Mr Salieri sends his regards.

Mafia 2 in my opinion is the perfect sequel to the 1st game and comes out as a better game at the end of it. The story is somehow better, with two great likeable characters in Joe and Vito and a narrative that takes you on an emotional journey full of great missions and enjoyable characters.

When it comes to the setting in Mafia 2, as soon as you take the first car ride through Empire Bay you can see how perfect the devs have got that 1940s America vibe. The streets are busy, the shops and billboards all have that oldies aesthetic and the radio station plays some great 40s classics that really help drive that atmosphere home. Its also really nice to see that the environment changes depending what era you're in, as the game takes place in both the 40s and the 50s. The car models change, the music changes and so does the city around you. Little things like that really help immerse you.

So if the environment is perfect for the setting, what about the characters? Everybody you meet in this game is exactly what you'd expect an Italian-American mobster to be. As for the main character Vito Scaletta, wow what a character, and the same goes for his partner in crime Joe Barbaro who has some of the funniest one-liners in the game. 2K really hit the nail on the head with their character writing again.

The gameplay in Mafia 2 is such an improvement on the first (even compared to the remake), with shooting and driving feeling a lot more smoother and less frustrating to work your way around. There were also less times I found myself getting annoyed with a mission. In Mafia 1, there are quite a few missions that have you tearing your hair out but this one didn't really do that for me, with my time playing being a lot more enjoyable on this title. It's definitely still very simplistic and could maybe benefit from some more unique missions, but that's what you get with these sort of games

The story of this game is stellar. The best in the Mafia series and I hope if there is a 4th game, that they take a lot of inspiration from this one. There are a lot more unforgettable moments in this game that had me laughing, crying or just happy as hell. As mentioned earlier, Joe and Vito really make this narrative shine, bringing the magic to those scenes while you're playing.

Something I would like to point out though, is that if you are going to play this game, I would suggest going for the classic edition. Unfortunately this port has a lot of audio and visual glitches that happen throughout the game. The devs haven't fixed them since the Mafia bundle dropped so I doubt they are going to do anything anytime soon

Bugs aside though, I really did love this game and would highly recommend checking it out. It's just a shame everything goes downhill from this title

Its highs are damn high but its lows are lower than the pits of Tartarus

Probably the most polarising game I've ever played.
I'll preface this review by stating that I started the playthrough on God (Hard) difficulty. An extremely foolish decision on my part, but having beaten the first game in Hard and still feeling let down by the simplicity of the final boss I wanted to ensure that it would be challenging this time around. However, with this games outdated difficulty settings there's no turning back as the only option to change the difficulty is to die repeatedly until you're given the prompt to go straight to easy mode. Too prideful to admit defeat I pushed through around 80% of the game before giving in. Most frustratingly of all it wasn't a boss or even a miniboss that broke me, just a generic room. This is because the way these games scale difficulty is by ramping up enemy health, damage and spawn rates drastically with what appears to be no regulation whatsoever. Consequently, some areas are practically impossible to beat because the player becomes utterly overwhelmed with what I would call artificial difficulty, where the challenge lies in the sheer volume of threats rather than a section that designed specifically to be technically difficult. When this is the case, the player is often forced to brute force their way through, making it lot more tedious and far less rewarding when you do succeed because there was no learning curve. This frustration lead me to shelving the game, nearly indefinitely, however my desire to play the rest of the series brought me back. Reluctantly I played the remainder of the game in easy, and to my surprise it was really enjoyable. Granted, I still wish I had played normal from the start and there's no doubt in my mind I'd have enjoyed the game a lot more if I did, but that's on me.

The saving grace of this game is its story really. I am fascinated by greek mythology and it's always exciting to see various interpretations. This game exceeds the first in storytelling, having some really awesome moments and amazing twists. Boss fights in this title are also much better because they incorporate some really unique mechanics and have creative ways of keeping gameplay fresh. The final boss was really exciting this time around, with a sense of spectacle and a good difficulty level, albeit not the most creative fight in the game.

Some sections of the game were straight up trash, for example fighting Mole Cerberus and the escort level in the Temple of Lahkesis. Both of those make you want to cry because of their obnoxious anti-player and anti-fun designs. The numerous YouTube tutorials for each show I'm not alone on that.

Overall this is probably worth a playthrough if you care for the narrative of the series and while it does have some awesome moments it's nothing too incredible that warrants playing just for gameplay alone. Safe to say I'm glad to be done with this title, but it succeeded in making me excited to play the next installment.

Despite my love for the base game, I struggled with this expansion. The story is one of the few things I enjoyed about it, it's relatively generic overall but it's centred around Melia who was my favourite character in the base game so I enjoyed it a lot for that reason. As for the gameplay, while it's almost identical to the base game, they removed chain attacks for some reason which was one of the most fun parts of Xenoblade's combat system for me. The new characters are two Nopon who are gameplay-wise identical to Reyn and Sharla. I found them fun at first but the novelty wore off fast and by the end, I just found them annoying. Finally, the last boss was one of the most frustrating bosses I've ever fought. I genuinely considered giving up because of how much I hated that fight but I remember casual mode exists; I'm not the type to lower the difficulty for the sake of a boss in games, I usually have too much pride for that, but I really didn't care with this boss and was just glad it was over.

I'd only recommend this expansion for the story, it's worth it for the Melia content but not much else outside of that.

It took me a while to really get into Xenoblade, but once I did it became one of my best video game experiences of all time. The combat is unlike anything I've played before; it took me a while to get used to but in the end, I was in love with it. I mained Shulk for the majority of my playthrough and was able to master his moves before switching to Melia in the late game whose combat was trickier to learn but felt very rewarding once I figured it out. Chain attacks were so fun; my usual party for half the game consisted of Shulk, Reyn and Sharla, and I got into such a good flow with these characters when performing chain attacks which felt so satisfying, especially with the score and their voice lines building up the hype in the background.

Some of the boss fights were extremely difficult and required going back and levelling up a lot, which was often achievable through completing side quests from across Bionis. For the most part, the side quests provide small new stories with the people of Bionis who reward you upon completing tasks for them which were quite enjoyable, but there were a lot of filler side quests which followed the formula of 'kill these monsters' or 'find these items' which were not only repetitive and boring, but were often extremely unrewarding. The only time where I found this to be an issue when trying to level up was at the very end of the story, a lot of the side quests unlocked at this point are very late-game stuff which I couldn't complete due to simply being too low a level. This is the only point in the game where I couldn't rely on side quests to help me level up and had to go out of my way to grind experience through fighting monsters, which wasn't very fun, but I took it as an opportunity to try out different characters and party combinations after maining Shulk for most of the game.

Each character has such defining characteristics with so much charm, especially the likes of Reyn and Melia who stood out to me the most throughout the story, alongside other characters you won't meet until late-game. Everyone's gameplay differs drastically, allowing for infinite party combinations to tackle different types of enemies in different areas. The AI isn't always perfect, for example, Sharla won't always heal the party when it's crucial, but the warning feature makes up for this after Shulk sees a vision so you can command your party members to perform specific actions at the cost of a party gauge bar which saved my life a million times.

The story overall is just outstanding. I've never played anything like it. The amount of twists and turns it takes you on, it's a rollercoaster. Learning about the world and the war between Homs and Mechon throughout the story is so cool, details like being able to see Mechonis in the distance in certain areas of Bionis add so much character to the story and the world, it blew me away.

After 75 hours logged on Xenoblade, it's become one of my favourite games of all time and I can't wait to continue my journey in the rest of the series. I recommend this game to everyone for the story alone, it's a must-play.

Dream Drop Distance is a game so mystifyingly poorly outlined in narrative scope and creative ambition that I have a genuine confusion as to its existence as a title. There's a lot of legitimately interesting lore packed into the latest moments of this game that players jumping and tentatively becoming uninterested would have no earthly idea of its existence.

What sees you as both Sora and Rikku world hopping from select Disney properties eventually involves some of the entire KH story's most important figures and integral plots. Not only was the story pacing misaligned, but difficulty and overambitious mechanic additions muddy what could have been a rather interesting title.

Whatever compelled Nomura and company to add another confusing and unnecessarily obtuse mechanic in its Chao-Buddy-Pal Thing system is a mystery to me. Just because you're adding another game in the series doesn't mean you need to reinvent the wheel on combat... just make it playable. DDD adds an entirely new layer and forces the player to learn it for no additional value. Couple this with routine gimmick boss fights and you have a beyond frustrating game to actually... play.

Enemy design is again repetitive, but what is most worthy of scorn is once more the inundated placement of monotonous foes throughout each realm you visit. It's one thing to fight the same group of enemies, its another when you are doing so at every single clearing/zone possible, and its another when you're doing it twice over as the game sees you re-tread each world you visit as both Rikku and Sora. I don't understand the infatuation with the KH dev team to force the player into physically playing the same locations (this is twice in a row now with Birth By Sleep) just to soak in some extra narrative. They explain it in DDD, but could and should have easily been bypassed through other means. It's alright to do things once... sort of, but making you run through everything you've just seen to move the story along is inexcusable.

Dream Drop Distance really could have been something interesting if it pressed the story that makes KH actually interesting into the earlier elements of the game, drip feeding it throughout, instead of waiting until the last moments of the title to do so.

A thoroughly enjoyable rogue-like to pick up and play. As someone who sucks at chess but really enjoys the concept this game fulfilled my desire to be a pseudo-pro. The characterisation of the various chess pieces is really charming and the game has a surprisingly interesting setup given that on the surface it seems like a simple concept. I really enjoyed the upgrade system and how every buff comes with a debuff, it gives the game a lot more strategy and causes you to adopt a various play-styles to match your current strengths. Overall the game is a lot of fun and it succeeds in making you feel like a powerful tyrant but its worth noting that its quite short, I managed to beat the main mode in under an hour.

I really wanted to finish this one but oh my god it's so terrible. It's laughably bad. I expected the story to be either a retelling of the 2002 movie or some sort of tie-in but it's neither, it's a whole new story that I guess is just like an 'alternate' to the movie story, which would be fine if it didn't suck. The voice acting is awful, you'd expect Tobey Maguire to be good at voicing Spider-Man, maybe it was a matter of bad direction. The worst part of the game is the gameplay, it's so clunky and difficult, I had to restart missions so many times because inputs just weren't inputting, and the missions have no checkpoints which doesn't exactly help. After a month of chipping away at this game, I'm finally giving up.

The first game to kickstart Telltale’s return to the gaming industry and to be honest, it’s a pretty weak one.

Let me start this review by saying I haven’t watched the show so I was going into this game as a newbie experiencing a brand new environment. Did this game intrigue me into the world and it’s story? Kinda. The premise of the story is okay and there are some interesting plot points and tense moments that get you to want to continue playing, but if you compare these moments to previous games in Telltales library, they’re not on the same calibre. It was more of just a ‘oh I guess I’ll find out what happens then’ instead of ‘I can’t wait to find out what happens next’ kind of thing. This isn’t good for a Telltale game when the whole fate of it rest on it’s ability to tell a good story. Another thing it lacks in its story in my opinion compared to the other games is in it’s final episode in particular. When you look at The Walking Dead’s final episode, having to rescue Clementine from her kidnapper, you notice it’s at an anxiety filled and gripping stage. But when it came to The Expanse, I didn’t feel in danger at any bit. I didn’t care what happened to the characters because the character building was nowhere near. The final showdown was flat as well, with the ‘villain’ kinda just popping in at the end and then dying super quick with very little build up. Overall an okay story on its own, but poor compared to previous Telltale titles.

The characters in this game are a mixed bag. Didn’t really get to experience much with some due to my choices in the game but for the ones I did interact with, there are only some that I found myself wanting to learn more about. The main character is fascinating enough to make you want to play as her but I don’t think she’s going to be memorable, not like Lee and Bigby. Everyone was just good enough to pass for a story, but I don’t know, maybe I was expecting more from a company that have delivered me some of my favourite characters in gaming.

Technically this game actually seems to lose a lot of things that were in previous Telltale games. The biggest of these is the stripping of the dialogue changes, we have now been reduced to only 2 options of dialogue instead of 4. This is a really poor design choice as it damages the games replayability with less unique dialogue. I replay Telltale to experience all those small dialogue changes and to have that taken away really puts me off going back to the game. Combat has also been watered down, now being more similar to older Telltale games which is also disappointing. Batman The Telltale Series had such a good combat system, really making the player more involved with the scene so I really can’t understand why they didn’t stick with this design. The level design too is different, with it leaning more to exploration and scavenging rather than an interactive story with bits of exploration dotted in it. This leads to some really long stretched out segments that kinda have you praying for a new cutscene as you slug through it.

While I have seemed harsh in my evaluation of the game so far, I didn’t hate it. It got me to play to the end and I was interested in what was happening to a certain degree. I was actually disappointed by its length, wanting it to be longer. 5 hours is very short for a Telltale game.

But Telltale are back, and while I think this game is far from their normal work, it is good to have them back. Hopefully they can build on this and get back to the heights they were once known for

Minit fun racer is a perfect little appetizer for anyone who enjoyed the equally addictive Minit. It is a charming spinoff title that knows it's place, offering the typical level of depth found in most endless runner games, with the added novelty of incorporating the time pressure of it's parent title. It's hard not to adore a game with a multitude of price points to pick from where 100% of the proceeds go to charity. This amazing idea means it's an easily justifiable purchase and you're almost guaranteed bank for your buck.

A masterclass in storytelling, Firewatch uses both the unknown and the unseen to create a terrifying wilderness where the player is made to piece the truth together like a meticulously designed jigsaw. The atmosphere in this game is like nothing else, the suspense and tension keep you constantly hooked, desperate for the next slither of information. Both the writing and voice acting bring the story to life, with some of the most impressive and convincing performances I've ever heard. It's impossible not to empathise with the characters and their chemistry is astonishingly natural. Additionally, the multiple choices in dialogue trees allows the player to really feel that they are shaping the story that unfolds. The visuals of this game are just gorgeous, the unique artstyle paired with the amazing scenery meant I couldn't resist stopping and taking pictures at every turn. Firewatch is a perfect example of how graphical fidelity isn't always necessary to have a beautiful game with a strong sense of identity. Lastly, although it's short, the story feels like the perfect length, with a well rounded structure and almost no unnecessarily slower moments for padding.

If you haven't already, I implore you to give this game a go. I promise it's worth your time.

Vice City has some great characters and an amazing story, but the controls and the gameplay ruined my experience. The lack of checkpoints in the missions was pretty annoying, especially considering you lose all your weapons upon death often making it a chore to prepare for the mission again. A lot of the 'difficult' levels like to throw infinitely spawning enemies at you which becomes quite frustrating, especially since you don't respawn with your weapons.

The map of Vice City is really cool, I enjoyed exploring the map a lot and finding rampage activities as well as hidden collectables, it was also really cool when I'd stumble across a weapon I hadn't seen before randomly in the open world. Things like this certainly push exploration more than the recent titles which I love.

I felt like the story started off pretty basic; a drug deal is ambushed and Tommy, the protagonist, must make back the money that was lost. Without going into spoilers, after a few hours, the story began to take some turns and gained a lot more character which had me hooked.

It's a shame the definitive edition remaster of this game was such a disappointment because I think with refined gameplay and modern graphics this game has the potential to be a masterpiece.