that four stars is only my thoughts on the base campaign. it starts off fantastic, atmospherically oppressive, but jesus man i'm not sure i've ever played a more dramatic decline in the final act of a game.

the first 90% of it holds up beautifully, motion feels fantastic and the sound design is still some of the most impactful out of any game i've ever played. had to unplug my subwoofer because the grenade sounds were shaking the house even with the volume cranked down.

monster design is great, except the jellyfish guys. absolutely despised them, and not in a "man i'm having fun with how much i hate these guys" way. towards the end of the game, the spawns on the little spider guys could be pretty unfun when it doesn't really give you much to work with when trying to get out of LOS of the projectiles.

hated the map design of the last few missions. i get the goal, just being a descent into madness or whatever, but it just wasn't fun to me and felt much less thought through than the first 4 episodes. the final boss fight was complete dog shit too, like they ran out of time and threw something together in an hour.