meteodriver
At once one of the worst and best games I've played in a while. I'm compelled enough to want to know what they're doing, but also the act of trying to figure out what they're doing is a fool's errand lol. Rebirth is exceptional when it's about hanging out. But it's weighed down so heavily by the worst case of ubisoft open world bloat I've ever put up with. Its combat system could be studied in universities for eons, it's obscenely, disgustingly, putridly brilliant. Boss fights in this game are some of the most fun and fascinating collaborations of systems and creative design I can recall, and I don't think they're getting nearly enough credit for just how intricate it is. But 95% of the fighting in this game is generic fodder enemies that turn it into a borderline-musou level of turn-off-brain-and-mash-square. The bulk of this game does disservice to everything it excels at. It bogs itself down with frivolous padding at every opportunity—every little action takes like a second and a half longer than you'd expect, making it feel sloppy and unresponsive in the hands when outside of combat, which is most of the time. The composition work on this score is some inconceivable galaxy brain stuff. We're talking minimum 200 IQ moves all over the place. I cannot wait for that big-ass CD box set, dude. That's my main takeaway from this game.
2006
2004
A perfectly cromulent third person shooter with some genuinely clever and thoughtful cooperative mechanics, with one of the worst Diablo Cody-ass scripts I've ever heard in my time on this Earth. The game's biggest sin, however, is in locking you into a weirdly cruel bad ending sequence, if and only if you manage to succeed a random quick time event in the middle of the damn game. Bummer! The game is also putting Kafka quotes on-screen constantly and it made me laugh every time. Classic bit.
Probably the weakest Yakuza for me but that's grading in a high curve. There's a weird tone shift without Majima that almost makes it feel like a gaiden sort of thing. The protagonist worship from every NPC is really annoying, and the combat still feels like filler. However, the dudes still rock extremely hard, and there is a heaping helping of a lovingly rendered Beat Takeshi.
2008
2021
2023
2014
2023