Not quite as consistently great as 2 was, mainly due to a couple missions that I had no desire to replay after completing them the first time. But still a very good crop of levels. Putting a whole-ass murder mystery in this game? A stroke of genius. I must've replayed the Dartmoor level at least 5 times. Going on a sightseeing tour of all the ways you can turbokill someone with grape processing machines? Extremely satisfying. Straight up ripping off Uncharted 2 for your big finale? Bold move but I'm here for it!

Sucker Punch outclasses Ubisoft's 12(!) Assassin's Creed games by focusing on telling one good story instead of two boring simultaneous stories. Ghost of Tsushima is the superior historical swashbuckler game in every way. The combat is consistently engaging and fun, particularly the one-on-one duels. The visuals are fantastic; I'm not usually one to touch photo mode but I found myself coming back to it again and again. The main story is very effective thanks to a lot of sharp, character-focused writing, and the ending packs a supreme emotional punch. It's great!

...

That said, the fatal flaw is the structure. The open-world format is not conducive to this kind of storytelling, and even though there are some great rewards for exploration as well as some pretty neat side stories, the experience of tracking down every last fox den, haiku spot, hot spring, and bamboo strike quickly becomes a dull slog through a checklist of content. At a certain point I started to forget why I was still playing. But then I'd come back to the main story and be like "oh right, this is actually really good when it wants to be." I think the lesson here is that every developer except the Zelda team needs to stop making open-world games for a while. Because all you do by making a game like this open-world is ensure that the pacing suffers tremendously under the weight of the all-consuming Content.

God I miss Harold Ramis.

This plays like what it is: a very 2009 over the shoulder shooter with a 2019 coat of paint on it. Pretty fun for what it is for better or worse, and also the closest we'll ever come to a true Ghostbusters 3 for better or worse (although if you're the kind of person who thinks the 2016 movie "destroyed your childhood" or whatever I think you're a huge dipshit).

Anyway, lemme know when 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand gets remastered.

Redoing my review since I'm getting closer and closer to the end of this. I finally managed to cross the difficulty threshold after the Blood-Starved Beast and I fully get why everyone loses their minds praising these games now. The sense of triumph is indeed palpable, but whether its worth the agony of failing over and over I can't say as of yet.

Also Fromsoft if you're reading this, please remove the scary brain ladies from the game, thanks.

Update: finished the game! Got the low-effort ending cause I missed out on the hoops you gotta jump through for the "true" ending and didn't feel like fighting an extra boss. Overall I remain mixed to positive on this game. Extraordinarily frustrating but immensely satisfying. Again, please remove the scary brain ladies, I am very scared of them!