Such a delightful little game. If we could distil the feeling of school summer holidays into videogame form, this would be it.

First played it during lockdown and it provided much needed respite from being stuck indoors, but also went back often after that as it's just a joyful world to chill in.

On top of the lo-fi visuals, what I loved most about this were the dialogues, freaking hilarious, sweet and heartwarming.

The soundtrack is also amazing and is nowadays my go-to when I need some feel-good vibes.

Perfectly balanced in length and tone, Journey is the perfect metaphor of life.

The fascinating vistas, mysterious goal and nameless companions that joined me in my travels resonated with me when I first played this in my teenhood. I still remember the emotional attachment I felt with that anonymous player I reached the summit of the mountain with.

Unencumbered by speech or language barriers, we found a way to communicate and help each other push forward - and then we lost each other at the end, but that was ok, as what it counted was the experience we had shared together.

The Last of Us Part II is a gut-wrenching, cinematic masterpiece that will unapologetically have you play both as victim and as your own executioner. As a lifelong player, I found this to be a refreshing and engrossing narrative choice that wasn't easy to embrace, but eventually enhanced my gaming experience.

With its improved mechanics, realistic combat & stealth action, and a story told with silences and little narrative details, this game is a brilliant study of human motivations, empathy and the moral consequences of one's actions.

I like many elements of this nice little game. The visuals, the eeriness, the physicality of the controls (all those little buttons and knobs and old school tools that you have to operate) and the building hypothesis-reward loop. It just feels satisfying for some reason.

Too bad for the finicky camera and the tiny ass UI. It should receive a proper accessibility-focused update. Performance is also not great at times on Switch.

Worth your time if you find it discounted. Would skip it full-price.

I hadn't given this a chance yet as I knew it's not from Media Molecule, but just based on the first couple of levels it's actually not half bad!

I like the "accessibility"-adjacent features clearly made for parents, like the helicopter assist that fast tracks you where player 1 is or the option to grab other players to (also) help them cross through trickier areas. A smart way to keep the game interesting for both parent and child while keeping autonomy and agency and avoid having to swap controllers :)

Dropped after 15 minutes. I just thought the character movement and move set are just not fluid enough to be fun for me (or for my partner fwiw). I've never played the previous games though (I was exclusively brought up with Tekken during my teenage years) so I understand I might miss that nostalgia component - hence why I'm not adding stars to this review.

I will say though that it's plagued by godawful user experience and the always-online curse. I just wanted to play offline, on my couch with my partner, and even before I could see the main menu I was forced to:
- Create an account and select a username (my chosen one was taken so I had to redo the whole process twice) 🤷‍♂️
- Connect to the online environment for no apparent reason 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️
- Close off literally 10s of full screen modals alerting me of current challenges, unlockables and god knows what else 🤦‍♂️

I probably should know by now that these games just aren't for me.

It starts great, then quickly becomes "Chore Simulator" for its first hour of gameplay (literally the first things you do in this game include collecting a delivery, throwing out the trash, tidying up not one but multiple rooms, making breakfast for an old guy). I get what it's supposed to make you feel but it's just boring, and the pretty terrible acting doesn't make it any better. There are a few powerful scenes but it also gets stuck in a weird limbo where the player should feel like they're in control and have complete freedom over the narrative, only for your decisions to seemingly make no difference at all or to break suspension of disbelief due to an unnatural script, bad timing or just player errors (cue me hilariously swinging back and forth between good cop and bad cop during that android interrogation as I couldn't figure out what each on-screen instruction was supposed to do).

I'll dare say that I'd prefer if this had more cutscenes, so I wouldn't be forced to swipe left and right a bunch of times to complete inconsequential tasks, painfully slow walking everywhere or have to wrangle the temperamental camera.

Long story short, even years after the infamous Heavy Rain I feel like this interactive fiction genre just doesn't lend itself well to games. Either make a film or make a game, David Cage. Just choose one and stick to it.

Bonus note, my ridiculous favourite scene (small spoilers, not actual script but that's basically how it played):

- [Connor, curious but tactful]: I saw a photo of a child... That's your dead son right?
- [Anderson, now wistful] Yeah, his name was Cole
- [Connor, without batting an eye] WE'RE NOT MAKING ANY PROGRESS WITH THE INVESTIGATION, THE DEVIANTS HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON

What kind of crap interaction is that? How does that make me feel immersed in the story?

It's crazy to think that the best showcase of the DualSense's capabilities is still a free game from 4 years ago that was pre-loaded on your PS5.

I'm genuinely still blown away by the haptic triggers, the reactive audio coming from your controller and all the other micro-interactions. Absolutely delightful.

And even if it didn't have any of that, it'd still be a solid platformer.

If the new game is even fractionally good as this, I'll be a happy guy.

It mixes and matches the heist genre with physics-based games, and the result is an intriguing sandbox that isn't easy to put down.

Levels are mostly of two types: the ones where you have to destroy buildings, which will have you find creative ways to blow up stuff or smash it up with your sledgehammer, or the ones where you need to steal cars, safes etc. These are the more brainy of the two, and will require you to spend quite some time to plan and prepare your route, deciding your best strategy for the last frantic 60 seconds to rush to your truck with the stolen goods before the police gets there.

The brainy levels are for obvious reasons the more interesting of the two in terms of game design, and can become quite challenging if you're a perfectionist. A very useful quick save/quick load function will help you get on the right track if you make any mistakes.