Closer to Doom 2016 than older shooters with its arenas, and how both work, but that's fine, I guess.

Tedious, not in difficulty, but in level design. A simple automap would've made the experience way more enjoyable (there's even the otherwise useless skull servitor accompanying you), as the samey corridors really do blend in, and found it quite easy to miss a switch/terminal, and kept going in circles. Took a look at the various forums, and looks like I'm not alone here. Was playing on hard difficulty, and found the overall difficulty to be just fine. Sometimes Aspiring Champions positioned right behind a gate would make me groan, but whatever.

Also not a fan of how the machine spirits secrets/upgrades work, wishing they persisted across missions, but maybe got taken away between chapters (if they have to be taken away for balancing reasons), but it's a power fantasy, let me be obscenely strong.

Otherwise, shooting & movement felt nice, and the trail of gibs you leave behind is neat. You can somewhat zip around the arenas utilizing the Chainsword Charge. Neat. On a side note, found it amusing how Melta got made into the super shotgun. One more thing, the damage feedback's kinda wonky.

Apart from one Legendary Ambull fight, where the boss got stuck on some boxes, I didn't find any bugs.

Very often games made by fans or these that are 'supposed to fill out the void after 'x' not being available on 'y' system' turn out to either be duds or miss the mark. That said, I'm happy to report that PW gets Ace Combat, and was pretty awesome.

PW's more similar to older AC games, 4/5/0, while being focused the most on 0, and was not afraid to change some finer mechanics to make it just enough distinct from AC games, but still allowing long-time fans to feel just like home.
I was iffy at first because PW doesn't have checkpoints, and some missions tend to be a bit on the longer side, but it led to tenser moments a few times. On the other hand most my deaths were caused by me ramming an enemy on accident, than being shot down, lol.

Liked that airplanes have more than one special weapon in PW compared to AC games. More dakka is always neat.

The missions available in campaign are very enjoyable, and give the player plenty baddies to shoot at. The first half of the campaign is pretty tame, but around the 10th/11th mission things get wild fast. The game has been repeatedly putting a big grin on my face during the second half.

Loved that special enemies/bosses have their own healthbars, it makes the dogfights more hype than it should. :D

PW looks and sounds really, and while it doesn't match AC7 in these regards, it doesn't matter that much tbh. I find the comparison to be unfair against PW - its dev team was much smaller, and they still did a great job.

Glad PW exists and I don't see it as a competinion to AC, I see it as a "long-lost brother", an equal. There's no point in antagonising one against another even if I made several comparisons above. I'm hoping/looking foward to a sequel, so that AC/PW fans will be dining well with TWO series of great games, and not just one.

Necromunda: Hired Gun is a mess. It has cool looking enviroments fitting into the 40k universe, that are a slog to get through even with additional mobility options. I've found quite a few seemingly flat corridors/arenas with cracks/debris which makes sliding a chore. The zipline, double-jumping & side-dashing work a bit better and using these options make the game a bit more palatable. That said, the so-so gunplay and spongy enemies make combat irritating after a while. At least the gibs are there, so that's nice.

During my story run I ran into a couple of bugs: one (last) enemy falling off of a ramp to lava, but not dying, so I wasn't able to kill him to proceed, my HUD randomly disappeared after loading a save, and got stuck in the 'firing zipline' animation. Usually a reload was enough to fix these. Also for some reason I had some major framerate issues in the last 3 missions during some segments, compared to having 180+ fps in other missions.

Honestly, just play Doom (2016), Doom Eternal, or anything from New Blood Interactive instead.

A great asymmetrical co-op, immensely fun as well.

A 10-ish hour adventure with great 3d platforming and entertaining puzzles. All of which were pretty varied, and accompanied by a number of new mechanics introduced at the start of the new level. The game also features a number of pretty and detailed environments. Oh, and even if you screw things up, and die, you respawn almost instantly, and the checkpoints are really frequent, so you never lose that much time.

Other than that, the game mixes in a number of elements from different genres - from turret sections, bullet-hell-ish moments, to a fighting game segment(!). There are also a number of hidden minigames in the game, which again make the gameplay even more varied, and reward players for exploring.

The dual pov of the split-screen sometimes helps with the puzzles, but on some occasions, it made seeing what's happening on the screen a tad difficult which ended with me or my buddy dying a couple of times. It is what it is.

The only other minor nitpick I have is that I feel like May had cooler stuff to do throughout the game, and Cody was designated to be the support character for the most part (I happened to play as May). Wishing this part of the game was a tad more balanced to allow the other player to have some fun as well.

There's a certain snappiness and impact I expect from good shooters and platformers, and Pedro had none of that. The character moves like molasses, and found the platforming to be janky af, and apart of a handful of arenas, found most of the engagements with the enemies to be bland.

The game steadily introduces a number of mechanics, and then mixes and matches them, to make the game a tad more interesting. That said, the platforming-only levels (two or three in the banana universe, and the ones with the moving lasers near the end of the game) were bad.

In theory, MFP has high replayability, but when I didn't like it the first time, I'm not going to stick around and replay the levels for a better score.

- so, during your playthrough you may find hidden 'mutators' that can be applied to the game after you've completed it at least once. I've found a couple of them, and one of them enables the player to increase the character's move speed from the default value of 30, all the way up to 100. I did turn that on for a couple of levels and set it to around 75, and the game instantly felt much nicer... but honestly, I rolled my eyes and deleted the game afterward.

Whatever.

FYI/Disclaimer: Played on the steamdeck, with no issues whatsoever, I think you have to manually invoke the on-screen keyboard while naming Cecil, but it ran fine, with no crashes, no slowdown, and having the ability to play FF4 in my bed was great. Hoping that all Pixel Remasters will get ported to NS, PS4/ and X1/XSS/XSX.

FF4 huh.

It was fine. A bit better than 3, also different than 3 in many aspects.

An attempt at making a more character-prominent game compared to FF3, with the cast being somewhat more involved in the occurring happenings than before. Story-wise it closely follows FF3's beats. It has more story points than 3, and characters in FF4 have some backstory and motivations, they aren't blank cards like the ones in FF3, but still wouldn't call them terribly complex.

I found the game to have weird difficulty fluctuations while being pretty easy overall. I mean that in the beginning, you have to be more deliberate and thoughtful with your decisions, when the game throws at you some comps that have regular mobs that are melee- or magic- resistant mixed with other mobs, but then in the middle of the game this has stopped occurring, and I was able to start auto-attacking almost everything that wasn't a boss or oddly composed monster-in-a-box.

Bosses usually required paying at least some attention, which was cool.

The free-form 'pick-a-job' system got ditched in favor of characters with predetermined jobs/classes, and it's been done because it's easier to balance the game and make the story go in parallel with the characters. No hard feelings here. The 'pick-a-job' system is cooler from the gameplay pov and offers more involvement, but I see why the change has been been made. Not a fan of frequent changes made to the party composition tho, but every time I got my bearings and was done figuring out how that certain character could/would fit into the party, the game would take a 90-degree turn and change them for the story reasons.

The coolest thing about having easy access to the first 6 games in the Final Fantasy series via the pixel remasters is that you can go back, and see how the series would change over the years, and simply because of that, I find them to be worth playing.

I'm looking forward to FFV, as that one's going to be a replay, it's been some years since then, tho

The cast and interactions, dialogue, and banter between them were probably the highlights of the game. Liked how some of the choices do affect other events later in the game. The actual gameplay was serviceable at best.

Combat's eh. You either stagger and/or disable shields while dealing with special enemies, and then gank them with the entire crew or by issuing correct orders, or tell Rocket to group enemies with one of his skills and then mop up the floor with cc-ed enemies. That's it. These two ways of dealing with the enemies will get you through the entire game.

The other part of the game is made of going through corridors/some other environment while completing puzzles and listening to the crew's banter until you find another arena where you fight. Rinse and repeat. There's some downtime between chapters where you may opt into talking with the crew. Overall I'd be more content if the game was 10-ish percent shorter.

The environments that weren't samey corridors were way cooler than the corridors themselves. That said there were some cool setpieces and areas. Oh and btw, prepare yourself for a metric ton of narrow passages of ledges made specifically for the last-gen consoles so the game could load the next area.

Not sure I liked how your crew keeps teleporting around the arenas while you issue special orders to them. It's more apparent with Gamora and Drax who are melee fighters and looks kinda silly. I also found the finisher camera disorienting and lacking punch. By that I mean sometimes the game wants to show how the last enemy on the arena gets punched in the face or w/e, and abruptly zooms towards them for a second or two, and then goes back to following Star-Lord, but lacks any dynamics. I was often left with 'whaaa.. oh ok' expression on my face, cause I couldn't get used to it. Same with the tag-team combos, they looked weak... or maybe I'm just spoiled by being used to Yakuza.

My experience was mostly bug-free. In the early stages of the game, I got stuck on some slopes and had to reload the checkpoint (which wasn't a big issue since the game does save your progress frequently, so I mostly wasted 20 seconds on this). Once both Gamora and Drax got stuck inside a pillar during combat, but I was able to teleport them out by issuing them orders, and once I think it was Gamora who got stuck inside another pillar while being stunned by a drone that was stuck inside the pillar as well, and I couldn't shoot at the drone, so I had to reload).

The game features lots of difficulty knobs and sliders to tamper with, as well as a number of neat accessibility options, tho I feel that making the subs bigger and a bit wider caused a number of weird breaks in the lines.

7 Groots out of 10 seems fair tbh. Glad the game's both on Gamepass and PS+Extra (played on the latter, but have both), as being able to "lend" GotG was way much preferable that to buying it even at -50% off.

More of the same as the main game, but gives us a peek into Jin's past and introduces some cool characters. Feels just right length-wise, meaning doesn't feel too short and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Just like the base game's regions, the titular Iki Island is a pretty place and gives us a colorful tropical backdrop, and similarly to the base game, Iki made me stop at times just to admire the vistas.

A solid experience overall.

Fun game with solid combat, and a good story. Vibrant & gorgeous, it made me stop on several occasions to either take screenshots or just admire the backdrop. Also features a lot of open-wordly stuff, with Shinto Shrines being my fav ones, and I'm usually not a fan of Jumping Puzzles in other games. Fluid movement, satisfying combat. Very polished, in 80h between the base game and Iki Island I've encountered 3 minor glitches (nothing game-breaking, just some physics/collision shenanigans)

Platinumed the base game, and also got all collectibles (without armor dyes, cba to grind the flowers tbh). The penultimate duel (vs Khotun Khan in Act 3) was mid at best. Some of the side quests have gotten repetitive towards the end. A very solid game overall.

Actually left the haptics on in Tsushima, having the controller react while traversing was kinda cool, the adaptive triggers were annoying and got old soon, and I disabled those.

Hoping it'll get ported to PC at some point, the more people enjoy this, the better.

Pretty much a step-up from FF1 in every way.
It's a cool, high fantasy game coming from the late 80s/early 90s about saving the world, with a cool sense of adventure, as the party both goes to cool places and meets new characters along the way, some of them even join them for a bit, and even tho they might not help in battle, they help in pushing the story forwards. Gives the story some characterization, even if the party of WoLs is a characterless blob itself, for all intents and purposes, the WoLs don't even need names. Oh well.

The gameplay also sees evolution, as the roster of jobs has grown to 20+ jobs throughout the game, will some being better than the others. Nonetheless, the number of available jobs gives the player better control of the game. It's worth noting that the PR version removes any penalties for changing your jobs, and you may do so at your own will.

Personally, I've found the game a bit on the easier side. Apart from some of the main and optional bosses, I breezed through the game with autoattacking/autobattling, all job having the ability to dual-wield weapons is kinda op, even mages' melee attacks would be enough for overworld mobs tbh.

Shame this version doesn't have any optional juiced up/ superbosses, similar to the FF3D Iron Giant.

FF3 PR has all other QoL improvements present in the game, the eight-directional movement, new music arrangements, and really well-done sprite work (the WoLs blend in just right tbh) enriched with some modern shaders/post-processing. The gameplay is really nice.

FF3 PR is probably the most accessible way to play Final Fantasy 3 nowadays. Sadly as it's with the other FF PR versions it's only available on PC and iOS/Android would be cool if Square released them on the PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, and the Switch.

I've played the game on the SteamDeck and can report that I haven't found any problems with it during my time with it (20 or so hours) on that platform.

This is mostly semi-coherent, as I haven't written anything longer in years, and it shows.

The TL;DR is that "Judgment is very solid but lacks (nothing major tho) in some departments, and other systems could use some more time/thought, but it does succeed at being its own thing".

Note, as opposed to a 3.5 Star rating, I'd say that Judgment closer to being a 7.5/10 in my book.

Playing as Yagami, who's noticeably more agile and technical compared to Kiryu was pretty fun. His (combat) moveset allows for diversified and fun gameplay, unfortunately, I felt that Yagami's techniques were considerably skewed towards the Tiger Style, with the Crane Style somewhat falling into a secondary combat style.

Judgment's story is its strongest point, as well as introduces a full cast of interesting characters. Following the game's main plot

The game also features a bunch of substories (Side Cases), and Friend Events, which are mini-substories (found both the Side Cases and Friend Events to be fine, and as usual they've allowed for some lighter stories be told, to offset the fairly grim main part of the game), minigames and other minigames (and while Karaoke is missing, I'm willing not to hold it against the game, as it's pretty understandable that it'd cost way too much to have Takuya Kimura sing in the game). Anyhow, there's still a lot to do in Kamurocho, some of the new minigames might be hit-or-miss for some, but you can't please everyone.

Tailing sequences, and looking for evidence are the biggest additions to the other systems known from earlier Yakuza games, and they work for the most part. Tailing suspects happened a couple of times too many for my liking, and some of these dragged on for a bit, similarly to the chases in the game.

Some nitpicks:

I found that allowing players to get the Tiger Drop pretty much from the get-go is a questionable idea. You have to know where to get it, but it's technically possible to obtain it very early, and similarly to all Yakuza games where it's available, it's pretty broken.

I wasn't a fan of the Keihin invasions. They got old kinda quick and then got even worse after random punks get firearms in the late stage of the game, especially since firearms cause Mortal Wounds... which takes us to the system itself.

Overall I'm mixed on the Mortal Wounds system, the system was okay at first, as it allowed for bosses to have an ace up in their sleeve (which was both dodgeable, and preventable if you were quick enough), and shows that Yagami isn't a 'god walking mere mortals' like Kiryu was, but it got annoying with random punks and their firearms in the late stage of the game.

Can't hold this last thing against the game itself and/or the devs and it doesn't affect my outlook on the game, but fuck Johnny & Associates for not allowing Judgment to come to PC. Since Yakuza 0 has been released on steam, RGG Studio's have found thousands of new fans on PC (I'm one of them!) and it sucks that Judgment most likely won't make it over, unless the idol company changes their mind. This is not coming from a "pcmr elitist" (because I'm not), but simply the more people can play the games, the better. Not everyone's fortunate enough to have multiple systems. As said, this isn't negatively affecting my opinion on the game itself, just wanted to mention it.

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Overall Judgment is a solid game, and a solid first entry in its franchise, building on top of years already spent in Kamurocho with Kiryu and company. A new protagonist and his role in the world allowed for a different angle for the story, and some new/additional gameplay mechanics.

The game still contains the Yakuza DNA, but Judgment succeeds at being its own thing.

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I've already played Lost Judgment and the Kaito Files DLC, but will leave these for the next week. See ya!