The last two worlds bring this game down significantly. Managed to get through them only once I committed to creating save points during levels as well, as there were so many scenarios stacked on top of each other (poor hitboxes, whatever's going on whenever you try to jump while on staircases, superfluous maze-puzzles etc.), that I found myself getting more and more frustrated. It didn't feel like I was getting better, only that I was beating my head against trial-and-error annoyances. Granted, this could also be just me who suck ass at 2D Mario, and that more experienced players gets through this blindfolded, but it did feel less than fair towards the end there. Still, when you move through each obstacle and find that flow, it's a different breed of satisfying. Looking forward to see how the 2D-sequels will fare in comparison.

For the sake of my own sanity, I'm done with this. Started well enough, but spiraled into utter cacophony quickly. If anything good came out of this, it came in the form of Capcom's complete 180 on the franchise, and perhaps that the non-linear narrative criss-cross helped them know what not to do with Devil May Cry V. Other than that this is baffling in all the wrong ways. It's like an AI-generated Resident Evil 4 and 5 mashup; squint and it's sort of a finished video game with clear design decisions and thematic ideas, but if you stop squinting it self-destructs like an old spy-movie letter. It wore me down, grinded my initial enthusiasm into powder, until I was so sick of it by the time the credits rolled for Leon's campaign (which, judging by the other campaigns, is the best of the four) that I have to put this down. At least for now. I've spent over 15 hours pushing my way through this monstrosity, and I don't dislike myself nearly enough to let myself continue for another 15 in this economy.

This would’ve been astonishing had it not been for the baffling obscurity of most of the later puzzles obfuscating a cinematic treatise on oppression and purgatorial existence into an all-too frustrating trial-and-error circle-jerk. The “difficulty” bereaves the game of its narrative essence I feel, as LIMBO seems like the type of game that should be played in a single sitting to truly let your emotions be stirred by the bleakness of its tone and the graphic expression of its aesthetic. Still highly recommended for anyone interested in games as more than just time-wasters, but hell, this should’ve been more.

I don't know what they've done with this, but later patches have absolutely mangled what was, at launch at least, if not the most polished FIFA ever (is there even such a thing as a polished FIFA, the gods wondered), then at least the most promising and foundationally good one in years. Hypermotion is a terrible buzzword, but the system alters the flow of everything on the pitch in such a dramatic way that it feels next-gen in comparison to last year's iteration. What we have left after EA has beaten it to death now is a hellishly buggy atrocity that feels just slightly less arcade-y than a pinball machine. Defenders don't track back, which leads to 90% of the goals arising from balls over the top and then a 40m runway. Physicality has been utterly eliminated entirely. Passes are foolproof, and shoot off at approximately 100mph. Hair physics come in and out depending on the cut-scene. It's a trainwreck at the moment. Just genuinely unplayable.

One of the most unexpectedly frightening games I’ve ever played, plunging the player into a computational, sisyphean nightmare, a totalitarian paradise where you’re unwittingly assimilated into a protocol of laser-honed destruction. You virtually become a software-based Terminator, at the expense of your free-will and corporeal selfhood. It’s as ingeniously designed as a Mario game, yet it instills paranoia and fear instead of joy. What easily could have been a featureless facade of a concept is given artistic sentience as a work of ominous late-capitalistic portent. A direct oxymoron of fun, creative gameplay and narrative nihilism.