Truly one of the best games I've ever played from top to bottom. The game sucks you in with its oppressive and haunting art style and atmosphere and leaves you with one of the most unique, free form gameplay experiences at the end. The amount of stuff you can do and interact with in this game to get one objective done is insane. This game caters to every playstyle with a special flair. Want to sneak past everyone the normal way, or blink through to your target while time is stopped. You'll probably get shredded taking on a cavalcade of guards head on, but bring a rat storm along and chain together executions... you get the picture. What are you doing still reading this. Play it!!

The most luscious, imaginative, innovative depiction of a sci-fi setting I've ever seen, and it's only used to as the backdrop of a world falling apart. Every little detail, each character and enemy and backdrop, feels both fully realised and never explained. The writing and artwork is so well executed that a character who never speaks is among the greatest protagonists ever. There are ideas here that a lesser developer would build a 40 hour experience around, but Transistor knows to never overstay its welcome, to layer incredible moments on top of each other while never giving away control from the player. An immaculate game.

And it comes with maybe the coolest soundtrack ever put to a video game.

What did I even want out of Dragons Dogma 2? I began this game with a severe sense of disappointment, frustrated that it wasnt something “more”. But Im glad the game has a much greater sense of itself than I did, unwaveringly retaining its unorthodox core with a much more grand presentation. When I get over myself, I see theres just as much here to love as the first game - I would be ungrateful to not appreciate its weird and rare nature.

However it must be said that I hate these characters and their side quests and Im glad half of them are sitting in the NPC Lost And Found (the morgue). I would have liked a slightly less vast open world full of nothing but caves and aged beast skags, but I had the most fun carrying pots down ancient cliff faces than I did trying to council Hugo on how to live his life after being a bandit patsy (with that council being "Ill throw you off the cliff myself")

Ive spent close to 6000 hours of my life on the 10 year Destiny project, with a hope (or maybe an increasingly morbid curiosity, I cant figure out which one it is) of where it could go. What profound thing would the Traveler have to say? What exotic societies and concepts reside in the bounds of the greater cosmos outside our little solar system? When it was all said and done, what exactly was the Final Shape going to be and what shape would we have to take to deny it? In the story of the three great nations and the three great queens, would it mean we would have to be the third queen?

And so I am beyond disgusted that the answer to where itll go is: nowhere. Nothing mattered. It was all just opium, just vapor and sawdust and pretty colors and shiny things, whatever it would take to mesmerize you for another year and for another $100. It fills me with rage, to have seen such fertile soil curdled into pigshit and tar. Art so negligent it should be criminal, work so poisonous it should be illegal. I am beyond hate for Destiny, and if theres any justice in the world itll become insolvent for Bungie and laid to rest, where its swollen husk can be pillaged by creatives who are actually worthy of its potential.

I say this only as a half joke, I think Destiny fans should be in prison. You let Bungie get away with it, you permit them at every opportunity with success for being unimaginative.

I'm a sucker for a flawed RPG and Vampyr has all the makings of a pre-GreedFall Spiders game, many of which have stolen my heart. Like most double-A productions you'll notice things like dated graphics and some technical issues that stem from having been made on a middling budget. However, developer DONTNOD Entertainment shows once again that they are one of the most creative names working in the industry today, and the unique ideas and compelling world they've crafted here make this title worth playing in spite of its faults.

Set in a plague-ridden London during the 1900s, this is a vampiric power fantasy mixed with a detective simulator (quests are even called "investigations") that lets you play doctor on the side. As you search for a cure for the epidemic that's sweeping the continent you'll be faced with a lot of morally gray decisions that will have serious impacts on the world around you. For example, a choice I made relatively early on in the story that seemed solid inadvertently led to an entire district descending into chaos, with a portion of its inhabitants either going missing, joining a gang, or turning into hideous monsters.

By far the most intriguing decisions you'll grapple with though are directly tied to the game's main hook. Every non-hostile NPC you come across can be fed on for a massive boost in experience points at the cost of their lives. While uncovering their secrets, healing them when they're sick, and completing side-quests for them offers a meager amount of EXP on its own, it also serves the purpose of enriching their blood and making it more profitable for you turn them into your next meal later on down the line. This mechanic creates an interesting dynamic where you can either help people out of the goodness of your own heart or raise them like cattle for the slaughter in order to get more powerful.

This is a significant feature because it essentially allows you to pick your own difficulty level. Choosing not to feed on people will ensure the world remains stable, but will make the overall game harder as enemies will always be at higher levels than you. Meanwhile, taking the alternative path and killing the locals for their blood will cause the city's status to deteriorate, but will allow you to unlock the most powerful abilities and can make combat a breeze. You can also strike a balance between the two options and only devour a portion of the population you deem unworthy of life.

In an impressive move DONTNOD put a lot of work into ensuring each character you encounter has a fully fleshed out backstory and set of motives. I met everyone from heartless serial killers to selfless hospital workers and plenty of types in-between. You can decide if the city would be better off without someone or not if you want to and that's a really cool feature. My one issue with it is that I never found talking to any of them to be all that interesting as your relationships with them never really go anywhere unless they are significant to the main story. So the only reason I ever bothered interacting with and learning about anyone was to get stronger, and even then I found myself skipping through most of the dialogue.

As far as issues go, this is far from the prettiest title on the market, but even the plastic looking character models can't rob this moody, gothic version of London of its personality and atmosphere. Load screens are long and you can even run into some random ones while exploring. I also experienced a few crashes. The biggest problems though are the lack of a fast travel system which leads to a lot of backtracking to and fro across the city and some trouble with the balancing at the very beginning and tail end of the game that are the result of enemies being too highly scaled above you. Part of this is intentional though to goad you into draining the NPCs of life as a means of somewhat simulating for you the protagonist's struggle with his constant thirst for blood. Which is creative, but frustrating nonetheless. There is a "story mode" where you won't have to worry about difficulty at all and can solely focus on the narrative, but playing that way locks you out of being able to get a certain trophy.

While known more today for their episodic, Telltale style adventure games, Vampyr like Remember Me before it makes a strong case for why DONTNOD should break out of their comfort zone more often. While they still weren't able to find the same level of critical acclaim here as they were with their Life is Strange series, they still created an exciting RPG based on original concepts that's worth looking at. Especially since its faults this time are more technical in nature rather than inherent to the actual design itself.

8/10

Midnight Suns is a very strange game about a bunch of Marvel rejects, some well known heroes, and Lilith, the mother of demons, summoning Chthon, a slumbering ancient god. The premise is really simple: No one wants to help Lilith summon a literal god, so the heroes need to stop her in order to save earth.

The game is a tactical turn based card game, mixed with social sim elements, where your heroes need some friendly talk from time-to-time, and maybe they even invite you into a book club, or ask for some advice. This aspect from the game works wonderfully, as you learn to love each and every hero from the roster, making their "friend story" unique, and rewarding. If you max one of them out, you are rewarded with a very powerful ability, and even a cool costume, so your investment at the end pays off.

The main character (The Hunter) is also fairly customizable, and your cards are very varied compared to the rest of the cast. However, when you enter combat, the mixture of your hero and your selected partners will create a deck, that you can customize however you like. Every playstyle is supported, and even encouraged, as the game constantly gives you cards, perks and upgrades to toy around with.

I really liked the combat, the social sim aspect, and even the fun hub world, that connects everything together, but I started to get tired from the story, that seemingly never wanted to end, and even came with a lot of clichés. Being a Marvel product, I was ready for some very cartoony story, but overall, the stakes were there, and the motivations were fine, but the pacing was horrible.

Also, some of the characters are utterly annoying, while others are way too likeable, and some of them are weird. Every person can easily find a favorite from this bunch, because they are very varied when it comes to personalities.
Some of my favorites were Blade, Deadpool (DLC), Magik and Scarlet Witch.

Overall, I had way too much fun with this game, and I was utterly invested in it's gameplay loop, but the story's length is way too much, and I wanted a bit more variety in terms of combat scenarios but that is about it. I can wholeheartedly recommend Midnight Suns to anyone who wants to have a fairly good time with a somewhat Lovecraftian Marvel game, and enjoys turn based combat.