Outriders is a funny game because sometimes it works excellently and other times it's insufferable. The soundtrack is among the least distinct I've ever heard, and I never cared about the story or the characters even a single time... I really cannot recall ever caring less about a story or cast of characters than I did in Outriders. They build up the Russian guy and his daughter but their relationship never makes much sense or gets enough details to get invested, and then when they dispose of him they pretty much never mention him again so any possible emotional weight that could come from that story beat is lost. The funniest part of the story is where you kill a mad scientist for being a psychopathic murderer and your scientist friend gets upset, so you explain it was necessary to kill him because he was an unreasonable serial killer and your buddy just says "BUT WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME?". Wonderful writing, just an absolute masterclass, the pacifist scientist thinks he is a killer because an entirely different scientist who didn't agree with any of his beliefs was a killer. Yeah that's how things work dude.

Around the time of the lava spider boss I was loving it, my build as a close range shotgun trickster was really fun and abusable in a way that felt intended by the devs. However the cracks show when certain bosses or areas show up and are completely antithetical to that playstyle. Good luck playing like that on the final boss as a solo player on any reasonable difficulty, because everything you've specced into becomes totally useless! My build was entirely constructed around sprinting and warping around like an idiot, basically killing weak things to become invincible while dealing with larger threats. At the game's best, it felt almost like I was turning the game into a third person knockoff of Doom Eternal, which ruled. In the levels and boss fights that are actually well designed you can play that strategy out very effectively and it's a ton of fun. That's the baffling part: one class has an entire playstyle of needing to feed on generic mooks, and sometimes the game provides for that. Other times you get, say, Moloch or the final boss, where there is nothing to duck and weave around and no enemies to kill to earn shield and health. In cases like that, genuinely the only path forward that wasn't overly torturous and grindy was to either lower the difficulty or play co-op (I played entirely solo).The shame of it is, for a co-op focused game, it doesn't feel like it would be fun to play co-op? Most levels are relatively short and not particularly wide or explorable so I don't see where that feature would really add much, and I say that as someone who loves an excuse to replay a game in co-op mode. I almost never needed or wanted co-op, I just sorta blazed through on my own in about 12 hours. Props for having some fun class abilities and very modular difficulty options, but design-wise it's a very confused game that jumps between solid level design or no level design at all. And it also comes with the worst parts of any looter-shooter, where a gun you love and want to keep using simply no longer can match the damage output you need, so you gotta abandon it for something with less fun abilities but four times the raw power.

This is a perfect game pass game, the sort of thing that I'd rent or borrow and enjoy, but regret if I paid for it.

As a short distraction to play through once in co-op, it's decently fun. Can't imagine it being as fun in solo play. Otherwise this is mainly noteworthy as a historical curiosity for using Halo's engine. The disc doesn't have the final updated version on here so I can only even boot it if I disconnect my Xbox from the internet, it refuses to boot because it looks for an update that doesn't exist, so it's gonna be one of those rare games that I remove from my collection. Ah well, could've been a decent Halloween season replay.

Lords of Shadow isn't a bad game, but it is a very inconsistent game. I'd swing between really enjoying myself playing this and then hating the game... the level design and combat encounters really can veer between the extremes. The vampire lands section is probably the peak of the game, minimal frustrations and annoyances there with some genuinely interesting and well designed areas. This game most excels with its art design, even as a 360 game played backwards compatible on Series X it looks very nice with some great looking areas. I also couldn't stand any difficulty higher than easy, I like hard games but this just felt annoying and not at all rewarding to play until I cranked the difficulty down. When the levels were great, like the three towers or the castle balcony, it really shined with potential, and if it had more of that it could've been something special. If anything, that makes this stand out as something of a historical curiosity; it's wild playing this game with the perspective that this company would go on to make Metroid Dread.

Inconsistency really is the biggest strike against it though. You'll have stuff like, here's the game introducing the speed boost power, and then a few levels later it sets up a blatant speed boost section that shows several timing based gimmicks to clear... GOTCHA, actually that's a trick by the level designer and the speed boost is impossible to use as the solution to the room, and you're not supposed to punch the switch that literally says to punch it when examined. You actually need to ignore all context the room provides and randomly try throwing a dark magic infused knife at the switch (this is the first time that ever happens and it only is required once more afterwards). The game gave you the tools and presented it as using them but nope, curveball - that happened frequently. Brauner was a fun fight, but then you face his brother Olrox in a nearly identical but worse fight that is stretched out 4 times with a gimmick where you cannot prevent him restoring health until after an unavoidable cutscene. Individually after each cutscene, you get a brief opportunity to stop him from being able to heal at that spot, which is required to proceed, and you can't preemptively go destroy his very obvious next three healing spots either: you gotta have him heal first, all four times, no exceptions! This fight is made worse in that he has all of three voice clips that he simply will not stop spewing.

It's even down to minor things like presenting itself as a very serious and grim game with blood and gore and exposed demonic breasts... while utilizing a storybook motif and sound effects that wouldn't feel out of place coming out of a Barbie fairy princess playset. Patrick Stewart will ramble about Gabriel falling to darkness and having nothing but hate in his heart, but that's never actually demonstrated in the game, in fact shortly afterwards it has Gabriel fucking proselytizing to literally Satan about having hope and faith in God at what the game tells you is his lowest, darkest, furthest from redemption point. That threw me off more than anything - I knew going in what the premise of the sequel was and I was shocked to see that reveal relegated to a post-game credits stinger and only explained via unplanned DLC that MercurySteam apologized for. I was even more confused that Patrick Stewart spent so much time talking about Gabriel being unrecognizable and changing radically as he falls to darkness, only for the main story to end with him NOT becoming what he is in the post-credits.

Unfortunately for me, I found the post-credits stinger compelling enough that I'm interested in giving the DLC and the two sequels a shot, despite hearing that they're all pretty widely reviled and that MercurySteam even apologized for the perceived low quality of the DLC, so I guess I gotta brace myself to get ready for that eventually.

While there's definitely a valid debate to be had over Pikmin 1's static time limit and Pikmin 2's more relaxed approach, I personally prefer the time limit. It adds that extra weight and importance to your actions on a given day. Yeah, once you're familiar with the game you'll never really be at risk of running out of time ever again, but it's still an effective element and adds the fun layer of seeing how few days you need to escape. I'm still not entirely sure whether I prefer 1 or 2, but the added intensity to survival and the more focused design of each level are definitely points in favor for 1. Just an all around excellent and fun strategy game.