I love Remedy’s games and always have. From the first Max Payne all the way to Quantum Break there have been ups and downs, but Alan Wake still remains my favorite game from them. Control takes place in the same universe as Alan Wake and even explains what kind of happened down there, as you play as Director Jesse who has a crazy gun that can transform and you fight off weird enemies call The Hiss and your goal…well…I can’t tell you what the end goal is as this is Remedy’s most incohesive story yet with many plot holes and even after the credits rolled I still couldn’t make sense of the story at all.

Let’s start with the exploration. Control takes place solely inside the Federal Bureau of Control and is a generic boring and ugly building that is basically a labyrinthine maze that requires a ton of backtracking and is a pain to navigate. There are several floors in this building and spread throughout are Control Points which you use to level up Jesse and fast travel. Even though fast travel is nice trying to find new areas from those points is a serious pain. Throughout the game, you can find files to read and solve simple puzzles that use your telekinetic powers. Jesse can throw objects as weapons and break off pieces of the buildings as well and hurl them. This is a key combat mechanic as you will swap between this and your weapon when either is recharging.

Combat in Control is pretty boring and frustrating. In fact, I would have rather had no combat in this game and it would have been more enjoyable. Shooting enemies that float in the air, have shields, larger health bars, and some bosses are all fun, but not in Control. The game throws an insane amount of enemies at you at every turn and there are no cover systems so you must run around like a bafoon trying to avoid explosive enemies, bullets, and projectiles. You don’t get to levitate until the last fourth of the game and I never even got the dodge move or shield as I completing side missions is an absolute chore and I didn’t care enough to see the level up system all the way through.

Many times I died because you can’t heal unless an enemy has dropped health and if you picked it all up you’re screwed. This is essentially a broken mechanic and I hated every minute of it. Not once did I enjoy the combat because instead of fun and unique bosses you get tossed into arenas and gauntlets and waves of enemies to chew through and it seriously hinders progression. Not to mention they respawn in certain areas when you’re trying to cut through somewhere. The gun itself isn’t fun to shoot as it requires recharging and there’s no ammo or reloading. There are various forms such as a sniper pistol, machine pistol, grenade launcher, shotgun pistol, etc. but I only stuck with a couple of forms through the whole game. You can add perks to Jesse and each weapon that can increase health, decrease recharging, energy costs, etc. and these are vital to surviving.

As you explore the game you will notice Remedy’s signature trippiness as level twist and turn and transform and there’s a supernatural aspect to the game of course, but it’s all for naught. Nothing in the game is ever explained like why can I pull a string three times and get warped to the Oceanview Motel and have to solve the same stupid puzzles inside. Ring the front desk bell, go into a room remember the placement of objects, ring the bell again, and move the objects in the next room. It’s stupid and makes no sense. Why is Jesse communicating with this Hadron entity and who is her brother anyways? What purpose does the Director have in all of this and why does a slide projector harness so much power? Yeah, makes about as much sense as it sounds and nothing is ever explained. It’s hard to push through the boring and frustrating combat only to get another confusing cut scene that seems like a random piece from a storyline.

Control looks pretty good, but Nvidia’s DLSS anti-aliasing is awful here and the game is a blurry mess even with MSAA enabled. The engine is decently optimized as I got a steady 60FPS through most of the game with RTX on and it rarely dropped below 45FPS. However, the art style is dull and stale with concrete hallways and corridors. It doesn’t have a unique identity and that’s sad as Remedy is good at this.

Overall, Control is a disappointing follow up to Remedy’s legacy. With Quantum Break being as disappointing as it was, was Alan Wake their last great game? Control isn’t the game we all wanted, and I honestly won’t remember this game a week from now, and that’s sad as there’s lost potential here with Remedy’s signature touches that just don’t quite connect. The combat is boring and frustrating and very repetitive, lots of backtracking, and a confusing mess of a building to explore just doesn’t strike me as fun. If the story was at least solid it would be worth it, but it makes no sense and when the credits roll you just shrug and wonder why you wasted your time.

A title from my childhood that I was way too attached to. It's not without issues; there's only 3 maps that repeat throughout the game's 7 levels with minor changes, and the mission structure can get repetitive with only a few different types of objectives, combined with a fluctuating difficulty curve. But even now, you'll find it a cold day in hell if I pop this one into the PS2 and don't come out with a smile on my face. A wonderful gateway to GTA stuffed to bursting with collectibles and unlockables to keep you coming back, all wrapped up in a blanket of Simpsons charm.

An amazing action game designed around dying and trying again... again... and again.

The premise is very Kill Bill. A group of people murder your master and you go picking them off your kill list one by one.

Story isn't important here. It's the gameplay.

It's addicting in the same way a FromSoft game is. You get your ass beat over and over again until you become a master at the game. You understand every enemies move set. You become Ultra Instinct Neckbeard playing this.

The game like from soft games can be beaten in record time once you understand everything, but understanding everything is the challenge.

The platinum trophy requires you to beat the game by Age 25. Essentially meaning you can only be knocked down twice through out the entire game. This seemed IMPOSSIBLE when I started but by the end of my 20 hours with this game, I went and popped in the PS4 version to do it all again. The second time took me 4 hours to do everything. Overcoming insurmountable obstacles like that are the beauty of games like this and Sekiro. It gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment well afterwards too.

My GOTY so far. Will likely stay that way by years end. If not I'll make sure to edit this passage out.

Neon White is an enigma. It has some of the tightest and most fun gameplay I've experienced in a long time. Every level feels so well designed in a way that encourages the games main premise, speedrunning.

As you play a level more and more, you start seeing ways you can use the wealth of extremely fun tools the designers have given you to shave your times down by seconds or grab collectibles. It gives a sense of accomplishment I feel is difficult to replicate in most games.

Oooooh, and the soundtrack. It features some of the most enjoyable and intense breakcore goodness from one of my personal favorite artists, Machine Girl. The soundtrack is nothing short of incredible and worth even just a listen, even if you haven't yet played the game.

Also, I found myself personally loving the game's artstyle, I never got tired of looking at the subtly blocky and angelic structures, enemies and characters throughout the game. It's very unique in that sense, I have never seen any game go for a similar style to it. It was something I thoroughly enjoyed throughout my whole playthrough.

However there is a catch to all this. If the game ended at that, I would've easily given it 5 stars due to it's variety of content, extremely fun gameplay and good level design. Unfortunately, for some god forsaken reason, a really horrible dating sim social was implemented in place of a story and character development. I hated it when the modern Persona games did it, I hate it now.

And that's not even to say the characters or story are at all good. The writing is nothing short of cringy and laughably horrible throughout the entire game, and had me feeling extremely uncomfortable at certain points due to how horrible some scenes were.

Overall it relies on anime and storywriting tropes like stereotypical and exaggerated characters and the classic "main character has amnesia" garbage. It's lazy and unfun to sit through. I found myself skipping all the cutscenes around 2/3 through the game as I just wanted to get to the gameplay.

I very much enjoyed my time with this game, although that is not to say I think it's overall the great game I make it out to be when discussing the gameplay, level design, music, etc. The story really is that bad for me to give it a poor rating.

After playing through this game twice, I think it is hard to justify a $15 price. It should be charged for much, much more than $15. From the moment you fall down to the King's Pass up to the moment you're about to deal the last hit on the game's final boss, it never stops captivating your attention and raising your interest. There is just. so. much. stuff to do in this game that it's ridiculous that you're paying only 15 dollars for it.

I enjoyed thoroughly exploring hallownest's caverns and scavenging for secrets and other items, and I got excited every time I found a new region of the map, with it's own theming, vibes, enemies and secrets to find. I hear many people say that they don't want to play this game because they don't enjoy getting lost. It is not nearly as big of a deal as people make it seem. Just go wherever you want if you don't have a map on you. That's it. It's that simple. If you end up in an area that you need an ability to reach, just turn back and go in some other direction. It was never a chore for me.

The hand-drawn sprites and Christopher Larkin's amazing composition work so well to create an immersive environment for each of the regions in the game that sucked me in for hours, unaware of how much time was passing(if you are a student, set an alarm or something while playing this). Team Cherry succeeded in making a world that felt very real, despite how fantastical the scope of the game is. Hallownest is an undead kingdom, filled with husks of bugs roaming the roads who attack the passerby. No explanation for what led Hallownest to its' current state is ever directly told to you, you have to find out yourself. I think hollow knight having a traditional storytelling method would completely ruin it and take away from how special it is. Hollow Knight has options for every kind of player. If you somehow don't care about the story, you can skip it by not reading the various lore tablets found throughout the kingdom, and not using the dream nail unnecessarily, making the game go by much faster. This brings me to another aspect I think makes this game very special, the Dream Nail.

The Dream Nail is a genius item given to you that in addition to being necessary to complete the game, allows you to learn the secrets of the world, and gives access to several other boss fights scattered throughout the game, and let's you access the area you'll spend the most time in after beating the game. There is so much that can be done with the dream nail, and it is all up to the player to decide if they want to complete the new objectives.

That brings me to the charm system. Charms are equippable items that change how you play the game. The charms are made so that you can accommodate how you want to play the game by changing around what charms you have equipped. It works very well and there isn't much more I can say about it besides that it is a well-designed system.

This game is a metroidvania, so expect a lot of backtracking to areas you encountered that you could not reach before getting a new ability. This game does provide a method for you to mark suspicious areas on your map, or you could make a mental note. But, if this isn't your thing, then don't pick up the game, because there are a LOT of abilities. But if this is your kind of thing, I could not recommend more for you to buy this game. The gameplay is tight and satisfying, the story is heartbreaking and well written, the visuals are beautiful, and it is horribly undercharged. So many things in this game are optional, and despite me not being a completionist at all, it was very hard for me to miss out and not want to complete those optional objectives. This is a masterpiece of a game and I am excitedly waiting for Silksong.

Stray is a beautiful, poignant meditation on history's mistakes and on how future generations are left to -- and, with luck and determination, can -- pick up the pieces.

This game is being described as a platformer, but I don't think that's accurate. It's an exploration game. You traverse a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk city, with your progress being gated by environmental puzzles, locked doors, and occasionally hostile NPCs. People are calling it a platformer because of its emphasis on jumping and verticality, but the jumps themselves are handled by contextual button-presses -- you can't actually miss a jump.

The real joy of Stray lies in appreciating its world. Art direction, color and lighting, music and sound meld to place the player in a neon-lit purgatory that somehow manages to feel both cavernous and cozy. The choice of a cat protagonist is a stroke of genius here, as it helps the city -- which is objectively somewhat small by modern video game city standards -- to feel like a massive place in which to get lost exploring every alley and rooftop.

The game's shortcomings feel pretty minor after a first playthrough. My main complaint has to do with the jumping mechanics: it was often hard for me to tell where I could and couldn't jump, and progress in a given direction was often barred by the unexplained absence of a jump prompt for a surface that seemed clearly within reach.

Call of Juarez has been a very rocky Wild West series. The first game was terrible, the second game was great, the third game was horrible, and the fourth game is great. Will the fifth game be horrible? Who knows. What I do know is that for $15 this is a very enjoyable shooter with a pretty good story and a narrative inspired by Bastion. You play as Silas Greaves, a “retired” bounty hunter who went after the most notorious outlaws in the west such as Jesse James, Kid Curry, The Dalton Brothers, and The Sundance Kid.

The story’s cutscenes are told through black and white stills, but the narrative is really fun. If you have played Bastion you will know what I’m talking about. As you play the game it is being narrated as you go. Sometimes things will change right in front of you, on the fly, as Silas narrates his tales. Sometimes you will go through a whole section of a level, a bar patron will ask Silas if that really happened, then he will back up and correct himself. You then play that part again in a different way. It’s really fun, and as you progress you start to question if Silas is really who he is or even telling the truth. The battles get more outlandish and even the patrons start questioning him. The story has a nice twist ending and I was hooked the whole time thanks to the tight gunplay and fun story.

The game is very simple and basic at heart. You get four different weapons: Dynamite, pistols, shotguns, and rifles. There are a couple variations of them, but they shoot damn well and I have to say I haven’t had this much fun in a shooter in a long time. While the enemies repeat often and it’s the same shootouts throughout the level — the environments change often and the fun narrative keeps things mixed up so you are never bored. Every so often you will have a duel with a boss. You need to use the two analog sticks to control the focus on the enemy and the speed of your hand. It’s tough to concentrate on two things at once but it makes it fun and a bit challenging. During shootouts, you can slow down time and highlight enemies in red. You also get a “last chance” by being able to dodge the bullet that would normally kill you. Push both sticks in the opposite direction to save yourself. These little elements are just fun and a bit different from your typical military shooter.

Some boss fights require you to hide and sneak around or use dynamite. There are also hidden secrets in the game that tell the real-life tales and occurrences of these real-life outlaws and skirmishes. They are pretty interesting for anyone who likes some history in their game (Assassin’s Creed fans!) That’s all there really is to it. The game is simple yet a lot of fun. You can do challenge missions afterward and a new game+ to continue with your leveled skills. There are three categories: Trapper/Melee, Long range, and short range. As you advance each section you unlock a special gun in that category and it makes the game both easier and more fun.

Overall, Gunslinger is a really fun game. There’s not much wrong here other than it being bitten simply for some people. The graphics are fantastic, the gunplay is solid, and the narrative is a lot of fun and will keep you hooked to the end (I rarely put the controller down!) For $15 this is one of the best downloadable games you can buy this year. It may also be a good jumping in point for anyone who hasn’t played a Call of Juarez game before.