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HOLLOW KNIGHT: VOIDHEART EDITION - MY NEW FAVOURITE GAME
On the surface, Hollow Knight's premise is simple. A Metroidvania souls-like set in the hauntingly beautiful world of Hallownest, one which the player character - an unnamed knight hailing from a distant land - is tasked with exploring. Yet when put into practice Hollow Knight becomes so much more than that, as the sprawling in-game world and its various mysteries gradually unfold before the player.
For me, this game has it all. Engaging - yet it must be said, challenging - combat, a great sense of exploration, intriguing lore, tightly-designed bosses, secrets absolutely everywhere, a timeless art style and an absolutely gorgeous soundtrack.
Weirdly, I picked up this game a couple of times previously, played a few hours and then just bounced off of it. But this time I stuck with it and I am so glad I did.
To say too much about this game would genuinely ruin the experience, seriously just pick it up and play, you won't regret it.
One of, if not the best, games I have ever played - and I've been gaming for 20+ years. And it was only made by an incredibly small studio to boot.
A masterpiece in every sense of the word.
On the surface, Hollow Knight's premise is simple. A Metroidvania souls-like set in the hauntingly beautiful world of Hallownest, one which the player character - an unnamed knight hailing from a distant land - is tasked with exploring. Yet when put into practice Hollow Knight becomes so much more than that, as the sprawling in-game world and its various mysteries gradually unfold before the player.
For me, this game has it all. Engaging - yet it must be said, challenging - combat, a great sense of exploration, intriguing lore, tightly-designed bosses, secrets absolutely everywhere, a timeless art style and an absolutely gorgeous soundtrack.
Weirdly, I picked up this game a couple of times previously, played a few hours and then just bounced off of it. But this time I stuck with it and I am so glad I did.
To say too much about this game would genuinely ruin the experience, seriously just pick it up and play, you won't regret it.
One of, if not the best, games I have ever played - and I've been gaming for 20+ years. And it was only made by an incredibly small studio to boot.
A masterpiece in every sense of the word.
SIFU - AN INTENSELY PUNISHING, YET REWARDING, EXPERIENCE
Some games can be described as being 'easy to learn, difficult to master', and SIFU - despite being a great game when it clicks - is undoubtedly one of them. This is definitely a game that is not for the faint-hearted, or for more casual players who want to feel an immediate sense of empowerment upon being put into the shoes of the game's playable character.
This is due in part to the steep learning curve which the game possesses, and how some of its more intricate systems - and how they work - are also quite difficult to grasp when first put into practice. But when they do eventually become second nature to the player it feels rewarding in a way which few other games can hope to.
So strong is this sense of continuous learning and development embedded in SIFU that, upon reaching the game's final boss, I was met with an encounter which made me completely reevaluate how I had been approaching the game's combat up until that point. Cue me then going back through the game's five levels with this newly-discovered approach in mind and effectively unlocking a whole new way of engaging with SIFU's various enemy types.
Yet when I once again reached the final boss, fully expecting to struggle yet finally overcome it with my new-found skills, I repeatedly got beaten. Again. And again. And again.
And whilst I did finally beat it and complete the game, it still left a bad taste in my mouth. In short (and I am usually never one to complain about a game's difficulty) the game's final boss felt far too hard and at times, unfair.
Some may argue that a final boss is meant to be hard, and is meant to be a sort of final test posed to the player for them to use all the skills they have learnt up to that point. And normally I'd agree, but the final boss of this game is seriously ridiculous in how quickly they move, how hard they hit, and how they combine blockable and unblockable moves in combos with abandon to punish the player.
Maybe I do just suck at this game and maybe I do just need to 'git gud', but given that as of writing this review just 14.4% of players on Playstation have earned the trophy for beating SIFU, I don't think my experience was in the minority.
Overall SIFU was a great experience with free-flowing, visceral combat which demands a continuously developing sense of understanding of the game's systems from the player. That is until the game's final boss, whose intense difficulty creates a great deal of frustration which will put off many from finishing what is otherwise a stellar third-person martial arts game.
Some games can be described as being 'easy to learn, difficult to master', and SIFU - despite being a great game when it clicks - is undoubtedly one of them. This is definitely a game that is not for the faint-hearted, or for more casual players who want to feel an immediate sense of empowerment upon being put into the shoes of the game's playable character.
This is due in part to the steep learning curve which the game possesses, and how some of its more intricate systems - and how they work - are also quite difficult to grasp when first put into practice. But when they do eventually become second nature to the player it feels rewarding in a way which few other games can hope to.
So strong is this sense of continuous learning and development embedded in SIFU that, upon reaching the game's final boss, I was met with an encounter which made me completely reevaluate how I had been approaching the game's combat up until that point. Cue me then going back through the game's five levels with this newly-discovered approach in mind and effectively unlocking a whole new way of engaging with SIFU's various enemy types.
Yet when I once again reached the final boss, fully expecting to struggle yet finally overcome it with my new-found skills, I repeatedly got beaten. Again. And again. And again.
And whilst I did finally beat it and complete the game, it still left a bad taste in my mouth. In short (and I am usually never one to complain about a game's difficulty) the game's final boss felt far too hard and at times, unfair.
Some may argue that a final boss is meant to be hard, and is meant to be a sort of final test posed to the player for them to use all the skills they have learnt up to that point. And normally I'd agree, but the final boss of this game is seriously ridiculous in how quickly they move, how hard they hit, and how they combine blockable and unblockable moves in combos with abandon to punish the player.
Maybe I do just suck at this game and maybe I do just need to 'git gud', but given that as of writing this review just 14.4% of players on Playstation have earned the trophy for beating SIFU, I don't think my experience was in the minority.
Overall SIFU was a great experience with free-flowing, visceral combat which demands a continuously developing sense of understanding of the game's systems from the player. That is until the game's final boss, whose intense difficulty creates a great deal of frustration which will put off many from finishing what is otherwise a stellar third-person martial arts game.
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST: BURNING SHORES - STORY DLC DONE RIGHT
I interspersed my playthrough of Burning Shores with God of War Ragnarok's free Valhalla expansion and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and, in several ways, I ended up enjoying both DLC titles much more than the fully-fledged £60 game.
Now this isn't to say Spider-Man was bad by any means (see my review), just that the worlds and stories that both Valhalla and Burning Shores presented were ones which I found more compelling.
I wasn't even expecting to enjoy Burning Shores as much as I did after picking it up on a whim for £10 whilst it was on sale, but I came away feeling as if I'd have happily paid double the price for what I'd just experienced.
First of all, it gets thrown around a lot but this expansion looks even more STUNNING than Forbidden West, especially when flying above Los Angeles, which is no small feat by the developers at Guerrilla given how great the original game looked.
The quests also seemed much more fleshed out than in FW and the locations were extremely interesting to explore, particularly the Old World ruins of which there are several in this DLC.
Being an expansion, combat and traversal mechanics are very much the same as in FW with a few slight additions here and there. But it is the story told, the characters you encounter and the world which is presented which make this DLC truly shine.
And this isn't even mentioning the absolutely spectacular scale of the expansion's final encounter, which is just jaw-dropping.
An absolute must-play for fans of the original game, and a triumph of DLC content which shows all developers how expansions to an already-great game should be done.
I interspersed my playthrough of Burning Shores with God of War Ragnarok's free Valhalla expansion and Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and, in several ways, I ended up enjoying both DLC titles much more than the fully-fledged £60 game.
Now this isn't to say Spider-Man was bad by any means (see my review), just that the worlds and stories that both Valhalla and Burning Shores presented were ones which I found more compelling.
I wasn't even expecting to enjoy Burning Shores as much as I did after picking it up on a whim for £10 whilst it was on sale, but I came away feeling as if I'd have happily paid double the price for what I'd just experienced.
First of all, it gets thrown around a lot but this expansion looks even more STUNNING than Forbidden West, especially when flying above Los Angeles, which is no small feat by the developers at Guerrilla given how great the original game looked.
The quests also seemed much more fleshed out than in FW and the locations were extremely interesting to explore, particularly the Old World ruins of which there are several in this DLC.
Being an expansion, combat and traversal mechanics are very much the same as in FW with a few slight additions here and there. But it is the story told, the characters you encounter and the world which is presented which make this DLC truly shine.
And this isn't even mentioning the absolutely spectacular scale of the expansion's final encounter, which is just jaw-dropping.
An absolute must-play for fans of the original game, and a triumph of DLC content which shows all developers how expansions to an already-great game should be done.