A brutal experience. In that sense it is probably equivalent to the feeling of the Gears themselves as they fight against the endless horde of Locust, but it was an exhausting experience to me playing through this game. Every victorious encounter and pop-up telling me I had reached a checkpoint was met mostly by a big sigh of relief, rather than a victorious fist-pump.

I assume this game must be a blast to play with a friend; Gears of War really seems to dig its team mechanic, but it mostly winds up being frustrating as Dom, Baird, and Gus are not exactly...useful. They'll distract enemies, but offensively they won't really do much good and they'll die quickly, leaving you to have to go revive them. Nobody revives you when you go down though...

That's all coupled with the fact that the Locust are brutally tough. Your bullets heal them, in fact, or that's what it seems like at least, as you unload bullet after bullet into their bodies or heads, after which you'll duck back in cover to reload and recover some health. There's a nice flow to the combat, and as I said, the difficulty of it makes sense in-universe, but it also never felt satisfying to me. The shotgun was about the only weapon that could give that 'oomph' to enemies that I was looking for, but even then really only on one type of enemy.

Gears of War gets criticized for being one of those games that killed colour for a while, and while I totally get it, I also think this game looks really good. I have to imagine it must've been a kind of 'first time Final Fantasy X' moment or something to see this in 2006. Obviously the graphics are dated now, but it's very clear that the quality is still there, and that it was impressive on release.

I'm not sure I could recommend playing Gears of War nowadays if you don't have any nostalgia for it. It could be interesting from a history perspective, as an Xbox 360 exclusive, the cover mechanic that this game seemingly brought to the fore,... but the genre has evolved, and it might be more enjoyable to play any of those games than it would be to go back to this one. But if you love a tough challenge, this could be a really good option.

Death is an interesting concept in video games. On the one hand, it is needed to create tension and the tension adds an important and exciting aspect to the playthrough. On the other, death breaks immersion. You're in the game, making it happen, living through it, and then you see a game over screen and you realize, "Oh right, I'm playing a video game."

Mega Man is not an immersive game. It hails from a time when games were just games, entertainment bits in the way you'd watch an episode of a TV show. And good for it too, as you will die a lot in Mega Man.

Modern video games are accused of having bloat; endless amounts of meaningless sidequests just to have content, just to pad out the game length. Mega Man, a game from 1987 also has bloat. The bloat is also part of the game design. Death is the bloat.

Other video games released at the time have their difficulties. Doing a deathless run on your first time through Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda is not easy...but it is not impossible (especially if you go to them now with experience in video games, back then it was far harder). Doing a deathless run on your first time through Mega Man is impossible. Every encounter with an enemy is basically teaching you what the enemy does and how it hurts you by hurting you. The flying cutters will hit you the first time they appear. The big hopper will hurt you the first time it appears. If not by their attacks, just the area where they spawn. Mega Man loves spawning enemies at points where you have to jump over a gap. It teaches you by killing you.

Doing a deathless run on your first time through Mega Man is impossible, but is almost required to beat the game. The game is unforgiving with health drops, throws enemies and bosses at you continuously and to beat it, you will need to know the level, spawn locations and boss strategies by heart.

And that is the bloat. If you use the Suspend Point function on the Wii U VC, you can get through this game in a short amount of time. If not, you'll probably spend months honing your skills, perfecting level after level of a NES video game.

Is that worth it? If you like bragging to your friends that you perfected Mega Man 'the right way', it is. You can pat yourself on the back afterwards for your skill. If not, Mega Man does not really have anything to offer you.

Grueling on the thumb. The artstyle looks really cool, but it's unfortunate that I didn't see a lot of it as I was way too focused on the rhythm meter. Even after beating the game, I'm not entirely clear on whether I'm terrible at rhythm games, this game is just hard, or somewhat poorly designed. There's certainly a lot to keep track of, as just pushing the buttons in the rhythm isn't enough, you also need to keep your peripheral vision on where the enemies are to shoot in the right direction. Couple that with the fact that enemies sometimes stay out of the line of fire but still 'near' that line, it can be confusing and difficult sometimes to really figure out what you did wrong in a given level if you can't succeed.

Not terribly into metal, but I enjoyed the vast majority of the tracks in the game. I also appreciate that some effort was put into the writing; it could've easily been complete filler, but they made something out of it.

Review only for GAA: Adventures

Great Ace Attorney: Adventures has all the charm of the Ace Attorney series, but feels in some way like a DLC prequel.

Great Ace Attorney takes place in 19th-20th century Japan and Britain and feature Ryunosuke Naruhodo who stumbles his way into becoming a lawyer and travels to England to fulfil his studies alongside his best friend and example Kazuma Asogi and judicial assistant Susato Mikotoba. I won't say more to avoid spoilers, but there also isn't really that much more to say. GAA: Adventures struggles with having a real main and overarching plot. Previous Ace Attorney titles obviously had distinct and individual cases which didn't always tie in to the main plotline, but Adventures truly feels like it doesn't have anything particular going on. There are hints here and there sure; best friend Kazuma Asogi travels to Japan with a goal and a purpose which doesn't really get revealed too much. Opposing prosecutor Barok van Zieks has a deeper story which gets alluded to in the final case. Secondary companion Herlock Sholmes (yes, Herlock) and Iris Wilson are involved in some plot which is again hinted at in the first and final case. Really, the final case is the only case where things really happen (as well as the first case) and is in that sense also the only that clearly feels the most like an Ace Attorney game. It's definitely the most exciting and intense one, but it just feels like a shame that the other case are unable to match this energy. Truly, the majority of the game feels like a way to get to know Ryunosuke and Susato a little bit (as Ryunosuke has a crisis of faith after a certain case) but it just feels like for the majority this game serves as a setup to the second game, Resolve.

Gameplay-wise, the core Ace Attorney dynamics are intact. There are however three new gameplay mechanics. These gameplay mechanics are part of the problem area of this game: pacing. Because the game wants to give them their chance to shine, but also doesn't want to overwhelm the player, they basically have you sit through a case where the gameplay mechanics get properly outlined. Case 1 is just a standard Ace Attorney tutorial case, save for one example; it is incredibly long. Adventures loves having you press every statement, and seems more eager than most to have the protagonist face seemingly insurmountable odds, with the quick scene of collapsing as the prosecutor or witness has come up with a great rebuttal...even though you might already know how to counter it. In this one the first new gameplay mechanic gets introduced; multiple witnesses take the stand, and they might react to each other. This mechanic feels a little bit useless; when the reactions are very clear, there's no point in not pursuing, and there is only one instance where you have to pursue when there is no clear reaction. It feels like it doesn't add anything particularly interesting.

Case 2 does not feature a trial, merely an investigation. Here the second mechanic gets introduced, which is the Dance of Deduction. Sholmes will deduct a case and it is up to you to correct him. This is part of the Investigation, so you are moving the camera to see if you can spot anything in the room or on a character. This one is a bit more engaging with a few tricky things to spot. Case 2 suffers from not having a trial though, which in my opinion were always the more interesting parts of Ace Attorney games.

Case 3 is the first case in England, and is only a trial. Here the final new mechanic makes its debut: the summation examination. England has a jury, and it is up to you to convince them otherwise if they deem your client guilty. This is the mechanic that at its core is the most interesting, but which also feels the most like pure padding. There is a lot of pressing jurors here to then pit them against each other, but there's a lot of summation examinations where it feels you already have a piece of the puzzle for the actual trial, and now you have to sit through this segment just to get back to it.

Case 4 and Case 5 are full cases, featuring both an investigation and a trial. Case 4 features that middle-case syndrome of other Ace Attorney games, and Case 5 finishes the game off in style. It is here however, that another problem with Adventures pops its head; the characters. The Ace Attorney franchise is full of memorable and likeable characters, and Adventures has...few of those. The witnesses in case 1 & 2 are forgettable and dull, and none of the characters in case 4 are very engaging either. I especially found the client of case 4 to be on the grating side, but some of the witnesses were frustrating as well. On the protagonist side, Ryunosuke is just a little too insecure, and Susato lacks the spark that makes Maya or Trucy so likeable (and I'm not even a big Maya fan). Herlock and Iris are fine throughout. Gregson, the Gumshoe of this game, lacks some of this charm but is overall a pretty likeable fellow, especially in regards to Iris. van Zieks is an interesting antagonist as he has a clear sense of justice; this is not a man who will tamper with evidence or witnesses to win. He is, however, somewhat racist. It's one of those things where you can say that this fits the time period, but it's so noticeable because none of the other major British characters (except for one) treat you that way. There is a hint that van Zieks has a reason for being so nasty, and at the end of case 5 there seems to be a level of respect, but it still makes it difficult to really be attached to him like you would be with Edgeworth, Franziska or Godot. Although I must give a shout out to the Skulkin Bros., who are some of the best sidecharacters in the entire franchise.

Technically, the game looks beautiful, and the soundtrack is on point as is the case with so many Ace Attorney titles. Especially Gregson's theme is a favourite of mine.

Overall, this game has all the inherent quality of the Ace Attorney franchise. It's just dragged down by not really being about anything for the majority of it, and a weaker character roster than most. But the final case was really quite engaging, and at least leaves an appetite for the sequel.

Far Cry: Primal is an adventure. It offers you a lot of freedom to traverse and explore the world, but the lack of linear structure is also its weakness.

Far Cry: Primal opens up with you, Takkar, joining your tribe in a mammoth hunt for meat. While you manage to fell the beast, a sabretooth tiger pops up to kill your comrades, steal your food and chase you off to parts unknown. You're left to quickly gather some materials to hunt for food, and trek through a cave, where you encounter the sabretooth again. You manage to scare it off and find Sayla, a woman who's also part of the Wenja tribe but whose tribespeople were killed by the Udam, a rival cannibalistic tribe. She asks you to take vengeance and to rebuild your people.

This is more or less all the story you're going to get in the game. FCP is not really a story-driven game; it's all about the adventure. You set out, gather materials, kill enemy tribes and wild animals and try to end up on top of the food chain. The gameplay loop is enjoyable, or it was at least for me; I had the advantage that this was my first Ubisoft open-world game, so I wasn't dragged down by Assassin's Creed or other Far Cry games. Still, the first story missions you receive are to recruit specific people to your tribe: a shaman, a warrior, a huntress, and an inventor. These are the people who will then later offer you quests, alongside the gatherer Sayla who welcomed you in the beginning. None of the people are particularly different; they don't receive a lot of character development in their missions and being cavepeople, they are all varying kinds of crazy.

Yes, cavepeople. Far Cry: Primal is a game that takes place in caveman times. There are strenghts and weakness to this setting: one positive is certainly the setting. The world is named Oros, and it is beautiful. There's plenty of beautifully lush forests to run through, lakes and rivers to traverse and wonderful vistas to admire from high rocky mountains. There's also a part of the map that's essentially all snow, which is a great sight but like most snow areas, loses its luster after prolonged exposure.

The early parts of Far Cry: Primal are tough. You have to gather materials to make all your weapons and to progress the missions. Combat is two-fold; either you'll be facing the enemy tribes of the cannibalistic Udam or the fire-worshipping Izila who have their own unique challenges and fighting styles but are generally manageable, or you'll have to deal with Oros' true hell: animals.

Animals will tear you to shreds and not think twice about it. This is the area where there is actual enemy variety; Udam are more physical and will charge at you with clubs while Izila will generally chuck spears, arrows, rocks, and fire bombs at you from a distance but each animal type really has their own fighting style. Dholes are like dogs and generally easy to take care of, but wolves will often fight in packs and overwhelm you early on. Big cats like leopards and jaguars will use a hit-and-run fighting style while bigger animals like bears and sabretooth tigers will physically overpower you. You'll be half dead before you notice a badger snuck up on you and is tearing you to shreds, and their hardiness means you won't kill them too quickly either. And woe upon you, poor cave(wo)man, should you anger a mammoth, as it will mostly likely result in a quick game over. Later on, you'll get missions to hunt the most ferocious animals, and the Blood Mammoth as it is called, could genuinely fit into a survival-horror game.

The animal menace can thankfully be dealt with as you are the Beast Master. Tensay, your shaman, will quickly instruct you in the way to tame wild animals and once you manage to recruit a sabretooth tiger (which scares most other animals when they approach you, leaving you to traverse the world in relative peace), the game really opens up. I found it to be very interesting game design, as there is a clear difference in difficulty before and after taming a sabretooth tiger because animals really will not hesitate to attack you, most are quite fast or hit incredibly hard, and are much more difficult to deal with as opposed to enemy tribes.

As the game opens up, the game becomes more comfortable to play. The more outposts and Wenja you add to your tribe (which can be done by clearing sidemissions and story missions), the more resources get added to a general resource stash that you have access to; this makes it so later on in the game you don't have to hoard as much wood and rocks and animal hide as your villagers will do it for you. Most of the missions are pretty simple 'kill these people' or 'gather these things'. There's some variety but not much. The game also gets easier as later on you'll recruit one Udam tribesman and one Izila tribesman, who will give you special skills. The Udam, Dah, teaches you how to make a berserk bomb, which turns enemies crazy and makes them attack one another. Once you have these, outposts and bonfires can be cleared in seconds; you let your owl fly over them and drop a few, and the enemies will take care of themselves. You could also drop sting bombs, which contain bees which will easily take out all but the strongest enemy types. It doesn't make the game completely easy though, as dropping bombs will generally alert enemies and later enemy camps will have horns that can be blown into to call for reinforcements, so a good combination of scouting and timing when to go for the Berserk Bomb is crucial.

After playing many hours of Far Cry: Primal, you'll reach the ending, and actually be surprised with some character and story moments. Both the Udam you recruit and the Udam leader, Ull, have some surprisingly nice scenes in the story finale. After defeating both Udam and Izila, the huntress you recruited also has a scene that made me somewhat surprisingly emotional as it played out. The strength of FCP without a doubt is how easy it is to just slide into it, to get into the gameplay and explore and do missions. Halfway through the game you will probably start missing a little depth; there's plenty of skills but many that aren't particularly useful, several weapons that don't feel like they fit a particular use, and a general lack of reason to do the missions you're doing. The characters will ask you to do something and you'll do it because it's a quest, not because there's a real reason in-game that makes a lot of sense.

However, Far Cry: Primal succeeds in what is, for me, the most important thing in a video game: it's fun. It's a good time. It's a pleasure to be in the world and marvel at the wonders, to lose yourself in the sounds of the animals, and to just pick up your spear, whistle for your sabretooth tiger, and trek out on another adventure.

Dust: An Elysian Tail is one of those games that's good, but you're especially interested in what the future could hold for it as a franchise. It's got a lot of good things going for it, but they're all not worked out well enough that you can call it a really great game, but you see all the potential there to make something actually special.

The story is one of the first examples of this. The game stars Dust, an amnesiac warrior with a talking sword and Fidget, a Nimbat who is your sidekick. The plot meanders for the most part, with Dust just looking for clues to who he is and saving people on the way. Most of the plot and the twists happen near the end of the game; at their core, there are some cliches but I felt the game does enough to put its own spin on it to make it not a complete rip-off. The characters (and especially the side characters) are pretty emotive. Dust is a pretty stoic character for most of the game (with room to be awkward or joking at times) while Fidget is more of a comic relief sidekick, but I found the voice acting for both somewhat grating at times which made it difficult to really get attached to them. The main problems are incomplete attempts to tell the story; there's some dialogue options later on that feel like the game wanted to do split paths, but nothing happens there. The big bad of the game, General Gaius, is someone who is described throughout the game as a ruthless monster, but every actual scene that features him, casts him in a more positive light. It feels like the game is missing a chapter to really highlight the character of Gaius and his relation to Dust, but maybe the indie development cycle didn't allow for that.

Gameplay-wise, Dust: An Elysian Tail has been named a metroidvania. While the naming is understandable, there's not that much backtracking to be done, and the vast majority of it is purely to pick up some chests if you want those. There's one level with a significant amount of backtracking throughout and it's also the biggest chore. This is mostly due to the fact that the screens are pretty big (where in Metroid or Castlevania the actual screen can generally be traversed pretty quickly) and horizontal. Enemies respawn every time you leave the screen and love getting in the way, which makes it almost obligatory to fight them.

The combat is a mixed bag. It feels good and it looks really cool and great. The shame is that your arsenal is very limited. You have a normal attack, and early on the game teaches you two combos. Later on, you don't get any more combos. Very quickly you will learn that the Dust Storm attack is the way to go. This means you let Fidget throw a projectile, and then spin your sword so you can send out an attack that is powered up by her projectiles. Fidget will unlock different kinds of projectiles after each boss you beat, but the electricity one really makes all the other ones obsolete. Especially the aerial variant of the Dust Storm is a great weapon, as it offers invulnerability to the vast majority of enemies. So combat will always look a cool force of chaos on your screen, but it is quite unfortunate that the combat will feel like a chore later on, as it'll just feel a lot like button mashing. There's also a parry you can do, but there's very few enemies that will really offer the opportunity to do it, as all the smaller enemies will generally crowd you to the point that you won't be able to see when you have to do your parry.

Graphically, the game is very pretty. The backgrounds are lovely and detailed, the enemies have nice variety in their design even if they are variations of each other, and the characters are easy to keep apart. The actual character sprites when they are having a conversation feel lower quality, but not to the extent of being bothersome or ugly.

On the audio, the music was enjoyable without being extremely memorable. In a game where there's a lot of traveling around, not having any grating music is definitely a good point, but I also doubt I will look up any of the tracks of this game on YouTube later.

Overall, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a fine, solid game, without being anything more. The ending leaves room open for a sequel, but I can't find anything about it potentially happening online, which is a shame, as all the systems are there to be improved upon and perfected to create a truly awesome title.

Race the Sun was a blast. To me, it's a great example of a 'pure' video game; it's just down to the gameplay to entertain.

I see other reviews talking about how it resembles a mobile game or is too expensive; I can't really judge it on that because I don't play mobile games and I didn't have to pay for it as I got via Games with Gold. But I found Race the Sun to be an enjoyable experience. The levels get randomized each day, so there's variance (even though the patterns of each region stays the same), but this also allows you to strategize and memorize routes to complete your objectives. The controls are simple, and there's a few useful tricks that the game doesn't tell you that you need to figure out on your own, but nothing too brutal to prevent progression. The objectives can be similar, but I generally got lucky enough that it felt varied to me, so I always had different options of what I needed to be doing. And while the game is challenging, I never felt incredibly frustrated or unfairly treated, which made the gameplay more addictive and engaging.

Technically, the game isn't anything special, but the graphics and the sound do what they're supposed to, especially in the emergency portals sections.

Honestly, Race the Sun was an engaging, but also generally relaxing experience for me. A great game that I'd recommend everyone try at least once.

The consensus on Pokemon generations evolve over time. Growing up, Gen I and Gen II definitively ruled the roost. Afterwards came Gen III, which was well loved, but didn't create the same energy or immediate adoration that Gen I and Gen II carried on release. When Gen IV came out, Pokemon fatigue had started to set in for me, and for a lot of people who grew up with the older Pokemon games.

Throughout the years, Gen III and Gen IV have gotten a redemptive reading. Children who grew up with these games, as I did with Gen I and Gen II (I was a child with Gen III as well but we'll leave that out for now), were now on the Internet, talking about their memories playing these games and having their first video game experience, let alone Pokemon.

Gen III deserves its redemptive reading. Gen IV does not. This generation is held up by the Gen II remakes and Platinum to a lesser extent. These games aren't bad, but for me they're easily the worst mainline Pokemon experience (although I will admit Gen I and Gen II have a nostalgia bias for me).

Let's start with things Pokémon never really does particularly well: story. The story of DPPt is your basic Pokemon story; you're a ten-year-old child on an adventure to become the best, while stopping an evil team along your tracks. The evil team is Team Galactic, and they're easily the worst of the evil teams. They look dumb, and the vast majority of the Grunts have some really bad Pokemon. This makes sense in the grand scheme of their leader, Cyrus's, plans, but it makes a lot of the encounters boring and non-threatening. There is an attempt to make the story slightly more dark, with the capturing and abuse of the Lake Trio, but that is so short and ineffective, it doesn't really stick with you.

But worse than the evil team plot however, is the Road to the Pokemon League. There is one big reason for this: Sinnoh. Sinnoh is the least interesting region to go through in the Pokemon generations. There are many reasons for this: for one, it is visually uninteresting. You have to understand that Gen II had a lot more interesting designs as compared to Gen I; there were more rustic/feudal buildings, the Radio Tower, Burned Tower, Olivine Lighthouse,... all had unique sprites. Obviously the entire game was in colour as well. There were railroad tracks, different grass sprites in the National Park, different kinds of trees,... The jump to Gen III was even more insane; there were beaches, no longer implied but actual visible sand that left behind footprints! There were bustling market port towns and resort port towns, towns near volcanoes, towns in treetops, and Rustboro with its own unique architecture. Sinnoh has essentially none of that. Oreburgh has a coal mine which you barely do anything in, Canalave has a bridge that goes up to let boats through, and then there's the snow routes and the Great Marsh. While these are new dynamics to Pokemon, they're the perfect example of the downside to realism in video games. There are deep patches of snow or mud for you to get stuck in and have to wiggle out of. This accomplishes nothing other than to annoy you and probably get you stuck in another random encounter if you're not using Repels. I could also give a shoutout to Sunyshore, which has a pathway consisting entirely of solar panels, but Sunyshore is a city that has nothing to offer the player, except for the final Gym.

This is what Sinnoh lacks; reasons for exploration. So many of these towns have little going on and don't even have interesting visuals that make you want to check the houses or talk to NPCs. From a navigational perspective, Sinnoh is also woeful. Hoenn has a beautiful traversal loop, but Sinnoh wants you to jump all over the place in the main quest alone. This design is especially egregious once you're hunting roaming Pokemon, as you can very easily find yourself on the wrong side of a mountain or a water route with no easy way to get to where you're going on foot. These problems are also exacerbated by Gen IV's poor Pokemon spread; you'll be seeing a lot of the same Pokemon in every single patch of grass, no matter how far you progress.

Tied in to these traversal problems are also Gen IV's main gameplay flaw: the HMs. I've always liked the concept of HMs; I think they're a great way to gate content and to push the player in the right direction. I think the execution however has always been flawed. HMs should be items you use (and it is optional to teach them to a Pokemon as a move). But Gen IV expects you to keep Rock Smash, Cut, Defog, Surf, Waterfall, Fly, Rock Climb, and Strength on your Pokemon at all times. It is baffling that Game Freak had the idea to get rid of Flash, but then bring in Defog anyway. Traveling through Sinnoh just isn't a fun time.

Gen IV did make battling a lot of fun though. Most Gens have one big gameplay change they're associated with, and Gen IV's might be the biggest of them all: the physical/special split. Moves are now physical or special depending on the move, and not on their typing. This completely changed the usability of a lot of Pokemon and created a pretty big dynamic. But even here there are some flaws; Gen IV is notoriously slow when it comes to depleting health bars (and Surfing). These make battles drag on much longer than they should. Speaking of Pokemon, the Gen IV dex is not immensely impressive; there's much more fun stuff to be found than in Hoenn for instance, but there's also a bunch of weaker designs and a lot of evolutions to previous-gen Pokemon, none of which look particularly good.

I never got too invested in the bigger mini-games on offer here; the Super Contests seemed an even bigger time investment than the Contests in Gen III did, and the game part of the Underground was meant as a multiplayer with your friends, but the benefits seemed small.

Technically, as mentioned before, I found DPPt to be disappointing. There's very little to set it apart from its predecessors, and it doesn't feel like it takes advantage of the DS hardware at all. Contrariwise, the soundtrack might well be the best of all the games. There's tracks for different times of day, and I love the general jazzy undertones that are present in a lot of the tracks. I could say that the battle tracks (aside from the Champion) are a bit underwhelming, but said Champion track makes up for a lot of shortcomings.

So, all in all, Gen IV are not bad games. They're Pokemon games, so they meet a basic standard of fun that is inherent to the series; I felt satisfied when I finished it. It's just that every other Pokemon game I've played has scratched the Pokemon itch much better.

Final team:
Luxray (Cat Viper) Lvl. 57
Infernape (Azula) Lvl. 56
Floatzel (Weasel) Lvl. 58
Chatot (Octavius) Lvl. 58
Dugtrio (The Mole) Lvl. 57
Tauros (Ram) Lvl. 57

Lost Planet 3 is a video game. It's okay.

If that sounds like an underwhelming intro...then I agree with you. It's just that Lost Planet 3 is one of those games that doesn't really sit with you. It's not a bad time; there were some frustrating moments, but every time I was done I felt fine. I also never had the feeling of desperately wanting to play more though. It's one of the most middle-grounded gaming experiences I've had.

The game stars Jim Peyton who is headed for E.D.N. III, a frosty planet, to mine for T-Energy to solve the energy crisis back on Earth. While the premise is simple, the story is one of the better parts of the game; there's a few nice surprises along the way, Jim Peyton himself is written quite well, and the plot keeps you engaged with what's happening all throughout. Tonally, the game does feel somewhat odd. The setting and situation at hand would seemingly lead to more serious and desperate situations, but most of the crew that man the home base are kind of goofy and weird. There's Gale, a young guy who's in charge of your machine and is pretty hyper, a crewman constantly on the lookout for the warmest spot in the base, a kooky scientist, a pair of engineers where one only ever mumbles,... The actual plot never turns goofy, but all the writing around it definitely takes a less serious tone.

Gameplay-wise, Lost Planet 3 is a bog-standard third-person shooter. There's a cover system, but it's only relevant in specific encounters; the majority of the enemies you'll face without any cover, and it doesn't feel like a huge loss in those scenarios either. What is not bog-standard in games however, is the Rig.

See, Jim Peyton doesn't mine with a pickaxe. He uses...well, he uses little posts that absorb energy, but to get there, he uses his Rig. The Rig is basically a big, lumbering machine. Think a Gundam if our current engineers had to seriously build one. Yes, the Rig unfortunately is as lame as it sounds. It's clear that the designers wanted the Rig to be a core aspect of the game, but it just doesn't really work. It's very slow; I wouldn't say that you as a person are faster than the Rig, but it certainly feels that way, so every time you're traversing areas it just feels like it takes forever.

This is exacerbated by fights in the Rig. Whenever you encounter normal enemies (the alien Akrid, endemic to the planet), you can try to kill them with your Rig or get out to shoot them. Shooting them is much quicker and easier; it's not that the Rig doesn't do damage, it's just that hitting them when you're so slow is just a major pain in the behind. Once you encounter bigger Akrid however, you'll generally be locked in your Rig, leading to a fight. These fights generally turn into QTE-events; you block a few attacks, then a scene happens where the Rig grabs the pincer/stinger/arm that was attacking it, you hold it up, and then you use your drill or welder to deal damage. You repeat this a few times, and the enemy Akrid dies. None of these encounters are thrilling; they just feel like a chore. These Rig fights also have problems throughout the game; you can pick up parts to improve your Rig, but at the start, you are not very tough, and the chance of the Rig going down are pretty high. Later on, you'll have gotten a few upgrades like a welder or a shock-claw, but these are tied to story progression, so it's very easy to forget you have them, can use them for combat,...or what button they're tied to. I don't have a perfect memory, but it hasn't happened to me before that I've had to check my keyboard config in the penultimate boss fight.

Technically, the game is okay. I enjoyed the snow planet setting; while snow areas generally get boring after a while, I feel the design of E.D.N. III had enough variety to not have me bored throughout. There's also some great sound design when you're navigating Akrid nests, as it sounds very gross, and icky, and intense. The game does a really good job of tensing you up in areas, potential dread around every corner. It's not a horror game, but it takes inspiration from them for some parts, and the sound is a big part of it. I did have to turn off the Rig radio though; country rock only? No thanks.

All in all, if you just want an enjoyable third-person shooter, you could do quite a lot worse than Lost Planet 3! You could, however, also do better.

LIMBO is a well-loved game. It's got a 90 on Metacritic and won a whole bunch of awards. Playing it now, I think that has to be put in the context of 2010. Maybe it would still work now, but I feel like LIMBO lives mostly off off the idea of video games as an art form. Aside from the auteur nature, it doesn't have that much going for it.



LIMBO plays like pretty much any puzzle-platformer. It doesn't have a particular mechanic it can call its own; there's box moving, timers, magnetic/gravity play,... One mechanic that is maybe more unique is how some levels rotate and you constantly have to adapt to the wall becoming the floor becoming the ceiling, but its not like LIMBO takes ownership of this mechanic and presents it as its thing. Neither does it do this with the brain bug mechanic where you're forced into a specific direction until you hit sunlight or a ceiling...thing eats the brain bug off your head. These mechanics are tied to a set of levels and don't really appear afterwards.



It doesn't help that the brain bug mechanic is pretty annoying too. Beyond the gameplay aspect of it, it slows down your nameless main character, who is already kind of slow. This is where more of that auteur nature of LIMBO comes into play; for the dark and dreary setting, the slowness of the child adds to the feeling of dread, but there's sometimes when you're trying to figure stuff out or have to redo a segment because you died a couple of times where it's just grating and a chore.



It hits the right notes for a puzzle platformer; solving a puzzle gives a good feeling! However, there's other puzzles where the solution just didn't feel right. I couldn't rightfully say whether I didn't like them because they frustrated me or if they were designed poorly (relative to the rest of the game), but some did not give me a feeling of "I should've figured that out", but more along the lines of "They expected me to figure that out?".



On a technical level is where the game attains its identity. There is only black and white, and no sound except maybe for an oppressive drone or the sound of insects and machinery. Every death is displayed pretty gruesomely; given the name of the game, it seems like a very specific choice, beyond just being gruesome for the fun of it.



That art direction ties into the art-nature of this game. It is very distinctive, with the eyes of the main character also being the only eyes you see in the game. Every other human figure that appears is merely a silhouette. The bugs don't have eyes either. The game doesn't have a story, beyond what you make of it as you play. There's no codex, no cutscenes, just small implications for people to figure out themselves.



I figured that this game was going to blow me away. It didn't. It's not a bad game by any means, but this kind of artsy is not really my thing. Kentucky Route Zero is a game where the art-nature hit me a lot more, and I was a lot more invested in that world. This was a nice distraction, but I'm thankful it was a short experience, because I don't know how positive I would've felt if it had dragged on.

This has always been one of my absolute favourite games. As a kid however, I never did manage to beat Braska's Final Aeon. Older and wiser, however, I finally managed to end this part of my story.

Story is a good thing to start with on Final Fantasy X, as I think it's absolutely one of its strongest points. All of the characters are believable and well written; Tidus gets a lot of crap but given the situation and where he comes from, makes perfect sense. The voice acting gets critiqued as well, but I think that's mostly down to some poor directing, rather than actually bad performances. It says plenty that a lot of the themes that are central to the story are actually still relevant, as some parts of the world are still ruled by religious doctrine that suffers no opposition. While Final Fantasy X doesn't look like the standard JRPGS of that time (or rather, before that time), certain mechanics still live through. As I did more traveling around the map and talking to people than I did before, I was pleasantly surprised at how much backstory and lore could be gained from talking to people in Luca and Guadosalam among others.

The strength of the storytelling does not just lie in the actual writing but also in the visual storytelling. There's the Sending at Kilika (which is in my opinion, the most beautiful and my favourite cutscene of any video game), which starts with Yuna's look of hesitation transforming to determination as she commences with the act. You also have Yuna's pained expression at the end of the game when the aeons need to be ended, as they have been true allies to Yuna for the entire duration of the game. This visual storytelling also lives in the locations; Besaid and Kilika, being very near the sea, are more rustic towns, as they need to fear an attack by Sin at any moment. Landlocked Bevelle however, is huge and filled with the machina the Yevon religion so despises (further adding to the hypocrisy of the religion). Guadosalam is part of the Yevon church, but the Guado are still not fully accepted by the rest of the world, so their home is essentially in a cave.

There are a few flaws to the story in my opinion. There's a stretch somewhere around the middle where it feels like the story slows down a lot. From the start of the game up to and including Operation Mi'ihen, the gameplay and the story felt very intertwined. The entire stretch from Djose to Via Purifico however, feels like separated segments of gameplay|story|gameplay|story, without really feeling like a concise whole. Secondly, some characters definitely get the short end of the stick. Lulu lives in bits and pieces of information scattered in some optional scenes, Wakka's turnaround happens rather abruptly where it feels like there should have been some scenes, and Kimahri also never really gets a chance to shine.

But what certainly deserves praise is the eye to detail. In the final fight, every enemy has a specific line when Sensor is active or Scan is used. Early in the game, Tidus teaches Yuna a way to signal him if she needs help. This trick is never mentioned again in the game...until the ending, when it is painfully sweet. Final Fantasy X has plenty of moments like this, truly showcasing that none of the decisions made in this game were half-assed or just “it'll work itself out”. There was a plan and an intent that was completely carried out.

Gameplay-wise, Final Fantasy X is excellent too. CTB (condition turn-based) is a great combat system. You lose the tension of ATB, but you gain a strategic element as you check the turn order with every move you make for maximum effectiveness. It's very simple, but it's great fun and it honestly surprises me they never went back to it (or that other games didn't pick it up). At the start of the game, most party members also have a specific enemy type assigned to them so it's easier to come to grips with the combat and to guarantee all your party members get some AP. Later on these types get less prevalent and you're expected to utilize more of your party members with each fight. Here as well, some characters come out better than others. I highly doubt first-time players will get a lot out of Kimahri, Rikku, and Lulu. While Lulu at the very least has a clear niche for about half of the game, Kimahri definitely requires some knowledge of how the game works, as does Rikku. And while Rikku at the very least also has her own skills with Steal and Use, if you don't know the intricacies of the game, it's very likely you won't use these abilities, as they might just seem like a waste.

When you think about it, Blitzball is a coding wonder. There's a real developed system of a sports game added to this jRPG, with actual RPG elements to boot! That makes it all the more of a shame that Blitzball kinda sucks. There's a cumbersome nature to actually playing a game of Blitzball that always gives it a goofy feeling, and it doesn't help that you can very easily glitch out the AI by keeping the ball in a corner while the AI swims circles around the middle of the field. But the worst grievance with Blitzball is that it is presented to the player in the most unappealing way.

Once your party arrives in Luca, the Blitzball tournament starts. You get the option to go through a tutorial to learn the basics. As your prepare to face the Al Bhed Psyches, Yuna has gotten kidnapped! While you take control of Tidus, Kimahri, and Lulu to go save her, Wakka stays back to play in the tournament. You manage to save Yuna and Wakka wins. You're in the finals against the Luca Goers! Welcome to your first game of Blitzball.

It's truly a horrible start. While the story gives you an underdog tale anyway, the chances of the Luca Goers absolutely brutalizing you is very big. They really have only one bad player, which luckily is their goalkeeper, but that's counterbalanced by the Besaid Aurochs really only having Tidus as a competent player, and he gets subbed out at half-time for story reasons. After the story events in Luca, Blitzball opens up as a mini-game and you get the option to recruit other players, and it's very easy to find out that it is not as hard or as brutal as that first game indicates, but I doubt many players find that out. Most of the other mini-games are just as harsh too. Chocobo Racing, Lightning Dodging, Butterfly Catching,...these are all notorious for how hard they are, but Blitzball is also the only one that's required to be played in the story.

Another aspect that I liked is that the temples you visit throughout the story have puzzles to solve. I've always been a fan of jRPGs incorporating puzzle elements in the game like the Golden Sun franchise also did; I think these genres work really well together, and the puzzles can serve as a welcome reprieve from trekking through areas filled with random encounters.

On a technical level, there's very little to be said. Final Fantasy X looked beautiful at the time, and the FMVs honestly still hold up. The OST is pretty much flawless; there's so many classics, with To Zanarkand obviously being the most notable one. Props also have to be given to the world design; Spira is filled with tropical locales, so there's plenty of colour to the world. There's plenty of variety as well, with deserts, icy lakes, cave-towns and deserted lands to be explored too.

Final Fantasy X to me is a clear indication of what games should (aspire to) be. It's a clear example of the strength of a well-developed and thought-out single-player experience. It has a story and a vision to tell and it follows through on it. It has an attention to detail in the story, the combat, and the technical elements that I unfortunately find lacking in many modern titles. It truly is a must-play title in my opinion.

It's somewhat hard for me write a review for this game as I'm pretty biased; I absolutely despise this game.

I'll start with one of the more positive aspects: the story. While the story isn't some groundbreaking, fascinating adventure, it is more interesting than games of this nature generally warrant. There are some twists that I did not anticipate which again, aren't mind-boggling but do more than I think most people would have expected. These twists aren't fully explored unfortunately, but at the very least they are there. There are some inconsistencies, as Alex Mercer (the main character) has a lot of anger at how the military can play with people's lives, but the gameplay loop generally requires you to slurp up people (enemies and civilians) to regain health, so that doesn't entirely make sense. There is/could be a story reason for this (going back to the story being more interesting than needed) but it never really feels justified, especially because that story reason would then also somewhat clash with the rest of the happenings in-game. Be ready for some late 00's edge too; Alex Mercer's voice actor leans into it and the story kinda demands it as well.

Having started with something positive, we can move on to the negative: the gameplay. I never had fun playing this game, at all. The traversal is okay; once you get your powers upgraded you can get around NY pretty easily, but Alex is very cumbersome in turning and when you reach a big building, going up it will take some time regardless, whether you're running or jumping up.

But while the traversal is okay, the combat is where this game truly falters. See, Prototype is a superhero game. Alex Mercer is not actually a superhero, but his powers basically enable him to be one. However, you are only more powerful than basic civilians, basic mutants and the most basic of army personnel. Even the soldiers who have RPGS will instill fear in you; the damage they do will have you getting out of whatever combat situation you're in to guzzle up some poor civvies for health. And then we haven't even talked about tanks, helicopters, hunters, supreme hunters, and super soldiers, who will happily tear you to shreds in seconds.

I understand; it's hard to balance a game like this. But there maybe should have been some RPG elements involved in this game, where the further you get, the stronger you become. At the start of the game guys with RPGS and tanks can be a problem; later on however, these should be nothing to fear. You get stronger by unlocking upgrades, but these are mostly additional powers or a different move, rather than just hitting harder or being able to take more damage. Alex' power definitely goes up later in the game, but he will perpetually feel like cardboard on the taking damage front. One of the final powers you obtain is an armor one, which helps, but is also hamstrung by limiting your movability, and the quickest way to die in Prototype is by being surrounded on all sides by enemies. The most annoying aspect for me was definitely the fact that the game never started me anywhere with full health, which meant I had to run around consuming people first, but that probably got the military on my back who I then had to evade or take care of, losing health again in the process.

The variety in gameplay missions also leaves something to be desired. There's a lot of traveling around the map to destroy some radars or helicopters, or to blow up a base or a nest, or to have a fight with some specific enemy. It especially becomes egregious later on in the story, when some missions really feel like they were designed to pad the game out a bit, rather than having an organic story purpose.

One other positive to mention is the Web of Intrigue mechanic. This will mark some people on the map when you get near them, and when you consume them, you'll get some backstory on what's going on. It's unfortunate there's no easy way to hunt for them, but it's a neat way to explore the story.

On a technical note, the game is mostly unimpressive. It's not exactly pretty to look at, and it was very clearly designed in the era of video games when developers all suffered from a colour phobia. The music isn't bad, but nothing that will really stick in your head either.

I would not recommend this game to anyone, but I've also seen a lot of people love it, so I can accept being in the minority on this. I would probably recommend playing it on a console, or at least on a controller. The keyboard was not a great experience for this game.