Going into Scarlet Nexus, I had no expectations whatsoever. I didn't see any trailers or gameplay due to lack of interest, and I've never seen anyone mention much about this game other than it's existence, so I decided to give it a try and was somewhat pleasantly surprised with what I experienced.

Let's start with the two things that I think are absolutely amazing: The Art Direction and the Combat Interactivity.
Starting with the first, most of the environment design ranges from good to amazing. Some of the earlier areas feel a little generic, but by the time I reached the mid game mark, there were plenty of moments where I stopped to take a few screenshots of the areas and their design. However, this doesn't even compare to the stellar enemy designs. All enemies in this game reach a balance of feeling alien, while at the same time bringing some sense of familiarity in their design. Just looking at some of the bosses it's clear the love an inspiration the artists put into their designs, which there's nothing quite like it. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the character designs. Most of them are pretty standard and dull generic anime designs, which I guess isn't exactly bad per say. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing "bad" about them, but nothing good either, it's just something that's been done hundreds of times before.
Now, onto the other subject that surprised me: the combat.
The combat mechanics are pretty simple, your character has a basic attack combo, a dodge, a jump and the ability to use items to supplement combat.
But perhaps the best addition, is the powers that Scarlet Nexus brings to the table. Both main characters you can play as have psychokinesis, which is the ability to move things with their mind. This brings a new edge to combat, where the player can use objects in the environment as extensions of their attacks, supplementing a character's lack of range or damage by throwing big objects from a distance at the enemies. To explain further, in the setting, most characters have superpowers and use them in combat. While it might not seem relevant considering you can only play 2 characters which have the same power, the game introduces the SAS system. When you're choosing your party members, you're not choosing only the characters and what they can bring to the table, but how their power can affect your gameplay style. Using the SAS system, you can connect with a character and user their power, which has some slight alterations to gameplay. These powers can range from elemental buffs to your weapon, to invisibility or the ability to teleport. While appearing not much by itself, the SAS system really shines in it's interactivity with the enemies. For example, the simpler powers like applying a fire buff to your weapon burns the enemy, a lightning buff can paralyse them and so on. But the more esoteric powers, like duplication can duplicate the objects you throw with your psychokinesis, or hypervelocity severily slows down every enemy on screen. This goes much further with the introduction of the Crush Gauge, which functions sort of like a stamina bar, which when depleted opens the enemy up to either be instakilled or to be dealt a very large amount of damage. By a combination of targeting enemy weakspots and correctly choosing the power most effective at dealing with those enemie's weakness, one can master the combat of Scarlet Nexus and truly show the depths of what appears to be such a simple system. There's more combat mechanics like Brain Drive or Brain Field, but they mostly function as combat buffs (the former) or a super mode like Devil Trigger (the latter), and aren't all that innovative.

Now, let's move on with my biggest gripe with the game: the writing in general.
Starting with characters, most of them are really bad, and even the best ones aren't more than decent.
None of them have any depth to them, and are mostly there to fill anime clichê roles and tropes.
I'll describe some of the party members so you can see what I mean: A Spunky Happy-go-lucky Childhood Friend, a Shy and Quiet girl that likes flowers, a Walking Talking Oedipus Complex, a Too Old For This Shit Boomer, and so on...
The biggest problem is that they have nothing to offer outside of filling their clichê roles, the characters have no depth whatsoever, they just feel like they were all taken out of really bad seasonal anime.
And the protagonists might be even worse. The male one is just your typical shounen protag who wants to do good and save the world, and the female one is unredeemably rude, to the point where it's her whole personality, being cold and rude for no reason whatsoever.
Moving on, let's talk story. And boy, if you think the characters were bad, you're gonna be even more surprised. Huge spoilers ahead.


Starting with the setting, it's a technologically advanced society where most people have powers. However, monsters called Others fall from space, so the people with powers joined together to form a military to fight them.
The story starts off with the male protag joining this military, and pretty standard slice of life stuff with the characters going from one place to another saving people and killing monsters.
However, the story quickly takes a dark turn when one of the characters is suddenly turned into an Other, and your shady military superiors clearly know more than what they let on.
What follows next I can only describe as akin to a group of children who have been caught doing something bad so they start blaming each other.
It starts off with a reveal that the goverment you work for is doing 1984 shit like brainwashing whoever goes against them or turning people into Others for research.
This sparks a rebellion led by a dude who creates a rival goverment and who is apparently really important, but you've seen him like twice outside of cutscenes.
Okay, so the government sucks and is behind it all, not giving any points for originality there but it could be a decent setup.
Some shit happens and now there's a gigantic black hole consuming the Earth.
Nope, they then shift gears for the bigger bad being a secluded religious group who you've seen being mentioned in dialogue literally once the entire game. Turns out humanity came from the Moon and that religious group wants to use the main characters power to take control of the Black Hole and open the way up to return to the Moon.
Okay... so you go and beat those guys up but turns out that the true villain behind it all is the Dude that rebelled against the goverment.
All of this happens because the main character's actual power is Time Travel, and the main villain wanted to use that power to try and save his dead girlfriend.
Yeah. That's the plot.
I just have no words for it. It clearly lacked a direction with all the ping-ponging the plot did about who was the actual villain. It just feels really disjointed, especially considering the characters conveniently forget some of the plot elements so the writers can setup reveals.

To conclude this review, I kinda enjoyed the game I guess. I felt like it was held back a lot by the lack of direction that the story had, and it was particularly held back by the awful and boring characters.
The combat system certainly has potential if fleshed out a bit more, but the whole thing is so dedicated to the anime aesthetic, that it ends up being chained down by it in most aspects.

yea story is whatever, dont really care. mostly don't care about the open world either, but its the best implementation of modern "ubisoft" open world i can think of. modest, existing more to try and compliment the freedom of the halo sandbox rather than specifically to add hours onto the runtime.

the second i finished it though, i started thinking about a legendary coop playthrough to focus on other abilities etc. the amount of versatility in how to approach engagements is just beautiful. and it feels so much more tangible to me than like, a bethesda fallout game.

i think this might be my favorite halo ever.

Full review:
https://youtu.be/yJkbRUNTxbI
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Linear, story-driven, single player action adventure game
You only play as Star Lord and give commands to the other Guardians
There are 4 abilities for each character + perks and elemental shots for Peter
Visually stunning with unique alien worlds that are fun to explore
Amazing story and team dynamic
Great voice acting and solid motion capture
Impressive amount and quality of dialogues
Awesome soundtrack (iconic 80s hits, orchestral score and an original hard rock album)

Combat isn’t challenging, but fun
Choices have little impact
Abilities are overused during exploration
Dialogues are often cut off when entering a new section
* Occasional Quick Time Events

One of the best releases this year!

There's been roughly one billion videos made and articles written analysing Silent Hill 2's themes, doing deep dives into areas of the game and all sorts of extremely detailed explanations of individual moments throughout it. There's a reason for this, because Silent Hill 2 might be the most thematically solid video game ever made.

Every single aspect of it is all laser focused on the same goal. From the writing, visuals, enemy design, even extremely specific parts of the world design are all an important part of telling this bleak, brutal tale. A mature game, not just in terms of subject matter, but also in regards to the way it is handled and the approach you need to take to truly get the most out of it.

Unfortunately, Silent Hill 2 is starting to show its age. The best place to play it remains on the original hardware, although the modding scene around the PC version is close to getting the game looking its best on modern hardware. Don't even go near the 'HD' version, it is an unholy mess.

A truly standout game in the survival horror genre and one of the best examples of how a video game can tell a story in a way that other types of media simply cannot.

This 1-star review was brought to you by:

Xbox Game Pass, for giving me the chance to try a game I've always wanted to play.

Halloween, for making me try some 'scary' games.

A bored Friday night.

This game, for being absolutely broken dreck with some of the worst controls in a game.

Steer well clear.

Guardians is a fun time, with great writing and genuine heartfelt moments. It manages to provide a cinematic experience without taking anything away with the gameplay or player choice

Combat is fun, but the lack of varied abilities is what lets it down. You either choose a stagger ability, or the one that deals the most damage. More varied Guardian abilities would've been great and possibly the ability to play as the other characters, even if just for a short while.

I was sceptical about only being able to play as Star-Lord, but now I appreciate the choice. You feel like you're genuinely commanding a team and your choices impact you personally, as well as Star-Lord. You want your team members to get along, you sympathise with them and you feel relationships form, which would've been completely missed if you could play as the whole team.

The soundtrack is an absolute banger. Star-Lord, the fictional band created for the game, have tracks that genuinely sound like 80s billboard toppers. Your dad could easily be wearing a faded out version of their shirt

(Code provided for free by Square Enix)

This game slaps so hard!

It's got fun combat that stays enjoyable and thrilling the whole way through, solid mechanics, beautiful presentation, and a story that hit so many emotional notes and was a lot heavier than I expected which I loved.

I really wish I could play this on next gen hardware because I feel last gen doesn't do it justice but it was still so much fun regardless.

A confusing game considering it comes out from the same publisher in the same franchise with similar third person action gameplay, yet this game is structually the opposite of the Avengers game. It's just a straight up linear single player triple A game.

The main focus of the game is the relationship between the main characters, and this is usually only something done in JRPGs but here its done a little differently, the combat system is simple but by no means bad, it's fun and flashy. You can jump and boost around wildly while blasting enemies with your low damage pistols, while commanding your teammates to do specific high damage attacks. The main problem with the system is that at the start, it's far too simple. The variety of enemies is good and there is some environmental interaction as well.

The other aspect to the game worth mentioning is the telltale style dialogue choices, these are pretty simple but i found it made long story segments more interesting, and there are a couple choices that actually have a significant effect on gameplay, as i discovered in my second playthrough.
The story is a bit rough around the edges, and some of the dialouge is irritating, like when characters insult you for exploring the map instead of continuing with the main path. But by the end I did really end up liking all the characters, though I would say Gamora's arc is very rushed.

The visuals on this game are incredible, the lighting environments and the facial animation are top of the line, which should be expected considering this game is literally just a very linear campaign with no side modes or multiplayer elements, which is totally fine, but I would say the price is a bit high (£50 on steam which is a bit too much and £60 on playstation which is definately too much.)

All in all Guardians of the Galaxy is a fun, fast paced action game with a suprisingly good story, and plenty of fun gimmicks to break up story and gameplay. The visuals are incredible and it's refreshing to see a game that doesn't have ambitions way above what it's offering. However for what this is the price is a bit too steep, and I could see many people not wanting to pay full price considering the (fairly lengthy) single player campaign is all there is.