Assassin's Creed Odysssey: part grand, technological wonderment, part shallow, hellish chore. It's a lot like the gameplay of an MMORPG without any of the second M nor O and paper-thin RPG. TL;DR at the bottom.

This game is long and I think I can say a lot about it, but I'll try to keep it as brief as one can when discussing something that can offer you well over a hundred hours of content to explore. Because there is so much to Assassin's Creed Odyssey (and simultaneously, so little), I don't think you'll ever read a single review that can tell you everything about it. Much of this ocean of content is only inches deep, and depending on your definition of "fun", this could be a very good or a very disappointing thing.

Right off the bat: if you're only looking for a game that's something "to do", like you just want some sense of accomplishment and love checking off lists, there's no doubt in my mind this game is for you and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better bang for your buck. The world of Ancient Greece is insensibly expansive, with large landmasses, many islands, and an ocean between it all to explore. I don't think I've seen a bigger map than this and it's not as though half the map is featureless flatlands: there's bandit camps, forts, towns, animal caves, tombs, and more littered around frequently. The world is nicely textured, the lighting looks great, and there're more pretty vistas in this game than there probably should be. There's also DLC worlds that expand this absurdity even further.

"Okay," you're saying, "there's stuff, but what's going on?" Well, you're Kassandra (or, if you choose incorrectly, Alexios): a misthios (mercenary) who's determined to make a name for herself in this war-torn land and, if possible, find out as much as she can about her family that was torn apart by fellow Spartans at a young age. Kassandra will start on a small island and eventually command her own ship to take part in the Peloponnesian War, fighting for whichever side she chooses, on her road to self-discovery. Along the way she'll visit otherworldly cities, fight mythic beasts of yore, and take on a cult determined to control the known world. You'll like Kassandra less for what she does and more for how she's portrayed: her voice actress does the heavy lifting in terms of character building because her animations, like everybody's, are comically robotic for the most part. You will enjoy, like all of these games, becoming Death personified as you will be cutting down thousands of Greeks with (hopefully) a single button press. Kassandra will charm you in conversation and slaughter an army back to back and neither required much effort on her part. Also, if you're a gross coomer who loves stiff "romance" sequences in a game, you can easily become Greece's most ridden bicycle in no time. Love pressing the "Let's have sex" button before rigid kissing and fade to black? Play Assassin's Creed Odyssey, you can do this more times than you can count. You can even briefly kiss one of the game's "top baddies" in a very awkward moment.

The mercenary aspect of this game is probably the best part of it and I wish more games had a similar vibe. You hold no allegiances, you do whatever you wanna do and kill whoever you wanna kill. Fight this battle for the Spartans, who're willing to pay you slightly more, or side with the Athenians, whose defensive advantage guarantees an easier payout? Entirely your call and you can always make the other choice another time soon. Maybe you just want to help locals with their bandit problems? Every town has endlessly respawning timed quests. Want to fight at sea instead? Engage in naval battles until your eyeballs bleed, the pirates will always come back. You're a mercenary, this is exactly what you want in life and the quests and battles feel very natural in this setting.

Unfortunately, this is still an Assassin's Creed game, which since its inception has made the poor decision to tie its historical events to current times. The good news is Kassandra's story has as little as possible to do with the "Assassins vs Templars" and her journey is mainly one of family and revenge. However, you will still occasionally be pulled back into the real world to be reminded of the Animus, Abstergo, and whacky, alien-tech, prehistoric assholes. Because this series has to go on forever, you know there's no real point to any of it: small victories, small defeats, and the war will never end because there needs to be another game eventually. The "RPG" elements basically just mean you get to choose which skills you'll be unlocking first and, depending on who survives your odyssey due to your choices, you can land an ending that's "happy", "utterly miserable", or somewhere in the middle. There's optional dialogue for almost every quest that lets you learn a bit more, but since it's unimportant tidbits and you'll be doing this hundreds of times, you'll want to just cut to the chase.

But back to warring: AC: Odyssey doesn't have very good combat. Neither does AC: Valhalla and I'd bet that applies to AC: Origins, too. In fact, here the combat is most fun when it's entirely avoided; ideally, you'll one-hit assassinate all of your targets. You'll get angry at yourself when you screw up and actually have to fight your enemies with a weapon, thankfully you can earn abilities by leveling up that usually kill enemies in one button, getting that "time spent in combat" as close to zero as possible. Unfortunately, these have a cooldown, meaning sometimes you'll actually have to actually engage in the combat so you can end this nonsense and can get back to assassinating the guards in the next room who (thankfully) heard none of this battle. Higher difficulty just makes enemies less likely to die in one stab (annoying) and in combat, they hit harder (also annoying), so while I started on Hard, I eventually lowered it to Normal for a faster pace and far better experience.

The combat being pretty lackluster is especially damning considering it's basically the only thing you're ever going to do. Sometimes there's variation tossed in there, like you escort someone before you murder ambushers, or you hear criminals and their punishers plead their cases before choosing who to slaughter, but in the end? You're going to kill someone(s) 99% of the time. Like one time, I had to decide if I thought a man could ethically steal a horse. Okay, some change, yeah? A moral dilemma? Well, to hear the man's story, I had to kill 5 guards standing around him, so not really. AC: Valhalla would at least toss in some minigames, like the drinking challenges or the Viking-spin on rap battles. Even though that wasn't exactly the most fun in the world, it did add some much-needed spice to things.

So, part of me wants to call this game incredible. Its scope is nothing short of outrageous, it's a beautiful project that's just crammed (and with DLC, overflowing) with content, and really, it's insane that any of this even works. But is this content worth the potential hundreds of hours you can put into it? Is exploring Achaia any more exciting (or even any different) from exploring Messara? If you've emptied one fortress of goodies and guards, haven't you seen them all? Does anybody give a shit who leads the Cult of Kosmos? Remember when there was a time in your life where you weren't playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Do those days now blend together into a blur that, try as you may, you can no longer bring into focus? I would argue that while this world is gigantic, the size just makes your echoes in its hollowness even louder. I think it's simply impossible to call this game "great". The game is long and there's lots to look at, but if length was all we cared about in games, JRPGs would be doing Iron Man numbers all day long, baby.

It's wild to me that Ubisoft made a game this massive after another big Assassin's Creed game, then just released Assassin's Creed Valhalla two years later, another world almost as huge. Soon, we can expect another with Assassin's Creed Mirage. Before you can even stop to truly appreciate one of these games, games that probably should be witnessed by everyone who says they like video games, it's "just another Assassin's Creed game" and forgotten in a catalog of far too many titles. It's no surprise Ubisoft is floundering.

Again, it's tough saying whether or not this game is actually worth your time, though I'd lean towards 'barely' or maybe even 'no'. Apparently, it was worth mine, but I just feel like I was hooked on the world's most mediocre drug. Something drove me to see as much as I could stand of Assassin's Creed Odyssey, but it wasn't purely enjoyment, I think I just liked how the wheel spun. You will have a largely bug-free and mediocre time with this game and you can count on it to keep delivering exactly what you're getting for a very long time. AC:O is reliably consistent, for better and for worse.

TL;DR Never pay full price for it, but on sale, this is probably worth your time if you've got nothing else going on. But really, if you're just killing time, there's better things to do. Go read "Infinite Jest". You can certainly get a lot of low-level entertainment out of this title, just don't expect anything too memorable from your time with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I had an alright time, but I'm very happy I'm done with it.

Spec Ops: The Line: The most mediocre of gameplay then has the gall to huff its own farts right in front of you, but really, I think its impactful story is still pretty unique over a decade later and helps keep a game - that probably should be pretty stale - somewhat fresh.

First, its issues. You can just launch right into Spec Ops: The Line if you want. But should you want to, say, adjust the mouse sensitivity and disable acceleration, or disable motion blur, maybe cap the frame rate? You know, normal PC stuff? You're going to have to become a bit of a CSI: Miami writing level-computer hacker for a minute. You have to download tools to decrypt the .ini files before you can even read them (unless you're fluent in Wingdings), adjust them from there, then encrypt them again. Absurdity. Why are these files encrypted?!
The vertical sensitivity when using a scope is terrible and there's just no fixing that.
You'll also want to block the .exe in your Windows Defender Firewall, as every time you boot up the game it sits at a “Checking for Updates” screen for far longer than it should, just waiting for files that'll never be there. Or, I suppose, you could just beat it in one sitting so you'd only see that screen once. The game isn't that long.
But hey: no hard crashes! So that's swell.

How's it look and sound? Pretty good, nothing super special. Great textures, pretty nice shadows, and the animations can seem a bit robotic, but definitely make sense given the release date. There's a couple times you get to really 'take in' the ruined city of Dubai where a dolly zoom-like effect is used to create a good sense of awe and vertigo. The sandstorms you run into look good and creep in slowly, creating a nice sense of tension, and they sound nice, too.
All the other sounds, like the guns, are just serviceable aside from Nolan “Everybody is Nathan Drake” North's performance, which is very commendable.

The gameplay is like a cheap Gears of War clone, very lifeless and repetitive. You run to cover, pop up for easy headshots, and if you're shot you stay down until you see colors again, then rinse and repeat. There's a chopper gunner segment to 'mix it up' but it sucks and you'll hate that it's in there twice. No, the meta joke doesn't make it worth it.
You can issue your squad to kill targets, but you have to aim your reticle on who you want dead in order to issue the command. Unless it's a heavy-armored unit or a turret gunner, it's almost certainly easier to just pull the trigger yourself.
There's not much weapon variety, pretty much exactly what you'd expect to see (a few rifles, a couple shotguns and SMGs, and pistols you'll never use), though the kill-tracking achievements may subliminally incentivize you to vary up your firearm choices, like they did me.

What keeps this game interesting and worth checking out in my opinion is its story. It's pretty divisive: you'll either love that they went from something different here or you'll wonder if you've got a case for false advertising. If you've played the game multiple times like me, maybe you've even felt both. I won't spoil anything, but I'll say I hated this when I first played it years ago and now find it to be an interesting change of pace.
Supposedly the developers are kind of pompous and believe something along the lines of “the only way to win is to not play”, but this is a video game: if you bought it, you're going to play it. In the game, you're never really given any choice, either, it's a pretty linear experience. In the years since my first playthrough and now, I'd say I'm just more comfortable with separating myself from the character, a concept pretty integral to the game's intended experience. It's very much deliberate for you to question “your” own actions and, like Walker would, seek redemption. What has this all been for? Do you feel like a hero yet?
Now, I can just play through it and smirk at stuff like “Mission Objective: Obey.” Obviously, it helps that I knew exactly what I was walking into here, too. That first time through Spec Ops: The Line is a pretty ambitious gaming experience to develop, though, and I think they did a pretty good job with that. The Epilogue mission here is a damn fine way to end a game, and though very dark, I really enjoyed it.

I know the term “iconic” gets tossed around pretty loosely these days, but I think the 'white phosphorous' scene in this game actually fits it. Walker's story is one very, very different from other military shooters you see and I think it's worth remembering Spec Ops: The Line for providing some outside-the-box war crimes for you to enjoy. It's not the best game ever, but I still recommend it for that.

"There's always a choice!"
”No... there's really not.”

Dead Island 2 is fine. In our state of gaming discourse, where anything below an eight or a nine out of ten is automatically bad, it was always going to be somewhat of a pariah. The extended development cycle featuring three separate developers certainly hasn't helped its perception, either; the expectations that come from a game in the oven for that long are on either side of an extreme, and reality rarely meets it.

The funny thing about that, though, is that if Dead Island 2 was released in 2015, I don't think it would have been as fascinating. Released a year after the overly ambitious sequel to its spiritual successor, it's almost refreshing to have a game this scaled-back. There isn't an Open World here; if you thought the original game kind of played like Borderlands, the immediacy with which you're asked to leave to the second area so soon after stepping foot in the first only cements that further. Unlike Borderlands, the appeal of this is pretty straightforward. With or without friends, you kill zombies in increasingly violent and silly ways. That's it. There's character building through a Skill Card system, but everything boils down to whacking the flesh off the undead while you drop-kick them in the head. The physics can use some fine-tuning, but the gore is a work of beauty. The question of, 'When was the last time you saw an action game try to sell itself on its gore?' is answered succinctly the first time you decide to keep hitting a zombie after you've downed it. But that question also has another answer attached to it: Dead Island 2 is decidedly low-stakes entertainment. It's aware of how silly its predecessor was, and it doesn't do anything to change that. It's just a better, more consistent thrill ride with genre enthusiasts who couldn't care less about having a prestige-worthy script attached to their games in mind. The worst that the nearly decade-long wait has done for this game is that it's fooled many into thinking that this either isn't enough or that there would be more to this. But I've been having a blast with this so far, so I really don't mind it.

Where your mileage will absolutely vary is in terms of this game's writing. I've heard many comparisons to last year's Saints Row, and while I can't personally make that connection, I can see where it comes from. From the offset, the team behind this was very open about the angle they were taking with this. You don't call Los Angeles 'Hell-A' if you're trying to tell an emotional, engaging story. It's pure camp, down to dated references and goofy caricatures you'll either find bittersweetly nostalgic or downright embarrassing to listen to. I'm finding the chatter to be less annoying than your average Borderlands character and I actually like the cast of characters in this so far. But if you were unable to play Borderlands 3 without muting the dialog, I wouldn't consider this an improvement.

If you want a throwback to what games were like a decade ago and you're going into this without expecting the world of it, this is a pretty enjoyable time. This is definitely not the bargain bin game some are making it out to be; at worst, I think it's worth waiting for it go on sale if you're curious but skeptical. If Dambusters keeps it at or above this level of quality, they might be developers to keep an eye on.