Man, I feel so dumb for progressing one third of the game and only then realising that there was a night vision option in the game and I had to turn it on to see things clearly instead of roaming around like a blind bat for 33% of the game. There were some really dark rooms where I had to navigate and was clueless for the majority of the time. I like the atmosphere of the game, it's kind of different from the other halo games but sometimes it looks unpolished and the cutscenes were pretty bad in comparison to the rest of the franchise, the face models looked like they were made in early 2000s , one of the main characters almost looks like Claude from gta 3, it was that block shaped and the animations in the cutscenes didn't help much either. I guess this was made on a lower budget compared to the other halo titles. I wasn't that invested in the story too and the humor that they went for felt like a misfire imo. They tried to replicate the kind of humor Battlefield Bad Company 2 had (I know BF released later) but then the latter did it far better than ODST. The gameplay and level design was fun albeit short but there were a few repetitive segments in the pseudo open world where you have to keep finding clues to something, that really felt boring honestly. Overall I don't mind this game that much it was decent, I appreciate that it was shorter on length and distinguishes itself in certain aspects from the rest of Halo. And before I finish ranting I literally was not able to find a single health pack in this game, so playing it on heroic that low health indicator sound was ringing in my ears like a siren throughout the game.

A nice little extension piece to the main story, new kind of weapons and new kind of enemies and I gotta say wrt combat, I had more fun here than in the main game trying to experiment on all the new weapons they brought in for the dlcs and prior to it. The story I'd say don't go with any expectations, that's kinda applicable with the main game as well. It was fun and the new area looked great but I have to say the whole Quen area for the DLC is horribly optimised for PC, I literally got less than half the performance I got during the main game which itself was pretty shaky cuz of my vram limitation. The area doesn't even look that different or improved upon compared to the main game if you ask for the amount of performance drop. All that said visually what an experience it was to pilot those airborne and waterborne machines, absolute beauty. Really looking forward to find out how much better the third game's gonna look in contrast to this. Also Sylens was literally one of the best characters in both the games. Lance Reddick was such a goat, gonna miss his presence not just here but also in John Wick and a potential Quantum Break sequel.

Maybe playing the first game and this one back to back was not a good idea. Might've had a slightly more positive view on this one if I hadn't played both the games back to back cuz most of the core elements whether it's the story, gameplay feel very identical. Also despite me taking my sweet time to finish the main story I was barely invested in all the crafting, skilling up and upgrading. I barely levelled up and completed quests despite being too under levelled, don't know if it enhanced the challenge or increased the tedium or a bit of both, cuz I hardly even changed the weapons until the final set of missions. The first game had a better lore, I barely cared about the zenith crap, not that I had any expectations for both the games in the first place. But the graphics and art style of the game are absolutely best in the business, I think its even better than Alan Wake 2. AW looks more realistic but this one's more gorgeous to look at. Deciding to play this game at 21:9 Aspect Ratio instead of the usual 16:9 might be the best decision I made regarding this game, makes the art style and visuals look even more godly.
They did add new elements to the gameplay and revamped the skill tree and also brought forth changes to melee and other stuff but I don't know the combat somehow feels better on the first game, maybe has to do with how the machines move while in combat. The characters were a mixed bag, they did a decent job with returning characters like Varl etc but had some annoying new characters as well. Overall I did actually like it I'd give it a 3 if I hadn't played Zero Dawn right before playing this. It's fun to shoot robotic animals and roam around in a setting like this with such gorgeous visuals. Onto the DLC now 🫡.

It was good to see them not following the trend set by Combat Evolved of backtracking the same area multiple times. Also they really cooked with the cutscenes, the CGI/animation of the cutscenes definitely felt movie calibre. They could've actually made an animated series/movie out of those cutscenes instead of the live action Halo.The actual game looks good too but then doesn't really match the visual tone/quality set by the cutscenes, so it felt like watching 2 different things. The gameplay was really fun, had a lot of diverse setpieces/encounters but it did feel hard to navigate stuff on heroic difficulty, also frustrating at times with the poor checkpoint system and bullet sponginess. I can't really vouch for this being the best among the series, so far Reach and 3 are tied at that for me.

Pretty fun at times, pretty monotonous at times. Felt like there was too much backtracking especially during the last few missions. Navigation sucks as a result. Heroic difficulty felt way much easier compared to Reach. I would have worshipped the game had I played it at the time of its og release cuz it's a remarkable thing to make something like this in 2001. My rating would've really been higher if not for the repeated segments in latter part of the game, I understand older game almost always reuse multiple segments via backtracking like resident evil but this felt like the game could've been really short if not for the repeated segments. Music was good I guess but the placement was very random. Also the most satisfying thing about the game is it's shotgun 🤌🏼, had so much fun blasting enemies with it and it's a shame the 2nd game's shotgun sucks in comparison.

Doesnt justify it's presence, it felt like a rehash of the main story with a new location. The frozen area is gorgeous for what it's worth and I was able to get better weapons because of the expansion. The level requirements are a joke, if a preceding mission has a level requirement of 40 why jump all the way to 50. But going under-leveled for the final mission didn't really feel as difficult as I had thought. The shield weaver outfit never goes wrong even if you are 10 levels below the requirement for the mission.

If this is how gorgeous the first game looks then idk how insane Forbidden West is gonna be on PC. A solid 3/5 game, took me some time to get used to the combat but it got more fun with time. Oh and the Shield-Weaver outfit carried my ass throughout the latter part of the game. Just walking through different locations from this game feels so relaxing and therapeutic, they really hit it out of the park when it comes to balancing fidelity and artstyle. There were some texture pop in issues especially on Meridian but you'd only see them if your playing for way too long without restarting the game. Really hope Forbidden West is properly optimised for PC 🤞🏼

The Hype for the game is completely justified, what an experience. The best part of the game is it's unforgiving at every moment but you're given the opportunity to read all the movesets and try to defeat the bosses. So everytime you die you not only die with frustration but also die knowing something new to deal with the boss and you really get the best kind of dopamine each time you defeat these bosses. You're also given the freedom to fight however the hell you want. Every main boss is uniquely designed with their own set of brutal but awesome move sets. The larger enemies are kind of tedious to fight, they look awesome, the setpieces are visually gorgeous but most of the time they're not as fun as the other enemies who are more challenging and at the same time more fun. Also I really wish the game had a feature where you could replay all these bosses without entering someone else's world. Story wise, I did feel disconnected throughout but I don't think it even matters all that much since it more than makes up for it with the gameplay. Another problem I had with the game is how locked away most of the main bosses are, the game really wants to explore every nook and cranny of its extremely vast open world but it's really hard to look for most of the bosses without an YouTube video guiding you. The exploration aspect is definitely cool but I find myself craving more to fight the bosses the game has to offer. Getting to Malenia was more frustrating than the boss fight itself. It's kinda understandable the developers design the game in a way to get the online community to interact and come up with all the solution to the most bizzare puzzles they've set, but personally I would have preferred it to be easily accessible. If this is the best game of FromSoftware when it comes to accessibility then I really don't know how I'd fair out in their other games. The game doesn't look next gen or anything but it's got one of the best art style you can ever find in a game. The music is equally spectacular.
The performance was stuttery and it would actually get worse if I lower the settings, the only work around with the performance is playing the game offline. Playing it offline kinda stabilised the performance. Also the final fight had one of the best bosses and at the same time one of the game's worst. I would have really enjoyed the final fight if Radagon had a second phase or something, elden beast was absolutely abhorrent of a boss, the most annoying part of the game for me. With all that said, we will be there no matter what for the DLC as well as NG+.

The boss designs are bullshit, the bullet sponge is the biggest out of nearly every game I've played, enemy ai is abysmal but the co-op experience I got out of it was absolutely wonderful. Game made me and my homie capitalise/exploit on each weakspot and bug and coordinate in almost every shitty situation the game put us in. Games pretty monotonous, lengthy and I'd suggest people take their time completing it instead of rushing it cuz there's no point in doing so, there's hardly any Innovative mission design, but the bullet sponges and overdose of enemies force you to make effective plans to win the situation you're put in, so that's a really good thing about the game, despite it being grindy af like every other Tom clancy coop game. Ubisoft makes the best brain rot coop games that you can simply have fun , be it the far cry games or the Tom clancy franchise. Game wouldve been more fun if they had usable vehicles like Wildlands instead of running mindlessly for more than one km and get shot to death out of no where. One thing I like more about this is there were no game breaking bugs like in Wildlands.

Okay, this was kinda amazing. The story presentation and style is where the game (and remedy always) excels at. The gameplay is the same as the first but it's slow paced to fit the survival horror vibe, the first game was more fun wrt gameplay but it didn't have that survival horror element to it, it was just goofy takens running towards you and you blasting them one by one. I kinda understand the idea of having this slow paced approach to the gameplay, enemies felt way more satisfying to kill as they were made to feel more terrifying, I used to lose my shit everytime I encountered a wolf in this game. Alan's part was kinda draggy, it felt like they wanted it to be shorter but at the same making it shorter would bring unwanted criticisms like people complaining about Saga having more playtime than the titular character. Alan's part peaked with the Herald of Darkness mission, after that it the theatre and hotel sequences didn't really match up to it. Saga's gameplay and story felt better imo but one complaint I have is naming one of the chapters as Scratch before the Scratch reveal and the ending chapters didn't have to be that long, now this where the game starts being a 'Walking Simulator' with hardly anything interesting going on, they could have made a neat cutscene or live action sequence instead. The art direction is just out of the world, and it was really expected from remedy after what I witnessed in the ashtray maze sequence from Control. The acting was great and RIP James McCaffrey, you nailed the role of playing both Alex Casey and Max Payne, can't imagine the Max Payne remakes without your majestic voice.

Talking about the performance on pc, I have to say the game's poorly optimised in the forest section despite the graphics looking that good, there were a lot of texture bugs, the same sort of issues I faced in control and the frame generation feature made the game clunky and unresponsive at some crucial parts of the game.

Overall the game is fantastic and is a massive improvement over the first game especially when it comes to story presentation, remedy really cooked with this like always. W studio imo has 0 Ls, worst case scenario; if they don't provide you a good story they back it up with a good gameplay and vice versa(Control and Quantum Break respectively). I need a Christopher Nolan Collab with remedy ASAP. Imagine the potential of a RemedyXNolan project.