Up next in the chronological playthrough: The Pre-Sequel! Upon beating it on Vault Hunter Mode, I honestly think I like it even more, though not enough to get the 4.5 stars as some flaws were much more evident.

Playthrough 1: Aurelia Hammerlock [4/5 stars]
VHM / Playthrough 2: Nisha [4.25/5 stars]

The Improvements:
- I'm very glad I went with Nisha as my character this time around, as her ability combined with the dual pistols skill is incredibly fun (and broken) to play with. Though I love Aurelia's character and gameplay, clearing out entire rooms in one burst of my ability was an incredible feeling.
- The weapon progression was fantastic this playthrough! Perhaps it is in part that I'm getting better at assessing what is an upgrade over my current gear, but it felt like every other mission I was finding some kind of significant upgrade over my current loadout.
- My appreciation and love for the characters in this one increased as well. Many great bits to be found in the side-quests, The story is still the best one told in the franchise and i'll take Nina over Zed any day.
- Claptastic Voyage still slaps.
- You've got a great lookin' mainframe... I love the look of your mainframe...

The Not-So-Good:
- The first hour or three were a bit boring this time around; potentially due to our characters starting at too high a level.
- The end-game difficulty curve is a bit insane, especially the ascended's are tedious to deal with at times as they constantly become stronger while recovering all their health.
- The gimmick of Nisha's unending cruelty becomes a bit tedious to listen to after a while.
- Some characters, as much as I hate to admit it, went down the powerrankings a bit. I completely missed Janey Springs' obsession with Moxxi the first time around so hearing about it constantly this time was incredibly jarring.
- Still heavily dislike laser-guns. I think we found maybe one that was functional? But even then it was only because it was so comically broken that being a laser-gun did not hinder it. (+300% continuous damage is a wild stat to put on a rapidly firing weapon)

---- All in all I enjoyed it just a bit more than the first playthrough, but that honestly might primarily be my choice of character. I love Aurelia, but I adore Nisha('s gameplay). I know it's a controversial take but [for now atleast] I still think this is my favourite one. The gameplay is largely the same across all these games so I tend to gravitate towards analysing the characters and narrative more when looking for what I like about these games.

Anyways, Borderlands 2 is up next! This was my least favourite one when originally playing through them (mainly because of the length and the fact I wasn't that into the franchise yet), but I'm hopeful I can appreciate it a lot more this time!

Having now played for about 3 hours it is pretty evident Bounty of One is not as well made, balanced or in-depth as many of the other games spawned by Vampire Survivors, but being the first (as far as I'm aware) that has co-op is a novel concept which carries it quite far.

The game is quite easy currently, but this might change as we go up the difficulty curve. My main enjoyment currently comes from trying various insane builds on the different assortment of characters, but i'm a bit worried if the difficulty does not pick up soon I will lose interest rather quickly.

Also for the love of God let the other players read what the upgrades do without having to wait for player 1 to scroll over it. And while we're at it, a deselect option in co-op is desperately needed.

Thinks it's a lot smarter than it is, or atleast the fans seem to do.

The writing is really heavy-handed with the metaphors, and it's constantly bashing you over the head with the meaning of them too because god forbid you have to cricitically think about it for a second. I also just heavily dislike this type of meta writing in general because it always comes of super pretentious and this is not an exception.

The atmosphere is great though, and I enjoy the vibes it gives off + the monster designs are fun (Thanks E.T. for letting me buy milk).

For a dollar I don't exactly feel ripped off, though this does feel like a game that should be free-to-play for how little content it offers. Maybe the sequel can improve the writing, because I do like the "world" that's being created here, but the writer seems more concerned with making sure that everyone knows whats going on at all times while feigning mystery, which just isn't an enticing read.

Very conflicted about this one. Closer to 3 stars than 4 for sure. I love the game's aesthetic, it is incredibly beautiful and what drew me to it in the first place. And the sense of mystery is strong.... at the start of the game.

The main issues I have with this game are the protagonist who DOES. NOT. STOP. TALKING, the puzzles in chapter 4 & 5 and the larger story.

Firstly, the protagonist's constant babbling creates an atmosphere in which the mystery becomes increasingly less interesting because you are so constantly bombarded with information. This becomes especially bad once the potential threat of the ooze becomes known yet the protagonist never stops talking about how safe she feels around the ooze and how the island seems to be threatening to everyone but her. It left me kind of uninvolved in our protagonist because it seemed like everything would turn out fine for her regardless, and there were quite a few times where an important piece of dialogue was immediately cut short by a different line reacting to something completely pointless.

Secondly, the puzzles in chapter 4 and 5 range from so strangely simplistic that you spend way too long trying infinitely more complex options because it does not even occur to you to try it, to needlessly convoluted puzzles which require either luck or a guide to solve.

Finally and most importantly though I found myself exponentially less interested in the world being build as the story went on and I realised where it was headed. It could have worked, but the amount of time focussed on the strange politics of gods and subjugation and slavery in this fish world took away any air of mystery that might have existed.

I am still giving it 3.5 stars because I really enjoyed my first ~3 hours, as well as most of chapter 6. But unfortunately the middle section of the game and the overarching world being set up just tanked my interest hard. Could've been a fantastic addition to the puzzle/walking sim-genre, but ended up being just pretty good.

Should've stayed a detective story about a parent and his estranged daughter on a (potentially) haunted island. The whole schizophrenia angle was not developed well and ruined the mystery of the second half.

When will artists learn that some mental illnesses just generally do not work for movie- or videogame narratives. For a good story to work you need some kind of resolution, but you cannot just "fix" schizophrenia, only live with it. This leads to stories being either disingenous about the mental illness (e.g. Edward "learning to accept Bessie isn't real" and "learning to live with his illness") or feeling like an unsatisfying/improper ending (This is most common when these types of twists are used mainly for shock value, and don't add much if anything to the themes of a game).

It's a shame, because the character design, aesthetic, voice acting and character dynamics are all good (though Lissie's dialogue could get grating at times), and deserved a better story attached to it. I've still given it 3 stars because despite my steadily decreasing enthousiasm from act 2 onwards, the first 1.5 hours are pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, the story's weak ending makes me unable to really recommend it to anyone else.

A truly fantastic storyline, that is unfortunately held back ever so slightly by the lacking gameplay.

Regarding the story: It is quite small scale and simple: Down on his luck, a man strikes a deal with a demon to turn his life back around, with terrible consequences. But it is the characters that really deserve a spotlight here.
O'Dimm is a fantastic threat, imposing and odd immediately from his (re-)introduction. A Faustian Devil was a great choice for a smaller scale villain, and his nickname has a great payoff at the end with the riddle.

Olgeird and Vlodimir von Everec are both scumbags who somehow win you over by the end of their stories, making it easy to see how they got that cultlike following off theirs. Particularly Olgeird shines as the emotional pillar on which the DLC rests: As you learn more and more about the specifics of his situations, the tragedy of his existance becomes ever more clear. The Witcher 3 gets praised a lot for it's grey morality, and I think Olgierd is an exeptional example of that. Even after I restored his heart, does that truly forgive everything he put his family and victims through? I don't think it does, yet saving his soul still feels like the right choice; only with his soul rescued (both literally and metaphorically, i see what you did there CD Projekt Red) can he start to atone for what he has done.

Shani, making her return from The Witcher 1, is a great sidekick for the adventure. Her upbeat and fun personality brings out a warmer side of Geralt, much like Triss does in the base game. There is a clear love for each other, but also an understanding that their livestyles are completely incompatible, which pervades their romance. That it eventually leads nowhere is almost certain from the start, yet still it is saddening when it happens.

Then there's the little clever touches, like reusing the spider model for the fiends during the 'Scenes from a Marriage' quest which I normally would consider lazy, but works here as a representation of Iris' fears, because she mentions to Ogeird that they cannot go into the house until they've gotten rid of all the spiders (because she is afraid of them). The same can unfortunately not be said about the reusage of gargoyle and elemental models for the fiends in O'Dimm's nightmare sequence, which I cannot see any particular reason for reusing other than seeming demonlike and laziness on CD Projekt Red's part.

Regarding gameplay: There's really only a few mediocre bosses (loved the frog though!) and the rest is just running around. This DLC felt more like a ten hour movie rather than a videogame at some points, which made the dialogue rather exhaustive at times. The final riddle's conclusion was cool, but I spent a long time trying to find the mirror and water despite already knowing the answer ('reflection') from the start, which lead to a bit of dissonance between my experience and Geralt's. To then die near the end because I did not realise I had to turn on witcher senses to find a breakable wall caused some unnessecary frustration right at the end, dampening the impact of the conclusion. But this experience was personal and might be completely different for others. However, the fact that Olgeird's final conversation with Geralt still made me feel fulfilled despite that, goes to show the writing talent behind this game.

I have little to complain about here, a fantastic DLC all around. I just wish there was more interesting gameplay to break up the dialogue sections, but this storyline and its characters will most likely stay with me for a long time, aiding me in writing my own stuff as a great example of how to write complex and/or engaging characters within a simple narrative.
Oh! And the expansion gave me some great Gwent cards for my Scoia'tael deck too, so that's really the biggest win here.

The fact that this was still around a 9.5/10 despite the Witcher burnout starting to kick in heavily for me goes to show how fantastic this DLC is. I do think I prefer Hearts of Stone as a story, but this was easily a better complete videogame experience on the whole.

The writing is phenomenal, and the characters are outstanding. I don't think they reach the emotional depth of an Olgeird von Everec, or are as engaging a villain as Gaunter O'Dimm, but the characters of Anna Henrietta and Regis provide great countering perspectives between which Geralt is torn. They also work as fun companions for their respective main story quests. I think particularly Regis is a standout character, and easily one of my favourites in the entire game. He enriches the themes of the world of the Witcher while providing genuine comedic chemistry with Geralt.
I don't particularly care for Sylvia Anna as a villain, but I can appreciate what she does for the themes of 'virtue' and loyalty in the story.

The fairytale aestethic of Toussaint is fantastic, and helps set it apart from the other areas in the Witcher 3. The fact that it is only "perfect" on the surface is ofcourse part of the message of the DLC, but still I find it hard not to be a little bit sad for the destruction that happens to it during Dettlaff's siege of the capitol.

The main questline is also some of the most engaging (main!) quests since the bloody baron questline from the base game, and you get to visit some wonderful setpieces and scenarios. Particularly the little things like Rapunzel tying a noose from her own hair is wonderfully morbid and tragic. Or using Aard to blow away the Three Little Piggies' brick house; its so simple yet clever.

I also very much appreciate the inclusion of mutations as a way to reward levelling up in the endgame, and being able to further my build after I felt I pretty much plateaued in power level since I hit level 30, almost 30-40 hours back.

Also the Skellige gwent deck is sick and nasty GRAAAH!! (I'm simply not going to question why people can just make their own cards and factions and others just have to accept it, but Skellige genuinely feels overtuned compared to the other factions lol).

There's probably a bunch I could still talk about like the various endings and their implications, or how the DLC deconstructs knighthood, but it's already plenty long. I'll leave that to any of the countless youtubers who I'm sure have made hour long essays about it. I adored the Witcher 3, but I'm going to need a break from it for a while. Time to finish Metroid Prime finally, it's been on the backburner long enough because of this unique, beautiful mess of a game.

Hey, let's make a sequel to our beloved tactical game and only take its worst qualities and make them 10x more prevalent what could go wrong?

What finally pushed me to quit this game was having a soldier get panicked by a Sectoid, which caused him to run into the blast radius of a Codex explosion which promptly killed him without me being able to do anything about it. Bad enough already, but his death prompted two of my soldiers to start panicking as well, which made them run into random fucking directions and triggering the Viper King that was apparently just chilling on the backlines, who subsequently killed one of them and blocked my way to the timed objective. Fuck this game.

Maybe I'll come back for it one day but I got really fucking tired of EVERY shot being 50% accuracy at most, soldiers panicking after every little thing, enemies one shotting you starting from Veteran difficulty, enemies seeming to crit on every fucking shot, destroying cover being a must for every encounter if you want any chance at a sensible hit rate but then getting almost no tools to do so, enemies being spotted / revealing themselves and attacking on the same turn, enemy overwatch not popping up so randomly getting merc'd while repositioning, some green objectives being able to be completed after using all your turns and others not (making it a fucking guessing game), etc. etc.

XCOM 2 has the aesthethics of a great sequel but it plays like a downgrade to Enemy Unknown in nearly every way.

Generally great Portal-like puzzle game. Surprisingly beautiful aesthetically for an older title. Story was unfortunately rather unsatisfying (the double fake out is a cute idea but it makes the climax rather unsatisfying. The entire story becomes a 'he said-she said' situation and it takes away from the mystery. However, you play these titles mainly for the puzzles, and ignoring some over-complex puzzles near the end it doesn't disappoint on that front.

If I had to rank the this along side the Portal games I think it would go something like:
4. Q.U.B.E: Director's Cut (7.5/10)
3. Portal Reloaded (8/10)
2. Portal 1 (8.5/10)
1. Portal 2 (10/10)

Moonscars is a wonderful and challenging addition to the Metroidvania genre, though it does get a bit repetitive with the lack of enemy diversity near the end. A lot of criticism seems to be aimed at the difficulty, but I found it to be just right for me.

Visually there's some really gorgeous areas like the Depths, but admittedly most places kind of wash into each other (though I would not say they look unappealing). Compared to its contemporaries like Blasphemous, Hollow Knight or Ori and the Will of the Wisps, it just doesn't quite live up to their (consistent) beauty.

What it does have over most of these (except maybe Hollow Knight), is an incredibly satisfying combat system. Healing is quick and hitting enemies is rewarding. Spells are strong but there is still a clear incentive for parrying and stabbing. Special weapons (with the exception of 1 or 2) are incredibly fun and really mixed up my playstyle in small but meaningful ways. I was tense throughout most of my adventure, especially when under the effects of the starving moon, yet I did not die very often. This kept my engagement up throughout much of the game, though when I started encountering the same few enemy combinations repeatedly this feeling admittedly waned a bit. Additionally, the bossfights were all pretty fantastic. I especially love how they just throw you into the deep end immediately with the first boss.

The story was nothing to write home about, I'm kind of mixed on it similarly to Blasphemous' story. A lot of conversations that seem complex but its really just a lot of incomprehensible terms and ideas thrown at you to make it seem more deep than it really is. Unfortunately, this games' cast just isn't as intriguing as Blasphemous' was, so it feels even more noticable.

If this review seems overly negative for the score that I gave it, I really did not intend it to be so. It is honestly closer to 4.5 stars than 3.5. However, I do think there is a lot here that the developers could improve on for their sequel(s) to create a truly exceptional Metroidvania experience.

The Arkham Origins of XCOM. The faster battles and preparation were a breath of fresh air, and I enjoyed making use of the different heroes a lot. It felt like I was jumping in and out of battles at incredible pace which was a nice change from the (sometimes overly) slow pace of XCOM 2, with a decent variety in team compositions I could bring.

Breach is an interesting mechanic, though I could take it or leave it honestly. I enjoyed the different factions a lot. I also genuinely believe that most of this game's negative reception came from people's expectation that this was XCOM 3, though I never felt like it was marketed that way personally.

My main complaint is that the story, art and characters are all on the weaker side (Axiom excluded!), ESPECIALLY if you compare it to enemy unknown or XCOM 2. Especially as a continuation of xcom 2's narrative it feels a bit unimportant? I suppose thats good in the grand scheme of things because of this game's (unwarranted) poor reception, but still. Clearly there was also a much smaller budget alotted to this project, evident in the re-used assets from XCOM 2 and the drawn cutscenes rather than the 3D cinematics in and Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2, which makes the end result being this solid and fun even more impressive to me.

That all being said, if you are into turn-based combat and/or XCOM I definitely think this is worth a play. But do read the steam page a bit more in-depth before you buy it expecting XCOM 2.5 or something: it's differences from the formula might be a huge turn off for you.