Kentucky Route Zero is a haunting dour game that has some truly stunning moments backed with some really great music. The only problem is that the weird obtuse-ness of it's style can bleed over into the gameplay being tedious and a chore to get through.

On longer playthroughs, the walls of text and strangeness can get grating and a slog to read through. It is a truly bold and interesting game though that is still worth trying for the experience, the moments of this game that are an absolute home run are worth getting to if a David Lynch visual novel appeals to you in any sort of way.

An interesting setup that gets bogged down by poor fighting mechanics and some quality of life features that are noticeably missing.

Vampyr is a game where your decisions matter. This is nothing new or novel but the overall setting and the setup to the game do make these types of mechanics feel a bit different.

You play as a newly turned Vampire at the height of the flu outbreak that moonlights as a world famous doctor. As a doctor vampire, you'll be making decisions throughout the game about who lives and who dies.

Want to kill a character to gain a huge amount of XP? Well that can effect side quests or even the morale of the neighborhood you're in. Decisions you make will also effect the literal lives of people in some of these neighborhoods. Though I never discovered the problems that can occur if the wellbeing of a neighborhood drops below a certain threshold, the game makes your decisions feel weighty.

One decision involved a nurse that left the hospital to start treating people in a more underground fashion in one neighborhood of the city. You can choose to help her, you can choose to shut her down or you can threaten her, all have a different outcome that leads to that part of the neighborhood shifting.

These neighborhoods and their morale changes happens whenever you rest, which is the only way to get stronger in the game, so these shifts are more forced since getting stronger and more skilled is very important in this game. This setup never feels unfair or difficult per se, but some key quality of life functions are missing that make this an absolute chore.

Like I said, the only way to level up in this game and get stronger is to rest. But resting causes the neighborhoods to shift. So whenever you rest, these neighborhoods can drop in quality unless you're keeping tabs on all of these sections.

The only problem though is, you can't fast travel. So if you want to make sure the neighborhoods aren't getting worse, you'll need to travel around to each one which takes time away from the actual gameplay missions.

Want to level up before a boss? Well, better slog through more bad guys that you've already killed a whole lot (they respawn each time you're going through areas of the city). Everything takes so much time and effort and because the combat isn't fun and is a slog, it just puts the games issues right up front constantly.

A lot of the nuance in the storylines and side quests gets completely lost underneath the weight of the crappy gameplay pressing down on you at practically every part of the game. I would've dropped this game a long time ago if it wasn't for the interesting storylines (obviously this eventually broke in the wrong direction).

The game uses a stamina bar that's tied into your attacks and dodging. If the stamina is completely depleted, you won't be able to dodge or attack until you have enough stamina to do either, so you'll have to not only time your attacks and dodges, but make sure you leave space in between at times to make sure you're not completely empty and a sitting duck for anything and everything.

As a personal preference, these types of stamina meters have always bugged me. Throw in a poor targeting system and poor camera don't help either. Since you'll have to be learning attack patterns on the fly too, death will occur and unfortunately, restarting after dying is also pretty unforgiving.

If you use any items or blood attacks (your special vampire powers which are all pretty dope) during a fight in which you've died, you lose these items upon restart. Since many of these boss fights are not near work benches (the place necessary for creating more health potions or other items) and since there is no fast travel, slogging back to find these things to get back to a good level of preparation prior to a fight after every death is just so tiresome after a while. Luckily refilling your blood meter isn't too tough (you can snack on some rats which are usually nearby boss areas) but also having to do that every. single. time. on top of the items leaving, it just adds to the annoyances.

Overall, if you can connect to the gameplay, you may like Vampyr. It was just a large deterrent from an overall enjoyable story that eventually was not good enough to make up for the playing frustrations I was encountering frequently.

PoPoLoCrois is considered a bit of a RPG hidden gem and while I personally might not completely agree with that label after playing it, I do see some very positive things about this somewhat obscure PSP game.

You play as a young prince named Pietro whose mother has fallen into a deep, unwakeable sleep. The journey begins this way but PoPoLoCrois' story is a bit different from the typical RPG.

The main story that starts the game is not the only "main" story that unfolds in this game. Once you figure out the reason behind your mother's sleep, the characters and area are returned in game a few years later with a new conflict popping up around the kingdom.

An over-arcing story does start to emerge as you progress through a few of these stories but the general setup is pretty interesting. Being able to see minor improvements around the cities, like an Inn going through renovations or a forest losing trees as the town chops more down are very minor but very great additions that really make the world and cities feel real and organic. That applies to Pietro and the various party members you'll meet in this game as well, though because of the graphics these changes are fairly minor.

Because of this multi-story format that takes place over the course of multiple years though, the party members you get for each of these chapters will vary. Since the party members you can use aren't just living in the main city of PoPoLoCrois, they won't always be free or aware of the conflict going on. Characters you can control almost always return at some point so you won't really lose anyone forever but it's another minor touch to help introduce new playable characters that changes up strategy in battle, which is needed.

The game's biggest flaw really is its battle system and overall gameplay and because the story and characters are so good, this makes these flaws that much more disappointing.

The actual battling isn't bad on its own, it's just incredibly bland and fairly basic no matter whose in the party. The game uses some turn based things and some tactics things for its battle system. Each character has a meter that charges up, the more agile your character is, the faster it charges. Once that meter charges, that character's turn starts. All battles take place on a grid map though that you have to move around on. So, once your turn begins, you'll have some options in terms of where your character moves, who they attack, or what you setup for them to do.

The biggest downside to this system is because battles just pop up at random, they begin wherever your character was on the map when the battle begins, so you really can't plan that much in advance to help make character movement easier/quicker. So if you have a slower knight that can't move around as fast but is a prominent attacker, you'll be wasting time getting them up to the heat of battle. This extends these bland battles out longer than they probably should be.

On top of that, the random encounters happen way too frequently. It felt like every five-six seconds I was running into another battle. That many battles over and over and over and over of a fairly bland battle system just makes it a chore the more I played, especially if I played over long periods.

Luckily you can run away without issue. Unfortunately, if you decide to run away from any battle, you are punished by having your gold go down. Given the frequency of battles, this can quickly add up. It just adds to the tiresome nature of the battles in this game since it kinda forces you to do it or risk losing out on money for upgrades/items.

Overall, PoPoLoCrois does some really interesting things with its storytelling and has some great characters and world to explore. Unfortunately, it just gets bogged down in some very bland fighting mechanics that pop up far too frequently and take away from the big positives this game possesses. I'd still recommend playing this since the story is so good. It's not too long by RPG standards and maybe the fighting won't bother you as much as it did for me.

Infernax is a modern attempt at a Castlevania-like style game, (brutal difficulty and all) with some newer game play sensibilities thrown in that make the game pretty interesting.

A great evil has spread across the land and you play, of course, as the only man who can save the day.......or not. The game features a pretty by-the-book story but with multiple endings that can make multiple play throughs a somewhat different experience.

The game in total features nine different endings depending on the choices you make. They range from playing the game as the good, fearless leader, an evil maniac, or less serious ones like playing like an absolute coward or a very, very lazy individual. Some of these are a little harder to obtain (the Internet is your friend) but the various options are a welcomed addition.

These multiple endings don't change much, a few of course will be tied to achievements/trophies and some will require a whole new play through (while others can be done by simply loading up your old save and doing things a bit differently) but they all unlock cheat codes for the game.

One of the retro additions to this game is a game genie-like cheat code area that you can find in your exploration. Infinite mana, unlimited money, more gore (this game is already pretty gory), or even paintball mode are just some of the cheat codes you can enter in this section and add a bit of uniqueness to the overall experience, though obviously don't change a ton in the core gameplay.

On the gameplay front, like I said previously, the game is a flashback to the NES games of old, AKA, brutal difficulty.

The game is hard but not impossible. Infernax has done a good job of making it a challenge without feeling too cheap. The old NES/Ninja Gaiden style damage take system is in place which is unfortunate, where your character when hit by an enemy will push backwards when hit, which of course can lead to you falling into a pit of fire/water/acid/death and having to start all over again.

Luckily if hard difficulty isn't your thing, the game does have easier settings that provide you with more saves, you keeping the exp and gold you've picked up and a few other bonuses that you don't normally get from the classic/brutal setting. Every time you die you have the option to change it up to the easier setting, though I don't think you can go back up to the more brutal setting once you've raised the white flag.

The brutal difficulty did have me take dungeons on verry carefully and very slowly. Luckily there is a save location right outside of each dungeon, so if you completely botch the beginning of a dungeon and want to give it a second shot without death being the reason, you can traverse back to the save spot, heal yourself and save, which will then finalize and have you keep any gold and exp that you've picked up to that point.

The experience can be used at these save points as well to upgrade your power, health or mana, so you can theoretically farm exp and improve your stats this way to help make things a bit easier if you are too stubborn to give in and drop to an easier difficulty setting.

The gold will also come in handy at various towns you visit, as you can use that to upgrade your armor, your weapon, purchase new spells, or purchase flasks that can be used to store health or mana potions. These things will also help make the game a lot easier as you progress. For instance, one of the various things you can buy are permanent continues.

On the regular classic difficulty setting, once you die, whether from too many hits or dropping into a death pit, you will start outside of the dungeon or your last save point, regardless of how far you've gotten into the dungeon. Did you die at the dungeon boss with one health bar remaining? Guess what, back to the beginning. Luckily, with these purchasable continues, if you were to die at a boss or at a section of the dungeon, you will start back up at the start of that section but once those are gone, they are gone until you get back to a save point where they will once again return.

When you do use a continue, your health and mana will start completely full again so it makes using mana in dungeons to try and extend how far you get.

Really the only game play flaw in these dungeons sections is the platforming aspects of it. For me, if a game is super challenging, I expect some pretty on point controls and mechanics to help make the game a bit easier or at least make it feel like your death wasn't the game's fault and purely on me the player. Unfortunately in Infernax, there are a few platforming sections that are just not good at all.

You'll have to make some pretty large jumps which you can make thanks to a charge attack you eventually will get in the game. Unfortunately, this charge attack can't be stopped once you're using it, so if you use it to go over a large gap but you're now coming up to a new gap or a pit of death and need to stop, you can't and you may end up dying from overshooting your target.

It's tough at times to predict just how much space you have for some of these jumps since you can't move the camera over to see if there are any surprises waiting for you.

There's also a rising attack that's used to help reach higher areas that a normal jump can't reach but you'll also need to use it in some platforming to jump down and around walls or sections in order to reach a new platform. The controls are just not responsive enough though for these areas and even after kinda getting the hang of it, the skills and controls just never felt good to do. It always felt like I was just making it by the skin of my teeth and was more lucky than getting good.

Bosses in these dungeons, while difficult, do have pretty easy to pick up on patterns that didn't require a ton of replays to pick up on. Mostly learning when/where/how to attack these bosses was the extent of having to figure things out.

You'll have to defeat five of these dungeon bosses in order to get to the end game boss. Each dungeon will have at least one spell or skill that will usually help you outside of those dungeons to help traverse new areas or help you complete side quests that you may choose to do.

These side quests are definitely not a requirement but do add to the fun exploration aspects of the game. Doing some of these quests will change what kind of ending you'll get as well so sometimes not doing some of these things is actually more beneficial depending on your personal goals.

Some quests feature fairly obvious morality options like choosing to help a guy destroy a dam or choosing to burn down all towns. Others will have more world changing effects that don't seem as obvious right away.

For instance, after agreeing to help a wizard get rid of a few randoms that decided to setup camp right outside his store, you can choose to stand firm and threaten them or choose to join them for a drink and hang out with them instead.

I chose to be righteous and demand they leave, which they did without much issue. However, after returning to one of the towns and being asked to help a potion seller bring his wares into town, the man was attacked and killed by those vagrants I chose to threaten. I took them down with ease from there but that town became the only one where I was unable to restock on health potions because of the man's death.

Overall, Infernax is a good time if you don't mind a challenge. It's got a great look, the music is pretty solid, it's got some replay value and the game isn't too brutal and frustrating, outside of some clunky controls on some of the platforming aspects of the game. It's not too long with the difficulty being the main thing that could extend the game out longer. Infernax is definitely worth at least one playthrough if retro feeling games or challenging games are something you enjoy.

The violent culmination of the original series doesn't disappoint. God of War III builds off of all the things that have made this series entertaining and pumps it to the extreme, while mostly improving things that have always been so so with the series.

Kratos is back bby and things start off immediately where things left off in GoW 2 and it fits pretty perfectly with this series story. The God of War story has always been pretty good for a game that's so violent and action heavy and God of War 3 does a good job of wrapping things up for the most part.

It's maybe a bit too longwinded near the end where it feels like the final stretch goes on for a while and less focused than the bulk of the start. There's a decent chunk of backtracking as well so even from a location standpoint it just gets a little repetitive.

That being said, the set pieces in this game are pretty impressive. Very big, very epic, very bloody. After two of these games still pretty fresh in my head, both with large scale action parts to them, God of War 3 surpasses all of them easily.

This game definitely takes advantage of the system shift to PS3 with its scale and action. Climbing up Gaia, fending off enemies and all the insanity going on around you is easily the best of the franchise up to this point and might be one of my favorite set pieces for an action/adventure game. The remaster of this version to the PS4 just adds to the impressive scale, scope and look too.

Gameplay wise it's pretty much what you remember from this franchise but much tighter and improved on for the most part. More weapons, easier to transition between them all and enemies overall feel more designed where certain weapons are almost a requirement in order to get rid of them. It keeps the game play fresh, especially when the game starts to mix and match some of those bad guys together, making you swap between weapons on a dime to quickly stomp everyone out.

The weapons and tools you get to help you cause mass murder are all pretty fun to use and all feel quite different from one another. Whether it's your tried and true double blades, or two closer range weapons, or a more ride range weapon you get near the end of the game. All differentiate themselves not just on a range standpoint but just in a use and attack pattern setting.

These weapons will also change your secondary/magic attack, all with their own advantages depending on the situation. I did find myself drawing to a favorite amongst the weapons I had but when you have to swap to take advantage of an enemy weakness, they never feel bad to use or tough to figure out even if it had been a while since I used it. Since you can swap so fluidly and seamlessly, you're never far from your favorite once you want to go back to it, the control swap is very responsive

The controls overall are quite responsive, about the only consistent issue I ran into was the game not really recognizing the double jump if you waited a bit in your second jump press.

Since we are on the subject of negatives with this game, there were also some camera and aiming issues I ran into with some consistency.

The game does get a bit creative with how it uses the camera and for the most part, these shifts work quite well but because its a fixed camera where you can't move it around, there are a few times where the camera is just not placed well.

Sometimes the camera makes judging gaps and distance a bit of a pain. There were a handful of times when I was trying to make a jump where I thought I had cleared it but it turned out, I hadn't and I'd fall to my death.

There are times during battle too where enemies just felt a bit off camera and hard to find while taking damage.

Since the aiming with some of your tools auto aim, trying to take them down and stop taking arrows to the face would be a bit of a pain since sometimes you can't see if the aim circle is over them. Other times the game will auto aim you on other enemies and trying to move away from them and onto the target you are trying to specify can be really challenging. It even felt like at times like the game would only auto aim on the exact opposite range I was trying to get. If I needed to hit someone from far away, I'd only get guys right next to me, if I needed to hit some enemies from close range, I'd only get bad guys from far away showing up. This by no means happened every time but it did pop up a bit too much for my liking, enough for me to notice.

Some of the quick time events can be tough to follow as well. Though they are much more responsive than the previous two (though this could've easily been a streaming issue on my end), they've setup the QTE's to have the button you need to press appear on the screen where that button is in relation to the controller. The X button appears on the bottom part of the screen, the Triangle in the top part of the screen, so on and so forth. Because the screen can be quite busy at times, it's sometimes hard to tell when the button shows up because so many things are showing up in the various quadrants of the screen.

That's really the only major issues I had though with this game. It pretty much nails and improves on everything across the board which was already pretty solid from top to bottom to begin with. Tighter controls, better, more engaging gameplay, better set pieces, and somehow even more violent. With the bar already pretty high, it just makes everything that much more impressive.

Man, this game is one amazing vibe that just gets stranger and more interesting the deeper you get. Though I'm not entirely sure I'll ever fully wrap my head around the strangeness that the Control world has to offer, that alone has me in constant thought about every thing I've ran into, every file I've picked up and can read, every audio file I've stumbled upon.

You play as Jesse Faden who has somehow stumbled into the Federal Bureau of Control, an FBI-like agency that handles otherworldly and odd situations/scenarios that pop up. The entire building is under lockdown due to some unexplained attack and it's up to Jesse to uncover the many, many mysteries of the Bureau and what exactly has gone on.

Along the way, you'll stumble upon a handful of employees that are trying to figure everything out just like you are, all with their own little oddities that will help you along the way and help paint a richer, deeper picture of the FBC and the overall world that Control takes place in.

Not everything will be answered and to me, that was perfectly fine. Not knowing everything helped make the weirdness that much more fascinating. Whether that was something like the Janitor and what his link to everything is or walking into a room covered top to bottom in Post-It Notes and having no real explanation for it. You can learn more through notes and various other things but Control is never going to fully reveal its hand to you and it's all the better for it.

The game play is a mix of gun play and various skills you'll learn along the way. The gun play itself is also a mixture of various types, ranging from your standard handgun style shooting, to a shotgun, to a grenade launcher of sorts. All have their pros and cons depending on the situation and the enemies involved. The game doesn't have a manual reload mechanic, the gun after a while will automatically reload which at first bothered me but as I played more of the game, I realized the purposeful nature of it and how it makes you use the full depth of your skillset. Same goes for your skills and the energy attached to it. You'll have to mix and match these abilities quite often to get through firefights and learn the best strategies to get through something. You won't always be able to shoot or throw your way through something with ease.

The skills themselves are also quite fun. Some will be more battle focused, like the ability to dodge or shield your character. Others though will have multi use to them, where battles will become easier but you'll also be able to traverse through the areas easier. Or even get through puzzles. Being able to levitate or throw things for example makes fighting a lot deeper once you've obtained them but also helps you power things up or reach areas you weren't able to prior. It's definitely in the same vain as a Metroidvania, as it does open up new parts of the areas to explore but its approach to this doesn't feel as necessary as many in that style make it. It's more so a fun addition and something that will help make side missions easier if that's something you choose to explore.

The game starts fairly linear as it unfolds the main story and your main objective but once it does set that stuff up, you are able to move more freely around. The characters will give you missions to do for them outside of the main story stuff and there are other objective based tasks you can pick up as well that will help you score some additional mods.

These mods aren't a requirement to beating the game but they will certainly make things easier for you. You'll be able to set personal mods up on yourself, whether that's energy regen speed, a general health, increase how much health you can recover when you pick up healing objects, or other things in that ballpark. There are also weapon mods for each of your weapon types such as how fast a gun can fire, how much damage you to on a headshot, how much damage you do when low on health, etc. etc. These are much more varied and also feature gun variety specific mods that can only be attached to one or two certain types.

As you progress and level up, the game also features various upgrade specific pickups that, along with a monetary-like system, will help you improve your weapons where you'll be able to equip multiple mods on them at one time, making them do more for you. These can be mixed and match to some degree of customization depending on your general play style which is nice, so if you want to equip a specific type of gun to not only to more damage but also do even more when low on health, you're able to do that on whatever gun you feel would be best in a near-death scenario.

The gun varieties themselves all have solid purpose to them. All have a variety of ammo levels to them, depending on the type selected which of course comes with its own set of pros and cons. Like the grenade launcher style type is great at hitting for big damage if you're seeing a bunch of bad guys come your way but it's only got three shots before you need to wait for it to start reloading ammo. Can you be more effective with that or with the SMG style type, where you'll get more bullets but you may not hit as accurately. These varieties mixed and matched with the mods available will definitely make you try different load outs to see what works best and for the most part, you'll find something that works best.

The only real issue I found with the gunplay is more a pet peeve than anything where some of the more explosive type gun varieties do have the chance if you're not careful of hitting something nearby you and exploding in your face, causing damage only on you and nothing more. Personally, I've just never been a fan of the "blast radius can also damage you" style approach to these things in games like this but this also digs into a bigger problem I had with the game.

For as crazy as Jesse's powers can get in this game and the otherworldly nature of the world and setting, at times it just felt like Jesse was always much weaker than some of the things she was coming up against. Granted a lot of the things you fight in this game aren't really people, at least some aren't people anymore, but it just felt like at times that, even as you progressed and got stronger, leveled up more and improved on your abilities, you would come up to something where, after one or two hits you were dashing and dodging around for more health to try and find. It felt like that was the case from the start to the finish of this game sadly.

As you get better with the combat and the strategies, this is mostly easy to get around but one surprise bad guy coming out of nowhere and blowing up in your face can happen and then suddenly you're on the ropes and that never really changed, even after I completely upgraded my health or various other skills. Bosses can also get pretty difficult and have this issue but it's a bit more understanding in those situations to me.

Overall though, there is very little to complain about for me and Control. The story is fascinating, the world created makes me want so much more (especially some of the things Remedy suggests in notes and what is setup in one of the game's DLC packs). The vibe this game is on is just addicting and incredible. It also plays pretty well and controls generally great, outside of the nitpicky thing mentioned and a few other gripes that really aren't worth mentioning in much detail. It's a game I've already started recommending to my friends as "just give this a shot and see if it connects with you". If it can dig its claws into you like it did me, you're in for one hell of an experience.

It's Kirby, there's not a whole lot more to say about it besides that. The second outing of the demon from hell is nearly 30 years old and still holds up pretty nicely.

Some power ups of course are missing, some enemies that eventually do give power ups in future titles surprisingly don't, controls are a little slow with their response time (though not by a lot and some of that could be on my end and not on the game) and the bosses are pretty repetitive but besides that, everything that has made Kirby the classic franchise that it is is alive and well here.

Until Dawn weaves a pretty good story and a few solid performances into an interesting choose your own adventure style horror game.

The game gets dragged down a bit by some uneven performances, characters that feel unimportant and massively underdeveloped (even by horror trope standards), and other characters feeling practically bulletproof for what they go through and still manage to survive (and despite your own choices up to that point). Until Dawn is fun enough despite these issues though and shows flashes of a potential classic from the team in charge in the future. The formula and some of the writing is definitely there.

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.

Pokemon goes open world with Arceus and it's definitely a change that I've always hoped for. Being able to just explore areas and find new and different areas, with maybe new pokemon to see, is a great idea on paper so it's surprising it took this long to actually see this attempted. The end result, for the most part, is a solid first attempt with a lot of room for improvement still.

The areas themselves are pretty great to explore. The game does a good job of making each area you can go to feel unique and worth covering every inch of. Whether you're climbing around mountains dealing with Ice Pokemon or you're swimming around beachy areas looking at water Pokemon, each area does a good job of setting itself apart without feeling too much like an obvious attempt to fit different types of Pokemon in one area.

Like many Pokemon games too, you'll earn HM style upgrades to make this exploration easier as you progress. In Arceus you'll be able to use a flute to call upon various Pokemon, all with unique traits that will come in handy. Whether that's a Pokemon that you can ride on to quickly get from point a to point b, a Pokemon to make sure you don't drown, or a Pokemon that helps you scale rocks or other various kinds of land, or even a Pokemon that can find buried treasure. These skill traits are good for the most part, though some feel less important in the grand scheme of exploring.

Along with a bit of a format change, the game's emphasis also feels a bit different. The Pokedex gets a lot of attention in this game and for the most part, that primary focus works well.

Now, each Pokemon has a set of goals in your Pokedex. They vary slightly depending on the kind of Pokemon, some are pretty standard and common, like defeating a certain amount of them or catching a certain amount of them. Sometimes it changes up though, whether its seeing a Pokemon use a certain move a certain amount of time, or defeating a Pokemon with a certain type of move.

The end goal with these Pokedex tasks ultimately is to "master" full knowledge on a Pokemon by getting it up to level 10. Luckily you won't have to do every single task in order to get it to full expert level which is good for not getting too tedious.

There's no specific big picture end goal for mastering the Pokedex in full in regards to the main story but there are side quests throughout the game that will task you with mastering specific Pokemon with a reward for doing so. You'll at times be rewarded with rare candy and things like that so the rewards for these tasks, at times, is definitely beneficial.

The only real issue with the new Pokedex first focus really is battling feels de-emphasizd a bit too much.

Random trainer battles are nearly non-existent in this version. You'll at times come across them but for the most part these are story driven so they pop up a lot less frequently than in previous Pokemon games where you could come across them on various routes. In order to level up with any kind of consistency, you'll have to do a lot of battling with random Pokemon in the open worlds.

On paper, this isn't all that bad but I did run into some frustrations with this. Wild Pokemon seemed to run away with a decent amount of frequency, which when it happens, your party will earn no experience. That obviously isn't anything new but with the increased focus on leveling up through these random battles, it tends to be a bit frustrating when you're trying to grind a few levels with your party and having to constantly deal with Pokemon running away.

Even move learning takes a pretty big step back. Any type of moves you learn after leveling up isn't really expressed directly. As soon as you're done with a battle, all the experience you gain, levels you gain, moves you learn, even evolving that can take place is all thrown at you all at once on the open world. The game is focused on getting you right back to exploring the open world in front of you but these two aspects clashed for me. I was constantly forgetting about new moves I could learn from my Pokemon or forgetting that a Pokemon could evolve because this info was being thrown at me so quickly without much time for me to take a bit of time to see what was going on with those aspects to the game. Especially since you can be attacked by these wild Pokemon as soon as you get out of a battle.

Another issue I had with the new focus on the Pokedex is a lack of quality of life aspects to that. Because the game wants you to complete these Pokedex tasks, trying to bring up the Pokedex while in a battle doesn't seem possible (it's possible there is actually a way to do this and I just wasn't aware of it but there wasn't an obvious button or anything that alluded to this being possible). So if you find yourself in a fight against a wild Pokemon that you're trying to complete tasks with involving a very specific thing, you'll just have to remember it from memory. If you can't remember which type of move you're supposed to use on a type of Pokemon though, you'll just have to hope you can find some more while you pop open your Pokedex post-battle. It's not a huge loss or massive annoyance, but it's a noticeable omission given the focus being what it is in Legends. There are a few quality of life omissions that could make this game so much tighter and more enjoyable as well. Much like the inability to open the Pokedex during a battle, none are super annoying or frustrating but adding them all up, it does make the game feel like it has a lot of room for improvement.

One of the newer gameplay additions is the agile style/strong style move mastering. If you use a move a certain amount of times you'll eventually master it and be able to change up the move before you use it. If you choose to use a move in agile style, you'll attack faster but for less damage than usual. If you do a move using strong style, you'll attack slower but for more damage. Overall, this didn't really change much from my perspective but it feels like an addition that also has room for being interesting and more strategic in the future.

The game also replaces the gym battle system with something called noble battles. In each area, there is a Pokemon that's been taken over by some strange force that causes them to go into a frenzy and its up to you to fix that issue. You'll do that by throwing items at them and draining a health bar. You can drain it consistently with these items but if you want to drain the meter faster, you'll have to get these Pokemon into a battle. In order to get them into these battles, you'll have to do something to slow them down. Each Pokemon has a different method in order to accomplish this and the only consistent thing is how underwhelming all of it is.

In short, these noble battles are bad. You don't even need to use Pokemon to complete these. You can just keep throwing these unlimited supplied items until the bar is completely empty. A few of the noble battles become a bit trickier with the patterns the Pokemon use but none of them were interesting or fun. All were tedious and boring. You don't even get anything significant to completing these. All the HM-like Pokemon you get all happen prior to these, all that comes with them is a sticker in your book and the story progressing. They are just so flat and feel completely unnecessary.

Overall though, Pokemon Legends: Arceus shows a lot of potential and on its own, it's a pretty good first attempt at switching up the Pokemon format. The foundations are there in this version, but it just feels like it needs a lot more tightening and quality of life improvements to really knock it out of the park. Some noticeable frame rate issues also don't help matters but with time, this style of Pokemon game could be even better than the old format. Only time will tell if they can get it there though

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 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.

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.