The government doesn't want you to know there's free puppies in the desert, you can just extract them.

Less stealth and more open ended, there's plenty of stuff to develop and experiment with, except they added real timers for said stuff because this is a mobile game apparently. I did do the total stealth airport mission in a box though so who needs any of the cool weapons and tools.

Who invented chapter 2 in this game? Do the same missions for no reason, we just wanted to pad the game out. You want Quiet back? Just do the same mission 7 times in a row, because that's fun.

Story is loosely connected through missions, with only certain ones leading to cutscenes and plot development. It picks up once you get to Africa though.

Over ten years since it was first released, I finally decided to play the first video game ever with a story. Hearing nothing but praise, and seeing it called one of the greatest games of all time, expectations were high going into it.

Taking place in a desolate world overrun by infected mushroom zombies, the main character gets wrapped up in the worlds longest escort quest across half of America, taking a girl who possibly holds the cure to the outbreak through several states. It's here where you see the state of the world 20 years after the outbreak started, and in typical fashion, it's every man for himself. Joel isn't afraid to reduce the already dwindling human population if it means he survives, and his selfishness is a very prominent theme, right up to the game's conclusion where he forsakes humanity for the life of a single girl that he came to view as his daughter.

Joel isn't a good person. Very few people in this game are. Yet together with Ellie, you can't help but take his side. Their dynamic throughout the game feels very organic, and you see them both change throughout the game. While Joel becomes softer towards the end of the game, we see Ellie become quiet and less jovial, coming to terms with the lives she was forced to take and the trauma she has gone through during their journey. A moment that stands out for me is when she hacks somebody to death with a machete after he attempted to assault her, it's a pretty impactful scene. Their back and forth dialogue isn't grating, but some lines do border on marvel tier writing, though a lot less cringe. I'm not going to detail every part of the story, but I agree that from a narrative standpoint, the game is pretty decent.

However, this is a PS3 game. And I say that in the most derogatory way possible. I don't think this standard of gameplay holds up very well at all playing it in 2024. It's not terrible, but it's not exactly satisfying either. The gunplay especially feels weak, no doubt deliberately due to the game's focus on survival elements and its attempts to incorporate stealth. It feels very formulaic, where you enter an area and enemies are patrolling, so you either kill them all with guns or use stealth to quietly take them out. The only time the stealth felt good was the chapter where you play as Ellie and have to escape through a snowstorm after being kidnapped. Why? Because she has a knife with infinite durability, and the snow actually provides cover. We can't forget the classic mechanics such as moving a ladder, pushing a crate and boosting your partner up so they can then pull you up too. Very much game mechanics from that era of gaming.

Also, you're trying to tell me Joel didn't bleed to death, get his wound infected or die from hypothermia after the university chapter? He's immune to death, they should be using him for the cure instead.

Overall, it's a pretty good game and I'd say it's worth playing for the journey, but it's far from one of the best games ever made looking back on it.

Another fan game clearly made with passion, but unlike Holocure, the gameplay loop isn't nearly as satisfying. The presentation alone doesn't make up for what is ultimately walking through five corridors consecutively while enemies spawn on both sides. The problem is that the combat is slow and unsatisfying, and rather than items being something cool to experiment and find synergies with, they're kind of just there to be spammed as soon as you get them.

So while the game is free and I can appreciate the material it references, you could just play something like Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds if you want a side scrolling beat 'em up for weebs.

The pause menu does go hard though, I'll give them that.

What if you wanted to go fast but God said you have to stop and find the collectibles?

This game was built with speed in mind, and you're set off to figure things out for yourself. Learning movement tech as you keep playing is actually satisfying and you can eventually chain moves together to skip large gaps, and complete stages much faster. The main character makes use of a yo-yo, offering a double jump, a dash forward through the air, and the ability to spin around the yo-yo while it stays in the air after a dash. This lets you carry the momentum as you swing forward, like choosing where to place a rope at any time. You can also drop down onto the yo-yo and ride it like a wheel.

The stages are mostly fine, not many of them stand out to me except the penguin world which was my favourite. It's a decent game which can be played casually, HOWEVER, there's bugs everywhere. Getting stuck in terrain, falling through the floor, the game literally crashing after clearing stages, those all happened to me.

There's also a score system, but it's kind of pointless since you can do things like bounce on a platform 100 times to get a 100 combo.

Infinite Wealth has infinite games in it. They have Pokémon, Animal Crossing, Frogger, Sega Bass Fishing, Pokémon Snap, Crazy Taxi, Tinder catfishing AND you can add a dog on social media as a friend.

If you remove the entire story (which I'm not going to mention here), minus the life resolution stuff with Kiryu, then you're left with a decent game. They expanded upon the combat of the previous entry by adding new jobs, positional attacks, team combos and all out attacks (it's a persona reference). Adding Hawaii as the new setting is also a breath of fresh air if you've played other games in the franchise and have been to the top of the millennium tower 1 million times at the end. Does he know?

Also, it's funny to see how modern culture has influenced this game. A key point in the story involves you being cancelled by a VTuber who is allied with the yakuza, because why not.

It's been a few years since I played FES, and in that review I specifically said a remake of Persona 3 would make the game so much better. Which it did.

This is a story about a group of young people accepting death, overcoming the struggles that come with loss, and ultimately finding their own reasons to live. At its core, it is something anyone can relate to in some way. And let me just say that the final ending scene, after everything you've gone through, is very bittersweet.

The plot is very much left as it was. The portrayal of characters feels so much better thanks to the voice acting and small differences in personality, as well as new events where you spend time with your team which were never present before. They're short scenes but doing them even leads to unlocking unique passive abilities for everyone so it's definitely worth it.

That's just one of the new things though, they expanded upon the combat by adding in light and dark as full elements, and a new system called Theurgy was introduced. A passive meter fills during battles, and once it is full you are able to use a unique ability for everyone, some of which are absolutely broken. They improved upon the life sim elements too, making more places accessible at night, no longer forcing you into a relationship with every woman you ever speak to and they added Eminem to club escapade selling bootleg software for the laptop in the dorm.

There is certainly a tonal shift from FES though, the game is brighter for one and the sprites look different too, no doubt due to the influence of Persona 5. The soundtrack compared to the original is also hit and miss for me. None of the new tracks are bad, and some are actually amazing, but others don't quite hit the same (Mass Destruction). Difficulty wise, even Merciless is more forgiving than Hard was in FES, but that's to be expected from modern game design I suppose. No more sleeping table fuck unfortunately.

So yeah. Basically. It's peak and you should play it assuming you're okay with walking through 260 corridors for a year.

Crash Bandicoot is a platformer with an emphasis on skill, with just two moves to make use of, keeping things pretty straightforward. I played through the game normally and it wasn't really anything special, levels which use the same templates, questionable design choices like crates which are off screen, giving you no indication where they are, buffered inputs for jumps could also be annoying sometimes too.

None of that really matters though, because the best part of this game is the relics, which require you to beat every stage under a certain time without dying. You learn to navigate through some long, complex stages, especially the DLC, and when you finally get that perfect run it's pretty satisfying. That's where this game shines, when it demands real skill from the player.

If there was a little more variety in the stages and some of the gems didn't have bullshit crates off screen, I'd probably rate it higher.

You're getting exactly what you expect, a sandbox platformer based in a city and its surrounding areas, filled with visual gags and references to other games. And you play as a goat obviously.

There is an ending to this game surprisingly, which you'll naturally get to just by doing the events and exploring.

It's mindless fun and there's plenty of equipment to experiment with, as well as collectables scattered around each of the playable areas and other secrets to find.

Furry propaganda disguised as a 3D platformer metroidvania. Over the course of the game, you get more and more abilities until there's more than enough movement options to traverse the environment, and even some tech the game doesn't tell you about like chaining a long jump into a super high backflip (you do be zooming in this game).

It's a short game with very minimalistic environments, and the combat is simple too, but with the focus being on platforming and exploration it's definitely worth playing.