Jedi Survivor is a good soulslike (Sekiro-like) that is let down by a weak story and a lack of new ideas as the game starts to wrap up.

Gameplay ★★★
The mechanics are basically the same as in Fallen Order and they still work very well. My biggest complaint about FO was that it wanted to be Sekiro but didn't have the ability to cancel your attack to switch to a block for as many frames which made it more difficult to be aggressive. Survivor does improve on this (though it's still there to a point) and it also reduces the post-attack recovery frames before a dodge can be performed, which was also helpful. I enjoyed the two new lightsaber forms that were introduced, giving a larger variety of playstyles to choose from. I favored the blaster and dual wield forms. I also enjoyed the variety of Force abilities that were available, though it is annoying that most bosses are most if not entirely immune to Force attacks. The biggest issue is that 75% of the way through the game has presented you with all of the different enemies that you're going to fight so in order to make things hard it just starts throwing huge crowds at you and multi-wave encounters. This forces you to be extremely defensive and becomes tedious very quickly.

Story ★★
I won't go into spoiler territory because, frankly, it's not worth my time to discuss. The story started out strong but quickly became boring and the characters' motivations and choices questionable. The overall goal is very poorly thought out and doesn't really make logical sense until about halfway through the game, like when a kid has an idea and gets really excited about it before thinking it through. The villain's motivations are unclear and the extent of his fall quite over the top. The big twist at the end is very obvious as it approaches and also makes no sense. Another "ok now what?" type of plan.

Characters ★★★★
This one is tough to rate because the characters do feel fleshed out and full, with significant relationships to each other that seem meaningful to them, but I as the player don't really care. I'd give it 3.5 stars but I don't know how to do a half star so I'll just round up.

Art/Graphics ★★★★
The environments look good and the monsters are interesting. I like the enemy designs as well.

Music ★★★
This is another middle one where I'd normally say 2.5 but whatever. The music does a fantastic job of emulating the classic John Williams style that you would expect from Star Wars but the composer either didn't know how to communicate feelings musically or the director didn't know where to put what songs. As an example, the final scene that should be somber but hopeful sounded apprehensive and like bad things were about to happen. I actually thought based on the music that the game wasn't over and that there was about to be another surprise confrontation. Nope, just weird musical decisions.

Overall I did enjoy Jedi Survivor, and I would probably continue to play games in this series.

Hi-Fi Rush is just a blast from start to finish. The characters are fun and interesting, the writing is great with fantastic comedic timing in the dialogue and physical humor, the combat is really fun and the music is good too.

The only reason it's not getting 5 stars is because
1) I found that the music was a little too similar from one level to another. While I enjoyed all of the music, I think the very fact that it's a rhythm game kind of locked them in to featuring heavy beat, high energy music, and I did get a little tired of hearing the same stuff over and over.
2) As I got better at the timing I, of course, felt more satisfied with my performance, but also started to get a little bored of the combat. At the start combat was challenging because I was learning how to make sure that my rhythm was on beat and it took time to learn how many beats different attacks take to execute, but by the end of the game I was able to intuitively dodge or counter incoming attacks without much thought. This is a very cool and incredibly apparent indication that I was learning and improving and that the game mechanics are solid, but unfortunately it translated to slightly monotonous battles near the end.

I absolutely loved my experience with Hi-Fi Rush even with the two complaints above. There were some truly epic moments!

Timespinner is a very well made and fun metroidvania with good level design and mechanics. With a compelling story of two planets at war and a clan that uses the timespinner to reset the timelines, it keeps you interested throughout. Combat and exploration are enjoyable and I very much enjoyed my experience overall with my only complaint being that I found it too easy to become overleveled.

Gameplay - ★★★★★
Game mechanics are your typical metroidvania faire, but it's all done very well. The map isn't huge but it's fun to explore and there are plenty of warp points to fast travel which really cuts down on the amount of aimless wandering that you have to do. Not only that, but soft dead ends (locked behind abilities you don't have yet) occur pretty early on in the area so you don't waste a lot of time exploring only to find a spot you can't access yet. As I'm writing this I feel like it's difficult to explain but the point is, you feel like you're making progress in your exploration the majority of the time.

Combat consists of melee attacks as determined by a number of equipable orbs that change the attack style, like a blade orb that acts like a sword or a fire orb that splits into two fireballs. You can equip two of the same ones or two different ones that might complement each other or spread out your damage types (enemies are resistant or weak to types). Additionally you equip necklaces that give you different spells, and a ring that adds a passive ability. The best part of this system is that you get 3 different equipment sets that you can quickly and easily swap between. This adds a really nice level of customization and is particularly helpful to change to a long range spell or a defensive spell as the situation calls for it. There are also several familiars to choose from that all have different attacks or effects!

Lastly, there is a time stop mechanic that I feel was unfortunately underutilized (or at least I didn't think to use it as often as I could have). It stops enemies and turns them into platforms that you can use. There were only a few times when this was used to it's fullest potential and a few times when I needed to use it in order to avoid big boss attacks. I feel like if had used it more than I did it would have made the game easier than it already was.

One additional note is that I appreciated the relative abundance of useable items. I often don't feel comfortable using items in Castlevania games because they are pretty much only available from enemy drops based on luck. The early parts of Timespinner have a good number of chests with healing items in them which encourages you to use them a bit more liberally.

Story - ★★★
The story centers around a clan of people who train Time Messengers to use the Timespinner to return to the past to reset the timeline any time that the bad guys are about to destroy them. I think, this is part of the problem. Time travel things are always a bit confusing and I don't think that Timespinner does a great job of explaining what's going on. You've got two planets that are connected by a portal, you have two if not three difference races of people who are at war with each other, and then you have a past and a present. It's a lot to take in and remember. I do appreciate the worldbuilding that was attempted though, with letters, memories, and downloadable files that you can find that tell the backstory through the viewpoint of the three factions.
In true metroidvania fashion, there are multiple endings, at least 4 and they are all fairly positive. The true ending was kind of out of left field for me but it does make sense in the context, just not what I expected.

Characters - ★★★
The main character is a bit one-note. She is sent back in time right as her clan is attacked and everyone is killed. Her mission is revenge and that's basically it, and she's not afraid to say so.
You find a little familiar friend who talks to you here and there and I like it. Very cute.
The NPCs are all pretty fleshed out but you don't really get a lot of dialogue with them so it doesn't amount to much.

Art - ★★★★
The portrait pixel art when someone is talking is really nice and I love the design of the pause menu. It's very artistic and has a nice big portrait of the main character and your equipped familiar. The backgrounds are also really nice. Enemy art style is great and most of the enemy designs are cool, but some are weird, especially in the early areas.

Music - ★★★
The music was hit and miss, some was great, like directly out of a Castlevana game, while other areas had very forgettable music. Put simply, I had the sound on the whole time I was playing and I enjoyed it.

In summation, Timespinner was a very enjoyable experience and one that I did not want to put down, beating it in only a few days. I would happily recommend it to any metroidvania fans as a good entry into the genre, especially from a small first time developer. I see that there is a Steam page for a sequel and I really hope that it gets made! I'll definitely get it.

I was excited for Skyrim in space. What I got was Fast Travel Simulator. I think that between this one and No Man's Sky, devs need to admit that there is such a thing as "too big." When you are designing on the scale of planets and lightyears, you force the player to rely on fast traveling. Even the types of people that never fast traveled in Skyrim for the realism of it have no choice but to use their gravdrive which is no different than just fast traveling via the map.

I've been told that you can get more classic Bethesda style exploration when you are on planets but when I tried that I just got meaningless copy-pasted bandit outposts and mines.

While Starfield has a lot of things in common with Bethesda's other very popular RPGs, it's not enough to save it from the downsides. I enjoyed the shooting mechanics and the weapons available but
Also, I'm not enough of a hard core role-player to enjoy the other more monotonous but very cool aspects of the game like ship or base building, and I did fine in combat so I never felt the need to bother with any weapon customization.

First things first, I played the game post-2.0 update.
I remember when this game was first announced and everyone went completely nuts over it. Then I also remember the continuous delays that more or less caused me to lose interest. Then the game was finally released and it was buggy and janked to hell, which was kinda the nail in the coffin for my interest. However, CDPR did the impossible and resurrected their dead game, pulling it back from the brink and ending up with something that is really damn impressive.

There is no denying that Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game, from a game design perspective. The world, the stories, the voice acting, and the gameplay all are incredibly well done. Really feels like you're playing one of the great cyberpunk/future dystopia sci-fi films.

I only have a few complaints. First, I was playing the game on Hard and I chose to go the quickhack route. This isn't to say that I was a glass cannon, per se, I very rarely died during normal combat encounters, usually even feeling overpowered. But there were 3 bosses that I had to turn the difficulty down for. One because their HP regen was literally faster than my reloading, and the other two because they'd kill me in one to two hits without hardly any chance for me to even react. Needs better balance in some places.

The second thing that annoyed me was how much time is spent talking. It's not a real problem during the course of the gameplay because it's fairly spread out in between missions, but as the game wraps up you start spending way too long in conversations. It took me two whole evenings of play time to finish the last mission because of how much dialogue there was, even with me reading the subtitles and skipping ahead. Even so, I enjoyed the story, I just wish the pacing were better in some places.
Also, related, "Relic Malfunction Detected" always resulted in an eye roll from me like "oh good here we go, V's got to collapse for a sec and waste my time."

Finally, I don't need a happy ending ever time, but I just really didn't like any of the choices in the end. Everything was left too ambiguous as to how things would turn out. I know that is how life is and that there are always unknowns but from a gameplay perspective it just ends up feeling bad. The difference being that in life, you can ask more questions, do more research, explore other options. In a game you have only the set number of paths ahead of you and you have no agency to learn more than the game allows you to. Therefore, even if the depressing endings are "realistic" in their layered end-states, they just left me feeling dissatisfied with the choices that I was forced to make.

Overall I did like the game, but it didn't blow me away and I won't be going back to it. I appreciate the work that went into it, I appreciate that CDPR stuck with it and fixed their embarrassment of a release instead of just cutting their losses. Kudos to the devs. I'll definitely want to try the sequel.

I really wanted to like this one. The kunai swinging is a really fun mechanic and it's done well. It's just that the rest of the game is not very interesting. The color palette is very simple which isn't a problem in and of itself, but combined with the fact that the environmental elements are also not all that varied means that most areas look pretty much the same.
Additionally, I found the enemies to be either trivial or obnoxious to deal with. You get knocked back every time you hit someone so you have to walk forward in between every hit (I know Hollow Knight did this too but it's much more dramatic in kunai) or you kill the enemy in one hit and there's no point. I got to the third or fourth area and didn't find any of the enemies to be engaging and the metroidvania style exploration to be boring.