Everything good from the first game is even better here and in far greater supply. More lightsaber stances, more lightsaber boss fights, more exploration, more customisation, more lore and more satisfying, kickass action in general.

Customisation is completely yoked here. I gave Cal the scrapper hair with full beard and realised I made him too hot. So then I gave him the Top Gun mustache and it made cutscenes hard to take seriously.
But my, does he look fly when it's paired with his pink poncho.

Props to Respawn for having fun with the player base by dropping in little memes and in joke references. Spawn of Oggdo was a nice surprise (nice is used very loosely here) Rick the Door Technician or the previously mentioned hot pink poncho.

You really feel like you're making a big change to Koboh for the better, making new friends, tidying the saloon, solving problems out on the frontier and defending it, it provides a true Jedi experience down to the bare bones.

And also, Cal and Merrin smooch, and I squeed so much.
Story as a whole I found interesting to an extent. They actually managed to do something cool with the High Republic era. There are some odd hiccups and weird choices, but it's overall another solid story of heavy themes and heartbreak, with tender emotional moments in the mix. Though not quite as refined as Fallen Order's story.

Random thoughts:
Rancors can eat shit, those unblockable grab moves are awful.
Loved seeing some Clankers again.
Blaster saber stance seems like a downgrade compared to standard single blade, but if you upgrade it a bit and stick with it, it's very satisfying to use.
So many hot women all over Koboh....Cal shoulda formed a harem, he has the rizz to spare.
Skoova.

Those holo matches were fun to begin, but when you start losing again and again to harder opponents....and the announcer guy won't shut the fuck up with his obnoxious ass voice....ooooohhhhhh I came close to snapping.
Luckily I figured out the best setup. Use the Skriton and place a Purge Trooper Commander behind him. If you don't have enough points for a Skriton, use a DT Sentry Droid. Basically, any large opponent with a PTC behind it will usually win you a round.

I don't have much more to say. Just another banger Star Wars game. Respawn can do no wrong. Here's hoping they go three for three with the next one.
Now to see whether Ubisoft can make a stand with Outlaws.



Btw, everyone said the Darth Vader boss fight was difficult, but I beat it in one go on Jedi Master difficulty, whereas I got stomped by Bode and Dagen Gera three times each in their final fights. Just saying, of all the main boss fights, he was way easier to beat, though that might be mainly down to Cere being more powerful than Cal.
Who's to say, really.

The most wanky, self-important and contrived shite I've ever played in my long career as a gamer.
I don't actively go out of my way to play bad games the same way I do with watching bad films or tv, mainly because acquiring games isn’t as easy as film or tv. Pirating games isn’t always the best.
Copped this in a PS sale for 9 quid and was tasked to play it, otherwise I couldn’t have an opinion on the game. Sure, I said. I’ve done worse for less, I said.
But when the dust clears and the experience is over, I gotta say, this ranks very high in the worst things I’ve done as favours for other people.
I didn’t expect it to be this terribly dull and painful to play through. It’s painful and miserable on purpose, but it's doubly moreso because the game is just crap to its very core.

Killing Joel off....you wanna do that? Sure, if you can validate it. Personally, I'd rather we just leave well enough alone with how the first game ends.
The execution of Joel's execution is contrived to all hell. That's what people are most mad about.
The game goes out of its way to villainize Joel for his actions at the end of the first, completely demolishing the ambiguity of it all. What Joel did at the hospital was neither entirely good nor wholly bad, and it leaves a lot for you to mull over.
Part II scraps the ambiguity and sticks Joel in the shit for saving Ellie, and writes him off as a jerk. Even if he killed all the fireflies in self-defence so Ellie could live a life and grow up.
And he gets ambushed like a chump by Abby and her friends, despite the first game emphasising the fact that Joel is not easily fooled or trusting of strangers.
In short, Joel is shafted and disrespected in favour of a story to be told where he gets offed for being a horrible person with no room for grey areas. Cheers Neil.

And of course there's Abby.
Sorry, but I will not feel bad for this cartoonish, obnoxious twunt who was just invented to fuck up a perfect ending. The lengths they go in the second half of the game to manipulate you into liking her and her miserable friends is insulting. Don't show me this after Joel is dead, it's cheap as fuck.
I don't like Abby. I don’t understand her. I don't buy the fact that she so easily defects from the WLFs to help the runaway SCAR kids when she seems wholly devoted to her own cause.
Also, leaving Tommy and Ellie alive was a stupid decision. You were basically asking for them to come and kick your shit in.
It's why Joel killed Marlene at the end of the first game.
Pity he didn’t get you because you weren’t invented when the first game came out.
I hated playing as her, but we’ll cover that later.

The game beats you over the head that revenge is bad, you shouldn't do revenge. But Ellie only realises that after we have:
Mercilessly killed scores of people, both WLFs and SCARs, all with families, friends, hopes and dreams (the amount of times I rolled my eyes everytime an NPC yelled the name of the enemy I just killed is innumerable)
Dozens of dogs.
And killed a pregnant woman. Even if we didn’t know she was until after the fact.
But Ellie has moments of doubt and conflict whenever she confronts and kills Abby's friends. What about the hundred other people you killed without even interacting with them beforehand?
The game keeps telling you you're a horrible person for killing everyone, but there's no other viable way to progress. Especially if you play on harder difficulties where killing is mandatory to acquire resources and stand a chance in the later areas of the game. You as a player don't have a choice in choosing not to kill anyone because you can't progress if you don't.
As such, you don't feel like there's much reward or incentive out of this experience because you're strictly being told what you're doing is morally wrong and pointless in the end.
Ellie's murder quest stops dead in its tracks when her father's killer (the instigator of this quest) is at her mercy and she decides not to end her right then and there. Even after all the ballache of killing her friends, numerous faceless chumps and losing our family, we don't do it, because Joel said to her shortly before he died that she should learn to forgive.
It’s the biggest load of bullshit ever.
Not even bringing attention to the fact that if Ellie kills Abby in this moment, she would be depriving a child of a parental figure, the same way Abby did to her.
But that’s not even touched on because basic logic is thrown aside for the THEMES.
If I were to fix this ending, I’d make it a two way decision for the player to decide. They choose themselves whether Ellie should kill Abby or not. Like in both Force Unleashed games where you can choose whether to kill Vader or not at the end and get a different outcome.
But the game doesn’t want you to have a choice in killing Abby or anyone else, you HAVE to do it to progress. And killing everyone is wrong and you’re a horrible person for doing so. Prepare to be lectured to about the consequences of your actions PLAYER.
….
Can you see why this game stirs such annoyance and bile in people?

It’s like an amateur schmuck screenwriter who wants to flex how smart his content is but can’t back it up with any credible plotting, characters or story.
Oh but Neil Druckmann is an artist. He’s revolutionising storytelling in gaming, he’s a white Hideo Kojima!
No. He isn’t. He’s just a wanker. Probably one of, if not the biggest in the gaming industry, if we’re not factoring in the corporate schlubs like Todd Howard.
It pretends to be high art and smart by having flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks, but the structure of the final piece is completely ass backwards. As mentioned before, don’t show Abby teeing off Joel’s head then afterwards show me her petting dogs and hanging with her friends or her father dying in the first game. This should’ve come earlier.
But I guess he wanted that shock value so early on, so cheaply and shittily. That is actual amateur shit. This is stuff I’ve come across from classmates in my script writing classes at Uni and seen being slandered by the teachers. This full grown man has the backing of 200 million doubloons and is the creative director of one of the biggest game studios right now, and he was allowed to just piss it all up the wall. Faaaaantastic.
I’m sick of talking about the story.

Gameplay is pretty much the same as the first, though it gets incredibly tedious this time around because you're less invested. And not to mention, the number of drawn-out cutscenes or walking sim sections where you do nothing but move the character forward are constantly breaking up the flow of gameplay. It’s lame. I haven't played the first game in years, but I do not remember the ratio of gameplay to cutscenes being so heavily one-sided to the latter. There's big long sections where my controller was just sitting on my desk because the cutscene just kept going on and on. For the most part, the game just wants to be a movie instead.
Which btw, I can completely understand why they did a TV show now, given where this game's priorities seemingly lie.

I want to highlight one specific part of the game to make my point clear.
When you first get to Seattle, you have the option to go into a music store and play a song to Dina. A sweet moment in concept, but you don't actually play the song. You just sit and watch Ellie play the song instead.
Now since we're making a game (in theory) a good developer would tune his storytelling to the correct format. In an ideal scenario, YOU the player would be able to play this song. Make it a li'l guitar hero minigame. YOU the player are an active participant in this moment, you are serenading Dina with A-ha's banging tunes and strengthening this relationship between the two women.
For something as important as these two’s relationship, you’d want the player to be heavily engrossed or make some impact on it to get invested, because as it stands, the relationship in the actual game is dull and half-baked. They’re already together at the start of the game, so we don’t see it grow or progress.
So yea, that’s lame, and there’s dozens of bits like this where player input would strengthen their connection with the events going on. But as said before, the game is mostly here to lecture, with no actual decisions or impact coming from the player besides being forced to kill everything and everyone they come into contact with.

And it's so fucking long too. The pacing is horrendous. First hour of the game is nothing but cutscenes and walking sims. Wonderful first impression. The plotting as stated earlier is piss, but when you play as Abby, it becomes even more unbearable because it keeps going and going, diving more and more into lunacy that amounts to nothing and you forget that you were playing as Ellie once.
Sidenote, they keep talking and bigging up this prophet character from the SCARs in the Abby sections, but you never actually get to confront them at all. TF was that all for?! That’s like if Bioshock bigged up Andrew Ryan by showcasing his impact on Rapture, but you never get to confront him and instead forgets about him to go straight into the Frank Fontaine stuff.

Oh and one last note: the notes. Around 12 hours in, I was fucking done with picking up these things. They’re all pretty much the exact same, they’re all miserable and there is barely anything interesting being said in them or cool li’l stories you can follow through each one. It’s just people being torn apart, or subtle points to the THEMES of the game. And there’s just too many of them. It becomes laughable at a point at the sheer amount of them and that some of them have been left in one spot for decades without any interference.

Anyway…
Quite possibly the worst game I’ve ever played in my life. I could probably cite others that are weaker in core gameplay, but based on both enjoyment and overall story quality, it’s the most pointless and needlessly gruelling 25 hours of gaming I’ve ever experienced. I beg to god that they heavily change things for the tv show, because if they follow the sequel beat for beat, the goodwill from the first season will dissipate just like it did for the first game when Part II released.
Can we send Neil Druckmann to the void that Squidward goes to so he can relax to the sound of his own thoughts and ideas? He needs to stay away from any future Naughty Dog releases and the industry in general.
Not playing this ever again. Not even for the platinum, despite getting over half of the trophies on one playthrough.
It’s just not worth the misery.

The best game in the series. Highly recommend you don't play it on the Crushing difficulty, this is the toughest one yet, regardless of difficulty settings.
But hey, at least I never have to play this again on Crushing.
Sweet sweet rare trophy.

The epilogue sure went on a fair bit.

Story falters slightly and the villain is aboslute crap and it's more lightweight than the first game, but it's an enjoyable couple hours.
There's just very nice vibes you soak up while playing this. Especially when you're bumming around Harlem, meeting all the peeps and doing the missions.

Gameplay is as good as the last game, with a few new cool stuff you can do.
I liked the sidequest where we made a track out of environmental audio.
Webslinging is seemingly more fun, though that may be down to them switching the controls for air tricks around for easier use.
And yes, I played the entire game with the Spider-Verse suit equipped as soon as I unlocked it.

Neat little appetiser of a game.

Platinumed, and played the entirety of New Game+ as Undies Spidey.
We had Arkham Batman back in the day, kids today got Insomniac Spidey, and I can't tell who is more blessed.
Fun gameplay, great customisation, and the story?
Freaking phenomenal.

Spider-Man 2 bouta be this series' Arkham City all over again. I can't wait.

More of the base game, and if you like the base game, you're guranteed to enjoy it.
Storywise, it's got some neat twists and turns, the stakes amplify with each episode, as do the enemies (they get incredibly difficult to web up by part 3) and the drama gets real heated with Yuri. Wondering where this'll go in the second game.

Gameplay is as great as ever, you get these new minigun enemies that are a pain in the arse to defeat (the way the game tells you how to beat them is crap, just shock them with the electric webs and then go ham).
The Screwball challenges can be irritating, but provide a more challenging experience than the base Taskmaster challenges. Once you get the hang of it, it's smooth sailing.

Words cannot describe the glee I felt when I unlocked the Spider-Verse suit.

Solid stuff. A meaty bit of DLC.

For all the hype around this, my expectations were not met.
Maybe it's the PS2 of it all, but it is janky as hell. Especially the camera controls.

Maybe one day when I have the patience to try again, I'll win, but as of now, I'll leave this whack control setup, low polygon, cube nightmare for another time.

Or maybe they'll release a remake or remaster.
That'd be cool.

Of the trilogy, it's the weakest for me. The story was aight, and the gameplay is the same, but I couldn't get behind the different lantern worlds, they were pretty uninteresting tbh.

And I'm pretty sure some of the missions in the Batcave are glitched because the mission detector and progress meter are telling me there's stuff to do, but it just isn't there. So no 100% : (

But y'know what, everything that includes Adam West is fantastic. Especially that bonus level.
I miss that man.

All the nay-sayers moan that they spent half their gametime in a closet....I don't get it. Everytime I tried to hide in one, I got found, even when the Working Joe didn't even see where I had hidden.
Perhaps it's because I played it on the hardest difficulty. Or because all of y'all are a bunch of pussies who can't handle a few spooks and the constant threat of horrific death.

Ok, that might be a bit mean, and yea, even on the easiest mode, you'll die quite often and maybe you don't feel like carrying on.
But it is doable on the hardest difficulty. It's just a lot of trial and error. A real challenge. And y'know what makes games fun? Challenge. If there's no challenge, it's a boring game.
And Isolation is sure no cakewalk.

The A.I in this bad boy, holy hell, why is this not the norm for games for today?
The aesthetic and environments are stunning. Ugh, I wanna live in this game!
The gameplay is fun, inventive and offers a lot of freedom to the player.
The sound design works so well into the fear of the Alien. The escaping steam, banging pipes, or any loud noises sound an awful lot like the Xenomorph, and it shits you up even when it's not even there with you.
And the music. The music will start popping off for no reason at times and get ya blood pumping. It's exhilirating!

The nay-sayers complain that you end up doing the same few tasks over and over again, and whilst that is somewhat true, each section of Sevastapol brings a new challenge to spruce up your sequence of events.
A big bit of criticism I've seen is that there is a big lull during the section after we've dealt with the first Alien. Whilst I did sort of miss the Xenomorph's presence, the game instead strips you of your weapons, and gives you a new android enemy type to face. A new challenge!
And after all that hutzpah, you get to wander round an Alien nest for 20 minutes! (or 45, if you're me)
After that point, I wasn't that much scared of the Aliens, I was more in fear of the goddam facehuggers. They're so fucken small and they show up without any warning, it's insane.

Yea, I don't get most of the complaints. Except for the fact that the game started to feel a bit long by the end.
Isolation is consistently fun. I cleared it in like a week because I kept thinking about wanting to explore more and conquer it all! It's such an engrossing game!

In the future, I definitely want to play this again on the easier setting just to go back and collect everything, but also take in the environment even more.
I love the vibes so much omg.

In conclusion, fuck IGN for sinking this game with their crappy review. This is top tier gourmet gaming.

Redownloaded this over the summer because I got extremely bored one day and I wanted to see, given my hardened experience back in the day, coupled with my years on 2017 BF, if I could platinum the sucker.
Yeah, that didn't end up happening.

I remember being so hyped for this game back in the day. The amount of times I watched that three minute teaser on Hoth is unhealthy. But holy hell, was I psyched.
Then I finally got to play it and it ate up so many hours.
Never paid for any of the DLCs, but I was still stoked playing it.
Then in a few years, I moved onto BF2.

I was quite surprised even at the time that people didn't like this game. I can see why now, but I think it is still enjoyable, albeit the issues I missed before are especially glaring now, paticulary the grind for cosmetics, which is horrendous.

Hopping back in four years on, most game modes are sparsely populated, if even running at all. Supremacy and Fighter Squadron are both dead, and the others vary. Walker Assault is still the most popular, and is definitely the best game mode. Cargo is also quite good. Drop Zone too, but it's hard to get anywhere now with player count so low. Guess I'll have to kiss that platinum trophy farewell.

Never realised how easy it is to die in this game, which I don't remember happening much back in the day. Clearly the rust got to my skills.

I don't know if it's just my goofy ass, but this game looks way more visually stunning than its sequel. Endor looks drop dead gorgeous.

In conclusion, the best thing ever when I was 12. With seven extra years of gaming under my belt, the sparkle has gone, but there were and are far worse Multiplayer FPS'.

This game holds the title of the very first one I platinumed on PlayStation. That's cool.

Storywise, it's on par with LEGO Marvel Superheroes 1. So many characters at play in a huge narrative that demands participation from each one. The Crime Syndicate are entertaining foes and kudos to TT for bringing them mainstream. Returning characters are still great.

Gameplaywise, It's fun to play through, lotta new powers and abilites and even some reinvented stuff from LEGO games of old. It's the usual TT Games shtick but this one is definitely a lot more enjoyable than some of the modern releases.

Oh and stellar voice cast. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Clancy Brown, Dee Bradley Baker, Nolan North, Tara Strong, Tom Kane and all the other veteran pros. They're as awesome as always.

To sum it up, gameplay is ok, but the story, characters and humour elevate what might've been a mid experience.