Dripping with Max Payne influence, El Paso, Elsewhere does maybe too good of an homage to that style game.

The constant motion abilities with gunplay and movement are good. It gets a bit dragged down by aiming mechanics that just feel slightly off though. Where the reticle is in relation to the camera placement just feels slightly off, so whenever I was aiming, I found it unnatural and like I was going to miss.

The game is a bit rough around the edges in a few places. Some of this is charming and really works for the style of game its going for. It's not able to overcome all of those rough spots, especially in regards to hit detection and clipping.

I found myself a few times getting stuck on something or getting stuck inside something. These of course would always happen in a wave of enemies, so I'd end up dying or in pretty rough shape when this would occur, making the whole experience a bit frustrating at times. Especially with the more common hit detection issues.

To just finish the bad stuff and get it all out of the way, the game is also way too long. The environments, the gunplay, the weapon and enemy variety, these are all pretty good in El Paso, Elsewhere, but because the game feels like it drags, some of these good factors get less impressive as the game goes on. Especially once the game stop introducing new enemies, new weapons and new environments.

There are good to great things with this game too. The music is fantastic, the weapon variety is nice, the enemy variety is as well, and the story is pretty good on top of it. The voiceover of our main character is also done very well.

El Paso, Elsewhere does a great job standing apart from its inspiration while feeling so similar to that Max Payne style gunplay and vibe. Some of the design choices from those games probably should've been left to that era. Minor frustrations and bigger ones drag the overall creative and interesting experience down which is a shame but this is a game worth trying if Max Payne style mechanics is something you enjoy. The story, the music, and overall experience should be enough to push through some of the issues.

I have played many Dark Souls games before so I knew the kind of hard task that I was in store for (to a degree). I've never felt compelled to really keep the fight going. Bloodborne was the most I spent on a game like this, until Elden Ring.

Elden Ring has been complimented to death, and it deserves all of it and more (for the most part). Its scale, it's satisfying combat (even when you are getting absolutely smashed for hours on end), it's world building, the scale (the scale deserves multiple compliments), the secrets. The game never feels like you're near the end of exploring.

Even when you get the crumb of the end game starting, the amount of content between that and the real end game is unbelievable. I thought I was done multiple times, defeating a near-impossible boss that took 100s of runs before finally getting a little luck, only to discover, "there's more, and it's gonna get worse."

The satisfaction of beating those unbeatables, the areas the open up when you're near that end, the effects you choices have on other parts of the already explored world, it's all so interesting even when nearing the end. I put over 170 hours into this game and there's still more for me to do, more for me to kill. These enemies no longer scare me, for I am a God, I fear no man, woman, child, or creature.

Anyway, the combat is very satisfying. When you edge out a roll dodge or a jump at the last second and spring a massive wave of damage at your opponent, it feels damn good. Get surrounded by a plethora of annoying low level bad guys that manage to get you near death, only for you to figure out a way to roll out the way of danger, sneak in a heal, and finish them all off, is so damn satisfying. Getting crushed, still, by wolves because a group of them came out of nowhere and killed your horse, and killed you when you were stunned, while having enough runes to level up once more, is not satisfying and sucks but it's worth it for the highs.

This game makes you paranoid about everything, on purpose. No empty looking room is safe. No empty looking corner with a glowing treasure to pick up is safe. Everything wants to kill you and the game purposely makes it come at you from every unexplored corner. You eventually get used to this hellscape, you don't trust anyone.

Which is interesting for this whole game. There are "bad" guys that will not attack you but because you have been trained to murder anything that doesn't resemble yourself (even that is shaky trust wise) or an NPC usually attacks. But eventually you will discover things that won't and those creatures are the best......unless you accidentally hit one of them, and then they do attack you. It's a risk I sometimes took, unless I wanted more blood. Sometimes you just need more blood.

There are some negatives, definitely. The camera is your enemy way more often than it should. Auto targeting is sometimes awful, and in tandem these two combined can straight up ruin a great run against tough bosses. Especially if those enemy encounters are big. The camera just cannot scale up in a way that doesn't leave you feeling super venerable to things, and since many attacks can one hit kill you, this can be real awful.

The game is also very hands off. It really lines nothing up for you when it comes to many of the items and how the menus and prompts do. It is very "try and see what happens" with a lot. Obviously your play style will dictate what items you give chances to more often than not. There are many items I straight up never touched because they never seemed to go with my build type. I don't want a full on hand holding but it would be nice to get some explanation as to how to setup some of your stuff without so much trial and error and just being left in the dark until you look something up or something else.

Despite these flaws, there are a ton of jaw dropping design choices with areas you explore, there are a ton of jaw dropping bosses that just........do things to make themselves more powerful halfway through a fight or just when you think you've finally beaten them. It never feels severely cheap (every once and a while in the heat of it it def can). It's all wild and brutal and insane. Early on you will face something that rips off a dragon's whole head and use it as a weapon after you've reached a certain level of health. It completely changes strategy on the fly but god, these things are so cool.

The game wants to fuck with you and destroy you. It wants to mentally destroy you. It may have accomplished that with me. I'm still not sure. But God, beating this game was a very satisfying and crazy experience (mostly). I don't know if I will ever touch this game again and beat some of the other, non-main bosses. But I will have this written on my tomb, in blood. Not really though. I am a God now, I will never die.

You will either want to play this already or you don't. This review will probably not change your mind. These games are not for everyone. But for someone who never feels like it's worth sticking through in order to beat these, I beat this one, and I think that's really cool.

Look, this is my first modern Fire Emblem game so there is some bias to my fondness for this game. The modern additions to this game are great, though I'm sure many of those features are not so new to this franchise.

As someone familiar with a lot of the older heroes of Fire Emblem, I really enjoyed the summoning/ring system this game features. There are a few duds in terms of ability and I wish there was one more to make late game roster full of ringed units but these complaints are quite minor.

The tried and true gameplay of this franchise is still here and still quite good. If you aren't a fan of that tactical/rock-paper-scissor style gameplay, this won't change your mind in that department.

Story wise, it's what you'd expect. It's a little weak and the overall characters aren't the most interesting. When you have so many characters though and summons, there are good characters but you've got SO MANY that they all start to feel like generic sword person #10 at times with ones that you might not be using as much, if ever.

If you like these games, it's a solid entry in the franchise. If you're not high on these games though, I don't think this is going to do anything to change your mind, especially with a weaker story.

Yeah, this rules. Tears of the Kingdom takes the foundation of BotW and improves on it in really fun and creative ways.

The building aspects and the new power ups are both bulls-eye level additions. These both give you so much freedom to just try and figure out the hurdles and puzzles in the game.

On top of it, the additions these bring in combat are all great. Being able to fuse weapons to make them more powerful is great and makes weapon's breaking a little less frustrating. The sages also bring a nice addition to the combat in this game.

At its core, there are still issues I have with how this game feels and plays but it's still a positive step compared BotW.

The shrines and temples are also an improvement from the original game. Shrines don't feel as repetitive with less frustration overall. The temples and the bosses inside are also more fun and less repetitive.

The story is better, exploration is much more fun, especially with various levels of the world to explore. Again, its nearly across the board with improvements.

Really, the game's only faults are minimal. It's way too long and given how free this game is, there are times I really wished I was given better direction. Especially near the end of the game after already putting so much time into the game. Some of the new enemy types are also a miss for me as well. The weather system is also unchanged and something that's more annoying and in the way than anything else.

It's still incredible despite some of these bigger flaws. There so many awe-inspiring moments, the score is one of the best of the year and one of the best in a franchise filled with great music. It's a home run of a game.

There are moments in Midnight Fight Express where the fighting is kinetic, the action is high paced and the chains of your combos are racking up as you bounce between guys, picking up whatever you can where everything feels so damn good and the experience is surreal.

Unfortunately, those moments are not consistent, and when this isn't happening, the game is fairly bland and a bit of a chore to get through. It's a bit of a bummer because those moments of bliss hit and I just found myself thinking, "if this game was this more often, it could be pretty damn fun." There just aren't enough of those moments to really recommend this game.

The game has its own sense of style and doesn't take itself too seriously with how it functions and the story its telling. That being said, some of the offbeat humor and moments just didn't work for me. The general story itself is also pretty forgettable, which certainly doesn't help with the game's general "washes over you like nothing" vibe.

The style is attempting a more simplistic presentation so there's not a lot that really will impress you there either.

The controls though are solid and on top of those moments of bliss, once you become fully skilled up, the sense of strength and growth from what you're upgrading is noticeable. There are some very satisfying kills despite the basic look and style.

It's still not enough to recommend though, as the game also feels quite long. It's a bummer more than anything since there are moments of greatness that really make this game feel cool. This being the work of one person seemingly is also quite the feat despite its shortcomings.

Was sitting at a four up until the end and the true ending really pushes it over to getting that extra 1/2. It's kinda hard to put into words what Outer Wilds does without making it seem too simple or too complicated.

Overall, it's just a hauntingly beautiful game with some really nice vibes of exploring space with some moments that are absolutely stunning when you run into it. The music specifically is so on point throughout and hit many, many home runs with some of the set pieces. Some nitpicks aside, it's a great experience

Of course this game is bad, I'm not the first and certainly not the last person to make that statement about Balan Wonderworld. It's kind of impressive just how bad it is though.

An amalgamation of unfinished ideas, dated design, and just plain bad design choices make up Balan Wonderworld. The story, the character itself, the main world hub, none of it makes any sense and is never explained.

You collect Chao-like creatures.......for reasons? You then feed them gems that you collect throughout various levels and feed them to these creatures........also for reasons that are just never explained. I could continue, but obviously, and once again, none of what you're supposed to do is explained.

You have various power ups in the form of "costumes" that you collect. Each have a singular ability that can be done and that is it. The frustrating thing about these costumes is that, because they all have one singular ability, sometimes that ability does not include jumping. Some costumes are completely stationary for reasons that are confusing and baffling.

Part of the reason behind this, I'd imagine, is that the controller setup for this game is very poor. All four main buttons do the same thing. You can jump or use your ability with any of these buttons. It doesn't sound like a major hinderance and it kinda isn't but it is an annoyance, especially if you are trying to move around the limited menu screens and just wanting to back out of it and go back to the hellscape of this game.

I could go on and on and on about the weird and poor design choices this game possesses but I just can't bring myself to continue to type these things out and care anymore. I want to be free from this prison and finishing this paragraph will be the final part of my sentence, once I finish with this, I will be free finally. Don't play this game? I guess that's the final feeling, but maybe if you are a glutton for bad things like I am, give this a shot because I assure you, even if you've heard all the bad things about this game, actually sitting down and playing it will not prepare you for just how bad it actually is.

A step up from the first PSP entry but still a step or two back from the main three entries in the franchise. Everything fo the most part in Ghost of Sparta compared to Chains of Olympus is an improvement. It's got a much better scope and scale to its fighting and level design, the enemies are a bit more varied, the story is much improved, and the levels are a lot more varied.

Again though, it is handcuffed and not nearly as good as its console counterparts but it's good to at least see improvement on the handheld side of these games.

There are still some issues I had, fights feel a bit more tedious and I felt like I was constantly being stun locked on my feet and on the ground, taking a lot more damage because of it a lot more frequently. Also felt like some of the hit detection was a little off, though I am giving the game a bit of a benefit of the doubt in these instances since I played an emulated version of the game.

The magic being hot keyed was a nice addition and the ability to add fire to your weapon attacks was a nice addition that helped switch up combat a bit and is pretty flawless turned on and off, even in the middle of attacks which was great.

Overall, Ghost of Sparta is a well made and solid entry into this series. Not a definitive, must play in the franchise, but a short and solid entry nonetheless.

God of War comes back to consoles with its most tepid launch in the franchise. A return to consoles returns the grand scale that's been sort of missing in the two portable version.

Unfortunately, some of the new things Ascension tries to do with scale and presentation don't work all too well in execution. The game plays around with the camera a bit, shifting some of the set pieces as you play on them. You could start a battle right up near the camera, only for the object you are riding on to shift to the foreground or for the entire object to flip over.

It's an interesting idea in concept but the game fails in executing this in a satisfying and cool way. This is mostly due to the color palete of this game. Ascension, unlike God of War 3 suffers from the same issue a lot of PS3 games did of being a bland and drab color palete that's mostly filled with different versions of grey.

Because very little pops out or looks different, especially from the perspective of both Kratos and the enemies of the game, everything gets lost in the shuffle when these perspective shifts occur. I was constantly losing Kratos in a sea of enemies, having no idea where I'm aiming my attacks, if I'm taking damage, if I'm even attacking in the first place. These shifts don't last forever and do usually go back and forth but it's still frustrating to be in the middle of a combo and then thanks to a shift in the perspective, I'm no longer sure if the combo is going on still, let alone if I'm down on the ground or taking damage.

The combat in this game also is the weakest since the first game which doesn't help these shift in the perspective either. I can't quite put my finger on what's off about it, it just feels completely different. A bit stiffer, a bit slower perhaps. It's nothing that is one massive shift, a few minor changes across the board that just change everything in a negative way.

My issue with the combat also comes to a head near the end of the game. There's a final area that, because of the changes in combat, I had the worst time with. It's a three part, three level battle with no save points in between and no way of regaining health. It's a huge spike in difficulty that, with the changes in combat, make it an absolute chore to get through. Results obviously may vary but there was one point I actually thought about just dropping this game altogether instead of giving the section another chance. Rarely have I done that with a game but this one makes that very exclusive list.

It's also because the story, simply, isn't that interesting. Why stick around to see how this story ends if I don't care about it? I usually play games for the fun or for the story. If neither are good, there's no point in sticking around. My pride eventually got the better of me though and I managed to power through it, it's just unnecessary to take this shift in difficulty out of nowhere really. Especially since there's no way of changing the difficulty once you've started playing.

Since this is near the end of the game and the rest of the game is boring but rather harmless, it's not all that bad despite my varied critiques. It's still rather good looking in spite of the grey palette, the scale and scope are back to console levels, though again, not every set piece works. The game is also gorier and more brutal than ever.

If the scale and over-the-top brutality are things you enjoy about this series, this game may hit better for you than it did for me. But for me, the combat is such an integral part of this franchise and what's made it so fun, both on console and on handheld. That piece being so poor this time around, it leaves Ascension at the bottom of my list of God of War games and the toughest to recommend in the franchise up to this point.

A very meditative game that relies a whole lot on it's vibe to get by. Some of it works, some of the areas you'll be exploring around while sailing will be enchanting, especially when the music hits just right.

Unfortunately, there are many times when the vibe just doesn't hit. Then you're left with a dragged out boat maintenance game that just feels tedious and boring.

Mix in a few puzzles that are fairly boring and repetitive and it's really just a shame when one of the moments that has everything come together perfectly returns and you're back to being reminded of what the game could do.

I can definitely see this whole vibe working for others though and this being a personal taste thing so I'd still say give Far: Changing Tides a shot if you're into games that are more about vibes than its gameplay. It might be enough to get over some of the lulls and tedious gameplay that just didn't click for me.

I don't really know how to talk about Beacon Pines and the things it does so well in a way that truly emphasizes how great and well made those things are. It's not doing anything THAT unique. It's just doing it all at such a high degree of skill and polish that it's a wonderful experience from start to finish.

The art style is gorgeous, the writing and humor are top notch, the music is incredibly complimentary, the narrator is on top of her game in projecting the perfect emotion for the situation.

It's not going to blow you away from the game play department, this is a narrative experience for the most part, so don't play this if you get bored easily from walking and talking and exploring but if you are into that type of thing, Beacon Pines is a multi-layered narrative heavy game that is absolutely worth your time.