This game is a technical marvel and runs like an absolute dream, and is infectiously fun enough to get me to finish every bit of content so that when I finished the main story I cashed in the platinum trophy. I don’t like how restrictive they made the gadget system, and I feel like the fact that it’s a video game hurts the story a little. Like Peter turning into anti venom was solely because you spend all your skill tree points doing symbiote skills and the game doesn’t want you to feel like you wasted your time, so they go “this suit does all the stuff the venom suit does, but without the evil part!” Also, Miles’s role was fumbled in the story. It feels like he didn’t have as much of a stake in it as Peter, which sucks considering he’s the co-lead. Hopefully since he’s the main character of the third game, he’ll get a better chance to shine.

This game wasn’t bad, but to me it was pretty disappointing. When this game is at its best, it plays exactly like the first game, but it does a lot that deviates and that isn’t always a good thing. For starters, they wanted to do a bigger focus on the story and I think that’s a huge misstep for ghostrunner. I have absolutely no investment in the story or characters so the last thing I wanted was to be forced to walk through a hub world and talk to people in order to get to the next level. The characters and story are weak! Why should I have to spend so much time engaging with them?? Also, performance problems plague this game from start to finish, and the developers are more interested in adding new cosmetics than fixing the bugs.

I really do like this game. On ps5 it runs very well, only had one or two crashes in 41 hours of gameplay. The music drove so much of the early experience for me, and motivated me to explore more of the rich environments laid out around the main planet. The combat is still great, and they had great ideas on how to expand it with the stance system. Mobility/traversal also got a boost in this game. I love that this a rare sequel that doesn’t take away your powers from the first game and instead lets you continue to build on your toolkit. Pretty much everything wrong with fallen order is improved, with the exception of the number of planets to discover, but the terrains and climates are varied enough that it sorta makes up for it. Had a great time with this game.

It truly pains me to say this, but this game isn't good. I am such a huge fan of Austin Wintory's work but this is an unfortunate outlier. I've been a musical theater actor for six years at this point and am studying it in college, and the direction of this musical is fundamentally wrong. They fail to diegetically tune the songs, the transitions between dialogue and music are rather sloppy, and don't even get me started on the lyrics. It shows that none of the composers have musical theater experience. Also the color choice system kinda sucks. I wish the game would tell you that you can only choose one of the three colors and that you lose access to role-playing choices pertaining to the other two colors permanently for the entire runtime of the game. Banking on replayability is not a good plan.

DMC5 has a lot of depth to its combat systems, and as someone who gets busy with work and sometimes has to take a couple days or even weeks off of video games, it was a little jarring coming back to this game having lost the muscle memory of hitting combos. This is especially true of Dante. I honestly don't know if I like how he plays, his sword feels weak and his other weapons don't feel all that intuitive. I think Nero is my favorite of the three main playable characters. The story is over-the-top nonsense but at least it owns it. There's a lot of goofiness that the game wears like a badge of honor. A couple of the songs are bangers, too. Holistically this game is good, I just wish I had a better time with it.

This game is an extremely mixed bag. I have a handful of issues with Breath of the Wild, and while this game does fix some of them, it creates a lot of its own problems. It is a good game, yes. But far from great and not even close to a 10/10. The story is chock full of copy/paste writing and is hugely disjointed, the combat still is irritating, and the presence of the Sheikah is just gone with no explanation. There are a lot of amazing moments in this game, and I ended up having a good time, but I wish there was a little more honesty about the flaws. The freedom and openness aren't enough by themselves to make this the game of the year.

No doubt worth the wait. Ms. Chalice's gameplay feels so fresh and being able to use her in any boss fight puts a new twist on the entire game (not just the DLC). Every new boss was super inventive and pushed the boundaries of what a Cuphead level could play like, and I had a great time. I also had a really good time with the gauntlet mode and its creative chess theme. The new weapons could be better but that doesn't really matter. Music continues to be great, the animation is unparalleled, and the level of polish is off the charts.