I have played Version 2.1.

I want to start with the fact that this game is not bad. I think for people who enjoy open world games this game is even very good.
But for me after some time the realization kicked in that this is in fact still just your normal average open world game, and those typically start just being busy work after some time.
I had fun with this game for around 10 hours I think, but then it just started to become stale very quickly.

Pros:
- The gunplay feels good, way better than I imagined
- The city looks and feels amazing, by far the biggest pro for me

Cons:
- The talent trees and cyber implementations etc. are too shallow for me. My "build" was finished after around 8 hours and it didn't feel like it would change at all anymore
- The story and characters are OK, but not as good as in Witcher 3 for example
- This is personal but the whole cyberpunk theme just doesn't really do it for me
- Too many "Walking behind NPC who has something important to say and nothing else happens" quests

tldr:
If you like typical open world games you will definitely enjoy this game and you should get it. The city feels amazing and you will have lots of fun.
If you're like me and don't really like open world games Cyberpunk 2077 won't change that.

They never let the gameplay breath with nearly constant dialogue. It makes it incredibly hard to focus on the platforming and combat when these characters won’t pipe down. It’s remarkable for how much they talk, how stale the actual narrative is and where the story goes.

The art style is decent but it clearly was meant to sell Sony 3D tv’s given how often shit flies at the screen. It’s pretty cheap visually and hurts the presentation of the game. The music is good but many songs repeat.

The boss fights were hit or miss. Some were recycled earlier ones and others were unique and interesting. The rat boss fight with the trees stood out.

The scissor cutting mechanic was very satisfying with how it reacts to your cuts in an accurate way. But there wasn’t a lot of depth to it. The gameplay also doesn’t evolve in meaningful ways past act 3. It’s too easy most of the time and relies heavily on these spam square button moments and qte’s to make it more cinematic. Swapping heads was a gimmick and was there to extend the runtime by requiring backtracking and tediously holding onto them until the precise moment they’re needed. I liked all the unique animations for them though.

The whole game was a mixed bag. Some gameplay areas were really cool, others are boring. Same goes for music, voice acting, story, and art. A lot of cool ideas here, just terrible execution.

This game is a narrative experience more than a game. It follows the story of an immigrant couple from southern India, raising a child in Canada.
The story raises themes of the immigration experience, cultural differences, raising a child, racism, and really delicious looking food.
The game element is a simple affair where you are asked to assemble meals based on partial recipes. The colourful food and tactile cooking methods make these sequences brief but fun. And if you hate cooking, there's a hint system that will tell you exactly what to do.
The game is very short, I finished in about ninety minutes but it's a fun, powerful experience. I'm glad this sort of game is available on Game Pass as it's likely something I would never have tried out otherwise.

Red Faction is a game that's been kicking around in my head for the twenty or so years it's been since I'd last played it. I've been meaning to go back to it for years, as my memories of the game were quite fond ones. What I have found in returning to this game, however, is that memories can be unreliable, even outright incorrect.

Aspects of this game unearthed memories buried deep within my brain, things that without my knowing I've been carrying with me for a couple decades: the enemy call outs and death screams; the incredibly stupid line at the beginning as the mining corporation thug attacks your comrade, "You threatenin' me? Yeah, well threaten this!"; a select few sequences here and there. But what I also came to realize is that this game that I looked back on so fondly? It's a total blur. I remember almost none of it. And for good reason: it kind of sucks.

For the purpose of not making this drag on too much (edit: about that... oops), when Red Faction is at its best, it's a pretty fun FPS. Shooting feels for the most part good, although I do think the spread could use to be tuned to be a bit less dramatic. There's a world in which this could be a game right in there in the same breath (or at least not far off) as the greats. So why is it, then, that I sort of hate this game?

Right as you start accruing an arsenal of decent weapons, Red Faction decides to flip a switch and turn into a stealth game. It takes all of your weapons but the silenced pistol from you, gives you a disguise, and tells not to get too close to anyone or they'll see through it. The game never communicates any of this information well enough to not feel fucking terrible and I found myself instead wishing I were playing No One Lives Forever or, shit, even one of the new Hitman games. Even if you set off alarms, and you will, you can't break out of your disguise and pick up new weapons; you have to hope you can make do with the magazine of bullets you were given. After some trial and error and strong use of quick saving and curse words you'll find your way through, but it never feels rewarding or that you've done something well. Oh and by the way? After that whole miserable sequence and more traditional shooting segments where you get your weapons back the game does it again, it fucking does it again, but this time in a more confusing area with deadlier enemies.

Even with those awful parts I wasn't overly down on the game, but then it turns into one of the least enjoyable FPSes I've ever played. For the last third or so of the game, nearly every single area you take battle in contains at least one enemy with an instagib rail gun that shoots through walls. It makes every encounter basically random: you will die dozens of times the instant you walk around a corner, well before any person could react. It feels like playing a multiplayer shooter in a lobby full of cheaters. It is horrendously fucking unfun. Except of course when you're using the gun yourself. It is awfully satisfying ripping a single cartoonishly powerful round through a line of clueless enemies from a couple rooms down the hall.

But it's not just the rail guns that made me ultimately hate the game: more generally speaking, the last stretch has a severe leap in difficulty that never feels properly challenging so much as it does cheap. Sometimes you'll open a door and be greeted by an unavoidable rocket an enemy has already sent your way. Sometimes enemies will be spawned behind you from dead-end corridors. There are stretches where there are more health items than you can use and then others where there are so few you end up riding the quick load button until you get by without taking a hit. I didn't happen to find healing before the (for the record, really, really bad) final boss fight, so I had to beat it without taking a single hit.

I should also make quick note of the game's defining feature: the so-called "Geo-Mod" technology, wherein explosions excavate the game's terrain. From a technology standpoint it's pretty neat, especially for 2001, but also: it barely exists. There's almost nowhere to use it in the single-player campaign and the places you can are at best superficial. Volition's method of stopping players from using the technology to perform sequence breaks appears to have been basically stopping the player from ever being able to use it at all. I think if they had instead taken the exact opposite approach and embraced the potential game-breaking nature of deformable terrain, the game would be profoundly more interesting. Instead, we're left with little more than a few walls in empty rooms you can make small dents in.

Before I get out of here, I've already rambled on too long, let me just briefly touch on the story. How fucking cool of a concept is taking part in a full-on violent revolution against the capitalist fucks who have been killing your fellow workers. It whips ass, right? Unfortunately no. I can't possibly imagine the concept for this game wasn't to at least some extent inspired by the real life labor history of miners such as that documented in the essential documentary Harlan County, USA, but rather than using any of that to enrich the plot or even attempt at making anything grounded in reality, Red Faction just kind of throws in some weird old cyborg guy who floats around evilly and has a forcefield. And a weird lady who also floats around evilly and has a forcefield. There's a virus or some shit too? I don't fucking know. It's written badly and acted stiffly and I didn't care about a goddamn thing that was happening. Wasted potential.

I still don't have the answer for how much of this game I actually ever played in the first place. It very well could have been that I cheated my way through the whole thing. Was my fond memory of this game based on a reality where I barely even played it? I don't know. Regardless, now that memory is replaced with a new one, and it goes a little something like this: Red Faction—a game I thought I liked.

It's hard for me to place what I didn't exactly jive with in the 3rd Uncharted game, but this wasn't an overly pleasant nor fun gaming experience.

Maybe it felt more over-the-top, or "been there, done that" as topping Uncharted 2 was a nigh impossible task. Perhaps it was the game's pacing feeling all over the place... Or the ending portion pissing me off, and the difficulty spikes and large swath of annoying enemies.

I just don't know... and having played it on release, and then never touching it again, it is hard for me to exactly remember what soured me on the game so much. I know that old IGN 10/10 review I read prior to release was a lie though... maybe that set the bar and expectations too high.

However, I will say, I really loved the opening part with young Nathan Drake and Sully. That short prologue section was 10/10 excellent... but outside of that and the plane portion, this was a relatively forgettable Uncharted experience.

The idea of this game is great, but I felt like the execution left quite a bit to be desired. The force powers are initially fun, but can get really frustrating. Even after beating the game I was still struggling with moving objects where I wanted them to go, getting the auto targeting to select the item I wanted to move, and I almost never hit my target when I wanted to throw an object. I also was pretty annoyed at the constant stun loops, cheap shots and just being overwhelmed again and again by the enemies. Why do game developers think this is fun? Finally, the force power level in the game just seemed way OP. Your character should be force sensitive, not the all being master 10x yoda planet splitting power that he ends up with. With a focus more on using the Force to solve puzzles and less relentless beat downs, this game would have been a lot better.

A fun but flawed entry in the Yakuza/Lika A Dragon series. This is a standalone historical adventure which require no previous knowledge of the franchise. The characters in the game are based on real historical figures but modelled on series protagnist Kiryu Kazama and his roster of allies, frenemies, and antagonists.
The combat is a refreshing change in this edition as guns are reintroduced and permanently available as part of two fighting styles. There is a weapon crafting and upgrade tree which is complex but rewarding if you put in the requisite grinding and resources. If you don't want to grind through side activities, you can get by in the game by using weapons awarded to you from defeated bosses.
The farm is a fun addition at first but quickly becomes tiring and dull due to overlong animations and very repetitive gameplay. The gloss comes off once you've prepared the same meals over and over again to meet orders or grind for money. Still, you can fill your farm with cats and dogs so that's a big plus.
The story is overly long and comes with plenty of twists and turns that eventually become a little overwhelming. It doesn't help that the cutscenes can sometimes run up to 20 minutes long. This is nothing new for the Yakuza series but this time my tolerance for the story was worn out by the final three chapters. There is historical context to the story that is lost on me as a Westerner who knows very little about Japanese history so that did hinder my enjoyment somewhat.
There are many substories (sidequests) dotted throughout the game. Most are fun stories, although many are just repetitive requests to feed resources to an NPC. This was disappointing as although attempts were made to make them amusing, it's still boring to feed someone vegetables for the 5th time and read the same dialogue until you fill their friendship bar.
I sound like I'm down on the game but I did have fun with it. I think part of the issue I had was that I put too much time into it without too much reward. I would recommend engaging with the side content but to not devote dozens of hours to it as they rarely pay off in satisfying ways. Play for a good time, not a long time, is my advice.