Trying this out again with the PS5 update. I never played this game on anything else other than my OG PS4, got the plat back in like 2017 and I never touched it since. So it's kinda crazy seeing it in smooth 60 FPS.

Anyways, this game singlehandedly carried me out of Destiny jail back in the day, the gameplay loop was more than addictive enough for me. Pick a spot in the map, shoot all the bad guys there, loot everything, haul it all back so you can upgrade your equipment, and repeat. The gunplay is quite solid, especially for an action RPG. And the weapons customization is just so fun to do, mfs be trembling at the sight of my glow-sighted drum-barrel powerful long-barrel automatic pipe rifle.

Then you have the Commonwealth open world itself, which nails the 50s retrofuturistic aesthetic that Bethesda really likes to focus on. And Fallout 4's colorful-yet-rustic art direction creates a lot of varied atmospheric locales to explore. Bethesda also handles their typical environmental storytelling stuff quite well, so there's usually some interesting tales to stumble upon.

Speaking of stories, there's no escaping NPCs in this game, and the actual dialogue driven stories that you'll be experiencing are just so flat, aside from a couple exceptions. The RPG aspects unfortunately doesn't extend to its story, and even in the dialogue choices, it doesn't feel like you're carving out a path for yourself. It always feels linear and limited, which is not good for a series that has made a name for itself with big narrative playgrounds. And the general quality of writing is just meh. A lot of the dialogues don't convey enough personality, and it can come across as toothless and boring. I do quite like the company of some characters like Nick Valentine and Piper, and there's some good story moments scattered all over the main and side missions, but overall it is not the driving force of the game's fun factor. They did made Far Harbor, which basically transplants an actually good RPG storyline with memorable writing into the game, so it's not like they can't do it. I guess they don't care enough or something.

But yeah, that's it really. Fallout 4 is a fun time when you don't have classic Fallout fans screaming at you. It's a very wide inflatable pool that has a lot of floaties to play with, but it's still an inflatable pool, and you'll probably yearn for the sight and sounds of the real sea at some point.

A particular moment that stuck out to me from this DLC is when Clive and the gang experience Mysidia firsthand, seeing blue skies and lush green life once again, after being deprived of it by Ultima. Their awe was not unlike mine. This new location is indeed a sight for eyes sore of gloomy skies. In that way, the DLC has already filled a hole that XVI had for a good amount of its runtime. And I think that is a pretty good summation of The Rising Tide; it is what XVI needed to become truly whole.

You can see that theme in Tide's story as well. For the most part, you will be assisting Shula, a leader of a tribe of people who used to live in the South before the fall of Drake's Horn, in rescuing Leviathan's dominant from a cruel fate concocted by her ancestors. In many ways, her journey runs parallel to Clive's, as she has to be the one to step up to the plate, decide what is best for her people, and bear the consequences of their actions. Both Shula and Clive learn from each other, and in turn, they become closer to what their people need them to be. It is a very solid foundation that helps Tide's story arc to be one of the stronger ones in XVI overall.

Then you have Leviathan's powers, which, in gameplay, fill a new role that the other Eikons haven't truly served. With their long-range attacks and high evasion capabilities, it's basically a great zoning tool to have while you are rapidly crunching down on the enemies' stagger gauge. It plays almost like some of those lock-on-based shooters, from back when the gaming industry hadn't truly figured out aiming and shooting mechanics yet. And it's a blast to use. For me, one of the most satisfying parts of XVI's combat is killing mobs as fast as possible, and Leviathan's high stagger damage is very helpful indeed.

And of course, we have to talk about XVI's special sauce: the Eikon boss fights. Leviathan is easily my 2nd favourite Eikon fight, and fellow XVI enjoyers will probably know how high of a praise that is. It's not the most epic in terms of pure spectacle and presentation, but it's definitely the most challenging one. Died a couple times trying to pass the DPS check, and was also too eager to use all my health items in the last stage, haha. Gotta shout out the Timekeeper boss too, probably my favorite non-Eikon boss fight in XVI.

I do have some slight disappointments, the biggest one being the lack of Jill's involvement considering the Southern setting. But overall, I am very satisfied with this DLC. If CBU3 really decides to move on from XVI after this, then it is indeed a wonderful note to end on. XVI has been living rent-free on my mind for almost a full year now, and The Rising Tide has only strengthened its place, like rain seeping into the soil and nourishing life.

I bought and started this DLC right when it dropped since I was so damn hungry for XVI content back then. Played it for about 2 hours, had a blast re-learning all the gameplay moves and stuff, and was generally very happy to be back with Clive and the gang, striking down fools with the power of friendship. I found out it was a pretty short DLC so I saved the last hour for whenever the next DLC drops. It's supposed to drop in the next 24 hours, so here I am.

Echoes is pretty much a meaty, sizeable dungeon run; the kind you would expect to be abundant in these sort of RPGs. And XVI certainly had a lot of them already, so Echoes doesn't necessarily break new ground on that department. In fact, it doesn't really break any ground. It pretty much keeps all the qualities of the main game: entertaining dialogue, fantastic looking environments, great soundtrack, fun minibosses, and an amazing final boss.

The plot of Echoes definitely feels like one of those filler anime episodes, except there's no drop in quality, it just feels filler because it doesn't directly relate to the main story. If you talk to Harpocrates and browse the Thousand Tomes, the game will mention that Clive's accounts of this DLC will not count towards his wisdom, and that's probably the most apt way to describe Echoes' event, haha. But we do get some more badass Clive lines, so it was certainly not for naught.

But Echoes truly excels in the enemies it introduces. Omicron is a speedy miniboss that feels particularly satisfying to perfect dodge against, and the Ancient Minotaur near the end absolutely wrecked me a couple times. The absolute peak is the final boss here; Omega in all their forms. Their attack patterns and moves are so fun to deal with, it's basically a good distillation of some of my favorite parts of XVI bosses: chaotic bullet hell and AoE attacks mixed with quick blows and lunges that you gotta dodge well. And of course Omega's soundtrack fucking owns.

Aside from that, I don't think Echoes will stick out to me whenever I think of FFXVI in the future. But as far as I'm concerned, it does its job of being this neat, little appetizer before The Rising Tide, and that's all I expected from this. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be crying to My Star on the Orchestrion.

P.S. it's insane that they let us transmog Clive's sword to the Buster Sword. I will NOT be switching back to any other sword model haha

I remember playing this game around the time of its launch for a couple hours or so, being mesmerized by its brand of hard boiled sci-fi dystopia. It's not hard to see why I was so enthralled by it back then: the first 5-6 hours successfully introduces an interesting world where the advancement of man-made tech is equally matched, if not exceeded, by the occult and the supernatural. Gameplay wise, despite lacking in tutorials, the design starts simple enough to ease you in, but not too simple to bore you. Not to mention the cast of decently written, colorful characters that you are being subjected to.

But the depth in those aspects are quite lacking, especially as you reach a certain chapter where things start to get quite wild, story-wise. The progression of the story's scale and stakes in the 2nd act already feels a bit sudden and unnatural on its own. But combined by all the side characters not being fleshed out enough, the disappointingly same-y level and encounter design, and a unwelcomed difficulty spike in this act, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with how they executed the game's second half. It almost feels rushed.

A big part of why I loved the first half of the game is how well the game introduces all sorts of interesting lore through its main missions, while maintaining this delightful detective vibe in its gameplay. From delving into Seattle's drug addict woes, to dealing with dead spirits in order to gain their testimony of an event nobody else saw, there's all sorts of stuff happening in the 1st act that I really enjoyed. You don't have to figure the story out yourself, but the CRPG gameplay of exploring thoroughly to fully scope out all your options fits perfectly with its premise of trying to figure out who killed your old friend. Even if the gameplay possibilities and options aren't that extensive (it's a relatively small scale game after all), the act of playing detective and getting yourselves some allies along the way is still a fun endeavor. The 2nd and 3rd act unfortunately doesn't have quite the same level of variety and memorability.

The RPG systems are pretty decent for the most part. Outside of combat, the various stats serve mostly to unlock certain dialogues options or pathways that usually will save you a minute or two of your time, and in the sense of their usefulness, there is a lot of room to improve on. Coupled with the somewhat cramped level design, it can feel more like a linear story rather than a CRPG. But executing these bonus options still feel satisfying.

In regards to combat, these systems feel more fleshed out, since the abilities and bonuses you'll get for advancing in the game's various combat stats feel much more helpful. For example, being able to mark a target to temporarily increase the chance of hitting them by advancing the Decking stats, and combining that with abilities such as full-auto assault rifle attacks. But do note that the combat follows the XCOM system of hit percentages, so be prepared for utter frustration as you miss attacks with 90% hit chance.

All in all, Shadowrun Returns feels more like a prelude of what's to come, rather than a completely realized idea. Still, I did have a fun time playing it, and I will be checking out the sequels someday to see if they ever get to fulfill this game's potential.

30 minutes of (mostly) jolly, simple and straightforward 3D platforming. It ends right when the gameplay needed more variety, which this 1 dollar game won't give you. I don't think the weirder elements of the game added anything substantial, would prefer them to not be in the game instead of disturbing a perfectly cheerful experience. But it's nothing too fatal, the vibrant low poly aesthetics are too hard to beat.

Also, this is just a tangent but this game makes me nostalgic for a penguin platformer game that was preloaded on my old Linux EEE PC back in the late 2000s. Images of that game were just flying all over my brain during this playthrough. And I don't think I have thought about that game for years.

The prologue levels tripped me out. I was hopping around, hunting for items and figuring out the way forward like it was a 3D platformer. Then I realized the levels are basically structured exactly as such, and from that moment I don't even see the game as a shooter anymore. Eventually the game started to lean back to the shooter parts and it got less interesting by then, but it was fun being 50 Cent, boppin' 'round the hood.

Anyways, please play 50 Cent Blood in the Sand if you haven't, that game is a certified classic.

Checked out some DBZ stuff in honor of the GOAT's passing. I'm mostly familiar with Budokai 3, never played this one before.

I do like the story mode's structure, presenting the story just like the anime, with the intros and recaps and such. But I wish there's more of it, the mode is so brief and skips a lot of cool stuff from the original story.

This is one of the earlier PS2 DBZ games, and even then the game still looks pretty nice. The 3D art style is well directed, and sufficiently matches the anime and manga's aesthetics. It definitely would have blown my mind away if I was a DBZ fan back when this came out.

The gameplay is pretty rough in this one. I never liked the way you do special attacks in these games, I wish you can just input a quarter circle forward or something like that for a Kamehameha instead of the punch button sequence. But beyond that, the feel of the controls is just a bit off, it's can be sluggish and awkwardly unsatisfying at times. Not to mention the game still lacks some visual oomph that the later DBZ games would have.

Budokai 1 is a decent start that would set up some of the best DBZ games ever made, and that's all it really needed to do. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to continue my DBZ binge.

I was thinking about what my ideal FPS game would be like, and I decided to revisit this game since I remember being really fond of it. I think I'm one step closer to an answer: I love FPS games that takes full advantage of the level of intimacy and individuality that the first person perspective provides, rather than just being a well designed shooter. And 2033 is a great example of that.

There's just hardly a moment in this game where I wasn't so invested in its world. The dank, dark tunnels of the metro have an incredibly tasteful atmosphere. And the icy ruins of the wasteland above are nowhere near as dead as they seem. The horrible men and monsters are plain as day, but there's also more than that. Places might not remember people, but we would like them to, and we leave echoes for others to stumble upon. The game has an excellent, grounded take on the supernatural, and it makes exploration so interesting. I'm especially impressed by the sound design in certain sections, it works wonders with the first person perspective to establish this constant feeling of walking on grounds you don't belong, and are barely hanging on to.

Then you have the more unique and gimmicky mechanics. Being able to wipe your gas mask from all the blood and filth covering it, and even replace it when it's cracked beyond saving, to the point of limiting your visibility; stealthily turning light sources off to better hide your tracks; manually pumping your pneumatic weapons; and so on. Doing all of these in first person, it makes you understand the kind of life these Metro folks live daily. Having to scavenge decaying tech and improvising from whatever they have is a classic post-apocalypse trope, and 2033's take on it feels more than distinct enough to leave an impression.

But the game is still a shooter at it's heart, and I think it's more than good enough on that front. The overall gunplay can be quite clunky, but the impact and feel of most of the weapons are quite good, and there's a decent degree of freedom that the game gives you in approaching a good amount of the encounters.

Lastly, I do have to say that the silent protagonist approach, writing and English VO can disappoint what the story is trying to do. There's a slight Broken English feel to it all. But I think the game compensates for that with the collectible diaries. Written from the perspective of the main character, they are better written and provide a much needed dose of personality to the storytelling.

All in all, 2033 is a must-play in its genre: a slower-paced, immersive, narrative driven FPS game. Like the people of Metro, it makes the most of its limited budget and scope, and despite rough edges all over the place, it lives on.

Been waiting for months for the PS+ port to show up. It was trademarked sometime ago, and I was really excited to revisit this one. This was definitely one of the most technically impressive titles for the PSP back when it came out, and I remember having a lot of fun with it. The funny thing is that I couldn't remember if I actually finished it or not. And after this latest playthrough, I'm pretty sure that I did. I just forgot because the game kinda gets more forgettable as it goes on.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. There's one thing that I would like to stress first: don't play this on Hard! It's way less fun than on Normal. The enemies hit too hard, and they're also very spongy. It leads to frustrating moments more often than not.

A big part of that is because of how the gunplay works. Since it's originally a PSP game, there are design decisions that comply with the limitations of the control scheme. The game is mostly about how you maneuver around cover, dodging projectiles like a bullet hell game, while still keeping your lock-on reticule on the enemies that deserve the most priority. The guns that you'll use the most have bullet spread that gets worse if you keep firing for too long, so you're encouraged to burst fire.

A unique feature of the original game is that you can use a Dualshock 3 as a controller, and that feature is what drives the control scheme on this PS+ version. Problem is, the lock-on is not accessible in this mode, and the analog aim controls are, at best, pretty sluggish, even after I tweaked the settings. I recently played Resistance 3 just to compare, and it feels so much better even without tweaking the controls. Here, it always feels like you're fighting against the controls on some level, especially when you're fighting the more nimble enemies. This is, thankfully, not too big of a problem on Normal, because it's quite forgiving, but it's still worth a heads up.

In the main campaign, you'll be going through the ruins and lairs of Europe that has been infested and rebuilt to the Chimera's needs. Level design wise, it definitely gets same-y pretty quick, since most of it are small tunnels and corridors. It's nowhere near as exciting as, let's say, Resistance 3's trek through post-Alien invasion America, which at least had way more setting variety. Most of the "puzzles" and objectives are pretty basic too. I can forgive the more limited level sizes since it's a PSP game, but they can do better on the rest. I do admit that the collectibles are well hidden, and satisfying to find.

Speaking of, the collectibles are mostly extra lore notes about various aspect of the world, and honestly, I like reading these way more than experiencing the main story. An example of this is regading Grayson's character: in the story he's mostly portrayed as an asshole that doesn't really have anything interesting about him, but the collectibles can sometimes show a more personal side of him that makes him much more likeable. The main story simply fails on most of what it tries to do, while the collectibles deliver interesting perspectives and details of the world that we don't get to actually experience in gameplay.

Now, I do realize that this review has been mostly me badmouthing this game. But I do enjoy it overall, despite all its flaws. I just like messing around with all the guns in this game, Bend did a decent job of continuing the series' staple of having fun weapons. I love that you can literally dodge projectiles in slow-mo with the sniper. And the manual redirect ability for the missile launcher is pretty sick. I also liked the enemy variety here, even if the game kinda loses steam with the encounter designs later on.

Playing this game (and also dipping back to Resistance 3 for a bit) made me realize how cool Resistance is as a series. It might not seem that cool, looking from the outside, but Insomnia poured a lot of thought creating this 1950s Alien Invasion story that manages to feel distinctive and evocative enough, while wearing its influences on the sleeves. I particularly see a lot of Half-Life 2 influence in this game (just look at the Rotterdam levels, heavy City 17-vibes), seems like Bend are big fans of that game haha. Anyway, I would love to see this series return. Lots of old Sony franchises worth reviving, and this is one of them.

P.S. one of the last cutscenes in the game was so horribly compressed and blurry, that it reminded me of the cover art of Germs: Nerawareta Machi. I thought it was neat haha

Utterly unserious, dumb game. It's not fun to play; I'm especially tired of how unresponsive and clunky the controls are, it makes you feel like you're playing as an unathletic man in a bad halloween costume. But the story presentation and vibes are just too entertaining sometimes. The early 3D cutscenes are inherently funny because of how they are directed: it feels more like a silly puppet show more than anything else. Not to mention the game's general ignorance of the concept of groundedness, and anything else that implies some sort of adherence to boring reality. The infamous multistory-height toxic gas is only the tip of the iceberg, there's a lot more cartoony little things in the gameplay, dialogues, and everything else that has any chance of being toon-ified. I would recommend checking this out if you want a game to laugh at.

Replaying this because of the recent news of London Studio being closed down. I played this a ton back in the day. It was far from perfect, and this latest playthrough has only made that much more obvious. But there's still some charming stuff that keeps me from being overly bored or offended.

The main attraction is the story mode, which sees you picking one of the 5 gangs to play as, conquering London's underworld by taking the other gang' territories. Structurally, this mode is decent. Each territory is taken by doing classic GTA-style bite-sized missions, but there's no free roam in this mode; instead, you choose the missions on a map-based menu. The variety of the missions are pretty good. And I particularly like how the story for each of the playable gangs are distinct enough in terms of the kinds of characters you'll see, and how you kinda grow attached to the playable characters in each gang, even with how light the story is. The story is mostly being told with comic book-style still graphics, and it works fine enough for what it is. It definitely does the job of setting the game apart from similar open world games.

But the gameplay core is where the game falters. The controls are quite clunky, mostly due to the PSP's lack of a second analog stick. Your character moves like a car, and the gunplay is mostly reduced to locking on to an enemy and just gunning them down mindlessly, while trying to awkwardly manuever around. A lot of the missions feature actual car driving, and the handling and physics are overall somewhat stiff. There's also some very skeletal stealth mechanics, which are thankfully not required too often.

There's also the problem of the enemy and ally AI. Their pathing can be so abysmal at times. I have seen more than enough enemies trying to get to my location from another side of the mission area, and for some reason they can't fathom that there's a wall separating us, so they just keep running at that wall, and I have to be the one paying them a visit instead. Same goes for the ally AI. They can slow you down quite a bit since some missions require all of your squad to be at the mission goal area, and they can get stuck in some random part of the level, so you have to control them manually.

Despite these glaring problems, the game's vibes are just unique and tasteful enough for it to be, at the very least, an interesting experience. The awkward nature of the in-engine cutscenes, combined with the cheesy 2000s aimed-at-adults tone of the comic book presentation is a pretty entertaining combination.

Rest in peace London Studio. I hope all their employees can land back on their feet quickly and without too much trouble. I should get to playing the Getaway games sometime soon.

Lastly, a word of caution: this game is pretty glitchy on emulators. Some missions are just straight up bugged for one reason or another.

P.S. forgot to mention the soundtrack. It's nothing too special but there's some nice tunes here and there. Really like the menu track and the Kane' Firm theme.

First of all, I gotta thank my local coffee shop for the clutch brew. Made me all focused and hyped up and stuff. With the power of caffeine, I just spent an incredibly fun 5 hours, tightening my gameplay skills and getting enough powerful abilities, in order to set up the one run that will be enough to carry me all the way to the end. Ended up beating the final boss at age 44. Lots of room to improve, but I'm happy with it for now. I just want to gush about this wonderful game for a bit.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the art direction of this game is kinda underrated. The soft painting-esque look of the game is pleasant enough on its own, but the game continuously impresses with the kinds of environments that it introduces as it goes on. Not to mention how surreal it can be sometimes. The game is not afraid to break reality and move beyond it to create absolutely stunning moments. The boss fight in the 3rd area is an absolute highlight in this regard.

Now let's move on to the juicy meat; this game's melee combat system is simply impeccable. There's definitely a lot of learning and practicing to do on your own before the system truly clicks, but once it does, it's so exhilarating. My personal favorite part of it is learning how the defensive mechanics work. Dodging, deflecting, parrying, and avoiding; all separate moves with their own use cases and benefits, but the game demands you to master them all, in that order. It's a highly rewarding feat, when you have studied the enemies' attack patterns enough, and you know exactly what to do in order to achieve the outcome you want. My favorite combo so far is avoiding or parrying an attack, pushing them with the palm strike, and pummeling them with chasing strikes; it's the kind of offensive manuever that I associate with Asian martial art movies the most, and it's so badass.

So, the fundamentals of the game are supremely solid. But what makes this game truly special is the intricacies of its accessory systems. You only can get new abilities from Shrines that are spread in all the levels, and they have certain requirements: being below a certain age, or requiring a set amount of score/XP. You can just use the level shortcuts to avoid fighting too many enemies, and just focus on the boss fights, while skipping some Shrines because of it. But you can do the opposite, and be rewarded for your efforts; I got enough abilities to make all the weapons in the game last much longer and hit much harder than normal, especially with bladed weapons, and it wouldn't happen if I don't take the scenic route. This meta aspect of the game is a big, fun puzzle that only strengthens the game's core qualities.

There's also some smaller quirks and features of the combat that I find really fun to learn. For example, learning that doing enough takedowns will randomly turn an enemy into a "fired up" state, and avoiding these mighty obstacles by resisting the extraordinarily strong urge to do a takedown in the first place; their animations are so fun to watch! It's so hard to resist sometimes. Not to mention the fact that they make you invincible for the duration of the animation, so you can do them to avoid getting hit by another enemy. Another example is abusing the environment to your advantage, like pushing an enemy from a ledge, or pushing them to hit a wall. It's far more situational, but still useful enough to give you the extra edge if you are aware enough to execute them.

The boss fights deserve a spotlight of their own too. All of them are challenging affairs that properly test your skills, while also pushing you to plan things out to make things easier. For example, finding a way to carry a weapon to the fight. The final boss fight is noticably harder than the rest, and is much more skill-based since one of your powers is completely handicapped, which was kinda annoying at first. But I realized that this design choice adds so much depth and replayability to the rest of the game, since the game asks you to optimize your gameplay in every other level leading up to it, to give you enough cushion and leeway to prevail in the final fight. In that way, this boss fight isn't just about mastering this one opponent, but also mastering the game itself.

Lastly, the presentation of this game is clean af. The camera moves during the takedowns, the sound effects of all the punches and kicks, the aforementioned art design, and so on: they all unite to form a beautiful, confident, and distinctive look and feel.

I want to give this a perfect score, but I'm holding out until I see more of the extra content. I do, however, have the confidence to say that this game is the absolute peak of melee combat gaming. Easily an all-timer game for me, too.

I wanted to like Beat Down so much. There's a lot of cool ideas in this game, but ultimately it is more fun to think about those ideas than it is to actually play the game. But I still respect the attempt to do something interesting with the beat em' up genre.

One of the big features of the game is being able recruit two like-minded criminals to follow you around and help beat up people, but in practice they aren't very useful. Especially if you have to actually play as them, since their movesets are relatively limited. As friendly AI, they mostly serve as just a distraction, so you will only be targeted by some of the enemies in a brawl, which is pretty lame.

I also feel a similar way about having to change clothes or accessories whenever your "cover" is starting to blow, to avoid being jumped by the Mob or the cops. After doing it often enough it just feels like they're just trying to artificially pad out the gameplay. In some of the areas, it's just not possible to move around without being noticed by the enemies. I think if they have a more deliberate way to avoid detection by the cops and the Mob in the gameplay, like being able to "blend in" like in the older Assassin's Creed games, something like this would have worked much better. It wouldn't be a surefire way to avoid confict anyways, since a lot of the missions require combat.

There's some other complaints I have, like the loading screens being too prevalent for a game like this, or the utterly lacking characterization of the main character(s), but there are still some aspects to appreciate here. The structure of the game is very classic JRPG-esque; having small interconnected areas to explore, being encouraged to talk with all the NPCs you see (except the two types I mentioned before), having items like potions spread around the world to find, being able to level up and upgrade your base attributes, and so on. The combination between these two genres is quite fun to see, and because of that I would still recommend people to check this out, mostly just to see it action.

Had an somewhat interesting journey with this game. Bought it day one, and the opening blew me away, but I just had this feeling that I wasn't fully ready to step in Spidey's shoes again. I guess it had to do with how familiar it is to the previous games, I was still in the mood for something different. But here we are now. Started the game back up a couple days ago and have been absolutely eating it up. It's such a fun game.

I have a lot to say, and I kinda want to just be varied and say more specific things, rather than just focus on a couple things like I usually do. So here's a list of the most interesting stuff:
- The main story really got going in the 2nd half. Particularly after the first Lizard chase scene (the one they showed at the PlayStation Showcase a while back). There's just a flurry of epic boss fights and strong story beats, with super tight pacing. Definitely way better than the previous games' stories, even if it can't touch the highs of the first game's ending.
- I absolutely loved how they used Venom's story arc to also tie things up from all the previous games. It's so satisfying seeing Miles stumbling constantly but ultimately having the moral clarity to make the best decision, which lead to saving Pete and also potentially a kick-ass Martin Li redemption arc in the future. I also love the "passing of the torch" theme that all of this builds up to. I'm ready for a SM3 with Miles in the lead.
- I mentioned great boss fights before; my personal favorite one gotta be Pete vs infected MJ. The fight is mechanically sound, but the best part about it is seeing MJ just vent all her feelings towards Pete, and he has no other option but to give in. It's like the most chaotic couple fight ever, haha.
- All the improvements they made to traversal and exploration, like the web wings, are so damn smart. Like, it's so cool seeing wind tunnels dynamically show up when you need it. It's like the game has this way of sensing whenever the pace is slowing down, and gives you ways to keep it up.
- The highlight of the side content for me has to be the mission where you're trying to find somebody's lost grandpa in the park. Definitely shed some tears there.
- I have to say, I don't really enjoy the Mysterio challenges. I guess the parameters are just a bit too much for me, and the concept of his presence being limited to this augmented reality stuff feels weak to me. I also don't like the Symbiote Nests that much, it being timed makes me annoyed because it's the one time the game doesn't let me be as efficient as I can be; I can't finish it faster than whatever the timer is. But these are probably the only type of gameplay that I don't enjoy, so no biggie.

Spider-Man 2 is yet another "bigger and better" sequel from the Sony camp this gen, and I ain't complainin'. I'll save the platinum trophy for another time, I'm sure I'll miss this game again soon-ish.

P.S. got the plat in just three days after I finished the main story.