I know a lot of people were kinda soft on it but I really loved the story mode for the base game so I found this DLC to be a bit frustrating. Its good, expected comic book-y stuff like the rest of Mortal Kombat but I don't know. My favorite part of the base game was the mom-daughter stuff with Cassie and Sonya. So of course this DLC focused a lot on the worst mother character of all time, Sindel. It does make for an interesting contrast and the focus on villains is cool but I just am not sure the ending is satisfying enough to make up for how it felt like all my favorite characters got done dirty. The most frustrating aspect of this DLC is that my opinion on it entirely depends on what happens in the next two Mortal Kombat games lol.

Other than that I like the three new characters (Fujin the most) and having Robocop is sweet but I already had my mains so wasn't too interested in trying them out.

Overall Mortal Kombat 11 Aftermath is a pretty solid expansion with a good if somewhat frustrating conclusion to the story and good new character additions. I do think the original 40 dollar price tag for it is positively ridiculous but thankfully you can get it for much cheaper on sale. Its a solid add-on to my favorite fighting game and I can't ask for too much more than that.

Just wanted to leave this little mini review. I also recently got the platinum for both the PS4 and PS5 version of the basegame if that doesn't tell you how much I enjoyed it. I currently have MK1 installed and I def need a bit of a fighting game break but I am very eager to play it nonetheless, will definitely be reviewing that as well 😌

-----TLDR----
+ Good new additions to the roster
+ Interesting set up for the future of MK
- Too many of my characters got disrespected in story mode lol

Nancymeter - 70/100
Trophy Completion - N/A
Time Played: 2-4 hours
DLC Completion #2 of November
DLC Completion #35 of 2023

Sure the combat could be better but if you think its bad clearly you've never impulse mega flare permafrost dancing steel into stagger will-o-the-wykes lightning rod gigaflare zantetsuken level 5-ed before and it shows :/

I struggled a good bit throughout my playthroughs of Final Fantasy XVI. It is now the third mainline game in the series I've beaten but at the time I started it I had intended it to be my first. Its a series I've always known i needed to try to get into, and the demo of this game was absolutely amazing, it completely blew me away. I was very unexpectedly hyped for this. And playing it I was like oh yeah this is def 5/5 material, after the Garuda fight I was so sold on the game. The music is fucking fantastic and I've never seen such awesome boss fights. But then after that the game felt like it had already peaked. There are still great boss fights through the rest of the game but they never were as impactful as the first 10 or so hours were for me. I felt myself increasingly disinterested in the plot and all the lore and by extension - the game itself.

All that changed near the end when I finally actually started doing side missions. I surprisingly ended up becoming quite fond of all the side characters in the Hideaway and to a much lesser extent the different characters out in the various towns and villages. The game has a pretty damn good cast. It was around that point that I was pretty hype for the end. And for the most part the finale delivers. Its plenty epic, and I was having a great time. But in the end, I was a bit disappointed in how everything wrapped up. That's not to say that there's really anything wrong with the ending, it just wasn't what I was wanting. How i feel about that is how I feel about Final Fantasy XVI as a whole. Plenty of great moments, but in the end still just a little disappointing.

Now that I've explained that I still think FFXVI is great, I have a lot more to complain about. Mostly minor things but it all added up over my 90 hours spent with the game. Some minor annoyances like enemy phases being tied to health bars so sometimes when you set up a stagger and start unleashing, the game just lets them sit there and recover without taking damage and you being unable to do anything for like 20 seconds before the next phase begins. There's also some battles in the wild where if the fight naturally goes a little further than where it started, enemies may just become immune and run back to their spawn point at full health. There's also without fail after every big boss, a main quest that's meant to let things settle but it just kills the pacing and feels like the game is wasting your time by dishing out forced side quests, sometimes several in a row. In the more dungeon-y areas the game is also pretty bad at leading the player along, there were several times I ran completely in the wrong direction because it doesn't make it clear what doors you can open unless you're right next to them. My final complaint is that Final Fantasy mode, the supposed hard mode for NG+, is a complete joke. Now I'm sort of glad it wasn't hard because it made the platinum obtainable for me and now that i have one for a mainline game in the series I don't ever have to bother again. But like, the games idea of hard is give every enemy 50x as much HP. For normal enemies it ain't nothin a level 5 Zantetsuken can't solve but any enemy with a stagger bar doesn't actually feel harder to fight, they just take ages to fucking kill. Even though i skipped every cutscene and did minimal side content, my FF playthrough felt longer than my first where I did basically everything. It just isn't very fun.

So that's about all of my thoughts with Final Fantasy XVI. But to end on a more positive note: Jill is hot and Titanic Block + Counter is one of the most satisfying moves of all time.

Thanks for reading <3

-----TLDR----
+ Great cast
+ Amazing soundtrack
+ Awesome boss fights throughout
- Story quality and pacing is wildly inconsistent
- Didn't like the way it ended
- Too many little gameplay grievances that add up

Nancymeter - 85/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #278)
Time Played: 92 hours
Completion #6 of November
Completion #210 of 2023

Ghostwire Tokyo is a weird game. Its more bloated than some of the ghouls walking its streets, and I didn't really understand much of the story. But I loved basically every second of it. The enemy designs, the setting, the lore, the color palette, the rain, the yokai... all of it is just so damn cool. Living in the world of Ghostwire Tokyo was an absolute dream, even if much of the actual game is busywork.

Storywise I don't have much to say but I did really like the main characters and it had some really cool levels. Where the storytelling really shines is the side quests. Despite its abundance, not all the side content is meaningless. Most of the side missions actually have some effort into them and are really cool and unique. Thanks to the free Spiders Thread update, there's a new quest chain in a haunted school that was absolutely phenomenal. Even if you ignore all the relics and other collectibles, it really is rewarding to at least check out all the quests.

Then there's the combat. Much like the rest of the game it is repetitive but still really fun. My only real complaint is that i never really felt like I needed to use the different elements much. But with how flashy it is and how cool the enemies are, it never really got old for me. Plus with how condensed the map is and how easy it is to grapple and glide around everywhere, the gameplay loop was consistently engaging. All the collectibles were just an excuse for me to spend more time in the world. Despite the downright unnecessary amount of collectibles, I still went for the platinum because I wanted to spend every second playing the game that I could.

I very much love a lot of what Ghostwire has going for it, but it still has a lot of room for improvement. From the leaked Microsoft court documents it has been confirmed that a sequel was at least once considered, but who really knows what the plans are now. I can't say I'm optimistic about its likelihood. But just knowing it was in the talks has given me a little bit of hope. I'm very grateful this game exists, and a Ghostwire 2 would instantly shoot its way up to my top 5 most anticipated games.

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 100% (Platinum #272)
Time Played: 31 hours 42 minutes
Completion #5 of October
Completion #197 of 2023

I never gave this game much thought from the glimpses I've seen of it up to release, but the quadruple combo of it being a shorter game published by Annapurna that got high review scores and is day one on Game Pass made it very hard to ignore. I'm glad I didn't as I can confidently say that Cocoon is so far my favorite Indie game of 2023.

The game never tells you how to do anything, which is one of my favorite things about it. It just feels intuitive, and its solely up to you to figure things out. I got stumped a lot but outside of something I'll get to in a bit, it basically never felt like the game was unfair. And even when things seemed impossible, every single time I found out the solution I was impressed with how clever the game was. The puzzle design is just simply excellent here and it feels consistently rewarding.

Now there is a reason this game is missing a star. A few smaller issues first: I didn't really care about the art style. It feels a bit generic but its not a bad looking game either so not really a negative. The soundtrack also exists. Its fine I guess, but I never really noticed it which feels like a missed opportunity. Also if this game has a story, its very vague. I'm sure there's some deeper meaning to everything but it very much takes a backseat. These three things are fine and didn't really bother me as the gameplay is still very engaging but they do stop me from fully loving it.

Now about the actual things I dislike about the game. It took me around 5 and a half hours to beat. This is a great length for a game like this, and the puzzles continued to expand and stay interesting the whole time. That being said, there were several moments that felt like finales where the game just kept continuing on after. It led to a conflicting feeling where I was enjoying the puzzles but still wishing for the game to be over. It was just a bit exhausting to be thrown for a loop that much. The only other thing I dislike about this game are some of the timed puzzles. For the most part these are perfectly fine, but in the last fourth there is three different timed sections each made up of three different parts. They're sort of like a boss battle but if you fail any part you have to restart the whole section. While other bosses do make you restart, at least they were based on skill, but this one is solely on timing. This led to a lot of having to redo parts I already knew how to just to get back to the part I was actually stuck on and it was quite frankly a pain in the ass. I don't like timed puzzles and this was a bad way to implement them. Otherwise the bosses are all sort of similar but still unique enough that their presence makes the game more interesting.

Overall, Cocoon is a fantastic puzzle game that's held back only by a handful of small things and the very occasional annoying section. None of its negatives take away from the fact that its highly creative and one of the best games I've played in an already stacked year.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far <3

Nancymeter - 85/100
Achievement Completion - 80%
Time Played - 5 hours 43 minutes
Completion #29 of September
Completion #192 of 2023

Gears 5 is the best looking, best playing, most compelling game with the best story in the series to date.

Growing up, I was an Xbox gamer. Sure I had a DS and my family had a Wii because so did everyone, but the majority of my gaming time was spent on Xbox. Naturally because of this I ended up playing a good amount of the Gears series. Despite that, I actually never beat a single one of them. Eventually I moved on to Playstation and hadn't looked back since. That was, until this year. Seeing the great value of gamepass and how the future of exclusives was really starting to look up (barring the Redfall setback), I decided it was finally time to return to my gaming roots. As much as I was excited to be able to play things like Hi Fi Rush or Starfield, honestly one of the biggest incentives to get one was to play a series I had always liked but never given the treatment it deserved.

And that brings us here, now. A few days past a month of owning an Xbox, and I have played through all 5 numbered entries and Judgement. The original trilogy is not without its flaws but were all a very fun time, with 3 feeling like a fitting conclusion. Of course its a mega popular series though, so obviously things weren't gonna end there. First was Judgement which, well, its not very good. Its not bad either, I liked it. But... the gameplay changes are very clearly a step down from the trilogy and the story wasn't particularly interesting at all. As a spinoff being developed with a different studio, it was understandable that it was significantly weaker than the main games. The new control scheme meant to be more like Call of Duty didn't help.

But then there was 4. Looking amazing, feeling great to play, absolutely awesome set-pieces. But wow. As a setup for the future of the series, it does a piss poor job. The story feels both padded and incomplete. There's a long stretch in the middle that feels entirely designed to make the game longer, but my jaw dropped when the credits rolled because it felt like half a game worth of plot. It introduces three new main characters in JD, Kait and Del but does barely anything with JD and Del is literally a nothing burger of a character. Combined with how the new characters in 3 and Judgement are treated (Jace, the most useless man to ever exist?), the series seemed to have a serious issue with providing anything interesting for the characters beyond the core 4 (That being Marcus, Dom, Baird and Cole). I still enjoyed 4 but it was hard to feel anything but disappointed coming off from the end.

Now its finally time to talk about the actual one that I'm reviewing! Gears 5 fixed just about every issue I had with the series. JD's character is genuinely interesting, Del turned from a complete nobody to such a bro that he's top 3 characters in the series for me. They finally start to treat their female characters with a little more respect by not killing them offscreen or doing nothing with them by putting Kait front in center as the new protagonist. They finally make the gameplay more interesting by having two big areas with optional objectives, as well as upgrades you can work for. The open areas are really great, and even if the side locations aren't anything amazing what they do do is give great room for character development and by the end of the game I really liked and cared for the whole cast, something that hadn't happened for me since 2. Another thing I really liked was the game letting you make a story effecting choice near the end. It doesn't really effect things much for now as obviously by that point the game is almost over, but assuming Gears 6 doesn't discard this altogether - it really makes me even more excited to see how the series continues to evolve with more choice and options.

All this is to say is that Gears 5 is by far the best in the series, and after Judgement and 4 I'm very happy that my binge has ended on a high note. This year is absolutely stacked so I need to focus on other things for now, but I do look forward to trying out Tactics in the future. Gears 6 can take all the time it needs, but I'm more excited for it than just about any other Xbox property. Not to mention finally being able to play a multiplayer mode that isnt completely dead <3

Also, couldn't figure out where to fit his in my review but even though all games in the series have plenty of funny moments, this made me laugh out loud several times without betraying the darker tone and I really appreciated that.

Nancymeter - 90/100
Achievement Completion - 8% (20/181 - ffs lol)
Time Played - 12-13 hours
Completion #29 of August
Completion #161 of 2023

I have a lot of free time. I often think about all the big games In my backlog, how well acclaimed they are and how I really should get to them. I also think about how I am still at the moment in my life where I could feasibly play all of those. There is constantly a sense of longing to be able to get into and love games like Skyrim or Tears of the Kingdom or whatever really. But, I don't play those. Instead I spend countless hours beating games like Marvel's The Avengers, Gotham Knights and well, Exoprimal. I'm not really sure why I am this way. In fact I think all three are good games in their own right. But I am constantly forsaking "better" experiences just to play a game about exosuits and dinosaurs. There are a million cool games out this year. Pikmin and Fire Emblem and Jedi Survivor and Final Fantasy and Rain Code are just rotting in my backlog, while I spent two and a half days almost entirely on this. I don't think its something I'll be able to understand about myself but hey, Its just what I do. And as one of the few people who has decided to beat this game, what better maniac to review it.

So obviously there is a reason why I spent over 20 hours playing this. And its simple, its pretty damn fun. The idea of it is so silly that its no surprise Capcom made it, but honestly its such a good mix that people should be ashamed they didn't think of it sooner. Shooting massive hordes of prehistoric raptors is peak game concept. (Most) of the exosuits are also really fun to use. There's 4 assault types, 3 tank types and 3 support types. While only 10 does feel a little small, they all have good roles. The only suit I actually disliked was Murasame the tank samurai. Honestly all three of the melee centric ones weren't good to use. But Vigilant, the hottest and of course last one you unlock, is insane at dealing high damage with her chargeable sniper rifle. Once I unlocked her I pretty much exclusively used her, except when my team decided to be chodes and nobody wanted to switch to a support class so ofc I had to play as Skywave instead, who is basically the mommy exosuit of the group. Her staff was very fun to use to both heal teammates and lay down some fire. I did dabble in the other classes a fair bit and while not all of them are really my style they're all very distinct and just fun. The enemy variety is strange, because there's actually a good amount of enemy types but so many of them you'll rarely see in your matches which can get quite annoying.

That's really the big problem with Exoprimal, most of its really cool stuff is probably like 15% of the game. When you get to the main story levels they are absurdly hectic and fun (if a bit bullshit) but for like, 45 of your 55 required matches to beat the main story you'll be going through the same 3-4 maps with the same few different objectives. You are unlocking more as you progress but its so little and so rare that it doesn't feel like much. Story progress is a little better since basically every match inbetween the big moments you'll unlock some more lore. And the story was interesting, and I found all the characters to be likeable, but its not really interesting enough for me to sit through like 60 individual glorified audio logs. After a few matches, piecing together the mystery becomes just as slow moving (and grindy) as playing the game. I think playing through matches to work your way to new story beats and getting lore along the way is a genuinely great idea for a multiplayer campaign but the sheer lack of variety in game modes and maps hinders Exoprimal more than anything. You do unlock a new mode after beating the story but its not available yet so pretty unfortunate all around.

Just because I have to mention it, there are microtransactions and there is a battlepass but these are pretty much entirely unintrusive. You can still buy plenty of good skins with ingame currency that is not held back at all. I never had an issue buying the cosmetics available that I liked without having to spend real world money. It would probably be a hella grind to buy every cosmetic on your own but I don't know why you'd even want to do that, and as far as I saw you can't buy more currency anyways.

So because of all that, I absolutely cannot recommend you buy Exoprimal right now. 60 dollars is just not enough for how feature incomplete it is. However, if you've got gamepass (also check out the new indie game Venba thats pretty good) I'd strongly encourage you to give it a try. It just might surprise you. And honestly do it soon, this game is gonna get shut down in like 2 years and it'll be very unfortunate.

So that's my review of Exoprimal. It's been quite a while since I've put up a review lol, but there are still plenty of reviews I'd like to get to. I'm not gonna do the standard "promise I'll have more up soon" thing because that literally never works so just expect a dramatically long hiatus after this so if I do post again soon its like an early Christmas. Thank you all for reading <3

Now time to play Redfall.

-----TLDR-----
+ Extremely Fun
+ some of the exosuits are hot
- Barebones content leads to the game feeling grindy

Nancymeter - 74/100
Achievement Completion - 77% (34/39)
Time Played - Xbox says 29 hours but I don't think that is possible
Completion #2 of August
Completion #133 of 2023

As someone who feels like they're in a constant game of tug of war with each Yakuza game they play, I was genuinely surprised with how much I ended up enjoying Ishin. As far as ones I've completed go, this very well may be my second favorite in the series.

Yakuza games are often funny and unique, with really entertaining characters. I really think Kiryu is one of the best protagonists of all time. But theres always some things that bring them down for me. Grueling pacing, terrible boss design and lackluster endings are what a lot of this series has left me with. Most of the games make up for this overall (besides Yakuza 4. Sorry I dont usually like to use reviews to insult other games but god I fucking despised playing that). But starting with 0 which does have some of the same issues but is by far the strongest I've beaten yet has made the entire series onwards feel a bit disappointing. Especially with my last two experiences, Yakuza 5 and 6. I never ended up reviewing them but they did so much that I wanted from the series and I really felt the Yakuza love again (much needed after 4), but then both of them completely dropped the ball for me with some of the most unsatisfying endings I've ever experienced.

So yeah, I made sure my expectations were tempered for this one. Which I think in the end made me enjoy it more. Its completely fair to expect the mainline series to be high quality but in most cases its understandable to expect a spinoff to be a little weaker. But damn, not this one.

I'm not really familiar with the history behind what inspired the story, but the small amount I do know tells me they definitely took some liberties. I can't really comment on if thats a good thing or not, but the way they play off of some of the real life events is pretty damn cool. Even without the history aspect, its just a badass story to begin with. And my god, characters are getting murdered every other chapter. I love that shit. And! Half of them aren't ridiculously stupid fake out deaths, hallelujah. I can't really get into too much detail because of spoilers but, for basically every Yakuza game there's a few chapters in the beginning or near the middle where I want to cry myself to sleep, but with Ishin I was hooked the entire time past the end of chapter 1.

The combat is already pretty fun. Yakuza needs more guns. Wild Dancer obv is the most entertaining but Swordsman and Gunman are both fun in their own right. Brawler is completely useless, barely touched it lol. The card system is fine, It wasn't implemented all that great and the best cards in the game are free DLC so I just used those the whole time, but It existing is neat. There's also the Another Life farming sim side mode that was cute and fun but for a reason I'm about to get to, I didn't get too far into it.

By 'about to get to', I mean we're going to talk about it right now. The only thing I really disliked about this game is how god damn grindy it is to interact with the side stuff. I usually skip a lot of the side content in this series but I like to do a bit of it when its one of them I particularly like, and it really felt like this one was fighting against me. The battle dungeons are absurdly long, everything in Another Life takes ages (also you can't pay off Haruka's debt with your own money normally for some dumb reason) and trying to upgrade weapons and make the blacksmith actually useful is a nightmare. The light rpg elements and how slow everything is really take away from wanting to interact with much of that.

But that rather large-but-not-really issue aside, this was definitely one of the most surprising games I've played in a minute. Very high contender for the most fun and best written game in the series.

We are now at the blog portion of this review. Skip to the bottom for a TLDR and my final score if you don't care about all that. Things have been going solid, this was one of 5 games I beat in a day (not in their entirety obv) the other day so I'm pretty proud of that. Found a sealed copy of Persona 4 Arena for PS3 so happy to get that. Been playing Breath of the Wild too. Not sure what my next review will be but a MGRR one is quite likely. Also been doing a lot more creative writing which made trying to do write this review harder than usual. I hope this turned out good enough and you enjoyed reading it. If you did, thank you <3

-----TLDR-----
+ Great story
+ Fun gameplay
+ sexy music
- Extremely grindy side content

Nancymeter - 89/100
Trophy Completion - 41%
Time Played - i forgor I'll add this in later
Completion #3 of May
Completion #92 of 2023

"You can't just shoot a hole into the surface of Mars!"

I don't need to tell you this. You already know. Doom Eternal is a badass game. One of the best first person shooters out there. There is so much variety and depth in the ways you deal with enemies and how you can use your tools, its almost like a puzzle game. But you're rarely forced to repeatedly fight with enemies the same specific way, the strategy is almost always up to you. This makes the combat feel very freeing and goes together well with how hectic it can get, fighting onslaught after onslaught of demons. The platforming is fun and fluid, the level design is amazing and the automap really incentivizes collecting things and exploring. The progression system is very well done and makes the game constantly feel rewarding. The cutscenes and dialogue are also very funny. Slayers actions and the way people react to him had me laughing constantly. Its just an awesome game all around.

My complaints are minor in the grand scheme of things. For one, as great as the music was, I could barely hear it for most fights. This might be a personal thing but I'm pretty sure I've had the problem with previous games. Having to turn down the sound effects so low to hear it was more distracting than anything. I also think the pacing of this could be a little better. Despite having so much fun in the beginning, I was definitely ready for it to be over by the end. I think it was probably just one level too long. My two final complaints don't effect my score or feelings on the game at all but I want to say them anyways. The trophy list is pretty terrible. I dont know why so many are focused on online mode. I did not bother to try it. And also, I'm really disappointed with how Mick Gordon was treated by higher ups while working on this. Its just pretty pathetic.

It has been quite a while since I played Doom 2016, so I don't really remember it much. But I thought it was good, not great. Doom Eternal really surprised me with how much I ended up enjoying it in comparison, and its definitely left me wanting to give 2016 another try. A few minor complaints hardly get in the way of how fun it is. If you haven't played this yet for some reason... stop procrastinating.

-----TLDR-----
+ fun varied gameplay
+ good level design
+ rewarding progression system
+ funny
- Could of been one or two levels shorter
- Couldn't really hear the music :(

Nancymeter - 91/100
Trophy Completion - 76%
Time Played - 17 hours
Completion #1 of May
Completion #90 of 2023

Man, what a letdown. I beat Bayonetta 2 on Christmas Eve so naturally didn't have the time to write a review. But I thought it was an improvement on the original in basically every way. I loved it. So naturally I was really excited for this one even with all the dumb drama surrounding its release. Now that I've finally got to it... all I really feel is disappointment.

Before I start being too negative I'll say a few things I like about it. First of all I love how colorful this game is. My biggest complaint with the first game was how damn dreary it looked, and to see 2 and 3 be a lot more vibrant is pleasing. Plus the location variety is fun and helps keep things interesting (desperately needed). I also think there's a really fun selection of weapons to use, Tartarus and the yo-yo being my favorite. And! This game has a lot of dancing. I love dancing. I love Bayonetta dancing. But if this game thinks I'll forgive it for throwing a lot of dancing at the end after mostly boring me for 12 hours then its kinda wrong!

God this game was such a slog to get through for so much of it. The combat may be flashy and the weapons may be cool but it didn't feel fun. The new enemies are almost all just boring. And it feels entirely too reliant on the summoning which besides giving more dancing just makes the combat feel slow and sluggish. Then there is playing as Viola which is a whole other can of worms. You only play as her in three chapters and an epilogue but everything about her moveset is so basic that those three chapters end up feeling like some of the longest in the game. Besides the normal combat the game does switch things up a bit often. I do really like when games get funky with their genres so its appreciated here but even some things like the kaiju fights are just so helplessly boring. There is also Jeanne's side chapters (you don't get to call them Side Chapters and make them mandatory, fuck you) that shake things a bit too but its just.. I really don't know how else to put it. Its not fun.

All of this translates into the cutscenes too. I love the over the top cutscenes in the first two games and DMC but its just way too much here. Its almost all action with very little substance and they drag on and on. Multiple times I just found myself completely zoning out. It all felt mindless. So much creativity with so little love put into it. The story of course suffers from this. Theres very little plot but this game still has the most cutscenes in the series. The first games story was barely decipherable but still fun. 2's was quite enjoyable but still nothing amazing. But here in Bayo 3 its both hard to follow and not enjoyable. The whole multiverse thing is great potential that's handled spectacularly uninterestingly. Only does it really do cool things with it at the very end where its already too late. I actually didn't really mind the whole Viola-Bayo-Luka thing going on but the ending is just kinda bad. Viola is basically female Enzo and I don't hate him but we really did not need more of that. There are dozens of attempts at humor with her and they did not land for me a single time. And now with the game really heavily pushing that they want to continue the story with her as the new main character in Bayo 4? Yeah. My interest in this turning into a saga has almost entirely diminished.

Despite huge missteps with story and pacing, I didn't hate Bayonetta 3. It has cool colors and lots of dancing and Bayonetta is still one of my favorite video game characters. But, I just can't help but feel really disappointed having completed it. I was sure this could be an easy 4.5 for me but Im struggling to find enough reasons for why it deserves a 3/5. Its mostly just the dancing.

man :/

A few more things I wanted to add but didn't know where to fit in to the review. Jennifer Hale my queen does great as the new actress for Bayo. Having one voice line for being idle is annoying. New soundtrack is cool but Tomorrow is Mine still clears. The Switch needs a sequel desperately.

Thanks for reading <3

Nancymeter - 64/100
Game Completion #18 of April
Game Completion #88 of 2023

I never reviewed Horizon Forbidden West when I beat it late last year. Despite being received quite well, for some reason most of what I see online about this series (and this site) is a lot of negativity and it just makes me not want to interact at all. But I promised to review every 2023 thing I beat this year and this is no exception.

First things first, like the base game (and me), its so damn pretty. I believe Horizon is unquestionably one of the best looking games out there right now - that are going for a "realistic" style anyhow. I'd say only really Ghost of Tsushima or the recent Dead Island 2 come close. The final boss of this is probably the best boss in the series as far as I can remember. The setting for it is just so beautiful and the fight itself is pretty sick as well. There's also some cool locations like a Dinosaur themed amusement park and such. The DLC does nothing but add to how gorgeous the game is. But being a DLC its still got all the issues of the main game, particularly the utterly jank climbing/parkour. Expecting that to be changed in something thats not a sequel would be silly obviously but its still as annoying here as it is in the base game.

The story of this is, pretty okay. The stories in Zero Dawn and Forbidden West are some of my favorites ever, the lore and everything surrounding them is just so damn cool. Even Dawn's DLC, Frozen Wilds, had a really interesting story going for it. Burning Shores just doesn't really hold a candle to them. It's a lot more character driven between Aloy and her new "friend" Seyka. And that's great. I really enjoy their relationship and I hope Seyka returns for the third game too. But because of that, the overall story is just not super interesting. Its basically just more character development and doesn't add much to the universe besides that. There's a couple new side quests, and those are pretty enjoyable as well but still nothing superb. It also introduces a handful of new enemy types which are neat additions to the already pretty stacked roster.

Overall, I would recommend Burning Shores to fans of the base game. It may be a little light on content for its price but the quality is definitely still there. Whether you get it now or on sale, its a worthwhile addition to the series and worth a playthrough for sure.

Thanks for reading <3

Nancymeter - 79/100
Trophy Completion - 88%
DLC Completion #3 of April
DLC Completion #19 of 2023

You've heard it here first folks: Disney Speedstorm sure is a free to play kart racer. It is a perfectly fine game. Outside of the mobile game like UI it has good presentation. Looks clean and the soundtrack is pretty solid. The core racing gameplay plays well, because why wouldn't it? It's a tried and true formula. Its got boosting and drifting and powerups, the whole shebang. I can't attest to how heavily monetized it is since its in early access but its looking pretty rough on that front. Lots of currencies and characters and cosmetics to buy. Most excitedly ways to upgrade your racers and give them better stats. I am sure nothing can go wrong there. Will have to see how it plays out at launch. Overall. its fun but, yknow. I'm sure your kids will love to spend your money on this.

Also to be clear I played this through PS Plus, I am not insane enough to buy the founders pack for early access of a free to play game.

just wanted to review a game cuz why not, I'm bored. Don't really have any stake in this but hey, hope the people who actually care are happy with it.

Nancymeter - 55/100

Tchia, for all its faults, is still one of the most wonderfully unique and charming games I've played in a long time. The story, while maybe it could've used being a bit longer to flesh out some characters a little more, is such a wild ride that constantly had me laughing whether because it was being legitimately funny or batshit insane (it was often both). Its also surprisingly dark for something that looks like an animated movie for kids. We're talking a villain who eats babies whole and a visual gag of a headless chicken with blood included. Also fucking like a bunch of people die, its crazy. While doing all the side content will probably take you 4x as long, the main story should only take you around 5 hours or so and I really think everyone should give this a shot especially if you got it on PS plus last month just to experience it. Also it features lesbians! Girls kiss! The story also gets wholesome with it so that's like an extra five stars.

Where Tchia will lose some people is the gameplay. The charm is absolutely still there, you can literally pick up a dog and hold it over your head, its hilarious. It also features a really cool mechanic where you can posses nearly every small animal or object. Some of the animals have different abilities you can use, like Cats have night vision. I did not find almost any of that really useful but its a cute little thing. However I did always have several birds stored in my backpack to use them to fly around when needed. And yes, the birds do have a dedicated poop button, if you were wondering. Now yes everything I've just described is awesome but then the open world stuff comes in. You've got your usual clearing out camps or doing races and stuff. None of it is bad but, I just never really wanted to do it. It just felt like a distraction when all I cared about was the story. Unfortunately as well, a lot of the gameplay in the story amounts to fetch quests. Finding an animal or item for someone and bringing it back to them. Its pretty boring, if I'm honest. There also some combat, which just involves soul jumping into explosive objects and launching yourselves into enemies. The soul jumping is fun but the combat is just pretty eh, and the enemies can be pretty annoying to deal with in dense areas where they'll constantly trap you, drain your stamina and force you to do a little qte. That's another thing, you'll drain stamina from doing almost everything. You're encouraged to find fruit around the islands to increase your stamina but they are very minor increases. If you run out of stamina too you'll basically faint and be returned to the nearest campfire. Thankfully there is an option in the settings to basically make it so you'll never faint. This really isnt a game that benefits from being difficult, and the challenge really is just annoying more than truly hard so I'd really recommend playing with that option on to keep Tchia the chill fun time its meant to be. My final gameplay critique is there are way too many campfire rhythm minigames. I do actually quite like rhythms games (Miku gang rise up) but they were just a bit excessive here, sometimes happening within ten minutes of eachother or less. You do have an option to let them autoplay which I ended up doing most of the time. These are full length songs and while the music in this game, vocal tracks especially, is amazing it just is another part of the gameplay that feels repetitive.

Tchia may suffer from some common open world problems, it may not run the best, it may bore you sometimes but despite all this, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Its bold, its hilarious and it is downright unforgettable.

Trophy Completion - 0% (not the best trophy list lol)
Time Played - 5+ hours
Nancymeter - 81/100
Game Completion #75 of 2023
April Completion #5

Ultimately, did I enjoy most of my hour or so I played with this game? I think I did. But also, I feel like I've already experienced everything the game has to offer. Will I come back to this regularly? Is there really a reason to? Well, I can't really say yes to either. Of course, every game is better with friends but that may only buy you another couple hours of enjoyment out of this. As far as I can tell only the first two very very short tutorial levels are developer made and everything else is user generated content. That's not entirely damning on its own but its clear from the level creator side of things the game is quite restrictive. There is only so many ways people can get creative with the same couple types of traps, enemies. There is an okay selection of blocks and textures but its not enough to stop levels from feeling the same, even when theyre as different as the game allows them to be. The core gameplay loop is enjoyable and every game with a grappling hook is a win but much like everything else, its not enough. What is there is fun but... there's nothing really there. Hopefully this gets supported more in the future, but its gonna need a lot of work to make me, and I suspect most people, wanna come back to it - even with it being a free PS Plus offering.

Just wanted to give my quick thoughts on this unfortunately disappointing game. Thanks for reading <3

Nancymeter - 57/100