This game just has no personality. Sure the cars look great, sure the tracks look great. But now that these games are all Game Pass released, Horizon is easily the more entertaining racing game available on Xbox.

Mix in an underwhelming new upgrade system, Forza Motorsport is just not worth it, especially when the competition on both systems is so good.

Because this isn't a Horizon entry, Forza Motorsport features no world "base" of sorts. It's a lot of menus. While Forza may not be alone in going for a more serious sim approach to the racing genre, the menus and UI in this game are incredibly bland and boring. Yep, these are menus. Gran Turismo at least tries to go for a stylish layout and visual presentation. Forza doesn't.

Now look, Forza Motorsport is a good playing game. The cars are gorgeous, the driving is nice, you can get DEEEP into the tuning portion if you are a sim fan. There is a good game here, it's just hard to feel good about this one when it's just so standard.

While the gameplay I can praise, there are issues I have with it and some of the new upgrade systems. First, the game locks certain upgrades. As you level up, the game will unlock upgrade/improvements that you can purchase for your car.

Want to upgrade your flywheel? Gotta level it up. Want to reduce the weight of your car? Gotta grind it out and level up. It's an unnecessary roadblock.

The better you drive, the more experience you receive and of course, the faster you level up. To make matters worse, when you do level up, you are only leveling up that individual car. If you get into a new car, you start back at 1.

On top of this grind, if you want to race (in a racing game?) the game practically forces you to practice before every. single. race.

You cannot on the standard setup menu get around this. You have to pick practice before starting the official race. You can exit out of the practice once you start the practice session but it's once again a completely unnecessary roadblock that just makes this game feel grindy and slow.

I always have high hopes for a Forza game and this one is good but a massive disappointment. If you are a hardcore sim gamer that needs a new sim racing game, go wild with Forza Motorsport 2023. Otherwise, stick to Horizon or Gran Turismo if you are looking for a sim style racing game.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey features a pretty solid main character and one of the better Assassin's Creed stories that gets so bogged down an insane amount of sidequests, collectibles, a huge map, and just loads and loads of content that has become standard with Ubisoft titles.

You get the choice between a male and female character for the first time. I played as Kassandra for my playthrough and she was a pretty dope bad ass throughout the game. Her story and family drama becoming the crux to most of the story of AC: Odyssey, the game does a solid job of positioning the story around a fairly intriguing conflict while doing the standard AC thing of introducing famous historical figures to fit and weave into the main plot points.

The main side quest in the game, the Cult of the Kosmos, is also pretty good. Having the ability to accidentally uncover these cult members by running into them and killing them inadvertently is also a nice touch that makes the game feel a bit more lived in and organic.

The game also does a good job of introducing a bit of the Greek Mythology to the game in some of the side quests without going too overboard with it. It does take some time (like most things) to really get to the bottom of the side quests to uncover these events though so for a while.

Overall though, this game is just too much and really bogs down the good stuff.

There are just so many quests to do and areas to explore. I put over 90 hours into AC: Odyssey and I still have areas that went unexplored and side quests that I completely ignored. So many caves and outposts and other nonsense to explore that, at times, to do the cool stuff like the Cult of the Kosmos side stuff, you have to go through and explore in order to get farther into those quests.

Because there are soooo many characters attached to sooo many random side quests, it bogs everything down when you do get the occaisonal returning character from earlier on in the game.

For instance, there's a big reveal when you finally finish the Cult side stuff, the only problem is that the big reveal didn't really hit for me because I couldn't remember who the person was since I hadn't seen them in nearly 80 hours and sifted through so many others in that timespan.

It's just way too much and makes a game that could've been a really delightful entry into the AC series if it were under 40 hours and makes it a chore to even attempt to beat.

The modern stuff returns once again as well and for the most part feels once again tacked on and fairly unnecessary. It's hard to say though if there is stuff from the modern timeline that I'm missing since I didn't complete all the quests in the game and maybe if you hit the 100+ hour mark there's more, who knows. It's not worth finding out though.

Overall, AC: Odyssey is a bit of a disappointment more than anything because buried deep under a ton of unnecessary gameplay additions, there is a good game with a good story and good protagonist.

The game would even have replay value since there are decisions you can make throughout that do actually effect future events. If the game were a lot shorter, exploring these other options might be worth it, especially since there is a New Game+ mode you can play after beating the main story. In a game that's packed to the brim with other nonsense though, it's really tough to find the motivation to replay it and see what changes I could make.

Nothing new from a gameplay mechanics standpoint. If you've played a game like Limbo before, you know how this game will play. But Bramble: The Mountain's Nordic inspiration is so wild and uniquely dark, I still really enjoyed my time with this game and think its sets itself apart from the other dark puzzle platformers out there.

Boss battles are relatively creative, the music is fantastic, especially the final boss music. It's not great to look at but it's nothing that holds it back too much.

Overall, if you liked games like Inside and Little Nightmares and are looking for a weekend game to play, this is a solid option. It's on Game Pass too (as of this writing at least). It's a little slow to get moving but once it really jumps into its Nordic tales, it gets quite good.

Short and to the point but Arial Knight's Never Yield just doesn't do enough to make up for its rudimentary gameplay.

It's an endless runner and it tries its best at times to change up its loop to try and make it a bit different but doesn't succeed in doing so all that much.

It's also just a bit too sloppy with the controls. There are tight succession areas that just don't input fast enough based on some things it wants you to do. Luckily, since there are essentially two different jump buttons, you can get around it by just not doing what it wants you to.

The game also implements a slow down/bullet time style whenever you get close to something you'll have to jump/flip/slide on. It certainly helps but it just slows the whole flow of the game down

The game also tries to implement some style to it with some visual flair and a really great jazzy soundtrack but, at least from a visual standpoint, it just doesn't fully commit to that type of visual flair so ultimately, it all just falls a little flat.

A lot of the stage areas are also repeated pretty often, so areas don't feel all that different. Since you're doing a lot of the same thing over and over again too, there are a few times I legit thought the game was just re-doing areas I had just finished.

It's a short game though so it's hard to get fairly offensive with the flaws the game possesses. I got it for free and had a decent time with it but I don't think it offers enough to recommend for any price tag above that, which does suck to say because I feel like the creator's heart was in the right place with making this game. So maybe if you can get it cheap and you want to support indie developers, maybe not the worst purchase to kill an hour or two with.

Sifu is cool. A martial arts revenge story where your character ages as they die is a dope idea on paper and, for the most part, Slocap is able to make a fun and interesting game.

At the same time, Sifu doesn't feel like a game that reaches its full potential. While Sifu is good for the most part, camera issues, a lack of enemy diversity, and difficulty that will turn many away leaves the experience a bit of a disappointment, despite some of the fun I had with it.

While luckily after some patches, the difficulty issues aren't as bad as they were at launch, it is still a game that is a chore to get through at times. For me, the enemies all felt like damage sponges. Even as you die and reach ages where you're supposed to be stronger, it never really feels like that much of a difference.

The camera also didn't help with this. I constantly found myself in a position where the camera was cutting off my full vision of whomever I was fighting, unable to fully see if they were attacking. For a game with difficulty like Sifu's, having these technical issues possibly be the thing that causes me to die or shift the fight to where I'm suddenly on the ropes or near death is super frustrating.

I also had some issues with the auto targeting from time to time where I'd go to attack someone, only for the game to try and attack someone nearby instead. Normally these would be smaller issues but since the game is asking for near flawlessness in order to survive, these things can shift your playthrough in seconds and turn a solid run into something where you're now having to restart completely.

Luckily, one of the things this game does provide is level shortcuts that you can unlock by exploring areas and finding keys to help unlock alternate paths. Once you find these keys, they stay with you forever, so if you've beaten a level but want to lower your age, you can restart with the items you've obtained and cut through some of the enemies. I wish some of these short cuts were more even though as some will push you right to the boss of a level while others will leave you having to push through a decent amount of enemies still before arriving to the boss.

The story, while really solid at first, tends to fade into the background pretty quickly. It makes sticking with it, through the constant trial and error, that much more difficult when the things you're learning and the story unfolding isn't all that interesting.

Despite all of my complaints though, when the gameplay lines up and you get a little luck on your side or you learn the trick to giving yourself the advantage against a boss or a stage area, the game play can get really satisfying and cool. It's those moments though that make the grind and frustrating parts that much more frustrating because they can flip in an instant.

If you enjoy a tough game, Sifu might be just for you. The game can be incredibly satisfying. For me though, those frustrations just held back the incredible potential this game possesses.

A very solid follow up to the original 2018 game. The swinging still feels great, the amount of costumes is insane, the upgrades and gadgets all feel nice but overall it doesn't feel as exciting of a sequel as I was hoping.

Story is just alright, the new additions are nice but nothing great. The additional MJ sequences are just straight up bad as well. It's a bit of a disappointment from where my expectations were but overall, the game is so polished and still fun. If you like the 2018 game or Miles Morales, this game is worth playing for sure. Just don't expect that much of a different experience.

Tunic has so much familiarity to it yet it feels so interesting and unique still. So full of other classic game DNA like Legend of Zelda, Tunic takes these familiar styles and kinda pumps up the difficulty across the board to make it feel just different enough where calling it a LoZ clone would probably be a disservice to the game.

Tunic is the adventure of a cute little fox and it's up to you as the player to figure out this strange world and guide your fox friend to complete his ultimate task. Much like Legend of Zelda, you'll need to complete a series of puzzles in order to achieve this, along with any items that'll prove useful to opening up parts of the map that may not be reachable with your basic move set.

The puzzles are definitely in the similar vain of the original LoZ game, where you are just dropped in your location and told nothing, you just gotta figure it all out. The main game puzzles were not terribly difficult to figure out. Areas to go to are laid nicely and they definitely gently push you into exploring these areas to help, while never feeling like it's holding your hand. When you get into a new area to explore, you feel like you're fully responsible for figuring it out and all the rewards that come with it.

The game also has manual pages (think old school video game instruction manual type) that are going to be key to figuring out future secrets, including some of the harder, end game things that are more optional. These pages are scattered throughout the locations and in no specific order, pages will be added with info on bosses you may not get to immediately, or have already beaten, you can also get area maps or other key hints. Exploring is key to getting these items and thus, getting farther in the game.

These clues aren't always obvious too. The game uses a language that you will not be able to read for the most part. Some words here and there will be translated to a readable language but you'll have to rely on pictures and other factors at times to figure them out. These clues never feel impossible (at least the ones needed to get to the end of the game) so for my personal playthrough, this never felt tedious or annoying, though results may vary depending on your puzzle solving skills.

The side quest puzzles though that are just there for completionist reasons or to get the "true" ending of the game though are brutal. Guides are your best friend if you want to do these end game tasks without taking hours and hours to do it.

Tunic isn't just about puzzles though, the game does feature bad guys that you'll need to fight your way through, all with their own strategies to make disposing of them easier and quicker.

These encounters can be really tough, especially if you're coming up against enemies you've never come across before. Nothing terribly frustrating luckily, a few boss battles from time to time were pretty crazy, especially the final boss of this game. The final boss was really the only one though that felt like it was too difficult and just brutal for the sake of being brutal.

The one thing that kinda made some of these encounters even more difficult is the item system Tunic uses.

First, it's not all bad. Tunic uses a somewhat custom button layout system where three of the four buttons you'll be using can be fully customizable at any time. Want to have a sword attack with the X button? You can do that. Prefer to have it as the B button or the Y button? You can do that too. You don't even need to put a sword in one of these button layouts if you don't want to as well. It's great for the most part.

It only gets tricky when you want to swap anything out because the game uses an in-game item menu, meaning anytime you are re-configuring what items you have assigned to what buttons, you can be attacked at any time. Most of the time this is easily avoidable but, if you run out of something like mana and didn't assign mana replenishing items to one of your hot keys, you'll have to either go the rest of the battle without magic attacks or try and duck and dodge while re-assigning your buttons quickly. Personally, I'm terrible at doing this kind of thing, trying to find where the item is while getting attacked by a boss or multiple bad guys is just not fun and lead to a few very frustrating moments.

A personal pet peeve of mine that this game features is items that get used in a battle you die in being gone forever being a bit annoying as well, especially since those items are finite and cost money (also which is not unlimited) in order to re-stock. Sometime re-stocking at an item store is not always the most convenient as well.

Tunic is still really good though despite some of these issues. The gameplay is tight and crisp, it's gorgeous to look at and the music is the perfect compliment to the style and vibe this game is shooting for. The "figure it out yourself" style is not too difficult and very rewarding when you do move forward and overall, I had a really good time with it.

A neat idea that unfortunately gets more tedious and frustrating as the game progresses. The general idea for this game is interesting, you play a mute who, with the help of some shady new friends, starts to cheat at card games across all of France.

Cheat successfully, win the hand. Fail to pull off the trick, lose the hand. It's a pretty simple concept and at first the mechanics are fun. The longer you take though and the more suspicious you'll become. The more suspicious you become, the closer you'll become at being called out and lose the game.

It all works relatively nicely, at least at first, but as the game progresses and the tricks and mechanics get more technical (and you have to start remembering even more steps), the more tedious and annoying it all becomes and the less fun it becomes. Near the end of the game I felt like I was tuning a lot of the game out in an effort to just remember the steps I had to do more than anything. It's a bit of a bummer since the game has a nice visual style, solid music, and a nice charm to it. The story is also not half bad, though it does start to become pretty convoluted near the end and the twists are all laid out.

There are multiple endings to this game as well. I'm not sure exactly what changes and effects this game in effort to get these endings since most of the game's story beats are very linear. If you can get this game on a deal, if the general idea intrigues you, I'd recommend it. Maybe the mechanics will click better with others.

A short but slick action shooter that feels like a toned down version of Hotline Miami in many ways. My Friend Pedro does a lot of cooooool things with it, the gameplay is easy to pickup, difficult to master but fairly addicting, the music is thumping, and it's all in a package that's around 3-5 hours (Beat it in around 3 but I could see it being a little longer on higher difficulty settings).

The look of the game is kinda interesting at first, nothing too crazy and over the top visually though and it does all feel kinda samesy and repetitive from that perspective as you progress through the various levels. The levels and look never change up all that much, enemies pretty much look the same, areas kinda all feel the same as well, so any interesting look does quickly fade into the background as you progress.

The gameplay is fun though. You're just looking to blast your way through these areas and build up your chain of cool shit (not sure what it's actually called but the chain combos continue to increase the more you're flowing through the various areas and as you chain together your kills).

The game does offer a bit of variety in the ways you can go about killing people, so you don't have to just bulletstorm your way through it all, but it's mostly going to be tied to that aspect either way. Whether that's ricocheting your shots off of things in order to hit guys, or going up or down ropes while shooting and taking guys out. You'll even at times be able to throw items up into the air and use it to your advantage, such as throwing a frying pan into the air and shooting it to have your bullets ricochet off of it and at enemies. You can kick people to death though, you can blow them up of course, you can hit them with barrels so there is minor things you can do to change it up slightly, though obviously the game's focus is on shooting things.

You'll be given a variety of weapons, starting with unlimited ammo handguns but you'll get the obvious things like SMGs, shotguns, even a sniper rifle and assault rifle. The guns are pretty by the book and you'll need to find ammo for them to consistently use them so you'll have to swap in between things as you go from area to area.

Swapping out isn't too bad, a simple press of the d pad left or right will change these up. The only issue is that you will have to scroll passed some of these if you're trying to get to a specific weapon. This on its own isn't a hard/bad thing, but when the game focuses a lot on frenetic, quick action and trying to rack up a massive action chain, slowing down to focus on the exact weapon you're trying to swap to does stick out a lot more.

As you progress too, the game does implement a few platform aspects to the game, simple puzzles you'll have to do in order to get to the next room. These are relatively easy but these actions are definitely not the games strong suit. They just feel a bit off and not as tight as I'd like.

Overall though, for a game this short, it's hard to find massive faults. If you like stylish arcadey action games, My Friend Pedro is a solid single playthrough experience.

Yep, it's an FMV game alright. Square-Enix made one and honestly, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. The story is alright, though obviously, since this is an FMV game, opinions will vary.

On top of it, the gameplay aspects of this are bare bones minimum. It's not great! Put tiles on clues to get more possible info and that's about it. Moving around the board is not the best but it's not too bad.

There's not much to this overall, guessing wrong is kind of fun since the reactions are pretty random so if you are a fan of FMV games and can get this for cheap, it could be worth the price.

There are just enough minor annoyances that keep this game from hitting 5/5 for me, but overall, the return of Kratos in 2018 is outstanding. The combat feels great, the story hits hard (especially for someone like myself who took 2022 to playthrough every GoW game and had a lot of familiarity to the Kratos arc up to this point), it still looks outstanding, still sounds great. There are just a few gripes.

Our fair boy is just a bit too annoying at times, especially the middle parts of this game, the main map is a pain in the ass to use, the story and the combat does take some warming up to as well and there are some enemies that are just entirely annoying to deal with. There are a few other minor nitpicks too but ultimately, this game is basically a 4.89/5, ever so close. This game is well worth the praise it has received and it is well worth your time overall, it's pretty incredible what this team was able to do with Kratos and how they've transformed this franchise.