving it and when it came out and it needed to be played in portrait mode I was really turned off. It isn't predatory in it's micro transactions, it plays really well, I like the design of the characters and the variety of the abilities, it just doesn't click with me. I literally bought this seasons battlepass hoping it would get me back into it and I literally deleted it because it was just taking up space. It's fine and if it's for you thats cool I just wish I liked it more.

Honestly blown away by this and it was genuinely such a shock to actually play this and like sort of get transported to what is just like a dream Sony theme park and I'm not even a fanboy I just have such a soft spot for the PS1 and PS2. It really felt like the video game version of a Disney ride where all the bright lights and the fun music and just exploring these little islands and finding all the easter eggs just warmed my heart. This was such a fun little game and the constant gameplay changes they made were also so great. There's not much to say it's just a really just a celebration of Sony and it's history wrapped in a really fun platformer that showcases the PS5 Hardware so well.

So I'm an idiot and completely forgot that this was listed by season so I guess I should put my thoughts on the state of my relationship with COD here. I already chronicled my love affair with Modern Warfare 2019 it was a very flawed masterpiece that consumed my life pretty much. It somehow perfected the art of the Call Of Duty grind. Just going into a game using .01% of your brain and somehow releasing enough serotonin to make it nearly impossible to stop. So why am I saying this well because this COD sort of picks up the pieces of where the MW left off. To make this not too long, when Cold War dropped I loved it. The engine change made this feel like such a different game, I can't properly describe it but this game felt smoother. MW was gritty and tough this one felt very more light and breezy. Due to the shorter TTK the game felt faster and more impactful and because I put like 500 hours into MW I fell off halfway into season 1 and didn't touch it until my girlfriend left me and I needed to keep myself distracted, it was my comfort food. I grinded out 100 battlepass levels and I think around 175 account levels in this season because it was the perfect get stone put on futurama and mindlessly shoot game. I needed this, it was my home for a little over a month and for that this season means a lot to me. This game is very flawed but it fills that hole of a fast and fun shooter, and a serious addiction is needed.