I knew this game hadn't been received well, but given that it was free on PSN+ this month, I thought I'd give it a shot. It actually opens strong. The world and lore and premise seemed pretty cool. But man does it have some issues. I made it about 2/3 of the way through the game before tapping out. The combat is just a mess of particle effects and screen filling colors. I get what they're going for: Doom Eternal but with Harry Potter spells. But they only got the formula about 50% of the way there. It just doesn't work. And it certainly isn't helped by some absolutely awful writing. We're talking well below MCU quip standards here. Also, at a pivotal point, the protagonist makes an absolutely terrible decision that the player has no control over. Then you spend a half hour getting reamed out about it even though you didn't even want to do it in the first place. It's just... not fun. Throw in some terrible performance and weak generic open-world filler activities and you've got yourself a game that I can't really recommend even at the price of zero dollars.

It's always a weird experience to not connect with a game that everyone else seems to love. But this game just did nothing for me. I really had to force myself to finish it, to be quite honest. It's just... too... long. Everything takes longer than it should. So many unskippable and incredibly slow animations. Every quest is padded to an insane degree. The entire design of the game revolves around justifying the bad decision to break a single game into three so they can charge you triple the price. The open world filler stuff is truly dire. The story has already devolved into pure anime nonsense after two games. There were so many points during my playthrough that as I pushed onward, I sat there thinking, 'man I really wish this was an RE4R style remake that was just the same game but better.' I guess it just wasn't for me. The music is amazing and some of the cutscenes were incredibly well-directed, but on the whole... this just isn't FF7. It's a Kingdom Hearts game (with all the negative that entails) with a FF7 total conversion mod on it. Ironically, this year's Like a Dragon IW is a far, far better Final Fantasy game than the actual FF game we got.

These all-time classics deserved better. It... sorta works. Firing up an instant action match or Galactic Conquest for a bit is undeniably fun. But then you notice that they still haven't fixed a 20-year old bug on Naboo. Half your AI team is just standing around doing nothing. The sound randomly cuts out in the menus. I'm not a big multiplayer guy but I think we all know how that went. They really should have gone all out for this... polishing and adding options to enable the most popular community mods. It would have been huge. Instead it's... whatever this is. Also, I know this sounds oddly petty, but: the new font in BF2 is a war crime.

This game, as well as its excellent predecessor, are demonstrations of the power of character. The fact is: I will always be down to spend some time with my man Ichiban and his pals. Every one of them gets their time in the spotlight, an arc, and meaningful development. But most of all, they're just really great bros (and lady-bros, as the game eloquently phrases it) whose friendships demonstrate that writing with sincerity and emotion still has a place in a world full of people who are terminally afraid of being 'cringe' for feeling things. I would have a beer with each and every one of these characters.

On the gameplay front, things have been improved quite a bit. The combat system in LAD7 was fun, if not rather simple. The addition of positioning and chaining mechanics in LAD8 greatly expand the possibilities for somehow feeling really intelligent whilst beating up thugs with names like 'Hungry Hungry Homeless.'

The remainder of the open world shenanigans are exactly what you'd expect from a LAD game. We've got your hilariously over-detailed and extensive side games (the Animal Crossing adjacent island builder and the Definitely-Not-Pokemon activities are both stand-outs), a huge collection of substories that are either absurdly hilarious or oddly sentimental, bonds to form with your squad-mates, tons of insanely wacky enemies to fight, and much more. You can easily spend well over a hundred hours trying to 100% this game--as is usual for LAD.

The writing here is stellar. The main story is a very touching look at coming to terms with the fact that nothing lasts forever: not our heroes, not our institutions, and certainly not ourselves. And as RGG is wont to do, they go hard on the feels in the final couple chapters. One particular scene during the ending sequence, in which Ichiban fully demonstrates just how good a person he really is, definitely had me wondering if it was... ahem, a bit dusty in here.

In short, the game is absolutely spectacular and somewhat of a culmination of what RGG has been building towards with their last couple releases. Can't recommend enough.

After a truly spectacular opening setpiece, SM2 falls into a bit of a lull. It honestly kind of lost me for a while there, as I was forced to slow walk around various locations listening to some questionable dialog and very much not Spider-Man-ing. That being said, once the plot launches in full shortly thereafter, the game recovers and hits some truly high highs. The combat is refined and smooth. The boss battles are the best in the series. The MJ missions, while still lacking a reason to exist, at least play well now--who knew that MJ apparently trains with John Wick in her free time. So while it's not perfect, it's still an absolute banger of a Spider-Man game that fans of this series will thoroughly enjoy. And let's be real: the level where you play as... well... you know... fully justifies the price of this game alone.

RGG Studios has unleashed their most powerful heat action: Essence of Weeping Like a Baby. Even in a series known for its incredibly well executed blockbuster endings, the finale episode of this game is maybe the best one they've ever put together. It's an hour of your favorite characters from the past 15 years in a perfectly executed high stakes action showdown... followed by 15 minutes of emotional damage. I'm not crying. You're crying. The beat-em-up combat is pretty satisfying, but let's be real... you know whether you like this gameplay or not by now.

Anyone with an interest in uniquely constructed narratives must play this game. The writing is incredibly nuanced, clever, unique, and hilariously meta (as is usual with Remedy Studios). The music written specifically for the game is excellent and well integrated, and the live action scenes are extremely well acted. I'm a huge fan of games that use the medium to tell stories in ways that could not exist outside of an interactive setting--and this is most definitely one of them. The fact that is also has some solid and satisfying survival horror gameplay is essentially just a bonus add-on to the overall package. The only way I can describe it is: an avant-garde mixed-media meta narrative hovering somewhere between a Nolan film and an A24 film and heavily dosed with shrooms.

When you're in the flow, this game really nails it. Clearing a tough room utilizing the hyper precise platforming and combat leaves you feeling like the next coming of John Wick. The issue with this game is all the rest of it: the cybervoid puzzle levels continue to be an utterly unfun interruption. Not sure we really needed so much... talking. The bike levels are interesting but extremely jank. Ironically, I wish the roguelike mode was the actual game. No one is playing this series for cutscenes or puzzles. I was really hoping GR2 would focus the series and give us a ton of combat and platforming challenges with zero down time. Instead they went in the complete opposite direction and while it's definitely good, it's just not what I was hoping for personally.

(Note: I didn't play this fully until 2.0 / Phantom Liberty). Everything you've heard about this game being a masterpiece... yeah, it's true. Night City is the most immersive game environment I've ever experienced. I actually found myself just walking around the city on rainy nights just to take in the vibe. The writing / motion capture / and voice acting are absolutely spectacular. Keanu knocks it out of the park. Near the end of the story, this became one of the few games that actually had me set the controller down and really contemplate my choices. I appreciated how the Phantom Liberty expansion slots right into the game, so you can play it alongside the main story. Not surprisingly, the expansion is excellent as well. I honestly don't really have many complaints about this game in its current form. If I had to knock it for something, I would say that the first hour or two (out of a 75+ hour game, to be fair), doesn't really make the best first impression. It's very tutorial heavy, the interface takes some getting used to, and they toss you into an extended braindance investigation. It's... a lot. But once I began the heist that sets off the plot proper, I could not put this game down. I was in.