I've yet to touch the port of Uncharted 4 in this, but I mainly bought this because I never played through Lost Legacy. Solid port with only a couple minor hiccups, and after beating TLL I can say that these are probably the best two games in the whole series.
Lost Legacy goes a long way to redeeming Nadine in my eyes. Making her an actual endearing character instead of a pure hardass with little redeeming qualities. Bouncing her off Chloe's more upbeat and adventurous personality helps humanize her more. The moments where there's significant friction between the two never lasts long enough to feel like they had time to simmer down and act reasonable, but that's my only major complaint about the story.
Alongside Uncharted 4, these two games have some of the best combat arena design in the series. With the most forgiving hip firing and the heaviest stealth focus. Allowing you to weave in and out of firefights, clamber all over the arena for cover, and swing around on a rope to get the literal drop on foes.
Uncharted 4 is the longer of the two and suffers in terms of fairly slow pacing in my opinion, while Lost Legacy moves lightning fast. I think these games are better with familiarity of the characters from the ps3 trilogy, but they're solid games on their own and much more fun than a lot of cover shooters out there.

It's rare that a game with decently complex first person melee combat comes around, and Dark Messiah has always been one that's brought up over the years. I can't say that I'm disappointed, but I was expecting a little more based on how much praise people give it.
For starters, the melee never fully feels right. Partially because you need to hover your crosshair over an enemy to actually land the hit. This means your sword can look like it should've hit, but will instead miss your target. Even Skyrim's infamous combat manages to get the upper hand here, but what it doesn't have is the sheer volume of environmental interactions.
Dark Messiah is at its absolute best when you're presented an area filled to the brim with rickety platforms you can break to topple large crates and barrels on foes, weird and out of place spike traps to kick them into, and large pits for them to fall off. The game feels scrappy and awkward and that's the fun part. The kick is a universal combat move that almost never gets old, as it allows for a variety of interactions with the enemies and environment.
This is then thrown into the gutter for a series of mediocre and dull combat encounters in enclosed caves against hordes of spiders that will inflict poison the instant they touch you. This is where the other combat styles come into play. Archery is slow and not very fun or powerful, but magic has a variety of spells with interesting and varied uses. The one that compliments melee playstyles the most is the ice, as you can freeze the ground for an easy instant kill. after an enemy slips and falls.

I'd talk about the narrative but I didn't really care. The voice in your head is so obviously evil that I won't even bother putting a spoiler tag on this review. Your goal is to stop an evil necromancer from destroying the world or something, so you go and get a series of mcguffins in a temple. Really the story is just a vehicle for the gameplay, and that's fine.
The game is definitely worth the price of admission on a sale but you're going to have to set up a few things before it stops crashing constantly. Once you do that you've got a somewhat janky but overall fun time. I wouldn't put it above Zeno Clash in terms of its fp melee system, but the environment really pushes it over the edge.

If you've ever played a Zelda game, you're probably familiar with the narrative setup of having to find a few mcguffins to be able to progress before having to find a second and final set. God of War 2018's setup is like this but instead of a set, you're constantly looking for a singular item, making some progress, then needing to backtrack to find another item to make more progress. This isn't the only comparison one can make to the Zelda series as Atreus and Kratos get new abilities and i tems that help solve puzzles. These are never particularly difficult to solve but are better than the constant block pushing of prior games. In fact the whole world feels somewhat built like one giant Zelda dungeon. Unlocking new abilities and areas as you progress with the main story, and returning to a hub area to make use of these.
This setup is mechanically satisfying as many years of Zelda has proven, but it goes against the narrative of the title. A father and son journeying to the highest peak in all the realms is a narrative built on forward momentum. The story ends up feeling meandering as there's always a new roadblock that forces them all the way back to the lake of nine.
This frequent back and forth would be better if the game didn't have dozens upon dozens of hidden loading screens that are more blatantly loading screens than not. My computer is powerful enough to load these areas much quicker than a PS4 could, but this design forces me to slowly crawl through crevices or listen to Mimir's entire tale before leaving the fast travel zone. Admittedly, I enjoyed the dialogue in the game. The banter between characters and how they acted towards eachother was decent fun, but as you backtrack for hidden goodies with your new tools the characters stay eerily quiet in spite of the wealth of dialogue to listen to during boat rides.

I'm not as negative about the combat as other people are, but its problems and flaws are apparent. Mouse and Keyboard controls help mitigate the issues with the camera to an extent, but you're still going to get backed into corners with awkward viewing angles at points. The entire RPG system feels like an afterthought. You always want to go for the higher levels because stats don't matter. If an enemy is too high a level they will shrug off attacks and their attacks will become unblockable. This ends up feeling inconsistent because the same exact enemy can either be juggled by Kratos or stand rock solid on the ground, instakilling the greek god.
When you get into the zone and properly use both Kratos and Atreus the combat is a lot of fun, but some annoying enemies get in the way regardless of their level. Variety is low, and several frequent ones have annoying status effects or gimmicks to deal with whenever you face them.
It never reaches the lows of the first two God of War titles but fails to reach their highs either. Spectacle is present, but it never feels spectacular to me. The consistently close in camera fails to convey the sense of scale of things like the classic camera from the trilogy could with its multiple angles.

God of War 2018 is a solid action adventure romp but it never resonated with me quite as strongly as it does for others. It's superior to the first two titles in the series, but I found myself more consistently engaged in the furious antics of Kratos' finale on Olympus than I did in this somewhat scatterbrained adventure.

Significant step up in basically every way. Less time is wasted on tedious chores and the longer combat gauntlets near the end didn't tire me out nearly as much as they did in the first two titles.
The only major complaint I have is that the alternate weapons don't have much of an identity of their own. 3 of the 4 weapons use chains to extend their reach, and while their mechanics differ, they don't feel like they're wholly their own.
Luckily for me, this time the returning enemies have been tailored to not pose as big an annoyance while still putting up the same challenge they presented in 1 and 2.

If the first two games didn't sell you, mechanically, then you should still seriously give God of War 3 a shot. It's the first time I had fun the whole way through one of these games.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, I'm frequently drawn to these "cozy" casual indie games.
Little Kitty, Big City is a buggy title. They were frequent and while none I encountered were game breaking they were the most noteworthy part of the experience. Aside from these technical flaws the game is quite dull. Repetitive fetch quests for characters with borderline ridiculous amounts of dialogue.

The appeal of mucking around as a cat is undercut by tedious objectives and a distinct lack of polish. I think this would be a decent game for young children but I don't think there's anything here for an adult.

If you're into or can get past the cybergoth anime vampire aesthetic and accompanying writing and character mannerisms, this is a competent and above average souls clone to dabble into.
It has some neat mechanics that set it apart from simply being weeaboo dark souls. However its distinct lack of enemy variety and some middle of the road level design hurt the fairly lengthy experience. I clocked in around 20 hours but I'd already seen all the enemies the game had to offer about a third of the way in. Fighting the same enemies for an extended runtime starts to get dull and I wish there were more and with greater variance. As too many foes end up being guys with weapons and little else.

At the end of the day I enjoyed my time with it and I'll probably replay it in the future. If you like souls games and their copycats you're likely to enjoy Code Vein. Just don't expect a mindblowing experience.

The unique ideas that Crab Souls brings to the formula are an entertaining mixup to be sure, but they don't hide the issues I had with the game.
Enemy stats seem overtuned. Even with a lot of stats put into attack, it never felt like it made a difference. Their damage output is also kind of absurd. Being prone to two-shotting the player at any given time.
Bosses felt the most balanced. Predictable but tricky attack timings and movesets that felt more in line with Dark Souls 1 than the later titles in that franchise. They were the highlight of the experience for me because of this.
The writing was winceworthy to me and I really didn't like the characterization of the main character. The overuse of the word "kiddo" also bugged me as I went on. Seeing as a prominent character will call the protagonist this about 50 times every conversation with her.

The game is on gamepass and I'd probably reccommend playing it there if you really like souls clones. It has some neat ideas, but unfortunate jank and lacking enemy variety prevent it from being something really special.

Over the years I've seen a lot of this titles implied negatives. How it's best left forgotten, but to be completely honest the Lost Frontier left me feeling a mix of emotions. But I was never left feeling contempt or distaste for the game.

The High Impact logo at the start colours the entire experience. Having experience with both Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, I thought the stories may be true about this game, however the low bar of being better than those games has been crossed easily. The stench of High Impact is still present. The camera behaves oddly, enemies have spongey health bars, and the core movement just feels stiff and awkward. Jak's moveset has been stripped down from past games. Nothing flows as well as they did in the trilogy, and he lacks the roll, longjump, and highjump. In their place are new Eco powers that were the highlight of the whole experience. Useful for platforming, puzzles, and combat, the Eco powers come in the form of a shield you roll around in, some crystals you can summon, a mine, slow motion, etc. They're better utilized than the Light Jak powers in 3 and I enjoyed using them to my advantage whenever I had the chance.
The new ship combat is another story. It's fine, and never particularly challenging. There's customization of the ship to tailor it to your liking but I never engaged with it much beyond just upgrading the mods I was using and survived just fine. It's just as stiff as Jak's on the ground moveset and never as fun as anything you do grounded.
The final new feature is Dark Daxter. Dark Daxter is a stupid idea with boring gameplay. I got softlocked in one of these stages and had to kill myself to proceed.

Narratively speaking, The Lost Frontier has an alright outline of a story. Jak, Daxter, and Keira travel to the edge of the world to find a new source of Eco because for some reason they need to or the world will die. They're accosted by pirates and eventually meet a man named Skyheed who helps them out and invites them to the city he rules. You do a tutorial for shooting the guns and then leave the city never to return until it appears as the final level of the game. They get some mcguffin there, which is stolen by pirates, and then Keira gets kidnapped, and then you do some dogfighting and they make a truce and become fairly buddy buddy with Jak for the rest of the game. It feels rushed and unfinished, probably because it was just the skeletons of a story given to High Impact of all studios. Things never really advance in a satisfying way, characters are portrayed in bizarre ways, and the game has very little fanfare for some of its bigger twists and turns. Speaking of fanfare, the soundtrack is ok too. It's never memorable but it gets the job done. And visually speaking the game has the same ugly, muddy textures of the Ratchet PSP games, but it manages to stay consistent stylistically with the PS2 games so I have to give credit where it's due.

As the final game of the series I can see why fans would be disappointed however it's not the 0/10 I've been led to believe it is for many years. It's simply mediocre. And maybe that's a worse fate for the final game of this franchise.

After reaching new lows with Jak 2, I was expecting very little from Jak 3. So to my surprise, the game is a fairly solid romp despite some flaws that hold it back from being a true favourite.

The guns have been tightened up significantly thanks to the new mods, which lets them design platforming challenges around the fact you can actually deal with enemies while jumping. The jetboard is just as fun as it was in Jak 2, and the leapers taking the mechanics from the flut flut in the first game was a welcome surprise.
Spargus City is a smaller, better designed hub than Haven City. Never taking more than a minute or so to get from point A to point B. And on top of that, the developers placed mission start points where the missions actually take place most of the time.
I wish the game had a heavier emphasis on platforming, but the sections it does have are solid. The minigames are a bit of a mixed bag but I never hated dealing with any of them like I hated sections of Jak 2. And the open world wasteland isn't my favourite part of the game, but it's a fun enough diversion to drive around in.

The Jak series has had an identity crisis and a half with none of the games really sharing an exact ideology in spite of sharing the same core platforming moveset. However I'm glad the trilogy ended off with a good game instead of another Renegade.

I could write many paragraphs about every little thing that annoyed me about this game. From the mediocre soundtrack where you'll mostly hear the droning alert theme, the cramped open world, or the unsatisfying and frustrating gunplay.

Instead I'm going to say that buried within the muck and filth that is this trend-chasing derivative mess, there's a Jak sequel I wish I was playing instead. The few all too short levels taking advantage of the jetboard. Mixing it in with proper platforming and reasonable enemy spawns.
If Naughty Dog had made that game I would've swallowed the weird edgelord tone no problem. Instead it's a game I never want to return to.

For the record I only played this for 2 and a half hours.
The game is a grinding simulator and nothing about it feels good. Jumping, climbing, attacking, etc. feels like empty air, the sound effects are both bad and also don't work half the time, and the games aesthetics feel messy.

Fighting alongside your pokemon would be novel but there's nothing to it since they just do their own thing, poorly. They get stuck and sometimes disappear into the ether.
The game as a whole feels like it was made with a machine. Just a mishmash of the most popular games and genres out there at the current time. With their own original designs being random aspects of existing pokemon slapped together to create their "original" designs.

If you feel you HAVE to try it out, try it out with gamepass and play something actually good while you're subscribed.

Of the many indie 3D platformers with "retro" visuals I've played so far, Corn Kidz gets the closest to nailing the aesthetic down. With cute and appealing character designs, authentically muddy textures, and very low poly side-characters, the visuals could have come straight from the console it takes its subtitle from. The main characters animations are extremely bouncy, with a hefty amount of squash and stretch that reminded me of Jak & Daxter's wonderful use of the technique.
The soundtrack is alright. It has a few decent songs but the one you'll be hearing the longest is grating, repetitive, and loves to abuse the cowbell.

Unfortunately the gameplay doesn't quite live up to the level of the visuals. The developer decided it would be wise to add 4 separate buttons to activate different camera angles. You need to constantly hold the right stick in a certain direction to keep it facing that way, and this goes for the zoomed in "aiming mode". Making hitting moving targets with the timed projectiles a pain, especially since the projectiles are in the way on screen.
Levels are also fairly spacious, and the game has no fast movement option. The headbutt attack has a delay before and after using it which makes long distance movement with it feel awful. The lockon feature with it also feels like it sometimes has a mind of its own, and during the final level I fell into a pit during a certain section several times with no idea why Seve didn't do his wallrun instead.

The game is fairly short, but as with every one of these games, it is also fairly cheap. It's worth the asking price, but don't go in expecting a masterpiece.