One of the best DLCs ever probably! I don't like roguelite hell I hate it even! But with this I saw it through most of it. Story content was good enough to drive my desire to continue and the boss fight was fun everytime. Feeling like it's hard at first but getting stronger and understanding the patterns, areas, powers etc felt good. Homages to og trilogy, some new backstory bits about it are all nice additions to the franchise. Gameplay is solid as always and may I say that I enjoyed Valhalla much more than main campaign of Ragnarok. It was just more enjoyable without all those slow ass parts that dragged the main game. Stil nice story plus more frequent action, best of both worlds! Also I don't think it's unfair to compare this to No Return of LoU-Part II and man this just sweeps the floor with that. So I guess I can give roguelites a try more often if they have a good story to tell with a combination of good gameplay. But not one without the other please, right Naughty Dog?

I am VERY CONFLICTED about Rift Apart. It's an absolutely stunning showcase for the PS5 in every way, and it feels like a legitimate masterpiece most of the time. But then it just has to do something dumb every once in a while to bring the experience down.

First: The Good!

I've said it in multiple reviews before, but I really am in love with the DualSense. The haptic triggers, advanced rumble, and speaker (when used correctly) create a thoroughly engrossing experience that I will never not be a sucker for. The way that you half-pull a trigger for certain functions feels amazing, especially with the gentle little stop in the middle. The sounds and voices that come out of the controller throughout are just fun, and the rumble does a great job of making each weapon you use and each surface you walk on feel different. I love it!

Beyond the controller, the weapons feel great to use in and of themselves. I leveled each weapon up fully and spent all the Raritanium you can acquire in a single playthrough. In the end, there were very few weapons I didn't adore. I was a particularly big fan of the Negatron Collider. Big laser good.

I played this game right after finally getting a 4K OLED TV, and it's easily the most visually impressive game I've played to date. It's easy to take incredible graphics for granted, but I try to stop and say "wow" every once in a while, and Rift Apart probably got more wows out of me than anything I've played since Uncharted 4. And can you believe how good all that FUR looks?!?

Anyhow, missions are fun, characters are enjoyable, weapons great, visuals stunning, music solid, blah blah blah. Why didn't this end up clearing a 4/5 for me even though I was absolutely enamored with it most of the time?

The Bad!!

The Clank astral projection mini game is... fine. Just felt like puzzles for puzzles' sake, there was nothing particularly compelling there, I'm not sure if it's filler or a misguided attempt to break up the near-flawless Ratchet/Rivet gameplay, but I think the game as a whole would be better off without it.

The Glitch mini game is worse. A tiny cute spider robot shoots viruses? Okay that's kind of cool I guess, but... it's in a game that already has a lot of fantastic shooting. Why are we interrupting that for some bland laser-zapping? They try to give Glitch her own antagonist here, but it just ends up feeling pointless and hollow. Playing the Glitch levels felt like watching a bunch of 4-minute webisodes that spun off from your favorite TV show. The showrunners swear that these matter and are worth your time, but... are they??

Those are both downers, but they don't ruin the main third-person shooting and platforming. You might even argue that they make you appreciate the main gameplay even more by giving you something bland and tedious to compare it to! But, unfortunately, even the Ratchet/Rivet stuff ends up stumbling once you try to go for 100%. (And let's be real, if I'm enjoying a 3D platformer collectathon, I'm gonna collect every single thing) In the first Ratchet & Clank, levels are wide open areas which give you a variety of options for potential paths between any two points. Rift Apart mostly eschews this approach (with Savali being the main exception), instead focusing on segmented levels built around scripted set pieces. These make for some great and exciting scenes, but once you're trying to navigate a world like Sargasso or Cordelion without just following objective markers, you realize there's often one railroaded path that connects islands or rooms together, with deviation not often being possible. In a more open setting, exploration is a joy and wouldn't invoke the term "backtracking" at all, but completing most areas of Rift Apart feels a bit too much like repeating levels of an on-rails shooter, hoping you don't accidentally miss something because you'll have to begin the sequence of island-hopping again.

It really is a great game, and I'm glad I played it. But man, it's such a shame that it's not as consistent as it could've been.

I've always liked Lost Legacy a lot. It combines all the great changes and improvements that Uncharted 4 brought to the Uncharted formula, but with the structure and pacing being more in line with the OG Uncharted trilogy. And on top of that, you have an entirely new main character dynamic to experience: Chloe's charismatic treasure hunter veteran presence clashing against Nadine's pragmatic straightforwardness. Now, this is 4th time I finished this game, and I'm still loving it as much, if not more than before.

I appreciate the small steps that ND took to add more spice to U4's gameplay, like the silenced weapons, or the lockpick-able safes spread all over. And then you have the open world section early on, which feels like a game inside a game because of how well-made it is, despite being relatively small and self-contained. Not to mention how well designed all the encounters are. There's a lot of interesting terrains and traversal mixed in these fights; I distinctly remember one where you are approaching enemies by way of multiple large pillars, so you can try closing in unseen by climbing through the longer paths, or just snipe away from afar if you have the means.

Then in the center of it all, the dynamic between Chloe and Nadine is just so fun to see. The girl talk between these two is so refreshing, in the grand scheme of things. There really is a future for the series beyond Nate, and I'm glad that ND explored this unlikely pairing of characters instead of something more predictable, like Sam and Sully. In a way, it only proves how flexible the Uncharted formula is.

And the most significant feeling I had during this playthrough is the fact that I do like Asav as a villain more than before. He's not quite the most memorable or well-written villain in the series, but I absolutely love the scenes where he goes on the offensive and fights our ladies head-on. Nadine described him as being more than what his exterior shows, and I feel like the game did show a bit of that, although he still needs way more screen time.

Also, the sequence at the end of the game is simply breathtaking. It's somewhat underrated because of how much it takes from their previous biggest set pieces, but it's definitely the most technically impressive set piece in the series. It's an incredible vertical slice of the Uncharted series as a whole, and it's a pretty poetic way to end it all.

Lost Legacy is not the gigantic leap forward that is Uncharted 4 (and it wasn't meant to be), but on all fronts, it is a great Uncharted game. I would put it as the 3rd best in the series. It is a cool and good thing that ND and Sony didn't just pump out a bunch more of these games and potentially bring down the series' reputation; the respect they have for one of their most successful series should be an example for everyone else. But man, I would love a new one someday, especially since its been 7 years hiatus, and there's barely anyone else that makes these sort of action adventure games these days. At least we have Indy filling the void soon-ish!

Ah, The Order 1886. I finished this once a while ago, but I came back to get the platinum trophy. I've pretty much enjoyed and loved 90% of Sony's first party output in the last 10 years, and of the other 10%, this game is perhaps the one I wanted to like the most. The setting and world of The Order is right up my alley: an interesting twist on the Knights of the Round story, set in a steampunk-ish London, with a tasteful supernatural edge to it all. But it stumbles more often than it excels.

Most of The Order's failings can be seen in its first hour. The opening is incredibly slow, and in return, it doesn't offer a meaningful reason as to why it would be this slow. You'll also see an overreliance on QTEs, using them when they don't need to be used, and when they shouldn't. This lack of engaging interactivity is also felt through the movement, as the game insists on making you walk/climb so slowly through tight corridors for most of its runtime. All of this coalesces into this feeling of sluggish, uninviting gameplay.

And then there's a bigger problem: the game lacks the gameplay variety and depth needed to keep people engaged at all times. There are neat things in the combat, like the high variety of weapons available, and the Blackwater ability, which is a pretty badass slo-mo auto-lock-on move. But the level and encounter design is just so lacking. It's like having a cool sports car to drive, but all the roads are just simple straightaways and 90-degree corners. There's a part early on where you're just blasting 30-40 enemies in a courtyard and it's so basic. You barely have to move from your original cover. It's more like a stationary shooting gallery, and there's at least one of these every hour. Then you have the non-combat sections, which are hampered by the stuff I mentioned earlier, and most of the collectibles you find are just not exciting. Sure, the graphics are pretty as heck, and the environments are quite detailed, but sightseeing will only get you so far.

The worst of all is the half-breed fights; they're so disappointing. I get so mad when I think about these fights. Either you'll have a shitty Infinity Blade clone (remember that iPhone game?), or a shootout with the dumbest creature AI in the game. Just wait in one corner, shoot the heck out of them when they pop up, and press X at the right time to dodge their attack if needed. Rinse and repeat. It never changes. God, what a waste of potential.

All of this is the textbook example of all the worst qualities of cinematic prestige gaming. When you wrest control away from the player, you're supposed to have a good reason for it. Maybe you want to showcase great facial animations by taking away the camera controls and having these cinematographed cutscenes. Or maybe you want to slow down the player's movement to properly time a cool scripted set piece. This game fails at most attempts of these. The best of the genre understands how to balance developer intent with user experience; just look at every single Naughty Dog game in the last two decades. They constantly juggle between multiple gameplay flavors fluidly, and they put so much care into the way all of these flavors connect and interact with one another. As somebody who is incredibly fond of this type of game, seeing all these flaws condensed into an experience this short makes me feel so annoyed like I've been a hater all along.

...Okay, the worst has come to pass. I have talked a lot already, let's speedrun some other things about the game before we end this.
- I enjoyed the story quite a bit. The game is at its best when it's building this world of long-living Knights. Lines like "...It's a motto that has seen me through decades" and "Two revolutions have taught me that danger are on both sides" makes me so excited to learn more about this world. I also really like the angle of the Knights living a cursed life; "Men were never meant to live this life."
- Sir Galahad is a pretty great protagonist to play as, and I particularly liked the company of Lafayette and Lakshmi.
- I mentioned a bit about the weapons before, they really cooked with some of these. The Arc Gun is seriously one of my favorite video game weapons in the last 10 years. Shoutouts also to the Dragoon Revolver, the Thermite Gun, and the Falchion Rifle.
- The Letterbox aspect ratio certainly doesn't help with the boring level design: it especially lacks verticality. It only adds to the overall claustrophobic feel of the game. Also, I wish there were motion blur and film grain slider settings.
- Having unskippable cutscenes sucks ass.

If there's any one game that deserves a sequel to right all its wrongs, it's this. The setting of The Order is just too exciting for me, and I'm still quite bummed that we'll probably never see more of this world. Except if Sony decides to make a TV show or movie about this, I guess.

I’ve held off on writing about this game for awhile due to needing more time to absorb it all. I’m still playing this game even though I’ve beaten it, and I think, just like Yharnam or my friend, Isaac’s mom, I’ll be returning readily for a long while.

I love the cryptic, Lovecraftian nature of Atropos and the ever-changing environment that begs for our heroine's blood. Some of the biomes fall flat, but it’s such a small issue that it’s not really worth complaining about.

The gameplay loop, with its heavy hitting weapons that just light the screen up and the frantic and lightning movement, is pure bliss. Honestly, I’ve even woken up early just so I can play it before work. The bosses aren’t on Bloodbourne's level, for example, but they are still stunning in their beautiful attacks and Lovecraft image.

I spent ages trying to piece together the plot and paint my own mental picture of this visual and mental trauma that Selene goes through, and I love that Soulsbourne-esque archaeological take on a story. The game's difficulty never really feels bad, as there is never really a feeling of punishment; like Sisyphus, you just push the boulder again.

I will be abandoning Helios for years to come.