I abandoned Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered, why? To tell that, let me tell you why I started it. It was leaving PS Plus and I wanted to try out the game. But I had very little time left, it leaves in just 2 days. I played the game for a bit and while it's not bad, it just felt like a linear, shooter?

The game is definitely not bad and if I had more time, I'm sure I would have beat it. Maybe even go for the platinum. However, it's not a great game. Not even a good one. I would give it 5 or 6 out of 10 probably when I finished it and I just didn't want to rush a 5 or 6 out of 10 experience.

If you are reading this later and got your hands on the game somehow, I would recommend you to at least try it. Depending on your love of Ghostbusters, you might really enjoy this one.

Max Payne still impressed me today thanks to it's core combat mechanics and it's focus on story compared to the games around it's original release. However, while the combat mechanics are strong, second half of the game takes the fun away due to you not getting any new weapons and enemies turning into bullet sponges. It's still an above average game and you can definitely have fun with it. But I can't quite say that it's a "good" game.

The Full Review(No Spoilers):

Flesh of Fallen Angels
Obviously, I have played Max Payne many times on PC before. Especially in my childhood, it was the essential game that was installed on every single one of my friends. Everyone knew about this game and everyone played it. But, none of us finished it. I didn't as well. So I decided that it was time to tackle the game after all those years and properly finish it this time. Here is my experience playing on PS5.

Let's start with the story. The game opens with the titular character entering his home, finding his child and wife killed. He is an NYPD Detective so after that horrible night, he decides to go rogue and take revenge on those who killed his family.

Compared to the games of it's time, Max Payne is a story focused game. But compared to the games of this time, the story is mostly background information. There are lots of cutscenes made up of comic book panels and even some very meta jokes, not surprising, but the story never interested me enough.

Characters are non-existent as well. There are a lot of them but most of them are bosses you won't remember in a few days. So, story and characters are weak. What about the gameplay? That is, pretty strong.

Max Payne is almost entirely a TPS game. It's linear so there is not much exploration here. It doesn't have puzzles. There is light platforming but it's very light. And sometimes where you will go is not clear but there aren't alternative paths in levels. It's a pretty linear game.

Which is totally ok and I would even say works in the favor of the game because you go to a lot of different places and encounter lots of different set pieces. Yeah, this game does have set pieces. They are not in the quality of something like Uncharted obviously but even in today's standards, some of them holds up great. There are some that doesn't hold up as well.

Speaking of things holding up, we need to talk about combat. Because wow, it works. It definitely works. Shoot Dodge, Bullet Time, the feel of the weapons, it all works and it all feels great. It's also very, very fun. However, there is one big problem with combat that dragged down the score of the game for me and that is the second half of the game.

For the first half, you will feel great. New enemy types are being added, new weapons comes in, it's fun. In the second half, new weapons stops coming. So you got the same arsenal for the remaining game time. Which is around 2-3 hours. And while there are some new enemy types getting added, they are not good.

Late game enemies here are bullet sponges. And that's not fun. So while the combat mechanics of the game are great, enemy design and encounter design needed more work. I won't get to the technical stuff because that is the one area that won't hold up for any older title and it would not be fair to judge the game based on that.

I can say one good thing about it though and that is the atmosphere. The game is set in New York, during a huge snowstorm. And the atmosphere is pretty nice. I felt the coldness of the air. It was great.

One final thing I want to talk about is the PS4/PS5 version of the game. I would not recommend it. Because there are some tricky platforming areas where the analog controls are not handled properly and you might go crazy in those levels. And there is no quicksave. It's beatable on the standard difficulty, as you can see from me. But playing this on PC or Xbox which I believe also has quicksave support would be the better idea. However, if PlayStation is your only choice, it did not hinder my experience much. One last note, it took me 7 hours to beat the game on PlayStation. On other platforms with quicksave, it would probably be somewhere between 4-5. Just to give information.

Max Payne still impressed me today thanks to it's core combat mechanics and it's focus on story compared to the games around it's original release. However, while the combat mechanics are strong, second half of the game takes the fun away due to you not getting any new weapons and enemies turning into bullet sponges. It's still an above average game and you can definitely have fun with it. But I can't quite say that it's a "good" game.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice could have been great but it does the most stupid thing imaginable in it's second half. While it's first half is a perfect mix of exploration, puzzles and combat; the second half decides to throw in these mechanics one by one which obviously gets incredibly boring after a while. Solving puzzles 40 minutes nonstop or doing combat for 15 minutes nonstop are the "brightest" ideas of the second half and well, they are not that bright. I loved the first half but got bored to death in the second half. I am right in the middle with this one.

The Full Review(No Spoilers):

Two Sides of the Same Coin
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is an important game. It's the game thar put Ninja Theory on Microsoft's radar as well as many players' radar. It's a game that is loved by many even though it has some haters as well.

I think Hellblade is a great game, sorry, "was" a great game. I haven't seen a game betrayed by it's pacing this much in a looooong time. And it's so stupid, it's crazy to think that anyone at Ninja Theory found this structure for this game plausible.

Okay, let's start from the beginning with the story. Our story is set in the 8th century, somewhere up north. We play as Senua and she is on a journey to get to Helheim in order to save the life of the love of her life. The game doesn't give you much more than this when you start it but the story is uncovered slowly through the flashbacks.

In terms of presentation, Hellblade is really solid. Director Tameem Antoniades did a great job with the performances being really really good as well. Especially Melina Juergens who played Senua is the main component that holds everything together. She is so powerful yet so vulnerable at the same time, Juergens really blew me away.

However, when you come to the end of the game and you now know all of the story, it's not that good. Writer is also Tameem Antoniades but I have to say, his writing skills isn't very creative. The story here is very basic when you look at the big picture and the ending, well, it was a very big disappointment.

So, the story is not good but the presentation is pretty solid. Bundle that with great performances and I was overall feeling good about the story side of things.

The biggest problems comes with the gameplay. In Hellblade, there are 3 things we do. We walk, we fight and we solve puzzles. Let's start with the exploration and puzzle solving first. Exploration, what exploration? Hellblade is a very linear game and while there is a collectible type that gives a little bit more context to some characters and events, it's not enough.

I did not like the things those collectibles spoke about and I was not interested in them after a point. I collected all of them by the way and I don't think they were worth it. Puzzle solving on the other hand was fine, it was nice.

There are some chapter specific puzzle types but there are also "Illusion" puzzles, I think that's their name. These are featured in the game from start to finish. You have a locked door, there are some signs on it. You explore around and try to find that sign in the environment. That's how you unlock the door. Obviously sometimes there is more than one sign.

I know a lot of people that got bored with it but I think they were very clever with it's usage. Overall, I really enjoyed these puzzles. I had much bigger problems with some of the chapter specific ones. But I won't go into detail because of spoilers.

There is a third pillar to the gameplay, let's talk about that now. Combat. Combat in this game is pretty solid but when you play it in smaller chunks. The camera placement is great, you really feel your hits, enemies also gets knife cuts and stuff. So it's really really good. Especially in presentation again. There is not much variety in the combat but there is a bit of enemy variety at least.

Now I need to talk about the structure thing. Oh my god, this is so stupid. In the first half of the game, everything is great. You walk a bit, you fight a bit and you puzzle a bit. In the second half however, the game goes crazy and decides to throw in a bunch of puzzles and only puzzles. Then it throws a bunch of combat and only combat. I mean, why?

The first half had a great pace with every mechanic in the game being used but then the second half decides to go through the mechanics one by one until you die of boredom. There is kind of a story reason but the core story isn't that good like I said so the gameplay of the second half is ruined for something that's not even good.

I loved the game during the first half but hated it during the second half. It's, truly a mixed bag in that sense. Now let's get a little bit into the technical side of things and end our review.

Even if the game came out in 2017, I think it looks pretty good. Especially the animations are very nice. Combat animations looks crazy in a good way. But obviously the environment looks a little old these days. And as a linear game, you do feel like you are walking along corridors at many points.

When it comes to sound, Hellblade is quite impressive. It uses binaural audio to convey the sounds inside Senua's mind to the players and headphones are highly recommended. I played the entire game with headphones and it really does feel interesting and even nauseating at times. In a good way though because it puts you really in the mind of Senua. They managed to do that very well.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice could have been great but it does the most stupid thing imaginable in it's second half. While it's first half is a perfect mix of exploration, puzzles and combat; the second half decides to throw in these mechanics one by one which obviously gets incredibly boring after a while. Solving puzzles 40 minutes nonstop or doing combat for 15 minutes nonstop are the "brightest" ideas of the second half and well, they are not that bright. I loved the first half but got bored to death in the second half. I am right in the middle with this one.