Honestly one of the best story-based puzzle games I have ever played in my entire life. The combat sections are hard but fun and rewarding when you parry correctly. And witnessing Senua descend into madness every so often was jarring but seeing her fight back against was motivating for me to keep going and as well as for personal reasons. Currently ive been going through a rough patch but playing the game and fighting off the northman and refusing to succumb to madness related to me in a way as to keep pressing on and to keep going and you will fight off all your mental demons you are dealing with. Bit of a long and personal review of this game but it really stuck with me and i loved it, can't wait for Hellblade II now.

This game is THE RPG of the decade, and has been the best RPG to release in gaming since Skyrim released in 2011. Choices matter (partly, will explain later), the game is monstrous in size, the story is captivating, the world is beautiful, the game looks good, runs good, and plays good. The game is phenomenal, a testament to the love of roleplaying and fun that has seemingly been lost in the genre, but I can't say it's quite as good as people say. I have a few complaints with the game that I'll go into, but before that, I wholeheartedly recommend this game. I cannot put it into words how incredible this game is, but I absolutely recommend it. What's going to follow in this review is my thoughts with the game, and then a few subjective critiques I had of the game.

To start with, the gameplay is addicting. This game takes turn based combat in an open environment with player resource management and makes it a multi-faceted dance of strategy and action. Character abilities and spells are all interesting and play into a grand scheme of defeating enemies like toppling a line of dominoes. Encounters make you clamor for an opening to turn the tide, sometimes a little too much. Certain combat encounters (a majority of act 2) are not designed for the game at all, and don't necessarily encourage player freedom with swathes of high health, high damage enemies that don't necessarily feel fun to fight nor strategize against, playing into a spellcasting and ranged meta that kind of disturbs the fun in playing martial characters. More on the balancing later.

The story is full of mystery and intrigue, uncovering the secrets of a cult with the ambition to topple the world, and for a time, it really is a story that grabs you by the throat and drags you along as you desperately try to find a cure for the parasite eating your brain apart. Until it's not. I love the story to death, but the reveals have little impact, and dilute the story at best, but break it's legs at worst. To me, the story comes to a crawl in act 3 as all the companion side quests rear their final stages, forcing the main story to slam on the brakes to give the player time to get everything done, and this really screws with the perception of the stakes for the ending. At one point, you're rushing to the city of Baldur's Gate to beat the clock on the cult dedicated to subjugate the world, and then the next, you're fetching letters from a cat on top of a church, giving the player extreme narrative whiplash.

The balancing in the game gives me horrific flashbacks to actual DnD. Martial classes are boring and will be constantly getting their shit rocked until they just give up and join the metamancing cult, while spellcasters remain the top dogs of the game, and either trivialize combat encounters (friendly), or make the difficulty skyrocket to infuriating. The game will be constantly kicking your kneecaps in until you quick-load enough times that you have enough meta knowledge to actually beat encounters. This is one of my biggest gripes with the game, being that you can't feasibly beat some combat encounters first try on a first playthrough, and it feels as if Larian's approach to certain encounters in the game was to swarm the player with high health, high damage, high resource enemies that will certainly put them in the ground enough times until they find a way to win. In certain games, this is the design behind an impeccable boss-fight. Bashing your head against the wall that is a Fromsoft boss-fight is gratifying and engaging, rewarding the player for paying attention, and not giving up. The game does not promote that, shoving the quick-load key down the player's throat until they finally power through an encounter by cheesing fights with whatever they can get their hands on.

Weapon and armor variety is honestly a little disappointing in the game. Every weapon feels the same (granted, it's turn-based, not really any way around that), with no real distinction between variations save for the occasional free spell every short rest or extra damage type added to damage rolls. Couple that with the same two models used for each weapon type, a sad quantity of legendary, unique weapons, armor that barely even feels like the rags off a peasant's back, and barely looks any different to the last variation that has one less armor class. Armor class doesn't feel impactful enough to push the player to up their defenses, and weapons teeter-totter between barely being better than what you've got equipped, and eclipsing every other weapon you'll find until you pull one off a boss' corpse.

Choices matter, but it doesn't feel like choices change anything. This is mostly subjective, and may be objectively incorrect, but I felt as if every repeat playthrough was just a reskin of the last. This NPC says something new, this encounter is slightly different, etc. I never felt like I was experiencing a different side of the story, just a different variation of events. The game hardly incentivizes you to make tough choices, making the facade of choices mattering fall apart, because.. well there's no tough choices. Do the right thing or the wrong thing, that's all it really came down to for most things in the game, not to mention certain choices are pointless, and just railroad you into the alternative anyway.

While those critiques seem harsh, those are my thoughts on the game, and overall, it's a phenomenal game and I do absolutely believe it's GOTY, and the best RPG of the decade. I would 100% recommend you pick it up, but keep in mind it's not perfect, and it's certainly been overrated as of late, phenomenal as it is.

I have a love-hate relationship with this game. After getting my PS2, I kept wishing for this game, and some time later I finally got my hands on it. And for every positive it has, there's a negative.

As I mentioned in other reviews, I wasn't so picky when I was a kid, so this was super fun back then. But upon replaying it a while back, the nostalgia goggles shattered and the glass got into my eyes. It's extremely slippery, to the point that it's not worth attacking with the "fighter type" character because of the risk of flying off platforms, and going slower is encouraged when dealing with enemies and poles, and you absolutely DO NOT want to make a Sonic game that forces you to go slower.

And yet, with all the bullshit that can happen with this gameplay, the level design ain't that bad, it can be fun and hectic at its best moments, though I'm not a fan of most stages being floating levels in an infinite sky box. The boss fights are mostly homing attack spams, and every other boss battle instead of facing Eggman or a rival team, you fight waves of enemies, which goes for too long. The main takeaway from the gameplay is: It can be fun, but also very annoying.

I'll be brief about the soundtrack, since it's the one thing SEGA can't miss, at least with Sonic games, though I will say that the first cassino level has one of the most annoying songs I've ever heard in a Sonic game. Other than that, no complaints, great work as always ("SONIC HEROOOOOOEEES").

Being the first multi-platform Sonic game, the visuals are much less impressive than the previous game, which was developed for dedicated hardware with devs a lot better used to it than competing consoles. It can look like the first Sonic Adventure sometimes, a 1998 game. They greatly improved visually for their next games, but Sonic Heroes was the sacrifice they had to make before learning how to make games to other platforms.

Stories in Sonic games can be rated within a spectrum, with 0 being "non-existent" and 10 being "actually good". Sonic Heroes would be a 3. Neo Metal Sonic is cool, but otherwise it's such a simple story that I wouldn't blame people for not remembering it at all. It's mostly there to serve as context as to why characters are going through these levels, and it barely even varies between teams.

Speaking of which, this is this game's main gimmick: You can play as 4 different teams comprised of 3 members: A speedster, a flyer, and a brawler. And each team was supposed to offer a different experience, both in story and gameplay. However, the story changes are - as previously mentioned - simple, and the gameplay changes are basic but can actually change things a bit.

Team Sonic (Sonic, Tails and Knuckles) is the standard path with some high speed parts and time trials as secondary missions, Team Dark (Shadow, Rouge and Omega) is "hard mode" with lots of enemies and having enemy-killing quotas as secondary missions, Team Rose (Amy, Cream and Big) is an actual easy mode with less enemies and shorter levels with ring collecting secondary missions, and Team Chaotix (Espio, Charmy and Vector) are a very distinct experience with each level requiring a specific mission to be completed.

As a kid, I really enjoyed it (Even with a weird bug that wouldn't allow me to actually save my progress, so each sessions was a restart), but as a grown up it was mediocre. Turns out it probably always was mediocre, but I didn't care at the time. I wouldn't recommend this over most other Sonic games, play it only if you're a franchise fan and haven't already.

SCORE: 6/10

To begin, I'd have to summarize Ultrakill in one word: Stupid. This game is absurd, and honestly is a testament to how insane a skill ceiling can get. I don't have much playtime compared to other die-hard fans of this game, but I would still consider myself a die-hard fan of this game. The skill ceiling is beyond immense, there are hundreds of different combinations of stupid movements and inputs to do hyper-specific tasks, and yet I still find myself using all of them at any given moment in-game. It is a top-shelf movement shooter that outshines even Titanfall 2, one of my favorite games of all time.

At first, my initial thoughts on the game and it's systems were "really?"
My first impressions of the game were very good, but I hadn't come to understand what made the game so special, but the more and more I had played the game and seen other people play the game, I was astounded at how much I missed.

Let's start with the movement. You have a jump, three dashes, three wall-jumps, and you can slide. That's it. If you're confused on how I can praise the movement so highly, I don't blame you. I was a little confused at first, too, but there is quite a bit of depth behind the limited selection of movement options, making it possible to zip around a stage at lightspeed. There is more so than I can go into detail here, but that is going to be a common theme in this review: Depth.

The gameplay, at first; honestly isn't that special, many veteran players of this game will describe it as being juiced up on adderall while clamoring for your next refill of health, but new players won't be experiencing that at first. Yet again, it comes down to depth. Ultrakill is faster than DOOM, and more vertical than Quake, and the potential for how absurd your gameplay can get comes down to the player. It is some of the most addicting gameplay you can get in a game, conjoining skill, difficulty, flair, and game sense into one neat package. The game incentivizes playing stylishly, and experimenting with new options as much as possible. The built-in style meter is constantly ticking up based on what you're doing, and the more you do, the bigger the number you get at the end of the level. Combine this with a bonus multiplier to style you gain if you use different weapons more often, and the game manipulates you into trying out all these wacky combos just to clear a stage. For once, a game isn't holding your hand all throughout it's runtime. There's barely even a tutorial, it introduces your movement mechanics and how to heal, then gives you a gun and says: "go nuts."

The soundtrack is one of my favorites in gaming, encapsulating the feeling of the game, and also encapsulating the feelings of the level they're in. Every song is curated to match the design of the stage it plays on, all of which are impeccably designed, with stylization and genuine love put behind every single area. Secrets are well-hidden and rewarding to find, and the story the game tells through small hints spread throughout the stages is captivating. Overall, Ultrakill is my favorite game, it takes hold of the genre, and throughout the game, stays true to its form. Highly recommended.

Ori and the Blind Forest wasn't the first indie metroidvania. It wasn't even the first big one. But it certainly was one of the most important modern entries for the genre, and it still holds up surprinsingly well after almost 9 years.

The game plays very smoothly, the platforming is fluid (I pretty much did the water tree segment in one motion!), with my only gameplay gripe being combat. It's kinda slow, there's a lot of button mashing, some enemy attacks don't have tells to help you avoid them, and there's technically only one boss fight that I can remember, which later becomes a normal enemy (Not even the main antagonist is fought). Other than combat, Ori is a fantastic platformer, the level design is very well made, and skillful gameplay is rewarded by it (You can even get some collectibles and power ups before the intended time by pulling off stunts).

The story is simple, but it's beautiful and cute, with a nice message to it. And that's good, it doesn't need a complex storyline or worldbuilding (Which is nicely done in its intro section and while you explore the world) to be well made and worthwhile.

The music is great and perfectly fits with the atmosphere of the game in general and each individual section of the map. Same goes for the sound design, never was there a moment in which the audio parts of the game failed to deliver (And Ori sounds so cute, especially when emerging from water bodies).

One of the best things about this game, however, is its looks. This game is nothing short of gorgeous, and it's no overstatement to call it one of the best looking games of its time, even nowadays and after an even better looking sequel it still shines. Set pieces are a highlight, the place after the water tree segment made my jaw drop.

It's a short and sweet game (Only took me about 13hrs with some thorough exploration), which is good in almost every segment, being held back by its combat. Overall a great game, and would recommend to anyone that likes platformers and metroidvanias and wants a short but worthwhile adventure for a week.

SCORE: 8.5/10

I wanted to love Silent Hill: The Short Message, but with a complete lack of environmental storytelling, outdated looking character models, and no subtlety whatsoever, it's difficult to enjoy it. The visuals (outside of characters) are gorgeous, the monster design is terrifying, and I loved exploring the Villa while running away from the cherry blossom monster, but the story really kills it for me. It wants to drive home an important message, but it is too reliant on explaining everything right when you see it instead of letting the player figure it out themselves--making it difficult to take it seriously sometimes. There are good bones here that could let it rival PT, but it needed a complete rewrite of its story and a reimagining of its main character, Anita. Honestly, if Anita was either a silent protagonist or if she rarely talked, this could have elevated the game from a 2 to a 3.

This game is severely overrated. The story is bland, mediocre, SLOW...

Whoever designed the UI and the systems built around it whenever you're out of combat should be fired. Everything is slow for the sake of being slow.

The way the story and narrative is presented is also slow because potato. Why on earth is there a narrator that narrates what I've literally just seen 15 seconds ago? Why does the plot need to be this slow? The plot is simple as FUCK, there is no depth, there is no need for so much unnatural buildup.

I've never been a fan of combat in these kind of games but I'd say that this is one of the few ones that I actually felt good playing. That is until I hit a fight where I was underleveled and forced me to grind, and then the same thing happened next battle and this went on and on and on.

Overall not a bad experience, music and art makes up for how bad the narrative is, but still nowhere near anything past a 6 or 7 out of 10.