Finished this game as part of the Ace Attorney Trilogy. Being a big fan of the original Phoenix Wright trilogy I was excited to experience my first playthrough of Apollo Justice.

Apollo as a character is a charismatic successor of Phoenix, mostly because he has similar traits as him and fills in the same "newbie" spot. Trucy, Apollo's companion, manages to stand out more on her own. I like the dynamic of the new prosecutor Gavin - I was constantly switching between admiring and cursing him. The return of some familiar faces is nice, even though the game feels more like a followup of Episode 5 of the first PW:AA than the entire trilogy in that regard.

Apollo's "sense" ability is a new feature in the cross-examinations which seems a little bit too gimmicky to me. On the other hand the 3D inspections of the evidence is underutilized.

My enjoyment of an Ace Attorney game depends mostly on the cases (logical use of evidence, twists, mystery, emotional investment, opponents). Sometimes the game relies too much on wild turns that didn't make much sense to me, but nevertheless were guessed correctly by me because I assumed the game would want to create a big twist. The final case does an excellent job of connecting loose threads spanning several years in the story. Unfortunately, catching the true villains of each cases never really had a big emotional impact for me.

All in all Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney succeeds as a new chapter in the Ace Attorney saga and has all the trademarks the game series is known for. I liked all cases but neither one of them could hook me completely.

One technical nitpick about the Xbox One version: Switching between dialogues and evidence often interrupts the music for a short moment which was never the case in the original DS version of PWAA as far as I remember.

This is a special kind of challenge for everyone who enjoyed Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. It's been a while that I was so frustrated with my own lack of skill in a singleplayer game. But I was always motivated to improve myself in every new run. And coming back to older levels from the beginning I could definitely tell how I got better at doing combos and avoiding enemy's fire. I didn't like how massive bombardment in the later levels would disrupt the flow of the trick system. And the boss fights in the huge flat arenas felt counter-intuitive to the established gameplay. But it's still a very rewarding game to master.

In Jusant we climb up a massive mountain and discover the remnants of a fallen civilization. It radiats a similar vibe as a Team ICO game: there is a lot of beauty despite the uninhabited and barren spaces. Without any form of combat the only enemies are the sun, cliffs and gravity.

While Jusant tries to be more than an automatic climbing experience familiarized by Assassin's Creed, the system still lacks a certain depth. But reaching new heights is often a reward in itself. It's a beautiful game with occasional moments of jank (stuck in places, weird animations).

It's a shame that Black Rock Studio was shut down because Pure and its followup Split/Second showed that the developer had a lot of potential to fill the gap after the Burnout series was abandoned by EA.

Pure features ATV racing at high speed with insane jumps and even more insane tricks. I'm most impressed by the racing tracks which offer so many different paths and turns that I've sometimes wondered if I'm driving in the same direction as my competitiors. The most reasonable path often depends on your speed and the gameplay mode (racing or trick-based freestyle) so there's enough variety on the track itself.

I've had most fun playing the freestyle mode which offers a special combo system for the tricks. Difficult tricks give more points but they are also risky at smaller jumps. You need to find the right balance of earning big points and increasing the combo multiplier with smaller tricks.

One complaint I have is the janky collision detection. Sometimes I've been stuck at parts of the map, losing speed at some jumping points or getting shoved off by competitors. And boosting is only really useful after several upgrades in the garage.