The most fun I had with a 4-player co-op game since Deep Rock Galactic. Helldivers 2 is addictive, chaotic, and fun without feeling so compromised in terms of the fundamental elements that are well put together, which is impressive for Arrowhead's first attempt at a third-person perspective. The presentation is top-notch in terms of the visuals that make each planet where you exterminate bugs or robots so distinctive, and the sound design is excellent too. My only complaint on the presentation side is that the music is pretty generic and repetitive after a while.

I do want to talk about monetization, which has been contentious with folks. As I have mentioned in the past, I don't have a problem with monetization as long as it values my time and doesn't penalize me for not spending real money. Helldivers 2 is a good example of my point. You can get premium currency right away with real money, but if you choose to play the game, it doesn't take that long to get enough premium currency to unlock stuff, which I can't say the same for most other recent live service games. It's leaning way more towards Deep Rock Galactic's approach than say any modern Blizzard game in terms of the spectrum.

Finally, I do want to mention that the game runs smoothly on PS5 during gameplay with no hiccups at all, despite how impressive it looks and how much is going on the screen. It did unfortunately crash a few times at random for me and the servers need some serious improvements like making the quickplay work properly. I'm not gonna harp on it too much because the devs are extremely aware of it and they didn't expect this game to explode in popularity. I'm just kind of annoyed that I can’t feast further into this incredible package due to the server problems

In conclusion, it's wonderful to see time a complete PVE co-op experience made by people who are big fans of it, but also understand how to make it fun without alienating their consumers and all that for just 40 dollars/euros?! if this is the direction that they will spearhead with post-launch support. I will 100% see myself coming back to it constantly in the future once these devs have finally fixed the servers.

Coming into this having played the Dark Souls trilogy but not the original, Demon's Souls is a very unique and refreshing experience. As someone who doesn't like the direction From's modern games are headed in, this is the opposite. It's Dark Souls but more out there, more experimental. In some ways, that feels rough around the edges, but it also makes for a much more worthwhile experience that isn't just rehashing old ideas while missing the point of them. The level and world design here isn't as ambitious as its successor, but it's not trying to be and what's here works fine. The remake is excellent, as far as I know the gameplay is untouched, but the graphical work here is some of the prettiest I've seen, and runs much smoother than From's own games do. If I have any complaints, it's mostly that the replayability here seems limited compared to Dark Souls. There's definitely some things I want to try out still, but the bosses are much easier in general and many of them are puzzles that seem like they wouldn't be as interesting a second time around, and there's less variety of weapons/builds to use in general. One of the later game areas (4-2) was also incredibly frustrating until I looked up a way to cheese it, not looking forward to revisiting that. Overall I had a really good time with it, it's nice to have a new (to me) Souls game that doesn't feel tainted in the way the newer ones do.

This needed to walk so Dark Souls 3 could run

This game introduced a lot of gameplay fixes on the original’s design with many unique features that make it a great experience amongst the souls-borne series. It also introduced a lot of what I disliked in the series such as linear areas, returning to the hub area and speaking to an NPC to level up rather than at any bonfire, and warping between every bonfire (the interconnected world of DS1 can never be topped)
That, plus a lot of cheap-shot placed enemies and insta-kill attacks with a soul-tier system that makes it hard to play with friends left a sour taste in my mouth when playing