Embrace your dreams and protect your honor... as SOLDIER.

This is a really hard title to review because it really felt like two different games to me. A prequel to FF7 and 7R, while also telling its own self contained Crisis Core story. As always with my reviews, I keep conversation on the story pretty light because I don't like including spoiler content, so I'll continue to avoid that here.

Crisis Core as it's own game is a little... weak. Genesis is not a very believable villain, Angeal isn't quite the captivating mentor figure that he's portrayed to be, and Hollander just kinda sucks. I don't know too much about the writing/directing history of the game but it felt really, really Kingdom Heartsy to me in all of the worst ways. Dialogue was weak across the board, even Zack who was the shining star had some really awful lines (see: Monsters and Angels,) and overall was a detriment to the story. The gravity of what was at stake for Shinra and the world at large felt deflated because that epic speech was never there, that interpersonal dialogue had me cringing most of the time. In theory I really wanted to like actually playing as a SOLDIER under the Shinra banner, doing missions on behalf of the orginization to uncover the mystery behind Genesis' dissapearance, but as mentioned above the lack of dialogue or intrigue behind Genesis made for a very underwhelming experience. Everytime he shows up in the story he's monologuing some faux-Shakespeare which comes off more like a morose teenager than what he's actually supposed to be. The story of Crisis Core felt like Advent Children to me, where I was legitimately only happy to have experienced it to get more of the rest of the cast... and that we did.

Before I get into the FF7/R part of Reunion, I should go over other elements of the game that I found to be lackluster. The first, and this was my issue with Peace Walker when I played that, is that Crisis Core all in all, no matter where I play it, feels like a PSP game in its design. Rooms no matter how small or large feel oddly... empty. Zones in the side missions are barren and tonally monotonous. The world is really nothing special, and almost an unfair critique after playing 7 Remake doesn't even begin to compare in terms of population/material density.

And oh man, speaking of those side missions... There are approximately 459304953049350 of them in the game, and they feature the exact same loop of maps in which you run from point A to point B and kill monster/group of monsters. The unfortunate thing here is that they are extremely beneficial to do, meaning that the player, even though they are displayed as optional, almost should do as many as they can before progressing. The reason these are so helpful is because of the plethora of beneficial DMW (I'll get to this in a second) summons and materia/materia slots that they provide for completion. I found myself in the first two days of playing Crisis Core almost exclusively doing these because I figured I could rush through them all and then progress like i did with 7R. Lo & Behold I found that after these first few days of doing almost exclusively side content that I had notched an 18% completion rate on side missions that I was going to give up. Why are there so many??? It would be one thing if they had even a smidge of variety... but outside of enemies that you fight they are literally all monster killing missions. This wasn't even remotely fun and destroyed a lot of interest I had in the game.

The caveat of doing as many of those side missions as I did was that when I resumed the story, I was reeeeeeeeally strong. For as long as possible, only needing to change for the final boss, I ran a full oonga-boonga strength/vit build into the end game abusing my fused Twister Attack combo to kill groups of enemies and bosses alike in one fell swoop. I almost appreciate how easily it is to break the game like this on normal, but it did remove a lot of the challenge. Unlike 7 Remake, which I know comes much later after the original Crisis Core, you don't need to put too much thought into Materia in this game once you've found what works for you. I assume magic builds work fairly well but you can legitimately speedrun the game on melee alone (took me maybe eleven hours with the side content included.) Combat is pretty bare bones overall, attacking with melee is mostly reduced to a one button normal but you can augment your arsenal with materia that enhance this. Abilities with materia were actually really convenient, and I'm glad they utilize this DNA in 7 Remake, allowing the player to hit Left Bumper then a/b/x/y/rt/rb (using xbox scheme) to select whichever spell they have attached to each slot. This made casting my twister attack and curaga seamless in combat and un-frustrating like some of Square Enix & Final Fantasy's action titles do.

Now as a lore fiend I really am glad to have played Reunion, which is probably exactly why this title got re-released. Not only was it extremely popular at launch, but I'm glad Square Enix was able to capitalize on the people who wanted to explore the multiple routes they see the FF7 franchise taking with 7 Remake. I've seen the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Orchestra live, own Advent Children, have played the OG FF7, 7 Remake, and Intermission DLC, I am a complete sucker for this series and the world its built. I love the characters, themes, environments, score, you name it. I spent the entierty of Crisis Core connecting the dots between it and 7 and 7 Remake, and I'm glad it was rewarding in that regard. I enjoyed seeing characters like Cloud, Aerith, Sephiroth, and the Turks in a completely different light, with everybody's favorite villain being shown in a period in time we never see in the OG/Remake title, a SOLDIER. You get to see the war hero from a direct spectator, and that was really neat. I wept internally at the ending, despite having qualms with the Angeal/Genesis storylines, it really did move me and appreciate the story of Cloud Strife even more than I already did. For a lore junky, Crisis Core is a must play due to how it sets the stage for one of the greatest stories in the medium's history.

In all, I was not a fan of the "Crisis Core" part of Crisis Core, but did love how it expanded on a story I was already very interested in, that of Final Fantasy 7. Nothing in gaming has captivated me quite like FF7 has, and I'm not sure anything will again. Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 - Reunion succeeds at what it clearly was meant to do, hold the hype for Rebirth, and it aces that for me. I would recommend this title for people just like I who are looking for more to hold them over until the next part of the Remake saga releases, or want to experience the origin story of Cloud Strife and Zack Fair. While the game itself wasn't great, I had fun and it most definitely was worth it.

No, I'M Pickle Rick

First off, this game has 100% been unreasonably review bombed because it's a Justin Roiland release. I've never seen Rick and Morty, so I'm missing out on all the finer bits of cringe and humor alike, but I think its unfair to judge this game because of its tangental relation to its television counterpart. I wish there was a better way to filter out negative reviews upon a game's release because when I went to log High on Life on release day (12/13,) it was already bombarded with low-ratings, of which I severely doubt were genuine.

The game itself, after beating it in eight short hours is... okay? The humor does get a bit old and drawn out, but sometime's I couldn't hold in my laughter? I don't know what that says about me, but the whole saga with the Mackincheese-brothers Brothers and the whole gun "LETZDUIT" got some cheap chuckles out of a usually stoic me. Other than that, there were quite a few drawn out punchlines that the writers had clearly intended to be funny that did not hit. The risk of a game (and probably show) that are written like this, is that the deeper you dive into the bits, the higher chance you have of making them cringe. And as we all know, cringe is one of the most damaging diagnoses' to have. While a game in theory written by a comic could be funny, I think this goes a mile too far into the "try to be funny" route than the actual "be funny" route that something like the AI: The Somnium Files franchise accomplished. There were many moments in this game where you have accomplished your objective or are about to embark on your next mission, and have to sit and wait for Gene or your Sister to monologue on a poorly attempted spree of jokes that are quite unfunny. I found myself frequently taking my hands off the mouse and keyboard, palming them on my forehead, and waiting until the scene had ended. This was waaaaay too common and kinda killed any flow of the game and actual good humour included.

Gameplay itself is alright, it's mostly basic first person shooting against a recycled cast of few alien enemies. To the credit of the devs, none of these are really annoying or tough to play against, just a little samey. Platforming is simple and there weren't really any moments where I was lost in translation trying to map through a puzzle or cross a map. I ran into a few bugs, nothing major and I found that the checkpoint system was good enough to bypass these.

I can't really recommend this game to anyone, because its short and doesn't do enough well to be worth going out of your way, but I will say please play a game before you review/rate it. Don't ride the bandwagon, if it's a bad game and you've experienced that, then it's a bad game. If it's a bad game, and you haven't actually experienced what makes it so poor, then I think it's best to leave the criticism/praise to those who have.

Tactics Ogre more like Tactics Thankfully It's Over.

I'm clearly missing something big about this game because my takeaways seem to be a tremendous contrast from almost everybody I know and the majority of reviews I've read, but Tactics: Ogre Reborn felt more like a slog of mishandled opportunities than an engaging tactical experience. Maybe it's because I've been spoiled on the advancements tactics games have made in the recent years, with my first formal Tactics game being Valkyria Chronicles 4.

I have a big problem with games that tutorialize and demonstrate information to the player poorly, and this is the biggest gripe I had with TO:R. I felt like almost none of the games deeper systems were explained to the player, with what they do explain being the basics of tactics/grid based gameplay and that was about it. I struggle, generally speaking with how information is presented to me, and games that hide this through self search or menus not directly shown to the player are legitimately tough for me to grasp. I felt like there were some cool mechanics I could attempt with Ogre, but I had no clue about optimal party makeup and the differences between classes, absolutely no idea on the benefits of slotting skills/magic, and was left ignorant of what the elemental signs do that are attached to every character. Now, I don't need a game to sit there and explain how to do everything the best way to me, but some basic explanation of these things could be nice. I could (almost) excuse that if this were still the older version of the title but it's not. This is a symptom of a lot of older Japanese RPG titles (and still some today,) that make said genre(s) generally unapproachable for me. I hope this doesn't come off as whining about the game not over-explaining, but rather a complaint to the lack of helpful text to make TO:R an engaging and fun experience. Things like elevation and weather affecting accuracy/movement are easier to parse through and understand but, are they really fun?

Outside of the unexplained deeper systems of the game, I had a major issue with pacing. Tactics games last notoriously long, with my runthrough of the recent Triangle Strategy lasting ~fifty hours, but it felt like a quick and chipper fifty hours. Tactics Ogre's battles feel reallllllly slow, and there's a LOT of them for what seemed like the sake of just having more battles. The upfront mechanics of this game weren't interesting enough to me to make this feel warranted either. Most inexcusable was there being no way to quick restart a fight, even where the Chariot Tarot wouldn't help. I don't care what year it is, if it's a tactics game, it should have a way to restart the battle if you want. Games that don't have this or save-anywhere mechanics (Souls games nonwithstanding) are not acceptable in the current gamesphere. There was a moment I got maybe thirty minutes into a fight, realized I was losing due to poor tactical decision making (or lack thereof heh) and discovered I couldn't go back to the start of the fight. I put my controller down, stood up from my seat, let out an audible "bro" and then sat down and let the AI take over until my party was wiped. This pacing issue struggled all the way to the end battle gauntlet of the game, it felt like it was never going to end.

I also took issue with the map design in this game, and after reading another reviewer on this site, I'm glad I am not alone. The large issue is that the maps are either too big or the units don't move far enough. It often takes 2-4 turns of movement around the map before the parties can engage, and that's all just wasted space. These maps are pretty poorly designed too, often lacking any concept of "realistic" combat. Now, that's not to imply you're coming to a game called "Tactics Ogre" for its realism, but rather to imply that there should be some sense for a world you are fighting in rather than squares mounted on other squares. The fortresses and castles in some of the fights in TO:R were just awkward, having your party start way at the bottom of a water-falled castle and having to climb up. It doesn't make sense in terms of combat, there's no logic or flow to the design of the map, rather just the need for "elevation." If you want a better look at Tactics games employing elevation on a grid based system in a medieval setting, look at Triangle Strategy this year. You often fight in courtyards and castles in that game, and the cities/towns feel a little more approachable to both game design and basic architectural logic.

Outside of the above issues with the game, I found the Sprites to be as dated as they can be, and the music to be largely repetitive. Again, maybe I'm spoiled by Fire Emblem Three Houses and Valkyria Chronicles 4 in regards to musically backing my longer tactical engagements, but I had to mute the TO:R OST after a while and play my own music over it because it was becoming rather cumbersome to my ears.

I can see why others enjoy this game but I cannot recommend Tactics Ogre: Reborn based off my experiences with it, and having played titles I find much more enjoyable in the same genre.

I love you
But when you're gone
There'll be Nothing else
I'll be all alone
All alone

It's more Plague Tale!.. for better or for worse. I might as well start off with what makes it good, and there's defintiely some weight there. Plague Tale: Requiem is a whole lot more "serious" than its predecessor in that its a darker and more depraved game, which in theory doesn't make any media "better" but with a topic as traumatically heavy as the Black Plague, I think is necessary. Requiem doesn't shy away from death in its most cruel and encroaching forms. Characters close to Amicia and Hugo will perish, entire populations will vanish, and the two constantly weigh the consequences of their actions and quest to right the proverbial ship. The game doesn't only do this through the story, but with the backgrounds and environments that the two travel through. After spending much of the first game in Guyenne, the growing party spend much of Requiem in transit. While many of these locations are luscious at first, thanks to some amazing environmental work by Asobo, they quickly descend into dilapidated warzones dripping with plague-borne ooze and despair. I think this allowed me to get more emotionally invested in the game than its predecessor, I found myself groaning less at the dialogue/conversations because I was consistently grossed out by what I was looking at, which is a good thing. Overall I think characters were written much better; Hugo was way less annoying than in the first game, Lucas was actually fun to be around, Arnaud plays a good guardian, and Amicia leans in to the derangement necessary to defeat the evil at hand. While I'm not a fan of Amicia's voice actress, the writing of her character made her a very compelling sibling protagonist.

The story was also quite good in Requiem, though I don't think it (nor Ragnarok) should have been nominated for this at the game awards. Ultimately the themes don't get too deep, other than trying to find a cure for Hugo and defeating the Plague Rat issue, but The Last of Us didn't get too deep either outside of being a story more about humans against humans. I'm not trying to compare the two, because The Last of Us 1 is nearly a flawless game, but I think the commonality in a worldwide destructive illness and how humans react to it tie the two's stories, rather than being more philosophical. Plague Tale 2's narrative jumps around a bit and has some fairly obvious twists, but I found it compelling enough to see it all the way through the end, because it was satiating enough and the writing of characters made me kind of want to see their resolutions.

Now it may read that I was more favorable on the game than I was with Innocence, which is true to a point but there were a number of things not improved from first title to sequel. The first being the combat, it's still really bad... it's samey and motonous and any fighting involving the sling and crossbow take waaaaaaaay too long. If you're being attacked by multiple characters, it's effectively just a kite simulator in which you have to find an impediment to enemy movement, run five steps away, throw a sling, run five steps away, repeat. Even though you can upgrade the sling motion (which was hard because the game doesn't regularily give you enough resources to do this,) it's not enough to give you any flow to fighting. Amicia still has to rev it up and watch as the enemies run a little too fast at her, often times requiring other ammo types to defeat. This was also annoying, and ultimately was my problem with Scarlet Nexus (I bet you didn't think I'd include that here.) In Requiem, much like Scarlet Nexus, the player is given a ton of tools for defeating the enemies. But this is a guise to hide enemy variety, because just like with SN each of these concoctions made by Lucas are used for a certain enemy type. This means that the player doesn't really have agency to how they want to fight (which is key in gaming) but just has to match the type of alchemical item to whatever enemy is running at them, that got annoying and always will in games.

Another issue I had with Requiem, that I also had recently with GoW: Ragnarok, is the just constant puzzling for absolutely no reason. I'm staunchly anti-puzzle, but I can excuse it in games like Resident Evil or Zelda where they make it flow well enough with the game or encourage the player to succeed through self-discovery. Requiem's puzzles are just there... they're not hard, they're not fun, they're just there, and are EVERYWHERE. You're rarely given a hint, and the obnoxiousness of the puzzles being there just to pack in gametime only frustrated me throughout the narratively intense moments in the story.

Requiem was also rather buggy with enemy movement, often times if you were about to exit an area after sneaking through a plethora of guards and had alerted just one, they would teleport through a wall and stop you. I get that the devs wanted you to "sneak the right way" by either taking out all the guards or getting through undetected, but it got annoying how often I was penalized from reaching the objective while an alarm was raised. Maybe there's a "git gud" here but I found it far more annoying than not.

While A Plague Tale: Requiem is exactly what I was looking for Innocence's sequel narratively speaking, the constant puzzling for the sake of puzzling and lack of improvement to combat is not enough to warrant a higher rating. I wouldn't recommend Plague Tale as a series, but if you want a story taking place in a unique period in gaming (The Hundred Years War/Black Plague,) maybe you should start the under twenty hour A Plague Tale: Requiem

New York City Simulator.

A Plague Tale: Innocence is an alright game, though it feels a litte more dated than the release date shows and the reason being that the combat is so... not good. Most of this game is a sneaking/light puzzle solving type beat through some extremely grotesque and downright horrifying locales, which on paper is alright but the manner of solving said roadblocks feels very samey. There isn't a whole lot of storytelling, thus I have a hard time supporiting or falling in love with the narrative, but Asobo does a phenomenal job in creating a devestatingly dark world in which fear rules over all humanity. The worldbuilding of Plague Tale is its strongest element, demonstrating how painfully crushing life during the Medival Times of the Black Plague really were. No character, whether main party or not, felt happy or positive in the face of the world around them really at any point in the story. This may sound silly but its evident of a job well done in making the reaction to how terrifying the game's events truly are.

In all, Plague Tale Innocence's combat/puzzling were just a little too monotonous and dated for this game to deliver on its ambitious vision. There really are a lot of rats... previews I saw of this game certainly did that part justice, and sometimes it gets a little grating to see roadblocks and deus ex machina occur because "lol rats." While those elements take the game down a few notches, the dank and disturbed world paired with an equally frightening soundtrack craft a unique and powerful (not quite authentic) experience through the darkest trenches in human history.

I'd recommend this to people who are looking for a great bite sized (ten hour) experience that doesn't require mechanical skill with a solid enough story. I hope A Plague Tale: Requiem is able to rectify on the issues I had with Innocence.

Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

The Quarry is honestly, to me, a less interesting and less funny version of Until Dawn, but that kind of gave it some charm? I feel like this dev will pretty much always be chasing the shadow of their first game, whose breakthrough Choose Your Own Adventure in a video game form was something fairly new and refreshing for gaming with the amount of effort put into it. The Quarry's premise is functionally something that I'm not really interested in, which was probably and unfairly my first gripe with the game's story and atmosphere. I've never been into the summer camp-horror genre aesthetic that something like Friday the 13th is all about, but I think it could be saved for me with some good character writing and a good narrative, but the Quarry was certainly not that.

Characters drive these kinds of games and Until Dawn nailed it with having the bizarre and distrubed Rami Malek lead and a supremely cringe supporting cast. The Quarry is decidedly cringe in its casting, but I didn't feel like there were a lot of people that were too compelling. I just kinda felt indifferent to a lot of characters that were written to feel "relatable" to zoomers and gamers of that age group. Ryan and his "podcasts" got old real quick, Jacob's "Chad-bro" attitude got grating pretty fast, and the cop's inability to explain literally anything that was going on was surely something. Of all the characters I came away with good takeaways on it was pretty much just Dylan, who was effortlessly sarcastic the entire journey, and Abigail who I just felt bad for. Like I mentioned, these kinds of games live and die by their characters and they were sort of perfect for a game like this, for the most part. The adolescent cringe was alright, but some of the blatant failure to adhere to basic logic (like Kaitlyn being the only person qualified to use a gun yet giving it up to others in the party at a pivotal moment) left me throwing up my hands in a confused pose.

In all, I wasn't into the games aesthetic too much and the cringe characters mostly succeeded in their cringe but fell flat in other parts of it. The story was alright at best, but the twists weren't too twisty and the surprise of this franchise has already been done best in Until Dawn. Casting was mostly pretty good, shoutout to my fellow Michiganders in Ted Raimi and Lin Shaye, but Justice Smith's Ryan just sounded... bored at pretty much every opportunity he had to speak. I also felt like the ending just more or less happened, and that was it. I think I got a "good" ending in the way I resolved the last few chapters but it didn't feel gratifying in the way that my multiple Until Dawn playthroughs did.

If I were to recommend this game, it should definitely be purchased on sale and should be played with a crowd (like I played it.) It's fun to make these decisions as a group and make fun of characters to give some added humour to the game.

I literally don't know what to say... Sonic is... Sonic... Sonic is... good?

The clock reads 4:25 AM and I have just completed Sonic Frontiers, I'm listening to the end credits theme for the second time in a row, I'm oddly emotional, it's Thanksgiving and I plan on spending it fully alone, listening to a lo-fi R&B song about Dr. Eggman. This is the state of things and I find myself oddly sentimental about Sonic of all things. This is like the one player on your favorite sportsball team who was on the team for all of its bad years, and finally got his big break and won it all after a decade plus of mediocrity. Sonic Frontiers is like that one musician that put out years and years of passable music at best, but finally got it together for that classic album. Sonic Frontiers is the Sonic that everybody has been asking for... since the dawn of the series.

Like a lot of people I've dipped and dabbled in Sonic as a franchise, with the bulk of my playtime coming in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the Gamecube (Recently completed on PC this past year) and while I loved that game, it was for a lot of the wrong reasons. Outside of the stellar OST, the game didn't play all that well... but it was at least fun. It had it's moments from the initial Escape from the City to the Knuckles rap songs to the "WE ALL DID IT TOGETHER" from Miles "Tails" Prower, but it was rough, writing was below acceptable, and the Chao stuff is not as fun as you thought it was, but like I said... it was fun. Does Sonic Frontiers fix all of that? The answer is no, but it does remedy enough. Sonic as a series strikes a weird chord because it's undoubtedly meant for Children in a way that other juvenile franchises like Mario and Kirby aren't, it found itself nestled within "cringe" as a draw. Mario and Kirby aren't cringe, they're funny and wholesome (respectively,) and bring about different swaggers in their branding and presentation that have led them down their path through superstardom. Sonic has taken an even more youth-friendly approach to its games and media, which might be at the risk of how quality its forray into gaming actually is. You can't make Sonic a serious character, and they don't really try. He cracks jokes that are unironically not funny at all, but somehow... the cringe makes them work? The entire crew of Frontiers is pretty dry... but I found myself smiling sometimes? The Silly Dr. Eggman-Sonic dynamic is the same as it was way back in my childhood, Knuckles is still as stupid cool as I remember him, and Tails is uh... Tails!

Some issues include the pop-in of various courses and world elements (SkillUp did a pretty good video on this) which is in my opinion, inexcusable, but didn't impact my overall gameplay in the end. It was just kinda funny to be running along the countryside and see random loops and jump pads come into view randomly.

I don't want to bog down on the negatives too much before going into the positive but it should be spoken about. There is a narrative in Frontiers and I have to hand it to them, it was the most invested I've been in a Sonic story since, ever, and actually was pretty appropriate for the series. Given the nature of Sonic, blowing out a full story that measures like other games isn't really possible, because that's not what people play the series for. They want to go fast and do things, not sit down and watch cutscenes where the characters go and do what heroes in an epic story do, there's seperate media for that. Frontiers gives exposition to the struggles of a pre-existing civilization that has seemingly been wiped from the planet inhabit, and what the Sonic team must do to prevent that from happening again. I didn't feel bad per se for the previous society, but I did collect that they were a victim of a tragedy that I was motivated to prevent.

The vibes of Sonic Frontiers are immaculate. The first trailer I saw of this game didn't necessarily sell that idea too well, as it felt like they were really trying to "BotW" the Sonic franchise, and while that isn't really untrue, they did it in a way that works for Sonic. Gone is the mostly linear level design of previous Sonic games in favour of large open world missions that are filled with incredible vistas and a plethora of things to do and accomplish, enemies to fight, and allies to converse with. I never, ever, thought I'd have that "Witcher 3" moment that I had in Skellige in Sonic where I would stop running around like a buffoon and just take in the sights. They nailed the post apocalyptic meets Sonic that they set out to tackle so well. While the worlds aren't really teeming with life, they have a suave to them that makes them feel great to just run and run and run around in. Sonic Team accomplishes the sense of scale of these worlds, encouraging the player to trot in Sonic's trademark red shoes around this world with sky-high structures and well designed flora.

Mechanics of Sonic Frontiers aren't too different in the end from other Sonic games, as you're running along the same speed boost squares and jumping off jump pads, but that's honestly alright, the game does enough things differently that it doesn't matter in the end. While you spend a majority of this game in the open world segments, the Cyberspace areas that you use to get resources to advance the main story were pretty neat and a nice ode to Sonic of years past. These are completely linear levels that see you run and jump in isolated levels like the famed Green Hill Zone and Chemical Power Plant (among others.) They don't occupy much time, and beating the time/ring challenges was quite easy, but were a nice change of pace from the open world courses and challenges.

Music man, this might be the biggest surprise for me out of the entire game. I remember Sonic Adventure 2's soundtrack quite fondly, as I still to this day play it quite frequently, but I didn't know if Sonic Team had preserved that commitment to making the sound of their games as good as it was in Adventure 2. I can't even put into words how happy I am to report that the soundtracking of this game across the board is nothing short of phenomenal. From the ambient/light orchestral sounds of running along the countryside, to the drum and bass/dubstep cyberspace courses, to the metalcore of the boss fights, I was head bopping and messaging everybody I knew about how great the music was. I'm going to be listening to these songs for a loooooooooooooong time. I'm kind of against writing about music for the most part because it's so subjective, so I won't do that here other than to tell the reader to listen to the soundtrack if they can (on the condition that they don't intend to play the game, otherwise they should experience it there.) This has easily catapulted into one of my favorite OST's of any game... ever. Recency bias be damned.

It's not perfect but damnit Sonic really nailed this one, my 4/5 stars signify a hope that Sonic will continue to take risks and go down this path of intricacy and trying to do something new for once. The writing wasn't great, and Sonic doesn't change enough in its core gameplay loop (like a Mario does,) to make this game a must play piece of history, but I had a lot more fun than I ever could have imagined.

This review is probably riddled with typos, but sometimes that's what happens when you defend Sonic from decades of your own criticism at 4:50 AM on Thanksgiving. On behalf of Sonic Haters Anonymous, I am sorry.

I strongly recommend anybody who is willing to step out of their wheelhouse to play Sonic Frontiers. The fresh soundtrack, beautiful atmosphere, and enjoyable gameplay loop (heh) makes this Sonic's best entry, and hopefully a sign of things to come for the Blue Hedgehog.

Yakuza 5 times the dissapointment.

This is a weird playthrough for me, as I played this game in between a LOT of social engagements that left me introverted out coupled with a lack of sleep which resulted in me being quite tired bwhile playing a lot of Yakuza 5. I'd come home from wherever, boot it up, play for a few hours, nod off, then go to sleep. That almost never happens with me in games, when it's my time to turn off for the night, I'll do it, but I stuck with Yakuza 5 because I was hoping for that moment in the story that I'd be motivated to stay up like I had the other games. I kept playing and turning it on in the hope that I'd get to that ONE chapter that kept me going into the wee hours of the morning, but it never came. I was greatly dissapointed in everything after the initial Kiryu arc, and even that felt rough to me.

I found none of the locations outside of Kamurocho particularly inspiring, Fukuoka was pretty but I didn't really like the side content, in particular doing any of the street racing. I kind of liked Kiryu doing a whole Iriqouis Pliskin-Solid Snake kinda thing under the alias "Taichi Suzuki" but it didn't lead anywhere important enough for me. I think if this game purely followed Kiryu living in secret, or attempting to, I would have been far more entertained. Taiga's locales (gameplay I'll get to) bored me with a grave degree. You spend a lot of time in some claustrophobically small environements and zones as him with questionably boring to bad gameplay and story beats that I found it hard to imagine that this was the same franchise I'd been playing. Haruka' story largely taking place in Sotenbori was fine but man, that city has been largely unfun to run around in after Majima made it his stomping grounds in 0. Akiyama in Kamurocho was good, I love Akiyama and love Kamurocho. Shinada in Nagoya was rough, as I found the city lifeless and largely boring.

Story-wise this wasn't necessarily the weakest Yakuza I've played on paper, as Yakuza 3 exists and I'm still not really sure what I was supposed to take away from that, but man the length that draws and draws this mediocre at best story harms the overall game greatly. They attempt to tie four stories (really five but I'm compressing Akiyama and Haruka into one) in the same manner that Yakuza 4 did but it was at the expense of me caring really at all. They take a loooooooot of time setting up Shinada's tragic baseball downfall and Taiga's prison escape/road to redemption, but to me it completely fell flat. The risk taken for exposure here didn't land, it bored me quite a lot when coupled with the monotonous gameplay of three of the four scenarios. Lastly about the story, Haruka's idol segment is a complete and utter miss. I didn't find it compelling at all, as it felt honestly like a story I'd seen before plenty of times in anime/games about uninspired music, boring (and again not new) teen drama, logical holes, and unendearing characters. Nobody outside of Park in Haruka's story had me asking for more out of them. In the nature of my first paragraph, I kept playing though because I believed something was going to happen that would make me jump up and say "Wow, now I'm interested!" but it never came. The beef between Tset and Haruka was juvenile and handled very poorly from a plausible plot perspective, and the rhythm game sections were just, bad.

I've written just about Yakuza combat being poor in just about all of my reviews of the series thus far and... surprise! It's still bad, this time maybe the worst I've experienced. Boss fights are just downright brutal, with most mainstory bosses (especially in the final gauntlet,) having no hitstun, ability to break out of combos, and a stun that penalizes you for trying to string together more than two hits in a combo. Most of this game's combat from a boss-fight perspective is playing the waiting game to get your chip damage in while also item checking to make sure you've bought enough sushi sets to fully heal you through whatever garbage you're about to endure. The last fight in this game could legitimately have been condensed by about fifteen minutes. Kiryu plays like he always has (minus Yakuza Kiwami 1) which is alright, Taiga still has a one dimensional brawler style, Akiyama is the most fun (because his kicks lend themselves to a faster paced style,) Haruka's rhyhthm fights were just annoying, and lastly Shinada's baseball-style felt like a weaker and even more numbing version of Taiga's. Nobody in this game really felt fun to play, but maybe I'm still chasing the ghost of playing Majima in Yakuza 0. The bear hunting stuff in Taiga's chapter had me really confused, it felt like a side story/optional scenario that they could have made optional as the mechanics were rather grueling.

I probably could have written a better review and condensed my thoughts in a manner that were more coherent of critique than complaints, as I usually try to, but this really just felt numbing to me. It didn't feel like a game I should exhaust more effort into writing about in great detail, it just... felt like something I spent a lot of time on that was mediocre at best. I had this same feeling when playing Soul Hackers 2 but at least that had Jack Frost.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm truly hopeful that Sonic Frontiers, which I'm playing next, has more for me than Yakuza 5. I can't recommend Yakuza 5 unless you're set on completing the saga of Kiryu Kazuma.

Working titles for my review included:

1) "God of Snore" - Reason not used: Taken
2) "God of More" - Reason not used: Could imply the more was positive/good
3) "Teen Angst Simulator" - Reason not used: Everyone was angsty, not just Atreus.

Used Title: "A Series of Unfortunate MacGuffin's"

I bought this game almost entierly out of curiousity, one of my more controversial gaming opinions and reviews is that of the renewed God of War (2018,) which I played because I wanted to get a gauge on the game that defeated Red Dead Redemption 2 come year's end at the Game Awards. In my experience I found GoW to be a mostly bland, monotonous, and unadventerous experience. I didn't get the same buzz or energy others did from the axe-wielding combat, I didn't enjoy the consistent babbling from Mimir and crew, and I certainly did not have a positive takeaway on the MacGuffin nature of the plot. I'd hoped, in playing Ragnarok, that the extremely high acclaim given to the game by critics when review embargo ceased meant that Sony had remdied the issues I had with the previous title. Now, I know that The Game Award should and have zero bearing on my enjoyment of a game, but it's clear that the two frontrunners for the big daddy of them all "Game of the Year Award" will be Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok. Curiosity killled the cat, and maybe it killed me too. What I found almost immediately in Ragnarok was that I'd be getting the exact same takeaways and experiences that I had in the 2018 game.

Starting it off with combat, which is admittably a little less... boring as it was in 2018 but comes with its own grievances. Gone is going 75% of the game with the same weapon, as you start the game with Kratos' famous Blades of Chaos and pick up a third weapon down the line (redacted for spoilers.) This is nice because it gives you a little variation in terms of visual flavor for the majority of the game but this fell completely flat for me as the enemies, from start to finish are pretty much all just "bullet" sponges for lack of a better term. There's a certian flare to the combo weaving of different weapons and taking advantages of status effects, but at the end of the day you'll have to pump so much time and effort into enemies to kill them, that I abandoned trying to make it look snazzy. Basic enemies aren't too bad but once you get into the special/mini-boss fights it gets real samey, real quick. Monotonous combat was a compaint I had in the 2018 release that really took up a lot of my opinion on the game, and unfortunately it's back in Ragnarok. Not only does Kratos' arsenal not feel very different overall, not enough for me rather, but again the enemy variation and recycled encounters greatly holds this game back just as it did in the predecessor. I recently played Bayonetta 3 which had the enemy arsenal/variety to make this work, but in God of War every gameplay sequence in a realm can be boiled down into such: Shimmy through a tight loading screen corridor -> solved light puzzle that requires throwing axe and using some kind of time magic -> fight same three to five enemies that are dropped into area -> shimmy loading screen -> repeat. These enemies change per location but the cyclical nature of fighting them, their spongey health bars, and responding to their same mechanics got reallllly old real quick.

You switch between Atreus and Kratos in Ragnarok for level sequences and unfortunately the combat doesn't feel very fresh in either when you change between. Atreus' gameplay loop is even more restricted than Kratos in the first game and his equivalent of Spartan Rage, while stronger, is just a swap-in move which doesn't even do the Nero-Dante dynamic that every character action game should do in making playable protagonists FEEL fundamentally different so controlling them comes off as fresh. My ultimate qualm with the combat, which is also backlines my qualm with the game itself, is that it doesn't feel fresh enough. The combat feels the same, the Hollywood-board-room-type dialogue feels the exact same, the light unecessary puzzle solving feels the same, the missions/levels feel the exact same. What's new with God of War that's supposed to push this series from Great to Fantastic? I don't know, I can't answer that question because I surely didn't find it. The narrative that is meant to wrap up Kratos' Nordic saga felt bland and broken at times, leaving me to constantly wonder the where's and why's of my actions. I get there is an over-arching narrative at play leading to Ragnarok itself, given the actions of the previous title, but I think the game could have done a much better job sequencing its filler-story content. Missions just felt like they were happening to give characters exposition, rather than move the narrative forward and do so. Final Fantasy X does a great job at this, giving each character their own arc while actually advancing the stakes and story at hand. Wakka, Kimahri, Auron, Tidus, and Yuna all have their character examined and challenged while keeping the focus on stopping Sin. Ragnarok had me wondering why I was taking Freya, Atreus, Sindi, Brok all on their own respective adventures that didn't really add to the sequencing of the game in a manner that made sense. With each of these characters you'll find either Kratos or Atreus running the same combat-puzzle-loading screen gambit in an attempt to achieve something or retrieve an item that is to help them in their final huzzah. Doing this over and over and over just felt... bland. God of War Ragnarok for much of its runtime didn't feel like an epic adventure across one of the cooler pantheons to exist within dated mythos, but like a buddy cop comedy where the entire exposition was to retrieve MacGufffin's.

This game honestly just reminded me of the MCU, specifically speaking the Avengers film franchise. Avengers is a media phenomenon that took the world by storm, utilizing a carefully crafted pattern to set up a plethora of Marvel heroes/villains to have them culminate in an epic cinematic experience sure to take the world by storm, and it did. Marvel/Disney spent the time and monetary effort setting up this big "Huzzah" that had never been seen before in the world of film. Almost everyone I knew that was a casual movie watcher, thus excluding those who I would call "Movie hipsters" like myself, were jumping at the seams to speak on the magnitude of the avengers and its fiscal achievements. People were completely enamored in what was a fairly basic story. How do you react when so many around you are speaking in praise of something that you view so mediocre? Surely the right thing to do is not speak ill on something in the world of media that others hold high, because a film series like the Avengers is entierly subjective when it comes to taste, but it's reasonable to have the discourse with those that investigate your dissent with the series further. Thus is my issue with God of War 2018 and Ragnarok. Almost everyone I know that has played the game(s) has loved them, critics have been raving over Ragnarok as soon as reviews were allowed to come out. I've had to step back from most discourse because I don't want to be "that guy" but this is a review space and this is my review, so I feel alright stating how I feel. God of War is that Avengers to me, it's something that can only be made possible by having a lot of money to make and afford the resources needed to make it "work." They both are spectatcles, never shying away from thrusting intense CG and big moments at the consumer. They both utilize top tier composition, sound design, and voice acting to create a complete experience, free of any hitch. God of War was a completely polished game, I had only one minor bug, and it ran phenomenally on my computer... but can that alone with a mediocre story and samey combat make the game "good" for me? The answer I found, to be no it cannot.

There are some things God of War Ragnarok does well, but in the theme of things being the "same" to me as 2018, they were the same things that the game before it did. Christopher Judge is a great Kratos, matter of fact the entire cast does an amazing job acting out and making their characters mostly believable (shoutout SungWon Cho,) but it's almost... too AAA. The game itself is beautiful, I played performance mode on my PS5 and it truly was a crisp experience, taking full advantage of the graphical prowess of the console and my 4k monitor. The game was eye candy, but to that point I felt myself let down with these amazing vistas because of the soulless gameplay loop I knew I was about to embark upon. Animation was great, again I had that "wow I remember gaming twenty years ago moment" whenever they panned to Kratos' face and you could see his emotion vividly. I also love how they took full advantage of the Norse pantheon, including smaller characters like the Norns, Sigurn, Angrboða, and many more to the bigwigs like Freya, Fenrir, Tyr, and Surtr. I loved seeing/hearing a character speak and opening up their wikipedia page to remind myself about their lore. I used to love doing that in my youth, and God of War Ragnarok was a great reminder of doing that.

Lesser issues I had with the game include one, the assumption that you as the player did all the sidequesting and optional content from the previous game. It was a little confusing when Kratos/Atreus were referencing things they did like "Hey remember when we did this" or explaining to another character of their actions and I'm sitting there completely confused because no... I never did that and I had no clue what they were talking about. Secondly, the camera was just downright poor in most combat and even in cutscenes. There was quite a lot of forced panning that takes away player agency from experiencing what they want in a game. Maybe this is part of appealing to the most common consumer, but it was more offputting to me because I am overall not a fan of being told how to interpret or take away scenes from a narrative experience. I would be trying to walk through a scene or turn to see the entire environment at large to only be met by a slow moving camera and a locked screen.

Ragnarok largely missed the mark for me, really feeling like a DLC/Expansion of the 2018 game without enough variety/change to rectify the previous mistakes for me. There were new vistas and characters, but it felt like the fundamental same experience for me, and I'm glad I didn't wait four years between these two releases. Odds are, fans of the 2018 game will absolutely love Ragnarok, and dissenters will not. I cannot recommend God of War Ragnarok, especially for $70, unless you're set on the experience and getting the most out of its sidequesting and characters.

"It's a terrible day for rain"

"But it's not raining"

"Yes... it is"

Life Is Strange: True Colors is much more a journey through emotion and grief than it is a video game. This is something I thought would be a pleasant use of a few afternoons, but what I found became a cathartic experience that dealt with my own insecurities of leaving home and starting anew, losing those we love and finding confidants in my closest friends. In the maybe ten hours I spent in Haven, I felt like I, as Alex Chen, was real. Though she has the powers to feel the emotions, good or bad, of those around her and I don't, she is believable.

Coming to Haven to reunite with her long lost brother, seperated after joining foster care, Alex moves to a small town in the Rockies, far away from city life and society at large. Here throughout the story's events she meets new friends, drifts from her loved ones, relives past tragedy, and discovers her past. The first chapter is a build-up to an unfathomable tragedy which will rock (pun intended) her world and turn it on its head, sending her on a path for truth and inner trauma.

Who do we turn to in times of sadness and despair when there are no family members to support us? How do we shed the degree of vulnerability and approach friends for help? How do we navigate the problems of others while healing ourselves? True Colors approaches these topics with the utmost degree of care, making Alex a realistic figure dealing with the death of someone very close to her. While she searches for the truth and enrolls the help of her closest friends in town, Steph and Ryan, she realizes that she isn't the only one dealing with the loss. Fellow citizens are hurting too, they are displaying their fear, anger, misery all in different ways. As Alex, you the player have to way the consequences of valuing your motives over theirs? Can we be altruistic in the time of sadness, and does that help us move past tragedy? That is ultimately what True Colors does best. It shows us, and especially as someone who has been through traumatic experiences (not of the same cause as Alex,) that the best path to healing ourselves is by demonstrating that we want to be helped. By treating others with respect and care, that will reflect upon us. When you're down and out, your actions previously will impact how those reach out to help you.

Alex Chen is funny, she's cute, and she's wholesome, but also very... human. I feel like a lot of choices matter games and slice of life's like this miss the mark, making characters one dimensional and overtly passionate without the necessary logic to support it. Alex isn't this. She gets bummed by the things that should bum her, she gets down by the things that should bum her, but she's not afraid to lighten the downtrodden mood by making an out of hand sarcastic joke. She knows that people don't want to hear "oh feel better" when they're sad, they want someone who can demonstrate that they care to console them. That's something I absolutely loved about this game. When I'm down, when my friends are down, the last thing I want to hear is "I'm sorry that happened." I want someone who will sit with me and talk it out, and that's where Alex makes a difference. She sits down and cares for the citizens of Haven, who in turn care for her. When Steph is mourning the loss of a close friend, Alex invites her over and they play foosball with eachother, reminiscing over old memories and familiar friends. It's the realism of this that helped me through tragedy. When I had something hit extremely close to home to me, me and my buddies went to IHOP and laughed the night away.

Man, I really loved Steph, not just because she was the romanceable option I picked but because she just felt... so believable as a friend and eventual lover. She demonstrates how much she cares for Alex and her brother Gabe, how she is a soul always dreaming of more. She loves music, but she loves the joy of just... being alive. Every moment I got to spend with her as Alex felt was fantastic, often being the most memorable parts of the game for me. Their relationship felt so much like "love" for eachother rather than romance for romance sake. Their degree of care reminds me of Squall and Rinoa from FFVIII, and Manami and Yukio from Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad. They love eachother (should you go down that romance arc,) not just for the plot, but because it makes sense for them to. They share a common loss, they share a passion for music, they share the will to be so much more than what fate has written for them. It's hard to drive home how well the developers made the way they look at eachother and smile feel so apt. Ryan was great too, I really enjoyed him as a best friend to Gabe and Alex and Steph, but I chose not to romance him as Alex because Steph just felt right.

One major aspect of True Colors that spoke me to me was the phenomenal selection of music for the game. The setting, as mentioned previously, is a picturesque town in the Rockies of Colorado. These are the people who wear flannerls, Carhartt hats, drive Subaru's, and love flowers and the outdoors. What kind of music makes sense for this game? A lot of indie, but appropriate Indie and singer-songwriter songs. The moment early on where I ran into Steph's record store and sat down to listen to "Scott Street" by one of my favorites, Phoebe Bridgers, meant a lot to me. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself as Alex Chen, falling in love with the calm and fragile voice that Phoebe carries. Other moments, like where Alex covers the Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" felt so... right! The Violent Femmes are a indie band out of the flannel wearing, outdoors loving state of Wisconsin, and playing their jubilant songs acoustically in front of a festival crowd was a perfect love letter to the game and the band, perfectly capturing the vibe the track brings to me. There's much more, but mxmtoon as Alex does a lovely job bringing this song and the credits to life.

In all, I'm probably rambling here, but Life is Strange: True Colors felt like, therapy strangely enough. I think I'm too stubborn for therapy, but with games, music, and film, I find like I'm able to heal and move forward with myself because I get to interpret what the connections and meanings of said media means to me. Much like Alex, I've lost and dealt with trauma, and I've had the friends to rely on. I've had the power of music, the power of nature, the power to keep on keeping on. While some people may find this style of game a little... extra, I felt like it all hit the mark. There's a beauty in humanity, in who we love, in how we move on. While we keep the tragedy with us, it's how we consult our memories and use them to become a better us. Life is Strange: True Colors is a fantastic journey through healing.

Modern Warfare... Again... for the second time!

The Good:

The campaign for this game, as Jeff Gerstmann put it feels like an action movie where they jump from location to location just for the hell of moving the plot forward, wasting no time jumping into the exposition of getting from point A to B or the logistics of jumping from the Middle East in one mission to Mexico in the next, they just did it. Honestly I didn't care too much for the plot, it's just kinda there, but it's not actively bad, which matters a lot! The levels were fun for the most part, though there is quite a lot of "It's a Sneaking Mission" type beat to go around. Infinity Ward made it a point to make the missions feel varied, as you're jumping through all sorts of different biomes and locales with varying objectives and methods of completing them. If you view this more as a blockbuster Hollywood film story, it becomes a lot easier to take in. The AC130 mission runs a bit long, but it was cool!The first mission was really cool! The final mission was cool! Maybe that says a lot about me but I was looking for a whelming + experience, and I liked what I got.

More of the good is the mutiplayer loop, it's more of the same that 2019 brought to the table but with enough positive changes that I'm satiated and not upset like I am with an Overwatch 2. They went all out in creating new maps, new modes, and new guns that don't repeat from the last title. Easy to learn/master maps are a dime a dozen in gaming nowadays but MWII seems to have got it down, with a few runs through each level (and maybe even just one in the ground war levels,) and you'll grow accustomed to the corners, peak spots, and optimal places to engage in combat. The gun play, while the classic CoD arcadey "what is a recoil" mantra, is again fun and a nice break from the realism-heavy recoil games that I play otherwise (like PUBG.)

The Bad:

It sometimes... works? I can't knock the game for the recent Nvidia flickering/stuttering on the newest drivers, but I can blame the game for the crashing in the campaign and assets sometimes not loading in multiplayer. Smoke and dust seems to be on the player side and not on the server, which means if you think you're under the cover of an explosion... often times that is only the case for you. Another item I have to dock from the game is the unlocks feel like they take a REALLY long time. You can unlock some weapons (and all perks/killstreaks/throwables) by levelling up but unlocking certain guns means levelling up with their "base" versions, which seems to take an unreasonable amount of time. I am not putting a ton of hours into the game thus far, with my Steam playtime reading over twenty-one hours, but I feel like I'm not getting enough "new" for how much exp/levels I'm getting.

When it comes to recommending MWII, I'm very much in the "you should play it!" camp because I'm having a really good time logging on after a long day, doing my basic "haha shoot and kills go up," logging off and going to bed. That's really all I want from CoD, what I got from it in 2019, and what I'm getting in MWII's 2022 release. I've had a good time playing ground war with my buds, laughing as we try to hold buildings down, and comparing our KD ratios like in the old days. Over all, it's not perfect, nor is it as good YET as MW 2019 is, but I'm going to continue to play it because it's just what I wanted.

I mean it's alright...

I took advantage of the DLC and replayed the entire Village campaign in third person, it didn't really add too much to my previous experience other than taking some of the "scare" out of the game, which was kind of interesting in an of itself. That being said though, you can tell this game was 100% intended for a first person perspective and a lot of the self discovery between story beats didn't hit quite as hard, not really close. Other moments like traversal on foot and in the boat felt a little awkward, especially the latter which didn't feel like it was animated correctly for the third person perspective. It was fun replaying the game though as this is easily my favorite RE entry and took a quick six hours to complete. I streamed it for friends and it was a good time, made even moreso by the third person perspective's lack of fear factor, making it spectator friendly for the non-horror inclined. RE8 is a fantastic game, but I think the new camera perspective removes a good bit of what makes the game "special."

After beating the campaign again I moved onto the Shadows of Rose DLC and I expected, something better honestly. Revisiting the locations from the first two bosses of the main game is on paper okay, but didn't feel very fun in the expansion. Even though you've got different objectives and the enemies you're fighting/dealing with are not the same as in base Village, the entire loop and locations repeat which makes it feel like a rehashed experience. Rose is an interesting character and I'd love to see more out of her in the RE franchise, but I felt that the story didn't do her character justice. Maybe I had the wrong expectations going in but this wasn't as fun for me as RE7's "Not a Hero" DLC which was short, but fundamentally different from the main game. My takeaway is more like mine for "End of Zoe" was, which also re-used a lot of the same scenery and gameplay loop, but to a far lesser extent than Shadows of Rose. I really digged some of the horror elements (like the mannequins that were Doctor Who-esque) and would love to see Rose again in a scenario like that, but that may be wishful thinking.

In all, I would recommend this to RE8 fans for some closure, but only if they are adament that they'd like more.

Wow. We have officially reached peak character action, and I'm not sure if it will ever be matched.

I'd been waiting for Bayonetta 3, like zillions of others for years upon years, starving for anything more than the short teaser trailer they showed what felt like eons ago. When we finally got the Project GG fakeout trailer, I jumped for joy, screamed, did a jig, and kept waiting. To say that there had been expectations for the Umbral Witch's third entry would be an excessive understatement, as the first two beloved entries delivered something so right to gaming that was foreign to the medium. Bayonetta is an unapologetically raunchy and sexy character with a sense of humor derived straight from her Devil May Cry DNA, with an arsenal of moves that would put a Joestar to shame.

Now to the game itself. I expected to have a good time, playing through a campaign and getting on to the next game, hopefully satiated with my favorite femme fatale. What I didn't expect was to have an experience where I'd smile from ear to ear the entire time, laugh out loud to the point where it hurt, and tear up upon the games conclusion. Bayonetta to me was always a "fun" series in games 1 and 2, and even the anime, but it dawned on me with 3 that it was more than a game, but a memory to hold and take with me. What Platinum never fails to do with their character action games (MG: Revengance, Nier: Automata, Astral Chain) is keep the gameplay loop fresh, evolving from entry to entry with something new yet familiar so fans of the companies attention to making action fun feel rewarded and continiously interested in what is yet to come. In Bayonetta 1 you become familiar with Witch Time and ultra tight dodging and 1 on 1 combat with humanoids and massive angels alike. Bayonetta 2 begins to think bigger with its addition of the demonic elements into your routine arsenal. Bayonetta 3 takes the series' formula and supersizes it, giving the titular witch an entire arsenal of Kaiju-demons and weapons to bring with her in battle. I LOVED this, as it gives FULL agency to the player in making Bayonetta the game THEY want while keeping the game in its base alive. I played with Bayonetta's legendary pistol as my main weapon and toyed around with secondaries. Going from the G-Pillar (which is an awesome name) associated with Gomorrah, and the massive trainsaw associated with totally not DoomTrain from FFVIII. Being able to summon Doom Train, Gomorrah, and Madame Butterfly in combat whenever my meter was high made fights feel epic and grandiose, as they should with the series. Having the ability to jump between my fast combo and a heavy hitting G-Pillar or Trainsaw (I forgot the actually name but its a chainsaw made out of a train so I'm running with it) felt great because I could weave in and out of combat and do big damage when I wanted. With each area you visit, you gain a new demon to summon and weapon to use, meaning that your experience will vary from location to location and you'll have the time and availability to try out each set. Platinum's been phenomenal with player agency ever since Kamiya began his journey on the DMC series, bringing with him total player control at each step of his character action expertise (and even outside of it, like with Wonderful 101.) In all, Bayonetta 3's combat feels like a player sandbox, throwing enemies at you and letting the player decide on the best route to take to remedy opposition. This made the entire experience a delight, as I didn't feel hamfisted into playing a certain way.

Many games have experimented with adding new playable characters to series with a beloved protagonist to varying success. Metal Gear Solid 2 had the infamous Big Shell fakeout where players discover they're going to play the majority of the game as the freshly minted Raiden instead of the heroic Solid Snake. Yakuza 4 which I recently played has the player split between four characters, the last of which you play being the Dragon of Dojima. Devil May Cry 4 drops the hot headed and bragadocious Nero on the player, a cringe, young, unfamiliar blonde with an attitude and a whole lot to say. Speaking of cringe, young, blonde, and hot headed... Bayonetta 3 introduces a new playable character: Viola. Viola is cringe, there's no way to go around that, but remember Luka in Bayonetta 1? In 2? He's as cringe as they come, but with Bayonetta's self aware satire and humour, it fits like a glove. She's annoying... but it's alright in the scope of the game at hand. Tasked with saving the multiverse, she is mostly inexperienced and unready for the objective at large, which is perfectly contrasted with the aged Bayonetta in her third attempt at righting the ship. I didn't love her playstyle at first, but the totally not Nero stand-in, grew on me as I played and eventually graced into the game's last chapter. She uses a katana, with one of her special combo's being practically Vergil's judgement cut, coupled with the familiar (if you've played Bayonetta 1&2) Cheshire summon who can aid her in combat. With no built in witch time mechanic it was very tough to understand how to play her at first, as you're more or less implored to take a Metal Gear Rising approach to fighting. Making use of perfect parry's allows for witch time with Viola, which admittably was rather tough to master because her block button is the same (when double tapped) as her gap closer, meaning that players must use dilligent timing and patience to master the art of not taking damage. While I ultimately enjoyed Bayonetta's gameplay WAY more than I did Viola's, I applaud Platinum for the risk they took in making a bold and brash character like Viola with a completely different moveset.

Difficulty is an interesting concept with Bayonetta and Platinum at large. The concept of an action game being hard is largely subjective, as reflexes and attention span vary from person to person. I found Bloodborne for example to be, generally speaking, quite easy, which is the opposite of what many others will say. Now, I'm not alone in that quip but it is just a sign of how the opinion of a reviewer in stating a game's difficulty should always be called into question in regards to the reader's own experience. What is easy for me, may be hard for you. Now I've played many Platinum Games' games at this point... starting with Bayonetta (and going even further into all the DMC games if you take in Kamiya's repertoire) into Rising, Automata, Astral Chain, Bayonetta 2, into Bayonetta 3 so I'm quite familiar with the way these games are meant to be played and the requirements for dodge timings and damage windows. I found Bayonetta 3 to be quite easy, not necessarily because of the difficulty of combat in and of itself, but the tools Platinum gives players to just up and complete the game. Gone is the increasing cost of restorative items that grew out of DMC and in is the ability to purchase healing/power items ad nauseum. I LOVED how I had a safety net of healing and damage items in case I ran into difficult enemies. Did it make the game easier? Sure, but did it make it "less fun" because I didn't have to spend as much time grinding in enemy encounters so I understood each and every witch time moment? No.

The story is light, but who really cares? It's serviceable enough in the nearly 14 hours it took me to complete and gives moments of comedy and sorrow to each of the series' mainstays. Enzo, Rodin, Jeanne, Luka, and Bayonetta all return with a new look but retain their unique brands of exposition. Jeanne is beautiful once again, Bayonetta is even beautifulist (that is a word I will only use in regards to Bayonetta,) and Viola was quite astonishing as well. You'll travel from location to location and meet some very intricate characters that all will repeat familiar stories and moments, with their tragic downfalls becoming a trend to the game's climax. I don't want to spoil anything but damn, if I didn't say that the Chinese location had one of the most eye-candy characters in gaming history I would be lying. Also, riding a train on the Great Wall of totally not China will shooting cannons at a Kaiju before summoning a massive Demon to have a bubblebath fight is an absolutely unforgettable and unbeatable moment in gaming history.

Music has only improved in each Bayonetta entry with 3 being the complete peak of the series thus far. Bayonetta's theme is incredible, and Viola's totally not Paramore combat theme is going to be a popular listen for me in the weeks to come. The motifs/themes in each level and at familiar moments of the games are excellently laid as is usual with Platinum, adding even more to the basically flawless game at large.

I know there was a lot of controversy about it, and I did really love Hellena Taylor as Bayonetta but man... Jennifer Hale is gonna do what Jennifer Hale is gonna do. She does a PHENOMENAL job voicing Bayonetta, even as an Canadian-American. She crushed it, and I'm really happy she's who Platinum was able to get.

I knew this game would make me happy, but I didn't know how much. I didn't know this game would make me cry at the ending. I didn't know how much Bayonetta as a franchise meant to me. I didn't know this would make me reflect on my experience with Platinum and Kamiya to this degree. Bayonetta 3 knocked every single expectation I had for the Umbral Witch out of the park to never be seen again. Bayonetta 3 is peak, peak gaming, peak action, peak Bayonetta. This is a MUST play to fans of the franchise, and of character action games. Platinum went all that and then some to make this feel like the ultimate experience.

Played this because I had a day to kill before some big releases and I'm still not sure if it was a good idea. Midnight Fight Express is an isometric beat 'em up that is five hours and fourty missions of the exact same gameplay loop that gets old pretty much as soon as you get into the game. It's got a story which admittably I paid no attention to, and the general level sequencing was very boring. I had this expectation going into MFE as it is clearly not a Triple A title, but something far shorter would have been preferred. I didn't love My Friend Pedro, but it was a shorter and much more innovative fast paced indie game than this was. Even though Pedro is a 2D platformer with bulletime sequencing and this is strictly isometric, I couldn't help but compare the two and long for the game I'd already played.

I can't recommend anyone play Midnight Fight Express as it's a style of game that wears its influences on its sleeve and isn't as good as something you've probably already played.

Yakuza 4 times the characters, 4 times the fun!

As I make my way through the Yakuza franchise with blistering speed (playing other games in between each entry to prevent burnout) I've come to the conclusion that the boss combat will always be poor, and Yakuza 4 is absolutely no exception to that rule. The final boss "rush" ended with two of the most head-rubbing monotony I've had in recent memory come video games, but does that tarnish the entire journey of the 22 some hours this game took? Absolutely not.

The fourth entry to this series does something completely new by multiplying the amount of playable protagonists by four. Instead of just playing as the Dragon of Dojima (going by release order, because 0 has a split protag campaign,) you are four very different characters. The first character is Akiyama, a philanthropic goofball with more money than he knows what to do with and a kicking based combat style. I found his part was a great introduction to the game as it was your first real outsider point of view into the Yakuza lifestyle. He's not Yakuza, he's not a cop, he's really just a guy who made it big following the events of Yakuza 1. As per usual I don't speak on story events but he plays a great role as a mediator and ally to several of the integral characters in this story.

Secondly you play as Taiga Saejima, Goro Majima's aniki and convicted felon who doomed the Mad Dog of Shimano's fate previous to the events of Yakuza 0. His story is also unique to Yakuza and really this style of game as you begin as a man whose life has been decided. Unlike Kiryu, who previously had served a ten year prison sentence, Saejima begins the game on Death Row with only a grim outlook on life. His story is emotional, asking players to take a chance on a condemned man and attempt to make a hero out of a man that is convicted for mass murder. Does this pay off? Absolutely if you follow his story, though he is stern and offputting, Saejima is a phenomenal character and I can't wait to see where he goes. Though his combat style was extremely basic and brute based, which makes sense given his story, I actually liked it in the end as it made me feel powerful.

Then you have Masayoshi Tanimura, whom others that I've read seem to have a little bit of an issue with as his campaign runtime is shorter and his story can be a bit of a plot tie-in for plot tie-ins sake. Tanimura's campaign is where the gears start to roll, and I found him a great liason for the common man as a police officer, something that you don't get in Yakuza up to this point as a playable offering. I wasn't a fan of the way Tanimura fights though, as he's the only character with a built in parry system but after playing the nth many character action games that I have, it just didn't feel great. Most of the time when you parry (which wasn't reliable because of Yakuza's questionable combo locking and hit timing) you put the enemy at a distance in which you can't close before they are able to muster up another attack.

Lastly is Kiryu's campaign, and oh boy was that fun. Going from all of these new fighters who are relatively low on the social ladder to the Dragon was awesome. Kiryu just feels strong, and you are able to bully most boss fights and enemies into submission, I loved that.

The music for this game was absolutely phenomenal, with some awesome wonky jazz pieces during the chase scenes. I felt enamored by Kamurocho once more, often sitting atop the apartment buildings and shops just staring at the neon signs and plethora of city lights. When a game drags me in like that, that's a really good sign. Also I nearly lost my marbles when I heard "Live and Learn" from the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack playing at the Mahjong parlor.

In all, Yakuza 4 was a great refresher in the Yakuza series and definitely the most fun I've had since 0 from a gameplay standpoint. Though I think the story doesn't quite match 0's or Kiwami 2's, I still found it to be very strong overall as it incorporated a great cast of new and old friends and foes to the fullest extent. I think the ending sequence was a little drawn on, and not necessarily the series' best, but it was still very good overall. If you were a little disheartened by Yakuza 3's gameplay and story like I was, Yakuza 4 will hopefully be that breath of fresh air.