Nioh is now a template to be randomly assigned to franchises and historical eras, like musou. That is what this game taught me.

Runs out of ideas in the middle so every fight turns into 7 big annoying enemies at once, levels are too linear (though I love that they are inspired by various Final Fantasy dungeons, including my favorite Delkfutt Tower), itemization is awkward, and the plot is extremely laughable. But you know what? It's fun, it's easy, it's learnable, and you punch monster make crystal go smash good.

Completed the main story, and enjoyed it, but I don't intend to continue for a while. Too mind-numbing. That this game is 80gb confounds me.

I love Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours quite a bit on their technical and design merits; a blend of idle game and adventure game, where you build up your abilities through "time spend" choices. I think this one is better than Cultist Sim in many respects too.

Unfortunately they are almost always too finicky on either side. The fiction is so overwritten and florid in the precise way which is fun in doses but lacks the direct punch you want for continued exposure. There's also almost no incentive to read all this fiction floating by, because you have to be juggling ten things and also thinking four steps ahead. Who has time to read this shit?

So you're left with the raw idle / crafter treadmill, where you optimize your resources so you can move on to greener pastures. This game is better in some ways on that front, in that items are actually unique and interesting things you see in the world and interact with. But it's often annoying trying to hunt down an item of a specific type-combination (say, Sky Forge Tool) and the interface is only partially "there" in terms of helping.

This is worst when you are trying to do something precise. You can't do the search-highlight across a specified quality combination using a filter, you have to manually and slowly search the whole property by swapping which quality your mouse is over in a tooltip. It's fucking agonizing.

On the shelf it goes. Maybe I can come back when other people have fixed this game's interface woes, just like its predecessor. Also the guy who writes this stuff is annoying and I would like to see this style of game in a better writer's hands.

Actually that's probably Pentiment lol

Kinetic, expressive, subtle; full of all the joys and terrors you could want from a game like this. Most easily described as "Metal Gear Solid V as a roguelite", but I think that does the game a huge disservice.

It truly understands the slapstick comedy potential of teamkilling and ragdolls. Like accidentally fragging your friends with a 500kg bomb you dropped at your feet when a bug knocked you over. Or diving off a ledge slightly too high and colliding headfirst with the ground in what I like to call "the concussion special".

And it also has the nuance for different approaches, like silently dispatching a whole outpost beyond their range to sense you. Then there's all the details enabled by its structure, like watching other squads' ships help with stratagems while you're in space. Clearing an entire map of its enemies is both fun and rewarding, even though missions are procgen. It can be as hard or as easy as you like it, and the higher difficulty content is very fun even when you're fucking up and dying constantly. Helldivers 2 has a near endless capacity to surprise you with its wit and playfulness, if you let it.

Really glad I picked this up and played it before my friends group moved on from it. I play it an hour or so a day, I'm 50 hours deep with everything unlocked, and I'm excited to see where they take it.

Simultaneously 5 and 0 stars, so I'm cutting it even and saying it's 3.

What do I say about a game I've spent the past 7-ish years playing? There's obviously stuff I love about it. The encounter and sandbox design is superlative - probably the best of any modern FPS - and the way they added ARPG mechanics to guns is far superior to other games like Borderlands or The Division. The story is deeply affective and the lore cosmologically complex, dense with gnostic metaphor. Taken purely on narrative and mechanical merits, it's one of the best games ever made.

However,

It is saddled to quite possibly the most annoying, soul-crushing, insultingly-bad progression model ever. 3/4th's of a year's releases are removed at the end of every year. The first two years are simply not in the game anymore, and if you didn't hit the window for account transfer, you don't even get to keep that progress either. There are multiple friends of mine who refuse to play Destiny 2 because a. Bungie stole their $60 buy-in or b. they don't want to run the FOMO grind treadmill because it's exhausting. Honestly, I can't blame them. I'm only still in this because I've been playing every expansion since Vanilla, have a clan to play with that does Day 1 raiding (where the real meat of the buildcrafting is, imo), and have the armory to support my play. I can afford to take months off of the game and grind everything out at the last week. Other people can't.

Really wish I could recommend this game to people because it has been a deep influence on not just my sensibilities as a designer but also my personal life and the lives of my friends, but I can't. Final Shape will likely be the last time I engage with this game unless some serious changes are made to their monetization model.

It saddens me, but like all MMOs, eventually you have to move on. I just wish it wasn't such an acrimonious split.

Not my favorite souls game (that's definitely the first one) but takes the series in a direction I appreciate: into RPG systems hell!

The levels are dense with secrets - including multiple optional bosses - and there's even more covenants to join. More weapon and spell variety. Relentlessly comedic, constantly pranking the player with enemy placements. I like this - the original - version more than Scholar of the First Sin because the progression structure is more lenient and less linear. It is more "game-like" in interesting and textured ways. The dark horse of the series, but deserves a re-appraisal. The one thing I dislike? Too stingy with estus.

Oh and adaptability is a good stat.

The platonic ideal of the single-player RTS. Almost perfect.

Very different factions, but each can counter the other's overwhelming strengths, so it's more about probing your enemy's defenses and figuring out the right angle. And sometimes the correct approach is A Lot Of Tanks.

Looks and sounds wonderful. FMV cutscenes with CyberLenin Udo Kier and President Ray Wise that embrace the camp and go all in on funny production design and overacting. Iconic soundtrack by Frank Klepacki and perhaps the best pre-rendered 3D of any RTS.

Campaign is basically flawless. Every mission is a puzzle that teaches you some interesting unit interactions, culminating in macro-scale matches that demand you apply everything you learned to date. Many little secrets and multiple approaches on each level makes exploration of the map profitable and fun.

In my heart, before my replay of this whole series, Tiberian Sun was the best one. But now, upon finishing Red Alert 2, I can confidently say it's the high point of Command and Conquer.

Achingly mid. Sure, it ~resembles~ Hotline Miami, in a very shallow sort of way, but it lacks that special touch.

Where Hotline Miami (1, anyway) is bold, shocking, beautiful, transgressive, and lovely, this game is completely rote. It lacks so much of what I love about that game, and instead replaces it with a drab monochrome roguelike. A game about careful positioning and clever engagement reduced to slo-mo and dodge rolls. You can't kick a guy into a wall and bash his skull in with a hammer, or use doors as improvisational weapons, or ride the tense razor's edge of a single hit. The mildly intriguing premise quickly gives way to tedium. And the music sucks.

I might return to this later, but where I voraciously devoured Hotline Miami in an afternoon, I have been procrastinating playing more of this. I'm going to take that as the sign it should be and shelve it for later.

Starts so strong. Truly loved the first few areas, the multitude of approaches to take you to the capital, and the many secrets and nooks to explore.

But it's way, way too long. Everything after the capital could realistically be cut to no detriment. Wish I could go back to before 80 hours in and finding out there's a whole three extra-annoying areas left to go. That's why this is shelved instead of completed. I could play Dark Souls 1 or 2 all day, but this game simply saps all my willpower to play. World TOO open. Bring back the metroid map.

One of the worst FPS games of all time. A true downfall to a franchise I grew up with and loved.

When you've played 2016, and think about that game's flaws (which are many, but ultimately do not ruin the game), the design decisions of Doom Eternal come into sharp focus. People favored particular strong weapons for general engagement and never switched in 2016, so all ammo caps have been drastically reduced in Eternal to force switching. Since there's basically no reason to hunt for ammo in a level, all the immersive exploration is gone, replaced by linear Longest Yard jungle gym fights delineated by Mario platformer levels. Since there's minimal ammo sources outside of enemy pinatas, and chainsaw ammo can run out, you regen the last chainsaw pip and fodder enemies infinitely respawn until you finish an arena's major enemies. Since EVEN THEN the optimal strategy is to ice bomb and then hotswap gauss / super shotgun / rocket launcher, certain enemies have lock-and-key mechanics that force you to switch to weapons you otherwise don't bother using.

The combat loop is wound so tight it becomes completely stifling. The game's director calls this "the Fun Zone", but it is anything but. The joy of a good FPS is allowing for player expression through multiple solutions to a combat problem, not forcing you into rote memorization of bad setpieces that feel like a budget character action game.

This isn't even mentioning the marvelfication of Doomguy, who now has a floating fortress, says a joke catchphrase from a comic nobody truly gives a shit about, and is depicted as essentially a "rage elemental". Sure glad we got exposition about how angels and demons are just other sci-fi races or whatever! What a fucking joke.

I hate-beat this game on Nightmare my first time through, and it wasn't particularly hard, with the exception of one specific arena near the beginning of the game before you get most of your arsenal. It was, however, full of unavoidable damage that constantly required glory killing to replenish my health, and the worst game loop of any shooter I've ever played. In other words, BORING.

Truly miserable. Play literally any other Doom instead.

Love this game.

The campaign design is a little scattershot, and it shows the seams of the scope-tightening it reportedly went through, but the result is still great. Unparalleled ambience, looks fantastic to this day, an all-timer OST (in my top 5 for sure), and a goofy sci-fi plot about climate change made in the late 90s.

Less solid as a game than its successor Red Alert 2 for sure, but still effortlessly iconic.