Gravity Rush kind of fell under my expectations a bit. Its got fantastic visuals, amazing soundtrack, decent movement, and fun dialogue. However, all of that is severely dogged down by janky and annoying combat, a level up system that you aren't really told about from my memory, and an overall confusing and mediocre narrative. It's definitely a game I would recommend giving a shot on a sale, or if you own PS Plus. Hopefully the second game is better.

Scott The Woz's review on this game was mid btw-

Sonic Dream Team is a good game...and that's all it will ever be.
I finally completed the game on something that isn't an iPhone 12, and I definitely had a better experience. The platform says "Mac", but I played it on my dad's Apple TV with a Dualsense. If you ever plan to play this game, definitely go for the Apple TV or Mac route. The game wasn't bad, but it just felt like an average game that you forget about a week later. To be honest, I'm already forgetting specific elements of the game already. The game didn't feel as grindy this time around, probably since I was able to actually enjoy myself more. My opinions on the story and line deliveries, even after finishing it, remains the same. On the other hand, the gameplay did become significantly better on this second go. The air controls weren't very good, but the ground control on each character gave me vibes of Unleashed and Generations if they were slightly more open. The missions were pretty decent as well, requiring me to take short cuts that I had to discover on the fly. The game is an overall decent experience, but I simply cannot agree with anyone calling this game "peak Sonic" or "goated". It may be more visually appealing than Sonic Frontiers, but it lags behind it in nearly every other aspect. I can only imagine myself going back to this game if the Apple TV is right in front of me when I have nothing better to do.

Sonic Dream Team is just about what I expected, but I'm still oddly disappointed. The game feels overly grindy, with the game requiring you to complete most of the stage missions before moving on, rather than them feeling like mostly optional missions that an allow you to complete the game faster if you wish, like other games with similar gameplay loops. Voice acting, as usual, sucks too. It's especially egregious in this game with each actor given awkward line reads and Rouge, Sonic, and Amy all continuing their thirteen year long trend of not sounding as they really should. The game was overly buggy and laggy on my iPhone 12, which seems incredibly bizarre, considering the phone isn't that old. The game softlocked on the first act of the final zone and I proceeded to uninstall the game. I plan to complete it later for a video, but, aside from that, I can never see myself playing this game ever again.

I dunno, man.
I loved Sonic Frontiers at launch, and continued to enjoy it after the "honeymoon phase". Before this expansion released, I had given the game a fair 7.5/10, and even after this update, it remains there. Rather than Sonic Team using this update to fix a lot of the issues I had with the base game and adding a really cool finale, it only does the latter and forces me to play a rendition of "The End Of The World" from Sonic 06.

The new playable characters have really cool abilities in concept, but, in execution, there are a boat load of small issues that add up to making the experience uneventful, despite them controlling quite decently, bizarre latency aside. Each character has at least one issue, in terms of their move set, that ruins the overall experience, such as Knuckles' stiff gliding, Tails' lack of a homing attack, or each character not being properly affected by the customizable physics.

The level design for the tasks Sonic/the new characters have to complete in order to gain the ancient's power/obtain the Chaos Emeralds have weird difficulty spikes that feel unfair and unbalanced compared to the rest of the game. A perfect example is the infamous puzzle where Knuckles needs to "CyKnuckle" multiple highlighted areas in the air while dodging a fleet of bullets. You never told that the CyKnuckle, which costs a pretty amount of skill points, is required to complete this task, despite the fact you have never been required to use any unlockable skills to complete required tasks previously. On top of that, if you are hit by a single bullet, you are sent plummeting to your death, with no way to recover and try again. Many other tasks are designed this way, and it baffles me that it was able to pass the playtesting stage.

Despite the lack of enjoyment to be found in the tasks required to progress, the optional ones that give you skill points are actually quite fun to run through. There aren't an overabundance of dash panels, unlike the platforming found in the base game. Each one requires you to build up speed and chain actions to progress and climb your way to the Koco holding the desired currency. I was surprised that the designers chose to make these optional, but make the annoying tasks necessary to make your way to the mixed bag of a final battle.

The main attraction of the expansion, the new final battle against The End feels much more enjoyable as a movie than an actual fight. The battle itself felt like I had to throw out arbitrary attacks at the enemy, due to the fact that, similarly to the Knuckles task, I was not told by the game about the specific maneuvers required to do anything meaningful to the titan. However, despite the confusing gameplay, the cinematography and music of the battle were among some of the greatest this series has ever seen. The grin I had on my face when Sonic would casually slap a massive out of his way, strike anime-like poses, or shoot himself out of a giant shotgun into the enemy was unrivaled. The scenes after the final battle with Eggman and Sage, and their father-daughter relationship were really sweet and heart warming, but the rest of the story left much more to be desired.

Somehow, someway, The Final Horizon's dialogue contained in its story had my jaw on the floor at how much of a step down it was from the base game and its writer's other works in this franchise. Many people poke fun at times that Ian references previous Sonic games, but those were mostly taken out of context and heavily exaggerated. In this expansion however, you start to see where those people come from. On multiple occasions, I'd groan at the shameless, almost out of pocket references to unrelated characters or phrases from other games in the series. There are also plot points that really have no point in being here and hinder the story rather than fleshing it out further, such as Tails still having self esteem issue after him concluding his arc about that earlier in this game and, of course, his campaign in Sonic Adventure. Ian Flynn has shown that he can do incredible works with Sonic stories, but this is, unfortunately, an exception.

One aspect of this campaign that I, somehow, found myself strangely enjoying the most was the extra Cyber Space stages, or, as I've affectionally called them, "B-Sides". These are variations of previous Cyber Space stages from other islands and the original version of Ouranos Island. They include new collectables to grab and hidden exits to discover. Many of them include new gimmicks, such as racing against a ghost of Tails, finding something, or reaching the end of the stage before time runs out. Unlike many of the "A-Side" Cyber Space stages, I had a lot of fun maneuvering through the stages trying to complete each mission. The new remixes in each stage are, as expected, incredible. Some include new vocals, covers of pre-existing ones, or entirely new sections of the track. The new Cyber Space stages were a nice surprise, as someone who didn't enjoy many of the originals. If they were accessible through a level select of some sort, rather than require me to do map unlocking tasks to find them on the island, I'd love to replay them more often.

I wanted to love The Final Horizon. I really did. Many people, including myself, felt that it was nearly impossible for Sonic Team to mess this up with their newly found budget. However, I, at least, was harshly proven wrong. Sonic Team has proven that they can create a much higher quality product in the past, but, with this release, they haven't continued that pattern. It slightly worries me for the quality of the upcoming Sonic Superstars, which is partially being developed by Sonic Team. An expansion for a game is supposed to make you enjoy it even more, but, to be honest, in this case, it may have made the initial product worse.

Sonic Frontiers is weird. It's simultaneously my favorite Sonic game and the most perplexing Sonic game I've played. It's so much fun to run around the Open Zones and speedrun the Cyber Space stages, the story is really well written, and the soundtrack has become my favorite in the series. However, at the same time, the game is incredibly janky, oddly optimized, and the voice acting, more so on the titular character's end, is among the worst in the franchises' history. Oddly though, those heavy cons are easily outweighed by the many positives this game possesses. Frontiers is easily the most fun I've had with Sonic on gameplay, narrative, and audible standpoints since Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.