The special features with this collection don't even work. They're prob on YouTube but when I buy something I expect it to work. But it turns out you get games on this disc too?

Hadn't replayed any of these since they originally came out (and never even played Michonne or the last two eps of S4) and while they are quite out-dated, I will forever have a softspot for this series. Season Two remains one of my all-time favourite games and Clementine one of my all-time favourite fictional characters!

Ranking of the series (Best to Worst):
Season Two
The Final Season
Season One
Michonne
A New Frontier

Played ep. 1 and 2 when they came out but never got around to the last two after Telltale went under.

After replaying New Frontier and being baffled at how I liked that when it came out due to terrible writing and the gameplay formula being incredibly stale by that point, I was ready for this to also suck. But straight away, it impressed me.

It's still the same basic out-dated design but refreshed to feel more lively and it's great. The graphics are beautiful and they really went out of their way to give this the good ending Season One & Two deserved.

You really feel the weight of all the decisions you make. They're no longer worthless and the parenting angle was a unique spin on it.

Love Clem so much. Glad I finally finished this [mostly] fantastic series.

After BL3 came out, I've been very scared to return to this cos I assumed it would feel very stale compared to the gunplay and movement in that. But this still feels so fresh!

I just have a pure addiction to this formula. This game will never get old for me.

I'm fucked in the head and actually find it funny cos it's so stupid. The story itself is really solid. Fantastic characters and so much replay value. Over 10 years later and I still come back to it and have loads of fun.

This game's DLC is also masterful. The longevity they added to the game with them is insane. Excited to replay them again now I've finished the main story once again.

Held out on buying it for a while but this really exceeded my expectations.

People blasted the game for having terrible endgame content and they're not exactly wrong but, for the past month, I've been doing a chaos chamber run nearly every day.

Very nice to get back into the Borderlands formula. It may feel dated in terms of design at some points but I still love it.

However, there's some stuff in this game that I feel was put in to annoy people and only that. Some of the bosses are incredibly unbalanced that they're just not fun. The primary thing for me though is that one trophy must've been made to tick off trophy hunters (or had DLC plans to make it more achievable but cancelled it).

If you don't know, there's a trophy for buying the final tier of every type of inventory upgrade. With 50 hours played, I only just completed one of them. Hence why I'm logging now and removing from 'playing' because I'm only one trophy away from platinum and I've come to terms with the fact that it's just not happening any time soon.

Perhaps it's cos I'm ill (the reason I treated myself to the PS5 upgrade and bashed it out in a day) but this was nowhere near as amazing my inital playthrough a little over a year ago.

Maybe I just needed to give it more air before revisiting because the action setpieces in this game are easily the best in the series and therefore very memorable so they're gonna lose that intensity.

The slower character moments still held up, though. I love the Nate & Elena bits so much. I also warmed up to Sam more on this playthrough too.

In addition, I'm not too sure how well The Last of Us-isms fit into this game. Some of them translate excellently but some of them should stay in Last of Us.

Overall, I still love this game. When I first played it I struggled to determine if I preferred 3 or 4 but this one clealy takes the cake for me. The action is better even though this is the most grounded. And the emotional moments hit the hardest.

I think it would've been interesting to see Hennig's original vision but I think Druckmann naturally kept some of it while adding to it gracefully. Uncharted was known for it's small characters but big plots, Last of Us for its big characters but small plot. I think he found an excellent balance for this perfect conclusion for Nathan Drake.

Sidenote: was this buggy for anyone else? The original on PS4 was flawless. Played on Fidelity Mode and experienced some pop-in, character animations not activating at the correct times, wouldn't let me climb at points, etc. which were all pretty harmless but still take you out of it. The most damning one was when I somehow got stuck inside of a wall and had to restart from the last checkpoint.

This game wowed eight-year-old me as it released throughout the year. Ten years later, I didn't think it was total shit so that's nice.

Still feels awful to play with a controller and overall plays like a game far older than it is but you're not playing this game to PLAY it so it's fine.
The facial animation was actually a lot better than I was expecting. However, the voice acting to go with it wasn't always great. There were just some bad lines of dialogue but I thought Clem overall was just too hollow. If I didn't have my pre-existing love the franchise and her, I most prob wouldn't care too greatly about her. I also think Lee's delivery often sounded too stoic and didn't fit with the rest of some scenes.
It may look cheap in areas but I really still love this artstyle. Maintains the comic-book look with cel-shaded graphics but subverts what's typically expected of that style to create something so gruesome that gives of an atmosphere of desperation.

I think this game deserves to be as popular as it is because it is very well written for a 2012 game and continues to hold up (sadly The Last of Us comparisons don't do it any favours) but I think the final episode is the worst. I don't recall ever actually playing it as it's hard to come by money as an eight-year-old and think I just watched it on YouTube instead. And honestly, that'll do. I think they knew how they wanted it to end but didn't know how to get there so they made a whole other episode with a lot of padding, a cringey random antagonist, boring puzzles, and some terrible out-of-place attempts at humour that were delivered very poorly. The ending itself is great but the hour and a bit to get there was a huge decline from the rest of the season.

Anyway, excited to replay all of these. Here's hoping Two isn't total shit too because I've listed that as one of my all-time favourites ever since it finished.

Cute and interesting idea. Not too sure how well it translates to an actual thing but it's cute.
Storytelling through the environment is nice but think this could've been many more levels and a straight-up puzzle game instead of capitalising off the short, cozy game market.
Get it on sale, preferably on a platform with a mouse, and play it in short bursts.

Shoutout to the hilarious Naomi Higgins on 'Gamey Gamey Game' for recommending this back in December on that show.

Cool: They sent me it a day early and I enjoyed it a lot more than the first time I played it on PS4 because I stupidly bought into the hype at the time.

Uncool: Making trophies missable by not tracking them in chapter select so I can't get the Platinum without doing New Game+ and I'd rather not replay the whole game again just to get two trophies as it would devalue the whole experience overall. So I'm counting having 26/29 trophies as a 'master'. I might replay the game to get them eventually but I doubt it.

I thought this game was alright. It was a mediocre rip-off of Last of Us, what do you want me to say? Hence why I wasn't gonna write a review.
But the pushing the cart bit in Chapter 16 almost made me rage quit for the first time in ten years! I fucking hated that shit so much. So incredibly poorly made, who the fuck put that in? You make a shitty combat system designed around stealth for when you and the enemy are stationary so yeah let's just put a bit where the player and the enemies are moving with our busted-up aim system and one option for combat and during a scene that's supposed to be sad (?) and traumatic for the characters. Fuck off.
But yeah, it was alright. Really liked the sibling dynamic. Not too bad for £8 on a sale.

I don't typically rate stuff but I instantly clicked with this and think this is one of the best triple-A games to come out in recent years. Yet, I don't hear enough conversation about it.

It being on a console not many people have factors into that but I also assume its difficulty. Spending 70 quid on a game that's intended to be challenging that you may give up on reflects the in-game risk-reward mechanics. You could risk buying it and end up with a sizeable hole in your wallet and a game you don't like cos you think its too hard or you could be rewarded with a game that has intensely satisfying control, rewarding and equally visually interesting boss fights and a well-thought-out narrative that's up to player interpretation that doesn't feel pretentious.

For players who aren't as skilled, this game is dopamine bank. Every time you die and restart from the beginning, you store a little bit dopamine so when you finally complete the boss, you have a huge dopamine rush and feel happy. For skilled players, you'll get a dopamine rush because you'll realise that you're actually one of those skilled players. I hate to be that guy but this game made me realise I was good at video games. I had heard so much that people have 100-200 deaths and can't get past the first boss and I completed the main game in 9 deaths, completing biome 4-6 in one go which was my first. Then 15 deaths, to complete the true ending. Shit made me feel like a god.

At the end of the day, if you don't like dungeon-crawler roguelikes, you most probably will dislike this too. But I feel it blends the genre with psychological horror, disco lights and shooters in a unique way to create a great layered human story about grief wrapped up in Greek mythology and Sci-Fi setpieces.

It's incredibly fun and addicting to play due to the gameplay loop (haha) supported by the DualSense controller which is proved to not be a gimmick by this game. And also fun to dissect the little nuggets of a story you get and piece it all together.
I was constantly intrigued by the characters and world throughout so I highly recommend it but with a warning as I fully understand why someone would hate this game despite its great design.

Luckily, it's on PS Plus Extra so give it a go. That's what I did and ended up buying it off eBay as I feared I wouldn't be able to finish it before my subscription ran out. I finished the main game before it did but still had Act 3 to finish and now the 'Ascension' expansion. Plus, I really like the game so I'm proud to own it and don't consider it a waste of £30 at all.