it's solid. the return to more of a linear Gears experience was highly appreciated after the hubs of base game Gears 5 and the pacing benefited heavily as a result.

wasn't as wild about some of the encounter designs as seen here, especially with the repetition of having two moving platform set pieces in the expansion's shorter length. the core of the gameplay itself was solid as always so it wasn't a complete slog or anything.

with Gears 5 ending like it did, i wouldn't mind seeing some of these characters shifting into the main cast for a Gears 6 tbh.

The best way I can think to describe this game is by first going all the way back and quoting my review for the Wii game:

"It's full of personality too. Every single character you can choose to put on your team is different. You've got different stats obviously, something like 4 different categories, but each team captain has their own unique item, each sidekick has their own unique special shot, each character has different theme music that plays when they score a goal, and different dodge animations (which itself is different per character class, with some being more offensive, some being able to bypass the goalie with the right timing etc). It just really helps feel like every character you pick makes your team personalised to you, rather than just generic characters with a Mario skin."

All of this is gone, except for the stats (and even those can be adjusted to basically make every character whatever you want them to be). Everything else just...gone. No more sidekicks in general, no unique special shots, no character-specific items, no theme music for goals, no unique dodge techniques. Personality has at least survived with some things like animations, but it's all aesthetic and there's essentially zero gameplay differences between the tiny roster of 10 characters.

Quoting from my old review again though:
"My main issue is with the super strike mechanic. While this also plays into the idea of the game making each character unique, by giving them characteristic animations during the move, it is way too powerful and slows the game down every time it's used. I think it would have been fine if it was just limited to once per match, including the set-up screen, so that if you tried to use one at a bad time, you're out of luck. It'd add a lot more strategy and give it a huge risk-reward factor, while right now it's just no reward-reward."

This has at least been changed. No more spamming super strikes for 5 easy goals. Now you can only do them when a special item appears, and they only give you 2 goals. They still kind of break the pace when using them (unskippable 30 second or so cutscenes), but generally they're a big improvement here.

Anyway moving on to things unique to this game - Holy shit the way they handled customisation. So they have some pretty cool ways to alter the look of your side of the field, things like the look of the goal posts, the electric barrier pattern, the scenery items outside the barrier etc. But you can ONLY do these as part of a striker club. And only the leader of a striker club can alter them. Like you can still use your clubs field outside of club mode, even in story mode, but for some reason there's no way to just...make field designs you want. It makes zero sense. Have it so you can only use your clubs field specifically when doing club matches, but why the hell would you not let us make our own fields for single player and quickplay matches?

You might think "Well I'll just make my own private club so I can make a field how I want". Except nah, because on top of the obvious disadvantage you'd be in for ranking with a club with only 1 member, you can't actually do proper club matches like this (which you need for currency to buy customisation parts). The characters you can select in club matches are exclusively the ones the players of a club have registered as their character in said club (including their gear). So you can use YOUR character, but if you're the only one in a club it'll fill the last 3 with random characters, none of which have gear. So your only choices are to join a club and let the leader pick all the customisation options for you, or be lucky enough to be the head of a club with 19 other people (and hope they bring in good characters to use).

Also club mode launched without even having a current season lmao. Why?!

Anyway here's just a random list of other complaints:
-Zero content. 10 characters. 5 stadium themes that have zero gimmicks (may or may not be a positive to some people), and all the actual pitches are just plain grass. The only single player mode is now a simple bracket tournament with 3 matches across various cups.
-The inclusion of more timing based elements for things like perfect passes and perfect shots sounds good on paper, but in reality it just results in WAY too many goals. Especially combined with being able to min-max any stat you want. Having a max shooting stat with a perfect shot (honestly not hard at all to time) results in a goal from anywhere almost automatically. 4 minute matches will take at least twice as long thanks to the amount of goals.
-Items have been reduced to just the basic 5.
-Stadiums are tiny now.

What's GOOD about the game? Well... it still plays fairly well I suppose. There's still a lot of personality in animations (though I think the amount of possible goal animations per character have been drastically reduced?).

Umm... I dunno what else. This game is such a shell of its former self. They seemed to bank literally everything on the idea people would love being part of a club online, and maybe if you have 19 friends to join that'd be the case, but for anyone who has to resort to joining random open clubs, it's just a bad game with basically nothing to do.

Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie are masterpieces. The reveal teaser trailer for this game just showed Spiral Mountain and the new character designs, and I was elated.

But the way it turned out still gets me down.

It's not a terrible game. But it's a terrible Banjo game. These cars depress me.

Horizon Forbidden West is more Horizon, more of the open world formula that’s filled the last decade of open world games and more of the visual fidelity that seemingly only PlayStation first party studios can deliver.
It’s not bad or a problem to be the default, when you excel at building a world with a fidelity that I would usually only expect of a rockstar open world game. When you create lore and stories that fill this staggeringly beautiful places with life. When you deliver a robust combat system, with a huge variety of enemies that are beautifully animated and distinct enough to keep you engaged for at least into the later parts of the game. What also separates this from the pack, is that you are not forced to play through the more generic and tedious parts of the game. Everything in your journal is split up so pedantically, that you would basically be able to play through the game in a very linear fashion, leaving out all the errands, the camps and other collectibles. They are waiting for you however, if you decide to spend more time with the game - and you can spend hours upon hours in it if you choose to. When I think about my favourite parts of the game, I always think about the exploration. Arriving at and being in awe of the intricately designed settlements or just wandering into the hugely varied wilderness have got to be my favourite moments of this current gen so far. And especially one place in the desert, later into the game, will always stay in my mind as one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever experienced in a game. In that sense it reminded me of the vistas and places I didn’t want to leave in CP2077. It’s not only the visuals from a technical standpoint. I asked myself if I’d still be so in awe if I’d play the game in 10 years from now and the answer is yes: the art direction and environmental design on display here is definitely top notch and will be a reference point for quite a while for me. The soundtrack is mostly beautiful as well, mixing traditional and natural sounds with artificial deep bass and synth sounds matching the same mixture of old and new around you. But not only the visuals and sound design in the open world are what make it a joy to explore, there are also a couple of activities which I thought were a lot of fun: first and foremost the Tallnecks. I love how they made every Tallneck basically into a puzzle and the payoff in the end is always an insane view. The Ruins were also my highlights, often times I just naturally came across them and really felt the urge to explore the places and solve the environmental puzzles. The design of the machines is absolutely mindblowing. Coming across a new type of machine is always interesting, their patterns and how they move and are animated in general is unrivalled imho. Some of the side quests were really well made as well, telling great stories and introducing a bunch of very cool and interesting characters. Not all of the side quests are delivered with the same quality however, this is were CP2077 for example knocked it out of the park. But the same goes for the story in general. It’s good, there are moments that exceeded my expectations by far and it’s filled with great characters for sure, but in the end I won’t remember too much of it, because I wasn’t as emotionally invested as I was with my favorite open world games like RDR2 especially.
Horizon is a very good game, it’s the best iteration of what you would expect in an open world game nowadays. It doesn’t play in the same league as the very best, but it comes close and I’m happy for everyone involved in the creation of this, that it has been such a success.

I don't give a ton of 10's. I feel like it should be reserved for personal GOAT games. I wasn't sure if Elden Ring was a 9 or 10, because I do feel like it has some flaws. Mostly, the game can be remarkably convoluted and I imagine a lot of people will consult a website to help them know what to do next. If you don't want to just explore for the sake of exploring and you are more goal oriented, it can be frustrating to find that goal. I would likely still recommend DS1 or Bloodborne as someone's first FromSoft game.

But Elden Ring is a 10. It's the best souls mechanics. It's vast. It's complex. It's a game for people who LOVE From Software titles. And most of all, it engrossed me for an entire week. Like no life, remind myself to take a shower, ignore work levels of engrossed. Games that grasp me and hold that tight are so few and far between it must be respected. Elden ring is an all-timer.

Truly incredible. I saw someone else say that this game can flip flop between being the best game and the worst game in the same ten minutes and good god, they were right on the money.

- This is the most fun I've had with first-person parkour in any game. Not Dying Light 1, not Mirror's Edge. It's a bit floatier than DL1 because you now lightly snap to thin/narrow terrain. After about an hour of play you get used to it. After a little more time and a few more skills, the convoluted paths laid out for early-game Aiden are more a suggestion than anything. This game hits new heights once you can completely disregard the paths laid out before you and blaze your own trail.

- Gear just does not matter at all. You get 5 pieces of gear with bonuses of 1-2% each. I usually just pick whatever gear has XP bonuses.

- Things like the immunity system actually make night and dark areas scary again. Sleeping biters are a fun incentive to come back to places in the middle of the night.

- The new upgrade system sucks. I don't mind the inhibitors, but all the skills in the skill tree feel kind of limp and way too situational to ever be useful. Compared to things like "you get a grappling hook" or "here's unlimited combat stamina" from DL1, the Big Final Perk in each tree is worth less than dirt.

- Rarely, Aiden will giggle or cheer himself on when you do one of the parkour skills you've learned, and it's so goofy and childlike that it's really endearing. I notice it once every 6 hours or so (infrequently enough to avoid annoyance) but it does a lot to make Crane 2 feel more organic than Crane 1 ever did.

- I quite like the new grappling hook! I know people are disappointed it doesn't just let you Spiderman around (it actually uses physics now) but I like this system a little more, feels a little more skillful, a little more interactive.

- The heights of the second half of the map are thrilling! I don't much care for the paraglider and generally try to avoid using it as much as possible, but when you're running on the side of a skyscraper it feels a lot different than making small jumps between mid-rise residential buildings (like those in Old Town in DL1).

- The story. Oh boy the story. I was essentially neutral on the story until the epilogue - the voice acting oscillates between passable and mind-boggling, and Rosario Dawson makes a prominent appearance as an insufferable Marvel character.

- The ending. I'm not going to spoil anything, but in the ending I got on my first run most of what happens was essentially pulled out of thin air. I think I confused the game with my choices because I watched a character shoot themselves in the head in the center of my screen only for the epilogue to say they're ruling the city.

- The faction system had the potential to be interesting but I just cannot bring myself to care about the Survivors at all. They are just a thoroughly charmless group who consistently treat you like you're the biggest asshole they've ever met. I saw no reason to not side with the Peacekeepers until roughly halfway through the story when the game decides some shit needs to happen so I can make some big story choices.

- Why would you remove text chat? Accessibility issues aside, I'm not trying to hear chip bags and music from two rooms over.

I love the new stage. A giant cruise ship with a bunch of areas connected in multiple ways. It's perfect for exploration. But that's basically ALL it's for, since all 3 of the new missions are basically variants of the same formula. First it's just a regular scavenger hunt, then it's a timed delivery mission, and then another scavenger hunt, but now the boat is capsized (which tbh is a REALLY cool idea, albeit one that comes with some camera problems). There isn't even any new bosses, or hats, y'know the thing the game is named after, to play with. The time rifts are decent challenges.

So the new stage is fun and has as much charm as any other world (I love the seals), it's just kinda short and lacks diversity in the missions.

As for the "deal" part of this, it's perfect for people craving a true challenge and completionists. For me it was something that I knew I wasn't gonna 100%, so I didn't feel like there was any benefit in doing many at all, y'know? I like the idea, and admittedly I had some fun with the few I tried, just not for me.

It's kinda... endearingly shitty? It's like a child's idea of what would be the best video game ever made: a completely absurd (and aggressively formulaic) mashup of your favorite elements from every other game, with no regard for how they interact with one another. There are dungeons, farming, cooking, a pokemon capture/breeding system that lets you breed anything with a health bar and pathfinding AI, base building, and it's so goofy and disjointed that the only real goals in the game do not even bother with making you touch these systems at all (literally).

It's mostly a strange experience because it's all like, 75% complete, spread evenly across every element of the game. You could spend all your time fishing and cooking, but for some reason there are like three core ingredients you can only get by breaking boxes on the beach, of which there is a finite, non-respawning number. Item descriptions are clearly machine translated but understandable, save for ~15% of items where the description is either still in Japanese, completely indecipherable English, or so vague that it may as well not exist. If it felt like progress meant anything in this game, I would almost be frustrated by how many times I've used a ridiculous amount of rare resources to build some mysterious rainbow-colored orb that seems to do literally nothing when placed/thrown.

It is a game made by people who very clearly love video games and very clearly have no idea what makes a good game work. There are games out there with satirical mechanics meant to parody time-wasting games, and yet none of them are as effective as Craftopia, which prompts you to do things like "craft one THOUSAND automated furnaces and cast them into the void" to permanently gain... +0.1 MATK.

And yet, I feel like it's worth noting that the game has never crashed. It's janky, but never has the experience completely fallen apart for me, despite this horrendous mess of features. I have done some really stupid shit, including breeding an entire farm of Anubis (the god), who exists on an island in the sky solely to help you gain permanent stat buffs, and the game never stopped me. Everything that is present works well enough that it's at least fun-adjacent if you can rope a particularly foolish person into joining you. I absolutely do not recommend any part of this experience, least of all if you have to exchange legal tender for the opportunity.

One of my favourite platformers ever. Some of the levels in here completely blew me away, wondering how people could be sleeping on a game with this quality of level design. The characters are bizarre and funny and the writing is yummies. The physics are familiar and have aged extremely well.
I played on Xbox One, so the infamously disastrous design of the final level has thankfully been patched to a point where its now just challenging instead of borderline impossible.
Also the campground music is a meandering, dark blues number and it works so well in creating that weird atmosphere.