This game looks fantastic. A+ presentation. This cartoon/comic book style has been done before, but nowhere near as well as it's been done here. This might be one of the best looking games I've seen.

The combat is good. Hitting enemies to the beat is satisfying. It's a proper action game with a combo tree that reminds me that developers from PlatinumGames work at Tango Gameworks. Mixing in the characters you meet throughout the game makes it even more fun. It can get a bit annoying when fighting a lot of enemies as my combo finisher kept getting interrupted by enemies attacking me. Having to dodge or parry right when I'm about to do the satisfying combo finisher can feel really anti-climactic.

This is a rhythm game, and I like how everything happens to the beat: movement, player attacks, enemy attacks, and even objects in the environment bounce to the beat. Too bad the music isn't good. It doesn't move me at all. It doesn't make me want to bop my head or tap my foot, and it doesn't get me pumped to fight. I swear there was only one song that I liked in the entire game. It was the song playing in Track 8 which is the museum level, and that really showed me how much better this game could be if the music was good. I don't think I've ever had an issue with the music in one of these kinds of action games or rhythm games, and it drains some life out of the game.

The story is pretty solid, but I never found the characters in it all that amusing. The humor in the game is pretty spotty too. There some good bits here and there, but there are plenty that fall flat. The game loses some of its charm because of this.

This reminded me of No More Heroes in that the combat is shallow but effective. It doesn't get old, and is satisfying, cool, and empowering. It also reminds me of Sifu as in the goal is to get into a flow state where you are slashing, parrying, dodging, and activating finishers. I think it is more successful at that than Sifu because the controls are more responsive here. I didn't think the parrying worked well in Sifu. The story and characters are offbeat, funny, but they are also intriguing. The game sets up a alternate history 2022 that immediately sounds wild. It keeps a lot of the story to a minimum, but still managed to pack an emotional punch at the end. The game is buggy (crashed twice on me and some framerate drops), but it never got too bad for me.

This has thankfully been a more stable experience than Vanguard. It's a better overall game in general too. The campaign was great as a non-stop thrill ride in the way the original trilogy was. It's not as strong as 2019 which felt like a real change from the norm as Modern Warfare II feels more like a throwback. The multiplayer made progression changes to push me to use other weapons I wouldn't normally. I actually like this change as it turns out I'm not as bad at sniping as I thought I would be. I like the new Invasion Mode. I was never a fan of large maps in first person shooters because it took too long to get to the action, but Invasion fills the map with a lot of bots along with real players making it more fun for me.

I think Bayonetta 1 is top 2 greatest action games of all time along with the first 3D Ninja Gaiden. Bayonetta 2 just felt like everything about the first game was toned down leading to an overall less fun game. It's still a great game, but it lives in the shadow of its predecessor. Bayonetta 3 takes what Bayonetta 2 had and adds a lot of new mechanics on top of it that are fun as hell. I love the new Demon Slave ability. Summoning a giant demon to join in on a fight feels incredible. There's a lot of depth to using the demons too as I kept discovering new strategies even after I beat the game twice. I just kept thinking about new things to try months after the game's release. They really changed the game with this. Viola feels closer to what Bayonetta 1 was like. Bayonetta became more of a button-masher in Bayonetta 2 as which combo I used didn't matter as much. I had to play Viola more deliberately than Bayo as she had a smaller set of attacks some of which leave you vulnerable. Getting to the point of where I was playing her well was gratifying. The game is funny again after the self-serious Bayonetta 2 with several moments that had me laughing my ass off. There are more mini game moments here as the game shows off the personalities of the new demons this way. The first couple weren't good, but they got much better after that. Jeanne is featured more in this game as she gets her own set of side missions that are like a fast-paced Mark of the Ninja. Those were silly fun. The story is bad, but I also think the story of 1 and 2 are bad. These games have always been messy and overly convoluted, Bayonetta 3 is even worse than the previous games in that way with an ending that really rubbed me the wrong way. I've seen Hideki Kamiya say some things on Twitter that hopefully means the ending isn't what I think it is. I don't think I can say Bayonetta 3 tops the first game, but it's much closer than the Bayonetta 2 was.

I never asked for a Pokemon open world game, but the exploration and rewarding discovery of open world games fits well with the Pokemon formula. Pokemon behavior in the open world has been more fleshed out since Pokemon Legends Arceus with Pokemon digging, hanging from trees, flying high in the sky, and traveling in packs along with other animal-like behavior. The new non-linear progression also works here as it allows the player to progress through three different campaigns at the same time. If the player gets tired of fighting gyms, then they can try fighting a titan Pokemon or defeating a Team Star base. Each campaign has their own recurring characters, and the writing in this game is fun. The game grabbed me and kept me obsessing over it through its runtime. These games still need voice acting though. That's the one thing I want from the franchise going forward.

This is the second best in the anthology. It's a serial killer story starring a documentary film crew stuck in a hotel full of traps being watched by a fan of real life killer H.H. Holmes. It's a more exciting idea than Man of Medan and Little Hope with a good enough cast of characters to keep it from getting boring. They could've done more with the traps idea. I wasn't fully satisfied on that end, but that might have been because of an early death of one of the characters in my playthrough. The new gimmick in this one pushes the franchise into a more Adventure game direction having me move around boxes to climb up to higher places along with giving each character their own unique ability. It don't think this added much to the game, and it just ended up dragging things out. The last gripe I have is there was a moment where I lost a character because they didn't do the obvious thing in the situation. They instead just sat there while they took an axe to the head. That was frustrating.

This is Wet meets Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and it delivers on the premise. It is intense. It throws so much at me while I have to dodge, shoot, and do tricks to beat the level. It can get borderline frustrating in moments where I dodge one thing only to fly right into another thing or dodge right off a cliff. Also, the final boss fight has an attack that could lead to me flying up in the air off a quarter pipe and looking down as the boss is targeting a bomb right where I'm about to land with no way to avoid it. I could mostly handle what was being thrown at me though. I was impressed by how much I was pulling off under such intense pressure. It was an exciting idea, and the game delivers on it.

Solid survival horror game with serviceable combat and satisfying exploration and puzzle-solving. The story about a cult ritual gone wrong and a main charactered haunted by guilt over her little sister's death make for a decently entertaining story even with some occasional poor voice acting. There are dialogue options that lead to alternate endings based on your choices that sadly didn't pay off. I was just confused by the ending I got, and the other endings don't seem much better from what I've read. It's still overall impressive since it clearly isn't a lower budget game. I had a good time.

Platinum Games finally makes a retro shooter after putting levels inspired by the genre in all of their action games. They nailed it obviously. They also put their own spin on it taking inspiration from The Wonderful 101. The game starts me off with one ship. I can dock with up to two other ships. Each ship has it's own standard weapon and special weapon. I can change the docking order the ship to swap these weapons. There is also a formation mechanic where I can separate the ships to put them in a specific formation. The different formations provide a different powerful attack. It's a neat mechanic that took some getting used to. I got pretty good at it as my life started depending on it. This game gets really hard from level 5 to the end. It's the hardest game I've played this year, but I never wanted to stop playing it. I was impressed that I was able to beat it. It was demanding a lot dodging all those projectiles.

The combat is really fucking good. It takes the arsenal of Resident Evil 4 with a sci-fi twist, the sci-fi telekinetic ability of Dead Space (called the GRIP in this game), and adds a new, deeper melee combat system. Each is satisfying and fun to use, and combining them together is even better. Each has their own weakness which will make combining them a useful strategy: using melee to conserve ammo or handle enemies when they get close, using guns to kill enemies before they get too close, and using GRIP to manage spacing or to throw enemies into a trap for an instant kill. It has me itching to play more even though I've already played through this game twice.

The game has a strong atmosphere. It put me on edge in a way that only The Evil Within was able to achieve. There are some good jump scares both scripted and created through combat that help create that feeling. It provides a good amount of challenge while keeping me vulnerable enough where a few mistakes would end me. The deaths are shockingly gory and varied. It's can be both fun and disturbing to watch. The devs bring a fucked up sense of humor to the gore at times that delighted me. There are two amazing set pieces in this game that kept me on the edge of my seat with one being a call back to one of my favorite moments from Dead Space 2.

The story is kept pretty minimal. It opens with several questions that aren't addressed until the final two chapters. The focus of the characters is just escaping the prison and getting off Callisto. The answers are satisfying, but I wish they did more with the characters to create a deeper connection with me. I will say that playing again after beating it did lead to some moments coming off differently with the new context of how it ends. It filled in the characters a bit more. They fill in the world through audio logs and employee files which reveal some fucked up details about how the prison was being run.

This all came together really well. It's a standout in the genre, and one of my new favorite horror games. I would put it next to Dead Space 2 which is my favorite of that franchise. I'm happy to have gotten a new Resident Evil 1 style horror game with Signalis and a new Resident Evil 4 style horror game with The Callisto Protocol and both of them knocked it out of the park.

It does exactly what it sets out to do. This is a survival horror game that sits up there next to Resident Evil Remake. The puzzles are clever in a way that takes time to figure out, but when I do, it makes me feel smart. Combat is tough because aiming takes focus and time in a way that keeps me from feeling comfortable facing enemies. The ammo is limited making running a good option when you can. Also, enemies might get up after later after I've killed them making running through areas I've already been feel unsafe. The music during enemy encounters keeps me on edge too. Boss fights are claustrophobic as it traps me in small rooms with hulking enemies. The story is intriguing with fascinating world details and an emotionally effective ending. It's also presented in pretty stylish ways with cut scenes, subliminal messages, and changing perspectives. The 2D pixel art with top-down, isometric perspective works, but it's not as effective of the fixed camera angles in a 3D space that Resident Evil Remake has.

This was a mixed bag. The story sucked me in enough to create moments where I had to think hard about the choices I was making, but then there were other times where I didn't care and chose chaos just to get the most entertaining outcome. They needed to cut the fat out of this story. There are extra tangents focusing on characters who don't really matter much, and these don't do much to flesh out the main characters of the story. The ending is surprisingly bad. I think they were trying to setup a sequel, but it was a terrible way to end the story the game told. I just felt like the further I got into the game the less I cared. I only finished it because it was short.

The game is presented with 3D environments filled with 2D pixel art characters. Sometimes it looks good and sometimes it doesn't.

The story was intriguing at the start seeming like a sci-fi crime thriller, but then it gets into magic and other dimensions. It lost me at that point. Also, too many emails and documents to read through. I just started to tune it all out.

The combat is good. It all happens on a 2D plane like a side-scrolling action platformer. The game provides enough attacks and weapons and challenging enemies to make that fun and satisfying. I do wish it provided new attacks and weapons at a faster pace though. There are a few things that feel off about the combat such as the main gun being a burst fire weapon. Shooting as fast as you can pull the trigger like a semi-automatic or holding down the trigger to fire an automatic weapon would have felt much better. Ann has a powerful transformation she can use temporarily after building up enough meter from landing hits. The transformation regenerates her health which is great, but I wish I could attack at the same speed as I could with Ann in her normal form. The attack speed is way too slow in this temporary powerful form of hers.

One of the issues holding back the first game was that it was playing with science concepts that the creator already used in the Zero Escape games. Thankfully, Nirvana Initiative brings some new ideas to the table making for a more exciting, mind-bending story.

The story goes much bigger this time, and stars two playable protagonists. Mizuki returns from the original game. She's 18 now working at ABIS with Aiba as her partner. She was a great character in the original game, and I still love her in this. Ryuki is the other protagonist along with his AI partner Tama. Their dynamic is like the reverse of Date and Aiba where Ryuki is the self-serious one while Tama is the perverted one. They took a while to grow on me, and even then, I don't like them as much as I like Date, Mizuki, and Aiba.

It's another murder mystery, but the murders are much stranger and potentially supernatural. The killer is cutting their victims vertically down the middle on a molecular level. It becomes more than who is doing this but also how this can even be done. Then another layer on the mystery is that only one half of the victim is found at each crime scene while their second half shows up six years later. Mizuki's side of the story is in the present day while Ryuki's story is six years ago. Both are investigating the same mystery.

Sadly, this game is still pretty perverted. Sometimes that stuff can be funny, but when it comes to adults creeping on teenagers, it's just uncomfortable.

The somniums are more varied and creative this time around. I love the one that is based on Pokemon Go with all of the characters appearing as the Pokemon for this game at different power levels. There are other fun surprise Somniums in this too. I already thought the somnium puzzles were better than the escape rooms of the Zero Escape series, and this game takes to an even more fun level.