As someone who loves Hideo Kojima and the Metal Gear Solid series to death, to say that I was pretty excited for Death Stranding is an understatement. Since Kojima left the evil empire known as Konami around the time Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain came out, that meant that he was able to make any type of game with any type of story that he wanted, regardless of whether it made sense or not. Now that I’ve finally completed the game, I’m glad to say that I loved Death Stranding, although I completely understand why other people don’t.

Death Stranding is one of the most unique AAA games I’ve ever played, and a lot of that is thanks to the gameplay itself. The gameplay mostly centers around delivering packages to isolated people across the UCA (United Cities of America) after a mass extinction known as the Death Stranding occurs out of the blue. A lot of people consider Death Stranding to be a “walking simulator”, and while I do see where they’re coming from, I loved the gameplay a lot. A lot of Death Stranding’s fun comes from trying to find the best route to take in order to keep your cargo in mint condition, which allows for some really cool moments of creative thinking and player freedom, especially when enemies like BTs or MULEs start to pop up.

Hideo Kojima’s games have always had exposition in them, and while I never minded it before due to how complex his stories are, I felt that Death Stranding has just a bit too much exposition. I thought that the story was still great, and the dialogue never reaches Christopher Nolan levels of expository drivel, but I still think that the exposition should’ve been toned down a bit. I also wasn’t a fan of some of the boss battles. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the boss battles are great, but some of the more gun-centric ones, especially the ones against Cliff Unger, aren’t as fun to play as the other boss battles. I think that this is because Death Stranding’s gameplay is centered around traversing the world rather than gunplay, so shooting bullet sponge troops and scouring the area for guns isn’t as fun as some of the other boss fights. Despite those issues, Death Stranding is a fantastic game that proves that Hideo Kojima can make a terrific, albeit polarizing game without the shackles imposed on him by Konami.

Back in 2016, I got a PS4 as a birthday gift, and some of my classmates got me games to play on it, with Dark Souls III being one of them. After being unable to get into it for almost two years, I gave it to a friend who then snapped the disc in half out of frustration. Since then, I’ve been meaning to give From Software’s games another shot, so I decided to pick up Bloodborne. At first, I considered quitting the game, but after beating Father Gascoigne for the first time, I never felt more satisfied in my life and I understood the genius of Bloodborne instantly.

Bloodborne is one of the most challenging, frustrating, but also immensely rewarding games I’ve ever played. The brilliant level design and lack of checkpoints encourages exploration and the memorization of enemy placements and attack patterns, which makes the aggressive, yet strategic combat more fun. The Victorian setting mixed with Lovecraftian creature designs not only made the game look gorgeous, but it also gave Bloodborne a uniquely macabre and gothic atmosphere. Although I still need to do more reading about the game’s lore, the tidbits that I got from item descriptions and NPCs were fascinating, and even when I didn’t fully understand what was going on, the story still managed to leave me in awe at times.

While it did take me a while to appreciate and love Bloodborne as much as I do now, I consider it to be one of the best games I’ve ever played, and while it might be a while before I pick up my next From Software game, I can’t wait to see what else they have to offer.

I must’ve been 10 years old when that first God of War dropped for the PS2. It was probably amongst the first ’18-rated’ titles I played and it really felt like it: the blood and gore, the menacing behemoth boss battles and outrageous difficulty, not to mention nudity.
I'm quite surprised that the age rating on this is the very same. Yes it’s still violent and occasionally challenging, but the emotional father-son adventure, furnished with humorous quips and quirky side characters, feels fresh out of Disney territory. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t mildly disappointed that such a franchise had been chiselled down to the now-standard formula of The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn, at least initially.
But my stubborness goes only as far as that, because the game is still a fantastic character piece for both Kratos and Atreus, who are equally conflicted in their identity and expectations of one another. It’s definitely a movie-story but one that nonetheless keeps the gamer roped in.
The graphics and presentation are also a triumph, the colours most incredible in its new HDR upgrade; and the camera enhances that cinematic quality through simulation of one long, unbroken take, most impressive during the many hours of gameplay.
The combat still retains the hack-and-slash of the previous entries but feels all the more satisfying with the use of close-up and slow-motion sequences. It was also nice to see the hidden chests and puzzle-solving reinvigorated and vastly spread out over the many open-world maps.
It doesn’t have the atmosphere of the early classics but is still both an incredible sequel and soft reboot of the franchise, absorbing and thoroughly entertaining.

I’ve been meaning to play Disco Elysium for a while now. Pretty much everything about it sounded appealing to me. A dialogue-heavy RPG inspired by my all time favorite game and the writings of Marx and Engels? Count me in! Even knowing all of that, Disco Elysium subverted a lot of my expectations, and as a result, I’ve experienced one of the most well written, engaging, heartfelt, intelligent, and overall best games ever made.

As I’ve said before, the main strength of Disco Elysium lies in its writing, and it’s almost overwhelming how good this game’s writing is. The macabre and fascinating world of Revachol is brought to life thanks to its detailed descriptions and lively characters, as well as the beautiful and unique oil painting artstyle. While I still do think that Planescape: Torment has the best writing in any video game, Disco Elysium is a very, very close second. I also loved how Disco Elysium’s version of perks and traits played into the way that Revachol was perceived by both the protagonist and the player. Rather than using traditional traits like a conventional RPG, the player has to manage 24 different aspects of their brain that are constantly fighting over each other, and that is an unbelievably creative and interesting way of giving the player an understanding of how the protagonist thinks and functions.

There is so much intelligence and beauty present in Disco Elysium, and while I could go on and on about it, I just want to end the review by saying that this is one of the best games I have ever played, and I’m not only incredibly excited to see what else Robert Kurvitz and ZA/UM have to offer, but I’m also excited to read The Sacred and Terrible Air, Kurvitz’s original Revachol-set novel, when it eventually gets translated into English.

BioShock has been hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, and when I first tried it, I didn't really see why. I didn't play the game for six months, and after being unable to get back into it, I made a new save around a week or two ago and fell in love with it. My appreciation for BioShock grew exponentially, and I'm really, really glad that I gave the game a second chance.

The strongest aspect of BioShock is its atmosphere. Rapture is an incredibly fascinating setting, with tons of lore and complex characters, and this already interesting setting is made even better thanks to its creepy, atmospheric sound design and beautifully unique art direction. Although it took me a while to get used to BioShock's gunplay, I loved how plasmids were implemented, especially with how they worked with elements from the environment, which makes each level seem less like just a simple area filled with enemies and more like a part of a dilapidated city.

Again, I'm really glad that I made that new save, because if I didn't, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate BioShock nearly as much as I do now.

Agh, the frustration! This is genuinely one of the most beautiful games I've ever played from an artistic perspective, the monochromatic surrealist illustrations and smooth animations popping out in every moment, a perfect choice to illustrate a universe defined by metaphysics and equations. I didn't love how the story was paced throughout but the way it tells human narratives of perseverance and survival with minimal spoken dialogue is admirable, whilst riffing on noir without resorting to cheap parody. I enjoyed experiencing Genesis Noir, but I didn't always enjoy playing it.

I'm all for interactive experiences and Genesis Noir has more traditional 'gameplay' than the majority of story-driven walking sims out there, but the puzzles and point-and-click sequences are so wildly inconsistent, it's ruthlessly easy to be taken out of the world entirely. I had multiple bugged puzzles where the solutions didn't work until I restarted on top of several occasions where I solved a puzzle only to have no idea why that solution was even the correct one, or what logic to follow. Minimal presentation is preferable to me than a deluge of information, but I ended up craving more context in these moments. Interacting with objects sometimes takes a few seconds to work properly and by the time it's over, these obtuse and exhausting moments stick out more than the positives (at least for me). I'm not exaggerating that the final hour involves a sequence requiring the mouse to be held forward 16 different times. At that point, I'd much rather just watch a walkthrough. I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a unique, stunning cinematic experience but with the serious caveat that it's either better to wait until these bugs are resolved, or to experience it online rather than interactively (which in itself is a huge shame).